Chinese medicine theory has long disagreed with the notion of icing injuries. According to Chinese medicine, the way to stop pain and improve healing is to stimulate blood circulation through the injured area by keeping it warm. This can be best achieved through gentle movement of the strained area, not by restricting movement and applying cold. Applying ice or a cold topamax compress may decrease swelling in the short term, but it will stop the movement of blood and make pain worse in the long run.
Excerpt: “Topical cooling (icing)?.?.?.?seems not to improve but, rather, delay recovery from eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage,” according to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
My parents live 400 km away from me, so we only see each other several times each year. During my parents’ last stay at my home, my father asked me a rather unusual question. He asked me if I believed in reincarnation. My father has not habitually meditated on these types of spiritual questions in the past, and the fact that he was doing so now was a bit unsettling. My father turned 80 years old this past March, and he has obviously been spending some time reflecting on his life, as is normal for anyone of advanced years. A Methodist by upbringing, my father has never been known to give credence to the more wacky tenets of other faiths, so I was a little surprised that he brought up the subject at all. However, it was his next question which really made me sad. “If reincarnation is real,” he asked, “at your death, would you prefer to be given another life, or would you prefer to simply vanish into oblivion?”. Perplexed, I answered, “Don’t you have to choose life? How can you prefer oblivion to life?”. Shaking his head dismissively, as if I could not possibly understand, he stated firmly that he would prefer oblivion.
To properly sympathize with my father’s answer, you have to understand that he has been in almost constant pain for as long as I’ve known him. When I was a young girl, he fractured several vertebrae in his lower back by improperly lifting heavy objects on our farm, such as hay bales or heavy bags of cattle feed. When I was seven, he had surgery to fuse his vertebrae together again, but the pain didn’t go away. In fact, the pain may have even become worse. And thus began the constant quest for pain relief that would last him for much of the rest of his life. He took all different kinds of pain relievers, both over-the-counter, and prescriptions from his doctor. He tried alternative therapies, including magnets and various herbal remedies. He had a back brace for a time, but this didn’t seem to help either. After dealing with ever-present, debilitating pain for four decades, you can understand why he might choose oblivion over life. And yet, I still found his sentiments to be profoundly distressing. If reincarnation were real and he were to get a new life, then the new body of whatever species he might become would most likely not have chronic pain. It seemed that my father had completely given up hope, not just in his own life, but in Life itself.
It is probably not uncommon for elderly people to express sentiments similar to these. The so-called “Golden Years” are often years filled with pain, reduced mobility, and loss of ability. If we haven’t yet learned to deal with loss in our younger years, we are sure to learn it before we die. And accompanying this deluge of losses, in both our own capabilities and in the people we’ve loved along the way, is the emotional weight of having to come to terms with it. These are the years when a long-held spiritual practice can sustain you, and the lack of one can break you.
Yet not all elderly people suffer with this level of pessimism and weariness. Granted, not all lives are alike, and some people are forced to endure more than others. But I believe there is something more at work here than a simple flagging of emotions. In Chinese medicine, the mind and body are known to be intertwined and inseparable. Whatever emotions are going through your mind have a physical cause, and in the case of age, this cause is most likely to be a loss of qi. In Chinese medicine, qi is said to be the vital energy that courses through all living things, including your physical body. It is this vital energy which causes you to wake up with a smile on your face and bound out of your bed, eager to face the day. The amount of qi that you have determines how many tasks you are able to complete each day, as well as how strong your immune system is, and how well you are able to digest your food. It necessarily affects every choice that you make each day, since your choices are bound by what you can actually do. And if your level of qi is low, and you know that you will not be able to enact many, or even any of your desires, then you are sure to greet the day with more resignation than enthusiasm.
So how does one get more qi? According to Chinese medicine, the organs which are most responsible for the manufacturing of qi in our bodies are our spleen and our lungs. Our lungs draw qi into our bodies from the air that we inhale, and then release waste in the form of carbon dioxide when we exhale. This beautiful cycle of renewal is repeated endlessly from the first breath we draw when we are born until the day that we die. “Breath is life!”, a friend of mine once said to me as she struggled to breathe while attached to an oxygen tank. She was in the final stages of cancer. She knew what we often forget: the oxygen from the air that we breathe nourishes and animates our entire bodies. Some of us may feel low in energy simply because we don’t take deep enough breaths throughout the day. Sitting hunched over our computers, our back becomes more curved and our chest can gradually become depressed, which prevents our lungs from filling up with enough air to give us the oxygen we need. Some people have reported improved health just by doing yogic deep breathing exercises, where we gently fill our lungs to capacity to maximize the amount of oxygen we receive and then exhaling fully to release as much carbon dioxide as possible. Exercises like qi gong or tai chi, and the Y-Dan exercises that we promote on our website, can also heal because of the increased amount of oxygen our bodies receive when we do them.
Our spleen is also important for the manufacturing of qi in our bodies. In Chinese medicine, the functions of the “spleen” include those of both the spleen and the pancreas in Western medicine. The pancreas produces enzymes for the proper digestion of our food, and if our spleen/pancreas is weak, then fewer enzymes will be produced, and therefore fewer nutrients will be available to our bodies. It is these nutrients will be used to create blood, muscle. tendon, and bone. Without them, we would soon become weak and malnourished. In Western medicine, the spleen is the organ which creates white blood cells to protect us from infection, so a properly functioning spleen is also important for maintaining our immunity against the bacteria and viruses which saturate our environment.
In Chinese medicine, there is a popular saying, “It is not what you eat, but what you assimilate that matters”, and this is why the spleen/pancreas is considered to be such an important organ. For the most wholesome food in the world cannot provide health and energy to your body if your spleen/pancreas is too weak to assimilate it properly. Hence the emphasis that Chinese medicine places on proper diet and the importance of avoiding foods which could potentially weaken your spleen/pancreas. Aside from ensuring that you eat a balanced and nutritious diet, high in whole grains and lightly cooked, fresh vegetables, Chinese medicine exhorts you to avoid foods which are known to weaken spleen functioning, such as white flour, white sugar, cold drinks, raw vegetables, citrus fruits, tomatoes, and bananas.
While maintaining the strength of our lungs and our spleen will ensure that we continue to receive good quality qi from our environment, we can still suffer from poor energy if our qi becomes stuck. For qi is not a static thing like the ground on which we walk. It is more like a body of water, that is constantly trickling or rippling or forming waves of all sizes. Qi is movement as well as substance, and if we focus only on the substance, our lives can become as stagnant as a swamp. While elderly people can suffer more from a lack of qi, as their lungs and spleen deteriorate in ability and they are no longer able to gather the qi that they need from their environment, young and middle-aged people tend to suffer more from sluggish qi.
According to Chinese medicine, it is the liver which is said to spread our qi, ensuring that it is evenly distributed throughout our bodies. If the bile ducts of our liver become congested, then qi will have difficulty moving and can become sluggish or stagnant. This happens particularly when we have been under a lot of stress, or when we eat a lot of stagnating foods, such as deep fried foods, or high fat dairy products, but it is also heavily influenced by our emotions. Anger, frustration, bitterness, and a lack of forgiveness are all sticky feelings that cause our liver to tighten and prevent movement. Every bitterly painful memory or feeling of resentment from our past can create a blockage which prevents the free flow of qi throughout our bodies, and this can shrink our potential and even shorten our lives. This is why forgiveness of yourself and of others can be one of the most important steps that you take to regain your health.
My father isn’t always as pessimistic as he was on that particular day, but when his level of pain is bad, he finds it difficult to generate any optimism. He has used some tinctures for his liver in the past, and has also tried to do daily stretching exercises, but I think it is difficult for people of his generation to develop a regular exercise routine when they stayed fit by doing physical labour, or to follow dietary advice which runs counter to what their parents fed them as they were growing up. Rather than repeatedly lecture my father, I try to be a good example of what he could do differently. As I do my regular yoga practice, I don’t hide the smile that comes to my face as I slowly raise my arms above my head and breathe in deeply. Morning sun salutations are my favourite way to build and move the qi in my body, and as my father watches, he says “Good for you!”. Maybe one day he’ll join me.
A new study[1] confirms past research which indicates that a diet high in protein, particularly in middle age, will increase mortality. This study dovetails with the conclusions of the EPIC study [2] in Europe which found that you should limit your meat consumption to 40 grams (roughly 1.5 ounces) per day.
Excerpt: “In a study Hu authored, people who ate a serving of red meat every day had a 13 percent eta-i.org/cialis.html increased risk of mortality, compared with those who ate little meat. By comparison, people who swapped out red meat for alternative sources of protein cut their risk of premature death. Choosing chicken and other poultry decreased the risk by 14 percent, fish decreased the risk by 7 percent and legumes decreased the risk by 10 percent”.
“Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.
Even though winter still lingers for a few weeks more, in March we always begin to dream of spring. At least that’s what happens in cold and snowy Canada where I live. The occasional days of comparative warmth, the slightly longer days, the warm sun suddenly peaking out from behind the clouds, these things always bring an impromptu smile to my lips. And more than that, my heart begins to yearn, to positively ache, for spring. After persevering through this particularly difficult winter, my heart yearns even more than it usually does.
Spring has been relentless in its teasing this year. The periods of thaw have been fewer and farther between. When they do occur, it is only for a day or two, and then winter comes back to reclaim its territory with a vengeance. Temperatures have remained stubbornly low for protracted periods, and there hasn’t been this much snowfall in Toronto for close to twenty years. Spring seems to be hanging back in the sidelines, shyly delaying its entrance. But even as I impatiently wait for spring to finally gather enough courage to hit the stage, I am encouraged by the fact that spring will indeed come. That is a promise. The snows will melt. The trees will bud once again. The sun will smile on us, and the grass will begin to grow.
Having lived through these seasonal cycles for generations upon generations, our bodies respond to these weather cycles too. As winter’s cold begins to turn away from us, we no longer feel the need to eat hearty stews and heavy, starchy meals. Just as the snow begins to melt, our bodies also begin to thaw. And as our bodies thaw, they desire movement, just as a frozen river gradually gives way to the burbling of a steadily growing, trickling stream.
The organ in our body which is most responsible for movement is the liver, which is why spring is known as peak liver time. According to Chinese medicine, the liver is the organ which spreads qi, or energy, throughout our bodies. If there is still too much accumulation from the winter, too much heavy foods from the cold winter days, then it will be as if our livers are still frozen. There is too much accumulation there for qi to move properly, which is why spring is an excellent time to do some liver and gallbladder cleansing. We need to soften the accumulations that have gathered in our liver during those cold, winter months and release them so that energy can dance its way through our bodies again, making us hum with life.
The main herb in our Chinese Bitters tincture, Chinese gentian, is known for its ability to soften hardened congestion in the ducts of your liver and begin to release it, making new openings in your liver for energy to flow. After retaining a lot of congested bile in your liver for many months or even years, people can begin to feel heavy and sluggish, their brain can start to feel dull, they can begin to feel pain in their right side, and have digestive difficulties like bloating, gas, or constipation. And they can also have a tendency to become irritable or angry easily.
When our customers begin to use our Chinese Bitters tincture, they are often surprised at how much better they feel. They feel lighter and happier, their pain begins to go away, their thinking is clearer, their digestion and elimination has improved, and they have more energy and enthusiasm for life. One of our customers told us that after cleansing her liver with our Chinese Bitters tincture and doing some liver and gallbladder flushing, she felt as if she could skip for joy.
In these ways, we can see that internal stagnation doesn’t just show itself solely in our physical symptoms. Because our minds and bodies are so intricately connected, our mental condition is influenced by liver congestion as well. Depression, anger, irritability, and frustration are stagnant emotions. In each of these emotions, our minds are rebelling against a seeming inability of our body, or our life circumstances, to move and change. In the case of frustration, we believe that an action can be taken to resolve our problems, but we just can’t seem to figure out what it is.
With anger and irritability, we may know, or at least think we know what action needs to be taken, but for some reason or other, we are blocked from acting on it. And with depression, we begin to feel that there is no longer any action that can possibly change our lives. In all these cases, it can be downright shocking to discover that a little bit of liver and gallbladder cleansing can suddenly make our personal situations seem more manageable. Suddenly, we are able to let go of these stale feelings and see new possibilities in our lives that were veiled from us before.
While we have, so far, spoken only of stagnation in the liver, stagnation can develop in the gallbladder as well. Whenever bile flow in the liver has been sluggish for some time, bile will not be able to flow well into the gallbladder either, and gallstones can tend to form out of this stagnant bile easily. This is why liver and gallbladder cleansing is always combined. Because your liver and gallbladder work so closely together, your liver will never be completely healthy as long as there are still gallstones in your gallbladder. And as long as there are any blockages to bile flow in either your liver or your gallbladder, the flow of energy throughout your body can be impeded, and the above-mentioned physical and emotional problems can result.
If you are interested in doing some spring cleaning of your internal organs this season, liver and gallbladder cleansing is the best place to start. Complete instructions for how to do a liver and gallbladder flush are outlined in the gallbladder flushing section of our website. For best results, we would recommend the use of our Liver/Gallbladder Flush 4-Pack as preparation beforehand, as the herbs in these tinctures will help to soften any hardness in your liver or gallbladder area so that it can be released and these organs can begin to “breathe” freely again.
There are often times in our lives where we feel as if our hearts have become as cold and frozen as the winter. When something of importance was taken from us, or when dreams we once had have died, we can spend months or even years in periods of heart-wrenching pain. Eventually, this pain can give way to a barrenness, a desolation of spirit, which in some ways is even worse. But just as the seasons in the world outside us inevitably change, so too does our inward situation. In little spurts, now and again, there is a thawing, and green shoots of growth will suddenly appear. A new relationship begins, an old friendship is rekindled, or a new interest is formed, and our lives begin to green up again. Spring reminds us that no matter what situation we are in, no matter how stubborn or intractable our problems, new life will be breathed into us in time. This is a promise. The enduring promise of spring.
Mr Hyde at Czech Wikipedia(Original text: moje foto), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Even people with insulin-resistance, an increasingly common health problem, were shown to have increased incidence of dementia. This makes it more important than ever to keep your blood sugar levels within normal parameters.
Excerpt: The study found that people with diabetes were twice as likely to develop dementia as people with normal blood sugar levels. Of the 150 people with diabetes, 41 developed dementia, compared to 115 of the 559 people without diabetes who developed dementia.
The results remained the same after the researchers accounted for factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking. The risk of dementia was also higher in people who did not have diabetes, but had impaired glucose tolerance, or were “pre-diabetes.”
There are few things I find magical about the month of February. If there is fresh snow on the ground, the pristine whiteness of my environment can sometimes coax an exclamation of beauty from me. It helps if the sun is shining and creates glints of light through the icicles on the trees. But by and large, by the time February has rolled around, I’m largely tired and exasperated by the continual presence of snow and cold. I’m tired of constantly shivering and shoveling snow out of my driveway. And while the days have lengthened some, night descends far too quickly, taking away whatever small amount of heat the sun brought with it, and dimming inclinations to stray far from home.
But as they say, “home is where the heart is”. For those of us in happy family situations, the cold nights of February bring us closer together. We share stories of our days and lives, laugh at each other’s jokes, and watch movies together, all while eating fattening food that brings us comfort during these cold, short days and long, dark nights. Maybe it is as much because of this, as of the presence of Valentine’s Day smack in the middle of February, that has caused February to be labeled “Heart Month”.
In Western medicine, the heart is known to be one of the most important organs in the body. Without its steady pumping of blood throughout our bodies, 365 days of the year, we would soon die. The other organs of our bodies depend on it for the constant influx of calcium, sodium, potassium salts, glucose, amino acids, oxygen, and many other raw materials, which are needed in steady supply in order to carry out the daily demands we place on them. What I’ve always found fascinating about the heart is its natural pace-making abilities. In the atrium of your heart, there is an “atrioventricular node” or AV node, that creates an electrical signal, much like the spark plugs in a car, which keep your heart pumping rhythmically. So, it is not just when we fall in love that “sparks fly”. This happens with each beat of our hearts, for as long as we live. In every moment, we contain the spark of life.
In Chinese medicine, this same idea of “sparking” also exists in relation to the heart. Aside from its physical duties of “governing the blood”, which include its responsibility of transforming the food that we eat into blood itself, and ensuring that all tissues receive the blood they require, the heart is also said to house a spiritual aspect, known as the “shen”. Shen is defined by Giovanni Maciocia as being “the whole sphere of emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of a human being”. You can actually see a healthy “shen” in someone you know, without knowing anything else about Chinese medicine. This is the spark in someone’s eyes, manifested in the enthusiasm that they show for life itself. We all know people who have a lot of “shen”. And, sadly, we most likely also know people who have very little.
People with a small quantity of shen may very well have a weak heart. But more often than not, they simply have very little blood flowing into their heart. It could be said that the thing which animates the heart is the very presence of blood, and without it, the heart, mind, and emotions are dull and sluggish. Knowing that then, in order to invigorate the heart, it is necessary to increase blood circulation through it. And as so often happens in Chinese medicine, this requires the help of another organ in the body, for no organ can function on its own in our bodies without help, just as people cannot function in the world without the help of our loved ones. In the case of increasing the flow of blood to the heart, its dear pharmacy-no-rx.net friend and help-mate in this endeavor is the liver.
As is mentioned on our website, the liver is the organ which filters all of your blood. It does this during the night as you sleep, which is why it is important to eat your last meal of the day as early as you can. If your liver is still heavily involved with the digestion of your last meal, it will not be able to devote as much attention to filtering your blood of toxins. As a result, your heart can become heavy with toxins and difficult in flowing. Blood that is filled with toxins will not be able to carry as many nutrients and oxygen to the cells of your body, including those in your heart.
Additionally, if the bile ducts of your liver are congested with a lot of old and hardened bile, which is the residue of poorly metabolized food due to poor diet or stress, then when blood enters your liver to be filtered, it may have difficulty moving out again. And the direct recipient of the filtered blood from your liver is your heart. Hence, the root cause of poor blood flow in the heart is often congestion in the ducts of the liver.
Until it went out of print, we used to sell a book entitled “The Liver Causes Heart Attacks”, by a Dr. W.P. Neufeld. In this book, Dr. Neufeld described how every patient he ever had who died of a heart attack was later found to have a badly swollen and congested liver when autopsied. From this, he concluded that the root cause of most heart attacks is actually an unhealthy liver. And so, in order to strengthen and improve the functioning of your heart, it is wise for you to consider the health of your liver. As a filtration organ, the best way to improve the health of your liver is through liver and gallbladder flushing. Directions for how to do this can be found in the gallbladder flushing section of our website.
To assist us all in our struggle through the cold, dark days of February, it would be helpful to strengthen our hearts and thereby increase our shen. I’m sure we would all aspire to be a “shen-filled” individual, who not only exudes happiness and well-being, but inspires those same feelings in all the people around us. Aside from doing regular liver and gallbladder flushing, you can also strengthen your heart by eating foods which are known to nourish it. In Chinese medicine, foods which are red in colour are said to nourish heart functioning, which would include adzuki beans, red peppers, red dates, hawthorn berries, and strawberries.
According to Western medicine, foods which are high in anti-oxidants can prevent oxidative stress from free radicals, and thereby decrease the stress placed on the tissues of the heart. Common foods which are high in anti-oxidants include foods such as blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries, as well as dark green vegetables, such as broccoli, spinach or kale. Leafy green vegetables also have the advantage of being very high in magnesium, without which all muscles in the body, including the heart, cannot function properly. Whole grain oatmeal is another good food for the heart because its fibre is known to reduce cholesterol. The health-promoting properties of garlic should also not be over-looked when speaking of the heart, since garlic is known to decrease both blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
Finally, and most importantly, we can also strengthen our hearts and improve our shen by being grateful for, and taking comfort in, the loved ones by our sides during this cold, harsh month. Even with their sometimes frustrating habits, our friends and family members buffer us from the harsh realities of our lives. We know that with them to help shoulder our loads, and encourage us to see the humor in life, we are rich indeed.
For anyone who is concerned about the dangers of alcohol consumption, yet another study has shown that those who drink alcohol moderately live longer than both heavy drinkers and non-drinkers.
Research found that those who did not consume any alcohol appeared to have a higher mortality rate, regardless of whether they were former heavy drinkers or not, than those who drank heavily.
Curcumin, one of the naturally-occuring chemicals in both turmeric and curcuma, the main ingredient in our Curcuma tincture, has been shown to kill fast-growing cells in the body. As such, it is been shown to be effective in preventing the growth of cancer, and may also be an effective birth control measure.
“Anything that is growing montauk-monster.com/pharmacy fast, it inhibits,” says Naz. This knowledge inspired him to test it as a spermicide. “I read studies showing it works beautifully in inhibiting cancer cells, which are fast-growing. The other fast-growing cells are sperm. They move fast and are highly energetic. I had this idea four or five years ago.”
