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natural healing

Sick from eating vegetables?

Educational Information, Healing Procedure April 8, 2018

 

Have you become sicker when you started eating more vegetables?

Have you gotten old symptoms back when you started a healing protocol such as detox program?

If you have, I hope you didn’t go back to your old eating habit but tried to be patient with the body’s reaction.

Elimination Organs

While we are eating fries, bread, pasta with little vegetables, and drinking pops, and other sugary drinks over clean water, our body’s metabolism slows down. Although our body is always healing 24/7, it needs nutrients such as proteins, vitamins, and minerals from foods that we are eating.

There are five elimination organs that are involved in getting rid of toxins from the body. They are lungs, kidneys, large intestine, lymphatic system, and skin.

If we don’t assimilate nutrients from the food we eat, toxins won’t get out of the body through the organs I mentioned above. Even worse, the liver may not be able to properly convert the toxic substances into less toxic.  Toxic substances first have to be converted to less toxic in order to excreted from elimination organs. Otherwise, those elimination organs will be damaged.

Nutrients are necessary not just for the energy production but for the other metabolic cycle. Our organs are digesting food as well as helping the detoxification process.

If there aren’t nutrients for digestion, digestive system slows down. Undigested food then becomes toxic to the body. If there aren’t nutrients for detoxification, toxins will circulate in the blood then store in the organs and tissues that are less functional.

It is the vicious cycle without nutrients.

Healing Crisis

When our body starts to heal with right nutrients, toxins stored in the organs and tissues, they will be dumped into the bloodstream. Then we hope that all elimination organs are working optimally in order to eliminate the toxins carried by the blood. If they are not working at its best, toxins may keep circulating in the bloodstream and then eventually stored again.

This is what happens to the body when your diet goes from no nutrients to full of nutrients. Or when you start detoxifying the body with herbs and nutritional supplements.

Especially when you go raw or do a juice cleanse, a lot of toxins will be dumped into the bloodstream and most of the time, elimination organs aren’t ready for that much toxins to be able to handle at once. As toxins circulate all over the body, we get sick and have old symptoms back.

We call this “healing crisis”.

Everybody who tries to cleanse should be informed this to avoid going back to medications because this process is absolutely necessary for healing.

Although healing crisis happens during the healing process, we can minimize the degree of it by utilizing homeopathy. But usually, people figure the best pace and amount to go on healing procedure for themselves by trial and error.

Make sure you reduce the amount of the food (raw, fresh juice, vegetables, etc) you are eating or supplements you are taking when started having a healing crisis. If vegetables cause gas and bloating, start with small amount of fermented food and supplemental probiotics to balance bacteria.

Besides going slow with the amount, try herbs to help support elimination organs so that toxins will optimally be eliminated when they are released from organs and tissues.

If necessary, please advice your practitioner before you get really sick that you can’t handle.

Hering’s Law of Cure

The nineteenth-century European homeopathic physician, Constantine Hering expressed the principles of healing, “All cure starts from within out, from the head down, and in the reverse order as the symptoms appeared.”

When we start searching for what’s best for healing by using our head, healing has already begun. In other words, healthy mind heals rest of the body.

If you see your skin is irritated, you always have to work on your internal toxicity. Nothing that topical cream could “heal” your skin unless that’s purely external injury.

Do you give up or be patient?

I have experienced many many healing crisis which weren’t easy physically nor emotionally. Generally speaking, healing crisis lasts for few days. Mine lasted for months. I didn’t even know when it was over as multiple healing crisis occurred one after another.

But I didn’t give up. I believed my body’s ability to heal itself.

Someone once told me they couldn’t eat any fermented food nor cruciferous vegetables because they hurt her stomach. When she eats KFC, she doesn’t get sick.

This is a typical example that her body is storing toxins rather than “eliminating” them.

Sometimes people react to vegetables and fruits because of the chemicals sprayed on them. Once they switch to organic from conventional vegetables and fruits, symptoms get better. So make sure you eat organic.

Healing takes time. Nothing heals overnight. Trust the process and be patient. You are healing as long as you are doing things that help the body do its job.

What is “Self-Love”?

Educational Information, Healing Procedure, Make Choices, Spirit for Healing March 23, 2018

I was asked one day.

What does self-love mean?

Do you think I have known what self-love is before starting my healing journey?

NO.

I believe this is something you learn as you experience certain events in life and be willing to heal from those events emotionally and physically. I’m sorry but I don’t believe people lightly say “I love myself.”. Because that’s not what I’m not talking about.

Abusing is NOT self-love.

My abusing started when I stopped looking after my body.

I intentionally held bowel movement as I was ashamed to go to the toilet when I was like 7. Then started skipping meals or stopped eating “food” to lose weight. Which led to the anorexic behavior for about 6 years. The reason for the weight loss was that a boy in my class told me that I was chubby. Around the same time, my mother also told me that I was chubby. Since I was sort of competitive in nature, I promised myself to get skinny.

While I kept losing my weight, I also had an extreme pressure from my mother regarding the school work. I was probably a decent student in elementary school but the pressure was put before I enrolled mid school. This pressure gave me stomach pains every morning. I remember taking painkiller pills every day for the next several months until I collapsed in the middle of the class.

Apparently, I almost had a hole in my stomach. Who knows if that was from the pills or the stress.

In the meantime, I have introduced to laxatives from a senior student in school when I was 13 for my constipation. Luckily, my family wasn’t big on any medications unless it’s an emergency. So when I discovered the pills that helped my bowel movement, I was hooked. And addicted.

The daily dose of the laxative was two. How much I took daily was 6. It also helped me keep losing weight. This laxative addiction lasted another 10 years from then.

When I became a high school girl, my eating habit started to rebound. I binge ate pizza, cookies, and other snacks. My mother was happy I started eating no matter what I was eating. I tried to keep my weight just below 100 lbs (my height was 5’6″) with laxatives until I moved away from my parents’.

I started living alone in Tokyo while I was in college. Here I started having serious bulimic behavior. It was very tough times as I had never been able to tell anyone about my “secret”, even my boyfriend whom I was in a serious relationship with.

Tokyo is such a big city where I could easily abuse my body, such as lack of sleep, heavy alcohol intake, binge eating, and very lonely in the heart.

Let me remind you that none of above is ever “self-love”. I abused my body both physically and emotionally. Especially, I remember I cried every time I was trying to throw up in the toilet which often wasn’t an easy procedure.

And HATED me.

I hated myself not knowing when this was going to end. I hated myself not to be able to control my eating attitude. I hated myself hiding “true self” from my partner I loved. I hated myself acting happy in public and being a mess when I was alone.

On the contrary…

I’d like to think of myself I’m a much more self-loving girl now. Sure, the environment is different and I am older. I have learned what I was supposed to along the way. “Wholistic Healing Arts” – body, mind, and spirit. And I am still learning every single day.

Physically Self-loving

I sleep (at least trying to intentionally, if not.) 8 hours a day. I eat 100% organic including plenty of vegetables and occasionally fish and organ meats that nourish my body. I also quit alcohol in 2011 when I decided to commit to my healing. I excuse myself to go to a toilet whenever I need. I stopped weighing in 2005 (I have weighed once in 2009 and was the last time I did so.) but don’t feel pity about my body. I exercise lightly but daily. I enjoy the detox procedures such as Epsom salt bath, castor oil packs, vaginal steam, and coffee enema to help my body regenerate.

Mentally Self-loving

I learned to forgive myself and others in any situations. I learned to understand the unique human being. I learned to set my own boundary. I learned my limitations. I learned that every emotion (anger, sadness, grief, fear, etc) had its own right to be felt. I learned to let myself express how I feel. I learned to say no. I feel comfortable being self-reserved. I learned to let go of toxic relationships. I don’t waste my time with people engage in drama. I laugh every possible moment.

Spiritually Self-loving

I practice 1000 gratitude a day (I haven’t reached 1000 yet, I am trying every day!). I learned the relationship between female hormonal cycle and intuition, which helped me to understand when I would be more intuitive and when I would be more logic. I always ask “Why” to whatever happens in life which will let me become more aware of signs from the universe. I listen to my heart. I say thank you in every possible moment.

Other Self-loving

I don’t try to become someone whom I am not. This is a tough one from time to time, however. We meet people who are like-minded in some topics and completely opposite in other topics. Can we be still close to those people?

The answer is YES. All we have to do is to accept who they are. We don’t need to be with them 24/7. We hang out when we are talking about something in common. You don’t need to project yourself to like everything they do.

I know that I’m not for everyone. What I believe in life is not for everyone. How I see life isn’t for everyone. What works for me isn’t for everyone. Sure. If a lot of people show up in my life and they are all like-minded people, that’s great. But that’s not really my goal for self-love. Self-love here is to be okay with who you are, no matter how many people will become your people. What’s important is that you keep loving yourself despite the change “outside” you.

What are FREE RADICALS?

Educational Information, Healing Procedure, Make Choices, Spirit for Healing December 21, 2017

 

Free radicals are not new in nature. They have been around for millions of years along with vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids (EFAs), and protective anti-oxidants found naturally in food. A free radical is an atom or molecular fragment with an unpaired electron. It is very unstable, highly reactive particle, because it hates to be alone and like to be paired. Therefore, it will draw an electron from wherever it can, including other molecules pair in the body, causing them to change structure. These molecules then become free radicals creating a chain reaction with millions of molecules being affected in nanoseconds.

Endogenous (from inside the body) Sources of Free radicals:

Free radicals are intermediates of the normal chemical reactions taking place in the body, including oxidative reactions to produce the energy that our cells require for detoxification, nutritional assimilation, and more. Our body’s immune system also produces free radicals which it uses to kill bacteria, viruses and fungi. If the immune system becomes chronically over-activated by chronic inflammation such as allergies and major operations, there is an extra burden of free radicals in the body.

While those oxidative reactions and immune responses are vital and absolutely necessary, unpaired electrons involved in oxidation can damage molecules in cells and tissues. And this becomes free radical stress, also known as oxidative stress in the body which leads abnormal, toxic, and biologically unsuitable substances to cause degenerative health conditions such as cancer.

Also, it is so important to mention about emotional stress. Emotional stress significantly increases the release of hormones (epinephrine/norepinephrine/cortisone) which in excess act like free radicals creates bio-chemical changes and damages the cells and tissues.

Exogenous (from outside the body) Sources of Free radicals:

  • Preservatives and other chemicals in food
  • Pesticides, antibiotics, synthetic hormones in non-organic food
  • Alcohol and smoking
  • Prescription drugs
  • Pollution
  • Radiation and microwave
  • Toxic metals like mercury, aluminum, and lead
  • Trans and hydrogenated fats

 

Luckily, our body is so incredible that it uses antioxidants like Vitamin C, E, A, selenium, CoQ10, as well as enzymes that contain minerals like zinc, manganese, and copper to neutralize free radical toxicity.

How Free radicals become “Bad” guys?

As I mentioned above, free radicals are produced from our body’s biological reactions besides exogenous sources and they can’t cause cell destruction when protective antioxidants are present in the body.

But in this fast-paced modern society, nutritional deficiencies are on the rise, especially vitamins and minerals (antioxidants!).

We eat packaged foods that are highly processed (often with chemicals), heated with high temperature in vegetable oils, and exposed to the light and oxygen. Those are perfect candidates for free radical damages in the body. There is no doubt that free radicals cause degenerative health conditions but the root cause for this is the nutritional deficiencies. By addressing the deficiencies, we could tame the free radical stress.

When I was working in a health food store, people asked me if it was really beneficial to take Omega-3. They were informed by Mr. “google” or some doctors didn’t know much about the benefit of Omega-3 that they cause the free radical damages rather doing the good.

YES. Omega-3s (and Omega-6s) are very sensitive to light, heat and oxygen (I have written about fats here.). Special care needs to be taken in processing, packaging, and storing rich in EFAs in order to avoid free radicals damages. However, to set such conditions costs labour and time. As a result, the necessary care is not usually taken.

Some haters (or just got a job writing about health and wellness) focus on this fact that scares readers without proving the solution to it. I think it is so important to intake Omega-3 either from food or nutritional supplements if you are dealing with asthma, eczema and other health conditions chronically. If you are scared of free radicals from processing the EFAs, eat more whole foods that can protect the cells with antioxidants.

It is so twisted if you are eating highly processed packaged foods and scared of free radical damages from bottled EFAs that could protect your cells. But only if your body has vitamins and minerals that assimilate the fat and act as antioxidants. Again, those have to come from whole foods or nutritional supplements.

Nature does its best to protect our body. Our job is to listen and take action.

References:

Organic restaurants are safe and healthy choice when going out for food?

Make Choices, Spirit for Healing December 21, 2017

 

When we are just about to enter the healing journey, eating out isn’t the first one to cut out of your life, because we have our social lives to keep. So we start suggesting friends to go to restaurants that serve more vegetables, gluten free, vegan/vegetarian options, and better yet they are either partially or completely organic. As far as I know, most of those restaurants support local farmers. That’s great! We feel less guilty eating fries if they are made in “healthy” restaurants.

Are they really healthy?

I have worked in different restaurants such as a bar, oyster house, and vegan/vegetarians’ over the years as a cook. And I have never found any restaurants that satisfy my way of eating when it comes to the way those restaurants make food, and ingredients and the way they are combined in a dish.

First of all, you don’t know what you are about to eat is really fresh. The food prep is usually done at least a day or two ago. If restaurants were slow on those days, they could be sitting in a fridge for days. Vegetable are exposed to oxygen and lights after being cut into pieces. Nutrients will be lost quickly, especially when they were pre-cooked.

Secondly, I like to mention about kitchen equipments. Among the restaurants I had worked in the past, some restaurants used teflon frying pans and aluminum pots besides stainless steel or cast iron ones. How about dishwasher they use? Do you think they use chemical free dish soap? Unfortunately, they don’t. That’s so rare to find places completely chemical free. Once dishes are washed with soap full of chemicals, they stays as they dry out. And you will be eating your food with toxic chemicals on the plates.

Lastly, yet most importantly, the biggest concern of mine is the oil. Especially, the vegetable oils such as canola oil, sunflower oil, olive oil, avocado oil, and other vegetable oils. I have written more about oils here.

The word free radicals has been well-known since a lot of scientists and doctors confirmed that they were responsible for the health crisis and degenerative diseases.  They are created from our body’s natural metabolism but the problem here I want to talk about is the way we consume oils is hugely contributing the free radical toxicity in the body.

When oils are heated, exposed to light or air, they change the chemical structure and become active as unpaired electron in the structure tries to pair up with other electron. This unpaired electron acts like a knife in the body damages the tissues and organs. This is so called free radical damages in the body.

Some oils such as coconut oil, palm oil, butter, ghee, and refined oils like high oleic sunflower oil, or high oleic safflower oil are more stable in the heat. But ideally all oils should not be heated especially when we are healing from degenerative conditions.

Restaurants consume so much oil a day so that they have to buy oils in huge bulks which usually come in plastics. When they are used for cooking, usually they are heated in high temperature.

Everybody has their own unique healing abilities. And there are differences how fast you degenerate your health or heal from health conditions. Because we all have weaknesses and strengths in different tissues and organs. So we can’t really compare with others who could be eating McDonald’s for years and they could be having no problems at all (or not paying attention to their health. Usually they are on medications masking what really is happening to their body.).

I come back to the question “How bad you want your health back?”. We can’t force anyone to do what they should do.    It’s always up to us whether we want to commit to our health.

Love in food that we are eating!

I also believe in healing property of the food we are eating. When we make food our own with love and healing energy, the food become more nutritious and will be assimilated optimally in the body.

If a cook in a restaurant had a bad day and making your food with anger, or is having a super busy moment and making your food with the pressure, your food could be burnt (which is carcinogenic) and carries on the stress as its energy.

Especially, when you are willing to reverse the health condition, take time to make your food with prayer and good healing energy.

That’s probably what you would be doing if you are trying to impress someone who you really like.                                     So why don’t you for yourself? (This is SELF-LOVE!)

Are supplements necessary?

Healing Procedure October 15, 2017

 

When I started my healing and cleansing protocol which I had to become an expert on my own, I wasn’t a supplement person. I had never taken pills (common cold pills, birth control pills, nor any medications!) before. I wasn’t feeling very convinced to take any until I started getting flare ups from my very first detox program.

I bought probiotic and fish oil (high in EPA). Those bottles cost more than $100 together. And the more I learnt about supplements in school, the more I become obsessed with new supplements I thought I should try to help heal.

I bought so many kinds of supplement I thought they would help me including homeopathic remedies. I was lucky or not, worked in the health food store where I had opportunities to take educational courses from supplement companies then. So wherever I hear about products that could help heal the skin then I had to try.

The truth is… I still have so many bottles, whether they are already open or not, in my drawer from years ago (2013~). Some of them looked very stale I had to get rid of them after a couple of years.

I have done many trials and errors along the way. It cost me a fortune to buy all those supplements. But I was 100% committed to get better. I economized on clothes and entertainments. I had rather spend all of my earnings on organic groceries and supplements. So I did.

While I was working in the health food store, almost 90% of the people needed help to find the supplements for their health conditions, they never asked me how to eat, what foods are nutritious. This is very tricky because people nowadays are more into “natural” healing instead of medications. But still, they want a “quick fix” which they refer to supplements, the pills. And that won’t give them what they want.

I wanted to become a nutritionist because I believe in nutritions that help heal us. Our health goes downhill when our diet doesn’t feed our body and/or too much toxicity the our body can’t get out of our system because of malnutrition. Our body needs vitamins, minerals, and fat (cholesterol) for enzymatic activities and regeneration.

The GAPs diet recommends minimal of supplements. And I strongly agree with it. It is super time consuming and hard to find the best quality supplements. When I talk about supplements, I’m not talking about supplements you get from Costco or dollar stores. They won’t do any good rather do harm to your body.

Because it was my responsibility to recommend the best quality supplements to customers in the store, I did a lot of research on supplement companies and talked to rep which I was very careful that I wouldn’t be biased by their information. I spent a lot of my own time to research the additives and such. And this helped me to pick supplements for myself too.

If you were to decide to take supplements, please do your own research. Call the company to know how they manufacture their products, the source of the products (a lot of vitamins are made out of corn. Ask them where it’s coming from), and safety (heavy metal contamination, etc). Companies want to show you the studies and researches done, either by their own company or general information from studies done by pharmaceuticals, that their products are effective to certain health conditions. And that’s very appealing. But what’s important is your body assimilates the nutrients from the supplement without any harm.

While I don’t completely disagree to take supplements, there are risks of what you may be getting into your body unless you know how and where they are coming from.

It is like going out for food. You don’t know what could be in the food you were about to eat unless you make it yourself.

I have become a practitioner educates my clients how to get nutrients from real foods. I still suggest some supplements such as probiotic, fish/cod liver oil, chlorella, and some liver herbs. But nutrients are more bioavailable for our body when they are coming from the right source. Supplements are nutrients that are isolated mostly from corn. Those isolated forms won’t be recognized by the body as easy as food in order to be assimilated. If nutrients from supplements weren’t absorbed by the body, it will be excreted as urine.

I think spending your precious money on organic local foods makes more sense than wasting it to make expensive urine.

 

Organic Local Farmers