In the golden era of bodybuilders, before science and research had progressed in the area of nutrition and its impact on resistance training, people would do just about anything in order to increase their muscle mass. Stories of ground body parts (thyroid glands, even testicles) being ingested in large quantities, of raw eggs, and many other obscure practices amuse us today. In fact, one common practice, the consumption of desiccated liver tablets, can still draw the occasional chuckle from the modern, scientifically equipped athlete. But is desiccated liver really something to laugh at?

17th Century Bodybuilding Discoveries In 1746, a scientist (by the definition of the era) named Menghini made an amazing discovery. He found that the consumption of foods containing iron actually increased the iron content of blood. While this may seem obvious today, at that time, the process of digestion and assimilation was poorly understood.

We are talking about a time when maggots and flies were thought to spontaneously appear from rotting meat! While this discovery helped shape the knowledge of nutrition, it was not until several centuries later - 1926 to be precise - that the principle of iron-containing foods was put to more practical use. Minot and Murphy were responsible for giving patients with pernicious anemia, a condition where the blood cells are not able to supply adequate oxygen, daily doses of liver. They did not know exactly why this benefited the patients, but it seemed to alleviate and even reverse the condition. This research led to the creation, in 1928, of a perfected liver extract that could be provided in powdered or capsule form.

Liver supplies two important micronutrients. The first micronutrient, iron, is very important for hemoglobin (a blood protein) and also for the muscle protein myoglobin Iron is essential to the body’s exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the cells. Iron is introduced in two forms: heme iron (from animal products) and nonheme (from plant products). The body absorbs heme iron more readily. Lack of iron can induce fatigue and anemia. People following a vegetarian diet may, according to the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), require twice as much iron as non-vegetarians. Excess iron can be fatal to children and harmful to adults, although only a few thousand cases of iron poisoning are reported each year, and these are typically related to elemental iron supplements (i.e. iron in supplement form, rather than obtained from food sources such as liver).

Liver is also a tremendous source of the vitamin B12. B12 plays an important role in cellular division and is vital to growth. In addition, it assists the body with the burning of fat and carbohydrate. A deficiency of B12 can also lead to anemia and fatigue. It also seems to play a large role in protection against heart disease. There is no established upper limit for the intake of B12.

This information may seem to imply that simply supplementing with iron and B12 should suffice. There is more to the equation, however. It is generally accepted that oral B12 supplementation will, for the most part, not influence the body to the extent that injections will. For this reason, some athletes actually have B12 injected into their bloodstream. While B12 remains to be studied more thoroughly, it is purported to have anabolic effects and athletes taking B12 injections report increased energy and a stimulation of appetite.

What Does This Have To Do With Desiccated Liver? So what does this have to do with desiccated liver? Everything! First, desiccated liver is an excellent source of protein, iron, and vitamin B12. More importantly, however, desiccated liver may be a more convenient (and less expensive) alternative to vitamin B12 injections. Liver, in addition to enzymes and phytochemicals, contains cytochrome P-450, a protein enzyme that is involved in steroid production and detoxification. Attempts to discover the crucial ingedient of liver extract failed until 1948, when B12 was isolated as the key compound responsible for improving the condition. Liver extract contains much less fat and cholesterol than other sources of iron and B12 such as beef.

A chemical known as “intrinsic factor” is secreted in the stomach. Intrinsic factor is required by the digestive system to absorb vitamin B12! This is very important - a B12 supplement, by itself, has nowhere near the effect of B12 combined with intrinsic factor and possibly other enzymes and catalysts. The discovery of intrinsic factor is what led to the isolation of B12 and allowed it to be identified as a vitamin, starting a revolution in nutrition.

After the discovery of intrinsic factor, B12 injections rapidly became the treatment of choice (understanding the role of B12 and intrinsic factor, doctors could bypass the digestive system and the need for intrinsic factor by injecting B12 directly into the bloodstream). Therefore, the value of liver for transporting B12 also seemed to become submerged in the chaos of nutrition and science that followed the isolation of the first vitamins.

As you can see, it is no surprise that such bodybuilding giants as Dave Draper and Frank Zane are avid supporters of desiccated liver. They are not clinging to some outdated, “old school” belief - they are supporting a supplement that, while often overlooked or dismissed, may be an integral component for the natural bodybuilder. Simply adding desiccated liver to the diet, however, may not be good enough - it has a very special advantage when used in conjunction with the proper nutritional regimen.

One of the largest advocates for desiccated liver, and one of the few companies that still provide a liver product (Ultra 40) is Beverly International. They have been in business for three decades and have been strong advocates of liver tablets from the beginning. A quick glimpse over those athletes who swear by their products (Beverly does not sponsor or endorse athletes, so these are all voluntary testimonials) demonstrates something worth looking into. This article, in fact, was motivated by the author’s own personal experiences with Beverly International.

There are many studies to be performed, and much science to be unraveled, but apparently one of the greatest benefits of using desiccated liver is the energy it provides. Anyone who has tried a low carbohydrate program knows what can happen - fatigue, crash, loss of strength, possibly loss of muscle mass. Beverly advocates lower carbohydrate than most bodybuilding programs - as a 185 pound male (under 10 percent body fat) the author himself only ingests about 100 - 150 grams of carbohydrate per day. With the addition of desiccated liver to the diet, however, energy levels are incredible - through the roof. There is no problem with dragging throughout the day or losing strength in the gym. While previous attempts at going low carbohydrate resulted in flat muscles and weak bench presses, the combination of lower carbohydrate and desiccated liver is nothing short of miraculous. You may be able to gain the fat-burning benefit of lower carbohydrate diet without losing energy (and possibly even gaining more than you imagined possible!).

Conclusion Hopefully this article will help you understand a little bit of the science between desiccated liver and encourage you to at least investigate this supplement for yourself. Everyone is different, and not all supplements work the same for every person. The author is a huge skeptic when it comes to supplements, but if you keep an open mind and try new techniques, you can learn new things that work for you. Desiccated liver is definitely an example of a supplement that turned a former skeptic into a firm believer and advocate, after seeing strength gains like none before and gaining 5 pounds of scale weight while dropping body fat in a short 4 week period. This again may not be the case for everyone, but you should certainly try for yourself.

Desiccated Liver: Old School Supplement

However, the researchers also found a higher rate of colorectal cancer (a disease often linked with eating red meat) among the vegetarians.

Researchers divided the study participants into meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans. There was a significantly lower incidence of all cancers among the fish-eaters and vegetarians when compared with the meat eaters. For colorectal cancer, however, that trend was reversed.

Sources:

BBC News March 16, 2009

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition March 11, 2009

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Although some people decide to become vegetarians for spiritual or philosophical reasons, many do so for health reasons, often encouraged by studies like the one above. The China Study is another frequently cited “gold standard” of proof, however I have previously commented why I believe this study is seriously flawed.

And there are loads of studies showing that eating meat is bad for you in one way or another, and being vegetarian is good.

But it is my belief that most of these studies get the favorable findings toward vegetarianism that they do because the common way most people consume animal protein is COOKED, or worse yet grilled, creating all kinds of toxic, cancer-causing substances in the meat.

To the best of my knowledge there are no studies comparing raw animal-food-based diets versus cooked vegetarian diets, or even grass-fed, organic, lightly cooked meat diets compared to vegetarian ones.

And even if there were these types of studies, they still could be flawed because they most likely would not factor in the person’s nutritional type.

There are so many variables in the equation, it’s hard to know where to begin, but let me first explain why being a vegetarian is NOT healthy for everyone.

Two-Thirds of People, or More, Will NOT Thrive as Vegetarians

No one diet works for everyone because we are all unique on a biochemical level, and we all need different amounts of macronutrients — fats, protein and carbs — to help us function optimally. You can find out the right ratio of macronutrients for you by learning your nutritional type.

You may be a protein type, mixed type or carb type, and as the names imply require a lot of protein and fat, a moderate amount or a small amount to thrive. Only about one-third of people are truly carb types, which means they could get by on a vegetarian diet (using eggs and other non-meat animal products for their protein sources).

For the other two-thirds of us, eating high-quality protein is necessary to function each day and certainly to prevent disease. Some of the sickest patients I have seen over the years have, in fact, been protein nutritional types who insisted upon eating a vegetarian diet. And when cancer patients are treated in our clinic, nutritional typing is one of the most powerful anti-cancer strategies we have.

So if you are a vegetarian and facing health problems, I would highly suggest you learn your nutritional type and begin to eat the right ratio of foods to best support your health.

How You Cook Your Meat Matters

Just as a vegetarian diet is not healthy for everyone, eating meat is not healthy across the board either. There are numerous factors that influence the quality or health-value of the meat you eat, such as:

• Whether or not it’s organic (conventional meat is loaded with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals)
• Whether or not it’s grass-fed (essential for healthy meat)
• Whether or not it contains nitrates, preservatives linked to cancer (processed meats are a big-time no-no)
• How it’s cooked

Any time you cook meat at high temperatures, whether you’re grilling, frying, broiling, etc., some pretty nasty chemicals are created:

• Heterocyclic Amines (HCAs): These form when food is cooked at high temperatures, and they’re linked to cancer. In terms of HCA, the worst part of the meat is the blackened section, which is why you should always avoid charring your meat, and never eat blackened sections.

• Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs): When fat drips onto the heat source, causing excess smoke, and the smoke surrounds your food, it can transfer cancer-causing PAHs to the meat.

• Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs): When food is cooked at high temperatures (including when it is pasteurized or sterilized), it increases the formation of AGEs in your food. When you eat the food, it transfers the AGEs into your body. AGEs build up in your body over time leading to oxidative stress, inflammation and an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease.

In other words, even if you are a protein type who thrives on red meat, eating grain-feed beef that’s been charred to a crisp will NOT improve your health.

In order for meat to be its healthiest, it should be organic and grass-fed, and it should be cooked as little as possible, or even eaten raw. You can also quickly sear the meat on both sides, leaving the inside mostly raw. This gives the illusion that you’re eating cooked meat, with many of the benefits of raw.

So while there are many variables involved, the majority of people feel their best when they include some healthy sources of lightly cooked or raw animal protein in their diet.

What Cookware You Use With Your Meat Also Matters

One of the most important variables that many fail to consider is the type of cookware they use to prepare their meals as this has the ability to transfer toxins like aluminum and fluoride gas to your environment even if you are cooking vegetables.

It is important to avoid all non stick cookware as they are slippery due to fluoride polymers that will volatilize once you heat the pan. This fluoride gas is well documented to increase your risk for developing health problems.

So, I’m sure you understand when I say “enough already” with the potential dangers of using Teflon. If you haven’t already done it, don’t you think it’s time to give your Teflon cookware the boot for good?

Although this type of cookware usually goes by the brand name there are many other non-stick brand names that contain this toxic coating, including: Silverstone, Fluron, Supra, Excalibur, Greblon, Xylon, Duracote, Resistal, Autograph and T-Fal, to name just a few. So, watch out for these as well.

Additionally I would not recommend aluminum pans for cooking if you want to enjoy your golden years. Aluminum is a causal factor suspect in Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Contrary to popular belief, stainless steel may not be an inert metal either. All stainless steel has alloys containing nickel, chromium, molybdenum, carbon, and various other metals.

In a study conducted on heart patients receiving stainless steel stents, restenosis occurred in 50% of patients. Allergies to the nickel and molybdenum in the stainless steel were suspected causal factors.

While this study is clearly not cooking-related, it is certainly possible that cooking with stainless steel, clad or not, may increase the likelihood that metals will leach into your food. This is especially true if the cookware becomes pitted due to extended use or storage of acidic foods. For those with nickel allergies, it could be a particularly concerning problem.

Copper is an alternative that provides even heat distribution. However, I recommend that it never has direct contact with your food.

When you use copper as your cooking surface, it can leach out in excessive amounts. If enough leaching occurs, you could potentially experience digestive discomforts.*

Therefore, most copper pans come lined with other metals, creating the same concerns noted above. And copper pans are also extremely costly.

Ceramic or Glass One of Best Materials

So here is the summary of what cookware would be wise to avoid:

Cookware Material - Potential Hazards
Teflon: PFOA induced potential health hazards — from your immune system to birthing activities
Aluminum: Is a reactive metal and suspected casual factor in Alzheimer’s disease
Stainless steel: Potential likelihood of metal leaching into your food and allergen issues
Copper: Due to the possibility of copper caused discomfort, recommended to never have direct contact with your food

Of course, I believe you should eat as much of your food raw as possible, but if you choose to cook your meal I could not recommend more strongly that you use a glass, or better yet, a new high tech ceramic cookware to prepare your meals. It is the only cookware I use in my home.

Nutrition…

* Antioxidants clean up harmful free radicals – free radicals lead to decline in cell function
* Get antioxidants from beta-carotenes, vitamins A, C, E, and mineral selenium

Physical Activity…

* Physical activity increases blood flow to the brain – try to take 10,000 steps daily!
* Obesity can lead to brain function decline later in life
* Increased blood flow to the brain areas releases endorphins
* 25% of blood generated by each heartbeat goes to the brain!

Mental Stimulation…

* Read and write daily – try things that are novel and complex
* Developing a good language system is linked to a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s
* Do puzzles and games that are “novel and complex” – playing Scrabble every single day won’t do it, so change it up!
* Try writing with your non-dominant hand

Nearly everyone knows that white flour is not healthy for you, but most people don’t know that when white flour is bleached, it can actually be FAR worse for you.

It’s generally understood that refining food destroys nutrients. With the most nutritious part of the grain removed, white flour essentially becomes a form of sugar. Consider what gets lost in the refining process:

* Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids
* Virtually all of the vitamin E
* Fifty percent of the calcium
* Seventy percent of the phosphorus
* Eighty percent of the iron
* Ninety eight percent of the magnesium
* Fifty to 80 percent of the B vitamins

And many more nutrients are destroyed — simply too many to list.

The Journey of the Wheat Berry

Have you ever wondered how white flour is made?

The website Healthy Eating Politics has an interesting article about the process.

Most commercial wheat production is, unfortunately, a “study in pesticide application,” beginning with the seeds being treated with fungicide. Once they become wheat, they are sprayed with hormones and pesticides. Even the bins in which the harvested wheat is stored have been coated with insecticides. If bugs appear on the wheat in storage, they fumigate the grain.

A whole grain of wheat, sometimes called a wheat berry, is composed of three layers:

* The bran
* The germ
* The endosperm

The bran is the layer where you’ll find most of the fiber, and it’s the hard outer shell of the kernel. The germ is the nutrient-rich embryo that will sprout into a new wheat plant. The endosperm is the largest part of the grain (83 percent), making up most of the kernel, and it’s mostly starch.

White flour is made from the endosperm only, whereas whole-wheat flour combines all three parts of the wheat berry.

Old time mills ground flour slowly, but today’s mills are designed for mass-production, using high-temperature, high-speed steel rollers. The resulting white flour is nearly all starch, and even much of today’s commercially processed whole wheat flour has lost a fair amount of nutritional value due to these aggressive processing methods.

White flour contains a small fraction of the nutrients of the original grain, with the heat of the steel rollers having destroyed what little nutrients remain. But then it is hit with another chemical insult–a chlorine gas bath (chlorine oxide). This serves as a whitener, as well as an “aging” agent.

Flour used to be aged with time, improving the gluten and thus improving the baking quality. Now, it is treated with chlorine to instantly produce similar qualities in the flour (with a disturbing lack of concern about adding another dose of chemicals to your food).

According to Jim Bair, Vice President of the North American Millers Association:

“Today, the US milling industry produces about 140 million pounds of flour each day, so there is no way to store the flour to allow it to age naturally. Plus, there is a shelf life issue.”

It has not been determined how many mills are bleaching flour with chorine oxide, but we do know the use of chlorides for bleaching flour is considered an industry standard.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines chlorine gas as a flour-bleaching, aging and oxidizing agent that is a powerful irritant, dangerous to inhale, and lethal. Other agents also used include oxides of nitrogen, nitrosyl, and benzoyl peroxide mixed with various chemical salts.

The chlorine gas undergoes an oxidizing chemical reaction with some of the proteins in the flour, producing alloxan as an unintended byproduct. Bair and other milling industry leaders claim that bleaching and oxidizing agents don’t leave behind harmful residues in flour, although they can cite no studies or published data to confirm this.

Why Bleaching Makes White Flour Even Worse

It has been shown that alloxan is a byproduct of the flour bleaching process, the process they use to make flour look so “clean” and — well, white. No, they are technically not adding alloxan to the flour — although you will read this bit of misinformation on the Internet. But, they are doing chemical treatments to the grain that result in the formation of alloxan in the flour.

With so little food value already in a piece of white bread, now there is potentially a chemical poison lurking in there as well.

So what is so bad about alloxan?

Alloxan, or C4 H2O4N2, is a product of the decomposition of uric acid. It is a poison that is used to produce diabetes in healthy experimental animals (primarily rats and mice), so that researchers can then study diabetes “treatments” in the lab. Alloxan causes diabetes because it spins up enormous amounts of free radicals in pancreatic beta cells, thus destroying them.

Beta cells are the primary cell type in areas of your pancreas called islets of Langerhans, and they produce insulin; so if those are destroyed, you get diabetes.

There is no other commercial application for alloxan — it is used exclusively in the medical research industry because it is so highly toxic.

Given the raging epidemic of diabetes and other chronic diseases in this country, can you afford to be complacent about a toxin such as this in your bread, even if it is present in small amounts?

Just How Much is Too Much?

Similar to disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in water, alloxan is formed when the chlorine reacts with certain proteins remaining in the white flour after the bran and germ have been removed. Protein makes up between 5 percent and 15 percent of white flour, depending on whether it’s cake flour, or high-gluten flour, such as what’s used for pizza crust or bagels.

So, this would suggest that perhaps 5 to 15 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour could be contaminated.

However, according to Professor Joe Schwarcz, Director of the McGill University Office of Science and Society, alloxan is the byproduct of xantophyll oxidation only. Xantophylls are yellow compounds in wheat that react with oxygen, causing flour to turn white.

According to Mr. Schwarcz:

“One of the possible minor side products of xantophyll oxidation is alloxan. It may therefore be found in small amounts in flour. There is no available research that shows trace amounts are a problem or that alloxan builds up in the body. The amounts, if present at all, must be small because xantophylls themselves only occur to the extent of 1 microgram per gram of flour.”

Alloxan has not been studied in terms of human exposure, particularly long-term. There is just so much we don’t know, and you know what assumptions will get you.

Alloxan in Rats vs Alloxan in Humans

Scientists have long known that alloxan produces selective destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas, causing hyperglycemia and ketoacidosis in laboratory animals. Alloxan is structurally similar to glucose, which might explain why the pancreatic beta cells selectively take it up.

According to Dr. Hari Sharma’s Freedom from Disease, alloxan causes free radical damage to DNA in the beta cells of the pancreas, causing them to malfunction and die. When they fail to function normally, they no longer produce enough insulin.

Even though the toxic effect of alloxan is common scientific knowledge in the research community, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still allows companies to use chemical processes in which the end result is toxic food. Until they unequivocally prove something is toxic by way of human deaths, severe side effects, or when the public screams loudly enough, the FDA is not likely to protect you.

Until then, it is you who must protect yourself.

If you have diabetes, or cancer, have a compromised immune system, or if you are in some other high-risk category as tens of millions of North Americans are, you need to know what foods contain hazardous ingredients so you can avoid them. But in the case of alloxan, there is no way to know, either by reading the ingredient list or by any other means, that it might be in your food!

History of Bleaching Flour — Pillsbury and the FDA

An interesting sideline to this whole flour story lies in the origins of the FDA.

Bleaching and oxidizing agents weren’t developed to produce quick aging of wheat flour (within 48 hours) until the early 1900s. Prior to that, it required several months for oxygen to condition flour naturally.

When bleaching was introduced, it was vehemently opposed.

The first major consumer advocate was Harvey W. Wiley, MD, who eventually became known as the “Father of the Pure Food and Drugs Act” of 1906. Mr. Wiley was head of the Bureau of Chemistry, which was the precursor to the FDA. Wiley crusaded against benzoic acid, sulfites, saccharin, and bleached flour, among other food additives and adulterants.

Dr. Wiley felt so strongly about preventing the bleaching of flour that he took it all the way to the Supreme Court. They ruled that flour could not be bleached or “adulterated” in any way. However, it was never enforced.

Wiley believed that foods posed a greater risk to the public than adulterated or misbranded drugs. He constantly butted heads with Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and President Roosevelt over food regulation.

Soon, Wiley’s personal administrative authority was undercut when Wilson created the Board of Food and Drug Inspection in 1907 and the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts in 1908, one of which was reportedly headed by someone who had been working at Pillsbury, although I have not been able to verify this addendum.

Finally, in 1912, Dr. Wiley quit as director out of frustration, although he continued as a vocal consumer advocate for many years.

The government replaced Dr. Wiley with Dr. Elmer Nelson. Dr. Nelson was the polar opposite to Wiley , and was quoted as saying:

”It is wholly unscientific to state that a well-fed body is more able to resist disease than a poorly fed body. My overall opinion is that there hasn’t been enough experimentation to prove that dietary deficiencies make one susceptible to disease.”

Therein lies the foundation of the FDA. Since Dr. Wiley resigned, the FDA has continued to shift its focus on drugs, since Wiley was never able to convince the government of the dangers from chemicals in our foods. He was truly a pioneer and a century ahead of his time!

Food For Thought

The important point to take away is, beware of any processed food because chemicals are always used. And we simply don’t know what the long-term effects will be of ingesting chemicals, on top of chemicals, on top of more chemicals.

Strive to stick to whole unprocessed foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. If you’re going to eat grains, make sure they are at the least unbleached, whole, and organic, and eat them in the proportion that is best for your nutritional type.

by: Susun Weed

Pay attention now, Grandmother Growth says, taking your hand and holding your gaze. The Change known as menopause deserves your full attention.

Do those memories crowd painfully into your head? Do they send your heart racing? So they make you weep? Sweep you off your feet? Leave you wondering what it would feel like to jump off a high bridge? Take my hand, dear one. Let us walk and talk.

There is no doubt in your mind. Your menstrual cycles are coming to an end. You are in the midst of your menopausal climax years.

During the year or so before the very last period (and the year or so afterward) many women experience some type of menopausal Change, such as hot flashes, heart palpitations, sleep disturbances, emotional uproar, anxiety, and/or headaches.

Menopause, like puberty, requires that we give in to Change and accept that it is beyond our control. If we arrive at mid-life feeling more in control of our lives than ever before, giving in to menopausal Change can be incredibly difficult. The desire to use anything, drugs or herbs or whatever, to avoid disruption of our normal life pattern is strong; it comes from within and is reinforced by society. Why resist?

The Wise Woman Way offers us a new/old story: where hot flashes and wild heartbeats are honored, where menopause is considered woman’s greatest transformation - her crowning as Crone - and where old women are vital, flexible, hale-hearted, strong-boned and clear-minded.

The Wise Woman Way offers us women’s mystery stories and a host of helpful herbal allies that aid the process of menopause instead of attempting to stop it or fix it.

Wise Woman stories say that menopause is an initiation and that initiation begins with a period of isolation. The grandmothers tell me that, as a menopausal woman, I need to draw inward, move away from outside responsibilities, and into myself. From this view, hot flashes, fatigue, headaches, irritability, sleeplessness, and emotional outbursts are understood as allies of wholeness, not problems; they urge me to be alone, to focus on myself and my Change.

Without knowledge of the women’s mystery stories, without the help of herbal allies and the reassurance of other women, a woman may feel alone and unsupported in her disturbing and “pointless”changes. She may think the Change is only for the worse, or that something is wrong with her. And when she seeks information, she is told (erroneously) that her Change will cause heart attacks and crumbling bones, wrinkles and grey hair, and loss of sex appeal and libido.

Where is Grandmother Growth to guide her through this immense, frightening metamorphosis, to show her the green gifts of nature that strengthen her heart and bones, soften her skin and sex? Science defines menopause as lack of estrogen and prescribes the remedy (take estrogen) and tells us that we don’t have to mature, or become wise women. We can remain bound to our (and society’s) ideas of who we ought to be, instead of exploring who we really are.

If I take hormones will I be able to make room for transformation? Take time for solitude? Give myself uninterrupted stretches of focused self-loving? Encounter, nourish, and sanctify myself as a wise and silly grandmother, a wrinkled wild woman, a lawless fierce crone? My menopausal metamorphosis deserves as much attention as I can give it. And I am not that rare woman who gives herself these gifts without the daily urgings of her body and feelings.

I don’t use hormone pills, or patches, or creams. I let the “problems” of my menopause give me the opportunity to claim all parts of myself, even those that are awkward, ugly, old, out of control, and afraid of death. By passing consciously through menopause, by embracing this Change in my life, by nourishing myself with green allies, I renew myself. The grandmothers say I make myself complete - reclaiming myself as maiden, redefining myself as mother, and knowing myself as crone. It is so.

Take my hand, dear one. I will soothe your head, calm your heart, stabilize your grounding, and then teach you to fly. Take my hand, now. You are in the midst of Change.

Susun Weed
PO Box 64

Woodstock, NY 12498

Fax: 1-845-246-8081

For permission to reprint this article, contact us at: susunweed@herbshealing.com

Visit Susun Weed at: www.susunweed.com;and www.ashtreepublishing.com

Vibrant, passionate, and involved, Susun Weed has garnered an international reputation for her groundbreaking lectures, teachings, and writings on health and nutrition. She challenges conventional medical approaches with humor, insight, and her vast encyclopedic knowledge of herbal medicine. Unabashedly pro-woman, her animated and enthusiastic lectures are engaging and often profoundly provocative.

To find other free health content see e-healtharticles.com

Common Anxiety and Panic Questions Answered

by: Paul David

Firstly I would like to introduce myself. My name is Paul David and I suffered from every form of anxiety and panic for 10 years. My recovery came from a meeting with someone who had a full understanding of this condition, in fact he taught me more in one hour than anyone else was able to teach me in 10 years.
With this persons help I was able to recover within a few months.

My recovery came because I was given a full understanding of my condition. This is the only way to recover in my opinion. When you know why you feel like you do this takes the whole fear out of your symptoms, it stops you going round in circles everyday trying to find answers to why you feel like you do. It gives your body the freedom to recover. Just like a broken leg or a cut your body is wanting and waiting to recover.

After my recovery I then went on to study the whole panic and anxiety subject in full, in this time I not only realised how much rubbish was spoken on the subject, I was also shocked to find out how many people actually suffered, I knew I was not alone but I could not believe how little information there is out there for a condition for which millions around the world suffer from.

This is why I decided to dedicate my life to helping others, over the years I have been asked many questions from people who suffer and below I list the most common ones.

Q.1 I feel so strange and out of touch with the world around me. Am I going mad?

No, you are definitely not. You may feel as if you are, but this is just another offshoot of anxiety.
Anxiety is not a mental illness. These feelings cannot harm you and there is nothing to worry about.

This feeling of strangeness has a totally logical explanation. It comes from the constant worrying about how you feel as you search your mind for answers to your condition. Your mind has become tired and less resilient through watching yourself and worrying about your symptoms, day in, day out. It has been bombarded with worrying thoughts and becomes fatigued. Just as our limbs can tire, so can our mind. It craves a rest from all this introspection of oneself.

In fact these feelings of unreality are your body’s way of protecting you from the onslaught of worrying thoughts. Your mind has a safety mechanism that protects against all this, causing us to feel strange and not with it. It is crying out to be left alone and just like a broken arm will heal itself so will your body, you just have to step out of the way and let it.

The main thing is not to dwell on how you feel. These feelings are temporary. Constantly worrying about ourselves and how we feel is the very thing that keeps this feeling alive and when we learn how to stop the habit, it will disappear. Once we are able to change the pattern of our worrying thoughts, we can reverse these feelings of strangeness. You are bound to worry if you don’t know why you feel like you do. That is why again ‘understanding’ is the key.

This is one of the questions I have been asked more than any other. I go into more detail in my book as I know that it is a symptom that needs special attention.

I found this feeling of detachment very hard to accept and understand myself, but when it was explained to me in full, I was able to rid myself of this disturbing symptom.

Q.2 Why do I feel better in certain situations and not in others?

This is a very common one and it all comes down to how you think in other situations.
For example, you may feel better in the safety of your own home rather than at a family gathering. There is no difference in both of these situations, the only difference is in the way you think. You are the same person and it is not the situation that makes you feel worse it is your thought pattern.
You may spend the day worrying about going to a particular function, setting your body up to be anxious on arrival and then blame it on the situation you are in rather than the thought pattern you have created during the day while at home. You may get there and then also worry about making a fool of yourself, spending the whole time tensing against how you feel and creating more anxiety. Do you see how we do this to ourselves? It is not the situation, but our perception of the situation that causes us to feel worse in certain situations. You are merely doing it to yourself with your thoughts.

You must just accept how you feel wherever you are and in whatever situation you find yourself deal with yourself and not the place. Sometimes a place may hold certain memories of failure, which makes us feel anxious, but this soon passes when we learn to accept how

If you truly accept how you feel in every situation and stop all the “What if’s” and other negative thoughts that just increase anxiety, you will find that although you may feel uncomfortable at times, nothing bad is going to happen to you, and in time your reactions lessen until you feel more able to cope, day by day. Anxiety loves avoidance, so take it’s power away and move forward and embrace these feelings of fear, even if you’re in a situation where you feel you have failed in the past.

Avoiding symptoms just does not work, as you must realise by now. I was taught to let all feelings be there, not to avoid them but to go through them. This worked for me, I had faced the demons head on and realised this was the only way to stop fearing them. I ignored my body’s instinct to avoid and started to embrace how I felt, I moved towards the feelings of fear. Eventually, I started to understand my condition so much more. I went from not been able to even mention or hear the word anxiety, to barely giving it a second thought.

I mention the word ‘understanding’ again, because this is the key to recovery. How can you not fear something you don’t understand! How can you accept something that still scares you?

Q.3 Will these feelings ever go away?

Yes, they will, once you understand why you feel like you do. You can unmask the fears you hold about anxiety. There are so many myths about anxiety that it worries me just how many people are mis-informed and truly believe they will never get better, and that they will just have to live with this condition. Too many people spend years like I did, searching for that elusive miracle cure that just does not exist.

Understanding anxiety takes away so much fear out of how we feel. Every stage and symptom has a logical explanation that can be explained. With less fear and more understanding, we also calm the constant worrying it is the lack of information on the subject that keeps the worry cycle going. Constant worrying that we will never get better also adds to the belief that we will just have to live with it.

Once we start to understand anxiety and use the tools we have learnt to cope with how we feel, the change can be dramatic. In my recovery, I found that the more knowledge I had and the more I understood my condition the easier it was to accept how I felt. I started to lose fear of my symptoms and how I felt. Eventually they began to hold less power over me and I started to pay them less respect.
Like I once said to someone, “Your symptoms hate to be ignored”.

It is your desperation to rid yourself of how you feel that keeps your anxiety alive. The stress you put on yourself day in day out, the constant worrying and thinking about your condition, puts a tremendous pressure on your body. Is it any wonder you stay anxious? It’s time to stop beating yourself up about how you feel and give your body the rest it craves.

Knowledge is power. The less you fear your symptoms, the less they mean. This also stops the worry cycle you may find yourself in, which is the very thing that keeps anxiety going. You are bound to worry if you don’t know what is wrong with you, that is why you need an explanation to help break this cycle.

Q.4 Why do I find it so hard in social situations? I find it so hard to communicate with people.

How can we expect to feel part of this world when all we do is worry about ourselves. Is it any wonder we find it difficult to follow a conversation when all we are concerned about is ourselves and how we feel. It is like being two separate people, one trying to hold a conversation, the other watching our body’s reaction. Is it any wonder we struggle to fit in to the world around us?

Once we find the courage to accept how we feel, even embrace these feelings, we find it easier to follow what the other person is saying. We become less concerned about how we feel which gives us more time to be interested in the situation we are in and become more involved in the present.

Q.5 Why do I seem to have so many bad thoughts running around all day?

The reason you seem to have your attention on yourself all day and it feels like there are hundreds of thoughts running through your mind is because of all your confusion about how you feel. You go round in your mind all day long, looking for answers, trying to find a way out of this hell. Some people may even stay up all night reflecting on the whole day, trying to figure it all out. Mostly these are negative or worrying thoughts and that’s why they seem to come automatically and with so much force. When you are in an anxious state, emotions seem to be ten-fold. Everything magnifies, a little problem becomes massive, and something that you could dismiss when you were healthy, sticks around all day.

Eventually thinking just becomes automatic it becomes a habit. All day, every day, these thoughts seem to come before you even think them. Looking at it from another angle, when people meditate, they stop thinking for hours on end until it becomes a habit and they can go all day without a worrying thought. That is why they feel so refreshed.

Not you, your thoughts just carry on and on and when your mind is tired, like it is now, it grasps hold of every thought, pulls them in and they seem to stick.
Don’t worry that thoughts come so often and seem so bad. These thoughts are not real, they are just exaggerated thoughts due to your overactive, fatigued mind. They hold no danger to you at all they are just THOUGHTS and nothing else.
Don’t ever think, “I must not think that”. Let all thoughts come, do not run away from any of them. See them for what they are - thoughts - exaggerated because of the way you feel. They can do you no harm and they mean nothing. They won’t be around when you recover, so pay them no respect.

Why not try following a negative/scary thought through and ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Ask yourself, “Is it really going to happen? Is this thought rational in any way?” If you do this, you may find an answer to a thought you have been so frightened of. So the next time you can see them for what they are and let them go, and deep down inside of you there is a place where you can see thoughts for what they are, you will realize they just come from habit and are just not important.

Paul David spent years after his own recovery studying the whole subject in full so he could go on to dedicate his life to helping others. He then went on to write a book entitled “At Last a Life”™ telling his own story of recovery and what took him there. For more information and better understanding of the subject visit his website at: www.anxietynomore.co.uk

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