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To ageless aging players, the most insidious foe you will ever have to pit your wits against is Kronos - the god of time. There appears to be no way to destroy what Milton called his `silent touches'. We can, however, go a long way towards softening them. As science probes the secrets of the cell and begins to decipher the genetic code, theories about slowing down the process of aging are rapidly turning into practical techniques for doing so. Researchers have already been able to do this for animals and in some cases even to reverse age-related changes. Now they can also double an animal's life span. The patterns of age-changes in humans appear to be very similar to those of the animals they are working with. the three faces of aging There are almost as many theories as to what aging is all about as there are scientists studying the process. Generally speaking, however, research falls into three main areas about which there is much agreement: `genetic clocks', random damage and the immune system. First, there seems to be some kind of internal genetic `clock' or `clocks', the control for which is probably centered in the cells themselves or an area of the brain, that appears to `switch off' specific vital functions at certain times. This could account for a number of `life events' that tend to occur around the same period in almost everyone, such as the way women go through menopause. Just where and what these age clocks in the body might be is still debatable. Once we learn what they are, and how to manipulate or to reset them, we should be able to reprogram predetermined occurrences so that our bodies age much more slowly. But there is, as yet, very little in the way of practical treatments or advice from age researchers on how to do this. The second major area of age research and practical methods designed to slow aging lies in the process of cumulative wear and tear your body goes through - the kind of random damage on a cellular level which is triggered by external agents such as ultraviolet light, air pollution, poisons in food or in the environment, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, or simply the by-products of metabolism in the body. These influences result in the formation of free radicals - highly reactive molecules which do serious damage to the body. Alex Comfort once referred to these free radicals as `promiscuous' because, `like delegates at a conference, they seem to race around frantically combining with everything'. They are a major cause of `cross-linking' which makes your body's protein tissues age rapidly and results in wrinkled skin, stiff limbs and a degenerating cardiovascular system. About combating age-related changes in this area there is much information and even a number of practical suggestions of what you can do now. the all-important immune system Central to the whole question of aging is the third area of intensive research, which investigates the role that a gradually weakening immune system plays in aging. As you get older your immune system, which is responsible for protecting your body against invasion, illness and allergy, gradually loses these capacities. Its function declines and your body becomes more susceptible to illness, bacterial invasions and deterioration. A poorly functioning immune system is also much more likely to attack your body's own cells in error. This produces what are known as `auto-immune' disorders such as arthritis. When your body is not able to repair random damage done by wear and tear, you get into a kind of vicious circle of age decline where the immune system is further weakened. In turn, it is less able to protect your body from further random damage. A lot of people have come to believe that this downward spiral is an inevitable part of growing older. But is it? There are a number of very good treatments that appear to offer support to the immune system and prolong its potency. Some may even help prevent aging and repair random damage at the same time. They can play an important part in any well-informed bid to keep Kronos in his place. An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association not long ago stated that, `Nature did not intend us to grow old and ill'. We are instead, it said, supposed to `die young in old age, but free from disease'. You can look and feel great at 60 or 70 and beyond; you need never lose brain power as the years pass. Time doesn't have to take its toll. how old are you? Not an easy question to answer. For, regardless of when you were born, you are at least three ages: your chronological age as measured by the calendar, your psychological age and your biological age - probably the most important of all. In fact, the latest research into aging indicates that the rate at which you age has but little to do with the simple passage of time. There are far too many other variables, like genetic inheritance, the food you eat, the way you live, your mental attitude and the number of pollutants in your environment - to name only a few. Interestingly, the things you do to achieve a state of high-level wellness and vitality just happen to be the things which many age researchers insist are important in slowing down body degeneration. But, some insist, there are a number of other things you can do as well. The most important of all is to eat less. Weight does add years! secrets of the long-lived Dr Alexander Leaf, from Harvard Medical School, spent several years studying three cultures where the people were exceptionally long-lived (some claimed to be as old as 140), but who at the same time showed few signs of degenerative changes traditionally associated with age. They were the Vilcabamba Indians in an Andes valley, the Hunzas in a mountainous part of Kashmir, and the Abkhazians in Soviet Georgia. They suffered neither tooth decay, heart disease, mental illness, obesity nor cancer. Leaf wanted to find out what these peoples had in common and to discover the secrets behind their youth. He discovered that they led extremely active lives, regardless of their age, and that they had vigorous sex lives well into their 80s and 90s. Men and women of ninety or more also spent many hours each day in physical labor - for physical fitness was an inevitable consequence of the active life of these peoples. They also ate a very low calorie diet. While the average Briton or American eats somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 calories a day, his Vilcabamban brother contents himself with a mere 1,700. Also, in all three groups, their diet was low in fats and in proteins from animal sources and high in fresh foods, a great many of them eaten raw. All of their foods were grown organically, as these people had no access to artificial fertilizers. They had never heard of sugar but ate mostly rough grains, fresh vegetables and fruits. eat less and stay young More than 80 years ago a researcher at Cornell University, Clive McCay, noticed that brook trout which were growth-retarded as a result of being underfed lived far longer than normal-sized trout. He experimented with rats to see what effect feeding them on a very low calorie diet from birth would have on their life span. He found that these animals on a calorie-deprived diet - which was carefully supplemented with nutrients so the rats did not suffer deficiencies - had increased life-spans. This was by far and away the most exciting practical discovery anybody had made in the area of how to make an animal live longer. But it was relatively useless to human beings since nobody would attempt to restrict a baby's diet in the same way from birth, because of the possible risk of brain damage. Also restricted animals are smaller than fully-fed ones and a small percentage of the restricted group tends to die very young. So for many years McCay's findings were largely ignored by those looking for concrete anti-aging methods. In the 1980s, however, a number of studies in the United States and Australia were begun into the effect of calorie restriction on life span of `middle-aged' animals - studies not begun on the animals until, in human terms, they are in their forties. One of the scientists who did much in this area was Roy Walford, a professor at the University of California Medical School and one of the world's leading experts on aging. In projects which Walford described as `undernutrition without malnutrition' - administering a diet low in calories but high in basic nutrients such as vitamins and minerals - he was able to add 40 percent to the maximum life span of mice and keep fish alive 300 percent longer than usual. underfeeding improves immune responses The exact mechanisms by which dietary restriction extends life is still largely a mystery. But researchers do know that a low-calorie-but-nutritionally-potent diet substantially improves immune system functioning - in effect, by rejuvenating it - so that signs of auto-immune responses are markedly reduced. It seems also to protect the immune system from the usual age degeneration an animal is subjected to so that its ability to combat disease and eliminate toxic materials from the body, which ordinarily declines to a level of 10 or 20 percent of what it was in youth, occurs only very slowly. Instead, the immune response of these highly nourished but underfed animals remains excellent. Their bodies, unlike those of `normal' aging animals, are able to repair much of the age-related damage that occurs at a cellular level and are prevented from turning against themselves. Restricted animals also show increased intelligence and have a much lower incidence of degenerative illness such as cancer and heart disease. What disease does occur comes only much later in the animal's life. And how great a calorie restriction appears necessary to bring about these beneficial changes? The diet of Walford's mice had been restricted by about a third of the calories they were raised on. Walford's work and the work of other scientists using calorie restriction has generated a great deal of excitement about what human beings might do now to lengthen life span and to avoid age degeneration. Many age experts have begun to recommend that healthy people who have already attained their full growth and maturity could benefit from restricting their calories to somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 calories a day (depending on how active a life you lead). But cutting down on calories is only half the formula. It just won't do to go on some slimming regime you find in a magazine, you need high-potency nutrition with it. Processed foods play no part in any such diet. The foods that you do eat have to be superbly high in nutritional value: fresh fruits and vegetables (as many as possible eaten raw), whole grain cereals and breads, pulses and seeds with very little fat and only moderate protein. Your food intake has to be balanced and no salt should be added to foods - salt is something that in animal studies has been shown to shorten life span considerably. Such a diet is, by its very nature, also high in fiber. Most experts also insist that you supplement your diet with a full complement of essential vitamins and minerals. is ageing all in the mind? Perhaps more than you might think. Psychologists have found that many of the changes that take place in our bodies and minds associated with aging depend on our `programmed expectations'. In our society it is assumed for instance that, at thirty the first wrinkles appear, at forty `middle-aged spread' sets in, and at seventy the mind begins to lose its clarity. But according to studies only 12 percent of the population has even the slightest predisposition to the kind of changes that result in senility; yet as people get older they become increasingly worried about it until they may work themselves into a kind of vicious circle of depression and anxiety which results in decline. How you age may have a lot to do with what you expect to happen. Change your expectations and that can change too. regular fasts can help too Periodic fasting of animals is another way of restricting calories which has shown itself to be useful in increasing their life span. This is a fact which I find particularly interesting because European experts on fasting have for a hundred years been saying that, done sensibly and regularly for short periods and in combination with a nutritionally excellent diet, fasting will make you live longer and reduce the incidence of illnesses. Roy Walford tended to be slightly more liberal with his own calories than sticking to a rigid 1,500 a day. But he then fasted for two days a week in order to end the week with the recommended number of calories. He claimed that a healthy normal weight adult will lose weight on such a regime but only very slowly until you are, say, about one fourth to one fifth of the weight you were when you started. Such weight loss appears to have no disadvantages (unless you fancy yourself slightly plump for aesthetic reasons) and indeed may be an important factor in the way such a calorically restricted, but nutritionally superb, regime appears to improve immune functions. And because the weight loss is so slow - it occurs in normal weight people at a rate of, perhaps, six pounds a year until they reach their `plateau' at which they remain - there is no chance of becoming flabby or tired from it. Indeed, such a regime tends to create the most extraordinary amounts of energy, according to people following it. raw power for youth A diet high in raw foods (where they make up 75 percent of the calories you eat) has quite remarkable rejuvenating abilities. It raises the micro-electric potentials of the cells, increases oxygenation and eliminates stored wastes and toxins which interfere with proper cell metabolism and cause cross-linking. It will also keep you mentally alert, make you lose excess weight and it tends to eliminate feelings of depression associated with aging. regular exercise keeps you fit Your body was made for use. When you regularly pursue an aerobic form of exercise, you help to protect your cardiovascular system from arteriosclerosis (which is otherwise inevitable) and you increase your metabolic rate, which helps protect against fat - a precursor to many degenerative diseases. Exercise also protects you from disturbances in blood sugar such as adult onset diabetes and from high blood pressure, and relieves many mental conditions often associated with age such as depression. Aerobic exercise improves circulation and optimal oxygenation of the tissues in your body - one of the most important measurements for health and vitality. exercise makes you look younger As far as good looks are concerned this increased circulation brings to your skin cells a better supply of the nutrients needed for their proper functioning. It also more efficiently carries away wastes, which can contribute to genetic damage in your cells, and to cross-linking of the collagen which produces wrinkles. Albert Kligman, one of America's leading dermatologists, believed that exercise may serve another purpose in retarding skin aging as well: if you keep yourself really fit you may lay down more fibrous proteins in the dermis, that deep layer of the skin where the structural network of collagen and elastin fibers gives strong young skin its firmness and cushiony feel. Then your face will preserve its youthful contours. Another way in which vigorous exercise helps to hold back skin aging is connected with the relationship between muscle and hormone production in the body. The amount of physical activity you get is a significant factor in maintaining optimal functioning of endocrine glands which provide hormones that are not only vital to youth and energy, but keep the skin smooth and soft in appearance. When you don't work out regularly, muscle mass declines. So does the amount of steroid hormones from the adrenals and sex glands - in direct proportion to the decrease in muscle mass, not (as was once believed) simply as a result of the aging process itself. Rebounding, swimming, dancing or running for 30 minutes or more several times a week can prevent these degenerative musculo-skeletal changes from happening and help you maintain optimal levels of hormones essential to skin softness and resiliency. When you are inactive, even for as little as 24 hours, your muscle mass starts to deteriorate. the exercise-age controversy Lounge lizards are forever congratulating themselves on the fact that they don't `waste their time' exercising. They cite well known studies which are purported to show that exercise will make you die younger. It's a great excuse. The trouble is that when you examine some of the research they refer to you find that it is all based on the popular method of examining death records of athletes - a method that is faulty in a number of ways. For instance, there was a study carried out at Michigan State University comparing 629 varsity athletes with 583 non-athletes, which showed that there was no difference in life length. Another at Harvard involving some 6,300 athletes showed that they died significantly earlier than the non-athletes. Their definition of the athlete was someone who was active athletically while at university. But the problem is that just because a man plays football or runs during his university career does not mean that he continues to exercise afterwards. Most athletes give up their training once they leave the atmosphere of the university. This was demonstrated by an interesting study carried out at University of Auckland in New Zealand. Looking at the training habits of 100 athletes out of season, Michael Colgan and his team of researchers found that only 34 of them continued training once the season finished. Studies examining the death records of former university athletes are of no use in determining what effect regular exercise has on life span. The only studies that are able to assess the effect of training on aging are those which attempt to measure how active a person is throughout his life, such as the one published in 1977 by Charles Rose and Michael Cohen from the Veterans Administration Hospital in Boston. With the help of relatives who were able to rate their level of physical activity from sedentary to very active, researchers - using the death records of 500 men - discovered that men who continued throughout their life to exercise in their leisure time lived 7.1 years longer than those whose level of activity had declined with the passing of the years. Other studies have shown that ordinary athletes who continue to exercise even as they grow old (up to 90 in some cases) show much less physical degeneration than non-athletes. They shrink in height only half as much, have a far better musculo-skeletal system, less body fat, and better heart and lung function. hydrochloric acid and aging A decline in hydrochloric acid in the stomach is a common event with the passing of the years. It results in an inability to break down proteins in your foods into their constituent amino-acids so that the body can make use of them for rebuilding tissue and making enzymes and hormones. This can be remedied by taking food supplements of HCL and digestive enzymes with meals containing protein foods. This is especially true with animal protein foods. diet, exercise and rejuvenation Not only can changing to a highly nutritious diet and getting yourself into a program of regular aerobic exercise help retard your own aging rate and make you feel great, it can also rejuvenate your whole body, quite apart from whether or not you choose to make use of any of the other anti-aging devices now available - from nutritional supplements to organic-specific antisera. Your body is not the fixed size and shape you may believe it to be. It changes slowly with use. And these changes can be for the better or for the worse. Most of your body's cells completely renew themselves so that the cells you have today are not the ones you will have five years from now. I have seen bodies and faces with flaccid muscles and loose skin be transformed in a few months by those two simple things, diet and exercise. They are far more powerful than any of the more sophisticated and more expensive rejuvenation treatments and really they will cost you nothing more than commitment and a little time.

In the grip of insane materialism, and controlled by the intense power of pharmaceutical companies, doctors who once practiced from a genuine passion to help heal are being forced to surrender their autonomy to a brutal overuse of dangerous chemical agents. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the “treatment” of menstrual and menopausal symptoms through the prescribing of HRT. In many ways, conventional medicine has disintegrated into a high-tech nightmare since the turn of the century. It has become controlled by the unbridled greed of corporations and government bodies who have only one goal in mind: Profit. The selling of drugs capable of producing massive side effects fails to deliver genuine healing. They do not address fundamental causes of illness. They only mask symptoms and in the process can poison your body long-term. Meanwhile, conventional health care has become so expensive that none but the top 0.1% of the population can afford it. Hundreds of thousands of people die each year as a result of using patented medicine. It is time for a radical overhaul in how we choose to treat health and healing. Nowhere is this more urgently needed than in addressing the way women’s issues are treated before, during and after menopause. Drug-based synthetic estrogens, progestins and progestogens prescribed in the form of HRT are dangerous and, used long-term, may even be life-threatening. RADICAL REVISION IS DUE Once dazzled by high-tech medical intervention at birth, we women willingly surrendered our bodies to epidurals, episiotomies and fetal monitoring equipment, which promised pain-free, trouble-free childbirth, but too often delivered problems for mother and baby. Then, inspired by the work of visionary doctors such as Michele Odent, Pierre Vellay and Frederic Leboyer, more and more women began to insist on natural childbirth, breastfeeding and good mother-child bonding. We demanded the right to drug-free childbirth and control over our own bodies. Gradually—not without resistance—doctors, hospitals and government agencies became more willing to provide this in response to the demands of us ordinary women, who kept insisting there is a better way. It’s we women ourselves who brought to fruition the natural childbirth revolution. Now it’s time for another revolution—that women’s reproductive and post-reproductive health be naturalized. It’s time we refused to swallow the nonsensical propaganda about the glories of drug-based HRT that continues to be forced upon us by the powers-that-be, and the media. LET TRUTH BE TOLD It’s time for us to begin challenging the “wisdom” of established medical practices. Time for us to dismiss the widespread propaganda which accompanies the sale of HRT. The indiscriminate doling out of potent drug-based hormones can undermine a woman’s fertility as well as trigger the development of her menstrual agonies from PMS and endometriosis to cancer of the breast and womb. The current attempt to make every woman a “patient” for most of her life by subjecting her to drug treatment through HRT is a way of diminishing her personal power and taking away control over one’s own body. I believe these practices to be biologically, politically and morally reprehensible. As Dr Jonathan Wright, Medical Director of Tahoma Clinic in Washington—and long-time advocate of bio-identical, natural hormones—says, “Replacing estrogen that your body is no longer producing with the versions found in conventional HRT is like replacing parts designed for a Chevy with those made for a Mercedes. They may be roughly the same, but with both engine parts and biology, very precise measurements matter.” NEW FACTS In 2002, researchers called a halt to a huge government- run study of HRT therapy used by millions of women under the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) when researchers discovered that long-term use of synthetic estrogen and progestin significantly increased women’s danger of stroke, blood clots, heart disease and invasive breast cancer in these women. Soon after, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published another study, showing that women who take a combination of synthetic estrogen and progestin are at high risk of getting a highly aggressive form of breast cancer. Meanwhile, other studies showed that HRT increases the risk of Alzheimer’s dementia and asthma. Then in 2010 more new research discovered that combined estrogen-progestin HRT increases the risk for more severe forms of breast cancer as well as increasing women’s chances of dying, from the disease and from other causes. This is but a tiny sampling of the research that continues to appear since the turn of the millennium, strongly exposing serious consequences from believing the hype for HRT and choosing to allow such synthetic chemicals into your body. CALL TO ACTION There is mounting dissatisfaction among women themselves. Many women write to me about this. They continue to be told that HRT is the only answer to mid-life depression, hot flushes, loss of sexual appetite and early aging. Women are by no means stupid, provided they have not been brainwashed by a media who these days toe the corporate party line in our chaotic world on the verge of unnecessary wars waged by insane governments. Women are smart. We know in our gut that such advice goes against our deepest intuition. Now is the time for us to stand up, band together, and make sure our voices are heard. For a long time, menstruation was talked about as a disease. Now it’s menopause which is treated as the biggest “crisis” demanding extreme medical treatment. Why? And because HRT is a billion dollar business, magazines and the internet are full of “reassuring” information about how “beneficial” and “necessary” are the synthetic hormones in the form of HRT given to women. You’ll find all sorts of soft-sounding names of organisations eager to give you such advice. They too are not to be trusted. Why? Because many conveniently toe the party line, like much of the media—choosing to minimize the dangers of HRT, under the guidance of strong control and direction from profit-seeking corporations. In the USA now, half of menopausal women are still using synthetic hormones, having been told that HRT is the only possible answer for alleviating their suffering during a time of profound change in their lives. Pharmaceutical companies forecast that, within the next decade, 75% of menopausal and post-menopausal women will be on HRT for the rest of their lives. A few loud voices still insist that HRT is “the most important advance in this half of the century”, proselytizing that taking hormone drugs can safeguard a woman’s bones and heart as well as keep her eternally young. None of these claims have been adequately proven, while many—including the notion that HRT can be used as a youth treatment—are blatantly false. SOME GOOD NEWS Despite our being asked to believe that HRT is both a miracle of modern science and an essential treatment for menopausal women, there is much evidence that, once the immediate flush of excitement of a new treatment is over, most women’s experience of using HRT does not back up these assertions. Many who start HRT initially experience a kind of euphoria, primarily because the one thing that estrogen replacement gets rid of almost immediately is the hot flushes that can disturb your sleep and contribute to exhaustion. But the hot flushes return as soon as they come off it. And significant numbers of women report that, a few months later, their experience of HRT has worsened dramatically, because of side-effects it can engender including mood swings, decreased control over the bladder, fatigue, headaches, and many other miserie that have developed since they began taking it. Some of the most common complaints I hear from women who have used prolonged HRT include migraines, bleeding, depression, water retention, increased blood pressure, weight gain, thrush, breast problems, varicose veins and chest pains. A Swedish survey in the university town of Linkoping showed that 48% of women who go on HRT stop taking the drug within a year. A British study examined the reasons most commonly given by women who give up HRT after starting the treatment: Half of these women stopped taking it because of side-effects, about one-fifth because they were advised to do so by their doctors, and about one-third either because they are afraid of long-term consequences such as cancer, or because HRT has shown itself to be ineffective in significantly helping them. THE ROAD AHEAD So where do we go from here? A woman’s hormonal system, with all its ebbs and flows, which parallel those of the earth’s tides and the moon itself, acts as an interface between her emotional life and her body. Mess with her hormones and you may even undermine her ability to grow spiritually. There are better, natural ways of handling them. In the next six weeks I will be sharing them with you. I will be writing another three articles—every other week—at www.lesliekenton.com. They will address the most important issues in relation to handling menopause naturally. Here are some of the issues I’ll be writing about: What is natural Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT) all about? How does it work? How is it different from pharmaceutical HRT? What causes hot flushes and how can you clear them naturally? Can BHRT be useful in managing stress? How is your hormone balance related to diet, lifestyle and attaining optimal health? Are there specific herbal remedies that work to counter premenopausal, menopausal and post menopausal issues ? Be sure to join me—every other week—at www.lesliekenton.com. I look forward to connecting with you and hearing back from you about your own experiences, as well as receiving your comments and questions while you are reading this important series, which I am passionate about sharing with you.

Within each one of us, thin or fat, there lives a joyous creative spirit. It is the spirit of the child - of life itself - a completely individual nature which is constantly seeking freedom simply to be what it is and to do what it wants to do. The world we live in as we grow up seldom leaves space for that unique spirit to develop fully. Our parents, our education, our culture is continually feeding us with rules about what we should and shouldn't do - should and shouldn't be. It is a little like getting up each morning and having to put on your straightjacket before you begin the day. For many people—both men and women—weight control has become part of that straightjacket. They worry constantly about how or what to eat or not to eat. They agonize over one or two pounds - or fifteen - gained or lost and they treat themselves like naughty children who need controlling lest they get out of hand and eat something they shouldn't. A person in any kind of straightjacket is a person disempowered. It is a person who does not trust himself or herself and who to a greater or lesser degree lives in fear - fear of food, fear of what he or she might do, fear of disapproval from a society impassioned by notions of thinness. I have known that struggle. I have lived it myself and I see evidence of it all around me in women caught in the jaws of bulimia, anorexia or compulsive eating, and in men who overindulge in alcohol or fatty foods, struck down by a heart attack in the prime of life. This has always seemed a terrible waste. POWER TO TRANSFORM Thirty years ago I began to ask questions like: Why do so many people struggle with weight in our society when the vast majority in other cultures never even seem to grow fat? What causes the distortions to our bodies not only in body size and fat deposits, but in the degenerative conditions, from heart disease to rheumatoid arthritis that come in their wake? Is it really weakness of character or lack of willpower that makes us all eat too much and gain weight? And - most important of all - is there a way of eating and living that enables someone who is carrying too much fat around to eat and live so that whatever distortions have already appeared will disappear quite naturally as part of the process of regenerating the body through food and exercise? MY SEARCH FOR ANSWERS So I read many books and papers, listened to dozens of lectures from physicians and scientists and interviewed a number of doctors personally who claimed to have found answers. Some of their answers were useful, but not until I was introduced to the work of ATW Simeons did I come to understand that even the most genuinely helpful discoveries about why we get fat—and why every slimming diet we follow—almost invariably lead sooner or later back to our regaining weight we have lost. Why? Because each and every one of them, no matter how sincere or well meaning, ignored the most important truth of all: Simeons’ work stands alone even amongst the findings of many brilliant and sincere scientists and doctors—from Atkins to Sir Robert McCarrison who have contributed so much to sound dietary practice. What makes Simeons unique is that he alone discovered that overweight, obesity and all the anguish that accompanies them is in no way caused by a lack of willpower or simple greed. Neither can it be permanently cleared by putting people on a slimming regime. These conditions represent a significant metabolic disorder. Until this metabolic disorder is dealt with we will simply go on forever taking diet pills, shedding fat and then regaining it, along with all the inner grief, disappointment and shame we suffer each time this happens. Even better, Simeons discovered where the locus of overweight lay in the body, and how to create a protocol that would give a man or woman’s overweight body a kind of permission to restore normal balanced functioning to that area in the brain, thereby clearing not only unwanted fat but enhancing a person’s overall health in life-changing ways. THIN FOR WHAT? In the Western world we have long been possessed by an obsession with changing the shape of our bodies, especially trying to make it thinner, using one diet after another. Yet making a body thinner is not always the best thing to do - either for its health or its good looks. A thin body is a wimpish body. It is a body depleted of energy and of power. When you are lean you are strong, you have sleek muscles, good tone, and you can feast heartily on wholesome, natural foods in keeping with your body’s unique food needs, enabling you to stay that way. You are also highly resistant to illness and early ageing as the years pass and you feel comfortable and at ease in your body. This is a very different experience from the anxiety over thinness which disempowers so many men and women. Leanness, created by restoring healthy balance and functioning to the body’s fat and appetite control center, brings a sense of power with it - a sense of being in control of your own life which is a far cry from the inadequacy many feel as they continue to battle against weight gain with conventional slimming diets. I believe it is time we forgot about thin and choose instead to go lean from inside out. This calls for revolution. COME THE REVOLUTION - Diets That Work To revolutionize means to change completely and fundamentally - your body and your life. It is not a word chosen lightly but because it most accurately describes the powerful positive transformation that takes place in how you look and feel when you transform your appetite and fat control center so it works again, throw out convenience foods loaded with bad carbs, hidden sugar, junk fats and chemicals, and begin to feed heartily on the kind of foods your individual body loves, drink large quantities of pure water and strengthen your muscle mass through simple exercise that your body loves, be it dancing, yoga, swimming or what-have-you. The word lean means `muscular...containing little or no fat.' Being lean is as different from being thin as Cura Romana is from all the quick fix slimming diets you may have tried over the years which have slowly but inexorably eroded your energy and increased the sense of disenchantment with your body.

People at the higher reaches of human health don’t face the future with fears of getting old and falling prey to degenerative disease. They live with a sense that the best is yet to come. They know they’re capable of moving toward an even higher state of health and fulfilment as the years pass. They’re not ruled by run of the mill notions about aging which teach that getting older includes illness as a “natural” part of life. They know different. Their view of aging is closer to that of the world famous age researcher Johan Bjorksten, who insists that aging is a question of bringing “as many people as possible as many more healthy vigorous years of life as possible.” LEARN THE SECRETS Thirty years ago my daughter Susannah and I wrote a ground-breaking bestseller about the wonders of high-raw eating called Raw Energy. Ever since then, I have been flooded with letters from around the world. People write to tell me about their experiments with high-raw eating and all the payoffs it has brought them. Together, with new information from many areas of natural medicine, they have added missing pieces to the original Raw Power puzzle. All this has expanded exponentially the understanding of how to use diet to encourage healing and enhance health. MY SEARCH FOR HEALTH I had been chronically ill as a child—one “infection” after another, nightmares, anxiety. But no-one seemed able to help me. Then a wonderful break came my way. I met some remarkable doctors. These were men and women highly trained in orthodox medicine where drugs are the primary means of treating symptoms. Yet these were doctors with a difference. Disillusioned with the conventional, symptomatic approach to medicine, they chose to look deeper and ask questions: “What can be done to help a living body heal itself from inside without the negative side effects of toxic chemicals in drugs?” These physicians in Britain, the United States and Europe, were enormously generous with their time and their knowledge. They shared with me research findings and information which they had spent decades learning: How to detoxify my body using a high-raw or all-raw diet. How to enhance my energy. And—most important of all—how to trust my body’s ability to heal itself. CHECKING IT OUT I practiced what they taught and experimented with countless natural techniques. Their knowledge and generosity turned my life around. I learned that my tendency to “infection” was in fact food allergies. I learned that, after years of eating convenience foods, my body had become toxic. I watched and marveled as high-raw eating cleared the toxicity, the illness, and the depression. I lost fat from my body spontaneously. I felt great. I had so much energy that my children used to tease me by suggesting I start smoking to put a damper on my vitality. (There is nothing worse than waking up to an ultra-dynamic, hyper-cheerful mother.) I never looked back. It was these changes that threw me into a career in health: TV programs, articles, books, seminars, workshops, creating teaching modules for universities—the lot. I saw clearly that few of us ever live out our potentials for dynamism, creativity, good looks and radiant health. I felt passionate about sharing what I had been taught and had experienced for myself with others. My children also became intrigued by the changes they saw happening to me on a high-raw diet. They loved the delicious foods and natural sweet treats which we learned to prepare together. WHAT WE FOUND OUT Here’s what we found out happens when you eat high-raw, low-grain foods: You have more energy and vitality and look better. You lose weight more easily and keep it off without counting calories. You benefit from the “information” that organic live foods carry to your cells in the form of electro-chemical light energy and complex nutritional information which improves health and radiance. You get the best possible complements of vitamins, minerals and trace elements as well as essential enzymes that are destroyed when foods are cooked. Eating raw foods strengthens immunity, making you more resistant to disease, degeneration and allergies. Many chronic conditions disappear when people switch to a high-raw low-grain diet and—best news yet—they often don’t return. Long ago, I’d learned that the Germans, the Austrians, the Swedes and the Swiss had for generations catalogued the health promoting effects of eating foods high in raw fresh vegetables and fruits. Such a diet had long been credited with the healing of long term crippling diseases like arthritis and cancer, gastric ulcers, diabetes and heart disease. I unearthed reports of how athletes, taken off their usual diet high in cooked foods and put onto a way of eating in which between 50-75% of their foods were raw, not only lost none of their physical prowess, they even improved their performances. MEET RAW POWER An optimal experience of human health and vitality is possible when what we eat and the way we live is in line with what we have been genetically predisposed to thrive on. Such a simple idea. Yet what dazzling payoffs it can bring. New information from many areas of natural medicine can add missing pieces to the original Raw Power puzzle, expanding exponentially the understanding of how to use this way of eating to encourage healing and improve health. Raw foods carry light energy—photons—gathered by plants and animals from the sun’s own energy. These biophotons interact with our body’s own light-based, energy-based cellular control and communication systems—the living matrix—to heal, to energize, to bring mental and emotional clarity and to help keep our bodies strong and resistant to the buildup of toxic waste which invites disease and degeneration. And, Raw Power eating has three beneficial characteristics to it: A high-raw diet is the way our ancestors ate to which we are genetically adapted an on which we therefore thrive. It has to include adequate adequate but not excessive top quality proteins. It’s a way of eating which is low-or-no-grain and low-or-no-sugar that does not include manufactured convenience foods. RAW POWER TRUTHS An all-raw diet is useful temporarily for deep detoxification and encouraging the body to heal both acute and chronic diseases. It is not advisable for most people to eat nothing but raw foods for long periods. People who carry on with eating all-raw for years may continue to feel well, yet they often lose power and stamina both physically and mentally. Sometimes they even find it hard to live in the “real” world. This is often because they do not get enough top quality protein foods which establish firm architecture for body and psyche. Adequate protein is far healthier for bones than a low-protein diet. Organic and free range meat, fish, game and eggs can contribute enormously to your power and vitality and help protect from premature aging and degenerative disease (this is something I, like many others, for years did not know to be true). Too much sugar and too many sweeteners like honey, raw sugar, rice syrup and malt extract which all-raw foodies often get, are not good. They disturb insulin balance, predisposing us to insulin resistance and all the degeneration that brings with it. The majority of people living on a conventional Western diet show signs of insulin resistance syndrome. This epidemic of abnormalities includes high blood pressure, distorted blood fats or triglycerides, high cholesterol and blood sugar disorders. It carries with it an increased risk of just about every age-related disorder you can name: from eye problems, heart disease, nervous system disorders, obesity, diabetes and Alzheimer’s to chronic fatigue, exhaustion, anxiety, depression and poor sense of self worth. Why? Because the way they are eating and living is so far removed from what their bodies are genetically programmed to thrive on. Eating a no-grain—or a low-grain—diet, together with moderate quantities of quality protein foods and plenty of non-starchy vegetables and fruits reduces fatigue for virtually everyone while it eliminates weight problems, banishes inflammation and further enhances health, energy and good looks. Today’s fruits and vegetables lack yesterday’s nutrition, so a few well-chosen natural nutritional supplements can further enhance well-being. We need if at all possible to go for organic foods and so help avoid the toxic build-ups that can occur from foods grown using conventional farming methods. Finally—and most important of all—high-raw low-grain eating helps rebalance metabolism, allowing the body’s own remarkable inner power for healing to regenerate and rejuvenate the whole person. YOU DESERVE TO THRIVE Few of us reach our potentials for radiant health, energy, clarity, emotional balance and creative power. This is what I call life at the peaks—quantum health. By this I mean a real leap into a totally different way of life—which most people don’t think is possible. I mean a way of living where you awaken in the morning feeling fresh and good about yourself and your life—a state of being in which your physical and mental potential have the best chance of being used to full effect—that realm of consciousness in which your capacity for fun, passion and excitement over just being alive can soar like a joyous child. For real health is not just the absence of disease. It is a dynamic state of mind, body and spirit which makes it possible for us to participate fully and spontaneously in life, whatever it throws at us. I suggest you get into Raw Power and thrive.

These days, unbeknown to most people, we are bombarded with toxicity at every turn. There are poisonous chemicals in the water we drink and bathe in, the foods we eat, and the electromagnetic energies to which we are exposed via mobile devices and cell towers. This makes detoxing your body an essential practice for improving your health, guarding your weight, and looking after your mental and emotional wellbeing. cleansing crisis The powerful deep cleansing of carrying out a detox is not a simple experience. It might very well give you an unpleasant headache or make you moody, temporarily create an upset stomach, a film on your tongue and teeth, or even loose bowels as the toxic wastes from your system clear themselves. If you do experience these things, rest assured they will pass. They are nothing more than signs that your body is throwing off wastes—which is great. You are only experiencing what in natural medicine is known as a cleansing crisis. Those most likely to get a bad headache or other discomforts are people who have been drinking several cups of coffee a day. This kind of reaction is triggered by your tissues dumping a lot of stored caffeine into your bloodstream all at once, in order to eliminate it from your body. home-made compress Let me share with you a technique that works wonders for any uncomfortable detox reaction. It involves using plain water in the form of a simple home-made compress around the middle of your body. It charges your cells with energy, activates circulation and stimulates your liver—the body's organ of detoxification—to let go of stored wastes so any discomfort is minimized. Here’s what to do Tear a piece of cotton cloth wide enough to reach from under your arms down to your hips and long enough to wrap around your body comfortably once. An old cotton sheet is ideal (never use nylon or polyester). Dip the cloth into cold water, then wring it out. Wrap it around your middle and secure with a large safety pin or two. Now wrap a thick dry towel around this and lie down, or even better, climb into a warm bed. You might want to put on a pair of thick socks so your feet don’t feel cold. Rest for at least half an hour. If you do this just before bed and you drop off to sleep for the night, that’s ideal. You can always remove the compress in the morning. Also take the time to relax, and be kind to yourself. Have a cup of ginger tea—it is very soothing and good for you. Remember that a healing crisis is actually a good sign. Your body is getting rid of a lot of debris so you can access a higher level of health and vitality. It will pass quickly, leaving you better than ever.

In the realm of cooking a whole new ethos is being born. You don’t need to have every ingredient to make a recipe work. I no longer worry about coming into my kitchen and making a meal out of practically nothing—wilted spinach, whatever herbs I have in the garden, four eggs, an apple, half a carrot, and a piece of fresh ginger. Make up your own recipes. Don’t get hung up on measurements. Use them only as guidelines. Try a little more of something that intrigues you, a little less of what does not. If you like the look of some recipe you’ve come across but don’t have all the ingredients, substitute. At the age of 11, one of my sons, Jesse, decided to make Banana Bread. The recipe he found called for nine ingredients but he had only five. So he tossed all five of them together and whipped it all up. Much to his amazement and ours, he managed to create what we in the family thought was the nicest “Banana err...something or other” that we had ever tasted. So put your kitchen scales away and forget the complex routines for preparing a béchamel sauce. You see, Come Alive Cookery breaks all the rules. It’s not rules that matter when preparing foods. It is a kind of passion for the foods themselves—a feeling reflected in your passion for the earth and life itself. You can watch this in a small child as he enthusiastically devours a bowl of fresh strawberries drizzled with honey. Such passion, which is visual, visceral, and sensuous, can become an inspiration in food preparation, which leads you automatically to make certain choices. If two things look good together they taste good together. Open wide your kitchen window. Welcome the breezes of experiment, wit and spontaneity. The standard meal of roast meat and boiled Brussels sprouts topped off with a piece of sticky toffee pudding must be replaced by something far more hedonistic: slivers of raw Pacific salmon, luscious garden-fresh salads with a slice or two of Russian black bread followed by a winter sorbet of cranberry and mint—foods that are lighter, richer in top quality proteins, full of texture, flavor, and surprises. I look on food as a source of both delight and life-energy passed on to us from the earth. And I believe this energy needs to be preserved by not cooking food too much but by eating it fresh and respecting its essential nature. That way meals become a medium for building the kind of natural vitality that protects your body from premature aging and illness, enhances good looks, and keeps your minds clear. It is the life-energy present in abundance in fresh foods and clean, simple proteins from fish, game, organic meat, and poultry that makes such foods irresistible. Shun manufactured convenience foods that fill up the shelves of supermarket. They’re dead and can make you feel dead if you eat them. Instead, use Real Food—fresh, organic stuff untainted by chemicals, preservatives, colorants, and phony flavor enhancers. We thrive on the kind of food our grandparents grew for themselves. Why? Because these foods are both the most delicious and the most life nurturing. Your kitchen, big or small, should be treated like an artist’s atelier in which you can lose yourself in creative games. I remember as a child sitting in front of an old Stanley stove gazing into the flame filled with delightful visions as my grandmother canned pears, peaches, and green beans for winter. My kitchen is more like a sculptor’s studio than a food preparation station. It is a place where I can laugh with friends, workmates, and family while discussing both serious and trivial stuff as we prepare meals together. Every kitchen should be a space that reflects things that delight you or amuse you. Twenty years ago I bought a gigantic soup ladle that has hung above my sink ever since. It is so big I use it only rarely. It would be ideal for a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Practical? Not really. But I love its beautiful shape and the absurdity of its size makes me laugh. In India the best foods are those you buy in the cheapest cafés because they have been made with love and joy (sometimes with humor too). The word “café” is really a euphemism, since these places are little more than a few stone slabs in which a fire has been built for cooking. Yet the foods they sell are infinitely better tasting, more nourishing and “safer”—less likely to cause Delhi belly than all the fancy foods you get in India’s most expensive restaurants and hotels. Unless each dish you prepare is invested with love—or at least lots of affection—the meal will be dead. Have you noticed how much better food tastes when it’s cooked by someone who likes cooking? This is not because they know what they’re doing; it’s because they love what they do. The bottom line is simple: Experiment and enjoy. The rewards can be endless in terms of health and sensuous pleasure. Above all...have fun!

Everybody’s heard of death curses. Literature is laced with accounts of how Aboriginal witch doctors have brought about the death of the young and healthy by cursing them. No sooner do these people learn about the fate which has been cast for them than, inexplicably, they begin to sicken and die. Through complex biological processes, their simple belief in the curse foisted upon starts to bring about their downfall. MODERN-DAY DEATH CURSES In civilized society we look upon such phenomena as anthropological curiosities—products of primitive superstition which can’t touch us in our “enlightened age”. What we don’t know, however, is this: We in the so-called civilized world are, more often than not, living under our own brand of “death curses”—most of which we are not even aware of. They are subtler than those issued by witch doctors, yet every bit as deadly in creating the physical and mental decline that we have been taught to associate with aging. Common charged words and phrases associated with aging like “retirement”, “middle-age”, “It's all downhill after forty”, and “At your age you must start taking things more easily” are widely voiced. They can exert a powerful effect on the process of aging for all of us by creating destructive self-fulfilling expectations of age decline. Then, instead of facing our future full of confidence and excitement about what lies ahead, optimism gets replaced by anxiety as we are warned to “Be careful”, or “Never take chances on a new career at your age.” The list of such frequently proffered “sensible” advice is a long one. Such suggestions often lead us to make changes in the way we live that actually encourage physical decline—like decreasing the amount of exercise we get, or altering our eating habits away from fiber-rich natural foods towards “softer” foods and “convenience foods”. We may even limit the amount of social and intellectual stimulation we have been used to. What’s worse, this kind of advice tends to undermine our self-image and destroy our self-confidence. This in turn interferes with the proper functioning of the immune system, which plays such a central role in protecting the body from aging. An essential ingredient in healthy aging is becoming aware of just how powerfully our emotions, state of mind, and unconscious assumptions influence susceptibility to illness and the rate at which we age. Once this awareness penetrates your consciousness, you can begin to make use of a few powerful techniques that quite automatically banish death curses from your life, and help you live healthy, decade after decade. MIND-BODY CONNECTIONS The notion that your state of mind can influence your health and the rate at which you age was once something that had to be taken on faith. Now it’s been scientifically proven, thanks to a scientific discipline with a tongue-twisting name: psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). PNI has established that the body's immune system, that bulwark of defense, is undeniably affected by your unconscious assumptions, your emotional states and your behavioral patterns. They lead either to a significant resistance to rapid aging on the one hand, or to an increased susceptibility to decrepitude and degenerative diseases on the other. The happier you are, the better you feel about yourself and the more positive are your expectations about the future, the more likely is it that you will age slowly and gracefully, and the less likely you will be to fall prey to illness of whatever sort—from a common cold to a chronic life-threatening disease. LIVE LIKE ZORBA No area of what I call “ageless aging” is more fun to explore than this one. I always think of positive aging as “Zorba the Greek” consciousness. It makes possible the most amazing physical and mental feats by quite ordinary people living ordinary lives. Take the man who is able to work eighteen hours a day, drink whisky by the tumblerful, dance on tables until the early hours of the morning and still live to be 110, thanks to the sheer joy of his passion for living. (I had a grandfather like this whom I absolutely adored!) You also find this positive vision of ageing amongst saints and holy men who carry out their day-to-day activities, from writing letters to peeling potatoes, in a state of bliss—samadhi. Take a look at their superbly unlined faces. Many could as easily be thirty as seventy. Mainstream medicine has long acknowledged that emotional states such as anxiety and depression can make some illnesses worse. These include asthma, diabetes, peptic ulcer, ulcerative colitis, migraine and cardiovascular problems. But until the advent of PNI, it has paid little attention to examining the power—both positive and negative—of their psychological components, nor has it explored ways and means of improving these conditions by altering a patient's mental state or behavioral patterns. Meanwhile, it still ignores psychological components in the vast majority of other illnesses—from lung disease and cancer to rheumatism and allergic reactions—choosing to treat them instead as nothing other than physiological conditions, little affected by whether the patient experiencing them felt good or bad in himself. Western medicine, bound by the Cartesian notion of a split between mind and matter, fails to consider the people it treats as psychobiological beings, whose feelings, thoughts, expectations and perceptions are intimately bound to their physiology and biochemistry. They never bother to ask the question: Why do some people who smoke forty cigarettes a day for 20 years end up with lung cancer, while others following exactly the same pattern don't? TIME TO TRANSFORM Just as prolonged unmitigated stress, depression and anxiety suppress immune functions, a positive frame of mind frees us from death curses. It brings us a sense that we can cope with whatever comes our way, offers potent protection from illness and age-degeneration. Those of us who succumb to anxiety, depression and a sense of helplessness when life difficulties arise invariably show suppressed immune functions. The Zorba-like people who feel they can deal effectively with whatever comes their way most often have good immune functions, even when faced with major life changes. In a well controlled study of women suffering from breast cancer who underwent mastectomy, British researcher Dr Steven Greer reported that women who react to their diagnosis by denying that they are seriously ill or with a determination to conquer the problem are far more likely five years later to be free of the disease than those who stoically accept a diagnosis while feeling hopeless or helpless. MAKE AGE WORK FOR YOU What can you do, starting right now, to develop your mind as a tool for positive aging? Begin by exploring the benefits of mind/body techniques that alter your mental attitudes and emotional states from negative to positive, therefore encouraging good immune functions and slowing down the rate at which you age. There are many. Some 40 years back, Dr Herbert Benson at Harvard Medical School developed a simple meditative technique, called the Relaxation Response. It consists of sitting with your eyes closed for 15 or 20 minutes morning and night and repeating a single word—say “one” or “peace”—over and over again silently. Practiced regularly every day, it not only counters the immune-suppressing tendencies of stress, but even brings about major psychological shifts in belief systems that gradually change a self-defeating sense of helplessness into a free spirit who, like Zorba himself, can dance on tables just for fun. I recently wrote about Benson’s amazing work. You’ll find it here. I’ve even posted a video so you can learn the technique and practice it with me every day if you like. Finally, there is an excellent video by Benson about working with the Relaxation Response and the amazingly positive benefits research shows it to have on those who practice it daily. HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT AGING? Explore how many negative expectations you have unconsciously connected with aging. Then you simply and methodically go about changing them. Start right now: How many of the following notions would you agree with? They have been adapted from a questionnaire designed by gerontologist Erdman Palmore from Duke University Medical Center in the United States. TAKE THIS QUIZ Then check your answers at the end. (Just mark “T” for true or “F” for false.) The majority of old people (past age sixty-five) are senile (i.e. defective memory, disoriented or demented). All five senses tend to decline with age. Most old people have no interest in sex. Lung capacity tends to decline in old age. The majority of old people feel miserable most of the time. The majority of old people are seldom irritated or angry. At least one-tenth of the aged are living in long-stay institutions (i.e. nursing homes, mental hospitals, homes for the aged, etc). Aged drivers have fewer accidents per person than drivers under age sixty-five. Most older workers cannot work as effectively as younger workers. About 80 per cent of the aged are healthy enough to carry out their normal activities. Most old people are set in their ways and are unable to change. The majority of old people are working or would like to have some kind of work to do (including housework and volunteer work). It is almost impossible for most old people to learn new things. The reaction time of most old people tends to be slower than reaction time of younger people. In general, most old people are pretty much alike. The majority of old people are seldom bored. The majority of old people are socially isolated and lonely. Older workers have fewer accidents than younger workers. Older people tend to become more religious as they age. Most medical practitioners tend to give low priority to the aged. NOW CHECK YOUR ANSWERS The even-numbered questions are true. The odd numbered ones are false. How many of your own answers are correct? AGE REBORN Contrary to popular opinion, a mere 2 or 3 per cent of old people are institutionalized because of psychiatric disorders. The vast majority of older people do not have memory defects. Most people over sixty-five continue to be interested in sex, and sexual relations often continue well into the eighties between healthy men and women. Studies made of morale and happiness amongst the elderly show no difference between their enjoyment of life and that of younger people. Meanwhile, people over sixty-five have fewer accidents per person driving than younger drivers do. They also have fewer accidents at work. The majority of old people are not “set in their ways” as we have been taught, although it can take them longer to learn something new than their younger counterparts. Studies show that very few old people suffer from boredom. Neither are they socially isolated or lonely. More than 10 per cent of older people work and two-thirds of those who don't would like to. Finally, older people are seldom irritated or angry. This has been established by three separate studies. VISUALIZE AGE ANEW Becoming conscious of any false assumptions you make about aging is a good first step. The next is to create for yourself a new vision of what it means to have time passing. Make use of creative visualization techniques where, in a state of relaxation, you allow your mind to play on positive images of yourself five, ten, thirty years from now. It is only a matter of letting yourself indulge in positive daydreaming. Or practice a meditation or deep-relaxation technique once a day, and finish off by repeating silently to yourself Coue's formula for personal growth and healing: “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.” It is exquisitely simple, yet enormously powerful when practiced daily in a deeply relaxed state so that it is your imagination rather than your will which is brought into play.

We live in an age where discipline is often looked down upon as something which interferes with spontaneity and freedom - something old-fashioned and stifling to life. We tend to rebel against it. But the kind of discipline needed for daily practice of meditation or deep relaxation tends - far from stifling one's ability to be involved in the spontaneous business of life - actually to free it. At first it may take a little effort to get up fifteen or twenty minutes earlier each morning and afternoon to practice a technique, but you will find it is well worth it. The most common excuse is that you don't have time, but the reality is that practicing twice a day for fifteen to twenty minutes will give you time, not take it from you; for you will find that you do everything with greater efficiency and enjoyment, and that far less of your energy is wasted on fruitless activity. Studies show that every minute you spend in a deeply relaxed state yields a fourfold return in the energy you have in your outer life. connect at the core A daily meditation practice gives access to energy resources from deep within through the process of allowing. Regular meditation helps improve your concentration and focus so that you are able to pour all of yourself into whatever activity you undertake. Anyone who has erratic energy ups and downs and mood swings can benefit considerably from meditating for 15-30 minutes a day. The traditional way to meditate is sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the floor. (Raising your bottom a few inches off the ground helps align the spine and is more comfortable.) You may find it helpful to adopt the Buddhist practice of placing the back of the left hand in the palm of the right one, and it is often helpful to meditate in the same place each time.

Skin-brushing is an old and well-proven European technique for getting rid of toxic wastes from the body: both because it stimulates lymphatic drainage and because it increases the quantity of waste which is eliminated directly through the surface of the skin - a staggering one third of our wastes can be eliminated this way. I first learned the technique more than fifteen years ago. It was taught to me by a West Country physician named Phillip Kilsby who used it in conjunction with a high-raw diet as part of a program for healing many kinds of illness - from migraine and arthritis to high blood pressure and depression. When he first told me how effective it was in eliminating wastes and toxins from the body I did not believe him. He suggested a little experiment by which I could prove to myself just how effective it was at eliminating rubbish through the surface of the skin. He said, `Take a washcloth or flannel and wet it then wring it out well. Now brush your skin dry using the directions below. When you have finished rub the flannel over the surface you have brushed all over just once. Then hang the flannel up and don't use it again until tomorrow when you perform exactly the same routine. After three or four days smell the flannel.' That was all the proof needed! I use skin-brushing regularly, year round, several times a week. Many of the natural techniques for detoxifying the body are more effective if your body is not allowed to become accustomed to them by doing them every day. Skin brushing can be done steadily for three weeks with a week's break before resuming it again. After even a week of skin-brushing you will also notice an improvement in the look and feel of your skin. After a few weeks it even seems to improve muscle tone although I have never been able to figure out why this should happen. here's how You will need a natural vegetable-bristle brush (the long-handled kind is best) but a hemp glove will also do. Such brushes and gloves can be found in most health-food shops or good chemists. The brush should be kept dry. It is best to brush first thing in the morning before you shower. Brush the entire skin surface, except for your face. Begin with your feet, including the soles, then move up your legs, front and back, with firm sweeping strokes. Brush from your hands up your arms and across your shoulders, then brush your back and buttocks. On your front, brush a little more gently—your neck, chest and abdomen. In the abdominal area use a clockwise circular motion. To begin with brush fairly gently, increasing the firmness of the strokes as your body becomes more accustomed to it. After brushing take a shower. If you are brave you can alternate with warm and cold water (always beginning with warm and ending with cold). This is an excellent way of getting the circulation going and speeding up elimination.