Why Stress Management is so Important to do Today

With Covid-19 now striking the President of the United States and his being in the hospital, this, I believe, should be focusing us even more on the power of this virus to alter lives. With all this change, it’s important to understand how our stress, anxiety and depression levels have been increasing.

In April, the National Center for Disease Statistics and the CDC launched an online survey to understand what people are experiencing. When they did this survey in 2019, they found that 11% of the respondents showed signs of anxiety or depression.

In the current survey, the researchers found that 33% of Americans felt symptoms of anxiety and 25% showed signs of depression. As you can see, this is a dramatic increase in these numbers. Since this survey was done in April, I’m certain that these numbers are even higher today.

Since I’ve been teaching and writing on Stress Management for almost 50 years, I know that getting your stress levels down can lead to reducing your anxiety and depression. While I’ve written a book on this called Manging Your Stress in Difficult Times: Succeeding in Times of Change, there are now many, many things you can do to lower your stress beyond wearing a mask and social distancing. From doing breathing exercises to meditation to prayer to walking, running, biking, taking vitamin and supplements, you can help yourself handle what’s coming at you.

Of course, if you need to, you might want to consider seeking professional help, since you can now use tele-medicine to talk to a mental health professional. 

So…reducing your stress is up to you and we all need to start taking steps to take charge of our lives again.

When Someone We Love Dies, What Happens to Our Brain?

 COVID-19 has killed over 167,000 Americans. They are all Fathers, Mothers, Grand Parents, Sisters Brothers, Children, and just people’s good friends. When someone close to you dies, it has a profound affect on your brain. Scientists are increasingly viewing this loss as a type of brain injury with the brain rewiring itself to respond to emotional trauma.

Each day that you are reminded of the person’s death, you may be triggering a stress response in your body. There are people who have a pronounced response to the death of a loved one which is called complicated grief. It strikes about 10% of mourners who are intensely grieving their loss. A study published in 2018 in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychology found over 7 years the people with complicated grief had a greater level of cognitive decline than those who had a lower grief response.

Grieving is considered a protective process. You might be asking yourself how is it protective? The answer is that it helps you survive this intense emotional trauma that is happening to your brain and body. 

When a Jewish person dies, the family mourns for 3 to 7 days in a process called sitting Shiva. Friends and relatives come to visit during the time and the talk tends to be about the good memories of the person. Afterwards, the mourner may wind up going to pray twice a day for a year for that person.

An Irish Wake is a time of celebration of the person’s life. A wake is a scene of both sadness and joy as the end of that person’s life is marked while the person’s life is remembered and treasured.

Both of these approaches are examples of how different cultures mourning processes are attempting to rewire the brain back to the positive side. Since the person’s death can be a brain injury to the survivors, it can take time for the person to heal.

There are ways you can speed up the healing process by using meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy and even massage. A study published in 2019 of 23 bereaved people in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that participating in an eight-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy improved the grieving person’s functioning.

So…if COVID-19 has taken a loved one, you need to remember to take care of yourself. You might want to do it for the person that you lost, as they might just be smiling down from the other side at your recovery. (Reported Discover, 2020)

Using Vitamin D in the Fight Against COVID-19

The question keeps coming up as to what you can do to help yourself in your fight against COVID-19. In this country, the answer has been not much besides wearing masks, social distancing, disinfecting areas and washing your hands with soap.

There’s another option that’s getting traction behind it coming out of other countries and that’s taking Vitamin D. In the June 22, 2020 issue of Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, the president of the British Society of Ecological Medicine, Damien Downing, talked about the power of Vitamin D for reducing the risk of getting COVID-19 by 90% and reducing the risk of dying by 96%,

Some of the research that has already been done which supports this conclusion found major reductions in those taking Vitamin D in experiencing only mild symptoms of COVID-19 and also having a mild clinical outcome (meaning they didn’t die).

Having a high level of Vitamin D seems to make the difference. A study in Indonesia looked at 780 COVID -19 patients. Those with a Vitamin D level below 20 ng/ml (which is very low) had a seven times greater risk of dying than those who had a Vitamin D level of above 30 ng/ml.

Another study from 20 European countries found that patients who had a level of Vitamin D above 75 mg/ml had a zero probability of developing and dying from COVID-19. That’s right 0% probability of developing and dying from COVID-19.

You also won’t hit levels of toxicity with Vitamin D until you get above 200 ng/ml which would be very, very hard to do.

The problem in this country is that the CDC is only looking at drug and vaccine options. They are totally ignoring what’s happening in the rest of the world and the Tech platforms like Facebook and YouTube have agreed to only publish CDC recommendations. This means you’re not hearing anything positive about Vitamin D. So, my question is…could the drug company’s influence and the billions of dollars they stand to make from a vaccine have anything to do with how the CDC is ignoring the real evidence that’s out there? Just asking.

To reach these protective levels of Vitamin D, you would need to take 4000 to 7500 IU/day (IUs is how Vitamin D is measured) and it would take several months to reach this 75 ng/ml level. According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, you can get there by taking 20,000 IU/day for two weeks.

You should also get a blood test for Vitamin D as that’s the only way to really tell what your level is. When I had my blood tested years ago, my Vitamin D level was only 13. It’s now at 65ng/ml!

I would also recommend your taking Vitamin D3 as it’s better absorbed by the body. I would also add 200 mcg of Vitamin K2 in the form of MK-7 per day as it helps the Vitamin D do its work in the body.
(Reported Mercola.com 7/9/20)

Therapy Dogs Effect More Than Just Patients

Therapy dogs are being used in medical situations because they are effective in reducing patient’s levels of stress, pain, anxiety, and anger while increasing the patient’s feelings of being supported and comforted.

A study by the Indiana University School of Medicine found that therapy dogs even have an effect on the physicians and nurses working in an Emergency Room.

The researchers found that just five minutes of interaction with a therapy dog lowered the docs and nurses stress levels. They compared the dogs to doing art therapy to a control group that did neither. The researchers found that salivary cortisol levels, which is a measure of stress, decreased significantly with the dogs and the art therapy.

In a survey done on what patients and staff think of therapy dogs in the ER, 87.8% of the patients and 92% of the staff approved of therapy dogs.

So…with all the craziness around COVID-19 and working in an ER, therapy dogs may be the best way to keep everyone sane in a crazy situation.
(Reported Healthpets.mercola.com, 6/4/20)

               Feedback from A Reader of My Blog

Emily Eisen recently wrote me about the impact of my blog on her. I thought you’d like to see what she wrote. “I’m sorry I haven’t told you this many times before but I enjoy and get so much amazing information from your reports and I thank you for all these years that you’ve provided this body soul and mind nourishment for us.”

Thanks, Emily. Your comments are greatly appreciated!

A Powerful Video About Nature & The Dangers of Ventilators

A Video on Nature’s View of the Pandemic


This link is for a very powerful video on nature and how we fit into the scheme of things. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7gkektc1jx2q2i5/8b789a27-cd6d-4314-b7de-678d039cafd2.mp4?dl=0. Let me know what you think.

The Dangers of Ventilators

We have all been hearing about the need for ventilators for those having major difficulty breathing from the impact of the COVID-19 virus. What’s not getting a lot of coverage is that most people put on ventilators die. An April 9 report in Business Insider reported that 80% of COVID-19 patients in New York City who were placed on ventilators died. A more recent report on April 22 published in JAMA found that 76% of the 18 to 65 age group and in the older than 65 age group it was 97% died. 

Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell says that patient’s symptoms are closer to altitude sickness than to pneumonia. A team from University of  Chicago Medicine got what they called “truly remarkable” results when they used high-flow nasa cannulas (HFNC), which place non-invasive prongs below the nose and blow large volumes of warm, humidified oxygen into the nose and lungs. 

The docs took 24 COVID-19 patients and gave them this HFNC therapy. After 10 days, only one patient required a ventilator while the others fared extremely well. The docs also had the patient’s laying on their stomachs, which also made it easier to breathe.

So…hopefully, this study will be expanded and validated as a way to save people by not using a ventilator!

(Reported Mercola.com, May 6, 2020)

Top Critical Care Specialists Being Ignored On COVID-19 Treatment

The recommendations for an extremely effective treatment for Covid-19 by a group of 5 critical care specialists, which includes several of the top experts in the world, are being ignored by medical groups, the government and drug companies. 

To put it simply, this is a breakthrough treatment for stopping COVID-19. 

The doctors have jointly treated over 100 patients with a 98% success rate. The only 2 that died didn't die from COVID-19. They died from other advanced medical conditions.

These experts have even testified before Congress about the effectiveness of their results with no one paying attention. The group includes Drs. Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, Joseph Varon and José Iglesias (Check out their credentials).

The protocols that these doctors have developed call for using the following:

1. Intravenous methylprednisolone to suppress the immune system and prevent organ damage from cytokine storms. This is followed by oral prednisone.

2. Vitamin C to control inflammation and prevent the development of leaky blood vessels in the lungs. 

3. Subcutaneous heparin to thin the blood and prevent blood clots. It must be administered within six hours of admission into the hospital.

4. High-flow nasal oxygen to avoid mechanical ventilation, which itself damages the lungs and is associated with a mortality rate approaching nearly 90% in some centers. 

5. Optional additions include the use of thiamine, zinc and Vitamin D (which I've already written about in an earlier blog). 

Could it be that the drug companies are seeing dollar signs in front of them and don't want to find something that would stop the development of vaccines? It's clear to me that the rate of success that these doctors are experiencing would eliminate the need to develop a vaccine to solve the Covid-19 pandemic? 

So…this protocol would also be a much better option for President Trump to recommend than using bleach or drugs that can kill you!

Strengthening Your Immune System

I ran across an article in Organic Consumers Association that I thought I’d share with you. It’s by Pat Thomas. Pat is editor at Natural Health News in the UK and author of “Complete Wellness and What Works, What Doesn’t – The Guide to Alternative Healthcare.”

What  Pat did was to give a great update on the latest COVID-19 conventional treatment news and alternative health options. It’s a good source for an overview picture of how you can help keep yourself health during this crisis.
Here’s the link: https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/coronavirus-what-are-best-alternatives-self-care?utm_medium=email&utm_source=engagingnetworks&utm_ campaign=OB+657&utm_ content=OB+657