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In this podcast I’ll be exploring how to Heal Broken Relationships:
- I’ll explain the major reason relationships fall apart
- I’ll talk about why people relate so poorly to themselves and to one another
- I’ll explain how 3 words can heal any relationship
- Finally, I’ll give an exercise on how to use these 3 words to heal broken relationships in your life
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Relationships are part of being alive. If you’re not relating you’re not living.
Technically the first relationship you’re in is with your own bodymind. Your bodymind is made up of trillions of cells living in harmony with each other. This massive community of cells are in constant communication with one another and build and maintain healthy relationships with each other. From the day you’re conceived into this world to the day you will leave this world you are in constant communication with your bodymind and must build and maintain this relationship throughout your lifetime. The healthier your relationship to your bodymind the healthier your bodymind ends up being.
Of course today the world is full of people with sick and diseased bodyminds meaning as a collective culture and society and species we are not doing a very good job of maintaining and looking after the most important relationship we have, which is with our own selves.
The main reason for such a high rate of disease in western society today is people do not listen and communicate well with their bodymind. When you have a symptom this is your body talking to you, telling you ‘hey you’re doing something that I’m not liking, please stop right now’. But you don’t. Who does? None of us are taught in school how to be in tune with the wants and needs of our bodies and our mind so we end up playing ignorant fools to our body’s messages.
I know when I was dealing with my chronic health issues I was totally ignoring the signs and body language that my bodymind was trying so hard to communicate to me. Why was I ignoring it? Because at the time I really enjoyed my lifestyle. I loved fast food, I enjoyed not having to go to the gym like everyone else was doing, and my job wasn’t killing me either or so I thought. Of course now looking back I can see how my body was rejecting the food, the lack of movement, and the dissatisfaction in my job by giving me skin issues, digestive issues, and depression.
The same reason goes for personal relationships. Your relationship to your family, friends, neighbours and perfect strangers it all comes down to effective communication. If you have good communication with other people you’ll have good relationships with those people. On the flipside if you have bad listening skills and cannot effectively share your intentions with other people you’ll find it very difficult to relate and connect to them on a meaningful level.
So why do people plead ignorance and just not want to listen to their bodyminds or to anyone else? Why is effective communication so difficult to build and maintain? It comes down to wanting to be right or not wanting to be wrong.
We all know the feeling of being right, but we also know the feeling of being wrong or at least to be found out to be wrong. One makes you feel great joy and pride, while the other makes you want to jump off a cliff or hide.
The idea that being wrong is bad comes from human evolutionary history. When your ancestors heard a sound in a bush they had to decide whether that noise was a potential threat, a predator and to run away or was it just the wind and they could continue on their way. Get this wrong and your ancestors would have a very bad day. Get it right and nothing much happens really except knowing you made the right choice and you got to live another day.
This idea that being wrong is bad is reinforced during your upbringing and it is during this time that the idea that being right is good was introduced into your psyche. I remember growing up at home and in school being rewarded for doing things right as they were expected to be done. I also remember being punished at home for not doing things right and being made fun of at school for getting things wrong and not knowing the answers.
This is when things start to go a bit screwy and mess up your innocent young mind. You begin to confuse what you’ve done with who you are. If you make a mistake you are a mistake. If you do wrong then you are bad. If you make something awesome you are awesome. If you do right then you are good.
So when you are given a symptom by your bodymind, a sign like your skin breaking out in pimples or not having enough energy to get out of bed, or when you are confronted by someone else’s ideas and views on life that are very different to yours, your first gut instinct is to deny everything. By denying the reality of what’s happening right in front of you (and there’s a reason for calling it right in front of you and not wrong in front of you) by denying reality you reduce the risk of being wrong and being made to feel bad and so you instead choose to live in blissful ignorance. Because if you were to give in to what’s actually right in front of you it would mean having to admit that what you know or believe in or did may be wrong and you would make that mean that you are wrong.
But, and this is a big but, being wrong or right doesn’t mean anything, really. If you make a mistake or create something awesome, so what? Your actions are not you. They extend from you, but are not you. You are more than something you do or have done in any one moment. Being wrong does not mean you are wrong and same goes for being right. So the best sure-fire way to improve and better your communication skills is to change your mindset where you believe being wrong means you are wrong.
There are 3 words you can say to yourself, to your bodymind, and to others that will stop you wanting to be right all the time for fear of being wrong making you a more effective communicator. No it’s not I love you or even I am sorry. The 3 words I am talking about actually say both of these as well. Those 3 words.
“I was wrong.”
That’s it. I was wrong. This short statement does three things besides saying I love you and I am sorry.
First it immediately puts the other person at ease. When you say the words I was wrong you are essentially saying you were right to the other person. Being told you are right is like celebrating all festivals and holidays in a single moment. It feels like the best piece of high quality dark chocolate or homemade apple pie you’ve ever tasted. So give someone the gift of chocolate and pie today by telling them you were wrong.
Second thing saying you are wrong does is it makes you aware of something you were previously ignorant to. You now have the knowledge and the potential power to make change happen in your life. We make mistakes in order to learn and grow. In fact to learn something means to fail at something as the whole learning process involves ups and downs and it’s only through practise and repetition that you will have more ups than downs, but the downs are always going to be there. Remember you can only rise after you have fallen, but you must be courageous enough to take that fall. Think of it this way, when you are wrong you are learning.
Eckhart Tolle the author of The Power of Now, a really awesome book on keeping you in the present moment, he states:
“It is through the mistakes that the greatest learning happens on an inner level.”
Meaning failure creates deeper more meaningful success later on.
Speaking of the power of now the last thing I wanted to talk about that happens when you say the words I was wrong is it removes the fear of being wrong because you’ve just said you are wrong obviously. As soon as you say those 3 words you shift from being afraid to look wrong in the eyes of others including yourself, to being accepting of whom you are in the moment and this knowing of self in the here and now gives you strength to be more open and honest with your communication. Saying I was wrong shows vulnerability and being vulnerable is very empowering. When you share something personal and intimate and that’s actually quite difficult to share it’s like having a huge weight lifted off your shoulders and you feel lighter and a lot more at ease to just talk and speak your truth.
Relationships require effective communication and need to be built on a foundation of openness and honesty. By saying I was wrong to your bodymind, to yourself, and to other people you remove the fear of being wrong and the need to be right and you create stability in your relationships. In order to maintain the relationship you will have to face your fear of being wrong over and over again and keep in mind that what you’re actually doing is following the learning process. Every time you admit you are wrong you give rise to the chance of being right.
Alright I’m going to leave you with a task. Your mission if you choose to accept it is to think of one rocky relationship whether it is with yourself, your bodymind, or someone else and to think how you have been wrong in this relationship. Then to say to the other person or your body those 3 difficult words, I was wrong, and then explain to them how you have been wrong.
There might be an apology in there, I am sorry, and there might be a connection there, I love you. But it all begins with I was wrong.
Let me give you a few personal examples of what this might look like. Time for me to get vulnerable here.
My relationship with my bodymind. Growing up I’m thinking I can eat pasta, pastries, and pizza without any consequences. It sure tastes good and feels good eating those things in the moment. But I had to admit to my bodymind I was wrong. After years of ignorance and not wanting to take responsibility I finally took control of my own health and discovered I was gluten-sensitive. So I went gluten-free and my bodymind rewarded me by no longer giving me an upset stomach, by giving me smooth glowing skin, and by giving me a genuine smile on my face instead of me having to force a fake one.
Another relationship, this time the relationship with my self. For many many many years I thought that my life revolved around the good opinion of other people and that I didn’t deserve a say in it. But boy I was so bloody wrong it’s not funny. As part of this exercise I would look in the mirror and say to my self, self I was wrong to let other people control my life. And after many moons of personal development work and discovering and learning who I really am and why I’m here I now realise that my life revolves around the most important person in the world, me. Me me me. Always has and always will. Sounds selfish right? I know. But now that I know who I am all I want to do is help others find who they really are too. So this selfishness, this sacred selfishness, this looking after myself now drives me to want to serve others and look after others as well.
Okay last relationship I’ll talk about is the relationship with me mother. Growing up I used to think that my mum actually didn’t love me or my brother and sisters and that she was really just a controlling, mean women who had us kids just to be slave workers and to clean up after her and no matter how good a job we did it was never good enough for her. Well I was wrong. Mum I was wrong to think that you the source of my being and existence didn’t love me or my siblings and I was wrong to think that you were a bad parent. Sure you may not have raised us as we would have liked, but you did the best you could with the knowledge and resources that you had at that time and I just want to show my gratitude and appreciation for the awesome parenting job you did and still do. Even now you’re still telling me to put an extra jacket on when the weather’s cold. I know now that everything you say and do for me and my siblings it always comes from a place of love. Well mum I love you too and yes I will put a jacket on, when it’s actually cold.
So a few personal examples there that I hope will help you on your relationship healing mission.
I’ll leave you with this thought.
“You are never on the wrong path, you are simply on the long path to learning, to growing, and to having happy and healthy relationships.”
Before we can all be right we must all admit that we are so very very wrong.
Links and Resources
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Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution – Richard K. Bernstein MD
(Buy from Amazon; Buy from The Book Depository)
Originally published in 1997, DR. BERNSTEIN’S DIABETES SOLUTION is a unique resource that covers both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, explains step-by-step how to normalize blood sugar levels and prevent or reverse complications and offers detailed guidelines for establishing a treatment plan. Readers will find fifty gourmet recipes, in addition to a comprehensive discussion of diet, obesity, and new drugs to curb carbohydrate craving and overeating.Now in its fourth edition, the book presents up-to-the-minute information on insulin resistance, blood-testing devices, measuring blood sugar, new types of insulin, gastroparesis and other issues, as well as updated diet guidelines. DR. BERNSTEIN’S DIABETES SOLUTION is the one book every diabetic must own.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring the Best Ways to Measure Your Health:
- I’ll explain why tracking your health progress is crucial to reaching your health goals
- I’ll talk about how your body weight is really a poor measure of health
- Finally, I’ll give you 5 different health tracking techniques you can use to better manage your health
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Many people set health goals and fail to reach them, why? Two big reasons come to mind. First one is you need to know why you are doing what it is you are doing. Many people fail to reach health goals because they don’t have a big enough why, a big enough reason to push through plateaus and obstacles that will most definitely show up. Having a dream gives you that why; it gives you direction and inspiration to push through right to the end.
Second big reason people fail to meet health goals is that they do not track their health progress. Just as having a dream and setting a health goal is important in that it gives you direction and something to move toward and gives you that drive and that push, tracking your health progress is like signs and indicators that keep you on the best path toward your dream. Tracking and measuring your health is really important in that it gives you clear signs when things are working for you and when things are not.
If you suffer from chronic weight issues, whether you’re overweight or underweight, than the bathroom scale is probably your most prized and most despised earthly possession and why wouldn’t it be. You have been told that body weight is a very important indicator for health. Let explain how this is not 100% accurate.
Your body weight is made up of muscle, bone, fat, cartilage, bodily fluids of several types, and of course water. Whenever you stand on a scale and measure your weight you are weighing the totality of all of these things. This is where the Body Mass Index or BMI fails as a health measurement. The BMI is a measure of body fat (supposedly) based on your weight in relation to your height. If your BMI comes out at 18.5-24.9 you are labelled as having a normal weight. If its 25-29.9 you are labelled overweight. Over 30 and you’re obese.
Now I want you to think of the Terminator himself Arnold Schwarzenegger. During his bodybuilding days his body weight was around 107 kg or 235 lbs and he’s 6’2”. Arnold’s BMI in his prime works out to be 30.2. Meaning according to body weight and BMI that Conan, the Commando himself who helped Red Sonja save the world and who single-handedly took out the Predator is an obese fat hunk of human flesh! Remember over 30 is obese. Well of course that’s not true as Arnold’s body fat percentage when he was competing was only about 5-7% and he was in reality a mass of lean muscle and a chiselled piece of human art.
The bathroom scale is not giving you an accurate number for health. It’s giving you a number, but that number depends on so many things. Is that scale number made up of mostly muscle which is a lot more dense and heavier and healthier than fat? Or is it bone mass? Is that scale number mostly fat?
Imagine you spend a whole month off the sugars and junk food, you’ve quit smoking, and you’re now walking more and doing some resistance training. You start out at 70 kg and after 4 weeks you see on the scale the same 70 kg. Your initial reaction may be shock, horror, and confusion, but if you understand that getting off the sugars means you’re not holding onto as much water as before and that eating more real food and not smoking and doing some weight training can actually build muscle and bone and cause fat cells to empty out and die then maybe that number is a really good indication of how you’ve been doing that month. You’ve burnt off the fat and you’ve built up some bone and muscle.
This is why body weight is not a good measurement to track and using a scale is a waste of time really. It’s difficult to get a real sense of what’s happening with your body and with your health overall when you rely solely on that number you get from the scale.
Let me share 5 more effective ways to track your health progress. These techniques do not need any fancy equipment and are simple and easy to do and they will give you a more accurate measure of your health than a body weight number on a scale ever could.
First technique is measuring your waist-to-hip ratio. This gives you a better measurement of your body composition. All you need is a tape measure and a calculator. Note down your waist circumference (by putting the tape around your waist over your belly button) and your hips circumference (by measuring at the widest part of your hips). Divide your waist measurement by your hips and you will have your waist-to-hip ratio. An ideal number for men is 0.8 and for women is 0.7. Less than 0.95 for men and less than 0.8 for women puts you in the low risk disease group. Above these numbers, .95 and above for men, .8 and above for women and you move into the moderate and high risk disease groups.
Along this body composition line of thinking clothes are a great way to track progress. Are your pants or dresses starting to feel more loose or tight? If it’s tight is it due to more fat or more muscle tone? How to tell? Use a mirror and a camera. Your memory tends to be a bit biased and flaky when it comes to your body image so taking photos of your half-naked body in the mirror is a great objective assessment of your body composition over time. I suggest keeping the snaps to once a week. You can overdo tracking your health progress. We want to keep it nice and balanced so once a week taking your measurements will keep you from getting too neurotic.
Second way to track your health progress is by keeping a food and poop log. This is seriously important data you need to manage to keep on top of your health. By logging your meals, snacks, and drinks you will be able to see how well you’re keeping to your lifestyle eating plan. Remember diets are great, but healthy eating is part of your life not separate from it so healthy eating shouldn’t be something you feel forced into doing, but something that’s as natural as breathing or brushing your teeth every day. So you can use this food log data to help track down root causes of any health issues that come up.
By logging your, logs, poop that is, and using the Bristol Stool Chart as your tool to compare your stool you can get an overall picture of your lifestyle and how healthy it really is. Your body rarely lies and if your poops are in the constipated or diarrhoea ends of the Bristol Stool Chart that means some part of your lifestyle is not working for your body and needs to be isolated and changed. Luckily you’ve been tracking your food intake so you can use this as a tool during your stool analysis.
Okay third way to track your health is to see if you can hold a 60 second plank. A plank is a position you hold horizontally on the ground where you raise your body and rest on your toes and your forearms and elbows. If you can hold a plank using good form and I’ll put a link to a video in the blog post for this episode so you can see what that looks like, if you can hold a plank for 1 minute your core strength isn’t that bad.
This fourth technique may seem easy for you young’uns out there, but it’s still a valid test and may even show up some faulty movement patterns or stiff areas of your body that you didn’t even know existed. It’s called the Sitting-Rising Test or SRT for short. This test involves sitting and rising, duh, but using only your legs. You start off with 10 points, 5 points for sitting and 5 points for rising and each time you use another body part for support like your arms or knees you lose 1 point. The SRT is measuring many things including muscle strength, bone integrity, mobility, balance, and motor coordination, but ultimately it highlights your longevity. The goal is to keep the 10 points and sit and rise without assistance. This indicates a reduced risk of death from all causes, but don’t worry if you can’t get a perfect 10. Just note down your number today and once a week or month retest and see how well your lifestyle changes are working for you.
Fifth and final tracking technique is probably the most important – logging (journaling, writing down) your thoughts, feelings, and the results you’re getting in other areas of your life. So has your thinking and your ability to focus improved? Have your moods improved or are they more stable? Has your outlook on life improved or gotten worse. How are your family and work relationships? How are your career and financial goals coming along? Have these all improved?
The first four techniques that I mentioned even if they are all showing improvements in your health in the right direction this doesn’t mean all is well in your life. Your body composition and fitness is one part of your health and your health is one part of your life.
This final way of tracking your health progress, logging how you think and feel and how you’re performing in the world really shows whether looking good in the mirror and planking yourself for days on end is really working for you or not. I mean what’s the point of having 10% body fat and being able to deadlift a car if you are secretly depressed, broke, and you have no-one else to share your health with. Health is one key to a happy life, don’t forget that and this last tracking technique brings all aspects of your life together.
Millions and I mean millions of kilos and pounds of human tissue have been lost and found over the years due to people not having a dream and not having the ability to follow that dream the simplest way possible. By using these 5 health measurements you will steer yourself toward your health goals a whole lot easier and happier than if you were to use a single number you get from a scale as your only measurement.
Archimedes, an ancient Greek mathematician, he said:
“Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.”
Well the scale definitely isn’t the place to stand if you want to make effective long lasting change happen. So here’s to tossing out the scale and thinking that your health is tied to a single number. Your health is dependent on so much more and then some.
Links and Resources
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Food Sensitivities:
- I’ll explain the difference between food allergies, food intolerances, and food sensitivities
- I’ll talk about the many many health issues associated with food sensitivities
- Finally, I’ll share 5 ways you can identify foods your body is most sensitive to
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Most people have heard about food allergies, like a peanut allergy and food intolerances, like lactose intolerance. But not many people know about food sensitivities.
Let me explain the difference between the three of these.
Now a food allergy is a dramatic and immediate reaction by your body’s immune system to a particular food that you’ve eaten. Allergic reactions include immediate swelling and itchiness and also anaphylactic shock which can be fatal. The top eight allergenic foods are:
- Peanuts
- Tree nuts
- Wheat
- Shellfish
- Soy
- Milk
- Eggs and
- Fish
Food intolerance on the other hand is a more subtle, minor delayed reaction. We’re talking a few minutes to a few hours here before you experience symptoms. Food intolerances do not involve your immune system and are actually caused by your body not having the right enzymes or not having enough enzyme activity to breakdown the compounds that are in real food or in the chemicals added to fake pretend food-like products. Common food substances that people are intolerant to and do not have the enzymes to fully breakdown include:
- Gluten in grains
- Lactose in dairy
- Biogenic amines like histamine, tyramine, and arginine
- Preservatives and
- Additives
Alright food sensitivities. Now food sensitivities are similar to intolerances in that they provoke a small delayed reaction in your body. When I say delayed I mean delayed. Reaction times to a food your body is sensitive to can vary from hours to weeks. Food sensitivities are similar to allergies in that your immune system is the cause for the reaction, but a different branch of your immune system, which is why instead of an immediate allergic reaction you get a delayed smaller reaction. So a food sensitivity is your body’s immune system having a reaction to the food you eat or the compounds added to or found on the food you eat and these immune reactions are small and can take a while to show up as a visible and noticeable symptom.
Common foods and substances found in food that people are most sensitive to include what I mentioned earlier for allergies and intolerances, but also the following:
- Sugar and sugar alcohols
- Industrial seed oils more commonly known as vegetable oils
- Corn
- Legumes
- Seeds
- Grains whether they contain gluten or not
- Artificial sweeteners
- Alcohol
- Caffeine
- Cacao
- Nightshade vegetables
- Citrus fruits
- Agricultural chemical sprays
- Genetically modified organisms and
- Mould toxins like aflatoxin and ochratoxin most commonly found in peanuts and instant coffee
As you can see when you add up all three food categories together that makes quite the list of food and food compounds that can cause food sensitivities. Keep in mind that these foods and compounds are the most common sensitivities found in people who are experiencing health issues, but you can actually be sensitive to any food. No food is off-limits when it comes to causing negative reactions in your body. Whether it’s seaweed, beef, pork, broccoli, or even beautifully roasted sweet potatoes, food sensitivities can occur with any food.
Let me list (yes another list) the many health issues and symptoms that a food sensitivity can cause:
- Brain fog
- Inability to focus
- Food cravings
- Low energy
- Irritability
- Fatigue
- Insomnia
- Headaches
- Mood swings
- Depression
- Dark circles under your eyes
- Need to clear your throat
- Runny Nose
- Nasal congestion
- Water retention
- Gas
- Constipation
- Diarrhoea
- Bloating
- Indigestion
- Obesity
- Joint pain
- Muscle aches
- Skin issues like rash, itchiness, and acne
- Many autoimmune diseases and other chronic inflammatory conditions
The list just goes on to be honest.
Isn’t it fascinating how all of these health issues and symptoms could be caused just by you eating a single food that your body doesn’t agree with?
Well I think it’s fascinating anyway, because for me I found that the chronic health issues that I had growing up including depression, skin issues, digestive upset, headaches, poor memory, mood swings, a majority of these were caused solely by sensitivities my body had to the foods that I was eating. While the rest of my health problems were a mix of food sensitivities and unhealthy lifestyle factors like the use of toxic personal care products and being in toxic relationships and I figured this out by what I’m about to share with you now.
Here are 5 ways you can identify the foods that your body’s immune system is reacting to.
First method of investigation is by lab testing. In the functional medical health space there are many lab tests you can run, based on blood samples that you give, that will give you a list of foods that your body’s immune system is having a severe, moderate, low or no reaction to. Examples of labs you can use for food sensitivity testing include:
- Cyrex Laboratories Array 3, Array 4, and Array 10
- Oxford Biomedical Technologies MRT or Mediator Release blood test
- Great Plains Laboratory IgG Food Test + Candida and the
- Antigen Leukocyte Antibody Test or ALCAT food test
There are pros and cons to lab testing food sensitivities. The con is they are not 100% accurate, meaning you could be eliminating a food from your diet for no reason at all and you could still be eating a food that your body is having a reaction to based on these tests. The pro is these labs provide a stepping stone in the right direction to eliminating foods that your body is reacting to and it can give certain stubborn individuals who are resistant to change the black and white evidence that they need to take some action even if that evidence isn’t 100% correct. So while these lab tests will not give you all the answers you were hoping for they can give you the motivation you need to change.
Second method to find your food sensitivities is to use your heart rate. When your body has a reaction to something you eat your heart rate will increase. Fifteen minutes before you eat a particular food measure your heart rate for 60 seconds and use this as your baseline. Fifteen minutes after eating measure your heart rate again. If you see a rise of 5 beats or more your body is reacting to that food and that food should be eliminated.
The third method is pretty simple, but you are not going to like what it means. It involves keeping a food log for 7-14 days where you write down everything you eat and also write down any food cravings you have and give into. After a week or two go back over your logs. Look for the most common foods you eat at every meal or every day. For example if you had an entry that read cereal for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, and pasta for dinner then that day was full of wheat, grain and glutenous foods. If a week reads bacon and eggs for breakfast for 7 days then that week was full of egg, pork, and preservative foods. Also note down your cravings and which cravings you could not resist.
Why is all this important?
Well because:
“the foods you eat the most and the foods you crave and give into the most are almost always the foods your body is sensitive to the most.”
So if you just cannot do without your bread, your cheese or ice cream, your morning cup of coffee, or chocolate then your body’s immune system is most likely reacting to the wheat or gluten in bread, to the casein or lactose in dairy, to the caffeine or mould toxins in coffee, and to the arginine or phenethylamine in cacao. I told you you wouldn’t like this method. It may be simple to follow, but can be extremely difficult to execute on because it means removing your most favourite foods.
Muscle testing is another thing you can try to find out which foods your body doesn’t agree with. I talked about this already in podcast 28 – One Diet To Rule Them All. Muscle testing is also known as applied kinesiology and is a form of energy testing where you’re testing the alignment or harmony between your body’s energy signature and that of the food you’re testing. If you find that your muscles become weaker when holding a particular food then your body is sensitive to that food and that food must be eliminated.
The fifth, final, and by far the gold standard for working out your food sensitivities is an elimination diet. Also known as an elimination provocation or elimination challenge diet. This method may be the best most accurate way to find your food sensitivities, but it’s also the most hardest to stick to. It’s the most difficult to implement and follow through on purely because it takes time, patience, and a very acute awareness of your body language.
With an elimination diet you start in the elimination phase where you remove the most highly allergenic, intolerant and sensitive foods from your diet for a period ranging from one month to 12 months depending on how sick you really are. After the elimination phase comes the provocation or challenge phase where one by one you introduce a new food into your diet over a period of 3-4 days and log any reactions your body has after eating that food. If you do notice a reaction you leave that food out of your diet for another 3 months before reintroducing it again. If no reaction you can keep that food in your diet and move onto the next new food to test.
Yes this means it’ll take some time and a lot of patience using an elimination diet to find your food sensitivities, but think of the lessons you will learn about how your body works and think of how much better you will feel and even look.
As an African proverb says:
“Wisdom does not come overnight.”
Your health issues may have taken years before fully developing so it’s going to take at least months before those health issues will minimise and hopefully disappear entirely.
When undergoing an elimination diet it helps to work with a health practitioner for support and guidance and if you need me you know where to find me. But I do have a couple of elimination diets that have their own support networks that I highly recommend.
One is the Whole30 program which uses a paleo template as a guide to help you kick health issues as well as bad food habits by eating real food for 30 days and then introducing suspect foods afterwards. Another is The 21 Day Sugar Detox with the goal of breaking free of sugar and carb cravings. Both of these programs have proven track records and have helped thousands of people get over chronic health conditions with some receiving the added side-effect of reducing their waistline.
I also recommend reading The Elimination Diet by Tom Malterre and Alissa Segersten for more detailed information on how to heal using an elimination diet.
So are your health issues caused by food sensitivities? You won’t know the answer to this until you begin to eliminate foods from your diet for a certain amount of time and then seeing how you feel. By using 1 or all 5 of these food sensitivity testing methods you will find the answer you’re looking for and I suggest you get ready to feel awesome!
Links and Resources
- WGP 028: The One Diet to Rule Them All
- Whole Guidance Holistic Lifestyle Coaching Services
- Whole30 Program
- The 21 Day Sugar Detox
- The Elimination Diet — Tom Malterre, Alissa Segersten
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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 Greed:
- I’ll explain how greed can be a good thing
- I’ll talk about where this wanting and grasping and craving for more comes from
- I’ll explain the link between greed and unhealthy attachments
- I’ll talk about how greed creates dissatisfaction through expectation
- Finally, I’ll share a few strategies on how to manage yourself when it comes to greed and your desires
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Greed is defined as an intense or excessive desire for more.
Looking at greed from an evolutionary lens, our ancestors lived in times of both abundance and scarcity and greed comes in very handy in those scarce moments. When traditional cultures did not have enough food put aside for the winter or had their villages wiped out by natural disasters or disease these are times when you need to have a very intense desire to survive as your life depends on it.
Coming back to today to modern times where if you’re fortunate enough to be listening to this podcast I have to say, you are pretty set when it comes to getting your basic needs met. We live in a world that’s very abundant in many respects with more than enough food being produced to feed the planet, but food wastage means people still starve. We live in a world with more than enough clothes to cover every single man, woman, and child a thousand times over, but still people die due to extreme weather conditions and thermal stress. We live in a world with so much advanced technology that this could shift the human race into a new age of peace and love, but old wars still rage on with weapons of mass and mini destruction being the technology of choice.
So the problem isn’t really greed itself, but the greed mindset in abundant conditions.
Now if the world we live in today has more than enough for us to survive why the excessive intense desire, the need, the want, the grasping, the craving for more? One reason is you have been programmed by news media, marketing, food companies, drug companies, sports, fashion, military, and every other industrial complex out there to desire more. Every day you see advertisements telling you that you’re not good enough or that you haven’t made it in life until you buy x, eat y, wear z, and smell like p, the letter that is.
Another reason for excessive wanting and desires is your upbringing. Your parents and family would have installed into your under seven year-old subconscious mind as you were growing up that no matter what you do, you must do more; no matter what you have, you must have more; and no matter how you’re being you must be more! Now they didn’t do this on purpose because hey their parents did the exact same thing to them.
So this is where greed in an abundant world comes from – external sources. This is why despite having more today than anyone 10,000 years ago ever had, you have this insatiable appetite to want more to crave what it is you don’t have yet grasp at because you feel like you’re missing out on something. This greed mindset comes from outside of you.
Having an intense desire for more can lead you down a path to unhealthy attachments. Attachment itself isn’t a bad thing. A loving bond is absolutely necessary between family members, friends, and communities to keep everyone moving forward in the direction that lifts everybody up. Unhealthy attachments, however, are not bonds of love, but bonds of fear.
When you lust after and want great ideas, people, places, and things you can begin to confuse yourself with that which you desire. For example you could be greedy for money and say to yourself that unless you earn a certain amount or have a certain amount of cash in the bank you are not successful. So you grow this unhealthy attachment with an idea of success equalling having lots of money and therefore you think that without money you are nothing. Another example maybe you want to be with a particular person say a celebrity and you daydream about them and begin stalking them on Facebook and Instagram. Then one day you wake up and realise you know more about that person than you actually know yourself and you’re practically living life through them instead of in your own body and space.
This unhealthy form of attachment comes from a place of fear where we as living creatures grasp security every chance we can get. So whenever you feel insecure within your own skin or unsure about your own thoughts and feelings you may find yourself not wanting to go inside to face this doubt and instead may look externally for that safety and security. You will seek out ideas that make you feel good, people that make you feel safe, places and things that make you feel secure and you will attach yourself so strongly to them that your entire existence depends on them more than anything else.
This craving for security can lead to attachments that cause you to live outside more than inside of yourself creating disharmony in your bodymind leaving you with an unhealthy and unhappy life.
Greed, wanting and grasping and craving, leads to many expectations. Expectations of how your life should be, of how you should be, and of how other people should be. Notice a lot of shouldas there. Living a shoulda life is a surefire recipe for a dissatisfied life. How?
If you really think about it the only times where you’ve felt upset or letdown were when expectations you had about a situation or person were not met. Every single time you expect your well prepared plan A to happen, but instead plan B happens out of nowhere you get frustrated and then when plan B seems to show up more frequently than your precious plan A your frustration turns to anger and possibly rage or maybe even tears. Whenever you experience an outcome that is not what you wanted or were hoping for of course you’re going to be dissatisfied.
“Unfulfilled expectations are the prerequisite to suffering.”
Does this mean that to live a life without suffering you must live a life without expectations and greed? No and I’ll share a few tips now on how to manage yourself when it comes to greed, to wanting, to unhealthy attachments, and expectations.
Most important tip to managing yourself and your intense desires is to switch off from media, marketing, advertising, and any other bad influence that brainwash you into thinking you live in a world of scarcity and that you’re not good enough so you must buy what they’re selling before you’ll ever succeed in life. All of this stuff creates FOMO in your mind where you begin to Fear On Missing Out on what other people are doing because of the so-called importance that is placed upon them through hype and propaganda. By moving away from this hype you will lessen your FOMO and your need for greed.
Bonus tip: switch off the news as well and not only will you shield yourself from the advertising hype, but you’ll also decrease your stress levels from the negative news improving your overall health.
Another way to not lose yourself to wants and desires and lose yourself to unhealthy attachments is to practice mindfulness, awareness, and being present in the moment. ‘Be in the now man’ is hippy talk for wake up to what’s happening in you and around you right now in this moment. Many people live in the past reliving their regrets or in the future worrying about possible failures. This way of thinking creates doubt of your own worthiness and personal abilities to live a successful and happy life so you begin to look to find your worth in another person or in other material objects. You look outside instead of inside.
By being here and now you learn what it is you need in this moment and stop thinking about what you needed years ago when you fumbled that catch at school or what you need in 2 weeks to pay the rent. When you can bring yourself to what’s happening right here, right now you will find your desires grow less intense and see that what you really need could be as simple as a glass of water, a deep breath, a talk, a walk, or even a hug.
A couple ways to practise mindfulness is meditation of any type and body scanning. I’ve talked about meditation many many times before so I’ll talk a little bit about body scanning. Body scanning is not getting a CT scan or x-ray at the hospital or doctor’s office, but a mindfulness practise where you start from of your head or your feet and work your way down or up your body focusing on each body part as you go through the practise. You notice aches, temperature, and other sensations in one area of your body before moving to the next. This is a great way to centre or ground yourself to how you, your body, your mind, everything about you is experiencing life in that moment. I’ll put a link to a YouTube video in the blog post for this episode showing how to perform this body scan practise.
When it comes to letting go of expectations, um, actually don’t. Zig Ziglar a personal development coach and speaker has a quote that goes:
“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.”
Meaning you shouldn’t remove expectations, but be flexible when things don’t go your way. Instead of stewing in misery think to yourself, what’s the lesson here and what new expectations can I create from this experience? Another way to say it would be to expect to fall in life and then expect that you will get back up.
Such is the story of all life no? A constant cycle of ups and downs, life and death, new and old. If you can see the world as an impermanent place where nothing is fixed, set, or stagnant, but more like water that’s always in flow and if you can see that the future is impossible to see and predict then you may just be able to let go of suffering by moving with the flow of the world when your expectations are not met and you may just learn something about yourself along the way.
Another quote this time by superstar martial artist Bruce Lee:
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
Do not take on other people’s baggage. You got enough personal baggage to last many life times as it is.
I’ll leave you with this thought.
Imagine putting your hand in a river to get some water and you grasp tightly. You end up making a fist which comes up empty handed. Now if you were to release your grip and open your hand more you’d be able to carry a lot more water. Grasping on to desires too tightly stops you from getting what you want. Be mindful, open yourself up to letting go of attachments, be flexible with your expectations, and use greed to inspire and move you toward your dreams – suffering being optional.
Links and Resources
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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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Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies: 400 Important Scientific Papers Summarized for Parents and Researchers – Neil Z. Miller
(Buy from Amazon; Buy from The Book Depository)
Many people sincerely believe that all vaccines are safe, adverse reactions are rare, and no peer-reviewed scientific studies exist showing that vaccines can cause harm. This book — Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies — provides the other side of the story that is not commonly told. It contains summaries of 400 important scientific papers to help parents and researchers enhance their understanding of vaccinations.
“This book should be required reading for every doctor, medical student and parent. Reading this book will allow you to make better choices when considering vaccination.” — David Brownstein, MD
“This book is so precise and exciting in addressing the vaccine controversy that I read it in one evening. I recommend this book to any parent who has questions about vaccines and wants to be factually educated to make informed decisions.” — Gabriel Cousens, MD
“Neil Miller’s book is a tour de force and a clarion voice championing the cautionary principle: ‘When in doubt, minimize risk.’ Let’s talk science. Read this book. The truth will keep you and your children protected.”— Bradford S. Weeks, MD
“Nowhere else can one find such an organized and concise compilation of research on vaccines. Not only does Miller have a deep understanding of science and the issues at hand, he has made this book easy to reference and cite. Truly, there is no other guide out there quite like it. For everyone who contacts me in the future seeking scientific evidence about vaccines, I will recommend Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies.” — Toni Bark, MD, MHEM, LEED AP, previous Director of the pediatric ER at Michael Reese Hospital
“Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies is the most comprehensive and coherent accumulation of peer-reviewed research on vaccine issues and natural immunity I have ever come across. A must read for parents, teachers, doctors and other healthcare providers.” — Dr. Tyson Perez, pediatric chiropractor
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 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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