Digestive Health : World's Digestive Health Roadshow

Read from recent local newspaper regarding the 'World's Digestive Health Roadshow' held in Kuala Lumpur. I won't comment too much and I will leave it up to you guys to read the news and watch the Vitagen video. I'm not in the mood to rant today, but I thought of posting this article for whoever who might have missed it. Meanwhile, whoever think that consuming beverages such as Yakult or Vitagen can build a healthy disgestive system, you ought to find your common sense back. You have poor digestive system not because you are deficient in Vitagen or Yakult.

See you guys next year, Happy New Year and enjoy your holidays. 

Watch the video from this link

Vitagen..healthy digestion? Yeah right!

Drink 2 litres of water for everyone? A 95kg adult male would be constipated if he drinks 2 litres of water daily. How can an obese or overweight adult drink the same amount of water with an average adult? A little bit of common sense here.

Unconventional training tools - Clubbells, K-Bell, Elevation Mask Training, STROOPS & Undulation Rope!

What's your favorite training tool or equipment? Treadmill? Stationary bicycle? Dumbells? MedBall? Elliptical machine? Got myself some 'fitness gadgets' to be used for personal training in my program, as well as being able to expose to more variety of training tools. Of course, some of the stuff I bought are not available in Malaysia, or it is very difficult to find in my own country, as I have yet to discover or find any shops or outlets that sell the less common fitness/workout tools.

Well, most commercial gyms do have dumbbells, cardio machines, barbells, etc. But, tools such as clubbells, kettlebells, combat ropes, elevation mask training,  stroops and TRX are some of the unconventional training gadgets you don't find in most commercial gyms. Although there are a few commercial gyms starting to install TRX and kettlebells in their outlets, but you will need a good trainer (certified) to assist and train the clients to avoid injuries and NOT giving these power tools a bad reputation! Always remember, it is not the training tool which is dangerous or bad, but it is due to poor or sloppy techniques or training which resulted in injuries.

Elevation Mask Training - A whole new intensity and training level

STROOPS - an awesome training tool!

Kettlebells - One of the best tools to hit all your energy systems.

Combat undulation rope - Your muscles will scream for mercy!

Clubbells - An ancient tool for definitive edge in strength and endurance training.

TRX RIP trainer - One of the best tool to train transverse plane and develop power.

Apart from Vibram Fivefingers, this would be another addition of 'barefoot'  apparel for fitness enthusiasts especially for people who loves strength training and sprints.

Do We Really Need Doctors? : Part 8

We are all civilized, modern homo sapiens who are currently living on this planet earth. Most of us are living a busy, hectic and stressful lifestyle, accompanied with a poor diet and nutrition. There are many of us who are 'couch potatoes' or what mainly known as sedentary lifestyle. Will once a week jogging in the park or walk the dog session be enough to cater such poor sedentary lifestyle?

In this final post, I will reveal to you another 'integrated doctor' within yourself. Called it doctor exercise, or doctor fitness, whatever you may like to name it, as this integrated doctor, will be your own master of movement. Well, back in the days of Hipprocrates , the amount of work that you had to do just to wash your clothes would have been acceptable as a workout today. How about our great ancestors aka caveman? Hunting a meal or prey, would have been an intense workout session for most of us. How about living as a farmer? There would be plenty of physical exercise as these farmers feed, water and care for animals, tend to crops, split firewood, clean barns, clear land and build fences.

In modern society, we notice how little exercise people get and how little they move. We enjoy all the comforts of modern technology; its easy to do the laundry today, most of us throw in our dirty clothes, push a button, and walk away. We go to the grocery store and buy our food instead of tilling the soil, growing our vegetables and harvesting them at the end of the growing season. But the result of all this convenience is that we get less and less movement in our lives. Now, remember this, Life is movement! If you stop moving, you stop living.

This is because to move means to experience. Without the right amount and kinds of movement, we suffer not only physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually as well. That’s what we are all here to do, experience life to the fullest! Nowadays, washing your clothes on the scrub board for three hours a day may not be your ideal form of exercise, but our bodies do require regular movement. The average hunter gatherer spent three and a half hours a day feeding and preparing food. So, it’s a good estimate to say that our bodies

are designed for at least several hours of movement in undulating intensity each day. When we get enough movement, each of the systems of our body is supported.

When we get adequate movement to run what are called biological pumps. These pumps are composed primarily of the abdominal muscles, the pelvic floor muscles and the diaphragm (primary breathing muscle). As we move, there is a rhythmic pumping effect that ripples through the body. I’m sure you have seen one of the old-fashioned water pumps with a long handle at a farm, museum or historic site. Well, our muscles act like one of those pumps. When you move, your muscles contract,forcing water, blood, and oxygen through the body, much like pushing on a pump handle that forces water out of the ground. But that’s not all, your lymphatic system relies solely on physical movement to keep it healthy and pumping. And your lymphatic system is one of the primary systems of your immune system. If we don’t pump our bodies with adequate movement, we don’t move these important fluids and we don’t remove waste efficiently from the body. This leads to lots of very common problems!

More specifically, if you aren’t moving your body enough, you’ll start to feel some combination of the following symptoms:

• Sluggish or low energy levels. The pumping action of movement transports nutrients throughout the body, and since movement in the right doses produces energy, movement can be seen as its own form of nutrition.

• So when the body does not get enough movement, it does not get the movement-nutrition it needs and the delivery of nutrition in general is drastically reduced. In fact, mitochondria, the tiny organs in each of our cells that produce energy, multiply in response to regular exercise. This means that movement, or a lack thereof, has a dramatic effect on the human energy system right down to the cellular level!

• Difficulty managing blood sugar levels. Muscles are the most metabolically active tissues in our body aside from the brain. Likewise, with regular movement, the human body not only maintains muscles that consume blood sugar at a natural pace, but it pumps toxins out to be eliminated. In the absence of healthy, daily doses of movement to maintain our muscles, not only will the body be less efficient at absorbing the nutrients it needs, it won’t be able to eliminate toxins as effectively either.

• Weight gain. Typically, people keep eating as much as they did when they were younger and more active. As they age, they become more sedentary and their metabolism slows. This means weight gain typically seen in the mid-region of the body, the buttocks and thighs, and eventually the back and upper arms. It also means that the waste generated by those tissues isn’t removed very effectively and in the beginning that might look like cellulite.

• Chronic Aches and Pains. Lack of movement starves the muscles and joints for water, nutrition, and oxygen. This makes it difficult for the tissues to repair themselves from the wear and tear of daily living. Soon enough, the body suffers chronic low-grade inflammatory processes in the areas needing movement and nutrition.

• Constipation. Not only does movement help to pump nutrients to every part of the body, but it also helps to pump the solid waste out as well. A body that isn’t moving enough is much more likely to suffer constipation; we know that there is an increase the risk of colon cancer with this condition. • Increased risk of disease. Constipation itself is upsetting, but it can be far more problematic than that. Fecal matter is the body’s solid waste and it needs to be moved out of the body regularly. If it isn’t removed, the body becomes backed up with rotting, indigestible foodstuffs, toxic bacteria and microorganisms as well as other toxic remains. Left in the body long enough, these wastes may cause a number of diseases.

• Mood swings and overall emotional imbalance. Remember, emotions are directly affected by the kinds of nutrition being supplied to the nervous system and the hormonal system. If the body isn’t moving regularly, whatever nutrients it takes in aren’t going to be effective at supporting the organs and glands responsible for maintaining emotional balance.

• Heart disease and circulatory problems. The heart is not intended to pump blood all by itself. When the body gets adequate movement, each muscle helps to circulate blood. This greatly reduces stress on the heart and cardiovascular system at large. It should come as no surprise that cardiovascular disease is such a top threat in our society!

Following the advice of your own integrated doctor will help your body pumps functioning at their best and keep you from ever suffering from these symptoms. Now, In addition to powering your body pumps, regular movement has an important effect on the oscillations underlying smooth muscle contractions. One of the recent insights into the body that science has provided for us is that the body generates a number of electromagnetic fields influencing biochemical circuits that regulate biological functions. In particular, the heart, the brain and the intestines generate very strong fields, each of which oscillates with a particular rhythm. These organs and the fields they generate are called your biological oscillators.

The energy fields for each of the oscillators interact with one another and should be in sync rhythmically. If one of your oscillators is distressed or malfunctioning, that tends to throw the other oscillators out of harmony with each other. It’s the interactions here that are important.

Here are some examples of the ways in which these oscillators interact:

1. Depression and heart disease. Research is now showing that these two illnesses often go hand in hand. The interaction between the heart and brain oscillators explains why this is the case. If the heart is diseased or damaged, it generates a disrupted field that can interfere with brain activity. This is especially the case with the heart as it generates the most powerful electromagnetic field in the body. Conversely, if one’s thoughts are predominantly negative or disempowering, the brain’s electromagnetic field is likely to reflect itself in the heart. As above, so below!

2. Heart disease and poor digestion. The small intestine generates a significant electromagnetic field as it goes through peristalsis (the rhythmic contractions that move food through the intestines). If a person has heart problems, the disrupted field of the heart can interfere with the process of peristalsis. Not only does this reduce how effectively the body absorbs nutrients, but it also means that waste products linger in the system too long. The effects are much the same as constipation. Anxiety, nervousness or excess stress can cause the intestines to speed up as well. This is often experienced as both loose stools and poor nutrient absorption. Again, the relationship between physical, emotional, mental and spiritual realities in this case can be understood once again, 'As above, so below.'

Regular physical movement is one way to ensure that the patterns generated by your biological oscillators are in sync and support one another to keep you healthy. In fact, the 'Work In' exercises I will discuss shortly are very effective at reducing stress, developing healthy breathing habits and increasing your energy, all of which greatly help to harmonize the rhythms of your brain, heart and intestines.

Now, let's talk a little bit about breathing. How many of you really breath? I'm not talking about 'normal' typical breathing, but it's the breathing all the way to your pelvic floor, which is part of your core. It may sound obvious to say that breathing is important. Of course, breathing is important, it draws oxygen into the body. But, the way that you breathe has a significant impact on your health. One of the most common side effects of modern sedentary lifestyles that it make us less effective at breathing. When we sit too many hours and don’t get enough physical movement, we tend to slouch. When our posture is poor from too much sitting, our head comes forward and our chest drops downward, crowding our organs. This tends to encourage shallow chest breathing and mouth breathing rather than the healthy, deep breaths that start with your diaphragm and come via the nasal airways.

Your respiratory rate and the efficiency of your breathing both influence whether you use your fight or flight nervous system or your rest and recovery system. Poor posture and shorter shallow breathes that are the result of the sedentary lifestyle activates the fight or flight system. You are now familiar with the effects of keeping that system active for prolonged periods of time. The kind of exercises that your own integrated doctor encourages keeps the muscles strong enough for you to maintain healthy posture, and teach you to breathe in a fashion that is much more likely to trigger your rest and repair systems.

Apart from breathing, let's discuss about exercise @ workout. Everyone knows about working out, but how many people knows about 'working in'? Exercise is not all about workout, which involved expanding energy from daily foods and drinks we consumed. Work-in type of exercise, such as Yoga, XiGong and Taichi are all movements which absorb energy into our body systems. Both are very different types of exercises and they compensate and balance out each other.

What we now understand is that there are lots of reasons to stay active. Unfortunately, most people just don’t get enough, if any, regular exercise. Of the small percentage of active people, those visiting the gym or hiring trainers do so because they:


• Are tired and want more energy.
• Don’t like the shape and feel of their body (this includes poor posture).
• Are injured. Often, traditional and commercial approaches to rehabilitation haven’t worked so they’ve decided to take their problems into their own hands and get fit.
• Have an intentional goal such as running a marathon, going on a vacation high in the mountains, river rafting, sailing, kayaking, skiing, or something that requires a higher level of fitness.


When I go into the gym, I go to workout. Sadly, the majority of people going to gyms to address their desires don’t get the results they were hoping for. The reason is quite simple. As you can see, all the common physical, emotional, mental and spiritual reactions to stress, each of which drains your vitality, don’t leave you much 'driving force' to work out do they?

If your body is already drained of energy and displaying these kinds of symptoms, adding vigorous exercise will more than likely add further stress. Think of it this way. A workout quite literally works the resources right out of your body! So, a visit to the gym may be doing you more harm than good. The main effect of the exercises in a work-in routine is that they cultivate more energy than they expend, leaving enough energy to stimulate and fortify your healing processes.

Most of the symptoms that we have discussed in the previous sections are a consequence of triggering your fight or flight systems, your experience of stress. Work-in exercises switch that system off and trigger your rest and recovery system (your parasympathetic nervous system). These exercises also use low intensity movements that help your biological pumps to move nutrients more effectively and tune the biological oscillators so they generate healthy patterns that support one another. In short, work-in exercises are specifically designed to counterbalance all of the effects of living an inactive or overly stressful lifestyle that we’ve explored above.

So should you be working out or working in? Dr. Exercise will be able to guide you. If you find that you have a number of the symptoms mentioned above, you’ll probably do best using the work-in exercises. But there’s an easier way to see which kind of exercise is right for you. If the idea of working out makes you tired just thinking about it, then you are getting a very important message from your body-mind and should pay attention. So when your body sends you a message telling you not to work out, it is simultaneously sending you a request to work in!

It would be easy to mistake your Dr. Exercise's advice not to workout as just promoting sheer laziness. But the fact is if you really don’t have the energy or drive to workout, chances are your body-mind just isn’t ready for more stress of the kind that a genuine workout will place on it. You’ll be much better off beginning
your exercise with the work-in movements I’ll describe below.

Which work-in exercises should I do? 

All Work-in exercises are to be done at an intensity that allows:

• Normal breathing. While you execute the exercise, you should never have to hold your breath like you would if you’re trying to pick up a heavy weight or exert yourself like running.

• Optimal digestion. When performing any work-in exercise, I recommend you start your practice directly after a meal. Work-in exercises actually support the processes of digestion and elimination because the combination of low strain movement and breathing with a relaxed mind actually stimulates digestion and elimination, as well as encouraging a reduction in stress hormones and elevation of sex, growth and repair hormones, which are called anabolic hormones.

• Your mind to relax. Work-in exercises should never be so technical in nature that you need to think as you exercise. Remember, the brain is a big energy hog and if you are thinking intensely during the time you are working in. Your brain sucks up all the energy you created and that defeats the purpose. Besides, your brain needs to rest just like your muscles do so why not allow your whole body to enjoy the work-in experience?

- Work-In Exercise Examples -

Slow Walking - Slow walking is a very easy, beautiful, effective work-in technique. Simply commit yourself to 20-30 minutes a day of walking slowly in a relaxed manner. To get the tempo of your slow walking right, I suggest you do it immediately after a full meal. When your pace is right, you will feel that your digestion is being supported and you will not feel uncomfortable at all as you walk. While walking, dump the mind. If need be, listen to relaxing music or better, simply listen to nature sounds as they are very healing.

Breathing Squat - Well, think of pooping in the woods. My bad, let me rephrase it in a civilized manner. Find a surrounding or place which is relaxing (quite playground or garden in your house), both hands position virtually like wrapping a bubble around your chest (but relaxed). While in standing position, take deep slow breathe and exhale slowly while your are squatting down until your butt almost touch your heel (That's why I mentioned imagine pooping in the woods!). Keep your body and mind relaxed and do as long as you want, breathing in and out through the nose and you MUST not feel like your heart rate speed up or exerting yourself.


Stretching -  Stretching is a lovely, gentle and effective way to balance the body and improve posture, while at the same time cultivating energy. By stretching the tight muscles of your body you will immediately start improving your posture. This encourages a return to what I often refer to as the green light posture. listen to nature sounds as they are very healing. When we have proper posture and our skeleton and muscles are balanced, energy moves efficiently through the body. When we have areas of tightness in our muscles and connective tissues, there is a strangulation effect that restricts the flow of blood, lymph and energy in much the same way you get restriction of flow when you step on a hose.


Tai Chi or Qigong -  Either of these ancient forms of exercise has been shown to be very effective at lowering stress levels and increasing vitality in the body-mind. I will not elaborate further on both of these exercises.

Yoga -  Yoga has been shown to relieve stress and restore optimal vitality for millenniums and is now a very popular practice. Not all yoga is the same though.  This soothing practice offers you the opportunity to leave your stress behind so that you feel nourished and well rested. Locate a good yoga teacher in your community that will give you individualized exercises to meet the needs of your body. I would not recommend to join commercial yoga classes in gyms unless you want to get injured. Yoga/Pilates training is one of the highest rates of injuries apart from Crossfit! Don't believe? Go do your own research. Imagine a yoga trainer in commercial gym class conducting on all 20-30 ppl at one time? That's just ridiculous.



There you go, various recommendations of different work-in types of movements and exercises to try it out yourself. Remember, it's not all about GO GO GO and workout like spartans and beat the crap out of your muscles and robbing your vitality and secreting chronic catabolic hormones. Everything in life, evolves around homeostasis and balance. Ying & Yang, negative and positive, one and zero, white and black, catabolic and anabolic, etc.

Before I sign off this topic, ask yourself, did we evolved with help of prescription drugs and so called 'supplements'? How did our ancestors and great grandparents survive and live an old healthy life? Did our ancestors run on treadmills to get fit and strong and healthy? And the million dollar question, do we really need doctors? Well, I will let you think and decide yourself after reading this whole discussion. As for me, the answer is YES and NO. Yes to certain surgeries associated with trauma, accidents, emergency situations and also caesarean section for baby delivery. But NO to disease or illness related assistance or so called 'cure'. I hope you enjoy reading this topic as much as I enjoyed sharing all these valuable information. Everyone deserved a healthy quality life. No one wish to be on prescription drugs all their lives and died prematurely!

Do We Really Need Doctors? : Part 7

Are you happy? I mean content and feeling like you are settling down and not much worries in your life. How is your relationship doing? How about your job? Do you have constant worries about your financial situation? Are you really content about what is happening around your life? 

We've discussed about diet and circadian rhythm in earlier posts. How about your mental and emotional stress? There are people who may be eating a clean nutritious diet, and sleep well most nights, but if they are suffering from a poor stressful relationship or perhaps a stressful tiring job, you are looking at downfall of a very important pillar of health. Unfaithful spouse, terrible work environment and boss, family problems, you name it, plenty of different mental and emotional stressors. 

Your diet may be perfectly tuned for your body and you may be getting eight hours of sleep every night, but if you are in an unhealthy relationship, or you hate your job, chances are your fight or flight reaction is still going to be activated far more often than is healthy for you. The bottom line, if you aren’t happy with your life you are going to be overly stressed.

Remember, your body does not make distinctions between physical, mental, emotional or spiritual stress. The crunch of a deadline for a project you really dislike and running from a bear while you’re hiking will have the same effect on your body, triggering your fight or flight systems in exactly the same way at the physiological level of reality. Why is it that our careers and life choices so often fail to bring us happiness? The answer lies in our values.

Each of us has a core set of values, even if we are not able to articulate them very clearly. These core values represent the needs that must be met in order for us to live a fulfilling life, they define the way we want to live our lives. Our values tell us about the sorts of people and organizations we want to have relationships with, the way we want to be treated by those around us, and the human characteristics we most want to emulate in our lives. They also shape the goals we set for ourselves.

It’s only when one’s lifestyle is in alignment with one’s values that we are truly happy. When we don’t live by our values, the stressors we encounter become genuinely distressing; this is precisely when they trigger our fight or flight system. If you value the environment, for example, and the company you work for frequently ignores environmental concerns in order to further their bottom line, you might probably find it extremely stressful to work for that company. If you value integrity, honesty and fairness, and your company takes advantage of its employees and customers, you probably find working there distressing. The more ways in which your work violates your values, the more stressful your job becomes. The same is true in any of our personal and spiritual relationships.

Our values inspire our choices with meaning and give us the ability to cope with the challenges we face. When we run into challenges in our lives, we can face them squarely if there is a good reason to endure them. Imagine being in a relationship in which you’re constantly arguing with your partner. If that relationship does not meet with your values − for example, your partner does not particularly care about finances, honesty and equality in the same way you do, then why are you involved? What meaning or purpose does the relationship serve? In general, the anger and resentment you’re enduring with your partner is going to be much worse for your wellbeing because the relationship itself does not share mutual values. The experience can be valuable if it helps you to better understand what’s truly important to you, but if you’re enduring pain without reason, your stress will just become more and more distressing.

When you are not living in accordance with your core values, the challenges you face are potentially harmful physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. As long as you continue to live this way your survival systems are going to be active, and as you now know, long term activation of fight or flight is the source of much of the aches, pains and illnesses we humans suffer.

You can often tell when people are not living according to their values because they will suffer from some combination of below symptoms or conditions:

• Fatigue

• Mood swings

• Depression

• Pimples

• Nervousness

• Poor sleep

• Upset stomach

• Diarrhea

• Neck/shoulder pains

• Headaches

• Poor concentration

Each of these can be traced back to the chronic activation of our survival systems due to lifestyle choices that now cause us to be stressful. The reason why so many of us face overly burdensome stress in our relationships and career is because we tend to equate success with happiness. We have been taught that if we can just succeed in our jobs, make more money, and start a family that everything will fall into place. In fact, there are far more unhappy successful people than there are happy successful people. Some of you might not agree but that's just the ugly truth.

The problem is that success and happiness are not the same. A lot of people tend to confuse success with being content or happy. Ask yourself,  'What makes you feel happy to be alive, and excited about waking up tomorrow?' Sadly, the most common answer I get from most people, even from the ones that most other people consider successful is, 'I don’t know.' Imagine waking up and telling yourself, 'Damn! I don't want to go to work today! I hate my job!'.

When a person is successful without being happy, they frequently excel because they have become very proficient at doing what other people want them to do. They are good at solving other people’s problems, sacrificing themselves because they have traded their own core values for those of whom they’re working for or trying to please. If you want to be at your healthiest, you’ll need to be clear on your values and whether your life is in alignment or at odds with those values. That’s when you’ll start to experience the symptoms I’ve described above. In other words, your career may be bringing in the money, the house and the car that you want, but if it does it in a way that isn’t in harmony with your values, you’re going to experience the aches, pains and diseases that go along with the choices you’ve made. From the outside, people, friends, and relatives may think that you are wealthy, owns luxury cars, huge mansion and has a big happy family. But, do you really achieve and have the happiness you want?

One consequence of sacrificing one’s values that I’ve seen repeatedly with many people is the emergence of addictions. For example, I’ve seen people who, because of their constant struggling to align their core values with those of their family, religion, friends or corporation, developed addictions to drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, food, sex, porn and even violence.

Now, your core value set is essentially your contract with your self as to how you should invest your time and your precious life force. I tell my students, 'Life is a boomerang and you always get back exactly what you throw out!' Living by your core value set is essentially loading your own energetic boomerang with what you want to return to you. To the degree that you are honest about and live according to your values, you are likely to be happy!

Learning about your personal values begins by learning about your basic needs and how to take care of them. You might break these basic needs down into physical, mental and emotional and spiritual categories. For example, take a moment to ask yourself:

What are my physical health needs?

• Do you have any particular conditions that need to be taken care of specifically? What are your dietary needs? What are your exercise needs? Are you a sedentary person or are you an athlete, or someone in between? If you are not a professional athlete, then your dietary and exercise needs will probably be extremely different from someone who is an elite athlete.

What do I need in my life to be mentally happy and healthy?

• What kind of mental challenges do you like? Do you really enjoy intricate, foreign films? Do you enjoy Crossword Puzzle or brainteasers? How much quiet time or rest do you need to be mentally focused?

What do I need in my life to be emotionally happy and healthy?

• Do you need a great deal of social time in order to be emotionally satisfied? What kinds of people do you feel best socializing with? How does your home need to be arranged so that it makes you feel comfortable, safe and secure?

What do I need in my life to be spiritually happy and healthy?

• What inspires you so that you feel connected to a higher power? Do you spend time in nature? How easy is it for you to forgive yourself or others? Do you require quiet meditation time?

These questions address your essential, personal needs in order for you to be empowered to achieve and live a fulfilled life. The idea is that your personal values should support all of your needs very clearly so that you can use them as a guide when making life choices.

It’s a universal truth that you cannot take care of others any better than you can take care of yourself. So before you can even begin to think about entering into a relationship with someone, starting a business, or having a family, it’s important to take the time to become very clear about your personal values and to become competent living by them. Every single one of us, regardless of who we are, serves as a living example for those with less life-experience and personal development.

Are you an example of how to live a healthy vibrant life guided by your values? Do you do what you preach? Careers consume a huge amount of time and energy and for most people, who work on average forty five hours each week. When we multiply that by four weeks a month and twelve months a year, that is a tremendous amount of energy output. Because careers do play such a central role in our lives, it’s important that your choice of profession and the professional environment that you create for yourself resonates with your values. Beyond capturing income needs (which is an important professional value), your professional values define your strengths and skills, ethics and integrity. For example, how you treat your co-workers and how you want your co-workers and employers to treat you would reflect that value. Your professional values determine the effects of your work with others.

Now, let's talk a little bit about relationship values. The relationships we have with others can be empowering, giving us the opportunity to grow, or they can become a real source of distress. Because they do have such a powerful impact personally and professionally, it’s crucial to understand your relationships and how they add to or detract from your happiness and your health. If you are not living according to your personal values, then you’re going to have a rough time in relationships of any kind, whether they’re personal, professional or spiritual. Remember the principle, 'you can’t take care of others any better than you can take care of yourself'. 

Once you have uncovered your values and really begin to live by them, you will have set yourself firmly on the path to happiness. The joy you’ll get from living in this way will be profoundly different than anything you have felt before. Living by your values is true living and anyone who’s truly lived life always feels nourished and gratified. That doesn’t mean that all of life’s challenges are eliminated, but you’ll know that your love and joy has become love and joy for many others. When one is truly happy in life there is a deep sense of personal fulfillment, gratification and grace. The quality of your life experience will positively be enhanced. A life of meaning and value is clearly a life worth living!

Do We Really Need Doctors? : Part 6

I just noticed that there are more and more coffee/tea cafes opened since the last 6-12 months period. Starbucks and ChaTime outlets are all over the place, plenty of other new 'caffeine and sugar loaded cafes' are more then ever, especially the last 12 months period or so. Why is that so? Why do we have a sudden coffee/tea business 'exploded' in recent time? Do more and more people become addicted to these caffeinated/sugary beverages? 

In this post, I will discuss the 'vicious cycle', or domino effect of how poor sleep wake cycles could trigger a vicious cycle, that goes on a roller coaster ride all day and night long, with repetitive weekly and monthly cycles, which eventually turns into a yearly adverse impact.

When we don’t get enough sleep, we are unable to repair the body and the nervous system becomes fragile. Our brains get tired too because thinking during the waking state is highly consumptive. The brain uses a lot of energy when it’s working. Staying awake too much is a bit like leaving all of the lights on and the appliances running in your house 24 hours a day. You’re going to run your energy bill up really quickly.

When you are awake, that means all of your body’s systems are left on. In short order, you are going to create an energy deficit. Once this happens, even when you do sleep, you’ll wake up tired with all of your day’s goals still in front of you. The common way that most people combat this sort of fatigue is to eat more sugar and drink more caffeine for quick energy. This starts a dangerous downward spiral that may look familiar to you. Check this out.

1. You wake up feeling tired but you’ve got a lot to do. You need a 'kick' to get going.

2. You increase your intake of sugar, coffee, tea and/or refined carbohydrates such as boxed breakfast cereals, breads, jams or jellies.

3. You jump in your car and run off, but soon you start feeling hungry. You’re busy and there’s nothing substantial you can eat in the middle of it all so another coffee will do. If there’s something quick, like a vending machine snack maybe, or another piece of fruit; that’s easy, you can eat it on the go. Maybe you reach for one of those so called sports bars, which are simply commercially, manufactured piece of crap usually marketed with photos of what I call, “fit sick people” on them!

4. Your blood sugar is now surging up with each addition of coffee and refined carbs.

5. As your blood sugar rises and the caffeine kicks in, stress hormones are released in response to over stimulation of the fight or flight response. This triggers a series of chemical steps that result in glycogen, a form of sugar stored in your liver being converted to glucose (another form of sugar) to aid in the rapid get away from the lion or tiger that your organs are sure must be chasing you.

6. Now you are literally swimming in sugar so insulin must be released to break it all down before it damages your nerve cells and other tissues. Soon, the insulin does its job, which you experience at some point as feeling tired, wired and hungry. In other word, 'CRASH'.

7. The drop in energy and increase in hunger usually begins the process all over again.

8. Often times, the cycle is capped off by a cup of coffee after dinner. You go to bed exhausted, but as a result of the caffeine and stress hormones it produces, you can’t get a restful night’s sleep. The whole vicious cycle begins the next morning, and the next day and weeks, and months, and years.

The short-term consequences of this cycle will generally affect your energy level and your ability to concentrate, but there are more dangerous and long-term consequences as well. As the body stores the excess sugars and your adrenal glands get overworked from producing so many stress hormones, your pancreas fatigues from producing insulin and the normal ratio between cortisol, and of course the immune regulating and sex hormones becomes progressively disrupted. The outward signs of this begin to manifest as:

• An accumulation of fat around the belly button that spreads out from there

• Mood swings

• Difficulty concentrating

• Low energy

• Pains in the neck, shoulders, lower back

• Weakened immune system often evidenced by frequent colds and minor illnesses

• Trouble recovering from injuries or an increase of injuries

In addition to the sugar/caffeine cycle, another common reason people don’t have adequate time with Dr. Sleep is because they are eating incorrectly for their metabolic requirement, as I‘ve discussed in the previous chapter. The most common mistake that people make which disrupts their sleep patterns is eating too much no-eyes food with dinner, or not calculating sweetened drinks or desserts into their ratio of no-eyes to eyes foods.

If you’re a Polar type, this is particularly problematic because you are extremely sensitive to sugars of all types. When you go to bed without enough fat and protein to maintain your blood sugar through the night, the body must release the stress hormone cortisol to elevate your blood sugar, as described above.

Because cortisol is also an awakening hormone, you’ll find yourself waking up, typically between 1am -3am. If you are hungry and you grab a snack, how easily you are able to return to sleep will depend on what you’ve eaten. If you eat something with adequate fat and protein, you’ve got a much better chance. Unfortunately, most people resort to dessert-like foods, after all, who’s watching right? This usually triggers a spike in energy caused by the refined carbs, making it even more difficult to sleep. Then, when it is time to get up, you’ll feel tired, which will compound your stress response as you face of all that the day holds.

If this cycle goes on long enough, your hormonal system will become over taxed and that opens the door to getting fungal and parasitic infections! You can tell when your body is beyond exhausted and needs to take Dr. Sleep much more seriously because you’ll start waking up in the middle of the night sweating. This occurs because of the elevated stress hormone levels, which excite your metabolism and make your body think that it’s sunrise and time to get out and do some hunting and gathering. The problem is, once you wake up it’s very difficult to return to sleep, and if you do, the quality of sleep is poor.

This very scenario, by the way, is one of the fastest ways for men’s sexual performance to diminish, which is why so many young men now carry Viagra around with them. Bear in mind, ED used to be a symptom of males in the 60's. In females, this process diminishes their interest in sex and makes it harder and harder for them to reach orgasm. If that’s not enough, this same process makes your skin look as though it’s aging rapidly and, as I’ve said, accumulating fat around the middle is common. Soon enough, your thyroid gland must slow your metabolism in an attempt to save your life, literally, so now your body temperature starts dropping, your mood becomes unreliable and often you feel apathetic and lethargic, and, fat now accumulates around the hips and back of the arms, and in time, the face and the chest too. This problem is much more common in females because their hormonal system is much more delicate than men. 

For more details and tips on how to sleep properly, you can read my SLEEP posts which I wrote previously. Dr. Sleep is one’s chief physician in charge of rest, whether it is sleep or just quiet time. Rest essentially determines how much you can do or accomplish. We all need quiet time in addition to sleep, because our body-mind requires quiet time during the day to repair and re-energize itself.

Today, there is a lack of quiet time in most of our lives. Imagine going to a hotel in city centre and getting a hotel room near the street. All night long you’ll hear the garbage trucks, the sirens, and people coming out of bars drunk, yelling and screaming at each other. You won’t get any quiet time, let alone quality sleep, and every day you’ll find yourself becoming more and more tired.

For whoever suffering from work stress and exhaustion, you MUST listen to your body, else you will fail in your health no matter how much supplements you take or how expensive your skin care products total up your bill trying to mask that aging skin or face.

Now, there are other forms of rest that are valuable as well. Each of these contributes to your general recovery so that you are recharged. They are total rest, active rest and passive rest. We’ve really already discussed total rest in some depth, with deep sleep as the main example of that kind of rest. Total rest can also include taking a day completely off from work and any other stresses. However, you get it, total rest is the very foundation of the recovery and repair cycles, as I’ve described earlier. Active rest is essentially a reduction in workload. If you’re taking an active rest, you’re still working and completing your goals, whatever they may be. The point is that you’re not working at them as intensely. While active rest may sound as though it can slow you down, in truth it can make you more efficient. By decreasing the burden you’re facing you give your mind the chance to re-energize itself, so that when you’re back at 100% of your workload, you’re re-focused and thinking more clearly. If you’re finding that you’re struggling at work, but can’t afford to take time off, active rest could be your best bet to completing your work projects more efficiently.

For professional athletes, active rest days are days when the intensity of your training is typically about 60% of your high-intensity training days or current personal best performance. Active rest days are excellent days to work on the technical aspects of your training as well.

Passive rest is a short term break from the work tasks or projects you’re currently involved in. Passive rest should completely divert your mind from the work you have been involved in. In doing so, it creates the space for your mind to re-energize and re-focus. Even a short, 10-minute break of this kind can reduce the amount of stress you feel. There are all sorts of ways to get passive rest, including:

• Listening to music
• A short, quiet walk
• Reading
• Meditation

If you take your work seriously and you want to succeed, you must take your rest just as seriously, since your rest allows you to operate at your best. Plan your rest, just as you would plan any other appointment. Your body will thank you for it and you’ll work more efficiently than ever.

If none of those techniques appeal to you, there are many other ways to give your mind the rest it needs. Just remember that whatever kind of rest-break you decide on, it should take your mind completely away from what you have been working on.

Do We Really Need Doctors? : Part 5

Alot of people are living a stressful lifestyle and suffer from chronic stress with primarily work and relationship related problems. Modern population, is so bombarded with hectic work schedules, household chores, and not to mention other stressors such as headaches with spouse relationships, family issues, having dilemma on how to settle bills and poor diet which contributes to digestive stress. Also, there are number of population or people who experience and suffer from spiritual stress, religion related issues, restricted from doing this and that, not allow to eat this and that foods, or obliged to only eat vegetarian diet. 

With all the different layers of stressors, how much longer can your body handle? Have you ever ask yourself this question? Wonder why some people just snapped or 'lost it', and they 'EXPLODE' out of nowhere? Everyone will have his or her own limit or barrier, when it comes to mental or physical stress. Question is, do you listen to your body? How often do you listen to your body? How much of quiet time do you have for yourself in a day or a week? Are you going too fast and need to slow down in your regular daily life? Do you still hit the gym for an intense weight lifting session even your body tells you that you are exhausted and having low energy levels? Do you still train that day for marathon or run a 8km even if your body tells you to STOP and rest? Do you work day and night having only few hours of sleep week in week out for a chronic period of time? Well, majority of the modern people just don't listen to their body and suffer health consequences after a certain period of time, months and years later.

Today, I will discuss about the 2nd type of 'integrated doctor' within our own self. This integrated doctor, primarily determines how much of stress one is suffering, how much is quiet time you should be getting, or how much of sleep or rest you need. We can call it Dr. Sleep. You can call it whatever you want, but it primarily determines your natural circadian rhythm and stress levels.

Once you’ve learned to work with your 1st integrated doctor which manage your diet and nutrition, your consultation with Dr. Sleep begins with your sleep habits. Sleep is the most vital contribution that Dr. Sleep will make to your physical health and wellbeing. Most people, tend to sleep an average of 7 hours per night, which is at least 90-120 mins less sleep every night then people were getting roughly 100 years ago.

As you can imagine, your body, which developed its natural rhythms well before humans even started using fire, easily becomes terribly disrupted by so little sleep. In fact, evolution has designed our bodies to follow a number of natural rhythms. The movements of the sun, the moon and the earth literally govern all of our hormonal rhythms. Our relationship to the sun, for example, directs the seasonal influences on our bodies. At different times of the year, the length of the day is different and this fact has shaped our behavior for most of human history.

In winter for example, it is normal to go to bed earlier and get more sleep. It’s cold too, which encourages us to stay in bed in the morning. In summer, it is warmer and the days are longer so we tend to be more energetic. More daylight also lends itself naturally to longer workdays or play days. The spring season gives us a nice slow transition into the more energy expressive summer season, while fall gives us a nice, gentle transition into the more restful winter season.  

Well, I have discussed quite a handful of details about circadian rhythm and sleep in my previous posts. I will add on some other details and recap some of the importance of sleep and our biological clock in this post. It is the rising of the sun that triggers the hormones that wake us in the morning and the setting of the sun that triggers the hormones that enact rest and repair during the night. If you don’t get to bed by 10pm, you’ll start cutting into your natural bodily repair cycles. Your physical repair cycle runs from 10pm until 2am, repairing your muscles, bones, joints and organs. After 2am, your psychogenic repair cycle begins, attending to the nervous and hormonal systems.

If you are physically active, especially if you are an athlete, missing out on rest is particularly damaging. You end up missing out on needed physical repair time and injury becomes far more prevalent. There are athletes or fitness enthusiasts who think late night sleep or getting less then 7 hours of sleep if adequate for their recovery of health. Besides, are you getting quality sleep throughout the night regularly? Or you have difficulties falling into sleep and awake in wee hours 2-3am for no apparent reason? Tons of people claimed they have 9 hours of sleep nightly, but they still feel exhausted and tired, question is why?

When you stay up past 2am, be it partying, working the night shift or getting up to care for infants, you’ll start displaying nervous system fatigue. This often shows up as headaches, foggy thinking and muscle twitching in the face and around one or both eyes. Additionally, anyone that misses the optimal sleep cycle, even if they sleep later into the morning, will not get the same degree of restoration as if they had gone to bed by 10pm because the repair cycles are driven by solar, lunar and terrestrial forces, which really don’t care about what shift you work or late night TV or playing online games! When this continues, even for a few days, this is when the stimulant effects of the caffeine/sugar cycle can further impact your nervous and hormonal systems, and instead of reducing your stress, will increase it.

Taking care to listen to Dr. Sleep becomes even more critical once we accept that the natural connection between the rising and setting of the sun and our sleep cycle is so easily disrupted. Light is one of the most important external factors that can affect sleep. Today, we are quite literally bombarded with electromagnetic pollution and overly stimulated by artificial light sources, such as lamps, TV’s, computers, digital alarm clocks and any number of light (and electromagnetic) emitting appliances that may be near us when we sleep. The electromagnetic pollution from electrical devices keeps a lot of people from sleeping well. This is crucial to understand because our bodies are particularly sensitive to all types of light exposure, which can dramatically influence the balance of our sleep wake system.

Light sources can trigger the awakening/stress hormones, making sleep difficult. This means not only a loss of sleep, but that the quality of your sleep diminishes. Exposure to light in the middle of the night can have more unpredictable effects, but can certainly be enough to cause our internal clock to be reset, and may make it difficult to return to sleep. Typical electrical lighting is very stimulating to the part of the brain that is both light and time sensitive. Remember, electric lights appeared very recently in our evolutionary history. They trick your brain into thinking that the sun is coming up at midnight and your body into releasing stress hormones to prepare you for another day’s work! That really disrupts sleep patterns. I have been telling tons of people about this over and over again.

These effects begin to stack up on one another as lack of sleep is interpreted as a very significant stress input by your body. This triggers further production of stress hormones. These hormones further disrupt your sleep duration and quality, blocking your ability to regenerate your bodily tissues and systems. Often times, Dr.Sleep's solution to the symptoms of excessive stress is waiting right there under the surface to be discovered. For example, some people who go on vacation, particularly when they went camping or resting on the beach, most, if not all of their symptoms completely disappeared!

If you simply follow the advice of Dr. Sleep and get to bed by 10pm and sleep for a good 8 to 9 hours each night, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much better you feel overall and how much less stress you feel. You will also probably notice right away that you don’t crave so much sugar, caffeine and nicotine, both of which exacerbate most any and all ailments of the human body. Individuals who travel across time zones or work the night shift typically have two symptoms. One is insomnia when they are trying to sleep outside of their internal phase, and the other is excessive sleepiness during the time when their internal clock says that they should be asleep. The disruption to the hormonal system caused by broken sleeping patterns can be quite profound.

The more well managed you are the more energy and vitality you will build, which makes you more robust and resilient to illness. Can't do it? I think most of you realize yourself that you are running out of excuses and no one can help you unless you start changing your lifestyle including sleep wake pattern by helping yourself. It is primarily your mental strength, how discipline you can be, how determined you want to be healthy and how much you want to live your life with better improved quality. Stay tuned.

Do We Really Need Doctors? : Part 4

Alot of people always begin to ask themselves, where do I start? That is the obvious first question when it comes to transitioning into a different diet, lifestyle changes, detox plans and whichever modification related to health, weight loss and even fitness. The first step towards the big decision and transformation in life, always involved this question, "Where Do I Start?".

Before we proceed further, I will present to you, a list of diet questionnaires which will determine where will you start your journey, and it will eventually guide you to how you should be eating, in a well planned manner. These questions, will closely determine your own metabolic type, although it is not a complete and full assessment, but at least, it is adequate to start your journey leading you to understanding of how you should be eating, according to your own body's requirement and what is optimal for you.

1. I sleep best

a) When I eat a snack high in protein and fat 1-2

hours before going to sleep.

b) When I eat a snack higher in carbohydrates 3-4

hours before going to sleep.

2. I sleep best if

a) my dinner is composed of mainly meat with

some vegetables or other carbohydrates.

b) my dinner is composed mainly of vegetables or

other carbohydrates and a comparatively small

serving of meat.

3. I sleep best and wake up feeling rested

a) if I don’t eat sweet deserts like cakes, candy or

cookies. If I eat a rich desert that is not overly

sweet, such as high-quality full-fat ice cream, I

tend to sleep okay.

b) if I occasionally eat a sweet desert before I go

to bed.

4. After vigorous exercise, I feel best when I consume

a) foods or drinks with higher protein and/or fat

content, such as a high-protein shake.

b) foods or drinks higher in carbohydrates

(sweeter), such as Gatorade or other sports drinks.

5. I do best maintain mental clarity and a sense of well-being for up to 4 hours after a meal, when I eat

a) a meat-based meal containing heavier meats

such as chicken legs, roast beef and salmon,

with a smaller portion of carbohydrate.

b) a carbohydrate-based meal containing

vegetables, bread or rice and a small portion of a

lighter meat such as chicken breast or white fish.

6. If I am tired and consume sugar or sweet foods such as donuts, candy or sweetened drinks without significant amounts of fat or protein

a) I get a rush of energy, but then I am likely

to crash and feel sluggish.

b)  I feel better and my energy levels are restored

until my next meal.

7. Which statement best describes your disposition toward food in general

a) I love food and live to eat!

b) I am not fussed over food and I eat to live.

8. I often

a) add salt to my foods.

b) find that foods are too salty for my liking.

9. Instinctually, I prefer to eat

a) dark meat, such as the chicken or turkey legs

and thighs over the white breast meat.

b) light meat such as the chicken or turkey breast

over the dark leg and thigh meat.

10. Which list of fish most appeals to you?

a) Anchovy, caviar, herring, mussels, sardines,

abalone, clams, crab, crayfish, lobster,

mackerel, octopus, oyster, salmon, scallops,

shrimp, snail, squid, tuna (dark meat)

b) White fish, catfish, cod, flounder, haddock,

perch, scrod, sole, trout, tuna (white), turbot

11. When eating dairy products, I feel best after eating

a) Richer, full fat yogurts and cheeses or desserts.

b) Lighter, low fat yogurts and cheeses or desserts.

12. With regard to snacking

a) I tend to do better when I snack between meals

or eat more smaller meals throughout the day.

b) I tend to last between meals without snacking.

13. Which describes the way you instinctually prefer to start your day in order to feel your best and to have the most energy?

a) A large breakfast that includes protein and fat,

such as eggs with sausage or bacon.

b) A light breakfast such as cereal, fruit, yogurt,

breads and possibly some eggs.

14. Which characteristics best describe you

a) In general, I digest food well, have an appetite

for proteins, feel good when eating fats or fatty

foods, am more muscular or inclined to gain

muscle and/or strength easily.

b) I am more lithe of build, prefer light meats and

lower fat foods, am more inclined toward

endurance athletics.

Now, once you have answered all these questions, you may drop me a comment or email, and I will let you know your results. Once you have the results, you can consult with your integrated doctor diet to refine your eating habits even further by taking a moment to look at your body's energy and nutrient requirements.

Let’s say, for example, that you’ve taken our questionnaire and determined that you are a Polar type. This means, in general, that each meal you eat should be divided up into portions of predominantly protein intake, and moderate carbs and as well slightly lower in fat. I know what the Paleolithic community will say about this as recommending eating a low fat diet would be a disaster. And you are right! It is not a recommendation of low fat diet. It is a lower intake of slightly lower fat requirement, and slightly higher in protein.

However, this particular eating plan recognizes that your body’s nutritional needs can vary from one day to the next, and even meal to meal. So lets take a closer look at your nutrient/energy requirements (diagram below). Starting first, you will see that there are three gauges that track factors such as weather, activity/stress levels, and menstrual cycles that may influence your eyes to no-eyes food ratio from day to day. Each of these gauges will push you to the left or to the right of the diagram depending upon the weather, your stress level or the duration of your menstrual cycle.

Clinically, I find that the stressors listed above can affect your animal to plant food ratio as much as one serving in either direction, depending on the intensity and duration of the stress. In short, this means that there is no such thing as a fixed diet for anyone because nobody ever is the same person day to day, nor are the environments and circumstances that influence our food needs the same day to day, and there goes about most of the diet books right there!

The main goal of the diagram displayed is to help you raise your level of awareness and learn to hear what your body is telling you about your own metabolic requirement needs on any given day in order get the foods that best meet those requirements. Once you have used the chart for a while, I think you’ll find that you become sensitive enough to your body’s language that you just won’t need it anymore.

Now, you must be asking yourself. How Do I Know if I’ve Got it Right? Look now at the box labeled, 3-D Body Energetics(bottom left) in the diagram and you’ll see a list of body systems that are essential to supporting your life. When your food ratio is correct and you are eating a variety of high quality, organic, whole foods instead of CRAP, not only does your diet result in efficient energy production for the body, it assures that you have enough energy to run your key biological survival systems.

In other words, aside from being able to last comfortably for three to four hours between meals without cravings, you can tell that your eyes to no-eyes ratio is correct because you won’t experience short-term negative symptoms such as:

• Food cravings

• Headaches or nervous twitches (typically in the eyes, arms

or legs)

• Energy and mood highs and lows

• Chronic problems with colds and nagging illnesses

• Shifts in body temperature and metabolism

• Mental fogginess

• Lowered sex drive

• Cold hands and feet

• Poor digestion − including constipation or loose bowel

movements

Now, looking to the right side of diagram, you can see that cholesterol is the source molecule for most of your sex, growth, repair/immune and stress hormones. Well, the most common mistake which our integrated doctor diet has to correct is not eating enough quality, organic, free-range animal foods, which are the most bio-available sources of cholesterol. Cholesterol, while thought of as the bad guy, is wrongly blamed and mistaken for the cause of heart disease. Did mother nature purposely put in something in our body which could kill us?  I DON'T THINK SO.

The fact of the matter is that the more you are under chronic physical, emotional, mental or spiritual stress, the more stress hormones your body produces. As this happens, your body requires more cholesterol to cope with the increased hormones. It’s a fact that if your diet isn’t providing the necessary cholesterol, your body simply manufactures it! Furthermore, why does your body manufacture both cholesterol and saturated fats (the so-called bad fats) but not the unsaturated fats? Did Mother Nature screw up? Again, I don’t think so! The reason why it produces these fats is because they are an essential component of most cell membranes in your body.

The stress hormone cortisol is a critical hormone along with adrenaline and insulin. Cortisol is a critical hormone because, quite simply, in times of emergency cortisol is responsible for creating clots to stop you from bleeding to death, elevating your heart rate and blood pressure, and increasing alertness.

To the degree that your body-mind believes it is under stress, it manufactures and uses more and more cholesterol to make cortisol. During times of stress, cortisol production will trump the production of other hormones such as sex, growth and immune hormones in order to keep you alive. So if you’re under high stress, animal fats become very important. They help your body build the cortisol it needs and minimizes the body’s need to divert all of its resources away from your secondary hormones in order to manufacture the cholesterol it needs.

Also, bear in mind that eating organic animal foods is especially important because animal fat will store any toxins introduced into the animal (including you) for long periods of time as a means of protecting the body. Unfortunately for both the animal and the consumer, commercially farmed animals are often carelessly fed such things as sawdust, cement powder, engine oil, industrial waste, plastic chips, and poor quality grains that are rejected by humans as foods because they contain high levels of fungal infection! Most Genetically Modified (GMO) grains today feed to commercially raised animals too. So you really are getting a double whammy!

The toxins from this sort of feed are stored in the animal’s fat and so passed on to you, the consumer. The consumption of commercial animal foods and plant foods significantly increases your body’s burden, creating more and more stress and requiring the production of more and more cholesterol. Combine this with the low-fat diet recommended by most nutritionists, and you’ll find your sex drive is disappearing before your very eyes.

Your body is trying desperately to keep you alive and reproduction is the last thing mother nature wants sick animals, or humans to attempt! Think about it, to handle the situation any other way would halt evolution in its tracks. This is what we’ve been doing with so called conventional medical-nutritional wisdom for the past 100 years!

Next, water. Perhaps the most important advice that your integrated diet doctor has to offer you concerns water. At the most basic level, water serves two important functions: hydration and cleansing. But, water is also an essential component for many of your body’s chemical reactions too. For this reason, it’s crucial to keep yourself well hydrated with quality water. If you have recently read the dehydration posts i wrote previously, you will realize how important water is to our body.

Most of us are exposed to a number of toxins and pollutants through the foods we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe. Commercially farmed produce and animals are laden with poisonous herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and rodenticides. Water serves as your primary cleaning agent, flushing these toxins out of the body. So, remember to drink at least half your body weight of water daily, for survival, metabolism, cellular functions and elimination of toxins. Stay tuned.

- Energy/Nutrient Requirements -