Clear for Life

Do you often have ‘bad skin days’? Those days you just don’t want to go out because of acne.

What if I told you those bad skin days are just in your head? That you create all those bad feeling, and you could just stop doing it.

That everyday could be what I call a ‘happy skin day’. I don’t mean that your skin would be perfect everyday but that no matter what your skin looks like you could be happy and optimistic. That you could face people with confidence and look them into eyes - even if acne carpet bombed your face the previous night.

Would you smack me on the head and call me an idiot, or would you want to know more?

If you want to know more, read on. If you choose to smack me on the head… well… luckily you can’t find me, but feel free to use the comment section to express yourself.

OK, I realize that may sound like a ridiculous claim. That you could be happy no matter what your skin looks like. If so, let it be ok. Because I’m going to tell you something 99.99% of the population doesn’t know.

All emotions are self created.

Whatever you happen to feel you created it yourself. Maybe it happened unconsciously. You may not know how you did it. It may have happened so quickly that it looks like the outside events caused those emotions. It may have happened against your conscious will; you may not want those emotions.

Nevertheless, you created those emotions and feelings.

You probably think I’ve smoked way too much pot lately and hallucinate these crazy theories.

Well, despite what you think of my drug habits, do this little thought experiment with me. It shows you that you do create your emotions, and a bit of how you create them.

I want you to think of a time when you were out in a public place and started feeling bad because of the way some stranger looked at you. You know just from the way they looked at you, you knew they were looking at your acne. And that made you feel bad.

We’ve all been through a situation like that. So just allow one to pop into your mind. And if you can’t think of any, just imagine one. Just imagine that you are in a public place and some stranger just looks at you a bit too long. And you know they look at you because of your acne.

How does thinking of that situation make you feel? Pretty bad I can bet.

Now let’s twist things around a bit. Imagine the same situation, but in that case imagine that the person was checking you out. That they were interested of you. Of course make sure that the person is of legal age and attractive to you.

How does that feel? I bet it feel different. Maybe even good.

So here we have two identical situations with completely opposite emotional outcomes. One made you feel bad; the other made you feel good.

You know what was different about these two situations?

Assumption = meaning = feelings

If you said your assumptions about the situation, good thinking. In one case you assumed the person was disgusted because of your acne, while in the other you assumed they were attracted to you.

“But I know they were looking at my acne“, you may object. “I just can’t hallucinate through my life that everyone who looks at my acne is attracted to me.”

Well, did you really know they were looking at your acne? I mean, did you go and ask them ‘Hey are you looking at my acne? Is it really that horrible?’

No you didn’t ask them. You just assumed they were looking at your acne, or to use your words, you hallucinated it.

And you don’t have to imagine everyone is attracted to you - though it might do good for your self-esteem since most of us imagine strangers think we are ugly. To stop creating bad feelings you just have to stop hallucinating those bad things.

Let me explain how this works so you’ll understand it a bit better.

Most people think emotions work like this: event –> emotions. Meaning something happens and that something causes the emotion(s).

How you create your emotions

Well that’s how it looks, but there’s one more step. Here’s how the process really works: event –> subconscious filtering –> emotion.

In reality all external events have no meaning. They are like a blank canvas. In our example the event was some stranger looking at you. Stop, the end. That’s what happened, and that has no meaning until you assign meaning to it. And that’s what these subconscious filters do (among other things). They assign meaning to whatever happens to you based on your past experiences.

I call these filters your Internal Map of Reality. That’s a term I learned from Bill Harris at Centerpointe.com. Your beliefs, values, ethics, language and memories are examples of these filters.

Without going into detail how these filters work they delete, distort and generalize whatever happens to you so that it confirms to your beliefs, past experiences and image of yourself.

You couldn’t go through life without this subconscious filtering. Here’s a simple example of how they help you.

Say you check into a hotel room in a city you’ve never been to, perhaps even in a foreign country. Could you open the door to your room? Of course you do. Because even though you’ve never seen that door before your mind has plenty of experience with doors. So it generalizes, and it could go something like this ‘This is a door. Doors usually open like this. Nope, didn’t work. OK sometimes they open the other way. Great that worked’.

It can also work the other way. Let’s say you had a problem with an authority figure while you were young. If it was dramatic enough, or happened many times, you concluded that authority figures are potentially dangerous. So when you see one, a cop for example, you get a bit stressed. You feel there’s something you need to watch out for. Your mind pulls those past experiences to warn you about this potentially dangerous situation.

Now let’s say you have some self-esteem issues (like we all do). Perhaps you don’t think you are that attractive or lovable. You might even think acne makes you unattractive or unlovable. So when you see some stranger looking at you your mind takes that information and deletes, distorts and generalizes it until it fits the way you see yourself. If you believe you are unlovable your mind fits the external event your belief by assuming they were looking at your acne. Out of the thousands of possible interpretations it picks the one that fits your beliefs.

Any evidence to the contrary is immediately deleted and distorted. So if (s)he actually comes and talks to you, you immediately assume the worst.

This is the exact same process people use to convince themselves that aliens have taken over their fridge, urging them to prepare for the arrival of the mother ship. If there’s a scratch on the milk carton the aliens made it - no matter that there’s also a cat in the house.

This same process fuels all the food fights, politically correct term is diet debates, that rage in forums and in the media. People have gotten their heads so wrapped around the idea that their diet is the only right one. Whenever a supporting study comes out they parade it like it would be the definitive word of God. Whereas opposing studies are immediately accused of having serious flaws and biased researches who fudged the numbers. Therefore such studies cannot be trusted. No matter that the same flaws and bias probably apply to the study they believed.

You only see what you believe.

So how does this relate to your acne and happiness?

If acne makes you feel miserable (even a little) it’s because of your Internal Map of Reality. Something that happened to you in the past caused you to form unresourceful beliefs about yourself. Those memories often have a lot of emotional charge (I like to call it emotional garbage). When triggered your mind drags that emotional garbage from past memories into your current experience. And you get the benefit of feeling lousy.

You know the saying pushes his/her buttons? This is the meaning behind it. We all have these buttons that the world just keeps pushing. Those buttons are ‘wired’ (in your subconscious) into negative memories. When pushed your mind drags the emotional garbage from your past into now, and you act accordingly. That’s why some people can get very angry from seemingly small things. It’s not that the event was such a big thing, it’s the fact that the button was wired into lots of emotional garbage.

The same thing happens to you when you make yourself feel bad.

The event that ‘made’ you feel bad is often not such a big thing. It’s that it triggered so many emotional memories from the past. Taking cue from those memories your mind then layers the event with negative meaning so that you can experience even more of that emotional garbage.

OK, so far this has been interesting theory, but let’s move onto how to use this to make yourself feel better. Into creating those happy skin days.

Theory into practice

With few reasonably simple mental processes you can ‘deactivate’ your buttons, clip the wires. So that even if something pushes the button it doesn’t lead to all the emotional garbage and your mind layering negative meaning on the events. Instead the event remains neutral. Someone looking at you and nothing more. And you don’t have to go through all the bad feelings.

The detailed explanation of this is just too much to cover in a blog post. Just the bare boned and practical how-to explanation took me 40 pages. And few audio-files to guide you through the mental processes. That’s essentially my upcoming book. It doesn’t have a name yet, but maybe I’ll call it Happy Skin Days: How to be happy and optimistic before you get clear. Few of my customers are currently testing the draft version and getting great results.

Anyway, this is not just a sales pitch for the new book. I’m going to give you something very valuable here.

The root of the problem is that this whole thing happens unconsciously. As long as it happens unconsciously there’s not much you can do about it. Your first challenge is to know it happens. And then to start noticing when and how it happens. To start noticing the situations that make you feel bad.

Your focus creates your feelings. When you focus (think) on someone looking at your acne and feeling ugly you get to feel bad. Focusing that you are attractive and lovable makes you feel good. Luckily your focus is always under your control. Most people just don’t exercise that control. Their focus runs on autopilot.

Your biggest challenge is to notice when the autopilot drags your focus on something negative and then consciously choose to focus on something positive.

Practical steps to happiness

Here’s a good way to do it. Carry some 3 by 5 cards without all the time. When you start feeling bad make a note of the situation. Look at what was going through your head that time (what you were thinking) and make a note of it. Do this every time you start feeling bad.

Since your focus runs on autopilot initially you won’t catch yourself very often. But as you keep up with it you train your mind to recognize these situations and bring them to your awareness. Once in your awareness you can consciously choose what to focus on. Little by little you start gaining more control over your emotions.

Lily’s success story

And once those buttons are gone incredible things can happen. Lily has been testing my upcoming book, and here’s what she wrote to me.

well, the incredible has actually happened! I am very happy to say that I managed to change my belief about how embarrassing it is to have skin problems and having to hide from people! I tried the folder swapping technique on Friday evening (before going to be) and I felt a bit relieved afterwards, which at the time was a bit weird to think about. I wrote down an affirmation about that particular belief and it’s like I woke up a different person the following day.

I am not even thinking about my skin’s condition anymore, I wear clothes without considering that I have to hide my chest behind big jumpers/coats etc and for the first time in years I refuse to cover up any spots/redness with makeup. It’s like I don’t care about it anymore…or rather I am accepting who I am with my flaws and everything! And what’s more, I don’t even get worked up or depressed when I see other women around me with flawless skin…I think they are lucky but it does not get to me! I just look in the mirror and smile regardless of what my skin looks like… The last time I remember feeling/behaving in such a way was when I was on Accutane (it did really produce some amazing results at the time).

All I’m saying is that for the last 4 days I have felt liberated and relieved…not only because I don’t obsess about my skin (I am following the clear for life guidelines because we all want to be cleared of acne in the end-I’m just not letting this affect me and make me miserable) but also because I feel happy with who I am!

Be well,

Seppo

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

In my earlier posts about Candida I’ve often referred to Dr. Graham and what I’ve learned from him. Now you have an opportunity to hear it from the man himself. Naturalnews published an excerpt of Kevin Gianni’s interview with Dr. Graham.

Dr. Graham explains the blood sugar issue and how fat affects it perfectly. I really recommend you read this. This is reprinted with permission from naturalnews.com, and the title of the interview links to the original article at naturalnews.com.

Author Dr. Doug Graham (Part II):
Fats, Sugars and Your Body

by Kevin Gianni, citizen journalist

 

(NaturalNews) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Roundtable, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeRoundtable.com. In this excerpt, Dr. Doug Graham shares on fats, sugars and the body.

Renegade Roundtable with Dr. Doug Graham is a lifetime athlete and 27-year raw fooder. He’s been an advisor to top performers including tennis legend Martina Navratilova. He’s also the author of the lifestyle book 80/10/10.

Kevin That was a great answer to that question. I want to move into fat, because there’s a lot of talk in the raw food community where there’s more than one camp. One will say high fruit, low fat, low protein. Another one will say no fruit, greens and high fat. What are some of the challenges with eating a high fat diet?

Dr. Graham: Well from a medical standpoint we know that high fat diets have been linked to cancer and heart disease, diabetes and chronic fatigue. Even candida and most digestive disorders are all linked to the over consumption of fat. I agree, too much fruit is bad for you. People ask me all the time, “Isn’t too much fruit bad for you?” Yes, of course it is. Too much of anything is bad for you. That’s what the phrase means, is that you have a problem. As does the phrase, “Too little.” Part of the problem with too much fat is that you invariably also get two few carbohydrates, so you end up with a double whammy. As soon as you end up in that ‘too’ category, meaning too much or too little, you’ve got both sides of that seesaw swinging out of control. When you don’t eat enough carbohydrates you invariably end up with cravings. This is why over 70% of all of the eating disorders in the United States are associated with binging on complex carbohydrate foods. Because when you try to reduce your carbohydrate intake below that from which we are designed as a species, which is 80 plus, you invariably start to crave that for which we are designed. It would be like holding your breath. If you try to hold your breath you’re going to invariably really start wanting to breathe, a lot, soon.

So in the Standard American Diet where we’re eating about 40% of our calories from carbohydrates, we still see a tremendous number of people with disordered eating. But when we go to the standard raw approach, when the carbohydrate intake is halved again down to 20%, then we see massive challenges with binging, people going to refined sugars, relentlessly going to candy and alcohol and dried fruits and chocolates and anything that’s a refined sugar source, in order to make up for the lack of carbohydrates that they’re not eating through fruit.

Kevin You mentioned candida, let’s talk about that. There’s all sorts of approaches for this. One is to starve the candida with no sugar and the other is eliminate the fat.

Dr. Graham: Well, I think there’s a variety of approaches. We have to understand enough about candida to at least make some sense. Candida is a microorganism that has a very short lifespan. We’re talking hours, days is not even common. We’re talking hours. If you have a candida problem and you’re trying to get rid of it and you’re trying for more than a couple of days, you’re not trying an approach that’s working because it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. You’re still feeding the candida.

What you have to look at is what does it do, what does it feed? It feeds on sugar, no question. It feeds on sugar and fats. All the cells of the human body are fueled by sugar. All the healthy cells, all the sick cells, all the cancer cells, all the damaged cells, all cells of the human body are fueled by sugar. Which means that there has to be a fuel delivery system to all the cells and that fuel delivery system is the blood stream. This is why doctors can measure what is known as your ‘blood sugar.’ All humans carry blood sugar. If your blood sugar level was zero, you would be dead. Therefore it is actually impossible to starve the candida of sugar by not eating sugar. If you’re on a diet of strictly olive oil, if you’re on a diet of strictly protein powder, or if you’re on a diet of strictly powdered sugar, if your pancreas is healthy and the rest of your system is healthy, the doctors should be able to measure your blood sugar and find out that it is within normal limits, in the normal ranges. It’s going to be the same whether you’re on a fast, not eating anything, or whether you’re on the Standard American Diet. It’s going to run, in American numbers, somewhere around 90-100. What we see is that everyone always carries blood sugar, that’s always there.

At that point we have to look at why does blood sugar rise and how does that affect what’s going on in terms of the candida issue? Essentially it’s like this, we have to bring sugar to the cells of the body. We do so through the delivery system of the blood stream. When we want to get more sugar to the blood through the blood stream, out of the blood stream, to the cells, this is done through a carrier system, essentially a doorman, that we call insulin, produced by the pancreas.

When the pancreas gets tired or when the pancreas isn’t working fast enough, it will receive assistance by a backup system called the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands, for instance, you’re walking up a hill and walking up the hill from the other direction is a bear. You both get to the top of the hill at the same time and whoa! You get a surge of adrenaline because you need fuel like crazy. You don’t actually have to outrun the bear but you have to at least outrun the other people that you’re with. So off you go, a surge of adrenaline. The adrenaline causes the pancreas to squirt out even more insulin and bam, you get an extra dose. What the insulin does is it attaches itself to the sugar in your bloodstream, helps it cross the membrane out of the bloodstream, helps to cross the membrane into the cell and it becomes essentially a doorman that opens the way for sugar to get out of the bloodstream.

When there is excess fat in the bloodstream, we bump into a problem because fat functions as an insulator. That’s what it does. It insulates us from jarring, it insulates us from electricity, it insulates us from hot and cold, it insulates us from bumps and bruises, it insulates in a wide variety of ways. Fat’s primary role is as an insulator. Does it have other purposes? Sure. But it’s primary role is as an insulator. It’s actually what creates the waterproof barrier of each cell that allows the contents of the cell to stay in the cell and the contents of whatever is outside, the extra-cellular fluid, to stay outside the cell. Fat is the essential barrier, an insulator.

If you pour a thimble full of fat, a thimble full of olive oil, onto a swimming pool, it will coat the entire surface of the swimming pool, creating a barrier. It’s a Please really good insulator. If you had a huge tube full of marbles and you poured in a little bit of oil and shook it up just a bit, that oil would coat every single marble, completely. It does the same thing to the cells inside the bloodstream. The fat starts functioning as a barrier as it coats itself around the insulin and coats itself around the sugar molecules, it makes it less effective for the insulin to find the sugar, for them to hook up. Now you’ve got a situation where there’s sugar in the bloodstream but it’s not getting out of the bloodstream. So the body produces a little bit more insulin. But the fat is blocking it. This is what’s referred to as insulin resistance. It’s actually not that the body is insulin resistant it’s that there’s too much fat in the bloodstream. Take away the fat and the insulin resistance goes away instantaneously, 100% of the time.

If the pancreas can’t produce enough insulin then we have a type I diabetes situation. Occasionally what will happen is that the adrenal glands will come in and they’ll kick in and try to help out the pancreas. That works fine except we can’t do that all the time or the adrenals become fatigued, what we refer to as chronic fatigue. Eventually what you end up with pancreas in the hole, adrenals in the hole, everybody falling down on the job and you’re still ending up with blood sugar levels that are too high.

Fortunately, our bodies are redundant in their design and there is a backup system for the backup system. There is a microbe that lives in the blood stream that literally consumes the excess sugar. The beauty of it is that in a one-all situation the microbe consumes the excess sugar and then as all species do when there’s an excess of food, it then blooms. The bloom creates a massive increase in population but there’s no more food supply so they just as quickly a die off. This is referred to in science as the balance of nature.

In this case what we see is that they’ll be a surge candida that eats the excess sugar quickly. It multiplies, it blooms, but now there’s no more excess sugar. The situation is resolved. There is candida in all human blood.

It’s a matter of how much candida. There’s no way to prevent sugar from being in human blood, so you can’t literally starve out the candida in that way. What you can prevent however is blood sugar becoming excessively high.

Since 1959 when the first studies came to light on this issue of ‘what is it that allows sugar into the bloodstream but does not allow it out of the bloodstream,’ it has been taught in science, in medical school and in health class that the problem is one of fat functioning as an insulator, preventing sugar from exiting the bloodstream. By lowering the fat we invariably allow the sugar out of the bloodstream and resolve a potential candida issue.

The funny thing is that the different approaches that we’re seeing are actually all the same approach. The approach used by some people for candida is to go on a fast, on a water-only fast, consume absolutely nothing for week or two, and give the adrenals a chance to recover, give the pancreas a chance to recover. While the candida issue itself goes away within 48-72 hours anyway and then doesn’t return.

The second approach is to go on a diet of eating almost nothing but greens, in which case blood sugar levels remain the same, the amount of fat in the bloodstream goes down and at the end of the week or two of eating nothing but greens you no longer have a candida problem. Unfortunately, you also don’t
have a healthy eating plan to follow through on.

The third approach is to eat all the fruit you want, eat all the vegetables you care for, but avoid the consumption of overtly fatty foods for a week or two, and allow your body to heal itself because you’re no longer causing the problem.

To read the rest of this transcript for free as well as access a full archive of information by health experts on abundance, optimum health, and longevity just like Dr. Doug Graham, please visit http://www.renegadehealth.com/inner-cir… for a free 30 day trial.

—End of article—

Though this is just an excerpt of the interview it does cover everything there was about Candida. I listened to the interview and after that they went to other topics.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin