It is all too common for people to seek medication first when they get sick instead of trying to cure it naturally. As soon as people feel even a tiny bit sick they seek out a box of drugs to help stifle their symptoms. Don’t you want to find a better way to get better?

Look into the cabinets in your kitchen-you already have everything you need to heal. What if you could help yourself feel better without having to leave the house? You have a lot of options available that will help you cure your sickness naturally!

Even scientists believe that using natural remedies like chicken soup can help a person treat symptoms of the common cold and flu. The ingredients in the chicken and vegetables are natural immune system boosters so, instead of jumping for the Dayquil the next time you feel like something is trying to get you, why not settle in with a giant bowl of some chicken soup (it’s best when it is homemade but canned varieties will work as well) and help your body kill that cold before it really gets started? Find a good salve recipe. Salves are useful because they can help break up congestion in both the sinuses and in the chest. There are quite a few salve recipes out there that are well known for their healing properties-the herbs and other natural ingredients used are good for the skin and your system and can be a great way to absorb the nutrients you need if your stomach is acting up. If you don’t have the time to make a salve from scratch, vaporub is a natural health alternative that is worth looking into. Whether you place a little bit under your nose to help you breathe or on your chest to help break up your cough or even on your feet to help you sleep, salves are a great natural health remedy.

You’ll want to introduce ginseng into your diet as well. Ginseng is pretty easy to come by too–you can buy ginseng tea (both hot and iced) and it is usually easy to find in the herbal supplements section of your store.

Don’t wait until you feel the flu coming on to get some, stock up on ginseng teas and drinks the next time you go grocery shopping–that way you’ll be prepared the next time you catch a bug. If you don’t feel well, brew some ginseng tea. Not only does the ginseng help you get better but the warmth of the tea can soothe a sore throat and the steam from the cup can help clear up your sinus passages a little.

It’s easy to find natural health cures to common colds and other illnesses. Instead of dropping a bunch of money on over the counter drugs, check out the remedies you already have on hand! There are those who insist that using natural remedies to cure your cold will work faster than using western medicine. Why not give it a try-your body will thank you for it!

Soft coloring within your home can also add to your sense of well-being. For more information visit this website at Edmonton House Painter or Edmonton Painters

We all know that we need to change our diets to a holistic nutrition approach, and avoid the sugar, dairy, processed oils and white flour. This list of products is very bad for us, causes disease and aging and it is amazing to see how people recover from chronic diseases by eliminating them. These elements promote inflammation and can really do a number on arteries and tissue throughout your body.

Make no mistake about it, sugar and flour are deadly and can ruin your life. In an average year, 160 pounds of sugar and 200 pounds of white flour find their way into our bodies and our children are exposed to them from an early age. They build up an addiction resulting in lifelong health problems and elevated blood sugar levels. When our blood sugar level increases, free radicals begin the process of inflammation right away and the disease process ensues. It is very difficult to avoid these poisons that are included in all kinds of foods within our “staple” diet — breakfast cereals, cakes, pasta, bread, soft drinks, candy, it’s really sad!

These days, milk products are also culprits as modern herds eat tainted grain that affects the proportions of fatty acids in the milk. Imbalance is caused when Omega-3 fats are stripped out. One out of every two of us is actually allergic to dairy without even knowing it!

Our diet situation is compounded due to the fact that oils and fats have an excess amount of Omega-six fatty acids. Reaction after reaction takes place within our bodies, causing chronic inflammation. If we consumed them in equal balance as we once did, there would not be so much of a problem, but the sad truth is that we ingest up to 30 times as much 6 as we do 3.

If you notice depression, you can make a dietary change by improving the oil quality used. How about making your own salad dressing? You should consider using flax seed oil or extra virgin olive oil. Heated oils such as soy, safflower and canola can all cause inflammation.

The problems go on — grain fed beef, farmed fish and poultry all have excessive Omega-6 contents. It all stacks up to a huge excess of inflammatory compounds. As inflammation continues, disease results and the only way to avoid this is to replace poor choices with healthy fats and oils.

Within the last couple of generations, as holistic nutrition has become ever less present in our society, we have markedly changed the way that we consume foods and we are setting ourselves up for serious and considerable problems.

The nutrients we need – which we would receive in abundance from a holistic nutrition diet, are removed from processed foods — basically anything that comes in a box, can or a jar. In place of nutrients, we find artificial colors and flavors, toxins and preservatives and our bodies have to work very hard just to remove these toxins and avoid a serious weight gain problem. There are even more elements added to foods to cause additional weight gain. You will find dangerous trans fats, neurotoxins such as aspartame and high fructose corn syrup in processed foods.

Even as we try to maintain a productive and functional distribution system, chemicals find their way unchecked into our food systems. Just think of all those pesticides, fungicides, larvacides and insecticides that find their way into our bodies. Chemicals proliferate in our foods, which are high in calories, but low in nutrients. Little wonder that we feel lethargic, overweight and drained all the time.

To start off with, how about some freshly squeezed lemon in your warm water? This helps to cleanse the liver and promote detoxification. Additionally, this cleanses the stomach, promotes a bowel movement and is active in the production of bile.

The stomach is responsible for breaking down and processing fats, but in truth the gallbladder and liver are the primary organs here. As these organs have so much input into the entire cycle, don’t even try and think about losing weight until you are sure that they are both clean and working as they should.

Unfortunately, society is to blame when it comes to a generation of unhealthy habits that we pick up from childhood. Those children who are overweight are stuck with those unfortunate habits throughout their life, but for generations now we have failed to notice that poor gallbladder and liver conditions are contributory to the problem.

It’s very sad to see an obese child and unless we intervene at an appropriate time, this problem will continue throughout his or her life. Why do we not teach them the importance of holistic nutrition, a correct diet, daily exercise and that they need to clean and detoxify the body regularly? Quite clearly, if your gallbladder and liver are not working correctly or may be clogged, regular exercise and an attention to a healthy diet may simply be not enough. You must pay particular attention to what comes out of your body as well as what you put in there. This is an ever increasing problem and the best way to look at it is through an approach to holistic nutrition.

Every day, new diets seem to pop up as part of a growing industry within Western society. People regularly start and fail on these diets and cannot lose weight because they simply don’t understand the fundamentals of holistic nutrition. They may not realize that they have toxic buildup in the gallbladder and liver. Unless you understand how these organs work and how essential they are to regulate our weight, problems will remain.

I can explain:

The liver is by far the largest internal organ that we have and it’s connected to the small intestine. The liver produces a secretion which is known as bile, used to break down digestive fats into smaller portions so that they are absorbed by the small intestine, along with associated vitamins.

The liver has an important function in this respect and develops its bile from a combination of molecules such as cholesterol, bilirubin, phospholipids, bile acids and also electrolytes. In popular belief, the liver is there just to remove the alcoholic chemicals and other toxins from our systems.

Any machine will fail if it is not maintained and this is also true when it comes to our organs, which will diminish in efficiency after many years of damage. If they’re not able to break down fats efficiently anymore, weight gain will be automatic and we won’t be able to do anything about this.

Of even more importance, if stones start to accumulate they will make the damage worse.

Our gallbladder is used for storage. We find this organ just beneath the liver, in the upper part of the abdomen and it is shaped something like a kidney bean. The gallbladder is connected to the liver by the hepatic duct, allowing the gallbladder to store the produced bile.

The primary job of the bile is to aid the lipase enzymes to digest fats.

Digestive bile breaks down fats and toxins, allowing the intestines to move these materials through the tract in an ongoing process of elimination. The bile starts off what is known as a peristaltic action, with the end result being a bowel movement. Without this bile, therefore, toxins and other debris would falter within the intestines and start building up elsewhere, promoting weight gain and even constipation. The bile releases fat soluble vitamins, such as A and E, together with fatty acids.

While there is no shortage of diet books, holistic nutrition strategies and new fitness equipment on the market, the problems of being overweight and obese continue to grow with the number of people being affected by these serious but preventable conditions. Something else must be going on here.

We all seem to have some kind of relationship with food. We don’t just use food to satisfy our physical hunger; we sometimes use it to quell our emotional hunger as well. As we learn more and more about why we eat and why we choose the foods we eat, we begin to understand how our emotions play such an instrumental role in our health. In the book “Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever,” Roger Gould, M.D., the Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA, says that emotional eating is a way of satisfying emotional hunger. By doing this, you are just using food as a way of coping, to comfort yourself and to deal with life. In other words, you eat for a variety of reasons, other than what you actually need.

At one point or another, we all take part in emotional eating behavior. For example, you could consume an entire pizza after a bad day at work, or comfort yourself by eating chocolate if you have had an argument with your significant other. These examples of emotional eating can go too far, however, and cross the line into food addiction, as this is where you lose control completely over what and how you eat.

According to Dr. Gould, we all have emotional hunger. The difference between an emotional eater and a non-emotional eater is how they respond to this hunger. If somebody is challenged, the emotional eater would reach for whatever food will supply a moment of comfort quickly. Comfort foods do not represent healthy choices and are far from what we might term “holistic nutrition,” such as heavy pastas, refined carbohydrates, ice cream and other fast foods.

We pay little regard to nutrition, health or even real hunger when we engage in emotional eating. Eating itself is very hurried, with little regard paid to what is actually being eaten and when we approach consumption this way, we are very likely to overeat.

When we are looking for security and solace, food can offer us a safety net and a refuge and a relief from emotional stress and discomfort. Food becomes the drug that distracts us from whatever discomfort we are feeling. By focusing on our emotional eating habits, we ignore the real cause of the issue.

But food is just a temporary bandage. Whatever is causing you to emotionally eat will inexorably return to haunt you. And worst of all, now there are usually new feelings of guilt, remorse, anger, and isolation once you have given in to the emotional eating.

There is a very large difference between wanting to change and actually changing. For someone who is prone to emotional eating, the lines between feeling physical hunger and emotional hunger can begin to blur. You need to examine how your relationship to food actually promotes this type of behavior.

Before you will be able to overcome these issues and start the healing process, you need to understand how an addiction to food can be very powerful and may mask underlying issues that lead to the emotional eating in the first place. Once this understanding begins to take form, holistic nutrition can ‘set the stage’ for a long term, yet full recovery.

Because your habits, even your way of thinking of things, took years to develop, you must allow yourself the same patience that you would extend to someone else tackling a new skill. Dr. Elson Haas, founder of the Preventive Medical Center of Marin, in California, mentions that you will need “greater attentiveness and willingness to deal openly with emotions and other adversities that may block your way to healing.”

Look for a trained health professional, a holistic nutrition specialist, support group, or program with a specialty in food addiction. They can help you develop coping skills that are not food-focused—effective interventions that will help you break the cycle of emotional eating and live an emotionally and physically healthy life. From a holistic nutrition perspective, it’s also helpful to look at what the food is actually giving you, which you might be able to get somewhere else.

Have you heard that craving sugar is a sign that you lack sweetness in your life? Cravings often signal something that we really want, as part of our lives. Think about what happens when you eat the food you are craving. For example, when you eat sugar, do you feel warmth, peace or euphoria? In what area of your life are these emotions missing? What could you be doing that would allow you to experience them without food?

Whether you are an emotional eater or a nail-biter, you’re not alone. Unhealthy habits run the range of extremes from the benign to those that threaten our health and livelihoods. There is no doubt that whenever you are slave to a habit, it’s holding you back and not allowing you to reach your full potential. However, you are certainly capable of changing the situation! You don’t have to be handicapped by these habits because you can make new decisions starting today—like kicking your sugar habit—that will change your entire future.

You can develop life-enhancing habits that revolve around your desire for health, happiness, financial independence and success. So many people endure very unhealthy habits because they haven’t connected them with mental skills. Just like learning a new physical skill requires repetition and practice, battling old habits and replacing them with new ones requires mental practice.

Every action starts with a thought—though so many of our habits and actions are so ingrained that we do them subconsciously. And that’s where the mental practice begins. When we’re able to stop ourselves before taking action and think about what we’re doing, we have the ability to change. We could classify this as a healthier choice.

Once you make the conscious decision that your old habits aren’t helping you achieve your goals and that they are, in fact, holding you back, you can begin choosing new habits that you would like to adopt. Wherever you are in your life is immaterial. You might be fresh out of college or a retired adult seeking a new career. You’re never too old or too young to make the change to holistic nutrition and to improve the overall quality of your life.

If you understand the concept of holistic nutrition, you would listen as I encourage you to eat a diet based around vegetarian/live food choices. That means staying away from animal protein if at all possible. Some people like to keep meat in their diet, but should do so in as healthy a manner as possible. For example, when it comes to eating beef, my strong recommendation is to look for “grass fed” or “organic” beef, only. You will find that beef purchased in grocery stores, even if it is corn fed, is most often filled with growth hormones and antibiotics and this will make a considerable difference to your body.

In the article “What About Grass-Fed Beef?” by John Robbins, who is a leading expert on the connection between diet, health, and the environment, he points out that commercially available beef in the United States is almost all “feedlot” beef because it is a faster and more profitable approach to raising cattle.

Giving the animals protein supplements and growth hormones is a way to make cattle gain weight faster, and so is feeding them corn. This is why you will see most animals in feedlots, consuming grain rather than being allowed to eat grass while roaming in pastures, their usual approach. And because grain is so hard on an animal’s digestive system and leaves their immune systems weakened, they must be routinely fed antibiotics. This is just the beginning of what these animals suffer, physically as part of this inhumane treatment, as they are kept in feedlots and fed corn.

Our systems benefit far more from grass fed beef consumption, as opposed to corn fed, because the latter is much higher in artery clogging saturated fats and is deficient in all omega-3 fats. So, if you must eat beef, please keep it to a minimum and look for the label that says “organic” and “grass-fed.” By keeping it to a minimum, you will avoid situations where the animals, even though they may have grazed on grass, picked up herbicides and synthetic fertilizers.

So, let’s talk about chemical balance and what that means. This is called “pH.” To put it simply, the definition of pH is a measure of the concentration of hydrogen irons in the bloodstream. The lower your pH, the stronger the acid content, or acidity, of your body. The higher your pH, the stronger the alkaline content, or alkalinity, of your body. Normally, your pH balance would be around seven. If you test your pH, therefore, you will have a good idea how alkaline or acidic your body is. All you need to know is that “too alkaline or too acidic” will lead to health issues and problems and is bad for your body.

When applying holistic nutrition, always use the 80/20 rule to maintain balance in your body. Consider every meal and make sure that your plate has at least 80% alkaline forming foods such as vegetables and only 20% acid forming foods like pastas and meats. Look at it another way — 20% of your food should be cooked, while 80% should be in raw form.

If you’d like to enjoy a holistic nutrition lifestyle, try to eat more foods rich in vitamins and minerals such as vegetables, fruits, and tubers such as ginger root, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and so forth. Add to that baby greens and sprouts. This group also includes, but is not limited to mung beans, alfalfa, lentils, radishes, and onions. Finally, load up with plenty of salad greens, bok choy, mustard greens, spinach, collard greens and lettuces.

Think for a moment about all the factors that affect your health and what is the first thing that comes to your mind? You might think it’s what you eat, but it’s not! Believe it or not, your attitude is 50% responsible for your overall health. So, fix your attitude and you’re halfway there.

The equation for good health is as follows, according to the Hippocrates Health Institute:

Attitude - 50%: A positive mental attitude is the most crucial component of good health. Critical self-talk, stress and other negative distractions will impair our physical, mental and emotional functioning.

Food - 25%: You must take a holistic nutrition approach and select a balanced diet for optimal health. If you continue to eat an unhealthy diet, the threats range from immediate to long-term, from merely unpleasant to life-threatening.

Exercise - 25%: This will help everything run more efficiently. It also delivers an emotional lift due to the release of endorphins. Over a period of time, a sedentary lifestyle will likely lead to serious illnesses and preclude you from performing regular, physical tasks.

You have to put unrealistic ideals behind you to establish a positive mental attitude. We all have certain expectations of ourselves. Often, these expectations are unrealistic. How often have we referred to what the “perfect” person should be, in our image dominated world and determined that we are far from being this person, sadly?

It seems crazy that even though we realize that perfection is not possible, subconsciously we still expect ourselves to be that way. We find it really difficult to accept our weaknesses, and sometimes even our strengths. Instead, when we find ourselves addicted to food, especially sugar, and in a battle with our inner and outer selves, we’re our own harshest critics. We begin a downward spiral by berating ourselves for being overweight and for being unable to eat normally. But there is hope. If you want to declare peace with your body, you can take control of what you eat by applying sensible holistic nutrition guidelines - on a daily basis, thereby eliminating your sugar addiction and bringing your weight under control.

To begin, accept yourself as you are, right now! It doesn’t matter whether you crave sugar, are not at an ideal weight and know that you eat unhealthily. Do you know something? Yes, you are human and none of us are perfect. Having empathy and compassion for yourself is the first step on your journey to a healthier mind and body.

By accepting who you are, you will notice that all the pressure and stress that you had borne for so long, starts to float away. Accept “you” for who you are and you will be able to bring on board some good habits that will enable you to become the healthier person that you know you can be.

Now you have to deal with time. Patience is most definitely a virtue. We live in an instant gratification world, but you should remember that a solution which requires the most time and effort to reach will often impart the best rewards. With persistence - and the will to change, holistic nutrition can ‘turn the tide,’ and help you to achieve your greatest dreams.

Welcome to the frantic pace of today’s living. How does a normal day work out for you? The chances are that you are working all the hours that are sent to you while trying to look after the needs of your family. Don’t you agree that we work too hard? You know that we also play hard at the same time. In fact, in our desire to make the most out of living, many of us have let ourselves go, especially in our health.

We enjoy life to the fullest, we eat rich foods, and we drink and smoke. We tend to overindulge, drive our bodies to the limit, and then wonder why we get sick. After a period of over indulging our bodies, we turn to doctors and expect them to be able to overcome all the damage that we’ve created, usually with pills of some kind. We have become a society addicted to pills and medications to make us happy, make us thin, and alleviate stress.

What happened to the concept of caring for ourselves and our bodies with holistic nutrition? The truth is that most of us have grown lazy when it comes to taking care of our bodies. Our diets are very poor, we avoid exercising like the plague and we don’t put much effort into preparing healthy diets and planning to lose weight. The chances are that this sounds very familiar. If it does, you’re not alone.

So that we can try and achieve the benefits of wellness and good health, holistic nutrition is very important to enable the reintroduction of balance. We have to put some effort into it. We need to watch what we eat, and we need to exercise regularly. Doctors aren’t miracle workers—they never have been and never will be. And, frankly, as much as we might depend on them, there are some things they just can’t fix.

After a long time dedicated to poor diet and maintenance, your body is crying out for a change. It’s not surprising that you are feeling exhausted and for one reason or another always feel under the weather and tired. Now is the time to really think about detoxification as this will limit and neutralize toxins that have built up in your organs. Isn’t it incredible to think that your organs perform such a great job every day and your liver, colon, kidneys, skin, lungs and lymph nodes all do amazingly well, and somehow manage to keep you going!

There comes a time when our self-cleaning operation has just about had enough, due to both our daily exposure to a poor environment and those self-inflicted wounds from our bad lifestyle.

Experts in this area tell us that periodically we need to make adjustments to back up the amazing job that our body functions perform as they detoxify our systems. If you are unfortunate enough to suffer from a chronic immune deficiency disease, such as fatigue, cancer or diabetes, detoxification may be of particular help. We rely too much on animal protein, saturated fats, chemicals and drugs like caffeine and alcohol. There is no way that our internal system can cope with all this toxic material on a regular basis. You could do with a periodic cleansing to boost your immune system, to eliminate those environmental toxins that can harbor bacteria, parasites and viruses, even if you are particularly good about sticking to a diet based on the concept of holistic nutrition.

From time to time, we’re all guilty of overeating. Well, all of that food might have been yummy going down, but it’s something you’re going to eventually pay for, in more ways than one.

This kind of splurging or binging also causes people to not chew their food properly—until liquefied—which results in swallowing large chunks of food that strain the GI tract. It’s not recommended that anyone should eat like this, certainly not on a regular basis. But, we are human after all.

So, if you find that you’ve splurged on a heavy meal, it’s a good idea to expel this toxic material as soon as possible. A colon cleanse represents the fastest and easiest way to do this. All of this may sound overwhelming, but I’ve spent years studying and researching the incredible impact that good nutrition and bad nutrition has on the body; and I know that we have the power to change bad habits and to experience a healthier way of living through holistic nutrition.

Fasting goes hand in hand with exercising regularly and eating the right food - food that has a high nutritional value and that is rich in antioxidants. The good news is that food rich in antioxidant properties can help slow the harmful processes that cause cellular damage in the body. Cellular damage can lead to cancer and diseases, as well as speed the aging process.

Information regarding the connection between diet, health, and aging is nothing new. It bears repeating, however, especially for those that are overweight and all of us need to hear this message, over and again.

I’ve come to the realization that the only method to ensure a long and healthy life is to consume the right kinds of foods by carefully following holistic nutrition guidelines, and to curtail the amount of food most of us ingest on a daily basis. This doesn’t mean I want you to starve yourself, but you need to know that the quantity of food many of us are consuming is overloading our systems; and some of the food we’re eating is making us sick, and can even, eventually, kill us.

We have known for centuries about holistic nutrition and the need to adopt a good and healthy dietary lifestyle. However, life is very hectic these days and it’s easy to opt for fast food, to dine out often and forget what we are causing our bodies to ingest. So, this is just a friendly reminder to nourish your body with the right types of food and to give your body time to cleanse, heal, and rest, which you can do through fasting.

Fasting is certainly not a new way to care for the body, and I was fascinated to discover that even Socrates and Plato fasted to “attain mental and physical efficiency.”

So did Galen, the 2nd century Greek philosopher and physiologist. Mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras would fast for up to a month. Paracelsus, one of the world’s foremost founders of medicine said, “Fasting is the greatest remedy.” And, Hippocrates, the original “Father of Medicine,” often prescribed fasting for his patients.

Following in those great footsteps, the Hippocrates Health Institute, since the mid-50s a leader in complementary healthcare and natural alternatives, promotes the virtues of fasting one day each week. Pretty impressive words of wisdom from some of the world’s greatest thinkers, wouldn’t you say?

Do you realize that if you regularly wake up in the morning feeling completely exhausted, even though you may believe you’ve had a restful night’s sleep, you might be suffering from what’s called “chronic exhaustion?” This is a medical condition caused by an infection. The enemy is a form of yeast called candida albicans, and this grows throughout your body if you pay little attention to your overall diet. It’s also quite probable that you may be consuming large amounts of refined and processed foods, have a significant sugar addiction, and/or you might also be otherwise out of balance because of a variety of prescription medications or strong antibiotics.

Even knowing this information, most people from all “walks of life” still usually ignore holistic nutrition guidelines and enjoy bad eating habits to such an extreme that they become irritable, develop sleep issues, have mood swings, experience chronic fatigue and an overall feeling of general impairment. The symptoms may not be particularly severe but taken together will certainly have a detrimental effect on your daily life. Most people do not realize that they have a candida problem and should address their diets.

As you get older, it’s not so easy to get a restful night’s sleep anymore. There are wide variety of obvious reasons for this, poor timekeeping usually being the biggest culprit. Ideally, you should strive to go to bed at the same time each evening, which for most us will be a little before or after the 10 o’clock hour. The human body is generally accustomed to having the most restful period of sleep during this time, and therefore you should strive for eight hours every night, without exception. Melatonin is one of the most amazing natural antioxidants, and its primary task is to assist with repairing the damage which you’ve amassed during your waking existence, by cleaning up free radicals and other dangerous toxins. Don’t disrupt the natural cycles of nature.

Many of us are used to eating the largest meal of the day almost within sight of our bedtime. Dietary experts recommend that you should leave at least three hours between your final meal and your bedtime, as otherwise your body will be busy digesting the food in your stomach and intestines and will not be able to allocate the correct resources to sleep-repair work. Even worse is the folly of those who have a significant snack immediately before they turn in. The body has very little chance of correctly resetting itself and over a period of time this will most certainly lead to problems. There seems little point in adding fuel just before a period of inaction, don’t you think? This is exactly what we’re doing if we eat late and then try and sleep. Your body is acclimatized to processing instructions and does not realize that it should pause its digestive action while you try and sleep.

You are what you eat and if your diet is high in sugars and processed or bad foods, you risk amassing a significant candida problem. Not only do you want to sleep better, but you want to stave off the threat of illnesses and diseases such as diabetes and cancer. Don’t leave it until you have developed these significant symptoms, and then kick yourself for not considering holistic health solutions before. A sugar addiction is a serious health threat.