Consume Ginseng Daily

Consume Ginseng Daily

Ginseng is the king of herbs in the herbal kingdom due to its holistic-healing potency. In other words, it treats the body as a whole. As such, it is used to keep your body balanced and healthy.. 

In Chinese medicine, balance and harmony holds the key to wellness and recuperation. Ginseng, with its branched roots in the shape resembling that of the human form, is called “man root” in Chinese. The word “ginseng” literally means crystallization of the essence of the earth, “shen”, in the form of a man, ”jen.” The name itself attests to the importance of ginseng among herbs, especially in Chinese medicine.

The potency of ginseng has long been recognized in Eastern cultures. In fact, as far back as 1800 B.C., ginseng was declared in the East as the king of herbs among more than 200 superior herbs recognized as “medical wisdom” for balancing and harmonizing the body for overall health.  Daily ginseng consumption is indispensable for health and wellness.

Ginseng is the essence of health. According to Chinese medicine, it brightens your eyes, opens your heart, enlightens your brain, and strengthens your soul and spirit.

Ginseng is also a potent short-term stimulant that does no harm. It stimulates your nervous system and increases your reflex. In ancient times, Chinese soldiers used to carry ginseng to the battlefield, using it not only to restore strength, but also to ameliorate the effects of shock and stress in battles. It is quite common practice for Chinese to give ginseng root to those on their deathbed to provide adequate strength to be able to receive their family and arrange their after-death affairs before dying.

In space exploration, the Russian astronauts considered ginseng a better stimulant than the amphetamines used by the American counterparts, because ginseng enhances performance without the hangover effects of amphetamines. 

Nowadays, Soviet coaches and trainers have long used ginseng to enhance the performance of athletes in training, even for Olympic Games.

Even in the West, ginseng has been well respected as a medicinal herb. Many American tribes used ginseng for childbirth, fever, aches and pain. In fact, ginseng was listed in the official book of medicine, the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, in the 19^th Century as a stimulant and a digestive aid.

Ginseng is safer and more effective than synthetic drugs or vitamins available on the nutrition market today.

Take ginseng daily. In addition to providing energy needed for old age, ginseng prevents disabling disorders, such as arthritis, and heart diseases.

Stephen Lau

Copyright © Stephen Lau

Avoid Digital Strain

Digital Strain

According to recent CNN health news, digital eyestrain has become a common eye problem, which is plaguing millions of people working at the computer with headaches, eye pain, watering, redness, double vision and loss of focus, among others.

Vision is one of the most important assets in life. Without clear vision, the world will be totally different, and living will become difficult, if not impossible. Therefore, always protect your eyes and maintain good vision.

Digital eyestrain is just one of the many ways in modern living that may harm your eyes and damage your vision. If you have to spend many hours in front of the computer everyday, maybe you should get yourself a pair of computer glasses. In addition, make sure that your computer screen is bright enough and is at least some two feet away from your eyes. 

No matter what, you must give your eyes a break every half hour or so. Your eyes may not be able to see clearly because they cannot adjust to the focus as they shift from near vision to distant vision when you look up from the computer screen during the break. To facilitate the sudden shift of focus, blink your eyes repeatedly  Eye-blinking is especially important when you are moving your eyes along the line; blinking often avoids staring or eye-fixation, which causes eyestrain as well as reduces side vision over the long haul.

The best exercise to relax the eye and to reduce eyestrain is eye palming. This is a simple eye exercise in which you place both palms over your eyes, but without actually touching them. Before placing your palms over your forehead and cheekbones, rub them hard so as to generate some heat. Then close your eyes and let your palms cover but without touching them. Visualize darkness, and breathe slowly. Do eye palming anytime when you feel eyestrain; it will do wonders in relaxing your eyes.

You may also include other eye exercises, such as rolling your eyes up and down and sideways. 

Remember, whenever you feel eyestrain, you must stop working at the computer.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Why and How You Should Not Eat Too Much Salt

You need oxygen to survive, but, ironically, oxygen is also your undoing. As you breathe in oxygen, you also give out carbon dioxide, which is toxic to your health. Nature has designed this unique built-in mechanism to guarantee your mortality. You get life-giving oxygen, but you also receive life-damaging byproducts in the form of free radicals. You are just like a log of wood burning oxygen for fuel. Fortunately, your body is also equipped with antioxidants that not only prevent free radical formation but also defuse the free radicals already formed. So, there is always a constant combat between antioxidants and free radicals within your body.

No matter what, free radicals may have damaged your cell walls. When cell walls are damaged, they become more difficult to metabolize the sodium intake, leading to more sodium leaks and hence further sodium metabolic impairment. Blood vessels damaged by excessive sodium leaks may result in swelling and edema. In this way, your arteries may become clogged and your blood pressure elevates. 

Cellular damage to the DNA by free radicals is a major contributing factor not only to heart disease but also to many human cancers, as well as damage to the neurons in the brain. Therefore, reducing salt in your daily diet is important.

To prevent further free radical damage to your cells and blood vessels, reduce salt intake. You have heard too often: Cut back on salt! But it is easier said than done, because nearly all processed foods contain some, if not excessive, amount of sodium chloride. Even Jell-O pudding may contain as much as 400 mg of sodium chloride. So there is salt in almost any supermarket food item 

(1) Always read food labels before any food purchase. Unless it says “no salt added,” there is always a certain amount of sodium chloride. 

(2) Reduce voluntary salting. Never reach out for a saltshaker in a restaurant. 

(3) Lay off all high-salt condiments, such as soy sauce, steak sauces, gravies, and relishes

(4) Restrict consumption of salt-laden foods, such as canned soups, potato chips, and pretzels, among other junk food items. 

(5) Eat whole foods instead of their processed counterparts. Eat living and raw foods instead of processed foods, which are always loaded with salt.

Reducing salt intake is an important component of a healthy longevity diet. Eating right is the art of living well.

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

How to be Happy

How to be Happy

Everybody wants to be happy because happiness is the essence of life and living. What is the point of living in this world if we are unhappy most of the time? Indeed, many people are depressed and unhappy. Sadly, to many, the quest for happiness is forever unreachable—just like a carrot-and-stick in front of a mule; the more pain it experiences, the more desire it shows to reach out for the forever unattainable carrot in front. In many ways, we are like the mule.

Why is happiness so difficult to attain?

Without human wisdom, the pursuit of happiness is like wandering in the wilderness without a compass and a roadmap. So, human wisdom is the key to unlocking true human happiness.

First and foremost, you need to be wise so as to be good in order to be happy.

What is wisdom? Wisdom has to do with the thinking mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “The ancestor to every action in the physical world is a thought.” In other words, wisdom comes from the mind: how you think, and how you perceive and react to your thought. Wisdom is different from knowledge in that a knowledgeable person may not necessarily be wise, and by the same token a wise person does not have to be knowledgeable. Wisdom has much to do with the interpretation and application of what an individual knows to his or her everyday life and living.

If you are wise, you will know how to be good, and goodness leads to genuine happiness. It’s just that simple.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

True Happiness Is Effortless

True Happiness Is Effortless

Life is meaningless and purposeless if happiness is absent. The truth of the matter is that many people are unhappy. So, the leading question is: what makes you happy?

It is also a myth that happiness is something that can be pursued with willpower and effort. The Bible rightly says that pursuing happiness is “like chasing the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 2:11)

 

Effort does not necessarily bring happiness; it only creates the illusion of an environment conducive to creating temporary happiness.

One may work diligently in one’s career to excel and to get to the top of the profession only to find that one has a terminal illness, or has incurred a debilitating accident. To illustrate, Joe Paterno the former Penn State football coach, whose reputation ruined by a sexual abuse scandal at the peak of his career, was fired, and died shortly of cancer; Steve Job, the co-founder of Apple computers, had his life cut short by pancreatic cancer at the height of his successful business career. Extra effort does not always pay off.

Pursuing happiness may be only a fantasy fueled by temporary moments of happiness, because aging, illnesses, misfortunes, and ultimately death plague all alike; in other words, impermanence cuts short all human efforts to bring happiness. We are all aware of the fact that impermanence is a leveler of everybody and everything, but many of us still choose to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise. Denial only fosters the myth that if there is a will there must be a way to attaining happiness, and that all it requires is human effort to make any dream come true.

The truth of the matter is that true happiness is, surprisingly, effortless, because it comes from within, and not from without; it is part of self, and is natural to human life and existence.

The Book of Life and Living

This book shows you how to attain true human wisdom through asking self-intuitive questions, creating an empty mindset with reverse thinking to let you have a blueprint for the art of living in this challenging world.

The Happiness Wisdom

This book shows you that true human happiness comes from human wisdom to understand self and others, as well as the world around, deepening the innate spirituality that guides the body and the soul to live as if everything is a miracle.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Daily Perfect Posture

Daily Perfect Posture

Perfect posture contributes to correct breathing—which is breathing with deep and long breaths. Incidentally, rodents, with the shortest breaths in the animal kingdom, have the shortest lifespan. Therefore, perfect posture with correct breathing is an important component of holistic health and healing.

Despite the importance of good posture for optimal breathing, good posture is often overlooked because there is no one constantly reminding you to improve your posture; just as correct breathing is taken for granted because you “think” breathing is second nature to you, but often it is not. Correct breathing is constant awareness of your breaths and your posture.

You cannot breathe right without correct posture. Perfect posture means in any standing position, you body posture should be as follows:

Your head is directly above your shoulders.

Your chin is tucked in. 

Your ear, shoulder, and hip are in a straight line from a side view.

Your upper back is straight, not slouched.

Your shoulders, relaxed and straight, are flat against your back.

Your pelvis is in a neutral position.

Your knees are unlocked.

This is how you can improve your posture, in particular, your standing posture: to stand up straight, you require a straight spine, straight shoulders, and no slumping.

These are the steps to improve your standing posture: 

Stand with your feet hip-width apart (for better balance).

Align your ears, shoulders, and hips (Using a mirror for alignment).

Unlock both knees (maintaining “neutral” pelvis; that is, avoiding you pelvis tilting forward).

Pull in your abdominal muscles.

Inhale naturally.

Exhale slowly while pulling your belly button into the spine.

Lift your rib cage by straightening your rounded upper back; while expanding your lungs for deeper breathing.

Realign your head over your shoulders. Make sure your head is not leaning backward.

Un-round your shoulders by rotating your arms until your palms are facing your thighs.

Gently press your shoulders down, away from your ears.

Pull your shoulder blades towards your spine.

Stretch your head upwards without tilting backwards.

Practice the above until correct posture becomes second nature to you. Perfect posture is your awareness of good posture at all times.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© 2018 by Stephen Lau