Time for a Heart to Heart Chat about

Your Potential for Health

by Michelle M Pearson

February is our Heart-to-Heart month! This month is a time to make special purposeful expressions of your love and thankfulness to others. So, as we celebrate these matters of the heart, our hearts turn to your heart and the things that will help keep it healthy so you can enjoy life longer and stronger! 

If you haven’t read the previous several articles, I encourage you to go back and read them, catch up, be inspired, and then read on here for the rest of the month.

Today, our heart to heart chat addresses the environment of your body, or as we call it… Your Potential for Health, emotionally and physically. Uniquely and intricately connected, the health of your physical heart is directly affected by the health of your emotional heart.The health of both greatly affect and respond to the condition of your body's internal chemistry.

In our nearly 40 years of working with patients and their health, we have found that monitoring your pH is a great way to keep yourself honest about how well you are taking care of your health, including your heart, and how your choices are truly impacting your longevity.

When pH – a reading of the acidity or alkalinity of your body fluids – becomes out of the desired range…

Toxins attack the body causing disease, aging, water and weight retention.

Microbes in the blood can change shape, mutate, and become pathogens.

Enzymes that are constructive can become destructive. Excess proteins and fat remain in the blood undigested.

Oxygen delivery to the cells suffers.

Antioxidant activity is reduced.

Organs of the body can become compromised, like your brain or heart. Function becomes diminished and deterioration is accelerated.

Mineral assimilation can be impaired or blocked. Magnesium is lost, calcium builds up in the blood and cannot get into the bones; other nutrients cannot be absorbed. Hormones become unstable and weakened in potency.

Let's look now at each of those things, expound on them a bit. Here to do that for us is Dr. Ray Pearson, teaching in an excerpt from our "40 Days to Freedom^(TM)" Series:

Believe. Choose. Activate. Achieve. (Repeat.)

Know someone who is struggling with some heart problems?

Of course you do! Please share this with them.

Dr. Ray Pearson is a licensed Chiropractic Physician and a Pharmacist, with over 40 years in healthcare.  Dr. Ray has post-graduate training and certification in numerous advanced wellness therapies and Chiropractic techniques.

Dr. Pearson and wife, Michelle, have more than 1000 hours of continuing education in advanced nutrition and wellness topics. Both are dynamic wellness coaches, speakers, authors and founders of http://thepictureofhealth.com. Together, their mission is to educate, activate, challenge and equip others to live a full, satisfying life through the use of state-of-the-art educational resources to produce significant and lasting health breakthroughs.

Picture of Health Inc

1212 Eugene St

Harrison AR 72601

(870) 204-6960

Did you learn anything?

Please take a second to leave us your comments and questions below!

Time for a Heart to Heart Chat about

Your Breakfast

by Michelle M Pearson

Continuing all month in February is our Heart-to-Heart celebration of the things that make your heart stronger and healthier. That gives us another great opportunity to have a heart-to-heart chat about… your breakfast!

Let's face it… most people skip breakfast, eat on the run, or grab a quick unhealthy choice to start their day!

We felt if more folks had a doable quick healthy alternative, they would make the change to increase their health. So today, we will look at what makes for a healthy start to your day and a healthy deposit for your longevity! Here are a few of the most important things that provide for a heart healthy breakfast:

• Essential Fatty Acids – to build-up the tissues, cell structure, and total health of the vascular system. These are delivered in a strategically specific vehicle of sulfur-rich protein that ensures entry into the body's cell structures. No other delivery system is as successful in getting these EFA's into active assimilation, providing as much as a 95% increase in bio-availability (usability) of these EFA's! 
• Fiber – especially important in the morning to cleanse the entire GI Tract, acting like an internal broom to clean out the waste and toxins discarded through the night's healing and maintenance cycles.
• Anti-oxidants – to assist the body in repairing and renewing, youthful anti-aging properties to promote health and healing in the heart and other organs.
• Carbohydrates – high-quality and low-glycemic sources provide glucose and short-term energy to get you up and running in the morning… instead of stimulants!
• Protein – a long-term source of energy that will carry you through the morning hours without lag or dips in energy and blood sugar. Balances the glycemic index of the breakfast.
• Greens – lots of green leafy and cruciferous vegetables to alkalize the body and oxygenate the cells (Just what you wanted for breakfast, right? Hold on, in the recipe below, you'll never notice we sneaked them in!)
  

Sound like a lot to eat for breakfast? We have made it super-easy and quick – you can even take it with you! This recipe gives you complete nutrition to start your valuable day of enjoying life and serving others!

Here's the how to for:

The Picture of Health Longevity Smoothie

4 ounces cottage cheese or quark
4 T flax oil

Combine these two first before any other additions, then add to the blender.

* Very important to do first, apart from other steps – this step is what makes the flax available for the body's use. Do not skip, change, or substitute ingredients of this step. (To consume flax oil with out mixing in quark or cottage cheese reduces it's availability to the body to 5% at best! In other words, you are wasting your money and efforts to consume it otherwise.)

Next:

6-8 ounces real fruit and/or veggie juice, or almond milk - NO soy –

   Note: if you use almond milk, remember it is thicker than juice, so use more of it or less of the fruit.

1/2 cup blueberries
1/2 cup strawberries, raspberries, cherries, or other berries or fruit
1 scoop greens – use a handful of fresh greens or Barlean's Greens

*Make to taste; if not sweet enough for your taste, you may add up to 1T honey or agave nectar. Not more than 1T and you may find that you don't need it at all. Depends on the type of fruit, the sweetness of that batch of fruit, and the type of juice. When I use frozen banana instead of 1/2 cup of my fruit, it is sweeter than just berries. So that all makes the taste change. If you use fresh fruit, add a handful if ice to chill it down well.

The above recipe is the basic smoothie. For variety, you can try these options instead of adding the fruits above:

1-2 T of Almond Butter

1/2 cup Oats

1T Wheat Germ

1/2 frozen banana

Optional: 3T melted Coconut Oil – added slowly through the top while blender is whirling.

Choose either the fruit or the Almond Butter option, combine ingredients in blender, pulse to combine, then blend on high until smooth.

Makes a large serving for one. Enjoy and eat it all.

That's SUPER FO  OD for heart-healthy Picture of Health Champions!

Know someone who skips breakfast?

Please click the easy share links

and share this with them.

Believe. Choose. Activate. Achieve. (Repeat.)

Dr. Ray Pearson is a licensed Chiropractic Physician and a Pharmacist, with over 40 years in healthcare.  Dr. Ray has post-graduate training and certification in numerous advanced wellness therapies and Chiropractic techniques.

Michelle Pearson is a dynamic wellness coach, speaker, author, and the Founder & President of Picture of Health Inc. (http://thepictureofhealth.com). On a personal health journey for the past 17 years, Michelle’s mission is to educate, activate, challenge and equip others to live a full, satisfying life through the use of state-of-the-art educational resources to produce significant and lasting health breakthroughs.

Dr. Pearson and wife, Michelle, have more than 1000 hours of continuing education in advanced nutrition and wellness topics. Click here for a short video: The Right Coaches Matter! Because the right connections do make all the difference!

Picture of Health Inc

1212 Eugene St

Harrison AR 72601

(870) 204-6960

Were you a breakfast skipper?

Leave me your comments and questions below!

Time for a Heart to Heart Chat about

Your First Love

by Michelle M Pearson

In our last article, we talked about the healthy properties of dark chocolate! Sweet! Today, you'll need to put your teeth back in, because this article is a full portion of meat! (grin)

February is our Heart-to-Heart month. That makes it a perfect time to have a heart-to-heart chat about… your first love.

Most of you are already thinking back to the person you first fell romantically in love with or perhaps that first "crush". But actually, our chat today is about your FIRST LOVE, that which you place first in your life, that which you love most above all else.

This topic became a powerful teaching lesson in our live webinar last week as we shared one of the final training sessions with a group going through our 40 Day Boot Camp, so much so I had to share at least a little piece with you and our entire mailing list.

The first question at hand was, "How does one stay on track after training is over?" The answer to that is HEART change and MIND renewal. You see, if you are merely going through the steps and following things legalistically, two things are inevitable: you will fail and you will turn back to your old habits, which are really your retained preferences. This is the very reason why so many have failed at previous attempts to get healthy, stay on course, overcome adversity, have good relationships, or even just to weather the storms of life with any measure of stability.

Our heart-to-heart today penetrates the issue behind why so many celebrities are seen so often in the news with one catastrophe after another, like the recent tragic death of Whitney Houston, at only 48 years old, my own age, with a life SO FULL OF PROMISE. Celebrities are really no different from the rest of us in that they all have promise, all have a purpose, all have a God-given destiny. They are perhaps more in the spotlight, yes, but nonetheless, God is no respecter of persons; we all have access to the ability to succeed and exceed our greatest imaginations of a glorious life, Spirit, Soul, and Body.

So why do so few actually attain that measure of fullness, of complete joy, health, wealth, loving and lasting relationships… truly satisfying life? Why do so many fall short? Why do beautiful people like Ms. Houston with such extraordinary gifts fail to lay hold of lasting peace and true success? How can a life so beautiful end so tragically?

Why do so many people KNOW they should get healthier or disease will take them out way too early – yet never make a change? Why do folks who already have disease ravaging their bodies not have the fortitude to make some simple changes or even difficult ones to save their, our, lives? Why when faced with cancer do people not change? Why when diagnosed with diabetes do folks keep guzzling soda and sweets?

On the other side of the same coin, why do folks who have been runners for years have heart attacks? Can we not see that diet and cardio-exercise in and of itself is NOT the answer to the prevention of heart disease? Why do people with anorexia continue to starve themselves unto death? And why will no one else intervene, no one say a word to them about Truth?

Lack of knowledge? Are you kidding? In this technology rich open-access knowledge explosion of this age? NOT. Get over it. WE KNOW. Do not even whine to me about that or think for a second that it is compassionate to excuse wrong behavior "because they didn't know".  Face it, people, we do that to make ourselves feel better. That would be to say God withheld information. Read the Word of God if you want to argue that point with me. Cover to cover it says…

The people rejected knowledge. Defiantly and definitely.

(So, O.K. You can be offended right now, or self-righteous, or feign to be hurt, OR… you can listen, learn, and LIVE! What is your real desire? It is to live the outrageously good life! So let's come up higher today!)

Why in the face of death does this human race reject life-saving knowledge, life-transforming truth? Why do that?? The answer to "why" is the root. It is the single answer that resolves all of the above grief and sorrows and puzzlements.

The cause of disease and destruction is not basically our genetics and not simply disobedience to natural laws that govern fitness. They play a part of the equation, but a comparatively small part. Therefore the complete, long-term answer is not found in our following programs, prescriptions, instructions, rules, and regulations. Look around at the trillion-dollar "health", diet, and beauty industry. Wait now. Just because the money is there isn't the measuring stick. Take another look…

What does that look like? With more available than ever before in history to "help" us get healthy and happy, we see a 60% fatter populous worldwide over the past 40 years; ginormous increases in autism, Alzheimer's, mental illness, bowel disease, fibromyalgia, suicide, heart disease, drug use – both illegal and prescription abuse, etc.

Accept this: the former mentality and socially-acceptable approach is NOT working, it is perpetuating a law-based sickness bondage industry. Including the flip-side of the coin, the so-called alternative or natural health industry. Bondage is bondage, friends.

And, the solution to that bondage is NOT strict adherence to a new diet and exercise regime. Shocking as this may be, it is also not found in "religiously" attending church. Neither act will produce what you are looking for.

PLEASE, don't take my words apart from my spirit. Yes, a decision and obedience is a step in the right direction. You do need to make healthy choices. And, by design, we all require communion and fellowship with our local church body in order to grow and serve. But there MUST be something else that occurs.

A decision is not a conversion. A alteration of behavior is not a transformation. And transformation inside is the only thing that will change both inside and outside. 

I have not digressed. I am still chatting with you about the health of your heart. And your heart health. You are what you have become. But you are not what you have to be. Spirit, Soul, or Body.

What is it that will produce life changing life-saving results in any and every area of life?

WHAT YOU LOVE MOST. That's right. The topic for the month. Now, please don't tune out like you know this already. Too many think they already know this and you do not. It is the root to any problem anyone on the planet has.

Listen. Here it is. YOUR FIRST LOVE, what it is that you love most WILL always dictate your choices in life and in death.

YOUR FIRST LOVE chooses what you feel, then think, then say and do. Every time.

Your first love, what you love most, selects your food, your drink, your schedule, leads you in your finances, in every things you choose thousands of times every day. Your first love is the core of your heart and it rules every thought, every action, every plan, every ideal you choose to believe and receive.Your first love reaches out and bites you and others in the bottom when you forget to keep it hidden. (Ouch.)

Your first step in laying permanent hold of your very best life in all areas, Spirit, Soul, and Body, in fitness, faith, family, friends, finances, fun, is this…

The Lord God must be your first love. The Father, The Word, and The Spirit of Truth. Seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness – right standing and right ways – as a product of GRACE, empowerment to do through Love!

Friends, that is the master key to all prosperity – including the health of your heart and your heart.

When God's love truly is your first love, in first place, then that love will be your motivator! The evidence of that is freedom, not bondage. It is the power of Grace, not law. Law kills and brings condemnation. Grace frees and brings transformation.

For example, in the practical application: do you eat food FROM Love (who fills your mouth with good things to renew your strength) OR for the love of it?

And your schedule, is it from Love or in search of it? If you are driven, even by passion, it is not God who is Love. Love invites, pressure drives. A driving spirit is a limiting spirit. Grace is empowerment in the limitless realm of God's Glory.

Love puts no pressure on people. Not even on ourselves. Sweethearts, if you put pressure on yourself or others to perform, you love you more than Love Himself. Make a heart change.

Why does this fine distinction matter? Because Grace empowers obedience through love. Grace is the power that contains all your supply of every good and perfect thing.

In contrast, performance brings pressure and obeys to access grace to merit love, if it could. It cannot.

The bottom line is that your motivation comes FROM your first love to produce the desire that produces results. Judge your fruit to see the root of what it is that you truly love most.

Want better results… examine what it is that you love most. Return to your first love… He is The One who first loved you. Obedience and healthy lasting results will never again be a problem.

So, that's our powerful heart-to-heart today. We pray you are receiving it in the abounding love it is delivered in. In can save and revolutionize your entire life! If you see that you have placed anyone or anything above your first love, Christ, or if you have never known the love of Jesus, we want to bring the light of that love to your life, either for the first time or again. It is as easy as making a heart change and as immediate as the moment you choose to return you heart to Him.

We are here to serve you in that same love. Join us as we bring real help, real hope, and real answers. We meet monthly for The Joshua Groups coaching and twice weekly for new blog articles. And please stay tuned for more in the series, "Heart-to-Heart for Your Health" all month long – every Monday and Thursday morning!  

(For more teaching on individual topics, please go to our Products and Resources Page and get the downloads. There are more than thirty hours of teachings available for your benefit!)

Believe. Choose. ACTIVATE. Achieve. (Repeat.)

Michelle Pearson is a dynamic wellness coach, speaker, author, and the Founder & President of Picture of Health Inc. (http://thepictureofhealth.com). On a personal health journey for the past 17 years, Michelle’s mission is to educate, activate, challenge and equip others to live a full, satisfying life through the use of state-of-the-art educational resources to produce significant and lasting health breakthroughs.

Learn Anything? Please tell me below what you learned or discovered from this article today…

Time for a Heart to Heart Chat about

Your Chocolate!

by Michelle M Pearson

February is our Heart-to-Heart month. That makes it a perfect time to learn something new that improves the condition of your heart! 

So, this heart-to-heart is about your chocolate!

I know that most folks are thinking "Uh-oh! She's about to toss out my chocolate!" But no! Here's the good news:

Recent medical studies provide substantial evidence that chocolate actually turns out to have profoundly important heart-healthy powers! Really!

That's right! Just in time for your gifts to loved ones for the Love holiday next week! HINT HINT. We are pleased to report that ever-increasing medical evidence does suggest that chocolate contains a whole wide range of healthy attributes, including mood-enhancing phyto-chemicals! (Yes, phyto-chemicals! After all, chocolate does come from a plant! But, no, it still does not count as a veggie.)

Here's a highlight list below of some of the surprising benefits of chocolate – let me qualify that… we are focusing on the benefits of DARK chocolate today. Dark chocolate has by far many more benefits than it's more processed common cousin, milk chocolate.

So, go for the good stuff because…

Dark chocolate is a plentiful source of antioxidants. Antioxidants help prevent rot and rust internally!

Dark chocolate may mildly thin the blood and also inhibit this clumping of blood platelets together, called aggregation, which is one cause of atherosclerosis.

Dark chocolate may also reduce elevated blood pressure, helping to prevent kidney disease, dementia, and other brain and memory-related disorders.

According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adding only half an ounce of dark chocolate to an average American diet is enough to increase antioxidant activity by 4% and lessen oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

Dark chocolate's natural fat, called cocoa butter, is high in saturated fat; however, most of the fat content in cocoa butter is stearic acid, which numerous studies have shown does not raise blood cholesterol levels. In the human body, it acts much like the good fat in olive oil. Hurray! It's a good fat! Well, almost, but that's not too far of a stretch!

(Milk chocolate, on the other hand, contains added butterfat which can raise blood cholesterol levels. And high in sugar to boot. Skip it. Not worth the side effects.)

So, now what about those mood-enhancing chemicals I referred to above? Get this: dark chocolate produces at least five, not one but, yes, 5! mood enhancing, natural hormone stimulating, neuro-chemical reactions! Serotonin, the happy hormone, is just one of those five.

Dark chocolate also triggers the release of pleasurable endorphins and potentates the action of dopamine, a neurochemical associated with intimate pleasures and the "cloud nine" chemical released in the brain when people become infatuated or fall in love.

And, last and least in our list today, dark chocolate is also healthier because it has less added sugar! 

That's our sweet heart-to-heart for today! (Get it? Sweetheart. Valentine's Day. Grin.)

We encourage you this Valentine's Day, celebrate life, celebrate love, and celebrate health  with a gift to yourself of some high-percentage organic dark chocolate! OK, so get some for the others you love, too! But remember, buying it for yourself keeps you healthy for serving them! 

(Go ahead, chuckle. Laughter, and dark chocolate, are good medicine.)

Know someone who likes chocolate??? 

Of course, You Do!

Send Them a Link Today!

Or, even better! PIN IT to your board on Pinterest under Chocolate! 

Stay tuned for more in the series, "Heart-to-Heart for Your Health" all month long – every Monday and Thursday morning!  

Michelle Pearson is a dynamic wellness coach, speaker, author, and the Founder & President of Picture of Health Inc. (http://thepictureofhealth.com). On a personal health journey for the past 17 years, Michelle’s mission is to educate, activate, challenge and equip others to live a full, satisfying life through the use of state-of-the-art educational resources to produce significant and lasting health breakthroughs.

Like Chocolate? Let me know below!

Time for a Heart to Heart Chat about

Your Sleeping Habits

by Michelle M Pearson

February is our Heart-to-Heart month! February contains the famous holiday, Valentine's Day, which is observed on February 14. (Yes, I put that in there on purpose so you wouldn't forget!) 

This month is a time to make special purposeful expressions of your love and thankfulness to others. So, as we celebrate these matters of the heart, our hearts turn to your heart and the things that will help keep it healthy so you can enjoy life longer and stronger! 

Our first heart-to-heart is about your sleeping habits… because we care!

Recent medical studies provide substantial evidence that not getting enough sleep may have more serious consequences than falling asleep at your desk or dark circles under your eyes the next day. In 2008, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that lack of sleep, even missing as little as one hour per night, can promote the plaque build-up that over time can cause heart attacks and strokes.

This particular research team documented that just one hour less on average each night can increase coronary calcium build-up by 16%. So how much sleep are we talking here? The study showed that 27% of those getting less than five hours of sleep each night showed plaque in their heart vessels, while only 6% of participants getting more than seven hours each night showed such atherosclerosis.

While it is commonly accepted that familiar hazards for the heart such as smoking, obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes increase risk of heart disease and heart attacks, considering lack of sleep as a risk factor is relatively new to the medical community.

But not here at The Picture of Health. Why? Because we consider the design and function of the body, not the disease itself. Interestingly enough, these studies actually support our teaching that it is the lack of sleep (as well as slights in the other of the 7 Essentials for Health) that actually produces the high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity in the first place.

Our powerful, revelatory teaching on the Endocrine System, available above in the Resource center, brings those factors into perspective. For example, did you know that without the proper amount of sleep nightly, say less than 6 hours per night on a regular basis, your risk of Diabetes, and therefore heart disease, increases by as much as a whopping 85%?

Part of the chemistry behind why lack of sleep impacts the heart is through elevated cortisol levels. Too little sleep can raise cortisol levels, a stress response hormone, which fuels inflammation, due to increased homocysteine levels, causing damage to tissues. That damage is what causes the body to send cholesterol to the "rescue."  Elevated cortisol levels also cause sugar cravings and mid-section weight gain. All of these are, again, contributing factors for heart disease.

Here are a few practical tips you can employ to help change your sleep patterns and form new healthy sleep habits:

• Choose to schedule adequate time for sleep. Make changes to your lifestyle that facilitate longer sleeping hours. Sleep should be a priority, not a result of whatever time you have left after everything is completed.
• Sleep in complete darkness to get maximum hormonal balance. Light or darkness each trigger brain chemicals that signal the body to complete different tasks. While you can "sleep" with the light on, your body never fully switches to "nighttime" mode, the critical phases when cleaning, healing, and repairing take place.
• Don't sleep on a full stomach, or lying on your stomach. Either of these can cause sleep disruption.
• Let the brain sleep as well – turn off music, TV, and other stimulation so the brain will rest, repair, and rebuild! Your brain will stay active on things hours after it has registered them. Just as the eyes are triggers, continuous input through the ears will keep you from entering deep restful sleep.
• Lower the temperature in your bedroom – most people sleep with the room or the breathing air much to warm, which is another hindrance to the nighttime hormones kicking in. A drop in body temperature by a few degrees can help trigger stronger levels of melatonin, can signal the thyroid and other organs to cleanse, and can promote more restful sleep.
• Don't exercise too close to bedtime – exercise kicks in the cortisol and adrenaline, your stress-hormones. These are at the opposite end of the spectrum from your sleep hormones. Be sure to allow plenty of time after your workouts to reduce your temperature, relax and unwind, and switch gears a bit before bedtime.
• Invest in both a good mattress and a good cervical pillow. The health benefits of this alone would take pages to share! But today, you are learning that a good mattress and pillow are good for your heart health!
• If you are a shift-worker, or work the night shift, be sure you regulate your schedule to accommodate your "night" hours. Most people who work shift work grab a few hours of sleep here and there without ever devoting 7-9 hours fully to getting a good "night's" sleep. Wear a
  

  

  sleep mask if you sleep days, so that you simulate night as closely as you can for the body's hormonal cycles.  Failing to do so can, over time, cause a complete change in your personality in addition to the strain on your heart.

In closing, let me say, I used to think I was a "night' person. I could easily work all night several times per month in order to produce more while others were not around to be distractions. I'd catch up on my sleep later, gets loads done, and was young enough to think it didn't harm me at all.

That is until I learned about the fearfully, wonderfully made body and discovered there is no such thing as a "night person". The very design of your body dictates that very important things happen in the body at very specific times, some in the day and some in the night. If you work with the design, it produces health. If you work against it, it will produce dis-ease. 

Sure, it appeared that I was doing just fine. But every night, every hour lost, was slowly resulting in silent damage inside. This slow, silent destruction does not show up until the diagnosis is serious and the consequences severe. Did you know that the early warning signs that most people who die from a heart attack have are… the heart attack itself?

This month as we talk heart-to-heart about matters of your heart health, the most important thing you can do is to honestly receive this truth:

You are in charge of the choices you make. You can change them if having a long, healthy life matters to you. Stop putting off changing your sleep and rest patterns simply because you have always done it a certain way, you enjoy doing things that certain way, or you have gotten away with bad choices for years with no apparent damage. 

Every hour of life is precious. Invest in yourself an extra hour of sleep per night and your years of reward will more than be worth the changes you make right now. It's your health. It's your choice.

So, that's our heart-to-heart today. If you struggle with making time to sleep, going to sleep, or staying asleep, or find that you could benefit from some practical take-away instruction on how the body responds, how to change these patterns, and how to renew the mind to health, join us monthly for The Joshua Groups coaching and twice weekly for new blog articles.

Stay tuned for more in the series, "Heart-to-Heart for Your Health" all month long – every Monday and Thursday morning!  

(For more teaching on individual topics, please go to our Products and Resources Page and get the downloads. There are more than thirty hours of teachings available for your benefit!)

Know someone who is struggling with sleep problems?

Sure You Do!

Send Them a Link Today!

Believe. Choose. ACTIVATE. Achieve. (Repeat.)

Michelle Pearson is a dynamic wellness coach, speaker, author, and the Founder & President of Picture of Health Inc. (http://thepictureofhealth.com). On a personal health journey for the past 17 years, Michelle’s mission is to educate, activate, challenge and equip others to live a full, satisfying life through the use of state-of-the-art educational resources to produce significant and lasting health breakthroughs.

Learn Anything? Please leave questions and comments below!

Guarding The Five Gates (Part 2)

by Michelle M Pearson

Some of the most powerful lessons I learned in life came as I turned away from the "pressure-cooker" life filled with looming diseases. These lessons were about "Guarding the Five Gates."

The five gates I am speaking of are your senses. LIFE starts in your heart and your heart is fed by what comes in through your five senses. Today, we pick up on Part 2 with your sense of…

3) SMELL –

The nerves in the nose, called olfactory nerves, are directly connected to the brain. Stimulation of these nerves by air, odors, and aromas, causes immediate physical and emotional responses in the body.

Input through this "gate" not only controls our drives of hunger, thirst, and sex, but also more subtle responses of emotion, memory, and creativity. Many believe that because these olfactory membranes contain millions of nerve endings, the sense of smell may be the most acute of all senses. There are many Biblical examples of God's direction for the use of essential oils in worship and other offerings, as well as indicating that our prayers and our lives are "pleasing aromas" to Him!

Caution should be applied however when becoming aware of the use of aromatherapy. Many get just a whiff of knowledge (pun intended) and then indiscriminately use multiple scents non-stop. Every thing about the design of the body is connected with proper rhythm and cycles. The sense of smell triggers a chain of internal reactions, including the release of powerful endorphins – misuse or overuse can boomerang!  

For example, don't be lighting that candle that smells like sugar-cookies when you are fasting! No joke! You'll be irritable and headed for the carbs without explanation! Lavender is what you need! Feeling down or nauseated? Peppermint will do the job.

But remember – smell is one of the most potent senses… just a drop will do. And keep it off your skin!

4) TASTE –

Did you know that digestion and hormone production actually starts the moment food hits the tongue? That's right… you really don't have to eat the pie to gain weight! But, you do have to taste it!

In addition, tastes can be associcated with positive and negative emotional responses. Ever heard the term "comfort food"? This may be hard for some of you to hear, but it will set you free to be healthy:

When taste becomes what triggers your comfort level, when food becomes your comforter, you have replaced the power and love of God, The Comforter, with the love for self and for pleasure.

Guard the gates. The Bible tells us that food is for our fuel and for our pleasure, but it should not ever become a replacement for the love and power of God to comfort and bring us through!

5) TOUCH –

Similar to smell, touch plays a pivotal role in the release of chemicals called endorphins – your "feel good hormones". It triggers memory. It alerts the body's  sensory system to injury. But it also is a means of deep emotional expression between married couples and between parent and child.

We have long since known that babies for instance, will suffer "failure to thrive" syndrome without loving touch. The Bible confirms that there is healing power in certain touch, as in the laying on of hands to heal. But it is also clear that there is negative or destructive touch, as in intent to harm or misuse, evidenced by the many Biblical warnings "not to touch" certain persons or things. 

The body's skin, our largest organ, is the covering for the very pulse of life within us. This pulse of LIFE, which is emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical, is ignited by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of points under the body's outer surface of skin that respond to touch. As we are learning to guard the gates to improve our health and promote a happier life, it cannot go without emphasis how important touch is to the human heart, in the physical, the emotional, and the spiritually realms of life.

Purpose and learn to express greater affection to your spouse and/or children through loving touch – even if you never grew up with that – and also to refrain from touch in casual relationships where powerful emotions could be inadvertently or surprisingly triggered.  

That's our Top Five! Every day you will have presented before you choices of LIFE or death… choose LIFE by guarding well the gates of LIFE!

Top 5 Fat-Storing Hormones

by Michelle Pearson

As we wind up the month, we are taking aim on FAT Elimination! Yes, armed with wisdom and understanding, that's what is up next as we are continuing in our series, "The High Fives to Health!" 

Here's your first bullet: Hormonally-driven, excess body fat has more to do with chemistry than calories!

The hormones in our Top 5 list today are the very reason why so many people worldwide are overweight, but also why so many are sick and diseased beyond a little extra padding or even obesity.

You see, these hormones, these chemicals in the body, direct the traffic, so to speak, in every organ and function of the body. When even one is off, because they flow in rhythm with each other, they will all eventually cycle into disease and deficiency over time. (That, by the way, is what was originally termed "Syndrome X", now more commonly referred to as Insulin Resistance Syndrome. This Syndrome includes a myriad of chronic and life-threatening diseases.)

These major chemical communicators in the body are designed to work in harmony to maintain life and health, enabling you to carry out your purpose. The body's hormonal system, the Endocrine System, is actually a neuro-electro-chemical system that interacts with and commands the structural system of the vessel that carries you around.

In more simple language, this beautifully and wonderfully and fearfully made vessel is created to work like a symphony, with all the players, major and  minor, all working together in unity, as one, to accomplish the work of the body. (Selah. Sound familiar?)

When any one hormone gets out of balance, out of rhythm, out of place, or is operating in a stronger rhythm than it's counterparts, the body will begin to cycle into first one disease and then another. This cycle happens on a hourly basis (insulin, adrenal, cortisol), a daily rhythm (serotonin / melatonin), a monthly cycle (reproductive), and even a quarterly cycle (blood), to name a few!

The longer you are in the disease cycle, day after day, month after month, the deeper in the body the disease cycle takes root.

BUT… by the same wonderful design, the body also can cycle into health hour by hour, one choice at a time. You can begin making better choices and working with the design RIGHT NOW and hour by hour, day by day, regain your health.

That is why MOMENTUM is crucial in reclaiming health. Working with the design produces health every time. If you are not enjoying that health yet, now is a great time to start your momentum going in the right direction! Consistency and momentum are keys.

Here, for example, are the Top 5 Fat Storing Hormones you'll want to learn how to regulate and bring into that symphonic balance:

1 – Insulin

     When insulin is present in the blood stream in response to carbs and sugars, you have the potential and propensity to store fat. This is a foundational reason when one is endeavoring to restore health and reduce body fat – not just weight but body fat – that we recommend separating proteins and carbs for a length of time. This is both to balance the hormones (to reduce body fat) AND to give the gut a rest (in order to more discharge waste and heal gut lining).

Separating grain-based carbs and added sugars from fat and protein, while limiting them to once daily, consuming within a two-hour period, greatly regulates the amount of insulin present to store fat. When you balance the insulin in relation to the other hormones, you begin the process that will balance the body's lean muscle-to-fat ratio.

See, it's not that we can't eat proteins and carbs together or that the body cannot process them together. Not at all. If healthy, one should be able to do so without difficulty or disease. And, yes, to answer many questions regarding "glycemic index", properly combined meals do help keep blood sugar levels more stable. But…

Here is the problem: modern society's gluttonous ways and constant feasting have produced indigestion, and un-digestion, resulting in severe nutrient, mineral, and Omega-3 deficiencies; these patterns have also produced rampant addictions to stimulants, carbs, alcohol, and drugs, caused initially by fermenting and rotting food in the gut causing yeast and bacterial problems, increases in belly fat, epidemic weight gain and diabetes.

Separating and limiting one's intake of carbohydrates is a healthy method of healing the gut by working with the body's design, regulating insulin production, reducing excess stored body fat and lowering low-density lipids (cholesterol).

Once both the hormones and the gut are healthy, a healthy system can process proper portions of meat and carbs together without hindrance. (Again, however, most of the population are not yet in this healthy category!)

Next in our Top 5 Fat Storing Hormones…

2 – Adrenaline, and

3 – Cortisol

     Both of these are stress-relieving, but fat-storing hormones. These hormones elevate either in response to stress, which is an increased demand for resources, and/or as a back-up to the Pancreas for insulin production. Regulating these two hormones is vital to the success in both protecting the heart and keeping excess fat from being stored around the mid-section.

I'll comment a bit further on these two hormones as we discuss…

4 – Estrogen

     Again, a fat storing hormone that much of modern global society gets way to much of. Estrogen is produced in our natural hormone production, but we also take in phyto-estrogens as soy products are consumed. For example, soy, can have a dramatic effect toward disease due to it's false hormone reaction in the body, both in males and females. In addition, there are often numerous hormones injected into the commercial meat production and processing.

Obviously, eliminating the added outside estrogen consumption is the first step you can take in lower and balancing this area. You can immediately stop consuming soy products and select better quality meat and/or dairy products as well. However, regulating the whole hormonal cycle will have a much more profound effect on overall health.

Another concern that we can pair with discussing estrogen is it's balancing counter part: progesterone. When the two fat storing hormones Adrenaline and Cortisol (noted above) are elevated and eventually exhausted, the body's magnificent back-up system is progesterone. Progesterone can be utilized by the body as building blocks in the production of these other hormones.

While that is helpful on a temporary basis, if we learn to live on the "adrenaline rush" of stress and stimulants, progesterone is constantly pulled away to help the adrenal production. As this occurs, fat-storing, temperature-regulating, estrogen levels will become increasingly disproportionate, spiraling into all kinds of diseases and dysfunction.

5 – Thyroid

     The most familiar of the fat-storing hormones. Thyroid is perhaps the first hormone that gets medically checked when a patient complains of weight gain. Interestingly enough, it should actually be the LAST on the list of things to modify in order to produce healthy results.

In almost every case, if attention to the whole balanced hormonal cycle is addressed – with teaching and corrections in the areas of our The 7 Essentials of Health – one will frequently find that regulation of the thyroid hormones will no longer be needed.

Prior surgery, of course, would be an exception. But short of that, one can very optimistically look forward to greater function of the Thyroid and the healthy whole metabolic process when the gut is healthy and the Top 5 Fat Storing Hormones are brought back into the harmonic symphony of God's design for and in your magnificent vessel!

For much more teaching on these and many other hormone considerations, you want to get our teaching Series 1, Module 2 – The Endocrine System. You can plug in to some of the excellent teaching on these individual topics on our Products and Resources Page.

Make plans to join us monthly for The Joshua Groups coaching and stay tuned for more in the series, "The High Fives of Health!" all month long – every Monday and Thursday morning!  

Know someone who is struggling with some health problems?

Sure You Do!

Send Them a Link Today!

Believe. Choose. ACTIVATE. Achieve. (Repeat.)

Michelle Pearson is a dynamic wellness coach, speaker, author, and the Founder & President of Picture of Health Inc. (http://thepictureofhealth.com). On a personal health journey for the past 17 years, Michelle’s mission is to educate, activate, challenge and equip others to live a full, satisfying life through the use of state-of-the-art educational resources to produce significant and lasting health breakthroughs.

Learn Anything? Please leave a comment BELOW!

Top 5 Things That Pollute Your Body's Environment

by Michelle M. Pearson

#1     SODA & CARBONATED DRINKS –

Any kind of soda and carbonated drinks containing sugar, sugar-substitutes, and most importantly, carbonation. A well-oxygenated body is a healthy body. Soda drinks rob your body of that oxygen. One 12 ounce soda takes about 36 glasses of water to flush out the acidity from the one soda pop. Diet sodas are doubly dangerous to the body's environment. If you intend to be healthy, sodas should become an item you no longer consume. 

#2     AIR-BORNE CHEMICALS, SMOKING & TOBACCO –

Again with the oxygen issue! All tobacco and even so-called "clean" nicotine products pollute the body's environment and pull down the pH. In addition to smoking pollutants, homes, schools, businesses, and other building are filled with chemicals in the air.

One way to drastically reduce these chemicals in the air is to open windows anytime the weather temperature allows. Built-up chemicals in the inside air are way more destructive than natural pollens and outside air!

Another way is to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals that are used in the cleaning and also the "fragrancing" your home. A clean home smells good and doesn't need extra help from candles, sprays, plugins, etc. If you like special scents, switch to essential oils for your fragrances! A few drops of peppermint in the toilet bowl after use is better than any air spray you could use! (Just don't use around babies; it's a bit too strong for their nasal passages.) You can also clean with vinegar, soda, Dr. Bronners, or other natural cleansers to help reduce air pollutants.

#3     SUGAR - 

All forms of added sugar, even thought it can be "natural", require extra resources to process it in the body – resources that could better be used for healing and health or hormone production. In addition, sugar feeds cancer, candida, microbes, and bad bacteria in the body. Cut off their food and feed your health.

#4     GRAINS (including ALCOHOL) -

Grains do provide natural carbohydrates, which are one of the body's building blocks.  However, most of our modern cultures consume a largely disproportionate amount of grain-based carbohydrates. Did you know that, undigested, these things ferment in the gut and cause toxicity much like drinking alcohol in excess? That's right. And both grains and alcoholic drinks are nothing better than liquid sugar to the body – robbing us of crucial resources that could be used for health! See #3 above!

And finally, 

# 5   UNDIGESTED PROTEINS or excessive amounts - 

Protein and animal fats are among the important building blocks to a healthy gut and healthy body. However, because so many consume such large portions of meat, while at the same meal eating large volumes of carbohydrates, the result is indigestion or, more accurately, un-digestion! This leaves excess proteins literally rotting and putrifying in the GI tract.

Did you know that the average American male on any particular day may have 7-10 pounds of undigested meat in the gut? YUK! There you have that 10 pounds around the belly you want to lose! And women typically carry around 5-7 undigested meats in the GI tract. I'd venture to guess it is this way in most countries around the globe as well.

One very quick way to improve the body's performance and environment is to reduce amounts of both carbs and proteins and keep them separate for a time period to improve digestion! "Beef" up your intake of non-starch vegetables until you have 2/3+ of veggies and the remaining amount or carb or proteins. Keeping a colorful, veggie filled plate will greatly improve the body's digestive environment.

So, those are our Top 5 today. If you want additional teaching on these Top Five Things That Pollute Your Body's Environment, including some practical instruction on how the body responds, and how to change these patterns, plug in to some the excellent teaching on these individual topics on our Products and Resources Page. There are more than thirty hours of teachings available for your benefit!

Make plans to join us monthly for The Joshua Groups coaching and stay tuned for more in the series, "The High Fives of Health!" all month long – every Monday and Thursday morning!  

Know someone who is struggling with some health problems?

Sure You Do!

Send Them a Link Today!

Believe. Choose. ACTIVATE. Achieve. (Repeat.)

Michelle Pearson is a dynamic wellness coach, speaker, author, and the Founder & President of Picture of Health Inc. (http://thepictureofhealth.com). On a personal health journey for the past 17 years, Michelle’s mission is to educate, activate, challenge and equip others to live a full, satisfying life through the use of state-of-the-art educational resources to produce significant and lasting health breakthroughs.

Learn Anything? Please leave a comment BELOW!