The Importance of Self-Awareness
Mathew Diaz • Jun 29, 2021
I quite enjoyed this assignment for one of my certifications, so I thought it would be a good idea to share it.
I dislike overly simplistic dualistic arguments but I feel when talking about something absolutely foundational as self-awareness it is appropriate. You can live a life as if you were a piece of floating wood on a river or you can live your life as if you had a mind of your own. If you choose the first option and surrender your god-given free will and intelligence it may seem, at first, to be the easier option but that option comes with it’s own consequences. Consequences that were chosen not by you but the flow of the river i.e. life. Both options come with their own set of challenges and I think anyone who embraces what it is to be human will dare to dream of a life designed or co-designed by themselves and not chosen by others or their environment.
To choose option 2 is just the beginning. It requires self-awareness to be developed over time and in relation to different areas of life such as relationship or mindset. Based on my own journey in choosing option 2, I can say that it seems like the river or life has a way of letting you know what work needs to be done in order for you to continue towards your goals. It has a way of telling you that you are part of a community, you exist on an inhabited planet and until you learn how to work with it, you are going to be fighting every wave that comes your way (I’m mixing metaphors, I know). Because you are part of life on this planet you have to choose someone to have your back, to look out for the blind spot of your awareness, a life coach is a trained version of someone you can pick to have your back.
I’ve had to deal with the consequences of being unaware. What I didn’t know was hurting me. I’ve seen others have to deal with the consequences that a lack of self-awareness brought to their lives, consequences that left them a shell of what they once were. We may not have many guarantees in life but I can guarantee that if you choose not to develop your self-awareness you will pay for the choices that others have made for you and that is no way to live. Fear of the unknown replaces wonder of the yet to be known. That is no way to spend, presumably, your one life.
At the risk of sounding self-obsessed I’d like to take a side step to relate my experience with life’s challenges so I can convey more adequately the importance of promoting self-awareness in my clients. As I’ve aged I’ve come to realize that I seem to be awakening in small incremental degrees of consciousness.
In my single digit years I had health issues that my authority figures had no clue about which told me two things, one; adults don’t seem to know very much and two; there must be something wrong with me, I was born ‘defective’.
In my late twenties after being told repeatedly throughout life that I don’t belong in the work that I was doing to pay the bills, my health took another unexpected turn, nothing dramatic but it was enough to open my ears to the messages that I was unintentionally ignoring, which was; ‘you don’t belong here why not make a place where you do belong?’ Like magic, the universe supplied me with answers to my health issues and I dove into becoming the Health Coach I wish I had met when I was a child. I learned that I was not broken but maybe the reason I thought that way was just a symptom of what society was lacking, which is a topic for another day.
This brings us to the last four years or so, to the haunting and lingering question, ‘why aren’t I there yet?’ Through my own work with a life coach I encountered some self-imposed or environmentally imposed mental obstacles that I was, yet again, unaware of. By acknowledging these challenges I was able to get longer and longer glimpses of the man I’m trying to become.
I see helping my clients develop their self-awareness as facilitating their release from a mental or spiritual cage. The way I see things, the purpose of life is to face your unique challenges, learn to overcome them and in the process, find yourself, and fulfill your unique potential. A heroes journey. And what can be more important than that journey of fulfilling your unique life purpose?
How do you deal with Eczema naturally? Hi my name is Mathew Diaz, I’m a health coach that has been lucky enough to have studied under some of the world’s best wholistic Doctors & in this video we’re going to go over some quick rarely talked about facts about how to deal with this inconvenient & annoying challenge. I bring this up because I recently had Eczema pop-up on my middle finger of all places so at least it was fun showing my family and friends, and neighbors and passerby’s. Luckily skin issues like eczema are annoying but not difficult or hard to figure out since I was trained by experienced practitioners and I’ve put in a good amount of foundational work with my health. I went step by step and noticed a noticeable change in my skin. For most people you will get results good or bad, if they’re good keep going if they’re bad reassess the strategy but it could still be a good sign just that you may need to go slower. Most people have a surface level way of dealing with skin problems & it’s not wrong but it’s not the whole picture. Skin problems are not just about your skin. Skin products work but you don’t want to become dependent on them forever in order to keep your appearance. So, where should you start?
What do you do if a lightbulb in your house goes out? Replace it with a new one. It’s not a big deal. What if your thyroid isn’t working like it “should?” You would think that a body part, a gland as essential to your health as, well, any other gland in your body wouldn’t be treated so nonchalantly as an inanimate and easily replaceable lightbulb but you would be wrong. The thyroid when enlarged, is discarded and replaced by pharmaceuticals. No thought about the repercussions of removal or why it was enlarged in the first place. Just throw it out like a broken lightbulb. Today we’re going to go into the potential reasons why goiters form from mainstream sources such as the Mayo Clinic and Textbooks and I’m going to connect the dots that are have been ignored for decades. I believe that this information is being ignored because the answers to the problem are far away from pharmaceuticals. Because there is less money in real answers. And because the answers dispels the myths that your body is malfunctioning and in order to function properly you need product X Y or Z or you will be forever doomed to live a subpar life. Words From The Mayo Clinic (*My two cent comments) What is goiter? Goiter is a condition in which the thyroid gland grows larger. The thyroid gland is a small, butterfly-shaped gland located in the neck, below the Adam's apple. The thyroid gland produces the hormones thyroxine (also called T4) and triiodothyronine (also called T3). (Most of the T4 is changed to T3 outside of the thyroid.) These hormones play a role in certain bodily functions, including body temperature, mood and excitability, pulse rate, digestion and others. What causes goiter? Goiters have different causes, depending on their type. Simple goiters develop when the thyroid gland does not make enough hormones to meet the body's needs. The thyroid gland tries to make up for this shortage by growing larger. Endemic goiters occur in people in certain parts of the world who do not get enough iodine in their diet (iodine is necessary to make thyroid hormone). For instance, a lack of iodine in the diet is still a common problem in parts of central Asia and central Africa. Because iodine is added to table salt in the United States and other countries, this type of goiter usually does not occur in these countries. Sporadic goiters, in most cases, have no known cause. In some cases, certain drugs can cause this type of goiter. For example, the drug lithium, which is used to treat certain mental health conditions, as well as other medical conditions, can cause this type of goiter. Other risk factors for goiter include the following: Hereditary (inherited from family) Female gender Age over 40 *Scene 1 The Skeptical Patient With No Family History of Goiter Why do I suddenly have a goiter, Doc? Dang, there’s nothing you can do, you just turned 40 yesterday. I’m 31. So someone in your family has had a goiter? Nope You are female so there is that. Well yeah but not all females get goiters. Touché … Well, we may never know why but we do need to remove your goiter otherwise it may grow and suffocate you. Don’t I need my thyroid? I think air is more important. Isn’t there a natural way to shrink it? There are no known pharmaceuticals that can do that. Okay, but how about a natural way? I’m not a magician. No, no, no I said A NATURAL WAY. End scene. Other diseases and conditions can also cause a goiter. These include: Graves' disease. Graves' disease is an autoimmune disease (your body's immune system mistakenly attacks your healthy body). In this case, the immune system attacks the thyroid gland and the thyroid grows larger. Hashimoto's disease. This is another autoimmune disease. In this case, the disease causes inflammation (swelling) of the thyroid gland. This causes it to produce fewer thyroid hormones, resulting in a goiter. This type of goiter usually gets better on its own over time. Nodular goiter. In this condition, growths called nodules occur on one or both sides of the thyroid gland, causing it to grow larger. Thyroid cancer. Cancer of the thyroid gland often enlarges the thyroid. Pregnancy. Human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone that a woman produces during pregnancy, can cause the thyroid to grow. Thyroiditis. Inflammation of the thyroid gland itself can cause the thyroid gland to grow. This can happen after the person has an illness caused by a virus, or after a woman gives birth. Exposure to radiation. A person who has had medical radiation treatments to the head and neck (but not diagnostic procedures, such as a CT scan) has a greater risk of developing goiter. What are the symptoms of goiter? The main symptoms of goiter include: A swelling in the front of the neck, just below the Adam's apple A feeling of tightness in the throat area Hoarseness (scratchy voice) Neck vein swelling Dizziness when the arms are raised above the head Other, less common symptoms include: Difficulty breathing (shortness of breath) Coughing Wheezing (due to squeezing of the windpipe) Difficulty swallowing (due to squeezing of the esophagus, or “food tube”) Some people who have a goiter may also have hyperthyroidism, or overactive thyroid. Symptoms of hyperthyroidism can include: An increased resting pulse rate Rapid heartbeat Diarrhea, nausea, vomiting Sweating without exercise or increased room temperature Shaking Agitation Some people with goiter may also have hypothyroidism, or underactive thyroid. Symptoms of hypothyroidism can include: Fatigue (feeling tired) Constipation Dry skin Weight gain Menstrual irregularities Source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/12625-goiter The Mayo Clinic may be filled with the world’s brightest people but if they don’t specialize in removing the reasons for dis-ease then it doesn’t matter. The world’s best electrician isn’t going to be the best person to ask about plumbing. Goitres enlarge downward due to the muscles and facia surrounding it, preventing it from enlarging upwards. Read between The Lines If we simply look at the causes and work our way backward we can find many avenues to explore for potential root causes and if we remove enough of the causes the thyroid would have no reason to be enlarged. Make sense? (Simple Goiter) Over production or underproduction of thyroid hormones.—> How do we get it to produce the right amount? Inflammation or thyroiditis. —> Eliminate thyroid inflammatory exposures (Endemic Goiter) Too much or too little iodine —> Assess iodine intake and correct as well as all nutrient intake that affects the thyroid (Vit. D, Selenium, Iron, Zinc, Vit. E, B2, B3, B6, C, A, EX) (Sporadic Goiter or IDK) potentially drug induced —> Eliminate exposure to thyroid toxins environmental or otherwise Hereditary —> I doubt if you… Female —> Remove all the other… Over 40 —> Factors above that this will be the issue. Parathyroid There are pea-sized glands embedded in the rear tissue of the thyroid gland that secrete parathormone. Parathormone, calcitonin and vitamin D control calcium metabolism. Any issues with the parathyroids can cause problems with nerve, muscle and bone tissue since calcium is utilized in these tissues. Overproduction of parathormone can cause de-calcification of bone and kidney stones. This is another great reason to assess tissue calcium levels and tissue mineral levels in general with a HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis). A test not found or understood in mainstream medicine. When it comes to testing your thyroid the standard metrics are TSH, Free T3, Free T4 and maybe vitamin D. As you can learn very quickly this is a fraction of the overall picture when you have a goiter, hyper or hypothyroid, Hashimoto’s, Grave’s Disease. And we didn’t even discuss how stress affects the thyroid, how the HPA Axis Affects the HPT Axis. The whole person needs to be looked at and not treated in the same cookie cutter approach as the next person with the same diagnosis. The standard textbook approach is to treat the symptoms, ignore the person as an individual and solve the problem with drugs and surgery regardless of the long-term consequences. The standard text books will not connect these dots. How stress influences the thyroid. How the environment effects the thyroid. How nutrition is used by the thyroid. The why is missing but you can still see it between the texts if you know how to ask it. Root Level Testing In case you were wondering about better testing. A more complete thyroid test would be a Thyroid Adrenal Hormone Test and if you could only pick two I would say the Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis as well. If you could pick three I would say you may as well go for the Big 5 (TAH, HTMA, Organic Acid Test, O3 Test, Food Sensitivity Test). I hope you enjoyed a deeper look at another piece of the puzzle of your health and life. If you would like more information like this, subscribe. New content will premiere every week. If you need help with your health, let me help you or point you to someone who is a better fit, email me at mathew@rootlvlwellness.com to set up a free exploratory call or to join my free health coaching group. Until next time, seek knowledge, take ownership and take constant action.
It’s Not All In Your Head! Hypochondriac, psychosomatic, all your tests results are fine these are all the same way for a practitioner to say “I don’t know, maybe you just imagining things”. The reality is you are not with the right practitioner or doctor. The practitioner or doctor assumes that if they didn’t learn it, it doesn’t exist and therefor the patient is imagining things. What an ego! To presume one person can learn everything they need to learn to help with every condition is a story that is taught to many in the mainstream medicine field. If you were told it’s in your head or everything is normal, what you were really told is I don’t know how to help you, find another practitioner. The truth is simple and complicated. There are many effective forms of medicine and each one needs to be used in specific situations. Acupuncture, Chinese medicine, mainstream medicine, Functional medicine, Naturopathic medicine, Bioregulatory, Orthomolecular… They all work when used appropriately. They are tools, use the right tool for the job. All modalities of medicines are tools, use the appropriate tools for the job.
Video Version: https://rumble.com/ve2yif-ep-136-how-to-care-for-your-pet-holistically-part-1.html We take various creatures into our home in an effort of providing shelter and building a loving familial relationship. I love my pets, and if you’re here you probably do as well. As you’re about to learn, the biggest factor for your pet living a long healthy life is you, not your vet and not you pet’s genetics. If you have already taken the responsibility of caring for your pet, then I hope you go one step further and care about the health of your pet and aim to make dog or cat’s life as long and symptom free as possible. Ignorance of the cause of sickness is among the scariest things in life but when combined with the care of another who can’t speak and is a different species than you, you can feel powerless in an instant. The usual thing to do is ask an expert, anyone you perceive to know more about animal care than you. But shouldn’t we as guardians of these creature, have a basic understanding of how to care for our ‘fur babies’, our cats and dogs? Who do we trust to give us the right information? As an Integrative Health Practitioner, I am able to confidently help coach other people to optimal health but when it came to helping my dog and cats I was scared to make any changes to there diet or lifestyle. I searched online knowing what I found would be similar to what everyone else finds online when they search for health information, 99% misinformation aimed to make you fearful of nature and to make you feel safe with drugs and fake food (“dog/cat food”). Everything I could find led me to believe it is dangerous to give them anything else besides the conventional. So I decided to ask someone who I trust with human natural health advice and see if they could point me in the direction of information that mirrored what I learned to be effective natural health advice for humans. Short Recap on Why Natural/Holistic Health is More Necessary You may be under the impression that the human body is an increasingly genetically flawed organism and that is why disease is in tandem increasing. But that is because we are told that story repeatedly, it is programed into us. The truth is, genetics is about 10% of the trouble and the environment is the remaining 90%. Layman and expert alike build their understanding on a false premise so that the answers we look for are how can we tell this malfunctioning body what it should do when the real answers lie with understanding why the body is exhibiting these symptoms then remove the ‘root cause’. Without the spinner in the paw, so to speak, the paw can heal. The common way of thinking is more akin to sewing the wound over the splinter, great job security for the whoever is doing the sewing but lousy for the long-term health of the furry patient. I’ve been diagnosed with arthritis and hypothyroidism, I’ve coached people to naturally balance their hormones, I’ve helped with many things deemed to be caused by the body ‘messing up’ by many text books and experts and institutions. But the reality is the mainstream science community is historically wrong and I believe over time, when the truth cannot be denied any longer, the mainstream will view the truth as self-evident and scoff at their ignorant predecessors. Right now we have a choice to follow what we know doesn’t work evident by the mass decline of health or we can learn how to help the body do what it wants to do, which is be healthy and thrive. How Do I Take Care of My Fur Babies? I shouldn’t have been shocked to learn that our pet’s health is affected nearly identical to our own health. Acupuncture works nearly the same way on them, diet, dis-ease, exercise, detoxification, psychology, Chinese herbs, all fit into the principles that I teach in every article, video, or consultation. In a beautiful symbiotic way, if we learn to better take care of them, we learn to better take care of ourselves and vice-versa. At times what I may tell you will sound hopeless but I want you to remember that nature is capable of miraculous things even in the face of impossible odds. The Dark History Before we learn any better we tend to listen to the ‘experts’. These use what they are told are beneficial drugs, necessary drugs, for the well-being of the animal. Unfortunately the story is more complicated than that. Many vaccine, drugs and other practices like superficial surgeries, have long-term consequences that will catch us off guard and will seem random. We give our pets too many vaccines, and sometimes all at the same time and all at the same dose regardless of the pets size or history. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because this one-size-fits-all approach is what we do to ourselves but what did surprise me is that the Vet has the option to see whether the previously administered vaccine effect on the immune system is still in effect and providing the ‘protection’ the vet is looking to provide in the case of an anti-body repose to the desired antigen. This is called a titer test. You have the option of seeing whether the desired immune protection response is still there, but the conventionally trained vet may view vaccines as harmless as good clean water therefore ‘who cares how many vaccines get injected, their harmless’. Vaccine fanaticism has caused unnecessary risk for millions but potentially vaccines like any tool, can still have a place. Heart-worm, flea & tick preventatives, are they necessary? Is there anything we can do naturally? I’ll refer you to the book The Nature of Animal Healing by Martin Goldstein for more information on all the subjects I bring up here but I want to point out what we do when we feed our pets these drugs. We are essentially using a toxic chemicals to kill potential parasites that enter our pets. The liver and kidneys and other detoxifying organs need to deal with those chemicals. Basically we add poison on top of poison on top of poor nutrition which means those detoxifying organs are under performing which lead to more toxicity and inflammation that will one day pop-up as any number of symptoms that we will then give more drugs to counter or suppress those symptoms leading to a vicious cycle drug, disease, drug, disease until death. This may sound familiar because this the same way human health care is built. The answer is simple, take yourself and your pets out of the cycle, and only use these drugs for emergency, when you have no other choice. Dog/Cat Food- Real whole food, as best you can manage to what they would consume in the wild with considerations given to the state of their health before adjusting the diet gradually towards 100% whole food. Before making changes to their diet consider what they have been through. They have survived off of cereal for every meal for years. No matter how good the ‘dog food’ or rather cereal, it is not real food and it will lack in vital macro and micro nutrients. A common tactic in ‘food’ brands is to do what thy do in the dirty side of the supplement business which is called pixie-dusting. Pixie-dusting is a cute name for having many good ingredients while inadequately supplying all of the ingredients, meaning a dusting of B-12 here, a dust of glucosamine here and for good measure quantum particle of D3. Real food is the answer just as it is for humans but it is a process of trial and error and if possible should be backed up with supplements. I recommend starting with the basics which is a multi-vitamin and mineral. Just like anything, do your research on supplementation because many brands even decent brands will sell you useless supplements. To learn how to spot a good supplement go to my previous article or video; https://mathewdiazihp.medium.com/5-case-studies-to-show-you-how-to-read-a-multivitamin-label-8208aa035f42 or https://rumble.com/vcodhl-ep-123-5-case-studies-show-you-how-to-pick-a-multivitamin-and-mineral.html I hope this has been helpful I recommend learning from holistically minded and open minded sources like this book The Nature of Animal Healing by Martin which is a bit old but the book recommends a plethora of other good books so you can arm yourself with knowledge, not just for your own sake but for your pet’s sake. If you would like more information like this, but typically on human health, subscribe. New content will premiere every week. If you need help with your health, let me help you or point you to someone who is a better fit, email me at mathew@rootlvlwellness.com to set up a free exploratory call or to join my free health coaching group. Until next time, seek knowledge, take ownership and take constant action. Bye.
Recommended podcast: Cabral Concept 108 - Stephen Cabral Popular Stories It just happens with age. Genetics These two stories are really what I call cop-out answers. It’s a distraction used so that the doctor doesn’t have to admit that they don’t know the answer to the simple question, why HBP occurs. Mainstream medicine does not educate on many of the root causal factors that cause high blood pressure or hypertension. Remember the body works as a system. If you have blood pressure symptoms then chances are good that it isn’t just about blood pressure but instead a multitude of imbalances that should be addressed. Possible Root Causes: Stress : There are many types of stress besides mental stress and all of them need to be assessed and addressed. Digestive stress, viral or infection-related stress, environmental stress, non-optimal nutrition, mineral imbalances, parasites, hormonal imbalances, sleep… This free assessment (affiliate link) can be eye-opening when it comes to shedding light on the possible Total Body Burden. Calcification : Minerals play a huge role in every aspect of our health yet the standard blood work tests are only effective for serious mineral imbalances, and not effective for functional imbalances. Calcium does many things but when it comes to HBP we can keep things simple and call Calcium the Stress Mineral. If the body is constantly receiving internal and external stress signals, calcium in the tissue will raise leading to calcification of tissue including the arteries. Normally the arteries dilate (Magnesium) and constrict (Calcium), but when chronic stress occurs the constant bombardment of calcium can stiffen arteries thus increasing high blood pressure. Functional Magnesium Deficiency : Magnesium is a vasodilator and is the natural antagonist of calcium. Dehydration : Too simple? Well, it’s true. Never disregard the fundamentals when solving a problem. Yes, chronic dehydration causes a loss in thirst, and gets this, reduces the water that makes up your blood, making your blood thicker and harder to pump than when properly hydrated, and causes blood pressure to rise. Look towards the medication to find the natural solutions: The typical hypertension medications are calcium blockers (because calcium is a vasoconstrictor), vasodilators (like magnesium), or even crazy enough, heartbeat reducing drugs are among the used medications. Does that sound like a good long-term solution? It doesn’t. What is the natural way to “block calcium”, or vasodilate? Reduce causes of stress like the ones mentioned above, as well as Magnesium. Recommended Tests : The BIG 5 (affiliate link) is my number one recommendation but it isn’t free like some of the options listed above. The benefit is that you are no longer guessing about what is the cause for you. It allows you however to stop guessing, it is the fastest way to find out almost everything that needs to be addressed. Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis: Minerals and Metals Test (Affiliate Link)
--- Hi, I'm Mathew Diaz, Integrative Health Coach and Founder of RLW. I Help empowered people to remove the root level causes behind their surface-level symptoms, so they can have the health & life they deserve. Have you ever taken a supplement that turned out to be a waste of money? I know I did and chances are, so did you. The conversations around health can be very confusing and it doesn't have to be. Today we'll look at 5 case studies so I can show you what to look out for. And I'm going to walk you through some of the tactics used to trick the consumer. I won't be showing the brand names of any of the case studies. This article is about bringing awareness, and not about tearing people or companies down. I share this with you because I started out taking so-called "science-backed" supplements and when I started to get symptoms I completely discounted the possibility that it could be my brand, my favorite trustworthy "science-backed" supplements. To understand how Science-backed supplements can be formulated to the detriment of any human being even when formulated by Doctors, PhDs, Scientists, and other very educated people, you should first learn about these 3 branches of science, Orthomolecular Medicine, Functional Medicine, & Bioregulatory Medicine. Orthomolecular Medicine "In 1969 Linus Pauling coined the word "Orthomolecular" to denote the use of naturally occurring substances, particularly nutrients, in maintaining health and treating disease." "Orthomolecular medicine describes the practice of preventing and treating disease by providing the body with optimal amounts of substances which are natural to the body." "The key idea in orthomolecular medicine is that genetic factors are central not only to the physical characteristics of individuals but also to their biochemical milieu. Biochemical pathways of the body have significant genetic variability and diseases such as atherosclerosis, cancer, schizophrenia, or depression are associated with specific biochemical abnormalities which are causal or contributing factors of the illness." http://www.orthomolecular.org/library/definition/index.shtml
Summary: Supplements formulated without a background in various Natural Medicine Sciences such as Orthomolecular Medicine, Functional Medicine, & Bioregulatory Medicine, can and will create deficiencies. All vitamins and minerals have a relationship with each other, synergistic and antagonistic. For example, Zinc and Copper: Supplement with Zinc alone and over time whatever Copper stores you have in your body will be driven out of your body and vice versa, this is called an antagonistic relationship and it can lead to a functional deficiency. A “functional deficiency” in any mineral can cause a myriad of symptoms. The body works as a system, and in that system, there are many interdependent subsystems. If one subsystem faulters there will be a domino effect on hormones, digestion, or even a psychological effect.
The half truths of the fitness industry By the end of this blog you’ll join the few that understand health and fitness to the point where you won’t fall for time wasting tactics or financial black hole products but first I have to provide context so this will be easy to remember and hard to shrug off. Anyone can make you tired or put together a workout that roasts you, so feeling beaten up after a workout is not a sign the workout was effective. Being sore is also not a great indicator (there are plenty of studies that suggest you are mainly feeling your facia or connective tissue broken down not your muscle tissue) instead look at your body composition, how much body fat you're actually losing, how well you feel throughout the day. If I had to estimate the amount of unhelpful information out there in health and fitness I would go with 95% unhelpful 3% somewhat helpful and 2% amazingly helpful. So congratulations you found in my humble opinion the later. The most popular sites, blogs, gyms, apps, personalities, videos, trainers often push this one romantic idea of health and fitness; work hard, eat little to nothing until you get results and if you give up before you reach your goal, well of course you didn’t reach your goal, you gave up. This is easy to sell for so many reasons, people are often too hard on themselves. It takes a lot to rid yourself of the negative talk in your head, I know I’m still working on it myself. This romantic idea is what I like to call a half truth. Yes, it takes a lot of hard work but it looks 80% different than what is being sold to you. There is a such thing as overtraining and this is simply the realm where most people workout. There is nothing romantic about overtraining, it lowers metabolism, degrades sleep, increases irritability, and makes it easier to gain weight. Until 3 years ago I was in the same camp, the work hard and get no results so work harder camp. Until I found something in that 2% amazingly helpful camp. Bigger leaner stronger: second edition by Mike Matthews , was by no means perfect but it provided so much and lead me down the path I’m on today as an Integrative Health Practitioner and personal trainer and I will be forever thankful. One of the cold hard complicated truths of health and fitness is that a lot of things work for a lot of different reasons and this book showed me how to get consistent sustainable results and what to do when I hit a plateau. Unfortunately against the intent of the author it also lead me to view food differently as numbers and not nutrients. To be fare I didn’t view food as nutrients before either and my relationship with food was also not so good before the book, so I am not blaming the book. If you start off with an eating problem that you are unaware of you have no one to blame… except the school system I believe we should be teaching our children how to be healthy and what we are doing now clearly doesn’t work. For more on that look for my food pyramid blog if it isn’t already linked up it will be soon. So back to BLS, the book basically teaches the concepts of effective strength and muscle building, dietary strategy to cut, bulk or maintain body fat and what the most time worthy exercises are. The book is great for teaching you how to change your physical appearance not for getting healthy which leads us to another half truth; fitness models. People who look healthy can be really unhealthy. The Cardio Trap (Half Truth)
By Mathew Diaz IHP L2, CPT Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food Introduction Growing up we question everything, it's healthy to. Somewhere along the way we stop questioning certain beliefs like the belief work has to be miserable or the belief that as we get older we are suppose to fall apart and lose our mind. I'm here to introduce to you the idea that having a healthy lifestyle trumps our supposed genetic destiny. It boggles my mind how many anti-healthy diet and lifestyle websites there are out there. It's easy to have doubts about "alternative" medicine when we've grown up with a pill for every ill mindset but what's the alternative to "alternative" medicine? Believing obesity, cancer, chronic diseases are all on the rise for no reason but there is a miracle drug out there we've all been waiting for. That the absence of basic nutrients in our diet has no negative impact on our health? That the over 77,000 man made chemicals we are exposed to daily are harmless? Which side seems like quackery to you? What is healthy? The short answer is not easy, after all we grew up with the food pyramid as the imagery of an ideal diet. Much like politics, the food industry has also been corrupted by money . If you laugh at that idea then just google the odd sounding ingredients in your children's cereal or in the your bread. The shocking answers won't be coming from an untrustworthy tinfoil hat website. No, the answers will come from government research studies. We already know the food we typically eat are toxic and devoid of nutrients and increases our chances for chronic disease. I'm not trying to scare you. The answers aren't too hard to find once you know where to look. Which is why I joined in the pro-health movement known as the Integrative Health Practitioner Certification. To spread good information. Enter the new standard for health coaching; Integrative Health Practitioners (IHP) Not to sound arrogant but I truly believe having an Integrative Health Practitioner certification from Dr. Stephen Cabral will be the new standard for health coaches and hopefully after reading this blog you will feel the same. Health coaching is part of alternative medicine. There is a stigma when that term is used so I'd like to cut straight to the point and fight this stigma; there is a lot of mainstream science coming out all the time backing up what natural medicine has been doing for centuries. Meaning, it seems like mainstream science is rediscovering old information. Milk thistle does up-regulate liver function? Yep, been using that for centuries but I'm glade we agree now said "Alternative" Medicine to mainstream science. The main difference in methodologies between what we all know as "conventional" Medicine and "Alternative" Medicine is that conventional medicine works with the symptoms and does not look for the root cause of those symptoms. It may sound like I'm insulting conventional medicine but I believe that the system is to blame not the M.D. The reason conventional medicine is currently overprescribing antibiotics, performing unnecessary surgeries and drugging the world up in general is that it is the system they learned to practice in teaches pharmacology and glances over nutrition. This system is best for immediate life saving conditions and will always be in "emergency mode". Back pain? Movement causes the pain, let's fuse the vertebrae together so there is no movement. Acne? Let's use antibiotics so we kill whatever is in your microbiome. High blood pressure? Let's make it so your heart pumps softer or you pee more often so you can get rid of more minerals. When we take a step back we can see this all sounds like an all hands on deck, let's get this done approach to problems that could be solved with lifestyle changes over the course of months with the guidance of someone with the knowledge & time to help you. In most cases our bodies are not messing up. There is an underlining reason for our symptoms. We always need to ask, why? What makes IHPs integrative? As an Integrative Health Practitioner I draw answers from 7 forms of medicine (Ayurvedic, Naturopathic, Orthomolecular, Functional Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine & Herbalism, Bioregulatory, Eastern Philosophy) to rebalance the body because a balanced healthy body is not an overweight or sick body. This hybrid approach will be the new standard for health coaching. *IHP's do not cure, treat, or diagnose disease, we can however work with underlining imbalances. To be honest the names of a group of symptoms do not matter to me, the root cause of those symptoms matter. Introduction to Functional Medicine With state of the art at-home functional medicine lab testing there isn’t any guess work involved. The human body is complex & the same imbalances and deficiencies in one person, can lead to different symptoms in the next person. As an IHP L2 I can use 7 3rd party at-home labs and base my consultations off of the information gathered from the tests as well as my client's stories. Who created IHP? The IHP certification was created by a Naturopathic Doctor named Dr. Stephen Cabral who has been practicing multiple forms of natural medicine for nearly twenty years, total appointments from his Boston practice are over 250,000. Here is his bio from his website Equilibriumnutrition.com -MEET NATUROPATH, AYURVEDIC & FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE DOCTOR, DR. STEPHEN CABRAL STEPHEN CABRAL Doctor of Naturopathy ANMCB ANMCB Board Certified Naturopath PASSION Dr. Stephen Cabral developed his passion for health & wellness after going through severe health complications at the age of 17. He saw over 50 different doctors, tried over 100 different treatment protocols, but still saw no hope of recovery. It wasn’t until he met an “alternative” health doctor whom explained to him how he got here and how he could become well again, that he began his recovery process. It was at this young age that he knew his life would be dedicated to helping others rebalance their bodies and renew their health. After almost 20 years and over 600,000 pages of research study completed, dozens of certifications in the natural health field, over 16,000 health & fitness client sessions, and a doctoral degree in Naturopathy, you can rest assured that Dr. Cabral’s knowledge, experience, and compassion are at the top of his field. Dr. Cabral also spent over 5,000 hours of formal doctoral degree work, which included 2,200 hours of internships. These internships were mainly spent overseas studying the very best of natural medicine (much of which is unknown here in the US). His internships included actually studying, working, and living in clinics all around the world. This intimate setting allowed Dr. Cabral to talk in depth with the patients at these clinics and listen to their struggles and path to wellness. He also got to see first hand the remarkable recoveries these people were making. Some of these internship locations included India, Sri Lanka, China, Europe, and various practices in the US. For the rest of Dr. Cabral's story visit Equilibriumnutrition.com . The point is Dr. Stephen Cabral has started a movement to improve our civilizations health crisis with his IHP certification and course because rest assured the answers lie in nature for a long healthy life not in taking life long drug prescriptions that ware off and lead to more symptoms over time. How do IHPs look for the root cause? By having an overall foundational education on how the body functions it doesn't take too long to know where to start looking or testing with Functional Medicine At-home Labs. Let's take high blood pressure for example. Here's what needs to be determined: • Increased SNS stress response • Elevated cortisol • High time cortisol • Low melatonin production • Diet too high in processed foods • Imbalanced calcium/magnesium • Low potassium • Insufficient stomach acid • Weak digestion • Poor protein breakdown • Gut permeability issues • Heavy metals accumulation If any of this seems random it is only because of a lack in knowledge in this field. Feel free to visit Dr. Cabrals podcast website to learn more on high blood pressure or anything else you may have questions on, he has over 1200 podcasts so you should have plenty of information to learn. Which Functional Medicine Lab tests will help? Thyroid+Adrenal+Hormone Test
*I do not diagnose, treat or cure disease.
