Turmeric and Ginger: Two South Asian Power Foods

Turmeric and Ginger:  Two South Asian Power FoodsOne of the great discoveries I made in my health-recovery journey was learning that food can be medicine. Ann Wigmore said it best, I think: “The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.”

You’re either eating foods that are health-supportive or health-destructive. The Standard American Diet (SAD)’s processed foods are not only virtually void of any nutrients, but they are also typically full of harmful ingredients like artificial colors, artificial flavors, high fructose corn syrup, preservatives and additives like MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein and other neurotoxins.

If you’ve read my blogs before, you know that I believe that whole foods are health-supportive. Whole foods are ones that look very much like what they did when they were alive and growing.

For example, instead of thinking that whole-wheat bread is a whole food (it’s not), think instead about where the flour came from: the wheat berry.

For a health-supportive diet, a whole-foods diet is the basis for feeling better. I recommend that, in addition to this, you look at foods that are anti-inflammatory in nature. These are typically herbs and spices, as well as brightly colored fruits and vegetables.

Traditional Diets

In my love of cooking and search for health for myself and my family, I have also discovered that traditional diets are very health-promoting. Think about it: before people had refrigeration and preservatives, how did they eat?

They ate foods that had been preserved with salt, fermentation or by drying. They also ate foods that were only in season, which is a core tenet of the macrobiotic diet. And they also prized herbs and spices not only for their strong flavors, but also for their medicinal properties.

In fact, most, if not all, ancient medicinal traditions use herbal medicine. Some of these herbs and spices are ones that are eaten daily, and some are used for medicinal purposes only.

Anti-Inflammatory Spices

South Asian foods from India are examples of foods that contain a lot of two of my favorite anti-inflammatory spices, turmeric and ginger.

Turmeric is not only anti-inflammatory, but it’s also anti-fungal, anti-aging, anti-cancer (anti-mutagenic), anti-diabetic and lowers symptoms of dementia. It’s great for the pains of arthritis and headaches, protects against damaging effects of radiation, protects against heavy-metal toxicity.

What’s not to love about turmeric besides the fact that it’ll stain your hands and clothes yellow if you’re not careful?

Ginger is another powerhouse food that has been used in both Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine for thousands of years. In Western cultures, we typically think of ginger as a nausea reliever, but ginger is a powerful anti-inflammatory spice as well.

Ginger also reduces symptoms of dementia seen in Alzheimer’s (likely because of its anti-inflammatory properties), and it’s also anti-cancer, anti-microbial, anti-diabetic and anti-viral. In addition, it decreases the pain from working out too hard as well as from migraines. Consumption of ginger has been proven to lower blood pressure, too.

You don’t have to eat South Asian foods to get these spices into your diet, although I will say I love Indian and Asian food! To get you started in incorporating turmeric and ginger into your diet, I’ve provided a couple of my favorite recipes:

Book Review: The Diet Cure

Now, you might think it strange that I’m writing a book review for “The Diet Cure” by Julia Ross.  While I am a health coach, I don’t specialize in weight loss.  Instead, I specialize in helping people recover from symptoms of chronic neurological and/or autoimmune issues like autism, ADHD, allergies, asthma, SPD, lupus, fibromyalgia, Lyme and more.

But I don’t like throwing the baby out with the bath water, so I read the book to see what’s in it for my clients.  There’s a lot!

In the book, Ms. Ross teaches us about adrenal, thyroid, yeast-overgrowth, nutritional deficiencies, fatty-acid deficiency, food sensitivities and blood-sugar issues, which are all common in my clients (both the children and their mothers) and how many of these issues can be controlled with diet (food choices) as well as amino acid therapy.

She recommends a whole-foods diet for all of these issues, as well as an Atkins-ish diet especially for those with blood sugar issues. It’s about the elimination of sugar with an emphasis on protein and fats to keep you full.  For anyone that’s ever done the Atkins diet, you know that one piece of bread will send you into a carb-lover’s binge-fest.

Ms. Ross provides us with the missing links for why the Atkins diet is not successful in the long run:

  • “Dr. Atkins did not know that carbs could be more addictive than cocaine.”
  • “Dr. Atkins specifically did not recognize the addictive power of grains, particularly wheat, for many people.”

The key to overcoming carb and sugar addiction is the addition of the amino acids that Ms. Ross recommends.

The book goes step-by-step into explaining how the factors I mentioned above as well as depleted brain chemistry and malnutrition from chronic dieting make it almost impossible to stay at a healthy weight.  Ms. Ross also shows us how to correct these imbalances.

Given that Ms. Ross has headed up the Recovery Systems Clinic for many years, she has dealt with the full gamut of different types of addiction (drug, alcohol and food).  She writes that the reason her clinic is so successful is because of the use of amino acid therapy to correct these biochemical imbalances in the brain and elsewhere.  It’s not willpower; it’s biochemistry.

When I read this book, I took a step back and looked at it from my perspective of not only a health coach but also the media director and a board member of Epidemic Answers, a non-profit that lets parents know that recovery is possible from autism, ADHD, SPD, allergies, asthma, autoimmune and more.

We let parents know WHY there is such an epidemic of children’s chronic illnesses:  it’s a perfect storm of the Standard American diet that is nutritionally deficient, the overuse of antibiotics, toxins in our environment, stressful lifestyles and gut dysbiosis (an imbalance of good vs. bad gut flora).

But when I read this book, I thought, “Huh.  All those women that have been on nutritionally deficient diets for years since at least the 1970’s are having kids, and those kids are being born with nutritional deficiencies that are compounded by gut dysbiosis, toxicity and stress.  No wonder we’re seeing such epidemics of autism, ADHD, allergies and more.”

Moms being on nutritionally deficient diets isn’t the only reason for this epidemic, but it certainly plays a key, overlooked role.

I’ll be hosting Ms. Ross on my upcoming webinar on April 23, 2014 at 1:00pm ET.  We’ll be discussing these imbalances and how to correct them with amino acids and diet, and you can sign up for your chance to ask questions here.

 

Inflammation

What’s so important about inflammation?

Discover 12 Powerful Ways to Reduce Inflammation - small3Inflammation causes pain, swelling, heat, redness and loss of function. Left untreated, it can lead to bodily tissue destruction, fibrosis and necrosis. Remember, pain is a signal that something’s wrong.

Who has inflammation?

Inflammation is a root cause of many chronic illnesses such as autism, ADHD, allergies, asthma, eczema, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune diseases, heart disease, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Help!  How do I reduce it?

Sign up for this free report!  In it, I’ll show you many simple things you can do with the foods that you’re eating to reduce inflammation.  And when that happens, you may not have as much pain, stiffness and swelling.

 

Birth Practices and Breastfeeding Practices

Birth Practices and BreastfeedingI interviewed Jennifer Margulis, author of “The Business of Baby:  What Doctors Don’t Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth and Baby Before Their Bottom Line”.

In this webinar, you’ll discover how many common pregnancy practices, birth practices and infant care practices are driven, many times without safety studies, to keep you and your baby as a profit center.  Sign up below for the webinar replay:

Sign up to find out about:

  • The link between ultrasounds and neurodevelopmental disorders like autism
  • Why the maternal death rate doubled in the U.S. between 1990 and 2008
  • Why the C-section rate is so high now and how you’re more likely to have one if you have good medical insurance and at a for-profit hospital
  • Fetal induction and its role in emergency Cesarean sections
  • The link between C-sections and autism, allergies and asthma
  • The link between early cord clamping, anemia and neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD
  • How birth practices and breastfeeding practices can be linked to children’s chronic illnesses and neurodevelopmental disorders

When I was on the way to becoming a new parent, I was like most people out there, who assume that doctors and the healthcare system are looking out for us and have our best interests at heart.

Jennifer (Dr. Margulis, PhD) shows us how this just isn’t so. She shows us how pharmaceutical companies and medical-insurance companies are not only shaping for the worse what our healthcare choices are but also how there is a revolving door between them and federal government that drives federal healthcare policy.

You and I are looked at as long-term profit centers by the healthcare industry. Food and prevention don’t make a lot of profit, so they’re ignored. I love Jennifer’s quote, “You won’t see a farmer going to a doctor’s office with free kale in the hopes of getting pregnant patients hooked”.

Sugar and Health: Cut Out the Sugar!

Sugar and HealthI’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  Sugar is as addictive as drugs!  Sugar activates the same pleasure centers in your brain that hard drugs like morphine and heroin do, and you get a dopamine rush from consuming it.  No wonder it’s so hard to give up!

Sugar is pushed on us by an agricultural policy that subsidizes corn and sugar, making it a cheap and addictive additive to processed foods.  Fifty years ago, the average American consumed about 20 pounds of sugar per year; these days, it’s around 130 pounds.  No wonder we’re an obese nation!

I think by now, we all know that sugar and processed foods can lead to diabetes and obesity, but here are some other reasons why you’ll want to cut out the sugar if you’re looking to improve your health.

Sugar and Health

  • Sugar feeds cancer.  Sugar in all of its forms, including high-fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, agave, etc., feeds cancer because it causes angiogenesis, the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor.
  • Sugar suppresses the immune system.  Glucose, fructose, sucrose and other simple sugars cause a 50% reduction in the number of white blood cells that engulf pathogenic bacteria.
  • Sugar feeds Candida and other intestinal pathogens.  Candidiasis is a systemic, whole-body infection with the Candida albicans yeast.  Sugar feeds Candida and other intestinal pathogens, which in turn suppress the immune system.
  • Sugar causes inflammation.  Sugary foods cause an increase of inflammatory cytokines. An overproduction or inappropriate production of certain cytokines by the body can result in diseases like heart disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
  • Sugar ages your skin faster.  Wanna know why I look 15 years younger than I am?  I don’t eat much sugar.  The free radicals caused by its inflammatory actions age the skin (as well as what you don’t see on the inside).
  • Sugar uses up valuable nutrients to process it.  For example, it takes a LOT of magnesium to process sugar, and magnesium is both woefully deficient in the Standard American Diet and necessary to calm the central nervous system.
  • Sugar causes adrenal fatigue.  Cortisol, made by your adrenal glands, controls blood-sugar swings. Too much sugar can cause excess cortisol production, leading eventually to adrenal fatigue, where your adrenals can’t make enough cortisol to get you through the day with enough energy.
  • Sugar decreases your ability to concentrate.  A high-sugar diet leads to a lack of attention in children (and adults, too!) as well as an increase in adrenaline.
  • Sugar increases your appetite.  Sugar doesn’t tell your brain that you’re full and that you should stop eating, which is why you can scarf down a whole box of crackers or cookies and still be hungry.

Giving up sugar is hard, and sheer willpower probably won’t be enough to do it.  I’ve found that cutting out processed foods while adding in foods made from scratch and whole grains helps.

Let me be clear on what I mean by “made from whole grains”.  I mean food made with the whole brown rice, millet, quinoa, oats grain/kernel, not flakes or flour made by grinding up these grains and seeds.  I mean food made with the whole wheat berry, if you eat wheat, not bread or cookies or waffles or pancakes made from whole wheat flour.  I mean whole oat groats, not oatmeal.  Grinding a grain into flour increases its glycemic load, meaning it can raise your blood sugar very quickly.

Looking for some dessert recipes that aren’t too sweet and don’t have too much sugar?  Try out these favorites:

Gluten Free Hype?

Gluten Free Hype?A lot of people are going gluten-free these days – is gluten free hype or a real and growing trend?

I would argue that it’s a real and growing trend, and it’s not just because the number of patients diagnosed with celiac disease is growing.

Gluten Isn’t What It Used to Be

A whole host of publications have come out recently that argue against gluten in the diet (“Grain Brain“, “Wheat Belly” and “The Dark Side of Wheat“), mainly because the gluten we eat today, which comes mainly in the form of wheat, is not the same as what our grandparents ate.

Wheat has been hybridized and genetically manipulated to the extent that our bodies recognize it as foreign and unfriendly.

In fact, recently there was an online “Gluten Summit“, in which celiac researchers, functional-medicine doctors and holistic nutritionists collectively agreed that gluten should be removed from our most, if not all, of our diets.

Effects of Gluten on Our Bodies

As more and more people discover that their allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders are exacerbated by food allergies and intolerances, these people discover that removing allergenic foods, such as gluten, from their diets makes them feel better.

Removing gluten from your diet can relieve you from a lot of symptoms that you might typically take an over-the-counter medication for such as bloating, headaches, constipation, diarrhea, inability to focus, fatigue and joint pain.

The best way to know if gluten is affecting you is to be a food detective.  Eliminate all forms of it (wheat, rye, barley, soy sauce, non-gluten-free oats and more) from your diet for at least a week, then add it back in.  Beware of hidden sources of gluten, such as those found in salad dressings, soups, puddings, processed meats and ice cream.

Keep a food journal and keep an eye out for any unusual symptoms, such as the ones I described above.  They might not just be a coincidence, and they might take 2 or 3 days to reappear, so be patient.

Working Gluten-Free Foods into Your Diet

I don’t recommend that you replace all of your gluten-filled foods with their gluten-free counterparts.  Doing so will get you a lot of gluten-free junk food.  Typically, these pancakes, cookies, waffles, breads, etc. are loaded with corn and potato starch as dough softeners, and adding more of these high-glycemic starches to your diet can adversely affect your blood sugar.

Instead, I recommend adding in gluten-free whole foods into your diet:  brown rice, wild rice, buckwheat, millet, amaranth, quinoa, non-GMO corn and potatoes are great starting points.  If you’re baking, my favorite grain-based gluten-free flour is sorghum, or you could try non-grain flours made from coconuts or nuts.

Here are some easy gluten-free recipes for you try out this holiday season:

 

 

Body Ecology Diet: An Interview with Donna Gates

Body Ecology Diet: An Interview with Donna GatesDonna Gates is the developer of the Body Ecology Diet, a gut-healing diet that can be used to recover symptoms of autism, ADHD, autoimmune diseases, hormonal imbalances and more.

Sign up for the webinar replay below.

In this interview, Donna talks about how she developed the Body Ecology Diet, almost as an offshoot of what she learned studying macrobiotics.

We talk about gut health is important for the immune system and how, if you have gut dysbiosis (an imbalance of bad bacteria, yeast, parasites and pathaogens vs. good), that it leads to ill health.

Gut health also affects brain health, as most (95%) of your neurotransmitters are made in your gut.  Most, if not all, people with neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders have impaired gut function, which is why cleaning up the gut can help recover people from symptoms of these chronic disorders.

Find out how this diet can help those with:

  • Allergies
  • Food allergies
  • ADHD
  • Asthma
  • Autism
  • Neurological disorders
  • Thyroid disorders
  • Autoimmune disorders

 

Listen to Your Gut

Listen to Your GutIn the fall of 2013, I attended “An Evening of Inspiration“, a fabulous benefit put on my non-profit, Epidemic Answers, to benefit our Canary Kids Film Project, a film in which we’ll be documenting the potential recovery of 14 children from autism, ADHD, asthma, atopic dermatitis, juvenile RA, mood disorders and type 2 diabetes as they receive free healing and recovery services for 18 months.

My fellow board member and friend, Patty Lemer, the Executive Director of Developmental Delay Resources, was interviewing people on film at the event about how they got involved in the project.

I told Patty my story of how I originally started blogging for Epidemic Answers four years ago after I heard our Executive Director, Beth Lambert, give a presentation about her just-published book, “A Compromised Generation:  The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children” at the Wilton library.

I found myself finishing Beth’s sentences and was astounded that someone else was on the same page as me and had also recovered her children.  Of course, I immediately asked to volunteer for them, which is how I started blogging for them.

If you don’t know my story, I’ve recovered my sons from sensory processing disorder (I call it “autism light”), asthma, acid reflux and eczema, and they also have had or continue to have developmental delays, hypotonia, hypothyroidism, mitochondrial dysfunction, immune dysregulation, methylation defects and failure to thrive.

It has been a long row to hoe, but it has very much been worth it.  Along the way, I discovered that many of my own health problems were related to and/or contributed to the health problems of my children.

I would not have achieved this level of success in our health if I had listened to what my western, allopathic doctors were telling me.

I would say, “My son barely eats; he eats 2 spoonfuls of yogurt and 5 Cheerios, and it takes him an hour to eat, and then he throws it all back up”.  They would say, “He’s fine, don’t worry about it”.  They said that all the way from his beginning at the 40th percentile for weight until he fell all the way down to the 3rd percentile at 18 months, when he lost weight.  THEN they said, “There’s a problem.”  Really!?!

I would say, “He has poor motor skills.  His first crawling happened when he was 8 months old, and he slithered backwards.  Then, he army-crawled until he was 19 months old.  He cross-crawled for only a couple of weeks before he began to walk at 20 months.”  All along, they were saying, “He’s fine; don’t worry about it”.  Until he hit 18 months, THEN all of a sudden they said, “There’s a problem.”

I would say, “He projectile vomits, and my clothes, his clothes, his car seat, chairs and rugs are covered with it constantly.  He throws up after every meal.”  They said, “He’s got a weak gag reflex; he’ll grow out of it.”  They said this until he was 2-1/2 years old, and THEN they said, “He has acid reflux.  Give him some Prevacid.”

I would say, “He’s hypersensitive to sounds, lights and motions.  He cries all the time.  Something is wrong.”  They would say, “He’s fine; he’ll grow out of it.”  By this point, my son was 3 years old, and I had had enough of being told that, “He’s fine.  There’s nothing to worry about.  He’ll grow out of it.”

The truth is, there was a gnawing feeling inside of me that “something’s not right, something’s not right”.  I couldn’t put my finger on it.  So, even though my then pediatrician du jour said, “Don’t worry about it; he’ll grow out of it”, I had grown a pair by then and learned to put my foot down for my child.

I badgered her with questions until finally she gave up and said that maybe we should see a developmental psychologist.  We did, and voila, we got the diagnosis (even though it’s not a DSM diagnosis) that my son had sensory processing disorder.

From then on, nothing could stop us.  I began to research WHY he was like this.  Therapy obviously helped, but there was more to it.

Why was he sick all the time?  Why had he had so many ear infections?  Why did he develop asthma?  Why did he have developmental delays and acid reflux?  Why was he so sensitive?

Nobody that I knew really knew, so I had to keep digging and digging until I got to the point where I figured it out.  It’s toxicity, gut dysbiosis, nutritional deficiencies and hormonal imbalances.

Try getting THAT answer from your pediatrician.  Unless you’re one of the lucky few with an integrative pediatrician, you’ll never hear that answer, despite a multitude of peer-reviewed medical research journal studies out there that they just don’t have the time to read.

The system is broken.  If you want health and recovery for yourself and/or your children, you will need to take your health back into your own hands and stop giving away your power to the religion of worshiping men and women in white coats as if they know everything.  They probably don’t.

You need to listen to your gut instinct when it tells you that something is wrong.

It’s so easy to push that knowing down and stuff it aside and listen to the authorities who tell you that nothing is wrong and don’t worry about it.  I’m telling you don’t do it; you’ll regret it if you do.

I teach my clients to become their own and their children’s own advocates.  If you don’t do it, who will?  You can’t expect that someone else will care more about you and your children than you do.

My children and I would not have recovered from our health problems if I had not listened to my intuition, that little voice that said, “Something’s wrong.”

 

Ritalin, Adderall and Anti-Depressants Aren’t the Only ADHD Options

Ritalin, Adderall and Anti-Depressants Aren't the Only Choices for ADHDDid you know that most, if not all, school shootings were performed by children on some type of anti-depressant or other psychological medication?

Even if you think your child would never do something like this, do you really want to take that risk?

Many parents feel that they have no other option but to medicate their child if he/she is hyperactive, inattentive or has behavioral problems.

Usually it’s a boy, and recent statistics show that 1 in 10 children has been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.  That’s crazy!

I keep doing a double-take and wondering when people are going to wake up and smell the Kool-Aid that they’re drinking.

Yes, I believe many of these diagnoses are correct.  I don’t think it’s just better diagnosis.  I really can’t remember kids having these issues when I was in school, but now that my sons are in elementary school, I see it everywhere.  In fact, I heard that the 2nd grade teachers said that this last class was the toughest yet in terms of behavioral problems – the teachers were worn out!

There is another way, and I recommend that parents look into the possibility of their children having gut dysbiosis, food allergies/sensitivities and/or toxicity before reaching for Ritalin or Adderall for ADHD options.

Unfortunately, your local pediatrician likely hasn’t been educated about these issues.

A child with any of the above issues is more likely to have had colic, projectile vomiting, developmental delays, chronic ear infections, chronic runny nose, ears/cheeks turning red after eating, distended bellies, acid reflux, cradle cap and more.

You can find out what’s happening to our children by viewing the full-length video below of “The Drugging of Our Children”.

 

Pollution in Newborns

Pollution in NewbornsI’m sorry to say that most people just don’t know this.  I didn’t either, despite the fact that it was published by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in 2005, the year my older son was born.

In their landmark report, Body Burden:  The Pollution in Newborns, the EWG pointed out that an AVERAGE of 200 toxic chemicals were in the cordblood of newborns, meaning that there is only one place these could have come from:  the mother.

They found a total of over 280 carcinogens, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, plastics, neurologically damaging pesticides and other nasties in these babies.

I remember telling our former pediatrician about the shocking levels of heavy metals that I had discovered in myself and my sons.  She said, “But you don’t live in a toxic waste dump!”

The point is, I don’t think you have to anymore to be this toxic because we’re all being exposed to these toxicants on a daily basis, then unknowingly passing them onto our children, whose toxin load will accumulate over time, and they’ll pass it on to their children.

It’s one of the main reasons we’re seeing such an epidemic of chronic illnesses like cancer and autoimmune diseases as well as developmental delays and disorders such as autism, ADHD, PDD-NOS and sensory processing disorder in children these days.

The good news is that people can be recovered from these conditions.  I’ve recovered my own sons from sensory processing disorder, asthma, eczema and acid reflux.

Here’s the trailer from the well-thought-out documentary, “Unacceptable Levels“.  It’s 2 minutes long and worth it for you to get a glimpse of what’s going on.