A Note on Self-Dosing

Whether it's a prescription drug, vitamin, tea, herbal pill or tincture, it's important not to overdose, to find one's balance with the active ingredients. Thus, always start with the smallest amount possible, no matter what the bottle says is the recommended dose.

For instance, the full-spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement Spectro by Solaray recommends five pills a day for the amounts listed on the label, all of which are higher than the RDA. So take just one. See how you feel. See what it does to the color of your urine. If it turns deep yellow, then you aren't absorbing it all, and taking more would be pretty pointless.

Some people think if a little is good, more must be better. This is not always true. Sometimes more is just more, or even dangerous. Balance is key!

When I do vitamins, I tend to do one every-other day, as that is how often I test positive for their use via kinesiology. When I was recovering from candida, I needed more than that for a time, but I've never needed as much as I thought I did, or as much as the bottles recommended.

If you're taking something like a liver supporting herbal complex in order to cleanse and detox, expect to get a detox headache or other reactions and increase the dose until you do. This lets you know your appropriate dose and that the compound is appropriate - you really do have toxins that must be taken out. You can leave the dose where it is and hope the headache stops as you get better, or lower it until you're in your comfort zone. If you stay in your comfort zone for awhile, try increasing the dose to see if your threshold has increased. This will keep the cleansing and detoxing moving at a brisk pace.

If you're taking a myriad of supplements, it's best to cycle through them. Don't give your body too much to do all at once. Break them up into stages, cycles (anti-fungals) or alternate days.

Always have an end date in mind with any supplement, there are very few supplements that should be taken forever. The end date can be as simple as when the bottle runs out. Most supplements and medications are temporary intervention, the goal being no longer needing them. The exceptions are certain teas, spices, super foods and essential minerals and salts.

Also be aware of the amount of intervention you are doing when choosing protocols and try to find what's appropriate. It's often best to start with the least amount of intervention and gradually increase as necessary. Herbs should be respected – they can be every bit as powerful as a prescription drug.

So say you're trying to be more regular. The least amount of intervention would be to drink a large cup of water first thing in the morning to induce a bowel movement. The next step up would be to take in some good oils, as bile induces peristaltic action. If these work, they're better than taking Senna, which is a strong laxative herb that can create dependency over time. So make sure you know your options and understand the hierarchy of which intervention is stronger or weaker and try to start out somewhere in the middle, or perhaps start off strong and then be sure to back off.

Have a clear goal in mind when you take supplements. Keep a list of your symptoms and update it weekly. After adding in a supplement or two, ask yourself weekly whether your symptoms list has changed. Are you closer to your goal? Feeling less brainfog? More energy? If you're feeling worse, is it a legitimate healing crisis, or is the compound simply not right for your body type?

Increasing the Power of Digestion

The power of digestion is one of the most important things to know about diet, our lifestyles, how to maintain and restore vital health, and the one thing that every diet system manages to completely neglect. After all, if you cannot digest something, it doesn't matter how good it is for you. And even if a food is listed as being “bad” for you, if you can completely digest it and easily eliminate it with no negative side effects, it's really not all that bad.

If you have chronic gas, bloating, flatulence, constipation, diarrhea or alternating between the two, you need to know this stuff. If you have any illness that is upsetting your life, you should know about this stuff. If you plan on living a long, healthy life while eating all the foods you enjoy in moderation, you should know this stuff. These simple and easy practices will help brain fog, chronic fatigue, bloating, abdominal pain, indigestion, acid reflux, etc. If you constantly have jagged cracks in your tongue, or lots of toxins coating it each morning, candida or arthritis, you need to know this stuff. Really, everyone needs to know this stuff! J

As always, use your intuition. Some of these tips will be good for your body type and issues, some will not, and of course, you can ask me personally via my forum.

The basic protocol for good digestion:

• Wait until you are very hungry before you eat anything . Drink warm lemon water as an appetizer to increase true physical hunger.
• Only eat as much food as you can hold cupped in both hands in a single meal. This is very important. Eating too much during a single meal complicates things tremendously and will turn good food into bad. It is the leading cause of digestive upsets and indeed premature aging, and of course obesity.
• Never drink iced drinks or very cold water with meals ; stop drinking fluids 30 minutes before meals and up to 1 hour after. If you must drink with the meal, drink herbal tea or warm lemon water. Spicy tea with lemon or peppermint tea is best for weak digestion. Peppermint, ginger, India Spice are excellent with meals, as is a very small Kefir smoothie spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove.
• The stomach digests best with 1/3 air, 1/3 food, 1/3 gastric juices. Watering down your stomach dilutes the enzymes and acids that digest food. If food gets into the colon partially digested, bacteria goes to work to break it down. This means fermentation and results in gas, microbial imbalances (dysbiosis), and over time, mucoid placque or systemic candidiasis.
• Try to wait at least 3 hours in between meals . Avoid snacking as much as possible so the stomach has a chance to be completely empty and burn off the toxins that often remain after eating. Eat regular meals at regular times.
• Pay attention to the meal and make the atmosphere calm and relaxing . Chew slowly and thoroughly. Saliva is an essential part of the process.
• If possible, have your main meal at lunch rather than dinner . Don't eat a meal after 8:00 pm, digestion is weakest at night and gets weaker the later it gets. Best to just fast if it gets too late to eat. A bit of fruit is okay late at night, but only one serving.
• DO NOT eat if upset, stressed or grieving, as digestion stops completely then . Best to fast, drink a cleansing drink, broth or tea instead. All those well-meaning people who say “but you have to eat SOMEthing” after a major shock or loss are not really helping you.

It's a good idea to take a short walk 15-30 minutes after meals . This really helps digestion and increases circulation, which helps the liver and absorption.

To wake up the digestion in the morning or after naps, lie on flat surface, bring knees to chest and hug them for 5 minutes. Then roll back and forth on back until little pops from the spine stop. Then sit up and do leg/hurdler stretches. Then you can begin your usual morning routine.

Avoid greasy foods. Deep-fried foods especially are real killers. Avoid very dead foods (refined) with none of their own live enzymes. Take digestive enzymes when you eat refined or cooked foods.

Digestive enzymes are an excellent option for increasing the power of digestion, including pancreatic enzymes for breaking down fats, carbs and protein, and the plant/fruit enzymes, papain and bromelain. Some digestive supplements include HCL betaine, although it can be difficult to get the dose of HCL correct so make sure it's a separate supplement and not mixed in with the enzymes. I simply use lemon juice or ACV.

If you have issues with not enough stomach acids (low appetite, burpies, reflux, candida, gas, bloating, feeling over-full long after eating), then take 2 oz lemon juice in a glass of warm water with a dash of salt and drink 20 minutes before the meal. Or if at a restaurant, ask for water with lemon and eat the slice of lemon, or enjoy part of a glass of lemonade.

Other ways to increase stomach acid include:

• 500 mg of Malic Acid
• 500 mg of unbuffered Vitamin C
• Peppermint tea gently increases it and is quite soothing.
• One tablespoon of ACV in warm water will increase stomach acids while giving you a good dose of potassium.
• HCL Betaine is the most potent way to increase stomach acids.

Try eating just a little bit of something pickled and/or spicy before your main meal, such as Kim Chee (pickled cabbage Korean style), sauerkraut, pickled ginger (like what they give with sushi), sunamomo (cucumber salad with vinegar) umeboshi (Japanese pickled plums. Very healthful and healing to liver/gallbladder).

Fermented/cultured foods aid digestion, repopulate proper bowel flora and provide enzymes. Most commercial versions of foods that started out as fermented foods are not so healthy, but when homemade, things like sauerkraut and yogurt and pickled beets are immensely helpful to our health and friendly flora, and a lot cheaper than store-bought probiotics.

Eat a radish with a bit of salt half an hour or so before dinner. It very effectively enkindles digestive fire.

Supplement with a super-green food such as Perfect Food and probiotics such as Primal Defense to repopulate gut flora. Microbes are essential to good, complete digestion and get killed off thanks to refined sugar, dead foods, the chlorine in tap water, and due to not enough greens or other veggies.

Try to use proper food combining techniques at least in terms of fruit, the rest of those guidelines are probably not so crucial. For instance:

Eat fruit alone as a fruit meal, never with dairy except the occasional cottage cheese or yogurt/kefir.

Some fruits are okay to mix with other things, like apples, pears, berries, raisins, dates, but melons and most tropical fruit should be eaten alone or only with other fruit. They digest very quickly and tend to drag other things along with them whether they're digested or not; or, conversely, the other foods delay the fruit digestion and so the sugars ferment instead. Don't ever follow a meat meal with a fruit dessert unless you want to be socially inappropriate (fart). Fermentation is only healthy outside the body. Inside the body it turns your intestines into something resembling an old refrigerator full of science project leftovers.

Consider eating lots of veggie stews and soups with onion, lentils, barley, quinoa, garbanzo beans and pungent spices rather than the usual plate of an over-large portion of protein surrounded by starch and bread. That way the water is reserved with all the goodness of the veggies, and you can add cumin, ginger and paprika and cayenne pepper to make them tastier and better digested.

An easy way to prepare veggies and preserve some of the enzymes is to cut up the veggie into a medium saucepan with a tight lid, 1/4 cup water and 1 tblspn olive oil. Put on high heat for 4 minutes then check for crisp-tender. Spice, add more oil, and eat.

Try to eat only 3-4 types of veggies in a single meal. Consider putting them through a blender. Most of your veggies should be cooked, as you need a strong digestive system to move to a raw diet, but veggie juice is highly recommended because the nutrients are no longer trapped by roughage. What raw food people never tell you is that eating a lot of cold, raw foods = weak spleen chi = persistent colds/flus = chapped/peeling lips.

Broccoli, cabbage and brussel sprouts are often gas-producing. Cook or ferment them with carminative spices like cumin, turmeric, ginger or coriander. If you tend to have issues with gas, try to use these spices with every meal. The cuisine of India really makes the best use of these spices in their curries and garam masala, and Moroccan cuisine also likes to use carminative, pungent spices to good effect.

Try to only eat beans and lentils and whole grains only if they have been soaked overnight before cooking, or at least slow cooked, and are eaten with carminative spices and not with sugar (baked beans have sugar, that's why they're the magical fruit!).

Try to eat more spinach, kale, beets, carrots, sauerkraut, kefir, artichokes. They have a healing action on the entire digestive system.

To really heal chronic digestive upsets, consider eating a mono-diet of nothing but Kichadi (basmati rice and mung bean stew) for one week.

If your tongue is very coated, consider a warm water and ginger tea fast for one day, or long enough for tongue to become clean (several days great for Pitta or Kapha, only 1 day for Vata types).

Triphala , an Ayurvedic remedy, is good for all body types and aids constipation, is rejuvenating to the entire digestive system. It acts like a very mild laxative but causes no dependency. It strengthens the colon and helps to clear away mucous. It has anti-fungal properties.

Trikatu , another Ayurvedic remedy, contains ginger, black pepper and pippali. This pungent formula enkindles the digestive fire, promoting healthy absorption and assimilation. Trikatu supports metabolism of fat and reduces toxins and mucous.

If your digestive fire becomes too intense (diarrhea, burning pain), back off on spices, lemon juice, and switch to a bland diet that includes more raw vegetables, more bitter greens, more rice.