In our world where grains of every kind—gluten-free or not—turn to sugar when you eat them, quinoa is a fabulous superfood you should make part of your diet. With its high fiber content and good quality protein, plus a wide variety of powerful health-giving compounds—from polyphenols, saponins and phytosterols to free radical scavengers—it’s not only yummy, but a great meat-free food to grace your table. It has very little carb content compared to all those stodgy grains and is far lower on the dangerous glycemic index. SUPER NUTRIENTS Although it’s spelled “kwin-OH-a” you pronounce quinoa’s name as “KEEN-wa”. It has been a staple of South American diets for an amazing 4000 years. But not until 50 years ago did curious scientists start to investigate the nature of this food and discover that it comes as close as any other in the plant kingdom to supplying a vast array of the essential nutrients we humans need to thrive. This seed is high in magnesium to calm the body and reduce blood pressure. It brings you an abundance of good quality fiber when you eat it. Quinoa also contains a lot of anti-inflammatory compounds. It is safe to eat even if you have delicate digestion, inflammatory bowel trouble, celiac disease or gluten intolerance. And it’s brimming with important minerals and vitamins from magnesium, zinc and phosphorous to vitamin E, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6 and folate. This makes quinoa an excellent choice for people savvy enough to go for foods that are low on the glycemic index, low-carb dieters, vegans, and all of us who need to increase our fiber intake. THE NEW FUNCTIONAL FOOD Studies continue to report that eating quinoa brings us all sorts of health-promoting effects. It can help reduce high blood pressure, alleviate cardiovascular troubles, promote cellular energy production and act as a pre-biotic. Thanks to its high level of bio-active compounds, many also believe this unique natural food has the potential to help lower the risk of cancer, diabetes, and heart conditions. At the University of Milan, researchers discovered it also satisfies your appetite far better than, say, wheat or rice. It promotes a sense of fullness, helping to alleviate your desire for more food and helping to halt weight gain. The seeds of quinoa can also help reduce most of the negative effects that come from fructose on your lipid profile and glucose level. To discover what this wonderful non-grain can do for you, you need to know how to prepare and use it in your life. After all, the proof of any pudding is in the eating. And there is an art to preparing it. HERE’S HOW Make sure the quinoa you buy is fresh and organic. Most of the stuff in supermarkets is neither, so shop in good, reliable organic food stores. Read labels carefully to check for both before you buy. Stale quinoa is dusty and can taste “dead” since it has lost so much of its goodness through food processing or just sitting on shelves for too long. Rinse it well Do not be tempted to skip this direction. You must wash away the thin coating on these tiny seeds, otherwise they will taste bitter. You will need a very fine-meshed strainer so that the little seeds don’t slip through it in the process. Hold it under streaming water for two minutes while swirling around its contents. Time to Cook To 1 cup of your rinsed seeds add two cups of water, a pinch or two of sea salt or Himalayan salt, then bring to a boil. Reduce the heat as much as possible and let it simmer until it becomes tender. This usually takes about 15 minutes. You’ll be able to tell when it is cooked because the tiny grains will have become translucent and the germ of each seed will show up as a little spiral on its surface. You do not want to overcook it as this will make it mushy. Drain it Remove from heat and drain it using the same fine-mesh strainer. Then put the drained quinoa back in the pot, cover it and let it sit without any heat for another 15 minutes. This helps dry it a bit so it does not become clumpy. Time to serve Aerate it with a fork. It should look light and feel fluffy, and you should begin to see the way the germ is separating from the seed itself. Its texture is very much like that of rice or couscous. Serve immediately You can eat it as a porridge with a handsome glob of butter on top, add it to a casserole, a curry, or the way you might serve rice on a plate with other vegetables. MORE FABULOUS FAUX GRAINS Quinoa is but one of the amazing “false” grains which have none of the negative effects of grains and cereals. You can make all sorts of wonderful things using them, from muffins and pancakes to loaves and pilaf. Learn more about all of these by clicking here, and enjoy! Do let me know how you get on, and if you discover any of your own wonderful recipes using this gem of a faux grain, so we can share them with other people in the future.

Are you one of the thousands of people who reach for artificial “low-calorie” sweeteners—such as aspartame or saccharin—to add to your tea or coffee, in the belief that they can help keep you from getting fat? If so, this is hardly surprising. We have had this lie shoved down our throats through advertising and the media, thanks to the lobbying of money-hungry companies keen to sell the sickly sweet chemicals they peddle. Independent research into the dangers of artificial sweeteners rarely sees the light of day. It can be a serious challenge to find unbiased data amongst the multitude of misinformation that is littered across cyberspace. It’s essential that you learn the truth about these destructive substances, as well as what they’re really doing to your health and your waistline. APPETITE STIMULANTS Independent studies have turned up some surprising results when analyzing the relationship between the use of artificial sweeteners and obesity, although as yet few people know about this. Far from helping you lose weight, these sweeteners actually stimulate your appetite, causing cravings and telling your body to “store fat”. How does this happen? When you taste something sweet, your body expects calories to immediately follow, just as they do when you eat sugar. This triggers your appetite. However, since the calories don’t follow, the sensation of hunger remains. You begin to crave more sweet-tasting, carb-rich foods. This effect is most marked in aspartame, though it also applies to the other common sweeteners such as saccharin and acesulfame potassium. HORMONE HAVOC This alone is bad enough, but it’s only half the story. The other half concerns aspartame’s effect on the key hormone insulin, responsible for regulating fat metabolism. Although vigorously denied by the “research” of the manufacturing companies, recent studies indicate that aspartame can actually trick your pancreas into releasing insulin—despite the fact that aspartame does not alter blood sugar. It can do this simply by activating our “sweet” taste receptors. Since the elevated insulin finds no blood sugar to combine with, this increases your hunger even more, and makes your cravings worse. The result of all this? You’re more likely to a) eat more of the sugary foods you’re craving, setting up a vicious circle, and b) lay down more fat stores, due to the hormonal fluctuations happening in your body. A new study published in the January 2013 issue of science journal Appetite reported that, between groups of rats fed either aspartame, saccharin or sugar, the aspartame and saccharin groups gained more weight than the sugar group—and this was unrelated to intake of calories, since they all ate the same foods. BAD NEWS FOR DIABETICS Not only is this terrible news for those trying to shed fat. It also has dire consequences for the ever-growing group of humans afflicted by diabetes. Many diabetics have been led to believe that these sweeteners are a healthier alternative than sugar, when this too is based on a fallacy. Sugar itself, in all its forms, is also toxic to the human body. And it too is an arch enemy to good health and weight loss. (See Robert Lustig’s excellent lecture on the dangers of sugar here.) But unlike sugar, low-calorie sweeteners are often sold as “diabetes-safe.” This too is a dangerous lie. As we have already seen, consuming aspartame can elevate insulin levels abnormally. The more often this happens, the more the body becomes resistant to this hormone. The insulin resistance that follows will lead to—or worsen—diabetes, along with obesity and many chronic degenerative conditions. FURTHER DANGERS As if you needed any more reason to stay away from artificial sweeteners, get this: Aspartame is composed of two separate components, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Phenylalanine quickly degrades into methanol, which in turn becomes formaldehyde—yep, that stuff lab specimens, and dead bodies are stored in—and accumulates in our cells. When levels of this nasty chemical get high enough in the system, it can cause all sorts of dangerous effects. The “Aspartame Consumer Safety Network Fact Sheet” warns of the following potential symptoms: “headaches, nausea, vertigo, insomnia, numbness, blurred vision, blindness and other eye problems, memory loss, slurred speech, depression, personality changes, hyperactivity, stomach disorders, seizures, skin lesions, rashes, anxiety attacks, muscle cramping and joint pain, loss of energy, symptoms mimicking heart attacks, hearing loss and ear ringing, and loss or change of taste.” All that, and it won’t even help you lose weight! NATURE’S SWEET OFFERINGS So what can we turn to now that both artificial sweeteners and sugar are off the menu? Fortunately for those of us with a sweet tooth, nature has provided a delicious and safe alternative: Derived from the sweet leaf plant, Stevia, in its natural state, is the best no-calorie, health-supporting natural sweetener on the planet. Even though it’s sweeter than sugar, its taste has a slower onset and longer duration, meaning it doesn’t carry the same risks as aspartame and the other artificial sweeteners. Not only is it safe—it is actually good for you, and may even help enhance glucose tolerance and improve insulin sensitivity. Another natural alternative safe for occasional use is coconut sugar, derived from the blossoms of the coconut palm. It has a high nutritional content, containing potassium, magnesium, zinc and iron, as well as Vitamins B1, B2, B3 and B6. It has a low glycemic index, so is considered safe for diabetics. It has a rich flavor that has been compared to toffee. Coconut sugar, which is currently bringing high profits to both coconut farmers and retailers especially in the US, has one major drawback, however. What nobody is warning consumers about is that coconut palm trees cannot produce both coconuts and coconut palm sugar, which is gleaned by drawing the sap out of the tree. When the sap is used to make coconut sugar, the flower buds, which are dependent on the tree’s sap enabling them to form, wither and die so the tree cannot grow coconuts. Because the tree can no longer produce coconuts and all the precious products made from them it can suffer and die. In short, producing coconut palm sugar is not a sustainable industry. Despite experiments in some places to make use of coconut trees one year as sap producers and the next as a coconut producer, this remains a serious challenge worldwide. STEVIA—IT’S GOOD FOR YOU An exotic herb which grows in subtropical areas of South America, stevia is replete with non-caloric sweet molecules. This is the reason for its sugary flavor. Stevia has sweetened herbal drinks since Pre-Columbian times. Its properties were first recorded by a botanist named Antonio Bertoni in 1887, who wrote about ways the natives of Paraguay used it. Others have discovered stevia in the past fifty years and made good use of it. Japan and the United States have done extensive research and safety testing on the plant. Their research shows that this marvelous sweet herb is non-toxic, safe for diabetics and beneficial for weight loss as well as daily use for yourself and family. More good news: Stevia is not a source of nutrition for bacteria in the mouth, nor for yeasts and fungi such as Candida albicans in the body. A few years ago, following some rather bogus animal research promoted by Monsanto—who produce much of the artificial sweeteners in the world—the European parliament banned the sale of stevia in Britain and Europe. There is not much pressure at the moment to lift that ban. In the meantime, if you live in the EU, you can nevertheless order stevia online from herbal shops, either in your own country or another European country, including the UK, without difficulty. It is widely available in shops and stores in the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand and most other countries of the world. Stevia is great for all sorts of reasons on Cura Romana. How sweet is Stevia extract? Stevia extract is 200 times sweeter than sugar. Add a pinch to drinks like coffee or tea. Dilute in water when you are using it to make a salad dressing or dessert. How many calories are in Stevia extract? None. Stevia extracts have zero calories, zero carbohydrates, zero sugar, zero fat and zero cholesterol. Can Stevia extract replace sugar in the diet? Yes. Refined sugar is virtually devoid of nutritional benefits and, at best, represents empty calories in your diet. Stevia is natural, much sweeter than sugar, and has none of sugar’s unhealthy drawbacks. Can Stevia replace artificial sweeteners in the diet? Yes! Stevia is the only a safe, calorie-free, all-natural alternative to artificial or chemical pharmaceutical sweeteners in the world. Will Stevia raise my blood sugar levels? Not at all. In fact, according to some research, it may actually lower blood sugar levels. Can I use Stevia if I am diabetic? Yes. Stevia is a great addition to a healthy diet for anyone with blood sugar problems since it does not raise blood sugar levels. I’d advise you to stay away from any form of artificial sweeteners including those recently being marketed as “natural stevia” which are, in truth, distortions of the real thing. Here are the best and most useful forms of stevia you will find anywhere. Both can be ordered direct from iHerb no matter where you are in the world. BEST LIQUID STEVIA Wisdom Natural, SweetLeaf, Liquid Stevia, English Toffee Sweet Leaf liquid stevia with all natural flavors is convenient and easy to use. As a supplement, add this nutritious stevia to water, tea, coffee, milk, sparkling water, protein shakes, plain yogurt or anything else you can imagine. It comes in many different flavors including lemon but English Toffee flavor is the best by far. Buy English Toffee Stevia BEST GRANULATED STEVIA Spoonable Stevia by Stevita uses only stevia extract with at least 95% pure glycosides (extremely sweet tasting ingredients of the Stevia herb leaves), and a little erythritol, a crystal granulated naturally produced filler found in fruits, vegetables and grains. It is best for baking and sprinkling. Buy Stevita GOOD COCONUT SUGAR Navitas Naturals, Coconut Sugar, 16 oz This coconut sugar is top of the range. It’s produced in Indonesia where farmers have harvested the nectar from coconut palm trees for herbal medicine and food for centuries. This product contains 100% pure evaporated coconut sugar that is certified organic, kosher and vegan. Buy Coconut Sugar ORDERING FROM IHERB.COM: They ship all over the world very cheaply, and their products are the cheapest and best in the world. Get your order sent to you via DHL. I use them for almost everything no matter where I am.

Every human being is brimming with creative power. Creativity lies at the core of what it is to be fully alive and vital, so each of us can express our unique visions as gifts to all life. I believe it’s time to set free our indestructible passion to create from the core of our being. I believe that we are all being called to do this, not only for our own sake but also for the sake of all beings and the Earth itself. I am excited about answering the call. Are you? Creativity is a mind-body-soul experience. It demands that you have access not only to your intelligence and to the layers of your psyche of which you are consciously aware, but also to the whole of your being, including what is commonly called the unconscious mind. Most of us have been taught to ignore the unconscious parts of us. To some degree this may be a result of Freud’s insistence that the deepest layers of a human being are a repository of repressed desires that need to be codified, pathologized, and treated. It is this belief that, for better or for worse, has propelled tens of millions of men and women into psychotherapy in the past hundred years. As a result, most of us still live with the lion’s share of our potential for creativity and freedom unavailable to us. Meanwhile, beneath the vast ocean of what it is to be fully human, our creative powers slumber is crying out for us to awaken it. Then, when the founder of depth psychology, Carl Jung, came along, he announced what every creative artist discovers for himself or herself: Freud’s “fearful unconscious” is in truth a realm replete with visions, archetypes, insight, and soul—all of which are fuels for our creative fires. Once we embrace the depths of our psyche and learn to work with them, we can access the gifts they hold and live our lives from a foundation of authentic freedom and power. Jung insisted that a person’s interior life not only merits attention but also calls for dedicated exploration, which is exactly what he himself did and then recorded in his fascinating and posthumously published Red Book. Thanks to more than half a century of exploration, Jung came to see the human psyche—both conscious and unconscious—as an inherently spiritual and fluid medium—a magnificent ocean in which we humans can fish for enlightenment, creativity, healing, and personal transformation. Jung then went on to discover that the dreams, myths, and archetypes that reside in our unconscious are highly personal to each of us. We are also given access to what Jung called the collective unconsciousness; that is, to archetypal realities that are not only personal but also universal. Now this is revolutionary stuff. It speaks of truths few people ever consider, unless they happen to be one of the visionary artists, thinkers, or scientists who discover this for themselves in the course of their work. The men and women who do discover all this for themselves are never willing to buy into the general consensus of what is taken to be reality. They prefer to strike out on their own, determined to enter uncharted territories and discover for themselves what treasures can be found there. Then they tend to bring these discoveries back, using them to fuel their work and transform their own lives as well as the lives of others. Invariably, when someone is courageous enough to question the stuff that the rest of us take to be true, they discover whole new realities. I have a passion to explore the nature and power of creativity from every angle possible in this blog. I hope you will join me through your own journeys.

To understand cellulite it is important to understand how your flesh is structured. Let's look at the deeper layers first. They are known as subcutaneous tissues. In your thighs, these are made up of three layers of fat with two planes of connective tissue and ground substance in between. This brings us to one of the interesting things about cellulite: It is almost always a female complaint. With a very few remarkable exceptions, men simply do not get it. In part this is hormonal. A woman's body is rich in female hormones such as oestrogen, which encourage the laying down of fat. (For years farmers injected oestrogen-like substances in cattle and chickens to fatten them rapidly for market.) This is also why cellulite tends first to appear during times of intense hormonal change such as puberty, pregnancy or when she goes onto a birth control pill. In part, however, cellulite is a woman's condition because the basic construction of subcutaneous tissue of the thigh differs in men and women. In women, the topmost subcutaneous layer is made up of what are termed large 'standing fat-cell chambers', which are separated by radial and arching dividing walls of connective tissue attached to the overlying tissue of the dermis or true skin. The uppermost part of the subcutaneous tissue of men is different. It is thinner, and there is a network of crisscrossing connective tissue walls which makes it harder for a man's body to lay down large fat cells and to trap stored wastes and water in the tissues. Also the corium - the connective tissue structure between the true skin and the deeper layers or hypodermis - is thicker in men than in women. You can check on these differences yourself by carrying out a 'pinch test'. It is only pinching the thighs of women that results in the 'mattress phenomenon' with its pitting, bulging and deformation of skin. Pinch the thighs of most men and you will get gentle skin folds or furrows, completely without bulges or pits. beware the ravages of time Age-related changes in women also encourage the build up of cellulite. For instance, as women get older, their skin gets progressively looser and thinner. This encourages the migration of fat cells into this layer. The connective tissue walls between the chambers of fat cells also get thinner allowing the fat-cell chambers to enlarge - a condition known as hypertrophy. This progressive thinning of connective tissue structures is another major factor in the development of cellulite and creates the granular texture and buckshot feel of much cellulite-riddled flesh. An examination of cellulite tissue under the microscope also reveals that a number of histological changes have taken place. They include a distension of the lymphatic vessels of the upper skin, for instance, and a decrease in the number of elastic fibers. The circulation of blood, too, has been slowed, and the connective fibers have undergone a sclerotic hardening, so that the fluids and the wastes they contain become trapped in an unpleasant network which pinches nerve endings (hence the pain in well developed cellulite) and create stasis in the tissue - rather like a polluted swamp - where energy exchange is reduced. The whole area takes on a deadened quality - a sure sign of poor body ecology.

Many years before Ayurvedic medicine arrived in the West, I made a journey to hospitals throughout India to learn all I could about this ancient healing tradition. I was bowled over by all the marvelous things I did discovered. When I arrived at the Ayurvedic Hospital in Kerala—land of the coconuts, I found thousands of acres, interspersed with twisting waterways lined with organic coconut trees. Doctor’s there taught me how inexpensive organic coconut oil can heal your whole body using a technique which is called “oil pulling.” I am excited about sharing this with you. Oil Pulling There are literally thousands of types of bacteria in your mouth, including Streptococcus mutans—an acid-producing bacterium that is a major cause of tooth decay. During oil pulling, coconut oil produces acids which breakdown these toxic pathogens. When you take coconut oil into your body through oil pulling, your system converts one important ingredient, lauric acid, into monolaurin, which has antibacterial, antiviral and antiprotozoal properties. In truth, coconut oil contains the largest amount of lauric acid of any fruit or vegetable on the planet. Monolaurin is a monoglyceride with the ability to destroy negative invaders in the body that have a lipid coating. The lipid-coated viruses and bacteria that it attacks include the HIV virus and the influenza virus as well as a number of other pathogenic bacteria and protozoa. Another ingredient in coconut oil, capric acid, also boasts antimicrobial properties. Finally, coconut oil is about 66% medium chain triglycerides or MCTs. These offer a huge variety of health benefits, including sating your appetite. Powerful Detoxifier The oil pulling technique has been used for some 5000 years, not only because it reduces plaque in the mouth, but as a means of healing conditions throughout the whole body—from inflammation, pain in the joints, chronic fatigue, sinusitis, back pain and diabetes, to migraine, PMS, and chronic skin problems. Oil pulling is powerfully detoxifying to the body as a whole. The mouth is home to billions of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other parasites and other toxins which undermine health and can trigger disease. It is these beasties and their toxic waste products that create gum disease and tooth decay. They are then passed on to the rest of the body. The immune system is constantly fighting off these pathogens. When we become overloaded from excessive stress, poor diet, or environmental toxins, they leak into the whole system and can create secondary infections, as well as a wide variety of other health issues. Pathogenic oral bacteria, and the toxins that they produce, harm far more than just your mouth. They circulate through the bloodstream and are carried all over the body. reduce plaque by at least 50% Coconut oil is highly responsive to temperature changes. In a cool room it goes solid. But set it in the sunlight or immerse a jar of it in hot water for a few minutes and it will turn into a crystal clear liquid oil. Oil pulling is believed to reduce plaque by at least 50%. It involves rinsing your mouth with coconut oil, much the way you would use a mouthwash. Even in its solid form the coconut oil will quickly change into a white liquid as it responds to the heat of the mouth. So how do you do oil pilling? You’ll need a container of organic raw coconut oil that is natural and has not had any fragrance taken out of it. Put a teaspoon to a tablespoon of oil in your mouth. It will probably be in its solid state. But it will melt as soon as you get it in your mouth. Swish the oil around in your mouth for around 10 to 15 minutes. Then spit it out completely. Finally, brush your teeth. This is best done twice a day after which you brush your teeth. You must never swallow the oil. You see, by the time you’ve done your oil pulling exercise each time, the oil will have become loaded with bacteria, toxins and mucus. You must then spit it out. I did oil pulling for eight months, after which my teeth were whiter, my breath was fresh and my tongue and gums had a healthy pink color to them. I was so pleased that I figured “I probably don’t need to do oil pulling any more”. So I stopped. After about three months, I realized that I was getting some slight swelling in my mouth. So I resumed oil pulling and have continued ever since. I actually enjoy it. So will you I predict.

YOU NEED MINERALS Your body cannot make minerals. It has to take them in, in a good balance, from the foods you eat. In addition to nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, it requires magnesium, manganese and calcium, selenium, zinc, copper, iodine, boron, molybdenum, vanadium and other elements—many as yet undiscovered—to stay healthy. These elements need to come from the foods you eat. Generally they do, when foods are grown organically in healthy, traditionally fertilized soils. But they are increasingly missing and unbalanced in the foods we buy today thanks to our legacy of chemical farming. High-tech farming methods have destroyed so much of the organic matter in our soils that fruits and vegetables no longer contain a good quantity of minerals and trace elements. Commercial food processing wipes out most of what’s left. Buy organically grown fruits and vegetables whenever you can. Herbs can help redress the balance. Take dandelion, for instance. Dandelion is rich in iron, silicon, magnesium, sodium, potassium, zinc, manganese, copper and phosphorus in an unbeatable synergistic balance. Put dandelion leaves in your salads. Drink dandelion tea often. It will help restore your body’s lost minerals, and you will also be getting an extra dose of vitamins A, B, C and D in the bargain. DRINK THE DANDELIONS Dried dandelion root is easy to come by—you can even find it in tea bags and is one of the great mineral supplements. Or you can dry your own and grind it in a coffee grinder or pestle and mortar. DANDELION TEA HERE’S HOW Use 2-3 teaspoons of dried dandelion root to one cup of water. Simmer it in a pan for fifteen minutes. Strain. Drink as much as three cups a day. GIFTS FROM A HORSE’S TAIL Silica is another essential trace element. Our daily requirement for it is high, at 20-30 mg. Unless we eat organically grown food, we simply don’t get enough—often not even when we do. Silica binds to minerals needed for strong nails, hair, and bones, making them available to our bodies. It is also essential to the production of our skin’s connective tissues—collagen and elastin. The delicate horsetail plant is one of the world’s earliest forms of plant life, and one of the richest sources of bioavailable silica you will find anywhere. Horsetail also boasts an amazing 15 other minerals and is a good source of bioflavonoids too. Drink horsetail tea as often as three times a day. HORSETAIL TEA—HERE’S HOW Put 2 teaspoons of the dried plant in a tea pot. Pour a cup of boiling water over it and allow it to infuse for 15-20 minutes. Strain, and drink. Be patient when learning to use the plant powers. Remember, it may have taken years for your body to become depleted in essential minerals and trace elements. A few weeks of herbal help is not so long to wait to restore your nails, hair, skin and body as a whole to a healthy balance. Besides, it is so much fun to learn to use plant power. The gifts these humble plants offer us are worth their weight in gold, and the plants are everywhere—just asking us to get to know them and use them.

I once spent the night lying on a platform above an animal watering hole, staring into the vastness of space beholding the great, fathomless mystery of the African sky. Aaron, my youngest son, then three years old, lay curled up next to me like a kitten lost in his dreams. Dazzled by the inconceivable expanse of the sky whose darkness was so overcome with the light from billions of stars that lived in it, I lost myself in timelessness and infinity. That night, I came not to think or to wonder but to know, with absolute certainty in every cell and molecule of my body, that this cosmic world was not something separate from myself, nor I from it. We were, in a way I will never be able to understand rationally, one being. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. Like the proverbial iceberg, most of us live with the lion’s share of our potential for freedom, joy, creativity and authentic power submerged beneath a sea of unknowing. We go about our day-to-day duties and pleasures conscious only of what comes to us through our five senses. How does it taste and feel? What does it sound like? What do we see in front of our eyes? Meanwhile, beneath the vast ocean of consciousness that constitutes what it is to be fully human, our greater selves hibernate, waiting to be awakened. Sometimes—when we fall in love perhaps, or when we are faced with an event of life-shattering proportions like a critical illness or the death of a close friend—a submerged area of our being erupts in magic or horror, and often in surges of passion, energy and beauty. Then, for a time, the mundane quality of everyday life is replaced with a sense of expanded being. Not only do we feel more alive, we wake up to find that familiar things—the tree that stands outside a bedroom window, the cat that greets us when we come home each day, a simple shell we picked up and slipped into our pocket while walking on the beach—have taken on a luminosity which we can’t explain. Other times, without warning while listening to music or walking down a city street, we are suddenly gripped with a sense that the world is far greater than we ever imagined it to be, and a certainty that all we see around us somehow is us. While the experience lasts, everything seems right in the world. Then, like the sun at the point of setting, everything fades beneath the mundane horizon, leaving only the faintest wisp of color to remind us that we once stood in its glory, felt its rays on our bodies and knew that being at one with the universe brings a sense of meaning to our own life and to the lives of others that is simply indescribable. The greatest desire I have is to live my life conscious of the oneness to which we all belong. After all, the magnificence of that African sky not only stretches out to infinity above us, it lies within us, calling to us—asking us to discover that it is who we are.

Let me share with you some exciting stuff—all about energy. This is where life breaks all the rules. Biological science has only just begun to penetrate the mysteries of life energies and the body’s energy fields which enable us to maintain health and to heal illness. Until now, energy has remained the province of mystics, sages and visionary physicists. When it comes to establishing radiant health and maintaining it, energy is where it's at. There is a mysterious lifeforce—expressing itself through a multitude of energetic fields within and around all living things. In its positive expressions, it governs growth, nourishes us, sustains us, and deep-cleanses our bodies. It also regenerates our cells and makes us feel happy just to be alive. This ineffable lifeforce is found in abundance in all living things, from bananas and beetles to hedgehogs and flowers. Different cultures call it by different names. The Indians speak of it as Prana. In Polynesia it is known as Mana. The Chinese call it Qi. These words describe various forms of subtle energy, which, at least until the advent of quantum physics, have remained virtually unknown to Western science. Yet throughout history, all forms of traditional medicine—from Paracelsus to Chinese and Ayurvedic herbalism—have worked with it. It is important to get to become aware of your body’s energy fields and how they can be directed to enhance our experience of health and life. LIGHT IN OUR CELLS More than seventy years ago, the eminent scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on oxidation and for isolating Vitamin C, asked himself a question. He then spent almost every working moment of his life in an attempt to answer it. He is often quoted as having posed the question at a dinner party: “What is the difference between a living rat and a dead one?” According to the laws of classical chemistry and physics, there should be no fundamental difference. Szent-Györgyi’s own reply was simple yet revolutionary—“Some kind of electricity.” Early in the twentieth century, quantum physics established that wave particles in living systems behave as biophotons. A biophoton is a proton in the visible and ultraviolet spectrum that biological systems, like the human body, emit as bioluminescence—electromagnetic waves in the form of light. This bioluminescence regulates and controls enzyme activities, cell reproduction and the creation of vitality. Experiments, such as those reported in the March 1995 issue of Scientific American by Brumer and Shapiro, helped to establish the importance of these energetic particle/wave behaviors in organisms. QUANTUM MAGIC Like light bulbs, all atoms and molecules give out radiant bioenergies, both harmonious—which produce health and healing in the body—and destructive. When they become scrambled, disordered and chaotic they produce illness. Sadly conventional science still tends to ignore or dismiss the way interference wave forms from negative sources—generated by cell phones, smart meters, and other electronic emissions as well as negative thoughts and feelings, internally manufactured toxins or external exposure to environmental pollutants—disrupt the body’s harmonious biophoton energies. They undermine homeostasis on which our health and protection from degenerative illnesses depend. The behavior of these light emissions reveals the functional state of the body— how healthy or unhealthy a body is. For instance, cancer cells and healthy cells of the same type show huge differences in biophotons emitted by them. There is currently a lot of investigation taking place to determine how we can use various kinds of bioenergies constructively to support health and slow degeneration. Some of this is considered “hard science”, from electromagnetic techniques now used to rejuvenate bone and tissues, to electronic devices for diagnosing disease. But a lot of it is shunned by conventional medicine, with its commitment to prescribing drugs. The use of visualization, for instance; focused intention, prayer and other forms of spiritual healing, as well as energy-based martial arts like Aikido, Tai Chi and Thought Field Therapy. Within the next few decades we are going to hear more and more about biophoton therapies. For now, we can still make practical use of the knowledge that has already emerged about how to change our emotional and mental states, and how to heal the body by altering our energy fields through consciousness alone. POWER OF CONSCIOUSNESS Like all biological organisms, we human beings are not only immersed in energy fields. Our bodies, our minds, our cells, our genes—every part of us, in a very real way, is made of pure energy. Our fields are constantly contracting and expanding as our thoughts, diets and lifestyles change. The aim of any form of natural treatment, from dietary change or detoxification to hydrotherapy, exercise and meditation, is to enhance positive bio-energies in an organism and to create greater order in your body, biochemically, psychologically, and spiritually. However, the biochemical view of health and sickness continues to be materialistic. It is based on the assumption that life can be entirely explained by an understanding of the laws of chemistry and physiology. It concerns itself about the way inorganic chemicals, like pharmaceutical drugs, act on a biological system to treat symptoms. Indeed, this is the whole point and purpose of biochemistry and molecular biology—the now-outdated scientific models that are still worshipped by conventional allopathic medicine. The only problem is that the living human body breaks all the rules. To get full benefit from what is now known about life processes, health and healing, we must go beyond the biochemical model. How? First, by asking a few provocative questions, like “What is the nature of this life force energy?” And, “How can we enhance and preserve it?” Second, we need to learn more about energetic models at the leading edge. These include models built on cutting-edge physics, biophoton data and information theory as applied to biology. These advanced paradigms encompass whole new realities. They also offer powerful tools and techniques for expanding consciousness and directing our intentions to bring effective healing and personal transformation. I love this quote by Richard Tarnas. It expresses so beautifully the conundrum that mainstream science has found itself in for scores of years, yet which it works hard to deny. “By the end of the third decade of the twentieth century, virtually every major postulate of the earlier scientific conception had been controverted: the atom as solid, indestructible, and separate building block of nature, space and time as independent absolutes, the strict mechanistic causality of all phenomena, the possibility of the objective observation of nature. Such fundamental transformation in the scientific world picture was staggering, and for no one was this more true than the physicists themselves.” ORDER FROM CHAOS In physics, the first and second laws of thermodynamics continue to rule supreme. Both laws focus on the nature of energy in the universe. They attempt to understand events in the universe by studying the kind of energy changes that accompany them. The second law of thermodynamics is particularly important in relation to health and healing. It is called the law of entropy. It states that, left to their own devices, all things in the universe become disordered: Iron rusts, buildings crumble, dead flowers decay, humans lose homeostasis, degenerate and die. In the language of physics, this is described by saying that everything tends toward maximum entropy. Entropy describes a state of maximum disorder—chaos if you prefer—in which all useful energy has been decreased. What is so remarkable about us human beings—and what has been a great puzzle to many of the world's finest minds—is this: Despite the second law of thermodynamics, we, like other living organisms, are able to remain highly ordered. In fact, so long as we are alive, our bodies are maintained in a condition of fantastic “improbability,” despite the endless destructive processes continually going on in and around us. More than that, there is every indication that a healthy body—a healthy mind as well—is continually involved in creating yet more order. This we do both individually—thanks to the repair functions of our cells and enzymic systems—and also viewed as a species, since from an evolutionary point of view, over time, all living species differentiate into ever more complex and highly structured organisms. NEGENTROPIC WONDERS Unlike the rocks and nails in the inorganic world, living organisms are both capable of becoming and of remaining superbly ordered thanks to their capacity for continuously recreating homeostasis and wholeness through energy. This is how we maintain our bodies at a high degree of health. Of course, our “ordering ability” makes no sense to dyed-in-the-wool scientists and doctors, who still worship paradigms of Newtonian physics with the passion of a religious dogma. According to mainstream science there should be little difference in the chemical and physical processes taking place in a living body and those in a corpse—since both, according to the second law of thermodynamics, follow the same scientific law which produces chaos, loss of lifeforce, degeneration and death. Yet there is every difference in the world. A living organism is able to maintain the system in quite exceptional harmony, despite the fact that events leading to maximum entropy in the universe as a whole should be destroying it. In the words of Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi: “Life is a paradox... the most basic rule of inanimate nature is that it tends toward equilibrium which is at the maximum of entropy and the minimum of free energy. The main characteristic of life is that it tends to decrease its entropy. It also tends to increase its free energy. Maximum entropy means complete randomness, disorder. Life is made possible by order, structure, a pattern which is the opposite of entropy. This pattern is our chief possession, it was developed over billions of years. The main aim of our existence is its conservation and transmission. Life is a revolt against the statistical rules of physics.” SUCK ORDER Physicist and Nobel laureate Erwin Schrodinger also took a close look at the scientific contradictions implicit in the living state. He concluded that, so long as the human body is alive, it avoids decaying into an inert state of equilibrium—death—through the processes of metabolism. In other words by eating, drinking and assimilating “information”—in effect by sucking order from the environment. As far back as 1944 Schrodinger wrote: “Every process, event, happening—call it what you will; in a word, everything that is going on in Nature means an increase of the entropy of the part of the world where it is going on. Thus a living organism continually increases its entropy—or as you may say, produces positive entropy—and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death. It can only keep aloof from it, i.e. alive, by continually drawing from its environment negative entropy... What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy... which is in itself a measure of order. Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.” Energetically, a human being is an open system. This means we continually exchange energetic information with our environment—through the foods we eat, digest, assimilate and excrete, as well as the company we keep, the radiation and electromagnetic fields we are exposed to, the way we exercise—even the thoughts we think. As such, we are constantly processing the energetic data—information which comes into us and continues to flow in and out of our own biophoton energy fields. We need a constant supply of the right kind of information from the outside world to keep our bodies functioning optimally, and we need to be able to dissipate any disorder and chaos—entropy—that has built up within our bodies and our lives. Although most biochemists and all physicists know about Schrodinger's concept of living organisms feeding on negative entropy, and though it is covered in standard textbooks on biophysics and biochemistry, it is still largely ignored by mainstream scientists. THE OSTRICH SYNDROME Life processes which cannot be explained within conventional belief systems have a long history of being ignored, misinterpreted and even viciously attacked. It’s easier to bury one’s head in the sand. Yet the energetics of how life breaks all the rules are central to an understanding of the body’s marvelous ability to heal itself. For when control processes go awry, disorder takes over the organism and degeneration ensues. Our natural capacity to recreate order in our bodies makes mincemeat of the outdated second law of thermodynamics applied to living systems. It makes most conventional scientists squirm. Why? Because within the paradigms of Newtonian physics it is nonsense. Where should we all be looking to find life-changing answers? Towards the body’s energy fields, and what we can do to enhance the order and vitality of positive energy fields in our own bodies. It is easier than you think once you learn how. More about all this very soon…

The sense of woman's estrangement not only from her body, but at a deeper level from herself; out of this estrangement develops a sense of powerlessness which leads you to think that what you need to be happy, complete, and fulfilled can only be found outside yourself - by accomplishment in the world, wearing the right clothes, earning a lot of money, winning the love of a man or conforming to some abstract ideal. Yet so long as you are driven by a sense of separateness from your body, whether you succeed or fail in getting what you think you want from the outside world is irrelevant. For neither success or failure brings you any closer to real satisfaction and fulfillment. Only wholeness can do that. the energy of instinct How does a woman reclaim her wholeness? By getting back in touch with the energy of instinct, and giving it as much space in her life as she does reason. For any woman who lives by reason alone is only half alive. Rediscovering the aliveness of the child and the instinctual innocence of bodily freedom can not only help heal wounds of separation between instinct and intellect, it can go a long way towards freeing you to live in the fullness of your being. Being cut off from any part of yourself squanders energy - in anxiety or in depression, in confusion, in unfulfilling relationships, or fatigue or illness. Only when you come to live in wholeness do you have access to your full power. This means rediscovering without fear of self-indulgence - how to celebrate your body. sex or sexuality? Women's magazines are jammed full of articles on sex, and they talk mostly not about the energy of instinct which fuels true sexuality, but about the mechanics of the sex act: "How To Make Oral Sex Work For You"... "A Complete Guide to Sex Toys"...and so on. Like the perfect plastic models on the covers of glossy magazines, such information does little to help a woman reconnect with her body and reclaim the energy of instinct and her deep sexuality. It actually encourages her not to trust herself. It asks instead that she stand back from her body and judge it, or that she put her trust in a lot of abstract "how-to-do-it-better" advice and commercial paraphernalia. The ecstatic, irrational, primordial power of a woman can only be experienced and expressed in the kind of sexuality that enables her to forget the rules and let go of her rational mind, trusting for a time the impulses of her body. Instinctual energy is creation energy - the stuff out of which art is made, as well as sexual ecstasy. So are joy, and the sensual pleasures - taste and smell and sight and touch and sound. As we gradually connect with our instinctual selves and learn to trust them, a kind of alchemical marriage between instinct and intellect begins to take place, and core energy from which we had been cut off becomes accessible. Such a marriage brings in its wake an experience of real personal power - the power with which each of us can create the life we want. When instinct and intellect are reunited your body thrives. It helps protect against early aging, increases vitality, and heightens your capacity for joy. There is only one problem. Like the wild fecundity of a rainforest (which is but another expression of the same life power), the instinctual energy of creation can be scary. It doesn't lend itself to rationalizations or structures. We will never understand it, neither can we comfortably put it into a little box to be dealt with when it is convenient. Yet instinct is a magnificent force. It needs to be honored just as much as the power of reason. Each of us must find her own way to honor it, live it and express it. Otherwise it can turn in on itself and insidiously destroy the very fabric of our lives.

Your body. A burden? A joy? An object to be admired and pampered? A source of shame better neglected and hidden? Both men and women are funny about their bodies. The media is full of advice on how we are supposed to look, smell and feel, how we should exercise, reshape, renew and bring our bodies into line with consensus values about size and shape. Seldom is much of it of use. For most of what is written and taught about the body comes from the prevalent (albeit unconscious) notion of the body as thing. Carried in the wake of this mechanistic approach to the body, which books, magazines and media programs take, is the notion that every human being needs the same sort of food, the same sort of exercise, the same sort of treatment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your body is most assuredly not a thing. It is a living energetic organism which in its shape and form and texture has become a reflection of your attitudes towards yourself and becomes a map for the way you live as a result. If you feel uneasy about your body, or foreign from it, or narcissistic about it, this shows in how you look, behave, and in the way you limit your experience of joy and creativity in day-to-day life. Shift those attitudes and gradually you will alter the way you look and feel dramatically. We forget that the body is also the medium through which each human being experiences all reality - from the most exciting theoretical thought to the most instinctual animal passion. This is an important theme I want to explore in depth in future blogs. I want to share with you ways of setting the body free from all that binds it and therefore all of us from whatever restricts us from feeling fully alive and free just to be who we are—instead of trying to fit in with consensus reality and other people’s rules. Anybody who has read anything I have written, or been to one of my workshops, or taken a CURA ROMANA JOURNEY with me, knows I have zero tolerance for blind conformity and a passion for authentic freedom. Guess what...the greatest joy for any of us is beginning to live out this kind of authenticity is experienced, not in your mind but through your physical body.

The word strikes fear into the heart of most women. The mainstream medical profession continues to insist that the only way for us to protect ourselves against death from breast, cervical and womb cancer is by getting regular mammograms and Pap smears. We are still being filled with fear by mainstream media and Big Pharma about the dangers of breast cancer, and treated to horror stories about brave women who have been cancer victims yet survived to tell the tale. Instead of empowering us so we can take action to make cancer's appearance in our own life unlikely, most of what we’re told about the illness fills us with so much fear that it makes it almost impossible to sort out facts from fantasies. Each woman responds to fear-mongering in a different way. Some keep booking regular appointments at “well women clinics.” Others bury their heads like ostriches, hoping that the cancer terror will pass them by. Whichever way you choose to view the threat of cancer—whether real or imagined—is disempowering. Even words used to describe someone who has the illness—a cancer victim—bestows upon the illness a power it does not deserve. USELESS ADVICE Ask the so-called experts how best to protect yourself from dying of cancer. They are likely to respond that early detection is the answer. The prevailing theory is that the earlier you detect cancers, the better your chances of survival. This is untrue. Breast cancers are diagnosed through a combination of sonograms, aspiration of lumps, physical exams, mammograms and surgical biopsy, where a piece of tissue from the breast is removed and examined under the microscope. Mammograms are x-rays taken of your breasts, used to diagnose breast cancer at its earliest appearance—supposedly before it can be felt by physical exam. This remains standard medical procedure in most countries. Interesting research first came to light as the result of the largest study of its kind ever carried out in Canada. The Canadian National Breast Screening Study followed the fate of 89,836 women between 40 and 49 for an eight year period, during which half of them were given mammograms every year to eighteen months while the other half were only examined physically. When all the results were tallied, researchers discovered that deaths from cancer in women who got regular mammograms were significantly higher than those who had no mammograms done. When results were published—which, incidentally, did not happen until a full four years after the study was completed—the NCI finally announced that the increase in death from breast cancer was 52 percent. In simple terms, you are half again as likely to die of cancer if you do have regular mammograms as if you do not. This report made the headlines, “Breast Scans Boost Risk of Cancer Death”, reported The Times. It then went on to explain that “Middle-aged women who have regular mammograms are more likely to die from breast cancer than women who are not screened, according to dramatic new research.” DANGEROUS RADIATION Mammography subjects you to powerful ionizing radiation which can cause cancer. One mammogram delivers the radiation equivalent of 1,000 chest x-rays into your body. Each year in the United States, an amazing 4 billion dollars is spent on over-diagnosis and false-positives in relation to mammography results. And the incidence of false positive results are known to be as high as 56% in a woman who has undergone 10 mammograms. Another very recent, massive study over 25 years concluded that mammograms have absolutely NO effect on mortality rates. The New York Times reported on it: "One of the largest and most meticulous studies of mammography ever done, involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter­century, has added powerful new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age. It found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. And the screening had harms: one in five cancers found with mammography and treated was NOT a threat to the woman's health and did not need treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation." EARLY DETECTION NONSENSE The second widespread notion about cancer is that the earlier it is detected and surgery performed, the better are a woman’s chances of survival. This too is untrue, as Petr Skrabanek reported some time ago in the British Medical Journal: "There is no evidence that early mastectomy affects survival. If the patients knew this, they would most likely refuse surgery". At the University of California in Berkeley, Professor Hardin Jones, whose expertise is in the areas of medical physics and physiology, had reported to the American Cancer Society some 20 years ago that every serious attempt to relate early treatment to survival has been unsuccessful. Jones studied many reports that looked at detection and survival and found that those subjects chosen for treatment for cancer tended to be patients who were considered capable of being cured by operations, while the inoperable or terminal patients tended to be lumped together as part of the untreated control groups. After making adjustments in the statistics to take this into account, Jones reported that "My studies have proven conclusively that untreated cancer victims actually live up to four times longer than treated individuals." Jones' investigations, like those of other researchers, continue to be ignored by Big Pharma and most of mainstream medicine and the media. MAMMOGRAM MIASMA Not only are mammograms not a cure-all for breast cancer, a “clean” mammogram is no real guarantee that you do not have a cancer developing. Mammograms are capable of missing its presence altogether. They are open to a great deal of confusion and interpretation, since reading them is not an exact science but an art dependent upon the competence and judgement of human beings. American specialist in internal medicine Dr H Gilbert Welch, a senior researcher at the Department of Veterans' Affairs in White River Junction Vermont, has looked carefully at the difficulties that go with the excessive diagnosis of diseases like breast cancer. He discovered that in women who die from other causes, an amazing 40 percent have had microscopic changes in their breasts. These are common lesions which show up on mammograms and there is no way in which any expert, no matter how skilled or highly experienced, is capable of knowing which of these will remain dormant and which may eventually turn into cancer. INACCURATE BIOPSIES Neither does a biopsy carried out after a “suspicious mammogram” improve survival rates from breast cancer. A biopsy entails cutting through the suspected lump and invading the protective pocket that helps keep a tumor from spreading, and as a result this very procedure designed to confirm the existence or non-existence of a cancerous lesion can actually encourage cancers present to metastasize—to spread to other parts of the body. German researchers who looked at the survival rates of patients with breast cancer discovered that those who had had biopsies died earlier than those who did not. Even biopsies done with a needle rather than a scalpel do not appear to be safe, quite apart from what the worry over waiting for results and the pain involved in the procedure can do by undermining a woman's immune system. George Crile Jr M.D., a Surgeon Emeritus at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States, says "It gives credence to what our patients already think and tell us—that cutting into cancer spreads it and makes it grow." BANISH YOUR FEAR It’s time we stopped falling victim to the pronouncements and procedures of high technology medical procedures as well as to cancer itself as a disease. The answer to its prevention lies mostly in our own hands. It depends largely on things we can do ourselves to change the way we eat, live and think—not in the hands of abstract medical theorizing and the fear-mongering which still too often accompanies it. As an editorial in The Lancet pointed out, "Some readers may be startled to learn that the overall mortality rate from carcinoma of the breast remains static. If one were to believe all the media hype, the triumphalism of the profession in the published research, and the almost weekly miracle breakthrough trumpeted by the cancer charities, one might be surprised that women are dying at all from this cancer." PAP-SMEAR SCARES The other common procedure to which we women are subjected is the Pap smear for diagnosing cervical abnormalities. Its name comes from a Dr George Papanicolaou, who developed the procedure almost three quarters of a century ago. It has since then been refined and is now used as a way of identifying “abnormal” (usually referred to as “pre-cancerous cells”) as early as possible. Using a simple instrument inserted into the vagina, a doctor scrapes away a sampling of cells from the squamocolumnar junction of the cervix just inside the cervical opening at the bottom of the womb. These are fixed on a slide with a chemical preservative and examined under the microscope by a technician or doctor used to reading them. Pap smears are frequently credited with some decline in the death rate for cervical cancer; however, they too can be highly unreliable and produce a number of both false-positives and false-negatives. There have still been no controlled randomized trials that prove that they actually save lives. When a trial was carried out in British Columbia, where mass screening by Pap smear had been carried out, deaths from cervical cancer did indeed drop: However, not a lot could be deduced from this fact, since they also dropped in the rest of Canada as well to just the same degree in areas where mass screening was not conducted. As Dr E Robin points out in his fascinating book Matters of Life and Death: Risks and Benefits of Medical Care, the Pap smear is not only one of the most common and popular laboratory tests, it is also one of the most unreliable. He writes about one study where two Pap smears were taken from the same women at the same time. An amazing two-thirds of the women's two tests showed different results. TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS In the past five years, a great deal of information has come to light about how the way you eat and live either protects or predisposes you to cancer. Forward-thinking researchers are awakening to hormonal links in the development of breast and womb cancer and finding ways of using natural, bioidentical hormones to protect against it. In many ways even more exciting, a minority of savvy medical practitioners have begun to teach their patients that, above all else, to protect themselves from the illness we need to take responsibility for the kind of foods we eat. There is a lot to me said about how powerful this can be not only to protect yourself from cancer but from all of the common degenerative diseases as well as early ageing. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. I’ll be writing specifically about this very soon.

Everybody “knows” that soy is good for you. But is it really? I’ve written about it many times in the past, in the full belief that compounds called isoflavones in soy are helpful in protecting women from hot flushes, pre-menstrual tension, and so on. Well, I was wrong. So was most of the world, as it happens. There are things about soy that you need to know about eating soy beans and using soy-based foods—from soy milk to tofu—things which can be vitally important to your health and the health of your family as well as to the reproductive capacity of future adults. BADS NEWS FOR SEX CELLS If you’re thinking of having a baby—or you’re pregnant—new research clearly shows that you want to steer clear of soy products. This is not only for your sake, but for the health of your developing fetus. The phytoestrogens in soy have been shown to exert profoundly detrimental effects on a growing baby as well as after its birth. Exposure to estrogenic chemicals in the womb and during childhood, can damage a girl’s fertility as she grows into a woman. Even more surprising, for many adult women even a small amount of soy can pcreate an anti-pregnancy effect—equal to four or five birth control pills a day! Eating a lot of soy has also been linked to an increasing chance of breast cancer. But women are not the only ones affected by soy and soy products. The soy isoflavone genistein interferes with sperm motility. Even small doses of this substance can seriously impair your ability to conceive if you are trying for a baby. PERILS OF GM Virtually 95% of all soybeans in the world are genetically modified. The last thing you want to do is feed yourself or your children on this nasty stuff. Not only are these foods incompatible with your body for many reasons. They can also contain dangerous quantities of Glyphosate, which is the main ingredient in the weed killer Roundup. As if this weren’t bad enough, a great deal of soy contains potentially destructive levels of manganese and aluminum—both of which are known to reduce brain functioning. The sad news is that in the United States alone, 20% of babies are now fed on soy formula. Meanwhile, as an adult, if you’re drinking a couple of glasses of soy milk a day for a month, you will be absorbing a lot of phytoestrogens. These are very likely to interfere with your menstruation and undermine your health. FALSE “FACTS” ABOUT SOY We’ve been told that Asians consume a huge amount of soy based foods in their diet. In truth they eat very little soy food...on average, only about 10 grams per person per day—two teaspoons. This they eat soy only as a condiment and never as a replacement for animal-based proteins. The use of soy foods began during the late Chou dynasty in Japan and China (1134-246 BC). This was only after the Chinese had mastered the art of fermenting soy beans to make foods like temph, natto, and naturally fermented tamari—all three of which are good for you. Most modern day foods are not fermented to neutralize the toxins in soybeans. They are manufactured in a way that not only denatures what protein they do contain but also increases the levels of carcinogens present in the foods. If you are vegetarian, you have also been told that soy foods provide complete proteins. This too is untrue as is the notion that soy foods can supply Vitamin B12 to vegetarian diets. ORGANIC FERMENTED ONLY If you are vegetarian and you wish to eat soy in some form, only choose fermented soy—and only from organic soybeans: natto, temph and tamari. Steer clear of all soy milk products, that are not fermented and let go of the notion that any soy products are going to give you all the protein you need to live at a high level of health and resistance to early ageing. BREAST IS BEST As far as infant formulas are concerned, soy is something you want to avoid altogether. The very best care you can give to both yourself and your baby is to breastfeed. If possible, let your child decide when the or she is ready to give up nursing. Your baby will get life-long health gains from breastfeeding. And the closeness that develops between the two of you is a great blessing. Here are some of the health benefits nursing your baby confers upon him or her: Decreased risk of obesity Decreased risk of eczema and other skin problems Fewer middle ear infections Better respiration Added protection against diabetes, asthma, allergies and heart disease Improved immune function. Better brain function. Want to learn more about soy? Check it out online at the Weston A. Price Foundation. There you can discover and learn which naturally fermented soy products are available. http://www.westonaprice.org/soy-alert/ I Want to know more about breastfeeding? You can get help from a wonderful organization called the La Leche League. Find them at http://www.llli.org/. If you are unable to breastfeed, your next best option is to create a healthy infant formula based on certified raw milk.