Microbiome and Behavior

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated July 2022. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

If I may usurp the microbiome throne, I would bring attention to the profound effect toggling nutrients on/off has on the human microbiome. A microbiome is a characteristic microbial community which lives in a reasonably well-defined habitat with distinct physio-chemical properties (1). Without an influx of nutrients, microbiomes cannot exist.

Fasting, this is refraining from all nutrition besides water for a length of time, is capable of completly reversing gut dsybiosis and restoring proper digestive function. Fasting is our normal physiological state in-between feeding, and the longer you go without nutrition in any form, the more pronounced effects from fasting you feel. For example the lining of the intestines, the epilithium, heals increadibly fast by up to 20% a day, when their is little-to-zero lumen in the gut.

The human body and mind require nutrition to function, and it is important for overall wellness to stay well fed with ample micronutrients, macronutrients, and other more exoctic compounds like phytonutrients. That said, solving gut dysbiosis solely through dietary and supplemental measures will be inefficient compared to methods which incorperate toggling nutrients on/off. To heal, the body requires it, and additionally microorganisms multiple increadibly fast, and can survive without nutrition themselves for some length of time. Those pathogens survive even longer if they have eroded away the muscus lining of the gut and establismed biofilms. A period of fasting can completely eliminate pathogens, biofilms, and parasites faster than it can completely eliminate the symbiotic microorganisms we want preserved. With a nutrient dense refeed schedule of the same length of the fast after the fast, no new pathogens will be introduced into the microbiome while the body reuptakes nutrients and symbionts establish new territory and multiple.

We know that their exists a bidirectional gut-brain connection wired by the nervous, blood, and endocannabinoid system. The microbiome can trigger the vagus nerve and cause behavior adjustements to the brain (2). Likewise the brain can choose which foods to eat which determine the composition of the microbiome. With a healthy microbiome, the triggering of the vagus nerve might manifest as a thought or feeling to eat vegetables or for something else you body is deficient in, such as fiber, fats, and micronutrients. When the microbiome is pathogenic, you might feel triggered to eat unhealthily, or perhaps you experience food cravings. With enough self-consciousness, it is possible to ignore this behavioral commands from the microbiome, which wants to be fed with what it wants most, and instead make an informed decision on what is best to do for your overall wellness. But when awareness is not present, then thoughts can turn into actions and be repeated into behaviors. To use a metaphor, a microbiome that triggers the brain for low nutrient quality food, has effectively compromised the central processing unit of a computer with a virus.

The most effective way to reset the gut-brain connection is to reset the digestive system. A 48-hour fast will eliminate nearly all pathogens, and with a proper refeed schedule, the microbiome can evolve to synergism. This work also requires behavioral resets, for long term gut health success cannot be had without addressing this aspect of the problem. During a fast, behavior can be reset to a more holisitic mindset as low-quality triggers are removed and replaced. For behavioral resetting, the refeed after a fast is critically important, as it is also in refeeding the body after a period of zero nutrient intake.

High calorie foods, fruits, and vegetables that are all gentle on the stomach are best. Avocados and coconut are excellent in being very nutrient dense, while fruits and vegetables provide many micronutrients in addition to paired carbs and fibers. The refeed schedule should be as long as the fast that is undertaken, with an understanding that the longer the fast the more impressive the results will likely be but all the more important it is to follow a proper refeed.

With willpower and following precise instructions, the well-grooved signals from the vagus nerve firing for junk food can be easily ignored, as new more beneficial pathways between the brain and symbionic microbiome develop. Reseting behaviors and creating new habits requires time, and any loose signals from pathogens which slip through successfully could led to the feeding they require for survival. The trick in eliminating gut dsybiosis is to make sure you understand the human mind and behavior. Just as important as the gut health protocol being followed is the behavioral protocol that needs to be assigned.

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Fasting provides a neat set of instructions that gastroenterologists can issue to their patients, given proper safeties in place. As an example, if the patient is overweight, then fasting will switch the body to buring bodyfat, which may or may not contain stored toxins which will stress the liver, spleen, and kidneys. Fasting and autophagy (cellular cleanup) has been used to completely reverse auto-immune conditions, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, help patients suffering from neurological conditions such as narcolepsy, and is protective against chemotherapy treatment. Once the main systems of the body are in well-enough shape and/or controls are in place, then fasting can be prescribed clinically for people with gut-dsybiosis. Knowing the patient’s wellness situation is of utmost important before triggering such a big metabolic switch. Some questions asked may be uncomfortable, but knowing exactly what gut dsybiosis symptioms they are experiencing can be used to design the fasting and refeeding protocol. Diarrhea has to be treated differently than constipation. Mental health issues, inflammation, skin issues can all be linked to gut health issues. Bloating and gas are also signs that a patient has a microbiome dsybiosis.

Fasting removes all nutrients from the digestive system, with existing food/lumen typically emptying out completely after 48-72 hours. As the digestive system empties, the stress of digestion decreases and eventually all the organs which are involved in the digestive process can switch gears to cellular repair and regeneration. This regeneration process happens most meaningly during a fast of extended duration, with consistent intermittent fasting, or consistent OMAD (one meal a day, 24 hour fasting).

Typically after 2 days, the body switches ketogenic and bodyfat begins to be burned for energy exclusively. If toxins are stored in the bodyfat, then flu-like symptoms may be experienced, as known as keto-flu. Someone who is overweight, inactive, and with gut dsybiosis is likely to experience this, and should come prepared. There are certain herbal remedies which can increase the efficacy of a fast and also mitigate any negative symptoms experienced.

• Green tea increases fat oxidation, levels out the brain into alpha wave lengths, and is rich in plant polyphenol antioxidants which aid in the repairing of the gut (3, 4, 5, 6).

• Milk thisle flavonoids known as Silymarin support liver function by maintaining protective glutathione levels (7).

• Turmeric curcuminoids and other turmeric compounds it possesses are rapidily taken up by the gut and are powerful antioxidant healers and more important powerfully anti-inflammatory (8, 9)

• Sulforaphane has these functions too, being a powerful anti-inflammatory derived from cruciferous vegetables, targeting the bloodstream better than turmeric, improving immune functon throughout the body (10)

• Papaya enzymes can aid in digesting food, especially for the first few refeed meals after a fast when the microbiome is still newly reshaped and growing.

• Wormwood, clove, black walnut hull, and oregano oil are natural adaptogenic antimicrobials, killing pathogens and parasites while being gentle on symbiotic microorganisms.

Natural herbs like these can be used to assist in the evolving of the microbiome and behavioral transition from low-quality to high-quality vagus nerve triggers. The microbiome will always be able to influence the mind of its host, but it can be done symbiotically and cooperatively.

Beneficial behaviors need to be established to ensure minimal to zero gut-health issues continuing forward. Additionally, A well-rounded diet of fats, carbs + fibers, protein, and diverse micronutrients, from relatively unprocessed superior quality sources (organic, non-gmo, pasture-raised) will ensure the gut functions normally, and therefore all nutrients the body and mind receive henceforth are of the highest bioavailibilty. “You are what you eat”, and this truth has not changed.

The mind and body cannot function to their maximum possible potential when low-quality nutrients are being received, the culprit of which is behavior. Low-quality behavioral food patterns people have existed and relied on for years now can be difficult to reset. In this instance, a longer month-long period consiting of many shorter fasts, or a single long fast, can be successfull in repatterning behavior. A single long fast of seven days is shorter in total duration than a month from a patterning standpoint, but more difficult to execute safely and to the benefit of the patient. A month long period of intermittent fasting with 48 hour fasts once a week will be similarily effective in repatterning, but possibly be harder to execute as willpower drains over time.

In either setting, if the patient sticks to the protocol 80% effective and no medical emergency is encountered, then success will have been made in evolving the microbiome and repatterning food behaviors. The more precisely followed the fasting and refeeding schedules, the more effective the strategies will be. Conscious awareness of the gut must developed by the patient for long-term success, and it is the hope that a strict fasting/refeeding schedule, plus keeping a daily digestive system journal, establishes this long term gut-microbiome-wellness consciousness. Cannabis usage can assist with this, and when CBD dominant flower is dry-vaporized, it also calms inflammation in the gut (11), inflammation being a key ingredient in developing a systemic disease such as an auto-immune condition (12), heart-disease, or cancer. Most diseases begin in the gut.

Once gut consciousness is developed, then whatever further tools/protocols the patient has experienced and knows to work will be willingly reused to further improve the situation. Stabilizing the mind during the day (feeding hours) to alpha brainwaves from the L-theanine in green tea makes resetting food behaviors easier to accomplish as the brain is functioning at a higher cognitive level. When having green tea consitnetly for this purpose and its other benefits, it is then important to be mindful of the effects caffeine has on the body and circadian rhythm. Lastly alcohol is to be completely avoiding during any gut healing endeavor. Alcohol kills microorganisms indiscriminately, stresses the liver, and throws metabolism into haywire. Alcohol is not good for wellness and will not help the patient establish a healthy symbiotic microbiome.

With this information and theory now laid out, we will now establish the framework in more specific actionable details. Let’s start with a simple 48 hour fast and refeed schedule.

48-Hour Fast and Refeed Instructions:

Schedule

Day Zero - 3 meals, fast begins (after dinner)

• The last meal eaten will be dinner, with no food happening after 6 pm. The meal can be what the patient decides, but with an emphasis on being healthy. Two servings of squash (~300 grams) will be included with this meal and is the last thing to be eaten, all together.

• 1 gallon (4 liters) of filtered water will be spread out and consumed daily. 16 oz before bed and immediately after waking are a good place to start.

• At 6 pm day 0, the digestive system of the body is filled completely up. If the patient had 3 meals that day, then their stomach, small intestine, and large intestine will all contain food, lumen, and partly individualistic microbiomes. By 9 pm, the stomach is now empty and begining to repair from the stress of digestion. After sleeping a full eight hours, by 8 am the patient is now 14 hours into the 48 hour fast. A 16 hour intermittent faster would refeed at 10 am with this schedule.

Day One - Fasting, 1 gallon water

• With a 48 hour fast, no food is eaten though at this 16 hour mark. Instead, a cup of green tea can be had anytime in the morning, from 6 am to 10 am. This is determined by every individuals unique circadian rhythm. The green tea assists the healing process in the stomach and also the small intestine as food moves out of there. Green tea also provides clarity of thought through alpha eave generation. If well-fed on day 0, day 1 of a fast is typically easy to achieve and of high energy. If feeding on day 0 was sporactic and lacking nutrients, then day 1 will be harder as the dysbiotic microbiome begins triggers the gut-brain connection for nutrients of any quality.

• By 6 pm day 1, 24 hours have elapsed, and when performing a short 24 hour fast to control food cravings, you would refeed here. This is known as OMAD, or one meal a day. As night settles in, energy demands decrease, and with a little extra willpower, it is not difficult to begin getting ready for sleep and go to sleep without eating.

Day Two - Fasting plus first refeed meal (dinner)

• After another 8 hours of restful sleep, by 8 am on day two 38 hours of fasting have been completed. With zero food intake, the brain has begun its own cellular cleanup, pruning synapses associated with the low-quality behaviors we’re selecting against. 10 more hours o no food and just water takes the patient to their first refeed meal.

• By 8 am day 2, one or more bowel movements will have occured since the start of the fast, and now the stomach and small intestine are completely emptied of lumen. The large intestine may or may not have fully emplied yet depending on the patients gut motility. Another cup of green tea has the same helpful benefits as before on day 1, and now also sulforaphane and milk thistle can be added for liver and blood support. A dsybiotic gut typically has weak tight-junctions, and therefore inflammatory particles and microorganisms can slip into the blood stream, causing a base-load immune response.

• Energy and behavioral volatility may be experienced during the final 10 hours of the fast from 8 am to 6 pm. Ensuring the patient has a low-stress easy routine set for the duration of the 48 hour fast helps the patient stay on-track and safe with their fasting schedule. Walking helps to energize the body and stablize energy levels, while some downtime focused on simple mental activities like meditation, writing, reading, or watching educational content are easy to pass the time with, requiring little calories. For fasting to be maximally successful and safe for resetting the digestive system and gut dysbiosis, these lifestyle factors need to be communicated to the patient and understood for their importance. Heavy exercise is best avoided during a fast, though certain types of yoga are fine, like yin yoga.

• At 6 pm of day 2, the first refeed dinner is eaten. The food ingredients for the breakfast, lunch, and dinner refeed meals are below. This refeed dinner is light and easy to digest, easing the digestive system back into work and reestablishing a more productive symbiotic microbiome. Papaya enzyme is used here to help break down the food. Eating small bites and chewing each bite thoroughly will reduce food particle size and therefore reduce the demands on the microbiome to process the nutrients down into sizes that can pass into the bloodstream. No food after the dinner refeed, just water if thirsty.

Day Three - Refeed

• The 48 hour fast has been broken by the first dinner refeed meal, but this meal also marks the beginning of a 16 hour fast, from dinner to brunch. This intermittent fast will make it very clear to the patient how they respond to the dinner they ate since their will be no food before or after it for 16 hours. Intermittent fasts are benifically healthy in numerous ways (13).

• From 10 am to 12 pm the patient can refeed with either a large breakfast or lunch. This meal will be the primary caloric replenishing meal for the patient after the fast, as the first refeed dinner was small in order to ease the patient back into digestion.

• After brunch, no snacks are consumed other than some nuts or pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds are calorically dense with healthy fats, contain appreciable fiber and protein, and are high in commonly deficient minerals. Pumpkin seeds are also good at killing parasites.

• 1 gallon of filtered water is consumed evenly throughout the day.

• At 6 pm the second refeed dinner is eaten. This meal is the same as it was on day 2 just larger in volume. No food is consumed after dinner.

Day Four - Refeed

• Now the patient can decide to resume a 3 times a day eating schedule (breakfast, lunch, dinner) or a 2 meals a day feeding structure, breakfast + dinner or lunch + dinner being the most common. If the 2 meal structure is preferred, then day three can be repeated. For the purpose of this guide, we will guide the patient back to a 3 meal food schedule.

• At 8 am a refeed breakfast is eaten, with no snacking in-between breakfast and lunch.

• At 12 pm a refeed lunch is eaten, with some snacking of nuts or pumpkin seeds allowed in-between lunch and dinner.

• 1 gallon of filtered water is consumed evenly throughout the day.

• At 6 pm the final refeed dinner is eaten, and then the patient can begin making their own food choices hopefully guided by increased gut-health consciousness and better behaviors. If following a month long plan, then this 3 meals a day or intermittent fasting schedule focusing on food quality and no food alergens is followed until the next 48 hour fast, one week later.

In this way, after multiple repititions, the microbiome will have been sufficiently reset to symbiosis, the brain will have pruned bad synapses, and food behaviors will have been changed. Within this framework is the task of making sure the patient consumes enough calories and required macro and micronutrients over the entire duration of the digestive reset. If the patient is carrying excess bodyfat, then the caloric concern is not as warranted, but stored toxins in the bodyfat, and the potential flu-like symptoms that might be encountered during detoxifying must be considered clinically.

By the end of the full month, or even just after a single four day bout, especially if journaling all aspects of gut health, symptoms, experiences, feelings, and thoughts was done, the patient will now be much more cognisant and mindful of their gut health, diet, mental state, and how they are all connected. Journaling for 1-2 months is typically successful in identifying any food intolerances or allergies they might have without the need for an elimination diet. For patients with these or suspected having these issues, intermittent fasting is more effective in intolerance/allergy diagnosis than a 3 meals a day schedule, as there will be less blurring of the effects between different meals.

Refeed Meals

Dinner

1. 10.5 oz (300 grams) squash (butternut, zucchini) lightly roasted

2. 2 oz (55 g) of raw mixed salad greens and/or spinach. No additions or dressing

3. 1 large avocado

4. 3 oz (85 g) Cassava chips

Notes: The first refeed meal on day 2 will be half the amounts above. Avocado and cassava chips are eaten first providing the body with much needed fats and elecrolytes. After 48 hours of fasting the body will now be ketogenic so the fats from the avocado will be processed efficiently. The carbs from the cassava chips will begin shifting the body back out of ketosis gently. Next the bulk of the meal is eaten, which is squash. Zucchini and butternet squash contain good fiber, helping to scrub the intestines clean, and is a natural food source for symbioic microorganisms which otherwise might exist in nature on the vegetable itself or in the soil. Eaten last are the salad greens, containing ample water-soluable micronutrients as well as fiber and protein. Food timing is important.

Note: Buying all organic non-gmo foods is important for the refeeding process. Whoever undergoes this fasting schedule is not just refeeding themselves with food but also the makings of a new microbiome. The patient is best served consuming the lowest amounts of pesticides possible and food grown from healthy soil. Washing fruits and vegetables with a baking soda rinse helps to remove pesticide residues. Organic food from a farmer’s market is ideal and still cost-effective.

Lunch

1. 1 orange

2. 1 cup of cooked brown rice

3. Protein - Either 4 oz (114 g) of mushrooms, beans, or fish protein. No beef, poultry, or pork.

4. 1 oz (28 g) of a fermented food like kimchi, pickles, sauerkraut, kombucha, or others.

5. 2 oz (55 g) of raw mixed salad greens and/or spinach. Olive oil and soy sauce can be added as a dressing.

Notes: The orance is eaten first in order to grow the microbiome, improving its ability to digest the incoming meal. Then the rice, protein, and fermented food is eaten. The salad is eaten last. Chopsticks are best used for this meal, as it forces smaller bites to be taken and lengthens the time it takes to complete the meal, improving digestion. Raw unpasteurized nuts or pumpkin seeds can be snacked on to satiety after this meal through to dinner, also contributing their microbiome communities to the symbiotic one you are establishing in your gut.

Breakfast

1. 2-3 large pasture-raised eggs

2. 1 potato (homefries, hashbrowns, baked), using butter or avocado/olive oil. Ketchup may be used.

3. Fruits or a fruit smoothie (1 orange, 1 banana, 1 lemon, 10-15 strawberries).

Notes: For vegans, the eggs can be replaced with mushrooms, beans, or lentils. The strawberries can also be used with or replaced by other berries like blueberries. Organic strawberries have signifigantly less pesticides and are the recommended purchase. The potato contains resistant starch, carbs, and many micronutrients. These 3 foods can be eaten simultaneously and will provide a very solid base of nutrition and energy for many hours. Eat to satiation but don’t stuff your stomach till you’re unconfortably full. Listen to your body and stop eating when appropriate. Therefore these recommended amounts of foods are variable based on individual needs and wellness preferences.

Supplemental Help (natural herbs)

For the herbs prescribed above, here is the dosage information and high-quality sources you can purchase. Not all these need to be used, though at a minimum the green tea is highly recommended as it makes fasting signifigantly easier.

Green Tea

• 1-2 cups a day inbetween 8 am and 4 pm.

Milk Thistle

• 200-300 mg Silymarin daily, taken with lunch.

Papaya Enzymes

• 1-2 servings of papaya enzymes, taken with dinner. Can be taken with other meals too if desired.

Turmeric

• 2-3 grams of turmeric powder, with or without standardized curcuminoids. Taken with breakfast or incorperated in food (avocado is a good choice, the fats present improving the bioavailibility of the curcuminoids).

Sulforaphane

• 50 - 100 mg a day, taken with lunch. Easy sources include brocolli sprouts, cabbage, or in supplemental form.

Wormwood, Clove, Black Walnut Hull

• 5-15 pills of SCRAM taken after dinner

Oregano Oil

• 300-400 mg taken after dinner.

In the context of a 48 hour fast and 2 day refeed, these herbal supplements are fine to take and will improve outcomes, but should not be taken daily forever. For a gut flareup, SCRAM, oregano oil, and turmeric work well. Papaya enzymes can be used to help food digestion. Sulforaphane is a powerful anti-inflammatory which can be used for any reason (gut flareup, headache, viral infection, injury). Milk thistle should only be used when placing the liver under stressful conditions (drinking alcohol, fasting if overweight/obese, prescription or commercial drug use).

4 Days to Success

With this theory of the digestive system, microbiome, behaviors, and neurology established, it is easy to understand the power of fasting in reversing gut dsybiosis. Fasting intelligently prescribed toggles the nutrient on/off master switch, from which cascades a series of important biological events such as autophagy, ketosis, and synaptic pruning. Once this reality of health is experienced and understood by the patient, then they have a powerful tool they can use to favorably alter their gut health at any point in the future given certain safety precautions best discussed with their primary care physician. Sometimes a 16 hour fast is all that is needed, other times longer duration fasts are more effective in healing the digestive system and guiding the microbiome to a more symbiotic state.

Our health is our responsibility, and it is up to us to make the most important health desicions there are to make. If you have a suspecicion that something is wrong with your gut, then you’re probably right. Normal gut function is 1-2 regular wipeless poops a day with no gas or bloating. Yes that is possible. No one can do for you what you need to do to establish a healthy digestive system, but clinicians, doctors, and natural health practitioners can guide you along the way. When not in a state of dire need, natural alternatives are safer than prescription drugs and much more gentle on the detoxifying organs of the body.

Fasting is one of the master switches for wellness, and much care must be taken when undergoing any fasting technique. If at any point blood sugar drops dangeously low and the patient feels dizzy, stablilize by sitting down and consume the refeed diner asap, no matter the time. It takes practice to improve your ability to fast without nutrients for extended periods of time, this is especially true for increase fat oxidation and metabolism. Once stabalized and healthy a few days later, the 48 hour fast can be attempted again, hopefully more successfully. The average 1st world citizen has never gone without food for more than 24 hours, and while the biology of the human body can go without food potentially for months, it is best to take the exploration of fasting for health cautiously and patiently. Green tea fasting is highly recommended as it increases the odds of success by aiding in the gut healing process, altering brain wave activity, and increasing fat oxidation.

The tea I use for my green tea fasts, from intermittent to 72+ hours, is Pique Tea. Pique Tea uses cold brew extracted green tea leaf products from pesticide-free sources for maximum potenency (antioxidant capability, polyphenols) and reduced risk of chemical exposure. They sell green tea blends specifically for fasting, of which I prefer their matcha and ginger Green Tea Power Bundle, as well as a variety of other green teas, herbal teas, and immune support products. If you use the coupon code WILDFREEORGANIC, you’ll receive 5% off your order and help support Wild Free Organic in funding operations. Amazon referral links also help support Wild Free Organic.

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References:

1. Berg G, Rybakova D, Fischer D, et al. Microbiome definition re-visited: old concepts and new challenges. Microbiome. 2020;8(1):103.

2. Bonaz B, Bazin T, Pellissier S. The vagus nerve at the interface of the microbiota-gut-brain axis. Front Neurosci. 2018;12:49.

3. Dulloo AG, Duret C, Rohrer D, et al. Efficacy of a green tea extract rich in catechin polyphenols and caffeine in increasing 24-h energy expenditure and fat oxidation in humans. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1999;70(6):1040-1045.

4. Cooper R. Green tea and theanine: health benefits. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition. 2012;63(sup1):90-97.

5. Kubo Isao, Muroi Hisae, Himejima Masaki. Antimicrobial activity of green tea flavor components and their combination effects. J Agric Food Chem. 1992;40(2):245-248.

6. Benzie IFF, Szeto YT, Strain JJ, Tomlinson B. Consumption of green tea causes rapid increase in plasma antioxidant power in humans. Nutrition and Cancer. 1999;34(1):83-87.

7. Hackett ES, Twedt DC, Gustafson DL. Milk thistle and its derivative compounds: a review of opportunities for treatment of liver disease. J Vet Intern Med. 2013;27(1):10-16.

8. Tilak JC, Banerjee M, Mohan H, Devasagayam TPA. Antioxidant availability of turmeric in relation to its medicinal and culinary uses. Phytother Res. 2004;18(10):798-804.

9. Aggarwal BB, Yuan W, Li S, Gupta SC. Curcumin-free turmeric exhibits anti-inflammatory and anticancer activities: Identification of novel components of turmeric. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2013;57(9):1529-1542.

10. Guerrero-Beltrán CE, Calderón-Oliver M, Pedraza-Chaverri J, Chirino YI. Protective effect of sulforaphane against oxidative stress: Recent advances. Experimental and Toxicologic Pathology. 2012;64(5):503-508.

11. Goyal H, Singla U, Gupta U, May E. Role of cannabis in digestive disorders: European Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology. 2017;29(2):135-143.

12. De Luca F, Shoenfeld Y. The microbiome in autoimmune diseases. Clin Exp Immunol. 2019;195(1):74-85.

13. Mattson MP, Longo VD, Harvie M. Impact of intermittent fasting on health and disease processes. Ageing Research Reviews. 2017;39:46-58.

Experience From a Three Month THC Break

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated August 2022. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

From the dates of August 20th, 2020 to November 14th, 2020 I took a break from all cannabis containing THC, a psychoactive cannabinoid. During this time I did consume small amounts (5-15 mg) of CBD here or there via gummies, and there was one CBD pre-roll I enjoyed, but I did not experience the effects of any psychoactive THC during this time. Having used THC regularly for the past few years, and then abstaining completely for 3 months, was a very enlightening experience.

Before I share what I learned from taking a 3 month THC tolerance break, I will share what I learned after four years of cannabis usage.

Four Years of Cannabis Experience

I first started experimenting with plant medicine around the age of 25. Before this I had never used cannabis or any other plant medicine because of the knowledge of how the brain is still developing until the age of 25. The brain still exhibits plasticity and the ability to change beyond 25, but most of the large structural changes are made from -9 months to 25 years of age.

At first I only consumed cannabis infrequently when with friends, and we burned our bud. Within a few months, I decided to pursue my understanding of cannabis further by purchasing a small oil vaporizer, which gives pre-measured doses of 2.5 mg and then shuts off. The quality wasn’t good like cannabis flower, but the ability to measure how different amounts like 2.5, 5, 10, and 15 mg made me feel was interesting and useful for a new user like myself.

Once that ran out, I began to consume cannabis more regularly. Knowing the benefits of vaporization over combustion I purchased some vaporizers from Healthy Rips, starting with the Fierce and then followed by the Fury Edge, both products I highly recommend. At times, I was consuming cannabis daily, sometimes many times a day, though never with huge amounts. I only used flower with my vaporizers, and dry herb vaporizers are so efficient at cannabinoid extraction that even with sometimes daily usage I never used more than 1 gram a week. I only purchased top shelf flower (the quality of which varies more than you’d expect), and as I learned the benefits of CBD I began to almost exclusively vaporize THC:CBD blends, from 4:1 to 1:4.

Exploring cannabis plant medicine and learning how to use it was a game changer for me for many reasons, and there were also some drawbacks.

Cannabis for Gut Health

When I first started using cannabis, I had serious gut health problems that I was actively working on healing. I had IBS, leaky gut, many food intolerances (with gluten being the worst), and a fructose intolerance. The anti-inflammatory effects of cannabis helped to soothe my gut issues and improved my digestion. Cannabis didn’t heal my gut…I was able to do that with a combination of mindfulness, dietary changes, fasting, and digestive supplements, but it did help to reduce uncomfortable symptoms and this allowed me to better address the bigger issues at hand (damaged intestinal tight junctions, pathogenic microbiome, inadequate vegetable intake).

Cannabis and Alcohol

Cannabis dramatically reduced my consumption of alcohol. Cannabis is stimulating and energizing for me, and I enjoy these effects much more than the depressing effects of alcohol. For social engagements, I began to use alcohol much less, instead using cannabis via dry vaporization. Removing alcohol from my life except in very rare circumstances has improved my mental health and has also dramatically helped with my gut health.

Cannabis opens the Third Eye

Cannabis opened my third eye and what was once a very slow spiritual progression began to increase exponentially. Pairing cannabis with meditation and yoga broadened my awareness, helped me to look inwards and discover my self. When used responsibly and with intention, cannabis can raise your consciousness.

Cannabis and Shadow Work

Cannabis opens spiritual “doors”, not only upwards but also downwards, and when I was using cannabis the most heavily, a light was shined on some inner work I need to do. This is often referred to as shadow work. Emotional trauma, dark truths about yourself, pain, fear, anxiety…all of this and more is hidden in our shadow selves. To become whole and fully aware of yourself, good and bad, and therefore to have more conscious awareness of your actions through life, it is important to explore both the light and dark inside. Shadow work cannot be ignored forever, and for the best healing results it needs to be done in a safe supportive environment.

Cannabis, specifically THC, can expose the shadow to the light, and if unaware or unprepared for this, it can be overwhelming, causing its own trauma and suffering. If I could go back in time I would caution my younger self to be aware of these effects and to use cannabis more responsibly and only in safe supportive environments.

Cannabis and Lung Health

For lung health, smoking cannabis flower is much worse than vaporizing it, but the inhalation of hot air below combustion temperatures (440 F) still can impact the health and function of the lungs. When consuming cannabis 4+ times a week, I coughed more and I had increased mucus production in the nasals. Vaporizing cannabis was therapeutic in that it was often the only time (before I started meditating frequently) I would take long deep breaths and enjoy that corresponding sense of calm, but vaporizing cannabis flower isn’t a zero impact event. It’s very important to have a regular breathing practice independent of any tobacco or cannabis usage.

Cannabis and Depression/Anxiety

Depending on your internal belief system, cannabis can make you more prone to be depressed or anxious. Because of its effects on time, using cannabis brings stronger awareness to the past and/or the future if the mind wanders there, and thinking about the future can be an anxious endeavor. Using cannabis daily definitely increased my anxiety, but it also made me more aware that I had anxiety, whereas before I was unaware of my anxiety and how I subconsciously changed my actions in order to avoid situations that made me anxious.

How cannabis is grown has an impact on the physical, mental, or emotional effects you experience. Outdoor, sun grown, biodynamic bud will tune you to a pleasing frequency as the plant itself experienced a pleasing life. Consume cannabis from a plant that had a stressful life under artificial lights, pesticides, and disconnected from the Earth, and your high may be stressful too.

Cannabis and Earth/Plant/Animal Connection

Using cannabis expands your awareness into the greater sphere of consciousness. Using cannabis over the past few years has made me more aware of the Earth and the fellow creatures we inhabit our beautiful planet with. All of us share and depend on the same resources. I now better understand the needs of plants, animals, and other humans and have grown much more empathetic.

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In 2022 I stepped away from cannabis quite notably and have cut back my usage dramatically. Now I use CBD cream for the occasional pain and inflammation sore spot, or I enjoy some THC cannabis if i’m guided to it and it is of a high quality. I wrote my thoughts on why I’ve created more space in my relationship with the plant which I know many habitual users of cannabis will find useful.

My Experience with a Three Month THC Break

I decided to take a long duration THC tolerance break for a few reasons. First, I was traveling to a state where cannabis is legal only medically, so instead of getting a medical card I saw the move as an opportunity to clear my system. I took a long step back from THC cannabis so I could more clearly see how it was effecting me physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. I was also curious to see how fast cannabis cleared my system.

About a week after I stopped using cannabis, I took a five level THC pee test that showed that all THC had cleared from my system, which I was very surprised by. Since then I have taken other THC pee tests at various points during cannabis usage and after stopping usage and have noticed the following:

1. I clear cannabis from my system quickly, for others this may not be true

2. Vaporizing cannabis allows it to clear your system quicker as it’s not inhaled along with tars produced by smoke

Five faint lines meant I was below the detectable THC limit of 15ng/ml within a week of stopped usage. A previous test during regular cannabis usage placed me in the 50-100 ng/ml range.

For the first few weeks into the t-break, I noticed that while cannabis isn’t addictive like nicotine or sugar (and I didn’t experience any withdrawal symptoms), there was a longing for the state of mind it used to put me into. I had clearly created a groove in my brain by cannabis that I liked, and while these urges were never strong, there were there. Occasionally seeing cannabis related content didn’t help, though after a few weeks it didn’t trigger me any which way. This “longing” effect lasted 4-6 weeks, and for this reason a t-break shorter than a month won’t experience as strongly the benefits I am about to describe.

About six weeks in, I felt that I reached a point of complete desensitization to THC. I no longer missed cannabis in the way that I did prior, and I felt more strongly rooted in the present. I had a CBD pre-roll at the halfway point which contained no THC, and overall the pre-roll was a fun and calming experience, though a little hard on the lungs. It didn’t affect my t-break in any way I could tell.

The biggest benefit to going through a long THC break was that it improved my ability to be present and in the moment. While drifting into future possibilities can be fun and enlightening, and THC consumption makes this easier for me, no longer did these future possibilities create a sense of anxiety. My mind was less distracted and worried and I was better able to clear my mind and fully utilize all my senses to be more receptive to what is happening around me. Overall I’m happier! Consistent cannabis usage for me created a sense of tunnel vision, and while this can be used to increase focus, enter into a flow state, and get a lot of work done, it clouds your peripheral vision. There are many many things I missed when I used cannabis more regularly than if I had been in a more balanced state.

After not using THC for nearly 3 months, I discovered I am much more confident and no longer have any anxiety. I began meditating almost daily during this time, so the effects of this are partially due to my meditation practice. My period of cannabis sobriety made me more aware of the importance of eye contact and the confidence behind it, and now I enjoy direct and long lasting eye contact with others as it lets us understand each other’s mental and emotional state better. I can form stronger connections with people faster than before.

If struggling to break usage of THC or cannabis in general, then using a dry vaporizer to vaporize other herbs can ease the transition. The habit of smoking or vaporizing isn’t broken but cannabis is no longer used. Herbs good for vaporizing independent of cannabis include peppermint, chamomile, green tea, among many others.

Reintroducing Cannabis

After 3 months of not using any cannabis containing THC, I dry vaporized about 0.2 grams of a 2:1 CBD:THC blend using the Fury 2 by Healthy Rips. I vaporized this small bowl of cannabis flower twice, once at 365 F and again at 385 F. The first bowl I didn’t feel the effects of, and after the second higher temperature run I experienced a subtle psychoactive effect.

I was watching Hamilton (which is absolutely excellent), and I found I was better able to empathize with the characters and understand their struggles as if I was actually there. Using cannabis took me out of my present surroundings and immersed me into the late 1700’s. I also found myself relating that history and those experiences to the future and I was exploring the parallels of life across the ages. It was fun!

Overall I found my reintroduction to THC to be thought-provoking and enjoyable. It did cause me to completely lose track of time and I lost a lot of my awareness for the present, which can be good or bad depending on the situation. I don’t think this is purely a drawback as sometimes it is good to disconnect; it all depends on the frequency of usage. I also think that if used less frequently, the ratio of CBD:THC can be increased while still experiencing a similar psychoactive effect. This should cause less negative interactions.

The Fury 2 is Healthy Rips entry level herb vaporizer. It can heat herb from 320 to 430 F using convection and conduction technology. It has a stainless steel chamber and glass vapor path.

Overall I am very glad to have done an extended THC break, I found the whole process to be very illuminating and I have a much clearer understanding of how cannabis effects me physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Going forward, I am going to be much more intentional with my cannabis usage, saving it for purposeful explorations of spirituality, time spent in nature, or for healing activities like cannabis yoga. While I won’t impose upon myself a strict schedule of when I can use and can’t use cannabis, I don’t see myself using cannabis daily going forward. I want each experience to be maximally potent while also not being frequent enough for any long term effects such as brain chemistry changes or general haziness to develop.

A THC-break is just one way of incorporating discipline into ones life. Practicing abstinence builds emotional maturity, whether you are temporarily abstaining from alcohol, sex, cannabis, sugar, technology, or much more.

If you are currently a heavy user of cannabis, or you’ve never taken a long t-break after you first began using cannabis, I highly recommend you take a long THC fast, record your experiences, and reflect on what you learn from it all. Remember cannabis is a powerful plant medicine best used responsibly and not by anyone under the age of 25.

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Medical Disclaimer: All information, content, and material of this website is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis, and/or medical treatment of a qualified physician or healthcare provider.

Disclosure: Wild Free Organic is a member of various affiliate programs and if a purchase is made through one of our affiliate links a small commission is received. This does not affect your purchase price. Visit our disclosure page for more information.

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More Articles on Cannabis

Cannabis for Raising Consciousness

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated August 2022. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

The cannabis herb (also known as hemp, weed, marijuana, ganja) has been used across the world for spiritual elevation for thousands of years. Just as evidence exists for tool usage and hunting to have increased brain size, there is ample evidence to suggest that psychedelic herbs and mushrooms used over the course of evolution of the Homo genus helped to increase our ancestors consciousness. It is very likely cannabis co-evolved with Homo sapiens, helping to transform our brains into the neural powerhouses they are today.

Elevating consciousness and spiritual evolution go hand in hand, as spiritual growth paves the way for truth to be discovered, and absolute truth is what allows for higher states of consciousness to be achieved. Cannabis is a mild psychedelic that can be used to elevate consciousness and bring awareness to states of reality, ideas, and truths that otherwise are obscured by the constant distractions and wants of modern society.

Note - The human brain still developing up to the age of +/- 25. I would highly caution against using any consciousness altering substances like cannabis until then. Regular cannabis usage at any age alters brain recruitment and gray matter density in ways that have yet to be understood. Cannabis should be used responsibly.

Meditation can also be used to achieve these higher states of consciousness, no psychedelics required. The advantage of responsible cannabis usage to achieve higher states of consciousness is that it can take you there quickly and then softly float you back down, creating a reference point for your meditation practice in the process.

“What you don’t know exists won’t prompt you to discover it. ”

Personally, without cannabis I am unsure I would have ever begun my spiritual journey towards self-realization. Conscious cannabis usage opened up the door to spirituality and I’m glad I walked through. As I have grown spiritually, I have used cannabis less but more mindfully.

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Use Cannabis with Intention

Elevating consciousness means raising awareness, increasing focus, and having intentions. Cannabis used “just to get high” and to escape from reality is not how you use cannabis for raising consciousness. The quality of the cannabis you use, how you use it, and the intentions you set are all very important when using cannabis for spiritual development. The goal is elevating consciousness is to better perceive truth, and using cannabis in a way that clouds and dulls the mind works against that ambition. If cannabis is being used for reaching higher states of consciousness, it must be done so cleanly and at the minimum effective dose. It is recommended for these reasons that only biodynamic cannabis is used, either through dry vaporization of flower or ingestion. Smoking or usage of any distillates is not recommended.

When using cannabis for a spiritual activity like meditation, yoga, intimacy, or a walk/hike through nature, set your intentions before consumption. Ask yourself what you would like the cannabis aid to help you accomplish or realize. Be emotionally calm and in a relaxed state of mind. Have your mantras or meditation practice prepared. Then, after consumption, use your breath and state of mind to manifest that which you seek. Raising consciousness is a journey that requires patience, so if expectation aren’t met, more cannabis isn’t the answer, nor will it help you achieve your aspirations faster. If it has been a while since you have last consumed, it will take just a little bit of cannabis to adequately activate the endocannabinoid system and raise your consciousness.

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How to Use Cannabis for Elevating Consciousness

Cannabis has been used for spiritual purposes for thousands of years, and before the advent of modern technology, this was either through smoking of the cannabis plant or ingestion. Now with vaporizer technology, cannabis flower can be heated precisely anywhere below the minimum combustion temperature of 230°C (445°F). Compounds found in cannabis that vaporize into a gas at various temperatures below combustion include water, terpenes, and cannabinoids like THC and CBD. Smoking cannabis can release 100+ dangerous compounds whereas vaporization only vaporizes water, terpenes, and cannabinoids out of the plant material. Combustion temperatures also destroy the cannabinoids and much more plant material is required for the same effect. Waste not, want not! It is for these reasons that I do not recommend smoking cannabis.

Healthy Rips manufactures excellent vaporizers which maintain a plastic-free air path. The Fury Edge is portable, has excellent battery life, and produces great vapor and flavor.

Vaporizing cannabis will be the fastest in effect because the cannabinoids are absorbed quickly by bloodstream via lungs, and creates more of a head high. For a longer duration but flatter effect that effects the body and mind equally, cannabis can also be consumed. Cannabinoids will still need to be heated in order to activate into their bioavailable forms (THCa to THC, CBDa to CBD), and this is most often accomplished by creating a cannabis infused oil over light heat. Cannabis that is ingested takes a minimum of 1 hour to first be felt, so be very patient and cautious when consuming cannabis this way. 2.5 or 5 mg is a good starting dose which can be increased by the same amount if the effects aren’t felt after an hour.

A protocol I like to follow which puts me into a great clear head space while increasing my connection to my body is to consume cannabis just at the minimum dose, and then an hour later to vaporize an equivalent amount to create a full body and mind experience. Using cannabis at a 1:1 ratio of THC:CBD is recommended. Unless you’re large in size, 5-10 mg of cannabinoids should be enough to enter into that state of clear higher consciousness. If you need to take more than that and you’re a regular cannabis user, consider taking a break, resetting your tolerance and reevaluate your relationship with cannabis in the process. Every cannabis tolerance break I have taken has been a growth experience and has helped me.

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Cannabis Quality Matters

The way cannabis is grown will impact how it affects you upon use. Cannabis grown outside with rich soil and lovingly cared for will be much different in its effects than cannabis grown indoors with synthetic chemicals under artificial lights. Cannabis grown holistically is much different than cannabis grown for maximum THC extraction.

The cannabis plant houses hundreds of unique phytochemicals like cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids, amino acids, esters, and many more. When cannabis is grown biodynamically, these chemicals all synthesize and balance in the right ratios for maximum entourage effect. The “whole is greater than the sum” entourage effect is disrupted when the plant is grown under artificial conditions. Cannabis is a plant that requires an ecosystem like any other, and when cannabis is grown monoculture with limited nutrients and only under certain wavelengths of light, the plant won’t develop properly. Biodynamic growing methods ensure cannabis is grown to it’s highest holistic potential.

Cannabis Grown with Love: Biodynamic

• Outdoors

• Full spectrum sunlight

• Natural seasonal day/night cycle

• Rich nourishing soil composted naturally from the land’s organics

• Spring water, rain

• Grown polyculture

• Natural pest control methods are used

• Grown with enrichment in mind and in practice

Cannabis Grown for Greed: Conventional

• Indoors

• Narrow-spectrum high frequency lights

• Artificial light and dark cycles which are changed to induce vegetative or flowering growth

• Inert soil that nutrient cocktails are added to regularly to sustain growth

• Tap water

• Grown monoculture

• Pesticides are used

• Grown with extraction in mind and in practice

The energy of the cannabis you use will be the energy that you experience. Cannabis grown under stressful conditions for maximum extraction is not cannabis that you want to consume at all, let alone as an aid to spiritual development. Likewise, when cannabinoids like THC are singularly extracted from cannabis and used, the entourage effect won’t happen at all. Cannabis used this way is solely an intoxicant, and creates a negative experience.

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The Responsible Spiritual Usage of Cannabis

If you live in a locality where cannabis is legal and you are interested in discovering yourself and exploring your spirituality, then cannabis might be a plant medicine worth experimenting with responsibly. Everyone is as different on the inside as they are on the outside, and your experience using cannabis for spiritual development and to reach higher states of consciousness is uniquely your own. Cannabis plant medicine might be a great spiritual tool to use, or it might have zero effect. The quality of the cannabis and how it is delivered to the body matter greatly, so until you’ve ingested or vaporized biodynamically grown cannabis, reserve your judgement.

Cannabis usage is not spiritual development, it is merely a tool which can be used. Breathing, meditation, and practicing mindfulness are the main tools at the disposal for the spiritual seeker, use them regularly, and maybe occasionally use cannabis to reach new heights.

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Medical Disclaimer: All information, content, and material of this website is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis, and/or medical treatment of a qualified physician or healthcare provider.

Disclosure: Wild Free Organic is a member of various affiliate programs and if a purchase is made through one of our affiliate links a small commission is received. This does not affect your purchase price. Visit our disclosure page for more information.

Abstinence for Emotional Maturity

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Existence has a dual nature. Happiness and pleasure can quickly turn into suffering and pain, and vice versa. Yin and Yang. Like a pendulum, the further it swings into either side, the further it will swing to the other side. Many people live for the happy and pleasing moments, and do their best to ignore the hard times, but these volatile swings in existence can be greatly subdued by practicing abstinence.

Abstinence is the practice of restraining yourself from indulging in wanted or enjoyable bodily pleasures. Most commonly this refers to abstinence from alcohol, sex, masturbation, drugs, food, technology…any activity that can release neurotransmitters like dopamine and naturally produced opioids. Abstinence is self enforced and requires discipline, and that’s the reason it is so difficult for so many people to practice abstinence.

Find balance within the duality of Yin and Yang in order to transcend beyond it to the next stage of consciousness

Practicing abstinence to the extreme can also be unhealthy, but in our current consumer driven society focused on pleasure, money, and fame, abstinence is a powerful tool that can be used to build emotional stability while freeing oneself from the volatile swings of pleasure and suffering that define many peoples lives.

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Abstinence Requires Discipline

The first thought many people have when abstinence is mentioned is that it is a lifetime decision. There is this all or nothing mindset which is common, rock-stars and celebrities often taking the all and everything approach (often to fatal consequences) and many religious groups and organizations preach complete abstinence from sex or alcohol, you name it.

Discipline is not an everlasting resource, and for the regular individual who doesn’t suffer from mental illness or have addictive tendencies, then taking a lifetime vow of abstinence for most things is not needed and can be counter productive. Certain drugs like cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines are poison no matter the dose, and should be avoided completely. Other recreational drugs like caffeine, alcohol, and cannabis have reported health benefits with limited use, and with moderation can integrate with a healthy lifestyle. Moderation is a ambiguous term though, and often this is abused.

“Many activities done in excess are often rationalized under the umbrella of moderation”

Abstinence for different periods of time is the best way to truly discover your definition of moderation for a pleasurable substance or activity. Using cannabis as an example, for some individuals, cannabis usage every weekend might be totally fine and not impact their life in any negative way. For others, they might find that if they use cannabis more than once in a blue moon the psychoactive effects of THC negatively affects their mood and increases their anxiety. The same can be said for alcohol, masturbation, and even caffeine.

Self diagnosis of how a chemical, food, or activity makes you feel and how it affects your health is impossible to achieve when it is currently being used in excess of moderation. Only with a period of complete abstinence where the pleasurable variable is removed does it become clear the impact that variable had, and what might be a better moderation limit to follow.

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How to Practice Abstinence

For an emotionally unstable individual, a lifetime vow of abstinence from what is afflicting them might temporarily see positive results, but if that vow is broken, then a binge session is likely to ensue. The psychology of this is very important. No one knows the future, and for the best chance of lasting success, it is better to be fully educated on the subject and understand all the consequences while still living in the moment, being fully aware. Come to acceptance with the pleasure seeker inside of you, and learn how to coexist with both aspects of your personality in a way that is optimally healthy. The pleasure seeker that craves alcohol, sex, nicotine, or unhealthy foods can be appeased in other ways. Time spent in nature, exercise, meditation, and other wellness activities produce dopamine as well and will nourish your soul in a healthy way.

Practicing abstinence goes hand in hand with practicing mindfulness. Abstinence requires discipline, and it also improves discipline and strengthens your willpower. If your maturity is low, a very long period of abstinence might be out of the books just yet, but this can be trained and improved just like anything in life.

A Day of Abstinence

24 hours is a short amount of time, but depending on what you’re newly abstaining from, it can seem like forever. A good example of 24 hour abstinence would be a 24 hour fast. Fasting is a state of not eating food where you only drink water, and if you’ve never skipped a day of eating, you might be surprised at the initial difficulty of it. Without a period of abstinence from food, it can be difficult to learn to control food cravings. A food craving is when you’re starving for one type of food, lets say Italian, but you’re not really hungry for something else, such as Mexican. Normal hunger alerts you to eat what you need, calorie, macronutrient, or micronutrient wise.

After a 24 hour fast, usually from dinner to dinner, you’ll be amazed by how you feel, how fasting improved your digestion, and how the absence of food caused many swings in energy and emotion. The energy swings which might or might not occur depend on your individual metabolism and how efficiently you can burn fat. With practice these dampen and disappear. The emotional swings have a connection to your microbiome, which in the absence of food might have released neurotransmitters causing cravings. The microbiome is a collection of 100 trillion microorganisms which live outside your body in the digestive system, outnumbering your cells 10 to 1. Gaining control over the microbiome is one of the fundamental steps needed towards gaining control over your health and wellness, and a period of food abstinence for 24 hours can help tremendously with this.

A Week of Abstinence

Many organizations recommend not drinking more than 14 alcoholic drinks per week, as amounts greater than that begin to tip over into the definition of alcoholism. 14 drinks over a week is two per day, and this is already a state of excess alcoholic drinking. Over time, having 1-2 alcoholic drinks everyday will change your brain structure and have lasting effects. The depressing effects of alcohol are from ethanol, and ethanol once consumed requires immediate processing and filtration by the body. The many enzymes required to metabolize ethanol into energy, water, and carbon dioxide are primarily stored in the liver, and because of this alcohol usage stresses the liver.

Drugs are used to achieve unique states of consciousness. Meditation is a better method of achieving this.

Many prescription drugs and common over the counter drugs like NSAIDS are hard on the liver, and daily alcohol usage paired with daily pill usage can stress the liver into a state of disease. 14 alcoholic drinks a week might be considered moderation by some groups, but depending on your health circumstances, it can be in gross excess.

A week of abstaining from alcohol is easy to achieve even with limited discipline and willpower and over the course of seven days a lot of physical, mental, and emotional observations can be made as to the positive and negative effects of regular alcohol consumption. You might find that an alcoholic beverage now and then helps you to relax and enter into a “rest and digest” parasympathetic state easier, but frequent alcohol usage impairs your digestion, sours your daily mood, and lets emotions of frustration and anger surface.

A Month of Abstinence

Porn addiction is a serious problem affecting millions of people worldwide, and it goes hand in hand with excessive masturbation. Viewing porn and the bodily pleasures of sex and masturbation release large amounts of dopamine and endogenous (naturally produced) opioids in the brain. When done infrequently, the effects of this chemical cascade on the brain is transient, and lasting changes to the structure of the brain are unlikely. When porn, sex, and masturbation are done frequently, brain structure can change through neuroplasticity, neurotransmitter receptors can become desensitized, and lasting behavioral changes can occur.

Abstaining from porn, sex, and masturbation for a month can reset these systems to a large degree, and thirty days of careful mental, physical, and emotional observations can dramatically increase your understanding of yourself and how the hedonistic pleasures impact all aspects of your life.

A Year of Abstinence

365 days is a very long period of time, but in the context of average lifespan, it is still a small percentage. What you eat is fundamental to who you are, as Socrates said “You are what you eat”, and a year of abstinence from certain foods can transform the rest of your life.

Common foods which can be abstained from for a year to gain deeper understanding on how they affect all aspects of your life include meat, sugar, heavily processed foods, desserts, soda and sugary drinks, bread, and more. Abstaining from meat reduces your impact on the planet and reduces your death toll. You might discover how by replacing meat with fruits and vegetables improves your digestion, stabilizes your energy levels, and increases your inner happiness. Cutting out all processed foods and added sugars for a year could transform your physique through fat loss, improve your cardiovascular health, stabilize your emotions, and so much more.

While food isn’t as acutely strong as drugs or sex, food is something needed to survive, and because it is consumed everyday multiple times, it’s effects positive or negative, can manifest very strongly over time. Choosing the foods you eat consciously and carefully is very important as it relates to your overall health and wellness.

A Lifetime of Abstinence

A lifetime of abstinence might seem like a tall order, but with certain things it is a must. Dangerous drugs like heroin, cocaine, and meth should never be consumed. These drugs are very powerful in their effect, and if you haven’t used them before, then there is no draw to use them again. Usage opens Pandora’s Box. The more addictive the chemical, the greatly the lifetime risk of using it once again once used before. Nicotine from cigarettes is also highly addictive, providing a very fast head rush, and as a one-off isn’t likely to be addictive, but after just a few regular uses the reward seeking part of the brain grows addicted to nicotine. The long term mental and physical health effects from these drugs and more are well documented and have ruined the lives of millions of users and have greatly affected their friends and family.

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Building Emotional Maturity

Periods of abstinence, whether short or long, can teach valuable lessons that can impact all areas of life. Emotional maturity is another way to phrase self-realization, and when all aspects and dimensions of the mind, body, and soul are in alignment, an incredible level of emotional strength and resiliency is created.

Having the emotional maturity to stay in the present moment and live with your current situation, and not seek to escape it, is the true path towards achieving lasting and effortless happiness. Happiness comes from within. Discipline, willpower, and abstinence might require a lot of mental effort when first being practiced, but like any skill, it becomes second nature with consistency and time. Once human experience is no longer distracted by pleasure seeking, your true life purpose can begin to be fulfilled.

Time spent in nature in awe of the magnificence of this planet we call home is the ultimate drug.

Rewire the Brain with Meditation

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Meditation is a mental and sensory practice that improves awareness, focus, and mindfulness. During meditation a technique is applied (and there are many) which trains focus, in the process resetting neural activity and with consistent practice rewires the brain so it’s easier to have a balanced, emotionally calm, and mentally clear state of mind.

Meditation has been practiced for time untold, and its popularity has steadily grown as we’ve learned more about its benefits scientifically. Just like exercising regularly and eating a nutritious diet for best health, meditation is a foundational wellness practice that should be a part of everyone’s lifestyle.

There are many ways to train the brain, and meditation is the safest way to rewire neural structures of the brain, optimize neurotransmitter ratios, and train parasympathetic (rest and digest) pathways. Having a regular meditation practice, even if it’s as short as five minutes a day, will improve all aspects of life, from stress management to exercise to sleep quality.

Meditation has been scientifically shown to change how the brain functions with as little as 7 hours of combined practice. Mediation increase neuroplasticity and the beneficial changes to brain structure and activation patterns caused by meditation are semi-permanent.

The Science of Meditation

When entering into a deep meditative state unencumbered of thoughts and distractions, one might reflect later that the mind felt much less active, but science have shown otherwise. A reduction in distraction and thoughts doesn’t mean a reduction in brain activity, instead brainwave patterns have changed.

What has been shown in the lab is that monks who have meditated for tens of thousands of hours have fundamentally different brain activity than someone who hasn’t put in the work. When connected to an EEG, master meditators demonstrate elevated gamma brainwaves, and when they enter into focused meditation, their gamma wavelengths increase further in amplitude (strength) by 600-800% in seconds (1).

Gamma brainwaves are normally only observed for a split second during periods of immense realization, such as at the end of solving a complex problem, or they can be observed during realistic states of imagination. For example, if imaging all aspects and senses associated with biting into an apple, small gamma waves will be briefly created as a result of this visualization exercise. Gamma brainwaves are very high frequency and the physics of higher frequency brainwaves connects different groups of neurons and regions of the brain together, enabling them to fire simultaneously for maximum cognitive output.

Extremely practiced yogis can sustain these gamma wave patterns in the brain indefinitely, but it takes time to reach such an elevated level on consciousness. Basic desirable changes in brain activity and neuroplasticity are observed even after a short period of meditation. Neuroplasticity is when the brain reorganizes its neural network in response to new experience and information. There are different mechanisms that influence neuroplasticity, such as the growth of new connections to the creation of new neurons. The human brain is not a static organ, it has ability to adapt and change (2). Neuroplasticity is more commonly observed in children, teenagers, and young adults whose brains are still developing, but neuroplasticity can be increased at any age if the right conditions are in place, such as with a meditation practice, learning a new language, or the acquisition of a complex skill.

The prefrontal cortex, hippocampal, and right anterior insula regions of the brain associated with attention, enteroception, and sensory processing are thicker in those who meditate regularly (3, 4). In as short as 7 hours of meditation, brain plasticity occurs and changes in brain activity can be observed. 7 hours of meditation over the course of a month is 15 minutes of meditation everyday, and a 15 minute time commitment which results in increased happiness and reduced stress is an attractive proposition an easy habit to create by anyone.

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Wellness Benefits of Meditation

Using meditation as a self-care wellness tool is still a relatively uncommon practice in the United States. Approximately 5-10 million adults practice meditation consistently in the US, and common reasons meditation was part of their wellness practice was for preventative wellness, stress management, and for greater emotion well-being (5).

Besides the immediate calming effects that can felt during and lingering after meditation, meditation has also shown to reduce burnout, improve emotional wellness, and reduce stress over longer periods of time. Meditation has even been shown to lengthen telomeres in young individuals (6). Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that keep them from fraying, and there is a clear trend between lifespan and telomere length (7).

As shown with telomeres, yoga and meditative practices have a measurable effect at the molecular level via gene expression (8), and it is through these mechanisms and certainly more still undiscovered that mindfulness practices reduce risk from inflammation-based diseases (9). Meditation is a powerful intervention tool that reduces anxiety levels. Anxiety often results from suppressed negative emotions, and mindfulness practices improve expressing and releasing negative emotions in a healthy manner. Because of its nullifying effects on stress and anxiety, meditation is an amazing wellness practice for mental health.

One inflammatory disease with strong ties to anxiety is heart disease, and preliminary evidence suggest that meditation can reduce risk and improve health outcomes for those with heart disease (10). Meditation and mindfulness practices go beyond just reducing stress, anxiety, and bodily inflammation, they also increase positive mental traits such as trust, cooperation, and empathy. Meditating widens perspective and increase empathy (11). Meditation increases cooperation and harmony among people, supporting a sort of collective mind (12).

Better understand outward reality by reflecting inwards

The positive effects of meditation are powerful and far reaching. From increased emotional maturity to better physical health, meditation can transform your health and wellness and help you be the best version of yourself with regular practice.

Methods of Meditation

There is an intrinsic difference between sitting in place and having a storm of thoughts cloud your mind, and sitting in peace with a calm mind clear of disturbance. Meditation is simply the practice of bringing awareness to one specific thing. How you approach your meditation practice is important. It should be done with intent and purpose. Find a regular time everyday to meditate, such as during a morning routine. Or perhaps a longer meditation is done weekly, the key is to create a meditation practice that is long lasting and not given up after only a few tries. Below are four different styles of meditation used by beginners and masters alike.

Breathing Meditation

Breathing meditation is probably the simplest form for meditation, and all it involves is paying attention to your breath. Breathing meditation can be done anywhere and for any length of time. Bringing conscious awareness to your breath for even just thirty seconds is highly calming, and for longer periods of time breathing meditation is an easy path into deeper states of consciousness.

Sensory Awareness Meditation

Sensory awareness meditation is the practice of tuning into one or a combination of the five senses.. Typically meditation is with eyes closed, so the senses tuned into are hearing, touch, smell, and potentially taste. Sensory meditation is similar to breathing meditation in that is very easy to do anywhere.

First, close the eyes and focus on any sound present. Simply observe and enlarge your sensory envelop, taking in sounds further away or sounds more quiet that you might have first missed. Any thoughts that arise simply let them pass and without reaction. Keeping a heightened sense of hearing, now pay attention to the body and your contact with the ground. Feel your hands and feel, the temperature of the air, can you feel sunlight or wind? Engage the olfactory system, noticing any smells or tastes. This is all done very naturally and smoothly, without effort over the course of 5+ minutes. If you can hold your awareness over all your senses simultaneously, congratulations, you’ve reached a higher state of consciousness!

Open Monitoring Meditation

With open monitoring meditation, you clear the mind and tune your awareness to what happens afterwards, passively monitoring the content of experience from moment-to-moment. Open monitoring meditation is very powerful because it can be used as a diagnostic tool to recognize the unique nature of your cognitive and emotional patterns. You might be surprised by the thoughts that manifest tempting you to react or dismiss them. With open monitoring meditation suspend all judgement, treat yourself with unconditional love, remain unattached, and filter out all non-harmonious energy and thoughts simply through awareness.

Focused Attention Meditation

When meditating, you can also focus your attention on a chosen object in a sustained fashion. Focused attention meditation is very powerful because it can be used in many different ways. It can be used to improve your emotional well-being very quickly, for example you could focus on the mantra “I am happy, I am healthy, I am whole” and with time those neural connections are grooved, the subconscious mind is filled with positive thoughts, and health plus happiness manifests.

If attention is given to areas such as empathy, compassion, or joy, those areas of the brain are activated and new neural grooves are formed, improving your ability to experience all of these things. Focused attention meditation is a powerful method for manifestation.  

Develop third eye gaze

When meditating, best practice is to focus on the spot between your eyebrows known as the “third eye”. This is the location of anja chakra, and behind that location rests the pineal gland. The pineal gland is a small endocrine gland located near the center of the brain, and it produces melatonin and other chemicals such as DMT*.

To train focus on the third eye, you can imagine a small flame flickering in that space, and any thoughts, emotions, ideas, and feelings you experience can be fed and consumed by the flame. Don’t interact with distractions, maintain mental tranquility and focus exclusively on the flame in the void. You can also imagine this as a ball of light (sometimes known as a tinge), a jewel, something simple to hold in your minds eye for as long as wanted.

*By age 17, the pineal gland in 40% of Americans is calcified (13), impairing gland function and melatonin production (14). Melatonin production is one of the master regulators of the circadian rhythm. The pineal gland is responsible for many of the observed beneficial effects of meditation.

Binaural Beats Aid in Meditation

A useful meditation tool are binaural beats. Binaural beats are a type of auditory stimulation that expose each ear to a different frequency of sound. After propagating through the structures of the ears these two slightly out of phase sounds are digitalized into electromagnetic waves that combine into a lower frequency brainwave. The frequency of the brainwave that is entrained by binaural beats is the difference between the two frequencies played. For example the right ear is exposed to a 110 Hz sound wave and the left ear a 100 Hz sound wave. The brainwaves that are amplified in the brain after 5+ minutes of listening will be 10 Hz in frequency (110 - 100).

For more information read through my Binaural Beats Complete Guide where there are also free resources available. A starting recommendation would be to meditate using a 7.83 Hz Schumann Resonance binaural beat using the video below.

Begin a Meditation Practice

Meditation is a powerful wellness and therapeutic technique that can transform your life in more ways than one. A meditation practice of 15 minutes everyday quickly adds up to noticeable improvements in mood and verifiable changes to the brain. Reduce stress and anxiety while simultaneously improving outlook on life with a regular meditation practice.

To slip into a meditative state easier, drinking a cup of green tea can help. Green tea contains an amino acid known as L-theanine which increases alpha brainwave activity, alpha brainwaves being observed when in a calm focused state of mind. Cannabis can also be used to enter into deep states of meditation, as can psilocybin found in magic mushrooms. Another way to make meditation easier is to practice after hard physical exercise or yoga as the body is tired and the mind will be more complacent and less distracted.

I hope you give meditation a shot, after thirty days of daily meditation practice you’ll be amazed by how you feel and the clarity of mind your regularly experience.

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References:

1. Lutz A, Brefczynski-lewis J, Johnstone T, Davidson RJ. Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: effects of meditative expertise. PLoS ONE. 2008;3(3):e1897.

2. Davidson RJ, Lutz A. Buddha's Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation. IEEE Signal Process Mag. 2008;25(1):176-174.

3. Lazar SW, Kerr CE, Wasserman RH, et al. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport. 2005;16(17):1893-7.

4. Luders E, Toga AW, Lepore N, Gaser C. The underlying anatomical correlates of long-term meditation: larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of gray matter. Neuroimage. 2009;45(3):672-8.

5. Burke, A., Lam, C.N., Stussman, B. et al. Prevalence and patterns of use of mantra, mindfulness and spiritual meditation among adults in the United States. BMC Complement Altern Med 17, 316 (2017). 

6. Thimmapuram J, Pargament R, Sibliss K, Grim R, Risques R, Toorens E. Effect of heartfulness meditation on burnout, emotional wellness, and telomere length in health care professionals. J Community Hosp Intern Med Perspect. 2017;7(1):21-27.

7. Heidinger BJ, Blount JD, Boner W, Griffiths K, Metcalfe NB, Monaghan P. Telomere length in early life predicts lifespan. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2012;109(5):1743-8.

8. Saatcioglu F. Regulation of gene expression by yoga, meditation and related practices: a review of recent studies. Asian J Psychiatr. 2013;6(1):74-7.

9. Buric I, Farias M, Jong J, Mee C, Brazil IA. What Is the Molecular Signature of Mind-Body Interventions? A Systematic Review of Gene Expression Changes Induced by Meditation and Related Practices. Front Immunol. 2017;8:670.

10. Tacón, Anna M. PhD; McComb, Jacalyn PhD; Caldera, Yvonne PhD; Randolph, Patrick PhD Mindfulness Meditation, Anxiety Reduction, and Heart Disease: A Pilot Study, Family & Community Health: January 2003 - Volume 26 - Issue 1 - p 25-33

11. Erratum: Borderud SP, Li Y, Burkhalter JE, Sheffer CE and Ostroff JS. Electronic cigarette use among patients with cancer: Characteristics of electronic cigarette users and their smoking cessation outcomes. Cancer. doi: 10.1002/ cncr.28811. Cancer. 2015;121(5):800.

12. Giovanni Di Bartolomeo, Stefano Papa and Saverio Bellomo. Yoga beyond wellness: Meditation, trust and cooperation. Department of Communication, Working Paper No 95, 2012.

13. Zimmerman RA, Bilaniuk LT. Age-related incidence of pineal calcification detected by computed tomography. Radiology. 1982;142(3):659-62.

14. Tan DX, Xu B, Zhou X, Reiter RJ. Pineal Calcification, Melatonin Production, Aging, Associated Health Consequences and Rejuvenation of the Pineal Gland. Molecules. 2018;23(2)

The Emotion of Awe

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

There are many emotions that one can experience, happiness, joy, sadness, anger, fear, but one emotion people don’t often think about is awe. Being in a state of awe is an emotion, and it has been shown to have serious health benefits to spend time being overwhelmed in awe. The connection between awe and the improvement in well-being is easy to experience too.

Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Africa

When something vastly larger than the self and not immediately understood becomes the center of attention, then a sense of awe is created. Human cultural activities such as music, art, or collective ceremonies can create a sense of awe. Nature can also create a sense of awe. For time immemorial, natural wonders like Yosemite, Victoria Falls, and Mt. Everest have struck people with awe and these wonders have created entire cultures based around them.

Changing your perception to be conscious of nature, therefore being aware of something much greater in scale than the self, has been shown to improve well-being, life satisfaction, mood, reduce hypertension, reduce anxiety, reduce depression and so much more. We’ll get into as many of the benefits as possible below.

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Experiencing Awe

Experiencing awe is truly a remarkable phenomenon. First, consciousness is required. To simplify, there are two states of mind. One state of mind is behavior driven; without awareness and control you follow preprogrammed actions. The other state of mind is conscious; you are aware of all your senses and then freely choose your direction of action. Without elevating consciousness, you cannot experience a sense of awe, as you’ll be stuck in a state of behavior-driven actions.

Modern indoor day-to-day life reduces consciousness and creates behavior patterns. Constant advertising, propaganda, and emotional triggers bombard you, forcing you in a state of anxiety, fear, and stress. The environment you spend the most of your time in determines in large part your level of consciousness. To fix the problem and to elevate your consciousness, change your environment and put yourself into a reality that is much bigger than your current existence.

Astronauts are the most familiar with this effect. Dubbed the overview effect, when astronauts first glimpse the planet Earth floating in space, they become overawed by the fragility and unity of life on our blue planet. A sense of understanding the "big picture" overwhelms their consciousness.

Experience a sense of awe right. Learn of the overview effect, and how astronauts experience a profound change in their level of consciousness when seeing the planet from an outside perspective.

If you watched the video, you can reflect back that your sense of time expanded, you felt humbled, and during all this, your stresses and responsibilities which pull at your thoughts constantly were placed on hold as you reveled in the presence of magnificence. Experiencing the emotion of awe has profound and wide-reaching health benefits, and it’s free to do and only requires a conscious effort to experience.

Spend time in nature and you’ll begin to realize the truth that we are all continually interconnected with the earth and other lifeforms via two-way electromagnetic, chemical, and mechanical interactions (1). Electromagnetic grounding is a great example of this. Everything we experience via our five senses is created from external stimuli, and it is our senses and experiences that form the basis for our identity. Hold your breath for 3 minutes and very quickly you’ll realize that without the life-giving oxygen provided by the tree, you’ll die (2). Likewise, without the carbon dioxide that we produce, the tree cannot live.

Every organism and object on this planet is continually interacting with each other. By shifting the narrative of well-being away from the individual and instead expanding it to include the larger realm of the world, a more dynamic wellness relationship between self and world can be developed.

How can you be well if the environment you eat your food from is sprayed with toxins? How can you be healthy if the air we breathe is poisoned with gases, smog, and particulates? This concepts might appear obvious, but when in a state of reduced consciousness, they no longer become priority issues, and therefore nothing is changed.

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Wellness Benefits of Awe

Experiencing a sense of awe will increase mindfulness of your surroundings, and this redirection of attention and energy from outward to inward can cause significant improvements in emotional well-being (3).

Spending more time in nature, naturally being at a higher level of consciousness and in a state of awe, has the following wellness improvements:

Improved:

• Mental, physical, social, and spiritual well-being

• Breathing

• Confidence

• Cardiovascular health

• Personal growth

• Nutrition

• Awareness

• Fitness

Reduced:

• Depression

• Anxiety

• Stress

• Fear

• Loneliness

• Pain

• Distress

• Hypertension

• Blood pressure
  

These positive wellness improvements are supported by the following studies & more (4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

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Rewild Yourself

Here is your challenge, whether you are healthy or not, spend the next thirty days spending time in nature, 15 minutes minimum each day. The health and emotional benefits of 30 day rewilding programs have been studied, and the results are striking (9). Activities that you can do to accomplish this goal include going for a nature walk, gardening, embarking upon a hike, meditating by a vista, practicing yoga at a nearby park, or looking up at the stars. Even changing your indoor environment by being near a window to include outdoor vistas can improve your connection to nature and calm your mind.

When loosing touch with reality and your environment, pay attention to your senses. Notice the vibrant colors of the trees. Smell the fresh air, hear the sounds of the forest creatures. Feel the crunch of the leaves underfoot.

Seasonable variability can affect your results, but no matter the time of year, you should experience the profound wellness changes discussed above. If you want to connect with a community at the same time you embark upon your rewilding journey, connect with nature-focused community groups near you. Use platforms like Meetup to connect with others and the outdoors.

The best way to ensure you are privy to the consciousness expanding and wellness benefits of experiencing awe daily is to incorporate sending time in nature as part of your morning routine.

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References:

1. Stevens P. Embedment in the environment: a new paradigm for well-being?. Perspect Public Health. 2010;130(6):265-9.

2. Sadhguru. Breath Bond. Sadhguru

3. Sturm VE, Datta S, Roy ARK, et al. Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults. Emotion. 2020;

4. Shanahan DF, Astell-burt T, Barber EA, et al. Nature-Based Interventions for Improving Health and Wellbeing: The Purpose, the People and the Outcomes. Sports (Basel). 2019;7(6)

5. White, M.P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J. et al. Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Sci Rep 9, 7730 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3

6. Yuen HK, Jenkins GR. Factors associated with changes in subjective well-being immediately after urban park visit. Int J Environ Health Res. 2020;30(2):134-145.

7. Barton J, Pretty J. What is the best dose of nature and green exercise for improving mental health? A multi-study analysis. Environ Sci Technol. 2010;44(10):3947-55.

8. Hunter MR, Gillespie BW, Chen SY. Urban Nature Experiences Reduce Stress in the Context of Daily Life Based on Salivary Biomarkers. Front Psychol. 2019;10:722.

9. Richardson M, Cormack A, Mcrobert L, Underhill R. 30 Days Wild: Development and Evaluation of a Large-Scale Nature Engagement Campaign to Improve Well-Being. PLoS ONE. 2016;11(2):e0149777.

Establish a Morning Routine

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Establishing a consistent routine is one of the cornerstones of a healthy lifestyle. Usually everyday routines are guided through meal timings (breakfast, lunch, dinner) or a work schedule. Often the activities people schedule their days around are stressful in nature. You don’t want to schedule a stress-first, relaxation-second schedule!

How you start the day determines in large part your physical, mental, and emotional status throughout the rest of the day. For this reason, morning routines are very important. Having a consistent morning routine provides a sense of normalcy, even during times of change such as travel, undue stress, and unique life situations. Consider a morning routine a wellness gyroscope that brings balance to your day to day life.

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Establish the Circadian Rhythm

The circadian rhythm is the 24-hour biological clock we all posses, and this rhythm controls your daily schedule for sleep and wakefulness.

One of the main reasons a consistent morning routine is recommended is it helps to establish a consistent circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is intimately tied to the various systems of the body, such as the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and a wandering circadian rhythm is easily disrupted further by stress and other variables. It’s been shown that the success of major surgeries is greatly influenced by the circadian rhythm. Those operated on during the day fair poorly compared to those operated on at night, during the bodies natural healing state.

The steps below help to establish a anti-fragile circadian rhythm, but there are a few steps that can be taken even before then:

Have a Consistent Bed Time

When you go to sleep, and for how long you sleep, has a huge impact on the quality of your life the following day. To help facilitate the process of establishing a rock-solid circadian rhythm, and therefore an awesome morning routine, go to bed at the same time every night. This bedtime should be respectful of the powerful influence the sun has on your circadian rhythm, and I wouldn’t recommend a bedtime any later than 10 pm. Unless you have a late-shift or night-shift job, there is really no excuse for going to sleep at a reasonable hour and treating yourself with self-love. If you stay up occasionally past 10 pm, that’s OKAY, but don’t make a habit of it.

Don’t Set an Alarm

If you have the luxury, don’t set an alarm to wake you up each morning. Face your bed East and open your blinds so when the sun rises in the morning you catch as much light as you can. The circadian rhythm is tied to the sun/moon cycle, and rising with the light is the most natural and peaceful way to wake-up.

Forget the Phone

The light we expose ourselves to each day is incredibly important. After sunset, naturally there is meant to be very little light, and the best thing you can do for your morning is to dim or turn off the artificial lights with the movements of the sun. Electronics give off primarily blue light, and blue light is particularly energizing. During the day blue light is expected and healthy, but in the morning and night, blue light can have a strong impact on the circadian rhythm, even shifting it by several hours. Blue light impacts melatonin (a hormone important in sleep) production, and the downstream effects of shifted melatonin or delayed production can completely upset the hormonal system as a whole. If you’ve ever had racing thoughts at night that prevented you from falling asleep, or made you sleep poorly, you should deeply examine your light exposure, both from electronics and the environment.

Picking up a phone first thing in the morning might help the brain to click on in that moment, but the overall effect of that habit can be devastating to normal sleep and wakefulness patterns. The solution is simple, keep the phone charging at night in a different room.

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Build your Fire

After a long nights rest, coaxing the metabolic engine to create energy is priority number 1. Movement and breath work are the prescription.

Upon waking, drink 16 - 32 oz of filtered water and prepare for some light exercise.

Stomach Vacuums (Uddiyana Bandha) are easiest to perform in the morning

This exercise could be a simple 15 minute flow routine, 30 minutes of yoga, or a full weight-training workout. Maybe you prefer to go for a walk, that’s fine too!

I prefer starting with a short flow routine followed by calisthenics and core exercises because the movements can adapt to how I feel. Whether you want to do more calisthenics, yoga, or stretching, flow training can incorporate all of those fitness modalities and are easy to modify instinctively.

Movements and exercise that establish deep consistent breathing are best, as oxygen is the fuel your body requires for all energy processes.

Breath work and movement finished, solidify your new baseline of energy with 5 - 10 minutes of meditation. Sit cross legged, breath in and out slowly, and clear your mind. To help clear your mind, you can think the words “In” and “Out” for when breathing in or out. You can also hum “aum” or focus your senses outwards. Can you feel the wind, the sun, the Earth? Listen to the sounds around you. Smell the air? Raise your level of awareness by practicing mindfulness and let any thoughts that start to materialize bounce off of your inner mental calm.

Avoid Stimulants

The first mistake many make here is to turn to a stimulant like caffeine first thing upon waking. Would you rather your energy for the day depend on an external stimulant, or your own movement and breath work for the day? Remember the goal of the morning routine is to create a calm mental and emotional state for each day, and it’s known that stimulants disturb this aspect of health and the natural circadian rhythm.

Coffee and green tea taste great, so savor them as a treat occasionally, not as a crutch.

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Feed Your Body

Whether you decide to fuel up or fast after the movement and breath work, it’s important that this decision of how to feed your body is done with your best interests in mind. Be conscious and make your own decisions.

For Fasting:

If you prefer 16:8 intermittent fasting, or you’re performing a longer duration fast for your digestive system, it is important to drink plenty of water. Since you are not consuming any food, which contains water, you’ll need to drink more water. And this means only water!

Stimulants like green tea and coffee as described are best avoided, and zero-calorie beverages wreck havoc on the digestive system, particularly the gut lining. Starting your day with a zero-calorie beverage will cause inflammation in the gut and eventually systemically.

For Fueling:

Find a nutritious breakfast that you can eat consistently everyday. I recommend eating the same breakfast everyday for the following reasons:

• Everyday your body will receive the same supply of fats, carbs, fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals.

• It will add consistency to your digestion, and establish a rhythm that your microbiome can come to expect

• Post-breakfast, your energy levels will be consistent and known. This stability allows you to start your day right.

• No more guesswork in the kitchen.

• Preparing the same breakfast everyday becomes a science, letting your mind focus on other ambitions of the day.

Find a meal that works for your dietary preferences, is easy to prepare, delicious, and well rounded nutritionally. This means developing a breakfast that includes fat, protein, starch, and fiber.

My Daily Breakfast

I look forward to my breakfast everyday even though it never changes! There is enough diversity in flavors and textures that I don’t tire of it. My breakfast is as follows:

1. Organic hashbrowns with ketchup

2. Three eggs scrambled with EVOO & sprig parsley

3. Organic strawberry, banana, lemon, and fresh squeezed OJ smoothie

4. Gluten-free everything bagel with organic cream-cheese and everything seasoning.

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Set your Intentions, Repeat your Affirmations

After a bout of movement, breath work, and a meal (or not), take 5-10 minutes to set your goals for the day and establish your affirmations. This can be done in so many ways, find what resonates with you!

You can set your goals and establish your affirmations through journaling. Keeping a log of your affirmations and aspirations is a fantastic way to develop a record of your daily goals, and looking back through past journal entries can help pierce the veil of what it is you truly desire.

Listening to your horoscope is another way to set affirmations for the day, or at least a way to bring consciousness to various topics that you might not have considered otherwise. For this I recommend Horoscope Today from Parcast. Each horoscope is only 2-3 minutes in length, but during this time my attention is drawn to my relationships with others, my career ambitions, and the larger worldly energy patterns to be mindful of.

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Pitfalls to Avoid - Reminder

When establishing a productive morning routine, there are a variety of old habits which might need to be cast aside as you undergo your evolution. Remember to avoid:

• Stimulants such as coffee

• Electronics 2 hours before bed, after waking up

• Morning junk food disguised as breakfast

• Inadequate water consumption

• Anything that disturbs your peace

Reclaim the morning as your time to clear your mind, stabilize your emotions, and set your focus. Remember it’s your life, not someone elses, be it your boss, friends, or the news. Before the world wakes up, the morning hours are yours and yours alone!

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Putting it into Practice

Now that everything has been discussed, here is an action plan you can start with and then adapt to fit your unique needs.

Daily Morning Wellness Routine

1. Wake up naturally, and limit your exposure to blue light.

2. Drink 16 - 32 oz filtered water.

3. Begin your breath-focused movement, yoga, workout routine (15-90 minutes), or walk. See below for two movement routines you can use to get started.

4. Cool down with 5-15 minutes meditation, stabilize your energy levels, and calm your mind.

5. Fuel or fast, be conscious of what you put into your body. If choosing to eat, consume a well-rounded breakfast with a focus on organic foods, protein, healthy fats, and fiber.

6. Set your intentions for the day and repeat your affirmations. For outside input to consider, listen or read your horoscope.

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Morning Movement Routine

Strength Focused

Complete this circuit three times

1. Push-ups - 25 reps

   • Form an arrow position with your arms, keep your core stable, and chest to floor.

2. RKC Plank - 30 secs

   • Squeeze your glutes, contract your core, and brace inwards.

3. Body-weight Squats - 25 reps

   • Open your hips and go deep with a stable back.

4. Glute Bridge - 25 reps

   • Squeeze the glutes at the top of the rep.

5. Mountain Climbers - 25 reps

   • Stay tight and stabilize against rotation.

Mobility Focused

Focus on the quality of the movement

1. Sun Salutation Warm-up - 5 rounds

2. Thoracic Rotation Stretch - 5 reps each side

3. 90/90 Hip Stretch - Hold 20-30 seconds

4. Hamstring Stretch - Hold for 20-30 seconds

5. Ankle Plantar Flexion Stretch - 30 seconds

6. Lizard with Rotation - 5 reps each side

7. Punter Kicks - 8 reps each side

8. Chest Stretch - Hold 20-30 seconds

9. Lat Stretch - Hold 20-30 seconds

10. Shoulder CARS - 5 reps each side

11. Windmills - 10 reps each side

Note - The beauty of a morning exercise routine is it helps maintain the physical status of the body. If you exercise exclusively during the afternoon or evenings, your fitness progress is dependent solely on those workouts. Miss a few workouts or more and progress will slip away. A morning exercise prescription, while not necessarily super intense, provides enough stimulus to maintain progress you’ve made during your more intense training sessions.

If you don’t occasionally skip your normal exercise routine, then you’ll make progress faster with the addition of the morning routine and have diversified your fitness skill set.

A Holistic Approach to Mental Illness

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Worldwide one billion or more people suffer from various mental illnesses. These mental disorders are mental or behavioral patterns that cause impairment or significant distress of personal functioning. Even though these disorders all exist within the mind, mental illness can severely impact interaction with the world and even prove deadly.

Depression and other mental illnesses are nothing to scoff at, and due to their nature they require immediately treatment.

Depending on the situation, natural solutions are often the best alternative.

Mental illnesses can range from mild to deadly, and they can form a pattern of progression.

Some common mental illnesses are:

• Depression*

• Anxiety

• Autism

• Attention deficit disorder (ADD)

• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

• Eating and Sleep Disorders

• Dementia

• Alzhiemers

• Migraines

• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

• Schizophrenia

*Nearly one-half of those diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

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Combating Mental Illness

To combat mental disorders, thousands have dedicated their lives to learn, diagnose, and treat the above illnesses and more. Current recommended treatments include psychiatry, brain stimulation training, and medication. Psychiatry, the rewiring of the brain via dialogue with a specialist is expensive, as is brain stimulation (a field still in its infancy). As a result, many people with mental illness are steered towards medications like SSRIs as the primary means to deal with their mental illness.

The approach for how to deal with mental illness by the medical system has done a lot of good, helping and healing many people of serious mental conditions, but their recommendations and research are outdated. The pharmaceutical industry has turned mental illness into a money maker, and if more costly human to human methods like psychiatry aren’t covered by insurance, then doctors prescribe drugs.

Meanwhile from the medical community, very little attention is given to simple preventative measures and healing techniques well-known to improve mental wellness. To begin understanding how mental illness can be treated holistically, we need to understand the conditions that give rise to mental illness, starting from the outside inwards.

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Brain-Gut Inflammation

Extensive research has shown that brain inflammation is connected to virtually all types of mental illness. Mood disorders such as depression (1) and anxiety (2), as well as more serious conditions like autism (3), dementia (4), alzheimer’s disease (5), and schizophrenia (6) have all been linked to inflammation of the brain or various parts of the body. Inflammation is not the ultimate root cause of these mental health issues, but understanding how to combat inflammation can provide relief and allow more holistic wellness measures heal the underlying trauma.

As discussed in our article on the importance of drinking water, everything that you are is built from what you’ve ate, drank, and breathed in over the course of your life. These are your starting conditions from which all else is determined, and as such your diet is supremely important in determining your level of health. You are what you eat, and an inflammatory state of the body or mind ultimately goes back to the quality of the food you eat, the water you drink, and the air you breathe.

After eating or drinking, your body needs to digest the food and actually assimilate it into the body. Your entire digestive system is actually outside your body. It might be contained inside your flesh and blood, but the entire digestive system is lined with cells and mucus whose primary purpose is to keep foreign invaders out and good nutrients coming in. Inside your digestive system lives your microbiome, a colony of 100 trillion microorganisms that outnumber your human cells ten to one. Just like your health, you can have a healthy or diseases microbiome. When the microbiome is highly pathogenic, the immune system has to work on overtime keeping the body free or opportunistic pathogenic bacteria. A stressed immune system causes inflammation as an acute protective measure, and inflammation can also be created in the gut when undigested foods leak through compromised tight-junctions of the intestines and into the blood stream. These food particles also require cleanup by the immune system.

The gut is the main center for the immune system, and when the digestive system is unhealthy and diseased, the effects are felt throughout the body, most notably as chronic inflammation. This is for healing mental illnesses because if the gut is the main source of inflammation in the body, then healing the gut will have a strong impact on reducing conditions like depression, insomnia, and autism. This connection is further strengthened by the knowledge of the gut-brain connection. The microbiome is able to create and secrete neurotransmitters which directly affect behavior and brain function.

I have written about the gut extensively in my other articles, read these for a more complete understanding of how the digestive system and how it affects your health and wellness.

• Use Fasting to Reset Digestive System

• Heal Tight Junctions of the Gut

• Control Food Cravings

• Break a Sugar Addiction

The most effective method to heal the digestive is with fasting because it deprives the microbiome of food, selecting for symbiotic microbes while providing the gut a chance to heal and strengthen.

To begin the healing process for mental disorders, a close examination of the health of the gut is needed.

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Spend Time in Nature

The emotions common to depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses are those of fear, sadness, anger, hate, hopelessness, and despair. If you don’t change your environment to see the bigger picture, it is easy to get twisted around by these emotions and the whole situations can feel insurmountable. It is for this reason that spending time in nature can be such a boon for you or a loved one’s mental health.

Being in nature opens up the senses and overwhelms you with emotions of awe, happiness, inspiration, serenity, and calmness. Surrounded by the wonder of nature, it becomes easier to see the bigger picture of life and to feel the healing energy of the Earth.

If you’re physically able, going for a hike is a way to experience nature while also providing concrete goals which when achieved provides a sense of satisfaction. Away from the noise and distractions of human society, with the elements around you, it’s difficult to be consumed by your worries and troubling thoughts. If physically unable, even just exposing yourself to green space and color can improve your mood and outlook on life. Spending time with Mother Earth is a helpful compliment to a mental illness treatment plan. Nature improves mindfulness, quiets the mind, and offers the opportunity to connect to the core of yourself.

Often just coming into contact with deeply buried emotional trauma and recognizing while letting it pass is enough to heal from it.

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Emotional Trauma

The trigger for a lot of mental illness to begin or grow is emotional trauma. This emotional trauma can happen suddenly, like with the passing of a beloved friend or family member, or it can be buried deep from past traumatic experiences.

It is by unpacking and discussing emotional trauma in a safe supportive space that makes psychiatry so effective in treating mental illness. If having psychiatry with a trained professional is too cost prohibitive, there are many ways to replicate the effect.

• Share and unpack your emotional burdens with a friend or family member after establish a safe space free of judgement or criticism.

• Create a safe supportive environment on your own and write your thoughts, emotions, and feelings into a journal. Don’t hold back. At the end you can either keep the written words to reflect upon, or finish the ceremony by symbolically releasing yourself from the trauma by lighting the pages on fire.

• If you attend school or if your work has a program, speak to a counselor and make a consistent schedule of it. It takes time to deconstruct emotions, it won’t happen all at once.

• Speak to a counselor using an online-only service like betterhelp.

• Join a spiritual community for emotional support and guidance.

Discussing your emotions and feelings with others or God can release your emotional trauma which might sit at the core of your mental illness. Taken with steps to improve health and connect with nature, mental health can be healed holistically.

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Sulforaphane instead of Medication

While there are many positive stories of drugs like Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) helping people regain control of their life, there are also many horror stories from the side-effects of mental illness drugs. Sometimes the side effects like liver damage, weight gain, and insomnia are worse than the starting condition. Knowing the connection between inflammation and mental illness, a natural anti-inflammatory can be used to combat the effects of depression, anxiety, autism, and other disorders. Sulforaphane is one such anti-inflammatory chemical.

Sulforaphane is a sulfur-rich naturally occurring compound found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, and kale which has many known health benefits (7). Sulforaphane is a defense chemical produced when it is crunched and chewed up, and its chemistry useful to plants is also useful for human health. Sulforaphane is able to cross the blood-brain barrier, and once there it can exert its effects on glutamate (a neurotransmitter) and glutathione (an antioxidant) chemistry via gene activation. It’s for this reason that sulforaphane is able to have profoundly healing effects on various mental disorders. Sulforaphane also has potent anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body.

Sulforaphane supplementation has been shown to help with humans for schizophrenia (8) and autism (9), and initial mouse models show sulforaphane has powerful beneficial effects on depression (10), anxiety (11), and alzheimer’s disease (12). Sulforaphane appears to be especially important for healthy brain development in juvenile and adolescents (13).

For depression, no human studies have been completed yet, but initial results with mice are very promising (14). Expect human studies testing sulforaphane against depression to release their results in 2021 (15).

For normal dosages of 50-100 mg, sulforaphane has no known side-effects, and anecdotally it has been reported to have similar efficacy as SSRIs in treating depression and it .

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Sources of Sulforaphane

The holistic wellness mental illness treatment plan is below, but first it is important to learn more about sulforaphane and how it works. Consuming sulforaphane naturally in the diet is superior to taking a supplement, and increasing sulforaphane intake through good dietary habits is a lasting strategy for success.

Cabbage and broccoli sprouts are the best sources of sulforaphane.

Sulforaphane is created when glucoraphanin comes into contact with myrosinase, a family of enzymes that play a role in the defense response of plants, hence why sulforaphane is only activated when vegetables are chewed or chopped. Cooking degrades and destroys sulforaphane production, so raw and chopped vegetables have the highest levels of sulforaphane. Green cabbage is one of the best known sources of Sulforaphane at 0.5 mg per gram, and it appears red cruciferous vegetables contain much less sulforaphane than common sources like broccoli sprouts.

Broccoli is a very common vegetable with high levels of sulforaphane, and the state of broccoli and it’s level of cooking determine its sulforaphane content. Cooking at temperatures above 70 °C can greatly reduce the amount of sulforaphane, so here we’ll look at the amount of sulforaphane found in various forms of raw broccoli.

• Broccoli Seeds - 3.5 mg/g

• Broccoli Sprouts 1 mg/g

• Broccoli Florets 0.01 mg/g

• Broccoli Stalks 0.005 mg/g

  Sulforaphane content found in seeds and sprouts (16). Sulforaphane content found in florets and stalks (17).

Note - Cooking broccoli will destroy the myrosinase needed to convert glucoraphanin into sulforaphane, but adding mustard seeds conveniently reintroduces myrosinase back into the reaction. Brown mustard seed added to cooked broccoli increases the bioavailibility of sulforaphane by 4x (18).

The best way to get any nutrient overall is through a whole unprocessed diet with ample vegetables. All macronutrients, micronutrients, and other chemicals such as phytonutrients all work together in balance as found naturally in food to promote optimal health. This is true for Sulforaphane.

A couple cups of chopped cabbage will provide about 100 mg of sulforaphane (19). Broccoli and brussel sprouts are further behind at 20 and 10 mg of sulforaphane respectively per cup chopped.

Sulforaphane-rich broccoli sprouts!

Broccoli sprouts and seeds are very dense sources of sulforaphane. This is because sulforaphane is a protective compound and is more highly concentrated in younger versions of plant growth. Along the same lines, Sulforaphane content is actually increased when cruciferous vegetables are subjected to heat and pressure stress. A healthy microbiome is also able to convert glucoraphanin into sulforaphane (20), the extent depending on the makeup of your gut.

When broccoli sprouts are heated to between 60-70°C, sulforaphane is increased by about 3.5x (21). Heat too high and the enzyme myrosinase is destroyed, stopping the reaction which creates sulforaphane from occurring. To easily heat broccoli sprouts to 70°C add a cup of boiling water to half a cup of room-temperature water. The resulting water will be about 75°C, and when added to the glass jar containing the sprouts, the final temperature will settle around 70°C.

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Holistic Wellness Mental Depression Action Plan

If you or a loved one is suffering from mental illness of any sort, it is important you begin addressing the issue as soon as possible and don’t let it fester and grow. Being mindful of the emotions wrapped up with mental illness, a holistic wellness plan is one of the safest ways you can begin to treat mental conditions like depression, autism, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and more.

1. Eat a diet rich in sulforaphane to tamp down on inflammation of the mind, body, and gut. Eating 7-9 servings of fruits and vegetables every day, mostly raw, will help heal the gut, ensure ample micronutrients are consumed, and will reduce chronic inflammation. Starting off, eating 7-9 servings of fruits and vegetables can seem like an impossible task, so at the minimum eat 1 cup of light sauteed cabbage everyday and take 50 mg of sulforaphane via a supplement like BroccoMax by Jarrow Formulas. Each pill contains 30 mg of sulforaphane, so take two daily, one in the morning and one at night for lasting all day anti-inflammatory effects. If you eat the cabbage and take the sulforaphane pills everyday you’ll get 110 mg of sulforaphane daily, which should dramatically improve the symptoms of mental illness.

2. Heal your digestive system and regain control over a diseased microbiome. The simplest method to reset your microbiome is with fasting, and in-between fasting you will want to heal epithelial tight junctions in order to reduce the inflammation from the microbiome die-off reactions. To heal tight junctions you’ll need zinc either from zinc rich foods like oysters or from a Zinc Balance supplement like the one from Jarrow. Flavenoids also heal the gut so drink a cup of green tea or eat some fermented soy every now and then.

3. Spend time in nature experiencing the emotions of awe, inspiration, and serenity. Use nature as a playground for experimentation where you can set goals and achieve them. Go for a hike or make a commitment to meditate for a certain length of time. Start a garden and care for some plants, which only need sunlight, water, food, and love to grow, which is all you need too! By spending time with Mother Earth you will become more mindful and you’ll experience the powerful healing effects of grounding.

4. Go for a walk and get your body moving. Walking is one of the easiest things you can do, being bipedal we evolved to be good at it, and if you can get yourself out the door then I can guarentee you’ll feel better at the end of the walk. Walking goes hand in hand with point #3 above.

5. Unpack your trauma with the help of professionals or loved ones. Better yet face these emotional traumas in the healing presence of nature. Look inward, touch the deep parts of your being, recognize the emotions, and let them pass like a wave in a non-reactive manner. The past is the past, you have to let yourself become liberated. You can do anything you want to do, it all depends on what your innate desires are, and what you wish to manifest.

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Liberate Yourself from Mental Illness

Mental illness is like a deep hole that you’ve been dropped in, and the light at the top seems so far away. It can feel hopeless and impossible to climb out of mental illness, but anything is possible. Mental illness starts in the mind, and it can be conquered in the mind. Mindset is everything, and the action plan above will help cultivate a new healthy lifestyle while also shifting your mindset to be default positive and happy.

A healthy diet full of whole unprocessed foods and vegetables is one of the best preventative health measures, and sulforaphane supplementation will give you a leg up. If you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, insomnia, or other mental disorders, make the strongest effort possible to exercise and eat right. Get eight hours of sleep every night. Enlist the help of friends and family to achieve your goals. The simplest changes have the biggest wellness impacts!

And if you’re ever having troubling or suicidal thoughts please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, available 24 hours a day. 1-800-273-8255

Updated November 2020

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References:

1. Felger JC. Role of Inflammation in Depression and Treatment Implications. Handb Exp Pharmacol. 2019;250:255-286.

2. Luliia Onofriichuk, Et al. Thyroid inflammation linked to anxiety disorders. European Society of Endocrinology.

3. Gevezova M, Sarafian V, Anderson G, Maes M. Inflammation and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Autism Spectrum Disorder. CNS Neurol Disord Drug Targets. 2020;

4. Walker KA, Windham BG, Power MC, et al. The association of mid-to late-life systemic inflammation with white matter structure in older adults: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study. Neurobiol Aging. 2018;68:26-33.

5. Hur, J., Frost, G.R., Wu, X. et al. The innate immunity protein IFITM3 modulates γ-secretase in Alzheimer’s disease. Nature (2020).

6. Kirkpatrick B, Miller BJ. Inflammation and schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull. 2013;39(6):1174-9.

7. Kim JK, Park SU. Current potential health benefits of sulforaphane. EXCLI J. 2016;15:571-577.

8. Johns Hopkins Medicine. "Broccoli sprout compound may restore brain chemistry imbalance linked to schizophrenia." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 May 2019. 

9. Singh K, Connors SL, Macklin EA, et al. Sulforaphane treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2014;111(43):15550-5.

10. Zhang JC, Yao W, Dong C, et al. Prophylactic effects of sulforaphane on depression-like behavior and dendritic changes in mice after inflammation. J Nutr Biochem. 2017;39:134-144.

11. Ferreira-chamorro P, Redondo A, Riego G, Leánez S, Pol O. Sulforaphane Inhibited the Nociceptive Responses, Anxiety- and Depressive-Like Behaviors Associated With Neuropathic Pain and Improved the Anti-allodynic Effects of Morphine in Mice. Front Pharmacol. 2018;9:1332.

12. Hou TT, Yang HY, Wang W, Wu QQ, Tian YR, Jia JP. Sulforaphane Inhibits the Generation of Amyloid-β Oligomer and Promotes Spatial Learning and Memory in Alzheimer's Disease (PS1V97L) Transgenic Mice. J Alzheimers Dis. 2018;62(4):1803-1813.

13. Shirai Y, Fujita Y, Hashimoto R, et al. Dietary Intake of Sulforaphane-Rich Broccoli Sprout Extracts during Juvenile and Adolescence Can Prevent Phencyclidine-Induced Cognitive Deficits at Adulthood. PLoS ONE. 2015;10(6):e0127244.

14. Wu S, Gao Q, Zhao P, et al. Sulforaphane produces antidepressant- and anxiolytic-like effects in adult mice. Behav Brain Res. 2016;301:55-62.

15. Renrong Wu. A 12-weeks Study to Evaluate Sulforaphane in the Treatment of Depression. Central South University. Clinicaltrials.gov

16. Jaime Lopez-Cervantes, Et al. Biochemical composition of broccoli seeds and sprouts at different stages of seedling development. International Journey of Food Science & Technology. Volume 48, Issue 11. 10 June 2013.

17. H. Liang, Et al. Determination of sulforaphane in broccoli and cabbage by high-performance liquid chromatography. Journal of Food Composition and Analysis. Volume 19, Issue 5. August 2006, pages 473-476.

18. Okunade O, Niranjan K, Ghawi SK, Kuhnle G, Methven L. Supplementation of the Diet by Exogenous Myrosinase via Mustard Seeds to Increase the Bioavailability of Sulforaphane in Healthy Human Subjects after the Consumption of Cooked Broccoli. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2018;62(18):e1700980.

19. Mohamed Farag, Et al. Sulforaphane composition, cytotoxic and antioxidant activity of crucifer vegetables. Journal of Advanced Research, Volume 1, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 65-70.

20. Sivapalan T, Melchini A, Saha S, et al. Bioavailability of Glucoraphanin and Sulforaphane from High-Glucoraphanin Broccoli. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2018;62(18):e1700911.

21. Dr. Rhonda Patrick. How To Increase Sulforaphane in Broccoli Sprouts by ~3.5-fold. Found My Fitness.

Five Mindfulness Practices

Article by Jason Brown - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Follow along and consider this your first mindfulness exercise.

Take a deep breath, breathe out, and relax. Quiet your mind; feel your senses.

Mindfulness meditation has been proven to provide enormous psychological benefits for both individuals as well as the larger communities who participate in it. Through mindfulness, you can learn to become fully present with the moment and accept all of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. Eliminating resistance to all of the elements that create your experience of life can bring about a sense of inner peace and improve your overall well-being.

While this may sound like a very worthwhile goal, it can be tough figuring out how to start on this journey of developing mindfulness. If you are seeking to start practicing mindfullness, or even just breathe new life into your existing practice, here are the five steps needed to help you create a meaningful routine:

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Set your Intention

Once you’ve decided that you want to practice mindfulness in your day to day, it’s important to define why you’re doing it and what you hope to get out of it. This will help give you an objective to focus on as well as provide you with some motivation to stick with it. This doesn’t have to be anything overly complex and for some, it might just be to learn to live in the moment a little bit more. For others, maybe life has been overwhelming lately and you really need help finding your inner peace. Whatever the reason, setting an intention for your practice of mindfulness will help you get the most out of it by defining a goal you can work towards.

Mindfulness has become somewhat of a buzz word and a sort of “trendy” thing to try out, but this does not necessarily have to degrade the actual value it can provide in your life. By creating an intention that is meaningful to you, you can develop an authentic and powerful practice that has the potential to be a transformative force in your life. 

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Create realistic expectations

Many people equate mindfulness to the idea of spiritual enlightenment or reaching some sort of Buddha-like state. While mindfulness may be the first step on the path towards enlightenment for some people, it does not necessarily have to represent embarking on a grandiose, spiritual journey of that scale for all. There are benefits to practicing mindfulness in any stage of the game.

That being said, it’s not realistic to expect that 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation a week will turn you into a sage overnight.

However, it may in fact help you find a little more equilibrium in your life. You may have also heard of stories of monks reaching nirvana by sitting and meditating under a tree for some period of time. It might be true that a number of individuals experienced something like this, but these stories can easily be misinterpreted to view mindfulness or meditation as nothing more than a tool to help achieve some specific state of being. Mindfulness is not a means to an end, but rather it is a practice that provides you with value for as long as you are engaged with it. It’s not some pill you swallow or thing you try once that changes your perception of the world forever, but rather mindfulness is like a muscle that you develop through regular use and exercise.

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Be Consistent & Disciplined

If you want to turn your intention into a reality, it’s going to take some consistent effort. It’s important to commit yourself to a regular mindfulness routine that will help you to internalize your practice. For some people, this might mean making time at the beginning or end of every day to sit and meditate. For others, it might mean spending 20-30 minutes a day reading some enriching material. It could even be a routine of sitting quietly with no distractions to enjoy a peaceful breakfast before starting your day. Whatever you choose to commit yourself to, the important piece is that you stay consistent with it. Like with most objectives, discipline matters. As previously mentioned, mindfulness can only add value to your life for as long as you continue to practice it, so it’s essential that you create a routine that you can stick with over time. 

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Create Accountability 

When starting any new habit, it’s important to create a system of accountability in order to keep yourself on track. This is particularly true with something like mindfulness where the effects can initially be very subtle or hard to measure. Therefore, creating a system that will push you to stick it out during the initial phases of developing the habit will help you reach the benefits that long-term commitment can bring to your life. One way you could do this is by setting a goal to practice mindfulness meditation for 10 minutes a day and then keep track of how many days in a row you’re able to stay with it. See if you can keep the streak going for one week, then two weeks, and then a month. Next thing you know, it will have become integrated into your normal, daily routine. Another way you can approach accountability is to find a friend who is willing to take this mindfulness journey with you. Check in with one another on at least a weekly basis to see how each of you has been able to follow through with your practice. Not only can this keep you accountable, it is also motivating to connect with someone embarking on the same journey as yourself.

“Eliminating resistance to all of the elements that create your experience of life can bring about a sense of inner peace and improve your overall well-being”

— Jason Brown

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Incorporate Mindfulness into your Daily Life

Practicing mindfulness can be as easy as simply living in the moment and being mindful of your breath

For practicing mindfulness to have significant effect for you, it's important not to fall into the trap of viewing your practice as separate from the rest of your daily life. There are many ways to mindfully meditate, and while you may have certain times of the day or certain activities you commit yourself to for developing mindfulness, the idea is that you will progressively start to become more mindful throughout your overall life.

It’s easy to view meditation as isolated from everything else you do during the day, but imagine what it would be like if you approached all experiences with the same openness and deliberateness that you bring to your meditation. You might slowly start to realize that being more mindful has helped take the edge off of some of the situations, responsibilities, or tasks that normally cause you stress, all unconsciously. Try imagining the 10 or so minutes you set aside each day for deliberate mindfulness as the “recharging” moments that carry you through the stressful parts of your day.

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Practice makes Perfect

Mindfulness is intended to bring lightness, relaxation, and peace to your life. It’s not entirely necessary to view these 5 steps as firm rules for your practice These five suggestions can kickstart your practice to turn an idea into a sustainable routine. There is definitely a science to the power of mindfulness meditation, but there is also an art of how to incorporate it into your life and get the most out of it. Above all else, take the liberty to be creative and experiment with finding a routine that can help bring more peace and joy to your life. 

Yoga will transform your life

Article by Jason Brown - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

We all recognize that in order to condition our bodies and improve our fitness, we need to take up some sort of physical exercise. However, it is often missed that the same concept applies to our mind, and that in order to condition our thoughts, emotions, and internal experiences, we need to take up some form of inner exercise.

When I first heard of yoga, my initial impression was that it just involved middle-aged moms doing aerobics on a mat in an unnecessarily hot room. Luckily, my open-mindedness and curiosity prevailed, and I eventually discovered the many different dimensions of yoga.

On the surface, yoga may seem like an alternative version of exercising for people who prefer to stay out of the weight room, but upon closer examination, you might find that there’s more going on under the hood. While yoga certainly does provide a number of physical benefits including flexibility, core strength, and posture, keep reading to learn how yoga can transform your life beyond the physical benefits.

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Practice Mindfulness with Yoga

It is so easy to get distracted by the hundreds of stimuli that fight for our attention every single minute of the day. Whether it’s our thoughts or the physical things around us, these distractions can make it seem like your default state of mind is to bounce around from one thought to the next. It really takes a deliberate effort to be present with the moment and aware of what is right in front of us.

Most who first start practicing yoga will find themselves impatiently thinking of other things, such as wondering how much time is left until the end of the class. The more you practice, the more you learn to let go and not worry about the time, instead focusing on the movements. The reward is much greater. With the uniquely challenging activities found in yoga, to master and perfect the poses you will eventually be required to completely clear your mind. Once you start to practice losing yourself in the flow you will start to notice that you legitimately feel different when I walking out of each class.

With my personal yoga practice, I eventually realized that the potential to lose myself in the moment existed with every activity that I encountered in my day. This skill can be learned by anyone. Use yoga as a way to practice mindfulness and apply that to your daily routine in a way that resets and reorients your perspective.

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Relieve Stress with Yoga

His holiness the Dalai Lama

A mantra you might learn in your yoga practice is “let go of the things that no longer serve you.”

We hold onto so much weight, from our past experiences to little day to day stresses, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that reliving or over-analyzing our grievances serves very little purpose.

Of course it's possible to learn from reflecting on our mistakes, but reflecting on a mistake 50 times does not teach you any lessons that can't be learned from reflecting on it once.

Yoga practice strengthens and develops the mind so it’s no longer a battle to calm your thoughts, allowing clarity of mind to develop. Just like a storm at sea, when the storm abates you can now see to the horizon.

“Let go of the things that no longer serve you”

By thinking, reciting, or chanting this phrase in or outside of your yoga or meditation practice, you can learn to actively let go of thoughts and outdated beliefs that add no value to your life. Release yourself from the bounds of your Not-Self. Once these steps are taken and mental solitude is established, be amazed by how much less stressed you are day to day.

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Learn Patience with Yoga

Ever been waiting in line and looked around to see that literally every other person in line has their head down looking at their phone? In truth, this probably occurs to you everyday! Generally speaking, most people lack the patience or ability to wait for something without distracting themselves with their phones. Yoga has the ability to teach patience, both with your mind and body. From the moment we wake up until the second we go to sleep, we are faced with thousands of opportunities to escape our own thoughts through technology, socializing, entertainment, or some form of consumption. Use the opportunity yoga provides to develop a new relationship with your thoughts so you can be both productive as well as mindful during the little down times of the day. You might find that those moments to yourself are sometimes the most enjoyable parts of your day.

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Develop Discipline with Yoga

Motivation and inspiration cannot solely be relied on to produce results in life. While it is certainly helpful to have ambition and drive, the main trait that you can rely on to make progress and achieve your goals is discipline. Inspiration and motivation are emotions. Emotions come and go, they are flux states that are dictated in large part by environmental factors.

Discipline on the other hand is a routine habit that you develop to work towards your vision no matter what mood, emotion, or feeling you’re currently experiencing. With discipline, you learn to experience emotion differently, let them wash over you and you recognize them, but stay distant and in control unless you decide to engage. Being emotional isn’t a problem, it is what makes us human, but emotions can also change your focus and disrupt your mindfulness.

If you have problems fostering discipline in your life, make a positive step forward by committing to something long term. Yoga is a great avenue for this, and over time you will learn that cultivated discipline throughout all aspects of your life can work miracles and enable you to achieve more than you ever thought before.

If you have trouble with discipline, start with your health. Wellness is a foundational element required to enjoy a blissful existence, and developing discipline by taking care of yourself and exercising your mind is a great place to start. Yoga is the scientific practice developed to cultivate this very thing.

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Enhance Focus with Yoga

Multitasking is something that has come to be celebrated as a strength and a sought after skill. What a lot of people fail to realize is that, as cool and useful as multitasking seems on the surface, the potential for productivity is far higher when we focus and concentrate our efforts on one task at a time, entering into a flow state.

Being in the flow is a mental state when everything seems to come intuitively and naturally, no matter how difficult the objective. The best athletes are celebrated for their ability to enter into flow states at those critical buzzer-beater moments.

The human brain is incapable of competently accomplishing two tasks simultaneously, and in order to be fully present and engaged in a conversation, we have to mindedly focus our efforts on the people we’re interacting with.

Learning how to focus will greatly benefit your life across the board, from work to social interactions. Without practice though it isn’t easy focusing on one thing. Being hyper focused can actually be very challenging if you don’t practice the skill, especially if you consider all the distractions of modern life.

Yoga is excellent for teaching focus as it challenges you to focus your attention on a single exercise, or breathing style, mantra, or awareness at a time. Yoga elevates your consciousness to new bounds, and the exercises in yoga often push you outside of your comfort zone to the point that you really have no choice but to cut the noise if you want to execute the pose properly.

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Ready? Take Your First Shavasana

Taking one yoga class is not going to immediately thrust you into spiritual enlightenment, but if you develop a deliberate and intentional practice, you will discover serious life benefits from yoga over time. You might even look back to that first class as the genesis moment that helped you create a new lifestyle, a new mindset, and…a new you.

A healthy mind has the potential to bring a little more calmness to your life and can do wonders for your relationships with other people. If you’re thinking about trying out a yoga class, most studios offer a 1 or 2-week free trial so you can get a sense first hand of what a yoga is like. There are so many different types of yoga so it can also be difficult to choose where to begin. For most beginners, a restorative flow is best.

Most practices include both physical and mental elements, but if you really want to hone in on the inner work and mindfulness part of yoga, I recommend seeking out a Kundalini Yoga class in your area as a good place to get started.

The Importance of Sleep

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated November 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Sleep is a very important part of everyday life. The prevailing recommendation is that 8 hours of sleep everyday is ideal amount for health and wellness. Less or more than eight hours and negative health implications start to increase. The health effects of sleep deprivation is also well studied fact. Sleep is so important that sleep deprivation studies on rats and dogs have shown that extreme sleep deprivation can be fatal.

Table of Contents:

1. Health Impacts of Sleep

2. The Sleep Cycle and Naps

3. Factors that Influence Sleep

4. Keep Sleep Simple

5. Holistic Sleep Improvement Protocol

6. Sleep is an Advantage, Use it

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Health Impacts of Sleep

Here are some quick facts from the American Sleep Association (1):

• 50 - 70 million US adults have a sleep disorder.

• 37% of 20-39 year-olds report short sleep duration

• 40% of 40-59 year-olds report short sleep duration

• 35.3% adults report < 7 hours of sleep during a typical 24-hour period.

Sleep can take many forms. Most people sleep once a day in a single unbroken event lasting, sleep involves a 5 to 9 hours in length. Others follow a biphastic sleep schedule in which there are two periods of sleep everyday, typically one long and one short. Then there are extreme sleep schedules like those developed by the famous late Buckminster Fuller (which we do not recommend you try). However your sleep schedule is divided, a total of 8 hours of sleep per day is recommended. If you get less sleep than what your body and mind require for restoration every night, then there are some health complications you should be aware of.

In a study of over 100,000 volunteers, researchers observed that cognitive performance is impaired in people who deviate from the recommended 7–8 hours per night (2). A deviation from the 7-8 hours had little impact on short-term memory performance, but reasoning and verbal skills were heavily impaired. Those who self-reported sleeping less than 4 hours per night had lower scores compared to those who slept well, and had similar cognitive performance to people 8 years older then them. In persons sleeping less than 8 hours, reduced leptin and elevated ghrelin hormones were observed (3). This skewed leptin/ghrelin ratio has been found to be responsible for increasing appetite and hunger cravings. In fact, increased body mass index (BMI) was found to be proportional to decreased sleep. Sleeping for less than 7 hours per night conferred a 12% greater risk of death (4).

Without a proper 8 hours of sleep per night you’re more likely to be cognitively older, fatter, and one step closer to death than if you had slept a full eight hours per night. Poor sleep can be avoided through! This article will guide you through the science of why you might be having poor sleep and how to counteract this. At the end there is an action plan you can follow to improve your sleep right away.

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The Sleep Cycle and Naps

Sleep can be broken down into sleep cycles 90 minutes in length. When you sleep for 8 hours, if everything is normal you will go through 5-6 sleep cycles. A sleep cycle can be further broken down into the stages of sleep: Wakefulness, Rapid Eye Movement (REM), Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3.

By Schlafgut - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Stage 3 is slow-wave deep sleep, and slow-wave-sleep is when the body heals and the brain consolidates memories (5). Stages 1 and 2 are short intermediate stages between stage 3 and REM sleep. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is when you experience dreams. Having adequate REM sleep every night has shown to be important for how alert, focused, and sharp you are the next day, and less REM sleep puts you at a higher risk of death (6).

While most of this article will focus on why you should get a good eight hours of sleep per night, daytime naps will also be discussed. When sleep deprived, naps can be a quick effective way to mitigate many of the effects of sleep deprivation. Longer naps have a more lasting effect than shorter naps, but the goal should be to resume a normal 8 hour sleep cycle as soon as possible. Keeping in tune with the circadian rhythm is important for many reasons, one of them being that brain waste clearance works better during sleep at night compared to daytime sleeping (7). The process of sleeping is important, but so is when you sleep. With that covered, here are the different types of naps you can take.

15 Minute Nap

If you’re feeling drowsy, fatigued, or have brain fog, a 15 minute nap can have you come feeling refreshed for 1-3 hours afterwards. The secret of the 15 minute nap is that very quickly you can descend into stage 2 sleep (see above). During stage 2 mental performance is increased, and in fifteen you’ll have gotten a mini tune-up, and the effects are immediate (8). A fifteen minute nap is too short to experience sleep inertia (that period of fatigue and drowsiness post sleep), so when you need a quick mental boost take a nap rather than reach for a cup of coffee. Naps used this way to help to improve your sleep and wellness overall.

The 15 minute nap is the best sleep option to utilize when you only have 15 minutes in the near future to catch some rest, and/or you require a cognitive boost right away.

30 Minute Nap

If you have longer than 15 minutes but less than the 90 minutes required for a full sleep cycle, then a 30 minute nap is a better option to improve mental clarity and also remove some physical fatigue. 30 minute naps enhance performance in reaction time and alertness compared to if you didn’t take a nap (9). A thirty minute nap extends your time in stage 2 sleep, improving the benefits compared to a shorter 15 minute nap. Sleep inertia will be slightly higher with a 30 minute nap that a 15 minute nap, but that should only last a few minutes at max.

If you sleep longer for thirty minutes you’ll enter into stage 3 sleep, and waking up from stage 3 sleep carries with it a lot of sleep inertia. It’s best to stick to a thirty minute nap or if you have the time go for a full 90 minute sleep cycle, and nothing in-between.

90 Minute Nap

The 90 minute nap is special because it encompasses one entire sleep cycle, from stage 1 and stage 2 sleep, through stage 3 slow-wave-sleep, and finally to REM sleep. If you need the biggest physical and mental boost midway through the day, a 90 minute nap is the way to go. 90 minute naps will boost performance for up to ten hours (10). The drawback of the 90 minute nap compared to the 15 and 30 minute options are that it creates more sleep inertia. Going through the sleep stages all the way to REM sleep takes one relatively close back to wakefulness though, and the sleep inertia from a 90 minute nap is slightly more than that from a 30 minute nap.

0 Minute Nap (Hypnagogic)

Hypnagogia is the experience of the transition from wakefulness to sleep. Ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes, this transition period takes people from conscious to unconscious experience, and unusual sleep phenomenon such as lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis can sometimes be experienced during hypnagogia.

A hypnagogic nap is a nap that only lasts for seconds. To experience a hypnagogic nap without having learned to control the hypnagogia state, sit in a chair and hold an object such as a metal ball in your hand and try to fall asleep. Right before you’ll fall asleep, your hand will relax, dropping the ball, waking you up from the hypnagogia state. With practice, the balls will no longer be needed. Visionaries such as Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Ludwig van Beethoven, Salvador Dalí, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Aristotle, and more all have credited hypnagogic naps with boosting their creativity and insight. I personally can attest to this phenomenon. All of my best ideas and revelations come to me as I straddle wakefulness and rest, and I’ve found that if I transition back to wakefulness instead of sleep after experiencing hypnagogia, I feel rested with my mind firing at max creative capacity.

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Factors that Influence Sleep

There are a many factors that influence sleep, and they range from minor to major in effect. It is important to be aware of these different factors, which range from light exposure to diet, and how they affect the circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle. When making changes to improve sleep quality and/or quantity focus on the most encompassing changes that positively effect the circadian rhythm. The methods that are the most effective in improving sleep often require the biggest lifestyle changes, so expect these changes to take time. Patience will be required if you wish to make lasting change and create a lifestyle which supports quality sleep and overall health and wellness.

Below is a list of the most important factors that can influence sleep. At the end of the article is a quick-start guide that will condense this information into actionable steps.

Chemicals: It’s well known that chemicals like caffeine affect sleep, but other chemicals, some of which are naturally produced, can also impact sleep.

Exogenous Sleep Disruptors

• Nicotine - the additive chemical found in tobacco, is a stimulant and disrupts sleep by increasing sleep latency (how long it takes to fall asleep), reduces quality, fragments sleep, and reduces overall time slept.

• Alcohol - a depressant, the more drinks that are consumed before bed, the greater the impact on sleep quality. You might fall asleep faster, but REM sleep (which is mentally restorative) is notably reduced after a few hours.

• THC/CBD - cannabinoids produced from cannabis, THC is a psychoactive chemical while CBD is non-psychoactive. Both promote feelings of relaxation but THC triggers dopamine release.

Exogenous Continued

• Caffeine - a stimulant found in coffee beans and green tea leaves, caffeine promotes wakefulness and releases adrenaline. The half-life of caffeine is ~6 hours, so if you have 100 mg caffeine upon first waking, 18 hours later when it is time to sleep you will still have 12.5 mg of caffeine in your system.

• Theobromine - a stimulant found in cacao, theobromine is very similar to caffeine in its effects.

• Phthalates - chemicals commonly found in plastic products, phthalates are endocrine disruptors and by affecting hormones can disrupt sleep through phenomenon such as hot flashes. Bedding materials commonly degas phthalates.

Endogenous Sleep Influencers

• Dopamine - a naturally produced feel-good neurotransmitter, increases in response to things that bring pleasure, and higher levels of dopamine disrupt sleep.

• Cortisol - a steroid hormone, cortisol peaks in the morning when you wakeup. Cortisol is released by the adrenal glands when stressed, though the overall cortisol release schedule is dependent on your circadian rhythm.

• Melatonin - a hormone primarily released by the pineal gland, melatonin helps regulates the sleep–wake cycle. 

Consistency: More consistent day-night schedules improve sleep quality. The circadian rhythm is based on the light and temperature cycles of the sun, and the further you stray from these natural variations, the more disrupted your circadian rhythm becomes. All the factors in this list affect your circadian rhythm, and therefore your sleep, but what also effects your sleep is how consistent you keep these factors everyday. Changing any factor, whether for the positive or negative creates circadian rhythm volatility, so move the needle slowly, introducing one optimization at a time, and make it a lasting habit.

Sometimes it’s not possible to be fully consistent, such as with jet lack from travel or life events, and in this case do your best to stay calm and reduce the volatility to your circadian as much as you can using the different takeaways that you glean from this list.

Electromagnetic Radiation: The Earth is buzzing with electromagnetic energy, both naturally occurring and now man-made. Little is known on how magnetic fields influence our physiology. Our bioelectrical system is just as developed as any other system in the body like the circulatory system, it’s just not well understood. There is evidence that the frequency and amplitude of electromagnetic fields can impact sleep (11), and if you’re experiencing poor sleep you might consider turning the WiFi routers in your home off ever night and keeping note of your sleep patterns.

I personally have done this and I notice I sleep better with the WiFI router off.

Environment: Environment is a multi-faceted word that means many things. Environment means more obvious factors like temperature and background noise, but environment can also mean more nebulous factors. Maybe you live with other individuals with volatile schedules who are highly stressed and emotional. Perhaps a family pet needs to be let out every night to do their business, or there is temporary construction nearby that starts at 6 am. There are endless ways your environment effects your sleep schedule and quality of sleep, and you can influence these factors to various degrees.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

— Reinhold Niebuhr

This quote is very true as it relates to your sleep environment. Make the changes and optimizations you can in order to sleep better, but remain calm with what you can’t change. Getting stressed or worried about what you can’t change will only make you sleep worse.

Food: Food has a big impact on your sleep. The timing and composition of meals determines your blood sugar levels, which in turn impacts your energy level and brain activity. Depending on what you eat right before bed can have an impact on how well you sleep that night meal right before bed. Fiber increased slow wave sleep and reduced stage 1 sleep (light sleep) whereas sugar and saturated fat increased stage 1 sleep and arousals (12).

When meal timing is kept consistent, the body adapts and the circadian rhythm normalizes, even if the meals are very early or very late. When the timing of meals change, the circadian rhythm shifts and sleep is disrupted (13)

Alcohol is a well known sleep disruptor. As a depressant, a few servings of liquor might help you fall asleep faster, but overall sleep quality will be worse, with REM stages suffering the most (14).

Light: Our existence is light, so it is no surprise to find out that light has a huge impact on sleep. Light is the main input the circadian rhythm bases its calculations off of, and the intensity, wavelength (color), and timing of light all change the response of the circadian rhythm (15). The transition of dim to bright light in the morning induces an immediate rise in cortisol (16), the stress hormone, promoting wakefulness. During the day, blue and green light dominate the sky, promoting alertness through changes in brain activity (17). At night blue light suppresses melatonin production, the sleep hormone, in a dose dependent manner (18). Any light after dark disrupts melatonin production and has an influence on sleep onset and quality (19), it’s just lower wavelength light has the least impact.

Being mindful of all light, and it’s effects on your sleep, is one of the biggest things you can do to positively impact your sleep quality and quantity.

Medications: There is a chance with any drug or medication for one of the side-effects to be sleep disruption. Alpha and beta blockers, SSRI antidepressants, statins, corticosteroids, ACE inhibitors, and diuretics are just some of the drugs which can cause insomnia, daytime drowsiness, decreased REM sleep, nightmares, the list goes on.

Getting good sleep every night is foundational to good health, and every effort should be made to get off medications which impact sleep. Every holistic effort should be taken to return to a healthy lifestyle not requiring any drugs or medications, but that desire has to manifest internally as a deep seated desire.

Pain: It’s no surprise that pain can disrupt sleep, it is something everyone has experienced. Chronic pain can cause regular sleep disruptions, whereas acute pain might only temporarily disrupt sleep. The issue with pain is that it can disrupt sleep, and then the lack of sleep can cause worsening health outcomes, which serve to further increase the pain. It’s a troubling cycle, and to break it pain and anti-inflammatory supplements can be of use. Curcumin, sulforaphane, and CBD are all effective natural anti-inflammatories which can reduce chronic and acute pain depending on their application.

Sex: We know that poor sleep negatively impacts your time in-between the sheets, but how does sex impact sleep? How sex can impact sleep is very individual. During sex, dopamine and oxytocin are released, which can create pleasant feelings which reduce stress, and after sex other hormones like prolactin can cause feelings of relief, relaxation, and sleepiness. These naturally produced chemicals can improve sleep, but for some sex might be too energizing. Likewise, if you’re disrupting your regular sleep schedule by staying up late and being frisky, this will only impact your sleep negatively.

Stress/Anxiety/Depression: Stress and anxiety can deeply disturb your sleep (20), and overtime this can lead to chronic sleep issues. How stress and anxiety affect sleep is similar to the pain-sleep downward cycle. Stress can disturb sleep which can worsen stress and so on. Overtime, or due to other factors, depression can become an issue, which can range from mild to life threatening.

Depression and sleep are closely linked. Decreased REM sleep can exacerbate depression, and depression can lead to insomnia.

Temperature: The temperature of the environment and your body temperature have a big impact on sleep. Finding the right balance between hot and cold is important for sleep quality. When sleep environments are too warm, slow wave and REM sleep are decreased, while wakefulness increases (21). In cold environments, shivering will negatively affect your sleep, but when bundled up the issue is mitigated. The best solution is to sleep in a cool to cold environment and then add warmth to your desired level with bedding materials.

Heat therapy which has many benefits, raises internal body temperatures and can impact sleep. Heat therapy at night (via a bath) while on the decline of the circadian rhythm was found to improve sleep onset, increase the deepest stage of slow-wave-sleep, but decrease REM sleep (22). Typically you don’t want to decrease REM sleep. The same heat therapy done during the incline of the circadian rhythm (think late afternoon) didn’t have any effect on sleep.

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Keep Sleep Simple

As you can tell, a lot of the health factors which disrupt sleep end up feeding their own condition, making it worse and creating a downward spiral. When or before this happens, it is important to intervene with wellness therapies which are proven effective in helping improve sleep, reduce stress, reduce pain, and increase happiness. Unless positive change is inserted into the equation, healing will not occur. Wellness activities as simple deep abdominal breathing or time spent in nature being in awe can change the conversation, getting wellness and sleep back on track.

Countering bad sleep habits with wellness activities is especially important as you can tell there is significant overlap in the categories above. When on a quest to improve sleep quality, it is best not to pick and choose which habits you’ll change and which you won’t. A holistic lifestyle approach is needed, and once normal sleep patterns have resumed, then you can patiently experiment with what minor changes you’d like to try to accommodate.

Native Americans used dream catchers as spiritual tools to give good dreams to those who slept below them. Bad dreams are caught in the webbing and burned in the light of the morning sun.

First, lets lay out desired sleep goals:

1. Sleep schedule in-sync with natural circadian rhythm

2. 8 hours sleep per night

3. Fast sleep onset

4. Reduced disruptions from elevated alertness and wakefulness.

5. Quality slow-wave-sleep

6. Regular REM sleep

7. Upon waking you feel alert and refreshed.

To accomplish the above sleep goals, lifestyle modifications will need to be made. These modifications are done with the best intentions and creating wellness habits out of these tips will positively impact your life given consistency and time. Some of these modifications might go against your established behaviors, so before you start the below program make sure you are 100% committed to improving your sleep. Only if you have a strong innate desire to improve your sleep and be healthier will these changes stick.

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Holistic Sleep Improvment Protocol

1. Establish a hard bedtime 8.5 hours before when you would like to wake up every morning. If you need to be up by 4 am that means bedtime is 7:30 pm. 6 am wake-up means 9:30 pm your head is on the pillow. The extra half hour is a cushion that accounts for the time it takes to fall asleep. You need to be consistent with this. Even if you’re not tired initially, create the habit and go lay in bed. Do you best to make your wake-up in the morning coincide with the rising of the sun.

2. Make the bedroom a place for sleep maybe sex and nothing else. If you have a TV in the bedroom, move it elsewhere. If you charge your phone or tablet on your bed stand, move the chargers to a different room. Actions dictate how we respond in different environments, and if you want the bedroom to be a place where you sleep, then it needs to be a place of sleep and nothing more. Watching TV or being on your phone gives your mind the expectation of alertness and activity in an environment where that strictly shouldn’t be allowed. Removing electronics and bright lights from the bedroom also reduces light exposure and melatonin production will be unaffected.

3. Keep the sleeping environment cool and exposed to the outside temperature, even in some small way. The circadian rhythm is driven by the light and temperature cycles of the Earth and Sun, and the further you remove yourself from the natural world the more your sleep will suffer. This goes for your electromagnetic connection to the Earth too, and being grounded at night can further improve sleep and reduce inflammation.

4. Be conscious of light throughout the day, and when the sun starts to set, all electronics should be put away and not used. The use of electronics 2-3 hours before sleep is strongly not recommended. Bright lights in the house should be dimmed, replaced with hue light bulbs (and set to a low kelvin temperature) or candles can be used. Dim lighting at night is better for your circadian rhythm and melatonin production while also being a more passionate creative environment. I have hue color changing lights and highly recommend them for reducing light exposure at night and also to schedule them to slowly turn on with the sun. They’re a game changer. At night put on some blue blocking glasses to further reduce the effect of having lights on. It might seem like overkill, but at night its very dark outside, and even dim lights affect the circadian rhythm. I use Felix Gray blue blocking glasses and notice if I use them consistently at night I sleep better.

5. Cut the caffeine and other stimulants. Caffeine has a long half-life and drinking a cup every morning builds up a chronic dependence on caffeine to be alert and wakeful. Having any caffeine in the afternoon or evening is a strict no. The occasional cup of coffee or tea isn’t a problem, but don’t make it a habit. Likewise, nicotine and alcohol are obvious sleep disruptors, and for health reasons overall shouldn’t be used at any time other than extremely sparingly. Skip the claw, la croix is a better alternative, and if you are addicted to nicotine, try transitioning off cigarettes to cannabis dry vaporization, a healthier alternative which is easy to stop. The cannabinoids might help you sleep too.

6. Exercise in the morning or afternoon, but not evening. Besides a peaceful walk at night, exercising at night stokes the energy systems of the body to ramp up, releases cortisol, and will delay sleep onset. Exercise and movement is foundational to a healthy life, but not at the expense of good sleep. The best way to make sure you exercise in the morning is to establish a consistent morning routine. Start your morning with a movement flow, yoga, calisthenics, a run or walk, there are so many options, and if you do this you’ll feel great throughout the rest of the day.

7. Start a journal and keep track of your sleep. Recording when you go to sleep, wake up, and sleep quality is a good way to pair your diet, daily actions, and habits to your quality of sleep. If your mind is still spinning before going to bed, committing these thoughts to paper can quiet the storm helping you fall asleep faster.

8. Meditate every day for at least 15 minutes. Meditation is the best way to practice calming your mind, it increases mindfulness, and provides an opportunity to raise your level of consciousness. The act of physically doing nothing might seem counterproductive, but through meditation you can unlock many internal and external secrets and truths that would have remained hidden to understanding. Meditation will impact your life in wide-ranging ways, and it will improve your sleep a lot.

9. Spend time in nature every day, increasing your consciousness of the world around you while also enjoying the mind clearing and emotionally calming benefits. You can practice your meditation during this time, focus on deep abdominal breathing, and feel the stress melt away.

10. Eat a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables and don’t eat too close to bed time. Additionally, keep your meal timing consistent so as to not disturb your circadian rhythm. For your last meal, at most 2 hours before bed, have a salad or high fiber vegetable like squash. Change your dietary mindset to not seek out foods you crave but instead the nutrition your body needs. Avoid all sugar before bed.

    To aid the sleeping process, there are some supplements which are known to help. 200-400 mg of magnesium glycinate an hour or two before bed will help improve sleep quality (23, 24), or simply eat 1/4 cup of nutrient-dense pumpkin seeds. 10-20 grams of glycine-rich collagen, or a meal composed of pulses (beans, lentils, chickpeas) which also contain a lot of glycine, before bed will improve sleep onset and quality (25).

11. Drink plenty of water throughout the day. The human body is made up of 70% water, and being in a state of chronic dehydration has serious long term health consequences. Upon waking, drink 24-32 oz pure filtered water and do the same before bedtime. Being dehydrated means your mouth and nasal passages will be more dry, increasing your chance of snoring and waking up with dry mouth. Dehydration will also increase your chances of getting leg cramps at night, an unpleasant and wakeful experience. Drink water everyday to stay healthy, skip the other liquids and aim for a gallon of water daily.

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Sleeping is an Advantage, Use It

It is clear that sleep is a critically important component towards achieving optimal human health, for achieving mental clarity, and for healing your body.

Modern culture doesn’t emphasize wellness, and has yet to fully realize the importance of a well rested 8 hours of sleep. Be cutting edge by going low-tech with your sleeping habits. You’ll experience a calmer mind, less turbulent emotional states, feel stronger and be better rested, and you’ll be less likely to die. Without good sleep you will not age gracefully and experience the quality of life you want.

Updated September 2020

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References:

1. Sleep and Sleep Disorder Statistics. Sleep Association

2. Wild CJ, Nichols ES, Battista ME, Stojanoski B, Owen AM. Dissociable effects of self-reported daily sleep duration on high-level cognitive abilities. Sleep. 2018;41(12)

3. Taheri S, Lin L, Austin D, Young T, Mignot E. Short sleep duration is associated with reduced leptin, elevated ghrelin, and increased body mass index. PLoS Med. 2004;1(3):e62.

4. Cappuccio FP, D'elia L, Strazzullo P, Miller MA. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. Sleep. 2010;33(5):585-92.

5. Todorova R, Zugaro M. Isolated cortical computations during delta waves support memory consolidation. Science. 2019;366(6463):377-381.

6. Leary EB, Watson KT, Ancoli-israel S, et al. Association of Rapid Eye Movement Sleep With Mortality in Middle-aged and Older Adults. JAMA Neurol. 2020;

7. Hablitz, L.M., Plá, V., Giannetto, M. et al. Circadian control of brain glymphatic and lymphatic fluid flow. Nat Commun 11, 4411 (2020).

8. Lovato N, Lack L. The effects of napping on cognitive functioning. Prog Brain Res. 2010;185:155-66.

9. Rosekind MR, Smith RM, Miller DL, et al. Alertness management: strategic naps in operational settings. J Sleep Res. 1995;4(S2):62-66.

10. Gillberg M. The effects of two alternative timings of a one-hour nap on early morning performance. Biol Psychol. 1984;19(1):45-54.

11. Bagheri hosseinabadi M, Khanjani N, Ebrahimi MH, Haji B, Abdolahfard M. The effect of chronic exposure to extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields on sleep quality, stress, depression  and anxiety. Electromagn Biol Med. 2019;38(1):96-101.

12. St-onge MP, Roberts A, Shechter A, Choudhury AR. Fiber and Saturated Fat Are Associated with Sleep Arousals and Slow Wave Sleep. J Clin Sleep Med. 2016;12(1):19-24.

13. Wehrens SMT, Christou S, Isherwood C, et al. Meal Timing Regulates the Human Circadian System. Curr Biol. 2017;27(12):1768-1775.e3.

14. Ebrahim IO, Shapiro CM, Williams AJ, Fenwick PB. Alcohol and sleep I: effects on normal sleep. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2013;37(4):539-49.

15. Dijk DJ, Archer SN. Light, sleep, and circadian rhythms: together again. PLoS Biol. 2009;7(6):e1000145.

16. Leproult R, Colecchia EF, L'hermite-balériaux M, Van cauter E. Transition from dim to bright light in the morning induces an immediate elevation of cortisol levels. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2001;86(1):151-7.

17. Vandewalle G, Collignon O, Hull JT, et al. Blue light stimulates cognitive brain activity in visually blind individuals. J Cogn Neurosci. 2013;25(12):2072-85.

18. West KE, Jablonski MR, Warfield B, et al. Blue light from light-emitting diodes elicits a dose-dependent suppression of melatonin in humans. J Appl Physiol. 2011;110(3):619-26.

19. Wright HR, Lack LC. Effect of light wavelength on suppression and phase delay of the melatonin rhythm. Chronobiol Int. 2001;18(5):801-8.

20. Al maghaireh DF, Abdullah KL, Chong MC, Chua YP, Al kawafha MM. Stress, Anxiety, Depression and Sleep Disturbance among Jordanian Mothers and Fathers of Infants Admitted to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: A Preliminary Study. J Pediatr Nurs. 2017;36:132-140.

21. Okamoto-mizuno K, Mizuno K. Effects of thermal environment on sleep and circadian rhythm. J Physiol Anthropol. 2012;31:14.

22. Horne JA, Shackell BS. Slow wave sleep elevations after body heating: proximity to sleep and effects of aspirin. Sleep. 1987;10(4):383-92.

23. Nielsen FH, Johnson LK, Zeng H. Magnesium supplementation improves indicators of low magnesium status and inflammatory stress in adults older than 51 years with poor quality sleep. Magnes Res. 2010;23(4):158-68.

24. Held K, Antonijevic IA, Künzel H, et al. Oral Mg(2+) supplementation reverses age-related neuroendocrine and sleep EEG changes in humans. Pharmacopsychiatry. 2002;35(4):135-43.

25. Inagawa, K., Hiraoka, T., Kohda, T. et al. Subjective effects of glycine ingestion before bedtime on sleep quality. Sleep Biol. Rhythms 4, 75–77 (2006).

Control Food Cravings with Fasting

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated December 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Fasting, that is, not consuming calories, is becoming increasingly popular, and for good reason. The incredible benefits of fasting are numerous, from extending lifespan (1) to curing diseases (2), and fasting is certainly a wellness tool everyone should learn to use properly in their quest for optimal health. Fasting has such powerful effects upon the body because it removes a key component to life, food. Basically the larger the lever you pull (water, sleep, food, sunlight, air quality, etc), the larger the potential effect, positive or negative.

When an organism starts to fast, cellular autophagy ramps up (3) and metabolism increases (4), and a whole host of other important bodily systems are adjusted in ways that boost longevity and promote health. Because fasting is free and requires little more than perseverance, water, and electrolytes (for extended multi-day fasts), it has a low barrier of entry for anyone to try, no matter how inexperienced. While extended multi-day fasting can be a powerful weight loss tool, a better approach for those new to fasting is to first start small with a 24 hour fast, and potentially experiment with longer fasts from their after consulting with their doctor.

Fasting for the sole purpose of losing weight can be incredibly successful, but with that success a misguided behavior may establish itself that the best way to maintain weight is to not eat. The best way to maintain a lean and healthy body is to be mindful of metabolism, not just choosing not to eat for 3 days every week. To be clear, fasting is a powerful tool and is best not used irresponsibly.

Hunger vs Cravings

During a 24 hour fast body fat is burned and the digestive system is partially healed and reset. For a first timer though, what is learned about the interaction between eating, psychology, and behavior is even more valuable. Fasting is a fantastic way to learn how to differentiate between two types of hunger everyone has experienced: Physiological hunger and psychological hunger (also known as cravings). A good example demonstrating the difference can be summarized with the following hypothetical conversation:

Rebecca - “Oh my god I’m so hungry! Hey Dave what should we have for dinner?”

Dave - “I’m ravenous too! How about we grab some burgers?”

Rebecca - “I’m not feeling burgers, does Mexican food work (cravings)?”

Dave - “Yeah sure I’ll eat anything (hunger)!”

Dave was experiencing physiological hunger. His body required calories, and anything would suffice. Rebecca on the other hand wasn’t physiologically hungry. If Rebecca was more aware of the difference between hunger and cravings in this instance, she might have decided to not eat again until she was actually hungry, therefore consuming less calories and likely maintaining a healthier body weight.

A 24 hour fast is a great way to learn the difference between cravings and hunger. Over the course of that 24 hours, the average person will usually experience food cravings a couple times because they are used to eating every day consistently. By remaining strict and continuing with the fast, it’s discovered that 10-30 minutes after the food craving first started that it subsides or disappears. Focus the mind on something else and completing a 24 hour fast is easy.

A 24 hour fast will also teach how the body becomes adapted to receiving food at regular intervals. Eat breakfast everyday at 7 am? Guaranteed your stomach starts growling everyday at 7 am or shortly afterwards. That signal isn’t necessarily a sign that you’re hungry, it’s just your stomach contracting via muscle memory as it’s used to processing food around that time. Muscle memory and psychological behaviors are often intertwined, and it’s easy to confuse a normal biologic process with a conjured up signal of “I’m super hungry right now”.

Fasting Resets the Microbiome

Schedule a 24 hour fast on a day where there will be little if any food temptations, and once a few 24 hour fasts have been successfully completed in that manner, do a 24+ hour fast on any random day where temptations of junk food may arise. Armed with the knowledge that you’ve already successfully completed a 24 hour fast, when food cravings are encountered because someone brought cake or donuts, you’ll be well equipped to handle the situation in order to successfully complete the 24 hour fast. If you slip up, simply refocus your willpower and try again! Once you’ve broke your fast with a healthy meal, follow these 3 digestion improving steps.

The 24 hour fast is a great tool to intuitively learn the difference between cravings and hunger, but it won’t make much of a dent on serious digestive health issues. A diseased gut is an inflammation machine, placing your body into a state of chronic inflammation which can result hundreds of known health issues which manifest in other parts of your body like the brain, skin, or other organs. Additionally, a weak gut leads to a weak immune system, as the gut is the bodies primary barrier which keeps pathogenic microbes out. Fasting can heal the digestive system and restore balance to the microbiome.

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Ready to Heal Your Gut?

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Together the digestive system and microbiome are the foundation of health from which everything else is dependent on.

The Holistic Gut Health Guide contains all the information you need to identify and understand the gastrointestinal and microbiome problems you may have while also providing you the most effective natural methods you can use to heal your gut. No gut health problems are unsolvable, give yourself every possible advantage along your gut health journey by reading an implementing the advice shared in the Holistic Gut Health Guide.

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Some of the information in the Holistic Gut Health Guide isn’t common knowledge but when implemented it is highly effective in healing the gut and shifting the microbiome towards symbiosis. Give yourself every possible advantage along your gut health journey by reading an implementing the advice shared in the Holistic Gut Health Guide.

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References

1. De cabo R, Carmona-gutierrez D, Bernier M, Hall MN, Madeo F. The search for antiaging interventions: from elixirs to fasting regimens. Cell. 2014;157(7):1515-26.

2. Documentary. The Science of Fasting. Directed by Sylvie Gilman and Thierry de Lestrade.

3. Jung CH, Ro SH, Cao J, Otto NM, Kim DH. mTOR regulation of autophagy. FEBS Lett. 2010;584(7):1287-95.

4. Knapik JJ, Meredith CN, Jones BH, Suek L, Young VR, Evans WJ. Influence of fasting on carbohydrate and fat metabolism during rest and exercise in men. J Appl Physiol. 1988;64(5):1923-9.

Medical Disclaimer: All information, content, and material of this website is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis, and/or medical treatment of a qualified physician or healthcare provider.

Disclosure: Wild Free Organic is a member of various affiliate programs and if a purchase is made through one of our affiliate links a small commission is received. This does not affect your purchase price. Visit our disclosure page for more information.

Break Sugar Addiction by Avoid Added Sugars

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated December 2021. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Being healthy and free from sickness, pain, and disease is as simple as consistently following and adhering to a collection of small healthy habits. Depending on your current state of health, becoming well can seem impossibly daunting, for one, where do you start? If you keep a lifestyle unchanged, but add one healthy habit, then wellness has been improved. To create a healthy habit, you must first be hyper-conscious of your actions until they become second nature, becoming a habit you do unconsciously. The hard part of being healthy isn’t following wellness habits, but rather forming the habits one at a time, and performing them long enough that they become second nature.

One of the most impactful wellness habits you develop is to kick a sugar addiction (1). Like other addictive chemicals, sugar is toxic (2), creates widespread inflammation in the body (3) when consumed in excess, shifts the microbiome to a less diversified pathogenic state (4), and desensitizes dopamine receptors (5). The average American consumes 10 times more sugar than 100 years ago; in 2017 this totaled 90.7 grams of added-sugar everyday (6).

For reference, Canada clocked in about 1/3 lower than the USA in 2017 at 58.5 grams per day (7), and the average per-capita added-sugar consumption for rural China in 2017 was only 3.75 grams. In India, Israel, and Russia, people on average consume 5.1, 14.5, and 20 grams of additional sugar per day respectively (8).

For most countries in the world, the processed food industry is driving the ever increasing consumption of sugar, and the health complications are piling up. Over-consumption of sugars together with other factors contributes to the current obesity epidemic

A healthy habit to form which would transform your life would be to kick a sugar addiction. Some sugar in a diet from natural foods and sugars is fine, but a strong effort should be made to avoid heavily processed added-sugars if true health and wellness is the goal.

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Symptoms and Complications of Sugar Addiction

Sugar addiction has many of the same symptoms of other common addictions like tobacco or opioids. When sugars are consumed, natural endogenous opioids get released. Outside the context of a healthy balanced diet, substantial parallels between sugar and drugs of abuse can be observed in behavior and brain neurochemistry.

Animal studies have shown sugar to be addictive than cocaine (9). You might be a sugar addict if you display any of the following behaviors:

Free yourself from the toxic behavioral influences of sugar

• You make excuses to consume more sugar.

• You make special trips to buy more sugar laden products

• You drink sugar sweetened beverages.

• You eat sugar dominant foods to breakfast.

• You reward yourself with a sweet for motivation or as a reward.

• You have a secret stash that you binge from when alone.

• You previously tried to stop eating sugar, and couldn’t.

Beyond these behavioral patterns, there are two types of symptoms when it comes to sugar addiction. There are symptoms present when actively feeding the sugar cycle, and there are the symptoms of sugar withdrawal.

Symptoms of Sugar Addiction

• Persistent brain fog

• Volatile swings in energy

• Intense cravings disguised as hunger

• Mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, ADHD

• Persistent fatigue

• Racing thoughts

• Strong sexual urges

• Regular foods like fruit and vegetables taste bland and dull

• Vehement denial of a sugar addition when questioned

• Being overweight or obese

Symptoms of Sugar Withdrawal

• Intense cravings

• Depression

• Fatigue

• Anxiety

• Nausea

• Irritability

• Altered sleep patterns

• Cognitive issues, brain fog

• Low blood sugar, dizziness

• Other symptoms associated with drug withdrawal

These symptoms themselves can cause serious complications towards everyday life, but there are more insidious long term health complications from being addicted to sugar.

When naturally occurring sugars are paired with a healthy dose of fiber, like with fruit and vegetables, overall the known negative health effects of sugar appear to be negligible. The issue with sugar is when it is consumed without fiber. When sugar is consumed in excess and without fiber, inflammation in the body rises dramatically. Inflammation is not the root cause of disease, but it is a complicating factor in 100+ diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, mental health disease, and more. More sugar also means more cavities, so oral health and hygiene is also affected (10).

Chronic levels of inflammation keep the body in a state of fight-or-flight, with the now dominant sympathetic nervous system being out of balance with the rest-and-relax parasympathetic nervous system. This over activity places stress on all the major systems of the body such as the immune system, liver, digestive system, circulatory system, and more.

Besides being predisposed to 100’s of different chronic health ailments, chronic inflammation increases body fat storage and can lead to obesity. Obesity itself is another complicating health factor, and now what was one health issue became two.

We are what we eat, and sugar is toxic. We know excess sugar consumption leads to inflammation, obesity, and disease, but what is the step that sits in-between sugar consumption and chronic inflammation?

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Sugar and the Digestive System

After sugar is consumed, before it can supply energy to the body through the mechanisms of insulin transport, it needs to be digested. Different sugars have different chemical structures and therefore different rates of digestion and absorption. Sugar is a general term used for sweet-tasting soluble carbohydrates. There are simple sugars which composed of a single sugar molecule, or compound sugars, where two sugar compounds are connected together. Whether sugars are consumed as simplex, compound, or as a starch (a chain of many sugar compounds), the digestive system will break apart and hydrolyze carbohydrates into simple sugars for transport into the blood stream. Let’s examine the most commonly consumed simple sugars:

Monosaccharides

• Fructose - Fruit Sugar

• Glucose - The basic form of sugar used by the body

• Galactose - Present in milk

Disaccharides

• Sucrose - One fructose and Glucose sugar combined

• Lactose - One glucose and galactose sugar combined

• Maltose - Two glucose molecules combined

There are also alcohol sugars, polysaccharides (which are larger chains of sugars), artificial sugars, and many more. The chemistry of sugars is complex, but what is clear is that excess sugar consumption is dangerous, and it all starts with the gut.

The microbiome is the collection of symbiotic (helpful), commensal (indifferent), and pathogenic (bad) microorganisms that inhabit your gut. Your gut is technically “outside” of your body, and it contains 10x more organisms than cells in your body, over 100 trillion! When the microbiome is well diversified and balanced (containing primarily symbiotic organisms) food will digest best and qualitative health markers are improved across the board.

The villi connect the digestive, immune, and circulatory systems.

We know the body only transports simple sugars into the circulatory system by passive and active transport through the cell membranes of the finger-like villi structures of the gut. Fats, proteins, and carbs which are still too large for transport need to be broken down. This is where the microbiome plays a critical role in digestion. The chemical and mechanical processes of the digestive system help break down food into smaller pieces, and the microbiome performs the finishing touches breaking apart food into sufficiently small compounds.

When excess simple sugars are consumed, it becomes much easier for the microbiome to access the energy of the sugar first for their own survival needs rather than needing to break chemical bonds first. Over time, this can shift the balance of the microbiome, creating sugar craving microbes with a mind of their own. In order to keep their over-sized populations stable, an unbalanced microbiome will directly interact with the body and brain through the release of chemicals and neurotransmitters. The gut is the second brain of the body, and for many people it’s not under their control. This will manifest as the affectionately known “sweet tooth”.

With an unbalanced microbiome, issues like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or more serious complications like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), irritable bowel disease (IBD), and Crohn’s disease can arise. Considering the gut is the boundary between the barbarian (microbes) and gate keepers (epithelial cells), the immune system is most active at the gut. A compromised digestive system with failing tight junctions which lets microbes and undigested molecules slip into the bloodstream is the source of inflammation that sugar causes. Sugar without fiber or not existing in long polysaccharide chains is too easily accessed and used by the microbiome, shifting the balance towards pathogenic microbes. It is this easy access to cheap resources with no nutritional value beyond calories that compromises the integrity of the entire digestive system, leading to chronic inflammation, and therefore obesity and disease.

And there are other complicating factors. Where did the sugar come from? Depending on the plant a sugar ultimately derives from is very important. Modern agricultural practices use heavy amounts of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides which contaminant everything they are sprayed on. These compounds have can take decades to break down. A GMO cane sugar will be genetically modified to survive when exposed to greater amounts of dangerous herbicides like glyphosate. Glyphosate is an effective herbicide because it interferes with the The shikimate pathway, an ancient seven-step metabolic pathway used by bacteria, archaea, fungi, algae, some protozoans, and plants for the biosynthesis of folates and some amino acids.

While the shikimate is not found innately in humans, it is found and utilized for the survival of our microbiome. Unless sugar is label organic, and even that can have its flaws, it is mostly likely contaminated with glyphosate and other compounds which interfere with the shikimate pathway and other similar metabolic processes. Consumption of this sugar will disrupt the growth of symbiotic microorganisms which might be content munching on fiber all day, and simultaneously fuel the growth of short-lived commensal and pathogenic microbes. Natural sources of sugar like honey are best because they are free or much less contaminated by these dangerous herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.

When the food source is taken away from these overgrown and unbalanced microbiomes, microbes will release chemicals and neurotransmitters in an effort to acquire more resources (aka you need to eat some sugar NOW) while simultaneously having their population die-off in the wait for more resources. This die-off reaction can release built-up toxic compounds, stressing your gut and liver while you simultaneously experience volatile swings in energy as you’ve become insulin resistant and blood sugar levels have dropped dangerously low.

It’s a terrible health predicament that can be frightening to experience, but feeding the microbiome with more sugar will only make breaking the addiction harder or inevitably lead to the genesis of a deadly disease down the line.

Does your microbiome work for you, or against you?

There is no one living without a microbiome, a healthy microbiome is a critical component to living a healthy disease-free life. If conscious awareness isn’t given to the microbiome through a healthy, organic, unprocessed diet, the microbiome will make itself known to you, either physically, chemically, or behaviorally, demanding nutrients. Understanding the 100 trillion microorganisms that make up your microbiome is the the key to unlocking your health, and the first step towards breaking a sugar addiction.

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Now that we’ve laid everything out, lets formulate a strategy that best increases your chances to kick sugar while also reducing the negative health effects that will be experienced during the healing process.

How to Kick a Sugar Addiction

To kick a sugar addition, you need to be aware of what drives a sugar addicition, and how you can break the cycle. Below is a simplified version of the vicious cycle that can form when consuming excess sugar. To break an addition, there isn’t any one strategy that will work, you must first have the innate desire to be free of addiction, have the willpower and discipline to see it through, devote time, and have strategies developed for each step of the cycle. Relapse can occur at any of the stages, so preparation is required for each stage.

In preparation for the following sugar reset, your environment must be made to be conductive to change. Follow the steps below first:

1. Eliminate all sugar from the household. This means throwing out all sweets, treats, desserts, sources of simple carbohydrates, etc.

2. Make a list of your favorite sugar pit stops (convenience markets, coffee shops) and blacklist them, vowing to not visit them again.

3. Practice saying no. Other people might offer you sugar-rich or other unhealthy foods during this reset, rehearse your line and practice saying no in order to avoid temptation, such as: “No thank you John, I am currently working to break my addiction to sugar”. The more truthful and to the point your words are, the less others will try to convince you that taking a bite or having one small treat isn’t a big deal.

4. Identify your trigger foods. Tracking your diet, mood, and energy in a journal for a week before starting the reset will help you identify your trigger foods that must be completely avoided during the reset.

5. Develop a plan for how you will drink 1 gallon of filtered water a day. Tap water containing fluoride kills microbes, so for the microbiome to survive more sugar is required, and they will release neurotransmitters for this. Filtered or spring water is pure and free of chemicals.

Once the steps above have been taking, find a 7 day chuck of time in your schedule which is expected to be lower stress. Breaking a sugar addiction takes longer than seven days, but the first week accomplished 80% of the work. Stress triggers sugar cravings, so to increase the chance of success this should be scheduled around a time period of low stress.

The fastest and most painless way to get the ball rolling is to start this week long period with a 24 hour fast, that is no eating from dinner on day to dinner the next. Unless you’re in a state of serious health complications, a 24 hour is safe and achievable by anyone to do. A 48 hour fast is even better as it takes you right to the edge of ketosis (fat only metabolism), but this can be trickier for those really dependent on sugar for their energy levels.

Fasting simultaneously does the following:

• Improves blood sugar levels

• Sensitizes insulin

• Kills off an overactive microbiome

• Reduces inflammation

• Heals the digestive system

• Burns body fat

Fasting promotes health in the exact opposite ways sugar addiction promotes disease. Fasting is a powerful wellness methodology. Fasting also removes many of the questions “like what should I eat instead” and removes analysis paralysis; there are only two objects, don’t eat and drink water! If you carry significant levels of body fat, an every other day strategy for fasting has been shown to be highly effective in breaking the sugar cycle, improving microbiome diversity, and lowering body fat.

An every other day 24 hour fasting schedule would look like this:

• Day 1 fasting, drinking only water (1 gallon recommended)

• Day 2 refeed with organic fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, minimally processed grains, animal protein

• Day 3 fasting

• Day 4 refeed

• Repeat

If you do this, expect body fat to melt off as it is used to cover your energy needs throughout the week. Blood sugar, lipid, and insulin markers will improve, energy levels will stabilize, mood will brighten, and sleep will improve. Fasting is the “rip the band-aid” off approach. It’s the most effective and ultimately causes less pain and suffering in the long run, but can be nerve racking to start.

If you think you’ll be more comfortable with a gradual approach, then the first step is to cut out the main offenders. This means cutting out sugar and all sweetened beverages, desserts like cookies and ice cream, and bread products, anything that contains almost exclusively sugar.

Even if you just stop drinking soda, that has a huge impact over time! According to the CDC, 5 out of 10 adults and 6 out of 10 youth drink a sugar sweetened beverage at least once a day. This equates to on average an extra 145 calories for both adults and youth consumed everyday, with one 12 oz soda containing 39 grams of sugar, double than the upper limit we recommend of 20 grams.

If you’re overweight and carry an unhealthy amount of body fat, then either replacing 1 soda a day with water over the course of a month reduce your caloric consumption by 4200 calories, or 1.2 lbs of fat. Over the course of a year of no soda, that equals 14.4 lbs of fat gone.

Once the main sugar offenders have been removed from your diet, you’ll want to replace them when the cravings hit with healthy fats and fiber rich foods.

Foods Containing Healthy Fats

• Avocado

• Nuts - walnuts, almonds, cashews, pecans,

  pistachios

• Seeds - pumpkin, sunflower, chia, flax, etc

• Animal Fats (grass-fed) - butter, ghee, cream, cheese

• Eggs (pasture raised) - chicken, quail

• Cacao (fair trade) - Dark Chocolate 70% +

• Oils (cold pressed) - olive oil, coconut oil, red palm oil, avocado oil

Foods the contain both healthy fats and fiber:

• avocado, nuts, seeds, olives, coconut, and cacao

Foods Containing Fiber

• Squash - butternut, winter, zucchini

• Seeds - pumpkin, sunflower, chia, flax, cacao

• Nuts - almonds, cashews, walnuts, pecans, pistachios

• Legumes - beans, lentils, peas, chickpeas, peanuts

• Fruits - such as avocado, pear, jackfruit, berries, mango, banana, papaya, coconut, guava, kiwi, etc

• Vegetables - carrots, eggplant, jalepeno, tomato, artichoke, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, sweet potato, radish, etc

• Dark Leafy Greens - spinach, lettuce, swiss chard, mustard, etc

• Grains - quinoa, popcorn, oats, black/brown/red rice,

As you can see, there are plenty of delicious foods which contain fiber and fats, excellent additions to any diet. All of the foods above are also micronutrient dense, and a sugar based diet is lacking in critical vitamins and minerals, the deficit of which can have massive health implications.

Homemade Raw Trail Mix

• 1/4 cup Almonds

• 1/2 cup Cashews

• 1/4 cup Walnuts

• 1/4 cup Pecans

• 1/2 cup Pumpkin Seeds

• 1/2 cup 70% Mini Dark Chocolate Chips

In your purse, bag, or on your person, keep a bag of raw trail mix with you. When a sugar craving hits, unless you’re in the middle of a fast, a few handfuls of trail mix is a nice healthy treat that will keep you satiated and content. Right now do not be concerned about calories.

Make sure to buy nuts and seeds which are raw. Raw foods are those that aren’t heated for pasteurization, and eating raw foods helps diversify your microbiome. Raw foods also contain higher levels of vitamins and minerals since the heat didn’t break them down.

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Building your Fat Metabolism

A sugar dependent diet is skewed heavily towards carbohydrate metabolism for energy. Carbohydrate metabolism isn’t necessarily bad in and of itself, but often the carbohydrate metabolic cycle will be overdeveloped and out of balance with fat metabolism. The metabolism of fat for energy, either from food or body fat, provides longer lasting and more sustainable energy levels. Having a well-functioning fat metabolism fills in energy dips that are experienced when eating carbs. By stabilizing your energy levels, fats will help keep you calm and emotionally stable, reducing your chance of giving into temptation and reaching for that sugary treat when your sugar starved microbiome and low blood sugar levels are saying you need it most.

Fatty acid metabolism can be improved by eating a diet higher in fats for an extended period of time, or more quickly through a ketogenic diet. A ketogenic diet is a very low carb diet where the body has to produce ketones for use by the brain. The brain exclusively runs on simple sugars or ketones for energy. Since a ketogenic diet is <5% carbs and 70% of greater fat macronutrient wise, it will very quickly improve your ability to metabolize fatty acids. Be aware that you might initially experience what is known as keto flu. Keto flu is a set of flu like symptoms that people first transistioning to a ketogenic diet might experience. The same smptoms can be expereinced during longer duration fasts too as the body as enters ketosis 36-48 hours after fasting has begun.

The digestive system is the seat of power for the immune system, and there is a removal of sugar & nutrients, a die off reaction will occur and many diseased microbes will die. Now these microbes are diseased waste that need to be expelled by the body, causing immune symptoms until this occurs. If tight junctions of the intestines are compromised, then some of these dead microbes will filter into the blood stream and cause an immune response, hence flu-like symptoms can be experienced. If you wish to avoid these flu-like symptoms during the start of fasting or ketogenic diet, then it is important that the tight junctions of the body are healed and have no gaps that undigested food or microbes can exploit to enter into the blood stream. It’s also been shown that glyphosate damages tight junctions, so be mindful of that information. I wrote a guide on how to heal tight junctions naturally with four methods. Luckily the digestive system regenerates very quickly, so even just following those recommended steps for one or two weeks before kicking your sugar addiciton will greatly reduce your risk of experiencing flu-like symptoms when resetting your microbiome and metabolic systems.

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Quit Sugar Quick Start Guide

Putting everything discussed into practice, below is a quick start guide with actionable steps you can follow to kick your sugar addiction, balance your microbiome, heal your digestive system, and build your fat metabolism.

1. Week 1 - Keep a food and mood journey for 1 week. This will help you identify your trigger foods which need to be blacklisted

2. Clean your Environment - Remove all junk food, sugar, and treats from your home, work, and car.

3. Practice Saying No - Be honest, and formulate a game plan for your first 7-14 days sugar free.

4. Prepare - Stock up and buy the healthy organic foods you require to be healthy and successful with this important health endeavor. Figure out your plan on how to drink 1 gallon of water daily (24 oz wakeup, 84 oz day, 24 oz bedtime)

5. Week 2 - Commit to one of the two dietary strategies listed above. Either do a 24 hour fast every other day, or keep a baggie of raw trail mix with you at all times for those moments when cravings strike.

6. Week 3 - The hardest part is over, continue with your wellness schedule. If fasting, you can ease up from the every other schedule and do two 24 hour fast every week instead. Keep eating whole unprocessed organic foods!

7. Week 4 and Beyond - It takes four weeks to create a habit, congratulations! Kicking a sugar addiction is a major accomplishment and over time your body will heal from the damage created by the consumption of added sugars. Now is not the time to relapse, stay disciplined!

If you’ve made it 30 days without added sugars, congratulations! At this point you might be tempted to experiment with “moderation” and have a bite of your favorite treat again, do not do this! Physiological addictions can be broken in a few weeks, but psychological addictions can take months or years to erase. The mind is a powerful thing, and overtime you’ll discover your old definition of moderation was not in fact moderation. By this point your taste buds will have changed, and sugary treats you once found delicious might now be revolting. Trust your instincts and give yourself the time needed to heal from that traumatic period of your life. Ask yourself, what was feeding my sugar addiction? Examine your emotions and look inwards. Food is often the cover for emotional turmoil, and true healing won’t occur until emotional healing can take place.

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References

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2. Lustig RH, Mulligan K, Noworolski SM, et al. Isocaloric fructose restriction and metabolic improvement in children with obesity and metabolic syndrome. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2016;24(2):453-60.

3. Aeberli I, Gerber PA, Hochuli M, et al. Low to moderate sugar-sweetened beverage consumption impairs glucose and lipid metabolism and promotes inflammation in healthy young men: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2011;94(2):479-85.

4. Di rienzi SC, Britton RA. Adaptation of the Gut Microbiota to Modern Dietary Sugars and Sweeteners. Adv Nutr. 2020;11(3):616-629.

5. Gene-Jack Wang, Et al. High sugar intake linked to low dopamine release in insulin resistant patients. Stony Brook University

6. Sugar and Sweeteners Yearbook Tables. USDA.

7. Consumption of Sugars in Canada. Canadian Sugar Institute.

8. Roberto A. Ferdman. Where people around the world eat the most sugar and fat. The Washinton Post

9. Shah SGS. A Commentary on "Ensuring safe surgical care across resource settings via surgical outcomes data & quality improvement initiatives" (Int J Surg 2019 Aug 5. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.ijsu.2019.07.036). Int J Surg. 2019;72:14-15.

10. Moynihan PJ, Kelly SA. Effect on caries of restricting sugars intake: systematic review to inform WHO guidelines. J Dent Res. 2014;93(1):8-18.