Tannins
I’m sure you’ve heard it by now:
Tannins are bad for your health!
Tannins are a substance found in plants which provide an astringent or bitter taste. Examples of the most harmful ones: chocolate, coffee, tea, colas, root beer, and all tobacco products.
Tannins usually stain things a darker color. A black water swamp is stained dark brown by oak trees. Oak bark and acorns are used to tan leather. Tannins are also found in wine, especially red wine, from the oak barrels as well as the seeds and skins of the grape.
Where are tannins?
They’re everywhere. You can’t live on real food and avoid them entirely, but you can cut down on them significantly so as to improve your health.
Tannins can irritate the entire digestive system as well as the kidneys. They prevent the absorption of iron and calcium. But mainly they irritate your adrenal glands. A lot like caffeine.
Tannins also affect the way you produce enzymes to digest your foods.
When you’re suffering in the 4C’s area you usually crave tannins or caffeine. And if you eat or drink them, they’ll make the cravings worse.
Adding lemon juice to a high-tannin food or drink can help neutralize the effects of the tannin. For instance, add lemon juice to your flax crackers before dehydrating.
If you’re stuck in the tannins and need some time to get yourself out, here are some tips to help:
- only use tannins between meals so they don’t interfere with digestion
- add a lot of milk to coffee or tea so the protein helps inhibit the action of the tannins
- add lemon to any meal including brown foods to help cut down on the effects of tannins
- cut down on the tannins that really don’t add to your life
- substitute other foods or drinks for high-tannin ones
There are two types of tannins and some people are only sensitive to one type.
If you’d like more info on tannins, here’s an excellent article: Tannins.
The Dreaded Diet Diary
Whenever I’m asked to coach someone through a crisis of some sort, the first thing I have them do is email me a list of everything that goes into their mouth each day along with a list of how they’re feeling, and the times all these are happening. This gives me two huge bits of information:
- which system is having the hardest time functioning
- what beliefs this person has about food and nourishment
Then it’s pretty easy to point someone to the appropriate website pages and help them understand how they are shooting themselves in the foot. It’s hard for many to understand before keeping this Diet Diary though, and you can learn much by keeping one yourself.
Some basic rules:
- write down everything that goes into your mouth and what time it happens
- write down when you’re feeling hungry, thirsty, sad, tired, or anything else, especially pain
- don’t try to make your diary look good, just be accurate
- don’t change what you eat just because you’re writing it down
- do this until you have no problems left
- analyze them by going through the Left Lemon System page on the website
Using the information found on that page you can adjust your diet to make your life work so much better! All sorts of **-isms disappear.
For a walk-through of using a diet diary to figure out how to change your diet, read Study: John or Sue’s Skin.
Here’s how I usually tell people to begin:
- Get a smallish spiral notebook. Begin listing your food and drink intake every day along with how you feel before and after each meal (or between if there’s something worth noting).
- If you are significantly overweight or have difficulty losing weight, two scales would be very helpful: one digital scale to weigh you to tenths of pounds, and one scale to weigh your food. I know this sounds tedious, but I was amazed at how much I was eating once I finally got around to counting calories. And weighing yourself every morning helps you to see the impact of that extra whatever you ate or drank yesterday. If you have bone density issues, get a digital scale that includes bone mass. You might have to go online to find one.
4C’s problems
When you are having 4C problems, you have a lot of problems. It’s usually not just one thing, but a combination of long-term abuse. And you’ve probably done it to yourself.
If you don’t have a clue as to what a 4C problem is, please read the Left Lemon System page.
Typical 4C situation:
- Most of your problem areas are on both sides of your body or midline (the red areas on the stickman chart)
- Your body type is plum-shaped — big gut, skinny arms and legs, round face
- You don’t eat enough dark green leafy veggies or bright red natural veggies and fruits
- You crave coffee, chocolate, tea, or other brown things and stimulants
- Your eating isn’t balanced according to 30/30/40
- You have blood pressure issues
- You have anxiety and lethargy — alternating between being really tired and really busy or anxious
- You can’t focus on much of anything
- You’re low in essential minerals and high in toxic metals
- You tend to be swollen a lot
- You tend to get kidney stones
To get out of this trap:
- Get rid of stimulants and tannins (cinnamon, caffeine, coffee, colas, dark brown nuts and seeds, chocolate, tobacco)
- Eat your greens — marinated is easier to digest
- Also eat dark red pigmented foods — red bell peppers, berries, cranberries, cayenne, beets, raw tomatoes, paprika
- Avoid artificial colors and dyes — in candy, chewing gum, drinks, processed foods
- Deal with your emotional issues by forgiving
Conscious Forgiveness
So how do you forgive someone?
You need forgiveness too.
You’ll be amazed how much easier life will be when you get into the habit of forgiving.
Energy Cycles
A lot of people have solved pesky problems by using the Energy Cycle chart. You wake up at 3:00 in the morning sweating or with pain somewhere and you’re too groggy to wonder why. But then it keeps happening.
You body is trying to tell you there is something wrong.
You can fix it.
Ancient Chinese practitioners of traditional medicine mapped out the subtle energy pathways flowing through our bodies. They found 12 pathways related to 12 organ systems, and they correspond to twelve two-hour periods each day when these systems are most active. Points along these pathways are used as acupuncture or acupressure points.
For two hours in each 24 hour day, one pathway (called a meridian) with its organ system dominates the body physically and emotionally. Using the energy chart can help to explain why certain symptoms get worse at certain times each day.
For instance, lets say it’s 3:00 in the afternoon and you start feeling anxious. There is too much to be done before the end of the work day, none of it is coming together, you are irritable and just want to escape. But you can’t because you have to get all this stuff done!
According to the chart, 3 until 5 in the afternoons is when your bladder does its thing. The emotion you feel when it’s having problems is irritation, and you can do simple tests to see whether you need more lemon or lemon and oil in your diet to fix this.
You can poke your belly to see which quadrant has tightness or pain. Or you can do leg lifts to see which system is in need of help. Instructions for both of these can be found on the Left Lemon System page. Then you can deliberately add more lemon if the results show LL is the problem, or lemon and oil if LO is the culprit.
If you don’t know what LL and LO mean, read about it on the Left Lemon System.
Of course Balance is the key here.
If you balance every meal with 30% protein, 30% good oils, and 40% high quality carbs you won’t run into these problems.
The chart gives basic information about each meridian — the times they are the most active, the organ or systems they are linked to, and the emotions most often associated with them. This information has been used for healing for centuries.
You can also look at the emotion column to see if what you’re feeling is related to the hour of the day. If so, remedy according to the chart.
Knowledge of these cycles can help you determine the best times to eat, sleep, and exercise. You should be hottest between 7:00 and 9:00 each evening. Being too cold or too hot means there’s a problem. Too cold might mean you have low blood sugar, too hot might be high blood sugar.
It’s between 5 and 7 in the evening and my main emotion is fear — fear that if I put the chart inside this post it won’t translate via email, RSS, or onto facebook. So I’ll put it in but still give you the link so you can print a copy for yourself: Energy Cycle Chart
Energy Cycle Chart
|
Time |
Organ/Gland |
Emotion |
Commentary |
| 5-7 am | Large Intestine | Guilt | Drinking Water Triggers bowel movement making room for the new day’s nutritional intake. Removes toxins from night’s cleansing. LO |
| 7-9 am | Stomach | Disgust | Stomach energies are the highest, so eat the most important meal of the day here to optimize digestion/assimilation. LL |
| 9-11 am | Pancreas / Spleen | Jealousy/Worry/Low Self Esteem | The stomach passes its contents on. Enzymes from the pancreas continue the digestive process. Carbohydrate energy made available. LL |
| 11 am – 1 pm | Heart | Joy | Food material enters the blood stream. The heart pumps nutrients throughout the system and takes its lipid requirements. Cayenne, calcium. 4C’s |
| 1-3 pm | Small Intestine | Insecurity, Vulnerable/Gullible | Foods requiring longer digestion times (proteins) complete their digestion/assimilation. Look for pain or tightness* to determine whether LL or LO. |
| 3-5 pm | Bladder | Irritation | Metabolic wastes from morning’s nutrition intake clear, making room for the kidneys filtration. Look for pain or tightness* to determine whether LL or LO. |
| 5-7 pm | Kidney | Fear | Blood is filtered (decides what to keep, what to throw away), maintains proper chemical balance of blood based on nutritional intake of day. Blood delivers useable nutrients to all tissues. 4C’s |
| 7-9 pm | Pericardium Circulation | Unresponsive, Hurt/Extreme Joy | Nutrients are carried to groups of cells (capillaries) and to each individual cell (lymphatics). LO |
| 9-11 pm | Triple Warmer | Hopelessness, Confusion/Paranoia | The endocrine system adjusts the homeostasis of the body based on electrolyte and enzyme replenishment. 4C’s |
| 11 pm – 1 am | Gall Bladder | Bitterness, Resentment | Initial cleansing of all tissues and processes. Cholesterol enhances brain function. LO |
| 1-3 am | Liver | Anger / Frustration | Cleansing of blood. Processing wastes. LO |
| 3-5 am | Lungs | Grief | Respiration. Oxygenation. Expulsion of waste gasses. 4C’s |
* Pain or tightness in neck – left side would mean LL, right side would be LO.
Pain or tightness in back – left side would mean LO, right side would be LL.
Use Left Lemon System to determine any other pain.
Study: John
LeftLemon.com offers two ways of looking at the same situation:
- Balance — how to balance all of your meals to improve your health.
- Left Lemon System — interpreting what your body is trying to tell you to help you balance your meals.
With that in mind, let’s figure out a problem by going through the Left Lemon System page.
John wrote in to say he had finally figured out why his right elbow woke him up every night at 3:00 AM. He had correctly identified the problem as being 4C’s, but let’s go through the page to see how it works.
By using #1, the “Stickman” chart (the yellow and green guy with the red stripes), John saw that his right elbow pain was definitely in the red zone, making this problem 4C’s. If you haven’t been around the website much, 4C’s means your kidneys or adrenals are suffering and you need more Calcium, Chlorophyll, Cayenne, and Cider vinegar.
#2 is body shape. Because this seems to be an ongoing problem, I’d suggest John fits the plum category — meaning he is kind of round in the face and shoulders, with thin arms and legs. If he is overweight, he’ll carry most of the excess weight in his middle.
#3 is muscle testing. If he would have had the presence of mind at 3:00 AM, he could have done a couple of leg lifts to identify which system was causing the problem. Here’s how to do it: lie on your back, lift one leg with the toe pointed to the ceiling. Now rotate the toe in and lift, then rotate the toe out and lift. If 4C’s is the problem, a toe pointed straight toward the ceiling is going to hurt more.
To see if it’s just one kidney or both, raise one leg at a time to see which hurts worse. The right leg relates to the left kidney, which needs more greens. The left leg relates to the right kidney, which needs more reds.
Now we’ll try #4, Poke Your Belly, which might be easier in the middle of the night. On your back again, poke around gently and see where any distress might be — if 4C’s is the only problem, any pain or discomfort will be mid-line — not to the left or right of center, but right down the middle (and usually just above or below the navel). If there is pain elsewhere, that would show other areas you might need to focus on also.
#5 is the Energy Cycle chart. Clicking on that link takes you to a chart that says when things go bump in the night and it’s 3:00 AM, it’s a 4C’s problem.
The next section tells you to balance your meals with 30/30/40, and make sure you’re getting those dark green and red foods. But below that is a link to “Rescue Remedies” where you can print your own copy of a list of special foods you can use to remedy problems like this while you tweak your diet.
So besides balancing every meal (to include more greens and reds, the lemon and the oils, and the vinegar), John could mix up a batch of nasty tasting stuff to drink just before he brushes his teeth at night that might help correct the problem enough so he can sleep through the night. He could do this for a couple of days while the changes in his diet take effect.
Muscle testing would narrow down which kidney is in need, or both. But just to cover all the bases, he could juice a lemon, add a tablespoon of real cranberry juice for the red pigment, a teaspoon of liquid chlorophyll for the greens, and a teaspoon of vinegar. Drink about half of it and refrigerate the rest for the next night.
Now here is the important part:
If you only focus on fixing the 4C’s problem, you’ll have other problems. The point of LeftLemon.com, as John figured out, is to balance your diet so your health improves in every way.
