Written by Biagio Allevato, Founder of Centre Herba Sana Biagio Allevato, N.D., is a naturopath, herbalist, and iridologist who empowers people to heal naturally through detoxification, cellular regeneration, and spiritual alignment. What if the secret to feeling more energized, more clear-headed, and more alive was not about adding something new to your life, but about gently releasing what your body no longer needs? Detoxification is not a trend, not a punishment, and certainly not something extreme. It is simply the most natural, beautiful thing your body does every single day, and when we learn how to support it, everything changes. Your body is a self-renewing masterpiece Imagine your body as a beautiful, self-cleaning home. Every single day, it sweeps, mops, takes out the recycling, and opens the windows to let in fresh air. This is detoxification. It is not something you do once a year with a special juice. It is something your body does lovingly, around the clock, without ever being asked. The body is in a constant state of renewal, and when we combine physical cleansing with a genuine shift in thought, belief, and emotion, the results go far beyond what either approach can achieve alone. Detoxification, in the fullest sense, is not just about the body. It is about releasing old patterns, old emotions, and old beliefs that keep us anchored in a past version of ourselves. The four channels of renewal Think of these four channels as the four doors of your home. When all four are open and flowing freely, the home stays fresh, bright, and full of life. The intestines, your first and most important door: The body's primary channel of release. When this pathway flows well, the whole body breathes a sigh of relief. Energy rises. Clarity returns. The skin begins to glow. Supporting this channel through hydration, fiber-rich whole foods, and gentle herbal allies is one of the most generous things you can do for your entire being. The kidneys, your gentle filtration system: Working quietly and tirelessly, your kidneys filter your entire blood supply dozens of times each day. They love pure water, warming herbs like dandelion and nettle, and a lifestyle that flows rather than rushes. The skin, your largest channel of expression: Your skin is a living, breathing channel of release. Through perspiration, it participates actively in the body's daily renewal. Movement, saunas, and time in the warmth of the sun support this channel beautifully, as does nourishing your skin from the outside with pure, plant-based care. The lungs, your rhythm of release: With every exhale, your lungs release what the body is ready to let go of. Deep, conscious breathing is one of the simplest and most powerful tools for supporting your body's natural renewal. It costs nothing. It is available to you in every single moment. Plant allies for renewal Nature has given us plants that seem almost purpose-built to support our channels of renewal. Dandelion root lovingly supports the liver and kidneys. Burdock root helps the skin and lymph stay clear and flowing. Milk thistle protects and nourishes the liver. Cascara and slippery elm support gentle intestinal flow. Red clover and cleavers are among the most beautiful allies for the lymphatic system. 5 gentle ways to support your daily renewal Begin every morning with warm lemon water: Before anything else, offer your body a large glass of warm water with fresh lemon. This simple ritual gently awakens the liver, encourages intestinal flow, and signals to every cell, good morning, we are beginning our renewal. Eat abundantly from the plant kingdom: Fruits, vegetables, herbs, sprouts, and seeds are alive with fiber, enzymes, antioxidants, and plant intelligence. They feed your beneficial gut flora, support your liver, and give your elimination channels exactly what they need to stay joyfully open and flowing. Move your body with joy: Movement activates the lymphatic system, stimulates the intestines, encourages perspiration, and deepens the breath, supporting all four channels at once. Breathe deeply and intentionally: Several times throughout your day, pause and take five slow, deep, conscious breaths. This simple act supports lung renewal, calms the nervous system, and reminds your whole body that it is safe, supported, and free to release. Renew your mind as you renew your body: A new body requires a new mind. As you cleanse physically, take time each day to sit in stillness, visualize the vibrant, clear, energized version of yourself that is emerging. The body follows the mind, always. Use this truth as one of your most powerful renewal tools. Renewal is your natural state Letting go, of what the body no longer needs, of what the heart has been holding, of what the mind keeps replaying, is one of the most profound acts of self-love available to us. The body, in its infinite wisdom, has been showing us how to do it beautifully all along. You were not made to accumulate. You were made to flow. Would you like to go deeper? If something in this article resonated with you and you feel ready to take the next step, I would be honored to walk alongside you. You are welcome to book a private naturopathic consultation, in person in Terrebonne, Quebec, Canada, or via Zoom worldwide, at Herba Sana. Your body is ready. So are you. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Biagio Allevato Biagio Allevato, Founder of Centre Herba Sana Biagio Allevato, N.D., is a naturopath, herbalist, and iridologist specializing in detoxification, cellular regeneration, and natural health education. He is the founder of Herba Sana and co-owner of Maison Rosessence, where he formulates plant-based remedies and guides clients toward vibrant, holistic well-being.

Written by Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach and Therapist Veronika Bubenickova is the founder of Lotus Journey, a breast cancer survivor, author, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner, and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis at 39, she now helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by supporting the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of healing. Finishing breast cancer treatment is supposed to be one of the happiest moments of the journey. For months, sometimes years, so much of life has revolved around cancer, hospital appointments, blood tests, scans, chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy, medication and the anticipation of the next stage. Reaching the end can therefore feel like a finish line you have been desperately trying to cross. From the outside, there is an understandable expectation that this is when life begins returning to normal. Friends and family are relieved. The appointments become less frequent. The congratulations arrive. You may even hear the words you have been longing for, "It's over now." But what if, internally, it doesn't feel over at all? This is one of the aspects of breast cancer recovery I believe we need to talk about much more openly. Completing active treatment is an enormous milestone and something worth celebrating, but the end of treatment is not necessarily the end of healing. For some women, it is only once the intensity of treatment begins to subside that there is finally enough emotional space to process what has actually happened. When survival mode switches off During treatment, there is often something concrete to focus on. You know the next appointment, the next procedure or the next cycle. There is a structure around you and a medical team actively working towards a shared goal. You may be frightened and exhausted, but there is also a task in front of you, get through treatment. Then that structure begins to disappear. Appointments become less frequent, and the people around you understandably start looking towards the future. Yet your nervous system may not immediately receive the message that the danger has passed. An ache, an unusual sensation or an upcoming scan can suddenly bring the fear back. The body may be recovering while the mind is still learning how to feel safe again. This is why I believe we need to stop thinking about recovery as a switch that is turned on the day treatment finishes. Recovery is a process, and different parts of us recover at different speeds. The medical treatment may be complete while physical side effects remain. Hair may be growing back while confidence has not. A scar may have healed while the emotions connected to it are still raw. Life may look increasingly "normal" from the outside while internally you are still trying to understand what normal even means anymore. The pressure to get back to normal "Getting back to normal" is a phrase we hear frequently after cancer, and I have come to question whether it is always a helpful goal. What exactly are we supposed to return to? Breast cancer can fundamentally alter how we see our bodies, relationships, priorities, careers and futures. Going through a life-threatening illness can expose things that we previously tolerated, ignored or simply did not have time to question. For some women, trying to recreate their old life can therefore feel strangely uncomfortable because the person attempting to return to it has changed. My own journey ultimately transformed the direction of my life. I had spent years in a successful corporate career, but breast cancer became part of a much deeper reassessment of what mattered to me and how I wanted to live. I eventually moved towards the work I do today, supporting other women navigating breast cancer and recovery. That does not mean I believe everyone needs to change career, leave a relationship, move country or reinvent herself after cancer. Transformation does not need to be dramatic. Sometimes it is quieter, saying no without guilt, resting when your body asks you to, changing how you nourish yourself, making time for people you love, or finally acknowledging that the life you were living before cancer no longer feels quite right. Perhaps the question after treatment is therefore not, "How do I get my old life back?" but, "What do I want my life to look like now?" Your body has survived, but your relationship with it may have changed Breast cancer treatment can also fundamentally change the relationship a woman has with her body. Surgery may alter her breasts. Chemotherapy can affect hair, weight, energy and physical strength. Hormonal treatments may bring additional changes, and treatment can affect sexuality, confidence and how comfortable a woman feels being seen. The language of survivorship sometimes makes it difficult to acknowledge this grief. We may feel that because treatment worked, we should simply be grateful. Of course, gratitude can coexist with enormous relief. But gratitude and grief are not opposites. You can be profoundly grateful to be alive and still grieve the body you had before. You can appreciate everything your body survived and still struggle to recognise it. You can celebrate the end of treatment and simultaneously feel frightened about what comes next. Allowing both truths to exist is part of healing. For me, recovery has increasingly become less about trying to return to an earlier version of myself and more about developing a different relationship with my body, one based on care, respect and partnership rather than judgement. When everyone else moves on There can also be an unexpected loneliness in survivorship. During treatment, people check in. They ask how chemotherapy went, offer practical help and remember important appointments. Cancer is visible, and there is a clear reason to rally around you. As time passes, the world understandably moves forward. People want to see you well, and sometimes their desire for everything to be okay can unintentionally make it harder to say that you are still struggling. You may look well. You may have returned to work. Your hair may have grown back. You may be travelling, exercising and socialising again. None of this necessarily tells us what is happening internally. This is why support after breast cancer needs to extend beyond medical surveillance. Women may need space to talk about identity, confidence, relationships, sexuality, purpose, body image, lifestyle changes, fear of recurrence and the complicated experience of rebuilding a life after something has fundamentally shaken their sense of safety. These conversations should not be treated as an optional extra to recovery. They are part of what it means to support a whole person. Recovery is not a competition Another trap in survivorship is believing that there is a correct timeline for recovery. There isn't. One woman may want to return to work quickly because it gives her purpose and normality. Another may discover that she needs more time. Someone may feel physically strong but emotionally vulnerable, while someone else may feel psychologically ready to move forward but frustrated by ongoing fatigue or treatment-related changes. Comparing ourselves with other survivors can create another expectation to live up to when what we actually need is permission to recover in our own way. There is also no requirement to turn cancer into something positive. I have personally found profound meaning and transformation through my experience, and it ultimately led me towards work and a life that feel deeply purposeful. But that is my experience. I would never tell another woman that she should be grateful for cancer or that illness happened in order to teach her something. Meaning cannot be prescribed. It can only be discovered, if and when it feels authentic to the person living the experience. Healing can mean creating something new Perhaps one of the most liberating things we can tell women after breast cancer is that recovery does not have to mean becoming who they were before. There may be parts of that woman they desperately want back, her confidence, energy, spontaneity, sexuality or sense of safety. Those desires deserve compassion. But there may also be parts of the old life that no longer belong in the next chapter. This is where recovery can gradually become something more than restoration. It can become reconnection. Reconnecting with your body and learning what it needs now. Reconnecting with relationships that feel safe and nourishing. Reconnecting with pleasure, femininity, movement and intimacy at your own pace. Reconnecting with dreams that cancer temporarily placed on hold. Perhaps, most importantly, reconnecting with yourself outside the identity of "cancer patient" or "cancer survivor". Cancer can occupy so much space that it becomes difficult to remember who you are without it. Yet you are still a woman with desires, contradictions, talents, relationships, ambitions, humour, sexuality, dreams and a future. Cancer is something that happened within your life. It does not have to become the definition of your life. The finish line is not where we think it is I no longer see the final treatment as the finish line. It is an important milestone, but healing continues afterwards in quieter and often less visible ways. It happens when you begin trusting your body again. When an upcoming appointment no longer consumes the entire week before it. When you make a decision based on what you want rather than what fear tells you to do. When you catch yourself planning months or years ahead. When you realise that cancer has not occupied your thoughts for an entire day. Sometimes healing happens when you finally accept that you do not need to become the woman you were before cancer. You are allowed to meet the woman you are now. She may carry scars. She may understand uncertainty differently. She may have stronger boundaries and different priorities. She may still have moments of fear. But she may also know herself more deeply than she ever did before. The end of treatment deserves celebration. But so does everything that comes afterwards, the rebuilding, the rediscovery, the small acts of courage and the gradual return to living rather than simply surviving. Perhaps that is the part of recovery we need to talk about more. Treatment can end on a date in a medical record. Healing rarely does. Your next chapter doesn't have to be navigated alone If treatment has ended but you don't feel "finished", there is nothing unusual about needing support with what comes next. Rebuilding confidence, identity and a sense of direction after breast cancer can take time, and you don't have to rush yourself back into the person you were before. If you are navigating life during or beyond breast cancer and would like practical and emotional support, I created the free Breast Cancer Support & Healing Series to help you explore different aspects of recovery and whole-person wellbeing. Access the free series here or learn more about Veronika’s breast cancer coaching and support programmes here. To learn more about Veronika, her story, speaking and media work, visit here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Veronika Bubenickova Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach and Therapist Veronika Bubenickova is a breast cancer survivor, author, speaker, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner, and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis in 2023, she embarked on a profound healing journey that transformed every aspect of her life. Today, she helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by addressing the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of healing. She is the founder of Lotus Journey and author of Diary of a Soul Reborn, with a mission to help women thrive beyond breast cancer, not just survive it.

Cherriell Orius is a trauma‑informed coach, empowerment leader, and founder of CRB Enterprizezz, Woman2Woman Rise & Soar, and the Limitlezz Mindzet program for girls ages twelve through adulthood. Her work centers on helping women move from survival into identity restoration, emotional clarity, and purpose-driven living. In this interview, she opens up about the deeper realities of trauma recovery, the misconceptions within the empowerment industry, and the emotional and financial patterns that shape a woman’s healing journey. She also shares her Heal, Rise, Soar philosophy, offering insight into how women can rebuild self-trust, recognize lingering survival mode, and step boldly into what comes next. Cherriell Orius, Women Empowerment Trauma Coach What first drew you to helping women move from surviving difficult experiences to rebuilding confidence and purpose? Cherriell Orius was first drawn to helping women move from survival into purpose because she understood the silent battles they carried, battles she once carried herself. Her own journey through trauma, misalignment, and emotional rebuilding became the foundation of her calling. She recognized that many women were living in a state of quiet endurance, functioning on the outside while fractured on the inside. What moved her most was witnessing how often women normalized pain, minimized their needs, and internalized shame as identity. She felt compelled to create spaces where women could finally exhale, be seen, and be guided toward restoration. Through her company, CRB ENTERPRIZEZZ, where they believe “Empowered Women. Empower the World,” she focuses on mindset resilience through health, beauty, and education. She began shaping environments where healing was not only possible but expected through her Woman2Woman with Cherrie Orius Podcast, the Woman2Woman Rise & Soar workshops and annual conference, and coaching sessions. Her passion deepened as she watched women rediscover their voices, reclaim their confidence, and step into purpose with clarity. The Limitlezz Mindzet youth initiative program expanded that mission to young girls, ensuring they learned early what many women were never taught, how to rise without apology. Ultimately, what drew her to this work was the belief that healing is not the end of the story, it is the doorway to destiny. What helps someone heal from trauma without allowing the experience to become part of how they define themselves? Cherriell believes that healing from trauma without becoming defined by it requires a deliberate shift in identity. She teaches that trauma is an event, not a label, and that the nervous system may remember what the soul is capable of releasing. In her coaching, she emphasizes separating the story from the self, helping women understand that what happened to them is not who they are. She guides clients to explore the emotional imprint of their experiences while refusing to let those experiences become their internal narrative. Through her Heal, Rise, Soar framework, she encourages women to name the wound, confront the impact, and then intentionally rewrite the meaning they attach to it. Using her acronym TRAUMA: T: transformation R: realignment A: awakening U: understanding M: mindfulness A: ascension She changes the narrative from negative to positive by showing how, though painful, the incident can be a catalyst for positive elevation, with the understanding that mindset determines the outcome. How we perceive it, negatively or positively, will determine its impact. She reminds women that there is no growth or transformation without pain. She also highlights the importance of community and safe spaces, where women can be witnessed without judgment and supported without being reduced to their pain. For young girls in the Limitlezz Mindzet program, she teaches early identity formation, emotional literacy, and resilience practices that prevent trauma from becoming a defining anchor. Ultimately, she believes healing requires reclaiming authorship, choosing to be shaped by truth, strength, and purpose rather than by the moments that tried to break them. In your Heal, Rise, Soar approach, what needs to happen before someone is genuinely ready to move from healing into growth? In Cherriell’s Heal, Rise, Soar approach, the transition from healing into growth requires a deep internal shift, one that cannot be rushed or bypassed. She teaches that healing is not simply the absence of pain, it is the presence of awareness, emotional regulation, and self-honesty. Before growth can begin, a woman must first confront the truth of her experiences without numbing, avoiding, or spiritualizing her wounds. She must learn to sit with her emotions, understand her patterns, and recognize how trauma shaped her decisions. Cherriell emphasizes that readiness for growth emerges when a woman stops fighting her past and begins engaging her future. She looks for signs such as increased self-compassion, the ability to set boundaries, and a willingness to challenge old beliefs. In her coaching, she helps women stabilize their internal world so growth does not feel like pressure but like an invitation. For girls in the Limitlezz Mindzet program, she teaches foundational emotional skills that prepare them for healthy expansion. Ultimately, she believes someone is ready to rise when healing has shifted from survival to intentional restoration, when the woman is no longer trying to escape her story but is ready to evolve beyond it. Where do you think the empowerment industry oversimplifies trauma recovery or personal transformation? Cherriell often notes that the empowerment industry oversimplifies trauma recovery by treating transformation as a mindset shift rather than a holistic process. She sees how many programs focus on motivation, positivity, or quick breakthroughs without addressing the deeper emotional, neurological, and spiritual layers of trauma. In her experience, healing cannot be reduced to affirmations or surface-level empowerment. She believes the industry frequently bypasses the uncomfortable work, grief, accountability, nervous system regulation, and identity reconstruction. This creates unrealistic expectations for women who are genuinely trying to heal but feel like they are failing when “positive thinking” doesn’t fix their pain. She also observes that many empowerment spaces ignore cultural, generational, and relational trauma, offering one-size-fits-all solutions that do not honor the complexity of women’s lived experiences. Through Woman2Woman Rise & Soar and Limitlezz Mindzet, she intentionally builds programs that integrate emotional intelligence, trauma education, spiritual alignment, and practical tools. She advocates for empowerment that does not rush women, silence their wounds, or glamorize resilience without acknowledging the cost. For her, true transformation is layered, intentional, and deeply personal, never a shortcut. How can unresolved trauma influence a woman’s relationship with money, scarcity, and financial security? Cherriell teaches that unresolved trauma often shapes a woman’s relationship with money in ways she may not immediately recognize. Trauma can create patterns of scarcity, fear-based decision-making, and a belief that stability is fragile or unattainable. Women who have lived in survival mode may struggle to trust abundance, feeling safer in limitation because it feels predictable. She sees how trauma can influence overspending, underspending, or self-sabotage, each rooted in emotional wounds rather than financial knowledge. For some, money becomes a symbol of control, for others, a source of anxiety. Cherriell helps women explore how past experiences, neglect, instability, abuse, or lack of support, shape their financial identity. She teaches that healing is essential for building a healthy relationship with money because financial empowerment requires emotional empowerment. Through her coaching and programs, she guides women to rewrite scarcity narratives, build confidence in decision-making, and develop habits that support long-term security. In the Limitlezz Mindzet program, she introduces young girls to financial literacy early, ensuring they grow up with a mindset rooted in possibility rather than fear. Ultimately, she believes financial healing is part of emotional healing, and both are necessary for a woman to rise fully. What is one practical way someone can begin rebuilding self-trust after trauma or a difficult relationship? Cherriell teaches that rebuilding self-trust begins with alignment or realignment with God and His identity for us, incorporated with small, consistent commitments to oneself. After trauma or a difficult relationship, many women lose confidence in their ability to make safe decisions, often doubting their intuition or second-guessing their needs. She encourages starting with one simple promise, something manageable, meaningful, and achievable. This could be a daily reflection practice, a boundary set with someone, a moment of intentional self-care, or a daily practice of gratitude. The goal is not perfection but consistency. She believes self-trust grows when a woman repeatedly affirms to herself that she will show up for her own well-being. In her coaching, she helps women reconnect with their inner voice, teaching them to distinguish fear from intuition and survival patterns from authentic desires. She also emphasizes the importance of celebrating small wins because acknowledgment reinforces confidence. For young girls in the Limitlezz Mindzet program, she introduces exercises that strengthen decision-making and emotional awareness early. Ultimately, she believes self-trust is rebuilt through faith and action, through choosing oneself again and again until confidence becomes natural rather than forced. How can women recognize when they are still operating from survival mode even when life appears stable? Cherriell explains that survival mode is not always loud, sometimes it is subtle, disguised as over-functioning, perfectionism, or emotional detachment. She teaches that women can recognize survival mode by observing their internal responses rather than their external circumstances. If a woman feels constantly on alert, struggles to rest, or fears losing control, she may still be operating from survival even if her life appears stable. She notes patterns such as difficulty trusting others, avoiding vulnerability, or feeling unsafe in moments of calm. Many women in her programs describe living with a quiet tension, an underlying belief that something could go wrong at any moment. Cherriell helps them identify these signs and understand that stability does not automatically equal healing. She encourages women to examine their nervous system cues, emotional triggers, and relational habits. Through Woman2Woman Rise & Soar, she teaches grounding practices, emotional regulation, and self-awareness tools that help women shift from survival to true stability. For girls in Limitlezz Mindzet, she introduces early recognition of emotional states to prevent long-term survival patterns. Ultimately, she believes women know they are still in survival mode when peace feels unfamiliar, and safety feels temporary. What does living in alignment mean to you personally, and how has that understanding changed through your own experiences? For Cherriell, living in alignment means living in truth, truth about who God says she is, what she needs, and what she is called to do. Her understanding of alignment evolved through her own experiences of misalignment, where she learned how easy it is to build a life that looks successful but feels disconnected. She once lived according to expectations, survival patterns, and emotional wounds, mistaking endurance for purpose. Through her healing journey, she discovered that alignment requires honesty, boundaries, courage, and reconnection with faith. It means choosing what nourishes the soul rather than what pleases others. Today, alignment for her is a spiritual, emotional, and practical posture. It is the foundation of her work with Woman2Woman Rise & Soar and the Limitlezz Mindzet program, where she teaches women and girls to build lives rooted in authenticity. Her experiences taught her that alignment is not a destination but a daily practice, one that requires self-awareness, healing, and intentional choices. She believes alignment is the compass that guides women toward destiny, and her mission is to help them find it. What would you want a woman who feels defined by her past to understand about what can come next? Cherriell wants every woman who feels defined by her past to understand that her story is not finished. She teaches that the past may shape a woman, but it does not have the authority to determine her future. She believes that what comes next is not limited by what came before, healing, identity restoration, and purpose are always possible. Through her coaching and programs, she reminds women that trauma is a chapter, not the entire book. She encourages them to see themselves as evolving beings, capable of rewriting narratives, breaking cycles, and rising into new versions of themselves. She emphasizes that transformation begins with one decision, the decision to believe that more is available. For women in Woman2Woman Rise & Soar, she creates spaces where they can envision futures beyond pain. For girls in Limitlezz Mindzet, she teaches early that their past does not define their potential. Ultimately, she wants women to know that what comes next can be beautiful, powerful, and aligned because destiny is not determined by wounds but by the willingness to heal and rise. Empowered Women. Empower the World. Visit woman2woman.world for more information. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Cherriell Orius

From salt therapy to root cause and quantum healing, this practitioner’s approach to wellness has evolved through years of personal experience, study, and listening closely to what the body may be communicating. In this interview, she explores the connection between mind, body, and spirit–the role of emotional and energetic patterns in health, and why curiosity may be the first step toward deeper healing. Connie Ng, Holistic Practitioner, Quantum Healing Facilitator & Transformational Coach Your practice has evolved far beyond salt therapy, so what inspired you to expand into root cause and quantum healing? It certainly wasn't part of some grand master plan! When I opened my salt therapy clinic, I thought I was helping people breathe better, improve their skin and perhaps enjoy 50 peaceful minutes away from the outside world. Instead, that little salt room became one of my greatest classrooms. Clients came through the door with eczema, respiratory problems, digestive issues, chronic pain and other persistent conditions. Once they relaxed and started telling me their stories, I often noticed an emotional undercurrent to what was happening physically. It could be grief, chronic stress, trauma, relationship difficulties, or something carried for years. Sometimes it wasn't even what they said. Intuitively, I sensed there was more beneath the surface. I later wrote about this in When the Body Speaks: Decoding Mental Health with the Five Elements. My own experience made me curious too. I lived with chronic eczema intermittently for around 35 years, so I know firsthand how much a long-term physical condition can affect you emotionally. But I became equally interested in the other direction: how unresolved emotions, chronic stress, and deeper psycho-spiritual patterns may influence physical wellbeing. So I kept studying, first for answers for myself and later for more ways to help my clients. I've never believed one modality holds all the answers. Holistic counselling, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), five-elements coaching, vibrational medicine, and eventually quantum healing gave me different ways to understand the mind, body, and spirit connection. My question changed from, “How do we get rid of this symptom?” to “What else might be going on here, and what could the body be trying to tell us?” I encourage clients to feel into their bodies too. If an uncomfortable emotion surfaces, where do they feel it? A knot in the stomach? Tightness in the chest? What happens if they become curious instead of immediately trying to make it disappear? My interest in Star Magic Healing and 0 Ishiki Healing came later because I wanted tools that might help facilitate healing at what I call “quantum speed.” One striking example was a man with eight years of restricted ankle mobility following surgery involving a metal rod. After around 20 minutes of quantum healing work, his range of movement improved, and he was surprised to find himself walking downstairs without consciously protecting the ankle. I shared his story in He Had Accepted Eight Years of Restricted Mobility: Then, in 20 Minutes, His Ankle Began to Change. When someone has lived with a condition for years, they can start believing the best they can hope for is to manage it. There is nothing wrong with management when it is needed. What concerns me is when it quietly becomes the limit of what someone believes is possible. A noticeable shift can challenge that assumption. Suddenly the question becomes, “If this can change, what else might be possible?” That curiosity can be an incredibly powerful place from which to begin healing. You combine traditional Chinese medicine principles, quantum healing, counselling, and vibrational medicine in your work, so how do these approaches complement one another during a client's healing journey? I think of my modalities as tools in a toolkit, or perhaps keys on a rather large keyring! Having lots of keys isn't useful if you don't know which lock they fit. The skill is recognising which approach might unlock something that has been suppressed, protected or dormant for a long time. Traditional Chinese medicine and five elements coaching gives me insight into someone's constitution, emotional patterns and response to stress. Holistic counselling lets us explore beliefs, relationships, behaviours and life experiences. Plant Essences can support the emotional and psycho-spiritual layers, while Tissue Salts are used within biochemic therapy to support mineral balance and healthy cellular function. Star Magic Healing and 0 Ishiki Healing give me an energetic framework to work with. I don't use everything at once. That would be quite the session! What I use depends on the person and what they want to change. That's why I offer a complimentary 15-minute to 30-minute clarity call. I don't expect someone to scroll through my services and somehow know whether they need five elements coaching, plant essences, holistic counselling or quantum healing. We talk about what is happening, what they've tried, and what they want to achieve. I can then hone in on the approach that may best support them. The modality needs to fit the person, not the person fit the modality. Mind, body and spirit don't conveniently operate in separate departments. My job might be easier if they did! I listen to the whole person, work out where we might begin, then reach into that toolkit for the right key. You often describe symptoms as messages rather than problems to eliminate, so what have years of working with chronic conditions taught you about listening to the body? I believe the body is an infinitely intelligent system. It is constantly trying to keep us alive and bring us back towards balance, or homeostasis. Traditional Chinese medicine has long viewed health through the lens of balance and imbalance. Even the word “dis-ease” makes sense to me because something within the person is no longer at ease. I also tell clients that the body is one big detoxing machine. It eliminates what it doesn't need through our bowels, urine, sweat, mucus, phlegm, and, yes, even farting! Healing isn't always glamorous. In my work, I see physical symptoms as one way the body communicates with us. The body cannot speak our language, so it gets our attention through aches, pains, itching, headaches, digestive discomfort and other symptoms. With chronic and complex health conditions, I explore psycho-spiritual patterns alongside the physical picture and see what resonates with the client's life. I might ask, “Were there any significant events around the time your symptoms began, or even six to twelve months beforehand?” I want to know about everyday life too. What are the dynamics at home, within relationships, friendships or work? What might be happening beneath the surface that has never been connected with the physical symptoms? Then we feel into the body. If an uncomfortable emotion comes up, where is it physically? Does the stomach tighten? Is there pressure in the chest or throat? This builds body awareness and helps the client understand their own patterns. Living with eczema intermittently for around 35 years taught me that this relationship can travel both ways. Chronic physical conditions can profoundly affect us emotionally, just as I believe our emotional lives can influence our physical health. For me, root cause healing begins with curiosity. Rather than only asking how to make a symptom disappear, I want to understand why it may have appeared. The body cannot speak our language, but it certainly knows how to get our attention. The question is whether we are willing to listen and feel into it. Where do you think conventional and holistic healthcare have the greatest opportunity to work together instead of separately? I don't think we need to choose between modern medicine and ancient healing wisdom. They are looking at the same human being through different lenses. Conventional medicine is incredibly sophisticated at examining anatomy, pathology and organ function. We have imaging, blood tests, genetic testing and biotechnology that our ancestors could never have imagined. Traditional systems such as Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda and Sowa Rigpa offer another lens, looking at patterns across the whole person and recognising mind, body and spirit as interconnected. TCM fascinates me because the Five Elements map relationships between organs, emotions, senses, tastes and colours. What intrigues me is how some of these ideas seem to echo through the English language, despite emerging from cultures worlds apart. We say someone has “the gall” to do something. In TCM, the gallbladder is associated with courage and decision-making. We say “green with jealousy.” The Liver belongs to the Wood element, associated with green, while anger, jealousy, and frustration are traditionally linked with the Liver. Then there is “the eyes are the window to the soul.” The eyes, Liver and Gallbladder belong to Wood, while the Hun (魂), often translated as the Ethereal Soul, is traditionally said to reside in the Liver. Coincidence? Perhaps. But it makes me wonder whether our ancestors, living miles apart long before global travel became commonplace, understood something about the intrinsic connection between mind, body and spirit that we are only beginning to rediscover. Years ago, a client came into my salt room for a respiratory condition and mentioned that he regularly woke around 2 a.m. I explained that according to the TCM Qi body clock, this falls within the Liver hour. He replied that it was funny I should mention his liver because six weeks earlier he had been rushed to hospital with acute pain and diagnosed with liver disease. I wasn't diagnosing liver disease because somebody woke at 2 a.m. But you can imagine why that conversation stayed with me. Before CT scans and pathology laboratories, traditional practitioners had to become highly observant. TCM developed tongue, complexion, and pulse assessment as part of pattern differentiation. Sowa Rigpa has its own observational and pulse traditions. I think that accumulated knowledge deserves study rather than being dismissed simply because it is ancient. I'm developing those observational skills myself. Through Tissue Salts and biochemic therapy, I'm sharpening my facial diagnosis skills based on traditions within German naturopathy, alongside tongue diagnosis. This is where integrative healthcare gets exciting. Modern medicine gives us extraordinary tools to investigate and measure the body. Holistic and traditional medicine can add observations about constitution, lifestyle, emotional wellbeing and the relationships between different aspects of the person. I'd love to see more collaboration between doctors, specialists and holistic healthcare practitioners, with respect for what each discipline brings. Instead of conventional versus holistic medicine, perhaps the better question is, “What can we learn from each other that may empower this person towards full healing and recovery?” That's where I think the future of healthcare gets really interesting. More people are exploring energy-based healing today, but what do you think they misunderstand most about what it actually involves? One misconception is that you need to completely understand or believe in energy healing before it can work. Some of my most interesting clients have been sceptics! What I ask is much simpler. Come with an intention for what you would like to change and be open enough to receive. I sometimes call it a “suspension of disbelief.” You don't have to understand everything. Just leave the door open to the possibility that your current understanding of what is possible may not be the whole story. I work with the premise that we are energetic beings and our physical, emotional, and energetic states influence one another. In quantum healing, I also work with the concept of the Higher Self and whether a deeper aspect of the person is ready for healing and transformation. I've had sceptical and half-sceptical clients expect very little, then walk away pleasantly surprised by something they could see, feel, or experience that didn't fit their previous understanding of reality. Perhaps the conscious mind was sceptical, but another part remained curious enough to receive. Another important point is that a powerful quantum healing session doesn't remove free will. I see energy healing as an opportunity to clear and reset. What someone does with that reset matters. If they return to unresolved emotional patterns, limiting beliefs, relationships, or ways of living that continually pull them down, there may be more work to do. I may use Holistic Counselling, coaching, and Plant Essences afterward to continue working through trauma, emotional patterns, and limiting beliefs while supporting a healthier inner environment. My role as a Quantum Healing Facilitator isn't to become the person who “fixes” somebody. I can facilitate the clearing, help create the reset, and offer tools for what comes next. The client still has a role in their healing and transformation. Healing isn't only about what happens during the session. It's also about what you choose once you walk out the door. When someone has tried multiple treatments without lasting results, what first shift in perspective do you encourage before beginning the healing process? The first thing I encourage is curiosity. Instead of concluding, “Nothing works for me,” I might ask, “Why hasn't it worked yet?” This isn't to assign blame, but because there may be something we haven't understood. One of my favorite self-inquiries starts with, “How is this not working for me?” Most people can answer that fairly easily. They know how their condition affects their health, relationships, mobility, confidence, work, or quality of life. Then I ask, “How is this working for me?” That's usually when things go quiet! We explore whether there could be a secondary benefit to staying where they are. It doesn't mean someone consciously wants to be unwell. I'm curious about what may sit beneath conscious awareness. Rather than thinking their way to the “right” answer, I encourage them to breathe and feel into their body. What comes up? Where do they feel it? Sometimes the body responds before the conscious mind finds the words. This is why, when clients sign up for what I affectionately call “the works,” I don't necessarily start with quantum healing. My three-step approach usually begins with holistic counselling, where we unpack their story, lifestyle, relationships and emotional patterns. I draw on TCM Five Elements principles and other mind-body and metaphysical frameworks to explore possible psycho-spiritual correlations between what is happening physically and what is happening in their wider life. Plant Essence work can take the enquiry further. An Oracle Reading and Constitutional Trauma Mapping, where appropriate, may bring other themes into awareness. Quantum healing comes later as the deeper clearing and reset. By then, the person who lies down for quantum healing may already be thinking quite differently from the person who first came to see me. When we start looking holistically through the lens of physical and emotional imbalance, rather than only seeing a body that has somehow gone wrong, we naturally ask different questions. We can revisit psycho-spiritual themes that resonated in the counselling session and ask what remains unresolved. Is there an old identity, belief or relationship dynamic they still can't let go of? People can become so accustomed to managing chronic illness that they stop imagining life beyond it. I explored this in What Future Has Your Diagnosis Quietly Persuaded You to Stop Imagining? In my clinical observation, clients who engage with the deeper enquiry by signing up for “the works” often reach the quantum healing session more open to what may be possible. Before we ask the body to change, sometimes we need to give the mind permission to contemplate and the courage to dream that full healing and recovery might actually be available to us. Then we can return to three questions: Where am I out of balance? How is this not working for me? How is this working for me? Sometimes the question we least want to answer is worth sitting with the longest. How can someone start recognising whether their physical symptoms may be connected to unresolved emotional or energetic patterns? Become a bit of a detective about your own body. Don't only notice what hurts or flares. Notice when it happens, what was going on beforehand, and who you were with. Does your stomach tighten around a particular person? Do headaches appear during stressful periods? Does your skin flare when life feels overwhelming? Do you repeatedly wake at the same time at night? Patterns can become clues. Traditional Chinese medicine offers an interesting perspective through the TCM Qi body clock, which maps two-hour periods to different organ systems. As mentioned earlier, a client who regularly woke around 2 a.m., during the Liver hour, subsequently told me he had recently been diagnosed with liver disease. I'm certainly not suggesting you diagnose yourself by the clock, but recurring patterns are worth noticing. Look backward too. Were there any significant events around the time your symptoms began, or even six to twelve months beforehand? Think about what life was actually like. What was happening at home or work? Had a relationship changed? Was there grief, conflict, financial pressure or a major transition? Were you taking care of everybody except yourself? Sometimes something has been “normal” for so long that we no longer recognise how stressful it is. Then feel into the body. When an uncomfortable emotion surfaces, where does it show up? Does your throat tighten? Does your breathing change? Does your stomach react? In my practice, I draw upon TCM Five Elements principles and other mind-body and metaphysical frameworks to explore possible psycho-spiritual correlations. I don't hand somebody a meaning and announce, “This is why you're sick.” I explore the pattern with them and see whether it resonates with their lived experience. A simple journal can help. Record the symptom, when it appeared, what you were doing, who you were with, and what you were feeling. Connections can become clearer over time. To me, body awareness is learning your body's language. The body cannot speak our language, but it communicates remarkably well when we pay attention. The key is to slow down, feel into the body, and stay present with what arises. With practice, we can become more attuned to what it may have been trying to communicate all along. Your belief is that the body is communicating rather than broken, so how has that philosophy changed the way you approach both healing and life? It has changed almost everything, including my relationship with my own body. When you've lived with a chronic condition for a long time, it's easy to become frustrated with your body. I lived with eczema intermittently for around 35 years. There were certainly times when I wished my skin would just behave itself! Over time, I stopped seeing my body as the enemy and became more interested in what it might be trying to communicate. Instead of “Why is my body doing this to me?”, I now prefer, “What needs my attention?” I see the body as an incredibly intelligent system, continually trying to keep us alive and bring us back into balance. Even when its way of getting our attention is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or downright annoying, I don't automatically interpret that as failure. I also pay much closer attention to what I was feeling when a symptom appeared. What was happening emotionally that day or in the weeks leading up to it? Was I stressed, frustrated, grieving, anxious, or ignoring something or someone I didn't want to deal with? Sometimes the connection becomes surprisingly obvious once you start looking. The body can be incredibly honest. It often reacts before the conscious mind is ready to admit something isn't right. It could be a relationship, lifestyle, environment, pace of living, or even a version of ourselves we've outgrown. That's why I've become more interested in feeling into my body rather than only thinking my way through life. How does my body respond when something feels right? What happens when it doesn't? I've learned that physical responses can sometimes tell me something my logical mind hasn't caught up with yet. This philosophy has also deepened my appreciation for what the body does every day. I explored that in A Love Letter to the Body That Never Gave Up on You. We spend so much time criticising our bodies for how they look, what hurts, or what they can no longer do that we forget everything they've carried us through. Healing, for me, isn't only about becoming symptom-free. It's also about the relationship we develop with ourselves along the way. When we listen instead of constantly fighting the body, we may discover that healing asks for changes beyond the symptom itself. Perhaps we need stronger boundaries, more rest, or the courage to leave something behind that no longer fits who we're becoming. Your body has been with you through every heartbreak, illness, stressful period, mistake, reinvention, and new beginning. Maybe instead of asking what is wrong with it, we could occasionally ask what it has been trying so hard to do for us. That has changed how I approach healing and, frankly, how I approach life. If readers could take away one idea that changes how they think about health and healing, what would you hope it is? I would want them to remember that they are more than their diagnosis, and their current state of health does not necessarily have to define their future. A diagnosis can be useful. It can finally name what you've been experiencing and point you toward treatment. What concerns me is when it quietly becomes an identity and, before you know it, you've built your life around what you've been told you may never do again. I understand that personally after living with chronic eczema intermittently for around 35 years. If you've lived with something for five, ten or twenty years, stay curious. Feel into your body and notice what was happening emotionally when symptoms appeared or changed. Look at your lifestyle, relationships, environment and patterns. Instead of only asking, “What's wrong with me?”, perhaps ask, “Where am I out of balance, and what might my body be trying to tell me?” I believe the body is infinitely intelligent and always trying to keep us alive. Looking at “dis-ease” holistically through the lens of physical, emotional, and psycho-spiritual imbalance opens a very different conversation about healing. Don't automatically assume something is permanent simply because you've lived with it for a long time. As mentioned earlier, I've seen an eight-year mobility restriction begin to change in around 20 minutes. Experiences like that keep me fascinated by what may become possible when we challenge limits we've unconsciously accepted. Healing, for me, isn't simply about chasing symptoms until they disappear. It's an opportunity to understand yourself more deeply, reconnect with your body, and question limiting beliefs about your health that may have become so familiar you don't even realise you're still carrying them. So I want to finish by saying to your readers what I often say to my clients: "I want you to know that full healing and recovery are available to you. You just need to give yourself permission to stop letting your diagnosis write your ending, and the courage to dream again." Life is for living. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Connie Ng

Written by Funk Roberts, Fitness Expert for Men Over 40 Funk Roberts is one of the world’s leading health, fitness, and longevity experts for men over 40. He created the Over 40 Alpha Brotherhood, is a bestselling author, a certified hormone specialist, and the founder of National Testosterone Awareness Day, helping men reclaim strength, energy, confidence, and vitality as they age. One of the biggest mistakes I see men make over the age of 40, 50, and 60 is assuming that getting leaner automatically means they need to eat less and less. The belly starts growing, the scale starts creeping upward, their energy isn't what it used to be, and muscle becomes harder to maintain. So, what do they do? They slash calories, skip meals, eliminate carbohydrates, live on salads, add more cardio, and hope the weight disappears. Sometimes it does. But there's a question I want every man over 40 to start asking: What exactly are you losing? Losing weight and improving your body are not necessarily the same thing. If the number on the scale drops but you're also losing valuable muscle, feeling weaker, struggling through workouts, constantly hungry, and eventually regaining the weight, you haven't fixed the underlying problem. You've simply made yourself smaller for a while. After 40, your nutrition needs to accomplish much more than creating the largest calorie deficit you can tolerate. You want to lose excess body fat while preserving and building muscle, fueling your workouts, providing the nutrients your body needs, and improving the metabolic health that becomes increasingly important as you move through your 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond. That's why I've always taught men that you can't out-train a bad diet. My Meta Test Boost Nutrition System was built around consistency and creating a sustainable nutritional foundation rather than relying on another temporary fad diet. But I want to take that philosophy one step further. I believe every meal a man eats after 40 should perform four jobs: build, fuel, support hormones, and support metabolic health. If you understand those four jobs, nutrition becomes a lot simpler. The big mistake: Eating less while ignoring muscle Muscle is one of the most valuable physical assets a man can carry into the second half of his life. Yet one of the problems with aggressive dieting is that men can lose lean tissue along with body fat, particularly when protein intake and resistance training aren't properly addressed. There's also an important age-related phenomenon called anabolic resistance. In simple terms, skeletal muscle can become less responsive to some of the anabolic signals that stimulate muscle protein synthesis as we age. The science is more nuanced than saying your muscles suddenly "stop responding" after your 40th birthday. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis found modest age-related reductions in basal and post-meal muscle protein synthesis, while also finding that the anabolic response can remain remarkably intact when exercise is combined with adequate protein or amino acids. That last point is incredibly important. Aging doesn't mean you can't build or maintain muscle. It means you need to give your body a strong enough reason and the nutritional materials to do it. Resistance training and protein become a powerful combination. A systematic review of randomized controlled trials in adults with a mean age of at least 50 found that increased protein intake combined with resistance exercise produced greater gains in appendicular lean mass than lower protein intake. Another review of meta-analyses found that protein supplementation alongside resistance training was associated with greater increases in lean body mass and muscle mass in older adults. That's why I don't want men over 40 starving themselves. I want them feeding the muscle while losing the fat. Protein is no longer just "bodybuilder nutrition" I've been preaching protein for decades, but after 40, I want you to think about it differently. Protein isn't just about looking jacked. Protein provides the amino acids your body uses to repair and build muscle tissue, something my Meta Test Boost Nutrition System (MTBN) has always emphasized. Research in older adults continues to support the importance of protein, particularly when paired with resistance training. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis reported that protein supplementation can improve muscle mass in community-dwelling older adults, while another 2024 meta-analysis in adults with sarcopenia found that combining protein supplementation with resistance exercise improved muscle mass and strength. For an active man over 40 who is resistance training, I generally like a practical protein target in the neighborhood of 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, adjusted for the individual, his body composition, training, and goals. That's about 1 gram per pound of body weight. An 180-pound man would therefore land at a minimum of around 180 grams of protein per day as a useful starting point. I don't want you saving 80 grams of that for a giant steak at 8:00 at night. Spread quality protein throughout your three meals, so you're repeatedly giving your body amino acids throughout the day. Eggs, beef, chicken, turkey, fish, seafood, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and quality whey protein are all options. My Meta Test Boost Nutrition Master Food List was deliberately designed to provide a wide variety of protein sources rather than sentencing men to plain chicken breast seven nights a week. Every time you look at your plate, your first question should be: Where's my protein? That's job number one: build. Stop being afraid of healthy fats The next mistake I see is men hearing the words "lose fat" and deciding they need to eliminate fat from their diet. Dietary fat and stored body fat are not the same thing. Fat is an essential macronutrient. It provides essential fatty acids, contributes to cell membranes, helps with the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, and plays numerous physiological roles. Extremely low-fat eating is not necessary for successful fat loss. This is also where the "hormonal support" component of nutrition for men over 40 comes in. Nutrition doesn't magically boost testosterone through one special food, but cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone production. Your body needs the raw materials and energy required to function properly. The key is quality and portion control because dietary fat is calorie-dense. You need a source of healthy fat with all three meals. Think extra virgin olive oil, avocado, Brazil nuts, chia seeds, whole eggs, and fatty fish. These are exactly the types of foods included in this approach. So, we're not going fat-free. We're also not pouring half a bottle of olive oil over dinner because somebody on Instagram told us healthy fats don't count. They count, and we use them strategically. That's job number two: hormonal support. Carbohydrates are not the enemy Then we get to one of my favorite nutrition myths: "I'm over 40, so I have to stop eating carbs." No, you don't. Carbohydrates aren't inherently making you fat simply because you turned 40. Your total energy intake, energy expenditure, food quality, activity level, and broader lifestyle all matter. If you're training hard, carbohydrates can be valuable fuel. Research supports a more nuanced view than either "carbs are essential for every workout" or "carbs make you fat." A 2022 systematic review examining 49 studies found that additional carbohydrate didn't consistently improve ordinary resistance training performance when people were already fed, but benefits became more apparent with higher volume training and under glycogen-depleted or fasted conditions. A separate systematic review and meta-analysis found that carbohydrate intake improved total resistance training volume, particularly during sessions longer than 45 minutes or following an eight-hour or longer fast. That's exactly why I call them strategic complex carbohydrates. I'm talking about foods such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, steel-cut oats, beans, legumes, Ezekiel bread, and other complex carbohydrate sources. Your carbohydrates will support muscle growth, energy, and, most importantly, your thyroid, which plays an important role in regulating metabolism. A man doing a demanding resistance workout may benefit from more carbohydrates than someone sitting at a desk all day. Training volume, activity, body composition, and goals all matter. Don't fear carbohydrates. Earn them, use them, and put them to work. That's job number three: fuel. Vegetables and fruits belong on the plate This is something I want to be very clear about. I don't just tell men to "eat plants." Eat vegetables and fruits. Different vegetables and fruits provide different combinations of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. They also help you build meals with more volume and nutritional value without relying on highly processed foods. Load up on broccoli, spinach, asparagus, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and other vegetables you enjoy. Add berries, apples, oranges, bananas, kiwi, melons, and other fruits. Don't turn nutrition into a religion where bananas are suddenly "bad" because they contain sugar. It's a banana, brother. Eat the banana. My Meta Test Boost Nutrition has always emphasized eating a variety of fruits and vegetables because of their nutrient density, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber. Your goal isn't to identify one magical "superfood." Your goal is dietary variety and consistency. Your belly fat is about more than how you look in the mirror This is where nutrition after 40 stops being purely about six-pack abs. The fat accumulating around your midsection can include visceral adipose tissue, which surrounds the internal organs. Visceral fat isn't simply stored energy sitting harmlessly under your skin. Higher visceral fat is strongly associated with metabolic dysfunction and metabolic syndrome. A systematic review examining visceral adipose tissue across diverse populations concluded that excess visceral fat contributes significantly to metabolic syndrome risk. Earlier meta-analytic evidence examining different fat depots also found that visceral fat had the strongest association with insulin resistance among the adiposity measures evaluated. This is why I want men to stop looking only at body weight. Pay attention to your waist circumference. Pay attention to your body composition. Pay attention to your blood pressure. Pay attention to fasting glucose and Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c). Pay attention to triglycerides and cholesterol. Pay attention to how strong you are, how well you move, and how fit you are. You don't just want to become lighter. You want to become metabolically healthier. That's job number four: metabolic health. Ultra-processed foods make eating less much harder Here's another reason simply telling a man to "eat fewer calories" isn't enough. The foods you're eating can influence how easy or difficult that becomes. One of the most fascinating controlled nutrition studies was conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Twenty adults lived at the NIH Clinical Center and were given either an ultra-processed or minimally processed diet for two weeks before switching to the other diet. The diets presented to participants were matched for several nutritional variables, but participants could eat as much or as little as they wanted. When eating the ultra-processed diet, people consumed roughly 500 more calories per day and gained weight. When eating the minimally processed diet, they lost weight. Think about that. Sometimes the answer isn't simply developing more willpower. Change the food environment. This is why Meta Test Boost Nutrition emphasizes recognizable whole and minimally processed foods. The system was built around foods such as eggs, meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, and described the overall approach as a sustainable eating lifestyle rather than a temporary diet. If most of the food in your kitchen comes in brightly colored packages engineered to be incredibly easy to overeat, you're making fat loss unnecessarily difficult. Make your environment work for you. Alcohol is working against more men than they realize We also need to talk about alcohol. This is another uncomfortable conversation for men over 40 because drinking is so deeply woven into social life. A few beers watching the game. Wine with dinner. Drinks with clients. A couple of cocktails on Friday and Saturday. Somehow none of those calories count because they're liquid. Except they do. Alcohol provides calories, can interfere with sleep and recovery, and carries health risks that increase with consumption. The World Health Organization notes that alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen and that current evidence does not establish a threshold of alcohol consumption with zero health risk, particularly regarding cancer. I'm not here to tell every grown man what he can or cannot do. But if you're asking me how to maximize your chances of getting leaner, improving your sleep, recovering from training, and supporting long-term health, no alcohol beats more alcohol. That's the truth. For a man who has been struggling to lose belly fat for years, removing alcohol for 30 days can also be an incredibly useful experiment. See what happens to your calories, appetite, sleep, workouts, and waistline. Micronutrients matter too Protein, carbohydrates, and fats get most of the attention because they're the macronutrients. But food isn't simply protein, carbs, fat, and calories. Your body also requires vitamins and minerals, and foods provide fiber and numerous other bioactive compounds. This is another reason I don't want men trying to build their entire diet around protein bars, shakes, and packaged "fitness foods." Eat variety. Eat eggs. Eat seafood. Eat different colored vegetables. Eat fruits. Eat nuts and seeds. Eat quality protein. Eat minimally processed carbohydrate sources. Don't forget the simplest nutrient of all: Water Hydration may be the least sexy nutrition strategy on earth, but it also matters. Fluid needs vary tremendously depending on body size, climate, activity, diet, medications, and how much you sweat, so I don't believe every man needs to force down the exact same arbitrary gallon of water every day. But you should be consistently hydrated. The perfect nutrition plan begins the day with hydration, mixing electrolytes with water and continuing to drink water throughout the day. Use urine color, thirst, activity, and environmental conditions as practical guides, and increase fluid intake when you're sweating heavily during workouts or in hot weather. Again, nutrition doesn't need to be complicated. What about meal frequency and fasting? One of the things that has changed in nutrition over the years is our understanding of meal frequency. There isn't convincing evidence that you must eat every two or three hours to "keep your metabolism burning." You don't automatically destroy your metabolism because you prefer two or three larger meals. Some men do extremely well eating three meals with no snacks. Others prefer two larger meals within a time-restricted eating window. Some like three meals and a protein shake snack to ensure they get their daily protein numbers. Today, I'm much more interested in what those meals accomplish than in forcing every man to eat at exactly the same times. Can you meet your protein needs? Are you getting enough vegetables and fruits? Are you consuming appropriate amounts of healthy fats and quality carbohydrates? Can you control your total food intake? Does the schedule fit your life? Can you follow it consistently? If yes, you're moving in the right direction. The Meta Test Boost plate: The four jobs every meal needs to perform after 40 This is where I want to make everything we've discussed incredibly simple. You shouldn't need a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in nutrition every time you open the refrigerator. When you sit down for your main meals, look at the plate and ask yourself whether you've covered these four jobs. Build: Where is my quality protein? Beef, chicken, eggs, fish, seafood, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, whey, or another quality protein source. Your goal is to provide amino acids that help preserve, repair, and build muscle. Fuel: Where are my strategic complex carbohydrates? Depending on your training, activity, and goals, this might include rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, oats, beans, legumes, or fruit. Carbohydrates aren't the enemy. They're fuel, and we adjust the amount to the individual. Hormonal support: Where are my healthy fats? Extra virgin olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, whole eggs, or fatty fish can help provide essential fats and other nutrients your body needs for normal physiological function. Metabolic health: Where are my vegetables and fruits? Get color onto that plate. Vegetables, fruits, and other fiber-rich whole foods contribute nutrients, fiber, and food volume that support overall diet quality and metabolic health. This takes my Meta Test Boost Nutrition principle of a balanced plate containing protein, starchy carbohydrates, healthy fats, and vegetables or fruits and gives every component a clear purpose. Build. Fuel. Hormonal support. Metabolic health. That's the Meta Test Boost Nutrition philosophy. Stop dieting and start eating for the man you want to become If you're a man over 40, I don't want you spending the next 20 years getting heavier, crash dieting, losing weight, regaining it, and starting over every January. Stop asking, "How little can I eat?" Start asking: "How can I feed my body so I can lose excess fat while protecting muscle, naturally supporting my hormones, training hard, and supporting my long-term overall health?" That's an entirely different mindset. Eating less can certainly be part of losing body fat because energy balance still matters. I'm not suggesting calories somehow disappear after 40. I'm saying "eat less" isn't a nutrition strategy. You need protein. You need essential fats. You can strategically use quality complex carbohydrates. You need vegetables and fruits. You need micronutrients. You need fiber. You need water. You need an approach simple enough that you can follow it when life isn't perfect. Don't starve the body you're trying to rebuild. Build it. Fuel it. Support it. Protect its metabolic health. Because after 40, 50, and 60, the goal isn't simply to weigh less. The goal is to become leaner, stronger, healthier, and harder to kill as you age. That's what Meta Test Boost Nutrition is all about. If you have been struggling to figure out what to eat, how much to eat, what not to eat, and when to eat to support your overall health, then I am here for you. This is exactly what my Over 40 Alpha Workout, Nutrition and Brotherhood program teaches you. It gives you a step-by-step blueprint for developing a sustainable nutrition lifestyle for men over 40, 50, and 60. Join the Over 40 Alpha Program and Brotherhood and start eating your way to losing belly fat, having more energy, increasing your testosterone, and improving your overall health. That's what I call the optimized man. Get it done! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Funk Roberts Funk Roberts, Fitness Expert for Men Over 40 Funk Roberts is a former professional athlete and now is one of the world’s leading health, fitness, and longevity experts for men over 40. After overcoming addiction, depression, and low testosterone himself, he dedicated his life to helping men reclaim their strength, energy, confidence, and purpose as they age. He is the founder of the Over 40 Alpha Brotherhood, a multi-seven-figure fitness community with thousands of members worldwide, and the creator of over 100 transformation programs for men over 40. Funk is a bestselling author, certified hormone specialist, Harvard Extension School graduate, and creator of the Men Over 40 Global Health Summit. His mission is to help one million men over 40 transform their health and lives naturally. References and scientific sources: Vieira AF, Santos JS, Costa RR, et al. Effects of Protein Supplementation Associated with Resistance Training on Body Composition and Muscle Strength in Older Adults: A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews with Meta-analyses. Sports Medicine. 2022, 52(10):2511–2522. The review found that protein supplementation combined with resistance training was associated with greater gains in lean body mass and muscle mass compared with resistance training alone. Nunes EA, Currier BS, Lim C, et al. Protein interventions augment the effect of resistance exercise on appendicular lean mass and handgrip strength in older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2022, 115(3):897–913. The analysis included studies with a mean participant age of at least 50 and supports the combination of resistance exercise and increased protein intake for lean mass outcomes. Hettiarachchi J, Reijnierse EM, Kew N, et al. The effect of dose, frequency, and timing of protein supplementation on muscle mass in older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Ageing Research Reviews. 2024, 99:102325. Protein supplementation was associated with improved muscle mass among community-dwelling older adults. Age-related anabolic resistance and post-absorptive muscle protein synthesis: integrative evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis. The analysis found modest age-related reductions in basal and nutrient-stimulated muscle protein synthesis but also found that anabolic responsiveness can remain when sufficiently strong exercise and nutritional stimuli are provided. Bennett JP. Evaluation of visceral adipose tissue thresholds for elevated metabolic syndrome risk across diverse populations: A systematic review. Obesity Reviews. 2024. The review found that excess visceral adipose tissue contributes significantly to elevated metabolic syndrome risk. Zhang M, Hu T, Zhang S, Zhou L. Associations of Different Adipose Tissue Depots with Insulin Resistance: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Observational Studies. Scientific Reports. 2015, 5:18495. Among the adiposity measures examined, visceral fat showed the strongest association with insulin resistance. Hall KD, Ayuketah A, Brychta R, et al. Ultra Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake. Cell Metabolism. 2019, 30(1):67–77.e3. Participants consumed substantially more calories and gained weight during the ultra-processed dietary condition compared with the minimally processed condition. Henselmans M, Bjørnsen T, Hedderman R, Vårvik FT. The Effect of Carbohydrate Intake on Strength and Resistance Training Performance: A Systematic Review. Nutrients. 2022, 14(4):856. The evidence suggests additional carbohydrate is most likely to benefit resistance training performance under particular circumstances, such as high training volume, fasting, or glycogen depletion, rather than automatically improving every strength workout. King A, Helms E, Zinn C, Jukic I. The Ergogenic Effects of Acute Carbohydrate Feeding on Resistance Exercise Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Sports Medicine. 2022, 52:2691–2712. Carbohydrate ingestion improved total resistance training volume overall, with larger benefits observed during longer sessions and following prolonged fasting. Anderson BO, Berdzuli N, Ilbawi A, et al. Health and cancer risks associated with low levels of alcohol consumption. The Lancet Public Health. 2023, 8(1):e6–e7. The authors conclude that current evidence does not establish a level of alcohol consumption with zero health risk, particularly for cancer. This article is for educational purposes and is not individualized medical or nutritional advice. Men with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, or other medical conditions, or those taking medications that may be affected by dietary changes, should discuss major nutrition changes with their physician or registered dietitian.

Mohamed Ahmed Fouad Amin approaches real estate investment from an unusual starting point: not how much an investor could make, but how much capital could be lost if the assumptions prove wrong. Based in Dubai, he is the founder and managing director of WeValue Real Estate Valuation Services and the founder of WeValue AI, a property valuation and market intelligence platform. His work focuses on valuation, investment analysis, capital protection, and exit strategy, with a particular emphasis on separating the quality of a property from the quality of the investment itself. With extensive experience across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) property market, Amin argues that investors should spend as much time planning how to leave an investment as they spend deciding how to enter it. He also lectures at the Real Estate Institute in Abu Dhabi and is the author of books on the property market. We spoke to him about building a property portfolio, off-plan risk, investing in Dubai from abroad, artificial intelligence in valuation, and the arithmetic most property investors never run. “I don't begin by asking how much an investment can make. I begin by asking how much it can lose, and how we get out if we're wrong.” Mohamed Ahmed Fouad Amin, Owner of Alfouad Group How did you end up advising investors rather than transacting for them? There was no single dramatic moment. It happened gradually, after years of sitting on the transaction side of the table and seeing the same problem repeat itself: the person giving the buyer advice was often the same person who needed the buyer to complete the deal. I began spending more time asking questions that had nothing to do with closing. What happens if the market slows? Who buys this asset next? What is the real cost after charges? Should the investor buy at all? Eventually, I realised that this was the part of the business I was most interested in. That is what moved me toward valuation and advisory. I wanted the analysis to survive even when the transaction did not. The principle is simple: advice is only valuable when it remains independent of whether a deal happens. What does a real estate investment advisor actually do? Three things. First, I define the mandate: what this capital is for, over what horizon, and what level of loss the investor can absorb without changing the purpose of the investment. Second, I build the portfolio to that mandate rather than to whatever is being marketed this quarter, including which asset types, which districts, which entry points, and in what sequence. Third, I plan the exits, which is the part almost nobody plans and everybody eventually needs. Buying is the easy half of investing. My work concentrates on the half that determines the actual return: what you own, why you own it, and how you leave it. How do you build a property portfolio from scratch? Not by buying the best available unit. You start with the mandate, then with liquidity. At least one part of the portfolio should be capable of being sold reasonably quickly in a slower market, even if that requires accepting a discount. Then you diversify along the axes that actually matter: completion status, tenant profile, price band, location drivers, and timing, rather than simply owning four apartments in four different towers. That can still be concentration wearing a disguise. I also prefer staggered entries. Investors who deploy everything in a single quarter have not really built a diversified property portfolio; they have made one large market timing decision with several title deeds. In the UAE, sequencing purchases can be as important as selecting the assets themselves. What returns should a property investor realistically expect? I would ask a different question: what return, net of everything, and with what probability of actually receiving it? Gross yield is a marketing number. Net yield after service charges, vacancy, management, maintenance, financing where applicable, and eventual transaction costs is a different figure entirely. The gap between the two is where much of the disappointment lives. I would rather a client accept a modest, defensible net return he actually receives than an ambitious gross figure he calculates once and never sees again. The right benchmark is not the advertised return; it is the risk-adjusted net return compared with what the same capital could reasonably earn elsewhere. What is the most common mistake you see investors make? They confuse the price of the property with the cost of the investment. An investor sees the purchase price and calculates a yield against it, but the real capital employed can include registration costs, service charges, financing costs, maintenance, vacancy, management fees, and eventually the cost of selling. Once those are included, an investment that looked exceptional can become completely ordinary. The second mistake follows from the first: they analyse how to buy the property but not how somebody else will eventually buy it from them. I have seen perfectly good properties become poor investments simply because the investor entered at the wrong price or into a segment with weak resale liquidity. This is especially important when assessing off-plan investment risk in Dubai and the wider UAE. A flexible payment plan or a compelling launch price does not remove delivery risk, future supply, service charge assumptions, or resale competition. A good property can still be a bad investment. The asset is only half the equation; the price and the exit are the other half. “A good property can still be a bad investment.” When should an investor sell? When the reason he bought no longer holds, not simply when the price feels high or low. Most investors have a detailed entry thesis and no exit rule at all, so the decision to sell ends up being made by emotion or by an emergency. I ask every client to define, at purchase, the two or three conditions under which he would exit: the yield falling below a threshold, a major supply pipeline arriving in the district, a target horizon being reached, or a material change in the original investment thesis. Decisions made in advance are usually better than decisions made under pressure. Why does capital protection come before returns in your approach? Because the arithmetic is asymmetric and almost nobody internalises it. A forty percent loss requires roughly a sixty-seven percent gain to recover, before you even account for the time lost. Most investors model the upside in detail and the downside not at all. I run the opposite exercise first: if this goes wrong, how wrong can it go, how quickly will we know, and what can we salvage? That is the foundation of a capital protection strategy. An investment you cannot exit is not really an investment; it can become a storage cost with a title deed. How does WeValue AI change the way you advise? WeValue AI is being built to turn property data into an independent second opinion before an investor commits capital. It brings valuation, comparable transactions, market analysis, and investment indicators into one platform so that an individual investor can approach a property with more of the analytical discipline normally available to larger market participants. The platform is currently at its launch stage, with key real estate data integrations being implemented and tested. The objective is not to replace the valuer or the investment advisor; it is to give both of them better information, faster. What technology has genuinely solved is the data half of the problem: processing comparable transactions quickly, holding multiple variables in view at once, and applying the same analytical process consistently. What it does not do is stand in the building, understand the quality of execution, or interpret the behaviour behind the numbers. Analysis is judgement applied to data, and the judgement half is still ours. What should international investors know before buying in Dubai from abroad? For an investor buying property in Dubai from abroad, the first problem is information asymmetry. From a distance, much of what you see is material produced by people who are ultimately paid to sell the unit. You may not see the construction site that will occupy the view for years, understand the resale depth in that particular building, or know that comparable units traded recently at materially different prices. Someone on the ground with no commission tied to the transaction can test those assumptions independently. For a remote investor, independent analysis is not an administrative step taken after the decision; it is the decision, made properly. “For a remote investor, independent analysis is not an administrative step taken after the decision; it is the decision, made properly.” You wrote a book titled "Please Don't Buy Property from This Developer." What did that cost you? It cost me the comfort of being agreeable to everyone, and I was prepared for that. The title was deliberately uncomfortable because the subject is uncomfortable. In real estate, there is constant commercial pressure to talk about what investors should buy. Far fewer people are willing to explain when the right decision is not to buy. What I gained was more important. People understood my position before they ever sat across the table from me. They knew I was willing to question the developer, the numbers, and, when necessary, the entire transaction. The book was never intended to be a blacklist of developers. It was about recognising financial, contractual, and operational patterns that should make an investor stop and investigate before transferring his money. A developer can change. A market can change. But the warning signs repeat themselves. What is the one thing you would tell someone about to commit capital tomorrow? Run the exit before you run the entry. Ask who buys this from you in five years, at what price range, in what kind of market, and how long the sale is likely to take. If you cannot answer those four questions, you do not yet have an investment thesis; you have a preference. Preferences are how people end up owning assets they cannot sell, in markets they entered at the wrong moment, with returns that existed only in a spreadsheet. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Mohamed Ahmed Fouad Amin

Technology has stopped behaving like a sector and started behaving more like the infrastructure underneath everything else. It sits behind the payment rails moving client money, the platforms pricing risk, and the reporting systems telling a family office what it actually owns. The technology itself may be invisible to the client, but the decisions built around it aren't. Overall, it has changed what clients need from the people advising them. Daniel Ladner, a Certified Portfolio Manager and Senior Vice President of Wealth Management, has spent more than 25 years in finance watching technology become harder to separate from the businesses and portfolios his clients depend on. A fintech certification can help advisors get closer to that underlying machinery. At its best, the training goes beyond learning financial terminology or adding another credential to a résumé. It teaches advisors how financial technology is built, how data moves through these systems, and where the assumptions behind a technology-driven business can start to break down. For someone working across institutional mandates and private wealth, that knowledge can stay useful long after the coursework ends, especially as new technologies keep changing the investment landscape. What a FinTech Certification actually covers Ladner earned his Certified Portfolio Manager designation from the Columbia School of Engineering Fu Foundation School, in conjunction with the Academy of Certified Portfolio Managers and Fintech Computer Programming. The program reflects a straightforward idea: understanding an investment increasingly requires understanding the technology and systems behind the business. The quantitative side of that training teaches advisors to work with data more directly. That means understanding what a model assumes before relying on its output, recognizing a data set's limitations, and knowing when a backtest reveals something meaningful about a strategy and when it's simply describing the past. Then there's the computational side. Learning to program, even at a practical level, can change the way someone looks at a software company. Code stops looking like an abstract technical detail and starts looking like part of the business itself. It has costs. It has dependencies. It breaks. It needs to be maintained. And those realities can have a direct effect on a company's margins and long-term prospects. That perspective can lead an advisor to look past the story a technology company tells about itself and start asking what has to be true for that story to work. Why technology investing punishes surface-level analysis Technology companies can be particularly difficult to evaluate because so much of their value depends on what happens next. Two businesses can report similar revenue while carrying very different risks. A subscription model and a licensing model may look comparable at a glance, but the underlying economics can be very different. The same goes for margins. A company's gross margin may look like a durable advantage until someone examines how dependent it is on inexpensive infrastructure. A technical moat may depend heavily on contracts with customers or suppliers. Those contracts can change. Technical knowledge gives an advisor another way to test those assumptions. How much of a company's costs rise as usage increases? What happens to margins if an infrastructure provider raises its prices? Is a product genuinely difficult to replicate, or have customers simply had little reason to look elsewhere? How much engineering capacity is devoted to developing new products, and how much is spent keeping existing systems functioning? Security raises another set of questions. For a company handling financial assets or sensitive customer information, the strength of its technology infrastructure can quickly become a business risk. An advisor who understands how those systems work is better positioned to assess whether security is built into the business or simply discussed in the risk section of an annual report. How Daniel Ladner applies certification training to client decisions Dan Ladner began his career with his current firm in 2008. His responsibilities include analyzing client objectives, developing strategic and tactical asset allocation policies, selecting investment managers, and reviewing investment results. Each of those decisions has a technical component. Understanding a client's objectives means looking beyond what they say they want and examining what their financial circumstances actually require. Building an allocation means understanding how investments behave together, including what can happen when correlations that normally look stable change during a period of market stress. Evaluating an investment manager means separating the decisions that drove performance from the market conditions that happened to help. Reviewing results means asking why a strategy worked, not simply whether it made money. His team develops customized wealth management strategies for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, private foundations and endowments, and privately controlled corporations. That mix of clients brings technology into the conversation in very different ways. An entrepreneur selling a software company may suddenly have significant exposure to the technology sector through the business they built. A foundation may view technology exposure as one small piece of a portfolio designed to support spending for decades. The circumstances are different, but both situations benefit from an advisor who can look beyond a sector label and understand what actually drives the businesses involved. Certification as a discipline, not a one-time credential The designation itself is only part of what a certification can provide. The lasting benefit may be the expectation that learning doesn't stop once the credential is earned. Ladner has continued his education well beyond the CPM. His professional development includes the Chicago Booth School Certified Private Wealth Advisor Program and graduate studies at Harvard University Extension School. His regulatory credentials require the same kind of ongoing attention. He maintains Series 7, 9, 10, 31, 63, and 65 licenses, along with life insurance licensing, and is registered to conduct securities business and provide investment advisory services in more than 30 states, including New York, California, Florida, and Texas. Technology presents an obvious challenge to that kind of education. No certification program can stay perfectly current with an industry that keeps producing new technologies, business models, and risks. What can endure is the method. An advisor who understands how to examine an unfamiliar technology, question its assumptions, and figure out where the risks actually sit has something more useful than a list of technologies they learned about several years ago. That's why keeping up with new developments becomes part of the job itself. The questions change as the technology changes. What clients should ask about an advisor's technical training A list of credentials doesn't tell a client much about how an advisor actually thinks. A few direct questions can reveal much more. What did the certification require? A program involving examinations and applied work tells you something different from one based primarily on attendance. How does that training affect the advisor's investment process? Ask for an example. A specific decision usually says more than a general statement about the importance of technology. How does the advisor evaluate a technology company they don't already understand? The answer can reveal how much of their process depends on a familiar narrative and how much depends on understanding the business underneath it. And perhaps the most useful question: What did the advisor get wrong during a previous technology cycle, and what changed afterward? None of this requires a client to become a technology expert. The advisor should be able to translate. Someone who understands the underlying systems should be able to explain why they matter without hiding behind technical language. About the author Daniel Ladner, CPM, is Senior Vice President of Wealth Management at a financial services firm, where he has provided tailored investment advice for more than 17 years. A Certified Portfolio Manager accredited through Columbia University, Daniel Ladner works with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, private foundations, endowments, and privately controlled corporations on long-term wealth strategy. He was named to the Best-In-State Forbes Wealth Management Team for 2023 and 2024, a recognition selected independently by SHOOK Research in partnership with Forbes.

Dr. Zuobiao Yuan, Lic. Ac, PhD, is a licensed acupuncturist, physician, researcher, educator, and founder of Yi Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine in Woodbury, Minnesota. He is also a current board member of the Minnesota Acupuncture Association. With more than 30 years of experience in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), integrative medicine, biomedical research, and higher education, Dr. Yuan brings a rare combination of classical Chinese medicine and modern scientific research to patient care. Zuobiao Yuan, Founder of Yi Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine Can you share what inspired you to combine Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with modern biomedical research? This probably has to do with my background. When I enrolled in university, I didn’t actually apply to a TCM university; I was assigned to it. Initially, I felt very resistant to the idea of directly applying concepts that are thousands of years old, like Yin Yang and the Five Elements, to modern clinical medicine because I felt the two were completely disconnected. Gradually, however, I tried to understand TCM and applied it to solve clinical problems, which led to very positive experiences. During college, my classmates and I had many meaningful discussions and debates regarding the future direction of TCM. Ultimately, I came to believe that the true direction for TCM development is to improve clinical efficacy. To achieve this systematically, we need basic and clinical research to provide data, support conclusions, and drive the entire industry forward. Why do you emphasise complex diseases in your clinical practice? Average or common illnesses can generally be handled by any TCM graduate, but that is not where the future of the industry lies. Complex diseases have always been the focus of the broader medical community. Therefore, as part of the TCM community and as an individual practitioner, it is only natural to focus my energy on complex diseases. What is your definition of a complex disease? These are diseases for which clinical outcomes remain unsatisfactory under current medical practices. For instance, cancer is difficult to cure, can be life-threatening, and has a massive impact on every family and individual. For many organs, such as the kidneys, heart, and lungs, chronic insufficiency means that conventional medicine can often only manage symptoms. Practitioners are forced to watch as symptoms worsen and functions undergo continuous, irreversible deterioration, leaving patients with a low quality of life and making organ transplantation the only eventual option or, worse, leaving them with no options at all. Of course, there is also massive room for improvement in the clinical outcomes of autoimmune diseases, metabolic disorders, and neurological conditions. How did your training at Longhua Hospital and Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine shape your approach to complex patient care? I obtained my doctoral degree from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and its affiliated Longhua Hospital was my primary clinical training ground. Additionally, I received training in modern medicine at Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, one of the best hospitals in China, which gave me a comprehensive and confident grasp of how to manage critical and severe clinical conditions. Because the hospitals where I worked or trained in China were all university affiliates, every physician was required to engage in research. Since the subjects of this research were always complex diseases, this pushed me to explore every possible avenue, including modern medicine, TCM, acupuncture, and even the latest biomedical research breakthroughs, to help patients recover as quickly as possible. What makes “Siege Therapy” unique compared to other integrative oncology methods? Longhua Hospital is one of the few national clinical centres for TCM oncology in China. Its academic leader, Professor Liu Jiaxiang, proposed the TCM treatment principle of “strengthening body resistance and eliminating pathogenic factors,” or Fu Zheng Qu Xie, in the 1970s. This approach emphasises improving the patient’s quality of life and prolonging survival rather than focusing solely on shrinking or completely eradicating tumours in the short term. This philosophy has gradually gained acceptance in modern medicine. Today, evaluating the efficacy of an oncology drug is no longer limited strictly to tumour regression but also focuses heavily on extended survival paired with a high quality of life, a shift that is particularly prominent when evaluating immunotherapy. In the past, the principle of “strengthening body resistance” typically focused on boosting the patient’s immunity. However, the mechanisms behind tumour formation are highly complex. For example, the microenvironment is equally critical to tumour occurrence and development. Unfortunately, there are currently no drugs on the market specifically designed to improve the tumour microenvironment. If we can alter the hypoxic and acidic microenvironment of a tumour, we can make it inhospitable to tumour growth and progression, helping to suppress the tumour fundamentally. This is much like surrounding a city during warfare to cut off its resources and ultimately win the battle. Improving the tumour microenvironment functions like improving wartime logistics, whereas surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted drugs, and immunotherapy act as advanced combat weapons. Both are necessary, and neither can be dispensed with. How has your research on inflammation and pancreatic disease influenced your clinical protocols? During my time working in China, the surgical department at Longhua Hospital significantly reduced the mortality rate associated with acute abdominal conditions, such as severe acute pancreatitis, through an integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine approach. Later, during my research period at the University of Minnesota Medical School, I was partially involved in translational medicine research on Minnelide, an active component derived from the TCM herb Tripterygium wilfordii, or Thunder God Vine, for pancreatic cancer. These experiences enabled me to accurately identify the specific strengths of TCM and integrate those insights, particularly discoveries from Chinese herbal pharmacology, into clinical practice. Which TCM techniques do you find most effective for patients with chronic or advanced conditions? Currently, in the United States, TCM therapies seem largely confined to acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping, Chinese herbal medicine, and infrared lamps. However, knowing how to combine and apply them is a complex discipline. For acupuncture, the choice of acupoints and specific manipulation techniques yields entirely different results. For Chinese herbal medicine, herbs must be used in different combinations and dosages tailored specifically to the patient’s TCM syndrome pattern to achieve better results. At the same time, we must comprehensively apply the findings of modern acupuncture and herbal pharmacological research to achieve maximum efficacy. What practical advice do you give patients to support healing between clinic visits? After a first treatment, the benefits of acupuncture generally last for about 24 hours before gradually declining, though some residual effects persist for a period. I generally advise patients to maintain a regular treatment schedule, such as two to three times a week, to achieve the optimal “dosage.” Additionally, I recommend that they engage in simple exercises or incorporate specific dietary therapies to support continuous recovery between visits. How do you decide which combination of acupuncture, herbs, or other modalities is right for each patient? This depends entirely on the patient’s condition. For instance, for chronic muscle and soft tissue pain, acupuncture alone is often sufficient. However, for conditions like renal insufficiency or cancer, acupuncture alone is relatively weak in efficacy, so Chinese herbal medicine must be introduced. For certain conditions, such as asthma, ankylosing spondylitis, anxiety, depression, and dysmenorrhoea, a combination of acupuncture and cupping often yields much better results. How does the principle of restoring balance guide your overall philosophy in patient care? Restoring balance is ultimately about helping the patient achieve homeostasis. Our bodies possess powerful feedback mechanisms designed to restore health. For example, if you are dehydrated, the body responds by concentrating urine while prioritising fluid delivery to vital organs like the heart and brain. When these homeostatic regulations fail, disease occurs. By using methods like acupuncture, we stimulate these inherent homeostatic mechanisms to foster gradual recovery. In reality, a patient’s ultimate healing almost always relies on their own homeostatic function. Tell us about your clinical insights and achievements so far. My primary clinical insight is to keenly observe every single reaction from the patient. For example, with patients experiencing emotional or psychological distress, one often needs to identify the source of stress hidden within their subtle words and then provide targeted intervention. For illnesses of unknown origin, a detailed review of the patient’s medical history frequently uncovers the most probable trigger. At the same time, it is vital to actively draw on the experiences of peers and apply the latest research findings directly in the clinic. For instance, QI jumping acupuncture and motion acupuncture work exceptionally well for pain management. Similarly, research into herbal pharmacology offers practical guidance on enhancing the body’s oxygen utilisation and improving the acidic microenvironment of tumours. If I had to pinpoint a single major achievement, I would name “Siege Therapy” for tumours because it targets a monumental clinical challenge affecting human health, offering profound help in improving quality of life and extending life. What is the one key takeaway you want patients and practitioners to remember about integrative medicine? First, respect the choices of the patient’s body or your own body because the body is what truly knows what it needs. Second, begin with nonpharmacological therapies before progressively introducing herbs or other interventions. Finally, never give up easily until the very end because our bodies possess an incredibly powerful capacity for self-recovery. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Zuobiao Yuan

Written by Andy Husler, Acupuncturist, Visionary, and Alchemist Andy is recognized for his unique approach to acupuncture and integrative healing modalities, supporting people in overcoming acute and chronic physical and emotional pain. His treatments combine results-driven methods with spiritual awareness and energetic alignment, with noticeable improvement experienced in over 80% of first sessions. At the end of July, I went into the Swiss mountains for a Vipassana meditation course lasting ten days. For ten days, we meditated for about ten hours a day. There was no talking to other participants, no phones, no outside communication, and very little distraction from what was happening inside ourselves. I went there primarily for myself. I wanted to step away, clear my head, and reconnect with something easily lost in the pace of everyday life. Looking back, it became one of the most valuable experiences I have had in the past fifteen years. I returned feeling centred, clear, and deeply grounded. What I did not expect was to return with a different perspective on the very thing I work with every day: pain. I treat people in pain for a living. When someone is suffering, my professional instinct is to find a way to change it. Yet for ten days, I found myself in an environment where the lesson was almost the opposite. Instead of immediately trying to change an uncomfortable sensation, we were learning to observe it. That distinction proved far more important than I had expected. Ten days of total silence The first three days of the course are largely devoted to laying the foundation for the meditation technique. The environment is deliberately strict. The daily schedule leaves little room for distraction, and silence removes one of the ways we normally escape from ourselves: conversation. At first, ten hours of meditation sounds primarily like a mental challenge. It does not take long to discover that it is also an intensely physical one. After hours of sitting, knees begin to hurt. Legs grow uncomfortable. The back starts to complain. The neck tightens. Sensations that would normally prompt us to change position immediately suddenly become impossible to ignore. I watched people around me struggle with considerable physical discomfort, and I experienced it myself. During the course, I developed persistent tension and pain in the rhomboid muscles between my spine and shoulder blade. As an acupuncturist, I typically respond to pain actively. I want to understand what may be contributing to it and what intervention might change it. During meditation, however, I began experimenting with something very different. I stopped trying to make it disappear. When my own body became part of the lesson The more attention I gave the discomfort around my shoulder blade, with the intention of getting rid of it, the more dominant it seemed to become. My mind kept returning to the same area, almost as if it were repeatedly checking whether the problem was still there. Vipassana invited me to simply become the observer. Rather than immediately labelling the sensation as bad or trying to escape it, I began simply noticing it. There was tension. There was pressure. There was discomfort. But I did not have to turn every sensation into a problem that required an immediate solution. As I became better at observing rather than resisting, something changed. The pain became less dominant. The more I moved towards acceptance, the less power the sensation seemed to have over my attention. Eventually, it settled. I cannot conclude from this experience that acceptance mechanically removed the pain, nor would I suggest that people should simply meditate physical symptoms away. What interested me was something more subtle: as my relationship with the sensation shifted, my experience of it changed as well. Then I began noticing similar experiences around me. The man sitting next to me was in tears At one point, the man sitting beside me was in such severe physical discomfort that tears were streaming down his face. This was probably one of the more difficult moments of the retreat for me. My professional instinct kicked in. I wanted to help him. Part of me wondered what I would do if this person were sitting in my clinic instead of beside me in a meditation hall. My work with acupuncture has repeatedly shown me that pain can sometimes change remarkably quickly. Knowing that I had a method at my disposal that might have reduced at least some of his suffering made simply sitting there surprisingly difficult. But intervening was not my role. So I sat beside him and observed. There was something humbling about that experience. As therapists, we become accustomed to asking what we can do. Which intervention might help? Where can we create change? How can we make the person in front of us feel better? For ten days, I was confronted with another question, "What happens when I do nothing?" Later, when participants were able to speak about their experiences, I heard remarkably similar accounts. Some who had initially fought intensely against their pain described how difficult that resistance had made the experience. As they became more able to allow the sensations to be present without immediately reacting with aversion, something began to change. For some, the pain became less intense. For others, it changed in character. Some described it eventually disappearing. It made me reconsider a distinction that is easy to overlook in pain therapy: the difference between pain itself and the additional suffering caused by our response to it. What happens when we stop fighting pain? Pain is real. It should never be dismissed as imaginary simply because psychological and neurological processes shape how it is experienced. But pain is also not a direct measure of tissue damage. Our experience of pain arises from a complex interplay among sensory input, the brain and nervous system, attention, expectations, prior experience, and the meaning we assign to what we are feeling. This is one reason people with apparently similar physical findings can experience their symptoms very differently. When pain feels threatening, our natural response is to protect ourselves. Muscles tighten, and attention narrows around the painful area. We may begin to avoid certain movements and anticipate the next painful episode before it happens. None of this is irrational. Protection is one of the nervous system’s fundamental jobs. But protection can sometimes become part of the cycle. Pain heightens the sense of threat; threat can increase tension and vigilance; and heightened vigilance can make pain increasingly dominant in our awareness. What interested me about Vipassana was that the practice approached this cycle from another direction. Instead of immediately trying to change the sensation, we practised observing it without automatically reacting to it. The sensation could still be present. What changed was our relationship with it. Getting the mind on board One of the clearest lessons I took away from those ten days was a new appreciation for how powerfully the mind can shape our experience of the body. I do not mean “mind over matter.” That expression suggests the mind must somehow defeat the body, which is almost the opposite of what I experienced. I became more interested in what happens when the mind and body stop pulling in opposite directions. A person experiencing chronic pain can expend enormous energy fighting the symptom. We may fear it, monitor it, anticipate it, and gradually organise our behaviour around avoiding it. These reactions are understandable, but they can also keep pain at the centre of our attention. What I experienced during meditation made me wonder whether change becomes easier when the mind is “on board” rather than constantly fighting the body’s experience. This is not an argument for positive thinking, nor does it mean that people are responsible for their pain because they have the wrong mindset. It means something much simpler: attention, interpretation, expectation, and bodily sensation are not completely separate processes. If we want to understand pain, we have to consider the person experiencing it, not only the place where it hurts. Why Vipassana reminded me of Somatic Experiencing As the days progressed, another connection became increasingly clear to me. Parts of the experience reminded me of principles I recognise from Somatic Experiencing. Vipassana and Somatic Experiencing come from very different traditions and should not be treated as interchangeable methods. Yet both brought my attention to something I consider fundamental: our capacity to remain present with bodily sensations without immediately needing to escape, suppress, or change them. Much of everyday life trains us to move away from discomfort. If something hurts, we change position. If an emotion feels unpleasant, we distract ourselves. If tension appears, we want it gone. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Avoiding harm is essential. But there is a difference between responding appropriately to danger and automatically treating every uncomfortable internal sensation as a threat. What fascinated me during the retreat was watching sensations arise, intensify, change, and sometimes disappear while the person remained present with them. Instead of seeing the body as static, I experienced it as constantly moving and reorganising. That observation has stayed with me: sometimes our immediate reaction to a sensation may become part of the experience itself. What doing nothing taught me about acupuncture There was a certain irony in learning this lesson while surrounded by people in pain. My professional work centres on intervention. Someone comes to me because something is wrong, and my role is to help create change. In some cases, I have seen a single acupuncture needle change a longstanding pain pattern within minutes. I value that ability enormously. Watching the man beside me struggle was difficult precisely because I knew there was something I might have been able to do. At the same time, that knowledge created an unexpected sense of gratitude. It reminded me why I do this work. When you possess a method that can sometimes reduce another person’s suffering, being an acupuncturist begins to feel like more than simply having a profession. To me, it increasingly feels like a form of service to humanity. Yet Vipassana added something important to that understanding. Helping does not always mean intervening immediately. Sometimes the body needs treatment, support, or a carefully chosen stimulus. At other times, there may be value in creating enough space to experience what is present without immediately trying to remove it. That does not diminish acupuncture. If anything, the experience made me think more deeply about what acupuncture may actually be doing. Perhaps the needle is not simply fighting pain. Perhaps, in some situations, it helps change the state in which pain is being experienced. Two very different paths towards regulation This is where meditation and acupuncture unexpectedly connected for me. On the surface, they could hardly be more different. With acupuncture, we introduce something from the outside. A needle creates a sensory stimulus to which the nervous system responds. With Vipassana, intervention is deliberately reduced. We observe what is already present and practise not reacting automatically to it. One introduces a stimulus; the other changes our relationship with an existing one. Yet both experiences have led me to the same broader question, "What allows the nervous system to reduce protection when that level of protection is no longer necessary?" That question has become increasingly important in how I think about chronic pain. There are situations where tissue is injured and protection is essential. There are situations where structural pathology requires appropriate medical treatment. But there are also people whose pain persists long after the original event or whose symptoms cannot be fully explained by structural findings alone. For those patients, simply asking, “Where does it hurt?” may not be enough. We may also need to ask what happens throughout the system when pain appears. Does the body brace? Does movement become guarded? Does attention immediately narrow around the symptom? Has everyday life gradually become organised around avoiding pain? Those questions do not make pain less physical. They make our understanding of pain more complete. Knowing when to intervene and when to listen I went into the mountains knowing many ways to treat pain. I came back with a lesson I could never have learned in another acupuncture course: sometimes the first thing that needs to change is not the pain itself but our relationship with it. That does not mean pain should simply be endured. Persistent, severe, new, or unexplained pain deserves appropriate assessment, and there are many situations in which treatment is necessary. Acceptance should never become an excuse to ignore pathology or avoid appropriate care. But there is another extreme as well: believing that every uncomfortable sensation must be eliminated immediately. The retreat showed me that there can be space between those two positions. We can treat without fighting the body. We can observe without giving up. We can accept what is present while remaining open to change. For a therapist, that distinction matters. Final thoughts Ten days of silence did more than clear my head. The experience centred me in a way I had not felt in a long time, but it also challenged one of my strongest professional instincts. I am trained to intervene. Vipassana taught me to observe. My own rhomboid pain became less dominant as I stopped fighting it. I watched others move through intense physical discomfort and discover that their relationship with the sensation could change. I experienced how difficult it can be, as someone dedicated to relieving pain, to simply sit beside another human being who is suffering. I still believe deeply in intervention. I have seen too many patients benefit from the right treatment at the right moment to believe otherwise. But I returned from those mountains with greater respect for the other side of healing: the capacity to observe, to allow, and to stop turning every uncomfortable sensation into an immediate battle. Perhaps good pain therapy requires an understanding of both: the ability to recognise when the body needs help and the wisdom to recognise when it needs space. Perhaps the real skill is knowing when to intervene, and when to listen. Ready to look at pain differently? What if fighting your pain is only part of the story? If you are living with persistent pain, recurring tension, or symptoms that seem resistant to change, it may be worth exploring not only what you feel but also how your body and nervous system respond to what you feel. Sometimes the answer is intervention. Sometimes it is learning to listen. Sometimes, meaningful change begins when we understand the difference. To learn more about my work and approach, visit my website. For more insights into acupuncture, chronic pain, the nervous system, and the connection between body and mind, follow me on Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Read more from Andy Husler Andy Husler, Acupuncturist, Visionary, and Alchemist Andy is a certified naturopath specialized in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), recognized for his distinctive approach to acupuncture and integrative healing modalities. His treatments are designed to address acute and chronic physical as well as emotional pain by combining physical, emotional, and energetic alignment simultaneously. With a strong focus on tangible results, more than 80% of clients experience noticeable improvement during their first session.

Written by Kellie Warne, Diet and Lifestyle Advisor Kellie Warne is a certified Diet and Lifestyle Advisor, trained at the Institute of Optimum Nutrition, and a full member of the FHT. She supports busy individuals and families to improve energy, digestion, and resiliency through simple, sustainable food and lifestyle habits. How marketing, convenience, and our modern food environment have quietly reshaped our relationship with food, and why it’s time to stop blaming individuals for a system that makes healthy choices harder. Most of us don’t think about health when we’re thinking about happiness. We think about time with the people we love, experiences we enjoy, freedom to do the things that matter to us, and having the energy to actually enjoy them. But there’s an important distinction between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is immediate. It’s the chocolate bar after a difficult day, the takeaway when we’re too tired to cook, or the glass of wine at the end of a stressful week. These things can make us feel good in the moment. Happiness is something deeper. It comes from feeling well enough to participate in our lives, to play with our children, nurture relationships, pursue the things we care about, and look forward to the years ahead. Underneath so much of that is something we often take for granted: our health. Yet the food environment we’ve created increasingly blurs the line between the two. It sells us pleasure as though it were happiness and surrounds us with products designed to make that pleasure convenient, accessible, and repeatable. So perhaps the question isn’t simply, “What are we choosing to eat?” Perhaps we should also be asking, “What are we being encouraged to choose, and what is that environment ultimately costing us?” We have more nutritional knowledge, technology, and access to food than at almost any point in human history. Yet, diet-related ill health remains one of the defining public health challenges of our time. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other metabolic conditions affect millions of people. If people don’t choose these diseases, why are so many people developing them? Perhaps it’s time we stopped asking what’s wrong with people and started asking what’s wrong with the environment we’ve created around them. What has happened to our relationship with food? Walk into almost any supermarket, and you’re surrounded by colour, clever packaging, promotions, and products designed to catch your attention. Food isn’t simply being sold to us. An idea is being sold alongside it. The idea that a chocolate bar can make a difficult day better. That a takeaway is something we’ve earned. That sweets are a reward. That dessert is an expected part of dinner. That sharing food, celebrating, and even relaxing somehow require a particular product. The message is subtle but relentless, "Buy this, and you’ll feel better." Of course, food can make us feel good. Eating is pleasurable. Sharing food is social. Certain foods can evoke memories, comfort, and connection. But pleasure isn’t the same thing as happiness. When highly palatable, heavily marketed foods become a routine part of everyday life, something important can get lost: the distinction between food we occasionally enjoy and food we consume by default. When did treats become everyday foods? Many of us grew up understanding that sweets, crisps, fizzy drinks, and desserts were treats. Birthday parties. Christmas. Holidays. Special occasions. They weren’t necessarily forbidden. They simply weren’t everywhere, all the time. Today, many of these foods have become woven into the fabric of everyday eating. Multipacks sit in kitchen cupboards. Snacks are carried everywhere. Sugary drinks are commonplace. Desserts are routinely expected after meals. Food is offered as entertainment, reward, comfort, and distraction. The shift has been gradual enough that many of us barely noticed it happening. But our environment has changed dramatically. When the exceptional becomes ordinary, our perception of what constitutes a normal diet changes with it. Convenience has become king We’re busy. Parents are juggling work and childcare. Professionals are dealing with long hours and constant connectivity. Many households are simply exhausted. So convenience matters. When we’re stressed and exhausted, food choices can become even harder. I explored the relationship between stress, nutrition, and the body’s ability to use food effectively in How Stress Blocks Your Body From Using Food and How Nervous System Nutrition Can Change Everything. The problem isn’t that convenience exists. The problem is that our food environment has made the most convenient options disproportionately likely to be highly processed, heavily marketed, and designed for immediate consumption. A meal that requires no planning, chopping, or washing up is understandably attractive after a long day. But when the quickest option is also the most aggressively promoted option, the choice isn’t quite as straightforward as “just eat better.” Affordability matters too. UK government data acknowledges that healthier diets can cost more, while the Food Foundation has reported that healthier foods are more than twice as expensive per calorie as less healthy foods. For a family trying to make every pound stretch, this isn’t simply a question of nutritional knowledge. It’s economics. We are not making choices in a vacuum We often talk about food as though every meal begins with a completely rational individual standing in front of an infinite number of equally accessible choices. It doesn’t. Our choices are influenced by price, availability, time, habit, stress, culture, advertising, social expectations, and what happens to be within reach when we’re hungry. Increasingly, we are surrounded by products deliberately formulated to be highly palatable and easy to consume. Blood sugar regulation is another piece of the puzzle when we think about food, energy, mood, and appetite. I explored this connection in How Blood Sugar Shapes Mood, Focus and Emotional Regulation. This doesn’t mean that everyone who eats ultra-processed food will become unwell. Nor does it mean that every processed food is inherently harmful. The science is more nuanced than that. But the evidence linking higher consumption of ultra-processed foods with poorer health outcomes is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. A large 2024 BMJ umbrella review, covering almost 9.9 million people across pooled analyses, found associations between greater exposure to ultra-processed foods and a range of adverse health outcomes, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. The authors also acknowledged important limitations in the quality of the underlying evidence. The point isn’t that a packet of biscuits is poisonous. The point is that the overall food environment matters. The hidden pressure to fit in Food is about far more than nutrition. It’s culture. It’s celebration. It’s connection. This is precisely why changing our eating habits can be difficult. Decline the office cake, and you’re “being good.” Skip the alcohol, and you’re “boring.” Pass on the takeaway, and you’re “no fun.” Choose a salad, and someone may joke that you’re dieting. Somehow, choosing not to consume something has become something we often feel compelled to explain. We’ve normalised overconsumption while sometimes treating moderation as unusual. Children are growing up inside this culture too. They don’t simply learn about food from their parents. They learn from television, social media, influencers, packaging, supermarkets, restaurants, and the people around them. I explored how dramatically this food environment has changed childhood in my article How 40 Years of Food Changed Childhood and Why Our Children Deserve Better. The UK government’s decision to introduce restrictions on advertising less healthy food and drink on television before 9 p.m. and on paid online advertising from January 2026 reflects evidence that exposure to this advertising can influence what and when children eat and shape food preferences from a young age. That tells us something important. If advertising didn’t influence behaviour, there would be little reason for companies to spend billions trying to influence it. Are we really free to choose? Personal responsibility matters. Of course it does. We all have choices to make, and learning how to nourish ourselves well is enormously empowering. But personal responsibility and personal blame are not the same thing. We can encourage people to make healthier choices while simultaneously acknowledging that those choices are shaped by the world around them. A person who walks into a supermarket hungry, tired, and stressed isn’t making choices in the same environment as someone with unlimited time, money, cooking facilities, and nutritional knowledge. A parent working two jobs doesn’t have the same resources as a family with a flexible schedule. A teenager surrounded by social media advertising doesn’t have the same decision-making capacity as an adult. Context matters. So when we reduce complex dietary patterns to “people just need more willpower,” we miss much of the picture. Willpower was never designed to compete with an environment engineered to maximise attention, convenience, and consumption. Follow the money This isn’t about demonising every food company. Businesses exist to make money. That’s how markets work. Many companies produce perfectly legitimate foods that can form part of a healthy diet. But we shouldn’t confuse commercial success with public health. The food industry is also enormously important to the UK economy. In 2024, the UK agriculture and food sector contributed £162.3 billion to the economy, equivalent to 6.2% of national Gross Value Added. The sector employed 4.1 million people in Great Britain in 2025. So what would happen if we genuinely changed the food environment? There would inevitably be winners and losers. Companies whose business models depend heavily on selling highly processed, highly profitable products might need to adapt. They could face pressure to reformulate products, change marketing strategies, or develop new ranges that better support public health. That could be disruptive. But disruption isn’t necessarily the same as economic damage. The money people spend on food doesn’t simply disappear when their diets change. It moves. It could move towards healthier convenience foods, higher quality ingredients, fresh produce, reformulated products, and businesses that make nutritious food easier and more affordable. There is another economic consideration we rarely include in this conversation: the cost of poor health. A food system can generate enormous commercial activity while simultaneously contributing to conditions that place pressure on the National Health Service, reduce healthy working years, and increase sickness absence. The question, then, isn’t whether food should be profitable. It’s whether we can create a food economy that is both commercially successful and aligned with long-term public health. A company’s responsibility is to its customers and shareholders. Public health is the responsibility of governments, policymakers, and society as a whole. When a business model rewards selling more products more frequently, there is an obvious tension between commercial incentives and long-term health. That’s not a conspiracy. It’s economics. When those incentives operate across supermarkets, advertising, online platforms, restaurants, and food delivery services, they create an environment that can make overconsumption feel normal. Meanwhile, when people’s health suffers, the conversation can still quickly become: Why didn’t they make better choices? Perhaps that’s the wrong first question. No one chooses chronic disease. I’ve never met anyone who wanted to develop obesity. No one wakes up hoping for a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. No one chooses fatty liver disease, cardiovascular disease, or declining metabolic health. Yet these conditions have become increasingly common. That doesn’t mean individual choices are irrelevant. It means they’re only part of the story. Health is shaped by biology, behaviour, socioeconomic circumstances, environment, culture, and the systems in which we live. If we genuinely want to change population health, we have to look beyond the individual. We have to look at the environment that surrounds the individual. What would a healthier food system look like? Imagine if healthy food was marketed with the same creativity and excitement as confectionery. Imagine if children’s environments were designed to support healthy habits rather than constantly challenge them. Imagine if nutritious convenience foods were affordable, accessible, and genuinely convenient. Imagine if supermarkets made the healthier choice the easy choice rather than relying on consumers to navigate an endless sea of promotions. Imagine if a parent could feed their family well without needing extraordinary amounts of time, money, planning, and nutritional knowledge. Imagine if we stopped measuring success purely by whether an individual had enough discipline to resist temptation. We don’t need to remove choice. We need to improve the choices people are surrounded by because choice doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A genuinely healthy food environment would still allow us to enjoy chocolate, birthday cake, crisps, takeaway meals, and a glass of wine. The difference would be that these foods could return to being what they were always meant to be: enjoyable parts of life rather than the foundation of everyday eating. It’s time to change the conversation Perhaps the question shouldn’t be, “Why can’t people just eat better?” Perhaps it should be, “Why have we created an environment in which eating well requires so much effort?” Until meaningful changes happen at a societal level, individuals still have to navigate the food environment that exists today. This is where individual support can matter. We can’t redesign the food system overnight. But we can help people understand their own nutritional needs, recognise the influences shaping their choices, and find realistic ways to nourish themselves within the lives they actually lead. Perhaps the answer isn’t choosing between personal responsibility and systemic change. Perhaps we need both. We can teach people about nutrition. We can encourage movement. We can support healthier habits. But if we want meaningful change, we also have to address the environment in which those behaviours take place. Because people don’t live in nutritional textbooks. They live in the real world. A world of busy mornings, packed lunchboxes, supermarket promotions, birthday parties, office biscuits, takeaway apps, social media, stress, tiredness, and limited time. That’s the world we need to design for. We don’t need a food system that removes pleasure. We need one that makes nourishing ourselves easier while leaving room for the foods we enjoy. Because health isn’t the reward we receive at the end of life. It’s the foundation that allows us to live it. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Kellie Warne Kellie Warne, Diet and Lifestyle Advisor Kellie Warne is a certified Diet and Lifestyle Advisor (ION) and FHT member who helps busy people and families feel calmer, more energised, and confident in themselves. She believes sustainable health begins with self-compassion, not restriction. Through practical nutrition advice and supportive lifestyle coaching, Kellie empowers clients to build habits that nourish both body and mind. Her mission is to help people thrive, not by chasing perfection, but by creating balance.

Written by Gordon McNaught, CDC Certified Divorce Coach Gordon McNaught, the founder of Resingled, understands relationships from start to end and all that comes in between. Gordon uses a blend of compassion, logic, humour, and faith to guide people through emotional transitions and build the life they aspire to. Many people view divorce as the finish line. The property settlement is complete. The legal documents are signed. The court decree has been issued. Legally, the marriage is over. In reality, that is often when the most important work begins. The legal process can resolve financial matters, establish parenting arrangements, and formally end a marriage. What it cannot do is rebuild identity, restore confidence, heal emotional wounds, or create a renewed sense of purpose. Life after divorce is not simply about recovery. It is about growth, transformation, and creating a meaningful future. The hidden challenge of starting over Many people assume that once the legal process is complete, life will naturally return to normal. Instead, they often find themselves facing a new set of emotional challenges. Feelings of rejection, anger, loneliness, uncertainty, and self-doubt are common. Questions begin to surface: Who am I now? What does my future look like? Will I find love again? Can I trust again? Am I enough? These questions cannot be resolved through legal agreements or court orders. They require reflection, healing, personal growth, and the courage to embrace a new chapter. The value of an objective perspective As a divorce coach, I am occasionally asked whether I have experienced divorce myself. The answer is no. While some people believe personal divorce experience is essential to helping others, my role provides a different advantage: objectivity. Because I am not navigating my own divorce story through the experiences of my clients, I can bring an independent perspective. This allows me to identify patterns, challenge assumptions, and help clients focus on practical, constructive next steps. Objectivity, however, does not mean a lack of empathy. Every client's experience is unique, and the emotions involved are real. Effective coaching requires balancing empathy with pragmatism, creating a safe space for people to feel heard while helping them move forward with clarity and purpose. Sustainable growth occurs when emotional healing and practical action receive equal attention. The difference between the love we want and the love we need One of the most important lessons I have learned through faith and my work with clients is the distinction between the love we want and the love we need. Most people naturally desire romantic love. Companionship, intimacy, partnership, and shared experiences are valuable parts of life. The challenge arises when we expect another person to provide our identity, value, or sense of worth. My faith has taught me that the love we need has already been given. Knowing we are loved by our Creator provides a foundation that no human relationship can fully replace. When our sense of worth is secure, we stop looking for someone to complete us and begin looking for someone with whom we can share an already meaningful life. That shift changes relationships profoundly. Relationships become partnerships rather than rescue missions. They become opportunities to give and receive love, rather than attempts to fill an emotional void. Appreciating the season of singleness One of the greatest challenges after divorce is impatience. Many people wonder when they will meet someone new. They compare themselves with others who appear to have moved on. They question whether their opportunity for love has passed. These feelings are understandable, but there is another way to view this season. Rather than seeing singleness as a period of waiting, it can be viewed as a period of preparation. It is an opportunity to: Heal old wounds Rediscover passions and interests Strengthen friendships Deepen faith Build emotional resilience Become the healthiest version of yourself This season can be one of the most valuable periods of personal development a person will ever experience. I look forward to one day meeting a wonderful woman and getting married. I have faith that this will happen in God's timing. Until then, I choose not to put life on hold. Life is happening now, and that is a mindset I encourage my clients to embrace as well. Understanding the foundations of healthy relationships A significant part of my coaching focuses on helping people understand how healthy relationships function. While every relationship is unique, the core foundations are remarkably consistent: Trust Respect Communication Shared values Personal responsibility Emotional maturity These qualities contribute far more to long-term relationship success than chemistry alone. Many people focus on finding the right partner before investing in becoming one. Divorce provides an opportunity to change that. The lessons gained through self-reflection and personal growth can become the foundation for healthier future relationships, whether they are romantic relationships, friendships, or family connections. What 1 Corinthians teaches us about love One of the most enduring relationship guides is found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. The passage describes love as patient, kind, humble, forgiving, and selfless. When we examine these qualities closely, a powerful truth emerges: love is fundamentally focused on others. Patience benefits others. Kindness benefits others. Humility benefits others. Forgiveness benefits others. In a culture that often defines love primarily by feelings, this passage presents love as a series of intentional choices and actions. Love is not only something we feel. It is something we do. Understanding this principle can transform relationships after divorce. Instead of asking, "Who will make me happy?" a more powerful question emerges: "How can I become someone who loves well?" That question often leads to healthier, stronger, and more lasting relationships. Divorce is not the end of the story Divorce may mark the end of a marriage, but it does not define a person's future. It is not the end of hope. It is not the end of growth. It is not the end of love. For many people, it becomes the beginning of deeper self-awareness, stronger faith, healthier relationships, and a greater appreciation of life's possibilities. A court decree ends the legal process. It does not end personal growth. Those who embrace the next chapter often discover that life after divorce is not defined by what was lost, but by what can still be built. Sometimes the most meaningful chapters of life begin only after the previous one has ended. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Gordon McNaught Gordon McNaught, CDC Certified Divorce Coach Gordon is a leader in pragmatic thinking during emotional times. Watching his mum raise two sons single-handedly, Gordon saw how people like his mum often went through highly emotional transitions alone and wanted to use his experience and expertise to show others they can and will thrive into the future.

Written by Shantana Telise, Quantum Channel & Multidimensional Healer Shantana Telise is a quantum channel and multidimensional healer specializing in divine channeling and soul remembrance. She is the creator of The Art of Divine Channeling Masterclass, the founder of The Portal of the Gods, and the host of The Goddess Evolution Summit. Your business can outgrow its strategy, audience, offers, and systems, but it can also outgrow the identity of the person leading it. When entrepreneurs become overly focused on fixing old wounds, scarcity patterns, and what is not working, they can unknowingly keep building from the very identity they are trying to leave behind. Here is how to recognize when self-awareness is supporting your business growth and when it is quietly keeping you stuck in the past. What is entrepreneur identity, and how does it affect business growth? Entrepreneur identity is more than the way you describe yourself as a business owner. It is the collection of beliefs, expectations, behaviours, standards, and patterns that influence how you lead, make decisions, respond to uncertainty, sell, receive support, and approach growth. The identity that helped you build one stage of your business may not be the identity capable of leading the next one. This becomes especially noticeable when a business begins to scale. In the beginning, doing everything yourself, moving quickly, staying close to every decision, and solving every problem can be useful. As the business grows, those same behaviours can become limitations. This transition is explored from a leadership perspective in Brainz Magazine's article on the Founder Ceiling and why the strengths that built a company can eventually limit its scale. But identity can create another, less obvious ceiling. Sometimes we intellectually know that we have changed while continuing to orient our attention around the person we used to be. I experienced this recently after several years of consistency in my business and a year focused heavily on expansion. I had moved into a bigger home, grown my team, launched a podcast, expanded my visibility, and continued building the next version of my business. Then, unexpectedly, things contracted. Sales slowed. Offers were not moving the way I expected. Accounts that had comfortably supported a growing business began draining until I was genuinely questioning how I was going to keep everything going. My instinct was to investigate. I reviewed sales pages, rewrote emails, examined positioning, looked at my relationship with visibility and receiving, assessed my offers, and questioned where I might still be holding myself back. Some of that examination was necessary. I discovered genuine gaps and made changes that will continue to serve the business as it grows. Once things began moving again, however, I recognized another pattern. I had become exceptionally good at looking for the wound. My attention had gradually shifted from building what was next to continually investigating what might be wrong. That distinction changed the way I understood the entire experience. When does self-awareness become a business limitation? Self-awareness allows us to recognize a problem. Orientation determines what we repeatedly look for. You can become aware of a scarcity pattern without organizing your entire business around scarcity. You can recognize that an offer is underperforming without deciding you have suddenly become incapable of selling. You can discover discomfort around greater visibility without making that discomfort the defining story of your next stage of growth. The problem begins when examination becomes our default state. We continually ask what is blocked, what needs healing, what we are doing wrong, and what belief is preventing the next level. These questions can uncover valuable information, but when they become the primary way we relate to ourselves, they can influence what we notice, how we communicate, what we expect, and how we operate. There is also a psychological reason to be aware of what repeatedly captures our attention. The American Psychological Association describes attentional bias as a tendency to focus more readily on certain types of information, influenced by factors such as emotional states, internal needs, and previous experience. In practical terms, when an entrepreneur becomes highly focused on evidence of scarcity, rejection, or failure, that information can begin occupying a disproportionate amount of her attention. Opportunities, progress, and evidence of expansion have not necessarily disappeared, but they may no longer receive the same focus. This is where a temporary business problem can quietly become an identity problem. Why business problems should be treated as information, not identity There is an enormous difference between asking, “Something isn’t working, so what is wrong with me?” and asking, “Something isn’t working, so what is out of alignment and what needs to change?” The first question makes the circumstance personal. The second treats the circumstance as information. A slow month is information. An offer that does not convert is information. A bank balance is information. A marketing strategy that once performed well and suddenly stops working is information. Information may require immediate action, but it does not automatically define who you are or what your business is capable of becoming. This distinction is particularly important for entrepreneurs because business constantly gives us feedback. Revenue changes. Campaigns fail. Clients leave. Platforms evolve. Markets change. Something that worked brilliantly six months ago may stop producing the same result. Brainz contributor Monique Farmer explores a similar leadership distinction in A Founder’s Guide to Mindset Transformation, where business challenges are reframed as information rather than identity. When every disappointing result becomes evidence about our worth, capability, or future, we stop responding only to the business problem. We begin responding to what we have decided the problem means about us. That can affect decisions very quickly. Instead of changing a strategy because the data tells us to, we change everything because we are afraid. Instead of evaluating an opportunity based on alignment, we say yes because we fear another one will not come. Instead of selling from confidence in the transformation we provide, we sell from urgency because we need the sale to prove that everything is still okay. The goal is not to become emotionally detached from your business. It is to become capable of receiving feedback without turning every piece of feedback into an identity crisis. Your physical reality still requires action Mindset, manifestation, and identity should never become excuses to ignore practical reality. If sales are down, look at your sales process. If your messaging is not connecting, examine it. If your expenses require attention, review them. If your offer no longer matches what your audience wants, change it. If you need support, ask for it. During my own contraction, I continued working on the physical business. I reviewed what was converting and what was not. I rewrote emails and sales pages, created new offers, changed parts of my positioning, examined how I was using the support inside my business, and eventually acknowledged that trying to solve everything alone was not serving me. The shift was not pretending everything was fine. It was not fine. There were moments when I was genuinely terrified by how quickly my financial reality had changed. The work was learning to respond to that reality without allowing it to tell me who I was. That is the distinction I believe matters most: handle the physical reality without allowing the physical reality to become your identity. Sometimes something is simply asking to be changed. Are you marketing to an identity your ideal client has already outgrown? This experience exposed another problem in my business that I believe many entrepreneurs encounter as their work evolves: our ideal clients can grow while our messaging continues speaking to an earlier version of them. Traditional marketing advice often tells us to identify the customer's pain. Understand the problem, speak directly to the struggle, and demonstrate that you understand what keeps your potential client awake at night. There is value in understanding pain. People want to feel understood. But pain is not the only reason people buy. An established entrepreneur may not be searching because everything is broken. She may already have clients, results, expertise, self-awareness, and evidence that her business works. She may be looking because she is ready to scale, become more visible, increase her wealth, strengthen her leadership, or create a larger impact. This requires a different conversation. The question becomes: Are you speaking primarily to the person your ideal client is trying to leave behind, or are you also speaking to the person she is ready to become? I realized that although my work had evolved, parts of my messaging were still heavily oriented toward the wound. I understood survival because I had lived it. I understood scarcity, overfunctioning, and the patterns that keep people small. Those experiences gave me valuable expertise. But the woman I wanted to support next was not necessarily looking for someone to explain everything that was wrong with her. She was ready for expansion. If all of my messaging required her to identify with struggle before she could recognize herself in my work, I was speaking to an earlier version of her. That realization changed my positioning. Instead of asking only what pain my ideal client experiences, I began asking what she is ready for. What does she desire now? What capacity is she building? What decision is she ready to make? What version of herself is she trying to embody? Pain can help someone recognize a problem. Possibility can help someone recognize her next identity. A business that is evolving needs to know how to speak to both. How the healing trap can keep entrepreneurs stuck There is another version of this pattern that appears frequently in highly self-aware entrepreneurs. Healing becomes the destination rather than the bridge. There is always another belief to uncover, another block to clear, another pattern to analyze, another wound to understand, or another reason we might not be ready. There will always be more we can examine. That does not mean everything needs to be examined before we move. Healing is valuable when it creates greater freedom, choice, and capacity. It becomes a trap when searching for what needs healing prevents us from taking the physical actions our next identity requires. An entrepreneur can spend months examining her fear of visibility instead of becoming visible. She can analyze her relationship with selling instead of making the offer. She can investigate her capacity to receive more clients without building the systems required to support those clients. She can become so focused on discovering why she is not expanding that she avoids the decisions expansion actually requires. At some point, awareness has to become embodiment, and embodiment requires action. Sometimes the next breakthrough is not another realization. Sometimes it is sending the email, making the offer, hiring support, changing the positioning, asking for help, releasing control, or allowing yourself to become visible at the level you say you want. This is especially relevant as a business grows because scaling often demands a different relationship with support, leadership, structure, and identity. Brainz Magazine's article on why many coaches and holistic practitioners struggle to scale explores this relationship between business structure, identity, support, and expansion. We cannot say we want expansion while repeatedly choosing the behaviours that keep our current identity comfortable. Why expansion requires us to notice different evidence When a business is contracting, our questions naturally become diagnostic. We want to know what happened, what is wrong, what we missed, and what needs to change. Those questions are useful when something genuinely needs investigation. They simply cannot be the only questions we ask. Expansion requires another set of questions. What is working? What opportunities are opening? Where is there already movement? What relationships are expanding? What have you created that an earlier version of you desperately wanted? What have you normalized so completely that you have forgotten it was once evidence of extraordinary growth? This became confronting for me when I looked at my own life. Things I would have considered enormous not long ago had become completely normal. Having a team was normal. Hosting a podcast was normal. Receiving invitations and collaboration opportunities was normal. Growing my visibility was normal. An earlier version of me would have looked at some of those things and thought, “I cannot believe we built this.” The current version of me had already moved the goalpost. Normalizing growth is part of expansion. What once felt enormous eventually needs to feel safe enough to become ordinary. But there is a difference between normalizing expansion and becoming blind to it. If we only register what is missing, every achievement disappears the moment it becomes familiar, while every problem receives our full attention. Becoming expansion-oriented does not mean ignoring problems. It means becoming capable of seeing the entire picture. Five questions to identify the identity behind your business If your business feels as though it no longer matches the person you are becoming, these five questions can help you identify whether an old identity is still influencing how you build. 1. What receives most of your attention? Pay attention to the questions running through your mind during an ordinary business day. Are you primarily searching for what is broken, missing, blocked, or failing? Or are you equally capable of recognizing progress, opportunity, demand, ideas, relationships, and evidence that something is working? This is not about forcing positivity. It is about noticing whether your attention has become disproportionately organized around one version of reality. 2. Is your marketing speaking to your ideal client's current identity? Review your website, content, emails, sales pages, and offers. Who has to identify with your language to believe your work is for them? If the client you want is already successful and ready for expansion while your messaging continually speaks to complete survival, there may be a disconnect between the audience you want and the audience your language is calling forward. 3. Are you examining a problem to change it, or simply out of habit? Useful awareness eventually creates movement. If you have analyzed the same issue repeatedly without making a decision, changing your behaviour, testing something new, or taking action, ask whether the investigation is still serving you. Sometimes searching feels productive because movement feels more vulnerable. 4. What evidence of expansion have you already normalized? Look beyond revenue. Consider your confidence, skills, relationships, team, support, visibility, audience, opportunities, boundaries, capacity, and the quality of decisions you now make. What exists in your current reality that a previous version of you once wanted? Recognizing that evidence does not mean settling for your current level. It reminds you that expansion has already happened before you ask yourself to create more of it. 5. What would you do next if you stopped assuming you needed to fix yourself first? This question can expose the gap between awareness and embodiment very quickly. You may already know what the next move is. You may need to make the offer, raise the standard, delegate the responsibility, ask for support, change your message, become more visible, or finally build for the audience you actually want to serve. The challenge may not be discovering another thing to heal. The challenge may be allowing yourself to move. How to build your business from your next identity There will always be another level of awareness available to us, and there will always be difficult seasons in business. Growth does not make entrepreneurs immune to contraction, uncertainty, fear, changing markets, unsuccessful launches, or strategies that stop working. The goal is not to reach a level where nothing challenges you again. The goal is to become capable of meeting the challenge without immediately surrendering your identity to it. Sometimes something is not working because it needs to change. Sometimes an old pattern genuinely needs attention. Sometimes the next stage requires healing, strategy, support, or all three. But there also comes a point when the dominant question can no longer be, “What is wrong with me?” It has to become, “What is available to me now?” What wants to be built? What is already opening? What are you capable of holding now that you could not hold before? What does your ideal client want next? What decisions does the next version of your business require? What would you create if you stopped using an old identity as the blueprint? You can respect the identity that got you here. You can understand why she learned to survive the way she did. You can heal the parts of her that still require your attention without continuing to build your future around her. At some point, expansion asks you to stop building for the person you needed to be and start building for the person you have become. Ready to build from your next identity? If you recognize that your business has outgrown the identity, messaging, or way of operating that brought you this far, your next level may not require more fixing. It may require a different way of leading, creating, selling, and allowing yourself to expand. This is the work I support entrepreneurs with: moving beyond survival-led business and into the identity, strategy, capacity, and leadership required for their next level of expansion. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Shantana Telise Shantana Telise, Quantum Channel & Multidimensional Healer Shantana Telise is a quantum channel and multidimensional healer specializing in divine channeling and soul remembrance. She is the creator of The Art of Divine Channeling Masterclass, where she teaches safe, embodied channeling practices. Shantana is also the founder of The Portal of the Gods, a high-level multidimensional initiation into divine love, wealth, and leadership. She hosts The Goddess Evolution Summit, bringing together spiritual leaders to explore ascension and embodied living.