Laura Koniver, MD's Blog, page 10

Things You Walk By Every Single Day That Could Easily Ground You, Even In The Cold

 

 

 

Typically when you hear folks recommend grounding, you only hear about walking barefoot on green grass.

That doesn’t help in winter, when the winter grass is either non-existent, crunchy and dried out, or covered in mud or snow.  Not to mention even if I could find living grass, I really don’t want to go barefoot on it when the temperatures are cold.

In fact, even in the summer, grass is not my favorite surface to get grounded on.  Grass in the summer can be sprayed with chemicals, have fire ants, have dog poop, and sometimes just isn’t the best solution when you want to get grounded.

Most of the time I prefer to ground through my hands, and that goes year round.  So thankfully there are lots of solutions, like trees and rocks and bushes and metal signposts and metal railings that can all ground you while you walk or stand outside.

Not that there is anything wrong with grass.  It’s just that most of us (myself included) are not lucky enough to have a lovely backyard full of grass… and who knows what is sprayed on the grass in public parks… so more often than not it is a sidewalk or a rock that will tempt me to reach out and touch it more than grass will.

 

So here you go…

 

15 Alternative Grounded Surfaces Waiting For You Outside:

 

 

 

 

1. Gravel.

 

Yep, that gravel road, that gravel parking lot, that pea gravel patio… it’ll all ground you, particularly if it is damp.

 

 

 

 

2. Ferns.

 

I seem to be able to find these even when most other smaller plants have gone dormant or died in the winter… long after the grass is brown, I usually can find a fern on my winter walks. And yep, any rooted living thing, ferns included, growing out of the ground will ground you.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Moss.

 

Even moss growing on a tree, even moss growing on thick bark (as I show in the video here) will get you grounded and feels oh-so-good. So if you are trying to ground through a tree that has a lot of thick bark on it, see if you can find moss growing on it to touch instead.

 

 

 

 

4. Slate.

 

Slate walkways are my favorite thing to walk barefoot on, I have a slate area by my front door that I ground on and I love it so much… and yes you are grounded the entire time you stand or walk on one.

 

 

 

 

5.  Your Pet

 

If you have a pet that goes outside with you, then every time you are near them you have an easy, warm, accessible way of getting grounded!  As I talk about in this blog post, touching your pet will ground you as long as they are on the earth outside.

If you want to see it for yourself, I show you in this TikTok here:

@laurakonivermd

Grounding through your pet #grounding #earthing #pethealth #laurakonivermd #intuitionphysician

♬ original sound – Laura Koniver, MD

 

 

 

 

6. Sidewalk.

 

The sidewalks around your home, the shopping mall, your office, that restaurant you are eating lunch in… if the sidewalk is directly on the earth then they are all grounded and waiting to support your health, even in the most urban of environments!

I give you tons more solutions on grounding in the middle of a city — far beyond just sidewalks — in my TikTok here:

@laurakonivermd

There is something that can ground you on every city block #grounding #earthing #groundingtechique #holistichealth #laurakonivermd #intuitionphysician #conductivehealth #urbanlandscape #citylife

♬ original sound – Laura Koniver, MD

 

 

 

 

 

7. Cement.

 

This is another great way to ground directly to the earth: do you have a cement floor on your basement? Or your garage? Or is your driveway cement? Or your patio? Is the basement of your office building? Or your parking garage? It’s all powerfully grounded!

 

 

 

 

 

8. Pavers.

 

Similar to slate and cement and sidewalks mentioned above, pavers will ground you too. In fact, most natural walkways (everything I can think of except dried wooden walkways or painted surfaces) will ground you!

 

 

 

 

9. Brick.

 

Did you know that brick will ground you as well, as long as it is directly touching the earth?

 

 

 

 

10. Rock.

 

Yep, any rock that is on the earth or part of the earth — touch it and it will ground you.

 

 

 

 

11. Sand.

 

Sand is really just a collection of mini rocks, and so yes… sand will ground you (especially if the sand is wet, as you’ll see in #15 below!)

 

 

 

 

12. Flowers.

 

All flowers that are rooted and growing out of the ground outside will ground you just by touching their stems, leaves or petals!  Might be hard to come by in winter, but keep this idea tucked away in the back of your mind as spring is just right around the corner…

 

 

 

 

13. Trees.

 

The moist parts on trees (leaves are best!) will ground you, no matter how high up in the air they reach, as I show you in this TikTok where I demonstrate grounding on a balcony!

 

@laurakonivermd

Reply to @thecaliforniagirl1 yes absolutely! No need to be on the earth directly when trees are nearby ❤️ #grounding #earthing #natureheals

♬ original sound – Laura Koniver, MD

 

Just be aware that thick bark insulates you from the moist, grounded inner wood (and the circulation of the tree, the vascular cambium, which is what carries the ground connection up to the leaves) so if the tree has a layer of dry, thick bark, it’s better to touch a leaf, look for moss growing on the tree or find areas where the bark is thinner to get grounded.

 

 

 

 

14. Weeds.

 

Yep just like the fern and flowers, anything that is rooted in the ground — even a pesky dandelion or a thistle or thorn or other unwanted underbrush — it will all ground you just the same as soft grass would, no matter how gnarly or uninviting the weeds seem!

 

 

 

 

15. Water.

 

This is the most impressive, strong ground connection you can make — water. Just having one cell in your body touch one drop of water on the earth will powerfully ground you from head to toe.  One fingertip touching the very top of a stream, lake, pond, river, puddle, or ocean will do the trick.

I show you this with my grounding test meter at the end of this video here.

 

 

 

 

Want to test these surfaces and more, where you live?

 

You can grab the same test meter I use to confirm if a surface is grounding you right here.

I have a special cord custom made, by hand right here in the USA, to use specifically with these test meters, so as far as I know, my Grounding Boutique is the only place to find the complete set up. I’d love to send one your way!

 

What about indoors?

 

 

 

There are lots of indoor ways to get grounded too, and I run through a bunch of them for you here in this TikTok here.  

Your sink, bathtub, basement, garage… they are all waiting to give you some grounding support where it is most easily accessible in the winter — indoors!

 

@laurakonivermd

Your sink, bath, garage, basement, pets, etc… can all ground you! #grounding #earthing #indoorgroundingtips #groundingtechique #laurakonivermd #intuitionphysician

♬ Sunny Day Smiles(965139) – Lesya nZ

Want some visual reminders?

 

Below, I’ve made some quick easy visuals of a few of the outdoor surfaces that will and won’t ground you, to help remind you. Feel free to share these images on any social media pages you like!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have any questions for me?

 

I’ve got you.

Every single day in my Earth Connect class will bring you a new, uplifting, inspiring way to ground your body and support your innate health, as well an opportunity to ask me any grounding questions you have.

Have you ever wanted to personally ask me a grounding question?  Let’s do it.

Want to know the best way to ground for a particular health concern you have?How to ground inside your specific home or workplace?How to ground if you don’t have a yard?How long to ground for to meet your unique grounding goals?How to work grounding into an already over-busy day?How does grounding work?Why does grounding work?

If so, this class is perfect for you — ask me any question at all about grounding and I will personally answer you in our private class Q&A.

My Earth Connect class is the quickest way to jump start a grounding practice. It’s like a quick start guide to supporting your health through grounding.

 

Join my Earth Connect Class: starts on Feb 5th

 

 

Join me in this two week course and get materials, tips, and ideas for grounding that you can use again and again and again, for the rest of your life.

To your natural, grounded, ever-resilient state of health!xoxox, Laura Koniver MD

 

The post Things You Walk By Every Single Day That Could Easily Ground You, Even In The Cold appeared first on Intuition Physician.

How To Make Room For 2024… In Your Living Spaces, In Your Body, In Your Life

 

I can think of no better way to set the stage for a brand new year, 2024, to be full of expression and growth than to simplify and declutter at the start of the year.

You need space to expand, it’s as simple as that.

Clutter stops growth and expansion, and it affects your health, both mentally and physically.

I want you to feel like your living space — whether it is a single room, an entire apartment, or a massive multilevel home — just wraps you up in a big hug of safety and security and joy, with plenty of space to take a deep breath in and let it fully out.

We spend so much time in our homes, we cook there, we sleep there, we talk to our loved ones there, we let our hair down and wash our face and put our feet up and read books there and most importantly… we dream there.

We think there. We create our lives there. So it’s important to take a few moments to walk through our living space and make sure that we can feel a positive energy movement within it.

Here’s how:

 

 

 

1. Begin by entering your home.

 

Try to see it as if you were walking through the front door for the first time.

What sights greet you? Do you immediately see a home that has *room* for you? Do you see space for you to *be*? Do you see things that you love, that are meaningful to you, that you cherish?

Do you see things you’d like to let go of… clutter, or things you have held onto out of guilt (furniture you don’t want to throw away, a gift or family heirloom that you really don’t want?)

Do you step into the space and feel like you can take a deep breath?

Clutter crowds you out. It is the living equivalent of a pointless worksheet full of math problems. Spitting out memorized facts to give your mind a bunch of busywork to distract it from actually *thinking*.

Clutter gives your soul a bunch of objects to be surrounded by that distracts you from actually *being*.

If you notice clutter in your home, try removing a third of the furniture and other stuff from your entryway and hallways, from your main rooms or your walls… and see how you feel.

Do you feel more expansive? Lighter? Freer?

If you aren’t ready to part with the items, just consider storing them all in another room just for this exercise, just for this hour… push it all into the garage or a different room… now re-enter your house again. Does this feel like a welcome change? Do you have space to breath, to unwind, to sit?

Tweak these changes as necessary… return items that you instantly missed, and consider truly tossing (ideally, gifting to charity or a friend) items that you don’t want to bring back into the space.

 

 

 

 

2. Consider allowing a flow of energy in through the front door.

 

Walk through your home from the entryway as if you were a wave of water.

You want your energy to flow through your house as easily as a wave would, washing through the room.

If you walk into a room, try to visualize how the energy would flow around the space… are there any dead ends or dark corners that a wave of water would get caught in?

If so, consider re-arranging the furniture in the room, or hanging a mirror on the wall. Mirrors and light are a fabulous way to get energy flowing again… The light bouncing around the room is an instant energy lift.

Lamps are another way to get energy to flow in a blocked area… consider rearranging furniture so that you have a light source along any solid walls or windowless corners. Double check that the lights all work and replace any bulbs that need replacing.

I don’t think you need to purchase a single thing in order to completely mix up the energy flow in your living spaces. Switching furniture around is a fun and easy way to get some new movement into a room… sometimes just angling an existing piece in a different way can get the energy flowing again.

Continue to walk through your home as if you were a wave of water entering each room, flowing down the hallways and through your living spaces… asking yourself two things as you enter each room:

 

First, do I absolutely LOVE this furniture/item/decor that is in front of me?

 

If not, do not rush to replace it… simply remove the item(s) from the room temporarily and walk back into the room and *feel* what this does for the space… does removing some of the items for the room give you more *space* back, more room for energy to flow?

Does it give you a new idea of how to switch the remaining furniture around?

Does it give you a new idea of how to bring back some of the pieces?

 

And second, does the area allow for the flow of an imaginary wave of water to circle around?

 

If there are dead ends, dark corners, or places that feel *stuck* energetically to you, respond to those.

Re-arrange your walls to put a mirror or two in corners that feel dark.

Re-arrange the furniture, angling an item in the dark corner, so that you soften the angles of the corner and allow the wave to flow around.

Consider adding a lighting element to the room… swapping out a lamp from another room or even just propping a metal bowl on a table, a candle, or consider re-painting a lighter, brighter color.

Even just rearranging the wall art… hanging a brightly colored picture or photograph on the wall can often be just as effective at lightening the space as a window or mirror.

Another option is to add a plant to the space… often the least expensive way to soften a corner of a room or add energy flow to a space is to add a plant. One leafy fern in a corner is usually much less expensive and much more relaxing then the thought of re-painting the room or needing to go out thrifting for a mirror or a lamp.

So when in doubt… add a plant!

 

 

 

 

3. Clear out the old cobwebs, both literally and metaphorically.

 

View this time of cleaning as a fresh start.

Even if you only spend ten minutes wiping down the furniture in your main entry/living area, it’s not so much about physically cleaning it as it is about spreading a new fresh intention about the space… your loving soul, tending to your living space and allowing your body to reside in a place that brings you peace.

It’s not about the level of clean; it’s about refreshing the momentum in your home.

It’s about the sacred space you are creating for your body to live in, because you honor and cherish every cell in your body and you trust it to work its beautiful magic every single day in supporting your spirit in physical form.

Just freshen the space up energetically and physically with a quick dusting or vacuuming.

If you want to make your own homemade spray, give this a try. It is eco-friendly, antibacterial, degreases, and shines. And it is so cheap that the cost is reason enough to use it. It involves recycling and is all natural. Win, win, win, win, win, win and win.

And hopefully you already have everything you need to create it: just vinegar and a citrus peel.  Any time you use lemons or limes in cooking, or any time you eat a citrus fruit, just pop the rinds into a glass jar, pour vinegar over it, store it in the fridge… and voila!  Instant citrus vinegar EO spray!

 

 

The EO (essential oils) come out of the rind of the fruit and scent the vinegar, as well as provide antimicrobial and degreasing properties.

I pour the vinegar into my spray bottle and use it 1:1 with water… and every time I eat a grapefruit or squeeze orange juice, I just start a fresh jar!

 

 

 

 

4. Declutter your bathroom

 

After attending to your main living space (living, eating and sleeping spaces) consider moving to your bathroom. Or heck, skip the main areas and just start in your bathroom.

Bathrooms are sacred to me — after all, this is the area where we literally strip down, get absolutely naked, bathe, clean and refresh our physical bodies, and even re-invent ourselves by styling our hair and make up at times.

We look in the mirror, take stock of what we look like (which can greatly affect how we feel) brush our teeth, wash our hands, get centered to walk back out into the rest of our day on the other side of that bathroom door.

When living with others, especially small children, sometimes a minute or two stollen in the bathroom is the only privacy we get, our only time to clear our minds and think.

So honestly, the bathroom is the prefect place to make sure we are decluttered and feeling free. Clean the toilet, sink and bathing area. Wash towels and bath mats. Remove duplicate items from the countertop and store away for future use. Slim down the amount of products you use, and consider taking a break from most of them.

Sometimes the large amounts of creams, lotions, serums, make up, hair products, special soaps and ointments and on and on… give the general feeling that in order to feel good, we need to be high maintenance.

This is an illusion… we think we are surrounding ourselves with a safety net by surrounding ourselves with our preferred beauty supplies, our rows of vitamins and health care products… and really we are giving ourselves the impression that we *need* these things to just feel like ourselves.

Try stepping back, even if it is just for a moment, and allow your natural well-being to shine. Focus on hydrating, drinking lots and lots of water, and feeling gratitude for the health that you do have.

Let everything else fall away for a few days.

Your body can self sustain for quite a long time nourished off of only gratitude and water. Take care to see that everything else you add on top of gratitude and water is simple and pure.

Start your mornings with a cup of hot water and a splash of lemon juice or honey… go outside in the fresh cold morning air to drink it. Take a walk. Focus on fresh fruits and veggies for food this weekend. Slather on coconut oil in the shower… take a break from all the body washes and lotions and face creams and eye creams.

All you really need is to stand under the water, soaking in the love, and then sealing the moisture in with some olive or coconut oil. Getting out, towel off… get dressed and go about your day in simplicity. Try using no makeup, body or hair care products for a few days to just take a break from it all… and reassure your body that you are trusting in its natural state of well being.

 

 

 

 

5. Declutter your closets, garage, attic and other storage spaces…

 

If you are feeling particularly inspired, after decluttering your main living spaces and your bathroom, consider moving into the areas that you typically don’t live in at all, storage areas like closets, attics, garages. Let go, let go, let go.

During a particularly hard life transition (over a dozen years ago now, my then-husband of 15 years blindsided me by disappearing one night out of the blue — just left letter on the kitchen table and that was that…  when woke up I found to my surprise I had lost a husband, my children lost a father, over the course of a few weeks we lost almost everything including our home, so downsizing became a absolute must) and I would repeat in my head, as I was letting go of almost everything we owned:

“freedom… freedom… freedom…“. over and over and over with each thing I released, donated, let go of.

You can do the same. It’s actually wonderful.

 

 

 

 

6. Declutter just one room at a time.

 

Taking care to focus on the entryway and your main living area is plenty for one day.

Or if the bedroom is calling you, do that first.

If you are feeling ambitious, continue this exercise throughout the rest of your home over the following few weeks as 2023 begins. I think once you feel how much freeing space up in your home helps you be able to relax into your home, you will be encouraged to keep going.

Once you have your main entryway and living room feeling comforting and alive… the type of room you can sit in and let your body relax and your mind open… consider doing one last walk through with a lit candle, a piece of sage, or a stick of incense.

I burn incense frequently in our home as a way to start over with a fresh slate and clearing out the old. You are saying to your home and your spirit that you are ready for the new; ready for the new fresh energy, the new fresh insights, the new fresh level of health that you are welcoming in.

Light the candle or incense, then walk through each space of your home, allowing the smoke to gently drift in the same pattern that you imagined your wave of water… and intend that the burning of the light or the burning of the incense is a new beginning… burning away all negativity, doubt, dark thoughts, old patterns that are no longer working for you… and release them all to the loving arms of the universe.

Allow this to be a new start to a new phase in your life… one of health freedom.

Beginning right here, inside your home.

 

 

 

 

7. Refresh your pet too!

 

If you have a pet (or two, or three) at home with you, you are so lucky. In addition to clearing out your home of old energy, also clear and refresh any toys and bedding your pet uses, and enjoy spending some quality time grooming them. They can feel the energy lift!

Not only is it so fun to have a pet to connect with and entertain you and give you physical touch, but living with a pet is actually a boost for your health. It’s true! From childhood throughout our entire adult life and elderly years, owning a pet gives us a a significant health boost that lasts a lifetime.  I wrote a blog post for you (you can read it here) on what the medical literature has to say about why caring for an animal just might be one of the best things you can do to protect your health over a lifetime.

In fact, this is one of the topics I talk about in my podcast here — how a few minutes spent with a dog was actually the very best stress relief out of several interventions studied. Even five minutes with a dog was found to lower stress levels and even decrease blood cortisol levels on stressed out study participants. It’s true. Connecting with a pet for five minutes was actually superior to taking a break for five minutes and peace and quiet, and also superior to a mindful centering activity (coloring a mandala for five minutes.)

 

 

 

8. Declutter your car

 

If you are fortunate enough to have a car, it can feel so good to clean it out.

Remove trash, wipe down windows and seats, shake out floor mats, even wash your car with a bucket of soapy water and rinse down with a hose if you can!

Even if all you can do is declutter your glove compartment and door pockets and wipe down the steering wheel and windshield, now is the time to do it… and the next time you need to use your car it will feel so uplifting to get into a freshened space.

 

 

 

 

9. Declutter your books & photos.

 

Don’t forget to declutter your media!

Old bookshelves filled with books you do not intend to re-read can weigh you down. Trust that your soul got the information that you were meant to get from it at the time when you read the book, and move on.

The start of a new year is a lovely time to reflect on, enjoy, and re-organize pictures you love (maybe it will inspire you to write some memoirs down and start a biography rough draft!) and release those that you don’t. Let go, let go, let go. Even just organizing your computer desk top and online photo storage can be hugely energetically liberating!!!

Put all of your pics into a big photobook (many online companies make it super easy to upload pictures right from instagram and/or facebook and will automatically create a photobook for you!) having them bound into a physical book will not only allow you to look at them whenever you want, it will also help you let go of extra copies or versions of pictures that you don’t love.

You don’t have to save every single picture just because it was taken!!! Save the ones you love and release the rest.

 

 

 

10. Declutter the future

 

This is the time to take a moment to re-examine the trajectory of your life, and if your current situation is setting you up to step forward in your life or keep you stuck.

If you are holding on to old energy items, like pieces of furniture you took in from your aunt that don’t feel right in your space, old clothing hanging in your closet that you don’t enjoy putting on, the old mattress you used to have before the divorce, now’s the time to release it.

It generally feels better to do without and have the space of possibility open than to have an item that doesn’t align with where you life is heading.

Maybe you can hang one of these sayings in your living space to encourage you as you let go:

 

Your future needs you. Your past doesn’t.***Don’t look behind you, you aren’t going that way.  Look ahead.***If you want to fly,give up everything that weights you down.

 

Want more help decluttering your internal energy to make room for fresh new energy, one that aligns with the future instead of the past?

Next month I’m running my Chakra Healing online class and this time I decided to make the entire course entirely and totally free!!!

It’s fabulous — a seven week course where we devote one week to each energy center, starting at the base of your spine and moving all the way up and outwards through your crown.  Join me here.  And tell your friends to sign up to take the class with you as well!   It’s totally free:

 

 

 

Go Deeper…

 

If you want some real inspiration, grab one of these books below (all of them are available on Kindle so you don’t even have to order anything in the mail or wait for the books to arrive, if you want to get started right away!)

I have read all of these books and find them all valuable in different ways — click the button below to be taken to their Amazon page where you can read reviews and look inside the books to decide which one vibes most with you.

There is no way you can read one of these books and not be inspired to simplify your living space… and there is no better time to refresh your space, anticipating a wonderful fresh new start after the pandemic lifts, than right now!!!  No, I don’t get any commission at all nor do I know any of these authors, these are literally just books I’ve enjoyed that I think you might too:

Soul Space by Xorin BalbesBreathing Room by Lauren RosenfeldMaking Space Clutter Free by Tracy MccubinA Simplified Life by Emily Ley

 

 

 

To Summarize:

 

Today walk through your living space as if you were a fresh wave of water, bringing new energy into the room full of possibility.

Can you move freely?

Are there stuck, dark, stagnant areas that are catching your eye?

Focus on cleaning, clearing, simplifying and decluttering those. Enjoy the release, you are making room for the future! Woot!

And be sure you are signed up to receive my free newsletter so you don’t miss any uplifting holistic healing tips coming your way in 2024!

If someone forwarded you this email so you could join in on this health routines mini-series with them, you can sign up here to get these tips delivered directly to your own inbox:

 

Dr. Koniver’s Uplifting Weekly Newsletter

 

To your naturally resilient, astoundingly incredible human body!

 

xoxox, Laura Koniver MD

 

 

 

The post How To Make Room For 2024… In Your Living Spaces, In Your Body, In Your Life appeared first on Intuition Physician.

Your 2024 Healing Mantra

 

Hello you!  We made it!  Today it’s 2024.  So here is your annual reminder:

 

Your body is completely new inside and out every few years.

 

All of your organs (except for one) completely regenerates, repairs, and optimizes on a continuous basis.

Some parts of your body are so fresh and new that they are only one day old… the cornea of your eye, for example. Your cornea can completely regenerate every 24 hours.Some parts are a little older… the lining of your intestines, for example, are about 3 days old.Your skin is about 1 month old.Your fingernails have completely grown out and replaced themselves in about 6 months.Your taste buds are only 10 days old when they get replaced.Your liver regenerates every 5 months.Your lungs are renewed every two years.Even your bones, the support system of your body, is on a 10 year replacement program.

“When we meet a friend we have not seen for six months

there is not one molecule in his face which was there when we last saw him.”

— Harold Saxton Burr

There is only one organ system that sticks with you for your entire lifetime: your brain. Nervous tissue is the slowest to repair, does not increase in cell quantity and declines in cell quantity over time.

Of course there are plenty of things you can do to stimulate new adaptations and promote brain health, as I’ve outlined for you over the years in free healing articles such as:

A Super Easy Way To Support Your Brain Health That You Can Do Right NowMoving Your Body Helps Your Brain Function Better, Immediately. Here’s HowA Medical Study Reveals How To Boost Circulation To Your Brain, In 12 Minutes Flat:When You Are Doing Something Meaningful, Your Brain Works BetterWhat Happens To The Human Brain During EMF ExposuresHow To Age-Proof Your Brain (plus 12 more medically proven anti-aging tips)A Supplement So Good For The Brain It Can Prevent Psychosis

But for the most part, the brain you have now is the brain you will always have.  Here’s the thing though… your brain is the one you will always have, but your thinking doesn’t have to be the same thoughts that you’ve always had.  That’s the power we have over our brains — although we might not get a new brain, we can certainly think new thoughts, form new neuronal pathways, develop new habits, and improve our brain’s health.

Every other part of your body has the ability to be made anew and replaced many many times in your lifetime.  So that means that you can and will outgrow old health conditions and it is up to you to let your mainframe evolve with your healing.

So the next time you get frustrated with your body… the next time you curse your bad posture or your sensitive stomach or your ingrown toenail or your seasonal allergies… just remember: those tissues in your body are literally in the process of being replaced right now!

The only thing you are carrying with you, decade after decade isn’t that red blood cell (lifespan of about 4 months) or that stomach lining (lifespan of about 2 days) or that skin cell (lifespan of about 3 weeks)… it is the way you feel about your body and the thoughts you think about it.

So I write this post today, right as we start off a brand new year, so that you can give yourself a chance to open to the fact that the conditions you have now are not the conditions you need to be saddled with forever.  The health reality you are dealing with right now at this very moment has the potential to shift and change and release.

Because your body is literally a self-healing machine, capable of fully replacing itself, it is worth being very aware of the thoughts you think about your body, and the baseline narrative of your brain… which is the only part of you that you need to be carrying with you in 10 years time.

 

(I painted this painting and added the mantra All Is Well it… you can find prints of this here.)

 

So here is where a healing mantra comes in.

Recent medical studies have proven that simply repeating a mantra can help trauma patients recover from PTSD even better than traditional talk therapy. I blog about that for you here.

Based on the fact that your body is a self-renewing machine, literally divinely designed to renew itself around the clock, the best healing mantra you can gift yourself is to be open to this renewal.

If there was one sentence I would want you to say to yourself every single day, all year long, it would be this:

 

“I am open to what is possible.”

 

As simple as that.

I am open to what I am experiencing now, but I am also open to what is possible for it to transform into.

What is possible is where your healing lies.

What you feel is possible for you defines exactly how far you can go with your healing.

You can only go as far as you feel is possible for you to go, so let’s start 2024 off reminding ourselves:

You are always full of healing potential… always.No one can tell you what is true for your body or your health… so don’t let anyone have that kind of power.Conventional medicine can be helpful in troubleshooting and treating illness and disease but is absolutely not yet fully equipped to help you maximize health and wellness.For maximizing your own health, you have an incredible and unlimited potential.

 

(I call this one With Every Beat… if you like it you can find prints here)

The way the current medical model is set up is to test and report the outcome of a medication or a surgical procedure or a health intervention, and to use these statistics as the standard of care.

I’m very familiar with the scientific method of research not only through keeping on top of the current scientific literature to as a physician, but also because growing up as the daughter of one of the lead scientists at the National Institutes of Health… I grew up attending international scientific meetings literally since I could walk. I then went on to join a laboratory at the National Cancer Institute throughout my college years where we conducted leukemia research. I then went on to go through medical school and now 24+ years of working as a physician.

And with my experience in both laboratory medicine and clinical medicine, what I can tell you is: while medical advances can be incredible awesome, the current medical model can also be incredibly limiting.  I talk a bit more about how our current medical model creates some limitations in your treatment plan in a recent video here on adverse medication reactions:  

The Fourth Leading Cause Of Death: Your Medicine Cabinet?

 

(I painted this artwork and entitled it See Beyond The Surface… it has sold.)

Here’s the basic set up:

A study collects data on a group of people — half of who get the drug (or surgery/intervention/etc…) and half who receive placebo or act as a control in a double blinded study. The results are collected, which basically tell us what the outcome was for this particular group of people at this particular point in time in this particular location and with this particular modality.

Your doctor reads this and then sees you in his or her office. When you are diagnosed with an illness, your doctor reviews the current standard of practice for that disease and based on these studies he tells you some statistics that are likely for you if you take this medicine or have that procedure done.

While this can be incredibly helpful, even life saving (after all, four years ago my appendix ruptured and I would not be alive today without the experience of conventional medicine in how to repair my body. My surgeon said I was about 2 hours away from dying, since I ignored my appendix rupture for so long!  Gah!) this also does come with an unintentional side effect: by using the medical literature as standard of care, your doctor unknowingly limits your healing potential with what has been most probable, in the past, for others.

And while knowing these statistics and outcomes can be helpful when faced with medical decision making, many times, these statistics are frightening, scary, and deflating. And even when the statistic or intervention offered has favorable odds of working, you are now being defined and limited by what is standard, what is probable, and what happened in the past to others.

What this model of healthcare never ever allows for is *POSSIBILITY*.

It never shows you what is POSSIBLE FOR YOU.  It brings you down to a common denominator but it never lifts you up and reveals to you the unlimited healing potential of your body.

 

(I call this one New Health — prints available here.)

Every cell in your body has unlimited potential to heal. What we do in modern medicine right now is collect data from around the world on what we are limited to, on what is probable. But what we should be doing is scouring the entire world to find all the anecdotal evidence, all the case reports, all the best outcomes, all of the miracles that happen all over the world every single day, in every sort of condition, in every type of person, with every intervention ever dreamed up… and studying THOSE.

We should be finding out WHY some folks heal fully, why some invite miracles, why some never get a disease in the first place, why some are predicted to have a very poor outcome and they fully heal anyway, why some outlive life expectancies by double, triple, quadruple the prediction.

Because these experiences, of people getting the illness that YOU HAVE and surviving and thriving and fully healing from it are PROOF of what is POSSIBLE!

 

(I call this one Your New Rx– and have prints available here)

Ideally in the future physicians can look through the medical literature like an encyclopedia, filled with all kinds of beautiful outcomes from all kinds of amazing interventions and treatments… both holistic and conventional… and to go through this information together with their patients as an idea book of what is possible! And together, come up with a treatment plant that feels right to that specific patient.

There are many paths to healing and you can align with any one of them! Or many of them! You can do multiple healing things simultaneously, and the process of healing should be uplifting and a relief… not a battlefield.

 

(I painted this one too, entitled Think Differently — it is has sold.)

 

In 2024, keep your mind and heart open to possibility.  Because if healing has happened to even one other person, than for sure it’s been proven: It can happen. It has happened. And it can happen to you too.

Anything is possible!  Anything!

 

I don’t want the standard of care to be that we sit a patient down and look at the spectrum of outcomes in the past and we limit our patient’s future healing by overlaying what happened to others onto them.

I want physicians to sit their patient down to look at the spectrum of WHAT IS POSSIBLE in healing, and lay out all the possible paths back to Wellness for them, and together reach for THAT.

That’s what health care should be! A journey back to Wellness!

Visiting a doctor should be a wonderful uplifting experience, a chance to get all kinds of healing support, possibilities, inspiration and ideas collected from the medical literature from all over the world offered to us by someone who is our healing advocate.  Ideally we would walk away from every doctor’s appointment feeling full of possibility.

So… the next time your physician talks to you about a treatment plan and gives you outcome percentages and probabilities, just remember: this is simply a mass marketed number.  It doesn’t tell you what is possible with this condition and it doesn’t tell you what is possible for you.  I think if we can shift the medical literature from Probable to Possible we’d experience a shift in the well-being of people everywhere.

And today it starts with you. Your 2024 healing mantra?

 

“I am open to what is possible.”

 

Repeat this often.

Look into a mirror, gaze directly into your own eyes, feel the presence of the YOU that is living inside of your body, and tell yourself out loud:

“I am open to what is possible.”

 

Want a different mantra?  Here is my second favorite one:

 

(My latest mantra artwork: Home In My Body… prints available here.)

 

“I am at home in my body.”

 

I tell you why this mantra is such a powerful one as well in this free healing article here.  I even have a video for you in that article where I repeat this mantra “I am at home in my body” three times for you so we can do the healing work together, right here and now.

Pick whichever healing mantra works best for you and let’s have a wonderful, ever expanding and upleveling 2024 together!

Here are some other original mantra pieces of art I have painted:

xoxoxo,Laura Koniver MD

 

 

The post Your 2024 Healing Mantra appeared first on Intuition Physician.

In Case The Holidays Aren’t So Happy… Ways To Move Through Your Grief Today

 

 

The holidays can be a time of great connection and warmth and love, but they can also be a time of great longing and grief over missing loved ones.  Today I want to share an article for you on easy ways to be gentle with yourself and allow grief to move through you, in case it can be of comfort in the pain.

Scan the list below and see if there is just one or two things you can do today to help nurture and flow with the waves of grief you may be feeling.  And if you are able to grab on to the warmth of the holiday season this time around, soak it in.  We all experience terrible losses throughout our lifetime and whether today is one of the painful ones or one of the joy filled ones, I hope you’ve felt my support behind you over the past year in these weekly blog post.

If you want 2024 to include another year of getting free, holistic, uplifting support from me, be sure you are signed up for my newsletter here.  

Holistic Ideas For Moving Through Grief:

 

 

1. Depression

 

Feeling down or depressed while grieving should remind you to prioritize TLC for your body, and give yourself plenty of restorative time to allow it to move through.

Here are some holistic ways to help the process along:

Eat chocolate: Yep, it’s true. Published on July 29, 2019 in Depression and Anxiety, researchers found that dark chocolate consumption significantly reduced a patients chance of feeling depressive symptoms for a 24 hour period of time. Looking at over 13,000 patients, researchers found that eating any amount of dark chocolate decreased depressive symptoms by 70% over patients who did not consume chocolate in the previous 24 hours. Oh my gosh… if I could give you a Rx drug that was 70% effective in taking away depressive symptoms for 24 hours, we’d literally all be fighting to get it, some might even advocate for putting it in our water supply, ha-ha. Now imagine if this miracle drug tasted just like chocolate. Now imagine it wasn’t a drug at all and it was just simply chocolate itself. Wish come true, that’s what they found.Supplement with Zinc — In 2013 the medical journal Biological Psychiatry published the results of a huge study that found that zinc supplementation can effectively reverse depression… and that zinc added to antidepressant therapy may produce more rapid and more effective improvement in symptoms of depression than without zinc supplementation.Add Probiotics — The natural flora of the gut is diminished in depression, so restoring the natural vitality and variety of healthy organisms in the digestive tract is a very powerful way to improve outcome in depression. A study published on Nov 15, 2013 in Biological Psychiatry, showed decreased depression when participants received probiotic supplements for 30 days, and another study reported clinically significant improvement in mood when participants ate probiotic-containing yogurt for 3 weeks.Consume Omega 3 Fatty Acids — Shown in many different studies — from improving symptoms in ADHD, protecting brain volume as we age, decreasing postpartum blues and more — omega fatty acids are a must have to soothe and support your entire body inside and out, from skin to brain.Take Vit D — The link between low levels of Vit D and depression have long been established, but newer research suggests that Vitamin D supplements, taken for 12 weeks, can reverse depressed mood. Most of us are Vit D deficient, so if you are experiencing depressed mood this is a great time to give Vit D supplements a try! Read more about these medical studies here.Sleep: A study presented at the31st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, Abstract 0335 in June 2017 showed that patients who were medically treated for depression but did not sleep well were three times less likely to recover from depression, and that sleeping 7 hours or more nightly actually tripled the rates of full resolution of depression. In the study, 62% of patients who received help for insomnia and got at least 7 hours of sleep nightly had their depression fully resolve, compared to 42% of patients sleeping 6 hours a night and only 18% of patients sleeping 5 hours a night. In other words, more sleep = higher chance of recovery in depression. More tips on sleeping well below, keep reading.

 

 

2. Sorrow

 

Sadness needs to physically flow through the body in order to release. You must *feel* the sorrow. Don’t try to resist it or put it off, instead get into the state of allowing the flow using this one simple trick: water.

Water is the ultimate medium of flow on earth, and comprises the majority of our body. In fact, water is the body’s natural choice of release as well, in the form of tears. Tears often help facilitate the flow of sorrow through the body and allows it to release more easily.

So one tip is — allow the tears. Let the water of your tears release your sorrow and lift it from your body.  Can’t cry?  You can still use the power of water to help facilitate the release of your sorrow, worry or grief:

Use a hot water bottle full of warm water and hold it on your body where you are feeling the sorrow (chest, abdomen, neck, back…) and breathe into the sensation.  Better yet make it a grounded hot water bottle and add the healing power of grounding to your water therapy.Take a long hot bath (add some baking soda, epsom salts and apple cider vinegar to turn it into a detoxing experience).  On top of the water soothing your soul like the amniotic fluid you were cradled in while developing in utero, you are actually grounded while soaking in a tub the entire time, so shoot for 15 minutes or more of grounded bath therapy.Sit in a warm shower and envision the water carrying your sorrow down the drain for youUse steam/humidifiers to help hydrate your head, clearing out the old mental fog and allowing room for the newDrink water — hydrate hydrate hydrate during times of worry or sorrow more than any other time of your life. Let your body be flushed out inside and out and with every urination or bowel movement recognize you are flushing the old energy down the drain and making way for new healing

 

 

3. Fatigue

 

The feeling of heavy fatigue or during grief means your body needs a break… NOW.  Not later. You must to honor this sensation/symptom for the important information it is providing instead of ignoring or resisting it.

Fatigue and depression show up to alert us that we are in a time of healing/repair and not in a time of action.  Help it by:

Low intensity exercise — respect your body’s need to slow down. Now is not the time for strenuous exercise… honor caring for your body in gentle ways such as yoga, stretching, long slow walks through nature.Get help — you don’t need to do it all alone. Ask for help. Call a friend. Lean on family to help with some of the burdens you are seeking relief from. Flag down a neighbor and just simply and literally ask for help.Passive body work. Your body needs to get into receiving mode and not giving mode. Your giving mode is burnt out. What I’ve noticed is that most people who struggle with fatigue are the givers who are giving to everybody but themselves. You deserve to give your body the message that there is a time to stop and receive. Get a massage, acupuncture, reiki, physical therapy, a facial, a haircut. Anything that is a passive process for you — let others actively help move that energy through your body and help you on your way to release it.Deeper sleep at night… more below

 

 

4. Insomnia

 

You absolutely, 100% need deep, restorative sleep!  It’s non-negotiable… poor sleep causes memory impairment, decreased life span, weight gain, worsened anxiety and other debilitating mood disturbances, increased risk of dementia and an increased incidence of Alzheimers, widespread brain atrophy and much much more!

Here are some ways to get that much needed, deep restorative sleep you absolutely need to make your way through the process of grief:

Grounding — connecting to the earth has been shown in sleep studies to increase the amount of time we spend in deep sleep, as well as treat jet lag and other circadian rhythm disturbances. Sleeping with a grounding product will support your body’s healing process from head to toe, all night long… find my favorite ways to sleep grounded indoors on healing organic ethically hand made products in my Grounding Boutique right here.Melatonin — Taken as the sun sets (not 1 hour before bedtime as printed on the label, but whenever the sun actually literally goes down, as this is when it’s most biologically critical for your body to get a melatonin boost) allows sleep to be deeper and more restorative.Increased daytime activity — simply getting up every single hour of the waking day and walking for a bit (instead of spending several hours in a row inactive) just might be the best gift you could ever give your body.Develop a nightly routine — turn off all the lights, make sure there are no computer screens or clock faces or nightlights lighting up the room while you sleep, and drink a soothing cup of warm milk, sleepytime tea, or take a hot bath to relax your body and transition into bed. More on this in a blog post I wrote for you right here.Sleep with an external source of warmth — we all have a deep seated, cellular need to be connected to others while we sleep — it comes from the caveman days of sleeping in groups to help increase survival. So especially if you have recently lost a spouse, a pet, or a loved one that you are used to sleeping with, insonmia might be a real struggle. Fulfill your instinct to sleep share by sleeping with a hot water bottle (the warmth provides that deep comfort your body is craving) or with a loved pet or pray to loved ones and ask angels to surround you as you sleep each night so you go to bed feeling connected and supported.Read additional tips on getting better sleep in this article I wrote for you: 12 Things To Do Throughout The Day To Improve Your Sleep Tonight.

 

5. Anxiety

 

Anxiety is a very active state, where you have lots of energy building up inside, and the answer to this (as in all emotions) is to really allow the flow to open up and release it to find relief.

With the energetic state of anxiety you generally need to get into a more active state of allowing, in contrast to the passive allowing state required by sadness, grief, depression and fatigue.

Anxiety states respond to active release… so give some of these a try:

Meditation — this is a very active and aware state that puts you in the perfect open-but-alert mind-frame necessary for relief. Focus on taking 3 deep breaths in and out and choose a mantra for the in breathe and the out breath. If you can do 5 breaths, do 5. Work up to 10, 20, 50 breaths of focused openness:

breathing in: I am lovable
breathing out: I am loved

breathing in: I am safe
breathing out: I am healing

or make up your own!  Even easier, pick a mantra.  I have a video in this article that guides you through a very simple, very healing mantra and I also talk a bit about the medical literature that suggests mantra can help with anxiety disorders such as PTSD.  Click here to read it now.

Exercise — moving the body and quieting the mind is the goal of many gentle, healing practices such as yoga, tai chi, qigong. If your energy feels more intense and will not allow you to settle down enough to do those types of exercise, honor your body’s need for active processing by something a bit more intense like pilaties, karate, kick boxing, or going on a long jog.Give to others — unlike depression and fatigue, the gift of anxiety is the gift of having energy to give and express… and one of the best way to off-gas this is to give to others in need. Volunteer at a cause that is meaningful to you, start a year of gratitude (doing one act of thankfulness to loved ones or strangers each week and record it in a gratitude journal) or just go out into the world each day asking that you be shown a way you can be of service. The point here is not to add any more stress into your life — do not do anything that doesn’t feel right. This is not a burden, it’s a very simple way to get rid of extra energy/tension. Consider doing simple things that don’t require a lot of preparation but will allow you to actively process and off gas extra energy. For example, walk along a road in your neighborhood and pick up litter for an hour after dinner. Pick up an extra pizza on your way home from work and give the extra one to a construction crew as you pass or head to your local SPCA and take some of the dogs on a walk each weekend. In fact…Care for a pet — caring for a pet is the perfect way to allow your energy to flow in a loving and active, yet low stress way. Simply walking your dog every day, spending 30 minutes petting your cat while she purrs on your chest, whistle to a pet bird and teach him your favorite TV show theme song… study after study has shown that pets improve our health simply by being in our lives. During times of anxiety and frustration, loving on a pet a little extra each day gives a heart-centered but simple way to boost your health and allow excess energy to flow through.

 

6. Decreased appetite

 

It’s important to consume nutrient dense food even when your appetite is low-to-gone. Your body needs healthy fats and protien in order to keep up it’s immune system and help get you through the intense and often exhausting grieving process.

Just when you don’t feel like eating at all is right when you need the nutritional support the most. So here are three tips to help you stay healthy even when your appetite has left:

Hydrate — it’s really important to at least stay well hydrated during emotional times. Although you can go for days without eating, you can not survive for days without water. Drink non-fluoridated, fresh, filtered water and drink drink drink some more. If you simply you can’t eat a single bite… drink a glass of water and take a deep breath and stay well hydrated.  This is the water filtration system I use in my own home.Gentle movement — while it is absolutely okay to want to curl up and not move while you are hurting, it’s also important to make sure you get gentle activity each day — going on a daily walk in nature is the best therapy. The movement gently stimulates gut perastalsis and will help gently nudge your appetite back into place.Nutrient dense foods — when all you feel like eating is a few small bites, make every bite count. There is a reason folks deliver nourishing bone broths like chicken noodle soup to loved ones who aren’t feeling well… the healthy fats and minerals in bone broth is nurtirtionally sound and will help keep your immunity high.  Other options include easily digestible casseroles, stews, organic nuts and peanut butter (when my kids just don’t want to eat, we compromise on a scoop or two of organic peanut butter), healthy fats such as avocado and coconut oil, organic yogurt, and organic butter (a comforting warm grilled cheese sandwich with organic cheese and grilled in organic butter is wonderful, especially alongside a cup of bone broth!)

If your grief is particularly intense, lasting longer than a few months or accompanied by suicidal thoughts… or you simply want the support of a counsellor… be sure to seek professional help by a medical or mental health practitioner who is experienced in grief counseling.

 

Want more support from me?

 

Sign up for my online Trauma Resiliency & Recovery Class by clicking over here right now to save your spot. And don’t forget to share this healing idea list by forwarding this blog post to your loved ones who are feeling the effects of grief during the holidays as well.

 

 

 

If your grief is from the death (however recent or long ago) of a loved one, I feel you.  The separation of death takes away so much, but maybe it takes away less than you think.  In case it might help to hear a little more from the medical aspect of the death experience, I can share with you what I’ve learned from patients who were dying, as well as patients who had near death experiences and told me about them.

What I found, is that like most big changes, death brings with it many opportunities to find deeper fulfillment. I’ve seen many patients greet death with joy, surprise, wonderment, love and even gratitude. Don’t count out the possibility that death may very well be one of your favorite phases of your life.

In medical school, I had an attending physician who had a heart transplant. He said as they removed his heart on the operating table, he went somewhere totally different than earth. After putting his new heart in, the surgeon shocked it to get it to start beating again. He says he felt that shock and felt himself feeling pulled back into his physical body and when he woke up… he was so damn mad. Angry to have to be back on this heavy painful earth.

Although he very much loved his wife, he loved his kids, he loved his job… whatever side he was on for the brief moment he was on it was infinitely better. The last thing he wanted to do was leave it, not even to come back here to his family.

 

 

I had a patient in the ICU who was dying, and as the veil lifted she started seeing her mother (who had died decades ago) sitting bedside with her. My patient would not let anyone sit in that chair, because that’s where her mother was sitting… so I stood nearby and listened as she talked to her mother.

She was so joyful and expressive and illuminated when talking to her mom, she laughed often and she gestured freely with her arms. She had not seen her mother in 40 years, and you could literally feel her light up at seeing her again and simultaneously relax into knowing it was all okay and that she was not alone during this death transition.

My very own grandfather woke up after having heart surgery in his mid-eighties, and told my father that he saw his dead wife (my grandmother, Grams) while he was on that operating table. He said Grams had told him to go back and eat — to finish his applesauce, specifically — and yes there was applesauce waiting for him back in the hospital room.

 

 

And on and on. And most recently, my best friend’s mom passed away. My friend told me that her mom started seeing energy — the light of souls that were in the room with her. She first started seeing them at the hospital she was in, and when she was able to come back home on hospice care, she told her daughter that she now saw the lights in her home too — and that they were colorful. Uplifting. Positive.

Watching people as the veil lifts between the two worlds — the living and the non-living — has always been my favorite thing. It’s so comforting, to know no one dies alone. Think of all of the billions of souls that have lived and gone before you, that not only make you who you are biologically but who have crossed over, and wait for you still, on the other side of that veil.

People you know and loved, people you never met, all knowing exactly who you are and welcoming you home. Row after row after row of beautiful soul energies, lighting up as they come to greet you.

But of course, for those of us left behind, there is great sorrow and grief.

No one likes to feel separated from those they love most, from those they love even a bit, from those that they had a complicated relationship with, from those they had unresolved issues with… it’s hard to be separate, which is why I feel there is so much joy in the re-connection.

The joining of each of our souls with all the souls that have gone before us.

I am so enamored by the joy that the dying person feels as they reconnect with the vast oneness of it all that I’ve painted it several times for you, this one is one of my more recent paintings, I call it As The Veil Lifts.  And I thank my best friend’s mom for telling us about those beautiful colored lights and giving me the inspiration to put this imagery down on a canvas.

(This is actually the third painting I’ve done after someone passes away. The first one I painted and blog about here and the second one I painted and blog about here.). But this one is by far my favorite.

I call it, As The Veil Lifts and it’s my expression of how the earthly world (represented by the foreground, the land and foliage) dims as the spiritual world emerges. Loved ones waiting.

All that’s left is to take one step in front of the other as we journey to the other side. I hope you love it and find it comforting, like I do.

(Sorry about the watermark, but I always see my art pop up on social media channels with no credit to me as the artist… now I’m forced to watermark the image but if you want to order Giclee archival prints of this piece, there will not be the watermark on those fine art prints!)

 

As The Veil Lifts

 

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If you love this image, if you find comfort in this image, if you know a loved one who would be uplifted by this image, you can order custom prints of it here.

I want to end this blog post with my favorite prayer, which I hope I captured the essence of in my painting.

Probably my favorite prayer/meditation of all time, I actually tore this prayer out from the book (With Open Hands, by Henri J Nouwen) and framed it, and have it in my bedroom to read every night before I sleep… it’s that powerful to me.

Dear God,I do not know where you are leading me.I do not even know what my next day,my next week,or my next year will look like.As I try to keep my hands open,I trust that you will put your hand in mineand bring me home.Thank you, God, for your love.Thank you,Amen.xoxox,Laura Koniver, MD

 

The post In Case The Holidays Aren’t So Happy… Ways To Move Through Your Grief Today appeared first on Intuition Physician.

You Can’t Lose Stress Weight By Dieting, Do These 10 Lifestyle Hacks Instead

 

 

Are you having fun yet?  As much as the holidays can be a meaningful time of connection, damn can it be stressful.  You might typically associate stress with a tension headache, or difficulty sleeping at night, or being in a bad mood.  But did you know stress also causes weight gain?  But if you don’t know that stress causes weight gain, you’ll probably wind up blaming your diet and then stress out about every bite of food you eat.

But that’s not necessary.  In fact, stressing out about what you are eating actually contributes to more weight gain.  That’s because unintentional weight gain is actually a very common response to chronic or acute stress.  And stress weight is different from other forms of weight gain — it typically centers in the abdominal area and is the most stubborn type of weight to release.

It’s worth talking about stress weight to help explain why stress weight doesn’t go away with dieting — that’s because dieting doesn’t release stress… in fact, often it increases stress.  Which makes any diet you go on to try to lose stress weight almost impossible to work.

That’s because no amount of bullying yourself in an attempt to lose weight will reduce your stress and re-align you with health. Stress weight gain is different from standard weight gain because it is stress-hormone driven. So focusing on rebalancing your adrenals — not dieting — is what works best.

Although the traditional approach to weight loss focuses on calories in vs. calories burned, we are starting to become more and more aware about how our environment actually impacts our weight.  There are many contributing factors, well beyond diet and exercise, that cause significant issues in our metabolism.

In fact, the environment has such an impact on our weight that there is an entire category of environmental chemicals that are now considered obesogens — chemicals directly responsible for contributing to obesity.  Obesogens increase fat has, modify our basal metabolic rate, alter our gut microbiota, promote chronic inflammation, interfere with glucose metabolism, and cause epigenetic changes that impact our health, including our weight.

The good news about this is that means there are other things you can do, well beyond focusing on what food you eat and what exercises you do, that can make a measurable impact on your health and on your weight, and I’m here to help outline them for you today.  If you are sick of focusing on calorie restriction to lose weight, if you are sick of focusing on exercising to lose weight, this article is for you.

Here is a round up of 7 things you can do to make losing weight, or maintaining your healthiest metabolic set point, that have nothing to do with calories in vs. calories out.

10 Hacks To Lose Weight Without Dieting:

 

 

1. Focus on Adrenal Repair Instead of Weight Loss

 

Stress affects your body from head to toe, and can have a tremendous impact on your weight.  Studies show that sress can cause changes in eating patterns and they also suggest that cortisol reactivity is one of the reasons why.

So instead of monitoring your eating, maybe what we should be monitoring is your cortisol and stress levels.

Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands and by supporting your adrenal health, you can normalize your cortisol levels. Stop the focus on weight and instead focus on reducing your body’s stress hormone output. In fact, releasing your weight struggle and embracing your adrenal repair instead may be the best way to stop unhealthy food consumption that is due to stress, which is what is triggering this change in the first place.

As I wrote about in this article here, feeling stress and shame over your weight is actually harmful… and unnecessary, when what we could be doing instead of stressing is nurturing. Nurturing your body, nurturing your adrenals, and relieving stress to naturally reset your eating patterns.

If you have been focusing on trying to control your food intake, maybe it’s time to stop beating yourself up over something that is being triggered by high levels of stress and high cortisol. I’d like to suggest that weight issues might be actually adrenal issues.

To help you figure out if some of your unwanted weight changes is actually due to adrenal fatigue, I wrote a free book that you can download and read. It has tons of fun things inside like a quiz to help you figure out if you are in adrenal fatigue (and what stage you are in) as well as powerful ways to help you fix it.

If you have been through any kind of stressful situation or big life transition (even fun, positive ones like marriage, a new job, a new baby!) chances are your adrenals could use some TLC. If you start to take care of your adrenal rhythm now, in just a few short months from now you can be fully recovered from Adrenal Fatigue and feel better than you have felt in many many years!

Did you know that you can actually be in adrenal fatigue from birth? It’s true. But did you also know it’s fully reversible, no matter how long you’ve been living on fumes? That’s also true, and I will help you get there. Click the button below to order your free copy of my Adrenal Fatigue eBook… it will be instantly emailed directly to you, to keep forever, and please share it freely:

 

 

 

2. Allow a few pounds of extra weight.

 

There are survival advantages to being overweight as opposed to underweight… like surviving life threatening infections. Published June 2016 inCritical Care Medicine, the results of this study suggest that heavier weight allows the body to survive overwhelming bacterial infections, even at advanced age, something good to know as this pandemic continues. Researchers looked at the data of over 1,400 elderly people hospitalized with severe sepsis (requiring ICU care) and compared their body mass index (BMI) with clinical outcome 1 year after discharge. The results revealed a 25% improved mortality rate in severely obese, obese and overweight patients compared to normal weight patients.

Another medical study (published July 2017 in Cardiac Interventions) that found that obese and overweight patients actually have better survival rates and less complications after heart surgery (percutaneous cardiac interventions, or PCI) than normal weight and lean patients do. On top of that, the better outcomes persisted even 5 years later, with better outcomes for the overweight and obese patients than for normal or low weight patients.

Another medical study, published in JAMA Oncology on June 21, 2018, found that a higher BMI was associated with lowered breast cancer rates. The highest BMI group had over 4 times lower rates of breast cancer than the lowest BMI group. This inverse relationship between higher BMI resulting in significantly lowered breast cancer rates was particularly strong for hormone receptor positive breast cancers. Young women (ages 18 to 24) who were obese (BMI greater than or equal to 35) developed breast cancer 4.2 times less often than women who were underweight (BMI lower than 17.) This study was very large — almost one million patients — and was a rigorously analyzed. Considering breast cancer is the most common worldwide cancer diagnosis for women, particularly young women, this is very important news indeed.

And this is not limited to breast cancer. Published Oct 2016 in the Journal Of Clinical Oncology, researchers examined body mass (BMI) and metastatic renal (kidney) cancer survival rates. They found that obesity actually predicted improved survival in metastatic cancer… improving both the progression free survival rate and the over-all survival rate. The fact that obese patients have better outcomes in metastatic renal cancer is a real thing — this study had large patient numbers, was reproducible in different cohorts, and is statistically significant. The numbers are actually so significant that now physicians are encouraged to take the patient’s weight into account before sharing information on prognosis with their patients.

Of course, anything that shows there is a wide diversity to what is considered a “healthy weight” totally hidden by the media. That makes sense, as the weight loss industry is a 20 BILLION dollar industry IN THE UNITED STATES ALONE!!! So, of course the media wouldn’t want you to actually feel good about your current weight or feel there was any advantage in the slightest to having a higher BMI.  But in fact, as I blogged about here,only when a person’s BMI exceeds 35 is there an increase in mortality rates.

So… if losing those last 10 pounds isn’t actually going to help you live longer… what defines your “ideal weight”?  What defines your ideal weight is how you *feel* wearing the body you wear each day: your energy level, your flexibility, your capacity to get around, to get outside, and to enjoy the things you want to enjoy each day.

The real focus should ALWAYS BE on feeling as healthy and vibrant as possible.

This means focusing on muscle tone.

On heart strength.

On endurance.

On lung capacity.

On bone mass.

On energy levels.

On restorative sleep at night.

On happiness.

On quality time with loved ones.

On meaningful relationships.

On spiritual strength.

On resiliency.

And even if you are at 35 BMI or higher?  Focusing on energy levels, bone mass, restorative sleep, endurance and such will create a path of natural weight loss anyway.

 

 

3. Still want to diet?  Don’t.  Fast instead.

 

You’ve probably heard of fasting for weight loss, but most people are not aware of the decades of medical research that show just how profoundly intermittent fasting can boost health in ways that go way beyond weight management. From reducing diabetes risk to reducing dementia to reducing cancer rates, fasting has head-to-toe benefits… and doesn’t have to be difficult.

It can be intimidating to think about trying fasting, as images of going without food for days on end run through our minds and hunger pangs set in quickly. But fasting can be as simple as increasing the amount of time you are not eating at night by just 2 hours. Medical research shows that simply not eating after 8 PM can actually be measurably beneficial to your health.

Fasting has been shown to:

Decrease inflammation: Published in the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism in 2007, researchers found that fasting for 12 hours daily decreased all measured markers of inflammation by a statistically significant amount, including interleukin-6, C-reactive protein, and homocysteine levels.Decrease heart disease: A study published in the American Journal of Cardiology in 2009, showed that fasting just one day a month (one day a month!) was enough to significantly decrease risk of heart attack risk by reducing coronary artery disease. In addition to that, a study published in Nutritional Research in 2012 showed that fasting for 12 hours a day decreased blood pressure, and when fasting was increased to every other day for just four weeks, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides were reduced by more than 25%.Decrease asthma attacks: Published in Free Radical Biology & Medicine in 2007, reducing calorie intake every other day by just 20% allowed asthma suffers to lose 8% of their body weight in only two months, decrease their blood markers of stress and inflammation, and decrease asthma symptoms while improving quality of life.Protect your brain: Improved memory, improved mood, decreased Alzheimer rates, and decreased Parkinson’s rates… all from fasting? Yep. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience Research in 1999, the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience in 2000, the Neurobiology of Disease in 2007 (as well as many other studies) researchers have found that intermittent fasting can improve neuronal connections, increase the proliferation of neurons, and even protect against amyloid plaques.Decrease cancer recurrence rates: Prolonging the amount of time spent fasting — skipping evening snacks all together and fasting for 13+ hours each night — significantly reduced the risk of breast cancer, according to a study that spanned thousands of patients followed for over a decade. Published on March 31, 2016 in JAMA Oncology , researchers found that fasting at night for 13 hours or more was found to reduce the risk of cancer recurrence by one-third, as well as drop HbA1C levels and increase sleep length at night. Another study (published in Teteratgenesis, Carcinogenesis and Mutagenesis in 2002) found that alternate day fasting helped decrease tumor formation, while yet another study (published in Science Translational Medicine in 2012) found that a wide range of cancer cells exposed to fasting showed increased responsiveness and sensitivity to chemotherapy treatments as well as directly decreased tumor growth. So fasting for 13+ hours each night is an effective, drug free, holistic, all natural way to decrease cancer recurrence and help boost cancer treatment.Boost longevity: One study (published in the Journals of Gerontology in 1983) showed that fasting had a greater impact in improving longevity than even exercise did! And a more recent study, published in 2000 in the Mechanisms of Aging and Development, showed short term repeated fasting throughout life resulted in a lifespan that was 75% longer. In fact, a study published in Nature in 2009 stated that intermittent fasting is “the most effective and reproducible intervention to extend lifespan” that we know of… capable of significantly extending lifespan by reducing age-related disorders.Encourage long-term weight loss: Published in Nutrition Reviews in 2015, researchers looked at all forms of fasting… including alternate day fasting, whole day fasting, and even simply time restricted fasting (like a 13 hour nightly fast) and all of these techniques resulted in significantly reduced body fat, significantly reduced body weight, and reduced blood lipid levels of cholesterol and triglycerides.

If you want to try fasting I’ve got the two best ways to do it and I’ll walk you through it right here:

The Two Best Ways Fast: Why It’s Easier Than Dieting & How To Do it

 

 

4. Sleep more.

 

Shorter sleep duration as well as inconsistent sleep patterns are associated with obesity.  We have know this for over a decade now, and you can review studies like this one, published in 2011, and this one, published in 2014.   So I always ask patients who are having trouble loosing weight about their sleep.

One medical study (that I shared with you back in August of 2013) even showed that poor sleep for only a few nights caused study participants to gain weight 9 times faster than participants who slept well.  Nine times faster weight gain after just a few nights!  Many of us live and function daily in a state of catching only a few hours of sleep a night for weeks, months, even years at a time. This has a huge impact on your weight.  If you are feeling exhausted from not sleeping well, than your body is going to urge you to reach for food as a way to sustain your energy. This is your body’s way of ensuring your survival!

So if you are watching your weight or struggling to understand why your best efforts are not good enough to prevent you from gaining weight, examine your sleep.  Give yourself the next month to focus on getting high quality sleep instead of focusing on dieting for the next month.  An easy place to start?  Don’t leave any lights on when you sleep, not even the glow from the TV, which is enough light to interfere with deep restorative sleep.  Then hop over here for some fantastic additional tips on deepening your sleep at night, naturally:

Winter Sleep: 12 Ways To Hibernate Now For Deep Rest Before Spring

 

 

5. Ground your body while you eat.

 

Grounding has a profound impact on your digestion, boosting your vagal tone (which supports the function of your entire digestive tract, from your esophagus to your colon and everything in between!) while meanwhile directly impacting your ability to feel full and satiated, even enhancing absorption by decreasing inflammation, which also helps with recovery after a meal.

From every single angle, eating grounded helps: putting you more deeply in touch with your hunger and satiation, helping you digest and absorb your nutrients better, boosting your metabolism and keeping weight gain at bay, even decreasing discomfort after eating.

Even if you eat completely organic, fresh, dairy-free, gluten-free, best-diet-in-the-world you can easily still have irritable bowel issues, or indigestion, or bloating, or pain.

That’s because you can’t fully resolve bowel inflammation without being grounded.

Because of the scientific evidence that grounding supports our digestion, I ran a study of my own patients because I wondered if, by boosting our digestion and metabolism through touching the earth, we would see a change in weight over time. So I personally enrolled a dozen overweight patients into an informal private study on grounding and weight loss. I followed them for 10 weeks, measuring weight, energy, mood, sleep, and pain, with weekly weigh-ins and assessments.  Their instructions were to touch the earth outside directly for 15 minutes a day, and that was it. I told them not to change their diet at all. I wanted them to eat everything they had eaten before in the same quantities and in the same fashion. I told them not to start new activities or to change their exercise or activity level at all.

What happened? Most of the patients lost a clinically significant amount of weight: 60% of them losing between 4 and 15 pounds in the 10 week study period, doing nothing more then adding in daily grounding for just 15 minutes a day.

How to do it?  Start grounding for 15 minutes a day — ideally while eating one meal a day.

Hop over here to watch a video I created for you to explain why adding grounding to your daily routine is the quickest way to heal your digestion.  In this post I also share tons of ideas on how to eat grounded outside — just pick one each day and watch your weight self correct effortlessly:

Grounding While You Eat, A Game Changer For Your Digestion (+ Freebies)

If it’s unrealistic that you can head outside to eat one of your meals each day, you can easily eat grounded indoors by simply sitting on an organic grounding mat — keep it on your kitchen chair to sit on, stand on the mat if you are stand to eat, or keep it under foot at your sofa or computer desk if you eat while you multitask.  Find your organic grounding mat here.

 

6.  Allow Yourself To Fidget

 

This very interesting medical study was sent to me by an awesome reader (thank you Lansing!) which found that study participants who fidgeted while sitting attenuated the risk of death associated with long periods of time spent sedentary.    Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2016, researchers followed over 12,000 participants for over three years and found that moderate to high fidgeting levels completely removed the risk of death from prolonged sitting.

This is incredible because even exercise is not enough to reverse the mortality risk of prolonged sitting, and this is because exercising once or twice in the day does nothing to break up the long periods of sitting spent in between exercise sessions.  But fidgetting allows you to keep moving, even during the time spent seated, completely ameliorating the mortality risk usually associated with a sedentary lifestyle.

So can fidgeting also help not only prolong lifespan but actually help burn calories too?  Yep.  Fidgetting falls under the “non-exercise activity thermogenesis” type of calorie burn (NEAT) and can burn as much calories as someone who exercise strenuously two or three times a week — about 350 calories a day, or well over 2,000 calories a week, according to this study published in Science in 2005.  Foot tapping, seat shifting, finger drumming, etc… all count.

Researchers suggest that this benefit only works for those that naturally fidget, as they generally fidget up to 10 hours a day without effort.  Those that do not naturally fidget can not train themselves to do it consistently enough to make a difference, and must be conscious about breaking up sedentary time with a more intentional activity, like walking or going up and down a flight of steps.

 

 

 

 

7. Stop eating or drinking from plastic.

 

Phthalates are found in plastics, found in your water bottles, even found in the coating on pills we ingest (what???  These are medications we are taking to try to improve our health, and they are putting phthalates into our bodies — yuck) and they disrupt our hormones and contribute to weight gain.

12 different medical studies found that the concentrations of phthalates in our bodies was linked to weight gain and central abdominal obesity.   These chemicals are so strongly assocaited with weight gain that they are now called “obseogens”.  Other obesogens include BPA, PCBs, DDT, PAHs and more — a good review of these studies can be found in this medical article, published in Feb 2022.

What to do about it?

Skip plastics food containers as much as possible.  And definitely do not microwave your food in a plastic container or plastic wrap — transfer to a glass container first.  In addition, filter your own water instead of drinking plastic bottled water (here is the one I use myself and recommend most to patients.) 

 

 

8.  Quiet background noise.

 

Think about your day:

Do you hear traffic constantly (especially consider if you hear traffic where you sleep at night?)Do you work in an area where there is chronic talking (such as a hospital, a hotel, a store or a restaurant?)Do you work in an area where there are phones constantly ringing (such as at an office?)Do you work in an area that has music playing constantly?Do you sleep with music or a television on?If so, your risk for diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart attack, stroke, cognitive impairment, higher BMI and more is much greater than it has to be.  Multiple medical studies have found that background noise is associated with increased weight, studies like this one, this one and this one.   Sadly background noise is also associated with obesity in childhood, as studies like this one and this one found.What to do about it?Wear simple, effective ear protection that allows you to hear (and even improve your hearing) of intentional noises while filtering out irritating background noise.  These simple, soft, effective silicone ear inserts decrease irritating background noise while at the same time, helping to clarify important noises that you actually want to hear.Calmer sits barely visible in the ear and uses revolutionary, non-electric technology to reduce mid and high frequency distortion without having a detrimental effect on our hearing. You can hear more clearly what you need to hear clearly, while minimizing the constant barrage of environmental noise stressors which have a negative impact on our mental and physical well-being.

Learn more about how these ingenious, simple ear protective devices work right here.

 

 

 

9. Stop the negative self talk:

 

Medical studies suggest that fat shaming alone — not the weight itself — can directly increase a person’s risk for metabolic syndrome and subsequent health issues.  Letting go of the internalized stress associated with weight will decrease diabetes risk, heart disease risk and the rate of metabolic disease in general, as shown in this study published Jan 26, 2017 in Obesity.

In that study, researchers found that participants who internalized stress from weight-related stigma were over 40% more likely to have metabolic syndrome than participants who did not internalize stigma.  These results were independent of the actual degree of obesity and other confounding issues such as depression. Weight stigma was found to cause a direct physiological stress response in the body, elevating blood pressure and increasing the body’s inflammation.

The researchers conclude that weight stigma alone is a form of chronic stress that creates physical disease when internalized.

These results suggest it is not necessarily the weight, but rather the stress that our society places on larger sized individuals and their internalization of that stress, that increases the risk of metabolic syndrome and puts folks at higher cardiovascular risk than they would otherwise have.

This is totally unnecessary. If the stress of being overweight was reduced, so would the disease burden. So stop beating yourself up and instead choose one of the positive things you can do from the list below to care for your body better. This is about supporting your body, not tearing it down.

So it is crucial to absolutely eliminate any negative self talk you might be having with your food choices. Your body functions on the basis of resiliency. It resets again and again and again and again. Adapting, recalibrating, adjusting, and realigning to health over and over again.

The human body is incredibly resilient, and the basis of our existence is that your body is adaptable. Your health is forgiving and intuitive.

You can find supportive, awesome information regarding the fact that you can be healthy at any size, click right here to read and download the Association for Size Diversity and Health’s Fact Sheet.  This is a wonderful organization that is sure to help you expand your definition of what a healthy weight means!!!!

And seek professional support by a counselor experienced with body shame issues if you find yourself unable to stop the negative self talk.

 

 

10. Focus on your health instead of your weight:

 

Medical studies suggest that older people in excellent physical health — called the “well-derly” — actually have higher smoking rates and higher BMI’s than expected. Presented March 3, 2017 at the 10th Future of Genomic Medicine Conference, a study on people 80 years old and older (who are free of all common chronic diseases and are in excellent health) found that they smoked more than the general public and that many had higher BMIs as well!

Hallelujah — finally a medical study trying to figure out what people do *right* to preserve excellent health for a lifetime, instead of looking at what they are doing wrong.

When you turn it around to look at survival and why some folks are disease free well into their ninth decade of life and beyond, you get some very interesting and important answers. Part of an ongoing study called the Healthspan Project (which I will absolutely keep you updated on because I am all about positive, uplifting health guidance!) researchers looked at healthy elders and analyzed them for genetic markers of disease.

What they found is that the elderly who were supremely healthy had the exact same rates of genetic markers that would predict disease as the rest of the population. In other words, it’s not that the well-derly didn’t have BRCA mutations and other genetic markers of disease, but in fact, they have the same genetic mutations at the same rate as the general population and are just not actually manifesting disease expression.

This study showed that healthy elderly participants had the same rates of genetic risk factors for diabetes, cancers and stroke as the general population, yet remained disease free. And when looking at why, the results were just as surprising, because when compared with the general population, the smoking rates were actually higher for men (61% smokers as opposed to 54% in general population) and equivalent for women (42% vs 43%.). The well-derly did exercise more (67% exercised compared to 44% of the general population) but their BMI was not uniformly lower — there were many wellderly with a BMI of 30 kg/m2 or higher.

Studies like these are so important, because it’s not just longevity but actually healthspan — how long someone lives in optimal health — that give us the most important clues on how to support our innate health potential. This study tells us that even if we have higher BMI’s than we want, or have made unhealthy lifestyle choices in the past (like smoking) we can still find that our health is resilient for an entire lifetime.

 

 

Want More Support?  I’ve Got You

 

If you want even more support to safely, easily, and effectively lose weight in a way that supports your innate health, I’ve got you.

We can work together to directly support your weight loss goals in my upcoming online health class.  Save your spot right here.

I’ve based this course directly off of the medical literature and my 25 years of experience helping to support patients with their weight loss goals. You’d be surprised that your body naturally knows what weight is the perfect one for you, and it can sustain it at this perfect weight effortlessly once you naturally align your metabolism.

I’ll show you how in a very non-threatening, supportive, uplifting way.

It’s not about being rigid or militant or hard on yourself, in fact, it’s the exact opposite. The harder you are on yourself, the harder it is to align with your healthiest version of you.   There are several other things that are even more important than what you eat that dictate what you weight… and without knowing what those things are, you just can’t lose weight.

Understand the things that sabotage weight loss and the weight releases, naturally.

Class starts Jan 8th and I’m excited to get started with you. Hop over here to sign up and reserve your spot today:

 

 

To your resilient, natural health!xoxox, Laura Koniver MD

The post You Can’t Lose Stress Weight By Dieting, Do These 10 Lifestyle Hacks Instead appeared first on Intuition Physician.

The Sugar You Eat Ages Your Face: How To Reverse The “Sugar Sag” In Your Skin

 

 

Last week I blogged about healthy party foods that you can find at almost every holiday gathering — hop over here if you want to be armed with a list of my top 5 party foods that I reach for before heading into your holiday parties and New Years Eve celebrations.

The Healthiest Party Foods To Eat + Navigating Your Specific Food Cravings

And just to be clear — chocolate is one of my go-to foods on that party list.  And yes I know there is sugar in chocolate.  If you want to read more about the astounding health benefits of chocolate, plus a review of a very interesting study that suggests eating chocolate in the morning offers even more benefit including boosted metabolism, hop over here to read further on that:

How To Eat Chocolate So That It Boosts Your Metabolism

 

 

However, excess sugar and simple carbs are just not that great for you.  In chocolate or in any other foods.

We all know (and you definitely know if you have followed my blog over the years!) that sugar and gluten are both very inflammatory — to the point where some research suggests that dementia may be correlated with carb consumption, as I blog about here:

Cutting Out Bread To Improve Brain Function

So it’s fair to say not much surprises me when I read negative studies on the impact of simple carbs (like those found in sugar and white flour) as well as the negative health effects of artificial sweeteners… so substituting in artificial sweeteners in an effort to reduce sugar intake is not a good idea.  (More on what is a good idea below!)

For example, I blogged 8 years ago on why drinking diet soda might actually shut down a part of your brain… read more on that here:

Are You Kidding Me? What Diet Drinks Are Really Doing To You

But today’s medical literature review on a surprising negative health effect of sugar really did surprise me.

 

 

Did you know consuming excess sugar can actually have a cosmetic effect that can be seen in your face?

Consuming sugar can actually make you look older — creating wrinkles, sallow skin, discoloration of the skin, and loss of firmness and elasticity.  All known as “sugar sag.”

After going through the effort to sticking with natural and holistic beauty products, hydrating well, avoiding photoaging your face, taking high quality supplements, etc… you may be undoing a lot of what you do to maintain healthy skin just by eating sugar.  YUCK.

Many studies confirm just how much eating sugar ages our skin.  Studies like:

The Damage Mechanism of Skin Glycation (Nutrients, 2022)AGEs In Skin (Methods, 2022)Carbohydrate Induced Skin Aging (Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, 2020)An Anti-Wrinkle Diet (Skin Therapy Letters, 2020)AGEs, Diet and Health (Biomolecules, 2019)Glycation and Human Skin (Pathology Biology, 2010) Sugar and Aging Skin (Clinical Dermatology, 2010)

Basically, sugar create advanced glycation end products (AGEs) which accumulate in the body, including the skin, and are associated with many diseases of inflammation and aging, like diabetes, heart disease, cataracts and dementia.

 

 

In the skin, AGEs create an abnormal cross linking of collagen which makes it difficult to repair, leading to aging effects that accumulate over time… since this abnormally cross linked collagen isn’t capable of being renewed or repaired, it leads to a decrease in skin elasticity, wrinkles, and even the advanced accumulation of age spots and skin discoloration… all together, something you can notice in the skin as the dreaded “sugar sag”.

Gah, what to do about it?

Luckily there are lots of things you can do can dramatically boost your skin’s health!!!   Here is a great overview of tips to help your skin remain firm and youthful, all rooted in medical research.

10 Ways To Protect Against Sugar Sag:

 

1.  Sleep:

 

Recent studies have found a direct correlation between sleep and collagen integrity, suggesting that beauty sleep is real.  In this one (published Jan 202o in Nature Cell Biology) researchers found that poor sleep actually caused a decrease in the structural integrity of collagen with an increase in collagen misalignment.

So over a lifetime, decreased sleep quality may literally be visible in your skin as your collagen becomes more misaligned, weaker, less elastic, and contributes to accelerated aging.

Conversely, improving sleep over a lifetime helps boost skin healing and even boosts anti-aging benefits by improving collagen integrity and skin repair while you sleep.  This is directly the opposite of what sugar does to your collagen and so is a very important first step in decreasing “sugar sag.”

If you’d like to hear me talk more about why sleep actually does improve your skin’s appearance, and a bunch of things you can do to improve your sleep quality, you can hop over here to listen to my podcast on Beauty Sleep.  I also have recently written a blog post for you on getting deeper, more restorative sleep that you can read right here:

Winter Sleep: 12 Ways To Get A Deep Hibernation Before Spring

 

 

2.  Grounding:

 

There are literally head to toe benefits in every major organ system when you ground your body, and your skin is no exception.  Grounding boosts skin health thanks to increased circulation bringing more nutrients and oxygen to your skin, improved removal of free radicals and other skin damaging toxic by products, improved healing of wounds in your skin (three times faster wound repair!) and even deepening your sleep which, as we discussed above, boosts collagen integrity too.

I recently published an article in Current Research In Alternative And Complementary Medicine here (just click this link o read the entire report) all about grounding’s skin boosting potential.

The earth’s DC energy significantly accelerated wound closureThe earth’s DC energy improved wound healing so much that it made normal skin heal three times fasterThe earth’s DC energy improved skin healing in diabetic skin so well that it healed at almost the same rate as totally healthy skin!

All together, grounding to the earth — a totally natural DC energy source — is a completely natural, exceptionally easy way to support skin health, helping to heal wounds and repair skin by boosting blood flow, improving oxygen and nutrients to the surface of the skin, even protecting the collagen of your skin by improving your sleep.  All it takes is going outside to touch the earth directly, or applying the earth’s DC energy to the skin through a grounding cord or ground stake.

Whenever folks ask my about my own skin care tips (I am turning 50 in a few months and get asked this quite a lot!) my two favorite tips I share are grounding daily and using my favorite niacinamide lotion, which I give a link to in #5 below!

Ground daily, even in the winter.  Make sure you have an indoor way to stay grounded this winter if the weather forces you to stay sheltered, so that you can apply this healing DC energy to your skin just like they did in the studies above.

H ere are the most eco-friendly, long lasting, artisan hand crafted, USA made, indoor grounding tools in the world:  

The Grounding Boutique

 

3.  Avoid self-tanner:

 

Here is something new I learned — self tanners actually create ACEs in the skin — that is how they turn skin brown and create the appearance of a tan.

Self tanners are a glycation product, it’s actually a sugar that binds to skin proteins in the stratum corneum (the top layer of our skin) and through glycation turns the skin brown.  In fact, originally self tanners were created as a sugar substitute in the 1920s but were never used because they turned the mouth mucosa brown!

The good news is that this glycation reaction occurs on the dead top layer of the skin, so may affect skin elasticity and aging less than an internally consumed sugar might.  However, the bad news is we don’t really know what cumulative effect self tanners have and it is likely to contribute, even if in small amounts, to “sugar sag” and other cosmetic signs of skin aging over time.

So save the self tanner for special events instead of routine use — that’s what I try to do — and if you do use it, be sure to apply self tanner in the morning so you can wash it off in the evening… don’t leave self tanner on your skin overnight.

 

 

4.  Avoid Smoking and Vaping:

 

Both smoking and vaping create AGEs that accumulate in the body and promote aging.  This is just one way that smoking increases the rates of lung disease, cardiovascular disease and cataracts.

In terms of skin, these AGEs might be one of the reasons that smoking is associated with a yellowing of the skin, as well as advanced wrinkling and decreased skin elasticity.

In fact, this study (published in Althlerosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, 2022) found that vaping actually creates a higher concentration of glycation end products in the body than even smoking does.

 

[image error]5.  Take B Vitamins + Put B3 Lotion On Your Face:

 

Clear evidence that a simple vitamin can be cancer preventive: Vitamin B3 dramatically reduces skin cancer rates.  Presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2015 Annual Meeting in May 2014, Vitamin B3 has been shown to be a safe, effective way to reduce your risk of recurrent skin cancer.

Researchers looked at over 380 patients with a prior history of non-melanoma skin cancers, giving half nicotinamide supplements and half a placebo, and followed them for a year. They found the patients in the Vitamin B3 group had a quarter less skin cancers total (a 23% decrease) than control patients:

Basal cell occurrence decreased by 20%Squamous Cell Carcinoma decreased by 30%Actinic Keratosis decreased by 13%

Niacinamide (Vit B3, also known as Nicotinamide) enhances DNA repair in skin cells damaged by UV light, as well as boosts the immune system and prevents the suppression of immunity by ultraviolet radiation. (Nicotinamide has other benefits as well, including preliminary studies showing a boost in cognition… helping to restore cognition in Alzheimers!)

So… if you have a history of serious sun exposure? Or a history of previous skin cancers? Or you just want less unsightly actinic keretosis popping up in the future?

Vitamin B 3 offers 100% all natural holistic chemo-prevention!  Vitamin B is safe, inexpensive, proven.  Find my favorite Vitamin B3 supplements and topical B3 lotion in my Skin Repair Protocol.  

I have both topical (lotion) and capsule forms of Niacinamide lotion I mention in tip #2 above, waiting for you here… this lotion is the one I personally use on my face every single night and could not live without (Niafourmin):

Skin Repair Protocol

 

 

6.  Consume Flavonoids:

 

Plant flavonoids have powerful anti-inflammatory actions that partially help neutralize the effects of glycation end products.

Foods high in flavonoids to eat:

blueberriescherriesblackberriesprunesraspberriesstrawberriespotatoescranberriesapplesbeansavocadotomatoesoranges anddark leafy greens

are all high in anti-oxidants and should be part of your routine diet, especially if you are looking to protect your skin long term.

 

 

7.  Stop Sugar Cravings:

 

Consuming less sugar is hard, especially if you are used to eating sugary foods, as sugar is highly addictive.  It’s usually not as simple as just choosing other foods to eat, because those sugar cravings can be extremely powerful.  Resisting baked goods and sugar snacks and drinks is easier when you address sugar cravings in the first place.

There is one key supplement that is a game changer in helping to reduce sugar cravings: L-glutamine.

Not only does l-glutamine help decrease sugar cravings, carb cravings, and even alcohol cravings, it also helps repair the gut lining too… win-win!  If you are wanting to decrease your sugar consumption and switch from simple carbs like wheat and sugar over to more nutrient dense foods like healthy fats and proteins, taking an L-glutamine supplement can be a life saver.

I’ve included L-glutamine in my Blood Sugar Support Protocol — simply take it throughout the day for ongoing support to decrease sugar cravings, and for immediate support, open capsule and sprinkle L-glutamine directly under the tongue to decrease urgent cravings when they strike.

Blood Sugar Support Protocol

 

 

8. Take Berberine To Decrease Blood Sugar:

 

Obviously diet and exercise are important modifiers to keeping your blood glucose levels low, but did you know there are supplements you can take to decrease blood sugar levels, warding off metabolic disease, decreasing diabetes risk, and — for the purposes of this blog post today — even reducing the effects of sugar sag?

Keeping glucose levels low are one of the ways to prevent sugar from creating more AGEs in your skin, protecting it from abnormal collagen cross-linking and keeping your skin firmer and more elastic.  This recent study (European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences, 2023) found that simply by taking Berberine supplements twice a day, with no other changes to diet and exercise, had a statistically significant drop in fasting glucose levels (on average, a 12% decrease) as well as significantly lowered cholesterol, lower fasting insulin levels, decreased visceral adipose tissue (the stubborn fat that accumulates in the belly area) and lower fat mass over all.

What?!?!  Just from adding one supplement to their daily routine, berberine.

This is why berberine supplements are the top component of my Blood Sugar Support protocol, along with the l-glutamine supplement we discussed above that help you crave sugar less in the first place.  Less desire to eat sugary foods and lower blood sugar and insulin levels to the foods you do eat — that’s win win not just for your skin’s beauty but also for your overall health and longevity.

Find out more about my Blood Sugar Support Protocol here.

Blood Sugar Support Protocol

 

 

9.  Eat Less Fast Food:

 

A study published by the National Center for Health Statistics, found that on any given day, over 1/3 of all adults in america aged 40 – 59 years old (37%) are consuming fast food.  One out of three! That’s 85 million adults eating fast food on any given day.

And sadly, for younger Americans that number is even higher — almost half of Americans (45%) aged 20 – 45 years old are eating fast food on any given day. One out of every two of us, every single day.

Wowza.

This makes me feel sad for hard working Americans who are so beyond stressed that they have little choice but to drive through fast food between jobs in order to have something to eat.

This makes me feel angry at corporate America, who lures consumers in on taste and does not give a crap about their long term health, all so a few folks at the top can be so wealthy it’s almost unfathomable. Corporate America is tricking customers to trade in their health for convenience and taste. They know that close to half of our country is eating this “food” that has poor nutritional content and they are laughing all the way to the bank.

This makes me feel completely defeated as a health care provider, because I know that the only way this will change is for there to be a complete restructuring of government programs to provide actual nutritional support to its citizens. That will require legislative, structural & policy changes that prioritizes the health of it’s citizens (instead of health being a corporate venture) as well as dramatically raising wages so that everyone is able to have a decent quality of life… enough that it’s possible to slow down and prepare decent quality of food.

It also means that we need to figure out a way to make high quality food — like organic produce — much less expensive.

Damn. After reading that study, I sat down to make a list of foods that are so quick and easy to prepare that many don’t even require cooking and absolutely all of them provide more nutrition for your body than a fast food meal does.

Here is what I have come up with so far. I hope you will freely forward this to your friends, co-workers, and family, especially your grown children who are working so hard and need to have really easy options to can reach for — options that don’t take any more time to prepare than waiting in line at the drive up window.

Fast Food Alternatives:

yogurt with fruit — anyone can layer some yogurt, berries and granola to make a parfait ready to eat within minutesnuts and nut butters — spread a dollop on veggies like carrot sticks & on fruits like apples for a protein and fiber rich snack or light mealveggies or crackers with hummushard boiled egg — eat as is or slice and put on a piece of toast (this is my go-to dinner on long work days)avocado toast — as simple as toasting a piece of toast and mashing half an avocado on top (add a drizzle of lemon juice, salt and pepper if you like)smoothies — zero cooking, just have frozen fruits & veggies on hand and blendsoup — find some one pot recipes you like, throw ingredients together over the weekend and you can eat this meal all week longpizza — keep ingredients on hand to make yourself in 2 minutes flat: pre-made cauliflower crusts, some pizza sauce or just a sliced tomato, a sprinkling of cheese and any other veggie toppings you like, then bake.tacos — if you keep a can of beans, some taco toppings like lettuce and shredded cheese, and possibly even some ground beef or ground turkey on hand you can make a taco dinner that combines healthy protein and fresh veggies for your family in the same 10 minutes you could be waiting in a drive throughwraps — likewise, even without cooking or heating anything up, if you can keep some wraps, veggies, cheeses, and/or lunch meats that you like on hand, you are never more than 2 minutes away from a simple meal that is as easy as roll up and enjoybaked oatmeal — bake this once a week and grab a scoop for breakfast every morning, I like to mix apple sauce into mine to make it taste bettergrass fed burgers — it barely takes any more time to form a patty and cook it (or heat up a veggie alternative) than it does to wait in a drive through. Eat it with some cheese, or on a bun, or simply dip into a condiment of your choiceveggie frittata — this is the most ambitious of the entire list and it still literally only requires whisking a few eggs, folding in some veggies and/or cheese, and cooking it. You can make a frittata either stovetop or baked and similar to the baked oatmeal — make it once and eat it all week

 

 

10.  Join My Online Class For More Support:

 

If you want more support in making healthy food choices (like today’s blog post on decreasing sugar cravings) plus learn about 4 other things that are WAY more important than what you eat — things that can help accelerate getting you to a healthy weight even if you make no changes in your diet at all — then I highly suggest you  join my upcoming Weight Release & Reset online class,.

Hop over here for more information and to reserve your spot.

“I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Weight Reset emails and videos! I looked forward to each and every day.  Your class gave me so much hope!”  – C.C.

“This was AWESOME!!  I loved all the information — the medical studies to back it up and the daily reminders.  Plus – I love that you can do this at your own pace.  Thank you!”  – C.W.

“I got a lot out of the class.  I was surprised at how many different things can affect your weight and when you talked about them in the class… it was like a bell went off.  I would  definitely recommend the class to others.”  – S.G.

“There was so much to take in each day!  I looked forward to the emails and the videos so much.  I would recommend this course even if someone didn’t want to lose weight but just heal.”  – D.D.

I’ve based this entire course directly off of the medical literature and my 20+ years of experience helping to support patients to feel their best, holistically and with no stress!

Snag your spot here and let me support you:

 

Bonus Tip: Re-evaluate your boundaries:

 

Your skin is always speaking to you.

Skin can speak subtly through chronic messages that it whispers to you your entire life… or skin can scream loudly and angrily during acute transitions and times of crisis.

Because our skin replicates so quickly, it is a wonderful mirror for what is going on with the rest of our body and mind:

If we are anemic, it shows us quickly.If we are dehydrated, it shows us quickly.If we are malnourished, our skin will lack that robust glow that healthy skin gives.If we have been neglecting our selves in other ways, our skin will reveal us.If we are unhappy, our skin literally sags.If we have lost connection with joy, our skin tells it.If we feel ugly, our skin mirrors that.

And because it covers our entire body, every thought we think and every word we say and every intention we ever have passes through our skin on its way to communicate with the outside world.

So it doesn’t just protect us from the world… quite the opposite is true too: it translates our inner being to the surface. It shows the world what is going on inside of us.

It is constantly in contact with and intimate with our inner workings. Because of this, skin reflects how we feel about ourselves.  Skin forms our barrier, our identity. It forms what we perceive as *us* and delineates *us* from *the rest of the world*.

In short, skin represents our personal boundary.

And every winter… during the darkest, coldest months, we get an invitation to go inward re-evaluate our boundaries before we emerge this coming spring fresh and new.

Grab a journal or get into an open meditative mindframe and ask yourself:

Are you grinning and bearing something that you’d secretly like to say a firm no to?Are you letting someone in your energy space that constantly irritates or drains you?Do you need to set some healthy boundaries at work?Do you need to set clearer boundaries around your time? We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but if you are doing activities you don’t feel aligned with or tending to emotional needs of others constantly, you will find much of that time will disappear and you won’t even know where it all went.Do you have a friendship that needs some boundaries clarified and strengthened?Do you have a family member that you need to create firmer boundaries and consequences of boundary violations with?Do you need more personal space when you are home? Do you have a place where it’s clear to everyone sharing your home that they are not to disturb you?Do you need to set boundaries in your sexual relationships?

Double-check that you say no when you need to and have clear boundaries that allow you to do what you truly want to do and enjoy that without guilt.

If you find your skin is stressed out, ask yourself what boundaries need to be strengthened in your life and meanwhile give your skin a little TLC with the other 10 steps listed above and watch the energy shift and your skin improve dramatically.

To your beautiful, radiant, ever repairing skin…xoxox,Laura Koniver MD

 

 

The post The Sugar You Eat Ages Your Face: How To Reverse The “Sugar Sag” In Your Skin appeared first on Intuition Physician.

The Healthiest Party Foods To Eat + Navigating Your Specific Food Cravings

 

Last week was Thanksgiving.  That usually means food.  It also means folks are stressing about their weight.  More on that at the end of this blog post.  Whether holiday parties are stressing you out, picking out the perfect gift, figuring out how to afford travel (damn it’s so expensive!) or balancing social commitments, even joyful holidays can be stressful ones.

Most people report that being surrounded by rich holiday foods, alcohol, impulse eating, and weight gain during the holiday season adds a significant amount of stress as well.

So as holiday season gets underway I wanted to give you a few tips on how to navigate this tricky but wonderful time of comfort food, decadent desserts, and celebratory toasts.

If you want to stick with foods that are healthy for your body… or, at the very least, you don’t want to undo all of the benefit you’ve gotten from the grounding, the fresh air, the decent sleep and good supplements you take, here are the party foods to look for.

You are almost guaranteed to find at least one of these five treats at any holiday party.

My 5 Favorite Party Foods:

 

 

1) Chocolate!

 

Shown to support heart and brain health, women who consume chocolate on a regular basis actually have a lower body mass index then those who don’t!  Want more info on this?  Hop over here to read this free article I wrote for you:

Chocolate To Boost Metabolism

 

 

2) Caffeinated coffee or tea

 

Warding off dementia, Alzheimers and depression, even decreasing your risk for developing diabetes… a warm cup of coffee or tea is the perfect way to indulge at a party, guilt free, especially if you can skip the sugar and whipped cream.  Want to read more about the health benefits of coffee?  Here you go:

Higher Coffee Intake Linked To Lower Mortality Rates

 

 

3) Berries

 

Super-powered antioxidants that decrease inflammation throughout your body, enjoy the berries found on that fresh fruit party platter!  Best dessert yet?  Snag that chocolate covered strawberry and enjoy every single luscious bite… combining #1 with #3 on this list!

 

4) Nuts

 

Medically proven to lower heart disease risk and boosting energy without causing any weight gain, find the nut bowl and dig in!

 

 

5) Deviled Eggs

 

I saved the best for last. My favorite party food of all time is deviled eggs. I truly believe in eating eggs regularly… the protein and healthy fats are second-to-none.  Although traditional recipes for deviled eggs double their calorie content, it’s still so much less calorie dense (at about 160 calories per deviled egg) than almost anything else that you can find at a holiday dinner. And the protein is sure to keep you much more full and decrease your desire to fill your stomach with empty carbs and inflammation-inducing sugar.

If you are truly concerned about keeping calorie counts low, you can always offer to be the one to bring deviled eggs to the party!  Using this recipe for a skinny deviled egg (which uses only some of the yolks and substitutes in greek yogurt instead of mayo) each deviled egg is only 37 calories and has 3.8 grams of satisfying, delicious protein!

 

 

But what if is the holiday drinks that are stressing you out?

 

It is possible to buffer your liver — at least a little — during your next holiday toast.

Drinking wine occasionally has enjoyed mixed health reviews, with some studies reporting cognitive benefits from wine (although for those you can simply take resveratrol supplements, which I highly recommend) but many more concerning studies reporting that alcohol increases cancer risk and decreases life span, well outweighing the benefits in my opinion.

And because holiday parties typically mean a lot of driving out and about to attend these parties, my first recommendation is just not to drink at all!

 

But if you are going to toast the holidays with a drink or two… and you have a safe ride with a designated driver lined up… there are supplements that may help that drink be less toxic to your dear old liver.

Plus, we can’t ignore that even if the recommendation is not to drink at all, there are 140 millions folks (in America alone!) that regularly drink and about 16 million of them have an alcohol abuse disorder.

So instead of ignoring a huge population of folks that need health support, I share this information in an effort to help their body stay as healthy as possible while they seek the help and support they need to stop drinking.

Not providing support for folks who drink is like not providing birth control for those who are sexually active. It’s irresponsible to insist the only option available is total abstinence.

So let’s start with the basics:

Alcohol is metabolized into acetaldehyde by your liver.

If acetaldehyde sounds familiar, you might be be thinking of it’s cousin, the more well known autopsy chemical: formaldehyde.

Yep, they are related, and just like formaldehyde is well known to pickle human tissue, acetaldehyde isn’t very gentle on your liver or body either.

Both are harsh chemicals known to cause cancer.

If you are drinking one drink an hour or more, you can expect to feel cumulative effects of acetaldehyde build up as your body can’t metabolize the acetaldehyde quickly enough: heart racing, pounding, nausea, dehydration, dizziness.

You might call that feeling buzzed or tipsy, but what that really is is the beginning of acetaldehyde poisoning.

 

 

How can we protect ourselves from this dangerous metabolite?

 

Our body can use n-acetyl-l-cysteine (NAC) + thiamine (B1) to protect against the acetaldehyde effects until our liver can further break the acetaldehyde down into carbon dioxide and water.  You can also add on Vitamin C to help keep the l-cysteine activated and working more efficiently as well.

A combination of l-cycsteine, thiamine and vit C (NAC + B1 + Vit C) taken before you start drinking, may help block the toxic effects of the acetaldehyde can help your body recover more easily from those holiday gatherings.  There was a very encouraging animal study that showed l-cysteine and thiamine was protective and prolonged the life of rodents who were fed toxic doses of acetaldehyde.  Only 10% of animals initially survived a large dose acetaldehyde challenge without supplementation, but 100% initially survived with L-cysteine + thiamine on board! A 100% survival rate in the face of toxic aldehyde poisoning is quite incredible.

Of course, no pharmaceutical company out there has poured money into researching how to reduce harm in humans from alcohol… so there are no large human medical studies to back this up. Because these supplements are safe, cheap, and readily available, pharmaceutical companies know they are unlikely to make a huge profit from pour large amounts of funding into examining how these vitamins might help us preserve and protect our health.

But on the upside, exactly because they are safe and inexpensive and readily available, this means you have easy access to these supportive healing supplements too. Woot! But be sure to stick with very high quality supplements made in fantastic, reputable pharmacy grade nutraceutical facilities.

To help, I have a Party Detox Protocol waiting for you right here in my trusty online dispensary (along with other protocols like Gut Healing Protocol and Immune Boosting Protocol) so that you can be sure you have pharmacy grade, super pure quality supplements on hand to support your body if you do decide to drink this holiday season.  Also, it happens to be Cyber Monday today and my entire online pharmacy is on sale — including these protocols — up to 25% off, automatically applied at check out.  Woot!

 

 

All in all, taking L-cysteine (NAC), thiamine (B1) and Vitamin C before drinking might help spare your body from some portion of the the ill effects of the toxic acetaldehyde.

These supplements are not a recommendation to make drinking safe… rather to make drinking less toxic.  Remember, no supplement can make drinking safe. And no supplement can make drinking and driving the slightest bit safe… or morally correct… or legal.

If you are going to drink… don’t drive. Ever.

 

 

What else can you do to help support healthy eating at holiday events?

 

Recognize your emotional eating style.

 

What I’ve noticed as a physician examining health outcomes for the past 20 years, is that most people eat emotionally instead of nutritionally.  To help you focus on what matters most (which is consuming nutrient dense foods) I have developed a list of the top 7 emotional eating patterns I see over and over again.

If you can develop insight into why you eat the way you do, you can reframe your mind away from eating emotionally and instead eat intellectually, based on what supports your health best.  Stop worrying so much about what treats and indulgences you crave and instead figure out why you crave them.

Look over this list to see if you can identify which emotional eating pattern describes you best and get some tips on working with your eating patterns in a healthier way:

The 7 Main Eating Styles:

 

 

 

FOOD IS SECURITY:

For some folks, food represents safety and security.  So when they are not eating, deep fears of safety and panic may arise.  There may be worries about food scarcity and needing to know when and what your next meal will be.

If you notice you overeat, it may be an attempt to feel secure and reassured that all is well. You may crave comfort foods such as casseroles and home cooking and baked goods, or foods that remind you of childhood.

The solution: focus on portion sizes &/or reach for high fiber foods.

If you tend to eat in this way, it is perfectly reasonable to feed your body foods that comfort it, but the goal is to have reasonable portion sizes.

Another way to provide comfort and a deep contentment to security-type eaters is to include lots and lots and lots of fiber, so that you feel full, satiated, safe and grounded for longer.

 

 

FOOD IS PLEASURE:

For some folks, food isn’t just about the nutrition, food is about the entire experience… the smell, the feel, the texture, the flavor, the delight in chewing it.  Food is pleasurable and even sensual.

If this is your style of eating, you may find you are eating because you want the feel of food in your mouth, not because you are hungry.  You may also find a love/hate relationship with food… often pleasure-seeking eaters have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) or lactose intolerance or celiac disease and need to find a balance between the foods they love and the foods their body hates.

The solution: focus on pleasurable drinks you enjoy &/or consider chewing gum.

One great idea for pleasure eaters is to enjoy drinking (coffees, teas, water, fresh squeezed juices…) or chewing gum throughout the day to experience that sensual pleasure of having sensations in the mouth without necessarily reaching for food.

 

 

FOOD IS POWER:

For some folks, eating food is an issue of control or power.  These control-based eaters are the ones most likely to try to strictly monitor what they eat and submit to horrible restrictive diets that they absolutely hate!

Healthy eating is not about what you restrict but rather what you eat.  So for people who see food as power, diets are particularly offensive because restricting food intake feels like a loss of power or a loss of control… two things these types of eaters hate!

The solution: pick easily digestible foods &/or develop a grazing habit (eating smaller quantities more often.)

One great idea for control-based eaters is to drop the diets and instead focus on choosing easily digestible foods like soups and pureed foods that are easier on your digestive organs (liver, pancreas, stomach) and eating frequent, smaller meals, grazing all throughout the day instead of a few large meals.

Focusing on high quality foods and eating them more often, instead of restricting quantity, tends to be kinder than dieting and allows your body to feel healthier.

 

 

FOOD IS LOVE:

Some folks enjoy food that releases endorphins and provides a rush, similar to falling in love.  Any of my blog readers who know how often I blog about eating chocolate will recognize… yep, I’m this type of eater.

Romantic foods like oysters, red wine, chocolate… it’s not so much that these eaters care about food, they care about the way the food makes them feel.  Dieting feels atrocious for love-seeking eaters and restricting food is equivalent to being dumped by a lover.

The solution: eat with others &/or make your place setting beautiful.

One great idea for love-seeking eaters is to focus on enjoying the people you are eating with more than the food — if possible, avoid eating alone (which typically leads to over-eating) and instead really focus on making eye contact with the people you are enjoying a meal with, the conversation.  This will allow you to enjoy what foods you do eat — for example, appreciating a lovely glass of wine and a small piece of dark chocolate instead of three plates full of food you do not actually love or even enjoy.

Or, focus just as much on creating a lovely place to eat as you do what foods you are eating. Add a fresh flower to your kitchen table, bring your lunch outside to eat in sunshine the middle of a work day, or browse thrift stores for beautiful, vintage glasses and plates to mix and match, or hand sew some beautiful cloth napkins to use as a treat.

 

 

FOOD IS JOY:

Some people just love to enjoy a wide variety of foods and this is one of their wonderful strengths with eating.  My son is a joy-based eater and he is amazing at trying foods most children wouldn’t even think of… exotic foods, spicy foods, unusual vegetables that kids traditionally hate.  He is open to trying it all and gets so excited as he watches me prepare an interesting meal from scratch.

Because joyful eaters are so open to food, dieting or any type of food restriction at all feels like a huge loss and may even bring deep sorrow.

The solution: increase food variety &/or make meals from scratch.

My favorite recommendation for joy-based eaters is to focus on trying new and unusual foods to satisfy their cravings, instead of over-eating a large quantity of boring foods.  Keep a stash of different spices, hot sauces and healthy seasonings to make each bite taste exciting and invigorating instead of needing larger portions to bring joy.

Joy eaters also tend to actually enjoy preparing food, so if you are a joy eater build time into your day to focus on trying new recipes, browsing new cookbooks, and preparing healthy meals from scratch.

Joy-based eaters can feel guilty that food brings them joy… but I say this is a strength!  Food brings joy!  So choose your food selection based on how much joy it brings you and do not waste your time (or calories) on food that does not bring joy.

 

 

FOOD IS ENERGY:

People that eat for energy may need lots more fats and more protein than other eaters.  These people have so much energy output that each bite needs to be calorie dense and their body knows this.

Although they get the message to feel bad about eating fats and eating dense protein (after all, eating a light salad seems so much more social acceptable) this leaves them feeling depleted and desperate for a pick-me-up later.  They may even feel a sense of shame about eating something that their vegetarian friend (who is not an energy-eater) would not touch.

The solution: focus on protein and fat rich foods.

Instead of feeling guilty, energy eaters need to know that they are honoring their bodies by feeding their brain lots of healthy fats (organic whole fat dairy/butter/yogurt or coconut, avocado, fish oil…) and protein (organic, ethically produced meats, organic eggs, organic nuts and nut butters.).

My daughter is an energy eater, and I can honestly say that she is one of the healthiest people I know. Glowing skin. Gorgeous hair. Beautiful radiant soul.  People who are energy eaters need to feel good about their intuitive food choices that make them crave protein.  Not everyone can feel their best on a strictly vegetarian diet, so please be non-judgmental towards yourself or your friends who need to eat ethically sourced meat routinely.

 

 

FOOD IS OPTIONAL:

Does this sounds familiar: forgetting to eat, not making the time to eat, feeling dizzy because you skipped lunch, reaching for a quick snack and then getting right back to work, forgetting to hydrate?  Some folks find it easy to ignore their bodies needs or lose track of time.

While sporadic eaters are usually not so bothered by going on a diet, the danger here is that they often don’t take the time to eat healthily so that when they do eat, they are ravenous and don’t make smart food choices, or they don’t even get the needed nutritional building blocks at all.

The solution: schedule meals & drink water often.

The best thing these eaters can do is to schedule in their eating so that they eat at regular intervals, stay hydrated, and make great food choices… instead of not eating all day long and then binging in a drive through on the way home.

Another great tip is to carry water with you at all times, so that even if they you not taking the time to properly eat, you stay well hydrated.  This goes for everyone, but to sporadic eaters most of all.

 

 

I hope these insights helps give you an idea of how to work with your own unique energy flow, cravings and health goals. Hopefully this article gave you some great tips on which party foods to gravitate to, how to detox after a holiday toast, and how to recognize the motivation behind your eating style.

And last but not least — if you want more support to safely, easily, and effectively lose weight in a way that supports your innate health, I’ve got you. We can work together to directly support your weight loss goals in my upcoming online health class.

Join into my:

Weight Release & Reset Online Class

 

 

“I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Weight Reset emails and videos! I looked forward to each and every day. Your class gave me so much hope!” – C.C.

“This was AWESOME!! I loved all the information — the medical studies to back it up and the daily reminders. Plus – I love that you can do this at your own pace. Thank you!” – C.W.

“I got a lot out of the class. I was surprised at how many different things can affect your weight and when you talked about them in the class… it was like a bell went off. I would definitely recommend the class to others.” – S.G.

 

Together, we will go over the 5 pillars of sustainable, feel-good weight loss. One pillar a day for 5 days. Simple and sweet.

I’ve based this course directly off of the medical literature and my 20 years of experience helping to support my patients with their weight loss goals.

You’d be surprised that your body naturally knows what weight is the perfect one for you, and it can sustain it at this perfect weight effortlessly once you naturally align your metabolism. I’ll show you how in a very non-threatening, supportive, uplifting way.

It’s not about being rigid or militant or hard on yourself, in fact, it’s the exact opposite. The harder you are on yourself, the harder it is to align with your healthiest version of you.

It’s not even about your diet and exercise plan — there are actually several other things that are even more important than what you eat and how you move… and without knowing what those things are, you just can’t lose weight.

Understand the things that sabotage weight loss and the weight releases, naturally.

Class runs Jan 8th. – Jan 12th… Hop over here to sign up and reserve your spot today:

 

 

To your resilient, natural health!xoxox, Laura

The post The Healthiest Party Foods To Eat + Navigating Your Specific Food Cravings appeared first on Intuition Physician.

The Healthiest Party Foods To Eat At Holiday Gatherings + Navigating Food Cravings

 

Well this week is Thanksgiving.  That usually means food.  It also means folks are stressing about their weight.  More on that at the end of this blog post.  Whether holiday parties are stressing you out, picking out the perfect gift, figuring out how to afford travel (damn it’s so expensive!) or balancing social commitments, even joyful holidays can be stressful ones.

Most people report that being surrounded by rich holiday foods, alcohol, impulse eating, and weight gain during the holiday season adds a significant amount of stress as well.

So as holiday season gets underway I wanted to give you a few tips on how to navigate this tricky but wonderful time of comfort food, decadent desserts, and celebratory toasts.

If you want to stick with foods that are healthy for your body… or, at the very least, you don’t want to undo all of the benefit you’ve gotten from the grounding, the fresh air, the decent sleep and good supplements you take, here are the party foods to look for.

You are almost guaranteed to find at least one of these five treats at any holiday party.

My 5 Favorite Party Foods:

 

 

1) Chocolate!

 

Shown to support heart and brain health, women who consume chocolate on a regular basis actually have a lower body mass index then those who don’t!  Want more info on this?  Hop over here to read this free article I wrote for you:

Chocolate To Boost Metabolism

 

 

2) Caffeinated coffee or tea

 

Warding off dementia, Alzheimers and depression, even decreasing your risk for developing diabetes… a warm cup of coffee or tea is the perfect way to indulge at a party, guilt free, especially if you can skip the sugar and whipped cream.  Want to read more about the health benefits of coffee?  Here you go:

Higher Coffee Intake Linked To Lower Mortality Rates

 

 

3) Berries

 

Super-powered antioxidants that decrease inflammation throughout your body, enjoy the berries found on that fresh fruit party platter!  Best dessert yet?  Snag that chocolate covered strawberry and enjoy every single luscious bite… combining #1 with #3 on this list!

 

4) Nuts

 

Medically proven to lower heart disease risk and boosting energy without causing any weight gain, find the nut bowl and dig in!

 

 

5) Deviled Eggs

 

I saved the best for last. My favorite party food of all time is deviled eggs. I truly believe in eating eggs regularly… the protein and healthy fats are second-to-none.  Although traditional recipes for deviled eggs double their calorie content, it’s still so much less calorie dense (at about 160 calories per deviled egg) than almost anything else that you can find at a holiday dinner. And the protein is sure to keep you much more full and decrease your desire to fill your stomach with empty carbs and inflammation-inducing sugar.

If you are truly concerned about keeping calorie counts low, you can always offer to be the one to bring deviled eggs to the party!  Using this recipe for a skinny deviled egg (which uses only some of the yolks and substitutes in greek yogurt instead of mayo) each deviled egg is only 37 calories and has 3.8 grams of satisfying, delicious protein!

 

 

But what if is the holiday drinks that are stressing you out?

 

It is possible to buffer your liver — at least a little — during your next holiday toast.

Drinking wine occasionally has enjoyed mixed health reviews, with some studies reporting cognitive benefits from wine (although for those you can simply take resveratrol supplements, which I highly recommend) but many more concerning studies reporting that alcohol increases cancer risk and decreases life span, well outweighing the benefits in my opinion.

And because holiday parties typically mean a lot of driving out and about to attend these parties, my first recommendation is just not to drink at all!

 

But if you are going to toast the holidays with a drink or two… and you have a safe ride with a designated driver lined up… there are supplements that may help that drink be less toxic to your dear old liver.

Plus, we can’t ignore that even if the recommendation is not to drink at all, there are 140 millions folks (in America alone!) that regularly drink and about 16 million of them have an alcohol abuse disorder.

So instead of ignoring a huge population of folks that need health support, I share this information in an effort to help their body stay as healthy as possible while they seek the help and support they need to stop drinking.

Not providing support for folks who drink is like not providing birth control for those who are sexually active. It’s irresponsible to insist the only option available is total abstinence.

So let’s start with the basics:

Alcohol is metabolized into acetaldehyde by your liver.

If acetaldehyde sounds familiar, you might be be thinking of it’s cousin, the more well known autopsy chemical: formaldehyde.

Yep, they are related, and just like formaldehyde is well known to pickle human tissue, acetaldehyde isn’t very gentle on your liver or body either.

Both are harsh chemicals known to cause cancer.

If you are drinking one drink an hour or more, you can expect to feel cumulative effects of acetaldehyde build up as your body can’t metabolize the acetaldehyde quickly enough: heart racing, pounding, nausea, dehydration, dizziness.

You might call that feeling buzzed or tipsy, but what that really is is the beginning of acetaldehyde poisoning.

 

 

How can we protect ourselves from this dangerous metabolite?

 

Our body can use n-acetyl-l-cysteine (NAC) + thiamine (B1) to protect against the acetaldehyde effects until our liver can further break the acetaldehyde down into carbon dioxide and water.  You can also add on Vitamin C to help keep the l-cysteine activated and working more efficiently as well.

A combination of l-cycsteine, thiamine and vit C (NAC + B1 + Vit C) taken before you start drinking, may help block the toxic effects of the acetaldehyde can help your body recover more easily from those holiday gatherings.  There was a very encouraging animal study that showed l-cysteine and thiamine was protective and prolonged the life of rodents who were fed toxic doses of acetaldehyde.  Only 10% of animals initially survived a large dose acetaldehyde challenge without supplementation, but 100% initially survived with L-cysteine + thiamine on board! A 100% survival rate in the face of toxic aldehyde poisoning is quite incredible.

Of course, no pharmaceutical company out there has poured money into researching how to reduce harm in humans from alcohol… so there are no large human medical studies to back this up. Because these supplements are safe, cheap, and readily available, pharmaceutical companies know they are unlikely to make a huge profit from pour large amounts of funding into examining how these vitamins might help us preserve and protect our health.

But on the upside, exactly because they are safe and inexpensive and readily available, this means you have easy access to these supportive healing supplements too. Woot! But be sure to stick with very high quality supplements made in fantastic, reputable pharmacy grade nutraceutical facilities.

To help, I have a Party Detox Protocol waiting for you right here in my trusty online dispensary (along with other protocols like Gut Healing Protocol and Immune Boosting Protocol) so that you can be sure you have pharmacy grade, super pure quality supplements on hand to support your body if you do decide to drink this holiday season.  Also, it happens to be Cyber Monday today and my entire online pharmacy is on sale — including these protocols — up to 25% off, automatically applied at check out.  Woot!

 

 

All in all, taking L-cysteine (NAC), thiamine (B1) and Vitamin C before drinking might help spare your body from some portion of the the ill effects of the toxic acetaldehyde.

These supplements are not a recommendation to make drinking safe… rather to make drinking less toxic.  Remember, no supplement can make drinking safe. And no supplement can make drinking and driving the slightest bit safe… or morally correct… or legal.

If you are going to drink… don’t drive. Ever.

 

 

What else can you do to help support healthy eating at holiday events?

 

Recognize your emotional eating style.

 

What I’ve noticed as a physician examining health outcomes for the past 20 years, is that most people eat emotionally instead of nutritionally.  To help you focus on what matters most (which is consuming nutrient dense foods) I have developed a list of the top 7 emotional eating patterns I see over and over again.

If you can develop insight into why you eat the way you do, you can reframe your mind away from eating emotionally and instead eat intellectually, based on what supports your health best.  Stop worrying so much about what treats and indulgences you crave and instead figure out why you crave them.

Look over this list to see if you can identify which emotional eating pattern describes you best and get some tips on working with your eating patterns in a healthier way:

The 7 Main Eating Styles:

 

 

 

FOOD IS SECURITY:

For some folks, food represents safety and security.  So when they are not eating, deep fears of safety and panic may arise.  There may be worries about food scarcity and needing to know when and what your next meal will be.

If you notice you overeat, it may be an attempt to feel secure and reassured that all is well. You may crave comfort foods such as casseroles and home cooking and baked goods, or foods that remind you of childhood.

The solution: focus on portion sizes &/or reach for high fiber foods.

If you tend to eat in this way, it is perfectly reasonable to feed your body foods that comfort it, but the goal is to have reasonable portion sizes.

Another way to provide comfort and a deep contentment to security-type eaters is to include lots and lots and lots of fiber, so that you feel full, satiated, safe and grounded for longer.

 

 

FOOD IS PLEASURE:

For some folks, food isn’t just about the nutrition, food is about the entire experience… the smell, the feel, the texture, the flavor, the delight in chewing it.  Food is pleasurable and even sensual.

If this is your style of eating, you may find you are eating because you want the feel of food in your mouth, not because you are hungry.  You may also find a love/hate relationship with food… often pleasure-seeking eaters have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) or lactose intolerance or celiac disease and need to find a balance between the foods they love and the foods their body hates.

The solution: focus on pleasurable drinks you enjoy &/or consider chewing gum.

One great idea for pleasure eaters is to enjoy drinking (coffees, teas, water, fresh squeezed juices…) or chewing gum throughout the day to experience that sensual pleasure of having sensations in the mouth without necessarily reaching for food.

 

 

FOOD IS POWER:

For some folks, eating food is an issue of control or power.  These control-based eaters are the ones most likely to try to strictly monitor what they eat and submit to horrible restrictive diets that they absolutely hate!

Healthy eating is not about what you restrict but rather what you eat.  So for people who see food as power, diets are particularly offensive because restricting food intake feels like a loss of power or a loss of control… two things these types of eaters hate!

The solution: pick easily digestible foods &/or develop a grazing habit (eating smaller quantities more often.)

One great idea for control-based eaters is to drop the diets and instead focus on choosing easily digestible foods like soups and pureed foods that are easier on your digestive organs (liver, pancreas, stomach) and eating frequent, smaller meals, grazing all throughout the day instead of a few large meals.

Focusing on high quality foods and eating them more often, instead of restricting quantity, tends to be kinder than dieting and allows your body to feel healthier.

 

 

FOOD IS LOVE:

Some folks enjoy food that releases endorphins and provides a rush, similar to falling in love.  Any of my blog readers who know how often I blog about eating chocolate will recognize… yep, I’m this type of eater.

Romantic foods like oysters, red wine, chocolate… it’s not so much that these eaters care about food, they care about the way the food makes them feel.  Dieting feels atrocious for love-seeking eaters and restricting food is equivalent to being dumped by a lover.

The solution: eat with others &/or make your place setting beautiful.

One great idea for love-seeking eaters is to focus on enjoying the people you are eating with more than the food — if possible, avoid eating alone (which typically leads to over-eating) and instead really focus on making eye contact with the people you are enjoying a meal with, the conversation.  This will allow you to enjoy what foods you do eat — for example, appreciating a lovely glass of wine and a small piece of dark chocolate instead of three plates full of food you do not actually love or even enjoy.

Or, focus just as much on creating a lovely place to eat as you do what foods you are eating. Add a fresh flower to your kitchen table, bring your lunch outside to eat in sunshine the middle of a work day, or browse thrift stores for beautiful, vintage glasses and plates to mix and match, or hand sew some beautiful cloth napkins to use as a treat.

 

 

FOOD IS JOY:

Some people just love to enjoy a wide variety of foods and this is one of their wonderful strengths with eating.  My son is a joy-based eater and he is amazing at trying foods most children wouldn’t even think of… exotic foods, spicy foods, unusual vegetables that kids traditionally hate.  He is open to trying it all and gets so excited as he watches me prepare an interesting meal from scratch.

Because joyful eaters are so open to food, dieting or any type of food restriction at all feels like a huge loss and may even bring deep sorrow.

The solution: increase food variety &/or make meals from scratch.

My favorite recommendation for joy-based eaters is to focus on trying new and unusual foods to satisfy their cravings, instead of over-eating a large quantity of boring foods.  Keep a stash of different spices, hot sauces and healthy seasonings to make each bite taste exciting and invigorating instead of needing larger portions to bring joy.

Joy eaters also tend to actually enjoy preparing food, so if you are a joy eater build time into your day to focus on trying new recipes, browsing new cookbooks, and preparing healthy meals from scratch.

Joy-based eaters can feel guilty that food brings them joy… but I say this is a strength!  Food brings joy!  So choose your food selection based on how much joy it brings you and do not waste your time (or calories) on food that does not bring joy.

 

 

FOOD IS ENERGY:

People that eat for energy may need lots more fats and more protein than other eaters.  These people have so much energy output that each bite needs to be calorie dense and their body knows this.

Although they get the message to feel bad about eating fats and eating dense protein (after all, eating a light salad seems so much more social acceptable) this leaves them feeling depleted and desperate for a pick-me-up later.  They may even feel a sense of shame about eating something that their vegetarian friend (who is not an energy-eater) would not touch.

The solution: focus on protein and fat rich foods.

Instead of feeling guilty, energy eaters need to know that they are honoring their bodies by feeding their brain lots of healthy fats (organic whole fat dairy/butter/yogurt or coconut, avocado, fish oil…) and protein (organic, ethically produced meats, organic eggs, organic nuts and nut butters.).

My daughter is an energy eater, and I can honestly say that she is one of the healthiest people I know. Glowing skin. Gorgeous hair. Beautiful radiant soul.  People who are energy eaters need to feel good about their intuitive food choices that make them crave protein.  Not everyone can feel their best on a strictly vegetarian diet, so please be non-judgmental towards yourself or your friends who need to eat ethically sourced meat routinely.

 

 

FOOD IS OPTIONAL:

Does this sounds familiar: forgetting to eat, not making the time to eat, feeling dizzy because you skipped lunch, reaching for a quick snack and then getting right back to work, forgetting to hydrate?  Some folks find it easy to ignore their bodies needs or lose track of time.

While sporadic eaters are usually not so bothered by going on a diet, the danger here is that they often don’t take the time to eat healthily so that when they do eat, they are ravenous and don’t make smart food choices, or they don’t even get the needed nutritional building blocks at all.

The solution: schedule meals & drink water often.

The best thing these eaters can do is to schedule in their eating so that they eat at regular intervals, stay hydrated, and make great food choices… instead of not eating all day long and then binging in a drive through on the way home.

Another great tip is to carry water with you at all times, so that even if they you not taking the time to properly eat, you stay well hydrated.  This goes for everyone, but to sporadic eaters most of all.

 

 

I hope these insights helps give you an idea of how to work with your own unique energy flow, cravings and health goals. Hopefully this article gave you some great tips on which party foods to gravitate to, how to detox after a holiday toast, and how to recognize the motivation behind your eating style.

And last but not least — if you want more support to safely, easily, and effectively lose weight in a way that supports your innate health, I’ve got you. We can work together to directly support your weight loss goals in my upcoming online health class.

Join into my:

Weight Release & Reset Online Class

 

 

“I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Weight Reset emails and videos! I looked forward to each and every day. Your class gave me so much hope!” – C.C.

“This was AWESOME!! I loved all the information — the medical studies to back it up and the daily reminders. Plus – I love that you can do this at your own pace. Thank you!” – C.W.

“I got a lot out of the class. I was surprised at how many different things can affect your weight and when you talked about them in the class… it was like a bell went off. I would definitely recommend the class to others.” – S.G.

 

Together, we will go over the 5 pillars of sustainable, feel-good weight loss. One pillar a day for 5 days. Simple and sweet.

I’ve based this course directly off of the medical literature and my 20 years of experience helping to support my patients with their weight loss goals.

You’d be surprised that your body naturally knows what weight is the perfect one for you, and it can sustain it at this perfect weight effortlessly once you naturally align your metabolism. I’ll show you how in a very non-threatening, supportive, uplifting way.

It’s not about being rigid or militant or hard on yourself, in fact, it’s the exact opposite. The harder you are on yourself, the harder it is to align with your healthiest version of you.

It’s not even about your diet and exercise plan — there are actually several other things that are even more important than what you eat and how you move… and without knowing what those things are, you just can’t lose weight.

Understand the things that sabotage weight loss and the weight releases, naturally.

Class runs Jan 8th. – Jan 12th… Hop over here to sign up and reserve your spot today:

 

 

To your resilient, natural health!xoxox, Laura

The post The Healthiest Party Foods To Eat At Holiday Gatherings + Navigating Food Cravings appeared first on Intuition Physician.

Your Body Is Almost Entirely Made Out Of Stars, Here’s How To Celebrate It

 

one of my most recent paintings, Made Of Stardust

 

As a physician, every single cell in our body is literally like a miracle to me. 

How it functions, replicates, repairs, lives, dies, replaces.  The fact that our skin is self healing, our bones fuse back together, we breathe and our heart beats while we use our body to do other things all day long without even thinking about it, how we create life, how little humans grow within us and are born.

The fact that all of it, almost every bit of it, comes from cosmic dust and stars — it’s all just so damn magical.  We are wearing solid, tangible bodies — I love the term “earth suits” — and we run a life spark through that body that brings the elements of stardust to life.

Researchers estimate that we are approximately 97% stardust, formed over 13 billion years ago.  Scientists used infrared spectrography to survey almost 200,000 stars and found that 97% of the same elements that make up human life make up the entire Milky Way galaxy.  

So now I have taken to calling our incredibly human bodies star suits instead of earth suits.

 

A custom painting I painted almost 10 years ago, find more of my artwork here.

 

“We are now able to map the abundance of all of the major elements found in the human body across hundreds of thousands of stars in our Milky Way,” said Jennifer Johnson, chair of the SDSS-III APOGEE survey and a professor at The Ohio State University, in a public statement on the research.  

Can you think of anything more beautiful?

Could you be any more magnificent?

Remembering that you are the universe, coalescing into physical form, in a beautiful living earth suit of stars, and that you are breathing through it this very moment, and thinking a thought at this very moment, and your heart is beating in this very moment, aren’t you so impressed with your body? 

You are having a conscious experience full of meaning and feeling and using it to interact with other star dust humans. It’s so beautiful.

Winter solstice is drawing quickly near, which means it’s these weeks have the shortest days of the year and the longest nights.  This is a beautiful time to step outside and see that starlight that makes up the galaxy, and makes up you and me.  

Here are 7 fun things you can do to celebrate the night sky while at the same time, boosting the health of your beautiful human star suit.

 

7 Fun Winter Solstice Ideas:

 

 

1.  Winter Solstice Soup Potluck

 

For winter solstice I always like to make a big pot of soup for dinner, cooking it all day long so that the broth is nice and rich.  To make it even easier, I highly recommend getting your friends together for a winter solstice soup potluck and ask everyone to bring a soup to share. 

It’s so fun to have lots of different bowls of soups and chilis and stews to try… as the host all you need to do is provide lots of lovely wonderful bread and some fresh organic butter to enjoy with the soup.  And like I blogged about last week, connecting with others is a fabulous way to boost your health too.

 

 

2.  Choose A Word of the Year

 

This is an activity I have been doing with loved ones since I was in college 30 years ago.  Each year, as the old year draws to a close and the new year is just around the corner, I’ve picked a word-of-the-year… one that captures the intention I would like to welcome into my life.  It’s fun to discuss potential words with your friends and loved ones, and it’s really fun to hear what word each person settles on and why they selected it.   

Stuck?  For fun you can try a word generator like this one.  And this blog post by Joni Kinney walks you through choosing a word and gives lots of great suggestions.

 

 

3.  Fire Gazing

 

Fire gazing is a wonderful, contemplative practice that is so lovely to do in the winter when the warm glow of a flame feels all the more nurturing and comforting.  You can gaze at a fire in your fireplace or in a fire pit outside, but perhaps most simple of all is using a candle.

Light your favorite candle and find a comfortable spot to be seated.  Breathe in and out gazing softly at the candle for at least ten full in and out breaths. If you find meditation or breath work challenging, you may find the practice of fire gazing easier and find you enjoy it more.  I know I do.

Prefer a different form of centering meditation?  Hop over to my blog post here on simple techniques using your breath for a few moments of healing stillness, similar to fire gazing:

4 Easy Ways To Use Your Breath To Feel Instantly Better — Do Them With Me Right Now

 

 

 

4.  Head To A Sauna

 

As the weather is gets unbearably cold, you can use a sauna to reap very similar benefits to exercising, but without the cold air burning your lungs! 

Click here to read my blog post on the absolutely stunning amount of health benefits from sauna — almost every organ system benefits and there are even studies showing routine sauna lengthens lifespan:

Sauna & Grounding: A Win-Win Combo To Boost Your Health All Winter Long

Sauna raises the core body temperature and increases circulation very similar to exercise.  So if you can’t exercise (or, ahem, like me, don’t particularly love to in the winter) then one good alternative is sauna.  

 

 

5. Stretch

 

It’s more important to stretch in the winter time than any other time, because muscles grow cold and cold muscles are more likely to be injured, strained or torn. 

Picture a bear waking up from hibernation, stretching arms out wide and rolling their torso all around to get moving again.  If you can stretch like this all winter long you will keep your body limber and in ready condition for spring to arrive! 

Here are a few stretches to get you started. 

Neck Stretches: Slowly lower your chin toward your upper chest and hold the position for one long slow deep breath in and out. Raise your chin up and look up at the ceiling for another long slow deep breath in and out. Turn your head to the left and right, slowly looking over your shoulder as far it is comfortable, each time for a full deep breath. Repeat this sequence three times to thoroughly loosen up your neck.  Finish with a few slow head rolls in each direction.  Spinal Twist: I find that sitting in a chair makes a spinal twist much easier.  Simply sit on the edge of the seat with nice straight tall posture, and slowly reach back to one side, placing the hand on the side that is twisting back on the backrest or (if there is no backrest) on the back edge of the seat. Take a few deep breaths, allowing your hand to grab the chair and pull your spine further around with each breath, deepening the stretch.  You can also place your opposite hand on the opposing knee and pull gently to help deepen the twist further. Then slowly release and twist to the other side, holding for several breaths in the same way. Finish by standing up a few feet away from a desktop, tabletop or countertop.  Place hands on the countertop, with arms straight out. Keeping your back straight, lean over until your back is parallel to floor, so you are folding at the hips (legs straight) and forming an L.   Relax into this stretch, letting your upper back and head fold so much that it drops below the countertop level where your hands are resting.  Feel a full back stretch as you deepen into this stretch for several long breaths, then slowly release back to standing.  Arm circles: Arm circles warm up the arm and shoulder muscles, encouraging circulation and involving the shoulders, triceps, biceps and upper back.  Simply hold arms directly out to the side and circle them a few times frontwards, then backwards.  Finish by clasping hands behind your back, arms straight, and lifting gently to feel a nice stretch across the front of your shoulders.  Gently release.  Ahhhhhh!  Feel how much more at home in your body you feel after a few moments stretching.  It’s so worth it.

Want some more ideas to get you moving, even indoors, even in the winter?  Read my blog post on this here:

Easy Ways To Bring More Movement Into Your Daily Routine. Even In Winter, Even At Home.

 

 

6.  Prioritize Sleep This Week

 

If you can give yourself at least one solid week this winter to prioritize sleep, you will do so much to repair your body and boost your wellness that it’s hard to overestimate the impact sleep has on the human body. 

These days of bright artificial lights and TV channels that blast shows 24 hours a day can keep us feeling like there isn’t much difference between the middle of the night and the middle of the day. But there is. To your body, to your pineal gland, your hormones, your brain… the difference between night and day is iron clad. 

You are meant to sleep at night, and you are meant to sleep longer in the winter months.  Allow your body to get an extra hour of sleep each night during the winter… at least in honor of Winter Solstice, vow to sleep an extra hour each night this week and see if your mood, energy level, eating habits, activity level and joy all get a boost!

For more tips on getting that restorative sleep more easily, hop over to this blog post here:

Winter Sleep: 12 Ways To Hibernate Now For A Deep Reset Before Spring

 

 

7.  Do A Quick Energetic Release Ceremony

 

2024 is unwritten… it is aligning and formulating and adjusting and gathering energy for you as we speak.

Here is one little 5 minute ceremony that can help you free yourself up from the energy of the old in order to warm up to the awaiting future.  All it is is this: write down what you are grateful for from 2023: what you are ready to release, what you wish to bid farewell to, what you are freeing your future up from, then simply light a corner of your paper on fire with a candle and watch as the paper transforms to smoke, watching it dissipate and disappear.

Just write down whatever comes to mind, or draw a picture (when my kids were very little, they would just draw a cute little picture and have fun lighting those with the candle. No words needed). After the majority of paper has caught fire, just drop the remaining piece into a bowl of water to safely extinguish. 

This is such a sweet, safe, fun way for children to experiment with fire — with the love and support of their family all around them as they safely reflect on the past and express their wishes for the future.  Just have a bowl of water waiting and have FUN!

 

 

Here is to honoring our magnificent star suits this winter and wear them brightly into a beautiful awaiting 2024.  

Xoxox,Laura Koniver MD

The post Your Body Is Almost Entirely Made Out Of Stars, Here’s How To Celebrate It appeared first on Intuition Physician.

The Healing Power Of Connecting With Others & How To Get More Of That Connection

 

 

If you are gathering with folks you love over the upcoming holidays, you are actually boosting your health!  And if you are alone or not able to connect with others in the upcoming days, there are lots of ways to still boost your health through the power of connection — practical tips on that in a minute.

But first, let’s review exactly what the health benefits are of connecting with others — something to keep in mind if you feel yourself growing irritated or annoyed or triggered by your loved ones over the holidays.  Even if they are getting on your nerves, connecting with loved one truly does boost your health. It may very well be worth overlooking the little things in order to savor a deep connection with someone who wants to be in your life.

You can already intuitively feel that connecting with others boosts your health.

Think of how much better do you feel after a warm hug from a friend, the comforting squeeze of a partner’s hand, or the joy of laughing around a dinner table with your children. Sharing space with a loved one for even one minute is enough to completely turn a bad day into a good one.

But it’s not just something you intuitively know, it’s something that has been medically studied and shown to actually protect you health. Medical studies have even shown that increasing your connection to others not only improves your health, it actually increases your longevity.

Connecting to others is so important that it even helps provide anesthesia to pain… that’s how much physical closeness helps.  A medical study (published in 2018 in the Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences) showed that simply holding hands provided significant analgesia during pain.

Physical touch calms brain activity during distress, which helps explain why it reduces the brain’s perception of pain, a study (published in 2006 in Psychological Science) found. In this study, brain activity was measured via a functional MRI while partners held hands with their spouse — hand holding significantly reduced level of brain activity during painful stimuli.

Another study, published in 2019 in Pain Management Nursing, found that simply massaging a patient’s hand reduced pain and provided longer pain free intervals in critically ill patients in a surgical intensive care unit.

Physical touch even has the power to calm your heart rate and respiratory rate, as well as lower blood pressure. A study published in 2017 in Scientific Reports found when evaluating patients who had a pain event while being monitored via an ECG… patients holding their partners hands had significant analgesia which resulted in lowered blood pressure, lowered heart rate response, and a lowered respiratory rate.

 

 

 

Even without physically touching others, just having friendships with others helps you live longer.

There was an interesting medical review, published in 2010 in PLOS Medicine, that looked at over 300,000 participants in over 145 medical studies pertaining to social relationships and mortality.  This review indicated that no matter your age, sex, health status, disease status, or cause of death, having social ties (like friends, family, neighbors and colleagues) increased your survival rate by 50%.

This protective health boost is dramatic, meaningful and significant.  The study also found that having low social interactions is actually a risk factor for death similar to other well known health risk factors. Having less social interactions was equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, equivalent to being an alcoholic, more harmful than not exercising, and twice as harmful as obesity.

It makes sense that if having social ties protects your mortality, having low social relationships drops it.  And that’s exactly what researchers found in a medical study published in 2015 in Perspectives on Psychological Science.  They found that isolation, loneliness and living alone each increases likelihood of mortality rates by 29%, 26% and 32%, respectively.

This may seem upsetting if you feel alone, but it actually doesn’t matter if you have friends reaching out to you as much as if you reach out to others.  You are in control of the positive health benefits of connecting to others, because it is initiating contact with others that is so healing.

So the good news is this — even if you feel lonely, by reaching out to support others, you actually boost your own health, regardless of if you are getting the same support in return.  It turns out that it is the giving of social support, not the receiving of social support, that really benefits your health, at least as far as your brain is concerned.

 

 

 

Researchers postulate that one reason being connected to others is protective to our health is that giving support actually helps mitigate the body’s stress response.

In a study published in 2019 in Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers used functional MRI imaging to examine what happens to the brain when one receives social support, and when one gives social support.  It turns out that key areas of the brain are restructured to protect you against stress — but only when you are giving social support, not receiving it.

Receiving support was not related to these beneficial, protective brain changes, but giving it was associated with significantly reduced activation of the brain in areas of stress response.  In other words, giving support to others might actually buffer your experience of stress, reducing the impact that trauma and stress have on your health by supporting areas of the brain that would typically activate during stressful situations.

So since it is your reaching out to connect (as opposed to waiting for others to reach out to you) that is so beneficial, today I wanted to share with you a few different ways you can boost your connections to others, and in turn boost your own health.

Here we go:

 

8 Ways To Boost Your Health By Boosting Connection:

 

 

 

 

1. Connect with yourself:

 

Ok so this first one isn’t about connecting to others, it’s about feeling more in touch with yourself. That’s because the best connection you can ever foster — first and foremost — is your connection to yourself.  Evaluating your own desires, fears, truths, boundaries, triumphs, needs daily allows you to walk through your days feeling centered and intentional, which is the basis for deep containment and alignment with your personal values and morals. It also helps you spark ideas about what new emerging interests you may have, that will help you find new friendships, classes and groups to join (more on that later in this article.)

To constantly be evaluating and re-evaluating who you are in each present moment takes courage.  It means you might change course.  It means your relationships might need to evolve.  It means you might outgrow old things.  It means you might find out new things about yourself and your desires for your future. It’s worth it.

Certainly you have changed from just a year ago. Certainly you have changed from just a month ago. Certainly you have changed from just a day ago. Certainly you have changed from just an hour ago. To find out who you are right now, and what might serve you best moving forward, you can cultivate some intentional practices that will help connect you to you, by:

making gratitude listswriting in a daily journalwriting your memoirs or autobiographywriting letters to your younger selfwriting letters to your future selfmeditatingreleasing clutter and old items in your living space that no longer bring you joyreleasing clothing items that do not make you feel beautiful in the current momentstarting a creativity journal (my favorite is It’s Never Too Late To Begin Again, by Julia
Cameron)

 

 

 

2. Connect through texting:

 

While medical studies show that social media can dramatically decrease mental health, direct texting is different, allowing you to stay in touch with people who are meaningful to you in real life, in real time.

Make a list of one, two, three, or twenty people you love and miss, and make a point to start each day off with a text to each, touching base with them.  Their responses throughout your day will help you feel connected. Repeat daily.

 

 

 

 

3. Connect through writing letters:

 

Yep, snail mail is still a thing. Write a letter to someone you love and send it in the mail.  You can even include a folded up self addressed envelop and a request that they write you back!

For a special gift to my son, when he graduated high school a few years ago, I asked family and friends to each write him a letter, then collected them all and put them into a special binder.  He told me that opening it and reading the letters, page after page, was the best gift I had ever given him.

Hate to write? Of course calling over the phone is a classic way to reach out to someone, or you can FaceTime or use any other video or streaming app to stay connected to everyone you want to.

 

 

 

4. Connect by organizing a get together:

 

Because we know, from the studies mentioned above, that initiating social interactions is actually more beneficial than receiving them, this is the perfect excuse to invite others to come together. It doesn’t have to be fancy, you don’t need to clean your home or cook a stressful meal in order to gather a few friends together.

Host a book club, a potluck dinner, a group picnic at a local park, a beautiful night under the stars around a fire pit at a campsite, an after dinner walk with a group of neighbors, a cocktail party after dinnertime, a costume party on the weekend, a prayer circle that meets in a coffee shop, an art night or a craft night in your backyard, a sewing or knitting circle in your garage, a karaoke or music night gathered on your front porch, there is no limit to the ways you can bring people together.

 

 

 

5. Connect through playing games:

 

Something as simple as playing a game together can boost your connections to others easily.  Card games, board games, golf, frisbee, tennis, video games, gaming apps, hide and seek, tic tac toe, water balloon toss, nerf gun battles… basically any game you think to play can bring people together in endless fun ways.

If you have in person loved ones, you can play cards or a board game together, but even if you live alone, you can connect to others through online platforms. From playing games together through app like Words With Friends or Chess) or even buying multiple copies of the same puzzle and shipping to a few of your friends or family members for a grand Puzzle Race — see who can finish it first! — there are plenty of fun ways to stay playful, even if virtually, connected with those that you love.

For more fun ideas on how to introduce more play into your life, and to take an easy quiz that will tell you your own favorite “play style”, hop over to this article I wrote for you here:

How To Discover Your Play Style, And Use It To Improve Your Health

 

 

 

6.  Connect through healing touch:

 

When you were a kid, did you ever walk around in your socks, rubbing them on a carpet repeatedly so you could sneak up to your sibling and shock them? (Or was that just me, LOL? My poor older brother.)

If you’ve ever shocked someone when touching them, you know this on a large scale — you could literally feel the large quantity of electrons passing between the two of you that caused the shock.

On a smaller scale, this is happening with every interaction, all day long.

Because no two bodies are 100% completely balanced and neutral in respect to each other, electrons are always flowing one way or another when you touch someone else, or they touch you.

Although the amount of electrons transferring is such a small amount relative to the amount of electrons in a human body, I believe this is in part why healing touch is so powerful.  When you “donate” some of your electrons to someone who is in worse physical condition than you (such as someone in pain, with an inflammatory process going on) you are supporting them in many ways.

I think this is part of what massage therapists, physical therapists, acupuncturists and other healers are doing when they touch you. Even your pet can donate electrons to you when it snuggles up with you while you are sick or have a chronic condition bringing you down.

For more on the healing power of grounded touch (and ways to use it to help your loved one too!) read this article I wrote for you:

What To Know Before Bringing Grounded Touch To Your Loved Ones

 

 

 

7. Connect to your pet:

 

Don’t forget to stay connected to your beloved pet!  As I talked about in this article, pets actually prolong your life!

The Health Benefits Of Having A Pet

Snuggles, love, company — your life is absolutely enhanced by your fur baby and that special connection you share.

Spend extra time each day getting into a routine of connecting with them at least morning and night. From walking your dog to playing with your cat to letting your guinea pig or bird out of his or her cage for a little play time, enjoy spending time with someone who absolutely loves you unconditionally.

 

 

 

8. Connect through a class or group:

 

From online classes you can join into from the comfort of your own home, to in-person gatherings, one easy way to meet new people and make new social connections is to join a group or sign up for a class.

From a meditation or breath work class, to an exercise class, to a cooking class, to learning a new language at your local community college, to taking classes to learn a new musical instrument, to taking voice lessons, and so much more… there are lots of classes just waiting for you to sign up for.

Or, instead of signing up for a class, you might consider just joining an established group. There are lots of ways to find a new group to join in person, for example, Meetup ( meetup.com ) Meetup can search your local community by city or zip code to find you anything from a local improv group, a toastmasters group, a yoga or tai chi meet up, a group to go running or biking with, a coffee lovers meet up, a local foodies group, a hiking club, a book club, a wine club, a gardeners club, a beekeepers club… you name it, if you have even a passing interest in an activity, there’s a club for that!

 

 

 

Stay open to others.

Yes, even if the person next to you at your thanksgiving table is getting on your last nerve because they chew with their mouth open, or uncomfortable political debates arise, or you just feel yourself regressing around your family and falling back into roles you have long since outgrown… stay open.

These people love you.  The people in your life can help boost your health just by being in your life, period.

Just say a gratitude toast, clink glasses, and soak it in while you can.  Here are a few to pull out of your back pocket when you feel holiday tensions creeping in around the table:

After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations. — Oscar Wilde

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” – William Arthur Ward

“I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy.” – Anne Frank

Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you for being a part of my world as well…

With much love and gratitude!Xoxo, Laura Koniver MD

 

The post The Healing Power Of Connecting With Others & How To Get More Of That Connection appeared first on Intuition Physician.