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Jimi's Daily Health Articles

Rhianne

Diamond Contributor
Member For 2 Years
ECF Refugee
Here's something disturbing

Genetically Engineered Fish
iStock-1167663004.jpg

iStock.com/nickalbi
Another concern in the fish farming industry is the genetically engineered (GE) fish. At least 35 species of fish are currently being genetically engineered around the world. Some of these include trout, flounder, catfish, salmon, tilapia, and striped bass.

What does this mean? Many GE fish have been engineered to have a gene for growth hormones, which speeds up maturation and results in a fish getting bigger, faster. The economic benefit of doing this is that more fish, and larger fish, will be available to consumers faster. Other GE fish have been “improved” to be more tolerant to varying temperatures, resistant to diseases, and even to have larger muscles. The genes being used are often sourced from bacteria, mice, and other fish.

In November of 2015, AquaBounty Technologies produced a GE fish called the AquAdvantage Salmon, which grows twice as fast as regular salmon. The FDA approval for consumption caused quite an uproar from consumers, members of Congress, environmental groups, chefs, and restaurant owners.

What’s the big deal? For starters, the environmental dangers are significant, with great concern regarding what could happen to wild salmon populations if these GE fish escaped into the wild. In short, they could cross-breed. And with the competitive advantage of rapid growth, they could take over, and effectively eliminate wild non-GE salmon stocks in short order. As for human health impacts, these remain unknown since there haven’t been any studies conducted. But we do know that GE salmon are more susceptible to disease, and tend to receive larger amounts of antibiotics than other farm-raised fish.


:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:35 species:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:, WTF

Another genius idea from Bio Ag/BP. They are just so filled with hubris and greed! :crazy:
 

Jimi

Diamond Contributor
Member For 5 Years
It’s time to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.


You and I are about to tackle some common yet embarrassing digestive issues — the ones you google in secret but clam up about in conversations with even your closest friends, maybe even your own doctor.


Out loud, you may politely say “My digestion is off”. But what you’re really thinking is…

I’ve been constipated for days!



I’m so bloated, only sweatpants will fit!



Is this gassiness normal?

Somewhere between nutrition intake and exit, something is amiss. And these unpleasant signs are your body’s S.O.S.


Often times the reason is obvious — such as you ate dairy when you’re sensitive to lactose. Other times the culprit is not so easy to suss out.


Your digestive system is a sophisticated, complex and delicate network that involves...


6 hollow organs

3 solid organs

5 major hormones

3 digestive enzymes

1.5 liters of gastric acid

300-500 types of bacteria


And that’s not all.


Stretching from top (mouth) to bottom (anus), your gastrointestinal (GI) tract is a long, twisting tube for food processing that’s affected daily by your stress levels, amount of exercise, hormones, fiber intake and sleep – to name just a few.




In other words, your digestion operates like a symphony orchestra. And when it’s out of tune, the alarm will sound.


Let’s explore 3 common signs of digestive trouble and what you can do to help keep your belly healthy, happy and flat.

1) Feeling gassy


Flatulence is as uncomfortable as it is embarrassing.


Over 90% of intestinal gas is made up of five gases: Methane, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. They’re mostly the result of swallowing and digestion, as well as bacterial fermentation.


You may dislike passing gas — but you can’t avoid it:


It’s perfectly normal to have 10 to 20 wind discharges a day. Even if you eat healthy.


In fact, many pure and natural foods such as legumes, broccoli, onions, cabbage — and if you’re a strict keto follower — fats, contribute to flatulence.


But it’s not a bad thing. There are millions of good bacteria in the gut that feast on these hard-to-breakdown foods… and generate smelly gases in the process.


So while you can’t stop yourself from breaking wind, you can take measures to reduce production of flatus (yes, it’s the clinical term).


Probiotics are a good place to start.


You’ve probably heard of probiotics — the live cultures found in yogurt and kefir, and added to other foods to promote digestive health.


Probiotics are bacteria with benefits. These good bugs and microorganisms support a healthy digestive system, which is key to keeping flatulence in check.


In fact, studies show that increasing certain probiotic bacteria can help reduce the volume and frequency of gas.


As important as good bacteria are for gut health, don’t ignore prebiotics… that’s “pre” with an “e”.


Prebiotics FEED probiotics.


These nondigestible plant fibers help fertilize healthy gut bacteria and nourish the cells in your colon. Prebiotics are your microbiome’s favorite food.


And, they can help minimize flatulence by helping to balance gas-producing bacteria in the gut.



My favorite prebiotic foods are artichokes, asparagus and dandelion greens.

2) Bloated belly


What’s to blame for that suddenly puffy, uncomfortable, distended feeling in your stomach?


There may not be one culprit but many responsible for your rounded belly.


One of the most common is FODMAPs — fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols.


This is a term for foods that contain hard-to-digest plant compounds that cause the digestive system to react. FODMAPs include all of the foods I described above, plus many others such as honey and other sweeteners.


You learned that gas production is a normal result of digesting some foods. But if your body has too strong of a reaction, then it may result in increased pressure and bloat.


Taking a good quality probiotic supplement has been shown to help restore balance in the gut.


Your microbiome contains a gut code that’s unique to you. And it’s important to support the good bacteria that support your immune and gut health.


In fact, probiotics have an antioxidant effect on the body, which helps support digestive cells.


But if a flatter tummy is really important to you, look beyond probiotics to digestive enzymes.


The digestion journey includes many stops and assorted enzymes to break down macronutrients into smaller, usable components.


And, if you have health issues (such as IBS) that affect your ability to properly digest food, or your body does not produce enough enzymes, then you should consider taking digestive enzymes.


When your GI tract is in order, problems like bloating and excess gas tend to go away.

3) Straining to ‘go’


Constipation happens to everybody. Especially when you’re on keto.


But before we tackle the common complaint of constipation, you should first know what’s considered a normal frequency for having a bowel movement.


According to the Cleveland Clinic, normal can range from 3X a day to 3X a week.

How often you go can depend on diet, water intake, exercise and other lifestyle aspects.


There are many over-the-counter laxatives for instant relief. But I want to focus on how you can get to the root of the problem.


“Eat more fiber” is the typical advice given.


There’s merit to the prescription. When insoluble fiber moves down to the large intestine, it absorbs water and gets larger, which makes it easier to pass. But if you don’t get a steady amount of fiber regularly, the process takes much longer.


The ketogenic diet, for all the health-transforming benefits it can deliver, comes with its challenges. And constipation is one of them.


Empowering your body to burn fat for fuel requires that you significantly reduce its main fuel source: carbohydrates.


And when grains, fruit and starchy vegetables go away from your diet, so does a lot of fiber.


The good news is you can do something about it.


The first place to start is your selection of non-starchy veggies. Load up on prebiotic fiber found in artichokes and asparagus, which nourish good bacteria and support digestion.


Lychee fruit is also a strong supporter of digestion and delivers plant fiber to help keep things moving.


In addition to prebiotic fiber, probiotics can help ease constipation.


You’ve probably heard of live cultures added to kefir, yogurt and other gut health foods. Well, there’s significant evidence that probiotics can increase the number of weekly bowel movements and make the “go” easier and more comfortable.

Prebiotics. Probiotics. Digestive enzymes… are they right for you?


You learned about the trinity of digestive health.


Together, these three substances have the power to help reduce three of the most common gastrointestinal complaints.


I’m often asked which one I believe is the MOST important.

This is an unfair question.


Because they work synergistically to help maintain a healthy digestive environment. They may perform different functions — but each one is as important as the other.


This reply often leads to another question… “How do I get all three?”


If you don’t often experience any of these digestive troubles, then keep doing what you’re doing. You’re probably getting the proper balance of prebiotics, probiotics and digestive enzymes through your food and lifestyle choices, and producing them normally.
 

Jimi

Diamond Contributor
Member For 5 Years

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Jimi

Diamond Contributor
Member For 5 Years
Dirty Blood
No, I don’t mean tribal warfare or family disputes. I mean blood for transfusions that are filthy. Disease-ridden!

It’s something the US specializes in: getting blood from students, tramps and druggies for a few dollars and then selling it to the rest of the world at a huge profit, on the understanding it’s a quality-controlled product, WHICH IT IS NOT.

My own dear father was killed by this medical negligence and commercial greed. He was a hemophiliac (the bleeding disease). He needed a transfusion because his blood would not clot. He needed factor VIII enriched (this was nearly 30 years ago, research has moved on since), which came from the USA. The best there is, you might think. Yeah, but the blood included lots of Hep C viruses. Nobody had bothered to check.

So he “caught” Hep C, without any mistake or lifestyle indiscretion, and died as a result. It was sad to see his liver ruined and one day he just exsanguinated (bled out) when liver cirrhosis caused the blood vessels around the esophagus to rupture. I drove like the furies to see him before he left this earth. But I was denied. He was dead by the time I got an hour down the freeway. It was another 5 hours before I finally reached the hospital. They couldn’t resuscitate him.

And then I was reading in my MENSA (high IQ club) magazine, only today, that Isaac Asimov, the brilliant science fiction writer and futurist, died of AIDS because he had received a filthy blood transfusion loaded with HIV. Nothing changes. We lost a very great intellect at that time.

mail

Isaac Asimov

Caffeine Transfusion
So I might as well keep going in the same grumpy vein! Ha ha!

You'd think donor blood ought to be perfectly pure, but a study from Oregon State University showed there are a lot of surprise substances in donor blood. They looked at 18 bags of blood and discovered caffeine in all the samples, as well as traces of cough medicine and anti-anxiety drugs in many of them, too.

The analysis was made as part of a study into how botanical dietary supplements and other drugs can interact together in the body, using mass spectrometry to identify the chemical composition of the molecules in the blood samples.

I presume they were trying to take another swipe at holistic medicine and how “dangerous” it is, because what the scientists set out to do was identify how dietary supplements might have adverse effects when they interact with existing prescriptions. Of course the problem would be the dietary supplements, not the damned meds, you can be sure!

Anyway, the team ended up discovering how our lifestyles cause changes that live on in the samples when we donate our bodily fluids. Ugh!

Based on this sample, we're so keen on coffee, tea, chocolate, soda, and energy drinks that caffeine and sugar are literally running in our veins.

"But the other drugs being in there could be an issue for patients, as well as posing a problem for those of us doing this type of research,” says pharmacologist Luying Chen, from Oregon State University, “Because it's hard to get clean blood samples."

mail

Besides the caffeine, which appeared in ALL the samples, 13 of the samples showed the presence of alprazolam, the anti-anxiety medicine sold under the name Xanax. It’s dreadful stuff and nobody should take it, never mind get it unknowingly, so get whacked mentally, without realizing where the horrible feelings came from.

Meanwhile, eight of the samples had traces of the over-the-counter cough medicine dextromethorphan.

As Chen says, this causes complications for blood transfusions as well as for medical research on blood samples – because researchers might not be starting from a clean state very often.

However, the team was able to successfully prove the effectiveness of their technique for measuring the presence of drugs in blood samples. That should make it easier to figure out how botanicals – natural products with drug-like activities – affect other compounds in the bloodstream.

"It's not straightforward or necessarily predictable, thus the need for methods to look for these interactions," says pharmacologist Richard van Breemen, from Oregon State University. "The odd thing in this case was finding all the tainted blood."

You need to get real van Breeman: transfusion blood is dirty blood, period.

In the end the team behind the study had to enlist the help of two volunteers who promised to abstain from eating or drinking anything with caffeine before their blood was taken as a sample. That gave them a baseline.

The number of samples in this case wasn't very big at all, so it's not comprehensive proof that caffeine is proliferating through blood donation bags worldwide. But it poses an interesting question on what exactly might be present in donated blood, whether it's being used for medical treatments or for further research.

"Another thing to consider is that we found drugs that we just happened to be looking for in doing the drug testing – how many others are in there too that we weren't even testing for?" says van Breemen.

A lot Buddy!

By amazing serendipity, as I was writing this very piece, one subscriber asked me to do a piece on the pros and cons of donating blood. That’s a different evaluation, of course, from the hazards of receiving blood.

Basically men should donate blood regularly. Otherwise we tend to build up too much iron (hemoglobin). Indeed, that may be one of the reasons why men don’t live as long as women on average (iron is a surprisingly toxic free radical).

For women, it depends on their menses. If you lose a lot regularly, it still won’t make you seriously deficient to donate blood occasionally. But maybe do it less frequently: once or twice a year, instead of monthly or quarterly.

I can’t be a blood donor because I had glandular fever and hepatitis when a teenager. That was rough to think back on!

Just take care of yourselves out there and remember my motto: if you want to be healthy and life long, stay away from doctors and hospitals! Just make sure you never need a blood transfusion and you’ll be OK!
 

Jimi

Diamond Contributor
Member For 5 Years
Health is not just an external journey. To be truly healthy, you must dedicate time to turning inwards. In a traditional sense, the word healing simply means to return to wholeness. This is a time to acknowledge the many forms of health and healing. Sometimes the most magical way to return to wholeness is to tap into the spiritual side of health.

One pivotal way to do that is to examine the grievances and resentments you’re holding onto that might be playing into how you feel emotionally and physically.

Let’s look at how this works...

Many people don't realize that as human beings, we have a tendency to hold onto resentment. Somebody says something to you that upsets you -- and you hold onto it.

But just imagine, every time that person says something to you or does not live up to your expectations, you have a certain negative feeling that you hold onto. Over time, this resentment, this anger all builds up.

Now, instead of just not being happy with someone, there's actually subconscious deep resentment that is basically festering in your system.

This deep resentment is something you want to address as it can have both physical and emotional repercussions. In some cases, this built up negative emotions can cause massive blockages. According to many spiritual healing traditions, the soul of illness can often come down to anger, resentment, lack of forgiveness, and negative karma.

This isn’t brought up for you to beat yourself up. I’m mentioning it here to bring it to your attention because there is something you can do about it.

You can still commit acts of forgiveness, you can always improve positive karma through acts of service, and you can continue do the inner work necessary to resolve anger, resentment, and negative emotions.

A simple way to start working on forgiveness is to reflect on grievances as a way to release the past and move into the future clean and clear.

Consider this: we are all in the process of evolving and growing. In this process of being human, we have been hurt by others, but if we look at things fairly, it is also likely that we have incidentally hurt others too.

To examine this deeper, you might ask yourself questions like:

-> Who have I not forgiven?

-> Who do I need to receive forgiveness from?

-> Where have I done things inappropriately because I didn’t know any better at that time of my life?

-> Why have I called in this injury or illness?

Truthfully, there aren’t always clear answers to these questions, and that is okay. The value isn’t in the answers. It’s in the act of contemplation. Sometimes we will never know the answers to these questions, in the same way my Dad never knew the positive ripple effect of his cancer.
 

inspects

Squonkamaniac
Senior Moderator
VU Donator
Diamond Contributor
Member For 5 Years
Dirty Blood
No, I don’t mean tribal warfare or family disputes. I mean blood for transfusions that are filthy. Disease-ridden!

It’s something the US specializes in: getting blood from students, tramps and druggies for a few dollars and then selling it to the rest of the world at a huge profit, on the understanding it’s a quality-controlled product, WHICH IT IS NOT.

My own dear father was killed by this medical negligence and commercial greed. He was a hemophiliac (the bleeding disease). He needed a transfusion because his blood would not clot. He needed factor VIII enriched (this was nearly 30 years ago, research has moved on since), which came from the USA. The best there is, you might think. Yeah, but the blood included lots of Hep C viruses. Nobody had bothered to check.

So he “caught” Hep C, without any mistake or lifestyle indiscretion, and died as a result. It was sad to see his liver ruined and one day he just exsanguinated (bled out) when liver cirrhosis caused the blood vessels around the esophagus to rupture. I drove like the furies to see him before he left this earth. But I was denied. He was dead by the time I got an hour down the freeway. It was another 5 hours before I finally reached the hospital. They couldn’t resuscitate him.

And then I was reading in my MENSA (high IQ club) magazine, only today, that Isaac Asimov, the brilliant science fiction writer and futurist, died of AIDS because he had received a filthy blood transfusion loaded with HIV. Nothing changes. We lost a very great intellect at that time.

mail

Isaac Asimov

Caffeine Transfusion
So I might as well keep going in the same grumpy vein! Ha ha!

You'd think donor blood ought to be perfectly pure, but a study from Oregon State University showed there are a lot of surprise substances in donor blood. They looked at 18 bags of blood and discovered caffeine in all the samples, as well as traces of cough medicine and anti-anxiety drugs in many of them, too.

The analysis was made as part of a study into how botanical dietary supplements and other drugs can interact together in the body, using mass spectrometry to identify the chemical composition of the molecules in the blood samples.

I presume they were trying to take another swipe at holistic medicine and how “dangerous” it is, because what the scientists set out to do was identify how dietary supplements might have adverse effects when they interact with existing prescriptions. Of course the problem would be the dietary supplements, not the damned meds, you can be sure!

Anyway, the team ended up discovering how our lifestyles cause changes that live on in the samples when we donate our bodily fluids. Ugh!

Based on this sample, we're so keen on coffee, tea, chocolate, soda, and energy drinks that caffeine and sugar are literally running in our veins.

"But the other drugs being in there could be an issue for patients, as well as posing a problem for those of us doing this type of research,” says pharmacologist Luying Chen, from Oregon State University, “Because it's hard to get clean blood samples."

mail

Besides the caffeine, which appeared in ALL the samples, 13 of the samples showed the presence of alprazolam, the anti-anxiety medicine sold under the name Xanax. It’s dreadful stuff and nobody should take it, never mind get it unknowingly, so get whacked mentally, without realizing where the horrible feelings came from.

Meanwhile, eight of the samples had traces of the over-the-counter cough medicine dextromethorphan.

As Chen says, this causes complications for blood transfusions as well as for medical research on blood samples – because researchers might not be starting from a clean state very often.

However, the team was able to successfully prove the effectiveness of their technique for measuring the presence of drugs in blood samples. That should make it easier to figure out how botanicals – natural products with drug-like activities – affect other compounds in the bloodstream.

"It's not straightforward or necessarily predictable, thus the need for methods to look for these interactions," says pharmacologist Richard van Breemen, from Oregon State University. "The odd thing in this case was finding all the tainted blood."

You need to get real van Breeman: transfusion blood is dirty blood, period.

In the end the team behind the study had to enlist the help of two volunteers who promised to abstain from eating or drinking anything with caffeine before their blood was taken as a sample. That gave them a baseline.

The number of samples in this case wasn't very big at all, so it's not comprehensive proof that caffeine is proliferating through blood donation bags worldwide. But it poses an interesting question on what exactly might be present in donated blood, whether it's being used for medical treatments or for further research.

"Another thing to consider is that we found drugs that we just happened to be looking for in doing the drug testing – how many others are in there too that we weren't even testing for?" says van Breemen.

A lot Buddy!

By amazing serendipity, as I was writing this very piece, one subscriber asked me to do a piece on the pros and cons of donating blood. That’s a different evaluation, of course, from the hazards of receiving blood.

Basically men should donate blood regularly. Otherwise we tend to build up too much iron (hemoglobin). Indeed, that may be one of the reasons why men don’t live as long as women on average (iron is a surprisingly toxic free radical).

For women, it depends on their menses. If you lose a lot regularly, it still won’t make you seriously deficient to donate blood occasionally. But maybe do it less frequently: once or twice a year, instead of monthly or quarterly.

I can’t be a blood donor because I had glandular fever and hepatitis when a teenager. That was rough to think back on!

Just take care of yourselves out there and remember my motto: if you want to be healthy and life long, stay away from doctors and hospitals! Just make sure you never need a blood transfusion and you’ll be OK!
This is somewhat troubling.......:devil:
 

Rhianne

Diamond Contributor
Member For 2 Years
ECF Refugee
Dirty Blood
No, I don’t mean tribal warfare or family disputes. I mean blood for transfusions that are filthy. Disease-ridden!

It’s something the US specializes in: getting blood from students, tramps and druggies for a few dollars and then selling it to the rest of the world at a huge profit, on the understanding it’s a quality-controlled product, WHICH IT IS NOT.

My own dear father was killed by this medical negligence and commercial greed. He was a hemophiliac (the bleeding disease). He needed a transfusion because his blood would not clot. He needed factor VIII enriched (this was nearly 30 years ago, research has moved on since), which came from the USA. The best there is, you might think. Yeah, but the blood included lots of Hep C viruses. Nobody had bothered to check.

So he “caught” Hep C, without any mistake or lifestyle indiscretion, and died as a result. It was sad to see his liver ruined and one day he just exsanguinated (bled out) when liver cirrhosis caused the blood vessels around the esophagus to rupture. I drove like the furies to see him before he left this earth. But I was denied. He was dead by the time I got an hour down the freeway. It was another 5 hours before I finally reached the hospital. They couldn’t resuscitate him.

And then I was reading in my MENSA (high IQ club) magazine, only today, that Isaac Asimov, the brilliant science fiction writer and futurist, died of AIDS because he had received a filthy blood transfusion loaded with HIV. Nothing changes. We lost a very great intellect at that time.

mail

Isaac Asimov

Caffeine Transfusion
So I might as well keep going in the same grumpy vein! Ha ha!

You'd think donor blood ought to be perfectly pure, but a study from Oregon State University showed there are a lot of surprise substances in donor blood. They looked at 18 bags of blood and discovered caffeine in all the samples, as well as traces of cough medicine and anti-anxiety drugs in many of them, too.

The analysis was made as part of a study into how botanical dietary supplements and other drugs can interact together in the body, using mass spectrometry to identify the chemical composition of the molecules in the blood samples.

I presume they were trying to take another swipe at holistic medicine and how “dangerous” it is, because what the scientists set out to do was identify how dietary supplements might have adverse effects when they interact with existing prescriptions. Of course the problem would be the dietary supplements, not the damned meds, you can be sure!

Anyway, the team ended up discovering how our lifestyles cause changes that live on in the samples when we donate our bodily fluids. Ugh!

Based on this sample, we're so keen on coffee, tea, chocolate, soda, and energy drinks that caffeine and sugar are literally running in our veins.

"But the other drugs being in there could be an issue for patients, as well as posing a problem for those of us doing this type of research,” says pharmacologist Luying Chen, from Oregon State University, “Because it's hard to get clean blood samples."

mail

Besides the caffeine, which appeared in ALL the samples, 13 of the samples showed the presence of alprazolam, the anti-anxiety medicine sold under the name Xanax. It’s dreadful stuff and nobody should take it, never mind get it unknowingly, so get whacked mentally, without realizing where the horrible feelings came from.

Meanwhile, eight of the samples had traces of the over-the-counter cough medicine dextromethorphan.

As Chen says, this causes complications for blood transfusions as well as for medical research on blood samples – because researchers might not be starting from a clean state very often.

However, the team was able to successfully prove the effectiveness of their technique for measuring the presence of drugs in blood samples. That should make it easier to figure out how botanicals – natural products with drug-like activities – affect other compounds in the bloodstream.

"It's not straightforward or necessarily predictable, thus the need for methods to look for these interactions," says pharmacologist Richard van Breemen, from Oregon State University. "The odd thing in this case was finding all the tainted blood."

You need to get real van Breeman: transfusion blood is dirty blood, period.

In the end the team behind the study had to enlist the help of two volunteers who promised to abstain from eating or drinking anything with caffeine before their blood was taken as a sample. That gave them a baseline.

The number of samples in this case wasn't very big at all, so it's not comprehensive proof that caffeine is proliferating through blood donation bags worldwide. But it poses an interesting question on what exactly might be present in donated blood, whether it's being used for medical treatments or for further research.

"Another thing to consider is that we found drugs that we just happened to be looking for in doing the drug testing – how many others are in there too that we weren't even testing for?" says van Breemen.

A lot Buddy!

By amazing serendipity, as I was writing this very piece, one subscriber asked me to do a piece on the pros and cons of donating blood. That’s a different evaluation, of course, from the hazards of receiving blood.

Basically men should donate blood regularly. Otherwise we tend to build up too much iron (hemoglobin). Indeed, that may be one of the reasons why men don’t live as long as women on average (iron is a surprisingly toxic free radical).

For women, it depends on their menses. If you lose a lot regularly, it still won’t make you seriously deficient to donate blood occasionally. But maybe do it less frequently: once or twice a year, instead of monthly or quarterly.

I can’t be a blood donor because I had glandular fever and hepatitis when a teenager. That was rough to think back on!

Just take care of yourselves out there and remember my motto: if you want to be healthy and life long, stay away from doctors and hospitals! Just make sure you never need a blood transfusion and you’ll be OK!

Good article. And that’s why I try not to go to the doctor ever, even if my family gets pissed off at me. But not my dh, so it’s okay!

Really scary.
 

Rhianne

Diamond Contributor
Member For 2 Years
ECF Refugee
Health is not just an external journey. To be truly healthy, you must dedicate time to turning inwards. In a traditional sense, the word healing simply means to return to wholeness. This is a time to acknowledge the many forms of health and healing. Sometimes the most magical way to return to wholeness is to tap into the spiritual side of health.

One pivotal way to do that is to examine the grievances and resentments you’re holding onto that might be playing into how you feel emotionally and physically.

Let’s look at how this works...

Many people don't realize that as human beings, we have a tendency to hold onto resentment. Somebody says something to you that upsets you -- and you hold onto it.

But just imagine, every time that person says something to you or does not live up to your expectations, you have a certain negative feeling that you hold onto. Over time, this resentment, this anger all builds up.

Now, instead of just not being happy with someone, there's actually subconscious deep resentment that is basically festering in your system.

This deep resentment is something you want to address as it can have both physical and emotional repercussions. In some cases, this built up negative emotions can cause massive blockages. According to many spiritual healing traditions, the soul of illness can often come down to anger, resentment, lack of forgiveness, and negative karma.

This isn’t brought up for you to beat yourself up. I’m mentioning it here to bring it to your attention because there is something you can do about it.

You can still commit acts of forgiveness, you can always improve positive karma through acts of service, and you can continue do the inner work necessary to resolve anger, resentment, and negative emotions.

A simple way to start working on forgiveness is to reflect on grievances as a way to release the past and move into the future clean and clear.

Consider this: we are all in the process of evolving and growing. In this process of being human, we have been hurt by others, but if we look at things fairly, it is also likely that we have incidentally hurt others too.

To examine this deeper, you might ask yourself questions like:

-> Who have I not forgiven?

-> Who do I need to receive forgiveness from?

-> Where have I done things inappropriately because I didn’t know any better at that time of my life?

-> Why have I called in this injury or illness?

Truthfully, there aren’t always clear answers to these questions, and that is okay. The value isn’t in the answers. It’s in the act of contemplation. Sometimes we will never know the answers to these questions, in the same way my Dad never knew the positive ripple effect of his cancer.

Really nice one, Jimi. And sometimes you have to forgive and release someone, so there’s no ties between you.
 

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