If a Pill Could Do This, Everyone Would Take It

I can’t believe it’s been only a week since the septic tank backed up into the house, from the pressure of three feet of sea water on top of it — as the ocean also rushed into my house.

John and I will probably be unpacking the trauma from this, for a long time. For now, we’re too busy to think much about it.

Virtually every conversation I have these days is with people telling me their stresses. I worry that people are “chasing endorphins” (we actually do this in life anyway, all of us!) and too many, especially our kids, are looking to weed or alcohol, or whatever it takes to numb out.

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I chase endorphins, too. But what I’ve done every single night this past rather hellish week (which also had lots of work stresses; work didn’t stop for the second hurricane in 3 weeks!) is substance-free, 100% good for you, and it improves mood and strengthens immune function. 

(You need your immune system, when your house fills with septic fluids. John felt super sick after a full day of mopping up the mess on his hands and knees, with nowhere to dump it, besides buckets.)

My Amazing Nightly Healing Ritual

• I drive to the corner convenience store and buy 3 bags of ice. 

• Back home, I get in my sauna for 25 minutes, set at 155 to 165°F 

• Then I get out, dump the three bags of ice in a bathtub half-filled with cold water, and submerse myself, taking slow, deep breaths.

  

I feel like a million bucks afterward … for hours! Even when it feels like the world is crashing down around me. The buzz doesn’t go away after an hour, like it would with a glass of wine. 

(Plus, with the wine, you don’t sleep well, and feel depressed and lethargic, when you wake up. In contrast, this practice makes me feel great in the morning, which wine would NOT do – it just delays the depressive effect.)

When It Feels Like Stuff Is Crashing … 

You and I are going to have to find ways to be steady and calm in the months and years ahead, because we have some economic meltdown in pretty much everyone’s forecast. 

• Real estate is coming down, hard, with more inventory than in 2007 heading into recession. 

• The stock market has never crashed harder than it has in 2022, except in 1929.

• The world’s second-largest crypto exchange just filed bankruptcy. Its founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) appears to have been involved in the last three crypto-project crashes, and he “invested” other people’s money into lots of other crypto companies, so I think the damage will roll out, for many weeks more. And a week before filing for bankruptcy, SBF donated $40 million of other people’s money held on his exchange to the Democratic party.

We can sit around telling ourselves tomorrow it will get better. Or, since we will all apparently have to weather a recession, we can decide to do what we can to develop resilience in the face of conflict, uncertainty, and chaos. 

People throughout history have done this. Most of the world lives in grinding poverty (and ironically, they’re happier than many Americans report themselves to be). 

My children are dealing with emotional health issues, too, and every parent knows, we carry our children’s burdens, no matter their age. Most of my children prefer I not talk to them about the things you read about in my blog, so I just do what I can to help prepare them.

For example, I just ordered each of them some storable green smoothie ingredients from Thrive Life — they’re freeze dried, with a 20-year shelf life. 

[Side Note: Storable, Healthy Food = Peace of Mind]

The coming diesel shortages mean trucks won’t be stocking your grocery store with 40,000 items soon. That reality is all we’ve known, our whole lives, but it won’t be our future. 

So it’s time to get serious about preparedness, and Thrive Life's 20%-50% off Black Friday sale is one of the best options I know, for stocking up on healthy freeze-dried food, with a 20-year shelf life.

(Click the link above and choose “Monthly Delivery Service” at checkout to get free shipping on orders over $99, and 15% off non-sale items. You can cancel at any time, including before your next order.) 

My Sauna Is a Blessing!

But my sauna routine has saved me, the last couple weeks! (The ice-bath part is hardcore, I know, and optional.)

We just kicked off our Annual Sauna Group Buy, and I don’t even have words for what an incredible blessing it’s been, when work and life are so hard.

All day, I think “Is it sauna time yet?” … I so look forward to my sauna (with optional ice bath) at the end of the day, which calms me right down.

I have yet to talk my husband into “taking the plunge” — the ice bath part. Or my assistant, Caroline, for that matter, even though they both LOVE the sauna. (I understand! The first time I got in ice water was scary for me, too. The first few times, actually.)

Now, honestly, it’s no big deal. I’m not Wim Hof, that guy who swims 20 minutes in icy streams. But I can sit, calmly and peacefully, breathing deeply, for 5 minutes in an ice bath. (For a while, I was “gutting it out” to do 60 seconds. Hey, 60 seconds is a great start.)

Even just the sauna — the ice bath is a new twist, and an endorphin-chasing addition to my nightly routine — causes your body to release serotonin and dopamine, those “feel-good” natural chemicals that give your brain a “reward.” Endorphins make you feel like you’re winning — like, “I got this.” They make you feel peaceful and calm.

Weirdly, since doing this every night the past 10 days, I’ve had some of the best sleep of my life, despite the chaos in my life and in the world, including the three feet of the ocean that entered my yard and my home a week ago.

Scrappy + Self-Care: A Winning Formula

Thanks to my hard-working husband and a friend — and thank God we had flood insurance — the beautiful 2-bedroom apartment a tenant was about to move into is now studs and concrete, scrubbed with bleach water and dried out.

Every morning last week before work, I hauled wheelbarrows of debris to a pile we will burn, and over the weekend, I did dozens more. (Yeah, there really was that much. Me and the rake — we’re new besties.)

The problems aren’t going away, friends. We have some tough times ahead. So, are we scrappy? Will we do the self-care at the end of the day (and beginning)? Can we all get through this?

People send me every shred of bad news they read. I’m completely marinated in it. But, not every bad thing you read is true, or completely true. The people of the world are finally pushing back!

The Magic of Heat Therapy

I did a free 70-minute webinar on the health benefits published in the scientific literature, laying out what heat therapy and infrared waves do for your health. 

There’s no work, or maintenance, or mold, with an INFRARED sauna. And as long as it gets hot enough (I don’t sweat in many infrared sauna models), I believe it’s your best option, by miles.

An infrared sauna is far superior to driving to a gym or spa, or a hot-rocks or steam or outdoor sauna. My longtime friend and colleague Ari Whitten wrote a book, The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy, with nearly 500 scientific references on the powerful benefits of near-infrared and red-light therapy. 

These waves deliver actual nutrients your body needs! People used to get them from the sun — and they’d sweat, too — before we lived an indoor life. 

I couldn’t cover ALL the benefits of heat therapy in the webinar, but I hit several major categories. Here are some highlights:

A “passive workout”

Infrared sauna benefits include a “passive workout” — my resting heart rate is 50, and it goes up to 90-100 on my Arc Trainer — but also in my sauna! And according to several studies, it also lowers blood pressure. (Check PubMed and other biomedical databases — you’ll find hundreds of studies on heat therapy lowering blood pressure, triglycerides, blood sugar and more!)

Detoxification and repair … and even STEM CELLS!

Tests show that we eliminate hundreds of chemical toxins in the sweat we emit in a sauna. (You can actually collect it and send it to a lab for analysis.)

Heat therapy also causes your body to produce FOX03, a master antioxidant. It also speeds up and mobilizes your white blood cells, which break down and metabolize pathogens. And it causes you to produce both stem cells and heat-shock proteins, which repair cells. 

My dad spent more on a single stem cell treatment than my sauna cost me. And my sauna helps my body produce stem cells every time I get in it!

Enhanced immunity: fighting cancer and other aberrant cells

You know that human cells are optimized at 98.6°F, but did you know immune cells (like white blood cells) are optimized at 104°F? 

Heat optimizes your body’s immune function, and since about 50,000 cancer cells mutate daily, in the average person, we all need the benefits of infrared and of raising our core body temperature 1, 2, or 3 degrees.

Does this make you think differently about fevers? Fever is an important tool your body uses to burn out infections, even though most doctors believe that fevers are a Tylenol deficiency. And heat therapy allows you to CREATE a low-grade therapeutic fever, artificially! 

Mood

Studies show that sauna sessions especially relieve depression and anxiety. I covered in the free webinar the different mechanisms of action in the original study (which sent other researchers investigating), showing that a SINGLE heat therapy session decreased depression for six weeks! 

Reduced risk of death 

A huge ongoing Finnish study has followed 2,300 men for many years, and concluded that those who get in a sauna 4 to 7 times a week have 40% less death from all causes, and 50% less death from cardiovascular disease!

Other benefits include beauty and aging well, skin health, athletic performance, autoimmune issues, and so much more. 

My friend, vegan cardiologist Joel Kahn, MD, said about Sunlighten saunas, “If this were available in a pill, everyone would take it!” You can watch the webinar, for many of the reasons why.

Our 2022 Sauna Group Buy

If this is your year to think about putting a sauna in your home (I know many of you have thought about it for years), I recommend getting the smaller, 2-person unit, unless your home has space for the bigger one that you can stretch out and lie flat in.

I have several friends (Caroline, too) who put theirs in their master bedroom! Mine’s in a guest room. In past homes I’ve had it in a basement, and in a garage.

Sunlighten recently came out with the Amplify Sauna line. I’ve always loved Sunlighten, but I wanted a hotter sauna, for the sweating/heat therapy in addition to the infrared benefits, and the Amplify Sauna line from Sunlighten hits all those targets.

Sunlighten is unparalleled for craftsmanship, and they’re 23 years old (financial stability matters extra, right now).

We negotiate a wholesale-price deal with a great sauna company every year, with our buying power — and right now you’ve got 9 days to get in on this year’s GreenSmoothieGirl Sauna Group Buy.

Start by just learning about it. Watch the free webinar, because it’s available for just 9 days, once a year. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks for subscribing to my blog. Thank you to SUBSTACK for hosting this platform. GreenSmoothieGirl’s blog got 1 to 2 million visitors a year for 12 years, but in the three years pre-Covid, Google became “pay-to-play” and very biased.

And they became so pro-Pharma that ALL OF US in “alternative” or “holistic” health have been almost entirely removed from your search results on Google!

Nearly everything critical of Pharma — everything revealing the harms and poor efficacy of the cut-burn-poison methods — has also disappeared from your search results. So, for now, Substack gives us a place to be heard.

God bless you and your family. Please have a wonderful Thanksgiving. With no place to put my kids due to hurricane damage, I’m flying to California to visit them. But I’ve got a new piece on 14 ways I’ve seen Marxism rolling out in the U.S. since March of 2020 — that’s your Black Friday, right there. Watch your inbox. And, please assume that some of the links I may share, compensate my small business.