Happy Spring Equinox! Today the length of day is equal to the length of night--we're halfway between winter and summer solstice as the days grow longer and warmer (in the northern hemisphere). Today I am driving home from upstate New York, where I spent the weekend giving seminars at the 7th Annual Women's Wellness Weekend, offered in conjunction with Natural Health magazine. . Since I've been traveling, there's no Green Living Q&A blog update today, but you are welcome to continue to post questions and comments and I will review and post them when I return. In next week's issue, I'll catch up on all the Q&A's. Today I want to share with you two books that have made a dramatic change in my health in a very short period of time, for very little money. And my husband's back pain has improved so much that he stopped using his cane to walk, which he has been using since his back injury almost ten years ago. These books contain information on simple processes anyone can do themselves that will bring your body back to it's natural state of health. I invite you to read these books and share them with others. Debra :-)
HEALTH, HOME & HABITAT #76 ~ 20 March 2007 * HEALTHY BREATHING If the links don't work on this newsletter, you can view it online at http://www.dld123.com/newsletter/newsletterupdateback.html Health, Home & Habitat Back Issue (tables of contents) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The topics that follow have something in common. They both are about how we can greatly improve our health by restoring basic body functions to their natural state. I was amazed to find out how much simply standing and sitting incorrectly and breathing incorrectly could affect my health, but I found that they do. These two things are so fundamental to health that you could do hundreds of other things to be healthy and these things will still stand in the way of achieving the health you are working for. The solutions are very simple and the problems correctable. Both these books have been written to focus on relieving specific health problems, however, in them I found information that applies to everyone. I encourage you to take a look at both of these books. HEALTHY BREATHING Breathing is the most basic necessity of health to the human body. We can live without food for weeks, and without water for days, but our bodies cannot live without air for more than a few minutes. So making sure our breathing is optimum seems to me to be the most important foundation of health, yet it gets very little attention in the world of health care. One day while doing a consultation, a client mentioned to me that she had been learning to breathe. Learning to breathe? I thought we all just breathed naturally. In. Out. What else is there to it? Turns out there is a lot more to it. Over fifty years ago, Russian scientist Dr Konstantin Buteyko observed that the correct volume of breath is fundamental to maintaining good health. After monitoring the breathing of hundreds of terminally ill patients during his medical training, Dr. Butayko observed that as the illness progressed, the patient breathed a greater volume of air. From this, he was able to accurately predict the time of death of his patients down to the minute, just by observing their breathing. Dr. Buteyko then developed hypertension and wondered if the cause of his illness could be his "big breathing." By reducing his breathing volume, he found his symptoms disappeared, and by again increasing breathing volume, he could make his symptoms come back again. Eventually he concluded that illnesses develop as a result of breathing more air than the body needs. This made sense to me when I read it. Too little food or water results in starvation or dehydration; too much leads to obesity and overhydration (water intoxication). Why shouldn't this also apply to to air? Actually, changes in our breathing occur all the time, but we rarely notice it. When our bodies are asleep, for example, our breathing is very slow, deep, and even; when we get excited, we take shorter, shallower breaths. So there is a "normal" breathing, as well as changes for different conditions. But beyond this, I suddenly realized the relevance of this to each of us. Many toxic chemicals are airborne and come into our bodies through inhalation. If we are breathing in more air than our bodies require, we are also bringing in more toxic chemicals than are necessary. Adjusting our breathing to optimum levels also reduces our intake of toxic chemicals. Hyperventilation The standard amount of air an adult human body needs is two to three gallons per minute. If we bring more air than this into our bodies, it is known as hyperventilation. If this goes on day after day, it is chronic hyperventilation. Interestingly, air is similar to toxic chemicals with regards to our bodies. A severe episode of hyperventilation can be fatal, just as a large exposure to a toxic chemical in a short period of time can lead to death. But just as small exposures to toxic chemicals over time can damage the body, a small degree of hyperventilation over time can cause illness. This day-in-day-out hyperventilation can be so subtle, it has been called "hidden hyperventilation" because it is not noticeable unless you know what to look for. Obvious indicators are regular sighing, sniffing, upper chest breathing, yawning, taking large breaths before speaking, and breathing through the mouth. And, like toxic chemical exposure, hyperventilation results in a collection of unusual and often unrelated symptoms that can affect any part of the body, any organ, and every body system (I'm sure this phrase sounds familiar to those of you with MCS). Symptoms include nasal congestion, post nasal drip, sneezing, wheezing, breathlessness, coughing, tight chest, airborne allergies, snoring, lightheadedness, poor concentration, numbness, sweating, dizziness, vertigo, tingling of hands and feet, fainting, trembling, headaches, abnormal heartbeat, anxiety, depression, apprehension, dry mouth, fatigue, itchy skin, sweaty palms, urinary problems, constipation and diarrhea, general weakness and chronic exhaustion. Again, all these symptoms we are familiar with from chemical exposure are also symptoms of over-breathing. Overbreathing also dehydrates our bodies. Every time we exhale, we release moisture from our bodies. Overexhalation releases moisture that our bodies need to keep. Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide Most of us have been taught that our bodies need to inhale oxygen to support health and exhale carbon dioxide, a waste product. It's easy to assume from this that it's a good thing to exhale 100% of the carbon dioxide. However, carbon dioxide is essential to health, too. All functions in nature operate with complementary pairs--hot/cold, male/female, wet/dry...and this holds true for breathing too. Oxygen and carbon dioxide are complementary pairs. Both are needed for health. Carbon dioxide is required for all metabolic functions in our bodies. It has long been known that a healthy body needs five percent carbon monoxide in the air sacs of the lungs. Constant overbreathing expels too much carbon dioxide from the body. The amount we inhale is the amount we exhale. Air can't be stored in the body. So when we inhale too much air, we exhale too much carbon dioxide. As the amount of carbon dioxide in the air sacs is depleted, body health lessens and illness develops. When it reaches three percent, the body can no longer survive. Carbon dioxide is also needed to transfer oxygen from the blood to tissues and organs. Without it, even though we may have enough oxygen in our bodies, our tissues and organs will suffocate. Why We Overbreathe We live in an industrial world that is very different from the world of nature in which our bodies evolved. One of the things that is different is that we eat more food than our bodies were designed for. Overeating leads to overbreathing because the body requires more energy to digest and process food. In particular, it needs more energy to digest animal proteins, so eating more animal protein increases breathing. Eating processed foods and exposure to toxic chemicals of all kinds also increases breathing as the body has to work harder to remove these toxic substances. Other conditions that contribute to overbreathing are stress, hot and stuffy indoor environments, lack of physical exercise, oversleeping, and excessive talking. Breathe Through Your Nose Looking at the design of the body, it is clear that our bodies are designed to breathe through the nose and eat through the mouth. The nose has specific design features that change air in our surrounding environment into air that can be utilized by the body. Our noses warm the air, add moisture, and filter foreign particles (once particles get in the lungs from mouth breathing, it takes the body 60-120 days to remove them from the small air sacs in the lungs). Noses also have a smaller opening than the mouth, allowing just the right amount of air into the body that is needed for that particular body. Breathing through the mouth allows too much air to enter. Are You Overbreathing? There is an easy test you can do to see if you are overbreathing: take your pulse. A normal pulse for healthy adults is 60 to 80 beats per minute. If your pulse is higher than 80 beats per minute, you are probably overbreathing. You can also measure the level of carbon dioxide in your body by timing how long you can hold your breath. The longer you can hold your breath, the more carbon dioxide you have in your body and the healthier you are. If you can hold your breath for 30 seconds, your carbon dioxide level is 5.0--good health. Less than that indicates poor health, more than that indicates better health. The goal of breath retraining is to reach the ability to hold your breath for 40 seconds. Benefits of Proper Breathing Correct breathing results in our bodies being in their natural state of healthy function. All organs and tissues receive the oxygen they need, enabling them to function as they should. People who have learned to breathe correctly have reported improvement in respiratory complaints, increased calmness, higher energy levels, better sleep, and a reduction of "mind chatter." There also may be a substantial reduction in appetite because the body is better able to process food and absorb nutrients with proper breathing. People who are overweight often lose a large amount of excess weight effortlessly and quickly because increased oxygen burns fat. Blood sugar levels also normalize, with improvement in both hypoglycemia and diabetes. I haven't even begun to do the exercises, but I have been noticing to breathe through my nose. One thing I've noticed is that I'm less hungry and my body is starting to lose a little weight (after having great difficulty doing so in the past). And I just feel calmer breathing this way, not so stressed, even when things are stressful around me. This information about breathing is not well known in America, but has been used successfully in Russia and Europe for nearly a half century. Clinical trials have been done to prove its effectiveness. I say, why wait until you body develops an illness? Learn to breathe correctly today as part of your overall practice of good health habits.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * HEALTHY POSTURE Now, the number one requirement for healthy breathing is proper posture. We've all been told to "stand up straight" but all we need to do is look around to see that most people don't. And this simple thing--that we don't stand up straight--leads to chronic pain throughout the body and illnesses of all kinds that you would never think are related to bones and muscles. My Husband No Longer Needs His Cane First, I'll tell you my success with improving my posture using a particular set of exercises. I had been having an ongoing pain in my neck for over six months. I had been to my chiropractor, had numerous massages, and my medical doctor wanted to x-ray it. It was suggested that the pain was being caused by how I hold the receiver when I talk on the phone. But none of this helped. Then our friend Cory, who is a personal trainer, called my husband and invited him to a seminar he was giving about a new service he was providing. This man was a firefighter and had retired on disability from a back injury. He had been in a lot of pain. And now he was pain-free. Of course my husband went to the seminar. Larry also had an on-the-job back injury about ten years ago and has been walking with a cane since. He was in some degree of pain almost continuously. He did the twenty-minute program ONCE and the next day he stopped using his cane! (Right now he's outside mowing the lawn and last week he was painting the house all day.) We got the book. Cory came over and went through the exercises with us. I did the twenty-minute program for neck pain ONCE and my neck pain was gone. We have since been doing the exercises daily to retrain our musculo-skeletal systems into proper balance. I noticed a difference in my whole body after the first day. I feel more stable on my feet and have more strength in my body. Even though the exercises are simple and mostly you just sit or lie in a position for several minutes, it's a real workout. Cory now considers these exercises to be the basic foundation for any exercise program. He said that a lot of people exercise over misaligned muculoskeletal systems and so exercise the wrong muscles, and don't build strength. Also, people go to the chiropractor and get adjusted and the adjustments don't hold because they leave the office and go right back into the posture that allowed the muscles to pull the bones out of alignment in the first place. Chiropractic can realign the bones our bodies, but to stay aligned, we each need to train the muscles that hold those bones in place. These exercises were developed by Peter Egoscue and described in his book Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain. Egoscue created these exercises with the purpose of eliminating the pain in his own body. I think this program is wonderful for anyone who wants good health. His "three R's" are * rediscover the body's design Egoscue says, "All the body's organs, it's bones and muscles, are already governed by a coherent, comprehensive canon of rules. We can only understand and follow them...We don't need a new and improved musculoskeletal system. The old one would work fine, if we let it. The Musculoskeletal System The musculoskeletal system is the foundation of the body--it is that upon which all else hangs. It is the basic structure, made up of the bones and joints of the skeleton and the nerves and muscles that move them. Bones don't move on their own, they just hang there like a science-class skeleton until the muscles move them. I hadn't given much thought to my muscles and bones, but after reading the book, I became very excited about the basic mechanics of how the bones fit together and the joints are different types of "hinges". I went through my whole body and just moved everything for the fun of it, so I would be aware of which joints just moved up and down and which rotated around. The musculoskeletal system may seem unimportant, but if it's out of alignment, your whole body is off-kilter. And if you're in pain, you're not going to function very well physically or mentally or emotionally. The musculoskeletal system also works hand-in-hand with all the other systems of the body: cardio-vascular, digestive, endocrine, immune, lymph, nervous, and respiratory systems. So any misalignment in the bones and muscles is going to impair the functioning of all other body systems. Here's a simple example. Posture affects your ability to expand your lungs and take a deep breath. Try this. Sit on a chair and lean forward. Take a breath and notice if it was difficult or easy. Then sit up straight and breathe again. Did you notice a difference? It is crucial to every organ and function in the body to be able to breathe deeply to bring life-giving oxygen into the body. But if your body is crooked, this function is impaired. [A deep breath draws air down to where it pushes out the diaphragm muscle over the stomach. It does not refer to a large volume of air.] The very fact that we have muscles indicates that the body is designed to move. It can move and it needs to move to work. To move the blood into the brain, to move food through the digestive tract, to help the lymph eliminate waste from the cells all require free body movement...and that requires muscles and bones in proper alignment. The proper alignment for the body is to have a vertical alignment of your "load bearing joints": shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. These should all line up one over another. They are strongest when they are vertically aligned, like boxes piled up one on top of the other. When I started to experience the stability of lining up these joints, I could see it was much easier to stand, sit, and walk. My body felt almost weightless. And I could also visualize that if one of the boxes wasn't lined up, the whole pile would be very unstable. Once I saw my body really standing up straight, I realized that good posture is not only healthy, it is beautiful. I remembered my great aunt Louise, who was a runway model before she married, would always be telling me to stand up straight. I began to look around and could tell that standing straight gives one more power and presence and it just "looks right." Bodies in Motion Our bodies were designed to be able to operate within the grand design of nature, as an animal in an ecosystem. They were designed to walk and run and move around as we hunt and gather food and build shelter. They aren't designed to sit all day and can't be healthy without movement. Egoscue says the illnesses we have today are effects of "motion starvation." When we can't move our bodies because they have pain in muscles or joints, all other body systems begin to fail. We could take a drug--or an herb or a homeopathic remedy--to stop the pain, but all that does is stop the pain. Pain relivers of any sort don't stop the process of deteriorating health that our bodies are trying to tell us exists by screaming with pain. When we move, we need to move our bodies the way they were designed to move. Only motion according to design restores health; motion at odds with design is useless and may be harmful. Yet, most of use move our bodies at odds with it's design. To be healthy motion, we need to have bodies in alignment. Bringing Our Bodies Back to Health Egoscue challenges us to take charge of our own muscles and bones by beginning to feel, see, and understand the basics of our body's biomechanical frame. He gives us the tools, it's our choice to use them to have balanced, strong, healthy bodies. I see on the internet there are a lot of devices you can buy to hold your body in better posture, but why not just retrain your muscles to hold you bones in place? That's what they are there for. This can be done faster and more easily than you might think. And then you'll have the benefits of an aligned and healthy body for the rest of your life.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * CLASSIFIED ADS LOTSA BAMBOO. Entire line of Bambu organically grown bamboo products--cutting boards, dinnerware, bowls, utensils, baskets, knives, trays, and more. www.greenfeet.com GIVE YOUR BODY THE NATURAL SALT IT NEEDS. Revive your energy with natural living salt. Contains 84 minerals essential to human life. Hand-mined to retain original primordial vibration pattern. Delicious taste makes food "come alive". A life-giving, natural, whole food. Email info@himalayanlivingsalt.com for free sample. www.himalayanlivingsalt.com SUSTAINABILY-HARVESTED WILD SALMON and other wild fish from the pristine waters of Alaska. Flash frozen, smoked, sausage and burgers, cans and pouches, salmon caviar. www.vitalchoice.com CALL FOR A HEALTHY BED CONSULTATION. 100% wool-filled and wool-encased mattress of heirloom quality, placed on a slatted wood frame for optimal airflow. Our wool fill comes from the EcoDomestic Wool Project and Woolgatherer Carding Mill in Montague, California, home of our production company. Available in U.S. and Canada. www.shepherdsdream.com SOLUTIONS FOR FLUORIDE HAZARD! Custom made water filters. Removes fluoride, arsenic, chlorine and chloramines without taking out the good minerals that make water wholesome. Whole house systems, under the counter systems, and 100% chlorine-free pool and spa system. Medical grade alkaline water unit. Natural Plus Plus LLC 727-447-2344 www.gobeyondorganic.com DEBRA'S GUIDE TO CHOOSING NATURAL SUN PROTECTION. Instant download e-book by Debra Lynn Dadd tells how you can enjoy the health benefits of sunshine in balance with natural methods of protection when necessary. Order now. DEBRA'S GUIDE TO CHOOSING A NATURAL BED. Instant download e-book by Debra Lynn Dadd covers the types of natural mattresses that are available, all about the materials, natural bedding, the history of natural beds. Order now.
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|  The new, revised, edition of Home Safe Home is now available in bookstores nationwide. Home Safe Home tells what toxic chemicals are generally found in specific household products of all types, and safe solutions you can buy or make at home. It's different from other books on toxic chemicals because the focus really is what you can do to protect yourself and your family and create a healthy home. I bring over twenty years of research and personal real-life experience to this book. * 10 Simple, Inexpensive Things You Can Do To Reduce Household Toxics * How Toxic is Your Home? Quiz (excerpt from the book) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Debra's List ~ 100s of links to 1000s of nontoxic, natural & earthwise products
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ email: debra@dld123.com web: http://dld123.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
Close Your Mouth: Buteyko Breathing Clinic Self Help Manual
The Aligned Body 
Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain