Insomnia Forum Posting

Posted by Neil on August 13, 2002 at 19:20:11:

Hi AJM. I know you're tired and frustrated so I'll try to keep this simple, though it won't be easy. The origin of most health problems is mental or physical. The spirit is a third possiblity but I won't get into that. However there is the mind-body connection. If I am anxious, whether I like it or not the hypothalmus sends signals to various organs to secrete adrenaline , raise the blood sugar level etc and get me in a state of hyper-vigilance which is not conducive to sleep. It works the other way around as well. If I am deficient for example in essential fatty acids , my body cannot build the hormones it needs to carry out mental functions, one of them being sleep. Or the hormones affected may not relate to sleep but the imbalance created impairs sleep.
I say that to say this: If you're problem is primarily physical, you are lucky! The roots of mental anguish such as anxiety are often deep and myriad, and are so elusive that to get lasting healing of the emotions is difficult. But if the problem is primarily physical then the problem is much easier to solve. I've taught seminars on nutrition so let me say the following as simply as possible: I don't have to know anything about you AJM to know that you're deficient in one or more of the 50 or so basic nutients essential to healthy life. If you live in a western nation in the 21st century you qualify. Beyond the volumes of research I'll give you 2 simple reasons 1) Several studies done in university hospitals in the U.S. determined that every subject was deficient in at least one nutrient(vitamin, mineral or EFA) and many were deficient in multiple nutrients. 2) Seventy years of overfarming has created soil that is sterile and plants that are devoid of nutrient. You can't take 50 nutrients out of the soil and replace them with 3 (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus) year after year and expect to get healthy plants. Nowadays most doctors believe that everyone suffers from a pill deficiency so when you describe your symptoms they give you a pill(pathetic). However there are only 4 possible sources of disease - nutritional, environmental, genetic and microbial. There are virtually no infectious diseases in western society and genetic conditions are extremely rare so that leaves nutrition and the environment. If we look at the top 4 - heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes we see that they are primarily related to nutrition. In fact over 95% of diseases are related to nutrition and the balance primarily to the environment, but a strong body built on nutrient dense food will virtually nulify the effect of a toxic environment. Again we all have genetic predispositions but these rarely kick in if the body is strong. Knowing that the body has an incredible ability to heal itself when given the necessary tools - nitrients - takes illness out of the spooky context modern medecine has put it in . There are vast number of diseases but only about 50 causes. For instance a zinc deficiency can cause over 30 medical conditions, hyperactivity in children being #1. A deficiency in calcium can cause over 5o medical conditions , the chief being ostioporousis. I suggest one of 3 approaches AJM.
#1) I worked for 7 months with little sleep and increasing amounts of pills. Finally a year ago I decided to take 3 weeks off to just sleep. That was a year ago. I crashed and burned. There's 2 lessons here - #1 if you have insomnia, don't stop until you know you've got lots of time off, because you are probably running on adrenalin and raw nerves and when you stop and the adrenalin stops flowing the true degree of your exhaustion will emerge. #2) The longer you run on nerves, the greater will be the exhaustion and the greater the crash. That was my experience and I pray it's not true for others out there.
Any way I went to a natural doctor - they call them Naturopaths here in Canada. He had a very expensive diagnostic machine that operated on the meridian principles of acupuncture. I still have doubts about acupuncture but the meridians have been scientifically verified.That machine diagnosed the 3 major system weaknesses in my body - the #1 being adrenal exhaustion. It was uncanny. There are 7 signs of adrenal exhasution, I had all 7 but neither the practitioner nor the machine knew that. Anyway he prescibed some supplements that restored my adrenals. So firstly AJM find yourself a natural doctor, pay the $100 or whatever it takes, get a hair analysis done to find out what nutrient you may be deficient in , see if he can diagnose your condition with or without a machine. Allopathic doctors mean well but they are only playing with half a deck.
2)Go to a good health food store (that's what they call them in Canada)Describe your condition, hopefully they have a herbalist or a nutritionist on staff. Ask them to recommend a product that might help the underlying cause of your symtoms. Shot in the dark but worth a try.
3)I recommend you change your diet unless you're sure you're eating well. Organic food is best as it contains the nutrients missing in the regular field crops. In addition i recommend the following as a start:
1) High quality multi-vitamin
2) 5,000 mg of Vitamin C per day minimum. When I first explained what I had been through to the naturopath his eyes got wider and wider. He later told me that he was wondering how I avoided a complete mental and physical breakdown. The good doctor had suffered such a fate 7 years earlier and was still not back to normal. In the ensuing conversation he found his answer when I told him I took at least 5,000 mg of Vitamin C per day. I kept it at my desk at work and every few hours I would take a 500mg tablet. Linus Pauling, the greatest chemist of the 20th century , the only chemist to win 2 Nobel prizes spent 30 years researching Vitamin C. This vitamin is the primary support for the hypothalmus and is essential to control the effects of stress. It peaks in the blood after 2 hours and is eliminated within 4 hours. There are many things that cause Vitamin C to be rapidly excreted from the body such as coffee, aspirin , birht control pills and stress. So very few people have proper levels of Vitamin C.
3) Coral Calcium . After trying dozens of products , only 3 have changed my life, this is one. I not allowed to give you a product name or a website, but plug this into a browser and see what you find. This product is a tiny sachet of coral minerals that you put into a quart of purified water. Eight glasses of this per day is the finest mineral supplement you can buy - 100% bio-available vs the 10 - 25% of most pills. Plus the water detoxifies and resets your pH.
4) A tablespoon a day of essential fatty acids . In Canada we take flax seed oil.
5) A geen drink . the most popular here are Barley Green and Greens+.
Those things are quick, easy and cheap and they can make a tremendous difference in your health along with a low sugar and low processed food diet. The list of course is endless - juicing, stomach enzymes, pycnogenol etc. I would encourage you to experiment.
Sorry for the long explanation but you're probably bored with people telling you to try this or that without any rationale. Why some of us crack under the pressures of high stress lives and low-nutrient diets and others don't ,is the great mystery of genetics. It's the reason some smokers out live atheletes. Anyway, hope this is of some value.
Take care ...Neil

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Follow Ups:

• Re: to AJM ronnie 18:19 8/15/02 (0)
• Re: to AJM AJM 08:51 8/15/02 (1)
  • Re: Re: to AJM liz 03:52 8/16/02 (0)
• Re: to AJM Andrea 21:59 8/13/02 (0)
• Re: to AJM Downtown 20:41 8/13/02 (0)

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