BLOOD SUGAR/PRESSURE LOWERING TEA

Forgot to mention the tea I mixed daily consisting of  Hibiscus flowers and Rooibos leaves.  I added loose peppermint leaves (clears the lungs) and Jasmine Pearls, my favorite way of consuming green tea because of the added taste of Jasmine, my favorite scent. (More about this when I get to perfumes). They’re all organic and I buy them in bulk from Davidson’s at great prices, e.g., $16 or so for a 16 oz bag of Hibiscus flowers.  This tea was especially helpful after meals that happened to stray from a 1500 calorie veggie/fruit-heavy  diet. Pop a small strainer into a large cup of hot water, drop in the flowers and leaves and in 5-8 minutes, tea!

Green tea is also an immune-system booster to help ward off any scary viruses that come around.

In this final installment, I’ll discuss the three other things that helped swiftly rid me of hypertension, diabetes, etc.  All are useful for any ailment. Then, having done my duty for the health of humankind, this blog turns to books, writing, food, travel, perfume and general fun.

TABATA

Until I found Tabata, a short version of interval training, I believed effective exercise meant hours of work.  Instead, this 4-minute program (12 minutes including warm-up and cool down) delivered remarkable health benefits.  This link explains the background and how, in a six-week test, people who did Tabata improved their fitness more than a group that “cycled, swam, skipped or jogged” 5 times a week for an hour at normal speed.  Following is the program I still use almost daily:

-4 minute warmup
(arm circles, waist swivels, side stretches, leg lifts, leg stretches, toe touches — the kind of thing we did in high school gym)

-4 minute Tabata
20 secs high intensity exercise (walking, biking, skipping, running in place — anything that you can do fast)
10 secs slow down
(repeat both for 4 minutes)

-4 minute cool down
keep moving but go slow for 4 minutes

I’d been so sick, I couldn’t get to the gym or even walk on my treadmill.  Because of zapping (see previous post), I was able to start this program in June. Tabata woke up my muscles and my metabolism and gave me real strength while other things were busy curing my insides. I credit it  and fasting as big contributors to my early progress.

FASTING

Inspired by this study’s claim that fasting renews the immune system, I decided to try it, using the advice on this excellent site, allaboutfasting.com.  Another way of putting it is that when digestion stops, the body’s energy is freed for self-healing. If you decide to fast, be sure to read the guidelines there or somewhere else. Naturally, my blood sugar was lowest during periods of fasting.

June 10-13  –  Fasting blood sugar range: 132-203

Jul 31-Aug 3 – Fasting blood sugar range: 94-142 [prior to this ate 1500 calories a day]

Sep 25-29 –  Fasting blood sugar range: 87-129 [prior to this ate normal diet]

Note: The key to avoiding weakness and and nausea on the first days of a water fast is to take a good laxative (preferably herbal; I use Swiss Kriss) the night before; or have an enema first thing in the morning of day one. Long ago for good reason, enemas were routinely given to those entering a hospital.

MEDITATION

What does meditation do that helps combat disease?  An incurable ponderer of things, I eventually became obsessed with understanding why so many health centers like the Mayo Clinic are suggesting it.

I first learned mantra meditation in 2006 at a Deepak Chopra seminar and have since tried other methods, including the simplest: sit still, close eyes, and follow my breath (without changing it).  However, busy with life,  I’d stopped doing it regularly.  When I got sick, I scooted right back to my meditation cushion for at least 15-20 minutes each day, often longer at first.

As background to what I’m about to write, I need to share something.  I could serve as a human canary. Not kidding. My senses are weirdly acute.  Mind you, this is not always a pleasant experience! If there’s something bad in the air, I pick it up and get headaches or have trouble breathing. Something off in the food or water?  My taste buds and stomach know. Hang a picture slightly out of line and my eyes keep returning to it. I have to remind myself not to adjust things in museums and people’s homes. Depending on what my ears hear, I’m blessed or cursed with keen reaction to the sound and an inability to tolerate even low level noise for long.

Therefore, as soon as I picked up the handholds of the zapper described in Not Afraid of Ebola, Part 2, I felt the low current vibrate in my hands and through my body.  Hubby felt absolutely nothing when he tried it, perhaps because his hands are muscular and mine are thin.  Since my lungs were congested and my heart not pumping right, my body didn’t love love this feeling, but I persevered, sure the current couldn’t hurt me, and tried to make friends with the vibration.

Here’s the zinger.  Since I hadn’t meditated in so long, I’d forgotten what it felt like.  It took  a while for the old sensations to resume and, for me, they usually range from pleasant to blissful.  Why had I ever stopped?  After a few days of meditation with occasional zapping, I suddenly realized something.  The vibration of  zapping and the vibration in the deep stage of meditation felt virtually the same!

It made me reassess what I thought I knew.  Dr. Clark, inventor of the zapper, said low level current kills pathogens.  Does deep meditation do the same by inducing a similar vibration in the body?   Is that what medical research is detecting?

For me, this was a thrilling discovery.   I’d read eastern meditation theory that said “cosmic energy”  heals when allowed to flow, not suspecting this could really be a fact.

Believe me, I’ll be doing a lot more pondering and reading about this now.  Meanwhile every morning I rise, visit the bathroom, then meditate before I do anything else, including shower. At the Chopra center, one instructor called it RPM (rise, pee, and mediate).  My day goes better as a result.  Now I realize my health could, too.

WATER

I added this because of repeated advice from almost everywhere that water is good for what ails us.  Lots of water.  More than most of us normally drink.  Plain water.  Not counting teas, coffee or other drinks.  During most of my recovery I drank 8-12 cups a day.

SIDE BENEFITS OF OLIVE LEAF EXTRACT

Other conditions that have improved are kidney function (urine stream back to normal; before OLE I used Dr. Clark’s Kidney Cleanse Tea which worked) painful joints (not so painful), overall stamina (I can stand at a perfume counter for hours now, if I choose, indulging in the positive application I discovered for a hypersensitive nose).  Ah bliss!

MY RESOURCES

WebMd – Great for both medical and herbal info, including interactions

VitaCost – Where I buy most of my supplements and natural products (high quality, low price)

HerbalRemedies – where I discovered Dr. Clark’s book.

BetterHealthHerbs –  He’s a master herbalist.

Supplements  – An online friend just pointed me to this gem

EatTheWeeds – and this gem for wild sources

NCCAM – What the NIH says about alternative medicine

LAST STEP

The cardiologist’s already told me my heart’s okay now. All that remains is to return to my doctor for an exam, though I know the result: I’m not diabetic and don’t have high blood pressure anymore.

CAN OLIVE LEAF EXTRACT BE THAT GOOD?

Yes!  See this recent medical article in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

A NOVEL THEORY OF DISEASE

My great grandmother used to jokingly say, ” Be careful of what you want, you might get it.” I’d dreamed of being a writer.  It had come true.  All day and half the night I sat, happily lost in fictional worlds, barely noticing my worsening symptoms.  Back in April  I learned how sick I was: Abnormal EKG, Chest Tight, Short of Breath, Hypertension, Type 2 Diabetes, hand, ankle and pulmonary edema, and more. One night I woke nauseous and breathless with the room spinning.  I noticed that. When I saw what drugs my doctor prescribed after my hospital stay (Valsartan-Hydrochlorothiazide, Crestor, Victoza, MetFORMIN), I remembered the Chinese doctor and his herbs (see About Me). China’s been practicing herbal medicine for thousands of years. Modern western medicine is only 249 years old if we date it from the discovery of the smallpox vaccine; 167 years old, if we date it from when washing hands with antiseptic before treating patients was introduced.  Not long.

Now for a revelation. On the Internet searching for natural cures, I eventually came upon three different books published at different times by different authors which all had the SAME theory of disease: Bacteria, viruses and parasites (microbes) out of control in the human body because of a compromised immune system cause all illness (unless congenital, I assumed, or from injury). What? Each book gave a different method of ridding ourselves of the little buggers and restoring health.

THE THREE BOOKS

In late May I found  Dr. Hulda Clark’s The Cure for all Diseases. What a claim!  Only because I’d discovered the title on an herbalist site I trusted, did I investigate.  It gave complicated ways of preventing pathogens (bad microbes) from invading us. Luckily, Dr. Clark also gave a super easy method of killing them all at once: zap ourselves with a very low level current for three 7-minute sessions, waiting 20-30 minutes between each zap. The book was full of case studies. Trouble was, she said we might get reinfected if we didn’t follow her complicated avoidance procedures. I knew I wouldn’t. As a result, I didn’t pay much attention to this wonderful book at first.

In August I found The One Minute Cure: The Secret to Healing Virtually All Diseases. The author said all pathogens (those bad bacteria, viruses and parasites again) were killed by oxygenating the body. He recommended drinking an increasingly strong version of the concoction in his book three times a day for 23 days until the maintenance level was reached.  Since the major ingredient is dangerous before proper dilution, I won’t mention it here.

Last but hardly least, I found Dr. Morton Walker’s splendid 1997 book entitled Olive Leaf Extract (OLE). It detailed original research, his and that of others. Dr. Walker also thought the problem was pathogens the body couldn’t control. He reported cases of OLE curing everything from measles to Herpes and AIDS! AIDS? That did it. I promptly bought some OLE and asked hubby to build me Dr. Clark’s zapper from the schematic in her book. We’re both EE’s, but he’s the more hands-on one. Dr. Clark also sells one on her website. (Hubby found an inexpensive version for sale here.)

HOW I USED THE BOOKS

DR. CLARK’S ZAPPER: It was ready in June. One session and I went from too weak to rise and wash my own dishes to full of energy the very next day. My blood pressure and blood sugar numbers didn’t decline very much at first, but I felt like I was no longer at death’s door.  Amazed, exhilarated, and buttressed by a growing belief in simple cures for what ailed me, I stopped taking my remaining prescriptions.

THE ONE-MINUTE CURE: I tried the author’s concoction for a day or so, but my stomach just wasn’t happy.

OLIVE LEAF EXTRACT (with occasional zapping). In mid-August I began taking two 500 mg tablets (standardized to 20 oleuropein) before each meal. Only one tablet before meals is suggested on the bottle, but no toxicity was reported and I was in a hurry.  Soon I added a tablespoon of Barleans Organic Olive Leaf Complex every other day, just because it was liquid and sounded fresh  Here’s the 500 mg OLE capsule I’m taking now.  A 100-day supply is less than $30. While Ebola’s around, I plan to keep taking OLE.

THE RESULTS

My average systolic pressure steadily declined from the 150’s to the 140’s by the end of August.  Then it fell to the 130’s and finally to the 120’s, stabilizing for a while in each range then continuing its downward trek. Diastolic declined from the 80’s to the 70’s.  My morning blood sugar swooped steadily down from an average of 182 in June (occasionally rising to 300-400+ in the day), to normally just around 100 now.  I have the feeling if I zapped more, it would have sped things up, but the zapping tired me, like Dr. Clark said it might. I think it was because of the diastolic heart failure. [She warns that the zapper hasn’t been tested on those with pacemakers].  When hubby zaps, he feels nothing except more energy.

By late September, my lungs had cleared of phlegm entirely.  I could do breath exercises again during meditation without getting winded. My hands and ankles  were no longer swollen. I stopped feeling pressure in my chest.  Every day I had energy! I could clean my house, drive, go out without fear of collapsing.  On 9/24 I visited the cardiologist my doctor sent me to. My  EKG was fine and he doesn’t want to see me again for six months!

ABOUT STOPPING MEDS

By the time I stopped taking my remaining prescriptions, I was convinced I could cure myself without them.  This brings me to the placebo effect. What do I mean? It ought not to be possible for even one person’s illness to improve from simply taking sugar pills, much less for this to happen to thousands of people in clinical tests over time.

To me, the placebo effect is absolute proof that our bodies respond to our minds and what we believe.  THEREFORE, IN MY OPINION, IF YOU BELIEVE YOUR MEDS ARE HELPING YOU, YOU SHOULD KEEP TAKING THEM.  I stopped them all only because I felt certain my alternatives would work and only when I saw some proof of that.

WHAT ELSE DID I DO?

I added a daily 10-15  meditation, an incredible four-minute intense exercise called Tabata, and three water fasts to the above.  I’ll describe them in my next post.  Olive Leaf Extract was the key, but I  do believe these helped a lot.

 

I’m not afraid of Ebola. Three reasons.  Blind luck, divine providence, or both led me to an herb that puts the immune system on steroids, so to speak.  Guess what the Ebola survivors have in common?  Strong immune systems.  (Also fast rehydration after getting sick.)  That’s reason number one.

Number two, I’ve just cured myself of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart problems using this same herb and a few other sensible measures I’ll describe in the next post. I haven’t taken meds AT ALL since May or June.

Blood Sugar. April: 300-400+,  Now: 85-110

Blood Pressure: April: 155/89,  Now: 120/72

(Late last night I lost it, gorged on chocolate chocolate chip ice cream with peppermint extract poured all over it and this morning my blood sugar was only 143, not 400!  Current blood sugar reading: 97.)

Number three, I’ve learned one of the biggest compromisers of the immune system is stress, so the last thing to do about Ebola is worry. To handle stress, I meditate for 15-20 minutes every day, now.  Even the Mayo Clinic says meditation helps with many ailments.

So what’s this magic herb?  OLIVE LEAF EXTRACT.   The link is to the cheapest reliable version I’ve found, standardized to 18% oleuropein (what makes olive oil so good for us).  Only 6% did the trick in studies, but more is better, many have found. What is Olive Leaf Extract?  A potent natural anti-bacterial, anti-VIRAL, and anti-parasitic agent with NO KNOWN TOXICITY.

In my next post, I’ll share the details of these last 6 months in which I went from a scary diagnosis to WELL!

With all my heart, I wish the same for you.

 

 

As you probably know, I’m a novelist and my principal works are the thrillers of THE JESUS THIEF series.  However, what inspired me to start blogging was real life.  In April I found myself in the emergency room, incredibly weak and dizzy.  Later, my doc told me I’d croak if I didn’t take heavy duty meds.  However, I absolutely hate meds.  My diagnosis?  Diabetes, high blood pressure, diastolic heart failure, pulmonary edema, etc.  Too much mint chocolate chip ice cream, apparently.  I never took the meds.  Seven months later I’m perfectly well, excitedly telling strangers in grocery  stores what happened to me.

The lady I shared this with day before yesterday suggested I start a blog so others could know what I learned: WE DON’T HAVE TO BE SICK!

My first posts will be about this.  Eventually, I’ll talk about writing, too.  Also, perfume, wine, food, travel, etcetera.