I thank and praise God for each one of you reading this and for our gorgeous Spring weather! I pray for Him to fill all of you and your family and friends to overflowing with His love and power and blessings!
Please forgive me for not writing! I have so much to share that I recently learned while reading 6 books on vacation, from my experience with my patients, and foremost God's leading. I am so excited about it all, but sadly I broke my thumb last weekend in a fall on water on a slick floor! I am healing over a 4-8 week period and being a good "patient". I am starting my blog tonight, and I will finish Tuesday (and then write another before the end of the month - I am committed to writing 2 a month to educate and motivate!). See the above pic of my 4 gifts from God after their Easter basket hunt and our puppies.
This blog I will write about our need for more and healthy water intake, suggestions to start eating healthier and more organic (taken from my current attempts after learning so much), Eric's tips for cutting calories, and excellent marriage tips (my church, Trader's Point Christian Church is in the middle of a series on "Tying the Knot") and parenting tips.
After a continually wonderful church experience, I want to encourage you all to find a great church AND small group in that church for you to attend (and I also suggest finding a good men's or woman's Bible study to attend and read your Bible daily - God's book of love to us). They make SUCH a difference in your knowledge and experience of God and life. They are our true family, along with our biological family. Just today Jay sent me an email of how he is praying for my thumb to heal, Larry and Beth brought over a macaroni casserole for me and my family (cooking is not easy for me right now-my beloved husband is so awesome to be cooking all the time right now and more importantly happily and wanting to do anything I need anytime!), and Larry asked how my patient Tammy is doing with her new diagnosis of breast cancer (I asked for prayer for her in all our groups 2 weeks ago). You can know I often ask for prayers for specific patients of mine from my husband, our small group, and my woman's Bible study group (but of course only by first name), and I daily pray for all of you! The more you read God's word and are around good people, the more active and powerful God is in your life and the more you are filled with His fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22).
WATER & Tips to Start Eating Healthier and Organic
Water (excerpts taken from "Overcoming Arthritis" by David Brownstein)
Water is an essential nutrient for everyone. Our body is composed of 70-80% water, with the brain being 85%, blood 83%, and muscles 75%. Adequate water intake (and salt along with it) is essential to promote good health and functioning of all our cells and to flush out the many toxins we ingest or make in our bodies.
My experience is that most people are at least mildly dehydrated and most chronically ill patients are very dehydrated. You cannot rely on your thirst to make you drink enough water, and your urine should always be almost clear when you are drinking enough water. One of the first signs of dehydration can be pain anywhere in the body, including the joint pain of arthritis, joint stiffness and early morning stiffness, and back spasms or other muscle spasms. If your body is dehydrated your joints and muscles will be also, and they will be more painful. Fatigue, dry tongue, coated tongue, vertical ridges on nails, dry skin, and poor skin elasticity are common signs of dehydration. Water loss can be accelerated by many things, including inadequate water intake, excess caffeine intake (caffeine is a potent diuretic), excess soda consumption (a government study in the 1990s showed the average person consumed 49 gallons per year!), alcoholic beverages, and diuretic medicine.
Many people assume that by drinking beverages other than water, they are supplying the body with an adequate amount of water. This is absolutely not the case, and these other liquids actually cause water loss in the body to accelerate. Chronic caffeine use can over-stimulate the adrenal glands and ultimately result in a depletion of the adrenal hormones. This can exacerbate other hormonal irregularities and weaken the immune system. When a person is in a dehydrated state, histamine levels are elevated throughout the body and this can worsen allergies, asthma, and the immune system.
Since water is such a nourishing agent for the body, it is important to drink water in its purest form and without additives and chemicals. Bottled water contains toxins leached from the plastic and tap water often contains chemicals harmful to your hormonal system and health (including fluoride and chlorine). Therefore it is important to drink filtered or distilled water, preferably from glass or stainless steel. Since a filter system removes many minerals and toxic agents from tap water, it is important that you take a well absorbed daily multiple vitamin-mineral supplement.
Doctor Brownstein's recommendation is that you ensure adequate water intake every day. It is impossible to achieve optimum health or recover from a chronic illness without adequate water intake. He recommends that you take your weight in pounds, divide it in two and use this figure as the amount of water in ounces to ingest on a daily basis. People who are more active will need to further increase their daily intake of water. (Since I weigh 130 pounds I need to intake at least 65 ounces a day.) I have found it helpful to intentionally drink at least 20 ounces of water at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I then drink at least 20 more ounces after exercise or exertion.
THE BENEFITS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SALT
We have been taught that salt is bad. Well too much salt can be bad when we do not drink enough water (in a dehydrated state) and if kidney problems/failure. Salt dose have good properties of helping in healing, attracting water for lubrication, can improve allergies by acting as a natural antihistamine, clears excess acidity from the body, produces energy in the body, and thins out mucous secretions.
Unfortunately, the most common salt is refined salt, and it has the healthy minerals removed and has a high content of aluminum. Unrefined sea salt (Celtic may be the best) contains trace amounts of over 80 minerals and is the best salt to eat. Dr. Brownstein recommends a pinch of sea salt each day followed by a large glass of water, and doing this in addition before strenous exercise.
Tips to Star Eating Healthier and Organic
There is a lot of information about excessive toxic exposures in our foods - especially hormones and antibiotics in milk and dairy and meat products (and animals horribly treated to produce more and cheaper product as my patient Karen told me about recently published video), pesticides on foods, toxins released from plastics, and GMO's (genetically modified organisms which change the chemical make-up of the plants we eat). We do have to live, and cannot eliminate all exposures. What are we to do 1st? My husband and I are working on this, and I will continue to inform you of our progress. Below are my initial tips.
1. Drink organic milk, or soy or almond or rice milk. Let your children know why.
2. Drink water and beverages out of stainless steel or glass containers, and work to avoid plastic. Especially with the warm weather, do not drink any beverages out of plastic containers that have been out in the sun and heat (especially in your car, and I will write more about plastic in a later article). DRINK 1/2 OF YOUR BODY WEIGHT IN OUNCES PER DAY AT LEAST TO CLEAR TOXINS!
3. Eat organic range-free non-cloned meats as much as possible, and add some protein sources like tofu.
4. If you do not eat fish, work to make yourself and children eat fish at least once a week (and best grown in the U.S. which has more controls on toxin exposure).
5. Try to buy certified organic vegetables and fruits, and avoid the ones I wrote about in my recent blog on pesticides in foods. We just started ordering from
www.farmfreshdelivery.com, so I will let you know how this goes (many of my patients love this).
ERIC'S TIPS
Fitness Tips
By
Eric Walden
Cut 500 Calories a Day
By Health Magazine Dec 2009
Dance- 2 hours of dancing burns 500 calories
Get Enough Sleep- lack of sleep can make you snack
Don’t eat in front of the TV. Trade TV time for a walk
Get in tune with your stomach- listen when it tells you it’s full
Limit Dinner Guest- More people = more food = more snacking
Fill up on less- cup of soup before dinner
Limit salad toppings- ie. Cheese, croutons, bacon bits
Don’t clean your plate- leave some on your plate
Use smaller plates
Serve and Sit- serve food in the kitchen and leave the food there
Make a swap- 1 cup plain fat free yogurt for heavy cream
Make mine a mini
Ditch that buttered movie popcorn
Count your chips and crackers- don’t eat from the bag
Step away from the nuts-
Skip the whip- or at least size it down
Kick the soda habit
Drink Sugar Free
Skinny up Cocktails
Eat less pasta or switch to a whole grain pasta
Knitting- at a rate of 100 an hour
Cleaning the house- up to 2 ½ hours
Check the number of servings in a dish
Beware the healthy-food trap
Build a lean burrito- order a naked one- no cheese, beef, black beans, and salsa
Think small at the ice cream shop
Think thin when it comes to pizza
Beware of hidden oils
Order spaghetti with meat sauce-instead of with Italian sausage
Nix that Smoothie a day
Help a friend move
Shovel snow
Ice skate
Tap your foot
Be the hostess with the mostest- grocery shop, cooking and setting the table
Go Window Shopping
Hit the pool
Stroll you way slim- push the stroller with the kids
Head to a county fair or amusement park
Play a game
Head for the nearest hill- sledding or just walking up and down it
Do an hour of Circuit Training
Tackle the garage- clear out that junk
Rake the leaves- minimum 1 hour 45 minutes
Kick-box
Go cross-country skiing
Exercise at home- 1 dvd with 20 minutes of yoga
Walk or run a 10K
Go hiking
Cut down your own Christmas Tree- hike out, cut it, and haul it back
Family & Faith
Marriage - "The Knot"
My church has just started a 5 sermon series on marriage called "The Knot". You can access the sermons free at
www.tpcc.org through an itunes link there. I strongly encourage you (and your spouse if you are married) to do this. You could make a marriage seminar/enhancement or date night out of this. I also recommend memorizing a few verses of the Song of Solomon for yourself and your spouse - to intentionally remind you how desirable your spouse is and you are!
Jake, our high school minister, stared the series April 11, talking about our marriage "knot", and how we need to continually work to strengthen it. God created us as His most importnt creations - for and to compliment each other. This last thing God created, Satan went right after. Sin separates us from God, and Man from Woman.
Last Sunday, our lead minister Aaron talked about the primary purpose of marriage - to make us more holy (not to always make us happy!). He talked about the initial hormone and chemical "falling" in love phase, but that staying and growing in love requires intentional work, but then is SO much better than the hormone/chemical start! Many people feel that actions follow feelings, but this is wrong. FEELING FOLLOW DELIBERATE AND INTENTIONAL ACTIONS. Aaron started to interpret God's wonderful and sensual blueprint of a healthy marriage in the Song of Solomon. Solomon and his beloved were intentional in their actions with each other. She knew how very powerful the words "I respect you!" are to a man. He knew how needed and powerful repeating to her how beautiful and special she is. We must continually pursue our spouses like we did when we first dated. We put a lot of time into our degrees/schooling and work. We need to put even more time in to our marriages - strengthening our "knots"!
Parenting Tips - from my womans's Bible study book, "Experiencing God", by Blackaby
Learn to ask your children God-centered questions. Instead of asking what they want to be when they grow up, ask "What do you sense God wants you to do?". When your children come to you with a question, ask them "What do you think God wants you to do?". If you just give them your opinion, you do not teach them to put their trust in God. As your children get older, regularly ask them "What has God taught you lately?". This provides many opportunities to discuss important issues with them... These are also great questions for you and your spouse to ask each other!
Hugs and prayers,
Dr. Lisa
