Laura Koniver, MD's Blog, page 9

April 1, 2024

How To Easily Add Grounding To Any Health Service You Offer Your Community

For those who offer services in the healthcare and wellness industry, adding grounding to your normal services offers an entirely new dimension of support to your clients, customers and patients — and it’s a positive outcome they can immediately feel!

If you have ever felt the relief of grounding first hand, then you already know how instantly supportive it can be and how resilient it helps your body feel. Literally helping to center you no matter what is going on in your life, no matter how stressed out you feel, even in the midst of a panic attack, the earth is waiting out there to center and support you.

And you can add that instant health boost from grounding on top of any other healing modality you already enjoy (or professionally offer!) including massage, chiropractic, physical therapy, reiki, counselling, coaching, cognitive behavioral therapy, even cosmetic procedures such as facials and other skin services.

Immediately upon being grounded, your customer will be better prepared to receive the healing benefits of any of the services they are used to getting from you — and will walk away feeling boosted results. There is a huge difference between therapeutic massage and grounded therapeutic massage, for example. A huge difference between an exfoliating facial and a grounded exfoliating facial. A huge difference between physical therapy and grounded physical therapy… and on and on.

Within seconds of being grounded, muscle tension decreases and their body becomes more receptive to any healing therapy you are preforming.

Within seconds of being grounded, their brain waves automatically switch into a calmer, more receptive state, helping them with shifting their mind-frame and thought patterns more easily.

Within seconds of being grounded, their body enjoys an immediate vagal tone boost — breaking them free from fight-or-flight mode and dropping into rest and digest healing.

In this grounded state, any work you do becomes deeper:

if it is mental or psychological work like counseling, talk therapy, CBT, life coaching, etc… their grounded brain is in the healing zone of alpha brain wave patterns, allowing them to embrace new cognitive patterns more easilyif it is bodywork like massage therapy, physical therapy, chiropractic work, reflexology, etc… their grounded muscles are immediately less resistant to deep physical release, as well as less sore afterwardsif it is energetic work like reiki, qigong, hypnotherapy or other healing modalities, their grounded central nervous system is more open to flowing and optimizing energy statesif it is cosmetic work like facials, lash and brow services, pedicures, nail services or other cosmetological procedures, their skin and nail beds have improved blood flow, improved oxygenation and nutrient exchange, so their skin has a boosted internal glow and even heals more quickly.

Getting the body and mind into a receptive healing state is one of the hallmarks of grounding.

In this video, I walk you through why offering to add grounding to your therapeutic services is the easiest thing you can do to powerfully expand your healing offerings to your customers — it’s a difference they will see, feel, and experience for themselves!

Addi ng Grounding To Your Health Services

To help you ground your clients and customers quickly and easily, I’ve created a Grounding ProPack for your professional use… these are sterile, medical grade body grounding pads — the same grounding pad used in hospitals to reliably ground patients during surgical procedures.

The Grounding ProPack is a great, hygienic, cost effective way to offer to up level your services (and make a boosted income from) adding on grounding to any treatment you are already doing.

This can also encourage a customer or client to continue the grounding journey at home (so if you are an affiliate who offers my eco-ethical grounding tools to your clients this is a great way for them to try out grounding to see how it works!)

These grounding body pads can be individually applied during your healing session and then disposed of for each client, maintaining strict hygienic standards. Kits are available with both a standard ground cord or the PureGround EMF Filtering Ground Cord (find out more about the PureGround cord here).

You can then easily re-order bulk quantities of grounding pads alone, without cords, as a refill set.

A fabulous, low cost way to add the benefits of grounding to your services — not only will this help you stand out from local competitors who do not offer grounding, but it will truly improve your client’s and customer’s health:

Find Grounding ProPacks Right Here

Meanwhile, here is a quick reference guide on some of the health benefits that might specifically work in tandem with your unique healing services that you offer your customers, with direct links to medical studies, medical literature reviews, or articles I’ve written for you on these topics:

Feel free to share these healing resources with other health and wellness practitioners that you know! If someone forwarded you this article, you can sign up to receive my uplifting weekly newsletter into your inbox right here:

Enjoy offering this unique healing boost and doubling the variety of services you offer, instantly!

xoxox,Laura Koniver MD

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Published on April 01, 2024 02:31

March 25, 2024

Hate Going Barefoot? 27 Fresh, Alternative Ways To Get You Outside Grounding This Spring

We just passed the spring equinox here in the northern hemisphere, which means our days are now longer than our nights… woot!

Spring weather usually means folks are more likely to get outside, get active, go on walks, resume hiking and biking and jogging, plant springtime gardens, catch up on yard work, take food outside to eat on picnics… you name it. Getting outside in that fresh air is so very good for you.

And you know what is even better for you than that?

If you can be grounded while doing all of your favorite springtime activities. And you can be, even without going barefoot.

Grounding has to be the absolutely easiest way to add therapeutic healing to your daily routine: no cost, no stress, no effort, and completely painless… enjoyable, actually! As this medical study, published in May 2020 finds — grounding is “a simple, profound lifestyle addition, requiring no effort” yet offers amazing health benefits.

And not only can you literally go outside and get grounded freely any time, but you can also use that time to multitask, adding a an additional healing element to whatever therapeutic daily practices you already have in place to support your health.

Activities like physical therapy, yoga, meditation, exercise, eating, reading, and even just spending time with loved ones, all can be exponentially boosted by doing them outside, grounded.

And even activities that you do daily that are not directly for your health but still must be done, like returning phone calls, working on your lap top, weeding through emails, filling out your weekly planner, scheduling work tasks, even your next zoom meeting can be done outside grounded so that even non-healing activities can actually become healing, therapeutic ones.

So today I wanted to review some ideas of indoor activities that you you are probably already doing that you can take outside — that way you are not adding one single thing to your to-do list, but you are adding immense health benefits from getting grounded!

Pick just one or two of these activities every single day over this week to move outside and I am absolutely certain you will notice the health benefits before this coming weekend.

And rest assured, you can wear shoes, sandals and flip flops this spring and summer and still be powerfully grounded to the earth outside. I’ve thoroughly tested all of these ideas all for you — confirming with my grounding test meter that even the footware I share with you in this article truly works to ground you.

Let’s get started!

Indoor Activities You Should Take Outside Today(No Bare Feet Required):

1. Do Your Physical Therapy Routine Outside:

If your physical therapist has a set of stretches for you to do daily at home, do them outside. Moving your muscles and bones and ligaments and joints while grounded to the earth outside will increase restorative blood flow, bring a boosted oxygen levels to your tissues, and reduce soreness after exertion.

You don’t have to be barefoot — if any stretches require you to place hands or back or knees on the ground, you’ll be grounded through any bare skin — or you can simply hold onto a tree with your hands if your stretch requires standing and you’ll be grounded from head to toe right through your hands.

You can read more about why grounding is so supportive of your muscles and joints in this blog post I wrote for you:

Feel Immediate Relief With Grounding: Relax Your Muscles, Strengthen Your Bones

2. Try This 3 Breath Meditation Outside

This meditation is so simple, and it’s perfect to do while you are grounding because it relaxes you into the healing state of connecting to the earth. Especially during times when you feel uncentered, anxious, stressed or in a health struggle with your body… drop the resistance and find your grounded center in just a few breaths. I know in it I am barefoot, but if you kept shoes on and just allowed your calf or knee to touch the earth in any way (or placed a fingertip on the ground beside you) you would be every bit as grounded as if you were barefoot.

Follow along with me here to reset your body, mind and spirit through this grounded meditation. It’s super simple, it’s just placing a hand on your heart, a hand on your abdomen, dropping your awareness down into your body by closing your eyes, and repeating: “I am at home in my body.”

Three breaths is enough to make a difference in your heart rate, muscle tension, blood pressure, mood and more.

If you want to do this meditation inside, grounded on the organic grounding mat I show you in the video, you can find that here: Organic Grounding Mat

3. Walk A Labyrinth Grounded:

In the video I walk this barefoot, but you can also do this with a grounded shoe sticker or grounded footwear on as well!

In this video I take you into my favorite labyrinth and walk you through how powerful it is to ground during this special type of walking meditation.

I’ll also give you different ways to use a labyrinth as well as different ways to create your own — they can be incredibly simple and can be made anywhere just using a piece of chalk! Literally drawing a spiral with a piece of chalk on a sidewalk square, or simply walking up and down a line on your driveway, or using tape to create a line or spiral in your garage, all of these ideas can create a grounded walking meditation path that will literally transform your day.

Any cement, sidewalk, concrete surface outside is grounded, so anywhere you can kick your shoes off and walk a line or a spiral on a sidewalk or concrete will get you grounded without ever getting your feet dirty! For example. Walk up and down a sidewalk slowly. Walk back and forth across your driveway slowly. Draw a chalk spiral on your cement basement garage or basement floor to walk on. Or get fancy and use tape to create a labyrinth in your garage or basement on the concrete floor that you can use forevermore! This video shows how you can create a labyrinth out of masking tape, in just minutes.Of course, any dirt path outside would make a fabulous grounded meditation path, just slowly walk it up and back.And if you are lucky enough to have your own yard, you can even spray paint a little spiral on your grass to use it for several days in a row. If you love it you may be inspired to create your very own labyrinth path by laying stones or brick to create a personal labyrinth in your yard or garden. I know this is on my bucket list to do one day!

If you can take ten minutes to do this walking meditation daily — grounded — I believe with my whole heart it can change your perspective on your entire life, fill you with a sense of hope and fresh positivity, and help you feel physically better too.

Watch me walk the labyrinth grounded here.

4. Start Your Spring Garden:

Many folks who embrace grounding are passionate gardeners, and understandably so… because being grounded while working a garden bed outside boosts your health instantly and you can literally feel it. Gardening is the easiest way I know to ground through your hands and keep your shoes or goulashes safely on your feet, protected and clean!

And even beyond the healing boost of being grounded, it’s actually healing just to be around plants of any kind, even while ungrounded… for example, just seeing a plant through a window or adding a potted plant to a workspace gives documented health benefits!

Read through this article I wrote for you, listing the top 9 perks of gardening and see if it doesn’t inspire even those of us who are non-gardeners to dive into this wonderful activity. From a windowsill garden to a flower bed to a large plot of farmland, gardening is more than a way to grow flowers and food… it’s a lifestyle that can help ensure longevity and health:

Gardening Health Benefits

5. Go Bird Watching:

More evidence that Mother Nature can boost your happiness like nothing else can… a new study suggests that bird diversity is as important to life satisfaction as an income is. This study found that not only is happiness correlated with local bird diversity, but a 10% boost in bird diversity actually increases happiness to a similar magnitude as a 10% boost in income does!

We’ve known for a while that animals improve our mood, health, and even boost longevity (I’ve blogged about how pets can do all of this and more for you right here) and that plants do much the same (see idea #15, above…) decreasing depression rates, anxiety rates, and dramatically reducing stress.

But even knowing all of that, I still think if you ask most people if they would rather see a couple extra birds today or earn a slightly higher paycheck, most would assume that money would provide more satisfaction.

But this actually isn’t true — click the link below to hop over to a free article I wrote for you telling you the details of this study and how to increase the amount of birds you see and hear:

Hearing Birds Sing Is As Important As Your Next Paycheck

6. Take Your Journaling Outside:

If your therapist wants you to do journal writing daily, do it outside. If you like to write in a diary, do it outside. If you like to set intentions, or are working on a manuscript, or filling out a dream journal — do all of your writing outside. In fact, anything creative or expressive can be taken up to new levels of releasing and healing when they are done grounded — that’s why plein air painting is so cool!

Drawing, sketching, photography, journaling, writing, even boring tasks like filling out your daily, weekly or monthly planner or grocery list can all be done outside, grounded.

Here is are some blog posts I wrote for you that goes into detail on why grounding allows your soul creativity to soar and any soul wounds to release:

The Hidden Benefits Of Grounding: Why It Helps More Than Just Your Body How Grounding Releases Trauma From Your Body To Protect Your Long Term Health

7. Sip Your Next Glass of Water Outside:

If your massage therapist or nutritionist or physician or personal trainer suggests hydrating more, take every single glass of water you drink outside to drink it grounded.

Grounding boosts circulation and will get that beautiful fresh clean water into your body and into your organ systems more quickly, allowing you to rehydrate your beautiful body immediately. As a bonus, hydrating while being grounded outside actually boosts your conductivity too, so it’s win-win!

Here is a video I made for you on how to use the conductive power of water to get grounded:

Grounding Through Water, Indoors and Outside (Laura Koniver, M.D. The Intuition Physician)

8. Exercise Outside:

If your 2024 goal is to get more movement and exercise into your life, you can bring almost every exercise outside and get double the benefits.

Not only is excerise great for protecting your lifespan, but doing your next yoga session, or HIIRT round, or next run, outside grounded will add all of the health benefits of grounding to your exercise routine. You can even swim outside grounded and feel amazingly rebooted from head to toe, inside and out, as most in ground pools (as well as the cement surrounding the pool) is grounded.

Here are some articles on why exercising grounded helps you get more bang for your buck:

Grounding & Reduced Muscle Soreness Medical Study Grounding Immediately Supports Your Heart & Boosts Circulation

9. Eat Your Next Meal Outside:

We all need to eat to put the nutrients our earth offers us into our body to boost our health… but if you can take your next meal outside and eat it grounded, you just added a therapeutic, anti-inflammatory benefit to time spent enjoying your food.

Grounding helps boost vagal tone and digestive function, decreases inflammation in the gut, increases digestion, peristalsis, absorption and even boosts the circulation of those nutrients all throughout your entire body, so eating grounded is the most natural way to bring nutrition into alignment with your body’s health. Any diet plan can be taken outside to eat in a natural way, grounded.

Here is a free article I wrote for you on the benefit of eating grounded outside:

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

10. Blow Bubbles Outside:

Even more crucial than eating, we all need to breathe the beautiful air that the earth provides. Many of us also find added benefit from intentional breathing practices like meditation. Taking intentional, deep breaths is a wonderful way to decrease stress and increase resiliency to the demands of your day.

Even if you don’t have the time to do the full mediation with me above (in tip #2) just take one or two deep breaths outside. Even if you don’t meditate, you can still reap the benefits of a few deep breaths taken while grounding outside.

Being grounded supports lung function and boosts oxygenation, so combining grounding with intentional breath work is another one of those win-win relationships that grounding brings to just about everything we do. (Bonus points if you blow bubbles as part of your breath work!)

For more on how breathing supports your health, hop over to read this article I wrote for you with several great ideas on developing an intentional breathing practice that you can do outside, grounded:

You Have The Healing Power Of Breath Inside You Right Now… Here’s 5 Ways To Use It

11. Meet Up With Your Friends Outside:

If your friend wants to spend time with you, take the initiative and suggest hanging out together outside. Having friends you can connect with is one of the best things you can do to boost happiness and protect your longevity, and connecting with them outside is the best combination of all.

Moving your time spent together outside allows you to get grounded while connecting on a deeper level with your loved ones, and really almost anything you can think of to do inside can be done outside.

From playing a card game, to having a cup of coffee, to sharing a potluck meal, to talking while watching clouds roll by or stars twinkle overhead, to going on a walk together, to sharing a picnic meal… anything you want to do with your friend is better grounded outside.

Medical studies like these show that your mood is boosted by time spent outdoors, so grounding outside while spending time with friends is sure to help that time be even more fun:

The Effect of Grounding the Human Body on Mood A New Study Explains Why Grounding Boosts Your Mood Boost Your Connection To Others And It Will Boost Your Health, Here’s How Getting Outside Today… A New Idea I Tested Out For You (With A Friend) And We Loved It

12. Go On An Outdoor Date:

If your partner wants a date with you, make sure some component of that date is outside, grounded. Hold hands and both partners will be grounded, or even ground through a kiss! Being outside, especially in the daytime, can even boost libido as it helps balance and regulate hormones.

Here is a recent article I’ve written for you about the power of grounding to enhance your relationship:

Grounding Improves Your Relationship & Boosts Your Sex Life

13. Play Outside With Your Kids Today:

Carving out time to play with your child in activities that interest them is absolutely crucial to bonding with kids. Play time is important healing time, and you can dramatically boost the healing value of play by taking that activity outside to do it grounded.

From arts and crafts, to sports and activities, to simply having a snack and talking, or reading a bedtime book under the wonder of the nighttime sky. You’ll worry less about any messes you guys make, and you’ll be getting a health boost the entire time. And of course, this includes your fur babies as well, so spend time outdoors with your pets too!

Even something as simple as playing a game of tic-tac-toe with chalk on the sidewalk will ground you and your children through your hands while you are doing it!

Here are some articles I’ve written for you on the power of grounding to enhance your children’s health:

Electrical Grounding Improves Vagal Tone in Preterm Infants The Healing Role Of Play, Right Now It’s More Important Than Ever To Stay Young, Stay Curious (& Dozens Of Other Ways To Protect Your Brain)

I also have written and published three children books for you so far… you can find these on my website here (or of course on Amazon and anywhere books are sold):

Together We Sleep (Co-sleeping Picture Book)Jake Finds Adventure (Healing Picture Book)From The Ground Up (Grounding Picture Book)

Lastly for more parenting support I have a totally free Parenting eBook for you right here. It has 17 chapters and 159 pages of ideas, concepts, games, suggestions, medical information, intuitive problem solving and uplifting parenting advice that help address health and life in a positive and re-affirming manner for children, including how I inspired my own children to reach for health, even during illness... filling them with the confidence that health is their natural state of being:

Enjoy the precious time you have while your kids are still little enough to want to play with you… soak it in!

14. Take Your Laptop Outside:

I challenge you to think of at least one activity you do for work that can actually be done outside.

First of all, anything you get done on your phone for work, from research, reading, posting on social media platforms, marketing, weeding through emails, returning phone calls, returning texts and even your next zoom meeting can all be done outside.

If any part of your work is done on a laptop, all of that can be moved outside as well. In addition, any reading or writing that you do, plus planning or scheduling that you do, can all be done outside.

I make it a point to attend any online medical conferences outside, so that I’m learning the latest medical advancements while allowing my body time to get grounded. If your boss has catch up work for you to do and you’ll be up late tonight on your laptop, take it outside and at least make this time your body gets to be grounded.

Here are some additional articles on the power of grounding to reduce work stress:

Grounding To Prevent Stress And Oxidative Damage While At Work Grounding At Work Decreases Fatigue Is Going Outside Part Of Your Daily Health Routine? 8 Reasons Why It’s Essential When You Are Doing Something Meaningful, Your Brain Works Better A Free Printable Tool To Give You Inner Clarity When Making Difficult Decisions Is Your Job Driving You Crazy? You Are Not Alone. Here’s Help.

15. Ground Through Your Hands: Grounding Hiking Stick

Keep your feet protected inside your hiking boots, sneakers, favorite orthotics, etc… and simply ground directly through your hands while using this gorgeous, solid wood, artisan hand crafted walking stick.

Touch copper button on top of handle or any part of the copper wrap at the top of the handle with even one fingertip and your body is instantly grounded from head to toe — every single part of you! Hand made by a Master Carpenter right here in the USA, using all natural materials, solid wood, even recycled copper — no two are the same and each are a work of art!

A great way to be able to wear protective walking or hiking shoes — even orthotics — and still be grounded, as well as those who are avid outdoor explores that like to carry a hiking stick. It’s also the best solution for those that want to be grounded on long car rides — pull over and walk or sit with the grounding stick every hour or two on your journey to release stress and boost circulation.

Simply use stick to touch the earth near you and get grounded from head to toe right through your hands.

Snag your grounded custom hand made walking stick right here to set yourself up for a summer full of easy grounding.

16. Ground Through A Grounding Cane

New item! Those who have mobility issues and can’t go barefoot are often those of us are the ones that need to be grounded most of all. If you like the support of a cane and want to be grounded at the same time, you can keep your comfy shoes or orthotics on, even stay seated in a wheelchair and simply by holding onto the cane, your body is instantly grounded from head to toe — every single part of you!

Hand made by an artisan in Ireland, this grounding cane is perfect for anyone who likes to use a cane to walk, to stand, and even for those in a wheelchair or scooter (which keeps them up off the earth, ungrounded.) Simply stay seated and use the grounding cane to touch the ground when you are stable on an earth’s surface outside — effortlessly putting your body into a healing state through your hands instead of your feet.

Cane is extremely lightweight and easy to carry.

Find yours right here.

17. Create Your Own Walking Stick: DIY Grounding Kit

To easily ground right through your hands as you are outside exploring Mother Earth, you can simply hold onto a conductive walking stick and it’s every bit as good as going barefoot — maybe even better as it definitely is a safer way to ground.

I have grounding hiking sticks and grounding canes (shown above) but f you prefer to make your own, or you already have a favorite cane or hiking stick you would like to convert into a grounding one, you can grab a DIY kit to transform any cane, stick — heck even a broom handle — into a conductive walking stick that will ground you from head to toe without you ever needing to touch the earth directly.

Keep your feet well protected in their hiking shoes and think hands instead!

Grab your DIY kit here.

18. Ground Any Shoe: Grounding Shoe Stickers

I can’t think of much more eco-friendly option than to simply continue to use shoes you already own.

And if you love them, and they support your foot function best, why not convert your favorite pair of sneakers, running shoes, hiking shoes, or even sports cleats into grounding shoes? A grounding sticker is the way to go.

Grounding shoe stickers even work on flip flops and sandals!!! Easy as putting on a sticker, because that is literally what it is, but made with a special adhesive to stay securely on your shoe (or flip flop) permanently.

The sticker is fully conductive and runs the grounding energy from the earth beneath you up and around your shoe and into the sole of your shoe where your feet are. By touching the sticker, you bypass the rubber sole entirely and are basically standing barefoot on the ground, conductively speaking.

I can’t even feel these stickers on my shoes.

Find them here.

19. Add Shoe Grounders To Shoes You Already Have:

I love the grounding shoe stickers featured above, but there are times when you don’t want a sticker applied to your shoe, or you want to be able to transfer your shoe grounder to other shoes, or you have a work boot or other style shoe that a grounding shoe sticker would not work with.

Here is your solution. Works with any shoe you already own.

Just slip on the shoe grounder over the sole of the shoe and slide the grounding ribbon into the footbed –now you are ready to conduct the grounding energy from the earth beneath you up and around your shoe, into the sole of your shoe where your feet are.

It’s as if you bypassed the rubber sole entirely and are standing barefoot on the ground.

Perfect for use during outdoor activities such as walking, hiking, running, jogging, tai chi, yoga, playing outdoor sports, strength training and more, as grounding enhances recovery after intensive exercise and decreases wear and tear on the body.

Find your reusable, adjustable shoe grounders here.

Me wearing my Groundz sandals

20. Wear grounding sandals: Groundz

I’m so impressed with Groundz and wanted to showcase their gorgeous sandal style shoes. These sandals are my warm weather staple — so soft and comfortable that these are my go to every day shoes.

Wearing open toed shoes whenever possible is extremely important for your foot alignment (and subesquently, for the health of your knees, hips and back over a lifetime!) so I typically reach for sandals or flip flops instead of a closed toe shoe whenever weather permits.

Groundz uses sustainably sourced and eco-friendly leather and goatskin throughout the sandals, chrome-free, water based and nontoxic vegetable dyes (very impressive) and a copper plug that is so comfortable I literally can not feel it. It’s so comfortable I had to check and double check that I was actually grounded in them — and yep, I am, every time!

They are also so beautiful I would want to wear them every single day even if they were not grounding me! And because I am a physician nerd, the cute little Copper Element tag on the top of my sandals make me smile every single time I slip them on.

Find your grounded sandals here.

21. Wear grounded slip on shoes: Raum

Ethically made, individually hand crafted leather shoes that are minimalist in design and come in closed toe slip on designs in tons of colors, for both men and women.

Raum shoes have a zero-drop sole made from a porous water buffalo leather. The sole is made extra conductive by absorbing the earth’s moisture and your perspiration. In addition, a copper metal grommet located behind the ball of your foot at the KD 1 pressure point provides maximum conductivity to ground your body.

I particularly appreciate that these shoes are hand sewn, because most shoes on the market are simply glued or cemented together, not hand stitched. So your feet mold into the leather over time to create an amazing level of comfort that brings you back into alignment with how your foot feels and functions best.

If you are looking for a slip on shoe that is minimalist in design (read: a non-cushioned footbed that allows feet to stay in their natural alignment) in a large selection of colors, then you want Raum shoes.

Find your grounded loafers here.

22. Wear grounding runners: Bahe

Bahe is one of the newest grounded sneaker system to hit the market, fully vegan shoes that use recycled and plant-based materials for high performance and low environmental impact. They prioritize plant-based solutions that deliver optimum performance — read: cushioned comfort for your foot while still grounding you.

The outsole is made from 65% natural rubber from the hevea brasiliensis tree to reduce micro-plastic shedding, combined with a EVA midsole infused with 5% sugarcane. The footbed is 72% corn-based foam. To further reduce plastic use, the laces are made from organic cotton. The upper and lining both feature 30% recycled polyester, providing light weight, breathable performance.

Find your grounding sneakers right here.

23. Wear grounding socks:

If you wear a grounding shoe sticker or any of the grounding shoes above, you’ll be grounded the moment you slip your bare foot into the shoe and stand outside on the earth.

But what if you like to wear socks?

Almost every sock manufactured on this planet will block the grounding flow from the grounded shoe because almost all socks have synthetic, non-conductive fibers or are too thick to allow grounding contact.

But it’s truly no problem to wear a sock with a grounding shoe or grounding shoe sticker, you just have to make sure it is a conductive sock. Luckily there are tons of beautiful socks made with conductive materials that will ground you instantly.

I’ve got three styles for you to consider:

an athletic crew sock: thick, plush, absorbent, ankle length a thinner dress sock: thinner, sleek, comfortable, crew length… great for work or dress!and a compressive knee high sock: stretchy, warm, with the added bonus that they carry grounding all the way up your calves! My personal favorite.

Each sock utilizes silver fibers throughout every inch of the sock, so the entire sock is conductive from top to bottom. By wearing a conductive sock with your grounding footwear, your entire sock will instantly encase your entire foot and ankle immediately in grounding energy, which will then powerfully ground your entire body from head to toe.

Silver fibers also provide shielding benefits by encasing your ankles and feet in a Faraday Cage — an exciting additional protective element if you tend to suffer with foot or ankle issues that won’t heal!

24. Improve your foot alignment with toe alignment socks:

My feet instantly relax with these socks on, and as a bonus not only will the improve the health and alignment of your feet but they will also allow you to ground at the same time, thanks to the fact that your toes are still bare and ready to connect with the earth outside or a grounding mat while grounding indoors.

I slip these on and stand on my front sidewalk when my feet have been cramped inside of shoes all day at work and feel instant relief. At the end of a long day, these are almost as good as a nice foot massage from a loved one.

Almost.

I always smile when I pack up an order that someone has placed for these toe alignment socks and some magnesium lotion to go along with them — it’s just the sweetest little duo and I always imagine how good the recipient is going to feel after working some magnesium lotion onto their feet and slipping into these socks.

25. Prep your body for better conductivity:

I’m asked all the time: Is there anything I can do to enhance grounding?

And the answer is YES! There are several things you can do to make your body even more conductive and ready to ground:

stay well hydratedcorrect any mineral deficienciesremove dead skin from your bodyand have well moisturized skin.

In the human body, conductivity requires two things: water and electrolytes. This creates an electrolytic solution that can pass the flow of an electric potential from cell to cell to cell, spreading instantly throughout your entire body.

If you are dehydrated or mineral depleted, you decrease your body’s conductivity.

So, to help you enhance your body’s natural conductivity and get you as connected as possible to the earth outside, I’ve pulled together 6 of my favorite products that will have your grounding sessions more powerfully healing than ever before. A dry brush, foot file, mineral lotion, toe alignment socks, physical sun protective travel powder, and all natural non-toxic cedar oil bug spray — and there you have it… everything you need to make grounding outdoors the most wonderfully powerful, connected, conductive, safe and healing experience possible.

Even if you have been grounding faithfully for a lifetime, this collection of items I have personally curated for you will give anyone’s grounding practice a wonderful boost.

Grab your summer kit before they sell out here.

26. Keep more ideas right at your fingertips:

For more awesome year round grounding tips, you’ll want to grab the ultimate guide to grounding outside, no matter where you live or what the temperature is.

I’ve filled this book with my very best ideas to get you inspired to head outside in the hottest and coldest seasons, no matter if you live in a city or have any green spaces around you or not… you can get grounded naturally to the earth and I’ll be right there with you, showing you how:

The Earth Prescription

I have signed copies waiting for you right here… or find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, New Harbinger, and anywhere books are sold!

27. Need more motivation?

Grab a pen and paper to test your foot health: A Quick Way To Know If You Are Going Barefoot Enough

Want to know if you are getting enough barefoot time?If your feet are properly aligned?If the alignment of your foot is giving you knee, hip and back pain?If the shoes you are wearing causing foot issues?And how can you reverse damage shoes have caused your feet?

With the two very simple tests that I demonstrate for you in the video above, you can test your own feet right now and you’ll know the answer to all of these questions!

This exercise is extremely eye opening, and you can do it in less than 2 minutes, so I highly encourage you to give it a try right now.

Watch the video right now to find out.

You get the picture!

Add your own ideas to this list — include all your hobbies too!

Play an instrument? Take it outside.Like to play chess? Do it outside.Have a pet? Play with them outside.Like embroidery? Take it outside.Doing something boring like meal planning for the week? Do it outside.Love to read? Do it outside.Perfecting a handstand? Do it outside.Love listening to music? Listen to it outside.

Run through your entire day from start to finish and decide what can be taken outside. Even if it is simply to start and end each day drinking a big glass of water outside — oh my goodness that’s PERFECT.

Almost anything you can think of to do — from fun and games, to connecting with friends and family, to eating and hydrating, to exercising and physical therapy, to yoga and meditation, to journaling and creating, to getting work done…

…you can do it all while in the healing state of grounding. Let’s do this!

xoxox,Laura Koniver, MD

PS — is it turning colder instead of warmer where you live?

Read my winter grounding guide, filled with winter shoes and other cold weather grounding tips, right here: Grounding Outside In The Cold

The post Hate Going Barefoot? 27 Fresh, Alternative Ways To Get You Outside Grounding This Spring appeared first on Intuition Physician.

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Published on March 25, 2024 02:22

March 18, 2024

Why Nothing Can Do What Grounding Can Do For Your Health

Clear air is awesome and nurturing.

Nutrient dense foods and raw juicing is powerful and cleansing.

Meditation is relaxing and centering.

Pure filtered water is hydrating and supportive.

Nutritional supplements can be balancing and healing.

But inevitably, with every holistic healing modality I worked with prior to grounding, there would be some patients who benefit greatly and some who get absolutely no results whatsoever.

Some people heal with a certain diet. Some heal with a particular physical therapy exercise. Some heal with a prescription medication, some with a life saving surgery, some with a chiropractic adjustment, some with acupuncture.

Nothing is universal.

There is no one diet that helps everyone. There is no one adjustment or one surgery or one supplement that will support everyone. There isn’t even one food that will support everyone.

Nothing is universal except for one thing: grounding.

I’ve been a physician for over 25 years now and I’ve seen quite a lot of patients over those years. And during all that time, I’ve only come across one healing modality that supports the entire body — head to toe, every organ system — in such a powerful way. Everything else provides indirect health benefits, but grounding directly to the earth means your body is directly healing.

The earth makes the atmosphere for those beautiful deep breaths of fresh air you can take each day.

The earth flows the water that can deeply hydrate your body each day.

The earth grows the food that you juice and the herbs that you take and the nutritional building blocks your body depends on daily.

Those are all powerful and wonderful indirect ways to support your well being. But the most powerful way of all to enhance your health is to touch the earth directly!

Because our bodies are electrical — our heart beat, our brain impulses, our breathing mechanism, our digestion — it ALL relies on electrical signals to work properly.

Food can not be digested, blood can not be circulated, air can not be breathed without first an electrical impulse conducted through the electrical circuitry of our bodies.

So it doesn’t matter what food we eat unless our GI tract is first innervated and activated properly! It doesn’t matter about air quality if we can’t first innervate and activate our breathing mechanism! Even that pure beautiful air or crystal clear water can not be taken into the body if first an electrical impulse does not conductively activate the body to breathe in or swallow down.

Our whole body is electrical and relies on good conductivity to work.

As a physician I have seen patients in the ICU hooked up to breathing tubes and feeding tubes and if the body is dying, it doesn’t matter if the air is the purist in the world and the water is the finest in the world and the food is the most alive, active, freshly pressed juice in the world… if the body is dying none of these parameters matter.

We have to electrically activate the body, which is what defibrillator paddles are trying to do in resuscitating the heart of the body that is dying, and what a ventilator is taking over for when it tries to breathe for a body that is not breathing on it’s own. Above all, we have to establish and maintain the healthy conductivity of our body.

Our body has to maintain a healthy electrical circuitry in order to remain conscious and have all of our body organs function effectively.

So to protect our body for a lifetime, we need to nurture the healthy conductivity of our body first and foremost, before turning our eye to the air and water and food quality that enhance our well being.

Touching the earth immediately impacts and supports the conductivity of the entire body — supporting the healthy function of our heart, our circulatory system, our brain, our bone metabolism, our thyroid function, our adrenal function, our skin conductance — our entire body from head to toe

Why is this important to even talk about?

Fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago we were more likely to spend time barefoot, or be working directly in the earth, walking on the earth, and going back further, sleeping directly on the ground.

But now, we have rubber shoes, cars to travel in, insulated flooring in our home, asphalt coating our roadways, high rises filled with smart meters to live in.

And life is so stressful, more fast paced and competitive and technologically advanced than ever before. We are surrounded by more financial stress, technological smog (EMFs) and artificial foods than previously imaginable.

Stress, higher cortisol, joint pain, dementia, cancer, age related changes — these are all a fall out from a life long inflammatory condition of a lifetime of living disconnected to the earth. So we better find a way to be absolutely certain we intentionally seek this connection, routinely.

When plants are grounded, they grow two and three times as tall and bloom more and the blossoms last longer. When humans are grounded, we are not going to grow two and three times as tall…. but we are going to feel two and three times more vibrant and healthy and energetic as we do when we are ungrounded.

While the plant world expresses grounded support by vibrant growth, we express grounded support by vibrant HEALTH! Grounding is the only modality that I know of that combines the fullest extent of physical support with the fullest extent of energetic healing.

Nothing else can quite come close to this full state of well being.

No vitamin you take in the morning, that your body will digest that day and try to deliver through your intestines to help nutritionally support your body, will do everything grounding can do.

No amount of sleep you can get the night before to help repair your body to meet the demands of the next day, will do everything grounding can do.

No amount of spiritual support through energy healing modalities such as deep breathing or meditation can support the fullest extent of the physical body the way grounding can.

No modality does both the physical and the energetic work that grounding does, simultaneously.

So while the medical studies show you — through double blinded placebo based studies — concrete evidence that grounding is a healing state for the human body, I want you to know that it’s not just your physical body that is being supported. It’s your mind frame, your soul energy, your Spirit.

Just as we have now shown that being disconnected causes everything from depression to inflammation to accelerated aging (collectively now called Nature Deficit Disorder) the re-establishment of grounding your body to support your health will have ramifications that go well beyond any single parameter or indicator of physical health.

You feel better.

You feel supported.

You feel creative.

You feel inspired.

You feel stronger.

You feel more motivated.

You feel more loving.

You feel more loved.

Nothing quite allows you to become the pure positive vessel of Well Being the way grounding does.

You become open to your soul energy flowing deeply, and meeting your body at its core, deep in your heart center. You become the perfect balance of a physical body that is supported and healthy while being an open vessel holding the most vibrant state of your soul’s energy flowing through your body and resonating out from your core.

When you are in that specific union — of your unique physical body that nobody else has, combined with your unique soul energy that nobody else has, coming together and being totally supported by the healing energy flow of the earth… that is your optimal state of Well Being.

You can offer twice as much of yourself to the world when you feel your well being optimized the way a plant would grow twice as tall because it is grounded and supported by the earth’s energy.

And that’s really the whole point of being alive.

So that you can offer to the world what you are here to offer. And you can live the unique meaningful life that you are meant to live.

You can go out and radiate twice as much creativity, twice as much goodness, twice as much connection with others, twice as much love to offer, and make twice the impact on this world… and more.

So ultimately, grounding is not just about your cardiac function or your hormonal balance or your sleep quality or your bone strength. Grounding is about finding a center that is so deep and so pure and so strong that you can truly be the best you possible.

Optimizing all of these other things… cardiac function, sleep, hormones, adrenals, bones, thyroid, insulin, etc… so that just like the plants in the grounding study that grow twice as tall when they are grounded, you can feel twice as vibrant, and twice as open to why you are here and what do you want to express while you are here in this lifetime.

That is what I have witnessed and experienced over and over and over again both personally and as a medical physician with my patients.

Ready to start your grounding journey?

I’ve got you. Here are a few videos to get you started, to answer the most common questions I get asked about grounding… specifically answering how it works, how long you need to do it to see results, and who it can benefit most:

1. How Does Grounding Work?

2. How Long Do You Have To Do It?

3. Who Should Do It?

Most people start their grounding journey because they need an answer that offers more support than any one single medication or operation or vitamin or exercise can offer.

Many people have found that conventional medicine has not been sufficient to correct the physical ailments the disconnect from the earth has caused.

And most people find that when they reconnect, it’s not just the physical ailments that improve.

It’s the body but it is also the energy level and it’s the mind-frame and it’s the sense of meaningful purpose and it’s the heart that heals as well.

So my goal is to be sure you do not limit your expectations in any way when you begin your grounding journey. Allow your entire body, mind, heart and spirit to be transformed. Allow the supportive energy of Mother Earth to fill you up, open you up, support you in becoming the optimized best version of you that is possible.

The future for grounding is limitless as connecting directly to the earth outside is the birthright of all living things. There are very very few circumstances where one would not be able to connect outside and receive that healing flow if only we would remember that it is natural for us to do so.

Even urban dwellers can get connected by standing barefoot in a park or on a concrete sidewalk. Even prisoners in most prisons have access to the outdoors, even if it is concrete, for at least a short period of time each day (for more on this, watch this video on how to get grounded in a city right here.)

I’ve had patients who live several stories off of the ground who hold onto a tree branch that reaches into their balcony and this is how they ground each afternoon.

I’ve had patients who have a cement basement and stand barefoot on this cement while they fold laundry, and this is how they ground each night.

And for those who have mobility limitations, even bed ridden, there are indoor ways to connect directly to the earth while sitting or lying comfortably indoors.

You can actually be grounded indoors while at work, while home watching TV or reading a book, while spending quality time with your loved ones.

The absolutely easiest way to optimize the amount of time you are grounded in a 24 hour period is to start by sleeping grounded all night long. If you are interested in indoor ways to get grounded that are healthy for you (and eco-friendly for the planet) there are a huge amount of medical grade, high quality indoor grounding tools waiting for you to explore right over here.

Taking action, trying it for yourself, taking a few minutes to put a bare foot onto the earth outside, taking the time to ground indoors as much as possible with indoor grounding tools, can do more to inform you about the healing potential of grounding your body than any amount of words I can write.

Luckily, grounding is the easiest, most readily available healing modality possible. The only thing you need to do is give it a try, and allow the earth’s energy to uplift, transform and optimize your well being naturally.

The earth is out there, waiting for you.xoxoxo,Laura Koniver MD

PS — I’m starting on my next book, called Conductive Medicine. I’m excited to share it with you! If you want to read my first book on Grounding, filled with hundreds of ideas on how to get grounded outside directly to the earth each and every day, you can find The Earth Prescription right here.

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Published on March 18, 2024 02:37

March 11, 2024

I’m 50 Today! Musings On Turning A Half Century Old + 7 Longevity Tips

Me at 1 years old

Well today I turned 50! Woot!

So here is how I am approaching my very first day of being 50. Or at least how I’ve thought about it in the past few months leading up to it — who knows how I’ll feel a year or two into it. But for now, my thoughts are this:

I don’t want to be an older woman trying to hold onto being young.

I always found it depressing to hear “OMG you’re 50?!?! You look 10 years younger!” Or to hear people try to cheer me up by saying “you look FANTASTIC for your age.”

Ummm… no.

I actually don’t want to try to look 40 years old at 50. I’d so much rather look like a phenomenal kick ass 50 year old at 50 than a questionable 40 year old who is aging possibly not so well. Instead of feeling empowered by looking younger (which just means I’m then in competition with someone actually younger) I’d really much rather consider myself a baby-older-person — a baby of old age.

If I try to think “I‘m still young… I still look and feel years younger than my biological age…” than it’s a losing game, because at some point I won’t look young or feel young and then what happens to my fragile sense of self, if feeling and looking young for my age was what I was hanging on to?

Instead, what if I’m actually just starting out, day 1 at being old.

I am the youngest baby-old-person I will ever ever be. And in my 60s I’ll be a teenager of my older years. And in my 70s I’ll be a young adult of my older years. And in my 80s I’ll be a full on goddamn adult of my older years. And if I’m lucky enough to live into my 90s and 100s, it will not be until then that I will I even think of myself as being an older person at all, in which case I will then have every right to flaunt my age as an immense success.

This is me about 4 years old, jumping on my parent’s bed!

But what I won’t do, what I don’t want to do, what I don’t want other people to tell me at all, is that I’m “still young.”

Oh hell no!!!

OMG do you know what I have had to get through to become a 50 year old woman?

I’ve had to fight my way to be accepting into medical school and get my MD at a time when only 20% of my classmates were female — I was surrounded by a male dominated medical world that was 80% male and had to fight against so much sexual harassment and sexism in general to become not just the first (and still to this day the only) physician in my entire family, but the first female physician to boot. I endured being in the minority of females as an officer in the military (which again — no shock — male dominated, especially 25 years ago) and the mental and emotional abuse that came with my military career. I endured several abusive relationships and then a marriage where I was abandoned in the middle of the night — literally waking up to a dear John letter on the kitchen table after 15 years of marriage — with two scared utterly traumatized children looking up at me wondering where their father was. I endured being homeless for a period of time because of it and stuggling to put a roof over my children’s head and a sense of security back into their life. I endured watching my children wade through trauma and PTSD, I endured my own traumas and PTSD.

But I also grew my own business from the ground up with no help. I also solo parented and am so damn proud of my kick ass adult children that I can barely see straight when I think of them, I love them so much. I wrote the first (and I believe still to this day the only) book written by a female physician on grounding as a healing modality. I started a new branch of medicine that I call Conductive Medicine, based off of the new research coming out about the electrical nature of our body’s health. I have done it all while being a kind, honest, transparent, and hardworking person. I have no desire for anyone to wipe away a single day of my 50 years by telling me I look younger.

Why can’t I be a kick ass amazing just-starting-out-as-a-baby-old-person?

I think women in their 30s and 40s would appreciate a woman who wants to look and own and find power in being a 50 year old that is just starting the newest phase of the rest of her life — not trying to grasp at a younger self but excited to be the youngest old person she knows and to bring that momentum into her life moving forward.

And I think women in their 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s would likely tell me that I am only just a baby starting out the second part of her life now that I am an empty nester and have the freedom to move through my days figuring out what makes this part of my life meaningful.

I could be wrong? I could be right?

It feels better to me to claim being older and being 50 than it does trying to trick a single person into thinking I’m younger.

Won’t do it.

Instead, I’m going to focus, as I always have done, on my physical health over my physical appearance. So to that end, here are some of the things I’ve started doing as a baby 50-year-old-newly-minted-older person in the path to feel the best I can for however many decades I have ahead:

7 Holistic Longevity Tips:

1. Move

Use it or lose it is the body’s internal mantra.

If you do something every single day, then hopefully you can continue to do it every single day… indefinitely. Like standing up from a chair without using your hands. If you do that every single day, you continue to be able to do that no matter what age you reach. If you stop doing it, all of a sudden you realize one day you truly can not stand up from a chair without leaning on something to help you do it, even in an emergency.

Preserving muscle strength, core strength, balance, flexibility and bone density are all key ways to age well, and moving your body is how you do it. I love my Barre3 classes, my yoga class, and going on after dinner walks.

For more encouragement and ideas on how to incorporate more movement into your day, here is an article I wrote for you that will help:

Try Not To Sit Still For More Than 2 Hours At A Time Today, Here’s Why

I also mention how sauna provides many of the same longevity benefits — perfect for those who can not exercise or to add onto your wellness routines in addition to exercise.

You can read more about the health benefits of sauna, and details on how long and how frequently to do it to get these health benefits, right here:

When You Can’t Exercise: Sauna For Similar Health Benefits

2. Sunlight

A large medical study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine found that folks who avoided sun exposure actually had a shorter life span… with a decreased life expectancy that was shorter than even heavy smokers who bathed in the sun. What?!?! Yes.

This was a huge study looked at almost 30,000 participants over a span of 20 years. Researchers tracked health outcomes and life span over two decades and found that even when smoking was factored in, the life span of those who avoided the sun was more than 2 years shorter than heavy smokers who got the highest amount of sun exposure. As hard as it is to believe, even heavy smokers who soaked in the sun their whole life outlived non-smokers who avoided sun exposure… by years!

This is because participants who avoided the sun had higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and pulmonary disease, and the results were dose-specific… meaning that the benefits of increased life expectancy with sun exposure went up directly in correlation to the amount of sun exposure.

Though risk of skin cancer did increase with increased sun exposure, the patients that had skin cancer occur in relation to sun exposure actually had a better long-term prognosis. This on top of recent research revealing that melanomas that occur in patients with low Vitamin D actually have more malignantly aggressive melanoma and their prognosis is worse than those with adequate Vit D from sun exposure.

These results show that avoiding the sun is a “risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking” — directly quoting the researchers of this study. So the verdict: under-exposure to the sun is actually dangerous. Turns out, longer time in the sun correlates with a longer life span. It’s that simple.

To read more about this study and for lots of tips on how to spend time in the sun safely, I wrote this article for you:

6 Ways To Make Spending Time In The Sun Safer

3. Grounding

This is something I talk about so often that if you’ve read anything from me prior to this one article you are reading right now, you already know all about grounding. Grounding is simply touching the earth to improve the health of your body.

Here are some resources I’ve created for you to get you started in this life-changing healing practice:

Grounding FAQs Grounding Medical Studies

The easiest way to get started?

I wrote a book to literally walk you through everything you need to know to set you of for an entire year of healing. I’ll sign it and send it to you myself!

your next must-read: The Earth Prescription

4. Hydrate

I’m going to be writing an entire blog post dedicated to the importance of hydration, how to tell if you are dehydrated, and tips and tricks on working with water for healing. But today let me just touch on why I filter my water in addition to being sure to drink water often.

After hundreds of studies have shown fluoride affects everything from cognitive function in humans to diabetes, fertility and more in animals, I highly recommend avoiding fluoride in water and never use fluoridated toothpastes. Fluoride is an enzyme inhibitor, point-blank. But what’s the problem with the minuscule amounts of fluoride added to the public water supply?

The old problem that is widely recognised (even by the National Institutes of Health) is that it accumulates in bone. It is estimated about 50% of the fluoride we consume is eliminated, and 50% is stored. Miniscule amounts of fluoride adding to our bodies sip after sip after sip equals a not-so-minimal exposure. Over a lifetime, these levels can reach high proportions… decreasing bone density and causing brittleness. For a nation whose women have epidemic proportions of osteopenia and osteoporosis, it would be counter productive to continue to drink fluoride on a daily basis. Studies have shown that the rate of hip fracture in elderly is directly increased in areas that fluoridate their water.

Fluoride is being taken up by your cardiovascular system as well. Direct absorption to of fluoride into our cardiovascular walls (and a significant correlation between cardiovascular events and fluoride uptake) makes it all the more urgent for us to avoid fluoride all together.

And now new reports are revealing something even more disturbing — fluoride lowers IQ. Statements from reps of the National Institutes of Health recommend that people who drink large quantities of water should not drink tap water, but instead switch to bottled water. We are just getting so much exposure to fluoride, to intentionally consume extra fluoride, whether through drinking water or toothpaste, is way too much.

But bottled water is incredibly un-eco-friendly, so I don’t recommend that either. I recommend filtering your water — this is win-win for both us and for the planet. I keep a water filtration system out on my kitchen counter space and not only am I drinking pure, clean, fluoride free water, but every time I walk by my water filter, the visual reminder to drink more water has really helped me to remember to maintain my hydration status.

Here is my favorite water filtration system, in stock right now.

5. Supplements

To me, body care starts with nurturing the inside with high quality supplements.

I take key supplements that I trust and have had ample evaluation in the medical literature so that I know there is evidence based purpose for taking them. Supplements I would not go a day without taking include Omega 3 fatty acids, Vit D, COQ10, Lutein, Reseveratrol, Curcumin, Pomegranate, Glutathione, Magnesium in several forms, Wild Blueberry and more — it’s all here in this exact protocol that I personally take.

If you hop over to my online dispensary you will not only find my Longevity Protocol, but tons of free protocols where I list my personal recommendations to you based on your health goals, everything from Skin Repair to Stress Relief to Blood Pressure Support to Mold Detox to Sleep Restore to Brain Protective to EMF Mitigation and more!

Here is the one I’m on:

Longevity Protocol

6. Sleep

Sleep is non-negotiable. It’s impossible to maintain wellness without high quality sleep. Poor sleep is related to mental health, accelerated aging (literally shortening your telomeres) weight gain, accidents, increased risk of death, etc… so hopefully this is a sharp reminder to focus on repairing your sleep.

If you need some resources to help you do this, I’ve go you. Hop over here and read this article now:

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

7. Create

If you read my blog you already know I love to paint.

You might already know what you like to do to express yourself too. Maybe you sing while you drive. Maybe you dance as you get dressed every day. Maybe you enjoy cooking new dishes and making up your own recipes.

If you don’t already have an outlet of creative expression, explore your thoughts with the following journal questions. Grab a piece of paper and free write, without censoring yourself, what immediately comes to mind when you read each question:

How much of each day do you devote to your own creative pleasure? Any? Do you feel any guilt when you allow yourself simple pleasures like eating, daydreaming, self care?If you had to pick one emotion that you value more than any other, which emotion would that be? How often do you feel that emotion? What is the emotion you feel most often throughout the day? How do you express that emotion now, and how do you think you might be able to express that emotion through a creative act. If you had to express that emotion through your body in some way, what would that be? What activity would allow you to express and release it most enjoyably?What part of your life do you feel has the most flow? Your career? Partnerships? Parenting? Friendships? Your inner world? Hobbies? Travel? Education? Entertainment? Health? What area would you say is the most stagnant? Do you want to change that?Do you consider yourself creative? Do you feel you were more creative in the past? Do you wish to be more creative in the future? What pleasurable steps can you take to express your creativity more?

Do you have a favorite way to play? If you don’t, this is the article you want to read right now. In it, I help you figure out what activity you might enjoy and how it can help boost your health:

How To Discover Your Play Style & Improve Your Health

8. Self Care:

So to be honest, I really didn’t feel physically good until I became an empty nester.

Of course I miss my children — painfully so. But as a single mom, not only did I have zero time to take care of myself, on some subconscious level I prioritized my children so much that I would not even allow myself to focus on me in any way. I didn’t really realize I was doing this until they were both off to college and I noticed I started taking care of my own physical body so much better. I exercised more, I went to bed earlier, I did little things like put on a hair mask or stopped to read a book here and there so much more often.

In allowing myself a little self care I started liking, and even loving, myself more. I can feel the difference inside and out. Maybe you can try one of these ways to practice a little self care today too:

Gratitude Shower

Showers are the perfect way to enjoy a private sanctuary to practice self care and by incorporating gratitude, your shower will reset you inside and out. Here’s how:

Set an affirmation for your shower today, for example:

“I step into this shower and feel peace envelope me…”

“I step into this shower to show gratitude to body…”

“I step into this shower and accept an instant health boost…”

Step into the shower and take a moment to allow it to cover you with warmth.As you begin to wash yourself, truly focus on the body part you are cleaning, and the organs that lay underneath each part. As you bath your leg, for example, thank the muscles that hold you upright, the bones that support you, the blood that faithfully brings energy and nutrition to your legs and the nerves that allow you to feel this warm water on your skin. Just hold your leg and gently cleanse it in the water, saying to your leg, “I love you. Thank you.” Feel the love and gratitude pouring through you while you are washing your leg… I actually have been moved to tears in my shower, taking the time to finally say thank you to the body that I tend to ignore for so long.When you are done cleaning, take some oil (you can just grab some olive oil or coconut oil from your kitchen pantry, or use skin or massage oils if you happen to have any) and pour a bit into your hand. Massage it into each part of your body you can reach… repeating your thankfulness. Allow that part of your body to relax, and let it feel you taking care of it for a change. Feet, legs, arms, stomach, chest, neck, shoulders, hands, face… lovingly apply oil to the skin and bath your body in loving gratitude again.As you towel off each part of your body give gratitude one more time to your healthy body, for supporting your journey in this lifetime.

Once you get in the habit, you’ll never let a shower go by without turning the water into an intentional health experience again!

Bath

There is significant benefit to be gained from an epsom salt bath at home. Not only are you likely grounded in your bath (watch this video here where I show you with my grounding test meter how you are grounded inside through the plumbing) but by adding Epsom salts you can deeply relax your muscles as well.

Magnesium is an essential mineral (required for over 300 different enzymatic reactions) and absolutely crucial for energy production as well as proper function of our heart, our nerves, our brain and our muscles. And most of us are magnesium deficient. If you are magnesium deficient, you can be anxious, depressed, low energy, have muscle tension, headaches and insomnia…. and you might find immediate benefits after just one single Epsom salt soak.

Here’s how:

To experience an inexpensive at-home version of float therapy, draw a warm bath just before bedtime, making it just a bit warmer than body temperature (around 100 degrees or so) and add several cups of epsom salts to make a hypertonic magnesium solution.2 cups of Epsom salts will equal one pound of salt in your bath, so shoot for at least 2 cups of salts per bath, but if you want to ration your Epsom salts, even 1 cup will make a difference.Darken the room or place a warm washcloth over the eyes and soak for at least 15 minutes and up to 60 minutes, adding warm water when needed to maintain body temperature.See if you feel more calm, with less muscle tension, and get a better night’s sleep!

Whiten Teeth

Because it is natural for our enamel to yellow as we age, it is an instant boost to your appearance to whiten your teeth… making you look years younger. So here is how I boost my whitening naturally… it’s only three steps and will make a noticeable difference in your teeth!

Start by oil pulling: I talk about oil pulling with coconut in more detail here… but I basically take a small scoop of coconut oil into my mouth and swish it around my teeth for as long as I can stand it — typically I hold it in my mouth for the 5 minutes I take a shower, then I spit it out down the shower drain before stepping out of the shower and drying off. The oil works to soften any plaque build up on your teeth, and is a FABULOUS healthy fat for your body so the more your oral mucosa absorbs, the better!Swish with 3% Hydrogen Peroxide: I use this as a pre-rinse before brushing… I just use a little bit (be sure not to swallow!!! It will burn!) and swish all around, letting it foam all over my teeth and my tongue. Then spit out the hydrogen peroxide and follow with this:Brush with baking soda: Although there are lots of great all natural toothpastes, when you are whitening your teeth, the combo of hydrogen peroxide with baking soda is AH-MAZ-ING. And the added bonus of not having to worry about any additional fluoride exposure is liberating. If you are using a fluoridated toothpaste, and you are a female, please think again. As I talked about above, fluoride is thinning to your bones and whether you are 20 or 70 you really want to protect the strength and long-term density of your bones.

It’s that simple: oil pull, swish with hydrogen peroxide, and brush with baking soda.

Do this as often as you like… I do it once a week. Give it a try for a month and you will see noticeable results!!!

DIY Face Mask

There are so many incredibly awesome DIY face mask recipes on the internet, so you should be able to find some ingredients in your pantry to make at least one or two different face masks without having to buy a thing.

There are face masks based off of yogurt, ones based off of honey, ones based off of oatmeal, ones based off of coffee grounds… look around your kitchen to see what you might have on hand already and then do an internet search to find hundreds of masks to whip up!

Here are my two favs:

Avocado Honey Mask

Mash one-quarter of an avocado in a small bowl.Drizzle in one tablespoon honey, mashing and mixing well.Apply the mask to clean skin for 10 minutes.Wash off with warm water, then follow with a moisturizer.

Banana Mask

Mash one-half of a banana in a bowl.Mix in a tablespoon of orange juice and a tablespoon of honey.Apply the mask to clean skin (it will be lumpy and that’s fine) and keep the mixture on for 15 minutes.Remove banana mixture from skin and discard in the trash, then rinse with warm water and follow with a moisturizer.

Don’t feel like mixing up a face mask?

Just apply plain yogurt to your face before hopping in the shower or bath and rinse off!

DIY Hair Mask:

Most people think of doing a face mask when doing an at-home spa day, but lots of people skip one of the easiest ways to refresh your look, and that’s with a hair mask!

There are just as many lovely ingredients in your pantry that you can use on your hair as there were for your face, maybe more! Even simply warming some coconut oil or olive oil in a microwave safe bowl for 15 seconds and applying it to your hair before showering can completely transform your locks.

To go one step more fancy, consider any one of these hair mask recipes:

1 egg + I tsp honey + 1 tsp apple cider vinegar1 tbsp coconut oil + 1 tbsp honey1/2 an avocado + 1 tbsp honey + 1 tbsp of olive oil1/2 cup mayonnaise + 1 tsp vanilla extract1 egg + 1/2 cup yogurt

Apply blended ingredients to dry untangled hair, wait 20 minutes, rinse thoroughly with warm water, follow with a gentle shampoo if desired.

Exfoliate

Give your skin a quick weekly exfoliation to sweep away dead skin cells and allow your skin to better absorb your moisturizer afterwards as well. Over time, you will notice improved circulation, improved texture, softer plumper skin.

To exfoliate, simply make a paste by mixing baking soda and a little coconut oil and us it to gently scrub your skin to remove dead skin cells. If you want to go even more simple, you can literally just sprinkle some baking soda in your hand, dampen with water and massage on skin in gentle circles.

But to up the moisture of your skin, I love going the extra step of mixing baking soda and coconut oil, like this:

1/2 cup organic coconut oil, melted or very soft1/4 cup baking soda

Mix ingredients well, until thoroughly blended and creamy. Use a small scoop to exfoliate skin gently all over the body. Any left over? Your exfoliator will keep for weeks at cool room temp.

Dry Brushing:

Alternatively you can dry brush your skin using a natural bristled brush before stepping in the shower or bath. Simply:

Use a natural (not synthetic) bristle brush.Get naked and use long sweeping motions lightly over all skin surfaces.Overlap strokes as you go, and be sure to lighten your pressure over any sensitive areas. Do not dry brush on areas with rashes or broken skin.After dry brushing your entire body, shower or bathe to cleanse.When finished bathing, pat skin dry and apply a natural moisturizer (like coconut oil) to further pamper your skin. While you are at it, drink a big glass of water to internally hydrate as well!Leave your dry brush in a clean area with good air flow, to air dry before the next use. Use daily or as often as desired.

Scalp Massage

I highly recommend scalp massages because you can give them to yourself any day, any time, any location, and they help reduce stress and tension throughout your entire body!

Just like a foot massage is something simple you can do for yourself to relax your body from head to toe, a scalp massage brings more blood flow to your scalp, which stimulates healthy scalp and healthy hair.

You can do a dry scalp massage… simply using clean fingertips to gently rub your scalp in circular motions… or just prior to stepping into the shower, you can even use some coconut oil to really give yourself a luxurious scalp massage. Simply dip your fingers in coconut oil and rub in circular motions all over your scalp. This is so fabulous if you have a flaky scalp, as the oil will help lift and the rubbing motion will help remove any flakes… and the moisturization of the coconut oil is fabbo for hair! Just shampoo twice to be sure to rinse the oil out.

Pleasure

The absolute epitome of pleasurable self care is nurturing the sensual nature of our bodies. Sensual pleasure is something to allow and welcome and receive… not something you need to force or fabricate. Orgasm — either alone or with a partner — is awesome of course, but is not the only way to focus on your pleasure today.

Some other ideas include:

picking clothing that **feels good** to your skin to wearchoosing underwear that makes you feels attractiveplacing your hand on your lower abdomen to center on and connect to your sexual energy center, then actively visualize expanding this energy to include your entire body and outwards, filling your entire energy space — use your whole aura to exude sensual energy!re-assess what sensuality means to you right in this moment… everyone’s sexuality is constantly evolving and expanding. What is your definition of sexy right now? What makes you feel sexually alive? What attracts you or catches your eye throughout the day?getting or giving a massagesoaking in a hot tub — light candles, add pleasurable scents/essential oils in the water that appeal to you, finish with luxurious oils to moisturize

Be sure to keep your favorite new additions to your daily self care practices going indefinitely!

Self care ultimately is not about how you look but about how you feel, and self nurturing practices care for your mental and physical health above and beyond what they do for your appearance.

Also be sure you are signed up to receive my free newsletter so you don’t miss any of the uplifting holistic healing tips I send out each week!

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

To your naturally resilient, astoundingly incredible human body!xoxox, Laura Koniver MD

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Published on March 11, 2024 02:48

March 4, 2024

Improve Your Mental Health Naturally, Starting With Your Next Meal

Did you know that gluten is a neuro-irritant — meaning it causes inflammation in the brain and has been linked to cognitive decline, even directly to dementia? I wrote this article for you back in 2014 to help explain how dementia could be considered a gluten-induced condition.

More recent evidence suggests that not only does the brain inflammation that gluten causes affect your brain, it might also be affecting your mental health, including causing or worsening mood disorders like depression and anxiety.

As someone who has struggled with anxiety her entire life, I am very interested to read up on medical studies exploring ways that our diet impacts our mental health (I’ve blogged for you in the past right here about foods that increase anxiety, and yep, gluten was on that list!) because this also provides natural, holistic ways to help reduce anxiety and depression — by simply reducing or eliminating gluten.

If this is the case, might a keto diet actually provide improved mental health?

One medical study says yes.

Research published in Frontiers In Psychiatry in Jul 2022 found that not only does a ketogenic diet (low carbohydrates and an emphasis on proteins and veggies) help with refractory epilepsy and other organic brain disease, but it also benefits psychiatric conditions.

Patients with severe mental illness resistant to other treatments — who were not improving despite intensive psychiatric care, were placed on a ketogenic diet with a 20 grams of carbs a day limit. The patients studied had diagnosis of major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and/or schizoaffective disorder not responding to conventional psychiatric therapy.

The patients were followed for a period of up to 8 months on this diet and the results showed an impressive, statistically significant improvement in not only mental health parameters but also in metabolic health, with improved weight, blood pressure, blood glucose and blood lipid profiles. The ketogenic diet was well tolerated and provided sustainable and significant improvements in both depression and psychosis symptoms — very impressive in patients who could not improve despite having the best treatments in medicine.

If a ketogenic diet, or even simply reducing the amount of carbs one consumes, can boost the mental health outcomes for very severe mental illness, I’m very encouraged to think what it might do for less extreme cases of depression, or for anxiety or OCD or agoraphobia or body dysmorphia or any number of other mental health concerns.

Obviously I sincerely hope this study will be followed by bigger studies that include other mental health issues, and of course I will keep you posted when those results are published. If you are not already on my newsletter list, you can join it to stay updated on this an other uplifting, holistic health information right here.

If you, like me, tend to get anxious, or depressed, or seasonal affective disorder, or any other mental health concern, you might want to give a ketogenic diet a try.

Diet truly does affect our mental wellness, and here are some other fabulous things you can do, along with any conventional therapy you are already on, to help.

And by the way, that’s one thing I really love about the possibility of consuming a ketogenic diet to help boost your treatment results for depression, anxiety or other mood disorders — that you can do this right along with any medications or therapies you might already be taking.

That’s the power of focusing on holistic health and combining it, or tailoring it, to what is already working for you from the best of conventional medicine as well.

8 Ways To Boost Your Mental Health Starting With Nutrition:

1. Try a Keto diet.

As discussed above, keeping your carbs under 20 grams a day might do more to boost your mental health then all of the most intensive, in patient therapies have been able to do combined.

The study was small and needs to be reproduced, but it was incredibly encouraging.

Interested in giving a Keto diet a try? Focus on:

a high quality, high fat diet (coconut oil, olive oil, organic butter, avocado are all wonderful fats)high quality proteins (like grass fed beef, wild fish, eggs, nuts, seeds)and colorful vegetables.

Intimidated by going keto?

Consider cutting your gluten and sugar intake in half for one month and see if you feel more clear headed, energetic, less depressed and less anxious. It’s been my experience that patients who are experiencing a brain fog or feelings of depression can feel dramatically better in just a few short weeks of reducing carbs and gluten.

You might also feel more confident if you snag some keto friendly cookbooks — Eat Happy, written by Anna Vocino, is the one in my kitchen right now!

2. Take high quality nutritional supplements.

Can something as simple as being sure you consume vitamins actually make a difference in our brain as we age? Yes.

A new study, published Sept 14, 2022 in Alzheimers & Dementia, is the largest randomized clinical trial on multivitamin use in healthy brain aging. It’s a three year long trial following annual cognitive assessments on over 2,250 patients that were randomly assigned either a daily multivitamin, a 500 mg daily flavanol supplement (from cocoa extract) or a placebo supplement.

What researchers found was that not only did taking a daily vitamin help preserve cognitive function, but it actually helped significantly improve it over baseline (and over placebo) by the third year. Meaning it didn’t just help prevent cognitive function from declining with age, but it actually helped improve cognitive function long term. Cognitive tests included word list, story recall, verbal fluency, number span, digit ordering and more. The results show that the daily multivitamin improved memory, executive function and global cognition over time.

This is the first large, long term, double blinded placebo based study to show that multivitamins are effective at improving condition in older adults. The researchers conducting this study estimated that the multivitamins potentially slowed brain aging by about 60%. I hope even longer studies, looking at additional health benefits beyond cognitive benefits, follow. If they do, I’ll certainly keep you posted

Especially if you have difficulty sticking to a keto diet (or if you are already doing a keto diet and want the next step to add to your diet) focusing on essential nutrients that help support mental health is the next step.

To help you find the highest quality supplements depending on your unique mental health goals, I’ve created different totally free protocols for you, and you can find them right here:

Mood boost protocol Anxiety relief protocol Brain protective/healthy cognition protocol

3. Focus specifically on gut healing.

Part of improving mental health through improved nutrition includes healing your gut so it works properly in the first place.

You already know that your digestion and your thoughts and feelings are directly linked. You know that sudden feeling when you are scared and you become instantly nauseous? As a mom I got that feeling all the time when my kids were younger and I lost sight of them for a moment in a public place. It’s a horrendous feeling… it doesn’t matter how hungry you were or how long since your last meal… in life-or-death situations, hunger immediately evaporates and the rest of your senses are heightened (heart pounding and ears and eyes on maximum alert) and you scan the crowd looking for your precious child.

Or… have you ever had nervous diarrhea before a big test, a blind date, a job interview?

Or… what about a dry mouth as you stand up to give an important speech to your peers, act in a play, sing your solo at a choir concert? Your dry mouth isn’t a true reflection of your hydration status… matter of fact you just drank two cups of water before stepping out on that stage… it’s your body’s immediate response to emotional stimulus.

While we all *know* on some level that our digestive state and our bowels are connected to our mind and mind frame, you may not know that your gut actually plays a big role in your mental health. What if it’s not just that our mind signals our gut to develop physical symptoms, but the other way around too? Is it possible that disease in our gut can cause a signal to our brain to develop physical symptoms, such as anxiety and depression? Yes.

Researchers looking into this studied over 1,900 individuals with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). The research (published in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics in 2016) after following the participants for one full year, found that participants with higher levels of emotional distress (anxiety and depression) were significantly more likely to develop IBS and those with IBS at the start of the study were more likely to report new onset of anxiety and depression in the year following enrollment in the study.

1/3 of participants had the mood disorder first, and then the gastrointestinal disorder.2/3 of the participants had the gatrointenstinal disorder (IBS or FD) first, and then the mood disorder.Researchers now believe there are two different types of functional gastrointesntinal disease pathways — not just one.One subset of patients experience gut symptoms (pain, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, etc..) first prior to anxiety or depression developing. This suggests that gut disease may signal the onset of a gut-to-brain disease pathway.Another subset of patients may have anxiety or depression signal to the gut and subsequently give rise to gastrointestinal distress… brain-to-gut signaling.

The bottom line: The more common pathway appears to be gut-to-brain signaling, being twice as common as brain-to-gut signaling! Gut disease occurred first, followed by the development of psychological symptoms in the majority of the participants during the study.

This is a really important finding… because it helps explain why probiotics can make such a head-to-toe impact on your body. As I blogged about almost 10 years ago in 2014, probiotics might be more aptly named psychobiotics for their mind and mood enhancing effects.

Clinical studies suggest that the gut microbes in depressed individuals are decreased in both amount and in variety. And that if the natural flora of the gut is diminished in depression, then restoring the natural vitality and variety of healthy organisms in the digestive tract might be a very powerful way to improve outcome in depression (and other mood disorders, such as anxiety.)

And indeed it is. Many studies now have shown improved mood after taking probiotics: one study 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. Yet another study showed that participants with chronic fatigue syndrome who consumed probiotics three times a day reported significantly less anxiety compared to those who did not.

This might apply to other neurological conditions as well. A large meta-analysis examining the intestinal flora of patients with Parkinsons Disease, researchers found that there was widespread decrease in the microbiome of those patients. Published in the medical journal Parkinsons Disease in 2021, researchers found altered gut microbiome in Parkinson’s patients and suggest that intestinal inflammation is intricately linked to Parkinson’s disease. A follow up study, published in Nature Communications in 2022 found such widespread the gut microbiome had such a powerful impact on Parkinson’s diseases that they suggest Parkinson’s might actually START in the gut and then SPREAD to the brain. They found that up to 2/3rds of the metabolic pathways in the gut of Parkinsons patients are dysregulated, and urgently recommend future research in improving the gut biome to help treat Parkinson’s, and possibly even detecting Parkinson’s before it becomes symptomatic disease with gut biome analysis.

Ready to add probiotics to your supplements and see for yourself? Ready to heal your gut lining and improve your gut function to boost your mental health? I have another free protocol, a gut healing protocol, for you right here with all of my favorite gut healing supplements and exactly how to take them:

Gut Healing Protocol

4. Eat your flavonols

A study published in Neurology in Feb 2023 looked at dietary intake of flavonols and brain function, and found that higher dietary intake of flavonols significantly slowed cognitive decline. The flavonols kaempferol and quercitin were the two that were specifically found to exert this effect. These two powerful flavonols are found in lots of different fruits and veggies, including:

applesasparagusbroccolicabbagekalelettuceonionsspinachchivesdilloreganoblueberrycherrycranberryblack teared wine

Because brain inflammation is specifically linked to depression and mental health mood disorders, it makes sense that eating anti-inflammatory flavonoids would protect your mental health as well, in addition to protecting against brain aging. And it does. So much so that one study found that new mothers who ate flavonoid rich foods had less post-partum anxiety than mothers who did not. Another study found that young adults who drank flavonoid rich orange juice every morning had a significantly improved gut microbiome as well as boosted brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), suggesting something as simple as drinking flavonoids may potentially help treat depression.

What is the link between brain inflammation and depression? It’s pretty solid. This study, published in 2014, found that if you decrease inflammation, you can actually help more effectively treat depression. Researchers reviewed 14 randomized, placebo-controlled studies looking at over 6,300 patients and found that adding anti-inflammatory medications to a treatment plan helped to lessen depressive symptoms and resolve depressive episodes better than placebo alone and better than anti-depressants alone. This study, published in 2016, further confirmed these results. By addressing inflammation along with depression you actually can help resolve depression more effectively.

But how does inflammation contribute to depression? Of course there are likely other factors at play, but one of the pathways seems to be that inflammation lowers dopamine levels in the brain, which is responsible for decreased mood, decreased motivation, and anhedonia.

In this study, published May 2020 in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, researchers found a direct correlation between blood markers of inflammation (inflammatory cytokines) and motivation. Specifically, that inflammation lowers dopamine levels in the brain, that switches the brain from positive to negative thinking.

As dopamine drops, you can go from feeling capable and motivated to feeling incapable and unmotivated.

Basically, inflammation gives you a motivational impairment, and prevents you from thinking optimistically as well as keeps you from accurately assessing what you are capable of. Even if you fully are capable of doing something, your brain will tell you that you are not.

Your motivation tanks and your outlook dims as a result of chronic inflammation. One way to reduce this inflammation is to cut out gluten, another is to consume flavonoids, and yet another is to go outside and get grounded to the earth.

For tons more info on the link between mood and brain inflammation, read my article here:

How Grounding Boost Your Mood + 10 Ways To Do It Today

5. Release old traumas

It’s 100% TOTALLY NORMAL to have brain changes in relation to having experienced life changing events. It shows that you are aware, open, experiencing life and responding to it. Your brain is ever evolving, ever-changing, ever adapting.

Some of the changes in your brain came about as a way to seek relief from the stress… in the form of PTSD response patterns, cravings and addictions, and self soothing behaviors. These brain changes are all adaptations to unhealthy stressful life experiences that you’ve had to go through.

New research is showing that even if you do not have overt psychiatric signs and symptoms after big life transitions, even just experiencing a stressful event at all — no matter how well you feel you coped with it — affects your brain… and over time, stress is linked to a higher risk of dementia. In other words, stress on the brain has long term effects, not just the immediate effects such as PTSD or substance addictions. Long term effects like memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimers… showing up decades later.

One study estimated that each stressful life event you experience declines your cognitive function equivalent to about 1 to 4 years of aging. Presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on July 16, 2017, the study looked at over 1,300 healthy adults and were assessed for 27 different lifetime stressful events (such as divorce, death, illness, bankruptcy, job loss, childhood trauma, war combat, physical assault, sexual assault, and many other universally stressful life events.) Every two years, researchers had these patients return for six domains of cognitive function to be analyzed and documented. Over time, results showed that patients with larger numbers of lifetime stressful events had worsening brain function later in life, with decreased thinking speed and decreased mental flexibility.

Here’s the important part: While you can’t prevent traumatic life events from happening to you, you absolutely 100% can minimize the impact it has on your brain and on your future cognitive ability.

The largest meta-analysis to date on trauma recovery (looking at data from over 11,000 relevant medical studies) suggests that one of the best long term recovery techniques after trauma is simply talking about it, no medication required. Published in JAMA Psychiatry on June 12, 2019, reasearchers looked at direct comparisons between talk therapy (psychotherapy) and drug therapy (pharmacological treatments) in patients with PTSD.

They found that in the long term, talk therapy helped more, being slightly superior to drug therapy both immediately following treatment and in long term follow up. The studies they looked at ranged from 2 months to 6 months long, and this meta-analysis showed there was no advantage to using drugs in recovering from PTSD.

Be encouraged by this. This means that the vast majority of folks can be helped — and helped best — by talking about trauma instead of medicating it away. Connect with others. Reach out for help. Don’t feel like you are going crazy and don’t feel like you must go it alone. We all have trauma, we all do. We all create coping mechanisms to get through it. And we can all lean on each other to heal.

The medical literature is clear… just communicating about trauma is every bit as healing (or even more healing) than all the best medications we have to treat trauma. In fact, as I blogged about here, PTSD can actually be significantly helped by something as simple and as accessible as repeating a mantra. It’s true. Simply joining a class, talking to a therapist, or connecting with others to heal can be just what you need to feel better than you have ever felt.

And did you know that folks who move through trauma can actually be healthier than folks who never went through any trauma at all? It’s incredible to believe that trauma can actually strengthen your health but it is true. In my Trauma Resilency & Recovery Class I go over the medical literature that proves that trauma is actually adaptive and empowering, and show you all the tools to use trauma to boost your own health in ways you never could have imagined possible.

My trauma healing class starts in two weeks, and I would love to have you join in. I developed this class based on my extensive research into the best of what the medical literature has proven to us about how to release trauma once and for all and become mentally and physically healthier for it. No matter what you have gone through, you absolutely do have the ability to rebound from from it and create a new normal and a new health set point.

Your body naturally want’s to trend back to full and complete wellness… mind, body and spirit. I’ll give you the tools to get there and walk with you through it: It starts in 2 weeks so sign up to snag your spot today!

Trauma Recovery Class

6. Exercise

Researchers looking at how movement helps to boost brain function found that there are literally immediate benefits to your memory function after exercising just once. ONCE! Published September 2020 in Scientific Reports, this study finds that one session of exercising (cycling on a stationary bike was the exercise used in this study) significantly improved motor sequence memory — immediately!

This is super encouraging, because it was not looking at just the long term benefits from exercise but suggests that even if all you can do is one single episode of exercise, you will get immediate brain benefits, that very day.

And although just one session of exercising provides benefit, ideally it would be even better to sprinkle movement throughout your entire day. It could be as simple as standing up and walking around a bit every hour or two, getting in some gentle stretching routines in throughout the day, walking up and down your stairs if you have them, and/or doing a before-bed yoga routine to reap massive benefits.

So see if you can come up with a way to move your body:

upon waking in the morningas a mid morning breakas a mid day breakas a mid afternoon breakand end with a before-bed stretch.

Today try to use movement as a way to boost your brain function before a difficult mental task. Some examples might include:

walking up and down a flight of stairs quickly before giving a presentation at workdoing a few jumping jacks in the office before writing an important emailplaying a game of frisbee with friends just before settling down to study for college examsencouraging your kids to jump on a trampoline before heading out on the school bus each morning.

7. Deep Breathing

Deep breathing actually helps provide increased nutrition to your brain and boosted removal of toxic metabolic waste because of the increased movement in cerebrospinal fluid that deep breathing creates… so taking a couple intentional deep breaths actually means you have conscious control over your brain’s environment! That is so cool.

Can you take a deep breath while grounded outside and/or on an organic indoor grounding tool? Combining grounding with a few deep breaths to immediately support the nutrition and oxygen going to your brain as well as decrease inflammation, which as we talked about in #4 above, boosts mental health as well. Win-win.

Watch this video where I go into more detail on the link between breathing and brain health:

Boost Nutrition To Your Brain In One Breath (Dr. Laura Koniver, MD… The Intuition Physician)

And if you prefer TikTok, here are two tiktoks I’ve made on this topic. I would love to have you follow me on TikTok here!

Boost nutrition to your brain:

@laurakonivermd
Deep breathing combined with groundng = boosted brain health #holistichealth #laurakonivermd #grounding #intuitionphysician #earthing #medicalstudies #brainhealth #deepbreaths

♬ original sound – Laura Koniver, MD

You still have your original amniotic fluid inside of your brain:

@laurakonivermd
♬ original sound – Laura Koniver, MD

8. Avoid Food Triggers

If you find that you are eating sugar and gluten because of emotional triggers, this is likely making your emotions worse as the brain inflammation aggravates and depresses mood, heightens anxiety, and decreases motivation.

So to end this list of ways you can modify what you eat in order to improve your mental health, I want to share some tips I’ve come up with for helping you overcome emotional eating triggers.

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:

You eat for 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.

You eat to feel 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.

You eat to fee POWERFUL:

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.

You eat to feel LOVED:

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.

You eat to feel HAPPIER:

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 even at a very young age he was amazing at trying foods most children wouldn’t even think of… exotic foods, spicy foods, unusual vegetables that kids traditionally hate. He was open to trying it all and got so excited as he watched 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.

You forget to eat, then BINGE:

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. Setting an alarm on your phone to remind you to eat every 3 hours throughout the day sometimes can totally transform a binge eater into a routine eater.

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.

You absolutely can feel your mood boost and your brain work better and better and better… all by taking a few completely natural and simple steps — like reducing gluten, adding nutritional supplements, healing your gut, processing and releasing trauma, taking deep breaths, and touching the earth.

Share these tips with others that you love and keep each other on track.

xoxo,Laura Koniver MD

Laura Koniver

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Published on March 04, 2024 02:22

February 19, 2024

The Latest Studies on CBD Benefits Include Enhanced Natural Killer Immune Cell Function

I have long been a fan of supporting our Endocannabinoid system, with organic CBD and CBD derivatives. The latest research has just boosted my commitment to offering safe, effective, pharmacy grade USA grown organic hemp CBD products, because of its effect on our Natural Killer immune cell function.

Natural Killer (NK) immune cells do exactly what you think they would do — they scour our body continuously for invading viruses and other pathogens to kill them before they have a chance to make us sick. They can recognize when our cells have been invaded by a virus and they trigger a cytotoxic reaction to stop that cell from replicating and infecting other cells, as well as boosting cytokine response to ensure our body’s immune system does it’s job before we are even aware that we were exposed and potentially getting sick. This limits the viral spread as well as tissue damage in our body.

But Natural Killer cells do another really important job, which is cancer prevention.

Natural killer cells provide both anti-tumor as well as anti-metastasis defense, which make them invaluable for not only preventing cancer but also decreasing metastasis. In fact, Natural Killer cells are our body’s main innate defense against developing cancer. Because of this, there are all kinds of new drugs being tested to boost Natural Killer cell function and treat a wide variety of cancers, a new generation of cancer treatments called immun0-oncology treatments, so of course there are lots of pharmaceutical companies investigating the role of immuno-oncology drugs.

A great medical review of the 25 tumor types that NK cells show promising therapeutic effects for can be read right here.

But new research suggests we already have a natural way to boost NK cell function, through CBD supplements.

This latest article, published in September 2023 in Nutrients found that after only 8 weeks of daily CBD supplements, NK immune cell function was significantly enhanced. That means not only boosted immune function but potentially boosted anti-cancer benefits. This on top of the fact that the study participants reported improved sleep quality as well.

The dose required for this effect? Only 50 mg CBD daily.

How long did they take the CBD supplements for? Only two months!

Anti-cancer and immune boosting benefits in just weeks? Yes.

I know I’ll get asked what the best supplement is for CBD supplementation, and there is only one CBD oil product I recommend — that’s because as a holistic physician I know that how each ingredient is grown (organically) and where supplement is made (in the USA) and how it is processed (cold pressed) and how it is stored (in a pharmaceutical grade storage facility) is just as important as what the ingredients are.

There is only one physician grade, organic, cold-pressed, raw, made in the USA CBD oil I would give to my patients, and I’ll tell you more about that below.

Meanwhile, let me tell you about a few other super impressive benefits that we already know from the medical literature can come from regular CBD use. How about that when you apply it topically it works to relieve pain so well that it can even relieve shingles pain?

Well all know that one of the most painful skin conditions, maybe secondary only to burns and chronic ulcers, is shingles. Very difficult to treat, not much decreases shingles pain once it starts. Shingles pain is a nerve pain that can be hideously intense — burning, stabbing and stinging so badly that it’s hard to even do the most basic functions during a flare, the pain can even prevent sleep.

Topical CBD application is one of the only all natural ways to decrease pain in shingles, with a recent study founding that shingles pain was reduced by 88% — that’s almost 90% relief! — in over 60% of the study participants, with no negative side effects and well tolerated by all.

How could CBD applied topically almost entirely relieve nerve pain?

That’s because cannabinoid receptors are found all throughout our body, including throughout our skin.

CBD is incredibly anti-inflammatory and soothing (if you want to hear me speak about the role of CBD in trauma recovery, you can listen to my podcast on that here) so it’s no surprise that researchers have found several different cannabinoid receptors in the skin.

Both cannabinoid receptors type 1 and type 2 (CB1 and CB2) are found in all skin, and help regulate everything from our hair growth to our skin’s immune system to it’s oil production. CB1 and CB2 receptors have been found in our keratinocytes, hair follicles, sebeceous glands, on the skin’s nerve fibers (including pain receptors that give rise to pain and itch sensations) and mast cells (which are responsible for our skin’s allergic response.)

When our skin gets dysregulated, and the healthy balance of our skin is disrupted, it can be challenging to restore barrier function and get chronic conditions like allergic dermatitis, acne, eczema, psoriasis and other chronic skin conditions to truly resolve.

Everything from the environmental pollutants our skin is exposed to, to the chemicals in the body care products we put directly on our skin, to climate stressors such as UV radiation or cold whipping winds that can literally freeze and crack our skin, as well as the plethora of pathogens (like herpese zoster living in our nerve cells) all of it can stress out our skin.

With all of these irritants and exposures, no wonder skin conditions can be hard to treat. If you’ve tried everything from topical moisturizers to topical steroids to topical antihistamines to topical antibiotics and you still have eczema, or hives, or rashes, resistant acne or even a painful skin condition… you may want to consider adding a topical CBD lotion to your regime.

Researchers have found that supporting the endocannabinoid system may help reduce pruritus (itching) associated with chronic skin conditions, as well as decrease inflammation (showing promise for help in treating eczema) as well as decreasing oil production (making it a new avenue to treat acne) in addition to the research on decreasing shingles pain that I shared above.

Many major research articles suggest that application of CBD to the skin improves human skin function while also being incredibly safe and well tolerated. I’ve listed some of the best ones below, if you’d like to dive directly into the medical literature on this:

Therapeutic Potential of Cannabidiol (CBD) for Skin Health and Disorders The antimicrobial potential of cannabidiol Topical Administration of Cannabidiol: Influence of Vehicle-Related Aspects on Skin Permeation Process The potential role of cannabinoids in dermatology Cannabidiol induces antioxidant pathways in keratinocytes Cannabidiol exerts sebostatic and antiinflammatory effects on human sebocytes An Observational Study of the Application of a Topical Cannabinoid Gel on Sensitive Dry Skin Tolerability profile of topical cannabidiol: evaluator-blinded clinical and in vitro studies in normal skin In vitro percutaneous absorption studies of cannabidiol using human skin Cannabidiol-Mediated Changes to Keratinocytes from Psoriatic Patients The Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Cannabidiol (CBD) on Acne Cannabis sativa and Skin Health: Dissecting the Role of Phytocannabinoids

Unfortunately, the purity and potency of the vast majority of CBD products on the market is questionable, so I highly recommend getting your CBD (whether topicals, capsules, gummies or tinctures) through a physician. ECS Therapeutics CBD supplements are prescription grade, pharmacy quality CBD oil products that are organically grown right here in the USA and quality tested more thoroughly than any other CBD product I have ever seen.

It’s the only one I personally trust and use.

You can ask your in person physician for an ECS Therapeutics prescription, or you can fill out my contact form here to request more information on prescription strength CBD products ordered directly through me, and I can have them shipped directly to your front door.

Whether you are interested in boosting your Natural Killer immune cell function — I have organic, USA grown, 50mg CBD capsules I would recommend for that — or you are interested in adding a topical cream, balm or roll on to your skin care routine, I have formulations for that too.

Fill out my contact form here to be evaluated for ECS Therapeutics CBD products and see how they work for you.

And stay tuned for next week’s blog post about 6 additional, all natural ways to treat pain — even chronic, unrelenting pain — so that you can feel your best no matter what your health goals are challenges are right now. Next week’s healing blog post will be a deeper dive into how to help treat other pain conditions in totally natural ways, so be sure you are signed up for my newsletter here to get that article into your email inbox. And if someone forwarded you this article then you’ll want to sign up to get that uplifting, holistic healing article right here right now.

To your natural and resilient health…

xoxoxo,Laura Koniver MD

PS — ECS Therapeutics even has pet care CBD tinctures… so if you want to improve pain, boost immune function, boost anti-cancer benefits or help improve sleep for your furry friends, you can obtain these products from ECS Therapeutics as well.

Ask your veterinarian to order them for you or fill out my contact form here.

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Published on February 19, 2024 03:22

February 12, 2024

5 Important Ways To Feel Loved And Boost Your Heart’s Health This Week

It’s Valentines Day this week, and regardless of if you spend it with a person you love, a pet you love, doing an activity you love or giving yourself much needed break and some healing alone time on Valentines, any and all of these things can benefit your heart function, so it’s a great time for my annual review on all the ways you can support your heart’s health.

I’ve got you covered on how to boost your heart health from every single angle! Physically, energetically, emotionally.

Let’s go:

1. A Heart Boost From Grounding To The Earth

Of course I’m going to start with this. How much the earth literally directly supports your heart health.

The energy output of the earth itself is essential to your heart health. Research published in 2017 in Sicentific Reports suggests that the frequency of the earth — the Schumann Resonance at 7.8 Hz — is cardioprotective. One and a half hours of 7.8 Hz frequency applied to cardiac cells resulted in a 28% reduction of creatine kinase release. Creatinine Kinase is an enzyme released by muscle cells when they are damaged or stressed… including the muscles that form your heart. Elevated Creatine Kinase is a common finding after heart attack, and helps in evaluating how severe the heart attack was as well as evaluating heart disease and other cardiac issues. Only an hour and a half was enough to get this marker of cardiac stress to reduce by almost a third, suggesting the earth itself is cardioprotective. They also found that when they reduced the cardiac cells exposure to the Schumann resonance, disconnecting it from that protective benefit, it caused creatinine kinase levels to rise, indicating that it’s actually stressful to our hearts to be disconnected from the earth and buffered from it’s electromagnetic heartbeat.

This on top of a study in 2005 in Biomedicine and Pharmecotherapy that found a correlation between blood pressure and the Schumann resonance, finding that blood pressure lowered on days when the Schumann Resonance was enhanced.

So if the earth protects our heart, then spending time outside connecting with the earth should boost our cardiac function, right? Yep, it does, and multiple studies on grounding the human body reveal three major ways that grounding boost our heart health.

Our hearts emit the strongest electromagnetic field of our entire body… thousands of times stronger than the electromagnetic field of our brains! The human heart’s electromagnetic field is measured at about 100,000 times stronger electrically (and 5,000 times stronger magnetically) than the human brain.

This electomagnetic frequency that pulses out from your heart center is 100% in sync with and resonant with the Earth’s Heartbeat, the Schumann Frequency, and this is no coincidence, this is our natural design. In the video below, I give you a very quick review of the medical literature that suggests exactly how connecting to the earth — and getting our heartbeat resonant with the earth’s heartbeat — supports our cardiovascular function.

Just click on the video below (newsletter subscribers that don’t see the video embedded below can click here to watch this video on YouTube) and in 2 minutes I will walk you through the science behind this healing support:

From increasing our heart rate variability (the key to the health and resiliency of your heart function) to increasing the circulatory perfusion of our capillaries (the key to getting oxygen and nutrients to all the organs in your body) to decreasing our risk of blood clots (which reduces our risk of heart attack and stroke,) the earth is essential to keeping your cardiovascular system functioning well.

To read through these benefits in more detail, hop over and read this blog post I wrote for you:

How Grounding Protects Your Cardiac Function For A Lifetime

2. A Heart Boost From Our Own Mind[image error]

Our minds and our hearts are inextricably intertwined. Most of you may already be aware that electrically — the brain and the heart each have an electrical field and that these electrical fields overlap.

This gives our brain’s electrical activity (thinking) and heart’s electrical activity (heartbeats) a direct electrical link to each other, meaning our minds are literally energetically linked to our hearts.

It’s so beautiful:

Because there is direct electrical messaging through the physical body between the heart and the mind, heart issues can literally cause psychological issues and vice versa.

This is the least understand interaction between the heart and the mind, but recent medical studies are starting to clarify this heart/mind connection. In fact, in medicine we now recognize this exquisite connection between the heart and the mind that has given birth to a new field of medicine, called Behavioral Cardiology.

Behavioral Cardiology is an important field, because if we improve psychological health, we improve heart health. And if we improve heart health, might we improve psychological health? I believe so.

First of all, we clearly see that stress affects heart — acute psychological stress directly increases the risk of sudden heart attack and cardiovascular death. So much so that anxiety is actually a cardiac risk factor for heart attack and cardiac death, and depression increases risk of both fatal and non-fatal heart attack as well. If you’d like to read a medical review looking at all of the medical literature to date on mood disorders and cardiac health this one, published in 2000 in the Archives Of Internal Medicine, is a good one to start with.

This medical study, published in 2017 in Lancet, tried to uncover exactly why there is this direct correlation between stress and heart attack, in both men and women. It turns out, increased brain activity in the area of emotional processing (the amygdala) directly increases the risk of cardiovascular events.

This study was the first to show that increased amygdala activity in humans strongly predicts cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart attack and angina. Researchers followed 293 patients who underwent full body PET/CT scans at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. The measured resting metabolic activity in the amygdala, bone marrow and arterial walls.

Researchers found that increased activity in the amygdala was strongly correlated with increased arterial inflammation and increased risk of cardiovascular events during an average follow up period of 3 1/2 years. They also found that high levels of self rated stress correlated with increases in amygdala activity, higher levels of arterial inflammation, and higher levels of the blood inflammatory marker: C-reactive protein.

Finally, a physical explanation for the very real connection between the emotional center of our brain and our heart health. The amygdala is responsible for processing emotions, survival instincts and memory.

That about sums up how stress feels: it’s an increased emotional load, a feeling of being overwhelmed when trying to navigate a stressful situation, and traumatic memories from the past all get linked up with traumatic present experiences — which come together to increase the metabolic activity in your amygdala.

Based on these studies, researchers now believe that it is actually the brain activity of the amygdala (and emotional stress in particular) that links stressful events with heart disease… causing increased vascular inflammation, increased cardiovascular disease and increased risk of stroke, heart attack and angina.

More recently, published in 2021 in JAMA Cardiology, researchers specifically studied the link between heart disease and women with a history of trauma. Because most studies on heart disease have focused on the male population, this one really caught my eye.

Looking at almost 400,000 women, researchers identified women diagnosed with PTSD and matched them to age and cardiovascular risk correlated female controls with no history of PTSD. They then looked at ischemic heart disease outcomes, including new onset coronary artery disease, angina or heart attack (myocardial infarction) over a 5 year follow up period.

Researchers found that a history of PTSD in younger females increased the risk of developing subsequent heart disease by almost 60%. Yuck. A history of trauma pretty dramatically increases the risk of lasting heart health issues long term.

But don’t worry, because the health effects of trauma, including from PTSD, can be reversed. To work with me on how the body moves through and heals from trauma, even trauma from long ago, childhood trauma, even birth trauma, join my upcoming Trauma Resiliency & Recovery class here:

Trauma Resiliency & Recovery Class, with Dr. Laura Koniver

To me, this study serves to underscore how very strongly our mental and emotional state affect our well being.

The link between stress and heart attack, stroke, and angina is so pronounced that researchers are now advocating stress levels, a history of anxiety, and a history of depression to all be considered independent risk factors for heart disease, along with other classic cardiac risk factors such as age, smoking history, and family history of heart disease.

And a study published in 2016 in Circulation shows that this idea has real world applications and uncovers some very helpful solutions. Researchers followed over 150 patients who were assigned to have cardiac rehab care following a cardiac event, and found that by adding stress management skills into their cardiac rehab program they were able to slash the rate of future cardiac events in a 5 year follow up period IN HALF!

So if addressing stress reduces the risk of subsequent heart attack by 50%, now we know why: stressful brain activity is directly correlated with cardiovascular events. Reduce the stress response in the brain, reduce heart disease in the body.

Another reason to address trauma — release the stress from past traumas from your physical body to protect against heart disease. I’d love to help you with that, and you can join my Trauma Release class right here.

3. A Heart Boost From Those We Love

We all intuitively can feel that connecting with others boosts our health, right?

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.

Medical studies have shown that increasing your connection to others not only improves your health, it actually increases your longevity. I feel this has something to do with the fact that we merge our natural energy fields together when we are close to one another.

We each produce our own healthy, natural EMF fields, and both the brain and the heart emit measurable energy fields, as we talked about above. But which one do you think is largest and extends furthest from our bodies, the brain or the heart?

It’s the heart field.

When our heart energy fields are overlapping, we can become attuned to others, and we can literally feel when we are resonant (or discordant) with others.

Connecting to others is so important that it actually 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 can even calm brain activity during distress, 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 a simple hand massage reduced pain as well as provided longer pain free intervals in critically ill patients in a surgical intensive care unit.

Physical touch even has the power to lower heart rate, lower blood pressure, and calm respiratory rate. 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.

Medical studies are just starting to reveal the healing power of physical touch:

physical touch has the power to reduce painphysical touch has the power to prolong pain free intervals (even in critically ill patients)physical touch has the power to calm brain activity during distressphysical touch has the power to lower heart rate and blood pressurephysical touch has the power to calm respiratory rate

And all of these studies are just from touch the touch of a loved one. Connecting and attuning with each other, overlapping our heart energy fields with those that we love.

So when you fall in love, you are specifically overlapping your heart energy with your lovers heart energy. Your bodies naturally attune together. You grow in love as you grow in sync.

Energy matches, breath matches, you literally become one energy field, together. As you attune together, you feel connected. They become your favorite person, an extended part of yourself.

In addition to attuning our heart fields together with our loved ones, I think another reason human connection is so healing is literally because we physically ground 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, or 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 — donating much needed electrons. 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.

The earth outside does this for us all the time and it is one of the reasons I find the healing practice of grounding to be so centering. The earth literally protects our heart health through the power of its heartbeat: Schumann Resonance. On top of the many medical studies that show the heart benefits from grounding that I talked about at the beginning of this article, we can also use the healing power of grounding touch to support the health of your loved ones, even boost your sex life too… hop over here read this blog post I wrote for you last week:

Grounding Improves Your Relationship, Even Your Sex Life!

My original canvas painting Attuning. Prints available here (I would love to send one to your sweetie as a Valentine gift!)

4. A Heart Boost From Our Own Emotions

Because there is so much interconnection between your heart and your mind, you can use this information to enhance the longevity of your heart from so many angles… physically yes, but also through the power of our own emotions. You can literally feel this in your body, right here and right now, that you have the ability to boost your own heart health through your emotions. Have you ever sat, focusing on something that made you so happy that you literally felt your heart grow larger and larger and larger still? That’s what I painted in the canvas painting pictured above.

Have you ever felt that your chest was going to explode, your heart energy got so big?

Have you ever felt your heart vibration reach past your chest, past your body, reach into the space around, to the people around you, to the universe around you?

It feels so good, and it feels so good because it is the healthy state of being connected to all of the energy around you.

You are dropping the limited barriers of what defines *you* and reaching out to *all that is*… in this state, you are pure, positive joy. In this state, you have blown up all the barriers around your heart, the ones that you built to *protect you* that actually harm you… they are dissolved and meaningless.

You are greater than this one moment in time, this one body, this one lifetime.

Through your heart, you can expand past any problem, any limitation. Through your heart, you can connect to all that is physical and non-physical around you. Through your heart, you can *feel* the eternal connections that you can’t physically see with your eyes.

Your heart is an amazing electrically activated organ, designed to pump nutrition and health throughout your entire body. It’s designed to pump joy and love throughout your entire being. It’s entire function is dependent on it’s ability to translate energetic impulses into a functional push of the blood throughout your body.

But do not limit your heart to what it physically can do. Do not regard it as a piece of muscle designed to transport blood. Instead, really *feel* the entire purpose of it’s design. It is the one organ, more than any other, that connects your entire body together — infusing every single organ system with life giving nutrients. It reaches every tissue, every surface, every organ. Through it’s immense meshwork of vasculature, your heart is one of complete and utter connection.

Of expansion.

Physically expanding to reach every single cell in your body… and emotionally, expanding your life force from the core of you to the universe around you.

To strengthen and expand your feelings of health and joy, remember back to those experiences where you feel your heart expanding, and seek to find those more often.

I felt them most effortlessly as a new mom, holding my babies. I can bring back that feeling any time I wish by remembering what it was like to hold them in my arms. To love on them. To take care of them. To adore them.

Recall your own times when your have felt your heart swell and reach for that feeling as often as you can. In this state you are realizing that the walls you build around your body and mind are no longer helpful, but instead, are constricting.

This picture was taken over a fifteen years ago, and both my kids are now all grown up, one in college and one already graduated and living in a different state… yet when I sit in appreciation for my children I can literally still feel my heart pound against my chest just like it did when they were first born.

I feel it expanding through my entire body, then out of my body, pulsing into the universe and connecting me to a greater love. It is in these moments that I *know* I am tapped in to something more than just myself. And it is in these moments that I know my connection to my children is eternal.

Do what you can, today, to find a moment like this and savor it.

You have just found your heartsong.

Every moment you spend in that state, you spend in the state of pure and absolute health.

5. A Heart Boost From Self Compassion

You don’t have to connect with others to boost your heart health. As we’ve mentioned, connecting to the earth through the practice of grounding is incredibly heart healthy, releasing stress and trauma from your body is heart healthy, spending time with a pet is heart healthy, and even just practicing a little self compassion is heart healthy… and not one of those four practices needs to involve another human being at all.

A study on self compassion, published in 2021 in Health Psychology, found that folks who reported extending compassion to themselves during times of suffering not only had better psychological outcomes, but also protected their heart health. Researchers used ultrasound technology to look at participants carotid artery health and measured carotid artery IMT (a well documented measure of cardiac disease.) They found that participants who practiced self compassion actually had healthier IMT measurements, lower rates of subclinical cardiovascular disease and lower over all cardiac risk factors, even after adjusting for all other standard cardiac risk factors.

So today, consider protecting your heart health in many many ways. Through physical touch with loved ones, through spending time outside on our earth, through spending quality time with your fur babies, through practicing self compassion and through really sinking into your heart field — feeling it’s warmth and it’s expansion.

And if you are lucky enough this Valentines day to be near someone you love, take a few minutes to drop down into your heart space and literally feel their energy. Over time you will get incredibly good at attuning with your loved ones, even matching your breathing to theirs without effort, calming and centering them as well as yourself.

Loved ones protect our health and buffer us from stress, so let’s become acutely aware of the precious heart energy of those we love and cherish the time that we are lucky enough to overlap them.

xoxox, Laura Koniver MD

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Published on February 12, 2024 02:30

February 5, 2024

Grounding Improves Your Relationship, Even Boosts Your Sex Life (Re: Valentine’s Day!)

With Valentines Day coming up next week, I thought this might be the perfect time to talk about why my favorite holistic healing therapy of all time — grounding — can boost your partner’s health, even boosting their sex drive and fertility!

January 29, 2024

Sick Of Winter? Me Too. 3 Reasons You Are Going To Feel Better Soon

I’m sick of being cold.

I’m sick of the shorter darker days.

I’m craving to be outside and luckily this spring I have a whole line up of awesome free healing articles for you on my blog that will help you get outside and feeling the best you’ve ever felt. If someone has forwarded you today’s article, you can sign up right here to get one free article each week directly into your own inbox.

Today we are going to start with why I know you are going to instantly feel better soon, as spring is just around the corner. Let’s go:

3 Reasons You Will Feel Better This Spring

1. You’ll Hear Birds Returning Soon

Low levels of constant indoor noises is harming our health.

Even small noises are an issue. This is one of the reasons being stuck indoors all winter long sucks. It’s not just an airplane passing by or the occasional sound of construction, but the level of normal talking, phones ringing, the sounds of cars passing by on the street outside your window — all of these sounds impact your heart attack and stroke risk, and they all up your risk for metabolic disease too.

We are now aware that normal volumes of speaking and car sounds result in much more insidious health risks over time — compromising the health of your heart, of your brain, of your body. Not only is chronic manmade noise increasing your blood pressure, increasing inflammation in your arteries leading to heart attack and stroke, but it’s also increasing your risk of metabolic diseases and type two diabetes.

Because the disease burden of chronic noise is so directly linked to heart disease, high blood pressure and increased inflammation of the arteries, it’s important for clinicians to start treating noise pollution as a cardiac risk factor on par with smoking history, family history, age, blood pressure, and weight.

Here is a printable medical study you can take to your physician to get them to take noise pollution seriously in evaluating your true cardiovascular risk:

Environmental Noise & The Cardiovascular System (Medical Review)

Every 10 dBA increase in noise increases your heart attack risk by 6%, arterial calcification by 8%, and stroke risk by 14%… starting at only 50 dBA! This is why the World Health Organization has now lowered the noise pollution threshold to only 55 dBA.

So normal conversation (at 60 dBA) can, over time, contribute negatively to health issues… increasing both heart attack and stroke risk by 6% and 14% respectively.The normal sound of cars driving/traffic, doubles that — increasing heart attack and stroke risk by 12% and 28% respectively.Listening to a telephone ring repeatedly increases risk of heart attack and stroke by 18% and 42% respectively, and on and on.

Clearly, working in a high noise industry (like on an aircraft or in construction) is very hard on the body… this we already knew. What we didn’t know is having a job where you answer telephones, or working at a busy restaurant, or working a the mall, or any other environment with constant conversation and music playing adds to your cardiovascular risk as well.

Review your typical 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, you may want to consider wearing simple, effective ear protection. You can wear simple, soft, effective silicone ear devices to decrease irritating 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.

Calmer specifically helps reduce noises that causes stress and anxiety. They do this without reducing the volume so you don’t feel disconnected from the world, and you can hear what you need to hear clearly. The result is a natural way to minimize today’s constant barrage of environmental noise stressors which have a negative impact on our mental and physical well-being.

You can wear these during waking and sleeping hours. The help to relieve stress while at home, at work, at school, on commutes, while traveling, at restaurants, concerts, or all night long when you want to deeply relax. They are very discrete and you can still hear normal conversation, music, co-workers, etc… but at much safer volumes that protect your long term health and decrease your immediate stress.

When you wear them you not only protect your stress levels and ability to process communication in the short term, but protect your heart and brain and metabolism for the long term, too! Tell your friends, fellow students, co-workers, anyone who ask about them how wearing ear protection can actually decrease heart attack and stroke risk — they will be amazed!

Learn more about how these ingenious, simple ear protective devices work right here. They always go out of stock, so if you want to try out a pair, do so today as they just came back in stock this week.

Back to the health benefits of hearing the birds chirping this spring!

We’ve known for a while that animals improve our mood, health, and even boost longevity (I’ve blogged about how pets can do all of this and more for you right here) and that plants do much the same… decreasing depression rates, anxiety rates, and dramatically reducing stress.

But studies suggest that bird diversity is as important to life satisfaction as an income is. This study, published in Ecological Economics on Nov 2020, found that not only is happiness correlated with local bird diversity, but a 10% boost in bird diversity actually increases happiness to a similar magnitude as a 10% boost in income does!

Analyzing data from over 26,000 adults across 26 different countries, researchers evaluated biological diversity, socio-economic data and life satisfaction surveys to examine what makes the biggest impact on our long term happiness. It turns out, more than plants, more than large fauna, more than insect or tree diversity, bird diversity has the biggest impact on happiness… comparable in magnitude to that of income.

So as the world wakes up around us this spring, stop and look for birds. Or, even easier, just stop and listen. We can often hear birds even when we can’t see them.

Living in an urban area? There are still birds. Listen for them in early morning — sunrise is the best time to hear birds — or listen in the late afternoon hours.

Want to increase the amount of birds you see and hear?

Hang a bird feeder in a window, put some potted plants, a birdbath or a birdhouse on a porch, balcony or doorstep — even without a yard, you absolutely can attract more birds to you, even in urban settings. For inspiration, check out this blog post on Bryony Angells’s blog — it’s so adorable — her hummingbird feeders and more hung up on a 10th story balcony that get’s plenty of attention from local birds!

Want to give your body a double shoot of happiness and a health boost?

Combine grounding and birding (simply touch a leaf or a tree or a flower or a rock or a balde of grass and you will be grounded while you listen to the lovely birdsong) and you will be directly supporting your body’s function while simultaneously boosting your happiness. More on this below…

2. You’ll Be Getting Outside More

We’ve know for a long time (and honestly common sense and personal experience tells you this as well) that time spent outside lifts your spirits. And while you are out there, touch something that will get you grounded. A leaf on a tree, a metal sign post that is anchored into the ground, a flower starting to bloom, even the sidewalk. We already know that grounding (touching) the earth outside immediately impacts our brains.

In fact a double blind medical study published in 2015 found that participants who were grounded had measurable improvements in mood that were significantly higher than the sham-grounded participants.

This fantastic medical study, published in 2018, documents the brain wave shifts that happen near instantaneously, within milliseconds, recorded via an EEG (electroencephalogram) when the human body is grounded.

While grounding has been shown to support brain function by decreasing inflammation, boosting mood, and even shifting brain wave patterns, I believe there is also an exciting novel pathway that explains why grounding may even help improve mental clarity and decision making.

Published in the Journal Of Signal and Information Processing, scientists found that electrical activity from the earth makes a measurable synchronization in our cerebral cortex that allows for real-time coupling between the Schumann resonance and cerebral activity. The researchers postulate this activity is the exact amount of time, length of time, amplitude of signaling, and frequency of time required for a “ping” from the planet to our human brains to occur.

Researchers found that the frequency of this brain ping is once every 30 seconds, which is the brain’s short term memory decay time, indicating that the earth provides perfectly timed “micro-guidance”, re-orienting us in a subtle way that provides meaning and clarity but not long enough as to disrupt cognitive thought as we navigate daily life.

The duration of coherence was long enough to give rise to the possibility that the earth itself may send electrical signaling, or electrical information our brain, just long enough to allow an intuitive insight, or a flash of understanding to occur, but not long enough to disrupt our stream of consciousness.

In other words, it’s possible that the earth boosts our ability to receive orienting information without disrupting cognition.

Even more exciting, the highest cohesion between the earth’s Schumnn Resonance and our human brains is in the parahippocampal gyrus of the brain’s cerebral cortex — this in an area of the brain that provides spatial awareness and navigation. The parahypocamppal gyrus is responsible for accurate and meaningful interpretation of our surroundings, our environment, and for support in making life decisions in a contextually appropriate way.

This gives a very real explanation for why time spent in nature, on the earth, grounded, helps to give rise to a feeling of centeredness, helps to give a deeper perspective on our personal life’s journey, and may even help open our subconscious up to reframing and refocusing our life’s meaning through these environmental “pings” from our planet.

Have you ever spent time in nature when you are mulling over a big life decision, or feeling distraught, overwhelmed or confused, and then you suddenly have a deeper insight, a gut feeling, a pull, or an intuition that provides greater clarity?

These studies suggest a direct pathway for the earth to enhance and support our not only our daily decision making, but also connect to our deeper understanding and even our intuitive capabilities through earth-to-brain coherence.

I think of grounding as hitting a reset button, a chance for a pause that brings clarity into focus. By connecting with the earth, we can shift the brain from high strung beta waves to calming alpha wave patterns, decrease inflammation to help improve mood, even possibly help provide greater clarity or boost intuitive navigation in our lives, all naturally.

Want to hear me talk more deeply about this concept?

I have a 5 minute YouTube video for you here that you can watch (& share with all of your friends who enjoy the great outdoors!) as well as a shorter 2 minute TikTok about it here:

Grounding is an instantly accessible healing tool that can provide immediate support during periods of stress no matter where you are or what you are doing.

Whether it’s just a few deep breaths as you sit on a patch of grass, taking a walk through a local park, or standing outside at night looking up at the stars… grounding supports your mood and enhances brain function and provides you with inner clarity and a deeper understanding of meaning in your life.

So the next time you are feeling anxious, or having difficulty finding the clarity to make a big decision, or simply feel your mood dive, just go outside. Touch the earth and let nature support you immediately.

Live in a city?

You can get all of these benefits just by heading to a local park. Studies suggest that adding even a small green space to an urban setting boost health in a measurable and meaningful way. Published in Science Advances in October 2020, researchers found that by adding a small green play area to urban playgrounds, they boosted the immunity of the children using the play area.

Researchers in Finland added a very small, low cost green area in the corner of existing playgrounds in several different urban daycare centers. They added a little grass patch, some small plants and a planter box with garden crops the kids could tend to.

This is what one of the modifications looked like:

University of Helsinki

After only one month — just 28 days — not only did the children who played in this urban greenspace (an average of 90 minutes a day) have boosted immune markers in their blood (like boosted T cells) they also had an improved microbiota (both on the skin and in their gut biome) similar to children that lived and played in rural areas with large greenspaces and forests. These changes were statistically significant compared both to controls and to their own baseline measurements.

This study is just one example of how you don’t need to live in the country to experience improved health from nature. In fact, in my book The Earth Prescription, I go into great detail about how you can get grounded in urban settings through sidewalks, through touching a metal signpost, through simply touching a leaf on a bush or a tree — even one growing in a downtown city street — that’s all it takes to get grounded from head to toe and experience all of these health benefits.

3. You Might Plant Something This Spring

When you combine the fact that growing plants has been shown to have huge mental health benefits, longevity benefits, grounding benefits, nutritional benefits and more, you would be hard pressed to find another activity that supports your health from so many different angles and in so many ways as gardening does.

Even if you just grow a potted plant or two on a doorstep, there are tons of health benefits from interacting with plants… beyond all the benefits of grounding. It’s actually healing just to be around plants of any kind, even while ungrounded (for example, just seeing a plant through a window or adding a potted plant to a workspace can provide measurable health benefits!)

From a windowsill garden to a flower bed to a large plot of farmland, gardening is more than a way to grow flowers and food… it’s a lifestyle that can help ensure longevity and health.

Multiple studies have found that having access to a garden or other green space decreases depression rates, anxiety rates, and dramatically reduces stress. One study, called the MIND study (conducted in 2007) found that simply walking through a garden or greenway significantly improved mental health, while walking through areas without greenery (such as a shopping mall) significantly decreased mental health.

If simply walking through a green space impacts mental health so much, you can probably guess that hand’s on gardening would boost mental health even more. And you would be right. After an extensive systemic review of 22 studies looking at the health impact of gardening, the results of this meta-anylsis (published in Preventive Medicine Reports in 2016) found that gardening significantly reduced anxiety levels, anger levels and depression rates, decreased tension, stress levels and boosted mood… all while simultaneously improving life satisfaction and boosting over all quality of life. It’s absolutely incredible that simply tending to a garden can offer such a transformative life make-over, but it’s true!

Even indoor gardens can positively impact on your well being, so don’t discount the power of a windowsill garden or a simple house plant to support your health. An exciting study published in 2015 in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology, showed that simply adding plants to an indoor computer room not only boosted the worker’s productivity, it also significantly decreased their blood pressure.

Another study, published in 2007 in the American Society for Horticultural Science found that workers with potted plants in close proximity to them while working took less sick leave off from work and enjoyed increase productivity.

Being physically near plants is so impactful to our mental and physical health that it turns out, even just seeing a plant can significantly impact our recovery from stressful health events. We have such an innate need to be submersed in a world with foliage and plants around us that a study (published in 1984 in Science) found that patients who simply had a view of plants through a window while recovering from surgery had better moods, used less pain medications, had less surgical post-op complications, and even decreased their length of stay in the hospital.

Less pain during recovery and getting to go home sooner after surgery just by looking at plants? That’s an awesome health strategy that I wish more hospital and clinics would take into account when designing their architecture.

By now we’ve all heard of the importance of getting adequate Vitamin D… vitamin D protects so many different aspects of our health, from decreasing diabetes risk to boosting weight loss benefits to decreasing depression risk to preventing depression to predicting better cancer recovery to boosting fertility!

But does gardening actually increase Vitamin D levels?

Yes, says a study published in PLOS One in 2014. Researchers studied thousands of blood samples from patients who engaged in a variety of activities, and found that gardening and cycling were the only two activities that significantly decreased the risk of vitamin D deficiency… superior all other outdoor activities, including fishing and walking. Gardening boosted Vitamin D levels across all age groups, so it’s a fantastic pastime that you never need to outgrow, a hobby to get into for life!

A study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine in 2016 found that people who stayed indoors and avoided sun exposure actually had a shorter life span than those who spent time outside. Participants who avoided the sun had higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and pulmonary disease than those who had daily sun exposure. And the results were dose-specific… meaning that the benefits of increased life expectancy went up directly in correlation to the amount of sun exposure. Longer time in the sun = longer life span. That simple! Gardening is a fantastic way to routinely be inspired to go outside and get that sunshine and fresh air, two of natures best holistic health treatments.

Another reason that being a gardener might lengthen lifespan, besides getting more sunlight, is the increase in activity level. A fabulous study (published in 2019 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine) found that replacing just 30 minutes of sitting each day with light physical activity was enough to significantly decrease mortality rates. And again, here’s the clincher: the health benefit of replacing sedentary time with light physical activity was actually even stronger if you were older than 75 years old. So light activity decreased mortality rates in adults older than 75 years old even more than it decreased mortality rates in younger age groups. In other words, the older you are, the more that activity of any kind increases your lifespan.

No matter how big or small your space is, whether you have a windowsill garden, a potted houseplant or two, a few medicinal herbs grown on your porch, access to a community vegetable garden or pick-your-own orchard or berry farm, or are even blessed enough to have your own land, tending to plants and growing flowers or food is one of the most rewarding, most pleasurable activities that I can recommend.

Want more tips on how to reap the benefits of nature, even when living an urban lifestyle?

I shared the idea to go bird watching, gardening, and hundreds of other tips to boost your health outside this spring with you in my book: The Earth Prescription. I’m so excited to share it with you, and I’d love to sign a copy for you and send it directly from my hands to yours.

Order signed copies of The Earth Prescription on my website here.

Or, order it anywhere books are sold, including:

Order On Amazon Order On Barnes & Noble Order On Indiebound

To a blossoming spring that is right around the corner… hang in there, only a few more weeks to go!

xoxoxo, Laura Koniver MD

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Published on January 29, 2024 03:01

January 22, 2024

Too Cold To Exercise Or Ground Outside? This One Tip Fixes Both Of These Problems Together

Even in the winter, we have to get our circulation moving.

I love anything that boosts circulation because I know how crucial it is to get healing blood flow throughout your entire body… carrying much needed nutrients and oxygen to all the tissues and organ systems of your body.

So I’m a big fan of the health benefits of movement and exercise, as I’ve blogged for you here:

Try Not To Sit Still For More Than 2 Hours At A Time Today, Here’s Why Moving Your Body Helps Your Brain Function Better, Immediately.How To Discover Your Play Style, And Use It To Improve Your Health

Similarly, I am a big fan of the health benefits that come from the boosted circulation that grounding brings, as I talk about in these free healing articles I’ve written for you here:

How Grounding Helps Protect Your Cardiac Function For A Lifetime Grounding To Support Your Heart Health Grounding Immediately Supports Your Heart & Boosts Circulation

But lately it’s been way too cold for me to really feel excited about heading outside for a long walk, and I certainly can’t play tennis outside, or paddleboard, or any other outdoor exercise that I enjoy.

It’s also so cold that I can’t get too excited about grounding outside, unless I am using a grounding shoe sticker, grounding gloves, a grounding hiking stick, or any of other ways you can stay bundled up and still get grounded outside that I review for you here:

Everything You Need To Know About Sleeping Grounded This Winter My Favorite Grounding Shoes + A Dozen Ways To Ground Outside When It’s Cold

Now heat… oh I love heat.

Warm sunshine, hot showers, sauna, steam rooms, long baths, sleeping with a hot water bottle, massage…. it just feels intuitively right to get your blood flowing.

The best of these, with the most studied medical research showing the most positive health benefits is… sauna!

Sauna increases the circulation of blood all throughout your body — getting the blood pumping through your cardiovascular system, your muscles, your skin, your joints, your brain — so it makes sense that routine sauna has many of the same health benefits that exercise does.

So when the weather is too harsh outside, if you can find a local sauna to go to, you can feel confident that you are still boosting your health and longevity even without going on a run or cycling or whatever you may enjoy during warmer weather.

Medical studies have shown that folks who use a sauna two or more times a week have a significantly reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and death, and a reduced risk of all-cause mortality (meaning they died less from all causes put together) than folks who used a sauna once a week or less.

All the benefits of exercise without exercising:

Published in Evidence Based Complimentary & Alternative Medicine Journal, April 2018 , researchers review 40 studies that included almost 4,000 patients — so it was the largest study yet, a meta-analysis of all of the medical literature on dry sauna from 2000 to 2017. Researchers found overwhelming health benefits of routine sauna, including:

reduced risk of heart disease, heart attack and sudden cardiac deathlowered blood pressurelower risk of strokereduced risk of dementia and other neurocognitive changesreduced risk of pulmonary disease such as asthma and lung infections like influenzadecrease risk of rheumatologist and immune disordersdecrease in pain conductions such as arthritis and headachesdecreased risk of deathimproved quality of life

Looking at cognitive function yielded even more exciting results. Turns out, sauna not only lengthens lifespan but protects against dementia to preserve quality of life, too!

Published in Age and Ageing (Dec 8, 2016) researchers followed more than 2,300 patients for an average of 20.7 years, and found:

Patients who averaged 4 to 7 trips to the sauna a week were two-thirds less likely to develop dementia over the next 20 years (a 66% decrease in dementia)Patients were also two thirds less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimers Disease (AD) during the 20 year follow up (a 65% drop in AD diagnosis)This risk reduction was independent of any known risk factors, including body mass, age, smoking status, alcohol consumption or previous heart attack.

The bottom line is that sauna users enjoyed a 66% reduction in dementia risk of all types (including Alzheimer’s) from this very easy-to-enjoy lifestyle intervention.

It turns out, the circulation boost from sauna preserves memory function and protects us from developing memory diseases. So, not only does sauna help you live longer (avoiding heart disease and all-cause mortality) but it also helps you avoid dementia and memory loss disease to enjoy that longer life more!

Why is sauna so good?

Sauna raises whole body temperature which activates metabolic changes like a neutralizing inflammation, reducing oxidative stress, increase nitric oxide bioavailability, increased insulin sensitivity, and improved vasodilation.

In other words, raising the core body temperature and increasing circulation makes the benefits of sauna very similar to the benefits of exercise. So increased time in the sauna helps increase vascular perfusion of the brain, increasing endothelial function and reducing inflammation. And not just in your brain, but throughout your entire body, too, which is one of the reasons it’s so cardioprotective as well.

So if you can’t exercise (or, ahem, like me, don’t particularly love to do it in the cold winter months) then one good alternative is sauna.

Sauna is also a great idea for disabled or mobility-limited folks, who might find getting outside to exercise more challenging. Almost anyone can sauna and enjoy very similar longevity benefits as if they exercised!

Often, the folks that could benefit from exercise the most (like those recovering from cancer, those with metabolic and weight issues, those with high stress loads, those who must sit for long periods of time at work, those caretaking of others with very limited time away, those recovering from trauma, those with balance and gait issues, etc…) may find it hardest to participate in regular exercise.

So the answer to this is routine relaxing in a sauna to raise basal metabolic temperatures.

If you know someone who doesn’t have time to exercise routinely, someone who had mobility issues, someone who doesn’t have the energy to exercise, someone who is in recovery and doesn’t have the strength for exercise, someone who lives in such a cold harsh environment they are not likely to be outside for long… let them know about the healing benefits of sauna to supplement during the times when exercise is harder to come by.

Here is how I do it:

So several times a week, all winter long, I wake up and ask myself — is it warm enough to go on a nice long brisk walk for exercise outside? Is it warm enough to go ground outside? And if the answer is a resounding “NO!” on both counts, then I know where I’m headed… to my local YMCA that has a sauna that I can have unlimited access to 7 days a week.

Making it one of the least expensive holistic therapies I know of… less expensive than chiropractic care, less expensive than massage, even less expensive than acupuncture.

As an added bonus, I can use my cool down period to get outside in the fresh air and get grounded. Sauna to boost circulatory health and grounding to boost conductive health… that’s your win-win winter health care routine.

I head to my local YMCA and sit in the sauna for 10 – 15 minutes to reap very similar benefits to exercising, but without the risk of slipping on dangerous ice or feeling my lungs burn from the frigidly cold airThen immediately after my sauna session, I am warm enough to embrace grounding outside for a few blessed moments while I cool down.

Let me show you my routine right here:

Interested in giving sauna a try?

The recommended routine is to sauna at least once a week and up to three times a week, for a time period of at least 5 minutes and a maximum of 20 minutes.Hydrate before, during and after sauna.Be sure to cool down afterwards by grounding for several minutes in the fresh air outside.Touch the ground, or cement, the sidewalk, concrete, a tree, a bush, or a rock to get grounded. Take five minutes to breathe deeply, let your core body temperature normalize, let your body get a major health boost from grounding, and then dive back into your day knowing you powerfully protected your health.Don’t sauna if you have a fever, an active inflammatory condition like a rash or hives, or are intoxicated, and ask your physician if sauna is right for you if you have a serious cardiac issue or other health issues.

What type of sauna is best?

I get asked all the time which type of sauna is better for your health: traditional sauna or far-infrared sauna.

From a medical point of view, most of the research that has been conducted has been using traditional (hot stone or wood burning) types of saunas in countries around the world, like Finland, where sauna is a cultural norm and part of a weekly, if not daily, household routine.

But while the most research has been done on traditional sauna, some promising newer research has shown similar positive benefits from far-infrared saunas. For example, in the largest medical literature review to date looking at thousands of sauna participants in over 40 different studies many of the studies on cardiovascular disease and congestive heart failure used far-infrared saunas instead of traditional sauna.

Traditional saunas have been used for over two thousand years, so if you want to go with the safest, most researched option, stick with traditional sauna.

However, advocates for the newer, far-infrared saunas would point out that while far-infrared saunas haven’t been around as long, they require less heat to provide the same results because far-infrared waves penetrate more deeply into tissues. They are also generally less expensive and make the possibility of investing in an at-home sauna more accessible.

So if you find a traditional sauna is too uncomfortably hot for you, you might prefer to choose an infrared sauna, which reaches temperatures typically about 70 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than traditional saunas reach (roughly 120 degrees Fahrenheit for far-infrared as opposed to 190 degrees Fahrenheit for traditional sauna.)

But the best answer of all is that whatever sauna you are more likely to use routinely, and whichever one you have access to, is the best sauna of all!

Sauna + grounding is so pleasurable it just might be one health care routine you want to keep up all year long, well past when winter’s chill is over!

xoxoxo, Laura Koniver MD