When scientists wanted to test the effect of fatty food and cholesterol on cardiac health, they designed an experiment on rabbits. The lab animals were divided into several groups; each group was fed highly fatty, cholesterol rich meals, and only one group was fed on normal vegetarian rabbit food to be used as control.
At the end of the experiment there was a remarkable difference in heart and blood vessels health between the groups eating unhealthy diet compared to the control one. Only one group deviated from these consistent results. This unique rabbit group had been fed fats and cholesterol diet, still no sign of blood vessels degeneration or abnormalities were detected. First, the scientists suspected that the rabbits weren’t properly fed, they actually were. So what went wrong (or rather what went right)? After thorough investigations, the researchers found out that the student in charge of feeding this specific group of rabbits was a pet lover. Before feeding them, he held each rabbit in his arms, petted it, caressed it and even talked to it. This seemingly simple act of pure love protected the rabbits’ system from the toxic effect of the administered diet.
Long ago, in Egypt rural areas, lots of people used to raise rabbits in their houses. A small room on the roof or in the attic was usually used for that purpose. Only one or two of the family members were in charge of feeding the animals. No strangers were allowed in the room. Bad eyes could kill the rabbits, they used to believe. Many tales were reported how rabbits died suddenly within few hours after someone entered their room, a strange phenomenon that was repeated so often for people to notice and get cautious. Science has now an actual explanation for the phenomenon. Rabbits are such scaredy animals. When they feel the presence of the stranger they grow so scared especially as they are helplessly locked in cages with nowhere to go. As a result, the adrenaline level in their blood shoots up causing heart failure and subsequent death. These rabbits died from fear, from the feeling helplessness not from a bad eye.
Exactly as love can heal rabbits fed on toxic diet, fear and helplessness can destroy healthy ones. Our thoughts, emotions and feelings are translated in our bodies into actual physical matters. Emotions, whether love, fear, hate or anger, are powerful tools. Their effect do not stop at our own system; their energy radiates somehow all around us affecting all our surrounding.
In the Intention experiment, Lynne Mctaggart shows that every thought, every deep feeling, every intention we have tend to influence the energy of every person and even everything around us. Even plants are affected by human feelings and thoughts. They feel the ‘love in the air’. In carefully monitored lab experiments, scientists discovered that whenever a participant mentally threatened the plant under investigation, its energy field significantly diminished. The plant regained its energy and grew healthier when treated with love and care. I have a brother who hates plants. When we were young, my mother, a plant lover, used to put plants in every room in the house. Interestingly, the plants in my brother’s room didn’t take long to wither and die. “What did you do to my plants?” She used to shout. “Nothing!!! I didn’t touch them,” he sincerely answered. It only took a feeling to kill those plants. Imagine what a feeling can do to us, humans?
Data shows that the best predictor for heart attack isn’t, as pharmaceutical companies want us to believe, high cholesterol levels or hypertension; it isn’t even smoking or fatty food; instead, it’s job dissatisfaction!!!
Studies on Americans from Japanese origin who still kept their community spirit and supportive social system showed better physical health conditions (even if they shifted to ‘junk food’ diet) compared to their counterparts who aborted Japanese social traditions of love and support.
Love and support is essential for health and vitality, not only for our human species, but for all life on our planet. Imagine how our world would be if love and care became the inner intention of everyone of us, or at least of most of us. Start by yourself. You can make a difference.

Side Note:
I wrote this blog last week. It's strange that I am posting it now after the bloody events that engulfed my country, Egypt, yesterday. How despertly we need this feeling of love now. Please pray for Egypt!!!
 

He was old, poor and lonely, but still, Sami wanted to plant his tree. He chose the best location in his land where the sun shone and bathed the place with its magnificent radiation. He prepared the ground and planted the seed with love and care. He wanted a bamboo tree. He loved bamboo trees. They are tall and grand; they are green and happy just like his early childhood dreams. Sami looked after his seed daily, watering it, adding fertilizers and removing weeds and bad grass. He waited and waited, but nothing happened. The trees, plants and shrubs all around him were growing and flourishing, with no sign from his precious bamboo tree. 'May be in the summer', he said waiting for the summer to arrive, still nothing happened. 'May be it needs cold weather', he thought; but winter came and went with no sign of life.
After a whole year of waiting, a tiny sprout started to emerge from the ground. Sami never gave up on his tree. He continued to water the sprout and look after it with love and care, patience and hope. The second year passed, and nothing happened. It looked as if his bamboo tree just stopped growing. He looked closer, added fertilizers, removed bad grass and weeds, and as before waited and waited. Year three, year four... Still all he got was a little bulb with a tiny shoot. 'Where is my tree?' Sami started wandering, he’s not young anymore. Will he ever live to see his dream come true? He got discouraged and disappointed upon looking at the lovely trees and branches growing all around him. He experienced the burning flame of anger and frustration. 'I don't want this stupid tiny bulb', he shouted almost throwing away his life dream. 'Not yet', he finally reasoned, 'I'll wait'. At the beginning of the fifth year, the bulb started to grow. It wasn’t an ordinary growth. It grew at an amazingly fast rate. In only six weeks, the tiny bulb developed into a gigantic 2 meters bamboo tree, the highest tree in the neighbourhood and the most precious of all!!!
Life is like this bamboo tree, for you to grow and flourish you need to establish your roots first. You need to establish a rock solid and stable foundation. It takes time and patience.

Our Prophet PBUH and his companions spent 13 years in Makkah, suffering discrimination, famine and torture. During this time the Devine orders for Muslims were not to fight back, to wait with patience and perseverance while the Prophet is teaching them their religion. He was establishing the roots, teaching them the true meaning of Islam, the meaning of being a Muslim, a true believer that applies the Devine law on earth while surrendering to the Divine will and tolerating any torments for His cause. They were promised that this religion will one day spread and roam, but they didn’t know if they will live to see that. They only have to do their part not waiting for a material reward. The real reward will be in the hereafter, in Paradise.
You do not even need to see results. Just do your part and believe deep in your heart that you will get your reward. Your efferts will never be wasted. Sometimes you cannot see the hidden wisdom behind the delay of your request. When you learnt your lesson, the next one will appear just on time. Just dig for the roots.

Last week my son had an eye infection. At the doctor’s office, after thorough check up, the ophthalmologist declared severe infection coupled with complicated allergic reaction that will probably lead, according to her, to “retinal detachment, macular degeneration and corneal lesions”!!! I stood speechless before the doctor as she showered us with her cruel diagnosis, seeing my 11 years old son panicking: “I’m gonna go blind? I’m gonna go blind??”
“No you’re not, she commented ‘empathetically’, with the treatment, you 'may' be okay.”
At home, we started immediately on the prescribed medication. Nothing made the inflammation go away. The swelling progressed and he started complaining from an even poorer eye sight. Two days later, we decided to consult another specialist. At the physician’s office, my son set anxious and fretting with his blood-red eyes bulging and staring.
After another thorough checkup, the doctor finally spoke: “It’s an acute allergic reaction. It’s probably due to the changing weather. Normal in this time of the year,” he declared calmly.
“No infection?” I asked worriedly
“No!!!”
“No antibiotic? Cortisone? Degeneration? Serious complications?”
“What are you talking about? It’s just an allergy. All you need is some anti-histamines!”
At home, before even administering the first eye drop, Youssof’s eyes looked much better. The swelling was already subsiding and the redness disappearing. One day later, his eyes were back to normal, Alhmdullellah!!!
When psychologists, new age gurus and alternative medicine advocates claim that’s ‘all in your mind”, most of us take it offensively. We perceive it as reason to blame ourselves and start endless self-sabotage causing us to carry a burden even heavier then the disease itself. If we look on the positive side, though, our mind has the tremendous power to heal. Taking responsibility for our health and wellness is an alien concept in this Hi-Tech world.  We are seeking a magic pill from our physician (or nowadays a magic touch from our healer) to gain health, wealth and/or happiness.
Increasing scientific evidence are proving how self-affirmations, guided imagery, adjusted intention, and optimism can boost immunity, control cancer-cell growth, lower hypertension, and even prevent plaque formation in our arteries. Mere words, like that of my son’s first ophthalmologist, can destroy a whole system, while simple affirmations can restore wellbeing.
Our thoughts are actual material entities (not yet classified by our physical terminology) that have the unlimited potent power to change physical reality, in shaa Allah (with God’s Will).
The well documented placebo effect shows us how our body can produce the specific internal chemicals needed for healing in the exact required dose and in the perfect timing. The main key is Belief, i.e. your state of mind. If you believe in a dummy pill, it will achieve wonders, and, on the other hand, if you doubt the effect of a potent antibiotic, it won’t do you any good. The latter is also a well documented scientific phenomenon often referred to as the ‘nocebo’ effect.
So, when someone tells you: ‘it’s all in your mind’, look at the full half of the glass and dig for your amazing mental abilities that will help you heal your body and your whole life.  

Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people developing cancer. Million new cancer patients are diagnosed every year and the numbers are increasing at frightening rates.
Still the main concern of the health organizations is the secondary prevention manifested as early detection and supply of adequate conventional treatments and pain relief. Nevertheless, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 40% of the cancer burden can be reduced by adopting healthier lifestyle and avoiding or limiting the exposure to risk factors.
To be able to fight any disease, including cancer, our main aim should be improving our immune system by avoiding or minimizing risks and implementing healthy daily practice for general well-being. Here are some useful tips:
• Shift to a healthy wholesome diet eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Get your carbohydrates from whole grains. Reduce your meat and fat intake and supply your protein needs mainly from beans, legumes, seeds, nuts and lentils. Boost your fibers intake, they are powerful protectors from colon cancer. Avoid fast food chains and reduce your intake of salt, smoked and pickled food. Eat beans, legumes, and lentils and use lots of natural herbal spices in your home cooking.
• Vary your food to ensure the intake of a wide range of the beneficial vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients (these are beneficial nutrients from plant origin that act, among other things, as antioxidants and anti-cancer agents). An easy way to achieve this is to vary the colors on your plate:  dark green leafy vegetables like spinach and rocket are good sources of folate (B vitamin) and vitamin C. They also contain large amounts of chlorophyll, a detoxifier and anticancer agent. Orange and yellow vegetables, like carrots and sweet potatoes are rich in beta-carotenes and red vegetables, like tomatoes, supply lycopene; both are powerful antioxidant believed to have anti-cancerous action. Anthocyanidins are complex flavonoids that produce blue, purple or red colors. Food rich in these phytochemicals include beets, purple and red grapes, and purple cabbage. Anthocyanidins support connective tissue regeneration and are anti-oxidants, anti-cancerous and anti-inflammatory.
• Some food have special benefits: Citrus fruits are good source of Vitamin C anti-oxidant. The cabbage family (cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli) are powerful detoxifiers and offer great protection against cancer. The sulfur compounds in onion and garlic have a known ability to fight cancer. It was related that ancient pharaohs used to feed the workers on onions while building the pyramids to give them strength.

. Drink a lot of water but avoid chlorinated water.
• Drink natural fresh fruits and vegetable juices and experiment with new flavors: drinks as liquorice, hibiscus, and carob for instence showed potential antioxidant and/ or anti-mutagenic action.
• Include herbs in your daily routine either as food spices or as herbal teas. Herbs offer a wide range of phytonutrients and antioxidants. Experiment with different flavors: available: ginger, nigella (black cumin), cumin, coriander, peppermint, dill, fennel, fenugreek, thyme, curcumin, cardamom, marjoram…
• Try growing your own greens and herbs avoiding harmful pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. You do not need to have a garden; you can grow them on your window sill.
• Learn new healthy cooking techniques and whenever possible avoid deep fried, barbequed and charbroiled foods; these methods of cooking generate harmful toxins and potential carcinogens. Seek free-range organic animals whenever possible or avoid animals fed on hormones and antibiotics. Remove the skin and fatty parts of your poultry before cooking as most carcinogens are fat soluble.
• Control your weight. Maintaining a desired body mass index may reduce the occurrence of many cancers.
• Take the habits of reading the labels, keep away from food containing chemical preservatives, synthetic additives and hydrogenated fats. Boycott suspected products with substandard qualities or products with unclear labels to urge companies to ameliorate their quality control and product standards.
• Do not smoke and avoid environmental tobacco smoke, passive smokers are subjected to similar harm. If you are a smoker, seek assistance to help you quit. Check alternative approaches like visualization, hypnosis and group therapy.
• Recheck your household chemicals; especially dry-clean sprays, air-fresheners and pesticides. Most of these products are not tested for long term effect on the human body and are not subjected to proper toxicity testing.
• Apply sun protection. If you have an outdoor job, try to reduce exposure to the sun between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Seek shade, use wide-brimmed hat, long sleeves cotton clothes, sun glasses and, if necessary, apply a broad spectrum sunscreen with a high SPF value.
• Get physically active. If you do not have the time to exercise, try to include some activities in your daily routine; for instance, park the car a station away from your destination and enjoy a walk or climb the stairs instead of using the elevator, visit your friend instead of calling him on the phone or go to the supermarket instead of asking for delivery.
• Reduce the stress level in your life using different relaxation techniques, meditation and prayers. Emotional factor pose a very important risk. I here quote Dr. Norman Shealy: “Cancer often is diagnosed one to two years following a devastating emotional crisis”.
• Adopt a loving, caring and forgiving attitude and enjoy an active intimate and stable social life. Dr. Andrew Weil said: “Our spiritual selves resonate with others; if the interconnection is positive, human connectedness is the most powerful healer, capable of neutralizing many harmful influences on the material plane”.

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