No I'm not taking about that. It's your sleep behavior that is leading to heart disease and depression. Ancient Chinese acupuncturists understood this behavior and observed it in action. They linked forever the functions of the heart, circulation and joy under the label of the "fire element." They noticed that a lack of joy will damage the heart and a damaged heart will cause a lack of joy. Today we call "lack of joy" depression. Depressed people have a lot fewer glia cells which power the neurons which make up the brain. WIthout enough glia cells the brain literally cannot fire on all cylinders.

During the Summer's long nights the fire energy is

Your body was designed to move; walk to gather food; lift heavy objects to build shelter; and run to escape danger. All these activities activate muscle fibers which burn calories in order to contract and move your body. Health experts took note as society became more sedentary with the end of the "industrial age." These experts focused on the most "efficient" of these activities. In 1968 American physician Kenneth Cooper coined the term aerobics in his exercise book Aerobics. He used the term to describe exercises that use oxygen to keep large muscle groups moving continuously for at least 20 minutes. Based on this definition, the name aerobics came to refer to calisthenics taught to music. (Encarta) A movement was born and women all over the country bought leg warmers and danced in classes and in front of the TV sweating to the "oldies."

The biology of the "runner's high"
As their classes wore on, and the brain became starved for oxygen and fuel, a funny thing happened to these women. A region of the temporal lobe got more active, a lot more active. This is the same are area of the brain that is activated when religious people "talk to God." Dr. Michael Persinger, who is an expert on this part of the brain, reports that when this part of the brain is activated, people feel an "opiate-like effect with a substantial decrease in anxiety." and a "heightened sense of well being." Millions of women were hooked, literally stoned on aerobics.

This blissful experience is triggered by two activities, meditation/prayer and stress/lack of oxygen. This euphoria is designed so that when it's time to "meet our maker," after being chased to exhaustion, it is a peaceful transition. What this aerobic "runner's high" is covering up is the huge increase in cortisol that accompanies survival mimicking activities -- aerobics, running, spinning, stairmaster, treadmill, kick boxing, etc.

How stress makes you want to eat "junk"
These elevated cortisol levels keep your blood sugar high, and your insulin system working overtime to supply your muscles with the fuel they need to escape "danger." Chronically high cortisol levels also skew your perception of time so you feel rushed during the day and have problems turning off your brain at night so you stay up late feeling that there is more work to do and searching for sweet and starchy foods to feed this permanent "fight or flight" state.

The end result off job related stress getting pushed over the edge by heavy aerobic exercise is a damaging high cortisol state masked by the mimicking of a blissful "near death" experience all of which forces you to over eat sweets and starches, feel guilty adding more stress and more exercise. It's no wonder many people drop out after just a few months and some who get hooked on the "high" fall over dead on the treadmill.

So what's the answer
I'm not saying don't move your body, just concentrate on the other less "efficient" exercises that don't create stress or burn calories, like yoga, pilates, tai chi, weight lifting and walking.

The ancient Chinese acupuncturists say, "Eat breakfast like a Queen, lunch like a princess, and dinner like a pauper." Most people have heard a variation of this advice and know that breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day, but they ask me, "I'm just not hungry in the morning. What should I do?" What I'm going to teach you today is why lack of hunger in the morning is a symptom of too little sleep and why you want to fix that.

Does your alarm clock wake you from the dead?
The problem with lack of sleep is that your body does not have enough time manage your hormones, especially melatonin. Among it's other jobs, melatonin is a master hormone that coordinates other hormones. When you go to bed too late, your melatonin levels peak right when they should be fading away, right about when the hated alarm goes off.

When your melatonin peak is shifted into the morning hours, the hormone controlling your appetite, leptin, is also high. (High levels of leptin at night keep you from waking up and raiding the fridge.) The elevated melatonin and leptin prevent hunger in the morning and explain why that lack of hunger is a serious sign that you are sleep deprived. Elevated morning melatonin also changes the timing of your natural cortisol spike which is your body's natural alarm clock. We are forced to replace our natural alarm clock with the much hated clock radio. Ugh!

Its all downhill from there!
So you drag yourself out of bed, forcing your body to wake up when it is just should be getting into deep sleep. You skip breakfast and sleep walk through the first part of the day. Because your cortisol levels are low, you cannot effectively deal with the stress of the day and your time perception gets warped and before you know it, the day has passed and you have accomplished little. Sound familiar?

The 5-element acupuncture body clock
The ancient Chinese understood the effects of these hormone waves. Even though they could not measure the hormones with blood tests, they could see the effects when normal sleep patterns were disturbed. They called this the Law of Midday/Midnight. If your internal body clock is off, not only do you have no hunger in the morning, but acupuncturists go on to say if your energy is not balanced, at 3:00 p.m. (bladder meridian time) you will crave sweets, get sleepy, irritable and stupid. Not exactly a recipe for success.

There are special 5-element acupuncture points to re-set your body clock called horary points. They help balance your energy through the day and help your hormones return to normal daylight patterns. So if you are feeling the effects of sleep deprivation, you will want to go to bed earlier and call for an acupuncture appointment!

Saturated fat is a marker for disease in the body, not because we eat saturated fat, but because the liver converts excess carbohydrates to saturated fats. The error logic is to assume that eating the same is harmful.

Here are a bunch of snippets from the Weston Price Foundation. They have abbreviated citations, but it should give you a start if you are inclined.

Myth: Heart disease in America is caused by consumption of cholesterol and saturated fat from animal products.

Truth: During the period of rapid increase in heart disease (1920-1960), American consumption of animal fats declined but consumption of hydrogenated and industrially processed vegetable fats increased dramatically. (USDA-HNI)

Myth: Saturated fat clogs arteries.

Truth: The fatty acids found in artery clogs are mostly unsaturated (74%) of which 41% are polyunsaturated. (Lancet 1994 344:1195)

Myth: Vegetarianism is healthy.

Truth: The annual all-cause death rate of vegetarian men is slightly more than that of non-vegetarian men (.93% vs .89%); the annual death rate of vegetarian women is significantly more than that of non-vegetarian women (.86% vs .54%) (Am J Clin Nutr 1982 36:873)

Myth: Vitamin B12 can be obtained from certain plant sources such as blue-green algae and soy products.

Truth: Vitamin B12 is not absorbed from plant sources. Modern soy products increase the body's need for B12. (Soybeans: Chemistry & Technology Vol 1 1972)

Myth: For good health, serum cholesterol should be less than 180 mg/dl.

Truth: The all-cause death rate is higher in individuals with cholesterol levels lower than 180 mg/dl. (Circulation 1992 86:3:1026-1029)

Myth: Animal fats cause cancer and heart disease.

Truth: Animal fats contain many nutrients that protect against cancer and heart disease; elevated rates of cancer and heart disease are associated with consumption of large amounts of vegetable oils. (Fed Proc July 1978 37:2215)

Myth: Children benefit from a low-fat diet.

Truth: Children on low-fat diets suffer from growth problems, failure to thrive & learning disabilities. (Food Chem News 10/3/94)

Myth: A low-fat diet will make you "feel better . . . and increase your joy of living."

Truth: Low-fat diets are associated with increased rates of depression, psychological problems, fatigue, violence and suicide. (Lancet 3/21/92 v339)

Myth: To avoid heart disease, we should use margarine instead of butter.

Truth: Margarine eaters have twice the rate of heart disease as butter eaters. (Nutrition Week 3/22/91 21:12)

Myth: Americans do not consume enough essential fatty acids.

Truth: Americans consume far too much of one kind of EFA (omega-6 EFAs found in most polyunsaturated vegetable oils) but not enough of another kind of EFA (omega-3 EFAs found in fish, fish oils, eggs from properly fed chickens, dark green vegetables and herbs, and oils from certain seeds such as flax and chia, nuts such as walnuts and in small amounts in all whole grains.) (Am J Clin Nutr 1991 54:438-63)

Myth: A vegetarian diet will protect you against atherosclerosis.

Truth: The International Atherosclerosis Project found that vegetarians had just as much atherosclerosis as meat eaters. (Lab Invest 1968 18:498)

Myth: Low-fat diets prevent breast cancer.

Truth: A recent study found that women on very low-fat diets (less than 20%) had the same rate of breast cancer as women who consumed large amounts of fat. (NEJM 2/8/96)

Myth: The "cave man diet" was low in fat.

Truth: Throughout the world, primitive peoples sought out and consumed fat from fish and shellfish, water fowl, sea mammals, land birds, insects, reptiles, rodents, bears, dogs, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, game, eggs, nuts and milk products. (Abrams, Food & Evolution 1987)

Myth: Coconut oil causes heart disease.

Truth: When coconut oil was fed as 7% of energy to patients recovering from heart attacks, the patients had greater improvement compared to untreated controls, and no difference compared to patents treated with corn or safflower oils. Populations that consume coconut oil have low rates of heart disease. Coconut oil may also be one of the most useful oils to prevent heart disease because of its antiviral and antimicrobial characteristics. (JAMA 1967 202:1119-1123; Am J Clin Nutr 1981 34:1552)

Myth: Saturated fats inhibit production of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.

Truth: Saturated fats actually improve the production of all prostaglandins by facilitating the conversion of essential fatty acids. (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Journal 20:3)

Myth: Arachidonic acid in foods like liver, butter and egg yolks causes production of "bad" inflammatory prostaglandins.

Truth: Series 2 prostaglandins that the body makes from arachidonic acid both encourage and inhibit inflammation under appropriate circumstances. Arachidonic acid is vital for the function of the brain and nervous system. (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Journal 20:3)

Myth: Beef causes colon cancer

Truth: Argentina, with higher beef consumption, has lower rates of colon cancer than the US. Mormons have lower rates of colon cancer than vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists (Cancer Res 35:3513 1975)

© 1999 Weston A. Price Foundation All Rights Reserved.

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Fabulous and provocative article about vitamin K2 from the Weston Price Foundation. I'm trying it right now and it seems to have helped some tooth sensitivity I was experiencing. If you are having tooth problems like frequent cavities, I would take a long hard look at adding this vitamin.

Since the amount of vitamin K1 in typical diets is ten times greater than that of vitamin K2, researchers have tended to dismiss the contribution of K2 to nutritional status as insignificant. Yet over the last few years, a growing body of research is demonstrating that these two substances are not simply different forms of the same vitamin, but are better seen as two different vitamins: whereas K1 is preferentially used by the liver to activate blood clotting proteins, K2 is preferentially used by the other tissues to place calcium where it belongs, in the bones and teeth, and keep it out of where it does not belong, in the soft tissues. Acknowledging this research, the United States Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with researchers from Tufts University, finally determined the vitamin K2 contents of foods in the U.S. diet for the first time in 2006.

http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/vitamin-k2.html#three

What causes lupus? Well. We don't really know. The general assumption is that the body's immune system has gone haywire has started attacking itself, but what if the immune system is doing the best it can. What if the body is trying it's best to eliminate the source of the problem? What if the real problem is underlying unresolved inflammation and eventually the body tries to eliminate the inflammation before a more serious and deadly disease takes advantage of the body's weakness.

If that's the case, then lupus sufferers should find significant relief if the cause of the inflammation can be identified and eliminated.

The photo is of Gulli's water basin. It freezes up overnight and we have to break it up and empty the ice before we refill it each morning. By the way, it holds 10 gallons of water!

Each one of my older clients today remarked that there would be a lot of illness after the record warm weather we were experiencing today. I'm not sure what the Chinese would say about the weather disrupting our internal energy balance, but I'm sure they had something to say. Keep your ecchinacia handy!

Wow. It's hard to grasp that three weeks have gone by since my last post. I'm working on being more consistent with the basic chores in my life with the hopes that the larger things will take care of themselves.

The photo is of a handful of our Buff Orpingtons before Sharon and the girls butchered them. (It's funny. The old meaning of the word "butcher" is to prepare to cook, now the meaning is to be unnecessarily cruel.) People talk about knowing where your food comes from and we've gone a few steps further and grow a lot of our own food. The difference in nutrition between a grass and bug fed heritage chicken out in the sunshine and a hormone/antibiotic fed mutant breed caged in a warehouse is calculable.

That said, I cam across an interesting article about cooking methods and nutrient retention in broccoli. (It wouldn't be too much of a leap to assume that the same goes for other vegetables as well.) The bottom line is that stir frying is perhaps the best method for locking nutrition in the broccoli. With microwaving, you lose nutrients, mostly vitamin C because it leaches out with any water you cook. I assume that steaming and boiling vegetables does the same thing. That's why the water has that green color when you are done! I suppose you could drink that water or put it into soups instead of pouring it down the drain. And one last thing, stir fry with heat resistant oils like extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil or lard. Some of the other oils don't lock in the nutrients as well and the high heat chemically changes most vegetable oils into toxic compounds.

That's the money-quote of the following article written by Betsy Hart and well worth the journey to get to it. The Chinese recognized the fundamental importance of acknowledging a purpose/force greater and wiser than human institution. In Western civilization, this is God.

But I also know I want so much more for my kids than a Baby Einstein DVD could give them, even if it worked. When it comes to my children, my ultimate goal for them is heaven, not Harvard. If they go to the latter on their way to heaven, that's great. But if I reverse that equation, I've failed them. full article here

The small intestine in acupuncture is the body official who sorts the pure from the impure. It's an essential function in the body and even more important in the information age. Yesterday the medical establishment released "new" dietary standards for cancer prevention and they echo the old prejudices against meat and fats.

One of the big problems with these studies is they do no differentiate between poisoned meats and pure meats. So the grass fed pork raised with no hormones or antibiotics counts at the same a factory farm horror living in filth and pumped full of chemicals. That's like saying don't drink any water because some of it is boiled and will burn your tongue.

So take these pronouncements from the medical oracles with a grain of salt. Remember when eggs were going to kill you?h

First, buying local is economically stagnating. It's economics 101. A local economy is a stagnant economy. The broader an economy's reach, the more robust it is. (If you don't believe me, read this.) Finished with the Vancouver Sun's article? Read on.

Even though a blind faith in buying everything local is not healthy for an economy, it makes sense in certain situations. Food is one such example. This "action alert" from the Weston Price Foundation is a perfect example of why.
The USDA is now implementing a rule that will require all RAW domestic almonds to be "pasteurized," using either a toxic and carcinogenic fumigant (propylene oxide) or a steam-heating process, to eliminate possible bacterial contamination. This is an effort to make nut production "safe" for industrial-scale farms with literally thousands of acres of production. We are now headed down the slippery slope-if agribusiness players have their way, almost all fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables will be treated with chemicals, heated or irradiated. We need to draw a line in the sand here and now!
It's a rough and tumble world in business. Big agri-businesses will work to stifle their competition, such as this move by "big almond". It the reason why today it is exeedingly difficult to get raw milk. The same thing happened to the milk industry in the 1950's and that's why you cannot buy raw milk, even though it's much healthier for you. It's also the reason why you should be terrified about a powerful central government deciding what you can and cannot eat.
If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson

And if you are a little bit worried about the government dictating the type of almonds you can eat, you should be terrified about what the government will decide is good for you if they are in charge of your healthcare.

We've past the autumnal equinox and the days are rapidly getting shorter. This means that everybody north of the Mason Dixon Line is now starting to draw down their vitamin D stores. (That is a computer diagram of vitamin D on the right.)

You have two choices to replace you vitamin D stores:

#1 Vacation

# 2 Take a vitamin D3 supplement

No. I'm not talking about the trash, or the dishes. Most of us get those done, although some of us more often than others. I'm talking about about the chores you must do to take care of your body. Most of today's health chores never made it on your great grandmother's to do list.

Several generations ago there was no need to exercise. Churning butter, washing clothes, kneading bread was enough to keep her arms from getting flabby. Similarly, she didn't worry about getting enough sleep. When the sun went down, not a whole lot could get done by candlelight, and nobody had to stay up to watch David Letterman's top 10.

Although modern life has made work less odious, the cost is that we now have to add new chores to the age old list.Here are the top five modern health chores.

1) Exercise - some type of strenuous weightlifting that leaves you huffing and puffing and sweating (I recommend a book called The Power of 10."

2) Sleep - your body requires 7-9 hours minimum a night, more during the winter. Why do you think nights get longer in Winter? Mother Nature hates you?

3) Cook and eat real food - for your great grandmother there was no option. Now you can go weeks without eating real food.

4) Drink clean water - do I really have to explain this one?

5) Get a life - a social life that is. iPods, Nintendo, computers, home work, and big houses with individual bedrooms have all conspired to separate us. Families and friends used to sing together, play together, fight together, eat together, dance together (Can you imagine going to your child's high school dance? Neither can I). We don't even do therapy together anymore

...your neck! There is compelling evidence that fibromyalgia begins with a displacement of the cervical vertebrae. This causes pain all over, much like a pinched disk causes sciatic pain down your legs. Once the nerves get activated and the pain takes over and persists for months and even years, the stress caused by the constant pain creates a depressed immune system. So now you've got cranky person in pain who is susceptible to getting sick, which they eventually do. You get the picture, right? Pain, illness, exhaustion, depression and in the worst of cases, a collapse of spirit which leads to suicide.In looking up treatment options, I came across Upper Cervical Chiropractic of New York in White Plains, New York. While I can't vouch for the office or the treatment. If I had fibromyalgia, I would drive down there and take a good hard look at what they had to say.

Today I built two new compost containers. A lot of the weeds we just till back into the soil or feed to Gulliver the bull or Frankie the horse (No, those aren't Sopranos characters, they are farm animals!) as green manure. Kitchen scraps and some other stuff needs a place where the bacteria and other critters can work on them to create compost.


Here is the old compost bin. It's just chicken wire held up by a few stakes. This container was placed under a tree so id didn't get the sunshine or water that it needed to work well. Which brings me to my acupuncture point...

Your internal composting happens primarily in your small intestine. There you have vast number of microorganisms that compost the food you eat so that the nutrients can be absorbed. If the internal conditions aren't right, like the compost bin under the tree, you won't get full nutritional value from the food you eat.


The best way to restore the conditions in your intestines is to take a probiotic supplement. Eating live culture yoghurt is fine for maintenance, but if you have been on a heavy dose of anti-biotics, birth control or have had surgery you need a system for getting the good bacteria past your stomach acid. Get a probiotic that is coated. Natrol's Biobeads and Shaklee's ProBiotics are ones I recommend.