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Would you employ yourself?

May 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

confidenceToBuy

It’s quite a question.
It came up because my beloved Cassie, whom I see as one of the most capable ‘stepping up’ women I know, began talking about her past perceived life failures and how they had moulded her life experience. I began looking at my own life and saw that I too had a subconscious story of ‘not good enough’ running that mediated every good thing I attempted.

I was also stimulated by Dr Mark Goulston’s latest post on How to Drain an Emotional Wound. In a postscript to the excellent article, he gave the two most common and most avoided ideas people hold on to. The first was the idea that they had made some terrible, future life-changing decision that had brought them to this irreversible present. The second was that they really actually slightly crazy or unstable and that nothing could be done about it. These ideas (and I’m sure there are others) pervaded their conscious life while managing to remain hidden from anything that may change them.

I know I have an unconscious saboteur in my life.
It’s the one that seduces me to check my email and Facebook too often, to begin great projects and take them 90% of the way, that feeds me brilliant ideas with the caveat that I am ‘just too busy’ to execute them. It subtly pervades my working life and, as Dr Mark says, we exert 80+% of our psychic consciousness keeping it at bay.

Or not. I can only speak for my experience when I declare that it is my daily practice of slowly, slowly prising its icy grip from my mind. Hopefully I have chipped my way down below the 80+% mark because every percent released is a percent available for my true self!

I have been blessed with an amazingly inventive mind.
I think up ideas so fast I often don’t even get to write down the last one before I have the next. So my unconscious saboteur has added a wicked twist to my dualistic self-abandonment by telling me that I am somehow damaged because I can’t actualise these wonderful world-changing ideas.

As we discussed this over our paleo brainfood breakfast, another idea hit me. “Would you” I asked, pointing at Cassie, “employ yourself?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, we’ve learned through bitter experience from the people we’ve employed that they can – and will – say anything to get the job. In fact you have to be like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, picking up the small slips, the incongruencies of their story to make sure they are the real thing. What a hell of a way to talk to someone you will be spending eight hours a day with! What’s more, there is a whole industry training people to… lie about their past to get a job. And we’ve both agreed that in the future we will ask for and insist upon them being able to actually demonstrate – with referees or actual projects they have managed – what they say they can do – or are promising they can do. No proof, no hire.”

Cassie thought a moment. “So you are asking whether I’d employ myself, knowing what I know about myself? Ooh. That’s a good one!”

The creative force was with us.
I let my mind run free. We all have stories we cover up from ourselves. There IS another story of what we are, who we are, what we have really done with our lives, and without the judgement subtly and monotonously applied by our ‘small self’. But this one is being smothered by the one Dr Mark’s article says takes 80+% of our psychic energy. Looking back, our real experience of employing people always resolved into a long term story of connection with an employee – not just because of his or her abilities on paper but to a much larger degree, his or her actual personality. As a result we have some dear friends who happen to be great team members.

  • Particularly, we wanted to know whether they were capable of remaining present and accountable.
  • Whether they were really willing to be a part of our story.
  • Whether they are all talk or all action.

Let’s be honest about being honest. Resume writing is somewhat like cheating the taxman. A permissible sin. So employing anyone is a battle of wits and often melts down to a gut feeling of trust for the employer when the applicant really shows they want to be involved in your dream.

Now let’s look again at the ‘employing yourself’ idea. What Cassie pointed out was that we are really asking interviewees is whether our offered position is just a means to an end, or are they truly committed to being an integral part of our dream. She went on.

“Am I offering my real self, or am I offering a ‘small self’ that works on the basis of my unconscious story; that I’m really unstable, or crazy, or irreparably damaged – and just presenting what I think my employer (me) wants to hear? Am I being basically dishonest with myself?”

Boy, that girl can nail it.
She has this amazing ability to attack my Gordian knots with a sword, cutting through the mindstuff and getting down to the ‘guts’ of the issue. Am I playing a dual role in my life?

One ‘me’ may be the one that runs my business, attempts to attract investors or purchasers based on a  contrived story.

The other me is the one that is courageous enough to present my ‘warts and all’ story with the confidence that my other self across the table can and will accept me into his ‘organisation’ or dream.

Ah, if it were that easy. I know my battle for authenticity may last years. (Now hold on, Ian, that’s an assumption. You don’t ‘know’. You assume, and assumptions are presumptions without gumption)  I assume (and accept) that the small self waits in the shadows, darting out to sabotage and remind me of my perceptions of my unsuitability to be a member of the human species. Yes, I admit it. I am perfectly imperfect and that’s perfect.

I understand that the hubris of George Bush declaring  the war was won from a safe aircraft carrier far from the battle just doesn’t cut the mustard in this most personal of battles. I am in the trenches of my mind every day, acting exactly as any soldier does; remaining alerts for signs of threat, being ‘in the now’ so I am fully present and keeping my spirit high through communion with my higher selves, my fellow soldiers in my trench. And yes, we win some skirmishes and lose others. A bit like the Somme actually.

But would I employ me? In a flash! At the very least there would be no nasty surprises once I am ‘installed in the job, new business cards printed, new computer purchased… At the highest, I have someone I know will say yes to join me in my dream of a future of honesty, integrity, and yes, reward.

PS: I would love to hear your comments and experiences about this!

Filed Under: Depression, FeaturedPost, Foggy thinking, Fun, Inspiring, Unconscious mind Tagged With: ,

Why people give up juicing.. and their juicers.

February 27, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Easiest Way to Eat Enough Healing Vegetables Every Day

 Ask any natural health practitioner and he or she will tell you that you need as many as nine serves of fruit and vegetables every day. And yet I’m sure that one in a hundred people reading this actually does get sufficient.

There are very serious reasons why we should get enough vegetables. (fruit is another subject I’ll come back to later). Lack of green vegetables in particular deprives us of vital alkaline minerals, and all fresh fruit and vegetables give us a whole range of live enzymes. Enzymes are the catalysts of a myriad of chemical reactions in the body and without a regular supply, functions we think of and accept as automatic health functions slow down and even stop.

Let’s talk about how we can get enough without actually preparing and cooking nine servings per day. It seems to be difficult – otherwise we’d be doing it. We all know that some foods – especially vegetables – taste like well…cut grass. But look at the alternative and we have to admit that continued health – the health we accept as our birthright – is no-one else’s choice. So keeping up our fruit and vegetables – however we do it – is our  ’bank’ of health, our guarantee of a good day tomorrow and every day thereafter.

How can we get enough in this busy life? There are ways and they are very practical.

What we need is a way to increase our intake that preserves live enzymes, that is fast, and that is economical. That’s where juicing comes in.. because only juicing ‘compresses’ all the benefits of raw fruit and vegetables into one glass.
Bypassing cooking also means that all of those heat-sensitive micronutrients will be immediately available. Juicing makes this infinitely easier.

Most of us think we know what a juicer looks like. Most of us have owned some sort of juicer in the past.. but most of us have it gathering dust in the rear of a kitchen cupboard. Why is that? Well, the vast majority of juicers sold to people are high speed models that run so fast that they kill much of those same sensitive and vital micronutrients through the generation of heat right at the cutting face of the juicer blade, whirling at hundreds of revolutions per minute.

So even if we haven’t understood it, our body hasn’t responded in the way we thought it should and juicing has been shuffled off the daily agenda.

I mentioned earlier that fruit juice isn’t so good as vegetable juice. Fruit is loaded with fructose and fructans – sugars. We have somehow decided that fruit sugar is OK whereas ordinary sugar is bad. Sorry folks, but all sugars are bad, and unnecessary, and juicing fruit concentrates all the fruits’ sugars into one glass. One glass of orange juice, for instance, has as much sugar in it as a glass of Coca Cola *

I suggest avoiding fruit completely if you have any issues with weight, cardiovascular disease, or diabetes. I’m a paleolithic diet convert, and our ancestors never had access to the unlimited volume of fresh fruits we have today. So eating the amount of fruit we do today is not natural – in the sense that it doesn’t correlate with our genetic blueprint.

9 reasons to start vegetable juicing today.

Freshly juiced ‘green drinks’ provide us with an instant boost in terms of nutrients, enzymes, vitamins and alkaline minerals in a highly digestible form. Although you can juice with red, yellow and orange vegetables — I recommend that the majority of your juice intake comes from green vegetables.

Here’s my nine reasons to juice:

1. Green foods contain high amounts of chlorophyll, a very effective detoxifier. It gives you strength, detoxifies your liver, removes mould, parasites, mycotoxins and excitotoxins from your body. If you have an odour problem, I guarantee it will solve it.

The structure of chlorophyll is very similar to the hemoglobin in your blood that transports oxygen, it purifies and rebuilds your blood cells.

Some studies even claim that chlorophyll can help prevent and remove cancer cells.

2. Green juicing is a powerful cellular detoxifier at the cellular level.

3. Fresh raw vegetable juice is a concentrated alkaline supercharge. We need our body to be slightly alkaline. In my experience, an acidic body is a leading underlying cause of disease and illness.

4. As I said earlier, raw vegetable juices and green drinks supply you with a concentrated source of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, nutrients, and trace elements that we all require for healing, cell regeneration, and overall wellness. These are embedded in a complex of nutrients, fibre and carbohydrates that’s digested and absorbed better – and benefits us far more – than a pill that contains just one nutrient. There are dozens, perhaps thousands, of undiscovered nutrients present in plants.

5. Many vegetables and their juices contain natural medicines and even natural antibiotics. For instance, the natural hormones and antibiotic substances in cucumber, onion and garlic, radish and tomatoes contribute to a healthy pancreas.

6. Minerals such as calcium, potassium, and silicon in fresh vegetable juice help your body restore its cellular mineral balance… which in turn prevents premature aging and disease.

7. Juicing lets you add a wider variety and larger amounts of vegetables to your daily diet than otherwise possible. Most important, it keeps the nutrients alive and absorbable.

8. Some studies have shown that vegetable drinks hit your bloodstream within 30 minutes of consumption, so they’re a quick way to flood your body with micronutrients.

9. Raw live juices may actually reverse disease, and have been used as a late-stage cancer treatment. The Gerson Therapy, one of the most famous anticancer protocols, is very largely based on juicing. Many, many other anticancer protocols now imitate Gerson and incorporate juicing into their systems.

You just won’t get juice like this is a supermarket.
When natural health specialists talk about “juicing” they are referring to real raw foods complete with their natural pigments, enzymes, vitamins, minerals and nutrients working to bring healing, energy and protection from disease to your body.

I don’t recommend packaged juices such as cartons and bottles of ‘fresh’ orange juice, pasteurised bottles of super fruits, or frozen juice concentrates! If you want to be healthy, leave them on the shelves and go home with fresh veggies.

Steve Jobs drank packaged carrot juice for many years, missing out on the micronutrients we talked about.. and by the way, flooding his body with sugar from the carrots. (Not all vegetables are good for juicing). Speaking of sugar, many prepackaged juices have added sugar; the very last thing a healthy body needs. They can be months old before we consume tham, kept ‘alive’ by radiation sterilisation.

Minerals such as magnesium and potassium are about the only nutrients you can be sure will survive all this. When it comes to enzymes, vitamins, other antioxidants and even proteins — good luck.

Once you decide to take on real juicing you may have a few questions about what foods to juice, what juicers to use… and (something people often forget) how to save juice’s top nutritional value if you don’t drink it right away.
As I mentioned earlier, I suggest that for the shortest distance from ‘woe’ to ‘go‘, skip the fruit. Sugar is what is keeping you at sub-par health, and fruit is loaded with it. Sugar is a drug and your way to health is in the opposite direction.

The Internet means you’ll get recommendations for all sorts of juices. There must be thousands of videos on the Youtube for people’s favourite juice. But we are all about health change, so my advice is to by all means look at the videos, but if they add fruit, they are juicing to support their sugar drug habit. Serious health means above-ground vegetables. They aren’t going to taste as good, but this isn’t the place for chic  juice. This is the serious save your life juicer place.

Start slowly and let your body get juiced up slowly. One aspect of alkalizing I notice over and over again is the body’s resurgent ability to let you know what it wants. Listen! It knows!

Juicing for Cancer

I have heard many reports of people actually reversed their cancer by changing their diet. A healthy diet certainly supports your body to rebuild your immune system and rebalance your cells.

If your diet isn’t fighting cancer, it’s fueling it. Or to paraphrase what they used to say back in the Sixties, if the food you eat isn’t part of the solution, it’s part of the problem.

Some say that 95% of the ‘ fuels’ of the typical American diet ‘fuel’ cancer. Juicing can help you reverse that.

I am not an expert on the very best vegetables for a cancer fighting juice protocol, but one fabulous cancer fighter I do know about is wheatgrass juice. And.. if you’ve never done it, it’s actually fun to grow.

Wheatgrass juice contains alkaline chlorophyll, which boosts hemoglobin production – pushing more oxygen to your cancer. It also contains the cancer fighters selenium and laetrile.  It’s also one of the most alkaline foods known to man. It cleanses the lymph system, restores pH balance, purifies your blood, and ushers toxic metals out of your body. It deserves a special place in your anti-cancer juicing protocol.

Although in the long term you probably need to consume healthy protein, many cancer patients use vegetable juice as their entire diet for weeks at a time, while trying to detoxify their system and kill the cancer cells. Many alternative cancer experts, that cancer patients should eat no animal protein at all. I challenge their view and would say that when you are on a low carb, medium protein and high fat paleo diet, the problems normally associated with high consumption of protein fades into irrelevance.

Fresh is Essential

Vegetable juice is HIGHLY perishable. Drink it as soon as possible after you make it. Even the aromatics — the scents and gases given off by the produce — are packed with valuable nutrients. Other nutrients will lose their potency when exposed to oxygen.

You can store juice for up to 24 hours with only moderate nutritional loss if you expose it to air as little as possible. An airtight container is a must — preferably one made of glass. Storage is helpful if you’re taking your juice with you to work or school.

Like most products, you should base your equipment selection on quality, performance and price. It’s important that your juicer operate at slow speeds so it doesn’t pulverize or heat (oxidize) the food.

Always clean your machine right away. Don’t wait until the food dries and bonds to the surface of the machine. In most cases, you may be able to get by with a rinse-off if you act right away. If you put it off, you’ll have to scrub and scrape.

If you’re worried about what the clean-up is going to involve, shop carefully and ask lots of questions before buying. Some of the larger twin auger models actually need a clean-up between different juices in the same batch.

Why Slow Speed Juicers? Aren’t we in a Hurry?

Centrifugal juicers spin at very high speeds. Both masticating and centrifugal juicers and blenders operate at high speed — from 1,000 to 24,000 RPM. These high speeds can heat your juice and can damage the more perishable nutrients.

The best option regardless of price is a twin gear unit that turns slowly, around 80 RPMs — to ensure that nutrients aren’t lost to heat, or to a destructive
high-speed chopping blade. Use of this type of machine reduces oxidation as well as heat and impact shock to nearly nothing. More of your food’s delicate nutrients survive to benefit your health. Be aware that many of the more popular single gear units use a plastic grinder/auger made of polycarbonate that contains Bisphenol-A. Many thousands of these units were sold before BP-A was discovered to be a carcinogen s powerful that even drinking water from a BPA -containing bottle was so bad it was banned.

Juicing is an investment in health so if you can afford the best you should buy it. Stainless steel is the best of all materials for juicers. Massive savings for a family that juices every day can be achieved by purchasing the more efficient systems.

Go HERE to see a real life efficiency comparison.

Go here to learn more about the only true stainless steel twin gear system on the market

Filed Under: Alkaline Diet, cancer, FeaturedPost, Uncategorized

We called that medicine!

February 15, 2012 by 1 Comment

Filed Under: FeaturedPost, Fun

Alzheimers’ Questionnaire: Take it if you dare.

February 8, 2012 by 1 Comment

I found this on an email sent to me recently. I don’t guarantee the results but it looks pretty good to me.

The Questionnaire

1. Does your loved one have memory loss?
Yes (1)/No (0)

2. If ‘Yes’, is their memory worse than a few years ago?
Yes (1)/No (0)

3. Do they repeat questions, statements or stories in the same day?
Yes (2)/No (0) 

4. Have you had to take over tracking events or appointments, or does your loved one forget appointments?
Yes (1)/No (0)

5. Do they misplace items more than once a month?
Yes (1)/No (0)

6. Do they suspect others of hiding or stealing items when they cannot find them?
Yes (1)/No (0)

7. Does your loved one frequently have trouble knowing the day, date, month, year and time; or check the date more than once a day?
Yes (2)/No (0) 

8. Do they become disorientated in unfamiliar places?
Yes (1)/No (0)

9. Do they become more confused when not at home or when travelling?
Yes (1)/No (0)

10. Excluding physical limitations, do they have trouble handling money such as when calculating change?
Yes (1)/No (0)

11. Do they have trouble paying bills or doing finances?
Yes (2)/No (0)

12. Does your loved one have trouble remembering to take medicine or keeping track of medications taken?
Yes (1)/No (0) 

13. Are they having difficulty driving; or are you concerned about their driving?
Yes (1)/No (0) 

14. Are they having trouble using appliances such as the stove, phone, remote control, microwave?
Yes (1)/No (0) 

15. Excluding physical limitations, are they having difficulty in completing home repair or housekeeping tasks?
Yes (1)/No (0)

16. Excluding physical limitations, have they given up or cut down on doing hobbies such as, playing golf, dancing, exercising or crafts?
Yes (1)/No (0) 

17. Are they getting lost in familiar surroundings, such as their own neighbourhood?
Yes (2)/No (0) 

18. Is their sense of direction failing?
Yes (1)/No (0)

19. Do they have trouble finding words other than names?
Yes (1)/No (0) 

20. Do they confuse names of family members or friends?
Yes (2)/No (0) 

21. Do they have trouble recognising familiar people?
Yes (2)/No (0) 

Once the questionnaire is completed, you calculate the score. Someone who scores under five is advised that there is no cause for concern. A score of five to 14 suggests mild cognitive impairment – or memory lapses that could be the early stages of Alzheimer’s. A score higher than 14, possibly indicates that the person may already have AD.

Writing in the journal BMC Geriatrics, researcher Michael Malek-Ahmadi stressed that it is up to doctors rather than patients to interpret the results of the test. However, he advised that anyone who scores five or above should seek expert help.

I scored four. Before I began my Coconut Oil smoothie I was scoring around double that. I didn’t have full-blown Azs. but I was having problems that made us both accept that I had incipient Az. Significantly, it became much worse when I was overseas for 6 months last year and had no access to the coco oil.

Check our story here.
And.. we have ordered Dr Mary Newport’s excellent book on Alz. called “Alzheimers’ Disease – What if there was a cure”  Let me know if you’d like a copy. No prices available yet but it’s a labour of love so we’ll keep it down.

Filed Under: Alzheimers, FeaturedPost

Is Alkaline Ionized Water ‘snake oil’?

February 5, 2012 by 2 Comments

This question has been asked on Yahoo Answers, a site where anyone can ask a question and anyone can answer. The best answer is voted to ‘the top’ of the stck. In response to the question:

Is alkaline water a scam?

The voted best answer was by Clifton Jolley, Ph.D., who said:

Up until recently, the scientific opinion of hydration was that all you need to worry about is whether the water you ingest is verifiably clean. However, a substantial bodyof NEW scientific research into the benefits of “electrolyzed-reduced” or “alkaline water” has yielded an range of potential benefits. PubMed (published by the National Institutes of Health) lists nearly 100 double-blinded, peer-reviewed articles describing demonstrated benefits of alkaline water tested in both human and animal studies.

While it’s true the resting pH of the body is relatively stable at 7.35-7.45, the benefits of alkaline water have more to do with the performance of the water in the body than with the pH of the body. For instance, in studies conducted in Switzerland at the Lausanne University Hospital, calcium resorption was evidenced to be dramatically reduced in osteoporosis patients fed naturally-occurring alkaline water. (The scientists anticipate similar results for alkaline water produced by electrolyzed-reduced ionization.)

Other studies evidence increased absorption of nutritional supplements when ingested with alkaline water; and absorption is decreased as the acidity of the water is increased. So, while it’s true that unscrupulous manufacturers of some ionizing devices may make exaggerated claims for their products, there are reliable manufacturers making claims well within the range supported by recent science. For instance, E……. —a major manufacturer of ionizing appliances—recently published a list of claims for alkaline water based on the science reported by the NIH and other reliable scientific sources.

And in addition to the benefits of alkaline water, a growing number of applications are being found for the acidic water byproduct produced in the ionization process. Acidic water is reported to be a superior agent for cleaning and a non-polluting agent in procedures that traditionally have relied on environmentally dangerous solvents and salts, such as industrial cleaning and swimming pool sanitation. While the research is ongoing, the findings are uniformly compelling to support a number of reliable claims for the benefits of drinking alkaline water and using acidic water as a “green” solution for a number of cleaning procedures that once insisted on environment-risking solvents and other polluting agents.

The greatest risk to the advancement of water science is presented by the uninformed and the under-informed whose opinions are based upon old science or no science. For instance, to suggest “the machines don’t make water alkaline” is to fly in the face of dozens of scientific studies that rely on electrolyzed-reduction to produce alkaline water. Such opinion usually is advanced without scientific verification by persons who have neither credentials nor education in the emerging science of alkaline water benefits.

Source(s):http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19954569

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19954569
http://www.enagic.com/watertheory_kangenbenefits.php
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19202298
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20836884
Filed Under: alkalizing, FeaturedPost, scientific studies, Water Ionizers Tagged With: , ,

Inflammation and Heart Attack

January 25, 2012 by 1 Comment

Cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol.

It’s certainly the battlecry of the general practitioner and the word heard most frequently around the subject of heart disease. In fact it’s heard so often that all the other equally important factors seem to be in the shade of the almighty ‘C” word. I’m not going to talk about whether or not cholesterol is the problem we are told it is.. that’d take too long and I might get over-excited. But I would like to look at the other factors.. and a common symptom of all of them. What about tobacco usage, psychosocial stress, activity level, or  genetic predisposition? These are all heart disease factors. But exactly how do they contribute to heart disease?

Ask most doctors and they’ll agree that beyond all of them, inflammation is the root cause of a heart attack. All of the factors create inflammation, which in turn, creates the conditions that may precipitate a heart attack.

Fags

A simple explanation of the relationship between smoking and inflammation is to show what happens when a smoker stops smoking, as in this Reuters article, which describes a study by Dr. Christine N. Metz and her team. Very simply, researchers  watched inflammation markers during a smokers’ ‘quit’ program. And yes, inflammation levels dropped quickly. If you need further evidence of the effect of inhaling hot tar-filled smoke into your fragile internal environment, this study shows the direct link between smoking, inflammation and heart disease. The study even slates passve smoking, saying :

“Passive smoke itself, is a volatile mixture of numerous toxins, chemicals and carcinogens, that interact with in vivo mechanisms and induce vascular damage, including endothelium inflammation, atherosclerosis development, lipid peroxidisation, alterations in cytokines and acute phase proteins (such as CRP), as well as platelet aggravation.”

Another PubMed study links smoking directly to inflammation and atherosclerotic plaque. In other words, big chunks of plaque that can break off with a good cough and block an artery – with fairly obvious results. This study showed the possibility of inflammation AND plaque combining to create an ‘event’.

Stress and Inflammation

It’s now shown that stress of all kinds creates an inflammation response. It’s interesting because we have learned to ‘control’ stress in daily life, but I wonder just what levels we are faced with compared to our ancestors. The stress of climate change, of financial system collapse, of job insecurity don’t go away. They remain an enduring part of what we have to manage every day. This report demonstrates that it is the repetition of stress that causes inflammation.. but it actually describes an example of chronic inflammatory response as atherosclerosis.

There are even studies that link anger and cynicism to inflammation.

Summarizing, this paper links stress events via inflammation to heart attacks. “The argument is made that humans reacting to stressors, which are not life-threatening but are “perceived” as such, mount similar stress/inflammatory responses in the arteries, and which, if repetitive or chronic, may culminate in atherosclerosis.” In reading up on this subject you’ll come across another term ‘Oxidative stress’. Oxidative stress is what happens as a result of inflammation. As Sang Whang said in  ’Reverse Aging‘, inflammation and acids go hand in hand. Oxidation of tissue is caused by the acids that gather in inflamed sites. The stress load of oxidation travels, and as acid, it oxidises our good cholesterol, our LDL. The problem is.. oxidised LDL becomes plaque.

If we had one study describing the relationship of inflammation to heart attack we may be able to dismiss it, but when we see so many, all saying the same thing.. that inflammation and heart disease are inextricably linked, it’s probably time to take notice.

I’m not qualified to advise on heart disease. I’m a layman like most of my readers, and you should consult your medical practitioner before acting upon any of my crazy theories..

However it certainly seems to me that the circuitbreaker between inflammation and oxidative stress may just be something as simple as a constant program of maintaining a healthy pH balance. Given that water is one of the body’s first line tools for draining acids from sites of inflammation, it seems reasonable to me that alkaline microclustered water just may assist. As my readers know, I am not permitted by law to make any therapeutic claims, nor am I permitted to relate the many stories of our clients.

So I guess you’ll just have to research the subject yourself, won’t you?

Filed Under: Acidosis, alkalizing, FeaturedPost Tagged With: ,

The Primal Antioxidant and Ionized Alkaline Water

January 17, 2012 by 1 Comment

What if you had.. and used..a really powerful longevity method.. but didn’t even know that you did?

Warning!
I am not qualified to make therapeutic claims. This article contains my story. It does not purport to make any therapeutic claims. The effects I experienced may not work with others and I recommend you talk to your registered doctor before you act upon the information I have given here.

 

I received an email today about this strategy. It was one of those long emails that end up selling you the latest supplement.. I’m sure you get them!

It talked about research carried out in Valencia, Spain, which attempted to discover why women outlive men.

Researchers discovered that women “over-express” a certain gene that in turn,triggers the production of a powerful “super enzyme.”1 This super enzyme apparently extends a woman’s life by supporting the health of every cell in her body.

Results were published in the journal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies. You’d think the industry would be falling over each other trying to replicate it. But like many excellent studies, Big Pharma obviously looked at it, took out the calculator, and decided the returns weren’t astronomical enoughut most doctors are still in the dark.

Scientists who know about it call it the “Methuselah enzyme,” after the Biblical figure that lived for almost a thousand years.

Further aging studies found that animals that produce the highest levels had the longest health spans. And, when they genetically engineered fruit flies to have double the amount of this super enzyme, ruit flies lived twice as long.

So if we do have a method of increasing this magic ‘Methusaleh’ gene.. wow!

The email went on to describe how difficult it was to replicate, how many had tried, and yes, of course, how only they had succeeded. Just like all the other supplement selling emails I’ve read.

The super enzyme that continues to amaze researchers is superoxide dismutase or SOD.

One of SOD’s protective roles comes from being a big time free radical fighter. SOD rules over your body’s immune system and is your primary and self-generated antioxidant. As an antioxidant, it’s the most powerful your body has. Antioxidants that come from vitamins and food sources pale in comparison.

 
ANTIOXIDANT PROTECTION LEVEL
Primary Antioxidants
SOD Highest
Catalase Exceptional
Glutathione Peroxidase Exceptional
Secondary Antioxidants
Glutathione, CoQ10 Very Strong
Carotenoids, Vitamin E Strong
Flavinoids, Vitamin A, C Strong
Minerals, Proteins Moderate

Just look at this table to see where SOD sits!

SOD Production of  starts in the womb. In one study, genetically engineered mice whose bodies couldn’t make their own SOD died in just days from massive free-radical damage.2

Antioxidants only come from two places; body and diet. The ones our body can make – like SOD – are primary antioxidants and the most powerful.

Secondary antioxidants come from your diet or supplements like CoQ10, vitamin E, etc. Or…..

You’ve probably heard about secondary antioxidants like CoQ10. They are very powerful and very expensive. 

According to the email, the big ‘breakthrough’ was a new way to get SOD into the body instead of relying on us manufacturing enough at a cellular level. This is a a great achievement.. but is it the only way? The email claims that this new kind of SOD is ‘the only way to boost your body’s level of SOD’.

Why is that? SOD is such a fragile molecule, it was impossible for it to get through the digestive system without being destroyed. Ongoing research has shown:3

  • Free SOD is destroyed in the stomach.
  • Oral supplementation of free SOD does not increase tissue SOD activity.
  • A small percentage of SOD can be placed in the intestinal tract but cannot get past the gastrointestinal (GI) barrier.

So their ‘big breakthrough is enteric coating. They put the SOD into a capsule that doesn’t break down until it gets past the stomach. Nothing new. Sang Whang used it six years ago to create a bicarb supplement that could get past the stomach without being neutralised.

The email says that from the very first moment, and for as long as you use SOD, you can increase your health span.

This increase in the length of time you can live while still feeling healthy and happy, comes from powering up your immune system and zapping the free radicals that accelerates how quickly you age.

The Bad Guys: Free Radicals

Free radicals are the “bad guys” that damage your organs and tissues, causing them to age faster and fall apart more quickly. Some are simply metabolic byproducts. When your cells burn oxygen for energy, depleted oxygen molecules become unstable and may damage surrounding organs and tissues.

Free radicals are also generated when your body absorbs toxins and other poisons in our environment.

Every time you breathe in car fumes, cigarette smoke, smog, or chemicals, that’s causing a new swarm of free radicals. These free radicals tear through your body causing damage every moment of the day.

One doctor estimates that every cell in your body gets 10,000 free-radical attacks every day.How many cells do we have? 50 trillion cells. Ouch.

SOD keeps cleaning up the attacks on your organs and tissues and keeps them in a strong, youthful condition for much longer… depending on how much SOD you have.

That’s why the mice in the experiment mentioned earlier died without SOD. You can’t survive in the outside world unless you have enough.

SOD’s free-radical fighting power stands alone. There’s nothing better. Compared to vitamin C, it’s 3,500 times stronger.4

But SOD doesn’t just seek and destroy free radicals. That’s what secondary antioxidants do.

SOD Protects Your DNA

SOD makes every cell in your body more resilient and able to fight off attacks better from the outside. No other antioxidant even comes close to that kind of power.

What’s more, SOD safeguards your DNA, the blueprint your body uses to build every organ, tissue and cell in your body. Everything I’ve rad about antioxidants zeroes in on this; that free radicals can and do break down our DNA: our cell replicator. So we lose the ability to regenerate.

In a randomized, placebo-controlled study, researchers exposed two groups of people to high pressure oxygen. In the study, the control group’s delicate strands of DNA broke. But not the group taking the super new SOD supplement. Their cellular membranes remained virtually intact and even more important, there were no DNA strand breaks.5

SOD supports your immune system and safeguards your DNA in a way that fights off the devastating forces of aging.

That’s why the fruit flies that were engineered to have twice as much SOD in the experiment I mentioned earlier lived twice as long.

And that’s why you’ll enjoy a longer health span when you raise your levels of SOD.

All good so far.. but.. there’s always a but … not everyone has the same levels of SOD.

Making Sure Your Levels of SOD are High Enough!

Ever wonder why some people eat well and do everything right but still age quickly, while other people drink, smoke and eat junk food and live to be 90? This might explain it:

Levels of SOD vary by as much as 50% depending on the subject.6

Perhaps that’s why some people age quickly and why others live to a ripe old age without any problems.

SOD is such a critical measure of longevity, it seems to outweigh other risk factors like diet and exercise … even smoking.

For me, this data stinks. It tells em that if I am one of the people who doesn’t produce enough SOD, I can live the good healthy life- which I do – and still die young. And if I don’t buy their supplement I am dicing with my DNA’s future. 

And then….I remembered…

It was a sentence in a study carried out in Japan that i had read many years ago.

“The superoxide dismutase (SOD)-like activity of reduced (That’s alkaline ionized water!) water is stable at 4 degrees C for over a month and was not lost even after neutralization, repeated freezing and melting, deflation with sonication, vigorous mixing, boiling, repeated filtration, or closed autoclaving..”

Dr Shirahata and his team of research scientist had discovered that our water acted just like SOD!10
I searched a little more.. and found a Korean study showing how the water protected DNA, RNA and Protein!11 This study was carried out not on rats, but humans.
 And just below that, I found a study that said the water enhanced the effect of other secondary antioxidants!12

Then I remembered something more.

Some years ago I was at an exhibition in Sydney, displaying our water ionizers. I’d been talking non-stop for three days when a friend dropped into our stall and said “Hey, there’s a guy a few aisles away that tests your antioxidant ability.” I was tired. I’d been on the go non-stop for a week, setting up and then talking.

But… what did I have to lose? Things had slowed up at my exhibit – so I followed my friend to the stall. It was a man with a machine and a computer. You sat down, he put a sensor on the inside of your wrist, and it measured your level of Antioxidant protection. He was, by the way, also selling antioxidant supplements to all the failed test-ees. He passed the probe over my wrist, looked at the computer and frowned. “Something wrong?” I asked. “What have you been taking?” he asked. “Taking? You mean antioxidants? Nothing. Why?” I replied.

“Why?” He answered.”Because this machine measures up to 30. If you’re ’30′ you have good antioxidant protection.
And you have 45. Come on, tell me. What are you on?”

Well the only thing I was ‘one’ was water. Alkaline Ionized water. the same water I’ve been drinking for almost twelve healthy years.

1. Vina, J. et al, “Why females live longer than males? Importance of the upregulation of longevity-associated genes by oestrogenic compounds,” FEBS Letters; 579(12): 2541-2545
2. Li, et al, “Dismutase,” Nature Genetics 1995; 11:376-381
3. “Dietary free superoxide dismutase does not affect tissue levels,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1983; 37:5-7 
4. Colman, J., “Life Span-Increasing Effects of Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD),” LEM Winter 2005/2006
5. Muth, C.M., Glenz, Y., Klaus, M., et al, “Influence of an orally effective SOD on hyperbaric oxygen-related cell damage,” Free Radic. Res. Sept. 2004; 38(9):927-32
6. Ueda, K., et al, “Levels of SOD in Japanese people,” Acta. Med. Okayama Dec. 1978;(6):393-7
7. Vouldoukis, I., et al, “Supplementation with gliadin-combined plant superoxide dismutase extract promotes antioxidant defenses and protects against oxidative stress,” Phytother. Res. Dec. 2004; 18(12):957-62
8. Weise, Elizabeth, “Wine ingredient resveratrol as anti-aging pill,” USA TODAY Nov 29, 2006 
9. Rahman, I., Biswas, S.K., Kirkham, P.A., “Regulation of inflammation and redox signaling by dietary polyphenols,” Biochem. Pharmacol. Nov. 30, 2006;72(11):1439-52

10>Electrolyzed-reduced water scavenges active oxygen species and protects DNA from oxidative damage.

Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1997 May 8;234(1):269-74. 

Shirahata S, Kabayama S, Nakano M, Miura T, Kusumoto K, Gotoh M, Hayashi H, Otsubo K, Morisawa S, Katakura Y. 

Institute of Cellular Regulation Technology, Graduate School of Genetic Resources Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. sirahata@grt.kyushu-u.ac.jp 

Active oxygen species or free radicals are considered to cause extensive oxidative damage to biological macromolecules, which brings about a variety of diseases as well as aging. The ideal scavenger for active oxygen should be ‘active hydrogen’. ‘Active hydrogen’ can be produced in reduced water near the cathode during electrolysis of water. Reduced water exhibits high pH, low dissolved oxygen (DO), extremely high dissolved molecular hydrogen (DH), and extremely negative redox potential (RP) values. Strongly electrolyzed-reduced water, as well as ascorbic acid, (+)-catechin and tannic acid, completely scavenged O.-2 produced by the hypoxanthine-xanthine oxidase (HX-XOD) system in sodium phosphate buffer (pH 7.0). The superoxide dismutase (SOD)-like activity of reduced water is stable at 4 degrees C for over a month and was not lost even after neutralization, repeated freezing and melting, deflation with sonication, vigorous mixing, boiling, repeated filtration, or closed autoclaving, but was lost by opened autoclaving or by closed autoclaving in the presence of tungsten trioxide which efficiently adsorbs active atomic hydrogen. Water bubbled with hydrogen gas exhibited low DO, extremely high DH and extremely low RP values, as does reduced water, but it has no SOD-like activity. These results suggest that the SOD-like activity of reduced water is not due to the dissolved molecular hydrogen but due to the dissolved atomic hydrogen (active hydrogen). Although SOD accumulated H2O2 when added to the HX-XOD system, reduced water decreased the amount of H2O2 produced by XOD. Reduced water, as well as catalase and ascorbic acid, could directly scavenge H2O2. Reduced water suppresses single-strand breakage of DNA b active oxygen species produced by the Cu(II)-catalyzed oxidation of ascorbic acid in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting that reduced water can scavenge not only O2.- and H2O2, but also 1O2 and .OH. PMID: 9169001 

11. Electrolyzed-reduced water protects against oxidative damage to DNA, RNA, and protein.

Appl Biochem Biotechnol. 2006 Nov;135(2):133-44. 

Lee MY, Kim YK, Ryoo KK, Lee YB, Park EJ. Department of Genetic Engineering, Soonchunhyang University, Asan, Chungnam 336-600, Korea. 

The generation of reactive oxygen species is thought to cause extensive oxidative damage to various biomolecules such as DNA, RNA, and protein. In this study, the preventive, suppressive, and protective effects of in vitro supplementation with electrolyzed-reduced water on H2O2-induced DNA damage in human lymphocytes were examined using a comet assay. Pre-treatment, co-treatment, and post-treatment with electrolyzed-reduced water enhanced human lymphocyte resistance to the DNA strand breaks induced by H2O2 in vitro. Moreover, electrolyzed-reduced water was much more effective than diethylpyrocarbonate-treated water in preventing total RNA degradation at 4 and 25 degrees C. In addition, electrolyzed-reduced water completely prevented the oxidative cleavage of horseradish peroxidase, as determined using sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gels. Enhancement of the antioxidant activity of ascorbic acid dissolved in electrolyzed-reduced water was about threefold that of ascorbic acid dissolved in nonelectrolyzed deionized water, as measured by a xanthine-xanthine oxidase superoxide scavenging assay system, suggesting an inhibitory effect of electrolyzedreduced water on the oxidation of ascorbic acid. PMID: 17159237 

12. Biophys Chem. 2004 Jan 1;107(1):71-82.

The mechanism of the enhanced antioxidant effects against superoxide anion radicals of reduced water produced by electrolysis.

Hanaoka K, Sun D, Lawrence R, Kamitani Y, Fernandes G. 

Bio-REDOX Laboratory Inc. 1187-4, Oaza-Ueda, Ueda-shi, Nagano-ken 386-0001, Japan. hanak@rapid.ocn.ne.jp 

We reported that reduced water produced by electrolysis enhanced the antioxidant effects of proton donors such as ascorbic acid (AsA) in a previous paper. We also demonstrated that reduced water produced by electrolysis of 2 mM NaCl solutions did not show antioxidant effects by itself. We reasoned that the enhancement of antioxidant effects may be due to the increase of the ionic product of water as solvent. The ionic product of water (pKw) was estimated by measurements of pH and by a neutralization titration method. As an indicator of oxidative damage, Reactive Oxygen Species- (ROS) mediated DNA strand breaks were measured by the conversion of supercoiled phiX-174 RF I double-strand DNA to open and linear forms. Reduced water had a tendency to suppress single-strand breakage of DNA induced by reactive oxygen species produced by H2O2/Cu (II) and HQ/Cu (II) systems. The enhancement of superoxide anion radical dismutation activity can be explained by changes in the ionic product of water in the reduced water. PMID: 14871602 [PubMed]

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