One of my all-time favorite subjects to teach is the endocrine system. It is the most fascinating and clear example we have of how “everything is everything” in the body. For those of you unfamiliar with the underlying theme of Whole Health Education, the idea that everything in the body is intimately connected to everything else is what our method and model of education and teaching is founded on.

The endocrines are such a perfect example of this interconnectedness of body, mind and spirit that it is pure joy to share the information with understandably eager students!

We begin with the Reproductive Glands and will discuss SEVEN aspects of the Reproductive Glands based on these concepts:

(1) the specific organ name and function
(2) the seven (7) virtues
(3) organs and systems
(4) Selye’s stress model
(5) its Whole Health aspect
(6) Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
(7) the seven (7) “deadly sins”

Referred to as the “root chakra” in yoga and energy circles, these powerful glands are in the most primal sense, the SURVIVAL component of Maslow’s Hierarchy and in fact, are essential to the survival of the species – which is their primary purpose. They are, of course, part of the organs and system of reproduction which includes various accessory parts that are necessary to support the reproductive function.

That the Reproductive Glands belong to the PHYSICAL aspect of Whole Health is very straight forward and evident. When we look at them in terms of Selye’s Stress Model we can see that they are connected to the “survival stressers” of

> reproduction (yes, sadly sex is another stressor for our bodies)
> trauma
> exertion (too much exercise or over work)
> weather (excessive heat, sun, cold)
> surgery (very stressful to the entire body and nervous system but sometimes necessary to save our life)

These stressors havea strong effect on the reproductivesystem. Stress decreases the driveand impulse to reproduce as the body wisely knows to conserve its energy until there is a well balanced system ready for reproduction.

So far we have gone over FIVE (5) of the SEVEN (7) aspects. The last two are fun because they really clarify the emotional and behavioral aspects of these important and influential glands.

The VIRTUE of the reproductive glands is spirituality – seeing the profound divine and unfathomable nature of reproducing and bringing forth, from the co-joining of two human beings, new human life. (If you’ve had children you know that they really do smell like they just came from “heaven” – what we imagine heaven to be anyway)

The DEADLY SIN of the reproductive glands is – we all know this one – its all around us. Yes, indeed, good ‘ol LUST, which of course is about self gratification and not the co-joining of a partnership resulting in a new life.

Understanding this information is important when we look at a person’s physical presentation or dis-ease from a Whole Person perspective. What are the cause and effect factors at play that are creating their disease? What is out of balance in the person’s seven aspects that is creating problems in this particular part of the body?

When we get to the “Disease as Metaphor” blog, this will take on even greater significance. In the meantime, we will go over ALL the endocrine glands, one at a time, so this will be a seven part series. Hope you’re enjoying this because I’m having a great time with my favorite subject!

With all good wishes,
G

Copyright 2010 G. Donadio

We have an innate understanding of what we need to do to be healthy. Yet, passed down health wisdom such as,”early to bed, early to rise, makes a being healthy, wealthy and wise”, are often ignored in favor of our more immediate comfort or convenience.

Physical labor has taken a back seat to “mind work”, and today we work harder than ever before to have the money to buy membership to a gym or spa so we can do the physical exercise we need to be healthy and attractive. How ironic, yes?

However, rarely do we actually have the time to go to the gym we pay membership fees to. Statistically, the average gym membership is used for the first 4-6 weeks after signing up and then falls off dramatically. Workout facilities count on these statistics when planning their recruitment and enrollment numbers.

Likewise, diet plans and weight loss centers know that 90% or more of their customers will continue to have body weight issues in spite of their best efforts to re-direct to a different way of eating. Why?

 Sometimes even with every possible service, care and expert available many individuals can continue to struggle with significant weight gain and loss for many years. The reasons these individuals give for not taking care of themselves can include:

 not having enough time to shop for or cook the right foods
 not being sure what’s best for our body type
 not having enough money for domestic help
 not having enough time to exercise, meditate and relax
 too much stress over money and achieving success

However, there are many individuals who have more than enough money and success to eliminate all of those concerns and yet in spite of that they still do not consistently maintain a proper body weight. What are the real causes of this syndrome and how can it be corrected?

Next Installment: Health and Self-Esteem Part II

With all good wishes,
Georgianna

Copyright 2010 G. Donadio

The ability for a human being to adapt to its environment and to deal with the many ongoing challenges and changes it faces is the hallmark of a healthy body. That we can withstand day to day events that challenge our nervous systems and subsequently our immune systems is the expression that our body is working very efficiently.

Understanding the connection between how events affect our stress adaptation system, primarily the adrenal glands, and how the adrenal’s hyper-secretions under stress can create havoc with the digestive and immune systems is important so we can make informed lifestyle choices that will preserve and respect our body and our long term health.

Most of us do not know what stressers are. We tend towards the idea that emotional upset is what constitutes stress. However, there are 12 major categories of stress that can impact our body and health. Unfortunately, we are subject to these stressors on a regular basis.

A stresser is any activity or event which requires the body to have to change or adapt to maintain its homeostasis, or balance. Therefore, it becomes essential to know the factors we must be mindful of in order to keep our stress levels in check.

Here are the stressors to be aware of in your day to day life:

> Weather – hot cold, exposure
> Sleep and Rest – not enough
> Infection or silent inflammation in the body
> Allergies – all types
> Dental or medical procedures and surgeries
> Reproduction – for women: menstrual cycle, pregnancy, breast feeding, menopause
> Sexual Activity – men and women
> Nutrition – too much or non-nutritious
> Exertion, exercise – too much or not enough
> Trauma – any form
> Fear, anxiety, worry – ongoing
> Loss or grief

By keeping your stress level low you will reduce wear and tear on your body parts, which in the long term will lead to chronic illness and disease. It is not the stress itself that makes you sick, but the ongoing wear on the body that causes dysfunction and dis-ease.

There are many ways to reduce stress and maintain a balanced nervous system. While the list is endless here are some of the most popular ways to do so:

> Exercise
> Music
> Yoga
> Sports
> Gardening

Each person finds their best way to relax and de-stress. It is something we all need to do on a regular basis to balance or nervous systems and stay healthy!

With all good wishes,
G

Copyright 2010 G. Donadio

There are three parts of the human brain, referred to as the “triune brain”. Paul D. MacLean, an early research director for the National Institute of Mental Health, postulated his Triune Brain Theory which states that the human brain is a product of three stages of evolution and is actually three separate brains which have evolved into one brain over long periods of time.

The first section [the lowest portion of the brain] which is comprised of the top part of the spinal cord, the medulla oblongata, the pons, and the cerebellum, MacClean calls “the reptilian brain” as he stated “at its base [the human brain] was a variation in the elaboration of the reptilian brain.”

The limbic system [located in the mid-portion of the brain] states MacClean, “was an elaboration of the new mammalian brain from the Jurassic period”. He termed it the “mid-brain” or the neo-mammalian brain (new mammal).

The upper most and largest part of the human brain, the cerebral cortex, encompasses our logic centers, our “intellect”. MacClean termed this portion “the neo-cortex” (new cortex).

Viewed through the perspective of MacClean’s “Triune Brain” theory, this is the time line on which the human brain evolved:

1. Reptilian portion = Triassic period – 248 to 206 million years ago. Regulates hunger, body temperature control, fight or flight responses; is shared with reptiles

2. Limbic Portion = Jurassic period – 206-144 million years ago. Regulates mood, memory, hormone control; is shared with older mammals = dogs, cats, mice.

3. Neocortex = Eocene & Oligocene Epochs – 55 -24 million years ago. Regulates logic and thought required for complex social situations, etc; is shared with monkeys and chimpanzees.

The Reptilian or “vegetable brain” [recall the autonomic nervous system functions], is fundamentally concerned with homeostasis, which is involved in regulating all of the body functions that allow each of us to be human, get up every day and live our lives. If you do not have a well-functioning lower brain, if you have a tumor, if you have a trauma, if you’re in an accident, if something happens to your brain stem, you may no longer have the capacity to control the day to day homeostatic functions to maintain your life.

Embedded inside the Limbic System is a structure identified as the Reticular Activating System which has pathways as well as neurons traveling throughout the lower brain, up through the medulla oblongata, across the Limbic System into the Neo-Cortex or the “thinking brain”.

The Limbic System and Reticular Activating System interpret sensory motor messages that are “incoming” from the person’s environment and it is in this portion of the brain that we not only interpret the “incoming stimuli and information” but we also select methods for survival and adaptation.

Here is where it gets exciting to put the anatomy and physiology of brain function and the psychology of personality together!

We know the neo-cortex is our thinking, intellectual brain – our “smart brain” and most of us know individuals who are brilliant academically or intellectually yet they are emotionally dysfunctional in the extreme.

Our thinking brain would presume that being “smart” or intellectually capable would exercise dominion over one’s emotions, however, the missing piece of information here is that our emotions actually are a survival adaptation mechanism that each of us individually develops as we process our early environment and social conditioning. Nothing is more powerful in the human being than its drive to survive! Hence, our emotions win the day in the battle between thinking and feeling.

It is critically important for each of us to understand that our emotions represent how we learned to adapt in our surroundings and environment, especially during the first 0-5 years of our development. Our familial “input” taught us, as did Pavlov with his dogs, how to respond to the stimuli we received as infants and toddlers.

This embedded neurological conditioning is not overcome by the thought process, as the thought process for humans is the “newest” component to our primordial brain. It is in the survival adaptive portion of our brain where we form our “personality” and where we become conditioned to create and interact within relationships.

When we understand the possibility that interpersonal issues which frustrate us may come not from “being difficult” or “bad intent” but rather from our drive to survive and our interpretation of the stimulation and environment we were conditioned by, then we can begin to be “kinder and gentler” towards ourselves and others.

In summary, our emotions are the way we learn to live, behave and survive in our world. We cannot “think them” into changing, but we can step back and appreciate the service and challenge they offer us in our daily lives.

With all good wishes,
G

Copyright 2010 G. Donadio

Like most things in life, health is simple. Maintaining a healthy immune system is also simple, yet in our enormously complex and hurried environment it become complicated to live a simple life and stay healthy. This is an important perspective to wrap ourselves around especially regarding our lifestyle choices and how we take care of our health – which is in the main, our immune system.

The short version of immune hygiene is this:

 remember that everything that goes into your body impacts your immune function and immune health
 plant based, living, nutritious food = a healthy body
 your thoughts creates proteins that communicate those specific thoughts to your immune cell membranes, so be mindful of your thinking
 chronic stress and adrenal gland function suppress your bone marrow and immune system functions
 laughter and joy strengthen immune function by increasing serotonin
 clean air and water are basic essentials to a healthy immune system
 compassion and caring increase Immunoglobulin-A, an immuno-protein
 exercise pumps 10,000 white blood cells through the lymph glands, cleansing and detoxifying the “little garbage cans” of the body
 cleanliness and sanitation prevent immune assaults by micro-organisms
 loving and being loved increases positive immune responses and secretions
 purposeful living reduces stress and balances the nervous system
 eliminating debt enhances longevity through immune system integrity
 everything is connected to everything else in your life – especially your immune function, so be kind to your body ~

These are simple, intuitive and common sense guidelines to preserve and protect the system that protects you.

The next installment will focus on muscles and bones, with a few surprises in store.

With all good wishes,
G

© by NIWH 2010 all rights reserved

It was an interesting week in my practice, as there were an unusual number of patients coming in with extreme symptoms that were addressed and resolved using the “when you hear hoof beats, think of horses and not zebras” practice model. If you are a practitioner and don’t know this one, it’s worth while exploring.

Having been in medicine and health care now for almost 40 years, (I’m as old as trees as my children like to tease me), there is no doubt that medicine is focused on looking for the zebras. That is, looking for the pathology, the disease, the exotic condition, something to diagnose instead of recognizing that most “hoof beats” are made by horses. This simple, practical and common sense approach to practicing health care has been lost within today’s fast paced, “expert” based practices and has even begun disappearing from “alternative” health care practices, as well.

Here is an example from one of my recent patient visits. A very gifted, integrative health practitioner called me up after having intractable muscle pain for a week. He could not lie down, could not sleep was in great discomfort and was also concerned about what this could mean. He had spoken to a wide variety of practitioners who normally deal with musculo-skeletal conditions and at the end of his exploration was still in pain and becoming rapidly more concerned.

When this happens to us we start to think, “do I have something really wrong with me?”, if you’re older you think “this must be what getting old is about”, or if you are an active, healthy person who takes care of yourself you might ask, “how could this be happening to me, I take care of myself.” This individual said he called me because he “didn’t know where else to turn” to understand his pain and condition and isn’t this what I did in my practice – figure things out about cause and effect?”

Being a Whole Person Health Care practitioner, I started with the basics:

> what specifically had he been doing prior to this onset?
> where is the specific discomfort?
> what makes it feel better?
> what makes it feel worse?
> did he experience any other symptom along with this pain?

He explained that he just joined a gym and was working out for the past week, but that he wasn’t doing that much exercise to cause this discomfort and it wasn’t just in one muscle, it was all over his body. He is in very good physical condition so the idea of the mild exercising causing this full body pain didn’t resonate.

He reported that he hadn’t changed his diet, work habits, taken any unusual supplements, changed beds, changed shoes or had any upset or stress over the past week. He tried a series of natural remedies and treatments to no avail. He was both personally and professionally stumped and so were the practitioners he had spoken with about his pain.

Having been called the “Sherlock Holmes of Whole Health”, I knew the task at hand was to find out the missing piece of information that would unlock the cause of the problem. So we discussed his new membership at the gym. Logic told me that there was something connected to his activities at the gym that was the casual factor in his pain experience because it was after joining the gym that his pain began. It was just a matter of putting our finger on it.

After a few minutes of detailed review, one factor that surfaced seemed the right solution to the problem. After his work out, he went for a swim in the gym’s pool. Interesting.

Now some of you who are practitioners reading this might think, “Ah ha, he has a virus from the pool water”, or ” His immune system must have had a toxic reaction to the chemicals in the pool”. Sorry, but no cigar – these are all zebras.

Having a comprehensive, evidence-based, whole person health education is critical to truly serving our patients and clients and being able to empower them with the knowledge they need to take control of their health.

What does chlorine do to our body? It leaches minerals, most importantly calcium and magnesium. Because chlorine has double negative bonds it is wildly attracted to double positive bonds, as found in calcium. What minerals are significantly involved in muscle function? Ca & Mg – correct!

I recommended that he go to Whole Foods and purchase A to B Calm calcium and magnesium powder, take a dose and see if that helped. I received an e-mail about 24 hours later with the subject title “WOW” – it completely took away all his discomfort, he got a great night sleep and felt excellent. He is swimming away, but mindful to take his calcium/magnesium after each swim.

This is the perfect example of thinking horses and not zebras in our practices. I do hope you found this helpful ~

With all good wishes,
G
© by NIWH 2010 all rights reserved

The upcoming Thanksgiving and holiday season is one of the most heavily vacation trafficked periods of the year, when millions of people “take to the skies and roads” , visiting friends and relatives.  Unfortunately, for 3-5% (yes, that is 3-5%) of the people who get off of airplanes, buses, trains or auto transport will develop blood clots, often not detected until many weeks after their trip.

As American health care consumers, we know in today’s environment we must be pro-active and take control of our health through health information and prevention. Staying healthy while traveling is one very important preventative situation that we can all be more aware of to circumvent an unwanted health crisis.

Three years ago, the World Health Organization published the WRIGHT report (WHO Research Into Global Hazards of Travel) which identified the extent of the problem and who was at risk. The report identified the population most at risk are females, over 40 years of age, with a prior history of deep vein thrombosis.

Others at risk include older travelers, obese travelers, pregnant women, anyone with varicose veins or a prior history of venous thrombosis, women taking birth control pills or estrogen, travelers with a history of a major operation, cancer, heart failure, highly trained athletes, and those with recent surgery or injury.

In spite of the evidence, however, there are still airlines in denial over the problem as many fear increased litigation. One major US airline has a published statement on its websites as a response to concerned travels that reads: “There is no epidemiological evidence that air travel causes blood clots.”

However, published experts would re-word that statement to read: “It would be more accurate to say, “Every credible scientific study of the subject has found that air travel [and other forms of confined travel] cause blood clots, including all of the most recent large sophisticated studies.”

What can you do to prevent blood clots?

1) Do not be immobile for more than 1 hour when traveling by air or in confined transportation

2) Dress in loose-fitting clothes and shoes. No socks or garments should have banded constriction.

3) Stay well hydrated, but avoid alcohol.

4) Exercise your legs and feet every chance you can (e.g. every 20 minutes).

5) Consider fitted, compression stockings – compression of 20 mm. Hg or more is best.

6) It is not a guarantee that taking aspirin to avoid thrombosis will work but as it prevents platelet clumping which causes clots, if you are at risk, it seems reasonable to take aspirin daily, starting a day before departure and continuing for a day after the flight terminates.

7) Sit in an aisle seat – you will have more room and it is easier to stand up and move around the plane, bus or train.

Hope this helps. For more information search for “blood clots and travel”. There is an enormous amount of information on the subject and if you are getting ready for that big trip, having this information should be part of your “packing”.

Have a wonderful and safe vacation!
With all good wishes,
G
© by NIWH 2010 all rights reserved