CHECKLIST
Many different health conditions are primarily caused by chronic inflammation. Here is a simple checklist of ways to reduce inflammation and how to get started. Each checklist item has a link to a different part of my book. Therefore, clicking on some checklist items will open another tab with additional information about that topic and why it is important for health. Many of these checklist items require important habit changes. Refer to Appendix B for information about habit change and recommended books that discuss emotional reasons some habit changes may be difficult.
Checklist items are organized into three main categories: Improve Nutrition, Reduce Stress, and Follow Nature.
IMPROVE NUTRITION
Goals: Read Chapter 7 of my book and know more about nutrition. Eat whole, natural low glycemic load foods and avoid most processed food at least 90% of the time.
How to start: Choose one day of the week to eat home cooked meals that contain no processed foods. Also, do a little research for recipes and flavors you may enjoy. For example, simply go on www.youtube.com and look up slow cooker and instant pot recipes. I like the recipes found on the Rainbow Plant Life blog. Each week add one recipe to your skill set.
Goals: Keep a journal of all food eaten and enter this data into a nutrient tracker, such as cronometer.com.
How to start: Simply write down one day’s worth of food and enter it in a nutrient tracker. Food trackers are more accurate if food is whole and natural, which a food plan should become anyway. Slowly add more days and meals you track. This is especially important for keeping track of minerals such as calcium, magnesium, and potassium, since most blood tests are only designed to detect severe deficiencies of these minerals. Therefore, entering daily food intake in a tracker may help discover hidden mineral deficiencies.
Goals: Minimize exposure to pollution and unnatural chemicals.
How to start: Read Chapter 5 of my book. Avoid most chemical cleaners, makeup products, and industry meat. This will limit your exposure to heavy metals and other dangerous forms of pollution. Also avoid processed foods, which often contain unnatural chemicals that damage digestive function. In general, ask the question “Is this natural?” If not, then that item may need to be thrown away. Avoiding pollutants and unnatural chemicals is critical because they can increase inflammation, which affects many different health conditions.
Goals: Excellent detoxification pathways and habits.
How to start: Improved fluid intake, daily sweating, and regular bowel movements all enhance the body’s ability to detoxify. Regular exercise and increased water intake help to get pollution out of the body. However, be careful not to overdrink water because it will waste electrolytes and cause other health problems. If you lack thirst, then the problem is likely not enough electrolytes in the body to trigger the thirst response. Improving intake of whole foods, with plenty of fruits and vegetables, provides many necessary electrolytes and will likely increase the natural thirst for water. Importantly, the best way to strengthen the liver’s detoxification power is to reduce inflammation. This is because chronic inflammation purposefully limits the body’s ability to detoxify at a deeper level.
Goals: Eat primarily quality organic food.
How to start: Slowly start to buy more organic food. Go to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) website and see which foods have the most pesticides. Only eat these high pesticide foods if they are organic. Learn more about organic plants and how they often have more minerals and beneficial phytochemicals than non-organic plants. Every week add one more organic meal to your food plan, until at least 80% of your food plan is all organic. Also, purchase most of your organic food locally because long-distance transportation reduces the number of good phytochemicals in vegetables and fruits.
Goals: Have a 70% plant-based food plan. Frequently use the slow cooker or instant pot, which makes cooking more convenient for a busy life.
How to start: Learn how to cook one vegetarian meal this week, preferably using a slow cooker. Every other week add one more recipe. There are a lot of cheap, tasty, and highly nutritious bean-based slow cooker recipes. Slowly start eating more of these plant-based recipes each week, until the daily food plan is primarily plant-based. Plants have many phytochemicals and minerals important for good health.
Goals: Eat high quality fat and avoid processed vegetable oils. Total fat consumption should be around 40% of daily calories.
How to start: Avoid vegetable seed oils, such as sunflower, safflower, and palm kernel. Realize eating refined vegetable oils is very unnatural and these fats are easily damaged by heat and light, making them more toxic to the body. A particularly damaging source of these fats is fried food because the vegetable oil has been repeated heated, which radically changes the fat structure making it more harmful for health. Instead, add more naturally raised animal fat to your daily food plan, but only after maintaining a low glycemic food plan for a while. It is necessary to reduce insulin resistance before suddenly starting to eat more fat. Also, learn about environmental pollution and why this makes eating naturally raised quality meat and fat important. Read more about why in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of my book.
Goals: Every three months go on a 48-hour fast, which challenges the body's ability to generate enough energy. Also at different times, and depending on your health, do high-intensity interval training exercises.
How to start: Longer fasting times are generally going to be easier once the body has become adapted to a high-fat low glycemic food plan. This is because refined carbohydrates create too many insulin peaks and crashes, which destabilizes blood glucose levels and makes long fasting unsafe. Therefore, first establish an intermittent fasting pattern and avoid high glycemic load foods for a couple of months. Once the body is well-adapted to lower glucose levels and establishes much better fat metabolism, then the longer fasts will be easier. Similarly, establish a good moderate exercise program for a couple of months before getting into high-intensity interval training. The reason longer fasting, and short high-intensity interval training are beneficial for health is because each challenges the body’s ability to make energy. This challenge stimulates the creation of new, more efficient mitochondria, which create fewer reactive oxygen species than old, inefficient mitochondria.
REDUCE STRESS
Goals: Get Five Element Acupuncture treatments every week. Some people may notice amazing positive changes after just seven treatments.
How to start: Discover Five Element Acupuncture and how this ancient and unique treatment style may reduce psychological stress by transforming powerful emotional blocks and lifestyle patterns. Learn about the important differences between Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) acupuncture and the emotional/spiritual Five Element Acupuncture style. I have experienced the ability of Five Element Acupuncture to reduce psychological stress and improve health.
Goals: Have a bedtime routine and regularly go to bed by 9 pm.
How to start: Begin by going to bed a little earlier each day. Organize daily tasks so by 8 pm you are free to relax and no longer need to use any computer or phone. Every hour of sleep before 12 am is worth more because early in the night the body has longer restorative deep slow wave sleep.
Goals: Avoid negative people. Instead, spend more time with positive people. Avoid negative news and negative social media sources. Seek out positive life experiences. As with physical nutrition, be careful and selective about nutrition for the mind and spirit.
How to start: Identify the current parts of life that feel draining. Seek and discover the positive experiences that bring joy, feelings of expansion, and deep closeness. Some questions to ask are: “Do I feel better after spending time with this person?” “Do I feel more hopeful and positive after watching this show?” “How much did I laugh today?” Become aware of mental nutrition because life experiences strongly affect psychological stress.
Goals: Discover work you love to do. If that is not possible, then find work you do not dislike.
How to start: Research different work options and try to find a better job. Switching jobs will of course depend on current life circumstances. Maybe the ideal job cannot be found but at least you may be able to find something that is less stressful. Sometimes a much less stressful job will require learning to live with less money. This connects to minimalism and the realization that buying more stuff is not the key to happiness.
Goals: Find people who have healed from a similar health condition.
How to start: Various health conditions are challenging to deal with emotionally and mentally. Many people have negative thoughts and feelings when faced with problems involving their health. Therefore, being with and talking to others who have healed from similar challenges helps reframe possibilities and generate more positivity. This itself may begin the healing process by breaking negative thought patterns and reducing the associated stress.
Goals: Exercise at least 3x a week for 30 to 60 minutes doing a mixture of weights and cardiovascular exercise.
How to start: Everyday do just five minutes of exercises using your own body weight, such as body weight squats, push-ups, and sit ups. Every week just add one or two minutes until more weights are needed to get the same effect. Also, find a group sporting activity you like, such as cycling, basketball, tennis, or soccer. Group activities make exercise more fun and increase community bonds, which is great for reducing psychological stress.
Goals: Meditate in the morning and in the evening for at least 20 minutes each time.
How to start: Meditate for only 2 minutes in the morning of each day this week. Every week add 2 minutes until reaching 20 minutes. Then repeat this process with the evening meditation. Starting at 2 minutes and slowly adding more minutes until reaching 20 minutes for the evening also. Some people will be able to do this more quickly, and some need to progress more slowly. Follow the body.
Goals: Have a daily yoga practice.
How to start: Start with only 5 minutes of yoga a day by following videos, such as the ones on the youtube channel Yoga With Adriene. Like other habits, slowly add more time to daily yoga practice each week. It is also important to include specific yogic breathing practices and know the niyamas and yamas associated with yoga. Combining all these features into a daily yoga practice can reduce stress and lower inflammation.
Goals: Gradually reduce the emotional charge of difficult past experiences.
How to start: Work with a trained healer or therapist on ways to reduce the emotional charge linked with difficult past experiences. Find methods to feel safe in your body and gradually change the way you feel about parts of the past. Be careful during the process of healing trauma as some emotions are intense. A medical professional may be necessary for this process.
Goals: Regularly practice letting go of thoughts, sensations, and behaviors that do not support better health.
How to start: Identify a few patterns in your life that are harmful to your health. Also, try to discover the thought patterns which generate the most stress. Spending some time in meditation will help you find negative beliefs and their associated body sensations. Practice letting go by fully accepting the body sensations. Acceptance is critical for letting go successfully. This is because attempting to forcefully remove a difficult sensation is an attachment to the rejection of that sensation. Once a sensation is fully felt and 100% accepted, as if it could last forever, then the sensation will naturally begin to disappear. Letting go of various uncomfortable sensations in the body also clears away many associated thoughts and emotions. This will reduce stress levels significantly and increase presence.
Goals: Keep a daily journal of thoughts, ideas, and things that need to be done.
How to start: Begin this habit by writing down your ideas for just one day of the week. Slowly add to the number of days and include more ideas, thoughts, and action items. This helps to organize your mind and reduces stress by increasing overall clarity. It is especially helpful to write a to-do list before bedtime because this helps the mind relax by knowing nothing is being forgotten the next day.
Goals: See reality and yourself in a positive way.
How to start: Seeing the good of reality will be easier once past traumatic energy has been cleared and transformed. Begin to change perspective by focusing on the positive in life and not the negative aspects. Perspective is strongly affected by mental nutrition, which was discussed before. To recap, a great way to start this process is to not watch or read news. This is because news focuses on negative, disempowering information, which can significantly raise stress levels. Another excellent and potent way to change perspective is to avoid negative people. Instead, hangout with positive people that are kind, funny, and passionate. Also, realize that the reticular activating system (RAS) in the brain acts as filter for what data the mind focuses on. This is a big reason why positive people often attract and end up in more positive life situations than negative people. The subconscious thought process wants to be correct because cognitive dissonance is unpleasant to the mind. Therefore, many people sabotage themselves until their life matches their dominant subconscious thoughts, which are mainly driven by trapped emotional energy in the body. Releasing these energy blocks can help change thought patterns, quality of life, and reduce stress.
Goals: Have daily healthy sources of joy.
How to start: Connect to positive experiences that bring you joy. Remember what you used to love to do when you were younger. Often these passions and hobbies still exist beneath the surface of daily work and obligations. Simply give less than one hour a day to doing something you love. Ideally, this will be creative and bring joy to other people as well. Also, watching something funny or joyful helps to significantly reduce psychological stress.
Goals: Have daily healthy sources of relaxation.
How to start: Modern life is busy. Therefore, finding ways to relax is important. To begin, just find one activity that you feel is relaxing and pick a day and time to allow this activity to have your full attention. Many people spend too much of their energy caring for other people without caring for themselves. This leads to burnout and feelings of resentment. Many people justify not paying attention to their own needs as somehow heroic. As if sacrifice of personal health means they care more. However, such an approach is flawed because fewer people can receive help when the caregiver is no longer healthy. Finding healthy ways to create deep relaxation helps to reset the nervous system and reduce inflammation. This leads to a greater ability to help other people after recharging.
Goals: Feel a strong sense of gratitude every day.
How to start: Choose five things you are grateful to have. These can be simple things, such as the ability to walk, or to be on a beautiful planet. The key to this practice is to feel the emotion with your heart. Just saying a list of things is not going to have the same benefits as feeling gratitude as much as you can. Gratitude is a great practice because it helps to counteract the inner critic in the mind and shift mindset. For this reason, starting your day with a powerful gratitude practice is great for overall health and productivity.
Goals: Dance daily to music.
How to start: Start with just one minute of dancing per day to music you like. Every week add more time and fun to the dance sessions. Also, try different styles of music and physical moves. Nothing needs to be traditional or like anyone else. This is only about moving your body in a way that makes you feel alive and free. Spontaneous dance sessions by yourself can reduce stress significantly.
Follow Nature
Goals: As much as possible have your skin in contact with the Earth each day, especially during sunrise and sunset.
How to start: Lay or sit so your skin is in contact with the Earth for 30 to 60 minutes each day. It is important to recognize humans evolved over many thousands of years walking without shoes connected to the flow of Earth’s electrons. Shoes and indoor living cut us off from this source of healing energy. In addition to walking around barefoot more often, having a daily grounded meditation practice during the sunrise and sunset may provide amazing health benefits.
Goals: Get at least two hours of direct sunlight on your skin daily. Also get early morning sunlight exposure because it helps match the body's circadian rhythms with Nature. Minimize light exposure after dark and use no screens after sunset. Also, it is important to sleep with no light in the room.
How to start: Become more aware of the power of light to affect health. Increase sunlight exposure by 10 minutes every week. Wake up close to dawn and get exposure to this early sunlight to synchronize circadian rhythms. Blackout your bedroom and sleep in the dark. Put away screens 10 minutes earlier each night until all screens are totally put away for at least two hours before going to sleep.
Goals: Eat a large breakfast and lunch. Do not eat dinner.
How to start: First eat natural whole foods for some time to stop the blood sugar spikes and insulin roller coaster. After the insulin spikes have diminished, then add more fat into meals to give sustained energy throughout the day. Progressively make dinner a smaller meal, until you remove it completely. Ideally, only eat during an eight-hour window of time earlier in the day, such as between 8 am and 4 pm. Having no food after 4 pm, and fasting for 16 hours, supports natural repair processes occurring during sleep. This earlier eating pattern can significantly improve sleep quality and cell regeneration.
Goals: Daily sunrise and sunset grounded meditation practice.
How to start: Begin by meditating for one or two sunsets per week. Every week add another day of either sunrise or sunset meditation, preferably grounded to the Earth if weather permits. Meditation relaxes the nervous system, grounding adds electrons, and timing this activity to the sun helps synchronize circadian rhythms to Nature.
Goals: Spend time each week in Nature and open your awareness. Also go on periodic camping trips.
How to start: Observe and feel the rhythms, patience, and peace of Nature. Go for a walk in the woods in silence and open all your senses to the environment. Listen to the sounds. See the complex geometry of the trees and flowers. Once you know your Five Element Acupuncture pattern this is especially helpful because Nature reflects your own elemental pattern and energetic. For example, some people are like water, some like wood, others are like Earth, etc. Each type has a different vibration, way of being, and pattern of movement. Being in Nature is already relaxing and adding knowledge of your pattern may help you gain more insight and harmonize with your element. This may reduce stress on a much deeper level.
Goals: Grow a seasonal garden, preferably outside.
How to start: Start by just growing a few potted plants. Depending on space and outdoor options, eventually grow a larger garden that requires some time to maintain. This will put you outside in Nature. Ideally, you can tend the garden without shoes on, so you get extra electrons from the Earth. A garden has many benefits for overall health, such as more sunlight exposure, earthing, and helping to slow the mind into a more meditative state. Also, a well-tended garden can provide many healthy vegetables.
Goals: Have only things that are necessary. Donate many possessions to others until only what is needed remains.
How to start: Begin by letting go of one possession each day. Over many weeks of letting go of items every day you will significantly fewer possessions. This reduces stress because humans evolved as hunter-gatherers with few possessions, which is less mentally demanding to track of and maintain. For most people, it is more natural and less stressful to practice minimalism.
Goals: Challenge yourself with different temperatures a few times a week. The human body is designed to adapt and be challenged by temperature changes.
How to start: Start by taking cold showers a few times a week. Depending on your health you can eventually start using a sauna and cold baths. Temperature challenges can be dangerous for people that are not in a good state of health. Therefore, consult with a doctor before starting these sorts of activities.
Goals: Socialize and have great relationships.
How to start: Humans are social creatures and function best when we have friends and community. Starting out, social activities may need to be based around a common interest or sport. Finding your joy and hobbies may help connect you to other people that also enjoy those things. This is a great way to start a more interesting long-term relationship. Being connected to others and life reduces stress. Another excellent way to increase connection is to adopt a pet.
Goals: Take no supplements, except electrolyte support or herbal formulas when needed.
How to start: Realize many supplements are unnatural and the supplement industry is poorly regulated, which allows many supplements to have dangerous ingredients. Also, few supplements are tested for negative long-term health effects. A question to ask is: “Although something unnatural may help today, what happens 10 years from now?” Instead of worrying about various supplements and spending lots of money, simply improve nutrition by eating a well-balanced food plan full of natural food. Start slowly reducing supplement use over a series of weeks and see how you feel. Remember, Nature does not take supplements and an acorn can become a large oak tree without any unnatural support.