Cleansing Blog

The parties, sweets, alcohol, missed workouts, late nights, mall-crawling, small talk, family issues, breathing air on crowded planes — ah, it’s the holidays. The experts say you need to get in training and be mindful to stay healthy and stress-free.

“Diet, exercise, mind and spirit are key,” says Laurie Steelsmith, ND, a naturopath in private practice in Honolulu and author of Natural Choices for Women’s Health: How the Secrets of Natural and Chinese Medicine Can Create a Lifetime of Wellness. “You need to build up to this time of indulgence.

“We need to remember what this is all about: connecting with loved ones,” Steelsmith says.

Diet Tips for Healthy Holidays

Even if you are foraging in a relative’s kitchen and not doing the shopping, a healthy diet consists of five fruits or veggies a day, complex whole-grain carbs, and adequate protein. Surely you can grab an apple or banana and slap together a whole-grain, lean turkey sandwich instead of chowing down on cold ham fat and cookies.

Larrian Gillespie, MD, author of The Goddess Diet, tells WebMD that fiber is very important when eating richer meals than usual. “Nuts are a good source of fiber,” she explains. “Sprinkle them over your food. They make you feel fuller.”

Gillespie also suggests switching your biggest intake to mid-day. This gives you more time to work off the calories.

Hot fluids, Steelsmith says, like soup or tea can also thin out mucus secretions that can trap bacteria and viruses. She also suggests eating plenty of garlic, which has strong antiviral, antibacterial, and immune-stimulating properties.

Rubbing on hand sanitizer before a meal can stave off the unfamiliar germs.

Gillespie recommends liberal consumption of the holiday staple, cranberries, to stave off possible digestive distress from copious amounts of turkey and chicken, which can sometimes be cooked inadequately.

Steelsmith also advises packing a one-a-day multivitamin.

Steelsmith recommends drinking a lot of filtered or bottled water as you go through your day, even on shopping forays. Heat in a sauna, with plenty of sweating, helps detoxify. Or even taking a cold shower. Brrrr! Her prescription is to let hot water run down your spine for a count of 10, then cold for a count of five, then hot for a count of 10, for three cycles. “End with the cold,” she says. “This is great for energizing.”

Before a party, of course, plan to eat and drink sensibly:

• Drink water beforehand. Alternate sparkling water with an alcohol drink, if you wish to drink.
• Fill a plate and don’t hover (or should that be hoover?) over the buffet.
• When you load a plate, aim for 2-3 bites of each food that appeals to you. Better to eat something in moderation than yearn for it later and maybe overindulge.
• You also can put some calories in the bank before a party. Eat lightly at all other meals of the day, but don’t starve yourself all day. That can lead to that buffet-hoovering syndrome.

What not to eat...

Because you know how much I love natural solutions to common health problems that have nothing to do with taking a potentially toxic drug, you may be as interested as I am about the combination of oregano and cranberry extract being used as a natural, effective antibacterial agent.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts tested different amounts of cranberry and oregano extract together on cod fillets and shrimp to determine how much of these disparate ingredients eliminated a seafood-based bacterium (Vibrio parahaemolyticus) that causes food poisoning.

A 50-50 mixture of the two did the trick far better than either extract did on its own, because both compounds work on different parts of bacterial cell, scientists said. And, adding a bit of lactic acid made the cranberry-oregano concoction even more effective.

Just another natural benefit of using oregano, also one of your best sources for antioxidants (with 42 times more antioxidant activity than apples).

Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies, Vol. 6, No. 4, December 2005: 453-458

UK News October 5, 2005

New Scientist.com October 7, 2005

What not to eat...

What We Don’t Know About Food Additives and Why Our Governments Don’t Care

• By Eric Schlosser
  The Guardian - UK, Sept 6, 2007
  Straight to the Source

From CommonDreams.org

The overwhelming majority of our additive intake today has been part of the diet of humans for generations: yeast, salt, sugar, baking powder. But thousands of other additives, derived from both natural and synthetic sources, have recently become commonplace in western eating. What are these substances doing to our bodies and our minds? We are just beginning to find out.

A study published today by Southampton University, into the impact of additives on groups of three-year-olds and eight-year-olds, produced some alarming results. The Food Standards Agency-commissioned report found a link between hyperactivity among children and certain food colourings, as well as a preservative used in sweets, drinks and processed foods in the UK.

We are only just beginning to learn the impact of synthetic additions to what we eat. The industrialisation of the food supply has turned consumers into the unwitting subjects of a vast, ongoing scientific experiment.

Spices and preservatives have been added to foods for millennia in order to make them last longer and taste better. And there is a long history of using additives to mislead consumers, with various chemicals employed to supply taste, enhance colour and disguise the aroma of spoiled meats. Before the advent of federal food safety laws in the United States, dangerous heavy metals were routinely used as colouring agents in children’s sweets.

It would be hard to find a processed food on a supermarket shelf (or on a fast food menu) that does not contain a vast array of chemical additives. Indeed, the packaged food industry and the fast food industry are dependent on the use of such additives to prevent spoilage, to allow the transport of products long distances, and to maintain uniformity. Any finding that such additives pose a threat to human health will threaten the financial health of these industries. And that is why so few large-scale studies have been conducted. The absence of adequate information greatly benefits the producers of industrial food.

In the United States there is an extremely cosy relationship between the food industry and the government agencies that are ostensibly regulating it. Until a few years ago, the head of the food and drug administration - our version of the Food Standards Agency, responsible for the safety of most of the food that Americans eat - was a former executive vice president of the national food processors association. Similarly close ties between industry and government can be found in the European Union. As a result, hundreds of food additives are never tested for harmful effects. And the risks posed by consuming a variety of additives in combination are rarely explored.

I don’t think that people should feel panicky about food additives or succumb to the latest food scare. The best advice is probably caveat emptor. We simply don’t know what effect these things are having on us. And government food safety agencies don’t seem eager to find out. “Food additives play a vital role in today’s bountiful and nutritious food supply,” the US food and drug administration claimed in a brochure some years ago. “They make possible an array of convenience foods without the inconvenience of daily shopping.”

Perhaps a little less convenience, and a lot more unprocessed food, would be the wise course.

Eric Schlosser is the author of Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World, and Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food comment@guardian.co.uk

What not to eat...

This chart is for those trying to “adjust” their body pH. The pH scale is from 0 to 14, with numbers below 7 acidic (low on oxygen) and numbers above 7 alkaline. An acidic body is a sickness magnet.

This chart is intended only as a general guide to alkalizing and acidifying foods.

What not to eat..., What to eat

Based on previous posts, you may have already dropped the hot dog as your “go-to food” ballpark food thanks to how it got there. If you’re still on the fence, however, please think twice before you take a bite, based on the findings of a University of Nebraska chemist. Depending on the brand of hot dog, there may be a wide variation in DNA-mutating compounds that cause cancer.

Spurred by research that found consuming hot dogs and other processed meats contributed to colon cancer, scientists tested store-bought and nitrite-rich hot dog extracts (that have been found to form cancer-causing chemicals called N-nitroso compounds) mixed with Salmonella bacteria.

Depending on the brand, hot dog samples exposed to Salmonella as much as quadrupled their normal level of DNA mutation chemicals. By the way, hot dogs aren’t the only processed food you have to worry about, as salted dried fish and soy sauce contain similar amounts of nitrites.

Before you swear off beef forever, remember the central issue here is where the hot dog comes from. If you cook meat filled with pesticides, antibiotics and nitrites, you’re asking for nothing but trouble. That’s why I restrict my diet to grass-fed and organic meats.

Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Vol. 54, No. 15, August 2006: 5617-5622

Live Science August 14, 2006

News Net Nebraska August 15, 2006

What not to eat..., What to eat