Personal Health

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Burdock

July 12, 2010 in Medicinal, Personal Health by bursty | 1 comment

burdock

The first time I’d ever heard of burdock was in the Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics - which introduced me to the root.  To be honest, I think since then we’ve only had burdock a few times in various dishes - but I do like it - it’s got a sweet flavor, kind of like a parsnip.  Well, I’ve since been getting more into natural healing, and have been learning the AMAZING benefits of this plant, which is found nearly ANYWHERE throughout Europe, Asia, and North America.  The WHOLE PLANT is medicinal, not just the root!

Burdock root itself is very high in chromium, iron, magnesium, silicon, thiamine, and inulin.  It’s also high in cobalt, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, tin, zinc, carotenes / vitamin A, protein, fiber and mucilage.  It also supplies calcium!  Medicinally, burdock root is good for clearing the skin (using applications of root oil or freshly grated roots) and pulling fluid from swollen joints (try baths and soaks of burdock root infusion). 

It’s also amazing for the digestive track — it nourishes the mucus surfaces of the intestines, absorbs chemical residues and metabolic break-down byprodcts (as well as metal contaminants) and binds them to escort them out of the large intestine!  So, try the infusion or tincture when fasting to maintain intestinal peristalis and prevent ketosis / acidic overload in the blood.  When you’re not fasting, use fresh burdock root as a cooked vegetable or as a fresh tincture.

Burdock root is also a good friend of your lymphatic system, energizing and organizing it - it works with your kidneys, liver and sweat glands to help clean the blood and strengthen the immunen system.  According to Susan Weed (author of Healing Wise), Native women in the Cherokee and Meskawaki nations used burdock root to strengthen their wombs before and after birth, to give stamina in birth, and to nourish their ability to be stable yet still flexible and available to birthing energy.  In addition, burdock can efficiently and effectively lower blood sugar levels in diabetics!

Beyond the root, the seeds are full of medicinal properties, especially for the kidneys and urinary system.  The leaves are also great for healing wounds!  I think sometime in the near future I’m going on a Weed Walk, as described by Ms. Weed in Healing Wise.  I’ll, of course, report my journey here!  Happy healing :)

Calm in a Chaotic World

June 17, 2010 in News, Personal Health by bursty | 3 comments

tolstoy

Sometimes people write to us and ask for advice … They want to know how to get started with macrobiotics, how to incorporate more whole grains into their diets, how to cleanse, how to feel healthy.  I’m the first to admit that I don’t have all the answers — in fact I have very few.  I only have the things that have worked for me. 

One of the most important things that I can think of as far as “advice” goes for people wanting to live a healthier lifestyle is to keep it simple.  Or, simplify, as some would have it, or need it.  In leading a relatively calm and peaceful life (most of the time), I find a few things remarkably helpful in keeping anxiety and chaos in check:

1.  Cut out the caffeine.  It took me a while to realize that caffeine causes me to be mad anxious.  It sets my mind racing and my heart pounding!  I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out the connection, but once I did and cut out the caffeine in my life, it made a huge impact on my anxiety level and my ability to maintain peace of mind, for the most part.  And, kicking caffeine isn’t as difficult as Starbucks would have you believe.  For me this was MUCH easier than getting sugar out of my diet / lifestyle.

2.  Avoid commercials like the plague.  Seems to be a strange thing to say in avoiding stress, doesn’t it?  But this is another of those things where I’ve put together the pieces as my life goes on.  When I am inundated more with commercials (be they on television, on the internet, what-have-you), I’m more anxious, and I’m more consumer-driven to get to whichever-place and buy whichever-thing the media has me obsessed with.  It’s hard to admit that one is so imprintable by mass media … but it’s completely true, in my case.  We don’t have a television and I promise you that this saves our little family much more money than just the cable and electricity bills.  When I watch more TV, I want to shop shop shop — and I also waste lots of time lounging in front of the tube.  Without the TV, we do all sorts of things I wouldn’t have the motivation to do if I had the constant distraction of meaningless blather on television, such as:  sewing my own skirts and dresses, gardening to grow our own produce, throwing pottery, cleaning the house, taking the dog for walks, etc. etc. etc.

3.  Cut down the sugar (if you can’t quite cut it out).  Sugar, as we’ve talked about multiple multiple times here at AGAD, sends your body on a roller coaster of blood sugar ups and downs.  First you’re waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay up, and then you take that huge hill nosedive (WAHOOOO!) and you’re waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down, going through a tunnel sometimes!  Nobody needs these roller coasters, when it comes to something as fragile and intricate to human body health as blood sugar.  Really.  You don’t.  It affects your hormones, and your mood, and eventually, your general health.  So, at least cut back the sugar, significantly - if you can’t quite cut it all out (I struuuuuuggle with this.  I do.).

4.  Meditate.  Spend some time in meditation, daily.  I know it sounds like something that takes oh-so-much time and well-how-exactly-do-I-do-that!?  But really.  Take a deep breath.  Close your eyes.  Spend about 5 minutes just relaxing all of the muscles in your body and thanking your body for the amazing things it does for you everyday (like keeping you alive despite your sugar binges throughout the day!).  There!  You’ve meditated!  Don’t you feel better!?  Studies show that meditation has PROFOUND effects on your body, your state of mind, and your ability to go through life with a positive attitude, which also has profound impacts on your physical health, long-term.  And it really doesn’t have to take that much time, if you don’t have it.  (But if you do have the time, why not spend a blissful hour here and there in a state of quiet calm, just with yourself, quiet and smiling inside?)

5.  Nourish patience.  This is something that my husband helps me with on a daily, no, hourly basis.  I’m not naturally a very patient person, you see.  I would much prefer that the thing that I want done now have been done yesterday, in most instances.  But that state of mind contributes to anxiety upon anxiety upon more anxiety.  Take life for what it is, in this moment, and be grateful.  Do the thing that you would have liked to have been done yetserday, now.  This way, when it is tomorrow and you’d have been wishing the thing was done, it will be.  This makes me feel calm.

But you guys are the wise ones:  What do you do (or avoid doing) to remain centered, and calm, in the midst of our very chaotic world???

Maintaining Sanity

April 20, 2010 in News, Personal Health by bursty | 4 comments

macrolunch

I have a sneaking suspicion that macrobiotics and similar eating habits attract obsessive compulsive types.  Now, don’t take this personally, I don’t mean you, dear agad readers!  You’re all amazing and I’m sure your mental capacities are completely intact.  But I see it happening in myself, sometimes, and I have to stop and be like “woah, lady - take a deep breath …”

Perhaps it comes from knowing too much or thinking too much or reading too much … too much of something?  But with all of the information out there about health, and the dawn of the internet age, and blogs and books and you tube videos and etc. etc., it’s easy to get yourself all up in a tizzy about various things from microwaves to supplements to chemicals to who knows what.  The fact is that almost anything can be linked to anything else - and has been, in one way or another, through this or that study, by this or that doctor / nutritionist / medical student / healer / what have you.  Just look at studies that are trying to figure out what causes cancer!  The list of correlations among various types of cancer and various types of lifestyles is endless.  So how to deal with all of this information and still live a relatively normal life without ending up in a mental institution counting the particles of pollutants you are breathing in on each breath, and the levels of chemicals present in your water and how they are affecting your body??

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Red Lentil Dhal

April 14, 2010 in Personal Health, Recipes, Vegetables by cooljuice | 1 comment

red lentil backgroundRed Lentil Dhal over Brown Rice

This is one of those delicious Indian-inspired dishes that seems to get better over time. I actually prefer eating this as a next-day leftover after all the delicious spices and flavors have been fully absorbed and expressed.

Here’s what you do:

  • 1 cup dry red lentils
  • 2 cups water
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 medium onion diced
  • olive oil
  • salt/tamari/shoyu and pepper
  • 1 tomato
  • 1 cup loosely chopped cilantro

Spices:

  • 1 Tbsp fenugreek
  • 1/2 Tbsp cinnamon
  • 6 whole cloves
  • 1 Tbsp coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds

Roast the seeds briefly in a hot pan and then mix everything up in a little coffee grinder or spice grinder. You can also use a mortar and pestle.

Sautee the garlic and onion in olive oil on medium heat for 5 minutes. Add water, lentils and spices. Bring to a boil and let simmer. Once simmering, add chopped tomato (seeded) and let simmer for another 20 minutes. Stir frequently. 5 minutes before it’s done, add cilantro and shoyu/salt/tamari it to taste. It should be a thick, pasty, goopy deliciousness that goes perfectly over brown rice, or with naan.

Sugar Addiction

April 9, 2010 in Personal Health by bursty | 4 comments

One of the toughest parts of going “whole hog” for me was kicking my lifelong addiction to sugar.  And although some may say that *addiction* is too strong a word to use, it’s not.  The biochemical make up of sugar is nearly identical to alcohol, with only one molecule different.  If you are a sugar addict, you know what I mean.  There is the desire to eat more and more sugar, even though you know that it makes you feel lousy and that it’s not good for you.  Dopamine and Serotonin (”feel good” neurotransmitters in the brain) are affected by sugar in the same way they are by cocaine and other hard drugs!  As you build up your tolerance to sugar, you need more and more in order to feel that sugar high you crave.  And, when you stop consuming sugar, you go through withdrawal:  headaches, nausea, irritability, etc.  So — are you addicted to sugar?  Were you?  How do you kick the addiction?

For me, kicking the addiction began by realizing that sugar (although a completely acceptable and common addiction in our society) is actually damaging to my body and I was not gaining anything good from my addiction to it.  Refined white sugar has absolutely NO nutritional value!  It actually strips your body of minerals and nutrients in order to be metabolized!  It also damages and alters proper functioning of the nervous system, endocrine system, metabolic system, cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal system, and immune system.  There is a CRAZY long list of health problems associated with over consumption of sugar ranging from diabetes to depression, from insomnia to fibromyalgia! 

Sugar puts your body and brain on this crazy roller coaster of highs and lows — you eat sugar and you’re high, then when it wears off (relatively quickly) you’re very very low so you crave more to bring you back up, and on and on in this cycle.  It’s really hard for your body to keep up with this roller coaster!  Your kidneys and liver are fighting to keep up with cleaning out the blood, while your pancreas is like WTF are you doing to me!?  Producing insulin and then retracting it, etc. etc.  For me — this cycle resulted in lots and lots of terrible headaches.  When I eat macrobiotically, and particularly when I am very aware of my sugar intake (i.e. not taking any in), I get remarkably fewer headaches than when I eat sugar and other “non-macro” foods.

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Only after…

April 8, 2010 in News, Personal Health by bursty | No comments

“Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
- Cree Indian Prophecy

Alright.  With earth day approaching, I’m about to go all political on you.  When people ask me why I eat the way that I do, I give a variety of answers, usually depending on how sassy I am feeling.  If I’m in a particular mood, I’ll give an answer that offends people of the meat-eating genre.  If not, I’ll say something like “I just don’t like the taste of it, never have.”  Both / All of my answers for why I don’t eat meat are true.  I draw from them all in my daily decisions. 

You’re in luck (or not, depending on your political biases) because I had some inquiring minds with me over the weekend, and right now I’m feeling a little bit sassy.  One of the biggest reasons that I chose to become a vegetarian about 10 years ago (with varying levels of commitment in between) was because eating meat (at least the way we (and by we I don’t mean me, I mean Americans, generally) eat it right now) is completely unsustainable.  It helps that I truly don’t like the taste / texture of most meat (chicken literally makes me gag) and whenever I see meat I get a pretty clear vision of the energy of the terrified animal before it went to its bloody and painful death.  But all that aside, the meat industry is completely unsustainable.

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Farm Fresh: Food Culture and Making Choices

March 29, 2010 in Farm Fresh, Personal Health, Social Life by Andrew Lee | 8 comments

central_perkEvery day I’m paving new pathways in my life, creating a personal culture of whole grain-veggie-macro-big-life lovin’.  A large part of that journey has been spent confronting the culture of my past - a meat and potatoes // food from a box // sodas with lunch // drive-thru ‘when convenient’ lifestyle.  That was my family’s food rhythm, and when I got to college the majority of my friends had grown up with the same rhythm.  Intellectually, I’ve always got healthy eating on my mind and for the most part I’m sticking to my new pathways.  However if there’s a moment when I eat something wholly un-macro, it’s most likely from some non-intellectual strand inside of me, rooted in nostalgia or a past food culture I participated in.  Take, for example, last week’s box of Kraft’s Classic Macaroni and Cheese:

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Lively Lymphatics

March 25, 2010 in Personal Health by bursty | 5 comments

I guess as a process of desludging during our newly found and much loved awesome practice of macrobiotics, I’ve been down with an absolutely awful spring cold the past few days.  All of the phlegm (luckily no picture on that wikipedia link), coughing, sneezing, headache, nastiness of it has made me really appreciate all the work my lymphatic system does for me on a daily (hourly) basis.  As I research more and more into the intricacies of the human body, I just never cease to be amazed at how it all works together to keep us healthy!  **Pause for a moment of gratitude — REALLY! — to your body and ALL of it’s organs with their individual jobs to do - for doing such a great job!**

So — the lymphatic system:  responsible for removing and replenishing fluids from the joints and tissues throughout the body, transports fatty acids and fats to the circulatory system, and transports immune cells to and from the lymph nodes.  The average human body has 600-700 lymph nodes.  These nodes cleanse your blood.  Blood pumps from your heart through your arteries to capillaries (a little biology 101 here!).  The blood carries nutrients and oxygen to the capillaries, from which the cells take what they need and then excrete toxins, some of which go back into the capillaries.  Dead cells, blood proteins, and other toxic material is removed by the lymphatic system — then the lymph (a pale fluid that is mostly water, of which you have much more than blood) passes through lymph nodes, where toxins and dead cells are destroyed and neutralized. 

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Love your Liver!

March 18, 2010 in Personal Health, Vegetables by bursty | 1 comment

As we move forward into spring, the energy feels alive and fresh for detoxification.  By detox I mean:  in our lives clearing out blocked energy, in our homes clearing out dust and clutter and unneeded items, and in our bodies, clearing out sludge.  Nomatter how long we’ve been practicing macrobiotics, it feels good to spend some time intentionally detoxifying.  I’m not talking about a brown rice fast (although those are good) or a cabbage soup diet (that sounds gross)… but more of a wholistic approach to detoxification including intentional use of detoxing/alkalizing foods and meditation.

The more I read up on self-healing and healthy lifestyle, the more astonished I am by the power of our own bodies to heal themselves and maintain health if given the tools it needs to do so.  One of the most important components of this healing is meditation.  I find that an excellent time for meditation comes during shavasana, at the end of an invigorating yoga practice, when you can be extremely present with your body and your chi/life energy/prana.  But, this is for another post. 

Today I want to talk about your liver!  It’s the largest glandular organ present in your body — it breaks down the fats consumed in food, and produces certain amino acids for tissue generation.  The liver is also the organ that eliminates toxins from the blood - it’s like your blood going through a good car wash when it travels through your liver, as it squeezes out all the toxins and bad stuff that we ingest and inhale throughout our days (even when we try not to have many toxins in our daily life, they get in).  So — as you can imagine, your liver is mighty important.  It’s a pretty amazing organ - the majority of it is located under the lower part of your right ribs, and this guy (or gal) is much larger than one imagines!  This is also the only human organ capable of natural regeneration of lost tissue!

So, how can we love our liver and keep it healthy and ready to process out the toxins that we ingest/have stored in our bodies?  Bitter vegetables are said to be some of the best foods for a healthy liver.  Chicory and dandelion enhance bile flow (produced by the liver), and bile helps eliminate toxins from the body.  Other good liver foods include artichokes, garlic, turmeric, beetroot, and limejuice.  Some good veggies to stimulate the production of enzymes that will help the liver:  cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, kale and brussel sprouts (hmmm, i see a green theme here).  So give your liver some love today!

Nourishing the Solar Plexus

March 17, 2010 in Personal Health, spirituality by bursty | 6 comments

yellow

The third chakra is known as the solar plexus.  In sanskrit it is manipura which means “lustrous gem”.  Your third chakra is located just below the bottom of your ribs — it is associated with self esteem, intellect, power, and vitality.  In Kundalini, it is known as the nabhi chakra, and the task in balancing nabhi is to achieve satisfaction with what is.  An imbalanced manipura manifests in worry and anxiety for things that are to come or for things that one wants (materialistic).  The third chakra also demands that we honor ourselves with self respect.

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