I have discovered that all human evil comes from this:

man's being unable to sit still in a room - Blaise Pascal

Just stop.

From the moment we awake until we crawl into bed, exhausted, at night - we're always Doing something. Although we try to run faster and be more efficient, it usually feels as though we're falling further behind. Information overwhelm, expectations, and rarely a moment to ourselves can cause a negative impact on our health.

Can you relate? If so, don't just do something - sit there! :)

Image: health.howstuffworks.com

Meditation is used with sports professionals to develop focus. Hospitals often offer classes to help deal with pain and to lower blood pressure.

Make this a powerful way of recharging your mental, emotional, and physical batteries a part of your daily routine. You'll be able to increase your efficiency, expand your capacity to enjoy life, and reduce job stress and tension by taking a few minutes each day to meditate. Begin now.

Image: awakenlight.org

I survived the hunger and blood-letting....

of the Genetic & Food Sensitivity Testing done this lovely wintery morning.

Let me first say that it's my personal philosophy to try - within reason- every diet, remedy, lifestyle suggestion, and test that I would ever suggest to my clients, friends, and family. What better way to empathize with a person on a candida cleanse? Or for the newly diagnosed celiac or gluten-intolerant person who is literally breaking down into tears over the thought of never being able to eat bread again? Sometimes what people really want to know most is that you've been where they are and have come out of it a better, healthier person.

I've recently embarked upon a journey to find out more than what I learned in high school biology about genetics, including Punnett squares (which, true to my curious personality, was tremendously fun to me - I even would use it to figure out the probability of having blue-eyed, red or dark-haired babies based on my genes and those of the person I was dating or currently crushing over, unbeknowst to them :D). Even though chemistry was like kryptonite to me and was one of the only subjects I actually had to focus on and study, I LOVED stoichiometry. Probably because it was math. (Nerd points scored by the end of this paragraph: 756).

But, getting back to the point: today I looked over the prettily packaged genetic kit (black box) and food sensitivity kit (red box) and decided that today is the day that I would gather my courage and forge into the unknown world of epigenetics and nutrigenomics ahead.  

Because I couldn't eat or drink for at least an hour beforehand, I did my oil pulling when I first woke up and the started knitting and reading to pass the time. 10:45am rolled around and my alarm beeped so I followed the instructions for the food sensitivity test first. Wash hands vigorously in hot water for a few minutes, shake them, stand while doing blood draw, have a rubberband on arm to act as tourniquet, wipe finger with alcohol....breathe...and prick your chosen finger with the enclosed lancet - I did it all. As I stood there 'milking' my finger to get the blood into the first circle, I thought to myself "this isn't so bad, I'll be done in no time"...but two circles in, with a sore ring finger, I started to question why I was doing this. Suddenly, it didn't seem so important to find out if dairy, grapefruit, soy, or nearly another hundred foods were my friend or my foe. But then I thought of my clients who are excited to see my results and try for themselves....I thought of my future health being better once I could determine if there were underlying intolerances....so I put on my big girl pants and pricked another finger. I was damn well going to find out if my favorite foods were poisoning me or not. What seemed like an impossible task to start became a challenge. And, I filled them all. The blood-letting was done!

One small blood draw from woman, one giant leap for humankind.



Yes!! I could stand and not faint at the sight of my own blood. I Could squeeze 12 precious drops of my life force in to the 5 circles and fill them up. Yeehaw!


I was a hero in my own mind. The invisible stadium full of fans cheered for minutes as I held my newly bandaged fingers up in the victory sign.

Ah, but there is one more test standing between me and my breakfast.....

The cheek-swabbing! Thank goodness we were on to more humane methods of testing. With two cheek scrapers and two test tubes, I was off on a minute-long scraping mission on each cheek, with the scraper ends deposited into the test tubes. This is the genetic testing part. All I had to do now was stick everything into the postage-paid envelopes and deposit them in the mailbox. And eat....

 The wait time is about 4-6 weeks for results. Stay tuned....

Interested in doing this yourself? Check OneBiteWellness.com under Rates & Services or contact me.

Ten Rules for Being Human

Rule One - You will receive a body.
You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth.

Rule Two - You will be presented with lessons.
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "life". Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

Rule Three - There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much as a part of the process as the experiments that work.

Rule Four - The lesson is repeated until learned.
Lessons will be repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can go on to the next lesson.

Rule Five - Learning does not end.
There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule Six - "There" is no better than "here".
When your "there" has become "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that will look better to you than your present "here".

Rule Seven - Others are only mirrors of you.
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule Eight - What you make of your life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.

Rule Nine - Your answers lie inside of you.
All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

Rule Ten - You will forget all this at birth.
You can remember it if you want by unraveling the double helix of inner-knowing.

The Kiss that Kills - Lead in Lipstick

...including my formerly beloved Burt's Bees "Raisin" color. As I gather my 3 tubes of lipstick, including two from Victoria's Secret, for the toxic waste graveyard, I am saddened for so many reasons, but chief among them is feeling betrayed by one company I actually trusted (before it went the way so many do and was absorbed into a bigger company - Burt's Bees belongs to Clorox Company). 

Backstory: I was watching a documentary on breast cancer and part of it was talking about how the average woman uses 12 personal care products everyday; the average man, 6. Of these products, sooo many of them have chemicals that are not beneficial for human health, and in fact, some have toxic ingredients. This is where I became aware of lipstick being contaminated with lead and followed up by going to the FDA website.

Learn more in the 2007 New York Times article, "The Pernicious Allure of Lead" about the many reasons and ways lead was used throughout history. Also, let's remember that Queen Elizabeth, whose face had pock marks, made it popular to use a toxic mixture of white lead and vinegar to give more of a porcelain doll look.

The 1979 ban on lead in certain products (including house paint and gasoline) were very successful at dramatically reducing blood levels of this poison. Why not lipstick? There are no FDA standards in regulating the amount of chemicals in products and companies don't even need to know the chemicals that they are putting in their products. If they do know there's lead, they usually argue, "it's legal, it's okay."

So, being ticked off, I felt compelled to write my 'local' Victoria's Secret company.

--Original Message--
From: adrienne.raimo@gmail.com
Date: 11/6/2013 8:05:48 PM
To: CustomerCare@VictoriasSecret.com
Subject: Questions About Our Products

Why is there LEAD in Victoria's Secret lipsticks? Are you, as a company, really willing to expose people to a substance linked to lower IQs and aggressive behavior? Worse, is that it's not even listed on the ingredients, but the Enviromental Working Group and FDA have tested your products and found them contaminated with lead. I urge you to be a responsible company and not create toxic products for your consumers (what good are they to you dead/damaged anyway?). I will certainly not be purchasing any more of your beauty goods and will make sure to inform my clients, friends, and family about this toxic product. 

On a personal level, I bought two lipsticks and two lip glosses from your company and I want a credit of the amount they cost me so that I can hopefully buy something non-toxic, perhaps underwear (unless your company has been secretly using something damaging there too - i.e. GMO cotton). Please address these very alarming concerns. 

Best of Health, 
~Adrienne~
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

G., Jennifer <JGantner@vscat.com>	7:28 PM (14 hours ago)

Dear Adrienne,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding our lipsticks. First and foremost, we want to assure you that at Victoria's Secret, nothing is more important than the safety of our products.

Our lipstick products are not formulated to contain lead. Small traces, less than you would find in safe drinking water, may be present in certain FDA approved colorants that are part of the formulation.

From personal care to home fragrances, our products are extensively evaluated and tested to meet or exceed industry standards, and we’re committed to ensuring that our customers can use our products with confidence.

Again, we appreciate your valuable feedback.

Best regards,

Jennifer G.
Victoria's Secret Beauty Customer Relations 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10:31pm, same evening...

Hi Jennifer,                                                         

I know you're just trying to do your job and that part of that probably involves giving bullsh*t answers (see below, in particular) to thoughtful questions from your consumers -likely passed down from higher ups in the company. If that is so, please pass on my response to them, because, really, nothing is going to change until the thinking at 'the top' does.

"Our lipstick products are not formulated to contain lead. Small traces, less than you would find in safe drinking water, may be present in certain FDA approved colorants that are part of the formulation." 

Hmm...well we all know that lead is usually present in lipsticks for the purpose of making it 'stick' to your lips longer - which gives it that 'all day color' so often touted by cosmetics companies. 

Regardless of drinking water, which, though in a terrible shape, can be filtered through reverse osmosis so that many contaminants can be removed...my lips don't have a 'filter' from your lipstick. Skin, the largest organ of the body absorbs the lipstick (this is often in addition to lipstick being swallowed - reports show the average women eats the equivalent of 5-8 lipsticks in her lifetime through this method), and then passes into the bloodstream and becomes part of our cells, tissues, and organs. Lead, which is not needed by the human body, and is quite toxic to it, should not be involved in formulations if you and your company truly give a damn about the public/your consumers.

Furthermore, let me give you an example of 'small traces' versus what Victoria Secret lipsticks have, in terms of lead content (given in parts per million):

Clinique

Estée Lauder

Almost 06 Black Honey

A79

<0.026

VS

Victoria’s Secret

Limited Brands

Pout d Pink Champagne

9217ZA

0.07

Or worse...

Victoria’s Secret

Limited Brands

Sparkling d Adorned

8345ZA

1.23

All of this is on the fda.gov website, if you want to do further research.

Again, it's not the one-time use that concerns me and others in the healthcare field. It is the constant use of products, such as these, that have a cumulative deleterious effect on human health.

I am part of the league of people trying to encourage and empower women, with knowledge, in ways to prevent or at least reduce the risk of health issues, including cancer. I'd like to know that your company isn't at odds with what I consider to be a worthwhile mission. 

-----------------------------------------------------------

Whew. </rant> 

Bottom line: there are a few actions you can take, personally and politically. If you aren't a fan of lead poisoning, consider truly natural products or going au natural. Write your cosmetics company to let them know you enjoy their products and want them to be lead-free. Ask the FDA to ban lead in lipstick.

Eating our Emotions

"Well, after he left, I remember going to the fridge and standing there looking for my favorites – strawberries, chocolate…then chips and salsa…then a handful of caramel corn. I ate until my stomach was uncomfortably full, sat down, stared out the window and realized that I still felt empty,” recounted my client, Kate (name changed to protect the client), during our latest session.
The realization of self-medicating with foods for unpleasant emotions (in this case, loneliness) made a huge impact on Kate. She became aware of the downward spiral of an unacknowledged emotion, turning to a (usually unhealthy) food, and ultimately beating herself up over the food choice.
One of the reasons we eat is because our culture promotes dining in conjunction with emotionally charged events – Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hanukkah and Valentine's Day. We eat when people are born, when people die, when we get an “A” on an exam, when we don’t get an “A” on the exam —we use food as reward and a punishment. Food is tied to our successes and failures, our joy and sadness, our excitement and anxiety.

Our emotions calm down as we anesthetize ourselves with salty, fatty or sugary foods. Our neurotransmitters increase production of serotonin, dopamine and other “feel-good” chemicals. Once we stop eating, we start the emotional descent again and eat more to temporarily feel better. After the cycle repeats a bit longer, we usually find ourselves physically full and feeling badly about our food choices.

In the cases of emotional eating, I work with my clients to be more mindful when eating and to build a reserve of what I call “soul-nourishing” activities – things that feed you but don’t come on a plate.
With the practice of mindfulness, we learn to cultivate the possibility of releasing ourselves from reactive, habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. Eating mindfully teaches us to be aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide decisions to begin eating and to cease eating.
Soul-nourishing activities involve taking care of yourself. Many people put themselves at the bottom of their own list of priorities; the result of making yourself a low priority is burnout, exhaustion and resentment. It is crucial that we take time out for ourselves to rest, relax and rejuvenate. Soul-nourishing activities can be done in limited amounts of time and can be as easy as taking 15 minutes to give yourself a pedicure. Any activity that makes us feel more positively and joyful is where we would start our list. Think of things that bring you comfort and have a restorative quality; is it journaling your gratitude? How about a hot bath or a couple of hours reading a book? Make a list and keep it on hand next time you are feeling raw emotions; this may prevent the drive to numb out the feelings with food.

My goal is to assist clients in learning how to mindfully eat and improve nutrition without deprivation, guilt, fear or shame. I am happy to report Kate* is eating more mindfully and engaging in self-nurturing activities and is no longer beholden to eating her emotions.

List of 10 soul-nourishing ideas

1. Give compliments and praise to those around you.
2. Practice relaxation techniques.
3. Keep a journal to write out your emotions and gratitude.
4. Visualize what life will be like after the emotion passes.
5. Surround yourself with friends and positive people.
6. Exercise (choose something you enjoy or that has a mind/body component like yoga or tai chi).
7. Learn proper self-care (get enough sleep, have a nutritious diet, & plenty of water).
8. Get outside and into nature (try a walking meditation, spend time near the water, watch the sky change colors as it sets).
9. Listen to music — and dance!
10. Use your passion and creativity in a hobby or career.

Photo from: medimanage.com