Wellbeing Workshop » Health

A paleo breakfast!

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:33:50 +0000

One of the many things that I recommend that people do is to change to a paleo diet to avoid any future development of symptoms of Chronic systemic inflammation.

One of the worst meals for the development of Chronic Systemic inflammation (CSI) is the current breakfast fad of having grain based confectionery for breakfast.

While I know that many people consider a cereal breakfast to be a great start to the day, unless you are eating something luike porridge they really are just a cereal confectionery.

To answer some of the questions that I get asked. Here are some breakfast ideas.

Pancakes

1 cup almond flour , 1/4 cup coconut milk, 1 egg, 1/2 a cup of blueberries or other berries (optional)

2 eggs, 1 onion cooked in olive oil , 1 orange

2 eggs, a 1/2 a cup of steamed spinach, 3-4 slices of pineapple or melon, handful walnuts

leftover meat or deli meat, and a piece of fruit

Vegetable scrambled eggs

Heated up some butter in a small frying pan
Tossed in half a bag of roughly chopped up Baby Leaf Spinach (60p) for a few seconds till it was covered by butter and wilted very slightly In another bowl mix up 2 organic free range eggs (33p) with some pepper, mixed herbs and thyme (I used all dried but you can use fresh if you prefer
Chuck in the egg mixture to the pan and stir it around on a medium heat.
When the eggs are set to your liking, remove and put in a nice bowl with some smoked salmon

In fact almost any vegetable omelette is a great start.

Mind you try not to go too crazy eating eggs.

Another one that I enjoy is is a piece of cold chicken breast from a roast chicken and a 1/4 of a rockmelon/cantaloupe. Or you can try a fruit slushie and a boiled egg. It is also nice to whack some fruit into a blender and to drink that while eating a cold cut.

I will date this one the 14th of June and keep adding as I run across new recipes

What is Healthy Water II?

admin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:33:44 +0000

Yesterday we started with the question, what is healthy water, and why is is healthy?

So today I am going to start with the great question about water, which is: How much water do I need to drink. We have all asked that question at one time or another "How much water do I need to drink."

Considering that after air, water is our second most important nutirent, this is a very important question.

Unfortunately tha question is much more complicated than it would first appear. There are a number of key factors involved in that. The key in this question is what is your caloric intake? You see the second largest factor in the amount of water is that your bodies uses water as a tool when digesting food and energy distribution.

The Primary use of water is for thermal management. So depending on the weather you may use or lose up to 3+ litres of water per day.

So a list of water usage in your body includes,

Food intake.
Climate.
Activity level.
Environmental toxic load.
Airconditioning (dries you out).
Length of day (believe it or not).
Lubrication.
Moisturising skin and lungs.
Shock absprbtion. (very active people use more for this)
Cleaning and toxin removal from cells.
Transport of energy, nutrients and toxins.
Etc etc....

But you start to get the idea.

This means that almost any advice that you get regarding amounts to drink is flawed advice as it takes none of the above into account.

In fact the original 8 glasses of water a day was an off the cuff comment by a doctor given in response to an interview question in north Eastern USA around 30 years ago. It has little relevance to most peoples water requirements. Especially if you are living in a temperate or tropical climate.

The simplest and best advice that you can be given regarding water, and this does not apply to people with kidney disease or other such issues, is:

Drink enough water to need to urinate every 2-3 hours during the day.

This will cover most situations. As your body flushes toxins it ramps up and down depending on load. Also this will bypass the amount of water that your body is using for cooling and keeping your lungs moist. If you continue to have enough foe your kidneys and liver to process toxins out of your system then the other issues are covered.

Water and Wellbeing!

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:36:14 +0000

About 30 years ago I started work with a local government here in Queensland working at a water treatment plant. It was a very interesting job. I trained for around 3 years studying chemistry and treatment techniques. We produced over 1,000,000 litres of water a day.

According to the training I had, we considered that water to be safe and drinkable. We regularly checked water quality around town and the state government also collected and checked the water quality.

You may not realize this, but Australia, and Queensland in particular, has some of the worlds most stringent standards for drinking water quality and has the least incidence of health issues. The water here is the safest drinking water on Earth.

While following this career and later in Ambulance and Nursing I also developed a healthy distrust of plastic containers and what the chemicals in thos plastics do to water. By the time I finally started studying Nutrition at university I was one of those who told everyone not to waste their time buying a water filter or buying bottled water.

I still say that in Australia, in most locations, bottled water is a crazy waste of money.

There are many issues to do with plastics. I will go into them later in detail.

But suffice it to say, that I do agree with the plastics industry, plastic is safe, if used in the right way.

But nobody does.

Do you keep plastic containers in a cool dark place away from sunlight.
Do you rinse them before use.
Do you never heat food in them.
Do you replace the water after 12 hours.
Etc ETC.

So my answer to people still is, Do not buy or drink PET bottled water or softdrink. Glass or cans only. Mind you cans are normally lined with plastic anyway.

As far as most water filters are concerned, most only change the taste slightly and have little effect on the quality of water. It does make it likely that you will drink a little more and that will help but what do you do if you really want access to good quality, healthy and safe water.

Strangely enough the answer may come from Eastern Asia. I have come across 2 systems that seem to have a different philosophy on water. Both of these systems started life looking at the question; What is the best quality of water that it is possible for us to drink? And they really went to town looking at the research from all over the world on water and water quality. They looked at magnetics and European spas. They studied the works of Masaru Emoto and they looked at the research in Korea and Japan. They come to some startling conclusions.

Water that does not make us ill is not always the best quality water available.
There are issues that western technology ignores.
Homeopathic theories have an impact on water quality.
Water has a molecular memory.
Even drinking enough of the wrong kind of water may leave us dehydrated.

Now with my background this was like waving a red flag at a bull. Obviously this was pseudo science at its worst. Sales and marketing under the guise of health information. So I started researching them.

After around 6 months, I too came to some startling conclusions. They are right. There are issues that we in the west have little or no understanding of. There are things about water quality that we do not take into account.

So what is my stance now?

I still recommend that you do not buy or drink water or softdrink in plastic containers. I still suggest that you buy a special container if you want to carry a water bottle, (and I suggest that you do carry a water bottle). Drinking water out of your tap is safer and cheaper than plastic bottled water or softdrink.

However if you want to do something to drink safer healthier water look at a ZAZEN or NIKKEN water system.

As far as I can see they are two of the best systems on the market.

More to come! and Have a great day!

Symptoms and Self Deception.

admin — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:31:58 +0000

One of the most common questions I get asked is why I tell people to ignore medical issues. While this is not quite my message, it is certainly a good question.

As a Public Health Nutritionist my focus is on avoiding issues. One of the frustrating issues in my professional practice has been peoples fascination with the outcomes of low quality diets, activity, hydration or sleep.

These outcomes include, obesity, overweight, arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, fatigue, depression, artheriosclerosis, stroke and cardiovascular disease.

Now, while I absolutely encourage people with any of these conditions to see a medical professional, and Australia has some of the best in the world. My contention is that all of these conditions are symptoms of an underlying cause. And it is the causal issue that we need to address.

So here is my rule of thumb. See a medical professional to deal with those symptoms but do not get fascinated by them.

Redesign your life, have fun and focus on what works.

Osteoporosis! Take it or leave it?

admin — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:35:46 +0000

Ok. So, finally i am sick of the hype and advertising I see all the time and think it is about time that health professionals got together and started teaching people how to be healthy. Not to just avoid being sick or treating disease.

As a nutritionist in Australia I am often talking to people who wonder why they are ill all of the time and doctors do not seem to make a difference. This Blog is going to be about that and my first subject is Osteoporosis.

On the weekend I was talking to a lady who has osteoporosis and has been told by her doctor that it is incurable and that it will shorten her life? At least that is how she interpreted the advice. I do hope that the doctor did not actually say that. One of my first actions was to advise her that this is not true. In fact osteoporosis is not even a disease in the true sense odf the word, just a set of symptoms that we label osteoporosis.

If your doctor does even a mild amount of reading outside of the drug journals they would find that many people think that osteoporosis is, in most cases, treatable. And most of the time totally avoidable. Many times we are told that it has something to do with our lack of calcium or a vitamin intake. This can be often true, however this is only a small part of the story. The thing that we are usually not told is that Calcium loss is most often the culprit.

What is calcium lass. It is the movement of calcium in your body and it is most often caused by having an acidic system caused by high intakes of grain, sugars, dairy and fatty meats. There are people groups who have low intakes of calcium but have no osteoporosis. There diets are mainly made up of Green plants, vegetables and low fat meat. They also have sufficient intakes of magnesium and vitamin A, which they get from their diets and being out in the sunlight.

(In fact recent research in China looked at several hundred vegan budhist nuns whose diet include less than 400Mg of Calcium per day.)

(There was no cases of opteoporosis).

In fact many researchers would say that these big four and the replacement of the diet that our bodies evolved with are likely to be behind many of the symptom sets that we call disease and illness in the west. www.ThePaleoDiet.com is a good example of this research.

There are some simple rules for avoiding many of these issues. Some simple ones are;

eat mainly unrefined plant food.
minimise cereal and grain intake.
avoid or minimise dairy intake.
avoid all sweeteners, artificial or natural.
drink mainly water. Amount you need varies.
avoid grainfed or processed meats.
increase your magnesium intake.
eat a vegetable rainbow everyday.

and the last is probably not dietary advice at all really, see or talk to a nutritionist or dietitian if you are having health issues. Few medical professionals do much, if any, study of human nutrition or nutritional bio-chemistry. So, absolutely see a medical professional for the management of acute symptoms but also talk to a nutrition professional for chronic issues like arthritis, osteoporosis or heart disease. Sometimes, for many, most often, the issue is really a poor diet or lifestyle that can be changed.