An old Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A battle is raging inside me....it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, friendship, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The old man fixed the children with a firm stare. "This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too."

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather,"Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee replied: "The one you feed." Let's spend the next few minutes feeding the good wolf. As a Doctor of Natural Health, a lot of people have asked me about how to feel better. People just want to feel better. Now, what did they mean by feeling better? Did they mean physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or all of the above?

While we're talking about feeling better, let me give you some statistics on three common conditions - depression, anxiety and panic attacks, and hypertension or high blood pressure. These statistics come from such sources as the Harvard University, the World Health Organization, The National Mental Health Association, and The National Institute for Mental Health.

We'll start with depression. Depression or some depressive disorders affects about 18.8 million people. That's about 9.5 percent of the entire population 18 years or older. Preschoolers are the fastest growing market for antidepressants. That's incredible to me. At least 4% of the preschoolers (that's over 1 million kids) are clinically depressed. 15% of the population of most developed countries has some form of severe depression. So it's not just an American problem. It's global. 15% of depressed people will commit suicide. 80% of depressed people are not currently having any treatment whatsoever. And depression results in more absenteeism than any other physical disorder. It costs employers more than 51 billion dollars per year in absenteeism and lost productivity. And that 51 billion dollar figure does not including the high medical costs and the pharmaceutical costs that are related to depression.

As far as anxiety goes, 1 in every 8 Americans between the ages of 15-18 suffers from some kind of anxiety disorder. That's over 19 million people. That's everything from obsessive-compulsive, to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, any kind of phobias, or panic disorders. Research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health shows that anxiety issues are the number one health issue among American women and are second only to alcohol and drug abuse among men. Women suffer from anxiety almost twice as much as men. It's the most common mental illness in America and it surpasses depression. It's the most common mental illness in adults 65 years or older and it costs the United States 46.6 billion dollars every year. Anxiety sufferers will see an average of 5 doctors before somebody even diagnoses them properly. Panic attacks occur to about 1.7% of the population. That's 4.6 million people.

Hypertension-that's one you hear about all the time-(high blood pressure). High blood pressure killed over 50 thousand Americans in 2002. About 65 million Americans age 20 and over have high blood pressure. That number translates to nearly 1 in 3 adults having high blood pressure. Of those people with high blood pressure, only about 65% of the people were aware of it and less than 50% are under any kind of treatment. Of the people in treatment, only about 30% of them have it under control. The cause of about 90 to 95% of cases of high blood pressure isn't known according to the statistics. The death rate from high blood pressure increased29.3% from 1993 to 2003. So, in a ten year period, it rose 30%, roughly.

To better understand what's going on with all these conditions and why people want to feel better, we need to look at the bigger picture. Quantum Physics has showed us that everything in the universe is composed of energy whether it's the electricity running through wires or whether it's electrical current that runs through our nervous system and sparks movement, or whether it's the electrical impulse that beats the heart. Whatever it is, there's an energy charge to it. So, one of the best ways to think of the body is as an open energy system. An open energy system that takes the energy coming from the universe, takes the energy from the food, takes the energy from its surroundings, and sends that energy back into the universe as work, love, movement, etc.

Again, as we can see from Quantum Physics, everything is energy. Anytime that we interact with something or someone, we interact with its energy field. One of the laws of Quantum Physics states that once two energy fields intermingle, they can never fully separate. So, we need to take that into account when we look at everything that we do, everything that we say, everything we read, every TV show we watch, everything we listen to,everything we smell, everything we touch, everything that we eat, and every person that we come into contact with is all part of the energy of the universe and our own personal energy as it flows through us. The key to feeling better is to have the energy in a positive form instead of a negative form.

Many people that want to feel better are feeling pretty negative right now. And the negativity is controlling their lives. It'll show up in their relationships, it'll show up in their health. So, let's talk a little bit about positivity and negativity and I'll give you some background on that.

There was a study done at the Chicago School of Psychology that took two groups of people - 1 group in Mexico City, and the other in Chicago, both with people between 20 years old and 65 years old. They discovered that BOTH GROUPS of people had more negative words than positive words or even neutral words. People in general know more negative words than they do positive or neutralwords. The proportion basically comes out to be 50% of the words we know are negative, 30% of the words are positive, and 20% are neutral.

What happens throughout daily life is that you don't much attention to the positive words, when you're talking with people. That's because positive words pretty much mean that things are okay and as a result, you don't have to pay much attention to it. It's the negative words that give us a signal that something is wrong and so we start spending more time, paying more attention, and giving more detail in our thinking in a negative form. Overall, we end up living our lives on more negative words.

Did you ever notice how the negative people in your lives are the ones that get the most attention and cause you the most tension? 20% of the people that we interact with in an average day are negative. They're the ones that stir up all the trouble, and we spend 90 to 92% of our day paying attention to them. The positive people in our lives are about 20% of our friends, relatives, and colleagues at work. We spend about 1% of our time with them. The in-between type people are about 60% of any group. And we spend about 7% of our time with the in-between group. A little bit more of the negativity is the average amount of negative input that you have in an average day.

There was an experiment conducted by Dr. Lacey Hall that concluded that most people experience 90% of negative input in an average day. That's a whole lot of negative thinking or negative input. Let's put it into perspective. Now, our verbal conversation, when we're talking with an average person, is about 300-500 words per minute. Internally, you and I talk to ourselves at an incredibly fast speed. It's somewhere about 3000 to 5000 words per minute; that's 10x faster. And all that chatter goes on in our heads constantly. Now, here's the really scary part - it's estimated that most of your self-talk is somewhere around 60-85% negative. That's just the talk that you give to yourself.

Motivational speaker Zig Ziegler says that the most influential person that you'll talk to all day long is you. So, you should be particularly careful about what you say to YOU. The answer to all your problems is right under your nose - Your mouth controls your life by what comes out of it and by what you put into it. The answer really is right under your nose.