Session Notes

Marlyn.ca

Implement Sleep-Right Rules

Once you’ve turned your bedroom into a healthy, sleep-inducing oasis, the next critical step is to start sleeping correctly. You may not have known that there is actually a proper way and time to sleep. It’s true!

When, how and how much we sleep is important. Failing to follow these recommendations can impede the fat-burning and hormone-balancing benefits you should gain from sleep each and every night.

Here are The Clear Medicine System guidelines for hormone-enhancing sleep:

Sleep in complete darkness. Again, even a small amount of light can hamper your sleep.

Sleep nude (or at least with loose-fitting nightclothes – but nude is better). Do not sleep in tight undergarments (bras, girdles, briefs, etc). Tight clothing will increase your body temperature and interfere with melatonin release while you sleep.

Establish regular sleeping hours. Try to get up each morning and go to bed every night at roughly the same time. Oversleeping can be as detrimental as sleep deprivation. How you feel each day is an important indication of how much sleep is right for you.

Get to bed by 11 p.m. Since the invention of electricity (not to mention television and computers), we have begun staying up later and later. This change has resulted in a largely sleep-deprived society. Our stress glands, the adrenals, recharge or recover most between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. Going to bed before 11 p.m. (in fact, 10 p.m. is even better) is optimal for rebuilding your adrenal reserves. I know this can be difficult to change so I recommend to my patients they start going to bed 15 minutes earlier each week until they reach their new target time.

Sleep 7 ½ to 9 hours a night. The American Cancer Association has found higher incidences of cancer in individuals who consistently sleep less than six hours or more than nine hours nightly. Oversleeping is just as harmful as sleep deprivation. Consistently needing more than nine hours of sleep every night warrants a visit to your doctor for further investigation, as this may indicate an underlying medical condition such as hypothyroidism or depression or a deficiency of iron, folic acid or vitamin B12. Some of us simply require more or less sleep than others. If you awaken without an alarm and feel rested, you’re likely getting the right amount of sleep for you.

See the light first thing in the morning. Daylight and morning sounds are key signals that help awaken your brain. Turning on the lights or opening the blinds is the proper way to reset your body clock and ensure that your melatonin levels drops back to “awake” mode until the evening. Exposure to morning light has also been proven to be one of the simplest ways to increase your energy for the entire day. It’s also been shown to boost testosterone in men and fertility in women by stimulating luteinizing hormone release from the pituitary gland. Enhance this action further by exposing yourself to sunlight and by getting outside during the day. I can’t say enough about the benefits of getting outside, even for 10–20 minutes in the morning light.

Keep household lighting dim from dinnertime until you go to sleep. Believe it or not, this simple step not only prepares your body and hormones for sleep, but it also helps your digestion.

The most important step in selecting a natural sleep aid is to first determine the cause of your sleep disruption because different supplements can be more effective than others for specific sleep-robbing conditions. Difficulty falling or staying asleep may result from stress, vitamin or mineral deficiency, excess caffeine intake, certain medications, menopause, anxiety, depression, low melatonin, muscle tension, pain and a whole host of other reasons too numerous to list. Fortunately, many herbal remedies, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and hormones are available to assist you in your quest for a good night’s rest.

Magnesium or calcium/magnesium is recommended for all causes of sleep disruption – in addition to one or more of the following for the specific sleep imbalances:

Cant fall asleep – Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to high cortisol/stress:
Seditol – 3 at bedtime with magnesium 200 to 800 mg
Relora – 1 on rising and 2 before bed
Ashwaganda – 500 to 1,000 mg twice daily

Can’t stay asleep – Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to high cortisol/stress or low melatonin
Relora – 1 on rising and 2 before bed
Ashwaganda – 500 to 1,000 mg twice daily
Melatonin – sublingual form is best 3 mg – best for those over 45 to 50 years

Waking too early– Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to low serotonin/anxiety or depression
RX to increase serotonin – fish oils – 6 grams per day
Vitamin D3 2000 to 5000IU per day
5 HTP 200 to 400 mg per day and add Cenitol (metagenics), which is inositol, to protein shakes daily to enhance serotonin in the brain

Racing mind in bed at night– Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to high cortisol
Phosphatidylserine – 300mg at bedtime
Vitamin B6 -100mg at bedtime

Can’t sleep because of anxiety or body tension/pain– Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to low GABA, a naturally calming brain chemical
Gaba – 500 to 1000mg at bedtime

Can’t sleep due to PMS – Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to low progesterone which helps to prevent headaches, anxiety and insomnia before your period
Evening primrose oil – 2000mg daily for 2 weeks prior to menses
Natural progesterone cream – prescription through MD or ND

Can’t sleep due to Menopausal or Perimenopausal symptoms- Suggested Supplement / Remedy – usually due to low progesterone/low estrogen and/or high cortisol, which can cause hot flashes, night sweats, anxiety, palpitations, broken sleep

Suggestions for progesterone above
Herbs to increase estrogen – clear estrogen 2 to 3 at bedtime
Natural Bi-est cream – prescription through your MD or ND
Relora – 1 on rising and 2 before bed to reduce stress at menopause

Normally a lot of these shows are filled with drivel — but this one is worth reposting — and worth watching if you can deal with the product placements. It’s remarkable in that it is so through and so free of the usual bandaid solutions.

Guardian.co.uk  

Last week, on an internet radio channel called The Fifth Column, I debated climate change with Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, one of the rightwing libertarian groups that rose from the ashes of the Revolutionary Communist party. Fox is a feared interrogator on the BBC show The Moral Maze. Yet when I asked her a simple question – “do you accept that some people’s freedoms intrude upon other people’s freedoms?” – I saw an ideology shatter like a windscreen. I used the example of a Romanian lead-smelting plant I had visited in 2000, whose freedom to pollute is shortening the lives of its neighbours. Surely the plant should be regulated in order to enhance the negative freedoms – freedom from pollution, freedom from poisoning – of its neighbours? She tried several times to answer it, but nothing coherent emerged which would not send her crashing through the mirror of her philosophy.

He’s right – but he’s missing a key point: The libertarian movement has rightly seized on one of the fundamental tenants of the doctrine of freedom taught by Paul: For freedom to be freedom, freedom must be absolute.

But, they miss the foundational logic behind such. The entirety of Scripture is pretty clear on one key point: people with un-transformed hearts need the law. They need to be controlled and they need a system of punishment to back such or other people would be harmed.

The intention of other people not being harmed has never changed.

All that has changed is the mechanism of the delivery of such. It’s based on the foundational assumption that people’s hearts can be changed and that every other part of them can be made new – such that they want new things. It’s based on the belief that it is possible to have such a profound encounter with love in the form of the person of Christ that the human heart can come to feel the pain of others and care as deeply for the pain of another as if it were their own pain. It’s based on the assumption that a person can come to hear the voice of God and, indeed, can come to long to do so.

A person who is that deeply transformed can be set absolutely free for they no longer need the control of law to cease hurting and commence loving others.

Libertarian ideology ignores once simple reality: Not all hearts have been transformed.

They could be – but some don’t want to be, some are too damaged to understand how to be, some are too afraid to be and some are so deluded that they actually think the evil that defines their lives IS transformation.

Those people need the law that the adherents of this level of extremism want to and have largely succeeded in abolishing.

Ironic thing is, it’s predominantly Christians who are promoting the ideological delusion that setting people free with un-transformed hearts is consistent with the Gospel…

Swizec

On the other hand you have something PG calls the maker’s schedule – a schedule for those of us who produce stuff. Working on large abstract systems involves fitting the whole thing into your mind – somebody once likened this to constructing a house out of expensive crystal glassand as soon as someone distracts you, it all comes barreling down and shatters into a thousand pieces.

Finally, an explanation!

WebMD

Dec. 13, 2011 — Girls and young women who are vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) appear to be no more likely than those who are not vaccinated to engage in sexually risky behaviors, a CDC survey finds.

After all of the drama, handwringing and false guilt about teens being given a free pass to have sex via safety from only one of oh-so-many sexually transmitted diseases, it turns out that the only thing this vaccination manages to do is keep children from dying of one sexually transmitted disease.

And, actually to the contrary of the above, it seems to at least be correlated somewhat with a rather high willingness to insist on condom use in women.

The best schools

The students could not go from their vague discomfort to a rational ethical conclusion because they have never learned traditional philosophy of ethics. Therefore, their objections have no force and, for all that they sense injustice, they will likely do very little good in the world. And the “accept everyone, accept everything” assemblies they attend unwittingly feed the problem: They learn to accept gay rights in North America and stoning gays in Afghanistan.

For centuries, the Church (Protestant and Catholic) was the center of moral thought. She defined goodness, ethics, morality and truth and, as dubious as some of the definitions may have been, they were societally accepted – though they were founded on very little in the way of rational thought and mostly based on the writings of ancient teachers.

And, the years passed and the faith slowly changed. More and more the basic concepts of grace and freedom became a tired footnote to a reconstituted law we used to control people. The strident hostility she formerly displayed towards the Gnostic ideas that regarded the body as bad and the spirit as good were replaced by a bland acceptance of such. The ancient and even enlightenment ideals of God calling humanity to heal and change the world for good slowly became replaced with a cosmic vending machine of the Divine which is purchased by an ever changing subset of moral requirements.

And, society responded. The more educated did what the Church had long since ceased to do – read the Bible – and rejected us because the strange Judaism, Gnosticism and New Age Movement based beliefs we were now following in no way resembled the teachings of Scripture. The less educated simply looked at us in the hard cold light of reality and judged us to be idiotic. And, they were both right.

And, with us went our morality.

But, the Church had no fear. Our laws safely projected our moral system and a societal acceptance of virtue – thus, the acceptance of our morality was not really that necessary. So, we continued with our passivity, pulled back into our stained glass hidey-holes, repeated the writings of long dead thinkers and acted like everything was fine while we continued to do nothing to alter our refusal to actually think about what we believe.

But, little by little, something was changing. While our laws still promoted most virtues, the society quietly forgot truth could even exist – and the law started to seem silly. And, a Church promoting anyone’s law – especially long dead people’s laws – began to seem absurdist, and MOST WORTHY of strident censure themselves.

So, then we finally get here: We arrive at a place where a class full of high school students no longer can look at a culture where women are property, can be executed at will, have their noses hacked off and may be abused by their husbands or families as a matter of course and conclude that this is not a good thing to be happening.

Why? Because way back when, we decided it was a good idea to stop thinking. We decided we would base our teachings on dead guy’s thinkings instead of founding them on anthropology (The study of what it means to be human) and we decided our stained glass hideouts would attract people in all by themselves.

And, ultimately, we decided to quit engaging culture and thought.

The ironic reality is that when we quit engaging and thinking, even secular thinkers are waking up and realizing that thinking basically seems to have ceased – right along with the ability to stand up for much other then not standing up for much of anything other then seals and trees – especially that which may suggest that some things simply do not fit well with our Anthropology.

And, starkly and significantly absent from an article that so clearly grasps the problem, is even the remotest grasp of anything but a plan to go back to teaching a set of rules that these students should then accept and make moral judgments on the basis of.

And, we’re still waiting for the Church to stand up…

The Electronic Freedom Foundation

We expect to carry on our lawful lives free from police intrusion unless a judge can be persuaded that the police are justified in their intrusion into your life, including the fact that the intrusion relates to a lawful investigation into criminal wrongdoing. Lawful access would remove the only check and balance, allowing police the ability monitor citizens without any reason.

Just in case you thought plans for a police state here in Canuckistan have finally died their natural death, think again…

It’s back, it hasn’t changed much and it still has exactly the same goal: the removal of the only firewall we have to modify the behavior of those we have given the power of life and death, bondage and freedom and rights vs. responsibilities.

And, it still needs more voices speaking out against it.

BigNoise-Enterprises

It’s short, bullet form and exactly as surgically clear/simple as a person in pain needs.

Danoah

Before I go on, I feel I must say something one time. Today’s post is not about homosexuality. It’s not about Christians. It’s not about religion. It’s not about politics. It’s about something else altogether. Something greater. Something simpler.



It’s about love.



It’s about kindness.



It’s about friendship

Honestly, I usually find this guy a bit insipid and annoying – but this is so worth reposting. Because it’s real. Because it’s so constant.

Scientific American

For example, subjects were asked if they’d administer harmless but painful electric shocks to another person. They chose to shock those fully clothed significantly more often than those exposed above the waist. So if you’re looking for sympathy, maybe show a little skin.

After years of church and society ranting about how a woman showing a little skin is the woman dressing for a rape, it turns out the opposite is true. Men and women who show a little skin actually elicit sympathy, not predation, from others.

Doesn’t it also seem rather interesting that the schools which treat children in the most severe ways also tend to be those which have the most stringent uniform demands…

Washington Post

The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy — work hard, play by the rules, get ahead — has been broken, and they want to see it restored.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the news media, almost to a journalist, simply fails to grasp what is going on world wide as the protests in the world wide financial centers multiply and the frenzied rhetoric calling for the arrests of the protestors out of the financial leaders increases in pitch and volume. They write curious articles wondering who these people are, what they want and about how silly they are to be there.

Strangely, the financial leadership is NOT giving voice to the same wonderment. They already know.

What they know is this: when the people of Egypt came to understand that they had a two tiered court system, that they had been fleeced out of their money, that they were under surveillance and control, that they were living in fear, that normal means would not get the job done and that they needed a change in those who were ruling over them, they went to the seat of power and overthrew those leaders. (Sadly they failed to figure out what they would replace it with…)

Well, the rest of the world has too figured out that they have a two tiered court system, that we have been fleeced out of our money, that we are under surveillance and control, that we are increasingly living in fear, that normal means will not get the job done as our political critters are all on the take and that we need a change in those who are ruling over them, they went to the real seat of western power and are clearly working to overthrow the real unelected overlords of our society. (Sadly they also have failed to figure out what they would replace them with…)

But, make no mistake, the loudest protests are not coming from the guys on the mattresses in the park out front – they are coming from the 33rd floor of the building because, unlike the press, they get it. They get that their paid shills in Congress, the Senate and on the North Side of the 49th may have to finally grow a spine and admit that the sort of theft these uber-rich managed to get written into law is just wrong. Perhaps, they may even have to do something about it – hopefully by tossing these thieves in jail.

Let’s just hope they all figure out how to spell, “Wrong,” before, as in Egypt, our overlords are dragged in the street.