Natural Detoxification (part 2)

Homeostasis:

1. the tendency of a system, esp. the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus tending to disturb its normal condition or function.
2. Psychology. a state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated.

Thanks Dictionary.com!

Homeostasis is a fundamentally important idea in understanding how the body maintains health. As an example, when your skin is cut your body decides that it would really prefer that the blood stay inside your body rather than leaking outside. To that end the bleeding is staunched with clotting factors and a repair process is set into motion to reduce the loss.

When you hold your breath, carbon dioxide levels in the blood are monitored and when they reach high enough levels of concentration your body decides that life is preferable and strongly encourages you to exhale the excess CO2 and inhale enough O2 to keep everything running smoothly.

While these are extreme and obvious examples of how they body dynamically maintains equilibrium, it should be understood that this movement towards balance is happening in countless ways throughout the body. A few more examples include keeping the blood pH balanced, keeping hormone levels in check, regulating sleep/wake cycles, and more.

Natural detoxification is happening on a moment by moment basis as your liver breaks down toxins, your kidney excretes these toxins and your immune system bounces out the unruly "guests" that have taken up residence. When you sleep and stop taking in stimuli, your body is hard at work repairing the countless dings you have taken through a rough day.
As soon as the external environment does not demand our immediate attention, the internal environment is cleaned, restored and balanced.

Next blog, how to use Siddatech's line of flower essences to encourage (not force) natural detoxification.

Take care,

The friendly folks at Siddatech R&D

Natural Detoxification (part 1)

Toxins, toxins, everywhere and nary a breath of fresh air!

Most of us city-dwellers are constantly being exposed to airborne debris, waterborne chemicals and food laden with all manner of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and more.

Each year the industrial world introduces 500 new chemicals into our environment. While humans have been regularly exposed to smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning since we started hanging out around campfires, the vast majority of our time has been spent breathing relatively clean, fresh air and drinking relatively clean water.

Natural detoxification in the past has meant curling up into a ball and keeping your head down until the food poisoning/flu/winter cold/stomachache/headache has passed.
The old-school tried and true ways to detox: reduce the light, reduce the food intake, reduce the proprioception expenditure by lying down, and generally reduce the intake of all stimuli.

Why? Why fast? Why rest? Why sleep? My theory is that our body is far more clever than we are and if we were allowed to run amok, making less than healthy decisions all day and all night, we wouldn't last very long. Rest is the reduction of stimuli intake. We have "eaten" too much and now we need to digest what has been ingested. We "eat" not only through volitional dietary acts but also unconsciously through all of our senses: everything that enters our visual field, our range of hearing, our olfactory spectrum, our kinesthetic awareness and also our unconscious food choices.

All of this information can overwhelm our nervous system in a hurry. So, once a day (or more if we've really had too much), we lie down, close our eyes and rest. If the wild chatter of the brain simply won't stop and demands its due, try our "Deep Sleep" product. It can help release the stress that prevents you from getting into that sweet place of sleep.

Next time, we'll talk about what the body and mind are doing in that quiet spot.

Sweet dreams,

Siddatech R&D

Diet and Optimal Health, El Fin!

The universal dietary answers:

There is only one proven dietary principle that will help you to live longer: eat less.

Okay, now that we've gotten that horrible truth out of the way, let's talk about the things most of us can actually do.

• Modify your consumption of tobacco and alcohol.
  

These two are major contributors to ill health in countless ways. There is no evidence suggesting that consuming these two non-foods will do anything but damage your health and well-being.

• Avoid refined sugar. It has ZERO positive nutritional characteristics and is associated with countless health difficulties.

If you are finding #1 to be extremely difficult, I'd like to suggest trying Sidda Blood Sugar. Sidda Blood Sugar helps resolve and release the stress and tension that leads to sugar cravings and blood sugar fluctuations.

• Avoid food-additives that took you more than a moment to figure out how to pronounce such as acesulfame K.

If our ancestors hadn't been able to maintain health without artificial additives, we would not be here today. Newer is not better in the world of nutrition.

• Avoid super-heated fats.
  

I haven't yet come across any dietary advice that suggests eating fried foods is a good idea.

• Eat more green foods (the ones that grew that way, not the ones artificially colored that way)

I have yet to come across dietary advice that suggests that green vegetables, especially the leafy ones, are anything but good.

• The best general rule I can give you is that fresher, more lightly cooked, grown locally in season, closer to the land food is better than day-old, week-old, frozen, microwaved, shipped from far away, chemically grown food products. We are not built to eat food products. We are built to eat food. If your grandparents would not recognize all of the ingredients when they were kids, you probably shouldn't eat it.

• Put another way, if you went to the zoo with what you are eating, would you consider feeding it to a chimp? If the answer is no, the chimp would get sick. You probably shouldn't be eating it either.
  

To some of you out there in web-land this may sound harsh, austere and impossible.
But notice, I haven't said a word about any of the foods that diets normally debate over:
meat, fowl, eggs, dairy, fish, bread, pasta, rice, fruits.

And there is a serious amount of debate on all of the above. Every side has their evidence and their data and their research.

My advice is to just avoid the worst culprits and eat more green things.
It will take a bit of time and attention to figure out what works for you, but it should become clear what doesn't work pretty quickly.

If you have even a small social calendar there is a strong likelihood that you will be "tempted" and you will "cheat." My advice is don't even think in the terms "tempted" and "cheat." The concepts of "being tempted" and "cheating" are emotionally-charged and drive the accumulation of stress.
Take Sidda Digest to relax and release the abdominal stress that impairs digestion. And eat whatever it is you are going to eat with gusto and joie de vivre to make sure that whatever you eat, your body digests it to the best of its ability.

Be well,

Siddatech R&D

Diet and Optimal Health (part 3)

Antioxidants. Phytonutrients. Anthrocyanins. Lycopenes. Omega 3's & 6's. Fats, proteins, & carbohydrates.

My goodness. How on earth did humanity survive for thousands of years without knowing any of this?

Americans are more overweight and less healthy than ever before, despite the mountains of advice.

Quick, nobody eat fat! It's all the fault of fat. Fat will kill you.
Oops, guess we were wrong. It's really the carbs. Eat all the fat & protein you like, just don't eat the carbs.

Look at the first line of this blog. How many people know or care about what an antioxidant actually is, how it works, what it does, why we need them and how many to get? It's become another marketing ploy and one that doesn't even particularly make sense to the folks who are just trying to buy food.

Among other things, the human body is a wondrously complex chemical factory that is dancing with an impossibly complex set of variables from its environment. And more so, each human body is unique in its genetic makeup and in the environmental pressures brought to bear on it. Nobody can take all of this into account when writing a diet book. And as far as I can tell, there isn't anyone out there who has "the answer."

In fact, the idea of "the dietary answer" is only an idea. Nothing more. And all that those kind of ideas do is make us lazy.
Those kind of ideas allow us to not pay attention to what we are doing in any a given moment because we now have preprogrammed responses.

The less attention we want to pay to our lives, the more we need rules to avoid catastrophe.
But why wouldn't we want to pay attention to our own lives?
In the end it's all we've got.

So let's ignore the "experts" who tell us about all of the wonderful chemicals we can ingest to fix all our problems and let's start paying attention to what we put in our body.

Next blog: "The answers" you have been waiting for!

Be well,
Siddatech R&D

Diet and Optimal Health (part 2)

Most of us have had the experience of acute stress affecting our digestion. Sometimes that can lead to constipation or diarrhea. Perhaps we might have felt "butterflies in the stomach" or "a sinking sensation in the belly."

Chronic stress has been linked to numerous GI difficulties including: diabetes, reflux, gastritis and more. Does this mean that there are not other factors affecting digestion? Of course not. But as far as we know, there are no studies that suggest the experience of chronic stress is good for your digestion.

The small intestine has more nerve endings in the spine, a fact that has caused some noteworthy researchers to refer to an "enteric brain," meaning the brain in your guts.

Most of us know that it is not a good idea to eat when feeling acute stress. In states of acute stress the sympathetic nervous system takes over and moves us into "fight-or-flight" mode as opposed to the "rest-and-digest" mode of the parasympathetic nervous system. In the parasympathetic state the volume of blood stays in the core of the body and encourages and supports resting, digesting, recuperating, regenerating. In the sympathetic state the blood and attention moves peripherally in order to deal with whatever threat is at hand.

It is easy to understand that the parasympathetic state (resting & digesting) is the best place to be in while eating. But life isn't as simple as black and white. Life is a constantly shifting tapestry of infinite shades of gray. Our nervous system is not simply sympathetic or parasympathetic, stressed or not stressed... we use these terms in order to paint a general picture of an impossibly intricate situation.

Sidda Digest, Sidda Blood Sugar and other Siddatech products are not just about situations of acute stress. They are for the chronic stress that we are not aware of. The chronic stress that leads to ulcers, indigestion, heart burn and general poor digestion. They help relax the nerves and open up the electrical pathways so that the blood can optimally flow and support the GI tract, bringing in maximal oxygen & nutrients and maximally removing wastes and toxins.

So, if you're going to eat something that you know isn't good for you... love it. Eat it with joy and happiness and pleasure. Why impinge on your electricity and your chemistry? When you eat food that generally doesn't suit you because you enjoy the taste, enjoy it because stress of worrying about the food just compounds things.

Next time... we will dive in to the chemistry of nutrition.

All the best,

Siddatech R&D