No Quick Fixes

Almost daily I receive emails and/or FB messages asking me for quick fixes for all sorts of health symptoms and ills including weight loss products... "Will this really work for me and make me lose the weight?" I have stopped sending answers with suggestions. Truly, for me to even consider responding to these messages is unethical on my part as it does not serve the person's best interests.

Quick fixes do not exist for problems that have settled into our body cells over a lifetime of eating and other less than optimal lifestyle habits. Truly it takes motivation to change and commitment to the process for the "fix" to be had. And... the fix is a lifetime process, a lifetime commitment. When we reach the goal, be it weight loss or the end of some cluster of ill health symptoms, our wellness walk is not over. The walk is a walk of life and for life: a commitment to self to make the best choices every day for cellular health and overall vital wellness.

Now I will tell you this: sometimes there are quick relief strategies for problems and symptoms. What I mean is I can suggest a little tweak here and a little tweak there to give quick relief for some issues while we work to get at the underlying reason these problems exist. Then we can work on changing what needs to be changed to get rid of the problem symptoms forever.

Examples of some quick relief strategies (keep in mind these are not long term solutions but rather a "get me over the hump until we can figure better solutions":

• muscle spasms and cramps (especially at night making you shoot up out of bed in crazed agony): take magnesium 400 mg at bedtime and drink more pure water throughout your day.

• constipation: again, magnesium (of the citrate variety) will assist here as well as more fruits and veggies, more pure water, move your body daily, and maybe use some herbs for a bit of relief until we can correct the underlying issues.

• sleep issues (keep in mind sleep issues can vary from trouble falling asleep, to staying asleep, to experiencing quality sleep): magnesium can help here as well, get off the caffeine and sugar, get outside and move...

Divine Weight Loss eCourse

Last night I was told the story of a local man who has transformed himself (over 2 years... it is about the long haul and commitment to self). He went from a 340 pound ill health human with serious cardiac issues; severe back, hip, knee, and ankle/feet issues; diabetes; depression with 3 medications; and high cholesterol to a 180 man with no health issues, no medications, and a healthy, fit body free from disease and depression.

What did he do? Changed the way he ate, what he ate, and got his butt to the gym and out for walks every single day. Sunshine. Fresh air. Movement. Real food, nothing processed. No sugar. Inner Conscious Connection work: how he thinks about himself and the world.

Why? Because his body was falling apart from the way he had ill treated it. It was a conscious decision on his part: stay grossly obese and sick or choose health.

He is a happy man for his endeavors and I wish he was my poster child! He did this on his own - Woo Hoo for him!

Lifestyle choices are up to you. I am offering you the opportunity and support to make health and healing choices in your life.

Blessing of good health and happiness on your personal path, Paula

E-Courses To Walk Your Health Path

Immune MishMash in the kitchen

When a touch of the flu hits your home be prepared with some tools to boost the immune system:

1. Brothy soups (bone broths are nice)
2. Elderberry syrups or tinctures (Check out my elderberry article in the next Potsdam Food Co-op's newsletter, coming soon)
3. Flu tonics: (No Time For Getting Sick, everyone around me was sick and needing my care, I had to be the one to stay functioning!)
4. Herbal teas: nettle, yarrow, rosemary, peppermint (Instructions for making medicinal infusions, teas, click the herbal teas link 
5. Hot baths with plenty of water (or the above immune herbal teas) to drink  while bathing. Fevers need to be kept hydrated and allowed to do their work. A fever's purpose is to destroy the microbes causing the sickness with their heat. Fevers are part of your immune response for healing infections. If you reduce fevers with medications and cold baths, the heat of fever cannot work for you. Keep the feverish person very well hydrated to avoid the problems of fever that people fear.
6. Whole food green drink such as SuperFood Plus
7. Foods rich in:

• Vitamin C (lemon water?),
• selenium (brazil nuts anyone),
• zinc (pumpkin seeds?)

I was making a pot of soup, pictured above, to offer something brothy for my sick kid's bodies. The flu hit and one kid had a fever for 11 days. Mom care was required. As I am making the soup, "extended fever boy" is lying on the couch around the corner and says to me:

Jake:  "What are you making for dinner Mom?"

Mom: "Soup"

Jake:  "Your soup is scary to me. It always contains one or more of the following:

• animal carcasses (bone broths)
• rotting bean matter (miso)
• vegetables that most of the modern world have never heard of!

Mom: "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

Jake: "I don't appreciate finding scary things in my scary soup. The soups usually taste good but what is in it terrifies me. I observe it very carefully before I eat it."

Makes a Mom run to the kitchen to create healthy fare for her loved ones!

The Soup Recipe

1. Bring 3-4 cups of water to simmer, slowly, no need to boil. Keep pot covered and on lowest heat.
2. Saute' a medium onion chopped into fine slivers. Saute' in butter from pastured animals, animal fat, or coconut oil.
3. Grate or finely chop cabbage, about 1 cup.
4. Grate a small celeriac.
5. Add both to onion saute' and quick stir fry.
6. Add above veggie mix to the simmer water and keep heat as low as possible. Do not boil this soup.
7. Finely chop kale and saute', about 1 cup.
8. Grate a carrot and add to saute'.
9. Toss into saute' some frozen red pepper strips that you perhaps froze before growing season ended.
10. Stir fry all 3 together and add to veggie soup mix in pot.
11. Add a pinch or two of cayenne to soup.
12. Peel and press 1-2 cloves of garlic into soup.
13. I then added 3-4 tablespoons of South River Miso's Sweet White Miso. 
14. Last addition was the flu syrup sitting on the counter. It contained raw apple cider vinegar, raw honey, garlic, onion, ginger, and turmeric. There was 2/3 to 3/4 a cup left in the jar. I dumped it all into the soup and stirred it up.
15. Soup was finished and ready for serving to my terrified kid.

The only thing else I would have added, had I some bone broth on hand, would be bone broth instead of the water at the beginning. I recommend keeping bone broth made and frozen in wide mouth quart canning jars for flu emergencies. 

Happy immune boosting soup making. I hope you efforts are appreciated and not creating a reign of soup terror!

Making Bone Broth:    From my educational handout on bones and minerals

Bone broths are made with fish, chicken, turkey, beef, and lamb bones and a tablespoon of vinegar to liberate the minerals.  Put bones in a sauce pan, soup pot and cover with water, just enough to cover bones. I squish the bones down into the pot. Add the tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar and cover the pot. I soak the bones in the vinegar water overnight and slow simmer for hours the next day. I gently bring to a simmer on the stove top. Then I place in a pre-heated 220 F oven and leave for 4-5 hours if chicken bones and longer if harder bones. Remove bones and use as a soup stock for veggie soup or eat the broth as is (add a bit of unrefined sea salt to taste). If making veggie soup, I saute' the veggies before adding to the hot broth to avoid simmering the broth anymore.

Comparing Your Health To An Antique Table

Antique table and your health? What could they possibly have in common?  

You Do NOT Need Me is another thought I had for this post's title. What possible connection could these 2 titles have? I will get back to all of this and hopefully the concepts will be clear.

To heal your body from most of the ills we suffer all one has to do is switch to a whole food diet. Eventually the body will recover its health:

• your gut flora will return to normal,
• blood chemistry profiles stabilize to normal,
• body cells recovery their health,
• hormone levels balance,
• DNA & RNA repairs itself,
• and the list goes on & on.

All of this repair stuff happens just by feeding your body real food*.

Most packaged food stuff, made in factories, is loaded with

• artificial ingredients
• genetically modified organisms
• preservatives
• chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, and
• so many more unnatural ingredients that were never meant to be part of your body's cellular health.

Each time we eat this unnatural food stuff we are chipping away at our body's health. The food we eat is responsible for the health of our body cells. Doritos and soda (or any packaged foods with fake ingredients) every day and you are seriously chipping away at your innate health.

Real Food = Real Healthy Cells

Crap Food = Crappy Sick Cells

If I was to take a vegetable peeler and every day chip a tiny bit of my antique table away what would my table look like? After days, weeks, months, and years of slowly chipping away on my table, the table's value, beauty, and function would suffer. 

The same thing happens to your health every time you chip away at it with food stuff that nature never intended us to take into our bodies under the pretense that it is real food. You read about this in my 80/20 Eating Plan Deception. You are chipping away at your health and your innate beauty, function, and vitality suffers.

So why is it You Do Not Need Me (possible post title #2) and my Wise Woman Nurse educational services?  

Just eat real food. It is that simple.

Feed your body food that nature gave us and avoid the stuff made in factories. If you must buy some factory made foods: read labels and make sure every ingredient in the product is natural, unrefined, non GMO, etc.

Be good to your body cells.  If you want to speed up the healing process... there are many ways to aid the body in recuperating from a non-whole food diet. This is where I can help you weave a bit of magic and make the whole food eating and healing plan happen faster, accelerate the body's return to health! 

Toss out the junk food and the vegetable scraper. 

Save your body cells and the antique table today!

*real food: food in its whole state

1. If a plant based food, the food is grown:

• as it would have grown in nature
• without GMO seeds
• without use of agricultural chemicals: fertilizers pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, etc.
• preferably with crop rotation and biological methods of maintaining soil fertility

2. If an animal based food, the animal is raised:

• in open space free to roam, eat, play, love, and live as closely as it would have if it was a wild animal
• not fed unnatural foods (grains and soybeans to cows, goats, pigs, etc.)
• no steroids, antibiotics, growth hormones, and/or agricultural chemicals
• treated with loving care by the farmers

Because I have used the words... "You CAN heal your own health problems," I will add this disclaimer to CMA.  Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.  

Longevity Recipe

The Greek man above has an amazing story of health, healing, longevity, and defying medical hexing. To read his incredible story of being diagnosed by US doctors with cancer and given 9 months to live and his story of unintended healing success, click this LINK.

Longevity Recipe

Ingredients:

1. Human with desire for vibrant health

2. Real food: http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/whole-food-feeding-your-cells/

3. Garden and/or connection with amazing local farmers

4. Vibrant lifestyle habits in mind, body, & spirit

5. Update 2/28/21 Connection to a loving community

It is really this simple: feed the body real food; real food for body, mind, and spirit.

In a recent conversation with a client a comment was made to me when speaking about healing:

"People do not want to believe that food is the problem."

To which I replied:

"Food, real food, is not the problem. The problem is factory made food products brought to you by Nabisco, Kellogg, Post, Betty Crocker, Pepsico, Tyson, Kraft, Nestle... on and on the list of food product manufacturers goes.

Real food feeds body cells for vibrantly healthy regeneration. Food products detract from body cell health, depleting nutritional stores, and degenerating body cells contributing to degenerative diseases. (Degenerative diseases are a body composed of degenerative body cells.)

As a culture we observe the world and look to emulate those countries with a better health and longer longevity:

• The French Paradox

• The Okinawan diet

• Mediterranean diet

Importing their culture's specific foods is not the answer. Cultures who stick to their traditional diets: food grown locally & naturally and then prepared through time honored home cooking methods are the cultures who thrive with vibrant health. No importation of foreign foods needed. Simply grow food, team up with neighbors to share the different foods you have grown and raise, and befriend local farmers who grow real food in time honored and sustainable ways... keep those farmers farming through purchasing their food and supporting their work in this world. Your health will soar, local food economy will soar, life will be vibrantly good.    http://www.gardenshare.org/

Reverse these time honored practices and instead eat processed, packaged, factory made food products and your body cells suffer. To digest and get rid of these products (detox, methylate) your body must rob nutrients from your cells. Keep robbing from your cells and the cells degenerate further and further and degenerative diseases are now the norm. 

Cultures who have always eaten their locally available and traditional foods create pregnancies with healthy babies who are developing with a firm foundation of healthy body cells. Feed those newborn infants (and their breastfeeding moms) real food and the baby's bodies develop with cellular health intact. Continue this good food, real food trend through the childhood and teen years and you grow up young adults with their cellular health intact. A lifetime of real food, whole food eating and you have a natural prescription, a recipe, for vibrant health and longevity.

The same feeding process for embryos, infants, teens, and all humans in general with processed, packaged food products and the reverse happens: cells degenerate and degenerative diseases are the norm.

Take a peak at the current US population... As a whole, We are NOT vibrantly healthy people.

Junk Vs. Real... Vibrant Vs. Degenerative Body Cells

Bottom Line: Eat Real Food, Eat Whole Food and THRIVE for the Long Haul of Life!

Whole Health Lifestyle Choices create vibrant health & longevity, click to learn more.

To learn more about using herbs to contribute to cellular health and longevity Join my Herbs For Natural Health online course.

This is a no sweat, straight forward class on making simple herbal medicines and 3-5 herbs that enhance each specific body system for your vibrant health. 

I look forward to sharing this time honored, wise woman wisdom with you, Paula

Traditional Foods, Traditional Movement

Eating whole foods, real foods, the foods that are traditional to one's area of living and thriving on this planet is one key to healing personal (and global) health. I praise the cell enhancing and body healing benefits of a 100% whole food diet all the time.

I now want to introduce you to traditional movement, the act of simply moving your body in flexing and strengthening ways, the time honored ways people on this planet have always moved their bodies. This is moving the body in the simple acts of daily living tasks that involve using the body not auto door openers and mechanized, labor saving devices. 

The farmers of Birdsfoot Farm, Canton, NY going about their daily tasks: moving, flexing, and strengthening their bodies all while creating something tangible... whole foods! Explore Birdsfoot Farm's website to see what they are up to and what they have to offer towards your healing plan!

We are a culture that simply needs to move more. Movement creates all sorts of healing effects in the body and creates an upward spiraling ripple effect to entice us to make other healing changes in our lives. When we move and then feel better... we naturally want to make even more changes to feel even "More Better!" (My kids used to use this grammatically incorrect more better making the term very endearing to me.)

We are told by the media, scientific sources, and all sorts of exercise specialists that we need to get our butts in gear, dramatically increase our heart rates for at least 20 minutes daily, lift weights to keep our muscles and bones strong, etc., etc., etc. I am not going to tell you to not engage in such activities if you are so inclined to do so. What I am going to tell you (if you are not one inclined towards hard core, butt hauling, sweat inducing, heart pumping, serious shit at the gym exercise...) is that simply getting up and moving your body, several times daily, has huge benefits for your whole body, and yes for your each and every beloved body cell!

As I grow older, I like to think common sense and wisdom is growing with me. I am one who has run miles daily (getting those miles in at 6 1/2 minutes or less was imperative), rode my bike for long and hard miles, lifted my body weight in all sorts of ways (bench presses, squats, lunges, etc.), and swam laps across rivers and lakes... I think you get the picture. In comes the wisdom (I am glad I did those things as I have always had too much energy that I needed to burn but my wisdom also tells me that some of it wore hard on my body parts)... all 4 of my grandparents lived to be just months shy of 89 years old. Not one of them ever did hard core, sweat inducing running, biking, weight lifting, swimming, etc. They simply worked hard in their tasks of daily living, moving their bodies constantly throughout the day to take care of farm animals, gardens, orchards, wood for winter fires, hay for winter feed, etc. Their exercise and weight lifting was part of life and survival from year to year. 

Lifestyle Hints: walk away from the computers (Yup, me too) go for walks, even short ones, several times daily. Walk up the stairs to use your upstairs bathroom every time you need to go (Or do laps about the house, even outside, if you only have a down stairs bathroom). Drop and do some push-ups before peeing, drop and do some crunches or V-seats (boat pose) when you are finished on the pot. Stack wood (I have 4 more cords needing stacking if anyone is interested in assisting with some free movement, no gym membership fee required and I might even make you lunch!) Walk more, do work by hand instead of using machinery, i.e.: push that lawn mower instead of sitting on it (do push-ups and pull-ups before and after mowing), split wood by hand, hoe-rake-shovel-weed, do everything you need to by hand using those glorious muscles and save the drive, and membership fee, to the gym.

I am off now to do some muscle flexing-strengthening-balancing yoga, push-ups, and a walk in the woods with my dog. I will contemplate the wood stacking and lawn mowing!

Create some Movement Magic in your own life!

Sean Corn, Yoga Teacher. Image from Yoga Journal August 2015, page 23, Rainbow Light Nutritional Supplements ad.

This chilly, wet weather on June 28th has me looking for something to do in my oven. With a hankering for yummy granola and my local yogurt, the timing seems perfect to whip up a batch of...

Gratifying Granola

Please feel free to assume that all ingredients are whole (unrefined), organic, non-GMO, pasture raised animal products, and as local as I can get.

• 2 1/4 cup oats
• 1/2 cup spelt or amaranth flour
• 1/2 cup corn meal
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup water or milk of choice
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• pinch of unrefined sea salt
• 1 tbsp. vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 250 F.
2. Blend dry ingredients together in large mixing bowl.
3. Beat eggs in a separate bowl.
4. Add other wet ingredients to beaten eggs and mix well. If batter is seemingly too "wet" add tiny amounts of flour and meal to create a damp batter.
5. Drizzle wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and stir to blend well.
6. Spread granola batter in a thin even layer in baking pan(s).
7. Bake for 2 hours at 250 F. Set a timer for every 20 to 30 minutes and stir granola well and redistribute into a thin layer on the pan(s).
8. When granola seems crunchy and well baked (not burned) remove from oven and allow to cool in the pan.
9. Transfer cooled granola to air tight containers. I prefer wide mouth quart canning jars with the 2 piece metal lids.
10. Enjoy in any and every way you enjoy granola!

Weight Loss is in Your Hands

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, adds fiber to roto-root the intestinal tract, provides pectin for weight loss, and is an all-around awesome whole food for many healing and nourishing purposes. Truly speaking (or writing I should say): nourishing the body, healing, and lifetime body weight balancing all go hand in hand!

I have written several posts on sustainable weight loss over the past few years. This link will take you to them if you wish to peruse through them and see what catches your attention and feeds your personal needs.

Weight loss is a goal many of my clients put on their health history as one of their top 3 health goals they are looking to achieve. 

Weight loss can be achieved quickly through the many, many, many get skinny quick diet plans. Problem is: what will you learn and have you learned about healthy eating from these get skinny quickly plans that you can use over the long haul of your life? When you stop the latest get skinny quick plan and go back to the old habits... voila, back comes all of the weight you lost.

This is what I can tell you about permanent, lifetime weight control:

1. Healing the body, this includes arriving at and maintaining a healthy body weight for your gorgeous shape and body structure, is achieved through a lifetime of eating natural (whole) foods and living as in sync with the rules of nature as possible. 

2. Weight loss is not the first effect you will notice when changing your lifestyle and eating habits, so hang in there. The wait will be well worth it.

3. Healthy food repairs cellular metabolism (All the exciting things that go on inside each and every body cell every second of your breathing life. Your body cells are the building blocks of your body and your health!). When we repair the cells we in turn repair the tissues, organs, organ systems, and you... the organism! All those nasty ill-health symptoms become a thing of the past, a distant not so great memory!

4. When your eating habits are built around whole food and amounts needed to sculpt your awesome body back into its natural size and shape... this is what will happen.

5. Ditch the scales and get skinny quick schemes. Fill your home with whole foods and whole health habits and your personal health will soar as your body weight sinks!

This is my bottom line friends: get real with yourself, your food choices, and your lifestyle choices. Health will slip gently into place if you are patient and allow your body to heal.

Cheers!