Three Weeks to Thinner Thighs: Exercise Optional!

Dr. Anne Dunev, PhD CN

Without starving yourself, without diet pills or gimmicks, even without exercise, it is possible to have thinner, smoother thighs in three weeks. That is plenty of time to get in shape for swimsuit season.

The rules must be followed strictly and will require some change in your diet. There is no free lunch, after all. The good news is that, not only will you lose inches; you will feel better and look better.

You will be able to follow this regimen any time you want to lose a few inches or a few pounds. Or you can make these rules part of your life-style and continue to lose weight and improve your health long-term.

There are 10 rules to follow.

1) Drink two glasses of good water (filtered, or spring water) every morning when you first get up, before you do anything else.
2) Drink at least eight more glasses of water throughout the day. Drink an extra glass of water for every cup of coffee, black or green tea that you consume. One cup of coffee or black or green tea per day. Herbal tea is allowed in any amount. No other beverages are allowed.
3) Eliminate all grains, except for ½ cup of brown rice allowed per day. That means no bread, oat products, cakes or pastries, or pasta of any kind. No corn or soy products, including tofu. Read food labels!!
4) Eliminate all sugar or sugar products, except for whole fruit. Stevia is allowed. Stevia is made from a South American plant and is considered a herb. It tastes sweet, but contains no sugar and no calories. Avoid all artificial sweeteners, including Splenda. No corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup. No alcohol of any kind.
5) Eat four servings of protein per day. A serving is 3-4 ounces (about the size of your fist). Eggs, chicken, fish and meat poached, broiled or grilled allowed.
6) Eat unlimited amounts of vegetables, steamed or raw.
7) Eat half as much fruit as vegetables. For example, if you eat 6 cups of vegetables, eat 3 cups of fruit. No juice allowed, only whole fruit.
8) Eat two tablespoons of oil per day, made into salad dressing, or over vegetables or fish/chicken/meat . Virgin olive oil, raw coconut oil, unrefined nut oils, or flax seed oil only. Vinegar or lemon juice may be added to the oil for salad dressing. Herbs and spices may be used for flavoring. You may use a sprinkle of sea salt-be very sparing. No butter or mayonnaise. No nuts or nut butters.
9) Avoid all dairy products—milk, cheese, yogurt, cream. The exception is whey protein, which you can use, along with water and fruit, to make protein shakes. You may also use egg white protein powder. If you need the smoothie sweeter, use Stevia. For a frosty smoothie, add ice.
10) Enjoy what you are eating. This is a “real food” regimen and your body will thank you. The processed, chemical foods most Americans eat are an invitation to chronic disease, so this is an opportunity for your body to get much-needed nutrients. Try to eat organic food, if possible.

Eat often; do not let yourself get hungry. This regimen will keep your blood sugar stable so that you will feel satisfied, as long as you eat every 3 hours. This program is not about calories. Eat until you are satisfied, sticking to the allowed foods. Keep a log of all that you eat and take note of your energy and moods. If you notice that your energy dips at certain times of day, have a snack ready so your blood sugar does not dip. You may find that you are not as tired in the afternoon when you stop eating bread for lunch!

Try lettuce wraps to substitute for sandwiches. Many delis and restaurants will make lettuce wraps, if you ask. Mustard is okay, but no ketchup, as it contains sugar.

Measure your waist and thighs before you start. Then measure every week. You should notice that your thighs will not only shrink, but will become smoother. This is a great way to eliminate some cellulite.

Although exercise is optional, you will increase the results if you do exercise. Walking as briskly as possible for 30-45 minutes four to five times a week will help. Yoga, Pilates and other forms of stretching are also good choices.

You may add fish oil supplements and pro-biotics. I don’t recommend synthetic or “horse pill” type multi-vitamins. Many do not even break down in the body, but make a great liner for a septic tank. (Just ask someone in the business.) Look for food source vitamins if you decide to supplement.

At the end of three weeks, you will be less bloated, thinner and feel better in general. Your palate will change and you will have fewer cravings.

If you want to continue to lose weight and inches, you can stay on this regimen for as long as you like. If you want to maintain, use this regimen as your base. Then have occasional indulgences. Pick one day per week to have pasta, or bread or dessert.

If you fall off the wagon for any reason during the three weeks, start this regimen again the following day. Remember it takes about three days to lose the craving for sweets. The good news is that the longer you avoid sugar, the less you will crave it. You will need to plan ahead and carry food with you during the day when you are away from home so that you don’t find yourself starving and the only food available is donuts or fast food.

This sounds more difficult than it is. Many people have told me they did not think there was any way they could follow this and were surprised to find how good they felt. Other benefits were skin blemishes clearing up and better sleep.

Good luck and let me know how you do!

Who Needs the Brothers Grimm When We Have Teen Screen

Anne Dunev, PhD
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a town called Edendale that had many little children. The children were very happy. They liked to run and play and giggle and tell stories, much like children have always done.

The parents of Edendale were very busy people. They had jobs to go to, and houses to run, and bills to pay, for the King demanded many taxes and the parents wanted a good life for their happy children.

Then one day a stranger came to town. He was dressed in a white coat, but his heart was black. He said that he was a new kind of doctor from the big University. He said that he was an expert in children’s development and had come to examine all the children of Edendale.

At first the parents of Edendale were skeptical about the stranger in the white coat. Their children were doing fine, they said. Look how happy and active they are. Their cheeks glow, their hair is shiny, they all read and write. They are normal children.

Oh no, said the stranger. I have observed your children. They gaze out the window during lessons. They lose their pencils and they run and skip far too much for their own good. They love their parents and they prefer to sing and dance rather than sit still. They have sick brains and sick minds. Every child must be tested! Immediately!

The stranger threatened the Head Master that he would lose his job if the children were not tested. A new Head Master from the capital could be found. So the Head Master told the parents that the children would not be allowed to attend school unless they had the tests.

The stranger brought in a group of testers who also wore white coats. One by one the children were interviewed. “Do you ever feel that other children don’t like you?” was one question. “Do you feel nervous about getting up and speaking in front of a group?” was another. “Do your parents ever have arguments at home?” “Have you ever felt sad?”

Many of the children answered yes to some of these questions. When their friends moved away or their pets died, they sometimes did feel sad. And sometimes they did get nervous in front of a group. And, even in Edendale, sometimes the parents had arguments. The tester marked with a big red pen and one by one the children who answered yes were taken to a little office. You are mentally ill, the stranger in the white coat said. You must be put in a special hospital. I want to see my mother and father, each child said. All in good time, when you are better, said the stranger in the white coat.

And many of the brightest and most dynamic children were taken away, locked up in a hospital far away from Edendale.

When the children did not come home from school, their parents went to find them. They asked the Head Master where are the children? The Head Master had no answer. The children had been taken by the man in the white coat.

The parents drove to the hospital. “Why have you taken our children?” they asked the stranger in the white coat. “Your children have an illness in their brains,” he told them. You must pay for their drugs and treatment and we will tell you when they are well enough to go home.

“We have never heard of brain illness before,” said the parents. How do you know our children have it? “We are doctors, so we know,” said the stranger in the white coat. He did not tell them that the only diagnosis was the way the children had answered their test questions.

In the days that followed it was very quiet in Edendale. There was no more laughter heard in the schoolyard, or in the neighborhoods. The children did not run and call to each other to come and play games. The children were afraid to make too much noise, or they might be taken away, too.

The stranger in the white coat stood once again outside the school and observed the children wandering listlessly at recess, or sitting, alone, on the benches. And for the first time he smiled, a very tiny smile.

***

A fairytale? Like the ones the Brothers Grimm gathered in Europe in the 1800’s that formed the basis for Western children’s literature? After all, we have rights and we would be protected from doctors who would diagnose psychiatric disorders from a questionnaire. But this is exactly what has happened to many kids and teenagers. The test is called TeenScreen, and it is part of a “mental health initiative” called The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, established by President George Bush in 2002. Its mission — to test all American school children. In one school in New York, 50% of the kids were found by this test to be “at risk.” The treatment? Psychotropic drugs that carry the all too real risks of suicide, suicidal ideation, homicide and homicidal ideation. Ideation means forming thoughts and ideas about it. And some American kids, after being tested, have been taken straight from school, without their parents’ knowledge or consent, to psychiatric facilities for treatment. If you think this could not happen here, please see http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/453/52/
For more information, go to www.ablechild.org and http://www.teenscreentruth.com/.

If you think you are safe because you are past high school, read all about the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. The real goal is to test everyone, from cradle to nursing home. Call it a Brave New World.

Try Catching a Few ZZZ's to Stop Catching Colds

Anne Dunev, PhD
Turns out there was something else your mother was right about. You should get more rest to prevent yourself from getting sick.

As printed in the Daily Dose by Dr. William Douglas researchers from Carnegie Mellon University actually performed a study, which they claim is the first to show that getting less than seven to eight hours of sleep every night makes you more apt to catch the common cold.

The results of the study claim that getting less than seven hours of sleep each night can make you three times more likely to catch a cold. And if you sleep restlessly, that makes you five times more susceptible.

Americans are sleeping approximately 20% less than they did 100 years ago. “Our biology has not changed by 20 percent. It’s our lifestyles that have changed,” according to Adam Moscovitch, a sleep researcher with the Canadian Institute of Sleep Medicine in Calgary, as quoted in the Denver Post.

The risks associated with sleep deprivation may be more serious — and deadly — than a few missed days from work due to a cold. People who didn’t sleep for 20 hours drove as poorly as those with blood alcohol of 0.08 percent, the legal limit for driving in Colorado.

Think about that the next time someone veers into your lane or cuts you off in traffic. If one or both of you is sleep deprived, your judgment may be dangerously impaired.

And you might consider asking how well your doctor has been sleeping recently.

Three days after a sleepless night on call, medical residents still performed poorly on simple tests.

Going without sleep can be pure torture. Just ask the ancient Romans who used tormentum vigilae (waking torture) to extract information from their enemies. The KGB, Japanese Army and various other assorted “bad guys” have used sleep deprivation as torture. Menachim Begin, former Prime Minister of Israel, described his experience, “In the head of the interrogated prisoner, a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep… Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it.” Of course, the “good guys” may have resorted to this type of torture at times, as well. “It is such a standard form of torture that basically everybody has used it at one time or another,” says Andrew Hogg, of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.

True sleeplessness produces irritability and impaired function in the short term, but will induce psychosis, including delusions, paranoia and hallucinations, if continued night after night. Is your teen-ager getting enough sleep? The pineal gland, which governs sexual development is also the producer of melatonin and responsible for day/night cycles.

How much sleep should you be getting? The average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep each night to be fully rested. 39 percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep each weeknight, and more than one in three are so sleepy during the day that it interferes with their function and activities.

Why do we sleep? As a Naturopath and practitioner of energy medicine, I consider sleep a time to recharge our batteries. Our bodies are like bio-electric cars, and they need to be “plugged in” to get enough juice to run all day long. In Chinese medicine it is understood that the organs are active at night and may use the “down-time” of sleep for repair and routine detoxification. In fact, one of the first things I check, when someone consults me about sleep difficulties, is the need for a liver or gall bladder detox. Waking after 2:00 a.m. with worries that keep you tossing and turning are a symptom of this.

Hypothyroid or hypoadrenals may be another physiological reason why sleep is evasive. Feelings of depression or anxiety are commonly symptoms of endocrine problems or imbalances.

Artists and entertainers have a tendency to burn the midnight oil. So do web surfers and Shopping Network browsers. Electricity lit the way to the modern world. But our bodies have changed little since we were hunter-gatherers. We still need the same vital nutrients; air, water, food from nature. And sleep. Dreaming optional.

Secrets to Avoiding Winter Flu Blues

Anne Dunev, PhD CN
I was amazed at how many people were down with the flu over the last month. We live in Los Angeles, and many of our friends headed for the shores of Florida or the mountains of Colorado. Expecting glowing reports of lazy days on the beach, or blissful hours schussing down the mountains, instead we heard glum descriptions of being bed-ridden with fever, aches and congestion.

It is common knowledge that wintertime is flu season. The Holidays produce extra stress, from close encounters with family and in-laws with the attendant emotional issues, to extra doses of sugar and fat that stretch the boundaries of the waist-line and suppress the immune system further. Add traveling across time zones, which taxes the adrenal glands, dealing with the TSA, and being packed into airplanes with other coughing, sneezing and stressed out folk, and small wonder some succumb to nasty viruses.

I just received some interesting and useful data on avoiding the winter flu blues from one of my favorite health newsletters, produced by the Health Sciences Institute.

Studies indicate it is not the cold of winter that causes an increase in flu, but the lowered humidity. Remember that we have flu viruses around us all the time. They are opportunistic little buggies that only take hold when the internal “environment” of the body allows them to dig in. That helps explain why some people catch everything and others seem to be blessed.

So, using a humidifier in bedrooms in the winter may be your best weapon against the flu. Traveling across country or just around town? You might try a little added moisture touched to the edge of the nostrils. My favorite choice is Egyptian Magic Cream (available at Health Food Stores, my office in Burbank or online.) Egyptian Magic Cream is made of olive oil, bee pollen and propolis, and Royal Jelly and can be used as a skin cream for hydration or skin conditions — very soothing and healing. I much prefer it to petroleum jelly, which is an oil industry by-product.

Here are some other natural remedies to try. Author of Vermont Country Medicine, Dr. D.C. Jarvis, suggests apple cider vinegar (make it organic) and honey at the first sign of a sniffle. Mix a spoonful of the cider vinegar and a bit of honey in a cup of warm water and drink as a healthy toddy that changes the acid/alkaline balance of the body and can stop a virus in its tracks. May promote restful sleep, also.

Put a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in each ear. Lay the head to one side and allow to bubble down in for a few minutes-then switch to the other ear. Some German doctors think that flu and cold viruses may enter the sinuses through the ear canal. The hydrogen peroxide will also soften wax. Don’t forget to be careful about sticking anything in the ear. Just twist a tissue and gently wipe out as needed.

For some people Oscillococcinium by Boiron, the French homeopathic company, is a lifesaver. Homeopathy means “like treating with like” and is made from tiny doses of plant and biological remedies. It can be very effective and I have used it with great success in my practice. You must use Oscillococcinium at the first sign of the flu, but it can knock the virus out before it has a chance to set up housekeeping.

Speaking of setting up house-keeping, viruses seem to linger when the liver/gall bladder is congested. I often treat liver/gall bladder in my practice when a cold or flu hits and patients want a quick recovery. I can usually move a virus through the body in record time, by doing some soft-tissue work on the liver and gall bladder. You can try massaging the area on the right side below and under the ribs. Also, liver/gall bladder supplements may help, such as the herb Milk Thistle and the B Vitamin Choline (best brand is Standard Process® — I love this product.) Avoid sugar and dairy products for the duration. Sugar may suppress the immune system for as long as four hours. The immune system is in action when the white blood cells attack bacteria and viruses and, like living Pac Men, actually surround and ingest the microbes. See the action here.

Flu shot or not? Guess what the side effects of the flu shot are? Achy muscles, congestion, fever and flu-like symptoms. Hmm, seems like that is just what we are trying to avoid. Here is the problem with the flu vaccine. No one can predict what the next flu virus will be- we can’t even make educated guesses, because there is no pattern. Viruses mutate at a rapid rate. That is why they seldom kill us- and only if the body is in greatly weakened state. A virus attacks healthy cells and takes over the cell’s replication process to create more virus cells. But in the process the virus changes into a more benign form, and the body is able to clean up the remains. That is also why it is hard to develop antibiotics against viruses. They change too rapidly for an antibiotic to chase them down and disappear like ghosts in the morning light.

Is there a risk to being vaccinated? Always. Why put more viruses, even weakened ones such as are in flu vaccines, directly into the blood stream? We have far more allergies, and allergy induced asthma, than we have ever had before. There is a constant assault on our immune systems, and that can trigger an inflamed immune system that goes into high alert at the slightest whiff of pollen or spore of mold. Nature developed a way for our bodies to fight infection, but over-use of modern medicine interferes in this natural process to your peril.

Many people say that the vaccines actually seem to make them more susceptible to flu’s. The key to being flu-proof is a strong immune system that knows the difference between a viral microbe and a healthy cell. The internal environment of the body, when healthy, is unwelcoming to disease causing bugs. Just as a well-tended garden repels weeds and pests, human health can be cultivated. It may be hard to find Eden with so many toxins in our environment, but surely a little knowledge about how the body works can be protective armor against the relentless marketing of prescriptions that are more poison than potion.

Effective prevention for colds and flu? As Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

This post first appeared in The Huffington Post.