The Year of the Fire Horse is almost upon us, galloping onto the scene on the next New Moon. This is a “Double Fire” year, carrying the invitation and the opportunity for dynamic changes, transmutation and transformation – and explosive power, if we are prepared for it.

The Snake Year that is currently drawing to a close has pushed us to shed our skins and release that which no longer fits, so that we can shine bright with the essential Fire energies of this Year of the Fire Horse.

I’m so excited for the unbridled, wild and untameable energies of this coming year – but the Fire Horse has not always been welcome. Indeed, individuals born in Fire Horse years were painted as ungovernable (yay!), reckless and dangerous – precisely because of their independent nature, fiery will and authentic expression of their truest selves. And none were more stigmatised than Fire Horse women.

Year of the Fire Horse Stigma

Women born in the Year of the Fire Horse were shunned as wives – seen as too wild, too free and too full of passion. Female foetuses were aborted, and unlucky “accidents” befell female babies. The lucky ones had their birth years misattributed to the neighbouring years. This data is clearly documented in the 1966 birthrate in Japan, which dropped by a staggering 25%.

Why are these qualities of passion, self-authority and living one’s truest impulses so feared? I have some thoughts. And I also believe that this coming 2026 Year of the Fire Horse is a potent opportunity for all of us – Fire Horse or not, woman or not – to embody even more of our most wild, essential selves. To be guided by our hearts and souls – both aspects of the Fire element.

In this episode:

(00:00) Introduction
(02:44) what IS the Year of the Fire Horse: why it’s so potent – and so feared?
(06:00) Double Fire and the potential for transformation & alchemy
(07:28) The stigma of being born in the Year of the Fire Horse
(09:40) Why the Year of the Fire Horse carries vital energy for ALL of us
(13:47) 2026 – rise of AI or an opportunity for greater embodiment?
(17:00) Balance Double Fire with simple habits & rituals (and a Feng Shui tip)
(20:30) Fire & Water polarity

One of the practices that is so important in grounded and capacitating these powerful energies of the Year of the Fire Horse is Qi Gong – literally, “energy work”. I have created a beautiful, self-paced experience that guides you through energy work practices in just 10 minutes a day. Open up the flow in your meridians, alchemise blocks, unlock the secrets of your energy centres (chakras), charge up your Qi and tune up your biofield – so that you can best harness these powerful energies coming our way. Learn more here.

Transcript Introduction

(00:00) Hi everyone, welcome to the Balanced Natural Health podcast where we share insights from the ancient science and timeless wisdom of Chinese medicine. Information from the old natural ways of healing can support us in leading more beautiful, more vibrant and more vital lives today. In this podcast I share simple, natural and accessible tips that you can incorporate into your everyday life for more vibrant health and wellness. I’m so glad you’re here.

Episode Welcome

(00:32) Hello beautiful beings and welcome to episode 49 of the podcast. I’m Dr. Maz and in today’s episode I would like to dive into something really timely and very exciting because as many of you may know we are about to head into a new lunar year – the Chinese New Year is coming up. It begins on February the 17th here in Australia and this year upcoming is a really exciting, powerful, dynamic one. It’s ripe with possibility and opportunity and it is the Year of the Fire Horse.

I’m just so excited about the energy that’s about to come through this Year of the Fire Horse. We’ve been getting ready for this new power that’s going to pour through us with the Snake Year that we’ve just been through. So we’ve just been through a shedding of skins, releasing of anything that might be clouding or dimming our power – and the way it shines through us. This has all been in service to clear the way for the wild, untamable power of theYear of the Fire Horse.

In today’s episode we will talk about why this is such a powerful year and what it means for feminine power – the rising of the deep, wild, sacred, untamed feminine within all of us. Because we all contain at least a seed of the masculine and the feminine.

We’re going to talk about what that means for reclaiming our essential, truest, most vibrant expression of selves. We will also talk about how we can best support ourselves to capacitate the flow of this powerful energy in this Year of the Fire Horse. Also, things to look out for and practices that we can put into place to ground and hold this huge influx, this surge of Fire Horse energy that’s coming our way.

Maybe you’re tapping into this energy as well? Perhaps you’re feeling like it’s been a weird kind of stop-start (or not-quite-start) to the Gregorian calendar, or maybe you’re feeling an upwelling of excitement – like something’s really brewing – and that is the Year of the Fire Horse that is coming.

What is the Year of the Fire Horse?

(02:44) So first of all, let’s take a look at what is the Horse year – and what is the Fire Horse year, specifically.

In the Chinese view of the world and from the Chinese calendar perspective, we have a 60 year calendar. It’s a beautiful calendar called the Heavenly Stems and the Earthly Branches. And this calendar has been used for millennia to map climate cycles, weather patterns, to harness the best harvest and to best align ourselves with the environment, This is because in Chinese medicine, we acknowledge that we are woven into the web of life all around us. And so knowing how we can position ourselves to be in the best alignment with the prevailing energies of the climate – and the weather for each particular year – is really beneficial. And this is something that has been honed to a fine art.

Stems & Branches: the Chinese 60 Year Calendar

The 60 year calendar is based on the 10 Heavenly Stems and the 12 Earthly Branches. There’s 12 animals – these are the 12 Earthly Branches. And this is where we get animals like the Snake, which we’re having this year, or which we’re just wrapping up, and the Horse which is coming up.

Each of the 12 animals have unique attributes. So for example, the snake likes to stay quiet, close to the ground. It’s really tuned into frequency and vibration. And it is well known for its ability to shed skins.

And the horse, in contrast, is full of a dynamic bursting forth. The horse is known for its energy, its love of movement, its freedom, its independence, and its generally enthusiastic and outgoing nature… and so on for all of the other 12 animals. So we’ve got the 12 Earthly Branches and the 10 Heavenly Stems.

The 10 Heavenly Stems are based on a Yin and Yang version of each of the five elements. The five elements are a really key way in which we describe the world in Chinese medicine, Taoist medicine and Taoist thought.

Five Elements within the Calendar

The Five Elements are Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. And for each of these, we have Yin and Yang counterparts. We’ve got Yang Fire and Yin Fire within the Heavenly Stems. So what happens is we have 12 animals, but we have a 60 year cycle. And this is because each of the animals gets a go in one of the Five Elements.

Now, you might be wondering, hang on a minute, there’s 12 animals and 10 Heavenly Stems, which would make 120, not 60 – and you are correct. But there is a rule that only Yang stems get matched with Yang branches (or animals that are Yang), and Yin stems (Yin type elements) get matched with Yin branches (Yin animals).

In the case of the horse, the horse has a Yang nature because it likes to move, it likes to be dynamic, to move explosively, it likes to run free, it has a really fiery active energy. And in addition to that, the horse is ruled by Fire. So no matter what element it falls in, the element associated with horse is already Fire.

Why the Year of the Fire Horse is a Double Fire year

So in this coming Year of the Fire Horse, when the horse falls into the Fire element, we have Double Fire. And there is potential for so much transmutation, transformation and alchemizing, because Fire is the element of transformation. It turns one thing into another, it’s dynamic, it’s full of energy, it’s the life force within all of us.

(06:33) And this is why this Year of the Fire Horse holds so much power for all of us, whether we’re a Fire Horse or not. There is an opportunity to claim this wild untameable power within us all for ourselves. And the Fire Horse is the most dynamic of all the horses.

In another 12 years, we’ll have the Earth Horse year – the element of Earth moderates that fiery Yang nature of the horse that is innate to the horse anyway. So Earth Horses are said to be more grounded. And, for example, a Water Horse will be more balanced than a Fire Horse in as far as their dynamism goes, because Water and Fire have a polarity, they balance each other out. So if someone is a Water Horse, they will possibly be less impulsive, explosive, dynamic than a Fire Horse.

Year of the Fire Horse Stigma

(07:29) Now, because of its double Fire nature, there’s been a lot of stigma around people born in the Year of the Fire Horse over the centuries, and particularly women. This is due to the nature of a society that liked women to be biddable, meek and submissive and to surrender to the will of others. And particularly so in a society that valued collectivism and submission to authority – anyone who stood in their wild, untameable, self-sovereign self-authority was a threat to that system – and none more so than women.

(08:06) Tragically, for centuries, many female babies were aborted when they were due to be born in a Year of the Fire Horse. If they were lucky, their birth was misattributed to the year before or after, to make them more marriageable. They might also have fallen prey to unlucky accidents or infanticide. There’s actually some pretty chilling data looking at the rate of infant deaths due to accidents in the Year of the Fire Horse, and there was definitely a spike in that.

What happened in the last Year of the Fire Horse, 1966, in Japan?

This was looking at the data in Japan from the Year of the last Fire Horse in 1966. And we can also look at a really fascinating bit of data from this same year in Japan, where we see that the birth rate actually dropped by 25%. This was possibly due to people holding off on having a baby in a Year of the Fire Horse. Perhaps they didn’t want to risk a female child being born as a Fire Horse, which would ruin her prospects of marriage (because Fire Horse women were seen to be unlucky wives).

Or it could have also been due to misattribution of that birth year to either the year before or after the Year of the Fire Horse .You can have a look at the data, it’s very clear. There’s been quite a few articles speculating about what’s going to happen in Japan in this new Year of the Fire Horse, given what happened in 1966. And when you actually look at the population chart by birth year, it’s really quite striking.

The Fire Horse’s invitation to all of us

And I think this is why it’s so important, more than ever this year with this Fire Horse energy coming in, that we all step into and claim this wild, untameable essence of ourselves: this wild truth, this self-sovereignty, self-governance, self-authority that runs within all of us, whether we’re a Fire Horse or not, whether we’re a woman or not. I think that this is so desperately needed in our modern society where we have externalised our power, we’ve given away our authority to systems outside of us – and we’ve forgotten, some of us, that we all carry this spark, this stream of the divine within us.

We all can connect to that at any moment and that can give us direction, that can give us vital information. And I feel that it’s time for the reclamation and remembrance of this force that is within us all – the force that is the wild and untameable, the truest essence of ourselves, and what could be described also as the deepest part. It’s the Yin and the feminine part of ourselves in a way, and it’s that which has been hidden or suppressed. And I feel that this is never more important than now, for this aspect of ourselves to be expressed and reclaimed, because for too long now we have been living an unbalanced way of life – we revere one way of being at the total denigration of another.

Collectively, our current way of being is unbalanced

(11:21) We revere the intellect and rational thought and logic, and yet we have denigrated, forgotten about and belittled the value of instinct and intuition – or body wisdom and felt senses. And I love that we’re talking more and more about the power that comes from these senses and impulses, and the information that we get from our nervous system. We are so much more than our intellectual mind and when we are only operating from one half of ourselves, we’re only operating at partial power.

But when we combine the Yin and Yang aspects of ourselves, we have access to the totality of our power, the totality of our essence. So this means giving space to honouring our feelings over always our thoughts. It means honouring our deepest desires over the external shoulds of society or our communities or expectations.

It means honouring our own needs and speaking up even when it might go against societal norms. It means also honouring that which is of the body – and giving the body space as well to share its wisdom with us. Not just living in the mind, but actually listening to the whispers of the body and soul.

And also it means honouring and giving space to the living over the dead. And I’ll explain a little bit more about this.

The Five Elements, our consciousness and soul

(12:59) In Chinese medicine we understand that each of the five elements also rules an aspect of consciousness. And in the case of the Fire element, it rules the Shen, which is translated loosely as our present awareness, our consciousness, our spirit. It’s how much spark of life someone has in their eyes: when you look at them, you can see that you’re connecting to something beyond the physical.

You’re seeing that spark of the divine in someone’s eyes. And everything that we do in Chinese medicine is about cultivating our shen, cultivating all aspects of self. We are looking to cultivate our shen so that we can be living as the truest, most vital expression of ourselves.

Will the Year of the Fire Horse bring more AI overload, or deeper soul embodiment?

And this brings me to my point. So many forecasts for the 2026 Year of the Fire horse talk about the rise of AI, because Fire relates to energy, which relates to, in the modern day, electricity, internet and technology. But while this may be true, and while we are certainly seeing that AI tools are exploding everywhere, I think that at the same time we are having a massive influx of energetic power coming through our consciousness- if we are available for that.

(14:20) And that means actually allowing time for cultivation of our presence and our awareness, our consciousness, our attention – and not just giving it all up to AI. I know that there can be some valuable time-saving tools that come from AI. But also I think that when we rely on AI for expression we lose that sense of aliveness that comes through in our own authentic voice – our own authentic expression – because that is also part of the element of Fire.

(14:52) And it might not be perfect. It might have spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, but it’s true and essential, wild and untameable. And I think we’ve all seen the absolute flood of AI content everywhere. So much of it feels lifeless and dead. And I think that this Year of the Fire Horse is an opportunity for all of us to be vessels for this divine force of Shen-spirit-consciousness that is coming through us, and to cultivate that through practices like meditation, Qigong, and even contemplation. So: sitting outside and contemplating a tree, or having a slow & meditative grounding walk outside, connecting to that energy, that living energy that is all around us, getting our feet on the earth, putting our face to the sun, charging up with that life force energy.

It can also be things like observing our own impulses and getting curious and getting to know ourselves more deeply, so that we can start to clear out conditioning and allow our truest self to shine through and flow through.

The gift of the Snake Year

And this is where the Snake year has been such a gift, because it’s been a continual (for me anyway!) sloughing off of old skins… of looking at where I was still in old habits of giving away my power externally, rather than looking to that wild untameable source within. And also perhaps shedding limiting habits of thought, and limiting perceptions.

(16:42) So all of those, or many of those (I’m sure there might be others lurking in the corner!) were challenged and were able to be shed. And there’s still time for all of us to do this in the next few weeks as well. You might be actually experiencing this for yourself as well.

Maybe there’s old triggers coming up, things that felt like that you feel like you might have already dealt with in the past, and yet they’ve resurfaced again. So I feel like we’re actually going through a purge at really the deepest levels, as we are readying ourselves for this influx of Double Fire energy that is coming our way. Now in Chinese medicine and Taoist medicine, Taoist thought, we are all about balance and moderation and the middle path.

And so a Double Fire year, a double Yang year, like we are having upcoming in the Year of the Fire Horse, can bring with it really strong energies that require moderation and grounding, so that we can absorb the best of them – and so that we don’t get burnt up in the flames. If we were to go straight out of the gate into theYear of the Fire Horse, without grounding and anchoring, we could become burnt out.

Another aspect of the Fire element when it’s imbalanced is mania. It’s like this ungrounded mental energy, someone talking a million miles an hour, or maybe laughing inappropriately, jumping around with thoughts. It’s going to be really important as these energies come through with the Year of the Fire Horse to bring a moderation and capacitance to hold those energies.

How to balance and ground in the Year of the Fire Horse

So this will be things like a daily grounding practice, like a somatic body practice, moving practice to open up and course and flow the meridians in the body so that our circuitry is well primed to receive that influx of energies.

(18:40) I like to think of the work that we do with cultivating and grounding our Qi in work like Qi Gong, or slow walking meditation, seated meditation, any kind of contemplation, getting into Mother Nature. All of this work is about connecting with our earthly vessel, so that we can provide a container for that energy to come through us. And the more grounded we are, the more of that beautiful Fire energy we can actually receive and work with in a productive way so we don’t get burned up.

And I think of this like shoring up the banks of a river, so that if there is big flow coming through in this Year of the Fire Horse, it can contain it. This is why we do these daily cultivation practices of Qi, because – rather than having to be controlled externally – it’s a way of internally cultivating that flow, so that we can hold more of that power and become more powerful, more vital, more vibrant and more radiant. And we can use that towards our enduring health as well. The extent to which we can ground and hold these energies of the Fire Horse, will also in part dictate how much of that energy we have available to launch our own dreams passions and desire this year- to manifest them into physical reality.

(20:11) The Year of the Fire Horse will give us the power to create changes if we want to – to transmute into a newer version of ourselves if that’s what we choose – and just to hold more of that energy for our own personal power and our own self-expression.

The polarity of Fire and Water

Now I mentioned before that the Fire element shares a polarity with the Water element, and it’s one of the fundamental balancing polarities of Chinese medicine. So in this coming Year of the Fire Horse, we can bring in more water into our lives – maybe it’s swimming, surfing, being around bodies of water, or maybe just bringing more awareness to how we connect to our water.

I’ve talked a lot about structured water, and the information-carrying capacity of water in other episodes, so you can have a listen to those. And perhaps it’s a more intentional connection to the water already in our lives – and it’s also about bringing qualities of Water to this Year of the Fire Horse. Water can be still, it’s steady, it’s slow, it’s persistent, whereas fire likes to flare quickly, it likes to create rapid change, it’s more impulsive.

In this Year of the Fire Horse, it’s about also bringing moderation or just checking ourselves with our impulses. And it’s about balancing out periods of productivity, speed and dynamism with periods of slowness. And this is definitely a note to self because I am a horse, and I have a habit of getting carried away when the energies are there!

(21:51) It’s a reminder that this Year of the Fire Horse, as every year – it’s a marathon not a sprint. A reminder to rest before you’re tired, to put little periods of rest and stillness (those qualities of the Water element) throughout the day, so that you can then have more access to lasting aspects of that Fire energy. And again, grounding, getting your feet on the earth, getting your body on the earth is so vital.

Qi Gong helps us to capacitate, anchor & benefit from these big energies

The Year of the Fire Horse might be a beautiful time to get started on a Qi Gong practice if you haven’t got one already. This is why I created my beautiful Qi Gong program, Coming Home to You – in preparation for this powerful year, so that we can really work with these energies and ground them into our earthly bodies.

It’s a beautiful, simple, accessible program, just 10 minutes a day. We go through a seven day sequence looking at the secrets of each energy center, and the different Qi Gong flows that cultivate our Qi – our energy – for that center. And then we put it all together in a beautiful flow, and we go deeper into two other classic Qi Gong sets as well.

Qi Gong doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but the benefits are profound. And the more regularly we practice it and over a longer term, as we practice it, the more benefits we reap. You can actually feel that energy moving through your meridians. So that invitation is there for you.

(23:22) The Year of the Fire Horse is a beautiful time to get into this practice. It’s on my website at drmaz.earth.

A tip from Feng Shui for the Year of the Fire Horse

(23:29) And before I wrap up, one other hint froms ome feng shui practitioners about how to moderate Fire energies of this Year of the Fire Horse is to bring more Water and Metal element into your space. The color of Water is a deep blue or a black, so we might bring in these colors in our clothes or in our environment. And the Metal element is associated generally with white, but also with Metal textures like gold or silver. So these can be colors or textures that we can bring into our surroundings or into our wardrobe, and even into our awareness, our meditations and visualizations, to balance out those impulsive, powerful qualities of this Double Fire Year.

I hope this has been interesting, enlightening, exciting perhaps. I think that this coming Year of the Fire Horse is just such a powerful portal for reclaiming that wild, untamed nature within all of us. So I’m wishing you all the very best for this coming Year of the Fire Horse.

Please feel free to share this episode if you found it interesting, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

We continue our exploration from the previous episode, and consider: how does the human body self-heal?

How are symptoms actually an indication of the body’s infinite wisdom & self-healing power, and how can we support these processes to move to completion and healing (rather than suppressing them)? What happens if we do suppress them?? How does the human body self-heal then?

Unlike modern medicine, Chinese Medicine supports the body’s self-healing processes, helping them to move towards their completion. In this episode, I share perspectives on health through the lens of the oldest science in the world, Chinese Medicine. A science that has persisted for over 5,000 years (some say 8,000… and it may be older still!) and is all about living in harmony, both within and without.

Listen for simple ways that we can cultivate these vital aspects of ourselves, for radiant health and self-healing.

(00:00) Welcome to the podcast
(00:32) Episode into, recap of why we get sick & how does the human body self-heal?
(04:11) what do symptoms like phlegmy lungs, sinus congestion & fever indicate?
(05:08) We humans have more microbial cells than “human” cells!
(07:05) How does the human body self-heal? Bacteria & other microbes help us
(10:35) How Chinese Medicine supports the body’s self-healing, rather than suppressing it
(11:22) The Eight Strategies, or Ba Fa, of Chinese Herbal Medicine
(17:41) Our bodies are infinitely wise & always move towards healing
(18:16) Case study: how a Candida “infection” benefitted the greater whole
(24:35) Mould sickness & our inner terrain, Dampness, low Yang

And if you’d like my guidance in building daily rituals and habits for radiantly robust health, I have created something simple yet powerful for you. As we know, our daily habits are the foundation for our health and “immunity”. Every moment, meal, drink, thought, habit, etc. can bring us into greater alignment and can charge up our Qi – the life force energy that fuels every aspect of health.

This is why I created the Radiant Energy Reset. A gentle, self-guided path of ancient health rituals to cultivate Qi, Yin, Yang and connection – guided by the wisdom of your own body. A real solution for those ready to ditch the fads & feel clear, energised and in control again. Backed by ancient wisdom, not wellness trends. Instant access for you here.

And, as we learned in episode 47, “when the Qi and Shen are present and sound, no pathogen can invade a person, even when the cycles of nature are disruptive, and plagues are near”. I show you how to cultivate and boost your Qi and your Shen – your spirit, soul, consciousness. Just 10 minutes a day of Qi Gong & Emotional Alchemy to connect to YOUR innate wisdom & guidance – and feel grounded in YOU. You already have all you need within. A gentle embodiment journey – Coming Home to You. Instant access.

Transcript Introduction

(00:00) Hi everyone, welcome to the Balanced Natural Health podcast where we share insights from the ancient science and timeless wisdom of Chinese medicine. Information from the old natural ways of healing can support us in leading more beautiful, more vibrant and more vital lives today. In this podcast I share simple, natural and accessible tips that you can incorporate into your everyday life for more vibrant health and wellness. I’m so glad you’re here.

Episode Welcome, and how does the human body self-heal?

(00:32) Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Maz and welcome back to episode 48 of the podcast. In today’s episode, we are continuing on from our exploration in the last episode about what it is that makes us sick, from a Chinese Medicine perspective, and does the human body self-heal.

And it is not invisible baddies, or germs / bacteria / microbes / viruses that we “catch” from other people that make us sick. From a Chinese Medicine perspective, the main causes of disease are a loss of harmony and balance, both with our world within – our inner world of emotions – and the world without – the environment, the climate and conditions around us. So in Chinese Medicine, staying balanced and in harmony with our inner world and our outer world is what maintains health, and allows our brilliant system to heal itself.

Health blooms both from harmony within…

(01:25)We understand that emotions can be a major contributor to disease because we are energetic beings, and emotions are simply energy in motion. And when they’re not in motion – when our emotions aren’t moving, when they’re stuck or repressed or ignored – they can snag our energy body, our biofield, our aura. And when our energy field and our Qi meridians are not flowing smoothly, and they’re not communicating as ideally as they should be, then we can start to see disease: this is because things aren’t moving where they need to be moving, and information isn’t being passed in a timely manner.

…and harmony with the external environment

(02:05) And we learned that another contributor to disease is an imbalance of our bodies in relation to the external environment. So for example, in Chinese Medicine, we say that Wind is the “spearhead of 1000 diseases”. This is why we bundle up against winds, we protect against drafts, we don’t sleep under fans, and we wear scarves in windy weather, because the neck is where Wind can get in. And when Wind and Cold get into the meridians that traverse our neck (and also our lower back, we like to keep that covered and toasty as well), we get frozen and flow is trapped on the surface.

So, how does the human body self-heal? “Symptoms” are one of the body’s wise responses to restore balance

And that is when an early stage “Cold” can arise. So, we might get tightness in the muscles of the neck, we might get that achy feeling that might indicate that a cold or flu is brewing, we might feel lightly flushed, and we might have some light sweating or fever. And all of this is, in fact, the body’s wise response to that Cold, and the resultant freezing of the surface: the body is trying to bring warmth to the surface to push that cold back out.

A very different (yet very ancient!) view on what it means to be healthy

(03:18) So we can see that these disruptions to internal harmony and outer harmony provide a very different view of health than the militaristic mindset of being constantly on edge against invisible baddies and “germs” that we need to defend against. I love that the focus is on harmony and balance, rather than waging war. And I think that that shift alone really benefits our nervous systems in the long run, too – that focus on what we’re creating, rather than what we’re fighting against, especially when it’s not the true cause of disease.

And I think it’s also interesting that this microbe idea or germ theory of disease is relatively recent, whereas Chinese Medicine has held its view of health for millennia, at least 5000 years, if not longer. And it has stood the test of time, so there is so much we can learn from it!

(04:12) In this episode, we’re going to look at a Chinese Medicine perspective on what happens when we do manifest symptoms. What does it mean, for example, when we get phlegm on the lungs or in the sinuses, or when we have a fever, or diarrhoea? How do we explain that from a Chinese Medicine perspective – and how does the human body self-heal?

We will also look at the Eight methods or the Eight Strategies of herbal medicine, and they describe different ways that we use herbs – and tastes and flavours – to support the body’s processes of restoring balance when it has been disrupted. So, for example, if we have constipation, we will use a certain treatment strategy, and if we have phlegm on the chest, we use a different treatment strategy. So we’ll learn more about that as well.

Review of previous episode – we are more microbe than human!

(05:03) Recapping on what we learned in the previous episode, staggeringly and amazingly, we humans actually have more microbial cells than human cells. So we have more bacteria and fungal (including yeast) cells than actual human cells. And together we live in a community which comes together in symbiosis that supports life (this also forms a big piece of the answer to “how does the human body self-heal?”)

And while it might seem that bacteria or microbes are the “baddies” when we look at the fact that they might be present, for example, in phlegm or mucus cultures when there are symptoms of disease (when there is, say, bronchitis or a chest infection, we can see that there are certain bacteria that might be more prevalent) there is actually a different view that paints these little friends in a different light. And what if, in fact, they were not the problem, but they were the cleanup crew? And that is how I see it – that our friendly helpers come to the party and help us restore balance.

(06:09) Let me explain a little bit more. But firstly, I’d like to bring to mind the image of a compost heap – and what happens in a compost heap.

Those of us who’ve had a garden or a compost heap before, we know that we throw food scraps on a compost heap, and then there are worms and microbes that help to break down these discarded bits of food, and help to break them down into something that will nourish the earth, which then feeds into the next stage of the cycle of life. So it’s a way of digesting the remnants, the leftovers, into a form that is usable by the soil, and by the next generation of plants – and which then nourishes us in return. So we can see that life cycle is continuing.

How does the human body self-heal? One key factor is microbes as a clean-up and recycling crew

And this is how I see our microbial helpers. As I see things, our bacterial friends not only do important tasks – like synthesising vitamins, for example, which they can do for us in the gut – but they can also be on call to process and compost and recycle damaged cells and tissues.

For example, imagine that we’ve been somewhere where we’ve been inhaling air that has something that’s challenging to the lining of the lungs. Maybe we’ve been by a busy road all day, and we’ve been inhaling a lot of diesel and petrol fumes. Or maybe we’ve been in a building in which there’s inadequate airflow, and maybe off-gassing from new plastic products, or carpet or paint or something. Or maybe we’ve been exposed to certain non-native frequencies that can upset the particular cell types or particular tissue types in the lungs. There can be many reasons for disruption to cells or tissues anywhere in the body. 

(08:04) So, assuming that people have been exposed to something that’s disrupted function, how does the human body self-heal? If the body is not well resourced to process that disruption, we may need to call on some extra help. Our bodies are amazing and so adaptive, and they help us adapt to so much and process so much. And that’s why I always talk about prioritising optimal nutrition with whole foods, getting adequate rest, drinking structured water, aligning with the cycles of nature, moving our Qi, limiting how much we have in our toxin bucket, and so on, so that we can be well resourced to adapt to and respond to these challenges.

But, if for whatever reason our vitality is a bit low – maybe we’ve had some stress or snagged emotions that are stagnating our Qi, or maybe there’s been a little bit more toxins in general recently – then we can’t respond as robustly to that challenge. And perhaps, in the example I gave earlier, the lining of the lungs gets a little bit upset and damaged by that exposure to toxins or fumes. Then we have degraded cells, that ideally the body wants to replace with fresh cells that are functioning optimally. So how does the human body self-heal in this situation? Well, it’s with a little help from our microbial friends.

Remove, remediate, reuse and recycle

So what does our brilliant body do? It sends in the cleanup crew. As we’ve seen in a compost pile, that veggie scraps can get degraded into something that nourishes the life cycle. And in our case, when the cleanup crew, the microbes, the bacteria, arrive on the scene, say in the lining of the lungs, they start to digest that degraded tissue. And in the process of doing so, we might get phlegm and mucus because that is how that degraded tissue can get either recycled or expelled out of the body. So we can cough it up and get it out. And what can be reused will be reused. 

Are bacteria the problem? Or part of the solution?

(09:55) If we were to do a culture of the mucus or phlegm at this time, we might notice that there are greater numbers of certain bacteria types. But what if they are not the cause of the problem? What if they are there because they are actually cleaning up the damage – because they are a part of the greater whole’s self-healing mechanism? And so then when we throw an antibiotic at them, then that process of cleanup, remediation and recycling is halted. And that compromised cell and tissue in the lungs doesn’t get a chance to be repaired completely.

Shooting the messenger

In such a case, we might have suboptimal repair of the tissue, and eventually, suboptimal function of the lungs. We’ve killed off our helpers – and some others probably have fallen by the wayside as collateral damage – and yet we haven’t solved the problem. So how does the human body self-heal then? Well, what if instead we took extra care to nourish the body at this time? What if we really doubled down on rest, on nutrition, on food that’s easy to digest? 

This means warm food, which is not adding to further Dampness. This is where nourishing the Spleen, which I talk about so often, is so important. Because if we’re eating in a way that we’re digesting completely, and we’re not adding to further phlegm and Dampness within the body, then the body can really focus its efforts on resolving the local inflammation in the damaged tissue and getting back to balance more quickly.

How does the human body self-heal, and how herbal medicine supports it: the Eight Strategies, or Ba Fa

(11:22) We can speed this process with herbs that can dry the area and help to expel that phlegm. So, rather than suppressing the helpers, in Chinese Herbal Medicine we’re actually supporting the body in completing the process of self-healing that it is attempting to do. And this expelling, or reducing, approach is one of the Eight Strategies that we use in herbal medicine.

Reducing, or Xiao Fa

It’s called the “reducing” strategy – Xiao Fa – wherein we support the body in eliminating what is obstructing flow and function. So it might be phlegm on the chest. It could also be stagnant Blood, in the case of really painful periods with dark blood and blood clots, and here we would give herbs that support the movement of Blood. For the chest phlegm situation, we would give herbs that dry out Dampness, that help to break it up and help it to leave the lungs.

And we might also use this strategy in a situation that we call Food Stagnation, which is when we have eaten too much rich food and overloaded an unsupported digestive system. And then the food just sits there and ferments, and people might get stinky farts, maybe stinky burps, there can be reflux, bloating, or a yellow or thick tongue coating. How does the human body self-heal in this situation and how can we support it? One way is to give herbs that strongly move digestion, they stoke that digestive fire, so that the body can move through that backlog of stagnated food, and bring relief in that way.

(12:48) So you can see that we’re not actually suppressing the symptoms. We’re not giving, say, antacids for indigestion, which would further dampen that digestive fire. The digestion is already overloaded, it is already dealing with stagnated food. But instead we support resolution – with our treatment methods and our herbs, we move in the same direction that the body is moving, and we support self-healing and balance in that way.

Sweating, or Han Fa

Another example of a treatment strategy that we use is “sweating”. As I touched on earlier, we say that Wind is the spearhead of a thousand diseases, and it is one of the most common triggers or causes of an early-stage Cold. And here, we might experience that tight neck, that flushed face, achy muscles, we get fatigued, there might be a light headache, there might be sneezing as well. The sneezing is just the body trying to expel the Wind and Cold through the nose, trying to get it out of the body. So how does the human body self-heal a Cold?

The ways that the body will try to expel this “Cold contraction”, this freezing at the surface, is through a fever or breaking a sweat. So if you have ever woken up in the night with sweats, and especially if you’ve been exposed to cold or a draft during the day, then it’s very likely that this is your body doing its magic to restore balance. Because when we can sweat Cold out (or return warmth to our body surface), then order is restored, that Cold and / or Wind is pushed out, and then the muscles get to soften, flow is restored, headaches ease, that flushed feeling can go because now it’s done what it needs to do.

(14:23) In the modern view, we might be tempted to throw some Panadol or Tylenol at this – something to reduce that flushed feeling, that headachy feeling. But what that actually does is that it stops that body wisdom response of heating up to push things out. And so then that process isn’t completed – it is suppressed instead – and the body’s attempts to self-heal are interrupted.

And because the healing process has been interrupted, then the imbalance that has come from the surface gets to sink deeper into the body – this is because we have worked against the body, we’re not helping it in its process of pushing things up and out. Whereas in Chinese Medicine, we have a sweating method, where for these kind of Cold presentations, we take herbs that help to promote light sweating. We also take some really nourishing, easily digestible warm foods, and then we bundle up and rest, and allow the body to break a light sweat. So this is the directive given in our oldest medical text, and it still works to this day.

(15:22) We often use a formula called Gui Zhi Tang, or Cinnamon Twig Decoction. This is cinnamon and ginger, licorice root, peony root, and jujubes or red dates, for a bit of gentle sweetness to help to support the energy so we can build that sweat, and have that fever. Those warm, spicy, pungent flavours of cinnamon and ginger push open the pores, they push out that Cold and Wind. And so. we might break a light fever – we’re already bundled up, we’ve had some easily digestible food.

What happens if we get in the way of healing? How does the human body self-heal then?

If we take this approach, then we can return to balance and harmony the next day. But If we don’t – if we don’t rest, if we don’t listen to our body’s messages, the messages that it’s telling us that Cold has come in – then what can happen is that the imbalance goes deeper into the body. And then we might start to get a sore throat, or phlegm in the sinuses or in the chest.

(16:19) And this is another way that we can arrive at that phlegmy cough situation I gave as an example earlier. What’s happened here is that the circulation and the Qi mechanism – the Qi circuitry – has been compromised by Wind and Cold initially, and the body wasn’t able to “expel” it. This can be because we’re low on Qi because we haven’t stopped, or maybe we suppressed it with something else, or maybe the body was dealing with other things. And so then it’s gone another level deeper, and there’s been more tangling of (16:49) the energy networks.

And so, lymphatic circulation is affected, fluids aren’t moving so much in the micro-circulation, and we can start to get water-logging and fluid retention in tissues within the body. So say, for example, the lungs aren’t draining as well as they normally would, and they can start to collect bits of phlegm and mucus. And so now we can see that if circulation and Qi – the energy mechanism – isn’t restored, then that phlegm is going to collect and sit there.

When the bacterial friends come in to help digest and compost the damage that has been done to the tissues, if we throw antibiotics at them, then that phlegm doesn’t get to be resolved. And what I love about this perspective is that it reminds us just how wise and powerful and amazing our bodies are!

Our bodies are infinitely wise and brilliant

(17:48) They don’t do anything by mistake, they don’t get sick by accident, they don’t have symptoms by accident, they don’t do things to be annoying. Everything that they’re doing is an attempt to complete a process, and move towards health – they are always moving towards health. So my question is always, how can we support that movement towards health? How can we help, rather than obstruct or suppress?

How a Candida “infection” benefitted the greater whole and supported self-healing

(18:11) I’d like to share another story that I think illustrates this really beautifully. I’ve shared this before in my Candida episode. In that episode, I talked about a patient who had been erroneously given an iron transfusion, and it shot their iron levels way up high. And this is a real concern, because our bodies don’t have a pathway for excreting excess iron – because we’re not designed to receive iron by transfusion in such vast amounts. So when this excess iron is accumulated in the body, it can start to deposit in the organs, and one of the concerns is that it can cause cancer.

So, it’s very important to get excess iron out of the body. And we were very keen, when this happened, to get that excess iron out of the body as soon as possible. There are herbs that we can use to support the process of chelation – getting metals out of the body. But what happened next just shows the amazing wisdom and power of the body. 

What happened was that this person developed a full body rash, which was a yeast or Candida rash. It smelled like a brewery, or fresh bread baking, and it was oozing this orange liquid, which incidentally was the same colour as the iron transfusion. It was incredibly uncomfortable – It was a whole body rash. It was very depleting, it came with a lot of brain fog and just general malaise and low energy. But what was happening was that our little Candida friends were doing what human cells are unable to do, or what human systems are unable to do without help from our little friends.

Candida can process metals – heavy metals. And what these little helpers were doing was providing an exit strategy to exude that iron from the system in the most efficient way. And in fact, what happened was, we retested this person’s blood again, a few months into this process, and the iron had dropped dramatically. It was almost back to normal, and then it returned back to normal shortly afterwards.

Now, this was very uncomfortable for the person. But we also knew that there was a body wisdom reason behind it. And if we’d been to see a Western medicine doctor at this time, we would have been given anti-fungals, and a whole host of possibly antimicrobials to shut down the processes that the microbes were carrying out, effectively shutting down their activity.

(20:43) And, yes – that would have probably reduced the symptoms at the skin level. But it wouldn’t have supported the process of excreting that excess iron, which was much more damaging. And this brings me also to another point, which is that sometimes discomfort is part of the process, unfortunately. But, if we support the body in its process, and allow it to complete that process to its fullest expression, then we actually get to enjoy greater health at the end of it. So this person was very stoic – they stuck with it. Everything got pushed out, or excreted, from the body, balance was restored and the skin returned back to its beautiful original state.

So again, we’re offered a different perspective here on what happens if we deeply trust the wisdom of the body and the processes that it’s going through. We see that the human body is infinitely capable of self-healing – if we don’t stifle its process.

Purging or Draining Downwards, or Xia Fa

This idea of occasional discomfort as sometimes being part of the healing process is something that we might see in another of our treatment strategies, which is the “purging” or “downward draining” treatment strategy, which is basically purging and expelling things through the intestines, like in the case of constipation.

What can also happen sometimes if someone has, say, a lot of Damp or inflammation in their digestive system, then when we give certain formulas that move Damp, there can initially be diarrhoea, and it can be somewhat explosive and sudden. But then generally, what we feel afterwards is ease and relief, because that’s been a really efficient way of quickly moving a large lot of Dampness out of the body. It might not feel amazing for a short time, but sometimes it really is the quickest way of moving things out. 

Vomiting, or Tu Fa

(22:29) Another way, which we don’t use much these days, because it’s much less appealing to modern humans, is vomiting. This was one way of getting things out that were sitting above the diaphragm. So, we’ve got the sweating method, we have the vomiting, the draining, we’ve talked about the reducing method. And then, we also have tonifying.

Tonifying, or Bu Fa

This is where we build up what is depleted. This is one of the more common strategies that we use. We can build up Yang – the spark of life – with warming herbs, we can build the Blood and nourish the Blood. We do this with our food as well, using specific foods for building both Blood and Yang.

Much less so in Classical Medicine than in Traditional Chinese Medicine, we nourish the Yin. This is because we’re much more interested in nourishing the spark of life from a classical perspective, which is by restoring function and the Qi mechanism first..

Harmonising, or He Fa

We might also look at harmonising. That’s another treatment strategy, and one that we very commonly use – in fact, it’s probably the most common method that I use in clinical practice.

And this is one that I often use when we have flu-type symptoms or lingering unresolved inflammation and infections, for example, or even unresolved past instances of flu or glandular fever. These are often presentations that involve the lymphatic circulation, the glands, the interstitial fluids. When we’re harmonising, we bring harmony to the interior and exterior of the body, by regulating and harmonising all the spaces in between.

Warming, or Wen Fa, and Clearing Heat, or Qing Fa

And the final two treatment methods are “warming” what is Cold – and nourishing the Yang – and “clearing Heat” – the goal of which is actually to ultimately preserve the body’s Yang, even though we are clearing it in an acute situation. Clearing heat is not one that we use that often, because in Classical Chinese Medicine, we are very much about maintaining and preserving theYang – the heat, the spark of life.

(24:13) But – if we have a extremely high fever, and the person is losing a lot of their Yang through sweating and fever, then we will use the clearing heat method for a short, acute situation. We do this to preserve their life force – to stop them losing too much life force – before we then go in and keep resolving things further.

Is mould the problem?

Now, before we finish up, I’d like to offer one more example. And this one is about mould.

This is something that we’re hearing more and more about these days, where people are having mould sickness, or they’re thinking to attribute their symptoms of say, fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, pain, to living in a mouldy environment. And yes, absolutely, we want to live in a well-ventilated environment! We want sunlight, we want circulation -that’s absolutely part of it.

But my question is – why can some people be unaffected in the same environment that other people are affected by?

This points to something different in the internal environment of the people involved.

If someone has a warm and sunny, and well-circulated and dry environment within, then they have more capacity to withstand Damp and mould externally. Whereas someone who’s already Damp, inflamed and wet inside – with compromised Yang or circulation – is going to be more easily overrun by external Dampness.

One way that I like to explain this is this. If we have a wet towel and put it out in the sun, it’s going to dry and will be fine, no problem. But if we have a wet towel and throw it in a dark cupboard with no ventilation, then we’re going to get mould.

(25:59) I had a person speak to me recently who had been diagnosed with mould issues, and they were being treated with some pretty intense protocols to kill off the mould. This person had been experiencing crushing fatigue, inflammation, not feeling like themselves, brain fog, a lot of weight gain as well, there was a disruption to hormones and metabolism, a whole host of things – and everything had been pinned back to mould that had been found in a diagnostic test.

But to me, I see things differently,, because I think that the mould is only there because the internal environment was too Damp to begin with. It had gotten out of whack, perhaps from improper diet, like maybe there’d been a lot of cold foods or a lot of fruit that contribute to that state of internal Dampness, for maybe eating foods that don’t support the Spleen in maintaining a warm and toasty, dry environment internally. So then the mould comes in to remediate the situation.

We know that moulds degrade, say, wet wood or wet organic substances – they help to break them down and compost them. And this is what I see was happening – waterlogged, Damp tissues were being worked on by mould to continue that process of recycling in order to keep the life cycle going. Viewed from the perspective, the mould is a self-healing or remediation process.

To give another analogy, if we think of a house that has received water damage, and we see that the ceiling is starting to get mould spots on it, if we just paint over the mould or spray them with bleach – but don’t fix the root cause of that leak – that’s kind of like the Western medicine approach. They just spray the surface with things that are going to kill the mould, but they’re not looking at why has that mould occurred? And how can we restore balance at the root? Because we can kill off the mould in that one area, but there’s going to be imbalances down the track because we still have not resolved the root.

(27:54) So for example, we could paint over that water stain on a ceiling, or we could even seal it with something that doesn’t allow further water to come through, but then that water is going to leak elsewhere – it’s going to have even less movement, there’s going to be more rot happening in the background, rather than if we just got in, dried everything out, patched up the leak, and restored balance and harmony.

Instead, we could view that symptom of say a mould-damaged ceiling as a message from the house, that there is an imbalance somewhere internally, in the same way that we can look at a body with mould as sending us a message to say that there is an imbalance somewhere internally as well. Maybe fluids aren’t moving well, maybe toxins aren’t excreting as well as we’d like and therefore, more fluids are amassing to buffer those.

What if instead we ask, how do we nourish the body to allow it to complete the process that it is moving towards doing already? How can we support our brilliant human body in self-healing? So we might, once again, nourish it with foods that build Qi, that build that spark of life. We take food and herbs that create a warm and dry ventilated environment, we promote circulation with gentle movements, we work with emotional alchemy to help the whole Qi mechanism work efficiently – so it can communicate and make sure that everything is functioning optimally as we move that process to completion. 

(29:24) So I hope this has been interesting and helped to open up a different perspective of how we can work with our bodies rather than against them. A perspective of how we can listen deeply to symptoms as the messages that they truly are; of how we can support our beautiful body-mind-souls in their processes of transmutation; of alchemising what’s happening and of supporting those processes, and of understanding that our bodies are always doing what is best for us.

And if you’d like to learn more about how you can support your body in these processes of transmutation and moving towards ever-greater wholeness, this is the major topic of my Radiant Energy Reset. In this beautiful reset, I guide you through – at your own pace – self-paced modules that explain how to nourish your energy, how to choose foods that are warm and drying, and that promote a balanced internal environment; how we can choose herbs and foods when we get certain different “messages” from the body, we also talk about emotional alchemy, processing our emotions and moving our body with some basic Qi Gong. That is all on my website at drmaz.earth.

If you have found this interesting, please share with someone who may benefit and I look forward to seeing you next time!

Not only does your Heart have tastebuds, but it is also connected to your Tongue – and the Uterus and Room of Sperm (what a poetic name for the testicles!). This connection between the various organs has been well-known by Chinese Medicine for thousands of years, and now, modern research is rediscovering what the ancients knew for so long.

Recent research has found that the heart has receptors for both the bitter and sweet taste, and that these receptors are believed to modulate the function of the heart. In our oldest medical text, the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine), it is stated that:

“the Heart is benefited by the bitter taste”
and
“bitter-tasting substances can clear the Heart” 

“sweet herbs are used to sedate”
but
“too much sweet taste can disturb the Heart Qi”  

And it gets even better!

In Chinese Medicine, the Heart is connected to the Uterus and  testicles via the Bao Mai. And, guess where else in the body can bitter taste receptors are found??

You guessed it! The uterine lining and the testicles. Wild, huh?

Chinese Medicine has such a profound and nuanced understanding of health. It’s a complete system of healing that has been proven over millennia, with rich detail on how to use herbs & flavours for health, and a holistic understanding of the connection between the visceral organs (like the Heart) and the sense organs (like the tongue). This can offer up new perspectives and potential for health and healing.

In this episode, we explore the connection between:

• Heart & tongue

• Kidneys & ears

• Liver & eyes

• Spleen & mouth

• Lungs & nose

We share modern research and clinical case studies that beautifully illustrate this connection, and discuss some acupressure points to support the vitality of the sensory organs.

Join our community! Sign up to the newsletter (scroll down) – you will also receive a free eBook on Nourishing Life with Ancient Wisdom.

In this episode, we look to the millennia-old science and wisdom of Chinese Medicine to ask: are ice baths harmful to health??

From a Chinese Medicine perspective – which honours, stokes and cultivates the “spark of life” at all costs, and protects the Yang (vital warmth) of the body – the answer is a resounding YES!

We address many of the common objections to my statement, looking more closely at claims of historical use of ice baths, as well as the effect on the stress hormones and nervous system. The Kidneys – a vital foundation for health and vitality at all life stages – are very much affected by sitting static in cold water. Ruled by the Water element, the Kidneys are easily overwhelmed by cold, water and shock/fear – a common trifecta of ice baths! The Kidneys are also responsible for the health of bones, teeth and cognitive function, and healthy Kidneys mean that we get to feel vibrant at all life stages (or, “age well”).

As always, we also look to Mama Nature and our own inner messages for guidance. Our body-mind-souls are infinitely wise, and will guide us towards whatever it is that we need (or don’t need!) in order to move towards the most vibrant expression of ourselves.

In Chinese Medicine, we aspire to balance – “The Middle Way”. We don’t glorify extreme practices, instead choosing to “nourish life” in the myriad actions of everyday life: what and how we eat, how we move / breathe / rest / sleep, how we express and feel, to name a few. This, from our perspective, is the path to lasting health.

Join our community! Sign up to the newsletter (scroll down) – you will also receive a free eBook on Nourishing Life with Ancient Wisdom.

On the next New Moon, which falls on the 29th January 2025, we move into a new Chinese Lunar year. We are leaving behind the Year of the Wood Dragon and flowing into the Year of the Wood Snake.

In this episode, I talk about what the Year of the Snake may hold for us, and what opportunities it may bring. We will talk a little about how the Chinese New Year or Lunar festival is celebrated, and I’ll be sharing some of my musings about “new years” in general – there are many different “new years” out there (beyond January 1st!). I believe that new beginnings, new chapters and a “new you” can come at any time – each inhale can invite the new, each exhale can release the old.

Is “New Years” really the 1st of January??

I’ve been reflecting on the fact that the Gregorian calendar (prevalent in the modern Western world)  holds no personal resonance for me as a marker of beginnings and endings; I see it as arbitrary and man-made, disconnected from nature. Perhaps you feel the same –  are there periods or seasons of your life that carry more meaning for you?

As a herbalist, practitioner of natural medicine (which sees us woven into the web of life), surfer, vegetable grower and as a woman connected to monthly rhythms within my own body, I feel more connected to the cycles of nature – tides, moon, seasons, stars, plants & animals – and look to these as a compass to align my flow with life, and with Mama Nature. These are the cycles that nourish life! I also love learning the cycles and seasons of my own physical place in the world: summer swells and summer storms, the clear blue skies of winter, the first call of the Pacific Koel bird when it arrives in summer – and the absence of its call when it returns north, which heralds the turning towards cooler weather.

What opportunities does the Wood Snake bring?

I particularly loved the perspective of Jill Lander, Feng Shui practitioner, on what this coming year may hold:

“We are entering into a year of death and rebirth, a year to make responsible decisions to evolve spiritually, moving away from old ways and habits that no longer serve us well. Among all living creatures, the Snake is the best equipped due to its magnetic resonance to hear the heartbeat of Mother Earth. It is a dynamic year to learn from the past, moving forward with wisdom, awareness, transformation and compassion.

Mythology recognises the Snake as a creature of healing, which influences the physical body to shift to a more spiritual outlook. A great deal of quiet progress can be made in 2025 with the help of this planetary energy. Honour this transformative beginning every day with positive thoughts”.

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/lifestyle/leisure/article/3293097/chinese-horoscopes-year-wood-snake-2025-predictions-health-wealth-work-and-love-plus-wood-snakes#

Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
https://www.instagram.com/tokopa/

What makes up a human body? Did you know that the number of microbial (bacteria, fungi, etc) cells that live in and on our bodies can outnumber “human” cells by up to 10 to 1? This suggests that we are a microbial-human community, and that these microbes have a vital role to play in maintaining balance and health in the human. And in this episode, we dive in a deeper discussion of Chinese Medicine & Candida

What if Candida (and other microbes) are actually working to support our human bodies to detoxify or eliminate non-beneficial substances that our human cells can’t metabolise? Is killing off Candida overgrowth just killing the messenger (or clean-up crew, as it were)? Is the presence of Candida sending us a message – and how can we respond in order to support balance?

Chinese Medicine generally views Candida as result of excessive Damp in the body. Like the soil that sprouts mushrooms after damp, rainy periods, our bodies too can sprout an overgrowth of fungi if the internal environment is too Damp. Luckily, Chinese Medicine offers many simple lifestyle and diet tweaks that can clear Damp and restore vital health!

SHOW NOTES

EMFs and Heavy Metals

Effect of Clove and Thyme Essential Oils on Candida Biofilm Formation and the Oil Distribution in Yeast Cells

More Chinese Medicine wisdom on nourishing and bolstering the Earth / Spleen, for healthy microbial balance

Episode 2: Happy hormones naturally, for general health, easier periods and optimising fertility (Part 1 of 2)

Episode 3: Happy hormones for all (not “just for the ladies!”), and the role of inflammation (Part 2 of 2)

Episode 5: Beat the Bloat – Chinese Medicine digestion secrets!

Episode 14: Late Summer Diet & Lifestyle Tips

Candida & electromagnetic health

Episode 16: We are light beings – on biophotons and our electromagnetic health

Episode 17: Cultivating our light bodies – on biophotons and our electromagnetic health

Topical Wash

Ku Shen / Sophora / Yellow Pagoda tree

She Chuang Zi / Cnidium

Bring to boil, simmer 20 minutes, strain and apply to skin. Promptly relieves itch due to Damp and overgrowth.

ST36: Zu San Li 足三里

Image source: Deadman, P., Al-Khafaji, M. & Baker, K; A Manual of Acupuncture

Chinese Medicine offers many therapies which can speed the release of “frozen shoulder”, also known as adhesive capsulitis. The treatment clue is in the name: what is “frozen” is cold and immobilised, and so by heating and promoting movement with acupuncture, moxa, heat lamps and herbal medicine, we can help people regain their function and movement in an accelerated timeframe.

In this episode, we discuss these therapies in more detail, and offer simple remedies you can also try at home. We discuss also the importance of supporting general health to speed recovery, and allowing for the flow and expression of emotions.

ST38: Tiao Kou 條口

SP9: Yin Ling Quan 阴陵泉

LU5: Chi Ze 尺澤

Image source: Deadman, P., Al-Khafaji, M. & Baker, K; A Manual of Acupuncture

In recent years, modern science has finally arrived at technologies that are sensitive enough to measure biophotons, bioelectricity, conductivity, resistance and energetic flow pathways in living beings, and the resultant findings have (unsurprisingly!) aligned with the meridian pathways codified by the ancient sages many millennia earlier. How did the ancients KNOW where to map these pathways?

In this episode, I share my perspectives:

• there are other ways of “knowing” and “measuring” that are beyond the external (to us) technologies and tools that we have available today;

• the present focus on materialism has been to the detriment and neglect of our subtler senses and ways of knowing;

• the ancients had an advanced somatic-knowledge, through practices such as Qi Gong (energy work), Nei Gong (inner work), Nei Dan (inner alchemy), Dao Yin (somewhat like yoga), yoga, pranayama (breathwork) and meditation;

• this knowledge was potentiated by living in alignment with Nature, and in observation of her cycles;

• we all have access to subtle ways of knowing and sensing – it is an inherent ability;

• simple ways to cultivate this awareness with Qi Gong and energetic practices you can do at home.

Reading List & Shoutout

https://thecrdchallenge.com/

The Invisible Rainbow, by Changling Zhang

Heavenly Streams: Meridian Theory in Nei Gong, by Damo Mitchell

Qi Gong Reels

Calming Qi Gong – Gathering the Sky

Qi Gong Warm Up Sequence

Wise Owl Qi Gong

Guided Qi Gong & Emotional Alchemy

Nourish your Qi – your life force energy – in just 10 minutes a day.

Because your life force energy – your Qi – is everything. When your Qi is abundant and flowing, your life battery is full and all of your systems function optimally – body, mind and soul.

And it doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Just 10 minutes a day can charge up your Qi and usher you into deep self-trust and self-connection. Backed by ancient wisdom, not wellness trends.

Coming Home to You shows you how – learn more here.

From the Huang Di Nei Jing, circa 220 BCE
Chapter 1: The Universal Truth

In the past, people practiced the Tao, the Way of Life. They understood the principle of balance, of Yin and Yang, as represented by the transformation of the energies of the universe. Thus, they formulated practices such as Dao-Yin, an exercise combining stretching, massaging, and breathing to promote energy flow, and meditation to help maintain and harmonize themselves with the universe. They ate a balanced diet at regular times, arose and retired at regular hours, avoided overstressing their bodies and minds, and refrained from overindulgence of all kinds.

As an eternal student and Doctor of Chinese Medicine, I am struck by the fact that many of the discoveries at the frontiers of health science – various biohacking, structured water, circadian biology, frequency & information medicine and quantum biology – are reframing knowledge that the ancients had down thousands of years ago. And not only did they have an advanced understanding of these “new” phenomena – they also codified simple guidelines on how to live and thrive accordingly. I share this because many of the time-proven health practices that stem from this knowledge are very much applicable today, and most are free, simple and can be done by you at home!

In this episode I talk about:

• my reflections on exclusion zone (EZ) water and the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching;

• EZ water and its relationship to Yin, Yang and Qi – and therefore our health!

• the many tools of Chinese Medicine that we can use to structure and enliven water, to support vitality;

• my musings on a unique type of water mentioned in our ancient medical texts, ganlanshui, 甘瀾水 (literally, sweet rippling water), and what modern research tells us about this practice

• Five Elements (or Five Phases / Agents) and their parallels with information and frequency medicine;

• pulse diagnosis, your amazing human technology and bioresonance;

• humans as conduits between Heaven and Earth;

• simple practices to charge up our beings for the fullest expression of health.

Qi Gong Reels

Calming Qi Gong – Gathering the Sky

Qi Gong Warm Up Sequence

Wise Owl Qi Gong

Guided Qi Gong & Emotional Alchemy

Nourish your Qi – your life force energy – in just 10 minutes a day.

Because your life force energy – your Qi – is everything. When your Qi is abundant and flowing, your life battery is full and all of your systems function optimally – body, mind and soul.

And it doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Just 10 minutes a day can charge up your Qi and usher you into deep self-trust and self-connection. Backed by ancient wisdom, not wellness trends.

Coming Home to You shows you how – learn more here.

From the Tao Te Ching, circa 400 BCE

Tao engenders One,
One engenders Two,
Two engenders Three,
Three engenders the ten thousand things.

The ten thousand things carry shade and embrace sunlight,
Shade and sunlight, Yin and Yang,
Breath blending into harmony.
– Lao Tzu

Yang Sheng (養生) literally means “Nourishing Life”, and refers to the body of nutritional and lifestyle therapies that is one of the pillars of Chinese Medicine. We view Yang Sheng as the highest form of medicine, as nourishing body-mind-soul can prevent imbalance, and stop disease before it takes hold. There is an old Chinese saying that perfectly captures this ideal:

“Waiting to treat illness after they manifest is like waiting to dig a well after one is thirsty”

We consider that the more resourced and resilient we are, the more smoothly we can flow with and adapt to life and its various inputs. Looking after our foundation, and ensuring that our Qi is flowing and able to clearly receive essential information, helps us to regenerate tissues in their most optimal expression.

This is why the seemingly little things that we can do each day, like connecting to the earth, soaking up sunlight, drinking structured water, eating close to nature, feeling and releasing our emotions, moving our bodies, feeling connection, love, joy and gratitude, add up to make a profound difference to our health and vitality.

Another way that the concept of Yang Sheng, or Nourishing Life, can be expressed is as that of KNOWING YOURSELF. Ultimately, you are the expert on YOU, and while health professionals can offer help and guidance, they are not having your experience 24/7. We are all unique, and listening to yourself allows you to collect data on what best nourishes YOU.

As we get curious about, and tune into, the subtle cues of the body-mind-soul, we become ever more fluent in the messages we are constantly receiving from ourselves. We also get to deepen our knowledge about what works for us, and what doesn’t: or perhaps even the same response may “work” at some times and not others. It can also mean observing our habits, reactions, perceptions, programs, coping mechanisms and addictions (this is not limited to substance addiction – it can encompass addiction to work, busy-ness, emotional states, etc.), and choosing to unwind from those that don’t serve us. It can mean looking at what foods, activities, environments and relationships leave us feeling balanced and vibrant, and which ones don’t.

One of the many aspects of Yang Sheng that excites me is that in deepening our relationship with our body-mind-souls, we (re)discover and remember that the power to heal is within each and every one of us.

Let me guide you in Nourishing Life

Let me show you a simpler way – one that has been tried & tested for more than 5,000 years. A way that I have witnessed transform the lives of hundreds of people. And, a way that gave me my own life & health back.

Gentle, sustainable changes and simple, daily rituals, grounded in the ancient wisdom of Chinese Medicine. No harsh protocols, diets or dramatic hacks – just simple, natural, body-honouring foods and habits. At your own pace and in your own time.

Because your body already knows how to heal. Sometimes we just need a little guidance to put the pieces together. And this framework is what I am so excited to share with you – it’s the missing piece of the wellness puzzle.

The Radiant Energy Reset guides the way – learn more here.

Qi Gong Reels

Calming Qi Gong – Gathering the Sky

Qi Gong Warm Up Sequence

Wise Owl Qi Gong

Guided Qi Gong & Emotional Alchemy

Nourish your Qi – your life force energy – in just 10 minutes a day.

Because your life force energy – your Qi – is everything. When your Qi is abundant and flowing, your life battery is full and all of your systems function optimally – body, mind and soul.

And it doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Just 10 minutes a day can charge up your Qi and usher you into deep self-trust and self-connection. Backed by ancient wisdom, not wellness trends.

Coming Home to You shows you how – learn more here.

What is health? Is it merely the absence of disease? Or can getting “sick” and having “symptoms” also be a sign of health – an indication of an appropriate response to an insult or toxin of some kind, whether emotional, environmental, climatic, energetic, relational, dietary, airborne, electromagnetic, thought-based, beliefs, etc?

In this episode, I share my musings and reflections on how I see health – and how we can flow with the manifestations that arise in order to continue supporting our vitality and fullest expression, rather than trying to suppress the vital and restorative healing processes. The body already knows how to heal – we just need to minimise the obstacles that we place upon that path, whether individually or collectively.

I share perspectives on health from sages, philosophers and doctors through the ages, and discuss some cases studies that illustrate that “dis-ease” has actually been a healing process, and that interrupting this process would have arrested the inconvenient symptoms at the cost of healing, pushing the imbalance deeper into the body-mind-soul. I also touch very briefly on the lenses of terrain theory, pleomorphism, German New Medicine, and homotoxicology, and how these overlap with Chinese Medicine.

NOTE: health is such a huge topic that I could spend literally years talking about it! This is just a very tiny sampler. The case study examples I share are here are centred around healthy responses to physical triggers – a whole episode could also be dedicated to case studies with emotional triggers – and are by no means exhaustive.

…

“Health is harmony, dis-ease is discord”
Aristotle (384-322 BC)

“Our mode of life itself, the way we live, is emerging as today’s principal cause of illness”
Dr Joel Elkes, Director of Behavioural Medicine, Harvard

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”
Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Commercials for depression in the 90s named the cause as low levels of serotonin*. With no mention of toxic marriages. unhealthy workplace, financial security, loss of a loved one, or childhood trauma. Depression is a response. A natural response to unnatural environments or painful events”
Dr. Nicole LePera, @the.holistic.psychologist
*now throughly debunked

…

“One who lives in accordance with nature
does not go against the way of things.
He moves in harmony with the present moment,
always knowing the truth of just what to do.”
Lao Tzu, Dao De Ching, Chapter 8

In Chinese Medicine, healthy digestion and assimilation of nutrients belongs to the Earth element. It is the foundation for vibrant health and wellness, and so our medicine has many practices and lifestyle tips that support this essential function.

“Symptoms” (or body messages!) like gastritis, indigestion, stomach pain & bloating, ulcers and acid reflux are common in our modern society, reflecting a departure from health practices that have withstood millennia. Luckily, our age-old medicine has many simple dietary tweaks and lifestyle guidelines to help restore balance to the digestion, in turn resolving the conditions mentioned above.

In this episode, I share easy ways that you can support your body to ease stomach pain, burn, bloat and discomfort, and help restore vitality!

If you’d like more support and guidance…

I have created the Radiant Energy Reset: a gut-loving program that heals at the root. Grounded in ancient wellness principles, I show you how to create a firm foundation for health and radiance.

I have distilled years of my clinical experience into this beautiful program, so that you have all you need to nourish yourself from the root. At your own pace, in your own time. Learn more here.

Why do we get sick?
(Spoiler alert: it’s not germs, or other invisible baddies)

Why do some people seem to get everything going, while others happily keep on going?
Why do some have “iron guts”?
And why do some individuals get allergies in the exact same environment that others are totally fine in?

We might be tempted to answer, “it’s the immune system”, but the “immune” system is both merely a working theory and a relatively new concept – one that has not been tested and proven over the course of millennia. And in its short existence, many holes and inconsistencies have already been uncovered.

What if there was another answer to “why do we get sick”? One that covers all aspects of dis-ease – mind, body and soul?

A view that:

• has persisted for over 5,000 years (some say 8,000… and it may be older still!)
• liberates us from the defensive mindset of waging war on disease, preventing “attack”, always keeping an eye out, etc.
• trusts the wisdom of our brilliant beings – and the wisdom of Mama Nature
• is about living in harmony, both within and without?
• reminds us just how powerful we are?

Wouldn’t that feel so much better – more easeful, joyous and lighter – than being on constant alert for the next invisible germ or baddie out there?

And what about the fact that these invisible “germs and baddies” are actually a vital part of health? They already exist on and in us, to the extent that the number of microbial cells outnumber human cells by an estimated factor of at 10:1 (some sources now suggest that it’s closer to 100:1). In either case, we “humans” are more a community of bacteria and other microbes than anything else. Which then makes me consider – why the obsession with killing off all of the invisible microbes that we ideally live in symbiosis with us? And what IS the answer to “why do we get sick“?

What if health is actually about cultivating harmony with both the world within, and the world without?

This is the Chinese Medicine view.

In this episode, we look at the causes of disease through the lens of the oldest science in the world: time-tested over centuries – and millions of patients – and delivering powerful clinical results to this day.

So then, why DO we get “sick”?

• Loss of balance, connection and harmony
• Lack, or stagnation, of Qi (our charge or life force energy)
• Imbalanced Yin Yang, accumulation of Damp, Cold, Blood Stasis, etc.

And what can cause these disruptions?

• Emotions
• Six Heavenly Qi – atmospheric and climatic influences, also called the Six Evils
• Disconnection from Nature
• “Improper” living: food, movement, routine, habits, sex, thoughts, etc. that don’t support health

And what can we do to stay vibrantly well?

This lens sees us humans as primarily energetic, electromagnetic beings, and when we cultivate our Qi and our spirit-soul-consciousness, health is the natural result. This is summed up beautifully in the quote from our ancient medical book, the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, circa 200CE):

…when the Qi and Shen* are present and sound, no pathogen** can invade a person, even when the cycles of nature are disruptive, and plagues*** are near.
Chapter 73: Etiology of Disease

Listen for simple ways that we can cultivate these vital aspects of ourselves, for vibrant, radiant health.

(00:00) Intro
(00:32) Episode Intro – the “immune system” is only a theory, and keeps us on edge
(03:03) A different view of health – one rooted in connection, balance & harmony
(07:50) The Chinese Medicine take on “why do we get sick”
(11:25) What can disrupt our inner balance & harmony
(15:30) “Improper” ways of living – and our Bladder meridian as first line “defence”
(20:15) The overarching goal of Chinese Medicine
(27:15) What can being out of balance look like?
(34:15) Why disconnection from Nature can imbalance us
(37:00) The common root of many modern dis-eases – why do we get sick?

* Shen = spirit, soul, consciousness, awareness – the spark of life in someone’s eyes
** pathogen – literally, “pathos” and -“gen”, meaning something that is engendering suffering (not an invisible, contagious baddie or germ)
*** again, this originally meant an “affliction”, not necessarily infectious

Radiantly robust health made simple

Our daily habits are the foundation for our health and “immunity”. Every moment, meal, drink, thought, habit, etc. can bring us into greater alignment and can charge up our Qi – the life force energy that fuels every aspect of health.

This is why I created the Radiant Energy Reset. A gentle, self-guided path of ancient health rituals to cultivate Qi, Yin, Yang and connection – guided by the wisdom of your own body. A real solution for those ready to ditch the fads & feel clear, energised and in control again. Backed by ancient wisdom, not wellness trends. All the details here.

Cultivate your Qi & Shen

And, as we learned in this episode “when the Qi and Shen are present and sound, no pathogen can invade a person, even when the cycles of nature are disruptive, and plagues are near”.

I show you how to cultivate and boost your Qi and your Shen – your spirit, soul, consciousness. Just 10 minutes a day of Qi Gong & Emotional Alchemy to connect to YOUR innate wisdom & guidance – and feel grounded in YOU. You already have all you need within. A gentle embodiment journey, instant access and at your own pace. Details here.

Transcript Introduction

(00:00) Hi everyone, welcome to the Balanced Natural Health podcast where we share insights from the ancient science and timeless wisdom of Chinese medicine. Information from the old natural ways of healing can support us in leading more beautiful, more vibrant and more vital lives today. In this podcast I share simple, natural and accessible tips that you can incorporate into your everyday life for more vibrant health and wellness. I’m so glad you’re here.

Episode Intro

(00:32) Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Maz! Welcome back to episode 47 of the podcast. In today’s episode I’d like to share a different perspective on why do we get sick Why do symptoms arise and why do we experience dis-ease? And why is it that some people seem to catch every bug, every flu or cold or gastro that’s going around and others seem to be totally fine? Or why is it that some people have asthma or allergies or reactions to mold or certain environments whereas other people in that same environment or around the same triggers seem to be totally impervious to any outside input? So what is behind that?

Why do we get sick – do “immunity” and “germs” actually explain this?

(01:22) Now if we think with our modern mainstream mindset, we might answer it’s the immune system. But there are two things to consider about this answer and that is that the immune system theory is just that. It’s a theory, a working hypothesis that has some pretty major holes. So there’s definitely some issues, it’s not airtight, it’s just a working theory. 

And the other thing to consider is that it is also a relatively new idea – a relatively new construct that hasn’t had the opportunity to be proven out over thousands of years like the other view that I’m about to share with you.

So ,the modern idea of an immune system is say 100 to 150 years old, and prior to that we had a very different idea of why do we get sick – and therefore, what we can do in order to cultivate vibrant wellness, and also how to look after our health preventatively. And this other view that I’m going to present to you is a beautiful contrast to the current view of the immune system, which has us constantly on guard, on high alert, on defense for invisible baddies and all of the invisible pathogens / bugs / viruses / bacteria that are out to get us. This means that we always have our back up: our nervous system is never truly at ease or at rest because we’re in this militaristic mindset of being at the ready, to spring into attack or to defend ourselves.

What if health is actually about balance and harmony – both internally and externally?

(03:06) But this other view is actually about harmony – it’s about trusting the wisdom of our brilliant, brilliant beings, our brilliant body-mind-souls. It’s about trusting that we are so powerful to cultivate vibrant health, and also to rebalance from whatever ails us – and also trusting in the power and the wisdom of Mama Nature, and trusting in the power of our connection to the web of life, to the natural world around us. Because the fact of the matter is that we are woven in to the web of life, and we live in community and symbiosis with the world around us – and this is particularly true when we consider our own human environment.

A balanced and harmonious microbiome is an essential foundation for health and wholeness

You might have heard me or others talk about the idea of the microbiome, and this refers to the beautiful collection and living community of microbes. These are the tiny little organisms, like bacteria, yeast and fungi and so on, that live in and on our bodies. And this is why people love selling probiotic supplements – because they are meant to make our microbiome healthier. But there’s actually other ways to do that, that are much more lasting.

(04:26) This community of beautiful little friends is vast, richly textured and layered, and if we count the microbial cells within that whole community, they actually outnumber our human cells by a factor of roughly 10 to 1, by current estimates. This is pretty mind-blowing when we ponder, what is it that makes us human? What IS a human? And when we consider that we, as human beings, are more microbes than human – more community than human – then how does this modern militaristic view of killing microbes and defending against invisible baddies make sense?! It has us killing the very organisms that are helping us to live and thrive, and that are performing essential functions within our body.

And when we’re constantly at war with them, in a way, we’re at war with ourselves – and at war with connection to nature herself. Because the fact is that many of the bacteria or microbes that have been blamed for certain diseases and illnesses actually live in – and on – us when we’re in a healthy balanced state too. So it’s not about the microbes themselves as being baddies, but rather it’s actually about the whole symphony of all of those microbes within the context of our human selves. Are they in balance? Are they out of balance? Are they coherent? Are they supporting life?

This is why waging war on microbes is not going to lead to thriving good health. Instead we need to look at how we can bring coherence, harmony and balance to our inner world, and harmony to how we interface with the world around us.

A much more liberating and empowering answer to “why do we get sick ” – and how to maintain health

(06:21) This other perspective that I’m about to share with you on why do we get sick, and how we can maintain vibrant wellness, is not focused on doing war or fighting off invisible nasties. or constantly having our back up. Instead, it’s about surrendering that and having faith in the wisdom of our bodies – and trust in the wisdom of nature. It’s about living in harmony with the world outside us, and also living in harmony with the world within us. That includes microbes – but it also includes all of our inner workings, our entire mind-body-soul, our emotions. We’ll get into that in just a minute.

This worldview that I’m about to share with you is the Chinese Medicine view of health, and it is a view that has persisted for at least 5,000 years – if not longer. There’s different opinions on its age – it might be 8,000 years or more – and as such, it is the oldest surviving science in the world. And it is a science that still offers us powerful ways of bringing about balance, of bringing harmony and cultivating health in this modern world. So it has truly stood the test of time, and it can be applied to the whole range of diseases and sicknesses that we experience as humans, whether it’s a dis-ease of body, mind or soul.

Why do we get sick? A Chinese Medicine take

(07:48) So let’s take a look at what Chinese Medicine offers us as to “why do we get sick”. Why do we experience sickness and dis-ease, and what can we do to maintain health.

From our perspective, the things that can lead to dis-ease and suffering are fundamentally a loss of balance and harmony: a loss of connection to and alignment with the living natural world around us. This is because we are living beings, and we depend on connection to the web of life around us to regulate our rhythms, to synchronise our flow, and to exchange Qi – energy – with as well. So a loss of balance and harmony, a loss of connection and balance are the answer to why do we get sick. 

Fundamentally, within our bodies we are always looking for a balance of Yin and Yang – which is the fundamental polarity of this material existence – as well as the flow of Qi and how charged up, or how abundant our Qi is. So. are we well resourced with energy, and is that energy in integrity? Is it flowing everywhere it needs to go? Because this is how information moves through our body, and how all of our vital functions and body systems get to regulate and optimise. We need to make sure that information or Qi is moving freely through the body. 

We humans are energetic beings – and energetic coherence is the foundation for health

(09:14) I like to visualise that we exist within a field of energy, or Qi: a field of our own energy that interacts with the world around us. Our own energy or Qi field has energy superhighways – these are the meridians, or channels, and it also has microcirculation of that. I like to think of this field as almost like a mesh or a weave, and when we have different snags in that energetic mesh or circuitry, then things don’t move and information, vital substances and Qi doesn’t get to go to where it needs to go. 

This is summed up beautifully in one of our ancient texts, the Huang Di Nei Jing, or the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine. This book is over 2,000 years old and this is what it says about the aetiology or the causes of disease – an ancient answer to “why do we get sick”:

“when the Qi and the Shen are present and sound, then no pathogen can invade a person – even when the cycles of nature are disruptive and plagues are near”

Qi is our life force energy, that charge that I talk about and how well it’s flowing and circulating; Shen is our spirit, our consciousness, our present awareness, our spark of life. And in this book, when they talk about pathogens, they talk about it in the literal sense of the word as it is originally intended – not as invisible baddies: “pathogen”, meaning literally “pathos”, suffering, and “gen”, so bringing about or generating that suffering. So this does not have to be invisible germies or anything like that. And also when they talk about plagues they just talk about in the sense of suffering as well.

(10:59) So we see very clearly how cultivating harmony within, and charging up our inner energy, can provide us with a robust grounding to hold steady no matter what the outside world throws at us, whether that’s physical, emotional, energetic – on any level. The more resourced we are within, the more we can hold firm and keep our centre.

Disruptions to our energy – our Qi – lead to dis-ease

So now that we know what the ideal is – what can disrupt that harmony, that balance between Yin and Yang, and that beautiful charge and flow of Qi? Why do we get sick? Well, in Chinese Medicine we say that there are both internal and external causes of disease. The internal causes are the emotions. Emotions are literally energy in motion, Qi in motion, and if they’re not allowed to move, metabolise or alchemise through the body, then they will snag that beautiful network – that circuitry of Qi – and they’ll obstruct the flow.

And then, maybe circulation will be impeded, or maybe certain cells or tissues in an area don’t get the information that they need and they become deranged, and don’t grow or multiply in the way that they should, and they lose their coherence. Maybe we accumulate too much fluid in one area because there’s not enough Qi flow to keep metabolising fluids there. When we’re suppressing emotions – or if we have stored trauma in the body as well – this can impede the flow of Qi, and this is why we have somatic practices in Chinese Medicine to move that Qi.

Somatic work and embodiment practices are at the heart of Chinese Medicine

(12:41) Like Qi Gong, which literally means energy work. This is a somatic practice in which we move the meridians – we move that energy, or Qi, network – and we include our breath and our intention. When we work with these different meridian systems, we will titrate or discharge small manageable amounts of emotions that are trapped. So before and after a Qi Gong session feels very different.

We can move frustration, we can move heaviness or depression, grief, anxiety, ungroundedness and so on. By bringing harmony to that energy network of the body we also, over time, bring harmony to our inner emotional state. And in Chinese Medicine we have a deep understanding of the different effects of different emotions.

Why do we get sick? Suppressed or unmetabolised emotions are a big contributor

I’ve talked about this in other podcast episodes, (and also here, in relation to the Five Elements and their associated emotions). but, for example, we can say we say that shock can scatter the Qi, or worry can knot the Qi, or anger causes the Qi to rise up. Each emotion has a specific effect on the direction of Qi – or on the tangling of it, or the dispersal of it in certain ways. So this is why making sure that we’re, as I said, moving those energies through / out of the body is so important.

I’m also such a big fan of stream of consciousness journalling. This can be so helpful because it allows us just to witness the clutter that’s in our body, mind and soul, and get it out. We get to write it down onto paper, without projecting it onto someone else. It’s a pressure release valve for those emotions, and the more that we let them stream out of us – it’s like peeling off the layers of an onion. We start to see actually that there are other emotions or other energies beneath that.

How lifestyle can contribute to health… or the opposite

So that’s one of the main internal causes of disease. The other is a secondary internal cause of disease, because it’s to do with lifestyle. It stems from what the ancients would call “improper living:, and that means not living in a way that is in alignment with our brilliant beings, and with how they desire to be cultivated.

(15:00) That can mean having an imbalance of work or movement, and inadequate rest or too much rest. Maybe it’s foods that are distanced from nature – or non-foods even, like processed foods, seed oils, artificial sweeteners, chemicals, preservatives. These are not things that we are meant to digest, so they’re going to snag our energy and contribute to blockages or Damp / inflammation within. Another improper way of living can also be not dressing ourselves properly for the environment.

Why we keep our meridians warm – especially the Bladder meridian

In Chinese Medicine, we’re such big fans of scarves, and protecting our feet and covering our kidneys – no crop tops when it’s Cold! This is because the Bladder meridian crosses these areas, and the Bladder meridian is our first layer of interaction with the outside world, and it is easily affected by Cold and Wind, for example. This is why we treasure and nourish that Bladder meridian / channel, and make sure it’s warm and protected. (I share an acupressure tip for how to get Cold out of the Bladder meridian here, and a herbal tea option as well).

Not wearing sufficient clothes would constitute an improper way of living, as it could allow Cold to penetrate deep inside the body, where it can then interfere with different organ functions, and lead to things like, for example, gastro (or what appears like food poisoning), painful periods, joint pain. The list is endless and this is why we live in alignment with the outside world, as far as protecting ourselves and what we wear.

Why do we get sick? Too much sex – really?!

(16:33) There’s also improper living in things like “bedroom activities”, or sex. For men, excessive ejaculation can deplete the energy as well, as it’s depleting the Essence, or Jing, which are our deepest reserves of energy. The state of our Essence determines how we move through each stage of life, how vital and resilient we are, so depleting the Essence means that we’re less resourced within.

External causes of dis-ease: disconnection from our environment – and Mama Nature

Another aspect of improper living is a lack of connection to – and harmony with – the outside world. This can contribute to an internal accumulation of Cold or Dampness (if we’re not dressed appropriately), or other things that obstruct the movement of Qi, Yin and Yang in the body. The external causes of disease are the Six Heavenly Qi, so-called because they describe six types of weather, or atmospheric and environmental Qi. They’re sometimes called the Six Evils or Six Pathogenic Qi. They’re not germs, but rather changes to do with the temperature and air pressure around us. They are Wind, Cold, Dryness, Damp, Heat and Summer Heat – which is a particularly annoying mix of Heat and Dampness together.

(17:39) Of these, Wind is the primary one. It opens the door for all of the others to get in, which is why we’re always looking after that Bladder meridian as I just mentioned, with scarves – and looking after our lower back / kidneys and making sure our feet are protected as well. As you know, we say that wind is the spearhead of a thousand diseases, and this is why we’re always looking after the exterior or surface of our body, making sure that there’s good circulation there, that we’re not cold, that we’re not goose-bumped – and this is why we are definitely not fans of air con, especially on that Bladder meridian area, and also why we definitely don’t sit in ice baths.

I’ve done a podcast episode on that and also several posts if you’re interested in learning more about that, because in Chinese Medicine we are always revering the spark of life – the Yang, the fire within. It’s like a metabolic pilot light that allows all of our body functions and systems to operate optimally, and this is why we don’t take in cold food or drink, we don’t put ice on injuries, we don’t ice bath because that all steals life. You can’t have too much Yang – you can’t have too much of that spark of life, that fire – and icing, taking in ice, or ice cream as well, it kills and dampens that vital spark.

Why do we get sick – the remaining, “miscellaneous” causes

(19:04) And finally we have miscellaneous causes, like trauma, poisoning, injury and so on. So you can see that in this whole list of ALL the causes of disease, we don’t have any mention of invisible nasties, baddies or germs, which is pretty eye-opening isn’t it? And it’s also pretty empowering, because it takes us out of that position of fear and victimhood, and feeling like we have no power to effect any changes on our health.

It returns us to – and reminds us of – a state of empowerment, where we remember that we have the power to cultivate our Qi, to cultivate our Shen, to charge up our batteries so that we can remain balanced no matter what’s happening externally. As our ancient text mentioned – when our Qi and Shen are full, then nothing external can touch us, because we are well grounded and well resourced within ourselves.

And this brings us to the goal of Chinese Medicine. Our overarching goal is always to bring harmony and coherence: to restore it where it has gone awry, to restore flow, and to remove blockage and stagnation. And, to cultivate and nourish our Qi – our spark of life – so that we can always maintain our centre – our balance – no matter what’s going on in the world. We are always focused on creating harmony within, with that flow of emotions, making sure that we’re not accumulating pathogenic factors within, like Cold and Damp (from Cold and Damp foods, or indigestible foods), and making sure that we’re also living in harmony with the outside world.

How to nourish our health in each moment: simple rituals

This means living in harmony with the seasons, with the daily cycle of Yin and Yang, and day and night: going to bed at the right time and rising at the right time – because this gives our systems important information. It tells our hormones what to do, tells our whole body how to organise itself through the day; and the same with the seasons – aligning ourselves in harmony both externally and internally is key.

(21:23) And so practically, what this looks like are habits like managing our energy expenditure and our energy restoration – energy in and energy out – making sure that we’re not overworking or underworking, and making sure that we’re having that beautiful balance of Yin and Yang. We’re always mindful in Chinese Medicine of not frittering away that precious Yang, that Qi, that life force – making sure that we allow sufficient time for that Yang to rebuild and recharge, making sure we get to bed by 9 p.m.ideally and making sure we take rest.

And on the flip side, also making sure that we are moving our bodies sufficiently – that our meridians are being flexed and that all of our organs are getting massaged by movement, and that our blood is getting moved through the body. In Chinese Medicine, there is always a “Middle Path” of moderation: that is always our ideal, we’re never about extremes, but rather a middle path of moderation that is sustainable as a way of life, for a whole beautiful, vibrant and well lifetime. 

As I mentioned, practically we are also aligning with the daily cycle and seasonal cycles, and environmental factors around us, making sure we’re attired properly. It’s also choosing foods from nature – and from the nature around us specifically – so eating local; caring for our precious digestive fire, that precious spark of life, by choosing foods that are from nature, that are digestible, and taking those foods cooked and warm. There’s much more on this topic in the episode just before this one, about how important it is to choose cooked and warm foods and drinks – and what a difference it makes to gut health, cognitive health, sleep, depression, anxiety and a whole host of other presentations. 

In practice, It’s also about allowing the free flow of emotions – and this doesn’t mean spraying our emotions out on people, but rather it’s about acknowledging that they’re there and allowing them to move through our body, whether it’s somatically or onto paper. It’s also about beginning to befriend those perhaps neglected, suppressed or hidden parts of ourselves – looking at what’s behind our various bindings, addictions or limiting beliefs, and then integrating and embracing those.

(23:54) In this way, we’re bringing together that Yin and Yang of self, that wholeness of self, bringing our shadows in, embracing them as well, so that we’re not at war with ourselves within. And further, on the topic of energy, cultivating health is also about being meticulous and discerning with our own energy within: looking at that whole energy or Qi circuitry and consideringL are we in integrity with what we think? what we say? what we believe? what we feel? what we do? Because wherever we’re not in alignment, it takes energy to hold that misalignment or that mismatch: we’re using up energy to hold that untruth.

The importance of energetic coherence

But instead, if we’re in alignment with everything that we think, feel, say and do, then everything’s in harmony. It’s like the whole orchestra of our being is in tune, and that amplifies our life force – our Qi, everything flows freely, whereas if there are snags and kinks and hidden bits, then that drains our energy.

So, for example if we tell someone that we’d love to do something but actually we really don’t, then that drains our energy, because we have to hold that tension, that disconnect and we force ourselves to do something that doesn’t feel good. Again, we’re denying our own inner wisdom and that is a betrayal. It’s actually a double whammy, because it’s a betrayal of our own inner wisdom and then we’re also forcing ourselves to feel drained by being in a situation that’s not in alignment. And so, coming into ever greater integrity, refinement, fullness of self, and coherence of self, is such a vital part of becoming more and ourselves, so that we can hold our centre no matter what goes on around us.

Why do we get sick? Sometimes, it’s aircon, draughts and not wearing the right clothes

Another external way that we practically cultivate our health is making sure that we’re dressing appropriately. This means not overdressing when it’s hot and also making sure we’re protecting from cold and wind – especially Wind, as the spearhead of a thousand diseases. As we said, it opens the door for all the other pathogens. So, protecting our beautiful meridians with scarves and keeping our feet warm.

This one’s also really important for women who have painful periods, or even people with back and hip pain – because the meridians that traverse the reproductive organs and also the back, hip, leg, knee are all connected – they come up from the feet, And so. if that meridian is cold and contracted at the very root, then Qi is impeded and energy doesn’t flow as freely. This is why getting our feet in a foot bath, making sure we wear socks and slippers is also a really important aspect of preventative health, and cultivating health. 

(26:51) And finally, externally we’re also about moderating extremes, and always looking for that middle path as well. This means protecting from extreme weather, protecting from wind, avoiding air con (that’s such a big no-no!), and not sitting around in damp clothes for example. And as I mentioned before, no ice baths or draughts or any of these externally disruptive factors. So, to illustrate this view a little bit further let’s take a look at what being out of balance can look like, and how this can explain why we get sick.

Some examples of how various lifestyle habits and choices can lead to dis-ease Chronic inflammation, pain, swelling

For example, if we are eating foods that don’t digest, or we’re not nourishing our digestive fire – so let’s say we’re eating lots of smoothies and cold drinks, slushies, raw food – or maybe we’re multitasking or skipping meals, then that precious digestive fire becomes really weak. And if we’re not cultivating it over time, if we’re not caring for it, then it starts to die down and this can lead to Cold and Damp internally, because that food is not being digested efficiently. This means that we end up with undigested food, which then festers and ferments into Dampness – which is somewhat equivalent to inflammation. This in turn can lead to chronic inflammation, body-wide inflammation, things like sore joints, arthritis; it can lead to congestion, cysts, bumps and lumps – all sorts of presentations.

Susceptibility to gastro or “travel bugs”

The other thing also that can happen if we have not tended to our precious digestive fire, is that then our digestive system can become easily overwhelmed when we travel. For example we might easily get travel bugs or”Bali belly”, “Delhi belly”, whatever you want to call it, and also we might succumb to gastro. Whereas someone who has tended to their Spleen – their Earth element, their digestive fire – is going to be more robust, and more resilient to those external energies of Cold and Damp, and their digestive fire will be able to withstand that. They might feel maybe mildly unwell, or maybe have a reduced appetite, but they’re not going to have such a violent response necessarily. Therefore, it’s really important preventative health care to look after that Spleen, that digestive fire. 

Stagnated Qi and depression, irritability, PMS, PMDD

Another example is If we consider perhaps what suppressed emotions, or packed-away trauma, unacknowledged trauma or rejected parts of self, can do to our Qi mechanics. What they can contribute to is what we call Qi Stagnation. This is where the Qi is not moving freely through the body, and what we can notice here – on a very minor level – is sighing, or someone who’s huffing and puffing a lot, or maybe shallow breathing because they’re armouring withi; because a deep breath would actually bring them into contact with those feelings they don’t want to acknowledge. So we might have shallow breathing, and we might have maybe depression. We can also have irritability, mood swings, anger outbursts. And because we’re not breathing as deeply and completely, and we’re not pumping that Qi, we might then get impeded blood circulation, and painful periods, things like PMS or PMDD. All pain is related to a lack of flow, and these symptom are all related to the Qi not moving freely.

Floating Yang and hot flushes, anxiety, insomnia, ADHD, and that tired-but-wired feeling

Yet another example is what can happen if we’re not living in balance from a Yin and Yang perspective: if we’re maybe going too hard, running in Yang mode and running down our life force energy – our spark of life, our Qi. If we’re doing that for a prolonged period of time, then we can start to deplete our Yang. And healthy Yang lives in the lower abdomen – between the kidneys – and it’s likened to our adrenal energy, our life force, and our very essence. It’s meant to be consolidated and anchored deep in the lower body.But what happens when we keep running on empty – and keep running on adrenal hormones, on stress hormones – is that the Yang gets more and more depleted. And rather than being anchored deep within the body, where it can warm us and mobilise us from within, that Yang starts to rise and float away to the surface. 

We call this “Floating Yang” – and guess what can happen here? Hot flushes. This is why hot flushes are so common at that time that is called the perimenopausal time, because this represents a time in a woman’s life where she has probably been running on empty a little bit. Maybe she’s been multitasking for decades, looking after family and work, looking after others at the expense of self. And her Yang can take a little bit of a beating. Perimenopause is a time to double down on nourishing Yang, especially because if that Yang floats up, it makes us feel hot. And it can be tempting then to throw cold into the system, but actually this only exacerbates the issue, because it dampens that poor little Yang even more and pushes what’s left of it even more to the surface.

Other ways that we can experience Floating Yang are things like anxiety, restlessness; like twitching, not being able to sit still; it can be insomnia, trouble falling asleep, racing thoughts, ADHD – all of these are symptoms of that Yang not being grounded, or not being steady and held deep in the body.

It’s very important to know that the body will never call for cold (the weak Yang just gives the illusion of needing cold). The body always needs more Yang – you can’t have too much life. So, as tempting as it might be to go jump in an ice bath, what we actually need to do in hot flushes (or other symptom of Floating Yang) is to look at ways of anchoring that Yang.

A simple way that we can support and boost Yang

One simple way that we do that is with hot foot baths, because they are hot, and they’re at the opposite end (the feet) of the meridian or channel to where the Yang floats away (the head). And they bring that Yang down, while also boosting it a little bit as well. I like to add Epsom Salts to my hot foot baths, and I love doing them before bed – they can be really deeply grounding. And in Chinese Medicine, minerals and salts are deeply anchoring and grounding as well, so they can help to anchor that Yang deep in the body where it needs to be.

Another example also is that, if Yang is depleted, then we are not full of it from within – this means that we can easily be affected by Cold externally. Because if our whole being is full of Yang and/or Qi, then normally that Cold Wind will only affect the outer part of the body, and we can kick it out. So a healthy person will be able to kick it out with a sneeze – that’s often why we sneeze in cold environments, because we’re clearing the Cold from the exterior.

But – if we don’t have enough Yang to keep us full of it, and to protect us from external Cold and Damp, then that Cold can go deep within, and we can end up with Cold deep within the body, like deep Cold in the lungs, for example. We might see this in cases of chronic chest infections or recurring pneumonia, for example. And then once again, we’re looking to warm and nourish.

Why do we get sick? It can also be due to disconnection from circadian rhythms

And finally, another example that we can experience when we’re not living in harmony externally – if we’re disconnected from nature, from the web of life that we are forever woven into – is maybe a lack of circadian rhythm. Maybe our sleep-wake cycle is out of whack, because we’re existing in artificial lighting, and we’re not getting those cues from Mama Nature, from the sun first thing in the morning. It’s so vital to get sunlight before phone light, or artificial light, in your eyeballs. It sends a lot of important signals.

And this can also be behind things like seasonal affective disorder (SADS) – a lack of sunshine, which is leading to mood changes. This is also why practices like earthing are so vitally important. There are so many studies now that show just how powerful earthing, or grounding (getting our feet or body on the ground) is: it connects us to nature’s rhythms. It has beautiful anti-inflammatory effects, as well as other regulating effects on hormones and the nervous system: it brings us into alignment with the world around us.

Now on that topic of connection with nature, and the living web of life around us, there are some beautiful quotes from the Huang Di Nei Jing, again. (9:59) And one is this:

“the Qi of the body flows in accordance with the changes of Heaven and Earth”.

We are always connected to the world around us, to the cosmos above and to the earth beneath our feet.

And the other beautiful quote is the reminder:

“every individual’s life is intimately connected with nature. How people accommodate and adapt to the seasons, and the laws of nature. will determine how well they draw from the origin or the source of their life”

This refers to the practices and foundations for preventative health and for radiant wellness that I have shared here. And I sometimes feel like a broken record on repeat, because when people ask me “what to do for symptom X”, the answer is very often the same. This is because whilst these dis-ease presentations, or symptoms or sicknesses, are very diverse, it’s like they are the branches of one tree, where the root or the trunk is the same. They might look different or present differently, but they all come from the same root cause. 

When we look after that inner and outer harmony, the balance of our Yin and Yang, making sure our Qi is resourced, that we’re nourishing our spark of life, and that everything is flowing – then everything else stems from there. And that is why, when I look at all of these modern disease names in modern medicine, I actually see all the common underlying threads that they share.

So for example, is it ADHD or is it Floating Yang? Or is it hot flushes or is it Floating Yang? Is it painful periods or is it Qi stagnation from unexpressed rage or frustration – which, I mean, rage or anger is such a healthy response to a lot of what’s going on in the modern world. or a lot of what we force our body-mind-souls into? Is it gastro or is it just that the Stomach and Spleen have not been tended to for decades, and now they can’t withstand external input as robustly as someone else? Is it asthma, or is it just a backlog of Damp and Cold within the body?

This is what I love about this Chinese Medicine perspective on health – it reminds us that we have the power. As our ancient text says, when our inner environment is resourced – when we tend to that – then robust health stems from there. I love this perspective because it reminds us just how powerful we are, and just how much we can do each and every day – with every thought, every mouthful, every drink that we choose. Maybe we can add in some beautiful herbs in a tea.

Each time we choose to speak, or think, or move with integrity; each time we honour our own impulses; each time we connect with Mama Nature as well – all of these things are adding to the piggy bank, the great reserves of energy within us.

Now, if you’re watching this on YouTube, you’ll notice I’ve had an outfit change, and that’s because I needed to add this little extra bit to this episode – and that is that I’m going to do a part two in our upcoming episode (on the next full moon after this one). And we are going to talk about what happens when we DO manifest symptoms of disease -we’re going to translate what the body is doing.

For example, if we’re having a chest infection and we’ve got phlegm coming out of our lungs or out of our nose, if we’re having a sinus infection, I’m going to share the Chinese Medicine perspective on what’s going on there. If we’re having a fever, or for example, if we’ve got what presents as gastro, we’ll explain what’s going on there

I’ll also share the Eight Strategies, or therapeutic methods, the Ba Fa of Chinese Herbal Medicine – ways of eliminating imbalance from the body.

So – I hope this has been interesting, helpful, enlightening. Please feel free to share this with anyone else who you think might benefit from it. 

If you’d like more support and guidance in implementing a lot of these foundational rituals and health habits into your life, I have created the Radiant Energy Reset, which is available on demand and is self-paced. It’s got a whole lot of beautiful video modules and a gorgeous guidebook and a journal. and a guided pathway to help you integrate these beautiful practices into your everyday. I also show you how to understand what your body is calling for, and share simple ways that you can bring balance to each and every day, through the foods that you choose, the herbs that you might choose, the movement you choose. We’ve got some beautiful breathwork and Qi Gong – energy work, meditation, acupressure points in there as well, as well as ways to look after our psycho-emotional health. It is a total foundation for mind, body and soul health, at drmaz.earth. (15:14) 

I also have a mini-offering: cultivating the coherence and integrity of our energy, our Qi, our life force energy. 

You can also find me on socials -drmaz_qi on Insta and YouTube, and drmaz.qi on Facebook. I’m always posting more of this beautiful wisdom from Chinese Medicine on there. I hope that what we’ve shared today brings you some more lightness, ease and liberation as well! Wishing you the very best of health and looking forward to seeing you in the next episode.

Chinese Medicine is a holistic framework that views all of space-time as one interconnected web: humans are woven into the fabric of the cosmos, and our health and vitality is influenced by the cycles of the heavens, the seasons, the sun and the moon. The Meridian Clock describes our daily cycles  – our circadian rhythms.

Recognising the importance of these cycles – and the benefits that aligning with these cycles can confer upon our health – the ancient sages and doctors observed Nature, and codified her many cycles and how they impact us. The result of this is a range of lenses that look at different expanses and magnifications of space-time. These lenses are fractal in nature, describing the ebb and flow of Yin and Yang – the contraction and expansion of the cosmic breath – at each degree. Like the many instruments of an orchestra that meld together to create music, these various cycles weave together to manifest the world we inhabit.

The Meridian Clock

I could do an episode on each of these cycles, so in this episode, we will focus on the Meridian Clock! The Meridian Clock is a 24-hour cycle describing the circulation of Qi throughout the 12 meridians of the body, and highlights various points of our circadian rhythm that are optimal for specific functions. It’s not surprising to me that the ancients had this cycle figured out thousands of years ago. The details which they identified are now being described by contemporary science in the forms of chronobiology, chronopharmacology and chronopathology, and it’s curious to note how diseases affecting certain organs align with the timings of this ancient clock.

In this episode, we go on a journey around the Meridian Clock, learning what it can illuminate for us about our state of wellness and vitality – as well as simple, practical things we can do to align ourselves with the flow of life and health.

Have you ever felt scattered or ungrounded after a shocking, frightening or distressing event? Or felt so stressed that it changed your breathing pattern? So angry that your chest and head felt hot? So worried that your stomach was twisted up in knots? So sad that your chest felt heavy and dull?

In Chinese Medicine we understand that, aside from environmental effects or traumatic causes, emotions are the main cause for dis-ease in our systems. The ancient doctors and sages observed the specific effects of each emotional state on the sum total of an individual’s Qi, or the totality of their unique energetic field. Even modern science concurs that we are predominantly “empty” space – not as solid as we might think, and rather composed of a multidimensional symphony of frequencies. If not processed and allowed to move out of the field, emotions can inhibit the flow, harmony and coherence of our energy.

Luckily, the ancients also codified many simple and accessible ways that we can move through these emotions and restore balance to the body-mind-soul. In this episode, I share some basic balances for common emotional experiences that many can relate to.

One of the fundamental tenets of Chinese Medicine is that it listens closely to the messages (symptoms) of the body-mind-soul, and uses that vital information to support the individual in moving towards their fullest expression of health.  It recognises that we are all unique, and so the treatment approach will be unique each time too. There is no “protocol” to treat specific “diseases”, as treatment will vary with each individual being – and will also change over both time and space (as we are intricately connected to our environment).

This perspective is not exclusive to Chinese Medicine alone. Any truly holistic medicine will take a similar approach: acknowledging the body-mind-soul’s wisdom and brilliance in creating the adaptations (often seen as “symptoms”) that it does, and supporting the whole system towards greater vitality and health.

In contrast, allopathic medicine generally seeks to suppress the inconvenient “symptoms”, which only serves to perpetuate the “condition” – or prompts it to move into another aspect of the body-mind-soul. Most often, long-term management via pharmaceutical means is the best that can be hoped for, and resolution is not a goal. In addition, “treatment” approaches are protocolised, offering one method or drug for the same symptoms, regardless of the many contributing or coexisting factors, and the individual’s unique history and experience.

In this episode I talk more deeply on this topic, and also share the Classical Chinese Medicine lens on health – if we don’t use protocol medicine and diagnosis, how do we assess. differentiate and treat what is presenting? How do we construct treatments to support the individuals? Find out in this episode!

Where I live, we are currently in the very depths of Winter – the season of the Water element, which rules the Kidney and Bladder. These channels can be most easily imbalanced by external Cold, and so at this time of year we can more often see “cold-like” presentations.

Luckily, we have a whole toolbox of options for restoring balance in Chinese Medicine! In this episode, I talk about:

• simple ways to kick out a cold with common herbs, Qi Gong and a special acupuncture point you can pinch if you get a chill;

• how the energy of Cold can upset fluid metabolism and affect bladder function, leading to a UTI-like presentation;

• the Water element, and how we can nourish this element not only in Winter, but at any time of year that is may require;

• messages that this element can do with some love, and simple things you can try at home;

• some basic food, flavour and cooking ideas to nourish Water;

• the magic of salt, its relation to Water, and how natural salt beautifully structured our drinking and body water.

I hope it is of interest and benefit!

This acupressure trick can kick out an early stage chill
(within the first 6-8 hours or so)

Start to pinch this point, Da Zhui, on the upper spine for a minute or so. Pinch as firmly as you can handle, until you feel a light flush. You may also feel a gentle warmth spreading out from that area.

Keep the area warm and protected from further Wind and Cold after doing this technique, as the pores and surface of the body will be open (this is how we kick the Cold out, before it settles in any deeper).

Da Zhui is translated as “Great Vertebra” – a handy guide to its location in the depression below the biggest, most prominent vertebra, where your neck joins the back.

Why this works

This point is a meeting point of all the Yang channels. The Yang channels govern the exterior of our body, and maintain good “boundaries” and harmony with the outside world. Certain weather – especially Cold and Wind – can breach these boundaries, and “colds” can ensue. Another way to kick an early stage cold = cinnamon, ginger and honey tea + a hot shower + bundle up well + rest.

This is why we love scarves in Chinese Medicine

While a gentle breeze on a hot day can be soothing, excess Wind can upset our system. We are at all times surrounded by a thin layer of warm air at our skin surface, which helps to maintain our boundaries and “immunity”.

The maintenance of this protective boundary is why we get goosebumps when we are cold – the raising of the fine body hairs helps to trap more body heat close to the skin. If this is repeatedly blown away, our muscles can tighten up in an effort to maintain the optimal levels of body heat. What we do when we are cold? We hunch our shoulders up to our ears to keep ourselves warm.

As the thinnest part of our body, and one which houses vital tissues like the spinal cord, nerves, arteries and muscles to support our head, the neck and nape are easily susceptible to Wind. If these areas get too wind-blown, we often see symptoms like headache & migraine, neck / shoulder / back pain and colds / flu as a result. This is why we consider it an important part of selfcare and health maintenance to wear a scarf to protect this vital area when it’s windy*. Plus you get to accessorise – winning!

* This also applies to air-conditioning and strong drafts (like open car windows when driving at high speeds). I’ve had patients with chronic headaches / neck pain that resolved as soon as they moved their desk to a part of the office that wasn’t under an aircon vent.

Read more about this acupressure tip here.

And learn about a simple herbal tea for kicking out a cold here.

Today I invite you to join me in a thought experiment – a journey of imagination, and perhaps, a dreaming into being of a new world. I think that it’s really important to ask these questions and consider what is possible, because:

A) it’s a big part of the actual scientific method – not the scientism that has been co-opted into dogma and religious belief, but the true spirit of inquiry through which we learn about our world, and who we are in it. In science, we ask “what if…”, “how does this work”, “how do we know this”, “why do we assume this be true”, “how can we consider this differently”, “can we look at things in a more expansive way”

B) words are spells! Our words spell out and shape our reality, the inform our subconscious minds; they shape how we think and how we relate with the world – and what kind of world we create around us.

In this episode, we ponder, what if we evolved into a different understanding and terminology for what we now call the “immune system”?

Is there another way to think of how our bodies adapt to input from the external world that is not so defensive, separating, oppositional and rooted in attack-thinking?

What if we thought of the amazing symphony of functions that helps us adjust to the world, and to process and assimilate a spectrum of information and input, as a dynamic interface – the veil between outside and inside?

Just because something is defined a certain way now doesn’t mean that it has always been that way, and we discuss some alternate perspectives on the science of health.

How can we hope to create a more beautiful world of peace and harmony from a place of fear, defensiveness, resistance and resentment? I believe that through our own liberation, healing and expansion, we can heal the world around us. When we shed our own limiting thoughts and worldviews, and become more whole and integrated, we are doing something real for the world – an infinitesimal part of healing the collective, to paraphrase Jung. It’s an inside job, and it starts with us. And so I think, if we hold certain worldviews of conflict, violence, attack, such as those that have come to the forefront in the past century with the rise of pharmaceutical medicine, what are we perpetuating into the world around us, what are we dreaming into being? What can we create from a worldview that is more connected, trusting and benevolent? Come dream with me!

In this episode, I share my own journey with Chinese Medicine: both the profound healing I received and my path to practicing this amazing medicine. Throughout my journey in this medicine, I have seen time and again that healing is always possible, symptoms are messages that are happening FOR us (not to us) and we have the power to make change and redirect the course of our health.

In this episode, I chat with Monique Telfer of Meta Pilates. Monique is a teacher of DNS – Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation – a school of movement that has been absolutely life-changing for me in resolving life-long pain, and in supercharging my strength and movement.

I’ve always been active and have loved many different types of movement, from tennis to running, Ashtanga and other forms of yoga, Qi Gong, snowboarding, skating and surfing. But I always felt like there was a missing piece of the puzzle: despite my broad range of activity, I didn’t feel as strong and stable as I might have thought, and I sensed that there was more that I could get from my performance and my enjoyment of movement. That missing piece was DNS.

DNS basically does a factory reset on the adaptive patterns of movement, posture and proprioception (our awareness of our bodies in space) that we have collected over a lifetime. It updates our nervous system and brain to facilitate healthy movement and postural habits, and in doing so, allows us to use our whole body holistically, and in concert and coherence.

I love that DNS gives us the tools to course-correct in a home practice between sessions, and that it grows our knowledge of ourselves. I often suggest it as part of the toolkit for people who talk to me about musculoskeletal pain, injuries and postural habits, and so I thought it was time to share more in a deep dive into this amazing modality.

metapilates.com.au
insta @metapilates_aus

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With the weather getting cooler where I live, I am seeing more and more sniffles and cold-like presentations around me. I am also hearing people talk about “catching” something from each other or spreading “germs” and.I wanted to share a different perspective that is the view from ancient Chinese Medicine texts (up to 2,500 years old!), as well as the view expounded by some very bold present-day scientists, doctors and virologist – even a Nobel prize winning one, for those that get into that. This is a view that is empowering and does not place us as a victim at the mercy of invisible attackers – with all the stress and fear that that brings with it. It is view that offers a different perspective to the theory (and it’s only a theory) of contagion.

I like to remind people that only several decades ago, we were demonising bacteria and now we embrace probiotics and understanding the importance of a robustly balanced and diverse microbiome. There are no goodies and baddies.

This is a way of looking at the world that tends to our inner terrain and the health of our inner world – terrain theory, as opposed to germ theory. It explains why some people don’t get sick, even when those around them do. It may also shed light on why many practitioners and doctors can spend all day in close proximity with sniffly people, and yet we don’t magically catch those symptoms. Why is that?

Chinese Medicine considers that we are woven in to Mama Nature and the world around us. When our energy – our Qi – is coherent and anchored, when our Shen (consciousness) is clear and present, and when we are in alignment with the cycles of nature, we flow with ease and health. When not, we manifest signs of “dis-ease” – a disruption to our healthy flow and energy.

NB: it is worth pointing out that the “pathogens” mentioned in this ancient text generally refer to imbalanced energies or climatic influences.

THE MUCH-AWAITED PROGRAM IS HERE!

As mentioned in the episode, cultivate your True Qi at the foundation in the Radiant Energy Reset. All the details here.

Depiction of Professor L. Montagnier’s experiment

READING LIST

De Aquino, F. ( 2012): Transmission of DNA Genetic Information into Water by means of Electromagnetic Fields of Extremely-low Frequencies

Montagnier, L. et al. (2010): DNA waves and water

Montagnier, L. et al. (2014): Transduction of DNA information through water and electromagnetic waves, in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine 

Tang, B. Q. et al. (2018): Rate limiting factors for DNA transduction inducted by weak electromagnetic field

https://www.infopathy.com/posts/dna-transduction-induced-by-weak-em-field

In today’s episode, I answer some awesome questions from the community, such as:

• what are the signs that your liver may be sluggish?
• what are your thoughts on enemas?
• how to manage symptoms of menopause?
• how to protect bone as we age?
• can you get your eyesight back?
• what is the link between a presentation of pelvic floor, bunions, thinning teeth and receding gums?

It’s interesting to note that as we go through and discuss solutions for a range of presentations, the root solutions often remain the same. Yes, there are additional remedies we can apply in specific situations for relief of the messages (symptoms), but if we keep digging to the root of the causes, very often we see common triggers such as inflammation, digestion that could do with some love, stress, limiting emotional patterns, belief habits, etc.

The good news is that if we actively work to support our foundation with key tweaks such as wholefoods, emotional expression, movement, structuring our body water, mindfulness, connection and reducing toxins, we can resolve the body-mind-soul’s calls for help and proactively create vibrant wellness in our future! Winning!

If you’d like additional guidance, the Radiant Energy Reset is ready for you here.

You are you own healer and you know your body best! 

Health professionals can offer (often much-needed) help and guidance, but ultimately, you are the expert on YOU, and you are the one having YOUR unique body-mind-soul experience, each and every moment. Getting curious about, and listening to, the messages that your whole self is sending you allows you to collect data on what best nourishes you – and how you can live to fulfil the fullest and most vibrant expression of yourself.

One of the many things that I love about Chinese Medicine is that it is an embodied medicine that invites us to get curious about these messages from the body-mind-soul – or what some may call disease or symptoms. In this episode I would love to share with you some of the questions that I commonly ask in clinic – the asking and witnessing of which can lead to deeper communication and connection with our whole self.

Imagine if simply choosing warm food and drink could help:

• depression
• anxiety
• insomnia
• gas
• bloating
• promote healthy gut bacteria (say bye-bye to expensive probiotics)
• painful periods…

All these benefits, without biohacking gadgets, expensive supplements and exotic superfoods!

This powerful tweak is something that we all can access today – and something that Chinese Medicine has been talking about for several millennia. So simple, and so empowering: each mouthful can move us towards ever-greater health.

A new study from the British Journal of Nutrition confirms what Chinese Medicine has known for well over 5,000 years.

In this episode, we learn why this works, and how you can apply it for yourself.

And if you’d like me to show you how to utilise the power of Chinese Medicine is other daily habits and tweaks, I have created the Radiant Energy Reset for you.

 

RESEARCH PAPERS

Cold and hot consumption and health outcomes among US Asian and White populations

Drinking water temperature affects cognitive function and progression of Alzheimer’s disease in a mouse model

Effect of cold stress on ovarian & uterine microcirculation in rats and the role of endothelin system

Visceral hypersensitivity following cold water intake in subjects with irritable bowel syndrome

Hot Water Swallows Improve Symptoms and Accelerate Esophageal Clearance in Esophageal Motility Disorders

The Pressor Response to the Drinking of Cold Water and Cold Carbonated Water in Healthy Younger and Older Adults

All water is not created equal!

We are learning that there’s an additional, fourth, phase of water – in addition to the three standard ones (ice, liquid water and steam) we were taught at school. This fourth phase of water sits between the solid and liquid phases: it is slightly more viscous than liquid water (also called “bulk” water) as its molecules are more regularly arranged than those in standard, bulk water. Structured water is arranged in sheets of hexagonal lattices, which confers a whole host of unique properties, such as the exclusion of certain molecules (hence the name, “exclusion zone” water), conduction of electricity and higher electrical potential and changes in pH (which measures acid-alkaline status). 

By weight, we are approximately 60% water – but by molecular count (counting all the molecules that make up all the cells in all of our body parts) we are closer to 99% water. That’s a lot of water, and so the state and qualities of that water will have a direct impact on our health and vitality. Is the water in our body coherent and vital, allowing transmission of nerve signals and other messages? Are the tissues of our bodies nourished by water with greater potential to carry charge and hold electrolytes? In this episode we dive deep into structured water – what it is, why it’s vital to our health, where to find it and how to make more of it.

Four phases of water

Image source:
Gerald Pollack – The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor

Hexagonal lattice sheets, stacked in layers, forming structured water

Image source:
Gerald Pollack – The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor

Bulk water vs. structured water, molecular arrangement

Image source:
Gerald Pollack – The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor

Graphite vs. diamond, molecular arrangement

Image source:
socratic.org/questions/what-are-diamond-and-graphite-in-relation-to-carbon

My intention for this episode is to open up our scope of thinking and perception to include the myriad ways in which we are interconnected. One of the many, many aspects of Chinese Medicine that I love is the acknowledgment that we are woven in to the rich fabric of life and the world around us. We are not separate, and we do not end at our skin. Opening our minds to this understanding offers us many additional realms or “channels” – beyond the merely material – in which to observe how our vitality is affected to either our benefit or detriment. This perspective gifts us greater power and agency to make tweaks or choices in our every day that can support our healing and greater vitality.

Our oldest medical texts codify the understanding of climatic, seasonal and environmental effects on our body-mind-soul, and offer solutions for aligning with these cycles for optimal health. The ancient sages worked out a 60 year calendar of Stems and Branches, which clearly map fluctuations in climate over this period – knowledge that has been corroborated in recent research into climatic and astronomical cycles affecting weather patterns. Modern research also aligns with ancient wisdom about the effects of cosmic and galactic weather, and the influence of heavenly bodies. On a more micro level, Feng Shui is a recognition of the importance of our local environment for our health and abundance.

In addition to our environment, whether cosmic or domestic, we are also connected across time in the form of ancestral memory and inheritance, past life / soul imprints, and in the form of shared cultural history and identity that shapes our beliefs about health and healing. The realm of ideas and beliefs — very often the unconscious and unexamined ones – also wields a profound impact on our health: just consider the powerful healing effects of “inert” placebos. Expanding our perspective beyond the physical and material gifts us so much more awareness, which in turn can lead to greater healing!

In the previous episode, we explored the fact that we – and all living beings – are emitting light in the form of biophotons. These patterns of our light emission carry information, can be reflective of our state of health, and are open to modulation and cultivation. Many of the ancient sciences, like Chinese Medicine and yoga, were already aware of these subtle energetic flows, and codified methods for their maintenance and optimisation. It makes sense, therefore, to look to this traditional knowledge for the ways in which we modern souls can also cultivate our light bodies for greater health and vitality.

In this episode, we talk about simple, accessible things that we can easily do to nourish our light bodies and boost our health.

You may also enjoy this episode, on our circadian health, aligning with Mama Nature, and the Meridian Clock.

EDIT TO PODCAST: to clarify, it is sunspot activity / solar winds / solar flares that showed a correlation with increased heart rate, potential stress response and also times of great change, NOT the suns rays that we normally bask in, which I see as vital for health and for structuring the water in our bodies (more on that in coming episodes!)

———————————————

If all matter – including us – is light condensed into patterns, what does this mean for our health? How can we harness this knowledge for our healing? What new tools and technologies can we open up to as tools for health?

Our body-mind-souls are an invisible symphony of energetic frequencies, which can fluctuate with our physical, mental, emotional and energetic state. This is the foundational premise of a vast array of healing modalities such as acupuncture, Qi Gong, Reiki, yoga, energy medicine, homeopathy, bioresonance, sound healing and information medicine. It is also used every day in modern biomedicine, in common diagnostic tools like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the electrocardiogram (ECG) and the electroencephalogram (EEG). The ECG and EEG measure the electrical signatures of the heart and brain, respectively. In fact, these tools are the only modern medical tests that can tell us if there is still a pulse of life in a body.

This knowledge can really open up our thinking about healing, harnessing our own powers, and also considering, where do we truly end, and where does the world around us begin?? What are the borders, or edges, of who we think we are?

Show Notes

A short list of just some of the publications referenced:

• Long-Term Study of Heart Rate Variability Responses to Changes in the Solar and Geomagnetic Environment

• Human high intelligence is involved in spectral redshift of biophotonic activities in the brain

• New Evidence for Coherence and DNA as Source

• Distant intercellular interactions in a system of two tissue cultures.

• Fröhlich systems in cellular physiology

This is a desperately-needed update to the original 2020 episode! Here’s why…

You may notice that the podcast took a few years break after this episode. The following episode, the original episode 16, was slated to be about terrain theory – and the beautiful overlap between it and the ancient health wisdom of Chinese Medicine.

What happened was that the events of 2020 prompted a journey of “unindoctrination” that led me deep into research, and away from this podcast for a while. Until this time, existing as I was in the holistic health space, I had not had the pressing need to examine some of the beliefs and worldviews that I had absorbed as a child. And the brainwashing was real – one of my children’s books was about the “hero” Pasteur, germ theory and contagion! However, the events of 2020 were immediately “off” to my science brain, and so off I went on a journey of discovery and unlearning.

I had thought my journey would take me deeper into terrain theory and end there, but instead I journeyed far beyond, into frequency and vibrational medicine, EMFs and structured water – and along the way, I dismantled many beliefs about society, our world, economics, law and so much more.

I have toyed with deleting my original episode 15 for several years now. I value truth and transparency about my own evolution and learning, and I am definitely not a fan of erasing information, censorship or any type of book burning. But, I also value integrity and coherence, and after consideration, I don’t feel ok about having outdated perspectives of mine in the public domain, especially when it might appear that I am condoning certain outdated – and thoroughly disproven – theories about health and “disease”.

So here we are: an updated episode 15, where I review both what I still stand by, and where my understanding has expanded. I share the liberating and empowering views of Chinese Medicine on maintaining health, as stated in the ancient text, the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, circa 200CE):

…when the Qi and Shen* are present and sound, no pathogen** can invade a person, even when the cycles of nature are disruptive, and plagues*** are near. 
Chapter 73: Etiology of Disease

I also love this deathbed quote from Louis Pasteur, acknowledging that terrain theory trumps germ theory (a nice antidote to my children’s book propaganda!). He is referring to his contemporary, Claude Bernard – the physiologist who explained many of the workings of the body through the modern, biomedical lens and was hailed as “one of the greatest of all men of science”****

“”Bernard was right: the microbe is nothing; the terrain is everything”
Louis Pasteur

* Shen = spirit, soul, consciousness, awareness – the spark of life in someone’s eyes

** pathogen – literally, “pathos” and -“gen”, meaning something that is engendering suffering (not an invisible, contagious baddie or germ)

*** again, this originally meant an “affliction”, not necessarily infectious

**** by Harvard historian, Bernard Cohen

We all have the power to charge up and boost our health in each and every moment.

This is why I created the Radiant Energy Reset. A gentle, self-guided path of ancient health rituals, guided by the wisdom of your own body. A real solution for those ready to ditch the fads & feel clear, energised and in control again. Backed by ancient wisdom, not wellness trends. More details at the link below:

LEARN MORE about the RADIANT ENERGY RESEThttps://learn.drmaz.earth

Right now, we find ourselves in the season of Late Summer – a time of humidity and dampness that can overwhelm the organ systems related to digestion and fluid metabolism, potentially resulting in digestive symptoms, weight changes, fluid retention, swelling, fatigue and foggy thinking. Luckily, Chinese Medicine has developed simple diet and lifestyle tweaks that help us flow in harmony with the seasons – including this time of dampness. Join us as we learn more about how to balance our bodies at this time for greater health and vitality!

Today we continue our discussion about the Five Elements in Chinese Medicine – and how they relate to the five flavours of different foods and medicinal herbs. This knowledge forms the foundation of Chinese Herbal Medicine and dietary therapy – and it helps direct us in knowing how to use our pantry as a medicine cabinet. There’s lots to talk about, so let’s get into it!

Show Notes & Links

Five Elements – generation, support and containment

Heirloom vs Cultivated Plants
source: Bill Marsh/The New York Times; illustrations by Matt Curtius

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/26/sunday-review/26corn-ch.html

https://www.urbanmoonshine.com/blogs/blog/bitters-and-digestive-juices

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25051278

http://www.isnff-jfb.com/index.php/JFB/article/view/89/166

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6766813/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/87559129.2018.1438470

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/bioactive-compound

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331972/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335903151_Bioactive_composition_and_promising_health_benefits_of_natural_food_flavors_and_colorants_potential_beyond_their_basic_functions

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-05-bitter-receptors-human-hearts.html

https://www.jamesmarrnaturopathy.com.au/why-heirloom-fruit-and-veg-is-better-for-your-health/

Today we demystify the 5 Elements – a central concept that we use in Chinese Medicine to classify things, symptoms, phenomena and the world around us. Stemming from Daoist philosophy, for the past several thousand years, 5 Element thought has informed Chinese science, technology and culture, influencing fields as diverse as military strategy, music, martial arts and of course, medicine! There is so much insight to be gained from an understanding of the 5 Elements concept, and how it applies to life, health and the world around us, so join me as we dive in deeper!

Show Notes & Links

Five Elements – generation, support and containment

Show Notes & Links

https://www.thoughtco.com/mandarin-meaning-of-yin-yang-2278446
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/being-happy-could-cause-you-7480609

It’s such an interesting time for us Doctors of Chinese Medicine right now, as we are seeing more and more of our fundamental medical concepts embraced as the foundation of the most progressive biomedicine, particularly in the spheres of functional & integrative medicine – and in medicine personalised to the individual. We also see it in the central importance of gut health to whole body health, in the mind-body connection, and in the interconnectedness of humans and their environment. Join us as we talk more about this intersection of new and old!

Can we have too much of a good thing? It’s possible! Very often, I see patients who come in with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, disrupted hormones, autoimmune conditions or seeking to conceive, who are simultaneously asking a lot of their bodies with the exercise they choose. As always, it’s important to strike a supportive balance with how we live, so if life is already demanding a lot from us, a greater focus on restorative exercise may be beneficial at that point in time. Join us as we learn how to choose exercise that best supports you where you are at.

Show Notes

Link to blog post

https://drmaz.earth/resources/a-simple-soothing-breath-to-release-stress-anxiety/

Hypermobility (including hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, hEDS) is an area which is gaining more acknowledgement, but the solutions within the conventional space are a little thin on the ground.

Hypermobility can mean a whole lot more than being double-jointed and having a selection of party tricks at your disposal 🤣 Because it involves the connective tissue – which is more stretchy in hypermobile individuals – it is not only joints that are affected, but also anywhere that we have connective tissue. Which is… our whole body!

This means that many systems can be impacted – digestive, nervous, cardiovascular and fluid metabolism – and that hypermobility can masquerade as other “symptoms” or “conditions”, like irritable bowel, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. If these are treated symptomatically, rather than being addressed at the root, we are only ever “managing” the situation, but not resolving or healing it.

But there is a simpler solution.

Every aspect of how hypermobility presents is ruled by the Spleen: upright posture, firm limbs, abundant energy, clear thinking, feeling grounded. Looking after the Spleen can take care of all of these manifestations of hypermobility.

Hypermobility often also presents with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). MCAS includes excessive immune cell response, leading to itching, hives, flushing, mood changes. POTS describes changes with posture, such as dizziness, palpitations, elevated heartbeat, nausea and even bladder changes. And, through a Chinese Medicine lens, both MCAS and POTS can involve the Spleen, as well as the Liver (MCAS) and Heart / Kidney / Yang deficiency (POTS).

As a “floppy” person myself, this is a topic close to my heart, because nourishing my own being with the Spleen-led approach has resolved diagnoses of:

• fibromyalgia
• chronic fatigue
• arthritis
• irritable bowel syndrome
• asthma
• hayfever / allergic rhinitis

…as well as intense panic attacks.

Many “diseases”, one solution.

So ultimately, this episode is about much more than hypermobility – it’s also about bringing balance to all of the “symptoms” I’ve already mentioned here (and more!). And it is also why every single one of us can benefit from giving our Spleen extra love and care.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

This is why I created the Radiant Energy Reset. A gentle journey for your most glowing self with a 28-day path of ancient healing rituals, guided by the wisdom of your own body. A real solution for those ready to ditch the fads & feel clear, energised and in control again. Backed by ancient wisdom, not wellness trends.

LEARN MORE about the RADIANT ENERGY RESEThttps://learn.drmaz.earthMore on Spleen & Digestive Health

Episode 5: Beat the Bloat – Chinese Medicine digestion secrets!

Episode 14: Late Summer Diet & Lifestyle Tips

Episode 23: What is DNS, and how can it revolutionise your strength & movement for more enjoyment of life?!

Episode 29: What is the Meridian Clock, and how can we align with nature’s cycles?

Episode 42: Fasting – helpful or harmful? A Chinese Medicine perspective

Free Spleen eBook

The Chinese New Year of the Metal Rat is just around the corner, and it’s a big party, with one quarter of the world’s population getting ready to celebrate! Let’s find out more about the Metal Rat Year, and ways that we can celebrate to bring in more luck, health and abundance in this coming year (hint: in may involve eating lots of dumplings!!)

They both use the same kind of needles, so you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re the same. In a way they are: dry needling is small subset of acupuncture – just one tool in a very big toolbox! But despite the fact that both modalities use the same tools (acupuncture needles), training, regulation, protection of the public, and evidence-based research greatly differs between the two. For example, acupuncturists study a 4 year Bachelor of Health Science, while a dry needling qualification can take as little as a weekend!! Join me as we discuss, and find out why it matters to your health.

People, please stop icing your injuries!! Today we are going to be busting the stubborn myth of icing. This is such an important one to raise awareness of, as it’s so entrenched in the mainstream medical field despite lack of any evidence of benefit and clear evidence of harm. So what do we do instead? Luckily Chinese Medicine has a tried and tested approach to healing, with thousands of years of clinic use. It’s so effective that the latest biomedical guidelines for healing soft tissue injuries echo traditional wisdom. So join me to find out how to heal more completely and efficiently!

Show Notes
Transcript

Today we’re going to get into some health mythbusting, and we are going to be busting the stubborn myth of icing an injury. This is such an important one to raise awareness about, as it’s so entrenched in the mainstream medical field – and it’s often the first thing that many of us will think to do when we injure ourselves, or if we’re recovering from certain surgeries. But despite it being so prevalent, unfortunately icing an injury not only lacks any evidence of benefit, but we are also seeing clear evidence of harm, in its delay and slowing of healing. Icing is directly contradicting our understanding of how the body heals, from both an Eastern and a Western perspective. It’s really important to bust this myth apart, so let’s get into it.

When did the idea of icing become so common in the first place? Well, the widespread idea of icing an injury dates back to the 1970s ,and it was bedded down in the acronym (many of us who are a little older might remember) RICE, which was the standard first aid treatment for injuries. RICE stands for Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, and itwas established as best practice back in the seventies and eighties. The term RICE was coined by the sports doctor and fitness guru, Dr. Gabe Mirkin, and the idea of RICE as the first-line treatment was further spread in his bestselling title Sportsmedicine. Now since then, Dr. Mirkin has realised that icing an injury is actually harmful – not helpful – and I really admire his openmindedness and ability to admit that he was wrong. This is the scientific method and a spirit of inquiry in action, which unfortunately doesn’t always inform the advice and practice guidelines out there. So it’s really awesome to see Dr. Mirkin being openminded and continually updating his knowledge and approach. As Dr. Mirkin says “RICE is something that just stuck and it’s wrong”.

Meanwhile, in many traditional medicines, for thousands of years the standard treatment for injury is the opposite of icing. We use varying treatments that will promote circulation and the growth of new tissue, and we do this with modalities such as acupuncture, cupping therapy (which had its moment in the limelight a couple of years ago with a lot of the Olympic athletes sporting the big dark spots on their backs, and it’s also been seen gracing the red carpet!), heat therapy – whether in the form of infrared heat lamp (which feels amazing!) or moxa. Moxa is also known as moxibustion: this is an ancient practice that involves the burning of mugwort and certain other herbs which release volatile oils – these are burnt near the skin and provide a gentle, warm feeling. It feels amazing and it speeds up recovery of topical injuries, even things like insect bites, and certainly feels really lovely for arthritis and pain conditions as well. So with all of these modalities, we’re looking at improving circulation and promoting new tissue growth. We also do that with both topical and internal herbal medicines that promote recovery. Some of these herbal liniments in particular have been fine-tuned by Kung Fu fighting Shaolin monks in China. These guys have had ample opportunities over the centuries to observe the effects of herbal medicine for a vast array of training injuries, so these liniments have been tried and tested over millennia.

So where did we get the idea in the West that ice could be helpful in injuries? Well, first let’s have a look at what happens when we do injure ourselves. When that happens, whether it’s a cut, a sprain, a bruise, a fracture, a herniated disc and so on, the body mobilizes its innate healing defense system, which is characterized by inflammation. And I touched on this in some early episodes, but the process of inflammation is commonly characterized by four qualities that many of us (who have had perhaps a sprained ankle or a pulled muscle or cut ourselves) would be well familiar with. These are redness, heat, pain and swelling, and these qualities are uncomfortable and undesirable in some ways, but they’re side effects of the healing work that the body is taking care of behind the scenes. They’re an essential part of healing!

The redness that we see is a result of the dilation (or the opening up) of the smaller blood vessels near the injury, and increased blood flow to the area: this allows the flushing out of debris, allows us to deal with any bacteria or immunological threats and allows for tissue healing. The heat that is characteristic of inflammation is similarly due to increased blood flow in the area, as well as arising from some chemicals that the body releases in order to start healing the injured space. The swelling arises from additional fluid that rushes to the area, and this fluid contains white blood cells (amongst other biochemicals that the body needs to heal and protect the injured area). Together with other chemicals released by the body’s defense system, these fluids also contribute to the fourth quality, which is pain. So this understanding of why the side effects of pain, redness, heat, and swelling are occurring, helps us to see that even though it’s uncomfortable and a nuisance and it slows us down, inflammation is a fundamental and necessary step to healing. Therefore any interventions that we can apply to support this process will speed healing and allow more complete recovery, while anything that we do to hinder this can delay, or even permanently affect, healing.

Back in the seventies, when people realized that putting ice on an injury could cut down pain and swelling, icing was implemented to get injured athletes back on the field immediately after an injury. From there, the idea became more and more widespread. To the point where the idea of ice bathing or cold water bathing after training is now incorrectly and widely believed to be helpful. Pain and swelling are the body’s way of immobilizing an area, so that we can’t do any further damage to it, so therefore icing an injury will certainly stop the pain signal (allowing a sports person to get back out on the court, or allow them a few more minutes on the field), but by slowing that pain signal, it’s going to take away the body’s innate warning mechanism to prevent further loading and damage to the area. So it’s absolutely going to slow down healing in the long run! And this understanding has been backed up by a whole spate of studies that I’ve listed in the show notes. These show that there were no objective benefits to cryotherapy or icing, and in fact that it delays healing. The only noted change was that people were able to use the effected area more intensely after 24 hours of icing, but again, this is just due to inhibiting that important protective (and essential) pain signal that protects us from overusing an injured area. The same study confirmed no measurable actual benefits, or long term benefits, in healing. So we need to ask ourselves: is short term pain reduction a parameter that we want to use when we consider the best approach to healing an injury? It is literally short term gain for long term pain!

On a subconscious level, we understand that icing slows things down. It’s even in our common expression of “putting something on ice”, meaning to delay or postpone or shelve something indefinitely. And again, this is what we are literally doing to the healing and optimal function of the injured area. This extends also to the use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like Voltaren and ibuprofen – whether they’re used orally or topically as a gel. The name of the drug says it all: they are anti-inflammatories, so they deal with pain and swelling by shutting down inflammation – but at the cost of long term recovery. Likewise, cortisone, which is another popular intervention, both orally and injected into joints, similarly stops healing. There is ample evidence regarding how cortisone and other steroidal anti-inflammatories inhibit the production of healing tissue. In fact, tendon surgeon, Professor Hakan Alfredson described in a British Medical Journal (BMJ) podcast recently, how multiple cortisone shots into an area can lead to dead tissue, reduced healing and wound breakdown. Two other studies, published in Radiology and Skeletal Radiology, just last year discuss observing accelerated progression of osteoarthritis, complications with joint and bone destruction and death, bone loss, stress fratctues, and also collapse of the femoral head (which is the head of the hipbone). So all these interventions are providing potential short term pain reduction, but with a long term loss of function and degradation of the tissue.

Chinese Medicine is the original functional medicine. It has always been focused on addressing the root cause of a presenting complaint. As we see it, healthy function stems from healthy flow and circulation, and the communication of all the body systems. As one of my teachers very memorably pointed out: the difference between a live body and a dead one is heat. It’s the spark of life! And when we die, the first thing that stops is movement, so let’s not shut down that vital movement – or “spark of life” – with cold. Let’s preserve it and support it, with supportive therapies. Our bodies are sending out this message too; often when I mention to my patients the difference between heat and ice therapy, they tell me already how unpleasant icing an area feels, and how when they switch to putting a heat pack on something (or we put the infrared heat lamp over an area) their bodies literally breathe a sigh of relief because it feels good! The body has been sending a message – our bodies are wise, and they’re constantly in communication with us, we just need to listen.

So how do we go about healing injuries in Chinese Medicine? Well, firstly we protect the area from further injury. By resting it, this means giving the body essential time that it needs to heal from the root up. And it means we need to be patient, and we may need to introduce changes in how we go about our daily lives: certainly we’ll have to look at how we exercise as well. There are no lasting quick fixes! So for something like a herniated disc, for example, avoiding loadbearing may be necessary for months. But the benefit is that it offers the body the space that it needs to heal comprehensively, and from the ground up. Secondly, in Chinese Medicine, we will use technologies and interventions that support the flow and circulation of essential biochemicals, fluid and blood to the area to support the healing process. In Chinese Medicine, we work with the inflammatory process, rather than directly heading-off against it – as with ice or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (the ibuprofens and Voltarens of the world). Depending on the injury, we will use acupuncture – and in areas that are really swollen or aggravated, the acupuncture doesn’t even need to be local to the injury to create change; often we use the body’s innately holistic structure by choosing points away from the inflamed area. In addition to acupuncture, we can also look at cupping therapy to gently move blocked or congested areas. W,e’ll look at the application of heat, as I mentioned, via infrared heat lamp and moxa. We’ll look at the application of herbal liniments and plasters. And internal herbal medicines. There’s lots of research out there on the beneficial effects of herbs, which are innately warming and circulation-promoting: in Chinese Medicine, these herbs are referred to as “warming” and “moving”. and these are things like cinnamon and ginger. There’s a lot of evidence out there looking at the beneficial effects of these kinds of herbs for delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), muscle fatigue, etc. These are herbs that we’ve been using in millennia in our herbal formulas for a whole range of pain and inflammatory presentations, from arthritis to muscular fatigue.

And finally in Chinese Medicine, we’ll also incorporate some gentle passive (and eventually, active) movement to encourage blood and lymphatic flow and drainage, and this movement will be customized for each patient depending on where their body is at. I also like to link this with breath and meditation for extra benefits! When we meditate, we allow our body to switch into the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) mode, which is also known as the rest-digest-repair-and-heal mode. So when we drop into this space, we get out of the way of the body’s essential healing work: we let it get down to business. A dietary tweak you can also incorporate for healing is eliminating inflammatory foods: I touched on this a little bit in earlier episodes. These are foods that will disrupt the body’s healing system, and add to the inflammatory load. If you eat meat, you can also add bone broth, or grass-fed gelatin powder as a daily supplement. These important foods provide the building blocks for a whole range of body tissues from tendon to bone, to cartilage and skin. Plus it has the added cosmetic benefits of beautifying skin, hair and nails, and the health benefits of adding integrity to the gut lining. So it’s such a great all round supplement! It’s so important too, because in our modern culture we’ve tended to embrace more of the muscle meats, and we turn away from gristle (which is effectively what collagen and gelatin is) – it’s that connective tissue that’s so essential to our healing. It also contains amino acids that might not be present in muscle meats, so it’s important to incorporate bone broth (or gelatin, or gristle if you’re doing slow cooks) into your diet for a balanced amino acid profile.

So that’s how we approach things from a Chinese Medicine perspective, and it’s so great to see this being picked up in the medical field. Recently, just last year, the British Medical Journal, which is one of the peak publications in Western medicine, published the following guidelines for soft tissue recovery and they’ve used the lovely acronym, PEACE and LOVE. PEACE talks about the immediate interventions: P stands for Protect; Elevate to promote more drainage; A is avoid anti-inflammatory modalities like the non-steroidals that we talked about (and ice); then we’ve got compress, and E is educate about active recovery – and in their words, and echoing our approach in Chinese Medicine, they said “setting realistic expectations with patients about recovery times instead of chasing the magic treatment approach”. True healing takes time: we can’t rush it and we’ve got to be supportive of the process for the individual.

The second acronym, LOVE, is applied after the initial phase, and it involves L for mild Load to allow the tissues to strengthen under pressure; Optimism, and this taps into the meditation aspect – when we have a positive mindset, we’re more likely to be in that parasympathetic nervous system mode, which is that rest-digest-repair-and-heal mode; V is for vascularization – promoting new blood vessel growth and vessel profusion through the area; and finally E is for targeted Exercises to strengthen the area. So that’s fantastic, and so in line with Chinese Medicine ideas about healing injuries! Ten years ago prior to these latest PEACE and LOVE recommendations, the physiologist John Paul Cantazaro started applying a similar approach with his clients. He used the acronym METH, which is a very memorable (!) and stands for Movement, Elevation, Traction, and Heat.

It’s really great to see these traditional medicine ideas coming through into the present, and informing best practice! I hope this has been helpful, and that it’s helped bust some myths. As always, I’d love to answer any questions you might have – or bust any further myths you might have burning curiosity about! So please get in touch with me with those on Insta, Facebook, or via my website. Thanks so much for listening and wishing you the very best of health.

Research & Links

Alfredson H. Treating tendinopathy with Professor Hakan Alfredson. BMJ Talk Medicine. 2013.

Hohenauer E, Taeymans J, Baeyens JP, Clarys P nad Clijsen R (2015)The Effect of Post-Exercise Cryotherapy on Recovery Characteristics: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, PLoS One 10(9), published online September 28th, 2015

Kijowski R (2019) Risks and Benefits of Intra-articular Corticosteroid Injection for Treatment of Osteoarthritis: What Radiologists and Patients Need to Know. Radiology, Published Online: Oct 15 2019

Kompel, AJ, Roemer, FW, Murakami AM, Diaz LE, Crema MD and Guermazi A (2019)

Intra-articular Corticosteroid Injections in the Hip and Knee: Perhaps Not as Safe as We Thought?Radiology, Published Online: Oct 15 2019

Lorenzen I. The Effects of the Glucocorticoids On Connective Tissue. Acta Medica Scandinavica. 1969;185:17-20.

McCormack J. “Mythbuster” on NSAIDs in sports medicine, challenging nutrition dogma, and evidence-based practice. BMJ Talk Medicine, 2014.

Mirkin G. Why Ice Delays Recovery. Dr. Gabe Mirkin on Health, Fitness and Nutrition blog. Updated October 13, 2016

Paddington-Jones DJ, Quigley BM. Effect of Cryotherapy on muscle soreness and strength following eccentric exercise. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 1997. 18:588-193

Reinl, G:  Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option, 2nd edition, 2014.

Simeone FJ, Vicentini JRT, Bredella MA and Chang CY (2019) Are patients more likely to have hip osteoarthritis progression and femoral head collapse after hip steroid/anaesthetic injections? A retrospective observational study. Skeletal Radiology, 48(9)

Starrette K, MobilityWod video: http://www.mobilitywod.com/2012/08/people-weve-got-to-stop-icing-we-were-wrong-sooo-wrong/

Tseng CY, Lee JP, Tsai YS, Lee SD, Kao CL, Liu TC, Lai C, Harris MB, Kuo CH. Topical cooling (icing) delays recovery from eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2013 May. 27(5):1354-61.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/putting-ice-on-injuries-could-be-doing-more-damage-than-good-20191011-p52zw0.html

https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2019/04/26/soft-tissue-injuries-simply-need-peace-love/

https://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/why-ice-delays-recovery.html

https://www.verywellfit.com/when-to-ice-3120707

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/why-icing-a-sprain-doesnt-help-and-could-make-the-injury-worse/2019/03/04/25a6caa0-3ae4-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html?outputType=amp

https://uk.cochrane.org/news/cryotherapy-it’s-cool-it-evidence-based

https://thischangedmypractice.com/move-an-injury-not-rice/

https://physicaltherapyweb.com/paradigm-shifts-use-ice-nsaids-post-acute-soft-tissue-injuries-part-1-2/

https://www.macleans.ca/society/the-end-of-the-ice-age/

This time of year sees many of us in Australia able to enjoy some time off, and the beautiful weather makes for an additional encouragement to get outdoors. Most of us have observed how great we feel after a day at the beach, camping, going bush or hiking through forests – but the benefits are not limited to lifting our mood: time in nature has proven health benefits! Join me as we talk forest-bathing, earthing and beachtime.

Show Notes
Transcript

Hi everyone and happy holidays – Happy New Year!! It’s the summer holidays here in Australia, and it’s a time of year that sees many of us able to enjoy some more time off – and we’ve got beautiful weather, which makes for additional encouragement to get outside. Most of us have observed how amazing we feel after a day at the beach, or camping, going bush or hiking through forests – but the benefits are not limited to just lifting our mood. Time in nature has proven health benefits, with lots of exciting research and the adoption of progressive medical practices around the world. So let’s get into it!

The past several hundred years or so have seen greater and greater technological advancements that have offered many undoubted benefits. But at the same time, these same advancements have created a greater degree of separation between us and the natural world around us – and its cycles and seasons. We humans evolved from a close relationship with nature, and despite the shiny, technologically-advanced modern lives that we lead, we still remain connected to – and affected by – Mother Nature and her cycles. For example, our biochemistry fluctuates with the diurnal rhythms of light, between night and day, and the weather has been shown to have an impact on pain levels. For example, a recent study by scientists at the University of Manchester looked at the impact of the weather on arthritis (and other pain conditions) with their excellently named app, “Cloudy with a chance of pain”. On a side note, Chinese Medicine has long referred to arthritis and other similar pain conditions as “Damp Obstruction” or “Cold Obstruction”, which relates with the contemporary findings of a greater incidence of these pain patterns in damp weather – or cold weather for some people. This understanding of our interdependence on, and our connectedness with, nature is at the foundation of Chinese Medicine philosophy. We’re all connected and we impact each other. So it’s exciting to see this recognized in research, and to see it carried through into prescribing practices.

One place where this is happening is in Scotland, where GPs, since last year have been able to start prescribing time in nature to their patients. They do this in an effort to reduce blood pressure, anxiety and to increase happiness for those living with diabetes and mental illness, stress and heart disease and so on. What the doctors can actually do is issue patients with a little brochure that has some great connecting-with-nature practices: these are seasonal practices that encourage the patients to get out there and just connect with the seasons and cycles of nature, and the magic of nature that’s all around us. I’ve included the link to the brochure in my show notes, but there’s some really awesome seasonal activities like, making beach art from natural materials, or borrow a dog and take it for a walk, touch the sea, make a bug hotel, bury your face in the grass, lots of beautiful ideas! Appreciate a cloud, talk to a pony and feed the birds in your garden – all activities that encourage us to slow down, take a breath and just appreciate the natural beauty that surrounds us. This exciting directive builds on earlier work and studies throughout the world, for example, some work in America that showed that patients recovering from surgery recovered faster and went home quicker if they had a view of trees outside their window. Other similar studies showed that a reduction in pain was available to patients from not only looking at real life nature, but also nature videos and pictures. And it’s not just nature scenery that was shown to have a positive effect – other studies looked at exposure to daylight, and found that exposure to daylight resulted in less pain, less stress and decreased use of pain medications than patients who didn’t have exposure to natural light. There’s also some preliminary work looking at the beneficial effects of hospital gardens and their ability to alleviate stress in both patients and their families. So it’s great to see that we’re starting to incorporate the magic and powerful benefits of nature into contemporary medical practice.

One place where nature as medicine has been very enthusiastically embraced is Japan, where the preventative health practice of shinrin-yoku – or forest bathing – is widely practiced. Forest bathing is so accepted in the mainstream that some companies even use it for employee health care. Shinrin-yoku practice involves time in nature, and slowing down to appreciate and connect with the beauty at our fingertips, much like the Scottish prescription booklet. There’s been quite a comprehensive body of research surrounding the measurable benefits of forest bathing on mind and body. And the list of benefits is quite amazing! The various scientists found that spending time in forest environments led to lower concentrations of cortisol, which is one of our stress hormones; it could lead to a lower pulse rate and lower blood pressure; it increased parasympathetic activity.

The parasympathetic nervous system is our rest-and-digest system – as opposed to the sympathetic, which is fight-or-flight, where we pump out those stress hormones. When we’re in parasympathetic mode, or rest-digest-repair-and-heal mode, that’s where the healing and repair of our tissue can happen. It’s a very potent state to be in for healing, and people in forest environments were seen to have greater parasympathetic nerve activity – and lower sympathetic activity – than those living in city environments. The research suggests that this occurs due to the activity of wood essential oils, which are called phytoncides – and interestingly, many of these chemical compounds are found in many Chinese herbal medicines! These phytoncides, or wood essential oils, were found to be beneficial for human endocrine and immune systems, as measured by the levels of stress hormones and dopamine levels. They were also found to bump up the activity of our natural killer cells and various immune markers, and all of these combined to have a beneficial effect on our immune function. These findings prompted the researchers to ask further questions, such as given this propensity to boost our immune function, could time in forests also have a beneficial effect for cancer patients or in cancer prevention? And they found that people living in areas of higher forest coverage had better cancer mortality outcomes, so lower cancer mortality rates, the greater the density of forest that they were living in. And the good news is that we don’t just have to be living in the forest. These same researchers also went on to discover that the benefits of the anti-cancer proteins that were produced from time in nature lasted more than seven days – and even up to 30 days after time in nature. So even a monthly trip for a bush walk, or to sit by the beach, or spend a day in the botanical gardens, can confer benefits.

The idea of forest cures, or forest medicine, was also seen in the mid to late 1800s in both Europe and America, where various doctors set up health retreats in pine forests in Germany and in the forests of New York. And they reported on the benefits of time in these pine forests for patients with tuberculosis. Previously it was believed that a dry environment would be beneficial for quicker healing from tuberculosis, but they found that despite the high moisture content of the forest, patients would heal faster there and they attributed that to potential volatile compounds in the air, which are these wood essential oils, these phytoncides that we’re learning about in the latest research.

Now luckily for us here in Australia in summer, it’s not just forests that have these myriad health benefits, but also beaches, and just time barefoot in nature. The practice of being barefoot in nature is called grounding, or earthing, and it’s an area of practice that’s been around for quite some time, but the research on it is still emerging and still new. Yet, despite that we’re seeing some really positive results and we’re seeing results similar to the forest bathing: that time spent barefoot in nature, or walking on the beach, and even soaking in the ocean can lead to health benefits such as lower stress and better nervous system regulation – again, that increased parasympathetic tone versus sympathetic (or rest-and-digest versus fight-or-flight) – decreased inflammation, reduction of pain, better sleep, a thinning of any over-coagulated blood,(for better blood flow). It was shown to be beneficial for many common health disorders, like cardiovascular disease, autoimmune conditions like lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis. Other research has shown that grounding can alter the numbers of circulating immune cells as well as different immune markers and various chemical factors related to inflammation.

The scientific basis behind grounding, or earthing, is that connecting barefoot with the earth connects us with the Earth’s electrons. Because humans are made of a very large percentage of water, and water conducts energy, we (throughout the course of the day and throughout the course of our lives) can not only accumulate a charge in our bodies, but even just the processes of life can lead to the production of molecules called free radicals. Free radicals lack electrons, which means that they’re positively charged, so spending time connecting to the earth, barefoot or sitting on the earth actually allows us contact, or exchange, with the Earth’s electrons – it allows us to revert to a more neutral charge by absorbing those electrons from the earth.

As the early research on grounding and earthing shows that it can reduce inflammation, it has been enthusiastically adopted by various athletes – supposedly many athletes on the Tour de France use it, even supposedly Lance Armstrong; there’s Olympic swimmers and runners and triathletes that use earthing technology. And recently, locally, even the New South Wales State of Origin team was using it in their training and recovery.

For best results, the skin should be in direct contact with earth, or rock, or water. And luckily for us here in Australia, the beach – and the ocean – is probably one of the best places to do earthing because saltwater and sand are both very highly conductive, and seawater has the added benefit of being high in magnesium. So we’re getting a double benefit there from soaking in the sea!

Another way that we can balance our charge thanks to nature is by exposing ourselves to areas high in negative ions. Again, these ions have a negative charge, so they’ll balance out any excessive positive charge that we might be carrying around. Negative ions hang out in places like waterfalls, around the surf, at the beach and also after a storm – all places that we are somehow intrinsically drawn to, and that we feel like we can breathe deeper and relax at. There’s been some great research into this area as well.

Some of the early pioneering work in this area was done by Dr Hansell in the early 1900s, or early to mid 1900s. He was a research engineer and he found that when he was working with positive and negative ions, when he was pumping out a lot of positive ions, his colleague would feel much worse and crankier than when he was pumping out negative ions. This led Dr Hansell to do some work into negative ions and Seasonally Affective Disorder (SAD), and some more recent research looked at using negative ions for management of chronic depression – and also looked at bright light for management of chronic depression. They found that both modalities were beneficial in improving outcomes for people affected by chronic depression – another reason to get outside, enjoy some sunlight, get by the beach or by lakes or waterfalls, get your feet out onto the grass.

One of the scientists that conducted a lot of the research into the forest bathing that mentioned earlier, Dr Qing Li was asked for his recommendations on how to incorporate the benefits of Mother Nature’s medicine into everyday life. He suggested that if you have time for vacation, choose a natural area; once a week visit a park; gardening is good for reconnecting with nature; on urban walks, try to walk under trees, go to quiet places and go to places near water – all of these confer the benefits of forest bathing and exposure to negative ions as well.

We’re very fortunate here in Australia that even in more built up areas, we still have access to open spaces and green spaces. So it’s quite accessible to most of us. And on that note, I’m going to keep this episode a little bit shorter because it’s time for me to go hit the beach and get my dose of nature’s medicine! I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback and any questions that you might like me to cover in future episodes. And in the meantime, I’ll leave you to get outside and enjoy some nature time!

Research

Chevalier G, Sinatra ST, Oschman JL, Sokal K and Sokal P (2012) Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth’s Surface Electrons. Journal of Environmental and Public Health. 2012; 2012: 291541.

Park BJ, Tsunetsugu Y, Kasetami T, Kagawa T and Miyazako (2010). The physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere or forest bathing): evidence from field experiments in 24 forests across Japan. Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine,(2010) 15:18–26

Li Q, Kobayashi M and Kawada T (2008). Relationships Between Percentage of Forest Coverage and Standardized  Mortality Ratios (SMR) of Cancers in all Prefectures in Japan. The Open Public Health Journal, 2008,1, 1-7

Li, Q., Nakadai, A., Matsushima, H., et al. (2006). Phytoncides (wood essential oils) induce human natural killer cell activity. Immunopharmacology and Immunotoxicology28, 319-33.

Li, Q., Morimoto, K., Nakadai, A., et al. (2007). Forest bathing enhances human natural killer activity and expression of anti-cancer proteins. International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology 20 (S2), 3-8.

Li, Q., Morimoto, K., Kobayashi, M., et al. (2008a). Visiting a forest, but not a city, increases human natural killer activity and expression of anti-cancer proteins.International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology 21(1), 117-27.

Li, Q., Morimoto, K., Kobayashi, M., et al. (2008b). A forest bathing trip increases human natural killer activity and expression of anti-cancer proteins in female subjects.Journal of Biological Regulators and Homeostatic Agents (in press).

Oschman JL, Chevalier G and Brown R (2015) The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Journal of Inflammation Research(8), 83-96

Sokal K, Sokal P. Earthing the human body influences physiologic processes. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 2011;17(4):301–308

Jiang SY and Ramachandran S (2018) Negative Air Ions and Their Effects on Human Health and Air Quality Improvement. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 19(10): 2966

Goel, Namni; Terman, Michael; Terman, Jiuan Su; Macchi, Mariana M.; Stewart, Jonathan W (2005) Controlled trial of bright light and negative air ions for chronic depression. Psychological Medicine, 35, 7; 945-955

Coyle M and Liang H (2019) Evidence-based Clinical Chinese Medicine – Volume 6: Herpes Zoster And Post-Herpetic Neuralgia. World Scientific Publishing Company, Singapore

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/05/citrus-oil-compound-could-reduce-dry-mouth-in-cancer-treatment.html

Given that this episode is coming out the day after Christmas (and considering all of the feasting that often comes with this time of year!), I thought it was a timely opportunity to talk about digestion from a Chinese Medicine perspective, and to share some pearls of wisdom that have stood the test of time over millennia. Chinese Medicine has long understood, and almost revered, the role that the gut and digestion play as a foundation for all-round health of mind and body. As a result of this, in Chinese Medicine we have a whole pillar of practice that focuses on nutrition or dietary therapy, and which offers guidelines not only on what to eat, but how to eat it. Listen in to hear some simple, natural tips to boost digestion!

Stomach 43

image: A Manual of Acupuncture, Deadman & Al-Khafaji

Stomach 36

image: A Manual of Acupuncture, Deadman & Al-Khafaji

Spleen 3

image: A Manual of Acupuncture, Deadman & Al-Khafaji

Show Notes
Transcript

Hi everyone and Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Given that this episode is coming out on Boxing Day (and considering all of the feasting that often comes with this time of year!), I thought it was a timely opportunity to talk about digestion from a Chinese Medicine perspective – and to share some pearls of wisdom that have stood the test of time over millennia. Chinese Medicine has long understood – and almost revered – the role that the gut and digestion play, as a foundation for all-round health of the mind and body and emotions. In many of the traditional diagrams that outline the interconnectedness of the various organs and systems in the body, the digestion (which we also refer to as the Spleen and Stomach, or the Earth, because it forms the foundation for everything) is often placed at the center of these schematics, which highlights its central and fundamental role.

And because of this in Chinese Medicine, we have a whole pillar of practice that is Chinese Medicine Nutrition or dietary therapy, which offers guidelines not only on what to eat, but also how to eat it. Also, many of our acupuncture points, and therapies like moxa (which is heat application) or infrared lamp and the herbs that we use – all of these modalities have been shown to have an impact on gut health as well, whether by raising certain bacterial populations in the gut, or by improving the efficacy of digestion.

This perspective regarding the importance of gut health is something that biomedicine has recently come around to as well, with an ever-growing body of research into the role of the microbiome and gut bacteria. The microbiome is the sum total of all of the bacteria and microbes that live in and on our bodies, so when we consider the number of cells that make up our body or what we think of as our human body, the number of bacterial cells of vastly outnumbers the human cells by a factor of roughly 10 to 1 – which might prompt some musing on what it means to be human, and what our perception of ourselves is based on, if 90% of the cells that make up our whole being are actually bacterial cells! It’s quite mind boggling, isn’t it?!

A healthy and balanced microbiome is fundamental to thriving, good health because the bacteria that live in and on us aren’t just freeloading – they actually have many important roles in the function of our body. This includes important processes, like the metabolism and assimilation of nutrients… they’re involved in immune regulation, And mood and brain regulation. Many of you might have heard the fact that 90% of serotonin, which is our happy feel good neurotransmitter, is made in the gut, so having a healthy, happy, balanced gut bacteria is truly essential to good health.

Meanwhile, an imbalanced microbiome has been linked to a whole range of symptoms and conditions from diabetes to depression, anxiety, autism, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and a whole host of inflammatory bowel conditions. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! In an attempt to rebalance the microbiome, we’re seeing all manner of interventions, from the relatively benign or simple probiotics (and probiotic foods), also prebiotic foods (which give us the substrate or the materials for the probiotics to thrive); we’re seeing antibiotic therapy in some cases where we’re just obliterating all of the gut bacteria (or all the susceptible bacteria), and we’re also seeing on the extreme end, things like fecal transplants, which is the transplant of healthy fecal matter – so healthy poos basically transplanted into the bowels of those who are affected by certain conditions. What we often find is that with the transplant of that bacteria, we’ll see an improvement and that can be maintained if the underlying foundation of gut health is looked after at the same time.

In Chinese Medicine, we are always looking to get to the root of the imbalance – to get to the foundation and correct it from there. So when looking at gut health and gut bacteria, we can take the analogy of a garden, for example. When we think about a garden, say, if it’s got poor soil or it’s marshy or it’s receiving insufficient light or drainage, we’re going to have trouble growing the healthy balance of plants – or bacteria – that we want in order to have the maximum benefit; what we might see instead is an overgrowth of weeds – which would be reflective of the non-beneficial bacteria which crowd out the space for everything else, and all the plants that we actually want to grow. One way to resolve the weeds, is to bomb everything – like a blanket-clearing of everything, as with antibiotics – just raze everything to the ground. It will be a short term fix, but it won’t necessarily fix the underlying imbalance, as once you’re done with the antibiotics, the non-desirables can often come back – and often in greater force as you’ve already damaged the soil in the garden. An example of this might be some of the experimental therapies looking at antibiotic infusions for people suffering with arthritis and other autoimmune conditions. They have ound that using antibiotics could confer short term benefits, but the long-term benefits were sketchy because, again, it was obliterating all of the gut bacteria. Similarly using probiotics or fecal transplants without addressing the underlying health of the soil or the underlying imbalance is like just planting desirable plants or bacteria into an unprepared or untended garden. They might hang on for a bit, but they won’t be able to gain a strong foothold unless the foundation is addressed. In Chinese medicine, this is a big part of what we do -we look at how we can support this essential function of digestion, which is so fundamental to life and health.

To bring up another analogy, in Chinese medicine – as in Ayurveda and other traditional age-old medicines – we view the digestion as a cooking pot, or cooking fire, and the healthier and more powerful our digestive fire, the better our assimilation of nutrients, and therefore the better our health and vitality. If the digestive fire is strong, we can break down all the food that we eat efficiently and completely, which allows us to absorb maximal nutrition. In Chinese medicine, this is why we say you are not only what you eat, but you are also what you can digest. You might be eating all the amazing superfoods, but if they’re not being absorbed completely, you’re not getting the maximum benefit from them. Another benefit of strong, efficient digestion is that food gets broken down in the appropriate point of the digestive tract. If digestion is weak, foods that should be more thoroughly broken down at the upper end of the digestive tract (around the stomach) reach the lower end (the intestines) insufficiently digested, and there they can cause improper fermentation, which might manifest as bloating, gas, and irritation of the gut lining. And this irritation of the gut lining is another concern, because over time when that delicate gut lining is being continually aggravated, it can contribute to a situation of leaky gut, which is where the cell junctions (of the cells lining the wall of the intestines) become looser, and allow the materials from inside the digestive tract to permeate into the body. Now the digestive tract is meant to be a sealed closed system, so when matter leaves here and leaks out of the gut into the systemic circulation, it is rightfully picked up by the body as foreign – it’s “not-self”. This can trigger a whole host of immune and autoimmune reactions such as joint pains, mucus production, lethargy, mood swings – a whole host of symptoms. And we’ll get more into this in future episodes as well, and particularly the role that gluten that is sprayed with certain substances can play in this.

So that explains why complete digestion – and a healthy digestive fire is so essential to our health. One of the ways that we maintain the strength of our digestive fire, and keep stoking it, in Chinese Medicine is with warm and cooked food, and warm drinks as well. And I do get a lot of eye rolls from patients when I first bring this up, especially in summer, when people say, “Oh my God, but it’s hot. What am I going to eat?” This is where we can look to a lot of the Southeast Asian cuisines, and Indian cuisines, for inspiration – or even Middle Eastern: these are all hot climates and yet we don’t see a proliferation of raw food. In fact, we see a strong focus on warm food and alsodigestive herbs and spices, like ginger or pepper for example, that help to support digestion. Also in a lot of these climates, we see people reaching for warm drinks: for example, in Hong Kong, I love how they have the hot water dispensers available in the airport and public spaces, and I love that we’re seeing these pop up at the Gold Coast picnic areas! This is awesome, and such a great way to look after our guts when we’re on the move. So yes, in a lot of those warmer climates, we actually see that people are consciously reaching for warmer food and drinks. This is so important for the gut because when we look at the stomach, it is layers and layers of muscle and we know that in order for muscle to function efficiently, it needs to be warm and supple. So throwing cold stuff into our stomach is like literally icing those muscles, and stopping them from doing their work efficiently. This can be a real issue because the stomach wall, which is lined with layers of muscles, also releases a lot of factors that are essential for our digestion. It releases stomach acid, it releases pepsin (which is a enzyme that breaks down proteins) and it releases a substance called intrinsic factor, which is essential to B12 assimilation in the body as well. All of these things are so essential to our digestion, so we want our stomach to be nice and warm and supple. Many of us might have had a direct experience of how much the stomach doesn’t like being cold, and that is the “ice cream headache”. When we throw something cold in the stomach, the stomach cramps up – and interestingly the Stomach channel pathway, or the connective tissue pathway that links the stomach to other parts of the body, travels up to the center of the forehead, which is exactly where those ice cream headaches hit us. That’s a very clear example of how the stomach likes to be kept warm, and if something doesn’t feel good, that’s always a good indicator that something’s off.

With respect to the warm and cooked food as well, I always suggest to people to look at what has stood the test of time – what kind of eating has worked for people in traditional cultures over millennia? We’re seeing a bit of a trend in raw food at the moment, but at the same time I’m also seeing patients in clinic with all sorts of digestive issues, irregular bowel movements, bloating, fatigue, headaches, brain fog and so on – and often when we switch to the warm and cooked foods (together with other treatments), people are amazed at the difference that they feel. I think it’s also important to consider that we are not ruminant animals. Unlike animals, like cows and sheep and giraffes, that eat large amounts of raw vegetable matter – these guys have been blessed with multiple stomachs, which gives their body ample time to break down the plant fibers that are harder for us to digest. We developed as we did in large part thanks to the discovery of cooking fire, because cooking food allowed us to unlock greater stores of energy and allowed us to make many more nutrients more bioavailable, and easier for us to digest. Raw food might feel good for a little, while the digestive fire still has some remnant energy. But over time, generally I find that it can lead to various imbalances – I go into a little bit more detail on this in one of my blog posts on my website, and I also have a whole lot of recipes that have more of a warm and cooked focus – and also, just in time for summer, some healthy cooked salad options! Eating warm and cooked foods doesn’t mean you miss out on salads. Veggies are amazing! We should all be making them a large focus of our diet, but there’s ways to make these summer salads more digestion friendly, so check out that post as well.

In the same way that warm food is going to keep our digestion firing on all cylinders, so will the drinks that we drink. Choosing warm drinks, like herbal teas – or for extra digestive power, you can throw some fresh ginger, (which is a digestive stimulant) in a cup with some boiling water, you can add lemon (which is another digestive stimulant), and even a pinch of salt, which will not only help with rehydration in the current hot summer that we’re having in Australia, but it also can be a precursor for the hydrochloric acid production in the stomach, so it’s an all-round digestive booster.

Another big thing we can do to support our digestion, and ensure complete function, and beat any bloating and fermentation and gas, is to chew our food well. Saliva contains an enzyme called amylase – this is an enzyme which breaks down starches, and in fact it does about 30% of the starch digestion. This is why it’s really important not to skimp on this step. Make sure you chew your food well! Get that saliva mixed through, let that amylase start to kick off that digestive process.

Another factor to consider if you are experiencing some digestive difficulties, or any bloating or fatigue after meals, brain fog and so on, is to limit sugar – and by this I also do mean natural sugar. Sugar is sugar! And if you’re experiencing any of the symptoms that I just mentioned, then giving any potential non-beneficial bacteria that might be living in your gut, giving those guys less easy fuel (less sugar) can starve them off, and allow beneficial bacteria more space to thrive. In Chinese Medicine, fruit doesn’t have such a starring role as it does in our modern diet. I think it’s interesting to consider the sugar content of many smoothies out there, and fruit juices – it’s equivalent to a can of Coke, or a Snickers bar. So even though it’s coming from nature, it’s still having similar effects in the body – it’s still spiking our blood sugar, and derailing hormones, and potentially knocking gut bacteria out of balance. When we think about how fruit was originally available in nature, it’s a seasonal treat and wasn’t available all year round, and didn’t form such a mainstay of our diet. In Chinese Medicine it’s used sparingly and it’s used medicinally: for example, we might use pears when someone has a dry cough, which gives us the indication that maybe you wouldn’t use pears, and certain fruits, when someone has too much fluids or inflammation going on in their body because they can be moistening. It’s really interesting to consider also that the various bacteria that live within and on us can actually change our cravings – so they can actually make us crave sugar if they perceive that their fuel source is running dry and they’re starting to die out. They can change our taste buds, they can also change the level of feel-good neurotransmitters, like dopamine and serotonin – they can reward us with feel-good chemicals for eating those foods that keep them alive. So if initially it’s a little bit challenging dropping your sugar content, just bear that in mind and stick with it – it does get easier with time!

Another simple thing we can do to look after our digestive fire is not to guzzle lots of water at meal times, because it’s going to dilute that stomach acid, and the enzymes and intrinsic factor – all of those essential chemicals that our stomach is releasing in order to help us digest. Keeping a small window either side of meal times is going to help you pack the most digestive punch! Another thing you can do for yourself at meal times is to take time away from distractions – from stress, from work, from heightened emotions. Just taking time, and allowing your body that time to eat and focus on eating. In order to support that process, you might take some deep belly breaths before, during and after eating. You might take some time to feel gratitude for the food that you’re about to receive, and the people that put in the love and care to bring that food to the table. We’ve talked a bit in past episodes about the importance of the “rest and digest” nervous system (the parasympathetic nervous system) and its complimentary other half, the sympathetic nervous system (“fight or flight” system). Really, the name says it all! When we are distracted, or stressed or pressured, our body diverts resources away from the “rest and digest” system into the “fight and flight” system – the system that primes us for action. But by slowing down, by feeling grateful thoughts, and by taking slow, deep breaths, this sends a message of safety to our system, letting it know that it’s safe to slow down – to receive nutrition and to divert its energies towards the full processing, assimilation and breakdown of that nutrition.

Taking that a step further, between meals you can also take time to lie down with your hands on your belly and allow yourself time for some deep belly breaths. Very often when we’re rushing through the day, we might fall into a default pattern of shallow breathing – which again triggers that sympathetic nervous system or that “fight or flight” mode. Taking time for deep breaths allows more circulation to those digestive organs, and allows the body to fully receive the goodness that you’ve eaten. You might want to soften into the muscles of the belly – you can even put a heat pack on your belly, or even do a gentle clockwise massage over the belly.

Finally, there are a few acupuncture points that you can use. There’s a great one on the leg called Stomach 36 – I’ve included a picture of that in my show notes.

One final note is bitter flavors! Bitter flavors are an essential part of good health – and good digestive health – and they feature pretty strongly in Chinese herbal medicine. For those of you who’ve had Chinese herbs, you’ve probably had the joy of experiencing the bitter flavor!! Bitter flavors are so important because they stimulate bile production, and bile not only helps us with efficient digestion and breaking down of fats, but is also a potent antioxidant. It’s a strong alkaline substance, so it can counteract acidity in the body, and also mop up any free radicals (cells that have gone rogue, basically!) Unfortunately, our taste buds have evolved towards strong, sweet flavors, and salty and so on. They’ve evolved away from this bitter flavor, but it’s so essential and we can see how important it is in things like a lot of the classic European bitters – like Campari (my personal favorite, which has citrus and other herbs to help digestion), and also Angostura bitters, which is often added to cocktails and is a strong bitters. Things like coffee and tea, bitter greens (like broccoli, rocket, radicchio, chicory) and citrus peels as well. We use citrus peel as a medicinal in Chinese herbal medicine! So definitely incorporating some bitter flavors in your diet will supercharge your digestion.

I hope that’s been helpful and timely, and I hope it’s helping you digest all of the Christmas cheer! I will be going deeper into digestive health in future episodes: we’ll be talking about things like why we love white rice instead of brown, and we’ll be talking more about gluten and the connection there -so make sure to subscribe if you’d like to be kept up to date when those episodes come out.

Links & Research

https://www.futurity.org/sugar-gut-bacteria-protein-1941482/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5385025/

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/sugar-keeps-good-microbes-at-bay/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-tell-their-hosts-what-to-eat/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/mood-microbe/201905/the-shocking-source-your-cravings

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/gut-bacteria-brain-cognit_n_7644484.html?

Evrensel, A and Ceylan, ME (2015) The Gut-Brain Axis: The Missing Link in Depression. Clinical Pharmacology & Neuroscience, 13 (3): 239-244

Racaniello, V. (2011). Gut microbes influence defense against influenza (6.9.2011).

Hollister, E. B. et al. (2015). Structure and function of the healthy pre-adolescent pediatric gut microbiome. Microbiome, 3(36).

Velasquez-Manoff, M. (2015). Gut Microbiome: The Peacekeepers. Nature, Vol. 518, Issue s7540, pS3-S11.

Velasquez-Manoff, M. (2015). How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution. Nautilus, Issue 030 (2).

Blaser, M. J., Chen, Y. & Reibman, J. (2008). Does Helicobacter pylori protect against asthma and allergy? Gut, Vol. 57, Issue 5, pp.561-567

Jin, X., Chen, Y. P., Chen, S. H. & Xiang, Z. (2013). Association between Helicobacter Pylori Infection and Ulcerative Colitis – A Case Control Study from China. International Journal of Medical Sciences, Vol. 10 (11). Pp.1479-1484

The Microbiome and Disease.

Pollan, M. (2013). Some of My Best Friends Are Germs. New York Times, 15.5.2103)

Mole, B. (2016). Mounting data suggest antibacterial soaps do more harm than good. Ars, (10.4.2016).

Molloy, A. (2015). Mothers facing C-sections look to vaginal ‘seeding’ to boost their babies’ health. The Guardian, (18.8.2015)

Neu, J. & Rushing, J. (2011). Cesarean versus Vaginal Delivery: Long term infant outcomes and the Hygiene Hypothesis. Clinics in Perinatology, Vol. 38 (2), pp. 321-331

Li, Q. Q., Shi, G. X., Xu, Q., Wang, J., Liu, C. Z. & Wang, L. P. (2013). Acupuncture Effect and Central Autonomic Regulation. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Vol. 2013.

Villas-Boas, J. D., Dias, D. P. M., Trigo, P. I., Almeida, N. A., Almeida, F. Q. & Medeiros, M. A. (2015). Acupuncture Affects Autonomic and Endocrine but Not Behavioural Responses Induced by Startle in Horses. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Vol. 2015.

Xu, Z. T., Li, R. F.., Zhu, C. L. & Li, M. Y. (2013). Effect of acupuncture treatment for weight loss on gut flora in patients with simple obesity. Acupuncture in Medicine, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 116-117

Li, H. K., Zhou, M. M., Zhao, A. H. & Jia, W. (2009). Traditional Chinese Medicine: Balancing the Gut Ecosystem. Phytotherapy Research, Vol. 23, pp. 1332-1335.

Alcock, Joe, Carlo C Maley, and C Athena Aktipis. “Is Eating Behavior Manipulated by the Gastrointestinal Microbiota? Evolutionary Pressures and Potential Mechanisms.” Bioessays 36, no. 10 (October 2014): 940–49.

Behary, Preeshila, and Alexander D. Miras. “Food Preferences and Underlying Mechanisms after Bariatric Surgery.” The Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 74, no. 4 (November 2015): 419–25.

Goncalves-Leitao R, Carvalho-Santos Z, Francisco AP, Fioreze GT, Anios M, Baltazar C, Elias AP, Itskov PM, Piper MDW, Ribeiro C (2017) Commensal Bacteria and Essential Amino Acids Control Food Choice Behavior and Reproduction. Plos Biology 15(4)

Temko, Jamie E., Sofia Bouhlal, Mehdi Farokhnia, Mary R. Lee, John F. Cryan, and Lorenzo Leggio. “The Microbiota, the Gut and the Brain in Eating and Alcohol Use Disorders: A ‘Ménage à Trois’?” Alcohol and Alcoholism 52, no. 4 (July 1, 2017): 403–13.

Join Dr. Maz for a simple, guided meditation. Just 5 minutes out of your day can offer greater calm, clarity of mind and support your body towards a greater state of health.

Today I talk about a very simple and free health practice that is accessible to all of us.  You can do it anywhere, anytime and you don’t need any special tools or props to do it. It is such an important tool for maintaining health and is so effective, that not only has it stood the test of time in a range of Eastern health traditions, but we are now also seeing it prescribed by Western med practitioners, from GPs to orthopaedic surgeons and cardiologists. The magic health tool that I am talking about is meditation! In this episode, we will talk a little bit about meditation, and answer some of the common questions that I get asked about it. I’m going to share with you some exciting research that shows just how powerful this practice is – and the measurable physical outcomes that can be observed in our health as a result of integrating it into our lives. We will finish up with some easy guidelines and an intro to starting your meditation practice, which will lead up the accompanying bonus episode to this one, which is a short, guided 5 minute meditation to ease you into the benefits of the amazing practice! So let’s get into it!

Show Notes
Transcript

Today, I’d like to talk about a very simple and free health practice that is accessible to all of us. You can do it anywhere, anytime, and you don’t need any special tools or equipment to do it. It’s such an important tool for maintaining health and is so effective that not only has this practice stood the test of time in a range of Eastern health traditions, but we are now also seeing it prescribed by Western medicine practitioners from GPs to orthopaedic surgeons and cardiologists. The magic health tool that I’m talking about here is meditation!

Today I’d like to talk a little bit about meditation and answer some of the common questions that I get asked about it – I’ll talk about why it’s important and how we can benefit from it. I’m also going to share with you some exciting research that shows just how powerful this practice is, and talk about the measurable physical outcomes that can be observed in our health as a result of integrating this practice into our lives. We will finish up with some easy guidelines and an intro into starting your own meditation practice, which will lead us up to the accompanying bonus episode to this one – a short, guided five minute meditation that will ease you into the benefits of this amazing practice. So let’s get into it.

So what is meditation? There are many different schools and traditions of meditation, but if we are talking about it from an umbrella perspective, meditation is the act of bringing our awareness to the present moment, and gently observing what is going on for our mind and body in this moment – without getting attached to it. To assist in anchoring our attention in the present, we might choose to focus on various anchor points – this might be the breath, it might be a sound or a chant, it might be a body sensation or a feeling – and these are just some examples of different focus points that we can come back to. Part of being human is our active minds: you might have heard the term “monkey mind”, or “mental chatter”, and it’s very normal for our minds to wander during a period of meditation. When it does go off on a wander, however, these focus points of breath, or sound or sensation, can help to remind us to bring our mind gently back to the task at hand.

I like to imagine a curious puppy as our mind, and it keeps escaping it’s basket. It’s in the puppy’s nature to go off and wander and explore and create adventures for itself. But we can also gently and repeatedly guide the puppy back to their resting place. And over time the puppy, like our mind, can develop the ability to stay in one place for longer. Meditation is a cumulative skill that develops with time and training. So in the same way that we wouldn’t expect to be able to run a 10 kilometre run without any training, we can take the pressure off ourselves with respect to meditation also and be gentle with our expectations around it – particularly when we’re starting out. I still have days where my mind is determined to go off in all different directions, and that passes with time – it’s important to not get frustrated about that wandering, because it’s a very normal part of the experience of our human mind. A wandering mind is common, it’s a very human aspect of ourselves, but it’s up to us what we choose to do when we discover it’s wandering during our meditation.

Another analogy that I like is that of a computer desktop that is cluttered with open windows, and all of the open windows are clamoring for our attention. So how do you feel when you think of that situation? I know for me it doesn’t feel very clear, and instead I feel foggy and heavy in the head. The act of bringing our minds to a single-pointed focus through meditation has the effect of closing all those open windows down for a while. It gives our minds and nervous systems and much needed rest – it gives them some breathing space so that they can refresh their focus and we can refresh our clarity of mind.

Common to many schools of meditation is this intention to bring the mind to a single, or soft, focus – and to quiet down all of that chatter and all of those different tangents that the mind goes off into. Part of that soft focus or attention is to also allow the mind to come back to the present moment. I’d like to talk a little bit about the importance of the present moment and the importance of it to meditation and our general health, because the present moment (when we think about it) is the only time that is real or that truly exists, the past has gone. It’s already behind us. And not only that, but it’s also often distorted by the subjectivity of our memories and the strength of our emotions. A good example of this is when we ask different people about their experience of the same situation, you might get wildly different answers. Meanwhile the future is yet to come, yet despite this, despite the fact that it’s not here yet, many of us might spend a vast majority of our time and headspace either thinking, reflecting, or reliving the past or projecting, worrying and racing ahead into the future while ignoring the precious moment right now that we’re living in. That’s not to say that we can’t reflect on the past and learn from our experiences, or that we can’t plan and hope and daydream about the future, but also it’s very important to bring our awareness to the present moment because then it allows us to have a soft awareness of what is going on for our mind and body in that moment. Again, this going off into the past and into the future is a very human thing to do – it’s what keeps us safe, by being able to learn from our experiences and plan and adapt for potential similar situations in the future.

We’ve been blessed with these beautiful minds that give us so many benefits and advantages, yet at the same time, they can also work to our detriment if they’re exhausting us by consistently rambling all over the place and thinking about a million things at once. I’m definitely speaking from personal experience here! All of that Yang and busy-ness and activity are wonderful thing, but like everything in life, we need to balance it out with the opposing energy, which is the Yin, that calm, that quiet time. I know for myself, if I go too hard on that busy-ness and mental activity without the balancing Yin time, then my health feels the effects of that on all levels – I might feel more emotionally reactive, or digestion might not work as well, or sleep might suffer. And for all of that thinking, I actually find that I have much more clarity of thought after meditating, and after actually closing down that activity, or calming down that overactivity for a little while.

Part of what happens when we’re in that hyper-stimulated mental state – when we’re overwhelmed by all the open browser windows and the mind is having a good old chatter – is that the stress and strain of juggling all of that activity can start to cause stress for the body. When we’re stressed, our body can start to release stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) and it can come with other changes in our body that are part of the sympathetic nervous system, or the fight or flight nervous system. This might be things like elevated heartbeat, or an increase in blood pressure. This is an adaptive processes -the fight or flight system is an adaptive system that helps us to be primed to escape from danger. That’s why our heartrate goes up, our blood pressure goes up, more blood is pumped to the heart and lungs and the limbs so we can make a quick escape from danger. Now because we need all of our resources to escape danger, or what the body perceives as danger, we shut down any non-essential functions – so anything that’s not immediately relevant to our survival, like digestion, healing of tissue or any injury repair, balancing our hormones, and all of our biochemicals and molecules of information that are doing all sorts of important work in the body. All of that gets put on the backburner while our body focuses on the immediate stress – or threat – at hand. Like I said before, this is an adaptive and helpful process if it’s used in the short term or when appropriate. But in the course of our modern life, we’re faced with many situations and triggers that might cause us to feel repeated or chronic stress. When this happens, the body can end up in a state of chronic inflammation, which as we touched on in last episode, has been implicated in many – if not most – diseases today.

In light of how detrimental that chronic inflammation can be for our health and wellness, our vitality and energy levels, any health practice that is going to drop those inflammation levels and keep them under control is going to be beneficial for us on many levels. A health practice that offers that is meditation. And therefore, extrapolating from that point, most of us, if not all of us, can benefit from a meditation practice because of its widespread reach in reducing inflammation, which is then implicated in a variety of symptoms and imbalances in the body. There’s been already so many wonderful research papers conducted into the benefits of meditation, and the benefits of meditation for our health, and the mechanisms by which that happens. When I looked recently on the research database, there were over 62,000 papers relating to meditation. I thought I’d pull out a few key points.

There’s been a few small trials that look at meditation’s effect in lowering blood pressure; there were some that looked at meditation and its ability to help psoriasis heal; there were trials looking at meditation healing immune response in vaccine recipients and cancer patients and there were other studies looking at the impact of meditation on mood. One of the mechanisms by which meditation is believed to have this positive effect on the body is by allowing us to switch out of that fight or flight response and into the complimentary nervous system mode – the parasympathetic or the rest and digest, repair and heal mode. When we drop into a state of meditation, we are taking deeper breaths, and our state of alertness is softening – these are all qualities that we wouldn’t be embracing if we are on high alert, or running from danger. By sending these physical, outward signals of safety to our body, our body can then start to soften and relax and switch into that parasympathetic nervous system, which is the state in which healing becomes really potent and possible.

Anyone who’s had a bit of an “acu-nap” while having acupuncture and goes into that deep space of relaxation – that is a parasympathetic state, and acupuncture has been shown to get us there. But we can also get there through meditation, that’s one of the mechanisms by which it’s believed to work. Another interesting mechanism by which meditation is believed to have positive influences on the body is by its effect on the telomeres. And you might have heard about telomeres – these are the end caps on chromosomes and they play a key role in how cells age. Basically each time that our cells reproduce and replicate, the telomeres, which are like little shoelace caps at the end of the chromosome, get shorter and shorter and more deteriorated. Over time the quality of the cell replication deteriorates as well. This process could be likened to taking repeated photocopies of the same image – over time you’ll lose quality and resolution as you continually photocopy that same image. What they found, and I’ve got the link in the show notes, is that meditation could affect an enzyme called telomerase, which is an enzyme, or a little active molecule, that helps to build up these end caps of chromosomes. What that indicates is that meditation can stop cell deterioration and can have an impact on how we age – it can play a role in slowing cellular aging. So not only can meditation be a direct benefit to our physical and biological health, but it can also slow potentially the aging process!

On that positive note, I thought we’d have a quick chat about some questions regarding meditation. And then I’ll leave you with a bonus episode to follow this one so you can put that into practice. Some of the common questions: one of the common ones I get is “I’m no good at it! My mind just keeps going all over the place!” And as we touched on earlier in this episode, that is a very normal and human thing. If our mind didn’t go to the Yang extremes of busy-ness, it also wouldn’t have the Yin calm and quiet states. Both are essential parts of our minds, and essential parts of life. Meditation isn’t about necessarily achieving some imagined state of complete serenity, although that can certainly be part of it, and that will certainly pop up at various times throughout your meditation practice in your life. But the practice of meditation is just about doing it – it’s just about sitting and doing it, and over time the benefits build. It’s about setting up that habit and that discipline and really, that gift of time for yourself, to just sit with yourself for five or 10 or 20 minutes, whatever time you can afford, gift yourself or to set aside for yourself. And like most skills, the more we meditate, the better we get at it. I wouldn’t expect to sit in front of a piano and become a virtuoso, or pick up a surfboard and be amazing straight off the bat. It takes time! The more time that we dedicate to it, the more cumulative those benefits and skills are.

Another objection that I get from time to time is “I don’t have time. I’m so busy”, and I get it. Modern life can be hectic, especially when we’re juggling many competing demands on our time – family and work and kids and friends and life admin and all of that stuff takes time. But interestingly, taking time out to meditate can actually make us more productive. I mentioned in last week’s episode that Microsoft Japan trialled a period of a four day workweek and found that productivity went up 40%, so more isn’t always more. One of my lovely patients mentioned to me just the other day that when they know they have a really busy day, that’s when they make extra time to meditate at lunchtime, because they know that they’ll actually be much more efficient if they put in that five or 10 minutes at lunchtime. And we are really just talking about five or 10 minutes. We can all find five or 10 minutes in our day to give our bodies and minds the gift of self care.

So “when is a good time to meditate”? “When should I meditate”? Well, any meditation is great – anytime that you gift yourself to sit with yourself and sit in quiet awareness is a good time. But it’s also lovely to use meditation as bookends for your day, so you might start with meditation on waking and then finish up the day and prepare your body for sleep, calming down the nervous system with a meditation before you fall asleep. And the beauty of doing meditation at these times is that often they are times that the busy-ness of the day doesn’t encroach on so much, so they’re usually times that we can dedicate as a set practice each and every day. Another aspect that I really like about starting the day with meditation is that it allows us to start the day with intention, and to create the reality that we want for that day. Rather than getting up and reaching for our phone, for example, which might then set up a chain reaction of reactivity to different posts and a roller coaster of emotions before we’ve even really begun our day, if we just start the day with a few minutes of connecting to ourselves, we can use that energy and that calming of the nervous to set a positive tone for the day.

Another point that I’d like to raise with meditation is the importance of maintaining soft awareness and soft focus while you’re doing it – and releasing judgment. Very often our ego, or our mind, will like to get involved and start telling us stories- it will start to tell us that “maybe I’m no good at this”, or look, “I’m sort of failing at meditation”, or “what’s the point of it anyway”? Or “I could be doing a million other things”, and that’s okay. That’s really normal, and that’s the ego’s job, actually. The ego is there to protect us and to keep us in a familiar state. So when we try something unfamiliar, like sitting in a quiet state of awareness and observing our emotions and our sensations, and without attaching to what’s going on, but just quietly observing, then that can be uncomfortable for the ego. The ego can try and distract us and take us off on other tangents. And that’s okay – you can just come back to the breath, or come back to whatever your focus point is for that meditation.

There’s many different meditation schools and traditions out there. For example, there’s ones that focus on the breath, there’s ones that focus on a mantra or a sound, there’s loving kindness meditations which focus on a feeling of love, radiating out from your heart and sharing that love with those around you. So if you are new to meditation, it’s worth trying a few different kinds of meditation to see what resonates with you. In addition to all the teachers and schools out there, we’re very lucky now that there are some amazing meditation apps that are accessible to all of us. One of these is Headspace, there’s also Insight Timer, which has many free meditations – I’ve popped that in the show notes. I’ve also uploaded a bonus episode, which is me guiding you through a five minutes seated meditation, so you’re welcome to listen to that too.

I hope this has been helpful and inspiring. I think meditation can benefit all of us. It’s simple and free and we can do it anywhere. You can even just roll out of bed first thing in the morning, and even just sit quietly on the floor and bring your focus to your breath for five minutes, and that will yield benefits as well! So on that note, thanks so much for listening today.

Links & Research

https://www.headspace.com

https://insighttimer.com

https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/3-epigenetic-reasons-to-meditate-your-stress-away/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeenacho/2016/04/11/why-one-orthopedic-surgeon-is-prescribing-meditation-over-medication/#2b401bbc775d

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeenacho/2017/02/07/why-cardiologists-are-prescribing-mindfulness-for-heart-health/#e01856a2c0c0

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/24/meditation-ageing-shamatha-project

Carlson, L. E., Beattie, T. L., Giese-Davis, J., Faris, P., Tamagawa, R., Fick, L. J., Degelman, E. S. and Speca, M. (2015). Mindfulness-based cancer recovery and supportive-expressive therapy maintain telomere length relative to controls in distressed breast cancer survivors. Cancer, 121: 476–484.

Epel, E., Daubenmier, J., Moskowitz, J.T., Folkman, S., Blackburn, E. Can meditation slow rate of cellular aging? Cognitive stress, mindfulness, and telomeres. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1172: 34-53.

Kaliman, P., Álvarez-López, M.J., Cosín-Tomás, M., Rosenkranz, M.A., Lutz, A., Davidson, R.J. (2014). Rapid changes in histone deacetylases and inflammatory gene expression in expert meditators. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 40: 96-107.

Ornish, D., Magbanua, M.J.,  Weidner, G., Weinberg, V., Kemp, C., Green, C., Mattie, M.D., Marlin, R., Simko, J., Shinohara, K., Haqq, C.M., Carroll, P.R. (2008). Changes in prostate gene expression in men undergoing an intensive nutrition and lifestyle intervention. PNAS, 105(24): 8369-8374.

Continuing from episode 2, we look at the role of inflammation in imbalanced hormones and why managing inflammation is important for each and every one of us. Chronic inflammation is now being implicated in many, if not most diseases, from heart disease and cancer to depression and diabetes, so we then go on to discuss simple health hacks to tone down levels of inflammation in the body.

Show Notes
Transcript

In today’s episode, we’re going to be building on our earlier discussion in episode two. In that episode, we looked at the role of relative estrogen excess with respect to hormone balance, and the various symptoms that can present as. Now today we’re going to go on to look at the key relationship between hormones and inflammation. Inflammation is such an important topic to understand and address because it seems that each month – and each week almost – more research comes out to suggest that chronic inflammation is linked to many if not most diseases, ranging from heart disease to cancer, depression and diabetes. This is something that Chinese Medicine has long understood – that link between inflammation and health. In Chinese medicine we’ve outlined diet, stress management and lifestyle practices to mitigate inflammation and promote health.

Let’s start with a brief look at what inflammation actually is. In basic terms, inflammation is our body’s innate protective response in the face of harm or hurt – such as a cut, a bruise, a sprained ankle, or an infection. In these situations, the body will mobilize cells, chemicals and processes that will help to clear out the muck of an injured or infected site, and to remove and break down damaged tissue; it will protect against further encroachment by bacteria or other infective agents and it will start to heal the affected area. Inflammation is classically characterized by four signs – redness, pain, heat and swelling. These four arise as byproducts of the various biochemicals and processes that the body activates in the process of healing an injury or infection. Anyone who’s had a sore throat, a cut, a bruise, a swollen joint or a sprained ankle has experienced these four signs of inflammation and when they are limited by time – meaning that they are switched off once the healing and repair has occurred – this inflammation is a healthy and adaptive response.

It feels like these days we hear a lot about inflammation. It’s a term that’s often thrown about, and it generally has negative connotations. So it’s important to point out that inflammation is not all bad. These four classic signs of inflammation that we just mentioned – redness, pain, heat and swelling – they’re byproducts of the body doing healing work, which is why shutting down inflammation with measures such as anti-inflammatories or cortisone injections will certainly limit pain, but at the same time, it will put a stop to any essential healing going on in that acute situation. And this is why we’re now finally seeing research that bears out this fact: there’s a study that I’ve attached in my show notes, and it talks about how putting cortisone shots into knees actually has poorer longterm health outcomes, both with respect to pain and mobility, and also with a greater deterioration of knee cartilage in those knees that had cortisone injected in them. And this is because it literally puts a blanket on any healing process and shuts it down. But that’s a topic for another episode, because it is something that I’d love to get into on a deeper level!

So, back to inflammation and hormones! As I mentioned, when occurring over a short, defined period, inflammation is an adaptive process, meaning that it’s a positive process that facilitates healing and helps to restore our system to a state of balance. The problem arises when the inflammation becomes chronic or repeated, and this is the side of inflammation that gets the deservedly bad rap. Unlike acute inflammation, chronic inflammation doesn’t get shut off when the injury or infection is resolved – it keeps being retriggered, which leaves the body on high alert, which then will drain resources from other areas of the body and disrupt their function. These are areas like digestion, mental health, emotional health, circulation, and of particular interest to us today – in light of this episode – also hormones or the endocrine system. Chronic inflammation very often goes hand in hand with a dysregulation or imbalance of stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline). Last week in episode two we talked about a process called pregnenolone steal. This is the process by which the stress hormones will steal the common building blocks that are essential for all hormones, but particularly the sex hormones. So when we’re pumping out a lot of these stress hormones and have a high demand for them, in order for the body to make more of them, it will steal the building blocks that it also needs to use for the sex hormones, thusdepriving our levels of those.

Now, unlike acute inflammation, which is often localized and always time limited by definition, chronic inflammation can be broad, widespread, and systemic – that means diffused throughout the body and therefore disruptive to many of the body’s systems. And because of this, it’s now widely accepted to be a major factor in most diseases. Unlike acute inflammation, which has the very obvious signs of redness, pain, heat and swelling, chronic inflammation can be sneakier and less obvious to spot – it can often be silent or just have low-grade, less dramatic symptoms like fatigue or brain fog or generalized pain or joint pain and mucus. Very often when I see patients with these symptoms, we’ll have a look at what’s going on in the diet, lifestyle, stress, emotional health and so on – and we’ll investigate if there’s some inflammation going on as well.

So what are some of the culprits in chronic inflammation? Well, as it happens, there are many trigger factors for chronic inflammation that are the same ones that we discussed last week, with respect to elevated estrogen. So let’s have a look at what some of those trigger factors are – and these are in no particular order.

We’ll start with number one, and that is toxic load. Now, toxic load just refers to the generalized and sum load of all of the toxins that our body – and more specifically our liver – has to deal with in order to detox and restore our bodies back to balance. These are very often things in our immediate environment such as the phthalates and parabens in products like moisturizers, shampoos, detergents, packaged foods with their plastics leaching into them, and also things like environmental pollutants on a grander scale – whether it’s petrol fumes or even (of particular relevance to us now in New South Wales and Queensland, where we have all these tragic fires going on) is all that smoke pollution. That constant irritation of the mucus membranes of the respiratory system is going to be contributing to a perpetual state of low grade inflammation in some people.

Number two is sleep, and the pace of modern life. Sleep isn’t a sexy health hack – it’s not some shiny new gadget or superfood that’s going to give you amazing healing results. But the fact is that sleep is such a potent healing tool because when we’re asleep, our body can drop into the parasympathetic nervous system mode, which is where we rest, digest, repair and heal – and the body and brain can clean and heal at rest. So it’s so important for our health on every level. The pace of life and the society that we live in glorifies busy-ness, and being overwhelmed is almost a badge of honour and you know, rather than calling it out and consciously slowing down or letting some things drop by the wayside (and I know that may not always be possible!) we just push on, and punch down some more caffeine or sugar or energy drinks to keep us going. That can feel amazing in the short term, because all of those substances trigger our sympathetic nervous system – the fight or flight system – so they release cortisol and adrenaline, which are stress hormones. In the short term these can make us feel invincible and clear-headed, so we think “this is great, we’ll just keep going!”. What that does though, is that it doesn’t allow enough time in the parasympathetic mode – in the rest and digest mode. That’s the time when our body goes around and mops up any pockets of inflammation and just tones down the whole inflammatory response.

I think we have this idea that “more is more”, and we’ll just push on through, but there was a very interesting example recently in Japan, where the whole culture of overwork has actually become a major public health concern. In fact it’s so endemic that there’s even a word in Japanese, karoshi, which means “overwork death”. In light of this big burden on public health, Microsoft in Japan recently trialled a four day work week. What they found was that by cutting 20% of the workweek, rather than dropping in productivity, productivity actually went up by 40% and in a bonus to the environment, costs went down: there was 23% less electricity used and a whopping 58% less pages printed, and all for more productivity. It just goes to show that more is not always more! So when guilt potentially sets in, whenthat little voice in your head goes “well, you can’t rest, there’s more stuff to do”, I think it’s good to remember that sometimes having a rest can actually yield greater results.

Number three in the list of trigger factors for chronic inflammation are, not surprisingly, inflammatory foods. And this is something that we will go into further in future episodes, when we have more time to focus on that. But just top line, these are things like polyunsaturated vegetable oils (canola oil, sunflower oil, soy oil) which unfortunately are so prevalent in packaged foods, and even in seemingly healthy foods – if you actually look through the ingredients, you’ll see that in probably 95% of cases, these are the oils that are unfortunately used. Things are slowly changing, but it’s always pays to read those labels. Another big culprit is fructose, which is prevalent in fruits and also, together with glucose, forms 50% of common table sugar. We also see high amounts of fructose in things like high fructose corn syrup, and it’s prevalent in a lot of soft drinks and again, packaged foods. It’s so popular in packaged foods because it delivers more of a sweet kick, but it also comes at a cost because it bumps up inflammation in the body as well. It’s interesting that in a Traditional Chinese Medicine diet, we don’t have much of a fruit component, or a sugar component. There’s also a very interesting book called Sweet Poison, which looks at the impacts of fructose on a whole range of health conditions, and actually ties fructose to cholesterol – and not cholesterol and fat consumption. A study from 2012 that I came across, looked at how a low fructose diet lowered blood pressure and inflammation in patients with chronic kidney disease – so that’s a big one to watch out for as well.

Number four is toxins in food. And by this I mean non-food ingredient – these are things that you can’t recognize as a whole food ingredient when you read the packaging. A good rule of thumb is, if you can’t recognize it or it has numbers in it (like preservatives and additives and so on), then it shouldn’t really be going either into your body or on your body, as a moisturizer or skin product or whatever.

Number five is alcohol, and this doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the occasional glass of wine, particularly if it’s red because it has a great antioxidant called resveratrol in it, which has some positive effects. But certainly the sweet spot seems to be no more than three drinks a week. At that point, it does seem to start to overload the body and can contribute to chronic inflammation.

Number six is unresolved infections, lingering pathogens and what we referred to as bacterial debris – this is bits of the bacterial cell that can remain, even after antibiotic use and even after the overt symptoms of an illness have gone. These lingering infections can occur if the body is too rundown to completely kick an invading bug to the curb. If we’re pushing ourselves, and overworking and not resting enough, and then maybe smashing it in the gym, the body just simply runs out of reserves to address the immune system side of things. And so it just kind of lays down and gives up the fight, and it allows that disease process to just fester quietly in the background. What often happens in these situations is that once we start rebalancing those underlying imbalances, and we start building the body up again and allowing it to bank some energy, then very often, once there is again some energy to continue that fight and pick it up again, these infections may come to the surface again – even years after the fact. This is a good thing, because it means that they can then be finally resolved, and that low-grade inflammatory burden can be resolved as well. On that note also, chronic inflammation can also happen when there’s another process that the body is perceiving as something imbalanced – that might be plaque deposits on the arteries, or a disrupted gut leading to leaky gut, for example, that will also contribute to the body’s state of high alert, and / or chronic inflammation.

Now number seven is an interesting one, and that is excessive cardio, particularly steady state cardio, but it can also cover interval training in people who already have a dysregulated nervous or endocrine system. And unfortunately that is a great many of us in the society that we live in, and the demands that we place on our bodies. Exercise is an important part of health – it’s one of the pillars of health – and daily movement should be a part of life for all of us, but it’s when we’re smashing our body that it can actually cause more harm than good. This is because if we’re already in that fight or flight dominant state (which can happen as a result of work stresses and long work hours, shorter sleep, inflammatory foods, stresses in your relationships) if the sympathetic nervous system is already dominant, then further smashing it and pumping out more stress hormones with an elevated heart rate and high intensity cardio is just going to perpetuate that problem. There’s more on this on my blog, and I will go into it again in other podcasts, but I did write an article about it called Exercise, Too much of a good thing?. It doesn’t mean that people in this situation have to stop heavier exercise forever, but it just means that until their nervous and endocrine systems get a chance to rebalance – and inflammation gets a chance to drop down – for that period, they will be pursuing calming exercise that support healing. Then, once the body is healed, they can pick up that more intense exercise again.

So we have quite a list of factors there that can contribute to inflammation. Just quickly as an overview, we’ve got 1) toxic load, 2) the lack of sleep and pace of life, not enough downtime, 3) inflammatory foods, 4) toxins and non-foods, 5) alcohol, 6) persistent and lingering infections or underlying imbalances in the body, 7) excessive cardio, or exercise that’s not serving us, or wiping us out. But the big one, the number one headline factor in causing chronic inflammation is stress. This is such a big one, and I think such an insidious and sneaky one as well, because we humans are such amazingly adaptive creatures that I think all of us have probably had that experience where we don’t realize how stressed we are until a particular situation ends, and we become aware of the difference in how we feel. Very often that stress just builds up, week by week, month on month, year on year, and we’re functioning and we’re getting by, so we think we’re not stressed, everything’s fine, I’m happy, everything’s good in my life – but the fact is that even positive experiences can add to our stress load – being stressed doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all negative emotions. It can even be really beautiful things, like a wedding, or a new baby, or a new job or moving to a place that you’ve always wanted to move to. All of those things can come with stress. And if we’re not offering our bodies the balancing support to process that stress, and to balance that stress out, then it is going to cause an elevation of stress hormones, and it’s going to perpetuate chronic inflammation in the body.

Another culprit with stress is the internal state: we mentioned earlier that inflammation is the body’s response to a perceived hurt or harm, and this also relates to psychological hurt and harm. Unfortunately for many people, they have an inner critic and a negative self-voice that says awful things, that they would never dream of saying out loud to someone that they care about, and yet this negative loop is just going on in the background 24-7. There are some estimates that we have, that of the thoughts that we have every day, 70 to 90% are repetitive or redundant and roughly the same amount were negative or, at best, neutral. That’s such a such an intense barrage that we’re getting from the inside – and that’s in addition to all of the external life stresses that our body is trying to find balance against. In light of that, one of the big things that I do myself (it’s a non-negotiable part of my day) and one thing that I recommend to all my patients, is meditation. There’s such a abundance of trials and research now that show just how effective meditation is in reducing stress levels and changing immune markers in the body. There’s even a fascinating study that showed that meditation could reverse or slow aging! So meditation is such a big one – meditation, gratitude, fostering positive states of mind.

I just came across what I think is the first one of its kind, where they looked at gratitude journalling in teenagers with Type One Diabetes -these are teenagers that need to rely on insulin to maintain their blood sugar. They found that the teens who wh were practicing daily gratitude journaling – focusing on the positive aspects in their life – had a statistically significant improvement in their blood sugar regulation. It was such a positive writeup, so I’ve included that in the show notes as well. What that shows is that meditation, and our state of mind, can have a direct biochemical effect on our physical health. It’s such a simple thing to do, and it’s something that really can benefit pretty much any health situation. Even when we don’t have any overt symptoms, it’s so great for maintaining our health, and for slowing ageing and keeping us healthy as we get older. I mentioned in an earlier episode that Dr Mark Hyman said that if it was a patentable and sellable drug, then everyone would be prescribing it for every illness. It really is that wonderful! Meditation can be such a simple thing to integrate into your day. It can just be five minutes on waking – to set a positive brain state and a positive emotional and body state for the day – and five minutes at the end of the day – as a kind of mental shower (or mental floss!) to clear your brain of the day, and set you up for a deeper and more restorative sleep.

The thing that meditation and journalling both have in common is that they slow us down, and bring us into the present moment – they encourage awareness of what is going on in our mind and bodies. I think that self-awareness in each moment is one of the foundations of good health – we can start to become aware of an imbalance as it arises – whether it’s something that we need to eat (if our body is calling out for something) – when we slow down, we start to become more attuned to these healthy cravings. We can also start to become attuned to certain emotions that aren’t getting a chance to be felt or expressed – so things that might be being redirected towards our partner or child, that maybe have nothing to do with them at all. It has so many positive effects in all aspects of our life, and the effects and benefits are cumulative – but even after a few days or a week of meditation, you can absolutely start to notice the benefits!

My next episode is going to be about meditation, journalling and positive states of mind – and in addition to that, I’ll be including a bonus five minute meditation episode to guide you through the process as well, so make sure to tune in!

Research

Brymora A, Flisiński M, Johnson RJ, Goszka G, Stefańska A and Manitius J (2012). Low-fructose diet lowers blood pressure and inflammation in patients with chronic kidney disease. Nephrology Dialysis Transplant,2012 Feb; 27(2): 608–612.

Gold, E.B., Wells, C. and O’Neill Rasor, M. (2016) The Association of Inflammation with Premenstrual Symptoms. Journal of Women’s Health,Vol 25, no. 9.

Guilliams, Thomas (2017) Re-assessing the Notion of “Pregnenolone Steal”
https://www.zrtlab.com/blog/archive/reassessing-pregnenolone-steal/ Accessed December 2019

Harvard Medical School (2006). Inflammation: A Unifying Theory of Disease. https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Inflammation_A_unifying_theory_of_disease, accessed December 2019.

Hunter P (2012). The inflammation theory of disease. EMBO Reports, 2012 Nov, 12(11): 968-970

Kamba A, Daimon M, Murakami H, Otaka H, Matsuki K, Sato E, Tanabe J, Takayasu S, Matsuhashi Y, Yanagimachi M, Terui K, Kageyama K, Tokuda I, Takahashi I and Nakaji S (2016). Association between Higher Serum Cortisol Levels and Decreased Insulin Secretion in a General Population. PLoS One.2016; 11(11): e0166077.

Liu, YZ, Wang, YX and Jiang, CL (2017) Inflammation: The Common Pathway of Stress-Related Diseases. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

McAlindon TE, LaValley MP, Harvey F, Price LL, Driban JB, Zhang M and Ward RJ (2017). Effect of Intra-articular Triamcinolone vs Saline on Knee Cartilage Volume and Pain in Patients With Knee Osteoarthritis: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Journal of the American Medical Association,2018 May 16: 317)19): 1967-1975.

Mills, PJ, Redwine, L, Wilson, K, Pung, A., Chinh, K, Greenberg, BH, Lunde, O, Maisel, A and Raisinghani, A (2015) The Role of Gratitude in Spiritual Well-Being in Asymptomatic Heart Failure Patients, Spirituality in Clinical Practice, American Psychological Association2015, Vol. 2, No. 1, 5–17

Plat L, Byrne MM, Sturis J, Polonsky KS, Mockel J, Fery F and Van Cauter E (1996). Effects of morning cortisol elevation on insulin secretion and glucose regulation in humans. American Journal of Physiology. 1996 Jan; 270(1 Pt 1):E36-42.

Rosenkranz, MA, Lutz, A, Perlman, DM, Bachhuber, DRW, Schuyler, BS, MacCoon, DG and Davidson, RJ (2016). Reduced stress and inflammatory responsiveness in experienced meditators compared to a matched healthy control group, Psychoneuroendocrinology,  2016 Jun; 68: 117–125.

Schache KR, Hofman PL and Serlachius AS (2019) Short Report: Educational and Psychological Aspects: A pilot randomized controlled trial of a gratitude intervention for adolescents with Type 1 diabetes.Diabetic Medicine, July 2019.

Scheiner, G (2011). Think Like A Pancreas: A Practical Guide to Managing Diabetes With Insulin. DaCapo Press.

Tolahunase, M, Sagar, R and Dada, R (2017) Impact of Yoga and Meditation on Cellular Aging in Apparently Healthy Individuals: A Prospective, Open-Label Single-Arm Exploratory Study. Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity

Yeager, MP (2011). Cortisol Exerts Bi-Phasic Regulation of Inflammation in Humans. Dose Response, 2011: 9(3): 332-347

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/04/microsoft-japan-4-day-work-week-experiment-sees-productivity-jump-40percent.html

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/how-caffeine-sugar-and-alcohol-affect-inflammation

David Gillespie, Sweet Poison

This episode was inspired by the patients who come to see me with symptoms such as painful, heavy or irregular cycles, with growth such as cysts, fibroids and endometriosis – and also those who come to see me with imbalanced hormones (whether estrogen, testosterone, thyroid or stress hormones, and so on).

Because Chinese Medicine is a functional medicine, each treatment is highly personalized and can differ greatly from person to person. But what often doesn’t differ are the lifestyle and dietary tweaks that I recommend as supportive therapies. Join us as we discuss some common factors underlying imbalanced hormones, and simple health hacks we can use to restore balance.

Be sure to also catch the following episode (3) for more on this topic.

Show notes
Transcript

Today’s episode was inspired by the various patients who come to see me with symptoms such as painful periods, heavy bleeding, irregular cycles, with growth such as cysts, fibroids and endometriosis – and also those patients who come to see me with imbalanced hormones (whether estrogen, or low testosterone and so on).

Because Chinese Medicine is a functional medicine – and it views symptoms as the body’s cry for help – it sees symptoms as the body’s message about what is out of balance. Because it does so, it seeks out the root cause of the imbalance so that this can be corrected, rather than just masking the “cry for help” (or dialling down its volume). This means that the acupuncture and the Chinese herbal medicine that I give (for my patients with the symptoms I just mentioned) is highly personalized – it differs greatly from person to person. But what doesn’t differ, is that the lifestyle and dietary tweaks that I recommend as supportive or adjunct therapies are very often common to all of the patients who come to see me for help with these symptoms. This is because in situations of changes to the menstrual cycle – or overgrowth of tissue (as in cysts or fibroids, or the growth of tissue outside it’s physiologically-designated area, as in endometriosis), or various hormone imbalances – very often in these situations, there is an underlying foundation of inflammation, and / or of excess estrogen. Therefore, any lifestyle adjustments are going to aim to reduce inflammation, and / or rebalance the hormones as required. So before we go into these natural health hacks for happy, healthy hormones, let’s briefly talk about sex hormones.

All humans produce in varying amounts, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. There are various subtypes of each of these hormones, but for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll just stick to the three main, overarching types. These hormones – estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone – affect not only our sexual and reproductive health, and the development of secondary sexual characteristics (such as the growth of breasts, or the deepening of the voice), but they also have wide-ranging effects on the body, beyond the reproductive system. This is because we know now in modern medicine – and Chinese Medicine has been talking about this for millennia – that all of the body’s systems are integrated, and they’re in a constant interplay of communication with each other. Therefore the balance and health of our sexual hormones is going to have knock-on effects throughout the body. The hormones mostly involved in the menstrual cycle are estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen governs the first half of the cycle, and it prompts ovulation, the release of mucus, the growth of breasts and uterine lining, whereas progesterone is released midway throughout the cycle, at ovulation, and it helps to regulate the cycle. It’s important to prepare the uterus in pregnancy, but it is also important for the production of testosterone in people assigned male at birth. So it’s important for everyone, and I love the shorthand that Chinese Medicine terminology offers us when we talk about sex hormones – it’s really beautiful, because it enables us to talk about the many complex biological pathways, and all the different interactions that are going on in the body, in a simple way that’s accessible to all of us.

All of us, regardless of our gender, are a mix of Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are complimentary opposites, and they’re in dynamic balance with each other; from a biomedical or Western medicine perspective, we’d see this as the state of homeostasis, or the body’s ability to return to balance in a dynamic way, in response to all the ups and downs and events of life. Yin and Yang are complimentary opposites, and each contain at least a seed of the other. There is no 100% Yin or 100% Yang in nature, as the very interplay of the two is what creates life. We can see a visual representation of this idea in the Yin and Yang symbol: we see that one half of the circle is Yin and one half is Yang, but each contains the seed of the other, and each is constantly changing into the other as well. We see that flow, or that cycle of life happening, visually represented. When we look at the root of the Chinese words for Yin and Yang, and when we look at the Chinese characters for them, we see that Yin describes a shady / shadowy part of the mountain (or the Northern side of the mountain, because it’s stemming from the Northern hemisphere); whereas the Yang character describes the sunny side of the mountain (or the Southern side of the mountain). In general, we see more activity in nature during the day, while night time is a time of rest and renewal. In biology, this translates as Yin describing the more material, dense and dark aspects of our biology – the more solid aspects like body tissues, body fluids, bones, flesh, and so on, while Yang is the dynamic, functional and active aspect.

When we think about things in this way, low Yang might manifest as low function in a particular area – it might be hypothyroidism, or depression or fatigue. Excess Yang might present as a hyperfunction in a particular area or body system, such as in hyperthyroid, or manic behaviour, or an inability to wind down. Excess Yin is an excess of substance: in Chinese Medicine, we see a relative Yin excess in cases where there might be fluid accumulation, swelling or an overgrowth of tissue – as in excess flesh or lumps like fibroids, cystic breasts and tumours.

Yin is associated with the traditionally feminine qualities, and Yang is associated with the masculine qualities, and when it comes to sex hormones, we view estrogen as more Yin in relation to the Yang of progesterone. This is because estrogen encourages growth and the proliferation of substance: it encourages more material density, and we see estrogen as being essential to fertile mucus and breast growth, it leads to ovulation – and excess estrogen can manifest as weight gain around the abdomen and hips. Meanwhile, progesterone is more concerned with boosting function – that’s more of a Yang aspect. We can see a very clear visual representation of this Yin and Yang relationship between estrogen region and progesterone, when we look at a BBT, or basal body temperature, chart. For anyone who’s ever tracked their temperature throughout the duration of their cycle, generally we’ll see that there is a fluctuation in the basal body temperature from day to day and throughout that time. The first half of the cycle is governed by estrogen, and generally has a lower body temperature, because Yin talks about the shady side of the mountain (and it’s dense and dark), Yin is associated with cold, whereas the second half of the cycle, which is governed by Yang – which is warm and dynamic and sunny – generally has an elevated temperature. We have a boost of progesterone throughout this second part of the cycle, and this is why optimizing progesterone levels is so important in fertility work, as the presence of Yang is what allows for the spark of new life. It’s also important for us in balancing menstrual and hormonal health, because progesterone keeps estrogen in check – so Yin and Yang are constantly balancing each other. And as we touched on at the beginning of this podcast, elevated estrogen is often underpinning many of the symptoms that we’re talking about today.

So why are estrogen levels so commonly elevated? in fact, they’re so commonly elevated that some people have talked about an estrogen epidemic that affects all of us. Now there are many factors that contribute to elevated or excess estrogen levels, so we’ll run through each of these in a little bit of detail.

The first one is quite an obvious one, and that is hormonal contraceptives, because very often they flood the body with much-higher-than-what-is-physiologically-normal levels of these hormones, which then leads to a disruption of the healthy balance of hormone levels. Another factor that is so important to hormone health is gut health, and the balance of gut bacteria (the microbiome). In recent years, modern science has aligned with what Chinese Medicine has been talking about for millennia: gut health being the foundation of all of our health. We’re now learning just how important gut health is in the treatment or regulation of many common conditions, and it’s just as important in the balancing of healthy hormones. We know a lot about the microbiome – that’s the whole population of bacteria and microbes that live in and on our bodies, and they outnumber our cells roughly 10 to one! So there’s definitely more of them than us, and they can be helpful to us when we live synergistically with each other, and when they’re in balance. In addition to the microbiome, there’s also the estrobolome, which is the body of microbes or bacteria that help in the metabolism, or processing, of estrogen. When the gut bacteria is healthy – and our estrobolome is in order – then we can process excess estrogen and excrete it in order to maintain healthy hormone balance. Therefore, anything we can do that will support gut health will also support hormone health.

Another factor that can disrupt estrogen levels as xenoestrogens – this just translates as foreign (“xeno-“) estrogens, and we see these in plastics and BPA. BPA is present in many packaged foods in plastic bottles, or anything that comes in plastic containers. This is why it’s so important to use glass containers, and to not heat up foods in plastics, as it can leach some of these BPAs into the food. Unfortunately, BPA is also really prevalent in all of the register receipts that we have, so every time we touch those, we’re also coming into contact with BPA – so we can see just how rife these are in our modern life!

In addition to xenoestrogens, we also have phytoestrogens (“phyto-“ meaning plant) – these are estrogens present in plants and they’re present in large amounts in soy. When eaten traditionally, or as part of a traditional diet, this isn’t an issue because often, in traditional Asian diets, a large proportion of that soy was fermented, which affects its digestibility, and its effect on the body. When we’re talking about fermented soy, we’re talking about foods such as miso paste, soy sauce and tempe, as opposed to unfermented soy products like soy milk and tofu. In small amounts, soy is not an issue to our bodies, but the problem is that soy is one of the largest commercial crops in the world, and is so prevalent in any kind of packaged or processed food. If you start looking at ingredients, you’ll notice that very often there’ll be soy flour listed, or soy protein; Vegetable oil is very often hiding soybean oil, so it’s not so much that soy is “bad”, but it’s the amount of soy that we’re eating (or that we’ve been exposed to over the course of our lifetimes) is just too excessive for our bodies to balance.

Another factor is estrogens in the water supply. Now, some people claim that this is due to the widespread use of the contraceptive pill and hormonal contraceptives, but some other research that I’ve read recently, suggests that up to 70% of the estrogens that we find in the water supply is due to industrial waste, and dairy and soy production. Whichever way you look at it, there are estrogens in the water supply at a higher level than what our bodies are physiologically designed to handle, so that is yet another contributing factor that’s boosting our estrogen load.

Speaking of load, there’s also the factor of higher toxic load that most of us are subjected to. This is a consequence of living within modern society, that has us surrounded by environmental pollutants, by packaged foods, and by a daily rhythm and lifestyle that doesn’t necessarily support the movement, and exposure to fresh air and sunlight, that would then encourage excretion of toxins. And it’s also contributed to by a lot of the synthetic substances that surround us – (14:02) – these are commonly called “endocrine disruptors” because they disrupt the endocrine system (the hormone system), and therefore they disrupt estrogen balance as well. These are things that unfortunately are all around us, like phthalates and parabens. Phthalates are often found in synthetic fragrances, so when you walk down the detergent aisle in the supermarket and you feel a bit queasy, you’re being hit with a massive phthalate load. Parabens are found in many commercial skincare formulations, and because the skin is our largest organ of absorption, the stuff that we wash with and put on our skin every day is going to accumulate in our bodies, and contribute to toxic load.

Another major contributing factor is unfortunately stress – this is something that has become so commonplace as a result of the pace of our modern life. Unfortunately, when we’re stressed and when we’re pumping out stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, our body will steal the common building blocks of these hormones, which is called pregnenolone, in order to manufacture more adrenaline and cortisol in response to that stressful situation. What that does is that it robs the body of the building blocks to make progesterone, which we need (as we learned) to balance estrogen. We call this situation “pregnenolone steal”. It’s so important to manage stress – not just from the pregnenolone perspective – but also because we’re dealt a double whammy on the hormone front, as the stress hormone cortisol will block our progesterone receptors as well (thereby reducing the efficacy of progesterone in the body).

As we’ve seen, the factors that contribute to elevated estrogen are factors that affect all of us, not just those with menstrual or reproductive system imbalances. And it’s a concern for all of us, because elevated estrogen has been linked with an increased incidence of autoimmune disease; it’s been linked to certain cancers and it’s been linked to thyroid disorders and to candida overgrowth. Now, understanding these different factors that can contribute to elevated estrogen gives us some clues on lifestyle medicine tweaks that we can make, that will help us to rebalance excess estrogen levels.

One of the first – and most important – of these is looking after our gut health. This is going to have benefits for any symptoms that we’re experiencing, because as we’re discovering, our gut health really underpins so much of our general health, and has an effect on our energy levels, moods, sleep, hormone levels and so on. Therefore, looking after the gut is essential. I’ll be going into much more detail in future episodes of this podcast on gut health – and optimizing gut health, and the unique Chinese Medicine perspective on how to boost our digestion, and assimilate nutrition and so on. So stay tuned for that!

Another tweak that we can make, to really support rebalancing of hormones, is to reduce the toxic load on our bodies. That’s having a look at where in your daily life can you possibly make choices that will support your health, rather than overburden your body in it’s attempt to excrete all of those toxins. This can be simple things, like making sure that we’re using glass or steel containers instead of plastics – just throw out all your plastic containers, and definitely don’t ever heat up food in plastic containers, because as I mentioned earlier, this leaches those xenoestrogens (foreign estrogens) into your food, and then allows them into your body. It’s also maybe having a look at all of the different products that you have for body – personal care – and throughout the home. We’re so fortunate now that we have natural, and less disruptive, products available – even in supermarkets – so we can get rid of those products that have synthetic fragrances, which might be disrupting our hormones and those that have parabens, which we’re absorbing and again, further disrupting our hormones. Look at the soap you use, the detergents, the deodorant, any beauty products that you use – all of those can be cleaned up over time to really support your body towards greater health. On that note as well, we can move towards wholefoods and preparing more of our foods from scratch, so that we’re less reliant on packaged foods that might have a preponderance of soy products (and that have hidden soy products that aren’t labelled as such), and that have chemicals, or other digestive disruptors, that add to the toxic load.

Limiting processed foods. If you can, definitely opt for filtered water: this is going to reduce the toxic load from the water supply, and any estrogens that are already present in that water supply. Where possible, choose organic foods – or at the very least, choose foods that have been minimally sprayed with pesticides and other toxins. If choosing to go fully organic isn’t currently an option, you can choose produce from the “Clean Fifteen” list. The Clean Fifteen is produced by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), and it’s updated yearly to reflect the 15 fruit and veggies that are the least contaminated by common pesticides. And in contrast to the Clean Fifteen, we’ve got the “Dirty Dozen” and they’re the fruit and veggies that are the most affected by pesticide use, and the best to avoid if you’re not going organic for those vegetables.

In addition to choosing clean veggies, it’s best to avoid meat that has been treated with hormones, because this will be passed onto us. Choosing organic where possible – and grass fed – because this will change the fat profile of the animal, making it healthier for us. While we’re on the topic of food, there are so many amazing foods that support the metabolism and the excretion of estrogen. The real superstars in this area are the leafy greens: So these are the veggies like broccoli, kale, bok choy, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. These guys are amazing at helping the body to excrete excess estrogen. Other superstars are onion and garlic – these guys support the liver. The liver is our major organ of detox, and these guys support the liver’s function of excreting toxins, and they will be supporting excretion of estrogen.

With excretion, it’s important to have regular elimination – making sure that you have enough veggies that provide fiber in your diet for removal of that estrogen – and for daily bowel movements – is going to help in remove all of those toxins too. From a Chinese Medicine perspective, because estrogen is Yin, we can balance Yin by choosing foods that are more Yang, like warm and well-cooked foods that don’t drain the body’s Yang reserves (the body’s energy or metabolic potential). We can balance estrogen by avoiding Yin foods – Yin foods are cold and dense, and they’ll encourage growth and fluids: these are foods like dairy and sugar, and this is why we call ice-cream “Triple Yin death”! It’s cold, it’s sweet, it’s dairy, and it can damage the digestion. Choosing foods that are more Yang, and more warming, like, ginger, tumeric and certain spices which are full of antioxidants (which explains how they work from a biomedical perspective), is going to help in excreting excess estrogen, and maintaining a healthy gut balance.

The final lifestyle tweak that I suggest to patients looking to balance their hormone health is managing stress, and very often this will be in the form of meditation. Meditation is amazing and so beneficial for literally every aspect of health to the point that the amazing functional doctor, Dr. Mark Hyman recently said on a podcast that if meditation was sellable and patentable, every doctor would be prescribing it for every ill because it really is that amazing! It helps the body get out of its own way with healing – it switches on those healing superpowers that I touched on in Episode One. Meditation might be a way of managing stress, while for other people it might be movement, particularly rhythmic movement that links moving with breath – so that might be walking or swimming, yoga, Tai Chi. As stress is characterized by being in that “fight or flight” mode, or that sympathetic nervous system mode, any activity that encourages us to switch over to “rest and digest” mode is going to foster healing and rebalancing.

Anything that brings you joy, or what Dr. Kelly Brogan refers to as “signals of safety”, will allow the nervous system to switch over. This might be quality connection with a loved one. It might be deep breathing – particularly with the focus on the exhale, which encourages parasympathetic tone. It might be prioritizing activities that engender positive emotions like love and joy and happiness. It might be giving back to the community, or it might be a hobby that gets you into the flow state, whether it’s baking or crochet or cycling, or whatever floats your boat! We need to be making more time for fun – and for stress management – in our lives.

Tucking in under that umbrella of managing stress is the importance of sleep. It’s very important for our hormone balance to get adequate and restful sleep – and sleep at the right time, because our bodies follow circadian rhythms. There’s different peaks, and the release of different hormones, at different times during the day. If we can aim to be asleep before 10 o’clock, we can get into a deeper sleep than if we stay awake beyond that time and catch our second wind (when often we have trouble falling into a deep and restorative sleep) So good sleep is important for stress management, and also for regulating hormones and managing inflammation.

We will be getting more into inflammation, and its impact on hormones and menstrual and reproductive health, next week. This week we’ve looked at the effect of estrogen, and the many lifestyle factors that contribute to elevated estrogen – and also the simple lifestyle tweaks that we can make to support our bodies in rebalancing hormones, and regaining more optimal health.

Related links

EWG Clean Fifteen
https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/clean-fifteen.php

EWG Dirty Dozen
https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php

As a doctor of Chinese Medicine, and a scientist interested in both ancient technologies and the latest biomedical research, this is one of the most common questions I’m asked. And it’s a great question to kick off this podcast, as at this point in time, not only do we have thousands of years of continuous clinical practice of this modality and many documented clinical studies from those millennia, but we also have literally tens of thousands of research papers published in contemporary scientific journals that discuss the many mechanisms and many pathways through which acupuncture has an effect on the body. Join me as a I answer this question from both an Eastern and a Western perspective

Transcript

One of the main inspirations behind starting this podcast was the many amazing conversations that I have with my patients in clinic, and the awesome and insightful questions I get asked both in, and outside of, clinic throughout my daily life. One of the most common of these questions is “how does acupuncture work?” This is an important one to answer, as quite often I’ll be having a conversation with someone and they’ll say “oh, I love acupuncture and I’d love my husband / mother / co-worker to get acupuncture as they’d really benefit, but they don’t believe in it”. I find this to be an interesting statement, because acupuncture isn’t a religion – it’s not something that you believe in – it either does or it doesn’t work. And particularly at this point in time, not only do we have 5,000 years of continuous clinical practice of this modality and many documented clinical studies from those millennia, but we also have literally tens of thousands of research papers published in contemporary scientific journals that discuss the many mechanisms and many pathways through which acupuncture has an effect on the body. So, I thought this was a great question to kick of this podcast, as it can be answered on so many levels. There’s the short answer, long answer, the Chinese Medicine answer and the biomedical / scientific / contemporary research answer. So I’d like to get into all of those, but I think the best place to start is with the short answer.

So, how does acupuncture work? The short answer is that acupuncture works by supporting the body’s innate healing mechanisms. These healing mechanisms are what allow our bodies to heal from cuts and to mend fractured bones, to bounce back from infections and colds, and even in outlying cases it might be what accounts for spontaneous remissions in serious diseases. We all have these superpowers, and in an ideal world, we’d be returning to a state of dynamic balance (or what we also call homeostasis) in the face of life’s various ups and downs. Say we have too many late nights and lots of stressors, and some dietary changes and maybe exposure to some pollutants and toxins: in an ideal world, our body would be able to recalibrate and return to a state of health. But unfortunately, modern life has quite a hectic pace and quite strong demands on us, so we are not always able to live in accordance with both our internal resources (that’s how much energy we have, our current state of emotion and our biochemical reserves, for example) and living in harmony with our external resources (that’s living in harmony with the outside world: harnessing access to sunlight, fresh air and movement). that’s not necessarily always happening – we might forego movement to sit at a desk 12 hours a day, and then drive home through traffic and get stressed, get stuck in a negative mindloop and then come home and have a fight with someone in our family, and have more stresses about money / mortgage / career / all sorts of concerns. So really, we are living in a constant state of constant stress.

What this does is it overstimulates our sympathetic nervous system. This is a component of our body’s autonomic nervous system that is also termed the “fight or flight” system. This is the response that we get in the face of stress: it primes our body to escape and so it might pump more blood to the skeletal muscle of arms and legs, it will allow more energy to go to the heart and lungs to strengthen our ability to run away, but what it does is that it shuts down energy and resources going to areas of the body that it deems not immediately essential for survival, which is areas governed by the parasympathetic nervous system, also called “rest, digest and repair”. What this means is that when we’re in a constant state of stress, hypervigilance or anxiety, then we’re not getting a chance to drop into that parasympathetic nervous system, which is where the healing and repair and restoration of that dynamic balance of that body occurs. Acupuncture is a way to do that. Acupuncture has been shown to encourage parasympathetic activity in the body, and so it’s a way of letting the body – and the whole body’s systems – know that it’s safe, and that it’s able to switch off and divert all that energy away from the “high alert”, and to use those precious resources to start recalibrating.

So that’s the kind-of short answer. The Chinese Medicine is kind of similar to the short answer, just using slightly different terminology or language (and this is what I love so much about Chinese Medicine language: that it offers a shorthand for describing the many complex biochemical and biophysical pathways that are happening in the body, and it offers that in a language that is accessible to all of us, so that we can all relate to it – it’s a really humanist medicine). From a Chinese Medicine perspective, acupuncture works by restoring the flow of Qi in the body, and restoring the balance of Yin and Yang (that’s really talking about homeostasis in the body). And I just want to mention that when we are talking about restoration of the flow of Qi, and balancing Qi in the body, sometimes Qi has been (in my opinion) mistranslated to represent some mystical or magical force that can’t be proven to exist and, while that may be the case, Qi in Chinese language also refers to situations concerning air, pressure, vapours and weather, and in Chinese Medicine when we talk about Qi, we talk about the body’s metabolism and potential for movement: really, it talks about all the different functions and processes that are going on in the body. So when we look at it with that understanding in mind, we see that the Chinese Medicine understanding is that acupuncture restores correct functioning of all the body’s systems and networks. And this is really beautifully aligned with a lot of the latest biomedical understanding of the body, which is starting to view the body as a complex network of information, and interwoven systems

In the past, we had a very mechanistic view of the body – we viewed it as like, say, a mechanic would view a broken car. We’d really drill down on where we perceived the problem would be, we’d remove the broken part or patch it up, and then we’d expect that things would be all good from there. But what that view doesn’t take into account is that all the body systems are not separate, they are actually all beautifully interconnected. And this is really coming through in new fields of science, like psychoneuroimmunology, which talks about the interwoven relationship between “psycho-” (the brain and neural areas), “immuno-“ (which is the immune system) and endocrinology (which is the hormones): all those systems are involved in continual crosstalk. It used be that we thought everything was governed from the brain down, or from the central nervous system, but actually we’re seeing that all of the systems are interwoven with each other, and can affect the other. What that means is that our hormone can affect our immune system, and our immune system can affect our moods, and vice versa. It’s beautiful to see how modern medicine and tradition medicine are aligning in their view of the body.

Another area where we are seeing this is in the exciting and emerging field of epigenetics. Epigenetics just means “epi-“ (above) genetics. Previously we believed that genes were set in stone, so the genes we received from our ancestors would – previously – very much dictate our health outcomes in the future. That kind of took our agency way: it took away our input in being able to generate the health outcomes that we would hope for. But what epigenetics is teaching us, is that our genes are merely a blueprint – they are just a sketch or plan or outline for our health – but how we actually live our lives (the food that we fuel our bodes with; the appropriate rest and the balance that we strive for; even the very thoughts that we think – and that we have as our continual internal dialogue), all of these factors have very potent effects on whether genes get switched on and off (whether they get expressed), and therefore whether certain characteristics, or certain conditions, might get expressed as a result of that. So really, it puts the power much more firmly in our hands.

So that was the Chinese Medicine answer of how acupuncture works (which was followed by a bit of a detour into emerging areas of medicine and system biology). The long answer gets into some really cool biomedical research, and as I mentioned before, there’s literally tens of thousands of papers that look at how acupuncture works. Some of the earliest work in this area comes from Dr. Candace Pert, who was a very highly regarded neuroscientist and pharmacologist, and headed up (a lab) at the US Government’s National Institutes of Health. Dr. Pert was the discoverer of our endogenous opiate receptor. Opiates are painkilling substances, and not only can we be given these from external sources, but we also produce our own endogenous (endogenous means “internally generated”) substances, which means that we have access to an internal pharmacy that we can use to reduce pain. What Dr. Pert found, was that acupuncture was shown to induce the release of these endorphins (these internally-generated painkillers) into the cerebrospinal fluid, and then disseminated through the body. That’s just one of the ways in which acupuncture has been shown to work.

To look at all the many other pathways through which acupuncture has been shown to have an effect on the body, I grabbed a paper that was recently published (this year) in the International Journal of Hypertension (“hypertension” is high blood pressure), and this research paper looks at all of the cumulative research over the last 10 years that shows the various mechanisms of acupuncture for hypertension, and how it can potentially improve the situation for people affected by hypertension. This paper highlights the many pathways through which acupuncture has a positive effect on the body. Tosummarize, they found that it worked on many different systems: they found that it had an endocrine effect (endocrine is the hormone system) – that acupuncture was able to regulate vessel tension and fluid regulation through the balance of specific hormones in the body. Acupuncture was also found to reduce oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is what contributes to aging and cellular damage in the body, and it’s the reason why we hear a lot about antioxidants – and different supplements and superfoods that are great for providing that antioxidant effect; these are things like leafy greens and turmeric, and even red wine. This paper suggested that acupuncture also had an antioxidant effect by inhibiting or mediating oxidative stress.

Acupuncture also had an effect on the molecules of information that work in the body. As I touched on before, the body as we’re now understanding it – and certainly as ancient Chinese medicine for 5,000 years has understood it – is an interwoven network of interlocking body systems. And those systems communicate with each other via molecules of information. And at any given moment, at any given second in time, our body is undergoing 37 billion billion chemical reactions, which is amazing! We’re amazing creations, but it’s also easy for some of these reactions to get dysregulated if we’re not living in optimal conditions, or in a state of balance for our particular body type. What they found is that acupuncture had an effect on some of these molecules of information – these ones in particular (mentioned in the paper) are called gasotransmitters, and these are transmitters of information. And interestingly, there are other studies that show that there’s actually higher concentrations of gasotransmitters along acupuncture channels and certain acupuncture points – really interesting research.

There was actually shown to be an effect on the brain. FMRi scans were able to show that different acupuncture points lit up different parts of the brain. In Chinese Medicine, we have a well-documented system of acupuncture points, and different acupuncture points at different locations in the body have different effects on regulating different body systems -and up-regulating or down-regulating metabolism in various areas. And this correlated with current research that showed that different parts of the brain would light up depending on which acupuncture points we used – it’s not just that the body was responding to local pain due to needling of a site – there was a greater physiological and therapeutic response occurring. The review went on to discuss the epigenetic benefits of acupuncture in respect to hypertension. It showed that with acupuncture, there was a down-regulation of genes that code for certain symptoms. And epigenetics, as we touched on before, is this exciting new field of science that talks about how our genes are not set in stone, and how they can be changed by lifestyle factors such as meditation, organic diets, and so on. The review paper also mentioned that there was shown to be an effect on target organ damage, as one of the secondary effects of hypertension is damaged to certain related organs (as a result of the increased pressure of blood, and the increased demands on pumping that blood against a high pressure). One of those organs that can be affected is the heart – we might see a thickening of the heart wall (which is called cardiac hypertrophy); there might also be potential inhibition of blood flow to the brain, or there might be damage to the renal tubules (in the kidneys) because of the force of the pressure moving through them. What they found was that with acupuncture, there was a positive effect on target organs implicated in hypertension, i.e. there was a protection of blood vessels and renal tubules, there was improved blood flow in the brain, and there was an improvement in the cardiac wall thickness as well.

As we can see, there’s so many different ways that acupuncture exerts a positive influence on the body, and this has just been a brief “dipping our toe into the water” of the how and why! This is just taking one review paper about acupuncture, but as I mentioned before, there’s literally tens of thousands out there now. I could talk about acupuncture and the intersection of modern and ancient medicine for days, but I’d like to hear from you – what would you like me to talk about? What health and wellness questions would you like answered?

Research & Reference

Pert, A., Dionne, R., Ng, L., Bragin, E., Moody, T.W. and Pert, C.B (1981). Alterations in rat central nervous system endorphins following transauricular electro-acupuncture. Brain Research. 224: 83-93.

Zhang, Q., Li, A., Yue, J., Zhang, F., Sun, Z. and Li, X. (2015) Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the possible mechanism of the action of acupuncture at Dazhong (KI 4) on the functional cerebral regions of healthy volunteers. Internal Medicine Journal, pp. 669-671

Juan Li, Mingsheng Sun, Jing Ye, Yuxi Li, Rongjiang Jin, Hui Zheng and Fanrong Liang (2019) The Mechanism of Acupuncture in Treating EssentialHypertension: A Narrative Review. International Journal of Hypertension.

Seorim Min, Koh-Woon Kim, Won-Mo Jung, Min-Jung Lee, Yu-Kang Kim, Younbyoung Chae, Hyangsook Lee and Hi-Joon Park (2019) Acupuncture for Histamine-Induced Itch: Association With Increased Parasympathetic Tone and Connectivity of Putamen-Midcingulate Cortex. Frontiers in Neuroscience, March 2019, Vol. 13, Article 215

Cho ZH, Hwang SC, Wong EK, Son YD, Kang CK, Park TS, Bai SJ, Kim YB, Lee YB, Sung KK, Lee BH, Shepp LA, Min KT (2006) Neural substrates, experimental evidences and functional hypothesis of acupuncture mechanisms. Acta Neurologica Scandinavia, 2006: 113: pp. 370–377

Hugh MacPherson, PhD,  Richard Hammerschlag, PhD,  Remy R. Coeytaux, MD, PhD, Robert T. Davis, MS,  Richard E. Harris, PhD,  Jiang-Ti Kong, MD,  Helene M. Langevin, MD, Lixing Lao, PhD,  Ryan J. Milley, MAcOM, Vitaly Napadow, PhD,  Rosa N. Schnyer, DAOM, Elisabet Stener-Victorin, PhD, Claudia M. Witt, MD, MBA, and Peter M. Wayne, PhD (2016) Unanticipated Insights into Biomedicine from the Study of Acupuncture, The Journal Of Alternative And Complementary Medicine. Volume 22, Number 2, 2016, pp. 101–107

Andrew C Ahn, Junru Wu, Gary J Badger, Richard Hammerschlag and Helene M Langevin (2005) Electrical impedance along connective tissue planes associated with acupuncture meridians. BioMed Central Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Young-Chang P. Arai, Yoshikazu Sakakima, Jun Kawanishi, Makoto Nishihara, Akihiro Ito, Yusuke Tawada, and Yuki Maruyama (2013) Auricular Acupuncture at the ‘‘Shenmen’’ and ‘‘Point Zero’’ Points Induced Parasympathetic Activation. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Sheng-xing, M. (2017). Nitric Oxide Signaling Molecules in Acupuncture Points: Toward Mechanisms of Acupuncture.Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine, 2017 Nov; 23(11): pp. 812–815.

What if perimenopause – our Second Spring – is not something to be suppressed, vilified or medicated away??

What if it is a portal into a more essential, more exquisitely-aligned version of ourselves?
An invitation to re-examine how we do life, and to witness and heal parts of ourselves?
An initiation into our wisdom and power?

In Chinese Medicine, perimenopause is considered the “Second Spring”. A second puberty, a second metamorphosis. When we reflect on what a wild ride that first puberty was, we can begin to see the grace, space and compassion that we can offer ourselves in this transition.

Patients have shared with me that they have felt gaslit by the mainstream system, where their various concerns were instantly dismissed as “just perimenopause”, and HRT was offered as the only solution. But it is no coincidence that symptoms like fatigue, low moods, irritability, low libido, poor sleep and weight gain can show up at this time of our life. These symptoms can also be a reflection of decades of caring for others at the cost of ourselves: of self-abandonment, people-pleasing, over-giving and under-receiving.

In our medicine, we see “symptoms” as wise messages from the body. An insight into what desires to be balanced or healed. And I see common underlying patterns in women at this phase of life, which also explain the common “symptoms” of perimenopause.

In this episode, I share what those patterns are, and simple ways that we can support ourselves to move most easefully through this powerful portal!

For more info on the courses I mention in this episode, go to “OFFERINGS, or click here.

More on Hormone Health

Episode 2: Happy hormones naturally, for general health, easier periods and optimising fertility (Part 1 of 2)

Episode 3: Happy hormones for all (not “just for the ladies!”), and the role of inflammation (Part 2 of 2)

Transcript

Hi everyone, welcome to the Balanced Natural Health podcast, where we share insights from the ancient science and timeless wisdom of Chinese medicine. Information from the old natural ways of healing can support us in leading more beautiful, more vibrant and more vital lives today. In this podcast, I share simple, natural and accessible tips that you can incorporate into your everyday life for more vibrant health and wellness. I’m so glad you’re here.

Welcome

Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 44. In today’s episode, I would like to dive into something which feels particularly relevant to me personally, due to my age and demographic, I’m now 47 years old. And also in response to what I’m seeing a lot of on social media, in mainstream, in the world around me, and that is the perception of menopause as a pathology to be medicated. And the perception of perimenopause as the cause of all ills, and also the attribution of all of the different symptoms or vital body messages that women might be experiencing at this time, the attribution of these always to, oh, it’s just hormones and you need HRT.

Whereas, as you probably know, if you’ve been listening to me for a while, I have long retired from the position of doing battle with my body. And I now see all symptoms as vital messages from the body, mind and soul as to what my system wants me to know and what is coming up for me for integration and harmonizing at that point in time. And so in today’s episode, I would like to talk about some of these, what I see as misconceptions about perimenopause and menopause. And I would like to dispel some myths. And I would also like to share a more empowering perspective on this powerful transition – traditionally called the Second Spring – and how I personally am choosing to navigate it and step through it.

Perimenopause – a Second Spring

In Chinese medicine, perimenopause and the whole process of moving through menopause is viewed as the second spring. So it’s viewed as a second puberty because we are literally in the process of metamorphosing ourselves into a different version of ourselves.

We are moving from a period of our life where we are creative in the material realm, where we can create life, we can create humans, whole new human body, which is such a miracle. And we are moving into a stage of life where we create energetic gifts to the world at this time. So all of our resources, all the resources that were formerly distributed to the womb, now start to move towards the heart, which houses the Shen and our consciousness.

And together, that portal of womb and heart can bring forth and birth so many powerful energies and ideas and so much wisdom into the world. In so many cultures and over eons of time, the crone or the wise grandmother was viewed as an archetype who had so much wisdom to impart. It was a really revered and respected archetype.

How the prevailing mainstream view is disempowering

And yet in our current iteration of society, we are being continually broadcast to that this is a burden, it’s a inconvenience, it’s the end of our relevance, that it’s all downhill from here, that we will put on weight, that we will have brain fog, that we will be fatigued, that we’ll have vaginal dryness, that we’ll lose our libido and our moods, and that we’ll go crazy and lash out those around us and a whole other litany of ills. And it doesn’t have to be that way. I do think that there is a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy when we keep being broadcast this message from so many angles, that it is something to be feared.

And that adds another dimension to this process of transition because stress can very much influence how we move through this really powerful period of our lives. So while I always honour and celebrate the choice of women to take HRT, I think it’s amazing that people have choices to do what they want to with their body and their health. I also think that there are other ways to move through this transition and it’s definitely not the only way to move through it.

Everything has a season – us too! And this is our Second Spring

I don’t think that mama nature makes any mistakes. And we, when we look at the world around us, there are seasons and cycles to everything and our bodies, minds and souls are no different. So while it might be touted in the mainstream that it’s protective to the body, to your bones, to your cardiovascular system, to keep pumping your body full of these external hormones, which your body is no longer producing, I really question what the long-term effects of that are.

Because as I said, mama nature doesn’t make mistakes. So if we’re meant to sustain this level of circulating hormones and hormone production, our body would be producing it, right? And when we look into the literature around the potential side effects of supplementation, external supplementation like this, we can see that there definitely are risks. So this is a conversation for another time.

In this podcast, I just want to share a different perspective on how we might be able to view perimenopause and second spring and this second puberty. And I love this idea of this transition, this perimenopausal transition as a second puberty, because when we think about what a wild transition our first puberty was, then it gives us an inkling of how much grace and spaciousness and tenderness, compassion, patience, we might want to give ourselves as we move through this second transition. Like think how wild the ride was with fluctuating hormones back in our teens when we were going through that transition and all the different emotional landscapes that came up and how we responded to different things, how we were finding our own power and expression into the world.

Perimenopause – Second Spring – as an invitation

And this period is no different. I think it’s a really exciting invitation to look at how we’ve been living, what kind of beliefs and assumptions we’ve had about ourselves, what kind of life habits we’ve fallen into and how we might want to live our lives going forward. And one symptom that is a symptom that is often talked about with regards to perimenopause is the mood swings.

And this is often attributed to the fluctuations of specifically estrogen, but also progesterone because estrogen is our buffering hormone. It is soft and juicy making, and it is what allows us to put up with shit basically, or put up with things that are maybe not in alignment with our highest good. It allows us to put up with self-sacrificing situations or enmeshment.

And what I have found as my estrogen has dropped throughout this transition is that I have had to look at where I have been people pleasing, where I have been giving away my power. And also having less estrogen has made me less inclined to self-abandon and sacrifice my energy to compromise my boundaries. And just to say no to things that are leaking my energy or things that are no longer serving me.

So whether that’s activities or relationships or certain types of emotional bonding, for example like bonding over drama, it’s just not available for that anymore because it’s such an energy drain. So to me this Second Spring has been a gift. To me having this drop in estrogen has shown me where I’ve been compromising my own energy, where there’s been leaks.

If I was supplementing with that hormone then perhaps I wouldn’t have had that clear vision of seeing where I’ve been self-abandoning and what I can do to live my life differently and what I can do to call back that energy to myself.

“Mood changes” or “swings” as a barometer of our energy

I also think that these mood swings that are talked about or irritability and anger can be a sign of where our boundaries have been transgressed and whether now or in the past. And they offer an opportunity for witnessing, for feeling and ultimately for healing those experiences whether now or in the past.

So when we look at mama nature and expressions of what seems like anger say in the animal kingdom, it’s only happening where the animal feels threatened or encroached upon or like their personal safety or boundaries are encroached upon. So us humans are no different and think about as women in this society, I know I can certainly attest to this and I wonder if many of you can relate as well, but how many times have we just swallowed back our words or just put up with poor behaviour, say sexualising us or inappropriate comments. It’s like oh well he didn’t really mean anything by it or maybe just ingrained patriarchy or judgment of women that I’ve even noticed within myself from my very repressive Polish religious upbringing.

It’s like I found some things in deep dark corners there, so things that were unexamined because we didn’t have the capacity perhaps or the space or we weren’t resourced enough to have a look at those until now. So I think sometimes these life will present us with opportunities to heal those things that haven’t yet been healed. So we might feel flashes of sacred rage about how the divine feminine or how the feminine expression has been mistreated, how we’ve experienced that or how we’ve seen that in the world around us or we might feel grief about self-abandonment, about places maybe where we didn’t stand up for ourselves or about where we judged our own bodies harshly.

How emotions can relate to hot flushes

So all of these feelings might move through our bodies and sometimes even with the anger we might get things like hot flushes, but I see this as energy being metabolised and processed. Emotions are energy in motion, so being able to sit with these feelings and sensations and witness what they might be telling us can be a way to integrate them back into our system. And every woman’s experience of this will be different because we have all walked different paths, different journeys, we’ve had different responses and different life experiences.

Some might not experience the rage or the irritability or the hot flushes at all or someone else might feel more grief or dissociation or low moods or low libido. So everyone’s experience is different and I think that the overarching takeaway of what I’m talking about here is that it’s an opportunity to get to know ourselves on a deeper level, to sit with the feelings, to be like a best friend to ourselves and listen to what our body, mind and soul is telling us. And I have a different perspective on many of the messages of perimenopause.

Symptoms, and I’m using inverted commas here, like for example fatigue, brain fog, low energy, low libido, irritability, hot flushes, poor sleep, insomnia, dissatisfaction with life, weight gain, all of these things are a complex that are lumped under the umbrella of perimenopause and the menopausal transition. I have a different view that these are symptoms that pop up at a period of life when we have been living a certain way and our body resources are taxed, our spiritual and mental resources are taxed because we have been spreading ourselves too thin. So perhaps rather than laying the blame at the feet of perimenopause, maybe we can look at, as we do in Chinese medicine, at what things might be out of balance that are causing these symptoms. And then we can look at gently supporting the body, mind and soul to recreate balance and to ease our path through this transition of the Second Spring.

Common patterns underlying menopausal “symptoms”

What I have seen in clinic and in my own experience, but certainly in clinic, what I’ve seen is that a common thread with many of the messages of perimenopause is that there is low yang, low spleen. So yang deficiency and spleen deficiency, often the liver is backed up or stuck and liver is related to anger and expression and frustration, and there’s often dampness as well.

What we might hear even in the Chinese medicine mainstream is that it is a yin deficiency time that we are deficient in yin and that’s why we are having those hot flushes. But I’ll just go on a quick little sidebar here that is absolutely not what I have seen. And there is another way of looking at it too, because in classical Chinese medicine, we don’t really believe that in this modern world where nutrition is abundant, that there is such a thing as yin deficiency.

It’s really not all Yin deficiency

It’s not possible. If you have a body, if you have substance to your body, then you are not yin deficient. And in fact, if we were to believe the mainstream, one of the common symptoms associated with perimenopause is weight gain.

So where there is substance, there’s no yin deficiency, but what there is a deficiency of around this time is yang. So we can have substance, we can have fluids, we can have body flesh, but if we don’t have the spark of life, the yang to animate and metabolize and move those fluids and actually make that fluid useful and physiological, healthy to the body, then that fluid and that dampness just stagnates. And we do get weight gain, we do get heaviness, we do get low mood.

It’s not the yin, it’s the yang that needs to be cultivated.

Why does Yang need love at this time?

When we look at how in our society, women have lived through the last few decades leading up to perimenopause, we see that there is often, you know, compromised sleep because they’re looking after kids. They’re often having a job and looking after the family as well. There’s, the women are always go, go, go. So they’re always in yang mode, using up that vital force, that spark of life and not having enough time to replenish it because of the demands of life. And when yang is deficient, when yang is low, it can, it isn’t anchored as it needs to be.

When yang is floating and unanchored, we see things like night sweats, insomnia, restless sleep, vivid dreams. These are really common yang deficient presentations. And when we start to nourish the yang by cooked and warm foods, by yang tonifying herbs, by prioritizing rest and time to recharge the yang.

So we’re not just spraying out yang all day. We’re not just being boss babes and just smashing it and going hard. This is also something where heavy exercise or sweating too much, going too hard in the gym can also drain our yang.

And it is really important to nourish our yang as we go through this transition at all stages of life, but especially as we go through this transition of the Second Spring. So our yang is also burnt up by things like – famously – ice baths, as I love to talk about, but also stress.

What else drains Yang?

Stress squeezes our adrenals – that is our kidney yang energy. And when we are running often in a state of fight or flight, so when we’re multitasking, eating lunch at the desk, dealing with things on all fronts, dealing with stress at work at home, then this is draining our yang. And so this perimenopausal portal is an invitation to look at how we can nourish our yang a little bit more, how we can carve out a little bit of time, a little bit more time for ourselves to nourish our yang, to just rest and replenish.

So it might even be bookending your day with five minutes of deep belly breathing. So I’ve talked about this before on my socials, but when we breathe and breathe deeply into the belly, into the whole abdomen, allowing the breath to just flow in, allowing our body to be breathed by that cosmic breath. And then we allow a long exhale that’s unhurried, allowing that longer exhale compared to the inhale is replenishing of our yang because it’s a yin type of breath. It’s not using up our yang to maintain. Whereas if we take short, sharp inhales, we’re not allowing sufficient time to exhale. That’s really putting us in that fight or flight, that stress yang mode.

A soothing, Yang-nourishing breath

Slow, deep breaths, yin breaths with a longer exhale can be a great way to replenish. We can even lie down while we’re doing this with our hands on our belly or our ribs to feel how we are expanding and releasing. You can pop also a pillow under your knees to support your lumbar spine, which is where the kidneys live. So then they’ll feel nestled and supported as well. So that is one aspect that I see commonly throughout this transition is that of that yang deficiency or kidney yang deficiency. And another one I see is of spleen deficiency.

The role of the Spleen

The spleen is our great nurturer. It’s our organ of nurturing, and it is affected by worry and affected by overgiving and over-caring as well, which is so many mums, right? We’re taking care as women as well of our families, of people at work, of our community. We naturally have that caring, I think, nourishing life impetus within us.

And coupled with estrogen that accompanies that fertile period, I think it can sometimes lead to self-abandonment where we’re not nourishing ourselves as well. So interestingly, in the mainstream, if you listen to it, perimenopause is associated with weight gain around the belly and thighs. Now, this is a pattern that we see with spleen deficiency.

When the spleen is deficient, this is where weight tends to deposit. And if we start to tend more carefully to the spleen at this time, then we don’t have to necessarily see that transition or that change in our bodies. So I have worked with a lot of people who have certainly not experienced that, and I haven’t either, because I have taken this time finally to look at my boundaries and look at where I was over-stretching, over-giving and prioritised caring for myself at this time.

A question to ponder at perimenopause…

Because that is another invitation of this perimenopausal transition is after decades of caring for others, how can we ourselves at this time? What do we need? How can we tune more and more deeply into the desires and whispers of our body, mind and soul and do what feeds ourselves and our souls at this time? So if we’re looking after our spleen yang and our kidney yang at this time, then that definitely supports a smoother transition through perimenopause. So the other two areas that I talked about were liver and damp.

Damp and the Second Spring transition

I’ll briefly touch on dampness. That’s often related to presentations like weight gain, brain fog, perhaps like depressed or low mood, low libido, low excitement about life, because damp can be like a heavy blanket or fog that just suppresses the spark of life. It suppresses the yang. It is the opposite to yang because it’s dense fluid. So it’s part and parcel. It’s usually linked to the generalised yang and spleen deficiency. But things that we can do to support both our spleen and metabolising damp at this time are absolutely cooked and warm food and drinks.

Warm food & drinks are vital

Every time you eat or drink something, it’s an opportunity to put warmth and yang inside your body. So when we have drinks that are warmer than our mouth, food that is warmer and well cooked and uses less energy to digest, it boosts our qi, boosts our energy and supports the spleen in doing its work and can stop the backup of dampness. And also at this time, we might want to take particular care with the foods that we do choose. Always leaning towards whole foods, minimally processed. I’ve talked about this a lot on socials, so you can look back through my posts, but avoiding things like seed oils, preservatives. So many grains these days are sprayed with glyphosate, which is Roundup, which has already had many lawsuits awarded against it as a carcinogen.

And unfortunately, unless you’re eating completely organic or regeneratively farmed grains like wheat, corn, soy, they are sprayed with glyphosate. And this is not only a hormone disruptor, but it causes inflammation by interrupting digestion and overburdening our liver as well. So definitely looking at, personally, I’m gluten free.

I see a lot of benefits for patients when they go gluten free because they avoid a lot of those grains that are sprayed with glyphosate and Roundup.

On the nutrition front, I would also add having adequate time to eat.

HOW you eat matters too

So it’s not just what we eat, but how we eat. So taking time to eat away from stress, away from other distractions. The spleen also digests the life experiences. So if we’re eating at the desk, then our spleen isn’t really devoting all of its or not able to devote all of its attention to the task at hand.

So how we eat is important and also ensuring that we have protein and fats with our meals as well. So we need that consistent energy. However, I’m not one for micromanaging macros. I’m not one who’s counting my protein at all costs or my fat intake or carbs. I don’t count any of that. I’ve come to a point now where I listen to my body and allow my body to tell me what it needs and take it from there. It changes day to day. So some days I want more protein, other days I want less.

And this has been a journey for me because when I was in my twenties and thirties, I had such a poor relationship with my body that I was willingly starving myself and suppressed all connection to what hunger felt like or even ignoring my cues for what I felt like eating. I was a vegetarian and later raw vegan at the time I was having such cravings for protein, for animal protein, and I was suppressing and ignoring that as well. So again, it’s coming back into alignment with the whispers of our body, mind and soul, because our bodies are always talking to us about what we need and what would best serve us, but it’s an invitation to come into greater alignment with that. And that is something that I am covering in an upcoming course that’s coming out this year about getting into a deeper conversation with yourself, befriending yourself, coming home to you.

Support for your Spleen and your Qi – your whole YOU

And also while we’re talking about the spleen stuff, there’s another course coming on that topic as well. So all of that information is packaged up in one package, guiding you through how to construct your own meals, how you can customise meals to your needs day to day, what kind of foods might boost yang, which ones might be more damp causing, what herbs and spices we can use and so on. And there’s plenty of this also, this information in my old podcasts and on my socials and website as well.

So feel free to have a look through there. Now, the final area that I see commonly out of balance is liver.

The role of Liver in perimenopause

Liver is the wood organ. It’s related to the emotion of anger and frustration. So when we think of wood, it likes to spread its wings or spread its branches and leaves and fully express its full potential. And when it is thwarted, then we have anger and frustration or resentment. These can all be emotions related to the liver. And there are emotions that commonly show up in perimenopause, irritability, restlessness as well. And the wood element and liver gallbladder also rules cyclical things – things that come and go. So at this time, the liver is managing fluctuating hormones, our cycles might change in length or duration. So the liver is really dealing with a lot.

And at all stages of life, I suggest keeping our toxin bucket or our toxic load small so that our body can do what it knows how to do, which is heal and rebalance. But especially at this time when we are processing extra hormones, potentially hormone spikes, I think it’s really important to give the liver some love.

We can do this with things like movement. The liver loves to move. Obviously it likes to spread its branches, but also things like because the associated gallbladder channel runs down the lateral aspects of the body. So even things like swinging our arms side to side, so rotating at the waist, sidebands, things that open up that side area of the body can be really wonderful to open up circulation to that area.

Foods to benefit Liver – and hormone balance

I also love leafy greens and the brassica family for supporting the liver. So lots of broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, mustard greens, bitter flavors. These are really important in supporting the liver, supporting its function, supporting bile production as well.

Bile is such a powerful antioxidant. So we need to make sure that that is functioning in our body as well. So looking after the liver in that respect, I find also stream of consciousness journaling can be helpful for supporting the liver because it helps us to offload certain stored or repressed emotions that might be lingering or too many browser tabs that are open in our minds.

So just dumping all of that can free up the liver. And the liver is also charged with coursing energy through the body and energy and emotions are linked. So the more that we can sit with emotions as they come up will also help to free any constrained liver chi or liver energy.

Toxic load – it’s not just what we add in, but also what we leave out

And the other big thing for liver with the toxic load is looking at what we put in and on our bodies. So I go into great detail in this in episodes two and three, but basically if you wouldn’t eat it, then I wouldn’t put it on my body. So that has very much changed what kind of body products I use like toothpaste, deodorant, moisturizer, hand soap, body soap, what we use in the home as well.

Big culprits are synthetic fragrances. So these often pop up in like room sprays and perfumes. That’s another big culprit.

Essential oil perfumes for the win every time and scented candles, car, scenty things, anything scented basically and in detergents and different like laundry liquids and so on. They often have a lot of synthetic fragrances, which are endocrine disruptors, their hormone disruptors. So they’re disrupting us at already potentially a bit of a wild rollercoaster time with our hormones.

And also they overload the liver. So I recently did a post about low tox and no tox beauty products. There’s so many options.

We’re so spoilt for choice these days and it doesn’t have to be all done in one fell swoop. So you can even just choose to replace old products with products that are no tox each time as you go forward. So it doesn’t have to be throwing everything out all at once, although it can be if you want as well.

The alcohol piece and our Second Spring

So definitely looking at the liver and how we can support in that way too. I will also add with liver, you might want to experiment with how it feels if you reduce or eliminate alcohol because the liver is obviously heavily involved in processing this.

And also fructose. So this is the fruit sugar that’s in fruit. In Chinese medicine, we are not big fans of vast amounts of fruit. It’s a seasonal treat at best and fructose is metabolized differently to glucose, which is why in my spleen programs that I devise for patients, I advise sweeteners like rice malt syrup or pure glucose because they are glucose, not fructose. So it metabolizes through the body quite differently.

That’s something we might want to play around with and see if we feel any differently. Personally, I stopped drinking alcohol and I have absolutely noticed a difference with my cycles and also just a few kilos of weight dropped off that I wasn’t even doing anything specific about. I think at the same time also as I stopped the alcohol, I have also been going on a deeper dive in somatically feeling.

Somatic healing and emotional alchemy

So on a body level feeling and releasing a lot of trapped emotions. So that has also allowed my energy to flow more freely and I think it’s metabolized some stuck things that were literally weighing me down. And to support all of these little lifestyle changes and diet changes, habit changes that we can make to support yang, to support spleen, to clear damp and support liver, I would also add the importance of elimination.

A breath to support regular bowels

I noticed at this time, sometimes elimination bowel movements can get a bit sluggish for some women and this is where the belly breathing can be really powerful. So in Chinese medicine, the lung and large intestine are linked as the metal element. So when we breathe deep belly breaths, when we breathe into the whole abdomen and we gently inquire about tight areas and we allow the breath to expand and release those tight areas, then we’re also supporting peristalsis and digestion.

We’re supporting the function of the intestines. Just think like if you put your hands on your belly right now and take a deep breath right down, we’re actually massaging the intestines. So many patients find that just with some deep breathing or some really simple qigong movements that support large intestine and lung or that metal element, that that’s enough just to get their bowels moving regularly.

It’s important that we’re eliminating regularly so that those toxins can get eliminated from the body so our liver isn’t backed up and pissed off. And I would also add the importance of joy and cultivating play and lightness and prioritizing those things that make us feel good, that give us pleasure, that light our hearts up.

Heart and Womb – their deep relationship

I’ve spoken before about how in Chinese medicine, the heart and womb are intimately linked They’re linked under the fire element. And interestingly, just a little sidebar, they’re linked to the fire element, which is ruled by the bitter flavor. And did you know that both the womb and the heart have bitter flavor receptors in them? It’s pretty wild, isn’t it? So when we cultivate joy, we are feeding the fire element, we’re feeding the heart, we’re nourishing it.

And this can be such a wonderful remedy for low libido, low moods, fatigue, because if there’s nothing pleasurable or fun or joyful to focus on, then of course we’re going to feel less excited about life. So this can be as simple as a daily gratitude practice and picking, say, five things every day that you’re grateful for, but not just listing them, also somatically feeling them. So somatically just means in the body, actually cultivating the feeling of gratitude while you’re also thinking about those things.

It might be a warm and fuzzy, glowing feeling in the chest or a softness in the body. So the more we can practice that, the more the body becomes accustomed to feeling that way. And it doesn’t have to be major things.

Cultivating gratitude to nourish Heart and Womb

It can be simple things that we’re grateful for, like the fact that we have fresh air coming into our lungs or that there’s sunshine outside, or we can reflect on, say, a beautiful interaction we had that day or the food on our plates. There’s so much to be grateful for in each moment. And we can also cultivate this in thinking about a favourite memory or someone that we love dearly and cultivating that love and that beautiful feeling of joy in our hearts.

I hope this has been interesting, maybe thought-provoking, maybe a different perspective on how we can view this time, which I think is an exciting and empowering portal. I’m excited for it, and I’m excited for who I’m becoming and who we all get to be on the other side. And I will add to that, even if you’ve already moved through menopause or you’ve had a hysterectomy, or maybe you’ve had medically-induced menopause of whatever kind, that it’s still an invitation for you now, if it resonates, to incorporate perhaps some of these tweaks into your life, because this second spring transition isn’t only a material one concerning our physical reproductive organs, it’s a whole energetic metamorphosis. We are moving from creating on the material plane to creating on the energetic plane. We are stepping into our wisdom era. It’s really, really exciting.

Coming home to ourselves

So it’s never too late, we can incorporate some of these observances and things to get curious about at any stage of life, even if we’re younger than the perimenopausal transition. It’s never too early to come home to ourselves and develop that relationship with ourselves. And I hope that this has shone a different light on this transition where perimenopause is not the scapegoat for everything that is going on in a woman’s life.

I’ve had so many patients share with me their stories of gaslighting within the mainstream system, where they’ve gone for help with things that have popped up around this time, and it’s all been lumped under the hormone umbrella, and oh well, just have to take HRT or get over it, rather than a deepening and a curiosity into that connection to self. So that is available to all of us. We can all come out of this transition more connected, more empowered, more ourselves than we were coming into it.

So I would love to hear your thoughts if you have any on this, if you have any questions, please let me know over on socials, and please share this message with anyone who you feel might benefit from this perspective, or who might feel empowered or unburdened by a different perspective on this beautiful portal that we are walking through. It’s something that I feel so passionate about changing the narrative on, or at least offering a different voice, because I feel like as women, we are so often, so many of our natural processes that mama nature has wisely created within us are pathologized. So childbirth and periods are pathologized and suppressed and medicalized, and menopause is no different.

I think it’s actually on a bigger scale, it’s an important way of reclaiming our feminine power, and stepping into that feminine power as well.

So please share, and thank you so much for joining me, I look forward to seeing you next time.

Have you heard of the Three Treasures, and how they relate to feeling great, aging vibrantly, manifesting your destiny and living your soul purpose?

Together with our Qi, our Jing (Essence) and our Shen (Spirit) make up the Three Treasures – treasures, because they are the precious substances that form the foundation for our health and longevity.

Jing can be translated variously as our DNA, our genetic endowment, our constitution.

Qi is the total of all of our energetic and metabolic processes that govern daily function, like digestion, respiration, circulation, cellular function, tissue structure and integrity (more in episode 41).

Shen is our spirit, our presence, our consciousness – the spark of life in our eyes.

Jing-Qi-Shen are interrelated and dependent upon each other. When they are in coherence and harmony, we manifest our destiny in this lifetime – our soul purpose. We feel lighter, clearer and more vibrant – and are well resourced for life’s adventures.

Many of our Chinese Medicine health cultivation practices centre around preserving and refining the Three Treasures. In this episode, Dr. Maz shares simple practices that you can incorporate into your everyday to boost your Qi, protect your Essence and help your Spirit shine bright!

The simple Qi Gong move, practised slowly, with intent and slow breathing, can be a powerful way to connect the energies of Heaven and Earth. Bonus points if you do it barefoot outside!

In Chinese Medicine, we are adherents of “The Middle Way” or “The Middle Path” – a path of moderation. Rather than opting for extreme or dramatic health practices, we opt for a gentle, daily nourishing of Life. Each moment is an opportunity to nurture health. Our amazing bodies already know how to heal, how to detox, how to repair – sometimes, we just need to get out of the way.

When I was asked my thoughts on fasting, the answer, while tending to alignment with The Middle Way, had some nuances that I share with you in this episode.

We touch on:

• the view of our ancient medical texts on fasting (scroll down for a quote)

• eating close to nature and the seasons vs. processed foods, preservatives, seed oils and, frankly, non-foods that pop up in the modern “diet”

• intermittent fasting, the Chinese Medicine Organ / Meridian Clock and circadian rhythms

• the “hollow” organs – what even are they, their relationship to health (and consciousness)

• how fasting can cause our systems to dip into our Jing – the vital “Essence” that we come into this world with, and that nourishes us throughout our lifespan.

“The source of vitality is the diet. If one stops eating or drinking, one will die. Without food or liquid, Stomach Qi will not be evident in the pulses.

Huang Di Nei Jing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine), Chapter 18: Pulse Analysis; circa 200CE

(APOLOGIES for the audio issue halfway through the episode – it’s only 30 seconds or so, so thank you for bearing with me!)

Put simply, life (and health!) is about how well we can gain and hold charge, and how effectively our systems work with it.

Chinese Medicine has a profound understanding of this. Our view of health and healing focuses greatly on Qi and its many expressions, qualities and functions within mind, body and soul. Qi is often loosely translated as “energy”, but it is so much more than that. It describes function, metabolism, processes of transformation, directions of movement… the list goes on!

In our medicine, we understand that when the body is well-resourced and abundant in Qi – and when the Qi channels, or meridians – are open and harmoniously organised, vibrant health naturally follows.

Here we talk about the concept of health as charge – and our ability to hold and use it effectively – and the many ways, both ancient and new, that we can charge up our Qi today.

PRODUCT SHOUTOUT

I talk in the episode about native frequencies (or EMFs) vs non-native ones. A common source of non-native EMFs are many lightbulbs – the wavelength of these lights can be disruptive to our body clock, or circadian rhythm. This in turn can derail everything from hormones to nervous system, sleep, repair and whole host of other important processes. This is why our house is full of natural wavelength lightbulbs from Block Blue Light.

The link below gets you 10% off, or just enter “DrMaz” at checkout.

https://www.blockbluelight.com.au/?ref=DrMaz

With the health and wellness industry exploding as it is, the following is a conversation I find myself having more and more frequently.

What I have observed over the years – both in my own health journey and in my many years in clinic – is that simple & natural is most often best.

While extreme or heroic practices, and expensive biohacks & supplements, may seem glamorous and exciting and may promise the world, I see that we can achieve the same benefits with the simple – often free! – consistent things that we do each day (grounding, sunlight, movement, emotional expression) and by living as closely to Mama Nature as we can (wholefoods, clean & coherent water, natural light & frequencies, aligning with daily / seasonal rhythms).

I also have witnessed that while it may be tempting to ADD more to our lives in an attempt to gain more vitality, it is very often what we REMOVE that frees up our vital force to go about its job of healing, repair and restoration. Reducing the load in our “toxin bucket” by limiting what we throw in there (food additives, chemicals, synthetic fragrances, toxin in personal care & home products, non-native electromagnetic fields, artificial lighting, etc.) can be just as – if not more – profound as what we add to our lives. I can also add to this the witnessing & releasing of limiting beliefs, “congestive” emotional habits and stored trauma is another important piece of the puzzle – letting go of these liberates vast amounts of our innate healing powers.

In this episode I share the simple, daily practices that I include to nourish my health, and easy ways you can apply them yourself.

CAVEAT: the practices discussed are suitable for most of us who are in at least a reasonable state of health. There are times when systems may be so depleted, overloaded with toxins or in such an pronounced state of compensation (“disease”) that more extreme measures – practices, supplements, devices – may be temporarily necessary in order to restore a baseline level of vital energy to the system, which can then take it from there.

CLEAN 15 & DIRTY DOZEN

WATER FILTERS I USE

EPISODE 2: Happy hormones naturally, for better health (“detox”)

EPISODE 3: Happy hormones naturally, for better health (“detox”)