Craniosacral East's 7 Foods to avoid for a better year

This list is from Dr. Mercola's web site who we mostly love despite his car salesman enthusiasm. He lifted the list from Yahoo and elaborated on its findings.

More Ads At Craniosacral East we totally endorse a happy and healthy conscious approach to your health.
Good luck to happy and healthy new year.

But before sharing this smart list I'd like to share a photo from CranioSacral-East's vacation to Belize--where I am now. The purpose of the trip is to stud water patterns in the open ocean, looking for similarities to the fluid movement within our Craniosacral Systems. So far, I've just seen a lot of fish.

Avoid These 7 Foods and You're Off To A Healthier New Year

Posted by: Dr. Mercola
December 29 2009 | 59,033 views

1. Canned Tomatoes

The expert: Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A

The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Acidity -- a prominent characteristic of tomatoes -- causes BPA to leach into your food.

2. Corn-Fed Beef

The expert: Joel Salatin, co-owner of Polyface Farms and author of books on sustainable farming

Cattle were designed to eat grass, not grains. But farmers today feed their animals corn and soybeans, which fatten up the animals faster for slaughter. A recent comprehensive study found that compared with corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

3. Microwave Popcorn

The expert: Olga Naidenko, PhD, a senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group

Chemicals, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in the lining of the bag, are part of a class of compounds that may be linked to infertility in humans. In animal testing, the chemicals cause liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancer. Studies show that microwaving causes the chemicals to vaporize -- and migrate into your popcorn.

4. Nonorganic Potatoes

The expert: Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board

Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes they're treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they're dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting.

5. Farmed Salmon

The expert: David Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany

Nature didn't intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT.

6. Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones

The expert: Rick North, project director of the Campaign for Safe Food at the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

Milk producers treat their dairy cattle with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST, as it is also known) to boost milk production. But rBGH also increases udder infections and even pus in the milk. It also leads to higher levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor in milk. In people, high levels of IGF-1 may contribute to breast, prostate, and colon cancers.

7. Conventional Apples

The expert: Mark Kastel, codirector of the Cornucopia Institute

If fall fruits held a "most doused in pesticides contest," apples would win. And increasing numbers of studies are starting to link a higher body burden of pesticides with Parkinson's disease.

Sources:

Yahoo Shine November 24, 2009

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

This is one of the best “foods to avoid” lists I’ve seen come out of the mainstream media. It is very rare when this happens, but I agree with every food on this list.

The reality is that most food nowadays is far from pure. Pesticide residues have been detected in 50 percent to 95 percent of all commercially grown U.S. foods, and that is only one type of toxin.

Babies are actually born toxic due to the toxic load of their mothers, some of which comes from dietary contaminants and food additives. One study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that blood samples from newborns contained an average of 287 toxins, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides, and Teflon chemicals!

The list above is a great starting point to cleaning up your diet, but focusing on organically grown, biodynamic whole foods is really the key to success here.

I want to expand on some of the toxic foods mentioned above, as well as add a few more to the list, so you can significantly reduce your exposure to toxins in the foods you eat.

Why Fresh is Better Than Canned

Many leading brands of canned foods contain BPA -- a toxic chemical linked to reproductive abnormalities, neurological effects, heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, heart disease and other serious health problems.

According to Consumer Reports’ testing, just a couple of servings of canned food can exceed the safety limits for daily BPA exposure for children.

The current US federal guidelines put the daily upper limit of “safe” exposure at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. You should know, however, that even low-level exposure to BPA can be hazardous to your health, and Consumer Reports’ testing found that eating popular canned foods may expose you to excessive amounts of BPA:

• Del Monte Fresh Cut Green Beans had BPA levels ranging from 35.9 ppb to as much as 191 ppb
• Progresso Vegetable Soup had BPA levels ranging from 67 to 134 ppb
• Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup had BPA levels ranging from 54.5 to 102 ppb

So, ideally avoid canned foods entirely and stick to fresh fruits and vegetables, or switch over to brands that use glass containers instead.

Grass-Fed is the Healthy Choice for Beef

Grass-fed beef is vastly superior to grain-fed beef, and in fact it’s the clear beef of choice you should be eating. It is far more important to choose grass-fed than to choose organic, as most grass-fed beef are also organic

Not only is it raised in a more sustainable way for the environment and a more humane way for the animal, but it’s the superior choice for your health.

Grass-fed beef, for instance, is lower in fat than regular beef and, more importantly, contains higher amounts of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatty acid. Grass-fed animals have from three to five times more CLA than grain-fed animals.

CLA has been making headlines for its extreme health benefits, which include:

• Fighting cancer and diabetes
• Helping you lose weight
• Increasing your metabolic rate, a positive benefit for promoting normal thyroid function
• Helping you maintain normal cholesterol and triglyceride levels
• Enhancing your immune system

Keep in mind that grass-fed meat is almost always preferable to certified organic meat also because most organic beef is fed organic corn, which is what causes the myriad of health problems associated with eating beef. If you can find organic, grass-fed meat, that would be ideal.

What You Need to Know About Milk

I strongly recommend you avoid milk that has the added growth hormone rBGH.

Samuel Epstein, MD, a scientist at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, is one of the top experts on cancer prevention, and he has been speaking out against rBGH in milk, the so-called “crack for cows,” for years.

For starters, Dr. Epstein points out that rBGH milk is “supercharged with high levels of a natural growth factor (IGF-1), excess levels of which have been incriminated as major causes of breast, colon, and prostate cancers.”

But that’s not all.

"This milk is qualitatively and quantitatively different from natural milk," states Dr. Epstein. "In addition to the issue of increased IGF-1 levels, these differences include:

• Contamination of milk by the GM hormone rBGH
• Contamination by pus and antibiotics resulting from the high incidence of mastitis in rBGH-injected cows
• Contamination with illegal antibiotics and drugs used to treat mastitis and other rBGH-induced disease
• Increased concentration of the thyroid hormone enzyme thyroxin-5'-monodeiodinase
• Increased concentration of long-chain and decreased concentration of short-chain fatty acids
• A reduction in levels of the milk protein casein."

You very well may be drinking rBGH milk and not know it, as no labels are required. This is despite the fact that nearly every American wants it labeled, but the government, as usual, bowed to industry lobbyists and, amazingly, does not require this on the label.

However, as increasing numbers of people and dairies choose to avoid rBGH, you can find labels that say “rBGH-free” or a similar variation. Organic milk is also rBGH-free.

This is certainly preferable to milk that contains this dangerous hormone … but I still don’t recommend drinking any milk, organic or otherwise, that is pasteurized.

You can avoid both the risks of rBGH and pasteurization by only drinking raw milk that comes from a small farmer you know and trust. This is the only way to drink milk if you’re interested in protecting your health.

The Most Important Foods to Buy Organic

Most fruits and vegetables contain unacceptable and unsafe levels of pesticides, so it’s a wise choice to buy organic produce as often as you can.

However, if you need to pick and choose which foods to buy organic, the most important foods to buy organic are animal products -- not produce. This is because animal foods, which are raised on pesticide-laced feed, tend to have higher concentrations of pesticides.

Non-organic meats have up to five times more pesticides than non-organic vegetables.

Non-organic butter can have up to 20 times as many pesticides as non-organic vegetables.

So when prioritizing your purchases, look for organic meats, eggs and dairy products before anything else.

There is one exception to this rule, and that is you may be better off choosing fresh local foods over organic foods. Often, locally grown foods are raised according to organic standards at a more affordable price.

Is Farmed Salmon the Only Seafood to Avoid?

Farmed salmon is among the worst seafood choices out there, as numerous studies show the salmon contain toxins and cancer-causing pollutants. Farmed salmon typically have at least 10 times more cancer-causing persistent organic pollutants than their wild counterparts.

That said, I do not agree that farmed salmon is the only fish you need to stay away from.

A recent study from the U.S. Geological Survey detected mercury in every fish sampled from nearly 300 U.S. streams. Among them, 27 percent contained mercury at levels that equaled or exceeded the U.S. EPA’s criterion for the protection of human health, and more than two-thirds exceeded mercury safety levels for fish-eating mammals like mink and otters.

Therefore, I do not recommend eating any fish -- whether farm-raised or from an ocean, lake, river or stream -- unless you have lab results in your hand that can attest to its purity.

There are still some safe areas out there, such as in certain pristine waters in Alaska, but it will take some searching on your end to seek them out. The ONLY safe fish I have discovered so far is Vital Choice wild red salmon, which remains the only source of fish I’ll eat.

Eating smaller fish, like anchovies and sardines, is also an option, as their small size makes them far less likely to be contaminated.

An important point to remember if you’re not eating fish is that your body still has a requirement for omega-3 fats. Fortunately, you can easily meet your omega-3 needs by taking a high-quality krill oil supplement, instead of risking your health by eating contaminated fish.

Another Food to Avoid: Unfermented Soy

This one did not make the above list, but it’s one I would definitely add.

Any soy that is unfermented -- soy milk, tofu, soybean oil, soy burgers, and all the other processed soy products out there all belong to this category -- is not a health food and in fact is not a food I would advise eating at all. This is true whether it is “organic” or not.

Soy infant formula is also on this list and is one of the absolute worst foods you can give your baby.

Unfermented soy products have been linked to everything from reproductive disorders and infertility to cancer and heart disease.

Further, unfermented soy contains isoflavones that are clearly associated with reduced thyroid function. Eating unfermented soy products is likely the single largest cause of hypothyroidism in women.

Another major problem with unfermented soy is that it contains natural toxins known as “antinutrients.” This includes a large quantity of inhibitors that deter your enzymes needed for protein digestion.

While a small amount of these antinutrients would likely not be a problem, the amount of soy that many Americans are now eating (and drinking in the form of soy milk) is quite significant.

The result of consuming too many of soy’s antinutrients is extensive gastric distress and chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake, which can result in pancreatic impairment and cancer.

For more details on soy foods, including the fermented varieties that can actually be healthy, please read Why This Type of Soy is Better.

Guidelines for Healthy Food

Whatever food you’re looking to eat, whether imported organic or locally grown, from either your local supermarket or a farmer’s market, here are the signs of a high-quality, healthy food:

1. It’s grown without pesticides and chemical fertilizers (organic foods fit this description, but so do some non-organic foods)
2. It’s not genetically modified
3. It contains no added growth hormones, antibiotics, or other drugs
4. It does not contain artificial anything, nor any preservatives
5. It is fresh (if you have to choose between wilted organic produce or fresh conventional produce, the latter may be the better option)
6. It did not come from a factory farm
7. It is grown with the laws of nature in mind (meaning animals are fed their native diets, not a mix of grains and animal byproducts, and have free-range access to the outdoors)
8. It is grown in a sustainable way (using minimal amounts of water, protecting the soil from burnout, and turning animal wastes into natural fertilizers instead of environmental pollutants)

If the food meets these criteria, it is likely a good choice. Most often, the best place to find these foods is from a sustainable agricultural group in your area. You can also review my free nutrition plan to get started on a healthy eating program today.

Related Links:

The Five Absolute Worst Foods You Can Eat

Ten Worst Breakfast Cereals

12 Food Additives to Avoid

Infants, Breastfeeding, and Pregnancy pains helped by CST.

Pregnany pains helped by CST.
I was experiencing reflux in my 4th month of pregnancy, and this work really reduced it. In my last trimester, it helped me release tensions in my chest and pelvis. What really surprised me is how it helped me drop so much of the stressful stuff I can get so involved in.

Pamela Warshay, Owner of Sage Fitness

Craniosacral East is now working with more infants.

Birth can often be a riveting experience for a child's head and body. Craniosacral Therapy with its exceptionally gentle touch can help an infant afterward.

Notice how this infant skull (veiwed from above), shows how much space there is between the bones. Most of the bones in our adult cranium are still in sections as an infant and child. For example the frontal bone which makes up our forehead is in 2 sections in an infant head. They will fully fuse into one bone within an infant's first year. Some bones are in four sections like our Temporal bones (where your ear comes out and jaw attaches). This bone takes 3 years to ossify, while others, like the Sacrum (the bottom of your spine at your pelvis) doesn't totally ossify until an adult's 20's!

During delivery these bone sections naturally glide over each other to allow the infant to get through the birth canal. This is also why infants are delivered with cone shaped heads. Sometimes, however, cranial bones glide over each other and then get partially stuck. This can happen more often If medical interventions were used to help the infant such as:

• Vacuum delivery
• C section
• Forceps
• Face-up delivery (sunny-side up)
• Breach delivery
• or a very long delivery where the infant may have been compressed for a while in one position.
  

Craniosacral Therapy is an ideal, gentle modality to help an infant's cranium recover from a difficult delivery. Our touch is often lighter than the weight of a nickel when working on an adults, and even less for children and infants. Craniosacral Therapy is so effective because it facilitates to flow of a child's own spinal fluid throughout their spine and head. It's their own energetic and fluid movement that creates the change--our touch is only a gentle and specific facilitator.

Improving an infant's ability to breastfeed is one of the most important results of Craniosacral Therapy for infants. If an infant is only feeeding at 50% of their optimum amount, it significantly impacts their growth. Not only is breastfeeding important physiologically, it also has tremendous emotional benefits. Anything we can do that can help a child nurse until a natural weening is in great benefit to them.

There is a particular bone in an infant's head that plays a role in suckling. The Vomer bone as (you can see below in pink in the image) naturally rocks back and forth on the bone above it, the Sphenoid. The vomer bone is right over the roof of the mouth, down the middle (right behind the nose). If an infant's vomer is partially restricted or impacted against the Sphenoid during delivery, this rocking motion can be reduced considerably. Interestingly, nature has its own way of addressing this common restriction: a child's relentless thumb sucking.

This is the Vomer bone in pink in an adult head. The eyes and face would be facing left, and you can see the teeth for orientation. It is easy to see how this bone could get impacted during delivery and also easy to see how a child's suckling motion would require this bone to rock back and forth easily.

Often times, Craniosacral Therapy can help release this bone and improve a child's ability to suckle.

Lastly, two issues affecting breastfeeding that will be covered in an upcoming blog will be:

1. Craniosacral Therapy can help a mother's ability to attune to her infant's energy and needs. By helping mother's to return to their own centered, inner balance, it can better help them be available to their child.
2. Craniosacral Therapy can help a child with reflux find a greater ease through their diaphragm and esophagus allowing food to naturally stay in the stomach.
   

The following excellent write up on Craniosacral Therapy by Laleche League (an association on breastfeeding) expands upon many of the points made here. For more info click here.

For more information about: Craniosacral East and our work with mothers, infants and children click right here.

CST Study group vegas nerve

Craniosacral East's first Blog, describing our recent study group in my office. Please click on our link to explore more about Craniosacral Therapy.


Today in my office we had a study group going over the embryological origins of the Vagus Nerve which connects to the organs relating to digestion and more.

The strange image to your left is your brain from below and the brain stem. It's where your spinal cord connects to your brain.

One of the nerves that come out of your brainstem is your vegas nerve. You can see how many organs this nerve touches upon.




To better place the brain stem, you can see in the image to the right as the spinal cord enters the brain. Notice the bulge known as the Pons. This is where the 12 paired Cranial Nerves emanate, one of the pairs being the Vagus Nerve (from vagabond for how it travels all around the organs)


What made the class even more interesting is we had images from the early embryonic development of this cranial nerve along with the primitive digestive track.


Notice the Vagus nerve development on the left drawing, clearly developing within the 4 week old embryo.

Interruptions in an embryo's development at this point can affect their Vagal nerve response & digestion much later in life as adults.

When we worked on each other on the tables, we kept in our mind these images and others we viewed of the embyonic seams that later develop into the face and throat. You can very faintly see the folded seams in the drawn picture of the embryo. They are the folds just above the word VAGUS NERVE. Unfortunately I didn't have any images of these seams that are work well with the low resolution photo content of this blog.

By keeping in our mind images of the embryonic origins of the Seams and how they become the face, and Vagus nerve and how it grew in connection with all these organs it helps us have a developmental feel for the body we are touching. If we also keep in our mind where the vegus nerve is in the adult body, and how it travels out of the skull, long held developmental tensions or issues, can be stilled. It's not that we do anything mechanical to this nerve, it's that we have it somewhere in our awareness, how it exits the skull, what organs it touches, and how it started to develop, alongside your organs when you were only a few weeks old.




If you are Craniosacral Practitioner and are interested in joing our study group in NYC Monthly. Please let me know. Or you can always subscribe to the blog if you live out of town and want the brief review.

CST for post spinal surgery

This summer at Craniosacral-East

This summer brought some very interesting clients into my office. The most technically interesting was a young Croatian man coming in with a Chiara (or Kiari) malformation in his spine.

This means he'd had a malformation of the bone making up the bottom part of his skull right at the spinal cord entrance to the cranium (the Foramen Magnum). This bone malformation most likely occurred when he was an early embryo or infant and caused a bubble of spinal fluid, a Syringomyelia, to slowly develop within his spinal cord instead of surrounding it.

Notice on the right side image above there is a blue bubble of spinal fluid creating pressure within the spinal cord. As you can imagine, this created pressure and affected his nervous system. He'd been experience strong shooting pains in odd places in his body due to the pressure. When it was finally diagnosed in his 20's the doctors recommended he have it surgically fixed. So he did.

However, some of the pains returned following the surgery, including burning sensations around the back of his head, exhaustion, loss of balance, and a real sense of defeat in his medical circumstances. Physical activities had been reduced, some days he could not really leave his apartment. Many of these symptoms were the exact ones the doctors had hoped would be fixed by the corrective surgery.

So he came to me quite a few months post surgery with the mentioned symptoms. As a part of his assessment, I noticed his occiput (the lowest part of the cranium where the malformation had been) and his brain stem had a lot of tension. Also the dural sheath around the inside of his skull and along inside of the upper spinal canal was very taught.

One day while talking before the session as we usually did, I noticed that the feeling of the tension in his head and brain stem in particular, was similar to the pressure I felt in the room while we were talking before the session.

He had a very strong need to be thoroughly understood. I instantly felt that we might have an opportunity to release the whole system if he could feel this similarity and start to help reduce it simply through awareness. He was a bright and self aware person so I shared the observation and he immediately recognized that how he might be recreating some of his own tensions with his own urgency.

We started working together to notice during our pre-table talk time moments when he felt really easily connected to his body, compared to other moments when he'd get into very intelligent, yet stressful discussion. We developed a freer energetic and physical awareness of the tension created just by thought and communication.

Working anywhere near his head, at first, even with the lightest contact could cause an outbreak of burning sensation afterwards. Just as a note, working with anyone in this condition has to be done with the utmost of caution as there's actually more space with the malformatin for the brain to fall down the through the spinal canal. That's a gross over simplification but don't ever try an Upledger style occipital release on someone with one. The hard part for me was he wanted relief of the pressure and pain in his head so much, it was hard to set up a really spacious biodynamic approach to his head. He'd ask for me to somehow find a way to work on it. But the fix it approach never helped him for a second due to the burning response he experienced so we tried the more spacious approach I'd been suggesting.

We made a plan that I would only make contact with his head for a few minutes in the middle of the session, sometimes not even touching his head. He suggested he lie on the side for some of the session which took pressure off the back of his head where most of his pain was. The benefit of our more spacious approach was he left the sessions feeling fine, and holding onto the releases that had happened. His hope about the process improved immensely.

During the sessions, I used Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, exclusively with him. This entails connecting to the fluidity of his body, specifically in his case, the fluidity of the spinal fluid moving around his spinal cord and brain.

By doing this, we could work just as easily to improve the flow of spinal fluid from his sacrum (the base of the spine) as we could from his head. We would work on his head only a little and then more and more as his tissues softened. On the image to the right you can see where the spine enters the brain, there is a little brown colored cistern between the brain stem in front and the cerebellum behind. This is the fourth ventricle where Cerebrospinal fluid collects and flows. By helping this system come to stillness, at also has the ability to soften the brain stem in front of it. I would stay sometimes for 20 minutes at his sacrum visualizing how the spinal fluid moved through the spinal canal and around his brain.

Sometimes he would go to a very deep state of relaxation, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is known for. They call it stillness. Early Osteopaths had a near religious respect for the body's self healing ability when it entered a state of stillness.

After 6 or 7 closely spaced sessions, he experienced a greater freedom from his pains than he'd had since before the operation. He no longer felt burning after the sessions. His head, instead of repelling my hands, invited me to work and help the dural tissue around his occiput. He's been able to cut down his sessions, and found that his own awareness of his mental state has allowed himself to reduce the pains and tensions he experiences. As of now he comes in as needed. It feels like this work really helped his own body self correct and continue to return to equilibrium so the state of balance has been lasting.