February 2008
Okanagan
Natural Care Centre
Winter
Newsletter 2008
Happy New Year! Wishing you a year of creating what you really want….have you thought about what you want this year? Writing it down, drawing a picture or cutting out a picture and putting it in a place you see often are ways of making a wish into reality! A picture speaks a thousand words. We have become very good at filtering out what we hear, what we see has a much more profound impact. Dreams do come true so create what you are wishing for by making it a goal - write it down.
It is interesting as an adult to understand that most of our beliefs are formed in childhood from what we saw and then, even more interesting, we made rules that we are living our lives by now. Time to make a change or are you interested in what your underlying rules and beliefs are? We can support you in making that change and in changing those outdated beliefs to be ones that suit you now.
Portfolios Often when people hear the word portfolio they think of their financial portfolio – a package created to support us when we retire and no longer have a working income. Have you considered creating a health portfolio? What investments are you putting into your health portfolio? Will you have anything to draw on when you need it?
Depending on where we are with building our portfolio we might just start with water.
Drinking
a minimum
of 4 glasses daily contributes to every body function:
digestion (we require 2˝ gallons of fluid to accomplish digestion each day)
nervous system (the brain is 90% water)
circulation and blood (clean, fluid blood moves nutrients throughout the body)
elimination (we eliminate waste with water as the solvent)
Setting out a container of water as the target for the day and consuming 4 oz every ˝ hour works well depending on your circumstance.
Exercise
contributes
to good health.
We need ˝ an hour of exercise daily. Exercise helps to build bone and keep our lymph moving to eliminate waste from our cells as well as build muscles and fitness. Even if you walk around at work a lot walking once home walking helps to reduce stress and improve circulation! If you are very physically active at work the after work walk serves as a stretch which reduces acid build up in the muscles. If you don’t like to walk, swim or find another exercise that suits you and then do it daily or alternate exercises. Take the stairs if you are able to. The body is very interesting and the more we use energy the more energy producing mitochondria we produce – talk about supply and demand. The more we use energy the more we make!!
Reduce
bio negative
substances from our lives.
Smoking, alcohol, junk food, negative thought processes (which create chemicals reactions in the body), unhealthy fats can all be reduced. Begin with what ever level you are at now, how much can you improve within reason? Set your self goals. If you eat a chocolate bar (drink alcohol, eat potato chips etc) every day even reducing this to 4 times per week is an improvement that will payoff in how you feel. One way to reduce consumption is to write down what feel you are suppressing or why you are doing this again. What is the underlying thought process that triggers you to want to create a negative cycle for yourself – and we all have them!
Make choices at the store that improve your nutrition. Many stores carry organic selections that are good for us and good for the environment. Organic in third world countries is real payoff as pesticides are expensive in ratio to income and labour is cheap and easily available. Once you have eaten an organic banana it is hard to eat the other ones.
Hygiene There are many things we can do to improve our health in the long term. One of the topics at Optimum Health Institute in San Diego was brushing and flossing your teeth. The maintenance of teeth contributes to good digestion as it is difficult to chew our food thoroughly without good teeth. It is recommended to chew food 2o to 30 times per forkful and even juice especially a nutrient packed protein drink should be chewed. Chewing prepares the pancreas so the correct enzymes are ready when the food arrives. Healthy teeth are something we want in our portfolio!
Setting yourself a goal to invest one improvement into your portfolio each month is very achievable. For easy changes one per week is a good goal. A great book on simple changes is Andrew Weil’s 8 Weeks to Optimum Health.
Breathing is an easy investment – we already do – sort of. Deep breathing regularly through the day increases oxygen in the blood, helps us to think clearer and sleep better! No cost to bring this one into your portfolio!
Investing in our health makes retirement worth living!
Diane Wiebe is an herbalist
and natural health practitioner at Okanagan Natural Care Center in
Kelowna. www.naturalcare.bc.ca
