Health Ideas, Part X

by

John Stephen Mauldin, MLA (not AI assisted)

All right reserved, copyright © 2025

Nightmares

Dreamless sleep markedly improves our lives, as we shall see in the section on Sleep. Yet, finding ourselves in surrealistic emotional traps in the middle of the night from which no escape seems possible drains us of energy and the necessary recuperation we must have during deep sleep. To avoid these traumatic episodes, take these steps:

First, never eat salty food or food that contains sodium after lunch. And, if we eat food containing salt or sodium during the day, its content must be low. This is critical since salt induces nightmares.

Secondly, excess sugar can also cause nightmares, so read the labels of packaged foods to avoid them. There is, of course, sugar in fruit; for this reason and because it can require time to digest, it is recommended that fruit is not eaten after lunch.

Third, think about the amount of dietary fiber you consume; if you are eating one-half cup of buckwheat cereal at breakfast, for instance, and having vivid dreams or nightmares, you may want to reduce it to one-quarter of a cup. This way your body will not be preoccupied with digestion when it should be receiving the nourishment from deepest sleep.

Fourth, it might be helpful to not eat after 6 pm. This will allow the completion of basic digestion before bedtime, ideally at 10 pm; in this way, your body will have finished the hard work before going to bed, allowing rest and release into deep sleep.

If nightmares persist after following these steps, talk with your physician to resolve this issue.

Oral Hygiene

Five basics comprise the minimum of oral hygiene:

• A tongue scraper to clean the tongue,

• A quality, soft toothbrush to brush teeth and gums,

• Toothpaste that is free from harmful ingredients,

• Mouthwash,

• A water flosser

Toothpaste that is edible and, therefore, harmless if accidentally swallowed is recommended. And, perhaps the best mouthwash is apple cider vinegar since it kills bacteria and treats halitosis, or bad breath. This natural mouthwash may also help to whiten teeth.

Brushing the tongue with a mixture of baking soda and apple cider vinegar will cleanse it from the fungus Candida albicans, which causes a white appearance of the tongue.

Pleurisy

Pleurisy is a condition affecting the pleura, a membrane consisting of a layer of tissue lining the inner side of the chest cavity and a layer of tissue surrounding the lungs. Should it become inflamed, we may feel a sharp chest pain (pleuritic pain) which worsens during breathing.

If you suspect you have pleurisy, contact your physician right away, as it could develop into a serious condition.

Occasionally, I would have bouts of pleurisy after overcoming a cold or episodes of acute stress that lasted a day or two. After eliminating salt from my diet, however, I also eliminated pleurisy. You see, when sodium levels rise, our body retains water to dilute the blood, which increases the blood volume and blood pressure. This, in turn, leads to inflammation throughout our bodies, including the pleura.

Plenty of salt is in the food we typically eat every day, so we needn’t sprinkle more on our meals for any reason other than seasoning. This is an acquired taste and habitual. We can, of course, break a bad habit, such as sprinkling salt on all our meals, in only three weeks and be healthier for having done so.

Posture

Our posture affects our self-esteem. This is a dynamic that I call Holistic Reciprocal Causation (HRC). For example, when standing erect, our mind and whole body respond with vitality, and, consequently, positive thinking becomes easier. If we sit with the base of our backbones against the back of our chair, our body responds similarly.

Besides the mental benefits of HRC, good posture allows our body to function more easily and freely. Blood flow to our vital organs opens, our breathing expands, and we are, in turn, more fully alive.

A superb way to improve posture is by hanging from a chin-up bar. This allows the spinal cord to slightly expand from a compressed state induced by hours of sitting. Hang for about thirty seconds, two times each day. You’ll stand taller, walk with greater ease, and exude an aura of attractive self-confidence.

Now is the time to start. Buy a chin-up bar that fits in a doorway and begin standing taller today.

Protein

Our body must have protein to repair tissue and produce hormones and enzymes. Protein is more multifaceted than other macronutrients since it’s also necessary for cell growth and repair and allows our immune system to repel infection. Our body also needs protein for energy. And so, we must eat enough protein to keep our bodies healthy and operational.

However, we most likely don’t need as much protein as many assume. Generally speaking, we eat far too much protein, which becomes fat. Overeating protein can also place unhealthy demands on our kidneys and even increase calcium loss.

Our protein requirements can be based upon our ideal weight, which is based on our height, as the chart in the section titled Weight reveals. Based on our appropriate weight, the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that the medium protein requirement for the average person is .50 gram of protein for each pound of body weight. Remember, this is your ideal body weight.

So, the WHO recommends 75 grams of protein for a person whose ideal weight is 150lbs. This, I feel, maybe too much. And so, I join the many-opinioned discussion on the subject. I seem to function quite well on about .25 grams of protein for each pound of body weight.

Of course, it would be shortsighted extrapolation to assume this would be appropriate for anyone else. So, I suggest you ask your physician what would be right for you.

In the meantime, you might find a good protein powder for smoothies that does not contain sugar or dairy products, since these are inflammatory. Excellent protein powders provide 20 grams of protein per serving, which is derived from a combination of green peas, hemp seeds, and cranberry seeds, for instance. You might want to try some of these protein sources, too:

Food Grams of Protein per Serving

Beans

Tempeh 8 oz. 18 g

Sprouted Tofu 6 oz. 20 g

Lentils, cooked 1 cup 18 g

Garbanzo Beans 1 cup 14 g

Black Beans 1 cup 15 g

Black Eyed Peas 1 cup 14 g

Kidney Beans 1 cup 15 g

Pinto Beans 1 cup 15 g

Cannelini Beans 1 cup 17g

White Northern Beans 1 cup 15g

Grains

Brown Rice 1 cup 5 g

Quinoa, cooked 1 cup 8 g

Amaranth 1 cup 7 g

Vegetables

Lima Beans 1 cup 15 g

Green Peas 1 cup 9 g

Kale, steamed 1 cup 2.5 g

Spinach, steamed 1 cup 5 g

Chard, steamed 1 cup 3.3 g

Mustard Greens, steamed 1 cup 3.6 g

Collard Greens, steamed 1 cup 5 g

Dandelion Greens 1 cup 2.1 g

Broccoli, steamed 1 cup 2.6 g

Brussels sprouts 1 cup 4 g

Nuts

Almonds 1/4 cup 7 g

Walnuts 1/4 cup 4.5 g

Cashews 1/4 cup 4 g

Pistachios 1/4 cup 6 g

Pine Nuts 1/4 cup 4 g

Pecans 1/4 cup 2 g

Brazil Nuts 1/4 cup 5 g

Hazelnuts 1/4 cup 5 g

Seeds

Sesame Seeds 1/4 cup 7 g

Sunflower Seeds 1/4 cup 8 g

Pumpkin Seeds 1/4 cup 7 g

Hemp Seeds 1/4 cup 10 g

Flex seeds 1/4 cup 8 g

Chia Seeds 1/4 cup 12 g

Rest

We should rest at the end of each day as a prelude to sleep. Yet, one full day each week should be given exclusively to rest. On that day, it is suggested that we do not seek the latest news on the internet or watch any television and that we don’t work or exercise but rest. Although we may have undertaken big projects that we have pursued twelve hours a day during the work week, we will probably reach these goals more effectively by forgetting about them for at least one day each week.

At times, we may have overloaded ourselves with so much data—music, news, videos, study, work information, social media, emails, and texts—that, for basic emotional health, we might need to completely disengage from them. For those reasons, I own neither a television nor any hand-held devices nor a cell phone.

Should turning off the television and putting away the cell phone for one weekend seem uncomfortable and frightening, we undoubtedly need detoxification.

If restful disengagement seems difficult, engage with nature as a data replacement. An early morning walk in a park rich with a heavy canopy of tall green cathedral ceilings will be a living substitute for the non-living data with which we are barraged throughout the week. Maybe we can spend all morning or all day there with a loved one, enjoying a picnic and a book of classic poems. This one-day vacation each week will help us work with keener concentration and vigor when returning to work. We will also feel better, sleep better, have better interactions with others, and look better, too.