The Single Cause and Cure for Any Health Challenge

What if there was a single cause of all health problems? What if there was something you could do about it daily?

Unresolved stress is the root cause of all health problems—it can kill you. However, stress itself is not harmful—it can be good for you, as long as you recover from it. For example, without stress from gravity, bones demineralize and muscles become too weak to walk. Because stress can cause us to become stronger, it can be appreciated as a valuable gift, just as fire can, if it is properly controlled. If not, it will, like fire, kill you.

Mice and the Electric Grid Experiment

Did you know that unresolved stress accelerates the aging process?

When mice were placed on an electric grid with very mild shocks, they were unaffected as long as they were given enough time to recover from the stress of the shocks. But if these mild shocks were too frequent, the mice were not able to recover from this harmless stress, and they died from old age within a few short days.

Even though each shock itself was harmless, the accumulative effect of frequent stress without enough recovery time causes the body to just give up and die. When you don’t have enough time to recover from a particular stress before the next one comes, your reserves (“account balance”) in your “health checking account” are depleted, putting you on the slippery slope toward degenerative disease, such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and so on, which takes out over 90 percent of all Americans. Where does stress come from?

Five Different Sources of Stress

* Physical stress. Stress can be physical, as in lifting or falling down stairs, a car accident, getting cut, or from being sedentary (not moving enough).

* Chemical stress. Stress can be chemically based. One hundred percent of us are exposed daily to chemical stress from the environment and/or prescriptions. The chemical/pollutant load in the average American home is five times that of outdoors! Many scientists believe that stress (and damage) from chemicals is the primary cause of cancer and many other diseases.

* Electromagnetic stress. Stress can be electromagnetic, for example, from cell phones and computers. You may not feel this stress, but it adds up, moving you toward disease.

* Deficiency-based stress. Stress can be deficiency based; for example, insufficient oxygen, food, water, or sunlight creates stress. Deficiency-based stress can be nutritional. It’s easy to get too many calories, but no one gets enough nutrients, which creates a deficiency-based stress that handicaps your cells and organs from doing their job, which is a setup for disease. The key principle is that the most critical nutrient is the one that is most missing, which will cause the greatest stress and thus serious problems. Among the most common missing nutrients are glyconutrients. There is an abundance of two of the eight essential glyconutrients, but virtually everyone is deficient in six of the eight, which causes a tremendous stress in the body that can lead to virtually any disease.

* Psychological stress. Most psychological stress is not based on what actually happens to you. It is based on your interpretation of events. Once you accept this fact, you no longer feel like a helpless victim to stress because you realize that stress is self-induced. Because we create our own emotional stress by how we respond to our circumstances, we also have the power to alter our perception so as to not create stress or recover quickly from it.

What can you do about stress from these five sources? The short answer, in a word, is lifestyle. Live your life in a way that minimizes all five sources of stress. One of the key ways to do this is through movement, as described below.

SHALOM WISH

Here are ten antistress and energy-releasing movements I do twice every day. Each takes less than one minute. To make it easy to remember, I created the acronym SHALOM WISH (shalom is a Hebrew word that means “health,” “happiness,” “well-being,” and “peace”).

Each movement is like making a one-thousand-dollar deposit into your health account! Maximize your benefit by doing these with the goal of curing your specific challenge or enhancing your health in a specific way.

* Stretching. Stretch your body in the morning, doing it slowly, with deep breathing and feeling appreciation. Stretch your spine by squatting, holding yourself up for ten seconds on a bathroom or kitchen counter or on the arms of a chair. Install a bar in a doorway and hang (stretch) for ten seconds three times a day. Try to stretch all your muscles daily.

* Humming. Humming increases nitric oxide, which is very good for your arteries and healing in general. Do this hourly, as much as possible.

* Activation/acupuncture points. Activate the flow of your energy by stimulating key acupuncture points with either firm pressure for twenty to thirty seconds each or for ten seconds with a pointer laser on these points: Kidney 27, Pericardium 6, Large Intestines 4, and CV-8. Do not use pressure on the navel (CV-8)—use only a laser, but laser this very important point twice a day.

* Lymphatic drainage (See Fig. 1). Lymphatic massage is extremely valuable and gives you benefits that you can feel instantly (alertness, energy, strength, pain reduction). Do this in sixty seconds first thing in the morning (even in bed) and last thing at night.

* Oxygenate. Oxygenate your blood by deep abdominal breathing hourly.

* Massage/mobility. Massage your ears, neck, hands, feet, arms, and anywhere you feel tight or stiff for ten to thirty seconds. Increase your joint mobility by moving or rotating every joint in your body, including your jaw joint, your arms (wide circles), your ankles, your wrists, and your neck. Suck your stomach in (exhale first); bend side to side, backward and forward, slowly, breathing deeply.

* Walk and wiggle/bounce. Walk for at least thirty seconds each hour, and ideally for thirty minutes continuously during the day. Wiggle your entire body by bouncing or jumping in place for ten to thirty seconds several times a day. The vibration is very healthy for every cell, organ, and muscle.

* Isometric contraction. Isometric contraction is the most effective way to build strength. Exert one muscle against another for five seconds, exhaling, using 100 percent of your strength. For example, (1) push your palms together at full intensity (five seconds), (2) grip your hands and pull apart, and (3) tighten your abdomen for five seconds. Figure out how to do this with all your muscles. Maximize your benefits by also contracting every other muscle in your body at the same time, from your nose to your toes, as intensely as you can for five seconds.

* Stimulating organs: tapping/slapping. Stimulate your organs by tapping or slapping over them for five to ten seconds each, including your thymus, heart, lungs, liver, intestines, kidneys, lower spine, neck, and the back of your head.

* Holding your breath. Hold your breath for thirty seconds or longer every half hour. This can permanently dilate your carotid arteries so that you get more oxygen to your brain, which can improve your memory.

Even though these stress reduction movements are easy to do, they are easy not to do. Knowing about them will not help you if you don’t use them. So do yourself, your family, and your future a huge favor by doing them every day. I can’t guarantee that if you do, you will live one hundred years, but what if you lived an extra ten or twenty healthy years?

If you are not proactively making deposits into your health checking account (healing yourself), you are passively making withdrawals (killing yourself).

I say, choose life by making large, frequent deposits!

** This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health. To get complete details on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health”, visit http://selfgrowth.com/healthbook3.html