Category: Movement + Mindfulness

When the Facts Aren’t the Facts: Depression, Drugs and Exercise

When it comes to facts, we don’t always get the real story. In fact, recent findings show that what we’ve been led to believe about antidepressants was cleverly skewed to favor drug companies. Surprising? For us, not so much.

Drugs, while they can be of great benefit and are sometimes necessary, are also extreme. Rarely do they work harmoniously with our organism—instead, they’re usually aimed at specific symptoms or intended for isolated results.

It was interesting and illuminating to discover this video about the real data on antidepressants. What’s the upshot? Antidepressants work primarily as placebos. Yes, that’s right. Placebos with a host of unwanted side effects.

Do Antidepressant Drugs Really Work? from NutritionFacts on Vimeo.

Reprograming-the-addictive-brainEven more, some side effects have only recently come to light with respect to age and antidepressants. The adolescent brain reacts very differently to antidepressants than the adult brain. In a Harvard School of Public Health study led by Dr. Matthew Miller, a careful review of over 162,000 pharmacy records revealed “that people under the age of 25 who received a higher initial dose of antidepressants were twice as likely to try to harm themselves, while that wasn’t true for people 25 and older.”

An increased suicide risk was also discovered in younger people taking an average dose. (See the NPR article Higher Doses of Antidepressants May Raise Teen Suicide Risk, also Dr. Frances Jensen’s book The Teenage Brain is a fascinating and excellent resource.)

So how can we affect depression positively, in a way that does us more good than harm? In a real way? Exercise!

Exercise has countless benefits—among them:

  • Elevated mood
  • Increased muscle tone
  • Decreased body fat
  • Better sleep
  • Increased energy
  • Heighted libido
  • Disease prevention (heart disease, stroke, diabetes and certain cancers)

The number of benefits trumps what any pill could offer, and even better: in most instances, moderate exercise complements any medicine, supplement or wellness plan.

1408574069790_wps_5_Teenage_girls_racing_in_tMotion is an integral part of our work at ELSI for a good reason. Daily activity brings increased vitality as natural result. This is why we offer daily movement classes (Mind + Body + Spirit). In these classes, we share what we do every day to be well and stay strong.

We also incorporate evidence-based into our Nutrition + Health classes, and it informs our work in general. It’s important to consider the whole being for true wellness.

Yours in whole health,
Dr. Miles

Harness Your Sexual Energy

Does engaging in sexual activity energize or deplete you?

Becoming aware of how your energy level rises or falls in relation to sex can help you increase your vitality bank account.

Outside of cultural or moral ideas of sex, there is the reality of how it is in your body, for you uniquely and individually. Sexual intimacy can be a wonderful thing, and yet the physical implications of orgasm may or may not serve us at a given time.

Considering your energy in relation to sexual intercourse is a practical, functional approach to your overall health and wellbeing. It’s very useful to take an account of your energy in relation to intercourse. It’s also easy to do.

So let’s put some attention on it. A little awareness can go a long way to energizing our bodies, minds and spirits!

Think about:

  • How often and with whom to you have sex?
  • What time of day?
  • How do you feel afterward?

How you feel immediately afterward is one thing, but how you feel an hour or two or three later, and how you feel the next day can tell you whether sex energizes or depletes you.

Did you know that sex at night can be more draining that sex earlier in the day? This is because at night, the body restores yin energy in the kidneys and orgasm is a release of yang energy, which can disrupt this energy restoration. It has less impact on your kidneys if you have sex in yang time of day—the morning time.

If you have kidney challenges (inflammation, for example) or kidney yin deficiency, this is especially important to pay attention to. Examples of kidney yin deficiency include dizziness, poor memory, low back pain, knee pain, ringing in the ears or hearing problems, spontaneous sweating, constipation, dry mouth and throat and aversion to cold.

If these symptoms sound familiar, you might want to experiment with favoring the morning over the afternoon or evening for sexual activity. Or if orgasms make you feel drained, you might consider abstaining for a period of time.

In contrast, if you run hot, and tend toward restlessness and a fiery temper, a release of yang through sexual intercourse can be centering and calming. You might need a sexual release to keep your energy from stagnating.

Like everything else, what is best for you is a personal, individual thing, and something that you have the power to discover for yourself.

So when you take an accounting, does an orgasm give you a boost in energy, or does it drain you? Does the time of day make a difference in your experience?

While our experience has a physical reality unique to each of us, social and religious ideas can have a distinct impact on our experience of our sexuality. What mental noise do you have about sex? What energetic entanglements restrict you? How do ideas of power play into and affect your experience?

Becoming aware of your stories about sex gives you the power to embrace or rewrite those scripts for your mental, emotional and physical benefit. Adding this to what you learned about whether you feel energized or depleted physically gives you a wealth of information to move forward with for energy.

You might want to alter your patterns, and even:

  • Have time away from sexual activity for a while to see what happens with your energy or
  • Engage more often in healthy sex

There are definitely things that you can do to enhance your libido and your sexual organs and essences. Learn more about herbs, supplements, exercises and more in the Nutrition + Health class Sexual Energy: Our Life Force.

The class airs live on March 7, 2015 at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time. Learn more and register.

Boost Your Immunity in ONE Simple Step!

Imagery for Immunity

Research shows that our thoughts and feelings impact our physicality, from increased cortisol levels when we’re stressed to lowered immunity if we’re feeling depressed. Most of the time, we don’t consciously direct our thoughts for the benefit of our health, but we do have the power to do just that.

Visualization is a practical tool we can use at any time to deliberately and positively influence our immune system. When we say “visualization,” we really mean much more than seeing with internal eyes. Some of us are not visually oriented, and may not connect to the idea of seeing images with our eyes closed. Instead, let’s think of visualization as image-feeling. The feeling, whether we can cognize images or not, is really what we’re after. The emotion is what has the greatest influence on our health. (For more on that, see Dr. Reid’s blog post: The Power of Words.)

For example, visualize a tree. If you can’t see the trunk, branches, etc. in your mind’s eye, then cognize the feeling of a tree. In either case, when we imagine a tree, there is a feeling that we likely associate with concept of tree. This is what we mean here by visualization. So even if you can’t see that tree, you can still use visualization techniques for your benefit.

How does visualization impact us physically? It becomes part of the chemical conversation going on in our body, creating a blueprint that influences our neuro- and immunotransmitters.

Dopamine_and_serotonin_pathways

From our earliest moments of life, the brain and immune system are engaged in a constant dialogue. Each influences the other by means of chemical messengers. In fact, the immune system has neurotransmitter receptor sites in white blood cells, lymph nodes and elsewhere, and the brain has receptor sites for immunotransmitters called cytokines.

Three important cytokines are:

  • Interferons
  • Interleukins
  • Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)

Examples of neurotransmitters include:

  • Seratonin
  • Norepinephrine
  • Dopamine

Neurotransmitters circulate throughout the body with specific immune system receptor sites, as mentioned. Emotions impact neurotransmitters and thus affect immunity specifically, and our health generally.

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The immune system responds to messages from the brain formed by images or emotions. We can deliberately create mental images or encourage emotions to impact our immune systems in a positive way. Instead of letting our unconscious thoughts steer our health, we can consciously direct thoughts and feelings for greater energy and vitality.

You can use visualization in any moment to influence your experience, or you can use guided visualization for a different and often deeper effect. One of the simplest approaches is to use a counterbalancing visualization. Let’s say, for example, that you feel nervous—you can imagine yourself being calm and strong. Or maybe you feel tired—consciously imagine yourself being active, feeling what it feels like to have more energy. If you’re cold, you can imagine sitting in the sun on a tropical beach, or if you have high blood pressure, you can visualize your blood pressure going down.

If a person is dealing with cancer and thinks “I’m doomed,” it certainly doesn’t help the immune system. Indeed, fear may be the most weakening emotion for immunity.

If we let negative thoughts run unchecked, they can weaken us, versus consciously visualizing life and vitality. We can use the tool of directed visualization on the spur of the moment when there is a need or when we notice an unhelpful thought.

We can also use guided imagery to potent effect. Our educational program on health and vitality, recently released the CD Into Your Heart, a guided visualization from Dr. Reid.

The visualization is designed to help you regulate the flow of your hormones and neurotransmitters in a way that reduces stress in your body and increases happiness. Dr. Reid guides you to opening yourself to the energy of your heart, to heal emotional hurts and find out what really matters to you.

Available at our online store, it’s a tool that you can turn to again and again. Listen to a sample:

Dr. Reid also created a wonderful CD entitled Guided Explorations to Our Internal Organs, which is also available at our online store.

In addition, you can try this guided visualization, or “recapitulation” for resolving past hurts. It guides you to evoking the feeling of safety and nourishment that one experiences in the mother’s womb for greater energy and vitality in daily life:

Remember that you can use visualization to benefit your life any time you like, whether it’s a quick image that you form in your mind to help you manage a situation, or whether you sit down.

Realize your New Year’s Resolutions in 2015

Most of us start each year with one or more resolutions that we hope to accomplish. Maybe you want to shed extra pounds gained over the holidays, or to get to the gym more regularly. But by the time March rolls around, these resolutions can seem like a distant memory.

What happens? Usually, other things take our attention. To successfully meeting our goals, it helps to have support and information to inspire us to continue to improve our lives.

ELSI is here to support and inform you! Our community is diverse and its members often far distant from one another, but we come together with the goals of realizing our potential and feeling our best.

Each year, for example, regulars return and new people jump on board for our group Detox Program. Although you can do our Detox Program anytime of year, the group support seems to make it all the easier to stick with it so you can enjoy its benefits. The results from the detox are often amazing—more clarity, better focus, deeper sleep and more.

The group Detox Program is part of our Nutrition + Health online class series. We also have new great classes planned throughout the coming year to give you tools and practical information for improving your health and wellbeing.

Find out about your ideal body weight, how to apply your sexual energy to activate your life force even more, what it means to breathe for greater vitality (with a special guest teacher) and what neuroplasticity means and why it’s important, and more.

In fact, the research is in—our lifestyle choices do make a difference in our health, even at the level of our DNA. Learn simple things that you can incorporate into your daily life in our online Nutrition + Health classes. Plus we’ll have time for questions and answers after each class.

Recordings of past classes are also available in our online store for purchase.

Presentation by Dr. Miles Reid at the Benjamin Center, Los Angeles, CA

We are excited about our recent presentation to the Cancer Support Community at the Benjamin Center in West Los Angeles, CA. The audience of cancer patients, their relatives and educators, enthusiastically received the three-part series.

We introduced the basic concepts and philosophy to first-time listeners, and shared an introductory set of  movements. We explained the essential elements of the practice and origin of our work, emphasizing both the physical and energetic benefits of the movements such as increased vitality and optimism.  We focused on how these movements shift our thoughts and perceptions, enhance a state of well being, and benefit the immune system.

We filmed the presentation and have divided it into several parts for your convenience and enjoyment. The videos offer a useful introduction to what our work is, making it easy to share with family, friends and the community.

Here is a first-glance experience!

A complete introductory practice that you can follow:

Three principles presented in five-minute segments:

I: Physical Body and Energy

II: Using Intention to Change the Body

III: We Shape Our Bodies with Our Thoughts

View the Full Presentation

Can Movement Define Emotion?

This fascinating study looked at how posture and movement can effect one’s emotional state. The study measured the effects of movement, motor imagery and observation of whole-body expression (body language) of emotions—happiness, fear, sadness—on the affective state. The findings show that the deliberate control of motor behavior can regulate feelings.

These findings highlight a key element of what we incorporate into every class and workshop. Read the full article here.