Our Task: Loving Self-Expression

By Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO
AANP Past-President

Photo by David 23 via Flickr, used under the Creative Commons License.

It continually amazes me how easy it is to become completely ensnared with daily challenges in our lives. As we strive to create perfection in our work, our relationships, even our creative outlets, things can get tough.

Last week, after several busy days of work, I was running late one morning. I was irritated that I was late and, as can happen, my irritation distracted my attention from how I was carrying my coffee. I spilled it all over my pants on my way to the car. I had to head back into the house, figure out a whole new outfit, change into it, and then get back into the car. By then I was really late, plus I was missing my coffee. As I drove to work, it seemed that every slow and nonplussed driver was in the fast lane. My frustration started to rise, my expletives escaping my clenched teeth.

Then, suddenly, grace interceded. In a moment of clarity, I saw all this for what it was – just silly superficial things that had nothing to do with the true purpose of my day. I was able to smile, relax my grip on the steering wheel, and relax into the truth and beauty of the moment.

Later, upon reflecting on this change of heart, I recalled some words that my father once shared with me. These words were received by him from his spirit guide:

What is a new adventure for you is for us a continuation of the same learning problem. It is new for you because it is a different situation, in a different place, with different opportunities and constraints. These are the surface manifestations, but natural focal points for people with bodies, connected so intimately with the Earth. We, on the other hand, are deprived of your distractions. We cannot see those things. Thus they are of little concern to us. What matters from our limited, in its own way, point of view is the degree to which heartfelt feelings are expressed in loving ways, the degree to which those feelings are translated into actions that improve the Earth, the home of our children, and how much closer you come to us in spirit.

I find these words to be both soothing and admonishing. With life so precious and so alarmingly short, our ability to express ourselves in loving ways for the good of all is exactly the task at hand.

Nature’s Way

By Bill Benda, MD


Photo by Rennett Stowe, via flickr, used under the Creative Commons License.

This article is reprinted with permission from the peer-reviewed journal Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal (www.imjournal.com), vol 7 issue 1, pp 64. Copyright 2008, InnoVision Health Media (www.innovisionhm.com).

My world burned on June 24th of this year. I witnessed its genesis on a beautiful Big Sur summer day, clear and warm, the Pacific luminescent in the afternoon sun. And then, from the north, 3 small, innocent, tumbling clouds, passing overhead barely noticed, until . . .

Boom. Five rapid lightning strikes: 4 over the ocean and 1 touching down half a mile south of my ridge. Ten minutes later, a puff of smoke. After 24 hours, 4 neighboring houses burned to the ground and I began what became a 7-week exodus from my home and bed. More than 200 000 pristine acres and 30 structures destroyed within a month, and nothing we humans, even with our sophisticated airborne fire-fighting technology, could do to stop the advancing flames.

And then, once we were finally allowed to return to our blackened homes, something quite strange and beautiful occurred. The smoke cleared, the ash settled, and the earth, instead of gasping in pain, began to breathe as it hadn’t in a hundred years. The sky acquired a blue not before seen by those now alive, and the coyote pups and fox cubs I feared had perished reappeared, thrilled with the epicurean fare now exposed on the barren earth. The land loved having been burned. It turns out only we humans had suffered from what was, in fact, the ecological equivalent of a good housecleaning. As the only species allowed access to the process of combustion, we were, ironically, the ones who suffered most from its ill temper. It turns out we have become so adept at fire suppression that we have interfered with Nature’s perfect means of clearing away the debris of her own life cycles. It took but 1 lightning strike to dissipate both our sense of security and our delusion of eminent domain.

Which brings us (at last!) to the topic of healthcare. Our media is laden with stories of epidemic obesity and hypertension and diabetes. But obesity, hypertension, and diabetes do not kill. Stroke and myocardial infarctions kill. And ketoacidosis. And sepsis. We, in our exuberance to suppress the unpleasant symptoms of chronic illness, have, with our pharmaceuticals and surgeries, allowed our own toxic accumulation of unhealthy protoplasm—cells and organ systems unable to breathe, to cleanse, to heal. The patient need not really pay attention to nutrition and exercise if a little blue pill can make the pain go away.

But when the lightning strike of a clot hits us or a bit of inflammation starts a forest fire, the results are catastrophic rather than merely inconvenient. We suffer a stroke rather than a little more senility. A cellulitis becomes sepsis.

Life’s disasters have a way of teaching us lessons that we, in our mortal arrogance, tend to ignore until painful remediation engulfs us. Some tutorials are of extraordinary value, such as the rediscovery of compassion that had been nescient until a friend faces heartbreak. Others are more poignant than tragic, as in the revelation that one really does not need and does not miss all that stuff in the drawers and closets.

But above all, through catastrophe we learn that we are not in control, no matter how powerful our war machines or how small our computer chips. Nature trumps all, and when she wishes to correct the insanity of our plans for her planet, we are helpless to stop or even slow her down. “It’s Nature’s way,” goes the old ’60s Spirit tune, “of telling you something’s wrong.”

Perhaps it is time to surrender back to Nature her thrones of omniscience and omnipotence. During some points in our lives, we must become ill. We must age. We must die. Our task as practitioners is not to suppress the symptoms of blocked arteries and failing memories but to clear the toxic load of adipose tissue and calcium deposits and free radicals that will feed the flames of an acute medical event. Most of all, it is time to come to the understanding and acceptance that we are not in control, and that, in fact, we would not benefit by being in control. Nature has given us the most advanced healing technology on the planet, one that has been perfected over tens of millions of years and needs only our respect and attention to function at top performance—our own personal human body.

It is time to stop interfering with the natural processes that possess their own timetable of living and of dying; rather, we should focus on lending support to a cycle we may not fully understand and may never fully accept. This life is not our life. It is but a beautiful, perfect cell in the organism that is our natural world, a place not ours to control but only inhabit. And when we do return to ash, we will assist the earth in breathing deeply, once again.

Resilience

By Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO
AANP Past-President (2008-2009)

Photo by OakleyOriginals via Flickr, used under the Creative Commons License.

I have a dear friend who is 71 years old and as spunky as they come. She is intensely inquisitive of everyone who has the good fortune of meeting her. With focused determination, in a matter of minutes, she can extract the most intimate details even from the most reticent person. At the same time, she has a constant twinkle in her eye and a belly laugh ready to erupt at any moment. She is entirely unreliable at making plans as something better is quite likely to come along and catch her attention.

Around a table filled with her friends, she loves to debate the deeper meaning of every movie that is showing within a 20 mile radius. At one of these dinner gatherings a few days ago, I asked her a question, “What do you most attribute your good health to?” Her response: “My good health is the most certainly the result of surviving all of my bad habits.” Perhaps she was referring to her daily evening bourbon cocktail. Perhaps she was referring to her disdain for structured exercise. She does have a few bad habits to be sure, but as the evening progressed, I wasn’t thinking of those.

I watched her listen to her friends with complete compassion, while gently and persistently pointing out the silver lining in every cloud that someone resolutely created and simply delighting in the joy of being with people she loves. I thought about her past, too, and the deep adversity and loss she has experienced. It dawned on me that the real secret to her health and vitality was resilience – her unceasing ability to rebound from all manner of disappointments and to emerge into a confident embrace of life within and around her.

Her resilience seeps into those around her as she constantly buoys them up, praises them, and revels in their unique brilliance. You just cannot help but to feel better about yourself when you are with her. She lives life with the expectation that we will swing at anything that life throws at us, that we will make contact with the ball, and that the point is to revel in wherever the ball flies. I smile as think of her now, likely snuggled into her bed, watching one of her favorite shows on TV, eager to fall asleep so that she can start her day tomorrow.

Rediscovering the Value of Fats in Our Diets

By Susan DeLaney, ND, RN
2010 AANP President's Award Winner

Photo by @joefoodie via Flickr, used under the Creative Commons License.

For most of the last 50-60 years, we have been under the influence of the “lipid hypothesis,” which translates into “saturated fats are bad,” that “cholesterol causes heart disease,” and that “to stay healthy one must eat low-fat or non-fat foods.” According to some food theories, any fat at all is bad for you and should be avoided at all costs.

I found this somewhat confusing as my grandparents grew up eating eggs and bacon with lard biscuits and butter. They worked hard and were rarely sick and lived healthy lives even as they aged. Looking at epidemiological evidence, it also seems that various groups of people living around the world consume even more saturated fats in their diets. Eskimos living in extreme cold areas consume approximately 80% of their calories from saturated fats, from marine mammals such as seal and whale meat and their fats, fish and fish eggs and their organ meats. The Masai, an African tribe, live almost exclusively on milk, meat and the blood of the cows they raise, with 80% of their diets consisting of saturated fats. Yet when scientists have examined the health of both of these groups of people living on their traditional diets, they remain free from heart disease, cancer, and the common infectious diseases.

The French present another problem, so much so that we call it the “French Paradox.” In the United States the death rate from heart disease is 315/100,000 and in France the death rate is 145/100,000. Somewhat confusing as the French eat so much butter, cheese, rich sauces and meat, all of the things we have been trained to avoid to prevent heart disease and maintain a healthy lifestyle. So we say “it must be the wine,” which does have beneficial effects but not enough to create such a difference in the death rates from cardiovascular disease. Looking more closely at the data, it turns out that in the region of Glascony, where people eat the highest levels of fats in their diets from duck and goose livers, the death rate from cardiovascular disease is 80/100,000. What’s up with that?: the highest fat in the diet with the lowest rate of heart disease! Bring on the wine, cheese and pâté!

What is now becoming evident to us is that real foods high in fats are essential to our health as they contain important fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. These vitamins act more like signaling hormones acting in concert with one another, instructing the body to perform important functions within the cell. They are the primary drivers of every system in the body. Foods such as butter, eggs, cheese and milk from pasture-raised animals contain very high amounts of these important vitamins. Additionally fish and fish livers oils, organ meats, shellfish, the fats of pigs and birds, and even insects prized by certain cultures contain high levels of vitamins A and D. And what about Vitamin K2? Surprisingly, goose and duck livers are amongst the foods containing the vitamin at its highest levels. Other K2-rich sources include cheeses, egg yolks, butter and fatty meats—all those things the French love to eat!!

Science is now beginning to back up these observations with the fat-soluble vitamins, especially K2, which acts by conferring the physical ability for proteins to bind calcium, helping it find its proper placement in the bones rather than the arteries. K2 also offers protection from heart disease by regulating two important proteins involved in monitoring and clearing the plaque from the arteries. In the future it is likely that the lack of vtamin K2 will be considered one of the major contributing factors to heart disease.

As naturopathic physicians, we should take a more holistic approach by considering the combination of ALL of fat-soluble vitamins as they act together, talking to one another and influencing heart disease, not to mention the other systems in our body.

Vitamin D, an important fat soluble vitamin, has been in the news recently, with studies demonstrating that many are deficient. Such deficiency contributes to the increased risk of cancer, auto-immune disease, heart disease, osteoporosis, depression and many other health concerns. Were a lack of sunlight the primary culprit, one of the studies would not have shown that even in Hawaiians with exposure to sun 28 hours per week—a level most of us barely reach in a month—50% of them are vitamin D deficient!!

Why, you ask, is this so?

Our diets are lacking in the foods that are rich in Vitamin D, as well as the other fat-soluble vitamins A, E and K. Fully committed to the low fat diet, most people have limited and even eliminated healthy fat-containing foods from what they eat. Know for a fact that if you supplementing vitamin D, you are lacking in the other vitamins as well. Instead of more supplements, I recommend changing your diet to include healthy fats from animals raised on pasture land: butter, cheese, eggs and milk. Include fatty fish and shellfish from unpolluted waters and, like traditional people and the French, eat more organ meats and the fat from animals. Let real food be the foundation what your health, and enjoy it as well!!

For more information:
http://www.westonaprice.org/
http://www.allergyresearchgroup.com/