Good Food Good Health- Diesel Fumes

Hi everyone

Did you know that Diesel Fumes are destroying our Health?

Most of us today drive, and in many families each member possesses their own vehicle, and being honest we too can be counted in this category.

Ted and I have our own cars and so does the eldest daughter, the youngest will be starting driving lessons next week on her seventeenth birthday and would love her own car, and I guess we are just like every other family up and down the country.

But do we really need them? If we all knew the damage that we are doing to ourselves perhaps we might think twice and cut back.

With the amount of cars and lorries on the road today, especially in towns and cities, we all know pollution from fumes are bound to build up, but did you realise that our health suffers, our arteries are being clogged up by these fumes, leading to an increase of strokes and heart attacks.

Pollution is causing deadly hardening of the arteries through a chain reaction in the blood, from the exhaust emissions of cars, busses and lorries.

This is really bad news for people who suffer from chronic heart disease and lung conditions. Staying outside when pollution levels are high for any period of time should be avoided, to minimise any problems.

I find this quite disturbing as although I feel and look completely healthy, through contracting bronchial pneumonia as a teenager and having a really nasty chest infection two years ago, I am now considered to have COPD – chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

I am so pleased that the new ‘no smoking in public enclosed areas’ has become law, so now we can enjoy having a drink, eating a meal or dancing in a club, with clean air around us and our clothes and hair still smell fresh. More importantly not breathing in second hand smoke. I have never smoked a cigarette in my life, but I do wonder how many I have passively smoked without knowing it and how its damaged my health.

For some time now scientists have known about the link between strokes and heart disease with pollution, but only recently have found through a new study that blood vessel inflammation is caused by fine particles of diesel pollution, these particles ‘work’ with an artery clogging cholesterol which then switch on the genes to cause the inflammation.

I think we all know that we are guilty of causing pollution, but we have grown up enjoying our freedom, myself too, and it is so very hard to give up or change out ways, but small changes really do help.

There are several schemes where people can share driving into work; I do this with my friend three days a week. Not only is it beneficial to the environment, it saves money through only one parking and petrol payment and obviously less wear and tear.

The school run is one of the biggest offenders, when our vehicles probably are lucky to get off choke. We were lucky with our primary school being only 800 metres or so from home, that we always walked, but the pressure was there from the children who saw others being ferried by car, living just a couple of doors away, who did not get cold or wet. So some days it was a battle but the only time I gave in was due to illness.

Park and ride schemes are good, keeping more vehicles out of our town centres helping to eliminate some of the pollution. Unfortunately in our area these services do not run on Sundays or bank holidays, when nowadays towns are just as busy as a regular working day.

Not only does the pollution cause us great harm, but also our wildlife and plants. Many trees in cities and towns are dying because of the fumes. We really do need to act now, however small, to try and curb some of our wasted journeys.

I have heard people saying, we do not have to worry as we live in the country side and the air is of good quality, but if we all think like this and carry on as we are the country side is going to suffer as well.

For our health and our children’s health we really should all be trying to cut back, a study found that new asthma cases are on the increase in general but has sharply elevated in children over the last decade. These findings were especially high in areas where there is more pollution from exhaust fumes.

Do not forget good food is good health

Sandra and Ted

http://www.goodfoodgoodhealth.com

http://www.thetalkingbooksite.com

http://www.quantum-mind-power.com

Good Food Good Health-Visualisation of the Mind

Hi everybody

Do you ever wonder how marvellous our brains are, or just take it for granted like every other organ in our body?

Visualisation therapy is something everyone can use to make them selves feel better and more positive about their health and lives, and we actually do it without knowing – in our dreams.

I believe a positive attitude is like good food for your brain of which our bodies feed off, just the same as ‘good food good health’ makes our bodies strong – a positive attitude keeps our minds strong.

Have you ever wondered why some people just seem to always be feeling on top of the world, running their family life and holding down a career? Well these people have a positive attitude and see things clearly and balanced.

Then we see other people who go from one problem to another who are often very negative in their thoughts, and who always believe they are unlucky as it seems ‘bad’ things only ever happen to them.

The power of the mind is a powerful force, and we need to be able to put ourselves in the right ‘mind set’ to be able to unleash this and benefit our health by reinforcing positive feelings.

There are so many views from specialists saying that we have lost use of some of the features our brain used thousands of years ago, even though through evolution we are far more advanced in many other aspects.

With visualisation therapy you use mental pictures. Making images is a natural mental process that occurs every night during dreams and visualisation is very similar, but this involves making a deliberate attempt with the conscious mind to imagine particularly beneficial events.

I believe that mind and body are not separate – well literally I know they are, but a body with out a mind or a mind with out a body just doesn’t work, but that they affect each other directly so that thoughts have physical effects as well as mental ones.

Visualisation works in that there is a close link between emotions, images and sensations. Our emotions are accompanied by physical sensations such as a sad face when we are unhappy or a deep sigh, as is a laugh or smile when we are happy, and so images call up emotions and emotions are experienced in terms of images.

I bet like me you can picture a funny event that has happened to you or a loved one that brings a smile to your face, and then people around you wonder what you are smiling at.

One of the best visual images I use to make myself feel better, and I am sure a lot of you do it as well is to imagine laying on a hot sunny beach faraway from any body, listening to the breeze in the trees and the crash of the waves. This relaxes me and always lifts my mood as well and seems to make by body feel warmer.

This is visualisation.

This is what I use when I feel tense or want to unwind after a hectic day, and is especially good in the dentist’s waiting room!

In everyday life people often tend to dwell on fears and problems, making them ill, instead of being positive.

http://www.quantum-mind-power.com

I use visualisation for relaxation and breathing exercises, as you will know if you have read other articles I have written that I suffer from COPD- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

For this condition I do practice breathing exercises- diaphragmatic, to ensure natural full use of the whole lung, and whilst doing this I visualise a circle in front of me, imagining I am drawing one half of the circle with my breath as I inhale and the other half when I exhale.

Continue to do this until your circle seems as smooth and as round as you can make it. Then after this spend a few minutes visualising your breath in travelling from the tip of your toes up your body along your spine to the top of your head and your breath out the reverse, through your head, down your spine and legs to your toes, this has the added benefit of enhancing the effect of muscular relaxation and most of us could do with this.

I also visualise a shield, I am not sure if that is the right word, but a protective layer around my lungs and internal organs that defends from external viruses, that goes round and round like a vortex – writing this makes it sound silly like something from ‘star trek’, but I just apply it every morning when I get up like clockwork now.

I repeat this process several times, and when I first started I would sometimes giggle at myself and have to start over, but I have mastered it now and the mental picture is so easy for me to recall that I can do this exercise anywhere such as commuting to work or even walking the dog!

Visualisation is the rediscovery of an ancient art used in healing from early times and was used by ‘witchdoctors’ or ‘shamans’ in Africa and South America, and was an integral part of most oriental therapies.

Many people will link this to ‘voodoo’ where the power of visualisation and thought was used and was said to have a strong hold on any person it was cast – although the person had to believe, so this just shows if you believe something how great an effect it can have.

Visualisation has been studied many times over the years and today is often used for relaxation in cancer patients.

Edmund Jacobson, an American, who in the 1920’s discovered that when a subject visualised himself running the muscles in his legs would twitch involuntary, and the same for other images and corresponding parts of the body.

It does not cost anything to do visualisation; it just takes a little time and practice, although you can go to a practicing therapist first to teach you the techniques.

There can be great benefit even if only used for relaxation to de-stress us from our busy lives. So do not forget to take time out to relax and eat a healthy diet as good food is good health and a healthy mind is a healthy body.

The other proven way of course is to listen to binaural music. Depending on what you want to achieve the music applies to that part of the brain to apply all its energy to this task whether it is sleeping, thinking or even giving up smoking. See our link in our resource box for Quantum mind power for more information.

Just remember good food is good health.

Sandra & Ted

http://www.goodfoodgoodhealth.com

http://www.thetalkingbooksite.com

http://www.quantum-mind-power.com