Category: Life

Your Words – and your Child’s Brain

2014-10-19 12.59.02When we enter this world our mind is like a sponge. It is ready to absorb and learn from every single thing in our surroundings.  From birth to age six, our brain stays in the low frequency activity range labeled as Delta and Theta wavelength (0.5-8 Hz). This is similar to when a hypnotherapist drops the brain activity to a state that is below conscious awareness.

This scientific measurement clues us into the importance parents play in shaping and creating a child’s world. Often parents think their children’s genes will be in charge of the way the child develops, but we are learning that is just not the truth. The study of how environmental input, or epigenetics, shapes a child’s health and behavior is a newly emerging area of research that has a lot to say about the way we raise our families.

Epigenetics says the sponge that is our developing brain will soak up the beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that we observe in our parents. We essentially download the environment onto our hard drive and compare every event in our life to this reference point. This means that as I grow up and I watch my parents fight about money, I will develop an attitude about money that reflects what I have stored on my hard drive. This is most obvious to any parent whose child has repeated a curse word with almost the same tone, inflection and meaning behind it as the parent did.

This precise and detailed behavior-recording system will cement into the circuitry of the brain whatever signals it receives. Whether they are of praise and joy or statements such as “you will never amount to anything,” “You are so stupid,” or “Grow up.”  At such a young age a child’s brain has not evolved enough to question these statements and once programmed into the subconscious will shape the behavior and life of a child’s development.

So as a parent you must identify what fears you are reinforcing in your own life and therefore passing onto your next generation. You must do the work on yourself and determine what unnecessary investment of your own focus is limiting you. And you must take care not to pass those limiting beliefs on. Know that your choices, actions and presence helps to shape their world and that you have an amazing responsibility to help them reach their soul purpose, aA duty to teach them of the greatness inside of them.  And above all else, JUST BE LOVE!


Winter Dehydration Warning!

In looking over a client’s bloodwork this week, I noticed a couple markers that were slightly out of the “healthy” range that could indicate slight dehydration – an easy thing to fix. I asked him if he drank enough water to which his wife replied, “No! He never drinks enough!” His response was a common one I often hear from clients: “I drink enough in the summer, but in the winter, I don’t need to.”

Many people know that they need to drink more water. “Hydrate! Make sure you hydrate!” Jerry Seinfeld even had a standup bit about it that we posted on our Facebook page. The truth is, most people don’t drink enough water.

Studies have shown that dehydration is very prevalent in the winter, where humidity drops and cold actually suppresses the body’s thirst mechanisms.

“People just don’t feel as thirsty when the weather is cold,” says Robert Kenefick, University of New Hampshire associate professor of Kinesiology. “When they don’t feel thirsty, they don’t drink as much, and this can cause dehydration.”


Is Hidden MSG Making you Fat?

Natural flavor. Chicken broth. Gelatin. What do these three common ingredients have in common? They all mean that the food you’re eating may contain monosodium glutamate otherwise known as MSG.
A common additive in baby formula, soups, broths, processed and fast food, MSG adds more than just flavor. It can add inches to your waistline. It actually causes you to eat more. In fact, when scientists needed fat rats to use for diabetes studies, they fed MSG to the rats to make them obese.

So about MSG is making people fat? It’s an excitotoxin – which means it stimulates nerves to fire more frequently. This action stimulates your pancreas to secrete more insulin, causing you to feel hungry even after eating. So, you eat more.

More importantly than its effect on your weight, MSG’s excitotoxin properties damage your entire vital nervous system. It can excite nerves to the point of death – leading to conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Lou Gherig’s disease.

Children are particularly susceptible to MSG damage because of their rapidly developing nervous systems. Eating packaged foods and infant formulas laden with MSG is thought to contribute to conditions like ADHD, ADD, and other behavioral issues. Read more at http://www.feingold.org/adhd-infoall.html

With such a naughty reputation, food companies have figured out ways to hide MSG under quite a few aliases. It’s up to you to be vigilant. Read labels to find out if your food contains MSG.
Avoid the following at all costs. They ALWAYS indicate that MSG is present: Autolyzed Yeast, Calcium Caseinate, Gelatin, Glutamate, Monopotassium Glutamate, Textured Protein, Yeast Nutrient, Glutamic Acid, Monosodium Glutamate, Yeast Extract, Hydrolyzed Protein, Sodium Caseinate, Yeast Food.

The following ingredients often contain MSG or create MSG during processing: Flavors and Flavorings, Seasonings, Natural Flavors and Flavorings, Natural Pork Flavoring, Natural Chicken Flavoring Stock, Anything Enzyme Modified, Protease, Soy sauce, Broth, Carrageenan, Corn Starch, Anything Ultra-Pasteurized, Soy Protein Isolate, Malt Extract, Maltodextrin, Citric Acid, Soy Protein, Malt Flavoring, Pectin, Powdered Milk, Natural Beef Flavoring, Bouillon, Barley Malt, Enzymes, Anything Protein Fortified.

If you’re not prepared to scrap processed food or infant formula entirely and prepare your own, hopefully from fresh, local products, contact the manufacturers to find out if MSG is present in your favorite products. To learn more about the questions you’ll need to ask in order to get a straight answer visit http://www.truthinlabeling.org/nomsg.html. And if you still have questions, be sure to ask Dr. Katy about alternatives to MSG.


Are you playing for the offense or the defense?

As summer slowly eases into fall, the mornings are crisper, the leaves are starting to turn, and the kids are back to school. Also – it’s football time!

Sports analogies are rampant in our culture and there’s a reason why. A game is life played head on – football often literally! In a game, we see drama, excitement, hope and loss several times over. For most of us, our lives are not as dramatic minute to minute, but the same themes are there, playing out over a lifetime.

And, as with all good metaphors, we can use the themes of offense and defense to examine our own lives and where we’re headed.

Playing for the offense, you’ve clearly defined your goal and where you’re going. You might not know exactly how you’re going to get there, but you can see it. As you progress down the field, you see openings as well as blocks you couldn’t possibly have imagined. You take in all the information around you and make decisions based on what is happening RIGHT NOW.

Hopefully, you have a team of supporters around you, helping you course correct when you get a little too excited or too frustrated, keeping you on track for that touchdown. The more people you have on your team, the easier it is to stay focused, to stay true to your chief aim.

We’d like to think we’re all playing for the offense, keeping our eyes on the prize. But that’s often not the case. Many times, we’re on the defense – taking ourselves further away from what we want by getting involved in other people’s games.

On the defense, we try to keep others from getting to their goals. We get in their way. We think we know better than they do and “just want to help.”

Just as you have your goals, others have their own. They have passions and desires that you can’t possibly fully know and understand – even if it’s a partner in life.

So really examine yourself. Are you supportive or, in the spirit of just being helpful, letting them know how it’s not going to work, giving a multitude of reasons why they will fail or get hurt.

When you act in that role for someone else, you’re not only going to get it right back, you’re taking yourself out of your own game! You find yourself tangled in other people’s games , caught up in extensive drama (that’s not even your own) and exhausting yourself in the process.

If you find yourself playing defense, think about why you’re acting this way. Are you jealous? Insecure? So frustrated with life that you’re unsure of whether true happiness really exists? Do you feel protective and want to keep others from getting their feelings hurt?

Whatever the reason, it’s yours. It’s part of who you are and a result of your experience. It’s also easy to change.  It’s only when we support each other, play on the same team – that we all win.

If you want to win, the easiest way is to help others. Sometimes it means being supportive. Sometimes it means simply butting out.