Message from Bernadette Wulf

Greetings!

I'm actually writing this way ahead of schedule, because I'll be on a whirlwind tour of the U. K. right before publication. It's a longtime dream coming true! I'll be able to touch Stonehenge and walk the labyrinth of Glastonbury Tor... and of course connect with my ancestral roots in Ireland and Scotland. But, back to the moment...

Looking out my window as I write, I see ripening peaches and plums, vibrant green redwoods, willows, and even towering eucalyptus off in the distance. It all looks so lush and bursting with life at the height of summer - an oasis of peace and abundance. It occurs to me that we all need something like this in our lives. Simple tranquility and the green of nature may offer the very best healing of all.

Of course we have to stop and notice the perfection of each moment in order to experience the healing energies all around us. We have to be able to receive it. Often we are so busy doing and giving, that we forget to allow ourselves to receive the abundant gifts that life so freely offers.

Some of those abundant gifts, though, have to be enjoyed in great moderation, like sugar. I wonder if Americans have become so addicted to sugar because we have desensitized ourselves to the true sweetness of life. Perhaps learning to receive could also help cut back our sugar cravings!

The age old vitamin controversy still rages on... alright, decades old. Some people really seem to have something against vitamin supplements. I agree, it's better to get your vitamins from fresh, organically grown fruits and vegetables, but few city or suburban dwellers have access to anything truly fresh anymore. A high-quality multi-vitamin is simply a good insurance policy. It's not the ideal, but it could save you a lot of hassles in the future.

Last but not least, we return to the issue of skin cancer and treatment options. Having had to deal with sun-damaged skin for years (thanks to my years of gardening in the California sun without hat or sunscreen), it is a subject near and dear to my heart.

Read on.

To Your Health!
Bernadette Wulf

- Visit My Website HealItAll.com

Why is it that the mainstream media keeps badmouthing vitamins? Someone I know recently told me he had read a study showing that vitamins were not beneficial to health. These studies keep showing up in the news, time after time, but what they don't tell you is more important than what they do tell you. Here is a case in point. (The following paragraph is excerpted from a NaturalNews.com article entitled "Dissecting a Study Disproving Vitamin B's Role in Preventing Heart Disease" by Dr. Phil Domenico.)

"Despite lowering homocysteine levels by 18%, this large-scale, placebo-controlled, randomized trial found no significant effects from high levels of three B vitamins on CVD [cardiovascular disease] events over seven years. Women in the treatment group received daily supplements containing folic acid (2.5 mg), vitamin B6 (50 mg), and vitamin B12 (1 mg), which exceeded the recommended daily allowance for these nutrients. The results go against observational studies linking increased levels of the amino acid homocysteine to an increased risk of CVD."

First of all, anyone who has studied nutrition should know that isolating specific B vitamins will create a B vitamin imbalance. Vitamin B is a complex, which means all vitamins in the complex have to work together. After seven years of this lopsided approach, it is no wonder they did not see the results they were looking for.

In addition, the previous paragraph states that these women were already at risk for cardiovascular disease! Aside from the obvious connection with heartache and heartbreak, we know, from the China Study and others, that CVD is also connected with faulty nutrition. Expecting a few vitamin supplements to compensate for a lifetime of overconsumption of sugar, white flour, and animal products is ridiculous. However, this does not mean that the vitamins do no good!

Specific vitamins have been repeatedly proven to cure diseases caused by their lack, i.e. vitamin C for scurvy. So if someone is missing certain vitamins in their diet, for one reason or another, a good multivitamin supplement could make the difference between relative health and disease. Because so many people, particularly in the U. S., are living on denatured, refined foods laced with synthetic chemicals (and spending less and less time in the sun), vitamin supplements can be quite beneficial for most people. Which is not to say that they can replace fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, and natural sunshine.

The problem with studies like these is that they do not take into account the multiple nutritional deficiencies that contribute to disease. These deficiencies cannot be alleviated by taking pills. The human body needs fresh, living, whole foods, sunshine, fresh air, exercise, and a healthy emotional balance, to thrive.

I was raised with the saying from St. Francis of Assisi, "It is in giving that we receive." It's true. Giving is a key to receiving a sense of fulfillment in life. But giving and receiving must be balanced. So many of us tend to forget about the receiving end of the balance. Women in particular, but also many men, often devote their time to families, jobs, social groups, and charities without taking time to nurture themselves. Even something as simple as a compliment can be too much to receive without protest.

Then we wonder why we feel so stressed out, why we have chronic fatigue, or why we feel so empty inside! Depression is now an epidemic in America, especially among women. We give and give and give without allowing ourselves to receive the gifts of others and of the world around us, and in so doing, we deplete ourselves and lose our joy of living.

At the other extreme are the greedy types who only want to take, but I wonder if that neediness is also triggered by an inability to receive. If we truly were able to receive, there would be no greed at all, because we would feel fulfilled.

For many of us, having grown up with the work ethic and the idea that it is better to give than receive, it is much easier to give. We almost feel guilty for taking anything from life. (A cute little humming bird just flew up to my window to say hello. I feel like St. Francis!) I can remember times in the past when I even felt embarrassed about being paid for work I had done. Talk about not being able to receive. That's lame!

Receiving is an art. It is something we can learn and perfect in balance with our giving. When we give a gift to someone, part of that gift is to receive their gratitude. When someone gives us a compliment, we can receive their gift by giving a sincere thank you. We can return compost to Earth as an offering of thanks for all the abundance of nature. In return our hearts will open to receive the healing gifts of green trees, balmy breezes, and humming birds at our windows!

Then we become part of the dance of life. We allow ourselves to be replenished and rejuvenated in the give-and-take flow of living. The other option is to drain ourselves of vitality and slowly give away our life force until we drop dead of some degenerative disease.

Receiving is one of the key elements of the Law of Attraction. Everything we ask for is given, but we have to be open to receive it. We have to accept the gifts of life with gratitude and appreciation, no matter how big or small they are. Otherwise we will never even notice the amazing abundance in which we live.

For some of us, the bigger the gift, the more resistance we have to receiving it! For example, we wouldn't mind accepting a birthday gift of $20, but if someone wanted to give us a beautiful house or a million dollars we would suddenly jump into protest mode. "Oh no! I couldn't possibly..." Why is that?

It's like we have a certain idea of our own value and anything more than that is out of the question. We feel we don't deserve anything that big, or that good - or that easy! We didn't WORK hard enough for it, so we feel guilty.

That is a trap, because we could never possibly work hard enough to earn all the gifts of life, so why not just relax and enjoy them? For some reason, they have been given to us freely, whether we deserve them or not, so just say THANKS.

It is the same with little things. How often have you walked past a penny on the ground? In my work with money coaching, I have learned that accepting pennies with gratitude is just as important as accepting hundreds or thousands of dollars. The universe doesn't distinguish between the the various denominations. If you ask for more money and then walk past a penny as if it is beneath your dignity to pick it up, you are sending out the message that you don't really want money after all. Receiving comes in all sizes!

To continue on this track, you might want to amuse yourself with Laura Doyle's book: "Things Will Get as Good as You Can Stand: (. . . When you learn that it is better to receive than to give) The Superwoman's Practical Guide to Getting as Much as She Gives"

I just read an article on sugar, which is actually pretty interesting, but I was rather appalled when I reached the last paragraph. The article starts out talking about how bad sugar is for your body and gives some good information, as in this paragraph: "When this [blood sugar regulation] is working properly, we have a constant and even amount of glucose circulating in the bloodstream. Want to hear something amazing? This amount is only approximately 2 teaspoons! Your [piece of] chocolate cake contains 10 teaspoons. Far too much for your bloodstream to absorb and use. Insulin, which controls the amount of glucose in your blood, is secreted from the pancreas. As it attempts to regulate this excessive amount of sugar, more insulin is issued. The insulin does its job, but frequently does it too well. Your blood glucose level will drop back to normal and will actually continue to drop until too much glucose has been removed from the blood stream. This means that now our muscles, tissues, brain, and other vital organs will not have enough glucose available to perform the necessary functions that they need to accomplish."

All well and good, but then it goes on to say, "However, there are healthy alternatives that do not wreak the havoc that sucrose does on the human body. The two most readily available and healthy alternatives to processed sugar are raw honey and pure maple syrup. Give your body a chance to wean itself off the drug of processed sugar and give either honey or maple syrup a chance in your diet. You will be thankful both in the short and long term!" (End of article.)

Hold on there! Sure, honey and maple syrup are somewhat better than white sugar, because they do have some minerals in them, but they are all highly concentrated sugars! Simply substituting ten teaspoons of honey or maple syrup for the ten teaspoons of white sugar in your chocolate cake will still overload your body with sugar almost as much as the white sugar does. The simple fact is that most of us eat far too much sugar of all kinds.

The good news is that cutting way back on your sugar intake will not deprive you of the sweetness you crave, because your taste buds will adjust over time. You will find, if you eliminate most of the sugar in your diet, that you begin to notice sweetness where you had never noticed it before. And if you are like me, the usual processed food products like sodas, candy, cookies, etc. will taste sickeningly sweet to you.

Just to get an idea of how different sweeteners affect your blood sugar levels, let's take a look at their ratings on the Glycemic Index (values may vary considerably in different charts).

Fructose (fruit sugar) 23
Raw Agave Nectar 34
Lactose 46
Maple Syrup 54
Honey 58
Sucrose (white sugar) 65
High Fructose Corn Syrup 65
Glucose 100
Maltose 105

Best are - Low Glycemic Index foods (less than 55)
Watch out! - Foods with GI index between 55 and 70 are considered intermediate
Danger! - High Glycemic Index food GI (more than 70)

In looking at this chart, it is easy to see that you could eat about three times as much fructose as sucrose to get the same level of response to sugar in your body. It also depends on what you eat WITH the sugar. More fiber and protein will slow down sugar metabolism, so a whole-grain chocolate cake would actually be a bit lower on the glycemic index than a white-flour cake.

Bottom line, it's not a bad article, but it stops short of giving you the information you really need to control blood sugar swings, which is to restrict your consumption of ALL sugars and refined carbohydrates such as white flour!

Here's the original article: More on the skin cancer question!

I haven't personally tried Curaderm (see article in July newsletter), but I've been using SunSpot ES by Lane Labs (as well as it's previous incarnation SkinAnswer) off and on for several years and I know it works. The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that you can use Curaderm on advanced skin cancers where the skin is broken or irritated, and you are supposed to bandage it so it doesn't dry out. [After hearing from the user quoted above, I would not try it at all!] With SunSpot, you don't have to use a bandage, but it should not be used on broken or irritated skin.

So, if you have rough, red, or scaly patches, or brown spots, I would try SunSpot first. It is a lot less expensive, plus you don't have to use a bandage over it. You will probably find that the spots are actually bigger than they look on the surface, once SunSpot starts attacking them. It is important to keep using the product until the spot stops reacting (i.e. turning red and/or peeling), because you don't want it to heal over with cancer cells still active under the surface, so make sure you buy a few tubes. You don't want to run out before the process is complete!

If you have one spot, you probably have several. I have found spots that reacted even when there was no surface indication of a problem. Normal skin does not react at all, so you don't have to worry about applying SunSpot all over your face. The places that need treatment will react and the rest will remain unharmed.

Plan to keep at it for several months, stopping use when the area gets irritated, and starting up again when the irritation calms down. For the first week or two, you may not see any reaction at all, then the area will usually turn red before it peels. SunSpot will sting when you put it on, but it doesn't last long. If particular spots sting too much, you may want to give them a rest for a couple of days.

On the other hand, if you have an open or oozing skin cancer, SEE A DOCTOR. I suppose, given the choice between having my nose removed and having to use a toxic topical product, I would take the prescription drug. Ideally, you would take care of the problem with SunSpot ES or Efudex before it gets that bad.

None of this is very pretty. If you are planning a hot date or a wedding, you might want to wait awhile before starting treatment. You can cover the red areas from SunSpot with makeup, but the peeling is hard to disguise.
 

Bernadette Wulf - Heal It All.com • P.O. Box 9546 • Santa Rosa • CA • 95405