haunted by your health?

haunted by your health?

does the future of your health scare you?

Thinking about how your current lifestyle is going to come back to haunt you?

Stop worrying. There are so many little things you can do to make a BIG difference to your health. Pick ONE per week and within 6 weeks you won't believe the difference.

1. Get 6,000 IU of Vitamin D a day, 20 minutes in direct sunlight, or some fatty fish like salmon, trout or mackerel. It lowers your risk of diabetes, cancer and weight gain. Vitamin D goes very well with your Omega 3's, so take both for amazing brain, body and beauty benefits.
2. Drink 2 glasses of warm water in the morning upon rising and sit on the pot regardless whether you feel "the need". This will train your digestion to work efficiently. Help things along by gently rubbing your belly (from rib-cage to below your belly button) in a clock-wise way.
3. Sleep 7-9 hours a night. It is critical to your health, especially your immune system and your waist line. When you even have one night of less-than-optimal sleep, your hunger goes up, your ability to burn fat goes down, you store calories, and your immune system depresses. If just one night can compromise your health, what do you suppose a lifestyle of this can do?
4. Cut your sugar (NOT your fat) consumption in half. Stop eating low-fat, because that simply means "we replaced the fat with sugar". Sugar lowers your immune system, depletes your body of important nutrients, messes with your ability to burn fat and lose weight, and causes you to CRAVE MORE SUGAR!
5. Breath deeply, down to your belly, 10 times each day. This will increase your digestion, your energy and your beauty, not to mention it will help to alkalize your system so disease simply cannot thrive in your body! And, it is FREEEEEE (which means most of you won't do it ;)
6. Replace your long cardio program with 10-20 minute sessions of All-Outs. This lowers your stress hormones, increases your ability to handle stress, increases your sexy, anti-aging Human Growth Hormone, and allows you to lose fat easier. To do this interval-type of exercise: Choose whatever form of cardio you like best (stairs, running, jump rope, biking, etc) and do it AS HARD AS YOU CAN (or go All Out) for 30-60 seconds. Recover at a slower pace for 60-120 minutes, then repeat. Do enough All-Outs to add up to 2-8 minutes (with the recovery stage, warm up and cool down, this cycle will take 10-30 minutes).
7. Add 1 serving of raw vegetables to your diet. Vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli are especially amazing at fighting everything from cancer to obesity. Stick to low-glycemic veggies for the best result.s Start thinking of potatoes and corn as non-vegetables. Corn is a GRAIN (and a common allergen, as well as a heavily genetically-modified crop) and potatoes are just about as quick to turn into sugar as white bread. Limit them to 1 time a week, in a small serving.

The health industry can be a pretty intimidating place to watch from the outside. It often seems like the very same food we revered as a health food is vilified the following week. If this seems overwhelming to you, stick to the basics. The truth is, the best advice is often the free advice - drink water, breath deeply, chew your food, and exercise. And eat your vegetables!

Kristi Shmyr,

Prana Holistic

High Carbohydrate Consumption Acceptable For Type II Diabetics? Since When?

First thing's first: know that this blog is NOT intended to discourage you from following your physician's advice.

I just finished writing a follow-up column to my most recent column for SEE Magazine: A Diabetes Diet. Together, my columns are a mild reflection of how shocked I am, having discovered that conventional recommendations for diabetics include an astronomically high consumption of carbohydrates. I've obviously had my head in the sand up until this point because I had no idea that this was the case. In my investigations, I thoroughly perused the Canadian Diabetic Association's website. One of their printable documents, Just the Basics, Healthy Eating for Diabetes Management and Prevention, suggests eating more high fibre foods, their first two listed examples of high fibre foods being whole grain breads and cereals. What? This is a joke, right? Both bread and cereal are refined carbohydrates, meaning that the bran and hull of the grains have been removed. The bran and the hull are what provide fibre that contributes to keeping blood sugar levels lower. Moreover, both of these items convert to glucose in the body and, as a result, they function to raise blood sugar levels.

There's more! Here's an exact quote from the same document: "Choose starchy foods such as whole grain breads and cereals, rice, noodles, or potatoes at every meal. Starchy foods are broken down into glucose, which your body needs for energy." If that's not a direct contradiction, then I don't know what is. I am beyond flabbergasted that the point of this recommendation is that glucose is an energy source. Ok, sure, glucose is an energy source, but excessive consumption of glucose is the PRECISE problem with type II diabetes in the first place! Those with type II diabetes are not storing and using glucose properly. In my opinion, it's absolutely irresponsible to suggest that type II diabetics should be including starchy foods at EVERY MEAL!! This is like telling someone with cirrhosis of the liver to drink a glass of wine or a pint of beer with every meal!

To add insult to injury, it is suggested that coffee is permissible at EVERY meal - 3 times a day! What's next, cake as a midnight snack? Caffeine entices a stress response in the body that throws the endocrine system out of balance. The endocrine system needs to be as balanced as possible for anyone to experience optimal health, never mind those with type II diabetes whose hormones are already unbalanced. It seems impossible for it to get any worse, but it's also suggested on the Canadian Diabetes Association's website to use artificial sweeteners in the place of sugar. Artificial sweeteners, being lab-produced and chemical based, are absolutely toxic to the human body.

As if that wasn't enough, the Canadian Diabetes Association also recommends pursuing a low-fat diet to maintain healthy body weight, avoid clogged arteries (atherosclerosis) and heart disease. But fat is a necessary component of a healthy and well-rounded diet. Fat is an excellent source of energy, especially for endurance activity that all diabetics ought to be participating in. Fats nourish the brain and connective tissues, cushion and protect organs and glands, are the building blocks of hormones and are integral to the formation and rebuilding of bones, cells, enzymes, hair, muscles, nails and neurotransmitters. Furthermore, insulin is needed to deposit fat in the body, and insulin is only released with the ingestion of glucose. Therefore, eating fat does not mean that your body is going to deposit fat - fat is deposited in the presence of insulin. When the body's sugar stores are all full, it's extra glucose floating around in the blood that deposits itself as adipose tissue, NOT dietary fats. Finally, high insulin levels in the body have been shown to increase the incidence of plaque formation in the arteries. This means that it's quite possible that excessive glucose intake - NOT excessive fat intake - is more causative of atherosclerosis and heart disease. 
 
The body is designed to assimilate and efficiently use fats AND glucose, so long as everything is eaten in balance. It's when we throw our systems out of balance by poor diet including excessive intakes of any one thing, ingestion of processed and refined foods, high stress that is not being properly dealt with and poor lifestyle that our bodies begin being unable to effectively deal with their tasks. 


If you are a type II diabetic interested in pursuing an alternative nutritional regime, please contact us. I would be happy to facilitate a nutritional consult for you.

Roberta Shepherd for Prana Holistic

Jump THEN Learn to Fly

I met a new friend recently who gave such a wonderful example of my goal getting philosophy of "Jump, THEN learn to fly". She went down to South America and found a health product that amazed her. She asked if they had it in North America - they didn't, but wanted a distributor. She offered to be the North American distributor, but they told her she needed to be an importer. She wasn't. Now here's the great part. Most people would have backed off and walked away. Not my new Goal Ninja Friend. She said she was, and then came back and Googled "How to Become an Importer"! She incorporated a name and voila! She was an importer with distributor rights to a product she believed in. 

Now THAT'S how it's done!

Kristi Shmyr
Goal Ninja and owner of Prana Holistic

Are we Investors or Fund-raisers?

Did you know that world wide, we have raised about $4 TRILLION dollars in money to fund cancer research?

Does that scare anyone else?

We all know someone who has cancer, who has survived cancer, or tragically died from this terrible disease. I have lost all four of my grandparents to cancer, and many dear friends. I know the draw to do ANYTHING to help prevent cancer is strong. And we are constantly inundated with opportunities to fund raise for cancer research. Yet...what are we accomplishing besides the creation of a multi-billion dollar pharma industry?

The pharmaceutical industry has 625 lobbyists maintaining their economic interest in the States (where we, like it or not, are heavily influenced by). That means that drug lobbyists outnumber the actual number of members of Congress! In 2007, the U.S's pharmaceutical industry raked in $315 BILLION. In Fortune 500 surveys, the Pharmaceutical industry is THE most profitable industry - period. Research and development was over $65 billion of that cost - 26% of the drugs currently being researched are cancer drugs, more than any other category of drug. We are running, walking, biking and frantically raising money for pharmaceutical companies to turn around and charge us for drugs they used OUR money to develop! Where is our cure? Not to be over cynical, but the cure is not the goal. Your cash is.

In 2007, a study found that vitamin D and calcium supplementation seems to reduce incidence of cancer rates by 77% (no drug does this). The World Health Organization says that 70% of cancer is preventable through diet and lifestyle changes. Why aren't we saving our money and investing it in prevention, that is PROVEN to work? Easy answer - not as glamorous. There are no TV crews around when you go to the gym, or eat broccoli, or see your natural health practitioner. There is no story there. But we have been brainwashed to believe that raising funds for research is the answer to our cancer woes.

Lately in the news I have been hearing about the WONDERFUL news that survivor rates are up 6% over the past 18 years. I wondered if this was due to more cancers with a higher survivability rate - and I was right. Thyroid cancer rates have been growing by 10% a year. Melanoma and prostate cancer rates are also rising. These three cancers have the highest survivability rates. So does an increase in the average 5 year survival rate MEAN anything? Or is it we are just getting more of the cancers that we are more likely to survive?

My plea to you is to think twice about where your donations are going - is your money better spent on prevention and good health? I think so.

Kristi Shmyr

Prana Holistic

Annoying Leaf Blowers Doing Away With Man Power One Leaf at a Time

So it's fall: a very aesthetically pleasing time of year. Let me describe an experience for you: you're walking along appreciating the fall colours. Leaves are falling...red, orange, brown, yellow...there's a soft breeze. You hear the gentle crunching of the leaves underfoot, the air is warm and...what's that other sound? A motor of sorts...oh, leaves are blowing around more than they should be considering the soft nature of this breeze. What the?!?!! What is that motorized, tube-like contraption pumping even more emissions into our precious atmosphere?! I've discovered that these things are called "leaf blowers". And, in case you didn't detect my tone, I find them supremely irritating. Here's a hilarious description of leaf blowers from an online site providing ratings and simple information for those interested in buying a leaf blower:

"Faith may move mountains, but to move a huge pile of leaves, you need a big rake and dollops of help (if you are lucky). However, if you are tired of using a rake and help is not forthcoming (it happens so often), you do not have to sit staring at piles of leaves! Just buy leaf blower!"

What the hell? What happened to good old fashioned elbow grease? So, if you can't find someone to help you rake the lawn, the alternative is to sit there staring at piles of leaves unless you buy a leaf blower? In my estimation, this is the epitome of laziness! Not to mention the fact that these things are commonly being used on commercial properties and, as noted in the online literature that I perused, gas powered versions are superior for larger areas. That means that more emissions are being pumped out into our atmosphere because we've become so lazy that we're beyond using a rake. Don't even get me started on noise pollution. I'm not one to go on and on about things being too loud - I'm a heavy sleeper and in previous years when I had roommates, I never would've dreamed of shutting down a party on the other side of the wall from me - but superfluous motors that are being used to replace man power that is really not that much man power to be spoken of to begin with?! COME ON PEOPLE. Pick up the damn rake and exert some energy! Sweat - it's good for you!

I was most recently irritated by one of these confounded things while at the bank: they were leaf blowing the parking lot. Let me say that again: they were leaf blowing the PARKING LOT. Because apparently leaves on pavement is problematic? In retrospect, I reflect on the number of times I've noticed home owners leaf blowing the sidewalk out front of their houses. Ummm...someone please tell me why it's necessary to remove leaves from the sidewalk and in doing so, spew emissions into the air while making lots of noise.

Seriously. I think I've made my point. This is one of the great reasons that I love blogs: I have license to rant about leaf blowers and get away with it.

Roberta Shepherd for Prana Holistic