The Most Important Key in Maintaining Good Health

As I was taking my daily walk, I began thinking about some of the things that I wanted to share with my readers today.  It always amazes me with regard to complexity and wondrous ability the physical body has to just go through its day to day functioning.  I reflected back on all the studying that I have done over the last four or five years in the natural health field. I remembered different books that I've read, lessons that I've learned and people that I've learned from, but what has impressed me most is the incredible capacity that the human body has to simply live.  Our bodies have been programmed on many levels to stay healthy...in fact there was a quote that I read at one point which stated that if the body is allowed to do what it is created to do, you can't beat health off with a stick!  So if that is the case, then why do we get sick?

In all reality, our bodies are very complex chemical laboratories which have one purpose...to live and to do whatever is necessary in order to maintain homeostasis.  Our bodies have redundant back up systems that kick in when our primary systems are compromised; they regulate minute changes in hormone levels, changes in brain chemistry and digestion...however even with that said, when our bodies have to go to those back up systems, it is not without a price.

But as I thought back over so much of my life and how often I never thought about the impact that certain behaviors would have on my health, in the whole scheme of things, the primary tool that I realized we have been given to remain in good health is something that we don't think about very often.  It works behind the scenes and we hardly aware of its existence until it is overwhelmed....that tool is our IMMUNE SYSTEM.

Our immune system is as important to our good health and longevity as oil is to an automobile.  It is the system the good Lord gave us to fight off the many germs, bacteria and viruses that are in the environment we live in.  We don't think about it, but when we overload our bodies with toxins and negative emotions, don't give it the proper rest or nutrition, don't drink enough water or exercise enough, we begin to overload our immune system...creating an environment that it cannot overcome, resulting in disease and sickness.  If our immune systems are operating at peak efficiency, we can fend off a host of diseases and stay healthy.  Although you don't think that a public health organization would recognize something that the natural health community has been aware of for many years, I was amazed to read that even the Center for Disease Control has begun to link disease with the emotions related to stress. “Up to 90 percent of the doctor visits in the USA may be triggered by a stress-related illness.”  


If we maintain a healthy immune system, we can avoid many of the diseases that lead to difficulty later in life.  Diseases like cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease can be avoided if we do what we need to do to keep our immune system healthy.  So...you may be asking...what are the things that I can watch for to maintain my immune system? Here is a list of things that you can research.  I have provided the links to good articles and from there you can search in other places to increase your understanding of this subject.  This is not an exhaustive list, but it will give you a good start.   

• Stress -The body responds to stress by releasing stress hormones, such as epinephrine (also called adrenaline) and cortisol (also called hydrocortisone). The body produces these stress hormones to help a person react to a situation with more speed and strength. Stress hormones increase blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar levels. Small amounts of stress are believed to be beneficial, but chronic (persisting or progressing over a long period of time) high levels of stress are thought to be harmful (1).

• Image via WikipediaAnger - A study from Harvard School of Public Health studied hostility in men and found that those with higher rates of hostility not only had poorer pulmonary functioning (breathing problems), but experienced higher rates of decline as they aged.  

• Ruminating - Rumination is comprised of two separate variables - reflection and brooding.  The reflection part of rumination can actually be somewhat helpful - reflecting on a problem can lead you to a solution.  Also, reflecting on certain events can help you process strong emotions associated with the issue.  however, rumination in general, and brooding in particular, are associated with less proactive behavior and more of a negative mood.  

• Vitamin D - Recent medical research indicates human daily requirements for vitamin D may be up to 10 times more than what is currently recommended. Proper vitamin D supplementation gives one a much better chance of preventing many major illnesses such as, but not limited to: Heart Disease, Hypertension, Arthritis, Chronic Pain, Depression, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Obesity, Premenstrual Syndrome, Muscular Weakness, Fibromyalgia, Crohns Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Autoimmune Illness, and Cancer.

• Image via WikipediaNon Processed Foods - Many high quality, non-processed foods are both inexpensive and highly nutritious, while others do cost a bit more but can go a long way toward healing your body of chronic inflammation and boosting your immune system naturally, without resorting to either supplements or drugs.

• Chronic Inflammation:  According to Donnie Yance, clinical master herbalist and certified nutritionist, chronic conditions such as cancer and cardiovascular disease have a strong link with chronic inflammation, which promotes the production of free radicals
• Dietary Guidelines:  a good diet that consists of whole food, low toxicity and promotes a more alkaline pH level will help to avoid many of the obstacles that lead to ill health.  Eating smart and eating with the goal of good health in mind helps to minimize the obstacles many individuals build up over a lifetime of creating acidity in their bodies.

Scripture also has a lot to say about health and maintaining our bodies so that we can fulfill our life purpose.  Here are a few scriptures taken from the book of Proverbs:

•  Proverbs 14: 30                                                                                                                          A calm and undisturbed mind and heart are the life and health of the body, but envy, jealousy and wrath are as rottenness of the bones.

• Proverbs 13: 12                                                                                              Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.

• Proverbs 3: 7-8

          Be not wise in your own eyes; reverently fear and worship the Lord, and turn [entirely] away         from evil.  It shall be health to your nerves and sinews, and marrow and moistening to your bones.

Image via Wikipedia

• Proverbs 16: 24

          Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the mind and healing to the body.

• Proverbs 17: 22

          A happy heart is a good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries the bones.

I believe that the side of good health which can be gained from attitude and a hopeful, positive mental state can be summed up in this verse, which is one of my favorites:

 Image via Wikipedia

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

Hopefully this information has provided you a good start to an overall healthy lifestyle.  Often, making changes like this is easier said than done, but it is important to remember that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Small, consistent changes over time will result in reaching a goal of good health.  I wish you all the best as you begin and maintain your journey.

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• OMG, I've Been Diagnosed With..... (solutions4livingwell.blogspot.com)
• Understanding Grief and Repressed Emotion (solutions4livingwell.blogspot.com)
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Understanding Grief and Repressed Emotion

Image via Wikipedia

Grief is a series of many thoughts and emotions in response to a loss.  The extent the heart is connected to what is lost, affects how much grief is experienced.  For individuals who are unable to adjust to a loss and move on, it may be necessary to look deeper to see what might be contributing to the prolonged grief.  Unresolved past emotions may be triggered by a current loss.  In such cases, the resolution of the current grief may be inhibited by a previous decision to either not think or not feel.

In her book, “Molecules of Emotion”, Dr. Candace Pert presents evidence that the experience of emotions are the result of neuropeptides released from the hypothalamus in response to a thought.  Each emotion has a specific chemical makeup that flows throughout the body and is picked up by receptor sites in various organs.  Each emotion will effect a unique combination of organs in a specific way, and hopefully this will trigger a resolving thought.  Dr. Scott Walker has developed a process he calls Neural Emotional Technique which has helped to pinpoint where in the body and what organs are usually effected by each of the different emotions.  For purposes of this article, we will choose the three emotions we have talked about here; fear, grief and bitterness.  Dr. Walker says that fear is an emotion that effects the kidneys and grief effects the lungs.  Scripture leads us to believe that bitterness effects the bones.  

Two difficulties can occur in the processing of grief.  If one refuses to think about the loss, unresolved energy remains in the brain, resulting in mental distress.  Secondly, if the emotions are internalized, repressed, denied or transposed, rather than embraced and expressed, the chemistry of the emotion remains in the organ, and the natural mental processes do not continue to resolution.  Since each organ shares a neural pathway with a specific set of muscles, the unresolved emotion will continue to affect both the organ function and the related muscle groups resulting in predictable disorders and pains.  However, when the emotion is expressed, the thought processes continue toward resolution causing the release of new emotional chemistry that resolves and replaces the previous set.  If each successive new emotion is embraced and expressed, this process finally results in the flow of the vital feel-good, unifying chemicals of a state of joy that facilitate both our biology and behavior.    

A scriptural example of this connection between thought, emotion and body function is revealed in Psalm 73.  Asaph is envying the apparent ease of the wicked, (vs. 3-12).  In verses 13 and 14 he declares his judgment against his efforts for purity of heart and innocence.   However, he then realizes the foolishness of that judgment and turns to God for His perspective.  Verses 21-22 state, “When my heart was embittered, and I was pierced within, then I was senseless and ignorant ”.   In the Hebrew, “within” is the word “Kilyah” which means kidneys.  When he held onto bitterness in his heart, his kidneys were afflicted and his thinking was blocked.  The conclusion of the Psalm in combination with verses 18 through 20 present a godly resolution of his dilemma.  We can see this kind of connection when we look at individuals who have certain kinds of kidney failure.  As the kidneys are unable to do their job filtering toxins from the body, the toxicity builds and thought processes begin to erode.  In advanced stages people become delusional, they may lose their ability to comprehend time and their understanding of simple every day life declines.

Many children are told, “Big boys don’t cry”, or “You’re just too emotional”.  These events can result in inner determinations of the heart not to express emotion.  Therefore, as loss is experienced, a person may repress the grief and choose to just move on.  Also, the processing of overwhelming experiences, especially in childhood, can be so traumatic that the subconscious defensive systems of the mind will shut it down until a time when the person has the capacity to handle the emotion.  A person may also stop the processing of grief because they judge a particular thought or emotion within the process as unacceptable.  If any of these patterns of repression continue through life, the mental tension and physical chemistry of grief will build.  Each successive event can then trigger fresh waves of the chemistry of the unresolved previous events along with those appropriate to the present situation.  As a result, they may experience excessive, inappropriate stages, or prolonged grief along with physical symptoms of pain in their bodies.  This extreme and confusing response often leads to further repression. 

It may be helpful to reconsider other losses in the life and explore how grief was handled in those situations.  When a previous event is recalled, it should be meaningful information, but if a wave of emotional chemistry is released it indicates the emotions have not been allowed to resolve.  Emotions, when allowed to come forward can resolve when we cry, as we talk and share with another safe person or during the night when we experience REM sleep and begin to dream.  Dreams are a human being's way of working through the "baggage" of the day.  If we don't dream, we don't process as effectively.  

As suppressed emotion is faced, understand that for past experiences, that unresolved chemistry will feel exactly the same.  However the good news is that if you are feeling emotion that was suppressed during childhood, what felt overwhelming at the time, may not be as overwhelming as an adult.  Allow yourself to feel, work through the emotions and resolve the chemistry...that is the path to good emotional health.

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OMG, I've Been Diagnosed With.....

Responses to a diagnosis, whether it is a mental disorder or a physical one can range from great fear to anger to denial.  Most of the time we can't figure out why it has happened and aren't familiar with what it is.

Physical disorders can be very scary.  How many times in your lifetime have you gone to the doctor and heard you just needed an antibiotic, you had the flu or a rash or needed something to help with indigestion?  Then you have an annual physical, a blood test and the doctor calls back saying they need you to come in right away.  You hear you have diabetes or heart disease, high cholesterol or some other frightening disease that you never thought you would hear.  Your mind starts racing, you think, "This can't be happening to me!"  Then, once it sinks in, you start learning everything you can about it, believing that it will be relatively easy to overcome and you'll be back to normal in no time.  However after a short time we come to realize that overcoming 40 or 50 years of bad habits isn't so easy.  Then we get discouraged, then we realize that if we don't make the changes that our life is at stake.  Determination takes over and we begin again.  Sometimes we are successful in finding alternative treatments that work, that are more compatible with our value systems.  If we have caught the disease in time, it may be much more simple to turn around than if we have denied our symptoms and the disease has progressed.

Mental disorders are not the same, although many people are diagnosed with depression, bi-polar disorder or different forms of personality disorders every day, mental disorders come with more of a stigma.  Once the person is diagnosed, although perhaps feeling relieved to know exactly what is going on, they then have to deal with learning about it and how to manage it.  This kind of diagnosis is just as scary, but can come with a distinct weight and path that needs to be walked out individually.  There are support groups for some of the more well known mental issues such as depression and grief, but many of the more severe disorders don't lend themselves to support groups as well.  Usually by the time someone has been diagnosed they have alienated family and friends, finding themselves with little to no support.

As we age, the probability that we are going to hear something like this in our own lives becomes more real.  How will we deal with it?  That too is an individual response.  As much as possible, attitude plays a huge part in whether we are successful in facing a distressing diagnosis or not.  Joy, laughter, love and encouragement are just as essential in the path back to good health as medical science.  Although we may not realize it, unaddressed emotion can effect us mentally as well as physically.  It is my opinion that in the journey of life, the body is the last voice to speak when we continue to ignore our feelings and stuff our emotional responses to the problems we face in life.  Feelings that are ignored don't die, they come up when we are exposed to similar events, people, sights or smells.  If we continue to ignore them, they can develop into fears, social withdrawal, discouragement, depression or eating disorders.  If we let them go long enough, the body becomes endangered.

For example, given enough time, the body will begin to interpret a consistent emotion of anger as a wound.  The normal response to a wound is to release fibrin, the wound clots, scar tissue forms and the wound begins to heal.  So what happens when there is no wound? The body releases that fibrin and it continues to build up and circulate in the blood stream.  Clots can form and the person may be more susceptible to a stroke than s/he would have been if that emotion had been dealt with early on in life.  Additionally, anything we do to turn the body more acidic will leave us more vulnerable to disease.

Cover of Bob Hope

So what can we do?  I don't know about you, but in my opinion laughter and happiness is an easy way to address a part of good self care.  I am old enough to remember some of the comedians of early television like George Burns, Sid Caesar, Bob Hope and others and have observed that these individuals lived well into their 90s, in relatively good health.  Why?  I would suggest that it is because they lived a life where they incorporated humor.  They saw the funny side of life and they were able to laugh at themselves.  If we look into scripture, we find verses that confirm it as well..."a merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones".

Human beings are very complex so understand I am not suggesting that this is the only way to stay healthy.  However, in the long term, it does have its benefits.  My encouragement to you would be to deal with your emotional baggage as soon as possible.  Forgive where you need to, try to find the humor in things and enjoy the life that you have been given.

Kriss Mitchell is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Post Falls, Idaho.  For more information, please visit www.livingwellcc.com or supplements4livingwell.com