What’s Your Headache Telling You?
d(Health Secrets) Last time we spoke of the fountains of youth that have already been discovered. Reverence for years lived and a positive attitude about one’s food are two centerpieces in creating a life of many youthful years. The third element in these fountains is social usefulness.
This is forever linked to the first discussion about viewing a life of many years as innately and intrinsically more valuable than a life with fewer years. When one sees him or herself as useful, usefulness will morph and change and may actually grow, but will never wane or disappear.
People who do not see themselves as socially useful and do not see any evidence of others seeing them as socially useful become neurotic, depressed and even spiteful as they age. These people will develop a sense of desperation or despondency that their usefulness has already, or is about to come to an end. However someone is aging physically, this seals the tomb, so to speak, on their lives.
It is sort of a test offered to the youth and those in their prime in each generation. You get to see how you score in treating those who handed the world to you. If you fail the test, you will inadvertently create a world where you are even more certain to be treated as valueless as you age.
Developing one’s usefulness is a lot of work. It requires one generation to not only honor their parents even in spite of their parents’ failure to honor the last generation and to also become the sort of people that ought to be honored when they age. The final element of timeless youth and adding years to life, I have already mentioned twice. This is personal cultivation .Not only is personal cultivation vital to staying at peace with food at peace with food and society, and adding years to your life, it is also needed if you expect the next generation to have a reason to honor you. This not only will insure your longevity but theirs too, since they will perpetuate the pattern of treating those with more years to their life as increasingly valuable, and honor the useful and vital elements of a whole and healthy life. In conclusion, because I am a chiropractor and an herbalist, and because it is one of my mission statements to, “relieve suffering,” I want to discuss just a few herbs and foods that will ease the suffering due to aging that many experience.
The first is my favorite brain food formula in the world. When people age, instead of simply adding years to their life, the stress of it causes many distortions in the brain and these must be helped and healed in order to promote happiness, well being, and the mental energy needed to make other positive changes as one’s life changes. I have used many brain food formulas and there is one that is so much better than the rest that it bears emphasizing. It was, interestingly, not made originally as a brain food, but as a heart and circulatory aid. The same company makes a brain food formula that was intended for a brain food, but it is not nearly as good.
This formula is called, Ginger-Ginkgo Blend, and it is sold by Wind River Herbs, who you can find on line.
In addition to feeding blood and neural energy to the brain, it is also important to normalize brain chemistry, increase serotonin and improve mood. To do this, I use St. John’s Wort tincture (I like Herb Pharm or Herbs Etc.) and Rosemary tincture. These herbs can and probably should be taken with the Ginger-Ginkgo Blend. Usually, twice a day (mid morning and mid afternoon) will make such a profound difference in how someone feels and thinks that they will wonder how they ever lived without it.
One should be careful when using St. John’s wort with drugs known as MAO inhibitors. St. John’s wort probably will not, but potentially could cause an overdose of MAO inhibitors, since it also has that action. St. John’s wort may also decrease the activity of some drugs and so should be used with caution if you are on a lot of medications. See a natural-remedy savvy practitioner or herb-friendly physician for help with that.
One of the champion anti-aging herbs of all time is turmeric. It can be taken in capsules with its close relative and partner in anti-aging activities — ginger. I often recommend as much as ten to fifteen capsules per day for someone in pain or with poor digestion, but just two capsules twice daily will reduce inflammation protein markers in the blood, leading to slowed aging, particularly of the cardiovascular system. Both of these herbs have a long list of anti-cancer properties. I do not think either of them would be stand alone treatments (although I am aware of turmeric studies that suggest it sometimes might) but as preventatives, they rank high on my list.
When people age, the endocrine system shuts down in many ways. One of the herbs that improves endocrine communication we have already mentioned: St. John’s wort, but there are other helpful aids that are very effective at taking the age out of the endocrine system.
One of the best is Goji (lycii) Berries. I have been using a goji juice by Genesis, and I find it good to very good. It has none of the preservatives or diluting additional juices found in most/all of the brands sold by network marketing companies.
Another important step is to heal the adrenal glands in order to maintain vigor and energy. I recently healed my own after a stretch of uncommon stress in my life. My adrenal glands were completely exhausted and I felt like I was dying. I used my own adrenal formula, and had my adrenal glands fully rebuilt in less than a month.
The next herb on my list is in every house in the country, probably. It is celery seed. So often, mild deposits of gout will plague people who have no idea that it is there. It never accumulates into full-blown gout, and so it never gets diagnosed or treated.
Fortunately, mild cases can be treated and prevented naturally with celery seed. I find that it takes about two capsules of ground celery seed per day to make a significant difference in kidney health, nitrogenous waste removal and more flexible joints in the lower extremities.
The end of this list includes foods that can be used together. These are parsley, carrots and beets. In fact, ginger can be added to the pot too, instead of taking capsules. This requires a juicer. If you are living in today’s culture of toxicity and stress and you do not have a juicer… well, you are hereby assigned. Any juicer will do, but for my money the Champion is the best.
It has been observed that two weeks of a pint of carrot juice per day will take ten years off of most people’s faces. This may have to do with the way carrot juice feeds the pituitary gland and causes an upsurge in human growth hormone (HGH) to a healthier and more youthful level.
In my program, a dime-sized bundle of parsley sprigs, one-two inches of ginger root and one small beet with its top (or you can use Swiss chard) are juiced into that one pint of freshly juiced carrot juice. This can be drunk at any time during the day, but the best time is late afternoon when a little extra supercharge is needed to feed the body when it might prematurely shut down and go to bed toxic and with incomplete digestion. Organic, of course, is best.
The number of systems fed by this juice are too numerous to explain, but suffice it to say that it really does do the body good!
One warning, parsley juice is generally not recommended for nursing mothers as it often dries up the milk.
With these tools, you can make a great difference in your health and aging trajectory. These are not the only tools, they may not even be the best tools in every case, but they are very, very good tools and they will be effective for most people. A month of this program, and eating according to the minimum standards taught in Traci’s Transformational Health Principles, will prove itself to anyone who uses it.
