Ever hear that you need to drink 8 cups of water a day (64oz)? Of course you have! Working in the alternative medicine field I run into this alot. People and practitioners alike think they should be drinking gallons of water a day. This is an age old myth that got obscured from some factual information. This blog isn’t the first post written to clear this information up, but I would like to see these facts more widespread.

I urge you to search the Internet about water intake and look at all the information available to you. You will get all kinds of information, but most of all you will be told you need to drink lots and lots of water.

In the 1950’s a famous nutritionist wrote an article about water intake to the body. This write-up was scientifically backed with tests and studies and was a wide spread breakthrough research report. This report stated that you need to take in 8 cups of water a day or 64oz. This statement is well used throughout the world and Internet. I see practitioners tell their patients to drink lots of water, people being told they don’t drink enough water, and even people walking around with jugs of water! Well, before I talk about what the rest of the report says, I would just like to analyse this statement of why this really doesn’t make sense.

Drinking 8 cups of water a day from a Chinese Medicine has a few problems right off the bat. First and foremost to say that Jane and Joe both needs to drink 64 ounces a day is absurd. If Joe is 6′3″ tall and 230 pounds why should his water consumption be the same as 5′4″ 120 pound Jane? This is contradictory to every holistic medicine as this is not holistic. Common practice seems to be during the patient intake and history, regardless of the ailment, ask them how much water they drink. A common response is “probably not enough” or “I could drink more”. Why would you accept this answer? This is based on a person thinking they need to drink, more than likely, way to much water. A common pet peeve of mine is even hearing a practitioner say “are you drinking enough water?”. WHY on earth would you say this to your patient? How are they supposed to know that?
Now lets examine some other possible problems with this statement. As far as Chinese Medicine is concerned we have issues of taking in a bunch of water and over working our kidneys. This will lead to weak knees, lower back pain, fatigue, coldness, and much more. Your kidneys do enough work without you asking them to constantly need to drain a bunch of water from you body all the time. Biomedically we face issues of losing electrolytes, causing edema, bursting red blood cells, and not being able to be away from a bathroom for more than 30 minutes.

By far the biggest spread of bad information is telling people they need to drink a bunch of water to lose weight. Are you joking? Are people supposed to pee the fat away? Lets examine this abomination of advice. If you have ever gone on a diet you can relate to the first week diet miracle. You start doing a little more exercise and start eating better you lose 10 pounds or so. Your so excited that you just keep going only to find out that you didn’t lose a single pound your second week. This is the power of water weight. When you took control of your exercise and diet you balanced your body water. I spoke about this and weight loss in a previous post here:
http://blogofherbs.com/recepies/diet-and-weight-loss-tips-tricks-and-help-part-1

Think about this logically for a second. A cup of water is 8 ounces of water, which is 8 ounces of weight. 2 cups of water or an entire 16oz water bottle is a POUND of weight. Want to gain a pound? Just drink 2 cups of water and get on the scale.

So what happened in this report? What part of the report didn’t get out with the rest of the information? The report said that we all need to take in about 64 ounces of water a day. And went on to say that this includes foods, soda, drinks, anything you put in your body. If you ate a bowl of soup you have taken in quite a bit of water. I don’t care what someone says, a can of soda contains water and counts as water intake. If you want to be specific you can 1/2 your carbonated water. a 12 oz can of soda has about 6oz of water in it. Your daily coffee or tea is part of this figure.

“Does the amount go in, come out in urine?”, I hope no one has ever asked you that. You should NOT urinate the same amount of water daily that you take in. Water is lost through your bowel, breathe and sweat as well. There isn’t scientific proof that drinking a gallon of water a day is good for you. This also stands true for Chinese Medicine.

“There isn’t scientific proof that drinking a gallon of water a day is good for you“

Is there a reason this myth perhaps got out of hand? I don’t know, look around and see how many people are making money off of water. Bottling Companies (incl. Coke and Pepsi), Water filtration systems, ionizing systems, and more. Not that I don’t drink purified water, but you wont see me walking around with the gallon jug!

Guess what people, your body tells you when your thirsty! Unless your out hiking in the sun, your thirst center is going to be pretty accurate.  Take this information and digest it. If your running 5 miles a day, you probably need more water than if you have and inactive life and an office job. Your size is going to come into play. I would also like to suggest that if you exchanged your sodas intake with water, you would be making a healthy change, so don’t get me wrong here. Every BODY is different, and that’s the point.

Im still searching for the original New York Times article, but found this on the way
http://style.uk.msn.com/fashionandbeauty/bebeautiful/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6775927

Share This

Let’s talk about home dieting. An easy and efficient way to help with weight loss and living healthy is to buy the right food. The good news here is that in many cases you can just modify the items you buy rather than buying something completely different. Some of this information may not be completely new to you, but I hope to get some awareness out there.

Fiber- This is the key to dieting and let me tell you why.
Fiber content is mostly indigestible fully in the body because we don’t contain the enzymes to do so. What Fiber does is compact our food and moisture and clear out our intestines on the way down. The regularity that Fiber gives to the bowel movement has many benefits. First, I would like to define regular- I mean have a bowel movement AT LEAST 1 time daily. What doctors consider normal is the national average, that’s why blood pressure normality seems to raise every couple years. So if you were told that going every 3 days is okay, its not. Regular bowel movements keep your intestinal muscles healthy, toxins out of your body; regulate proper water weight, and nutrition absorption (all of these can also help with your complexion).

Secondly Fiber just so happens to be in foods that are all good for you! Fiber is found in Whole Wheat, Brown Rice, Seeds, Whole Grains, etc… When you are eating ‘Whole’ foods you get the benefit of the Fiber and many B-Vitamins (energy), protein, and iron.

Fiber and ‘whole’ foods are denser. You just can’t simply eat as much as you would. This helps you on your goal of losing weight as one of the things you need to do is learn portion control. Fiber is a great snack before meals as well. A slice of whole wheat bread in your system some time before meals will greatly reduce your appetite. The whole wheat portion is a natural part of food. It is processed off of the grain when you it is purchased in a non-whole wheat fashion. When you take in the whole grain your body must use more energy (work off calories) to break off this ‘capsule’ of the wheat.

Lets recap-

Healthy intake

Less appetite

Bowel regulation

Here’s a secret of diet pills- help regulate appetite, regulate bowels, and make you lose water weight. Sound familiar?

Now I would like to talk about what I think as the greatest of all fiber foods- Flax Seed. Flax Seed, like many other seeds, are an excellent source of oils along with protein and iron and such. The oils of nuts and seeds are quite healthy and Flax Seed is not only no exception but the king of all oils. Flax Seed is high in Omega 3 fatty acids; an essential fatty acid that our body cannot produce on its own it must be outsourced. Flax Seed has a high content of fiber and it’s a ‘moist laxative’. Flax seed needs to be ground up prior to use for full effect, but I like to buy it pre ground from say Uncle Bob’s. What is the usage you say? It can be used at every meal if you wanted to, but specifically- Sprinkle on your cereal, cook in with hot cereal, goes great on peanut butter sandwiches, add to soups, add to crock pot meals, add to chili, wok it in to meals early when you are sautéing just to name a few. Flax Seed has a very subtle taste and usually won’t be tasted. Its taste is sorta nutty when you can taste it so it’s especially great with anything that would have peanut butter or where that taste would compliment the dish.

Here’s a little sample shopping list to give you some ideas:

Flax Seed

Multi Grain Hot Cereal

Whole Wheat Bread (Double fiber or Whole Grain)

Whole Grain Pastas

Whole Wheat crackers

Fiber One Cereal

Whole Wheat Waffles (Eggo’s Cinnamon Whole Grain Waffles are great!)

Brown Rice

Buy Wheat Flower and use instead of White

There are many whole wheat pasta sides available

Eat the fruit, not the fruit juice

Buy fresh vegetables

Have side salads at as many meals as possible (easy and light dressings!!)

When you’re out getting a salad load up on the green vegetables

Whole Wheat tortilla chips

And much more!

Keep an open mind about it and look for a whole wheat alternative to what you normally buy.

Share This

Welcome to the first of my 3 part series on Dieting and Weight. This topic is on dieting in itself. The next part will include an actual diet along with grocery help. The last part will help you out with easy exercises that are targeted at losing fat. Enjoy!

There seems to be a phenomenon that dieting must be followed by some type of celebrity or ‘scientific breakthrough’. I’m here to tell you this simply isn’t true. The same fundamentals that existed for healthy weight is still true today. You need a healthy diet combined with daily activity that increases your heart rate (exercise). Diet pills that circulate around have a bottle full of promises, but they all say ‘combined with diet and exercise’. Why do we try to dance around this subject and not do anything properly? Even if you could start slimming down by simply popping a pill would it be worth it? This is highly doubted and let me tell you why. Weight gain is simply a by product of bad diet and/or overeating. You still have health risks of taking in unhealthy food. Secondly, about every ‘diet pill’ has either come under scrutiny, been sued, or killed a handful of people.

Thankfully many recent diet fads are at least ‘diet programs’ or ‘diet plans’. The diet simply consists of sending you healthy meals that just need to be heated up to eat. The thought here is that it’s so convenient you will eat the meals and combined with some exercise can lose weight. Pills are frankly mostly psychological in nature in that you feel like its going to help and hopefully you continue to diet. Diet pills have continually changed what they put in them, usually because it kills someone, but usually consists of ways to speed metabolism and help curb hunger. There are frankly too many diet pills to look at, but a good way to gauge a good diet pills is take a look at Dimmak LITE - weight loss pills from www.DimmakHerbs.com . This is an all natural herbal diet assistant that helps maintain and speed up your metabolism, curb appetite, and help you maintain a regular bowel movement. Lastly the pills help with body water maintenance.

Many people are familiar with water weight lose, whether they know it or not, as when people start a diet they lose 5-10 lbs in the first week. In subsequent weeks they can lose very little to nothing at all. This is when the diet crash comes in to play. People now believe they aren’t losing enough weight, the diet isn’t working, or they are doing something wrong. Water weight is an ever changing thing in your body in very small amounts. When you become active and eat good food, a 180 from previous, you end up shedding a lot of water the first week. It is now possible for you to have a slight over lose and your body brings water back in. You may now be exercising so your water intake and expel have increased.

‘Bottom line is a diet take some time. You can’t expect drastic changes in the first few weeks. You lose and gain water; you lose and gain pounds’

The best way to take error out of watching weight lose is to weigh yourself at the same time everyday, preferably in the morning first thing. Water weighs a lot! If you don’t believe me then weigh yourself before and after you pee. It can be ½ to an entire pound of weight!

When people begin to diet they also believe that they should be drinking some ridiculous amount of water. This is simply not true and is quite unhealthy for you. Men should be taking in about 10-12 cups of water and women 8-10. This includes food, drinks, and everything else with water in it! Make sure to gauge this out by how intense your exercising routine is. Overdrinking water will cause sodium and electrolyte balances in your body causing cramping and intense shooting of pain. This also over-works your kidneys which is the root of your energy.

On top of all of this I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Losing more than 2-4 lbs a week is quite unhealthy for you. You will not only be losing weight in an unhealthy way, but you will also be losing weight faster than normal skin adaptation. Bottom line if you aren’t losing weight properly you are going to have a handful of excess skin to deal with in the end.

For real diet success I would recommend contacting a nutritionist, person trainer, or dietician. I have helped many people lose weight and when it’s done right its semi-permanent. You can eat out when you want, grab some fast food here and there. This is because your diet staple has become healthy; a treat every now and then has little effect on you!

Share This

Lets get to the next weed with some powerful effects. This is part 2 of this blog post Health, Fist Aid, and Detox Weeds Part I. This is also an extension of the article on weeds found here- 3 Weeds You Should Cultivate.

I want to talk about Chickweed today. A nice thing about these herbs I am talking about is they are really weeds. Chickweed even grows quite abundantly here in the desert of Las Vegas, Nevada. In fact chickweed can be found abundantly growing across the mountains and is recognized as an abundant vegetation here in Nevada. I would also like to point out that usually when herbs are discussed they must be dried properly to work. This is not the case for chickweed, the herb can effectively be used fresh as it can dried.

The first great property of chickweed is its anti-histamine ability. However, you do not want to apply too much OTC anti-histamine to your body as it can have lasting negative effects. This is not the case with chickweed, and it can be used as often as you like. I think you will find you will not need to much of it to be effective. The great properties of chickweed come from the Saponins that are found in it.
For most of chickweed’s uses an oil of chickweed is best and is more all-purpose. Here is how you make a small portion:
Grind up some chickweed
place it in a jar that has a lid
cover with olive oil
keep in a warm spot and shake twice daily
strain oil from herb and discard the herb
In large portions combine 4 ounces of herb to 1 pint oil.
This oil works wonders on rashes, itching, bites, stings, eczema, psoriasis, hives, seborea, and also on hemorrhoids.
Chickweed also has healing and drawing properties. So this oil is okay on open wounds and works great. Apply directly on sores, boils, ulcers, skin eruptions, cuts, bruises, wounds and abscesses. This helps your wound heal by itself and allows a soothing effect to be placed on the area so you wont feel the need to mess with it.
By pressing the herb to get a juice from it makes for a miracle treatment for dandruff and scalp problems. But Sean you don’t have dandruff. Exactly
Lastly you can just straight eat chickweed in a great abundance. It has a few vitamins and minerals in it and tastes pretty good. Chickweed taken as food can help with sore throats, lung mucous, and soothe an upset stomach. Chickweed also has an expanding effect on the stomach while it also has a mild diuretic and laxative effect on the body. This makes it great to help in losing weight! Internally chickweed can be taken when inflammation is present to help reduce inflammation from the inside. An outside and inside approach is always more desirable.

Share This