Lord we stand before you at this time today in gratitude for the many blessings you have given us and thank you for bringing us together to share knowledge and your word.
We ask that all evil and negative be removed from this place and that our minds be opened to your infinite wisdom.

The ABC’s of Natural Health
Let me tell you a little about being called to create this paper.  I was asked to speak at an extra ordinary woman’s conference. How exciting I thought what do people need?  At first, I thought I would educate people about stress – this will be great I can help them deal with their stress!…Well, I have some good tools for that, but when I sat down to actually start writing I got stressed myself.  So I put it down and thought I will get to this later.  Well, time was running out, the conference was coming, and I was doing some serious stressing.  I was lying in bed looking at the ceiling thinking about stress, getting more and more stressed. Fortunately, I went to sleep.  While sleeping I had a dream…In my dream I had a profound idea, you know the kind where your head is a glowing light bulb.  “I know, I’ll write about the ABCs of Natural Health”, I told myself and recited…
    A for Activate
    B for Build
    C for Cleanse
Now I didn’t make this up.  I don’t deserve credit for that.  I learned it in my Herbology (101) class some 10 years ago.  My quest was to figure out how to get you to get this picture.
It came to me, the answers you seek are in the bible.  We all know our ABCs… 

Activate, the body has a remarkable ability to activate its healing response, if given the proper nutrients. What does that mean?  Well, let’s think about this, do you tell your body to heal that cut on your finger?  No, your body knows what to do – it activates the healing response.  Nutrients are what our bodies live on. Proper nutrients are what our bodies need to function unlike improper nutrients that our bodies can’t process and become toxic build up. Like hydrogenated oils, ********
As you chew your food digestion begins, saliva breaks down the food, and vitamins and minerals begin to be absorbed as they travel through your digestive system.
What is the healing response?                 

And we know the body with its infinite wisdom will listen to God…who forgives all and who healeth all thy diseases. It is our minds that are bewitched by mass marketing and flavor enhancers like MSG.  Our bodies suffer from the results of eating false food promises.  Cooked foods and artificial sweeteners have been clinically proven to be addictive.  Clinically proven means they set up an experiment and based on the results of that experiment some thing is proven to work, like a medication.  Did you know medications only have to work for 2% of the people they experiment with?  So if 10 people are in a drug trial it only has to work on 2 people for it to be considered an effective prescription drug. Chemical fertilizers help grow super sized, perfectly shaped fruits and vegetables, they look fabulous, however; Rutgers University found a way to scientifically measure and compare mass-produced food to organically grown.  Mass produced contains 75% less vitamins and minerals. I have new respect for the smaller misshapen organic produce that I grow in my garden, so to activate your body chew, chew, chew, and stay away from produce grown with chemicals.
Oh, and then there are chemical cleaning products.  Chemical cleaning products are stressors to your body.  Our liver normally filters over 400 things a day.  Add chemical cleaning, fabric softening, air fresheners, and gasoline to the mix and you have a tired, stressed out liver.  If you don’t think that matters so much, Remember the Liver is responsible for converting the nutrients from food into useable substances and stores them till needed.  The Liver also synthesizes certain amino acids, the building blocks of protein.  We need those for muscle health.  The Liver is also responsible for distributing iron.  A lack of iron (anemia) leads to symptoms of depression, fatigue, loss of hair, and feeling like you just don’t want to do anything.  Did you ever feel like you don’t want to get out of bed?  When the liver can’t filter the toxins you put in, it stores them in your blood and fat cells?  In my office at The Wellness Cottage, I have a microscope where I can view your blood.  If you will give me one drop of blood we can peer into what your cells look like.  It is both amazing and motivating.  So you will activate your body by putting the correct nutrients in and keep your liver away from toxic overload and stress you will see a difference in those blood cells – the shape and the mobility in 2 weeks time.

So Activate and Accept – Accept the fact that you are responsible for your health path.  There is always a choice.  You, however; must make time to listen and choose wisely. Seek the help of knowledgeable individuals, because work that is done in the service of the house of God will prosper. Did you ever just mention a problem to someone you know and then you see it on TV or a friend says I just heard of that…. you need to call so and so?  Because, as you seek the answer, you seek the truth, as you seek the truth, you are doing God’s work.  In Philippians 4:13 we are reminded, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthenth me.”  I have found answers in my own health situations because I listen to and seek God’s healing knowledge.  I simply will not give up and take the easy way out with pills and drugs.  Pills and drugs mask the symptom.  I never heard of Prilosec or Prozac helping heal your liver or boost your iron.  So, does a drug activate the healing response?  – It can’t it is chemically designed at the cellular level to get rid of your symptoms, not solve the problem or heal the cause.  So, if you have a headache that may come from a toxic liver…putting Advil on top isn’t going to help detoxify the liver.  And God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”  Genesis 1:29.  And there are many other health principles to follow:  Leviticus 3:17 It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.  In Proverbs 25:27 – A warning against excess sweets – It is not good to eat much honey:  so for men to search their own glory is not glory.  In Proverbs 23:2 – Overeating is harmful – And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.  In Ecclesiastes 10:17 – we are told to eat to live, don’t live to eat – Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness!
 
Building a strong body comes from faith and discipline.  “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.” John 1:5  Did you ever eat something or eat too much and you can tell, Oh I don’t feel so good.  Maybe I should go take a nap, or how about some Rolaids or Alka Seltzer, or maybe a stomach pump.  Well, if you constantly do this to your body it will become tired and misshapen.  Not built up, but weak and full of Diss….  Ease.  Disease comes from Diss… Ease.  Chewing your food – the first step in digestion is mixing your saliva with the food you eat.  Chewing breaks down the food and puts it in a more digestible and absorbable form.  When people come to my office and I ask them to take the 2 week challenge to help them feel a shift in their body it takes willpower but makes every one that has ever tried it feel better.  We know if you are willing and obedient you shall eat the good of the land, but if you refuse and rebel you shall be devoured with the sword.  I educate each and every one about a diet specifically designed for each individual and offer suggestions about how to take steps toward building a healthier body, mind, and spirit.  I teach people how to understand the abstract concept of how our bodies work.  Allowing yourself to come to my office and taking time for you is an important step.  For with God, is the fountain of life, in the light we shall build the light.  How can you build the light?  How interesting, every recipe can be recalculated, recreated to be lighter, sugar free, apple sauce can be used instead of oil, water instead of milk, 2% milk instead of heavy cream, fruits and green vegetables for snacks instead of sweet treats.  In order to build the light within, you must remove the things from your diet that weigh you down – they are often referred to as the deadly whites – white flour, white potatoes, white sugar.

Cleanse, all the good, organic food you put in your body will allow it to get rid of the bad stuff it has been holding onto for a long time, and cleansing will begin.  How so, you may ask? Well, the Liver doesn’t have to process as many chemicals and additives, if you are staying away from them.  If you stop breathing chemical cleaning products, your body can now eliminate toxins it has been storing for years because it was so overloaded that it stored toxins instead of processing them.  So, the easiest way to start a cleanse is to read labels on every thing – refuse to buy and ingest foods that contain chemicals that you can’t pronounce.  Your digestion will improve if you eat less food and better quality foods. Your body will begin to cleanse and function with ease. There are many ways to help the cleaning process along, Herbal cleanses, Raw & Live Foods, Colon Hydrotherapy, & Fasting, Exercise, and drinking lots of water.  Herbal cleanses work well to get the first couple layers of debris loosened from the colon walls.  Debris that accumulates resembles the layers of an onion……   Sometimes, debris loosens and looks like a bicycle tire inner tube.  People I have worked with will agree that herbal cleanses enlighten and lift the spirit unexpectedly that’s probably because up to 10lbs of fecal matter could be stuck to your intestinal walls.  Normal water consumption should be ½ your body weight in ounces.  If you are doing a cleanse, it should be 1 oz. for every pound of body weight.  The Master cleanse is a total body cleanse, using lemon, maple syrup, water, and a dash of cayenne pepper…it is recommended to drink 4 – 8 oz. of this lemonade followed by water whenever you get the least bit hungry.  This cleanse wipes away any hunger pains and as soon as you shrink your stomach – you feel like you could continue for quite some time.  Raw and live food blended is a good way to allow your digestive system to rest.  Raw, freshly grown sprouts and seedlings blended with soaked nuts and seeds fill your tummy and are full of enzymes to aide in digestion.  Fasting, you can fast from more than food.  There are over 25 references to fasting in the Bible.  I don’t know about you but I have never heard of anyone dying from doing a fast.  I encourage people to do a 1-day fast and consider colon hydrotherapy as a method to go one step deeper in their cleansing process.  Colon Hydro therapy is the gentle irrigation of filtered water into the colon, and a low pressure of 1 lb or 1psi.  It always amazes me as to how fasting clears your mind of negative thoughts.

This brings us back to the beginning of this talk.  Isn’t it interesting how my first thoughts were a bit negative?  I was pretty stuck on talking about stress so I started to become stressed.  If you choose to create barriers toward your health and well-being they will be there.  If you choose to say this is easy, I walk with the Holy Spirit today; my life is full of easy tasks and joy.  The light will shine in the darkness, because you know, the darkness cannot overcome it.