Wellness News October 2010

Vol. 25 No.10. OCTOBER 2010

wellness newsonline magazine of the Cancer Support Association

environment, wellness and healing

Patron – His Excellency Dr. Ken Michael AC, Governor of Western Australia

Cancer Support Association of WA Inc.

SPONTANEOUS REMISSION

CAN A FEVER CURE CANCER?

HYPERTHERMIAA PROMISING CANCER

THERAPY

MIRACLES HAPPEN!WHEN CANCER DISAPPEARS

WITHOUT REASON

MIND BODY SOUL EATING MEDITATION;

PRAYER WALKING

SUMMER RECIPESLIGHT, TEXTURED FOOD

TO DELIGHT THE SENSES

A GUIDE TO CLIMBING MOUNTAINS PAULO COEHLO

MY STORY 18 YEAR OLD JESSICA MERRELL TELLS HER REMARKABLE STORY OF CANCER, FAITH AND HEALING

“Out there, beyond right and wrong, there is a field...I’ll meet you there.” Rumi

news team...

monthly online magazine of the Cancer Support Association

of Western Australia Inc.

Editor Mandy [email protected]

Editorial Consultant Dr. Peter Daale

editorial...

One day seminars for people living with cancer and their carers with a special focus

on accessing key cancer information online, nutrition, and meditation. Held on the first Friday of every month. UPCOMING 2010 DATES: 5TH NOVEMBER, 3RD DECEMBER

from 9.30am-4.30pm.

To book phone CSA 9384 3544NEW CSA members

can attend free!

one day cancer wellness workshop

MEETING THE CHALLENGE!

Life Changing Information for people with cancer presented by Dr. Peter Daale, Paul Alexander

& Michael Sandford

Dear Readers,

Living in the hills I am fortunate to occasionally see the full moon rise in the east – a huge, luminous ball of pearly white light rising up from behind the black ranges. It doesn’t matter how many times I witness the moon rise, it is always a sublime experience reminding me of the transcendental power of nature and the miracle of life.

This issue of Wellness News is dedicated to the everyday miracle. All of us are praying for a miracle of one kind or another and occasionally our prayers are answered – perhaps in a form we don’t appreciate at that time. Many cancer survivors, for example, will look back on their journey with cancer and in retrospect see it as an awakening or a gift. While we don’t always have our prayers answered in the form we wish for, all of us have moments of serendipity where it seems that the universe aligns and everything goes our way.

If you have cancer then it is not unrealistic to pray for a miracle of healing or spontaneous remission – new research is showing this is not as unlikely or improbable as your doctor may lead you to believe and there are many instances of spontaneous healing. If you have faith, take positive steps to improve your health, believe in yourself and your path, and have the inner strength to do whatever it takes – then who knows, anything is possible! ✦

Peace, Mandy

Wellness News e-magazine is published online and distributed free to members of the Cancer Support Association.

Wellness News magazine is dedicated entirely to environment, wellness and healing. The magazine is for people with cancer or serious health issues; for people who are well and want to maintain their good health naturally; and for complementary, alternative and integrative health professionals.

Please enjoy your Wellness experience!

www.cancersupportwa.org.auonline at...

wellness news

moon rise

Above image: Tropic Moon by Gordon Beck

It’s the possibility of having a

dream come true that makes life interesting.

Never stop dreaming.

Paulo Coehlo

in this edition...features

CAN A FEVER CURE CANCER? An explanation for spontaneous remissions and renewed hope for cancer sufferers

6

13 IT’S A MIRACLE!

10 HYPERTHERMIA A remarkable cancer therapy

regular

5 IN THE NEWS Watercress stops spread of breast cancer; A dietary supplement for breast cancer

28 SUMMER RECIPES Light, textured foods to delight

EDITORIAL moonrise 2

SPONTANEOUS REMISSION The Body’s Miraculous Self-Healing May Not Be as Rare as Doctors Believe 17

14 FOR YOU I WILL RUN A young woman’s spiritual journey with cancer, faith and healing

STRIDING TOWARDS SPIRITUAL FITNESS Taking a prayer walk18PICTORIAL The Art of Frida Kahlo20What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know about Everyday Products 22

Yoga for Healing

Ongoing Classes: Thursdays 10-11.15am $5 CSA members / $10 others

Join yoga teacher Madeline Bunter for an introductory free session of yoga. Madeline takes inspiration from both Iyengar and Vinyasa approaches to yoga with an emphasis on relaxation, breath awareness, gentle movement and meditation. She believes a balanced yoga practice has the capacity to heal, shift energy blockages and bring the body into physical, emotional, mental and spiritual alignment. Yoga for Healing classes bring the joy of yoga to people with cancer and those who may need a nurturing space in which to practice.

NEW CLASS AT CSA

Free Introductory ClassThursday 21st October

Come along to experience the serenity, wellbeing and

healing potential of yoga

Madeline has practiced yoga for nearly 20 years through three pregnancies and recently undertaken teacher training in the UK and at the E-shed Yoga Centre, Fremantle, where she continues to learn and assist in therapy classes. She welcomes each new yoga experience as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Madeline takes inspiration from both Iyengar and Vinyasa approaches to yoga with an emphasis on relaxation, breath awareness, gentle movement and meditation. She believes that a balanced yoga practice has the capacity to heal, shifting energy blockages and bringing the body into physical, emotional, mental and spiritual alignment.

Madeline is keen to offer Yoga for Cancer to bring the joy of yoga particularly to those who may need a more nurturing space in which to practice. I look forward to coming together in a safe place in the Spirit of Yoga.

Meet our new yoga instructor Madeline Clare

THE BEST HEALING HERBS24NUTRITION Six simple steps to improve digestion26EATING MEDITATION27MANUAL FOR CLIMBING MOUNTAINS Paulo Coehlo28

The Cancer Support Association of Western Australia Inc is a non-profit charitable organisation which was established in 1984.

CSA’s key intention is to help people become informed, empowered and supported on their cancer and wellness journeys. CSA encourages an integrative, well-informed understanding of health and treatment options and strategies, and is committed to supporting all people, regardless of their treatment choices.

CSA supports individuals who are living with cancer, their families, carers and the wider community through the services we provide, as well as through our widely distributed publications and unique cancer information website.

CSA’s workshops, courses, groups, and complementary therapies are advertised throughout this publication and are held at CSA’s premises in Cottesloe unless otherwise stated.

About the Cancer Support Association

of WA Inc

MONDAYMeditation Made Easy .................................................................................10.00 – 11.30am Ongoing Lessons with Bavali Hill. FREE FOR MEMBERS (non-members $5) No bookings necessary.

TUESDAYWellness and Healing Open Support Group ............................... 10.00 – 12.00noon with Dr. Angela Ebert

Carer’s Wellness and Healing .............................................................. 10.00 – 12.00noonOpen Support Group (when required)

Reiki Clinic .....................................................................................................12.15pm – 1.30pm

WEDNESDAYReflexology with Udo Kannapin ..................................................................10am – 2pm (appointments available between10am – 2pm)

Laughter Yoga with Kimmie O’Meara ($3.00) ...................................11.00am – 12.00pm

Chinese Medical Healthcare Qigong ($10/$5 members) .........12.30pm – 2.00pmwith Master Andrew Tem-Foo Lim

THURSDAYYoga for Healing .........................................................................................10.00am – 11.15amwith Madeline Clare (members $5 / others $10)

Grief and Loss Open Support Group ................................................... 1.00pm – 3.00pmlast Thursday of each month

FRIDAYMeeting the Challenge 1 Day Seminar ................................................9.30am – 4.30pm 1ST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH with Dr. Peter Daale (and others).

DAILYGeneral Counselling with Dr. Angela Ebert ..................................................by appointment Phone direct on 0414 916 724 or 9450 6724 or email [email protected]

CSA weekly program...

Please phone CSA on 9384 3544 or check our website for further information. We can help you with information packs, course prices, confirm course times and make bookings.

October/November 2010

New Class: Yoga for HealingJoin CSA’s new yoga teacher Madeline Clare for a free introductory class 10-11.15am on Thursday 21st October

Magazine of the Cancer Support Association of WA September 2008www.cancersupportwa.org.auCancer Support Association

September 2010 5WELLNESS NEWS in the news...

A paper on a new dietary supplement for breast cancer has appeared this week in the online version of Integrative Cancer Therapies (http://ict.sagepub.com). BreastDefend (BD) is a blend of medicinal mushrooms, herbs and nutritional compounds. In this laboratory study, Indiana University scientists showed that BD inhibited the proliferation and invasiveness of highly metastatic breast cancer cells. Particularly impressive was the effect of the highest dose of BD at 72 hours, where virtually all the cells were suppressed (see illustration).

This isn’t the first time that most of these ingredients have been shown to kill cancer cells. But by combining them in a single formula, one can use lower doses to achieve an synergistic effect. I appreciate the way the developer of the product, Isaac Eliaz, MD of Econugenics, has not just touted his product’s virtues but once again (as with his Pectasol-C) provided scientific proof.

The recommended dose is 1 to 4 capsules, 2 times a day, taken with food, or as directed by one’s health care professional. I have found it for sale on the Internet for as little as $77.99 for 120 capsules. Even at the highest dose this comes to around $5 per day, which seems reasonable for such a promising supplement. ✦

Source: themossreports.wordpress.com, October 2010

A dietary supplement for breast cancer

It has been found that a simple salad food

can stop breast cancer developing.

Cancer specialists use powerful and debilitating agents such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy to attack cancer – but researchers have discovered that a simple salad food can stop breast cancer developing.

A compound found in watercress can suppress the growth of breast cancer cells by turning off a signal in the body. When that happens, the flow of essential blood and oxygen to the growing tumour stops is stemmed, and the cancer cells stop developing.

Researchers from the University of Southampton discovered watercress’s cancer-fighting abilities when they gave a group of cancer survivors a bowl each – around 80g – of watercress and monitored them for the following 24 hours.

Not surprisingly, they found very high levels of the watercress’s plant compound PEITC in the participants’ blood samples afterwards – but it had affected the protein that helps nourish cancer cells.

Research team leader Prof Graham Packham commented: “The research…shows that eating watercress may interfere with a pathway that has already been tightly linked to cancer development.” ✦

Source: www.wddty.com news, October 2010

Watercress stops spread of breast cancer

Table showing the suppression of cancer cells after taking BreastDefend

www.cancersupportwa.org.au

WELLNESS NEWS

environment • wellness • healing

September 20106

By John Naish

Eighteen months ago, Jordan Harden’s despairing doctors gave him just weeks to live – the leukaemia he’d battled for much of his life had returned.

Given the heartbreaking news, Jordan’s parents, Garry and Claire, decided to take their three-year-old for a final holiday together, to Disneyland in Paris.

They told the hospital they were so distressed they didn’t want to receive any more calls from doctors about his test scans.

‘I just did not want to know,’ says Claire. ‘I just wanted to enjoy this last chance together.’

But, days before they set off, the hospital did call – with the astonishing news that Jordan’s cancer had gone. Now, Jordan is at school, just like any other healthy five-year-old boy.

In a similarly amazing case, soon after her birth in 2009, Grace Woodhead was diagnosed with a swift-growing and inoperable brain cancer that doctors said would kill her within a few months.

But, in February, the tumour started shrinking and continues to do so; doctors have now told Grace’s parents that their 19-month-old is no longer going to die from the disease.

And, only this month, the Mail reported the extraordinary case of Peter Crane, 60, a retired teacher whose incurable form of blood cancer simply disappeared 18 months after he was diagnosed. He is officially in remission.

‘I couldn’t believe it when they told me,’ says Mr Crane from East Boldon, South Tyneside. ‘I was in shock.’

This fascinating report on so-called spontaneous regressions or remissions of cancer was recently published in The Daily Mail (UK). Generally speaking, about half of these regressions follow an infection and/or a high fever. Observation of this phenomenon led to development of the fields of (a) cancer immunology (such as Coley’s toxins) and (b) hyperthermia (also called thermotherapy or oncothermia).

An Explanation of Spontaenous Remissions

Can a FeverCure Cancer?

and Renewed Hope for Cancer Sufferers


September 2010 7WELLNESS NEWS

A weekly group held every Tuesday at CSA 10am – 12noon. Anyone who’s life has been affected by cancer

or other life threatening illnesses is welcome to attend. A Carer’s Support Group is held at the same time when

required.

He is now enjoying a new lease of life with his wife Mary and says: ‘My blood counts had been normal for about 12 months, so it had disappeared without the need for any treatment.’

All these patients have one thing in common – there is no accepted medical explanation as to why their cancers have disappeared. Doctors call such cases ‘spontaneous remissions’.

Many others are content to call them ‘miracles’ and leave it at that. But researchers increasingly believe many such reprieves are actually caused by a quirk of nature that could be harnessed to save the lives of countless other patients – and the answer could be as simple as the patient having a fever.

Jordan, from Wishaw, near Glasgow, was only ten weeks old when he was diagnosed with the blood cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

Parents Garry, 31, and Claire, 27, worried that he seemed limp and unresponsive, so they took him to see the GP. The doctor thought there was nothing wrong, but the Hardens persuaded their local hospital to test him for meningitis.

The blood tests revealed he had leukaemia and Jordan was rushed into intensive care for a blood transfusion. He then endured several six-month bouts of aggressive chemotherapy.

When this did not work, Garry and Claire paid for private treatment involving an experimental stem-cell transplant in Barcelona, Spain. This was also ineffective.

When the Hardens took Jordan for hospital scans in December 2008, the little boy’s outlook was bleak.

‘The doctors told us there was no sign at all of recovery and that the cancer had come back even more aggressively,’ says his father Garry, a security guard. ‘There was nothing more they could do and they gave him a few weeks to live – all he had was palliative care.’

It was tragic news, however the family decided to make Jordan’s last few weeks as happy as possible, including a trip to Disneyland.

‘Just as we were getting ready to go, the consultant called, asking us to come in. We panicked: the doctors had previously told us Jordan’s body could not take any more chemotherapy. But the news was amazing. The latest scans showed the leukaemia had

New outlook: Claire Harden with son

Jordan whose leukaemia went into

remission after he had a high fever

‘The doctors told us there was no sign at all of recovery... I don’t know how we can be so lucky’

continued on next page...


WELLNESS NEWS


September 20108

disappeared.’

After so many months racked by worry, the family were overjoyed, but perplexed – as were the doctors.

‘They just don’t know how it happened,’ says Garry. ‘They had never seen this type of leukaemia go into remission.’

Indeed, Jordan was thought to have among the lowest chances of survival of all the children with whom he was in hospital. Many of those children have since died.

As Garry puts its simply: ‘I don’t know how we can be so lucky’.

Spontaneous regression or remission has been reported in many cancers, but is most often seen in those of the skin, testes and kidney, as well as in some forms of lymphoma and leukaemia. So what could be behind these medical miracles?

Several reports, including a recent paper in the Netherlands Journal Of Medicine, have linked a significant number of spontaneous disappearances of leukaemia to fever caused by serious infections.

Now, scientists believe they understand how this might work. There are two theories: the first is that an infection serious enough to provoke a fever response can push the body’s immune system into a high-powered, hypersensitive state.

This helps the patient’s immune system detect the fact that cancer cells are subtly different from normal healthy cells. It then attacks the tumour cells as though they are infectious invaders.

In everyday life, our immune systems may wipe out many cancer cells unobtrusively, so we never know we were at risk. But, too often, such tumour cells can be sufficiently similar to normal ones that they sneak under the radar of a normally-running immune system and develop into serious cancers.

The other theory is that the high temperature itself attacks and destroys the cancer.

Tantalisingly, Jordan had a mild fever of 38.1c in the days before his clear scans. N ow scientists are trying to harness the power of fever and infection in a controlled way to treat cancer patients.

Researchers in Italy and the U.S., are using the food-poisoning bugs salmonella and listeria to provoke tumour-killing immune responses.

These bacteria are the chief culprits behind the estimated 850,000 cases of food poisoning each year in Britain, around 500 of which are lethal. But scientists are using modified forms of the bacteria that do not cause illness itself.

These are attached to patients’ tumour cells in the laboratory, painting them as ‘enemies, which

‘We know that cancers do sometimes regress when the immune system is stimulated by an infection’

Spontaneous remission: Peter

Crane’s incurable blood cancer

disappeared without any

treatment

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is then primed to begin detecting and killing all the tumour cells.

It’s hoped that the lab tests will soon be extended to patients themselves.

Food-poisoning bacteria are being used because the body is primed to recognise them and set off major alarms at their presence.

Maria Resign, of the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, is working with neutralised salmonella cells to alert the immune system to skin-cancer cells.

‘We did experiments first in mice and then in cancer cells and immune cells from human patients, and found that the salmonella was successfully doing exactly the same job in each case,’ she says. ‘Now we are ready to go into testing on humans, but we are waiting for authorisation from Italian regulators.’

Meanwhile, in the U.S., drug company Advaxis is doing similar work, using a bioengineered form of listeria, to activate the immune system to combat a broad array of cancers.

Cancer Research UK is helping to fund the company’s research trials. One clinical study is already under way, giving the listeria bug to women with cervical cancer. The use of food poisoning bugs is the latest attempt to develop a generation of cancer treatments called immunotherapy drugs – or ‘cancer vaccines’.

The idea is to recruit the body’s own immune system to fight tumours. In April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first immune-stimulating vaccine to treat tumours – Provenge is designed to prime the body’s defences to attack prostate cancer.

Another experimental immunotherapy drug, Ipilimumab, is being developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb. It showed some positive results in fighting melanoma in a June trial. Such therapies are still a way off becoming mainstream medicines, but Peter Johnson, chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, is optimistic.

‘We are starting to see evidence that this may be a sensible approach to treating cancers,’ he says. ‘We know that cancers do sometimes regress when the immune system is stimulated by an infection.’

‘The complicated challenge for researchers is to work out how you can give a broad stimulus to the immune system and achieve a very specific response – a targeted attack on tumour molecules.

‘But we are now seeing, in some cases at least, this kind of thing being achieved with drugs such as Ipilimumab.’

This and other work is also throwing up a fascinating explanation for the spiralling numbers of cancers nowadays; it could be that our immune systems are less on the alert as – thanks to antibiotics, vaccinations and improved hygiene – we have far fewer infections.

Indeed, now some doctors have gone so far as to suggest we should intentionally create fevers in cancer patients. Professor Heinz-Uwe Hobohm, of Berlin’s Technical University of Applied Sciences, recently called for controlled fever to be used as part of chemotherapy regimens.

It may kick-start the body to kick out tumours without patients having to take cancer-vaccine drugs.

‘Today we should be able to induce and control fever much better than 100 years ago,’ he wrote in the British Journal Of Cancer. In fact, in the U.S., Dr Joan Bull, a pioneering oncologist at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Centre in Houston, is already heating cancer patients’ bodies to boost the immune system.

‘We’re using a temperature you would get with a bad case of the flu,’ says Dr Bull.

Two days after having chemotherapy and immune-boosting drugs, patients are put into an infra-red ‘total-body thermal therapy’ enclosure nicknamed the ‘hot box’, for eight hours under sedation.

Their temperature is carefully monitored as it is raised from just under 37c to 40c. ‘The fever is giving a startle, a cry for help to the immune system to say, arm yourself, get out here, do something,’ Dr Bull says.

She believes if the heat can wake up the immune system, her team can use less chemotherapy and reduce the side-effects which such strong drugs can wreak. Dr Bull is using the experimental therapy on patients with hard-totreat pancreatic cancers and smallcell lung cancers.

‘Whole-body fever-range thermal therapy is a gentler therapy than using radiotherapy, which can hit a lot of the body’s vital structures,’ she says. ‘The fever itself is safe; the patient is sedated, not because it hurts, but if you’ve ever had a fever, you know how crabby you get. We let them sleep.’

It’s not clear if baby Grace Woodhead or Peter Crane, like Jordan Harden, suffered a fever before their clear scan.

Yet whatever the explanation, Jordan’s parents are simply grateful to enjoy days that they never dared to dream they would experience, such as proudly seeing their boy off to school.

‘He has just started his first term,’ beams Garry. ‘You would not even know that there has ever been something wrong with him.’

Garry admits, however, that the shadow of cancer has not fully passed: ‘We still worry about him every day.

‘We have never got over the worry. But I think that’s natural in any parent who’s gone through this, even if his disease has ended in a miracle.’ ✦

• Beautiful tealight candle angels & brilliant suncatcher angels in various sizes, each with a healing crystal.

• Inspirational cards, soaps, organic personal care products

• Gift vouchers of any value

from CSA Wellness ShopChristmas Gift Ideas


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201010

“Give me a chance to create

a fever and I will cure any

disease,” Parmenides, a Greek

physician and philosopher

(540-480 B.C.), said even

back then. Fever has always

had a special meaning for

human beings: On the one

hand the harbinger of death,

on the other hand a chance of

recovering.

hyperthermiaA Remarkable

The history of hyperthermia“Give me a chance to create a fever and I will cure any disease,” Parmenides, a Greek physician and philosopher (540-480 B.C.), said even back then. Fever has always had a special meaning for human beings: On the one hand the harbinger of death, on the other hand a chance of recovering.

The healing effect of heat was first mentioned in the early civilizations of ancient Egypt, where baths in hot desert sand were prescribed for the ill. Then the doctors of ancient Greece started consistently using this therapeutic approach and named it ‘overheating’ (in Greek: hyperthermia). Over the centuries various areas of application were found, for example fever was artificially induced with the help of pyrogenic substances to fight infectious diseases. In the Middle Ages growths on the skin were burned away with a red-hot iron. Fever was considered to be a purging agent that purifies and detoxifies the body.

Heat, i.e. hyperthermia, has also been shown to be of great use in treating cancer. The reason for this is that tumour cells are extremely sensitive to heat. The American surgeon William Coley (1862-1936) had already observed that cancer patients often recovered completely if they had suffered a severe post-surgical infection of the wound accompanied by high fever. This led the physician to conjecture that the increase in body temperature not only mobilized the body’s own immune system, thus fighting off the infection, but also destroyed the tumour at the same time.

The physicist and cancer researcher Manfred von Ardenne (1907-1997) was the first person to specifically treat cancer patients with the help of hyperthermia by using long-wave infrared light. Since the hyperthermia treatment was a very strenuous procedure, Ardenne supplied oxygen to the patients in support of the treatment. At first it was difficult to optimize the treatment, since there was no way to exactly control the internal temperature of the body. Over the years, however, more technologically advanced equipment guaranteed better control over the overheating process and made widespread use in clinics possible. In general, all procedures for overheating the body or the tumour area from the outside by using microwave or radio wave technology or by infrared light are called hyperthermia. This is different from fever therapy, by which the body is overheated from the ‘inside’.

The effect of hyperthermiaContrary to healthy tissue, cancer cells cannot easily divert heat because of their primitive blood supply. This has to do with the fact that tumour cells have a different metabolism and their vascular supply lines are different compared to those of healthy cells.

Cancer cells experience a build-up in heat, which leads to an inadequate supply of oxygen and a depletion of nutrients in the tumour. These deficiencies lead in turn to disturbances in the metabolic processes of dividing and maintaining cells, including the failure of the repair systems of the cells. Thus thermal cell components (i.e. those parts of the cells damaged by hyperthermia) cannot be replaced, and this can lead to the death of the cancer cells.

By Dr. Peter Wolf

Cancer Therapy




A Remarkable

Before I devoted myself to alternative treatment methods more than 25 years ago, I worked as a doctor and specialist for psychosomatic illnesses at the Medical University of Hannover. During that time I gradually realised that although the methods of orthodox medicine can be very helpful when dealing with acute illnesses, they often reach their limits when applied to chronic disease.

Even today – despite the greatest efforts and sometimes great successes in many areas – chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease, rheumatism, cancer and allergies are still ‘hard nuts to crack’ for orthodox medicine.

As I became ever more frustrated with this powerlessness to help, I started looking into other possibilities and began to learn more about alternative methods of treatment. I discovered the potential that lies in this school of medicine, especially with regard to chronic illnesses. I gradually recognized that a holistic approach to therapy in treating patients with chronic disease can be a valuable alternative and/or supplement to orthodox treatment.

That is why we offer a variety of alternative and complementary types of therapy at my Center for Hyperthermia in Hannover. These different methods of treatment have proven to be effective in the long-term for patients on whom orthodox medicine had already given up. At our Center we are committed in particular to the treatment of cancer, which is still the most frequent cause of death despite the most modern advances in technology.

We have been able to achieve extremely positive results when using the methods of modern hyperthermia (overheating) treatment. For even though hyperthermia is not recognized by orthodox medicine as an effective form of treatment for cancer, it can chalk up a considerable number of successes – either on its own or as a supplement to other treatment.

Furthermore, results from studies show that cancer cells form a special type of protein structure on the surface of the cells when heated to a temperature of approx. 42° C, which does not happen with healthy cells. These protein structures – also known as heat shock proteins – are recognized by the body’s immune system as foreign substances, thus enabling the immune system to destroy them.

So hyperthermia works in two ways: on the one hand by creating thermal damage and on the other hand by stimulating the body’s own immune system.

The impressive effects of hyperthermia have been proven again and again in scientific studies. For example, the university hospital in Erlangen published a study on the effects of regional deep hyperthermia in patients with cancer of the bladder. The results show that five years after treatment 80% of those participating in the study who received hyperthermia treatment were alive, compared to 67% of those who did not receive hyperthermia treatment. The tendency toward invasive growth and metastases was also able to be considerably reduced by hyperthermia. The evaluation of the study showed that there was a direct connection between the frequency of hyperthermia treatment and the survival rate: the more often patients received overheating treatment, the better they became. Further studies in Holland and Italy confirmed these results.

Hyperthermia in connection with chemotherapy and radiation treatmentIt has been proven again and again in recent years that hyperthermia is especially effective in combination with chemotherapy or radiation treatment. The reason for this is that the tumour has a chance to recover and become resistant to the radiation or cytostatics between treatments. This is where hyperthermia comes in: the genetic code of the tumour cells is damaged by the heat, which in turn results in the cells not being able to repair themselves and reproduce. Consequently, the chance of the cancer growing back is considerably smaller.

National and international studies have shown that cytostatics are significantly more aggressive at temperatures above 40°C than at normal body temperature. For instance, it was able to be proven that in some cases the tumour completely receded in patients with certain types of cancer. For patients with other types of cancer hyperthermia treatment was able to prolong their lives and considerably improve their quality of life. This was proven in a randomised study with over 340 patients who had sarcomas in the soft parts of the body. Patients who received chemotherapy together with local hyperthermia treatment lived an average of 32 months without further signs of the disease; in comparison, those patients in the control group without hyperthermia treatment were symptom-free for only 18 months.

The various kinds of hyperthermiaOur clinic offers various types of hyperthermia treatment. These include:

Whole body hyperthermiaPatients in whom metastases have already spread to all parts of the body are often treated with this type of hyperthermia. The entire body except for the head is overheated to a temperature of 39.5 to 40.5°C.

In our experience whole body hyperthermia can be used in particular in the case of inoperable metastases and tumours and for frequently recurring

By Dr. Peter Wolf

Dr. Peter Wolf


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201012

There are no such things as incurable diseases, only incurable patients.” Bernie Siegel

...from previous page

types of cancer. Sometimes, however, this type of hyperthermia can also be used on patients with a contained tumour. In our clinic we treat the following types of cancer with whole body hyperthermia: breast cancer, sarcomas, skin cancer, melanomes and bone metastases as well as carcinomas of the lung, the stomach, the pancreas the gall bladder and the kidney.

Loco-regional hyperthermiaIn this case the overheating is concentrated on the affected organ or tissue, with temperatures reaching between 42 and 44 degrees Celsius. There is less of a strain on the body than with whole body hyperthermia since it does not affect as much of the healthy tissue. At our clinic we have used loco-regional hyperthermia to treat metastases in the peritoneum, recurring tumours in different organs, in particular in the female breast, brain tumours, tumours in the ears, nose and throat areas, the prostate gland and inoperable tumours.

Prostate gland hyperthermia or transurethral radio frequency therapy (TURF)At our clinic we use a special machine, the radio frequency machine PCT2000 made by Onco-Therm, which in addition to the heat creates an electrical field made up of radio short waves. Contrary to the microwaves that were used years ago, the radio short waves have a greater range and cause considerably less damage to healthy tissue.

This type of hyperthermia is used to treat prostate cancer and benign enlargement or infection (prostatitis) of the prostate gland. It consists of placing a catheter in the urethra under local anesthesia, on the end of which is a probe. This probe works like a transmitter, with the receivers of the control signals that transfer the radio frequencies attached to the hip or upper thigh of the patient. The electric waves are sent via the probe to the prostate tissue, where they are transformed into heat. The probe itself remains cool, so there is no danger of injuring the urethra. The thicker the tissue is, the more waves it absorbs and the higher the temperature gets. During transurethral hyperthermia the temperatures reach between 48 and 52 degrees Celsius; a temperature of 49 degrees has proven to be very effective with benign enlargements of the prostate gland and prostate cancer.

Advantages of transurethral hyperthermia• No risky operation

• No full anesthesia

• No side effects like incontinence or impotence

• No complications

What happens during hyperthermia treatmentOne hyperthermia treatment usually takes between one and two hours.

Treatment at our clinic takes place in pleasant surroundings. Preparation for the treatment takes about half an hour, after which the hyperthermia treatment itself takes about 2-3 hours. Our staff stay at the patients’ side and monitor their vital signs throughout the entire treatment. Fortifying Ayurvedic tea and invigorating natural tonic are available. The muted light, soothing music and soft interior colors help patients to relax. In addition, we give patients 25g infusions of vitamin C, which in this concentration helps in damaging the tumour cells. There are also additional infusions with mandelonitrile (B17) and a special infusion for regeneration, detoxification and excretion of waste products.

Since serious methods and a holistic approach are very important to me in treating my patients, my entire staff regularly go on training courses in order to keep abreast of and be able to adequately implement the newest developments and study results without delay. Of course, all of the treatment methods we offer are explained in detail to every patient, including reference to the possibilities of orthodox medicine. As studies have confirmed again and again, combining treatment methods from both schools is often more effective than one type of therapy by itself.



People from all over the world travel to Hanover, Germany to attend Dr Wolf’s Hypothermia Clinic. Full details on therapies offered at the clinic, travel, accommodation and how to book are outlined on the website: www.hyperthermia-centre-hannover.com. The clinic can be contacted by emailing info@dr-peter-wolf.

Side effectsLoco-regional hyperthermia in particular is usually tolerated very well and can be applied without special medication or other preparations. In many cases patients experience localized warmth or heat. In some circumstances this can lead to a stronger feeling of pain. If this happens, the doctor can adjust the treatment accordingly.

Whole body hyperthermia is also well-tolerated by our patients. Due to the length of the treatment, some patients experience some unpleasantness in having to lie prone for a long time, surrounded by water cushions that prevent burns. In general, the body experiences some stress from the heat, which is comparable to being in the sauna, i.e. patients who have good circulation will not have any problems. ✦

This article is from the website www.hyperthermia-centre-hannover.com. Dr. Peter Wolf has a new book which is available online “Innovations in Biological Cancer Therapy: A Guide for Cancer Patients and their Relatives.

Nancy Hassett Dahm is the author of the internationally acclaimed book Mind, Body, and Soul; A Guide to Living with Cancer. Visit her website at www.cancerbook.com

Miracles happen every day to ordinary people living ordinary lives. So why don’t we hear more about these incredible events? We should reveal miracles in order to keep hope alive, to keep faith alive, and to keep the belief in possibilities alive.

Just what exactly is a miracle? The Baker’s Dictionary of the Bible defines a miracle as “an event in the external world brought about by the immediate agency or the simple volition of God.” Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary states that a miracle is “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.” Now that we know what a miracle is, how many people believe they occur? A 2003 Harris Poll survey of 2,201 adults found that 84% of the American public believes in miracles. It’s interesting that many people believe in miracles without ever having experienced one. It is enough to know that it has happened to others for a belief system to manifest itself as a self-held truth.

It was long theorized that science and matters of divine supernatural nature do not mix well. Today, medicine, natural healing, prayer, and miracles are becoming less delineated and more incorporated into the culture of everyday life. Though there are sceptics in our midst, there are more and more professional caregivers who are willing to acknowledge that divine intervention may well be the reason for many unexplained medical recoveries. Scientists have been studying the effects of prayer on the body for decades. Prayer and meditation can have an effect on the physiological function of the body by lowering stress, blood pressure, heart rate, and producing a sense of well being. People who pray and meditate improve their health because of the positive benefits of “tuning out” a stressed environment.

But can prayer and meditation cure an affliction? Can prayer and meditation make miracles happen? This is definitely something that cannot be proven under any circumstances. The closest thing to an explanation is that something has occurred to interfere in the probable course of an event. The subject of the effects of prayer is gaining momentum in the halls of science, where studies are being conducted in the power of prayer to heal. There have been studies conducted on the effects of remote prayer and healing. In these studies, people who are ill are prayed for by others without their knowledge. There is already considerable evidence from these studies to support the idea that remote prayer somehow does make a positive difference. Prayer studies have doubled in recent years. Even the National Institutes of Health is conducting a prayer study.

When a “big” prayer is answered, can we prove it was a miracle? To those of us who have received one, we need no proof. We just know that it was. The experience is one of an internal recognition that is so indescribably profound as to alter your life forever. I revel in the belief that I was blessed with not one, but several miracles during the course of my life. When I was 22 years old, I tried to resuscitate my father, who had suddenly fallen lifeless. After many failed attempts, I feared he was dead. While on my last try, I yelled out in desperation for Heaven’s help. Then my father finally gasped in air! Later, I learned he had suffered a brain haemorrhage and had stopped breathing. He recovered six weeks later without surgery.

Then there is Rosie from California who was diagnosed with uterine cancer that had metastasised to her liver and lung. She was given six months to live. One rainy day at a book-signing event, the artist Thomas Kinkade stopped everything to hold an impromptu prayer session after hearing about Rosie from her friend. She has been cancer-free since that day, four years ago. You can read the entire story of Rosie at www.cancerbook.com.

End-stage “dying” cancer patients (as many as 4.4%) walk out of Calvary Hospital and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York each year – cancer free! Even the doctors at these world-famous facilities cannot explain it. Miracles happen every day – big and small, quiet and loud, known and unknown. We don’t need scientific studies to confirm the power of prayer or the power of the mind to heal the body. Prayer is powerful. Meditation is powerful. All we need is faith, courage, and the belief that anything is possible! ✦

IT’S A MIRACLE!By Nancy Hassett Dahm


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201014

A young woman’s spiritual journey with cancer, faith and healing

For You

RUNI Will

By Jessica Merrells




“I have learnt so much from having cancer that I would never trade the

last year and knowledge I have gained with

anyone. My only aim is to now share it with

others. I have grown in maturity and often feel

far older than my actual age because of the life

lessons I have learnt firsthand which many

people are far from learning at 18.”

Jessica Merrells is 18 years old. She was diagnosed with Acute

Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) last July. She has since published

a book which chronicles both the suffering and insights of her cancer

journey and the spiritual growth and deepening relationship with

God which resulted from her experiences. This is her story.

I was studying in year 12 last year and just after I had completed the semester one exams, on the 4th of July, 2009 I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) and was forced to pull out completely from my schooling. To this day I still get told frequently that I was in a very bad state and should have died. After 13 months of intense chemotherapy and many complications I am now doing much better and have started working part time.

I was achieving high marks in all of my subjects and was striving towards receiving the dux award at the end of the year and getting a TER in the high nineties to easily gain entry into my desired course of Occupational Therapy.

After the 4th of July, 2009 when I was diagnosed with ALL, I remained in Royal Perth Hospital for 3 and a half weeks without being allowed out of my room unless wearing a mask due to my extremely low white blood cells and high chance of getting infections. During this time I lost all my hair and was often in too much pain or too tired to even watch the full length of a movie. I kept thinking that I would just wake up from this nightmare I was in at any second and that life would return to normal, but it never did. It was so surreal, it is something you hear about happening to other people but never think it could actually happen to you.

After this period I was declared to be in remission. Like many others, if no one close to you has ever experienced cancer, you often don’t realise what this actually means. In our situation we thought that was chemo over for me, that I was in the clear and that my life would return to normal from then on. But this was not the case at all. Despite being in remission, we then found out that chemo would continue intensively for 9 months and then I would start the maintenance phase which would continue for another 18 months. This period was just like being in an emotional rollercoaster which in some ways has just kept on going.

Many people always asked me what I did during this time when I was at home receiving chemo and not at school anymore but the truth is I was always too sick to do anything at all. Between hospital visits, blood transfusions, intrathecals and chemo, there were only two moments in the whole 10 months that I actually felt ‘bored.’ It wasn’t that every other moment was spent doing things, they were just spent not even able to contemplate doing anything at all.

I had several central lines and PICC lines put in and taken out due to thrombosis that appeared. It was then decided that I would have a Port-a-catheter put in during October as a more permanent alternative. This was put in on the 22nd of October, 2009 and caused many complications and left me in excruciating pain for many nights on end for the next few months.

The next complication arose in November when I had my next hospital stay due to a dramatic rise in my triglycerides to over 30 and my cholesterol to over 15. After their initial diagnosis of pancreatitis, they later confirmed it was only an acute form of this caused by the chemo drugs I was on.

Early December I then developed a complication after an intrathecal which resulted in mind problems and I was not in any way responding or behaving in my usual manner. Still to this day there are 3 days during that period in which I only recall about half an hour of in total.

My next hurdle came in January 2010 on the 11th when my blood sugar levels went up to 32. I was taken straight to hospital where I was immediately put on IV insulin. I remained on this until it had stabilised at a reasonable level and then when I was allowed to return home after a few days. I then administered my own insulin and was diagnosed with having drug induced diabetes. After already suffering with my


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201016

...from previous page

weekly meditation classes with Bavali Hill

Cost: Free for CSA Members, $5 for non-members. Newcomers welcome. No bookings necessary.

every Monday at CSA from 10am to 11.30am.

Meditation Made Easy

condition for 6 months this was what we thought was the last straw. I became very down and just desperately wanted to return to living a normal life.

Then in February I came very close to being in ICU. I was rushed to hospital when my temperature soared up above the magic number 38. Also being neutropenic at the time developed further complications and after several scans it was recognised that I had Appendicitis. The surgeon came to see me about the operation and was quite hesitant in going ahead with it. I had platelets less than 30, a blood pressure of 80/30, neutrophils of under 0.5 and a temperature of 40.8. These are the conditions that if even one is present in a normal circumstance, the operation is called off, but with appendicitis, if it burst then you are then in an even more fragile state. I was told that more than just the appendix may be affected and that I may wake up after the surgery and have a bag attached to me; something a 17year old girl in an already unstable condition does not enjoy hearing. However the surgery was successful and I did not need a bag. I returned home after 2 weeks and finally during the middle of March completed the intensive phase of my chemotherapy protocol.

No amount of words on a piece of paper could ever describe my past year in any way that would show the severity and depth of sorrow felt throughout it. No one else will ever understand the pain, anguish and despair that I or anyone like me goes through. This, I believe, would be a common feeling amongst others who have also struggled along any trialling journey. However, somehow reading about someone else’s struggles and realising you are not alone in your misery was and is a great comfort to people.

Looking back now I have learnt so much from my past year that I would never trade the last year and knowledge I have gained with anyone. My only aim is to now share it with others. I have grown in maturity and often feel far older than my actual age because of the life lessons I have learnt firsthand which many people are far from learning at 18. ✦

For You I Will RUN is a book compiled from my father’s emails as well as my own thoughts during the period of my intense chemotherapy phase which lasted 9 months.

For You I Will RUN gives insight into the topics of ‘God and suffering’ and ‘the unanswered prayer’. It explores the matter of what faith really means-even after the point of being tested and put through fire. It is easy to trust God in the sunny joyful times but what do we do during the valleys? This is when holding onto our faith is the most important but becomes substantially harder. Faith is more than an opinion about God. It does not alter with circumstance nor disposition nor attitude. What we learn through these valleys is that faith is, or least should be, constant through anything and everything in life. We should continue to trust in God because He is still there and we still believe that.

Sometimes, when we feel like we have been abandoned by God, that we are not being answered and we feel like Jeremiah when he said, “Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? Will you be to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails.” (Jer 15:8)

It is then we are left in a place where we are almost forced to just believe. Believe that God is still with us, that He still cares and that what He told us before; that He will not leave us nor forsake us, is still valid no matter how distant He may feel. We are desperate for Him to answer like He did to Jeremiah, when He says, “I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you.” (Jer 15:20)

But sometimes He doesn’t respond. We don’t all hear this clear voice answer us and we are forced to just believe that this is true. We have to have faith, because our faith is all we have left.

These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:7)

Jessica MerrellsTo preorder a copy of Jessica Merrell’s book For You I Will RUN send an email to: [email protected].

For You RUNI Will



every Monday at CSA from 10am to 11.30am.

The Body’s Miraculous Self-Healing May Not Be as Rare as Doctors Believe

Spontaneous remission – where the body miraculously

heals itself without medical help – is far more common than doctors realise, a new

report has discovered. Up to 19 percent of some cancers

heal themselves, which baffles doctors – but it may provide the key to understanding the power

of the mind

Spontaneous remission grabbed the headlines last November when AIDS victim Andrew Stimpson’s disease reversed itself.

But a look at the research on spontaneous healing shows that miracles are not as rare as we think — it’s simply that there has been no way of collating and recording the events, according to a report from the investigative health journal What Doctors Don’t Tell You (WDDTY).

Doctors sporadically reported cases of spontaneous remissions (SRs) throughout the 20th century, but it was two non-medical researchers who, 15 years ago, took on the huge task of collating all the reports into one database. Caryle Hirshberg and the late Brendan O’Regan both worked at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). The pair assembled 1860 SR cases, and they made some astonishing discoveries.

Nearly 7 per cent of all cancers involving the digestive organs or bone or soft tissues spontaneously cure themselves. Some 12 per cent of cancers involving the skin and the lymph nodes heal themselves, and an astounding 19 per cent of cancers – nearly one in five – involving the genitourinary organs undergo spontaneous cures. Some are rare conditions such as Addison’s disease (adrenal-gland breakdown), but even common ones such as hypothyroidism or blocked arteries can ‘miraculously’ disappear.

In the 1960s, doctors were surprised to discover that up to 90 per cent of patients with ‘early diabetes’ were completely clear two years later – with no treatment at all. And most of the patients hadn’t lost any weight either.

WDDTY researchers found that one in 20 cases of infectious and parasitic diseases, problems of the circulatory and endocrine systems, and metabolic and immune disorders can self-heal, as does one in every 25 nervous system or mental disorders, and problems involving the sense organs.

What’s more, the number of cases is probably vastly underreported. One Dutch study found little difficulty in finding SR cases, raising the question of “whether the phenomenon of SR is as rare as is reported in the literature”.

The WDDTY report also reveals the powerful role the mind plays in the spontaneous reversal of illness. Perhaps the best-known and most dramatic example of mind-over-matter was the case of ‘Mr Wright’, whose terminal cancer was completely cured – twice – by nothing more than his belief in the treatment. On one occasion his physician injected water into his veins, telling him that it was an amazing new cancer cure. His belief in his physician’s words was enough for the cancer to disappear.

Although extreme, it’s just one instance of the so-called ‘placebo effect’, where belief in a medicine is enough to cure, which is only now becoming understood through the burgeoning new science of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). Strong biochemical connections between the brain and immune system have been found, explaining how thoughts and emotions can affect the body.

PNI research has legitimised the mind’s role in SRs such as the so-called ‘miracle cures’ at places like Lourdes in France. In its 120-year existence as a shrine, Lourdes has produced thousands of claimed cures, of which about 60 truly defy medical/scientific explanation.

Other well-documented cases of cancer SRs involve major changes in the patient’s attitude towards life. One researcher looked at 18 cases of cancer regression and noted “a marked favourable psychosocial change one to eight weeks before the shrinkage in their tumours”. These changes included religious conversion, reconciliation with a long-hated mother, a sudden marriage and the death of a long-hated husband. ✦

From: What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You website: www.wddty.com. This article and others like it are available when you regisgter to become a free member.

Spontaneous Remission


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201018

Mother Theresa did it. Mahatma Gandhi did it. Spiritual teachers from John the Baptist to Martin Luther King did it.

Prayer-walking, also known as “walking meditation,” has been practised by poets, philosophers and holy people from many religious traditions for centuries. Now this age-old discipline is experiencing a modern revival as stressed-out, harried Americans seek to commune with the divine while they shape up, enhancing fitness of body and soul.

“In our culture, we love to do two things at once, so we can be as efficient, effective and practical as possible,” says Linus Mundy, author of “The Complete Guide to Prayer-Walking” (Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997). Prayer-walking is especially helpful during busy times, like the holidays, he says, because it provides an easy way to be active, relieve stress and embrace the true spirit of season–all at the same time.

Prayer-walking is simply “taking a stroll with your soul,” says Mundy. “There is no wrong way to do it.”

It can be a meandering saunter down a garden path or a brisk march around a track. The point is “to walk with prayerful intentions,” he says, “realising that your real journey is an interior one.”

Ideally, prayer-walking is done outdoors in nature, where you can experience a divine presence in the whisper of wind in the trees, the

Striding towards Spiritual Fitness

soaring flight of a bird or the scent of freshly-fallen rain. But even if you can only get to the mall, Mundy says, you can still see the Creator’s handiwork in human nature.

“We are all busy-busy and hurry-hurrying in our society, yet we know we have to slow down, physically, emotionally, spiritually,” he says. “The wonder of prayer-walking is that it lets us keep moving, keep acting and doing on the outside while we slow down, quiet down, ‘centre down’ on the inside.”

Mundy, 51, first started walking to lose weight more than a decade ago. During his exercise walk one day, he recalls, “I found myself walking, then praying, then prayer-walking.” The experience inspired him to write an eight-page pamphlet called “Taking a Prayer-Walk,” published in 1992 as part of Abbey Press’s “Care Notes” series. The pamphlet’s popularity led to a small book, “Prayer-Walking” (Abbey Press, 1994), and then to his larger guide released last year.

While there’s no way of knowing how many people prayer walk, spiritually focused walking is increasingly popular in varied locales, from health spas to religious retreats. At Canyon Ranch Spa in the US, walking meditations are led by a “spiritual awareness educator.” At Plum Village, a retreat community in southwestern France, Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hahn has been leading walking meditations for years and teaches the practice in his poetic guide, “The Long Road Turns to Joy” (Parallax Press, 1997).

Taking a ‘prayer walk’ is good for your body, mind and soul

By Carol Krucoff



A new study reveals that physical exercises is more than just good for your heart and body weight: it also prevents endometrial cancer and breast cancer according to a study involving 850 women. The more the study subjects exercised, the less their odds of being diagnosed with cancer, even if they were considered “at risk” for the disease.

This study confirms what many health-minded professionals have known all along: physical exercise is a proven strategy for remaining free of chronic disease. It helps with more than just cancer, too, of course: diabetes can frequently be prevented through physical exercise alone. With exercise, high cholesterol disappears, heart health improves dramatically, joint flexibility is greatly enhanced, and people lose excess body fat.

The fact that exercise is now being shown to prevent cancer is important for one more reason: it proves that cancer is systemic, not local. In other words, cancer is a whole-body failure, not just a specific tumour or lesion that can be surgically removed or targeted with radiation. Because cancer is a systemic failure, it must be treated holistically (literally!) – that is, the whole person must be considered: their physical health, immune system function, mental health, spiritual health, and of course their day to day activities such as eating and exercising. Only through a whole-person approach can any healer (accredited or otherwise) offer real hope for reversing cancer.

Now here’s some good news: when cancer is treated holistically and the patient gets involved by radically altering their dietary and exercise habits, most cancers can be reversed without drugs or surgery. In the real world, however, very few patients actually make the changes needed to achieve good health. I know many people who have suffered from cancer, and those who die from the disease are consistently the people who refuse to change their diet or engage in regular exercise. Those who quickly recover from the disease are those who pull out all the stops and make the “big changes” like giving up all soft drinks for life, eating no processed foods, and engaging in physical fitness training for 2-3 hours per day. ✦

Physical Exercise Prevents Cancer (but only if you actually do it)

By Mike Adams. From: www.naturalnews.com.

Focused walking can be an excellent stress-buster because it prompts a physiologic calming effect known as “the relaxation response,” says physician Herbert Benson, the mind/body medicine pioneer who coined the term Relaxation Response in the late 1960s and is now president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Boston. The opposite of the body’s “fight or flight” reaction to stress, the relaxation response is a tranquil state in which blood pressure is lowered and heart rate, breathing rate and metabolic rate are decreased.

It can be elicited, Benson says, by doing two things:

Repeating a word, sound, prayer or doing a repetitive physical activity like walking or running.

Gently brushing aside distracting, everyday thoughts to return to your repetition.

“If you do this regularly, for 10 to 20 minutes, once or twice a day, you can reverse the negative physiological effects of the fight or flight response,” Benson says. While it’s possible to elicit the relaxation response without moving, he notes, “when you exercise and simultaneously focus your mind, your exercise becomes more efficient–that is, you require less energy to do physical work. And our research also shows that focused walking is associated with reduced anxiety and diminished negative thoughts.”

Including prayer as part of a focused walk can help activate the therapeutic effect of belief, says Benson, who explores “the biology of belief” in his book, “Timeless Healing” (Fireside, 1997). “People feel better when they use a word, sound or prayer that conforms to their belief system,” he says. Protestants might use “The Lord is my shepherd,” Jews “Sh’ma Yisroel,” Catholics “Hail Mary, full of grace,” Moslems “Insha’Allah,” Hindus “Om” and the non-religious “Nature heals.”

During this season of peace on Earth, stride toward inner peace with a focused walk using these simple steps:

Breathe consciously. Notice each breath and the number of steps you take as you breathe in and breathe out. If you take three steps during an in-breath, say, silently, ‘One, two, three,’ or ‘In, in, in,’ one word with each step. If you take four steps per inhale, count ‘One, two, three, four’–whatever is comfortable.

Switch to using meaningful words, instead of numbers, to keep time with your steps. Walk in time with a phrase such as “Breathing in, I calm myself; breathing out, I smile.”

Keep your mind in the present. If past anxieties or future worries pop into your head, gently let them go and return your thoughts to the present moment.

Feel free to stop and look at something beautiful. But be sure to continue breathing consciously as you admire.

Don’t worry if you’re doing your focused walk “right.” If you feel peace and joy while you’re walking, you’re practising properly. ✦

Originally published in The Washington Post. Carol Krucoff, RYT, is a Yoga Therapist at Duke Integrative Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, where she creates individualized yoga practices for people with health challenges. A certified personal trainer and award-winning health journalist, Carol has created a new audio home practice CD, “Healing Moves Yoga,” that brings the nourishing experience of her popular yoga classes into the comfort of your own home. This mindful practice is geared to beginners as well as seasoned practitioners and includes basic relaxation and breathing practices that can be done lying still – in bed or in a chair. For more information, visit www.healingmoves.com.

Striding towards Spiritual Fitness


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201020

fridaFrida Kahlo de Rivera (July 6, 1907

– July 13, 1954) was a Mexican

painter, born in Coyoacán. Best known

for her self-portraits, Kahlo’s work is

remembered for its “pain and passion”,

and its intense, vibrant colours. Her

work has been celebrated in Mexico as

emblematic of national and indigenous

tradition, and by feminists for its

uncompromising depiction of the

female experience and form.

kahlo

One of the most obvious and important reasons that

artists make art is to satisfy the need for self-expression.

Frida Kahlo used self-portraits in the style of native folk

art express her own suffering. As a teenager, she suffered

a tertrible accident when the bus she was riding on was

smashed by a tram. Her spine and pwelvis were shattered

and she spent the rest of her life in constant pain, deespite

thirty-five operations. Kahlo’s willingness to use art to

reveal her inner life gives her work great impact. For Kahlo,

the act of creating such art must have had a cathartic,

healing effect.

Text from: The Power of Art by Richard Lewis



fridakahlo

“I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.” Frida Kahlo


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201022

What the Chemical IndustryDOESN’T Want You to Know about EVERYDAY PRODUCTS

The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, India has tried to get Dow to own up to its poisoning of the village of Bhopal for over two decades, and accuses the multinational of using strong-arm tactics to intimidate the habitants of Shinde Vasuli into submission to build another chemical experimentation facility near their Indian village.

In 2002, Dow Chemical interrupted internet use for thousands, and closed down hundreds of unrelated websites after intimidating Verio into shutting down the ISP of a critical parody website.

And more recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forced Mary Gade to quit her job as head of the EPA’s Midwest office in the US after her interactions with Dow Chemical. Gade had been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Michigan plant. The company had been dumping the highly toxic and persistent chemical into local rivers for most of the last century.

In an interview on May 1, 2008, Gade said of her forced resignation: “There’s no question this is about Dow. I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I’m proud of what we did.”

These examples are just a few drops in a very large bucket.

BPA and Your Immune SystemThat low-level exposure to BPA can be hazardous to your health has been established (but hotly debated and denied by industry) for over 10 years. It’s just now reaching the tipping point.

According to Washington State University reproductive scientist Patricia Hunt, “exposure to low levels of BPA – levels that we think are in the realm of current human exposure – can profoundly affect both developing eggs and sperm.”

But fetuses and infants are not the only ones at risk. Researchers are also finding that BPA exposure can affect adults. A study published in the Environmental Health Perspectives in April 2008, discovered that BPA promotes the development of Th2 cells in adulthood, and both Th1 and Th2 cells in prenatal stages, by reducing the number of regulatory T cells.

This could have a profound effect on your health as Th1 and Th2 are the two “attack modes” of your immune system. Based on the type of invader, your immune system activates either Th1 or Th2 cells to get rid of the pathogen. Th1 (T Helper 1) attacks organisms that get inside your cells, whereas Th2 (T Helper 2) goes after extracellular pathogens; organisms that are found outside the cells in your blood and other body fluids.

When your Th2 are over-activated, your immune system will over-respond to toxins, allergens, normal bacteria and parasites, and under-respond to viruses, yeast, cancer, and intracellular bacteria, because as one system activates, the other is blocked.

FDA Favours Industry Science… Again! Pressured by a growing number of health and consumer advocates, lawmakers and scientists, an FDA advisory panel met on September 15th to decide whether BPA should be reassessed in terms of food safety. If the answer had been yes, it could have put an end to BPA-laced food packaging. It was not.

I often point out just how powerful and influential the pharmaceutical industry is. The global market for pharmaceuticals was worth more than $693 billion in 2009. But the pharmaceutical industry is easily dwarfed by the global chemical industry, which lives somewhere in the $3 trillion-a-year-neighbourhood.

About 6 billion pounds of Bisphenol A (BPA) is produced annually, generating at least $6 billion in annual sales alone.

BPA – which mimics the sex hormone estradiol – is a building block for polycarbonate plastics and tough epoxy resins. BPA-containing plastic is so pervasive it shows up in many places you might not have considered, such as in the linings of canned goods, where it leaches into your food and drink.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) found BPA in more than half of the canned foods and beverages sampled from supermarkets across the U.S.

Cans of infant formula have been shown to be some of the worst offenders; just one to three servings can contain BPA levels that have caused serious adverse effects in animal tests.

Dow Chemical – Roughnecks in SuitsChemical companies like Dow are not above using threats and forceful intimidation when plain money doesn’t do the job. (Monsanto’s ruthless “seed police” are another giant swinging a big club, with a reputation for suing small farmers out of their homesteads.)

But this is not the first time Dow Chemical’s less than ethical tactics have been exposed.

By Dr Joespeh Mercola



True to form, the U.S. FDA upheld their decision that BPA is safe and can remain in food packaging, including infant formula containers and baby bottles, despite the more than 100 independent studies linking the chemical to serious disorders in humans, including:

Prostate cancer Breast cancer Diabetes Early puberty Obesity, and Learning and behavioural problems

The Scientists & Engineers For America Action Fund Website said about the verdict:

The agency based their decision on two large multigenerational studies funded by the American Plastics Council (part of the American Chemistry Council) and the Society of the Plastics Industry.

As for the large body of literature on low dose effects of BPA that originally raised concerns about the chemical’s ability to disrupt reproductive, neurological and metabolic development and function at levels of exposure within the range found in humans, the FDA broadly found these studies to be inadequate or of limited utility in evaluating safety.

By relying solely on the industry-funded studies, the agency reaffirmed the trade associations’ ability to control what is considered to be reliable, credible science.

Where to Find BPA-Free ProductsClearly our regulators are either asleep at the wheel, or too busy planning how not to lose their hard earned bribes in a crashing stock market.

Fortunately, some companies are taking note of consumer demand and are increasingly offering products that don‘t contain BPA.

Personally, I too am doing everything I can to avoid this menacing chemical, and will be offering glass water bottles for sale on www.mercola.com later this year. (They have neoprene sleeves to protect them from breaking.) Glass is the safest and most inert way to store your water, and far better than ANY plastic.

Here are several other resources where you can buy various types of BPA-free products:

• Amazon.com’s BPA-free section lists water bottles, baby bottles, and sippy cups.

• Rubbermaid says that some of its food storage containers and water bottles contain BPA, while others do not.

• Nalgene now offers BPA-free water bottles.

• Brita, which makes water filtration products, says that its pitchers and filters don‘t contain BPA.

• SC Johnson, which makes Saran brand wraps and Ziploc bags and containers, says that it doesn‘t use BPA in its products.

• The Children‘s Health Environmental Coalition offers tips for how to spot plastic household products with and without BPA.

• Consumer Reports describes its BPA test results and provides advice on choosing safe plastics.

• The Z Recommends blog posted an updated guide in February that lists children‘s feeding products that don‘t contain BPA. ✦

From the newsletter of Dr Mercola: www.mercola.com.

A new study commissioned by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) found that many leading “natural” and “organic” brand shampoos, body washes, and lotions contain the carcinogenic contaminant 1,4-Dioxane.

1,4-Dioxane is considered a chemical “known to the State of California to cause cancer.” It is a byproduct of the cancer-causing petrochemical Ethylene Oxide, which is used as part of a short-cut process called Ethoxylation, which makes harsh ingredients milder.

1,4-Dioxane is also suspected of being a kidney toxicant, neurotoxicant and respiratory toxicant, among others, according to the California EPA. It is also a leading groundwater contaminant.

Some of the leading organic and natural brands found to contain 1,4-Dioxane include:

JASON Pure Natural & Organics Giovanni Organic Cosmetics Kiss My Face Nature’s Gate Organics

To avoid 1,4-dioxane, OCA recommends reading ingredient labels and avoiding products with indications of ethoxylation, which include: “myreth,” “oleth,” “laureth,” “ceteareth,” any other “eth,” “PEG,” “polyethylene,” “polyethylene glycol,” “polyoxyethylene,” or “oxynol,” in ingredient names. ✦

Sources: Organic Consumers Association

Carcinogens Found in “Organic” Personal Care Products

“Your body is your temple... keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in”

~ BKS Iyengar


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201024

Your arsenal of home remedies is about to get a lot spicier. Though herbs have been used for hundreds of years to heal, scientists are finally starting to substantiate these plants’ abilities to alleviate arthritis pain, reduce high blood sugar and cholesterol, and help with many other conditions. They’re even discovering amazing new powers in some herbs, such as the ability to kill cancer cells and help problem drinkers curb their alcohol intake.

“Herbs and other natural remedies can be as effective as traditional treatments, often without the same negative side effects,” says Roberta Lee, MD, medical director of the Continuum Centre for Health and Healing at Beth Israel Medical Centre in New York City. So here are 10 superhealers you’ll want to add to the all-natural section of your medicine cabinet and even to your favourite recipes! Folding one or two of them into your cooking every day can yield big benefits.

The Best Healing Herbs

By Nancy Kalish

New science shows these herbal power-healers can ease pain, prevent Alzheimer’s, and ward off cancer and heart disease.

Turmeric Ease arthritisA heaping helping of curry could relieve your pain. That’s because turmeric, a spice used in curry, contains curcumin, a powerful anti-inflammatory that works similarly to Cox-2 inhibitors, drugs that reduce the Cox-2 enzyme that causes

the pain and swelling of arthritis, says Lee.

It might also: Prevent colon cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. According to a small 2006 clinical trial conducted by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, curcumin can help shrink precancerous lesions known as colon polyps, when taken with a small amount of quercetin, a powerful antioxidant found in onions, apples, and cabbage. The average number of polyps dropped more than 60% and those that remained shrank by more than 50%. In a 2006 study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers at UCLA also found that curcumin helps clear the brain of the plaques that are characteristic of the disease.

Maximize the benefits: For general health, Lee recommends adding the spice to your cooking whenever possible. For a therapeutic dose, James A. Duke, PhD, author of The Green Pharmacy, suggests 400 mg of curcumin extract three times daily, right in line with what subjects in the colon polyp study took (480 mg of curcumin and 20 mg of quercetin, three times a day).

CinnamonLower blood sugar In a recent German study of type 2 diabetics, taking cinnamon extract daily successfully reduced blood sugar by about 10%.

It might also: Lower cholesterol. Cinnamon packs a one-two punch for people with type 2 diabetes by reducing related heart risks. In another study of diabetics, it slashed cholesterol by 13% and triglycerides by 23%.

Maximize the benefits: To tame blood sugar, study subjects took 1 g capsules of standardized cinnamon extract daily, while those in the cholesterol study took 1 to 6 g. But keep in mind that a large amount of the actual spice can be dangerous, so stick with a water-soluble extract. Terry Graedon, PhD, coauthor with her husband, Joe, of Best Choices from the People’s Pharmacy, recommends the brand Cinnulin PF (available in health food stores).

RosemaryAvoid carcinogensFrying, broiling, or grilling meats at high temperatures creates HCAs (heterocyclic amines), potent carcinogens implicated in several cancers. But HCA levels are significantly reduced when rosemary extract (a common

powder) is mixed into beef before cooking, say Kansas State University researchers. “Rosemary contains carnosol and rosemarinic acid, two powerful antioxidants that destroy the HCAs,” explains lead researcher J. Scott Smith, PhD.



The Best Healing HerbsIt might also: Stop tumours. Rosemary extract helps prevent carcinogens that enter the body from binding with DNA, the first step in tumour formation, according to several animal studies. When researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign fed rosemary extract to rats exposed to dimethylbenzanthracene, a carcinogen that causes breast cancer, both DNA damage and tumours decreased. “Human research needs to be done,” says study author Keith W. Singletary, PhD. “But rosemary has shown a lot of cancer-protective potential.”

Maximize the benefits: To reduce HCAs, Smith recommends marinating foods in any supermarket spice mix that contains rosemary as well as one or more of the spices thyme, oregano, basil, garlic, onion, or parsley.

GingerAvert nauseaGinger can prevent stomach upset from many sources, including pregnancy, motion

sickness, and chemotherapy. “This is one of Mom’s remedies that really works,” says Suzanna M. Zick, ND, MPH, a research investigator at the University of Michigan. A powerful antioxidant, ginger works by blocking the effects of serotonin, a chemical produced by both the brain and stomach when you’re nauseated, and by stopping the production of free radicals, another cause of upset in your stomach. In one study of cruise ship passengers traveling on rough seas, 500 mg of ginger every 4 hours was as effective as Dramamine, the commonly used OTC motion-sickness medication. In another study, where subjects took 940 mg, it was even more effective than the drug.

It might also: Decrease your blood pressure, arthritis pain, and cancer risk. Ginger helps regulate blood flow, which may lower blood pressure, says Zick, and its anti-inflammatory properties might help ease arthritis. Ginger extract had a significant effect on reducing pain in all 124 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, in a study conducted at the Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Centre and the University of Miami. Those same anti-inflammatory powers help powdered ginger kill ovarian cancer cells as well as or better than traditional chemotherapy, at least in the test tube, found a 2006 study by the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Centre. Although further testing is needed, Zick and the study’s authors are excited about its prospects: “Our preliminary results indicate that ginger may have significant therapeutic benefit for ovarian cancer patients.”

Maximize the benefits: For nausea, ginger is best taken before symptoms start, at least 30 minutes before departure, say the Graedons. They recommend capsules containing 500 to 1,000 mg of dried ginger every 4 hours, up to a maximum of 4 g daily.

Holy BasilCombat stressSeveral animal studies back holy basil, a special variety of the plant you use in your pesto sauce, as effective at reducing stress by

increasing adrenaline and noradrenaline and decreasing serotonin. This is no surprise to Pratima Nangia-Makker, PhD, a researcher at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, whose mother and grandmother relied on a tea made from the leaves of holy basil to relieve indigestion and headaches.

It might also: Inhibit breast cancer. First in test tubes and then in mice, a tea made of holy basil shrunk tumours, reduced their blood supply, and stopped their spread, found Nangia-Makker, who plans to study the effects in humans.

Maximize the benefits: For stress relief, try holy basil extract from New Chapter or Om Organics, widely available in health food stores. To aid in breast cancer treatment, Nangia-Makker advises drinking this tea daily: Pour 2 cups boiling water over 10 to 15 fresh holy basil leaves (other varieties of basil won’t work) and steep 5 minutes. Remove the leaves before consuming. If you are being treated for breast cancer, be sure to check with your doctor.

St. John’s WortSoothe your worriesYou probably know that research has confirmed this herb’s power to relieve mild to moderate depression and anxiety as

effectively as many drugs without a lot of the side effects.

It might also: Help you snooze more soundly. St. John’s wort not only contains melatonin, the hormone that regulates our sleep-wake cycles, but it also increases the body’s own melatonin, improving sleep, says a report from the Surgeon General.

Maximize the benefits: For both mood and sleep problems, author Duke recommends a supplement containing at least 0.3% hypericin (the active phytochemical) per capsule or 300 mg of the extract to be taken three times daily. Warning: St. John’s wort has been shown to interact with several prescription medications, so be sure to check with your doctor before taking it.

GarlicLower cancer riskHigh consumption of garlic lowered rates of ovarian, colorectal, and other cancers, says a 2006 research review in the American Journal

of Clinical Nutrition. A 2006 Japanese clinical trial also found that after a year of taking aged garlic extract supplements, people with a history of colon polyps saw a reduction in the size and number of the precancerous growths detected by their doctors.

It might also: Provide cardiovascular benefits. Garlic contains more than 70 active phytochemicals, including allicin, which many studies have shown decreases high blood pressure by as much as 30 points. Garlic may help prevent strokes as well by slowing arterial blockages, according to a yearlong clinical study at UCLA. In addition, patients’ levels of homocysteine, a chemical that leads to plaque buildup, dropped by 12%.

Maximize the benefits: Crushed fresh garlic offers the best cardiovascular and cancer-fighting benefits, says Duke. But you’ll need to down up to five cloves each day. Try Kyolic aged garlic extract capsules (1,000 mg), the product used in many of the studies. ✦

From: health.msn.com. For rules on using herbs for self-healing safely see the article on the page 28.


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201026

Summer Minestrone With Fresh Basil You can finish this hearty summer soup with slivered fresh basil

or with pistou, the Provençal version of pesto. (It’s pesto without

the pine nuts.) A Parmesan rind, simmered in the soup and then

removed, provides great depth of flavour without additional fat.

On a hot summer day in Italy, the soup might be served at room

temperature or just barely warm. This recipe serves 6-8 people.

To make the soup1 tablespoon olive oil1 medium onion, chopped2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped1 celery stalk, chopped4 large garlic cloves, minced or pressed3/4 pound zucchini, diced1 pound tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped, or 1 (14-ounce) can chopped tomatoes, with liquid1 medium turnip, peeled and dicedA bouquet garni consisting of 1 Parmesan rind, 1 bay leaf, 3 sprigs parsley and 3 sprigs thyme, tied together with kitchen string or bundled into a piece of cheesecloth1 (15-ounce) can cannellini or borlotti beans, drained and rinsed6 ounces green beans, cut into 1-inch lengths 1/2 cup soup pasta, such as elbow macaroni or broken spaghetti, or 3/4 cup penneSalt & freshly ground pepper to taste1/4 cup slivered fresh basil leaves, or 1/2 cup pistou (recipe below)Freshly grated Parmesan for garnish

1. Heat the olive oil to medium-low range in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven, and add the onion, carrots and celery. Cook, stirring about three minutes until vegetables begin to soften, and add 1/2 teaspoon salt. Continue to cook, stirring often, until tender, about five more minutes. Add the garlic, stir together for

Ingredients2 (15-ounce) cans chick peas, drained and rinsed1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, or a combination of parsley and other herbs, such as chives, tarragon, marjoram, basil, or mint1 small red bell pepper, chopped2 medium tomatoes, diced 4 scallions, white and light green parts only, sliced (optional)6 kalamata olives, pitted and quartered lengthwise1 ounce feta cheese, crumbledTo make the dressing:1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, champagne vinegar, or sherry vinegar1 small garlic clove, minced or put through a press1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds, lightly toasted and crushed or coarsely groundSalt and freshly ground pepper4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil2 tablespoons plain low-fat or nonfat yogurt:

Method1. Toss together the salad ingredients. Whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, garlic, cumin seeds, salt, pepper, olive oil and garlic. Toss with the chick peas. Advance preparation: The salad can be assembled several hours before you wish to serve it. Keep in the refrigerator. Leftovers are good the next day. Yield: Serves four as a main dish, six as a side.

Chickpea Salad If you like hummus, you’ll like chickpeas. They’re a versatile

legume, welcome in salads and soups, stews and pastas. This

pretty summer salad is quickly assembled. You can also make it

in winter without the tomatoes.

light, textured foods to delight the senses

Email your healing recipes and food news to the editor:

[email protected]

summer recipes



There are many healing properties and uses for basil that have proven themselves by surviving the test of time.

Basil has sedative and calming qualities. A basil sandwich, for example, will help to alleviate anxiety.

Use basil as a gargle for clearing mouth infections – pop a handful of basil in 250ml of boiling water and allow to stand for 5 minutes.

Basil healing properties will help relieve the pain of tired and aching feet. Soak 2 cups of fresh basil leaves in 2 litres of water. Allow to cool and immerse feet for a good long soak. You can also crush the leaves and massage into your heels.

It has been said, that a drop of basil juice from the leaves of the plant, has been very effective in the healing and relief of ear inflammation.

Basil is also an antiseptic and antibacterial herb. Its healing properties can be used as a digestive aid to relieve nausea and an upset stomach.

Basil is antispasmodic, so aids in the healing and relief of headaches and migraines, vertigo and even colic.

As a culinary herb, basil is one of the most cleansing and helps with healing kidney and urinary problems.

Basil is a source of beta-carotene, estragole, eugenol, borneol and Vitamin C. ✦

From: ww.essential-herb-garden.com

Healing Properties of Basil

about a minute, then mix in the tomatoes. Keep stirring until the tomatoes have cooked down and smell fragrant, about 10 minutes. Stir in two quarts water, the turnip, zucchini and the bouquet garni, and bring to a simmer. Add 2 teaspoons salt. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 45 minutes. Stir in the canned beans. Taste and adjust salt. Remove the bouquet garni.

2. While the soup is simmering, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add the green beans. Boil five minutes, until tender but still bright green. Transfer to a bowl of ice water, allow to cool, and drain. Retain the cooking water in case you want to thin the soup.

3. Add the pasta to the soup and simmer another 10 minutes, or until the pasta is cooked al dente. Stir the cooked green beans into the soup. Grind in pepper, and adjust seasonings. Soup should be savory and rich-tasting.

4. Stir in the basil or pistou, or place a spoonful of pistou in each bowl and stir in. Serve in wide soup bowls, with a sprinkling of Parmesan over the top.Advance preparation: The soup can be made through step 2 a day or two ahead. It improves overnight. If you’re making the soup ahead, cook the pasta separately and add to the soup, along with the green beans on the day you are serving it.

To make the pistou2 cups basil leaves2 garlic cloves, blanched if desired1/2 teaspoon kosher salt1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil1 ounce Parmesan, freshly grated (1/4 cup tightly packed)

Grind the basil leaves to a paste in a mortar and pestle with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Remove from the mortar and pestle, and place the garlic and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt in the mortar. Grind the garlic to a paste. Return the ground basil and slowly work in the olive oil. Stir in the Parmesan. Alternatively, place all of the ingredients except the Parmesan in a food processor fitted with the steel blade or a blander, and blend until smooth. Stir in the Parmesan. From: New York Times. Recipes by Martha Rose Shulman

There’s new evidence that a sprinkle of oregano on your pizza or pasta may do more than just add flavour. It turns out that the delicious herb is also a powerful antioxidant. U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers have determined that herbs, particularly those in the oregano family, have even higher antioxidant activity than vegetables, fruits, and spices.

Antioxidants are compounds that neutralise harmful free radicals – cancer-causing molecules generated in our bodies when we’re exposed to pesticides, smoke, fumes, and other pollutants. By binding to and removing the free radicals, antioxidants may help prevent cancer, heart disease, and other diseases.

Most fruits and vegetables are chock full of antioxidants. And the good news is it now looks like certain herbs – some of our favourites – may outshine even the healthiest vegetables.

“Some herbs should be considered as regular vegetables,” says study leader Shiow Y. Wang, PhD, in a news release. “People should use more herbs for flavouring instead of salt and artificial chemicals.”

Unfortunately, people are still eating too few fruits and vegetables to reap real antioxidant benefits, while continuing to eat too much artery-clogging fat. ✦

From: WebMD Medical News. By Liza Jane Maltin.

Herbs Pack a Big Anti-Cancer Punch


WELLNESS NEWS


September 201028

six simple tips toimprove digestion naturally

1. Drink Your Water... But Not During MealsThe digestive system needs to be well hydrated like the rest of the body, but downing glasses of water near mealtime will impair digestive strength and may cause upsets. Water is best sipped lightly during a meal. Otherwise you should get your water in at least 15-30 minutes before a meal and preferably at least an hour after.

2. Eat CleanThis one should be obvious but is included for good measure. The body wasn’t meant to digest chemical food additives, artificial sweeteners or extruded grains. Eat whole, natural foods as much as possible so your body can concentrate on assimilating the good stuff instead of eliminating the bad stuff.

3. Go RawIt may not be necessary for every food that passes your lips to be uncooked, but including some raw foods in your diet is a great way to get natural enzymes and nutrients that might otherwise be denatured by heat. Getting at least some raw, live foods in with every meal will give your digestion a break and your body a more complete set of nutrients.

4. Get FermentedFermentation allows probiotics, enzymes and nutrients to flourish and multiply. Foods that have been fermented (like sauerkraut) are so potent only a few tablespoons each day will provide the body with a hefty digestive punch that can make a world of difference in gastrointestinal health.

5. Try a Little BitternessBitter herbs were commonly used in traditional cultures as a digestive aid and even to treat general ailments. Herbs like dandelion, gentian and yarrow are just a few examples of bitter herbs that are usually combined in a tincture to use directly before or after meals to stimulate bile production.

6. Say No to StressStress cuts off circulation to the digestive tract and can impair the body’s ability to utilize the food you eat. Learn to reduce or manage the stress in your life if your digestion is poor. Before meals, take a deep breath and eat slowly, eat consciously. Try not to rush meals, shovel food down your throat or grab hurried bites between trips to the copy machine. Mealtime should be relaxing and enjoyable. Your digestion will thank you. ✦

From: www.naturalnews.com, September 2010. By Elizabeth Walling.

Rules For Using Herbs for Self-HealingNatural substances often work like drugs in the body. It is advisable to follow these precautions when using herbs:

RULE: DON’T ASSUME IT’S SAFE. Herbs are not regulated by the FDA for safety or efficacy. So search the label for a seal of approval from a relevant Association, which indicates it has been approved by certified academic laboratories.

RULE: TALK WITH YOUR DOCTOR. It’s best to tell your doctor if you’re considering supplements. Some herbs can interact with certain medications, including those for high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression, as well as blood thinners and even OTC drugs.

RULE: DON’T OVERDO IT. More isn’t necessarily better and could be dangerous. Always follow dosing instructions. ✦

Food is the foundation of good

health. And digestion is the

foundational tool for using food

to achieve good health. Without

proper digestion, our bodies may

never receive the nutrients we

work so hard to include in our

diets. Poor digestive function can

cause nutrient deficiencies and

numerous health problems like

fatigue, emotional instability, skin

disorders and more.

Improving digestive function

could very well be one of the

most important steps you take

in improving your health, and

fortunately it can also be one

of the easiest if you follow the

right protocol. Here are some of

the most simple ways you can

make big improvements in your

digestive health.

Eating meditation is an example of spiritual purification through experiencing pleasure with mindfulness and equanimity. Through it your baseline of fulfillment in daily life can be permanently elevated. Since it involves a tangible pleasant object of concentration, it makes a good compliment to sitting meditation where unpleasant sensations are sometimes present.

Of course, sometimes unpleasant sensations may arise during eating. For example, if you eat something that you dislike, waves of tension, aversion and cringing may spread through the body. Although it is not necessary to seek such an unpleasant experience, it is helpful to remember that by bringing mindfulness and equanimity to those sensations, deep psychological blockages such as separation, fear and alienation are being broken up.

Eating slowly and mindfully may also cause one to become impatient and driven to gobble. If this should happen be happy! It represents a significant opportunity to work through the drivenness and achieve more ease in daily life.

If during the eating process you feel impatient and driven, try to detect this in terms of tangible “driver sensations” throughout your body. What is true of the ripples of pleasant sensation that bring satisfaction is also true of the tensions and pressures that produce drivenness: they may be subtle and cover much or all of your body.

Observe them with precision and acceptance. In this way drivenness, not only around eating, but in all aspects of your life, will get worked through. Life becomes lighter and easier. Your actions become dynamic and zestful, arising from a fundamental inner peace, as opposed to being driven by subliminal suffering.

When approaching eating as a form of meditation it is useful to pay attention to your posture. Try to keep your spine straight while at the same time allowing the whole body to “settle in.” Rather than

“meditating while eating”, try to get the sense that you are in a deep meditation sit during which you just happen to be eating.

Eating slowly will help you focus and also perhaps bring up driver sensations. In order to deepen your state, you may want to occasionally pause, put down your utensils and close your eyes for a period of time. After you have completed your meal, it is instructive to sit for a while and savour the delicate vibrations of satisfaction that suffuse your body after pleasant experiences. In daily life we seldom have an opportunity to contact this significant phenomenon.

You may find that a rhythm develops as you eat. You are aware of the tactile sensations in your hand and arm as you reach for the food, then the flavor qualities and texture sensations in different parts of your mouth and the smells going up to your nose, then your whole body reacting to the tastes and smells and finally the gradual subsiding of taste, smell and body reaction. Then the cycle begins again. Drivenness and impatience may arise just before a bite, or as the flavor and pleasure subsides after a bite, or throughout the whole process. Try to “love your impatience to death” by patiently observing it.

Two sources of distraction during eating meditation are thinking and preoccupation with what’s happening around you. Remember: your defined object of meditation is taste, smell and body sensations. As soon as you feel the tug outward into the sights and sounds around you, gently return to taste, smell and body sensations. As soon as you feel the tug inward to planning, judging, fantasising and memory...lovingly return to taste, smell and body sensations.

If you are willing to put in some effort, you can enter a kind of slow motion, “eternal present” while eating. The simplest fare then becomes a celestial samadhi! ✦

From: here-and-now.org

Each time you take a bite, taste sensations spread over the palate, tongue, cheeks and throat and smell

spreads into your nose. If the tastes are pleasant, it will cause a rippling of pleasant sensation throughout

your body. An analogy may be helpful. When a pebble is tossed into a pond, it causes a splash where it lands

and from that splash ripples spread through the whole pond. The morsel of food is like the pebble; your body

is like the pond. The explosion of tastes in your mouth is the splash and the associated reaction of your whole

body is the rippling. This global reaction may be subtle but remember, when it comes to working with feeling,

“subtle is significant.” If you can detect the ripples and let them come and go without clenching you will

greatly deepen your sense of satisfaction.

Eating Meditation



six simple tips toimprove digestion naturally

1. Drink Your Water... But Not During MealsThe digestive system needs to be well hydrated like the rest of the body, but downing glasses of water near mealtime will impair digestive strength and may cause upsets. Water is best sipped lightly during a meal. Otherwise you should get your water in at least 15-30 minutes before a meal and preferably at least an hour after.

2. Eat CleanThis one should be obvious but is included for good measure. The body wasn’t meant to digest chemical food additives, artificial sweeteners or extruded grains. Eat whole, natural foods as much as possible so your body can concentrate on assimilating the good stuff instead of eliminating the bad stuff.

3. Go RawIt may not be necessary for every food that passes your lips to be uncooked, but including some raw foods in your diet is a great way to get natural enzymes and nutrients that might otherwise be denatured by heat. Getting at least some raw, live foods in with every meal will give your digestion a break and your body a more complete set of nutrients.

4. Get FermentedFermentation allows probiotics, enzymes and nutrients to flourish and multiply. Foods that have been fermented (like sauerkraut) are so potent only a few tablespoons each day will provide the body with a hefty digestive punch that can make a world of difference in gastrointestinal health.

5. Try a Little BitternessBitter herbs were commonly used in traditional cultures as a digestive aid and even to treat general ailments. Herbs like dandelion, gentian and yarrow are just a few examples of bitter herbs that are usually combined in a tincture to use directly before or after meals to stimulate bile production.

6. Say No to StressStress cuts off circulation to the digestive tract and can impair the body’s ability to utilize the food you eat. Learn to reduce or manage the stress in your life if your digestion is poor. Before meals, take a deep breath and eat slowly, eat consciously. Try not to rush meals, shovel food down your throat or grab hurried bites between trips to the copy machine. Mealtime should be relaxing and enjoyable. Your digestion will thank you. ✦

From: www.naturalnews.com, September 2010. By Elizabeth Walling.

Rules For Using Herbs for Self-HealingNatural substances often work like drugs in the body. It is advisable to follow these precautions when using herbs:

RULE: DON’T ASSUME IT’S SAFE. Herbs are not regulated by the FDA for safety or efficacy. So search the label for a seal of approval from a relevant Association, which indicates it has been approved by certified academic laboratories.

RULE: TALK WITH YOUR DOCTOR. It’s best to tell your doctor if you’re considering supplements. Some herbs can interact with certain medications, including those for high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression, as well as blood thinners and even OTC drugs.

RULE: DON’T OVERDO IT. More isn’t necessarily better and could be dangerous. Always follow dosing instructions. ✦

Food is the foundation of good

health. And digestion is the

foundational tool for using food

to achieve good health. Without

proper digestion, our bodies may

never receive the nutrients we

work so hard to include in our

diets. Poor digestive function can

cause nutrient deficiencies and

numerous health problems like

fatigue, emotional instability, skin

disorders and more.

Improving digestive function

could very well be one of the

most important steps you take

in improving your health, and

fortunately it can also be one

of the easiest if you follow the

right protocol. Here are some of

the most simple ways you can

make big improvements in your

digestive health.

Eating meditation is an example of spiritual purification through experiencing pleasure with mindfulness and equanimity. Through it your baseline of fulfillment in daily life can be permanently elevated. Since it involves a tangible pleasant object of concentration, it makes a good compliment to sitting meditation where unpleasant sensations are sometimes present.

Of course, sometimes unpleasant sensations may arise during eating. For example, if you eat something that you dislike, waves of tension, aversion and cringing may spread through the body. Although it is not necessary to seek such an unpleasant experience, it is helpful to remember that by bringing mindfulness and equanimity to those sensations, deep psychological blockages such as separation, fear and alienation are being broken up.

Eating slowly and mindfully may also cause one to become impatient and driven to gobble. If this should happen be happy! It represents a significant opportunity to work through the drivenness and achieve more ease in daily life.

If during the eating process you feel impatient and driven, try to detect this in terms of tangible “driver sensations” throughout your body. What is true of the ripples of pleasant sensation that bring satisfaction is also true of the tensions and pressures that produce drivenness: they may be subtle and cover much or all of your body.

Observe them with precision and acceptance. In this way drivenness, not only around eating, but in all aspects of your life, will get worked through. Life becomes lighter and easier. Your actions become dynamic and zestful, arising from a fundamental inner peace, as opposed to being driven by subliminal suffering.

When approaching eating as a form of meditation it is useful to pay attention to your posture. Try to keep your spine straight while at the same time allowing the whole body to “settle in.” Rather than

“meditating while eating”, try to get the sense that you are in a deep meditation sit during which you just happen to be eating.

Eating slowly will help you focus and also perhaps bring up driver sensations. In order to deepen your state, you may want to occasionally pause, put down your utensils and close your eyes for a period of time. After you have completed your meal, it is instructive to sit for a while and savour the delicate vibrations of satisfaction that suffuse your body after pleasant experiences. In daily life we seldom have an opportunity to contact this significant phenomenon.

You may find that a rhythm develops as you eat. You are aware of the tactile sensations in your hand and arm as you reach for the food, then the flavor qualities and texture sensations in different parts of your mouth and the smells going up to your nose, then your whole body reacting to the tastes and smells and finally the gradual subsiding of taste, smell and body reaction. Then the cycle begins again. Drivenness and impatience may arise just before a bite, or as the flavor and pleasure subsides after a bite, or throughout the whole process. Try to “love your impatience to death” by patiently observing it.

Two sources of distraction during eating meditation are thinking and preoccupation with what’s happening around you. Remember: your defined object of meditation is taste, smell and body sensations. As soon as you feel the tug outward into the sights and sounds around you, gently return to taste, smell and body sensations. As soon as you feel the tug inward to planning, judging, fantasising and memory...lovingly return to taste, smell and body sensations.

If you are willing to put in some effort, you can enter a kind of slow motion, “eternal present” while eating. The simplest fare then becomes a celestial samadhi! ✦

From: here-and-now.org

Each time you take a bite, taste sensations spread over the palate, tongue, cheeks and throat and smell

spreads into your nose. If the tastes are pleasant, it will cause a rippling of pleasant sensation throughout

your body. An analogy may be helpful. When a pebble is tossed into a pond, it causes a splash where it lands

and from that splash ripples spread through the whole pond. The morsel of food is like the pebble; your body

is like the pond. The explosion of tastes in your mouth is the splash and the associated reaction of your whole

body is the rippling. This global reaction may be subtle but remember, when it comes to working with feeling,

“subtle is significant.” If you can detect the ripples and let them come and go without clenching you will

greatly deepen your sense of satisfaction.

Eating Meditation

By Paulo Coehlo

Well-known author of The Alchemist, Paulo Coehlo, inspires us to face obstacles without fear, to go further, climb higher, and realise our dreams!

Manual for

Climbing Mountains

every Monday at CSA from 10am to 11.30am. weekly meditation classes with Bavali HillMondays 10 – 11.30am. Newcomers welcome


A. Choose the mountain you want to climb: don’t pay attention to what other people say, such as “that one’s more beautiful” or “this one’s easier”. You’ll be spending lots of energy and enthusiasm to reach your objective, so you’re the only one responsible and you should be sure of what you’re doing.

B. Know how to get close to it: mountains are often seen from far off – beautiful, interesting, full of challenges. But what happens when we try to draw closer? Roads run all around them, flowers grow between you and your objective, what seemed so clear on the map is tough in real life. So try all the paths and all the tracks until eventually one day you’re standing in front of the top that you yearn to reach.

C. Learn from someone who has already been up there: no matter how unique you feel, there is always someone who has had the same dream before you and ended up leaving marks that can make your journey easier; places to hang the rope, trails, broken branches to make the walking easier. The climb is yours, so is the responsibility, but don’t forget that the experience of others can help a lot.

D. When seen up close, dangers are controllable: when you begin to climb the mountain of your dreams, pay attention to the surroundings. There are cliffs, of course. There are almost imperceptible cracks in the mountain rock. There are stones so polished by storms that they have become as slippery as ice. But if you know where you are placing each footstep, you will notice the traps and how to get around them.

E. The landscape changes, so enjoy it: of course, you have to have an objective in mind – to reach the top. But as you are going up, more things can be seen, and it’s no bother to stop now and again and enjoy the panorama around you. At every meter conquered, you can see a little further, so use this to discover things that you still had not noticed.

F. Respect your body: you can only climb a mountain if you give your body the attention it deserves. You have all the time that life grants you, as long as you walk without demanding what can’t be granted. If you go too fast you will grow tired and give up half way there. If you go too slow, night will fall and you will be lost. Enjoy the scenery, take delight in the cool spring water and the fruit that nature generously offers you, but keep on walking.

G. Respect your soul: don’t keep repeating “I’m going to make it”. Your soul already knows that, what it needs is to use the long journey to be able to grow, stretch along the horizon, touch the sky. An obsession does not help you at all to reach your objective, and even ends up taking the pleasure out of the climb. But pay attention: also, don’t keep saying “it’s harder than I thought”, because that will make you lose your inner strength.

H. Be prepared to climb one kilometre more: the way up to the top of the mountain is always longer than you think. Don’t fool yourself, the moment will arrive when what seemed so near is still very far. But since you were prepared to go beyond, this is not really a problem.

I. Be happy when you reach the top: cry, clap your hands, shout to the four winds that you did it, let the wind – the wind is always blowing up there – purify your mind, refresh your tired and sweaty feet, open your eyes, clean the dust from your heart. It feels so good, what was just a dream before, a distant vision, is now part of your life, you did it!

J. Make a promise: now that you have discovered a force that you were not even aware of, tell yourself that from now on you will use this force for the rest of your days. Preferably, also promise to discover another mountain, and set off on another adventure.

K. Tell your story: yes, tell your story! Give your example. Tell everyone that it’s possible, and other people will then have the courage to face their own mountains. ✦




Climbing Mountains

every Monday at CSA from 10am to 11.30am. weekly meditation classes with Bavali HillMondays 10 – 11.30am. Newcomers welcome


For more details contact CSA reception on 9384 3544

Reflexology appointments with

Udo Kannapin are available on

Wednesdays between

10am – 2pm.

Please book in advance 9384 3544

Reflexology

The benefits of reflexology include

the release of toxins, chemicals

and hormones that, in effect, promote

relaxation and overall well-being

Paulo Coelho’s bestselling fable, The Alchemist, identifies many of the challenges and fulfillments of the spiritual quest. Here is an excerpt on listening to your heart.

“The boy continued to listen to his heart as they crossed the desert. He came to understand its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. He lost his fear, and forgot about his need to go back to the oasis, because, one afternoon, his heart told him that it was happy. ‘Even though I complain sometimes,’ it said, ‘it’s because I’m the heart of a person and people’s hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of the moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.’

“ ‘My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,’ the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

“ ‘Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.’

“ ‘Every second of the search is an encounter with God,’ the boy told his heart. ‘When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I’ve known that every hour was part of the dream that I would find it. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I’ve discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve.’ “

From: The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. Published by Penguin.

following your heart...

Do not stand at my grave and we ep. I am not ther e. I do not sle ep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain...

In fond memory of those who have shar ed part of their journey with us...

Claire VincentTim CollinsMardi Palmer

A near new ACORN 120 StairLift worth $10,500 has been donated to the CSA. We are selling this item to

raise funds for CSA. Phone to make an offer ($2,000+) Contact CSA on 9384 3544.

Do not stand at my grave and we ep. I am not ther e. I do not sle ep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain...

In fond memory of those who have shar ed part of their journey with us...

Claire VincentTim CollinsMardi Palmer

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Wellness News October 2010