daily health tips

Often forgotten in cases of cirrhosis of the liver is that the patient must have bed rest. He must also abstain completely from alcohol in any form. He should undergo an initial liver cleaning programme with a juice fast for seven days. Freshly extracted juices from red beets, lemon, papaya and grapes may be taken during this period. This may be followed by the fruit and milk diet for two to three weeks. In this regimen, the patient should have three meals a day, each of fresh juicy fruits and milk. The fruits may include apples, pears, grapes, grape fruit, oranges, pineapples and peaches. One litre of milk may be taken on the first day. It should be increased by 250 ml daily up to two to two and a half litres a day. The milk should be fresh and unboiled, but may be slightly warmed if desired. It should be sipped very slowly. After the fruit and milk diet, the patient may gradually embark upon a well-balanced diet of three basic food groups, namely (i) seeds, nuts and grains, (ii) vegetables and (iii) fruits, with emphasis on raw organically grown foods. An adequate high quality protein diet is necessary in cirrhosis. The best complete proteins for liver patients are obtained from raw goat 's milk, home-made raw cottage cheese, sprouted seeds and grains and raw nuts, especially almonds. Vegetables such as beets, squashes, bitter gourd, egg-plant, tomato, carrot, radishes and papaya are useful in this condition. All fats and oils should be excluded from the diet for several weeks. The patient should avoid all refined, processed and canned foods, sugar in any form, spices and condiments, strong tea and coffee, fried foods, all preparations cooked in ghee, oil or butter and all meats rich in fat. The use of salt should be restricted. The patient should also avoid all chemical additives in food and poisons in air, water and environment.

Enhance your health with proper breathing. Breathing is so simple we often take it for granted, but it has fundamental influence on body, mind, and spirit. Every time we breathe in air, we bring oxygen into the body and spark the transformation of nutrients into fuel. Every time we breathe out, we purge the body of carbon dioxide, a toxic waste. Breathing influences our state of mind. Shallow breathing can make us tense. Deep breathing can make use calm. Breathing can make our thinking confused or clear. In the yogic tradition, breathing is the means of acquiring prana, the ethereal substance that powers life. Pranayama is the optimization of prana through the control of the breath. Pranayama can be practiced with or without the practice of other poses. You already know how to do this.
1. Sit comfortable with your spine straight or lie comfortable on your back. Take deep breaths through your nostrils.
2. Relax your breath as you slightly contract the back of your throat. The first time you do this, you may create an "oinking" sound rather like a pig! Do not worry about unusual sounds. With a little practice, you will create a steady hissing sound as you breathe in and out. You do not have to force this sounds, but it should be loud enough that another person in the room could hear it.
3. Breathe as long and deep as you can without creating tension anywhere in the body.
Perfect your technique with help of an instructor. What diseases can be relieved by pranayama? Pranayama purifies the channels along which the life stream of 'prana' flows in the body and prevents various disorders. It increases one's resistance to respiratory diseases. It helps cure cough and cold, insomnia, chronic headache and asthma. And, as recently reported in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, pranayama can even relieve diabetes and heart disease.

The complete healing spectrum of natural light is essential to health. The full moon is the ancient symbol of completion. The rays of light cast by the moon on the earth contain colour in the form of white light. The white light of the moon originates in the sun and contains seven different colours - violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. These are natural colours which are highly beneficial to the maintenance of health and for healing diseases. How can you tell if you are receiving all the colours of the healing sun? In 1932, Gerrard and Hessay, two Californian psychologists, scientifically established that blue light had a calming effect and red a stimulating power on human beings. A patient is first subjected to an examination to ascertain which colour he lacks. The deficiency is determined by observing the colour of the eyeballs, nails, urine and excrement. In cases of the lack of red, the eyes and nails will be bluish, and the urine and excrement white or bluish. If there is a deficiency of the blue colour, the eyes and nails will be reddish and urine and excrement yellowish or red. This is a good day to consider whether you are receiving all the vital colours of health in your daily life.

Starve a fever, feed a cold, but do not overfeed an asthmatic. Asthma, particularly when the attack is severe, tends to destroy the appetite. In such cases, do not force the patient to eat. He should be kept on fast until the attack is over. He should, however, take a cup of warm water every two hours. An enema taken at that time will be very beneficial. Honey is considered highly beneficial in the treatment of asthma. It is said that if a jug of honey is held under the nose of an asthma patient and he inhales the air that comes into contact with the honey, he starts breathing easier and deeper. The effect lasts for about an hour or so. This is because honey contains a mixture of 'higher' alcohols and ethereal oils and the vapours given off by them are soothing and beneficial to the asthma patient. Honey usually brings relief whether the air flowing over it is inhaled or whether it is eaten or taken either in milk or water. It thins out accumulated mucous and helps its elimination from the respiratory passages. It also tones up the pulmonary parenchyma and thereby prevents the production of mucous in future. Some authorities recommend one year old honey for respiratory disease.

Another way to detect the cause of allergy is by Dr. Coca's "pulse test." The method is as follows: Check your pulse before a meal. Then limiting that meal to one food only, wit for half an hour after eating and take your pulse again. A slight increase is considered normal, even up to 16 extra beats. If your pulse does not rise above 84, you may be allergy-free. But if your pulse rises beyond that point, and remains high an hour after the meal, you have found your food allergy. The best way, however, to prevent or overcome allergies is to strengthen the overall physical resistance so as not to fall an easy prey to every allergen that comes along. To start with, the patient should fast on fresh fruit juices for four or five days. Repeated short juice fasts are likely to result in better tolerance to previous allergies. After the fruit juice fast, the patient can take a mono diet of vegetables or fruits such as carrots, grapes or apples, for one week. After that one more food is added to the mono diet. A week later the third food is added and so on. After four weeks, the protein foods can be introduced, one at a time. In case an allergic reaction to a newly introduced food is noticed, it should be discontinued and a new food tried. In this way all real allergens can be eventually eliminated from the diet.

Diet is not the only nature cure for cataracts. Simultaneous with the dietary treatment, the patient should adopt various methods of relaxing and strengthening the eyes. These include moving the eyes gently up and down, from side to side and in a circle, clockwise and counter clockwise; rotating the neck in circles and semicircles and briskly moving the shoulders clockwise and counter clockwise. The patient should also resort to palming which is highly beneficial in removing strain and relaxing the eyes and its surrounding tissues.

Regular drinking of water is beneficial not only for constipation but also for cleaning the system, diluting the blood and washing out poisons. Normally six to eight glasses of water should be taken daily as it is essential for digesting and dissolving food nutrients so that they can be absorbed and utilised by the body. Water should, however, not be taken with meals as it dilutes the gastric juices essential for proper digestion. Water should be taken either half an hour before or an hour after meals.

To defeat stubborn diseases, consume enzymes in fresh, uncooked foods and in supplements. Enzymes are chemical substances produced in the living organism. They are marvellous organic catalysts which are essential to life as they control all the chemical reactions that take place in a living system. Enzymes are part of all living cells, including those of plants and animals. The term enzyme, which literally means in yeast', was coined following the demonstration of catalytic properties of yeast and yeast juices. Although enzymes are produced in the living cell, they are not dependent upon the vital processes of the cell and work outside the cell. Certain enzymes of yeast, for instance, when expressed from the yeast cells are capable of exerting their usual effect, that is, the conversion of sugar to alcohol. It has been estimated that there are over 20,000 enzymes in the human body. This estimate is based on the number of bodily processes that seem to require action. However, so far only about 1,000 enzymes have been identified. But their great role in nutrition and other living processes has been firmly established. They are protein molecules made up of chains of amino acids. They play a vital role and work more efficiently than any reagent concocted by chemists. Thus for instance, a chemist can separate proteins into their component amino acids by boiling them at 166 o C for over 18 hours in a strong solution of hydrochloric acid, but the enzymes of the small intestines can do so in less than three hours at body temperature in a neutral medium. A feature which distinguishes enzymes from inorganic catalysts is that they are absolutely specific in their actions. This means that a particular enzyme can cause reactions involving only a particular type of substance or a group of closely related substances. The substance on which the enzyme acts is known as "substrate." The specificity of an enzyme is, however, related to the formation of the enzyme-substrate complex which requires that the appropriate groupings of both substrate and enzyme should be in correct relative position. The substrate must fit the enzyme like a key fits its lock.

Flesh is often a carrier of disease germs. Diseases of many kinds are on the increase in the animals, making flesh foods more and more unsafe. People are continually eating flesh that may contain tuberculosis and cancerous germs. Often animals are taken to the market and sold for food when they are so diseased that their owners do not wish to keep them any longer. And some of the processes of fattening them to increase their weight and consequently their market value, produce disease. Shut away from light and pure air, breathing the atmosphere of filthy stables, perhaps fattening on decaying foods, the entire body now becomes contaminated with foul matter. If you do not eat meat, you are spared its contamination.

The process of digestion begins in the mouth. The saliva in the moth, besides helping to masticate the food, carries an enzyme called ptyalin which begins the chemical action of digestion. It initiates the catabolism (breakdown) of carbohydrates by converting starches into simple sugars. This explains the need for thorough mastication of starchy food in the mouth. If this is not done the ptyalin cannot carry out its functions as it is active in an alkaline, neutral or slightly acid medium and is inactivated by the highly acid gastric juices in the stomach. Although enzymatic action starts while food is being chewed, digestion moves into high gear only when the chewed food has passed the esophagus and reached the stomach. While the physical action of peristalsis churns and kneads solid food into a semi-solid amorphous mixture called chyme, this mixture undergoes chemical changes initiated by gastric juices secreted by the walls of the stomach. These juices include mucus for lubricating the stomach, hydrochloric acid and gastric juice. The enzyme or active principle of the gastric juice is pepsin. This enzyme in combination with hydrochloric acid starts the breakdown of proteins into absorbable amino acids called polypeptides. An additional enzyme, rennin, plays an important role in the stomach of the infant. It curdles milk and allows the pepsin to work upon it. The gastric juice has no effect upon starches or fats.