Surprising Allergy to Good Foods

If you are prone to sinus during pollen season then you are more likely to be reactive to specific foods too. Which foods? Raw fruit and vegetables! Symptoms can be eczema, itching, tingling or swelling of the mouth, tongue or lips, the parts of your digestive tract in direct contact with the irritating food. Does this happen to you? It’s labelled as Oral Allergy Syndrome.

In Northern Europe 70% of people sensitized to birch pollen have a reaction to raw fruit and vegetables as well. 80% of those react to apples, 59% react to hazelnuts, 51% react to nectarines and peaches, 48% to kiwi fruit, 35% to carrots … the list goes on. Peanuts come in at 24%, tomatoes 21%, potatoes 19%, celery 16%, and more.

But the symptoms continue internally too. Stomach cramps, diarrhoea, bloating, vomiting, and even vary rarely, anaphylaxis. Cooking these fruits and vegetables can neutralize the impact. So juices or smoothies may not be so good all year round or for some people at all.

Although the pollens and foods are not biologically related, the structures of their proteins are so similar that the body reacts to both, especially during pollen season. In Australia we have our own pollen season that plays havoc with people in the path of the wind.

And what affects your digestive tract will also disturb your brain. A National Institute of Health study found that learning issues can develop from a mere allergic reaction to a specific food product. This can include raw fruit and vegetables, not just wheat, milk, eggs, seafood, peanuts that we hear about so much.

The belief that food can have an impact on brain function has been studied as early as the 1920s, when Dr W.Ray Shannon reported on the successful treatment of children with hyperactivity and learning disorders, using an elimination diet, writes Dr Dorothy Fairley ND.

Can you eliminate this problem of food reactions?
It was recently reported that more than four years after a group of children with peanut allergies were treated in an Australian immunotherapy trial, 70% are still free of the allergy. The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute research could eventually change the way nut allergies are treated, but for now it’s essential to keep any nut products out of school lunches is still the official medical advice.

But what can you do right now to be healthier, and reduce or eliminate the reactions you have to foods. Science is gradually proving that allergies don’t have to be a lifetime burden and natural therapists have been helping people all along. First thing is to find out what sets off your reactions, which foods and conditions?

Attend Food: Friend or Foe workshop, Saturday 3rd February, in Brisbane and discover how to identify offending foods and what you can do to get your best nutrition from your foods to stay healthy. Contact me for details: anna@annamcrobert.com.au

What Is It With Wheat?

We didn’t have so many issues with food sensitivity and allergies in our parents and grandparents times. It wasn’t nearly as bad or as common a problem as it is now, so what has changed?
Our food has changed. How we grow, harvest, store and prepare food, what we add to it and what we take out of it has changed. This certainly applies to wheat and wheat products of today, a staple in the Western world.

Modern wheat seems far worse for health than earlier strains like spelt and emmer. Natural mutations, cross breeding with other grasses, and selective breeding specifically to increase grain yields and gluten content, have had consequences. These are becoming more and more obvious in general health, emotional behavior, and mental functioning of grain eaters around the world. But wheat and other grains contain many components that are unfriendly to the body, and gluten is coming up as the worst of these.

Gluten in wheat is an important protein in bread making.
Gluten forms when water is added to flour and mixed into a gluey, stretchy dough.
Gluten swells up and forms cross-linked fibres that trap gas during baking and causes the bread to rise, and maybe your tummy to rise too.
Gluten is recognized as an inflammatory agent and is behind many health issues, including leaky gut and irritable bowel problems.

Gluten is a family of proteins found in grains and is highest in wheat.
The two main proteins in gluten are gliadin and glutenin. Gliadin causes the most trouble. When gluten arrives in the digestive tract the immune system may label it as a foreign invader, like it does a bacteria, and can attack it causing inflammation. and a stack of symptoms. This is a gluten sensitivity or gluten intolerance.

In celiac’s disease, the immune system attacks the gluten proteins, and also attacks an enzyme called tissue transglutaminase in the cells that form the walls of the intestinal tract. This is an autoimmune disease.

Many studies have found strong statistical associations between celiac disease and other autoimmune diseases, including Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Type 1 Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Multiple sclerosis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Cancer, and others.

In non-celiac gluten sensitivity there is no attack on the body’s own tissue. However, many of the symptoms are similar to those in celiac disease, and can create physical, mental, emotional, and nutritional havoc. Inflammation caused by gluten can cause Anemia, Anxiety, Arthritis, Ataxia, Autism, Bone density loss, Candida overgrowth, Chronic Fatigue, Cognitive impairment, Depression, Dermatitis … and the list goes on.

Physical Symptoms: Even without a gluten sensitivity and no gluten antibodies in the blood, there can still be problems like irritable bowel syndrome and leaky gut, both related to inflammation, that improve markedly on a gluten free diet, according to results of studies with randomized groups. Bloating, cramping, muscle and joint pain, bowel inconsistency, and fatigue, are common symptoms that subside when gluten is eliminated from your diet.

Neurological Disturbance: Beyond the effects in the gut, gluten can cause severe problems in the brain. In as study of patients with neurological illness of an unknown cause 30 of 53 patients (57%) had antibodies against gluten in the blood.

Cerebellar ataxia is an inability to coordinate muscles for balance, movements, walking, even talking, and is linked to gluten. It’s even labeled gluten ataxia and the damage to the cerebellum, part of the brain important in motor control, is considered irreversible. But patients improve significantly on a gluten free diet.

According to reports and studies several disorders of the brain responded well to a gluten-free diet, including schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, as well as cerebellar ataxia. How many of our unsteady elderly folk live on toast and biscuits daily?

Brain dysfunction starts in your daily bread,” says Dr David Perlmutter in his book, Grain Brain. “Brain disease can be largely prevented through the choices you make in life,” he adds. “Food is a powerful epigenetic modulator, meaning it can change our DNA for better or worse… food actually regulates the expression of many of our genes. And we have only just begun to understand the damaging consequences of wheat consumption from this perspective.” (more on this in a future article.)

Addiction: Endorphins are:
– morphine like narcotics,
– that are made by your brain and body
– and bind to other proteins, the opiate receptors.

When gluten is broken down into short chains of amino acid, the peptides formed can activate opioid receptors in the brain.
Gluten exorphins:
– are a group of opoid peptides
– formed during digestion of the gluten protein
– and have been found in the blood of celiac patients.

Your self-made endorphins:
– can reduce pain,
– can sedate you and
– affect your emotions.
– They can also stimulate pleasure response
– the reward pathways in the brain
– setting up an addiction,
– so you crave more of the same.
We are pleasure seekers, and do what feels pleasurable.

Exorphins in grains (and dairy) can act just like natural endorphins, BUT, they are not self-made by your body. Exorphins are introduced from outside your body via food. They bind to your brain opiate receptor sites so you think your body is telling you to eat more of that, when actually it is your food that is telling you to eat more of that food.

Your brain also uses the exorphins instead of neurotransmitters which can impair your learning and memory, writes Dr Al Sears. Gluten appears to be the most common exorphin producer, with 5 different opioids that produce a wide variety of symptoms according to Dr Norman Shealy.
No wonder many people can’t give up their morning toast, or sandwiches for lunch, or their afternoon biscuits and cake, and pasta at night. Gluten ensures they crave it and come back for more. Surely just one biscuit can’t hurt, can it?

It’s essential we learn how to determine which food is good for us and which is detrimental. Kinesiology muscle monitoring is a tool to discover the impact of various foods on your body and brain, your health and behavior, your learning and creativity, your moods and productivity. Kinesiology is a gentle and safe skill well worth learning. Touch For Health 1 workshop is due 10 & 11 February.
Food testing is part of Food: Friend or Foe workshop due 3rd February.
Discover how to determine the best foods for your wellbeing.
Email me for more details: Anna@annamcrobert.com.au

Reverse the Digestive Decline

Have you got a Digestive Problem?
Are you feeling bloated and uncomfortable,
suffering with tummy cramps and get headaches,
feel tired all the time and

I think you may be shocked at what you’re about to read.
Your digestion decline can start as early as your 20s! Really? Research shows that if you have a digestive system (along with the rest of you) that’s older than 60, then there’s a 65% chance that you have insufficient digestive capacity? And the digestion decline may have started in your 20s. If you can’t extract the goodies from your foods, then you can’t repair and replace cells efficiently, which means you are actually aging faster than you realize. At age 30 your digestion could be functioning as age 60! That’s a mismatch that can be corrected.

When low on supplies your body will break down existing tissue, sacrificing muscle tissue, skin tissue, bone tissue, to get what you need to keep your vital organs going. That is one of the reasons that you lose muscle mass as you age, and develop osteoporosis, and your skin thins and wrinkles.
This reduced capacity to digest foods can lead to reactions to the foods you eat, even those that were fine when you were younger. And all the symptoms will make you think you’re sick … and need medications … that produce side effects that can be worse than your current problem. Scary!

Improving your digestion could save you thousands of dollars in costly health treatments and medications. Many medications can upset your body systems even more, hide the original cause, create heaps of further problems, make you put on weight, reduce the nutrition you can extract from foods, create a string of additional food reactions, get you on a medical drug treadmill, and keep you there, while you continue to decline. And you’ll be told that’s inevitable with age. Not true!

You don’t have to decline, you can even reverse the loss of digestive capacity, at any age. You can actually improve your digestion, naturally. Kinesiology food testing, through monitoring muscle change, can identify which foods your body can handle effectively, and which foods cause trouble, that drop your energy and create symptoms, and put an extra load on your detoxing and elimination organs.

If you have been ill your body is directing energy to healing, not digestion. If you are stressed, your body is directing energy to deal with the threat, and not to digestion, till the stress has passed. What if it never totally passes? What if every day is stressful to you? Then your digestion remains low, and poorly digested food sets up a reaction, causing inflammation in your gut, and throws your intestinal microbes out of balance too.

Attend Food: Friend or Foe workshop, Saturday 3rd February, 9am to 4pm and learn how to take stress off your digestion, and what to do to boost your digestive powers.
Take charge of your energy, digestive power and brain power. This is a face-to-face workshop in Brisbane Australia.
Email me for details and I’ll send the Registration Form.
anna@annamcrobert.com.au

Food: Friend or Foe

Food: Friend or Foe workshop could save a lot of misery for you and your kids. If you want to know which foods are safe and which foods disturb the digestive tract, mess with energy levels, and trigger behavior problems, then this one day course is ideal for you to learn how to quickly and easily test which foods are safe and which are disruptive. That way you can bypass the problems and increase health.

Talking with people recently highlighted some issues around food:
– food reactions are a continuing problem, (worse with holiday treats)
– which foods are your friends and which are a foe?
– how can you choose the best food for your system (not all good food is good for you)
– how can you recognize which food is creating problems (how to pin point them)
– how can you drop the belly fat (expanding more on belly than else where)

Are any of these on your “find the answer” list?
Do you want clear, effective solutions?
Then this can be the most valuable information you’ll come across.

In the workshop coming up I can show you how to:
– identify which food creates which reaction in your body
– pinpoint which foods boost your health and lift your energy
– demonstrate which foods drop your energy and create disturbing symptoms
– find which foods maintain your current state and keep you going

But it doesn’t stop there. I’ll spend 7 hours in a hands-on workshop to train you in a small class, so you get to learn to do this yourself, ask questions and get your answers on the spot. And you’ll get heaps of notes to take away with you.

The topic – Food: Friend or Foe
That’s right, I’ll show you how to identify which food you can trust and which to avoid using kinesiology muscle monitoring, so you can make the right choices for you and have great energy all day.

You see, two of the biggest problems facing people wanting to know what is best for them food wise, is the overwhelming amount of information about food available today, often contradictory, and the time it takes to research and track down what you want to know for your own situation.

There’s lots of piece meal and varied information out there, many options and opinions. But how do you know what is right for you specifically, for your metabolism, for your genetics, for your lifestyle, for your energy level, for you as a unique whole person? And each child will also be uniquely different in their own right as well, so what is right for you may not be right for your child.

When I started searching for answers for myself years ago, everything I read seemed to be written for me and my symptoms, but no matter what I tried, the results weren’t there, I wasn’t getting better. Everything the doctor prescribed added more symptoms. I was still bloated, still starting the day looking and feeling ok to have my belly blow up with fluid and my waistline expand dramatically by lunch time. I was feeling nauseas, even if I didn’t eat or drink. Everything I ate made me feel worse. I felt tired, sick and disillusioned. And I had two young children to care for, one with unresolved health issues.

Where was this fluid that expanded my belly coming from? Why was I feeling nauseas all the time? How come my energy would drain so quickly? Why didn’t the supplements work? Was that the right combination of foods I ate? Am I doing enough? Should I keep going, or should I stop trying this, that, or the other?

And my young son had other issues. He was forever coming down with infections, was on antibiotics regularly, was on medication for asthma, had bowel issues, was exhausted and couldn’t get going in the mornings. He wasn’t enjoying his life and I was stressed watching him suffer.

It took time to find answers, but I did. I studied how the body works, how the nervous system works, how biochemistry works, how it all comes together.

I discovered how to go through information available and sift out what was relevant to my son and myself. I learned how to personalize options presented and address my unique situation. He got better and I got better, thanks to kinesiology muscle monitoring

So, then I could help others too. I have now been running my clinic since 1981, all the while continuing to learn and add to my skills and knowledge. By combining ancient wisdom from traditional cultures, with present day methods, and adding what science is discovering and proving, we can get the best from old and new ways to help the body work efficiently and effectively.

If you want some guidance, for yourself or your children, including:
– insight on how to adjust foods to suit your health better,
– reassurance that you are on the right track,
– gain ability to improve your results,
– to build your confidence with muscle monitoring
– and to trust your body’s ability to indicate your best options,
then you will definitely benefit from attending Food: Friend or Foe workshop
Because you will get the information, see the demonstrations, and learn hands-on how to muscle monitor foods so you can at any time test if foods are friend or foe.

Food: Friend or Foe Workshop
Saturday, 3rd February 2018, 9am to 4pm.

To Register: email me anna@annamcrobert.com.au for details.

Holistic Approach for Holistic Health

It’s happening. What has been so obvious to natural therapy practitioners all along, the essential need take a holistic approach for holistic health, of treating the person and the body as a whole, is progressively being acknowledged and validated by universities, scientists and researchers. Health comes with respect for the whole person, the physical, biochemical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects, and better education to understand and meet needs holistically.

Medical interventions have focused on symptoms and block those with drugs, and they see detrimental side effects as an acceptable payoff, which they countered with further drugs. This does not create a healthy population, just drug dependant people. Side effects of multiple drugs are creating as many problems as they relieve. There is no possibility of cure or wellness in this.

Lifestyle diseases remain the leading cause of death in Australia. These are the diseases that are largely preventable by changing lifestyle factors. Australian Bureau of Statistics lists heart disease as the most prevalent, followed by strokes. Diabetes 2 has increased dramatically, and liver disease is climbing the ranks as cause of death.

Research is showing some cancers too are related to life style. Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer. Poor diet is associated with bowel cancer. High blood pressure increases chance of heart attacks, stroke, and kidney disease. Being obese doubles your chances of developing all these diseases. Excessive alcohol consumption is leading cause of liver disease. The list goes on. Lifestyle diseases are on the increase world-wide.

I read, “The University of Sydney’s new centre will deliver coordinated education and research in basic sciences, biomedical sciences, nutrition and exercise science, coupled with clinical and community studies.
”

The University of Sydney is taking a more holistic approach for holistic health insights, and acknowledges, “Environmental, social, economic, and behavioural factors are all involved in the increasing prevalence of lifestyle diseases, all against a background of biologic mechanisms and genetic susceptibilities.” This is quoted from the website of University of Sydney.

As human beings it is essential we to take a holistic approach for holistic health, and take care of all health issues by integrating knowledge from all areas of understanding, traditional and modern. Scientists are providing more and more research to prove what we logically and instinctively already know and that natural therapies have always encouraged.

The physical body is designed for movement and functions at its best when we exercise, and it willingly responds with increased circulation and oxygen uptake, and increased muscle tone and mass, and increased physical fitness. Exercise enhances mental fitness too.
The biochemical body thrives on nourishing food, including water, with abundant energy at cell level for organ function and increased sense of wellbeing.

Holistic Approach for Holistic Health
Just exercising and eating well is not enough without also including how we think and feel. We also need to care for the mental, emotional and spiritual body. The brain generously builds brand new neural networks when we engage in new interests, in new learning of any kind, and effectively maintains the networks we actively engage regularly. Brain networks fall apart, actually disintegrate, when they are not stimulated by regular activation. Use it or lose it is a fact, not just a game with words.

Emotionally satisfying relationships in our personal world and our work world, with family, friends and colleagues, are essential to our emotional wellbeing. A life of meaning and opportunity to contribute our strengths, skills, knowledge, insights and energy is a basic emotional and spiritual need.

We know that constant, unrelieved stress is energy sapping and soul destroying. It squeezes the life out of our dreams and de-motivates and de-presses. Stress relieving strategies are important in our tool box for daily life.
(see links to previous articles giving stress reducing strategies at end of article)

The Emotional Body
Learn to communicate with your important people, your spouse, siblings, children, and extended family in a way that nurtures relationships. Become fascinated by how different we all are, even coming from the same parents and raised in the same environment. Discover the strengths in each person and explore what each holds dear. Doing a course like The Dynamic Communication Program can introduce you to ways to see and understand the world through your own eyes and through the eyes of those your value.

Socialize to keep your emotional brain healthy. We are designed to interact with our own species. Interacting with people opens doors to new experiences, fresh ideas, and different worlds. This builds new brain networks as face-to-face discussions and connections link parts of the brain and touch the heart in very special ways.

There is an energy exchange that can boost your wellbeing in ways a text message or email cannot. This is already showing up now as a lack of empathy and compassion in our up-coming generation of computer and mobile obsessed youngsters. Reduced focus of learning with and through others allows disregard for their impact on others wellbeing. This disregard leads to bullying, physical aggression, to criminal activity, and harm to others property. Only people with no interest, concern, or regard for others, no feeling of connection to others, can deliberately harm another. Socializing, sharing interests, being a part of interacting circles keeps us aware and mindful of behaviours and the ongoing impact. Only self centered, unconnected people can plot to cause distress.

The Mental Body
Learn something new. Take up a sport, learn to play a musical instrument, plan a trip where you will be exposed to new language and customs, learn the language basics. Learn a craft. Start tracing your family tree. Get curious and explore something new.
All these will build new brain networks ands stimulate new brain cell production. Your brain does regularly birth new cells, but with no new activity they have nowhere to belong. With no “family” to include them, to train them for a task and include them in an active circuit, they die. (see links at end to my articles on new brain cells)

Relax and rejuvenate – breathe, meditate, spin and weave, do pottery, paint, garden, sing, walk, dance – all reduce stress, change gear, shift thought patterns, quieten the Left brain chatter and allow the Right brain to dominate for a little while. Peace lives in the right brain.
Words live in left brain hemisphere so when you shift to right brain focus you find greater awareness of colours, shapes, textures, patterns, rhythms, relationships, connections, within your self and with nature. Enjoy and absorb the right brain experience. If you are engaged in brain chatter, self talk, you are engaging in Left brain.

Singing will engage more R brain, toning, singing non-word sounds, puts you further into Right Brain. Here is where you experience peace, joy, belonging in a world of vibrational energy, in sync with self and your world, present in the moment.

You Can Do It
You are not doomed to dis-ease nor do you have to “lose your marbles”. You can honour the amazing service your body and brain provide, and keep all your marbles and even add to them.

Take a holistic approach for holistic health. To enhance and maintain wellness of body and soul: exercise to improve circulation, breathe, drink water, be grateful, eat colourful foods, communicate and connect with family, socialize, learn something new, relax and rejuvenate, exercise, sleep and let your body recover from the day’s wear and tear.

You can do it. Create and live a holistic wellness life style.
Cheers
Anna

PS.
See http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=118 Stress Release Process
and http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=336 Shift Your Focus
See http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=271 New Brain Cells On Demand
and http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=278 Exercise Rescues Baby Brain Cells

Friends Can Make You Fat

What are friends for? And what are they not for? Do friends help you to be healthy? Or are your friends making you fat? This is a question science is researching and it pays to know the answers they are coming up with.

Back in 2007 social scientist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University and Professor James Fowler of University of California San Diego, revealed that being fat is contagious, meaning you catch it through contact. Now that’s a bit astounding don’t you think?

And it’s not just your friends that can make you fat – their friends’ friends can too. So even three times removed from your immediate circle you can react by becoming fatter yourself. Really? That seems far fetched. How is this supposed to happen?

Well, these findings have been confirmed in multiple populations.

In 2009 Christakis and Fowler published their book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. They were following up with members of the famous Framingham Heart Study, begun in 1948, and that now includes the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of the original participants. Their study showed that obesity was socially transmissible. Research shows we do what our social group does.

But hang on, surely free will and self direction come into play too? Aren’t I responsible for what I put in my mouth, not to mention how much exercise I get and what I think and believe? Well, yes, of course I am. But the company I keep will make it harder or easier to stay on my path to health and fitness, according to research. Hmm, I can’t argue with that statement.

So how do people “infect” each other with fatness? One way is by imitation, or more accurately mirroring. Research on mirror neurons includes brain scans that show when you watch someone else doing an activity your brain activity mirrors theirs. You are firing up the same areas in your brain as they are, so when they are chewing, your own muscles for chewing are firing up too. So the more you hang around people who eat a lot the more your brain is firing up and priming you to do the same.

Your Eating Companions – In the experiments conducted during the research, it was found that people who sat next to big eaters would eat more than when sitting next to light eaters. And you may have noticed meeting friends over a smorgasbord lunch or dinner almost guarantees everyone will eat more than they need in terms of replenishing energy expended.

My mother was good at making sure you ate more than you needed for health. I clearly remember visiting as an adult with my own family and having meals at Mum’s. She would constantly urge us to “eat, eat” as if we had been starved since the last time we had visited. This urging was considered being a good hostess in my Mum’s European culture. And yes, her friends were short and round, just like her.

What’s Normal – It seems social norms play a part too. Over 60 per cent of Australians are overweight or obese, so that has become our norm. It is no longer unusual to see heavy people all around us in our daily life and to be eating with them. The more often we eat with them the more likely we will be influenced by their behaviour and their choices. The number of “healthy eaters” have been surpassed by “unhealthy eaters”, so those trying to stay healthy are now a minority.

Trying to lose weight while spending time and socializing with overweight people is like a smoker trying to give up smoking while amongst smokers – almost impossible.

So do we have to drop our friends to become healthy? Maybe! We may have to choose to meet them over a cup of tea and not at mealtime, or meet them for a tea or coffee straight after lunch so they are too full to eat in our presence.

We know it can be impossible for an alcoholic to have one drink and stop at that, just as it can be difficult for a choc-aholic to stop at one chocolate. Some people are junk-aholics, or carb-aholics, or sugar-holics, or just food-aholics, and if you hang around with them you can succumb to their influence.

But birds of a feather flock together as the saying goes, and we humans also tend to congregate with people like ourselves. So if you are health conscious among people health unaware or not interested in health issues, and find your values not supported, dismissed or undermined, then you will make a choice – to stay or go.

It wont be long before you find you don’t have enough in common to stay, and you’ll move on to another group, or you’ll consciously or unconsciously change your values to be like the others, to fit in and belong.

I’ve noticed that bike riders all congregate at favourite breakfast locations, especially on weekend mornings. They are all slim and healthy looking. They all eat a hearty breakfast. So I have no doubt that exercising as they do allows them to eat as they do, without gaining weight. But not so for other patrons, who indulge the eating side without the burning up energy by exercising side, with the obvious long-term results of getting bigger.

Who we choose to eat with regularly can have as big an influence as who we choose to exercise with. So your friends can make you fat, at least they can model the habits and behaviours and you get to choose to succumb or not.

And there is still the concept that the friends of our friends friends can influence us, even if we never meet them. I’ll cover that part of the research another time.
Cheers
Anna McRobert
(also see Nov 2010 Newsletter & article Who You Hang Out With Counts)

Is Chocolate In or Out

A while back there was an article in the Courier Mail, Brisbane’s daily paper, pointing out there’s a big difference between treating yourself and gorging, and it was referring to … chocolate. Snippets have been coming up about the benefits of chocolate too. So, for your health, is chocolate in or out?

A chemical analysis shows that “pure chocolate is bursting with antioxidants called flavonoids, which can help to prevent a whole heap of diseases. Good quality chocolate is packed with iron, calcium, magnesium and vitamins.

But because it’s bitter, sugar and milk are added to make it more palatable. So that could be a problem … or not. “Eating sugar pumps up your appetite and hits up the same neurotransmitters that activate the brain’s pleasure state, which addictive drugs such as morphine and heroin do as well.” Which means, we can easily get addicted to sugar or to chocolate or both. Is there any way to have chocolate as a treat without losing control and gorging or becoming addicted?

We have an appetite control centre in our brain called the hypothalamus, which reacts to four major appetite hormones. Three of them (insulin, leptin, cholecystokinin) tell us when we have had enough to eat. Every morsel of food stimulates the release of one or more of the “I’m stuffed” hormones once we’ve had enough.”

So there are benefits in dark chocolate: flavonoids as antioxidants provide protection from free radicals, anti-aging, helps relax and lower blood pressure, stimulates feel good endorphins, seretonin acts as an anti-depressant, theobromine, caffeine and other substances are stimulants so is a pick-me-up.

And there are drawbacks in dark chocolate: high calorie, high fat, some fats used are saturated fats that raises cholesterol.

And also, feeling deprived is detrimental to achieving balanced health and balanced weight. So what to do?

Studies done on 100 grams, about 3.5 ounces, of dark chocolate a day come up with benefits. The trick is to balance the dark chocolate calorie content by reducing other sugar and fat foods in your daily intake. So chocolate can be in and out at different times.

And of course, if you have sugar issues like hyperglycemia or diabetes, then ultimately, for your own peace of mind, you really need to discover how to get well and stay well. Can I show you how? Ring now make an appointment.

Meet Ghrelin and Leptin, They Control Your Appetite

Many people are avoiding fats in an effort to reduce weight. They may be doing the exact wrong thing. How can that be?

Meet Ghrelin and Leptin, they control your appetite.

Certain fats are essential to your health. For a start, without healthy fats you cant make hormones, and hormones control your hunger and appetite. Without these specific hormones, made from fats, you could be eating lots and never feel full or satisfied. That “want something” feeling never shuts down. It all gets out of control. So too little of the right fats or oils can lead to too much of a bad ones, or too much food in general, and then weight gets way out of balance.

Hormones control your hunger and appetite. A key hormone is ghrelin, which is secreted by your stomach when it is empty, to increase appetite and induce you to eat. The counter balance to ghrelin is leptin, the hormone which tells your brain that you are full so you naturally stop eating.

To regain control over your appetite and get back to a healthy weight you need certain fats to make hormones, to buffer your nerves, to support brain function.

What if you could turn down the hunger hormone and increase the fullness hormone? Would you eat less or maybe less often? This is worth knowing about. You actually can reduce production of hunger hormone ghrelin, in a number of ways, and maintain the fullness hormone leptin too.

According to Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, both MDs, in their best seller, You: The Owner’s Manual, An Insider’s Guide to the Body that Will Make you Healthier and Younger, it can be quite easy and simple to reduce your appetite and feel full longer.

They explain if you have a cup of tea and piece of dry toast for breakfast, avoiding fats as dieters often do, you will digest that and pass it on to small intestine in about half an hour, leaving your stomach empty in a short time. That emptiness can trigger the production of hunger hormone ghrelin.

But if you put avocado or cheese or egg on the toast you will slow the digestive process. And why is that? What you put on the toast contains fat and fat will slow down digestion, keeping hunger at bay. And it also contains protein that needs digesting too. It can take three hours or more to process the toast with fat and protein so your stomach has some content and is not totally empty all that time. No need for more hunger hormone ghrelin.

If you put jam on your toast you are virtually putting a sugar on a sugar. That will digest and be absorbed quickly and leave your stomach empty too fast. All that sugar creates a blood sugar spike and then a drop that can leave you feeling flat and hungry in no time, setting off the production of hunger hormone ghrelin again. That sets you up to be looking for morning tea and a quick blood sugar fix long before lunchtime.

And if the jam had high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) added, a sugar substitute that is a sugar itself, it will make matters worse still, as HFCS inhibits leptin secretion, so your brain never gets a fullness message to cut out the appetite stimulating hormone ghrelin. As your carbohydrate, sugar and fructose corn syrup combination empty into small intestine quickly, you trigger hunger hormone ghrelin again.

So a little healthy fat can help you eat less and reduce weight without feeling hungry all the time. It could even be a good idea to have a little healthy fat before your biggest meal, like dinner at night, for instance.

The suggestion of the two MD authors, Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, is to have maybe seventy calories, equivalent to about six walnuts, or twelve cashews, or some peanuts, before your meal to slow down digestion so you feel satisfied and full sooner as you eat dinner and don’t need to go back for seconds. These fats also help you absorb fat-soluble nutrients such as lycopene in tomatoes.

And another way to turn off the hunger hormone ghrelin is to include lots of fibre vegetables, plenty of greens, as part of your dinner. This provides bulk to create the full feeling that releases leptin, telling your brain you are full and turning off your appetite hormone.

Chew each mouthful at least 20 times is a further suggestion that has proven itself too. That means you will be paying attention to what is on your plate, on your fork, in your mouth, noticing the smell, the colour, the texture, and savouring the flavour of your food. The longer you spend chewing, the more full you will feel because it takes your stomach about 20 minutes to register fullness.

Eating too quickly or mindlessly while watching TV means you don’t register the amount of food you eat or the taste and just keep shovelling it in till the distension of your stomach finally stops you. The result is a stomach full of poorly chewed food that needs a lot more energy to dissolve the content before the stomach enzymes can do their job of splitting the foods’ chemical chains to simple components, to be absorbed and used as energy and repair material.

To regain control of your appetite you need to understand how appetite stimulating grehlin and fullness communicating leptin work and help them out.

You don’t have to avoid all fats to reduce weight. You just need the best fats that can be made into hormones, particularly ghrelin and leptin. Savour your food and take at least 20 minutes to chew really well before swallowing. Chewing makes more saliva and triggers the cascade of digestion through the whole digestive tract. Make sure you include lots of fibre foods to create bulk and trigger the fullness hormone. And add fats or oils from seeds and nuts and grains.

Aren’t you glad you met ghrelin and leptin. Work with them and not against them. Help them do their job of appetite control for you?

Good Digestion is Essential – You Need Hydrochloric Acid in the Stomach

Do you suffer with indigestion, burping, bloating, food sensitivities, low iron levels, other nutritional deficiencies, bacterial overgrowth, yeast infections, weak brittle hair, dry skin and splitting or peeling nails, premature aging, low energy, poor sleep patterns?

What do these symptoms have in common? Where do you start to find the cause behind these symptoms? Well, there are various possibilities to consider when hunting for the cause and choosing a course of action to regain equilibrium. Could be you need Hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

Your body does the best it can within the environment you provide for it. The cause for these symptoms could be tracked to one of three key areas. It could be due to long ignored physical damage or overload like muscle strain, poor posture, or an accident causing pain and disability. It could be poor nutritional choices due to busy lifestyle, eating on the run, or picking up take-away-meals on the way home on a regular basis. It could be mental or emotional distress, fretting over mortgage payments, career hiccup, or a relationship breakdown. Problems in any one area of your life will upset the other two primary areas.

Over and Under Production of Stomach Acids
Let me give you some insight on one example of how this list of symptoms could be linked. You could have low stomach acid. Most people think of indigestion being linked to overproduction of digestive acids, but the truth is that it is often the opposite problem. Low hydrochloric acid levels in the stomach will prevent stomach enzymes doing their job, especially splitting proteins into particles called amino acids. These particles are the basic building blocks of all cells and are essential for repair and replacement of worn out cells, and for making important enzymes.

Delivering Minerals Where Needed
Amino acids are also carriers for minerals and without carriers you can easily become mineral deficient. Minerals are electrically charged, being either positive or negative. So is the lining of your small intestine. Now you may be familiar with the concept of two positively charged particles repelling each other and the same repelling result with two negatively charged particles. And you may know that positive and negative particles will stick to each other.

Apply this to what happens in your small intestine. Magnetically, minerals may be repelled by the small intestine linings and never get to the openings to enter the blood stream. Or minerals may be attracted to the linings and stay stuck to them. Either way minerals may not pass through to your blood stream to be delivered to your cells.

This is where amino acids come in. They are carriers of minerals, neutralizing the charge to allow the minerals passage through the small intestine wall openings, into your blood stream, on their way to where they are needed in your body. Protein foods are split by enzymes into amino acids in the stomach, only in the presence of hydrochloric acid, so low stomach acids will prevent enzymes doing their job, resulting in reduced building blocks for repair and poor availability of minerals to provide the spark for action in the body.

High Stomach Acid is Essential Signal to Pancreas
Low stomach acid fails to signal pancreas to produce alkalizing juices and specific enzymes for the next stage of digestion in the duodenum, where protein, fats and carbohydrate digestion is completed for easy assimilation. Thus availability of nutritional components for internal functions is further reduced.

If you are not digesting correctly you are not extracting nutrients from the food you eat to nourish, repair and replace cells in your body. Your body is declining and so is your energy production.

What’s Age Got To Do With It?
By age 35 your stomach’s digestive juice production has already reduced, and by age 50 this is likely to be much lower again, often less than 50% compared with your age 20 levels. So what do many folk do? As digestion slows many people, knowingly or unknowingly, eat more of what is easy and quick and requires less digestion, like carbohydrates and simple sugars.

Trouble is, a sugar hit can lift energy for 20 to 30 minutes, but you can’t repair cells with sugar, so rate of cell wear and tear starts to exceed repair. You are now aging with skin sagging as collagen and elastin is not replaced efficiently – they are made from protein. Muscles will be cannibalized for their protein to keep vital organ cell function supported. Joints unable to replace worn tissues will become painful and swollen.

Does that sound familiar? Check out who is living on toast and jam and a cup of tea. Or breakfast cereal with sugar. There are no cell building materials in those.

Efficient Stomach Function
The stomach must produce hydrochloric acid (Hcl) to dissolve your food and to allow digestive enzymes to do their job of splitting food chains into separate particles for delivery to cells.

Food Allergies
With low hydrochloric acid (Hcl) in the stomach not only are you starving your cells of needed proteins, minerals, vitamins, and essential fats, but partially digested foods that pass through into the blood stream will set off the immune system alarm. These partially digested particles are not recognized as nutrients as they can’t be absorbed into cells, so they are treated as foreign invaders to be destroyed. Now the scene is set for your body to treat food as an enemy. Many food allergies stem from inability to digest food effectively in the first place.

Hydrochloric Acid Destroys Bacteria on Raw Foods
A further problem that stems from low acid in stomach is it does not destroy unfriendly bacteria that is on your salad foods, or eaten with dirty hands or cutlery, or from bacteria laden chopping boards. Your stomach acids are essential to destroy bacteria that comes in with your foods.

Candida
And further still, poor stomach acid sets the scene for wrong ph in your intestinal track. This favours the increase of unfriendly bacteria like candida in your small intestine that then overwhelms your friendly bacteria such as lacto bacillus.

Leaky Gut
All of this leads to “leaky gut syndrome” as the repair of intestinal wall gets further and further behind. Now more and more partially digested food leaks into your blood steam. You are now often bloated, feeling uncomfortable, always tired, can’t think straight and are emotionally touchy.

Joints
Wear and tear of joints can’t be repaired without nutrients so now there is joint inflammation. Skin repair is poor so becomes susceptible to irritation, dryness, flaking and rosacea. Hair becomes brittle. You’re looking older and feeling it too.

Is this story grim enough for you to take note? What can you do to improve digestion?

It takes a lot of energy to digest your food effectively and the catch 22 is that inefficient digestion reduces energy. This can be a spiral down over the years with more and more symptoms building up progressively. You need hydrochloric acid in the stomach to provide essential nutrients for function and building blocks for new cells and for running repairs.

How to improve your hydrochloric acid levels so you can lift energy from food sources and other energy sources I’ll cover in another newsletter.

Women’s Health Update

Extracts from GNLD Newsletter article by
Anjana Srivastava, International Vice President Product, Science & Technology

Women are inherently different from men – the physical, physiological as well as hormonal differences result in distinct nutritional needs for men and women. As a result, certain health conditions disproportionately impact women.

For example:
– 75% of autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes and others occur in women.
– heart disease kills more women than men
– women under the age of 50 are twice as likely to have a fatal heart attack then men
– heart disease is six times more likely to kill women than breast cancer
– women also metabolize certain drugs differently

More Research and Insights
The latest scientific discoveries have reinforced some of the previously existing knowledge about women’s health, brought new insights and opened new doors to maximize optimal wellness for the body and mind. It is up to us to use this knowledge to enhance our health.

For most of us, nutrition is the single strongest tool for cardiovascular disease prevention. Minimizing exposure to “bad” food choices and maximizing the presence of “good” ones is a prudent strategy for women looking for cardio protection. For example, the benefits of omega-3s in cardiovascular health are well documented by many studies.

Most recently, results published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggest
that increased levels of omega-3s could potentially reduce a woman’s risk of heart
failure. It found that even one portion of omega-3 rich fatty fish per week could reduce the risk of developing heart failure by almost 30% compared with women who ate no fatty fish.

On February 15, 2011, the American Heart Association presented new guidelines for
women’s heart disease risk. Scheduled for publication in the journal Circulation, these new guidelines are based on years of research that now clearly links a woman’s heart disease risk with pregnancy complications such as pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes or pregnancy-induced hypertension. These pregnancy-related events, added to the known risk factors of poor diet, lack of exercise, and being overweight or obese, point to a woman’s increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Whole foods and Their Bioactive Nutrients Are Keys to Heart Health
Newly published dietary recommendations from Dr. Louise Chang (Board Certified Internal Medicine, graduate of Stanford and New York Medical College) medical editor for WebMD, focuses on “24 Foods that can save your heart.” Particularly important to women, these guidelines focus on key food groups and highlight the specific nutrients or groups of nutrients that provide the benefit.

So, take charge! Take control of your and your family’s wellness; and spread the word about health and nutrition. We can all help create a healthier world for our selves and our families to thrive.

Additional Note: I have personally used GNLD whole food supplements for over 25 years and rely on them to fill the gaps in the nutrient deficient “fresh” foods available in supermarkets of today.

These foods are generally mass produced in soils that are known to be depleted and have been “enriched” with fertilizers that focus on what will make the food grow fast, look good and last on the supermarket shelves. The nutritional content of these foods is way below that grown on soils that are enriched with home made compost, devoid of any pesticides and herbicides.

Mass produced food has its pluses and minuses. The plus is we can feed more people more easily. The minus is the health of people eating this food is compromised by the reduced nutritional levels in the foods they eat daily. Bottom line is many people are way below their optimal health because their foods are below optimal nutrient composition in the first place.

I intend to stay fit and healthy till the day I drop. So that means I exercise, I choose what I eat with preference given to health rather than to loading up with sugars and such, and I ensure I address stresses in my life regularly.

I have seen people’s health turn around when they supply their body with quality food sourced supplements, balance their meridian energy and reduce their stress levels with Kinesiology. Contact me if you want to boost your energy and wellness with reliable food supplements, energy balancing, or both.

Further Note: I will run a Food and Supplement Testing Mini Workshop after Easter on Saturday 14th May. You will discover which foods your body is reacting to, which ones are creating bloating, or nausea, or inflammation in your intestinal tract, leading to aches and pains in joints and muscles.

Kinesiology muscle response testing indicates the foods that lift your energy, those that drops your energy, and the ones that maintain your energy.

This can also be applied to discover which foods are increasing or maintaining your excess body weight, and which foods will help promote muscle mass and reduce your fat stores.
Cheers
Anna