7 Steps Toward Eliminating Back Pain
Follow these 7 steps and very likely your back pain will vanish. In all probability you will gain new abilities to:
- stand pain free for longer periods of time
- sit pain free for longer periods of time
- reduce your need for pain medication
- engage in more pain free physical activities you now avoid
- enjoy more frequent lovemaking
- experience deeper uninterrupted sleep
I have been exploring non invasive techniques to reduce and eliminate chronic severe back pain ever since I was in a car accident on Maui in early 2004. These 7 steps are the best solutions I’ve discovered to address the many causes of debilitating back pain.
Step 1.
Eat A High Raw Whole Foods Diet
Give yourself the opportunity to see if your back pain is the result of intestinal blockages, gas and/or constipation. With your permission sign up for my newsletter and receive my free eBook as a thank you. My eBook outlines a safe, sensible and comprehensive high raw whole foods cleanse.
I would like you to discover something worthwhile in my eBook to clean up, tune up or fine tune your current diet. I wonder if you’ve ever noticed how sometimes your back pain moves from right to left and is relieved briefly with a bowel movement.
Do this. Two hours after eating a meal, lie down on your back in bed and with your fingers gently press on your belly. Work around your belly button and entire abdominal area noticing any hard or painful areas.
I have felt referral pain in my back and chest from painful intestinal blockages, gas and/or constipation. Very often the intestinal pain is directly in line with the pain in my back. You can gently massage around the painful areas and often feel the connection between the pain in your guts and the pain in your back.
If you’re eating a predominantly cooked diet with meat, eggs and dairy as well as refined and processed foods, you are ingesting very little fiber and water rich raw vegetables. Slow digestion from lack of fiber and water slows elimination causing pain in your guts and often in your lower back too.
Step 2.
Eat An Anti-Inflammatory Diet
It may be that you’ll enjoy signing up for my newsletter and finding out my free eBook is an anti-inflammatory high raw whole foods cleanse which includes the anti-inflammatory spices, ginger, cinnamon and turmeric.
And if you wish, add the anti-inflammatory Omega 3 fish oil supplement which helps relax the muscles in your back. I’m testing two different brands of Omega 3 fish oil supplements right now.
The first Omega 3 fish oil supplement is 400 mg combined EPA and DHA in two capsules which I review here. The second Omega 3 fish oil supplement is a concentrated formula with 1100 mg combined EPA and DHA which I review here.
Step 3.
Maintain Cellular Hydration
When I was being treated by my chiropractor on Maui for head, neck and back injuries sustained in my car accident, he told me that it was crucial that I stay hydrated to reduce and prevent severe back pain.
He went on to explain to me that the discs in our backs are like little water filled sponges that are puffy and soft, kind of like a nice fat padded cushion between our vertebrae acting as shock absorbers. When our bodies need water the discs are the first place to be tapped for water which causes them to go flat. They no longer cushion the vertebrae and without the water filled discs as protection we experience back pain.
I’m not sure if his statement is accurate. I do know staying hydrated alleviates my back pain. Maybe it will surprise you to notice that a diet low in magnesium and other macro minerals is an underlying cause of dehydration even if you are drinking 6-8 glasses of water a day. And you can be pleased to know that Magnesium is known to relax muscles.
My free eBook offer lists containing a broad spectrum of mineral rich food choices including magnesium rich foods. It may be that you’ll enjoy eating your big mineral rich steamed vegetable salads every day. I wonder if you will sign up now or when you are finished reading this article.
It’s so nice to know you can easily supplement your diet with magnesium too. I’ve been testing two different supplement brands containing magnesium. The first brand I review contains both calcium and magnesium and the second brand I review is magnesium only.
And I’d like to have you discover a raw food that contains half of your magnesium requirement for the day in 3 tablespoons. Maybe you’d rather eat your magnesium as a food source rather than a supplement. Here’s a review I wrote about Hemp Seeds.
Step 4.
Increase Circulation
Research has shown that painful back muscles in spasm are starving for oxygen. Here’s a few ways to increase circulation and feed those oxygen starved muscles to eliminate back pain:
- exercise: walk on uneven surfaces, hula dance and sun salutation for twisting and stretching. Only attempt when muscles are warm to avoid cramping
- massage: give yourself a treat
- hot showers, hot tub and saunas: more relaxing treats
- inversion table or back swing with review: best time to use is when muscles are warm to avoid cramping
Step 5.
Sleep
You do all your healing and recovery when you sleep. If you’re waking up tired in need of a stimulant to get you going, you really require more sleep combined with healthy and good nutrition. And it’s very rewarding to know it’s worthwhile for you to sign up and receive your own free eBook which will help you clean up, tune up or fine tune your current diet.
Sign up now for my newsletter and receive your free eBook with color pictures and lists of foods to enjoy along with lists of what to avoid.
Step 6.
Emotions
You may have heard an angry person describe the person they are angry with as “a pain in the ass.” This literal language often translates into real pain in the ass, back and shoulders . Back pain is considered an epidemic in our culture. Can you notice a connection between your emotions and your back pain?
And you can wonder whether you are repressing anger when you have a pain in your back, shoulders and butt. Next time you notice pain and discomfort in your back, ask yourself if you are angry or anxious about anyone or any situation you find yourself in. Refrain from answering your own question and just observe your thoughts and feelings.
Often the answer will just pop into your conscious mind from your unconscious mind as a picture, feeling or voice. Perhaps beginning to notice the connection between your thoughts and emotions while observing your back pain allows you to address the repressed anger which resolves your back pain immediately or soon there after.
I’ve made a deal with my unconscious mind that if I am ignoring repressed anger or anxiety that it can notify me via back pain and I will stop and take notice immediately. Works wonders for me. If you’re anything like me it will work for you too.
The reason I made this deal with my unconscious mind is because I know it will find a way to let me know when I am repressing anger and anxiety. I want to make sure it’s somewhere I will notice and take action.
By addressing the repressed anger and anxiety when I have back pain I am preventing the pain from moving and hiding in another place I might be less aware of resulting in much more of a problem for me than back pain. There is speculation that many of the chronic disease we have in our society have roots in repressed negative emotions.
All that’s really important is for you to stop and immediately deal with any repressed anger and anxiety when your attention is drawn to back pain. And you can be pleased that when you ignore the physical pain and focus on the internal emotions your back pain subsides.
At first it might take some time to reduce or eliminate your back pain but later your back pain will disappear immediately as soon as you focus on your emotions. This little gem has helped me reduce a significant amount of back pain.
Step 7.
Posture
OK, everyone slouches, twists, bends, pushes and pulls in a variety of seemingly contorted ways. Our body can and will do all sorts of crazy positions. The really important thing is just to be fully aware of your posture and how you feel.
For example, when I sit down to write I immerse myself into the flow and am only aware of what I want to write about. First, I assume the most excellent posture that is comfortable and I will maintain tension free. I breathe deeply and disappear into my writing.
When I finish a sentence or an idea I check in with myself and notice how I feel and how my body has changed its position from what I originally intended when I began writing. I SLOWLY and I mean SLOWLY, and then slow it down even further, as you adjust yourself into your most excellent posture that is comfortable for you.
I emphasize SLOWLY because this is the key to eliminating back pain with this step. If instead of moving SLOWLY once you realize you need to correct your posture, you quickly snap yourself into your new position like you’re some Marine recruit and your Marine Lifer Superior Officer just walked in the door catching you snoozing on the job, you risk the possibility of injuring yourself further.
And I think you’re going to enjoy being surprised that practicing these simple 7 steps will move you toward eliminating back pain.
And I’d like you to gain more positive results from my worthwhile suggestions by signing up for my newsletter.
My eBook is your gift and contains a safe, sensible and comprehensive high raw whole foods cleanse.
18 Tips For Beautiful Shiny Soft Long Thick Hair
Get my free eBook now and learn what hair loving and beautifying foods to eat that will grow beautiful shiny, soft, long, thick hair. In addition to tips on eating health promoting foods I include other practical hair loving and beautifying tips below that guarantee you grow beautiful shiny, soft, long, thick hair starting today.
For me natural comfortable living and personal freedom is about self reliance and independence, a rare and vanishing commodity these days. Your uniqueness and individuality, two precious gifts, represent your personal power and salvation.
No one else can be you.
This is great news! Claim your power by growing beautiful shiny soft long thick hair naturally when you apply my hair loving and beautifying tips below and experience the thrill of allowing yourself to feel naturally comfortable in your own skin without apologizing for stepping away from the crowd.
I love my hair. It has its own unique personality. What’s important to me is that my hair be allowed to express its highest potential without any intervention beyond providing conditions for health in conjunction with other practical hair loving and beautifying tips.
Humans intervene in every aspect of our natural world down to the thoughts you think by influencing you psychologically to buy their products. Your drive to strive for enforced sameness is motivated by a psychological need to please and get approval. Where is your personal freedom in this equation?
To comply without questioning why you are complying to a proscribed standard of fashion fads delivered to you by people who’s only motivation is to surreptitiously manipulate you for their own profit while transmitting their coercion through mindless peer pressure and other social forces, feels like robotic behavior to me. Whose idea is it anyway?
Give your hair what it needs by creating an environment that encourages your hair to be as healthy as possible by following my hair loving and beautifying tips below which guarantee you grow beautiful shiny, soft, long, thick hair.
Have you ever felt a horse’s mane or tail? If you haven’t had the rare opportunity to pet a horse I can tell you that their hair feels extremely course and dry. That’s what some friends told me my hair felt like one day at a university party.
At one point during the party a few girlfriends started talking about hair and told me I had beautiful long red hair. Each one said they wished that their hair was long and red just like mine. My friends began touching my hair until one girl recoiled saying,”Your hair feels just like horse hair.”
That was the end of anyone wanting my hair. At least this realization helped improve their self esteem because they began to appreciate their own hair more once they realized they didn’t want course dry horse hair even if it was long and red. I, on the other hand, had never known my hair to be any other way.
Another problem plaguing me was my hair although long would never get any longer. It just stopped growing at a certain point. I wanted it to grow longer but it stayed at the same length for many years.
Then everything changed. My hair became very soft and shiny. It started growing longer and thicker than it ever had at any other time in my entire life when I applied my hair loving and beautifying tips:
1. Eat whole unprocessed foods
You probably know this already. Yet in forums I see people want and ask for new information not the “same old stuff.” If it’s sound advice that works, what else do you need?
Are you doing it? That’s all I care about. There’s a world of difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Knowing exists in the head. Doing exists in the gut. Get my free eBook now to see the diet I eat for beautiful shiny, soft, long, thick hair.
2. Eat a wide range of fresh fruit and vegetables including special emphasis on leafy greens daily
This may seem like a no brainer to many at a time when every day we have more health gurus and information about diet available. Since we know what to eat, why is the human race getting increasingly sicker at an alarming rate?
Download my eBook now for a quick look at what I eat to grow beautiful shiny, soft, long, thick hair.
Fresh is best. Dried, canned, frozen or processed and packaged in any way is a far second in my opinion. Antioxidants are very fragile and I have serious doubts they survive being processed even though you see the food advertised as containing antioxidants. At least they did when they were fresh!
3. Eat healthy fats
If you’re eating your omega 3 fatty acids, avoiding most saturated fats and all trans fats and your hair is not as shiny, soft, long or thick as you would like then maybe your system is clogged with wastes, toxins and mucus.
This was my problem and I knew it because every time I ate my healthy fats I would heat up and get congested with thick yellow mucus. Sometimes I would get hot red itchy spots on the palms of my hands.
If you’re anything like me and having problems even though you’re eating healthy foods, you may need a safe dependable extended cleanse or detox. Get my free eBook now which outlines exactly what I eat to safely cleanse and heal.
4. Exercise
You already know this but are you doing it yet? Get your circulation flowing. Your hair will love you for it.
5. Wash your hair with a clean gentle shampoo and conditioner as natural as you can find without preservatives and other toxic substances
This is a sure fire way to protect and preserve the overall health of your hair and body.
6. Use a shower filter
Chlorine and other chemicals ruin your hair.
7. Wear a swimming cap whenever you go swimming
Chlorine, other chemicals and salt wreak havoc on your hair.
8. Wash your hair with warm not hot water
Hot water is too harsh on hair causing it to dry out and break easily.
9. Do not squeeze or wring wet hair
Wet hair is fragile and breaks easily.
10. Never comb or brush wet hair
Wet hair is fragile and breaks easily. Wait for it to dry then brush.
11. Do not use a blow dryer
Let it dry naturally and avoid over drying your new luscious locks.
12. Do not pull your hair tight from the scalp or constrict your hair as in very taut braids, buns and ponytails
This helps avoid breaking your growing hair.
13. Avoid sun on your hair
Wear hats, hoodies and scarves. Hats are a beautiful way to express your mood and individuality.
14. Protect your hair from wind damage
Wear hats, hoodies and scarves.
15. Brush to minimize breakage
Bend over and brush your hair from the back of your neck forward over the top of your head with a good quality boar bristle hair brush. Follow with fingers to loosen any tangles. Do not use the brush to break through these tangles. Gently separate your hair with your fingers.
When you can brush all the way through from the back flip your hair back and gently brush the sides. The side hairs seem the most delicate compared to the rest of my hair. Only brush enough to gently place your hair where you want it. Using your own fingers is the best technique to prevent breaking delicate growing hairs.
16. Wash your hair when it feels heavy or greasy
How long I go between washing my hair depends on what I’m eating more than anything else. My hair stays clean the longest when I eat a high percentage of fresh fruits and vegetables daily while reducing intake of heavy fats and animal products.
When my hair is clean, it feels light, full and smooth to the touch with each hair free and hanging naturally. As it gets dirtier, it feels like the individual hairs are sticking together and it gets very flat all over. That’s when I wash it. If I wash it before it becomes noticeably dirty my hair quickly becomes too dry.
17. Stop taking birth control pills
I lost handfuls of hair every time I brushed or washed my hair while taking birth control pills. My hair loss stopped once I went off the pills. If you’re anything like me, you will need to become more creative about birth control if you want beautiful shiny, soft, long, thick hair.
18. Do not trim your hair
One day I complained to Jay that my hair had stopped growing. He told me if I continued to trim my hair regularly it would never grow any longer than the length I trimmed to because I was telling my roots they didn’t need to hold on to longer hair. He said trimming my hair made my roots weak.
He told me if I stopped trimming my hair my roots would practice weight lifting and get stronger and hold longer hair. I thought he was joking at first but he told me he wasn’t. I took his advice and my hair keeps growing longer to this day.
Once you see and feel your own beautiful shiny, soft, long, thick hair I’m sure you’ll include my hair loving and beautifying tips into your repertoire of health promoting natural comfortable living.
Get my free eBook now and jump start your way to beautiful shiny, soft, long, thick hair.
Set your hair free!
3 Spring Cleanse Dangers And How to Avoid Them
Get my free eBook now to prepare for your spring cleanse, end your spring cleanse or forestall your need to cleanse at all! Avoid the dangers of many popular spring cleanses.
Feel the whispering promise of spring in the air. Have you seen your first robin or daffodil yet? Even in the colder climates there may be new buds on the trees already!
The days get longer and your body stirs from deep within you. Shake off the cobwebs and reach for your dreams.
Spring is almost here!
Hear Nature’s call and feel her persistent nudging to consider healthy changes that bring you ever closer to the life you imagine.
Perhaps you are feeling the need for a rebirth and renewal with a spring cleanse after a long dark winter indoors?
Good for you!
Spring cleanses can be extremely healing and inspiring as well as your first step to a lighter and more alive you.
I owe my life to very specific and periodic cleanses. Between cleanses I follow my own simple and sensible eating plan as outlined in my eBook. The dangers I refer to below and how to avoid them are from my extensive experience with cleanses healing my chronic wasting disease.
There is a healthy way to do a spring cleanse and I want to share that with you.
Your spring cleanse has tremendous potential to initiate your new lifestyle when you continue beyond the spring cleanse to incorporate positive, health promoting dietary changes with stress management practice and a fitness routine.
Your spring cleanse also has the potential to seriously harm your body and lead to more serious and possibly debilitating chronic health problems if not an untimely death. This worst case scenario did happen to a dear friend of mine.
Begin preparing for your spring cleanse safely, easily and inexpensively right now. My free eBook shows you how.
3 Spring Cleanse Dangers And How to Avoid Them
1. If you currently eat
- fast food,
- restaurant food,
- convenience food,
- junk food
- some variation of the Standard American diet,
- any type of vegetarian diet, or a
- high fat raw vegan diet,
when you start a spring cleanse without first making gradual health promoting dietary changes to your current diet, you risk your health and life.
Do not start your spring cleanse without first transitioning to a health promoting dietary plan that prepares you for a successful spring cleanse.
Are you feeling the need to do a spring cleanse because you feel polluted, congested and constipated? Maybe you suspect you are hurting, cranky and in a fog because of your history of dietary choices.
Is your weight up again after many months of indoor living? You may notice new aches and pains that move throughout your body causing more stiffness than usual adding to that worn out feeling. Your stimulating foods are not lifting you to previous highs as you try to ward off burn out.
Maybe you feel you are losing “the battle.”
Perhaps you regularly consume
- meat
- dairy
- eggs and other
- low fiber and
- low water content
- cooked foods
- sugary foods
- caffeine
- alcohol
Maybe you eat a significant amount of your daily calories from
- high fat foods such as
- nuts and
- nut butters,
- coconut,
- dehydrated crackers,
- seeds and
- seed butters,
- olives,
- avocados,
- dark chocolate and
- vegetable oils
and now you want to do a spring cleanse.
This radical change can initiate a “healing crisis” which can be anything from merely unpleasant to life threatening. You do not have to suffer this way.
Healing crises are not normal. During a spring cleanse healing crisis, you are being poisoned by accumulated uneliminated toxins leaking into your blood and circulating throughout your body. These accumulated uneliminated toxins were mobilized by your spring cleanse.
It is not healing to be in crisis! Your brain thinks you are dying and you are!
You do not need to suffer and sacrifice. You do not have to punish yourself for being bad. There is an easy and gentle way to remove toxins, mucus and wastes accumulated over a life time of poor dietary choices.
My free eBook is an intermediate health promoting dietary plan which prepares you for your spring cleanse mitigating the potential for a healing crisis. You do not need to have a healing crisis to gain the benefits of a spring cleanse.
Any change in routine is perceived by your body as stress.
Consider this. First you have your “normal” life that is stressing your body with excesses of nutrient poor stimulating and toxic food which is difficult to digest, assimilate or eliminate properly. Even healthy nutrient dense food is toxic if you overeat!
Then to correct this condition you stress your body the other way with fasts and purging cleanses. It is an endless cycle of continuous stress.
You are giving your physiology whiplash!
How about instead of seeking the stress of denial after the stress of excess, you move toward reducing stress and avoiding the need for extremes of any kind. These cycles of libertine pleasure with masochistic denial wears you out.
It numbs you so you need greater extremes just to feel normal. Great extremes accelerate the whole process.
2. Ending your cleanse without incorporating a new health promoting dietary plan after your spring cleanse is a surefire way to begin binge eating. You must gradually transition to a new health promoting dietary plan when ending your spring cleanse.
This is very important and often overlooked by many after they “cross the finish line” of their spring cleanse. I will explain this more below because commercial products and medical procedures become deeply implicated at this point.
Remember, your old way was not working. That is why you did the spring cleanse in the first place.
Give yourself a chance to do something different than the “old you” would do. That “old you” wanted to keep doing the same thing and getting different results.
Now you are different. You have been “reborn.” Allow the “new reborn you” to make new choices which guarantees new healthy results.
My free eBook guides you towards new healthier food choices to end your cleanse. new healthier food choices nurture the “new reborn you” and supports your growth to maximum potential.
The “new reborn you” is fragile after a spring cleanse and you can harm your “new reborn baby” easily. And just like any new born baby
you need to receive gentle and loving attention.
3. Invasive intervention cleansing with purging commercial products and/or a medical procedures that promise to detoxify you quickly.
I barely survived this one when I became desperate five years ago, after the doctor gave me my diagnosis.
Fasting and cleansing was new terrain for me. I threw our hard earned money into many different product cleanses and supplements as well as a couple trips for colonics.
I had a hard time writing this article because I knew I had to “come clean” with you and I felt extreme humiliation admitting this publicly. I felt really stupid getting sucked into the commercial product and medical procedure advertising promises and blowing the little money we had out my ass, literally. We had a “golden toilet” for sure.
I hope these are well meaning folks who hawk these cleanses and colonics but I think they are as sick as the people they are selling them to but do not know it. I am willing to give them the benefit of my doubt concerning their fitness. Otherwise, they would have no moral excuse for choosing to endanger so many people as a way of life.
And really, truth be told, I wanted to be sold. I wanted to believe the promises. Someone already knew that, by studying the psychology of marketing. They just preyed on my psychological weakness. Mea culpa.
One of the most deeply humiliating and potentially fatal experiences I had was with a cleanse I bought, which was touted by a well known raw food guru and a Hollywood celebrity I met on Maui.
Five years later I understand it as one of the great opportunities for success in my life because it proclaimed the culmination of my use of invasive purging interventions with commercial products and medical procedures and the
beginning of my true healing.
This particular cleanse was a month long and I persuaded Jay to do it too. I did not think I could maintain it unless we both did it. So being his usual sweet self he went along with me. We had $1000 and I spent half of it, $500 on two herbal product cleanses.
These herbs and supplements are powerfully purging and potentially dehydrating. Yes, the company promised, through a live salesperson and website, that they did not have the bad boy purging herbs such as
- Senna
- Cascara Sagrada and
- Psyllium Husk.
I write about these in detail in the comment section of my article, Avoid Desperate Constipation Remedies, so I will not repeat myself here.
Even the advertised “safe” herbals like the product I bought irritate the delicate membrane lining of your intestines and entire digestive track as well as all the very delicate tissues, organs, nerves, blood vessels and cells making up your magnificent body!
The stress was enormous! We felt like we were starving for a month. Oh yea, we were! And boy did we purge. We purged all the product right out including our precious body fluids, leading to dehydration. We should have felt reborn but we felt burned out, at both ends!
At the end of the cleanse Jay had a colonic and I had two. That used up the rest of our $1000. We followed all the directions to the letter even their ending the cleanse protocol. Like I warn about in #2, we could not maintain a new health promoting dietary plan and started binge eating.
We even relapsed into some old eating habits we had previously given up before the spring cleanse!
Recidivist bingers!
When I talked to the Registered Nurse who administered our colonic therapy she said, “Everyone I clean out goes back to their previous diet as soon as they complete their cleanse and colonic.”
When she said that I thought, “Not me! I’m different. I sacrificed and suffered every which way, physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, spiritually. I deserve to have a new life.”
And now you know my story. That R.N. is still mostly right and she makes a really good income administering colonics. The same people keep coming back with more money because they never change their harmful disease producing lifestyle.
Do you think your stone age body might have a mechanism to heal you without needing invasive interventions like purging commercial cleanses and medical procedures? It seems to me that if we did not, humans would not have made it this far.
These commercial cleanses and medical procedures accelerated my declining health. It was not until I figured out how to successively cleanse with food not
- fasting,
- commercial cleanses
- expensive supplements
- medical procedures or
- processed and packaged superfoods
that my health turned around.
Spring cleansing is a great idea. Just make sure you do not make your choices out of fear and desperation. Those savvy internet marketers will get your hard earned money every time and you will get severe imbalances that might take years to correct, if you do not do irreparable damage to yourself.
Start preparing for your spring cleanse today.
Get my free eBook now.
