Nutrition
Magnesium: What You Didn’t Know You Needed
Magnesium is an important mineral involved in over 300 of the 4,000 enzymatic processes in the body, which means that not having the right amount of it can lead to many different kinds of symptoms. You may remember from high school chemistry class that enzymatic processes are the chemical inter-conversions that sustain life like digestion of food and synthesis of DNA.
The following is a video of Dr. Mark Hyman discussing the importance of magnesium especially for the majority of Americans who do not have enough magnesium to carry out the work their body needs to do to stay healthy.
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Need a Reason to Eat Kale?
I am a huge fan of kale. I’ve been meaning to write a post about it’s nutritional value, but this article-Crouching Garnish, Hidden SuperFood: The Secret Life of Kale-by Sayer Ji is so comprehensive that I couldn’t dream of doing better.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Avocado: The World’s Healthiest Food
If you were stranded on a desert island and could have just one food with you, what would you choose. I would choose an avocado. The avocado page on the Whole Foods website offers an amazingly comprehensive explanation of the seemingly endless nutritional value of the avocado, but here is why I try to eat one every day. Avocados are:
- full of antioxidants
- enhance the absorption of other antioxidants
- anti-inflammatory
- full of good fats
- blood sugar regulators
Add an egg to it, like I did for breakfast this morning and you get:
- a complete range of amino acids
- all the B vitamins
- rich source of selenium and iodine, minerals difficult to obtain from other foods
- omega-3 fats
Recipe
- cut 1 avocado in half, remove the pit and scoop out a little extra if needed
- drop one egg in each avocado half
- sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste
- bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes (don’t overcook!)
How Colorful Is Your Plate?
When I first made major changes to my diet I learned from Dr. Terry Wahls to eat, among other things, 3 cups of color per day. She suggested the 3 cups be made up mostly of reds and blues like blueberries and raspberries. She clearly was promoting the consumption of antioxidants to stop the internal “rusting” associated with oxidative damage.
I eat those 3 cups of color most days, but I have to admit that is far easier to accomplish during the bountiful summers here in the Pacific Northwest. Below is a chart that reminds us of the importance of all the colors foods have to offer.
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Leaky: Bone Broth for Leaky Gut and Leaky Brain
There are many ways to react to a diagnosis as big as ALS. Having a decent sense of self-efficacy, I chose to find ways to intervene in the disease process. Re-watching a TED Talk by Dr. Terry Wahls reminded me how important diet can be to health and healing so this is where I began.
I started by eating the Wahl’s Way as described in her book Minding My Mitochondria, which, at it’s simplest, involves 3 cups of greens, 3 cups of colorful fruits/veggies and 3 cups of sulphur veggies daily. Then, not satisfied that I was doing all that my body might need, I moved to the Gerson Method, which is naturally high in vitamins, minerals, enzymes, micro-nutrients, and extremely low in sodium, fats, and proteins. In essence, it involves 13 fruit/veggie juices per day, soup and baked potatoes, but it is cancer focused so I eventually decided there were limits to it’s value to my neurodegenerative-self.
Along the way I learned about leaky gut and leaky brain. As described by Dr. Andrew Weil,
Leaky gut syndrome (also called increased intestinal permeability), is the result of damage to the intestinal lining, making it less able to protect the internal environment as well as to filter needed nutrients and other biological substances. As a consequence, some bacteria and their toxins, incompletely digested proteins and fats, and waste not normally absorbed may “leak” out of the intestines into the blood stream.
While I did not think of myself as someone with a lot of stomach complaints, I was realizing that I had issues with milk, which I had been consuming my entire life. Could this constant exposure to an irritant have disrupted my stomach lining homeostasis? I had also spent many years as a junk food junky with a penchant for sweets. Did I have an imbalance of sugar loving yeasts in my gut that was contributing to leakiness? There is also a growing body of evidence pointing to the harmfulness of GMOs to our bodies and gut with this one on pig stomach lining disruption by a GMO diet being the most recent. And if I did have a leaky gut, what nutrients weren’t being absorbed or metabolized and what molecules were crossing into my wider system that should have been kept out?
Leaky brain syndrome essentially is the caboose end of the leaky gut syndrome train. Scott Forsgren writes,
Food sensitivities and Leaky Gut Syndrome lead to systemic inflammation. Once the entire body reacts and enters a state of inflammatory response, a multitude of additional symptoms may be observed…
and
…inflammation due to pro-inflammatory cytokines attracts molecules which have receptors on the blood-brain barrier. Slowly, these molecules end up in the brain compartment and cause destruction of nerve cells. This entire process starts in the gut and results in a neuroimmune disorder including autoimmunity to the brain.
I certainly have a history of inflammatory issues spanning the entirety of my life. I had stomach issues as a baby, eczema during childhood that resolved and returned in adulthood, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis and more. Could I have been challenging my gut and brain barriers my whole life? Could healing those barriers stem the tide of inflammation and give my body a chance to heal? I was willing to do the work to find out.
Enter bone broth.
Bone broth is so full of minerals and nutrients as to support a number health issues including healing the gut. The nourished kitchen website writes:
Bone broths are a good source of amino acids – particularly arginine, glycine and proline. Glycine supports the bodies detoxification process and is used in the synthesis of hemoglobin, bile salts and other naturally-occurring chemicals within the body. Glycine also supports digestion and the secretion of gastric acids. Proline, especially when paired with vitamin C, supports good skin health. Bone broths are also rich in gelatin which improves collagen status, thus supporting skin health. Gelatin also support digestive health which is why it plays a critical role in the GAPS diet. And, lastly, if you’ve ever wondering why chicken soup is good for a cold, there’s science behind that, too. Chicken stock inhibits neutrophil migration; that is, it helps mitigate the side effects of colds, flus and upper respiratory infections.
So, if you have issues with inflammation, leaky gut and leaky brain, consider learning to make and drink bone broth on a regular basis.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )The Current of Food Politics
A guest blogger at Scientific American recently made this tongue-in-cheek post: Dear American Consumers: Please Don’t Start Eating Healthfully. Sincerely, the Food Industry.
It pointed me to the 2009 Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children and the guidelines this group created which included:
…that foods advertised to children must provide a meaningful contribution to a healthful diet.” For example, any food marketed to children must “contain at least 50% by weight one or more of the following: fruit; vegetable; whole grain; fat-free or low-fat milk or yogurt; fish; extra lean meat or poultry; eggs; nuts and seeds; or beans.
And here is some of what one food industry member, General Mills, had to say about the guidelines in a public comment letter:
- under the IWG guidelines, the most commonly consumed foods in the US would be considered unhealthy
- of the 100 most commonly consumed foods and beverages in America, 88 would fail the IWG’s proposed standards
- it would cost [the food industry] $503 billion per year [if the guidelines were implemented]
Just in case you weren’t sure, it’s not that our government doesn’t know what would be good policy-because clearly they have studied it, it’s that officials lack the will to prioritize the needs of its people over the highly organized, professional and well paid voice of the food industry.
So, I swim against the food industry-created and government sanctioned current for the benefit of me and my family. My children and I discuss the confusing messages of the McDonald’s commercials. We talk about why sugared cereal is placed right at their eye level in grocery stores. We teach our pediatrician that milk isn’t the only (or best) way to get calcium.
Yeah, I’m that lady. And I’m OK with it.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Diminishing Nutrition
According to this NYT article-Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food
We’ve reduced the nutrients and increased the sugar and starch content of hundreds of…fruits and vegetables.
While I don’t think this article captures the larger issue as strongly as the title does, it is an important topic. I do like how they point to fresh herbs as a way to compensate for the nutritional losses in our food.
A Path to Health 