Relaxation Is Vital

Suffer from Monday bitch face? There's still time to improve the start of your week with a little walk in the sun & a juicy treat. Don't let werk werk werk werk hold you back from taking care of yourself. Taking breaks during the day will optimize your health, enhance your brain power, and get rid of that bitch face ;) So if you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for your co-workers.

Take Time For Yourself

Tuesdays are for coffee break meditations by the water. Always remember to be good to yourself and take breaks out in nature to de-stress. And lowering stress levels helps you to burn fat. It's a win-win :)

NOT Your Grandma's Cookies

Some people may think, "How'd I get fat? How'd I get so many wrinkles? How'd I get cancer?" 

When your body cannot recognize a foreign agent entering the body, it taxes the immune system and causes stress, aging, breakdown, and fat storage: all of which lead to dysfunction and disease.

Health is not about "calories in, calories out".  Always check the INGREDIENTS label.  If you cannot understand what it is that you're eating, chances are good that your body does not either, and your health will pay the consequences.

G-e-l-atin....It's Alive

Gelatin is an anti-inflammatory protein that's good for reducing symptoms of fibromyalgia, joint pain, tissue degradation, inflammation, asthma, hives, hyperventilation, the size of cancerous tumors, high blood sugar, insulin resistance, strokes, seizures, insomnia, and more.  It also helps to promote weight loss and the health of hair, skin, nails, tendons, and the gut. 
 

Add a dash to your food, smoothies, and/or post workout recovery drink, and reap the benefits.

You can order Great Lakes Gelatin here www.kinectionholistichealth.com/products

Stay Salty

Salt helps produce energy efficiently, boost the metabolism, and protect against inflammation and degenerative stress.

Salt restriction actually increases blood pressure and damages the metabolism. 

Add a pinch of canning and pickling salt or a white Celtic sea salt (NOT table salt) to your liter of quality water to lower adrenalin, alleviate headaches and stomach cramps, create hormonal balance, and inhibit fat-storing stress hormones. Your mood, skin, hydration, and health will all improve.

You're welcome.

Sometimes, Less is More

Instead of doing multiple cleanses, signing up for 6 workout classes a week, joining a gym, juicing 2 pounds of fruits and vegetables a day, cutting out sugar and sweets, depriving yourself of food, and running yourself into the ground, try to focus your energy on one thing each day.

Remember to rest, relax, and rejuvenate so that your body is able to recover from the stress that you may be placing upon it.  It's not about how much you're doing, it's about how well you're doing it.

Pre-eclampsia is a Mother

Pre-eclampsia or Eclampsia may have nothing to do with lacking blood pressure medication and everything to do with lacking proper nutrition.  In pregnant women, blood volume needs to increase by over 40% to ensure efficient circulation to the developing fetus and mother.  

Eating a LOW PROTEIN diet or a HIGH CARBOHYDRATE diet can activate the stress response, causing estrogen to rise.  High estrogen and low protein can cause the blood to clot and/or thicken.  Furthermore, estrogen destroys the liver's ability to produce albumin, which is a key factor in allowing the liver to rid the body of toxins.  When the body does not produce enough albumin, it creates hypothyroid issues, and with hypothyroid issues, comes a loss of sodium in the body.  

The loss of sodium and lack of albumin allows for TISSUE EDEMA (or swelling/bloating). Estrogen pulls out water from the blood, and pushes it into the cells, which gives you puffiness and increases HYPERTENSION (high blood pressure) due to the decrease in blood volume and the increase in viscosity (or thickness) of the blood.  

In addition, if the mother is not eating enough of the right kind of carbohydrates (i.e., too many grains/processed carbs/above-ground vegetables and not enough tropical fruits and root vegetables) the body will start to break down protein to produce the glucose that it is lacking (another stress), which exacerbates the low level of protein in the mother.  

Overall, improper eating can create low protein and high estrogen in the body, which may lead to hypertension and pre-eclampsia or eclampsia issues during and after pregnancy. 

As always, it's best to address the cause, rather than the symptom of a deeper dysfunction. 

Shed Some Light on Your Insomnia

If you experience insomnia or have trouble sleeping, you could be in need of exposing your skin to sunlight for at least 20 minutes, daily. 

The lack of sunlight slows down energy production, consequently, releasing adrenaline.  Adrenaline leads to insomnia, anxiety, fatigue, cravings, and increased stress on the body.  Sunlight helps treat insomnia, anxiety, and depression, while it also increases cognitive function, decreases food cravings, improves immunity, protects your tissues from free radicals, and boosts your metabolism.

Just another reason to go toward the light...but don't forget to eat your coconut oil, first!

I Love Cholesterol...Said No One Ever, But Maybe You Should

The increased production of cholesterol is your body's anti-stress system kicking into gear. Cholesterol is actually a large anti-oxidant to help fight stress and inflammation in the body.

So why may your cholesterol levels be high?
It could be a number of reasons.  One reason could be not eating enough fat.  Yes, it is a myth that the fat you eat is directly responsible for the amount of cholesterol in your body. 

As much as 80% of cholesterol comes from your liver, NOT the food you eat.  So when you are given the suggestion to go on a "low fat" diet because you have high cholesterol, expect your cholesterol levels to increase, as the body sees this deprivation of fat as a famine or crisis.  During that time, insulin activates an enzyme in your liver to overproduce cholesterol from the carbohydrates that you eat.  So not eating enough of the right fats can increase your cholesterol!

The truth is, your nutrition and lifestyle are not adequate enough to keep up with the demands you place on your body throughout the day and over time. 

Eat well, sleep well, hydrate well, move well, and love well.  This is what your high cholesterol is really trying to tell you.

a + b = High Cholesterol

Allow me to shed some fat on the current situation:

In the 1940s, the oil and seed industry was collapsing and needed a new market for their products, besides the use for producing paints and plastics.  The only other biological effect of unsaturated fat/vegetable oil, next to sterility, dementia, and lowering the immune system, was its influence on lowering blood cholesterol.  In a "research study", cholesterol was found to dissolve in the presence of unsaturated vegetable oils.  This opened the door to campaign that since cholesterol is found in the walls of blood vessels, and cholesterol levels contribute to heart disease, then unsaturated fats lower your risk for heart disease.  It was taken one step further in proclaiming that saturated fat is the culprit in causing elevated cholesterol levels that increase your risk for heart disease. 
 

However, to this day, there has never been a study that demonstrates high blood cholesterol, from the consumption of saturated fats, causes heart disease.  But there are studies that show the stressful effects of polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) on the body, and stress levels are a main contributor to heart disease. 

According to Diana Schwarzbein, MD, "When you do not eat cholesterol, your body sees this deprivation as a time of "crisis" or "famine".  During this "famine", insulin activates an enzyme in your liver called HMG Co-A Reductase that begins to overproduce cholesterol from the carbohydrates you eat."

As you can see, there are many factors that go into the cause of heart disease...vegetable oil being one of them.  Eating the right quality of foods, in the right quantities, at the right time of the day, can exponentially improve your health.  Deprivation is not the answer, nor is a chemical alternative.

My suggestion is to truly understand your body's physiology, and not put your trust in a lab chemist claiming that a+b=high cholesterol.