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How To Be Spiritual In A Material World
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01 Sep 2022
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September Artist of the Month: Thomas Hudspeth

 

 

About the Artist:

With so much biodiversity in North Carolina, it’s fun to go outside and encounter nature’s constant offering of interesting and beautiful surprises. A daily routine started a few years ago as a strategy to “get my steps in,” to move my body, and to connect with nature. A windfall was that it also became an artistic endeavor when I started taking pictures along the way.

Self-taught, I’ve noticed over time some improvement as a photographer. I’ve learned to give more attention to various perspectives, distances, angles, color, lighting, as well as “the macro and the micro.” That said, I don’t suspect I’ll ever pursue high tech photography—it’s just my simple iPhone camera and Mother Nature collaborating.

This artistic endeavor is an outgrowth of other experiences. I was a classroom teacher throughout the 1990’s and well into the 2000’s, an experience that piqued in me an interest in human development and holistic well-being. Those years led to marriage, a growing family, and my ongoing vocation as Life Coach.

Daily outings to observe nature, to take pictures, and to share them have been part of my exploration in the art of authentic living, another topic that allures me. Sharing the pictures in social media has put me in touch with other artists, nature lovers, and many kind people. I imagine that everyone at their core is an artist, a conduit through which the universe can reveal, express, and celebrate itself in endless, unique forms.

 

Connect with Thomas:

Website – CollaborateWithThomas.com

Email – CollaborateWithThomas@gmail.com

Twitter: @Collabor8tor

Rumble: Collaborate With Thomas (videos coming soon)

 

 

 

 

15 Aug 2022
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Keeping Fit: How to Do the Right Exercise for Your Age

The effect of exercise on health is profound. It can protect you from a range of conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. But the type and amount of exercise you should do changes as you age. To ensure that you are doing the right type of exercise for your age, follow this simple guide.

Childhood and Adolescence

In childhood, exercise helps control body weight, builds healthy bones and promotes self-confidence and healthy sleep patterns. The government recommends that children should get at least one hour of exercise a day. As a tip:

  • Children should try a variety of sports and develop skills, such as swimming and the ability to hit and kick a ball.
  • Lots of non–scheduled physical activity is great, too, such as playing in playgrounds.

Exercise habits tend to steadily decline during teen years, particularly in girls. Getting enough exercise promotes a healthy body image and helps manage stress and anxiety. You can also:

  • Encourage teenagers to keep one team sport, if possible.
  • For teenagers who are not into team sports, swimming or athletics can be a good way to keep fitness levels up.

In Your 20s

You are at your absolute physical peak in your mid-20s, with the fastest reaction times and highest VO2 max – the maximum rate at which the body can pump oxygen to muscles. After this peak, your VO2 max decreases by up to 1 percent each year and your reaction time slows each year. The good news is that regular physical activity can slow this decline. Building lean muscle mass and bone density at this age helps you retain them in later years.

  • Vary your training and keep it fun. Try tag rugby, rowing or boot camp.
  • If you are a regular exerciser, get advice from an exercise professional to build “periodisation” into your training regime. This involves dividing your training regime into progressive cycles that manipulate different aspects of training – such as intensity, volume and type of exercise – to optimise your performance and ensure you peak for a planned exercise event, such as a triathlon.

In Your 30s 

As careers and family life for many intensify in their 30s, it is important that you maintain cardiovascular fitness and strength to slow normal physical decline. If you have a sedentary job, make sure you maintain good posture and break up long periods of sitting by forcing activity into your day, such as routing your printer to another room, climbing a flight of stairs to use the bathroom on another floor, or standing when taking a phone call so you are moving every half an hour where possible.

  • Work smart. Try high-intensity interval training. This is where bursts of high-intensity activity, up to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate, such as sprinting and cycling, are broken up with periods of lower-intensity exercise. This kind of workout is good for the time poor as it can be done in 20 minutes.
  • For all women, and especially after childbirth, do pelvic floor exercises, sometimes known as Kegel exercises daily to help prevent incontinence.
  • Diversify your exercise programme to keep it interesting. Try boot camp, spin class or yoga.

In Your 40s

Most people start to put on weight in their 40s. Resistance exercise is the best way to optimise calorie burning to counteract fat accumulation and reverse the loss of three to eight percent of muscle mass per decade. Ten weeks of resistance training could increase lean weight by 1.4kg, increase resting metabolic rate by 7 percent and decrease fat weight by 1.8kg.

  • Try kettlebells or start a weight-training programme in your gym.
  • Take up running, if you don’t run already, and don’t be afraid to start a more intensive exercise programme. You get more bang for your buck with running versus walking.
  • Pilates can be useful to build core strength to protect against back pain, which often starts in this decade.

In Your 50s

In this decade, aches and pains may crop up and chronic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, can manifest. As estrogen declines in postmenopausal women, the risk of heart disease increases.

  • Do strength training twice a week to maintain your muscle mass.
  • Weight-bearing exercises, such as walking, is recommended. Walk fast enough so that your breathing rate increases and you break a sweat.
  • Try something different. Tai chi can be excellent for balance and relaxation.

In Your 60s

Typically, people accumulate more chronic conditions as they get older, and ageing is a major risk factor for cancer. Maintaining a high level of physical activity can help prevent cancers, such as post-menopausal breast cancer, colon cancer and cancer of the womb, and it reduces the risk of developing chronic conditions, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Physical activity tends to decline with age, so keep active and try to buck this trend.

  • Try ballroom dancing or other forms of dancing; it’s a fun and sociable way to exercise.
  • Incorporate strength and flexibility exercises twice a week. Aqua-aerobics can be a great way to develop strength using water as resistance.
  • Maintain cardiovascular exercise, such as brisk walking.

70s and Beyond

Exercise in your 70s and beyond helps prevent frailty and falls, and it’s important for your cognitive function. If you have a period of ill health, try to keep mobile, if possible. Strength and fitness can decline rapidly if you are bed bound or very inactive, which can make it hard to get back to previous levels.

  • Walk and talk. Instead of inactive visits from family and friends, go for a walk together. It will keep you motivated and boost your health more than solitary exercise.
  • Incorporate some strength, balance and cardiovascular exercise in your regime. But get advice from a physiotherapist or other exercise professional, especially if you have several chronic conditions.

 

The main message is to keep moving throughout your life. Sustained exercise is what benefits health most.

 

 

Original article here

06 Aug 2022
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Clay As A Remedy

 

The four essential elements offered to us from Earth — earth, air, fire and water — have tremendous healing power.

Clay is of the earth element and retains the planet’s electromagnetic energy. It is a purifier — like fire, water and air — despite the fact that it is dirt! Healing with clay connects us to Earth’s forces and creates a reciprocal relationship. As we become healthier humans we have more passion and energy for tending to the planet.

Clay is considered by some to be alive because of its instability and tendency to transform its chemical and physical components over time. While clay is not a cure all, it is a natural remedy that can have an enormous impact on body mind and spirit when used in a variety of different ways. Potters, for example, experience a unique healing effect of clay through its willingness to “listen.”

When you push or pinch, clay responds. The inherent nature of clay is to move as instructed, pliable at the creator’s hand. Some potters describe this as a reconnection with the forces of nature, a spiritual connection that permeates the soul, the physical body, the whole self. An amazing thing to witness is a room with 8-10 kids and wheels going. At times, you can hear a pin drop because the clay is so mesmerizing. Working with clay is incredibly therapeutic.

Physical Therapy and Arthritis

Physical therapy and art therapy are two treatment modalities that have long recognized clay as a source for client restoration. Simply working clay in your hands is great for arthritis or any other malady that requires keeping the hands moving without calling for any sort of skill or expertise. It is also recognized as a great medium with which to work through emotional crisis or troubles through the art of sculpting, with or without intention.

Clay As Meditation

Try this clay meditation when you want to get grounded. Take a hunk of clay and chose one of the following: pinch, poke or smear. Give yourself 15 minutes and do this one activity to the clay. You can use different fingers or even body parts getting creative but stay focused on not straying away. Let’s say you chose poking. Poke with one finger at a time, then two, then three, etc. Poke softly, poke with gusto, poke in a straight line, poke at an angle, but be careful you don’t start pinching! When your time is up journal about the experience. What came up, how did you feel, was it pleasant? Often times the most beautiful creations come from these meditations without intent.

Varieties of Clay

There are thousands of different kinds of clays, each unique in its mineral content determined by geological location and the weathering that has occurred. Some clays are suitable for eating (bentonite), other clays are suitable for industrial use, and still other clays are used to bathe in or apply to the body. Clay is a term used to describe an earthy, mud-like sediment composed of very fine particles of minerals, pliable when moist and hard when dry or fired. Clay differs from mud in its particle size and purity. Mud generally has more “debris” in it and does not have the same stickiness or retain its shape as clay does.

Clay is created during the cycle of rock formation. When magma cools it becomes an igneous rock. One of the most abundant igneous rocks is granite. When granite decomposes it breaks down into feldspar, quartz, mica, potash and kaolinite, which is also known as “pure clay.” There are many classifications of clay, including primary and secondary clays. Primary clays are found at the site of the “parent rock” and secondary clays are clays that have moved and changed due to ice, water flow and weathering. As the secondary clays travel, they can pick up and leave behind different minerals resulting in thousands of varieties depending on its location and what has happened to it. Some good places to search for your own local clay are in riverbanks, ocean shores, or construction sites.

A Natural Detoxifier

Clay’s healing impact on the body has been known for thousands of years and used around the world. Rich in minerals, clay provides two benefits: it pulls toxins out of the body and it also re-mineralizes. Clay is used in skin care products because of its pulling power. It is the best way to provide a deep pore cleanse. Clay baths are used to pull toxins, heavy metals and chemicals through our largest organ — the skin.

Clay’s natural pulling power results from its negative ions seeking the positive ions found in toxins, which either adsorb to the surface or absorb into the clay. Poultices and packs made with clay are used on bug bites, bee stings, headaches, burns and more, pulling the poisons or toxins out and helping the body to healer quicker. I once had the privilege of giving a clay footbath to a very, very sick woman. As she soaked her feet, she said it felt wonderful to squish her feet around in the mud at the bottom. She felt so relaxed and pampered. We were both amazed at the toxins we found at the bottom of the bucket that the clay had pulled through the skin on her feet!

Eating Clay

Usually when I mention eating clay, most people imagine taking a hunk of clay and chewing on it. Thankfully this is not how it is done! Most health food stores carry clay in powder or liquid form. It is mixed with a glass of water for drinking and, in most cases, doesn’t taste like much. Eating clay can be beneficial for many disorders such as diarrhea, parasites, ulcers, allergies, anemia and more, as clay contains minerals and energy that our body’s defense system needs.

Ideally, clay should be taken to build immunity so that if you are exposed to a contagious illness or if you are approaching a time of lowered resistance, your defense system is prepared. How much clay to eat and how often is determined by individual needs and what goals are being accomplished. For long-term use, 1 tablespoon mixed with water once or twice a day is a good guideline to follow.

Earth has provided us with a powerful natural medicine — itself! Clay is sacred; honor Earth and you will be honored with receiving its wonderful energy.

 

 

Original article here

24 Jul 2022
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Burn, Baby, Burn: The New Science of Metabolism

As the director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the USDA Nutrition Center Tufts University, Massachusetts, Susan Roberts has spent much of the past two decades studying ways to fight the obesity epidemic that continues to plague much of the western world.

But time and again, Roberts and other obesity experts around the globe have found themselves faced with a recurring problem. While getting overweight individuals to commit to shedding pounds is often relatively straightforward in the short term, preventing them from regaining the lost weight is much more challenging.

According to the University of Michigan, about 90% of people who lose significant amounts of weight, whether through diets, structured programmes or even drastic steps such as gastric surgery, ultimately regain just about all of it.

Why is this? Scientists believe that the answer lies in the workings of our metabolism, the complex set of chemical reactions in our cells, which convert the calories we eat into the energy our body requires for breathing, maintaining organ functions, and generally keeping us alive.

When someone begins a new diet, we know that metabolism initially drops – because we are suddenly consuming fewer calories, the body responds by burning them at a slower pace, perhaps an evolutionary response to prevent starvation – but what then happens over the following weeks, months, and years, is less clear.

“Does metabolism continue to go down, more than it should,” asks Roberts, “or does it initially go down, and then bounce back? This is an enormously controversial topic, and one that we’re looking to address.”

Over the next three to four years, we may get some answers. Roberts is co-leading a new study, funded by the National Institutes of Health in the US, which will follow 100 individuals over the course of many months as they first lose and then regain weight, measuring everything from energy expenditure to changes in the blood, brain and muscle physiology, to try to see what happens.

The implications for how we tackle obesity could be enormous. If metabolism drops and continues to stay low during weight loss, it could imply that dieting triggers innate biological changes that eventually compel us to eat more. If it rebounds to normal levels, this suggests that weight regain is due to the recurrence of past bad habits, with social and cultural factors tempting us to go back to overeating.

“If someone’s metabolism really drops during weight loss and doesn’t recover, it shows we have to put all of our money on preventing weight gain in the first place,” says Roberts. “Because once it’s happened, you’re doomed. If metabolism rebounds, it means that the lessons about eating less because you’ve now got a smaller body haven’t been learned effectively. So we might need to encourage people who have lost weight to see psychologists to work on habit formation. These are such different conclusions that we really need to get it right.”

This is just one of many ways in which our understanding of metabolism is evolving. In recent years, many of the traditional assumptions, which had long been accepted as truth – that exercise can ramp up metabolism, that metabolism follows a steady decline from your 20s onwards – have been challenged. For scientists at the forefront of this field, these answers could go on to change many aspects of public health.

The age myth

In mid-August, a paper emerged in the journal Science that appeared to challenge one of metabolism’s universal truths. For decades, scientists have accepted that metabolism begins to slow down in early adulthood, initiating a steady descent that continues through middle age and later life, inevitably resulting in the phenomenon known as “middle-aged spread”.

But this may not actually be true. Over the past few years, Herman Pontzer, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, North Carolina, and more than 80 other scientists have compiled data from more than 6,400 individuals – from eight days to 95 years old – that shows something very different.

It appears that between the ages of 20 and 60 our metabolism stays almost completely stable, even during major hormonal shifts such as pregnancy and menopause. Based on the new data, a woman of 50 will burn calories just as effectively as a woman of 20.

Instead, there are just two major life shifts in our metabolism, with the first occurring between one and 15 months old. The Science study showed that infants burn energy at such a rate to support their development that their metabolism at one year old is more than 50% higher than an adult’s. The second transition takes place at about the age of 60, when our metabolism begins to drop again, continuing to do so until we die.

“For much of your life, your body’s kind of chugging along on a trajectory for how busy your cells are going to be,” says Pontzer. “Your cells are following a roadmap, and it’s very hard to bump them off that roadmap.”

So what does this mean? Much of the ageing process, and the commonly observed middle-aged weight gain, is not because of declining metabolism but genetics, hormone changes and lifestyle factors such as stress, sleep, smoking and, perhaps most crucially, diet. Pontzer argues that if the calories we burn stay largely the same throughout life, then the real source of obesity has to be the amount we’re eating, and particularly the heavy consumption of highly processed foods.

Over the years, one of the main marketing tools used to promote different exercise regimes and wellness supplements has been claims that they boost your metabolism. Pontzer says that this is mostly nonsense.

Studies that have compared indigenous tribes of hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania – who walk an average of 19,000 steps a day – with sedentary populations in Europe and the US have found that their total number of calories burned is largely the same. Other studies looking at whether metabolism changes if you put a mouse on an exercise regime, or comparing non-human primates living in a zoo or the rainforest, have found a similar pattern.

Some scientists believe that this is because the body is programmed to keep its average daily energy expenditure within a defined range. While there are day-to-day fluctuations, the body still burns the same number of calories overall, but it adjusts how they are used, depending on our lifestyle. To explain the theory, Pontzer gives the example of a keen amateur cyclist who takes part in 100km bike rides at weekends. Overall, that individual still won’t burn more calories on average than a sedentary person, but their average energy expenditure will be skewed towards providing fuel for the muscles. The sedentary person will burn a similar number of calories, but on background bodily functions which we do not notice, including less healthy outlets such as producing inflammation and stress.

“I think there is a deep evolutionary reason to this,” says Pontzer. “In the industrialised world, burning more energy than you eat would be great, but in the wild, that’s a bad strategy. The reason we’re gaining weight is not only because there’s more food available than we have evolved to expect, but because they’re modern, industrialised foods, designed to be overeaten. So you’ve got this perfect storm for making people obese.”

But these new findings on metabolism are not only changing our understanding of how to tackle obesity: they have ramifications across the world of medicine. Given that metabolism slows markedly beyond the age of 60, doctors now need to know whether older adults should receive slightly different medicinal doses, while the research will prompt questions about the connection between a slower metabolism and the onset of chronic disease in older adults.

Individual differences

While the Science paper illustrated general population trends for metabolism across the age spectrum, we still know relatively little about individual differences, and what they might represent. Do babies with a particularly rapid metabolism develop quicker and in a better way? And do variations in the environment in which they grow up, such as social deprivation, mean that they have a slightly slower metabolism than their peers?

This is all speculation for now, but scientists know that metabolism can still vary significantly from one person to another, even after you account for factors such as size and body composition. We still don’t know exactly why this variation occurs, but there are thought to be a whole range of factors, from genetics to organ sizes, the immune system, and even the species of bacteria in their gut microbiome.

Even with the latest digital technologies, it is very difficult for people to track their own metabolic rate. Pontzer says this is because none of the current apps on the market can account for individual differences in resting metabolic rate.

However, one of the key questions is whether these variations can confer susceptibility to disease, especially illnesses linked to metabolic dysfunction such as cancer and type 2 diabetes. “There are so many metabolic health conditions,” says Eric Ravussin, director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “These are influenced by your diet and your weight. As you gain weight, you’re more likely to have hypertension, you’re more likely to have inflammation.”

A whole variety of startups around the world are now investigating ways of using our knowledge of metabolism to assist with developing personalised treatment programmes. Because our gut microbes play such a crucial role in energy metabolism, by breaking down the food we eat, dysfunctional imbalances in the gut microbiome have been linked to the development of a number of metabolic illnesses.

Oslo-based Bio-Me is profiling the gut microbiomes of patients with type 2 diabetes, coeliac disease, inflammatory bowel disease and certain types of cancer, using DNA sequencing of faecal samples to identify the exact species of bacteria present in their intestines. It can then compare that information with existing microbiome data on that group of patients, available in population biobanks, and use this to predict dietary regimes or treatment interventions that could be particularly beneficial for those individuals.

Bio-Me CEO Morten Isaksen says that this can be used to predict whether common medications, such as the diabetes drug metformin, will work well for that particular patient. “It was discovered that metformin only works because the gut bacteria change the medicine into its active form,” says Isaksen. “So if you don’t have the right bacteria in the gut, the medicine won’t work. So knowing which bacteria are present is really important for identifying the right treatments.”

Because dysfunctional cell metabolism is central to cancer, determining how tumours form, as well as how fast they grow and spread, indications of metabolic dysfunction could be used for early diagnosis of certain cancers. The Stockholm-based biotech firm Elypta is trialling a system that detects small molecules, known as metabolites, which are produced by kidney cancer cells. In future, this could be used as part of a liquid biopsy for the disease.

“Once cancer cells begin to proliferate, what really changes is the metabolic requirements, compared with healthy cells,” says Francesco Gatto, co-founder of Elypta. “So we think we can use this layer of information from metabolism, to help identify multiple types of cancer early in a non-invasive manner.”

Pontzer is now planning to follow up the Science study by delving further into the extremes of metabolism, both in the young and the old. “We’re going to try to look at that variability both in very young children and the over-60s,” he says. “We want to try to understand whether in people whose metabolism is changing more or less, or faster or slower, does that predict anything about their health or how their bodies develop? Or maybe it’s not related at all. So we’re going to try to find out these things.”

 

 

Original story here

 

 

09 Jul 2022
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How Stress Hits Women’s Brains Harder—and Why Men Don’t Always Get It

If you’ve been stressed out and ignoring it—isn’t everyone stressed right now?— it could be time to do something about it. That’s because even though you may be basically healthy, tension is doing its stealthy damage. The latest evidence? Researchers have linked high levels of the stress hormone cortisol to brain shrinkage and impaired memory in healthy middle-aged adults. And get this: The effect was more pronounced in women than in men.

This research underscores an important point. Though stress affects your whole body, ground zero is your brain. It’s not just the effects of cortisol—it’s that teeth-grinders like traffic jams, personal snubs, and financial worries are perceived and interpreted by your gray matter. Fortunately, research focused on the brain is pointing to new, more effective ways to reduce your tension.

But first, let’s drill down and see how and why your brain’s natural reactions make you more vulnerable to the zings and arrows of tension.

How Stress Affects Your Brain

Aspects of the brain’s design that served us well thousands of years ago now make us susceptible to negative emotions and mental fatigue, both of which ratchet up our stress, says Amit Sood, M.D., professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and founder of the Mayo Clinic Resilience Program. Although our brains have evolved over time, “the speed of life today is the main stressor—it’s much faster than our brain’s ability to adapt,” he says. And that means we often end up with too little time and too few resources to address what life throws at us each day, which adds to a diminishing sense of control over our lives. Perceived lack of control has been shown to be a huge source of stress.

In his book Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century, Dr. Sood describes a number of traps that frequently ensnare our brains. Three of the most challenging:

Focus Problems

When giant predators roamed Earth, a scanning, outward-directed focus served us well—but today that focus is directed inward. Now, 80 percent of the time, our minds are wandering, stuck in an unfocused state even if we’re not aware of it.

Studies have found that this state makes us less happy, and the unhappier we are, the more our attention wanders and our thoughts pile up. It’s like having a huge set of open files on your computer, Dr. Sood says, only they’re in your brain, distracting you and demanding attention. Our tech dependence, a source of constant distraction, adds to our inability to focus.

Fear

Our survival depends on the ability of the brain (mostly the amygdala) to detect physical and emotional threats. Moments or events that elicit fear raise our heart rate, which the brain stores as information that might protect us from future danger. This so-called negativity bias makes us prone to paying more attention to bad news than to good. We readily remember bad things that happen to us because our brains also release hormones that strengthen those specific memories, and this further embeds them in our minds. The result? More stress.

Fatigue

While a number of body organs (e.g., the heart and the kidneys) can keep going like the Energizer bunny, the brain is not one of them. After working hard, it needs rest. The more boring and intense an activity is, the faster your brain will grow tired—and that can happen in as little as four minutes or as much as an hour or two. You can tell when your brain is fatigued (it has to signal this indirectly, since it has no pain receptors) because your eyes feel tired and stuff happens—you start making errors, become inefficient, lose your willpower, or see a dip in your mood. Brain fatigue leads to stress, and stress leads to fatigue, in a continuous closed loop.

Why Stress Hits Women Harder Than Men

Stress almost seems to have it out for women. In an annual survey by the American Psychological Association, women have repeatedly reported higher levels of tension than men and sometimes even more stress-related physical and emotional symptoms, including headache, upset stomach, fatigue, irritability, and sadness.

What’s more, midlife women have been found to experience more stressful events than both men and women of any other age, reports an ongoing study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute on Aging. Stress overload may even lead to chronic disease: Long-term pressures at home and work plus stress from traumatic events almost doubles the risk of type 2 diabetes in older women, according to a recent study at the University of California, San Francisco. Women are also more prone to stress-induced mental health problems such as depression and anxiety disorders.

Here’s the why of it: A triple whammy makes women uniquely vulnerable to strain and pressure, says Dr. Sood. First, women’s brains make them more sensitive than men to stressors and a perceived lack of control. The limbic areas of women’s brains, which help control emotions and memories, are highly active, making them remember hurts and slights more readily. Stewing over these and having difficulty letting them go strengthens the brain circuits of those negative emotions—another example of the negativity bias at work—which also increases women’s stress.

In addition, the multiple demands of parenting and being in charge of the well-being of the household mean that women’s focus tends to be more diffuse. And an unfocused brain, as noted earlier, is another source of stress. A mom’s protective radar is always up for her kids too, which makes her sense a threat more quickly, and she’s more likely than her husband to get stuck and dwell on it, says Dr. Sood.

What Men Don’t Always Get

The differences in how men and women experience tension don’t play out in isolation, of course. They affect how husbands and wives, friends, and work colleagues experience and interpret the world—and yes, often the result is conflict. If you’re a woman, think of a time you had an upsetting disagreement with your boss. When you vented to your husband about it—how your boss looked at you, what she said, how you responded, how you felt, what she said next—maybe you saw his eyes glaze over, and maybe he said, “It’s over now; why don’t you just let it go and talk to her tomorrow?” Which made you feel hurt, angry, and dismissed—and depending on which feeling was uppermost, you either escalated the conversation into an argument or retreated to mull it over.

New studies are looking at how the genders process stress in the moment and coming up with reasons for the disconnect. Recently, using fMRI to measure brain activity, researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine found that while imagining a personalized, highly stressful event, the action- and planning-oriented parts of men’s brains were actively engaged, while women’s brains were busy visualizing and also cognitively and emotionally processing the experience.

In the second part of the study, when men and women were experiencing intense anxiety, brain regions that were active in women were inactive in men. This suggests that women tend to get caught up in processing their stress, turning it over and over in their minds and reimagining it, says Rajita Sinha, Ph.D., director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Stress Center.

“Women cope by talking about being anxious and describing their emotions and stressors,” she says. This could put them at risk for ruminating about the issues. Men seem not to access that cognitive-processing part of their brains and “are more likely to quickly think about doing something, taking an action, as opposed to expressing their distress verbally. It’s just the difference in the way we’re wired.”

That might explain why women tend to provide emotional support to someone who is stressed, whereas men might offer advice or something tangible like money or physical help. Ironically, what both genders want is emotional support when they’re tense, says Jennifer Priem, Ph.D., associate professor of communication at Wake Forest University. So men and women who are stressed out prefer to get support from women.

Bridging the Gender Stress Gap

Priem has found that problems arise between couples when each person has a different perception of what’s stressful. The result: When people are really tense, their partners aren’t necessarily motivated to offer support if they think, If I were in this situation, I wouldn’t consider it that big a deal. So how do you get the response you want when you need it?

Ask your partner to just listen

“That’s number one—listening to and validating the other person’s feelings,” says Sinha. “So even just saying ‘You’re really frustrated by this’ in a nonjudgmental way is validating and will ease someone’s anxiety.”

Explain that you feel defensive when he dismisses your experience

“When a partner downplays the significance of something, the person who’s stressed may hold on to it more or feel they have to convince the other person it’s true and that they have a right to feel that way,” says Priem. “You might say, ‘I’m really upset right now, and I feel frustrated when it seems you’re making light of my feelings. It would make me feel better if you’d be more responsive to the fact that I’m upset, even if you don’t understand it.’”

Treat yourself with compassion

“Women tend to be more self-critical about not being able to control their emotions,” says Sinha. So they may see a partner’s comment as judgmental even when he didn’t mean it that way. If that’s the case, forgive yourself and let it go—and hug it out, which can reduce tension and boost positive feelings.

Learning to negotiate conflicts is a big step in easing pressures. Also important: figuring out strategies to deal with the distractions, fears, and fatigue your brain naturally accumulates (see below for four smart ones). These can help you take stress in stride, with a terrific payoff: better health and greater happiness, plus a more resilient brain.

How to Control Stress and Calm Your Brain

To keep stress in check, you should of course be eating healthfully, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep to improve your mood, emotions, and cognition. But those are just the basics—and they’re not always easy to accomplish, especially when life is throwing lots of tension your way. Dr. Sood has advice that can up your stress-reducing game, based on the successful resilience program he runs at the Mayo Clinic. Here, four of his brain-focused, research-based strategies that work in just minutes a day.

Give your brain some RUM

That stands for Rest, Uplifting emotions, and Motivation. You need all three to help energize your brain and head off fatigue. So when you’re engaged in a task, take three to five minutes every couple of hours (or sooner, if you start getting fidgety) and pause for RUM.

How-to: Get up from your computer, or stop what you’re doing, and look at photos of your kids or of your favorite vacation spot, read inspiring quotes, text or call a friend, or watch a happy short video. Choose an activity that makes you feel good and is motivating.

Begin a morning gratitude practice

Take control of your brain before it gets hijacked by the day’s concerns and greet the morning in a happier, more connected frame of mind.

How-to: When you first wake up, before you get out of bed, spend a few minutes thinking of some people who care about you and silently send them your gratitude. Another reason it’s a good idea: A recent study found that anticipating a stressful day when you first wake up affects your working memory later that day—even if nothing stressful actually happens. (Working memory is what helps you learn things and retain them even when you’re distracted.)

Be mindfully present

Meditation is a great stress reliever, but not everyone can sit still, looking inward, for 20-plus minutes. Good news for the fidgety: Research has shown that focusing your attention outward engages the same brain network, so you can get similar stress-easing benefits by consciously giving the world your attention.

How-to: Challenge yourself to be curious and notice details—the color of the barista’s eyes at the coffee shop, the pattern of your boss’s necktie, which flowers are blooming in your neighborhood. Curiosity feeds the brain’s reward network, which makes you feel good; it also augments memory and learning.

Focus on kindness

Even the nicest among us are quick to judge others, especially if they’re different from us (thank the amygdala, a region of the brain that interprets difference as a threat).

How-to: To calm the amygdala, focus on two things when you’re feeling judgy about someone: that every person is special, and that everyone has struggles. Start a practice of sending silent good wishes to people you pass on the street or in the halls at work. The benefits for you: Your oxy­tocin, the hormone of connectedness, rises; your heart rate slows; and you feel more benevolent. All of which makes you healthier and happier.

 

Original article here

01 Jul 2022
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Sleep: The Best and Worst Foods to Eat Before Bed

There are a number of different factors in your day-to-day life that can make it difficult to get to sleep, from stress to our central heating. People are reporting sleep disturbances more than ever: the average person is losing two hours of sleep a night and 37% of people in Britain are sleep deprived, according to 2021 research from fitness tech brand Zepp.

But what if we told you that the answer could lie in something much more simple than lavender sprays and supplements? When it comes to getting a good night’s sleep, your diet can play a huge role. Studies, including a 2016 paper from Columbia University, have found that our dietary patterns and consumption of specific foods can have a significant impact on our sleep quality, with some foods having the potential to really disrupt our time snoozing.

Certified Health Education Specialist Brielle Merchant and Dr Aishah Iqbal both know just how important sleep is, and how much our eating habits can affect it. So we asked them for their expert insights into the link between diet and sleep, what you can eat to ensure you sleep well – and what foods are most likely to disrupt your rest.

How Important Is Diet to Good Sleeping Habits?

As Brielle explains, “eating well balanced meals supports your body’s pathways when regulating your hormones”, some of which “impact how much sleep you get and how well you sleep”. This means that eating foods containing nutrients that support sleep – and in the right amounts – is crucial to ensuring you are able to drift off when your head hits the pillow.

It works the other way too, with your sleep impacting your food choices. Both of these factors can influence your energy levels throughout the day. So, Brielle recommends “trying to keep a consistent sleeping and eating pattern, so that they are able to work together to supply your body with energy”.

When and How Much Should You Eat in the Evening?

Dr Iqbal explains that “there is growing evidence to suggest that the time you eat can impact your circadian rhythm”, also known as your sleep-wake cycle. As a result, eating too close to when you go to bed can potentially impact your sleep routine, and so “it’s best to eat earlier in the evening, allowing yourself a couple of hours to digest your meal before going to sleep”.

However, there is no hard and fast rule for when you should be eating. As Brielle explains, “it’s important to listen to your body and how you feel, so aim to feel satisfied when you eat in the evening, but not stuffed or hungry. It all depends on what works well for you”.

What Are Some of the Worst Foods to Eat Before You Sleep?

Some ingredients may not always be a good idea to eat close to bedtime due to their energising nature. Both Brielle and Dr Iqbal particularly warn against the consumption of caffeine too late in the day, “because it stimulates the brain and gives you energy, thus keeping you awake”, says Brielle.

Foods high in sugar can also be stimulating for the body and mind. As Dr Iqbal explains, they “heighten arousal and give you a dopamine hit, which keeps you feeling alert”.

According to Brielle, some foods cause disrupted sleep simply because they take longer for the body to digest. If you’re struggling with your sleep, try to stay away from heavy proteins in your evening meals, and minimise the high-fat foods which require longer to be broken down.

Foods to avoid

  • Coffee
  • Tea (especially those high in caffeine)
  • High protein foods (red meats, whey shakes)
  • High sugar snacks (sweets, fizzy drinks)

What Foods Will Help You Get a Good Night’s Sleep? 

Brielle explains that kiwis are excellent sleep aids. In fact, “in a study, participants who started consuming kiwis regularly before bed were able to fall asleep 42% faster” than they did before. Foods high in melatonin are great as well, because melatonin is the hormone that helps to regulate your circadian rhythm. Dr Iqbal recommends cherries and nuts such as walnuts and almonds as good sources of this crucial hormone.

Fatty fish such as salmon and tuna are a good option for your evening meal. They are a great source of vitamin D and omega 3 fatty acids, “which help to regulate serotonin, the hormone that is responsible for maintaining sleep”, explains Brielle. Milk contains vitamin D, too, as well as tryptophan, “both of which have been linked to supporting sleep”.

Other minerals, such as magnesium, have also been shown to support your sleep cycle and send you into a deep sleep. Foods such as spinach, nuts, salmon and banana are high in the mineral and great to be included throughout your day to maintain levels.

Foods to eat

  • Kiwi fruit
  • Cherries and tart cherry juice
  • Nuts (try to go for unsalted varieties)
  • Salmon, tuna and other oily fish
  • Milk
  • Spinach
  • Bananas

 

 

Original article here

18 Jun 2022
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10 Surprising, No-Waste Uses For Strawberry Tops

Believe it or not, strawberry tops—the part you cut off and toss into the garbage or compost—can be repurposed in a variety of creative ways. While munching on the green tops itself doesn’t sound all that appetizing, you’ll be surprised at how they can be used.

Strawberry Tops Have Health Benefits

Strawberries as a berry are a nutritious, healthy snack, and it turns out, even their leaves and stems pack a powerful nutritional punch, carrying many health benefits. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, strawberry leaves are high in vitamin C, iron, and calcium, as well as contain tannins, which helps with digestion, nausea, and stomach cramps.

Strawberry tops are loaded with caffeic acid, a compound that alleviates inflammation, which is good news for arthritis sufferers.

10 Things You Can Do With Strawberry Tops

1.   Make A Refreshing Water Infusion

Infusing your water with the leafy tops of strawberries adds flavor, and helps to use up those excess pieces that are headed to the compost bin. This works especially well if you’ve cut off too much of that precious strawberry meat. To make, place your cleaned strawberry tops into a lidded container and top with water. Let sit in the refrigerator for a few hours, and sip (you can strain if you prefer). Ten to twenty tops should do the trick, but you can play around with the amount depending on how strong you want the taste. Strawberry infused water also pairs nicely with some cucumber peels or fresh mint.

2.   Make Strawberry Vinegar

Fruit-scrap infused vinegar recipes are popping up everywhere. Strawberry vinegar made from your strawberry tops is delicious drizzled on a salad, mixed into a BBQ sauce (or any vinegar-based sauce), or added to a cocktail. To make, cover your strawberry tops with a vinegar of your choice (white, apple cider, red wine, or balsamic). Cover, and allow it to steep for about a week in the cupboard. Strain the mixture and use your strawberry infused vinegar however you would normally use vinegar. Delicious!

3.   Go Sweet With Strawberry Syrup

Turn your discarded strawberry tops into treasure by making scrumptious strawberry syrup. Perfect for pouring over ice cream, pancakes, waffles—the sky’s the limit. You can also add this syrup to flavor lemonade, home-brewed kombucha, iced tea, or smoothies.

To make: In a bowl, combine the tops from two quarts of strawberries, 1 cup granulated sugar, and one tablespoon of lemon juice. Stir, cover, and place in refrigerator overnight to allow the contents to soften. Blend until smooth, and then strain through a metal sieve, scraping the sides of the strainer with a rubber spatula making sure to get all the delicious strawberries. This makes about 2-3 cups of syrup and can be stored in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, or longer in the freezer.

4.   Blend Them Into A Nutritious Smoothie

Leafy greens are often tossed into smoothies for an additional nutritional boost, but don’t stop at spinach or kale—toss in your leftover strawberry tops in as well. They’ll give your smoothie an extra boost of nutrients. Simply drop the whole berry, top and all (or saved tops) right into your blender. You can also freeze the tops after they have been hulled, saving them for smoothies down the road—making it easy to grab a handful when needed.

5.   “Lift” Your Spirits

Kick your favorite cocktails up a notch! Just like water, you can also infuse your favorite alcohol with strawberry tops to make your own custom flavored rum, vodka, or gin. Toss tops into a lidded bowl or mason jar, fill with your choice of liquor, and let the boozy concentration sit for about two days. Strain, and use to shake up a new summer cocktail.

6.   Make A Healing Tea

Strawberry leaves have a long history of being used as an herbal remedy. Wild strawberries have more condensed healing properties, but conventional ones will get the job done. Strawberry leaves, like other leaves and herbs, can be used to make a healing tea to treat diarrhea, aid in digestion, combat nausea, and settle an upset stomach. One cup of strawberry leaf tea contains enough tannins to ease symptoms.

Drying the strawberry tops in an oven or food dehydrator will allow you to preserve them for later use when needed. Add three to five fresh or dried strawberry tops to your teacup. Optionally, you can add a teaspoon of other fresh or dried herbs of your choice (mint, verbena, rosemary, lavender, basil). Pour boiling water over the tops and let steep for five to ten minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon or sweetener of your choice. The cooled tea can also be used to soothe sunburned or inflamed skin.

7.   Clean And Whiten Teeth

Your dentist will probably never tell you this secret, but strawberry leaves are an effective tooth and gum cleaner. Those tannins act as a powerful astringent, helping to fight plaque and keep gums healthy. Or for a whiter smile, dip your strawberry top into baking soda and rub it onto your teeth. Leave the mixture on your teeth for a few minutes before brushing as usual.

8.   Add Them To These Yummy Recipes

Pesto doesn’t have to be all about basil. You can make pesto out of almost anything including strawberry tops. Use them alone or add them to other pesto greens in this no-cook sauce. Strawberry tops combined with parsley, with a touch of garlic or ramps is a delicious and healthy way to use them up. You can also thin out your strawberry top pesto with more oil and lemon juice and turn it into a tasty salad dressing. Or try adding some fresh strawberry leaves to your salad greens–the small leaves add a nice contrast to bigger leafy salad greens.

9.   Make An Itch-Relieving Bath

Not only are strawberry leaves nourishing for the inside of your body, but they are also beneficial for the outside. That inflammation-reducing property helps with skin inflammation, too, helping to alleviate rashes, eczema, and even acne. The vitamin C and antioxidants found in the tops are also beneficial for aging skin. Simply fill a tea bag or tea ball with some strawberry tops and toss into the bath with you. Your four-legged furry friends will also love a strawberry top bath, which is especially helpful for pets with dry, itchy skin.

10.  Livestock Treats

Share these tasty scraps with your farm animals! Strawberry tops make a great snack for chickens, goats, ducks, rabbits, pigs, horses, and more. It helps recycle your scraps, while also gaining your flock’s love and trust.

 

Original article here

23 May 2022
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3 Simple Habits That Can Protect Your Brain From Cognitive Decline

You might think that the impact of aging on the brain is something you can’t do much about. After all, isn’t it an inevitability?

To an extent, as we may not be able to rewind the clock and change our levels of higher education or intelligence (both factors that delay the onset of symptoms of aging). But adopting specific lifestyle behaviors – whether you’re in your thirties or late forties – can have a tangible effect on how well you age. Even in your fifties and beyond, activities like learning a new language or musical instrument, taking part in aerobic exercise, and developing meaningful social relationships can do wonders for your brain. There’s no question that when we compromise on looking after ourselves, our aging minds pick up the tab.

The Aging Process and Cognitive Decline

Over time, there is a build-up of toxins such as tau proteins and beta-amyloid plaques in the brain that correlate to the aging process and associated cognitive decline. Although this is a natural part of growing older, many factors can exacerbate it. Stress, neurotoxins such as alcohol and lack of (quality and quantity) sleep can speed up the process.

Neuroplasticity – the function that allows the brain to change and develop in our lifetime – has three mechanisms: synaptic connection, myelination, and neurogenesis. The key to resilient aging is improving neurogenesis, the birth of new neurons. Neurogenesis happens far more in babies and children than adults. A 2018 study by researchers at Columbia University shows that in adults, this type of neuroplastic activity occurs in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that lays down memories. This makes sense as we respond to and store new experiences every day, and cement them during sleep. The more we can experience new things, activities, people, places, and emotions, the more likely we are to encourage neurogenesis.

With all this in mind, we can come up with a three-point plan to encourage “resilient aging” by activating neurogenesis in the brain:

  • Get your heart rate up

Aerobic exercise such as running or brisk walking has a potentially massive impact on neurogenesis. A 2016 rat study found that endurance exercise was most effective in increasing neurogenesis. It wins out over HIIT sessions and resistance training, although doing a variety of exercise also has its benefits.

Aim to do aerobic exercise for 150 minutes per week, and choose the gym, the park, or natural landscape over busy roads to avoid compromising brain-derived neurotrophic factor production (BDNF), a growth factor that encourages neurogenesis that aerobic exercise can boost. However, exercising in polluted areas decreases production.

If exercising alone isn’t your thing, consider taking up a team sport or one with a social element like table tennis. Exposure to social interaction can also increase the neurogenesis, and in many instances, doing so lets you practice your hand-eye coordination, which research has suggested leads to structural changes in the brain that may relate to a range of cognitive benefit. This combination of coordination and socializing has been shown to increase brain thickness in the parts of the cortex related to social/emotional welfare, which is crucial as we age.

  • Change your eating patterns

Evidence shows that calorie restriction, intermittent fasting, and time-restricted eating encourage neurogenesis in humans. In rodent studies, intermittent fasting has been found to improve cognitive function and brain structure, and reduce symptoms of metabolic disorders such as diabetes. Reducing refined sugar will help reduce oxidative damage to brain cells, too, and we know that increased oxidative damage has been linked with a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Twenty-four hour water-only fasts have also been proven to increase longevity and encourage neurogenesis.

Try any of the following, after checking with your doctor:

  • 24-hour water-only fast once a month
  •  Reducing your calorie intake by 50%-60% on two non-consecutive days of the week for two to three months or on an ongoing basis
  • Reducing calories by 20% every day for two weeks. You can do this three to four times a year
  • Eating only between 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., or 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. as a general rule

  • Prioritize sleep

Sleep helps promote the brain’s neural “cleaning” glymphatic system, which flushes out the build-up of age-related toxins in the brain (the tau proteins and beta amyloid plaques mentioned above). When people are sleep-deprived, we see evidence of memory deficits, and if you miss a whole night of sleep, research proves that it impacts IQ. Aim for seven to nine hours, and nap if it suits you. Our need to sleep decreases as we age.

Of course, there are individual exceptions, but having consistent sleep times and making sure you’re getting sufficient quality and length of sleep supports brain resilience over time. So how do you know if you’re getting enough? If you naturally wake up at the same time on weekends that you have to during the week, you probably are. If you need to lie-in or take long naps, you’re probably not. Try practicing mindfulness or yoga nidra before bed at night, a guided breath-based meditation that has been shown in studies to improve sleep quality. There are plenty of recordings online if you want to experience it.

Pick any of the above that work for you and build it up until it becomes a habit, then move onto the next one and so on. You might find that by the end of the year, you’ll feel even healthier, more energized, and motivated than you do now, even as you turn another year older.

 

 

Original article here

01 Apr 2022
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Stop Thinking Like A Machine

 

April Fool’s Day, and a New Moon in Aries. This lunation is joined by Mercury and Chiron.Time to get real…on a lot of levels! Real with ourselves, our previous sacrosanct beliefs, our self-invented or culture-created identities, all that covers over or covers up the real you. Chiron in Aries is FOR the individuation of Spirit into Matter and advocates and supports how the divine is expressed and actuated in every precious one of us. In other words, our self-talk (Mercury) will need to constellate around Chiron (healing the wound) and any feelings we have about being not enough, not good enough, or any perception we still may hold that our very being isn’t okay, just at it is in its most divine natural state. However, the warrior aspect of Aries is in the grip of the Sun and the Moon, which are both luminaries.

The Sun represents the Core Identity beyond ego and the Moon primordial emotions and intuition. The energy of this about not acquiescing to any attempt to diminish your spiritual and human Self, to guard against absorption into some binary-oriented digitally defined hive mentality. A New Moon in Aries conjunct Mercury (let’s talk about it…a lot!) and Chiron (time to heal and re-integrate) is the perfect metaphor for this essay. Hang in there, this will take some time.

Everything is frequency and frequency is everything. That is not only a spiritual truth, it is echoed by quantum physics and bioenergetics investigators. The electromagnetic spectrum is a way we have devised to measure certain invisible and visible scales of frequency. The visible spectrum, where our five senses operate and what our conscious minds and bodies are accustomed to, is a miniscule fraction of the overall electromagnetic spectrum. The spectrum is graduated based on shortest to longest wavelength, and highest to lowest frequency.

Artificially generated electrical technologies operate within our environment on varying wavelengths and varying cyclic frequencies. One example is A.C. or alternating current. It pulses up and down through wiring, changing polarity 60 cycles per second, using a carrier of 110 to 115 Volts AC. That is the standard in most countries around the planet, but all of Europe and certain other parts of the world use a 50hz cycle at 220-240 Volts AC. Electrical induction motors convert A.C. to D.C. or direct current by using a field effect created with polarized magnets in a coil. All standard electrical wiring and electrical appliances generate a field effect, residual electrical energy that surrounds and interpenetrates the atmosphere around it. For house electrical wiring running on a 60hz, 110VAC circuit, that creates a typical around field around 12 inches in diameter. It extends beyond the insulation around the wire into free space…and goes through gypsum board (drywall) like a hot knife through butter.

Around 1840 the first wired telegraph technologies were introduced. This was a quantum development in our experience and that of the Planet. Up until then, all life on Earth lived in a natural bath of low-level electromagnetic fields that the planet’s core generates, and which extends out to the ionosphere. Lightning discharges aren’t just a by-product of meteorological conditions in the atmosphere. They are an integral part of the natural bio-EMF that Mother Earth uses to nurture and sustain itself and all life forms on the planet.

The advent of electricity introduced in the form of a communications network was not just novel, it would revolutionize our planetary civilization. Little did we realize at the time how it would impact human consciousness or human health. The Christian mystic and founder of the Waldorf Schools, Rudolf Steiner, had many things to say about artificial electricity and the human soul and spiritual life.

However, in the late 18th century some intrepid doctors did experiment with using electrical charges on patients to see if it would improve or worsen certain health conditions. The bulk of the history about those experiments can be found in the groundbreaking research book, “The Invisible Rainbow,” by Arthur Firstenberg. I leave it to you to do your own research into the early experiments with electrical fields and human biology.

One noteworthy experiment in the middle of the 19th century bears repeating here and is oddly synchronistic with the rollout of the telegraph systems in the United States and Europe. In 1839 a fellow named Andrew Crosse accidentally stumbled onto a surprising discovery with electricity and crystalline structures. What he did was to create a new life form, which he dubbed the Acari Insects. An electrical voltage applied for an extended period to certain solutions containing crystals. The result was shocking…he created tiny little animated insect-like forms that seemed somewhat sentient.

To create life out of nothing but some silicon-based elements and electricity has long been forgotten, but as you will see in the blogs that I will write following this one, Mr. Crosse’s discovery is pivotal to understanding a great many of the predicaments facing humanity right now. I am referring here to the Archons, as revealed in the book “Not In His Image” by John Lamb Lash.

Following the proliferation of wired telegraph and phone systems, another trend began to develop. Illnesses once thought to be rare became more commonplace. Odd epidemics came and went. One stated statistic from the 1870’s is that heart ailments became more widespread. Before 1840 heart failure or heart disease was the 26th leading cause of death, right behind accidental drowning. By the end of the 19th century, a rash of chronic illnesses cropped up. Some of these smaller epidemics and illnesses were attributable to the movement of larger parts of the populations of Europe and the Americas into crowded cities and into factory work. Conditions became dire, and most of the common ailments were due to poor sanitation (bacteriological), poor diet, heavy drinking and smoking, and a lack of ventilation in the crowded tenements and factory floors. At least that is what most doctors believed, and some of the problems were caused by these factors. However, everything is connected, as we now know, and more than one cause can contribute to ill health.

During these times the views of Louis Pasteur and Dr. Antoine Bechamp came into heated confrontation with one other. Pasteur maintained the new epidemics were caused by microorganisms, or viruses (literal translation — poisons). Bechamp claimed that they were the result of unsanitary living conditions of the times — contaminated water supplies, bad waste management, poor diet, etc. The debate went quiet after Pasteur’s death, with most western medical authorities aligning with his theories. The French medical authorities probed Pasteur’s legacy and found most of his findings were based on prejudicial opinions and thin on facts and proof. Many of his experiment’s results were found to be fraudulent. On Pasteur’s deathbed he declared Bechamp’s Terrain theory as everything and his own theory “as nothing.”

Things started to get very interesting around the time of the sinking of the Titanic, and the drumbeat of the coming war in Europe. The advent of the first wireless version of the telegraph and rudimentary radar units for the war effort in Europe came into being between 1916 and 1917.  U.S. Army bases in Kansas and Massachusetts started to train recruits in these new technologies. Barely 7 months later, the 20th Century’s first major pandemic erupted in Camp Funston in Kansas. The misnamed “Spanish Flu” pandemic started March 4th, 1918 and lasted until April of 1920. During that time an estimated 30-50 million people perished. Some estimates went as high as 100 million, but that figure was never verifiable. The planet’s population was estimated at 1.7 billion at the time it broke out. Towards the end of the pandemic, U.S. Army and Navy doctors carried out experiments to determine how the “flu” was transmitted from one human to another, and they simply couldn’t do it!

Again, I recommend obtaining and reading “The Invisible Rainbow” to understand the correlation and chronologies between the rollout of various electronic technologies, acute and chronic illnesses, and epidemics. Another very important piece of the puzzle is this post on the HHS (Health and Human Services) website in the USA. One of the authors is Dr. Anthony Fauci. You remember him, the one advocating wearing two masks and everyone must get 4 jabs? Right.

We are a long way from proving any of these correlations between electricity and illness, at least from the governmental side or the scientific side of things anyway. To date the telecoms industry and the Federal Communications Commission have done everything in their power to actively ignore or thwart any attempts to initiate serious scientific inquiry into the matter of how perhaps our digital environment is impacting our health, and in turn our livelihoods, the planetary ecosystem, and our sanity.

The philosopher Erich Fromm pondered the question about why humans are so easily hypnotized by technology and want to emulate the qualities of synthetic intelligence and logic. In one of his observations about modern societies he mentions a form of “low-grade chronic schizophrenia” that can be a pathological, though difficult to detect, characteristic of a large group of people. If millions of people share the same sickness, according to Fromm, they feel a certain strength in numbers which reassures them of being perfectly healthy. Group narcissism, therefore, is a pathology that is not only difficult for the afflicted multitude to detect, but as it progresses, its detection becomes increasingly unlikely. Does any of that sound familiar? It should, as we’ve been living in such a state for quite a long period of time, especially so since the spring of 2020.

The following quote is from an essay from a fellow by the name of De Marco:

“The dream of the individual that his life could run automatically like an efficient machine, has begun to assume the proportions of a corporate nightmare in which automation unleashes its suffocating powers of standardization, over-regimentation, and depersonalization. Arthur Miller’s trenchant remark that we live in an “air-conditioned nightmare,” implies the unhappy co-existence of technological progress and spiritual regress. Like real nightmares, it takes place within a profound collective sleep therefore offering little chance of discovering either its cause or its cure. Technology can have an anaesthetic effect on man, dulling his moral consciousness and his capacity to enter fundamental, meditative thinking.”

The esteemed medical publication, The British Medicine Journal (BMJ, which has just published a critique of the entire basis for modern medical diagnosis and procedures. In their article “The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine”, they illustrate how dependent the medical establishment has become on Big Tech’s reworking of health via the pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma and Big Tech is their model, and if allowed to continue would only harden into concrete the idea of playing God with nature and genomics, and continue viewing the functioning human body as just another inferior technology, prone to malfunctioning and death. The body is too inefficient a vehicle for an age in which all is measured according to one’s value as a resource, or how productive or non-productive that resource is.

Whether we recognize it or not very few individuals (by percentage) on this world have resisted the temptation to be completely seduced by the spiritual canonizing of technology as the primarily solution to the human condition itself, as well as all we have miscreated during the past 500 years. Whether we realize it or not, many of us are parroting ideas and perspectives being populated across social media, the major media organizations or the culture-modifying engines of commerce and technology. We are being changed, altered, anesthetized, and atomized by an invisible onslaught that by the day is increasingly difficult to detect, escape, or live without. If we continue to give our consent to such a thing we risk losing that last inch or so of our divinely imagined humanity that we are systematically being separated from.

To not think like a machine, to reorient ourselves to the essence of who we are, will take effort and a few sacrifices along the way. It will require self-directed inquiry, research, decision-making and action. It won’t be easy, but when we create common ground through dialog and empathy and share resources and knowledge, there will be strong hope for creating a different vision to the one being offered.

What is on offer? To live in the “meta”? To achieve immortality through cybernetic means and to become dependent on a centralized vision of how the world should be ordered? So it would seem, but this is being promoted by those who have already acceded their humanity to the machine. That is the agenda of A.I., synthetic intelligence, to turn us into IT. This is exactly described by the Gnostic author John Lash as the agenda of the Archons (synthetic sentient hyper-dimensional entities), to morph humans into something akin to themselves. Perhaps the writers of Star Trek Next Generation were being given the script about the Borg Collective from some angelic source and shown how imperative it was to resist the forced assimilation of human consciousness by a soulless force.

Some of you use digital tech for your livelihood, or as an adjunct to your career. I rely on my laptop and a smart phone to arrange and conduct sessions for my clients, and I use a powerful desktop system for audio production. I take precautions though.  All my gear have disks of Shungite attached to them, the densest form of natural carbon on the planet. It shields away radiation from my body.  Because I have dry eye syndrome, I need to take frequent breaks from the computers/phone just to rest my eyes. I try not to scroll, and spend mere minutes on social media per day, and only on my desktop work PC. The artificial light from the screens on handheld and stationary devices hypnotizes our minds, suppressing left-brain critical faculties. We then absorb data without discretion.

Isn’t it ironic that in order for me to share with others about the hazards of digital life, I  must use this very medium to communicate about it? There must be a way to create a new type of communications network globally without the Internet. Telepathy, our natural intranet? Well, it is an idea.

If you wish to get to grips with your electronics in the home and on your person, then a strong will, clear awareness, and actively implementing safeguards to your health and your mind will be essential. Try to not be in front a screen for more than an hour continuously before taking a break. Change the positive ions you pick up from electronics, along with the brain fog, by walking in nature, or sitting with your back against a tree, or lying by a flowing stream. Get effective protection devices to minimize the radiation from all devices in your home. Reduce your T.V. viewing time or get rid of the box altogether. Turn off your routers at night, and your phones, and minimize using any Wi-Fi in the home. Instead, try to run Ethernet LAN cables from the back of the router to the device you want to hook up. They now have Ethernet adapters for smartphones as well.

Another clue of how A.I. is taking more and more of our attention and time is how many times a day we are asked to confirm our identity to some bot on a website, even after we have entered the correct password. Another clue I discovered is when the bank I deal with removed access to my online banking directly from a computer unless I had their app on my smartphone so they could send a 2Factor Authentication code…for every single visit. Everything is now dictated to us by a virtual boss in the meta.

If you’re getting tired of the drudge of it all, then there is only one option. Opting out and going off grid. That may become a necessity as the new digital currency systems are rolled out, making all transactions trackable and not as anonymous as we are told. Everything will be stored in your digital I.D., and I do mean everything. Social credit systems are coming to the West courtesy of China’s experiment with it, and that is the stated agenda in the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”. It is possible to create a parallel economy, and it’s been done before, back before the 20th Century. The nightmarish artwork to the right was created by an A.I. program. It exemplifies everything that John Lash ascribes to Archontic consciousness…chaos is the agenda (link below). Is this what we truly want our lives to be ensconced in?

The Internet was a much friendlier place to explore when it first appeared, but even now very few folks realize that it was created by a military think-tank known as DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the U.S. government. So was Google. This information is readily available online if you know where how to search for it. Patent filings is one way to do this.

If we could come together and offer a different vision and narrative of what would be the way to use electricity and digital technologies in a non-violent, non-invasive, health-neutral and human and Nature friendly way, then I would be all for it. However, that simply isn’t possible in the current climate, with so many billions and trillions of profits still to be made by its progenitors.

I do not by any means wish to eliminate or marginalize all forms of technology. That is impossible. The simple tools and implements for gardening are, for example, a type of technology.  Quite a bit of the amazing music and art we experience now is created using digital methods (I employ these tools in music production for example). Some medical procedures are greatly enhanced by the use of computers and micro-optics. I would certainly miss listening to my favorite music on a high fidelity sound system. However, to become overly reliant on these forms and elevate them over Nature is the danger here, and I haven’t yet even addressed the immense environmental damage our energy demands and footprint has had in order to just keep all the tech humming along.

A computer cannot replicate the experience of your beloved pet on your lap, or licking your face. It cannot replicate human touch or feeling. It cannot perform energy healing or give you a massage. And it sure cannot help you to become self-realized.  All forms of artificial intelligence can only mimic the analog world, but they cannot create anything new. Therein lies our challenge and a clue about our divine gifts and heritage – to be able to experience feelings, imagine things, and then to create them.

One current perception about the Covid-19 event is that it has split humanity into two camps or factions. There are many other factions or splintering that have been underway before 2020, but the events of the past two years has created deeper gaps than any political divide. However, this is nothing compared to the choice now before us.

Compliance with the inorganic, or non-compliance in favour of remaining organic? That is the next boundary point ahead. It is symbolized by the conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces on April 12th 2022. This meeting is only 11 days away, and it last occurred in 1856 and won’t occur again until 2188. This is an opportunity to initiate something new and oriented according to organic principles…that the superior living technology that All That Is emanates continuously throughout Nature and within all of us. Beware of imitations and counter-mimicry, and avoid thinking like a machine. Artificial anything is an evolutionary dead end.

Choose the real.

 

About the Author:

Isaac George is an internationally recognized intuitive mentor/coach, evolutionary astrologer, conscious channel, self-published author and musician. After a life-altering spontaneous kundalini awakening in 1994 he explored various healing modalities, including hypnotherapy and Reiki. In 1998 he began spontaneously channeling Archangel Ariel and other dimensional intelligences.

Originally from the United States, Isaac currently resides in the UK and offers Spiritual Mentoring sessions and programs and Evolutionary Astrology consultations.

 

 

23 Mar 2022
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How to Turn Off Harmful Stress Like a Switch

Let’s play a game of “would you rather.”

 

Would you rather speak in front of 500 people for an hour or be stuck in an elevator with your ex?

Would you rather get a cavity drilled or be forced to take a four-hour Zumba class?

Would you rather lose your car keys before work or lose your internet connection before an online meeting?

 

None of these options are good, but they all have something in common: they invoke stress.

What stresses you out? How do you deal with that dreaded feeling? And did you know there’s a bulletproof method for disarming stress?

Where Does Stress Come From?

Stress is defined as “mental or emotional strain resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances.” We’ve all felt it, but where does stress come from?

Stress comes from the future, but not in the Marty McFly way.

Humans are unique in our capacity to predict what might happen next. We rely on our amazing ability to anticipate the future better than any other animal, and this ability is a feature of our unusual intelligence.

Unlike other animals, which (as far as we know) react solely to what’s going on in their environment, humans can imagine entire realities in our heads. These alternate realities make us act in all sorts of strange ways. For instance, while zebras will run from the sound of a lion in the brush, humans will stampede at the start of a Black Friday sale, imagining the deals we’ll miss if we don’t elbow our way through.

While imagining the future motivates us to pursue what we want, it also comes with a cost. All that thinking about what might happen next is stressful.

Does that mean humans are doomed to lives of constant stress? Does our ability to imagine many futures mean we’re destined to feel constant emotional strain?

Not necessarily.

You’ve no doubt heard the story of Viktor Frankl, the inspiring psychiatrist who survived imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. He observed firsthand the profound difference between his fellow prisoners who lost hope—and soon died—compared with those who found a purpose. Focusing on that purpose allowed them to take back some measure of psychological control. The difference was literally life and death.

What if I told you that same powerful difference in focus and mindset is impacting you right now?

You’re about to learn how to create a real-life forcefield against the stress you face every day.

Viktor Frankl knew something science would later verify: perception can mediate the effects of stress. In other words, two people faced with exactly the same stressful situation can have very different physical and emotional reactions. How does that happen? To answer that question, let’s take a look at some fascinating research about the power of feeling in control.

The Power of Control 

A classic study of two rats reveals an important insight about the role control plays in the experience of stress. The two rats are in separate cages connected to the same electrical circuit. The circuit administers random shocks through the metal floor of their cage. One rat has a lever in its cage that enables it to turn off the shocks while the other rat does not.

The rat with the lever in its cage is called “the executive rat,” because it has control. It has the power to turn off the electric current flowing through the cage. The rat with no control is called the “subordinate rat.”

When the experiment begins, both the executive rat and the subordinate rat show signs of stress, indicated by a sudden surge of the stress hormone, cortisol. Then, something interesting happens. The executive rat’s stress levels drop back to normal, while the subordinate rat’s stress remains high. Why? In a word, control.

The executive rat has discovered that it can turn off the stressful stimulus (the random shocks) by pressing the lever in its cage. For the executive rat, it’s as if the physiological effects of its stressful situation have been turned off completely. In contrast, the subordinate rat’s health steadily declines due to the stress, leading to secondary effects including a suppressed immune system.

Here’s what’s happening. The electrical shock is the stressor, and both rats experience exactly the same amount of that stressful stimulus. Yet one rat feels in control of the stress. He can turn it off at will. On a psychological level, this makes all the difference. Let’s consider why that’s the case, and what it means for our ability to cope with the daily stress we all face in the human rat race.

Psychological Immunity to Stress 

The stress we experience is based on our perception of what’s going to happen next. If we anticipate a threatening situation, our body releases stress hormones to prepare us to face the threat.

But if we believe we have control over a threatening stimulus, then we don’t need to prepare for that threat in the same way. We don’t need to be on full alert with the fight-or-flight response gearing us up for survival. How can we regain a sense of control when faced with stress and uncertainty?

Let’s return to the story of Viktor Frankl. Faced with unimaginable hardship, he had no idea how long the torment would continue. There was no guarantee of rescue, and many of his companions died of starvation, illness, or worse. What did he do differently to cope with the stress?

He changed the focus of his attention. Frankl searched for meaning and purpose in the smallest daily actions, like caring for a friend or saving a scrap of string that might be useful later. He also found long-term meaning and purpose in the idea of survival itself. He reminded himself continuously that surviving this hardship would be meaningful to his family and friends. They needed him to come back to them alive.

This change in focus—from the many uncontrollable aspects of life to the few controllable ones—can have a profound effect. That’s because our perception of reality is, to a large extent, created by the focus of our attention.

Are you facing the stress of an uncertain future? If so, it helps to focus on what you can control. Sometimes that means bringing the finish line closer by setting goals for today or this week instead of trying to figure out what you’ll do if you lose your job three months from now. Sometimes, it means making a list of 10 ways you can stay connected with friends and choosing the best one to put into action.

Our human tendency is to focus on threats and problems. For the sake of our emotional wellness, it makes sense to modify that automatic tendency. You can’t control the stressors that come your way, but you can influence the focus of your own attention. That’s why we recommend you focus on the things that give you back a feeling of control.

Want another tool to combat stress? Counterintuitively, one of the best things we can add to your toolbelt is an entirely different belief about stress—one befriending it instead of battling against it.

The Power of Your Beliefs 

In her TED talk, psychologist Dr. Kelly McGonigal revealed an important insight that changed her own mind about stress. After decades educating people about the dangers of stress and imploring them to reduce stress for the sake of their health, Dr. McGonigal discovered an unexpected trend in the data.

When people believed stress was something bad that must be avoided, it had a far worse impact on their health. In contrast, among those who perceive stress as a normal part of pursuing goals, there was no correlation between higher stress and poor health outcomes.

Once again, how we perceive stress matters. If you believe stress itself is a threat, something you must reduce for the sake of your health, and yet can’t effectively reduce it, you feel trapped. You have no control, just like the rat getting shocked at random.

Feeling out of control makes us feel even more stress, perpetuating the harmful cycle. Perhaps it’s time to consider an alternative view of stress. What if we stopped seeing stress as something abnormal or threatening to your future health and instead thought of it as something that empowers us to be our best?

For instance, speaking in front of hundreds of people can be debilitatingly stressful. Many people try to fight stage fright, thinking the stress will make them more likely to stumble over their words and embarrass themselves. However, instead of thinking the stress is a bad thing that we must resist, we can think of it as an asset. A racing heartbeat for instance, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s a sign of the body sending more oxygen to the brain so you can do your best.

After we learn to see stress as something to harness rather than run from, we can take things one step further. Let’s see what happens when you pursue stress deliberately, on your own terms.

Stress for Success?

In his book, The Power of Full Engagement, peak performance coach Jim Loehr recommends oscillating back and forth between pushing hard and relaxing. Observing both athletes and executives, Loehr noticed that we engage more fully in our work if we push hard for periods of time and then pull back toward rest and recovery.

An athlete who knows there’s a short break around the corner is capable of pushing harder during periods of extreme exertion. And if you think about this in the context of your own life, it probably makes sense. It’s easy to push hard for the last two days of work before a vacation, or even the last hour of a typical workday. That’s because you know you’re about to get a break.

When you intentionally push yourself outside of your comfort zone and schedule periods of rest and recuperation, something interesting happens—your capacity to endure stress increases. It’s as if you’ve created a new set point for what feels normal.

For example, an entrepreneur who feels constantly pressed for time during her nine-hour workday might experiment with doing a 14-hour workday once per week for three weeks. Each of these long workdays is followed by a shortened workday of only six hours. In this case, she is stretching her sense of what’s possible by working longer than what feels comfortable. Then she recovers, taking it easy the next day.

The effect is less stress. Can you guess why? She has expanded her sense of what’s possible. She feels in control of the stressor (time pressure to get things done), because she knows that if the worst comes to worst, she can put in a few longer workdays to get caught up. Things no longer feel out of control.

Alternatively, she can practice timeboxing. This time management tool gives her better control over the focus of her attention when too many things are competing for her time. Timeboxing allows her to translate her highest priorities into blocks of time she’s reserved to get the most critical things done. Once again, the result is a feeling of control.

Since stress comes from feeling out of control, you can sometimes put yourself back in the driver’s seat, deliberately steering toward stress so you have greater control over deciding when to steer away toward rest.

Achieve More with Less Stress

You don’t have to choose between a healthy life and a life of full engagement with high, hard goals. You can have both.

The way to have both is to take control of the stress you put on yourself. By proactively seeking stress in forms that further your goals, you can change your set point for what feels overwhelming. Doing so will eliminate the feeling that stress is happening to you. It’s instead something chosen by you. You’re taking control of stress before it takes control of you.

If you want to take action on this idea, here’s what I recommend. Choose one area of life to experiment with (e.g., your physical fitness, tolerance for periods of intense concentration, or handling rejection on sales calls). Apply the concept of steering toward stress and then away from it.

If done correctly, as you steer toward stress, difficult challenges will begin to feel more like an adventure. Emotionally, you’ll experience a sense of thriving and empowerment as you navigate your way toward difficult goals rather than a feeling of being crushed by their weight. Then, when you steer away from stress, you’ll experience a deeper level of relaxed contentment that contributes to your well-being, both mentally and physically.

Bottom line—stress isn’t your enemy. It’s not even a bad thing. Stress is, in a very real way, what you make of it. You can take control of it, or you can let it control you. The choice is yours.

 

 

Original article here