Healing Health House Parties

Health & Healing Home Party  

What better space to learn health and healing and start the process of taking responsibility for your health back into your own hands... in your own home!

Gather like minded family and friends and invite me over.  Together we create a Health and Healing Home Party to fit your group's unique needs.

It is as easy as that!

Workshop Topics:  (Feel free to create your own ideas and we will put together an inspiring, learning experience!)

  1. Healing with Whole Foods:  What is whole food, why eat it, how to make changes in your life including the why's of eating seasonally and locally, and how eating whole foods will heal your body from the cellular level.  This workshop is the launch point for all work on healing. I suggest starting here.
  2. Natural Foods Know How:  An information session on how to know what foods really are natural and not just marketing.  Real food not food hype.
  3. Healthy Menu Prep: How to prep healthy meals for the week, how to shop for healthy foods.  Shopping and eating seasonally and locally.
  4. Healing with Herbs:  Common herbs for simple healing at home, antimicrobial use, herbal preparations, adding nourishment to your lifestyle.
  5. Herbal Preparation:  A more in depth and hands on class in making several types of herbal preparations based upon the individual or group’s desire to learn.
  6. Gluten Free Eating & Loving It:   Many people find that they are unable to tolerate the proteins found in gluten-containing grains.   We’ll discuss the basics of the gluten free diet, how to do it in a healthy and easy manner, how to avoid hidden gluten and cross contamination, and cleaning out the kitchen of gluten products and flours.
  7. Facial Rejuvenation:  Anti-aging based around whole foods, high mineral herbs, lotion, essential oils, and facial energy work.
  8. Detox Nourishment Diets​​:  What they are, why they work, how to implement simple and more involved nourishing detoxes.
  9. Divine Weight Loss:  Accessing your divine inner self to get past the "stuck" points and heal around food and weight issues.
  10. Gut Health:  What creates and destroys healthy gut micro-organisms,  how to optimize diet and lifestyle for top notch gut and whole body health.
  11. The Benefits of Exercise: Exercise provides multiple benefits.  Learn how simple, every day movement can increase your vibrant energy and healing in every body system, right down to the cellular level!
  12. Proteins, Carbs & Fats:  What they all are, why we need them, and where to get them (healthiest food choices).  
  13. Give Sugar the BUTT Kick!: What sugar is, forms of sugars, why so addicting, how sugar is damaging to body, how to butt kick sugar out of your life, ways to add “sweetness” to your life without adding sugar.
  14. Perfecting Posture for Pain Free Motion:  Why, how, when…. In everything we do sitting / standing / mowing /vacuuming / etc.  Yoga poses to enhance posture, open space between vertebrae, proper bending.
  15. Maternal Child Nutrition and Health:  My years of Maternity Nursing experience shine here as we talk about how to best holistically care for mom and babe during pregnancy and beyond.
  16. Healing the Feminine Divine: Holistic health from the Wise Women’s perspective around menarche, infertility, fertility, birth control, menstrual products, female sexuality, pregnancy, breast feeding, peri–menopause, and menopause - "the Wise Women Crone".  Workshops are created for the unique needs of the group around these feminine divine topics.
  17. Reiki Energy Healing:  Reiki Certification Classes: Level 1, 2 & 3
  18. Chi - Life Force Energy Healing  Learn about the chakras, meridians, and life force energy in your body.  Learn how to access the energy through yoga, acupressure, massage, reiki, and other forms of body work – energy healing techniques to prevent and heal disease.

Seductive Sugar....and our calamitous relationship

Sugar... oh so sweet and so seductive

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Like heroin, cocaine and caffeine, sugar is an addictive, destructive drug, yet we consume it daily in everything from cigarettes to bread.   -William Dufty, author of Sugar Blues.

We know sugar and refined sweeteners are a leading contributor to many health problems:  diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis to name but a very few.  Yet, as a culture, we continue to consume it in heaping piles on an annual basis.

How did we get here as a culture?  The use of sugar has been on the rise for hundreds of years.

Consumption in the USA:

  • In 1700, the average person consumed about 4 pounds of sugar per year.
  • In 1800, the average person consumed about 18 pounds of sugar per year.
  • In 1900, individual consumption had risen to 90 pounds of sugar per year.
  • In 2009, more than 50 percent of Americans consume 1/2 pound of sugar per day, which is 180 pounds of sugar per year! YIKES!

Sugar's history is an amazing tale to be told.

US citizens are the world's largest (no pun intended) consumers of sugar.  The first sugar refinery was built in NYC in 1689, sweet breakfast porridge became popular and consumption soared to 4 pounds per year. We now consume 100 pounds per year on average.  For those of us who consume very little, where does that leave others in this average consumption?

Loving sweet tasting foods is a natural human desire.  Whole foods that are sweet nourish the body cells with complex carbohydrates, fiber, minerals, vitamins, enzymes, and all sorts of nutrients yet to be "discovered."  Whole sweet foods release a slow and steady level of carbohydrates into our blood streams.  Not so for the refined stuff....

Refined sweeteners have been stripped of most of their nutritional value.  No nourishment to offer to the body cells?  Then the "food" item actually robs nutrition from your body cells.  The body must deplete its own store of nutrients to digest and absorb sucrose properly. This creates nutritional deficiencies. This is an empty calorie syndrome.

Refined sugar enters the blood stream very quickly raising the blood sugar to very high levels and the resultant high levels of insulin crash the blood sugar.  This is how we get swings of hyper excitability followed by lethargy and depression.  We feel good for a microscopic period of time, a sugar high, then we crash and burn turning into moody, frustrated, tired individuals.

Sugar is highly addictive.  A little bit raises and crashes the blood sugar leaving you craving more, more, more! And did I mention more, NOW?  When we go through sugar withdrawal we have mood swings, severe cravings, headaches, fatigue, irritability... symptoms akin to drug and alcohol withdrawal.

Sugar is put into all manufactured foods, those factory made "food products."  The reason is clear, sugar is addictive, add it to food and people will buy and eat more.  What a great sales campaign!

The health consequences of sugar are profound. Excess sugar intake is associated with weight gain and obesity. Being overweight raises your risk for many health conditions: diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, gallbladder and liver diseases, osteoarthritis, gynecological problems such as infertility, respiratory problems, sleep apnea, and colon, breast and endometrial cancers, to name but a few.

I find it amazing that rarely does a diabetic (or anyone else with metabolic health issues resulting from refined foods and sugars) get advised to remove all sugar from their diets in order to regulate their blood sugar and insulin levels and heal their bodies.  If a person had liver disease or lung cancer, would we not advise that they remove the offenders: alcohol and tobacco?

If sugar is so bad...why do we crave it?  Sugar in the bloodstream stimulates the same pleasure centers of the brain that respond to heroin and cocaine but in a very pronounced way compared to other yummy foods.  Sugar becomes an uncontrollable habit.  One feels great while consuming, bottoms out when it leaves our blood stream, and rush to find more.

Leaving sugar out of the diet for 2 weeks ends this yo-yo affair with the sweet, white stuff.

Interestingly enough, until the middle of the 1800's, refined, "white" sugar was a luxury.  The wealthy could afford refined sugar cane sugar.  Most common people used maple syrup, honey, and crude forms of molasses and the true molasses rich brown sugars (not the modern grocery store variety that is merely white sugar with caramel coloring added).

Take yourself back to the Little House On The Prairie books and recall how they consumed sugar.  Manufactured sugar and sweets were truly a rare treat, only at holidays.  (Keep in mind that the sugar and food indulgent holidays were far fewer in Laura Ingall’s days. Another testimony to where our collective health has gone and why!)

Think how long a hard candy or small piece of chocolate, given as a Christmas gift, would last Laura.  Now think about how we pack away candy and whole, large chocolate bars on a daily basis.  Any wonder why and how  our health suffers the degenerative consequences?  Can you imagine how long an Equal Exchange large chocolate bar would last Laura… weeks upon weeks, turning into months!

Want to return to vibrant health?  Removing sugar from your diet is a huge step in the direction of restoring metabolic health. How to do this sugar detox is a question of your style of functioning.  Are you an all or nothing type that can completely cut sugar now and never look back (trust me, you will feel so good you will not want to look back!) or do you function better weaning yourself slowly?  Knowing what works for you and doing it, surrounding yourself with loving support, and finding ways to  sweeten your life without sugar are key components to kicking the sugar habit.

PS  Stay tuned for my thoughts on kids' parties and sugar!

Fun Food Focus

Satisfy that sweet tooth with 1/2 an apple and a handful of raw walnuts or pecans.  The nuts add fat and protein to balance your blood sugar and insulin reaction.  You won't feel a blood sugar crash 30 minutes or so after eating the apple.  

Fresh fruits are gentler on your blood sugar.  Dried fruits are very concentrated fruit sugars and will elevate and crash your blood sugar, leaving you craving more sweetness to drive your blood sugar back up.  Dried fruits will contribute to the same yo-yo cycle with blood sugar rushes and crashes.  Eat them with divine respect for the concentrated source of fruit sugar that they are;  be mindful of this sugar effect even with natural foods.

I'm Going Home!!

Saturday, November 30th at Elliot's Agway in Winthrop, NY                                                                                                                                                          Recently I taught a workshop, about whole foods, at Nature's Storehouse in Canton. Cindy, from Elliot's Agway, was present in the audience. She asked me if I was interested in "coming home" to do a workshop.  I chuckled and said to her, "But I am a Brasher girl!"  So, I am heading home (all of 20 miles) to teach a workshop for the fine people in my hometown!  I love home!                                                                                                                                               

What:  

Whole Foods for Healing Body, Mind, & Soul AND White Sugar Blues  This is all about eating well to heal yourself AND what sugar is, how it depletes your vitality, and how to butt kick sugar out of your life!

When: 

Saturday, November 30th, 11 AM...  Be there and start getting healthy before the Holidays!  

Who should attend:  

Anyone interested in learning about using foods to your best advantage to heal and feel divinely wonderful AND anyone looking to learn why sugar has you in it's snare and how to get out of that snare!

Where:

Elliot's Agway in Winthrop.  I said that already, right?  

648 State Route 11C, Winthrop, New York 13697     (315) 389-5641

How:  

Walk, ride your bike (Get the snow chains out!), x-c ski, skate (Wait, the St.Regis is probably not frozen!), drive your car with a car load of family and friends... just come to relax, laugh, learn, and enjoy some local-whole food snacks!

My health & healing guide book will be available for purchase.  

Think of your loved ones... give them the gift that will jump start their health!

gift of health

  Whole foods build vitality!

 sucks the vitality from you!