Welcome to my blog, which built on the belief that we have the ability to create our health, and that consciously or unconsciously we are creating our level of health all the time.  Health and illness are an inside job.  This may seem far-fetched, but the amazing advances in neuroscience over the past decade or so have shown that our brain and mind have a huge influence on how our body functions.  Lifestyle factors are important too, but our beliefs and the things we focus on, are as important, if not more so.

Illness is not something over which we have no control, but is something that arises for a reason.  A loud message from the psyche that something is amiss,  illness does not arise out of the blue.  Previous messages will have come in the form of emotions, feelings of stress and maybe physical feelings.  When these are ignored, the body ups the ante, trying desperately to get the message across that there is something that you, the body owner, need to pay attention to.

Imagine that your body is a barometer that signals the internal weather of your  mind and spirit.  If you recognize it as such, then the meaning of prodromal emotions and symptoms (those that arise before an illness) or the meaning of the illness itself, can be identified and you can take steps to either avert or heal it.  Healing it means recreating yourself and your body to serve you better, whatever that may look like – it may not necessarily seem like healing to an outsider.  However, people rarely take the steps required to recreate their health, because emotions, symptoms and illness are not seen as a message, but as a threat which must be resisted.  The  perception of threat, and the resistance to it results in added stress on an already stressed system.

Some of you may say that this is blaming the victim, but this is not blame – this is how our minds and bodies work.  The brain of very early man had a primitive response mechanism, the fight-flight-freeze response, to help him fight or escape from  Sabre-Tooth Tigers and other outside dangers. These situations were stressful, but the stress was short-lived.  The man was either eaten or he escaped.

Over time, as mankind evolved and man became part of a social system, living in a group with others, this mechanism became more sophisticated.  As it became important for man to fit in with the group, stress could be caused by internal events (doubts and fears) as well as by external ones.   And the growth of imagination meant that stress could be relived, even after the stressor was gone.  Consequently, stress itself has become an ever-present danger, because while its short-term effects help mobilize man to escape an external threat, when these effects continue and become long-term they are extremely damaging to the body.

Nowadays,  our lives are so complicated that most of us have multiple small (or even large) stressors to deal with on a daily basis.  Situations such as working  for a boss we dislike, living on a barely adequate income, having a row with our spouse , or even being ‘unfriended’ on Facebook,  may cumulatively lead to a stress level that, if not deliberately reduced, may contribute to a ‘stress iceberg’ -  ninety percent of the stress is hidden below the surface but is still having an on-going effect on us.  The mechanism of how stress leads to physical illness has been known for  fifty years, but only recently have physicians been acknowledging the link and tailoring treatments to include stress reduction techniques.

Most of the earlier, pre-2013, posts on this blog did not make this association between stress and illness clear, because I believed that readers would see this as ‘blaming the victim.’   However, my intention from this point forward is to be open about the known mechanisms  for creating illness and health, and to give examples of actions (both external and internal) that people can use to reverse illness, or create greater health – whatever that may look like for them.

I will also be updating the category names as they have been somewhat random.  However, this make take time, so bear with me.

Regular meditation is one of the best ways to improve your health, but many people think that they don’t have time for it. The video below shows a way of meditating in the moment, which will only take you about a minute. Try it and see how easy it is.

Once you have practiced this method of meditation for a while, you may want to meditate for longer…or you may not. As the narrator says, when you learn to reduce the minute-long mediatations to only a moment, you can fill your whole day with meditation. Do whatever feels right for you, but the important thing is to keep meditating on a regular basis.

The Fast Diet is the title of a new book that extols the benefits of intermittent fasting, and tells you how to do it.  Most people think of fasting as equivalent to starvation, and therefore difficult and harmful , but intermittent fasting is none of these.  Calorie restriction has been shown to extend the life-span in animals, and is believed to cut the risk of a number of disease including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

What Is The Fast Diet:

The term calorie restriction is usually applied to daily severe restriction of calories over the long term, but intermittent fasting (IF), also known as the Fast Diet or the 5:2 diet, is different, in that calories are only restricted on two days a week.  On these two days, a total of 600 calories, approximately a quarter of the amount that many of us would eat in a day, are eaten over two meals spaced approximately 12-hours apart; the remaining five days you eat what you want.  Furthermore, the Fast Diet  is not a diet in the meaning of something only done for a few weeks until the required amount of weight-loss is achieved, but is a long-term strategy for improving health while losing weight and keeping it off.

How Does it Work:

In days gone by, most people did not eat between meals, so adults would go for an average four-and-half hours , and children four hours, without eating.  Nowadays, on average,  adults go three-and-a half hours, and children three hours, between meals, but may snack in this time.  Contrary to what you might expect, snacking does not reduce the amount eaten at meals, but increases it.  Compared to 30 years ago, we eat 180 calories more per day in snacks and up to 120 calories more at meal-times.

The problem with this increased intake is not just weight gain, but an increase in Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1), a  hormone that keeps cells constantly active.  Necessary in those who are young and still growing, high levels of  IGF-1 can lead to accelerated aging and cancer in adults.  Periodic fasting leads to a lower production of IGF-1.

Fasting also switches on a number of genes that repair the body.  When the body does not receive food when it expects to, it decides that it is in a famine-situation and that the best thing it can do is to expend it’s energy on  repairing the body, to keep it in good shape until food appears again.  When the body is over-fed it does not worry about repair, which can, among other things, lead to a risk of cancer.

Besides reducing IGF-1 and switching on repair, another advantage to reducing calories in this way is  that it rests the pancreas thereby making the body more sensitive to insulin.  Increased insulin sensitivity reduces the risk of heart disease,  obesity, diabetes, and cognitive decline.  Finally, intermittent fasting leads to weight loss and to an overall feeling of well-being.

What Does a Fasting Day Look Like:

Intermittent fasting is done on two non-consecutive days each week, with a maximum intake of 600 calories, which are split between two meals – one in the morning and one in the evening, about 12 hours apart if possible.  If the time between meals is difficult, then a small fruit or raw vegetable snack can be taken.  Some people may prefer to eat just one 500-600 calorie meal in the day.  Fluids that do not have a substantial calorie content may be taken as required.  Drinking water is best, but black tea and coffee without sugar, are also acceptable.  Fruit juice and drinks containing milk add to calorie intake and shorten the time that you are calorie free, so should be avoided if possible.

On non-fasting days, people can eat whatever they want,  as much as they want and when they want.  This means that psychologically you will not feel deprived. Any feelings of deprivation only last for one day,

Who Should Not Fast:

Fasting is not for everyone – there are certain people who should not fast including those: with Type I diabetes, or who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant,  or anyone suffering from an eating disorder, those who are already lean, or anyone who has a medical condition..  The latter should consult their doctor before deciding to fast. Children also should not fast as they need nutrients for growth and should not be exposed to any nutritional stress.

Information taken from: