Lorna’s Weekly Link Love

Starting today, I’ll be giving a little weekly “link love” here at The Spiritual Eclectic blog for mind-body-spirit subjects as well as a link round-up for book and history lovers over at The Secret Lives of Librarians blog.

Featured book this week is one that captured my heart long ago, A Man Called Regret.  Just click on the photo to the left for the kindle version.

This week’s most interesting Mind-Body-Spirit links:

I always thought I wouldn’t have to worry about hormones until menopause but hmmm, seems lots of my female friends in their 30’s are having hormone imbalance problems.  As it was explained to me, peri-menopause can be the 15 years before a woman is IN menopause, and so there can be a lot of

hormone fluctuation during that time.  Here’s a Too Much Estrogen, Too Little  list that gives you a hint as to whether you have too much or too little estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.  Part of my current “study” and experimentation involves looking at hormones and the effects of my environment on my hormones.  I was surprised to learn that a chemical that acts as estrogen in the body is in the lining of canned foods.  Since I have some of the symptoms on the hormone list above, I’ve decided to have a saliva test done by ZRT Laboratoryto test my hormonal balance, plus my cortisol levels.

Speaking of saliva tests, I decided to check out my family tree and see if I could confirm all the Native American ancestry in my family’s oral history.  Four or five friends of mine have reported being very pleased with the results of their family genealogy testing, so I’ll report on my findings when I have them.

And speaking of saliva…or in this case, drool…I continue to seek out recipes that are gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free or any combination thereof.  Favs this week:

Raspberry Butter Sauce with Crispy Salmon and Salad Greens

–  Mango Raspberry Tart  (for some reason, raspberries really appealed to me this week!)

 The 1-Minute Muffin 

–  Kiwi Apricot Mango Pops (so good on hot days!)

Ahem.  Waylaid by food thoughts.  If you don’t know if you’re gluten-sensitive and can’t afford the lab tests for it, take this simple quiz.  It will give you an idea of whether you might want to try gluten-free for a few weeks at least to see if your symptoms improve.

I’ve just finished reading  Inside Scientology.  Why?  Well, with all the drama over  Tom Cruise (probably the most famous Scientologist currently) and his shockingly fast divorce from Katie Holmes, the questions over whether Katie Holmes opposed the Scientology religion or training of daughter Suri Cruise or whether Scientologists were evil or Scientology was a cult or what Katie Holmes had on Tom Cruise that allowed her to settle the divorce so quickly…..  I really hate it when people assume my spiritual beliefs without even asking me about them or doing research on what I believe, so I decided  that I shouldn’t say anything about Scientology until I’d had a chance to look into it.  Basically, I chose to do a little research and try to be informed rather than just another mindless gossip.  Inside Scientology does not a paint a very positive picture of the religion (and if people consider their belief set to be a religion, I’m okay with that).  The book details a lot of the history of the church, its run-ins with authority, and–most interestingly to me–the marketing of the religion.  That may not be the intent behind the book, but it did make me think about how different religions market themselves to followers.

I’m already halfway through The Invisible World: Understanding Angels, Demons, and the Spiritual Realities that Surround Us.  Hmmm, at this point I’m struggling with the book.  It’s really a long sermon, explicitly Christian in nature, though that really wasn’t obvious in the first chapter or two.  There were a couple of nuggets early on that I liked and, placing the template of my spiritual beliefs over the author’s sermon, I could agree with many of his earlier points and even overlook his earlier inconsistencies, such as criticizing other religions or non-Christians for particular ways of thinking and then in the same chapter committing the same offenses which are okay for Christian thinking.  By the half-way point, I’m just shaking my head and laughing at some of his imagery but, oops, I guess that was a demon “smuggling a thought” into my head.

A few other links that intrigued me:  Beauty blogger Lauren Luke’s must-watch video on domestic violence; my Ph.D.-candidate daughter sends me the coolest links on things like brain scans of monksthe discovery ofthe God particleandliving without breathing;  and a low-carb blogger’s discovery about how sleep affects hormones, weight, and more.


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