Solutions for Fatigue and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome There's something in this report for everyone

As I discussed in chapter 2, stress, or the effects of being in the “fight or flight” response for too long a period of time, releases stress hormones into the body, flooding the blood stream with protective chemicals. These chemicals, like cortisol, were necessary during the times of our ancestors who had to run for their lives from wild beasts or rival tribes.

These days, this stress response is caused by different types of stressors, like emotional upset, physically demanding work, and overwhelming psychological issues that we deal with at home and at work. There are too many of these happening throughout the day. It is no wonder we are under chronic states of stress, are not well, and are in a constant acidic state. Our modern diet is also a huge contributor to our chronic acidic interior environment. When food reaches your digestive tract, it is broken down and either leaves an alkaline or an acidic residue behind. If you eat foods that are organic, whole, and fresh, and drink plenty of pure water, the body can easily maintain an alkaline state.

However, consuming excess sugar, refined grains, preservatives, pesticides, dairy products (like cow’s milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream), red meat, chocolate, coffee, soda and alcohol turns the body acidic. One of the main effects of a poor diet is inflammation, which is also the main symptom of chronic pain and illness.

Ph is a measure of the potential hydrogen or residue a food leaves behind, as being either alkaline or acidic. And this is not directly related to the acidic nature of a food before it is digested. Lemons, for example, are highly acidic.

If you squeeze the juice of a lemon on an open wound, it will burn. However, when ingested and digested, lemon is very alkalizing for the body, and lemon juice can help reduce acidic levels. A diet that is low in acidic foods and packed full of nutrient-dense alkalizing foods will make you healthier, while also reducing the symptoms of your chronic pain or illness.

If you have pain or chronic disease, you more than likely have a predisposition to infection, and it is likely that a pH imbalance is present in your body. To be sure, you can purchase pH testing strips or rolls in your local drug store.

These are thin paper items that gauge your pH level when dipped either into your saliva or urine stream, first thing in the morning before anything is eaten or drunk. You should strive to have your pH in in the alkaline range, and if you aren’t at that level, you should try to move closer to it each day.

Good Foods

Now for the good news. There are plenty of foods that you can add to your daily diet to make you strong and keep you in homeostatic balance. A diet high in fiber and whole foods, low in preservatives and unhealthy fat, and infused with blood-invigorating aromatic spices can help reduce pain and inflammation.

It is essential to any healthful diet that you consume as many fresh, organic, whole foods as possible. Eating foods in or close to their original state is one of the keys to being healthy, preventing self-induced diet-based inflammation, and reducing the inflammation you are experiencing as a result of your pain or illness.

Dr. Wiley’s book, Arthritis Reversed, gives a concise list of the best foods known to prevent and help reduce inflammation and pain. These should be eaten throughout the day as part of balanced wholesome meals.

• Wild fish (example: Alaskan salmon)

• Fresh whole fruits

• Bright colored vegetables (except nightshades)

• Green and white tea

• Purified and distilled water

• Healthy oils (coconut, olive, flax, hemp, safflower, hazelnut)

• Beef and poultry that is certified organic, grass fed, soy free, and free range

• Nuts, legumes, and seeds

• Dark green leafy vegetables

• Organic oatmeal (regular, not instant)

• Aromatic spices (turmeric, ginger, cloves, garlic, onion, coriander,

and ground mustard seed)

I want to stress the importance of making sure your meat comes from animals that are grass fed, soy free, free range, and certified organic. It is a sad truth that a lot of the meat that is commercially available today comes from sick animals, who are kept in awful, unhealthy, and cruel conditions.

These animals are usually stuffed and packed into barns so tightly they can barely move and they get little to no natural light. They are also often given growth hormones and overfed with foods they wouldn’t eat normally, like corn for cows and, in some cases, even dead, sick animals. These conditions obviously make the animals sick, and then they need antibiotics. At the end of this cycle, the unhealthy, antibiotic-ridden, hormone-laced meat from a sick animal finds its way into our bodies. That’s why it’s so important to choose your meat with care.

As you can see, a diet high in whole foods and low in preservatives and unhealthy fat is an essential part of any pain and illness relief plan. Not only do the above-listed foods actually work to reduce pain and inflammation, but they also support proper nerve function, and muscle and bone health.

Remember, the acid/alkaline or pH level of your body (which can cause or prevent inflammation), is related to the foods you consume. Using the chart reproduced from Dr. Wiley’s Arthritis Reversed below, see how what you consume on a daily or monthly basis may be contributing to the worsening of your chronic health condition.

Chart 12.2: pH Spectrum

Credit: mindbodygreen.com http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-5165/Alkaline-Acidic-Foods-Chart-The-pH-Spectrum.html

Green Tea

Dr. Wiley did a significant amount of research on green tea. He found that green tea, like all true tea, comes from the leaves of the Camellia Sinensis tree, and 90 percent of the world’s tea supply is produced in China. What makes green tea so powerful is a chemical compound called polyphenol, which occurs naturally in plants and works as an antioxidant.

Polyphenols work to protect the body from the oxidative stress that causes diseases. Specifically, the polyphenol Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is an extremely powerful antioxidant. In fact, EGCG antioxidant activity is more powerful than the antioxidants found in vitamins C and E.

After fifteen years of working with green tea in his cancer research, Dr. Hasan Mukhtar started looking at the possible benefits this drink could have for people with rheumatoid arthritis. Realizing that both disorders were inflammatory in nature, his team began testing to see if green tea would have the same healing effect on rheumatoid arthritis as it does on cancer and cardiovascular disease.

His first paper, “Prevention of Collagen-Induced Arthritis in Mice by a Polyphenolic Fraction of Green Tea,” was presented to the National Academy of Sciences in April 2005. The results were astounding. Out of the eighteen mice that were given green tea extract, ten never developed any arthritic symptoms. What’s more, symptoms in the remaining eight showed that they developed a much milder form of arthritis. The amount given was the equivalent of drinking just four cups of green tea a day!

Lead author of the paper, Dr. Tariq M. Haqqi said, “Taken together, our studies suggest that a polyphenolic fraction from green tea that is rich in antioxidants may be useful in the prevention and onset and severity of arthritis.”

Three independent and controlled experiments were conducted. Using a widely accepted animal model that is very similar to rheumatoid arthritis, the mice were injected with collagen to induce arthritis. Two groups were studied for forty days, while a third was examined for eighty-five days to verify that the green tea did not simply delay the onset of the disease.

Green tea, unlike the more widely used black version, is not fermented. Instead of crushing the tea leaves, thereby removing the polyphenols, green tea is first dried, and then heated. One teaspoon steeped in hot (not boiling) water contains anywhere from 100 to 200mg of EGCG. Milk should not be added, as it negates the tea’s beneficial properties. According to this study and others that were done for other diseases, two to four cups a day is usually

recommended.

Human trials are currently being developed. In the meantime, however,.Drs. Mukhtar and Haqqi both strongly encourage people to start drinking green tea. Nobody has shown any form of toxicity associated with tea, and with the tremendous amount of data showing its many beneficial qualities, it is a wise and wholesome preventive measure.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms should also be a part of your daily diet, as they are full of nutrients

and are power immune boosters.

There are many reasons that mushrooms are so powerful and essential to our health. They are an excellent dietary staple and health booster, containing nine of the essential amino acids our bodies need, along with 30 percent of the high-quality proteins we require. Plus, with virtually no unsaturated fat, they include more minerals than most meat and vegetables.

Even more important than their nutritional content, mushrooms are rich in enzymes that are critical to reducing inflammation throughout the body. For this reason, mushrooms are known to be useful in alleviating rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, hypertension and heart disease, diabetes, and even some cancers.

With so much going for them, and all their amazing health benefits, what’s not to love? So go ahead and give mushrooms a big welcome in your home. Add them to your meals where you can. You will feel a whole lot better because of it.

Turmeric

In cultures that are thousands of years old, such as in India, there are deep traditions of cooking daily meals with medicinal roots and herbs. These herbs act as preventive measures for sustaining good health, and prevention is the cornerstone of India’s traditional Ayurvedic medicine. Turmeric is one such medicinal root that has made its way into a vast number of Indian recipes.

Aside from your standard chicken or goat curries, there is a whole list of Indian dishes that contain flavorful thermogenic ingredients like cardamom, coriander, ginger, cloves, and turmeric. Not only are these recipes tasty, the ones containing turmeric are especially healthful because of one of its components, called curcumin.

Research conducted by Sarker et al. notes the powerful anti-inflammatory, antitumor, and antioxidant properties of curcumin. Moreover, the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health say: “Laboratory and animal research has demonstrated anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-cancer properties of turmeric and its constituent curcumin.”

Unlike aspirin or ibuprofen, turmeric’s curcumin reduces inflammation naturally, without damaging the liver or kidneys. It has been found especially helpful in treating conditions like arthritis, sports injuries, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, tendonitis, and various autoimmune diseases.

Some research even suggests that curcumin may also help those suffering asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and yes, even cancer. Since curcumin is an anti-inflammatory as well as an antioxidant, it is used for treating arthritis, wounds, digestive disorders, liver issues, and in the prevention of cancer. It also helps reduce the side effects of chemotherapy.

Statistics show that Asian children experience less incidence of leukemia than their Western counterparts, and a diet rich in turmeric may be the reason why. With no negative effects, there’s no reason not to include more turmeric in your diet. You can try to eat more Indian and Malaysian food or buy the ground powder and use it in your own cooking. Since the flavor can be strong, some people prefer to purchase a high-quality curcumin supplement. In any case, make turmeric and curcumin part of your diet and start reducing your body’s inflammation.

Inflammation Free

Being aware of what you’re eating and how it affects your body. Think about this in the larger context of the Wellness Model of Health™. This is the first step toward becoming free of inflammation. By tweaking your diet to avoid certain foods and adding some new ones, you can live an overall healthier and happier life.

And good food isn’t the only tool you have at your disposal when it comes to building better wellness. In the next chapter, I’ll talk about the power of hydration and show you how simple water has the power to change your life.

Chapter Review

• Inflammation is associated with nearly every major disease we suffer from today.

• The typical American diet is filled with foods that cause inflammation.

• Acidic foods are another cause of inflammation. Stress can cause additional acidity in the body.

• A diet high in fiber and whole foods, low in preservatives and unhealthy fat, and infused with blood-invigorating aromatic spices can help reduce pain and inflammation.

• Green tea, mushrooms, and turmeric are extra-strong foods for battling inflammation.

Recommended Resources

Arthritis Reversed by Dr. Mark Wiley

You can get a detailed list of the best and worst foods for inflammation in Dr.

Mark Wiley’s book, Arthritis Reversed at www.arthritisbookfree.com.

its important to drink 8 glasses a day. But not all water created equally. Make sure you drink the water that doesn't kill you just as fast. For example, tap water is full of chemicals, chlorine, lye, fluoride etc. Even bathing and showering without shower filter is dangerous.... Filtered Reverse Osmosis and bottled water is very acidic and very oxidant. Your body is 70% water, brain is 80 and blood is 90. Imagine what happens when the water you drink is burning and rusting you inside? Thats why more and more people switching to Kangen 9.5 pH water. Its anti-acidic, anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory.

Canabis use

Rise of the bizarre 'cannabis vomiting syndrome': Heavy users suffer from severe nausea and pain that can only be relieved by bathing in hot water several times a day Cannabinoid hypermesis syndrome was first recorded in Australia Symptoms include severe stomach pain, nausea and vomiting. Sufferers often report having a hot bath up to 5 times a day to relieve pain.

Expert warns condition is responsible for a rise in 'unnecessary' hospital admissions for heavy cannabis users - and is 'increasing acutely'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3216967/Rise-bizarre-cannabis-vomiting-syndrome-Heavy-users-suffer-severe-nausea-pain-relieved-bathing-hot-water-times-day.html#ixzz3mgX5wjcR

An 18-year-old male presents complaining of crampy abdominal pain, nausea, and intractable vomiting for the past year. The symptoms are episodic, lasting several weeks and remitting for weeks to months. The patient states that his abdominal pain is 10 out of 10 in severity, and that he has been vomiting up to 20 times each day. He has been evaluated at multiple hospitals, and he has had numerous upper endoscopies, colonoscopies, swallowing studies, and CT and MRI imaging studies, all of which were unrevealing. He underwent a cholecystectomy, but had no improvement in his symptoms after the surgery. His pain and nausea are unresponsive to antacids and antiemetics. The patient’s only relief is with hot water bathing: he spends hours each day in the shower with the temperature set as hot as he can bear. The patient’s history is otherwise unremarkable, except that he admits to daily marijuana use beginning at the age of 14.

This patient’s story is typical of cannabinoid hyperemesis, a clinical syndrome characterized by intractable vomiting and abdominal pain associated with the unusual learned behavior of compulsive hot water bathing, occurring in the setting of long-term heavy marijuana use. Treatment consists of medication for immediate symptomatic relief and marijuana cessation for long-term relief. Symptoms usually remit within weeks of becoming abstinent. http://www.clinicalcorrelations.org/?p=2877

4) Endocrine Dysfunction Hormone and Endocrine Disruptors

The endocrine systems of people with CFS seem to be out of balance.

* Cortisol and DHEA-S are hormones released by the adrenal glands, and are invariably low in people with CFS. They work together to control how the body responds to stress. Low levels of these hormones can cause fatigue, hypoglycemia, poor brain function, allergic reactions, anxiety, and many other problems associated with this condition.

* Melatonin is a hormone released by the pineal gland. Its primary function is to control sleep patterns. During the day the pineal gland is stimulated by light and communicates to produce chemicals such as serotonin to wake the body up. When light levels fall the pineal gland signals the production of melatonin, preparing the body for sleep. Melatonin production appears to be disturbed in CFS, causing a lack of deep, restful sleep.

* Thyroxin is a hormone excreted by the thyroid gland. Studies consistently reveal an under-active thyroid in many people with CFS.

Hormone imbalance endocrine disruptors and natural solutions webinar

from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PunH8kdjhJw

After transcribing this I found the official transcript, which contains slightly different information here http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/hormonal-imbalance/

"Today, I'm going to be covering a lot of different topics but what I will really be focusing on is the root cause of hormone imbalance and it's not like one out of nine people have problems with their hormones, it's 100% of the people out there have problems with the hormones. I mean we have a massive debilitating situation worldwide that is being caused by different types of endocrine disrupting chemicals and some of the things were going to get into today that are altering your hormones in your body and it's causing damage and it's causing all kinds of different other issues and is causing infertility it's causing sterility so what i want to do today is let you know that in order to balance your hormones naturally first you have to understand what's causing the hormones to become imbalanced.

So I'm going to go over a lot of different things today and hopefully by the end I'm going to give you solutions as to what you need to do so your body's self-healing mechanism can kick in and you can balance your hormones naturally again

So if you're feeling fatigued, run down, depressed, if you have excessive weight gain most likely it's going to be your hormones because your hormones can be imbalanced naturally by your age, your diet, your lifestyle, harmful chemicals, metals and really one of the big kickers is stress, I mean we live in a society today where everybody gets stressed out all the time so we all need hormonal balance so we can experience good health.

Now health isn't just the absence of problems, health is a focused mind, healthy habits in your lifestyle, a healthy environment, calm nerves, balanced systems within your body, it means that you are at your best, you're confident you feel good, youre mentally and emotionally and spiritually aligned and that ultimately allows us to create and to be healthy and resist any type of illness or disease that might come our way. So what are hormones basically I'm not going to get into all the technical aspects of hormones and everything doesn't really matter you need to know how to balance your hormones naturally if you want to get into the technicalities of how the hormones work together in unison is that like that that's fine you can do that on your own but in general hormones are just chemical messengers in your body that allow the different systems and glands in your body to communicate with each other properly. and hormones are part of the endocrine system and the endocrine system is composed of your pineal gland or what they call the third eye which gets damaged and calcified by fluoride in the water, your hypothalamus your pituitary your adrenal glands the thyroid the parathyroid the thymus the pancreas and the gastrointestinal tract as well as the ovaries and the testes. One thing people really don't really understand a lot is how important the gastrointestinal tract is at regulating the endocrine system.

All those glands together make up our endocrine system. Now these glands produce the hormones that regulate growth and development, reproduction, fertility and infertility, weight, that's why we have problems with obesity, regulate your moods and the list goes on and on, I mean many other things. Now men and women have the same hormones just in different ratios, women obviously have more estrogen and less testosterone and vice versa and of course we all have adrenal hormones, thyroid hormones and so on. When your hormones are balanced your body is humming along just perfectly, you should feel good you should feel full of energy, but when they're not you have problems and that's what affects your whole body systems your mood and everything else.

So hormone imbalances literally forwomen basically means that estrogen and progesterone are out of balance and most likely it's going to be high estrogen and not enough progesterone and that's pretty well known as estrogen dominance. For men they're full of testosterone, but their testosterone their DHEA levels their growth hormone levels as they age they start to decline and there's a term for that called andropause and one of the reasons now is that men as well as women are taking in too much estrogen, and they can experience the same symptoms as women can and many other symptoms including sterility with estrogen dominance.

So we are seeing right now in the current times and it's been getting worse and worse and worse over the years, a estrogen dominance that doesn't happen naturally. It happens as a result of industrial polutants and chemicals and a lot of the stuff that you have around your house probably that you don't even realize that's coming into your body. Now there's a ton of environmental toxins that can also really amplify estrogen dominance anyway. So you know a lot of people don't know that they have hormonal issues by we could list about 100 200 different symptoms for just this webinar today and I'llk just go through a few of them, number one skin problems, if you have acne you have blotchyness in your skin, premature wrinkling that would be assigned a hormone deficiency or imbalance if you have hair loss, you know I talk to a lot of women all the time and every time especially women with long hair and every time they take a shower they have clumps of hair coming out, that's a telltale sign that your hormones are imbalanced or unwanted hair growth either way where you can have unwanted hair somewhere else. Another thing obviously is weight gain especially around the belly area the thighs the buttocks is the big problem and the sad thing about all this is it's affecting our children now just as much as the adults, girls are going through puberty at younger ages and men are becoming feminine because of the estrogen and so that's also a big issue but another big symptom is lack of energy also diminished libido sex drive sleep disturbances especially if you're having hot flashes night sweats these can lead to insomnia, memory problems people on so many stimulus on psychotropic drugs that affect their sleep cycle so it's really something to look at if you're having problems with your sleep because if you're having problems sleeping most likely you're not going to be in the best mood every single day so, and hormones and mental health are very closely related I mean we got an antidepressant epidemic and not only in this country but especially throughout Europe we have so many antidepressants in the water system that even in some countries drinking a gallon of water is the equivalent of you taking one pill of an antidepressant, so the problem is most doctors believe that women and men are depressed and they need antidepressants but it's the completely wrong approach. Nine times out of 10 it's not depression it's something wrong with the hormones and again standard medic medicine doesn't address the root cause of the problem they just address the symptoms of the problem and put a Band-Aid over it so it's really not depression is just a hormone imbalance or chemical imbalance inside your system. most people that we've worked with most people that just clean their body on a regular basis they balance their hormones and then the anxiety and the mood swings the depression and the mental cloudiness and the brain fog and everything just mysteriously go away but it doesn't mysteriously go away it's the fact that you're actually doing something to balance out your hormones.

So one of the things that we have a really big problem with today and this subject of hormones really comes close to my heart because spending years and years tracking down these endocrine disruptors basically and what we're going to start off with is talk about endocrine disruptors and what endocrine disruptors are are chemicals, most of the man-made, but some of them can occur naturally, that interfere with hormones and endocrine disruptors can reduce the production of hormones by the endocrine glands they can influence when, how much and if the endocrine glands release hormones they can affect the organ or the tissue that the hormones are trying to communicate with they might speed up the metabolism of hormones may reduce the action. One thing though that's really bad is that they can block or mimic the hormones and that's especially estrogen, so endocrine disrupting chemicals or EDC's as most people call them are hugely disruptive to the endocrine system. Now you know the reason I'm saying this is because these are the things that you want to look for to avoid, it's all about cleaning up your environment and avoiding hormone disrupting chemicals that allows your body to balance the hormones naturally again.