wellness – Five Little Duckies

Quantum Leap

Does anyone remember this TV show from the early 90’s? I remember watching this and thinking it was sci-fi and thinking how crazy the concept was. Jump to 2017 (pun intended). I’ve been on a journey of faith, personal development, and love for the past 5 years and of late I’m burrowing into the concept of quantum physics. If you have no idea what that is or what I’m talking about, hang onto your hat! Because your mind is about to be totally blown.

Let’s start with basics. Do you know that every single thing has a vibrational frequency? Everything. For, every. single. thing. in this universe is purely made of energy. Quantum physics is the study of this energy–the study of vibrational frequencies and energy and matter. And quantum physics explores the possibility of particles being in two states at the same time. I love how this site presents it: In 1905, Albert Einstein proved through quantum physics that energy and matter are interchangeable and interconnected. In other words, the universe and all things within it are interchangeable. Your energy, vibrational frequency, and physical self are interchangeable. We are one universal energy body manifesting itself in various forms throughout the cosmos. Boom! Mind blown.

Hard to wrap your brain around that, right? It’s ok, I’ll give you a minute. I’ll be right here when you get back (and maybe somewhere else at the same time! 😉 )

I’ve become so fascinated by this topic of quantum physics that I really TRULY feel I could write an entire book on this (and many folks have!). Without even knowing it, I’ve been dabbling in quantum physics for years. My oils. My Oola obsession. Personal development. I’ve ditched bad habits and toxic relationships. I’ve done an ENTIRE overhaul of the food we eat and the chemicals in our home environment. I’m releasing negative emotional patterns with the use of mantras and essential oils. I believe there’s something innate in all of us that KNOWS this stuff already and WANTS to be at the highest frequency we can be. There’s a MOUNTAIN of fascinating information on this topic. For instance, the scientific/medical community is now studying the use of frequencies to literally blast out cancer cells and remedy other medical conditions. I mean…seriously, how much more sci-fi can it get?! I am just seriously nerding out all over with this stuff. I look forward to the day when we all are empowered to live life to our highest frequencies and anyone who is sick can get better with light therapy, sound therapy, water therapy, essential oil therapy (which I am obligated legally to tell you–duh–does not yet exist!), or nutritional therapy. BRING. IT. ON.

So these vibrational frequencies are measured in megahertz units. A megahertz is a unit of alternating current or electromagnetic wave frequency. Yes…get out your spectacles because we are in severe NERD territory. And you know you’re loving it as much as I am!

The human body typically vibrates between 62 and 78MHz. Disease begins at 57MHz, cancer at 42MHz, and death at 25MHz. These are proven numbers, recorded over and over and over again by the scientific community to the point where they are well known standards. We now can know the vibrational frequency of ANYTHING. It’s not difficult to Google this stuff and find tons of sites that list the frequencies of the food you eat, the thoughts you have, the things you watch on TV, your emotions, your activities, your sleep, your outlook on life…the list goes on and on, my friends. Every thing you say, eat, do or think truly–TRULY–has a direct and PROFOUND impact on your health and your quality of life. Let me repeat that. Every single thing you say, eat, do, and think TRULY has a DIRECT impact on your HEALTH and your QUALITY OF LIFE. That is profound and astonishing. Sure, it’s something we hear all the time. You are what you eat. What you think about comes about. Watch what you wish for! Mind over matter. How many sayings do we have that drive this point home? And yet most of us walk around like zombies, letting life throw us around like your laundry on spin cycle. We develop negative thought patterns, negative emotional patterns, poor eating and sleeping habits, destructive relationships, self sabotaging habits…you catch my drift.

Here’s the good news: As we’ve said, everything you think, do, eat, experience, say, and feel affects your vibrational frequency…this means you have influence over your number. YOU HAVE INFLUENCE OVER YOUR NUMBER!!!! This is perhaps the best news you’ve ever heard. Trust me.

In order to raise your frequency, you need to have a grasp on what some common numbers are. I really like this chart of the vibrational frequency of emotions. This is a well known and highly used chart:

Negative thoughts lower frequency by approximately 12 MHz, but positive thoughts raise frequency by approx 10MHz. Look at love…love vibrates at around 500MHz. But guilt? Guilt vibrates at 30Mhz. You know the old notion that someone is giving you a “guilt trip” to make you feel bad about something? TRUTH! And the old saying “you are what you eat”?? YEP! You are. I really like this fellow bloggers’ article about frequencies and food. The highlight for me is this list right here: Fresh Foods 20-27 Hz, Fresh Herbs 20-27 Hz, Dried Foods 15-22 Hz, Dried Herbs 15-22 Hz, Processed/Canned Food 0 HZ. Again, processed foods…ZERO. If you want to impact your frequency greatly, start by shopping the perimeter of your grocery store and skipping all the inside isles which are loaded with processed foods!

Something else you can do…get some essential oils. Essential oils can actually assist you in supporting most of your body systems. They can make your water tastier, enabling you to drink more. They help with cravings, support normal sleep patterns, encourage you to love and be grateful, and they are amazing tools for emotional support! The frequency of therapeutic grade essential oils range between 52 and 580MHz…wow! Did you remember that love vibrates at 500MHz? Blue Spruce oil vibrates at 580MHz–a higher frequency than the emotion of love, scientifically speaking!!! Imagine how crazy good you will feel if you diffuse or apply this oil every day as part of a morning routine. Essential oils actually have the highest recorded vibrational frequency of any measured natural substance. That’s pretty boss! Next time you are feeling down or the negative thoughts are starting to overtake you, grab an oil. Smell it and apply it topically. Diffuse it all around you. Keep oils in your purse, on your kitchen counter, in your bathroom, at your bedside.

There are lots of things you can do to raise your frequency. Drink more water. Ditch sugar, alcohol, and coffee (yes, painful to hear!). Get more sleep and higher quality sleep. Exercise. Turn your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Love yourself. Be grateful! (Does all this sound very…Oola? If you don’t know what Oola is, do yourself a favor and check it out…you can click to above link or read my previous blog entitled Ola-la.) Take a look at the food you’re eating. What’s the last book you’ve read? What are you doing to elevate your mind? Are you meditating? Practicing prayer, worship and fellowship? Are your friendships loving and open and accepting? Do your other relationships challenge you in a healthy way?

In my mind, quantum physics isn’t just a topic of discussion or a scientific theory. To me, it’s an approach to life. Living the life that God designed for you and the life that YOU were meant to live will bring you wellness, purpose, and abundance. The key to a life of high vibrational frequency is in your hands. You can bring yourself down with poor choices, negative thoughts, and destructive habits and relationships. Or you can lift yourself up at every chance possible. For some, it will take a lot of work to dig out of certain holes. But oh, it will be so worth it. For others, it will come a lot easier. However you get there, it is YOUR journey and your journey alone…and that is the whole point! You are what you eat. What you think about comes about. Watch what you wish for! Mind over matter. So…get your habits, thoughts, actions, relationships, and words aligned with the kind of life you truly want to live…and LEAP into it (you see what I did there?). 😉

How Sweet It Is…

So…the white stuff. Oh how we all love it. I could write a novel on sugar, so I’m planning to break it into a few smaller posts. Who doesn’t love that feeling when you’ve been craving some chocolate and you finally get your hands on the dark, velvety stuff, and you pop it in your mouth and the world just feels nice for a second? (Then the kids pull at your jeans, the cupboard door hits you in the head, the doorbell rings, and the baby pees on the floor…but you had a nice second there when the sweet stuff hit your system!) Does this sound a bit like an addict talking??? That’s because it is. We can absolutely 100% be addicted to sugar–and most Americans are. Check out this article by Dr. Mark Hyman explaining why sugar addiction is a fact, not a myth. You can even take his little self evaluation to see if you may be heading to the next SEA (Sugar Eaters Anonymous) meeting (pretty sure this isn’t an actual group but if you Google that term, you can find some actual resources for support groups). You are probably sitting here reading this thinking, “Wow, that’s sad. Those poor saps are addicted to something like SUGAR?! So lame…” I have news for you, friend…you are probably one of “us”!

It is surprisingly easy to become addicted to sugar. And the food industry is not trying to stop it. In fact, the opposite is happening. They are fueling the fire as much as possible. They want each one of you to be a sugar addict..and they are your supplier. If you’ve never seen one of the many documentaries out there on this topic, may I suggest my absolute favorite, Fed Up, which features the lovely Katie Couric. Their website is a wonderful resource, so check it out. This is a truly eye-opening film. If you walk away from this film and your eating habits don’t change and you especially don’t change what you’re feeding your kids, you either have the sugar thing figured out already or you should have your pulse checked. 😉 The moment this film was over, I was raiding my cupboards, tossing all kinds of what I thought were “healthy” snacks into the trash. It totally changed how I shop, how I bake, and how I view my childrens’ bodies. And previous to viewing the film, we were definitely already a healthier household than most. We eat only organic, we don’t do many processed foods, and we are admitted food snobs when out and about. Before viewing this film, I knew sugar was bad for us and I definitely limited it with sweets and treats, but the biggest takeaway for me is how grams and grams of sugar are literally hiding in just about every food you eat. Three of the most shocking items for me were yogurt, marinara sauce, and whole milk. And that brings me back to the food industry and their agenda…

The food industry has a vested interest in you becoming a sugar addict. Because they are your supplier. Pick up something from your pantry and come back to this page…go ahead. I’ll wait.

Welcome back…now look at the sugar content. It tells you how much sugar is in the product in grams, correct? Now, do you see the percentage of daily recommended value next to the sugar content like you do for all the other nutritional values? Right. It’s ok…I’ll give you a second to pick your jaw up off the floor…it is not required for the daily percentage of sugar intake to be listed…on anything. Let me repeat that. The FDA does not require the “percentage of daily value” for sugar to be listed on nutritional labels in the US.

I felt like such a jerk when this fact was exposed in the film Fed Up. I felt stupid for never having noticed. I felt taken advantage of for this not being an FDA requirement. And I felt angry for never having been educated on this. Here’s why the sugar industry has finagled the FDA into allowing them to refrain from listing the recommended daily value percentage on food labels: because the actual recommended daily values are so low that almost every single item in the store would be far above 30 or 40 or 50 percent of the recommended daily value, and that would look bad for the sugar industry. If you try to find an answer about why the daily percentage values aren’t listed, you will find some rigamarole about how it’s too difficult to measure the sugar content of many products because there is no way to separate naturally occurring sugars from added sugars, blah, blah, blah. In my mind, it is clear to me that this argument is complete drivel. They have the means to measure the sugar content. Clearly. Because it’s already been measured and added to the label. Whether or not it’s added sugar or naturally occurring sugar or a combination of both, it still comprises the percentage present in the product. No? Seems like common sense to me. Here are some facts that will knock your socks off:

Recommended daily sugar allowance according to the American Heart Association and WHO:

Adult Male: 37.5 grams (approx. 9 teaspoons)
Adult Female: 25 grams (approx. 6 teaspoons)
Children 8 and under: 3-4 teaspoons (approx. 12-17 grams), depending on body weight
Children ages 9-18: 5-8 teaspoons (approx, 21-35 grams), depending on body weight

Seems reasonable, right? If you’re a label reader and you already have a sense of the number of grams of sugars in your food products, you may already be breathing into a paper bag. But if you’re not really a label reader: #1, these numbers may mean nothing to you and #2, I hope you will be a label reader after you’re through with this blog!

The grams seem high, but they’re not. Take a look at the teaspoons. Do you drink coffee? Do you add sugar to it? If so, how many teaspoons? Two, you say? Boom! You just used up one third of your daily allotted sugar on your FIRST cup of coffee. Does that put it into perspective? Do you ever pick up one of those yummy Starbuck’s concoctions as your first cup of coffee of the day? If so, I’d be taking a serious look at the sugar content next time you’re in line for your sugar fix. Let’s say you don’t add sugar to your coffee and you’re not a fan of “dessert coffees” as I now like to call them. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Cereal? Yogurt? Instant oatmeal? If you’re heating up Quaker Old fashioned Oats and putting nothing on them, more power to you! But chances are that’s not the case. Just as an example, Nature’s Path Blueberry Cinnamon Flax instant oatmeal has 8 grams of sugar per serving. Kashi Heart-to-Heart Apple Cinnamon has 11 grams per serving. You want to talk about yogurt for a minute? Most plain (unflavored), greek yogurts have 5 grams or less. So if you’re eating that plain and not mixing it with a sugar-coma inducing granola or cereal, it’s not so bad alongside other low or no-sugar options. If, however, you’re reaching for Danon Activia, you’re looking at anywhere between 11 and 25 grams in that tiny little cup. You read that correctly. Most flavored yogurts–greek or not–are in the 20-32 gram range for ONE TINY CUP. It is outrageous! That exceeds your entire daily recommended intake if you’re an adult female!!!! Dry cereals and granolas are maddening, too. Raisin Bran: 18 grams in one serving. Golden Grahams: 13 “golden grams” of sugar! Lucky Charms: 13 grams. Kellogg’s low fat granola with raisins: 25.5 grams. What!? And you know I have to go through pasta sauces because this one was a shocker to me. Ragu tomato, garlic and onion: 12 grams. Barilla marinara sauce: 9 grams. Prego Heart Smart (laughable!): 10 grams. Bertolli tomato and basil: 12 grams. Check your milk, too.

Now would be a good time to go take a thorough look in your fridge and cupboards…how much sugar are you consuming BY LUNCHTIME? How much sugar are you putting into your babies before they even leave the house in the morning??? How much sugar are they getting in their school lunches? How about at their friends house? Or out of your own cupboards when you’re not there to monitor them after school? I was appalled to see that in my “healthy” household, we were reaching our sugar limit by lunchtime on most days and definitely by dinner time on all the other days. I guarantee you that most Americans hit their sugar limit before breakfast is over.

I’m not one to take the drastic approach and totally 100% ban sugar from my house–that will just make the kids want it more and develop a very bad relationship with sugar. Plus, let’s be honest…I want some sugar sometimes, too! What I can and will do is make sure my kiddos are eating as many whole foods as possible instead of processed foods. I can monitor the added sugar they are getting for meals and snacks that I provide. I can keep extremely unhealthy options out of my house. And, perhaps most importantly, I can educate them on this matter and teach them that a cookie or a cupcake once in a while or a mildly sweet snack once a day is not the problem. When it’s time for a sweet, have a sweet. I mean, I want to know when I’m eating a sweet! But when it’s time for a balanced meal or a healthy snack, I shouldn’t be getting duped into thinking I’m having something healthy when in reality it’s full of added sugars, which are throwing my body into a tailspin…more on that next time 😉 For now, I hope I’ve been able to shed some light on lurking sugars and what a healthy amount of sugar looks like for you and your family. In closing, have fun raiding your pantry!!!

Our birth story…

This journey began about 7 years ago when I was trying to become a mommy (which took two years and nine months, but that’s for another post!). On my path to motherhood, I ended up taking a good hard look at many aspects of my life: nutrition, stress, environmental toxins, emotional health, wellness and the pharmaceutical industry, the importance of relationships, the power of thoughts, mindfulness, environmentalism, and faith…just to name a few ;).

Something life-altering happens when you hold your newborn baby in your arms for the first time. Something crazy happens when you hold your second born in your arms for the first time. And something profound happens when your third-born arrives 10 weeks early, weighs a mere three pounds, makes it through an emergency delivery, and you hold him in your arms for the first time.

After a 41-day stay in the NICU and many hurdles to follow, venturing out alone with my three boys for the first time was a big step! As we walked down the sidewalk–me with the baby in a carrier and the rest all holding hands–I thought to myself we look like a family of ducks walking along. And so, Five Little Duckies was born.

Join me in our continuing quest to grow and thrive by getting back to our roots…naturally.