Okay, everyone. Go into your bathroom and pull out your shampoos, conditioners, soaps, hand sanitizers, body wash, mouth wash, bubble baths, baby wipes, exfoliants, deodorants and/or antiperspirants, any lotions and creams including those for shaving, hair products, sun screens, perfumes and colognes, powders, toothpaste and cosmetics including nail polish and let's see if any of these products might be implicated in stubborn fat on the thighs and hips for women, and man-boobs for men. Too much estrogen is implicated in breast, cervical and uterine cancers not to mention PMS in women, and erectile dysfunction and low sperm counts in men. Even if you don't have these problems, check your products because they might be carcinogenic.

Before we get to the topic at hand, I want to announce that my long awaited nutrition course entitled "Why the Food Guides are Wrong: How to Find Health and Lose Weight", is now available online. By the end of the roughly two hours it takes to go through the course, your confusion over food and what is healthy to eat will have disappeared because the lens through which you look at food will have changed. Suddenly the conflicting nutrition messages that are everywhere won't be a problem anymore and you won't be pulled from one diet to another depending on what diet guru you happen to be listening to at the time. Everything will seem so obvious that you will wonder how you could have possibly been confused before. I echo Paul Chek's suggestion that food is the drug we take three times a day. Eat poorly and your health will be taken from you. Eat right and your health will be restored.

The feedback I have received from people that have attended the course in the past have included sentiments like "life changing", and "I didn't really expect to learn anything, but found out I didn't know anything at all", and "I don't think I'll bother taking the other nutrition course I signed up for - I now know all I need to know". People have come up to me months after taking the course and thanked me for the presentation and changing their lives.

The introductory offer is $39USD, which includes the slide presentation and lecture, as well as additional reference materials and resources that you can print off to help you get started. Sign up by going to http://WellnessTips.digitalchalk.com.

Now to the topic of SI joint pain. Thursday I was sitting at a coffee shop in a business meeting with a colleague without the "butt lift" that I need (one side of my pelvis is slightly smaller than the other, so I usually sit with a pad under one sit bone to keep my pelvis level), and I felt my SI joint go out of alignment. Instantly I was back to that left-sided low-back pain I had felt on a daily basis many years ago. That night I was lying in bed thinking how ironic it was that the following day I would have no time in my day to fit in a chiro appointment to realign my pelvis and resolve my pain, because it was jammed with people coming to see me to fix their back problems.  Aarg!  I don't have time for back pain!  I decided that surely I knew enough about the SI joint to fix myself, even if I couldn't assess myself properly to determine exactly what had happened. So at three in the morning I was crawling around the floor in the dark with my cat, trying to fix my back.

Just wanted to make sure nobody missed this very important conclusion published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in March of this year.

 "A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD."

Can we please STOP recommending low-fat diets now?   A low-fat diet = a high carb diet, which leads to obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  Thank you very much.

From a physical ability perspective, the toilet was a dastardly invention. We are designed to poop by squatting right down to the ground, so before the toilet, from the time we learned to squat poop as a child until the time we died, we had the flexibility and strength to do so. We pooped often enough to keep ourselves adequately limber to squat low, and strong enough to easily get up from that position.   Now a-days many of us stop getting down onto the floor altogether once the kids are past the toddler age. The chair is about as close to the floor as we get. Then some years later we find ourselves on the floor for some reason or another, like looking for something that rolled under the sofa, and we realize that getting up off the floor is suddenly quite hard work.

The USDA is working towards putting out its 2010 Nutritional Guidelines, and so far based on what I've seen, I'm thinking they are still heading down the wrong path. For the first time the guidelines are going to be geared towards the unhealthy, obese and type 2 diabetes population, and rather than lowering the intake of grains which would make a huge difference for that population, they are lowering fat intakes even further. Surely after 30 years of food guides that have suggested high carb low fat diets along with concurrent increasing rates of obesity and type-two diabetes, it is abundantly obvious that this strategy isn't working? Perhaps the powers that be need to review Albert Einstein's famous quote "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Most people that decide they want to lose weight try the "eat less, exercise more" approach, and a few people get results. Many others just feel hungry and tired, not to mention frustrated. Eating less calories than one burns might work for some, but if the diet is not sufficient in protein, vitamins and minerals, the body will reallocate its resources eating up your muscle tissue and taking minerals from your bones in addition to burning that body fat in order to keep the body functioning. If you are hungry, your body is telling you it needs nutrients. Losing muscle mass will decrease your metabolism and make it easier to put on weight once you go off the diet. And we also probably all know of someone who eats next to nothing yet simply does not lose any weight despite consistent effort. Controlling calories is usually not the answer. So rather than starve yourself, why not look at which hormones might be responsible for your fat pattern, and work towards controlling those hormones in particular?

Before I get into this topic, I want to let you know that I have created a Wellness Tips Page on Facebook, where I post and comment on various health articles I find interesting. Would love to see you there!

We have probably all seen photos of what the inside of bone looks like - kind of like honeycomb with lots of tiny holes. This keeps bone light and strong, with the boney web arranging itself  according to the forces put through the bone. In someone with osteoporosis the holes in the web of bone become bigger, and the bone that forms the web becomes thinner making the bone more prone to fracture.

Do you have chronic low back or hip pain? If you are female, did you notice that you developed your back pain during pregnancy or after giving birth? Maybe a fall or car accident triggered the back pain and now it is ongoing? Whatever the initial cause it may be worth checking yourself to see if you are a butt gripper. Butt gripping is a term coined by Diane Lee and Linda Joy Lee, used to describe a back stabilization strategy that involves squeezing the buttocks together. This habit is completely unconscious, and is a common strategy the brain uses to try and stabilize the spine if the muscles that are supposed to do the job are not functioning as they should, or if there are significant digestive issues that may be causing gas. Butt grippers are easy to recognize in other people - not only do they look like they are squeezing their butt cheeks together, but they also frequently walk like a duck with the toes pointing out.

I had always thought that our appearance was determined by the genes we received from our parents, and that is obviously true, but I had not realized how large a role nutrition played in determining the full potential of our genes until I studied nutrition in a historical context.

The easiest way to understand this is to look at the issue from an architectural point of view. You have the plans for a beautiful and strong building that must be built by a particular date. (The Olympics are coming?) So, you set out to begin your task, but the materials required are not available in the quantities needed to build it to the specifications in the blue print. This building must be built, so you are forced to alter the plan to make best use of the materials that you do have. Hopefully better quality materials will come at some point, and you can try and improve the quality of the structure if that happens, but there are no guarantees.

A lack of flexibility impairs our ability to move properly making us more prone to injury. So if "relaxing" is not the word you would use to describe these positions, working towards being able to do them easily again may just change your life. Here are my initial ideas on positions I think we should be able to do throughout our life. Do these in bare feet for best results, and keep any stretch mild.

1. Squat to the Floor We should be able to easily spend time in a deep squat keeping our heels down without falling backwards, body leaning between the legs as if we were pooping in the woods. If you cannot do this, try holding onto a sturdy post and lower yourself down leaning back just enough to keep your heels on the floor. You can always sit on a low step-stool for extra support and to make the position more relaxing. Keep your knees in line with your toes, ease into a stretch and wait for it to dissipate. In addition to pushing through your feet you can use your arms to help pull you up when you are done. (Please note: NEVER do a squat to the floor with added weight. Avoid if you have a disk problem in your back.)