The cold water in this type of treatment was considered to be 55 degrees Fahrenheit, yet these Nature Cure practitioners stated that 71-82 degrees Fahrenheit could also be beneficial.  This type of treatment was believed to develop the body’s power of immunity and protect children from the danger of chill and drafts, and reduce convulsions and infections including measles, scarlet fever, and diptheria.  It was the best security against illness, they stated.  This was a time when antibiotics and vaccination were not available, so the importance of strengthening the body was essential.  I argue that with the high rate of chronic disease prevalent today that the importance of strengthening the body is still essential. 

The prescription by these Nature Cure doctors was to take 3 cold water baths a week of a few seconds’ duration up to no more than a minute’s duration.  These baths could be anytime during the day but never within 2 hours after a meal, right before bed (because it prevents sleep), or when a person is feeling cold or has the chills (i.e. is sick with a cold or flu).  They believed that the best time to start this “hardening” was before conception with the mother-to-be and should continue from day one of a child’s life with 1 or 2 three-second duration cold water baths a day.  Once the child reached 3 years old, only 3 cold water baths a week was considered necessary.  To comfort the chill that this may bring to your ears, they stated that after 2 or 3 applications, the aversion to cold water goes away, even in children. 

Dr. Czeranko elaborates that hot water bathing, warm homes and minimal exercise that people have in their lives these days reduce resistance.  Kneipp advised that warm baths shouldn’t last longer than 5 minutes and that they must be followed by cold water and exercise.  Lust stated that “this cold water application will strengthen the body and counteract the effect of the warm water.” 

If you’re thinking of adding a piece of this old wisdom into your life, consider keeping your hot showers to a minimum and end them with a few seconds up to a minute of the maximum level of cold water.  If you’re having trouble going with the maximum level of cold water at first, consider lowering the temperature to what you can tolerate while each day continuing to get colder.  For those reluctant, you may be comforted in knowing that 55 degree Fahrenheit (or 13 degree Celsius) is “the same temperature that European spas administer the cold water plunge that follows the hot sauna or warm mineral baths.”

• Food allergies (in particular gluten and dairy) can be one culprit and the elimination of food allergies usually causes them to go away completely. 
• WebMD states that citrus or acidic fruits and vegetables (such as lemons, oranges, pineapples, apples, figs, tomatoes, and strawberries) can trigger them or make them worse.
• Michael Murray, ND (author of many books and naturopathic spokes person) and WebMD alike believe they can be caused by nutritional deficiencies, especially of thiamin, folic acid, vitamin B-12, vitamin B-6, zinc or iron.  (Correcting nutritional deficiencies should never be done without the advice of a physician as some nutrients can be toxic in over the counter amounts.)
• Others believe that sodium lauryl sulfate in toothpaste is a contributing cause.  Brushing with just baking soda alone or a toothpaste without that substance in it can reduce their recurrence. 

Blue-Red light therapy: Blue light destroys Propionibacterium acnes (the bacteria that causes the inflammation and infection that produces acne).  Red light reduces inflammation and improves healing of the skin.  Because the bacteria rapidly multiplies, treatment needs to be twice daily for 15-30 minutes each session.  Side effects are minimal and include temporary redness, dryness and maybe flaking.  The British Journal of Dermatology in its May 2000, Volume 142, Issue 5 article states that after 12 weeks of treatment 76% improvement in inflammation and 58% improvement in acne was achieved.  While these results are significant, Acne.org (http://www.acne.org/light-acne.html) states that non-inflamed black-heads and white-heads respond best; whereas inflamed cysts and nodules respond more poorly.  Cysts and nodules are walled off from the outside so it’s even more important to work internally to reduce the predisposition to form these.  The blue-red spectrum doesn’t include UV rays, so it’s not cancer-causing.  However, blue light can be harmful to the retina of the eye, so saftey goggles are needed.  You can get this type of therapy at dermatologists’ or aestheticians’ offices or you can purchase the lamps themselves for self-treatment.  Home devices range from expensive to inexpensive units to just the plain light bulbs themselves.  Doing an Amazon.com search for blue and red light therapy for acne will provide you with some of the many options.  LED sources appear to have deeper action, are convenient, and require shorter treatment times (British Journal of Dermatology’s article called Guidelines for Topical Photodynamic Therapy, Volume 159, Issue 6).  The plain light bulbs can be screwed into a lamp by the bed where one can spend an extra 15 minutes basking in the light before getting up or going to sleep.

Pulsed light and heat energy therapy: This is a combination therapy that kills the bacteria that causes the inflammation and infection that produces acne and shrinks sebaceous glands resulting in lower oil production which the bacteria feeds off.  Side effects are again minimal and include temporary redness.

Diode laser therapy:  Diode lasers destroy sebaceous glands in the middle layer of skin, which makes me a little more wary of this treatment.  And it can be painful with requires pain medication to be applied with treatment.  Side effects are again minimal which includes temporary redness and swelling of the treated areas.

Photodynamic therapy:  Because I am a naturopathic physician, I don’t promote this therapy because of the use of strong topical chemicals.  For educational purposes, this treatment combines topical medication with blue-red or pulsed light therapy.

Photopneumatic therapy: Using a vacuum suction to remove the oil and dead skin cells from within the sebaceous glands, this therapy combines blue-red light therapy with treatment.

To end with, the June 2009 (Volume 160, Issue 6) publication of the British Journal of Dermatology compared 13 different light therapies and found them to be inadequate, except for blue light, blue-red light and infrared radiation.  They even stated that blue-red light was more effective than topical 5% benzoyl peroxide cream, a common chemical used in anti-acne medication.

“In an exposé on the Sunday, March 18, 2012, edition of Dateline NBC, Chris Hansen presented the results of an NBC investigation into the laboratory practices of some nutritional supplement companies. This investigation showed that an analytical laboratory that claimed to analyze dietary supplement ingredients and finished products for dietary supplement manufacturers might not have actually tested the supplements they were given by the undercover reporter. Instead it was suggested they were engaged in a practice known as “dry labbing,” in which a request is made for analysis and the laboratory simply sends the supplement manufacturer a document that fraudulently lists the results of an analysis that was never conducted. The “results” are, in fact, made-up numbers that are within the range that the supplement company is expecting. This practice is illegal and very dangerous, and was exposed in an editorial in a 2004 issue of Alternative Medicine Review. We condemn the practice of dry labbing and any supplement company that would do business with one of these “labs” with knowledge of their illegal practices.

Accurate lab analysis is key to proper quality control. However, there is no way to have full quality control over a lab’s results without full knowledge of an analytical lab’s operation. This is why Thorne operates our own, state-of-the-art laboratory at our manufacturing facility in Dover, Idaho. Following current Good Manufacturing and Lab Practices that have been audited by the Food and Drug Administration, we test the ingredients that are designated to be included in our products, as well as all finished products before they are released for sale. We also utilize legitimate reference laboratories (including Chromadex, the highly reputable lab featured in the Dateline segment), reviewed and certified by Thorne to meet our standards for those instances when our laboratory does not have the analytical methods or expertise to test for a specific substance, as well as to verify the results of our laboratory. Thorne DOES NOT conduct the practice of dry labbing, nor do we employ labs known to do so.

Another emphasis of the Dateline NBC story was the practice of selling drugs, such as steroids or erectile dysfunction drugs, labeled as dietary supplements, or spiking a dietary supplement product with a drug. This is illegal and any company selling drugs that are masquerading as dietary supplements should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Thorne DOES NOT sell such products, nor spike our dietary supplements.

At Thorne Research, we are proud that our customers can trust the dietary supplement products they purchase from us will always contain what is listed on the label. This trust will never be taken lightly and will always be diligently earned.”

As a homeopath, I understand that illness comes in many forms, not just the physical.  As well, illness deepens as vitality is dampened.  In the homeopathic view, illness is an imbalance in vitality.  That sounds simplistic and indeed homeopathy views the mechanism that maintains health as simple.  This mechanism is like a light switch: it’s either turned on or off.  Not to undermine the difficulties that one experiences in illness; when the switch is turned off, it takes an enormous rally of energy to get it to flip on again.  When vitality is dampened and illness sets in on the different levels of wellbeing, it takes time to vitalize the body once again.  It takes a medicine with a rigorous holistic perspective and a method honed to knowing the direction of cure.  Homeopathy is one such medicine.  In homeopathic theory, there are four levels of wellbeing and they are physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.  In my form of treatment, I’m not just looking at what illness is on the physical level.  Instead, I look for illness, and health, on the four levels of wellbeing and I gauge and follow how someone is experiencing life on all these levels. 

Lacking purpose in life is illness on the spiritual level.  I’m not talking about spirit as in religion, however it can be that too, but spirit as in the supra-intellectual understanding of being in the world: connection, purpose, meaning, ideals/values, faith, comfort in the past and future, interest, and motivation.  One could say this is emotional wellbeing, but I don’t want to side step around the word “spirit.”  Many people impart a woo-woo connotation to the word, “spirit,” due to new age emphasis on feelings.  But these words do not describe emotions.  Let’s look at what spirit is more practically.  These words are broader terms that give one a sense of placement in the world; or rather, emotions lead one to having a belief about the world around them and therefore a connection with that world.  For example, while depression has the emotions of sadness, it leaves one with a sense of isolation and discontinuity.  Depression is an emotional and spiritual illness. 

While there are many areas to work with someone on finding passion in life, I want to mention an article I recently read in Experience Life, a magazine commonly found in doctor’s offices.  It highlighted a book called Mindset: the New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck.  Dweck suggests a valuable perspective on the mindset that a person chooses.  She states that having a “growth mindset” keeps someone learning and developing new skills that builds onto their natural born potential, while a “fixed mindset” leaves someone feeling stalled in life.  From a fixed mindset, Dweck says, one believes that they have all the characteristics that they will ever have and so everything is a test on those characteristics; avoiding failure becomes the focus in order to avoid feeling unworthy.  Dweck believes that growth minded people rise to the top of their pursuits as a byproduct of their enthusiasm and love for the activity.  The fixed minded person focuses everything on failure or success; while they may have successes, failure is only being held at bay.

To find passion in life, start exploring what it is you enjoy in life; if you can’t think of something, think back to childhood.  What did you enjoy then?  What are your natural born skills?  Be honest with yourself and brainstorm.  Then, look for activities that combine what you’re naturally skilled at and that you enjoy.  Susan Davis-Ali, PhD, a researcher who developed a fitness-interest profile test that I also read about in Experience Life magazine says, “Research suggests that people who engage in personality-appropriate activities stick with those activities longer…”  Also, become engaged with learning as you adopt a growth mindset.  For someone experiencing lack of passion, these steps can sound very daunting.  Make an appointment with me so that I can help you start the process of building your desire for life’s many interests.

Here’s how to make a salve from dried herbs:
1. Take 1 cup of either Olive oil, Sesame oil, or Almond oil and stir in 1-2 oz of a dried herb (or herb combination).
2. Place the mixture in a pot over the stove.  Heat the mixture at low heat (between 100-140 degrees F) for 3-5 hours.  An alternative to heating the herb and oil together for 3-5 hours is to soak the herb in the oil for 3-4 weeks, preferably in a window in direct sunlight.
3. Strain into another pot on the stove.
4. Add about 1 oz of shaved beeswax per cup of oil. 
5. Place on low heat until the beeswax has melted.
6. To test the firmness of the salve, dip a metal spoon into the mixture then place it into the freezer for a few minutes.  If the salve is too runny, add more beeswax to harden it.  If it is too hard, add more oil to soften it.  Repeat until the consistency suits your purpose.
7. Lastly pour the mixture into an appropriate container, let it cool and harden, then use as desired.

You’d have to be a saint to sustain an entirely whole foods diet in our day and age, however.  Nonetheless, we all should aim for 75% of our meals being made from scratch (from whole foods).  Certain health conditions would benefit from an even higher percentage.  A healthy human body should be able to cope with a 75% pure – 25% manufactured diet.  The most popular fad diet today is the Paleolithic diet.  In my opinion the body should have the flexibility to be able to process grains.  If the person is unable to process grains, the person lacks flexibility in their physical health and improving one’s digestion should be the goal.  Our bodies should be able to cope with modifications as long as a whole foods’ diet is at its base.  And, if it isn’t, there are measures to be taken to strengthen the body so that it regains flexibility.  One of the measures to be taken is to go on a Paleolithic diet, but it should only be a temporary step toward the long-term solution of bringing flexibility back into one’s physical health.

Decreased flexibility in physical health comes from more than just a fortunate, or unfortunate as it may, lifestyle.  Environmental chemicals play a part in this too.  This body burden can come from normal metabolism when the body’s detoxification organs aren’t working properly as well.  Abnormal metabolism can be caused by allergies and nutritional deficiencies and they make the detoxification pathway sluggish.  A detoxification diet is one tool to strengthen the body.  It reduces inflammation, which is a common element in chronic illness, and it tonifies the detoxification pathway.  The detoxification pathway consists of the liver, digestive system, kidneys, lungs and skin.  In addition to a detoxification diet, specially targeted supplement and nutritional therapy can be used to cleanse and strengthen these organs. 

The body absorbs chemicals.  For the most part, it excretes water soluble chemicals, but it stores the fat soluble chemicals.  Fat soluble chemicals re-circulate under certain circumstances, such as during exercise or from the ingestion of certain medication and foods.  This is another reason to have supplement and nutritional therapy during detoxification; it helps the body get rid of these re-circulating chemicals rather than re-depositing them back in the body.

There are different levels of detoxification, but the most basic, which should accompany all levels of detoxification, includes a food elimination-type diet accompanied with fasting.  A detoxification diet repairs the body by letting it rest from an offending lifestyle and it provokes the body’s healing ability.

One should never undergo fasting without the advice of a physician or without knowing what you’re doing as it can be hazardous to your health if done improperly or without supervision.  There is a difference between fasting and starvation.  Fasting is for a specific purpose with a designed course to follow and benefits the health (or it is done with specific spiritual goals in mind as in some religions).  Lastly, there are some conditions that do not benefit from fasting.  So, it is wise to consult a physician and/or do your own research before going on a detoxification diet.

Please contact my office if you want to know what a detoxification diet can do for you.

The 12 Most Contaminated Foods are:
1. Peaches
2. Apples
3. Sweet Bell Pepper
4. Celery
5. Nectarines
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Pears
9. Imported Grapes
10. Spinach
11. Lettuce
12. Potatoes

And, by the way, go crazy eating these foods.  The 12 Least Contaminated Foods are:
1. Onions
2. Avocado
3. Sweet Corn (Frozen)
4. Pineapples
5. Mango
6. Asparagus
7. Sweet Peas (Frozen)
8. Kiwi Fruit
9. Bananas
10. Cabbage
11. Broccoli
12. Papaya

Keep in mind while reading this information that the solution is to live more in balance with our environment.  Anyone watch “Centennial,” the 1978 TV series based on the James Michener novel?  Living in balance with our environment is a big theme of that story and is not solely a granola-crunching idea but also an idea of anyone living close to the earth, cowboys, ranchers, native Americans, and even cows and farmed plants.  In essence, for health to exist in our bodies we have to look outside of ourselves.

In short of the major undertaking to care for and maintain our environment, here’s the best you can do to avoid chemical contamination:
1. Eat foods closest to their original form (whole grain, unprocessed foods, non-packaged foods, and foods cooked from vegetables and meat that come directly from growers whom respect soil composition and animal health).
2. Eat organic produce.  At the very least, avoid the dirty dozen (see next blog post).  And, eat 1/2 to 2/3 your plate in vegetables.
3. Eat grass-fed, free range (pasture-raised is best) meat, and minimize your meat consumption to 1/4 your dinner plate. 
4. Drink organic, hormone-free milk.
5. Do not eat farm-raised fish and anything labeled Atlantic salmon.  Atlantic salmon is a synonym for farm raised fish.
6. Use a water filter (and for some health conditions a shower filter), that not only excludes chlorine, but also lead, arsenic (esp in Seattle), asbestos, VOCs and other environmental chemicals, pesticides/herbicides, pharmaceutical medication, and unwanted organisms from your drinking water.  [See my future blog post comparing water filtration systems.]
7. Avoid ingesting synthetic chemicals yourself.  A good, shall I say, rule of thumb is if the ingredient list is longer than the width of your thumb, it’s probably not good for you.

Here are Liz’ highlights

Canned Tomatoes: Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, endocrinologist at University of Missouri, says the linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen linked to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and infertility.  While the chemical is in all linings of tin cans, acidity leaches it out into the food.   Tomatoes are one of the most acidic of foods in cans.

Corn-Fed Beef: According to a USDA/Clemson University study, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, Vit E, omega-3′s (anti-inflammatory), conjugated linoleic acid (important for weight maintenance and may be anti-cancer), calcium, magnesium, and potassium and is lower in omega-6′s (pro-inflammatory) and saturated fats (directly linked with cardiovascular disease).

Microwaved Popcorn: Olga Naidenko, PhD, Environmental Working Group scientist, says the chemicals that line the bag of microwaved popcorn may be linked to infertility and cancer.  Major manufacturers have agreed to phase out the use of one of the chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), by 2015.

Nonorganic Potatoes: Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board, says these root vegetables absorb many chemicals that are in soil, and they are highly chemicalized during farming and marketing.

Farmed Salmon: According to David Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment and the University of Albany, farmed salmon is lower in Vit D and higher in contaminants (including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides).  His 2004 fish contamination study concluded that “you can only safely eat one of these salmon dinners every 5 months without increasing your risk of cancer.”

Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones: Rick North, project director of the Campaign for Safe Food at the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility and former CEO of the Oregon division of the American Cancer Society, says that recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST) given to cows increases the hormone insulin-like growth factor (IGF) and this comes out in the milk of animals.  High levels of  IGF-1 can contribute to certain cancers.  In other industrialized countries, rBGH/rBST is banned.

Conventional Apples: Mark Kastel, codirector of Cornucopia Institute (a farm-policy research group that supports organic foods), says apples are sprayed with large amounts of pesticides and are sprayed frequently.  He says, “Farm workers have higher rates of many cancers.”  And, high body burden of pesticides may be linked to Parkinson’s disease.

The 7 Foods that Experts Won’t Eat by Liz Vaccariello: http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/the-7-foods-experts-wont-eat-547963.html

     Consciousness is not the elite fortress of the mind where the personality of uniqueness and individual preferences, hopes and desires, and feelings and behaviors seem to come from.  In fact, Eaglemann actually dethrones any notion of egocentrism.  At the bottom of this, Eaglemann argues that one of the few things consciousness seems to be needed for is to set goals for what should be burned into the circuitry of the brain.  This circuitry, he explains in the first part of his book, is responsible for most of our action–actions like riding a bicycle are performed by muscle memory that’s been built in so that consciousness doesn’t have to be involved and an action like “seeing” is more than just visual information hitting one’s eyes but instead is information that the brain has to make sense of (not the consciousness but the brain).  These are two examples out of many Eaglemann uses to demonstrate that the brain fills in gaps so that interpretation of external data and action are seemlessly woven together so that the story that you tell yourself makes sense to you.

         Previous exposure leads to much of the information we use to fill in the gaps.  When external input matches what the brain predicts, no consciousness is needed.  However, awareness is needed when unpredictable input doesn’t match internal expectations.  The brain is all about making processes the most efficient.  To do this, recognizing and forming patterns are important so that the brain doesn’t have to think so much.  The brain weaves stories together, just as a narrator does in storytelling, based on previous pattern formation.  “The brain works around the clock to stitch together a pattern of logic to our daily lives… Fabrication is one of the key businesses in which our brains engage” to get things to make sense. 

     Making sense doesn’t mean being in reality, being ethical, or even being congruent with the things and others around you, but it does mean the brain operates in a story telling fashion, not necessarily reliant on conscious memory or thought.  While this may raise your alarms, because who knows what story your mind could conjure up, the brain also has an area called the anterior cingluate cortex, which alerts the brain to contradictions.  As well, Eaglemann believes, the more subroutines that exist in an animal, the more necessary a CEO (i.e. the consciousness) is needed to direct the different parts and to mediate between subroutines that conflict.
     
     So, why am I, a homeopath, interested in this book?  It doesn’t prove that nanoparticles do affect physiology.  For that I will have to hightlight other information.  But, understanding human behavior and thought process is important for the practice of homeopathy.  The homeopathic process places large emphasis on understanding human behavior and experience and the story a person weaves for their self.  Books like Incognito help inform the homeopath of areas of the brain that are involved in illness based on interpretation and objective signs. 

     Homeopathy takes a larger view of illness than pharmaceutical-based medicine. To homeopaths, “illness” is truly what the word “dis-ease” implies; it is a lacking of ease. And mental characteristics, which are gleaned from knowing the story a person weaves for him or herself, play a big part into diagnosis and assessment of health and wellness.  While some of these “characteristics” would be classified as “symptoms” by modern medicine, many of them are much too subtle to be “pathology.”  To a homeopath, however, they point to the ways in which people suffer and guide us toward helping people live with more ease.