Spring is in the Air, Water and Food
By Sally Anne Turner

Spring is the time for Renewal and Rejuvenation in Nature. Traditionally it is a time for spring-cleaning the home. Our minds and bodies also need to shake off the hibernation phase and come alive in preparation for the activity of the warmer months. Spring is a good time to give our bodies the internal cleanse that they deserve after the heavier foods consumed by most people in cooler weather.

Spring is a time of rebirth and of coming alive each day. We can do a few simple things to make this spring more alive and more enjoyable simply by shifting our awareness to the simple things that give us life and sustain our lives.

Put your attention on your breathing for a moment. Do you chest breathe or belly breathe? The one thing that most people do badly and have never been taught is how to breathe properly. So find someone who knows how to belly breathe and get them to teach you. It is really easy, once you learn. Everything works better when we breathe properly.

A quick, simple method is to lie down on the floor or a bed and place one hand on your chest and one on your tummy. Hold the hand on your chest to stop it expanding and gently pat your tummy with the other hand as you breathe into your lower lungs and push your diaphragm down so that your tummy expands. When you can go no further, suck some more air into your chest, then with the hand on your tummy, pushing down, exhale from your stomach and then lastly from the top of your lungs, relaxing and dropping your shoulders as you do. Immediately start to fill the lower area again, patting your tummy to remind you that is where you are sending the air, fill the upper chest and so on. After a few minutes you may find that you are naturally breathing into your tummy area, sometimes it takes a few practice sessions. In any case, if you are not used to getting that much oxygen, stay lying down for a while.

Another handy hint is to breathe with your tongue curled back behind your bottom teeth. This allows 30% more air into your lungs because you have your tongue up and out of the way. This will send more oxygenated blood to your brain, shoulders and upper back and is useful in reducing blood pressure. This is called Himalayan breathing. Try it - it works. Please don’t do this while driving in carbon monoxide laden traffic jams. Remember, spring is clean, so breathe fresh clean spring air!!!

Without water, life on Earth would cease to exist. Spring is a good time to increase our water intake to flush our bodies. There has been much debate about water in the news so we have no excuse for not thinking about water in our lives and what it does in our bodies. However, few people really know just how important it is and what it really does. Water is necessary for every part and process within the human body. Water is needed for communication, cooling and heating, cleansing, carrying nutrients and information around the body and wastes from it. When it is given what it needs, the human body is very efficient. When it is dehydrated, it begins to break down.

The commonly accepted warning for dehydration is thirst, correct? Wrong! By the time you are thirsty, you are already there. This is more dangerous in children than adults, due to body mass. Also adults who are chronically dehydrated rarely experience thirst because their body has gone into "safe mode" like your computer does when all the systems are not operating correctly. So, spring is a good time to re-boot your internal body systems with good water - a little and often to start with until your kidneys get used to it and gradually working up to around 1.5litres a day, everyday.

What type of water? The best water you can get your hands on. There are many different waters available if you don’t want to drink tap water. I suspect with the current trends towards recycling your toilet water, that will be the majority of us.

The main choices are rainwater, spring water, mineral water and manufactured water. There is not room here to go into a full explanation of each one, so do your own research and feel comfortable with the type you choose for yourself and your family.

Rainwater usually has no minerals, is slightly acidic and may contain chemicals that it has picked up from the atmosphere, so it will require filtration to guard against Giardia and other problems. It tastes clean, but really has little value to the human body. It is a bit like distilled water, which is now known to be too acidic and is responsible for leeching minerals from the body.

The majority of bottled waters in Australia are spring waters. This means they generally have a low level of minerals and are also often acidic and therefore not completely what our bodies need. Acidic means they are below 7 on the pH scale of 0 to 14. pH is a measurement of potential hydrogen, which means that the higher the number, the less acidic a solution becomes and is therefore able to absorb more oxygen. One important thing to remember is that the pH scale is exponential. This means that for every decrease by one unit on the pH scale, there is a tenfold increase in acidity levels. The difference between 7.5 and 4.5 in not 3 times more acidic, it is 1000 times more acidic. And the more acidic our extracellular fluids are, the more oxygen is reduced at the cellular level because the acidity pushes the oxygen out and we all know that oxygen is essential to a healthy human. So alkaline solutions, (the opposite of acid) are above 7 on the scale and are able to generate and utilise more oxygen. Oxygenated cells are happier, healthier cells. A ph of 7.2 to 7.5 is considered healthy and anything lower than 6.5 is mineral deficient and sickly. The human body is mainly water and minerals after all and many of them are needed in soluble form.

Mineral Waters, as the name suggests, have more minerals and may be acid or alkaline due to the mineral composition. There are very few mineral waters in Australia and many of them are manufactured by adding various minerals as allowed by law. In Europe, mineral waters abound and the Europeans have been flocking to these mineral rich waters for centuries. The City of Bath was founded because of its hot mineral springs and the ancients knew the therapeutic value of mineral water long before Australia was even discovered. It is often said that French women don’t get fat because they drink mineral water. Models are being told to drink mineral water. So if you want to shed a few kilos this spring, try mineral water, preferably still, not carbonated, as the body only recognises water as water. Everything else is a food. There is NO substitute for water.

If you feel overweight you may not have excess body fat, it may simply be the body’s dehydration safety mechanism – fluid retention. When you consistently drink small amounts of water and often, you your body will release what has been stored, and double chins and cellulite will begin to reduce and eventually disappear along with the unwanted kilos. Goodbye brain-fog; lethargy; sluggish liver; dark-coloured, acidic urine; stiff joints; constipation and a host of other things that reduce your enjoyment of life. This is not rocket science; it is common sense.

Water is the information system in the human body and the largest component by volume. Minerals are the foundational elements of human life. They are the core essential factor in the proper function and structure of all living cells. Without a properly functioning mineral intake and balance, our body has difficulty ingesting, assimilating, digesting, eliminating and regenerating. Water and minerals are the key elements in controlling the chemical and electrical processes in the body every moment we are alive. Unlike plants, our body cannot manufacture its own minerals. It would make sense to combine our water-soluble mineral intake with our water intake and give our body what it needs every day to communicate and function. Add in the magic pH factor and drink an alkaline mineral water and you are on the way to improving your ingestion, maximising you assimilation and calming your digestion.

The negatively charged ions in alkaline mineral water will pull the positive ions towards it and aid elimination and detoxification. A fully hydrated and mineralised body can get on with the job of regeneration – something it is designed to do 24/7.

Doctor Linus Pauling, winner of two Nobel prizes, once said: "You can trace every sickness, every disease and ailment, to a mineral deficiency." There is no room here to touch on this in greater depth – take a moment to ask your intuition if treating your body to water containing an abundance of minerals may result in more vibrant health and longevity for you. It has been the answer for so many people.

The greatest gifts we can give our children are love and water. Teach them by example to love water. Reinforce the positive rather than the negative with words like: "water nurtures my body - I just love this water". It is vitally important for children to drink water with an abundance of minerals – children need mineral water.

Mineral water has 500+ parts per million (ppm) of minerals, while the more common spring waters have less than 250ppm.

Doctor Graham Chadwick at Dundee’s Dental School in Scotland has released a study in July 2006 that examines eating, drinking and brushing habits of 250 school children aged 11 – 13 years. It compared them with the levels of dental erosion over an 18-month period. It was found the children who drank more mineral water had less tooth erosion. Doctor Chadwick said: "The high mineral content seems to help re-mineralise teeth by replacing essential minerals in the enamel that get removed when they are exposed to acid." He believed it would have the same effect on adult teeth.

While most people would reverse the order: Air, then Water, then Food are the human body’s greatest needs (as well as love). Spring gives us so many delicious choices in food and it is a good idea to try to eat organic food where possible. Try to eat 4 times as much alkaline-forming food (fruits, vegetables, nuts and non acid grains such as spelt) as you do acid-forming foods such as red meat, dairy and acid-forming grains and processed foods.

Fresh, raw, juiced and steamed foods give your body maximum nutrients and a gentle cleanse after the more sluggish effects of warm winter fare. The organics industry is growing at more than 20% per annum in Australia and by as much as 40% in the UK. Farmer’s markets and organic shops are a good place to find organic, biodynamic or chemical free food.

If you can’t go organic completely because of the cost, just select a small range to supplement your current shopping list and grow some herbs on your deck or patio. Spending a few minutes every day tending and watering your mini-garden will give you the vitamin D that you need as well. The growth in the good food that is good for you is not just a passing fad, it is a sign of the times.

People are fed up (pardon the pun) with chemical-laden air, water and food and are voting with their feet. Statistics show that if we don’t stop ingesting chemicals our children and their children will have the life expectancy of Stone Age man. Surely it is time we all woke up.

Spring is in the air, water and food. So make it your goal to put more spring in your step and enjoy a fuller, happier, healthier life.

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