Tag: Immune System

Dr. Mercola and Dr. Chutkan on Gut Health

Source: Mercola.com
Dr. Mercola | Dr. Chutkan
January 24, 2017

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/cur… In this video, Dr. Joseph Mercola, founder of Mercola.com, and Dr. Robynne Chutkan, author of the book, “The Microbiome Solution: A Radical New Way to Heal Your Body From the Inside Out,” talk about the importance of gut health to overall health.

6 Immune Building Winter Drinks

Source: Guildbrook Farm | Simple Sustainable Living
January 11, 2017

Beating colds and the flu start with building a strong immune system. Here are 6 immune building winter drinks that I drink all winter long and some reasons that make them good for you.

6 Healthy Winter Immune Building Drinks:
1) Black Tea and Ginger
2) Hot Lemon
3) Ceylon Cinnamon and Apple
4) Black Strap Molasses (and spices)
5) Turmeric, Honey and Milk
6) Dandy Blend Coffee Substitute

Kal Stevia on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2j5IHzi
Organic Ceylon on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2jBl4zk
Aunt Patty’s Blackstrap Molasses on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2idU8Aq
Organic Turmeric on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ie7UCZ
Dandy Blend Herbal Beverage on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2gX057g
Dandy Blend Sample Link: http://www.dandyblend.com/Dandy-Blend…

If you have some tips or a video on natural remedy drinks, please be sure to leave a comment or link below. We encourage community and want to provide access to a variety of information so viewers can make their own informed decisions about the topics we cover.

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Thanks for watching!

Jaime and Jeremy

How Meditation Can Help Students Master Life

Image is courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons by Alec Couros
Source: Edudemic.com
Dustin Le
June 16, 2015

Some of the most successful people in the world meditate, including Josh Waitzkin, the only person to have won a championship in every category of chess. In addition, he is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and a national champion in Tai Chi. He attributes much of his success to the focus gained from the practice of meditation through various forms of meditation.

Meditation is a practice that has a long history dating back to Hindu traditions of Ancient India. There was always something a bit mystical or mysterious about meditation, but as science has shown in recent years, it is not as “out there” as many think. This article goes into the benefits of meditation and the different methods of meditation that students can use in order to excel in school, perform at a high level in sports and extracurricular activities, and have more emotional control over oneself.

Five Benefits of Meditation

1. Increased Focus

Although it is not understood why, studies have shown that meditation increases the ability to focus for longer sustained periods of time. This benefits students in many ways, including being able to pay attention in class longer, thus improving the chances of material retention. In addition, students who meditate have a higher rate of success in taking quizzes and exams.

Better focus also benefits students outside the classroom — specifically, in extracurricular activities such as football, drama, band, basketball, baseball, or choir. The act of visualization is a form of meditation that many professional athletes use in order to perform at the highest level. Phil Jackson, coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, teaches his players to use Zen meditation to improve their game. He has 11 championship rings, the most in NBA history. Pete Carroll, NFL Superbowl champion coach of the Seattle Seahawks and former USC Trojans coach, also uses meditation techniques at practice. Musician Paul McCartney meditates as well. And as we covered in our recent article on Daily Meditation, even some schools are beginning to integrate meditation into their daily curriculum.

2. Improved Memory

A study in the Harvard Gazette reports that after an 8-week meditation study in which participants meditated for 27 minutes each day, MRI’s (Magnetic Resonance Images) showed an increase in grey matter in the hippocampus region of the brain that is responsible for learning and memory.

An enhanced memory allows students to retain more information, which of course, lends itself to better test scores. But this is not the extent of the benefits of a better memory. One benefit is remembering people’s names that you have just met. As Dale Carnegie wrote in his book, How To Win Friends & Influence People, “A person’s name is to that person, the sweetest, most important sound in any language.” The simple act of remembering another person’s name makes it easier to converse and create relationships. This is a plus for both personal and career lives.

In addition, a good memory means an increased ability to juggle many different ideas and thoughts at once. This is a skill that is useful in carrying thought-provoking, intelligent, and interesting conversations. Furthermore, it is a skill that comes in handy in the workplace and in the world in general, where information is king.

3. Reduced Anxiety and Stress

According to this article from the National Institute of Mental Health, stress can cause digestive issues, headaches, insomnia, depression, and anger, among other symptoms. Under conditions of chronic stress, people may suffer from more viral infections like the flu.

Tragedies, traumatic events, and even minor failures can cause an onset of stress that seems neverending. This is especially true in teenagers and college students, who go through emotional rollercoasters due to hormonal changes and stress-inducing events such as moving away to college or breaking up with a significant other.

Meditation is one way to confront emotions and deal with these stressful events in a healthy way. Vyda Bielkus of Mind Body Green writes about how yoga can be a great form of meditation for gettingover a breakup. In contrast, still meditations like transcendental meditation are great for calming the mind and body.

4. Reduced Fatigue

A study was done at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine that showed that brief meditation sessions (within 4 days) reduced fatigue and increased attention. Jerry Seinfeld is a huge advocate of meditation and its affects on his energy level throughout the day. In his own words, “Sleep is hit and miss. TM [transcendental meditation] is not.”

College is an interesting time in life where students sleep irregularly, consume foods and liquids that are less than healthy for the body, and give up on the healthy exercising habits they indulged in while attending high school. These are all hesee major causes of fatigue.  In addition to changing those three lifestyle habits, meditation can help reduce the fatigue felt by the significant life event of going away to school and being bombarded with incredible workloads.

5. Immunity Boost

With a job, five classes, a relationship, and social activities, nobody has time to get sick. Unfortunately, with the lifestyles that many students have, illness is something that is difficult to avoid.

Exercise, a healthy diet, and a regular sleeping schedule are all important to sustain a healthy way of life. Additionally, research from the National Library of Health shows that even a short-term meditation training program can provide significant measurable changes in the immune system of participants.

How to Meditate: A Quick Primer

There are many forms of meditation in the world, and every person’s approach can vary based on their personal preferences. We will go into three of the most common forms of meditation.

  1. Mindfulness is a form of meditation in which the participant observes sensations in the body. This is a great way to transition students from one lesson to another by helping them refocus and recharge mentally. To practice mindfulness, have your get students into a comfortable position, whether that is laying down, sitting, or somewhere between. Have your students close their eyes and observe how different areas of their bodies feel. Bring their attention to how their lungs inflate and deflate with each breath without necessarily changing the breathing pattern. Then have them move their attention to their feet and notice the pressure on them and whether they are cold or hot. Do this for every single part of the body. This form of meditation helps people become more aware of their mind and body, as well as of their thoughts.
  2. Transcendental Meditation is a very popular form of meditation in which minute focus is key. In addition to starting off class in a calming manner, using this form of meditation is a great way to recharge your students after lunch, when food coma starts hitting. To do TM, have your students sit up with their backs straight in the lotus position and close their eyes. A mantra, which is considered by many to be a sacred word that is gifted to meditators, is repeated over and over for 20 minutes. TM is usually done twice a day – once upon waking and again at around midday.
  3. Moving Meditation is a form of meditation that is not meditation in the traditional sense of the word, where participants sit quietly in the lotus position with the eyes closed. Moving meditation includes any physical activity that puts one in a trance-like state. This can be a martial art like Tai Chi, a focus-intensive activity like mountain climbing, or a game like chess. All of these activities require an intense level of focus that some call “the zone” or “flow”. This too is a great form of meditation and can be a great way for students to energize and refresh their minds and bodies while creating a very acute sense of focus.

Conclusion

In order to fully optimize health by reducing stress and increasing cognition performance, it is important for students to embrace a healthy diet, exercise, a regular sleep schedule, and meditation. While it has not been in the conversation until very recently, meditation is just one piece in the overall puzzle of health.

Read More At: Edudemic.com

Why Social Isolation Leads to Inflammation

Image result for social isolation
Source: GreenMedInfo.com
Dr. Kelly Brogan M.D.
October 17, 2016

We are wired for community. If we disconnect, our bodies will call us back to the sense of human connection that we are wired for using the unexpected language of inflammation.

I love dancing, so I wasn’t too weirded out when we were asked, in one of my first kundalini classes to dance like no one was watching to some loud bhangra music. What really tweaked me (and likely most newbies in the class) was when the teacher turned the music down and asked us to take a stranger’s hands, face them, and stand close. She asked us to close our eyes and just breathe with this person. Then we were to open them and look into their eyes. Simply look, eyes open, into theirs. After about 30 seconds of panicked awkwardness, something opened and tears began to flow. They flowed from a chamber of the heart that is closed when we live as automatons separated from ourselves and each other. It takes less than two minutes to be reminded that this connection is missing.

The Chronic Hurt: The Community Wound

The “community wound” is a deep one for me. I remember a therapist once telling me, “you know what your problem is…you don’t let anyone in your life feel needed by you.” I was convicted by this because it was true. Fiercely independent, I made my mission self-sufficiency from an early age. Asking for advice, guidance, support, or counsel was a form of weakness, for “others” to indulge, and for me to remain squarely on the dispensing end of. I didn’t know that I was protecting a need so deep and so intense that to even expose it to the light of day would necessitate I come into contact with a deep wellspring of unmet needs and associated grief. Francis Weller, an expert on the matter, pierced my knowing heart when he wrote, “…when these things are finally granted to us, a wave of recognition rises that we have lived without this love, this acknowledgment, and the support of this village all of our lives.”

These days, I relish the opportunity to bring people together. Introducing friends, creating bigger webs, organizing alliances, and marinating in the womb-like energy of kundalini festivals.

As someone who has even identified as a loner, it shocks me that I can be in a room full of like-minded people and find myself on the verge of tears, unrelated to anything specific, for hours on end. Just simply being in that energy.

…when an individual’s particular kind of soulfulness, which is both an instinctual and a spiritual identity, is surrounded by psychic acknowledgement and acceptance, that person feels life and power as never before. – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

It’s no coincidence that A Mind of Your Own reached NY Times Bestseller status because of grassroots energy. Because of a fabric of those who love the truth. This for-the-people-by-the-people success was a part of my healing as much as an opportunity for others to reclaim their health journey.

The Reminder That It’s Missing: Addiction and Hopelessness

We are social animals, and our health and wellness depend on it. We used to wake up to dozens of eyes. Now in our modular homes and digitized worlds, we no longer feel that our tribe is holding us. In fact, missing, often, is the sense that anything is missing. But it is, and our bodyminds know it. According to Jane Leidloff, author of the Continuum Concept, our unmet primal needs may manifest as addiction-like behaviors as we seek to medicate deficiencies like that of the tribe.

In the 70s, Bruce Alexander conducted the famous Rat Park experiments (thanks to Will Hall for sharing this vital science with me!) where he rips the foundation out from under the drug war, the chemical addiction model, and the notion of the addict as mentally and physically disordered. His elegant experiments play on the presumption that rats in an isolated cage with one water and one cocaine dispenser go onto addict and eventually kill themselves. This seemingly demonstrates that chemical nature of the addictive process.

He then went on to conduct subsequent experiments in a “rat park” where the rats had a social network, space, and an enriching environment, in which they no longer chose to consume the cocaine and would even detox themselves voluntarily if they entered the space previously addicted. Watch a short sketch of the data here!

What this tells us is that, even in animals, community is the prevention and the treatment for self-abuse. Many argue this is why and how 12 Step programs enjoy the persistent success that they do. They offer community.

Inflammation and how it calls us back

If addiction and associated depression are a sign of what we are missing on a social level, is this all in the mind? Does the body participate in a meaningful way? Do they both work as one?

An important review on the subject by Eisenberger et al says yes: our behavior impacts our immune system and our immune system guides our behavior and inflammation is the common link. Inflammation has many sources, and evidence suggests that perceived stress, intestinal imbalance, medication exposures, and nutrient deficiencies can all contribute to an uptick in inflammatory messengers. In today’s stimulatory soup, inflammation traffics in the body as a result of everything from infection to that email you’re still obsessing about (non-infection-related inflammation is called “sterile” inflammation) and it has become a chronic phenomenon. In this sense, depression may be the final common pathway for the experience of mismatch with lifestyle – body, mind, and spirit.

What if we need each other to recover?

Are you in the market for a guru? So many of us are looking for that one person who will tell us just what to do and how to do it. Who will hold out that hand with the magic pill. My friend, James Maskell, invoked Thich Nhat Hanh’s genius when he reminded us that community is the guru of the future. By this, he means that the unique alchemy of our togetherness will ultimately serve to empower, heal, and guide us. The guru is not the expert, and it may not even simply be “within”. The guru is the web, the union, the sum greater than the parts. And it may be the case that we cannot heal fully without this sense of connectedness.

It is through this lens that we need to explore the latest theories on depression. Much of the new literature on depression (since we left the serotonin theory behind) has focused on “sickness syndrome” as a model of depression, or the idea that the depressed individual is inflamed and part of the behaviors that come with that are social withdrawal in order to limit contagion and recover. But what if we need each other to recover?Eisenberger reviews a literature that suggests that inflammation in humans actually drives pro-social behavior in many circumstances, in addition to a heightened sensitivity to positive social cues to help identify “allies”. They write:

“To the extent that sensitivity to certain types of social rewards is preserved in inflammatory-related depression, this hypothesis suggests a spared island of motivational significance for these individuals.” 

In other words, you can be flat out on the couch, and even suicidal, but there is a part of your behavioral sensing mechanism that is still asking for and receptive to human connection.

They also discuss the literature that suggests that social isolation and rejection lead to inflammation. In this way, an awareness of these feelings of social disconnection may actually be the missing link to depression (not everyone with inflammation gets depressed), ultimately driving a type of enhanced responsiveness to “friendly connection” to bring the depressed person back to a place of connectedness. Perhaps this is why and how a trusting therapeutic relationship with a healer carries significant weight in resolving chronic disease.

They conclude with compelling nuance:

Social behavior influences the immune system – Social isolation leads to inflammation (with some groups 2.5 times more likely to have elevated CRP levels!) and specific effects on the immune system. I explore this in my peer-reviewed, indexed paper on the role of mental health in vaccine response. Additionally, a recent paper on “dyadic coping” demonstrated that couples who have high self-reported communication have less reactive immune systems to interpersonal stress.

The immune system influences social behavior – The immune system directs social behavior leading to specific interpersonal sensitivities, motives, and drives. Baseline inflammation renders people (especially women) more sensitive to further inflammatory responses to social stress. So, once sensitized, chronic inflammation leads to a louder call to respond to positive social cues.

The Magic Ingredient: The Tribe

This paper is powerful evidence for the role of perceived social safety and connectedness in healing inflammation. While I advocate for diet as the portal to wellness, I also acknowledge that there are some who may archetypally need to lead with community. In fact, in our online course, Vital Mind Reset, participants claim that community may be the most critical element of the healing journeys they report over the 44 days. The online group is an incredibly powerful healing space, and I am inspired, daily, by the exchanges.

Most surprising in VMR to date posting assignment. It doesn’t have to do with diet, or meditation, or yoga, combined or separately. Instead, it is the individuals I’ve “met” and the community we’ve become. All good – which when I think about it, isn’t surprising at all.

Read More At: GreenMedInfo.com
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© [October 17, 2016] GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here http://www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter.
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drbroganDr. Brogan is boarded in Psychiatry/Psychosomatic Medicine/Reproductive Psychiatry and Integrative Holistic Medicine, and practices Functional Medicine, a root-cause approach to illness as a manifestation of multiple-interrelated systems. After studying Cognitive Neuroscience at M.I.T., and receiving her M.D. from Cornell University, she completed her residency and fellowship at Bellevue/NYU. She is one of the nation’s only physicians with perinatal psychiatric training who takes a holistic evidence-based approach in the care of patients with a focus on environmental medicine and nutrition. She is also a mom of two, and an active supporter of women’s birth experience. She is the Medical Director for Fearless Parent, and an advisory board member for GreenMedInfo.com. Visit her website.

Are These Vaccines Damaging Your Immune System?

Source: iHealthTube.com
Dr. Stephanie Seneff
September 13, 2016

Are some vaccines that are supposed to keep you healthy really damaging your immune system? Dr. Stephanie Seneff discusses two popular vaccines and what they have in common in terms of an ingredient that is known to be a neurotoxin. Find out what these vaccines might really be doing. Are these vaccines damaging your immune system?

 

Leaky Gut Syndrome

Source: DoctorSaputo
Dr. Saputo
August 22, 2016

Leaky gut syndrome is well described and studied in the mainstream medical literature, but mainstream GI doctors have ignored it. The physiology, pathology, and immune aspects of this condition are explained. It is involved with a wide range of autoimmune conditions and treatment is generally fairly effective and affordable.

Autoimmunity Overview

Source: DoctorSaputo
August 15, 2016

There is an epidemic of autoimmune diseases that include hay fever, asthma, diabetes, collagen vascular diseases, and hypothyroidism. The causes of this epidemic range from heavy metal toxicity to drugs and environmental toxins. Our immune system attacks our tissues and we use drugs to suppress our immune system. There are other options for treatment that relate to GI immunity (leaky gut syndrome), lowering the antigenic load (discussed), preserving a high antioxidant load, balancing pH, and supporting a healthy lifestyle.

CDC Admits Most People Self-Immunize Against Zika Virus; No Vaccine Required

Zika
Source: NaturalNews.com
Ethan A. Huff
August 10, 2016

From the way the news media keeps harping on about the Zika virus, one would think that it’s right up there with the plague in terms of its threat to humanity. But truth be told, Zika is typically no more serious than a mild fever, and those who contract the virus end up developing natural immunity to it for the rest of their lives.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains on its website that the vast majority of people who contract Zika don’t ever show symptoms at all. Among those who do, the symptoms are generally mild, the most common among them being a small rash, red eyes (conjunctivitis), joint and muscle pain, mild fever and headaches.

These symptoms can last for up to a week, but generally aren’t serious enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. And very few people, if any, actually die from Zika, despite all the fear-mongering from public health officials and vaccine hawks pushing experimental jabs on pregnant women.

Though Zika infection is believed to cause birth defects such as microcephaly and even Guillain-Barre syndrome, a type of nervous system infection, the risk of one developing these conditions is exceptionally low. Meanwhile, the unknown risks of experimental DNA vaccines, the latest “solution” to Zika’s spread, are potentially worse than the virus itself.

The CDC’s advice if you contract Zika? Firstly, don’t panic, because Zika isn’t as nefarious as we’ve all been led to believe. Just be sure to rest, drink plenty of clean water and use pain management interventions – preferably non-drug options – if necessary.

Zika is so unassuming, generally speaking, that people who contract it often mistake it for something else equally mild in nature. The CDC admits that Zika symptoms are “similar to those of many other diseases,” which is why “many cases [of Zika] may not have been recognized.”

You’re supposed to be scared of Zika so that you’ll buy into getting a Zika vaccine

So why, all of a sudden, are we seeing all this panic over Zika? Why is the U.S. military actively testing mosquitoes all around the world, with some factions now calling for all female service personnel to be moved out of countries where Zika is present?

The answer seems to lie in all the potential profits to be made from a Zika vaccine, and not necessarily in a need to protect the public. Again, Zika is relatively mild in most cases, and once a person gets over it they earn lifelong protection from the virus. In other words, Zika is its own vaccine.

But, just as the government has repeatedly tried to do with Ebola, H1N1, avian flu and other diseases that it claimed “pandemic” status for that weren’t nearly as threatening as they were made out to be, it’s about selling fear over Zika in order to sell future vaccines for Zika.

In Florida, for instance, some families are investing hundreds of dollars in anti-mosquito equipment to keep Zika away from their homes. Pregnant women in particular, are, as one woman put it, filled with “stress and concern” over possibly contracting Zika.

Zika testing is also being offered for free to all pregnant women throughout Florida – this the result of an “explosion of demand” by Floridians panicked over Zika. This, folks, is how government agencies set the stage for getting people to line up, roll up their sleeves and practically beg for a vaccine injection to make everything better.

Read More At: NaturalNews.com

Sources for this article include:

CDC.gov

MiamiHerald.com