Sunday, December 25, 2011

Go to sleep more easily tonight

Dr. F. Batmanghelidj (known as Dr. Batman, for obvious reasons) has a simple recommendation that will help you get to sleep: salt! At bedtime drink a glass of water, then put a small amount of salt on your tongue. His experience and that of others (including your editor) is that one begins falling asleep within a few minutes. (Your editor actually just puts the salt in the water. Warm water is best.) Dr. Batman feels that this combination alters the electrical discharges in the brain and thereby induces sleep. Salt can irritate the palate so be careful.

He also recommends a cup of yogurt before going to bed as another aid to sleep. Yogurt contains tryptophan, a calming amino acid.

Ref: F. Batmanghelidj, M.D., Your Body’s Many Cries for Water, 1998. This book has a wealth of information about the importance of water and its many specific uses in supporting health.

Is television making you ill?

How many times have you heard someone on TV announce, with feeling, "I feel terrible," "I feel awful," or watched them dramatize their headache, or had it suggested you are probably getting or going to get a cold or the flu, along with images of sneezing or other symptoms? How do you feel right now after remembering these things? Worse than a
moment ago, right? This is a small demonstration of the power of our minds to create our experience. Amazing as it sounds, you can help yourself avoid colds and flu by simply turning off the sound when these drug advertisements appear. Better yet, leave the room when they come on. That way you won’t see them either, and won’t follow along with the script in your mind if it has burrowed itself into your memory.

How does this help? It helps because your subconscious mind takes any statement you identify with and immediately goes to work in a powerful way to make it true. Why else do placebos work so well (and they do)? It is the power of the mind. Those drug advertisements use your mind against you to make you sick.Why? So you will buy the drugs they are selling, of course. Does it work? Why else would they spend the millions they do on exposing you to these images and words? (Hint: There is a reason it's called TV programming!)

Statements made with feeling are the instructions our subconscious mind runs on. Like a computer, it has no discrimination whatsoever. It will make you healthy and rich, and just as readily it will make you sick and poor. All it does is follow directions. When you hear "I feel sick" does that help you feel sick or healthy? When you hear "I feel great, energetic and excited" is that different? Notice how you feel
throughout the day as you make statements like this or hear them. Test it.

The great thing is, you have the choice and control over what messages you listen to and what you tell yourself. Good, informed choices in all areas are the key to good health, and a good life.

Immediate Calmness

Level with the Adam's apple, in the muscle to the side (either side) there is a place where you can feel your pulse. The heart has a pressure-monitoring station at this precise spot to tell it how much blood is going to the head. Light (repeat, light) pressure on this point can help any time you are "building up steam" or "feeling pressure." The effects of gentle pressure on the calmness point will be to lower your blood pressure and to cause redness to leave your face. You will know it is working if you feel a slight lightheadedness, which is due to the decrease of blood to the brain.