Common Lifestyle Choices That Cripple Our Immune System

There are many common things people do in our society that cripple the immune system and make us more susceptible to illness.  When people get sick, they often act as though they are a poor victim of a vicious assault by a pathogen.  What they don’t realize is that their lifestyle provided the proper environment for the pathogen to do what it was created to do.

The job of any pathogen is to “break down decaying matter.”  Our job is to avoid being  “decaying matter” by keeping our bodies functioning and adapting at their peak potential.

Here are five major choices that promote illness:

1.       Eating Sugar

When we consume sugar it feeds parasites within our bodies and depletes our system of critical immune boosting nutrients such as vitamin C, glutathione, zinc, etc.  Sugar also feeds the development of abnormal tissue and cancerous growth.   When sugar and starch is metabolized in our body it breaks down into a simple molecule called glucose that is used for energy production.

In the 1970’s, Dr. John Ely discovered the Glucose-Ascorbate-Antagonism (GAA) theory.  Glucose and vitamin C (ascorbate) have a very similar chemical makeup.  This theory proposes that elevated glucose levels compete and effectively restrict vitamin C from entering cells.  Both glucose and vitamin C depend upon the pancreatic hormone insulin and its signaling effects in order to get into cells.

There is an important receptor called the Glut-1 receptor that activates in response to insulin to allow both glucose and vitamin C to enter the cell.  However, glucose has a greater affinity for the insulin receptor.  This means that the greater the content of circulating blood sugar the less vitamin C will enter the cell.

White blood cells have more insulin pumps than any other type of cell and may contain 20 times the amount of vitamin C as other cells.  They also need 50 times more vitamin C inside the cell than the blood plasma in order to handle the oxidative stress that occurs when they encounter a pathogenic substance.

When white blood cells encounter pathogenic bacteria and viruses they must ingest or phagocytize these organisms in order to neutralize them.  The phagocytic index measures how effective a particular white blood cell is at destroying viruses, bacteria, and cancer cells.  Elevated blood sugar impairs this phagocytic index.  In fact, a blood sugar of 120 reduces the phagocytic index by 75%.

2.     Sleep Deprivation

Quality sleep is fundamental for optimal performance. Sleep deprivation creates a heightened stress response within the body that disrupts normal healing and tissue rejuvenation processes.  When the body has a heightened stress response it lowers immune coordination and increases the inflammatory processes.

3.     Drinking Tap Water

Municipal water is extraordinarily toxic to the body; it destroys the immune system.  This water is loaded with environmental toxins such as chlorine, DBP’s, arsenic, heavy metals ,and fluoride.  Proper water filtration is essential to remove these chemical agents.

High quality reverse osmosis systems are one of the very few water systems that are able to effectively remove fluoride.  Add back a pinch of pink salt (1/4 teaspoon per gallon) to replace any lost minerals from the reverse osmosis process.  Teach your children not to use municipal water fountains but instead to carry bottled water in either glass or stainless steel bottles.

4.   Staying Indoors

We spend as much as 90% of our lives indoors nowadays and researchers are investigating our exposure to indoor pollutants as contributing causes to the rise in chronic illness in our society.  According to the EPA, our indoor environment is two to five times more toxic than our outdoor environment, and in some cases, the air measurements indoors have been found to be 100 times more polluted.

By spending so much time indoors ,we are also missing out on the protective factors inherent in nature.  When outside we are exposed to low levels of natural pathogens and our immune system is able to gently adapt to these.  Being outside also offers the benefit of fresh air, sunlight, and vitamin D3 and if you take off your shoes the electrons from the ground.

 5.    Chronic Dehydration

All life began in water; even the developing fetus is surrounded by water. A water rationing system takes effect immediately in response to any form of dehydration. A neurotransmitter named Histamine becomes active and redistributes water throughout the body. Some areas of the body are obviously more important than others. The order of circulatory priority (an inborn triage system) is the brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, and glands. Of least importance are the muscles, bones, and skin.

Histamine’s responsibility is to ensure that these vital organs have enough water to function properly during times of dehydration. If the dehydration issues become chronic, then water must be taken from major regions within the body. Additionally, chronic dehydration can cause histamine to become excessively active leading to symptoms that are often mistaken for other disorders. The most common symptoms associated with dehydration and elevated histamine include allergies, asthma, dyspepsia, colitis, constipation, rheumatoid arthritis, migraine headaches and chronic pain.

Sources For This Article Include:

• http://www.naturalnews.com/033082_sleep_deprivation_stress.html#ixzz2Z24gOamX
• http://www.naturalnews.com/034185_glucose_vitamin_C.html
• http://www.naturalnews.com/037205_water_toxins_arsenic.html
• http://www.naturalnews.com/028725_asthma_allergies.html
• http://www.draxe.com/indoor-air-pollution-worse-than-outdoor/

We cannot prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that vaccines do more harm than good anymore than anyone else can prove that they are beneficial. There are too many variables. But to say that there is nothing to worry about with vaccines is to bury one’s head in the sand.

Vaccine companies are corrupt. They lobby for new laws preventing lawsuits for vaccine damages. They ship vaccines they find to be tainted, contaminated, or otherwise compromised to developing nations under the guise of being altruistic. They lobby to pass laws forcing vaccines on people, even when the majority of healthcare practitioners state that the vaccine is completely unnecessary. They test dangerous concoctions on the military (soldiers don’t get to choose which vaccines they will receive and some have had dire consequences before being pulled). They continue to add more and more vaccines to the vaccine schedule (recommended vaccines), overloading children at an early age. Some children are receiving as many as 24 shots within their first two years of age. And to top it off, they continue to lobby to try to make vaccines mandatory for all United States citizens. Fortunately, unlike the previous laws they have successfully lobbied to pass, they are yet to have luck with this one.

Vaccinations Cause Injury

We have more vaccinations on our schedule than any other country. We also have one of the highest infant mortality rates and one of the highest newborn death rates among industrialized nations. We also have the highest rate of autism.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.” – CNN

The United States has the highest number of mandated vaccines for children under 5 in the world (36, double the Western world average of 18), the highest autism rate in the world (1 in 150 children, 10 times or more the rate of some other Western countries), but only places 34th in the world for its children under 5 mortality rate.” – Generation Rescue

Our autism rates, along with many other neurological disorders that can be attributed to the preservatives in vaccinations, are skyrocketing with a direct and very clear correlation to the number of immunizations children are receiving. Anyone who reads the studies can plainly see this. Our brains aren’t working well. While this can be attributed to many factors, studies are being ignored or manipulated in order to hide the truth and keep the profits flowing.

We are obviously doing something wrong.

Fortunately, today, pretty much everyone knows that vaccinations can cause autism and other neurological disorders. This is in stark contrast to just a few years ago when I would write a Facebook post about how vaccines can cause these injuries, and I would be flooded with comments telling me how wrong I was. Since then the CDC and even a few heads of the vaccine companies now admit that these injuries are happening. Julie Gerberding, back when she was the director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control, confirmed to CBS News:

…if you’re predisposed with the mitochondrial disorder, it can certainly set off some damage. Some of the symptoms can be symptoms that have characteristics of autism.”

Now Julie is the President of Merck’s Vaccines Division. No surprise there!

If you’ve ever read the forms required before getting vaccinated, you know the dangers, and you know the drug companies and hospitals are aware of the dangers. We also have the pharmaceutical companies spending millions of dollars every year lobbying in order to get bills passed that make it impossible to hold them legally responsible for any of their vaccine damages as they continue to push more and more new and obviously unnecessary vaccines on us. With 1 out of 150 children affected by autism, according to the National Vaccine Information Center, just imagine how many injuries we don’t know about. Imagine how many children learn everything more slowly, how many children end up with ADHD and dyslexia because of vaccines. How many children are deemed troublemakers and are thought to be unwilling to learn because they can’t learn the way other children do, due to vaccines? And how many children progress significantly slower in so many ways thanks to vaccinations?

And many of the reports, even from the CDC’s own website, show that the likelihood of vaccine injuries are greater than the likelihood of getting the disease the immunization is intended to prevent. Take the DPT vaccine for instance. The chances of a serious adverse reaction are one in 1750, while the chances of dying from pertussis are one in several million. Another example is the HPV vaccine. They tried to pass law forcing young girls (starting at 11) to receive this vaccination. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease and the infections in young women are temporary and have little to no long-term significance.

How many people have you heard of that got sick because they did not vaccinate?

How many have you heard of that got sick because they did vaccinate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6HPe-s1V2o

Check out Vaccines, Retroviruses, DNA, and the Discovery That Destroyed  Judy Mikovits’ Career

Vaccinations and Eradication of Disease

Many people in the natural health community will agree that drug companies are corrupt and that the number of vaccines recommended for people is ridiculous and dangerous. They will typically contend that most of today’s vaccines likely do more harm than good. The educated ones will often point to the chickenpox and the measles vaccine and agree that these are obviously totally unnecessary, historically ineffectual, and not worth the risks. But many still argue in favor of the efficacy of the smallpox and polio vaccines.

Diseases run their course. Eventually, a natural immunity develops or the species becomes extinct. There is considerable evidence that this was a contributing factor with smallpox and polio. In addition, health plays a huge role in disease prevention. It’s simple. The cleaner the water and food supply is, the healthier the people are, the better their bodies are at defending against disease. It’s a logical, but typically ignored, fact.

Was Poliovirus Eradicated with Immunization?

Historical documents show a decline in polio cases after the introduction of the poliovirus vaccine for four reasons:

1. Improvements in sewage and water systems. Polio is spread via feces/oral route, and sanitation policies clearly played a major role in the decline of polio. In every case of polio outbreaks, unsanitary conditions were the cause of the epidemic.

If the poliovirus vaccine is responsible for eradicating polio in our country,  then why is the poliovirus still prevalent in India, the Congo, and many African countries? There are still outbreaks after years and years of annual polio vaccine campaigns. This is due to a lack of sanitation and due to the vaccine itself. Wherever people use waterways for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and for sewage, polio will never go away.

2. The criteria for diagnosing the poliovirus changed. Doctors trusted vaccines to the point that they mis-diagnosed polio patients if they had been previously vaccinated. Instead, these well-meaning doctors attributed the symptoms to other diseases.

3. Before vaccinations, many doctors diagnosed anyone and everyone with polio-like symptoms as having poliovirus, regardless of the fact that other viruses like Coxsackie, echo, and enteroviruses can also cause long-term paralysis,

4. And last, but certainly not least, polio cases were already on the decline dramatically before the vaccine was introduced.

So during the peak of polio, everyone with polio-like symptoms was said to have the poliovirus. After sanitation programs began, cases of polio dropped significantly. Next, immunization began. Then there was another drop because everyone with polio-like symptoms, including those with polio, was said not to have the poliovirus.

Polio is long-term paralysis caused by the poliovirus and other diseases as well. Prior to 1954, the following undoubtedly hid behind the name “poliomyelitis”: Transverse Myelitis, viral or “aseptic” meningitis, Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS)- (what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had)[4], Chinese Paralytic syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, epidemic cholera, cholera morbus, spinal meningitis, spinal apoplexy, inhibitory palsy, intermittent fever, famine fever, worm fever, bilious remittent fever, ergotism, post-polio syndrome, acute flaccid paralysis(AFP).” – Suzanne Humphries, MD

Now the CDC reports that out of 162 confirmed cases of  paralytic polio, eight were contracted outside of the United States and 154 cases were actually caused by the vaccine itself. Mainstream-media is reporting that the polio vaccine campaign in India was a success. But there are 47,500 new cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis, which is caused by the polio vaccine and is said to be clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly.

Are Immunizations Responsible for the Eradication of Smallpox?

Many people point to the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme that started in 1967. Initially, immunizing everyone with the vaccine was the plan, but it proved too difficult to implement and the idea was abandoned in favor of surveillance and containment.

This involved trained workers searching for cases, with rewards for those who found them. Cases and their contacts were then isolated; contacts were vaccinated.” – History Today

When Japan started compulsory vaccinations in 1892, they saw yearly increases in smallpox infections. In twenty years, there were 29,979 deaths from smallpox, and all of these people had been vaccinated.

In the Philippines, 8 million people received 24.5 million vaccinations (95% of their population). What followed was their worst smallpox epidemic ever with a quadrupled death rate.

In England, before 1853, the largest known  smallpox death count for a two-year period was approximately 2,000. Shortly after England’s compulsory vaccination , the death rate in England and Wales began to climb. In 1870 and 1871, the death rate peaked at more than 23,000 smallpox deaths. When the City of Leicester, England stopped vaccinating for smallpox between 1882 and 1908, they saw a remarkable reduction in cases compared to the rest of England.

In 1871, Bavarian cases of smallpox deaths totaled 30,742,. Of the dead, 29,429 had been vaccinated.

Polio, and virtually every other contagious epidemic disease for which we vaccinate. is spread by unsanitary conditions to people with poor health. Better sanitation reduced the occurrence of smallpox and polio, not vaccinations. The studies show us that, too often, the people who suffer from these diseases have either been vaccinated themselves, or they caught the disease from someone else who had been vaccinated.

One of the great triumphs of medical science is said to involve the eradication of smallpox. The fact that it was in decline before mass vaccination was instituted is conveniently forgotten, as are the many cases of fully immunized individuals contracting the disease.” – Vaccination and Immunization: Dangers, Delusions and Alternatives by Leon Chaitow.

The risks involved in smallpox inoculation are fairly well known. The United States government asked doctors to stop routine smallpox vaccinations in 1972. For some previous years, the only known cases of infection with smallpox were people who had been vaccinated. On top of that the vaccine is the most reactive of all and has been linked to the most serious side effects including death. It is also noted in many medical reports that people who receive the vaccine are not necessarily less likely to get smallpox, they are simply more likely to survive smallpox. This contradicts studies that report cases of smallpox deaths. When countries were doing compulsory vaccinations for smallpox, the death rate for those who received the vaccinations was as high or almost as high as the death rate for the non-vaccinated who contracted the disease.

Are Any Vaccinations Responsible for Eliminating Disease?

We could write about every single vaccine out on the market (if we wanted a 50 page article), and the story would be the same with the same answer. The answer is “no.” Sometimes we found graphs that make it look as though a disease was eliminated by immunizations, only to find that the graph has been manipulated. For instance, if you start a graph close to when a vaccine is administered to many people, it usually looks as though the vaccine had an effect on the infectious disease, when in fact, if you look back a few more years, it turns out that these diseases were already on a drastic decline. Time and time again, sanitation efforts increase (as they should when a population of people are getting sick) right before the drop in numbers.

The chart above is an example of a smallpox chart (from tetrahedron.org) made to look as though a smallpox vaccine did its job by starting the chart at a date well past when the disease began its decline (click to see full size).

But many other charts show an entirely different story.

Disease is spread when a population of poor, unhealthy people drink, cook, and bathe in water contaminated with sewage. Historically, when the disease begins to spread beyond the borders of the poor communities, people are quarantined and the communities are cleaned up and sanitized. This is when the disease declines within the population. Then a vaccine comes along, there is a bump in the amount of people infected due to the vaccine, but because money is involved, the reporting gets skewed and the vaccine takes all the credit.

A Dirty Business

Earlier this month, (July 2013), the CDC posted a page on their website stating that more than 98 million Americans received one or more doses of the polio vaccine within an 8-year time span in which a portion of the vaccines contained a cancer causing polyomavirus known as SV40. The page was quickly pulled down. In May of 2010, federal health authorities recommended that doctors suspend the use of Rotarix, one of two vaccines licensed in the United States against rotavirus, because the vaccine was contaminated with material from a pig virus. In 2009, Baxter flu vaccines were contaminated with H5N1. Vaccines have been contaminated with HIV. The list goes on. Often times when the contamination is found, the vaccines are shipped to third world countries and administered there. No lawsuits. No liability.

Mainstream Media Vaccination Scandals

Drug companies, time and time again, commit atrocities. We rarely hear about them because drug companies to a large extent control our mainstream media, but we do have a few videos from mainstream media that cover vaccine industry corruption.

The first video is a news story about how Bayer and the U.S. Government knowingly gave HIV tainted vaccinations to children. This is no surprise to us, except that the mainstream media actually covered it!

We force immigrants to get needless vaccinations thanks to Merck’s lobbying.

This video talks about how the swine flu pandemic never was an actual pandemic.

For every story that the mainstream media exposes, imagine how many are covered up.

Flu Shot Ingredients

Type of Ingredient	Examples	Purpose
Preservatives	Thimerosal (only in multi-dose vials of flu vaccine)	To prevent contamination
Adjuvants	Aluminum salts	To help stimulate the body’s response to the antigens
Stabilizers	Sugars, gelatin	To keep the vaccine potent during transportation and storage
Residual cell culture materials	Egg protein	To grow enough of the virus or bacteria to make the vaccine
Residual inactivating ingredients	Formaldehyde	To kill viruses or inactivate toxins during the manufacturing process
Residual antibiotics	Penicillin, sulfa drugs	To prevent contamination by bacteria during the vaccine manufacturing process

 

For some time it seemed many people thought mercury was removed from all vaccines. Not true. Thimersosal is mercury and it is still a major ingredient in many vaccinations. After years of denying the connection between mercury and autism, routinely used children’s vaccines (except for flu shots) in the United States no longer contain thimerosal.

The rest of the ingredients don’t look so good either. You don’t have to be a scientist to understand that formaldehyde, aluminum, and mercury are very toxic to us. Ammonium sulfate can be found in the DTaP, DPT, HiB vaccines, all of which are routinely given to babies. Ammonium (basically positively charged ammonia), monosodium glutamate, potassium monophosphate, diphosphate, and phenoxyethanol (antifreeze) are other common and toxic ingredients found in vaccines, including children’s shots. If one were to suggest ingesting the same quantity of these ingredients found in a single vaccine, in any other way other than a vaccine, virtually every single doctor in the country would tell you that this could be extremely hazardous to your health. But put it in a vaccine, and inject it directly your blood stream, and suddenly these preservatives become inconsequential.

Vegan Issues

Flu and measles shots contain chick embryo and embryonic fluid. Vaccines cultured in human diploid cells that come from aborted human fetal tissue include Hepatitis A, RotaTeq, Varicella (chickenpox), Rubella, and Mump inoculations. Flu and mump shots are made in chicken eggs. Monkey kidney cells are used to create Polio vaccines. Other ingredients from animal byproducts include gelatin serums and guinea pig embryo cells.

Questions to Ask Yourself

If vaccines immunize, why must we keep taking them?

If vaccines are safe, why are laws being passed to protect the drug companies from any liability?

Do you trust these companies with your life and the lives of your children?

Do drug companies that create vaccines have any financial incentive to make the population healthy?

The Bottom Line

Vaccines are killing and damaging people. The drug companies do not care about our health. In fact, it behooves them not to heal us. This has been proven so many times, over and over again with scandal after scandal. It’s all about profit.

Even if the efficacy of vaccinations could be proven throughout history, we cannot recommend anyone inject something directly into their bloodstream that is sourced from corporations that have proven time and time again that they do not care about our health and wellbeing.

Further Reading:

• How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• Doctors Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Nurses Against Vaccines
• Influenza Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness of the Flu Shot
• The MMR Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview Of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness
• How Plumbing, Not Vaccines, Eradicated Disease
• Autism and Vaccines: CDC Whistleblower Exposes Vaccine Dangers, Lies, and Cover-ups

Sources:

1. Vaccination Schedule
2. Statistics by Country for Autism
3. Mass Immunization, A Point in Question, by Trevor Gunn (citing E.D. Hume, Pasteur Exposed-The False Foundations of Modern Medicine, Bookreal, Australia, 1989.)
4. U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says
5. Physician William Howard Hay’s address of June 25, 1937; printed in the Congressional Record
6. Eleanor McBean, The Poisoned Needle, Health Research, 1956.
7. Outbreak of paralytic poliomyelitis in Oman; evidence for widespread transmission among fully vaccinated children. Lancet vol 338: Sept 21, 1991; 715-720.
8. Neil Miller, Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? pg. 33
9. Chicago Dept. of Health
10. Dispelling Vaccination Myths
11. US Infant Mortality Rate Higher Than Other Wealthy Countries
12. Polio Disease – Questions and Answers
13. CNN – Rotarix rotavirus vaccine contaminated
14. Herd Immunity: Flawed Science and Mass Vaccination Failures

A few other articles worth reading:

• ‘Police State’ Registry System Being Set Up to Track Your Vaccination Status
• The Coming Push to Give HPV Vaccines to Infants
• Autism Prevalence Up? 1 In 50 Kids Has ASD, Parents Say

Soil 101 – Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K)

Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are the three main staples, the top three macro nutrients, of any soil and any garden. They are essential for plant growth, so keeping them at the correct levels is very important. But how the hell do you get these three elements into your soil?

Let’s start with number one, nitrogen.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is indeed the number one constituent for healthy growth in your plants. It is what basically makes up chlorophyll and it gives us that fresh green colour in our plants. It is a huge part of our atmospheric surrounds, but it cannot be utilised in this form by plants, which I’ll explain more about later in “nitrogen fixing”.

Nitrogen comes in both natural and synthetic forms, the latter being common commercial fertilisers and common shelf products like urea. The problem with these synthetic forms (besides the massive amount of oil that go into their manufacture) is the overdose amounts a lot of farmers dump on their crops.

Yes, you can have too much nitrogen. This excess simply runs off and eventually seeps into the soil where it joins the ground water and contaminates it. It will usually be marketed as a “nitrate” or “sulphate”. Often, crops that have been over fertilised with nitrogen lack stability and the rapid green growth of the plant soon outweighs its lagging root system, much like the legs of a commercial chicken. The plant eventually gives way and generally dies off, usually with a good amount of burning appearing on the leaves as well.

If there isn’t enough nitrogen in the soil, the opposite can happen. The leaves/plants won’t grow. Their existing leaves will turn a patchy yellow colour and they’ll soon die off randomly.

Well, that all sounds rather bleak doesn’t it? How then do you get nitrogen into your soil naturally and organically? I’m glad you asked.

One lovely example is through “nitrogen fixing”, through “weeds” like clover or legumes such as peas, beans etc. What these wonderful plants do is fix atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to the ground in tiny nodules on their root systems, which are actually symbiotic bacteria called rhizobia. This bacteria is behind the actual process of fixing the gas to the plant. When the plant dies, this fixed nitrogen is released into the soil as it breaks down and can be taken up by other plants.

We can take advantage of this process by planting beans, peas etc in our garden beds from the onset, After they’ve grown, we can simply cut them off at the base and let the root systems break down into the soil, the top half we can compost or put back onto the beds to break down,  after you’ve harvested your peas/beans of course!

I even plant broad beans around my fruit trees in winter. This way I get a crop of beans, the tree’s root system benefits from the beans’ root system breaking down, and the plant itself contributes to the mulch.

I still follow the guidelines of crop rotation with my beans and peas, I try to cycle the type of pea/bean I plant on a four year rotation. So if I plant peas under one tree or in one bed, I won’t plant those peas there for another four years, This reduces the risk of pest and disease build up in the ground.

Other sources of nitrogen include, compost, manure, lawn clippings, blood and bone. See the end of the article for directions.

Phosphorus

Around 75-80% of phosphorus that is mined today is used to make commercial fertiliser as it is most common in solid form. See what I mean about oil/mining being a big player in the fertiliser industry? Phosphate occurs naturally after the breaking down of plant (and animal) matter so composts can be a good source of it, as the whole phosphorus cycle is a very slow one.

Regular introduction of compost can keep phosphorus at good levels. If you have low levels of it in your garden, the effects will be obvious. Your plants will hardly flower and leaves can take on an unnatural green tinge or darken off. Phosphorus is the “building block” of your plant’s growth system, which it takes in through its root system. So it’s important to have good amounts of it in there.

Phosphorous: Compost, manure, blood and bone. See the end of the article for directions.

Potassium

Commonly referred to as potash, this is what your plants and trees need to produce abundant flowers and in turn, fruit. It is also the main nutrient that plants use to get water from the soil and keep it in their leaves and stems. Prior to flowering, many gardeners will sprinkle a small handful of potash around the drip line of their trees (or any plant that produces through flowering) to increase the amount of blossom it produces. Potassium is also commonly labelled as potassium sulphate, though the organic gardener wouldn’t touch it in this form.

Most find that they don’t need to specifically add potassium to their gardens as it occurs naturally in manures and most organic fertilisers, though in small amounts (2-5%). It’s usually enough for the soil to get its fix if added at regular intervals. Blood and bone, rock minerals, potash, and wood ash all contain potassium that will be slowly absorbed into the soil.

Plants that are deficient in potassium will yellow slightly at the leaf edges. A good percentage will simply die off.

Good sources of potassium: manure, potash, blood and bone, rock minerals.

How to Add These Nutrients to Your Garden

Compost and manure can be added to a depth of say 2” on your beds or roughly 3-4 shovel fulls per square metre. You can turn it all over if you like, I prefer to leave it in layers (like lasagna) and let the plants do the work.

For blood and bone, add one handful per square metre. For potash, mix 1 tablespoon in 9 litres of water added to the beds. (This will work great).

For rock minerals, 1-2 handfuls per square metre is what you’ll need.

By rejuvenating your soil after each season with things like compost, manures, and a good handful of blood and bone per square metre, you’ll keep your NPK levels at their best and the results will show in what you grow.  These top three are the main constituents with your soil structure. There are other macro nutrients and micro nutrients that are also found in there as well, but as a rule of thumb, if you look after your NPK, everything else will fall into line. Happy gardening!

Nature provides an amazing array of resources to improve our health and boost our immunity.  Mushrooms are a type of fungus that are enjoyed by people all over the world and renowned for their nutritional benefits.  These have used in tonics, soups, teas, prepared foods, and herbal formulas to promote health and longevity.  In recent years, scientists have studied the medicinal benefits of mushrooms on the immune system.

There are thousands of different types of mushrooms with a small percentage being poisonous if consumed.  Most mushrooms are edible and include white mushrooms, morels, truffles, portabellas, chanterelle, shiitake, maitake, agaricus, reishi, oyster, and enoki.  While all of these mushrooms have nutritional benefits, some are far denser in unique immune stimulating compounds than others.

The most common nutrients found in the majority of mushrooms include thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), folate (B9), phosphorus, iron, panthothenic acid (B5), zinc, potassium, copper, magnesium, pyridoxine (B6), zinc, potassium, copper, and selenium.  All edible mushrooms are healthy for the body but some contain high levels of beta glucans, which are an extraordinary molecule that scientists are just beginning to understand.

Beta Glucan and the Immune System

Beta glucan is a powerful immune stimulating compound found in several mushrooms, yeasts, and other foods.  Beta glucan is a polysaccharide that is made up of multiple sugar molecules linked together.  The different types of beta glucan include 1,3-D glucan and Beta 1,6-D glucan,

Beta glucans are known by scientists as “biological response modifiers” that bind to the surface of innate immune cells, which allows the cells to have better coordination in their attack.  This reduces the tendency towards auto-immune reactions and hyperinflamatory activity when the body is under attack. This compound activates certain immune cells such as key T-cells, macrophages, natural killer (NK) cells and the cytokines interleukin (IL) 1 and 2.  Studies have shown that it inhibits the growth of cancer and strengthens the immune response to microbial invaders.

Beta glucans have been studied for their ability to mitigate cancer cell growth and reduce the symptoms of the common cold.  In one report by the Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism they studied firefighters and tracked their cold/flu symptoms.   Firefighters have very physically and emotionally stressful positions that demand a lot out of them. The results of the study showed that those who took beta glucan instead of the placebo had a 23% reduction in upper respiratory tract infections.  “These results are consistent with previous clinical research involving marathoners, individuals with high stress lifestyles and the general population,” wrote Brent C. Rudy, the director of the Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism.

Maitake Mushrooms  

Maitake means “dancing mushroom” in Japanese. It is said that people danced for joy when they found these mushrooms because they were worth their weight in silver for their remarkable healing properties.  Maitake has been found to contain high levels of the immune modulating molecule Beta 1,6-D glucan.

Agaricus Blazei Murill Mushroom

This mushroom commonly referred to as the ABM mushroom is grown in the rain forest of Brazil and is nicknamed “The Mushroom of God.”  Studies have revealed that the ABM mushroom has the greatest density of beta glucan in the world.  When human subjects were given ABM in their diet, they saw a 3000% increase in NK cells in the blood within 2-4 days.

Reishi Mushroom:

Reishi is rich in Beta1,3-D glucan which boosts macrophages, T cells, and cytokinetic activity.   Reishi is especially good at increasing the production of tumor inhibiting cytokines IL-1and IL-2.  Reishi has powerful analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, and anti-microbial affects in the body.  It also acts to protect the liver and detoxify the body of ionizing radiation.

Sources For This Article Include:

• http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-different-types-of-mushrooms.htm
• http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/dietandnutrition/maitake-mushrooms
• http://www.naturalnews.com/023633_cancer_mushrooms_health.html
• http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2009/dec2009_The-Immune-Enhancing-Benefits-of-Beta-Glucans_01.htm

“How to be happy” is googled 55,600,000 times a month in the United States. Happiness is something every business pretends to sell. Pharmaceuticals, soft drinks, clothing lines, and just about every product you can purchase claim to offer happiness for a price. But what if you don’t have the money? No problem. You can buy it with credit. But the truth is, if we were happy we wouldn’t be spending so much money on crap we don’t need.

Happiness VS. Pleasure

Understanding the difference between pleasure and happiness is paramount. And from what I see, hardly anyone in our society knows the difference.

Coke started a marketing campaign, “Open Happiness,” implying that happiness is inside their bottles and within their soda, dancing among the fizzy sweet goodness, waiting to start a party in your mouth. The first time I saw that commercial, I knew a new trend was starting. While Coke wasn’t the first, it seems that every large business marketing their brand is now promising some degree of a happy, more joyful life.

At most, these products that are pushed on us in every way possible, 24 hours a day, offer pleasure and nothing more. They certainly don’t offer happiness.

Pleasure is short term. It comes in spades with happiness, but it comes at a price with consumption. And often that price exceeds the number on the price tag.

Polls show that in countries where people have less–less cellular coverage, less television, less shopping, fewer automobiles–they are often much happier than we are in our modern societies with all our toys. It seems the more we attempt to satisfy our every eager impulse, the emptier we feel.

Recommended: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Fuck Convention, and Fuck Consumerism

Convention says you need to spend money to be happy. Convention says you need pharmaceuticals (or you will at some point) and a large home to be happy. Convention says you need to work your ass off for many years to achieve this. And convention says a lot of other stuff that doesn’t do us any good.

Convention produces marketing that is shoved down our throats to spur us on to stimulate an economy that will collapse if it doesn’t keep growing at an incredible rate. It’s all about selling us stuff: more vaccines, more cars, the newest phones, and bigger, higher resolution televisions. But the price we pay is a drive to work harder and harder and harder to keep up with the Joneses. All the while, we are bombarded with so much technology offering us convenience while it sucks up every spare moment we might have had. Most of us want this. Most of us need this, because when we stop and just sit still with our thoughts, we don’t like the massive void we feel. We think all that crap fills that void, when, in fact, it creates more and more of a void within us.

Let go of what you’re supposed to do, and do what’s best for you. Unplug for awhile. Unplug more often. Get away from the noise. Figure out what makes you happy, and start taking some time to do it. Make the time.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Fuck What Other People Think

My life really started to change for the better when I began letting go of what other people think of me. I do things for me. I don’t do things for someone else unless it’s out of love and/or the desire to help someone. It’s no longer because I want to impress someone. I used to live for other people, working the job that I was supposed to work, driving a car that I thought other people liked to see me in, wearing the clothes that people told me I looked good in, and constantly worrying about what other people thought. It takes a lot of energy out of you.

I realize that many people aren’t going to like my use of language in the previous two titles, but I felt for the sake of authenticity, well, fuck it.

I see a lot of my friends trying to please their parents at the expense of their own happiness, for their whole lives. I see these people choosing careers and their whole life’s path based on a need for their parents’ approval. And these are people with parents who will never, no matter what their adult children do, tell their son or daughter that they are proud of them. Nothing their kids do will ever be enough. But if it were, it wouldn’t have been worth it.

I tell people to go do something embarrassing, to go into a store where no one knows them and pretend to trip and fall. Or yodel. Go for a walk with their headphones on and dance across every crosswalk. I tell them to practice not worrying what anyone thinks. It’s liberating and it feels better and better every time you do it.

Recommended: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Fitness

If you haven’t heard, exercise releases endorphins. Exercise has many benefits on our emotional state. It’s actually very difficult to be miserable about anything in life when you’re exercising, (except maybe the exercise itself.)

Exercise has a knack for putting us in the moment. Other worries fade away. Things shift into perspective. The whole day is better after a good workout.

Give it some time if you’re new to fitness. Those benefits don’t come immediately. At first it can feel like a drain, and the initial soreness can be very painful. But like everything else, the good stuff takes work.

Diet

Poor nutrition and toxic ingredients prevent the body from working right. This includes the brain. The brain doesn’t work right when we don’t get the right nutrition. When the brain doesn’t work right, we feel like shit. This goes for the body, too, but I find it surprising how many people think that the brain’s ability to function properly, including (but not limited to), dealing with stress, remaining objective, and controlling anger, has nothing to do with physical health. Studies show that chemical toxins, both in food and in our environment, have a direct correlation to our overall wellbeing.

B Vitamins, D, oils

B vitamins, vitamin D, and healthy fats are absolutely essential to our wellbeing. Anyone suffering from depression or any other mental health issue needs to consider taking high quality supplements and changing their diet.

Staying in the Moment

We spend so much time wishing to be in a different time. With phrases like, “I can’t wait until…” and, “Remember when things were…” But we so often fail to realize that the moment you are in now could very well be a time you long for later.

Learning to stay in the moment has been absolutely life changing for me. There are rarely any problems in the present. Putting yourself in the moment, and staying there, is difficult at first, but it puts things in perspective. Exercise is a great way to do this. Yoga and meditation are also very good at teaching us to stay in the moment. Whenever life gets overwhelming, consider that the problems at hand are in the future. Right now, at this very moment, we have everything we need.

Perspective

Have you ever had a day where you felt great, and then you had one or two little things happen to you and all of the sudden your life sucks? Life is all about perspective. Our perspective is our life. And that means that our life, no matter where we are in it, is our choice. A terrible situation for one person can be an incredible experience for another. It all depends on perspective.

I was in prison, after having lost my daughter, my friends, the business I had just started, and what felt like my whole life. I had lost everything I thought I cared about except for my mom who came to see me every single chance she could. And in that prison, when I got to see my mother, I was filled with joy. I spent all week looking forward to visitation. Hugging my mom meant everything to me. I was in prison, and every day I got to hug my mom was amazing. This was after a year of being in jail where I could only see my mom through glass. Prison was wonderful because I not only got to hug her, I got to go outside, walk in the grass, exercise, eat raw vegetables, and feel the sun on my skin. I got none of this in jail. A year deprived of all of these pleasures put things in a whole new perspective. And I never let go of that.

It really is the little things in life that you’ll remember, that you’ll laugh about, that you’ll hold in your heart. No one (or at least, very few people) lays on their death bed agonizing over a bad business decision. Stay in the moment with a fresh perspective and look at the joy you can feel. It’s there. Sometimes you just have to look harder for it.

I Am Happy

I have been through more crap than most people who read this article would ever know. I carry pain with me at all times. There is a sadness that may never go away, due to a major loss in my life. But I am still, really, very happy. I love life. I live in the smallest home I have ever lived in. I have less stuff than I have ever had. I am starting Green Lifestyle Market and it is very stressful. But still, I am not only happy, I am joyful. I keep my diet clean. I exercise. I don’t give a damn what other people think of me because it’s none of my business, and I love being me. If you are reading this article, looking for your own happiness, I wish you the very best and sincerely hope you find it. I am sure it is with you, that it has always been with you, waiting for you all along.

Recommended Supplements:

• B-Complex #6  – Thorne Research
• Vitamin D – Thorn Complex
• Krill Oil
• Shillintong’s Total Nutrition Formula

Further Reading:

• Natural Remedies for Depression
• I’m Depressed
  
• Vitamin B6 and What You Should Know About it

A Step-by-Step Guide to Losing Weight the Healthy Way

I eat too much. I love food. I have my demons, and I’ve been fighting to be or stay in good shape my whole life. The way I stay in decent shape is by eating high quality food and exercising. For more on that, check out My Eating Disorder.

There are thousands of articles on the Internet on how to lose weight. Obviously, an Organic Lifestyle Magazine article will have a more natural slant than most articles, but this article is also a very conscious and clear, step-by-step guide that anyone can use.

When I was fat, I found myself overwhelmed with information on how to lose weight. Let me assure you, if you are obese, this article comes from a man who knows the battle we wage in our head as much as anyone. But like everything else you will learn about improving your health in Organic Lifestyle Magazine, weight loss is not a quick fix. Being healthy and thin is a lifestyle; it’s a journey. And you can actually lose weight very quickly in a healthy way when you do it right. But keeping it off means doing it right for the rest of your life.

The Healthy Mindset

Pleasure is short term. It comes in spades with happiness, but it comes at a price with consumption. And often that price exceeds the number on the price tag.

First and foremost, if our mind isn’t right, our diet isn’t right either. Allow me to be very blunt, dispel some myths, and then note some hard truths:

• If you are overweight, you eat too much
• If you are overweight, it’s not your thyroid, your genetics, or your spouse who cooks too well that is the problem
• If you’re overweight, you do not exercise the right way often enough
• If you’re overweight, there is no pill that is going to fix your weight without serious consequences
• If you’re overweight, there is no temporary diet that will allow you to lose weight and then go back to your old lifestyle
• If you’re overweight buying supplements, essential oils, or any fitness products on a late night infomercial isn’t going to take off the weight (though I do recommend B vitamins, vitamin D, and a nutrition powder)
• If you’re overweight, it is your fault

The world is a much, much better place when you’re in shape. People treat you better and take you more seriously when you’re thin. Everything is easier. Life feels better. It’s a massive difference. I used to believe that I was never going to be thin, that I was going to be stuck being fat my whole life. And I believed that people should treat me with the same amount of respect regardless. But while I have mixed emotions about this now, the fact is, everything becomes easier when you’re thin, from getting a promotion, to getting a date, to getting up the stairs. Everything.

I used to say my thyroid was slow, and this is why I was fat. My thyroid was slow. It was slow because I was eating too much, eating crap, and not seriously exercising.

I used to tell people that my whole family was fat, and it was just genetics. I knew that was a lie because my dad was skinny as a rail, but even if your whole family is overweight that’s due to learned behavior not genetics.

The mindset of a healthy person that struggled with weight loss is this:

I need to burn more calories then I consume to lose weight.

If your thyroid is slow, it’s going to be harder. If you smoke, it’s going to be harder. If your liver is toxic, it’s going to be harder. But it is still the same rule. It’s science. And while there are some variables, the bottom line is that to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume.

And if you’re like me, a binge eater, a stress eater, an “I don’t need an excuse to stuff my face sick” eater, than eat mindfully. Don’t go into that zone where you’re just stuffing your face. Stay in the moment, mindful and aware.

For Those Who Don’t Have Food Issues

There are plenty of people who don’t binge eat (or rarely do) and don’t even eat very much and still cannot seem to get into the skinny jeans no matter what they do. These people need exercise and they need more produce in their diet. And, in many cases, a liver detox.

Quick Weight Loss

It is totally possible to lose weight quickly and stay healthy. Forget the experts who tell you it is unhealthy to lose weight too quickly. It is unhealthy to lose weight in an unhealthy manner. If you’re eating healthy, and you’re not taking drugs to assist in weight loss, and you aren’t killing yourself in the gym, and if you’re getting enough sleep, it doesn’t matter if you’re losing 10 pounds a week or 2. Healthy is healthy.

If you follow the following steps strictly, you will achieve very quick and very healthy weight loss.

Healthy Weight Loss Plan

Step 1 – Start a Journal

Write down everything you’re eating. People kid themselves. People outright lie to themselves. People forget. Write it all down and hold yourself accountable.

Step 2 – Get a Scale and Measuring Tape

Every morning, at the same time, write down your weight and your measurements in your journal. In my experience and with those I’ve helped, the day you stop measuring and checking your weight is the day you’re off the wagon and back to gaining weight.

It is important to weigh yourself at the same time in the morning, nude. A common mistake to make when weighing oneself is to weight yourself one morning when you wake up and then the next morning after you’ve used the restroom, or had a glass of water, or had a bowel movement, etc. You can lose and gain a surprising amount of weight with these regular morning activities. For me, I always have a bowel movement in the morning, and I weigh myself at my lightest, which is before I eat or drink anything but after I use the bathroom. That’s how I keep it consistent.

Do not weigh yourself multiple times throughout the day! That’s just asking for drama.

And please, if you’re one of those people who think they’re fat when they are not, like when everyone tells you that you look great but you “know” you’re fat, you need to do just the opposite and throw away your scale!

Step 3 – Learn Proper Breathing

Proper breathing will help with stress relief, detoxification, and weight loss. For that information, check out How to Breathe. Do not skip this. Do not doubt its importance. This is life changing.

Step 4 – Exercise

Start exercising every single morning, and every single night, before bed. Exercise at least twice a day. Turn your body into a high metabolism fat burning machine that has no choice but to build muscle and burn fat.

Exercise for Weight Lose

Here is an example of a plan that I recommend, and it’s one I’ve implemented with great results.

In the morning do squats and pushups, and pull-ups if possible. If you can’t squat, stand up from a chair and sit back down many times. If you can squat, squat all the way down. Check out good form and practice it. If you can’t do pushups, do them on your knees. If you can get to some sort of pull-up bar but are unable to do pull-ups, set it up so you can stand up, and then use your arms as much as possible to let yourself go down.

With all the cheats, the idea is to progress more and more until you can do it the conventional way. And progression is key. If you did five squats yesterday, do five today. If you’re sore, do five anyways. When we are focused on weight loss, especially for people who have struggled with it their whole life, routine is key. The idea is to try not to get too sore the first day so you can keep slowly progressing every day, without taking a day off. Not taking a day off has two benefits. It tells both your mind and your body that you are an active person who lives a physically active lifestyle and it also keeps one day off from becoming two and then more.

At night, I like yoga to relieve the stress accumulated from the day and to help me sleep. You can also do more bodyweight exercises. But most importantly, stretch.

After two weeks of doing these bodyweight exercises it’s time to add some other exercise. Take 20 minutes to break a sweat every morning and every night. Breathe heavily. Exercise hard. An example, depending on your fitness level, would be 25 jump squats, 15 pushups, 5 pull-ups, and then 15 minutes of sprints. Make it intense, and make it build muscle and endurance.

Step 5 – Take Up an Active Lifestyle

If you like to go to the gym, got to the gym. This is in addition to the aforementioned workout program. If you have stairs and an elevator to choose from at work, take the stairs. If you sit at a desk all day, get out of the chair and bust out 20 squats when you’re feeling lethargic. Sit on a Swiss ball instead of a chair at work. Go hiking on the weekends with friends. Park as far away as possible from the entrance of the building. Walk faster than everyone else. Get a stress-ball to play with at work.

Step 6 – Eat Right

Eat Produce. Raw, fresh produce. Not just fruit, eat salads. Eat lots of salads. Read How to Be Healthy. Live, eat, and breathe a healthy lifestyle with lots and lots of produce. And don’t skip breakfast. My weight loss diet goes as follows:

• Pre-breakfast – 1 apple and a glass of stevia sweetened cranberry lemonade
• Breakfast – (after a workout) Large salad with a low-fat (or non-fat) homemade dressing
• Snack -1 Fruit
• Lunch – A smoothie with organic berries, leafy greens, and coconut water, and coconut oil
• Snack – A small salad or watermelon
• Diner – Brown rice and beans, or a quinoa stir fry with veggies

Breakfast is my largest meal; it keeps me full for hours and sets the tone for healthy eating all day. Dinner is smaller than breakfast or lunch. I also recommend coconut oil, pineapple, and avocados to anyone trying to lose weight.

Step 7 – Get More Nutrition

I don’t think people looking to lose weight should go out and buy a bunch of supplements and exercise equipment the first day. If you have the discipline to stick with the aforementioned routine, supplements are going to be much more beneficial. Plus, you may find you have a better idea of which supplements you need.

Almost anyone can benefit from Vitamin D, a B vitamin Complex, and Total Nutrition Formula. If you don’t get it from our sister site, Green Lifestyle Market, just make sure you’re getting very high quality supplements. They are not all created equal. And most supplements are actually counterproductive and toxic. Unfortunately, it’s a dirty business. Choose wisely.

Step 8 – Detox

All of the other previous steps can be taken one step out a time, either waiting one day, or one week to start the next. They can also be started all together on the first day. What works for you is what works for you. If you have the discipline to jump right in and start doing everything right, then go for it all on the first day. But if you are struggling with obesity and you do not suffer from any serious health problems at the moment, I recommend you wait and detox after a few weeks of living a healthy and physically active lifestyle.

I usually recommend starting a detox when you reach a plateau on your weight loss regimen.  This is also a good time to go ahead and get some supplements. While I so recommend supplementation, I don’t like to push it on people who aren’t ready to get healthy.  If you’ve stuck to the program for a few weeks, and you’re serious about losing weight, it might be the perfect time to choose a supplement wisely. You’ll be less likely to waste your money.  For a list of detox plans along with some supplement recommendations, check out Cheap and Easy Detox.

On the other hand, if you have serious health issues that should be addressed immediately, or you are someone who is totally and completely addicted to junk food, it might be best to fast with detoxification first.

If your liver is severely toxic, addressing liver toxicity will help speed up your weight loss. Your liver processes fats. A clean and healthy liver helps you deal with fats properly.

And finally, if your thyroid is slow, supplementation will be helpful with that, too. But I don’t recommend anyone get on thyroid supplements until after they have been exercising and living an active lifestyle for some time, unless their thyroid is so dead that getting out of bed is too difficult, and exercising is impossible. But for those who are hoping to find motivation in a bottle, it’s not that easy.

If you have any questions, or you need to talk about struggling with obesity, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or message me on Facebook.

A Complete, Step-By-Step Guide to Restoring Your Health and/or Staying Healthy

It’s simple. But in today’s world, it certainly isn’t easy. The hardest part about being healthy is learning how simple it can be. Simplifying one’s life can be very complicated.

Start Listening

Listen to your body. When you eat crap food there is an itch in your throat. That’s infection feeding off of the sugars and the damaged cells caused by one soda or one cookie. Headaches, skin itching, brain fogginess, fatigue, and aches and pains can usually be traced back to something you ate. If you are not yet in tune with your body, pay attention.

Don’t take painkillers. They make it too easy to continue the poor behavior. Healthy people, the truly healthy ones, deal with a headache naturally. They ask themselves what they did to get this headache so they don’t get it again, and they use natural means to remedy the pain. They don’t cover it up, causing other problems in the long run.

Accept the Fact That Your Health Is Up to You

Learn the absolute truth that your health is your responsibility and totally in your hands. A doctor cannot make you healthy. Neither can this article. Your health is totally and completely dependent upon your actions. There are very few people reading this article who don’t have the choice to be healthy. Most people think that their sickness is out of their control–a hand dealt by fate, bad genes, etc. This is so rarely true. Every single ailment has a natural cure. An absolute cure. And none of them work well without a very healthy diet as the foundation of one’s lifestyle.

And the truth is that a healthy diet cures most problems by itself. But there are those who are so sick, so toxic, that they need targeted nutrition.

Recommended: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Forget the magic pill. Almost everyone who comes to me asking what they can do to be well is looking for a shortcut. They’re looking for a few natural “tricks” that will allow them to keep smoking, or drinking soda, or eating fast food. And I know them. I know tons of them. And they work – for a little while. You can take an Advil for a headache, or you can take enough high quality Boswallia, but being healthy means avoiding behaviors that cause headaches and not blaming them on stress and/or genetics. When the body is healthy, I mean really healthy, it is amazing how well it can handle stress, allergens, and even environmental toxins without negative physical reactions.

Genetics are a predisposition. If your father died of a heart attack at 50 years old, that does not mean that you have to die at 50. It simply may mean that if you don’t take care of yourself your heart may be one of the first organs to go. That’s how genetics work.

It’s a hard truth for most to accept. It’s hard because it takes away the excuses and makes it much more difficult to live life in the conventional way, the way most have been raised believing is “normal.”

How To Eat Healthy

Cut Out All the Crap. No soda, coffee, smoking (anything), drugs (over the counter and prescription), alcohol, pre-packaged processed foods, fast foods, microwaving, and restaurants.

That last one is tough, I know. And that includes restaurants that claim to be healthy. They aren’t. Of the 65 restaurants I know of that claim to be healthy, two of them are. Even the healthiest options from the other 63 are prepared by cutting corners that render the food much less beneficial than if it was prepared by you at home. I do eat out. But I don’t do it often, and I know how to order healthy when I do. And every now and then I splurge. But I spent a lot of time eating perfectly, detoxifying, and learning to listen to my body. I also worked in a few restaurants that were supposed to be healthy, and know what to avoid. For the purposes of this article, it’s better to just give up restaurants for a month at least. If you want to be truly healthy, it’s time to prepare your own food. It’s time to learn raw food recipes. It’s time to cook with quinoa and brown rice. No more refined foods. Almost everything should be unadulterated. The few exceptions are certain foods that can or should be fermented, but that’s another article.

Recommended: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

No More Drugs

Smoking marijuana is not healthy. It’s got a ton of benefits, and there are way worse things you can do to your body that are totally legal. But smoking, smoking anything, introduces tons of carbon and free radicals into your body. And if the marijuana isn’t the pure high quality stuff, who knows what else you’re burning into your lungs. There are better ways to get all of the benefits that marijuana can provide.

As written above, no more over the counter medication. It’s not a small thing. One aspirin is not inconsequential. It does damage. I have yet to see anything at all healthy that is sold at a pharmacy, believe it or not. Everything in there is toxic! That is, unless you know of one that sells some organic produce. I haven’t found that drug store yet. Give up cough medicine, throat lozenges, and antacids; nothing you would buy at pharmacy is good for you or your health.

There is a catch that I am well aware of–birth control. Other than condoms, birth control is absolutely terrible for you. Pills, shots, IUDs, they are all absolutely terrible for your health and I have yet to find a natural birth control that works. I recommend condoms and/or spermicide. But I do understand that sometimes those aren’t the best options and we all have to figure out what works best for us. But I do not know of a way artificial hormones can be healthy. And IUDs have serious problems associated with them as well.

Another tough problem to deal with is the prescription drugs for serious issues such as mental illness or diabetes, or other conditions with dangerous consequences if/when we quit taking them. In most cases there is a way off of them. But it’s a long road, and it takes time, patience, and diligence. And while I feel everyone should take health into his or her own hands, this is an exception. Most people on medications such as these should have guidance; someone should be watching and making sure things are going well.

It can be very tough to find a professional who knows enough about health and knows how, or has the desire, to get someone off drugs. If you suffer from a physical health issue, take things slowly. And consider getting help if possible. If it’s a mental condition, and it would be dangerous to be off the medication, I do believe there is a way to get off of the pharmaceuticals and be healthy, but it will take a lot of time and a lot of help, and a lot of discipline for the rest of your life. There are a few cases were I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to take this route. The risks are so high.

No More Processed Foods

I know a lot of vegans. I only know two who are healthy. The rest are junk food vegans.

I know a lot of health nuts. It’s my field; it’s my circle. And while many of them don’t want to hear this, I only know of a handful that are really, truly healthy. Most choose to be “healthier.”

Understanding the difference between healthy and healthier is imperative. Cliff Bars are healthier than a Snickers bar. The latest raw food spirulina bar sweetened with dates and apple juice is healthier than the cliff bar. But what’s healthy is raw whole dates and apples. I haven’t found a mass marketed food bar that is actually healthy. I’ve only seen healthier. The few that I have seen that I would consider to truly be healthy are made by very small companies and sold at smaller individually owned health food stores. And still, the other 19 out of 20 of those sold at these places would fall under the “healthier” category.

Prepare your own food. Take the time. Health is taking time for yourself and your family. Enjoy cooking or preparing raw foods from scratch with your family, instead of choosing a lifestyle that demands quick and cheap meals.

I can cook most meals as fast as other people can cook out of a box. It takes practice, lots of time and energy put towards learning the skill. But there is nothing more important to one’s health than preparing one’s own meals.

Drink

Don’t drink coffee. It’s acidic. It’s not good for you. The caffeine wreaks havoc on your thyroid. It causes a lot of other problems. Soda should come with a warning label as serious as a pack of cigarettes. Don’t touch the stuff. Diet soda is worse. Artificial sweeteners are an absolute no. Truvia is bad too. No soda. No flavored water. No store bought juice.

Limit the fruit juice even when it’s fresh and pressed. It’s still refined and processed because you are removing the fiber. Fruit juice, at its best, is still a concentrated refined sugar product. Green apples are an exception, and can be mixed with vegetables, but juice green apples, beets, and carrots sparingly because of the sugar content.

No alcohol. Humans weren’t meant to ingest alcohol. A glass of red wine has benefits, but those benefits can be had with better choices. Drink water. And make sure it is filtered and toxin free whenever possible. Don’t worry about drinking “enough” if you’re eating right. More on that in a moment.

Exercise

When someone tells me that they don’t have time to eat right or to exercise, I ask them if they ever watch television, and if they have a Facebook or a Twitter account, and if they ever go out drinking with their friends. People are so addicted to convenience and pleasure that it all ends up being very inconvenient. I try to remember that what is convenient today may have a high price to pay, and I also try not to confuse pleasure with happiness.

The truth is exercise pays you back with time in more ways than one. I’m not just talking about the idea that you live longer. And exercise alone does not necessarily help one to live longer when their diet is poor. Exercise for 20 minutes in the morning and once your body becomes accustomed to it you get back much more than 20 minutes in that day. You get that time with mental clarity and the ability to handle stress more effectively. We are more efficient, more productive, and see things in a more positive way when fitness is a part of our lifestyle.

And 20 minutes done right is all I believe anyone needs. I workout for longer than 20 minutes on most days, but the benefits of 20 minutes of very intense ass-kicking exercise are massive. And while one could argue that 30 minutes would be better, I find that on a busy day when I feel that my time is limited, 20 minutes offers me the best return on my investment. I am a firm believer in HIIT training. High Intensity Interval Training. Google it if you’re unfamiliar. I also do yoga, I ride bicycles, I weight lift, I do exercise that last for hours and I do very short and intense circuit training. I mix it up. There are different benefits to all. That said, for anyone short on time, nothing beats HIIT.

If there is no time or money for the gym, that’s fine, because the best exercises in the world are bodyweight exercise! From yoga to squats to sprints, the variety is endless. I believe that squats are the most important exercise anyone can do, and you don’t need weight. If you’re too out of shape to squat all the way down, try what I call “get ups.” You lay down and you stand up (alternating between what side you get up on each and every time is very important). When one ‘s health is too poor do “get ups” then sit down and get up as many times as possible from a seat. As soon as the soreness goes away, try for at least one more than you did before.

Be careful not to do it if you’re out of shape, especially for those with issues that affect muscles and joints like fibromyalgia. It is very easy to get very sore when you’re out of shape, and a toxic body takes so long to heal that a tough workout can be counterproductive.

And while this is one area that I do not heed my own advice with often enough, I recommend everyone take up yoga. An intense 20 minute exercise routine that builds endurance and strength is essential, but yoga is a close second. I don’t make enough time for it, but I will, as it improves one’s life immensely when practiced regularly.

Fast and Detoxify

You can fast without detoxifying. You can detox without fasting. And you can fast and detox while getting lots of nutrition, too. I recommend the latter. A calorie fast is a great way to reduce and eliminate the urge to eat junk food and to eat too much. It helps to reset the taste buds so that fresh raw produce tastes as it should. It can eliminate addictions. And when one is looking to lose weight, the initial results from a fast can help inspire those to start eating well afterwards. But it can also be the beginning of a rollercoaster ride. Coming off the fast gently and slowly with raw and healthy produce is the proper way to ease off. For a few choices on affordable fasting and detoxifying check out Fast and Easy Detox. You can also add a high quality nutrition supplement to the detox and insure you are getting plenty of nutrition. I am a fan of calorie fasting, but not nutrition fasting.

Get Educated

Read all about natural health. The key phrases for Google are: natural health, alternative health, natural remedies, home remedies, holistic health, and alternative medicine. I will warn you, like everything else, most of the information on these topics is crap. But almost all of the information is better than conventional medicine, and even most of the lousy information on natural healing has a higher success rate than conventional medicine, believe it or not. Seriously, the statistics on conventional medicine are scary!

It takes time to get educated. You get better and better at weeding out the B.S. It needs to become a hobby. Health and the knowledge of it should be one of everyone’s favorite hobbies. Doesn’t that make sense?

A lot of people who go through a traumatic health experience dabble in alternative medicine. Then they say, “I tried everything.” The truth in many of these cases is that the person tried 19 conventional medical treatments and one or two alternative medical treatments, none of which included patience and the most important aspect of holistic healing, a lifestyle change. True natural health takes time, patience, and discipline. But once you find it, that magical balance when you are totally in tune with your body, it’s easy and surprisingly simple.

If you’re looking for alternative medicine to compliment conventional treatments, I firmly believe you are wasting your time. As I’ve stated, the only alternative medicine that works in the long run includes a nutrient dense, toxin free (or as close to it as possible) diet, which cannot possibly be very effective if one is consuming the incredibly toxic substances that pharmaceutical companies call medicine.

Take Supplements

There are two reasons I recommend people take supplements. One is that our food, even the organic produce, is grown in depleted soil using conventional farming practices. We have spent a long time developing our agriculture practices to grow food that looks good and lasts a long time on the shelves, without a care for the nutrition content or taste of the produce (and the two usually go hand and hand). For this reason I recommend a nutritional supplement like Total Nutrition Formula. I like to make my own. This article shows you how to make your own Total Nutrition Formula. I also recommend vitamin D, a B vitamin complex (a whole and complete B vitamin complex), and Body Balance. You can also easily make Body Balance yourself, if you are so inclined.

Some people need more nutrition than others. For instance, when someone’s thyroid is weak, which is very common with our lifestyle, there are a lot of supplements to choose from based on their specific needs.

The other reason I recommend supplements is to eliminate parasites and fungi. If you’re familiar with Candida, you know that it’s yeast, a fungus, that when left unchecked causes series problems. And almost everyone you know living the modern conventional lifestyle can contribute every single one of his or her health conditions, at least to some degree, to Candida. Many different kinds of parasites also affect many people in many ways.

And what most people don’t know is that Candida can grow anywhere. Yeast infections are not just vaginal. Athletes foot, sore throats, ear infections. Most infections are actually in part, if not completely, caused by Candida.

How to Know If You Have Candida

If you are prone to any kind of fungal infection (including athletes foot), if your tongue is white, if you regularly drink alcohol (which turns into simple refined sugar in the bloodstream feeding all the bad bugs), and if you have taken antibiotics recently and not addressed Candida, you have Candida overgrowth.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

Kill The Parasites

What do bacteria, virus, yeast, and parasites hate? Garlic, Oil of Oregano, Clove, and a healthy body. In addition, nothing is better at killing Candida than SF722.

Anyone who is getting started with natural health, and/or detoxifying, needs to take Oil of Oregano, a parasite cleaning supplement with clove, and SF722 for at least the first month. And most should continue with lots of garlic and SF722 thereon after if they are typically going to “cheat” and eat sweets every now and then. This is why I always have SF722 ready. I do “cheat” every now and then. You don’t have to always be perfect to be healthy, but most people have to be perfect for at least a month or two (in many cases more) before cheating doesn’t set them back as if they never cleaned up their diet in the first place.

The Most Important Supplement

Blood Detox. I believe everyone should take this. It’s one of the (if not, the) most powerful tinctures there is. Thick, sludgy, toxic blood comes with an unhealthy body. It contributes to all health issues. Thick and gross blood makes it harder to rid the body of any and all infection.

The Mindset

I think this is the hardest part. The healthy mindset sets apart those who are “healthier” and those who are truly healthy. People who will never get cancer, people who will never die in a nursing home, people who will have their cognitive abilities until the day they pass on, all understand that every aspect of our health in almost every single case is under our complete control.

Now comes the information that even most of my close friends who are health advocates will disagree with me on, but I know that the following is absolutely true. If you’re pregnant and have morning sickness, you’re not eating right. If you are nursing a baby who gets diaper rashes, you’re not eating right. If your nails break easily, you’re not eating right. If you have allergies, you’re not eating right. If you get headaches, you’re not eating right. If you have body odor and need to mask it with deodorant or perfumes, you’re not eating right. If you wake up in a fog, sore and achy, you are not eating right.  If you have ADHD or you are not sleeping well, chances are you are also not eating right. If you get cavities, you are not eating right. If you need any medication that is not for an emergency situation, you’re not eating right. The bottom line is, if you have health issues, you either are not eating right, or did not eat right for a significant period of time.

There are so few exceptions. Genetics is very rarely one of these exceptions. In almost every case, genetics are simply a predisposition, not a curse.

There are a very few people who try eating right but are so infected with Candida and various parasites that it seems as though there is nothing they can do to their diet to get healthy. That’s where the nutritional support listed above comes in.

A Truly Healthy Diet

The most important part of this whole article is the diet. Nothing else alone will get anyone to a healthy state, but for many, especially younger people, the right diet can be followed and everything else ignored to get one to a healthy physical condition.

Stop Feeding the Bad Guys – No Sugar, No other Crap

Candida makes everything worse. And it is fed by sugars, rancid fats, and damaged cells. It doesn’t take much! Even a little bit of sugar feeds it and keeps Candida thriving. It is hard to kill, and it comes back so easily. The reason Candida is so pervasive is that humans were not meant to eat refined sugar. This includes agave, fruit juice, sugar in the raw, and date powder. It’s all refined sugars (even “raw sugar” is a refined sugar). Even the seemingly healthiest health-nuts typically eat way too much sugar. This is the number one reason why so many of my health-food loving friends still have health issues. They cannot get away from sugar.

Bacteria, viruses, fungus, molds, and all manner of parasites love sugar and decaying cells. If you eat crap with sugar you feed these infectious organisms. If you eat crap food without sugar you damage your own cells, which feeds these organisms.

These organisms are not inherently bad. We need them. Our bodies and our planet need scavengers to take out the garbage. The trick is not to eat garbage causing our body’s cells to become garbage.

Avoid These Foods

Soy, pasteurized foods, homogenized foods, foods from conventional farms, prepared packaged snack foods, microwaveable foods, “ready-to-eat” foods besides fruits and vegetables, and foods in the health food section (because the real health food section is the produce section).

Also avoid MSG, GMOs, and anything refined that we wouldn’t normally eat wild in nature. I do make an exception for oils, not for health, but for taste. I use a very little bit in my salads and some of my cooking. I cook with high temperature oils, so I don’t eat spoiled rancid fats. I also get plenty of healthy fats from my diet. At times, when money is tight, and/or good produce is scarce, I do take a fat supplement. UDO’s Oil with DHA is my personal favorite. I also like the Nordic Naturals, Thorne, and Carlson brands for their commitment to quality.

If you choose to take a fat supplement, make sure it smells right. It should not smell rancid or fishy.

What to Buy

My diet, in order of what I eat most of to least of, when I can afford it is: fresh raw vegetables, fresh raw fruit, cooked vegetables, brown rice, various beans, quinoa, oatmeal, eggs, and fresh herbs and spices. With very few exceptions, this is my diet. The main difference between when I have a better income and when money is tight is that rice and beans move closer to the top of the list.

I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. I have in the past, but not anymore. There are plenty of great reasons to boycott Wal-Mart, but the point I am making here is their food is awful. I shopped there for groceries a long time ago before I knew better, and a few times since to prove a point. The produce is absolutely tasteless. There are few exceptions that come and go. For the most part, the produce at Wal-Mart is bland and nutritionally void.

Unfortunately, most grocery stores aren’t much better. A little, but not much. Find your local farmer’s markets. Buy produce at a supermarket as a last resort. And buy organic whenever possible, but don’t let that stop you from eating fresh raw produce as often as you can. The exception here is genetically modified foods. Read about GMOs here. Avoid them at almost any cost.

What’s better than buying food, if at all possible, is to grow your own food. It takes time to master the art. It’s not a quick and easy solution. It will likely take a few seasons to get things right, and most people who do grow much of their own food cannot grow everything they need to sustain a healthy diet with enough variety to get all of their nutritional needs meet. Though I do know a few people who forage with great success, but that’s another topic for another article.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Meat

If you do not want to be a vegetarian or a vegan, choose your meat carefully. Make sure it’s sourced from humane farms for ethical reasons and for good health. Chickens should be pasture raised and allowed to eat all kinds of bugs, grasses, and weeds. Cows should be free range too, grazing on grasses all day long. Healthy meat, from a healthy animal, cooked in a healthy manner, is not bad for you, contrary to what most vegans will tell you. But overcooked meat, meat that is cooked on too high a temperature, meat smothered in MSG and other toxic ingredients, and meat from unhealthy animals feed unhealthy unnatural diets is what most people eat. And that is how meat causes cancer.

How to Prepare Healthy Food

If you think my diet is bland, think again. I eat very well. People love my food. It’s really very good. And I am still learning. It’s fun. It takes time, but you get fast and you get good. I can make the most amazing rice and beans in a pressure cooker in 20 minutes. I do have to soak the beans first, and there is about 5 minutes of prep time chopping the onions and mincing the garlic, etc., but once the beans are cooking, I’m able to clean up the mess I made and relax well before it’s finished.

Make salads. Not your typical salads, but salads with lots of variety. My type of salads typically consist of spinach, arugula, collard greens, spring mix, shredded leeks, red onions, red cabbage, red bell pepper, rainbow chard, beet greens, grated beet root, graded carrots, grated zucchini, cucumbers, cilantro, pomegranate seeds, raisins, dried unsweetened cranberries, sesame seeds, and ground papaya seeds. A large salad with a wide variety of vegetables is the most important meal of every single day!

I mix it up. Sometimes I have other vegetables in there. Sometimes I shred an apple and throw it in. My dressing is a balsamic vinaigrette. For the recipe check out my article 80% Raw Food Diet.

You will find that when the bulk of your diet is made up of fresh raw produce, you don’t necessarily need to drink a lot of water. You get it from the produce. And your body will do a much better job than it used to of letting you know when you are thirsty.

When cooking foods, it is important to understand Advanced Glycated End Products. Don’t overcook your meat as this binds the proteins. Rare beef is not dangerous when it’s from a healthy cow.

I also love sprouts! They are super easy to make at home. Check out Five Reasons to Sprout.

Soaking and Sprouting

To be on the safe side, soak all dried beans for 24 hours. Soak all raw nuts for 24 hours as well, and then dry them before eating for taste if you want the familiar crunch. Don’t eat more than a handful of nuts a day except on special occasions. It is common for raw food enthusiasts to eat nuts with every meal. They make cashew cheeses and almond butters. Once you get the hang of these recipes, what you can make is simply incredible. But most raw food advocates eat too many nuts and I believe this is the most common cause of health issues for people who eat mostly or entirely raw. Raw junk food is much healthier than regular junk food, but it is still junk food.

Veganism

I wish everyone would eat vegan. I love animals. But I do not believe that meat is inherently bad for us. And I do know that most vegans are no more healthy (or only slightly healthier) than meat eaters. Junk food vegans, junk food vegetarians, and junk food health-nuts are people who eat prepackaged processed foods of the healthier variety. This isn’t healthy. At best, it’s healthier.

If you do choose to go vegan or vegetarian, you really don’t need nearly as much protein as we have been led to believe. And the protein you do need does not have to come from meat. There are plenty of all natural vegan bodybuilders. And a good protein supplement for those who do need more protein is the Nutrition Formula I also recommend as a multivitamin/mineral.

Get Enough Sleep

This can be very difficult to do when one’s health is poor. But the body needs to regenerate or else lots of health problems will remain and damaged cells feed the bad bugs. For more on sleep check out Ask OLM, Pure Sleep, and 10 Things You Can Do to Have More Energy. We have many articles.

No Shots

Vaccines and other shots are toxic. No matter how useful you think immunization are (and the reason they are crap is beyond the scope of hits article) they put toxic chemical preservatives in every single one of them. You cannot be as healthy as possible with that toxic crap in your system.

My Diet and Lifestyle

It’s simple. Eat like we would eat in nature’s most optimal conditions. If we were the very best, very fastest, very smartest humans before technology and alcohol were discovered, in the healthiest most abundant environment, how would we eat?

But like everyone else, I have my demons. I don’t eat perfectly. There are a few people I know who are healthier than I am. But only a few. And only two of all of the many doctors I know are healthier than I am. I find that when you focus your energy on healing other people all the time, it’s too easy to let your own health become secondary.

I rarely get enough sleep. This is my biggest issue. I spend much of my time trying to help people and trying to make the world a better place in the ways I believe I can, while giving my family as much of my time as possible. It’s a balancing act I am still getting the hang of. I know it’s difficult, balancing one’s life.

But our child is healthy. He’s progressing very quickly, without a single health issue or a cold or anything. At 7 months old he has not had one single health problem besides an occasional diaper rash when his mom’s diet has a little too much sugar (due to smoothies at work with sweetened almond milk or apple juice). Gabriel doesn’t get sick, I don’t get sick, and neither does his mother. We both wake up with energy and clarity. We can focus almost all day, every day. We are vibrant and full of energy. And we ride our bikes everywhere.

I still have a ways to go. I get better and better at practicing what I preach every day. Health is a journey, not a destination.

Must Reads:

• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet
• How to Make the Healthiest Smoothies – 4 Recipes