Showing posts with label wellness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wellness. Show all posts
Friday, April 13, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
AWAKE ~ Seven Minute Mornings
Mornings can be one of the most hectic times of the day as we shower, dress, feed and and steer ourselves, our children and any other beloveds (in my case Frio the cat and my husband, Bruce,) out the door to work or to school (or in Frio's case, the backyard.). Even though mornings may not be the most optimal time to squeeze in an hour, or even a thirty minute workout, most everyone can manage seven sweet minutes before the chaos begins, to center ourselves, connect with our higher power, become aware of our bodies, and set the tone for taking care of ourselves for the rest of the day..
I've discovered a couple of super simple 5-10 minute morning routines, one Pilates and the other yoga, that offer a complete body stretch. Add two more minutes for focused deep breathing, and you're set to face your day.
Once you've done either of these routines a few times, you won't be as dependent on the video(s), and THAT'S when you'll really start to reap the benefits, by focusing inward. And don't forget the breathing routine at the bottom of the page, which could be even more important to subscribe to on a daily basis.
Pilates
Yoga
In order to breathe properly you need to breathe deeply into your abdomen
not just your chest. Even in the old Greek and Roman times the doctors
recommended deep breathing, the voluntary holding of air in the lungs,
believing that this exercise cleansed the system of impurities and gave
strength. This certainly is of great value to you in your work in the
world. Breathing exercises should be deep, slow, rhythmic, and through
the nose, not through the mouth. The most important parts of deep
breathing has to be regulating your breaths three to four seconds in,
and three to four seconds out.
1. Inhale through your nose, expanding your belly, then fill your chest. Counting to 5
2. Hold and Count to 3. Feel all your cells filled with golden, healing, balancing Sun light energy.
3. Exhale fully from slightly parted mouth and Feel all your cells releasing waste and emptying all old energy. Counting to 5.
I've discovered a couple of super simple 5-10 minute morning routines, one Pilates and the other yoga, that offer a complete body stretch. Add two more minutes for focused deep breathing, and you're set to face your day.
Once you've done either of these routines a few times, you won't be as dependent on the video(s), and THAT'S when you'll really start to reap the benefits, by focusing inward. And don't forget the breathing routine at the bottom of the page, which could be even more important to subscribe to on a daily basis.
Pilates
Yoga
1. Inhale through your nose, expanding your belly, then fill your chest. Counting to 5
2. Hold and Count to 3. Feel all your cells filled with golden, healing, balancing Sun light energy.
3. Exhale fully from slightly parted mouth and Feel all your cells releasing waste and emptying all old energy. Counting to 5.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The Wheat Lobby Smokescreen
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/03/the-wheat-lobby-smokescreen/comment-page-1/#comments
The Grain Foods Foundation, the Whole Grain Council, and other lobby/trade groups for the wheat industry are in panic mode. After all, a recent 4.5% reduction in bread sales for the year were just reported. While 4.5% is not a big percentage, it is a percentage of a huge number. This is big.
According to SymphonyIRI Group (a Chicago-based market research firm), unit sales of fresh bread declined 4.5% in the 52 weeks ended Jan. 22 [2012] . . . The one-year volume decline likely was the steepest in the history of sliced bread. [Emphasis mine.]
So the Wheat Lobby and trade groups have been organizing behind several counterarguments to maintain the “healthy whole grain” franchise, including:
“Wheat is not genetically-modified.”
Dr. Glenn Gaesser of the Grain Foods Foundation recently offered this “counterargument” on a TV interview I did. This statement has also cropped up a number of times in various articles and reports that aim to counter the claims I am making, suggesting that it is part of a concerted, planned defense.
They are correct: Wheat is not genetically-modified. In the language of geneticists, “genetic modification” or genetic engineering refers to the use of gene-splicing technology to insert or remove a gene. While wheat has indeed been extensively genetically-modified in laboratory settings, no genetically-modified strain of wheat is on the open market. And I never said it was.
But that does not mean that the genetics of wheat have not been changed. Its genetics, in fact, have been extensively changed using techniques that include hybridization, repeating backcrossing (to winnow out specific characteristics like short height or seed head size), embryo rescue (to rescue otherwise fatal mutations), and chemical, gamma ray, and x-ray mutagenesis (induction of mutations, used for instance to create the popular strain of wheat that is herbicide-resistant). These techniques, as any geneticist will tell you, are far less predictable, less controllable . . . far worse than the act of inserting or removing just one gene. But that is conveniently left out of the sound bites that come from the Wheat Lobby.
“Grains have been eaten by humans for thousands of years.”
Well, humans have been enslaved for thousands of years, children put to work and abused, the strong dominated the weak . . . but that doesn’t justify any of it.
Whole grains of 2012 are also not the whole grains of 1950, the 19th century, the Bible, or pre-biblical times. Modern wheat, in particular, is genetically distant from its predecessors, thanks to the extreme genetic changes (not genetic modification!) inflicted on wheat in the 1960s and 1970s in the name of increased yield-per-acre.
“Healthy whole grains have repeatedly been shown to reduce risk for diabetes, heart disease, and colon cancer.”
That’s is true . . . if whole grains are compared to processed white flour products. It is guilty of the kind of flawed logic that dominates nutritional thinking:
If something bad for you is replaced by something less bad and there is an apparent health benefit, then a whole bunch of the less bad thing is good for you???
This flawed logic is used to justify replacing high-glycemic index foods with low-glycemic index foods (more properly called less-high glycemic index foods), hydrogenated fats with polyunsaturates.If “healthy whole grains” are compared to no grains, i.e, no wheat, then dramatic turnarounds in health are witnessed. The 1% of people with celiac disease are not the exception; they are the “canaries in the coal mine” telling us that wheat is inappropriate for any human to consume . . . especially the semi-dwarf strains made worse by geneticists.
Surely the experts know all this!
Nope. They are, to an incredible degree, ignorant. I recently debated a PhD Professor of Nutrition at a major university, who was also Director of Research at a major agricultural corporation, who offered up the usual defenses of wheat, while accusing me of ignoring the evidence. So, when I informed him that the wheat of today is a high-yield, semi-dwarf variant that stands around 2-feet tall, with marked changes in its genetic code, he answered with . . . silence. After a bit of hemming and hawing, he finally blurted, “Well, the farmers did that so they could see over the tops of the fields!” Farmers, of course, did not introduce these changes to create the dwarf strain of wheat. In other words, the fact that modern wheat is the markedly altered product of genetics research was entirely new to this “expert.”
Monday, March 26, 2012
Is There Life After Ambien? Part Deux: Food That Promotes Sleep
Many people find tryptophan to be a safe and reasonably effective sleep aid, probably due to its ability to increase brain levels of serotonin (a calming neurotransmitter when present in moderate levels) and/or melatonin (a sleep-inducing hormone secreted by the pineal gland in response to darkness or low light levels.)
I found this diagram at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan that reflects foods high in tryptophan. I'm not sure what a dried egg white is. Or dried spirulina? And although I do know what dried cod and caribou are, I am pretty sure I'm not consuming them before bedtime, or anytime, in the near future. But soybeans I can try and pumpkin seeds? Love 'em!
And note: Have you heard about turkey being a sleep inducer? According to this chart . . .it's a big fat myth. It's all of those carbs you have with that bird that knocks you out on a Thanksgiving afternoon.
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