Spring is in the air! At least it is here in Santa Barbara.  Chinese Medicine is heavily influenced by the Theory of the 5 Elements – Earth, Metal, Water, Wood and Fire – with each season being assigned an element.

Spring is the time of the Wood element, a time when there is blossoming in the air, new life, renewed energy after the long winter slumber.  The Wood Element is responsible for building, for creating, for growing – it is the energy behind growth and development.

Due to the fact that the energy of the Wood Element is at its most influential right now, this is a great time to begin a new project, to pick up a new hobby that you’ve been thinking about or enroll in a class.  The days are longer with more light, more heat and more energy, use this added time and energy to your advantage, it won’t last for very long!

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you had a great day eating and drinking with family and friends. You might have woken up this morning and felt like you had your head under water, I know that I certainly do. Things might be a tad bit foggy, the mouse in the wheel may be trudging along today, as opposed to his or her regular gallop!

Whether you drank alcohol or not, this hangover of sorts is every bit real. Chinese Medicine has a clear understanding of these symptoms and covers them under the concept of “dampness”. It makes sense if you’ve ever had the feeling, it’s like your brain is a little bit damp or foggy.

What causes dampness you ask? Great question. Dampness occurs in Chinese Medicine when our spleen system is unable to transform the water and food into usable products and the byproduct from that lack of transformation becomes phlegm or dampness. This dampness tends to rise upwards into our lungs or into our head giving us a couch with phlegm or the feeling of dizziness, muzziness or a general lack of clarity.

How do you get rid of phlegm and dampness? Even better question. Dietary wise our best choice is a whole lot of leafy green vegetables, especially those that are bitter in taste. Eat your spinach, chard, broccoli, kale etc and watch your dampness dissipate!

Let’s face it – women on the whole are a heck of a lot healthier than men.  In the United States, men will die an average of 8 years earlier than their female counterparts.  8 YEARS!!

Why is this?  It’s due a combination of reasons, but first and foremost in my opinion is because women simply take better care of themselves.  They’re more interested in nutrition and preventative medicine than men and it shows in their longevity.  I actually have been gently persuaded to study up on all things Women’s Health related since opening my practice due to the fact that 90% of my patients are women and even if they initally came to me for shoulder or knee pain, inevitably we’d end up talking about night sweats, PMS and endometriosis.

Here’s another great ARTICLE with 15 Superfoods that women should be eating.  Even if many of them are common knowledge, we can always use a reminder to eat more broccoli, blueberries and avocados! 

Enjoy the article and eat well this week!

Herbs = The Goodness

Check out this great ARTICLE, by Dr. Andrew Weil on plant based medicines. Here’s a small clip to wet your appetites!

“For four decades, I’ve been skeptical of a prevailing belief in Western medicine: when a plant shows bioactivity in humans, we must attribute that effect to a single, predominant compound in the plant. We label that the “active principle,” isolate it, synthesize it, and make a pharmaceutical out of it. Then, typically, we forget about the plant. We don’t study any of the other compounds in it or their complex interactions.

This belief persists for two reasons. First, it makes research much easier. Single compounds can be manufactured in pure, standardized dosages, which simplifies clinical trials. (However, technology has largely solved this problem. Modern growing and processing methods make it possible to produce standardized, complex, whole-plant-based medicines. Clinical trials of these compounds have become quite sophisticated, especially in Europe.)

Second, and this is clearly the major reason, it makes drugs far more profitable for drug companies. Isolating and synthesizing a single molecule allows a drug company to patent that molecule. Making slight chemical modifications allows further patent potential. Such exclusivity can be worth billions, whereas a whole plant offers little opportunity for profit.”

Enjoy!

Since you now have written health goals and a yearning for nutritional information, let’s keep with our theme of basics and talk about a $20 fix to most sleep problems.  Until Bill Gates decides that Microsoft can no longer operate without his first acquiring rights to this blog, I will continue to have my bedroom next to a busy street.

For some reason, one of my neighbors has to leave his or her house every morning at about 3am, and to do this needs to drive right by my window.  This is not that awesome.  My normal routine as someone that has trouble sleeping to begin with (how can one sleep with so many blog topics rolling around in one’s head) was to wake up each night as my neighbors headlights would turn my bedroom from a den of tranquility into a runway at LAX.  Needless to say, I would stay up for the rest of the night half of the time and this was no bueno.

The solution?  For twenty dollars at Bed Bath and Beyond (I went in with my girlfriend, just in case I ran into someone that I know there) I got blackout curtains.  Outcome?  Pure dark awesomeness.  Now when I go to sleep, I can literally not see my hand in front of my face and when my neighbor leaves for work, it goes unnoticed. 

For $20, I have increased my health dramatically.  I sleep through the night much more often, thus eliminating the cascade of ill health effects from not doing so.

Do you think that a twenty can increase your health dramatically?  I do!

“Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sleep well.

Don’t worry if the last post didn’t inspire you to run out and buy a Michael Pollan book or enroll in a nutrition class, you’ll be hearing more and more about food and nutrition as you continue to follow this blog!

Let’s keep talking about basics since they are the platform upon which we’ll be building our health and wellness.  Nutrition is clearly in the forefront here, but what else do we need to have in place or have an understanding of to achieve our health goals.  Hmmm, you do have health goals don’t you?!  If not, let’s take a minute and come up with some.

Most people if asked will agree that they would be happy with an increase in their quality of life.  However, if asked (because I do), most people (only 3% of the American population, give or take) do not have clear goals in any category of their lives, let alone health.  Forget most people, we want to be at the top of the 3%!

What do you need to make an effective goal?  Another great question.  All you need is a piece of paper, a pen and a timeline.  Yep, writing goals is easy and with the proper format, they become even more powerful.

A goal needs only three aspects to be most effective –

1)    They need to be written down

2)     They need to be written in the first person

3)     They need to have a timeline attached to them.

An unwritten goal is just an idea.  There is power behind being able to look at something tangible like a notebook or even scrap paper and see your own handwriting, your own idea and your own skin in the game.  Write down your goals to keep them clear and to let them dwell in the unconscious where they do their best work. 

Write your goal down in the first person!  Writing, “lose 10 pounds” doesn’t give your mind a chance to be clear with your goal.  Is your goal to have your husband lose 10 pounds?  Your dog to lose 10 pounds?  Your unconscious mind appreciates the clearest of instructions and will reward you in kind by getting them.

Attach a timeline.  It’s been said by people smarter than me that a goal without a timeline is just a dream and I agree with them.  If your goal is written down as “ I will lose 10 pounds.” but there’s no timeline attached to it, how does your body, your unconscious mind and your life know when this is supposed to happen by?  Do you want to lose 10 pounds over the next 35 years or the next 35 months?  Be very clear with your timeline and be very honest with yourself.  Losing 10 pounds in the next 3 days is doable, but not very healthy.  Be aggressive enough with your goal to inspire you to make the necessary changes to achieve it, but also make it something that is actually achievable in a health y manner.

“I will lose 10 pounds in the next 30 days by exercising twice a week, cutting out sugar from my diet and adding an extra helping of broccoli to my dinner every night.”  Is a kick ass goal.

What are your health goals?  Are they all weight related?  Do you have pain related goals?  Breathing related goals?  Sleep related?  Dental related?  You should!

“A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time – pills or stairs.” Joan Welsh

Be well.

Let’s talk basics. Often times I see patients that are at the end of the medical rope. They’ve been to doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist. They’ve been poked, prodded, tested, retested, examined and still left wanting for answers. Where to begin with someone that has already been dismissed by the best and brightest of the medical system? I certainly don’t have access to fancy machines nor the scientific background to fully understand micro levels inside the blood etc.

Where to begin? Jiujitsu World Champion Rickson Gracie always taught his students to master the basics. He said that if your fundamentals were solid, you would beat 99% of your competition that was relying on fancy moves and flashy outcomes.

So what are the basics of health you ask? Great question. When I do get a patient such as the above described, I go right back to the basics. First and foremost, what are they eating every day? Shockingly enough, I’m often the first person to ask this. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, what we eat today will have a profound effect on how we feel and perform tomorrow – and what we eat consistently for the next five years will dictate the health we have for the next 20.

How well do you eat? This is a loaded question and one that is extremely variable. The answer I usually get is, “I eat pretty clean.” What does this mean though? Does this mean that the patient eats fast food once a week, once a month or once a day? What does it mean to you?

The most fundamental activity that we undertake as humans is to feed ourselves and our loved ones. Understanding food, understanding the role that it plays in our bodies is paramount to living a life full of health and vigor. Make food your obsession, make it your hobby and make its study the first step in your journey towards great health. Start this today!

“In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.” – Henri Frederic Amiel

Be well.

Why the above video?  Well, you all obviously have interweb access and it doesn’t take much more than a click or two to see that a good portion of our world is either in transition, in turmoil or both.  While completely ignoring what is happening around the globe and going on as if all is well may not be the most enlightened approach to living during these times, in contrast, I strongly believe both from a sociological and medical point of view that our central nervous systems are not hardwired to handle all of the stresses of the world – 24 hours a day.

Sometimes we have to stop, turn off CNN for a few minutes and take a few deep breaths. The sun is still shining, there’s still hard training to be done, health to be considered and babies to be laughed at.  Hysterically.  Enjoy.

Does your list have meaning to you yet?  If not, go back and spend some quiet time with yourself to sort through your feelings; have no fear of being brutally honest with yourself as you are in essence deciding what you will be willing to trade your life and time for.

As I worked through my own, and continued to do rewrite after rewrite, my list started getting smaller and smaller.  Houses disappeared, the cars disappeared, and the elaborate vacations and other toys became less and less important.

On a quick side note, I have nothing against the above listed items and hope that you don’t either as long as they do have meaning for you.  If it’s been a goal of yours since age 6 to have a house in the French Riviera then by all means keep it on your list and throw yourself wholeheartedly into the attainment of it!

At the end of the exercise (which took almost a month of soul searching) my list did end up still having some luxury items on it, but there were only a few and they did have meaning to me.  What was left though and what ended up surviving revision after revision was the last item that I had written down on my very first draft – to help people.

I figured that at the end of the day, that was what was important to me, and everything else was secondary.  Did I want a big house?  Absolutely, but only if it came as a result of providing immense value to others.  Would I have been happy with the house if it came from work that was meaningless to me?  Absolutely not.

To finish this series off, I’ll share with you that although Gavin was instrumental in me ending up where I am today, I ended up leaving his employ shortly after for the exact reasons that he asked me to come up with.  I stopped bodyguarding and entered into the master’s program at Yo-San University and never looked back.  To this day, that decision, fueled by this exercise has been one of the best that I have ever made.  My hope is that this exercise provides you with the same opportunity.

Be well.