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As we all know it is what we do 80% of the time that gives us the results we seek or don’t seek in our lives. The 80/20 rule is probably pretty accurate.

So having said that the following pointers are just that…guidelines for the 80% part of our lives. I believe one reason we might experience adrenal burnout is because we want to do it all NOW. So as I share this list with you know you can not do it ALL now. Your body will so appreciate you slowly adding one or two of these lifestyle shifts a week or even a month. Allow them to become your habit before you add more.

Please make this a gentle, kind process for yourself and your body. This is truly about low-stress. If any of these create more stress for you, hold off on adding them to your life. Remember…make small action steps for they truly do add up exponentially.

• Be in bed before 10:00 pm and sleep in until 9:00 am whenever possible.
• Adrenals love breakfast and prefer it be eaten before 10:00 am consistently.
• Increase your whole, organic vegetable and fruit consumption making them your new best friends.
• Try adding a glass of water in the morning with 1/4 tsp of good salt (salt that is air dried and from the sea) stirring until it is completely dissolved. If you have an aversion to this much salt adjust according to taste. Ziquin offers a sea based liquid mineral called Nanomeds that I enjoy in my water
• Laugh several times a day enjoying your return to adrenal balance.
• Eliminate the things in your life that take away your energy.
• Begin to believe in your ability to facilitate recovery.
• By keeping a food diary or journal track which foods are energy robbers.
  
• Each day do something that pleases you and makes you smile.
• Take your nutritional supplements everyday. 
• Eat an abundance of whole foods or foods that can be eaten the way Nature grows them.
  
• Use your mind as the positive healing tool that it is.
• Choo choo choo choo your food well.
• Laugh each day as you make whatever lifestyle changes you need to make each day.
• Always have breakfast.
• Create low-stress choices for yourself in every potentially stressful situation then act on them.
• Allow yourself to be patient with your recovery; it is the journey that counts.

This is a world of duality. So here are the lifestyle choices to gently let go of. Please begin to avoid:

• Being harsh or negative with yourself.                                                                                                          
• Staying up past 10:00 pm
• Caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and white flour products.
• Foods that are refined and processed.
• If you have blood sugar imbalances, you may be assisted by staying away from sugar and fruit juices. Might be best to eat only whole fruit (all the co-factors are present) .
• Feeling sorry for yourself.
• Getting overtired or exhausted.
• Coffee, even decaf.
• Eating sweet fruits like dates and raisins.
• Eating starchy carbohydrates by themselves (ex. Eating bread or pastas by themselves)
• Foods that make you feel foggy in your thinking or pull your energy down in anyway.
• Foods you are addicted to.
• Skipping breakfast.
• Pushing yourself beyond your reasonable limits.
• Situations that are high-stress.

Please know that these are guidelines to get you started. By now you have consulted with your health care professional and are actively choosing Self-Health Essentials relevant to you and your lifestyle. Remember, who else is with you 24/7?

© 2012 Self-Health Essentials LLC

Nutritional Solutions for Mood Disorders and Depression Part I

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Did you know that it is our brain that makes us distinctly human? It is the basis of our emotions, memories, behaviors and moods. Because of our brain, we can read, write, compose and appreciate music, communicate with others and plan for the future. A balanced brain is the foundation for a life that is happier, more satisfying and one that can sustain healthy aging.  In this article we are looking at the importance of balancing lifestyle with nutrition to support each of us in a healthful approach to mood disorders.

Researchers believe most mood disorders are caused by complex chemical imbalances in the brain. The body responds to all sorts of factors both internally and externally from the thoughts we think to the kinds of foods we put into our body. In the field of nutritional science, we are looking for the most natural ways to support and balance those conditions using diet, supplementation, mind-body exercises and creative relaxation techniques.

Each year, almost 44 million Americans experience a mood disorder. 7-14% of children will experience an episode of major depression before the age of 15. While 20-30% of adult bipolar patients report their first episode during their 20s. Almost everybody will be challenged by depression at some point in their life. Research is showing that children are even more impacted by mood disorders than ever before. Statistics are showing pre-schoolers are the fastest-growing market for antidepressants. At least four percent of preschoolers — over a million children– are considered clinically depressed.

There are two primary classifications for mood disorders. They are bi-polar (also known as manic-depression) and depression alone.

Symptoms of Depression can include:                                                              

The second classification is Bi-Polar. It includes all of what is listed above with these following signs added:

What Can I do?

1. Create a plan, which works on changing your depression that includes: nutrition and dietary supplements, exercise and learning more about how to reduce stress and cortisol levels by more rest.
2. It’s important to realize that rest does not need to mean deep sleep. Listening to relaxing tapes or watching fish in a bowl can be restful. People with active mood disorders may need more rest because of the exhaustion from the emotions.
3. Breathing exercises are also very effective in bringing down anxiety or lowering tension and stress.
4. As a dietary strategy, one can use the Ziquin products as part of a nutritional plan for people who are challenged by mood swings and stress. The Mind and Body Tonic, EFA Complete and All Xymatic are foundational to finding balance between mind and body health. They can be useful in balancing the blood sugar, which helps people to stabilize cravings for sugar, feelings of irritability and loss of confidence.  It is important to keep nourishing the body since most people who suffer from depression will stop eating or eat too much of the wrong foods. Eating too many carbohydrates, sweets, caffeine drinks, drugs or alcohol can imbalance the brain. In the Mind and Body Tonic the vitamin B and D help to produce serotonin and melatonin which support the body to rest and relieve distress. 
   

© Self-Health Essentials LLC 2012

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Greetings and a warm welcome to Self-Health Essentials.com. We are so pleased you are able to use our educational offerings in your personal journey to vibrant Self-Health!

The following are some quick ways for you to check into your body-talk. We have personally found that health is an inside job and that you are your very own best guide in this arena. Do you know of anyone else who is with you 24/7?

POSSIBLE signs of Adrenal fatigue:

After reading a list like this, one might come away feeling exhausted. It might be better to make note of the ones that you have a tendency towards. This is only a partial list that is for your information and self-awareness. Adrenal health is a growing concern in our fast paced culture. A quick vacation or going to bed early for a few days CAN help your precious adrenals.  We are finding that a new lifestyle design is very beneficial in creating a greater adrenal equilibrium coupled with consistent nutrition and multi-system supplemental approaches.  See Essential Supplements

Thank you for taking a moment and asking your body which of these signs it is sincerely wanting you to pay attention to?

Then ask your body how you should proceed? We offer an easy, self-health approach to designing your own health-ful lifestyle that truly could change your life!

Just a thought!

An Adrenal Supporting Lifestyle  

Managing the stress in your life is key to supporting your adrenals. The most important factor in managing the stress is understanding the mind-body connection in regards to stress. We know that what makes a situation stressful for one person may not be stressful for another. Remember the example of a person in a car stuck in the middle of rush hour traffic.  It can be perceived as an opportunity for listening to a self-health audiotape or perceived as highly frustrating. Either way the operative word is perception. Whether a situation is stressful or not is based on our perception. And our perception is based on what we believe to be true. Our beliefs determine our perception. So if we believe bumper-to-bumper traffic is stressful, guess what for us it will be. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can learn to change how we perceive things by changing how we look at things and yes even our beliefs. Letting go of our fears is the first step toward creating a fuller, more satisfying life. We need to seek joyful, loving and fulfilling activities, ones that stimulate us to grow and be happy at heart. After all we are worth it! Let this be our mantra. I do those things that give me joy and let go of those things not in harmony with my joy.

Providing nutritional support. Now let’s talk about a day-to-day adrenal supporting plan. 

On a fresh sheet of paper make a heading “health drains” and list everything and everyone in your daily life that are health-limiting factors. The following are examples;

Junk food, alcohol, overwork, chemicalized water, coffee, financial pressures, unhappy work or home environment, prescription or non-prescription drugs, lack of fresh air, tobacco, lack of sleep, soft drinks and chemical pollutants. The idea is to minimize as much as possible those health-limiting factors in your life that take away from supporting your adrenals and overall health.  

Someone who has adrenal fatigue have used up much of the body’s stored nutrients and are in desperate need of new supplies just to continue to function, let alone heal. Good quality food is the best source of these nutrient. Nutritional supplements can increase your ability to heal and speed your recovery.

If you have adrenal fatigue, when you eat is almost as important as what you eat. Low blood sugar is in itself a stressful situation that further drains yours adrenals. Therefore, avoid letting your blood sugar levels drop too low by eating natural, high quality food at frequent, regular intervals. Small high quality meals are ideal. It is important that you eat before 10:00 am. If you eat breakfast earlier in the morning around 8:00 am then you will want to have a snack around 10:00 am. You need to replenish your waning glycogen supply after the previous night’s energy requirements. Then lunch at noon, a snack sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 pm and your evening meal around 5:00 to 6:00 pm. Later in the evening, before bed, just a couple of bites of a high quality snack is often the key to successfully getting through the night without sleep disturbances or feeling wrecked in the morning.

It is best to combine fat, protein, and whole food carbohydrates at every meal and snack. Eating sugar or sugary foods is hard on your body. It makes blood sugar rise too high, too fast, and subsequently fall too low, leaving your body starving for fuel again.

Salt craving is a common symptom in all stages of adrenal fatigue. Most people with adrenal fatigue have low blood pressure, not high. Salt is a welcome addition to the diet in adrenal fatigue because it not only helps increase blood pressure, but also helps restore some of the other functions related to sodium loss within the cells. If you have concerns about taking salt and high blood pressure check with your doctor. We recommend natural unrefined sea salt and Ziquin Nanomeds. Another way to naturally increase sodium levels are to take sea vegetables like kelp and dulse.       

Vegetables that are high in sodium and helpful in supporting adrenal recovery include the following; kelp, dulse, green and black olives, beet greens, celery, zucchini, and Swiss chard. Please refer to the recipe for adrenal recovery soup that is posted on our blog.

People with adrenal fatigue are hugely lacking in several vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids and this is where high quality supplemental can speed recovery. Both Ziquin’s mind and body tonic and EFA complete is crucial to supplying the body and adrenals of the nutrients it so dearly needs. 

Summary of what to eat: Eat a wide variety of whole, natural foods. Combine a fat, protein and carbohydrate source with every meal or snack. Eat lots of vegetables, especially the brightly colored ones. Use unrefined sea salt if you crave it. Eat mainly whole grains and vegetable sources of carbohydrates. Eat high quality foods.

Adequate rest. For people with adrenal fatigue, it is important to be in bed and on your way to sleep by 10:30 pm. Although most people’s schedules do not allow it, it also helps to sleep in until 9:00 in the morning. For those who have a day job, sleeping in on the weekends until this time is highly beneficial. Sleeping in until 9:00 am gives your adrenals a chance to rest, allowing your cortisol levels to rise. Normally cortisol levels rise rapidly from 6:00 to 8:00 am, but quite often in adrenal fatigue these levels do not rise as high and/or drop faster than normal. Also when your cortisol levels are lower, as in adrenal fatigue, it takes longer to feel fully awake in the morning. Sleeping in, therefore, is not only restorative for your adrenals but also helps you feel much better when you wake up and during the rest of the day.

If you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep this is a sign that your cortisol levels are probably low due to depleted or exhausted adrenal function. As mentioned before the reason you awaken in the middle of the night is due your body releasing adrenaline instead of cortisol to raise your blood sugar. This works as a brain stimulant, which naturally keeps you awake. To help counteract this have a light snack that contains protein, unrefined carbohydrate, and a high quality fat before going to bed, such as a slice of whole grain bread with almond butter.

1)     Be sure to get enough physical exercise during the day. Rapid breathing expels volatile gases out of your body that become harmful if they build up. The increased blood flow helps keep plaque from building up in your arteries while stimulating your liver to perform more efficiently. Cell function improves with accompanying acceleration of carbon dioxide, oxygen and nutrient exchange. Exercise normalizes levels of cortisol, insulin, blood glucose, growth hormone, thyroid, and several other hormones and puts more oxygen into your brain. Exercise also decreases depression.

2)     Avoid coffee, caffeine containing beverages and chocolate because they act as stimulants. These can interrupt sleep patterns and increase morning lows.

3)     If you are having difficulty going to sleep and usually watch TV or work on a computer late at night, try having an 8:00   PM limit on these visual stimuli.

4)      Some common herbs used to promote better sleep are hops, catnip, valerian root and licorice root.

5)     Try to schedule breaks around times when you feel more tired so that you can lie down for 15-30 minutes. Lying down is much more restorative than sitting, for the person with adrenal fatigue.

6)     Laughter. Norman Cousins found that two important keys to rebuild your adrenals are laughter and vitamin C. He laughed himself back to health from a debilitating disease. We recommend a whole food natural source of vitamin C like Acerola cherries.

© 2012 Self-Health Essentials LLC

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Hello, this is Tessa from Self-Health Essentials. The story below so touched me I wanted to share it with you in this form. This is a sharing from one heart to another. I know I am only the conduit for the possibility that is available to each one of us. It is an honor for me to witness and facilitate Self-Health Energetics (Matrix/Access/Yuen + more) sessions like this one.

So, eating Soy is bad for me? Why?

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We receive many inquiries from our clients about Soy. One dear friend drinks soy milk as often as she can hoping it will assist her body with healthy aging.When in fact it is quite possibly speeding up her aging process.

There are many, many studies available to offer another view. The following comes from Dr Mary Eng and Sally Fallon in their book Eat Fat Lose Fat.

Today, many dieters try to meet their health requirements by eating foods based on soy, promoted as beneficial in many popular books and weight-loss plans. However, soybeans contain several toxins, and high-temperature chemical processing adds many more. As early as 1972, a soy-industry textbook (Soybeans: Chemistry and Technology) listed a number of well-documented toxic effects from soybeans—everything from endocrine disruption to undesirable changes in many organs.

The most serious problem with eating soy while you’re trying to lose weight is that soy is a goitrogen, that is, it depresses thyroid function. When your thyroid gland malfunctions, you tend to gain weight even when you eat very little. Dr. Dan Sheehan and Dr. Daniel Doerge, government researchers at the National Center for Toxicological Research, discovered that the anti-thyroid component of soy is the isoflavones or phytoestrogens, which inhibit the synthesis of thyroid hormone. All soy foods, including tofu, soymilk, protein bars and meal replacements, contain these thyroid-inhibiting isoflavones. In 1999, these researchers actually wrote a letter urging FDA to require a health warning on soy foods, rather than the health claim the agency eventually approved.

Soy foods also contain anti-nutrients known as phytic acid which blocks mineral absorption, and enzyme inhibitors that block the enzymes needed for protein digestion.

Reading labels is very useful especially when it comes to soy. Over the years we have removed soy from our diet and happily so.If you would like to learn more about this topic, the book, The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food, is a must read. This is an area that one is best served as a Self-Health sleuth!

As you listen make note of how your words ‘feel’ or resonate with you and others. Begin by playing with words that might sound negative. Play with changing them to happier words or phrases. Notice.

Here is a stunning example of the power of our words.

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We have come to truly understand the significance of our daily intake of whole food nutrition and basic foundational nutrient supplementation. Your adrenals are on the clock. This clock is one that is timed to the light of day.

From sunrise to sunset your adrenals are monitoring and adjusting your energy levels based on natural cycles. Your body needs you to be consistent in your timing of when you eat and what you eat and how you eat. We would like to share with you some general guidelines for nutritional adrenal support. Please know that we will be updating and expanding this information often.  En~joy!

• It is always best to eat a wide variety of whole, organic, minimally processed foods. This is body wisdom for all of our systems.
• It is recommend that one who desires to step out of adrenal exhaustion to eat a fat, protein and carbohydrate source with every meal.
• You will greatly benefit from eating lots of vegetables with each meal…especially ones that are brightly colored..
• If you can, avoid fruit in the morning. Experiment with having these potassium rich foods a little later in the day?
• Mixing 1-2 Tbs of Essential Oils into your grains or vegetables on a daily basis will certainly bring a smile to you adrenals. ( Learn about Macadamia Nut, Kukai Nut and Black Current seed Essential Fatty Acid Blend, that really makes the veggies sing and also supports your Adrenals wonderfully)
• Eat the best quality food you can afford. Some would say that this is a Self-Health Essential in all facets of your wellness. As you know, your food becomes you!
• For those with moderate to severe adrenal depletion, increasing your protein intake and decreasing the whole grains and fruit from your food plan will better serve you. Please know that as you make these simple shifts your body will respond. How quickly is truly a personal experience, is it not? Patience is a gentle herb that will do wonders for your adrenal replenishment.
• A consistent whole food nutritional lifestyle will really help your adrenals. We have also found  that for an already deficient body, we benefit greatly by adding low-stress supplements that are easily absorbed and created to replenish a body that has little extra energy to use for breaking down nutrients. 

                  

We highly recommend that as with any general guideline you go within your own reference systems and carefully choose the foods that are best for you!

This inner reference system is one that we develop with intention, skill and sometimes guidance. It is our sincere wish for your Self-Health; that with these educational offerings you will develop your own personal Self-Health guidance system, this could be a health essential!

© 2012 Self-Health Essentials LLC