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Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.

World Water Day 2018 – and a fitting announcement

Our water is getting worse. A reminder that celebrating water today comes with the burden of working toward the goal of clean water. Clean water for those people who still don’t have it, and clean water for those who take it for granted, and don’t realize the water quality is deteriorating. Apropos the World Water Day today, I want to announce that finally a new book by me comes out. Or, put more modestly – and more accurately, a chapter in a handbook. The handbook is Integrative Sexual Health, and it is part of Andrew Weil’s Integrative Medicine Library series, published by Oxford University Press. My chapter 22 is called The Benefits of Water Therapy for Sexual and Pelvic Problems. If you have read my water book Health20 -Tap into the Healing Power of Water, you know already some of the usual suspects: cold shower, herbal bath, hot footbath, tepid sitzbath, and so on – just not with so precisely the lamplight turned on the area between your thighs and your navel (sorry for that metaphor …). You will find remedies for a whole host of ailments “down there” as my medicine hero Sebastian Kneipp (1821-1897) always put it. As a Catholic priest he might have felt uncomfortable talking about “down there”. Be assured that the authors of this handbook do not feel uncomfortable naming names and stating problems. How excited I was when writing that chapter! I had asked this question: How it could be that all the diverse healing approaches lined up in this book seem to help –cold water, herbs, exercise, better nutrition, talking therapy, improved sleep, hormones, vitamins, removal of toxins, weight loss, Ayurvedic Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine. What is the reason they all work? The answer I finally arrived: Disease is an imbalance in your body, and all these different medical modalities can nudge your body back into balance. And I don’t mean balance in a flaky way. I mean this in a strictly scientific way. Because, it turns out, that all these different modes of healing affect the neural-hormonal-intestinal axis from your pineal gland to your sexual glands (ovaries in women, testicles in men), to your gut. In between we have the pituitary gland, the thyroid, the adrenals – and they all work together in health, along that axis that also comes by the name of psycho-neural-hormonal-intestinal axis. And that axis is out of balance in sickness. This is how integrative (or alternative, or natural) medicine defines disease: Imbalance. Compare it to the predominant model in conventional medicine: You have a disease, you get a label (a diagnosis) – and only this kind of pill can make you right again. A prescription pill that only the physician can give you. Sometimes, actually, that model works – and in my chapter I list a whole slew of problems for which you better see a conventional doctor. But it is safe to say that many sexual problems are approachable by natural means. A bounty of advice and hints – that’s what you will encounter in this book. If you are not pleased with your sex life, or experience pain and discomfort in the area down-under, you might find a solution to your problem in this fat handbook. It will come out April 8th, and can already be pre-ordered. Happy World Water Day 2018! Read More 
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News from My Summer Reading Pile

Remember my summer reading list? Slowly I am making my way through, devouring one Commissaire Maigret after the other. This is what I found: “He had a bath, followed by a cold shower, and ate a substantial breakfast while watching the rain fall as continuously as on a November morning. At nine o’clock he had the ballistic expert on the line.” (Excerpt from “Maigret and the Surly Inspector”) Not only James Bond – Commissaire Maigret also is fond of cold showers! Georges Simenon wrote this story in 1946. Something that was once common wisdom, namely that a cold shower does one good, has mostly been forgotten. Just as a reminder – here are the benefits of ending each hot shower/bath with a cold shower (don’t do it if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure and/or arterial disease). A daily cold shower • boosts immune function • lifts your mood • fights fatigue and hangover • normalizes your blood pressure • decreases chronic pain • trains and improves blood circulation – arterial and venous • detoxifies the body • deepens breathing, relieving obstructions in the lung • tones subcutaneous connective tissues • improves lymphatic circulation • rejuvenate and heals skin • regulates the activity of all glands (pituitary, thyroid, adrenal, ovaries/testes • enhances motivation for physical exercise • is helpful in diabetes, obesity, gout, rheumatic diseases, chronic fatigue, varicose veins and hemorrhoids • regulates sympathetic/parasympathetic nerve system (the non-voluntary part of the nerve system) to an optimum Now that the water is summer-warm it is the perfect time to begin cold showers. In February, it will be murder – I am screaming every time I have to get into the cold shower. But I do get in! Read More 
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