Healthy Bones Quotes

Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms.

It's healthy to say uncle when your bone's about to break.

Talk was like the vitamins of our friendship: Large daily doses kept it healthy.

believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it. I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting. The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it. I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage an parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look. Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted. Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is. You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural. You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.

The attendant pointed out that the bones were in very good shape and so many of them had survived cremation because the deceased was relatively young and healthy. Torn almost rolled his eyes. We could do without the biology lesson.

I’ve got so much inside me I have no idea about. I’m like the mayor of a city I’ve never seen.” He smiles at my phrasing. “If you knew the kind of little miracles happening every moment you breathe in, you wouldn’t be able to handle it. A valve could close and not open; an artery could split, you could die. At any moment. It’s nothing but miracles inside your tiny city.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “Holy shit.” I clutch at him. “You wouldn’t believe the stats on people who go to bed one night and never wake up. Normal, healthy people who aren’t even old.” “Why would you tell me this? Is this what you think about?” There’s the longest pause. “I used to. Not so much anymore.” “I think I preferred it when I thought I was full of white bones and red goo. Why am I now thinking about dying tonight?” “Now you see why I can’t do small talk. 

In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed. Once you've been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.

Feathers—no matter what size or shape or color—are all the same, if you think about them. They’re soft. Delicate. But the secret thing about feathers is . . . they are very strong.

Healer that she was, creator of medicines and poisons, binder of broken bones, comforter, could she take the remnants here and build them into a man again? Doro looked at people, healthy or ill, and wondered what kind of young they could produce. Anyanwu looked at the sick—especially those with problems she had not seen before—and wondered whether she could defeat their disease.

In your modesty you seem to consider that writers are of different blood and bone from yourselves; that they know more of Mrs Brown than you do. Never was there a more fatal mistake. It is this division between reader and writer, this humility on your part, these professional airs and graces on ours, that corrupt and emasculate the books which should be the healthy offspring of a close and equal alliance between us.

Here Mankind is not governed by the rules of reason, stupid and strict, but by the heart and intuition. The people do not indulge in idle chatter, parading what they know, but create remarkable things by applying their imagination. The state ceases to impose the shackles of daily oppression, but helps people to realize their hopes and dreams. And Man is not just a cog in the system, not just playing a role, but a free Creature. That’s what was passing through my mind, making my bed-rest almost a pleasure. Sometimes I think that only the sick are truly healthy.

Doolittle stopped and looked at me. For a moment he looked stricken, and then he crossed his arms. "There will be none of that, now. You are my fines work. If I ever go to one of those medmage conferences they keep inviting me to, I will take you with me. Look!" He held his hands out toward me. "Bone dragons, sea demons, rakshasas, and worst of all, our own people, and these magic hands kept her alive through it all. Look at her walk! You can't even see the limp anymore. As long as you don't open your mouth, you will appear as a perfect example of a healthy adult female. With your history, they'll be calling me a miracle worker." I snickered.

Humans are built to move. We evolved under conditions that required daily intense physical activity, and even among individuals with lower physical potential, that hard-earned genotype is still ours today. The modern sedentary lifestyle leads to the inactivation of the genes related to physical performance, attributes that were once critical for survival and which are still critical for the correct, healthy expression of the genotype. The genes are still there, they just aren't doing anything because the body is not stressed enough to cause a physiological adaptation requiring their activation. The sedentary person's heart, lungs, muscles, bones, nerves and brain all operate far below the level at which they evolved to function, and at which they still function best.

Wanaume hupenda nyama kwenye mifupa.

I am, for some reason, actually happy with who I am and the muscle, the bones, and the flub that exist beneath these clothes. I don’t need to lose 20 lbs. to be attractive. I don’t need to starve myself of the good things of life to be healthy. And, I don’t need to chase someone else’s ideal of what I should be looking like.

Those who deny guilt and sin are like the Pharisees of old who thought our Saviour had a “guilt complex” because He accused them of being whited sepulchers—outside clean, inside full of dead men’s bones. Those who admit that they are guilty are like the public sinners and the publicans of whom Our Lord said, “Amen, I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the Kingdom of God before you” (Matt. 21:31). Those who think they are healthy but have a hidden moral cancer are incurable; the sick who want to be healed have a chance. All denial of guilt keeps people out of the area of love and, by inducing self-righteousness, prevents a cure. The two facts of healing in the physical order are these: A physician cannot heal us unless we put ourselves into his hands, and we will not put ourselves into his hands unless we know that we are sick. In like manner, a sinner’s awareness of sin is one requisite for his recovery; the other is his longing for God. When we long for God, we do so not as sinners, but as lovers.

The results of the study were astoundingly clear: The more childhood trauma someone had suffered, the worse their health outcomes were in adulthood. And their risk for contracting diseases didn’t go up just a few percentage points. People with high ACE scores were about three times as likely to develop liver disease, twice as likely to develop cancer or heart disease, four times as likely to develop emphysema.[2] They were seven and a half times more likely to become alcoholics, four and a half times more likely to suffer from depression, and a whopping twelve times more likely to attempt suicide.[3] Scientists have learned that stress is literally toxic. Stress chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline surging through our bodies are healthy in moderation—you wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning without a good dose of cortisol. But in overwhelming quantities, they become toxic and can change the structure of our brains. Stress and depression wear our bodies out. And childhood trauma affects our telomeres. Telomeres are like little caps on the ends of our strands of DNA that keep them from unraveling. As we get older, those telomeres get shorter and shorter. When they’ve finally disappeared, our DNA itself begins to unravel, increasing our chances of getting cancer and making us especially susceptible to disease. Because of this tendency, telomeres are linked to human lifespan. And studies have shown that people who suffered from childhood trauma have significantly shortened telomeres.[4]

One of the leading causes of obesity is the misbelief that, when it comes to juice, ‘100%’ means ‘sugar-free.

Like many family dynamics, it didn't have to be healthy, it just had to work.

Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It's better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we're going to die of.

Nana’s oven-baked fried chicken cut off the bone (with plenty of ketchup) was a huge hit. So were Thanksgiving turkey bathed in gravy and Nana’s Passover brisket

A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body;        jealousy is like cancer in the bones.

Self-parenting exercises taught me to slowly rebuild healthy self-talk. But it must be said: Even though I know reparenting had helped dozens of my friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has told me it’s exhausting. Reparenting takes time, and concentration, and calmness. It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction. And even though that effort comes with joyous rewards, sometimes it also comes with sadness. Because expressing the kindness to yourself that you deserve often reminds you of the kindness you didn’t get.

A healthy heart doesn’t pump at the same rate all the time. That would actually be a really unhealthy heart. The healthiest hearts are adaptable, and the quicker they adapt, the better. When you start running, your heart should ideally speed up quickly. Then, when you rest, it should slow down quickly. It’s the same for your emotions. When something really tragic happens, it would be weird if you were still happy, right? Or if you just sat there with no reaction. When something tragic happens, you should be there with that pain, feeling that sadness. When something unjust happens, you should feel how aggravating it is. And then, after you’ve sat with those feelings for the appropriate amount of time—and it could be an hour, or a day, or months, depending on the severity of what happened—then, you can go back to a state of rest. Or joy. Or whatever. Being healed isn’t about feeling nothing. Being healed is about feeling the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times and still being able to come back to yourself. That’s just life.

as far as your body’s cells are concerned, healthy diets are all essentially the same, resting on the same Four Pillars: meat on the bone, fermented and sprouted foods, organs and other “nasty bits,” and fresh, unadulterated plant and animal products.

There is a famous study from the 1930s involving a group of orphanage babies who, at mealtimes, were presented with a smorgasbord of thirty-four whole, healthy foods. Nothing was processed or prepared beyond mincing or mashing. Among the more standard offerings—fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, milk, chicken, beef—the researcher, Clara Davis, included liver, kidney, brains, sweetbreads, and bone marrow. The babies shunned liver and kidney (as well as all ten vegetables, haddock, and pineapple), but brains and sweetbreads did not turn up among the low-preference foods she listed. And the most popular item of all? Bone marrow.

Most people had trouble accepting the fact that Chloe was ill. Fibromyalgia and chronic pain were invisible afflictions, so they were easy to dismiss. Eve was healthy, so she would never feel Chloe’s bone-deep exhaustion, her agonizing headaches or the shooting pains in her joints, the fevers and confusion, the countless side effects that came from countless medications. But Eve didn’t need to feel all of that to have empathy. She didn’t need to see Chloe’s tears or pain to believe her sister struggled sometimes. Neither, for that matter, did Dani. They understood.

Save me from hatred, that destructive impulse, the poison that ravages the heart and liver. I must stop wanting to take revenge on other lives, on other minds; I must forget hatred, reject it, refuse to answer it with more hatred. I must rise above it. Help me to renounce this crippling bond, to leave without hindrance this body that no longer looks like one, but like a jumble of deformed bones; direct my eyes to other stones. This darkness suits me: when I look inside myself, I see more clearly the world, even if my feet are still freezing on this damp cement floor. The back of my neck hurts because I cannot stand up straight. No--I feel no pain. I am certain that I feel no pain. I do not feel anything any more. My prayer has been answered. I am not ill. I will never be, here, no matter how I suffer. O my God, I have learned from You that a healthy body teaches us about the beauty of the world. It is the echo of enchantment, produced by life and light. It is light. Light in life. When it is withdrawn from life, isolated and imprisoned in a black hole, it no longer echoes anything, it reflects nothing. Thanks to Your will, I shall never be extinguished.

Brace yourselves, girls: Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body. For starters, soda’s high levels of phosphorous can increase calcium loss from the body, as can its sodium and caffeine. [Cousens, Conscious Eating, 475] You know what this means—bone loss, which may lead to osteoporosis. And the last time we checked, sugar, found in soda by the boatload, does not make you skinny! Now don’t go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame (an ingredient commonly found in diet sodas and other sugar-free foods) has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies, like arthritis, birth defects, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.2 When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). 3 Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don’t fucking drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received more complaints about aspartame than any other ingredient to date.4 Want more bad news? When aspartame is paired with carbs, it causes your brain to slow down its production of serotonin.5 A healthy level of serotonin is needed to be happy and well balanced. So drinking soda can make you fat, sick, and unhappy.

The look in your eyes, boy. You’re afraid. A man like you is afraid, I take stock.” “I’ve known some fearless men. Hunted lions with them. A few of those gents forgot that Mother Nature is more of a killer than we humans will ever be and wound up getting chomped. She wants our blood, our bones, our goddamned guts. Fear is healthy.

You grow up with somebody, and he is a success, a big-shot, and you're a failure, but he treats you just the way he always did and hasn't changed a bit. But that is what drives you to it, no matter what names you call yourself while you try to stick the knife in. There is a kind of snobbery of failure. It's a club, it's the old school, it's Skull and Bones, and there is no nasty supercilious twist to a mouth like the twist the drunk gets when he hangs over the bar beside the old pal who has turned out to be a big-shot and who hasn't changed a bit, or when the old pal takes him home to dinner and introduces him to the pretty little clear-eye woman and the healthy kids.

Anybody can grow a bone in the penis; you don't have to be particularly healthy or tough.

This gift I give you,” said Agnes. “You shall grow up fatherless.” And then, in a voice much more like the old Agnes, she added, “And healthy.

I’m so ready for a glass of wine, my just big enough tub, and some Witcher. Lord knows I need a healthy dose of Henry Cavill in my life to remind me why I shouldn’t look into becoming a lesbian.

dairy foods are fine to eat if you like them, but they are not a nutritional requirement. Think of cows: they do not drink milk after weaning, but their bones support bodies weighing 800 pounds or more. Cows feed on grass, and grass contains calcium in small amounts—but those amounts add up. If you eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, you can have healthy bones without having to consume dairy foods.

You will come upon those who exude life, who burn bright. In their company, how are you to be? Proud to name them friend? Pleased to bask in their fire? Or, in the name of need, will you simply devour all that they offer, like a force of darkness swallowing light, warmth, life itself? Will you make yourself a rocky island, black and gnarled, a place of cold caves and littered bones? The bright waves do not soothe your shores, but crash instead, explode in a fury of foam and spray. And you drink in every swirl, sucked down into your caves, your bottomless caverns. ‘I do not describe a transitory mood. Not a temporary disposition, brought on by external woes. What I describe, in fashioning this island soul, so bleak and forbidding, is a place made too precious to be surrendered, too stolid to be dismantled. This island I give you, this soul in particular, is a fortress of need, a maw that knows only how to ease its eternal hunger. Within its twisted self, no true friend is acknowledged and no love is honest in its exchange. The self stands alone, inviolate as a god, but a besieged god … forever besieged.’ Gothos leaned forward, studied Arathan with glittering eyes. ‘Oddly, those who burn bright are often drawn to such islands, such souls. As friends. As lovers. They imagine they can offer salvation, a sharing of warmth, of love, even. And in contrast, they see in themselves something to offer their forlorn companion, who huddles and hides, who gives occasion to rail and loose venom. The life within them feels so vast! So welcoming! Surely there is enough to share! And so, by giving – and giving – they are themselves appeased, and made to feel worthwhile. For a time. ‘But this is no healthy exchange, though it might at first seem so – after all, the act of giving will itself yield a kind of euphoria, a drunkenness of generosity, not to mention the salve of protectiveness, of paternal regard.’ Gothos leaned back again, drank more from the cup in his hands, and closed his eyes. ‘The island is unchanging. Bones and corpses lie upon its wrack on all sides.’ Arathan

An artist must regulate his life. Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.7 pm. From 5 to 6.47 pm various occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation, dexterity, natation, etc.) Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20 pm. From 8.9 to 9.59 pm symphonic readings (out loud). I go to bed regularly at 10.37 pm. Once a week (on Tuesdays) I awake with a start at 3.14 am. My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coco-nuts, chicken cooked in white water, mouldy fruit, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the Fuschia. I have a good appetite but never talk when eating for fear of strangling myself. I breathe carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When walking I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me. My expression is very serious; when I laugh it is unintentional, and I always apologise very politely. I sleep with only one eye closed, very profoundly. My bed is round with a hole in it for my head to go through. Every hour a servant takes my temperature and gives me another.

In Warsaw, you also remember that you are in a Communist-controlled country, though by all accounts the control is now humane and lenient, judged by what it was and what it is in other satellite countries. Still you do hear the incompetent echo in the tapped hotel telephone, you do notice that people look over their shoulders when talking in restaurants - the secret police are dormant but not forgotten; you feel in your bones, as you would a threatening change in the weather, every change in Russian mood or action. This is not and air we have ever breathed; I doubt if we would be strong enough to resist such a climate and stay as healthy in spirit as the Poles.

Think of music like you think of eating. There's meat and potatoes, very hearty basic comfort food that sticks to your bones and nourishes you. Then there's fluff. Chips, dessert, junk food. Stuff that won't make you healthy but you prefer because it's quick and there.

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

There are a few clear themes that emerge when we synthesize all the findings we’ve looked at so far, and those are jewels you should pluck out of this book, place in your pocket, and carry with you for as long as they serve you. Here are the biggies. Eliminate or drastically reduce your intake of refined grains, refined sugar, and high-omega-6 vegetable oils. No healthy human population has thrived on these items, and the bulk of the evidence points toward their harm. Secure a source of those precious fat-soluble vitamins—whether from shellfish, fish eggs, high-quality dairy, bone marrow, organ meats like liver, or cod liver oil.

You start running, even though you know that it will, over time, ruin your body. Split your bones, stiffen your muscles, gnaw on your tendons. You learn to like it, the fire in your rib cage, your lungs a conduit for the storm raging inside of you. You run, because you only know how to destroy yourself in healthy ways.

I’ll Open the Window Our embrace lasted too long. We loved right down to the bone. I hear the bones grind, I see our two skeletons. Now I am waiting till you leave, till the clatter of your shoes is heard no more. Now, silence. Tonight I am going to sleep alone on the bedclothes of purity. Aloneness is the first hygienic measure. Aloneness will enlarge the walls of the room, I will open the window and the large, frosty air will enter, healthy as tragedy. Human thoughts will enter and human concerns, misfortune of others, saintliness of others. They will converse softly and sternly. Do not come anymore. I am an animal very rarely.

A diet rich in readily available nutrients allows the bones to mineralize properly, particularly during gestation and early development, and gives the teeth immunity to decay throughout the stresses of life. Not surprisingly, he found that the native diets that conferred such good health on healthy, so-called primitive groups were rich in minerals, particularly calcium and phosphorus, necessary for healthy bones and teeth. What is surprising about the work of Weston Price is his discovery that these healthy diets always contained a good source of what he called "fat-soluble activators," nutrients like vitamin A and vitamin D, and another vitamin he discovered called Activator X or the Price Factor. These nutrients are found only in certain animal fats. Foods that provided these nutrients were considered sacred by the healthy groups he studied. These foods included liver and other organ meats from grazing animals; fish eggs; fish liver oils; fish and shellfish; and butter from cows eating rapidly growing green grass from well-mineralized pastures. Price concluded that without a rich supply of these fat-soluble nutrients, the body cannot properly use the minerals in food. These fat-soluble nutrients also nourish the glands and organs to give healthy indigenous peoples plenty of immunity during times of stress.

Baby’s first colonizers are supposed to be predominantly lactobacilli, the microbes picked up in the vaginal canal. Lactobacillus sets up a healthy human gut with positive influence over digestion and immune functions. If other species of bacteria are baby’s first colonizers, the baby’s microbiome sets up differently, maybe harmfully.

You seem disappointed that I am not more responsive to your interest in "spiritual direction". Actually, I am more than a little ambivalent about the term, particularly in the ways it is being used so loosely without any sense of knowledge of the church's traditions in these matters. If by spiritual direction you mean entering into a friendship with another person in which an awareness and responsiveness to God's Spirit in the everydayness of your life is cultivated, fine. Then why call in an awkward term like "spiritual direction"? Why not just "friend"? Spiritual direction strikes me as pretentious in these circumstances, as if there were some expertise that can be acquired more or less on its own and then dispensed on demand. The other reason for my lack of enthusiasm is my well-founded fear of professionalism in any and all matters of the Christian life. Or maybe the right label for my fear is "functionalism". The moment an aspect of Christian living (human life, for that matter) is defined as a role, it is distorted, debased - and eventually destroyed. We are brothers and sisters with one another, friends and lovers, saints and sinners. The irony here is that the rise of interest in spiritual direction almost certainly comes from the proliferation of role-defined activism in our culture. We are sick and tired of being slotted into a function and then manipulated with Scripture and prayer to do what someone has decided (often with the help of some psychological testing) that we should be doing to bring glory to some religious enterprise or other. And so when people begin to show up who are interested in us just as we are - our souls - we are ready to be paid attention to in this prayerful, listening, non-manipulative, nonfunctional way. Spiritual direction. But then it begins to develop a culture and language and hierarchy all its own. It becomes first a special interest, and then a specialization. That is what seems to be happening in the circles you are frequenting. I seriously doubt that it is a healthy (holy) line to be pursuing. Instead, why don't you look over the congregation on Sundays and pick someone who appears to be mature and congenial. Ask her or him if you can meet together every month or so - you feel the need to talk about your life in the company of someone who believes that Jesus is present and active in everything you are doing. Reassure the person that he or she doesn't have to say anything "wise". You only want them to be there for you to listen and be prayerful in the listening. After three or four such meetings, write to me what has transpired, and we'll discuss it further. I've had a number of men and women who have served me in this way over the years - none carried the title "spiritual director", although that is what they have been. Some had never heard of such a term. When I moved to Canada a few years ago and had to leave a long-term relationship of this sort, I looked around for someone whom I could be with in this way. I picked a man whom I knew to be a person of integrity and prayer, with seasoned Christian wisdom in his bones. I anticipated that he would disqualify himself. So I pre-composed my rebuttal: "All I want you to do is two things: show up and shut up. Can you do that? Meet with me every six weeks or so, and just be there - an honest, prayerful presence with no responsibility to be anything other than what you have become in your obedient lifetime." And it worked. If that is what you mean by "spiritual director," okay. But I still prefer "friend". You can see now from my comments that my gut feeling is that the most mature and reliable Christian guidance and understanding comes out of the most immediate and local of settings. The ordinary way. We have to break this cultural habit of sending out for an expert every time we feel we need some assistance. Wisdom is not a matter of expertise. The peace of the Lord, Eugene

So can you exercise too much? Perhaps at extreme levels, and most certainly if you are sick with a serious infection or injured and need to recover. You also increase your risk of musculoskeletal injuries if you haven’t adapted your bones, muscles, and other tissues to handle the stresses of repeated high forces of Olympic-level weight lifting, playing five sets of tennis a day, running marathons, or overdoing some other sport that obsesses you. In other respects, the negative effects of too much exercise appear to be ridiculously less than the negative effects of too little. As my wife points out, the biggest risk of exercising too much is ruining your marriage, to which I would add that the biggest risk of exercising too little is not being around

Western clothes were intended for healthy, robust men: to anyone in a weakened condition they were quite insupportable. Around the waist, over the shoulders, under the arms, around the neck - every part of the body was pressed and squeezed by clasps and buttons and rubber and leather, layer over layer, as if you were strapped to a cross. And of course you had to put on stockings before the shoes, stretching them carefully up on your legs by garters. Then you put on a shirt, and then trousers, cinching them in with a buckle and the back till they cut your waist and hanging them from your shoulders with suspenders. Your neck was choked in a close-fitting collar, over which you fastened a noose-like necktie, and stuck a pin in it. If a man is well filled out, the tighter you squeeze him, the more vigorous and bursting with vitality he seems; but a man who is only skin and bones can't stand that. [...] It was only because these Western clothes held him together that he was able to keep on walking at all - but to think of stiffening a limp, helpless body, shackling it hand and foot, and driving it ahead with shouts of "Keep going! Don't you dare collapse!" It was enough to make a man want to cry...

Recent psychological research on grief favors meaning making over closure; accepts zigzagging paths, not just linear stages; recognizes ambiguity without pathology; and acknowledges continuing bonds between the living and the dead rather than commanding decathexis. But old ideas about grief as a linear march to closure still hold powerful sway. Many psychologists and grief counseling programs continue to consider “closure” a therapeutic goal. Sympathy cards, internet searches, and friendly advice often uphold a rigid division between healthy grief that the mourner “gets over” and unhealthy grief that persists. Forensic exhumation, too, continues to be informed by these deeply rooted ideas. The experiences of grief and exhumation related by families of the missing indicate something more complex and mysterious than “closure.” Exhumation heals and wounds, sometimes both at once, in the same gesture, in the same breath, as Dulce described feeling consoled and destroyed by the fragment of her brother’s bones. Exhumation can divide brothers and restore fathers, open old wounds and open the possibility of regeneration—of building something new with the “pile of broken mirrors” that is memory, loss, and mourning.

If it is all up to me to live a consistently whole and healthy spiritual life, then the dry bones of my dry soul will not live. If it is all up to preachers like you and me to keep a local congregation alive in community and ministry, then we may as well close the doors right now. If it is all up to you, me and all the other preachers alive today to bring about a moral revolution breaking the chains that bind us, then our world is doomed.

Well, yes. But you’re a gnome. You’re supposed to be round.” She squinted at him. “So why can’t you be?” “It’s not—it’s a matter of health—I can’t—” “I want to be round,” Lucy announced. And then he was. One moment, he was the skinny little thing sitting in his booster seat, and the next, he began to blow up like a balloon, his chest stretching out, bones cracking obscenely. His eyes bulged from his head, and Linus was sure they were about to pop out onto the table. “Look!” he said

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

Dr. Manning said he'd thought at first it might be sleeping sickness, or even narcolepsy, whatever that was, but - no, Pete was healthy enough physically. Manoel growled that the boy was bone-lazy, spending his time fishing and reading. Reading! No good could come of such things. 'In a way you're right, Manoel,' Dr. Manning said hesitantly. 'It's natural for a boy to day-dream now and then, but I think Pedro does it too much. I've let him use my library whenever he wanted, but it seems... h'm... it seems he reads the wrong things. Fairy tales are very charming, but they don't help a boy to cope with real life.' 'Com certeza,' Manoel agreed. 'You mean he has crazy ideas in the head.' 'Oh, they're rather nice ideas,' Dr. Manning said. 'But they're only fairy tales, and they're beginning to seem true to Pete. You see, Manoel, there are really two worlds, the real one, and the one you make up inside your mind. Sometimes a boy - or even a man - gets to like his dream world so much he just forgets about the real one and lives in the one he's made up.' 'I know,' Manoel said. 'I have seen some who do that. It is a bad thing.' 'It would be bad for Pete. He's a very sensitive boy. If you live too much in dreams, you can't face real life squarely.' ("Before I Wake...")

A European traveler describing his visit to a Southern plantation noted that the food included beef, veal, mutton, venison, turkeys, and geese, but he does not mention a single vegetable. Infants were fed beef even before their teeth had grown in. The English novelist Anthony Trollope reported, during a trip to the United States in 1861, that Americans ate twice as much beef as did Englishmen. Charles Dickens, when he visited, wrote that “no breakfast was breakfast” without a T-bone steak. Apparently, starting a day on puffed wheat and low-fat milk—our “Breakfast of Champions!”—would not have been considered adequate even for a servant.

The continent is full of buried violence, of the bones of antediluvian monsters and of lost races of man, of mysteries which are wrapped in doom. The atmosphere is at times so electrical that the soul is summoned out of its body and runs amok. Like the rain everything comes in bucketsful - or not at all. The whole continent is a huge volcano whose crater is temporarily concealed by a moving panorama which is partly dream, partly fear, partly despair. From Alaska to Yucatan it's the same story. Nature dominates. Nature wins out. Everywhere the same fundamental urge to slay, to ravage, to plunder. Outwardly they seem like a fine, upstanding people - healthy, optimistic, courageous. Inwardly they are filled with worms. A tiny spark and they blow up.

You Are What You Eat Take food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting. Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertising hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup. Think it's rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc - three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don't talk about bugs' disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year. An Italian professor recently published Ecological Implications of Mini-livestock: Potential of Insects, Rodents, Frogs and Snails. (Minicowpokes sold separately.) Writing in Slate.com, William Saletan tells us about a company by the name of Sunrise Land Shrimp. The company's logo: "Mmm. That's good Land Shrimp!" Three guesses what Land Shrimp is. (20-21)

This is honestly the best lasagna I've ever had, Lilian. I'm not sure how I ever get Rachel to come out for dinner when she could be eating here all the time." He smiled at Rachel, but my mother answered him. "It's lucky they inherited my good genes, isn't it, Richard? My girls may not have quite inherited my bone structure, but they both got my metabolism. I can eat like a horse and still stay a size one." She smiled. "I worry a little about Clare, though. She picked up her Dad's slightly chunkier build, didn't you, pudding?" Rachel caught my eye and looked horrified. I was silent, but it was only because I was building up a proper head of steam. Just as I was about to get to my feet and order her out of my life forever, Clare spoke up. "It's not about how big or small you are, Grandma, you know." She took another bite of lasagna, and talked around it. "It's about being strong and healthy. You need to eat plenty and run around a lot and drink lots of water and go to sleep early, that's what Mom says.

Between 1995 and 1997 the California-based healthcare network Kaiser Permanente gave more than 17,000 patients a questionnaire to assess the level of trauma in their childhoods. Questions included whether the patients' parents had been mentally or physically abusive or neglectful and whether their parents were divorced or had abused substances. This was called the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. After taking the questionnaire, patients were given an ACE score on a scale of 0 to 10. The higher the score, the more trauma a person experienced in childhood. The results of the study were astoundingly clear: The more childhood trauma someone had suffered, the worse their health outcomes were in adulthood. And their risk for contracting diseases didn't go up just a few percentage points. People with high ACE scores were about three times as likely to develop liver disease, twice as likely to develop cancer or heart disease, four times as likely to develop emphysema. They were seven and a half times more likely to become alcoholics, four and a half times more likely to suffer from depression, and a whopping twelve times more likely to attempt suicide. Scientists have learned that stress is literally toxic. Stress chemicals surging through our bodies like cortisol and adrenaline are healthy in moderation—you wouldn't be able to get up in the morning without a good dose of cortisol. But in overwhelming quantities, they become toxic and can change the structure of our brains. Stress and depression wear our bodies out. And childhood trauma affects our telomeres. Telomeres are like little caps on the ends of our strands of DNA that keep them from unraveling. As we get older, those telomeres get shorter and shorter. When they've finally disappeared, our DNA itself begins to unravel, increasing our chances of getting cancer and making us especially susceptible to disease. Because of this, telomeres are linked to human lifespan. And studies have shown that people who have suffered from childhood trauma have significantly shortened telomeres. In the end, these studies claimed that having an ACE score of 6 or higher takes twenty years off your life expectancy. The average life expectancy for someone with 6 or more ACEs is sixty years old.

Depletion of Vitamin D Sunscreens prevent the absorption of vitamin D. But all the compounds discussed above, whether in sunscreens or other products, also lower your liver’s ability to convert this critical vitamin to its active form. This prevents the regeneration of new cells in your protective intestinal wall barrier, allowing more lectins and LPSs through, along with other foreign bodies. Men with prostate cancer have very low levels of vitamin D. Despite the fact that my practice is in Southern California, I have found that almost 80 percent of my patients have low levels of vitamin D in their blood. In fact, anyone in my practice with leaky gut or autoimmune diseases has low levels. Lacking sufficient vitamin D, and in the face of repeated assaults on the walls of the intestine and the lack of ongoing repair to keep out lectins and LPSs, the body constantly senses that it is at war. It’s not surprising, then, that most of my overweight and obese patients are also very deficient in vitamin D.20 Such a deficiency also impedes the generation of new bone, setting the stage for the development of osteoporosis. My thin female patients with osteopenia and osteoporosis also have low levels of this critical vitamin when they first come to see me.

And you're thinking I just tossed out some casual phrase that you've heard from dozens of guys? Or maybe one in particular,who mattered enough to turn you into a cynic?" At the intensity of his tone she looked up. "Yeah.Something like that.After all, McCord,your reputation precedes you. You're not exactly shy with women. I'm sure you've used plenty of lines like that to get what you want." His eyes,steady on hers,were hot and fierce. His voice was equally fierce. "I'll admit that when I first saw you, my initial reaction was purely physical. A healthy combination of testosterone and lust.What guy could look at you and not feel what I felt? You're beautiful, and bright and independent.And did I mention beautiful?" That brought a smile to her eyes. "But the more I got to know you,the more I realized you weren't just a pretty package.I started learning that you were someone special.Someone I wanted to treat very carefully." "And now?" "I'm still battling lust." There was that grin,sending an arrow straight through her heart. "But there's more here.Much more." He stared at her mouth with naked hunger. "I've waited a long time for this,but now I'm going to have to kiss you.And when I do,I can't promise to stop." She stood very still,heart pounding. "How do you know I'll ask you to?" "Careful.Because unless you tell me to stop,you have to know where this is heading..." In reply she stood on tiptoe to brush her mouth to his,stopping his words. Stopping his heart. He drew in a deep breath and drew her a little away to stare into her eyes. "I hope you meant that." "With all my heart." "Thank God." He dragged her against him and covered her lips with his.Inside her mouth he whispered, "Because, baby,I mean this." She'd waited so long.So long.And it was worth all the time she'd spent waiting and wondering.Here was a man who knew how to kiss a woman and make her feel like the only one in the universe. This kiss was so hot,so hungry, she felt the rush of desire from the top of her head all the way to her toes.And still it spun on and on until she became lost in it. He changed the angle of the kiss and took it deeper until Marilee could feel her flesh heating, her bones melting like hot wax. She wanted to be sensible,to move slowly, but her mind refused to cooperate. With a single kiss her brain had been wiped clear of every thought but one.She wanted this man.Wanted him now.Desperately. When at last they came up for air, she put a hand to his chest. "I need a minute to catch my breath." "Okay." A second later he dragged her close. "Time's up." Her laughter turned into a sigh as he ran nibbling kisses down her throat until the blood was drumming in her temples.

Nartok shows me an example of Arctic “greens”: cutout number 13, Caribou Stomach Contents. Moss and lichen are tough to digest, unless, like caribou, you have a multichambered stomach in which to ferment them. So the Inuit let the caribou have a go at it first. I thought of Pat Moeller and what he’d said about wild dogs and other predators eating the stomachs and stomach contents of their prey first. “And wouldn’t we all,” he’d said, “be better off.” If we could strip away the influences of modern Western culture and media and the high-fructose, high-salt temptations of the junk-food sellers, would we all be eating like Inuit elders, instinctively gravitating to the most healthful, nutrient-diverse foods? Perhaps. It’s hard to say. There is a famous study from the 1930s involving a group of orphanage babies who, at mealtimes, were presented with a smorgasbord of thirty-four whole, healthy foods. Nothing was processed or prepared beyond mincing or mashing. Among the more standard offerings—fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, milk, chicken, beef—the researcher, Clara Davis, included liver, kidney, brains, sweetbreads, and bone marrow. The babies shunned liver and kidney (as well as all ten vegetables, haddock, and pineapple), but brains and sweetbreads did not turn up among the low-preference foods she listed. And the most popular item of all? Bone marrow.

Kamimura has been whispering all week of a sacred twenty-four-hour ramen spot located on a two-lane highway in Kurume where truckers go for the taste of true ramen. The shop is massive by ramen standards, big enough to fit a few trucks along with those drivers, and in the midafternoon a loose assortment of castaways and road warriors sit slurping their noodles. Near the entrance a thick, sweaty cauldron boils so aggressively that a haze of pork fat hangs over the kitchen like waterfall mist. While few are audacious enough to claim ramen is healthy, tonkotsu enthusiasts love to point out that the collagen in pork bones is great for the skin. "Look at their faces!" says Kamimura. "They're almost seventy years old and not a wrinkle! That's the collagen. Where there is tonkotsu, there is rarely a wrinkle." He's right: the woman wears a faded purple bandana and sad, sunken eyes, but even then she doesn't look a day over fifty. She's stirring a massive cauldron of broth, and I ask her how long it's been simmering for. "Sixty years," she says flatly. This isn't hyperbole, not exactly. Kurume treats tonkotsu like a French country baker treats a sourdough starter- feeding it, regenerating, keeping some small fraction of the original soup alive in perpetuity. Old bones out, new bones in, but the base never changes. The mother of all ramen. Maruboshi Ramen opened in 1958, and you can taste every one of those years in the simple bowl they serve. There is no fancy tare, no double broth, no secret spice or unexpected toppings: just pork bones, noodles, and three generations of constant simmering. The flavor is pig in its purest form, a milky broth with no aromatics or condiments to mitigate the purity of its porcine essence.

Sophie Windham, put that child down and come here.” “You are forever telling me to come here,” she replied, but she put the baby on the floor amid his blankets. “And now I am going away, so humor me.” He held out his arms, and she went into his embrace. “I will not forget you, Sophie. These few days with you and Kit have been my true Christmas.” “I will worry about you.” She held on to him, though not as tightly as she wanted to. “I will keep you in my prayers, as well, but, Sophie, I’ve traveled the world for years and come to no harm. A London snowstorm will not be the end of me.” Still, she did not step back. A lump was trying to form in her throat, much like the lumps that formed when she’d seen Devlin or Bart off after a winter leave. She felt his chin resting on her crown, felt her heart threatening to break in her chest. “I must go to Kent,” he said, his hands moving over her back. “I truly do not want to go—Kent holds nothing but difficult memories for me—but I must. This interlude with you…” She hardly paid attention to his words, focusing instead on his touch, on the sound of his voice, on the clean bergamot scent of him, the warmth he exuded that seeped into her bones like no hearth fire ever had. “…Now let me say good-bye to My Lord Baby.” He did not step back but rather waited until Sophie located the resolve to move away from him. This took a few moments, and yet he did not hurry her. “Say good-bye to Mr. Charpentier, Kit.” She passed him the baby, who gurgled happily in Vim’s arms. “You, sir, will be a good baby for Miss Sophie. None of that naughty baby business—you will remain healthy, you will begin to speak with the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ you will take every bath Miss Sophie directs you to take, you will not curse in front of ladies, nor will you go romping where you’re not safe. Do you understand me?” “Bah!” “Miss Sophie, you’re going to be raising a hellion.

FASCIA: THE TIES THAT BIND Imagine a collagen-rich, stretchy slipcover for every organ, nerve, bone, and muscle in our bodies, and you start to get a sense of how fundamental connective tissue—specifically fascia—is to the entire body. Suspending our organs inside our torso, connecting our head to our back to our feet, fascia protects, supports, and literally binds our body together. Fascia can be gossamer-thin and translucent, like a spider web, or thick and tough like rope. Ounce for ounce, fascia is stronger than steel. Other specialized types of connective tissue include bones, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and fat (adipose) tissue. Even blood, strictly speaking, is considered connective tissue. But to me, the most exciting aspect of the latest research on connective tissue relates to fascia. Fascia is the stretchy tissue that forms an uninterrupted, three-dimensional web within our body. Our body has sheets, bags, and strings of fascia of varying thickness and size, some superficial and some deep. Fascia envelops both individual microscopic muscle filaments as well as whole muscle groups, such as the trapezius, pectorals, and quadriceps. For example, one of the largest fascia configurations in the body is known as the “trousers,” a massive sheet of fascia that crosses over the knees and ends near the waist, giving the appearance of short leggings. This fascia trouser is thicker around the knees and thinner as it continues up the legs and over the hips, thickening again near the waist. When the fascia trouser is healthy, supple, and resilient, it acts like a girdle, giving the body a firm shape. Fascia helps muscles transmit their force so we can convert that force into movement. The system of fascia is bound by tensile links (think of the structure of a geodesic dome, like the one at Epcot in Disney World), with space and fluid between the links that can help absorb external pressure and more evenly distribute force across the fascial structure. This allows our bodies to withstand tremendous force instead of absorbing it in one local area, which would lead to increased pain and injury. Fascia is also a second nervous system in and of itself, with almost 10 times the number of sensory nerve endings as muscle. Helene Langevin, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has done landmark studies on the function and importance of connective tissue and its impact on pain. One of the leading researchers in the field today, Langevin describes fascia as a “living matrix” whose health is essential to our well-being.

The temple was in a field of graves suddenly a pitiful-looking skeleton appeared and said: A melancholy autumn wind Blows through the world; the pampas grass waves As we drift to the moor, Drift to the sea. What can be done With the mind of a man That should be clear But though he is dressed up in a monk's robe, Just lets life pass him by? Such deep musings Made me uneasy, I could not sleep. Towards dawn I dozed off... I found myself surrounded by a group of skeletons, acting as they had when they were still alive. One skeleton came over to me and said: Memories Flee and Are no more. All are empty dreams Devoid of meaning. Violate the reality of things And babble about 'God' and 'the Buddha' And you will never find the true Way. Still breathing, You feel animated, So a corpse in a field Seems to be something Apart from you. If chunks of rock Can serve as a memento To the dead A better headstone Would be a simple tea-mortar. Humans are indeed frightful things. A single moon Bright and clear In an unclouded sky; Yet we still stumble In the world's darkness. This world Is but A fleeting dream So why be alarmed At its evanescence? The vagaries of life, Though painful, Teach us Not to cling To this floating world. Why do people Lavish decoration On this set of bones, Destined to disappear Without a trace? The original body Must return to Its original place. Do not search For what cannot be found. No one really knows The nature of birth Nor the true dwelling place. We return to the source And turn to dust. Many paths lead from The foot of the mountain, But at the peak We all gaze at the Single bright moon. If at the end of our journey There is no final Resting place, Then we need not fear Losing our Way. No beginning. No end. Our mind Is born and dies; The emptiness of emptiness! Relax, And the mind Runs wild; Control the world And you can cast it aside. Rain, hail, snow, and ice: All are different But when they fall They become to same water As the valley stream. The ways of proclaiming The Mind all vary, But the same heavenly truth Can be seen In each and every one. Cover your path With fallen pine needles So no one will be able To locate your True dwelling place. How vain, The endless funderals at the Cremation grounds of Mount Toribe! Don't the mourner realize That they will be next? 'Life is fleeeting!' We think at the sight Of smoke drifting from Mount Toribe, But when will we realize That we are in the same boat? All is in vain! This morning, A healthy friend; This evening, A wisp of cremation smoke. What a pity! Evening smoke from Mount Toribe Blown violently To and fro By the wind. When burned We become ashes, and earth when buried. Is it only our sins That remain behind? All the sins Committed In the Three Worlds Will fade away Together with me.

Wherever you go, Provincetown will always take you back, at whatever age and in whatever condition. Because time moves somewhat differently there, it is possible to return after ten years or more and run into an acquaintance, on Commercial or at the A&P, who will ask mildly, as if he’d seen you the day before yesterday, what you’ve been doing with yourself. The streets of Provincetown are not in any way threatening, at least not to those with an appetite for the full range of human passions. If you grow deaf and blind and lame in Provincetown, some younger person with a civic conscience will wheel you wherever you need to go; if you die there, the marshes and dunes are ready to receive your ashes. While you’re alive and healthy, for as long as it lasts, the golden hands of the clock tower at Town Hall will note each hour with an electric bell as we below, on our purchase of land, buy or sell, paint or write or fish for bass, or trade gossip on the post office steps. The old bayfront houses will go on dreaming, at least until the emptiness between their boards proves more durable than the boards themselves. The sands will continue their slow devouring of the forests that were the Pilgrims’ first sight of North America, where man, as Fitzgerald put it, “must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The ghost of Dorothy Bradford will walk the ocean floor off Herring Cove, draped in seaweed, surrounded by the fleeting silver lights of fish, and the ghost of Guglielmo Marconi will tap out his messages to those even longer dead than he. The whales will breach and loll in their offshore world, dive deep into black canyons, and swim south when the time comes. Herons will browse the tidal pools; crabs with blue claws tipped in scarlet will scramble sideways over their own shadows. At sunset the dunes will take on their pink-orange light, and just after sunset the boats will go luminous in the harbor. Ashes of the dead, bits of their bones, will mingle with the sand in the salt marsh, and wind and water will further disperse the scraps of wood, shell, and rope I’ve used for Billy’s various memorials. After dark the raccoons and opossums will start on their rounds; the skunks will rouse from their burrows and head into town. In summer music will rise up. The old man with the portable organ will play for passing change in front of the public library. People in finery will sing the anthems of vanished goddesses; people who are still trying to live by fishing will pump quarters into jukeboxes that play the songs of their high school days. As night progresses, people in diminishing numbers will wander the streets (where whaling captains and their wives once promenaded, where O’Neill strode in drunken furies, where Radio Girl—who knows where she is now?—announced the news), hoping for surprises or just hoping for what the night can be counted on to provide, always, in any weather: the smell of water and its sound; the little houses standing square against immensities of ocean and sky; and the shapes of gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in.

The American Heart Association reports: There are numerous benefits of daily physical activity: reduces the risk of heart disease by improving blood circulation throughout the body; keeps weight under control; improves blood cholesterol levels; prevents and reduces high blood pressure; prevents bone loss; boosts energy levels; helps manage stress; releases tension; improves the ability to fall asleep quickly and sleep well; improves self-image; counters anxiety and depression and increases enthusiasm and optimism; increases muscle strength; gives greater capacity for other physical activities; provides a way to share an activity with family and friends; establishes good heart-healthy habits in children and counters the conditions

Restore vitamin D to healthy levels and wonderful things happen: improved mood, clearer thinking, better bone health and protection from osteoporosis, reduced blood sugar and blood pressure, and improved physical performance and protection from dementia and cancer—compounding many of the wonderful effects begun by wheat and grain elimination.

In fact, there is much crossover between these categories of research. If we can learn how to counteract the devastating impact of bone loss in microgravity, the solutions may well be applied to osteoporosis and other bone diseases. If we can learn how to keep our hearts healthy in space, that knowledge will be useful for heart health on Earth. The effects of living in space look a lot like those of aging, which affect us all. The lettuce we will grow later in the year is a study for future space travel—astronauts on their way to Mars will have no fresh food but what they can grow—but it is also teaching us more about growing food efficiently on Earth. The closed water system developed for the ISS, where we process our urine into clean water, is crucial for getting to Mars, but it also has promising implications for treating water on Earth, especially in places where clean water is scarce. This overlapping of scientific goals isn’t new—when Captain Cook traveled the Pacific it was for the purpose of exploration, but the scientists traveling with him picked up plants along the way and revolutionized the field of botany. Was the purpose of Cook’s expedition scientific or exploratory? Does it matter, ultimately? It will be remembered for both, and I hope the same is true of my time on the space station.

The Kapha Season Kapha season is like springtime for your body. For the first twenty years, your body builds bones and tissues, and the circadian rhythm fluctuates wildly at times, trying to find a balance. Babies aren’t born with a set sleep schedule, but they develop one quickly during the first months of life. Gradually, the body settles into a system in which the hormones, blood pressure, bowels, and other systems function on a diurnal schedule. Anyone with teenagers knows that they give up their regular sleep habits and become night owls. They are impossible to pry out of bed in the morning and sleep until noon on weekends. In fact, some researchers suggest that the real end of adolescence can be marked by the time when young adults give up trying to stay up so late. Teenagers’ eating schedules, too, become erratic as they crave energy while their bodies are growing and maturing. When they get out of balance, teens can struggle in school and get inflammatory conditions, such as acne. They can adopt dietary habits that will be harder to shake as they become adults, which can lead to weight gain and depression in adulthood. This is a crucial time to introduce kids to healthy eating, a good night’s sleep, and plenty of exercise. Their growing bodies demand a lot of fuel, and their muscles need to move in order to develop properly. I often see patients who are still in their teen years struggling with school, friendships, and finding a sense of purpose. Though it may sound surprising, I can often trace these problems back to an unhealthy schedule, including late nights of doing homework (or texting while pretending to do homework), and eating unhealthy foods late in the day. Another culprit is little or no exercise, and a lack of natural light. Kids need natural light during these critical growing years.

One of the French sailors had learned enough Massachusett to inform his captors before dying that God would destroy them for their misdeeds. The Nauset scoffed at the threat. But the Europeans carried a disease, and they bequeathed it to their jailers. Based on accounts of the symptoms, the epidemic was probably of viral hepatitis, according to a study by Arthur E. Spiess, of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, and Bruce D. Spiess, of the Medical College of Virginia. (In their view, the strain was, like hepatitis A, probably spread by contaminated food, rather than by sexual contact, like hepatitis B or C.) Whatever the cause, the results were ruinous. The Indians “died in heapes as they lay in their houses,” the merchant Thomas Morton observed. In their panic, the healthy fled from the sick, carrying the disease with them to neighboring communities. Behind them remained the dying, “left for crows, kites, and vermin to prey upon.” Beginning in 1616, the pestilence took at least three years to exhaust itself and killed as much as 90 percent of the people in coastal New England. “And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations made such a spectacle,” Morton wrote, that the Massachusetts woodlands seemed to be “a new-found Golgotha,” the Place of the Skull, where executions took place in Roman Jerusalem.

Although the current medical approach to treating osteoporosis is quite often one dimensional—prescribing medication, calcium, and vitamin D supplements—I’ve encouraged you to take the true complexity of bone into account, using an approach that, while it may or may not include medications, always includes proper nutrition; assessment for and resolution of any gastrointestinal dysfunction; hormone balancing if needed; and exercise. I’ve asked you to maintain a healthy skepticism regarding your diagnosis and the recommendations of your doctor( s), doing a good job on your homework before agreeing to any treatment program—and always watching out for treatments (conventional or alternative) that claim to be magic bullets!

Cardiologist Dr. Broda Barnes believed health was synonymous with a high metabolic rate. In his book Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness, Barnes links a healthy metabolism to a warm body (97.8–98.6 degrees F/36.6–37 degrees C), good digestion and daily bowel movements, healthy skin, shiny hair, strong nails, bones, and teeth, the ability to procreate and desire sex, void of PMS and hormonal issues, a healthy heart, clear mind, infrequent urination, deep restful sleep, good energy all day long, a lean muscular body, lack of disease, and a feeling of content and happiness.

You should ask your doctor for a magnesium red blood test which is used to measure magnesium levels. It usually ranges from 4.3 to 6.7—the optimal level is 6.5. So, if you are below 6.0, you are magnesium deficient.

If you have good overall health (free of disease, pain, and illness), a warm body (average 98.6 degrees Farenheit), a normal pulse (75–90 BPM), good digestion, and restful sleep; can maintain good muscle tone; have a healthy sex drive, feel happy; maintain normal blood pressure (around 120/80); and have healthy bones, teeth, hair, skin, and nails, then I would say you are eating the right amount of protein for you.

Too much vitamin D supplementation and not enough of the pure form can cause magnesium deficiency.  You also need to consume it in your food as well as take supplemental vitamin K2 with more magnesium. "Taking mega doses of vitamin D supplements without sufficient amounts of K2 and magnesium can lead to vitamin D toxicity and magnesium deficiency symptoms, which include inappropriate calcification.

It can also be used to counter joint pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis.

We know pretty well the makeup of the party of the global economy, but who are the members of the party of local community? They are people who take a generous and neighborly view of self-preservation; they do not believe that they can survive and flourish by the rule of dog eat dog; they do not believe that they can succeed by defeating or destroying or selling or using up everything but themselves. They doubt that good solutions can be produced by violence. They want to preserve the precious things of nature and of human culture and pass them on to their children. They want the world's fields and forests to be productive; they do not want them to be destroyed for the sake of production. They know you cannot be a democrat (small d ) or a conservationist and at the same time a proponent of the supranational corporate economy. They believe-they know from their experience-that the neighborhood, the local community, is the proper place and frame of reference for responsible work. 'They see that no commonwealth or community of interest can be defined by greed. They know that things connect-that farming, for example, is connected to nature, and food to farming, and health to food-and they want to preserve the connections. They know that a healthy local community cannot be replaced by a market or an entertainment industry or an information highway. They know that contrary to all the unmeaning and unmeant political talk about "job creation," work ought not to be merely a bone thrown to otherwise unemployed. They know that work ought to be necessary; it ought to be good, it ought to be satisfying and dignifying to the people who do it, and genuinely useful and pleasing to the people for whom it is done.

If your fasting insulin level is below 3, and you are not hypoglycemic, your Personal Sugar Rule is “Eat More Fruit and Starch.” Low insulin prevents the building of new muscle and bone. However, avoid junk. Eat healthy sugar and starch, such as northern fruits (berries, apples, etc.) and potatoes. A daily amount that seems reasonable should be chosen, and glucose and insulin re-measured after a month or so. If you got an “A” in Sugar (insulin is between 3 and 6 µu/dl and fasting glucose below 80 mg/dl), then it is OK to continue eating the amount of sugar, starch, and fruit currently being consumed. The Personal Sugar Rule is “Hold the Line.” However, low quality food, like cereal, should be swapped out for food richer in micronutrients, like northern fruits or potatoes. Breakfast cereals have little in the way of micronutrients beyond what the manufacturer added for “fortification.” If you got a “B” (insulin is between 6 and 12, and fasting glucose below 90) , then a reduction in sugar, starch, and fruit is called for. The Personal Sugar Rule here is “Reduce the Fruit, Sugar, and Starch.” If you got a “C” (insulin is over 12 or fasting glucose is over 90, all sugar, starch, and fruit should be cut. The Personal Sugar Rule is “Fruit, Sugar, and Starch Are Forbidden.” This is a pre-diabetic condition, or worse. If these have already been cut and the numbers are still high, then more meat should be added and vegetables cut further. Dietary fat, including saturated fat, is ad libitum—all you want.

13 Reasons to include Curry Leaves to your Diet Sambar. Upma. Dal. Poha. What do they all have in common? A tempering rich in curry leaves. But curry leaves – or Curry leaves, as they are commonly known in India – do more good than simply seasoning your food. Curry power benefits include weight loss and a drop in cholesterol levels. But there’s lots more that the Curry leaves can do. Here are 13 reasons to chew on those curry leaves that pop up on your plate. To keep anaemia away The humble Curry leaves is a rich source of iron and folic acid. Anaemia crops up when your body is unable to absorb iron and use it. “Folic acid is responsible for iron absorption and as Curry leaves is a rich source of both compounds, it’s the perfect choice if you’re looking to amp up your iron levels,” says Alpa Momaya, a Diet & Wellness consultant with Sunrise nutrition hub. To protect your liver If you are a heavy drinker, eating curry leaves can help quell liver damage. A study published in Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical and Clinical Research has revealed that curry leaves contain kaempferol, a potent antioxidant, and can protect the liver from oxidative stress and harmful toxins. To maintain blood sugar levels A study published in the Journal of Plant food for Nutrition has revealed that curry leaves can lower blood sugar levels by affecting the insulin activity. To keep your heart healthy A study published in the Journal of Chinese Medicine showed that “curry leaves can help increase the amount of good cholesterol (HDL) and protect you from heart disease and atherosclerosis,” Momaya says. To aid in digestion Curry leaves have a carminative nature, meaning that they prevent the formation of gas in the gastrointestinal tract and facilitate the expulsion of gas if formed. Ayurveda also suggests that Curry leaves has mild laxative properties and can balance the pitta levels in the body. Momaya’s advice: “A juice of curry leaves with a bit of lime juice or added to buttermilk can be consumed for indigestion.” To control diarrhoea Even though curry leaves have mild laxative properties, research has shown that the carbazole alkaloids in curry leaves can help control diarrhoea. To reduce congestion Curry leaves has long been a home remedy when it comes to dealing with a wet cough, sinusitis or chest congestion. Curry leaves, packed with vitamin C and A and rich in kaempferol, can help loosen up congested mucous. To help you lose weight Curry leaves is known to improve digestion by altering the way your body absorbs fat. This quality is particularly helpful to the obese. To combat the side effects of chemotherapy Curry leaves are said to protect the body from the side effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. They also help protect the bone marrow and halt the production of free radicals in the body. To improve your vision Curry leaves is high in vitamin A, which contains carotenoids that can protect the cornea. Eating a diet rich in curry leaves can help improve your vision over time. To prevent skin infections Curry leaves combines potent antioxidant properties with powerful anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and antiprotozoal properties. It is a common home remedy for common skin infections such as acne and fungal infections of the nail. To get better hair Curry leaves has long been used to prevent greying of the hair by our grandmothers. It also helps treat damaged hair, tackle hair fall and dandruff and add bounce to limp hair. To take care of skin Curry leaves can also be used to heal damaged skin. Apply a paste on burns, cuts, bruises, skin irritations and insect bites to ensure quick recovery and clean healing. Add more Curry leaves to your diet and enjoy the benefits of curry leaves.

Self-parenting exercises taught me to slowly rebuild healthy self-talk. But it must be said: Even though I know reparenting has helped dozens of my friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has told me it’s exhausting. Reparenting takes time, and concentration, and calmness. It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction.

Insulin is the hormone directly tied to the increasing cause of high sugar levels. It is secreted by the pancreas,

Magnesium aids in the making of the primary form of energy—ATP (adenosine triphosphate). Therefore, a deficiency in magnesium can make you tired or low in energy.

It’s okay to be sad. You won’t be sad a week from now. I love you, and you are doing your best,” she said, and I knew she was right. I leaned back into her belly. I could almost feel it pushing back against me, a solid pressure, telling me I was not alone. She silenced my mother’s voice in my head. Excised her not just in body but in mind. She did it because, as my third parent, that is her right. — Self-parenting exercises taught me to slowly rebuild healthy self-talk. But it must be said: Even though I know reparenting has helped dozens of my friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has told me it’s exhausting.

Eat fermented foods regularly to introduce probiotics into your diet, such as yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, and naturally-fermented “pickled” vegetables. Ensure fermented vegetables are raw or unpasteurized (and from a reputable source); cooked or pasteurized products no longer contain live cultures. ●      Eat foods rich in prebiotic fiber, which serves as food for the probiotics in your gut, such as vegetables (especially locally-grown cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, kale, and Brussels sprouts), fruit (especially berries and slightly under-ripe bananas), nuts, seeds (especially chia seeds), and legumes.[240] ●      Include bone broth and slow-cooked meat in your diet regularly. The gelatin these foods contain helps maintain a healthy gut lining and thus improves your resilience to foodborne pathogens.

Extensive research over the last forty years has shown that WBV safely promotes and increases bone density, more so than conventional exercise, which has long been understood to be important for healthy bone development.

Luckily, a healthy diet for building bone is the same diet that is healthy for every other part of you. A primarily plant-based, whole-foods diet with small amounts of animal products, if desired, will make an enormous difference to your health.

A key to avoiding chronic inflammation is in balancing one’s dietary fat intake by eating only natural fats, avoiding junk food, and consuming healthy foods. In doing so, many problems like muscle imbalance, weak bones, injuries, chronic diseases, even mental-emotional illness can be prevented.

Dart initially echoed Darwin’s theory that bipedalism freed the hands of early hominins to make and use hunting tools, which in turn selected for big brains, hence better hunting abilities. Then, in a famous 1953 paper, clearly influenced by his war experiences, Dart proposed that the first humans were not just hunters but also murderous predators.18 Dart’s words are so astonishing, you have to read them: The loathsome cruelty of mankind to man forms one of his inescapable characteristics and differentiative features; and it is explicable only in terms of his carnivorous, and cannibalistic origin. The blood-bespattered, slaughter-gutted archives of human history from the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian records to the most recent atrocities of the Second World War accord with early universal cannibalism, with animal and human sacrificial practices of their substitutes in formalized religions and with the world-wide scalping, head-hunting, body-mutilating and necrophilic practices of mankind in proclaiming this common bloodlust differentiator, this predaceous habit, this mark of Cain that separates man dietetically from his anthropoidal relatives and allies him rather with the deadliest of Carnivora. Dart’s killer-ape hypothesis, as it came to be known, was popularized by the journalist Robert Ardrey in a best-selling book, African Genesis, that found a ready audience in a generation disillusioned by two world wars, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, political assassinations, and widespread political unrest.19 The killer-ape hypothesis left an indelible stamp on popular culture including movies like Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. But the Rousseauians weren’t dead yet. Reanalyses of bones in the limestone pits from which fossils like the Taung Baby came showed they were killed by leopards, not early humans.20 Further studies revealed these early hominins were mostly vegetarians. And as a reaction to decades of bellicosity, many scientists in the 1970s embraced evidence for humans’ nicer side, especially gathering, food sharing, and women’s roles. The most widely discussed and audacious hypothesis, proposed by Owen Lovejoy, was that the first hominins were selected to become bipeds to be more cooperative and less aggressive.21 According to Lovejoy, early hominin females favored males who were better at walking upright and thus better able to carry food with which to provision them. To entice these tottering males to keep coming back with food, females encouraged exclusive long-term monogamous relationships by concealing their menstrual cycles and having permanently large breasts (female chimps advertise when they ovulate with eye-catching swellings, and their breasts shrink when they are not nursing). Put crudely, females selected for cooperative males by exchanging sex for food. If so, then selection against reactive aggression and frequent fighting is as old as the hominin lineage.22

Last, and perhaps most important, prolonged sitting can kindle chronic inflammation by allowing muscles to remain persistently inactive. In addition to moving our bodies, muscles function as glands, synthesizing and releasing dozens of messenger proteins (termed myokines) with important roles. Among other jobs, myokines influence metabolism, circulation, and bones, and—you guessed it—they also help control inflammation. In fact, when researchers first started to study myokines, they were astonished to discover that muscles regulate inflammation during bouts of moderate to intense physical activity similarly to the way the immune system mounts an inflammatory response to an infection or a wound.40 Without going into too many details, we have learned that the body first initiates a proactive inflammatory response to moderate- or high-intensity physical activity to prevent or repair damage caused by the physiological stress of exercise and subsequently activates a second, larger anti-inflammatory response to return us to a non-inflamed state.41 Because the anti-inflammatory effects of physical activity are almost always larger and longer than the pro-inflammatory effects, and muscles make up about a third of the body, active muscles have potent anti-inflammatory effects. Even modest levels of physical activity dampen levels of chronic inflammation, including in obese people.42

Because squatting creates tiny smoothed regions on ankle bones known as squatting facets, we can see that humans for millions of years, including Homo erectus and Neanderthals, regularly squatted.12 Squatting facets also indicate that many Europeans squatted habitually until furniture and stoves became common after the Middle Ages.13

I told myself that self-care shouldn’t cost money or come from a place of obligation. Being truly healthy should feel like a pleasure.

Like many family dynamics, it didn’t have to be healthy, it just had to work.)

Sometimes I think that only the sick are truly healthy.

The sakura shrimp fishing season has just started in Yui, so that's the first catch you're eating. If you believe what they say, that means you'll live a long and healthy life." Nagare removed the lid from the bowl, releasing a cloud of steam. Kana leaned over, closed her eyes, and took a deep sniff of the clear broth. "It smells wonderful!" "The only solid ingredient is diced tofu. Plus a garnish of pepper tree leaves." "Just tofu? But this aroma--- it's so complex." "The stock is from quick-grilled sweetfish bones. I had plenty of them left over from all that sushi." "So that's what I'm picking up," replied Kana, sniffing the steam again. "Who'd have thought those tiny little bones could add so much flavor?

The grace of joyful living gives strength to the bones.

My body and all its organs were created by the infinite intelligence in my subconscious mind. It knows how to heal me. Its wisdom created all my organs, tissues, bones, and muscles. This infinite healing presence within me is now transforming every atom of my being, making me whole and perfect. I give thanks for the healing I know is taking place now. Wonderful are the works of the creative intelligence within me! I am now perfectly healthy.

Pregnant ladies, new mothers, and young children can turn to a special recipe from holistic wellness coach, Ashley Neese – one she fondly refers to as the “Nourishing Broth.” Bearing the traditional recipe in mind, add 4 large carrots, celery stalks, and a whole onion bulb into a pot of bubbling water. A couple of key ingredients featured in the nourishing broth come with added assets of their own. 3 vitamin-A rich leeks are added to the mix. More than just a booster for healthy eyesight, it helps with white and red blood cell development as well. The 4 stalks of lemongrass, mostly native to Asian countries, is a rich source of vitamins A, C, and folic acid. 5-inch knobs of ginger and turmeric bring more than just tang to the savory broth. Ginger is a known reliever for motion sickness and loss of appetite, whereas the golden-yellow turmeric spice powder is an anti-inflammatory agent that treats symptoms from toothaches to menstrual pain. Finally, 1 bunch of Swiss chard stems, 6 cloves of garlic, 2 bay leaves, non-soy miso, fresh lemon juice, and half bunches of cilantro and parsley leaves complete the broth. Pregnant women are advised to drink 2 to 3 cups a day. The recipe provided makes around 5 quarts, equating to an average of 20 cups.         

Visceral belly fat, the harmful fat surrounding organs, was reduced The risk for cancer and inflammatory diseases declined Immune and brain function improved. In the mouse brain, neurons were regenerated, improving learning, memory, and concentration It also reduced the incidence of skin lesions and it ceased bone mineral density loss Intermittent fasting actually promoted healthy bone formation

To be healthy and not… fat,” she blurted. “Reginald likes you exactly like you are,” he said, like he didn’t want her changing anything while he was gone. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind—” “He minds,” he snapped. “He’s obsessed with everything about your body.” “Really?” She smiled even though he sounded disgusted. “That’s just—” “Silly, I know.” Her smile vanished. “No, sweet, asshole,” she said to the bastard behind the door.