Christian Healthy Lifestyle 

David Sandstrom 0:00
Welcome to the holistic health matters podcast where it's all about maximizing your health potential in body, mind and spirit, so that you can pursue the abundant life more effectively. I'm your host, David Sandstrom, and this is episode number 13. This episode is part two of a two part series on a better response to the Coronavirus. In the last episode I finished up by letting you know that based on feedback from some of the double HM community that I decided to shorten the episodes up a little bit, I think that might be a better a better format. And by the way, if you do have a comment, something you'd like to hear or see or something I could do better, just shoot me an email. I'd love to hear from you and I will definitely respond. Last week as I was finishing up we were talking about germ theory and the difference between trying to avoid germs and trying to strengthen our internal terrain and which approach is better. Obviously, I'm sure you know that I believe that strengthening our Internal terrain is, by far a more effective and a more productive approach, strengthening our immune system and allowing our bodies to fight off the would-be invader on their own is far better than trying to avoid germs at all costs. You see, we can never completely eliminate our exposure to germs. Dr. Aaron Glatt, a spokesman for the infectious disease Society of America has said this: "There is very few surfaces that are truly clean. You're almost never going to culture something and not find some germs on it." So trying to avoid every possible germ that can make a sick is ultimately futile. Another doctor by the name of Philip Terino. He's the author of the book, "The Secret Life of Germs" MD says we're exposed to about 60,000 germs every day and he says only about one to two% of them have the ability to infect us. So let's go on the low side of that 1% of 60,000 is 600 potentially infectious agents per day. So what are they going to do? Give us 600 different vaccines? What about the next time a novel coronavirus comes along and threatens a pandemic? What are we going to do then?

David Sandstrom 2:26
Well, the government's offering us advice to wear a mask. The trouble with that advice is the air that we're breathing inside of a mask is less than ideal. Human beings exhale carbon dioxide. haven't we been told that carbon dioxide is the enemy when it comes to climate change. If you breathe enough carbon dioxide you will die. Also, the air inside of the mask is lower in oxygen. Studies have shown that surgeons that wear masks for long periods of time suffer from low oxygen levels in the blood, which is called mild hypoxia. Now, I know a little bit about this because pilots are trained in the effects of hypoxia. And it's not at all good. The first thing you do is you lose your vision. And you also lose your mental function. And it's, it's, it's a real hazard for a pilot, because we're already up there in low pressure conditions at altitude. And if we lose pressurization up at altitude in a jet airliner, we will go unconscious in a matter of seconds. And that's exactly what happened to the crew that was piloting the plane that Payne Stewart the golfer was on. It was a Learjet, and they had a rapid decompression and the valve was turned off to the crew oxygen, and they put their masks on and they thought they were breathing oxygen, but they weren't. And they went unconscious, and everyone died in that flight. There's an interesting video that I found on YouTube, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes. I encourage you to go there and click on that link and watch this video. It's a it's A demonstration of a pilot going into a decompression chamber and experiencing the symptoms of hypoxia. And the funny thing is, is as his faculties were eroding, he didn't know and didn't realize how impaired he was. It's a very interesting watch, I encourage you to go to the show notes. This is Episode 13 and click on the link there and watch that YouTube video; I think you'll enjoy it. In addition to experiencing mild hypoxia, a dark warm environment is the perfect breeding ground for viruses and bacteria. Also, low oxygen weakens our immune defenses. So we're actually putting something on our faces that is going to weaken our defenses against the coronavirus. Is this good advice? You know, I think the CDC actually knows that it's not good advice because for quite some time, they were reluctant to recommend masks and all of a sudden they had an about face and they said oh yeah, everyone needs to wear a mask. I believe the reason why we're being told to wear masks is because it makes the invisible visible. You see, there are many people that want to make us uncomfortable. Because the more uncomfortable we are, the more we're warm up to the idea of mandatory vaccinations. I think that's a very bad idea.

David Sandstrom 5:22
Our government is going full speed ahead with this operation warp speed with the rush to market for the coronavirus vaccine. I think it's a big mistake. They're skipping the animal trials, they're going straight to human trials. And I have a feeling that this is going to be a really, really dangerous thing. Remember, vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued. They are legally immune from liability from lawsuits. So how much motivation do they have to truly test the safety of the products that they're trying to push on us? Every one of these recommendations is based on avoidance only, they've not addressed the more critical issue of strengthening our internal terrain.

David Sandstrom 6:09
The last thing I want to mention that the government is offering up is fear. There is no quicker way to raise your stress response than through fear. And chronic activation of our stress response is a very unhealthy condition. One of the things I think is helpful is to put things in perspective. And there was a report that came out a couple of days ago, which is really quite encouraging. Again, according to CDC data, they released a report last week, which is last week of August 2020. They said in that report that 94% of reported COVID deaths were actually reported inaccurately, only 6% of the 187,000 deaths were actually reported as COVID only. The other 94% had, on average, three comorbidities or another serious health challenge like advanced cancer, diabetes, renal disease or kidney failure, emphysema, or some other chronic lung disease. Those are the people that are succumbing to this illness. But what they're saying is in this report is that those people died from complications from their previous diseases, not from COVID by itself. There's a big difference between dying with COVID and dying from COVID. Most of these people according to the CDC, 94% of that 187,000 people died with COVID. Not from it. And the largest percentage of the people who did die were over 85 years old. Now people over 85 years old makeup 2% At the population, yet they comprise over 31% of all the deaths recorded by the CDC with COVID. Now, don't get me wrong on this, every life is precious. We need to do everything we can to preserve everybody's life. But we must understand that old people do get sick, some are hospitalized, and some of those people will die. Now, to be fair, this is not to say that COVID didn't contribute to their demise. It could have it could have complicated the the symptoms of their other conditions and cause them to die before they otherwise might have. But that is true with any illness, including the common cold. This is not unique to COVID-19. I share this information with you because I believe it's reason to be encouraged. The COVID-19 infection is nowhere near as deadly as we've been led to believe and According to this recent report released by the CDC, the death rate for people under 25 years of age that are otherwise healthy, is close to zero, they have pretty much zero risk of death. So I think we can all take a deep collective deep breath and say, Okay, we're gonna get through this, the human race is going to survive, and we don't need to live in fear the way some would have us do.

David Sandstrom 9:27
It's time for a better approach. I know I've spent a lot of time criticizing and I don't want to be just a critic. I want to offer you some useful advice. I want to give you a better or smarter approach that you can follow as an individual. Now first, let me say if you do have COVID, or you know somebody that has it, in addition to the recommendations I'm about to give you, I suggest you look into nebulised hydrogen, hydrogen peroxide therapy. There's a doctor by the name of David Brownstein, who has been using this treatment for 25 years in his practice for viral infections, and it's very effective at fighting viral infections that infect the lungs. And he published a paper where we had 107 patients, and they experienced the use this treatment that hydrogen peroxide nebulized, hydrogen peroxide therapy, and they had zero deaths, one hospitalization and a 100% recovery rate. And that's in the published peer reviewed medical literature. I'm going to put a link in the in the show notes if you want to check his paper out. It's definitely worth reading. And if you have COVID, or you know somebody that has it, I think this should be your frontline defense.

David Sandstrom 10:43
But I also have some other recommendations that I want you to consider. According to the CDC data, the people that die from dying with COVID-19 not from it, but with it have some similarities. One is hypertension or High blood pressure, their blood pressure was greater than 140 over 90. And they are obese. That means a body mass index or BMI of over 30. And they were often diabetic. That means they had a fasting glucose of greater than 110 milligrams per deciliter or a fasting A1-C of greater than 5.4%. So, if you address the things that cause high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes, you will be addressing your internal terrain, you will be strengthening your system your body's ability to fight off this infection if you have to deal with it. So I suggest that we all take greater responsibility for our own health. We've got to stop expecting the health experts to take care of our health for us.

David Sandstrom 11:53
The first thing I would suggest is you might have guessed it, pick up a copy of my book, "The Christians Guide to Holistic Health." In my book I talk about, I lay out all kinds of strategies for improving your health and strengthening your internal terrain. We can't possibly do the book justice on a single podcast episode. So I highly recommend you go to Amazon and do a search for the Christians guide to holistic health by me David Sandstrom and pick yourself up a copy. Do yourself a favor and do that. Now, I'm not recommending that because I need to sell books. I don't I make my living from being an airline pilot. I wrote the book and I'm encouraging you to pick up a copy because I want to empower you, I want you to have this information available in your own hands.

David Sandstrom 12:39
One of the things one of the concepts I go over in the book is the concept of total body load. Now this is important to understand about strengthening your internal terrain. In the naturopathic model, you can think of health as a two by four straddled across two sawhorses. Now the empty two by four is strong and durable, think 21 year old Olympic athlete. Now imagine that I started stacking bricks on top of that two by four. The two by four can easily handle a few bricks, no problem. But as we keep stacking bricks, that two by four is going to start to sag, there's going to come a point where one more brick in our two by four will snap. The bricks that were stacking on top of our two by four, those are health blocking factors. Things like sedentary lifestyle, lack of rest, poor nutrition, and smoking and those types of things. With a two by four starts to sag, that's when we experienced some symptoms. And when the two by four snaps, that's when we have a diagnosis of disease. The question we need to ask ourselves is did the two by four snap because of the last brick, was that the problem? No, the last brick wasn't the problem. One brick is easily supported by the two by four. The problem was the total load of bricks underneath. That's the problem. And that's the problem with our health. If we start to unload the body, we can more easily handle the curveballs that life throws at us in the form of illness or even an accident. So the secondary thing to add on to this metaphor, is we want to stack as many health enhancing factors as we can on one side of a seesaw. And on the other side of the seesaw, we stack the health inhibiting factors. And we want to stack our seesaw in a lopsided fashion with far more health enhancing factors than we do health blocking factors. So that's the naturopathic model. And that's what we need to embrace if we want to strengthen our internal terrain, and enhance our body's ability to fight off the COVID infection if it comes our way. Again, our goal is to make our bodies turn our bodies into a hostile environment for any undesirable microscopic organism. Including the COVID-19 virus.

David Sandstrom 15:03
One of the things I would suggest you do during this time is to concentrate on getting a good night's sleep. Back in episodes six and seven, I went into how to do exactly that. So if you haven't listened to those episodes, I encourage you to go back and listen to those two. Now they're both on getting a better night's sleep. Another thing we can do to strengthen our immune is to drastically reduce our sugar consumption. Sugar will compromise our health real fast. In fact, 40 grams of sugar in a single serving, which is about the equivalent of a can of coke will shut down the production of white blood cells, while the efficiency of white blood cells by 50% for the next six to eight hours. So if you did that three times a day, you've shut down your ability to fight off a virus for 24 hours. So reduce sugar consumption it will dramatically improve your your body's natural defenses. We should be by up on probiotics and prebiotics. Probiotics are the bacteria the friendly bacteria in our gut that strengthen our immune and enhance the efficiency of our digestion. And the prebiotic fiber is the sugars that the probiotics feed on. So it helps them colonize. You can of course buy prebiotic fiber supplements, but you're always better off getting them from real food. Anything high in inulin is a prebiotic fiber. foods high in inulin are chicory root, Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, onions, shallots, leeks, and cabbage. One of the best ways to get your probiotics is to eat cultured vegetables, I like to culture them at home, but you can also pick those up at a at a health food store. It's a good investment in your health, especially probiotics that have S Baulardii or Saccharomyces Boulardii. That is a particular strain of bacteria that has been shown and demonstrated to enhance immune function.

David Sandstrom 17:05
Another thing we can do to strengthen our internal terrain is get outdoors spend some time in nature we talked about that study from last year that people spend more than 120 minutes or two hours outdoors per week, lessen their risk of coming down with all kinds of diseases. It's it's powerful spend time in nature. Exercise, again exercise, get your lymph fluid moving. And the lymph fluid is what transports the white blood cells with a killer T cells that are manufactured in the bone marrow. They have to get into the blood somehow. And they do that through the circulation of lymph fluid. The lymph moves through exercise. The best kind of exercise for moving lymph fluid is a trampoline. You can use a backyard trampoline or if you have an indoor one. rebounder they call them that's useful as well. And you you can also use a CHI machine I talked about that in a previous episode and the CHI machine you lie on the floor, and you put your ankles on this machine and it elevates your feet about six or eight inches off the ground or so. And as your feet swing back and forth, your whole body starts to move in a little bit like fish swimming through the water. And it's very efficient at moving lymph fluid this way, and therefore, it enhances immune function. I have a link to the CHI machine I use in the resources page on my website at DavidSandstrom.com. Another thing you can do to boost your immune is to use a far infrared sauna. sauna use has been demonstrated to boosting mood function. We all know that the body's natural response to an infection is to raise the core body temperature with a fever. Well FAR infrared sauna can raise your core body temperature by two, three, maybe even four degrees, acting as an immune system enhancer and it's quite effective. Not only that, our skin is our largest detoxification organ, and as we sweat inside the sauna, we've remove toxins, which also lightens our total body load, therefore strengthening our immune as well. So sauna use is an excellent way to go. I have a sauna at my house, they're not cheap, they're not inexpensive. But if you can afford it and find a good one, I recommend using that. I've been searching for a brand that I can recommend, but I haven't found one just yet. But there's there's all kinds of vendors online, check that out for FAR infrared sauna, they're very useful and they will help boost your immune system.

David Sandstrom 19:44
Another thing that's very important to immune system function is making sure you are eliminating once per day, we should have a bowel movement at least once a day. If you're not having them. The first thing to do is increase your water consumption and you can try eating some fiber, some more fiber. You can get that from fruits and vegetables but there's also fiber supplements on the market. If that doesn't work, there's an herb that's very good at stimulating peristalsis which is cascara Sagrada bark, it will gently stimulate the colon into that into that squeezing motion, the peristalsis and get things moving again. And if that doesn't work, you can always do a coffee enema, and that will help clean things out down there. And it will also help you detoxify, which is good for the immune as well. And here's one of the most important things you can do for helping you eliminate regularly is the squatty potty. We were designed to squat when we go to the bathroom when we do number two. And this device sit you sit by the toilet and you put your feet on it and it raises your knees up into the squatting position and it helps work with our body's natural function and release the muscles down there so that things can get moving much easier. I have one in every bathroom in my house and trust me on this once you get used to the squatty potty, you won't want to live without it. This This thing is great, it's a great device. I'll have a link in the show notes to the squatty potty as well.

David Sandstrom 21:20
Another thing we need to do to optimize our immune function is to address our vitamin D levels. Most people are deficient in vitamin D. Now getting you're optimizing your vitamin D levels can be a little tricky, because it is a fat soluble vitamin and you can have levels too high. So you need to get your blood tested in order to know where your vitamin D levels are. When you do they'll probably be low because most people are and the best way to get your vitamin D up is the natural way by getting sunlight on your skin and your body will manufacture vitamin D that way, that's the ideal. But if you can't get out in the sun or you just can't get that off than enough, you can take supplements, you want to take vitamin D-3, and you want to get your vitamin D levels up to somewhere between 40 and 60 nanograms per milliliter. Another important vitamin for immune function is vitamin C, and vitamin C is water soluble. And it's not that you don't have as much risk of overdosing of vitamin C because the body can easily eliminate excess. So you can take pretty much as much vitamin C as you want. But if you take too much of it, it may make your stool soft. Another important supplement for immune function is zinc. And this is one I've mentioned before in the show, and that is propolis propolis has been shown in the medical literature to act as an antimicrobial a powerful one that will fight off viral infections. And I like the propolis from beekeepers naturals. I have a link in the resources page in my website at DavidSandstrom.com to the pro list that I use, you can get a nasal spray and a throat spray. It's good stuff. I always take it when I'm flying and I recommend that if you get anywhere near an airport or an airplane, that's a good supplement to take along with you.

David Sandstrom 23:13
Moving away from the physical, we also need to consider our mental emotional condition and our spiritual condition as well when it comes to maximizing our health potential. I think it's important to connect with friends. Genesis 2:18 says, "It is not good that the man be alone." Loneliness is a major risk factor for all kinds of diseases including all cause mortality. There's a study that I found published in the Harvard Health News that illustrates some shocking impact that loneliness can have or lack of relational connectedness can have on our health. Here's what they said. "Dozens of studies have shown that people who have social support from family friends And their community are happier, have fewer health problems and live longer. Conversely, lonely people who lack strong relationships have an increased risk of all cause mortality of 50%. That's roughly comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and greater than the risk from obesity and physical inactivity. That is a staggering statistic. If you lack social connections, it's more hazardous to your health than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. being obese and having a sedentary lifestyle. Yeah, God really knew what he was talking about when he said it is not good for man to be alone. It's heartening to see science catching up with biblical wisdom that is thousands of years old. That is pretty amazing. So If you want to boost your immune, work on your relationships, get in touch with an old friend, look them up on Facebook, get in touch with people, you know, spend some time with them, not virtually, have lunch with them. Sit down, go for a walk in the park, look them in the eye. You cannot replace the reality of being engaged and near another human being. Another thing we can do is to pray and meditate. A number of studies have shown that prayer does affect health outcomes in a positive way. Also, meditation brings on peace. studying God's word, of course is the best thing we can do. And that's all beneficial to our health. Another thing we need to do to boost immune function is to process our emotions. We don't want to get emotionally constipated. our emotions are there for a reason. They're telling us something about our circle. stances, but we need to ask ourselves, what are my emotions telling me about the situation? How should I react? And then we need to process them, learn what we can from them and let them go. This is especially true with negative emotions such as anger, rage, bitterness, hostility, we don't call those toxic emotions for nothing. They need to be processed, and let go of. Now of course, this doesn't apply to positive emotions such as love, joy and peace. We can linger in those emotions all we want, but for the more stressful ones, they need to be processed and released. Another powerful thing we can do to increase our immune is to forgive others. People that have wronged us. A lot of times we experience anger. In fact, most of the time when we experience anger, it's because we've been hurt by someone close to us. We've got to process those those emotions and The secret to getting over anger is forgiveness. Now, this is a huge topic, we're going to spend a whole episode down the road, maybe more than one on this. And I've got a whole chapter in my book on this. In fact, I'm going to make the free chapter on forgiveness from my book available as a content upgrade for this episode. So if you go to my website, DavidSandstrom.com, there'll be a link there where you can download a free chapter out of my book on forgiveness. I encourage you to go there, get that chapter. Read it. There's some powerful information in there. I'm just going to leave you with these with these couple of quotes on forgiveness. "To forgive someone is to set the prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was me." Here's another one that I really like. "Forgiveness is the fragrance the rose gives off to the heel that crushed it." Mark Twain, so if you want to boost your immune you Want to give your immune system a turbolift? Learn how to forgive. This is huge folks. All right. This episode combined with Episode 12 is a lot of information. It's a lot to take in. That's enough for now. I hope you enjoyed it. I certainly enjoy putting this information together and sharing it with you. If you like what you heard today, please share it with some friends. There's a lot of people that need to get this message. I would appreciate you sharing it on social media and telling your friends about it. Thanks for listening. Thank you for giving me some of your time this week. I enjoyed serving you. I'll talk with you next week. Be blessed.