Recipes of simple ginger soup

Image by FotoosVanRobin via Flickr

Tranlated from a Chinese health forum, by lily7:

Benifit: Ginger soup is a traditional Chinese health diet therapy. It is supposed to have several health benifits such as making your body temperature higher (for those who feel cold all the time. In another words it helps body to gain energy); weight loss; smooth out skin. etc..

Recipe (1):
put about 10 kg mashed ginger root into cup, pour boiled water, add one teaspoon of honney. Done!

Recipe (2):
Boiled sliced ginger root together with black suger (like you make tea). Drink it morning and night (somebody just suggested that it is not recommanded to drink it at night).

The first look of the fall

Finally, rain stopped. It is a fresh looking morning. Air is cool and dry. It's going to be a sunny autumn day.

I feel discernible change on my physical condition these days. I believe my diet play the most part of it. Acupuncture might contributed some positive energy too.

Yesterday I went to my second appoinment of acupuncture and felt a little nervous. I guess it is because my physical condition was better than the first time. The room was too cold to me so I got a little cold after treatment.

But again, overall I believe I am on the way to be good.

(the picture of my back yard )

First time acupuncture experience

Image via Wikipedia

(It was not really the first time but it is the first time I got into this seriously.)

The past Friday I went to see a local Chinese doctor. He looked around 60, energitic and was very concerned about my condition. He gave me one hour acupuncture treatment --- needles all over my body! And all of them were connected to electricity! But really, it was not that scary and painful as it sounds. After connecting to electricity, I felt vibration on skin. That's all.
Before the treatment started, my noses were running like crazy. Doctor gave me first 3 needles around my noses. He said it should help me with my sinus problem. Other needles went to all other places for all different goods.

I didn not feel obvious difference after treatment (my noses stopped running during the treatment but after I left clinic they started running again). These couple days I do feel better but I don't know if it is because of acupuncture or not. Doctor told me I would not feel obvious change until 3 times treatments. So I am patiently waiting for my next appointment (which is tomorrow). In the meantime, I just keep my fingers crossed.

The pain of visiting doctors

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Some of my friends always ask me to get help from experts, but my experience with experts are 99% negetive.
Pat Sullivan (also a famous entrepreneur, founder of ACT), the auther of the book I am reading now ("Wellness, piece by piece") has visited tones of "experts". But still, most causes of his chronic illness were found by himself (he certainly is an intelligent man). He described one of his experience with a doctor: once after he read a book about a hormone called cortisol, he was convienced that his cortisol level was not enough. So he brought the book to the doctor and talked to him about it. What suprised Mr. Sullivan was, not only this doctor agreed with him, he actually was familiar with this cortisol theory and he was a student of the author of that book Sullivan just read! But he never suspected Mr. Sullivan could have such problem! Then after running a test they found that Sullivan's cortisol level was indeed very low!
Only if this doctor could suspect this earlier... What a time, money and energy waste! After finishing reading this chapter, my doubt about "experts" was even encreased.

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Saliva-based hormone tests

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

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Just found another quicker and easier hormone tests: Saliva-based hormone tests. You can also order online.

Here is one of them.
http://www.virginiahopkinstestkits.com/salivakits.html

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Order blood tests online!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

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By the reading the book "Wellness, piece by piece" I learned that we could actually order blood tests online! I just did one from directlabs.com and I could go to do the tests tomorrow (I could actually go today if I didn't eat my breakfast).
By doing this online, I could avoid all those doctor visit sh*t (sorry) and saved a lot of time! And what's better is that we do not need doctors' permission to do the tests we need! We could do whatever tests we want.

This is the website from where I got my order:
https://www.directlabs.com/

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Another piece of puzzle ---> sleeping in the room without enough oxygen

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I found another cause of my recently chronic tiredness: my bedroom didn't have enough oxygen.
Last night I lied in the bed and could not fall in sleep because I literally felt suffocated. My body needed oxygen! So I had to open windows and door fully and also opened the window in the hall way so air could flow through entire room. It really worked because in this morning, for the first time since "quite a while", I found my chest felt much "lighter". Also, my whole body felt more refreshed than previous mornings.

Of course, this is just one piece of puzzle. I still need to fix a lot of things.


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"Wellness, piece by piece", by Pat Sullivan

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A friend recommanded this book. Pat Sullivan is a successful entrepreneur who suffered long term chronic fatigue syndrome. I just started to read. It seems to be a book that contains lots of original and valuable information.
In the chapter "manage your nervous system", the auther quote from Dr. Edward Conley, an expert in treating CFS:
"We should not confuse the fact that the vast majority of fatigue patients are depressed because of chronic illness, not chronically ill because they are depressed. This is a very important distinction and (one) that most doctors fail to draw. To treat the depression as causing whole illnes is wrong!"

This is so important. I had told friends about this countless times! Now I finally found a approval by an expert!


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The second diet change

I have changed my diet 5 months ago, from my regular unhealthy food hobby to an almost vegetarian food structure. I felt a dramatic health change immediately and I thought I would stick on this diet in the rest of my life. However, after 2 or 3 months' significent health improvement, my health condition stopped at a point where I could not make it any more progress. I didn't know why? I could not exercise as much as I needed (I used to walk 45 - 50 minutes, but somehow I could only walk around 30 minutes). And what was worse later on, over a month ago, I suffered a huge back fire of chronic fatigue syndrome! Again!

I did not find the true reason (actually i believe that reasons are always multiple) until a week ago. Before that I had blaimed everything and tried everything I could, still did feel any better. Then I tried the last thing: changing diet again. I was somehow convinced that what I had been eating is too simple. It was good for killing candida yeasts but it may not be nutritious enough for my health needs. So what I did was to increase the variety of foods, not only fish and vegs, but some beef, chicken, etc. And I started to take some Chinese herbs again which I disbelieve for a while.
It has been about a week and I do feel better, even though the difference is not significant as the previous diet change.

Rest, rest and rest more!

Lots of rest, that's all I need.

September 14-20, 2009, the national invisible disease awareness week!

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977792111

"Nearly 1 in 2 american has a chronic illness"! That's a lot! But I am sure they don't have chronic illness like I have, because almost everybody I know is healthy compair with me!

Backfire of CFS!

Being optimistic for over 3 months, I have been suffering from a serious backfire of CFS for over a month. Heart palpitation, shortness of breath are my primary symptoms. I had to constantly cancel my working schedule in order to get rest. Terrible!

I have been thinking what triggered this backfire and why it took so long to recover (I am still not recovered yet). Lacking oxygen is what I suffer the most when I had shortness of breath: I do not have strength to inhale air. I realized that this symptom happens after I overuse my energy. Back to April I had significant improvement after I changed my diet but why now, having being in better situation in every aspects (mental, financial), I still have such an attack from this monstrous disease?
I blaimed soy products, iodine overdoes, but today my "final" complain went to TALKING! Since I got better after I changed my diet, I increased working hours (I work as a teacher) and I realized that might be a problem! Because every time after 2 or 3 classes I literaly felt exhausted (More miserably I would started to suffer from shortness of breath for couple of days, sometime even longer). Talking is especially hard for me because when we (human) talk, we only breath out. We can only breath in during those intervals of sentences or words. So talking requires certain amount of stored oxygen inside our bodies to use. And my body is so weak sometime that I could not accomplish such a regular task which a normal person can do it without conscious intention.
I have already thrown away the inhalers that doctors gave me long time ago. They didn't help. I believe the only thing that can help me is talking less, doing more cadio exercise. Of course, it takes time. A lot of time. But I have no choice.