The Healthy Cell Concept I

My intention is to write several articles giving a general overview of what I feel are the most important aspects of a healthy lifestyle. We’ll see how our health depends on the health of our individual cells, almost 100 trillion of them! We’ll see how the choices we make on a daily basis affect our cells to either enhance or diminish the health of each cell. I’ll describe what I feel is an optimal lifestyle to shoot for so we can begin to make choices that will lead us to abundant health in a relatively short period of time. I’ll discuss some great technologies for assessing your health picture and monitoring your progress, including a measurement of your “physiological” age (verses your chronological age), live cell analysis, and a quick procedure to determine risk factors for many chronic degenerative diseases. ???

This discussion would be incomplete if we didn’t also address your VISION for your life, and the issues of exercise, supplementation, fresh air (oxygen), sunshine, clean water, stress management, “live” foods verses “dead” foods, juicing, and rest/sleep. ???

I will now introduce the five components of the Healthy Cell Concept. I have drawn on two primary sources for this information and blended them, along with my own input, into what I will present here. Some of these concepts came from Albert E. Carter, a medical reporter and author, who wrote The Cancer Answer and The New Miracles of Rebound Exercise. Other concepts came from AIM International, a whole foods supplement company based in Nampa, ID that focuses on teaching healthy lifestyle principles, including their version of the healthy cell concept, over just selling products. My version of The Healthy Cell Concept includes 1) Cell exercise, 2) Cell food, 3) Cell communication, 4) Cell environment, and, 5) Cell protection.

The first of these, CELLULAR EXERCISE, must in some way involve every cell of your body without damaging any part of your body. There are many types of exercises, and I’ve tried my share of them over the years. I will only briefly mention one, walking, and then I’ll spend more time on what I believe is the world’s best man-made exercise – rebounding!

Most people know that walking is a great exercise that can be done by almost anyone in some form or another. My suggestion is to start slowly, as with any new exercise program. The usual precautions apply to this and any other exercise program. Namely, if you have any health condition that may affect your ability to exercise safely, get your doctor’s approval before beginning. It is also advisable to wear comfortable clothing, warm your muscles up and then stretch prior to exercising. Be sure to also drink adequate amounts of pure water before, during, and after strenuous exercise.

That said, I recommend that if you are new to a walking program, find a safe place to walk that is not polluted with vehicle exhaust or other contaminants. Begin by walking a measured mile at a comfortable pace and see how long it takes to complete it the first time. Then continue to walk that mile until you can do it in no more than 15 minutes. Then add a second mile. Walk those two miles until you can do them in no more than 30 minutes. Continue until you have worked up to a four-mile walk in less than one hour. Remember to breathe deeply while walking to oxygenate your cells and tissues and to expel toxins. Light hand and/or ankle weights can be added later to increase your workout and heart rate and for variety.

The best exercise I know of for the health of your cells is called rebound exercise. This is exercise is done on a mini-trampoline that is usually 40 inches in diameter. It can do more beneficial things for the cells of your body than any other exercise without the harmful pounding effects of jogging. In fact, NASA did research that showed rebounding to be 68% more effective than jogging with only 1/8th to 1/12th the strike force, depending on the rebounder used. Ideally, it is best to place it outside on a patio or deck while exercising so as to get the benefits of the fresh air and sunshine during your workout. If this is not possible, open the windows if you can to at least get some fresh air.

There are two distinct types of rebounders. One is a piece of exercise equipment that is constructed of a heavy-duty frame, music instrument quality springs attached with bolts to the frame, and a “Permatron” mat. This is a high quality mat that won’t stretch out with use and should last ten years or more. Some top-of-the-line rebounders will even fold in half for storage in a closet or under a bed, will fit in a trunk for trips, and can even be taken aboard planes. These quality units are priced from $200 to $250. The other type of rebounder I would classify as a toy. It is not meant for regular exercise and will break down with that kind of use. In addition, the mats are made of nylon or vinyl and will stretch with use. This can cause joint problems to develop in the ankle, knees and other joints. These units can be purchased for $20 to $40. For short-term use just to see if this kind of exercise is suitable for you, these cheap models are o.k. but I wouldn’t use them for more than a month or two at most. Then give them to the kids to play on and get a good quality rebounder.

A rebounding workout can be aerobic for cardiovascular/respiratory conditioning. You can also do strength training, cross training, calisthenics, or lymphatic flushing. Actually, a good routine will combine several of these components. One of the most important components to understand is “G-forces”. As you jump up and down on the rebounder you will naturally develop a rate of approximately 100 up and down movements per minute. At the top of your jump, you will experience weightlessness briefly, as your momentum changes from the up cycle to the down cycle. At the bottom of your bounce, as you reverse direction from the down cycle to the up cycle, the “G-forces” on your body will be increased. You can develop G-forces up to two to three times your body weight, which is enough to put your cells under a significant load, but not enough to do harm. This means that 100 times each minute you are exercising each cell of your body by the increased load they experience. Your cells have no choice but to respond by getting stronger!

The whole idea behind exercise is that cells (i.e. – muscle cells) must respond by getting stronger when subjected to increased forces/weights. When you are rebounding this happens to every cell of your body – 100 times each minute. This obviously includes, but is not limited to, your skin cells (making you look years younger than your age), your sub dermal cells (tissue below your outer skin), your organ cells (making them function better), your connective tissue cells (helping to prevent organs from sagging or drooping), your eye cells, your blood cells, and on and on. You may notice that you progress with this exercise faster than anything you’ve tried before. You’ll tone, firm and trim up all while having a lot of fun! Can you recall as a child ever getting yelled at for jumping on the bed or sofa? Did you stop right then or did you get yelled at more than once? If you were like most of us, this happened often. Why? Because it was fun. I also think we innately knew that it good for us. If our parents only understood this, they could have purchased a rebounder and saved us all a lot of trouble, right?

The other major thing to know about rebounding is that it gets your lymphatic system pumping 30 to 40 times its normal rate and helps to enhance your immune system. You have several times more lymph fluid in your body than you have blood, but without a pump like the heart to move it. This is not a problem for very active people, but it can cause serious problems for those who are inactive or sedentary. The lymph vessels are similar to your veins. They have one-way valves in them so that as the lymph fluid moves upward through activity and muscle contraction these valves close as gravity pulls on the fluid after the contraction has ceased. In this way the lymph fluid can work its way up to the Thoracic duct in the chest to be dumped into the blood vascular system for removal. Rebound exercise, with the constant up and down motion and the regular, rhythmic muscle contractions, helps to get this fluid pumped out at a much higher rate.

So, why is this important? Because the lymph fluid is what carries the nutrients from the blood stream to the cells and also carries the cellular waste products that are not picked up by the blood vessels back to the blood stream for elimination. Dr. Alex Carrel’s research showed that cells were designed to virtually live forever if two conditions were met. First, the proper nutritional requirements for optimal health must be supplied, and, just as important, the waste products must be removed in a timely manner. Rebound exercise helps to enhance both of these processes. Waste products that remain in contact with cells can become an irritant. These irritants can sometimes cause a cell to mutate. The best way to avoid this is to get regular exercise. And rebound exercise is the best type of exercise for this purpose.

Rebound exercise is truly cellular exercise and also creates strength, endurance, flexibility, mental alertness and helps to relieve stress.

The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) Abolitionist