Following on the last article here Alternative Cures: Meditation, we’re going to take a short look at an about turn in the fortunes of sunlight and its links to cancer.
In this case, however, you can use the sun not to risk causing skin cancer, but to help you prevent breast and colorectal cancer.
Recent research by the University of California has revealed that something like 350,000 cases of breast cancer and 250,000 cases of colorectal cancer that currently occur worldwide could actually be prevented by people getting more vitamin D.
As we all know vitamin D is produced in the body when exposed to the sun. Now we know that too much exposure to the sun can risk contraction of skin cancer, but in smaller doses it is beneficial.
You actually need a mere 15 minutes of sun exposure a day in order to boost your vitamin D levels enough to help your body ward off these cancers. In winter of course, this is not always something that is uppermost in your mind. But if you can get outside f0r 15 minutes at lunchtime, when the sun is at its strongest (even if it’s behind clouds) , this is enough for most people’s skin to produce a large amount of vitamin D.
That exposure time is much less than it would take for the skin to burn, so the risk of getting skin cancer is almost negligible. Its all about getting the right balance between enough sun exposure to produce sufficiant vitamin D to stave off breast and colorectal canvers and avoiding skin cancer.
In my last post Cracking Skin? An Alternative Cure Approach, I looked at ways to rehydrate your skin and get it looking and feeling more healthy. Now I’m going to take a look at one alternative cures style method of reducing your chances of cardiovascular disease.
Meditation as a way of relaxing and beconing more in touch with yourself is as ancient as the hills, but using this alternative cures and lifestyle enhancing technique has many more health benefits that the popularly realized ones.
If you have any worries about your cardiovascular health, then using transcendental meditation on a daily basis for about twenty to thirty minutes can really lower your your risk of cardiovascular disease without making any change whatsoever in your diet or exercise routines or habits. A US study back in 2000 discovered that by practising transcendental meditation daily, this lead to a significant decrease in the thickness of potentially dangerous fatty substances deposited onm the artery walls. That means that transcendental meditation could potentially reduce the risk of heart attacks by as much as 11% as well as reducing the risk of strokes by 15%.
It has been noted that the calming affect the mantras which are repeated during transcendental meditation helps to lower the blood pressure and stress hormone levels while at the same time reducing psychological stress. These are, of course all associated with cardiovascular disease, so transcendental meditation is a good alternative cures style technique to use on a daily basis.
Following on from my last post Alternative Cures Help Prevent Hangovers, which was mainly about avoiding a hangover the alternative cures way, this post looks at dry, cracking skin and what can be done about it.
Well, dry skin, while often caused by the environment we are in, such as a centrally heated house or an air conditioned office, is also the direct result of the scourge of modern living, lack of sufficient plain water being drunk.
When we dehydrate our bodies even slightly, our skin suffers similar dehydration and naturally feels drier to the touch and in severe cases can crack and feel terrible. Drinking plenty of plain water every day is the only sure.fire way to stop this happening. We should aim for around two litres of water a day, although that can include tea and herbal drinks, but not coffee, which dehydrates you, or beer which also dehydrates you. Fizzy drinks are just bad for you in so many areas full stop.
Water is best absorbed by the body when it is drunk at room temperature, not chilled.
Another alternative cures style way you can help your skin to look and feel good is to eat avocados. Yes, I know they’re supposed to be fattening and they are if you eat too many, but they contain the valuable vitamins A, C and E as well as iron, potassium and magnesium along with natural oils that give a boost to tired looking skin!
Its no accident that mashed avocados are used as a moisturising face mask!
Ok, following in from my last insomniac fuelled post Too Many Late Nights?, a sort of follow up in the very best alternative cures style is to give you a preventative measure when you intend to have one or two “measures” too many!
If you’re hell-bent on giving yourself a hangover, then you can at least do something positive to reduce the effects of it. It really is better to prevent the worst side-effects of too much alcohol by doing one of three things.
1. Don’t drink so much alcohol in the first place. Wise words at the start of th night, but halfway through they go out the window, so you might as well not bother with that one!
2. Drink plenty of fluids during your alcohol session! yes it sounds absurd especially if you’re drinking beer, which is pretty much 95 plus percent water anyway! Still drink plain water in between pints and you’ll stop yourself dehydrating (the 5% or so alcohol will still make the other 95% leave your body plus some more!).
3. Before you go out, eat a wholemeal tuna sandwich and wash it down with a large glass of semi-skimmed milk!
The last one needs a little explaining!
Tuna contains a liver boosting substance called taurine, which will help your liver to process the alcohol more efficiently. The wholemeal bread has fibre which will activate your digestive system. The fat in the milk is a perfect stomach liner to help cut down on the damage the alcohol would otherwise to the stomach lining. Also helpful are milk thistle supplements in tablet form, which contain bioflavanoid molecules called silymarin which enhance the removal of harmful toxins by the liver.
Terry Didcott is a qualified hypnotherapist and web designer among other things, but what truly inspired him to create this website was his life changing experience about thirteen years ago. Read the full article HERE
