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
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
The Problem with Hand-dryers
May 6, 2017
Many good ideas start in the bathroom – at least mine.
I am talking about my present favorite personal dislike, hand-dryers – those bacteria slingers. Cutting down trees for paper towels is, of course, horrible. But every time, I hear one of those germ circulators start up, I jump and try to leave AFAP. Those machines are mushrooming in public bathrooms – is nobody aware that we are living in times of increasing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics?
Hand-dryers are efficient microbe-distributors, with good potential to infect everybody who happens to be near: The user, the bystander, the cleaning folks. We have studies to prove it; paper towels are more sanitary by a mile: After being whirled into the air effectively, bacteria then settle on surfaces, where you don’t want them - the restroom doorknob, the faucet handle, your skin, lungs or sinuses. Questions is: Why have the hand-dryers multiplied anyway – like, just in spite? Of course, it is because they are out to get me. But apart of that: Why really?? Turns out they are cheaper than paper towels. Paper towels make a mess in restrooms. Or, better: Patrons are making a mess in restrooms with paper towels.
Seems we have not a lot of good alternatives. Paper towels have the advantage of being a renewable source, easily degradable. In Germany, I see a lot of cloth roles that automatically roll up after use, preventing the same use repeated times – and can’t be thrown about in the corners. They probably are Old-World-expensive, needing cheap maintenance crews and laundry services. To carry your own cloth towel comes to mind as a possibility. Admittedly, most of the time rather impractical. Rabelais, in his Gargantua and Pantagruel suggest a fluffy baby rabbit, unforgettably, for use as what he calls an arse-wipe. That would work for hand-wipe, too. A bit unrealistic, again, because where are the rabbits if you need them?? But Rabelais’ prose convinced me that a rabbit is the most ingratiating solution. Better than hand-dryers that are, to me, just another thing they sell us that is automated, expensive in hidden costs, unnecessary and dangerous.
My personal way out of the conundrum: Just don’t wipe your hands dry; let them air-dry. Read More
Hungry? Really hungry? Or is it just hypoglycemia?
November 17, 2016
Sometimes, working, I forget to eat. My friends don’t believe that you can forget to eat. They think if you don’t eat you get jittery and weak and blank in your brain – how can one work through that?
Then I remember that I used to be like that, too. To this day my family makes fun about the time I wanted to fast for a day, and broke the fast after three hours because I couldn’t go on – it felt as if I was falling apart.
The difference between being hungry and being in the grip of hypoglycemia lies in how healthy your metabolism is. When you are diabetic or prediabetic (and most Americans fall in either category), you are always looking for food. You cannot go without for any prolonged time. Most Americans, for that reason, do not only eat, but they snack in between. And, listen – I don’t blame them. Because if your metabolism is lousy (because of the Standard American Diet – or SAD) you NEED to eat frequent meals. Otherwise you fall apart. You feel you are hungry. In reality you are voracious because your cells are on a sugar rollercoaster.
This is how your metabolism – the sum of all the chemical and biochemical events in your body at any given time – functions if you eat SAD: You eat a load of sugar (white starches are chains of sugar molecules that are being digested within seconds of entering your mouth, filling you up with sugars, and more sugars). Your brain gets a nice sugar high. Insulin kicks in because high sugars are dangerous for your body (leading to blindness, impotence, heart disease, stroke, dementia, amputations, polyneuropathy, and so on). Since high sugars are so dangerous, your body shoots out much to much insulin. Next thing you know, your blood sugar is really low, and you feel lousy: weak, confused, shaky. What do you do? Well, you reach for another meal or a snack that starts the high-sugar/low-sugar cycle again. On the way, you gain weight because weight gain is the number one side-effect of insulin. And you go see-sawing through high and low blood sugars, never feeling top-fit and at your best potential.
What is the difference when your metabolism is healthy? You eat your three meals, and then you forget about it. You have energy to pursue what you love to do in life. And yes, sometimes you forget to eat because making music, or cleaning the yard, or making a scrapbook is so much fun.
What to eat to reach your perfect metabolism I have described in my diabetes book. But the main points are: Stop sugars and white starches (and don’t replace them with artificial sweeteners). Eat proteins and good fats in every single meal. Within a day or two, your body will experience the difference between hunger and hypoglycemia. When somebody around you says: “I am hungry,” I bet that in ninety percent they are talking the low-sugar jitters. Real hunger is different. Our ancient bodies are made to survive the normal periods of hunger and plenty of food. Our ancient bodies are not made to survive the overfeeding with sugars.
By the way, I didn’t say that you can just suppress that feeling of being “hungry” and ignore it. That is exactly the point: Hypoglycemia is a real condition, and really dangerous. Don’t try to starve when you come off a sugar high. Eat reasonably first. Then you can even put in a fasting day – as I can do now without difficulty. Or you can, once in a while, forget to eat altogether because you are so happily ensconced in a project that warms your heart. Read More