Author: Michael

I have been a hypnotherapist for around 12 years. My specific interests are in stress and physical healing. My fascination is with how the mind 'creates' the world. I am a fan of Esther & Jerry Hicks.

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Magic or Self Hypnosis?

When life is getting on top of us; when nothing seems to be working; when we look around and see others with everything we want; that is when we start to look around, maybe even pray, for a little magic. As adults we don’t believe in magic, we’re much too grown up for that – but we still want it. So anything that smacks a little of that childhood fantasy world, where a thought creates a kingdom, will grab our interest like nothing else.

Just imagine how wonderful it would be to be able to think your Wonderful World into existence. How amazing would it be to daydream about your perfect partner and then bump into them the next day? How incredible would it be to lie amidst the bubbles in the bath fantasising about the work you would love to do? Maybe you were dreaming of visiting exotic holiday destinations followed by a film crew as you tell the world about these amazing hidden places. Maybe you are inventing the next gadget to take the world by storm. Maybe you see yourself in charge of a multi-million dollar corporation with a life-style to match. Maybe your dreams are of a simpler life closer to nature and free of all the anxiety and stress of the rat race. Then, maybe a week, or a month, later, a chance meeting or an interesting conversation leads you to take the first step on that path to your heart’s desire.

Strange things begin to happen, and after a few months of this, you notice a pattern beginning to emerge. Your happy thoughts, your peaceful daydreams, and your fun fantasies are creating your world. You realise that the pleasurable thoughts you have in those moments when you are at peace, and free from anxiety, worry, and stress, are actually manifesting themselves in your reality.

Then, with this realisation, you understand that you truly are creating your own reality – just like it says in all of those books on Law of Attraction.

Unfortunately, in real life, the consistency of daydream to reality never quite seems to take off. Yes, we notice odd thoughts and ideas that drift through our minds and then seem to take on a life of their own; but reality still sucks most of the time.

If only there was a way to improve the success rate.

If only there was a way to make even a small shift towards a life of more positive experiences.

If only there was a way to reconnect with the magic of childhood.

Well, there is. But I’m sure the title gave the game away a long time ago.

If you are prepared to put in the work to learn some new techniques; if you are prepared to practise daily; then you can begin to create the magical life you desire. But it starts with small steps and small expectations until you build up your confidence and realise that you do Create Your Own Reality, and that all of the Law of Attraction stuff really does work if you approach it this way.

So if this interests you. If you want to learn how to use your mind to create the world you want rather than the world you have – then check out my new Self Hypnosis book that tells you exactly how to begin this process of bringing the magic back into your life.

You deserve happiness.

You deserve fulfilment.

You deserve freedom.

All you have to do is to take it.

So take it NOW.

Michael

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Chakra Balancing for Health and Well Being

I finally finished proof reading, tweaking, and building web pages last night (for the free accompanying downloads) and submitted my suitably formatted manuscript to Kindle for approval and publishing. It was a nice feeling this morning when I checked on Amazon and there it was: Chakra Balancing – 7 Easy Steps to Improved Health & Well Being listed under Kindle books.

I think if you’d tried to talk to me thirty years ago about invisible energy systems and magic whirlpools that can impact your physical and emotional health then I would most likely have smiled politely while privately thinking you were a total nutcase. That’s not likely to be the case with you because you are reading this having already seen the title. But if it was, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that Chakras, nadis, and all the other weird stuff is a bit strange and you’ll leave your health for your Doctor to look after.

That is certainly what I used to think.

But life took me down a path where I had to start to take notice of the odd things that were happening and the even odder things that I found myself being able to do. I tell the story of that in this book. I tell it by way of introduction to the whole Chakra business. I show you how I found out about Chakras and how changing their state can have an immediate, one might say miraculous, effect on physical symptoms.

After that I take you through the seven major Chakras and let you see how you can easily identify those which need attention. I give you a seven step guide to the process of starting from no knowledge to becoming accomplishing at diagnosing and bringing your chakras back into balance. After this of course you are the one who benefits by feeling better.

I don’t want to say much more about the contents because I don’t want to spoil the adventure for you. It’s not a big book and it won’t take long to read through – but if you follow my guidance it could have a huge beneficial impact on your life.

What I would like to say for those of you who have your own story to tell, and are interested in publishing with Kindle, is that Kindle publishing this time was much easier than the last time I did it around 6 months ago. It is still not a simple straightforward process, but it is less tedious now than it was – or possibly tedious in more understandable ways.

But it really is quite an enjoyable adventure if, like me, you are doing the whole thing on your own. You get to discover about cover design, play around in Photoshop, and stretch your mind in interesting ways as you think about how to communicate something complex in a way that your readers will not only enjoy, but also benefit from.

I enjoyed writing it, I hope you enjoy reading and using it.

Michael

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Angels, Pre-Cognition, and Causes after Effects

Something really nice happened today.

It was one of those interesting moments that reinforced the idea that minds are something magical and can do extraordinary things.

I’d been enjoying my lunchtime coffee while savouring a fascinating book The Intention Experiment: Use Your Thoughts to Change the World. This book is written by one of my favourite authors, Lynne McTaggart. I was reading about all of the rigorous scientific experiments that demonstrate that intention, in other words focused thoughts, can act backwards in time and bring about statistically significant and measurable change.

I was pondering on the ramifications of this, while waiting in the post office with the big bag of gold dust that is required to purchase a single stamp these days, and the thought of someone popped into my mind. This person is not a close friend or someone I know especially well – just someone I know well enough to stop and pass the time of day with. This person is also someone I gave a copy of my Angel Healing – Meditation Cd to. But that was many years ago. I had not seen or spoken to this person for around two years.

I’m sure you’re way ahead of me by now.

I’d meandered my way into the library by this time and was on my way out when I saw this young lady heading towards me. Normally I would have just said ‘hi’ and passed on my way, but because I had experienced pre-cognition, or maybe pre-monition, I stopped.

It seemed that this young lady, who throughout her life has experienced serious health and mobility challenges, had cremated her mother the day before. She was telling me how calm and peaceful she had been since discovering the body of her mother a fortnight ago. She attributed her ability to cope so calmly with this traumatic event by listening daily to Angel Healing. She thanked me profusely for the help and support I had provided for her with this gift and how it had reassured her that her Guardian Angel was with her and watching over her.

We chatted for around ten minutes. I offered a few words of comfort and encouragement and left the encounter feeling so much lighter. I love it when the Universe reminds me of the benefit that my work continues to bring to others.

It was also really nice to discover that a moment’s generosity had such long-lasting impact.

Michael

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Chakra Dowsing For Improved Health And Healing

Here is an easy way to find out about the health of your own chakras, or the health of a willing volunteer. I have to say it is a lot easier if you have a volunteer who can lie down while you work – though you can use this technique on yourself.

All you need is a pendulum. I use a shaped lapis lazuli suspended on a chain (similar to the one in the picture), but you do not need to use a crystal. I’ve used a watch on a chain (like they use in hypnosis), or any weight I could fasten to a piece of string. They all work.

Chakra dowsing. This was at a training workshop and the chakras have been located with crystals to assist the students.

You might want to ‘condition’ your pendulum before you start to use it for chakra work. This is more to convince you that something will happen once you start to test chakras than for any other reason. Just suspend the pendulum from your dominant hand at the full length of its chain. Then ask yourself any question for which the answer is a definite ‘yes’. You could say “is my name…?” and state your name. Then watch the pendulum with an expectation of movement. The pendulum will move in one of four ways. It will describe a clockwise circle; an anticlockwise circle; it will swing back and forth; or it will swing from side to side.

Repeat the process but this time ask yourself a question for which the answer is a definite ‘no’. Again wait and watch for the movement. It will move in a different direction this time.

Now you have satisfied yourself that your pendulum will respond you can start work on some chakras. For this description I am going to assume that you have a volunteer. If you haven’t then just work on yourself with your head propped up comfortably so that you can see the pendulum. You will need a mirror to see what is happening with your throat and crown chakras, but the rest you will probably be able to see ok.

Start at the base chakra (if you are unfamiliar with the names and locations of your chakras then you will find chakra descriptions here ) suspend the pendulum about an inch above the physical body at the chakra location, empty your mind of trivia by focusing on the pendulum and holding the intention that you wish to see the chakra condition reflected in the pendulum’s movement.

In a healthy chakra the pendulum will describe a clockwise circle around 3 inches in diameter. The speed of movement of the pendulum indicates the vigour of the chakra. Sluggish movement, no movement, a very small diameter circle, or a distorted circle, all indicate health problems. If the movement describes a narrow oval I usually find that the long axis of the oval is pointing towards the problem area in the body.

Repeat this process for all seven chakras.

If there is a problem with any of the chakras I have found two excellent ways to fix them. I appear to have some healing ability so I usually just work with the energy until the chakra is restored to normal functionality. In my own experience this produces immediate relief from symptoms.

The other method is to use visualisation. I use this technique with my hypnosis clients who come to me for help with physical problems and I find it very powerful. I’ve reproduced this in  a Chakra Meditation CD so that you can easily benefit from this technique.

If you would like more information on chakras and chakra healing then watch my video.


Michael

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Fun Gadgets To Help You Lose Weight

You look at yourself in the mirror one morning and don’t like what you see.  You constantly need new clothes because the old ones are so tight they show all of your bulges. Members of the opposite sex no longer seem to notice you. And the bathroom scales obviously need replacing because you could not possibly be that heavy.

Whatever the trigger is, something causes you to see the truth.

You have let yourself go. You need to do something about it. But you have been here before. You know that diets don’t seem to keep the weight off. Not only that but diets are hard work and mean months and months of struggle.

There really is only one problem to solve and that is maintaining motivation over the long haul. Slow weight loss is the only way to make it permanent, but what you really need is a coach – someone to look over your shoulder and keep on with the encouragement even when those pounds do not seem to be shifting. But a coach is going to be expensive, so how else can you get that encouragement?

Well, it seems that there are a lot of websites out there that help you keep track of your weight loss and fitness goals. They make it so much easier for you to keep track of progress and maintain your determination to not only reach your realistic target weight, but also to maintain it.

MyFitnessPal is a handy free service that helps you keep track of goals. If you like to count calories it has a database full of foods and a calculator that will give you a pretty good idea of how many calories you are eating. If you tell it how much exercise you do it calculates how many calories you are using and lets you know how much you need to eat to lose weight at a healthy rate. It also has an app that shares your details with your smartphone/tablet so you can keep on track.

Talking of apps there’s a great bathroom scale available now, the Withings WiFi Body Scale. It keeps track of weight, body fat, and BMI and talks to either your web browser or an app on your smartphone/tablet.

Add to that a heart rate monitor so that you get the maximum calorie burn when you exercise and you have given yourself a well-deserved gift that will help to motivate and encourage you long-term.

If you add to that mix a copy of my book How to Lose Weight Easily you will have the perfect weight loss kit. My book, by the way, has loads of useful hints and tips on how to lose weight without suffering as well as a 10-step guide to successful, lasting, weight loss.

Successful weight loss is all about motivating yourself to keep going until you reach your target. So surround yourself with whatever tools, or equipment,  that you need in order to be successful. Take advantage of everything that you need to support yourself. No one else will do it for you and you do not need any one else’s permission to look after yourself the best way you know how.

Remember, it is how far you have come, not how far you travelled yesterday, that matters.

Michael

The links above are for European readers. If you live in the US please use these:

Withings Body Fat Scale

Heart rate monitor

How to Lose Weight Easily

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Insomnia And How To Beat It

Sleep is probably the only thing we do each day that really matters. But many people fail to get the quality of sleep they need.

Sleep appears to be a quite natural process that we have no control over – largely because we are unconscious when we do it. But, we can actually do quite a lot to improve the quality and quantity of our sleep without having to resort to medication.

A survey by the National Sleep Foundation showed that 35% of the people surveyed had sleep problems.

The problems fell into four categories:

  1. Difficulty falling asleep
  2. Frequent waking during the night.
  3. Waking up too early and staying awake.
  4. Waking without feeling any sense of refreshment.

I think all of those things happen to all of us at some time, but there comes a point when they are happening frequently, or worse still, nightly, and that’s when you have a problem. The problem is twofold. First of all you no longer look forward to bedtime because you know what’s going to happen. Secondly you are not energized by your night’s rest and so fatigue sets in early along with problems concentrating and staying focused. Enthusiasm is difficult to find, temper gets short and relationships suffer.

The interesting thing is that poor sleeping patterns can usually be fixed quite easily and without resorting to medication.

Anxiety is one of the major causes of sleep disruption, and that’s quite understandable if it is just an occasional disturbance. But when the anxiety is a background state that is always present then it is time to take action.

Anxiety falls into two main categories:

  1. Anxiety about things you have no control over
  2. Anxiety over things you have control over.

If you can do something then take action. If you can’t do anything then recognise that you are powerless, it is in the lap of the Gods, and make peace with it.

I know that simplifies things a little too much, so here is another angle.

Anxiety is all about thoughts that wander through your mind. The thoughts will be thoughts that cause your emotional energy to drop into the territories of anger, fear, or grief. Anxiety is either a fantasy about what might happen, or a regret about what has happened. Neither of those is going on in the present.

The problem is rarely what has happened, or might happen, it is your thoughts about that. The thoughts are the problem. It is the thoughts that disturb your sleep, prevent you from dropping off, and wake you early.

So attend to the thoughts.

Now you may think that you are powerless to impact your thoughts. After all, you only know about them once they appear and once they appear it is a little late to do anything about them.

At least that is what your thoughts would have you believe.

Worrying is a choice and an addiction.

You can control it, but not directly. You have to sort of sneak up on it through the back door.

Here are three simple things you can do to begin to take back control of your mind.

Bathe:

Just before bedtime, run yourself a nice warm bath. If you like bubbles and candles and soft music, do that too. Get in, then just lie there soaking in the warmth and allow your mind to drift to somewhere pleasant. Plan a dream holiday to a place you’d love to visit; fantasise about a new toy you’d like to possess; start to write your novel in your mind by developing the story line and characters; let your mind run free to explore anything at all that you find fascinating. If at any time you realise you are back on your favourite worry subject, then just let that go and return to your imaginary world. After about half an hour of this, get out and go straight to bed.

Turn off TV:

An hour before bedtime turn off the TV. Instead listen to some relaxing music, something drifting and dreamy if you have it, definitely not something that makes you want to get up and dance. Read a really good book that takes you away and engrosses you, or read something really boring.

Exercise:

Fit some vigorous physical activity into your evening routine. Join a gym, go for a fast walk, buy yourself a rowing machine. It doesn’t really matter what the exercise is or where you do it but get physical. The exercise generates endorphins which make you feel good. When you feel good it is much harder to get hold of negative thoughts.

There are also some don’ts.

Go to bed to go to sleep. So don’t read in bed. Don’t watch TV in bed. Don’t listen to the radio, or anything else, in bed. And most important of all, don’t nap during the day or evening.

If anxiety is disturbing your sleep then just doing these simple things will improve your sleep quality, and quantity.

Michael

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As Long As You Do It Regularly – You Can Eat As Much Fat As You Want

At least that’s a rough translation of the research by Dr Hadas Sherman et al at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although the research has only been done using mice as subjects, if it translates to human behaviour, then this is really good news for people who want to lose weight.

The numbers of overweight and obese individuals have only reached epidemic proportions in the last few decades. So this research correlates nicely with a major change in eating patterns that has taken place in that time – snacking.

In my childhood, food was eaten at mealtimes and there were three of those a day, plus a snack for supper at nine every evening. Every day food was eaten around the same time. I was never hungry, and I ate a full meal at lunchtime as well as in the evening. I grew up slim, fit and healthy.

Nowadays people seem to graze, rather like cattle, eating constantly. They eat walking down the street, they eat in coffee bars, and they eat in pubs. They eat in the cinema even though the bucket of popcorn is ten times the volume of their stomach and they had an evening meal a couple of hours earlier. They eat at their desk, and they fill their supermarket trolley with crisps, biscuits, snacks, and chocolate bars so they can continue to graze all evening in front of the tv. But, and this seems to be the problem, there is no regularity to any of this. Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are missed, or eaten early or late, to fit around other activities.  Snacks are used to bridge the space between these irregular meals.

Now, it seems that regularity is one of the ways that the body’s intelligence knows that the food supply is plentiful. When food arrives in the stomach at the same time each day, the body adjusts metabolism accordingly. If it had a voice it would say something like – “ I know that food always turns up at the same times each day, therefore, I know food is plentiful, therefore, I don’t need to store any fat for emergencies. Even if an occasional meal is missed, as long as the next one is on time I know there is no problem.” Food is converted to energy for immediate use or eliminated.

The Hebrew University research found that mice who ate a high-fat diet consisting of regular meals weighed less after 18 weeks than mice who consumed either a high fat diet with irregular feeding, or a low fat diet with irregular feeding. Unfortunately, all the mice, even the ones on a low-fat regular diet ended up heavier than they were. But the interesting thing here is that every single mouse consumed exactly the same number of calories each day.

So, as I suggested some time ago in my article Calories are not Created Equal your weight isn’t just about the Calories that you consume. It seems that you can offset some of the damage by eating meals regularly and cutting out on the snacking. So become a champion for the family mealtime sitting around a table with the tv off, at the same time each evening. Eat breakfast and lunch at the same time each day and forget about all the rest – regardless of what everyone around you is doing.

This, according to the researchers, is going to reset your metabolic clock to a much healthier state. Knowing what times each day you are going to eat and not eating at any other time will leave you fully satisfied – once you develop the new habit – you will almost certainly start to lose weight and the really good news is that you still get to eat whatever you want.

If you would like some more hints and tips on How to Lose Weight Easily get hold of a copy of my book of the same title. It’s available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback at an almost giveaway price.

Michael

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Blood Pressure – The Hidden Disease.

There is a good chance that your blood pressure is high enough to negatively impact your health. I can say that with certainty because 1 in every 3 people has blood pressure that is too high. So if you think of two people who are close to you – then one of you probably has high blood pressure.

The reason I’ve called this the Hidden Disease is that moderately high blood pressure, like smoking, produces no noticeable symptoms. However, just like smoking, after a few years of ignoring it, you start to suffer serious health problems. The worst of these, heart attacks and strokes, can be lethal or severely disabling.

High blood pressure causes:

  • Artery damage and narrowing
  • Aneurism
  • Coronary artery disease
  • Enlarged heart
  • Heart failure
  • Transient ischaemic attack
  • Stroke
  • Dementia
  • Mild cognitive impairment
  • Severe kidney damage and failure
  • Eye and sight damage
  • Erectile dysfunction
  • Loss of sexual desire, lack of arousal and orgasm (women)
  • Osteoporosis
  • Sleep problems

Yes, hypertension is serious, and since it is endemic you need to do two things. Find out if you have it and, if you have, take steps to reduce it.

The only way to discover that you have high blood pressure is to measure it. There are two ways you can do this.

  1. Get your doctor to measure it.
  2. Do it yourself.

Now you may think that your doctor’s is the best place to have your blood pressure measured, but it isn’t, the best way is to do it yourself. You see anxiety is one of the things that pushes blood pressure up and a lot of people suffer from what is known as White Coat Hypertension. This is high blood pressure caused by being in a medical environment.

Also blood pressure (Bp) varies, quite naturally, throughout the day. Your blood pressure is lower when resting and relaxed, than it is when you are active. When you measure it yourself you can, if you wish, measure it several times a day, or just once a day when you are relaxed. When you do this regularly and keep a record this gives your doctor a much more accurate picture and helps them to help you with much more relevant treatment, because many of the pharmaceutical treatments for hypertension are quite harmful in other ways.

Now, in the days when blood pressure was measured with a column of mercury and a stethoscope you had little choice but to get it measured by your doctor, but nowadays there is a huge range of accurate, electronic Bp monitors that are so simple and easy to use that anyone can take accurate blood pressure readings.

Omron make a great range of accurate blood pressure monitors. The Omron M6 Comfort  Blood Pressure Monitor has automatic inflation, lets you know if the arm cuff isn’t positioned correctly, and warns you if the reading is too high. All you have to do is sit down, slip a cuff up your arm and position it just above your elbow, rest your arm on a table, then press a button. The machine pumps up the cuff, takes the measurements and displays the results clearly.

These machines give you three numbers, systolic pressure, diastolic pressure, and pulse rate. Systolic is the higher of the two numbers.  Your blood pressure is in the healthy range if systolic is 120 or below, and diastolic is 80 or below (120/80). Now it’s unlikely that your blood pressure will be in that range because most adults have blood pressure above that but below 140 over 90 (140/90). This is what is now known as pre-hypertension. If you are in this range then you need to be taking steps to reduce your blood pressure. Above 140/90 and you definitely need to have a word with your physician.

If your Bp is in this pre-hypertensive range then there are a range of things you can do yourself, without need for medication, in order to bring your blood pressure down. But I’ll give you time to absorb this, and find out whether or not it applies to you, before I show you some things you can do to improve your health and well being. But it will require that you make some small easy changes to your routine, so prepare yourself for that and you will find that helping yourself to a longer, healthier life is much easier than you think.

Michael

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Stress Adversely Affects Unborn Children

It’s a real shame that pregnancy affects so many people because it’s tough being in the womb when your Mum is finding that life is not as easy as she hoped it would be. Mum-to-be can’t smoke to ease her frazzled nerves. And almost anything she consumes has the potential to end up in you, so drinking and drug taking (prescribed or otherwise) have to be monitored carefully or, preferably, stopped altogether.

Now, according to a recent Dutch study by Eva Loomans, a psychologist at Tilburg University, you can’t even get stressed or depressed without your unborn child suffering. The problem is that stress and/or depression appear to cause low birth weights. There was also a small, though statistically significant, connection with babies born pre-term. Being born early has the potential to cause health problems throughout your life.

Now, you and I both know that stress is a part of modern life. We cannot escape from it, but these pregnancy problems arise when the stress interferes with normal functioning. When the worry causes you to change behaviours; to avoid situations, or just people; or it stops you from living normally; that is when it becomes a health issue. This state of affairs applied to around 25% of 7,700 women who took part in the study.

A lot of people suffer from stress, anxiety, worry or depression. But if they happen to be pregnant it affects their unborn child too. Of course, if you are pregnant or thinking of starting a family, all this knowledge is going to do is to add to your worries because now you not only have all your current worries, you also have to worry about your worry damaging your baby’s health too.

What you need is a solution.

The doctors may give you medications, but there is always a danger that they will probably affect your child as well. It’s a bit of a Catch-22 situation. The worry is making you worry more and the medication to solve that problem is going to do as much or more harm than the worrying is already accomplishing.

A good idea is to learn a different approach to life and living – an approach that reduces the amount of worrying you do and frees you up to spend that worry time doing something much more interesting instead.

There are a lot of tools you can use to help you start with this. I’m in the process of creating products and writing books that will guide you through many of these so I’ll just introduce you to a few here.

Meditation

Learn how to meditate. Meditation is one of the best tools I know to reduce stress and anxiety. You can learn to meditate on your own or listen to a guided meditation.

So far I’ve produced two Guided Meditations. Chakra Meditation, and Spirit Guide Meditation. They are both beautifully relaxing meditations available in CD format from Amazon.com and as an MP3 download from my website.

Self-Hypnosis

Self hypnosis is a great way to reduce stress and improve your life. I’ve created a self hypnosis MP3 Download that helps you to learn how to do this quickly and easily so that you can begin to take control of your life and discover that those external pressures do not have to impact you so strongly. As you work with self-hypnosis regularly you will find that your life begins to change and you feel lighter, more energised, and able to see solutions where previously you only saw problems.

Freedom

I have written a book that looks at a lot of stress causing problems, and it’s yours for free. It’s called Freedom and you can get your free copy at the top right of this page.

Hypnosis

If you feel that you need some help and don’t have the strength of mind to take control of your own destiny at this point, then find a good hypnotherapist and sign up for a course of treatment. It will help you to find your way out and back into the world again.

Books

Get down to your local bookshop, or library, find the Self-help section and take home whatever grabs your attention. I’ve organised a selection of titles that I’ve found amazingly helpful during the darker times of my life so check out my self help books page.

Release from Worry

The first step is to realise you have a problem. The second is to recognise, that with some help and guidance, you are the best person to solve it. No matter how difficult life is for you right now, if you are pregnant or thinking of having a baby, then you owe it to your future family to take action now to resolve the anxieties and concerns in your life. Even if you suffer from severe depression, these steps will help to begin the process of lifting you up and back to life in the light.

Understanding that you can change your mind, and then discovering exactly how to do that is your key to freedom and release from your suffering.

Michael

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Coffee Bean That Melts Fat?

That was the subject line of an email in my Inbox this morning. I almost deleted it straight away because it was SPAM from some company I’d never asked to send me stuff, but I thought no, let’s have a look. So I opened it up and was greeted by a scantily clad, skinny lady – rather like the one on the cover of my book How to Lose Weight Easily – and emblazoned across her very attractive bosom in giant writing were the words.

Weight Loss Experts
CAN’T BELIEVE THIS

I couldn’t believe it.

They were absolutely right.

I am a weight loss expert and I can’t believe it.

Having come this far, I thought I’d better check this out, after all it might make for something interesting to write about today. My intention being to quickly discover that it was a load of rubbish and then tell you why and what was wrong with the research.

You might think it’s quite easy to track down a piece of research these days with the internet being what it is. But, truth be told, Google is a bit rubbish when you want to find out specific and accurate information. What tends to happen is that you trawl through twenty, thirty, forty promising looking sites only to find out that they are all rehashing the same information which originated in the same press release. Occasionally there is a snippet of fresh information that leads, like a trail of breadcrumbs either to the goal, or to a giving up on the search.

It really is important to locate the original research paper because, quite often, distortions creep into the reporting of what the results mean. Especially when the reporting is done by a company whose product sales are going to benefit.

For instance one site reported

“16 overweight young adults”

Another…

“The 16 people were obese or overweight and between the age of 22 and 26.”

The study actually used 16 people between the ages of 22 and 46.

The key author of the study is cited as Dr Joe A Vinson, a chemist at the University of Scranton, PA, but the study was conducted in Bangalore, India. Dr Vinson’s research was funded by Applied Food Sciences. Applied Food Sciences are the company that supplied the Green Coffee Bean Extract (GCA – Green Coffee Antioxidant) that the research was testing!!!!

Looking at Dr Vinson’s list of publications on the University website it seems he is a leading light in researching natural products that produce health benefits. But I am nevertheless suspicious when the guy who is paying the bills is also the guy whose products you are testing to see if they do what they say.

Back to the research: 16 people is such a small sample that no statistically significant conclusions can be drawn – which makes me wonder why bother. That said, the results are certainly interesting. The study ran for 22 weeks. Participants had a period with a low dose green coffee extract, a period with a higher dose, and a period with a placebo. There was a two week recovery period between each test. Over that time the subjects showed an average weight loss of 18lbs. 10 subjects had 10% loss of body weight, and 5 of the other 6 lost 5% of their body weight. Average heart rate slowed by 2 beats a minute – this doesn’t sound much but is significant for heart health. There are also indications, but nothing statistically significant, that there might be beneficial effects on blood pressure.

It is important to note here that Green Coffee Extract is low in caffeine. The caffeine comes when the beans are roasted. The extract used is primarily chlorogenic acid which is removed from the green beans, but is destroyed in the roasting process so drinking more coffee isn’t going to do you any good.

You’ll find elsewhere on this site my comments about two drugs, Belviq and Qsymia that the FDA recently approved for use with weight loss – both of which look like they could have very serious long-term side effects. A 22 week trial isn’t going to identify long-term side effects, but no short-term side effects were reported in this coffee bean trial.

It looks to me as though this trial was created specifically to provide scientific evidence and backing to promote the sale of Applied Food Science’s GCA. It is too small to be of any use for anything other than to provide quotable results from a clinical trial in order to convince customers of the product’s efficacy. However, the results are interesting, so I cannot say, as I was hoping to, that this is just more junk. If you are desperate for a solution in a pill – this might help you. If you decide to take it then please let me know how you get on.

Michael

 

If you want to check it out yourself you can find the report here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3267522/?tool=pubmed