Got your ducks in a row?

 

When I look back at all the many changes I have made over the past 60 years, and I think about which changes were the easiest to manage, I realise that for me it's all about timing. There are changes I have had to go through which were forced on me by circumstances, and these were inevitably painful and difficult. The best changes though were the ones where I saw something I needed to change, planned for the change, managed the change and then enjoyed the change. For example, there was a point where I needed to learn to drive a car. I was pregnant, and working - and wanted to continue to work - and I realised that I would need a car in order to carry about all that extra clutter that is necessary with a baby. So I re-jigged my budget and started lessons. I knew I had 6 months, and might not pass first time, so I did as many lessons as I could, got as much practice in as possible and finally passed my test six weeks before I had my baby. Driving cars has been an essential part of my life ever since, and something I have enjoyed enormously. But I never would have got there if I hadn't planned for it, focused on it and pushed myself towards the moment when I finally achieved that full driving licence.

The Americans call this process 'getting all your ducks in a row'. It's a good bit of slang because it's so visual, and most of us work best with a visual image of what we have to do. But what does it mean in real terms?

It means that you have to plan all the steps necessary in order to make the change. Each step is another 'duck', and you have to get them all lined up if you want to get wherever you want to go. We need an example to work on, and I'm going to start with the idea that you are unhappy in your job, and want to get a new one. What ducks do you need to line up?

Well, you might start by thinking about what is wrong with where you are and what needs to change. If the work is boring, then you need something to get your teeth into. Maybe you need to visit a career advisor, or decide for yourself what you really want to do. Then you might need to get some training - that needs planning in itself, how you are going to afford it and how you will fit it into your busy life.

Maybe the work is ok but your boss is a bully or you don't like your workmates - then you need to brush up on your interview skills, and dust down your CV, both of which might need planning and perhaps professional help.  After that you'll want to search for jobs, and go for interviews.

Every step along the way is likely to need breaking down into another series of steps - or each duck gives birth to more ducks! The trouble is, when you look at all those ducks in front of you, you start to feel overwhelmed and unable to move, it looks too hard and too much effort and there's too many points at which you may fail. You need tactics to get through this, and here's the ones I have found useful in my time:-

·         Start by taking a deep breath, and let go of that fear of failure that stops you doing what you want to do.

·         Look at the big picture, and see yourself in years ahead, in the place you want to be. Keep that image in your mind - draw it, write about it, daydream it.

·         There is a famous Chinese proverb 'A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step'. That tells you that your fear is one that has been felt by many people for many centuries! Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, no matter how tiny that step is.

·         Celebrate every major step along the way. Tell people about and hear them tell you how clever you are. Reward yourself with a holiday or a present or a day off or whatever floats your boat. Take a moment to admire what you have achieved so far. Well done!

·         Every now and then, everything will come together and you will get the chance to move forward in a big leap. Seize the day! You might astonish yourself with what you can achieve when the timing is right.

·         If you stop moving forward and  go 'off plan' for a while, then just forgive yourself and get back on your programme. There is nothing to gain by giving yourself a hard time and smashing your self-esteem to bits, and everything to gain by moving towards your dream.

One or two of you might find that the same stuff gets in the way every time - it might be your fear of failure, or an addiction, or anxiety - but whatever it is, do remember that constitutional homeopathic treatment can help you to get to that moment in your life where you have the energy and the clarity to get your ducks in a row and move to where you want to be.

Good luck in all the changes you have planned!

 

Implementing change

Implementing change is a challenge to all of us, and it seems to get worse as we get older. It becomes harder to make any change part of our everyday reality, particularly when life is busy and stressful. It's as if we are trains, moving along rails from A to B without the ability to take a different route. Like trains we have become fixed, established - and frequently late!

This fixedness is a kind of paralysis, which is a state I have been putting a lot of thought into recently due to a lecture I delivered.  Physical paralysis can have many forms, from MS and muscular dystrophy to nerve damage and motor neurone disease, but the end results are similar - fixedness, stiffness, weakness and immovability. Is there a relationship between these physical states and mental and emotional attitudes?

Some illumination can be gained by looking at the human condition. Paralysis and lack of mobility tend to increase with age, as any visit to a care home will demonstrate. As we get older, our joints stiffen and our muscles lose strength. Our flexibility and our response times both diminish, and towards the end of life we become more static and inflexible. This is paralleled by a change in our mental and emotional capacities - we become less tolerant, less open-minded, more inclined to ignore the new and to dwell in the past. In other words, our thought processes mirror our physical deterioration, in an overall move towards a more rigid, inflexible, and static stance.

And yet, as babies we are almost the polar opposite. We are physically flexible and pliable, we respond quickly to stimuli, and at the same time we are open minded and fascinated by the new.

It seems possible then that there is a relationship between our physical mobility and our mental flexibility. Retaining this adaptability and resisting stiffness and rigidity seem therefore to be essential to living a fulfilling life for as many years as possible. This makes my decision to start yoga last year even more sensible than I thought at the time!

So what can we do to retain our mental agility?

·        Stay in touch with new ideas and new ways of thinking. This can be in your chosen area of interest, or more generally in terms of culture and politics.

·        Identify an area in your life in which your inflexibility limits your choices. For example, if you never travel because you can only sleep in your own bed, start to push the boundaries of this fixedness. You could visit somewhere for only one night to begin with.

·        Make a commitment to learning something new. It could be a new language if you want to do something big, or just mastering an aspect of your digital life that seemed out of your reach.

·        Remember to notice when you have done something new, and pat yourself on the back. The experience should be positive, and add something to your life. If not, try something else - it's not a failure, you have just learned something new about yourself. I tried doing my own repairs on my vehicle many years ago. I learnt how to change sparkplugs - but I also learnt that I hate working with dirty oily metal things!

·        Try to imagine what it is like to be someone else. Ask them how it feels and try to 'walk in their shoes'. A change of perspective can really free you and enables you to develop tolerance and open-mindedness.

I hope some of these ideas work for you .I personally am shocked by how stiff my body has become over the last 20 years, and am determined to resist the same process in my mind!

Reducing blood pressure and LDL cholesterol

Cholesterol, as you probably know, is composed primarily of two major components: HDL (good cholesterol) and LDL, which is the stuff you don't want. When LDL becomes oxidised, it sticks to the walls of your arteries and becomes problematic.  Thus 'free radicals'- unpaired electrons- are a culprit, because their unpaired electrons bind onto the LDL and oxidise it.

CoQ10 is an interesting supplement, because it has many useful effects. For a start, statin use depletes CoQ10 anyway, so taking 100 mg twice daily is a sensible precaution. CoQ10 is an energy fuel for the heart, and reduces blood pressure. It is a powerful anti-oxidant too, and inhibits the oxidative damage to LDL. It works better with a daily intake of 200 iu's of Vitamin E.

Niacin effectively lowers LDL cholesterol, by 10-20%, and raises HDL. You shouldn't take more than 3 g daily as it can be very taxing on the liver if taken in large amounts, particularly if time relase niacin is used. Thus you should take non-sustained release niacin, or nicotinic acid, In divided doses of 100 mg, and work your way up slowly to a larger dose.

You might be glad to know that resveratol, which lowers blood pressure and oxidises LDL, is a strong anti-oxidant that is found in red wine. A good daily dose is between 30-200 mg.

For me, CoQ10 and Vit E sound like a good combination, one I can understand and that comes with little risk. Niacin/nicotinic acid sounds pretty heavy duty, and frankly I would rather save my liver for drinking red wine, which also will lower my blood pressure and oxidise LDL!

If you are concerned about  reducing your LDL levels, other dietary changes you might like to make are:

1) eat berries and cherries three or more times a week

2) eat 1 oz of nuts five times a week

3) eat beans or lentils four times weekly

4) use the least processed olive oil you can find, i.e. Extra virgin

5) eat plenty of garlic, crushed and added to your meal at the end of the cooking process.

6) eat turmeric and pomegranate juice on a regular basis. Turmeric is highly anti-inflammatory, and reduces oxidised LDL.

It's much more effective to take your anti-oxidants via food than supplements - see my other blog on anti-oxidants at:-

http://www.elaineatwalkerandwood.blogspot.co.uk/2012_03_01_archive.html

If you need more information on cholesterol and heart disease, feel free to borrow the book I found this information in. It's called 'The great cholesterol myth', by Bowden and Sinatra, published in 2012. It's an easy read, and has far more in it that I have written about here. There's a lot of research on the dangers of chronic inflammation in terms of heart disease, so I will try to get my head around what that is, what it means and how to treat it - and then I will blog it for you!

The homeopath's perspective

I want to discuss in this blog what a homeopath treats, how they see disease, and what a homeopath looks for when assessing the action of a remedy in a particular patient.

For a  homeopath, exploring all the symptoms that a client has is like revealing a picture. So if a client tells us that they have a cold with watery eyes, a tingling nose and a watery nasal discharge that makes their nose sore, then that is a picture - and in this case it is a picture of the homeopathic remedy Allium cepa, also known as red onion. Like treats like, remember?

But the size of this picture varies from patient to patient. Our Allium cepa patient is showing us a very small picture - in other words, it's an illness that has only been happening for days not months, and there are a limited number of symptoms associated with it.  So, in picture terms, it's more like a postcard than anything else!

We call this an acute illness - it only lasts a short amount of time, it has a limited number of symptoms associated with it, and ( to be brutally frank)  it is self-limiting in that the patient either recovers or dies!

Treating acute illnesses is no great issue for your average homeopath. Usually the patient will need between 4-6 doses a day of the relevant remedy, for up to a week - then the job is done. You can learn how to do that for yourself with a good book and a few remedies, because it isn't rocket science. And that is amazingly useful if you have children, because it means you can treat that 3 a.m. fever with Belladonna, or stop that stomach upset in its tracks with some Arsenicum. The remedy stops the illness - but it doesn't affect the big picture, and it won't stop that child getting ill next week.

However, that's only the postcard picture - what about the picture that takes up most of the wall, is in deep rich colours, and tells a wonderful story? Well, that is what a homeopath calls a chronic or constitutional picture. This is the picture of the whole patient, and encompasses their medical history, their temperament, their recurrent illnesses, their genetic inheritance and so on and so forth. Lots and lots of symptoms, some which are true now, some of which were apparent in the past. Information on sleep and dreams and body temperature, on appetite and thirst, gynaecological history, and even anxieties and fears - all of this information helps to give the picture its depth and colour, and enables the homeopath to choose the right remedy. Every symptom is a signpost to the homeopath, helping us to find a way from a sick patient to the right remedy!

Constitutional treatment is work your professional homeopath does best. A constitutional remedy will do many things, depending on the level of illness of the client. In an adult with long term chronic illness, a good constitutional remedy will reduce the incidence and severity of the complaint, as well as lifting the energy and mood. In a child, or someone who is prone to opportunistic illnesses, the right constitutional remedy will lift the immune system so that they are less susceptible to getting ill, and don't suffer so much when they do.

This sort of treatment can go on for a while, because it is not a magic wand. A very rough estimate of length of treatment is one month of treatment for every year of suffering - so if you have been ill with, for example, migraines for 6 years, then it may take up to six months to get rid of them. For a child of course treatment is unlikely to be for as long, but this estimate is very approximate, and doesn't take into account the many variables which may change the recovery rate.

What frequently happens is the 'peeling of the onion'. For example, I treated a child constitutionally last year. He had had eczema as a baby, then very bad recurrent ear infections age 2-4, tonsillitis after that, then a few bad chest infections age 8-10, and finally came to see me aged 12 with asthma. He had been treated with steroid creams and antibiotics throughout, and now was on a daily puffer. Notice in this case how the dis-ease has started on a minor level with eczema on the skin. I say a minor level because while eczema is unsightly and uncomfortable, it is rarely fatal! The eczema isn't cured by the steroid cream, it just goes deeper into the body, and thus the ear infections start - then it moves to the throat. These are progressively deeper levels of disease, more and more towards the internal organs, more and more life threatening, finishing with the asthma.

Thus when I treated this child, the first effect of the right remedy was that he developed a sore throat. Nothing worse than he had ever had, and as the asthma was better, I felt happy that this was the action of the remedy and that he would come through it ok. He did, and I gave him another dose. Then his skin became problematic - dry, itchy and rashy. This lasted about a week and then went. His skin was clear, his breathing was fine, and his mum had conferred with his doctor and stopped his steroid inhaler, on the understanding that he could start it again should his breathing become problematic again-  although in that case, a remedy would be a better plan! Job done, from my point of view.

That's peeling the onion - the pathology builds up in layers, going deeper and deeper into the organs. Remedies peel back the layers until the patient is well again.

I hope that this blog explains some of what a homeopath does, how we see illness and how we assess remedy reaction. If you have any queries, please just drop me an email or a text and I will do my best to respond, either personally or in another blog.

Animals, homeopathy and natural solutions

I have always treated my animals like I treat my children and myself in terms of health. In other words, I believe that 'you are what you eat'  - so if you eat healthily then you will be healthy. That means eating natural food, with as few additives as possible. I also believe that the early years, for puppies kittens and babies, are crucial in terms of setting up the constitution of the individual as strongly as genetics and lifestyle will allow. Thus, avoiding refined foods, antibiotics and vaccinations are second nature to me, and I rely on good nutritional and holistic information and homeopathy in order to achieve my aims.

In terms of diet, this means that I put in a lot of effort when my animals are young. They get a natural and healthy diet, often home-cooked and frozen in batches. This needs a lot of research, but I have found the work of Juliette de Bairacli Levy and Richard Pitcairn (see booklist) very helpful in evolving my own approach. I have to say, I don't ever go the whole nine yards they recommend as they both are very exacting! I compromise and substitute in order to find a balance that I can achieve reasonably easily. No-one want to spend all day Sunday in the kitchen making pet food for the next week! And once these animals get to two years old, I make more compromises. My current cats for example are fully grown now and thus they have a very good-quality meat pouch, the best dried food I can afford, and daily raw meat. It's easy and straightforward, and while it's not cheap I feel that the money I save in terms of visits to the vet makes it worthwhile. And I know it works because I have used these same principles on my cats and dogs for over 20 years now.

It's not just about diet of course. I do my best to treat their ailments myself, using herbs and homeopathy. Of course, there are occasions when you need the vet for an animal, just like you need a hospital for yourself occasionally. When my dear old cat Badger became suddenly very ill indeed, vomiting and retching almost convulsively, I didn't hesitate. I threw us both in the car and accelerated away to see my local vet - I knew he had eaten something poisonous , probably a poisoned rat - and needed professional help to deal with the effects. Which he got, in double-quick time, and that was that. And if I have tried everything I know to get rid of a flea infestation - brewers yeast and fleabane on animals and furnishings, hoovering daily (not something I normally do!), and daily flea-combing for my furry friends - and they are still scratching madly, I will resort to orthodox treatment, because it works. It's horrible stuff though, and I really prefer not to. Next time I will try diatomaceous earth - it's supposed to be fantastic for any insect infestations. It's the microscopic remnants of algae, and is composed of silica, which shreds the exoskeleton of fleas and mites and thus kills them. Food grade diatomaceous earth is harmless to pets and people, and is fine to sprinkle all over carpets and furnishings, hoovering up after a couple of days, and can even be used on an animal's fur. Do research this on the internet before you try it (I certainly will), but I have heard some fantastic things about this treatment, and for me it is certainly worth a try.

Although there are legal complications around treating animals homeopathically if you are a practitioner, there is nothing to stop you treating your own animals if you want to. Both Tamzin or I have a lot of experience in this area, treating animals as diverse as chickens and horses, and are very happy to give you any advice you need,  and of course have a fantastic array of remedies at our disposal. Giving animals remedies couldn't be easier, as they can be put in water, administered with food or dropped as a powder into the mouth.

Here's my booklist of useful books for animals:-

Dr. Pitcairn's complete guide to natural health for dogs and cats by Richard H Pitcairn and Susan H. Pitcairn. An amazing book, full of useful tips for feeding and treating your pets naturally. Not very well edited, so you have to be prepared to skip through the information to find what you want! A mine of information on nutrition, with recipes for a healthy diet, which is great for kittens and puppies to give them the best start. Lots of naturopathic and homeopathic tips for curing common problems too.

The complete herbal handbook for the dog and cat or The complete herbal handbook for farm and stable by Juliette de Bairacli Levy - A great resource for herbal medicines for animals, as well as a good guide to a natural diet. De Bairacli Levy was one of the first animal nutritionists to write lucidly on these issues, and many later books are based on her work. A good fundamental bible, although old fashioned in some respects.

Homeopathic care for cats and dogs by Don Hamilton . The first five chapters of this book constitute an introduction to homeopathy and the use of homeopathy in the home for acute conditions that applies to humans as well as animals, so it's a good read for those of you who want to understand and use homeopathy yourselves. This section is followed by a comprehensive review of many animal illnesses, with an explanation of the disease state, acute care and suggestions for remedies. There is also a chapter on the pros and cons of vaccinations which might be useful to some of you who are interested in this contentious issue.