Read 21 Pounds in 21 Days Online
Authors: Roni DeLuz
21 Pounds in 21 Days (9 page)
Under normal conditions and when our cells are healthy, if
they get injured or out of alignment, they automatically heal or balance themselves. Perfect health is the body's natural condition, the state that it innately strives to achieve. Although we rarely think of the body as wanting to be well, we all have personal experiences that prove it. Who does not have childhood memories of, say, falling off their bicycle and skinning their knee? We bled, the body's way of cleansing the wound, and a loved one wiped it with an antiseptic solution and bandaged it. A few days later when we removed the dressing we discovered that our body had created a scab and new skin. Our body heals us even if we fall again, scraping off the scab. Even if we pick off that scab intentionally, the skin beneath will keep on healing time and time again. Though the idea of getting cancer scares most people to death, we successfully fight off cancerous cells every day of our life. If ultimately they overrun us, it's only after decades during which our self-healing mechanisms effectively kept them in check. Unless we're ill, all through our life our paper cuts, hangnails, scratches, cold sores, bone breaks, and bruises repair themselves.
But while we know from personal experience that the body has the ability to self-heal, we live in a culture whose indigenous healing arts have been destroyed, that teaches that the body can't be trusted and that it's the doctor or medicine that heals us. It's no wonder we forget! No matter what health care professionals or pharmaceutical companies imply, medicines do not and cannot make us better. Medicine may alleviate symptoms, but it's our body that heals us. The body's repair department is on call 24 hours a day, 365 days yearly. It heals us without our conscious effort or knowledge because being healthy is our nature. Only some of the functions the nervous system coordinates are activities that our mind has power over. Other activities happen whether we want them to or not. No matter how hard we may try, the average person cannot, for instance, change their skin, hair, or eye color (naturally); will themselves to grow taller; change their body type; or get rid of their naturally skinny calves or their propensity to have a prominent posterior. (I say the “average person” because some people have trained themselves to exercise mind
power over physical matter, to self-heal or accomplish amazing feats like walking on hot coals.) It is also impossible to stop the body from attempting to heal.
No matter how well or poorly we treat it, the body always attempts to create a state of balance, called
equilibrium
or
homeostasis
. It doesn't matter how off center we areâwhether we stay so busy at work that we consistently skip lunch, whether a loved one's behavior has us at wit's end, or whether we eat nothing but junk foodâthe body hangs in there with us, striving for harmony. Many of the adjustments it makes take place while we are asleep, which is why we awaken feeling rejuvenatedâand why chronically skimping on sleep is equivalent to dying slowly. The reason we experience the urge to urinate and/or move our bowels immediately upon awakening? Because the body wants to expel all the toxins it mopped up while we slept. Of course, our cells heal themselves better when they have not been damaged by our unproductive lifestyle habits and toxins. The longer we live and eat the standard American diet, the greater a toll it takes on the body. Our cells perform and duplicate themselves less perfectly, leading to aging and disease.
Even for scientists it can be hard to comprehend the countless internal activities our body engages in as it tries to keep us stable. It's easier to imagine ways it does this by looking at activity we can see, so allow me to give you an easy example. Consider what happens if you literally set your body out of balance by leaning too far in one direction. The farther you move away from a vertical and upright position, the more your muscles will clench, your toes grab, and your body adjust to reestablish equilibrium. Lean far enough over and your leg will involuntarily step in the direction you're leaning in an effort to keep you from falling over. It does this without your effort. Of course, you can override that reflexive movement to “catch” yourself, consciously choosing to fall over instead. When we ignore the body's natural instincts, we undermine its effort to keep us in equilibrium. But that's our free will working. The body's natural inclination is to keep us healthy, harmonious, and balanced.
Is Ignorance Bliss?: Ways We Ignore Our Bodies
While it is the body's nature to balance and heal itself, we are able to override many of our natural instincts by exercising our free will. Our society encourages us to mistrust or ignore our bodies, but when we do this, we make ourselves less healthy. Here are some common examples.
Not sleeping when we're tired.
Rather than taking an afternoon “siesta” or “power nap” when we're sleepy, many of us reach for stimulants like coffee or caffeinated soda. While most of our ancestors awakened at dawn and went to bed around sundown, we push through our early evening fatigue to stay up to watch the eleven o'clock news. Or we fall asleep, wake ourselves up, then wonder why we're not sleepy when we finally lie down.
Not going to the bathroom.
Ignoring the bodily urge to evacuate is a big issue, particularly for women. I cannot tell you how many of my female clients tell me that they go all day without urinating or moving their bowels because they were in a meeting. Not peeing when you need to teaches the bladder muscles to retain more urine than it was designed to. After years of gravity pulling the heavy liquid downward, the bladder muscles become overextended and lose elasticity. No wonder so many mature women develop urinary incontinence. Holding your bowel movements conditions the body not to evacuate the bowels. When this practice is combined with eating denatured foods that the body doesn't know how to digest, you become constipated. Granted, many workplaces don't make it easy to go to the bathroom. It's not unusual for nurses to feel unable to use the bathroom during an entire sixteen-hour double shift, especially in a busy pediatric ward. Many companies give workers only half an hour for lunch and two ten-minute breaksâwhich not only doesn't leave you much time to take care of your bathroom business, you have to choose between going to the bathroom and calling your kids at home.
Unhealthy practices like these not only train the body to work against its instincts, they cause us to retain toxins in our bodies for longer than nature intended.
Supressing a sneeze.
While there's no need to spray your neighbor with germs, it's not a good idea to stop your body from throwing off a toxin the body is violently trying to eject. Sneeze into the crease of your elbow or a tissue instead.
Ignoring a headache.
When our temples are throbbing, instead of lying down and figuring out what is making our brain ache, our culture teaches us to take aspirin or Tylenol and keep on stepping. But headaches occur for many reasons, and several of them are severe. Exposure to toxins is one major cause. Many people eat, breathe, or otherwise come into contact with things they are intolerant or allergic to and, consequently, experience headaches. Some people have tension headaches, caused by sluggish blood flow to the brain. These often signal an underlying problem. Some signs can lead to a stroke. Other folks have headaches caused by hormonal imbalances. Still others have brain tumors.
Feeding a fever.
Should you starve a cold and feed a fever or feed a cold and starve a fever? Americans are all confused about this time-tested advice. The answer? Listen to your body. A hot fever is created to burn up a virus or bacteria. If you let the fever burn, you'll get rid of the bug by sweating. When you have a fever, you generally do not feel very hungry. When you pop a pill to reduce your temperature, you may feel more like eating, but the “bug” will still be inside you.
Taking an antidiarrheal.
When we have the “runs,” it's a sign that our body is trying to cleanse a “bug” our out of our bowels. But instead of letting the body purge, many of us take medicines to stop the process. That one leaves me scratching my head. If your body is literally exploding toxins out of you, why in the world would you want to trap the “crap” inside? The
answer: Because people don't understand that their body is always working in their best interest.
Overeating.
One of the most common ways we override our body's innate intelligence is by misusing food. Clients are constantly telling me that they eat when they're not really hungry. Many of us learn this bad habit during childhood from our well-meaning parents. “But I'm not hungry,” you often hear children sayâto which your parents often reply, “Eat it anyway!” Other people eat because they're angry, lonely, tired, bored, or sad. Still others tell me, “I just eat when I'm supposed to” or “I just eat everything on my plate.” I remind them that even though their parents taught them to eat at 8
A.M.
, noon, and 6
P.M.
or to clear their plate because there are “children starving in Africa,” the best thing to do is to eat when you're hungry. For most people, this means consuming a very small meal or snack every two hours or so.
Engaging in recreational eating.
There is a difference between productive eating, whose goal is to nourish the body, and recreational eating, which I define as eating solely for taste, because it's dinnertime, for companionship, to celebrate, or because you're stuffing down your emotions. When we eat recreationally, the question we ask ourselves is: “What tastes good?” When we eat productively, we ask ourselves: “What is this going to do for my body?” When we engage in productive eating, we're using our food as our medicine.
The Acid/Fat Connection
You probably didn't realize it at the time, but you learned a lot about body harmony in high school science class. You may remember that you can use a piece of litmus paper to measure an item's
pH
(short for
potential hydrogenation
, a term you rarely see used), an indicator of its acid/alkaline balance. pH is measured on a scale of 1 to 14, with 1 being the most
acidic
reading possible and 14 being the most
alkaline
or
basic
. Stick litmus paper into some soapy water and it will turn blue, reflecting an alkaline pH that
falls somewhere between 9 and 10. If you stick litmus paper into vinegar, it will turn golden yellow, indicating its acidity. At 7, pure water is neutral and doesn't change the color of litmus paper at all. However, most Americans live in places where chemicals like fluoride are added to cleanse the water, making our water more acidic than nature intended.
The body's drive to establish equilibrium is reflected in its biochemistry. The pH of the human body should fall anywhere between 6.5 and 7.0. This reading represents the balance between healthy cells, whose pH is more toward the alkaline, and waste products the cells secrete, which are largely acidic. (Your urine should be acidic in the morning because your body has been scrubbing the toxins out overnight.) When we consume a lot of processed foods, take medications, or are under a lot of stress, the body becomes more acidic. For example, the following list shows the approximate pH of some common foods (the values vary depend on the variety of the food, whether it is fresh, canned, or packaged, etc.):
|  | ⢠Apples: 3.5 | ⢠Jelly: 3.3 |
|  | ⢠Beans: 6.0 | ⢠Mayonnaise: 4.4 |
|  | ⢠Beef (ground): 5.6 | ⢠Milk: 6.6 |
|  | ⢠Beer: 4.4 | ⢠Oatmeal: 6.4 |
|  | ⢠Bread: 5.5 | ⢠Peanut butter: 6.3 |
|  | ⢠Broccoli: 6.4 | ⢠Pork: 6.0 |
|  | ⢠Coffee: 5.0 | ⢠Salmon: 6.1 |
|  | ⢠Corn: 6.5 | ⢠Soda pop: 2.5 |
|  | ⢠Citrus fruit: 2.3 | ⢠Sugar: 5.5 |
|  | ⢠Eggs: 7.9 | ⢠Tomatoes: 4.5 |
|  | ⢠Fish: 6.7 | ⢠Watermelon: 5.4 |
|  | ⢠Ketchup: 3.9 | ⢠Wine: 3.1 |
For comparison, consider the pH of some common products:
|  | ⢠Acid rain: 3.5 | ⢠Bleach: 11 |
|  | ⢠Ammonia: 11 | ⢠Blood: 7.4 |
|  | ⢠Battery acid: 1 | ⢠Liquid drain cleaner: 14 |
|  | ⢠Oven cleaner: 12+ | Urine: 4.5 to 8, depending how acidic the person's body is |
|  | ⢠Saliva: 6.7 |  |
|  | ⢠Sea water: 7.5 to 8.4 |  |
|  | ⢠Stomach acid: 1 |  |
When we consume a diet containing a variety of vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, and lots of vitamins and minerals, the body becomes more alkaline. Because the typical American diet and lifestyle are so out of balance, our pH tends to be very acidic.
While having an overly acidic body doesn't mean you have a disease, it causes you to experience a lower-grade level of living and sets you up to gain weight. When the body is constantly acidic, not enough oxygen is able to flow through our system and our cells get very congested. When our cells can't breathe and are all backed up, we become tired, hyperactive, emotionally unstable, and angrier than we are under more healthy conditions. Some people become very stressed out. When we're stressed, we secrete epinephrine, the hormone that causes the “fight-or-flight” reaction. Epinephrine is very acidic and contributes to the body's being chronically acidic.