Cultivating Health:
Learning and Living Your Biological Mandates
by Adeha
Feustel
The Biological Mandates:
Featuring selected excerpts from Cultivating
Health : Learning and Living Your Biological Mandates. (Sorry,
the book is not available yet. E-mail
me to get on the prepublication announcement list. Speed up the
process by helping me find a publisher!)
| The Biological Mandates |
| Whole Light | Fresh Air | Long Sleep | Real Food |
| Pure Water | EMF | Natural Cycles | Sound |
| Regular Cleansing | Daily Movement | ||
Artificial lights: fake sunlight is not benign.
There is another consequence of avoiding the sun that the experts fail to mention. When we avoid the sun, the alternative is artificial light, which lacks the critical balance between the visible frequencies as well as most of the invisible infrared, and almost all the invisible ultraviolet of natural sunshine. Many studies are indicating that our regular artificial light is not the benign substitute for sunshine that we have assumed, that in fact it has destructive and even life-threatening impact on our health, raising stress levels and disturbing cell function.
Not only do we compromise our health and immunity by avoiding the sun, we endanger our eyesight, bone density and psychological equilibrium, and we wreak havoc with nervous and endocrine function. By so ignoring our biological mandate, we endanger every aspect of our function. By accepting artificial skewed- spectrum lighting as a substitute for sunshine, we unknowingly precipitate profound physiological effects with disastrous results, the causes of which are invisible to us, although glaringly evident in the available research on sunlight and health.
On John Ott's Research into colored light.
Ott got some truly stunning results when he studied the effect of variation in lighting on life span of a particular strain of mice bred for high susceptibility to spontaneous tumor development. He compared the life spans of 2000 mice kept under various fluorescents versus those living under natural sunshine. Mouse lifespans averaged 7.5 months under pink fluorescent lighting; mice under different types of light with increasingly wider spectral composition showed a progression in life span up to 16.1 months under natural sunlight!
| Lighting source | Mouse lifespan |
| Unfiltered sunlight (UV included) | 16.1 months |
| UV transmitting plastic | 15.6 months |
| Window light (no UV) | 9.4 months |
| Daylight fluorescent (no UV) | 8.2 months |
| Pink fluorescent (no UV) | 7.5 months |
(Note: that UV and no UV are the first big difference, and that window light without UV was still considerably better than even daylight fluorescents. Full spectrum artificial lighting had not been developed.)
Ott considered this experimental outcome the most significant of all his experimental work, and concluded that the full spectrum of sunlight was as vitally important to the health of animals (including humans) as to plants.
| Footnote: Ott's original research was done in the early 1970's. The research was repeated on a small scale by a few other researchers, but grant money for further research was refused on the grounds that light conditions could not possibly have anything to do with cancer! Anyone with a "genetic susceptibility" to cancer deserves to know about this study. Have you ever heard of it? Do you suppose that lighting conditions, if not the main variable in cancer experiments, should at least be controlled and standardized? Are they? Not! |
"Every nutritional substance, medicine and drug," says Dr. Ott,
"has a specific wavelength absorption. If those wavelengths are missing
in the artificial light source a person is exposed to, then the nutritional
benefits of the substance will not be utilized."
"Full Spectrum Light: Energy and Health Builder" By Joseph G.
Hattersley
http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/FullSpectrum.html
Breath, Lymphatic Function and Cultural Conditioning
Because our culture values a flat stomach and tight abdominals, many of us tend to resist the natural excursion of the belly that occurs with a deep breath. Deep slow breaths from the belly indicate that we are relaxed and confidant, and other cultures have maintained their appreciation for a healthy rounded belly - the Buddha belly, not the beer belly! Unfortunately, western culture values a flat belly, so we tend to wear tight clothing, waistbands, belts, and bras, all in an effort to look trim. This may make us look fashionable, but it does not make us healthy. Quite the opposite. By constricting the gut, we interfere with nature's marvelous design.
Not only does the undulating reciprocal pressure of the diaphragm on your gut massage the vital organs, but it also performs a vital lymphatic function: it pumps the lymphatic fluid from the abdomen up to the collar bone area, where it rejoins the bloodstream. When you inhale, the diaphragm presses down, pressurizing the abdomen and compressing the cysterna chyli, an extra-large lymph node that lies immediately below it. This pressure forces the lymph up through the diaphragm into the chest cavity. When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up into the rib cage, propelling the lymph along its one-way path back into the blood stream. At the same time, the alternating pressure of the diaphragm is massaging the heart and improving its lymphatic exchange. The natural motion of the diaphragm actually detoxifies your body by propelling the lymph along its path. When you are not actively moving your active diaphragm is the only pump for your lymph: its correct function is absolutely critical to your health. By sucking in your gut to look good, you force your breath into the upper chest, hamper oxygenation, still the lymphatic pump, and activate the stress response of the sympathetic nervous system. This habit is totally destructive to health and vitality.
Short-sleeping mice.
Adequate sleep has a profound impact on immunity. Researchers at Johns Hopkins injected mice with common carcinogens while altering their sleep patterns; one group to a long night, and another to a short one. Using common household chemicals (window cleaner, bottle plastic, and antiperspirant) as carcinogens, researchers were able to induce cancer rapidly in the short sleeping mice -- so rapidly that they could not even tell which carcinogen was most damaging. But even after testing many carcinogens on the long sleeping mice, they were unable to cause cancer at all! Let me repeat that. Even after testing many carcinogens on the long sleeping mice, they were unable to cause cancer at all...
The powerful protective effect of ample sleep may seem surprising from our civilized perspective in which cutting sleep is just one more way we can add time to our busy days. Sleep is seen as an inconvenient but marginally necessary waste of time. But if you look at what healthy animals do, they sleep a lot. And when they are sick, they sleep even more. They rest and recover. Humans used to do that; they had no choice. Now we are more likely to take a pill and forge ahead with our day. We are going the way of the short-sleeping mice. Researchers can hardly tell which substances are the most carcinogenic....
Up until Edison invented the light bulb in 1879, people averaged 10 hours of sleep a night. Even in 1910, before the advent of widespread electric lighting, average adult sleep per night was still 9.5 hours. By the 1970's we were down to 8 hours per night and today (2001) average adult sleep in the U.S. is less than seven hours per night. Sleep expert Professor James Maas of Cornell tells us that in just the last twenty years we have added 158 hours to our yearly working and commuting time, the equivalent of a full month of working hours! Maas claims that a third of us are sleeping less than six hours each night! If we assume the biological mandate requires 8-9 hours of sleep (which is probably high for summer and low for winter), our entire culture is suffering a massive sleep deficit! Does it matter? What are the life impacts of these kinds of changes in sleep over the span of a few generations? Professor Maas tells us:
"Sleep is a necessity, not a luxury. Recent studies of the neurological, chemical, and electrical activity of the sleeping brain show that even minimal sleep loss can have profound detrimental effects on mood, cognition, performance, productivity, communication skills, accident rates, and general health, including the gastrointestinal system, cardiovascular function, and immune system.
Given the role of sleep in determining daytime functioning, most alarming is the current extent of sleep deprivation in our society. At least 50 percent of the American adult population is chronically sleep-deprived, and it's getting worse by the decade. This trend can be found throughout the industrialized world. If we don't get adequate sleep, our quality of life, if not life itself, is jeopardized."
"Perchance To Sleep", by Dr. James Maas
(http://cornellmagazine.cornell.edu/Archive/Jan1999/JanSleep.html)
Jeffrey Bland on EFA's and cancer.
Jeffrey Bland, in his highly informative and useful book, The 20 Day Rejuvenation Diet Program, describes a study he and Ewan Cameron, MD conducted to assess the effect of different kinds of dietary fats on the incidence of breast cancer in mice (p.164). They used a strain of mice bred for its genetic tendency to develop breast cancer. They exposed all the test groups except the controls to a known carcinogen. They fed the 6 groups of mice the same diet except for the fat source, which was varied between corn, safflower, flax, fish, or evening primrose oil. The sixth group was the control, which received normal mouse chow and no exposure to the carcinogen. At the end of the 40-week double blind study, all the mice in 4 of the groups were dead, while in two of the groups, only one or two of the fifty mice were dead!
Obviously significant results, but when the researchers decoded the double blind to find out which oils were responsible, they were surprised. They expected to find that one of the groups with the high survival rate was the control group (no exposure to the carcinogen) and the other would be one of the oils. Not so! The 50 control mice were all dead! The two groups of survivors had been fed flax or fish oil, both Omega 3 essential fatty acids that are sadly lacking in our modern diet.
The implications of this study are staggering. The genetically susceptible mice, not exposed to carcinogens, without the protective fats, were all dead. The genetically susceptible mice, exposed to carcinogens, but with the protective Omega 3s, were almost completely protected. Diet proved vastly more critical to survival than genetic predisposition.
On eating refined carbohydrates and sugar.
Besides getting fatter and fatter, besides high cholesterol and triglyceride levels, there is another fearsome result of yo-yo blood sugar: endocrine exhaustion. Let's go back to the primitive diet. You don't get a lot to eat. Once in awhile you get to eat all the walnuts or apples, or all the elephant, moose or whale you want. These foods have a low glycemic index (even the apples have high fiber), and are digested slowly, keeping the blood sugar within acceptable limits. Enough insulin is released to balance the surplus calories, but never so much as to drive the blood sugar down so far that the pituitary has to call in the adrenals. In this scenario, the pituitary, pancreas and adrenal glands have a lot less work to do!
In our modern yo-yo version, these endocrine glands have to be on the job constantly, to the point of exhaustion. Lower the blood sugar. Raise the blood sugar. Lower the blood sugar. Raise the blood sugar. Our glandular factories are overworked, having to put out a lot of product in the form of glandular secretions: and these glandular secretions are not made of carbohydrate! They are made of fat, protein, and minerals: their production demands the presence of enzymes with their essential vitamin and mineral cofactors. You may be noticing a problem here: if you ate refined carbohydrates, you didn't eat much fat and protein, and you ate almost no vitamins and minerals; if the carbohydrate was cooked, you got no enzymes. The food was devoid of the nutrients necessary for your body to process it! The food did not feed you. You fed the food! You used up your vital resources to store fat and exhaust your endocrine system!
Water and Fatigue.
In the early 1940s a group of researchers at Harvard tested the effect of dehydration on exercise fatigue in a group of conditioned athletes. The athletes walked on a treadmill at a constant speed in a hot environment under three conditions: no water, water on demand, and water replacement commensurate with water loss. When the athletes were given no water, their body temperatures reached 102 degrees in 3.5 hours, and they were exhausted. When the athletes could drink as much as they wanted, they lasted 6 hours before their temperatures reached 102 and they became exhausted. But when the athletes drank enough water to replace all they were losing as they were exercising, the researchers ended the experiment at seven hours because the athletes felt they could continue indefinitely! Their temperatures remained at a steady 99 degrees. (G.C. Pitts et al, "Factors Affecting Work Output in Hot Environments," American Journal of Physiology, 1944, 142: 254)
Water and joint function.
If your body is dehydrated, your joints will not get the water they need to keep the cartilage hydrated and flexible. As the cartilage dries out, it becomes more brittle, and begins to fray. In its dried out state, it cannot repair itself as fast as you are destroying it. Swelling and pain result. If you have joint pain and you are not drinking the amount of water recommended by Dr. Batmanghelidj, try increasing your water intake before you begin taking pain medication. You may find that your pain improves with careful attention to your water intake.
Water and asthma.
When the body is forced into drought mode, it shuts down the exit routes for water from the body. The obvious exit routes are sweating (cooling), urine production, and water loss in the feces. A less obvious exit route is the water we breathe out when we exhale. A dehydrated body will constrict the air sacs in the lungs to limit the water loss through exhalation. Dr. Batmanghelidj names this as a cause of asthma! He claims that rehydration will reduce or even eliminate both the asthma symptoms, and dependence on asthma drugs. Surely if this were true we would have heard about it. But who is going to tell us? Certainly not the drug companies that make millions of dollars each year by selling drugs to treat asthma. The only way you will know is to try it.
Rebounding for lymphatic acceleration.
"Rebounding" is jumping up and down on a mini trampoline. Because the lymphatic vessels contain a series of one-way valves, the fluid can only move in one direction. When you jump up and down, the fluids move upward in your vessels, and the valves prevent backflow. So rebounding is an extremely effective mechanical method of enhancing lymphatic flow. It is important to note here that the lymphatic effect is pronounced even with very little motion on the rebounder. You need not even jump enough to get your feet off the mat to have a significant lymphatic impact! When you start jumping higher than that, or when you start jogging on the rebounder, you not only accelerate lymph, but also accelerate blood flow. If you are aiming at bypassing the liver, you would not want to increase blood flow a lot. If you are aiming at clearing the lymph in general, moving in and out of the lymphatic level of activity to an aerobic level of activity should alternately activate lymphatic flow, then accelerate blood flow through the liver for cleansing. Al Carter's and Samuel West's books on rebounding are fascinating and definitely required reading for anyone wanting to improve lymphatic and immune function.
If rebounding makes you dizzy, don't do it! Dizziness means your body is not ready for rebounding. Work on your lymphatics in other ways and then come back to rebounding later when your lymphatic function has improved. If rebounding only makes you a little dizzy, then get the stabilizer bar that comes with the soft bounce rebounder (see resources), and only rebound for 30 seconds at a time until your capacity increases - meaning you no longer get dizzy. You can also put your rebounder next to a wall or door jam, giving yourself something to hold on to. Be creative! You can even sit on the rebounder and use your hands and arms to create the bounce! Your body will still be going up and down, assisting your lymphatics to clear your tissue. In cases of extreme debility, you can just sit on the rebounder while someone else bounces on it!
Rocking in an old-fashioned rocking chair (not a glider) is another good way to get your lymph moving if rebounding is too much for you: and sit on the porch to take advantage of the negative ions. Please respect your body's messages about its capacity on the rebounder: start gently, stop when you need to. And enjoy!
Skin brushing for lymphatic acceleration.
There are two methods of skin brushing; one for skin elimination and one for lymphatic acceleration. Robert Gray's method is best if you are trying to accelerate lymph flow: using a long handled natural bristled brush and starting at the extremities, brush every surface of the body (except the face) one time only in the direction of the lower abdomen. This actually stimulates lymphatic flow, and the results will likely be evident in your bowel movement within a day or so. You can practice this up to two times a day while you are cleansing, for up to a maximum of three months, after which you should only do it once a day, twice a week, because the lymphatic system will become accustomed to the stimulation if you overdo it, and the brushing will no longer have the desired effect. Note that you are not trying to get the skin to redden with blood flow with this version of the technique: that would actually hamper the lymph flow. The other method of skin brushing will result in increased blood flow as well as lymph flow, and is discussed below under skin elimination.
Skin brushing is one of the most effective methods of stimulating skin elimination for detoxification. Instead of the single stroke over each surface that we do for lymphatic stimulation, we brush the skin as vigorously as is comfortable, in all directions and until the skin is rosy and moist. By stimulating the skin and then warming the body we can encourage the body to eliminate toxins through sweating. Doses of niacin taken before exercise and thermal techniques will also expand the capillaries to encourage sweating.
We could combine some of these methods for a synergistic effect by taking a hot bath after skin brushing, rebounding, and LBG assisted lymphatic massage; we could also add Epsom salts, herbs, or clay to the bath to pull the toxins from the body. When doing this it is especially important to take plenty of liquids with electrolyte minerals before, during, and after the bath or sweat. Freshly squeezed lemon or lime in a quart of water with 1 - 2 teaspoons of honey is nice, and the lemon will assist in detoxification. You can add a pinch of Celtic salt if you tend toward low blood pressure. You can stay in the bath until your body temperature goes up to 101 (use a thermometer!) (WARNING: If you have any problems with your heart, or if you have high blood pressure, thermal methods may be dangerous and are contraindicated: with either of these conditions you must always check with your health care practitioner before using any thermal methods.) After getting out of the bath, you can increase the detoxification effect by immediately wrapping up in a blanket or heavy robe, trapping body heat and encouraging even more sweating. If you begin feeling weak or dizzy during any of the thermal methods, it is time to get out of the heat and begin cooling off immediately! Drinking extra liquid will help.
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Natural
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Copyright Adeha Feustel 2001. All rights reserved.