Nutritional Security Should Be Given The Same Priority As Food Security.

Nutrition is becoming ever more central to our understanding of virtually all metabolic processes. Its biological basis offers insight into the mechanisms by which diet influences human health and disease. Nutritional biochemistry broadens and deepens our understanding of many aspects of human biology including immunity, development, and aging. Research in this complex field must integrate information from a myriad of fields including cellular and molecular biology, molecular genetics, physiology, epidemiology, and clinical medicine.

Nutritional biochemistry is a vital field of study. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, poor nutrition (along with inactivity) contributes to approximately half a million deaths each year. Poor nutrition is also a leading cause of disability and loss of independence. Healthier dietary practices, according to the US Department of Agriculture, could prevent at least $71 billion per year in medical costs, lost productivity, and premature deaths in the United States alone.

At the international level, the World Health Organization focuses on nutrition as one of the most significant factors influencing human health; under nutrition contrinutes to about a third of all child deaths around the world, amd growing rates of overweight and obesity worldwide are associated with the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

Gene nutrient interactions in growth and developmemt and in disease prevention are fundamental to health, therefore regional Centers on Genetics, Nutrition and Fitness for Health should be established worldwide.

Heads of state must elevate, as a matter of urgency, Nutrition as a national priority, that access to a healthy diet should be considered a human right and that the lead responsibility for Nutrition should be placed in Ministries of Health rather than agriculture so that the health requirements drive agricultural priorities, not vice versa.

Nutritional security should be given the same priority as food security.

Live and Learn. We All Do.

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Filed under: Health and Fitness, Science, World Tagged: biochemistry, Chad Cox PhD, nutrition, United States, US Department of Health

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My Friends, Do Not Lose Heart

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

 

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

Live and Learn. We All Do.

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Filed under: Philosophy, Politics, Spirituality, Women, World Tagged: Clarissa Pinkola Estes, earth, healing, love, soul, Women Who Run With Wolves

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Every Man Is The Builder Of A Temple Called His Body

In Scripture we are told that God made man in his own image. This is stated not only in the Christian Bible but also in the holy writing of nearly all enlightened people. The Jewish patriarchs taught that the human body was the microcosm, or little cosmos.

There is no doubt that the Old Testament is a physiological and anatomical textbook to those capable of reading it from a scientific viewpoint. The functions of the human body, the attributes of the human mind, and the qualities of the human soul, have been personified by the wise men of the ancient world. Today a great drama has been built around their relationships to themselves and to each other.

To the real Egyptian demigod, Hermes, the human race owes its concept of the law of analogy. The great Hermetic axiom was that which is above is like unto that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above.

The religions of the ancient world were all based upon nature-worship, which in a degenerated form has survived to our own day as phallicism.

The building of temples in the form of the human body is a custom common to ALL people. The great Egyptian Temple of Karnak, The Tabernacle of the Jews, the religious structures of the Hawaiian priests, and the Christian churches laid out in the form of the cross, are examples of this practice.

If the human body were laid out with the arms spread in the shape of any of these buildings, you would find that the high alter would occupy the same relative position in the building that the brain occupies in the human body.

We know that the human body has been the inspiration for nearly all mechanical contrivances. Hinges are copied from the human body; likewise the ball and socket joint. We are told that the first plumbing was reproduced from the arterial and venous circulatory systems.

Hundreds of machines and implements have been inspired by the subtle workings of our own vehicles, for the human body is the most marvelously constructed machine that the human mind can study. We know that mathematics and geometry are the great keys to universal order, and they are nowhere more evident than in the physical body.

While on the subject of the debt of science to the human body we might add that the decimal system is the result of primitive man’s counting on his fingers, whereby ten became the unit of enumeration. The ancient cubit also was the distance between the elbow and the end of the second finger, or approximately 18 inches. So it goes back through the study of things until we find that nearly everything with which man has surrounded himself is an adaptation from the body with which God surrounded his spirit.

The word Adam, meaning species or type, signifies humanity collectively; that is, the wave of cosmic life that is now flowing through nature in the form of human beings.

The ancients therefore, gave us the concept that the body is a living temple of the living God. Each human body is a sanctuary for a spiritual entity or reality. This body, this temple, has been in various ways corrupted.

We have gradually lost the strength, the vitality, or the incentives to maintain properly this living temple. Most people do not even bother to consider the body a temple. Our attitude toward our own physical structure is almost unbelievable. In the first place, to most individuals the body is merely a servant of the purposes of the will, the mind, and the emotions. The body is merely a kind of animal, which is supposed to draw wagons as horses did, a faithful servant to the pressures that are forced against it.

The body in a sense is analagous to humanity. It gives us an understanding of the relationship of parts to the whole. Within the body of man there are more separate living entities than there are creatures upon the surface of the earth. Not only is this true of human beings, but of every form of life that exists.

Within the human body, however, is a far greater assembly of life than can be found anywhere else. Some of these are so small that we cannot see them. Because they sometimes are born and die within a few hours, and because they are so completely involved in the structures, which they nourish and sustain, we lose sight of the fact that we are not one being alone, but that the human body is a field of evolution for millions and billions of living things.

All of this together and very, very much more, brings me to the final realization that this body is indeed a sacred thing that it has been given to us for a reason, for a purpose.

Live and Learn. We All Do.

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Filed under: Culture, Health and Fitness, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Spirituality Tagged: body is a temple, egypt, health, Hermetic, human body, humanity

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Beauty Itself Is A Universal Medicine

To the old philosophers, the human body itself was a musical instrument.  They believed that it is the musician within the body who must control and direct the impulses which flow outward through the personality.

The universality of music and the importance in the life of man is in many ways analogous to water.  Like water it adapts itself instantly to the shape of its container.  In a square vessel, it is square; in a circular vessel, it is circular.  It may exist in countless forms and several states.  It nourishes and sustains all kinds of internal life.  It nourishes religions, philosophies, and sciences without being identical with any of them.  Like beauty it is forever ministering, enriching, and expanding the potentials of human consciousness.

Music and art have long been closely associated with man’s religious instinct.  The influence of music is more powerful and continuous than that of any other arts because of the factor of repetition.

We may attend a play once or twice, and then have the feeling that we have exhausted its meaning for us.  The same is true of a good book, unless it is one of the scriptural writings or some well-loved classic.  Even then, we grow tired of it and move on to something else.  Most art gallery visitors would not think to return daily to contemplate a certain painting or piece of sculpturing.  Once the symbolism has been impressed upon our mind we are satisfied and seek stimulation elsewhere for further stimulation.  In the case of music, however, the reaction is totally different.

The secret seems to lie in the fact that music is invisible and therefore does not immediately reveal its full significance. Although we hear the same selections on numerous occasions, there is always a difference because in the passing of time and the vicissitudes of living we become different.

The countless changes in our own psychic life cause old music to seem new, and the friendly themes seem to adjust themselves to our immediate requirements.  Thus, music is friendly, lovable, and intimate; and we turn to it both in joy and sorrow and find it forever gracious.

Music is a positive expression of beauty, and beauty itself is a universal medicine.  Even those who do not understand or who do not feel that they have developed appreciation respond to harmony and melody.  It becomes a symbol of a harmonious kind of existence.

Health and beauty are intimately related, and to preserve the first we must cultivate the second.

We talk a lot about the science of living, but now is the time we should think more about the art of living.   It is not the destiny of man that we should compete with machines in hopes of equaling them in mechanised efficiency.  We are capable of a larger concept and a higher destiny and are responsible before God and Nature for the right use of these capacities and powers, particularly our own.

Live and Learn. We All Do.

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Filed under: Culture, Music Tagged: beauty, health, Music, philosophy, Science

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