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I bet that if I said, “Let’s start the process of dealing with your psychological baggage,” most people would tense up a bit and expect that they’re in for a “heavy” experience. It’s funny, because if we’re carrying around this baggage all the time, it already represents a certain “weight” that we’ve gotten used to, and the “dealing with it” part should amount to feeling lighter and freer.
While writing our book, The Well Life, we felt it simply wasn’t possible to guide people to the wellest of lives without encouraging them to resolve and/or release the stuff from the past that may be undermining their best efforts to be healthy and successful today. But we anticipated that some readers might react to this agenda about as well as if we offered to give them an amateur root canal.
I don’t have enough space in an article to explain our whole methodology – not to mention the approaches we use before and after to prepare for and stabilize this work. But I’d like to share an except on how we introduce this process, which I hope will help you feel ready to liberate yourself:
“Now, before you think, “Oh boy, this is going to be heavy,” we want to tell you that this doesn’t have to be a heavy experience. In fact, it’s an opportunity to feel lighter. It’s just that, between the heaviness and the lightness, there’s often something that one of our former teachers calls a “veil of discomfort.” The discomfort is only a veil because it’s really quite insubstantial. As soon as we become willing to experience it, we readily pass through it. And on the other side is lightness and opportunity!
Let’s talk about how these loose ends from your past can undermine you. One thing that may happen when you prepare to go for something big (whether it be a new relationship, a career change, or a cross-country move) is that your mind quickly runs through all your baggage—unresolved issues, past traumas, mistakes, losses—and tells you this is a bad idea.
Rather than hating your mind for this, it’s important to remember that you programmed this mind. You started out as a baby with a clean mental slate, and little by little you trained your mind to look out for things that might threaten your survival or happiness. That’s how your mind is built to work. It just happens that most minds are overly eager to do this job (especially if it means that your mind gets to monopolize your attention).
The more intense the bad experiences of your past, the deeper the groove they cut in your mental record. The mind looks for anything in your present that even remotely resembles these past experiences so that it can steer you clear from repeating them. It produces warning thoughts and initiates intense emotions to grab your attention.
So what can you do? Thank your mind for its efforts to protect you, but inform it that it’s working from outdated beliefs and overly generalized data. There’s no purpose in blaming yourself for how your mind functions. You’ve done your best with the resources that were available to you in each moment. But if you want the freedom to show up to each moment without being restrained by your past, it’s imperative to recognize that your baggage impedes this. Limiting beliefs and the echoes of past emotions are an intrusion on your space and the peace that lies within.
The key to identifying past incidents that get priority cleanup status is that when you bring them to mind and then check in with your body, you don’t feel altogether light and clean. Instead, you might feel heavy, tight, agitated, or constricted. Or a negative emotion might come up, such as guilt, fear, shame, anger, regret, sadness, or grief.
It’s possible that something you did that was objectively bad, like stealing the Statue of Liberty and burying it in your backyard, doesn’t actually provoke an especially strong physical or emotional response when you focus on it. In such cases, it’s important to remember that the objective “sin rating” of an event is less significant than how much of a hook it has in you. On the other hand, you might have accidentally thrown away your child’s first finger-painting and experience a tremendous feeling of guilt when you think about it—this would be something worth addressing.
Think of this process like cleaning your living space. When your house is filthy, there are piles of documents, dishes, laundry, and areas needing repair. It can feel so daunting you don’t know where to begin. You don’t even want to begin. But once you start, and then you have one room that’s clutter-free, it feels more manageable. Eventually, the whole house is pretty well in order, and then it’s fairly easy to stay on top of it. In the same way, as you clean up your life, you’ll find it both easier and more appealing to continue to clean, and to nip any new messes in the bud so they don’t impede your future.”
If this sounds good to you, I encourage you to let go of something right now. If you feel into your body, are you totally at ease? If not, is the unease associated with something that’s unresolved? Something you want to be different? Something you’re holding onto? Why not let it go – even if just for this moment? First try feeling it without any resistance, welcoming the feeling completely. Then take a breath into the feeling and as you exhale, let it go.
If you’re intrigued by where we’re headed, check out our book.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Losing Your Baggage
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When you think about people, chances are you think about skin. Most of what we see that isn’t covered up by clothing is skin, after all. Humans are skin bags. Sorry, did that make you feel kind of gross? Anyway, like it or not, the quality of our skin can have a big influence on how others perceive us. It’s why we get so distressed by things like acne, wrinkles, birthmarks, warts, and scars, even though they don’t actually compromise our function or health.
When people come to me for help with a cosmetic skin issue, they often act a bit sheepish about it, as if they believe I’ll consider them shallow for caring about their appearance. But I recognize how much our feelings about our appearance affect our happiness and the way we relate to others. I think that as long as we’re not obsessive about it, we should do whatever we need to do to feel pretty or handsome.
More importantly, skin health is an expression of overall health. This doesn’t mean you won’t get wrinkles if you’re healthy, but even a wrinkly face can look vibrant if it’s part of a vibrant body and spirit. Last month I discussed some basics of vehicle maintenance – i.e., taking care of your body – with regard to nutrition and digestion. Now I’m going to cover basic mechanics and maintenance of your skin.
There are a number of factors that affect skin quality, including genetics, climate (wind, dryness, sun, chlorine, smoke, pollution, etc.), and our internal environment, to name just a few. We have more control over certain factors than others. Obviously, your skin will need different things in a dry, windy place than in a hot, damp place. But regardless of your particulars, there are two main things worth focusing on for healthy skin: good nutrition and good detoxification.
This week I’ll focus on detoxification. Most naturopathic physicians see dull skin and chronic skin problems as an expression of internal toxicity, which often results from digestive imbalance and/or a sluggish liver, plus a history of exposure to chemicals and/or problematic foods. When we cleanse the liver and gut (and support the lungs and kidneys while we’re at it) skin problems frequently clear up. Even without rashes or other obvious problems, our skin tends to be flat, dry, or irritated when our detoxification mechanisms aren’t at their best.
Here are four basic starting points for supporting internal and external detoxification:
- Drink plenty of water. For any kind of skin problem, from acne to eczema to wrinkles, you should first make sure you’re well hydrated. The body functions better when well hydrated, and this includes our detoxification mechanisms. I recommend drinking half the number of pounds you weigh as ounces of water per day (thus, a 100 pound person would drink 50 ounces of water). And this should be consumed evenly over the course of the say, and should not be ice cold.
- Make sure your bowels are moving regularly. Constipated people are retaining toxins in the colon for longer than is healthy. If you’re not having at least one big, complete feeling bowel movement a day, here are some measures you can take. Try drinking a glass of hot water first thing in the morning. Adding some honey may help. Consider prune juice if necessary. As I mentioned above, be sure to get enough water throughout the day. Eat plenty of good fats for lubrication (olive oil, walnuts, chia seed, flax seed, oily fish, coconut and coconut oil, avocado, etc.) and plenty of fiber to scrub your colon. Get exercise that engages your abdominal muscles. Stop tensing your abdomen throughout the day if this is a habit of yours. If you need more help, get some powdered magnesium (such as Natural Calm) and gradually increase the dose until your bowels start moving more freely.
- Practice dry skin brushing. Get a natural fiber skin brush and brush over all of your skin, always working toward the heart. Start at your toes, brushing firmly up your feet and legs, going over the same area a few times, and gradually coming up the legs to the torso. Work from the fingers to the torso next. Then cover the torso itself. Be gentle over delicate areas, and don’t brush so hard that it hurts. When done, jump in the shower, finish with cool water, and then give yourself a quick massage with a high quality oil, like jojoba, coconut, or sesame.
- Sweat. You can induce sweating through exercise (a great option) or through heat (sauna). Take a cool shower afterwards. Sweat carries toxins, including heavy metals, out of our bodies. Spending a long time in a medium hot sauna, just to the point of glistening skin, is more sustainable than going into a very hot sauna and dripping sweat.
- As a basic cleanse, consider abstaining from all grains, meat, dairy products, nightshade family vegetables (tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, peppers), and anything processed. The bulk of your diet should be vegetables, including some raw greens (bitter ones are good), and basic homemade soups. Some fruit is ok, but veggies are best. If you need something starchy, bake a sweet potato in foil at 400 degrees for 90 minutes. Try it for one to seven days. You’ll feel great, and your skin will become more clear. On an ongoing basis, try a low dose liver cleansing formula such as silymarin (milk thistle), artichoke, and turmeric (you can get this as a premade formula called S.A.T. made by Thorne), or just take plain milk thistle or dandelion.
Give these strategies a try and report in the comments section on your results. Stay tuned for more on nutrition for healthy skin next week.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Skin Care 101: Five Detox Strategies for Better Skin
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As long as I’ve been studying health, there’s been an ongoing argument about the role of dairy products in human nutrition. If you do a quick Google search for inflammatory foods you’ll find that most of the web “experts” out there put milk and cheese on their Bad list. Many naturally-oriented healthcare practitioners believe that cow milk has no place in a healthy diet, frequently citing the fact that it’s a substance designed to make a calf gain more than a hundred pounds in its first few months of life – which is meant to prove that it’s suitable only for baby cows. I’ve used this example myself in my nutrition course, but I’m ready to revise it.
While I’ve never been one to demonize dairy (yogurt is probably my favorite food), I think I’ve been too hasty to accept negative viewpoints about it, and I believe the truth of it isn’t nearly as black-and-white as people want to make it. So I’d like to offer you a more balanced examination of dairy today.
First, let’s look at what the oldest sources say on the matter. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, milk products are considered to be moistening and fortifying to the body, though potentially to the point of causing phlegm when consumed in excess – and excess could be very little, depending on the person. Also, its ability to produce congestion is considered to more pronounced if it’s consumed cold.
In Ayurvedic Medicine (the traditional medical system of India), milk is said to deeply nourish the body, to build mass, balance the emotions, and to be cooling and grounding. Especially in light of Hindus’ reverence for cows, milk is considered to be an exceedingly special food. Along with honey, it’s revered as one of the only foods that can be consumed with no “violence” since it’s not a living organism. It may be excellent for, say, a skinny, anxious person (vata dominance) but perhaps not so good for an overweight, congested person (kapha dominance). Consumed in large amounts, cold, or by someone for whom “building mass” isn’t appropriate, it has the ability to cause phlegm or toxicity. Also, it is recommended that milk be drunk apart from other foods.
It bears mentioning that throughout most of the history of both of these medical systems, there was no mass dairy production, refrigeration, pasteurization, homogenization, antibiotic or hormone use in cattle, and cows ate grass – not grains and soybeans. In Ayurveda, milk is usually prescribed warm, raw, unhomogenized, and in moderation. Because of its relatively rich and heavy nature, consuming it with the addition of warming spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, turmeric, or ginger helps to make it more readily digestible.
The perspectives of these holistic systems highlight an important point – what it does to a person depends largely on (1) the person and (2) the way the milk is prepared and consumed. Think about how milk is presented to the baby for whom it was created – warm, unpasteurized, unhomogenized, and in a format that supports slow consumption. It’s reasonable to consider that rapidly downing a glass of cold, processed milk is quite a different experience for the body.
Despite the differences, however, several recent studies show that even the consumption of modern, processed dairy products generally has no inflammatory effect, and may even have an anti-inflammatory effect. For instance, a 2015 study called Dairy Products and Inflammation: A Review of the Clinical Evidence reviewed 52 clinical trials that looked at inflammatory markers in relationship to dairy consumption. In people who were specifically allergic to cow’s milk, there was an inflammatory response, but in those without an allergy, milk consumption decreased markers of inflammation.
The key here, then, is to determine if you’re allergic to milk. Often, but not always, you can figure this out by simply cutting all dairy products out of your diet for at least two weeks. If you feel better, this is a decent indication that your body doesn’t love dairy – at least, in the way you were consuming it before. Then, reintroduce it in generous amounts and see how you feel. If your energy declines or your skin gets itchy or you get phlegmy or anything else unpleasant happens, it’s likely a problematic food for you, and more investigation is warranted.
If you don’t experience any change, it might be safe to say your body handles dairy okay. But for a really clear test, I recommend cutting out not just dairy, but all common culprits in food sensitivities – wheat, corn, soy, eggs, beans, nuts, onions, garlic, and even fruit – eating a very clean, simple diet (you can look up “elimination diet” for more ideas) for two weeks and then, against this blank canvas, reintroduce dairy. Your body’s response should be more obvious.
If this elimination diet is too hardcore for you, but you’re willing to go one step further than just cutting out dairy, I recommend cutting out both dairy and gluten (wheat, barley, rye, oats – unless certified gluten free) at the same time, since some nutritionists have theorized that gluten sensitivity heightens dairy sensitivity by causing changes to the gut.
If you discover through your self-experimentation that you don’t feel well with dairy, do some more experimenting to determine if it’s all dairy or just certain forms. Try yogurt – both full-fat and non-fat. Try butter. Try plain milk. Try cheese – both soft cheeses and hard cheeses. If you’re accustomed to consuming conventional brands of dairy, give the organic, grass-fed stuff a try. See if you notice any difference in how these different forms of dairy make you feel. It requires paying more attention to your body and mind than you may be accustomed to, but there’s a big payoff to tuning in this way.
Even if you’re not technically allergic to it (meaning, mounting an immune response to it), you may still be “sensitive” to it. Sensitivities to foods are something milder than a true allergy, and are rarely investigated in a scientific way, so it’s difficult to say what’s really going on physiologically. But I’ve definitely seen many cases of dairy sensitivity – people who develop symptoms of irritation when they consume it. It’s especially common in young kids. When I encounter a child with a chronic skin rash or recurrent ear infections, dairy sensitivity is the first thing that comes to mind. Frequently this sensitivity disappears as the child grows up.
One thing the studies and most zealots on either side of the issue don’t tend to account for is human variability. Factors such as your ethnicity and blood type, and even the climate you live in, can influence how you’re affected by certain foods. If your ancestors dined on dairy for centuries, chances are you’re fairly tolerant of it. If your ancestors came from a place – like China – where dairy has not been a prominent part of local cuisine, you may have more difficulty with it. Peter D’Adamo covers this topic to some extent in the blood type diet book, Eat Right 4 Your Type.
Finally, many of the negatives attributed to dairy come down to quality. I’ve had numerous patients tell me they don’t handle conventional dairy products well, but they do just fine with the good stuff.
Cows are made to eat grass – like an all day salad – and this is highly significant. Their four stomachs and the chewing of their cud are specific adaptations to an all-grass diet. It’s what they thrive on. When instead we feed them corn and soybeans, the nutritional quality and flavor of their milk (and meat) are diminished. When we give them hormones in order to extend the period they can be milked after giving birth, this degrades the quality of their milk (this has been proven in court, despite the persistence of that FDA statement that there is no difference between the milk of cows that are and aren’t treated with growth hormone). When we pasteurize their milk in order to kill bacteria that may be present, we damage its enzymes and probably reduce its nutritional value. And when we homogenize it so it won’t separate, we break the fat globules into tiny particles that do not occur naturally, and this seems to detrimentally affect how we utilize the nutrients in it.
These factors considered, although the studies don’t seem to support the blanket negative allegations against it, it still seems worthwhile to consume dairy products in as close to their natural form as we can get them. Therefore, if your body handles milk products well, feel free to consume them. Ignore the zealots. And, when possible, have them fresh, organic, raw or cultured, and warm. I know it’s a bit unusual for many people to have milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese warm, so if that seems unpalatable, consider taking a tip from Ayurveda and mix in a small amount of some warming spice (cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, or turmeric).
What’s your story with dairy? Tell me about it in the comments below. Oh, and as for that idea that “milk is meant to make a cow gain a hundred pounds in a few months,” here’s a simple reason for that: by three weeks old, most calves are consuming about 11 quarts (that’s almost 3 gallons) per day.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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I bet that if I said, “Let’s start the process of dealing with your psychological baggage,” most people would tense up a bit and expect that they’re in for a “heavy” experience. It’s funny, because if we’re carrying around this baggage all the time, it already represents a certain “weight” that we’ve gotten used to, and the “dealing with it” part should amount to feeling lighter and freer.
While writing our book, The Well Life, we felt it simply wasn’t possible to guide people to the wellest of lives without encouraging them to resolve and/or release the stuff from the past that may be undermining their best efforts to be healthy and successful today. But we anticipated that some readers might react to this agenda about as well as if we offered to give them an amateur root canal.
I don’t have enough space in an article to explain our whole methodology – not to mention the approaches we use before and after to prepare for and stabilize this work. But I’d like to share an except on how we introduce this process, which I hope will help you feel ready to liberate yourself:
“Now, before you think, “Oh boy, this is going to be heavy,” we want to tell you that this doesn’t have to be a heavy experience. In fact, it’s an opportunity to feel lighter. It’s just that, between the heaviness and the lightness, there’s often something that one of our former teachers calls a “veil of discomfort.” The discomfort is only a veil because it’s really quite insubstantial. As soon as we become willing to experience it, we readily pass through it. And on the other side is lightness and opportunity!
Let’s talk about how these loose ends from your past can undermine you. One thing that may happen when you prepare to go for something big (whether it be a new relationship, a career change, or a cross-country move) is that your mind quickly runs through all your baggage—unresolved issues, past traumas, mistakes, losses—and tells you this is a bad idea.
Rather than hating your mind for this, it’s important to remember that you programmed this mind. You started out as a baby with a clean mental slate, and little by little you trained your mind to look out for things that might threaten your survival or happiness. That’s how your mind is built to work. It just happens that most minds are overly eager to do this job (especially if it means that your mind gets to monopolize your attention).
The more intense the bad experiences of your past, the deeper the groove they cut in your mental record. The mind looks for anything in your present that even remotely resembles these past experiences so that it can steer you clear from repeating them. It produces warning thoughts and initiates intense emotions to grab your attention.
So what can you do? Thank your mind for its efforts to protect you, but inform it that it’s working from outdated beliefs and overly generalized data. There’s no purpose in blaming yourself for how your mind functions. You’ve done your best with the resources that were available to you in each moment. But if you want the freedom to show up to each moment without being restrained by your past, it’s imperative to recognize that your baggage impedes this. Limiting beliefs and the echoes of past emotions are an intrusion on your space and the peace that lies within.
The key to identifying past incidents that get priority cleanup status is that when you bring them to mind and then check in with your body, you don’t feel altogether light and clean. Instead, you might feel heavy, tight, agitated, or constricted. Or a negative emotion might come up, such as guilt, fear, shame, anger, regret, sadness, or grief.
It’s possible that something you did that was objectively bad, like stealing the Statue of Liberty and burying it in your backyard, doesn’t actually provoke an especially strong physical or emotional response when you focus on it. In such cases, it’s important to remember that the objective “sin rating” of an event is less significant than how much of a hook it has in you. On the other hand, you might have accidentally thrown away your child’s first finger-painting and experience a tremendous feeling of guilt when you think about it—this would be something worth addressing.
Think of this process like cleaning your living space. When your house is filthy, there are piles of documents, dishes, laundry, and areas needing repair. It can feel so daunting you don’t know where to begin. You don’t even want to begin. But once you start, and then you have one room that’s clutter-free, it feels more manageable. Eventually, the whole house is pretty well in order, and then it’s fairly easy to stay on top of it. In the same way, as you clean up your life, you’ll find it both easier and more appealing to continue to clean, and to nip any new messes in the bud so they don’t impede your future.”
If this sounds good to you, I encourage you to let go of something right now. If you feel into your body, are you totally at ease? If not, is the unease associated with something that’s unresolved? Something you want to be different? Something you’re holding onto? Why not let it go – even if just for this moment? First try feeling it without any resistance, welcoming the feeling completely. Then take a breath into the feeling and as you exhale, let it go.
If you’re intrigued by where we’re headed, check out our book.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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