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by Maireid Sullivan
2012, updated 2024
Work in progress:
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Index
- Learning from personal experience
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There's an APP
- The Human Genome Project
- The role of OXYGEN in preventing immune system breakdown
"It is more important to know
what sort of person has a disease
than to know what sort of disease a person has.”
- Hippocrates, (460-370BC),
Greek Physician - "father of medicine"
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We each need to do our own research.
We need to become your own health maintenance detective.
We need to listen to our own 'body-language' because every body is different.
We seek information when we need it, and, of course, we go to the "experts" for peer-reviewed reports. When those answers aren't satisfying, and we have the inclination -the will and the energy- to continue investigating, independent cross-discipline study can be enlivening.
The key is to stay focused on the point - examining our conditions - because we can find clues in the most unexpected places, and connecting with like-minded people turns the effort into a very exciting journey of discovery - for sharing.
Boosting our immune system reduces stress and prevents infections: Chronic stress can suppress the immune systems ability to prevent illness.
Allergies to various foods and food processing methods can have nearly instant impacts on children - and adults.
Too often, when parents don't understand why children are 'acting out' they try to suppress symptoms with medications. |
Learning from personal experience
As the eldest of 7 children, raised on a farm on top of a very high hill in West Cork, Ireland, by two nurses and a dietician, (mother, grandmother and great aunt), health maintenance has been my lifelong focus.
Long story short, my daughter attended the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School,
and
I taught singing and dancing to cover her fees: When she was 10 year old,
I became step-mother to three children, from age 2, 4, 7, each suffering from various food allergy symptoms: eczema, asthma, and bed-wetting.
(Their father lectured in Sociology at Melbourne University, while I launched an influential arts marketing consultancy. Ten years later, I 'left home' and returned to music fulltime.)
Beginning the healing process:
The children's genetic heritage (Austrian mother and Scottish father) led me to a comparative analysis of inherited dietary compatibility:
1. Dairy products: Comparing capacities for absorption;
'smaller' molecules in goats milk and 'larger' molecules in cows milk.
2. Wheat: Discovering that gluten intolerances are caused by metal blade milling of wheat, which 'shocks' the nutrients needed to digest gluten - vs
the more 'flexible' uneven surface of stone milling, which allows the grain to pass more slowly through the mill, at a lower temperature, thus preserving nutrients.
For example, the 2-year old suffered from eczema.
His father and I took turns waking up several times every night to 'cool' his rash when he scratched until he cried out. In addition, within minutes of eating 'something he shouldn't have' he 'externalized' by fighting with the others.
The 4-year old suffered from asthma and 'introversion' - bordering on autism.
- His confidence grew as we tutored him in reading.
- By supporting his diaphragm with my hand (singers technique) I was able to correct his 'reversed' breathing pattern, which followed hypertension after eating the wrong food.
Discovering solutions to gluten intolerance meant home-baking (bread, cakes and cookies) with Bio-Dynamic stoneground flour - and switching to goat milk.
All commercially processed foods and sweets were banned.
One delightful memory is worth sharing:
Some years later, while on our way to a school camp, we stopped in a small town, and gave them pocket-money to buy sweets - for the first time.
All four moaned - yuk yuk yuk yuk! - and spat them out!
By strictly following a diet of organic/Bio-Dynamic fresh foods, we all 'outgrew' allergy symptoms and continue to flourish on energetic creativity. |
Now that I've discovered the role of maintaining "Basic" pH balance in maximising oxygen uptake, I'm even more intrigued to consider this 'hypothesis'
– in supporting kidney health.
Uric acid build-up in the kidneys can cause "renal insufficiency"
– aka the inability of the kidneys to filter waste, which can lead to joint pain, pseudo-gout, gout, arthritis, chronic kidney disease, kidney stones or kidney failure, high blood pressure, heart disease, hypothyroidism, etc.
The focus is on the Gut and the kidneys, not on the blood, which DOES NOT VARY in pH. The body pH is scale from 0 to 14: numbers below 7 are acidic (low oxygen) and numbers above 7 are alkaline (high oxygen).
The blood, lymph and cerebral spinal fluid in the human body are designed to be slightly alkaline at a pH of 7.35 to 7.45.
I attended "Steiner" school founder, and Bio-Dynamic agriculture pioneer, Alex Podolinsky's weekly lectures. One of his most intriguing topics of discussion was on the evolution of the ears and the kidneys as a unit, based on his hypothesis that the kidneys register our feelings. He gave us an exercise:
Bite into a piece of celery or a green apple, and follow the taste 'sensation' all the way to the kidneys.
I used that technique to judge how I felt in any circumstance - including meeting people: That, besides monitoring "Basic" pH/oxygen uptake, our 'feelings' need to be taken seriously as an 'interweaving' condition of planetary evolution, no less.
The Bio-Dynamic "500" fertiliser processing practice has been a guide for me too - the 'turning' of the water and 'compost' solution, followed by turning in the opposite direction, causes 'chaos'– chaordic disorder– which 'activates' the 'nutrients':
Contemplating the dance of order and chaos, creativity and innovation can lead to improved conditions;
Out of chaos, new levels of order emerge– interdependent, collective learning– leading to intelligence collective wisdom;
Catastrophe after catastrophe, we learn to understand the implications of "chaotic" manifestation in our emotional responses and physical conditions.
Relaxation reduces stress
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Move, stretch, dance, run, jump.
– Eat more fresh organic fruit and vegetables.
– Go out into fresh air – sunlight energises infection-fighting T-cells
which play a key role in immunity.
– Anticipating a happy or fun event increases endorphins
and other hormone levels that support a state of relaxation.
– Sleep helps us heal and grow – and LEARN!
'Learning' is processed into memory at the same stage of sleep as healing and growth. Sleep supports the immune system by distributing immune cells to the lymph nodes, where they prevent infections.
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Now, we have a more detailed understanding:
Maintaining pH Balance
(excerpt from the Introduction)
Understanding how our Immune Systems evolved via 'collaboration' is our most encouraging 'sustainability' factor:
Flashback:
Remembering my High School Biology lessons.
High School-level Biology curriculum teaches cell structure, anatomy, and genetics for plants, animals, and humans: The potential for 'cell' mutation is deeply embedded in all multi-cellular organisms - mammals, birds, fish and reptiles, with shared evolutionary roots going back hundreds of millions of years.
While dissecting frogs, we were informed of a long-established scientific theorem:
– 'primordial single cells' developed on earth long before oxygen formed
– before "The Great Oxygenation Event" as confirmed by recent scientific reports, (ScienceDailyNews, 2013);
– which "caused an ecological upheaval, because oxygen is such a reactive molecule” (Holmes, 2017);
– that "primordial cells" chose to form a 'cluster' inside a 'skin' to protect themselves from OXYGEN (Biello, 2009);
– and those 'clusters' EVOLVED (Cooper, 2000) to become our 'body' – every body.
Self-preservation has encouraged collaboration over many millions of years
– 'in tandem' with mitochondria, DNA, RNA: The human Immune System is a survival strategy (Temperley et al, 2010).
"By maintaining body pH slightly above pH 7.4 cancer cells become dormant and at pH 8.5 cancer cells will die while healthy cells will live."
- Paul Davies, (2013), Exposing cancer's deep evolutionary roots, Physics World, July 2013 (pdf).
Maintain "Basic" pH balance for healthy longevity:
power of Hydrogen (pH) and Oxygen.
That body pH imbalance (acidosis) is the primary cause of kidney failure, cancer, and premature aging, is not a new idea.
Empower your kidneys to boost your immune system:
Paying attention to acid-alkaline balance,
aka maintaining "Basic" pH Balance
is one of the most effective ways to support our health:
"It impacts immunity, digestion, bone strength, symptoms of joint disease, hormones, and the function of essential internal organs."
– Susan Lark, M.D., co-author:
The Chemistry of Success: Six Secrets of Peak Performance.
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There's an APP . . . for better food & cosmetics choices
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Toxic Personal Care Products
Beware that products boasting "all-natural" labels can still contain harmful chemicals, so be sure to check the full list of ingredients.
Today, there are many valuable resources available online to help research the potential toxicity of ingredients.
My favourite:
When Australia-based Homeopath Bill Stratham "became increasingly concerned about the detrimental effects on health caused by synthetic chemicals in the foods we eat and cosmetic products we use every day,"
in 2001, he self-published The Chemical Maze, supported by his local Lions Club, to make it simpler and easier for the general public to recognise additives and ingredients in foods and cosmetics.
Needless to say, "it went viral" which encouraged him to continue documenting his research via annual updates. Now, 'there's an APP for that' which makes it so much easier to use.
>>> more
"If you can't eat it, don't put it on your skin."
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The Human Genome Project
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We're not just a product of our human cells.
We are a product of our microbiome as well.
1990 - 2003
The Human Genome Project, (HGP) launched in 1990 and completed in 2003, was an international project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and National Institutes of Health with the following goals:
– identify all the approximately 20,500 genes in human DNA,
– determine the sequences of 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA,
– store this information in databases,
– improve tools for data analysis,
– transfer related technologies to the private sector, and
– address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project. . . >>> more
The HGP produced radical new insights, such as the major discovery that
(i) the human body consists of far fewer genes than previously believed,
(ii) our genes are also shaped by 'foreign' bacteria and other microbes in our body,
(iii) these genes do not function as expected.
Analysis of the data continues:
2015
"10% Human:
How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness"
(2015), Harper Collins
by Dr. Alanna Collen, UK evolutionary biologist, science writer, environmental scientist whose husband, biologist Ben Collen (1978-2018) succumbed to cancer in May 2018. Dr Cullen began her research on the human microbiome when she became very ill after taking excessive amounts of antibiotics.
Summary
Excerpt: Obesity, autism, mental health problems, IBS, allergies, auto-immunity, cancer. Does the answer to the modern epidemic of ‘Western’ diseases lie in our gut? You are 10% human. For every one of your cells, there are nine impostors hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and bone, but also bacteria and fungi. And you are more ‘them’ than you are ‘you’. Your gut alone hosts 100 trillion of them and until recently we thought that our microbes didn’t matter. This is all set to change as the latest scientific research tells a very different story, one where microbes run our bodies and becoming healthy is impossible without them. >>>more
In 2016, Dr Cullen posed a question:
"As it stands, two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese,
1 in 68 children has autism, around 15-20 percent of people have IBS, and something like one in 10 people have an autoimmune condition. If these disorders are not part of the human condition, then what's causing them? ...
If it's not altered genetics behind the rise in these modern chronic health problems, it has to be a change in the environment.
Our modern, medicated, antiseptic lives, though nearly free of deadly infections, come with a downside. We are neglecting 90 percent of our cells. They are not human cells, but microbes --and we are only just beginning to realize how much they matter to us."
- Dr. Alanna Collen, (2016), From Germ Theory to the Microbiome:
Why Microbes Still Rule Our Lives, HuffPost Blog.
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The role of OXYGEN in preventing immune system breakdown
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Breathing is not just for oxygen -
It’s now linked to brain function and behaviour.
How we inhale and exhale, including breathing through the nose or mouth, effects our brain power: Physical movement, in fresh air, oxygenates the body – all movement: laughing, singing, dancing, yoga, tai chi, walking, running, sports, etc.
Very informative overviews:
1.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Your Body’s Oxygen Detector
Three scientists won the award for uncovering the molecular switch that regulates how cells behave when oxygen levels drop.
by Megan Molten
Science,
July 2019
Every time you breathe in, you supply your body’s cells with the oxygen they need to convert food into energy. Scientists have long known that cells must sense how much oxygen is available to adjust their metabolic rates, so they can efficiently and safely burn fuel to build new tissues... >>>more
2.
Rhythm of Breathing Affects Memory and Fear
Gottfried, et. al. 2016, Neuroscience News
"The rhythm of breathing through the nose sparks electrical activity in the human brain that enhances emotional judgement and memory recall." - Professor of Neurology Jay Gottfried 2016
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered that the rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the human brain that enhances emotional judgments and memory recall. . . . This discovery led scientists to ask whether cognitive functions typically associated with these brain areas — in particular fear processing and memory — could also be affected by breathing. >>> more
3.
From the archives:
A
legendary 1903 tome from the Yoga masters
- The Hindu-Yogi SCIENCE OF BREATH (pdf) by Yogi Ramacharaka
Excerpt: "We may be pardoned if we express ourselves as pleased with our success in condensing so much Yogi lore into so few pages and by use of words and terms which may be understood by anyone. Our only fear is that its very simplicity may cause some to pass it by as unworthy of attention, while they pass on their way searching for something "deep", mysterious and non-understandable. However, the Western mind is eminently practical and we know that it is only a question of a short time before it will recognize the practicality of this work".
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Go To:
– Maintaining pH Balance
– Food for Thought
– Detox and Cleanse
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