Broccoli Princess: Biosig CE day 2 - Mark Schauss & Charles Poliquin

Day two of Biosig 2 in Rhode Island. Poliquin Strength Institute is the best place I've studied in - I LOVE the energy and atmosphere here. Even the staff are so nice. They're always interested in hearing if everything is good, if we'd need something else and how did we like the days lectures. You can really tell they do this with passion. After being here for two days again, I'm thinking I wouldn't really want to do courses anywhere else anymore. Eleiko Center in Halmstad is excellent as well - I can see why Charles prefers it over other places in Europe - but PSI is just something else.

Yesterday we had a wonderful lecture about applying Traditional Chinese Medicine herbal formulas into Biosignature practice. Honso is a company that makes pure, tested herbal products with ancient formulas. We had the president of the company teaching us. I won't write more about it now but all I can say is that TCM really resonates with my inner self. Looking at the person on all levels is just something we lack too often in our western view of the world.

Today we had Mark Schauss lecturing. He's an expert on lab testing and environmental health. If you don't know who he is, that's okay. A month ago I had never heard his name either so not knowing him "doesn't make you a bad person" like Charles always says :) To find out more, check these out:

Mark Schauss' website
Mark Schauss' blog: Toxic World (you can order his book here - I got mine from Amazon)

Questions you might want to think about before you read today's post (these are from Mark's presentation):

What does feeling good mean to me?
Who am I comparing myself to?
Have I ever thought that relying on how I feel might be a little crazy ? Even Robert Crayhon, a top nutrition expert on the field of functiona medicine, couldn't tell he was developing cancer by "going by feeling". Dr Crayhon was Charles' and Mark's mentor who died of colon cancer in September. Here's Charles' post on his blog on the topic - warning: if you're a sensitive and empathy is your second name, you might cry reading it :(
When did I get my basic lab tests done the last time? ... or how about food intolerances... or a comprehensive blood lipid panel... or a fatty acid test...?

Mark insists on doing at least a comprehensive blood test which you should do once a year. BTW, I'm not a perfect example here - I haven't done a full panel in over two years! You need to do this in order to be able to COMPARE later on so you know what the numbers are when you're healthy and what they might be when you're getting sick.

I'm going to get one as soon as I get back to Finland and can see my doctor. I've got some tests done during the past year as I've had more health problems than in a very long time... but not a comprehensive blood test. I know for a fact that the stress I've experienced due to changing careers, being in a car crash, paying nearly $10 000 expenses because of the car crash, dealing with entrepreneurship alone and so on has really taken a toll on my health. There are no excuses to not putting myself as a priority though. I guess it's just something called LIFE.

But, back to the topic - Mark went over distinguishing what the differences between allergies and sensitivities are. Food ALLERGY means you might die when you eat the food - the reaction can be life threathening. An example of this is peanut allergy and aflatoxins. This occurs on 4-6% of population. When you go to a hospital to do an allergy test, this is what they test. It's not very useful as usually you know what foods cause immediate reactions.

Food SENSITIVITY is something you might not be able to see clearly right away, the symptoms might take 3-7 days to appear and usually you wouldn't even think it's caused by a food. You might have joint pain, headaches, brain fog, diarrhea... many symptoms you can't always spot to be caused by foods. This occurs on 20-100% of population.

Mark also talked about toxicity. It's very tightly connected to food sensitivities and vice versa. His daughter, Tasya, was diagnosed with a very aggressive type of epilepsy as a baby. The parents were told she won't live over the age of 12. Today Tasya is 14 and she hardly has any seizures anymore. What did Mark do? Go crazy over finding what may help her. Eliminating her food sensitivities and cutting out the foods she was sensitive to decreased the incidence of the seizures greatly. When she was first tested with LEAP MRT food sensitivity test, she had 25 "red" foods. Five years later she only had two. They have also continued doing detoxing on her. Mark strongly believes that finding out the causes of Tasya's condition has been the key to why she is still alive and doing well.

That kind of stories are such powerful examples of how ignorant we are - and how badly mislead we are by most sources of common information. It's actually very sad that so many people suffer just because they don't know. Anybody who is taking courses like this is doing a HUGE favor to their clients by bringing them information that's not widely used but so very helpful in finding solutions to the most complex programs.

Later the day Charles talked to us about toxicity and how it affects the body and the whole environment. Did you know that even polar bears are toxic nowadays? Even wild fish is toxic - the winds carry the pollution from other countries. In Finland we tend to think we're living in the safest place on Earth - pristine, surrounded by clean nature. Bah. That's a dream world.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A NON POLLUTED PLACE ON EARTH ANYMORE. Anyone who thinks his or her body doesn't have any toxins, is misinformed, ignorant or plainly stupid. Many people suffer from conditions that can be linked straightly to toxins in the body - for example Parkinson's disease is "a man made disease" - it didn't exist until 1970's, according to Charles. Most people in big cities are full of cadmium and other nasty heavy metals (we had quite a few people on the class to tell their own experiences on the breaks).

It became very clear on Charles' lecture that every single one of us needs detox. You should never buy a health food store's "detox in a box" - it can be very dangerous. An easy (and healthy) way to begin detoxing slowly is to start using Poliquin's Primal Clear pH as your post workout drink and slowly add another shake to your day as a snack. DON'T begin with two shakes a day initially, if you're new to cleansing foods - you will have nasty detox symptoms! It's a rice protein based medical food, that will help you get rid of pesticides in the body. They might act as estrogens causing fat accumulation especially on the hamstrings. Don't expect to drink a pineapple banana smoothie as the stuff is not very tasty... but it's about the effect, not about the taste. I use this for my PWO drink most of the time. Every time I try to go back to whey my gut tells me it was not a good idea :P

If you want to do a proper detox for heavy metals, plastics etc, I highly recommend you to contact a Biosignature Level 2 practitioner in your area. You can find all the practitioners here.

Eating a nutritious diet is just not enough - the amounts of nutrients have decreased so badly that it's impossible to get enough nutrients from a normal diet anymore. We learned that a modern orange may contain 0-20mg of C-vitamin in it - and it's advertised to be a good source of C-vitamin. It's supposed to have 75-100mg of C-vitamin in each but because the soil has become so weak due to loss of minerals, the veggies and fruits don't have much in them anymore. If the soil isn't naturally fertile, what do you think the veggies and fruits are going to be like?

Today was a great day. Highly enjoyed the lectures and also got to do a good but short workout in Charles' gym over the lunchbreak. I'm lucky to be on the list of people who get to train in the gym - there are only 20 people who they can fit in at the same time. Here are a couple of photos from the gym. I'm stronger here than I was at home so training is really fun :)

Tomorrow will be muscle testing - challenging, but a very interesting topic!