Sprouting Nuts, Seeds and Grains

Sprouting Nuts, Seeds and GrainsSoaking and sprouting nuts, seeds, legumes and grains removes phytic acid, a digestion inhibitor. Learn how to do this and more with Institute for Integrative Nutrition’s Raw Foods Guide.

Sprouting increases the nutritional value of raw foods and makes them easier to digest.

Step 1:  Soak your nuts, seeds, whole grains or legumes overnight.

Step 2:  Rinse with fresh water in the morning, and then every 12 hours for 3-4 days.

Step 3:  Store upside down in a glass jar with a cheesecloth over the top or a sprouting bag.

Step 4:  Expose the fresh sprouts to sunlight before eating to increase chlorophyll absorption.

Get the guide here.

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:

Bone Broth Benefits

Bone Broth BenefitsBone broth is one of the staples in my kitchen, and I’m hoping to make it that way in yours, too.  Our ancestors knew about bone broth benefits, but we’ve gotten so out of touch with traditional foods that we don’t realize how healing something as simple as bone broth can be.

Minerals

“Good broth will resurrect the dead” is a South American proverb.  The reason is that animal bones are full of minerals.

So many people are mineral deficient these days, especially those who eat a Standard American Diet full of processed foods that are typically void of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.

Minerals are necessary for proper functioning of our adrenal and thyroid glands, which help us to deal with stress.  If you’re mineral deficient, you’re likely having a hard time managing stress.

Gelatin

When broth cools, the gelatin in it congeals.  Gelatin contains the amino acids glycine and arginine.  Glycine is helpful for achieving deep, restful sleep as well as for making glutathione, the body’s master antioxidant.  Arginine helps heal coronary blood vessels, keeps the plaque off of arteries and minimizes clotting.

Gelatin also helps heal the lining of the colon, and is especially helpful for anyone with digestive issues.  It’s great for building up hair and nails and because it contains collagen, it’s great for keeping your skin from sagging.

Gelatin has been found to increase cartilage in the joints, so it’s helpful for someone with arthritis.  Not only that, but gelatin is anti-inflammatory, so it can help reduce the pain of arthritis, as well as that of other conditions.

Deep, Hearty Richness

Bone broth is the magic ingredient I use to give my home-cooked meals a satisfying and rich flavor.  Anyone that’s eaten my food knows that it has a deep, hearty richness that comes from my homemade bone broths.

You can’t buy this flavor from a package in a store or even find it in most restaurants, as they use factory-made bases containing MSG or other free-glutamate “foods”.  You really need to make it yourself to taste the difference.  I use it for reconstituting grains and legumes, for sauteing and braising meats and vegetables and for the base for sauces and soups.

Be sure to use bones from pasture-raised or grass-fed land animals or from wild-caught (not farm-raised) fish.  When I buy meat, I buy it with the bone in and skin on.  Fat from the skin is full of fat-soluble vitamins and gives dishes another depth of flavor that’s impossible to duplicate with store- or restaurant-bought food.

I save the bones and store them in the freezer until I have enough to make a batch of bone broth in my slow cooker.

Here are some easy recipes for you to incorporate into your daily routine so that you, too, can realize bone broth benefits.

I wrote this blog post for Dr. Henri Roca, a functional-medicine MD.

 

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.

 

Diet Soda and Aspartame

diet sodaI saw another pleasant surprise in today’s Wall Street Journal:  sales of diet sodas fell for the ninth straight year because more consumers are increasingly becoming wary of aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in diet sodas “despite decades of studies by the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies”.

Some consumers are finally catching on to the fact that just because the FDA says it’s safe, doesn’t mean it really is.  Perhaps they understand that the fox is guarding the henhouse and that these agencies often don’t look out for our best interests, as we would expect that they do.

Diet Soda and Aspartame

Aspartame, a genetically modified ingredient used as an artificial sweetener in diet sodas, converts to formaldehyde in the body and has been linked to migraines, fibromyalgia and even seizures. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen that’s used to embalm corpses. Wanna become one faster? Drink diet soda.

Recent studies have shown that people who drink diet soda typically fail to lose weight or worse, gain even more weight, because their metabolisms are tricked into storing fat by the sweet taste of aspartame.  It’s not just a “calories in, calories out” equation because the biochemical reaction of our brain reacting to the sweet taste isn’t accounted for in the equation.

Don’t think you’re off the hook if you’re drinking regular, sugar-laden soda.  Honestly, it’s a tough call as to which one is worse, but you can read more about my thoughts about it in the Dangers of Drinking Soda.

Food as Medicine

Food As MedicineI was pleasantly surprised to see an article in the Wall Street Journal:  “A Delicious Prescription:  Chefs and Doctors Are Teaming Up to Create Health Food You Might Actually Crave.”

The article talked about how famous functional-medicine doctors like Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Frank Lipman are teaming up with famous chefs such as David Bouley and Seamus Mullen to show that, as Ann Wigmore said, “The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison”, meaning that we should look at food as medicine.

I’m hoping that this isn’t just a fad, but that doctors are recognizing what traditional medicines from around the world have long known about the healing properties of food.

Doctors, you see, typically don’t learn about nutrition in medical school, and if they do, it’s usually about macro nutrition things like calories, carbohydrates and maybe vitamins.

In my experience, mainstream doctors have pooh-poohed the benefits of removing certain problem foods and/or the addition of health-promoting foods.

In fact, one of our ex-pediatricians advised me to take my older son to McDonald’s and give him Pediasure when he was finally diagnosed as failure to thrive, as if that would solve his problem.  It didn’t.  There was way more to the story than that, and giving my son non-nutritious, toxin-laden food was not the answer.

Fortunately for us, unfortunately for them, some of these famous doctors like Dr. Hyman and Dr. Susan Blum have had their own health crises, and they realized that food was a large part of their own recovery journeys.  In fact, Dr. Blum has a state-of-the-art kitchen at her office, where a staff chef teaches about cooking for health.  Let’s hope more mainstream doctors take a cue from them and decide to write prescriptions for more fruits and vegetables.

 

The New Nutrition Label

The New Nutrition LabelThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just announced proposed changes to the nutrition label.  Overall, I think these changes might make a positive and meaningful difference to our country’s health, at least to those who pay attention to food labels.  Here’s a breakdown of what I think are the positive changes:

  • More accurate serving size.  This is the big winner here because it reflects what people currently eat in one sitting.  Most people don’t carefully measure out ½ cup of ice cream for a serving; they eat half the pint instead, so the new label will reflect that reality.
  • Big emphasis on “Total Calories”.  This will be in a much-larger font size so that it really grabs your attention.  It’s kind of like the angel on your shoulder saying, “Do you REALLY want to eat that many calories?”
  • The addition of “Added Sugars” to the label.  Now people will know exactly how much sugar that food manufacturers have been adding to our food.  The problem with our misguided focus on eating low-fat foods is that it comes with the added cost of nasty chemicals to achieve the same “mouth-feel” as well as added sugar.  Fat and sugar both make food taste better.  If you’re taking out one (fat), you’re likely replacing it with more of the other (sugar).Rhetorical question:  Is it coincidental that at the same time we’ve been eating low-fat foods (remember, saturated fats were supposed to have been causing cardiovascular disease), there has been a skyrocketing epidemic of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity?  I think not!  It’s the sugar, folks!  And many times, it’s not listed as “sugar” on the ingredient label, so it can be tricky to figure out just where those calories are coming from.
  • Elimination of “Calories from Fat”.  Unfortunately, we’ve become fat-phobic in this country, as I explained above.  I wish we could become sugar-phobic instead, but sugar causes a dopamine rush, meaning that eating it is addictive and makes you (temporarily) feel good, so that’s probably not going to happen!
  • The addition of “Vitamin D” RDA percentage.  This country is in the midst of a vitamin-D epidemic deficiency, and it’s a factor that plays a large part in the epidemics of autism, allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, so having people pay attention to vitamin-D rich foods is a plus.  I’m betting, however, that most of them will be supplemented with synthetic vitamin D (vitamin D2) instead of the natural form (vitamin D3), so this is going to create another game for food manufacturers:  they will probably just add a lot of synthetic vitamin D so they can claim that it’s “rich in vitamin D”.
  • The addition of “Potassium” RDA percentage.  Potassium lowers blood pressure, so it’s a good idea to put this on the label, especially since so many people (young ones, too!) have hypertension these days.

The problem is that some people just don’t pay attention to food labels and portion sizes.  They’re going to eat whatever portion is set in front of them, which is why ex-mayor Bloomberg of New York tried to tax soft drinks over 8 ounces – do we really need to drink a Big Gulp?  The documentary “Super Size Me” did a great job of showing us how this kind of portion creep is making us fatter.

Nutrition-label improvements are mostly a moot point for me, personally, as I don’t buy very many foods that come with a food label on them.  I recommend you do the same.

This is a guest-blog post I wrote for Dr. Henri Roca, MD.

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