One of the most important lessons I have realized about wealth is that it is
internal, it is a state of mind, an attitude, a mindset, a “prosperity
consciousness.”

Our beliefs about what wealth is and what it is not usually comes from our
parents and childhood environment. Sometimes these experiences and beliefs
serve us well, other times they do not.

My eyes were really opened about the world’s political and economic systems
worked from a behind the scences point of view, I finally began to
understand the news.

In a way it felt like I was given the red pill, and chose to take it as Neo
did in the Matrix.

It also taught secrets of life beyond the borders-and in this way the
conferences are held outside the borders of Canada and the united
states-usually in Mexico.

You can visit the Sovereign Society online.

2006 HerbClipT
Mariann Garner-Wizard Heather S Oliff, PhD
Shari Henson Brenda Milot, ELS
Marissa Oppel, MS Cathleen Rapp, ND
Densie Webb, PhD

Executive Editor - Mark Blumenthal Managing Editor - Lori Glenn
Consulting Editors - Dennis Awang, PhD, Steven Foster, Roberta Lee, MD
Funding/Administration - Wayne Silverman, PhD Production - George Solis

Chocolate Consumption and the Reduced Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

Ding E, Hutfless S, Ding X, Girotra S. Chocolate and prevention of cardiovascular disease: a systematic review. Nutr & Metabol. 2006;3(2):1-12.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide. The results of many studies suggest that changes in lifestyle factors, such as exercise and nutrition, may reduce the risk of CVD. Flavonoids-an antioxidant found in foods such as fruit, vegetables, coffee (Coffea spp.), tea (Camellia sinensis), wine (Vitis vinifera), and chocolate (Theobroma cacao)-have attracted much interest because of their potential to protect against CVD. Chocolate has been used since ancient times as a medicinal remedy and has recently been recognized for its antioxidant potential. Although many short-term trials have explored the possible health benefits of chocolate, thought to be due to its stearic acid and antioxidant flavonoid contents, no long-term trials have assessed the possible beneficial effects of chocolate consumption. Thus, the long-term beneficial effects of chocolate are debatable. This systematic review was conducted to evaluate the controversial health benefits of chocolate consumption as they relate to CVD.

The authors conducted a literature search of the MEDLINE database (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD) for clinical, observational, and experimental studies of the relation between chocolate consumption and CVD that were published from January 1965 to June 2005. The search terms included chocolate, stearic acid, flavonoids, cardiovascular disease, blood pressure, cholesterol, oxidation, and thrombosis. Approximately 400 articles were found, and 136 were selected for review. Randomized trials with either a cross-sectional or parallel design and prospective observational studies were the focus. The strength of the evidence of chocolate’s beneficial effect was based on the study design and quality of individual studies, the consistency of findings across studies, and the biologic plausibility of the mechanisms involved. Relative risks were estimated and pooled according to a random-effects model.

Overall, evidence from the short-term randomized trials and from the epidemiologic studies of chocolate consumption suggests that “flavonoid intake from chocolate is likely protective against CVD, particularly CHD [coronary heart disease] mortality.” Evidence from laboratory experiments and randomized trials suggests that stearic acid has beneficial or neutral effects on clotting factors and blood pressure; thus, it is unlikely that stearic acid would adversely affect CVD risk. However, evidence from observational studies of the relation between stearic acid and CVD risk is inconclusive. A meta-analysis of seven prospective studies found that the intake of chocolate flavonoids may lower the risk of mortality from CHD. Eight cohort studies consistently found that the risk of CHD mortality was lower with total or specific flavonoid intake. However, a large cohort study (n = 38,455 women) found a nonsignificant association between CHD mortality and flavonoid intake.

On the basis of this systematic review, the authors suggest that “stearic acid may be neutral, while flavonoids are likely protective against CVD.” Because dark chocolate contains substantially higher amounts of flavonoids than does milk chocolate, the authors suggest that “it would be more prudent to consume high flavonoid dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate.” Long-term randomized feeding trials need to be conducted to definitively determine the effect of chocolate consumption on cardiovascular disease risk.

-Brenda Milot, ELS

The information on this site is intended for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for the advice of a qualified healthcare professional. The American Botanical Council does not endorse or test products, nor does it verify the content or claims made, either implicit or explicit. ABC does not accept responsibility for the consequences of the use of this information or its most up-to-date accuracy. ABC is a nonprofit, tax-exempt research and education organization under IRS section 501(c)(3). All text, images and content Copyright

© 2005 American Botanical Council, unless otherwise noted.

One of the most transformative things I have done for my health is to transition my diet to primarily raw, vegan, organic cuisine.

Some may roll their eyes at the thought of eating such foods because this seems weird, out of the norm, and at worst, bland or even boring.

Fortunately, there is NO deprivation. After spending some time with the chefs at the Tree of Life (www.treeoflife.nu) and studying raw food preparation, I learned the basic skills of preparing this food, and my taste buds have been thanking me ever since.

Whatever food one can imagine in the cooked kingdom – everything from milk to pizza to spaghetti and desserts – can be replicated with this nouveau cuisine. Not only can these foods taste similar if not better, the health effects are so uplifting as to even raise consciousness – this is what I have tasted.

One of my favorite books to study raw food cuisine is Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine by Gabriel Cousens, M.D., one of the world’s eminent raw food physicians.

Years ago, I thought my health was pretty good, I liked to eat what I considered “healthy”…but only after I fine tuned my nutrition to this supreme level higher octane level, did I feel like a Mercedes finally being provided it’s super unleaded gasoline instead of the regular unleaded where it would just choke and sputter.

Since I began this journey in 2004 after a severe case of food poisoning when I took my girlfriend at the time to an “unforgettable” lunch of fish tacos in Tijuana, Mexico across the border from San Diego, my body has undergone dramatic changes.

By eating as much as possible foods in their purest state possible, I have healed myself of depression, insomnia, fatigue, candidiasis, a severe jawbone infection caused by “creative dentistry” – not only that, I’m told I look like I’m in my early 20s and most of the time I feel like it too!

Although at first I was extreme in my approach, almost like a religious zealot on a holy crusade, over the years I have found a happy middle ground. Today, I balance my commitments. For example, every day, whenever possible, at the beginning of the day I create a fresh healthy juice from fresh fruits and vegetables – there it is, pure liquid nutrition. And I also fill a gallon jug with pure reverse osmosis water, replenishing it with Himalayan sea salt and other trace minerals—and don’t go to sleep until I have downed the whole bottle.

But after doing this daily “rejuvenative practice” I allow myself to go with the flow the rest of the day. Especially if I am joining friends or clients to eat with I’ll give myself free reign over what I eat. I will even eat fish on occasion, and I don’t mind a mojito (rum, mint leaves, and sugar cane – my favorite sample was in Cuba), margarita, or red wine on special occasion.

In this way I don’t feel isolated from the rest of the world, I can participate in all the fun and festivities and at the same time I feel my body strong and resilient enough to handle the onslaught.

The crazy thing is that if I go too much to the other extreme and eat too many cooked foods with preservatives over the holidays, I feel my sense of energy shrink down again.

Last year, while I served as a staff reporter/columnist (specializing in real estate) for the Scottsdale Times and North Scottsdale Times, I heard from my friend Katherine that Jane Seymour would be exhibiting her artwork at some local galleries. Simic Galleries, I believe, who also shared rights to exhibit Seymour s work at affiliated galleries in Monterrey , California .

Jane had earned acclaim as a dynamic actress in numerous memorable films and television series including Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeves, the series Heart of Healing featuring Bill Moyers, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, and the comedy Wedding Crashers. So I was curious to see how her creative energies express themselves in her work.

Seymour s works moved me, each had a distinctive energy, exuding an unmistakable depth and simplicity. I couldnt help but ask her for an interview. I politely approached myself to her publicist and then introduced myself to her. She agreed, and a week or so later, I conducted an interview.

The range of topics we covered in such a brief time, Janes life and work, during the interview, was too vast and a brief paragraph about Janes appearance in the Times and would not do it justice. I found Jane to be warm and personable, her courage and perseverance through adversity admirable, and I was especially impressed by the breadth of her creative accomplishments, as an actress, artist, designerwho gives back to humanitarian causes whenever she can.

When I presented the transcript to my venerable mentor Stan Krippner, he stated he would present it to the Dream Network where he served an advisorial role on the board. This journal wrote informally about anything and everything having to do with dreams and their applications.

Although the interview did not directly relate to Seymours dream life, she did have some anomalous dreamlike experiences during her surgery in which she found herself hovering over her body in a so-called near death experience (NDE) and for this reason her experiences would be relevant to the readers of the magazine. I am pleased with the interview and hope it provides you insight into a highly accomplished and creative actress with a deep appreciation for life. Please click on the link to view and download her interview.

In a future interview with Seymour I would like to explore the impact of Seymour’s dream life on her creative process as an actress and artist. Seymour has been interviewed many times but I have not yet seen any interview focusing on this aspect.

What words could describe the profound bliss I feel in my body at this moment. Every morning since I purchased the world-classe GreenStar Juicer, I have juiced a spectrum of vegetables, mainly a full bunch of celery, cucumbers, beets, carrots, and spicing it up with ginger, lime, and hot peppers as my inspiration dictates. For the first few months I was almost overwhelmed by the intensity of the juice, and found the flavors hard to swallow. It is not something someone raised on standard diet would easily be used to.

Most flavors in the cooked food palate are oversalted, overcooked, oversweetened, with preservatives added, that our taste buds may not be used to flavors of food in its natural state. But over time my taste buds slowly adapted to this.

It was only recently, the past few weeks, where within about 1 hour of drinking this elixir of life, do I feel myself overpowered by such intense bliss it is hard to describe. It is as if I am literally breathing in the joy of life, the exquisiteness of being alive so intensely it is almost hard to contain. Somehow my body has transformed and uplifted itself to receive this high-octane life and nutrition straight from the source.

It is a gift from the source of creation for me to be able to taste and experience such incredible ecstasy simply from something natural and fresh that I drink, the reward after many years of hard work on myself, healing many bothersome, chronic problems that the average person might consider “normal.” And yet, I wanted more, much more.

My cells are singing and dancing the song of life. In my humble opinion, the world would be a much better place if more people felt this divine level of joy and supreme ecstasy. It is one thing to feel the emotion of joy and strive to experience it whenever possible; it is an entirely another experience to feel it so intensely in one’s body on a cellular level I would not have imagined it was possible unless I actually experienced it.

I also came to realize, after feeling this level of joy, that as a society we are often have a greater fear of pleasure than pain. Put another way, many of us are unconsciously more afraid of pleasure than of pain – for a multitude of reasons. I speculate that since we are still survival-oriented as a civilization, we prioritize pain, or its avoidance, as a greater indicator to keep us alive than the pursuit of pleasure. This is a gross generalization and pure speculation, but I have found this to be the case.

Another way I experienced this fear of pleasure is during an orgonomy session with Morton Herzkowitz, D. O. a psychiatrist practicing in Philadelphia, PA. Orgonomy is a practice of releasing blocked energy and tensions in the body through various breathing and pressure techniques that stimulate a whole-body level orgasm, for some of us, perhaps the first time in our lives. It was developed by the controversial genius doctor Wilhelm Reich, who also developed the orgone box, a device purportedly designed to capture free energy from the atmosphere and deliver it to people. Dr. Herzkowitz asked me to simulate pelvic rocking and with each movement breathe deeply and intensely – very quickly the pleasure of this simple practice alone was unbearable – and it quickly demonstrated to me how we keep ourselves locked up for fear of experiencing pleasure, and the orgasm that comes with it.

Right now, pay attention to your breathing. Are you breathing as deeply as possible? Or are you breathing just the minimal amount to keep you alive? Just another sign that most of us are operating at a fraction of the energy capacity was possibly can.

So for starters, I recommend juicing once a day if at all possible. It has worked for me to juice first thing in the morning, as part of my daily rejuvenative practice – it sets a blissful tone for the day and I feel energized, vibrant, and alive. Of course I recommend everyone experiment with timing for when to juice, which fruits and vegetables to use in which particular combination, and the impact and effect the juice will have on your life based on your intentions.

Based on this simple routine, I also feel free to eat as I please during the day, in concert with what feels right, taking into consideration my taste buds, activities, and social calendar.

Any juicer is better than no juicer. Your choice of equipment depends on your budget and dedication to the art of juicine. I’ve been through several juicers, starting with Juiceman, which quickly burned out from overuse- I also found it to make the juice warm and foamy. Not all juicers are alike.

I also used the Champion Juicer, but finally landed on the GreenStar juicer, in my opinion the best I’ve come across. The hefty price tag is more than justified in the long term impact it will have on your health. This juicer “chews” food slowly pushed through its gears comparable to teeth, and does it so well that the out put is a very large quantity of juice from a modest amount of vegetables. The pulp that is pushed out is also very dry, another good indicator that the juice is extracted. Also, the two gears that chew food supposedly contain strong magnets that help extract the trace minerals contained in the food. This juicer is for the serious connoisseur for the rugged health crusader.

I find it hard honestly to imagine who would not benefit, at least in some way, from juicing frequently as part of your rejuvenative daily (or weekly) practices.

People have asked me this on more than one occasion. For years I have been working as a real estate entrepreneur. But before ever engaging in real estate I had a burning passion to explore and study consciousness. I suspect that always have and always will. I’ve always found myself on the cutting edge of whatever I did.

For example, as an undergraduate at Duke, I attended research meetings at the Rhine Research Center , formerly known as the Institute for Parapsychology. I interviewed research staff and published articles about parapsychology. I also ran a mind/body medicine study group for the university community, in which I invited leading edge health professionals to join me.

So I always had my awareness in leading edge consciousness and mind-body medicine research. I envisioned a future of possibilities. While involving myself with the Rhine Research Center , I witnessed first-hand the potential for psychic claimants to provide clues in helping police, government agencies, and industry sort through complex tasks.

While serving as an intern at the Monroe Institute in the summer of 1994, I delved into also explored out-of-body reports, personally, and also met Robert Monroe before he passed. (It is interesting to note that when he first had these curious experiences of floating above his body, Robert Monroe had met with J. B. Rhine, founder of the Rhine Research Center , in an attempt to understand his experiences.) While at the Monroe Institute, I also met Joe McMoneagle, a remote viewer who gathered intelligence for government agencies without directly using the five physical senses.

The next year, in 1995, while interning on Wall Street, at the investment banking firm J.P. Morgan, I kept wondering how extraordinary human abilities can applied to enhance the performance of employees, and ultimately, increase shareholder returns. Tom Bain, my manager and director of the HR division, was inspired by the possibilities. He co-sponsored my attendance of an “Intuition in Business” workshop hosted by Institute for Noetic Sciences (IONS) later that year in Denver , Colorado . Bain also mentioned that floor traders at the firm claim to use intuition (or their gut) to direct split second decisions that could not have rationally been thought through; if they hesitated or spent too much time cogitating, they would lose the trade!

This conference was sponsored by Jeffrey Mishlove, Ph.D., innovator of the film series Thinking Allowed. There I encountered leaders in their field, for instance: Marcia Emery who actually taught intuition to various businesses; a gifted intuitive, Gigi Van Deckter, formerly a director and producer, who consulted to leaders of government and industry worldwide.

Having fulfilled all the required pre-med coursework, I applied to medical school with ambitions to become a medical doctor and transform the medical system. My professors gave me the highest letters of recommendation, given my stellar grades, hospital volunteer service, and publications. I was shocked to discover that I was waitlisted but not accepted…Later it was determined that I had been discouraged by my Dean because she considered me “too controversial” for medical schooling given my broad interests. It took me years to recover from the shock.

Meanwhile, I had become interested in real estate as a practical grounded way to free myself financially, fund my education, and invest. However, I always retained interest in mind-body medicine and consciousness studies, and kept thinking about I can integrate these two worlds together. One day I felt inspired to consult with an intuitively gifted strategist about my real estate dealings: Van Deckter. Although I did not know of any other American businesses and industries in which strategists were consulted, I did consider the broader historical perspective—leaders often turned to unconventional methods to gain additional clues in the decision-making process.

In the process of working with Van Deckter, I found post-hoc, her insights were helpful, whether or not they “predicted” the future. Typically the process of engaging with her in asking questions and probing possibilities helped me sort through many often ambiguous cues and arrive at a reasonable option.

My successes in working with Van Deckter piqued my curiosity about other possibilities. After moving to Arizona , I encountered Mami Wheeler, a gifted healer who performed “property clearings” by bringing in fresh positive energy into a property and removing any negative energy which might stand in the way of a fast sale. Interestingly, I observed that prospective buyers were much more attracted to homes in which we performed these clearings. Obviously, this observation is hard to prove scientifically: how can I compare results, side by side, of one house that was cleared with another home that was not? In truth, I am not making any scientific claims, I am merely describing my experience. At the very least, I am having fun approaching real estate from a unique angle.

Having had novel experiences involving real estate, I wondered how I can shape this into a manageable study suitable for a dissertation. So, I turned to the published literature. Fortunately, many studies have been done involving dreams, and few if any involving other esoteric aspects of real estate that I explored. My professor at the time, Stanley Krippner, suggested the topic “dreams in real estate.” Next he and Ruth mentioned at least two people who had significant dreams that foreshadowed the purchase of property. Suddenly the topic came to life – I realized that it would be feasible to find ten people to produce a solid body of case studies. Further, I realized that by conducting an in-depth interview, I might be able to capture what made the dream/real estate experience so meaningful to the dreamer.

Diving deeper into the literature, I found that a majority of the public surveyed either believe in ESP, believe they have had precognitive experiences, and that many of these extraordinary experiences had occurred in dreams. So the topic was conceived. And I am proud to share the results with you.

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