Wellness Naturally

If you’re like I was, you’re probably in denial about your sleep apnea and its potential effects on your health.

So many people suffer from this silent killer and either don’t know it or are choosing not to attribute their current health problems to anything sleep related.

So for all of you men out there (and women too!), if any of the following sounds familiar, allow me to sound the alarm and send you a ‘wake up call’.

Are you almost always tired?
Does your partner tell you that you’re snoring is really heavy (and drives them nuts)?
Do you wake up several times a night and wonder why?
Do your toes, legs, or extremities ever tingle during or after your sleep?
Does your throat or voice feel sore?
Has your voice changed or deepened over the past several years?
Do you have elevated blood pressure?
Do you have terrible nightmares, where you’re being chased, or otherwise feel scared and/or paniced?
Do you thrash around and get startled awake, gasping for air?

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If you answer yes to one or more of these questions, you most likely are suffering at the very least from mild sleep apnea.

So what, right? Who cares? Well, I care and you should too.

In my case, being single well into my thirties, I never paid much attention to my sleep habits. My daytime tiredness and other symptoms (as above) I attributed to poor lifestyles choices (too much beer, acidic foods, etc, etc). When I did finally settle down a little and have a regular partner, I was being hounded night after night to stop snoring. So in addition to my ‘apneatic episodes’ I was also getting elbowed awake many times a night by my partner who just couldn’t sleep beside me.

This went on for a few weeks, then one day she came to me and suggested that I may have sleep apnea, and forwarded me an article online which described it. Being a typical man, I brushed her and it off, didn’t read the article and continued disrupting both of our sleep habits.

Many months and sleepless nights later, I stumbled across an article online which described sleep apnea, and in a grand moment of self discovery, told my partner that perhaps I do have sleep apnea… duh! After the required ‘I told you so speech’, I promptly made an appointment with my physician to find out if in fact I did have sleep apnea.

Once I finally had the test, it turned out that not only did I have sleep apnea, I was putting myself at major risk of heart attack because of it. Being a big man, sleep apnea put enormous strain on my already overworked heart muscle.

So what exactly is sleep apnea? Sleep apnea can loosely be described as choking yourself to death in your sleep. More specifically, as you relax into sleep, the soft tissues at the back of your mouth and throat essentially collapse and fall backward onto your trachea, creating a vacuum effect, which leads to the ‘apnea’, which is literally choking you while you sleep.

In my case, I was having these episodes over 100 times per night. Each time, your bodies only defense is a switch in your brain witch tells you to wake up, otherwise we might literally choke to death.

If you’re still thinking ‘so what’, then allow me to really freak you out even more. Again, in my case, the sleep study showed that during these episodes, I would go without any air for up to a minute at a time. A MINUTE! Think about it. Can you hold your breath for a minute? Perhaps, but if you did that 20 times an hour, 8 hours a night… yeah, perhaps you’re starting to get the picture.

One of the measures done during a sleep study is oxygen levels. In my case my blood oxygen levels would slip below 60%. That means your brain, heart, organs, and tissues are all being absolutely starved of the oxygen they need to function properly.

Remember those tingles in the feet and legs I mentioned above? Right, well, when I saw the doctor about my tests he asked me if I ever felt that way. I said yes. To which, he replied, that is your body’s way of conserving oxygen for more vital organs – i.e, your heart and brain. That’s right, my body would stop circulating oxygen to my extremities because it was in such short supply that I was at serious risk of having a stroke or heart attack. What a wake up call.

So, please, if you suspect even for an instant that you have sleep apnea, do not hesitate to get tested. Many doctors today don’t think about this treatment, and may not recommend it without prompting. So if you’re being prescribed medication for blood pressure, diabetes, and feel tired all the time, insist on a sleep study. It may just save your life. I know for sure it saved mine.

Incidentally, if you do get diagnosed with sleep apnea, you will have to get a cpap machine. This machine is a mini air compressor which through and hose and mask forces air down your throat at a steady rate which prevents the apnea or choking from happening, allowing you to sleep soundly throughout the night. Not to mention your partner too.

These machines and supplies are quite pricey if purchased directly at a sleep clinic or retail supplier. So I recommend buying online. In addition to the initial cost to get set up, you will need to replace your mask at least twice a year. Before spending hundreds locally, check out these great deals online.

Happy sleeping! Oh, and BTW, using a CPAP may not be the sexiest thing you ever wear to bed, but within a few days and weeks, you will notice a massive shift in how you feel. You will awake more refreshed, have more energy, and perhaps solve other related health issues.

Get the sleep apnea test!!!

If I went to heaven, this is what mine would look like.

Personally, I would not be a human being as much as I would be the embodiment of the best aspirations of the human race.

All people would caress and dance with each other like a walk through the early morning mist.

The heavenly place I imagine is inside a cove off a large body of water. Abundance in its most natural form is everywhere. The area that I inhabit is built along a mountainside near cliffs, but is very heavily wooded with large trees that provide a large canopied area that keeps the weather always warm without heat and cool without cold.

All who dwell there do so as a celebration of our animated spirits. There is no commerce… no boundaries… no quarrel… no husbands… no wives… all interaction is done without the consequence of our physical selves.

The material is only present as holographic image for the sake of self expression, and all beings are free from the earthly impediments of age, death, pain, and sacrifice.

The self is not to be interpreted as we might think of it here on earth, but rather as a burning ember of light in the shared fire of life.

Here, love is not jealous. Love is not unkind. Love does not keep us from our true purpose in this place. Love is the fire. Love is the light of the soul. Love is the unbreakable light of consciousness. Love is what makes the birds sing and the fish swim. Love is no longer what keeps us hostage to the fear of its loss, but that which allows to swim and jump through the open sea like a racing school of dolphins.

Heaven is also many things unseen and not yet imagined. Heaven is supernatural time traveling to witness and reveal wondrous epiphanies of spiritual ascension. Visions, perceptual and spiritual, will irrigate our souls, breathing new life and spirit into beings weathered by a journey on earth.

What does your heavenly paradise look like?

In this shocking footage we see clearly how we are being poisoned by the water we drink.

There was a time when rain water was an effective part of our hygiene, cooking, and health matters, but as we’ve polluted our air, we’ve polluted our water systems.

Though in many parts of the world, rain water remains an essential part of daily life. Millions live without running water, while others only have access to it at certain times of the day or week.

Water in general is so essential to our overall existence on this planet, yet its increasingly difficult to find sources of pure, unpolluted water to keep us alive and well.

How do we maintain our health and longevity as a species when our very life source is slowly becoming more toxic and harder to filter or clean for safe consumption?

Today, I’m lucky enough to have time to watch a beautifully loud, dark, and electric thunderstorm, and it reminded me of how our water is constantly being redistributed around the globe by the never ending force of nature.

We are all one. Water should surely teach us that. All our fresh water is within this globe we share and if we want to continue to enjoy its life giving properties, we have to keep it clean as a we can as a humans; clean it in our homes for our own families use; and always be mindful that as we poison it, we poison ourselves.

While I’m not sure I would like to catch and drink a glass of the water that is falling around me in this heavily populated city, I’m sure there are many who still benefit from the earth’s natural filtration processes and are able to enjoy rain water fresh from a large leaf or natural basin. Of them, I am extremely jealous.

Enjoy 8 glasses of water each and every day.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all the foods we eat were excellent for us and the more we eat them the better we feel? Well, while that may not be the case with most foods we consume, there are however, a number of superfoods that come very close to this ideal.

Superfoods are foods rich in vital minerals and nutrients that can be eaten in small or large doses, but essentially provide a rich source of anti-oxidants, vitamins, and or fibre without calorie loading or prepared with other less pure ingredients.

Some examples of Superfoods

This is what Wikipedia has to say about superfood:

“Superfood is a term sometimes used to describe food with high phytonutrient content that some may believe confers health benefits as a result. For example, blueberries are often considered a superfood (or superfruit) because they contain significant amounts of antioxidants, anthocyanins, vitamin C, manganese, and dietary fiber. [1] However, the term is not in common currency amongst dieticians and nutritional scientists, many of whom dispute the claims made that consuming particular foodstuffs can have a health benefit[2] There is no legal definition of the term and it has been alleged that this has led to it being over-used as a marketing tool.[3]”

The goal here, whether you eat superfood or not, is to choose food items for what they can provide you nutritionally and to support your health.

While superfoods may provide an extra ‘natural’ dose of highly desirable nutrients, we still need to focus on the 80% of the things we consume on a daily basis. If we change our everyday habits to healthy ones, the super foods can really do their job by boosting your already healthy self to even greater strength and wellness today and years down the road.

Be yoga! Yoga is one of the best ways to get in shape and stay in tune with your body.

Yoga is the practice of coordinated body movements, postures, and breathing techniques. Its a form of meditation designed to take meditation further. While meditation calms the mind and heals the soul, yoga enhances your physiological being as well.

There are many forms of yoga. Some very physically exhausting and draining, others more subtle in their use of techniques and maneuvers that require you to use your heart, lungs, and muscles to any extremes.

The goal with yoga is to unite the body and mind in a harmony of your essential beings. A calm mind needs a strong body. And strong body must be supported by a calm and disciplined mind.

Like all exercise, there is a period of adjustment as you learn to stretch and position your body in postures that you may have never attempted before. Growing into you yoga body, you will gradually become more nimble and find it easier to move around. Then as your heart, lungs, muscles, and mind all come together you are able to appreciate a new level of physical strength and endurance; positive self-awareness as your mind is cleared and more prepared for the work of each day; and your world will become more beautiful as your sense become fore active and you are able to see and hear better, smell aromas that you haven’t smelled in years, enjoy massage and intimacy more as your skin becomes more supple, and of course enjoy whole natural foods more as your tastes re-acclimatize to a healthier, less toxic digestive tract.

Yoga can improve your life in ways you cannot possibly imagine. Combined with other healthy lifestyle choices such as meditation and massage, you will be the very best in all the things you do.

Meditation is forgetting without loosing your mind. When you meditate you aim to find the purest form of consciousness, without the bitter ego after taste.

To meditate we must be fully engaged and focused, alert, but without the dissenting noise of questions and answers.

Meditation is the art of quieting the mind while maintaining your presence. You are awake enough to hear subtle sounds in the room or out of doors, but disconnected from your impulse to reason and make arbitrary mental comments about them.

There are hundreds of forms of meditation. And billions of ways and means to achieve the practice. One for each of us.

How and why you come to meditation is irrelevant.

The abundance and blessing of meditation is living without anxieties or nagging internal thoughts.

We achieve this by training the mind to surrender to stillness. We have to trust our hearts will keep beating and our world will keep revolving around us. We have to just be present in the stillness of each moment. Its like walking a tight rope in the dark without a balance beam. Each second can lead to disaster as your mental feet step nervously and erratically for what it knows is there somewhere – oneness.

As we break and fall out of our meditation in the the early stages of its practice, we need to be mindful that catching it is all we need to acknowledge. There is no need to debate it in your mind or discuss your success or failure. Just guide it back onto the path of focused consciousness like you would a child riding a with training wheels for the first time.

Give yourself a chance to accept the stillness and make it your friend. Its only space, which is there for you to enjoy.

Meditation can give all of your senses the time and space they need to revitalize themselves.

Join us on an odyssey of meditation and wellness.

Enjoy meditation today!

Its everything really. Isn’t it? That old saying about ‘we are what we eat’ holds true to this very day. More so, in fact. We as a global society are eating more refined sugars than every before. This explosion of corn syrup based food additives is robbing most honest people of their lives. This modern trend of fast food, prepared foods, and even ‘healthy snacks’ are filled with stuff that can wreak havoc on our bodies ability to keep itself healthy and repair itself in times of sickness.

We must admit to ourselves that we are literally eating ourselves to death. We consume and consume and consume. Even those of us who aren’t naturally heavy eat and eat this crap that isn’t good for us.

So what is good for us? Well, all the things you hate. Not what you wanted to hear, huh? Well, this simple truth is that we must eat our greens and drink lots of water to optimize our digestive system and keep it happy. Next we need a balanced intake of selected proteins from animals based foods or vegetarian options such as lentils, beans, and soy. We also need some carbohydrates to keep us running once our bodies are leaned out. Finally we need the right spices and herbs to compliment our body type and health needs.

Eating right is like feeding a baby. You wouldn’t give a baby McDonalds on her way home from the hospital. Nor would you give her a glass of wine with her dinner. It is that sober when you think about it. But there is a lot of room for indulging. And with moderation in mind there isn’t much we can’t enjoy from time to time.

The importance of eating right cannot be over-stated. Not putting into your system more than it really needs is the simple miracle cure to sustained vitality and anti-aging we will ever find. How much or how little you indulge is a very serious matter when we think about the quality of our lives as we get older.

Getting older and getting sicker is what we all expect. But how much more would you enjoy life if you remained pharmaceutical drug free until you were 75 or 80 years of age?

Giving you body only the right amount and combination of food, spices, and supplements is perfect prescription for a health heart, strong bones, vital organs, and brilliant senses as we progress into this world.

Learn to enjoy less food. Learn to prepare it for your self more often. Eat less fatty, fried, and salty food. Learn to enjoy the natural tastes and textures of a world of fruits and vegetables.

This will make you stronger than you could possibly imagine.

Ayurveda is the ancient art of healing the body and mind naturally. Each of us has specific body traits which can lead Ayurvedic healers to important information about the health and well being of a patient. Treating a patient with Ayurvedic medicine does not mean one has to give up his or her family physician, its intended to treat the body, your body, as God intended so that it can achieve balance and wellness on its own, eventually without pharmaceutical drugs.

Of course, we all have a major role to play in making ourselves healthy. It requires a very mindful and socially adjusted way of life. We cannot be ruled by our impulses or social pressure when considering our lifestyle and eating habits. This must come first from an internal desire to pray on and make happen our deepest desire to be healthy and live long.

Ayurveda teaches us that all sickness is imbalance. That something in our bodies is out of balance. Because of today’s reactionary approach to our health, by taking too many pain medicines and only going to our doctors when we are really sick, we have lost touch with our internal source of health and health knowledge.

The more we clean and purify ourselves from the waste and toxins that have collected in our bodies and remove the harmful foods and environments from our lives, the more responsive our bodies will become both to sickness and health. With this kind of physiological health we can catch and diagnose imbalance and illness earlier and restore it to health with much simpler medicines and methods.

We take too much medicine. Each leaving us feeling a little more sick some where else in our bodies. Side effects can often be worse than the disease we are seeking treatment for. With Ayurveda, the proper balance of nutrition and nutritional supplements will enhance each and every part of our bodies simultaneously, rather than to the detriment of another vital organ or internal system.

WellnessNaturally.ca believes in these principals and encourages every one to take seriously their health. We must return our bodies to a natural state of being if we want to give it the best chance possible of fighting disease and aging.

Seek professional advice before starting any new health, nutrition, or supplement regime.

Wellness Naturally is here to introduce and guide you towards healthier living practices and a longer live through wholistic healing philosophies.

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