“Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can’t buy.” – Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683)
How much do you value your health? Can you put a price tag on it? Obviously not, if anything, your health is invaluable. Long gone are the days when expensive chemical or synthetic drugs were deemed to be the best for our bodies. Apart from the forbidding cost, the side effects that the body has to deal with cannot be ignored. This realization has dawned and people today are going back to natural remedies that humankind has been using for thousands of years.
For natural remedies and cures, the kitchen is a great place to start. It has almost all the medicines you would possible need at least, to deal with common ailments. All this at no (or negligible) cost, purity, without side effects and dollops of TLC (tender, loving care). Sounds too good to be true? Well, it’s not, all you need is just a little awareness and understanding!
The best solutions are not the cheapest ones, the best solutions are always the ones that cost nothing!
Having a headache?
Curing headaches has never been easier! Eating fish and ginger will make the pain go away in no time.
Fish contains fish oil that prevents headaches. Americans consume a dangerously insufficient amount of Omega-3 fats, which are essential to good health but can only found in fish oil and a few other foods (flaxseed, walnuts). However, the most beneficial form of Omega-3 – containing two fatty acids, DHA and EPA, that are essential to fighting and preventing both physical and mental disease – can only be found in fish.
Other benefic effects of fish oil include:
Helps fight and prevent heart disease, cancer, depression, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, diabetes, ulcers, hyperactivity and many other diseases
Increases your energy level and ability to concentrate
Provides greater resistance to common illnesses such as flu and cold
Helps pregnant women avoid premature births, low birth weight and other complications
Ginger has a small amount of antihistamine and anti-inflammatory action and that may be the basis for its effectiveness in preventing headaches. The is an anecdotal information saying that a woman in Denmark took 500 to 600 milligrams of powdered ginger in water at the first sign of a migraine and relief came within 30 minutes. After a few days of taking powdered ginger, the woman changed to eating fresh, raw ginger (the amount is not given). Fewer migraines were reported and those that did break through were of less intensity. Read the rest of this entry »
“One cannot think well, love well or sleep well if one has not dined well.” – Virginia Woolfe
Thinking is a biochemical process. For brain cells to communicate effectively with each other and create neural pathways, they require chemicals called neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are the ‘messengers’ carrying messages from one neuron to another. They are made from amino acids found in protein foods (e.g., meat, fish and cheese).
Eating fruits and vegetables is a habit which has very positive effects on your brain. It stimulates brain functions and helps improve memory. The reason why fruits and vegetables are so important is because they are one of the key “brain foods” and are provide an important source of carbohydrates (carbohydrates enhance the absorption of tryptophan, which is converted into serotonin in the brain). Digestion causes the breakdown of carbohydrates into glucose (sugar) which is the primary source of energy for the brain. If your glucose levels fluctuate too much, you may experience mental confusion, dizziness and if severe, convulsions and loss of consciousness.
Fruits also slow down the oxidation process of our cells. And not just that, but they also act as anti-inflammatory agents, make the brain less vulnerable to amyloid plaque, improve communication between neurons and allow the brain to regenerate faster.
Improve your learning and exam results
If you’re a student facing an exam, one of the keys to pass it successfully is to eat raw fruits! They are the ultimate brain fuel.
It’s true, you can actually improve your test results simply by changing your eating habits between waking up and doing the exam. The big trick is to consume only fruits and to avoid the “brain blocking” foods, which are foods that contain white flour, refined white sugar, meat and dairy.
You can check this on yourself! Tomorrow morning eat nothing but fruits and you’ll notice that your thinking will be much clearer and faster than the day before.
New research has also shown that B vitamins, such as niacin and folic acid (found in lean meat, fish, legumes, dairy products, grains and green, leafy vegetables) are vitally important to brain function and may help keep the mind sharp.
Stay away from the brain blockers, eat fruits and in a very short time you’ll be amazed of how much better and clearer your head (and life) will be.
Don’t let your memory run away from you
Curcumin, a spice used in India, known for its anti-inflammatory effects, may prevent memory loss. Curcumin is what gives yellow curry its bright color and is frequently used as a natural food dye. Curcumin is an antioxidant and anti-inflamatory spice that also helps reduce amyloid plaque (this plaque is one of the causes of Alzheimer’s disease).
According to a study published in the October 24, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the AmericanAcademy of Neurology, eating vegetables – but not fruit – helps slow the rate of cognitive change in older adults.
“Compared to people who consumed less than one serving of vegetables a day, people who ate at least 2.8 servings of vegetables a day saw their rate of cognitive change slow by roughly 40 percent,” said study author Martha Clare Morris. “This decrease is equivalent to about five years of younger age.“
Breakfast sets the tone of the day
Eating breakfast is very important for weight control, health, mood and work performance. But just eating – any – breakfast won’t do you too much good, you have to know what to eat and what not to.
Several studies suggest breakfasts that slowly release carbohydrate into the blood help memory and concentration more than those that rapidly release large amounts in a short period of time. Carbohydrates are released slowly by foods that contain whole grains and solid fruit rather than refined grains (whether bread, pastry or cereal) and fruit juice or soft drinks. A long-lasting, health-promoting breakfast formula is to combine a whole grain serving, a fruit or vegetable, and a healthful source of protein.
Diet protects memory
Experts say that age related memory loss is no further away than your refrigerator and no more expensive than a bag of groceries. To understand this, we must first understand the aging process of the brain.
The aging process of the brain is caused by inflammation and oxidation, processes which allows damaging free radicals to attach themselves to cells.
“Old neurons are like old married couples — they don’t talk to each other very much anymore. They just sit in the room with the remote and stare at the TV.” – Dr. James Joseph
Even if research in this field is still in infancy, scientists believe that diet may help minimize brain’s sensitivity to oxidation and inflammation, thus improving the communication abilities of brain cells.
A very important role in this process is played by antioxidants. They are potent chemical substances found in plants that protect them against free radicals (highly active molecules that damage cells). Antioxidants are what give fruits and vegetables their bright colors and the reason why plants produce these chemicals is to protect themselves from pollution and other environmental dangers. By eating fruits and vegetables we enjoy the same protective benefits of antioxidants as plants do.
If you enjoyed this post, stay close by subscribing to the RSS Feed, because more posts on nutrition will be coming along in the future.
Now long ago I wrote an article explaining – shortly – why compulsory school is bad for life. If you haven’t read it, here are the two main points of the article:
1. The current school system forces children to grow absurd.
“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own part and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does. […] Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.” – John Taylor Gatto
2. It doesn’t teach the children anything about themselves. And self-knowledge is the only knowledge with a long lasting value.
“‘Self-knowledge’ is commonly used in philosophy to refer to knowledge of one’s particular mental states, including one’s beliefs, desires, and sensations.” – Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
But compulsory school does more damage to a children’s mind than this. In the following lines of this article, I will try and expand on the subject, with the help of John Taylor Gatto.
If you’re wondering who John Taylor Gatto is, here is a short biography excerpt from Wikipedia:
Gatto was born in the Pittsburgh area steel town of Monongahela, Pennsylvania. In his youth he attended public schools throughout the Pittsburgh Metro Area including Swissvale, Monongahela, and Uniontown as well as a Catholic boarding school in Latrobe. He did undergraduate work at Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia, then served in the U.S. Army medical corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Following army service he did graduate work at the City University of New York, Hunter College, Yeshiva, the University of California, and Cornell.
He worked as a writer and held several odd jobs before borrowing his roommate’s license to investigate teaching. He was named New York City Teacher of the year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. In 1991, he wrote a letter announcing his retirement, titled I Quit, I Think, to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, saying that he no longer wished to “hurt kids to make a living”. He then began a public speaking and writing career, and has received several awards from libertarian organizations, including the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for Excellence in Advancement of Educational Freedom in 1997. He promotes homeschooling, and specifically unschooling. After learning from another teacher named John Gatto that he was regularly confused with him, he added Taylor to his name.
The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher
In his speech, “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” Gatto describes the seven lessons that are taught in all public schools by almost all teachers in America, whether they want it or not. This is what he writes:
The first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach dis-connections….Even in the best of schools a close examination of curriculum and its sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions….Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working along with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending, for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess….In a world where home is only a ghost, because both parents work…or because something else has left everybody too confused to maintain a family relation, I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny.
The second lesson I teach is class position….The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class….My job is to make them like being locked together with children who bear numbers like their own.…If I do my job well, the kids can’t even imagine themselves somewhere else, because I’ve shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes….That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
The third lesson I teach is indifference….When the bell rings I insist they drop whatever it is we have been doing and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch….Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.
The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestinated chain of command. Read the rest of this entry »
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.” – Oliver Goldsmith
Almost everyone knows that lying is a negative habit and generally a bad thing to do, but we still continue doing it anyway.
A lie is type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement with the intention to deceive, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, or to avoid punishment. To lie is to state something one knows is false with the intention that it be taken for the truth by someone else.
I’ve heard a whole lot of people who said they hate lying, but honestly now, how often do people lie?
It’s kinda difficult to find out how people (as in the majority) lie, but what is possible is to try and find out how often do the readers of this blog lie. It will be a test of honesty and courage and it will certainly make you feel a bit “lighter” on the inside.
How often do you lie? Rate each of the following scenarios with a number from 1 to 5; 1 meaning that you rarely lie in that environment and 5 meaning that you always lie.
At school (skip this one if you’re not in school):
On the job:
With family:
With friends:
On the phone:
On the Internet:
While shopping:
In your own mind:
To yourself:
I’ll let you know how often I lie later in the comments, until then feel free to to be honest in your answers. In addition to rating how much you lie in a certain environment, also try and motivate your rating (eg. Internet-4, because I can be whoever I want to be and I enjoy being someone else).
Nobody will judge you here!
Even if honestly you need to lie, always be honest.
Ever been through times when you feel really depressed even if nothing seems to be wrong with your life? Of course you did, we all have times like that, it’s only human. If you haven’t been through that then you must be either some creature from outer space or a robot – and you should go home to your planet or see your engineer.
Seriously now, let’s take a look at the the things that trigger that feeling.
Uninspiration
To understand uninspiration, we must first understand what inspiration is.
The word “inspiration” has its first origins in the Greek word θεοπνευστος, which reads theopneustos and translates into “God-breathed.” In artistic composition inspiration refers to an unconscious and irrational burst of creativity. In both cases – spiritual and artistic – inspiration has something to do with the supernatural, it has a connection with the divine, it is a state of being in-spirit with something higher than ourselves.
Inspiration appears when your actions (work) are aligned with your life’s purpose. How do you know when that happens? When you love your work so much that you would do it for free, just because you enjoy the process of working.
Uninspiration doesn’t exist as such, it is only the lack of inspiration that we perceive as uninspiration. This feeling of helplessness appears because we humans have a tendency to lie to ourselves. Let’s have a quick example. It is a known fact that there are many beginner bloggers out there. Many of them force themselves to believe that they love writing and blogging, they force themselves to write new stuff every day, they force themselves to believe they love doing it. Some enjoy the process for a short while, but then, because they didn’t really love doing it, it starts to turn into a chore – because of the lack of inspiration. That happens because they started doing it only for the potential money earnings and not because they loved the work.
This is why it is important to always do what you love. Doing what you love will inspire you, it will help you get through the eventual hard times of life, it will constantly keep you motivated and it will bring you a success that is way beyond your expectations.
Work
People devote enormous amounts of their lives to work. Surveys indicate that the majority of people feel dissatisfied with their working lives. But why is it that most of the population seems to get so little enjoyment and satisfaction from their work? It may be the result of too little reward, too little free time, or maybe a boring work.
The fact that so many people feel dissatisfied with their work made me wonder, what is the meaning of work then? Some might say that work is necessary to make enough money to support you and maybe a family. But this answer is too superficial and without solid foundations, because the utilitarian purpose of work (getting money to sustain life) wouldn’t require enormous amounts of time. One or two hours per day would do that job really well.
Work without passion is able to create only more work without passion. “Keep doing what you do and you will continue to get what it is that you get.” This work for the sake of work is a vicious circle that can be broken only by making the courageous decision to start doing what you really love.
Work is supposed to be more than a stepping stone to leisure and retirement. Work is a practice run for what we might do after we die. Heaven is not a place where you just hang out and play harps. Heaven is the place where we will be given the opportunity to continue expanding the skills and abilities we started to develop here on Earth. Our life here isn’t much more than a testing ground to see what we can handle.
The most important question to ask yourself when starting something isn’t “how much I will earn?”, it is “what will I become by doing this?”. Who you become is the most important thing, money and the other rewards are secondary.
From a psychological point of view, I believe that work fills the need within us to conform to the now social cloud of the pack. A need is developed greatly by the school system.
Doing what you love
Do what you love! Regarding the work aspect of life, this is the most important thing to do. However, doing what you love isn’t as simple as it looks on paper.
The very idea of doing what you love is foreign to what most of us learn as children. During my childhood I had this idea that work and fun are totally opposed things (work = pain). When I entered the school system that idea gained amplitude, because I didn’t necessarily love school and my parents told me that it is necessary as a preparation for grownup work. Also, I noticed that the teachers all believed that work was not fun. Not a surprising thing considering the fact that work was not fun for most of them.
But enough about me. Did you ever notice how all the successful people say they love their work? And they aren’t just making that up like the most of us, they really do love their work! What does it mean to love your work? It means that you have to love that activity more than any unproductive pleasure, the concept of “spare time” should seem mistaken to you. Many of my friends are asking me when will I take a vacation, a break… But this concept seems flawed to me, because my work is offering me more pleasure than a vacation! I’m not saying that you should spend your whole time working, because you can do only so much work before starting to screw up, but doing what you love should fill up most of your time.
Doing what you love will earn you money in almost every situation. We’re all unique, but our hobbies aren’t. There is a very good chance that your hobbies and passions are enjoyed by thousands of other people!
In the search of doing what you love stay away from the magnificent temptation of prestige.
Prestige is social honor, or honor that receives from others.
Prestige is just fossilized inspiration, it is the opinion of the rest of the world. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious weren’t that at first (Jazz for example). In the example with the bloggers that start blogging without loving it, prestige also plays an important role; they’re doing it because some people are doing it and they get money and respect in return.
Donald Hall said young would-be poets were mistaken to be so obsessed with being published. But you can imagine what it would do for a 24 year old to get a poem published in The New Yorker. Now to people he meets at parties he’s a real poet. Actually he’s no better or worse than he was before, but to a clueless audience like that, the approval of an official authority makes all the difference. The reason the young care so much about prestige is that the people they want to impress are not very discerning.
Back to basics
Doing what you love a sort of guarantee that you will never run out of inspiration. A very powerful example in that direction is Jay Leno, the famous host of “The Late Night Show.” I haven’t seen a single show with him about which I could say that “it was uninspired.”
Here’s a one hour interview with Jay, hosted by Charlie Rose. It contains some really important advices so I suggest you listen carefully to it.
