In my learning about blogs and blogsites, I realize that I have more flexibility if I move to a domain of my own, separate of WordPress.  So you can find all of this site content plus all future postings at http://subtlenrgblog.com/  Thanks.  I’ll see you there!

It’s June already so that means some of us will start to get real body-conscious (to get into that bathing suit).  Although I feel I should say that health should be a year-round focus, these two tools can help, whether your focus is short- or long-term. 

They are Gyminee.com, a workout buddy and Cron-o-meter, a calorie counter.  Gyminee excels at counting calories broken down by workout type and duration, and happens to have a good calorie counter that will even allow you to enter recipes and have it total up the calories.  Cron-o-meter is even more anal about counting calories – and calculating nutrition of the food you eat.  You can see a quick demo of both of them at DemoGirl.com (you may have to scroll down the page a ways).  Molly does a great job of tourguide, walking you through the software’s essential elements, usually in under 3 minutes.

This idea came from the blog of a chiropractor I met here in Long Beach, Dr. Michael Day.  He has a very good blog DayWellness.com  It reminded me that breathing is such an easy but essential way to reduce stress and reconnect with ourselves.  Be good to yourself.  Take a few minutes to not only watch this but to try it and then try incorporating the yoga practices demonstrated here (and in the companion videos you’ll find if you click on the control panel icon in the lower right corner).  Here’s the video:

For an industry that has a lot to hide, this still may come as a surprise. A statistic called Numbers Needed to Treat (NNT) was devised to figure out how many people have to be treated with a drug to avoid one incidence of a medical issue (such as a heart attack). If a cancer drug has an NNT of 100, that means only 1 person avoided having cancer for every 100 people who were given the drug. Sounds bizarre, doesn’t it, that we have drugs allowed on the market by the FDA with NNT numbers higher than 250?! 

Mercola.com posted a very informative article on this recently.  In it they cite a Business Week study done on Lipitor specifically attempting to decipher what an NNT of 250 means for that drug.  Referring to an ad by Lipitor’s manufacturer, Pfizer, the article said:

Upon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:

“That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor.”

What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people.
 

So, just to be clear, Pfizer is saying that if you give 100 people at risk of heart attack a sugar pill for more than 3 years, 3 of them would have a heart attack.  Give 100 others at risk of heart attack Lipitor for the same time period and 2 of them would have a heart attack.  So 99 of 100 have spent a lot of money and risked a lot of unpleasant side effects – for nothing!  That’s not just a dirty secret; that’s a dirty rotten shame.

This is one more reason why I strive to find solutions that avoid the use of drugs and are more effective.

I welcome your comments!

Recently I’ve seen some advice suggesting that there may be a different approach to curing candida / yeast infections / thrush if it’s merely vaginitis (inflammation of the vagina, vulva or labia) versus if it’s systemic. How do you know the difference?  Either way, antibiotics will almost certainly make the problem worse because they tend to greatly reduce the populations of beneficial flora in the body, thus giving the bad flora even more of an advantage, since good flora are a major part of the body’s natural control mechanism.

So I’d think twice before you take that Nystatin or other antibiotic, especially when there’s a great way to both boost the good flora and take care of the bad flora.  And the solution I’ve found works whether you’re proactive, careful about your hygiene, diet, etc.  or if you’re pretty negligent (you know, the kinda person that’s tempted by that quick-fix your doc’s suggesting).  Please resist the quick-fix as it may give some symptomatic relief in the short term but the problem’s going to come back and it’s going to be harder to fix as a result of the damage done to your good flora in the process.

Did you know you could sleep on bamboo?  They have had bamboo flooring for some time but I never knew the fiber could be processed and woven into cloth! Like other fibers, it’s sometimes woven in a blend, depending on what characteristics the manufacturer is seeking – warmth, durability, softness, etc.  

It seems that bamboo is naturally organic (unlike cotton which requires a LOT of chemicals to keep it bug-free). And it’s antibacterial, antifungal and antistatic.  Plus, it’s softer than cotton and 3-4 times as absorbent.  And repeated washing does not reduce these properties. 

Right now, most bamboo cloth comes from China (I know, but what doesn’t?).  There are probably other sources on the Web but here’s one I was alerted to that sells a variety of bamboo-derived products: BambooHomeUSA.com  The video on their home page offers a nice overview of the properties of bamboo cloth.

Because I’ve been talking about candida and fungus issues, I’m focusing on the bed linens and socks (think: no more athlete’s foot) for their therapeutic value.  And it doesn’t hurt at all to sleep more ‘green’ – make choices of sleep products that are more environmentally friendly. 

But what good is it if it doesn’t feel good?  Here’s what healer Ingrid Naiman had to say:

“A year ago, I bought a bamboo blanket.  I was astonished at how warm and snuggly it is so bamboo linens sounded incredible.  I ordered some pillow cases from Hawaii and they came really fast and it was love at first nap.  Contrary to stuff from Overstock.com and Linens n Things, these cases are odorless.  They are apparently free of fumigants, formaldehyde, and other things that promote coughing and irritation.

“However, I ran an experiment. I bought the best quality “natural” pillow cases from Linens n Things and put one on a pillow and the bamboo on another pillow.  In an hour or so, I had a rash on my hand
on guess which side!”

If you like what you see at BambooHomeUSA.com , then use the following coupon code to receive a discount: greensleep. You can also phone and ask for Limin: 808-941-9707.  (Disclaimer: I have no connection to this business and make nothing from any sales.)
 
When you order a set of sheets of any size, you will get a bonus of 20 dollars’ worth of other products, your choice of bamboo socks, towels, face cloths.  Even if you only want pillow cases, there is still a bonus if you mention “greensleep.”

Sweet dreams.

OK, it sounds off the subject but hear me out.  If you knew nothing about this planet, how do you figure out who’s in charge – the organism that’s the biggest, that has the largest numbers, that controls what’s going on?  Well, it’s been said that an alien could look at this planet and human beings, in particular, from this perspective and well, it’s hard to draw an easy conclusion. 

Sure, the human is the largest.  But all those little organisms (including candida) living in the human’s body – the lower intestine in particular – often seem to be in charge.  After all, those organisms have a large degree of control over the human’s desires - its craving for sugar (driven by chemistry shifts caused by candida), how good it feels (due to all those toxins building up causing everything from vaginitis to migraines), its weight loss (or gain), its ability to draw the nutrition it need to survive from its digestion, and so on – you get the idea.

Who’s in charge, you or the billions of tiny bacteria, yeasts and other organisms you’re carrying around all day?  If they are out of balance, a strong argument could be made that they have the upper hand.  Want to take charge of your body?  Here’s how – using my candida fix.

Well, if you could, there would be a lot fewer books sold – and a lot more happy women (and guys – they get yeast infections, too) out there.  Sure, some milder cases can be handled with probiotics.  But most of us have too many issues not stacked in our favor to expect a little yogurt or some acidophilus capsules to do the trick. 

First, an explanation.  Candida (also known as bowel dysbiosis) is a chronic imbalance in your lower intestine’s bacteria – there are too many ‘bad guys’ and too few ‘good guys’.  Your body needs a huge number of good bacteria to function properly.  For instance, a very large percentage of your own excrement is made up of those bacteria, so you need to replace those you are eliminating from the body every day, at a minimum.  Then there are things we do to further kill off the good ones that are left – eat and drink the wrong things, take antibiotics, etc.  So, by the time you start noticing symptoms, you’re not just a little out of balance.  No, now it’s going to take massive numbers of those ‘good guys’ to fix the problem.  And hmmm…. wouldn’t it be great if you could also do something about reducing the number of ‘bad guys’ (problem bacteria and other organisms like yeast)? 

That’s why I started researching this issue years ago and came up with a solution.  I have sold the Candida Fix for $50 but now I’m giving it away.  Get your copy here.  And learn all the details – what to do and why it works.  You’ve learned the hard way what doesn’t work.  Now try something that does.  I guarantee it.

To follow up on yesterday’s thoughts, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) could be an enormous boost to the well-being of those shaken (emotionally and literally) by the recent tragedies in China and Myanmar.  The Chinese government has voiced support for giving psychological aid to recent earthquake victims.  This is huge and unprecedented (as far as I know), but it remains to be seen how and when this will take place.  Logistics are a challenge, if nothing else.  The Myanmar government has so many issues that there’s no chance they will make a similar initiative.

Regardless how it is ultimately resolved, my point in bringing disasters of this magnitude and EFT up in the same post is that we all have issues, small and large, that happen every day.  Such is life.  And I hope disasters like happened recently in China and Myanmar will never befall you.  But the beauty of a tool like EFT is that it is simple, easy to teach to others with no background in counseling, psychology or medicine, it’s inexpensive (free!) and there are no side effects.  And if that isn’t enough, it’s proven to help with physical as well as emotional issues.  Both come into play in our daily lives, and surely would be of great comfort to these disaster victims. 

So, I encourage you to get familiar with EFT – because you never know when you could use it.  Or where you’ll find yourself.  You’ll find it handier than a swiss army knife!

Start by downloading this free EFT Summary Sheet I put together (you’ll find it under ‘Resource documents’).

Because I’m not sure where my readers are coming from, I should mention a tool that I use to address emotional – and some physical – issues.  It’s been around for over 20 years and has helped a lot of people.  But just in case you haven’t heard of it, it’s called Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT or tapping, for short.  Despite the name, it can be used for both emotional and physical issues. 

You can read tons of anecdotes/case studies of how it has been used at emofree.com, the official site of EFT.  Gary Craig is the creator of EFT and he offers a free weekly newsletter which I highly recommend.  (Don’t worry; they never try to sell you anything.   On my site, I have produced an EFT summary (cheat) sheet (scroll down to ‘Resource documents’) that I give to my clients, which I offer to you free of charge.  I mention it here because I’ve never seen a similar sheet on the EFT site.  Read over my EFT page and the summary sheet and give it a try.  Simple, easy, fast, cheap, no side effects, and it can be quite effective.