Balance In Your Body
& Depression
Life is a series of choices, from when we are babies and all the way
through to old age. We have available to us hundreds of choices for
our health and life. When our bodies are in balance
physically, mentally and spiritually, choices come easily and positively. When
we get out of balance, it becomes hard to make the right choice.
Small continual good choices will lead us back to health and balance.
Although food would seem to be something our body requires on a
physical level to build new cells, to give us energy, to ease hunger, our
foods are most important to feed our brain and our heart so we can
maintain life. The choices we make of which foods we put in our
bodies sets the basis for physical, mental and spiritual health.
Every single moment of every single day from the moment of our birth,
our bodies strive for life – long, energetic, healthy, happy life.
We are beautifully designed to live and to live fully! (Thank you
God!) We are for sure the most sophisticated “vehicle” on this
planet. Every single moment we are building bone cells, muscle
cells, liver cells, pancreas cells, brain cells, skin cells and so on.
In a one-year time frame we rebuild and replace every single cell in our
bodies. The catch here is, what quality of raw materials are we
putting in while we are building all these cells?
When we eat food that is not recognizable by the human body, our bodies
have to do their work anyway so have to use up our reserves. From
the moment of birth we have reserves set aside in a “bank” which our
body is meant to use when we are in a crisis such as when we get a cold or
have the flu, in an accident when extra healing is needed, when we diet or
refuse to eat, or when we choose poor quality foods. When we eat poorly
continuously, we overdraw our “bank” dangerously. These reserves
are also meant for when we need to do major bone building, teeth building,
brain building, etc. When we do not have enough minerals for
building our bones or teeth, our body sends us a powerful message which we
call “pain.” When our legs burn, or our backaches, or our teeth
are highly sensitive and hurt us, these are all messages from our body
that it does not have enough raw materials to work with. We are so
incredibly designed that we are given “pain” as a message to alert us
that something is out of balance and needs to be corrected.
There are several essential raw
materials and building blocks for life:
1.
Water – pure and clean (not chlorinated)
2.
Minerals and vitamins
3.
Essential fatty acids
4. Enzymes from living plants
5. Friendly bacteria (probiotics)
6. Plant based proteins
These building blocks are needed every single day of our lives.
When any, or worse yet, all of these are missing, we get off balance and
our brain will give us a strong message by slowing the entire body down
and we will experience tiredness – the very first sign of imbalance or
in other words, disease.
Often when we experience tiredness, we put something into our bodies
to give us energy – this is the correct thing to do – but we often
make the wrong choice here. A good choice would be several of
the above listed essential foods; however, we often choose caffeine from
pop, coffee, chocolate or sugar. Although it perks us up quickly and
temporarily, the body for rebuilding or health definitely, will not use
it. In fact, it only makes us think we have more energy, when in
reality it is doing major harm to our cells and our brain. This
is when depression creeps in, another sign from our bodies that we
need better choices and nutrition.
When most of the foods that are going into our mouths are “acidic”
in nature, they have to be continually neutralized with minerals from our
bones and muscles. All packaged, processed, fast, and micro waved,
deep fried foods are acidic. All animal products including meats,
fish, dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt) are acidic. Only fruits and
vegetables are alkaline and only alkaline foods neutralize acidity.
External sources of acidity are smoking, drugs, medications, heavy
exercise, environmental toxins from shampoos, skin care products, etc. and
stress which is the biggest cause of acidity and “dis-ease” in our
bodies. A balance of 70% alkaline and 30% acidic in our bodies and
in our meals is ideal.
When we become deficient in minerals because of too much acidity
developing in our bodies, we become agitated, nervous, “stressed out,
tired, can't deal with life, or in other words, depressed.
Minerals, along with enzymes, are the essence of life in our bodies and in
every single cell of our bodies. Minerals and enzymes come from
plants and that is how we are meant to get them.
What happens is a very vicious cycle: Our bodies
strive for life and health, we choose not to feed true whole foods to
ourselves, our bodies weaken and do the best they can, we continue to
choose poor nutrition, our bodies weaken further. Eventually, our
bodies get the message we do not value ourselves enough so they decide we
must not want to live. This is when depression really gets hold of
us.
There are two main types of depression: 1) External
which is caused by life circumstances such as a relationship break up, an
injury, a loved pet dies, a good friend moves away, a divorce in the
family. This type of depression, although devastating at the time,
generally passes, we mourn and we heal and we become stronger people.
2) Internal which is caused by what we choose to put in our mouths
AND by chemical imbalances in the body which could be caused from
injuries OR from what we choose to put in our mouths.
External depression can become internal if our bodies do not have the
resources available to help us recover and bounce back to life. Life
is challenging and we all are faced with huge challenges from family,
friends, school, work, and so on and how we deal with these challenges and
recover from them is dependent entirely on how healthy we are internally.
So, what is the answer to avoid or reverse depression?
It is critical to get the basics of nutrition into our bodies.
Often we can do this through “baby steps” of making small better
choices each day.
One of the most important things to do is to
drink water – not
chlorinated tap water which will cause further damage in the body – pure
clean water, preferably filtered or distilled. We need at least half
our body weight in ounces in pure water each day. If you weight 100
pounds you should drink 50 ounces of water per day. Then we need
more for every acidic food or body stress situation (exercise) we add.
I cannot ever stress enough how important good water is for us.
Next, we have to have very essential, Omega 3 and 6 good fats.
These can be obtained from many sources – the simplest is to take a
supplement either in the form of a capsule or in the actual oil, adding it
to your morning shake, drizzling it over steamed veggies, a salad or
rice/pasta, or taking it by the spoon. And, a real bonus here, good oils
and fats feed our skin and make our skin beautiful and healthy. You
can also obtain these good fats from avocados, ground flax seeds, raw nuts
and seeds, almond or peanut butter, soy nuts, dark green veggies, deep
water fish, extra virgin olive oil, flax seed oil, and other pure properly
processed oils.
Let me just say something here about fats and oils. In today's
society we have become “fat free” in our search for losing weight.
Interestingly enough, the quickest way to gain weight is to eat these
“fat free” foods as they are all high in sugar. Because of the
amount of “bad fats” we get from fast foods, processed foods, packaged
foods, we have to give our bodies some ammunition in the form of “good
fats” to deal with all these bad fats. Omega 3 and 6 good fats are
the answer. You want to lose weight, improve your skin, be smarter!
Take your Omegas every day!!! They also reduce cravings as your
brain is fed very essential fats.
Next, is vitamins and minerals. Vitamins
are organic substances that are essential for life. They are found
in food and derived from both animals and plants. Vitamins are so
called micronutrients, because the amounts
that are required for normal functioning are minuscule, yet vitamins
perform very important tasks. Among other things, vitamins help us
digest our food, fight infection, and manufacture new cells. With rare
exceptions, vitamins cannot be manufactured by the body, and must be
obtained from food or supplements. Vitamins help our bodies operate at
peak efficiency.
Since most people in today's hurried
world don't have time to eat regular nutritious meals, it is important to
supplement our diet with vitamins. It is especially important that we
receive the highest quality product in a form that will be quickly and
easily absorbed. . And it is difficult to obtain the
necessary vitamins and minerals from food because of mineral-deficient
soils that are common throughout the world today. It only takes 10 years
of intensive farming to exhaust the minerals in any tract of land. The
depletion of necessary nutrients by cooking and processing living foods
adds to the difficulty in obtaining vital minerals and vitamins from our
food. Severe vitamin deficiencies will result in serious
illnesses. Even a modest deficiency in certain vitamins, can have a
profound effect on health.
Vitamins are important, but minerals are the catalyst for everything in
our bodies. What this means is that minerals ignite every action in
our cells and bodies. No vitamin can work without the proper
minerals. Minerals -
are naturally occurring chemical elements found throughout the
human body in the bones, muscles, teeth, blood and nerve cells.
Minerals help to maintain a normal water balance within the body,
regulating the breakdown of sugar and carbohydrates (chromium), helps form
red blood cells and maintain nerve tissue (cobalt), strengthening bones
and teeth (fluoride), regulating the thyroid (iodine), stimulate a healthy
immune system (iron), fighting cancer cells (manganese), essential for
protein synthesis and a healthy nervous system (molybdenum), destroying
free radicals with vitamin E (selenium), antibiotic capabilities (sulfur),
helping wounds heal, production of white blood cells (zinc).
Minerals are involved in virtually every activity from immune function to
the beating of our hearts.
Also critical for overall health are enzymes and friendly bacteria.
Lets discuss enzymes first. We are mainly concerned about two kinds
of enzymes – digestive and metabolic. Digestive enzymes
help break things down in our body and metabolic are the building blocks
of every cell in our bodies. When we have low digestive enzymes, our
miraculous body can change our metabolic enzymes into digestive enzymes so
that the big dinner we ate can be digested. However, that means we
are depleting our very essential metabolic enzymes, which give us life.
The more we do this the more we age and get far out of balance and this
allows depression and disease. Also, when we do not have enough
digestive enzymes, our body because it is so intelligent, will produce
something called candida yeast to break down excess undigested foods,
toxins, non-foods etc. This overabundance of candida can give us all
kinds of unpleasant symptoms, which also can lead to depression.
Friendly bacteria-is the bacteria that we are supposed to have
in our bodies to help with digestion and keeping bad bacteria under
control. Medication, antibiotics, drugs, sugar, chlorine, pop,
etc. will all kill friendly bacteria so if we are consuming too many
harmful foods, our body never has a chance to rebuild its friendly
bacteria. A product called acidophilus is friendly bacteria and is
available from health food stores. It is also called a probiotic,
which is the opposite of antibiotic. It does the same work as an
antibiotic but it is supportive of the body rather than killing all
bacteria in the body.
Keeping all of the following items to a
minimum or avoiding entirely will encourage and promote rapid healing and
bringing the body back to balance:
1) White sugar and flour, including all wheat (gluten is linked
to depression)
2) All soda pops and
carbonated beverages
(deplete
us rapidly of nutrients and strength)
3) Caffeine, alcohol,
nicotine
4) Foods additives such as
MSG, dyes, artificial sweeteners
(well
disguised on labels)
5) Processed dairy products
(unless you can obtain free range organic)
6) Animal products (unless
you can obtain free range organic)
7) Chemicals such as
chlorine, drugs, medications, nicotine
8) Bad fats such as
margarine, lard, anything deep fried
9) Anything microwaved
Highly beneficial nutrients for bringing the body back to balance,
giving the body the power to reverse depression, disease, acidity and
aging include:
1. Complex carbohydrates in the form of fruits and vegetables which
include the most powerful fruits and vegetables: carrot, parsley,
beet, broccoli, kale, cabbage, spinach, tomato, apple, orange, pineapple,
cranberry, acerola cherries and papaya.
2. Soybeans and soy products
3. Beans, nuts, seeds, dried fruits
4. Whole grains such as brown rice, wild rice, kamut, rye, millet, barley,
spelt, quinoa
5. Salmon, white fish, range fed turkey, eggs
6. For sugar, use honey, molasses, cane sugar, stevia
7. Minerals/vitamins – selenium, folic acid, calcium, magnesium,
chromium, niacin, Vitamin D, B vitamins, etc. – Choose a high quality
supplemental source.
There are many non medicinal ways to
alleviate depression to go along with good nutrition, some of them are:
1. Homeopathy (many books and practitioners available)
2. Aromatherapy is easy to
apply and is enjoyable
3. Exercise – probably the
most important thing to do
4. Sunlight – activates
Vitamin D (the happy vitamin) in our bodies
5. Acupressure, massage and
reflexology are all very supportive
6. Reading motivational,
supportive books (library and excellent source)
7. Reading spiritual healing
books and working with prayer, meditation and caring
for yourself
In summary, by putting all of the basic nutrients into your body on a
daily basis, depression can be avoided or reversed. However, once
depression has set in, it can be quite challenging to even imagine having
the energy or desire to do any of these things. I recommend a whole
food supplement that gets into the cells which means it is bio-available.
This supplement would contain all the basic micro nutrients for the body:
plant based vitamins and minerals, live enzymes, and friendly bacteria.
This supplement would also contain all the powerful plant based
antioxidants necessary to protect cells from free radical damage (but that
is another whole topic), and has all the plant proteins that are critical
for rebuilding. Here
is a
package
of nutrients worth looking at.
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