Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness – Thomas S. Cowan MD
(Buy from Amazon)
One Doctor’s Surprising Answer to the Epidemic of Autoimmunity and Chronic Disease
Over the past fifty years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded: currently 1 in 2.5 American children has an allergy, 1 in 11 has asthma, 1 in 13 has severe food allergies, and 1 in 36 has autism. While some attribute this rise to increased awareness and diagnosis, Thomas Cowan, MD, argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines American children typically receive―approximately 70 vaccine doses by age eighteen. The goal of these vaccines is precisely what we’re now seeing in such abundance among our chronically ill children: the provocation of immune response.
Dr. Cowan looks at emerging evidence that certain childhood illnesses are actually protective of disease later in life; examines the role of fever, the gut, and cellular fluid in immune health; argues that vaccination is an ineffective (and harmful) attempt to shortcut a complex immune response; and asserts that the medical establishment has engaged in an authoritarian argument that robs parents of informed consent. His ultimate question, from the point of view of a doctor who has decades of experience treating countless children is: What are we really doing to children when we vaccinate them?
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links that may provide monetary compensation to help support the Whole Guidance Vision of Creating a Happy and Healthy Planet should you make a purchase. We very much appreciate and thank you for your support.
The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs – Nicolas Pineault
(Buy from Amazon; Buy from The Book Depository)
Can you really feel years younger & make unexplained symptoms vanish with the click of a button — the “Airplane Mode” on your cell phone?
Investigative Health Journalist Nicolas Pineault used to think this all sounded like something only crazy people wearing tinfoil hats would say.
But the overwhelming amount of independent scientific evidence linking electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from wireless technologies with increased risks of cancer, infertility, insomnia, and depression sure has the uncanny ability to change a man’s mind.
The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs is a simple and unconventional book that will teach you exactly how to reduce your exposure to this brand new 21st-century pollution without going back to the Stone Age.
You will learn:
- What your smartphone, your wifi router and your microwave oven have in common (page 9)
- Why policy makers and scientists all worldwide don’t agree about whether EMFs are dangerous or not (page 21)
- Is Electro-Hypersensitivity as popularized in the TV show “Better Call Saul” real? Or is it all psychological? (page 62)
- Why carrying a cell phone in your pocket can harm your fertility (201 studies prove it) (page 72)
- The 1-click fix to reduce cellphone EMFs by 84% (page 142)
- What is safer? Speakerphone, earbuds or a Bluetooth ear piece? (page 155)
- The #1 worst source of EMF radiation at home (page 160)
- Why baby monitors are worse than smartphones, and better alternatives (page 208)
It’s true. The jury is still out about whether cellphone radiation is the new smoking or just a temporary scare. But why take chances?
Instead, read The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs — the technological seat belt you might just need to use your new gadgets safely.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links that may provide monetary compensation to help support the Whole Guidance Vision of Creating a Happy and Healthy Planet should you make a purchase. We very much appreciate and thank you for your support.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Obesity:
- I’ll explain why obesity is a disease and also a major hidden cause of other diseases
- I’ll talk about the difference between being obese and being overweight
- I’ll explain how obesity is caused by hormonal imbalances and not by eating too many calories
- Finally, I’ll give you a few holistic lifestyle strategies to reduce obesity, regain health, and feel awesome in your own skin
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FAT BURNING FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
It’s no secret. The world today has a lot more fat and sick people than there were 150 years ago. Seeing an obese person way back in the day meant having to visit a carnival or circus that’s how rare obesity was. Unfortunately today you just got to walk outside or turn on the tele and you’ll see excessively large people everywhere.
Since the 1980s obesity rates have doubled. Hmm, I wonder what happened in the 80s? Ah that’s right the low fat recommendation from the American health authorities. Good one guys. Today this misguided unscientific nonsensical low-fat strategy has lead to about 13% of the world’s adult population being categorised as obese and about 50 million kids worldwide under the age of 5 being defined as obese. That’s what gets me the most, seeing overweight and obese infants and children.
Now the World Health Organization has a list of the top 10 leading causes of death and smoking tobacco isn’t even on the list, but we all know that smoking causes many chronic diseases that eventually will lead to death. This is what the World Health Organisation says about smoking:
“Tobacco use is a major cause of many of the world’s top killer diseases – including cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive lung disease and lung cancer. In total, tobacco use is responsible for the death of about 1 in 10 adults worldwide. Smoking is often the hidden cause of the disease recorded as responsible for death.”
Interesting right? In fact the World Health Organization label smoking as the number one killer, but they still don’t put it on the list. Instead you’ll see diseases relating to the heart, brain, lungs, and infections.
This is where obesity comes in. Even though it’s not listed, just like smoking as a leading cause of death, obesity is a major hidden cause of many of those on the list. The top 3 by the way are heart disease, stroke, and lung related diseases all of which are due to the obstruction in blood and oxygen flow to the heart, brain, and lungs.
The thing about obesity is that most people think it’s just a weight issue and obese people are eating too much and not exercising enough. While I agree that some of the health problems associated with obesity is due to the large amount of weight on the body causing physical dysfunction, obesity causes more harm through physiological and biochemical damage because of its ability to disrupt the function of other systems in your body.
You see your body isn’t stupid. It has specific feedback loops and safety mechanisms to prevent the excessive loss or accumulation of fat and it has to control the amount of fat on your body because your fat cells are actually another organ. So when your fat levels get out of balance the key functions that they perform will be disrupted.
One of the functions of fat is fat acts as a warehouse for toxins. When your body is unable to fully metabolise, process, and eliminate toxins it stores the toxins in fat cells. Fat also sends signals and hormones that can have a positive or negative effect on your immune system and your metabolism. Your fat cells send out immune signals controlling inflammation and stress in your body. Your fat cells also send out hormones telling you that you’re full and will increase fat metabolism, i.e. fat-burning.
But when you have too much fat this will increase the amount of pro-inflammatory signals called cytokines increasing the amount of inflammation and stress in your body putting it in a catabolic state or a state of breaking down. Too much fat will also cause your satiety hormone leptin to be produced in excessively large amounts and your brain will become leptin resistant because there’s too much to take in. Meaning you will still feel hungry even though your body may already be carrying a lot of fat. Plus leptin resistance reduces fat metabolism and the amount of fat you burn causing you to hold onto more fat.
So just as there is heart disease, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, kidney stones, thyroiditis, arthritis, osteoporosis, autoimmune conditions and many other illnesses centred around particular organs and systems there is an illness, a disease of your fat cells and that my friend is called obesity and obesity is a disease that can cause further health issues in the future.
Now I don’t like to use the conventional classification system for defining whether someone is overweight or obese. Currently this is defined by your body mass index or BMI. BMI is supposed to calculate body fat based on your weight and height, but the calculation has a massive flaw. It doesn’t take into account lean muscle mass and bone mass and water weight. So you could have a fit athlete with 10% body fat, but a high BMI and have a very sick person with 30% body fat, but a medium BMI and the athlete would be categorised as obese and the sick person overweight, and this is not a good indicator of a healthy body.
So I define being overweight as holding on to a few extra kilos of fat and looking a bit soft and fluffy and chubby in the mirror, but still having normal healthy metabolic, hormonal, and immune function. This is very different to being obese, which is a person who is also carrying extra fat weight and has a broken metabolism and a weak immune system because their hormones are out of balance.
Okay so what causes obesity?
“Obesity is not caused by consuming too many calories.”
Yes you heard right. Obesity is not caused by consuming too many calories. It is true that you can become overweight by eating a huge amount of calories even those calories come from whole real food sources, but you would never become obese. Your hormonal system regulating hunger and appetite would kick in and prevent you from eating more then you need. Once you do become obese this is when you will be unable to control the amount of calories you take in and will begin to eat well beyond your body’s requirements.
What pushes you over the edge from being overweight to becoming obese isn’t the calories. It is an underlying hidden malfunction in your body’s hormonal system. When your sex hormones, growth hormones, hormones regulating metabolism and stress, when these are no longer playing the same song and in sync with each other a lot of things go wrong in your body including broken detox pathways, lowered immunity, decrease in muscle mass, increase in fat mass, and an increase in appetite for nutrient-poor foods.
So in this respect obesity turns out to be a symptom of other health issues that are already going on in your body.
The leading cause for your hormones going out of balance and for obesity in my book is eating a nutrient deficient diet. Your body is not a finite object, but an infinite process in constant flux and change. It’s constantly breaking itself down and building itself up. If you don’t consume enough nutrient dense foods then your body is left hanging without the right building blocks to build hormones, neurotransmitters, immune cells, bone, muscle, cartilage, ligaments, organs, blood, etc. Also after a meal your body will search for the nutrients it needs in that meal and if it doesn’t find it guess what happens? You get hungry again a lot sooner than you should and you eat more food. And while your body is craving nutrition you begin to crave less nutritious food.
So if all you eat is junk nutrient deficient fake pretend food-like products like commercial bread, biscuits, corn chips, French fries, candy, vegetable oils, soy milk, etc then you are setting your body up for hormonal havoc and mayhem and chronic hunger as it won’t have the necessary parts to make hormones and this will increase your chances of becoming obese. As you can see here it’s not how much you eat, but what you eat that matters most.
“You can be overfed, but so undernourished”
Which is the sad state for a third of westernised populations today.
Another cause for hormonal dysfunction deals with insulin sensitivity. When your cells are insulin sensitive nutrients are taken out of your bloodstream and absorbed. However, just as you can become leptin resistant due to excessive leptin production, excessive insulin production will cause your cells to become insulin resistant. This means that when there are nutrients in your blood, like glucose it will not be absorbed by your cells and this will cause damage to your tissues. So in order to prevent further damage from happening sugar in your blood will be turned into fat and stored away in your fat cells. Eating too many carbohydrates especially processed and refined sugar and fructose and not getting enough quality restorative sleep will cause high insulin production and insulin resistance.
Another cause for obesity is an underactive or hypoactive thyroid gland. Your thyroid produces thyroid hormones that regulate your metabolism and temperature and if your thyroid is hypoactive your metabolism slows right down making it very difficult for your body to burn stored fat as fuel. Here’s a list of things that can disrupt thyroid function:
- Gluten
- Stress
- Too much exercise
- Chemicals in tap water
- Chemical compounds found in plastics and
- Certain medications
Another underlying cause for hormonal mayhem and obesity is stress. Whether it be physical, emotional, or mental any perceived stress if left to linger long enough becoming chronic will cause chronic inflammation upsetting your normal hormonal rhythm moving you from an anabolic and growing state to a catabolic and breakdown state and unfortunately in this catabolic state the one thing that does keep growing are your fat cells.
The health of your gut and gut microbiota will also determine the health of your hormonal system and your fat levels. If your gut is leaky, meaning it’s damaged, and if you have dysbiosis, meaning you have more harmful pathogens than beneficial probiotics living in your gut this will cause a rise in inflammatory signals, stress hormones and depending on your genetics and epigenetic expression this may lead to obesity. Plus a damaged gut will mean you won’t be digesting and absorbing the full amount of nutrients from your foods leaving your body in a nutrient deficient state, which I talked about earlier.
Probably the least known root cause for obesity are obesogens. Which is ironic because these obesogens are Persistent Organic Pollutants or POPs and they are actually out in the open in plain sight for all to see. Obesogens are chemical compounds found in the environment that act as endocrine disrupters, meaning they screw up your hormonal system. They hijack it and create chemical chaos throughout your entire body. This hormonal havoc causes a whole wealth of health issues from cancer to autoimmune conditions and it also increases fat cell number and fat cell size. Obesogens can be found in:
- Plastics
- Pesticides and herbicides
- Flame retardant materials (such as in clothing and furniture)
- Treated wood and textiles (such as in building materials)
- Additives used in paints
- Non-stick cookware and even in certain
- Pharmaceutical drugs
Let me put all these obesogens together into a pretty terrifying yet common scenario we see today. Let’s say you have a new born baby. You bring him home to your brand new house with building materials, furniture, paint, and new carpets all chemically treated, some of them containing flame retardant chemicals and all of this is off-gassing or releasing chemicals into the air, also known as that beautiful new house smell. You dress your beautiful boy in flame retardant pyjamas. You use a plastic bottle to feed him non-organic formula, which contains sprayed ingredients. And finally you put him to bed in a brand new non-organic chemically treated cot. This is just a chemical toxic soup that this poor kid is living in and he doesn’t stand a chance against growing up without becoming obese or at least experiencing other health issues.
Now along with obesogens I have to mention environmental toxins and toxic chemicals. Remember fat cells are used by your body as a storage unit for toxins. So if you’re chronically exposed to heavy metals, air pollution, and eating a lot of pesticide and herbicide sprayed foods and eating meat from sick toxic animals your liver, kidneys, your entire detoxification system will become overloaded and will be unable to process, breakdown, and eliminate the excessive amount of toxins. As a last resort, so your body doesn’t shut down and die due to toxic poisoning, all those toxins that are not eliminated will be shoved into your fat cells.
“Fat cells don’t just store energy they also store poison.”
This is also why a rapid and dramatic reduction in fat isn’t a good idea without proper supervision and guidance. A lot of obese people their health actually gets worse when burning a lot fat too quickly. Just keep in mind the saying slow and steady wins the race. If you lose fat too fast those toxins are going to be flooding your system and you do not want that.
So those are a few examples and there are more of how a person can become obese without eating a lot of calories. Obesity like every other disease is not caused by one thing, but many things related to your environment, your food, and how you perceive life.
It isn’t just a physical weight problem, but more a physiological, biochemical, and really a hormonal problem. Obesity is a symptom of an underlying hormonal issue in your body and is not caused by eating too many calories, but it will cause you to overeat.
Obesity is also a disease that gives rise to the top leading causes of death.
Alright let’s get into how to heal from and prevent obesity and how to get your hormones humming to a happy and healthy tune.
First up, watch what you eat. Watch it. Get off the inflammatory foods, the chemically sprayed foods, and the highly refined and processed junk fake pretend food-like products. No gluten, no sugars, no pasteurised dairy, no industrial seed oils, no junk. Watch out for the carbs especially as eating too many carbs will cause a lot of insulin to be produced and you want insulin and blood sugar to be in the Goldilocks zone, just right. Real food from Mother Nature communicates with your hormones on an informational level where they speak the same language. By just eating real food you’ll keep your hormones in balance and in harmony and this hormonal bliss will keep your body composition balanced and in check.
Next up, reduce your perceived stress. Practise relaxation techniques. Get a massage, meditate, breathe mindfully, and watch the amount of physical stress you’re under. If you don’t have a formal exercise routine get moving and start working out. If you do exercise regularly and religiously maybe you’re overdoing it and need to do less working out and more working in. If you’re obese then your body is already under enough physical stress as it is, so working out would just add to that stress so look at working in. Working in is where instead of expending energy with a workout you’re cultivating energy, building up your energy stores. Movement practises like:
- Tai-chi
- Qi-gong
- Restorative yoga
- Hatha yoga
- Iyengar yoga
Are the perfect work in exercises.
Biggest thing you can do to prevent and heal from obesity is to clean up your environment. Remove the obesogens and toxic chemicals and clean up your habitat. Use glass and stainless steel drink bottles instead of plastic. Wear organic chemical-free clothing and buy organic chemical-free furniture and use chemical-free building materials. Cook with ceramic and stainless steel cookware. Actually there’s a lot more to this topic and you can find an entire podcast I did on this quite a while back about how to purify and clean up your environment and support your detoxification system. Look for episode 12.
Along with clean eating, clean thinking, and clean living there are other holistic lifestyle principles to consider in order to fully heal and to keep your bodymind in a happy and healthy state. Listen to episode 30 about the 7 Holistic Lifestyle Principles you can follow in order to live happy, healthy, whole, and complete.
An awesome book that covers everything from diet and exercise to cleaning up your environment and your thinking is How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! by holistic health practitioner Paul Chek. This book is my bible and really is a one-stop shop for holistic living.
I’ll leave you with this thought.
“Obesity isn’t about energy in and energy out.”
It’s about so much more.
If you’re fat or overweight, sure you may be eating more than you should.
But if you’re obese then it’s not about how much you eat, but what you eat and the environment you’re eating in. If you’re obese you are probably eating nutrient-poor and sugar-rich foods and you’re living in a very stressful and very toxic environment.
Remember your health is 100% your responsibility so make the choice to own your lifestyle and eat, drink, move, breathe, live, sleep better, and think and feel like you deserve a happy and healthy life. The only person who can save you is you. So don’t play the victim. Be the hero. Because you are awesome and very much worth it.
Links and Resources
- WGP 012: How to Love Your Liver and Detox Your Life
- WGP 030: Want the Good Life? These 7 Holistic Health Principles Will Guide You There
- How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! — Paul Chek
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Epigenetics:
- I’ll explain the difference between genetics and epigenetics
- I’ll talk about how your environment impacts the activation and expression of your genes
- Finally, I’ll give a few holistic tips on how to activate and express health-boosting and life-affirming genes
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST HEALING FOODS FOR YOUR GUT
The study of how genes control life is called genetics. Genetic looks at genetic differences, mutations, heredity, and of course of lot of today’s genetic research looks into genetic diseases. Genetics and the study of genes is a very important and valid science, but the belief behind genetics is outdated old-school thinking and that belief is that genes control life.
This belief came from the hypothesis that there is a gene for every protein. The more complex an organism, the more cells and proteins there are, the more genes there would be. That was the idea. This idea turns out to be incorrect.
The Human Genome Project, which started back in the late 1980s, was setup to uncover the entire sequence of genetic information found in human DNA with the side benefit of discovering the genetics of every disease and how to prevent and cure them. The human body has about 100,000 protein molecules, so science expected to find about 100,000 genes. Fast forward 15 years and guess how many genes they found at the end of the project in 2001 – only 35,000. Fast forward another 15 years to today and after further study and research that initial number has shrunk to about 20,000 genes.
There was a lot of hype in the science community about the Human Genome Project, but funnily enough when the scientist’s expectations proved to be wrong, very wrong, there was no big deal made about the unexpected results. This massively incorrect assumption about a gene coding for a protein fell off the radar. Science tends to work this way unfortunately where the good news is reported and the bad news is swept under the rug.
So now we know that there are only 20,000 genes in the human genome and these 20,000 genes code for over 100,000 proteins and alongside this fact is the news that the largest number of genes found in a single animal is 31,000 genes and that animal is the near-microscopic water flea Daphnia. Imagine that, a near-microscopic simple organism with hardly any cells and proteins compared to the 35 trillion cells and 100,000 proteins in your human body and yet this tiny little life form has 11,000 more genes than humans do.
What this shows you is that genes do not control life. No matter the complexity of an organism the number of genes present will vary a lot. It’s not the genes that say how life will be from birth to death. It’s the life that is lived that will determine which genes get expressed or activated or switched on and which genes don’t. Say goodbye to the old belief that your genes control your life and hello to the new way of thinking – that your life controls your genes.
This new way of thinking is actually 50 years old and is called the science of epigenetics, which looks at how environmental signals affect gene expression.
Epigenetics means above the genes and studies how your environment affects the biochemical and physiological processes that are happening outside of your genetic code, but have a direct effect on which sequence of your genetic code to read and which genes to express or not.
Remember the old way of thinking says that genes are in control like a foreman of a construction site. Genes dictate what gets built and so decide the health or disease of your cells.
The new way of thinking, epigenetics, says genes are actually just simple blueprints. They don’t do anything at all. It’s all the proteins and enzymes and cellular signals and every other process that’s going on in and outside of your cell that dictate which blueprints to read (gene expression), which parts of those blueprints to create proteins from (gene variation), and whether or not those blueprints need updating (gene mutation).
What this means is that epigenetics has actually shown that some genes will lay dormant and may never get expressed while other genes will be switched on and switched off and that other genes may undergo spontaneous mutation and transform into a brand new gene all based on your environment, on your surroundings.
So how does your environment impact your genetic expression? How does the environment influence your biochemistry and physiology and determine which genes to read or not, which parts of that gene to express and make proteins from, and which genes to mutate or leave unchanged?
Let me give a little background information first. Your genetic code is one long sequence of molecules like the alphabet is a sequence of letters. Your genes are subsets or small groupings of these molecules like words are groupings of the alphabet. This long sequence of your genetic code is called DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid. Your DNA is covered in a protein sheath. Altogether the proteins surrounding your DNA and the genes contained in your DNA this is called a chromosome. You have 23 pairs or 46 strands of chromosomes in your body. Chromosomes are found inside the nucleus of your cells.
Remember your genes don’t do anything; literally they don’t perform any physical action or function. Everything that happens with genes happens to the gene and is entirely dependent and reliant on signals that come from outside the chromosomes. So your genes are merely blueprints and blueprints don’t build structures.
The life your parents and grandparents lived designed and created your blueprints, your DNA, your genes. You had little say in the matter, but the expression or activation of your genes is all on you.
How epigenetics work can get pretty complex and I’m just going to give a summary here, but I will put a link to a video in the blog post for this episode which will give you more detail and a visual on what I’m talking about.
Your genes get read, expressed or activated, and mutated via signalling, that is the transmission and reception of information that come from your environment and go right down into your cells and ultimately reaching your genes. These environmental signals include everything that your six senses can perceive. Examples of these signals include your thoughts and feelings like fear or love, a physical threat or loving embrace, or digested nutrients from food. These environmental signals are the primary signal the first signal you receive.
Your brain, your heart, and your gut all have nerve centres and communicate with each other and they can be thought of as the primary organs that make up your conscious and subconscious mind. They receive this primary signal from your environment and then based on your beliefs and perceptions about life they interpret and translate this primary signal into a secondary signal, and it’s this secondary signal that is sent to other organs and cells in the form of hormones and neurotransmitters.
When this secondary signal is delivered to your cells it is picked up by a protein receptor in the cell membrane. Once this secondary signal is received this sets of a chain of events where a number of proteins and enzymes in the cell membrane and within the cell itself they bind to each other performing specific functions until eventually they either create a tertiary signal within the cell or they allow a tertiary signal to enter the cell through the cell membrane. This tertiary signal is the last signal that will bind to other proteins within the cell to perform a specific function.
Alright so you get a primary signal from the environment. Your conscious and subconscious mind changes that primary signal into a secondary signal. Your cells take the secondary signal in and they transform that into a tertiary signal and then there’s a function that is performed in the cell.
Now if that tertiary signal is unable to perform its function because the specific protein its wanting to bind to is missing, the signal molecule will enter the nucleus of the cell where your chromosomes are. It will bind to a specific regulatory protein on one of your chromosomes and when it does this that regulatory protein releases itself from the chromosome uncovering a specific sequence of your DNA of your genetic code. This exposes the gene that codes for the missing protein. The gene is then transcribed and copied and finally converted into that missing protein. The regulatory protein returns and covers up the DNA, and the tertiary signal can now bind to this newly created protein to perform its original function. This transcription, copying, and conversion process is called gene expression, gene activation, or a gene being switched on.
Here’s where it gets very interesting. If the tertiary signal is unable to perform its function due to a missing protein and it cannot locate the specific gene for that protein in your DNA, guess what happens next? The tertiary signal will activate a specific genetic engineering gene, which in turn will rewrite another gene in a different part of your DNA. Meaning the signal is now causing a genetic mutation. With the newly mutated gene now in place this tertiary signal can now activate the new gene, creating the missing protein and the signal will bind itself to the new protein and finally perform its function.
There’s nothing random about these mutations at all. It’s the environmental signal creating specific mutations to perform a specific function.
That may have been a lot to take in, so please watch the video for a visual detailed representation of what I just discussed.
Let me give you a real world example of how this works.
Let’s say you’re scared of spiders and you see a spider. Or let’s say you’re prone to road rage and you get cut off in traffic. Or let’s say your body is sensitive to dairy, but you don’t know it and you’ve been drinking dairy for a long time, for years and you’ve just had another glass of milk. Seeing the spider, getting cut off in traffic and drinking the milk are examples of a primary signal from your environment.
Since you have a belief that spiders are scary, and that bad drivers are a valid reason to get mad, and your body perceives dairy as indigestible and a possible toxin you transform the primary signal to an emotion of fear, an emotion of anger, and your body’s immune system gets activated yet again – this is the secondary signal. These secondary signals, which are now a bunch of hormones and neurotransmitters like epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol, are sent to your cells.
When your cells receive these secondary signals they activate proteins and enzymes that allow negative tertiary signals to enter the cell activating genes that stop growth, repair, reproduction, digestion and elimination; that cause muscle breakdown and fat storage, and your immune system to go crazy. These negative tertiary signals can also cause gene mutations and enhance cancerous cell growth.
Alright time to flip this around. We’re going to change your beliefs and your perceptions. The primary signals don’t change. You still see a spider, you still get cut off in traffic, and you still drink a glass of milk. But this time you love spiders, you are a calm and relaxed driver, and your body is not sensitive to dairy and can digest it without any issues.
So again the primary signals don’t change, however, because you’re now smiling at the spider, giving gratitude for not getting into an accident, and your body is nourished from the milk you get secondary signals like oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, feel good hormones are now being received by your cells.
When your cells receive these secondary signals they activate proteins and enzymes that allow positive tertiary signals to enter the cell and activate genes that promote growth, repair, reproduction, digestion and elimination; they promote muscle-building and fat-burning, and regulate your immune system. These positive tertiary signals can also activate genes that suppress cancer growth and cause cancer cells to die.
So what is this showing you? What this is showing you is that it’s not the primary signal from your environment that affects your genes. It is the secondary signal that comes from your conscious and subconscious mind that affects the tertiary signal and your genes. Whatever situation or event happens in the real world, in reality, it is you, your beliefs and your perception of that situation, of that event, that has the final say on which genes to activate and which genes to leave switched off.
It is your thoughts, your feelings, what you eat and drink, how you move, how you breathe, the toxicity of your environment, the quality of your sleep, the quality of your relationships, all of these control your genes.
Your mood, your health, your life these are the stimulus to your genes and your genes simply respond to that stimulus. If you have a sucky mood and are depressed about life then your genes will simply reflect this fact. So if you want to feel awesome and love the life you have it all begins by changing your beliefs about your life, positively changing your perceptions about life itself, which will change your behaviour and change your genes, eventually making the inside of your bodymind reflect the outside world that you positively perceive.
Now I’m not saying the goal is to think positive and live a naturally holistic healthy lifestyle 100% of the time. That’s impossible. What I’m saying is when you are aware, when you are conscious of your surroundings and of what’s going on around you, know that you have a choice in that moment to choose either a positive or a negative experience. I suggest you make the kind choose for yourself.
Here are three kind choices you can make to positively impact your health and to express health-boosting and life-affirming genes.
First, get rid of your ANTs – Automatic Negative Thoughts. Do this through critical thinking and questioning yourself, your beliefs, and asking yourself are your thoughts and beliefs true? For example is it true that you’re worthless, or that you’re not smart enough, or that no one will ever love you, or that you’ll get cancer because of your genes? Really, is that true? I highly recommend doing The Work by Byron Katie. She takes you through a powerful process of inquiry that’ll show you whether or not your current way of thinking is actually worth paying attention to.
Secondly, practise some form of daily meditation. Mindfulness meditation, movement mediation like Qi-gong or even walking meditation, any task that has you focused on one thing is a form of meditation. Meditation has been shown to boost your immune function, reduce stress levels and inflammation, reduce depression, and improve your mood and your outlook on life.
Third kind choice is to choose to live a holistic healthy lifestyle and you can do this by following the 7 Holistic Health Principles as I outlined in episode 30.
- Eat real food
- Drink natural water
- Move often
- Breathe properly
- Purify your environment
- Get quality restorative sleep and
- Form positive relationships with nature, with yourself, and with others
These 7 principles bring your bodymind back into sync with the rhythm and flow of Mother Nature and these principles give happy and healing epigenetic signals to your genes.
Okay I’m going to give a quick recap on epigenetics because I really want you to get that your genes are not your destiny.
“Genes DO NOT control your biology! Your beliefs about your life control your biology.”
It’s your habitat and environment, your habits and behaviour, your feelings and emotions, your thoughts and beliefs that influence your genes.
It is your beliefs that change the biochemistry of your blood and your blood carries the signals sent to your cells, and ultimately these signals determine the expression of your genes.
Perceive love and you get feel good hormones in your blood, sending positive signals to your cells where they read and express healthy genes.
Perceive fear and you get stress hormones in your blood, sending negative signals to your cells where they ignore healthy genes and may read and express disease-promoting genes.
Dr Joseph Mercola creator of the number one natural health website mercola.com says:
“Epigenetics shatters the idea that you are a victim of your genes, and shows that you have tremendous power to shape and direct your physical health.”
Meaning the power to live an awesome happy and healthy life lies within you. Take ownership and responsibility for your thoughts and your beliefs about life and you will no longer be the victim, but the victor in the beautiful story that is your wonderful life.
Links and Resources
- Video — Dr Bruce Lipton Presenting on Epigenetics
- The Biology of Belief — Bruce H. Lipton PhD
- The Work — Bryon Katie
- WGP 030: Want the Good Life? These 7 Holistic Health Principles Will Guide You There
- mercola.com
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Leaky Gut Syndrome:
- I’ll explain how a leaky gut can lead to chronic disease
- I’ll talk about what causes a leaky gut
- Finally, I’ll give you 5 steps to healing and sealing a leaky gut
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST HEALING FOODS FOR YOUR GUT
Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician and considered the father of western medicine, although I’m sure he’d be quite upset at the current health-care system and medical model we use today, which is really a disease-care model, but anyways… Hippocrates said:
“All disease begins in the gut.”
And he is absolutely 100% correct and let me explain how. And by the way when I say gut I’m talking about the small and large intestines in your body.
Your entire alimentary canal, your entire digestive system is one long tube that begins in your mouth hole and ends in your south hole so anything you put in your mouth and swallow is still technically outside of your body. If it gets digested and absorbed into your bloodstream then it’s inside your body, but if what you swallow gets eliminated then it technically was never in your body. That’s not to say it won’t affect your body only that the effect will be minimal compared to if what you ate did get into your bloodstream.
Now your gut performs many functions in your body besides digestion and elimination and its primary role is to act as a barrier controlling what’s allowed in and what stays out of your body. Nutrients are allowed into your body and unwanted unknown foreign materials are kept outside of your body. So it’s similar to a mosquito net. It allows oxygen in while keeping mosquitoes out. When this barrier becomes compromised and unregulated or when this mosquito net gets punctured and has tears in it this is called leaky gut syndrome.
When you have a leaky gut unwanted unknown foreign materials get into your bloodstream and then all hell begins to break loose in other parts of your body. When undigested food particles, pathogens, toxins, and other irritants that usually get eliminated find their way into your body, into your bloodstream your immune system gets activated and this causes an inflammatory and stress response at whatever site the foreign material settles in. The longer this inflammation and stress goes on the higher your chance of getting a chronic disease.
For example, if you have had leaky gut for a while and unwanted material settles in your joints you may get rheumatoid arthritis. If they settle in your arteries your chance of having a heart attack or stroke skyrockets. If this foreign matter settles in your thyroid you may experience hyper or hypothyroid issues. If they settle under your skin you may get rashes, eczema, or acne. If they settle in your brain your ability to focus and think clearly may reduce dramatically giving you brain fog. If this foreign material stays in your gut you may experience digestive issues like bloating and foul-smelling gas that can eventually lead to Crohn’s or coeliac disease. And if these non-nutrient substances don’t settle anywhere in particular this chronic low-level inflammatory and stress response will cause your hormones and your neurotransmitters to get out of balance with either too much or not enough being produced causing body composition problems (fat gain or muscle loss), reproductive issues (infertility), energy imbalances (feeling tired or fatigued), and mood disorders (depression).
Not only does bad stuff get into your bloodstream with a leaky gut, but because your gut wall is damaged you’re no longer able to absorb the full amount of nutrients, minerals, and vitamins from the food that you’re eating and this leads to nutrient deficiencies. This malabsorption of nutrients causes your body to start cannibalising itself in order to meet its own nutrient requirements. So if you’re not absorbing enough calcium your bones will begin to breakdown. If you’re not absorbing enough protein your body will get this protein from your muscles. Not absorbing enough natural fats? Say goodbye to proper brain function. And if you’re not absorbing enough vitamin A your cells will no longer form and grow properly causing dysfunction of many of your bodily systems.
So having a leaky gut is a serious problem with serious health consequences and it’s not limited to your gut. Your entire body is fair game.
“If you’re experiencing health symptoms of any kind there’s a 99.9999% chance that your gut is leaky.”
Your skin is a dozen cell layers thick and you can see the layers of your skin when you get a cut or you scrape yourself. The mucous lining of your gut, also known as your gut wall, is only one cell thick or should I say one cell thin. The cells that make up your gut wall are called enterocytes. This single layer of enterocytes makes it easy to absorb and transport nutrients into your bloodstream, but this also makes your gut very easy to damage.
Your gut wall isn’t smooth, but is made up of very tiny finger-like projections called villi that stick out increasing the surface area of your digestive system and this makes it easier to break down food and absorb more nutrients. Villi are connected to each other at their base by tight junctions and these tight junctions can open slightly to let certain nutrients in, but they remain closed when there’s foreign material around like undigested food particles, toxins, and pathogens.
There are certain substances, however, that can cause these tight junctions to open even in the presence of foreign material. There are even more substances that can cause direct physical damage to your single-celled gut wall. The term leaky gut syndrome comes from the fact that these tight junctions are opened and your gut wall is damaged. The technical term for this is intestinal hyperpermeability.
The unwarranted opening of these junctions and damage to your gut wall is caused by many many things and a variety of factors including:
- Anti-nutrients like gluten, lectins, saponins, and phytates
- Industrial seed oils aka vegetable oils
- Grains
- Instant coffee
- Pasteurised dairy
- Processed and refined sugar
- Foods your body is intolerant and sensitive to
- Nutrient deficiencies
- Inorganic foods raised with inorganic fertilisers and pesticides
- Tap water and water that is deficient in minerals
- Alcohol
- Artificial sweeteners
- Artificial colourings, preservatives, additives, thickeners, emulsifiers, bulking agents, flavourings, and texturants
- Synthetic vitamins
- Parasitic infections
- Dysbiosis, which is not an infection, but simply having more pathogens than probiotics in your gut
- Environmental toxins including personal and homecare products
- Lack of exposure to the sun, to bare skin on the Earth, and to time in nature
- Pharmaceutical drugs like antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, acid-blockers, and pain-killers
- Caesarean birth or being born via C-section
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Lack of quality restorative sleep
- Chronic stress and
- Chronic inflammation
So how do you seal and heal your leaky gut? How do you prevent those tight junctions between your villi from opening when they shouldn’t and how do you repair the damage to the enterocytes the cells of your gut wall?
Here are five steps to healing a leaky gut.
First things first – Redefine your dream for healing.
Without a big enough why, a big enough reason to keep you moving forward you will end up stressed out about the whole healing process. If you stress about how difficult it’s going to be for example to stop eating bread or cheese or having to buy plant-based organic deodorant and homecare products then forget about moving onto the next steps. This stress about changing and healing is just as bad as continuing to eat gluten or drink alcohol. You need to create a dream that matters, a dream that will inspire you to make change happen, to make change stick, and to make healing feel less of a burden and more of a passion, more of a right like you deserve this. Checkout episode 14 for more details about how to build your dream.
Second step – Remove all possible gut irritants.
This includes everything in the list I gave you earlier. Well as much of it as you can handle without stressing out about it. Hopefully your dream keeps your stress levels or your perception of stress in check. Even if you do find yourself feeling a bit stressed about this step you can always practise meditation and movement practises like Qi-gong to help reduce the amount of perceived stress you’re experiencing.
Step three – Refeed your body with holistic nutrition.
This isn’t just about eating real food. This also includes drinking natural water, moving often, breathing correctly, getting quality restorative sleep, and engaging in loving relationships. When it comes to food to heal your gut though you can’t go past:
- Bone broth
- Fermented foods like raw milk kefir and sauerkraut
- Fatty fish like salmon and sardines, and
- Eating more natural animal and fruit fats
Fourth step – Repair your gut with smart supplementation.
You could heal your gut naturally without the use of supplements, but strategic use of supplements will help support and boost your body’s own innate healing abilities increasing your chances for success. The enterocytes that make up your gut wall, these guys love to feed on an amino acid glutamine and you can get glutamine in real foods like bone broth, but you can also find it as a supplement powder called l-glutamine. Digestive enzymes are a fantastic way to supplement your body’s digestive system and will ensure the proper digestion and absorption of nutrients. Aloe vera juice and deglycyrrhizinated licorice or DGL are two very potent plant-based gut-healers. High quality fish and krill oil with their anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids will also help your gut heal. Lastly, a probiotic supplement preferably containing soil-based microorganisms will help bring your gut microbiome back into balance.
Fifth and final step – Remember to laugh.
There’s an age-old saying:
“Laughter is the best medicine.”
A real hard laugh boosts your immune system and lowers your levels of the stress hormone cortisol for at least a day so be sure to watch something funny, go to a comedy show, or do some laughing yoga. Yeah, you heard right, laughing yoga. I’ll put a link in the blog post for this episode to a video showing what laughing yoga is all about. It’s actually quite funny, obviously. Also I’ll put a link to the Chewbacca Mom viral video. It’s a video I’ve come across recently and it made me laugh pretty hard the first time I saw it.
Here are a couple of books to help you on your gut healing journey. How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! by Paul Chek covers how to heal holistically. Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride gives you the GAPs Protocol and this goes deeper into gut healing and is a great option for those with severely damaged guts.
I’ll leave you with this thought. Life is short. Don’t live life so seriously. The time it’s going to take to heal your gut will be long though. So take the time now to heal your gut so you can enjoy yourself later and have more fun before your time is up.
Links and Resources
- WGP 014: Dream Building – How to Create the Life You Really Really Want
- Aloe Vera Juice
- DGL Licorice
- Krill Oil
- Digestive enzyme and probiotic supplements
- Laughing Yoga Video
- Chewbacca Mom Video
- How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! — Paul Chek
- Gut and Psychology Syndrome — Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring how Blood Sugar Affects Your Hormones:
- I’ll explain how hormones control your health
- I’ll talk about how blood sugar levels affect your health and control your hormones
- Finally, I’ll share a few holistic lifestyle tips on how to control your blood sugar levels and hormones naturally
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
There is so much information old and new about health and wellness that it can be extremely frustrating sorting through what he said and what she said and what science says just to find yourself back where you began – confused. If you ever find your head spinning and your ears smoking and your brain melting and your bodymind just about to explode because of all the contradictory information out there I suggest you keep it simple by focusing on one thing and this one thing to focus on would be your hormones.
Now do you know how to make a hormone? Okay that’s a setup for a bad joke so I won’t go there, but do you know what a hormone is?
Hormones are signalling molecules that traverse and tell different areas of your bodymind what’s happening in your environment both internal and external and how to respond and behave to environmental changes. Your hormones are affected by your lifestyle, by what and how you think, feel, do, sleep, breathe, move, drink and eat. All these things affect your hormones and your hormones affect all these things. I’ve spoken about hormones before and how they affect your health back in episode 23.
I’ll focus on three major hormones in this episode with regards to the effects of blood glucose levels. Insulin, cortisol, and melatonin.
Insulin is a very critical and important hormone needed for growth and repair as its job is to help get nutrients out of your bloodstream and into your cells. Keep in mind that when insulin is high your body’s ability to mobilise and burn fat for fuel comes to a standstill. Insulin does not have a circadian or daily rhythm like cortisol and melatonin do. Insulin’s release is determined by what, when, and how you eat. The insulin receptor sites on your cells, which is the place where insulin docks when it connects to your cells, these insulin receptors do have a circadian rhythm of their own where in the morning these sites are insulin-sensitive, screaming out to insulin to come and give some nutrients. Whereas in the evening these receptor sites are insulin-resistant where they play it cool and ignore insulin most of the time even when insulin is trying to dock on and deliver nutrients.
Cortisol is known as the stress hormone and when you perceive stress or when your body is physically under stress this is when cortisol gets released and is free to roam around your bloodstream where it will suppress your immune system, digestion, and your ability to burn fat, because if you’re stressed the last thing your body is worried about is healing and breaking down your last meal as it wants to move as fast as it can to get away from the stressor. In order to do this cortisol increases blood glucose levels and metabolism to provide more energy to your muscles. Cortisol has a circadian rhythm where it rises sharply in the morning to get you up and moving and then its levels begin to fall throughout the day where in the evening there’s only a tiny amount of cortisol in your bloodstream allowing you to relax and to get to sleep.
Melatonin is known as the sleep hormone, but it’s also a potent powerful antioxidant and it plays a major role in reducing cancer risk. Melatonin has a circadian rhythm, but opposite to cortisol where it’s low in the morning and then rises in the evening making you want to go to sleep as it helps in the repair process of your bodymind while you sleep.
Everything in life ebbs and flows goes up and down in rhythms and waves and this constant flow back and forth keeps everything in harmony and balance. However, when this flow is blocked, disrupted, disturbed, destroyed, taken to extremes even, if this flow is out of time and beat with its usual rhythm then you get disharmony and life that is out of balance.
When these 3 hormones and remember you do have many many more, when these 3 hormones alone get out of rhythm, out of balance, out of their hormonal bliss point or range of proper function this causes illness, sickness, disease, chronic symptoms, and I swear I must say this almost every episode about malfunction and being out of balance, but when these hormones are out of rhythm it can lead to the full-blown expression of cancer.
Now there are many lifestyle factors that can cause your hormones to go haywire, but I’m going to stick to talking about blood sugar levels in this episode.
There is about 4-5 grams or about a teaspoon of glucose, a sugar molecule, running through your entire bloodstream at any one time. This amount of glucose is the optimum amount required to keep your bodymind moving. If your blood glucose level gets too low you become hypoglycaemic causing dizziness, light-headedness, confusion, hunger, anger, sleep issues, and the shakes. If your blood glucose level gets too high you become hyperglycaemic causing headaches, blurry vision, frequent urination, a jumpy mind where you can’t focus, and making you wired, but tired.
Chronically low blood glucose levels can lead to seizures and nervous system damage. Chronically high blood glucose levels have far worse damaging effects. Remember sugar can be very sticky and when you have too much glucose in your blood for too long this causes those glucose molecules to start sticking to cells that they come into contact with. This process is called glycation and these newly created molecules are called Advanced Glycated End products or AGEs and the name is so appropriate because when these AGEs build up your cells are no longer able to function and do their jobs so your bodymind begins to breakdown from the inside out causing you to age rapidly. Depending on your genetics and environmental factors that affect your epigenetics these AGEs may cause excessive damage to your skin, to your nervous system, your gut, your brain, your sight, your heart, your joints, to any organ in your body.
This is why it’s very important that your insulin hormone is working in sync with other hormones and is functioning as it should. Remember insulin takes the glucose out of your bloodstream to the insulin receptor sites on your cells.
Okay so how does blood glucose levels affect insulin, cortisol, and melatonin?
Insulin and cortisol maintain proper levels of glucose in your blood. After you’ve eaten a well balanced meal insulin levels will rise slowly and eventually it will move that small amount of sugar into your cells. Many hours after the meal your blood glucose levels should still be steady and if they do become low a little bit of cortisol will be released to help raise your blood glucose back to where it should be. Not too bad a situation.
Imagine the ocean with a massive big wave coming in and after that initial big wave it’s all smaller waves from thereon out and you’ll have a good idea on what this looks like and how it affects your body. The initial big rush and then a nice calming effect hours after.
Now let’s say you eat an unbalanced meal high in sugar and carbohydrates, and maybe even high in protein as well, with varying amounts of fat. This meal would cause a massive rise, a sudden surge in insulin as there is now excessive amounts of glucose running around in your bloodstream. This huge spike in insulin will rapidly remove the glucose from your bloodstream and move it to your cells. Now this sudden shunt of glucose into your cells will cause a huge rebound effect where now you don’t have enough glucose in your blood. In fact it’s far too low because you had a lot of insulin doing what was supposed to do.
So with this low blood sugar you begin to feel hungry and angry also known as hangry and you have to eat, but what do you eat? More sugars in the form of snack foods, maybe crackers, chips, dried fruit, chocolate, cookies, but this just causes another huge rise in blood glucose levels causing another spike in insulin and here you are riding the blood sugar roller coaster up and down throughout the day.
Using the ocean analogy again imagine massive waves crashing into the shore followed by the sea being sucked out just like you get when a tsunami’s about to hit. And then what do you know another big wave comes crashing in again and then the sea gets sucked out again. And those crashes are causing damage to your bodymind.
Now even if you didn’t eat and managed to stop yourself from reaching for food your bodymind would then turn to cortisol and release cortisol to help get more glucose in your blood. This spike in cortisol causes too much glucose to circulate so guess what happens next? Insulin has to come out to play and get that blood glucose level down again. So you’ve just bought without even realising it another ticket on the BS roller coaster – the blood sugar roller coaster that is.
With regards to melatonin this hormone is affected by cortisol and cortisol is affected by both blood sugar levels and perceived stress. If cortisol is chronically high due to constant low blood glucose levels and persistent perceived stress then this will disrupt the circadian rhythms of both cortisol and melatonin, meaning you won’t get enough cortisol to get you out of bed in the morning. You feel sluggish and tired causing you to reach for a sugary carb-loaded breakfast like cereal, bagels, muffins, toast, fruit juice, or even coffee. And guess where this high carb meal is going to take you. Back on the BS roller coaster.
Cortisol which should be low in the evening will now rise slightly in the evening making it very difficult for you to relax, to calm down and to fall asleep. Now that melatonin’s circadian rhythm has been disrupted by the disrupted circadian rhythm of cortisol you won’t get that rise in the evening and this will lead to poor quality sleep, less repair and growth while you sleep, and above all else this gives you an increased risk of expressing cancer as there won’t be enough melatonin released at night to suppress the growth of tumours and to cause cancerous cells to self-destruct.
As you can see blood glucose levels have a major impact on your hormones and I’ve only talked about 3 of your hormones. There are other hormones that your blood glucose levels can affect. Hormones that control your immune system, your inflammatory response, your growth and repair, your sexual and reproductive functions, and even your appetite.
So how do you control your blood glucose, your blood sugar level to remain steady and stable and to not spike too high or to drop too low? How do you get off the BS roller coaster?
Well the first thing you gotta’ do is to stop eating processed and refined carbohydrates. Insulin release is mostly determined by glucose levels in the blood, sugar levels, carbohydrate levels. Now it’s not about eating less carbs, it’s about eating the right kinds of carbs more of the fibrous carbs like non-starchy vegetables and less of the starchy refined foods like chips, milk chocolate, candy, pastries, and for some people even mashed potatoes and starchy vegetables can be an issue, but the worst refined food, fake pretend food-like product is carbonated sugar water also known as fizzy and soda drinks.
“Lower your intake of carbs and you’ll lower your insulin levels and the subsequent cortisol release as well.”
Thing is when you do lower one fuel source you need to replace this with another. The other fuel source being fats. So as you reduce your carb intake look to increase your animal and fruit fat consumption by pouring more fats on your salads and vegetables. Remember vegetables are the perfect vehicles to eat more fat. Stay away from the industrial seed oils. No canola, corn, soya, any of those vegetable fats, they are even worse than soda.
Another way to control blood glucose levels is to move your body. Insulin receptor sites on your cells are more ready to receive insulin in the morning than in the evening, but when you move your body (doesn’t matter if it’s high or low intensity, even a good 30 minute walk will achieve this), by moving your body you increase the sensitivity of the insulin receptors on your muscle cells, but not your fat cells. Meaning movement will allow your muscles to take in more glucose than usual out of your blood. This of course means you have to move your body before you eat. However, walking after eating will also increase the uptake of glucose by your cells reducing blood glucose levels post-meal. So take a nice easy stroll not a jog or a sprint, just a nice walk after you’ve eaten.
Final tip is to manage how you perceive stress in your life. Cortisol should only be used in case of emergency as in when your life is on the line. Not just because your spouse put your cup in the wrong cupboard or because someone called you a poopy-head. Meditate, breathe, go outside for a walk anytime you feel anxious or tense. Remember cortisol is there to get you moving. If you’re sitting down being stressed out at work, or at home, or in the car your blood glucose levels are going to spike and you won’t be moving your body to deal with it. So learn what makes you feel relaxed. Listen to episode 3 for more details about how to manage yourself when it comes to perceiving stress.
Some additional resources. I recommend reading The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living this is by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney and also Primal Body, Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas. These two books delve more deeply into hormones, sugars, and how fats are your new friend in getting off the BS roller coaster.
Look I get it. Sugar is sweet and sugary foods taste oh so good, but these foods are not doing your bodymind, your hormones, and your health any favours.
“If you really feel the need to eat more sugar just stop for a second and remember that you are already sweet enough as it is.”
Links and Resources
- WGP 023: The Calorie Myth and Hormonal Harmony — The Truth to Reducing Body Fat
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
- The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living — Jeff Volek, Stephen Phinney
- Primal Body, Primal Mind — Nora Gedgaudas
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A Mind of Your Own – Kelly Brogan, MD
(Buy from Amazon; Buy from The Book Depository)
New York Times bestseller
Named one of the top health and wellness books for 2016 by MindBodyGreen
Depression is not a disease. It is a symptom.
Recent years have seen a shocking increase in antidepressant use the world over, with 1 in 4 women starting their day with medication. These drugs have steadily become the panacea for everything from grief, irritability, panic attacks, to insomnia, PMS, and stress. But the truth is, what women really need can’t be found at a pharmacy.
According to Dr. Kelly Brogan, antidepressants not only overpromise and underdeliver, but their use may permanently disable the body’s self-healing potential. We need a new paradigm: The best way to heal the mind is to heal the whole body.
In this groundbreaking, science-based and holistic approach, Dr. Brogan shatters the mythology conventional medicine has built around the causes and treatment of depression. Based on her expert interpretation of published medical findings, combined with years of experience from her clinical practice, Dr. Brogan illuminates the true cause of depression: it is not simply a chemical imbalance, but a lifestyle crisis that demands a reset. It is a signal that the interconnected systems in the body are out of balance – from blood sugar, to gut health, to thyroid function– and inflammation is at the root.
A Mind of Your Own offers an achievable, step-by-step 30-day action plan—including powerful dietary interventions, targeted nutrient support, detoxification, sleep, and stress reframing techniques—women can use to heal their bodies, alleviate inflammation, and feel like themselves again without a single prescription.
Bold, brave, and revolutionary, A Mind of Your Own takes readers on a journey of self-empowerment for radical transformation that goes far beyond symptom relief.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links that may provide monetary compensation to help support the Whole Guidance Vision of Creating a Happy and Healthy Planet should you make a purchase. We very much appreciate and thank you for your support.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Food Anti-Nutrients:
- I’ll explain what anti-nutrients are
- I’ll talk about how anti-nutrients affect your body and how they affect the absorption of other nutrients
- I’ll list foods that are thought to be extremely nutritious, but really are extremely anti-nutritious
- Finally, I’ll share how to best prepare foods to lower their anti-nutrient content
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Everyone knows what a nutrient is – a substance that nourishes the mind, body, and soul. But have you heard of anti-nutrients? Anti-nutrients are plant compounds that prevent you, the plant predator, from stealing or absorbing nutrients from the plant.
Believe it or not plants and other living creatures were not put on this planet for the sole purpose of feeding the human race. Plants are sentient life forms, like you and me. They have their own life purpose with the dream of the continuation of their own species and since they don’t have legs to run away or claws to fight off predators they use chemicals to protect themselves. By using biological phytochemical warfare in the form of these anti-nutrients plants increase the chances of their own survival and the survival of their offspring. While at the same time causing a lot of health issues for their predators. So anti-nutrients are a plants innate defence mechanism. These anti-nutrients can negatively affect your health.
Examples of anti-nutrients used by plants include:
- Lectins
- Saponins
- Gluten
- Phytic acid or phytates and
- Enzyme inhibitors
Lectins have been shown to bind to insulin receptors on the walls of your cells. Insulin is the hormone responsible for putting nutrients into your cells and if you’ve had a carb rich meal high in lectins then all that sugar that’s now flowing in your bloodstream cannot be absorbed into your cells because lectin is blocking insulin from attaching to the cell. When sugar is blocked from getting into your cells it’s left to roam in your bloodstream and when it lingers there for far too long this causes damage and inflammation to your cells. Think of your arteries, think of your brain neurons, think of any part of your body where sugar attaches itself to the cells, it becomes glycated, glued to the cell and it causes malfunction and damage. We’ve all heard of diabetes and this is what happens when sugar is left to linger in your bloodstream.
Gluten, saponins and lectins can also cause irritation to your gut, to your intestines. Remember your gut is where most of your nutrient absorption takes place, but if your gut is stressed, inflamed, or compromised then you don’t absorb as much nutrition as you should. Your gut wall is like a net, like a mosquito net where it keeps the pesky bugs out, while letting the proper nutrients in. The problem is lectins, saponins and gluten they’re like mosquitos with little katana blades that cut through the net creating tiny little holes that allow them and other molecules such as undigested food particles and disease causing microorganisms, pathogens, to get into your body.
When you get undigested and unprocessed food particles, pathogens, and other foreign materials in your bloodstream your body mounts an immune response and this leads to inflammation and stress. Now if this stress is chronic and goes on for a long time, if your body has to fight off these pathogens and foreign material that shouldn’t be there day after day because your gut has become leaky this is how you get really sick and get diagnosed with autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Hashimoto’s, psoriasis, diabetes, and coeliac disease, just to name a few.
When it comes to phytic acid this will bind to minerals meaning that if a food is high in say zinc like pumpkin seeds, but that food is also high in phytic acid then when you eat pumpkin seeds for example you only absorb a small amount of zinc or a small amount of that mineral. This is due to most of the mineral being bound to the phytic acid creating a phytate molecule. So it doesn’t matter the nutrient content of a food if it has high phytic acid content, because that high phytic acid will reduce the amount of minerals you actually get to absorb.
Enzyme inhibitors are substances that stop digestive enzymes from doing their job of breaking down the food you eat. In the case of a trypsin inhibitor it is a protease inhibitor meaning it prevents the breakdown of protein. So if you were to eat a nice chicken salad with green leafy vegetables and pumpkin seeds you may be thinking you’re getting a lot of protein from the chicken and vitamins and minerals from the vegetables. But the trypsin inhibitors and phytates that come from the plant foods will actually bind up a lot of those minerals and they will prevent you from fully digesting and breaking down that protein. Plus the saponins, lectins, and gluten, if it had croutons in the salad, will be tearing up your gut making even less nutrition available for absorption while allowing bad stuff to get directly into your bloodstream. You are getting less nutrition than you think because of these anti-nutrients.
But can you blame plants for these anti-nutrients? If I was a plant I’d make sure predators suffered the consequences too.
I’ll list the main types of foods that are full of nutrients so are thought to be very nutritious and good for you, but actually are also jammed packed and full of anti-nutrients and so turn out to be not that healthy at all. This includes:
- Grains (both gluten-free like rice and corn and gluten containing grains)
- Legumes (beans including soy and peanuts)
- Nuts and
- Seeds
What do all of these have in common, these 4 food groups? Technically these are all seeds of plants. They are the next generation and they will not go down without a fight hence the high anti-nutrient content of these foods. Yes you can still find anti-nutrients in whole vegetables and fruits, but seeds have the highest amounts.
It is true that seeds are full of nutrients and they need to be because within this one seed is an entire plant, but these nutrients are not highly available or absorbable, another way to say it is bioavailable due to the high anti-nutrient content. Remember theses seeds need a way to protect themselves. So even though for 100 g of pumpkin seeds you will see 7.5 mg of zinc in the nutrition profile, you may only get 50% or even less of that zinc because it’s bound to the phytic acid in the pumpkin seed. Same with whole grains and legumes which are full of vitamins and minerals. But they’re also full of gluten, saponins, and lectins and a lot of sugar and starch and excessive intake of all of these will cause gut irritation leading to low vitamin and mineral uptake.
So these nutritious seeds turn out to be more unhealthy than healthy and not just because you absorb less, but also because they cause gut inflammation and stress throughout your entire body.
So how do you make the nutrients in these seeds more bioavailable and also reduce the anti-nutrients and the stress and the inflammation they cause? By using ancestral traditional food preparation methods, that’s how. Yes you have to go back in time in order to improve your future.
Our human ancestors through trial and error figured out that by soaking and sprouting and fermenting grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds they could reduce the anti-nutrient content while at the same time increase the bioavailability of other nutrients. Not only that, but soaking and sprouting and fermenting seeds reduces gut stress by making them a lot more digestible and easier on your stomach.
General soaking and fermenting guidelines are to use filtered water with some natural salt or whey depending on what you’re soaking and letting grains and legumes soak or ferment for 12 to 24 hours and nuts and seeds to soak from 4-144 hours. After soaking you can then dehydrate, lightly roast dry, or cook the seeds. Seeds left to soak for a long time will eventually begin to sprout releasing all that stored up nutrition to feed the growing embryo. Each seed (grains, legumes, nuts) has a different preparation method, so I’m not going to explain every single method in this podcast, but I will put a bunch of links to more information on how to soak and sprout seeds and ferment seeds in the blog post for this episode.
A very awesome book about real food nutrition and traditional cooking methods is Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. Here’s a passage from that book:
“Traditional societies usually soak or ferment their grains before eating them, processes that neutralize phytates and enzyme inhibitors and, in effect, predigest grains so that all their nutrients are more available. Sprouting, overnight soaking and old-fashioned sour leavening can accomplish this important predigestion process in our own kitchen.”
So you can buy sprouted and fermented breads in the store by looking for sprouted or sourdough breads. Nuts and seeds that have been soaked or sprouted are also called activated nuts and seeds, because this process activates the germination process for growth so look for soaked, sprouted, or activated nuts and seeds on labels. Of course the best grains, legumes, nuts and seeds are raw seeds that you’ve activated at home yourself.
Yes anti-nutrients have their bad side, but they do have a few benefits as well. So the goal isn’t to eat an anti-nutrient ever. The goal is to eat more nutrients compared to anti-nutrients and you do this by properly preparing seeds before you eat them.
Here’s to seed activation.
Links and Resources
- SPROUTING VS SOURING VS SOAKING OF GRAINS — CulturesForHealth.com
- YOUR GUIDE TO SOAKING & SPROUTING WHOLE GRAINS, BEANS, NUTS, & SEEDS — WeedEmAndReap.com
- Nourishing Traditions — Sally Fallon and Mary Enig
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring the light side to Cancer:
- I’ll explain how there’s always a flip side to every situation
- I’ll talk about 3 negative sides to cancer that can be turned into positives
- Finally, I’ll give the 3 most important steps anyone dealing with cancer needs to follow before healing can begin
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
This is the final part of a 3-part series I’ve been doing on cancer. In the previous episode I talked about what cancer is: a miscommunication between your healthy and abnormal cells. I also explored many factors contributing to this miscommunication and worked out it was because we as a species are living against the natural order of things and that we’re surrounded by and participate in activities that are not allowing our community of cells to communicate effectively. I also talked about how to heal from cancer following the 7 Holistic Health Principles that bring you back in alignment with Mother Nature and the Universe.
On to the final part.
All life is influenced by two universal forces yin and yang. Like a coin which has two sides, heads and a tails, life can also be viewed as either black or white. But you shouldn’t forget a coin also has a middle and when you spin that coin on this middle heads and tails no longer exist, but what does exist is the potential and the possibility for both. Meaning the universe, life it’s not as simple as black or white, but it’s both black, white, and even gray. So from one extreme all the way to the other including everything in between this is what life is all about.
So when it comes to cancer many shudder at the mere mention of the word, the sound, the intention behind it. But did you know in many traditional cultures and non-westernised societies they have no word for cancer in their native tongue because they’ve never experienced it. You could tell one of these non-westernised people all about cancer, what it is and describe to them in detail what you mean by it and they wouldn’t flinch.
The reason we jump when cancer shows up is because western civilised society has evolved with cancer and whether intentionally or not has turned cancer into a poisonous snake. So cancer to us is what a predator is like for more ancestral tribal communities. To these traditional cultures cancer is a ghost. It doesn’t exist to them. Is it possible for us civilised folk to turn cancer from physical to metaphysical and maybe even beyond?
Well as I just mentioned earlier life isn’t black or white so let me talk about how cancer isn’t a poisonous snake, but instead can actually turn out to be the antidote to the snakes bite.
In part 1 of this series I talked about the big 3 conventional medical treatments for cancer: chemo, radiation, and surgery. I for all intents and purposes badmouthed these 3 treatments and gave one side of the coin to how fatally flawed these treatments are. Over 97% of cancer patients die from these treatments so while what I said may be true it’s only a half-truth.
This is the Whole Guidance Podcast and I help guide people toward wholeness in all aspects of their life and show them new ways of being so I’d like to give the whole side to the medical cancer treatments story and flip my negative perspective from part 1 to show that these actually can be very positive treatments if used correctly.
It is true that chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery are not selective treatments. Meaning these procedures do not target cancer cells specifically. Yes even surgery. Recall from part 1 while surgery may remove the cancer daughter cells inside a tumour it actually misses the cancer mother cells or stem cells that produced the daughter cells and caused the tumour. Plus surgery can puncture a tumour causing it to leak cancer daughter cells giving them freedom to metastasis and spread throughout your body. So if chemo and radiation are like dropping a nuclear bomb in your body wasting everything inside, surgery is like dumping toxic nuclear waste in a specific area and leaving it to cause problems in the future and to leak and spread.
However, there is a way to turn these unselective, blind, and misguided treatments into very targeted ones where chemo, radiation, and even surgery will select just the cancer cells to kill and leave your healthy cells intact and also to ensure the effects of any leftover stem cells and spreading of the cancer is dramatically reduced. You can turn these nuclear attacks into well-trained snipers. How? The same way you prevent and heal from cancer – by living a holistic lifestyle in alignment with the laws of nature.
When you give your bodymind the physical, emotional, and mental nourishment it needs your healthy cells are able to protect themselves from these 3 treatments. Your immune cells are better equipped and armed when you’re living a holistic lifestyle and this gives them what they need to look after your healthy cells and to take out the abnormal cancerous cells. While at the same time these treatments target only the abnormal cancerous cells. By following a holistic lifestyle framework such as the 7 Holistic Health Principles I talk about in episode 30 you give yourself a significant chance of healing from cancer when using chemo, radiation, and surgery.
One thing to take note of regarding these treatments and to keep in mind if you ever have to make a choice is that a majority of cancer patients diagnosed with a solid tumour localised in the body like you’d find in the breast, lung, prostate, or pancreas, etc do not do well with chemo and radiotherapy, but patients with a systemic immune cancer like leukaemia, myeloma, lymphoma, etc actually these patients do see some benefits in using these two treatments.
Another misperception about cancer that can be seen from a positive perspective is that cancer and this actually goes for all disease, sickness, illness, and pain, all of these are great teachers. Anytime you feel pain or discomfort this is a sign from your body and it’s teaching you a valuable lesson.
You see your body is constantly talking to you and giving you a scorecard on how well you’re doing in terms of living a healthy holistic lifestyle. When you feel tired, have some pain, have low energy, a sore belly, some skin issues, all of these are signs. They are your body whispering to you. Your body is attempting to communicate to you that something you’re doing, how you’re being, the way you’re living your life and expressing yourself is not working for you. It communicates by producing these symptoms.
If you ignore these signs and continue doing what you’ve always been doing eventually these whispers they get a little bit louder and they turn into a stern talk and lecture from your body and these little symptoms turn into bigger health issues such as chronic fatigue, chronic pain, extreme gut issues, brain fog, mood issues, change in body composition, and severe skin problems.
If you still refuse to listen to your body’s lectures then your body begins to scream really loud where your chronic health problems turn into degenerative diseases like heart disease, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, stroke, MS, ALS/MND, sarcopenia, Hashimoto’s, the list goes on, and yes even cancer.
Pain and sickness is your body’s way, Mother Nature’s way of telling you to either shape up or ship out. Cancer is the Universe screaming at you like a sports coach on the side line telling you to change the way that you’re playing the game, the game of life in this case because right now you’re losing big time.
So if you can look at cancer as a teacher, a coach, a guide that’s clearly indicating to you that something in your life needs to change, instead of being stubborn about it and not changing your lifestyle and instead of pleading ignorance and believe you got cancer by some random chance you can take control of the situation and see cancer for what it really is – an opportunity for personal growth and development and the choice to change your way of being. Change how you live your life.
The last way I’ll talk about how you can see cancer in a more illuminating light is that cancer can bring you face to face with one of man’s greatest fears – death. We are one of many creatures on this planet who are consciously aware of our own individual existence and this conscious awareness brings with it many gifts including knowing your own mortality and that we are all going to die some day. Yes I’m saying death and knowing your time is limited is a gift, as it should inspire you to do more with the limited time you have in this life.
You can heal from cancer, but just as a mild infection can take a turn for the worse and conventional and natural treatments cannot fight it, cancer can linger for far too long in your body where no treatment will support your body’s innate ability to heal. For people in this situation death is no longer a future event, a rare thought, some distant experience, but an ever-present day-to-day in your face reality.
This inevitable encounter with death, this gift of knowledge that your time is limited and that you need to be living life to the full could make you freeze in your tracks and want to run away from your destiny. This refusal of the inevitable brings about much pain and suffering as your thoughts and feelings betray what your body is telling you to accept.
However, what if you could relax and connect to yourself in ways you never could before. Your whole life you’ve been looking for peace and contentment, never enjoying the moment, but seeking the next pleasurable one. With death around the corner can you accept your fate, live your life from this point on in full awareness and enjoy every moment you have as if it were your last?
Whether you believe death is the end, this is it and there’s nothing else that happens afterward or if you believe death is just a part of life and the next stage in your journey if you can live the remainder of this life in absolute awareness you will be able to bring this awareness and hopefully newfound joy for life into the death process. Meaning you will not die in pain or suffer, and you will not die in fear. By accepting cancer and the new path it is leading you toward you will be able to die consciously, in peace, and in love.
For those of you with cancer here’s a personal affirmation that you can say to yourself that may help you change the way you see cancer:
“Thank you cancer for showing up when you did, because now you have given me the opportunity to change my life and even my death for the better.”
Alright now I’m going to go through my 3 top tips, the 3 most important steps anyone with cancer needs to take before healing can begin.
First step to healing is to take responsibility. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean blaming yourself. It simply means owning the fact that this is your life and everything that happens in your life is due to the choices and decisions you’ve made. No-one can make these choices for you. It may feel at times like you have no other choice and you are forced into certain life situations, but I can tell you right now you do have the power of choice when it comes to what you put in your mouth in terms of food quality.
The reason taking responsibility is so very important is because human beings have this weird inability to take action on things that appear to be out of our control, that have nothing to do with us.
If you have this attitude with cancer where you think you have no control over it and it’s up to others to deal with it then your body’s innate ability to heal will never take place. You don’t have to take all of the responsibility for how your life is and for your cancer diagnosis if you’re not ready to, but by at least taking some responsibility for your life and where it’s at right now you will increase your sense of control and will actually feel like you can take action and make the lifestyle changes that will begin the healing process. Responsibility equals action and this equals change and change is just what the natural doctor ordered.
Step 2 to healing is to forgive yourself and others. Forgiveness is the key that balances out your hormones and unlocks emotional blockages in your bodymind. Emotions such as anger and bitterness are extremely yang energies, very hot and chronic expression of these emotions will put your stress and repair hormones out-of-balance with stress hormones coming out on top. On the flip side if you’re not expressing these energies and suppress them deep down inside they will build up in your body creating stagnant areas where energy, hormones, nutrition, and immune cells cannot flow. Because of this resentment is a big killer not just of the emotional body, but your physical and mental bodies as well. Can you see now how the saying ‘resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die’ is so very true.
Let go of resentments, balance out your energy and hormones, and release stagnant energy that is causing you pain. By forgiving yourself and forgiving others you bring your body back to centre with balanced flowing energy.
Final step to healing is to be in an attitude of gratitude. Being in an attitude of gratitude puts you in a more positive mindset as it forces you to focus on what you do have more so than what you don’t have. So instead of moping around and thinking woe is me and my cancer you could give gratitude for the lesson cancer is here to provide you. Remember cancer is a great teacher and if you can show appreciation and thanks toward your cancer diagnosis for showing you that there’s something about your lifestyle that is out of balance with what Mother Nature expects of you then you can see how very fortunate you actually are to be given this lesson as you’re no longer living life numb and blind, but now have the opportunity to live your life more mindfully and become more consciously aware of every moment you have while you’re alive.
“Giving gratitude opens your mind, your body, and your spirit to a new way of being.”
This is my personal attitude of gratitude practise. Every night before bed I give gratitude for 3 experiences I had that day and the lesson I learnt from each of them. I give gratitude: for one person I had an experience with; for one goal I had completed no matter how big or small; and for any other random experience that happened. Whether I perceived any of these 3 experiences as positive or negative, as uplifting or upsetting, I always give thanks for the lesson I learned from that person, from that achievement, and from that experience.
Those are my 3 tips that anyone wanting to heal from cancer needs to follow before healing can begin.
Can you see the one central theme running through each of these 3 steps? It’s all about giving. By taking responsibility you give yourself the chance and the choice to change. By forgiving yourself and others you give your body balanced energies and by being in an attitude of gratitude you give yourself a positive mindset allowing you to see what could not be seen before.
I’ll leave you with this quote from ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:
“A great nation is like a great man: when he makes a mistake, he realises it. Having realised it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers. He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts.”
What all this means is that there’s a misperception that cancer is this evil and bad thing that’s happening to you, but if you flip this view, cancer turns into a gift that you’ve given yourself so that you can see your life and your death in a new light.
Mind you that’s only if you choose to see it that way and as always the choice is yours.
Links and Resources
- WGP 030: Want the Good Life? These 7 Holistic Health Principles Will Guide You There
- WGP 020: The Power of Choice
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Mindsight – Daniel J. Siegel MD
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This groundbreaking book, from one of the global innovators in the integration of brain science with psychotherapy, offers an extraordinary guide to the practice of “mindsight,” the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence. From anxiety to depression and feelings of shame and inadequacy, from mood swings to addictions, OCD, and traumatic memories, most of us have a mental “trap” that causes recurring conflict in our lives and relationships. Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, shows us how to use mindsight to escape these traps. Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients free themselves from obstacles blocking their happiness. By cultivating mindsight, all of us can effect positive, lasting changes in our brains—and our lives. A book as inspiring as it is profound, Mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.
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