[Since so many of us are rushing to the diet centers and health clubs to shed those extra pounds for the New Year, this article is timely and appropriate. This is a great reminder that it's not just about the body. ~ OfSpirit.com]

At first glance, it may seem like a stretch to link inner peace and weight loss; but there’s a direct connection between your ability to change or manage your body weight and your peaceful state of mind.  When your mind is upset or anxious or distracted, it’s tremendously easy to turn to food to sedate your fear and to experience instant happiness. Food is the one sure thing that always pleases.  Unfortunately, ingesting food does nothing to undo your underlying anxiety. It just masks it. Also, as you already know from your own first hand experience, it really is possible to have too much of a good thing.

When you habitually over eat or eat in an out-of-control way, you end up feeling bad about yourself. The bad feeling isn’t because you put on an extra pound or two; rather it’s from the very literal drain of your life energy. Whenever you do something that has no value, no useful purpose, you waste your life energy. The word “devil” is a derivative of the Greek word diabolos, which means good for nothing. That’s why eating or using food in a diabolical way makes you feel worse than when you started. For most of us, the drain of life energy is so imperceptible it’s hardly noticed. We just feel bad, depressed, or we don’t care one way or another what happens. This is where inner peace comes in handy. A moment of peace enables you to plug the hole where your life energy is draining away.  Instead of responding to the anxiety, tension, or provocation of the moment, you can choose to be at peace instead.  

If you could interview a Harvard educated medical doctor who's life work was to integrate conventional and alternative therapies, had two best-selling books, and communicated in a way that both laymen and doctors could understand, who would you interview? Dr. Andrew Weil, of course. Don't miss this interview where Dr. Weil explains natural healing that is realistic and safe, as well as curative and preventive.

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On The Natural Medicine Page

Sizing Up Naturopathy
by Stephen Barrett

If you're one who has a hard time saying the word "naturopathic," never mind understanding its meaning, this article by Stephen Barrett could go so far as to make you feel comfortable talking about naturopathy at a party. Naturopaths have this optimistic approach to health that trusts our body's ability to heal itself. Naturopathy focuses on assisting our body's healing ability with natural medicine and by flushing our body of the toxins that infect us. Wow, what a concept. But don't accept our pseudo-explanation, we can't even say the word; read the article for a more trustworthy and in-depth understanding.

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On The Natural Medicine Page

Finding Dr. Natural: Guide To Selecting A Primary-Care Physician Who Will Work With You To Get The Alternative Treatments You Want And Need.
by Luise Light

Want a primary-care physician who is open to alternative forms of treatment? Not comfortable with the advice your family doctor has been feeding you lately? Whatever your reason for seeking a new doctor, this article suggests the five best ways to locate a doctor who will be open to alternative health care methods. Arm yourself with information about the insurance issues involved and the best questions to ask to accomplish your goal of finding a new doctor who best fits your needs.

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On The Natural Medicine Page

The authors of two popular books on pet care agree, the general health and life span of our pets is seriously declining. One survey shows a particular breed of dog to have half the life span it had only twenty-five years ago. What's going on? It's not just one cause, but a combination of factors that include emotional and physical stress, changes in the environment and poor diet. The solution? According to these authors, holistic medicine and prevention practices for pets can make an enormous difference.

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On The Animal Care Page.

Simple Strategies To Soothe Your Stomach.
by Steve Meyerowitz

If you've been suffering with symptoms of the stomach and bowels but haven't found a solution to ease your discomfort, this article suggests you may have been calling the disease by the wrong name. Writer Steve Meyerowitz describes some possible symptoms as: "constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, nausea, indigestion, gas, bloating and cramps, and have ramifications outside the digestive tract, causing allergies, anemia, fatigue, weight loss, arthritis, eczema, psoriasis, muscle pain and more." If these sound familiar, and every treatment you've tried hasn't helped, read this article and have another talk with your doctor. Doctors love patients who make an effort to become educated about their diseases. Just maybe you'll help your doctor discover something he/she hadn't thought of before.

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On The Colon Therapy Page

Viagra fever. (Man To Man)
by Rob Ivker

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On The Men's Health Page

New This Week On Our Counseling Page

Radical Radiance:
A Heretic's View of God and Love
by Karen Anne Bentley

Pathway To Health. Dr Dale Guyer Gives Advice On Avoiding Toxins
Interview with Dr. Dale Guyer

More than another interview promoting chelation therapy as a means for removing heavy metals from the body, this interview with Dr. Dale Guyer also teaches us how to avoid exposure to lead and mercury that create the need for chelation therapy. Parents will also find some of the advice regarding children and low-level lead exposure interesting. But this isn't another article that's going to send you into a fury of fear, worrying about every possible exposure to toxins; Guyer further explains how some products that may contain lead do not have to be avoided and should not be of concern to us.

Catherine Ryan Hyde's Pay It Forward takes as its premise the bumper-sticker phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally" and builds a novel around it. The hero of her story is young Trevor McKinney, a 12-year-old whose imagination is sparked by an extra-credit assignment in Social Studies: "Think of an idea for world change, and put it into action." Trevor's idea is deceptively simple: do a good deed for three people, and in exchange, ask each of them to "pay it forward" to three more. "So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven.... Then it sort of spreads out." Trevor's early attempts to get his project off the ground seem to end in failure: a junkie he befriends ends up back in jail; an elderly woman whose garden he tends dies unexpectedly. But even after the boy has given up on his plan, his acts of kindness bear unexpected fruit, and soon an entire movement is underway and spreading across America.

Trevor, meanwhile, could use a little help himself. His father walked out on the family, and his mother, Arlene, is fighting an uphill battle with alcoholism, poor judgment in men, and despair. When the boy's new Social Studies teacher, Reuben St. Clair, arrives on the scene, Trevor sees in him not only a source of inspiration for how to change the world, but also the means of altering his mother's life. Yet Reuben has his own set of problems. Horribly scarred in Vietnam, he is reluctant to open himself up to the possibility of rejection--or love. Indeed, the relationship between Arlene and Reuben is central to the novel as these two damaged people learn to "pay forward" the trust and affection Trevor has given them.

Hyde tells her tale from many different perspectives, using letters, diary entries, and first- and third-person narratives from the various people whose lives Trevor's project touches. Jerry Busconi, for example, the addict Trevor tried to help, one night finds himself talking a young woman out of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge:

I'm a junkie, Charlotte. I'm always gonna be a junkie. I ain't never gonna be no fine, upstanding citizen. But then I thought, hell. Just pay it forward anyway. Kid tried to help me. Okay, it didn't work. Still, I'm trying to help you. Maybe you'll jump. I don't know. But I tried, right? But let me tell you one thing. I woke up one morning and somebody gave me a chance. Just outta nowhere. It was like a miracle. Now, how do you know that won't happen to you tomorrow?

   ~ Cheyenne proverb