Wow! The topic picked for this month is HUGE!
The body is such a complicated and mind boggling creation! There is such an amazing interplay between the various organs and systems of the body. Perhaps that is why I love the study of anatomy and physiology so much! I love trying to understand, as once expressed by Einstein, what God was thinking during the creation process. The study of the body, its organs and systems, and how they work together has consumed a great deal of my life, and almost every bit of knowledge and understanding has been a blessing in my life!
The liver is responsible for, to the best of my knowledge, over 500 different functions in the body. (No, I won’t be attempting to describe each one of them here! Rather, I will group them together a bit and try to highlight the most important ones. Most important? Eh.) The most important one, obviously, is the one that is creating havoc in your own life or in the life of someone you love.
IMMUNITY AND IMMUNE BUILDING
Energetic Responses During a Zone Session
I love learning myself! I simply can’t get enough of it on any topic at all . . . AND . . . I am, and have always been a teacher. (I began with my first class of 4-year-olds in a church setting when I was only an eleven-year-old myself! Shortly after that, I was asked to be the music leader in the weekly children’s meeting.) I love writing these newsletters and trying to share with you things that I have found useful in my own life and my years doing Foot Zones. And Butterfly Expressions, LLC is about sharing and educating!
This month’s topic and sale items for the general Butterfly Express, LLC Newsletter are “Immunity and Immune Building”. As Foot Zone therapists, I am making the assumption that each of you understands how critical an understanding of anatomy is to the work you do! I am also assuming that you have made your own study of anatomy and how the Immune System works, so as to enable you to better recognize and understand those things that the feet can reveal about the physical and emotional health of those people you work with.
I have been informed that the majority of you (Foot Zone Therapists) also receive the general Butterfly Express Newsletter. I have gone into quite a lot of detail about the Immune System in that newsletter, and I have also discussed some of the properties of this month’s ‘on sale’ Immune Building products at Butterfly Express, LLC there. I will not be taking the time or space to re-discuss those items here. If you do not get that newsletter sent to you and you are interested, the monthly general Newsletter may be accessed online at ButterflyExpressions.org.
Additional items, more specific and chosen by myself, based on my favorites for possible use during a Foot Zone treatment, will be the topics of this article. I will, however, be including a slightly shorter summation of the General Newsletter here along with a list of those ‘on sale’ items at the end of this article/newsletter. (The promised summary of the Butterfly Expressions General Newsletter can be found at the very end of this article, if you are interested in accessing it that way.)
The Zone, although very ‘energetic’ in nature, brings about real changes in the physical body. Of course, you have all seen both the physical and energetic balancing and healing that the Foot Zone treatment is capable of bringing about! As you can see from the title of this article/newsletter, I will be focusing on energetic responses during a Foot Zone session and how those responses may affect the body’s physical immune system.
Please ponder for a moment what is causing stress in your life. What in your life is ‘stressful’ to you? And, please, consider for a moment that our bodies and our minds are simply not equipped to handle long-term, chronic stress without suffering serious consequences, big and small.
Some people – I wish I were one of them – respond to most situations calmly. They simply handle stress well, with little or no ill effects on their bodies or minds. For these people, stress is not all bad. In small doses and handled properly, stress can even help us accomplish tasks quickly and well.
Can alternative health products such as essential oils, herbal remedies, and Blessed Water/Homeopathic remedies really help us reset our thinking and handle stress more appropriately? I certainly do believe that they can! Some of those remedies are featured in this month’s newsletter. Let’s begin today, however, with a little bit of information about the effects of stress on us physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Why am I taking up time and space to point out to you the long-term effects of stress and to discuss the things that might be stressing each of us out? Because, as I said in the first paragraph, I am hoping you will ponder the stress in your life and take steps to minimize the effects of stress on your health and happiness.
The heart is an incredible muscle—yes, muscle. The amount of work done by the heart each day is almost too incredible to even believe. The body contains approximately six quarts of blood. This blood is pushed through the blood vessels over 1000 times in a day. The heart, incredibly, pumps about 6000 quarts (about 1,500 gallons) of blood in a single day for all the days of one’s life!
There is simply no way that I can cover the complicated workings and anatomy of the heart in this article. (I certainly do try during Foot Zone Therapy classes, as some of you can probably attest, to do my best with pages and pages of information—possibly too much information—in the material provided.
Two systems regulate heart activity. One involves the nerves of the autonomic nervous system and acts as an accelerator and as brakes for the heart rate. The other is the intrinsic conduction system—nodes which are built right into the heart tissue. This system sets the basic rhythm of the heart. For this article, let me stress firmly (very firmly) that when a person is under either physical or emotional stress, the heart works much too hard, pumping faster and more forcefully, in order to make more oxygen and glucose available to the systems of the body. The good news: For people who know how to handle stress more calmly or know how to rest and rejuvenate between periods of stress or hard work, the heart will slow down and beat steadily. This gives the heart a period of rest when the crisis is over.
Stress Cardiomyopathy – Broken Heart Syndrome
A troubled mind may lead to a broken heart in a very literal and physical sense.
Many patients arriving at emergency rooms and doctors’ offices with symptoms of a heart attack have just experienced the death or loss of a loved one. Traumatic experiences such as a car accident or mugging are also recognized as triggers for heart attack-type symptoms.
Intense emotional events can trigger your sympathetic nervous system, unleashing a flood of chemicals. This sudden surge of chemicals can stun the heart’s muscle and leave it temporarily, and sometimes permanently, unable to pump properly. In medical speak, this is referred to as ‘Stress Cardiomyopathy’. Energy workers often refer to this situation as ‘Broken Heart Syndrome’. It is very real!
My point? If we insist on living our lives in real or imaginary stress, we will be increasing, daily, the stress on our hearts.
A second point? Anything that strengthens you emotionally—whether oils, herbs, exercise, faith, or anything else—will benefit your heart. . . and the heart certainly needs all the help that we can give it. Statistically speaking, heart disease of various types is the leading cause of death for both men and women and has been for more than a century!
During sleep, our bodies should be working to support healthy brain function and maintain our physical health.
How is that working for you?
I hope very well! But, if not, I hope something in this article can help you! There are few things in life more frustrating—and more detrimental to our health—than lying awake, so very tired, but unable to sleep. Not getting enough good quality sleep is, however, more than just frustrating because sleep is a very essential function! Without sufficient rest/sleep, it is impossible for a person to be well either physically or emotionally! As you sleep, your body and mind get a chance to recharge. If that ‘recharging’ gets accomplished, you should wake up refreshed, energetic, and alert. If not . . .?
During childhood and into the teenage years, sleep also supports growth and development. Getting inadequate sleep over time increases the risk of chronic (long-term) health problems.
Studies show that when we don’t get quality sleep or enough sleep, our immune system gets disrupted and weakened. This, of course, makes it more likely that we will get sick when we have been exposed to any sort of illness. Our bodies need sleep to fight infections that are passed from one person to the next. Long-term lack of sleep also raises our risk of obesity, diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease.
I could go on and on here, but let’s just get on to possible solutions!
As I have said often and with emphasis over many years, “All drugs have side effects!”
As an introduction to this section on Alternative Pain Management, I am including parts of an “FDA Drug Safety Communication” issued on July 9, 2015. If you wish to read the entire communication (with pages of additional information for patients and consumers and even more information for Health Care Professionals along with a comprehensive Data Summary) I am providing the link to the FDA announcement itself on the U.S Food & Drug Administration’s web page.
This statement certainly is true of the drugs used for pain management, as is illustrated by these statements taken from the FDA website itself. The use of herbs, essential oils, and Blessed Water or Homeopathic remedies is an effective and safe way to manage pain.
The digestive system is a very intricate and complex system. To my mind, it is much like a fragile ecosystem. There is a constant need for balance in the digestive system, just as there is in nature. The balance between the organs and among the different types of healthy bacteria found in the digestive system is absolutely essential to good health. When the digestive system is not working properly, the body becomes either malnourished or toxic. As a result, all the woes of poor nutrition and/or a toxic system eventually show themselves in the overall health of the body and mind.
Due to the many different organs included in the digestive system and their specific roles in the body, there are a lot of essential oils and herbs which have an ability to impact this system and bring about improvements. This month’s newsletter targets only a few of them. (I know from the length of the article that it seems like we surely must have mentioned them all. Not so—but it did feel like that to me as I wrote it.) I hope you find something useful to you or your family in the information I have tried to present here.
The ADRENAL GLANDS, KIDNEYS AND THYROID are super-intelligent organs. When I consider the number one cause of malfunction in these closely related organs, the word that comes to mind is STRESS—especially chronic, seemingly unending types of stress! Stress will, of course, quickly damage the adrenal glands. Since the adrenal glands and the thyroid are in constant communication with each other, malfunction of the thyroid gland is eminent and almost unavoidable.
I love the study of anatomy (where things are placed in the body) and physiology (what their functions are and why they are where they are). Placing those little adrenal glands right on top of the kidneys, makes perfect, beautiful, harmonious sense! Because of their importance to survival, they are placed with each other in a well-protected spot in the body! See the full list of topics.
This is the time of year that I am aching to get out in my yard and get started. Spring cleanup and all the activities of spring can leave you with lots of aches and pains and that is why I decided to focus this month’s blog on aches, pains, and sprains. This is an area where herbs, essential oils, and homeopathics really shine. Some of the things we are going to talk about have been used in my family for over 40 years. These are staples in my home and I hope learning to use them will be a blessing in yours. Thanks for reading.
See the full list of topics.
In May, we will be talking about KIDS AND ESSENTIAL OILS. Essential Oils are such a blessing in the lives of children — and in the lives of those who care for and love them! I can’t imagine raising my family without the blessings of essential oils and other natural remedies. This month we will be talking about some of my favorite oils, herbs, blessed waters, and more. See the full list of topics.