recovery

Epsom salts baths are one of the world’s most potent yet underrated natural treatments. Don’t take them lightly. They can improve your health and they cost almost nothing. They can be useful if you have been having a stressful day because they deep cleanse the body, both physiologically and energetically. They are great for encouraging deep, restful sleep and relaxation. Epsom salts also carry a magic that goes way beyond this. Lying in an Epsom salts bath is a superb way to enter your inner world and make you aware of dreams and longings you may not even have discovered yet. Use them to help forge deep connections with your essential being. Use them often and just allow yourself to BE instead of having to DO all the time. Named after a compound of minerals discovered in 17th century England, Epsom salts were first discovered by Nehemiah Grew in Epsom, a small town not far from London. He discovered that Epsom salts could relieve pain in muscles, calm headaches, and quell inflammation. Early on, drinking Epsom water was used as a purgative. The salts themselves were produced by boiling Epsom water until it turned into hydrated magnesium sulfate—which is where the name Epsom salts comes from. This hydrated magnesium sulfate brings important minerals your body, and they are absorbed through the skin when you take an Epsom salts bath. Both the magnesium and the sulfate molecules have the ability to leach excess sodium, phosphorous, and nitrogenous wastes from the body. As they reduce toxicity, more of your body’s energetic potential gets freed up for use. Magnesium and sulfur also happen to be among the most alkalinizing of earth minerals. In practical terms, what this means is that they have the ability to create more physical space between the atoms and molecules of your body. This is important since the greater the acidity in the body and the more compressed this molecular space becomes, the greater the physical and emotional pressure you feel. There’s more good news. When you step into an Epsom salts bath, magnesium sulfate immerses your body in a unified electrical field. This takes excess electrical discharge from one area of the body and sends it to areas that are undercharged, which creates energetic balance and flow. There is nothing quite as good as an Epsom salts bath; for instance, taking an Epsom salts bath after you have been on a long flight or if you are suffering from jet lag, emotional tension, or fatigue. Magnesium deficiencies are rampant in the Western world as industrial agriculture has removed massive quantities of magnesium from our soils and also because most people choose to feed themselves on packaged convenience foods. More than 80 percent of people in the United States are deficient in magnesium. Very few have any idea just how important magnesium is to their health. Magnesium is the second-most abundant element in your cells. It is also the fourth most positively charged ion in your body and essential to more than 300 specific enzymes in the body. Magnesium helps activate your muscles and nerves. It’s a catalyst for vital neurotransmitters like serotonin. It helps create ATP, which are energy molecules for your body. And it must be present for optimization of the mitochondria in cells, which are crucial for vitality, health, and athletic performance. What about sulfur—the other half of the Epsom salts equation? Sulfur is a natural detoxifier. It is a powerful antioxidant, pain reliever, and anti-inflammatory. Inviting sulfur into your body through the surface of your skin while lying in an Epsom salts bath is a superb way to strengthen your system as a whole. The electrical charge between magnesium with its positive charge and sulfur with its negative charge helps these two minerals blend together in a superb way. There is a very specific way of taking an Epsom salts bath. Let me share it with you: Pour two large cups of industrial grade Epsom salts into the bathtub. You can find them in small amounts at the chemist and in supermarkets. Far better is this: order in bulk a 25 kg bag over the Internet. This way Epsom salts are inexpensive. One more tip: I like to add a pound of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to every Epsom salts bath because it blends well with magnesium sulfate and is wonderful for skin. But you must make sure that any baking soda you use contains no aluminum since this is the last thing you should ever put into your bath water or anywhere else. Fill the bath with blood-heat tepid water, just above body temperature. Immerse yourself in it for at least 20 to 30 minutes. If your body gets too cool, add some more hot water. If your body becomes too warm, add some cold water. You need to be able to sustain being in this bath in a very relaxed state for 20 to 30 minutes. Then get out of the bath and wrap yourself in a towel. If you are doing this just before bed, now climb into bed, cover yourself up, keep warm, and you can easily drift into blissful sleep. If it’s during the day or if you are trying to restore yourself to be able to go out in the evening, then when you get out of the Epsom salts bath wrap yourself up in a towel and lie down for 10 minutes. Then get up, get dressed, and go about doing whatever you are intending to do. In our home we are completely addicted to the joys and the benefits of daily Epsom salts baths. I predict that you too may become the addicts we have become. Try it and see.

The most dangerous damage your body ever has to handle is inflammation. When your body becomes inflamed this can trigger serious degenerative illnesses, from early aging and heart disease to diabetes, arthritis, food intolerance, and mental disorders. Inflammation is your body’s natural response to infection, injury, and tissue damage. It comes in two forms: Acute inflammation and chronic/ systemic inflammation, which spreads throughout your body. Acute inflammation is temporary, the purpose of which is to restore good tissue function as soon as possible. Your body creates inflammation as its defense against disturbing homeostasis in an attempt to prevent harm to surrounding tissues. Chronic inflammation, however, can be dangerous. It can turn into a festering fire that creates pain, illness, and disability. This is because your body reacts to chronic inflammation by triggering cellular and molecular distortions to pro-inflammatory immune cells that circulate throughout your body. This can bring damage to healthy areas like the linings of your blood vessels, as in arteriosclerosis, or your joint tissues in arthritis, or gut mucosa and diabetes. It may even act as a precursor to cancer. When it comes to the treatment of long-term illness—such as heart disease—savvy medical doctors now warn that we’ve been misled. It is inflammation in the arteries that is the real cause of arteriosclerosis and heart problems. Cholesterol can never line artery walls and cause heart attacks and strokes unless systemic inflammation is widespread in your body. So prescribing drugs to lower cholesterol and telling people to restrict saturated fats do not protect from heart disease as we’ve been told. In fact, statins, which the majority of cardiologists continue to prescribe for cholesterol, can seriously damage your health. Dwight Lundell, former Chief of Staff and Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital in Arizona, is one of many outspoken physicians in regard to this mistake. As he says, “We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority, often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong.” He continues, “I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years’ experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.” So, what are the causes of chronic inflammation in your body? The most common causes include: Exposure to chemical inhalants and pollutants, and electromagnetic exposure to cell phones, smart meters, and towers. Another is taking long-term courses of powerful drugs, from antibiotics to hormones, anti-depressants, analgesics, and sedatives, as well as drugs like statins and other pharmaceuticals, the remains of which can literally poison your body long term. Want to protect yourself from inflammation? Become aware of your possible exposure to these things and make changes to help protect you from possible causes. In many ways the simplest place of all to begin is by changing the way you eat, since the typical 21st century diet is right at the core of widespread chronic inflammation. Learn which foods are inflammatory in nature and which foods can help protect you from it. Then it’s time to throw out every one of the inflammatory foods that line your cupboard and your refrigerator, and forever change how you may have been eating. Foods that cause inflammation, which you want to avoid at any cost, are all kinds of sugars, regardless of how much they may be promoted as “good for you;” all artificial sweeteners, which are chemically dangerous to your body; and all GMO foods, which can literally be deadly. A large percentage of the population nowadays reacts badly to cow’s milk products—from the milk itself to cow’s yogurt and cheese. Buy goat, sheep or buffalo milk, yogurt, and cheese instead. Another category of foods that can be seriously inflammatory to the body are high-carbohydrate foods—breads, pasta, cakes, and biscuits made from common grains and cereals as well as all the common convenience foods that line our supermarket shelves. These are chock-full of colorants, flavor enhancers, and other chemicals that poison your body. And it goes without saying that you want to avoid all junk foods completely. Certain foods, herbs, spices, and supplements can help reduce inflammation and protect your body from it in the future. Organic dark green vegetables are high on the list: spinach, kale, dandelion greens, collard greens, broccoli, bok choy, beet greens, and asparagus are high on the list of protective vegetables. So are organic berries of all kinds, organic chicken, grass-fed lamb, beef, venison, wild salmon, and green-lipped muscles from New Zealand. Clearing inflammation from your body in whatever form it occurs is likely to be the very best action you can take to help you live a long and healthy life, during which you look and feel your very best at every age.

The least understood of all nutrients, Vitamin B 12 is a huge molecule. It has long been known as “the energy vitamin.” And rightly so. You need to have lots of it in your body in order to thrive and protect yourself from fatigue and degenerative conditions. Vitamin B12 plays a major role in DNA synthesis, the formation of healthy blood cells, and the production of energy in your mitochondria. Yet Vitamin B12 deficiency is now rampant. At least one in four people in the Western world are seriously deficient in this essential nutrient. Meanwhile 50% of the population in the world now has blood levels of Vitamin B12 in the sub optimal range. Why should you care about making sure that you have enough Vitamin B12? First of all, this remarkable vitamin is essential for building myelin in your body. Myelin is a fatty material that encloses the axons of neurons. It provides a sheath of electrical energy around your cells so your nervous system functions as it is meant to do. This helps nerve impulses move speedily and makes it possible for the cells all over your body to communicate with each other. When the myelin sheath is damaged the body becomes prone to all sorts of degenerative conditions, including spinal cord injury, stroke, and multiple sclerosis. Your body needs an abundance of Vitamin B12 for many other purposes as well. It’s essential for adrenal hormone production, maintaining a healthy immune system, having balanced moods, and experiencing good memory function and mental clarity as well as physical and emotional vitality. If you don't have adequate levels of Vitamin B12 in your blood you are more likely to experience tingling in your hands, legs, and feet, weak muscles, problems with your memory, apathy, and even depression. The scientific term for Vitamin B12—this water-soluble nutrient—is cobalamin. But, unlike other water-soluble vitamins, B12 is not rapidly removed from your body when you urinate. Instead, it is taken into your kidneys, your liver, and other important organs, where it may remain for long periods. So you can be deficient in Vitamin B12 yet not know it for several years because your body has simply not been absorbing Vitamin B12 from your foods. Perhaps the most important cause of Vitamin B12 deficiency is what is known as food-cobalamin-malabsorption syndrome because your body is not making what is known as intrinsic factor. Intrinsic factor is a protein made by your stomach that binds to Vitamin B12. It’s meant to grab the B12 molecule as it passes through the small intestine, carrying it on to the large intestine where it can be absorbed into the body, eventually end up in your bloodstream. But if you are depleted of stomach acid, as many people are—especially if they have been using anti-acid medications or eating a lot of cereal and grain-based carbohydrates—which create gastric reflux and indigestion—you are likely to be low in stomach acid. When stomach acid is decreased in this way, intrinsic factor can’t absorb B12 properly and your health suffers. As we get older, levels of Vitamin B12 in our bodies tend to decrease. A study of over hundred older men and women showed that we become more susceptible to atrophy or shrinkage in the brain—a well-known characteristic of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Here are a few habits you will want to avoid to help prevent this: Don’t drink more than three or four cups of coffee each day. Even better, limit your organic fair trade coffee to only one or two a day. Stop taking prescriptions drugs that diminish Vitamin B12 in the body. Do not use antacids and other drugs to treat ulcers. Change the way you are eating then you will find that most of these problems clear up naturally within a few weeks. Finally, never take antibiotics unless they are absolutely necessary. If you do, make sure you counter their effects by using a top quality probiotic for many weeks as soon as the antibiotics have finished. How do you make sure you get enough Vitamin B12? It’s difficult to manage if you are vegetarian. It is virtually impossible if you are vegan. Eggs are a good source of Vitamin B12 provided they come from a free-range pastured farm. If they are genuinely free range, a great way to eat eggs is to put them raw into some sort of smoothie. Good sources of Vitamin B12 are also found in organic chicken, grass-fed beef, grass-fed lamb, and seafood that did not come from fish farms. Unfortunately—and this is something few people are aware of—more than half of the seafood in the world is now either contaminated with heavy metals and harmful materials from fish farms where these fish are raised on quite hideous foods. Certified grade A raw milk also contains good quantities of Vitamin B12. There are medical tests that you can take if you suspect you may be B12 deficient. Your health practitioner can organize this as well as help determine the underlining cause of deficiency and how it should be treated. The problem with these tests is that they are not very accurate and, as yet, few doctors are aware of the seriousness with which Vitamin B12 deficiencies must be treated. You can, of course, look for one of the under-the-tongue sprays, although the human body often does not absorb these efficiently. Personally, I prefer occasional Vitamin B12 injections. It is still legal in many countries for you to do these yourself. If you live in a country where they are not legal, your health practitioner can inject them for you. What is important is that when you have an adequate supply of this vitamin in your body, especially as you get older, to help prevent many potentially life-destroying conditions that result in a B12 deficiency.

Inflammation is the most dangerous condition your body has to handle to make you well and keep you that way. It diminishes your immune system. It can trigger a wide variety of serious degenerative illnesses, from early aging and heart disease to diabetes, arthritis, food intolerance and mental disorders. Inflammation is your body’s natural response to infection, injury and tissue damage. It comes in two forms: Acute and chronic inflammation—systemic inflammation, which spreads throughout your body. Acute inflammation is temporary, the purpose of which is to restore good tissue function as soon as possible. Your body creates inflammation as its defense against disturbing homeostasis in an attempt to prevent harm to surrounding tissues. Chronic inflammation is different. It turns into a festering fire causing pain, illness and disability all round. The reactions it brings about in the body are highly complex, involving many cellular and molecular distortions. It acts upon pro-inflammatory immune cells that circulate throughout your body, damaging healthy areas like the linings of your blood vessels in arteriosclerosis, joint tissue in arthritis, gut mucosa in lactose and gluten intolerance, and pancreatic tissue in diabetes. It can even act as a precursor to cancer. SURPRISING DISCOVERY Recently, highly respected cardiologists have pointed out that when it comes to the treatment of many conditions—such as heart disease—the medical profession has been doing it all wrong. Prescribing drugs to lower cholesterol, and telling people to restrict quality fats, do not protect from heart disease as we have been taught. The statins which cardiologists continue to prescribe are not only useless, they say, these pharmaceuticals can be seriously detrimental to your health. It is, they have discovered, inflammation in the arteries that is the real cause of arteriosclerosis and heart problems. Cholesterol can never line artery walls causing heart attacks and strokes unless systemic inflammation is widespread in your body. Dwight Lundell, former Chief of Staff and Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital in Arizona, is one of many outspoken physicians in regard to this mistake. “We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong,” he says. “I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years’ experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.” THE TRIGGERS What causes inflammation in the body? Many things, from genetic inheritance to environmental influences—especially the wrong diet; being exposed to bacteria, inhalants, pollutants; even electromagnetic influences from cell phones, smart meters and towers; not to mention taking long-term courses of powerful drugs—from antibiotics to hormones, anti-depressants, analgesics and sedatives, to drugs like statins, commonly used to treat heart conditions; and other prescriptive drugs, the remains of which literally poison the body, badly polluting its terrain. If you wish to protect yourself from inflammation, you need to become aware of where it’s likely to be coming from. This means examining how you live your life, and making changes to protect yourself from possible causes. The second step is to learn about which foods cause inflammation and which foods can help protect you from it. Then it’s time to throw out every one of the inflammatory foods that line your cupboard and your refrigerator, and forever change how you may have been eating. ANTI-INFLAMMATORY EATING Certain foods, herbs, spices, and supplements help reduce inflammation and protect your body from it in the future. Organic dark green vegetables are high on the list: Spinach, kale, dandelion greens, collard greens, broccoli, bok choy, beet greens, and asparagus are high on the list of protective vegetables. So are organic berries of all kinds, organic chicken, grass-fed lamb, beef, venison, wild salmon, and green-lipped muscles from New Zealand. Foods that cause inflammation which you want to avoid at any cost are all kinds of sugars, regardless of how much they may be promoted as “good for you”; all artificial sweeteners, which are chemically dangerous to your body; and all GMO foods, which can literally be deadly. A large percentage of the population also reacts badly to cow’s milk products—from the milk itself to cow’s yogurt and cheese. Another category of foods that can be highly inflammatory to the body are high-carbohydrate foods, from the common grains and cereals to packaged convenience foods which line your supermarket shelves. They are chock-full of colorants, flavor enhancers and other chemicals which poison your body. It goes without saying that you want to avoid all junk foods, from sugared drinks to pastries, completely. Explore instead using the faux grains, which do not pollute your body and are great for meals and baking. (See: faux grain) SPICE IT UP Certain spices are wonderful for helping to quell inflammatory issues. Always buy organic. Most herbs in supermarkets have been irradiated—sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, which you do not want to allow into your body. Turmeric has been used for centuries as a medicine for treating colds, flu, and liver disease. It contains curcumin which has been used for centuries to reduce inflammation. Cinnamon, in addition to its beautiful smell and flavor, has been shown in many studies to exert anti-inflammatory properties and to ease swelling. Garlic in fresh form eases the inflammation of arthritis, as well as helping to protect you from colds, flu and other ailments. Ginger, in the form of a fresh root which you can grate into your foods and drinks, is fabulous for calming inflammation of upset stomachs, getting rid of headaches and infections. Cayenne, like other chili peppers, contains capsaicinoids which gives it its anti-inflammatory properties and can ease the pain of arthritis and headaches. MAGNESIUM THE ULTIMATE For those in the know, it is magnesium that forms the foundation of both treatment and prevention of heart disease, arteriosclerosis and diabetes by calming the fires of chronic inflammation. Virtually everybody in the western world is seriously deficient in this wonderful mineral. All packaged convenience foods are very low in it. Magnesium deficiency is common in obesity, type 2 diabetes, and the insulin resistance that can trigger cardiac issues as well as the widespread incidence of cancer. Magnesium reduces hypertension, reduces your rate of aging, helps protect from bone fractures, and calms troubled minds. It is as basic as clean air and water for becoming healthy and staying healthy. There are many ways you can take magnesium, from swallowing supplements (not the best way) to bathing in magnesium chloride baths. One of the most effective ways to get more magnesium into your body—something all of us need to help clear inflammation and treat pain—is transdermal magnesium therapy. Get yourself a spray bottle of high quality magnesium chloride and spray it on your body, massaging it in all over. Magnesium chloride is taken right through your skin into the cells. Slowly but surely, doing this three times a day counters inflammation and pain superbly well. Spray it on or have a friend massage it into your body. When it dries, it may leave traces of white powder on the skin surface. This is nothing to worry about. It is some of the magnesium itself, that’s all; you can brush it off. Life Flo Health make a pure Magnesium Chloride Oil, which is inexpensive. It provides 66mg of magnesium chloride for every 4 sprays or 560mg per teaspoon. It is taken from the Ancient Zechstein Seabed, which lies 1600 to 2000 meters beneath the surface of the earth in the Netherlands, and is 100% pure. Magnesium chloride has no equal when it comes to the effectiveness of using magnesium to counter inflammation and athletic pain. It must be 100% pure magnesium chloride, not any other form of the mineral. I use it every day. Clearing inflammation from your body in whatever form it occurs may well be the very best action you can take to help you live a long and healthy life, during which you look and feel your very best at every age. Life Flo Health, Pure Magnesium Pure Magnesium Oil is a highly concentrated spray of pure magnesium chloride-nothing added and nothing removed. Mined deep under the earth's surface from the Zechstein Seabed in the Netherlands, it can be used daily, is non-greasy, and leaves no unpleasant odor. Provides approximately 66mg of elemental magnesium for every 4 sprays or 560mg per teaspoon. Order Pure Magnesium from iherb

One of the oldest systems of natural healing in the world uses hot and cold baths and showers to increase your vitality, balance hormones, beautify skin, tone muscles, clear your mind, and vitalize your nervous system, lymphatic system, and circulation. It quickly brings you a sense of wonderful aliveness, and all the while it is dissolving, transporting, and clearing rubbish from your body and psyche. Father Sebastian Kneipp The father of all water therapies was Father Sebastian Kneipp, the Bavarian priest who first made us aware of water’s healing power. “When used appropriately,” he said, “water and herbs can cure almost every disease.” He established Bad Worishofen in Germany in 1897, a center where people all over the world came to be healed by special ice cold baths, walking barefoot in the snow, and other simple but powerful methodologies that are celebrated to this day. I first learned the secrets of water healing in my early twenties after spending many years in a state of ill health thanks to my being raised on a terrible diet. It had been based on huge bowels of breakfast cereals piled high with white sugar, horrid fast foods eaten at 5 am in truck drivers’ cafes throughout America, and a lot of other junk. No wonder I was unhealthy. However, what I learned from the generosity of some brilliant British and European doctors who practiced natural medicine turned my entire life around. This was how I came to work in, write about, and teach natural methods of healing. It is also how I came to visit Kneipp’s centers for hydrotherapy, which still continue to thrive, especially in Germany. In many ways the most important of all I learned was how powerful healing with simple water techniques can be for improving your life at any time. Let me share with you one of these techniques. Do try it and let me know how you get on. There are many more, but let’s begin with this one. Thanks to water's chemical and bioelectrical properties, and to your body's physiological and energetic responses to them, water therapy is a superb method for cleansing, energizing, and restoring great functioning to any tired or aging body. The technique of using alternating applications of hot and cold water is called “Contrast Hydros.” If you have not yet experienced the turn-on it offers, you have a real treat ahead. After a workout, athletes use hydroelectrics in the form of contrast baths and showers to strengthen the body, prevent muscular damage, and eliminate aches. Contrast hydros not only help clear wastes and vitalize but also bring nutrients and oxygen to areas of your body that need them and balance your energies, helping to protect you from stress-induced damage. Here is how Apply hot water to your whole body for three or four minutes in the form of a hot bath or shower. Follow with 30 to 60 seconds of cold water. Repeat the procedure three times. The application of cold water needs to be just long enough to make blood vessels constrict. This can take place in as little as 20 seconds. Cold water triggers your sympathetic nervous system to energize while hot water intensifies parasympathetic activity for relaxation. The combination of the two makes you feel great. It’s important that you start slowly, increasing the length of your exposure to hot and cold water gradually. If you have a separate bath and shower you can use the bath for one temperature application, the shower for the other, moving back and forth. During the summer, make your bath cold and your showers hot. During the winter, reverse this. Like any natural treatment, contrast hydros need to be followed carefully and wisely to get all the benefits they offer and to make sure no harm is done. You will probably find at first that a plunge into cold water or a cold shower is a shock to your body. Soon this will turn into an experience of total pleasure. It is always the first cold application that is the hardest. The biggest barrier to getting into cold water is a psychological one. Once you leap this hurdle you’ll find yourself eagerly looking forward to your daily treatment. Here are a few cautions: Always check with your doctor before beginning any natural treatment to make sure that it is appropriate for you. He or she may advise you not to use contrast hydros if you have any kind of heart condition, nervous disorder, high blood pressure, if you are an insulin-dependent diabetic, or suffer from hardening of the arteries. Make sure your body is warm before beginning. The room should be well heated. Don’t let your body become chilled during the treatment. If you feel yourself becoming too cold, immediately stop and get into a hot bath or shower until you warm up fully. Always begin with a hot application and end with cold. Start slowly with 2-3 minutes of hot application followed by 20 seconds of cold. As your body gets used to contrast hydros, increase the time of the cold applications up to 1 minute (even up to 2-3 minutes if you are extremely fit or an athlete). When you finish, dry your body well and dress warmly. I’d love to hear how you get on so I can share with you other hydroelectric treatments that cost virtually nothing but can be wonderfully life enhancing.