Top 10 Tips for Staying Healthy this Winter

1.    Cut sugar out of your diet! 

*Sugar is difficult for our bodies to digest…this wears our bodies out, strips them of necessary vitamins and minerals.

*Sugar feeds the bad bugs!!  Bad bacteria, bad viruses, even cancer cells…they thrive on sugar.

*Unstable blood sugar balance wreaks havoc on our adrenals, this disturbs our beauty sleep.

*Sugary foods take the place of nourishing foods that our bodies need.

*Sugary foods include actual sugary treats, but also starchy carbs like pasta, bread, donuts, etc.  We can get all of the carbs we need from fruits and veggies!

         2.  Get your probiotics!

*90% of our bodies are microorganisms! We need to make sure we have more of the good guys than bad guys.  Most of us have a compromised gut bacteria from antibiotic use, lifestyle choices, etc.  It is up to us to replenish the good microbes so that they can keep the pathogenic microbes in line.

*There are many probiotic supplements on the market (I have a couple of favorites that my family uses), but an even better way to get these is through probiotic rich foods.

3.  Digestion is key!

*Most of us don’t have enough hydrochloric acid production when we eat our meals.  This is a recipe for disaster in your stomach.  Pathogens aren’t eliminated from the acidity, and foods aren’t digested which means we aren’t getting the nutrients from the foods we eat to keep our bodies healthy.

*Drink some cabbage juice or fermented veggies or some lemon water 15 minutes before meals to stimulate hcl production.  Hydrochloric acid is also available in a supplement form.

*Sure signs you’re not digesting your foods…undigested food in your stool, gas, bloating, acid reflux.

4.  Rest, rest, rest!

*Our bodies need uninterrupted sleep to detoxify and rejuvenate.  This is when our bodies do their best work at fighting off the invaders.  Eight hours of sleep is the recommended amount for adults per night.  Set your bedtime accordingly.

5.  Stay hydrated!

*Our bodies need water to transport nutrients from cell to cell, for our cells to communicate with each other, for healthy blood cells, and so many other things.  A dehydrated body is a sick body. 

*The general rule of thumb for the amount of water we should be drinking is half of your body weight in ounces daily.  That means a 100 pound person would need to drink 50 ounces of water per day. 

*Diuretics drain our bodies of water.  Coffee, soda, juice, alcohol, and some teas are examples of diuretics.  For every 8 ounces of diuretic, you need to drink 12 ounces of water to replenish your body.

6.  Exercise, but not too strenuously!

*A little exercise daily is just what the nutritional therapy practitioner ordered.  Most of us are adrenally fatigued to some degree, so strenuous exercise can cause more harm than good.  Listen to your body, only you know what you can handle. 

*Some exercise suggestions are walking, yoga, swimming (especially if you have access to non-chlorinated pools), bike rides.  If you haven’t exercised for a while, start slowly.  A 5 minute walk will do wonders for you.  Gradually increase the amount of time. 

7.  Enjoy the sunshine!

*Vitamin D is essential to maintain a healthy immune system. 

*Get some sunshine daily, without sunscreen (toxins, all of them, don’t put things on your body that you wouldn’t eat!!).  Our bodies will store vitamin D for a few months, but come December we are all getting low, especially those of us who live in a northern climate. 

*Supplementing with vitamin D is important, but can not take the place of actually getting out in the sun.  The best way to supplement vitamin D is cod liver oil because the ratio of vitamins D and A are in balance.  Vitamin D3 supplements are also available. 

*Can your family get away to a sun shining destination this winter? 

*Sunburns happen less to people eating a nutrient dense, whole foods diet.  Avoid the hottest part of the day (spend it in the shade reading a good book).  If you have to be out in the hottest part of the day… wear rash guard, sunhats, long sleeve shirts.  During the rest of the day, you should be fine to be out and about. 

8.  Reduce your stress levels!

*Find a way to reduce stress, whether it means making time for a bath at the end of the day (with Epsom salts for detoxing!), or reading a book, SCHEDULE in time for you to do something you love.

9.  Keep your lymph healthy and moving!

*Lymph is the fluid that transports the white blood cells around our bodies, cleaning our tissues and ridding our bodies of toxins.

*Eating a nutrient dense diet (that means no processed foods, no bad oils/fats, limited sugars), and having proper digestion, will help your body to make healthy lymph.

*We need to keep our lymph flowing.  Some ways to do this are through dry brushing, rebounding, “fluffing the girls”, going braless for at least half of the day (don’t wear a bra to bed!!), alternating cold and hot shower, sauna, exercise, lymphatic massage.

10. Wash your hands (but not with antibacterial soap)!

*We want to wash away the harmful microbes that we can, so it is a good idea to always wash before eating, after using the bathroom, after being in a busy place.  However, antibacterial soaps kill all of the beneficial microbes that we have on our skin that are there to protect us.  Our skin is our first line of defense against intruders…those microorganisms are there for a reason. 

Check out these Foods that Boost the Immune System...

Probiotic foods

Home made soup with meat and veggies

Juicing organic veggies and fruits

Elderberry

Garlic

Cinnamon (Ceylon, not the fake stuff)

Cayenne pepper

Turmeric

Ginger

RAW honey

Apple Cider Vinegar (Live culture like Braggs)

Lemon

Oregano

Zinc rich foods (egg yolks, oysters, beef, lamb, cashews, spinach, pumpkin/squash seeds, cocoa, pork, chicken, some beans)

ESSENTIAL OILS TO BOOST IMMUNITY

Oregano

Melaleuca (tea tree)

Rosemary

Clove

Frankincense

Geranium

Lemon

Thyme

Lavender

Lime

On Guard blend

Some Healthy Beet Recipes to get you started

Liver/Gallbladder Salad

(recipe courtesy of Caroline Barringer, lead teacher, NTA)

Shredded raw beets

Shredded raw carrots (equal parts of beets and carrots)

Chopped dandelion greens

sea salt

olive oil (a generous amount)

a squeeze of lemon juice

a splash of apple cider vinegar (living, of course, like Braggs brand)

Mix well.

A person can eat this with meals several times per day if needed.

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Beet Kvass

(recipe courtesy of Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions)

▪   3 medium or 2 large organic beets, peeled and chopped up coarsely

▪   1/4 cup whey(To make this recipe dairy/casein free, omit it and just use 4 teaspoons of salt instead of 2)

▪   2 teaspoon sea salt[TNC: I reduced the salt to 2 tsp from 1 T]

▪   filtered water

Place beets, whey and salt in a half gallon glass container or 2 quart jars.

Add filtered water to fill the container.

Stir well and cover securely.

Keep at room temperature for 2 days before transferring to refrigerator.

When most of the liquid has been drunk, you may fill up the container with water and keep at room temperature another two days. The resulting brew will be slightly less strong than the first. After the second brew, discard the beets and start again. You may, however, reserve some of the liquid and use this as your inoculant instead of the whey.

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Beet Fennel Salad

(recipe courtesy of Emily and Justin Waiser)

Thinly slice raw beets and raw fennel.

Add chopped fresh parsley, sea salt and fresh ground pepper.

Drizzle generously with good olive oil and a splash of white balsamic or apple cider vinegar.

Little bit of onion.

(Adjust amounts according to # you would like to serve)

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Roasted Beet and Walnut Salad

3 medium beets, peeled and chopped into bite sized pieces

½-1 cup soaked walnuts (soaked overnight)

coconut oil or ghee for pan

olive oil

apple cider vinegar or lemon

sea salt

Roast beets in coconut oil or ghee in a 350 degree oven until fork tender.  Just before beets are done, add soaked walnuts to the pan to get them nice and crispy (even better would be dehydrated after soaked to keep them raw).   Remove from heat.  Add olive oil, acid, and sea salt to taste. 

Digestion, Liver Health and Detoxing

I recently had the opportunity to talk to a group about the importance of liver health, basic detoxification techniques, and digestion.  Here is an overview of what we discussed.

Our Livers are responsible for more than 500 different jobs in our bodies, one of the most important things that our livers do is filter the toxins out of our blood.  Our blood flows through our bodies at a rate of 5 liters/minute, and it is estimated that our bodies have more than 700 toxic chemicals in them.  That’s an enormous job for our livers. 

There are several things we can do to help our livers with this burden.

*First,  we can eliminate the toxins from our food.  The easiest way to do this is to buy organic produce whenever possible.  Remember the clean 15 and dirty dozen list?  Look for free range, non GMO fed poultry and eggs, and grass fed beef whenever possible.

*Second, we can eliminate the toxins from our self care and cleaning products.

*Limit alcohol, caffeine.

*Avoid processed, Standard American Diet (or SAD for short) foods (including soda).

*Eat good fats (pastured or organic butter, unrefined coconut oil, olive oil, lard) and eliminate the rest (canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, margarine, hydrogenated oils).

*Don’t eat difficult to digest foods after 6pm (proteins).  Instead, end your day with fresh vegetable juice, a light salad, or some raw fruit or veggies.

*Digest our food.  This is easier said than done, and it really requires an entire blog post.  For now, try to eat in a relaxed atmosphere, chew your food well, and be mindful of whether or not you need hydrochloric acid-HCl (keep reading to determine this).

Our livers need Amino Acids (AAs)to complete the two phases of detoxification, these AAs come from proteins, some of which can only come from animal products.  To make sure these proteins are being fully digested we need to do many things…from eating in a parasympathetic state (calm, not rushed, relaxed), to chewing our food well enough, to making sure our bodies have enough HCl (hydrochloric acid) to digest the proteins we eat.  Most people don’t have enough HCl, which is evident from the number of people we see on antacids and other proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) such as Tums, Alka-Seltzer, Prilosec, and Zantac.  These antacids and PPIs come with side effects and they are actually making your digestion problem worse by reducing your stomach acid, when what you really needed to digest your food was MORE stomach acid!  Read the book "Why Stomach Acid Is Good For You" by Jonathan Wright, M.D. to learn more about this topic.  

How do you know if you have enough stomach acid?  Well, if you get heartburn, it is almost a guarantee that you don’t have enough.  Here’s how that works.  If you don’t have enough acid in your stomach, the food that you eat is not able to be broken down.  It just sits in your stomach and rots/ferments.  When this fermentation happens, gas is created in abundance. There’s not enough acid in your stomach for the food to pass into the small intestine (this is only triggered when the pH is acidic enough), so the valve between the stomach and small intestine remains closed.  With passage into the small intestine locked (because the pH of the stomach isn't acidic enough) this gassy mixture begins to travel up into the esophagus (the valve between your stomach and esophagus goes both ways unlike the valve that goes from your stomach to your intestines).  Now, the esophagus really burns!  The food and gasses from the stomach are acidic (maybe a pH of 4 or 5).  A pH of 4 or 5 is much more acidic than the esophagus is used to or designed for, but not acidic enough to actually digest the food (needs to be a pH of 1.5-3 to digest proteins).  Therefore, we feel acidic heartburn (again, even though the pH isn’t acidic enough to digest the food  it is still more acidic than our esophagus).  Another way to know whether or not you need HCl is by how gassy you feel.  I can always tell when one of my kids hasn't taken his HCl by the increase of passing gas!!

What can we do to increase our stomach acid?  Lemon water, raw apple cider vinegar, bitters, and HCl supplementation.  Eating zinc rich foods, and foods high in vitamin B6 are also important for increasing your level of HCl.

When we are digesting our proteins, our livers get the AAs (Amino Acids) they need for detoxification. 

Digestion is also important for healthy lymph.  What is lymph?  It is another filtering system for our bodies.  Lymph flows through our lymph nodes, filtering bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens.  If we are not digesting our fats well, our lymph gets clogged.  Our lymph is a pre-filter for our livers. 

One way to make sure we are digesting our fats is by eating healthy fats.  These include coconut oil, butter and ghee from grassfed cows, lard from organically raised livestock, duck fat, olive oil (ok for light saute, but best used cold), and different nut and seed oils (never heat these).  Another way to make sure we are digesting our fats is to keep our bile healthy.  Our bile is made in our livers (another one of it’s 500 jobs!).  If we eat healthy fats, our bile will be healthy.  To keep our bile thin and free flowing, we need to include things like apple cider vinegar, fermented foods, dandelion, and most importantly, beets!

There are many reasons we should include beets in our diets including that they are an anti-inflammatory food, which helps with things from arthritis to heart disease, and they are full of vitamins and antioxidants (I’ve even heard they’re good for the libido), but for today the point I want to get across is that they help detoxify our blood (so they unburden the liver).

This thin and free flowing, healthy bile will be stored and released by our very important gallbladders at just the right time to help us break down and digest more healthy fats.  (Remember these healthy fats need to be digested well so that our lymph does not get clogged.)

Clogged lymph is not a good thing.  Our lymph does not have a pump like our blood does (the heart) to help it travel through our bodies.  Lymph relies on us to help it.  First, eat healthy fats, eliminate the other fats from your diet.  Second, EXERCISE!  It is so important that we exercise to move our lymph (and to sweat-another way the body gets rid of toxins).  Our lymph is holding some pretty nasty stuff in it and it is important that we help it move through our body to get it out.  Some additional ways to move our lymph...rebounding, jumping rope, dry brushing, lymphatic massage.

Additional ways to detoxify…drink half your body weight in ounces of clean WATER daily, get a full night of sleep, eat fermented foods/probiotics, yoga/meditation, cut back on sugars (too many sugars deplete the body of vitamin B which is essential for detoxification), castor oil packs, enemas, don’t use antiperspirants (this blocks an important elimination pathway for our bodies to release toxins, use deodorant without antiperspirant instead, better yet, make your own *), and find a way to reduce stress.

Eat plenty of fresh vegetables and fruits, the best for detoxification are leafy greens, garlic, watercress, broccoli sprouts, beet greens, lemons, cabbage, sesame seeds, fruit, dandelions, and beets of course.  I believe it is best to ferment or cook many of these so that our bodies can absorb them well.

*It's easy to make your own deodorant!  Just mix a little coconut oil with baking soda (will make a nice paste).  Add a few drops of your favorite essential oil and voila!  Apply with finger tips.

If learning more about optimal health through good nutrition interests you, look into the Nutritional Therapy Association at www.nutritionaltherapy.com.