Fear is among the most powerful of emotions.  When any one of us feels fear, we are hard pressed to stand our ground.  We flinch, we cringe, we shy away, or we flat out run.   When I search through the memories of my life, the times when I felt afraid seem the most potent.  As the chemical of fear coursed through my veins, each tiny detail of the event has been seared into my memory.   I remember so clearly what I was thinking at the time, what room I was in, the time of day, as well as the agony I felt as I made the difficult choices necessary to get out of that situation.  Interestingly, I don’t remember all of the people around me.  When you are afraid, the world closes in on you, your peripheral vision shuts off, and you are only aware of the people right in front of you, as your heart beats strongly in your chest.

Some people become addicted to the heightened sensations they feel when they are afraid and chase after them.  These are the people who climb mountains, jump out of airplanes, and tie bungee cords to tall bridges.   I am not one of those people.  Although I am afraid of a number of things, dizzying heights are a featured part of most of them.  A friend of mine shares my fear of heights.  Visiting the Grand Canyon with her husband and son a number of years ago, she couldn’t bring herself to walk toward the edge.  Her husband and son walked eagerly to the edge of the canyon to better see the spectacular view, while she clung to the cliffs behind her, terrified.  A concerned observer asked her if she was alright, and tried to coax her away from the wall.  “You don’t understand,” my friend told her.  “Everything that I love in this world is right now standing at the lip of that canyon, and I’m terrified of losing it!”.   Our fears can take many forms.

When we feel fear, our adrenal-corticol system dumps as many as thirty different hormones into our bloodstream in an attempt to handle the perceived threat.  These hormones cause our heart rate and blood pressure to increase, our pupils to dilate, and our muscles to tense.  Understandably, this large output of hormones is stressful for our adrenal glands and if they are frequently called upon to release them, your adrenal glands will weaken.  Due to the stresses of modern-day life, many people are in a constant state of anxiety, if not outright fear.  Adrenal gland burnout is becoming increasingly common.  According to Chinese medicine, the adrenal glands are considered to be a part of proper kidney functioning.  Since each of your adrenal glands sit atop each kidney, if your adrenal glands weaken, your kidneys will tend to weaken as well.  In addition to the exhaustion and poor stamina seen with people who have weakened adrenals, there can also be symptoms like increased frequency of urination and lower back pain, which are more commonly associated with weakened kidneys.

One way to protect our kidneys and adrenals anti fungal from becoming weakened is to avoid feeling fear as much as possible.  Although it would be impossible to eradicate fear from our lives, we can try to simplify our lives so as to remove unnecessary stresses and anxieties.  We can decide not to accept the promotion that will dramatically increase our responsibilities and lengthen our days.  We can choose not to drive ourselves through congested traffic and take public transportation, or carpool instead.   We can try to minimize the time we spend with people we find stressful.

Those people who are born with weaker kidneys will have to take stronger precautions than those who are stronger.  Naturally, daily stresses and fears will take a greater toll on people who are already inclined towards kidney weakness.  If your parents or grandparents had a lot of kidney problems, or if frequent urination, incontinence, or poor stamina runs through your family, then you should take greater precautions against stress.  In Chinese medicine, it is known that while fear can weaken the kidneys, having weak kidneys inclines us to be more fearful when others are not.  Aside from using herbs like those in our Kidney Tea to gradually strengthen your kidneys and adrenal glands, you can also perform soothing exercises to calm your body and mind.  Yoga and meditation are wonderful ways to slow down your sympathetic nervous system and engage the more calming para-sympathetic nervous system.  Just like learning to play the piano or the clarinet, with practice, you can also become more skilful in activating your para-sympathetic nervous system, and this can extend your life.

While only a small percentage of us actually enjoy jumping out of airplanes, there is a more common way to feel the exhilerating effects of fear, and you can find it at your local amusement park.  Every year, my two sons try to coax me on to one of the new, extremely high roller coasters at Canada’s Wonderland, Toronto’s amusement park.  One year, against my better judgement, I gave in to them.  As the roller coaster climbed the crest of a series of high hills, I clutched the bar in front of my seat with a death grip.  A panic set in, and my heart beat so quickly that I had to close my eyes and breathe deeply to calm myself, trying to ignore the sensations that my body was experiencing.

Later, as I described to my husband the fear that was coursing through my body, he wondered why I couldn’t just relax and allow myself to feel like Superman, flying through the sky without a care.  I found it an interesting way to re-frame the problem.  Rather than picturing myself careening through the air in a death-box, I could choose to imagine that I was flying freely and expertly, without danger.  For those of us who feel fear frequently, it would be a good exercise to try to re-frame all of our fears this way,  imagining ourselves as super-beings with all the strengths and abilities required to survive the incident with ease.  Even so, I don’t think I’ll be riding that roller coaster again!

My father-in-law has always had a very clear idea about what he wanted in his life, and has striven hard to achieve it.   As a result, he accomplished much and was well rewarded for it, giving him the means to live out a rich and satisfying retirement.  But while this might lead others to recline on their front porch and enjoy their remaining years in idle pleasure, he hasn’t rested on his laurels now that he has retired.  As is common with men of ambition, he still has goals and plans, and he wakes every day with a sense of purpose.

He has lived fastidiously all his life, watching his diet, and exercising regularly.  As a result, he is in exceptional health for a man of his age.  But in spite of all these efforts, something happened this spring which threatened to derail all his unfinished plans.  He unexpectedly developed a staph infection in his blood, more commonly known as septicemia, which almost killed him.

These kinds of near-death experiences tend to bring a new sense of clarity to life, and this has certainly happened with my father-in-law since then.  But what I found most interesting during his illness, was how strongly he tried to retain power over his life.  In the same way that he skillfully extracted his desires from the world around him when he was younger, he quickly created a plan to draw life out of his rather miserable month-long stay in hospital.  Enlisting the help of many family members, he obtained the food he desired, collected his preferred articles of hygiene, and through repeated visits, eventually accumulated enough components from his home office that he was able to mostly conduct his affairs at the hospital just as he did at home.  He had a table to use as a desk, pens and paper, and plenty of books to keep his brain working.  And rather than rest in his hospital bed, he would sit at his makeshift desk, read, and make notes to himself.

Once my father-in-law finally returned home, he was required to carry an IV bag with him for a couple of months so that he could continue to receive the intravenous antibiotics he needed to get well.  Any of us would find this tiresome after awhile, but what really bothered my father-in-law was the constraint this placed on his ability to take a daily morning shower.  Because neither his IV line in his arm, nor the IV bag itself could get wet, it seemed that daily showers would no longer be possible, which vexed him considerably.  I suggested that he take a bath instead, as then he could safely keep both his arm and the IV bag out of the water, but this change in routine was completely unacceptable to him.

Over the next few weeks, I was amazed at the number of different ways in which he tried to get around this new constraint.  Initially, he tried wrapping his IV bag in plastic, but he could never get it completely water-tight.  He tried washing his hair with only one hand so that the IV line in his left arm wouldn’t get wet.  Both of these efforts failed no matter the adjustments he made.  Eventually, he came upon a plan to disconnect his IV line temporarily each morning, with my help, so that he could shower without its encumbrance.  But his IV line frequently became clogged without a continuous drip through it, and the nurses at the clinic who flushed his line each day began to complain.  He eventually found a way to hang his IV bag outside the shower door, while also protecting his left arm from the water.  But throughout this endless drama, I wondered why he couldn’t just accept defeat and take a bath for a couple of months.  Sure, it was a little annoying if you preferred to take a shower, but certainly better than what I saw as a futile battle against the inevitable.

But here was the essential difference between my father-in-law and myself:  even as a sick man, he could still summon the energy to maintain this fight, whereas I would have buckled quickly under the unremitting difficulty of the situation.  I believe it is this deep resource of energy which has fueled all of my father-in-law’s  ambitions over the years and to a large extent, explains why he has been so successful.  Yes, he is also intelligent and has a strong work ethic, but I would maintain that without the energy to do so, he wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far.

On a recent visit to the Humber Arboretum, a nature preserve near where I live, a guide took us through a heavily wooded area and pointed out some animal prints in the still soft mud of the spring.   “What animal do you think made these prints?” she asked us.  “Coyote?” a man called out.  “A fox?” called another.  She smiled knowingly and shook her head.  “No.  A coyote or a fox would never make paw prints like these,” she assured us.  The prints were quite evenly spaced; you could clearly see that the animal had four separate paws.   “A coyote or a fox would never waste his energy like this,” she said.  She pointed out how you could see each of the animal’s four feet.  “A coyote or other wild animal has to conserve their energy because they never know when they may eat again.  As a result, they will place all four paws down at once, at almost the same spot.  That way, that they can efficiently leap farther, using less energy, than if their feet were separated”.  As I listened to her, I realized that it was true:  when you see wild animal prints, you typically see only two paw prints, which look as if they have just brushed the earth before leaving off again.  “These prints were probably left by someone’s Labrador retriever,” she laughed.  “You see how he’s inefficiently moving his paws all over the place?  birth control These prints could only have come from an animal who doesn’t need to worry about his next meal”.

All living things need to conserve their energy, because the latent energy within us is so precious, and because new energy can be difficult to create.   Just as trees store energy for growth deep in their trunks in the form of sap, we humans also store our energy deep within ourselves.   In Chinese medicine, our energy is said to be stored in one of our most vital organs:  our kidneys, whose functioning would also include that of our adrenal glands.  This makes our kidneys very important for maintaining the will to live.  In Chinese medicine, this stored energy in our kidneys is referred to as the “Gate of Vitality”, or “Ming Men Fire”.  Our kidneys and adrenals are like the coals at the bottom of the fire, which are always glowing and hot to the touch.  The heat that our kidneys and adrenals generate spreads upwards throughout our bodies and gives us strength and energy.  When this hot glow of coals wanes and cools, we become weaker and closer to death.  And so, if we want to have a long and fruitful life, with enough energy to accomplish our goals, we should be sure to take good care of our kidneys and adrenals.

Much of the strength of our kidneys is genetic.  In Chinese medicine, a large portion of our kidney strength is referred to as “Pre-Heaven Essence”, which means that whatever kidney strength we have was gifted to us by our parents before we were born.  If our parents had weak kidneys and adrenals, then this weakness will be passed down to us, and there is really nothing that we can do to change this genetic inheritance.

Those people who are gifted with strong kidneys and adrenals at birth can easily find energy for all their daily ambitions.  Without thinking much about it, they can swing from chore to chore and accomplish much throughout the day.  With this seemingly endless supply of energy at their fingertips, they can make grand plans with confidence and rarely worry about their ability to carry them out to completion.  People thus blessed tend to have a strong will, like my father-in-law.  They will fight any battle important enough to them, knowing that they have plenty of reserved energy to sustain them.

Those born with weakened kidneys and adrenals live a different life, and sadly, are often criticized in a Western culture that prizes vitality over other equally valuable qualities.  For, often through a poor genetic inheritance over which they have no control, these people are more prone to tiredness, listlessness, and a lack of confidence over their ability to complete the assignments before them.   These people may be equally intelligent, and may also understand the importance of hard work, but simply don’t have the stamina to achieve their goals.  In short, they have a lack of will power.  They may have the will to achieve their goals, but not the power to do so, and over the course of their lives, they can eventually become resigned to the fact that many of their goals will never be met.

If you have weakened kidneys or adrenal glands and are now despairing of ever obtaining that store of energy that others have in such abundance, there is much that you can do to improve your situation.  You may never have the energy to waste that some others do, but you can preserve what you have, and even kindle some more, with careful effort.

Firstly, to preserve what you have, you should take better care of yourself.  Don’t overwork yourself, especially without proper meals.  If you must work hard, ensure that the food you eat is also nutritious, with enough protein to maintain your tissues, and plenty of fruits and vegetables to provide you with anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, and fibre.  If you deplete your body with overwork, while also failing to restore the nutrients which you have used, your body will be forced to dip into its reserves, which will weaken your kidneys with time.  Ensure that you get proper rest so that your body can regenerate itself.  And avoid chilling this source of “fire” in our bodies with the excessive intake of cold drinks, or other cold foods such as bananas and citrus fruits.

Apart from avoiding unnecessary depletion, you can also help to beef up your energy reserves by  taking herbs to strengthen your kidneys and adrenals.  The herbs known to strengthen your kidneys are some of the best known and most treasured herbs in the Chinese herbal pharmacy.  Prepared rehmannia root, fleeceflower root (also known as he shou wu), shizandra berries, and dodder seeds are all good herbs to help rejuvenate your kidneys.  In Ayurvedic medicine, ashwagandha and asparagus root (also known as shatavari) are used for the same purpose.  While these herbs will help to nourish and calm stressed adrenals and gently strengthen your kidneys, other stimulating herbs can also be used to re-kindle latent kidney energy.   These more stimulating herbs, used to stimulate “kidney yang” would include eucommia bark, horny goat weed, or morinda root.  These herbs will replenish your inner “fire”, helping to restore the energy needed to achieve your goals.

Those of us with weakened kidneys and adrenals may never have the same abundance of energy as those who were birthed with it, but if we can effectively prevent its depletion and faithfully restore what we can, we can still have very productive lives.  In fact, someone who carefully protects their kidneys can often have more energy at the end of their life than someone who carelessly depleted it without thought while they were young.  We might not all have the boundless willpower of my father-in-law, but with enough care, we can maintain that fiery glow in our core, and allow it to smoulder and radiate a generous amount of heat well into our advanced years.

Chinese medicine theory has long disagreed with the notion of icing injuries.  According to Chinese medicine, the way to stop pain and improve healing is to stimulate blood circulation through the injured area by keeping it warm.  This can be best achieved through gentle movement of the strained area, not by restricting movement and applying cold.  Applying ice or a cold topamax compress may decrease swelling in the short term, but it will stop the movement of blood and make pain worse in the long run.

Excerpt:  “Topical cooling (icing)?.?.?.?seems not to improve but, rather, delay recovery from eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage,” according to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

http://www.macleans.ca/society/the-end-of-the-ice-age/

My parents live 400 km away from me, so we only see each other several times each year. During my parents’ last stay at my home, my father asked me a rather unusual question. He asked me if I believed in reincarnation. My father has not habitually meditated on these types of spiritual questions in the past, and the fact that he was doing so now was a bit unsettling. My father turned 80 years old this past March, and he has obviously been spending some time reflecting on his life, as is normal for anyone of advanced years. A Methodist by upbringing, my father has never been known to give credence to the more wacky tenets of other faiths, so I was a little surprised that he brought up the subject at all. However, it was his next question which really made me sad. “If reincarnation is real,” he asked, “at your death, would you prefer to be given another life, or would you prefer to simply vanish into oblivion?”. Perplexed, I answered, “Don’t you have to choose life? How can you prefer oblivion to life?”. Shaking his head dismissively, as if I could not possibly understand, he stated firmly that he would prefer oblivion.

To properly sympathize with my father’s answer, you have to understand that he has been in almost constant pain for as long as I’ve known him. When I was a young girl, he fractured several vertebrae in his lower back by improperly lifting heavy objects on our farm, such as hay bales or heavy bags of cattle feed. When I was seven, he had surgery to fuse his vertebrae together again, but the pain didn’t go away. In fact, the pain may have even become worse. And thus began the constant quest for pain relief that would last him for much of the rest of his life. He took all different kinds of pain relievers, both over-the-counter, and prescriptions from his doctor. He tried alternative therapies, including magnets and various herbal remedies. He had a back brace for a time, but this didn’t seem to help either. After dealing with ever-present, debilitating pain for four decades, you can understand why he might choose oblivion over life. And yet, I still found his sentiments to be profoundly distressing. If reincarnation were real and he were to get a new life, then the new body of whatever species he might become would most likely not have chronic pain. It seemed that my father had completely given up hope, not just in his own life, but in Life itself.

It is probably not uncommon for elderly people to express sentiments similar to these. The so-called “Golden Years” are often years filled with pain, reduced mobility, and loss of ability. If we haven’t yet learned to deal with loss in our younger years, we are sure to learn it before we die. And accompanying this deluge of losses, in both our own capabilities and in the people we’ve loved along the way, is the emotional weight of having to come to terms with it. These are the years when a long-held spiritual practice can sustain you, and the lack of one can break you.

Yet not all elderly people suffer with this level of pessimism and weariness. Granted, not all lives are alike, and some people are forced to endure more than others. But I believe there is something more at work here than a simple flagging of emotions. In Chinese medicine, the mind and body are known to be intertwined and inseparable. Whatever emotions are going through your mind have a physical cause, and in the case of age, this cause is most likely to be a loss of qi. In Chinese medicine, qi is said to be the vital energy that courses through all living things, including your physical body. It is this vital energy which causes you to wake up with a smile on your face and bound out of your bed, eager to face the day. The amount of qi that you have determines how many tasks you are able to complete each day, as well as how strong your immune system is, and how well you are able to digest your food. It necessarily affects every choice that you make each day, since your choices are bound by what you can actually do. And if your level of qi is low, and you know that you will not be able to enact many, or even any of your desires, then you are sure to greet the day with more resignation than enthusiasm.

So how does one get more qi? According to Chinese medicine, the organs which are most responsible for the manufacturing of qi in our bodies are our spleen and our lungs. Our lungs draw qi into our bodies from the air that we inhale, and then release waste in the form of carbon dioxide when we exhale. This beautiful cycle of renewal is repeated endlessly from the first breath we draw when we are born until the day that we die. “Breath is life!”, a friend of mine once said to me as she struggled to breathe while attached to an oxygen tank. She was in the final stages of cancer. She knew what we often hair loss forget: the oxygen from the air that we breathe nourishes and animates our entire bodies. Some of us may feel low in energy simply because we don’t take deep enough breaths throughout the day. Sitting hunched over our computers, our back becomes more curved and our chest can gradually become depressed, which prevents our lungs from filling up with enough air to give us the oxygen we need. Some people have reported improved health just by doing yogic deep breathing exercises, where we gently fill our lungs to capacity to maximize the amount of oxygen we receive and then exhaling fully to release as much carbon dioxide as possible. Exercises like qi gong or tai chi, and the Y-Dan exercises that we promote on our website, can also heal because of the increased amount of oxygen our bodies receive when we do them.

Our spleen is also important for the manufacturing of qi in our bodies. In Chinese medicine, the functions of the “spleen” include those of both the spleen and the pancreas in Western medicine. The pancreas produces enzymes for the proper digestion of our food, and if our spleen/pancreas is weak, then fewer enzymes will be produced, and therefore fewer nutrients will be available to our bodies. It is these nutrients will be used to create blood, muscle. tendon, and bone. Without them, we would soon become weak and malnourished. In Western medicine, the spleen is the organ which creates white blood cells to protect us from infection, so a properly functioning spleen is also important for maintaining our immunity against the bacteria and viruses which saturate our environment.

In Chinese medicine, there is a popular saying, “It is not what you eat, but what you assimilate that matters”, and this is why the spleen/pancreas is considered to be such an important organ. For the most wholesome food in the world cannot provide health and energy to your body if your spleen/pancreas is too weak to assimilate it properly. Hence the emphasis that Chinese medicine places on proper diet and the importance of avoiding foods which could potentially weaken your spleen/pancreas. Aside from ensuring that you eat a balanced and nutritious diet, high in whole grains and lightly cooked, fresh vegetables, Chinese medicine exhorts you to avoid foods which are known to weaken spleen functioning, such as white flour, white sugar, cold drinks, raw vegetables, citrus fruits, tomatoes, and bananas.

While maintaining the strength of our lungs and our spleen will ensure that we continue to receive good quality qi from our environment, we can still suffer from poor energy if our qi becomes stuck. For qi is not a static thing like the ground on which we walk. It is more like a body of water, that is constantly trickling or rippling or forming waves of all sizes. Qi is movement as well as substance, and if we focus only on the substance, our lives can become as stagnant as a swamp. While elderly people can suffer more from a lack of qi, as their lungs and spleen deteriorate in ability and they are no longer able to gather the qi that they need from their environment, young and middle-aged people tend to suffer more from sluggish qi.

According to Chinese medicine, it is the liver which is said to spread our qi, ensuring that it is evenly distributed throughout our bodies. If the bile ducts of our liver become congested, then qi will have difficulty moving and can become sluggish or stagnant. This happens particularly when we have been under a lot of stress, or when we eat a lot of stagnating foods, such as deep fried foods, or high fat dairy products, but it is also heavily influenced by our emotions. Anger, frustration, bitterness, and a lack of forgiveness are all sticky feelings that cause our liver to tighten and prevent movement. Every bitterly painful memory or feeling of resentment from our past can create a blockage which prevents the free flow of qi throughout our bodies, and this can shrink our potential and even shorten our lives. This is why forgiveness of yourself and of others can be one of the most important steps that you take to regain your health.

My father isn’t always as pessimistic as he was on that particular day, but when his level of pain is bad, he finds it difficult to generate any optimism. He has used some tinctures for his liver in the past, and has also tried to do daily stretching exercises, but I think it is difficult for people of his generation to develop a regular exercise routine when they stayed fit by doing physical labour, or to follow dietary advice which runs counter to what their parents fed them as they were growing up. Rather than repeatedly lecture my father, I try to be a good example of what he could do differently. As I do my regular yoga practice, I don’t hide the smile that comes to my face as I slowly raise my arms above my head and breathe in deeply. Morning sun salutations are my favourite way to build and move the qi in my body, and as my father watches, he says “Good for you!”. Maybe one day he’ll join me.

A new study[1] confirms past research which indicates that a diet high in protein, particularly in middle age, will increase mortality.  This study dovetails with the conclusions of the EPIC study [2] in Europe which found that you should limit your meat consumption to 40 grams (roughly 1.5 ounces) per day.

Excerpt:  “In a study Hu authored, people who ate a serving of red meat every day had a 13 percent eta-i.org/cialis.html increased risk of mortality, compared with those who ate little meat. By comparison, people who swapped out red meat for alternative sources of protein cut their risk of premature death. Choosing chicken and other poultry decreased the risk by 14 percent, fish decreased the risk by 7 percent and legumes decreased the risk by 10 percent”.

1. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/03/04/285879644/eat-plants-and-prosper-for-longevity-go-easy-on-the-meat-study-says

2. http://epic.iarc.fr/keyfindings.php

Even people with insulin-resistance, an increasingly common health problem, were shown to have increased incidence of dementia.  This makes it more important than ever to keep your blood sugar levels within normal parameters.

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110919163947.htm

Excerpt:  The study found that people with diabetes were twice as likely to develop dementia as people with normal blood sugar levels. Of the 150 people with arthritis diabetes, 41 developed dementia, compared to 115 of the 559 people without diabetes who developed dementia.

The results remained the same after the researchers accounted for factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking. The risk of dementia was also higher in people who did not have diabetes, but had impaired glucose tolerance, or were “pre-diabetes.”

There are few things I find magical about the month of February. If there is fresh snow on the ground, the pristine whiteness of my environment can sometimes coax an exclamation of beauty from me. It helps if the sun is shining and creates glints of light through the icicles on the trees. But by and large, by the time February has rolled around, I’m largely tired and exasperated by the continual presence of snow and cold. I’m tired of constantly shivering and shoveling snow out of my driveway. And while the days have lengthened some, night descends far too quickly, taking away whatever small amount of heat the sun brought with it, and dimming inclinations to stray far from home.

But as they say, “home is where the heart is”. For those of us in happy family situations, the cold nights of February bring us closer together. We share stories of our days and lives, laugh at each other’s jokes, and watch movies together, all while eating fattening food that brings us comfort during these cold, short days and long, dark nights. Maybe it is as much because of this, as of the presence of Valentine’s Day smack in the middle of February, that has caused February to be labeled “Heart Month”.

In Western medicine, the heart is known to be one of the most important organs in the body. Without its steady pumping of blood throughout our bodies, 365 days of the year, we would soon die. The other organs of our bodies depend on it for the constant influx of calcium, sodium, potassium salts, glucose, amino acids, oxygen, and many other raw materials, which are needed in steady supply in order to carry out the daily demands we place on them. What I’ve always found fascinating about the heart is its natural pace-making abilities. In the atrium of your heart, there is an “atrioventricular node” or AV node, that creates an electrical signal, much like the spark plugs in a car, which keep your heart pumping rhythmically.  So, it is not just when we fall in love that “sparks fly”. This happens with each beat of our hearts, for as long as we live. In every moment, we contain the spark of life.

In Chinese medicine, this same idea of “sparking” also exists in relation to the heart. Aside from its physical duties of “governing the blood”, which include its responsibility of transforming the food that we eat into blood itself, and ensuring that all tissues receive the blood they require, the heart is also said to house a spiritual aspect, known as the “shen”. Shen is defined by Giovanni Maciocia as being “the whole sphere of emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of a human being”. You can actually see a healthy “shen” in someone you know, without knowing anything else about Chinese medicine. This is the spark in someone’s eyes, manifested in the enthusiasm that they show for life itself. We all know people who have a lot of “shen”. And, sadly, we most likely also know people who have very little.

People with a small quantity of shen may very well have a weak heart. But more often than not, they simply have very little blood flowing into their heart. It could be said that the thing which animates the heart is the very presence of blood, and without it, the heart, mind, and emotions are dull and sluggish. Knowing that then, in order to invigorate the heart, it is necessary to increase blood circulation through it. And as so often happens in Chinese medicine, this requires the help of another organ in the body, for no organ can function on its own in our bodies without help, just as people cannot function in the world without the help of our loved ones. In the case of increasing the flow of blood to the heart, its dear pharmacy-no-rx.net friend and help-mate in this endeavor is the liver.

As is mentioned on our website, the liver is the organ which filters all of your blood. It does this during the night as you sleep, which is why it is important to eat your last meal of the day as early as you can. If your liver is still heavily involved with the digestion of your last meal, it will not be able to devote as much attention to filtering your blood of toxins. As a result, your heart can become heavy with toxins and difficult in flowing. Blood that is filled with toxins will not be able to carry as many nutrients and oxygen to the cells of your body, including those in your heart.

Additionally, if the bile ducts of your liver are congested with a lot of old and hardened bile, which is the residue of poorly metabolized food due to poor diet or stress, then when blood enters your liver to be filtered, it may have difficulty moving out again. And the direct recipient of the filtered blood from your liver is your heart. Hence, the root cause of poor blood flow in the heart is often congestion in the ducts of the liver.

Until it went out of print, we used to sell a book entitled “The Liver Causes Heart Attacks”, by a Dr. W.P. Neufeld. In this book, Dr. Neufeld described how every patient he ever had who died of a heart attack was later found to have a badly swollen and congested liver when autopsied. From this, he concluded that the root cause of most heart attacks is actually an unhealthy liver. And so, in order to strengthen and improve the functioning of your heart, it is wise for you to consider the health of your liver. As a filtration organ, the best way to improve the health of your liver is through liver and gallbladder flushing. Directions for how to do this can be found in the gallbladder flushing section of our website.

To assist us all in our struggle through the cold, dark days of February, it would be helpful to strengthen our hearts and thereby increase our shen. I’m sure we would all aspire to be a “shen-filled” individual, who not only exudes happiness and well-being, but inspires those same feelings in all the people around us. Aside from doing regular liver and gallbladder flushing, you can also strengthen your heart by eating foods which are known to nourish it. In Chinese medicine, foods which are red in colour are said to nourish heart functioning, which would include adzuki beans, red peppers, red dates, hawthorn berries, and strawberries.

According to Western medicine, foods which are high in anti-oxidants can prevent oxidative stress from free radicals, and thereby decrease the stress placed on the tissues of the heart. Common foods which are high in anti-oxidants include foods such as blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries, as well as dark green vegetables, such as broccoli, spinach or kale. Leafy green vegetables also have the advantage of being very high in magnesium, without which all muscles in the body, including the heart, cannot function properly. Whole grain oatmeal is another good food for the heart because its fibre is known to reduce cholesterol. The health-promoting properties of garlic should also not be over-looked when speaking of the heart, since garlic is known to decrease both blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Finally, and most importantly, we can also strengthen our hearts and improve our shen by being grateful for, and taking comfort in, the loved ones by our sides during this cold, harsh month. Even with their sometimes frustrating habits, our friends and family members buffer us from the harsh realities of our lives. We know that with them to help shoulder our loads, and encourage us to see the humor in life, we are rich indeed.

For anyone who is concerned about the dangers of alcohol consumption, yet another study has shown that those who drink alcohol moderately live longer than both heavy drinkers and non-drinkers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/people-who-drink-alcohol-outlive-those-who-abstain-study-shows-8995879.html

Excerpt:

Research found erectile dysfunction those who did not consume any alcohol appeared to have a higher mortality rate, regardless of whether they were former heavy drinkers or not, than those who drank heavily.

Curcumin, one of the naturally-occuring chemicals in both turmeric and curcuma, the main ingredient in our Curcuma tincture, has been shown to kill fast-growing cells in the body.  As such, it is been shown to be effective in preventing the growth of cancer, and may also be an effective birth control measure.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/03/18/mellow-yellow/

Excerpt:

“Anything that is growing montauk-monster.com/pharmacy fast, it inhibits,” says Naz. This knowledge inspired him to test it as a spermicide. “I read studies showing it works beautifully in inhibiting cancer cells, which are fast-growing. The other fast-growing cells are sperm. They move fast and are highly energetic. I had this idea four or five years ago.”