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“The Cholesterol Myths” — A Book Review

My Chorale PicFrom my Health Light Newsletter — Rethinking Healthcare in the New Paradigm — of December, 2006. Enjoy!

A BOOK REVIEW

The Cholesterol Myths — Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease

by Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD

Without question, the author did his homework  before writing this layman-friendly book. The bottom line: all the testing and studies done on cholesterol and heart health are flawed by bad science, bias and manipulation. Cholesterol has absolutely nothing to do with coronary heart disease (CHD). It seems it is a mere “innocent bystander” and that the real cause of cardiovascular disease is battered and worn out arteries the repair of which the body uses fat to patch up breaches in their walls, to reinforce them by making them thicker. What causes the arteries to wear out? Toxins and other free-radicals circulating through them, the primary offenders being insulin from high carbohydrate consumption and food allergies.

Homocystine and C-Reactive Protein are the more accurate markers for CHD. Their presence in the blood stream indicates inflammation caused by free-radical assault to the inner lining of the blood arteries and consequent impairment of blood supply to the heart, as well as other vital organs.

Myths Dr. Ravnskov proved to be false:

Myth I: High-fat foods cause heart disease.

Myth 2: High cholesterol causes heart disease.

Myth 3: High-fat foods raise cholesterol.

Myth 4: Cholesterol blocks arteries.

Myth 5. Animal studies prove the diet-heart idea [that heart disease is related to diet].

Myth 6: Lowering your cholesterol will lengthen your life.

Myth 7: Polyunsaturated oils are good for you.

Myth 8: The cholesterol campaign is based on good science.

Myth 9: All scientists support the diet-heart idea.

I would encourage anyone reading this who is on Statin drugs, or even considering taking them, to READ THIS BOOK! There are doctors who will not see you if you think for yourself and refuse to take their medicine. If you can’t educate your doctor, then you may need to find one who is more open.

Here are some facts substantiated in this book that may guide you in making important choices in the care of your cardiovascular system.

  1. Cholesterol is a substance vital to the cells of your body. Your Iiver produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production increases when you eat on Iy small amounts of cholesterol and decreases when you eat large amounts.
  2. The “prudent” diet, low in saturated fat and cholesterol, cannot lower your cholesterol more than a small percentage.
  3. The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs. Many of the cholesterol-lowering drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life.
  4. The new cholesterol-lowering drugs, called Statins, do lower heart disease mortality, but this is because of effects other than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer, at least in rodents.
  5. You may become aggressive or suicidal if you lower your cholesterol too much.
  6. Polyunsaturated fatty acids [such as margarine and hydrogenated oils], those which are claimed to prevent heart attacks, stimulate infections and cancer in rats. If you eat too much polyunsaturated oil you will age faster than normal. You will see this on the outside as wrinkled skin. You can’t see the effects of premature aging on the inside of your body, but you will certainly feel them. Too much polyunsaturated oil may provoke atherosclerosis.
  7. People whose blood cholesterol is low develop just as many plaques in their blood vessels as people whose cholesterol is high.
  8. More than thirty studies of more then 150,000 individuals have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven’t eaten more saturated fat or less polyunsaturated oil than other people.
  9. Older women with high cholesterol live longer than those with low cholesterol.
  10. Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but proponents of the diet-heart hypothesis never tell them to the public.
  11. The diet-heart idea and the cholesterol campaign create immense prosperity for researchers, doctors, drug producers and the food industry.
  12. The Chance of not dying from a heart attack over four to six years for a patient with CHD and high cholesterol is about 92 percent without treatment, and increases slightly to 95 percent with Statin treatment.

I like this conclusion by the author:

“In conclusion, the new guidelines may possibly prevent cardiovascular death in a small minority of patients with cardiovascular disease. But at the same time they may increase mortality from other diseases, transform healthy individuals into unhappy hypochondriacs obsessed with the chemical composition of their food and their blood, reduce the income of ranchers and dairy farmers, undermine the art of cuisine, destroy the joy of eating, and divert health care money from the sick and the poor to the rich and the healthy. The only winners are the drug companies and imitation food industry, and the researchers that they support.”

Most people I have talked with are intimidated into drug therapy by their physician. Here’s what Dr. Pinckney, former co-editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, had to say about that:

“Your fear of dying … may well have made you a victim of the cholesterol controversy. For, if you have come to believe that you can ward off death from heart disease by altering the amount of cholesterol in your blood, whether by diet or by drugs, you are following a regime that still has no basis in fact. Rather, you as a consumer have been taken in by certain commercial interests and health groups who are more interested in your money than in your life .”

American experimental psychologist Dr. Russell Smith studied the diet-cholesterol-heart issue with extreme thoroughness and concluded:

“The current campaign to convince every American to change his or her diet and, in many cases, to initiate drug ‘therapy’ for life is based on fabrications, erroneous interpretations and/or gross exaggerations of findings and, very importantly, the ignoring of massive amounts of unsupportive data . . . it does not seem possible that objective scientists without vested interests could ever interpret the literature as supportive ….”

Dr. Stehbens of the Department of Pathology at Wellington School of Medicine, and director of the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in Wellington, New Zealand, after doing his own extensive research and review of the literature, says:

“The perpetuation of the cholesterol myth and the alleged preventive measures are doing the dairy and meat industries of this and other countries much harm quite apart from their potential to endanger optimum nutrition levels and t he health of the populace at large . . . .  It is essential to adhere to hard scientific facts and logic. Scientific evidence for the role of dietary fat and hypercholesterolemia in the causation of atherosclerosis is seriously lacking. . . .  The lipid hypothesis has enjoyed undeserved longevity and respectability. Readers should be aware of the unscientific nature of claims used to support it and see it as little more than a pernicious bum steer.”

The author continues:

“Dr. Russell Smith criticizes a large number of leading scientists from National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the American Heart Association, which he calls the ‘alliance.’ He considers their work “incompetent and sloppy …. The fraud is so blatant and so pervasive that it was considered necessary to take some liberties with the usual staid rhetoric of a scientific review and inject stronger language to emphasize the problem.'”

Noted Professor George Mann, now retired from teaching medicine and biochemistry at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, presented his arguments against the diet-heart idea as far back as 1977 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Ravnskov writes:

“Eight years later, when the cholesterol education campaign was getting into gear, Professor Mann summarized his criticism of the diet-heart idea in Nutrition Today. The diet-heart idea is the greatest scientific deception of our times, he said. Mann is especially critical of the cholesterol-lowering trials. Never in the history of science have so many costly experiments failed so consistently, he declared . . . .  People who are faced with the many distorted facts about diet, cholesterol and heart disease often ask me why almost all scientists unquestioningly accept the diet-heart idea. And you may have asked the same question after reading this book. Here is Professor Mann’s comment: “to loose their soft money funding, the academicians who should speak up and stop this wasteful anti-science are strangely quiet. Their silence has delayed a solution for coronary heart disease by a generation’. Professor Mann offers a little glimpse of hope at the end of his article in Nutrition Today:

‘Those who manipulate data do not appreciate that understanding the nature of things cannot be permanently distorted-the true explanation cannot be permanently ignored. Inexorably, truth is revealed and deception is exposed…. In due time truth will come out. This is the relieving grace in this sorry sequence ….'”

I have done my part to apprise my readers of this deception and to reveal the truth as I have discerned it in order to provide information that may help my readers in making intelligent and informed choices in their healthcare. [Portions of this report
were italicized by the author for emphasis.]

Reference: Dr. Ravnskov’s book was published in Sweden in 1991 and in Finland a year later. To order his book ask for ISBN 0-9670897-0-0.

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for inspiring articles. The Current theme is “Human Relations — Man-Woman Equality”

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“Osteoporosis and Hormones: The Whole Story”

My Chorale Pic

Laying down my pen

I am laying down my pen after twenty-seven years publishing Health-Light Newsletter.  I’ve left quite a legacy of print in my fifty-years of service as a health care provider and healer. I will continue posting articles from previous issues. I hope you will enjoy this one. Thank you for following me and sharing my blog articles with others. I bid you adieu with best wishes for your health and happiness.

The following article is from the Summer-Fall 2002 issue of Health Light. I first published it in my monthly column entitled “Your Body Knows Best” in the Lake Charles American Press.  I think you will find it quite informative. Enjoy!

Osteoporosis and Hormones: The Whole Story

In light of recent developments in medicine relative to hormone replacement therapy, exposing further the limitations of the medical model of health care, I thought it would be timely to write a series of articles exploring the alternative health care model and what it has to offer in this troubled area of hormonal balance and osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis is a condition of bone loss orchestrated by the body’s innate wisdom which has determined that some of the calcium in bones is needed elsewhere in the body, primarily to buffer rising acid in body fluids. The pH (potential of Hydrogen) of body fluids, in which all cells live, ideally is 7.2, which is practically neutral and slightly alkaline.

One of the largest determining factors of body fluid pH is the residue of digestion. Proteins and grains leave an acid-ash residue, because they require hydrochloric acid to digest them. Fruits and vegetables, for the most part, leave an alkaline-ash residue. (A chart is available at the center.)

Acid-ash has to be neutralized in the duodenum before it can be sent through the intestines. For this process, bile from the liver, stored in the gall bladder, and copious amounts of alkaline juices from the pancreas, are secreted into the duodenum as the stomach contents are emptied into it to emulsify the fats and neutralize the digestive acids.

The pancreas and liver make their alkaline juices from alkalizing minerals, such as sodium, which are stored in the body. These come from vegetables rich in organic minerals, which commercially-grown vegetables sorely lack. They are quickly used up keeping body fluids neutral for cell comfort and optimal function.

These sodium reserves become depleted in two ways: by over-consumption of proteins and grains and under-consumption of mineral-rich vegetation. When this reserve runs out, the body, in its wisdom, turns to the fluids and starts recycling sodium, such as is found in bile. When too much sodium is pulled out, causing calcium to precipitate out of solution and crystalize (contributing to stone formation), the body turns to the bones and starts re-absorbing calcium, the next mineral in line for neutralizing acids. The body’s time clock and survival mechanism kicks in and basically says, ”I can live with stones and osteoporosis, but I can’t live with my cells dying in these acidulous fluids.” Emergency measures are then taken in order to sustain and prolong life, the basic drive in all living organisms.

In his article on the subject in the July 4th issue of the American Press, syndicated medical columnist, Dr. Allen Douma recommends more calcium and protein in the diet. New evidence warrants caution in this area so that we do not consume too much acid-ash food and we balance that with lots of organically grown dark-green leafy and subsoil vegetables, such as lettuce, celery, spinach, radishes
and carrots, which are high in alkalizing minerals. Supplementation with organic minerals and barley green is an excellent safeguard measure as well.

Caution must also be taken to avoid “elemental” or inorganic calcium and other minerals (carbonates) which cannot be absorbed into the body. It’s only via the vegetable kingdom that we can receive the elements of the mineral kingdom. The vegetables chelate and arrange them in proportions we can use.

Milk is a high-protein food that takes sodium and calcium out of the body to buffer the acid it produces during digestion. All the calcium of a glass of milk is used up in this process, leaving not a single milligram for your bones.

For supplementation, calcium lactate or citrate can be safely taken. Cal-Ma-Plus, by Standard Process, what I use, is by far the best choice formula for increasing calcium levels in the bones.

Understanding Hormones and Drugs

With all the hoopla in the news lately about hormone replacement therapy (HRT), it might do us all well to review the process by which bone is replaced in the body. Over a seven-year cycle, every bone is replaced in your body cell by cell. Just how this happens is a story worth telling.

Bone replacement is done by osteoblasts, cells that generate bone tissue. Bone resorption is done by osteoclasts, which break out old bone tissue, thus making room for new. Both are essential to healthy bones. For example, if the old bone is not broken out, new bone cannot be brought in to replace it. The result is bone collapse from within, especially the long bones and spinal segments.

The hormone estrogen activates osteoblasts to produce new bone, just as it activates new tissue growth throughout the body. Progesterone, its partner, activates osteoclasts to break out old bone and stops the proliferation of issues. This is how estrogen is responsible for the production of neoplasm which forms tumors, and how progesterone helps stop and reverse tumor growth.

According to the literature that comes with them, Fosamax (alendronate) and Actonel (risedronate), two popular drugs given to “fight” osteoporosis, do so by inhibiting progesterone from activating osteoclasts. Old bone does not get taken out. New bone cells lay down on top of this chemical, now coating the bones, and form a veneer of calcium on the surface of the bones. This looks good on your x-rays and bone-density tests but is very misleading, because underneath this veneer is old bone now not being replaced by new. The result is hollow bones that will crumble under stress due to lack of internal structure and substance. The spinal segments are often the first to go in these cases where drug therapy is used. Women on Fosamax are known to have stress fractures in the spine.

This is one of many classic examples of the failure of the medical model of health care to honor the innate wisdom of the body. (For documented research on how medical prescriptions of estrogen without progesterone gave American women their breast cancer, read Dr John Lee’s book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You about Menopause.)

Dr. Lee, a medical physician, is doing the apologies for the rest of his profession and is busy reversing breast cancer in thousands of women, mainly by applying progesterone cream. Call the office for his video, which every woman should view, and for more details on how you can replace your HRT with natural hormonal support using herbs and nutritional therapy.

Estrogen and progesterone are made elsewhere in the body than the ovaries. Natural estrogen and progesterone can also be administered through the skin by a cream to control hot flashes. Natural Woman is the formula we use, recommended by Dr.
John Lee ($25 for a month’s supply).

Bone Production

We now know which came first . . . the chicken!  Why? Because only the chicken can make the calcium that forms the eggshell. Listen up. Chickens that lay a calcium rich egg every day, eat grains and seeds that contain very little calcium. Yet the droppings of chickens and other bird species contain substantial amounts of calcium. But why?!

A cow produces 1-3 gallons of calcium rich milk every day, yet the cow’s diet is low in calcium. Grasses are approximately .001 % calcium. But how?!

The truth of the matter is that animals and birds naturally produce up to 20 times more calcium than they ingest If a calcium block or calcium pellets are put out for animals and birds, they will not eat it Why not?!

Conditions such as osteoporosis, PMS, hypertension, depression and many others are, in part, a result of calcium deficiency. Why don’t cows and chickens have these diseases?!

Because they eat grass and whole grains, which are surprisingly low in calcium but very high in silica and other enzyme producing micro-elements. They produce the calcium they need from silica, just as we do, and it’s done by an alchemical process called
biological transmutation.

We actually manufacture bone tissue from silica and a number of other trace minerals, such as zinc, copper, manganese, fluoride and boron, along with many other trace minerals and organic minerals, which include, of course, calcium, magnesium and
phosphorus.

Dr. Louis Krevran discovered that animals and birds eat foods rich in minerals that actually biologically transmute into other minerals required for metabolic processes. Bone growth and strengthening is one of these ongoing processes. Seeds, grains, herbs and grasses are rich in organic silica. Silica is 26% of the earth’s crust. Studies have proven that animals and birds produce calcium as a terminal waste product.

Now here’s the important piece of the puzzle. Humans cannot assimilate a waste product such as synthesized calcium (carbonate) because the body does not know how to metabolize it That’s also why chickens and cows won’t eat it In fact, ingesting synthesized calcium causes the parathyroid gland to function inefficiently.

Other Dietary Considerations

Osteoporosis was relatively uncommon among the ancients of Egypt, Rome and Greece, and is also unknown among the Indians of Hunsa, Peru, Equador, Brazil and New Guinea. Their diets of herbs and botanicals, such as Equisetum and Alfalfa, were rich in enzymes, silica, iron, copper, chromium, vanadium, boron, tin, rhodium and other minerals not found in modem vegetable diets.
Equisetum is a plant containing the richest source of safe silica known to man.

Studies have proven that silica from plants can prevent osteoporosis and calcium deficiency diseases, or reverse them.

Green and garbanzo beans, leeks, strawberry, nettle, bamboo shoots, seeds, and whole grains such as brown rice, are all rich in organic silica and other micro-minerals. The Japanese have strong, dense bones because of the amount of rice they eat daily. Such whole plants and other nutrients are in the formula Bone Plants by Total Health Solutions (available at my office).

Exercise Unavoidable

As much as we would like, simply popping pills to correct osteoporosis is not enough. Changing diet and lifestyle is unavoidable, as is exercise. But how does exercise help bone growth and density ? The answer is quite fascinating. Let’s explore.

In physiology we learned that when a crystal structure of bone bends or is placed under pressure, an electrical current is generated. This current triggers the movement of electrons, which sets up small, measurable vibrations. The current, or perhaps the resulting vibrations, also stimulate cell growth and mineral deposition. Without these vibrations of electrical currents, bones begin to weaken, as we learned in outer space. Astronauts lost bone mass quickly without gravity to place needed stress on weight-bearing bones.

Exercise is essential to bone growth and strength, as it is to all the tissues of the body. Incorporate a spirit of enjoyment into your exercise program and you have creative activity that can only lead to health and strength throughout your entire body.

And now you know the whole story! Remember, your body knows best and never does anything without a good reason. Trust it. Listen to it. Honor it’s wisdom and help it with sound nutrition and natural, holistic health care.

You body already knows what it needs to restore its health. All you have to do is ask it. I can help you do that through my services. Sound nutrition and whole food supplementation go a long way in helping to release the innate healing power of the body by supporting the healing and restorative processes. Call for a courtesy consultation today.

Anthony Palombo, D.C.

(337) 802-5510

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for more inspired reading. Current theme is Human Relationships: The Law Of Balance

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Balancing your Endocrine and Chakra Energy Fields

My Chorale Pic

ANNOUNCEMENT: The two-day workshop intensive in the philosophy, science and practical art of Attunement with Sacred Sound May 15-17, 2015 at Oakwood Farm Retreat Center in Selma, Indiana has been cancelled.  For details, please visit my HealingTones.org blog. What I will be teaching and exploring with the gathering of attunement practitioners and energy workers is my rationale and methodology of using sound as a carrier wave for healing energy, a topic which I will expand on in this blog post. Thank you for sharing what is central in my life’s purpose at this time.

The Rationale of Balancing the Chakras and Endocrine Glands

Why is it important to balance the energy fields of our bodies, specifically those of our endocrine and chakra centers? 

When we consider what these energy centers do to assist us in our day to day function as human beings in a social context that requires intelligent interaction between one another and with our environment, it becomes obvious that we need to have accurate feedback and appropriate response to what we perceive is going on around us in any moment if we are to have intelligent behavior.

THE CHAKRAS

From the standpoint of the feedback function of the chakras, for example, it is important that these spinning wheels of energy that bring us information about our environment – which, by the way, includes our physical bodies and what’s going on in them – be balanced and clear of static.  It’s also important that they be open and spinning widely enough so as to gather all the information coming into our fields. If they are spinning in a wobbly or constricted manner, then they are not capable of conveying important information to us.

The chakras feed information to us through our central nervous system. These spinning wheels of energy are grounded in the spinal chord through which they download their information to Central Command in the brain. The receptor for the brain is the hypothalamus, which lies at the base of the brain and acts as a mediator between the brain and the endocrine system. Its more immediate connection to the endocrine system is via the pituitary gland, which is suspended from the hypothalamus and rests securely and well protected in the sella tursica of the sphenoid bone that forms the floor of the cranium.

THE ENDOCRINE SYSTEM

The function of the pituitary gland is to receive information from the hypothalamus and then to produce and send hormone precursors to the other endocrine glands that trigger the production of hormones based on the need in meeting the environmental stressors with appropriate response, thereby enabling appropriate physiological function in the body as well as appropriate physical action on the part of the individual. If the information coming in through the chakras is not accurate, or doesn’t get through to the hypothalamus, then appropriate hormone response in the body and intelligent action in one’s environment will not be forthcoming. One will not be in position to act creatively but will rather react based on usual and customary learned behavior. Body chemistry will likewise be thrown off balance due to inappropriate hormonal response, or an entire lack thereof.

Now, there is an interdependent relationship between the endocrine system and the chakras, just as there is an interdependent relationship between the individual and his or her environment. One affects the other. What goes out energetically, for instance, through the endocrine glands affects the energy patterns of the chakras based on the law of pure physics that states for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  What I send out energetically through my spiritual expression, which is enabled and empowered by my endocrine glands through which spirit operates, will bounce off my environment and return to me for appropriate handling.  All energy seeks its origin for healing and recycling.

For example, if I express anger through my emotions, that angry energy – besides dissipating the connecting substance between spirit and form – conditions and may even shatter the energy fields of my chakras, making them incapable of accurately receiving and conveying information back to me about the actual conditions around me. My actions, then, cannot be other than irrational and inappropriate. If, on the other hand, I do not react in anger to conditions around me but withhold judgment and maintain a calm emotional and mental inner state, then my chakras will reflect that calmness and be available to me for accurate perception and reception of information coming to me from my environment. I will then be in position to respond appropriately and act intelligently toward events in my world.

ATTUNING AND BALANCING THE TWO SYSTEMS

If I have been stressed out by interactions with impinging environmental stressors and have acted or reacted inappropriately, shattering my energy fields with incoherent and erratic energy, it is not a sign of weakness but rather of wisdom and strength to seek outside help in bringing harmony and balance back to my endocrine and chakra centers. This is the purpose of such spiritual practices and modalities as attunement, sacred sound, meditation, deep breathing and other such aids in creating a peaceful and harmonious atmosphere in one’s energy field.

PREVENTION AND PROTECTION

In the way of prevention and maintenance, one can trust the radiation of love through one’s spiritual expression to act as a shield against incoming erratic and disturbing energies. This is all based, of course, on the ancient knowledge and wisdom of maintaining a balance between the yin and yang, masculine and feminine energies. It starts with unconditional love and acceptance of myself and others and of conditions the way they are.

The Psalmist expresses it in terms of the Lord being one’s “shield and buckler.”  The Lord is one’s inner divine Self, whose radiance in expression through the outer human self establishes a hedge of protection around the body temple, through which nothing can enter that defiles, works an abomination or makes a lie, in the words of St. John in his Book of Revelation (21:27). These are tried and true words that resonate with the attunement practitioner’s motto: “Let love radiate without concern for results.” This does not say “without results.” Love never fails to produce results, one of which is protection from harm.

I trust that you learned something important reading this post. I also hope that you consider seriously the possibility of coming to my workshop in May and experience first hand the value and magic of Attunement with Sacred Sound. Until my next post, 

Here’s to your health and healing,

Anthony Palombo, D.C.

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for details about the workshop and for inspiring reading in the archives. 

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The Cause of Disease and Death

My Chorale PicThe underlying cause of disease and death is living on earth instead of in heaven. And now that I have your attention, let me share with you a true story.

When I was a young man in Catholic seminary, about 15 years of age, I had a most peculiar and profound quest for a young man aspiring for a meaningful life purpose. I wanted to know what we had to do in order to stop dying. I had read the story of Creation in the Bible and was well aware of what brought death into human experience, although I didn’t understand it. Eating the “fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Really? Just eating a “forbidden fruit” has brought disease and death to the entire human species?! And an apple, at that! One of our most nutritious foods! Something wasn’t right about this story in Genesis. If it was true, however, then there must be a way to undo what our first parents did to merit such a stiff punishment.

In my simple and naïve way of thinking, it seemed to me that if eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil causes death, then it seemed to follow that we could simply stop eating this fruit and we would stop dying. I brought this curious thought to my spiritual director and he didn’t show as much interest in my mental musings as I was having at a rather deep level. He simply told me to stop thinking about such nonsense and study my Latin instead. That was that.

But that wasn’t that for me. The question did not go away but rather became a burning quest for an answer, for someone to come along and say “That’s right, and we can do just that!” I had to put my quest on the back burner for more practical and necessary endeavors, like studying for exams.

If you ask the right question, I was later to discover, you will receive the right answer. On May 20, 1967 I was attending a seminar in Applied Ontology in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when my quest came off the back burner. Ontology is the metaphysical study of the nature of being and of reality. Applied Ontology is the art and science of living the true nature of being and of reality. In other words, being who and what you really are—and not just in theory. The facilitator and dynamic speaker was Dr. William H. Bahan of the Universal Institute of Applied Ontology in Loveland, Colorado—a man who would become my professional mentor and most beloved friend. He was a doctor of Chiropractic, which I had become—but that’s another story.

Half way through the seminar, Dr. Bahan started talking about our responsibility as healers and teachers—which is what the title of doctor means—which was to bring about an increase of life in those who came to us for the healing of their ills. His chief reference turned out to be the Book of Genesis and the Story of Creation, including more specifically the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden where the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were planted.  You can only imagine how this got my attention.

He then began to speak from a certain place of authenticity and uncanny authority about what had transpired in the Garden of Eden that led to “The Fall” of Adam and Eve from grace—the so-called “Original Sin.” I had never heard the story told from such a clear and meaningful perspective. Bill simply revealed the truth of what had happened—and, more to the point, continues to happen—to bring diseases and death into the experience of human beings.  The Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he allowed, is the “design tree” of the “Creative Process,” and it wasn’t external to Man in some fruit orchard. It is part of our very make up as stewards of the cycles of creation, which was the very reason and purpose for God creating Man in His own image and likeness. As long as we were true stewards and ate only of the fruit of the Tree of Life, we would fare well in Eden. But if we ate of the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we would “surely die.”

Then he said what I had been waiting for someone to say for a decade or more. In order to stop dying, he went on to say, we needed to stop eating this “forbidden fruit,” which he defined simply as “judgment.”  Judging the evolving forms that are being brought forth by Life through the Creative Process and then interfering with that process by imposing our own self-interested ideas as to how things could evolve if we just made this or that alteration in life’s natural and perfect design. It made such profound sense. The word “evil,” Bill explained, is more like “evol.” Evol is an unfolding of life’s design through the Creative Process. Evil is produced when we interfere with life’s design in order to produce something other than what the Creative Process had in Mind and in store for us.

It was primarily an act of disobedience and self-active determination that derailed Man’s stewardship of Creation and his enjoyment of life in the Garden of Eden. As a consequence, our creative powers were greatly diminished and we soon found ourselves out of Eden and laboring for our survival on Earth. Eden was a Heavenly abode, and we had much different forms than the animal forms we have now. These forms are subject to the evolutionary cycles of birth and death. But we are still immortal beings incarnate in these mortal bodies, which we have to shed in order to return to Paradise. In Paradise there is no death, no disease, and no suffering. One may rightly wonder why it is that we spend so much effort trying to stave off death.

This blew my mind. I was ecstatic. Could it be that simple? I didn’t sleep for three days. My quest was complete. Well, almost complete. All that remained was for me to prove it out in my living. That entailed, first of all, seeing how this applied to daily living and how I was continuing to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evol; how we human beings were still manipulating the natural creative processes and thwarting them to please our own self-centered purposes.  Then, upon seeing how I was eating this death-dealing fruit, to change my behavior.

It’s easy to see how we disobey the Creator and thwart the natural design in the way we grow our food by genetic engineering and manipulation of the soil with chemicals to produce plenty of food. Stewardship has been almost entirely abandoned for the sake of producing product. We’ve become very product oriented, the ultimate product being money and material wealth—the end made to justify the means in our irrational thinking. We’ve got to feed the masses. Yet, surely we continue to die.

But how does this apply to the way we care for our bodies. Even in our health care we are oriented in results rather than process, in relieving the symptoms of disease rather than engaging and stewarding a healing process. We have settled, it seems, for relief from our pain and suffering in lieu of healing our bodies and our lives.

THE GARDEN IS WITH US

In the Biblical story of the Fall, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, who alone got the curse of God upon its head. The serpent represents the brain and spinal chord, and the tree of life, along with the design tree of the knowledge of how life evolves and grows Creation, are both within our body temples. The tree of life is the endocrine system, which delivers creative energy and life’s messages to the cells by way of hormones, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evol is the brain and central nervous system which administers the design and control of life in the body. The Garden is our hearts, in which we are to keep a sweet and heavenly atmosphere for the gifts of spirit to be born through us. Our minds and bodies are the capacities for rendering stewardship in the natural world. But our consciousness is the most important aspect of our being because it can change levels. It’s our capacity to know who we are as divine beings. It can move down a level to create hell and up a level to create heaven. Heaven, then, is nothing more than a state of consciousness, as is hell.

Wow! All of this and more was packed into that weekend seminar, so you can see why I was blown away. It was way more answer to my quest than I had ever expected to receive. And I had to scramble in order to make some drastic and fundamental changes in how I practiced my healing profession. I had to switch from being the fixer, a masculine approach, to being a healer, a more feminine approach.  The fixer imposes change by manipulation. The healer coaches the client in how to nurture the healing process so that the body is allowed to make its own appropriate changes.  The former is oriented in product and results. The latter is oriented in process and growth. The one is reactive; the other proactive.

GETTING BACK INTO THE GARDEN

An interesting aspect of the story of Eden is the placing of a cherubim with a flaming sword that turned every way in the Garden guarding the way to the Tree of Life. No one could get back into the Garden and eat of the Tree of Life without encountering the angel with the flaming sword. The angel is who we are in reality. The flaming sword is the truth of love. It is the truth of love that gives birth to life. Without love and truth life is not possible, in the same way that a child cannot be born without a father and a mother. The qualities of the father and mother are reflected in the child. Life is characterized by Love and Truth. In order to know life, in other words, one must be true to the truth of love in the expression of one’s living. It is life that generates health in our bodies. It is a lack of life that produces disease and death. It is that simple.

Therefore, the only way back into the Garden of Paradise, is to let it be born through us from within. The “kingdom of heaven” is within us, the Teacher instructed us. As we are consistent in expressing the qualities of heaven in our living, heaven begins to appear around us.  Our world is a reflection of what’s in our consciousness, our heaven in other words. As above, so below. I will leave you with a sampling of what Dr. Bill Bahan offered us that weekend:

 Bill BahanWe are responsible to allow life to be born. And life is born in the parenthood of love and truth. There’s the flaming sword. That’s a great symbol. You can’t come to the Tree of Life, you can’t know life, and you can’t know yourself—because you are life. That’s who you are. You can’t know yourself except you come through that flaming sword.

 If there is anything in your expression that is not true to the truth of love, outside! You can’t get in. You can’t get by that sword if you’re identified with complaint or unhappiness or resentment or fear or jealousy. Outside! You can’t get in. The moment you’re true to the truth of love, you walk right through.

If you’re a true servant of love, of the Lord, you’re going to win. You’re going to win! I know that in relation to my service. I’m going to win. Win all the time. Love never faileth. Those who are true to the truth of love, they never fail. No such thing as failure in the Kingdom. Failures are for those who don’t want to live in the Kingdom on Earth. Those who live in it, they move and have their being with an absolute spirit of victory.

Such was the victorious spirit of Dr. William Bahan. His words were a flaming sword that turned every way, and only by being genuinely true to the truth of love could one stand comfortably in the shadow of his presence. He was love and truth in action. He was Life itself. And so are you. Come into the Garden and enjoy the gifts of Love, one of which is health; another is happiness; yet another is unconditional acceptance of who you are. Love does not judge. Love never faileth. Let love radiate without concern for results.

Here’s to  your health and healing,

Anthony Palombo, D.C.

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for more inspiring articles on the Golden Age we are entering.

 

 

 

 

 

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Living Medicine Vs Pharmaceuticals, part 3: Herbs that Cure, page 2

My Chorale Pic

I’ve been sharing and commenting on an interview in the December, 2014 issue of The SUN magazine with master herbalist Stephen Buhner, a magazine that traditionally carries quality writings by little-known authors. We’ve been talking about herbs as “living medicines” as opposed to pharmaceutical drugs, and I thought my readers would be interested in knowing more about specific herbs and their benefits. So, here are some of the more popular herbs I use in my practice to support the healing process and healthy function in general. I will highlight in this post some of the herbs that help circulation and the immune system in the body and support the body rather than do its job for it and thereby depriving it of its education on handling environmental toxins and invasive germs, viruses and bacteria. So, read on if you want to know more about these living medicines and their benefits to your health and longevity.

HERBS THAT HEAL

BilberryBILBERRY — is the herb of choice for eye conditions such as macular degeneration and cataracts. That’s because it supports microcirculation through the small capillaries in the eyes. But not just in the eyes, also in the brain and throughout the entire body. Additionally it . . .

  • Promotes vascular integrity
  • Builds healthy connective tissue
  • Eases the effects of occasional aching or throbbing discomfort
  • Supports and maintains normal fluid levels
  • Supports healthy peripheral circulation
  • Supports healthy response to environmental stresses
  • Enhances urinary tract function
  • Maintains healthy eyes
  • Provides antioxidant protection

HORSECHESTNUT SEED — is another herb for improved microcirculation of blood through small capillaries. Medi-Herb has an excellent Horsechestnut Complex that is a synergistic blend of Butcher’s Broom root & Rhizome, Horsechestnut seed and Ginkgo Biloba leaf. Together these herbs and the compounds within them help to:

  • promote venous integrity
  • promote normal vascular tone
  • ease the effects of heavy exercise
  • support health peripheral circulation
  • support and maintain healthy fluid levels

Scan_Pic0002ANDROGRAPHIS — is especially supportive of the immune system during acute infections. Medi-Herb has an effective product called Andrographis Complex which is a combination of Andrographis, Echinacea root and Holy Basil leaf. Together they work to:

  • enhance immune system function
  • support healthy respiratory function
  • support and maintain normal body temperature within a normal range
  • promote healthy liver function
  • support health immune response following stress, sudden changes in weather or temperature
  • encourage adaptive response to occasional everyday stress

ASTRAGALUS — is a great companion to Andrographis in that it supports the immune system during chronic infection and auto-immune conditions.  Medi-Herb combines Astragalus root, Echinacea root and Eleuthero root in their Astragalus Complex. Together these herbs work to:

  • enhance immune system function
  • maintain feeling of general well-being
  • assist the body during convalescence
  • facilitate the body’s normal response to occasional stress
  • promotes a healthy response to environmental stress.
  • Caution: Contraindicated in known allergy to plants of the daisy family. Discontinue during an acute infection or fever.

Cat's ClawCAT’S CLAW — is an herb for the intestinal flora. I use it with yeast infection for its support to the immune system in the intestinal tract where the largest portion of the immune system operates. Medi-Herb combines Cat’s Claw inner stem bark, Pau d’Arco stem bark and Echinacea root in their Cat’s Claw Complex. Together these herbs and the compounds within them help to:

  • enhance immune system function
  • support respiratory system health
  • maintain healthy mucous membranes
  • promote healthy bowel flora
  • regulate bowel function
  • support and maintain healthy blood
  • provide antioxidant protection
  • promote healthy response to environmental stresses

Pleurisy rootPLEURISY ROOT — is a great herb for bronchial conditions such as bronchitis and acute or chronic cough. Medi-Herb combines several herbs together in their Broncafect to give powerful support to the bronchial tubes: Licorice root, Pleurisy root, Echinacea root, White Horehound herb, Thyme essential oil, and Ginger.  Together these herbs and essential oils help to:

  • support health respiratory tract function
  • maintain healthy mucosal tissue
  • support normal mucous flow
  • support the body’s natural ability to break up respiratory secretions
  • support the body’s normal cough reflex
  • encourage a healthy environment to help maintain normal respiratory flora
  • enhance immune system function
  • promote healthy white blood cells
  • promote healthy throat tissue
  • assist the body in maintaining normal body temperature within normal range
  • promote the body’s normal resistance function
  • CAUTION: Licorice root’s inclusion in Broncafect makes it contraindicated in high blood pressure, edema, (water retention), congestive heart failure, low blood potassium, pregnancy and lactation. Pleurisy root alone is not contraindicated in the conditions mentioned.

Mullen LeafMULLEN LEAF — also known as “lamb’s ears,” is a mucous removing herb.  Medi-Herb combines Mullen Leaf with five other herbs in ResCo that work together in removing mucous from the lungs and sinuses. They are Licorice root, Euphorbia, Grinellia, Ginger, and Fennel. These key phytochemicals and other compounds within this herbal formulation work to:

  • support healthy mucous membranes within the respiratory tract
  • encourage healthy removal of mucous
  • help maintain throat health
  • support healthy respiratory function
  • assist in maintaining healthy airway passages
  • support the body’s normal cough reflex
  • encourage normal secretion removal from the respiratory system
  • promote the body’s normal resistance function
  • CAUTION: Licorice root’s inclusion in ResCo makes it contraindicated in high blood pressure, edema, (water retention), congestive heart failure, low blood potassium, pregnancy and lactation. Mullen Leaf alone is not contraindicated in the conditions mentioned.

Golden SealGOLDEN SEAL ROOT — The herb of choice for the mucous membranes. Medi-Herb’s Golden Seal contain alkaloids (especially hydrastine and berberine) and other phytochemicals that work together to:

  • help maintain healthy mucous membranes
  • cleanse the gastrointestinal tract
  • assist in maintaining healthy breathing passages to support free and clear breathing
  • help maintain healthy mucus function
  • stimulate digestion
  • support the normal production and flow of bile
  • help support the body’s response to environmental stress
  • CAUTION: Contraindicated in pregnancy, lactation and high blood pressure.

ARE HERBS DANGEROUS?

Not nearly as dangerous as drugs — both prescribed and so-called “recreational.” We don’t hear about people dying from an overdose of or “complications” from herbs or nutritional supplements.  It is drugs that kill people. There are some precautions to take where herbs may interfere with medications. St. John’s Wort is a good example. It will neutralize and destroy all drugs as they are processed in the liver. That’s why St. John’s Wort is such an effective liver detoxifying herb, and why you don’t want to take it while on vital medications. It’s also a powerful anti-viral agent. However, there are relatively few contraindications and fewer negative side effects taking herbs and nutritional supplements.

There are too many herbs to review in a blog such this. Some are best used under professional supervision. Chaparral is one such herb that is so powerful as an antimicrobial and immunostimulant that it should be used only on a short term basis, 10-14 days in most cases, and in cycles of two week on and two weeks off. People with pre-existing kidney and liver diseases such as hepatitis and cirrhosis should not take Chaparral in large dosages and then only with professional supervision.

SAFE FOR THE GUT FLORA

As mentioned in an earlier post, the use of antibiotics will often destroy the beneficial bacteria in the GI tract. Probiotics should be taken while dosing with oral antibiotics to replace the friendly bacteria that are being destroyed. Natural antimicrobial herbs do not harm the intestinal flora, and in most cases help to bring about a balance.

MEDICAL IGNORANCE OF HERBS

Your medical doctor will usually ask you to discontinue taking herbs if he or she is not well informed and educated in their uses and contraindications, and that is very wise. Medical doctors study pharmaceuticals in medical school, not nutritional and herbal therapies. Some herbs do have potential interactions with prescription drugs, most at a low level of risk. Medi-Herb provides its doctors with ample information and quick-reference charts to guide them in prescribing herbs and their dosages. It is always best to consult with an herbalist or eclectic (alternative) practitioner about the possible interactions of herbs with any prescription medications you may be taking.

WILL HERBS EVER REPLACE PHARMACEUTICALS ?

Eventually, but not in my lifetime. I believe we will soon be forced to abandon antibiotic dosing simply because it will become increasingly ineffective against the super-bugs antibiotic overuse is creating — and not only in our health care system but in our agricultural practices as well. I am obviously enthused about the potential Living Medicines have in offering alternatives to pharmaceuticals. Currently, we humans are not healthy enough in general to abandon our dependence upon prescription drugs.  Therefore it is the better course of wisdom to use nutritional and herbal therapies as “integrative” therapies rather than as “alternatives” to drug interventions. The word “alternative,” as I use it in my practice and writings, is not meant to be construed as “instead of.” So, I would caution my readers to align with my way of viewing alternative healthcare as an “integrative” methodology in the current pharmaceutical-dominated health care system.  In most instances, alternative therapies such as nutritional supplements and herbs actually help prescribed medications work better and more safely in the body.  They are second only to the placebo and prayer.

I trust you have benefited from these posts on Living Medicines Vs Pharmaceuticals. This post will conclude this series of considerations. Until my next post, then. . .

Here’s to your health and natural healing.

Anthony Palombo, DC

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for inspiring articles. Current theme is “Golden Age and Golden Race.”

I JUST REACHED 51,000 VIEWS OF MY BLOG!  36,000 OF MY HEALING TONES BLOG!

 

CAUTION: Herbs are powerful natural medicines and should not be used indiscriminately. None of the above information should be construed to diagnose or treat any disease nor to preclude sensible medical care and professional supervision. Medi-Herb and Standard Process products are only available through licensed physicians and certified healthcare practitioners and should only be used under the supervision of such. The intention of the author of this blog is to provide information only about natural alternative and integrative medicines. However, it is left to the sole discretion of the reader to determine if the considerations or suggestions included herein are appropriate for his or her health condition and/or needs.

Reference Sources: MEDI-HERB Product Catalog put out by master herbalist Dr. Kerry Bone; Herbal Formulas for Clinical Practice by Nicholas Weed, D.C., Herbalist and owner of Weed Botanical Company, Wimberley, Texas.

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Living Medicine Vs Pharmaceuticals, part 3: Herbs that Cure

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When you use a living medicine and get well, you feel that the world is alive and aware and wants to help you. People often talk about saving the Earth, but how many times have you experienced the Earth saving you?

My Chorale PicI’ve been sharing an interview with herbalist Stephen Buhner in THE SUN magazine on the efficacy of herbal medicine and the dangers of placing our healthcare system in the hands of the pharmaceutical industry, which the Medical profession relies entirely on when it comes to prescribing chemical drugs to relieve the symptoms of disease. While drugs do relieve symptoms – the reason people go to doctors in the first place – they do not effect a cure. They’re not designed to. Besides making huge profits for the Big Pharma, drugs are designed to relieve pain and mask symptoms — a purpose that has great meaning and usefulness in a hospice care facility but little if any meaning and value in a facility that claims to render “health care.” Herbs, on the other hand, are designed by Mother Nature to effect a cure. The main requirement, however, is patience on the part of the patient. (Pun intended.)

Herbs do not cure. Rather they give the body living medicine the body can work with to cure itself of disease. It is the inborn Intelligence of the body, of course, that directs the healing process–Life. And Life works within the time frame of its own wisdom and cycles. Drugs interfere with those cycles by nullifying the symptoms of pain and malfunction that trigger the healing process. Herbs facilitate the healing process. It just takes time.

For example, anti-inflammatory drugs reduce the inflammation in tissues and joints that, for one thing, stop us from doing what is damaging the tissues and joints. We won’t do what hurts. That’s the body’s wisdom at work, which we defeat when we take pain killers.  The other and main thing, however, is that inflammation is the first and initiating phase of the healing process. When you nullify this phase, you stop the repair process of the damaged tissue, which means you’ll never experience healing as long as you’re taking Ibuprofen or Tylenol or any number of other pain killers. It’s that simple.  Stephen Buhner tells his personal story working with herbs.

Ahuja: What was your first experience with herbal medicine?

Buhner: When I was thirty-four, I became quite ill with severe abdominal cramping. The doctors didn’t know what it was. I met a local herbalist, and she mentioned that a certain plant growing in the forest around my house was good for my condition. The doctors wanted to do exploratory surgery, but instead I ate some of the plant. The pain was about half as severe the next time it happened, and the next time about half again, until finally it just went away. After that, I began to take control over my own health.

Ahuja: What was the plant?

Buhner: It was a perennial herb called osha. I just dug up the root and began eating it. It’s got a spicy, celery-like taste. Not only did I feel my body getting better, but I could feel, inside, some living entity that cared about me. It’s difficult to explain, because it’s not something we generally talk about in the West. When you use a living medicine and get well, you feel that the world is alive and aware and wants to help you. People often talk about saving the Earth, but how many times have you experienced the Earth saving you?

HERBAL MEDICINES AND THEIR HEALING GIFTS

Here are a few herbal medicines with which I am familiar:

BoswelliaBOSWELLIA – is a natural anti-inflammatory that does not interfere with the healing and repair process. It rather helps it work faster. It is especially effective in the intestines when they become irritable. Cases in point are IBS, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s Disease. I use Boswellia Complex by MediHerb and Standard Process Labs, which is a synergistic combination of Boswellia gum, Celery seed,  Ginger, and Tumeric.  These and other compounds work together to:

  • Support the normal function of the kidneys to clear acidic waste products effectively, like uric acid that causes gout.
  • Maintain and support healthy joints.
  • Promote the body’s normal resistance function.
  • Support healthy circulation.
  • Support healthy response to environmental stresses.
  • Provide antioxidant protection.

Scan_Pic0005ECHINACEA – here is an herb for the immune system, and its healing gift lies primarily in its root and less in its foliage.  This herb does not stimulate or activate the immune system, as is commonly thought, but rather acts as a modulator to the immune system, regulating its response to various stress needs in the body. In the case of infection, it up-regulates the immune response and boosts the white cell count. In the case of autoimmune disease, it down-regulates the immune system. As with all systems in the body, balance is the key to healthy function.

Master Herbalist Dr. Kerry Bone of MediHerb has thoroughly researched this herb and here is what we now know about Echinacea:

  • Echinacea is both misunderstood and underestimated. There are many Echinacea products available which differ according to species, plant part, quality markers and dosages. The wide variety of products available is why there is controversy surrounding Echinacea and its effectiveness.
  • Echinacea is commonly thought of as an herb for winter season stresses and only for short-term use. Kerry Bone’s applications for Echinacea are much broader than this and you may wonder why this is. Kerry has spent many years both researching and prescribing Echinacea for thousands of patients. His passion for Echinacea led to the MediHerb research project and a greater understanding of Echinacea and how it works. For full details of MediHerb’s Research visit mediherb.com and search for The MediHerb Echinacea Research Story on the Echinacea – A New Understanding page.
  • The research results validate the traditional wisdom of Echinacea, and that is to achieve good clinical results you must use only a root preparation with high levels of alkylamides. An important aspect of any herb, or nutrient for that matter, is its bioavailability. Echinacea angustifolia and E purpurea contain high levels of alkylamides which are easily absorbed in the body.
  • MediHerb’s Echinacea Premium is the best Echinacea product on the market because of its high levels of alkylamides. You can tell if the Echinacea product you are taking is derived from the root by how it imparts a persistent tingling sensation on your tongue.
  • Daily dosage with Echinacea Premium (1 a day) will help keep your immune system balanced and ready to respond to the stress needs of the body.

BacopaBACOPA HERB – helps in the retention of memory. I have had students taking Bacopa while listening to lectures and studying for exams. This helped them retain what they were hearing and reading. Then, when exam time came along, they would switch to Ginkgo Biloba, which helps in memory recall.  MediHerb’s Bacopa Complex combines the herbs Bacopa, Schisandra, Eleuthero and essential oil of Rosemary. These herbs contribute key phytochemicals that combine with many other compounds to:

  • Enhance mental clarity and support cognitive function.
  • Support normal memory function.
  • Support physical endurance.
  • Ease the effects of temporary and occasional environmental stress.
  • Nourish the nervous system.

Ginkgo BilobaGINKGO BILOBA – helps in memory recall and has a variety of healthy benefits.  MediHerb’s Ginkgo Forte contains flavonoids, terpene lactones (including ginkgolides and bilobalide) and other phytochemicals that work synergistically to:

  • Support memory and cognition.
  • Promote alertness and mental clarity.
  • Help support healthy mental function.
  • Support good health in older adults.
  • Promote healthy circulation to the brain and peripheral areas of the body which is important for the delivery of oxygen and vital nutrients.
  • Support a healthy cardiovascular system.
  • Support and encourage healthy blood.
  • Provide antioxidant support to help protect nerve cells and other tissues.
  • Support normal hearing.
  • Support eye health.
  • Beneficially modulate cortisol during periods of stress.
  • Reduce the congestive symptoms of premenstrual syndrome.

GYMNEMA SYLVESTRE – is the herb of choice for diabetics in Australia, which many folks use exclusively to regulate their blood sugar. It literally nullifies the sweetness in sugar. When you put a little bit of Gymnema tincture into your mouth, or suck on a tablet, you will not be able to taste the sweetness in candy for several minutes. You will taste the flavor of a mint, but not its sweetness.  MediHerb’s Gymnema 4g tablet and its Gymnema 1:1 tincture deliver a powerful dose of this amazing sugar-destroying herb, which is effective in diabetic and hypoglycemic conditions alike. The complex mixture of saponins (gymnemic acids) and other compounds work together to:

  • Maintain healthy blood sugar levels when combined with a balanced diet.
  • Maintain normal cholesterol levels in a normal range.
  • Help support normal cravings for sugar in the diet.

I will continue sharing information about popular herbs and their benefits in my next post in two weeks. Until then, here’s to your health and natural healing.

Anthony Palombo, DC

CAUTION: Herbs are powerful natural medicines and should not be used indiscriminately. None of the above information should be construed to diagnose or treat any disease nor to preclude sensible medical care and professional supervision. Medi-Herb and Standard Process products are only available through licensed physicians and certified healthcare professionals and should only be used under the supervision of an certified herbalist or healthcare practitioner.

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for an interesting series of articles about the Golden Age of Aquarius.

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Living Medicines Vs Pharmaceuticals, part 2: Healing Herbs

“When you use a living medicine and get well, you feel that the world is alive and aware and wants to help you. People often talk about saving the Earth, but how many times have you experienced the Earth saving you?”

Healing Herbs
Stephen BuhnerI find it interesting that toxic plants often move into damaged landscapes. Some specimens are harmful to cattle or sheep who graze the land. Others interfere with industrial agriculture or threaten people. They all have the same purpose: stopping the source of the damage so that the landscape can regenerate itself. —Stephen Buhner

My Chorale PicTo heal means to make whole again that which has been fractured or fragmented. What Stephen Buhner describes above about “toxic plants” moving in where landscapes have been damaged speaks to the intelligence of healing herbs. These botanical plants have a living, functioning intelligence. As part of our Mother Earth from which our physical bodies arise, their energetic fields are connected to our energetic fields by way of which they speak to us. When we give them our attention, ask them the right questions, and then listen to their answers — which may come in the form of an attraction toward them, or even an aversion — they reach out to help us with their healing essences.

We’ve all had the experience, when out in Nature, of being attracted toward certain plants and flowers. Could that attraction and repelling be telling us something about the gift of healing being offered to us by the plants and flowers?  Of course, some plants warn us to stay away from them, such as poison ivy or poison oak, if we have an allergic condition.

I love the way Stephen Buhner goes about introducing his clients to herbs in this interview by Akshay Ahuja in the December, 2014 issue of The SUN magazine.

Ahuja: How do you go about treating patients as an herbalist? 

Buhner: It’s a relationship, not a technique. My clients often feel lost and alone in their suffering. They need human companionship and also a sense of companionship with the living world. If I can, I’ll take them into the woods and introduce them to the plant that will be helping them. 

In my book “The Lost Language of Plants” I tell the story of a twenty-eight-year-old woman who was going through a messy divorce. Her periods were extremely irregular, with heavy cramping and bleeding, and her hands were always cold. I could see that her whole body was closed off, curled in on itself. Her fingernails were chewed back deeply, as if she were eating herself alive. 

I told her there was a plant I thought she should meet. We went for a walk through a pine forest, and when she saw the plant at the edge of a stream, a kind of force drew the woman and the plant together. The plant was Angelica, which has been used for thousands of years to help treat menstrual cramping. She spent a long time with it, then said a prayer and asked for help, and then we went to look for just the right Angelica. When we found it, she dug up the root, which has a beautiful smell. On the walk back she held it close to her. She was already carrying herself differently. The healing had started. 

She took a tincture made from the root, and within a month her period had normalized.

HERBS GROW WHERE THEY ARE MOST NEEDED

We are more connected to our immediate environment than we may be aware. I am convinced that many of the viruses and bacterial infections we encounter are an integral part of our local habitat — unless they are transported by travelers from other parts of the world, as was the case with the Ebola virus.  It’s common knowledge as well that for every disease and ailment there’s a plant remedy in the botanical world. I would be curious to know what kind of herbs are growing in that part of Africa where the Ebola virus erupted. I am equally as curious to know what kind of herbs grow abundantly in my neck of the woods. Buhner addresses this subject in the interview:

Ahuja: Many of the plants in Herbal Antibiotics aren’t native to North America, Do you think people should look first to the plants around them for medicine?

Buhner: The book was written to offer alternatives to people who might die of a resistant infection, so I wanted to list anything they could reliably use in that circumstance. Still, many natural antibiotics do grow in the United States. I live in the Southwestern desert, and Bidens grows all around our house. It’s invasive. Sida grows along the Gulf Coast, and some Sida species grow in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They’re all considered invasive. In fact, the most potent medicines for emerging infections tend to be invasive botanicals that people are busy trying to eradicate.

These invasive plants don’t move into a region for no reason. Take, for example, the berberine-containing plant Phellodendron. Berberine-containing plants are used to treat parasites and infections from yeast, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Goldenseal was probably the most potent berberine plant in the U.S. until it was harvested to near extinction in the late 1800s. Phellodendron, which is a massive tree,is invasive in exactly the same range that goldenseal was removed from. And if you cut just one branch, you’ve got enough berberine
plant to last a year.

I’ve found that if people are ill, the plants they need are almost always growing in their vicinity. I’ve watched plant populations change around me in places I’ve lived for thirty-some years, and they seem to shift in response to changes in my own disease complexes. This sounds airy-fairy to the Western reductive mind-set, but people have been commenting on it since Hippocrates. Plant populations rise and fall according to the needs of the ecosystem in which they grow, and that includes the animal life there, which includes us.

Ahuja: Yet we act to remove invasive plants from ecosystems.

Buhner: Yes, these plants are seen as alien invaders…. It‘s not understood that dandelion and burdock and a host of other common plants are non-natives that moved in and established a balance with local ecosystems, or that many of the plants targeted for eradication happen to be effective against the exact diseases that local people are contracting. Japanese knotweed is invasive all up and down the East Coast, and its root is the most specific medicine there is for the treatment of Lyme disease. There‘s a Lonicera species – a honeysuckle that reduces mosquito egg–laying wherever it grows. The mosquitoes that it discourages happen to carry dengue fever and a number of other viruses that cause encephalitis – inflammation of the brain. And it turns out that the plant is also a treatment for inflammation in the central nervous system.When plants move into an ecosystem, they do so because the ecosystem has been disrupted. The problem is that people don‘t ask, Why is this plant here?

Buhner offers suggestions on treating specific health conditions which I thought my readers would find helpful.

Aruja: My father is around sixty. I don‘t think he could imagine being without his daily blood-pressure pills. What are some alternative treatments for his condition? 

Buhner: Regular fasting will lower blood pressure and keep it low. Certain kinds of simple, focused meditation will lower it. And many herbs, such as hawthorn and garlic, will do the same.

Ahuja: Have you worked much with cancer? 

Buhner: I haven‘t. The only type I have regularly treated is skin cancer, usually on the face. I learned the use of a traditional herb for it from a Mexican curandera many years ago. The root of Swertia radiata – also known as monument plant or green gentian – is finely powdered, then mixed with Vaseline (nothing else will do) and applied to the cancer. It‘s left covered for three days. Once the bandage is removed, the cancer generally comes with it or lifts off with minimal effort. I have never had that treatment fail. It is easy, efficient, and noninvasive. . . . 

I apologize for the lengthy excerpts, but I wanted to share with you the spirit and energy of the interview as well as the content, which sometimes direct quotes best convey.  We will explore some of the more specific uses of healing herbs in the next post. Until then, here’s to your health and haling . . . naturally!

Anthony Palombo, DC

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for inspiring articles on various topics. Current theme is “Golden Age and Golden Race.”

Also visit Laurence Layne’s Herb Shop online at HerbShop.HealingWatersClinic.com for great information about herbs along with easy ordering of products.

Credits: The picture above is by Roger Davies and is used in the article in The SUN which I am referencing.

CAUTION: Herbs are powerful natural medicines and should not be used indiscriminately. None of the above information should be construed to diagnose or treat any disease nor to preclude sensible medical care and professional supervision. Medi-Herb and Standard Process products are only available through licensed physicians and certified healthcare professionals and should only be used under the supervision of an certified herbalist or healthcare practitioner.

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Living Medicine Vs Pharmaceuticals, part 1: The Antibiotic Crisis

Stephen BuhnerPhysicians continue to utilize antibiotics without much thought. We focus on the misuse of painkillers, when the most dangerous thing we do is overuse antibiotics. Resistant bacteria are a more severe problem for the survival of this civilization than oil depletion, global warming, topsoil erosion, and water scarcity. —Stephen Buhner

“Stephen Harrod Buhner On Plant Intelligence, Natural Healing, And The Trouble With Pharmaceuticals”

My Chorale Pic

The December issue of SUN magazine carried an insightful, though sobering, interview with an herbalist that I thought would be an inspiring and deeply meaningful article to review and share in my Health Light Newsletter blog.  The interview is by Akshay Ahuja, writer for the SUN and production manager for Ploughshares, an organization that works with churches, governments and civil societies, in Canada and abroad, to advance policies and actions to prevent war and armed violence and build peace.

Stephen Buhner was born in 1952 in the Midwest where he was introduced to his healing ministry through his great-grandfather, a country physician in rural Indiana.  At the age of sixteen he left home to attend college in California. From there he traveled and settled in the high mountains of Colorado, where he built a “turn-of-the-century cabin that he lived in for four years.” His path to becoming an herbalist started out with a personal healing of severe abdominal cramps with the perennial herb osha root.  His encounter with this herb was more than remedial and had a spiritual and vital quality to is, as he recalls in the interview.  He currently lives in Silver City, New Mexico.

I just dug up the root and began eating it. It’s got a spicy, celery-like taster. Not only did I feel my body getting better, but I could feel, inside, some living entity that cared for me.  It’s difficult to explain, because it’s not something we generally talk about in the West. When you use a living medicine and get well, you feel that the world is alive and aware and wants to help you. People often talk about saving the Earth, but how many times have you experienced the Earth saving you?

I love this man’s insight into the natural botanical world of herbs and his thoughtful perspectives on both the natural healing and modern medical models. He covers a lot of territory, so it may take a couple of posts to do the interview justice. This is, I feel, a very timely and important mile-stone article.

Let’s start with the heart of his message: the overuse of antibiotics that has resulted in the evolution of bacteria into “superbugs.”  To gain a perspective on how this has come about, we need to consider the history and evolution of our medical system. Buhner, who has spent his entire life exploring herbal medicine and has published several books on this and related topics, gives some very thoughtful consideration to this in the interview, which can best be presented in his own words. In his 1999 book “Herbal Antibiotics” he speaks to the heart of the “flaws” of what he calls “technological medicine.”

“By declaring war on bacteria,” he writes, “ we declared war on the underlying living structure of the planet.” Buhner maintains that, through indiscriminate use of antibiotics, we have created “superbugs” with few effective pharmaceutical treatments, wreaking havoc in hospitals and making future pandemics likely.

Asked what is wrong with the medical system in the USA, Bunher gives a very interesting synopsis of its relatively brief history, starting at the close of the nineteenth century when homeopaths were plentiful and allopaths were fewer and the poorest of the various groups of physicians.  The discovery of penicillin changed all that.

Allopathic physicians argued that their training was based on science and was thus more legitimate than other medical traditions and would provide safer interventions. With a lot of lobbying, they managed to get control over medical practice and have the other approaches outlawed. After the discovery of penicillin in the 1920’s, antibiotics became a primary aspect of allopathic practice. The drugs were so effective against previously difficult-to-treat problems, such as infections in burn patients, that Western cultures completely embraced allopathic healing. In 1942 the entire world‘s supply of penicillin was 8.5 gallons – about seventy pounds. By 1999 the production of antibiotics in the U.S. alone reached 40 million pounds per year.

Unfortunately medical researchers‘ beliefs about bacteria were very wrong. Researchers said it would take roughly a million years for bacteria to develop widespread resistance to antibiotics through spontaneous mutations. They assumed bacteria were stupid, when in reality bacteria are highly sentient. They communicate by means of a sophisticated language – as sophisticated as ours. They recognize their kin. They protect their offspring. They create chemicals designed to produce specific outcomes in living systems, which certainly fits any definition of tool-making.

We‘ve tended to view bacteria as a collection of single-celled entities, but when many of them join together, it‘s more proper to look at them as a swarm intelligence. And complex organisms such as plants, animals, and insects are, in essence, communities of bacteria.

Ahuja: How does bacterial resistance challenge the current medical model?

Buhner: Since the end of World War II, the medical establishment has been promising that we are heading for some sort of disease-free future in which we will live to be 120 and never get sick. They almost imply that they can cure death. Scientists’ inability to predict the bacterial response undermines the entire world view that the allopaths disseminated – and still disseminate – about disease and the nature of the world around them. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that, in 2011, 722,000 people picked up infections in hospitals. About 75,000 of those patients died during their hospitalizations. And some sources give a much higher figure for annual deaths from hospital-acquired infections.

The allopaths’ lock on medical practice, which they insisted would create safer outcomes for the public, has not done so. All it has done is give one orientation toward healing a virtual monopoly on practice.

Ahuja: How would you treat a resistant infection with herbs?

Buhner: One woman who had undergone multiple antibiotic regimens over several years for a resistant staph infection (MRSA) came to me for help. She was about to lose her foot to the disease. It took a month to turn her condition around using an African herb called Cryptolepis sanguinolenta. Commonly used to treat malaria, it is also a broad-spectrum, systemic antibacterial with no side effects – at least, after twelve years of use, I have seen none.

Vancomycin is the antibiotic often used for staph infections. Besides being frequently ineffective, it has a long list of side effects. In general, herbal medicines have fewer or no side effects. They are composed of hundreds of synergistic compounds, whereas pharmaceuticals have just one compound, or perhaps a few. We have been at this antibiotic business only a century or so. Bacteria have been around for 3.5 billion years:

This begs the question, will not bacteria eventually become resistant to plant medicines? I love Buhner’s answer.

Buhner: With a pharmaceutical, the bacteria analyze the single compound and generate solutions to it, which they then pass on to other bacteria. Plants, on the other hand, generate multiple compounds that deactivate resistance mechanisms in the bacteria and enhance the activity of the plant’s natural antibacterials. Bacteria cannot easily counteract that kind of complexity. Also, plants aren’t trying to kill all the bacteria on Earth. They merely want to create a balance in which the plants and bacteria set limits on each other’s behavior.

Ahuja: There seems to be a general view that herbal medicine is fine for coughs and colds, but when something gets serious, you go to a conventional doctor.

Buhner: The pharmaceutical companies’ advertising campaigns are very good. We have been trained to think of technological medicine as the only reliable type and other approaches as outdated remnants of a prescientific age. Yet the majority of people I have met don’t much like doctors or hospitals. The one thing modern medicine is good at is trauma. If I get hit by a car, I will go to a hospital. But other than antibiotics and some surgeries, hospitals have little they can offer to cure disease. They can only address the symptoms.

Pharmaceutical companies are in business to make as much money as they can. They try to develop drugs you have to take for years and years, such as medicines for high blood pressure or depression. You don’t get well; you just keep taking the drug.

Buhner then cites an example of herbal practice in Africa, where the people can’t afford Western drugs and the infrastructure there doesn’t support drug manufacturing.  Local healers in Nigeria, for example, were asked what herbs they were using. Researchers then took the seeds from the best and most effective herbs and gave them to the people so they could grow their own plant herbs. This had a very empowering impact upon the people, not to mention its ecological friendliness.

I will continue sharing Stephen Buhner’s perspectives in the next post. I will close this post with words of a colleague in the healing field. “Nothing is wrong. Everything matters.” Allopathic medicine has played an important role in healthcare and continues to play a crucial role in the emergency room of our hospitals. On the other hand, pharmaceutical medicine’s days are numbered. Already pharmaceutical companies are getting out of the antibiotic business for two reasons. One, they don’t make a lot of money with the drug’s short-term usage. Two, “they know antibiotics are going to fail, and they don’t want to be the one holding the bag when they do.” According to Buhner’s latest information, the U.S. Government is taking over antibiotic research and production and will take all the blame when it crashes, and crash it will. “As David Livermore, the top antibiotic resistance researcher in Britain, put it, “It is naive to think we can win.”◊

Until my next post, here’s to your health and prosperity throughout the coming New Year.

Anthony Palombo, D.C.

Visit my HealthTones.org blog for more exploratory articles in the field of healing and transformation.

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“Founded On TONE”

DD_Palmer1-father-pof-chiropracticsDaniel David Palmer founded Chiropractic in 1895 when he realigned the cervical spine on his janitor, Harvey Lillard, and restored his hearing.  Dr. Palmer, a magnetic healer, wrote these words on the title page of his first book: “Founded On TONE.” I published my booklet Rediscovering The Soul of Chiropractic in 2007.  In it I wrote these words:

In D.D.’s first book these words appear on the title page: “Founded On Tone.” In the pages that follow he proclaims, almost charismatically, that life is tone in human beings and that tone is health. In his second book, Daniel confides how initially he leaned toward the theory that nerves conveyed the vibrational “Tone” of life, and that spinal aberrations stretched and otherwise stressed the nerve fibers thereby distorting the frequency of that vibrational tone.

“An impulse travels over a nerve by waves known as vibration, similar as a pulse-wave, only more rapid . . . . Nerves, like material substances, are composed of particles, atoms or molecules, which vibrate, oscillate. When nerves are in a normal condition, known as tone—normal tension, normal elasticity and normal renitency [tonicity]—impulses are transmitted by vibration in a normal manner with the usual force . . . . Motor and sensory impulses are transmitted over the nervous system by molecular vibration.” (The Chiropractor 1914)

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

Magnetic healing has come around again. I’ve been practicing it since the 1970’s.  We call it “attunement,” a term that has come to be used by Reiki and other energy work healing methodologies.  Basically, we are working with the energetic body and through the energetic body with the physical body.  It is the energetic body that holds the patterns of health and disease that manifest in the physical body.  The principle at work is simple: change the vibration in the energy body and you change the manifestation in the physical body. The ultimate goal is to lift the energetic vibration of the physical body to a level where dissonant patterns of disease cannot manifest but only harmonious patterns of health. 

SOUND HEALING COMES OF AGE

Such words as “TONE” and “dissonant” and “harmonious” imply music and sound.  Sound healing has come of age and has even entered into main-stream medicine.  Of course the majority of sound healers are in the “Alternative” and “New Age” milieu.  I received my certification in sound healing in 2009 at Jonathan Goldman’s Healing Sounds Intensive out of Boulder, Colorado. This is a nine-day workshop intensive that is held every year and draws up to a hundred sound healers from all over the world to participate in a transformative journey into the vibrational world of Sacred Sound. This is only one such sound healing school offering training in this vibrational healing methodology.

THE TONE IS LOVE 

I just returned from an “Energetics of Healing” attunement intensive at Oakwood Retreat Center in Selma, Indiana  and will be flying up to Portland, Oregon this weekend to participate in another attunement intensive entitled “RESONANCE –THE HEART OF ATTUNEMENT.”  There’s another word that relates to music and sound.  Resonance is a principle at work throughout creation.  All of creation resonates to the TONE of Life sounding and resounding throughout the Cosmos. It’s the TONE of LOVE. 

THE PINEAL GATEWAY

Over the years that I’ve been exploring the frequencies of the sacred anatomy of our seven endocrine glands, I’ve noticed that a shift has taken place in the tonal frequency of the energy radiating from the pineal gland located in the center of the brain. That shift has gone a half step up from an F to an F#.  In his wonderful book SACRED SOUND, Ted Andrews writes in his historical account of Sacred Sound’s ancient past . . .

The Chinese healers used “singing stones”–thin flat pieces of jade which would emit various musical tones when struck. One of these tones was designated the kung or great tone of Nature. It corresponds in our own musical scale to the tone of F or F-sharp. The Sufis considered Hu to be the ultimate creative sound. The Tibetans considered the tones F-sharp, A and G to be the three powerful and sacred tones of the world. 

The corresponding color of F# is Violet.  I see a violet light pulsing and contracting to a fine focus in the dark space of my closed eyes when attuning the pineal gland with the Spirit of Love. This light is particularly strong when someone is sharing attunement with me and focusing the current in the area of my pineal gland.

There is an energetic gateway here in this gland that opens up to let in sacred energy from the divine spirit that is incarnate in each and every one.  This is the portal of light through which the angel enters his or her body temple after the temple is complete at the end of the third month of embryonic development.  Incarnation takes place in the womb when the house of being is complete and ready to receive the lord or lady of the house.  It is as well the portal for excarnation and ascension at the end of our earthly journey.  It is where the “silver cord” attaches that leads back to the realms of light.  If you wish to own a quartz crystal bowl, let it be an F-sharp bowl. I highly recommend it. 

Our bodies are founded on TONE. They resonate to the frequency of Love. The frequency of Love is F-sharp in my experience. The harmonic chord of F-sharp is F# A# C#.  If you want a little magic in your life, your health, your spiritual practice, then obtain three quartz crystal bowls that “sing” these three sacred tones. Set them in your meditation space and place them in the morning when you arise and just before bedtime. You will be amazed at how these sacred tones calm and bring focus to your mind as your pineal gland resonates with them.  

Here’s to your health and healing,

Tony's picture 2 from PeggyAnthony Palombo, DC

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for more inspiring articles about sacred energy.

 

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Don’t Trade Perfect Love For Ebola Fear

My Chorale PicPardon me for turning to Sacred Scripture for inspiration during our current health crisis. But we definitely live under a fear-based governance promoted by the news media.  If it isn’t the “threat” of ISIS — which has taken second place to Ebola in the media’s more current entertainment agenda — then it’s the scare of an Ebola pandemic.  But don’t you let your guard — and your immune system — down.  Perfect love not only casts out fear but it keeps what you are being led to fear at bay. Remember what Job cried out in his troubles: “…that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” Actually, that entire scene of chapter three is a perfect meditation piece to dwell upon for the length of this post.

 Job was utterly depressed to the point of despair.  Have you ever been there and cried out like Job: “I wish I had never been born!”

(Vs 3-5)    Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

Wow! He was in a very, very low state of mind and spirit. Job goes on with a tirade of words condemning the day he was born. I wonder if those who have contracted the death-dealing plague of the day feel as Job did as they face certain death. Apparently, Job’s boils and great loss of family and wealth appeared  to him to be harder to bear than had he been born dead — “. . . as infants which never saw light….[where]…the wicked cease from troubling; and…the weary be at rest.”  Then he says something very interesting a few verses down at the end of this chapter:

(Vs 23-26) Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?  For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.  For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.  I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.

Job was not an individual but was a representation of the body of Humanity on earth at that time. Job was a people, in other words; a collective body of humanity — like the Lemurians or the Atlantians —  “whom God hath hedged in.”  Hedged in, protected from harm, and immune to disease. But by what?  What would hedge us in so that we would be immune to the Ebola virus, or to any and all forms of pestilence and plagues?

Well, Job named the conditions that broke down his hedge of immunity: “I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet.”  Hmm. Not in safety — exposed, in other words. Had no rest — tired and worn out.  Was not quiet — busy doing to keep from being worried about the future and the consequences of living out of one’s integrity.  

Safety can be seen as doing the right things for our bodies, minds and hearts. Such as eating healthful foods and exercising regularly. Supplementing with wholefood nutrients where healthy foods are not readily available, and where one is eating on the run — which is not very safe healthwise — and dosing daily with immune system modulating herbs like Echinacea and antioxidants. It can also be seen as pertaining to living in the moment, the only place that is safe and real, and where life is.  That has to do with conscious living, doesn’t it. You’re not safe if you’re mind is not present while driving your car or carving the turkey, just to name a couple of activities that put us in harm’s way if we’re not mindful of what we are doing. It also pertains to our hearts and emotions, our spiritual life, in other words.

Rest speaks for itself. The body needs rest as much as activity. Balance needs to be maintained between work, play and rest.  Play can be a rest from work. Rest, of course, is essential to the revitalization, repair and growth of cells in the body. Six to eight hours of sleep are generally recommended for adults. Children need as much as nine hours simply because they are in a growth cycle and expend a lot of energy playing hard.  Rest also pertains to presence of mind and a heart that is at ease with what is, not judging things and wishing they were different. Accepting what is simply as what is.

Quiet, of course, is what most are not these days.  A “noisome pestilence” invades our space every moment of the day, and even into the night in some big cities.  The traffic, the television chatter, the daily newspaper and national and local news hours — the “daily crime report” is what I call our local evening news.  But the real noise is not out there. It’s inside the hearts and minds for most. That’s why they need noise around them: to balance and drown out the noise inside. The so-called “music” of our young generation is a sad example.  Even commercials have noisome background sound tracks to get the attention of potential buyers away from their inner troubled thoughts.  Sometimes the commercials are more “entertaining” than the program. 

A friend wrote a poem with this verse in it:

Busy thought and troubled feeling Trespass not in virtue’s wise serenity Where firm control and awful power eternally abide.  Here earth’s pains are healed And cruel chaos of mind’s spawning Is called again to order and to beauty.

Meditation is an essential spiritual practice for one who wishes to be in a place of safety, rest and quietness of mind and heart. Just five or ten minutes of quietness and solitude — like the revitalizing “catnap” we older folks take — can give one a recharge of energy and an opportunity to gather one’s substance together in one place: the eternal Now.  One’s substance can get spread out pretty thin at times, and that’s asking for trouble.  Your substance is your hedge, especially strong and impenetrable when charged with the energy of love and joy.  “Perfect love casts out fear.”  Fear dissipates your hedge and opens your body temple to defilement by the noisome pestilence, and to viruses like Ebola.

Just as a side note: it’s interesting that the flu kills over fifty-three-thousand people every year and yet doesn’t engender nearly as much fear as the Ebola virus has in just a few weeks. Notice the “Get Your Flu  Shot” signs in front of drug stores. Even while shopping at the super market the music coming over the speakers is interrupted by messages about shingles. “If you’ve had the chicken pocks, then you have the shingles virus in your body.” Fear drives our healthcare delivery system.  Little wonder we are so weak and susceptible to diseases.  Ebola has given the medical world a new reason to rev up the fear mode.

I will close this post with my favorite Psalm 91 as a meditative piece to secure our sense of safety, rest and quiet.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.  

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adler:  the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

Who are “the wicked” that are receiving their reward in the wars and plagues of today?  I will answer with the The Teacher’s response to a similar situation: “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.” We as a race of human-doings are the wicked, and we are reaping our reward in the Middle East with ISIS and in Africa with Ebola. The Earth is fighting back to rid Herself of the parasitic plague we have become.

And what is the “snare of the fowler” from which we need deliverance?  The bird-catcher.  Birds are like thoughts that fly in and out of the belfry towers up in our heads. The mind snares thoughts that fly through it every moment of the day and blows them up into issues we should all be afraid of and fight over. Does your mind snare unwanted thoughts, crows and vultures sometimes?

“Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him in trouble.” What have I set my love upon? My life, perhaps?  “He that loveth his life shall lose it.”  

What we fear about Ebola is the loss of our life. Death seems inevitable without proper medicine.  The only way through that fear is to love death itself as the perfect outworking for one’s life, given all the factors at play.   It’s the only way back Home these days.  By embracing the worst case scenario — death in this case — we take it within our hearts — in the “secret place of the Most High” that is within us, where the “shadow of the Almighty” prepares a place of safety where death has no sting. Death, even death, cannot come nigh me, for I cannot die. I am life and I am alive forever more.  

Don’t let fear of Ebola overshadow your love for the Lord, who is perfect — your love for that which is perfect in yourself: life and truth, peace and tranquility, thankfulness and appreciation, honesty and integrity.  Then get on with your life and LIVE! Be safe, and don’t let your heart be troubled by the troubles of the world. 

Here’s to your health and to Life!

Anthony Palombo, DC

Visit my Healing Tones blog for more inspiring reading. The current theme is “The Hero’s Journey.” Comments on my blogs are always welcome and I look forward to them every day. So, share your thoughts.

Here’s a great song about being brave and fearless. Enjoy!