Tip #51: Be there

We've had a hard week here in Connecticut. We live very close to Newtown. I'm sure for parent's of little children it must be even more emotional and difficult to make sense of such horrific events.

While looking for consolation, I found some quotes which I would like to share with you as this week's tip, as they all point to the same thing: We can only heal as a community, and it is the compassion within the community which will sustain us.

In Breneé Brown's blog Ordinary Courage, I found this wonderful quote from Mr. Rogers:

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world."

And then, by chance, as it tends to happen, I heard a wonderful radio program called  "On Being." The episode was titled "Presence in the Wild" with Kate Braestrup, a pastor who wrote Here If You Need Me.She works as a chaplain in Maine helping victims of search and rescue missions. And she was just saying the same thing as Mr. Rogers. It is the people that surround us in tragedy, the community, who will heal us. And often, we don't even know we have that support until tragedy strikes. I know so well from my own experience, how when I have needed support I have had so many people helping me, friends and colleagues, family members and neighbors, to whom I will be forever grateful. Exactly a year ago I had a big surgery and we had amazing people cooking for us, making sure our kids were OK, sustaining my spirit with their visits and love. And healing me in the process.

I think most of us have this net (although we may not know it) but we also have to remember to be the net to others. To keep reaching out, to be there to embrace the people who need to be embraced. Because this blog is geared towards health and happiness, we can remember that this compassion to others is indeed healthy to us too.

And let me finish with some words from Pope Benedict, who prayed that God "sustain the entire community with spiritual strength which triumphs over violence by the power of forgiveness, hope and reconciling love."  Let's all be together.

Tip #50: Be in the moment

I have already written about the power of now (and the book of the same title by Eckart Tolle), and how I have found that, although extremely difficult, it is a simple solution to make us feel more centered and satisfied with our lives, regardless of our circumstances.

There is also another lesson from Tolle (this time from his book A New Earth) which I feel I need to work on and thus, I write about it here as a friendly reminder to myself (like all tips really are), which is also connected to being in the moment.

According to him, we need to add a consciousness flow into our everyday activities and there are three ways in which we accomplish this. He calls these the "three modalities of awakened doing" and they are acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm. He believes that if we are not in any of these three states, we are instead creating suffering for ourselves and others. The way I understand it, we do suffer when we worry about things to come or past events, and we also make others suffer when we are not happy with ourselves, because, likely, we have not accepted our situation.

But these three modalities deserve a bit more explanation. In a way I see them as levels, from more neutral to ideal. So in my view, these would be the modalities in our everyday life:

• Not accepting (I have made up this one): This is when we create suffering for ourselves or others. I do know I have to watch out for this, particularly when dealing with my children who may end up paying for my busy life. He suggests that when we cannot accept something, we should either stop it or change it. I'll try to remember that.
• Acceptance: Tolle reserves this modality for those tasks that we do not want to do but still have to be done, like, for example, changing a flat tire.  He says that accepting it means that we are at peace with it.
• Enjoyment: For most other things, we can try to bring joy to our actions. According to him, enjoyment should replace want as a motivator for our actions. And this joy should not come from the actions themselves, but from ourselves, so we will stop needing things or people to make us happy. We bring the joy to them. He believes we can bring joy to most of out everyday actions if we are really present when we perform them and I have to agree that I have definitely noticed that certain tasks, like walking to school, are much more enjoyable when I don't let my mind wonder.
• Enthusiasm: It is this modality that it is preferred. According to him "enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward." He compares this enthusiasm with stress, but this is the other side of the coin, negative energy. Enthusiasm, on the other hand, can be the positive fuel for our projects.

Well, I'll let you all that to ponder. I definitely need to work on all this, but they make sense to me. What do you think?

Lots of love to everyone.
 

Tip #49: Eat more mushrooms

Here's what Dr. Greger has to say about mushrooms, particularly significant for those of us with breast cancer:

Mushrooms are an underappreciated component of healthy diets. They can play a role in a dietary cognitive portfolio (one mushroom—the bay bolete—even contains theanine, the relaxant phytonutrient in green tea) and may slow breast cancer growth by inhibiting the aromatase enzyme. Surprisingly, plain white mushrooms—the cheapest and most widely available variety—may work best and are among the most anti-oxidant rich. 

They are also recommended by Dr.Weil, who suggests they can lower cholesterol and improve athletic performance, and by Dr. Fuhrman who makes them one of the components of his G-BOMBS that we should eat every day: greens, beans, mushrooms, onions, berries and seeds. Please note, that all these three doctors strongly suggest to always cook the mushrooms, particularly white button mushrooms, as they may contain a naturally-occurring toxin called agaritine that is deactivated by heat.

And for me, I found the most convincing evidence about the efficacy of mushrooms against breast cancer (not just for prevention) from Paul Slamets, a mycologists who is researching the impact of a type of mushrooms, Turkey Tail, on the strengthening of Natural Killer cells which help people undergoing chemo and radiation have a stronger immune system. In a a very emotional TED-MED talk, he tells us the story of his research and how it actually impacted his own mother, who had been given three months to live after her diagnosis of Stage IV breast cancer. Here's the talk, but you can fast forward to minute 8 and be prepared to cry at his story:

According to Dr. Fuhrman, women who eat one mushroom a day have a 64% decreased risk of breast cancer. If you also add drinking green tea in addition to that mushroom, your odds go up to 89% decreased risk for pre-menopausal women and 82% for post-menopausal women. This alone should make you all start having mushrooms right now!

Enjoy your week! I always love your comments. How do you eat your mushrooms? Any tips?


photo credit: selva via photopin cc

Tip #48: Practice visualizations (or not)

This is something I don't do often, but when I do I always feel better, happier and filled with optimism. It's a technique called the "10 10 Visualization." I read about it in Mathew Ferris' blog. I do it this way: I sit in front of my window (in the photo) and I first think of ten things I'm grateful for at that moment. Then, I move on to think about ten goals or desires I also have at that moment. The first part is always easy, there are so many things and people I am thankful for! But the second does take some work, as I often think my life is quite blessed as it is. I'm getting better at it, and I now tend to think of some long term goals, but mostly short terms ones, like maybe a project at work or the next doctor's visit. Like I said, when I remember to do it, I always feel happy afterwards, so it can be something to do just for that reason.

But, as I like to research anything I write here, after a bit digging on visualization, I found an article which mentions that many athletes, including Tiger Woods (I don't know if any of this is true) use something called "creative visualization," which consists of imagining themselves playing the game and doing really well. And, maybe it could also help you in your everyday life in the same way. The Wikipedia entry for "creative visualization" is also quite interesting.

On the other hand, I also found some research that actually says the opposite, that when we visualize something as if it had already happened, we tend to believe it and then we actually do LESS to attain it, as our mind thinks we have already done so. I saw somewhere else (I cannot find it now, of course) that when you actually tell your goals to other people, you are more likely to fail, for the same reasons as above. But maybe the visualizations are different in these cases. In "The right kind of visualization," we learn that we need to visualize the process, instead of the outcome. 

In my case, I don't know if what I do could be called "creative visualizations" or not, but they do help me be calmer. It's like a voice telling me, "everything is possible" and "everything will be all right," both at the same time. Plus, the ten items to be grateful for puts your mind in the right place for the next step of visualization. Always be thankful first for what you have. We do have so much!

What do you think? Have you tried this?

Tip #47: Cultivate compassion (even to yourself)

As I have mentioned before, I have been watching, whenever possible, Rick Hanson's Compassionate Brain series. It is subtitled "Activating the Neural Circuits of Kindness, Caring, and Love. Practical Neuroscience for Transformation." In the series, Dr. Hanson interviews leading scientists and teachers from different fields on the topic of compassion, its origins, its characteristics and the transformative effects of its practice.

I'm a bit behind with the talks, but, thankfully,  they can be also watched on demand as well (the series is free, but you do have to sign up for it). So far, I have enjoyed everything I have watched, and today I will tell you about two of the talks which I thought were particularly fascinating.

The first one is by Dr. Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. He is also the creator of another wonderful website, Greater Good, the Science of a Meaningful Life, which has many resources (articles, videos etc.) about the topic. From his talk, I learned the following:

• Compassion is something innate to humans. Why? Wouldn't it be better if we were all nasty to each other, winner takes all, mentality? Well, no, because we start as extremely vulnerable babies, who could not survive if the adults around them didn't feel compassion for them. He pointed out that, as species, we are the only ones who take such a long time to be able to defend ourselves on our own. 
• Kindness turned out to be the number one characteristics that people all over the world, in many different cultures, chose as their number one characteristic they look for in a mate. Not beauty or money or strength.

The second one is Dr. Kristin Neff's talk, called "The power of self-compassion." She wrote Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself up and Leave your Insecurities behind.(I wish I had time to read all these books!). She talked about how, in our society, we have elevated the concept of self-esteem, but that this always involves being better than somebody else, and thus, it becomes a source of anguish and frustration, because this is just not possible. By comparison, cultivating self-compassion will allow you to move on with life in a more gentle, caring, and better way. She did emphasize that self-compassion is not to be confused with indulgence, but that we should talk to ourselves as a loving parent would talk to a child who has failed an exam, for example. You wouldn't tell your child, "you are such a loser!"(hopefully), but would try to encourage him to not let this defeat bring him down. Her talk did remind me about the ideas I had outlined in the post about perfection not being the goal, but it may also be another way to look at the same problem. We all have failings, or setbacks. It is part of a normal life. How we respond to them is what can really make the situation different. It is, in a way, my goal with my tips, my mental exercises as I call them. I do believe my life (and with it, my health and all my surroundings), will be better, it is already better, from these type of lessons which reaffirm and enlarge my own understanding of it.

Dr. Neff's website, Self Compassion, is also full of practical resources, including exercises, even physical ones (how to move your body in certain ways) to help you develop your own self-compassion. And she was also fascinating for another reason. She is the mother of an autistic child, and they are the protagonist in a documentary about how her son discovered by accident that he had a connection to horses, and how the whole family traveled to Mongolia to experience life with horses in nature (http://www.horseboymovie.com/). In the talk, she mentioned how she had used her own techniques of self-compassion in the (many) cases when his son would have public fits (like in long plane rides). It was, all in all, very moving.

Well, I manged to write much more than I thought.  But, I do believe that by being aware of these things we can really start to understand that we, as humans, do have to strive to be good, to each other and to ourselves, regardless what society or other forces may be telling us.

What do you think? As always, I'm amazed and thankful that anyone reads these tips and I hope you may want to share your thoughts. I actually discovered Dr. Hanson thanks to a comment by my friend Jennifer to my Tip #5. So wonderful!

Tip #46: Try fasting

So, what do you think? Let's NOT eat together? Well, why not? I have been interested in the idea of fasting as I would encounter many mentions of it when dealing with alternative methods to treat cancer. But lately, it is not just for alternative methods or only cancer. Here you can see how doctors in Utah found that regular fasting can boost heart health. Those who fasted for about a day a month had a 58% lower risk of coronary disease as those who didn't. And Dr. Weil, tells us in this article that intermittent fasting can indeed improve not only caridiovascular health, but also diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer, and improve cognition in general. Even my nutritionist recommends caloric restriction for certain patients, as there are many studies already associating this with better outcomes in cancer patients. And, there's a new book just published, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, by Seyfried, PhD, a cancer researcher who worked at Yale University and is now Professor of Biology at Boston College, which reviews the literature on caloric restriction and its beneficial impacts on tumor growth. Here's an older article which summarizes the main points of the book.

I became a bit more interested in the topic after seeing this BBC documentary this summer, Eat, Fast & Live Longer. It is an hour long, but well worth it. Here's a summary, with commentary, if you don't have time to watch it all.



By the end of the show, Dr. Mosley, the guy that goes around looking for ways to implement fasting, decides to try the 5/2 diet plan: five days your normal consumption of food, and two days of only 500 calories for women, 600 for men. After trying for five or six weeks, many of his "aging" markers, like IGF-1, CRP, or blood sugar level, came down considerably, plus he lost some weight and felt better.

In the show, they also talk about a group of people in Ecuador, who are very small because they suffer from something called the Laron syndrome, but that, surprisingly, never develop cancer or diabetes. I had read about them in the New York Times last year, and I think they may hold the key to something very important.

In any case, this year I did something that I don't recommend anyone to do (please, please, please), but, after researching a bit more the 5/2 diet, I found that there is a doctor in Great Britain testing it to actually cut breast cancer occurrence in patients at higher risk. According to her, it could reduce the risk by 40%. So, at the beginning of October, because I knew that I had blood work coming four weeks later, I decided to try it without telling neither my doctors or nutritionist (or even my family, I guess I just came out). Well, my blood work was fantastic, particularly my HbA1c, which measures blood sugar control. It is the lowest I've had it, finally at the level my nutritionist recommends. My CRP, which measures inflammation, did not go down, but it also did not go up (it was quite low to start with), and I think it's also remarkable, as it tends to go up with medication and I've now been on treatment for close to two years. Of course, I don't know if the diet was the cause. I did stop it after the results came in. i\It was just an experiment that I may take again in the future, hopefully next time with some type of medical supervision. I lost a little bit of weight while on it, but not much, maybe two or three pounds, and it was not too hard to do.

But, I also wanted to share something else in this blog post. My husband mentioned that somebody in his work were doing a 48 hour weekend cleanse, recommended by Dr. Oz. I went to check it out, and I really like it, and I think that may be also something I try to do, maybe once every two months or so. Here's the link. Maybe after Thanksgiving could be the ideal time. :)

Do you fast regularly? Any recommendations?

Tip #45: Give dry brushing a try

 

Let me start by saying that I hope everyone is safe and sound after Hurricane Sandy. I feel extremely grateful, as not only we were fine, but I got many e-mails and calls from friends all over the world who  made me realize once more how loved we are. Thanks, everyone. You are truly amazing.

And now, to this week's tip. Through the book Crazy. Sexy, Diet, I learned about dry brushing and although it is not something that I do often (maybe twice or three times a week), I do notice some differences in my skin (it is softer and less dry), so that's why I thought I would pass along the tip. In addition, it is supposed to help with your lymph system (there's more information about that in the video below), something I definitely cannot prove, but I feel that it's important enough. Some people say it also helps with cellulite or weight loss. That, I just don't think it is true, but let me know if it happens to you!  

The way I do it, is this. Right before my shower, I put on the gloves (in the picture. I bought them at WholeFoods) and I start massaging my feet, all the way up to my neck, dividing my body in chunks, as explained in the video. It does feel great, particularly when I get to the neck area (remember not to dry brush your face!) and I think this is mainly because it is a massage, even if it is yourself doing it and not a professional masseuse. It only takes me about five minutes, so this is not a time consuming activity. I honestly forget to do it more often, but I always remember how wonderful it feels when I do it, and even after one time doing it, I can notice a difference in my skin. 

Here's the video, from my beloved Greensmoothie Girl herself. I hope you enjoy it and find it beneficial as well.

 

And I also have two unrelated notes that I thought may interest you:

• Deepak Chopra is offering a free 21 day meditation challenge which starts tomorrow. You can sign up for it here. I actually have tried his meditation challenges before, and although I didn't finish them, I found them soothing the days I got to them.
• Gym-Pact, the tool I have been using with great success to help me go to the gym, is offering a $5 bonus for you and $5 for me if you sign up. I honestly can say I love this app, especially since they added integration with RunKeeper, another app that tracks your outdoor activities as well. So far with them, I have made $70 and lost only $10.(And if you see me walking around my block on a Sunday night, you now know why). If you have a smartphone, I highly recommend this app. It definitely helps me with my fitness goals (if only there were a Gym-Pact for medtitation!). If you do sign up, my referral code is SkippPilar, so we both get the $5. Hey, and I'm going to throw a party if I do get lots of money. What do you think? Want to come over? 

Well, let me know what you think about all this. I always like to hear your thoughts.