I wanted to take this opportunity to direct you to the blog page on my website: www.therenkenscenter.com

During the months of July and August I will be blogging about  food and nutrition and will be posting something related every 2-4 days. I will hit on all things food and nutrition -- including food facts, dietary strategies, shopping suggestions, recipe ideas and more.

Check it out, and if you find the blog interesting and helpful, please send the link to friends who may be interested as well.

This is not the first time I have written about how important healthy eating habits are. We are all exposed to various types of environmental stressors and toxins every day.  A good diet is high in antioxidants which will protect your cells from environmental toxins we are exposed to. Even if you are eating well, your body still has the environmental burden to deal with. A good, clean diet can help make your body more efficient at removing those toxins. Conversely, if you eat a lot of sugars and processed / refined carbohydrates, your ability to deal with these toxins diminshes.

By consuming sugar, refined carbohydrates, artificial sweeteners, and high amounts of saturated fats, we move further and further away from an ideal state of health. Sickness and disease do not just happen all of a sudden. Sickness and disease evolve as we move futher away from ideal health.

Sickness and even infectious disease needs a relatively unhealthy body to find a home. People say things like, "Yesterday I caught a cold." This implies that everyone around them missed the cold. The germ, just like Kobe Bryant, faked right, then shot faked, went left, spun back to the right, avoided everyone else and slam-dunked right into you. Right? No way!

At the workplace, school, home, or any other place where there are a lot of people together, there are people who are sick all the time and there are people who are seemingly never sick. Do the germs keep missing the same people all of the time? Of course not. People who don't get sick are the same people who have more energy everyday. They have better cell function, hormone function, enzyme function, immune system function and better overall health. 

Most people tend to abuse there bodies day after day, year after year. Then, when they start having problems, they want to go to a doctor and have it fixed quickly without any inconvenience or pain. It is time everyone recognize the strong connection between lifestyle choices (diet, exercise, stress management) and how they feel.

How important is breathing and the oxygen we take in through our breath? Denying your body of oxygen will kill it faster than denying it of anything else. Did you know you can live for weeks without food and for several days without water, but only for a couple of minutes without oxygen? We all take breathing for granted, but it is the most important thing we do.

Most people breathe too shallowly. Perpetual shallow breathing does not allow good oxygenation to all of our tissues, and can actually result in various musculoskeletal syndromes including cervical (neck) pain, shoulder pain, and even low back pain. Deep breathing can, by contrast, relax you and energize you.

I begin each morning with the following exercise and find at least two other times during the day to perform it. I read about this breathing exercise from Dr. Andrew Weil (naturopathic doctor from AZ) a few months ago and have used it every day ever since.

Perform it like this:
1. Sit up straight or stand up tall.
2. Place the tip of your tongue against the back of your front teeth.
3. Breathe in through your nose to a COUNT OF FOUR SECONDS.  Keep your tongue against your teeth.
4. Hold your breath to a COUNT OF SEVEN SECONDS.  Keep your tongue against your teeth.
5. Exhale through your mouth to a COUNT OF EIGHT SECONDS. During the exhalation phase, imagine yourself "fogging" a window in front of you. If done correctly, you should hear your breath during this phase.
6. That completes one full breath. Repeat the cycle another four times for a total of five breaths.

Do the exercise once now. Notice the difference in how you feel after doing the deep breathing. If you didn't do the exercise, do it now. It will make a difference in how you feel, and will show you just how much proper breathing can energize you.

There are many different breathing exercises you can try, but this one has proven to me to be both easy to perform and very powerful.