On The Internet! Take the Self Improvement Tour
Lynn Baer, M.A.
Lynn Baer, M.A. Quick Facts
Lynn Baer, M.A. is a nutritional researcher/writer, specializing in body detoxification, weight loss and nutrition. Since 1992, Lynn has researched and written hundreds of recipes, health tips, supplement stories, health book reviews, diet reviews, colon cleansing reviews, and personal stories of kidney cleanses, liver flushes and the occasional detox disaster.
Her interest has focused particularly on the pursuit of healthy health and to define the difference between health and fitness at any cost (desperate, emotion-driven starvation dieting, for example, will kill a person if taken to far) and safe, sane responsible approaches to diet, nutrition, detoxing and exercise.
Her web site DetoxSafely.org is a complete reference guide for safe, natural cleansing and body detoxification. DetoxSafely.org provides information about how to plan every aspect of a healthy and effective detox program, including a detailed preparation guide for a safe, doctor-recommended detox program.
Lynn's Philosophy
In my pursuit of healthy health, I have discovered 3 things. These apply especially to the self-help health nut.
3 Things to Know About Self-Help Health:
1. What goes in and what comes out DOES matter. Your body has a great filtration system, but it can only handle so much. Next time you start to order a fried cheesy delight, think about what you’re putting in. Fat is fat and dangerous in its own right (especially restaurant fat), but fat has to be processed by the liver, who is your primary cleansing mechanism. When you load the liver up with fatty foods, it has to work harder and may even start to shut down. As far as what comes out, you can tell a lot about your state of health by the frequency, amount and smell of your excretions. Keep an eye on them.
2. The quicker the fix, the more risk to the body and the least chance of long-term success. The “live it up then confess on Sunday” approach to health does not work. If you want to be healthy or loose weight, a weekend detox or 1 day a week fast is not the ticket. You need to create healthy habits that you stick with everyday. Then you can have a weekend splurge once in a while.
3. There is a shamelessly deceptive scam going on in the alternative health/weight loss/detox industry that sells big promises in fancy packages with exotic ingredients. Not only are these scams money down the drain, they can be harmful to your health. The desire to be healthy, feel good, have more energy and get thin are powerful motives – and they’re not easy goals to achieve the old fashioned way. How we all would love to find the miracle product that will do it all for us. “Losing weight has never been easier!” When you see promises like that, run in the other direction. You’ll probably lose more weight doing that than taking those weight loss pills. Young women particularly are vulnerable to detox and diet scams.
It isn’t easy to be healthy on planet earth right now. We may have better medicine now than ever before, but we also have more environmental and dietary toxins than ever before.
Some of these toxins we have a choice about (Krispy Kreme’s, artificial sweeteners, fast food, and “diet” anything – seriously, if it’s in a box or a can and it says “diet”, it’s probably loaded with chemicals). Some of the toxins we don’t have a choice about (car exhaust, dirty tap water, coal plant pollution). The pursuit of health, anymore, has become more a matter of watching what comes into our bodies in the first place than managing and orchestrating what comes out.
So, we have to watch what we ingest. And we also have to help our bodies filter out the bad stuff. Doing a cleanse or a detox was almost unheard of not so long ago. Now, we see it all over the internet and in women’s magazines. Self magazine reported in spring 2009 that detox diets are all the rage in Hollywood. So, detox has gone mainstream. And along with that, detox scams are popping up everywhere. Not only do we need to be careful about what we eat, drink and breathe, we have to be careful about how we detox.
Good health can really be very simple. It’s about moderation and balance and these 3 essentials:
1. Right food
2. Regular exercise
3. Lots of water
All the extra stuff is just extra stuff. Sometimes the extra stuff really helps, but it often it is just expensive (at best) and occasionally will make you worse off for taking it. Those who live the longest all report that they lived their life rather simply. They had good habits they stuck by. They did not tend toward excess and they usually didn’t think about their health that much.
I’ve come to believe that a light touch is good. Your body is a precious thing, and for all it’s apparent sturdiness, it can be delicate. I wish it a long and healthy life.
