Healthy Blood: the Keystone of Everything Part I

All of the old natural healing gurus talked about healthy blood. This is how you build a healthy YOU! Blood carries away waste and carries nutrients to your tissues. Blood health means whole body health. In this series of four articles, I will address blood, how to get it healthy, how to mitigate modern problems and how to keep your system clean.

In this article, we will begin with building blood. First off, it might surprise you to know that some very common problems are actually caused by poor quality blood. Here is a list of several things that have long been known to be related to poor blood quality.

1. Tension in the shoulders and upper back and neck. This happens when the blood doesn't carry nutrition and wastes like it should and does not have good physical properties, such as good quality hemoglobin and red blood cell affinity.

2. Brittle, dry or falling hair occurs when the blood does not carry enough protein. This is related to things like protein intake quality, stomach function (where proteins are digested) and ability of the liver to build good proteins fast enough. It is also related to trace mineral balance and abundance.

3. Unreasonable exhaustion or loss of performance with aging. Watching our performance and vitality go down as we age is a problem many minds are thinking about today. For sure, there are several aspects of aging we now can manage pretty well. We also know certain diets slow aging, while others speed it up. But when it comes to actual performance, strength and ability to build muscle as we age, the quality of the blood, the protein content of the blood and the ability of the blood to exchange nutrients is a vital part of the process.

4. Susceptibility to infection and stress. This is totally about the health of the blood. If the blood has excellent quality, both physical and nutritional, then stress will not be destructive at all, but totally manageable.

5. All Chronic Disease, Long-Term or Degenerative Illness. Any situation where you do not Heal. If the blood is healthy, you simply do not get sick with this kind of thing. Injuries and illness, infections and imbalances are healed by the body if it can and it can if the blood is healthy.

6. Hormone Problems.

So, now what do we do? If you look at yourself and realize that you have a need for better blood, how do you get the blood healing?

Before I answer this question, let me help you understand what healthy blood needs in order to be HEALTHY!

Healthy blood has these characteristics:

1. Healthy, properly formed, adequately nourished hemoglobin on a healthy, properly formed red blood cell--this allows your blood to carry oxygen, release it efficiently at the capillaries (so that it gets into your cells) and then carry carbon dioxide away.

2. A certain cohesiveness where the red blood cells (RBC's) "like" each other and hang together in the vessels. Babies and children (unless born very unhealthy--something happening more and more) enjoy no interruption to blood flow in part because their blood cells literally never strike the sides and branches of the arteries, but stay right in the center of the vessel. Consequently, circulation is better and freer and no damage happens to the cardiovascular system. Consumption of the wrong kinds of foods and the addition of various unhealthy stressors (life, emotional environmental, dietary, hormonal) starts to affect the blood in strange ways, causing a loss of cohesiveness of the RBC's which then begin to be turbulent and strike and damage the walls of the arteries. This is the beginning of the end as far as blood health is concerned. Once the blood begins to lose its cohesiveness, it also becomes damaged more and more, resulting in weaker blood, which results in weakening of all body systems, which results in weaker blood. This is a recipe for aging.

3. Sufficient blood proteins. Blood proteins should be viewed as forever tethered to trace minerals. Of course the production of blood, proteins and the absorption and use of trace minerals is attached to all other nutrition, function and structure. But if we take protein, one problem is the function of digestion as we age. Stress takes down stomach function, poor food takes down stomach and liver function and then protein absorption goes down. Once protein absorption goes down, then the body begins to starve for protein (particularly if the diet is mostly cooked and thence all the protein is damaged). Then enzymes cannot be produced and stomach function gets worse. This leads to aging, once again.

Blood protein is required to get the blood to hold water. If protein drops then the blood starts to lose water, the kidneys begin to fail in their task, the tissues fill with fluid, the body feels heavy and inflexible and the whole system begins to weaken and the person does not feel like moving around, leading to further degradation.

Here is our approach:

First and foremost, please do the simplest thing in the world, which is the most important thing I ever tell anyone to do: Get your stomach ready for food BEFORE you eat EVERY TIME!

The natural method for this is to relax, smell the food, enjoy good company and then CHEW a VERY SIMPLE MEAL very well. Of course, it is easy to spot the divergence from natural, healthy options in each of our lives in the modern world. So, we must reach for something else. That thing, is cayenne pepper! We put a little cayenne pepper in water (1/8 teaspoon in preferably warm water) 5-15 minutes before each meal and snack. This gets the stomach ready for food before we eat. It increases saliva and enzyme production. It will result in good protein digestion (of raw, undamaged protein) even in the weakest person.

Other, less effective methods include hot water or hot, spicy tea (cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, black pepper, etc) before or with meals.

Slightly less effective than that, but very useful for travel, is taking 1-2 Zypan with each meal.

Last, we have the option for helping very chronic cases of stomach dysfunction by taking in some supplements which heal the stomach and duodenal lining, restore the secretory glands within the stomach and improve its function overall. This is done using 2 capsules each of two supplements night and morning. These are Gastrex and Okra Pepsin E3. These are quite nourishing and mild and work over several weeks to restore stomach function. Do not forget, howevere, that raw protein (animal or vegetable) is the only way to go. We do not want protein powders, which have proven to be not very effective at all, but raw, fresh, high water content vegetables, sprouted seeds (legumes, etc), fruit and raw eggs or meat. Cooked protein leaves a lot of mess behind and is absorbed poorly. Dehydrated sources are not properly absorbed for some reason and should not be considered replacements for real food. Sadly, much of our food is denatured due to modern conditions and farming methods, but we can do much better than we do.

Finally, the crowning aid for building blood is a single supplement which contains all the building blocks for blood nutrition. This supplement is Ferrofood. It is quite strong and stimulating to blood building. For anyone with any type of weak blood, take 1-2 capsules twice daily (usually 1 capsule 2x daily is enough). If you have to choose one supplement today, please choose this one. Start faithfully using the cayenne pepper before meals at also.

For someone worried that they are very weak and need lots of help, please take the following:

1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper in warm water 5-15 minutes before each meal and snack.

2 capsules each of Gastrex and Okra Pepsin E3 night and morning.

1 capsule Ferrofood night and morning with the previous two supplements.

6 tablets of Trace Minerals B12 one time daily.

If you cannot tolerate Standard Process supplements (very rare) use cayenne as instructed but also take 6 capsules of Dr. Christopher's Vitalerbs night and morning always (replaces any and all multivitamins); take 8 capsules of dandelion root and 2 capsules of Pau D' Arco all at once 1 time daily for 6 weeks. Repeat 4 times yearly.