Yonder Willow Wellness

Milk might not be the best thing to drink to deal with osteoporosis.

My wife found this yesterday in one of her nutrition textbooks, Dietary Guidelines, from the Global College of Natural Medicine, 2010

Regrettably, the more dairy one consumes, the weaker bones can become.  It has to do with acidity and alkalinity.  When placed together they neutralize.  The calcium in milk is alkaline while the protein is acidic.  The problem is that there is more acid in the milk than alkaline calcium.  This causes the body to leach more calcium from the bones to combat the acids coming in.  So, unfortunately, those consuming dairy to combat osteoporosis are actually causing the opposite to occur.

Everyone knows that milk is an excellent source of calcium. As far as I know, calcium is the only reason that people drink milk.  It also turns out that milk doesn’t contain enough of the other minerals that the body needs to be able to absorb the calcium even if it was available to us.

I guess that the calcium fortified orange juice I saw at the grocery store is also pointless because orange juice is very acidic.

The best place to get calcium naturally is vegetables. That actually goes for just about any mineral because vegetables are alkaline. Here’s a good list of veggies and their calcium content.

If you want a calcium supplement that contains the necessary minerals to actually use the calcium for something other than making kidney stones, try this one.

If you want something the drink, try water.

Wayne Woodworth
Cow milk is specially formulated for baby cows anyway

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Osteoporosis has become a serious problem. It used to be considered a disease that only elderly women developed, but not anymore.  It is becoming a problem for younger people, both men and women. A large part of the rise in osteoporosis is the increasing amount of acidic foods and drinks that people are taking in. As a society, we eat too much fast food and processed food and drink too many soft drinks. We don’t realize how acidic some of our food and drinks are.

Why should you care about acidity when it comes to osteoporosis? Because calcium, what makes your bones hard, is also what your body uses to balance out the pH, or acid level, in your body. If you take in a lot of acid foods then your body will pull calcium out of the bones to deal with it. Over time, that will lead to loss of bone mass and osteoporosis.

So, how do you fix the problem?  Most people already know about taking calcium to strengthen their bones. The problem with just taking calcium is that the body needs other nutrients to help use it properly. When you take large amounts of calcium without the required nutrients to help the body use it, the calcium gets flushed out of  the body through the kidneys, causing an increased risk of kidney stones. I’ll talk about the nutrients that help in a moment.

There are chemicals in some foods that prevent the body from absorbing calcium like it should. Sodium increases the amount of calcium lost through urine. Sulfate produced from burning excess protein for energy also causes calcium to be lost through the urine. The oxalate found naturally in some foods binds with calcium, preventing it from being absorbed. The phosphorous in cola and a lot of processed foods can interfere with calcium absorption. Insoluble fiber also reduces calcium absorption.  Finally, caffeine can increase urinary excretion leading to more calcium being lost.

Fortunately, there are also chemicals that aid the absorption of calcium. Vitamin D is essential for the body to absorb calcium. Vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium, and boron also assist the body in absorbing calcium.

As you can see, fixing bone mass problems and osteoporosis takes more than just increasing the amount of calcium that you take in. Nikken has a new calcium supplement called CalDenx that contains vitamin D, magnesium, and boron in addition to the calcium. Nikken also has another supplement, OsteoDenx, that does not contain calcium but aids in the absorption of the calcium that you get from your diet, other calcium supplements, or CalDenx.

Wayne Woodworth
Consumer of Nutritional Supplements

PS: The info about what substances inhibit and support the absorption of calcium came from an excellent article at www.emedicinehealth.com

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Have you heard of Matrix Energetics? I read the book about 6 months ago and took the 3-day seminar a week ago.  Dr. Richard Bartlett has an interesting story about how Matrix Energetics came about, which he shares in the book. He also describes some of the techniques, which I didn’t really get from the book. I’m a little too left-brained to pick it up from a book. It was enough for me to understand that it is really powerful though, so I looked into the seminar.

I got it at the seminar.  From the outside, the seminar looks a lot like the videos on the Matrix Energetics website. Someone gets up on stage, Dr. Bartlett wiggles his fingers at them and laughs, then the person falls down (there is someone to catch them of course). The basic teaching is to set an intent for change and how to get out of your own way to let it happen. They teach several techniques for distracting your conscious mind so that you can let the change happen.

As a participant in the seminar I can honestly say that it does work. I did find myself sitting on the carpet several times. I don’t know that I felt anything big happen to me, but several other people in the room had some pretty significant experiences. I was also able to allow a shift in a few of the people I worked with at the seminar, which was really cool.

I have played with it since the seminar working on building my belief and opening myself to the experience. In other words, I have caused my wife and kids to fall down in the safety of our home. Mostly I have just been building confidence in my ability to do nothing and allow things to change. That’s really all it is about and it is very powerful in that simplicity.

I think the people who would get the most out of the books (there is a second book out now) and the seminar are either people involved in body work (massage), energy work (Reiki, Pranic Healing), and anyone seriously interested in learning how to get the most from learning how to use the Law of Attraction.

The two books by Dr. Bartlett are Matrix Energetics and The Physics of Miracles. There is also a very good audio program called The Matrix Energetics Experience.

You can find out more about Matrix Energetics and the seminars at the Matrix Energetics website.

Wayne Woodworth
Matrix Energetics Newbie

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You probably hear almost daily that another one of your friends or co-workers is sick. The media is still pumping up the swine flu even though some medical authorities have said that it has already peaked and has not been the event that it was predicted to be. Personally, I’m tired of hearing about it.

I don’t believe that most people need to get sick, especially not with things like a cold or the flu. None of my immediate family has been sick in over a year, and it isn’t because we live in isolation. I have small kids who go to school every day and are around other sick kids, so they have been “exposed” to whatever is out there, as have my wife and I.

So why don’t we get sick? We do just a few things different than other people. The biggest is that we drink a lot of alkaline water instead of carbonated beverages or coffee.  Other things that we do include taking a good green barley grass supplement, a mushroom based immunity supplement, and make sure that our indoor air is filtered. My kids like taking these supplements too.

Naturally, I can’t guarantee that you will have the same results as we have. It is sure worth giving it a try. Find out more about the water filtration that we use and the  nutritional supplements that we take.

Wayne Woodworth
Nikken Wellness Consultant

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My “local” congressman called a few nights ago with an automated phone survey to get my input on what they are working on in Washington. One problem with the survey is that it only accepted “yes” or “no” answers, so it was pretty meaningless in my opinion. The other problem is that I really don’t care too much about what they are doing because I look after my own interests.  The two major areas in the survey were about health care and taxing the wealthy. I give my viewpoint on the taxation issue on one of my other blogs. This is about my view on health care.

First, I prefer “wellness care” to “health care” because the idea of health has become so tied to doctors, drugs, and surgery. I don’t think that they are the long-term answer. If you really want to be healthy and stay healthy, then you need to make choices on a daily basis. Are you going to take the time to get enough sleep? Are you going to eat better today? Are you going to drink enough water? Will you take the time to do something for yourself and have fun?

Health doesn’t come from a pill bottle or a syringe. Your health comes from your lifestyle. It is what you do and eat every day and have done every day from the moment you were born. Actually, it starts before you were born but that was out of your control. If you eat a lot of processed foods and fast food, drink soft drinks instead of water, get completely stressed out, and only sleep 5 hours every night then you will probably get sick and there is nothing that a chemical can do to prevent it. These things all stress the body. Doing some of these things in small amounts is OK and could be beneficial because small amounts of stress could strengthen the body. When these choices become the norm though and the body is constantly stressed, it eventually reaches a breaking point and it will let you know.

On the other hand, if you usually get a good night sleep, drink plenty of water, eat your veggies, save desserts for special occasions, get some exercise, and take time to play then you will be much more resistant to illnesses. The body gets the nutrition and water it needs to properly function. Sleep gives it the time to repair and ready itself for a new day. Exercise helps to pump the blood and keep the muscles toned. Time for play, whether that is physical play or mental play, allows the body to release stress and relax. This all helps the body to be ready for whatever comes along, deal with it, then get ready for the next thing. That includes dealing with illnesses.

I don’t think the federal government’s plan is looking at health this way.

Wayne Woodworth
Take a look at my other wellness blog to see what I am using to help stay healthy.

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