In our daily lives, we are usually surrounded by clean drinking water. While we may choose to avoid tap water in many cities, in general it is safe to drink and cook with. Outside of developed communities in the US and in many other countries around the world, however, the water is not so clean. In the past I’ve looked at water cleanliness in general, this week I’ll specifically examine giardiasis.

Giardiasis is one of the most common water-borne diseases in the US. It is caused by ingesting a one-celled parasite called Giardia lamblia. This parasite hatches and feeds in the intestines of the host, and during the feeding phase can be the cause of intense discomfort and inconvenience.

Infection can come from several activities, but the most common is drinking or otherwise ingesting infected water. Rivers, creeks, and lakes in the wilderness are often contaminated, as is the occasional recreational water source such as swimming pools. Another common infection opportunity is eating something that has come in contact with a contaminated source. This can occur, for instance, from eating food handled by an infected person who has not properly cleaned their hands, or eating food that was washed with contaminated water. Boiling water is enough to kill the parasite if you are unsure of your water source.

Any surface that becomes contaminated can be infectious for up to a month. This is because the reproductive phase of giardia is a hard shelled cyst that is well-protected against the environment. Coming into contact with such a cyst and transferring it to your mouth begins the cycle again, which can be both the cause of reinfection in an already infected person and new infections within a group living or working in the same space.

Once infected, it will take several days for a person to experience symptoms; typically symptoms will show in about seven days, but can take up to two weeks (and some people don’t show symptoms at all). When they do occur, they include diarrhea, fatigue, stomach cramps, gas, bloating, upset stomach, and greasy stools. In particular, the gas (and sometimes affiliated belching) smells strongly of sulfur. During this period, which lasts from two to six weeks, the host can be highly contagious to others if they do not maintain strict cleanliness standards and vigilance.

At the end of the symptomatic phase, the host can still cause infections for a few weeks. Even an infected person who is not showing symptoms can cause infections in others. Then, after a few weeks, the infection clears completely in most people. In some cases, a person may be symptomatic chronically, but this is uncommon.

Treatment for giardiasis covers two aspects. First, treatments are designed to prevent spreading the disease to others. Second, treatments address easing the symptoms, especially relieving the discomfort and keeping the individual hydrated. For adults treatment is only necessary if the symptoms persist more than a week or two or are very severe, otherwise they are recommended but not vital. However, in children, the elderly, and some other cases, treatment may be very important. You can find out more from the CDC or your healthcare professional.

Giardiasis is not pleasant, but it is also not life-threatening in most cases. A little common-sense and care can be enough to avoid it altogether, and avoidance and prevention is preferable to infection. If you are traveling, take care in obtaining water to drink and food to eat. If you are camping, treat your water appropriately. And if you do get giardiasis, make sure you stay hydrated. And stock up on toilet paper.

Resources:

• Fact Sheet: Giardiasis [www.cdc.gov]
• Giardiasis: Topic Overview [www.webmd.com]
• Giardia lamblia [en.wikipedia.org]

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From the editor

I usually choose topics for my main articles based on the events in my life, and this week is a great example. I was careful the entire time I was in the wilderness, but one time (ONE time!) I consumed water that was not treated. One week later, I came down with all the symptoms of giardiasis.

The next six days were spent, um, close to the restroom. Between the discomfort and the body demands, I was effectively out of commission. Now I’m basically back to normal and feeling great.

One of the most interesting aspects of this experience for me has been seeing, first-hand, how effective our water treatment system was while we were out in the wilderness. During our time out, we drank whatever water we could find, regardless of how it looked, smelled, or tasted. Some of it was outright disgusting by normal standards. Yet we were fine the entire time.

I think people are generally over-concerned about water quality, especially when they are picky about tap water in homes and restaurants. However, when water is coming from an untreated, outdoor source, it makes sense to be choosey. If you must drink water of unknown quality, you’ll want to have some way to treat it on-hand. Carrying a water-treatment solution when hiking or traveling makes a lot of sense.

Next week, I’ll be writing about the particular water-treatment system we used. It was something I had never heard of before, and I think more people should know about it.

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

We’ve all heard the saying: “Attitude is everything!” Is it, really? I believe it is.

Everyone has positive events in their life sometimes. Everyone has negative experiences sometimes. The typical day contains some good and some bad. We can’t always choose the circumstances we’re confronted with, the environment we’re in, or the people we’re surrounded by. We certainly can’t choose the actions or opinions of others or control the world around us. Life, as a whole, is entirely beyond our control.

One thing, one critical thing, is within our control: our attitude. Most of us spend most of our time choosing our attitude unconsciously, out of habit. This attitude choice is typically not supportive or helpful in achieving our goals or living from abundance. Rather, the unconscious attitude choices are reactionary, stressed, depressed, distant, exhausted.

But we can choose the attitude we take at any moment. That’s right, each instant provides an opportunity to change our state of mind. We can decide to be happy, or creative, or confident, or relaxed, or whatever else we might want. That choice opens the door to living beautifully, to having a great day rather than a bad one.

An amazing thing happens when we choose our attitude: we start creating a different reality around us. A cascading chain-reaction begins that affects everything we experience in life.

Let’s say you decide to feel happiness. Maybe you’re having a rough day, with screaming kids, a nagging spouse, a demanding boss, or thick traffic. However, you choose to be happy anyway. In that instant, your mind opens up to the positives around you. In that instant, you start to perceive the things that are going your way, you start to realize the positives in your life, the goodness in the significant people in your life, the beauty of the world. This, in turn, makes it easier to be happy, which brings even more wonderfulness to mind. It’s a cycle that builds on itself again and again with each moment.

Our habits, built up over years, can make it difficult to keep that happy feeling for any significant length of time. After all, our minds are used to being called on to find the negatives in the moment and will interrupt our happiness again and again until we start down the trail we’re used to. That’s when we have to make the choice again to be happy. It might take weeks, months, or even years, but eventually we can break those habits and replace them with our new attitude choices.

Some people think of this as ‘fake it until you make it’. I disagree with this phrase, because nothing is being faked. I’m not suggesting you fake being happy, I’m suggesting you choose to be happy for a moment or two. That choice empowers you to be able to make the same choice again at a later date. If you do it often enough, it becomes your new frame of reference, your new baseline.

Choose to be happy. Choose to be relaxed. Choose to be confident. You have the power, exercise that power to find the full wonderfulness life has to offer!

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From the editor

I have returned from my survival course, and have spent the last week gaining back all the weight I had lost. I was eating about 1100 calories per day, and my body needs around 2500 on a lazy day, so I was operating on at least a 1400 calorie-per-day deficit. I lost 20 pounds, and those of you who know me know I don’t have 20 pounds to lose. Now the initial barrage of cravings are past, and I’m falling back into my eating and fitness routine.

I’ve also learned a whole new perspective on what it means to live minimally. I had a blanket, a rain poncho, a knife, the clothes I was wearing, a set of long-johns, a wool cap, and a heavy coat. That was it. For four weeks, I was without all electronics, communications, tools, and modern conveniences. The amazing thing wasn’t that I was able to manage, it was rather that I was able to thrive with what I had. Now I look around and realize just how much junk I really collect in my life; what truly matters can fit in a single small bag, and everything else is dead-weight.

Of course, as I get used to being back, I’ll probably decide that some of the ‘junk’ really does seem necessary. I’ve bent really far in one direction, now I’m bending back the other way. The cool thing, though, is that I will end up somewhere less materialistic than I was before. I have changed as a result of my experience.

Anyway, I’m back, I’m well-fed, and I’m catching up on sleep in between catching up on email and news. I look forward to hearing from many of you and finding out what you’ve been up to while I was away.

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

I am always learning something new. As far back as I can remember, I have loved math and science, computers, technology. I am insatiably curious of the world around me, always wanting to know and to understand what things are and how they work.

It came as a great surprise, then, when I realized one day just how much I hadn’t remembered about many of the things I thought I knew. I was trying to recall something from chemistry and couldn’t. With a little more concentration, I realized I could only remember a few quotes and concepts from an entire year of chemistry; most of it had been forgotten.

Well, this was frightening to me. Had I wasted my time?

Fast forward a few years. I still don’t remember my chemistry classes, but I had another surprise: I could ’see’ the workings of a particular molecule, even thought I couldn’t verbalize the rules that governed those workings. I understood, even though I couldn’t express. I was in a place of ‘knowing’.

What had happened?

I realized that the workings I was understanding were not new, that I had actually understood that much when I took the class. This was the knowledge that went with me after the homework and tests, after the lectures. This is what I had grafted into my mind at a deeper level.

We all remember snippets of life: certain people, certain events, certain conversations, certain views and scenic panoramas. After a while, many of them blend together into composite memories or are forgotten from the conscious mind altogether.

Some of those experiences, however, change us at a deeper level. Our first passionate kiss, for example, alters how we see the world from that moment forward. Good or bad, we’ve experienced something profound, and our life is forever changed.

When this deep understanding occurs, we have integrated the experience.

T. Harv Eker, a life coach and personal development trainer, says the following: “How do we know if we know something? If you live it, you know it. If you don’t live it, you’ve ‘heard about’ it, you’ve ‘read about’ it, but you don’t know it.”

It’s all well and good to learn new things. but you must integrate them to gain value in the knowledge. Spouting facts, figures, opinions, and data is not the same as knowing something. Until you incorporate the knowledge into your daily life, it’s just useless fluff.

So how do you integrate something? There are a few ways; the more of these you do, the more quickly and effectively you integrate the learnings:

• Experience the material in multiple ways, from several points of view, using all your senses. View it, touch it, smell it, taste it, feel it. If it’s a concept, imagine it and contemplate it for a while.
• Take a hands-on approach. You can read about baking a cake, but until you actually bake one you haven’t actually learned anything. Try it. Try it again. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. Try it again. And again. Then one more time.
• Practice it every day. A black-belt in martial arts got that way by living and breathing the exercises, drills, movements, and thought patterns for years. Once they don’t have to think about what they are doing, they have integrated the material. You have integrated walking, you have integrated brushing your teeth; you don’t even have to think about these things, they just happen. That which you do repeatedly becomes a part of you.
• Just let it sink in for a while. Do something else. Sleep on it. Go for a walk. Meditate on an unrelated topic.

Read about it, hear about it, do it, ignore it; then reflect on how you’ve changed. Integration has occurred at some level, figure out how much you’ve grown from your experience.

It’s completely acceptable to try something new and decide it’s not what you were looking for. But don’t tell yourself you know something unless you live it. Everything else is just data. Have a higher standard for what you call knowledge or wisdom.

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From the editor

As you know, I’ve been totally disconnected for quite some time now. I am starting the massive project of catching up with a month’s worth of email and voicemail. If you sent feedback over the last month, expect a reply over the next few days. Thanks for being so patient while I was away.

I still expect to be slow in getting back to people because I am currently integrating the last four weeks of learnings.

Healthy thoughts,

Jeff

I had a very interesting realization recently. I was in a conversation with my wife, who was very stressed out over some bureaucratic process she was trying to work through and an assumption I had made that has now created a mini disaster of work. I was trying to be calm and peaceful for her while she vented and expressed her frustration. This wasn’t working, and I couldn’t figure out why.

Then, in response to something she said, I lit up with an inner passion. Suddenly I was coming from the strength of conviction and purpose, and with a deep connection to my core. I was totally present, enthusiastic, and powerful. I was coming from source.

And everything instantly changed. At that moment she could see what had been missing, the life-force that I had been suppressing while trying to relax her.

I spent the rest of the morning feeling powerful in spite of the obstacles we’re dealing with. And I started to ask myself, ‘What had changed?’ Certainly, the challenges were exactly the same. The bureaucracy wasn’t suddenly gone. The issue hadn’t disappeared. And yet, we both felt the change: it didn’t matter any more, we could move forward knowing everything would work out in the end.

My next question was, ‘Why had I not shown that power before?’ That’s where I suddenly underwent a shift in understanding.

I had suppressed my power because of a dynamic with another very close friend. Whenever we spoke, my power was misunderstood as anger or received as an overpowering burden. My life-force was detrimental to the relationship. And so I had spent months, years, learning to remain totally calm on the phone. I had been suppressing the very essence of my being in order to facilitate communication.

Now, in the new relationship, the choice to suppress myself was hurting our ability to communicate. Because I was not acting from a place of internal consistency, it was making it hard for her to trust me. She saw my lack of energy as not caring, not being present, not being connected. I had taken a specific issue with one person and brought it into this relationship.

There’s a word for that, when you carry something from one relationship into another: baggage. I wasn’t able to be true to myself, to act with integrity. I was altering my behavior without realizing how I was stripping myself of congruence. I was suppressing my true self. I was bottling the very energy that is my most valuable power.

Energy is everything. Once I found my energy, my core, I was able to be the pillar of security she needed in the moment, without even trying. Once I was acting from truth, from source, the relationship stress went away. Sure, we still had problems to solve, but now the solutions were visible. My energy moved us out of a stuck state.

Stuart Wilde has a great quote on the power of personal energy: “The key to success is to raise your own energy; when you do, people will naturally be attracted to you. And when they show up, bill ‘em!”. People are attracted to inner strength. When it is openly expressed, not as ego, but instead as natural life-force, people are drawn to it.

That’s called charisma. You can just tell when someone has that inner strength. You can’t miss them.

The lesson I learned: connect with my power, and stay connected in everything I do.

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• You were saying? Test Puts Attention on the Easily Distracted [healthday.com]
• And vice versa: Treating the Mind Eases Irritable Bowel [healthday.com]

From the editor

I am still off the grid: no email, no telephone, no IM. I’m on the final stretch, just a week to go. If you send feedback, realize I won’t be able to respond for several days. I’ll be back next week.

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff