Nutty Insomnia Treatment

How long has it been since you had a really good night's sleep?

I know, I know.

With most people working like maniacs just to make ends meet these days, the first thing to go is a restful eight hours in dreamland every night.

Well, if you're suffering some insomnia, perhaps this nutty all-natural remedy will help you get some zzz's.

This natural insomnia treatment is so simple, it's almost embarrassing to describe, but here it is, anway...

Before going to bed, eat a one-ounce serving of fresh walnuts. It's important to chew them slowly and thoroughly and don't swallow until you've reduced them to a liquid.

You're probably wondering, "What's the deal with walnuts and insomnia?"

Well, walnuts just happen to be one of the plant kingdom's richest dietary sources of seratonin, the magical chemical that that promotes feelings of relaxation and well-being. As an interesting side effect, seratonin also tends to suppress appetite.

In addition to helping you overcome insomnia, eating fresh walnuts on a regular basis may even help you lower cholesterol and fight depression.

Cool, eh?

Chet Day
Editor, The Natural Health Circus
http://chetday.com

P.S. I developed a natural insomnia aid that's even nuttier than walnuts. Click here to learn about NightTrain, my amazing CD that evokes rave reviews from those using it for deeper and more satisfying snooze sessions!

Bean Sprouts Salad

Hey, how about a natural and healthy recipe for a...

Bean Sprouts Salad

2 cups fresh bean sprouts
2 medium cucumbers
2 Tbs organic apple vinegar
1 Tbs favorite oil (to suit your taste )
1 tsp raw honey
1/8 tsp dry mustard
1 Tbs sesame seeds
Salt to taste

Rinse sprouts, wash cucumbers. Run tines of fork down side of unpeeled cucumbers to score. Thinly slice. Arrange sliced cukes and bean sprouts on a serving platter.

In a small bowl or screw top jar, combine salt, vinegar, oil, honey, and dry mustard, and mix or shake until thoroughly combined. If you shake, make sure there's a lid on the container.

Drizzle sauce over vegetables. Sprinkle on the sesame seeds.

Eat.

Now you have one of the easiest and healthiest recipes for bean sprouts salad that I've run into since I joined the natural health circus back in 1993.

Chet Day
Editor, The Natural Health Circus
http://chetday.com

P.S. Click on the comments link below if you'd like to share a favorite bean sprouts salad recipe.

5 Health Tips

Today I'd like to share five more easy health tips you can put to work in your life, no matter how busy you are.

1. To improve your digestion, try food combining. For example, do not eat starches, sugar, or sweet fruits such as raisins, dates, and figs with meats. Food combining doesn't work well for everyone, but for those for whom it does work, the results are quick and significant. Click here for an excellent article that contains more information about food combining.
   
   
2. Avoid fried foods. Yes, I'm sorry, but just say no to Kentucky Fried Chicken, French fries, and all the other great-tasting stuff that comes out of a vat of boiling fat.
   
   
3. Drink the purest water you can get. If your local water company is dumping chlorine, fluoride, and God only knows what else into the water for "your protection," you must purchase a good water filter. Be sure that it meets California certification standards.
   
   
4. Do not eat late at night. Even better, don't eat anything at all once you've pushed away from the table after your evening meal.
   
   
5. Take a good brisk walk every day. While you're moving those old legs of yours and swinging your arms, take plenty 0f deep breaths. Morning walks are best for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that you'll probably be too busy at the end of the day.

These tips are easy to implement, so give them a try, please.

You'll be happy with the results.

Chet Day
Editor, The Natural Health Circus
http://chetday.com

Living Borscht

Bobbi A. submitted the following recipe for a healthy raw soup.

Dear Chet,

We recently tried a borscht soup that we really liked, and I want to share the recipe with others. Here it is...

Living Borscht -- a Delicious Raw Soup

1 1/2 cups carrot juice
3/4 cup beet juice
1/2 cup apple juice
Juice of 1/2 lemon

I made the juices with our Champion juicer. Next time I am going to try it in the Vita-Mix for a thicker soup.

Grate

1/3 to 1/2 cup grated beet
1/3 to 1/2 cup grated carrot
1/3 to 1/2 cup grated cabbage

Chop 3 or 4 green onions

Mix all of the ingredients together. I warmed them in a double boiler until everything was not hot but just warm.

Top with an avocado blended with lemon and celery.

Now, does that sound good or what? Thanks to Bobbi for sharing this recipe.

If you have a healthy raw recipe you'd like to share, please do so by clicking on the comments button below.

Chet Day
Editor, The Health Circus
http://chetday.com

Easy Health Tips

Today I'd like to share five easy health tips you can put to work in your life, no matter how busy you are.

1. Eat at least one good serving of uncooked food (fruit and vegetables) before every meal. For example, you'll be pleased by how much weight you'll lose and how much better you'll feel if you eat an apple before breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
   
   
2. It won't kill you to skip a meal on occasion. In fact, if you overeat on fast foods at lunch, as so many people do, you'd be better off not having the evening meal... or, if you do have it, make it a light meal of fruit and salad. Many health nuts skip at least three meals a week. Some even skip all food entirely for one 24-hour period every week.
   
   
3. For Pete's sake, slow down and chew your food. If you're bolting every mouthful, you're not going to digest the food properly and will end up with indigestion and smelly farts that won't help you advance at work!
   
   
4. Your mouth and throat contain delicate tissues that don't care much for being frozen or burned. So avoid the common tendency to drink liquids that are steaming hot or freezing cold.
   
   
5. Keep your liquid drinking at meal time to a minimum, if at all. Though it's a controversial topic, many natural health nuts (including the one writing these tips) think it makes sense to not dilute salivary and digestive juices with meal-time liquids. Try having a few meals with nothing to wash them down. If you're like me, your digestion will thank you for making this simple change.

Warning: Don't plan on putting these tips to use later. Instead, write them down immediately as goals for the next seven days and then put them into practice, starting right now.

Most people make the mistake of reading tips like these but never acting on them.

That's stupid.

If you put into action the five tips I just shared with you, one week from today you will feel significantly better than you feel right now.

If you don't believe me, try them for a week and then come back to this blog entry and report your results.

I dare you.

I double-dare you!

Chet Day
Editor, The Health Circus
http://chetday.com

Caffeine Addiction

Do you realize that caffeine addiction may well result from the ongoing love affair between Americans and one of the country's most popular legal drugs?

Coffee, soft drinks, headache pills... you'd be stunned if you realized how much caffeine ends up in your body over the course of a year.

What is this potent legal drug that so many people rely on to wake them up in the morning as well as to keep them awake during the rest of the day?

Well, from Wikipedia, we learn...

Caffeine... is a xanthine alkaloid found naturally in such foods as coffee beans, tea, kola nuts, Yerba mate, guarana berries, and (in small amounts) cacao beans.

For the plant, caffeine acts as a natural pesticide since it paralyzes and kills some of the insects that attempt to feed on the plant.

Caffeine's main pharmacological properties include a stimulant action on the central nervous system with psychotropic effects and stimulation of respiration, a stimulation of the heart rate, and a mild diuretic effect.

Does this sound like a substance you want to put in your body on a regular basis?

It it does, please think again.

According to Stephen Chernisek, author of Caffeine Blues, caffeine in the human body...

1. Raises blood sugar levels and disrupts sugar-regulating effect of insulin
   
   
2. Raises fatty acid levels in the blood
   
   
3. Raises homocysteine levels, which greatly increases the diabetic's risk for cardiovascular disease
   
   
4. Causes vascular resistance (circulation is reduced)
   
   
5. And caffeine raises stress hormone levels which is a primary risk factor for diabetes

And if that's not enough to get you started on breaking your caffeine addiction, Wikipedia's article on caffeinism reveals that...

Caffeinism is poisoning resulting from excessive intake of caffeine, whether via coffee, tea, chocolate, soft drinks, over-the-counter medications, or other caffeine-containing products.

Its symptoms are both physiological and psychological. The amount of caffeine needed to generate caffeinism depends on individual sensitivity.

It is commonly assumed that only a small proportion of people exposed to caffeine develop symptoms of caffeinism. However, because it mimics recognized psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and psychosis, a growing number of medical professionals believe caffeinism victims are routinely misdiagnosed and unnecessarily medicated.

A study in the British Journal of Addiction declared that "although infrequently diagnosed, caffeinism is thought to afflict as many as one person in ten of the population." (JE James and KP Stirling, 1983).

Shannon et al (1998) point out that: "Caffeine-induced psychosis, whether it be delirium, manic depression, schizophrenia, or merely an anxiety syndrome, in most cases will be hard to differentiate from other organic or non-organic psychoses... The treatment for caffeine-induced psychosis is to withhold further caffeine."

The fact that caffeine is known to exacerbate organic mental illnesses (Hughes et al, 1998) can make accurate diagnosis difficult.

Personally, I overcame my caffeine addiction back in 1993 when I got serious about my health. At the time, I lived in New Orleans and on most work days drank up to seven cups of black coffee with chicory, a rabid concoction that wired me up so tight with phony "caffeine energy" that I'd often experience body tremors and shaking hands by the time I knocked off from work.

When I started studying natural health and learned about caffeine addiction, I decided to get that monkey off my back for good.

I won't go into the nasty details because my experience getting off caffeine was awful, but I will say it took me three days of pounding headaches, night and day sweats, upset stomach, and a number of other unpleasant withdrawal symptoms and behaviors (talk about grouchy) before I was free of my caffeine addiction.

Seriously, one of the best things you can do for your health is to decrease or, even better, totally remove, caffeine from your life.

Once you get past the withdrawal problems, you'll be amazed at how much better you feel physically and mentally.

Chet Day
Editor, The Health Circus
http://chetday.com

Building Self Esteem

Today I'd like to share some techniques for building self esteem that I learned from the late Declan Twohig of London, England.

Let's begin with an important question:

Do you regard your lack of success in life as a failure?

If you do, and for as long as you do, that's the length of time you'll be immobilized and unable to succeed.

When you change your attitude toward failure -- when you think of failure as a result YOU produced -- then you can start to change your results.

Did you know you can only think one thought at a time? You can think a lot of things during any given amount of time, but you can only think ONE thought at a time.

That being the case, what are you thinking right now?

If you don't like what you're thinking in any given moment, use this technique to change it.

The second you realize you don't like what you are thinking, put your hand on your heart and smile. Not only will this make you feel better because touching your heart is a symbol of love, but it will get your mind off what you were thinking.

Practice this technique every day and soon your mind will produce positive thoughts instead of life-draining negative ones..

Guess what else you'll be good at?

Smiling.

Want some more tips for building self esteem?

Here are five simple and effective techniques...

1. Greet others with a smile.
2. Always show real appreciation for a gift or compliment.
3. Talk positively.
4. Increase your level of creativity.
5. View a failure as the conclusion of one performance and immediately move on to the next. Realize the failure is NOT the end of your life. Remember that there's always hope ahead.

Self-esteem can be defined as a two-way street to happiness. When you're happy, you make others happy. When you make others happy, you feel better. When your brain knows you're happy, it shoots your self-esteem way up.

Practice these techniques for a week and then note how much better you feel from doing them.

You'll be amazed because your life will be happier and healthier.

Chet Day
Editor, The Health Circus
http://chetday.com