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I shall try to summarise this brilliant scientific treatise on how to activate the inherent superior healing powers we all have, but which have been overshadowed by our reliance on modern medicine. I hope this short article will be a simple DIY guide to anyone wanting to either improve their general health or to improve their chances of defeating any known disease. 

I trained as an osteopath and joined a therapy team that established the first holistic natural health clinic in Kent in 1981. Since then I have tried to promote natural healthcare and to encourage my patients to take more responsibility for their own health.

It is incredible that we have become do so reliant on modern medicine to the neglect of our inherited natural immunity to disease and the body’s inherent ability to fix itself, from the minor scratch to “untreatable diseases”.

So here are the key lifestyle changes you need to make. They all seem incredibly simple but may be very challenging for most of us.

We Are What We Eat

The stories of spontaneous healing and recovery from what are regarded as incurable diseases has been the research work of Dr Rediger for over fifteen years. In his book he has tried to identify the common elements in all these stories that could have accounted for the amazing outcomes. 

One of the most important factors has been the change in a patient’s eating habits. One could discuss this topic at great length and still not cover all the ground or encapsulate much of the essence of this powerful medicine in a simple one-line recommendation, “shift your diet to a high nutrient density diet, that means a diet based on whole plant foods, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, pulses, nuts and seeds with small amounts of other foods”. 

When you realise that most people in our advanced industrialised countries eat a diet of processed, fast food that lays the foundation for most of our chronic diseases, this simple advice makes good sense. Surely no one would fuel their car with low grade fuel mixed with substances that could gum up the engine and cause serious long-term problems? Why should we not ensure that the “fuel” we put in our mouths is of the highest octane, the highest nutritional value? 

Dr Fuhrman created the aggregate nutrient density index, or ANDI. The ANDI ranks many common foods based on how many nutrients they deliver to your body for each calorie consumed. It also helps you visualise how nutrient dense green vegetables are and how foods compare with one another. 

Foods are rated on a scale of 1-1000. He has given us a simple formula to guide our choice of food H=N/C, where “H” is health, “N” is the total nutrient content and “C “is the calorie content, with a scale from I to 1000. For instance, kale and watercress score 1000, peppers and cabbage 400, beans and oats 50, but olive oil and corn oil only score 2!  Please click here for a fuller list

Your Body Care

We service and check our cars every year at least. You wouldn’t dream of driving around with any major structural problem with your wheel tracking or your brake efficiency, though when did you last have your body structure and physical function checked and fixed? 

We are made for movement, so ensure you get adequate physical exercise, maybe just stretching and walking or whatever you enjoy doing. If your “chassis alignment” is out, you can always check this by lying down and looking at your feet! If your pelvis is twisted and not level, you will see your right foot rolling out more than your left! (The DIY structure test!) 

My advice would be to see a structural therapist, then keep your pelvis in order with my daily thirty-second exercise. Listen to this on my free podcast to learn how: The Pisa Pelvic Exercise

A Contented Mind

Maintain a positive mental outlook, with a sense of gratitude and hope. 

Dr Rediger refers to “Love Medicine” as a way to increase the calming effect of the vagus nerve system. It is the vagus nerve that pours out anti-stress hormones and is stimulated with all love connections with friends and family, as well as deep breathing when fully relaxed. 

Recent research suggests we have three “brains” – the head brain, heart brain and gut brain. The vagus connects all three. Every friendly human contact, however seemingly insignificant, stimulates the vagus nerve and its powerful healing impact.

Meditation

“It is better to believe than to disbelieve; in so doing you bring everything to the realm of possibility” Albert Einstein 

The medical profession is so careful not to give “false hope” to patients that it often destroys hope entirely. The truth is no one is wise enough to know our future, not even the highest qualified professional doctor who relies on statistics to guide his advice and therapy. 

My university training was originally in Economics and Statistics, and what I learnt was that individual people are not statistics! There are millions of “outliers”; the ones who defy the statistics! 

Mainstream medicine often dismisses the “placebo effect” when their patients start to get better without good medical reason, but Dr Rediger’s research made him aware that there are powerful healing resources in the mind and heart that medicine was leaving untapped. 

I have seen the adverse impact of the “nocebo effect” on a patient and friend who had breast cancer, and had an oncologist who could not support her whenever she began to feel better in herself. 

So, beware of the hope-destroying, gloomy prognostications from anyone. They do not help your health and survival.

Make time for short sessions of quiet mindfulness with calming breathing exercises. My experience teaching the Buteyko Method – a breath training system developed by a great Ukrainian doctor, Professor Konstantin Buteyko – to hundreds of patients is that most of us breathe badly. We have a habit of over-breathing or hyperventilating. 

Stress increases this problem and even though breathing is a totally automatic, unconscious activity, we can re-educate ourselves to return to normal healthy breathing with a little effort and perseverance. I have produced a free DIY podcast that provides the full training course. Visit: Better Breathing Means Better Health

Community & Environment

Work on building close community friendships and caring family contacts. All the evidence suggests we all need support from fellow humans for a healthy life. 

We are now discovering the severe long-term damage to the nation’s health that “lockdown” produced, especially among the elderly and children. Only history will show whether the enforced isolation was a net health benefit or not.

We not only ingest food, but we also ingest our environment, physically as air pollution, water pollution and industrial toxins, but also psychologically from noise, fear of our safety, our workplace stresses, and the constant feed from the media of disasters or crimes. Try to protect yourself from these stressors in any way you can. 

The above is only a snapshot of the full content of Dr Rediger’s book. If we all tried to make a few minor changes in our lifestyle as outlined here, there can be only one outcome:  a healthier, happier, and longer life!

Words: Michael Lingard BSc. DO

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If we look at America as a preview of where the UK follows a few years on, longevity has been achieved with ever increasing medical support, so that now the American people are the sickest people among the industrialised nations despite, or perhaps because of, their highest national expenditure on medicine.

We should be making major, urgent changes to the way that our healthcare system works to avoid going the same way, and to take pressure off our NHS.

Most of us have a choice between a long, active, and healthy life or a long increasingly unhealthy life, progressively becoming more and more inactive and disabled through chronic illnesses.

Our life response-ability

The key question is “are we brighter than an amoeba?” Every living creature, from a single cell amoeba to an elephant, has the ability to respond to its environment. Shine a strong light on an amoeba and it will move away for its survival. As food or water supply become scarce the elephant will move on to find a better environment in which to survive. We humans also have the ability to respond to anything that is a threat to life, or in other words we all have response-ability for our lives.

Unfortunately, most of us are no longer living responsibly. We no longer feel responsible for our own health and longevity. Many of us have handed over this responsibility to others, such as a doctor who will “fix” us with “a pill for every ill”, the food industry that seeks to maximise profits with highly processed food that is designed to tempt us to buy rather than provide the best nutrition, or the government in charge of our health and safety, rather like an all-wise nanny, so we are relieved of our own response-ability for decision making!

Big pharma, big food & big media

So, we see in the USA, long healthy, active lives have been degraded into long chronically sick, highly medicated, and poorly nourished lives. This has been driven by “big pharma”, “big food “and “big media” industries all trying to maximise their income and profits at the expense of the nation’s health.

If we, in the UK, are to avoid going the same way, we must get back into the primitive survival habit of taking more responsibility for our own lives and the lives of our children. What does this mean? Using our common sense and the best independent advice and information not driven by profit but by the best science.

Optimal Health

At the simplest level this means:

• Eating for optimal nutrition as well as for enjoyment.
• Avoiding over-processed denatured attractively promoted foods that are filled with additives, preservatives, sweeteners etc.
• Getting more simple exercise; we are designed for walking rather than driving!
• Taking time out to relax mentally and minimise stress. This includes learning to breathe normally as over seventy five percent of us over-breathe due to stress, diet or just a bad habit.
• Drinking adequate water, roughly the same number of fluid ounces as your weight in kilos. That’s about five to ten glasses a day for average weight person; few people drink this amount.
• Being cautious with medications, do you really need all those over-the-counter pills and potions? Check with your doctor if there is anyway you could reduce the need for your prescribed medication. With lifestyle changes, they will generally be delighted to hear you want to take more responsibility for your health!

Please see image below, which demonstrates either a rapid decline with chronic conditions as we age due to an unhealthy lifestyle, or a slower decline as a result of a healthier lifestyle. Both lifestyles may achieve 80 – 100 years of age, though not necessarily with the same quality of life or vitality!

Michael Lingard BSc. DO. Cert.Nut.

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When did your doctor last check your body structure in alignment?

Any structural problem will adversely affect your body functioning to some degree! This is part of the Real Health Assessment.

When did your doctor last check your diet and eating habits?

Our diet is a major factor in health or disease – most chronic diseases are diet related! This is part of the Real Health Assessment.

When did your doctor last check your breathing efficiency?

Very few of us breathe normally for optimal health. Poor quality breathing is a prime factor in over a hundred health problems! This is part of the Real Health Assessment.

When did your doctor last check your stress levels?

Stress is known to be a major factor that impairs good health, weakens our immune system and affects all body functions! This is part of the Real Health Assessment.

Your health is connected to everything – from your diet, your breathing, your body condition, your mind, and even the cosmos!

The Real Health Assessment

We can check all this in the “Real Health Assessment” so you will get the key factors you have control over checked and be given my book “Connection – towards a broader understanding of health in medicine” to guide you on some of the other factors you have less control over.

The consultation will take about ninety minutes and you will usually receive your report the following day.

SEE BELOW FOR A SAMPLE REPORT

The Real Health Assessment – TotalHealthMatters! Hawkhurst Kent TN18 5DA

Name: XXXX

Date: 28/10/2022

The Body Connection

Very briefly, your body general mechanics and structure show a significant torsion on the pelvis of half an inch, associated right side-bending in the lumber and cervical areas with consequent neck pain and restrictions. Recommendation: See an osteopath to correct these problems to establish a level pelvis and maintain this level pelvis with the “Pisa Pelvic Exercise” as described in my podcast: https://yourhealthinyourhands.simplecast.com/episodes/the-pisa-pelvic-exercise

Your Weight: 123.8 lb. is well within the normal BMI (21.3) For your Height:163cm.

Your Body Fat 30.8% is well within the normal range 24-36% Your Visceral Fat 6 likewise is within the normal range of 1-9.

The Food Connection

Your 4LeafSurvey score of +14 indicates You are in the Two Leaf Group and between 40 to 60% of your calories are derived from whole plant food. Associated health risks from your diet are average. You are among the top 6% with this quality diet. Listen to my podcast “The World’s Finest Diet” here: https://the-worlds-finest-diet.simplecast.com/episodes/

Your Diet ID quality diet was 8. General dietary changes would include: increase vegetables content of your diet, reduce dairy foods and eggs to lower cholesterol intake, add more pulses and whole grains. The Diet ID site will offer you more information as to how you can improve your diet.

The Breath Connection

Your Nijmegen Score was 8, indicating no significant hyperventilation.
Your Buteyko Control Pause was 45 indicating excellent breathing quality.

Haemoglobin oxygen saturation was 99% and Pulse rate 69, both healthy measures.

You may like to read the literature I gave you on Better Breathing to keep this monitored.

The Mind Connection

Your Initial LCT score was 2 indicating minimal stress and your second LCT score was 0 indicating the possible lowering of your stress in the future.

We discussed some of the other indications that your choice of colours might mean. As this is a very simplified LCT do not place great reliance on these findings.

General Comments

From your medical history you have had high blood pressure and panic attacks in the past. Both these conditions can be controlled to a large extent with diet and improved breathing. The shift towards a Whole Plant Diet is the most well researched dietary impact on heart and circulatory problems, and any significant hyperventilation is a common cause of panic attacks or anxiety states due to hypoxia.

You already have taken the most important improvement in your diet by eliminating meat. Check out https://nutritionfacts.org/ for the latest research on diet and osteoarthritis. As I mentioned hydration is often a problem with many people, check out my podcast: “Water- The Foundation of Health & Life” here: https://yourhealthinyourhands.simplecast.com/episodes/water-the-foundation-of-health-life

Michael Lingard BSc. DO. Cert.Nut. Tel: 01580 752 852

Book your Real Health Assessment

The fee for this Real Health Assessment is £95.

To book your Real Health Assessment please send an email to lingard [@] totalhealthmatters.co.uk or phone 01580 752 852

Words: Michael Lingard BSc. DO. Cert.Nut.

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