photo: analise benevides

Many of my clients reach out to me for help with physical complaints. No, I am not a doctor, nor do I diagnose symptoms. But I do believe that on some level, the women and men who seek me out understand that their symptoms—aches and pains, trouble sleeping, depression, infertility, anxiety, weight issues, stomach upset, blood pressure, and addiction or substance abuse—can find some relief through hypnosis. And they are right. These are women and men of all ages, backgrounds, and awareness levels, and many come to me as a kind of last resort—they’ve been to doctors, psychologists, acupuncturists, ministers, or shamans who have offered protocols of all persuasions. But their problems are stubborn, deeply rooted, and often leave them feeling hopeless.

Through our focused work on the subconscious and the power of the mind over the body, my clients discover a new way to think about wellness, their bodies, and their physical ailments. I listen, observe, and then guide them to connect with their inner selves to get to the root of their problem and how they unwittingly may have helped create it. Yes, created. We like to acknowledge all the good things that we create for ourselves but feel uncomfortable about and resistant to admitting to the problems we create for ourselves. There is something incredibly empowering about recognizing the role you play in your health—once you take ownership of having created the problem, you can then take proactive steps to fix it!

You’re probably wondering how a physical issue or ailment can be created and what the connection is to the subconscious. I suppose you already heard the “mind over body” phrase many times over. But, what does that mean? Through my work, I’ve come to understand that physical issues can be caused by past or present heartache. Debilitating anxiety can be the aftereffect of trauma or emotional shock to your overall body-brain system. Frustrated and hopeless, most people don’t know about this mind-body connection. It gives me great satisfaction when clients come to me and through our work together, and oftentimes with their physician’s assistance, they are able to return to excellent health.

What sort of results have I seen? Claire came to see me after almost a year of struggling through menopause symptoms that nothing seemed to alleviate. She used hypnosis to tune into her body and determine if her symptoms were something she might be able to calm down on her own. Once she stopped resisting the hot flashes, moodiness, and trouble sleeping, the symptoms began to settle down. For Claire, her resistance was stoking her hormonal imbalances. The concept of mind over body control helped her ease the pain caused by the menopause symptoms.

Todd, a client who was being treated for mesothelioma (an aggressive form of lung cancer), came to me after treatment; half the cancerous lung had been cleared by the necessary medical interventions, and his doctors were pleased with the results. Todd wasn’t. He wanted to see if he could find a way to communicate with his damaged lung. This is when he sought me out. Through hypnosis and deeper work with his subconscious, he was able to feel optimistic, connect to his immune system, and lower his stress. After a month of practicing these Hypnotic Hacks, Todd returned to his oncologist, who was amazed at his improvements. The subconscious can seem almost magical at times.

These reactions to stress and illness can bring relief. However, you do not have to be ill or have a specific disease to benefit from the Six Principles and Hypnotic Hacks I’ve outlined in my book. Indeed, my work with people teaches them how to use the concept of mind over body healing and their subconscious to improve their health in general, not to address a specific ailment. I think of our bodies as vessels for all that we are—body, mind, and soul—and they need protection and good care. And when we use our subconscious power to tap into our bodies and its signals, truly listening to what our bodies are telling us, then we are better able to be their stewards and reach or maintain optimal health and wellness.

When Your Ailment Is Working for You

I’ve seen many clients develop a dependence on their own illness because it “works” for them on an obscure level. This may sound counterintuitive—how can someone’s illness work for them?—but think about it for a moment. If someone feels alone or misses a cherished parent, having caring women and men in white lab coats dote on them may fill a void. But what kind of life is that? I guide clients through their dependency by helping them envision their own health and imagine a life of well-being where they become truly accountable. I show them how their illness has come to define them so they can move past it.

This was the case with Robert, who has suffered from a bad back for years. Before trying the mind body spirit healing, he’d complain constantly about his pain. And yet in his regular diatribe, I picked up on a certain note of pride, as he implied that his enduring the physical suffering was an accomplishment.

He described his weekly routine in such a way that it became clear that he was attached to his suffering. For example, he told me that his favorite day of the week was Saturday. When I asked him why, he explained that it was the day he had physical therapy for his back. He described that on his way to PT, he’d fit in time to eat his favorite yogurt, then stop for a latte, and then a quick game of mah-jongg in the park. When he got to the PT office, he said, he loved having a quick flirt with the receptionists, enjoying every moment. He described those details with a big smile on his face.

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

Robert’s bad back was working for him. He was holding on to this ailment because he’d made it bring him happiness—in the form of lattes, mah-jongg, and frozen treats. He created a day of socializing around his ailment, and that day had become the cornerstone of his weekend. What intrinsic motivation did he have to get better and give up his bad back? On a subconscious level, his bad back isn’t bad at all.

In other words, Robert had grown dependent on a physical ailment because it gave him permission to enjoy himself. Through our work together, he was able to clarify the discrepancy between the actual discomfort he experiences in his back and his need for more pleasure. When he was able to be more truthful about his desire for enjoyment and how he mistakenly believed that his back pain prevented him from these pleasures, he was able to use the mind over the body technique to take some concrete steps to shift his relationship with his bad back. First, he gave himself rewards throughout the week, not reserving them only for Saturdays. Then he took more accountability for the root causes (the tightness in his hips and his weak core muscles, for starters) of the chronic pain he was experiencing. With these two simple actions, Robert was able to give himself permission to really go after pleasure in his life and to take care of his body in a more complete, conscious way.

Let me share another story about the power of the mind over the body. This one is about my client Will, the meat-eater. Will loves backyard BBQs, so much so that he even named his grill: he calls her Sue. Will also likes fitness, so it made sense that he would fall in love with Rebecca, his yoga instructor, whom he says looks great in her down dog and who is a vegetarian health fanatic.

The two fell madly in love and were soon engaged. Because of his devotion to Rebecca, he follows her lead when she introduces a new health fad—cleanses, boot camps, liquid diets, intermittent fasting—you name it, they tried it. Before the wedding, Rebecca asked Will to go meat-free, and as a sign of his love and good intentions, he agreed. This was not no sex before the wedding day; this was no meat before the wedding day.

Veggies ruled for a while—veggie broccoli steak, veggie jerky, veggie chili. You get the idea. But soon, Will started to not feel well. He’d feel fine all day at work, but as soon as he came home, he’d start to feel sick to his stomach and achy, and would need to go to bed. Rebecca assumed it was his body making the transition from a body built on meat to a healthier body fueled by greens.

But what was really making Will so sick? There was one thing he did not tell Rebecca: he’d been secretly eating meat all along at lunch during the workday. It wasn’t really the meat that mattered.

It was that meat mattered to Will. Unwittingly, Rebecca had asked Will to give up a very basic but important need in his life, and Will could not really give it up without feeling deeply resentful. But the toll of lying to Rebecca was more powerful than the resentment: it was making him physically sick.

Until Will came into accountability and confessed to Rebecca that he had continued to eat meat, he would continue to feel sick. He was conflicted because he loved both Rebecca and (his grill) Sue. But secrets don’t bond us; they shred us.

Will and Rebecca eventually discovered a happy compromise, which allowed Will to eat meat but also participate in Rebecca’s meals, eating and enjoying lots of veggies! They both benefited from being more honest about their needs and learned how to create a more mutual give-to-get principle in their relationship. A win-win!

Hypnotic Hack: Be Body Aware

What role are you playing in your illness? You must be willing to explore the emotional ties to your pain or ailments. Be honest when you look at yourself and how certain choices and patterns keep you locked in physical discomfort. Tapping into your subconscious enables you to release physical dependencies that may parade as illnesses. This exercise will enable you to bring into clarity what is physical… and what might have unacknowledged or unresolved emotional roots.

1. Close your eyes and go within.

2. Imagine your health.

3. What physical issues or limitations are you experiencing?

4. What secondary benefits are you experiencing by holding on to this condition? (This step requires accountability. We don’t want to believe that we are playing a role in limiting ourselves this way; remember, this information isn’t coming from your conscious mind, but from your subconscious. You may be unwittingly causing yourself to feel discomfort as a means of self-protection or self-limitation. Does this ailment keep you from working at a job you don’t enjoy anyway? Are you afraid of failure? Maybe this distress gives you the attention you crave from an otherwise distant family member or mate. Are you restricted from enjoyable activities? What is at the core of not being able to hike with your family?)

5. Imagine all the things you would do successfully if this condition or situation were not in your life. In what ways would this new freedom allow you to enjoy your life, spend more time with your loved ones, reach new career heights?

There is a very powerful fact: the decision is yours. Physical conditions can arise from continually ignoring what’s really going on. When you tap into your subconscious and really attune yourself to a level of mind-body control, you will know what’s real and what’s not. Yes, you’ll have to be brave. Yes, you may need to remind yourself that you are capable and supported. Have faith that you are indeed ready—it’s time to elevate your health.

On Louise Hay’s Symptom List

In many ways, Louise Hay was the first to identify and define how our minds are connected to our bodies. In her well-recognized Symptom List, which I have adapted here, Hay points to how certain areas of the body and specific symptoms may be related to emotional states or feelings. Consider this list as you begin to tune into your own body and learn the power of the mind over the body.

Acne: Not accepting the self. Dislike of the self.
Addictions: Running from the self. Fear. Not knowing how to love the self.
Allergies: Denying your own power.
Alzheimer’s Disease: Refusal to deal with the world as it is. Hopelessness and helplessness. Anger.
Ankle: Inflexibility and guilt. Ankles represent the ability to receive pleasure.
Anxiety: Not trusting the flow and the process of life.
Arthritis: Feeling unloved. Criticism, resentment.
Back Issues: Represents the support of life.
Lower Back Pain: Fear of money or lack of financial support.
Mid-Back Pain: Guilt. Stuck in all that stuff back there. “Get off my back!”
Upper Back Pain: Lack of emotional support. Feeling unloved. Holding back love.
Broken Bones: Rebelling against authority.
Cancer: Deep hurt. Long-standing resentment. Deep secret or grief eating away at the self. Carrying hatreds.
Cholesterol: Clogging the channels of joy. Fear of accepting joy.
Constipation: Incomplete releasing. Holding on to garbage of the past. Guilt over the past. Sometimes stinginess.
Depression: Anger you feel you do not have a right to have. Hopelessness.
Diabetes: Longing for what might have been. A great need to control. Deep sorrow. No sweetness left.
Eczema: Breathtaking antagonism. Mental eruption.
Fatigue: Resistance, boredom. Lack of love for what one does.
Foot Problems: Fear of the future and of not stepping forward in life.
Hands: Hold and handle. Clutch and grip. Grasping and letting go. Caressing. Pinching. All ways of dealing with experiences.
Headaches: Invalidating the self. Self-criticism. Fear.
Heart Attack: Squeezing all the joy out of the heart in favor of money or position. Feeling alone and scared. “I’m not good enough. I don’t do enough. I’ll never make it.”
Heart Problems: Long-standing emotional problems. Lack of joy. Hardening of the heart. Belief in strain and stress.
Hip: Fear of going forward in major decisions. Nothing to move forward to.
Impotence: Sexual pressure, tension, guilt. Social beliefs. Spite against a previous mate. Fear of mother.
Indigestion: Gut-level fear, dread, anxiety. Griping and grunting.
Inflammation: Fear. Seeing red. Inflamed thinking. Anger and frustration about conditions you are looking at in your life.
Insomnia: Fear. Not trusting the process of life. Guilt.
Kidney Stones: Lumps of undissolved anger.
Knee: Represents pride and ego. Stubborn ego and pride. Inability to bend. Fear. Inflexibility. Won’t give in.
Legs: Carry us forward in life.
Menopause Problems: Fear of no longer being wanted. Fear of aging. Self-rejection. Not feeling good enough.
Neck: Represents flexibility. The ability to see what’s back there. Refusing to see other sides of a question. Stubbornness, inflexibility. Unbending stubbornness.
Osteoporosis: Feeling there is no support left in life. Mental pressures and tightness. Muscles can’t stretch. Loss of mental mobility.
Pain: Guilt. Guilt always seeks punishment and it can cause chronic pain.
Sinus Problems: Irritation toward one person, someone close.
Sprains: Anger and resistance. Not wanting to move in a certain direction in life.
Stiffness: Rigid, stiff thinking.
Throat (sore): Holding in angry words. Feeling unable to express the self.
Thyroid Gland: Humiliation. “I never get to do what I want to do. When is it going to be my turn?”
Hyperthyroid: Rage at being left out.
Varicose Veins: Standing in a situation you hate. Discouragement. Feeling overworked and overburdened.
Weight Issues: Often represents fear and shows a need for protection. Running away from feelings. Insecurity, self-rejection, and seeking fulfillment.
Wrist: Represents movement and ease.

Where Are You Now?

Take a moment to think about your own body and respond to the questions below:

1. Do you often wake up feeling rested after a night’s sleep?
2. Do you have the energy for the activities you enjoy?
3. Can you walk up a flight of stairs with ease?
4. Are you able to touch your knees (or maybe your toes!)?
5. Can you raise your arms overhead?
6. Are you able to balance on one leg for any length of time?
7. Do you often find yourself hungry or craving certain foods?
8. Do you go to sleep around the same time each night and stay asleep?
9. Do you enjoy spending active time outdoors?
10. Do you belong to a gym?

If you responded “yes” to most of these questions, then you are more than likely taking good care of your physical health. If you answered “no” to more than three questions, then pay particular attention to the lessons in this article.
The Truth Behind Surprising Diagnoses

When you are connected to your subconscious, you are in tune with your body at a cellular level. You are in tune with its ups and downs, its ebbs and flows. You know that the reason you have a headache is that you are dehydrated after a long walk or run. You know that you woke up feeling sluggish because you had one too many glasses of wine, an unhealthy meal, or a too-big dessert the night before. You know that your stress level is a bit higher than usual because you’ve recently moved offices or homes. In other words, you have the ability to listen to your body and read its cues, which in turn positions you to respond immediately to alleviate the symptom or address the cause. You drink plenty of fluids to reverse dehydration. You rest, avoid sugary foods and beverages and do a mini cleanse to cleanse your liver and blood to get rid of that hungover feeling. Whatever the issue, you address it, so it doesn’t have a chance to worsen.

The opposite happens when you’re out of sync with your subconscious; it’s as if warnings come out of the blue, but do you pay attention? Here is an example from my own life. During a time of enormous stress, when my elderly father was going through some health issues, he turned to me from his hospital bed and said, “Kimberly, what is that bulging bump on your forehead?” I couldn’t feel anything, and I figured it was his bad eyesight or a shadow from poor lighting. When I eventually looked in the mirror, sure enough, I saw a big, distended, blue-and-purple vein on my temple. I sent a picture of it to my doctor.

“Be very careful,” my doctor told me, “because it’s in a precarious position.”

“What is it?” I asked in frustration.

“It’s probably stress,” responded the doctor blithely. I listened. “You’re under a lot of stress right now, Kimberly, isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“And you’ve been traveling back and forth from Nevada to California to Texas, correct?”

“Yes.”

“These kinds of things can appear during stressful times, so I recommend you take a deep breath, sit and relax, and check on it then.”

I followed my doctor’s advice, and in thirty minutes the bulging vein was gone. I am not worried about it returning because it doesn’t have to—I’m now connected to my subconscious and keeping my stress levels in check. Thanks to the literal heads-up, which served as a reminder of the power of the mind over the body.

The surprise is not the actual diagnosis; the surprise is that we are unaware of our bodies and changes to them. When we use our subconscious power to stay tuned in to our bodies, its shifts, and changes, then it’s easier to keep our health in alignment.

However, when your subconscious and your conscious mind are out of balance, you will not look or feel your best. Some people will overextend themselves. Others will stop eating right or eat too much of foods that don’t make them feel well. Still, others will begin to sleep poorly, and the signs of fatigue will show—around the eyes, for instance. Interestingly, friends and loved ones who are in tune with their subconscious will notice this about you right away. Hence their well-meaning comments of “You look tired” or “Are you feeling okay? You don’t seem yourself.” Since the subconscious is a primal, instinctual kind of knowing that we all share, connecting us at the pack level, we can sense when others in the pack are not at their most fit.

If we are disconnected from our subconscious, it will communicate to us in a different way: our bodies will reflect key messages from the subconscious. When we ignore our bodies and these messages, ailments will crop up and surprise us. This is the subconscious demanding to be heard. When we really suppress our subconscious, we can trigger the disease.

In the paragraphs ahead, you will learn a lot more about how your body reflects the yearnings of your subconscious. Heed its warnings. Take good care of it. Your physical body and health are an important barometer of the connection between your subconscious and your conscious mind.

Know Your Body

Living our lives necessitates continual healing at a cellular level. Our bodies are always responding and adapting to outside negative influences—environmental stress, pollution, viruses, and a host of microscopic organisms that can negatively affect our bodies and brains. The key to maintaining your subconscious power and using it to protect your health and build your resistance from outside threats is to tap into your body in a regular way. Use the Body Scan hack below as a way to do so.

Hypnotic Hack: Body Scan

To get a better sense of how your physical ailments may be connected to a non-physical source, try the following exercise and experience the miracles of mind over body healing:

Consciously notice and write down different body parts that you feel are malfunctioning now or that you may worry about in the future. Notice the function for each body part and refer to the symptom list on the previous pages. For example, if your hands hurt, what are you having trouble grasping? If your hips hurt, you might be in need of balance. The knees represent your pride and ego. Learn to cue into the emotional roots to physical symptoms. Our body parts correspond and react to our thoughts, and if these thoughts are unattended, the physical problem persists until it awakens our attention.

In this exercise, you will be asking your subconscious to reveal to you any physical issues and concerns that need to be brought to your conscious attention. It’s not unusual for this exercise to reveal more than one issue, so have a piece of paper and a pen or pencil handy so that you can make a list.

A body scan is a tried-and-true exercise recommended by many practitioners as a way to bring attention to the sensations of your body and train yourself to attend to its needs. I’ve adapted this body scan based on what has worked best for my clients and myself. It’s a great way to connect your subconscious to the areas of your body that might be out of balance and need some attention, care, and mind, body and spirit healing.

I love this protocol in conjunction with regular doctor visits because oftentimes your physician will ask you to identify your aches, pains, symptoms, or reason for your visit. When you relay this information to your medical professional, he or she is in a better position to identify the issues, answer your questions, and respond to your concerns. Remember, a surprise diagnosis can be a diminished link between the subconscious, the conscious mind, and the body.

1. Close your eyes and go within.

2. While relaxed, breathe deeply in and out.

3. With each breath, imagine various parts of your body. Begin at the top of your head, moving to your neck, down your spine, into each of your limbs, and ending at your feet.

4. Notice the sensations you encounter and where on your body these sensations occur. (Do you encounter any stiffness? Blockage? Tightness?)

5. If yes, breathe into the affected body part. Feel the rhythm of your breath, massaging any discomfort until that body part feels released.

6. Ask your subconscious to identify the original source of that discomfort. (Oftentimes the name of a person, place, or thing will come into your awareness.) Continue to breathe into the resolution, releasing any residual discomfort.

7. With each new body part, repeat this breathing technique until all symptoms subside.

8. While continuing to breathe deeply, send gratitude to your subconscious for your new awareness and connectivity to your physical body.

Welcome your discoveries, knowing you can check on your body any time you choose. And remember, physical discomfort is meant to get your attention; you can admit nothing gets our attention like discomfort. It’s actually your ally, your guide. Use it for what it is: an alarm. This is where the subconscious comes in. In other words, when emotions on the inside are out of step with ecology on the outside, there can be a physical imbalance.

The Importance of Fitness

Your health emerges from the inside out. Getting fit through eating a clean, balanced diet and exercising regularly is not about vanity. It’s about building a body that is reliable and resourceful. You know that feeling when you are so tired, your lack of energy keeps you from doing what you want? Respecting your body makes it reliable. Treating your body like the vessel also shows your SoulSpirit that you care; this care is a form of respect toward your SoulSpirit and one of the primary keys to healing mind, body and soul.

When I think about health and fitness, I like to envision an airplane pilot seeking balance, keeping both wings parallel to the horizon to level the plane. When the plane lists to one side or a malfunction is detected, lights flash, sirens whine, and occasionally a mechanical voice will repeat a warning to get the pilot’s attention. Imagine that the plane is your body and the whirring instrumentation is your subconscious.

A 2007 study done by Cornell University professors revealed a surprising statistic: the biggest weight loss or the most weight dropped by women is before their weddings. How do the brides themselves explain the weight loss? Because they want to like how they look in their wedding photos. But the study findings disagree, and instead suggest that the primal directive from the subconscious was suggesting women lose weight so their grooms would believe they had made the best choice in a mate. The research seems to suggest that on a subconscious level we want to be perceived as fit.

In fact, with clients who struggle with their fitness, I found a direct relationship between the amount of unhappiness they experience and the amount of slack they have allowed themselves: the more they cared, the more fit they were; the more slack they gave themselves, the less fit they were… and the less happy. The slack they afforded themselves and the level of unhappiness were in direct proportion to each other. In other words, the more they let their health slide and recognized it, the more unhappiness they experienced.

Weight fluctuation is not uncommon during the course of a lifetime, and there are many reasons people put on extra pounds here and there—divorce, stress, sickness, hormone changes, job loss, job gain… the list is endless and ever-changing. We are all susceptible to weight and fitness fluctuations during stressful times. The key is to then right our course. Becoming fit should never involve an endless binge-and-purge cycle. It does not require deprivation or scarcity.

Now, at the risk of raising a touchy subject, I want to address the real pain of weight issues: they can be an outward sign that something is unbalanced on the inside. Our bodies are designed to always seek homeostasis, a place of equilibrium for all our physiological processes. Homeostasis is the basis for an interesting and sometimes controversial approach to thinking about stubborn weight issues: set point. First identified in 1982 by nutrition scientists William Bennett and Joel Gurin, set point theory states that a person’s body has a predetermined weight range in which it feels most comfortable, which implies that your body will sabotage itself during weight loss by slowing down your metabolism and the rate at which it burns or consumes calories. Regulated by the hypothalamus, this set point also suggests that the internal regulating system of overweight or obese people has become disrupted due to overeating, sedentary lifestyle, and other factors. Of course, set point theory also explains why it’s so difficult for people to lose weight and keep it off for good. All our bodies are looking to return to their set point.

People who are either not tapped into their subconscious or whose subconscious and conscious mind are out of sync will tend to not eat enough or to eat past satiety, consuming more food than their bodies can utilize. Due to the mind-body connection, our subconscious is preprogrammed to do everything it can to get the body what it needs; sometimes, the conscious mind resists this information.

Some people, of course, go in the other direction toward fitness and push themselves to an extreme. Sometimes to such an extreme that an injury, stress attack, or exhaustion might occur. Fanaticism in either direction is going to hurt your equilibrium.

True health is the result of first understanding your real thoughts and real reasons for eating and exercising like you do. Do you move away from what’s best for you? Do you hang out with other family or friends where eating unhealthily has become your routine and your bond, an excuse not to thrive? Are you in a misery-loves-company relationship with Ben & Jerry’s?

Once you explore these questions and tune into your subconscious, you may be surprised at what you may find. At the end of the day, your actual, personal set point is irrelevant; what matters is that you find the real you, the healthiest version of you, whatever size or fitness level that’s intended to be. Only a misdirected subconscious is more comfortable in an unhealthy body. The good news for us is that our subconscious power can alter our set point and guide the body into creating a new normal, a new baseline or range of healthy weight.

With the power of the mind over body, you can not only envision yourself in a new way but also create life-sustaining habits that support sustenance and satiety. You may not consciously know or believe that you can achieve a healthy, fit body with little effort. More important, you can maintain a healthy, balanced physique, because ease equals balance. Dis-ease equals imbalance. Did you ever try to guide a wobbly grocery cart through the store, continually fighting the off-balance wheels? The cart lists to the side and pulls off course, requiring strenuous effort just to roll to the next aisle? The same holds true for a body out of alignment. The fight, the tug, the pull is exhausting and requires such effort just to roll straight ahead. You know the feeling.

The Pillars of Self-Care

Your body is a vessel for producing and using energy. It works more efficiently and functions more optimally when it is nourished with clean foods, well-hydrated, given exercise, and refueled with adequate rest. These pillars of self-care are not new concepts, but they are essential for physical health; they are necessary for using your subconscious to the best of its abilities. Self-care is a major part of playing big in your life. Why? Because playing big insists that you put yourself first and care for your body. Your body and brain are living biochemical organisms that require upkeep, fuel, and lots of TLC. Taking good care of your health is also vital to being able to live an expansive life. Sleep, clean food, and regular movement refresh the connection between your subconscious and your conscious mind.

Remember, the universe will give you more than you can imagine. But to access those oversized goals, you need to be ready to embrace what that means physically—you need to be prepared to perform at a top physical level. This starts with self-care.

Sleep Well

Your day begins with a good night’s sleep. If we don’t sleep well, we don’t think well. Poor sleep leaves us vulnerable to a host of diseases. It means we cannot be as productive during daylight hours. Think of sleep as the time when your body’s mechanics rush in to repair the damage of the day, whatever that is; healing the immune system, cellular repair, neurogenesis, memory consolidation, and more all take place when the body is at rest. Giving your body the necessary care so that it can repair itself is critical for both your short- and long-term health. And your subconscious is also very busy during sleep; this is the late shift for your body’s working mechanisms.

What if you’re struggling with disrupted sleep? Remember how the subconscious wakes you up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. if you have unfinished business? If you’re not sleeping well, keep a pen and paper next to your bed. If you find yourself awake, write down whatever comes to mind. Alternatively, if you are having trouble falling asleep, jot down the questions, doubts, and worries that are keeping you up—oftentimes upon waking, you’ll find that your subconscious has figured out solutions.

Eat Well

While I do not subscribe to any one style or approach to eating, I recommend to my clients that they eat as clean as possible as part of the mind over body healing process. Think of your body like a high-performance car. You would give that car optimum fuel for optimum performance, and clean fuel works best. What does it meant to “eat clean”? Clean foods are foods that occur in nature and are not altered, including:

+ Fresh, locally grown or organic vegetables and legumes
+ Fresh, locally grown or organic low-sugar fruit (berries)
+ Grass-fed meats
+ Wild-caught fish and seafood
+ Ancient grains that have not been processed
+ Minimal dairy

Eating clean also means consuming as little sugar as possible and staying away from packaged, processed foods. Think whole, baked sweet potatoes rather than potato chips. Or a leafy kale salad over a processed energy bar. Eat lean protein in the form of red meat, poultry, and fish. Enjoy organically grown fruits in season so you don’t overindulge (fruits contain sugar!). Always include green vegetables with your meals. Consciously include fibrous foods, such as legumes, brown or wild rice, and seeds and nuts. And drink lots of water. All this will keep your blood sugar balanced, help you maintain a healthy weight, reduce inflammation, and help you alleviate the symptoms of and ward off illness and disease.

A number of clients come to me because they struggle with their weight or feel like they cannot control themselves around food. My secret weapon to help these clients lose weight and get healthy is to ritualize their food intake, which helps build a healthful anchor to your eating habits. Creating a ritual around eating brings awareness and soulfulness to the reverential act of feeding oneself. Here are some simple suggestions for creating a ritual around eating:

+ Set the table before you sit down.
+ Look at the balance of foods on your plate or in your bowl.
+ Give thanks that you have food to enjoy.
+ Eat slowly, savoring the taste and flavor and texture of the food.

When we assign meaning to things, especially the communion of taking in nutrients, we satisfy the subconscious while we feed our body, mind, and soul. Giving reverence to food gives it importance beyond just shoveling food into our mouths and satiating our hunger.

When I want to bring a sacred aspect to the ritual of eating, I create a “one-bowl” experience: an ancient practice of putting an entire meal—veggies, some clean protein, and a grain—in one bowl and then enjoying it slowly using only my fingers to eat (if you prefer, you can use chopsticks). There are several beneficial aspects to this way of eating. The simple dexterity of the chopsticks slows you down, which allows your level of satiety to keep up with your intake. Eating with your fingers is very primal and reinforces the basic connection to that which fuels you. Food and eating are tactile, and bringing awareness to the ritual of eating enlivens all our senses and literally feeds the subconscious. Many trendy restaurants are now serving this form of one-bowl meal because it works. It’s healthy, satisfying, and very close to our nature of collecting.

There are additional benefits to be had from ritualizing your meals while putting the mind over body concept to heart. Infusing any act or event with meaning helps you stay present and provides a fuller experience. Instead of mindlessly eating at your desk while working or checking your social media over dinner, add reverence to the experience. You will enjoy your meal more, and it will be more satisfying—physically and spiritually. Even a small change like this to your daily routine—going from mindless meal to mindful ritual—will enable your subconscious mind to create healthful shifts in your body.

Move Well

Your body needs to be active in order to remain flexible, stave off illness, restore itself, and offset the inevitable stresses of our daily lives. And did you know that aerobic exercise is the only way of growing new neurons (a process known as neurogenesis)? This perfectly represents the mind-body connection. You get to decide on what type of exercise to do, because the bottom line is, whatever you enjoy, you will do! There is truly something for everyone, so go for what suits you and your lifestyle. And by all means, utilize the principles of the subconscious to ramp up your self-care.

1. Be accountable about where you are physically. What is your starting point? Are you physically unfit? Are you somewhat fit, with room for improvement?

2. Your higher self knows the fitness level perfect for your needs. Don’t push yourself to try an intense spin class if that doesn’t feel right. Maybe what you need is a long walk in nature instead. And vice versa.

3. Do you move toward health and fitness or away from fatness and sickness? What is your internal motivator? Remember—it is easier and more powerful to move toward what’s positive than away from the negative.

4. Do you have the support of friends and family to take on a healthier mind-set and routine? Surround yourself with doers not talkers, movers not sitters.

5. You are going to give it your all (energy and commitment) in order to get your all (fitness and optimal health).

6. Your fit and healthy body will be your vehicle for your time here. It will support your work and play, your desired lifestyle. You cannot play big unless your body is ready to play big.

We cannot be our best selves—body, mind, spirit—unless our vessel is strong, supple, energetic, and well-tended.

Taking good care of the bodies we inhabit on this earth is a must. I urge you not to let contrast be your teacher. We all know that we only really notice our good health after sickness. But daily care will keep you in your best performance.

Excerpted with permission from SUBCONSCIOUS POWER: Use Your Inner Mind to Create the Life You’ve Always Wanted by Kimberly Friedmutter, published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 2019 by KBF Entertainment LLC.

About The Author

Kimberly Friedmutter is a world-renowned board-certified hypnotherapist who works with some of Hollywood’s best-known luminaries, titans of industry, and leaders around the globe. Kimberly is a member of the prestigious UCLA Health Systems Board, the American Board of Hypnotherapy, the Association for Integrative Psychology, and the International Hypnosis Federation. She is also a certified neuro-linguistic programming trainer. Learn more at kimberlyfriedmutter.com

photo: aaron ledesma

The Power of Epigenetics

I’ve always been fascinated by the ways our bodies want to be healthy, and I’ve spent most of my life learning how to help them get there. As an undergraduate, I studied cell and molecular biology. I then became a naturopathic physician—a science-based practitioner who relies on natural methods to restore balance and optimize health. As I worked with patients, I realized that I also needed to become a specialist in environmental medicine, discovering both how the chemicals in our environment undermine our health and what we can do to detoxify our bodies. What made all my diverse studies come together was the field of epigenetics: the many, many factors that can influence how our genes are expressed. I had always understood how powerful genes can be. But wow, was I thrilled to discover that we don’t have to bow down and submit to our DNA. Instead, we can work with our genes to create optimal health and, in a way, not exacerbate genetic mutations inside our bodies—if only we know how. One of the most important pieces of the genetic puzzle is a type of variation known as a SNP (pronounced “snip”), which is short for single-nucleotide polymorphism. So far, roughly ten million SNPs have been identified in the human genome, with each of us having over a million. Most of those SNPs don’t seem to affect us very much. Yes, they represent a slight variation or abnormality in various genes, but so far as we know, those variations don’t seem to make much difference in the way our bodies function. Some SNPs, however, can make a huge difference in our health—and in our personality, as well. For example, SNPs in the MTHFR gene can create a whole host of health problems—everything from irritability and obsessiveness to birth defects and cancer can be a result of an MTHFR gene mutation. (Note that I said can. They don’t have to—that’s what this is all about!) SNPs in the COMT gene can lead to workaholism, sleep issues, PMS, problems with menopause, and again, cancer, along with boundless energy, enthusiasm, and good spirits. (Yes, many SNPs have an upside as well as a downside!) Health issues that had puzzled my clients for years suddenly made sense when they discovered through our work together that their SNPs had at least partly created those issues. Problems that had seemed overwhelming—even dooming—became manageable as clients learned that they could use diet and lifestyle to reshape their genes’ behavior. I experienced that kind of aha moment myself when I discovered that I have at least three significant SNPs. I finally understood something about why I’m so focused and determined—some might say obsessive! Remember the MTHFR symptoms I mentioned earlier? I also saw why I can suddenly become irritable at a moment’s notice, and why I react so intensely to certain chemicals and fumes. It was a relief to have this new understanding: things made sense to me in a way they never had before, plus I had some new solutions I could rely on. As you read this, you’ll have the chance to make the same kind of exciting discoveries about yourself. Most important, learning about my SNPs helped me understand some of the misconceptions about methylation disorders better and empowered me to take charge of my health. Finally, I could support my body and brain with the diet and lifestyle that they needed. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was working at the top of my potential. I wanted my patients to have the same experience—heck, I wanted everybody to hit that high. So I began to develop a program for cleaning up our “dirty genes”: what we should eat, which supplements could help, and how to create a “clean genes” lifestyle. I wanted us to be like that epigenetically supported mouse, glowing and healthy, no matter which genes life has dealt us. I knew that if I could just delve deeply enough, I’d find the answers. And now, ten years later, I’m proud to say that I have. Oh, there’s still a ton more I have to learn—the whole field of epigenetics is just getting started, and we’re making new discoveries every day. I spend a big portion of every week doing my own research, and another big chunk of time reading the studies that my colleagues turn out. It’s more than one person could ever keep up with—and that’s the good news. In another ten years, I’m fully confident, we’re going to have the power to take charge of our health in ways we can’t even imagine.

Are Your Dirty Genes Making You Sick?

You’ve probably heard that your genes affect how healthy you can be. Almost certainly, your doctor has told you that because of the conditions that run in your family, you may be vulnerable to heart disease, depression, anxiety, and/or other disorders. Most of the time, this news makes people feel discouraged. “I’m scared,” they tell me. “My genes are a mess. I’ve just gotta make the best of it.” No way! After years of research in the new science of gene abnormalities and methylation disorders, and having successfully treated thousands of clients, including my family and myself, I’m offering you an exciting new approach: a proven method to clean up your genetic limitations and create a healthier, more vibrant you. So let me say it loud and clear: Your genes are not your destiny! But perhaps you’ve been taught that they are. Perhaps, like most people, you’ve been told that you inherited a “master plan”—characteristics that are written in stone from the moment of your conception until the day you die. In this view, your genes are a stern committee of judges handing down a life sentence. “Hmm,” your genes seem to say. “Let’s give this woman depression, which she gets from her mother. And let’s throw in some heart disease, which runs on her father’s side. How about adding in a shy, anxious personality, which she gets from her grandmother? We’re almost done, but let’s throw in one more ingredient—a mild case of ADHD, nothing clinical. But, like two of her uncles, she’s always going to have a hard time focusing. There—all done! Good luck, lady! Enjoy the destiny that we’ve written for you, because there is absolutely nothing you can do to change it!” Pretty bleak, right? Luckily, it’s wrong. Far from being written in stone, your genetic destiny is more like a document written in the Cloud—you get to edit and revise it every moment of your life. Every time you drink a soda, barrel through on four hours of sleep, use a shampoo loaded with industrial chemicals, or hit a stress bomb at your job, you’re putting the negative part of the document in giant type. And every time you eat some organic leafy greens, get a good night’s sleep, use a chemical-free shampoo, laugh with friends, or do some yoga, you’re enlarging the positive part of the document while reducing the negative part—genetic mutations, specifically—to a font so small, it might as well not be there at all. Your genes don’t lay down the law; they negotiate with you. They don’t even speak with a single voice. They’re a committee, and sometimes they disagree with each other. Some of the folks on that committee are harsh. They’re constantly shouting, “Heart disease!” or “Depression!” or “Crippling lack of confidence!” And if you don’t know the right way to work with them, those loud, harsh voices might rule the day. But—and here’s how this is going to change your life—if you do know how to work with your “gene committee,” you can produce a much better outcome. You can get those loud negative voices to tone it down or even shut up completely. At the same time, you can turn up the volume on the voices that are saying, “Balanced mood!” “Healthy heart!” and “Self-confidence!” So get ready to clean your dirty genes, folks, because that’s exactly what you’re going to do. In the pages to come and in my book Dirty Genes, you’ll find out how to change your genes and make the most of your genetic inheritance, now and for the rest of your life.

Are Your Genes Dirty? Some Common Symptoms

+ Aching joints and/or muscles + Acid reflux/heartburn + Acne + Allergic reactions + Anger and aggression + Anxiety + Attention issues + Blood sugar spikes and crashes + Brain fog + Cold hands and feet + Constipation + Cravings, especially for carbs and sugar + Depression + Diarrhea + Edginess + Fatigue + Fibromyalgia + Food intolerance + Gallstones + Gas and bloating + Headache/migraine + Heart racing + Indigestion + Insomnia + Irritability + Itchy skin + Menopause/perimenopause symptoms + Mood swings + Nosebleeds + Obesity/weight gain + Obsessiveness + Overreactive startle reflex + PMS / difficult periods + Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) + Rosacea + Runny nose / congestion + Sweating + Unexplained symptoms—just “not feeling right” + Workaholism

What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You—But I Will

If you’ve had trouble with any of the symptoms I’ve just listed, your doctor might have told you that you’re not really sick. Or maybe you’ve been offered drugs to medicate the symptoms—antibiotics, painkillers, antacids, antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications—without much attention to the underlying issues that produce those symptoms of methylation disorders. Or perhaps you’ve been one of the lucky ones. Perhaps you’ve found a naturopathic physician, functional/integrative MD, osteopath, nurse practitioner, nutritionist, chiropractor, or other health professional who has helped you restore health and wellness through diet, lifestyle, and other natural means. Even so, your treatment is incomplete if you haven’t learned about dirty genes, the root cause of many of the conditions you’re struggling with. That’s because epigenetics—modifying genetic expression to improve your life and health—is a cutting-edge aspect of medicine that most practitioners don’t understand. I’m one of the few people who have figured out how to translate genetic research into concrete actions that will improve your health, which is why so many leading health-care specialists come to me for training and advice. That’s why I spend so much of my time lecturing and consulting with physicians and providers—conventional, natural, and otherwise—as well as reading other people’s studies, doing my own research, and helping others regain their health. As a result, the suggestions here are based on the very latest scientific material. Most health-care providers simply aren’t aware of this information, though I’d be willing to bet that in a few years, programs like the one in my book, including answers on how to change your genes, will be widespread, even standard. Meanwhile, once you understand what makes your genes dirty and how to clean them up, you’ll feel better than you ever thought you could.

Your Dynamic Genes

Remember, every moment of every day, your genes are working on that document about your health. They can write it in a way you like or a way you don’t like—but they’re always writing. And whether you know it or not, so are you. For example, your genes keep telling your body, “Rebuild your skin!” As you know if you exfoliate, your skin is constantly dying and being replaced. So every moment of every day, your genes are adding to the document, telling your body to get on with the repair. What kind of document do you think they write if you eat a high-sugar diet, skimp on sleep, or stress yourself out for days on end? Hmm, maybe something like: “Please give this woman dull, lackluster skin with plenty of acne and maybe a touch of rosacea.” On the other hand, provide your genes with healthy fats, plenty of sleep, and time to chill, and you’re going to see a different document: “This one gets healthy, glowing skin that makes her look ten years younger!” Your genes won’t stop writing until the day you die. But what they write is up to you. Likewise, your genes are constantly producing documents about your gut lining, which is repaired and rebuilt every seven days. If you eat right and live right, you’re going to get away from genetic mutations and have a great document: “Keep that guy’s gut strong and healthy!” If you mess up your genes with poor diet and lifestyle, your document probably says something like: “Since this man is giving me so much extra work to do, I can’t focus on repairing his gut lining. He’s also not providing me the tools I need. So give this man a weak gut lining—the kind that lets food leak through.” Watch out for all the weight gain, immune issues, and other problems that are likely to follow! Now here’s my personal favorite: the memo about your mind. Those instructions involve neurotransmitters—biochemicals such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine that govern your thoughts, moods, and emotions. Your brain runs on thousands of biochemical reactions, and there are countless ways the process can go wrong. Your goal is to give your genes whatever they need to produce an uplifting memo: “Keep this person sharp, focused, calm, and full of energy during the day, and relaxed, calm, and ready to sleep at night.” The memo you don’t want mentions forgetfulness, depression, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, addictions, and brain fog. So yes, your genes write your life memo. But what they write is largely up to you. Sound good? Then let’s get started.

How Gene Mutations Mess with Your Health

Most likely, neither you nor your doctor is used to thinking about your genes as an active, dynamic factor affecting your present-day health. Instead, your genes seem like an unchangeable, unavoidable set of hard-wired instructions passed on from your parents at the moment of conception. I want you to shift that mindset. Instead of seeing your genetic inheritance as a fixed set of instructions from the past—instructions written on a stone tablet handed down from the ancestors—I want you to see your genes as active participants in your daily health. Right now, while you’re reading this, thousands of genes throughout your body are giving instructions—to your brain, digestive tract, skin, heart, liver, and many other aspects of your anatomy. Those genetic instructions shape every facet of your experience and your health, and your genes are handing them out every single second. With every breath you take, every object you touch, every thought you have, you give your genes instructions—and they respond, leading to epigenetic changes. Let’s say you eat a big lunch—too big, more than your body can handle. Oops! Your genes are overloaded. They stagger under the burden of all that food. They tell your metabolism to slow way down. They have trouble methylating—a key process that facilitates at least two hundred functions in your body, from skin repair, digestion, and detoxification to mood balance and clear thought. Because of the challenge posed by that overly large meal, hundreds of instructions are being given differently—and badly. You might promise yourself to eat light that night to make up for it, and maybe you even will. But that won’t prevent the damage you inflicted at lunchtime, when you didn’t give your genes the conditions they needed to do their job. Or let’s say you stayed up late last night, playing a video game or answering email or binge-watching your favorite show. Now the alarm is going off and you can barely drag yourself out of bed. “I’ll make up for it this weekend,” you promise yourself—and maybe you will. Meanwhile, though, your genes are living in the present, and they aren’t happy about the lack of sleep. They give instructions that alter your digestion, your mood, your metabolism, and your brain, so that right now—not when you were first born, but now—your health shifts and slips and declines a little bit. Of course, if most of the time you’re eating well and sleeping deeply and limiting your toxic exposure and managing your stress, an occasional big meal or late night doesn’t make all that much difference. Sure, your genes alter their responses for a little while, but your body is strong and resilient, and it can handle the extra challenge. If one gene staggers, a second one steps up. If that second gene stumbles, a third one takes over. Your body has lots of built-in backups, which is terrific. However, if you consistently give your genes poor working conditions, they’re going to consistently hand out poor instructions and may result in methylation disorders in the process. Why? Because each backup gene is going to push on the next backup gene, one after the other after the other, and before you know it, too many of your genes are struggling. Your health will suffer, and in way too many cases your doctor won’t be able to do much more than prescribe a few drugs to medicate your symptoms. I want something better for you—a lot better. I want you to give your genes exactly what they need to hand out the instructions for perfect health. I want your first-line genes working optimally as often as possible, putting the least possible strain on your backups. I want all your genes cooperating smoothly to give you glowing skin and a healthy weight and tons of energy and a clear, sharp mind. I want you feeling calm and enthusiastic and ready to go, and I want you sleeping so deeply at night that you wake up each morning feeling terrific. If you want that for yourself, listen up: The way to get optimal health is by supporting your genes.

Two Types of Dirty Genes

You have two types of dirty genes—both of which can give you a host of symptoms and disorders.

Some Genes Are “Born Dirty”

The scientific name for a born-dirty gene is genetic polymorphism, which is a fancy way of saying “genetic variation” or “genetic mutations” in some cases. As we saw in the introduction, these genes are also called single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs—pronounced “snips.” These dirty genes—and each of us has several—can do a full-scale number on your body and your brain. They help determine whether you’re heavy or slim, sluggish or energized, depressed or optimistic, anxious or calm. We have about twenty thousand genes in our body. There are more than 10 million known genetic polymorphisms (SNPs), and one person can have as many as 1.2 million of them. However, only about 40,000 are known to potentially alter your genetic function. We’re going to zero in on the key SNPs in the seven genes most likely to have the biggest impact on your health. I chose these Super Seven because each of them influences hundreds of other genes. If any of these seven genes are dirty, you can be sure they’re making your other genes dirty, too. When my clients first discover that they were born with SNPs, many of them are upset. As Taylor said, “I feel like a mutant.” But in fact, we’re all mutants—that is, every one of us is loaded with SNPs. It’s just part of the magnificent variety of the human race—what enables each of us to be unique. The good news is that once you know which SNPs you have, your health issues start to make a lot more sense—and your emotional issues do, too. If you suffer from migraines, can’t seem to fall asleep at night, or struggle with a hair-trigger temper, SNPs may be at the root of your problem and hasten the development of methylation disorders. SNPs also contribute to anxiety, depression, irritability, workaholism, obsessiveness, difficulty paying attention, trouble winding down, and a whole bunch of other things that you might never have realized had a genetic and biochemical basis. SNPs also contribute to various strengths, such as boundless energy, good spirits, enthusiasm, dedication, determination, and laser-sharp focus. The really good news is that you get to work with your SNPs, turning up the volume on your strengths and turning down the volume on your weak points. Through the Clean Genes Protocol, you can alter your lifestyle, diet, and environment to maximize the positives and mute the negatives, so that what you once thought was “normal” for you may be nothing of the kind. How awesome is that?

Some Genes Just “Act Dirty”

Sometimes a gene without a SNP creates problems for you anyway. That might be because your genes aren’t getting the nutrients, lifestyle, or environment that they need to function at their best—too few vitamins, too little sleep, too many chemicals, too much stress. A better diet and lifestyle might inspire your genes to behave differently. The scientific name for this is genetic expression: the way your genes express themselves in response to your environment, diet, lifestyle, and mindset. Depending on which of your genes are expressed, and how, you can be healthy, energized, and glowing. Alternatively, you might be loaded down with a whole slew of symptoms: obesity, anxiety, depression, acne, headaches, fatigue, achy joints, poor digestion. If your genes act dirty enough, you might even face such serious conditions as autoimmune disorders, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other forms of genetic mutations. Once again, your Clean Genes Protocol comes to the rescue. If you give your genes the diet and lifestyle that they need, they’ll act clean instead of dirty, and you can optimize your health, your mental outlook, and your life.

Meet Your Dirty Genes

Here are the seven genes—I call them the Super Seven—that we target with the Clean Genes Protocol. I chose them because they’re extremely common, have been well researched, and have the most far-reaching effects on your body. If these guys are dirty—whether born dirty or just acting dirty—the rest of your genes will be gunked up, too. Some genetic mutations are hard to scrub. Not these seven. They are easily cleaned up through diet and lifestyle changes. Being born with dirty genes has an upside as well as a downside. Born-dirty genes might put you at risk for some nasty health challenges— but they also help to shape your personality, activating strengths as well as weaknesses. Your goal is to work with diet, chemical exposure, and lifestyle to maximize the benefits while minimizing the drawbacks.

1. MTHFR, the methylation master gene

This gene initiates your ability to methylate, a key process that affects your stress response, inflammation, brain chemistry, energy production, immune response, detoxification, antioxidant production, cell repair, and genetic expression, which, if not taken care properly, could lead to methylation disorders.

When MTHFR is born dirty:

+ Strengths: intensity, alertness, productivity, focus, improved DNA repair, decreased risk of colon cancer

+ Weaknesses: depression, anxiety, autoimmunity, migraines, increased risk of stomach cancer, autism, pregnancy complications, Down syndrome, birth defects, and cardiovascular conditions such as heart attack, stroke, and thrombosis

2. COMT, the gene whose SNPs help determine whether you’re focused and buoyant, or laid-back and calm

COMT and its SNPs have powerful effects on mood, focus, and how your body handles estrogen, a key factor in the menstrual cycle, in fibroids, in some estrogen-sensitive cancers and other genetic mutations.

When COMT is born dirty:

+ Strengths: focus, tons of energy and alertness, good spirits, glowing skin

+ Weaknesses: irritability, insomnia, anxiety, fibroids, increased risk of estrogen-sensitive cancers, test anxiety, neurological disorders, migraines, PMS, impatience, vulnerability to addictions

3. DAO, the gene whose SNPs can make you super sensitive to certain foods and chemicals

When this gene is dirty, aside from the development of methylation disorders, it affects your response to the histamine that lurks in various foods and beverages and that’s also produced by some gut bacteria, affecting your likelihood of food sensitivities and allergic reactions.

When DAO is born dirty:

+ Strengths: immediate awareness of allergens and trigger foods (so you can get them out of your diet before they cause serious long-term problems)

+ Weaknesses: food sensitivities, pregnancy complications, leaky gut syndrome, allergic reactions, the risk of more serious conditions such as autoimmunity

4. MAOA, the gene that affects mood swings and carb cravings

This gene helps govern your levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin: key brain chemicals that affect mood, alertness, energy, vulnerability to addictions, self-confidence, and sleep.

When MAOA is born dirty:

+ Strengths: energy, self-confidence, focus, “highs” of productivity and joy

+ Weaknesses: mood swings, carb cravings, irritability, headaches, insomnia, addictions

5. GST/GPX, the gene(s) that can create detox dilemmas

A dirty GST or GPX affects your body’s ability to rid itself of chemicals.

When GST/GPX is born dirty:

+ Strengths: immediate awareness of potentially harmful chemicals (before they have the chance to make you really sick), improved response to chemotherapy

+ Weaknesses: supersensitivity to potentially harmful chemicals (with responses ranging from mild symptoms to serious autoimmune disorders and cancers), increased DNA damage (which increases the risk of cancer)

6. NOS3, the gene that can create heart issues

NOS3 affects your production of nitric oxide, which is a major factor in heart health, affecting such processes as blood flow and blood vessel formation.

When NOS3 is born dirty:

+ Strengths: decreased blood vessel formation (angiogenesis) during cancer, which reduces the growth of cancer

+ Weaknesses: headaches, high blood pressure, vulnerability to heart disease and heart attack, dementia

7. PEMT, the gene that supports your cell membranes and liver

This gene affects your body’s ability to produce phosphatidylcholine, an essential compound that you need to maintain cell membranes, bile flow, muscle health, and brain development.

When PEMT is born dirty:

+ Strengths: more support for methylation, better response to chemotherapy

+ Weaknesses: gallbladder disorders, small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), pregnancy complications, cell membrane weakness, muscle pain

What Makes Your Genes Act Dirty?

Even if you don’t have a SNP in any of your seven key genes, you might still be gunking up those genes with the wrong diet and lifestyle, which are two of the main factors that fuel genetic mutations. As a result, they can’t do the jobs you desperately need them to do—metabolize nutrients, balance your brain chemistry, repair damaged cells, and a hundred and one other tasks. What happens? You gain weight, feel sluggish, get depressed, become anxious, lose your ability to focus, develop acne, get headaches… the dirty list goes on and on. If you’re taking antacids, for example, you’re messing with many major genes, including MTHFR, MAOA, and DAO. If you’re taking metformin, a common medication for diabetes, you’re disrupting the function of your MAOA and DAO. Birth-control pills, hormone replacement therapy, and even bioidentical hormones can strain your MTHFR and COMT. Even if you’re not taking medications, your genetic expression can be disrupted by poor diet, lack of exercise, too much exercise, not enough sleep, environmental toxins, and plain old everyday stress—and those are just the most common problems. Long story short, there’s a whole laundry list of factors that might be dirtying up your genes—and your doctor probably has no idea. To make matters worse, every additional factor that makes your genes dirty changes the whole picture and may even cause you severe forms of methylation disorders. So if you’re only eating too much sugar, that’s one problem. But if you’re also eating too many carbs, now you have two problems—and a much wider and more complex effect. If, in addition, you’re not getting good sleep, you’ve just created more damage. That plus stress—even more! Pretty soon, you’ve generated a cumulative effect that makes the whole problem even worse. Instead of 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4, you get 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 50. Why? Because all your genes interact with one another. When one gene gets dirty, it doesn’t work properly, so several more genes step up to help—and now suddenly they get dirty, too. Your body isn’t a set of discrete compartments that each work separately. It’s one amazing interactive system in which problems spread and multiply with amazing speed. The good news is that health can also spread and multiply in amazing ways. When you clean up your dirty DNA mutations, you start feeling terrific in ways you never even imagined. Your mood improves—and that chronic muscle pain you’ve been working through stops aching. Your brain fog clears—and you’ve got tons more energy. Your allergy symptoms disappear—and you begin to lose some weight. This is why I’m so eager for you to clean up your genes so you can avoid genetic mutations. If your dirty genes were born clean but became dirty, cleaning them up gives you a tremendous boost. And if some of your genes were born dirty, giving them the support they need can make a world of difference.

What Dirties Up Your Genes?

Diet

+ Too many carbs

+ Too much sugar

+ Too much protein

+ Not enough protein

+ Not enough healthy fat

+ A shortage of nutrients that your genes need to work properly, such as B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin D, copper, and zinc

Exercise

+ Sedentary lifestyle

+ Overtraining

+ Electrolyte deficiency

+ Dehydration

Sleep

+ Not enough deep, restorative sleep

+ Going to bed late, getting up late

+ Irregular sleep patterns

Environmental Toxins

+ “Dirty” food

+ “Dirty” water

+ “Dirty” air—including indoor air

+ “Dirty” products: sprays, cleaners, cosmetics, paints, pesticides, herbicides

Stress

+ Physical stress: long-term illness, chronic infections, food intolerance/allergies, insufficient sleep

+ Psychological stress: issues at work, at home, with your loved ones, with life

The Clean Genes Protocol: How to Change Your DNA

Following is your Clean Genes Protocol—a lifelong program to keep your genes clean and avoid bad genetic change as you optimize your health. Although you may periodically add in Spot Cleaning from the second step of the program, which is outlined in my book, this is the approach to diet and lifestyle that will best support your genes for the rest of your life. Here the Clean Genes Protocol is outlined in broad brush strokes, as an introduction. Fear not, though: my book Dirty Genes addresses all the components—diet, exercise, and so on—in greater detail.

Diet

+ Eat appropriate amounts of protein and healthy fat.

+ Make sure to get all the nutrients that your genes need to work properly, such as B vitamins, vitamin C, copper, and zinc.

+ Cut out cow’s milk dairy, gluten, excess carbs, and white sugar.

+ Avoid foods high in pesticides, herbicides, preservatives, and/or artificial ingredients.

+ Avoid fermented foods, leftovers, or food that’s likely to contain excess bacteria if you find they trigger symptoms.

+ Avoid foods that are high in histamines: wine, some types of cheese, and smoked and/or preserved meat and fish, if you’re particularly susceptible.

+ Eat in moderation: stop eating when you’re 80 percent full.

+ Avoid snacks and late-night meals.

Exercise

+ Get the right amount of exercise for your body—not too much and not too little.

+ Exercise when you’re rested and only until you’re pleasantly tired. Don’t exhaust yourself, and don’t force it.

+ Exercise when it doesn’t negatively impact your sleep. Don’t skimp on sleep to exercise; don’t exercise later in the evening if it keeps you from falling asleep.

Sleep

+ Make trying for deep, restful sleep a priority.

+ Consistently match your sleep schedule to nature’s circadian rhythms: asleep by 10:30 p.m., awake seven to eight hours later.

+ Avoid electronic screens in the hour before bed.

+ Block out or turn off artificial lights. Natural moonlight is great.

Environmental Toxins

+ Eat organic food or at least avoid the “dirtiest” conventional foods.

+ Filter the water you use for drinking, cooking, and bathing.

+ Avoid the use of household and garden chemicals.

+ Avoid all plastic containers for your food and water, especially BPA plastic and especially in the microwave. Ideally, store and cook foods only in glass or stainless steel.

+ Follow guidelines to keep indoor air clean, bearing in mind that indoor air is often more toxic than the air outdoors.

Stress

+ Attend to sources of physical stress: long-term illness, chronic infections, food intolerances/allergies, insufficient sleep.

+ Reduce and relieve psychological stress: issues at work, at home, with your loved ones, with life.

Profiles and Personalities

Any one gene is just a single factor in your genetic profile—let alone in your entire personality. But to give you some idea of how your genetic profile might help shape your temperament, here are some quick personality sketches that I’ve observed in conjunction with the seven key genes when they’re dirty: MTHFR Among the many MTHFR symptoms are the changes in one’s mood. Some days you’re blue and depressed, while other days you’re anxious. On good days, your focus is great and you get stuff done. On bad days, you have performance anxiety, a hair-trigger temper, and/or headaches—or maybe you just feel grumpy. After eating a salad you tend to feel great, but you’ve never paid attention to that because, after all, it’s just a salad. COMT (Slow) Man, you’re on fire! ADHD?—not in this house. You’re cranking away on several projects and already eager for the next one or five. As you lie down to sleep, you’re still cranking away. After tossing and turning, you finally doze off, dreaming of tomorrow’s tasks. Tomorrow arrives. Coffee is needed. Once again, you’re off and running. You put pressure on yourself, and if you’re not accomplishing what you need to, anxiety sets in, so you focus harder to get everything done. And you do get it done. Your colleague makes fun of you for working overtime on a particular project, and you snap at her. As usual, you’re quick to be irritated. In addition, sometimes you have an extreme sensitivity to pain and can be plagued with headaches. COMT (Fast) Look at that blinking light! Did you see that dog over there? Man, I wish I could read a book, but I just can’t focus. You’re always jumping from one task to another, and it’s hard to get much done. Friends have suggested that you might have ADHD. You also love shopping and buying new things! The problem is, you feel great buying them, but the next day the “shopping high” wears off, and you find that you need to buy something else or you start feeling blue. It’s getting expensive and time-consuming. Oh—and hugs! They’re awesome! The more hugs you get, the better you feel. DAO You are so tired of not knowing what you can and can’t eat. One meal you’re good, and the next you feel awful: throbbing head, irritable mood, sweaty body, racing heart, itchy skin, bleeding nose. Perhaps you’ve even spent a ton of money on food allergy testing—and found nothing! So frustrating. You keep limiting your foods one by one in hopes of identifying the culprit, but it’s a never-ending battle. GST/GSX Ever since you figured out that chemicals and smells make you feel sick, you’ve been on a mission to get rid of such stuff from your home. That neighbor of yours is using scented dryer sheets—again! Those give you a headache within seconds. Your friends wonder why you’re such a clean freak. But you know that you’re tuned in and sensitive to these things because you have to be. MAOA (Fast) Carbs. CARBS! Pleeease, get me some of those! Your grocery cart looks like you work for the grain and chocolate industry! You feel so great eating carb-laden foods. You know you shouldn’t, but when you don’t, you feel blue. The problem is, eating carbs picks you up only for a moment or two; then you crash. So what do you do then? You eat more carbs. You try diet after diet, but they just make you feel depressed. You’re sick of gaining weight, but you feel stuck in that pattern. You don’t want to be on antidepressants, but you feel like you can’t keep going this way. MAOA (Slow) You’re easily startled and quick to become anxious or irritated. You can become aggressive and later feel bad for overreacting. You just can’t seem to help it. You always have to watch out for headaches, especially when you eat cheese or chocolate and drink wine. Falling asleep at night is always tough, but once you do, at least you sleep soundly through the night. NOS3 You’re freaking out. Your dad, uncle, grandma, and grandpa all had significant heart problems when they were around fifty years old, and now you’re getting there. Your doctors check your heart and say it looks okay—but are they checking everything they need to, or are they missing something? Your hands and feet are constantly cold, but your doctors say that’s nothing to worry about. You need answers, because this family history is weighing on you. PEMT Ever since you switched to a vegan or vegetarian diet, you’ve felt just a bit off. Your mind isn’t as sharp, you’re forgetting things, and you’ve got aches and pains all over your body. As an omnivore, you felt good overall, though you did have some aches and pains. Your liver felt heavy then, and it still does—just under your right-side ribcage. Fatty foods just don’t sit right with you either. Now your doctor has said that you have gallstones and need to have your gallbladder taken out. No! There must be a way to save it.

What’s Your Genetic Profile?

If you want to know your own genetic profile, there are a few ways to go about it. The most expensive route is to get yourself tested by a company like 23andMe or Genos Research. At that point, you’ll know exactly where all your SNPs are—but you won’t necessarily know what those results mean. Another route is to invest four weeks in my book’s Clean Genes Protocol. Most people I know, including health professionals, get genetic testing results back and focus only on the genes. The problem is, that genetic report is a piece of paper showing your genetic susceptibility—not your genetic destiny! In other words, your genetic profile is not you. Most of the folks who send away for genetic testing are unaware that a gene born clean can easily become dirty. When they read that their MTHFR is normal, they celebrate instead of realizing that—due to diet and lifestyle—it might in fact be super dirty. Even if your MTHFR was born dirty or you are showing no symptoms of an MTHFR gene mutation, you don’t want to make the common mistake of thinking that you can target it with a magical methylfolate supplement or nutrition vitamin B12 supplement and all will be well. Many of the people who send away for their genetic profile end up following simplistic instructions for MTHFR treatment, thereby creating significant side effects and making themselves worse off than they were before. Here’s the bottom line: the only way to truly help your dirty genes is by remaining on the Clean Genes Protocol, a lifelong approach to diet and lifestyle, including a specific MTHFR diet. That’s how I do it. That’s how my family does it. That’s how the doctors I’ve trained around the world encourage their patients to do it. The result? Healthier, happier lives. I’ll tell you what I tell all of them: there are no shortcuts. The tortoise always wins the race. Because your genes can give you problems whether they’re born dirty or simply acting dirty, I want you to know how to keep all seven of these important genes clean and healthy, giving them all the support they need. Out of the roughly twenty thousand genes in your body, these seven are critical to optimal health, every day of your life. When I say you’re going to scrub your dirty genes clean, I’m not saying that you’re going to change your basic personality or remove all medical risk. I’m saying that you’ll learn to work with your genes, giving them all the support they need. That way, you can celebrate your unique temperament—and safeguard your health from genetic mutations. Every vehicle drives differently. By understanding your genetics, you gain the opportunity and ability to make choices that will give you a smooth and enjoyable ride throughout your life. Excerpted with permission from Dirty Genes: A Breakthrough Program to Treat the Root Cause of Illness and Optimize Your Health by Dr. Ben Lynch. Available online at Amazon.com.

About The Authors Dr. Benjamin Lynch, N.D., received his Cell and Molecular Biology B.S. from the University of Washington and his doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine from Bastyr University. His passion for identifying the cause of disease directed him toward nutrigenomics and methylation dysfunction. Currently, he researches, writes, and presents worldwide on the topic of MTHFR gene mutations, methylation defects, and genetic control. Dr. Lynch is the President of seekinghealth.com, a supplement company oriented toward disease prevention and health promotion. Learn more at drbenlynch.com.

How to Protect Yourself from EMR and Harmful Energies in Your Home

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of research showing that if you want to achieve the highest levels of health and wellbeing you are capable of, then it’s extremely important to take steps to protect your body from the increasing amount of harmful electromagnetic radiation and environmental stressors that our modern technologies and lifestyles are broadcasting into the spaces and places where we live, work, and sleep. Whether you are aware of it or not, every second of every day your body is being bathed in a sea of health-deteriorating electromagnetic radiation (EMR) that’s being emitted from cell phones, wi-fi, computers, the wiring in walls, cell towers, and much more. All of which disrupt the functioning of your cells, nervous system, and brain, contributing to significant levels of stress and inflammation in your body and its immune system. And while it’s tempting to think this only happens when you are out in the world, or in urban areas, researchers have consistently found that it is typically at home where people are exposed to the highest levels of this health-deteriorating electromagnetic radiation. The one place where we spend the majority of our time and that should be the most relaxing and rejuvenating is often the most stressful to our body due to the impact of EMR-emitting technologies like wi-fi, cell phones, appliances, and old wiring in homes.

How to Protect Yourself From EMR in Your Home and Restore Optimal Health

Thankfully, there are just as many researchers and engineers working on solutions to the problem as there are those who are studying it. And what’s even better news is that over the last few decades, a number of powerful, cutting-edge technologies have been developed to eliminate the effects of EMR, protect the nervous system from stress, and help restore the body’s optimal functioning. A handful of the best of these devices go far beyond just protecting and restoring health, but have incredibly beneficial effects on your consciousness, mood, sleep, meditation, and peace of mind as well. However, not all of these devices are created equal, and as part of our mission here at Conscious Lifestyle Magazine to help people reach peak levels of health and consciousness, we’ve been testing out countless technologies over the years to help discover the most effective ones. Recently, we came across something that we feel is a breakthrough in this space: Somavedic.

Somavedic

Having tried many devices over the years claiming to help reduce the effects of electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) and radiation (EMR) and improve health, we’ve got a good handle on what works and what’s hype. When we got our hands on the Somavedic last month, we were deeply impressed. First of all, unlike many devices, the Somavedic has solid research behind it, showing that it substantially helps to protect against the negative effects of EMF/EMR, increase calmness, and has positive effects on stress and biomarkers of blood health, which is an important part of verifying that the effects of a device are not just placebo but actually have a meaningful impact. Second, from the moment we plugged the Somavedic in, we could instantly feel its soothing effects on our bodies and minds. Within seconds of turning it on, it felt like our nervous systems were being wrapped in a soft and soothing blanket that was melting away stress and tension. That night we slept deeper than we had in many months, with more vivid dreams, waking up refreshed and rejuvenated, despite it being well over 50 feet away on the other side of the house. This is because the Somavedic creates a large harmonic field that extends 100 feet in any direction, offering coverage for even quite large houses. In the days that followed, we noticed our meditations were deeper, that we felt calmer and happier, and that our bodies were stronger and more resilient to things that would normally stress us out. All of these benefits are consistent with the effects that the vast majority of Somavedic users report: + Improved sleep and feelings of calmness + Reduction in headaches and stress + Better mood, increased energy, and greater peace of mind + Reduction of inflammation, lowering the levels of free radicals + Decreases in symptoms of electrosensitivity

How it Works

From the get go, we were interested in exactly how Somavedic works; and if you’re like us, you probably have a long list of questions about this as well. In order to learn all about how this new device was radically upgrading our lives, we interviewed one of the key people on their team who has been working closely with the founder and brilliant engineer behind the product. In short, the Somavedic technology works by creating a more coherent, natural environment that activates self-healing process in the body and mind. Inside the beautiful glass encasing on the outside of the Somavedic is a disc composed of specific minerals, crystals, and elements that is charged and enhanced by the shape of the glass such that the healing and protective properties of these minerals, crystals, and elements is amplified greatly to create a protective, health-rejuvenating field in the space inside your home around the device. This biologically supportive environment protects you on a cellular level from the unwanted effects of electromagnetic frequencies (EMF), viruses, mold, free radicals, and geopathic stress. These effects are so pronounced; in fact, the Somavedic is used in doctors’ offices and therapy spaces throughout the world, with doctors reporting increased energy, focus, and productivity, as well as a positive effect on patients. And after having it in our space for the last few months, we can see why: this is one of the few devices that really works and that you really can feel having a profoundly beneficial effect on your health and consciousness.

The Different Types of Somavedic Devices

Depending on your budget, the size of your space, and the intensity of effects you are looking for, there are different types of Somavedic devices to choose from to suit your needs. Each Somavedic model is made from different types of hand-blown glass and crystals that are combined and configured in various ways to serve a specific purpose and produce a variety of desired benefits. Below is a brief overview of three of our favorite options, and you can find more information about the individual Somavedic products on their site here.

Somavedic Medic Green Ultra

One of our favorite options is the Medic Green Ultra model because it combines a number of benefits including water structuring capabilities for improved hydration and is designed to be the most universal. This green beauty can handle the harmonization of spaces and water anywhere. It eliminates the influences of 3G, 4G, 5G, EMF, geopathic stress, viruses, bacteria, parasites, molds, and free radicals. The corpus is made out of hand-blown yellow glass, which shows off a calming and subtle green glow when plugged in.

Somavedic Traveler

Depending on how much you travel, this option might be the best for you. The Traveler Somavedic is a godsend for anyone who has a long commute by car or spends a lot of time in hotels or coworking spaces with a lot of people. This is the most compact version, which can be plugged in to your care and can easily fit in a purse or briefcase. Although it does not have water structuring capabilities, it eliminates influences from EMF, geopathic stress, viruses, bacteria, parasites, and free radicals.

Somavedic Medic Amber

This Somavedic model is a biohacker’s dream come true. It can easily eliminate the influences from many environmental stressors, including very strong electrosmog, EMR, and EMF. The performance of the Medic Amber is four times greater than the Medic Green Ultra, making it a great option for larger spaces and places with a lot of energy, such as apartment buildings, workplaces, office spaces, shops, hotels conference halls, and electric cars.

Other Somavedic Models

While we’ve mentioned a few of our favorite versions of Somavedic, there are a total of eight models to choose from, including a completely customizable option, the Medic Gold, that is made according to your specific needs and areas of focus. As such, we encourage you to spend some time exploring which option is best for you. To try Somavedic for yourself, use code CLMCALM10 for 10% off of all Somavedic products.Somavedic.com This article is a sponsored post written in collaboration with Somavedic, whose products and ethos comply with Conscious Lifestyle Magazine’s stringent quality and integrity guidelines.

About The Author Meghan McDonald is the Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Conscious Lifestyle Magazine. She holds a master’s degree in social psychology from San Diego State University where she conducted award-winning research into the nature of human social behavior. She is an advocate for many environmental and social justice causes and a champion of social impact-focused brands and products that adhere to high sustainability and ethical standards. As a regular travel and lifestyle contributor to Conscious Lifestyle Magazine, Meghan funnels her extensive knowledge of natural products, organic living, and consumer behavior into researching and reviewing brands and products that promote health, wellbeing, sustainability, equality, and positive social change. She has traveled to over 25 countries and loves exploring diverse destinations worldwide while documenting the local artisans and businesses offering conscious, healthy alternatives.

photo: roberto nickson

Ayurvedic medicine has a rich history, which was originally passed on through the oral tradition, then later recorded in Sanskrit in the four sacred texts called the Vedas. This ancient practice of Ayurveda is all about connecting to ourselves and staying in harmony and balance with the natural world. Ayurvedic rituals aren’t just about preventing diseases rather than simply curing them; they’re also about how to live in a state of vigor and energy. In India, more than 90 percent of the population uses some form of Ayurvedic medicine. While it’s becoming much more popular here in the West, it’s still considered an alternative medical treatment. The theory behind this medicine is that all areas of life impact one’s health. Here in the Western world, we believe in using targeted tactics—generally, prescription medications—to cure specific ailments. Ayurveda views the body as a whole. Like traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda is about the mind, body, and spirit connection. The aim of Ayurvedic daily rituals is to return the body to its original healthy state; true luminous beauty must be supported by health. At the heart of Ayurveda are ojas, our life force, the very essence of our health and well-being. They are our honey, the sap in the tree that is our body. Ojas give us the ability to thrive. When our ojas are strong, our bodies are firm and flexible, our skin is clear and glowing, and our hair is shiny and healthy. Ojas also allow us to overflow with love and compassion. However, the modern world takes its toll on ojas. Constant stress, processed food, technology, overextension, and too much information deplete ojas and dry them out. When we restore them—with meditation, healthy food, and being in tune with the universe—we become radiant. Ridding your body of waste and toxins helps ojas to flourish, as detoxing allows the system to be nourished. The aim of daily Ayurvedic practices is to improve your health. When your body is clear of toxins, it is able to receive the healthy benefits of nutritious food, face masks, and body oils. Rather than promote a harsh, all-at-once approach to detoxing, Ayurveda employs several small daily or weekly practices to help ensure that your body is always detoxing and efficiently processing waste.

Ayurvedic Self-Care Practices

Slowly incorporate these practices into your day. You can begin with something as small as integrating fresh produce into your diet, massaging your feet before bed, or dry brushing your skin in the morning. These Ayurvedic additions to your daily routine will help you to continuously keep your body in a rhythm and in balance. Once you know your body, you can adjust certain practices.

1. Tongue Scraping

Scraping your tongue every morning can give you clues as to how efficiently your digestive system is functioning. If your tongue is very coated, it usually means there is a lot of ama, or toxicity, in your system. With this Ayurvedic morning routine, you can gauge how well your system is flushing out toxins. To scrape the tongue:

+ Use a stainless-steel tongue scraper (which you can find online or in most health food stores) or a spoon. Gently scrape from the back or base of the tongue forward until you have scraped the whole surface, which is typically accomplished with anywhere between seven and fourteen strokes. This clears away any bacteria. Scraping stimulates the gastric and digestive enzymes to wake up and start working.

+ Rinse out your mouth, and proceed with oil pulling as your next Ayurvedic morning ritual.

2. Oil Pulling

During the night, as you sleep, your body builds up toxins while it is in the resting, cleansing state. Oil pulling allows these toxins to be released. As an Ayurvedic ritual, oil pulling should be done first thing in the morning, before you have anything to drink or eat. Coconut, sunflower, and sesame oil all work well, but coconut oil has the added benefit of whitening your teeth. To practice oil pulling:

+ Take a spoonful of oil and swish it in your mouth for fifteen to twenty minutes (this is the recommended period of time, but sometimes I do it for just a few minutes to feel the freshening and teeth-whitening effects of the coconut oil).

+ It is important to keep the oil in your mouth and not to swallow it. It also is wise to spit it out in either the toilet or the trash can, as it can clog the sink.

+ After you finish oil pulling, brush your teeth or rinse out your mouth very well.

3. Dry Brushing

The skin is our largest organ and is responsible for 25% of the body’s ability to detox, yet we tend to focus our beauty and self-care routines on the face and hands when the whole body deserves reverence and respect. In addition to being an Ayurvedic ritual practice, skin brushing for the whole body has been used for ages in Scandinavia, Russia, Japan, and Greece and by the Cherokee tribe (using dried corncobs), to name just a few examples. Skin brushing helps rid the body of dead skin and also stimulates the lymphatic and circulatory systems, which assist the kidneys and liver in releasing excess hormones that have built up in the organs. Over time, dry brushing can prevent cellulite and help regenerate collagen, and in the short term, it invigorates and energizes you. As you are shedding dead skin, you are also asking to release what no longer serves you. Dry brushing is an Ayurvedic ritual that should be done before bathing or showering; your skin should be dry. To practice dry brushing:

+ Using a body brush with natural bristles (I like ones that have copper in them to help balance electromagnetic fields), start at the feet and move up toward the torso.

+ Using long strokes in the direction of your heart, brush each part of the body six times.

+ Brush so it feels slightly painful but good—like when you get a really deep stretch.

+ To increase the detoxifying effects, follow with a cold shower.

4. Self-Massage

In the West, we consider a massage to be a special treat, but for many in India, massages are a regular part of life and Ayurvedic self-care. Babies and toddlers are massaged daily, and when they are a little bit older, they are taught to massage their family members. Women get daily massages for forty days after giving birth. Once you become accustomed to the health and beauty benefits of massages, you won’t be able to do without them. Fortunately for our wallets, Ayurveda considers self-massage, or abhyanga, to be just as beneficial as a massage given by another. Set aside some time once a week, or daily if you can, to practice abhyanga, and you will soon see the benefits of this common Ayurvedic ritual, including toned, glowing skin; improved circulation; the relief of stiffness in the joints; and the flushing out of toxins in the body. It’s also a wonderful way to get to know your own body better. Use sesame, sunflower, or almond oil for massage; it feels extra luxurious if you warm it beforehand in a pan of hot water. To practice self-massage:

+ Apply warm oil generously to your body, beginning with your limbs. Use long strokes on your arms and legs and circular motions on your joints. Massage clockwise to release tension, and include areas like your neck and under your arms to target lymph nodes.

+ Massage your abdomen and chest in broad clockwise, circular motions. Follow the path of the intestine on your stomach, moving up on the right side, then down on the left.

+ Apply oil to your crown chakra, working outward in circular motions.

+ Dip your fingertips in the oil and massage your ears.

+ Massage your feet (but make sure to wipe off the oil before you walk).

+ Throughout the massage, send loving intentions to your organs and show gratitude to your body for everything it does for you.

+ Allow yourself enough time so that the oil soaks into your skin before you dress.

If you don’t have time for a full massage, you can always take a small scoop of shea butter and give yourself a foot massage before bed. This serves as a form of acupressure, and the shea butter helps moisturize dry skin. At the same time, you’re honoring your feet—which are your foundation—and how much they do for you throughout the day.

5. Bathing

In ancient times, bathing was regarded as a gift of health from the gods themselves. Making baths one of your regular Ayurvedic rituals can be a therapeutic activity. Almost every evening, after I have taken care of my work, my daughter, and my animals, I will indulge in a bath. Taking a bath is the perfect way to have nourishing alone time and create a bit of sanctuary for yourself. Baths are cleansing and can enhance physical and mental energy, remove negativity, and relax your body and mind. They’re also a wonderful way to soak up the deeply therapeutic medicine of essential oils and other good-for-the-skin ingredients.  

Relaxing Mineral Bath

One of my favorite relaxing baths for all doshas is a magnesium bath. Most of us are lacking magnesium due to depleted foods that are the result of overtaxed soil beds. Magnesium is essential for healthy skin and hair, aids in sleep, and can promote a profound sense of calm and well-being. To make the bath:

+ 1 cup magnesium flakes

+ 10 drops of a relaxing essential oil (I like chamomile or lavender)

+ Fill the tub with water that is the ideal temperature for you. Add the magnesium and essential oil before you step in. Soak for 20 minutes or more.

Excerpted with permission from Whole Beauty by Shiva Rose (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2018.

About The Authors Shiva Rose is the author of Whole Beauty: Daily Rituals and Natural Recipes for Lifelong Beauty and Wellness. Through growing her own organic herbs and flowers; mixing creams, lotions, and tonics; and following Ayurvedic practices and creating mindful rituals, Shiva not only healed her life from a life-threatening autoimmune condition but has also become a leader and entrepreneur in the world of all-natural beauty and lifestyle. Shiva created the holistic lifestyle website the Local Rose and developed her own non-toxic, all-natural skin-care line that nourishes the body, skin to soul, leaving the skin with a luminous glow. Learn more at shivarose.com

Neurogenesis: Growing New Brain Cells

A virtual revolution in neuroscience has been launched by the recent discovery of the process of neurogenesis, the ability of the brain to actually grow new neurons (brain cells). Stem cell therapy, a hot button of political debate and the focus of leading-edge research, holds the promise of offering a powerful tool in neurodegenerative conditions. We now understand that the human brain is constantly undergoing its own “stem cell therapy” through the process of neurogenesis. Every moment of our lives, several critically important areas of our brains are being replenished with stem cells that are destined to become fully functional brain cells. And when it comes to the question of how to increase new brain cells, there’s a lot we can do to enhance this process.

Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)

A major component in this gift of neurogenesis—and it is a gift to be revered—is a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which plays a key role in creating new neurons. And it also protects existing neurons, helping to ensure their survivability while encouraging synapse formation—that is, the connection of one neuron to another—which is vital for thinking, learning, and higher levels of brain function. Studies have in fact demonstrated that BDNF levels are lower in Alzheimer’s patients, which is no surprise, given our current understanding of how BDNF works. But we gain an even greater appreciation for the health benefits of increased BDNF when we consider its association with other neurological conditions, including epilepsy, anorexia nervosa, depression, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

How to Increase BDNF Production

We now have a very firm understanding of the factors that influence our DNA to produce BDNF and how to increase BDNF in the brain. Fortunately, these factors are by and large under our direct control. The gene that turns on BDNF is activated by a variety of factors, including voluntary physical exercise—animals forced to exercise do not demonstrate this change—calorie reduction, intellectual stimulation, curcumin, and the omega-3 fatty acid known as docosahexaenoic acid. This is a powerful message because all of these factors that increase BDNF are within our grasp; they represent choices we can make to turn on the gene for neurogenesis. So let’s explore them individually.

1. Physical Exercise

One of the most efficient ways to increase BDNF is through physical exercise. Laboratory rats that exercise have been shown to produce far more BDNF than sedentary animals. But, interestingly, animals forced to exercise produce considerably less BDNF than those who voluntarily choose to spend time on the running wheel. Researchers have shown that there is a direct relationship between elevation of BDNF levels in the voluntarily exercising animals and their ability to learn. With the understanding of the relationship of BDNF to exercise, researchers have examined the effect of physical exercise in humans, both apparently healthy individuals as well as persons at risk or already diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The findings have been fairly remarkable. In a recent paper, Nicola Lautenschlager of the University of Western Australia found that elderly individuals who engaged in regular physical exercise for a 24-week period demonstrated an astounding improvement of 1,800 percent in memory, language ability, attention, and other important cognitive functions, compared with an age-matched group not involved in the exercise program. The exercise group spent about 142 minutes exercising each week—about 20 minutes a day. In a similar study, Harvard researchers found a strong association between exercise and cognitive function in elderly women and concluded, “In this large, prospective study of older women, higher levels of long-term regular physical activity were strongly associated with higher levels of cognitive function and less cognitive decline. Specifically, the apparent cognitive benefits of greater physical activity were similar in extent to being about three years younger in age and were associated with a 20% lower risk of cognitive impairment.” These and other studies clearly indicate that exercise enhances brain performance and is directly associated with increased production of BDNF. Simply by voluntarily engaging in regular physical exercise, even to a relatively moderate degree, is a great way to take control of your brain health and mental destiny.

2. Calorie Reduction

Another factor that turns on the gene for increased BDNF is calorie reduction. Extensive studies have clearly demonstrated that when animals are fed a diet with reduced calories, typically by around 30 percent, their brain production of BDNF soars, along with a dramatic enhancement in memory and other cognitive functions. In a 2009 study on how to increase brain cells naturally, German researchers imposed a 30 percent calorie reduction on the diets of elderly individuals and compared their memory function with a group of a similar age who ate whatever they wanted. At the conclusion of the three-month study, those who ate without restriction experienced a small but clearly defined decline in memory function, while memory function in the group who consumed the calorie-reduced diet actually increased profoundly. In recognition of the obvious limitations of current pharmaceutical approaches to brain health, the authors concluded, “The present findings may help to develop new prevention and treatment strategies for maintaining cognitive health into old age.” While the prospect of reducing calorie intake by 30 percent may seem daunting, consider that Americans now consume an average of 523 more calories daily than in 1970. Current United Nations estimates show that the average American adult consumes 3,770 calories each day. In contrast, most health care professionals consider normal calorie consumption (i.e., the amount of calories needed to maintain body weight) to be around 2,000 calories daily for women and 2,550 for men, obviously with higher or lower requirements depending on level of exercise. A 30 percent reduction of calories from an average of 3,770 per day provides 2,640 calories, still more than a normal minimum requirement. Much of the calorie increase in Americans comes from our overwhelming increase in sugar consumption. Lowering sugar intake alone might go a long way toward achieving a meaningful reduction in calorie consumption; weight loss would likely be a side benefit. Indeed, obesity, in and of itself, is associated with reduced levels of BDNF, as is elevated blood sugar, a common consequence of obesity. Furthermore, increasing BDNF provides the added benefit of actually reducing the appetite. We hope that this data and the desire to help your brain turn on BDNF production will motivate you to follow a reduced-calorie diet. But, if you want to do more in achieving a healthy brain, you can implement a program of intermittent fasting.

3. Intellectual Stimulation

BDNF is described as a brain-derived neuronal trophic factor, which means that it is a chemical that induces positive growth, health, and functionality in the target tissue—in this case, brain neurons. So it would only make sense to expect BDNF to increase when the brain is challenged. Just as muscles will gain strength and thus functionality when exercised, the brain also rises to the challenges of intellectually stimulating circumstances by becoming faster and more efficient as well as having a greater capacity for information storage. These positive features are all facilitated by the increase in BDNF levels caused by stimulating activities. Inversely, it is likely that BDNF levels are low in individuals who spend several hours each day watching television, playing rote computer games, or otherwise engaged in mindless and passive activities. Being involved in stimulating mental activities—such as problem solving, exploring novel environments, and, perhaps most important, meditating regularly—increases BDNF levels and creates a brain that is not only more resistant to deterioration but one that enables you to push the limits of day-to-day functionality. In this context, it is important to view meditation not as a passive activity but as an active, brain-stimulating exercise that could also help in the production of new brain cells. Even among Alzheimer’s patients, the rate of disease progression is dramatically slowed in those who engage in spiritual practices, which, again, is likely a consequence of increased BDNF levels. Meditation helps us visit the complex environment of the inner mind as well as the universal energy field. And, not surprisingly, this might well be the most powerful stimulant for BDNF levels. Meditation-induced production of BDNF should be looked upon as the fertile ground into which seeds of spirituality-induced enlightenment are planted and flourish.

4. Curcumin

Curcumin, the main active ingredient in the spice turmeric, is currently the subject of intense scientific inquiry, especially as it relates to the brain and how to increase BDNF. But curcumin isn’t new to the medical research. In fact, practitioners of traditional Chinese and Indian (Ayurvedic) medicine have used it for thousands of years. Curcumin is known to possess a variety of biochemical properties that include antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antifungal, and antibacterial activities. And it is curcumin’s ability to increase BDNF that has attracted the interest of neuroscientists around the world. Interestingly, in evaluating villages in India, where turmeric is used in abundance in curried recipes, epidemiological studies have found that Alzheimer’s disease is only about 25 percent as common as in the United States. There is little doubt that the positive effects of enhanced BDNF levels on brain neurons is at least part of the reason why those consuming curcumin are so resistant to this brain disorder.

5. Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA)

Perhaps no other brain nutrient is receiving as much attention lately as DHA, especially after it was found to be a great way to increase BDNF. Scientists have been aggressively studying this critical brain fat for the past several decades for at least three reasons. First, more than two-thirds of the dry weight of the human brain is fat, and one-quarter of that fat is DHA. From a structural point of view, DHA is an important building block for the membranes that surround healthy brain cells. These membranes include the areas where one brain cell connects to another, the synapses. This means that DHA is involved in the transmission of information from one neuron to the next and thus is fundamental for efficient brain function. Second, DHA is one of nature’s important regulators of inflammation. Inflammation is responsible for a large number of brain maladies, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and multiple sclerosis. DHA naturally reduces the activity of the COX-2 enzyme, which turns on the production of damaging chemical mediators of inflammation. This inhibits the enzyme and helps put out the fire in our brains. The third and perhaps most compelling reason for studying DHA is its role in modulating gene expression to increase BDNF. Thus, DHA helps orchestrate the production, synaptic connection, and viability of brain cells while enhancing functionality. In a recently completed double-blind interventional trial called the Memory Improvement with DHA Study (MIDAS), some members of a group of 485 healthy individuals with an average age 70 and mild memory problems were given a supplement that contained DHA made from marine algae and some were given a placebo. After six months, not only did blood DHA levels double in the group who received the DHA but the effects on brain function, compared with those who received the placebo, were outstanding. The lead project researcher, Karin Yurko-Mauro, commented, “In our study, healthy people with memory complaints who took algal DHA capsules for six months had almost double the reduction in errors on a test that measures learning and memory performance versus those who took a placebo. …The benefit is roughly equivalent to having the learning and memory skills of someone three years younger.” Humans are able to synthesize DHA from a common dietary omega-3 fat, alpha-linolenic acid. But so little DHA is produced by this chemical pathway that many researchers in human nutrition now consider DHA to be an essential fatty acid, meaning that health maintenance requires a dietary source of this key nutrient. Data also show that most Americans typically consume an average of only 60 to 80 milligrams of DHA daily, less than 25 percent of what researchers consider to be an adequate intake of 200 to 300 milligrams each day.

BDNF and Brain Protection

Now that you already have an idea on how to increase BDNF naturally, it is also worth noting that BDNF is important not only in neurogenesis and neuroplasticity but also in protecting delicate neurons from being damaged by a variety of insults, including trauma, transient reduction in blood supply, and, perhaps most important, environmental toxins. Indeed, in laboratory studies, rats and even primates with higher levels of BDNF are far more resistant to brain-damaging toxins than animals with low or normal levels. Thus, turning on BDNF production through natural means and lifestyle decisions provides our brains with powerful protection against the ubiquitous onslaught of mitochondrial toxins, such as commonly used pesticides, to which we are exposed on a daily basis. Excerpted with permission from Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment by David Perlmutter and Alberto Villoldo. It is available online at hayhouse.com.

About The Authors Dr. David Perlmutter, M.D., FACN, is a Board-Certified Neurologist and four-time New York Times bestselling author. He serves on the Board of Directors and is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. His books have been published in 28 languages and include Grain Brain, The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar, with over 1 million copies in print, Brain Maker, The Grain Brain Cookbook, and The Grain Brain Whole Life Plan. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has been interviewed on many nationally syndicated television programs. Learn more at drperlmutter.com. Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., has trained as a psychologist and medical anthropologist and has studied the healing practices of the Amazon and Andean shamans. Dr. Villoldo directs The Four Winds Society, where he trains individuals in the practice of shamanic energy medicine. He directs the Center for Energy Medicine in Chile, where he investigates and practices the neuroscience of enlightenment. Dr. Villoldo has written numerous best-selling books, including One Spirit Medicine; Shaman, Healer, Sage; The Four Insights; Courageous Dreaming; and Power Up Your Brain. Learn more at thefourwinds.com theurbanmonk.com.

photo: hanna postova

Most people know that CBD does wondrous things for your health—but did you know that it also does equally wondrous things for sexual pleasure? CBD (also known as cannabidiol) has gained widespread popularity in recent years due to incredible research that has shown it to be particularly effective for reducing anxiety, pain and inflammation and inducing deep relaxation quite quickly. While most people use CBD internally, the more clever and sensual among us discovered that if you apply it topically on sensitive areas below the belt, those same medicinal effects start to work in a whole new way—increasing blood flow, relaxation and sensation in your most sensitive areas, which translates to a massive increase in pleasure. With this in mind, the pleasure connoisseurs over at Foria Wellness created an all-natural, herbalist-formulated arousal oil and lubricant that’s infused with CBD and blended with aphrodisiac herbs. It’s called AWAKEN, and let me tell you, it’s f*cking incredible.

The Orgasmic Effects of CBD and Sensual Herbs

I was first introduced to AWAKEN from Foria Wellness at Pura Luna Women’s Apothecary, a local women’s healthcare boutique in Santa Barbara. I came into the store that day because I was fresh out of the CBD that I typically order online. While I was browsing the CBD products, I picked up AWAKEN, and the woman behind the counter commented, “Oh, that’s a bestseller,” with a distinct and somewhat sensual intonation in her voice. I knew in that moment that I had to try it for myself to see what all the hype was about. I also wanted to learn more about AWAKEN and its effects, so I did some research and spoke with herbalist Ashley (Ashe) Kelly-Brown, the owner of Pura Luna Women’s Apothecary. The first thing I found was that a lot of women were raving about how well it increases their arousal and enhances pleasure and orgasm. When I asked Ashe about this, she explained, “The majority of the plants that are inside of the product (which are ginger, cardamom, kava root, peppermint oil, vanilla, and cacao) all increase blood circulation and blood flow, so they are really great for tight muscles and really great for relaxing, enhancing, and creating more stimulation and blood flow in those areas.” As for the CBD, she says that it “makes things a little more sensory and helps reduce inflammation and any pain that may be associated with penetration.” In fact, many women, Ashe’s clients included, use AWAKEN for these reasons and find that it makes sex and pleasure a lot more comfortable and enjoyable. While there hasn’t been much research regarding the use of CBD during sex, research has shown that there’s a direct link between the endocannabinoid system and hormones, fertility, and reproduction. Similarly, Ashe notes that cacao, which is used in AWAKEN’S all-natural and plant-based formulation, “releases endorphins and dopamine in the brain, therefore creating a more relaxed experience.” Furthermore, medical texts dating back thousands of years record the use of cannabis and hemp for a wide variety of uses relating to gynecology and women’s health and well-being.

The Awaken Experience

In light of all of this information, I was excited to find out what my own experience with AWAKEN would be like. Here’s what I can share… Within a few minutes, the first thing I noticed was a pleasant, warming sensation, which had the effect of making me more aware of my state of arousal. Because the instructions said that the oil could take up to 15 minutes to reach its full effect, I wasn’t exactly expecting what came next… As I was casually scrolling through Spotify for a tender playlist to enjoy, I experienced a powerful orgasm without any other touch beyond the application of the lubricant itself. Although I have the capacity to orgasm fairly easily when intimate with my partner or on my own, this was a surprising first. You see, I wasn’t doing much of anything other than noticing the sensations that were arising and taking note of them for the purposes of this review. I can honestly say that reaching orgasm has never been easier and can confidently corroborate the anecdotal evidence from other women who have said the same. Here are some other things I’ve noticed from using AWAKEN from Foria Wellness on a regular basis… In addition to longer orgasms that are easier to reach, my experiences with AWAKEN are characterized by increased arousal and increased natural lubrication, which many other women also experience. My favorite, however, is the heightened experience of sensation where even the slightest touch is extremely amplified as a result of this herbal magic and science. Overall, I’ve found using AWAKEN to bring about a really deep and connected experience of intimacy and self-pleasure where I’m highly in tune with myself and my body in a way that I haven’t known before. I feel much more mindful and aware of the sensations in my body and the presence of my partner, resulting in a deeper, more lasting, and heightened experience of pleasure. To try AWAKEN from Foria Wellness for yourself, use code PLEASURE15 for 15% off of all Foria products. foriawellness.com Please note: As with all oil-based lubricants, AWAKEN is not safe for use with latex. This article is a sponsored post written in collaboration with Foria Wellness, whose products and ethos comply with Conscious Lifestyle Magazine’s stringent quality and integrity guidelines.

About The Author Amanda Smith is a journalist and writer who focuses on natural approaches to women’s health issues and well-being. She’s a strong advocate for organic and nature-based therapies for improving the quality of life for women worldwide.

Switching On the Longevity Genes

We spent many millions of years feasting and then fasting. When food was abundant, nature turned on reproduction. Females became fertile, and both males and females buffed up and put on muscle mass and stored fat reserves. When times were lean, nature sensed our survival was threatened by possible starvation—females became infertile and all the repair and regeneration systems were turned on, ensuring our survival until more abundant times. If we can create the conditions that mimic starvation, while keeping ample nutrients on board, we can trigger the DNA switches that allow us to grow a new body. This article will help you better understand the profound benefits of autophagy and fasting.

Autophagy and Intermittent Fasting

Abstaining from food for short periods as a way to cleanse body and mind has a history going back millennia. Indigenous medicine men and women, Buddhist monks, Christian mystics, and others would subsist on only water for a few days to prime the brain to function optimally and pray. In the process, they would repair and upgrade their body naturally through a biological process called autophagy. However, there’s no need to fast from good carbs, including fruit, for more than 18 hours at a time. Brain repair starts to happen quickly, and brain fog begins to clear in a matter of days. Even during Ramadan, the month-long period of fasting that is one of the most sacred practices of Islam, Muslims fast only from sunrise to sunset each day. As long as you drink plenty of water and refrain from vigorous exercise while you’re fasting, you may find that you don’t even experience hunger pangs, or if you do, that they’re mild enough not to bother you. One form of intermittent fasting involves not eating any grains or anything that turns into sugar in your bloodstream between 6 p.m. and noon the next day. This daily 18-hour fast will bring you into ketosis, a metabolic change that happens when your cells exhaust the energy from carbohydrates and sugars and break down fats into a powerful fuel known as ketones. Then your brain starts burning ketones for fuel. Ideally, you will follow this fasting routine for the rest of your life, or at least for as long as you wish to keep your vibrant health. Hunger pangs while fasting are good; they are an indication that you’re switching from the glucose fuel to the ketones, and your brain is beginning to burn fats. But your ancient limbic brain, that runs on sugars, may try to convince you that you’ll die if you don’t eat a glazed doughnut right away. Don’t give in to it. Simply observe your cravings, knowing that in fact, your body has enough fuel reserves to get you through the next 40 days without eating—though I don’t recommend it! “Hanger” pangs are different. Hanger is what happens when you become angry as you get hungry. If you find yourself getting hangry as you do the daily 18-hour fast from sugars, it is because of Candida overgrowth in your GI tract. They want to be fed and want to be sure that you know this, and they begin releasing toxins that signal the brain to increase the levels of ghrelin, the “hunger hormone.” The purpose of intermittent fasting is not for weight loss. That’s a dangerous misuse of the practice. You fast in order to go into ketosis and turn on the body’s fat-burning system and repair mechanisms. Autophagy fasting brings about detoxification at a cellular level. Reducing the intake of sugars and processed carbs for more than a few hours triggers a process called autophagy, in which more than 90 percent of the “waste” inside the cells is recycled into amino acid building blocks the cells can reuse for repair, and the remainder is eliminated as garbage. Cells have the most efficient recycling system. If our cities were as effective in recycling waste as our cells are, we would hardly have any garbage in our landfills. As you detox, you release cellular waste into your bloodstream, where it’s carried to the GI tract and to the liver to be flushed out of the body. But fasting can be dangerous if your liver is not working properly because if you are not eliminating the toxins in your bloodstream, you are recycling them. And the worst place toxins can end up in is the fatty tissue in the brain. When Eastern sages and Western Christian mystics fasted, they did not have to deal with a toxic burden in their body or brain that modern humans have. They were not exposed to the chemicals you find today in our foods, in cosmetics, in water, and in the air. The Chernobyl nuclear tragedy had not contaminated the air and gardens in Europe, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster had not contaminated the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the seafood that ends up on our dinner plate. Upon entering ketosis during fasting, their bodies would go into repair mode, and they would activate higher order neural networks in the neocortex. They would begin to grow a new body as they attained mystical Oneness. When we’re burning carbs, the body is in building mode; insulin levels are high as we build muscle. When we stop utilizing carbs as our primary fuel, even for a few hours, we go into ketosis. An autophagy diet allows the body to recycle waste and repair itself. It triggers the production of stem cells in the brain and every organ in the body. It also awakens the higher order neural networks where we can have a spiritual experience, even when we are not looking for one. Even during a short fast, amazing things happen to the body and brain. In just 24 hours, the production of human growth hormone increases by 1,500 percent, repairing cells that make up our tissues. Not eating carbs for as little as 18 hours switches on the longevity genes. Intermittent fasting should be done carefully if you are hypoglycemic or diabetic. You should not undertake any long-term fasting until your blood sugar levels are regulated. Do not attempt this program while trying to maintain a diet made up primarily of sugar-filled, processed carbs. This means that you need to eliminate the pizza, pasta, bagels, croissants, potato chips, soda pop, and so on before starting this program. Be sure to fill your diet with high-fiber vegetables, avocado, olive oil, coconut oil, and raw nuts. The payoffs of the 18-hour daily fast are as follows:

+ Increasing your metabolism. This is one of the most popular benefits of fasting. After you exhaust the sugars in your bloodstream, your cells will begin to burn fat for energy.

+ Providing a higher-quality fuel for your brain. The ketones (fats) are jet fuel for the brain and will switch on the higher order neural networks involved in creativity, discovery, exploration, compassion, and the experience of oneness necessary to grow a new body.

+ Lowering levels of insulin. When you lower the levels of glucose in your bloodstream, your need for insulin is reduced because insulin’s job is to remove glucose from the bloodstream. Insulin receptors in the cell have a chance to reset and reduce insulin resistance and the risk for diabetes.

+ Increasing the detoxification of every cell in your body. Ketosis allows for autophagy and recycling of cellular debris, emptying out the garbage.

+ Preventing cancer and reducing the proliferation of existing cancer cells. While cancer cells can readily burn glucose (sugar) for fuel, their impaired metabolism makes it difficult for them to burn ketones (fat). In addition, ketosis lowers the levels of the tumor marker IGF-1. That is a sign that the ketosis is preventing cancerous tumors from growing or spreading.

+ Protecting the brain. Ketosis reduces inflammation in the brain and body and turns on the production of stem cells in the brain. It does this by activating BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which enhances brain repair.

However, when implementing an intermittent diet, be sure that you give your liver support for eliminating the toxins that will be released into your bloodstream from your fatty tissues as you begin to burn fat for fuel. Zinc, B12, magnesium, and glutathione will help your liver do its job. Without these nutrients, the liver will not eliminate toxic waste effectively, and the toxins may end up in your brain.

Two Meals a Day

Who said that we need to eat three meals a day, that breakfast, lunch, and dinner are necessary or desirable? Our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors ate whenever they got hungry (and had food available), and so did the Native Americans when Europeans first arrived in the New World. Abigail Carroll, author of the book Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal, explains that the Europeans believed their regular eating habits and “civilized” mealtimes distinguished them from the “grazing” practice of the natives, a habit they associated with animals. How wrong they were about timing your eating! Ditch the three-meals-a-day-plus-snacks habit that we have been accustomed to. If you are interested in growing a new body through an autophagy diet, you need to think of a new golden rule of eating only one or two meals a day and skipping breakfast (and sometimes dinner). I prefer skipping breakfast rather than skipping dinner because it draws out the period of recycling and ketosis provided by intermittent fasting. You can eat organic, plant-based, nutrient-dense, and calorie-poor foods until full during the six-hour window. It will take a few weeks to persuade your gut flora to become comfortable with eating only one or two meals a day. Remember that they are the ones who eat first, and you have trained them to eat three meals a day or more. Once your body has shifted into fat-burning mode, you will find it easy to go for 18 hours without feeling hunger pangs. Your cravings for sugars will gradually dissipate as you eliminate the Candida and restart your fat-burning engines that have been dormant for decades. Some bugs in your gut will not like this at all, particularly Candida that you have rewarded with sugary treats for years. So prepare your homemade S. boulardii and have it ready to take every morning!

How Much Protein Do We Really Need?

Humans and animals have co-existed side by side for a long time. We have been domesticating sheep, pigs, and cows before the dawn of agriculture, and have been eating animal products, including dairy and meat, since then. Even in our hunting and gathering days, our ancestors would feast on a lucky find of eggs. Granted, our Paleolithic forebears had meat infrequently, as they had to hunt it or fish for it; however, for the last few thousand years, animal protein has been a staple of the human diet. Though several studies have linked eating a significant amount of meat to various ailments, it’s not totally banned even when you are on an intermittent diet. Today, meat is at the center of one of the world’s bloodiest food fights. Most of the meat consumed in the developed world comes from factory farms, where animals are treated with extraordinary cruelty, fed hormones, and antibiotics, and raised in unsanitary and inhumane conditions. But healthy, organic, grass-fed meat in small portions and wild-caught fish can foster freedom from heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and dementia. Although we need protein, our cells actually cannot use protein and this is a primary reason why the concept of protein fasting is becoming more popular. Our gut bacteria must break protein down into amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. If your gut flora is damaged, you will not get the necessary amino acids. Amino acids cannot be stored, and the ones that are not used promptly get converted into glucose or fat, then burned for fuel. There are many amino acids found in nature, but humans can only use 20 of them for building proteins. Essential amino acids are the ones you need to get from food because your body cannot make them. Nonessential amino acids are the ones your body makes on its own. Protein makes up about 33 percent of the weight of a piece of beef, so if you eat a 100-gram steak, you are only getting about 33 grams of protein. Lentils, meanwhile, have 9 grams of protein per 100 grams. In contrast, salmon has nearly 25 grams of protein per 100 grams. A good general rule for most people is to limit your total protein intake (animal and plant-based) to 200 to 400 grams or less per week, depending on your weight. Your body does not need protein every day. Eat your protein, especially animal protein, on a cycling schedule, largely abstaining from protein on the days in between. Remember to feast and then fast! Intermittent fasting can be hard at first, but it is worth it. If you are looking at these recommendations and thinking, You’ve got to be kidding. My body wants more meat than that!, it’s likely your gut flora is damaged, and you are not absorbing amino acids properly. The more damaged your gut is as a result of antibiotic use or age, the more protein you may require. The key to animal protein is high quality, not high quantity. When we eat meat, we need to be concerned about what the animal ate too. Meats from animals that are not raised on the foods nature intended for them are not the best protein source. After all, animals did not graze on the corn that they are fed in the factory farms of today. Make sure that your meat is free range, grass fed, and vegetarian. Wild-caught fish are better than farmed fish, which are fed cereal. Most important, forget about your daily protein intake, and think about weekly protein intake. Remember that our ancestors were hunter-gatherers who ate all their protein at once when they had a good day of hunting. They feasted and fasted, cycling their protein consumption. The key is cycling protein. I consume about 300 grams of protein a week, which is perfect for my weight (165 lbs, or 75 kg) and level of activity (moderate exercise). I will eat most of my protein on days one and four of the week, in two sittings, just like our Paleolithic ancestors did when they found a fresh mammoth on their way home and shooed the birds away and brought it back to the village—except that instead of mammoth, I will eat a couple of hard-boiled eggs at lunch and a portion of fish in the evening. So, Sunday and Wednesday, I will have a protein feast, maybe eating out at my favorite fish restaurant or having a double scoop of plant-based protein powder at lunch or a helping of black beans and rice, which is a typical Cuban dish and a complete protein. I am on the road teaching and lecturing a lot, and I often have to go to dinner with the hosts of my program. If the night before I had a big protein meal, I know that my mTOR is activated; so that evening I will have a soup and salad with no animal protein, to again silence mTOR. (I explain mTOR in the next section.) The key is protein cycling. I know that what I’m telling you flies in the face of our current popular beliefs about our protein needs but stay with me. Years ago, I was a fervent advocate of restricting carbs. Now that new research has come out, and I have experienced for myself the benefits of restricting protein intake, I am convinced that eating less protein is key to growing a new body and to sustaining health and longevity. I believe that many Paleo dieters are exposing themselves to increased risk of cancer and degenerative disease because of excessive protein intake.

Protein and Evolution

To understand our basic food requirements, we have to go back to when life first appeared on Earth—perhaps before the term autophagy diet was first used. Around 2 billion years ago, the first bacteria appeared on Earth. Their mission was to eat and reproduce. When there was lots of food available, they grew strong and multiplied. When food was scarce during times of starvation, nature turned off reproduction, and all their resources went into repair and survival. These early bacteria needed a way to determine if there were abundant nutrients for reproduction or if they needed instead to conserve energy, using scarce food supplies to repair in preparation for a time when food would be more plentiful. This protein-sensing system is known as TOR (target of rapamycin), and it is shared today by all creatures from bacteria to whales to humans. You’ll learn more about TOR and its very important work shortly, but for now, know this: Consuming too much animal protein stimulates the TOR pathway, which can cause out-of-control growth of cancer cells. Cancer cells want to multiply quickly. Why would our bodies be controlled by a process that could end up killing us? Remember that nature selects for the longevity of the species, but not of the individual. It wants us to reproduce so that our species doesn’t become extinct—and if you happen to die on the way to the species surviving, nature shrugs. Your challenge is to work with your natural intelligence to continue to enjoy good health and live long past your reproductive years. Restrict your protein intake and quiet TOR, and your chances of living a long and healthy life improve immensely. For a species to survive, birth rates need to be higher than death rates—and this has to happen even when there are times of extreme hardship. But nature will not allow any animal to reproduce if there is a danger of famine or starvation. That’s because carrying and nursing offspring, as mammals do, requires a lot of energy and takes a huge toll on the mother, who must feed herself as well as the young she is carrying. When we practice intermittent fasting (with adequate nutrition), our body focuses on repair and renewal. We literally trick the brain into thinking that there is a danger of starvation and that its resources should go into growing a stronger and more resilient body. The Grow a New Body program works by calibrating the level of TOR in your system! During times of food scarcity, many creatures will go into a dormant state so they can wait out the long winter. We see this in bears that hibernate and in yeasts found in the skin of grapes. As winter approaches, a yeast cell will “sleep.” When food supplies become available again in the spring, TOR will sense an abundance of nutrients, and it will “wake up” again. Some bacteria can even withstand boiling and freezing temperatures, and endure many years of extreme weather before the TOR system detects the right nutrient conditions for germination. And while most of the genes of the yeast on the skin of the grape go dormant, the TOR nutrient sensors remain alert, ready to rouse the organism when there are adequate nutrients in the environment. As I mentioned, humans have a TOR system, just as yeast do, and it’s called mTOR (“m” is for mammalian.) On the Grow a New Body program, you won’t be fasting for months, just hours, to get a similar result. Now that we understand the science behind mTOR, we know we can make dietary choices that downregulate it (restricting protein) and effectively send our bodies into repair and longevity mode. But, remember that you have to know how the program works first before you can fully enjoy the benefits of fasting.

How TOR Works

In periods of famine, women will become infertile—mTOR makes sure their bodies do this, and male sperm counts will go down dramatically. During this time, the resources in the body are dedicated to eliminating toxins through autophagy, switching on the longevity genes, and silencing the genes that create disease, all of which are fantastic strategies for long-term survival until food sources become plentiful again. Humpback whales fast for many months in the tropics, losing up to half of their body weight and clearing diseases evident on their skin. When their bodies have repaired, they migrate north where food is abundant and switch into reproduction and growth mode. So, how important it is to calibrate our TOR when aiming for autophagy? The TOR sensors detect the presence of amino acids and sugars. Billions of years ago, when the first bacteria were feeding on the amino acids found in the young earth, some developed the ability to use light as a food source. These were the first cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, and they discovered photosynthesis—how to feed on sunlight. These early plants turned light and minerals into carbohydrates, and thus the first sugars appeared on the earth in significant quantities. These plants would become the food of the large herbivores that later walked the earth. The earliest sources of energy (food) in the earth were amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins and sugar. The TOR sensors measure the abundance or scarcity of these two foods. When things were good, TOR stepped on the reproductive accelerator. When food was in short supply, it put on the brakes on having babies, or cells dividing, and switched on the long-term survival systems. For humans, it meant recycling cellular waste to capture 90 percent of the amino acids from damaged proteins and maintain steady amino acid levels in the blood. To summarize, we can think of our all-important TOR as the “brain” that senses nutrients and that controls growth and longevity in all animals. When we avoid sugars and reduce proteins, TOR instructs our cells to go into repair and longevity mode. Stem cell and antioxidant systems that protect the brain are activated, as well as all cells, and you prevent or delay the appearance of cancer and the proliferation of existing tumors.

The Discovery of mTOR

Rapamycin, a drug used to prevent rejection of transplanted organs, comes from a bacterium discovered in 1960 on Easter Island. Doctors were surprised to find that patients taking Rapamycin had a reduced incidence of cancer despite the fact that the medication they were taking suppressed the immune system, which the body depends on to kill cancer cells. It turns out that Rapamycin was downregulating mTOR (the target of Rapamycin). This causes the body to go into repair and longevity mode and inhibits rampant cellular replication, which is the hallmark of cancer. We are learning that downregulating mTOR through intermittent fasting is a key to preventing cancer and helping the body repair.

Debunking Other Dietary Myths

The only proven strategy for extending both life span and health span in mice and primates by up to 30 percent is reducing the total number of calories they consume, primarily the carbs that turn into glucose. We know a low-carb diet will keep insulin levels in the body low. Combining that with a high-protein intake was thought to be the key to extending the life span of all the animals on a calorie-restricted diet. But it turns out that the longer life span was due to a protein called IGF-1, or insulin-like growth factor-1, a growth factor we need when we are young and are growing fingers and toes. But for adults, high levels of IGF-1 are associated with pathological growth—it indicates the likelihood of a cancerous tumor present or developing. As you lower your IGF-1 levels, you reduce your chances of developing cancer. When blood sugar levels are high, IGF-1 tells mTOR that there is lots of food available, and mTOR shuts down repair and switches on cell growth. Therefore, the key to longevity is lowering sugar and protein intake, which can be achieved through autophagy and fasting.

The New Science on Diet

It turns out that long-term caloric restriction does not actually lower IGF-1, but protein restriction does. You can eat organic steaks, keep your blood sugar levels low, and be in mild ketosis, burning fats instead of sugars for energy—and this combination will allow you to feel great, lose weight, clear the brain fog, and have tremendous energy. But mTOR will still be activated from eating too much animal protein. Overeat meat and you will not be flipping the genetic switches to grow a new body; instead, you will be opting for an early death even as you tone and strengthen your muscles. Amino acids are detected by mTOR directly. They do not need IGF-1 or mediating hormones to do the job. In a recent research study, Roberto Zoncu and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stated that “a significant advance in our understanding of the regulation and functions of mTOR has revealed its critical involvement in the onset and progression of diabetes, cancer, and aging.” Clearly, it’s important to not just avoid sugars but to also avoid overeating protein. The authors conclude that “recent findings suggest that mTOR signaling controls the rate at which cells and tissues age, and that inhibiting mTOR may represent a promising avenue to increase longevity.” A high-protein, low-carb diet is great for weight loss and for achieving a toned beach body, which is one of the key reasons this type of diet became popular. Unfortunately, it is not very good for long-term health. The bottom line is that eating too much protein accelerates aging and the onset of cancer. Meat and eggs should be a side dish rather than the main course. I personally eat about 8 ounces of fish during the week, and a couple of eggs once or twice weekly. I generally avoid red meat but will have a bison steak once in a while or a small fillet of grass-fed free-range beef.

The Crux of the Matter

The solution turns out to be far simpler than we thought. The proteins that activate mTOR seem to be the branched chain amino acids (BCAAs). There are three BCAAs: leucine, isoleucine, and valine. And they are found predominantly in animal products, including red meat, dairy, cheese, and eggs. Luigi Fontana and his colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, demonstrated that “a moderate reduction in total dietary protein or selected amino acids can rapidly improve metabolic health in both humans and mice. Reduction of dietary protein or total amino acids decreases fasting blood glucose levels and improves glucose tolerance in both species in less than six weeks.” The verdict is in. The culprit is animal protein. So, what’s the bottom line: how much animal protein should we eat? Very little is the best answer I can come up with. It seems that the staples of the Western diet, meat and dairy, are partially to blame for the tremendous increase in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Valter Longo, Ph.D., a cellular biologist at the University of Southern California, found that starving a mouse receiving chemotherapy or other targeted therapies will protect normal cells and organs while making the therapy up to 40 percent more toxic to cancer cells. In human clinical trials, Longo found that periods of no food for two to four days at a time during a six-month period killed older and damaged immune cells and triggered the generation of new healthy ones. “We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration,” explains Longo. One of the most promising benefits of fasting is it forces the body to use stores of glucose and fat as well as break down white blood cells. This depletion of white blood cells triggers stem cell-based regeneration of new immune system cells. Fasting reduces the enzyme PKA that extends longevity and is linked to the production of stem cells and pluripotency—the potential for one cell to become many different cell types. Fasting also lowered levels of IGF-1, the growth factor associated with tumor progression and cancer risk. Longo explains: “PKA is the key gene that needs to shut down in order for these stem cells to switch into regenerative mode… and the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting. Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or aging, autophagy fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system.” Protein restriction is the key. And be sure to avoid the protein bars that are full of sugar and the packaged protein powders. Make vegetable proteins and legumes your main source of good amino acids. It’s important to note that legumes contain lectins; these are anti-nutrients, proteins that can bind to sugars. These compounds reduce the body’s ability to absorb minerals from your food. So, when you prepare legumes, soak them overnight and rinse them well. I like to ferment them overnight with S. boulardii, to further neutralize the anti-nutrients they contain.

The Truth about Carbs

When it comes to “cheap carbs,” the worst offenders are the simple carbs in processed foods that turn to sugar right away in your gut. A slice of white bread, for example, raises your blood sugar more than a spoonful of white sugar. If you are running your system on sugars, you are using a short-lived energy strategy. The body stores glucose as glycogen, and you can only store about 100 grams of glycogen in your liver. This is enough for a 20-minute work-out at the gym! Your muscles can store about 400 grams, enough for 90 minutes of endurance exercise. But the average 165-pound man in good physical shape has close to 55 pounds (25 kg) of stored fat he can use for energy, which is nearly 1,000 times more fuel than that glycogen in his liver! The complex carbohydrates in broccoli, cauliflower, and asparagus are long molecules of glucose that your gut bacteria break down into sugars. However, complex carbs do not spike your insulin, so they do little damage; they are also nutrient-rich, packed with phytonutrients necessary for good health. In addition, vegetables appear to quiet the mTOR sensors. Choose your vegetables and fruits for color. To attain the best intermittent fasting results, be sure to include two or three dishes of vegetables every day. And it is best to eat your fruit during lunch so you can burn the sugars during the afternoon and go into ketosis, burning fats into the night and the morning. You may be wondering, If I have to go lean on carbs (even healthy ones) and low on protein, what the hell do I eat? For starters, fat.

The Skinny on Fat

Most of your calories should come from fat. When you eat a high-fat diet and low cheap-carb diet without excessive proteins, you enter into nutritional ketosis, so your body will be burning fats for fuel rather than glucose. If you are like most people, it will take a few days for your body to remember how to burn fats, as you have been running your metabolic engine on sugars for a long time. But once you switch on the fat-burning furnaces, you will notice that the brain fog will begin to clear, your muscle mass will increase, and you will naturally start losing weight. As your insulin levels drop and you lower your intake of proteins, you will be downregulating mTOR and reducing inflammation, and your levels of leptin (the anti-hunger hormone) will stabilize, reducing your food cravings. When you switch over to burning fats, you turn on your cell’s recycling systems or autophagy. I like to point out to my students that probably the most important workers in New York City are the garbage collectors. If you go for a walk through Manhattan late in the evening, you will see stacks of garbage bags piled on the sidewalks. Yet by morning, they are all gone, and the streets are clean again. Imagine what would happen if the garbage collectors went on strike even for a few days! Autophagy fasting provides a big help in the garbage collection (and recycling) process in the body. And for many of us who have been living on a sugar-rich diet, the garbage collectors inside us have been on strike for many years. Consequently, cellular waste has accumulated inside and outside our cells, and broken-down proteins have not been recycled. By having a low-carb diet and consuming the right amount of proteins, you turn down the volume on mTOR and switch on autophagy. Voilà! The strike is over, the workers return to clean up the garbage, broken proteins are recycled—which reduces the need for dietary intake of proteins—and you begin to grow a new body. When you limit your intake of carbs and proteins, you have three incredible, measurable benefits. The first is that you trigger the production of new mitochondria, the fuel factories in every cell in your body. That phenomenon is known as mitochondrial biogenesis. The second benefit is that you increase your levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which switches on the production of stem cells inside the brain. A few decades ago we did not believe that the brain could regenerate or that we could grow new neurons. Today, we understand that we can activate the growth of new neural stem cells that repair and upgrade the brain by turning on the production of BDNF. It also reduces your levels of a death-promoting protein, BAX, associated with neurons dying in your brain. This may be important in preventing Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Last, and perhaps most important, reducing carbs and proteins will switch on the SIRT-1 genes: these longevity proteins silence the genes that create disease and wake up the genes that create health. I like to think of the SIRT-1 family of genes as the immortality genes. And they are only active when you eat a low-carb, low-amino acid diet. In a high-carb, high-protein environment, the SIRT-1 genes go silent. The key to receiving all the intermittent fasting benefits I have just described is not only eating more fats—such as avocados and the coconut oil, olive oil, and grass-fed butter that you use to prepare and enhance your meals—but burning your own fat through ketosis. Even if you are not particularly interested in losing weight, you want your body to run mostly on fats rather than sugar. As you are cranking up your metabolic engine, you can help the autophagy fasting process by adding good fats to your diet, including coconut oil, olive oil, avocados, and so on. But you do not want all of your fats to come from these outside sources, or you will not be turning on autophagy. The garbage inside cells will not be cleared away, and the recycling of amino acids will not be as effective as when you are burning your own fat stores. Your body in its great wisdom will not allow you to burn your own fat stores until you eliminate the toxins that are stored there. Remember that the body stores toxins in fat tissue. In your fat, you may have the residual mercury from your own and from your mother’s dental fillings and from the time you played with mercury at the age of eleven when a thermometer broke; pesticides in the food you ate as a child; lead from the lead pipes in your home or coming in from the street; and aluminum from cooking pots (or the aluminum foil you cooked with). All of these are stored in your fat tissue, together with the endotoxins, or internally created toxins, including the products of incomplete breakdown and elimination of spent hormones. Your fat tissue has been holding on to all of that for a long time. If you are thinking that burning fat sounds good but eating a high-fat diet doesn’t, you should know that government guidelines have been revised in 2015 to no longer limit the amount of fats or cholesterol in our diet. Saturated fats, found commonly in coconut oil, dairy, and meat products, were once maligned and blamed for heart disease being the number one killer in America. Today we know that that there is no link between them and heart disease. In fact, the higher the amount of saturated fats that you consume, the better for your brain and your health. These are anti-inflammatory, are stable, and do not oxidize easily. (Oxidation is the process involved in steel rusting, copper turning green, and a cut-open apple turning brown.) Fats do not cause a spike in blood sugar or trigger the release of IGF-1. That means they don’t upregulate mTOR. Instead, they contribute to quieting it.

 The Truth about Fat

Here’s the skinny on the different types of fats: 1. Saturated fats: The best are the MCTs, or the medium-chain triglycerides, which are used quickly by the body and do not go into storage in fat cells. The best MCTs are found in coconut and olive oils, as well butter and avocados. MCTs are jet fuel for the brain, and supplementing with them during the Grow a New Body program will help keep your mind clear as your body starts to burn its own fat reserves. It will provide a great transition until you begin to produce ketones from your own fat stores. You might be wondering: Aren’t coconut oil and other saturated fats bad for you because they raise cholesterol? Turns out that the fats that cause heart attacks are the ones that come from eating sugar and carbs, not from eating fat. Remember that your liver converts excess sugars into fat. In effect, the role of insulin is to convert sugar into fat—the sugar our ancestors ate at the end of summer when the fruit was ripe for all of six weeks was stored as fat to help take them through the long winter. The saturated fats protect against heart attacks and come from animal products like cheese and butter. Saturated fats are essential for our immune system. They raise LDL cholesterol but also increase HDL (“good” cholesterol), while sugar lowers HDL. While coconut oil is 40 percent saturated fat, people from countries that consume the most coconut oil seem to have the lowest rates of heart disease in the planet. As you are relearning to burn fats for fuel, you may want to help your system with a mixture of MCT oil (made from coconuts) and coconut oil. A tablespoon of each in the morning is a great way to kick-start your fat burning. The MCT oil provides ketones immediately, while the coconut oil turns into ketones gradually, fueling you throughout the day. Repeat two to three times daily as needed. 2. Monounsaturated fats (MUFAs): MUFAs are your good friends. They are found in olive oil, avocados, nuts and nut oils, olives, and butter. 3. Polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs): PUFAs can be good and bad. The two most important ones are omega-3 and omega-6. Omega-3 reduces inflammation, switches on the production of stem cells in the brain, helping to repair the memory and learning centers, and protects you from heart disease. Omega-6 is pro-inflammatory, so you have to be careful with this fat. Before we lived in cities and discovered what autophagy and fasting are, our prehistoric ancestors consumed omega-3 and omega-6 in a ratio of 1:1. Today our processed foods provide us with nearly 20 times more omega-6 than omega-3. In the Lyon Diet Heart Study, more than 300 subjects and an equal number of controls were followed for four years. Researchers found that decreasing the amount of omega-6 the people consumed and increasing the omega-3 fat intake resulted in 70 percent fewer heart attacks, reduced the overall mortality rate, and protected against cancer. Omega-3 fatty acids are abundant in avocados, grass-fed meat, flaxseed and flaxseed oil, and fatty fish like salmon. And you should supplement with 2 to 3 grams of omega-3 daily. 4. Trans fats: These fats are the problem! A few decades ago, hydrogenated oils (trans fats) replaced butter in processed foods in a misguided effort to lower the consumption of saturated fats. We now know that these fats contribute to dementia, inflammation, and diabetes and increase the risk of cancer. Avoid anything that says “hydrogenated” in the label! If you are intermittent fasting, you should stay away from any of the seed and vegetable oils, including corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, and margarine. Instead, choose organic, cold-pressed, extra-virgin olive oil. You can pour it directly on your food, including salads, fish, and cheeses like fresh mozzarella. You cannot eat too much of it, but do not cook with it, as it has a low smoke point. (Cooking with oils above the temperature of its smoke point causes the creation of toxins and free radicals.) Use coconut oil in your smoothies, to make a vegetable stir-fry, or to cook with, as it has a high smoke point. Serve fats with every meal! And remember, although fats go great with veggies, a sure way to put on weight is to add in starches and sugars—plus, you will raise your bad cholesterol. This article is excerpted from Grow a New Body: How Spirit and Power Plant Nutrients Can Transform Your Health by Alberto Villoldo. © 2019. Used by permission from Hay House.

About The Author Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., has trained as a psychologist and medical anthropologist and has studied the healing practices of the Amazon and Andean shamans. Dr. Villoldo directs The Four Winds Society, where he trains individuals in the practice of shamanic energy medicine. He directs the Center for Energy Medicine in Chile, where he investigates and practices the neuroscience of enlightenment. Dr. Villoldo has written numerous best-selling books, including One Spirit Medicine; Shaman, Healer, Sage; The Four Insights; Courageous Dreaming; and Power Up Your Brain. Visit her website: thefourwinds.com

photo: manki kim

Did you know that the average man should drink about four liters of water per day, and the average woman should drink about three liters of water per day? Most people fall drastically short when it comes to drinking the right amount of water in a day. Yet water is a basic necessity of life, so it’s important to drink a sufficient amount every day. Every part of your body relies on water to properly function. Without enough water, your organs will have to work much harder, and dehydration can have a long-term impact on your wellbeing. If you value your health, then it’s important to understand how proper hydration will benefit your body.

1. Better Temperature Regulation

Humans sweat to cool down, and doing so requires a lot of water. If you don’t drink enough water while you exert yourself, then you won’t be able to sweat, and you may overheat. In warmer weather, chronic dehydration may lead to heatstroke, and that condition can be very dangerous. To avoid heatstroke, it’s a good idea to carry water with you at all times, especially in the summer months and when you’re physically active. Even if you don’t develop heatstroke, a high temperature just isn’t comfortable, and it will prevent you from enjoying your day. If you are feeling a little off on a hot day, then you should seek shade and find some fresh water as soon as possible. Once you’re hydrated, you’ll be able to face the day’s activities with increased energy and a reinvigorated spirit.

2. Weight Loss

Dehydration and hunger feel remarkably similar. Because of this, many people reach for a snack when they should really be reaching for a bottle of water. This can lead to a vicious cycle of snacking, which contributes to dehydration and unintentional weight gain. A glass of water 20 to 30 minutes before every meal will help you feel full for a longer span of time, so you won’t end up craving snacks and other unnecessary calories. Some homes may not have the best tap water, so you should get high-quality filters to ensure that you can drink clean, flavorful water whenever you want. Check out Berkey water filters to ensure clean water for the entire household.

3. Improved Cardiovascular Health

As you become more and more dehydrated, your blood becomes thicker and thicker. Your heart is a sensitive muscle, and it will have to work very hard to push thicker blood through your veins. This can wear out your heart over time and cause serious damage. Your heart isn’t designed to push a thick paste through your veins, so it’s important to drink enough water so that your cardiovascular system can work at peak efficiency. As a bonus, when you’re properly hydrated, your body is better able to bring vital electrolytes to your muscles. These electrolytes will allow you to carry out strenuous physical activities without severe cramps or soreness. Furthermore, when you hydrate during a hike, workout, or other vigorous activity, you will be able to recover more quickly, so you can go back to the gym, track, or trail much sooner.

4. More Comfort in the Washroom

To maintain a healthy body, you need to regularly go to the bathroom. When you do your business, you are expelling toxins and waste from your body. Without enough water, your body will not be able to expel waste as easily or consistently. This can lead to kidney stones, constipation, and other painful problems. Constipation and kidney stones aren’t only painful, but they can also interfere with your everyday life. After all, who wants to go to work or visit a friend when they’re severely constipated? Water will help clear out your system so that you can consistently relieve yourself without discomfort.

5. Stronger Immune System

Even if you don’t notice it, your body is in a constant battle with viruses, bacteria, and other nasty pathogens. Proper hydration allows your white blood cells to enter the fray and defend your body. On top of that, water helps your body clear out dead tissues, waste products, and toxins so that your cells can operate in a safe and sanitary environment. When you drink enough water every day, you’ll find that you won’t feel sick or tired as often. If you’re sick with an illness that causes diarrhea or vomiting, then it’s especially important to drink a lot of water. Otherwise, these symptoms can quickly make you dehydrated and exacerbate the condition.

6. Increased Energy

When you’re dehydrated, your eyes, mouth, and skin feel dry, and you just want to sit down and do nothing. Often, people feel tired when they really just need a glass of water. This is especially true after a meal or snack. If you’re feeling a little drowsy after lunch, then you should drink a glass of water or two. It will reinvigorate your body and give you the energy that you need to tackle the rest of the day. Drinking enough water is one of the seven pillars of health, and its benefits can’t be overstated. If you think that you’re not properly hydrated, then develop a practical plan to meet the recommended amount every day.

About The Author Nichelle Lucero is a lifestyle writer. She loves sharing her ideas and personal experiences through her writing. She currently writes on a variety of health and lifestyle topics for her personal blog lifewithkrich.com. Her favorite pastime is working out and reading books together with her cats, Chloe, Milo and Nocco.

photo: brooke lark

It’s become a cliché for important people to have the same lunch every day, a way to reduce their decision load. What kind of awesome day rings in the halfway point without the spice of variety? No more. It’s called a lunch break, so let’s break with the ordinary. Lunch is an opportunity to reframe and restart your day. It’s the perfect time to eat an ideal meal, not an obligation to cross off the list. It’s also an opportunity to get your body the micronutrients it needs to keep you feeling great. The way to do that isn’t with something ordered off a cart. It’s by experimenting and exploring. It’s by taking my hometown’s motto to heart and keeping it weird.

Getting Owned

My favorite lunch as a young man was the Carl’s Jr. Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger. I would order it two, sometimes three times a week, and with that first hot, steaming bite, every time I’d think to myself: What is this creation of the fast food gods? This Zeus Burger that has me slobbering like a pit bull in a butcher shop? Back then I thought the sandwich was a savory flavor explosion designed by super geniuses, proof of man’s inherent dominion over nature. I would gleefully crush it with reckless abandon, then bask in the postcoital euphoria of a multiple flavorgasm… for all of about a minute and a half. Then I would literally feel sick to my stomach and drag ass the rest of the afternoon. Why? Well, let me tell you what that sandwich really was. It was meat and bacon that had been shot full of hormones and antibiotics and raised on Monsanto corn. It was yellow “cheese” that was somewhere in between milk and Nickelodeon “gak,” engineered not for flavor but for its ability to “melt” over the “all-beef” patty like a coat of high-gloss latex paint. It was sugary BBQ sauce for tang, and breaded onion fried in canola oil for crunch, all of it sandwiched between two fluffy slices of refined blood-sugar-spiking carbohydrates. How many of you fall prey to similar guilty lunch pleasures, not eating a healthy lunch or worry that you have poor lunch habits? Not sure? Then answer me this: How many of the following things do you do, or have you done, on a regular basis at lunchtime?

1. Decided what to eat based on how many/few calories it has.

2. Bought a sandwich from Subway because it’s “fresh.”

3. Eaten some form of fried starch like chips or fries as your “side.”

4. Eaten a meal whose only colors are different shades of white and brown (yellow cheese doesn’t count).

If you are anything like I was, you’ve done all those things. Many times. You found yourself owned by cravings and convenience, only to be left battling inflammation, brain fog, low energy, and mood dysregulation, all of which prevent you from crushing it during your afternoon work session. There are a number of reasons for this. With an estimated 75% of the world’s food produced from only twelve plant and five animal species, the lack of biodiversity in our diet is failing to support our gut or “second brain.” Additionally, our culture’s maniacal focus on calories instead of nutrients has left our bodies unbalanced and undernourished. Last, and I think most important, when it comes to the midday meal, the typical lunch is often packed with what I call antinutrients and far too few of the essential micronutrients you get when you eat weird foods in all colors of the rainbow from fertile, mineral-rich soil, which is why developing an ideal meal plan is more than necessary. Eventually, I got to a point where I was sick and tired—literally and figuratively—of only being productive for the first half of my day and missing the giant opportunities I had to fulfill my mission and achieve the things I dreamed about when I closed my eyes at night. So, I changed my lunch. And that’s what you’re going to do too. So, what is a healthy lunch? In this article, we’re going to walk you through the right kind of lunch. You’re gonna spice it up. You’re gonna make it interesting, exciting… even weird. It’s not gonna be the same every damn time. It’s gonna take a little effort to prepare before you dive right in and devour it, but it’s gonna be worth it. And you’re gonna be doing your body a solid. As Orson Welles once said, “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

Owning It

Take a deep breath. Lunch is about to get weird. But before we have some fun with it, we have to get fundamental. We have to address the nutrient profile of your overall diet and how that connects to your lunch. We need a solid foundation of macronutrients that provide the fuel for your body and the building blocks for your growth—all those healthy foods that proteins, fats, fiber, and carbohydrates that come from air, land, and sea. Once we have a handle on those, then we can dive into the weird foods that provide the key micronutrients that take you from functional to optimal. And finally, we can go to war against the antinutrients that are regularly undercutting the benefits of both your macro- and micronutrient consumption.

Universal Nutrition Principle #1: Calories Are Bullshit, Macronutrients Matter

Nutrition coach Mike Dolce has captained thousands of dramatic weight-loss and body transformations in his career, helping people from all across the spectrum: tall, short, white, black, male, female, Team Edward, Team Jacob. If there is one message that Mike has preached most consistently over all those years, it’s that if you are counting calories, you are setting yourself up for failure, because calories aren’t real, and humans don’t actually “burn” them. Hence, if you are formulating an ideal lunch for yourself, you have to think beyond calories. The calorie, as a unit of measurement, is based on the amount of heat produced when food is burned in a metal oven called a calorimeter. Last time I checked, our bodies are not metal ovens. What the body actually does is break down food in complex metabolic pathways, utilizing amino acids for muscles, shuttling nutrients into cells, and storing energy. When we work out, we don’t “burn the calories” from the last meal we ate like a coal-powered engine. Energy in the body comes from a chemical called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) that the body generates from a variety of sources, including glycogen, ketones, protein, and fat that our body had previously stored. That’s a very science-y way of saying that calories are bullshit. Still, this is how most people think about calories: Food has them. If you eat more than you burn when you work out, you get fat. Full stop. If it were only that simple! Does that mean you can eat any amount of food you want? Of course not. But it probably does mean that you can and should eat more of the right macronutrients than you currently consume. The biggest surprise to many of Mike Dolce’s clients, in fact, is just how much food he tells them to eat. Convinced by years of diet fad brainwashing of the calorie-in, calorie-out hypothesis, his overweight clients are shocked that when they eat more food than they ever have, they start losing weight. These anecdotes are plausible because when it comes to food and owning your health, it ain’t about the calories, it’s about the nutrients, which healthy meals have a lot of. The body needs good macronutrients to trigger the hormonal signals that help you start losing weight. A 100-calorie pack of crackers is not going to be as good as a small handful of almonds, or a couple pieces of grass-fed jerky, or any of the weird foods we’re going to talk about here. That is a nutritional truism that holds for more than just weight loss as well. Solid macronutrient intake is essential for optimal organ function, musculoskeletal function, and general bodily effectiveness.

PROTEIN: BUILD YOUR HOUSE

Protein is a key building block within our bodies. Technically, proteins are chains of different amino acids that break down and rebuild to help us form our muscles, skin, joints, and even our eyeballs. If the body were a house, it would be in a constant state of renovation, and protein would be the building materials. When the body starts to run out of those materials, it starts to age and degrade until it breaks down rather than building up. Eating enough protein (especially complete amino acid protein) as a regular part of your diet ensures that you supply your body with the building materials it needs to keep those internal load-bearing walls strong and, thanks to its role in promoting stable blood sugar levels, keep those lights on and burning brightly. That said, the big question with protein as a macronutrient and an essential part of an ideal meal isn’t whether it’s important; it’s what constitutes enough and whether there is such a thing as too much. In a study including both young and elderly subjects, a meal consisting of beef that yielded 30 grams of protein elicited significant increases in muscle protein synthesis after an overnight fasting period. Interestingly, a meal yielding 90 grams of protein did not elicit any greater responses in muscle protein synthesis. What makes those numbers so significant is when you put them in the context of a Western diet and standard American portions. Thirty grams of protein is only 4 to 5 ounces of beef, or about the size of the palm of your hand. An 8-ounce steak is 50 grams of protein by itself, and that’s usually the smallest option on most restaurant menus. Try hitting that 30-gram mark, because more is likely just going to be unnecessary extra work for your organs, and your wallet. Ideal sources: Grass-fed beef, wild-caught salmon, pasture-raised eggs, sprouted pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds

FIBER: SLOW AND STEADY

Fiber is another constituent of a healthy lunch. However, if I were Dietary Fat, I would fire my PR agent and hire the one they have working for my friend Dietary Fiber. While fiber is technically a carbohydrate, everyone and their mother—especially their mother—has heard of the importance of fiber. But not many people know exactly why. To understand fiber, you have to understand the different types and how each can be beneficial to your body. We are going to focus on three main types: soluble, insoluble, and fermentable (prebiotic) fiber. Soluble fibers mix with water and form a gel-like substance. If you’ve ever had chia seed pudding, or a chia slurry, you have a good sense of what this looks like. It almost has the consistency of Jell-O. Soluble fiber, like its unjustly maligned friend Dietary Fat, offers a variety of metabolic benefits when this process happens in the body, including slowing down the uptake of nutrients just long enough to help level out blood sugar spikes. Ideal sources: Chia, flax, asparagus, guar gum Insoluble fiber, an important element of an ideal meal, plays an important role in making sure your digestive tract has enough substance to push through the system efficiently and completely. Some of the most common sources of insoluble fiber are plants without much nutrient density but whose cell walls are made of cellulose. Like our friend psyllium, they act as a bulking agent, which helps speed the complete passage of food and waste through your gut. Ideal sources: Avocado, sprouted barley, mixed greens, popcorn, psyllium Fermentable fiber/resistant starch is often called a “prebiotic” because your friendly neighborhood gut bacteria are able to digest (ferment) it to use as food. Whereas probiotics actually contain more friendly bacteria to help populate your gut colony, prebiotics provide the food they need to thrive. The most common fermentable fibers include beans, the “magical fruit,” and as with all forms of fermentation, produce everyone’s favorite bodily byproduct: gas. Not all fermentable fibers are created equal, of course. Some will be more efficient and tolerable for your body than others, and you’ll just have to experiment to find out. Though I suspect you, or whoever you might share a bed with, already know. Personally, my favorite prebiotic fermentable fiber is dandelion greens. My body tolerates them very well. My least favorite are Brussels sprouts, which turn my digestive tract into a fart factory. Ideal sources: Garbanzo beans (hummus), dandelion greens, chicory root, onions A lunch composed of food groups with these fibers well represented will promote gut health and aid digestion. A healthy, well-firing digestive tract is key to preventing the kind of heavy bloat and discomfort that can derail what would otherwise have been a smooth, productive afternoon.

CARBOHYDRATE: SPEED KILLS

With the exception of fiber, carbohydrates are basically sugar. But it is not their sugary nature that makes them dangerous, it is the speed at which they are delivered into your system. Your goal when it comes to carb consumption is to slow them down as much as possible. The speed at which you digest caffeine depends on what else you’ve consumed with it. Chewed-up food—or chyme—will digest at the rate of the slowest-absorbing nutrients within it. Fat and fiber take longer for the body to process than sugar or starch and are therefore two of the best nutrients for slowing down digestion. The best way to eat carbs in an ideal lunch, then, is to eat things that already have the fiber in them—things like yams, sweet potatoes, quinoa, sprouted or fermented grains, and some fruits. A lot of people who are sensitive to their carb intake look at the composition of fruit, being largely sugar, and they come to the conclusion that fruit is bad. What they fail to realize, though, is that fruit is full of fiber. The fiber is a big part of what gives fruit its solid-state structure. Without it, most fruits would just be juice balloons ready to spill out all over the place. That relationship between the fiber and the sugar in fruit plays out in the body as well. Fruits don’t just flood your bloodstream with sugar; the fiber in them slows down the absorption of sugar in the gut, which basically spreads out the glycogen battery charge over a longer period. Anything over a 100% charge of your glycogen stores converts to fat, so if you can charge your body at a pace similar to the one you drain it at, you’ll be fine on the fruit front. So, if fiber and fat slow down the absorption of sugar, what do you suppose produces the fastest absorption? Well, something that has neither fiber nor fat. The liquid greased lightning of sugar: soda. If you just do one thing for your nutrition, for your workday, and for your world, stop drinking conventional soda and stop giving soda to your kids. Sugar-sweetened beverages contributed to a staggering 60% increase in childhood obesity. Sugar-sweetened beverages that use fructose, like fruit juice concentrates and high-fructose corn syrup, are the worst of the worst. Fructose cannot be used in any other immediate functions of the body, so it immediately converts to glycogen or fat. When it comes to sugar, and especially fructose, you need to get them out of your diet so you can get their effects out of your day. Ideal sources: Yams, sweet potatoes, sprouted or fermented grains, certain fruits

FAT: FUEL THE BURN

Aside from proteins, fiber and carbohydrate, healthy fats should also be a part of your breakfast, dinner and midday meal. One way high-fat diets like the ketogenic diet can help you lose weight is by curbing hunger through increasing the signal for satiety, the feeling of being full. This diminishes the desire to overeat, sometimes starting as early as the first bite of hunger-satiating fat. Your liver can convert saturated fat in your diet to cholesterol, but contrary to what you might have been told, cholesterol is not going to kill you. There are studies showing that even in the elderly, high cholesterol can be protective. In these older populations, the higher the cholesterol, the lower your risk of heart disease. Not to mention that cholesterol levels that are too low are actually associated with increased risk of death from other causes, like cancer and suicide. This likely has to do with the fact that saturated fat and cholesterol are the starting point for the production of many important hormones, including testosterone and estrogen. Whether you’re male or female, having robust hormone levels has been linked to most aspects of healthy living: mood, body composition, libido, and energy level. Without good fat in your diet, without enough cholesterol, you will be setting yourself up for some serious problems. Ideal sources: Coconut oil, animal fats, avocado, grass-fed butter, egg yolk, olive oil, MCT oil, cacao butter

You Are What What You Eat Ate

 As critically important as macronutrients are to your overall health when creating the ideal meal, it’s equally important that they come from as many high-quality sources as possible. We’ve all heard the expression “You are what you eat.” Well, that’s literally true. You didn’t grow from magic, or because that’s just what babies do. You grew because you ate stuff. But that’s only half the story because the stuff you ate grew because it ate (and metabolized) stuff too. You aren’t just what you eat, you’re also what what you eat ate. Double Western bacon cheeseburgers, technically speaking, have a macronutrient profile you could get away with, especially if you threw one bun off and made it a convertible. But if that is all you ever ate (like I wanted to when I was young), you would literally be made up of reconstituted and metabolized double Western bacon cheeseburgers. You would be a cheeseburger human. Carl’s Jr. Junior. Which might be all right, depending on what what you eat ate. Did the cow who so kindly donated the patty and the cheese eat grass and weeds full of nutrients and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)? Or did it eat genetically modified corn packed with fructose? Did the onion come from nutrient-rich soil, or was it commercially farmed on re-fertilized ground that was regularly doused in Roundup? Was the bread refined wheat—basically cotton candy in the shape of a bun—or was it a sprouted grain, watered from mineral-rich springs or rainwater? Aside from making it hard for us to answer the “what is a healthy meal” question, multinational food manufacturers have tried to convince us that stuff like this doesn’t matter that much, but a cursory glance at the difference between natural foods and those that have endured even a modest amount of processing is all you need to know that this matters a lot if you want to own your day and own your life. Look at the higher concentrations of healthy fats like CLA in grass-fed beef versus conventional beef. Or just look at the food, period. Often you can actually see the difference in nutritional quality. Wild-caught salmon, with higher natural levels of the colorful antioxidant astaxanthin, have a much deeper pink flesh compared to farm-raised salmon, which would be unrecognizable without the red dye added for coloring. Pasture-raised chickens produce eggs with rich orange yolks, whereas factory-farmed chickens lay eggs with almost sickly yellow yolks. Even corn and berries, when grown organically, can have up to 50% more antioxidants. And veggies, well, they are only as good as the soil and water that made them grow. Anyone who has sampled the merchandise at a good farmer’s market can tell you that it is not to-may-to versus to-mah-to. It’s tomato versus what the hell is that? All of which is to say, whether it’s macro- or micronutrients you’re after, going conventional with your food isn’t going to get you very far. You’ve gotta get weird and be meticulous about what types of food you choose for the ideal meal.

Universal Nutrition Principle #2: Eat Weird Foods

Jonathan Swift said, “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.” Damn right. I wonder if ol’ Curious Jorge was actually hungry or just feeling destructive when he came across his first oyster? I can imagine him finding this sea rock that seemed to have something alive inside it, smashing it open, and giving it a good sniff. It smelled like the ocean, so he poked it with his tongue. It was slimy… yet familiar. Then, he eventually slurped the whole thing down for desperately needed sustenance. What is certain is that he had no idea how just a few oysters could supply 1,000% of his daily vitamin B12 needs, along with hefty supplies of vitamins A and E, copper, selenium, zinc, and essential fatty acids. Add in a bottle of sauv blanc, and he would also have the world’s first afternoon patio brunch, but that’s a whole different discussion. This is the essence of weird foods. And the more diverse they are, the more diverse the micronutrients you consume, the closer you’ll be to optimized performance following your midday meal, and the farther away you’ll be from the deleterious internal conditions that always seem to throw the brakes on the rest of our day.

MICROBIOME-ASSISTIVE FOODS

Besides taking a supplement to fix our screwed-up guts, the next best thing we can do in preparing the ideal lunch is dramatically increase the type and variety of foods we eat, because with that diversity comes a more robust and more diverse group of microbiota. The more diverse and plentiful your microbiota, the more potential health benefits they can contribute to the body. To get there, you need to hunt down prebiotic foods that feed the good bacteria that already exist, encouraging them to flourish, and probiotic foods that increase the ranks of those friendly bacteria. Prebiotic foods are those that feed the bacteria already present in the gut. Fueling those little dudes, which outnumber the rest of the body’s cells ten to one, is pretty important and why foods rich in fermentable fiber and resistant starch are so key. They survive the digestive enzymes in the stomach and small intestine and deliver their payload—principally inulin, among others—to the large intestine, where they can feed critical strains of probiotic bacteria like bifidobacteria, which keep things efficient in the bowel system by helping reduce constipation and boosting the immune system. While lunch is not usually the time for a bunch of starchy carbohydrates like french fries, surprisingly there may be a way to keep potatoes on the lunch menu in a useful, prebiotic fashion: potato salad! When you heat and cool potatoes (or rice), you turn some of the digestible starches into resistant starch via a process called retrogradation. In addition to feeding your friendlies, the retrograded starch will have a diminished effect on elevating blood sugar levels, which will help you ward off the afternoon drowsies. The key with any prebiotic food is to start small and build up. If you eat too much right off the bat, you are going to have serious gas. Ideal sources: Jerusalem artichokes, blueberries, almonds and pistachios, and especially high quantities in chicory root, dandelion greens, and onions Probiotic foods add more friendly bacteria into your system, the ones that not only break down food in the stomach but also start breaking down food outside the stomach as well; hence, it comes as no surprise that it is a must-have when preparing a healthy lunch. Their helpful bacteria and yeasts feed on the sugars and resistant starches in the food, converting some of the sugar to organic acids and making the food easier to digest. Eating  probiotic food is kind of like hiring new intestinal factory workers who start working before they even reach the factory floor. They work a lifetime, multiply, have children during the fermentation process, and then when you finally consume the food, you add some of their numbers to your own intestinal factory. It’s a win-win. The best place to find these probiotics is in cultured or fermented foods. Fermentation not only introduces a bunch of healthy probiotics, it also increases nutrient bioavailability and digestibility, making tolerable many foods like dairy, soy, or plants like cabbage that would normally be irritating to the digestive tract. Fermentation is a traditional practice around the world, and commonplace in many of the world’s Blue Zones. If you haven’t heard that term, Blue Zones are areas of the globe whose populations enjoy the highest levels of health, and studying those populations can give great insight into some best practices we can all apply. Ideal sources: Miso, kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, dark chocolate, Greek yogurt

PROTECTIVE FOODS

Moreover, an ideal meal should also have protective foods. There are a lot of different protective foods, to the extent that any nutrient dense food you eat is probably doing something to benefit or bolster one of the systems in your body, but two classes of food stand above the others for their essential protective nature: omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. Omega-3 fatty acids are called essential fatty acids because the body can’t produce them and needs to source them from food. These aren’t normal fats; these compounds play key roles in regulating inflammation and other processes like blood clotting. While both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are important, the problem develops when the ratio gets out of line. Research by Dr. Stephan Guyenet suggests that the ratio in healthy nonindustrial populations is somewhere from 1:1 to 1:4 omega-3 to omega-6, respectively. Unfortunately, in our typical diet the ratio is more like 1:16, and we need to correct that, not just with supplements but with diet. Ideal sources: Chia, flax, and sacha inchi seeds; wild-caught fish like sockeye salmon, sardines, and mackerel; grass-fed beef (as long as it isn’t grain-finished) Antioxidants have been touted, at one time or another, as a cure for everything from cancer to the common cold. While the hype for antioxidants as a panacea was definitely overblown, what is absolutely true is that they reduce oxidative stress in the body by eliminating free radicals, hungry molecules on the hunt for electrons to quench their unending molecular thirst. When free radicals pull electrons from normal cells, those cells die as part of the inflammation process. Cell death is a healthy function that keeps deranged and damaged cells from wandering around aimlessly, but when there is too much oxidative stress, and there are too many free radicals roaming around like Pac-Man ghosts, you start to get more inflammation than you need or want. That is when it is time to reach for the antioxidants. With electrons to spare, there are several powerful classes of antioxidants that can blast thirsty radicals. So, what is a healthy meal? Well, it should include foods rich in antioxidants and abundant in other protective foods. Polyphenols help reduce something called C-reactive protein, which is a marker of inflammation. The best sources for polyphenols are chocolate, red wine, and green tea. Anthocyanins are immune boosters present in dark fruits like blackberries, blueberries, acai, blackcurrant, and cherries, as well as black rice and eggplant. Curcuminoids have earned a lot of buzz for their ability to reduce inflammation. Found primarily in turmeric—whose yellow root gives curry powder its color—not only do they reduce oxidative stress, they are specifically valuable for the brain and may help reduce the age-related brain conditions. Unfortunately, on their own, curcuminoids are hard for the body to absorb, but when you combine turmeric with black pepper or the extract BioPerine, the absorption can skyrocket up to 2,000%. Garlic is one of these mysterious foods that has been used therapeutically for millennia. This is another easy win in the ideal lunch meal since it contains multiple antioxidant compounds that, among other things, subdue the common cold like a Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt. A large 12-week study found that garlic supplementation reduced the number of colds by 63% versus placebo. That is awesome by itself, but even better when you consider the average length of cold symptoms for those who were sick was also reduced, from five days to just one and a half days in the group taking garlic. Another study backed up those results and found that a high dose of garlic extract can reduce the number of days someone feels sick with the cold or flu by 61%. To get the maximum benefit, load up on garlic in the winter or if anyone in your house is getting the sniffles. Sulforaphane is an antioxidant compound produced when raw cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage are chopped or chewed. Evidence suggests that sulforaphane may help inactivate and eliminate carcinogens as well as help decrease DNA damage by reducing inflammation, the underlying cause of many diseases. The highest concentration of sulforaphane is actually in broccoli sprouts rather than broccoli itself. As it turns out, it’s not uncommon for sprouts to be more nutritious than their more mature form. Ideal sources: Dark chocolate, red wine, green tea, berries, black rice, turmeric and black pepper, garlic, broccoli sprouts

VITAMIN- AND MINERAL-RICH (MICRONUTRIENT) FOODS

Here’s the deal: pretty much every vegetable or well-sourced protein contains good vitamins and minerals. But if you’re going to get all the trace micronutrients you need to really get your body and your brain humming on a regular basis, you need to vary your dietary intake and pull from the WTF-is-that? part of the salad bar. Here are a couple of winners: Cauliflower is so hot right now. Go to any modern food joint and you’ll likely see some kind of unique preparation: cauliflower rice, cauliflower flan, cauliflower pizza crust, General Tso’s cauliflower. It’s become the grain of vegetables, with the added benefit of 900% fewer carbs than rice, and it contains all the usual vitamin and mineral suspects, along with brain-healthy nutrients like choline. Seaweed/sea veggies contain high levels of ocean minerals, including iodine, magnesium, manganese, iron, and other trace minerals. One great way to add in seaweed besides eating sushi or miso soup at your favorite Japanese restaurant is to purchase kelp or dulse flakes. I have a great seasoning that includes sesame seeds and seaweed flakes that I sprinkle on all my stir-fry meals and even put in my bone broth. The seaweed snack game has really found its groove with sea crackers and dried nori as well. Organ meat (liver, heart, kidneys) sourced from pasture-raised animals is one of the world’s most nutrient dense superfoods. While the taste and texture can be a challenge to overcome, the benefits make it worthwhile; it’s packed with the most bioavailable forms of both vitamins and minerals. Don’t be shy about doing your best Hannibal Lecter impression and eating some liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Universal Nutrition Principle #3: Go to War with Antinutrients

Now, in order to truly answer the question of what is a healthy lunch, there’s even more to talk about. You know that old saying, “Two steps forward, one step back.” When it comes to diet and health, antinutrients are the one step back, and they are just as important to avoid as the two steps forward we need to make with macro- and micronutrients. These toxic compounds generally lead to oxidative stress and inflammation, which, as we’ve discussed at length already, is one of the most harmful conditions our bodies deal with on the regular. And since most of us are too chronically stressed out to be able to count on simply shutting off inflammation, limiting the inputs that trigger inflammation is the next best thing. Sugar, of course, is the biggest antinutrient of them all, and an ideal meal should never include sugar. Here, however, we are going to cover the other dietary supervillains so that you might avoid limiting or reversing your progress.

TRANS FATS AND VEGETABLE OILS

What is a healthy lunch? A meal sans artificial trans fats. Artificial trans fats (vegetable oils bonded with hydrogen) were created by food manufacturers to extend the shelf life of packaged and processed foods, so they could sell more food more cheaply and farther away. The strategy worked, ballooning their bottom lines. Unfortunately it also started killing us in the process, causing massive systemic inflammation that was the precursor to all sorts of chronic health conditions. In 2015, in recognition of this fact, the FDA took the remarkable step of removing trans fats from GRAS status (generally regarded as safe) despite the explicit trans fat labeling requirements already in place. The biggest problem with most vegetable oils like canola and safflower is that they are so high in omega-6 fatty acids, skewing the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio so disproportionately that the only way your body doesn’t slip into a pro-inflammatory state when you consume them regularly is if you start every morning with a salmon-sized suppository full of fish oil. These oils are in all kinds of foods, including baked goods, fried goods, spreads, and sauces. The most offensive, though, are the fake butters and margarines; these are so packed with pro-inflammatory, cardiovascular-disease-inducing vegetable oils that people who replace their butter with margarine are more likely to die from heart disease. So here’s the move: Anytime you can’t believe it’s not butter, or you see something with trans fats, throw that shit in the trash. Even if it says “0g trans fats” on the packaging, double-check that the ingredients don’t include anything listed as “partially hydrogenated ____ oil” because that is trans fat. Companies get to claim zero grams because the FDA allows them to round down for anything that contains less than 0.5 grams per serving. Spare yourself the fraction math and just throw it all out. Simple, done. No further discussion necessary. And as for canola and safflower oil, just do your best to limit your intake and vote with your dollars for products that don’t contain them.

FRIED OR BURNED FOODS

When you’re cooking for your health, even if you’re indulging in some delicious pan-fried foods, you want to make sure you don’t heat your fats—olive oil, butter, coconut oil—to what is called their “smoke point.” This is where healthy fats start to turn unhealthy, because once they burn, they start to produce toxic compounds called aldehydes, which, interestingly, are also in the class of compounds that accumulate when we drink too much alcohol, making us feel hungover. This chemical conversion process, which turns the healthy fats into something perilous, is why I tell you to keep your bacon bendy. When you burn it or fry it on high heat, the sodium nitrite, as well as the nitrates that are often added for preservation, can turn into a nasty carcinogen called nitrosamines. Not only is this bad for your system, but it also ruins one of nature’s tastiest, porkiest gifts. I know that dark crust on burned ends and bone-in ribeye steaks is mouth-wateringly good, but for the sake of optimizing your lunch and reducing the carcinogenic effects on your body over the long term, let’s go ahead and dial all that back for a little while. Pro Tip: Fry with Avocado Oil Avocado oil has the highest smoke point of all cooking oils. With a nice mild flavor, it’s great for any kind of sauté or stir-fry. And with a smoke point upward of 500 degrees Fahrenheit, you’ll be hard-pressed to scorch it unless you crank the burner to 11 and then forget about it.

PESTICIDES

While major players in the agricultural-industrial complex like Monsanto will defend their use of pesticides on crops by telling you that it’s fine to spray Roundup in your face on a hot day to cool off, you would do well to proceed with caution when you consider that numerous studies over the years have demonstrated disturbing links between pesticides and a host of gnarly shit. One study found pesticide residues were four times more likely on non-organic crops, while organic produce saw a 48% lower presence of cadmium, a toxic metal, than their non-organic counterparts. In a study of 1,139 children, researchers found a 50% to 90% increased risk of ADHD in children with the highest levels of pesticides in their urine, compared to those with the lowest levels. Another study noted a correlation between those gardening with the pesticide rotenone and the development of Parkinson’s later in life. Hence, when preparing the ideal meal, it really pays to know the sources of your food. Does all this mean you need to run screaming from the conventional produce section at your local supermarket? No, just understand that pesticides are not good for you and that eating organic as much as possible will be the surest way to avoid the antinutrients conventional produce contains.

CHEMICALS

There are all kinds of chemicals found in food, but perhaps the most ubiquitous are food dyes. An analysis of over fifteen clinical trials, compiled well over a decade ago, showed that artificial food dyes increased hyperactivity in children. And yet they still remain in food. Tartrazine, also known as FD&C Yellow #5, found in many of those tasty mac-and-cheese boxes and Kraft singles marketed to kids, is particularly ugly, having been correlated with behavioral changes including irritability, restlessness, depression, and difficulty sleeping. So Velveeta doesn’t make it better after all. It’s not just food dyes, though. A huge study looking at 1,873 children showed that food dye in conjunction with sodium benzoate, a common preservative, also increased hyperactivity. Is it any wonder we are handing out ADD medication to our kids like candy? Blame it on culture all you want, but it might just be what’s in your pantry that’s the problem.

HEAVY METALS

We’re not talking about Metallica. We’re talking about death metal. Namely, your own death from metal. Remember Tony Robbins? Well, his favorite thing to eat was tuna and swordfish steaks, and it almost killed him. The reason? Mercury poisoning. Like most larger and longer-living predatory fish, tuna and swordfish are extremely high in mercury, and over time those metals can build up in the tissue and wreak havoc. In a study of 129 Brazilians, for example, higher levels of mercury were associated with a decrease in fine motor skills, dexterity, memory, and attention. Further evidence suggests that low levels of mercury toxicity are linked to diseases like depression, anxiety, and even Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Interestingly, canned tuna has a much more reasonable level of mercury than a bigeye tuna steak, so if the preservatives and additives are not off the charts, and you need your chicken of the sea, snagging some cans off the grocery store shelf may be your best option. If you are concerned about heavy metals, whether because you live in a polluted environment, you had a bunch of dental work 30 years ago, or you are a sushi addict who is 25% spicy tuna roll by weight, definitely get your blood levels tested. In addition, consider adding a daily dose (about 1/4 cup) of cilantro to your diet. Packed with vitamins and minerals, cilantro (or coriander leaves, if you’re not from North America) in moderation has been shown in several studies to have the unique ability to help the body chelate (a fancy word for “eliminate”) heavy metal accumulation, making it a good addition to your options when preparing the ideal meal. In the animal model, it has even been shown to prevent the accumulation of metals. Either way, it is important not to overdo it with cilantro chelation because the metals can become mobilized during the elimination process and enter even more sensitive tissues. To prevent that from happening, you want to open up all the channels of detoxification. In other words, make sure you are drinking plenty of water to flush urine, having regular bowel movements, and sweating to release the toxins. Sauna and hot yoga are great ways to ensure you are moving enough sweat.

PHYTIC ACID AND OXALATE

Phytic acid and oxalate (or oxalic acid) are natural chemicals found exclusively in plant species that protect and assist the plants in which they’re found but inhibit mineral absorption when consumed by humans. Phytic acid, found in all edible seeds, grains, and legumes, helps protect the seed and stores phosphorus that young plants use to grow. When ingested by a human, it prevents full absorption of key minerals like iron, zinc, and calcium. While vegetables and fruits are essential elements that comprise a healthy lunch, food items loaded with phytic acid and oxalate are also dangerous to your health. Oxalate is found in particularly high concentration in leafy greens like kale. It is part of the plants’ natural anti-pest defense mechanisms, but binds with minerals, particularly calcium, when consumed and makes them less available for use in key cellular processes. Fortunately, there are strategies for mitigating the antinutrient properties of both these sneaky little devils. Sprouting or fermentation disable and degrade phytic acid in plant seeds so that the grain can burst through in the process, increasing vitamins like folate, vitamin C, and vitamin E, along with nutrients like lysine, a crucial amino acid for immune health. The tastiest version of this process is probably sourdough bread. The fermentation of the dough promotes phytate breakdown to a much greater degree than typical yeast fermentation in normal bread, resulting in a delicious delivery mechanism for a slab of real butter and mineral-rich sea salt. The best way to handle the oxalate in your leafy greens is simply to boil or cook them, which significantly reduces the amount of oxalate, in some cases by up to 90%. Adding calcium to your dietary regimen can compensate for the calcium lost to the oxalates as well.

Now Do It

Humans are funny creatures. Having lost our instinctual guidance, we have to make choices with our minds constantly. Some of these choices require willpower, and when life gets rocky, that’s when our willpower turns to Rocky Road. The decision to delay or restrict immediate pleasure for future gain or the greater good is controlled by a part of the brain called the frontal cortex. This part of the brain continues to develop even through our twenties, reaching maturity well beyond the time we have a car and a credit card. With an immature frontal cortex, and the means to acquire a double Western bacon cheeseburger on the regular, even if we know it isn’t good for us, we still might do it. But it’s not just those wild teens and troubled twenty-somethings who may not have a powerful frontal cortex; like any part of the brain (or entire body for that matter), it gets stronger largely through exercise. Every time we make a choice for our future good, our frontal cortex is strengthened. Every time we fail, the groove that slides us into post-food-orgy shame is also deepened. This is why lunch is important not only for the body but also for the mind. Preparing the ideal lunch doesn’t have to be a wrestling match with yourself. Make eating weird foods a game, take some of the pressure off. The world is full of awesome food, so stop thinking about what you can’t have and get excited about what you can. Expand that list by seeking out restaurants and foods you’ve never tried and giving them a go. I’m not talking about a new toaster strudel flavor or a new gastropub either (it’ll have the same crudo and Brussels sprouts appetizers as all the other pubs), I’m talking about a new concept or a new type of nut, or fruit, or vegetable. Something like rutabaga, or macambo, or pili nuts.

What is a healthy meal? Three Pointers:

+ Rather than counting your calories, focus on the nutrients you are putting into your body. You want to ingest plenty of macronutrients like proteins, fats, and fiber. Remember, you are what what you eat ate, so source your macros well. + Micronutrients are abundant in a diverse diet. Seek out these “weird” foods and benefit from a host of protective and performance-enhancing nutrients. + Equally important as what you put into your body is what you keep out of it. To achieve the ideal meal, avoid antinutrients that come from sugar and highly processed, refined, burned, fried, or artificial foods and colorings. These are the succubi of the food world and are to be resisted. Excerpted with permission from Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex by Aubrey Marcus.

About The Author Aubrey Marcus is the founder and CEO of Onnit, a lifestyle brand based on a holistic health philosophy he calls Total Human Optimization. Aubrey currently hosts The Aubrey Marcus Podcast, a motivational destination for conversations with the brightest minds in athletics, business, science, relationships, and spirituality. Aubrey regularly provides commentary to outlets like Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Doctors, and The Joe Rogan Experience. He has been featured on the cover of Men’s Health, and his newest book, Own The Day, Own Your Life is available now from HarperCollins. Learn more at aubreymarcus.com

photo: kaylee garrett

External Factors: The Outside Influences that Mess with Your Fertility

Are you wondering how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility? Let’s talk about the fifteen external factors that could be affecting your fertility. These are outside factors that might not immediately seem related to your fertility but can be huge contributing factors. Obviously, not everyone who has these factors deals with infertility, but this is where the mindset and the external factor together can block fertility. Not all fifteen will apply to you, but it’s very likely that, as we elaborate on each factor, one you didn’t think was an issue might resonate. Also, notice if something other than these fifteen possible causes of infertility in women comes up for you. I’m going to bring your awareness to things that can be affecting your fertility and ways to diminish or even eliminate these factors to boost fertility.

1. Stressful Job

While most people think their job is stressful, I’m talking mainly about teachers, nurses, caregivers, and CEOs—those responsible for groups or teams of people. You get to work early, stay late, and give it your all. You’re great at your job. But, here’s the problem: Your brain/ego’s main function is to keep you alive. The amygdalae in your brain are two almond-shaped groups of nuclei located in the temporal lobes. They play a primary role in memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions. This is where aggression, addiction, anxiety, PTSD, and, most importantly, fear reside. The amygdalae are responsible for the primal fight-or-flight reflex. This response is awesome when you’re being chased by wolves, but not so much when you’re trying something new. Your brain means well and wants to keep you safe, but sometimes it’s a pain in the ass. While we don’t live in a world where we need to run from saber-toothed tigers anymore, our brain is still triggered by stressors that it perceives as a threat to our survival. When we have too many things going on and are spread too thin, it triggers a silent alarm in our body. That’s when things can start to go haywire and this isn’t ideal if you are trying to increase fertility. The fight-or-flight response is part of the sympathetic nervous system, which means it’s automatic; and it can be triggered on a low-grade level without our even realizing it sometimes. When you’re responsible for a lot of people’s health and wellbeings, such as a teacher, nurse, or caregiver, or you’re responsible for a team in a corporate situation, your time and energy are maxed out. So while you’re thinking “I want to have a baby,” your brain already feels as though it’s taking care of way too many people and says, “Why would we add another responsibility to our plate?” It literally can’t handle taking care of another human, and that can put the kibosh on the lady parts. When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, all unnecessary body systems slow or shut down. All available energy goes to the heart, brain, lungs, and legs (in case of flight). During a crisis, you don’t need your reproductive system to stay alive. This is especially prevalent among women in the “unexplained infertility” group. When the doctor can’t find anything wrong with you, this very thing could be happening. Though it may seem like only low-grade stress to you, it’s not to your body. This continual stress pattern, over a long period of time, is exhausting. Again, not everyone in these careers has fertility issues, but 95 percent of my clients are in these fields. There’s an undeniable correlation. So, what can we do about it? You might say, “Okay, great, but I can’t quit my job right now,” or “I love my job. Am I screwed?” Of course, not. Are you the get-there-early-and-leave-late, give-it-your-all type? While that’s admirable and will garner you perks at work, this push-to-the-limit attitude could actually be getting in the way of conceiving or, in other words, could be one reason for infertility. Your great work ethic is awesome, but unfortunately, it can mean you’re taking care of everyone else’s needs before your own. So your lovely brain, which wants to keep you alive, says, “Um, we’re already stretched way too thin and not taking care of ourselves as it is. And you want to add something to our plate? Are you insane?!” I’m certainly not advocating that you become a sloth and only move for food and sex, but we do want to look at ways you can slowly start conserving more energy. When your brain feels that you have more space in your life, the fight-or-flight response isn’t triggered as often, and it will feel that a baby is a plausible venture. Even though you, as an evolved human, want the baby and see all the positives, you are dealing with a primal, involuntary reaction in the brain that you cannot fool. So, our initial job is to create an environment where your brain feels safe to start this process. Consider it food for thought that, when most of my clients come to me for to ask help on how to deal with infertility and get pregnant fast, they also end up changing their career in some capacity. So, I invite you to inquire in a journal entry if you’re in the career you feel you’re meant to be in, or one you feel you’re obligated to be in. More and more, I’m seeing these two areas tied together, and sometimes, it can be the reason the baby hasn’t shown up yet. You’re supposed to get a handle on that first. When we want to have a baby so badly, we tend to skip over the areas where we need to do some work or make adjustments. But that work, ladies, is what helps you move toward the baby. These roadblocks being presented to you are not to be jumped over or gone around. You must move through them. They are likely to be among the spiritual causes of infertility, a big part of why your pregnancy hasn’t happened yet. In your career, you need confidence, drive, preparedness, and the feeling of being capable. More often than not, my clients tend to be in a job that is just that…a job. It’s a paycheck, or it gives them professional accolades, but it doesn’t feed their soul. I’ll ask them, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’ve only had one person answer that it was what they were currently doing. On the surface that might not seem important, but I’m finding that we are being called to step into our purpose versus a career. When we are not in that purpose—the reason we are on the planet this time around—other things that we really want can be delayed. That delay is not your body failing you; it’s trying to give you time to find your purpose before you add another aspect to your life. I have my clients explore what they’d love to do for a living if their “stories” about why they couldn’t do it didn’t factor in. I joke that, if they want to be a mime in a park, we’ll find a way to make it happen. But. seriously, if you’re harboring a super-creative person buried under an overworked CPA, it could be a problem. There’s nothing wrong with being a CPA if that’s your purpose, but if your soul longing isn’t being fed, it can manifest in your body. I’ll get more into chakras later in the article, but, for now, know that there are seven main wheels of energy in your body, going from the base of your spine to the top of your head. They all represent something different. When I’m reading people, the sacral chakra, located at your lower abdomen, represents creativity, relationships, and children. Your ovaries and uterus quite literally represent the point of creation. So, if you are in a job that’s not feeding your soul and your creativity, that chakra can be closed and can be considered as one of the spiritual causes of infertility. That means the creating children part shuts down as well. I’m not saying quit your job and draw landscapes on the sidewalk with chalk; but finding a way to feed your soul, whether it’s with something obviously creative (painting, drawing, dancing, photography) or something that just feeds your passion (getting a yoga teacher certification, making organic bath products, flipping houses) is a key component in how fast you move forward. Stepping out of the idea of being obligated to be in a job and into what were you put on the planet to do is so important. Here are some things you can implement now to overcome unexplained infertility and convince your brain there’s room for a baby:

+ If you usually stay late at work, commit to staying late only two days a week this month, then only one day a week the next month. If you can, wean over time to zero. But even if you stay at one, that’s a hell of a lot better than five.

+ Another way to reduce stress levels and increase fertility is to cut down your involvement in committees/organizations at work. Two of my clients who are teachers were involved in several extra things besides their teaching responsibilities, such as teachers union committee, AP classes, tutoring, department head, taking master’s classes, and club advisors. These are all admirable things, but they’re little things that add up to a lot of your energy. Again, if your brain feels overloaded with all that you have to do for so many other people, it believes that it literally can’t take on anything else. Can you find a place to back off on some of these responsibilities? Ask yourself, “If I had to choose between one of these extra things and my baby, would I still choose to be head of my union?” The mistake a lot of women make is thinking, “When I get pregnant I’ll cut back.” But the overload could be the very reason for infertility, so take that action now. Put out to the Universe that you’re making space for this munchkin to show up by looking for natural infertility treatments.

+ If you want to get pregnant fast, simply show the Universe that you’re energetically choosing the baby. Find ten minutes a day (and yes, you have it) to implement some sort of grounding practice. It’s all right if you’re not into yoga or meditation, though that’d be great. Having this daily practice, even if it’s for only a few minutes a day, starts to train the brain that you’re safe, you’re taking care of yourself, and it’s okay to allow this baby in.

You can do something as simple as:

+ taking a bath with essential oils. + sitting in the park or near a patch of grass on your lunch break and connecting to the earth is among the best spiritual things to do to get pregnant. + listening to soothing music with your hand on your belly, inviting in the baby’s energy, could promote natural fertility. + having a solo dance party in your living room to “Eye of the Tiger,” Lady Gaga, or whatever floats your fertility boat.

The idea is to get you into your body and out of your head. If your schedule is maxed out, you must find a way to create space so that your brain can feel like there’s room for this baby to come in.

2. Family Pressure

Many of us, from the moment we’re married, are asked, “When are you having kids?” Parents are eager for a grandchild to spoil. We’re also so steeped in tradition as a society that it’s just what you do. You have a baby after you get married. We’re almost trained to ask that question. Although family and friends mean well, their comments can seem preachy, judgy, or just plain insensitive. When we’re dealing with unexplained fertility issues, we’re already feeling insecure, and the last thing our brain wants is to feel worse about the situation. Not only are we worrying about our own feelings, but we then take on that extra responsibility of being able to tell our friends and family some good news. We plug it into our belief system the idea that “we should be pregnant by now.” The pressure of multiple people counting on us gets painful. And every time we encounter those people, we start to dread the inevitable question. Part of what keeps this pressure going is that we don’t always want our family to know we’re having a hard time conceiving and think that we don’t need any form of help getting pregnant. Though I hope this will change in the near future, infertility has traditionally been a very private struggle. So we think that if we share our issues, our loved ones will judge us or offer unsolicited advice that can be unintentionally painful. On the flip side, if we don’t address their comments, it continues to fester in us and perpetuates the problem. Social situations that were once fun turn into a tedious, defensive chore. First of all, there’s no shame in this journey at all. And honestly, the more it’s talked about, the better. Fertility is one of the few taboo issues left. It used to be like that with cancer and PTSD, but now they’re openly talked about. Unfortunately, there is still shame around unexplained infertility because we feel our body is not doing what women’s bodies have done for millennia. We blame ourselves, and sometimes forget that we can ask for help in trying to get pregnant. Remember that one in six women struggles with infertility. It’s very likely that you know multiple women who’ve dealt with the same thing. Realizing that you are not defective is so important in this journey. Just because the check engine light comes on in the car doesn’t mean the car is a lemon. Addressing the issue removes the stigma. Many of us have that family member or friend who continually asks when we’re having kids. As I said, that can be energetically draining. You put on a brave face and swallow your frustration. Every family party and dinner out with friends where you have to do this gets stored in your body—the annoyance, the frustration, the stress, the shame, the fear. Under the umbrella of the Law of Attraction is the Law of Psychophysical Response, which says that for every stressful thought, there is a stressful reaction in the body. Studies show that when we relive stressful past experiences or even hypothetical future scenarios, our bodies actually react as though it’s happening now. Every time you tell someone about it or think about it, your body is stressing in real time and this is not good for you if want to get pregnant fast. It’s so interesting! Consider the effect that these thoughts have on your body each time someone asks you at work or the next baby shower, “So, when are you having kids?” The problem with this, besides feeling annoying and hurtful, is that it’s actually impacting your body. When your body is in even a low state of fight-or-flight, it’s enough for your reproductive system to slow or shut down. Think about the primal fight-or-flight response: You need your heart, brain, lungs, and feet (in case of flight) to get out of a stressful situation. The last thing you need is for your reproductive system to be fully functional. So if not for your own sanity, do the following exercise for your body and your future baby. We take on a lot of responsibility when we’re worried about letting family down. It’s hard enough to deal with how you feel. To take on someone else’s expectations can be really overwhelming. Perpetuating these stressful thoughts takes a toll on the body and this could contribute to unexplained infertility. The good news is that, according to the same law, for every positive thought you have, there is a corresponding response in your body. It’s important that we choose positive thoughts and surround ourselves with positive people for this reason. My challenge to you is to say something to them, not from defensiveness, anger, or fear but from a loving place. You, hopefully, understand that they just want the best for you. And because they aren’t going through it, they have no idea how it’s affecting you. All they know to say is “Just relax” and “It’s up to God.” Know that, infuriating as that is, it’s coming from a caring place. But, that doesn’t mean you should have to keep swallowing your feelings about their constant inquiries. Speaking to them once about it can save numerous times of them asking. While I totally agree that it’s none of their beeswax, it saves you a perpetual headache. Swallowing your frustration can squash your energy and ability to allow a baby in. So, in this case, giving them the brush off can be an effective infertility cure. A lot of times, that family member or friend has their own neurosis that they’re projecting onto you, and you’re absorbing it without even being aware of it. For example, before she was pregnant, one of my clients (who just gave birth to twins) was dealing with pretty severe anxiety. As we worked together, we saw that her mother was projecting all her fears onto her daughter. My client was subconsciously scared of being pregnant and of life in general. We did a lot of belief work, but, to summarize here, once she realized they were her mom’s fears and not hers, she was able to speak frankly to her mom and stop the IV of anxiety and get pregnant. Some people will casually bring up the subject not knowing that it’s been a struggle that you’re sensitive about. Not having gone through it, they can’t possibly know their nonchalant comments are actually coming across as insensitive. It could also be that friends and family members are just genuinely excited for you. They can’t wait to have a little munchkin to spoil. They know you’re going to be an awesome mom and can’t wait for this next phase of life to start for you. Whatever the case may be—and it may be all three in various areas of your life—there’s a way you can approach it that will bring about understanding versus hurt feelings on one or both sides. It’s likely that they don’t know they are doing anything that’s hurtful, so if you lash out, both sides are hurt. Then there’s no lasting understanding, because to them it will seem like your reaction is coming out of nowhere. Finding ways on how to deal with infertility properly can be hard already, so getting affected by the pressure that your loved ones are injecting in your life can only make things worse. On the flip side, you don’t want to constantly be defending your position to a pushy family member. Everyone’s got an opinion, and if yours doesn’t match Aunt Susie’s, it can be a little daunting. One of my clients wanted to take a more holistic route, while her mother was pushing every intervention known to man. It was mentally and energetically wearing on my client. So, we talked about finding a way to come from a loving but clear place about what her boundaries were. Try something to the effect of this: “________ , I understand that you mean well and are excited for me. I know you love me and want the best for me and/ or are just curious, so I need you to hear this. ________ and I are in the process of starting a family. I so appreciate your love and concern, but it stresses me out when people keep asking about our baby-making status. I’m really focusing on grounding and being peaceful and present right now. I love that you’re excited to be a ________ (grandparent, aunt, etc.). Just know that when there’s good news to report, you will be one of the first to hear. In the meantime, we are exploring all the avenues that feel right for us. Thanks for your support.” While it is understandable that it’s hard to find answers on how to overcome unexplained infertility, you don’t want to admonish them. They’re your loved ones and genuinely want to see you happy. They just don’t realize how their inquiries are affecting you. Thank them for their love and concern while being clear about what you need. Remember that they aren’t doing it to piss you off or make you feel less than. And by addressing them in this way, you can head off a lot of your own frustration. That’s honestly the most important thing. We want to get you into a safe, supported, stress-free environment as much as possible. And heading off well-meaning friends and family at the pass can save a lot of energy.

3. Partner’s Energy Is Holding Back

These are considered some spiritual causes of infertility:

+ It may physically manifest as male infertility.

+ He’s getting cold feet about the amount of responsibility of having a child.

+ He hasn’t achieved what he wants in his career yet.

+ He’s got some subconscious family issues going on—parents never around or father left, etc.—and he hasn’t really dealt with it.

Sometimes, we get so gung-ho about having a baby that we can unintentionally miss our partner’s concerns and sweep them under the rug. But, it doesn’t solve anything and you just have a really big lump under your rug. It’s important to step out of your situation and see if any of these scenarios might apply to your partner. Even if you are willing to work with him, many husbands/partners are hesitant to consider non-medical alternatives—especially ones that have an energy component—so it can be hard to get them on board to move forward. And honestly, sometimes, it takes them seeing you making progress with this before they’ll ease in, but there are spiritual things to do to get pregnant and help your partner’s energy move forward without going all woo-woo on them and freaking them out. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Visualize your partner in front of you, tune in to their energy, and ask:

+ Are they in a career they hate?

+ Is there still something they want to be when they grow up that I could encourage?

+ Is there a class or workshop they could take to move their energy in that direction?

Most times, they aren’t aware of how to move through it, or sometimes they don’t even know they’re stuck. Sometimes, supporting them and pointing them in that direction is enough to shift things. I’ve seen this many times with men with low sperm count and motility. It often comes down to them not being in the career they would love, or the fact that the woman is the breadwinner or the more dominant personality. And this dynamic can be one of the possible causes of unexplained infertility. You might know what his dream career would be, or you might not. If you don’t, casually ask. Even if money and schedule are tight, what might be some ways that he could move toward it? Workshops? Classes? Meetups? If you can’t think of any class or certification he could pursue, you could just do some research about his desired career in your area or encourage a hobby that fulfills him. My client Amy’s husband was in a job he hated and wanted to be a firefighter. Finances wouldn’t allow that at the moment, so he joined the volunteer brigade and felt more fulfilled. As a result, his sperm count and motility improved. In another case, my client Rae was pretty high up in corporate America, and her husband made much less than she did. She also made all of the household decisions. It sounds a little silly, but men still have that primal instinct to provide. They still innately feel the need to kill the food, drag it back, and see their family live because of them. So with Rae taking care of the “hunting” and the home front, her husband was left unsure of his place and certainly not feeling like a provider. In the later part of this article, I will go into how this directly affects the body, but for now know that when a man isn’t feeling important or valid or that he has a primary role in the function of the family, his sperm motility and count can be affected. Did I ask Rae to quit the prestigious position she loved, just so her husband could feel important? Of course, not. There are other ways that men can feel like they’re contributing, even if it’s not financial. It could be something as simple as having him do a DIY project that you’ve been meaning to knock off the list for a while, or getting the car serviced, taking out the trash, or other things that need to be done to keep your lives running smoothly. We want to be careful that it’s not just giving chores to a kid. The important part of this is that you let him know how helpful it was that he did said task. It was such a big help, relief, took something off your plate, etc. Thanking him for making your life easier goes a long way with men. Not only are they more likely to keep doing a task when they are praised for it, but energetically they feel like they have a greater purpose, more worth, etc. That’s when we can start to see changes in the morphology and this could answer the “how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility?” question. Also, look at his family situation:

+ Are both of his parents still in the picture? + Are they divorced? If so, how old was he at the time of the divorce? + Has he not fully grieved or processed the death of a parent? + Are there abandonment issues that he doesn’t want to repeat? + Talk with him as lovingly and supportively as possible.

This sounds like a no-brainer, but often when we want to be pregnant so badly, we want our partner to hurry up and figure it out so we can move forward. Look at him as the person you love the most in the world who might be a little stuck and do what you can to connect to and love him. It will trickle down to the baby, but for right now, you may have to focus on him. So open your heart and see if you can feel into how you might best be able to help him move through this unexplained infertility.

+ If he doesn’t know what the problem is or won’t talk about it, see if he’ll try acupuncture infertility cure—so the energy can be unblocked, regardless of whether he wants to share his feelings or not. Acupuncture is a relatively accepted modality, even for men who aren’t really into alternative methods.

+ If you have good friends who have kids and your husband/ partner is close with the other husband, have the friend talk to him to alleviate his fears.

All of the manifestations of male infertility come from fears and beliefs that he’s likely not even consciously aware of. So, take some time away from the stress of worrying on how to overcome unexplained infertility and plug yourself into lovingly helping your partner forward.

4. Is Your Relationship Solid?

Some of the aforementioned things apply here, but this is more about the two of you. This can be a tough reason for infertility, so if this applies to you, try to breathe into it and see how you can move forward. When we are on Mission Baby, it’s so easy to want to skip over the pesky relationship thing. Here’s the thing: the obstacle is the path. That’s a famous saying and it’s so true. This obstacle was put in front of you to move through—not to leap over or burrow under or find a way around. The Universe is a loyal friend, albeit that tough-love friend that you want to punch but know it’s right. Know that avoiding our blocks doesn’t make them go away. Sure, we can choose not to deal with it now, but the pattern will keep repeating until we move through it, so why not address it and be done with it? Yes, it can be messy and painful, but honestly that’s better than staying in some kind of weird relationship limbo. Don’t hope that getting pregnant will change your relationship. Change your relationship and learn how to overcome unexplained infertility, so you can get pregnant. Ask yourself:

+ Do you fight a lot? More than you get along? + Does the divorce word get thrown around? + Are you out separately with friends more than together? + Is there physical or verbal abuse going on?

I know this seems like an unpleasant topic, but two of my clients, Jasmine and Diane, have gone through some combo of these issues and both chose very different paths. Neither is right or wrong. It’s more about making a decision. Their husbands wouldn’t go to counseling because “nothing was wrong with them.” Their wives were putting so much energy into the relationship and not getting anything back. They were being made to feel small and insignificant—and believe me, the worth piece is among the possible causes of unexplained infertility. If you don’t feel capable in one area of your life, it’s really difficult to feel capable in others. We can’t change our partners or make them do what we want. We can’t change anybody. But we can and must change how we react to this challenge we are being presented with. Do we find a way to move through the obstacle and stay, or do we leave and start over? Sometimes, through the belief work, we are able to shift our energy and viewpoint about what’s happening in the relationship and release negative energy about it and move forward. That being said, abuse is never okay and should not be tolerated. There’s always a lesson to learn on an energetic level, but I am by no means condoning staying in an abusive relationship. So often we feel like if we leave now, it’s gonna take way too long to meet someone else, get married, get pregnant, and have a baby. We already feel like we’re running out of time (which isn’t true, by the way), so we might as well stay. I promise you, if the relationship isn’t fixed one way or the other, you’re going to keep spinning your wheels. We want a baby so badly sometimes that we’re willing to leap over the relationship problem to get to the baby. Remember that energetically, this problem on how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility is being put there for you to address, not to leap over. Admittedly, that can seem like a huge pain in the ass. But see if you can look at it by asking yourself, “What do I need to learn from this first? What is the gift I’m supposed to be getting out of this?” This can be a hard question to answer, especially if your partner doesn’t know how to communicate or the relationship has been deteriorating for quite a while. I promise that there is always a reason we are going through what we are going though, and the timing isn’t random. The things that happen to us aren’t because of a vengeful god or because we’re being punished for cheating on that spelling test in fifth grade. There are always lessons to be learned. That phrase can have a not-so-great connotation to it. When we were little and heard the phrase “I hope you learned your lesson,” it usually meant we’d been punished for doing something we shouldn’t have done or that shouldn’t have happened. So we can be a little gun-shy when it comes to us having to learn “life lessons.” I’d like to reframe that a little bit. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, I like to refer to our life this time around on Earth as “Earth Camp.” I believe that each time around we pick things to “work on,” whether it’s family, relationships, health, or money. These are not easy things to move through, but if we do, we acquire skills that up-level us, so to speak; and if we don’t, we repeat it the next time until we do get it. So everything we come across in this incarnation on Earth Camp is a class with something to learn. As long as we don’t assign a stressful meaning to the thing, it can be as simple as taking history, algebra, or a relationship class. Yes, in some cases it’s a doctoral-thesis kind of class, but it’s for us to learn, not something to harm us. I like to say that it’s happening for you, not to you. We will live through it, though it doesn’t feel like it at the time. So the more we can say, “Okay, this sucks and is really stressful right now, but I’m in this situation to learn something, so what might that be?” There is an answer and a possible infertility cure. I will bet lots and lots of money on it. In the case of my client Jasmine, her husband was super high-strung and was always going to put work first, and he verbally abused her to keep her small. He had addictions he wouldn’t deal with, they did not know how to deal with infertility and her lesson was to take back her power and believe that she could do or be anything she wanted. She moved back among her friends and family and blossomed. She found love soon after and was pregnant eight months later at forty-one! So, her not getting pregnant with her former husband was a sign for her to deal with the relationship. My client Diane had a similar experience in terms of being made to feel small—her husband was squashing her personality because she was “too much,” and he was verbally abusive and unsupportive. He threatened divorce on a daily basis and told her that she was the problem and he had nothing to work on. He was also lacking in some social skills and had to deal with an overbearing mother who controlled everything well past the normal timeline. He either chose not to leave his mother’s nest or wasn’t allowed to, but his mother overstepped boundaries by continuing to try to make decisions for him even after he was married, and to make my client feel like a burden and less than. Diane realized her husband hadn’t learned certain things about relationships because of being sheltered by his overbearing mother. Things like how to work through disagreements without threatening divorce. That the way your wife does things isn’t necessarily how your mother does them and that’s okay. That once you’re married, the two of you are a nuclear unit and make all decisions, financial and otherwise, together. That you don’t squash the other person’s personality to make it fit your ideals. My lovely client, who wanted to make this relationship work, was the more evolved of the pair and did a lot of work on herself to clean up her beliefs and blocks so that she could be in a place to help him through his and move forward as a team. She made the decision to stay, found a solution on how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility and was able to get pregnant. So whatever you decide, the important thing is that you decide something and take action in that direction. The Universe can’t bring you what you want when you’re in a place of limbo. When there’s another person involved in the decision, it makes it more complicated. We can’t change that person and we can’t make them get on board with our plan. We can’t make them heal themselves or the relationship if they are not willing. So in order to assess where they are, we need to crack open our heart and tell them about our dreams for a family and for the relationship, and our desire to work on things, go to therapy, undergo natural infertility treatments and exhaust all options before throwing in the towel, plus how much we really love and value them, etc., and then see where they are mentally. If they are willing to recognize that they need to work on things as well and are willing to do what they can to preserve the relationship, fantastic! Together you can outline some steps and a timeline for the goals of the relationship, find ways on how to overcome unexplained infertility and begin moving forward. Having a heart-to-heart really helped my client Diane to stay, because she saw a different side of her husband and his commitment to implementing solutions and moving forward. We want to know that we are on the same team and that the other person has our back. So having a heart-to-heart can strip away the stories we have in our head about the other person and allow us to see them in a vulnerable state and reconnect with them. Often, by working on ourselves and bringing our energy up, they will rise up to meet us. If your partner says you’re the problem and he has nothing to work on, first of all, that’s not true. I don’t care if the ratio is 50-50, 70-30, or 99-1, but there is never one person who is completely at fault in an argument or a relationship. We can get ourselves so closed off because of our hurt and frustration about the other person and so plugged into our “stories” about it that it can seem like the other person is the problem. But there is always something to work on. No one’s ever done or finished early. Everyone has crap to work on. Unfortunately, if your partner can’t see that you both have things to work on, it can be hard to move forward. If you are funneling energy into something and not getting anything back, that can mean that it may be better for you to move on, as Jasmine did. If you are staying small, giving up your dreams, and walking on eggshells around your partner, that is not even remotely conducive to conceiving a baby. And leaving could mean that you’re allowing in that next partner, like the one who came for Jasmine just months later. Leaving didn’t stop her from being a mom, and it didn’t take nearly as long to have a baby as her brain thought it would. Here’s one of the most effective spiritual things to do to get pregnant: Close your eyes and put your hand on your heart and ask yourself which scenario feels right for you. We cannot make the decision to stay or go out of fear of what our partner will do, fear of what will happen to our dream of having a baby, or fear that we will make the wrong decision. We will talk more about how to align your energy with what you want versus what you don’t want, but making a decision from a calm, plugged-in place will ensure that you’re doing the right thing.

5. Too Cerebral (Not in Your Body)

Many women dealing with unexplained infertility issues are not connected to their bodies. They’re smart women who are good at their jobs and figuring things out, but there’s a disassociation from the body that can happen that can exacerbate the causes of infertility in women. We are, essentially, driving our meat suit around from our head and are often disconnected from our intuition as a result. Just as the third eye is an accepted center of intuition, so is your gut. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “gut feeling.” But so many of us like to think and analyze things down to a bloody stump, to the point that we are completely unaware of what our intuition is trying to tell us, and we get frustrated when our body doesn’t do what we want or think it should do. We feel that our body is failing us and that if we could just get it on board with our brilliant plan, everything would be fine. We need our body in order to have a baby, but if we are treating it like this unfortunate ball and chain that we have to drag around, it’s very hard to be connected to it and to conceive. It’s also likely that if you’re super-cerebral, it’s not so easy for you to feel into the emotions of things. So we want to look at some ways to get you more aware of your feelings and how to direct them toward what you want, as well as to bridge the gap between your brain and body by learning to listen to your intuition. Now, this may seem easier said than done. As with any habit or pattern, it takes time. But, here are a couple of natural fertility exercises to get you started. Exercise It’s hard sometimes for us cerebral folks to just “get into our bodies.” So, sometimes, having visual cues can help us connect to our body and therefore have more access to our intuition. Close your eyes and visualize a tiny purple elevator sitting at the top of your head. Close the door of the elevator and watch it start to descend to your forehead. Taking deep, slow breaths, see the elevator move down to your throat, down to your heart, and lowering deeper still to your upper abdomen. Your breathing slows down as the elevator descends into your lower abdomen and finally comes to a stop at the base of your spine. Once you’re dropped down into your body, place a hand on your abdomen and just ask a question, like “What do I need to know/do in order to move forward?” Now, here’s the tricky part: we want to not be attached to getting an answer. For now, just ask the question and be open to receiving whatever comes. It may be a visual, a color, or a feeling, or you may hear a sentence. You may hear nothing for the first week of doing this. It’s okay! You wouldn’t expect to be able to learn and speak Aramaic in the span of a week. If you badly want to overcome unexplained infertility, cut yourself some slack and just keep calling in the energy of the next best step for you. Write down whatever you do notice, even if it seems insignificant. If you get the color blue one day and an ostrich the next, write it down. See if you can feel into what they might mean. You can also look up the symbolism of the things that come up, but I find it best to feel into what it means for you. When developing your intuition, the hardest thing is to trust it. When I was developing mine, I remember saying more often than not, “Is that my intuition or my imagination?” While it is difficult to discern at the beginning, you need your imagination to access your intuition. This is why it’s important to write everything down each time you do this. The more you do it, the more you will see patterns or coincidences, and you’ll begin to trust yourself more. We will dig more into intuition, but it’s essential that we learn how to be in our body instead of driving it around from our head. There are things that our body is trying to tell us, and the more connected we are to it, the more we can interpret the information and take action to move the mind and body forward together versus pulling them in opposite directions. Exercise Here is an exercise for getting a little more connected to your emotions and could help you boost fertility. Close your eyes and think of a time when you were really sad or angry (a relationship ended, your boss was mean to you, someone passed away, etc.). Notice where in your body you feel that thought (in the pit of your stomach, wanting to vomit, wanting to give up, blood boiling, etc.). Notice what that thought does to your body. Now wipe that visual slate clean and shake it off. Close your eyes again and imagine a time when you were really excited about something (the day your partner proposed, when you got a promotion, when you got a puppy, etc.). Notice where in your body you feel that thought (butterflies in your stomach, goosebumps/chills, can’t stop smiling/laughing, etc.). Notice what that thought does to your body. We get so caught up in our day-to-day routines that we rarely check in to see how our emotions are affecting our body, especially if we lean toward the cerebral end of the spectrum. So take some time to take stock of your emotions and see how you really feel about something versus what you think about it. When we feel things (versus thinking about them), that’s when things begin to shift on a cellular level in the body. It took me about two months to get my client Leah to be able to assess how she was feeling, not her thoughts about her feelings but how she felt. As an academic with multiple long-standing family issues, she was great at having the drive to get things done, but she had zero idea about what was going on with her emotions. Emotions seemed like a hazard or certainly a huge inconvenience to her, so it was best to be strong and not care—all the time. This started to take a toll on her physical body and was suspected as one of the unexplained infertility possible causes. Her check engine light was saying, “Hey! We need to process some shit! And since you won’t look at it, it’s affecting the vessel that makes the baby you want so desperately.” Using the previous two exercises helped her get to a place where she could check in with how she was feeling and to process things so that she could heal her body and therefore get pregnant fast. Most of us are like Leah in that we don’t like looking at our uncomfortable emotions. After all, who wants to feel anger, sadness, hopelessness? This is, however, part of the process of healing and is also important in terms of getting your body to a place where it feels positive and safe to bake this baby.

6. Super Planner/Micromanager

I say this lovingly to all my Type-A compadres: We get shit done, right? And most of the time that’s a good thing, but when it comes to the arrival of our munchkin, it can be a little frustrating when it doesn’t happen when we want it to. Whenever we think we can control everything, the Universe has a little laugh and says, “Oh yeah?” All of a sudden it’s like, “What the hell happened to my plans?” We want to get pregnant at 7:01 p.m. on April 17 in Paris because that’s when it’s convenient and fantastic for us. It sounds funny, but some of us really can get like that about our timelines. We want everything to fit into this nice box, but the Universe has other ideas. What can cause infertility? Relinquishing our need to control things is, perhaps, the trickiest part of this whole process. Most of us already know if we are a bit of a control freak or not. Chances are, if we are team Type A, we probably have a bit of a control issue. Sometimes this just manifests as needing to be tidy all the time, or else we get nervous; but some women are entrenched in having to deal with a more extreme manifestation, like OCD. These can be things that have developed from a point in childhood or adulthood where we have felt an extreme loss of control and have put the manifestation of that into an action or need. It may not seem directly related to your uterus, but the fear of not having control perpetuates more fear (which keeps your fight-or-flight switch on). Exercise How to overcome unexplained infertility? If you have a need to control, take a deep breath and visualize whatever your specific issue is (the load of laundry that needs to be done, the bed that needs to be made, etc.). Feel what that’s like in your body. How much does it bug you? How compelled are you to finish the task? Where do you feel that in your body? Then say, “If I didn’t need to do the laundry or make the bed, how would I feel? If the dishwasher isn’t unloaded today or I don’t make the bed, what will happen? Will anyone die? Will something bad happen?” It feels like it sometimes. But, we need to give ourselves a break, because maybe it’s more important to take a bath or watch a movie with the hubby. See if you can zoom out of your body and look at the compulsion as just a thought. It’s not a reality that you will die or anything bad will happen, it’s just your brain’s story about the thought. Can you just sit in the discomfort of the thought long enough to realize nothing will happen? Then, don’t make the bed or do the dishes (or whatever you chose). Once the wave of fear goes over us and we realize that we survived, our brain may freak out a little less each time. As you know, having a child is going to turn your schedule on its ear, so can you start getting used to not getting everything done perfectly and being okay with it now? One of my clients did this by not making her bed and not doing the dishes. She sat in the discomfort of it and felt into what she was making it mean: “Does it mean I will become a slob and will end up on a reality show about hoarding if I don’t do these things for one day? That my life will spiral into a pit of despair? Can I prove to myself and to the Universe that I don’t need to control everything?” This process really helps us to be more okay with the timing of things. Think of it as a show of commitment to do these practice runs, despite your uneasiness about them. I am of course not saying to never do dishes or laundry again; it’s more about addressing the anxiety that comes up around the need to do it that we want to ease. If you’re reading this, you’re probably open to the idea of how your energy affects your body/life—even the process to increase fertility. So you may even be aware that trying to control everything is not so conducive to this process and you may want to let go of the control. Most of us try to let go of our control as fast as we can—which means we are controlling how we give up control, which is still controlling. It’s like trying to run away from something that you’ve been Velcroed to. Frustrating as that may be, there are ways around it. Let’s find a mantra around releasing control—one that doesn’t have the word “control” in it. Try some of these on for size, or create one of your own that has a positive, forward feeling, and invite in the next step on how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility, versus hunting it down:

+ I invite in the next step on my journey and am excited for the abundance that’s coming.

+ I’m choosing to be a mom and am open to the Universe’s timing of when that’s best for me. + I focus on what I’d love and let the Universe take care of the pesky details. + I’m open to receiving my gifts from the Universe in a way that I could not or did not expect. + I’m excited to allow flow and abundance into my life. The cool thing about a mantra is that even if it doesn’t fully resonate with you, the more you say it, the more it drops down into your body. And that’s when things start to change on a cellular level. So write your chosen mantra on a bunch of sticky notes and put them everywhere—fridge, bathroom mirror, night stand, laptop, etc. Get used to saying the mantra over and over. It will help to start retraining your brain. As Type-A-vengers, we might also want to keep an eye on our brain/ ego’s need to be right and to have some tangible acknowledgment that we are doing well. As Type-A-ers, we are good little students and want to know that we are executing the task at hand correctly and performing well. Our trust for our body goes right out the window, and we rely on outside measures to tell us how well we’re doing. Many of you are taking your temperature every morning, feeling pressured to have sex at the exact moment you find out you’re ovulating, and using ovulation sticks and waiting for the smiley-face peak fertility sign to appear. If that happy face doesn’t come up, we feel that we’ve failed; and if it does come up, we feel like we need to go have sex and that this has to be the month we get pregnant. Suffice it to say that these things can actually exacerbate your infertility and will never help if you are trying to get pregnant. Constant monitoring and not trusting your body pulls in more fear, more needing, and more anxiety, which is not the cushiest place for your munchkin to bake. Your body wants to be trusted. It knows how to do what countless women have done before you for millennia. And I get that it’s hard when you’ve had previous experiences that make it seem otherwise. We tend to turn these past thoughts and experiences into the belief that we need things outside of ourselves to tell us when it’s okay. If you want to increase fertility, here’s my challenge to you: Can you commit for one month to not…

+ take your temperature + use ovulation sticks + go to the fertility specialist + check your CM (cervical mucus) all the time

(On the one hand this is checking in with your own body, but sometimes our Type-A brains get obsessive about it. We start checking the “all-knowing” internet for what it means, and we pull in the attached wonky energy, versus the belief that “of course I can do this.”) For those of you planners who feel you’re already running out of time, that thought of giving up the meticulous monitoring is going to make you gulp a little. But can you show your body energetically that you can trust it? Many of my clients who started in this place are now actually able to feel when they’re ovulating. They feel when the cramping is different from period cramps. Just the sheer idea of trusting that their body will do what it needs to do is a huge leap forward. You don’t need anything outside of your body to get pregnant. Commit this month to your body. See if you can connect with it, and put out to the Universe that you know that together you can do this.

7. You’re Not Where You Want to Be in Your Career

How to get pregnant with unexplained infertility? We covered some of this in the stressful job section, so you can go back and refer to #1 as well. But I have really been surprised by the number of my clients who also end up moving their jobs as they move their fertility. Part of this can have to do with our solar plexus chakra, which is the energetic center of drive and ambition: our power center. It’s the confidence of being able to complete the things we set out to do, which can be related to work and/or fertility. If we are not feeling powerful or capable in our job, it’s easy to not feel capable of anything, and that can translate into your ability to create a human. When you are feeling powerful and capable, things seem to come easy to you and there isn’t a heavy “efforting” feeling, because you’re not feeling powerless or at the mercy of something you can’t control. Many of you are in a job you feel obligated to be in because it’s what your parents thought you should do or it’s all you could find at the time. And more and more I’m finding that sometimes the reason for the baby delay is that we are really supposed to be stepping into our purpose—not just another higher-paying job, but our purpose. Many of us are not being what we wanted to be when we grew up. It may be partially that life got in the way, or that we were influenced by others who made us feel that the thing we wanted to be wouldn’t be viable, and that we would be poor and miserable if we pursued it. Alternatively, it might be that we’ve never allowed ourselves to really sink into what we would love to do for a living. What would light you up if you could do it every day and get paid for it? You have a unique set of talents that you came into this world with, and we want to make sure they’re being used and not squandered. If you’re a CEO who’s supposed to be a chef, or a dental hygienist who’s supposed to be a yoga teacher, there’s discord in that energy. And it can throw our whole alignment off so that we literally can’t receive the things that are important to us this time around. So often we have to adjust the career area first, and then once we are in alignment, the fertility easily follows suit. My client Eliana was a teacher, who faced unexplained fertility issues. She felt obligated to stay in that career, but her dream was her side business. Crafting organic bath and beauty products made her heart sing. She couldn’t imagine how she could let the teaching pension and the 401K go, until she saw the flexibility of working from home to be with her baby and the fact that she could build an empire on this. All of a sudden her sales started picking up, and that brought her closer to being pregnant. Eliana is a living proof that doing what you love can have a positive impact in your life, and in her case, it helped her in getting pregnant. Exercise Write a little brain dump (freeform thought, no structure) around the idea that if money didn’t matter and you could do whatever you wanted for a living, what would it be? There’s no structure to this—just keep writing until you feel like you’re done. It’s important to write it down, as your brain processes it differently than when you just think about it. Try not to judge what comes up, and don’t be the “enlightened” human being that you are. Get down-and-dirty honest and list all of the things that come up, no matter how stupid or frivolous they sound. Even if your brain/ ego goes to things like “that could never happen” or “no one will pay me enough just to do that,” write down everything that sounds delicious for you regarding this dream job. I jokingly say to my clients, “If you want to be a lint salesman, let’s find a way to do it!” The main thing for this exercise on how to deal with infertility is to feel into the excitement of letting yourself dream big and noticing how it feels to entertain that you could design a career that you’d love, versus one that you feel obligated to be in.

+ What would your dream job look like?

+ How would you feel?

+ Who would you serve?

+ How would they feel?

+ What would you be helping them with?

+ How many hours/days per week would you work?

+ Would it be from home or in an office?

+ Would you work for yourself or someone else?

+ What would be exciting about it?

+ How do you feel in your body when you think that this dream job could actually be enough to nourish and support you?

More and more I am seeing this list turn into people’s careers or purposes. Dare to dream a little. It may very well be that you have a hard time identifying what your dream job title would be. That’s why I want you to feel into the qualities that you’d love in a job instead of trying to fit it into the box of what your brain knows or expects. When looking at your list, it’s okay if you then say, “These things aren’t a job.” I can relate. The work I do with my private clients is a hybrid of three different modalities. What I do didn’t exist before I did it either, but now I’m helping women all over the world and am filled to the brim with purpose every day. So try not to judge what comes up, but rather feel in your bones how awesome it would be if the things you wrote down appeared on your doorstep as a job that you got to do every day and that people were paying a decent amount of money for. We must start putting out energetic feelers toward our purpose, even if we aren’t sure how it’s going to work out or how we’re going to get there. It’s important that you just acknowledge that you have a purpose other than the job you’re doing, and that you then take whatever steps you can toward allowing that in.

8. Money Worries

Did you know that one of the unexplained fertility possible causes is money? This can be a tricky one. Money beliefs can be deeply embedded patterns in our psyche and can really trip us up. We learn these patterns from a very early age, without even realizing it. If we had secondhand clothes or were repeatedly told that money doesn’t grow on trees, etc., it can instill in us a survival pattern of there not being enough. It can elicit a really primal fear that we’re going to die at any given moment if the money stream runs out. We are going to get more into the fight-or flight response and how it physically affects fertility later on, but know that fear—especially fear around something that dictates whether or not you have shelter or food—can be a major reason for infertility. I’ve been there and I totally get it, that feeling of “What if I don’t have enough to pay my bills?” or “I don’t see how I’m going to be able to afford that.” It lasted many years for me, because not only was I not aware of the pattern, but I also didn’t think there was a way out of it or that there were steps I could take to shift it. Sometimes we get so ahead of ourselves that we never move forward because we’re scared of what might happen. Now obviously, if you’re living in a cardboard box, it might not be the best idea to bring a child into the world, but most of us are not living in that scenario. So we want to separate our thoughts from what is actually true, so that we are not paralyzed by fear but actually allow in more abundance— which allows our body to feel safer. Exercise Addressing existing money issues is one of the most effective ways on how to deal with infertility. How? Write a list of what you do have enough money for. Include everything you can think of, from the epic to the miniscule. Can you feel into a place of being grateful for each one of those things? A big piece of getting things moving is being grateful for what we do have and feeling into that. Think about what you do have that isn’t necessarily monetary but is helpful in terms of making your life easier, more enjoyable, and less stressful, such as a great support system of family and friends who would help when needed. Explore these areas and then take time to feel into them. It’s important not just to make a list and intellectually acknowledge these things to be grateful for. That doesn’t do much in terms of moving your energy forward. What gets things snap-crackle-popping is when you feel these things in your body. That’s when things begin to change on a cellular level and you attract what you want versus what you don’t. Make a goal sheet for the rest of the year. (This worksheet is included in the Conceivable Tool Kit.) Break it into three-month, six-month, and twelve-month goals. Write three goals for each time period, which may include looking for the best unexplained infertility treatment. When setting goals, we don’t want to think of them in the typical sense—the drive, the competition with the self or others, or the belief that “if I don’t achieve this, I’ve failed.” What would be awesome to shift in your career, or what circumstances would alleviate this concern? Each goal should feel good and should feel attainable. You don’t want your brain to shut off and go, “Yeah right, that’s never going to happen.” So make sure it sounds exciting and a little out of your comfort zone while still plausible. The great thing is that you don’t have to know how the hell it’s gonna happen, but just that it would be phenomenal if it did. Feel into how amazing it will be when three, six, or twelve months down the road you look at these goals and they all happened! After you fill in your sheet, post it on the fridge or your nightstand and feel into each of the goals every day. Each day look at 36 One them and don’t try to force these goals to happen, but just imagine how lit up inside would you feel if they did. What would it feel like in your body if that thing just showed up? Our perception about what money is and what it means is key. When we are stuck in these embedded patterns, it can be hard to think that money isn’t the root of all evil or that you’ll ever have enough. The wise Wayne Dyer said that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. From an energetic perspective, if we perceive an issue as heavy, it will feel heavy. If we perceive it as light, it will feel light. The less power we give money, the less we are governed by it. Can we look at money simply as wampum—as a means of exchange—and can we get to a place of not hoping but of trusting that the Universe will provide what we need when we need it? Money is necessary in today’s society. There’s really no getting around that unless you go off the grid. But we can reframe it as something that helps us to have the experiences in life that light us up and make us happy, versus the thing we will never achieve or that holds us back. If you’re living in fear that there will never be enough, there never will be. So many of us are in survival mode when it comes to money, whether it’s because we actually don’t have money or we are afraid of losing it. This triggers our fight-or-flight response in a big way, because money is what we use to buy our two basic needs: food and shelter. Remember that your reproductive system isn’t needed when you’re running from a stressful situation. So if you are stressed about being able to provide for yourself, let alone another mouth to feed, we want to reframe that ASAP. It’s our beliefs that are stressful, not the actual situation, so the sooner we can see what is going right with our money situation, the sooner we can move out of the dire situation. We then go from surviving life to enjoying it—and that makes a huge difference in the quality of your life, whether there’s a baby or not.

9. Do You Have a Hard Time Saying No?

Sometimes, being too generous has a few of its own unique problems, and, believe it or not, it could be one of the many causes of infertility. This factor can be related to your job, if your boss continually asks extra things of you. It can be in terms of family (especially a tight-knit one). Is a family member ill or elderly, and a lot of responsibility falls on you? Do your drama-queen friends need you to be there for them all the time? Again, I’m not saying ditch your friends, your sick brother, or your grandma. I am saying we need to establish some boundaries. When you are that go-to person for people and you readily do what needs to be done, people keep going to you because they know it’ll get done. It’s great to know you’re helping people, but this is where your little brain/ego kicks in and goes, “We are taking care of everyone but ourselves. We literally cannot handle another human,” and hence the endocrine system and the reproductive system get wonky or slow/shut down because your brain is already convinced that you have no time to yourself and therefore can’t possibly add a baby to the mix. So where can we set some boundaries? As mentioned in external factor #1 with the stressful job situation, commit to staying late only one or two days a month if it’s normally five—unless, you don’t want to boost fertility. If you don’t know how well that would go over, have a conversation with your boss or the HR department. Tell them it has been recommended to you that, due to a “condition” you’re going through, they’d like you to limit your overtime. You can say it without going into too many details. If you are caring for an ailing parent or grandparent and have siblings, coordinate so that you’re not the caretaker every day. If you don’t, ask a family friend or spouse to help or, if means allow, hire someone to give you a break for a couple of days per week. This is not selfish. You are not a horrible child or grandchild if you do this. Think about what their soul would want for your soul. I promise that it’s not to be stressed and tired all the time because you felt obligated. They know you love them. Help create this space for you so you can show the Universe that you can slow down your life and make room for what you want. Make space now. Put that energy out there and believe that you will find the best-unexplained infertility treatment there is. The “I’ll do it later” mentality brings more “I’ll do it later” energy, and that leads to you being stuck in an energetic loop of “later.” Additionally, some of us have friends who are living in a Greek tragedy and need our urgent help all the time amid the ninety-seven other things we have going on in our lives. One of my clients and I affectionately call these people the “facehuggers” (from the movie Alien). You are the person who doesn’t say no, so these folks just migrate right to you. They don’t know how much it taxes your energy because they’re so caught up in their own drama. Do you ditch these friends? Of course not. But, you can try setting a boundary of a weekly lunch or dinner date where all the beans are spilled, and then it’s just occasional texting throughout the rest of the week. You can also tell them you’ve got a lot of stuff going on that you’re trying to process, so if you don’t get back to them right away, you still love them and will be there for them as much as you can, but there’s some stuff you’re working through that may inhibit that. One of the best natural infertility treatments is simply having enough time and space for yourself. Let your friend know that, say, between the hours of 6:00 and 8:30 p.m., you’re having dinner and catching up with your husband or partner, so if something super-important comes up, she can text you after that. Brainstorm some things to say that would feel good to you, where you’re communicating to your friend, boss, or family member that you care about them and that there are certain things you need as well, and you appreciate their understanding of that. Part of the fertility puzzle is claiming the worth piece. Your needs are just as important as other people’s needs. You deserve and are allowed to do whatever you need to move yourself forward. There’s enough to go around for everyone. Claim that. Claiming your time and space doesn’t make you insensitive or a bitch or a bad friend, especially if you are trying to increase fertility. If you don’t stand up for yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to. And you can’t expect the people who are sucking up your time and energy to know that they’re being facehuggers if they’re not made aware of it. We often don’t want to stir the pot or upset people, but you can say it in a loving way by letting them know that you care about them but you also have to take care of what’s best for you right now. Voicing what you need is especially important for those of you dealing with thyroid conditions.

10. Are You Eating Crap?

If you’re still wondering how to overcome unexplained infertility, eat healthy. Here’s the thing about the food piece for me: it’s kind of a double-edged sword in terms of this mindset/energy work for fertility. I try to eat clean as much as I can. I eat organic whenever possible and I feel the benefits in my body. The energy I have when I’m eating well is super-noticeable. I’m definitely an advocate of the belief that if you can fight a condition with food instead of medicine or drugs, you absolutely should. There’s a lot of evidence for how you can manage hormonal imbalances with food and supplements, some of which I’m going to cover here. My concern is that, as with many of these fertility “fixes,” our brain becomes obsessed with determining the right amount of beets, kale, and folic acid we should consume. We become rigid about it, like we did with the ovulation sticks, and it actually exacerbates the infertility. When we obsess over making sure we eat the right amount of this or believe we shouldn’t have any of that, it places our body in a stressed-out place, paranoid that the coffee we just drank means we can’t get pregnant this month. It’s just not a helpful place to be. We want to pull the body out of its fight-or-flight mode and help it feel safe, calm, and nourished. The following guidelines are intended to help you increase your chance of getting pregnant, and I encourage you to consider consulting a holistic health coach or naturopath who knows what are the spiritual things to do to get pregnant and has a chill vibe to further your understanding of and connection with the foods that may be beneficial. From my experience with all of my work with clients, whether or not they got pregnant wasn’t dependent on whether or not they drank a cup of coffee or didn’t eat the right amount of kale. It came down to their mindset shifting not a fertility cleanse. Let’s face it: we’ve all known women who don’t take care of their bodies (drinking alcohol, smoking, eating fast food, taking drugs, etc.) who get pregnant, so diet really is not the be-all and end-all. But it can help if you’re approaching it from a nourishing versus militant way. So, we’re going to look at five things to avoid and five foods to amp up. Five Things to Avoid

+ Multiple cups of coffee per day. One cup of coffee will not kill your chances of conceiving, but caffeine in general can alter your blood sugar level and overstimulate the adrenals, which can send your hormones into a tizzy.

+ Soda and bottled juices. These are high in sugar and can have a negative effect on your blood sugar level and hormones.

+ Soy products. Unfortunately, most of the soy available now is genetically modified and has been shown to affect both male and female fertility. Soy has estrogen-mimicking hormones that knock your body’s hormonal balance for a loop. This especially affects men in terms of low sperm count and motility, as it mimics estrogen.

+ Low-fat foods, especially dairy. Not only are these foods highly processed and packed with sugar, but your body actually needs fat to grow a munchkin. A 2007 study from Harvard showed that women who ate full-fat products had a much easier time conceiving and those who consumed fat-free ones (see “Diet and Lifestyle in the Prevention of Ovulatory Disorder Infertility”) faced unexplained infertility issues. If you feel uncomfortable about the idea of giving up low-fat foods, we need to have a look at your body image and beliefs about pregnancy. Sometimes releasing those things can be helpful so that we can physically and mentally allow a baby in.

+ Alcohol. Again, a glass of wine on occasion won’t kill you, but if you have a glass or more every day, you might want to consider reducing or stopping altogether. Alcohol consumption can prevent the production of progesterone in women and decimate sperm count in men. Cutting out beer is what helped Chloe’s husband get his count back up, and subsequently they got pregnant. So if your husband or partner drinks regularly, at least have him cut down when you’re ovulating—but preferably stop for you to get pregnant fast.

Five Foods to Amp Up

+ Leafy greens such as spinach and kale are high in folate for healthy ovaries and vitamin E for healthy menstrual cycles.

+ Eggs (including the yolks) are rich in vitamin D, supporting ovulation.

+ Sunflower seeds are packed with zinc, which helps support egg quality. Oysters are also a good source of zinc.

+ Wild salmon has the least amount of mercury of all fish and is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, which help to balance your reproductive system and send more blood to the necessary organs.

+ Nourishing herbal infusions of red clover and linden flower are helpful to both regulate hormones and reduce inflammation. (Inflammation is one of the leading causes of hormonal imbalance.)

Again, please don’t drive yourself crazy with the exact amount of this or the wrong amount of that. If it feels good to you to do some of these things, great, but if you’re spending more time and energy stressing about eating the right foods than hanging out with the hubby or taking a yoga class, then I lovingly say, “Step away.” Getting too rigid about anything isn’t good, as we mentioned before with the ovulation sticks and temperature, etc. It’s really about where your mindset and energy are. These are just supplemental infertility cure suggestions.

11. Do You Not Have Closure on One or More Relationships?

This factor might seem kind of out of left field, but a surprising number of my clients have energy hanging back in past relationships. This awful emotional roadblock, unfortunately, is considered as one of the spiritual causes of infertility. For some, it’s the “one that got away” mentality. They wonder if they would still be together if X circumstances hadn’t torn them apart, so a little stream of energy is hanging back there in “what if.” This can be a tricky one to catch, because even if 95 percent of you gets that he wasn’t the right guy for you, the brain can still be like, “But maybe it could have been. Maybe it would have been easier to get pregnant.” As long as we’ve got even 5 percent of our subconscious energy in that thought, it can be enough to derail us from Operation Baby. For others, it’s not that they still want to be with the person, but that they never got closure and want to know why. What’s wrong with me that you broke up with me? Some of my clients have subconsciously made it mean something about their worth that this person no longer wanted to be with them. Of course it’s not about you or your worth, but it can feel like it, and a strand of energy is held back there. To your brain, it feels like “it shouldn’t have happened this way.” Trust that it actually happened the exact way it was supposed to. As long as we’re sending strands of energy to “it shouldn’t have happened,” we keep ourselves in a sort of bizarre state of limbo. The body and the brain are inextricably linked, so if we’re having these thoughts that aren’t helpful, it’s preventing our body from functioning at an optimal level as well. In other words, negativities would do no good in your goal to attain holistic fertility. Finally, for some others it’s not that they want to be back with the person, but they are mad that they spent what they feel were their prime baby-making years with the ex. They feel that they wasted time, and now they’re getting screwed because they waited too long. This is pretty common among my clients who are in their forties and had a noncommittal boyfriend throughout their thirties and feel like they are being punished now that they want to have a baby with their current partner. There tends to be a lot of subconscious anger around this, which can manifest in the form of cysts, fibroids, or endometriosis. It’s important to address these hurts and beliefs so that your body can resume normal functioning. You are always where you’re supposed to be. We have beliefs about what should have been. But, see if you can entertain letting go of the energy you’re giving to him for having wasted your time. It’s not affecting him. It’s affecting you. You can’t be in the energy of needing closure from him and be ready to make a baby at the same time. Those two energies are too far apart. Exercise To address this possible cause of unexplained fertility, write a letter to this person. Handwrite it and get down and dirty with your emotions. Cry and yell while you’re writing it. Get everything out that you need to say and then burn or shred the letter in a ceremonial “I’m done.” Visualize a gold cord of energy going from your heart to his. Sit in the emotion of this for a minute. Feel the hurt, regret, etc., and then see if you can genuinely wish him well on his path and thank him for lessons learned. (Remember, we are presented with the partners we need at the time.) Chop the cord with your hand. You may need to do this a few times to really feel a release, so rinse and repeat as necessary. Write a brain dump (freeform thought, no structure) on why it was purposeful that things happened exactly the way they did. Why is it great that you didn’t end up with him? Why was the timing not right? Why is your current partner best for you to have a baby with, and why will he be a great father? This is perhaps the most important one to feel into. Make sure you write it all down. There’s something about the act of writing down your thoughts and then seeing them on paper that can help your energy shift. Our brain loves to be in shoulda-coulda-woulda mode, but the fact is that it just keeps us stuck. We can’t change the past or predict the future. The only thing we can change is the present, by choosing positive thoughts. In order to start thinking positively on a more consistent basis, we must be willing to give up our attachment to the past. This can be easier said than done, which is why doing the belief work in chapter 2 of my book can be really helpful in terms of offloading the energy that isn’t helpful to you.

12. Do You Have Space for This Baby?

How to get pregnant with unexplained infertility? Simply make space for your future bundle of joy. A surprising number of my clients haven’t given any thought to where the baby is going to go (in terms of physical space). I get it. It’s one of those things where you think, “Well, we’ll figure it out when we have the baby,” or “I don’t want to get my hopes up and then find out I can’t have one.” We want to get more of your energy moving toward the idea that this baby is in fact coming. We want to be able to create the physical space as well as the energetic space for the baby to come. Many women I’ve spoken with are currently living in small one-bedroom apartments and haven’t gotten excited about how they’re going to decorate because there’s nowhere for the baby to go. I get that you can’t exactly justify selling your tiny apartment at the moment or converting the office right now, but if you found out you were pregnant today, where would that munchkin go? I’m not saying to set up the crib right now. That’s too much of an energetic gap for your brain to be able to get behind. But we want to start thinking in terms of the fact that this baby is coming. Doing visualizations can help you start to feel that in your body. It’s important to be putting out the energy of excitement, and that it’s a matter of when this baby comes, not if. Exercise Close your eyes, stop thinking about the reason for infertility for a while and take a deep breath. In the space you’re currently living in, where is your baby’s crib going? What about her dresser? Changing table? Rocking chair? Really picture it. What does it feel like to see it all set up? What do you notice in your body when you realize that having those things set up in your space means that you did it, that she’s coming? Is there stuff you’re going to have to get rid of in order to make room for her, things that are no longer serving you and that you haven’t used in a year or more (and probably won’t)? Commit to purging at least five things this week to symbolically make room for the baby. See where you can commit to making even a small change. This will go a long way in terms of shifting your energy. My client Vicky had a tiny one-bedroom apartment, and even though she kept it very neat and minimalist, there just wasn’t enough space for a family. Despite this, she made a plan for where she was and then began visualizing the bigger apartment she’d love. She started a Pinterest board and vision board without knowing how she’d convince her husband to move. But she held the intention without attachment, and one day her husband came home and said that he’d been looking at apartments and was thinking they should move. Soon after they did, she was pregnant!

13. Did You Just Start a Business and You Have to Tend to It Like a Baby?

Serving two masters at the same time is not easy. What more if you are dealing with unexplained infertility? There are so many moving parts to tend to when you’re starting your own business. Even if you are generally a laid-back person, it can be pretty overwhelming. Even if the business is something you really love and are passionate about, it takes a ton of energy. If we then overwhelm ourselves with “Why can’t I get pregnant?” we can be in for a serious uphill battle. Have you found that your business is your baby? You provide for it, nurture it, and put its success above all else. Your brain may very well think you already have a baby and it doesn’t see the need for another one. According to your brain, you’re already devoted to something. From the flight-or-fight perspective, if your energy is tapped out, your brain isn’t going to want to add another thing to your plate and make it harder for your survival. So, what can we do about it? Exercise We want to look at streamlining your business, whether it’s how you’re scheduling things or how much you take on. Can you hire an assistant or intern to take some of the menial jobs off your plate? Or can you commit to not answering anything business-related on weekends? Implement some of the grounding techniques, which are also some spiritual ways to get pregnant, we talked about in the stressful job section (external factor #1), such as meditation, yoga, dancing, knitting, taking a bath, connecting to the earth, etc. Give yourself the space to do what you need to do to feel solid in the business, and know that the baby will come when the initial craziness is over. As women, we feel we need to do it all, and all at once. That’s admirable, but not very practical. Give yourself the space and permission to have one baby at a time. You only think you’re running out of time. I promise you’re not. Building your business is great! It’s going to provide a secure situation for you and your munchkin. It’s okay to build it first. We’ll talk about this more later on in the book, but the more in alignment you are in one area, the more the other areas are inclined to follow. Almost all of my private clients have either shifted jobs within their field or shifted fields completely, and that’s when they get pregnant. By working on stepping into their purpose career-wise, it moved their fertility energy along. When you’re feeling capable and fulfilled in one area, other areas naturally begin to fall in line. Building a business, if that’s what you’re doing or want to do, can’t be rushed. It’s going to allow you amazing flexibility when you do have a baby, and you want to have as many of the kinks worked out as possible. The more you can look at it as something that’s going to support you and make your life easier in the long run, the faster things will fall into place. See the act of building your business as actually helping the baby get here, because it is.

14. Do You Have a Doctor or Care Provider That You Aren’t Comfortable With?

Here’s the thing: I am not anti-doctor. I think many elements of Western medicine are awesome and necessary, and in a lot of cases it’s good they exist. Medical science has done some truly amazing things. While we expect our doctors to provide us answers on what can cause infertility, there are times when they are also among the factors that contribute to the problem. My hang-up involves the seriously overlooked mindset component to physical conditions and fertility. There’s a reason that IVF only works 25 to 50 percent of the time. And it’s not because you had that cup of coffee you shouldn’t have. It has so much to do with the mindset of the woman and what she’s believing or committing to. Thanks to the Law of Psychophysical Response, for every thought the brain has, the body has a physical or chemical reaction. So if we’re having a stressful or panicked thought, it registers in the body. Thanks to the fight-or-flight response in the amygdalae of the brain, when we are stressed-out or triggered, our nonessential body systems slow or shut down. The reproductive system is not necessary for us to stay alive, so that’s one of the first to be affected. Many things can trigger this response, but what I’ve found in my practice is that women are often plugged into beliefs that are spewed at them from society, family, and, yes, care providers. I’ll get more into this in the belief and energy work in my book, but the way some doctors, nurses, and technicians speak to women can be abhorrent and can actually perpetuate the infertility. These are things doctors have actually said to my clients that didn’t help them boost fertility:

+ Wow, you’re starting late. Well, there are lots of old moms now.

+ Let’s just start right off with IVF. The other stuff doesn’t really work anyway. (This client was completely healthy, with a regular cycle, by the way.)

+ IVF probably won’t even work for you, but you can try if you want.

+ I doubt you have enough eggs at this point, so maybe you should look into other options. + I mean, we can do an IUI right now, but it probably won’t work.

+ Doctor comes in from other exam room and says: Whew, the girl before you had eighteen follicles! But you have…three. That’s good.

+ You don’t want to get your hopes up. You are over thirty.

While care providers rarely mean to be insensitive, they’re often not aware that what they say and how they say it subconsciously plants itself into our belief systems—and sabotages our belief in ourselves and our body’s ability to be able to do the job women have done for millennia, including how to deal with infertility. The wellness aspect and bedside manner have unfortunately gone out the window in many cases. Whether that’s due to training or hospital constraints, I don’t know. But the focus is often on the pathology, not the person. Many just look at you as a uterus and not a human. Again, I know some warm, caring doctors, but almost all of my infertility clients have had unfortunate experiences with insensitive care providers. And because these care providers are authority figures, these women buy into the belief that they are not capable, that it’s not likely to work, that they are too old. And according to the Law of Attraction, like energy attracts like energy, so if we’re plugged into the belief that we are not capable, the Universe answers with situations that are an energetic match to that thought. The result is several rounds of IVF that don’t work, unexplained infertility, etc., and it just never happens. Of course, these doctors’ concerns have some basis. But, unfortunately, they are trained to focus on the exception, not the rule. In Europe, it’s not so unusual for a woman to conceive up to age fifty. Part of that is due to eating less processed crap, and part of it is not being made to feel incapable at age thirty. Yes, it’s true that your egg count goes down quite a bit after thirty, and so from a scientific perspective, the odds decrease. But that’s just it—they’re odds. And you need one egg. Just one. When the mindset component (the idea that by shifting your thoughts, you can shift your physical condition) is left out of fertility, it can be a bleak prognosis. Your mind is so powerful. I’ve seen amazing things in my practice, including the following:

+ Cysts and fibroids disappearing + Scar tissue being released + Cycle returning after years of amenorrhea + Egg quality increasing + Endometriosis disappearing + Uterine lining doubling in thickness + Thyroid conditions disappearing + Stopping miscarriage

It all happened when the woman was open to the idea that things could be different from the prognosis they were given, by doing the work and by having a care provider who made them feel safe. So, how to overcome unexplained infertility? What’s often overlooked throughout this fertility journey is your own intuition. You know your body better than anyone. You know what’s normal for you, what feels right/wrong, etc. Unfortunately, over the last few generations we’ve lost touch with our confidence in our intuition and have given our power over to the authorities. It’s so important that you get back in touch with your intuition and start to trust it. It will help you exponentially to achieve your goal. So many of my clients have stayed way too long with doctors who have made them feel uncomfortable, too old, less than, incapable, and like a lost cause. It’s so subtle that you often don’t notice it, but it’s a huge factor in your progress. So if you don’t love your doctor and they’re not uber-supportive of your journey and what’s right for you, consider a naturopath or midwife for well-woman care. If having a medical doctor makes you feel better, interview a few more and get someone you feel safe and comfortable with. Feeling comfortable and capable is essential in this journey. Don’t be afraid to change providers. If they’re not on Team You and do not provide any help in your goal to increase fertility, they need to go.

15. Are There Some Body Issues Coming Up?

This can be a big factor related to unexplained infertility and may have many layers to it. After all, body image is something we’re sort of forced to be aware of from a young age. If we have beliefs that are either ours, our parents’, or society’s that are clouding our view of ourselves, we can have a fertility block. I have several clients who are former bodybuilders, or have dealt with eating disorders, or grew up overweight and are scared to death to go back to that place. It’s not something we really want to admit to ourselves because, of course, we want the baby. This can lead to not eating well or eating processed low-fat foods, which adversely affect your hormones, as we mentioned earlier. If the hormones are off kilter or there’s inflammation in the body, the chances of conceiving are significantly diminished. We’re afraid of growing larger, and that can trigger fear and kick up our Type-A desire to control how things will go, rather than basking in the idea that we’re about to be pregnant. These are two conflicting energies that sort of cancel each other out. Exercise Here are natural infertility treatments you can explore to help you move through your fears around weight gain/body image.

+ Consider speaking with a therapist for a couple of sessions to work through the fear.

+ Check in with a holistic health coach for advice on how to eat safely and healthy as you prepare for pregnancy. You may also try out faith-based coaching that provides natural fertility plan just for your individual need.

+ Know that not everyone gains sixty pounds during pregnancy. In fact, twenty-five to thirty-five pounds is the typical weight gain—and if you plan to breastfeed, it comes off even quicker.

+ Look into prenatal yoga classes in your area.

+ Look at some of the really cute maternity wear they have now. Start to get excited about being a chic preggo mama!

+ Talk to your friends who didn’t take long to lose weight after giving birth and ask for their secrets.

+ Come up with an accountability plan postpartum that can quell fears now, such as a walking buddy, a postpartum mommy group, a mommy and me yoga class, etc.

+ Make a list of the negatives of gaining twenty-five pounds and a list of the positives of having a baby. If the negatives outweigh the positives, then there might be some mindset work and healing that needs to happen before the munchkin makes an entrance. It’s okay and necessary to heal this first so that you can have a beautiful, stress-free pregnancy.

One solution on how to get pregnant with unexplained infertility is by writing an inquiry as it can really help the brain release anxiety. It allows us to let go of a fear that’s not moving us forward. Body image isn’t necessarily something we think of as being a factor in why we’re not getting pregnant, but it’s a sneaky subconscious block that can keep us in limbo. For example, my client Kelli told me in an early session that she had decided she was going to adopt. Adoption is a great option and the people who do it are heroes, but I also know that Kelli really wanted her own biological child, so I asked why. One of the first things she said was that then she wouldn’t have to worry about losing the babyweight. Her friend at work who had a two-year-old still hadn’t lost the weight, and she was scared that she would have the same fate. So the brain says, “Let’s just adopt because it’ll be easier on our body.” I reminded her that she would never let the same thing happen to her. It’s just not in her personality. This is where she would use her Type-A-ness for good and schedule workouts, go for stroller jogs in the morning, and cook healthy meals. She relaxed after that, which is part of what helped her get pregnant. Kelli now has a two-year-old and is actually below her pre-pregnancy weight! Look over the fifteen external factors affecting fertility again, and circle the top three that you think apply to you. After getting some hints on how to overcome unexplained infertility and help getting pregnant, take some time to write down what actions you will take to move those factors forward. You don’t have to know how to “fix” the whole situation and address all the spiritual causes of infertility. Just put your energy forward toward what would feel really good. This piece is excerpted with permission from How to Get Pregnant, Even When You’ve Tried Everything: A Mind-Body Guide to Fertility by A’ndrea Reiter. 

About The Author A’ndrea Reiter (Brooklyn, NY) is a certified Reiki master and intuitive fertility coach specializing in a mind-body approach to fertility. She uses a combination of reiki, intuition and mindset coaching to move women through the emotional and physical blocks that are impeding them from conceiving naturally. Visit her online at fusionfertility.com