Soul's Code

When the temperature grows colder, these simple DIY treatments can warm you, body and soul.

BY ALEX ANZALONE –  The retreat to a warmer, safer place in winter is more than a physical phenomenon. When it’s cold out, not only our bodies but our energy and attention start to head inward.

Part of staying balanced involves being aware of this shift and adjusting our habits to reflect it. Because we are all inseparable from the rhythms of nature, life is easier when we go with the flow rather than work against it. Self-care, stress reduction, nutrition and touch are all essential to staying balanced, healthy, and happy.

I call the following my Five Hot Winter Health Tips because they warm both the body and the soul. Try whichever ones you like to coax your energy out of hibernation:

Alternative healing and advanced science continue to converge — and leap-frog ahead of conventional wisdom

BY DAVID RICKEY and RICK LEED — As we evolve, both scientific researchers and esoteric healers have advanced new therapies to treat our bodies and our minds but when we first hear of some of them we make a snap judgement that this sounds too wacky to be legit. We use words like voodoo medicine or magical thinking.

Think back to examples like quinine and willow bark — the former a tribal medicine used by Peruvian Indians, the latter an ‘old wives’ remedy. In the modern age, the first was prescribed by doctors as a treatment for malaria and the second in derivative form as aspirin.

A healing act where your religion and your body may meet

BY RICK LEED —  Anyone who watches any television, or spends any time on the world-famous Internet researching health and wellness, has run across the phrase: colon cleanse. First of all, what exactly is a colon?

We all apparently have one. Anatomical translation: the section of your digestive system, according to Gray’s Anatomy, that lies below your small intestines.

Some of the better-selling products promise — and seem to deliver (pun unavoidable) — the elimination of built-up colon corrosion, reduction of toxins, an energy-boost  . . . and bonus, weight reduction and even a flatter stomach.

Foods we once thought were healthy alternatives are now off the menu — starting with your daily (whole-grain) bread.

We’ve joked about it at dinner parties. We’ve read all the same articles, talked to our doctors, and reached the same realization: You can’t eat anything anymore. Soul’s Code canvassed its community of experts about the latest research into conscious dining:

1. Soy, it sucks

The world’s most famous cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Robert Rey, is ultra body-conscious both inside and out. And Rey, a.k.a. Dr. 90210, is highly conscious about what he puts into his own body. Dr. Rey is the author of a 2.0 version of the Paleo diet.

How to have teeth as white as a Hollywood star — and take your dentist out of the equation

BY SOUL’S CODE — One of the themes of this site is exploring techniques and tools that do an end-run around insurance companies and the medical establishment. If there are things that you can do on your own to improve your physical and emotional well-being, why pay a psychiatrist, a hospital or a doctor exorbitant fees?

So we occasionally check out new products like our review of facial scanners that we nicknamed “New Age Botox” (they promised to make you look healthier without sticking a needle in your skin). Unfortunately, we didn’t think those ones worked very well, if at all.

But now we’ve found a new use-at-home product that displays dramatic results.

7 nights in tents, 3,000 cyclists + 500 miles. The 10th annual AIDS ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles made octagon-fighters look like wimps

DAVID RICKEY — As we marked the “30th anniversary of AIDS,” we acknowledged that many people on this cycling marathon at one time were fighting for their lives.

I suddenly realized that I personally know several people who have been infected with the HIV virus for 31+ years, and are still alive!

The AIDS Lifecycle Ride was both a testament to the continuing need for cure and treatment and a potent source of healing in its own right.

The AIDS virus entered the human bloodstream probably in late 1979. I can remember visiting, in 1980 as a student chaplain, gay men who were experiencing what was called the “Gay Plague.” The symptoms were various: pneumonia-like, intense fatigue, but the cause could not be determined.

The virus was discovered, isolated and named in 1981, hence the “anniversary.”

In those early years, AIDS was considered a death sentence.

If you’re the glass half-empty type you don’t necessarily need Dr. Phil, an ashram yoga retreat or antidepressants – you need to stop ignoring half of your brain.

BY MARGARET A. COCHRAN — In the movie Limitless, a writer takes a pill that lets him access every previously, untapped part of his brain. But in the process, he risks losing his love, his life and his soul.

While no such pill exists, I suggest that you can activate the neglected side of your brain – risk free – just by asking yourself three questions:

Why rely on the administration of drugs — or the Obama administration — to cure diseases if you can avoid getting sick in the first place? The worst culprits, including heart disease and many forms of cancer, are preventable with some basic self-care.

BY VAISHALI — The largest generation in history, the post-WWII Baby Boomers (76 million people in the U.S., alone), are entering their peak need for care. And those of us affected by a U.S. health-care reform led by President Obama may end up (or not) at the government’s mercy to nurse what ails us. In the name of self-preservation, here are six highly-effective, do-it-yourself tips to keep the doctor away, and aging at bay.

Six ways to enhance your health and vitality

Why we stagnate despite our best intentions to achieve greatness, overcome addictions and compulsions — or, like, just be happy.

BY MARY COOK — The next Pulitzer Prize winning novelist might be living next door to you but, for whatever reason, has yet to write a novel.

Your best friend might want to quit smoking but is on the porch having a smoke right this minute. Why?

What psychologists call associations.

Perhaps the non-writing writer associates hard work with her overbearing parents, and the smoker associates cigarettes with self-affirmation or self-pampering.

A leading expert on diet and digestion has developed an agent that doesn’t require a prescription — and promises better results than a pill made by AstraZeneca or GlaxoSmithKline. The new enzyme therapy.

BY ELLEN CUTLER —  Do you remember how you felt as a child — healthy, happy, bursting with energy and full of enthusiasm?  As the years pass, many of us lose our connection with that effervescent spirit.

Our sleep no longer refreshes us, and we become resigned to feeling fatigued, stressed, and/or fuzzy-headed.  Next to depression and allergies, lack of energy is the third-most prevalent ailment among adult Americans, affecting 33 million people.