Cannabidiol, aka CBD oil, is all the craze these days for being a fantastic plant compound that comes with many health benefits. But did you know that it can also promote creativity and inspiration? It can reduce anxiety, improve sleep quality, and reduce pain symptoms, but a lesser-known benefit of taking CBD is its ability to unleash your inner artist and unlock your creative mind. 

It is, therefore, a potential remedy for a song lyricist with writer’s block, a photographer who needs a vision, or an artist who needs a bit of help to stay focused and bring into existence something magnificent.

Optimized brain function is crucial for those who need to create and produce.

In studies, CBD has been shown to have neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory benefits. This is because it interfaces with our endocannabinoid system (ECS), a system in our bodies that is a central component to health and healing.

Scientists now recognize that the ECS plays a direct role in homeostasis, which means it regulates every metabolic process in the body to keep things running as they should. However, it’s estimated that 20 to 30 percent of the population has deficiencies in their ECS, a condition known as clinical endocannabinoid deficiency (CECD). 

Due to its biological interactions with the CB1 and CB2 receptors in your brain, CBD can clear your mind so that you can focus on your craft. When you use CBD, you’re also improving blood flow to the frontal lobe of your brain, which is great since this is the part of your brain used for creativity and planning. 

Instead of letting the stressors of life get in the way of your creative endeavors, CBD can put you in the zone to create your next masterpiece.  By improving your quality of sleep, enhancing your mood, and reducing your anxiety, CBD is ostensibly improving your mental state and providing you with better brain function.  It also helps release more dopamine to your brain, which helps improve your mood.

By using CBD, you can focus more on your creative pursuits, and focus less on the fears, worries, and anxieties that tend to get in the way of those creative pursuits.

If you are an artist struggling to unleash your creativity, give CBD a try. Remember that it doesn’t always work the first time, especially if you buy a substandard brand. Here are some things to look for when buying CBD oil from industrialized hemp. Many CBD users have found that it only begins to work after a couple of weeks of taking it, so it’s important to be patient and listen to your body. Here are also some ways to optimize the effects of CBD.  And here is one brand we find to be superior.

This article is a part of our new series “The Art Of… Holistic Healing“

The post CBD and How It Can Unleash Your Creative Mind appeared first on Artiholics.

Antibiotic overuse, and the increase in bacteria resistant to antibiotics, is one of the biggest health threats we face today. While humans are a bit more informed in 2019 about the repercussions that  accompany the abuse and misuse of antibiotics, 45 percent of people still continue to use them incorrectly, according to a recent poll published by the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

The medical world has known about the possibility of such an epidemic since 1945, when Sir Alexander Fleming, the Scottish biologist who discovered penicillin, warned against its overuse. Today, we’re facing an epidemic.

“Injudicious use of antibiotics when they are not indicated has fed this problem and allowed it to become a crisis,” says Amesh A. Adalja MD , a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Antibiotics — the product of genius minds solving a daunting life-or-death problem — have been squandered and, if no solution to the resistance crisis is developed, modern medicine as we know it will be threatened.”

Antibiotic Overuse: Continued Education Desperately Needed

Despite world wide campaigns to better inform the public about antibiotic overuse, many do not truly understand what misusing antibiotics does for the body or environment. In addition, about 27 percent of people polled by Kaiser believe that viral infections can be cured with antibiotics. This is NOT TRUE. Even some Western medical doctors dole out an antibiotic for viruses even though they do nothing for viral infections. 

Most respondents in the survey were aware of the possible negative implications of antibiotic overuse, though 45 percent reported that they personally had not taken antibiotics as prescribed. 

With that said, the common instructions that antibiotics must be taken to full term no matter what is actually not true. Even the CDC backs this up. In reality, you should only take antibiotics if they are absolutely necessary. We tend to think of antibiotics as safe and any side effects as negligible, but consider that some have devastating side effects such as tendon ruptures, joint problems and antibiotic-associated colitis. Also many people take multiple prescriptions a year without keeping track of the types they have used over the years rather than blinldy swallowing antibiotics.  

There also isn’t any widespread understanding of how best to combat the problem. According to the Kaiser poll, “When asked who bears responsibility for fixing the problem of antibiotic resistance, a larger share of the public place the responsibility on drug companies and health care providers than on any other entity, including patients.”

Many who stand for health freedom would emphatically disagree. The online health and wellness site HoneyColony, for instance, that has been covering antibiotic resistance for years, encourages consumers to learn about the extent of this travesty. 

Natural Antibiotics & Other Solutions

Unfortunately the misuse and overuse of antibiotics have created “superbugs” resistant to antibiotics, demanding new weapons to treat them. People  are dying needlessly because the medications prescribed do not work. The good news is we have a few weapons in our arsenal that have been long overlooked . 

In recent news, phages have emerged as potentially potent tools in this fight. They are more formally known as bacteriophages and are basically viruses that infect bacteria.

Even though phages were discovered before penicillin, in 1917, they cast aside because their impact wasn’t broad enough. As The Verge reports, “when the antibiotic first arrived, with its broad-spectrum, scorched-earth ability to eliminate vast swaths of different bacteria, the phage — which could only attack one specific bacteria at a time — was deemed less useful.” 

But now the fact that they are able to discern and don’t kill everything in their way like antibiotics is what is making them so interesting to researchers. A disadvantage is that, a phage that works for one strain of superbug in one patient may not work for another strain. More research is needed and it’s not very comforting to learn that pharmaceutical companies are looking into patenting genetically modified phages. Do we really need anything more in our lives that is genetically modified that comes with undetermined future impl

Silver Worth More Than Gold  

One of the best-kept secrets in the war on antibiotic resistance is a metal that most of us have in our houses: silver. It was swept under the proverbial rug with the advent of penicillin. 

In 4th century B.C., Hippocrates used silver to dress wounds.

Cyrus the Great, King Of Persia, 550B.C. who reigned for more than three decades, insisted that his water be stored in silver vessels.

Physicians and scholars, meanwhile, advised rulers to literally suck on silver spoons (not just be born with one in their mouth) for health. And in the Middle Ages, if you didn’t carry your own silver spoon, you weren’t really worth talking to. French Aristocracy drank and ate everything from silver containers and plates. Louis XIV took three baths in his life (he must have smelled like a cesspit) but lived to reign for 72 years—the longest monarchy in European history. Incidentally, the life expectancy of an aristocrat was at least 20 years longer than that of a peasant

According to the NIH (National Institutes of Health):

Silver has a long and intriguing history as an antibiotic in human health care. It has been developed for use in water purification, wound care, bone prostheses, reconstructive orthopaedic surgery, cardiac devices, catheters, and surgical appliances.

Silver is arguably one of the all-time best natural antibiotics.

“It’s been demonstrated to be effective against fighting off infections and supporting the immune system,” adds Dr. Jaquel Patterson, Naturopathic Physician, and Functional Medicine Expert. “It is a natural antimicrobial that can be used internally, topically or intranasal for colds and nasal congestion.”  

Studies, Patterson says, have demonstrated its effectiveness within test tubes on its antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral benefits. And it’s shown to be effective in wound healing and ulcers on the skin.

In another study, scientists demonstrated that antimicrobial silver plays a role in preventing and treating topical staph infections. In particular, silver caused the cell membranes of Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria to lose integrity by damaging them.

Silver also has a host of other benefits. For those who grew up taking a slew of antibiotics, you may be familiar with antibiotic resistance or have developed allergies to some antibiotics, rendering them useless and or even dangerous. If this is the case, silver can become a valued alternative. 

Keep silver close at hand. You can use it as a liquid you add to water or as an ointment or even make it yourself with a nifty microprocessor! With it on tap, you have before you a sword, ageless and strong. It helped people centuries ago, and it could be just the solution we need to combat the overuse of antibiotics in our modern age.

This article is a part of our new series “The Art Of… Holistic Healing“

The post The Art Of Solving Antibiotic Overuse in America appeared first on Artiholics.

Moving Toward a Revolutionized Health Care

Among the hot-button issues Democrats debated last week, health care was one of the hottest. The candidates’ plans range from building on the current system implemented by the Affordable Care Act under President Obama to Sanders’ Medicare for All plan, which would mandate the closing down of all private health insurance except for elected treatments like cosmetic surgery.

Some of us are wondering if the new health care system will also incorporate a more forward-thinking model of care, one based on prevention and healing the whole person and incorporates conventional as well as evidence-based alternative and complementary modalities.

Many candidates shared moving personal stories: Joe Biden spoke of his family’s struggles and Peter Buttigieg talked of his father’s terminal illness.

While everyone acknowledged the many problems with the current state of health care, just one candidate spoke of the problem as a deeper issue having to do with the system.  “We have a sickness care system in the United States,” stated author and activist Marianne Williamson.  “We just wait until somebody gets sick, and then we talk about who’s going pay for the treatment and how they’re going to be treated.” 

Better Health Care Incorporates Alternative Options

A truly  revolutionized health care model utilizes the best of evidence-based, time-tested treatments while also urging independent research into new potential healing agents and modalities. Cannabis-based medicines, for example, show promise in helping in a range of issues, especially in the relief of anxiety, pain, and autoimmune symptoms. Yet because of the controversy around marijuana, a lot of people aren’t getting the chance to use them.  

And then there is the insidious influence of profit-hungry Big Pharma. While pharmaceutical companies have been instrumental in bringing us life-saving medicines, they’ve also pushed health care to a system which is more about prescribing meds than looking at patients holistically with an aim to prevention and healing. They’ve also been at the forefront of blocking plant-based and dietary supplements that some patients find are the only option for relief.

A few candidates also spoke to the problems of the opioid crisis, which has forced health care to revisit the prescription pad as the doctor’s only tool. Even Medicare has started to cover treatments like acupuncture and chiropractic care, modalities previously consigned to the realm of “alternative” medicine.

It’s clear that a better health care system must consider not only who gets covered and how, but what will be covered and if a focus on prevention and treating the whole patient will lead the way. 

By Alyssa Colton

Senior Editor, HoneyColony.com

Quotes from the debates are taken from transcripts provided at nbcnews.com. 

The post The Democrats Debate Health Care appeared first on Artiholics.

Studies show that CBD oil (cannabinoidl) can improve your lymphatic system, a very important mechanism in our bodies. The lymphatic system is considered your body’s drainage system, and it includes your lymph nodes, lymph vessels, lymph, spleen, tonsils, adenoids, and thymus. The bone marrow is often included in the lymph system as well because lymphocytes (a type of immune cells) mature there.

CBD can help because it interfaces with our own endocannabinoid system (ECS), which regulates homeostasis. Receptors, called CB1 and CB2, live in our brain, digestive and lymphatic systems. Studies in rats have shown that cannabinoids with lipids can substantially increase intestinal lymphatic transport. 

The lymphatic system is a key player in your immune system and detoxification system, but it is frequently overlooked when searching for the root cause of chronic disease. You may find that getting your lymphatic system optimally working might just be the thing you have been missing in your health protocols.

“The best way to boost your lymphatic system is through a detox protocol that includes a healthy, whole-foods diet, exercise, deep breathing, reducing toxins in your environment, and dry brushing,” explains Kendra Whitmire, a nutritionist and contributing writer to HoneyColony, a health and wellness site. Whitmire also recommends a high-quality CBD product, and in particular, recommends Morpho Topical CBD.

“Morpho works synergistically to help take the detoxification experience to the next level,” says Whitmire. One of the reasons why Morpho topical works so well is because it can be used in conjunction with massage, which is another tool for detoxification, ensuring the lymphatic system is working at its peak performance.

The key ingredients that make Morpho effective are: hemp extract, CoQ10, Angelica sinensis, Polygonum cuspidatum (Japanese knotweed), Salvia miltiorrhiza (Red Root Sage),  Panax notoginseng (Tienqi ginseng), Boswellia errata (Boswellia), and ginger EO. Together they synergize and result in a potent formulation.

• Hemp extract (CBD): Researchers continue to explore the many benefits of cannabidiol for health; topical CBD as found in Morpho helps with oxidative stress and relieves inflammation.
• Coenzyme Q10, already known for providing support for the cardiovascular system, helps produce cellular energy.
• Angelica sinensis has been long used in Eastern medicine to help support healthy blood and immune system regulation.
• Polygonum cuspidatum (Japanese Knotweed) contains resveratrol, a potent antioxidant. 
•  Salvia miltiorrhiza (Red Root Sage) has also long been used in Chinese medicine to promote circulation, remove toxins, and reduce swelling. 

For more information on these and other components of Morpho, and how to keep your lymphatic system healthy, read more on HoneyColony.

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