Lifestyle Choices - 039

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalized professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. In 2005. The US. Surgeon General said that our daily Lifestyle choices s accounted for 70% of our health status, more than all other factors put together, including medical care and genetics. What are those lifestyle choices? Stay tuned. SPEAKER B Healthy Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person, body, mind, and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good health. SPEAKER A My guest today is Dr. John Clark, who has helped many people improve their health by making simple lifestyle choices. Welcome, John. And tell us about some of those lifestyle choices. SPEAKER C Yes, people, if they only knew how to live their lives, they could live better and live longer. Live healthier. SPEAKER A That sounds worth doing. That sounds really good. SPEAKER C Yes. And I'll tell you about a gentleman that came to me and what we did for him. Thomas was 69 years old and he was feeling run down. He had been working the same job for 30 years and he liked his job, but he's getting ready for retirement and he's figuring he'd like to do interesting things during his retirement. But his energy was low and he didn't feel like it was as low as what his age should suggest. And he's wondering, what can I do to pick myself up? What can I do to be more energetic? What can I do to make sure that I enjoy my retirement? SPEAKER A Absolutely. People look forward to that, don't they? And they think that's just going to be something where they really start to live and really enjoy their lives. SPEAKER C Oh, and they want to have a good time going and fishing or traveling. And here he was not feeling well, so I started by asking him a lot of questions and we'll talk about what I did for him and his results as we go along. SPEAKER A Yes, I think that's what we're all waiting for because I think we all know what it's like to be tired. And what we want to know is. SPEAKER C How not to be and not be worn out when you shouldn't be worn out. First thing I asked him is, what time do you get to bed? You know, sleep has a lot to do with how you feel and the quality of sleep. And he wasn't sleeping real well. Reason he wasn't sleeping real well is because he was eating a large evening meal. Now, if you're eating a large evening meal within 3 hours of going to bed, you can figure you're going to suffer in your sleep because your stomach is going to be working. And a working stomach doesn't allow the rest of the body to sleep very well. SPEAKER A It's hardly fair in a way, is it, to put your whole body to rest. And the stomach thinks, well, thanks a lot, you've given me the biggest task of the day. Everyone else is knocked off and here I am, drug me and having late at night. SPEAKER C And if you lay down anytime while there's still food in your stomach, the digestive process takes three times as long, so it makes a major impact on the time. SPEAKER A That could be all night. SPEAKER C That could be all night. What's more, the same meal eaten in the evening as eaten in the morning, same content of food, will take twice as long to eat when it's after 05:00. And so eating evening meals is definitely going to mess with your sleep. SPEAKER A Twice as long to digest. SPEAKER C Twice as long to digest, even if you don't lay down. So there's a factor here. We have to realize that for the evening meal, you only want to eat things that are light and easy to digest. So one of my recommendations for him was to eat only fresh fruit for his evening meal. For example, watermelon, rock, melon, honeydew, papaya, things that are high in water that digest quickly, things that won't be still gurgling away in the stomach when you have your head on that pillow. SPEAKER A Do mangoes qualify for that? SPEAKER C Yes. Any fresh fruit, basically. And in saying that, we're avoiding heavy oily products, even nuts and seeds, but especially fried things, barbecued things, roasted things, things that have oils added, meats, vegetables even, aren't great for the third meal because they take a long time to digest. Fresh root is going to be the best. SPEAKER A So all those heavy things that you're talking about, I think, in this country anyway, are traditionally what people do, have meal. That's the main meal of the day for a lot of people. It's just the way we've grown up, that's what we do. And we tend to think that's the main meal of the day. That takes a bit of changing. But it's good to know what you've just said. SPEAKER C Right? And we're talking here about having more energy for retirement. Of course, you can choose between the evening meal and having more energy, but. SPEAKER A That would even apply to the next day, surely? SPEAKER C Yes, absolutely. Definitely the next day. And so that was the first step in helping him with his poor sleep. The second step was I asked him, what time do you go to bed? And it was anywhere from ten till midnight. And so we talked a bit about that. See, in your body you have a clock. The clock is very important. Soybeans run on a clock. They did an experiment with a field of soybeans at 03:00 A.m.. They came out to the field of soybeans with a very bright light, like a kangaroo search light on top of the ute, and they shined it out on the soybean patch and the soybeans turned their leaves to the light, just like they would to the sun. And then for the next week, the researchers came and looked at their soybeans without a bright light, but with a small light, and saw that at 03:00 A.m., the soybeans turned their leaves up, expecting this bright light, because they run on a clock. Well, soybeans run on a clock, and they're just a plant. Guess how big our clock is? And we run on a clock. And there's all our different hormones run on a clock. And if we don't get much sleep before midnight, we don't get melatonin. Melatonin is sort of your feel good, keep young hormone. And so he needed more of his melatonin. And so we recommended he get to bed by 09:00. That way you have 3 hours before midnight. We say 2 hours before midnight has the impact on your health positively like 4 hours after midnight. SPEAKER A That's incredible, isn't it? And I tell you what I found interesting, though. They only put those bright lights on once, and you're saying for the next week the effect was there. It wasn't just that one night. SPEAKER C That's right. Kept turning their leaves up at 03:00. SPEAKER A A.M.. And that would happen to human beings too, right? SPEAKER C And so you want to be regular about your bedtime always at 09:00, always getting up at, let's say, 05:00. So we put him on a strict bedtime schedule and a strict rising schedule in order to get the maximum amount of benefit out of his sleep, in order to have more energy. Some people, that alone would fix the problem. But we gave him a whole lifestyle program, and the next step was what to do when he got up at 05:00. SPEAKER A Okay? SPEAKER C And so when he got up at 05:00, I had several things for him to do. This is, of course, sparking his energy, because that's what he wanted. First thing was to hydrate his body thoroughly. So we had him take one liter of warm water. SPEAKER A Why warm? SPEAKER C Why warm? Well, if you take cold water, it'll sit in your stomach. It'll drive the blood away from your stomach, and it'll take a while before the water warms up and it can be absorbed. What's more, the valve at the end of your stomach will close, so the water doesn't go on down to your intestines. Because it's cold, you don't want it going on down. On the other hand, if you take warm water, the stomach will sort of not even sense it a lot because it's the same temperature, perhaps, as the body. It'll leave that valve open. Some of it will go on down and start cleansing the intestines. It'll absorb quickly into the system, hydrating the cells, hydrating the brain, giving you that energy, and you'll be prepared for the day. We also had him add some lemon to that water. Lemon is very valuable in that it's got high antioxidants. It also has lemonins and lemonoids. That stimulate the liver to start cleansing early in the morning. And it also helps with the intestines cleansing. So it's really sort of like a cleanse to get the person going, right. The next thing we did is we had him do a cool sponge bath or cool shower with skin scrubbing. And when you get up in the morning, you've been laying there all night, the toxins have been accumulating on your skin. You can carry those through the day and try to show everybody them, or you can remove them. And so he was instructed to do what I did this morning, get in the shower, get either a face washer or these shower gloves and start scrubbing himself in cool water. It doesn't have to be as cold as it'll go, but just cooler than your body temperature, and start scrubbing himself from head to toe. Face, ears, cheeks, neck, arms, chunk all the way down to the legs. And when you do that, boy, let me tell you, you don't feel like crawling back in bed. You're awake. Whereas you might have been groggy before and having a little bit of trouble after that. It tends to really get your blood flowing, get your nerves woken up, tends to get your immune system percolating. It's very good at getting a person energized. Like this gentleman wanted to be energized for his retirement, but he got energized straight away. Yes. So that's a bonus right off the top. SPEAKER A He didn't have to wait that long. SPEAKER C No, the next thing I had him do is take a walk outdoors. Now, when you get up in the morning, you have things to do, but if you can get outdoors, you see a lot of people live indoors. Too much indoors has become a way of life. It used to be when I was a kid, the whole neighborhood was out on the street. We'd be riding bikes up and down with all the neighborhood kids. Today you walk into a neighborhood, there's still the same number of kids, perhaps, but there's nobody on the streets. Everybody's inside playing their Nintendo or their Xbox, or they're looking at the television or whatever, entertainment. And they don't get outdoors. And they're rebreathing the same air over and over and indoors. There's carpets putting off formaldehyde, there's paints putting off paint thinners, there's insulation board putting off Styrene or whatever. Different chemicals. There's all kinds of chemicals. Chloroform. When we study indoor environments, there's toxic levels of chemicals, and it comes from all the building products that are used these days. People sit in there all the time breathing that stuff. More cancer, more diabetes, more Alzheimer's disease. What they need to do is get outdoors. So we send them outdoors in the morning. Isn't morning air nice? SPEAKER A Beautiful. I love the morning air. Absolutely do. SPEAKER C If you let it wait too long, it gets old, doesn't it? SPEAKER A Different. SPEAKER C It's like when the sun comes up, all the negative ions go away. If you can take a walk in the early morning near a body of water, you get a lot more negative ions. Those negative ions come into your lungs. They energize your immune system. They get your brain working more efficiently. Those negative ions are key to a lot of things. It's interesting in some dental offices, they have a negative ion generator because it kills bacteria and germs and viruses. Really, it's a very interesting subject, these negative ions, but if you can get those from an early morning walk and when you walk, you're moving your pelvis, you're moving your legs, you're getting the blood flowing, you're getting your insides, your intestines massaged, you're getting everything ready for the day. Ten to 15 minutes. I sent him outdoors, and that was his protocol. And then when he got back, I had him do something that's very important for people who want a good mental attitude. And that is I hope that's everybody we hope so. Some people don't like having a good mental attitude. It drubs them the wrong way. They have a chip on their shoulder, and they need somebody to knock it off so they can be controlling and through abusive anger and okay, we'll get off those people. We'll get back to our topic here, because what I had him do was to engage in what we call gratitude therapy. He was to make a list of three things for which he's thankful. Write them down, take notes, and the three things can be the same three things as the previous day, as long as they are truly things for which he's thankful. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER C But gratitude therapy has been shown to help people live longer, less cancer, recover quickly if they do get cancer, it's helpful in fighting depression. People who are grateful, who are thankful, especially when they can direct it to their creator, have a much better mental attitude and are more energetic. And that was what he wanted, more energy. SPEAKER A Yes, gratitude is a science. When I realized that some time ago, I was quite surprised. I didn't imagine it. I never thought of it that way. But yes, books have been written on it, and it's a science, and well. SPEAKER C They might be because it's definitely helpful. So then, next thing was, he was coming to breakfast time, and I said, now what you want to do is eat lots of fresh fruits, especially people like fruit for breakfast. You can eat breakfast as vegetables if you like, but fruits tend to be a traditional breakfast, in a sense, unless it's going to be some kind of meat or so I've had this in my own experience. I had been doing a bunch of lectures out in a town in Virginia, and we'd made some good friends there, and they listened to my lectures, and they went home, and they had a family of four children. They decided, we're going to eat largely fresh fruits and vegetables. We're talking 80, 90% fresh fruits and vegetables. SPEAKER A Really? SPEAKER C We thought that's interesting. Well, we came back to that same town a couple of years later and met them, and they said, we want to tell you our experience. They started telling us about their fresh fruit and vegetable diet, and we're like, well, maybe you took this a little too far. I mean, it's probably a good idea, but you're almost 100% fresh fruits and vegetables. And so my wife said, Well, I want to come over and see what you do. And she came over and watched. And for breakfast, they would chop up a big bowl of fruit salad, and everybody would eat it all up. And then for lunch, they'd make a big salad and a dressing and maybe some cooked beans or something, or brown rice to go with it. And even the two year old was asking for seconds on salad. SPEAKER A That is amazing. SPEAKER C That's amazing. SPEAKER A Wouldn't everyone who has a two year old like that to be so and so? SPEAKER C My wife said, well, let's try it. And so we decided to go 100% raw for six weeks. SPEAKER A Okay? SPEAKER C And my wife says, I've never had more energy in my life. SPEAKER A Is that right? SPEAKER C I've never had more energy in my life. And so in giving this gentleman who wants to have more energy and vitality and have more strength for his retirement, giving him as much fresh fruits and vegetables, I mean, you figure if you're going to process the food and cook it, you're killing vitamins. You're not killing minerals, but you're killing phytochemicals. And so the more fresh in most cases, the better. I mean, there's a few foods you can't eat fresh, uncooked, like grains, but you can sprout them, but there's most fruits you can eat fresh. And so we had him eating 80% fresh fruit and then nuts and seeds. And I said, one of the things we like to do is make a fruit salad and then go to the blender and make a nut and seed cream. And a typical recipe might be to put two thirds a cup of water into your blender, put in a tablespoon of some kind of seed, like pumpkin seed or sunflower seed or flaxseed or sesame seed or any of your favorite seed, and then two tablespoons of some kind of nut. The most antioxidant nut is a pecan, but walnuts are good, and almonds, brazil nuts, nuts that aren't real helpful perhaps are cashews and peanuts. They tend to raise your cholesterol, but they're not terribly bad. They're going to be better than some meat, of course, but you definitely want to have a few nuts and seeds for the minerals and for their oil based vitamins. SPEAKER A Nuts are really well recognized, and the value of them is, for so many reasons, it's right out there. Now. When that first started a few decades ago, it was ridiculed that it even helps with heart disease. And they thought that can't be true. And it is true. SPEAKER C Yes, very helpful. And you would think they would with their fats, be a problem, but the fats are contained with the fiber and with the vitamins and so it's not a problem. And then for his cooked portion of his breakfast, he could eat porridge, he could eat good foods that he liked already. Brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, millet, a lot of good grains. If you want porridges. Or you can make toasted musli. We really enjoy toasted musli. But anyway, he had a good breakfast. Immediately after breakfast, take a walk midmorning, get another liter of water. Lunchtime, come along. And we would have him eating lots of fresh vegetables, salads, and making a dressing with nuts and seeds again, and lemon juice. And if you go to my website, there's lots of good recipes. Website is rev 15. Com. That's a short version of the URL, rev twelveteen.com. There's recipes, there's videos, there's handouts for my lectures that are all well researched and so they can go to the website and find some of these things. So for lunch, we would have him eat lots of fresh vegetables and also some cooked things. Steamed veggies, like broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower grains. SPEAKER A You're making me hungry. SPEAKER C Oh, yes. Well sounding so lovely. Quinoa, brown rice, you name it, I'll tell you. One of the things we would like to do with our salads is take and bake a white potato, chop it up on the plate into small squares so it's bite sized. Put the salad on top of it, quite thick and heavy, and then put on the dressing like gravy and eat it all together. And that's delicious because the potato is very comforting and your salad is very nutritious. And then the salad dressing gives it a wonderful flavor. SPEAKER A Beautiful. SPEAKER C We're really going to get hungry. And you can do that with sweet potato too. We've done that. You can do it with brown rice and beans. You can do it with different things you might otherwise eat without the salad. But eating them together is an interesting way to combine. SPEAKER A Very interesting. It's not what you'd usually do to put salad on top of a hot potato. But why not? I mean, people do amazing things with food. Why not do that? SPEAKER C Why not mix them and make them match them? And then immediately after lunch, guess what? SPEAKER A Oh, let me see. Might it just be a walk? SPEAKER C And this helps keep the digestion good. If you don't walk after a meal, if you lay down, then you are going to get more of this tired, fatigue business. You don't want to be tired and fatigued. What happens when you walk? It keeps the blood from stagnating at the stomach. I mean, the stomach is trying to draw the blood because it's digesting food. But an overabundance of blood at the stomach is sort of like going into Sydney and rush hour traffic and everybody's going slow because there's too many cars on the road, too many blood cells in the stream. Going to the stomach is going to be the same effect with stagnation of blood. So you want to walk after your meal? We call it postprandial ambulation. SPEAKER A Okay, well, let's just walk after a meal, shall we? Digestive walk, perhaps these walks after the after the meals, about how long duration is an ideal time? SPEAKER C Ten to 15 minutes is plenty, yes. I mean, you can take a longer walk if you like, but we're finding that people who walk periodically do much better than those that try to do the walk all at once. During the day, maybe they take an hour walk, and the rest of the day they sit. Sitting for 12 hours or whatever cannot be compensated for by a quick short walk or even a marathon. It's that time. Sitting causes an increase in inflammation. It causes an increase in stiffness. It's better to always be a little bit active. I even told him, after you drink your water mid morning, take a walk. After you drink water mid afternoon, take a walk. Unless you're already working in the garden or doing something else active, don't get caught sitting too long. SPEAKER A Isn't it scary, though, to think that prolonged sitting, the damage done by prolonged sitting can't be undone? SPEAKER C Right? SPEAKER A It just can't be undone. SPEAKER C Yeah. SPEAKER A So that's hugely important. SPEAKER C The other factor here is I told him not to eat too much food. When you overeat, it takes more energy to digest the food than the amount of energy you get out of the food. And it's much better to chew the food thoroughly. In fact, chewing the food thoroughly gets you more energy out of the food. I mean, look at it this way. Well, I'll give you an illustration. We had a dog that had a big appetite, and for some reason, we had a bunch of peanuts that we didn't want to eat ourselves. And so we fed him these peanuts whole. We thought he'll chew them. He didn't chew them. They went in. Guess what came out the other end? Some very unusual looking peanut stools. Did he get any nutrition out of those peanuts? No, none whatsoever. Same is true of your food. If you don't break it down into small enough little tiny particles that the digestive enzymes can get to all sides of it, you're not going to get any nutrition out of that food. SPEAKER A Makes sense. SPEAKER C That makes sense. And so he was supposed to chew his food very thoroughly. In fact, we said, Why don't you chew it 40 times per bite? Whoa. And the reason I picked 40 is because that is a very common number in research. One research article compared 15 times, which is actually quite a bit for most people, to 40 times. And the people who chewed 40 times had better hormone balance in their body, had better satiation hormone balance, like gruelin and leptin. They had better response from the colon, cholesterol and other hormones. And so there was big benefits from chewing the food thoroughly and getting more energy out of it. SPEAKER A I'm just smacking my hand. This is something I've been working on for a long time, and I'm going to try very hard to chew my food much better. SPEAKER C Habits are hard to change. SPEAKER A They are. And you wouldn't think a habit like that would be that hard. It is, but I promise you'll promise? I promise I'll do it. SPEAKER C We'll hold you to it. What's the punishment, if you don't know? But indeed, this gentleman, he decided he would do this. And so we gave him some tips on practicing habits and what to do. And so it's very important to chew your food and chew it thoroughly and take small bites. And there's been studies, or not studies, but people who've gone to concentration camp decided, I'm going to take advantage of this idea that chewing your food gets you more energy out of your food. And they sat there and chew their food till there was nothing left of it. It was all liquid. And they found out they could eat less than the other prisoners and still do well. And so this is a big factor. Well, chewing your food well. So then we had him drinking water mid afternoon. I recommended, as I previously said at the beginning, that he eat a very small supper. Now, as far as bathing, we talked about the morning bathing with a cool shower and a good skin rub. What I didn't mention is that in scrubbing, the skin good, you open up the pores. When you open up the pores, toxins can come out. And also the pores breathe, if you please. Your lungs are your big breathing organ, but your skin is also a breathing organ. And so if he can get his skin really pure and clean, then he'll exchange oxygen that way as well, too. SPEAKER A Well, that's fantastic. I mean, the skin is our largest organ, isn't it? SPEAKER C It sure is. That's right. And some of us have a larger organ than others, but that's beside the point. Anyway, the gentleman was then ready for his hydrotherapy. And one of the hydrotherapy I know. SPEAKER A What you're going to say. SPEAKER C What am I going to say? Cold showers. Definitely hot and cold showers. Because when you do a hot and cold shower, it gets your white count going, it gets your blood flowing, it gets your circulation going through your body quite efficiently. Anytime you have blood that stagnates somewhere, it'll tend to raise the temperature of your body. In fact, a fever is often stagnating blood somewhere. Doing a whole body hydrotherapy where you can get the blood flowing evenly everywhere will solve the fever problem often. And so this gentleman, he didn't necessarily have a fever, but we didn't want stagnated blood anywhere. And so the hot and cold showers were especially helpful for this. And so there's definitely a benefit to doing hot and cold showers for somebody that wants more energy. SPEAKER A Yes. It's not so challenging when the weather's warm. It's quite challenging in winter, but I know what you mean. SPEAKER C It is very good, and you get used to it. You get so you miss it. You get so oh, I would hate not to have it. SPEAKER A All right. Take your word on that. SPEAKER C Yeah. I've been ending all my showers for years with a cold shower. And that makes sure that your blood doesn't stagnate, that your pores close after the shower. SPEAKER A That's right. So it's very important to have just that cold finish so that the pores close again. That wouldn't be good to just finish with the hot shower. So even if people aren't brave enough to do a cold shower, if they just reduce that temperature and just got it down to something manageable, that would be a better thing to do than step out from a very hot shower. SPEAKER C The last thing I told him to do maybe it's the most important, but maybe not, but that is get involved in helping other people, in volunteering for community organizations or in service in a church or something. They've discovered that people who volunteer, who help others help a spouse, help a friend, help a neighbor live longer, they have a lot less diseases. On the other hand, people who just accept help had no change in mortality. They didn't live longer, didn't have business improvement. SPEAKER A Interesting. So it's not the person receiving that got that benefit, but the person who gave it's. SPEAKER C More blessed to give than to receive than to receive. That's right. SPEAKER A Beautiful. So all of these things were just. SPEAKER C Helping him to get more energetic and that he did get more energetic. Next time I saw him, his eyes were wider open, he's more perky. I thought, wow, you're doing well. And he was doing well. SPEAKER A Oh, that's wonderful. And I think we could all benefit from all that you've said for a whole host of reasons. Thank you, John. And if you'd like to watch our programs on demand, just go to our website, that's 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the Watch button. We hope we'll see you next time because we've got lots of good things coming. God bless you all. SPEAKER B You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.