Holistic Health Secrets

Archive for March, 2010

The act of sleeping is one of the healthiest “activities” that we can perform.  This is because the body repair and rejuvenates itself while we sleep.

When we sleep, we release hormones that help us to:

•    Grow
•    Avoid anaemia
•    Create white blood cells
•    Create substances that prevent tumours
•    Strengthen the immune function
•    Maintain our ideal body weight
•    Produce new skin cells
•    Avoid ageing prematurely

Lack of sleep can lead to binge eating, short term memory loss, high blood pressure or a decrease in the immune system that leaves you vulnerable to illness.

New research and studies carried out in Birmingham have indicated that lack of sleep is also contributing to weight gain and obesity in British adults.

Insomnia can also cause hormonal changes or infertility problems.

Sleep deprivation can also slow down your reactions.  This can be especially dangerous if you are operating machinery or driving, leaving you at constant risk from accident or injury.  One in six fatal road accidents are believed to be caused by fatigue.

Sleeping contributes to our sanity.  Prolonged sleep deprivation can lead to stress, depression or paranoia.  At the extreme end of the scale, sleep deprivation can lead to anti-social behaviour, aggression and hallucinations.

We shouldn’t view sleeping as a waste of valuable time that could be better used studying, working or partying.

Sleeping replenishes our energy, repairs our body, eases our mind, contributes to our longevity and revitalises our soul.

Do you experience insomnia?

Learn natural methods for beating insomnia in online course

Insomnia can affect anyone at some point in their life.  It’s estimated that one in five adults have problems sleeping.

Many people view their problems with lack of sleep as an unavoidable and natural part of modern lifestyle and believe that’s just the way it has to be.

On the other hand, sleep should be the natural part of any healthy lifestyle.  But, for those of us who live in a city, we’ve all become accustomed to leading a stressful hectic lifestyle.

We’re used to viewing caffeine or nicotine as stimulants that keeps us awake.

But information overload can also be viewed as a stimulant.  In the modern age, with 24 hour access to media, communications, TV, computers and the internet, we’re constantly being bombarded with an endless cycle of information that varies in its degree of usefulness.

TVs, mobile phones, the news, surfing the net – all these activities act as effective stimuli which hamper our ability to get to sleep.

Reading or watching TV before we go to bed may seem like relaxing activities but they actually stimulate the mind which adds to the problem of insomnia.

Watching a horror movie or reading a suspenseful whodunnit or a really gripping page-turner in bed at night could be as bad as guzzling down a few cups of coffee before you retire.  One affects your body and the other stimulates your mind.

The light from TV and computer equipment can suppress melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone which helps us to fall asleep.

The electromagnetic field from your mobile phone can disturb your body’s sleep/wake cycle, if you call someone a few minutes before you go to bed.

It can be a real challenge for some of us to stop texting, emailing, surfing and reading and relax the mind long enough to go to bed.

Do you experience insomnia?  What’s your biggest challenge?

Learn natural methods for beating insomnia in new online course

Lack of healthy natural sleep is one of the main obstacles to enjoying good health and well-being.

Sleep deprivation contributes to or creates the conditions that manifest in depression, heart problems, diabetes, stress, poor performance at work or study, weight problems.

Many health issues can be alleviated just by getting a night of simple restorative natural sleep.

Taking sleeping pills or over-the-counter aids is a short-term solution which can cause more problems in the long run.

The free Beat Insomnia eCourse will introduce you to some of the natural and simple ways to create the conditions to produce a healthy night’s sleep.

It consists of 5 lessons sent to you by email.

These lessons contain simple, free or cost-effective recommendations and action steps involving small lifestyle changes which will help you to create the conditions to have a natural healthy quality of sleep.

At the end, you have the option of a personal follow-up email about whether the course has been able to help you.

Sign up for the Beat Insomnia course now and receive your first lesson immediately.

So I’ve been experimenting with eating a mediterranean diet for just over two weeks now.

I think the food is delicious and wholesome.  Early on though, things felt a bit stodgy for me – particularly if I was eating lots of pasta, bread and potatoes.

I then realised how important exercise is when following this kind of diet so I’ve been doing the cross crawl exercise to music two or three times a day.

For me, it’s more enjoyable if I vary what I eat and mediterranean cuisine is very varied.

I’m surprised to find that I don’t miss eating red meat so frequently.

I feel lighter and weirdly enough, even though I feel as if I’ve been eating, for me what I feel is a lot of heavy food, I think I’ve lost weight (which was not the aim of this experiment).

I feel that the time hasn’t been long enough to judge the effects of this diet on my overall health so I’m going to extend the experiment for another 14 days.

Read more about the Mediterranean diet.

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The nervous system includes the brain and the spinal cord.

The problems that can be caused by a weak nervous system include:

* stress, tension and anxiety
* poor concentration and memory
* insomnia
* depression or apathy

Nourishing the Nervous System

I’ve already written about Nutri-Calm, a product which combines vitamins and herbs which help to relieve the stress, tension headaches, elevated heart rate and insomnia symptoms that can be caused by an undernourished nervous system.

You can read more about Nutri-Calm here.

And here is another product which helps to nourish the nervous system.

Brain Protex with Huperzine

This powerful form of brain food contains gingko biloba which is often used to treat dizziness, memory problems and circulatory problems in the brain and body.

It also contains huperzine which helps to boost memory.

Huperzine can help with concentration, memory problems, learning and reducing the risks of degenerative diseases that affect the brain function.

It is currently being investigated for its potentially positive effects in treating degenerative brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease.

Brain Protex with Hyperzine is designed to support the nervous system and help to create protection for the brain’s cells, improve longevity and general health.

It comes in the form of 60 capsules. One capsule is taken twice a day with a meal.

Check out Brain Protex with Huperzine .

Recently I’ve been writing about the brain and the nervous system so I thought I’d write about them now from an Eastern perspective.

In one form of Japanese massage theory, the autonomous nervous system is related to the Water element and the energy pathway in the body that corresponds to the bladder.

The bladder pathway (or channel) runs from the corner of the eyes, down the centre of the back of the head, down the back on either side of the spine, down the centre of the back of the legs to the little toe on each foot.

The bladder pathway is one of the longest energy pathways (or meridians) in the body and it closely follows the path of the nervous system.

The energy pathway of the bladder helps to control:

• * information
• * movement
• * balance
  
• * coordination

In traditional Chinese medicine, the brain is sometimes called the palace of intelligence.

The nervous system (brain, spinal cord) is sometimes referred to as the Sea of Marrow. (This is not to be confused with the Western “bone marrow”).

Marrow forms the brain, the spinal cord and the nervous system.

The Sea of Marrow governs thinking, concentration, memory and the five senses.

So when the Sea of Marrow is weak, it can result in:

• * dizziness
• * hearing problems, tinnitus
• * blurred vision
• * poor concentration and memory
• * vertigo
• * poor coordination and balance
• * low energy levels

The Free Health Analysis has been specially devised to help you find out about the condition of all of your body’s systems (like, for example, your digestive, cardiovascular and immune system).

By completing this short quiz, in as little as five minutes, you can find out which of your body’s systems are in good condition and which would benefit from further nutritional or holistic support.

To access the free confidential health analysis online, please complete the form below.

Neurons are cells that form part of the nervous system (which includes the brain, the spinal column and the nerves).

Neurons transport messages (or conduct electrical impulses) from one part of the body to another controlling our senses, thoughts, reactions, moods and movements.

The nervous system is a complex communication network divided into the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system.

The central nervous system is made up of our brain and the spinal cord.

The peripheral nervous system is made up of the nerves which extend to all parts of our body.  The peripheral nerves control movement and our skeletal muscles.

The brain is like a powerful central computer which instructs the body how to react to stimuli.  It controls how we move and talk, regulates our heart beat, controls digestion and our reaction to stress.

Once we make a decision to do something, such as pick up a pen, the brain sends a signal to the spinal cord which in turn sends a signal to your hand, telling it to move and how to move.

The way that the brain and the nervous system operate clearly demonstrate the unconscious power of the human body.

Common symptoms which affect the nervous system include headaches, stress, insomnia, memory problems, learning difficulties and depression.

In a previous article, Why Positive Thinking Doesn’t Always Work, I discussed how our behaviour and beliefs are programmed by authority figures and the media.

But why is it so easy for human beings to be brainwashed or conditioned?

It appears that from birth, our brains are designed to synchronise with the brains of those in our immediate environment.

For example, we learn to talk by imitating our family members.  We unconsciously mirror the facial expressions and habits of those in our immediately family.

But imitation doesn’t end in childhood.

Some believe that you become who you are surrounded by: we’ve heard the clichés about girls turning into their mothers, married couples who look like twins and people who look like their dogs.

It’s often said that the people in your inner circle will have similar physical symptoms, problems and personality traits to you.

A neuroscientific discovery in 1995 revealed that particular cells in the brain become active in macaque monkeys when they perform certain tasks – like, for example,  eating a peanut.  But the same brain cells also fire when the monkey is just watching another monkey (or someone else) eat the peanut.  These cells are now called mirror neurons.

Although the existence of individual mirror neurons in the human brain is a matter of debate amongst scientists, brain imaging experiments have shown that corresponding areas of the human brain do light up when watching another human perform a certain action.

Whether or not our brain cells make us predisposed to copying others, the fact remains that most human beings are copycats who learn by imitation, osmosis and by unconsciously absorbing both the conscious and unconscious opinions and beliefs of other people.

A major factor of positive thinking comes through learning to consciously think for yourself, independently of others.

But while we are temporarily caught in copycat mode, we can learn to model our behaviour patterns on positive confident people to emulate those who have learned to achieve inner and outer success.