health news, alkaline diet resources & tips to make you happy! do something nice today…

Hi everyone

Just a quick post to officially announce our new look blog! Over the next few weeks and months we’re going to be making a whole heap of changes, modifications and, ultimately, enhancements.

The benefits to you, the reader are:

• Cleaner, easier to read & nicer to look at
• Relevant information, products and offers will be featured in the picture box over there, on the right, giving you easy access to the best that energiseforlife.com has to offer
• FAR superior navigation of the blog, making it easier for you to find the information and resources you need
• Greater community integration with comments and the forum

Let us know what you think and what additions/improvements you would like to see on the blog!

Ross

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Can you use baking soda to make your body alkaline?

This question keeps coming up (most recently in our brand new forum / message board) - but also from customer emails and comments on other posts in the blog. People want to know:

Instead of pH drops or pHour Salts - can I just use normal baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in water to alkalise my body.

This is a big question, which could have a big impact on people who are trying to alkalise and energise themselves and so I’ve gone to a big man (in stature, not size!) to get the answer. Thankfully I’ve got a good working relationship with Dr. Young now and so I went to him with this very question last week. His response was:

Most all sodium bicarbonates on the market contain anti-caking agents which are toxic - such as aliminium. There are 3 other mineral salts (magnesium bicarbonate, potassium bicarbonate, and calcium bicarbonate) which are important and not in other products but in pHour salts.

Why are these other salts important?

Dr Young goes on to say:

A combination of four powerful bicarbonate mineral salts (sodium bicarbonate, magnesium bicarbonate, potassium bicarbonate, and calcium bicarbonate) are anti-oxidant, anti-aging and maintain the alkaline design of the body from both the inside out and the outside in.

These four antioxidant/anti-aging mineral salts are naturally occurring in all fluids of the body. Specifically, they may aid in the reduction of dietary and metabolic acidity helping to maintain the alkaline design of the human, animal or plant body and slowdown or reverse the aging or decay process.

I believe that each of these four salts are all highly alkalising, but each do have a different role in the body. While it is great to get sodium bicarbonate, the power of having all four salts is far greater than just one in isolation.

So in short:

1. Supermarket sodium bicarbonate contains toxins such as aluminium
2. Having a range of salts is far superior to having just one salt

Personally I’m going to continue with the pHour Salts because I’ve had fantastic results so far, including a marked increase in my energy levels, better digestion and clearer skin. I love it!

Want some? Click here for more information on pHour Salts

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I used to suffer from pretty bad acne, right through my teens and into adulthood. Now my skin is absolutely clear. The secret? The foods I eat.

I am absolutely convinced.

I can’t see how it could be related to age or hormones because it was as bad when I was 25 as it was when I was 15. When I was a young lad I used to drink a fair amount (it’s what being young is all about right?) and I never took any notice of what I ate. At uni my diet was atrocious. And so was my skin.

It wasn’t until I became interested in my health that things started to change. And now my skin is clean, clear and fresh!

I don’t just think it is a case of sugary sweets are bad for your skin, but a more holistic effect.

And lo and behold, I do think that it is tied into the whole acid/alkaline balance. I think that when we live an acidic lifestyle (lots of bad foods such as sweets, sugar, trans and saturated fats, refined foods, meat, dairy, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, no exercise, burgers, chips, pasta, breads and yeasts etc) we overly tax our systems and the build up of acidity in our cells wreaks havoc on our body.

I’ve explained before, and this is a simple way of putting it - just as our body HAS to maintain a certain temperature and will do ANYTHING to achieve that, our blood and cells also HAVE to remain slightly alkaline at around 7.3-7.4 on the pH scale. When we throw acids in it will draw alkaline ‘buffers’ from other areas of the body to try and neutralise the acids (calcium, magnesium, potassium are all alkaline minerals the body robs from other areas of our system to do this). The acids turn into and create yeasts, harmful microforms, mycotoxins, bacteria, mold and more nasties. They feed off each other, feed each other and the whole thing forms a vicious cycle.

In such a state of toxicity, our body only has a few ways to get this out: through the lymphatic system (when overly taxed can cause lymphoma), our waste (when overly taxed can lead to massive toxicity in our colon and intestines, with cancer being another of the main symptoms of this) and through our skin - with skin disorders such as eczema, psoriasis, rosecea and acne being the by-product of this.

Since I’ve been alkalising I’ve had such clear skin. I’m not going to list the foods to eat for clear skin here, check this link, but 4 litres of alkaline water with powdered greens certainly helps no end.

I also thing getting a proper and regular amount of omega 3 into my diet has been a MASSIVE help. Omega 3 is SO important in SO MANY areas of our health, but is especially good for our skin and achieving clear skin is certainly easier with proper omega 3 supplementation.

I use, and massively recommend Udos Choice Oil. But then so does everyone, because it is simply the best oil supplement on the market by a long, long way.

So there you go - if you want clear skin, you HAVE to eat right and supplement right with healthy, beneficial oils.

If you think this might be hard for then you might want to sign up to our free alkaline diet course. We hold your hand over a number of weeks to take all of the hard work away. And yes, it is FREE.

Clear skin could be just around the corner…

PS. Oh, OK. This post is just not actionable enough. I get that. OK, here are my top 5 tips for clear skin from my own experience:

1. Eat Alkaline: make 70% of the food you eat fresh, green, high water content. At every meal try to be at least 70% alkaline and at least 30% raw. Think giant salads with every meal. Think steamed veggies, with lemon and olive oil poured over. Think avocado & tomato. YUM!
2. Drink Up: make sure you are drinking up to 4 litres of good quality water daily. Makes such a massive difference to your energy, but also does wonders for your skin as it allows your body to flush toxins out much more easily (rather than forcing them through your pores)
3. Supplement: green drink, omega oils, pH drops, alkaline salts and probiotics are all on my must have list every day, especially the greens and the oils.
4. Juice Baby: drinking a fresh green veggie juice in the morning gives my body its minimum quota of daily vegetables before I’ve even left the house!
5. Cut Out the Crap: you know it is bad for you anyway, but the more acids you throw in the more toxins your body has to deal with and squeeze out. It just makes sense

So there you have it. NOW clear skin is just around the corner…and it’s not just about food.

[edit] I just found a great little article by Dr Greg Emerson on diet and skin, particularly focusing on the right foods to eat for great, clear skin

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Hello

I haven’t done this for a while, and I wondered what was missing from my blogging life! Blogging means different things to different people, but to me it is all about connecting, sharing and learning. I used to post a round up of different blogs and posts I found interesting or fun every Thursday and I made so many connections with people, many of whom I still keep in touch with now.

So I am starting it back up. I know I got busy before, but there is no excuse for ever stopping really.

So here we go - the return of the THDBR!

• Shelly at Be Naturally Well has launched a cracker of a blog. True to what I was saying above about connecting, I found her through her leaving a really insightful comment here. The post I have linked to caught my attention, because we share the same sentiment. It is about not defaulting to the doctors surgery at the first sign of illness. I personally find that so many doctors, regardless of the symptoms just prescribe antibiotics or painkillers. Putting these chemicals into our body may quickly eradicate symptoms but they are also so bad for us and wouldn’t it be better to treat the cause rather than the symptom?
• Barry Groves, author of a very interesting looking book (must buy a copy) has written a post that kind of supports my views, whilst not supporting them at the same time! Either way, it piqued my interest! In this blog post he discusses the danger of eating fruit in terms of fructose having a high correlation to increased risk of heart attack, which is a concern I didn’t really touch on in my (almost) controversial post Don’t Eat Fruit.

  However, he does give some dissin’ to the alkaline/acid theory, but I can forgive him that. I have no idea where he is sourcing his info, and from the post I would presume it is from one of the misleading, frustrating sites out there that list sugary fruits as alkaline forming. Great post though Barry.

• Dr Robert Young, the father of alkalising, has launched his own blog since I stopped THDBR-ing, and so of course he gets a mention! He is a prolific poster, but the one that caught my eye this week was about the toxicity related to home and body care products. Have a read, it’s scary and eyeopening. This is an area I’ve been looking more and more into since meeting my girlfriend and I’ve transitioned onto using only natural goats milk soap and natural shampoos, ecofriendly, non-toxic cleaning products and am going to get my mercury fillings removed asap! It’s so easy to change and it makes a massive difference.
• Steve Pavlina, personal development blogging guru, is on another mission. After his experiments into polyphasic sleeping and raw food this time he is going for the big one - a 92 day juice feast. This is going to be SO interesting. He’s up to day 5 now so keep posted. I’m going to write a review/preview/give feedback to this approach over the next couple of days. It will be really interesting to see how he goes and the changes that happen to his body. I have my hypothesis, but you’ll have to wait for my blog post…
• And finally, I found this ’sweet’ post by Diana about the risk of kids (and adults) consuming too much sugar over Hallowe’en. She posts that kids often consume up to 40 teaspoons of extra sugar in that one night! She also interviews a five year old about the issue!

That’s my round-up! I’ve eased myself back in, but as before and as always if you’ve found or posted something interesting then let me know in the comments - I’d love to hear from you!

Ross

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We know that living alkaline increases your energy, vitality and wellness, but I must admit that this recent news caught my eye. I had seen recent research showing that increasing alkalinity was improving the performance of athletes (speed-based sports in particular) but I must admit my surprise at finding that a huge number of athletes at the Beijing Olympics were turning to alkalising to increase their performance.

And that alkalising was more effective than performance enhancing drugs!

A study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine (June 2008) has shown that by increasing the pH of the blood (with alkaline salts) elite swimmers were able to significantly improve their performance times.

The explanation for this sits exactly with the acid/alkaline balance theory in that by increasing the body’s alkaline buffer, the athlete’s body was able to more easily deal with the acid build up caused by the fast burst of energy consumption. Dr Folland, who led the study (alongside Dr’s Lindh, Peyrebrune, Ingham and Bailey) found that over 200m freestyle, the athletes who alkalised their blood with the salts took 1.5 seconds off their time.

In a second study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise in May 2008 found that 800m runners benefitted ‘significantly‘, alongside ‘favorable blood changes and individual benefits‘.

This is really exciting news for me, because I love to see this theory receiving not only the focus it deserves in the scientific community (yes, actual proof for all of those who have been asking for peer reviewed research in accredited journals), but it also shows this spilling over into mainstream sports and nutrition.

And it all seems to be snowballing. During the past twelve months I have seen:

• We worked closely at the beginning of the year with a top sports nutritionist who represents Leicester Tigers, Bolton Wanderers and the UK Olympic Team who had been using green drinks and the alkaline principles to encourage peak performance.
• We also learned that Amir Khan has been using green drinks and alkalising principles as part of his nutrition and training programme!

• Top football nutritionist, Antonio Escribano, has transformed the diets of football clubs including Tottenham and Spanish sides Sevilla, Xerez, Murcia and Deportivo La Coruna, as well as bullfighters, models, dancers, marathon, triathletes and many other sporting stars. His nutritional programme is based around juiced green vegetables and green smoothies, while cutting out simple carbs, sugar and other crap!

And these are just a few examples.

But the research that is starting to emerge around the benefits of maintaining an alkaline balance is really exciting. We’ve been hearing more and more about the benefits of alkaline salts for a while now and Dr Young has only recently created a specific alkaline salt product called pHour Salts.

As someone who runs, lifts and plays a bit of sport myself, it is great news to hear that this is getting mainstream attention!

What are you thoughts? Will you be alkalising your body and supplementing with salts before your next big game?

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It’s back! The world’s most authoritative alkaline diet forum is bigger, better, faster and more slick looking than ever before!

After a LOT of issues with spam, we’ve changed provider, redesigned, upped security and are ready to rock and roll once again.

What the forum gives you (i.e. why you should care!):

• The opportunity to learn more about alkalising and natural health
• The chance to ask questions - and get personalised answers from the Energise team
• The feelgood factor of helping others by answering their questions!
• The change to connect with our growing community and chat to likeminded people

The doors have only been reopened for a few days but we’re getting new members all of the time.

If nothing else then just stop by and get that alkaline diet question answered that you’ve been thinking about for so long!

I look forward to seeing you there!

Sign up now and start learning

Ross

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Sounds outlandish, I know. But it is true. If you are serious about alkalising your body then you simply have to cut fruit from your diet.

The reason?

Fruit is absolutely packed with sugar. While I understand that it also contains fibre, vitamins, phytonutrients etc. the sheer amount of sugar that fruit contains means that this a worthwhile trade off.

The Problem with Sugar (and a quick crash course on why an acidic lifestyle is so bad)

In the same way that our body will do whatever it has to in order to maintain a temperature of 37 degrees, it will go to similar lengths to maintain a pH level of 7.365 for our internal cells, particularly the blood.

The modern Western diet of meats, dairy, fizzy drinks, chips, chocolate, candy, alcohol, coffee, pizza, pasta, bread etc has a massively acidic effect on the body. Such an acidic lifestyle puts incredible stress and strain on the body as it has to constantly fire-fight to keep this pH level of 7.365.

This not only takes up a MASSIVE amount of our energy (remember how you feel after Christmas dinner or a huge takeaway meal?) but it also uses up the alkaline minerals (buffers) in our body including calcium, potassium, magnesium and sodium. This in turn leads to so many health issues it is unreal.

These acid-forming foods and drinks also lead to the creation of yeasts, bacteria and mold in our blood. In addition, the acids that are created and consumed in our modern lifestyle also ferment the blood and create harmful by-products, toxins and alcohols, which then further destroy our internal environment.

With more acid, more toxins are created, the pH is lowered, the bacteria and yeast grows, becomes mold, and a vicious cycle begins.

And what’s more - these harmful bacteria, yeast and mold actually feed off the nutrients you consume! But that is not all! The waste products they leave behind also act as their food, meaning that rapid multiplication takes place!

So when we consume sugar it sends our body into turmoil. Consuming sugar is like throwing petrol onto a fire. It rapidly fuels this cycle, compounding the problem and placing an insane amount of stress on the body.

I’ve written about this before and a number of questions and concerns often arise, but the question that comes up most frequently is this:

But sugar from fruit is different isn’t it? Fructose is ok, right?

Nope. Sugar is sugar is sugar. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, it still wreaks havoc with the acid/alkaline balance of the body. Whether it is from fructose, sucrose, an apple, honey or a piece of chocolate cake, the sugar still has the same devastating effect. How quickly or slowly the body metabolises different sugars may have an effect on your energy levels (in terms of how quickly the peaks and troughs will follow one another) but makes no difference to the fact that the sugar ferments and fuels these harmful microforms in exactly the same way.

So stop eating fruit! It is plain to see that sugar is incredibly harmful, and fruit is packed full of it. And as for fruit juice? Fresh or not, fruit juice is simply highly concentrated fruit! But without the fibre! It is the same problem multiplied by twenty. DO NOT DRINK FRUIT JUICE!

Sure, if it is the choice between an apple and a Mars bar then go for the apple, because you’re at least getting some goodness. But better still, give yourself better choices so you don’t have to go for the lesser of two evils! (wow, five years ago I never would have thought I would be calling fruit ‘evil’!)

Is any fruit OK?

Yes! There are a handful of low-sugar fruits that are great for you! Tomato, avocado, lemon, lime and grapefruit are all alkalising and full of goodness. And before anyone asks about how lemons and limes can be alkalising - the answer is simple: it is the effect the food has on the body, not whether it is acid or alkaline in it’s natural state. The reason lemons and limes have an alkalising effect is because they are not only high water content and low sugar content, but they also contain high amounts of alkaline minerals (potassium in particular).

I hope this makes sense. As ever, leave any questions below. This post will have been a shock to a few people, especially given how many alkaline food charts I see on the Internet with fruits listed as alkaline (alongside maple syrup and honey, so not the most trustworthy). But it really is down to sugar, and we all know that sugar is really not so good for us.

In my next post I’ll give some tips on how to transition away from fruit, but for now please treat it as a treat and nothing more than that!

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Hi everyone

I’ve literally just managed to get the comments fixed, delete (by hand) the 18000+ spam comments and approve the good comments from the last three months.

And boy, there were some really great comments left. I sincerely apologise to everyone who took the time to leave me a message. Some of them are amazing and really heartwarming. Thank you.

I will get around to answering all of them as soon as I possibly can.

Thanks again, Ross

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Or at least, that’s the way it looks.

I know we’ve been hearing it from the event organisers for YEARS, but this time I think it really is true. Usually it is announced by the organisers at each UPW and I’ve always taken it as a bit of a sales pitch for the next event (oh, so the next one is the last one is it? Better get me some tickets then).

But having worked with the guys that promote UPW in Europe for a couple of years I am absolutely certain that this is the real deal. The promoters in Australia are also saying the same over there and I had never known them to cry wolf on this before…

The other thing that confirmed it for me was hearing Tony talk at Date with Desitny in Australia this past April about how knackered his throat is. He could hardly talk at times and looked in pain, and lets be honest, he has been doing this stuff for a looooong time now and probably deserves to chill for a while.

So what now?!

I know I am personally gutted that I didn’t go to more UPW’s in the last couple of years because it looks like I’d have to go to the USA to go to another now.

BUT…on the plus side (change of state there!) there are still some kick-ass events coming up. The first of which is UPW: The Next Step. This event looks like a lot of fun and I know that the UK-based Energise guys are pretty pumped about going.

Its a 3 day seminar run by Joseph McClendon III (remember him? He is the awesome, enthusiastic guy who runs day 4 of UPW).

We have managed to snag a handful of tickets to offer Energise customers (because we’ve always done a good job for the promoters over here) so here are some more details if you are interested in it.

I think it looks like a great weekend and is bound to be heaps of fun. If I were in the UK I would be there in a flash! At Date with Destiny I definitely appreciated the smaller crowd and the more hands-on, exercise led approach of these Mastery University events and The Next Step follows in this vein. I believe there are only 1,500 attendees and when you consider that UPW is nearly 12,000 it is quite a difference!

It is also pretty interesting in that it is applying Tony’s technologies to areas such as The Law of Attraction and The Secret so it is all new material and pretty groundbreaking stuff.

So while I’m still pretty gutted that Tony is finally winding down, I am so happy to see that not only Joseph, but Tony’s other Master Trainers such as Joe Williams are leading events across Europe and Australia. Joe was absolutely amazing at Date with Destiny - and apart from Tony himself, I have never seen someone with the ability to get a crowd so pumped. If you get a chance to see Joe (he does Wealth Mastery and is also doing a number of Presentation Training events in Oz) then definitely do so. He’s a cool guy!

So anyway, every cloud has a silver lining. And who knows, after a recovery year or five Tony might be back…but in the mean time lets keep on taking things to the next level!

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Hey all

Purely by chance I have recently discovered how shockingly dangerous mercury fillings are and I wanted to share this with you all straight away. I’m only just really researching into this and am taking steps to have my mercury fillings looked at and almost definitely removed.

This video does the talking far more effectively than I ever could, so take a look:

I have spoken with someone who had their fillings removed without the necessary procedures and their health suffered dramatically so I would strongly recommend researching your dentist choice for a specialist who has all of the correct equipment and who specialises in this procedure.

I am heading down this path now so will keep you updated with my findings!

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Hey, we’ve been experiencing untold problems with the site/wordpress/spam and all sorts of other goings on. But we’re back!

Hold tight for the Energise Blog 2.0 (supercharged)

p.s. thanks for the emails of support and encouragement while we’ve been away!

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