Dr. Joseph Mercola believes that love and intimacy – not just the physical form with a significant other but also the emotional form occurring between families, friends and even strangers – can protect and heal us from disease. Studies show that when people express love and feel loved they tend to:

• live longer
• feel happier
• have better cardiovascular health
• be more productive
• be less anxious and depressed
• become less likely to drink alcohol or do drugs

Love is a wonderful thing but it can also be agonizing and destructive. Many health experts, including Dr. Mercola, now regard lovesickness as a serious health concern. Lovesickness can cause people to feel weak and destabilized, and in extreme cases, put them in an extreme sense of despair, depression, hopelessness and physical exhaustion.

Studies show that relationship problems can have a negative effect on mental and physical health, and can be particularly hard on women. Women experiencing severe stress from marriage difficulties were times more prone to heart attack than peers without such stresses.

Heartache is very real. Stress stemming from emotional events may even be worse for your body than the stress from non-emotional events, even though both evoke the same types of responses, Mercola explains.

So how do you deal with heartache and the stress that accompanies it?

Stress is a main contributing factor in any illness and it’s impossible to completely eliminate it from your life. Since stress will always be there, what you can do is to look for ways to adjust your body’s ability to tolerate it. Dr. Mercola recommends energy psychology tools like the Emotional Freedom Technique to deal with depression and stress.

Knowing how to give and receive love will lead to a happier and healthier life so take care of your heart.

Your body has the amazing ability to heal itself, so even if you haven’t been eating right, still on the stick and the bottle, or have less than healthy habits, you can still wipe your slate clean, make the decision to start living healthy and never look back.

This year could be your healthiest ever if you want it to be. Here are Dr. Joseph Mercola’s recommended lifestyle changes that will help you take control of your health this 2010:

1. Learn How to Deal with Stress
   Dr. Mercola notes that the vast majority of patients he has treated who were suffering from serious chronic illnesses have previous emotional stress that contributed to their problems. But it doesn’t take serious trauma to cause these changes, because the sum of the normal, emotional situations that you experience on a daily basis can negatively affect your future health. Mercola recommends meditation, prayer, physical activity and tools like the Meridian Tapping Technique (MTT) to help you maintain emotional and mental balance.
2. Get More Sun
   Studies show that vitamin D, which you can get for free by simply getting enough sun exposure, can help decrease your risk of cancer and many other diseases .Vitamin D receptors can be found in almost all of your cells, from your brain to your bones, so its ability to influence your health is simply amazing, Mercola points out.
3. Eat According to Your Nutritional Type
   Dr. Mercola’s nutrition plan is based on natural whole foods and is designed to help increase your longevity. This involves eliminating, or at the very least, drastically cutting your consumption of grains and sugars and at the same time, eating foods that are right for your unique biochemistry.
4. Exercise
   Don’t kid yourself – you can’t be at your peak condition if you don’t work it and sweat it out. That’s because exercise helps boost your immune system, aids in weight loss and weight management, and helps you sleep better, among other benefits.
5. Keep Your Toxin Load Low
   The world is more toxic nowadays and the number of dangerous chemicals lurking around you continues to increase. That is why you need to become an informed and vigilant consumer, Dr. Mercola advises. This means using non-toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, insecticides and other products.
6. Drink More Pure Water
   You can survive without food for weeks but you’d die without water within a few days. Your body needs to be constantly rehydrated as it loses water when you sweat and urinate. Checking the color of your urine will tell you what your water requirement should be. If you notice that your urine has turned deep, dark yellow, it’s likely that you’re not drinking enough water. Installing a quality water filter in your home will provide you pure drinking water and help you remove impurities and toxic disinfection byproducts from your tap water.
7. Get Quality Sleep
   Studies show that disrupted sleep cycles can lead to serious health problems like cancer, coronary heart disease and depression. If you feel rundown or tired all the time, lack of sleep is a big factor because circadian rhythms regulate the energy levels in your cells. Also, the proteins involved with your body clock and metabolism are intrinsically linked and are dependent upon each other.

Beer drinkers are aware that drinking beer as if it’s water will lead to a beer belly, among other health concerns. Studies show, however, that moderate consumption can actually provide some health benefits.

Recently, researchers at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg have discovered that a powerful antioxidant called xanthohumol, which is found in hops – an aromatic herb which gives beer its bitter flavor – can help fight breast and prostate cancers.

Scientists are already aware that substances in hops help inhibit the action of estrogen but the German study marks the first time that they have been found to block testosterone as well.

Xanthohumol was also found to help prevent the release of PSA, a protein which hastens the spread of prostate cancer.

But hold your horses, beer drinkers, because doctors aren’t about to recommend regular booze consumption as a cancer prevention tip.

The more popular light lager and pilsner beers, which are preferred by more beer drinkers in the U.S., contain less hops than ales and traditional beers like porter and stout. That means you’ll have to drink more than a dozen beers to get enough xanthohumol to experience any potential health benefits, Dr. Joseph Mercola explains.

While moderate consumption of alcohol can provide you with certain health benefits, alcohol use also poses significant health and safety risks, as it impairs driving performance, Dr. Mercola points out. It is also a known fact that alcohol is a neurotoxin, meaning it can poison your brain.

Mercola believes that alcohol is only for people who are at no risk of alcohol addiction and are already at their peak health, which means they have their carbohydrates – sugars and grains – under control, as alcoholic beverages increases insulin levels.

You get constantly stimulated emotionally, mentally, physically and visually on a daily basis physically. Taking a break from this stimulation can help improve your health, natural health expert Dr. Joseph Mercola explains. Meditation allows you to rest your mind and direct its focus on one particular thing, free from any form of distraction, or on nothing at all.

Meditating allows you to become more aware and mindful of the things going on around you. Through meditation, you can strengthen the areas of your brain that regulate attention and memory, detach from thoughts that lead to emotional swings, manage your mood cycles and stress levels, and learn how to do things more effectively.

Aside from the emotional and mental benefits, numerous studies have looked at the physical health benefits of meditation. Every illness is related to stress on some level, Mercola points out, and since meditation is effective at relieving stress, it can also help relieve:

• Chronic pain
• Fatigue
• Gastrointestinal distress and irritable bowel syndrome
• Headaches
• High blood pressure
• Mild depression
• Premenstrual syndrome
• Respiratory problems such as emphysema and asthma
• Sleep disturbances
• Skin disorders and
• Symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis

Meditation can even help boost your immunity. In a study published in Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers found that people who had eight weeks of meditation training produced more antibodies to a flu vaccine. Dr. Mercola doesn’t recommend the flu shot but this shows that meditation can boost the immune system.

Think of good health as a three-legged stool, says Dr. Mercola. The first leg is proper diet, the second is exercise and the third being stress management tools like meditation.

The stool can’t stand up without all three legs. That’s how important meditation and stress management can be to your overall health and wellness. Your survival depends on your ability to handle what life throws at you, the food that you eat and the condition of your body.

Nevertheless, it’s still relevant information. Among the chemicals tested, the CDC highlighted six of the most widespread and potentially dangerous substances, including:

1. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) – Commonly known as flame retardants, PBDEs are widely used to reduce the risk of fire in all sorts of goods, like electronics and upholstery. PBDEs accumulate in human fat, and some studies show they may be harmful to your kidneys, liver and neurological system. The states of California, Maine and Washington have restricted the use of certain PBDEs.
2. Bisphenol A (BPA) – Found in many plastics, the lining of cans and even in the coating of many sales receipts, it’s not surprising that this chemical was found in more than 90 percent of Americans tested. BPA can influence fetal growth in a way that increases the risk of breast cancer. But this is just one of the many and growing concerns about this chemical.
3. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and other perfluorinated chemicals – These are used to create heat-resistant and non-stick coatings on cookware (Teflon), as well as grease-resistant food packaging and stain-resistant clothing. PFOA has been tagged as a likely carcinogen and studies have associated perfluorinated chemicals to infertility in women, and to liver, immune system, developmental and reproductive problems in lab animals.
4. Acrylamide – Cooking carbohydrates at high temperatures (French fries) and roasting of coffee produces acrylamide, which is also a byproduct of tobacco smoke. High-level exposure to acrylamide is believed to cause cancer and neurological problems in lab animals and workers, respectively.
5. Mercury – Contaminated fish continues to be the main source of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that can lead to permanent brain damage to fetuses and young children.
6. MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) – A gasoline additive no longer used in the U.S., MTBE is still present in the bodies of many Americans because it has contaminated many drinking water supplies. The health risks associated with MTBE are not well defined but studies have linked it to potential damage to the neurological and reproductive systems.

Dr. Mercola offers simple advice on how to avoid these offenders. Don’t sleep with the enemy. PBDEs could be lurking in your mattress. Since you can spend a lot of time in bed, look for for 100 percent wool, toxin-free mattresses, or those that use Kevlar instead of chemicals for fire-proofing.

Choose glass containers – this will help reduce your family’s exposure to BPA. Use only glass bottles and dishes. Store food and drinks in glass containers. Buy natural fabric toys instead of plastic. Don’t heat food or drinks in a plastic container or covered with plastic wrap. Avoid bottled water and make sure your plastic kitchenware is in good shape.

Avoid Teflon cookware and go for glass or ceramic cookware instead.

Say goodbye to fries and chips – these are two of the absolute worst foods you can put in your mouth or feed your family. Not only are they loaded with carcinogenic acrylamide, they also contain dangerous trans fats, the worst kind of fat you can consume.

Be careful with the fish you consume. The government says that about 75 percent of all human exposure to mercury comes from eating fish, 40 percent of which is attributed to contaminated Pacific tuna. There are a few safe alternatives like wild Alaskan red salmon. Eating smaller fish like anchovies or sardines, reduce the risk of contamination because of their small size. Avoid mercury-containing vaccines and dental fillings as well.