Integrative Health Blog

Summer is here!

One of the biggest reasons I love summertime is the fruit!  Beautiful berries, watermelon, cherries, peaches, nectarines and plums - all make my mouth water. They also bring back memories of trips to the local farm when I was a kid to buy fresh produce, long before farmer’s markets were “en vogue”.

Now that I am older, I am also wiser when it comes to eating fruits.

As you know from reading my blogs, I am interested in helping people understand how blood sugar problems can lead to insulin resistance, pre-diabetes and Type II diabetes.

You’ve heard the phrase “work smarter, not harder”, right?

I want to remind you of a tip I have given you before to help you make smart decisions when it comes to enjoying all the beautiful and luscious fruits that are in season now.

Here is my healthy tip:

Colonic therapy goes by many names, such as: colon hydrotherapy, colonics, colon cleansing, colon indignation, high enemas, and colon therapy.

Disease begins in the Gut

A toxic bowel is the source of many health problems. Colonics rejuvenate every cell of the body. Colonic sessions hydrate and cleanse the colon, exercise the colon muscles,  and stimulate reflex points. In addition, colonic therapy helps cleanse the blood, release toxins, build up the immune system, and rehydrate the whole body.

Why do people receive colon hydrotherapy?

• Many receive the treatments as a preventative measure or a lifestyle change.
• Other groups have symptoms of intestinal distress, constipation, indigestion, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, gas, bloating, IBS, colitis, diverticulitis, parasites, skin conditions, such as, shingles and eczema, inability to lose weight, and scar tissue from surgery.
• Others receive colonics to relieve their pain from headaches, migraines, lower back and shoulder pain, aching joins, and gout.
• Colon hydrotherapy sessions are also medically used for stool samples, pre/post surgery, geriatric and barium x-rays.
• Many people come for colonics while they have been fasting or on a cleansing program, a liver or gallbladder flush, or recovering from an accident.
• Others might have emotional issues which they feel are related to their backed up intestines.

What are the symptoms of constipation?

Several signs of a toxic colon are:

Over the past few decades, a lot has changed about food and about our food choices. 

The food industry is constantly trying to keep up with our changing lifestyles by offering us foods that are easily eaten on the run, or that have longer shelf life.  Recently, the food industry has been offering solutions to our childhood obesity epidemic by offering low-calorie and low-fat food.  But most of the time, these foods contain toxic ingredients that are contributing to disease rather than improving health.  If you’re trying to improve your child’s health by replacing regular soda with diet soda, encouraging “low cholesterol” refined carbs, or “low-fat” dairy products, read on to find out how such choices are detrimental to your child’s health. 

Artificial sugars: More and more children are using artificially sweetened foods and beverages in an attempt to curb the obesity epidemic.  But aspartame, and other forms of artificial sugars are toxic chemicals.  Aspartame is associated with numerous symptoms, such as headaches, joint pain, fatigue and even seizures.  Moreover, the main reason for its use, weight control, often doesn’t work.  A recent study showed that regular consumption of diet soda actually is associated with weight gain.

Trade up: If you want a low- or no-calorie sweetener, switch to Stevia or Xylitol which are natural.

Given the exuberant response to the article Methylation 101: What it Means for Your Health, I have been encouraged to write a second article to continue the discussion.  In the first article, I introduced the idea that those with “methylation defects” are relatively less capable of methylating away the fight/flight neurotransmitter noradrenalin and are thus likely to incur a more heightened and sustained stress response from stressors of any cause (emotional, metabolic e.g., low blood sugar), infectious (e.g., candida), toxic (e.g., mercury) or energetic (e.g., wi-fis and microwaves). 

Having a heightened tendency to be motivated by extra stress, the up-side of having methylation defects can compel such people to have increased drive to succeed and be more productive!

The Good and Bad of Genetics

The same argument has been made for another common genetic quirk which you may be more familiar with, sickle-cell disease. The genetic abnormality which causes hemoglobin to be made in a different way provides protection against malaria, a disease which has been so devastating that some medical anthropologists suggest it has killed more human beings in history than all other diseases combined.  Those who have one sickling gene from one parent and a normal gene from the other parent – called sickle-cell trait - have the best of both worlds.  Their hemoglobin is fairly functional because the normal gene from one parent covers up the expression of sickling gene.  The sickling gene however, gives protection against malaria.