Swimming Against the Tide (or not), part 2

The topic of discussion in my wellness classes this month is hydration. Many, if not most, folks in the US are chronically dehydrated, and I’d hazard a guess that almost all folks who have chronic illnesses are either chronically dehydrated or have a level of toxicity in their bodies that would be greatly improved by drinking more water. I’m often surprised (not sure why, since I’ve heard it so often) when I hear how little water people drink.

Our bodies evolved drinking pure water. Our bodies are composed of 70% water. Water is necessary to every biochemical reaction that takes place in every cell in our bodies–low energy anyone? have some water! Especially relevant to preventing and healing from disease, water is necessary for processing metabolic waste and toxins out of our bodies, via urine, sweat, water vapor from the lungs, and in the stool. Water is the foundation of life, and we have innate mechanisms for driving us to drink water to feed all of these functions.

So how do we subvert these innate mechanisms and end up with drinking behaviors that are not only not supportive of hydration, but work directly against it? What causes us to drink coffee, tea, energy drinks, sports drinks, soda, diet soda, other sugary or artificially sweetened drinks, fruit juice, beer, wine, and cocktails? Well, there are obviously a lot of different drivers for drinking these things. Let’s just take caffeinated drinks as an example here and look at the drivers.

Caffeinated drinks enable us to push ourselves harder and get more done, which is one of the major compulsions of our culture, despite the fact that it diminishes our health. They also are dehydrating, because they have a diuretic action, causing us to pee more, and they suppress our thirst response, causing us to drink less than we need. They place a burden on our detoxification systems, specifically the liver and kidneys. They exacerbate anxiety and insomnia in many folks. They suppress appetite in the short-term, and later result in increased hunger (part of which is actually thirst), thus encouraging eating more. And caffeinated beverages are, nevertheless, a prominent feature of our culture (and many other cultures).

Here’s where the tide comes in. We place a premium on productivity in our culture. We tend strongly toward overwork, and then there’s only so much that the body/mind is capable of, unassisted by stimulants, so we assist it with caffeine. We also may be working in careers that are not feeding our spirit, and imbibing a stimulant every day can help to generate a sensation of motivation and even excitement, if you drink enough.   So we have a strong dominant tide that encourages caffeine consumption.

There are other cultural influences as well. Consider the warm, fuzzy commercials for coffee and even for caffeinated soda, that create a relationship in the mind between caffeine and things that are important to us, like human connection and love. There’s the fact that there’s a coffee shop on every corner (I live in Seattle, so this is a literal phenomenon here), there are soda machines everywhere, billboards, magazine ads . . . . We’re saturated with the idea of caffeine, even if we don’t consciously process all that exposure.

The most fun thing for me to observe is the closer community influence. I have interaction with a few disparate communities in Seattle. In one of these communities, whenever I mention the idea that a person could be drinking too much coffee (or other caffeine), folks look at me like I’m a Martian, or like I’m spouting blasphemy. In another of these communities, if a person is seen with a Starbucks cup, folks will look down their nose at them, both because they are drinking “corporate coffee” and because they may be overtaxing their adrenal glands. Now, there could be people out there who are completely unaffected by what those around them think, but I haven’t achieved that completely yet. I sometimes do hop in to Starbucks to get some black tea. When I feel other people looking at my cup derisively, I feel defensive inside (see, like the way I just told you that I’m drinking tea and not coffee). Those societal “opinions” play a role in shaping our behaviors.

So we have all of these influences working against our natural instinct to drink pure water. We can try to swim against the dominant tide of our culture, which is exhausting. What happens when we step out of that dominant tide? When we cultivate a mindful awareness of the drivers and choose not to be influenced by them? When we choose to honor nature and our bodies by giving them what they want and need? I invite you to step into the new tide of drinking pure water. Connect with water in nature by sitting by a stream or hiking around a lake, listen to what your body is saying about water vs. other drinks, and see how it goes!

 

Swimming Against the Tide (or not), part 1

Mainstream culture in the US has an insidious (although, in no way subtle) and powerful agenda: to get us to consume, consume, consume, and to subvert our innate sense of when enough is enough, be it food or information or goods or services. The success of this agenda depends on the members of the culture not doing too much thinking about why it is that we are behaving the way we are. And the way that the message is sent, by the media, corporate advertising, our government, and even our educational system sometimes, is deliberately designed to effect behavior by circumventing our thinking minds–the messages appeal instead to our innate biological/instinctual/survival-based imperatives: fear of starvation (eat/consume more!), the evolutionary drive to propagate the species (sex!), and fear of isolation and not being protected by a community group (keep up with the Jones’, don’t stray from the norm!).

I remember two distinct moments in my life when the seed was planted and fertilized in favor of questioning our cultural behaviors and really delving into why it is that we behave the way we do, especially when it comes to consumerism. The first was when I learned that the phenomenon we now have in all our cities, of folks sitting endlessly in traffic commuting too and from work on freeways, exponentially worsening our air quality and wasting countless hours of time, was spurred in large part by a corporation, General Motors, presenting a vision to the American public at the 1939 World’s Fair, that would result in the American Dream of suburbia, and to benefit GM, a car in every driveway. That has to be the most incredibly successful long-term marketing strategy in history. They followed it up by buying up and closing down a number of streetcar/train services in big cities. Good for GM, but not necessarily so good for the rest of us in many ways.

The second was when I learned how it came to be a cultural norm for women to shave their legs and underarms. To go into all the details of that would take too long here, but the upshot is that it was a massive marketing campaign after WWI, designed to make women feel bad about the natural state of their bodies, in the interest of selling razors to the half of the US population that had never needed them up until then. Double the demand for your product–also an incredibly successful long-term marketing strategy!

These two pieces of history may or may not be compelling to you. Maybe you can take one aspect of your daily behavior and look at it closely, try to figure out why it is that you do that behavior. Thanks to the scads of information available on the internet, you might be able to find some history about it. I kind of wonder just how much of our daily behavior is driven by a message that a corporate marketing campaign embedded in us. That would be an interesting study.

When we start (or continue) the process of changing our behaviors, it can feel like we are swimming against the tide of all this history and all these familiar surroundings–we are stepping outside of the norm, which can feel unsafe in some ways. I mean, if everyone is doing it, it must be OK, right? Wrong. But that feeling of swimming against the tide can create an impression that the behavior change is difficult. Note that I said it creates an impression of difficulty–it does not actually make the change difficult, unless we let it.

I feel like one way to be unaffected by the dominant culture is to realize that there’s another tide that we can jump into–we don’t have to continue fighting against a tide that really doesn’t have our best interests at heart. To keep fighting it takes a lot of energy. To save our energy for other things, we simply have to remove ourselves from that tide of the pop culture and put ourselves into a different place. Does this mean I have to go live in a cave somewhere in the middle of nowhere like the Buddha? Nope. But you do get to decide what you are exposed to every day. As an experiment, see what happens if you stop watching TV, or stop listening to pop music, or stop reading pop culture magazines, and instead spend time in nature, or in whole foods cooking classes, or gardening, or a whole host of other life activities that are unconnected to American pop culture.

Part 2 of this post, coming in a few days, will explore how culture affects eating and drinking behaviors . . .

 

Letting a Cold Run Its Course

Lots of folks here in Seattle are currently experiencing the latest respiratory infection (or two?) that is (are?) going around. How we all deal with these experiences within ourselves is as variable as people are in general. I’m here today as a cheerleader for the common cold! Any of my patients reading this will not be surprised.

Having a good, robust cold or other acute illness about once a year and letting it run its course while supporting the natural process (I’ll explain what I mean by that below) is actually a positive thing for your long-term health. It allows the immune system to exercise a wider range of its function than it does on a daily basis–like a tune-up for the immune system, or like taking the immune system to the gym. A cold allows the body to discharge things that build up over time–all that mucus is serving a purpose–to carry waste products out of the body. And any acute illness provides us the opportunity to take some time out from our busy lives and rest and renew ourselves. So the bodily experience of having a cold isn’t just about fighting off an annoying bug; it’s about tonifying the immune system, cleaning house and hitting the reset button, so to speak. It serves a purpose, if we let it.

So what are ways to let a cold run its course while supporting the natural processes that are taking place?

1. Rest, rest, rest: this includes both extra sleep and spending awake time resting, which requires staying home

2. Drink lots of water: this supports the body’s efforts to flush waste products out, as well as keeping the mucous membranes moist from the inside, so the immune cells there can function properly

3. Avoid sugar and refined carbohydrates: sugar and carbs suppress immune function and feed microbes, ’nuff said. Note that fruit juice is also in the “avoid” category here, as it’s a dense source of sugar. Drinking a ton of orange juice is not the answer to getting past a cold.

4. If you have a fever of 100 degrees F or lower, then continue eating normally, placing emphasis on lots of veggies and some whole fruits, as well as broths and soups. If your fever is above 100 degrees F, abstain from food until it’s lower, and just have water, broths and herbal teas.

5. Avoid taking any medications that will suppress the symptoms of the cold, such as over-the-counter decongestants, fever reducers, or cough suppressants. These all essentially put up a road block in front of the body’s natural process and prevent it from running its course to the end.

6. If you have a low-grade fever, especially if you also have a stiff neck, then soak in a hot bathtub and then spend some time under the blankets to allow your body time to have a good sweat.

There are lots of other supportive things that can be done to move a cold along without suppressing it, but generally, I don’t advise those things unless a person has frequent and repetitive infections that indicate their immune system might need some help. Otherwise, it’s best to let nature run its course with minimal intervention. If, after a week, symptoms of a cold are still sticking around and don’t seem to be improving or are getting worse, then visit your naturopath for additional natural support. Also, if symptoms of your cold are so severe that they are preventing you from getting sleep, e.g., you’re drowning in mucus when you lay down, or you’re coughing a great deal, then talk with your naturopath about ways to naturally sooth these symptoms so you can sleep, because sleep is essential to healing!

 

Relaxing Herbal Teas

A few days ago, one of the participants in my Being Well program asked whether I tend to recommend herbal sleep aids. I responded with an email to all the program participants discussing the fact that I don’t, generally, tend to do this, because I prefer to help folks figure out why it is they aren’t sleeping well, and work on that root problem instead of putting a band-aid on a sleep problem via a sleep aid. And then I went home and had my after-dinner cup of chamomile tea!

This is one of my rituals, and while it’s not really intended to help me sleep, because I generally don’t need help in that department, it surely is one of the things I do to help me unwind and relax from my day, as well as to help me digest my dinner (chamomile is a mildly bitter digestive stimulant, as well as being relaxing). Having bedtime (or end of the day) rituals to take yourself from a working/productive state into a relaxed, ready for sleep state, can be very useful, especially if you tend to have trouble letting go of the day when you lay down to sleep.

There are lots of great herbal teas at the grocery store to use for such a ritual (and for sleep encouragement). The gentlest ones tend to be chamomile-based, but also have other herbs for flavor, and the stronger ones tend to have herbs like catnip (it has a different effect on us than on cats!), passionflower, hops, and sometimes valerian. Some brands to look out for (I have a strong preference for organics) are Traditional Medicinals, Tazo, Yogi Tea, and Choice Organics, all of which have really nice relaxing herbal teas.

Maybe an evening cup could help you with relaxing toward the end of your day and getting to sleep easier. Not too close to bedtime, or you run the risk of being up in the bathroom soon after you lay down!

 

What Does “Healthy” Mean, Anyway?

Do you consider yourself healthy or unhealthy? Are there folks around you who you consider healthy or unhealthy? How much is “enough” when it comes to behaviors that support health vs. behaviors that might diminish health? And why does it even matter?

Folks have lots of different motivations when it comes to the desire to be “healthy”: the desire to avoid dying prematurely (or the fear thereof), the desire to be around as long as possible for one’s children or other family members, the desire to feel well and get the most out of life, the desire to look good and be attractive, the desire to age well and not fall prey to chronic/degenerative diseases, etc. Some folks might tell you that they desire to be healthy, when really it’s just an auto-pilot idea that’s been implanted by friends, family, or the media, and really they’re not quite sure what the motivator is. And some folks don’t have much motivation toward the idea of “healthy” at all, perhaps because they have found other things in their life experience that are more compelling to them!

The World Health Organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” That’s a pretty tall order, no? But I think I would strive for even more, for myself and for anyone who comes to see me for help with their health and who is motivated for more. (As a side note, I was told by my acupuncturist some years ago, “what’s enough for most people just isn’t enough for you”) For me, a couple of ideas are missing from the WHO definition.

First, the idea of “health” being a “state” is sort of strange to me. Health is a pretty fluid thing in my view (although, I guess fluid is a state!). To me, health feels like something more dynamic, and the experience of being human involves that dynamic having its ups and downs. I think about this in the same way I might consider mood–if your mood is always on even keel, sort of in the middle, then you get to not consciously feel lots of “negative” emotions, but you also sacrifice the experience of great joys and bliss. A “healthy” body/mind/spirit, in my view, has periods when it demonstrates its joy of living via great energy, positive outlook, creativity, and freedom from pain and other symptoms, but it also has its moments when it needs to exercise its other capacities, which might involve the organism not feeling so well for a bit.

The other aspect that I see missing in the WHO definition is the experience of connection to spirit. Now, granted, this is the WHO, and they were probably trying hard to be as secular as possible in their definition. But to me, in order for the body and mind to be well, the spirit has to be well also. In fact, I believe that the spirit being well precedes the body and mind being well. If we are not connected in to what brings us bliss in life, what really feeds our spirit, what we believe our purpose here to be, then the mind and body aren’t going to be able to set things into a healthy dynamic on their own.

What makes you passionate about being “healthy”? What motivates you toward behaviors that support your health? Or better yet, what motivates you, period?

 

A Felt-Sense of Your Vitality

One of the most basic ways that naturopathic doctors support healing in their patients is by helping them to cultivate greater vitality. We call it “the vital force” or “the healing power of nature” in keeping with the roots of our medical tradition. In Chinese medicine, we call it “chi” or “qi”, and in Ayurvedic medicine and the yogic tradition, it’s referred to as “prana”. Deficiency of vitality, or qi, or prana, leads first to mild symptoms that we might not even notice and are easy to ignore, and if it continues, then it leads to chronic illness. Think of it like the gas tank on your car (as much as I hate to compare the vital force to fossil fuel!)–when the tank has enough fuel in it, the engine works, when it gets low, the engine sputters, and when it’s empty, the engine doesn’t want to go anymore.

Some of these terms have found their way into Western culture and are now somewhat familiar, although how the concept can be used to help us be healthier and have a higher quality of life has not really come home to us in Western culture yet. We get pieces of it: “eat right”, “exercise” . . . . But as compared to some other cultures, we don’t have any widespread practices that daily support our vitality. For example, in both Germany and Russia, hydrotherapy (predominantly in the form of cold water applications) is used to stimulate vitality–this practice is woven into the fabric of their cultures. Perhaps the absence of such practices is one of the reasons behind the poor overall state of health in the US.

I feel like the main reason US culture doesn’t carry such practices is that we are, generally speaking, cut off from how we are feeling in our bodies. Of course, when we are ill, we may be in touch with a feeling that our vitality is low. There may also be days when our energy is particularly high and everything is going well that we may be in touch with a feeling that our vitality is high. But what about all the spaces in between?

There are lots of ways that we can support our vitality–eating good quality food, breathing fresh air, soaking up sunshine, hydrotherapy, meditation, movement, just to name a few. But how do we know that these things are helping us? The first step is to learn to place attention throughout each day on how we are feeling through our entire being–body, mind and spirit. We might ask: “what am I feeling that might be getting in the way of my complete enjoyment of my life, of doing all the things that I want to do?” With that, or similar, questions, we might then notice the level of our vitality each day–the felt-sense of our vitality–and as we use various types of self-care practices to stimulate our vital force, we can gauge how our vitality is increasing.

 

Healthy Boundaries and Sleep

Establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries is a challenge for many of us, especially when it comes to self-care. Our culture, and we as members of it, in many ways don’t really value activities that are considered non-productive, and many self-care habits and rituals might fall into this category. Sleep is one of the best examples. We are a nation of sleep-deprived folks, on average, and our nation’s health statistics reflect this, as sleep is one of the most important contributors to health. Establishing healthy boundaries around sleep is one of the most beneficial things we can do for ourselves.

So what does that mean: “healthy boundaries”? Well, the body functions best when it follows a routine each day, going to sleep at about the same time each night, and waking at about the same time each morning. Culturally, we’ve got a lot of things that can get in the way of that. The boundaries around our sleep time are challenged by the internet, text messages, emails, television and movies, among many other less technological things, like children, and our tendencies to pile too many things on our TO DO lists.

Setting a healthy boundary around sleep entails making your sleep time a priority, and deciding to be mindful of that priority above other things that might draw our attention away from it. One of my habits is, about an hour before my bedtime goal, to ask myself, “what do I need to take care of in the next hour in order to get myself into the bed on time in a relaxed way?”

Another aspect of a healthy boundary is that it has flexibility when it’s important. The idea of a healthy boundary is not to have a rigid, black-and-white rule that is followed regardless of all external circumstances. Sometimes, there are things that are more important than sleep, although hopefully they are more the exception than the rule. To have a healthy boundary around sleep time calls for us to acknowledge that we are the ones who have the power to make a conscious and informed decision about what is most important, given the knowledge we have about how important sleep is to our overall state of health.