Why Moms Should Quit Drinking

If you are a mom you should quit drinking, not because you are a drunk but because it is bad for women. Alcohol is an activity that is completely acidic in nature.
I am not suggesting you quit alcohol altogether unless it is a problem. There are many studies out now that suggest that we derive some health benefits from moderate drinking—to the heart, the nerves, to easing self-consciousness. Drinking does help us manage stress and can help us socialize and break the ice with the opposite sex.
However it is also unhealthy in many ways as it impairs our judgment and slows down our cognitive responses. In slightly higher amounts it can land us in situations that we’d never put up with if we were sober.
Drinking alcohol can also lead us down a fairly slippery slope, where that glass or two of wine a few times a week becomes a glass or two every day without our noticing, and pretty soon we become addicted.
Alcohol abuse can interfere with the brain’s chemical messengers, specifically the neurotransmitters serotonin, GABA (gammaaminobutyricacid), and dopamine. When you mess with these transmitters it affects our moods, our ability to think clearly, and the signals the brain sends to the body. It’s not a stretch to say that how our neurotransmitters are functioning affects how we experience the world and ourselves. We suffer from distorted thinking and bad moods.
Serotonin affects our emotions, memory, appetite, body temperature and endocrine regulation. Dopamine is involved with feelings of pleasure and reward. GAB A is involved in memory and cognitive functioning. Alcohol affects all of these factors in a negative way.
Alcohol can also be hard on our metabolism. Metabolism is the process by which the substances we eat and drink are converted into other compounds, less toxic than the original, some more.
As our bodies treat alcohol as a toxin, a poison to be purged (because, for your liver, that’s exactly what it is.) It is detoxified and removed from the blood through the process of oxidation. The liver is where most of the metabolism takes place.
However the liver can metabolize alcohol more slowly than the body absorbs it into the bloodstream so a certain amount nearly always affects the body and the brain.
Curiously, alcohol does not raise your blood sugar level in and of itself it will actually lower it. What does raise our blood sugar level is the carbohydrates in booze.
Your liver treats the alcohol like a toxin and goes about the detoxification process whenever it is in your body. It puts off releasing glycogen until it is complete. This process leads to hypoglycemia.
Alcohol causes stress-related issues in the body as well. One way is by raising cortisol levels. Cortisol is the 'stress hormone,” and elevated levels of it can destabilize blood sugar levels and also add fat to the body.
Alcohol also depletes vitamins and B12 as well as folic acid—nutrients the body needs to cope with stress—and can interfere with REM sleep, leaving you less rested than when you wake up in the morning.
When you take a break from alcohol your body is again able to recover from stress on its own without artificial stimulation. You are able to keep dopamine in balance so your brain isn’t always craving a drink to temporarily elevate its levels.
The fact is, if given the chance, the brain has an amazing capacity to read just neurotransmitter levels and effectiveness all by itself but only if you stop alcohol.
Also, by reducing the toxin load when you quit drinking, you give your liver the opportunity to regenerate itself (unless it has already experienced serious scarring—cirrhosis—from heavy drinking).
If you steer clear of alcohol for twenty one days your body will reset and find its own balance again.
If you’ve been avoiding wine, beer, and spirits. Here’s what you can enjoy:
• Sparkling water with a twist of lemon or lime or a bit of unsweetened pomegranate, grape or blueberry juice
• Any kind of chilled herbal tea served in a festive glass
• Good, old-fashioned water with a lemon, lime or tangerine slice
If you do drink, say for a special occasion like your birthday try having that glass of white wine with some sparkling water. Diluted alcohol is best.

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Holistic Healing Through Diet

Holistic treatments address and approach all the parts that make up “the whole” person. This includes the physical body, mental body, emotional body soul, and spirit. It is about getting to the root cause of what causes illness and more often than not the root cause is diet.
You might want to investigate this type of theory if you have a sick kid. I know that I have had luck healing my son's asthma by paying attention to this kind of thing.
All disease results from cellular dysfunction. Either the cell suffers from a deficiency of vital nutrients such as – vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, and phytonutrients from fresh foods or toxicity from exposure to the wrong foods and toxic environmental factors like lead and mercury.
Making lousy food choices, such as eating overly acidic foods like refined and processed flour and sugar and dairy and meat can throw our body's pH balance way out of whack!
This acidity leads to toxicity and inflammation and eventually to degeneration and breakdown of the body’s function and thus energy and vitality. The result is the opposite of 'ease' – what naturopaths call 'dis-ease.'
Healing happens we address our lives and make changes. A primary philosophy I live and practice by is this, “How we feel and look is a result of how we live.'
This means that if we want to look and feel better, something needs to change.” Changing our lifestyle habits so they are healthier is the best idea.
Unfortunately Western medicine humors our desire to refuse to change. We petrify and stagnate when we try to control our physical, mental and emotional symptoms with drugs rather than try to get to the underlying root cause.
We can only cure ourselves by making big lifestyle changes. These changes typically have to do with lifestyle – what we choose to eat, how we think and the stresses we have, our quality of sleep, how we exercise and move our body, and our attitudes toward our self and our life.
When it comes to keeping your health and sanity, it all boils down to respecting your body by choosing foods that nourish you and provide your cells with optimum nourishment. You will stay fit, get proper sleep and discover ways to handle emotions and stresses.
Change will not happen unless you embrace the idea. We are only complete when our body, mind, and heart are healed, conscious, connected, and whole again.
Keep in mind that you don't have to do all of this overnight. Just try to take on step forward for every step backwards and you will feel much healthier.

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