Chewing for Weight Loss
I have written about the virtues of chewing on a few occasions. Every day I see health issues that could benefit from better chewing, so...
I feel compelled to write about chewing again because your whole body's health depends on the quality of food you eat AND that very food getting to your each and every body cell. Chewing is a foundational habit of good health.
Chewing properly:
- unlocks the nutrients in the whole food you feed yourself with so those nutrients can feed your body cells which
- makes for vibrant healthy body cells (this is a front line defense against disease of all manners)
- creates a healthy digestive tract
- feeds healthy gut microbes which in turn keep your immune and nervous systems healthy (really, your whole body healthy)
- prevents constipation
- prevents gastro-intestinal ill health symptoms
- and so many more whole health effects!
Chewing for Whole Cellular Health
Eating begins with the simple act of chewing which leads to smooth digestion and greater absorption and assimilation of nutrients by initiating the release of digestive enzymes that break down food. The better chewed your food, the better your body can absorb and use the food’s nutrition. This means healthier better nourished body cells.
The chewing action sends messages between the mouth, brain, and stomach alerting your digestive tract that food is coming. This helps to jump start the whole digestive tract for smoother functioning by starting your digestive juices rolling!
Have you ever chewed a piece of gum only to find your stomach churning and growling within 20 minutes? Your chewing of gum is telling your tummy that something is coming. In the case of chewing gum, nothing is actually headed down to the stomach. You have started the digestive process but not given your digestive tract food to work on.
Carbohydrate digestion begins in the mouth with chewing. Chewing converts whole grains, fruits and veggies, and other complex carbohydrates into satisfying whole food sugars. Whole foods must be mixed with saliva and chewed until they become liquid to release their full nutritional value.
In addition, the more whole carbohydrate foods are chewed, the sweeter they become. This, in of itself, helps to naturally satisfy the “sweet tooth” and end sugar cravings.
Better carbohydrate digestion, from efficient chewing, helps to end that bloated feeling after a meal. Bloat can be carbohydrates that are not digesting well from inadequate chewing and the resultant lack of mixing with salivary enzymes. You literally stop digestion in its tracts from poor chewing habits, making the stomach and small intestine work harder than nature intended.
Chewing breaks apart proteins and fats making the oils, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and all nutrients available for maximum absorption. Because digestion becomes so efficient when you chew your food thoroughly, your body will begin to feel wonderfully light.
Chewing food well takes your mouth and senses through the whole range of flavors in foods. This mindfulness practice, while eating, ensures that your senses experience sweet, salty, bitter, pungent, sour, astringent, and spicy. By chewing and experiencing these tastes, your body is satisfied with less food. No cravings later! (When your blender chews the food for you, you miss this taste sensation experience.)
Try this experiment: Eat a carrot. Chew it poorly (or what is normal chewing for you), leaving good size chunks in your mouth and swallow them. Aim for the size of sunflower or pumpkin seed chunks and swallow. What do you think you will find in your solid waste? You've got it, those very same chunks of carrots, virtually unchanged.
Chew another piece, slowly and taking your time, until the piece of carrot resembles smooth pudding in your mouth. No chunks will be found in your solid waste and your body will be able to absorb all the nutrients from the carrot. Chunks in your solid waste are food wasted; no nutrients can be pulled from the interior of solid chunks of food. Your digestive tract only pulls what it can from the surface area of these food chunks. When food is like “pudding” when swallowed, the food’s surface area is immense and available for digestion and absorption of nutrients.
“Drink your solids, chew your liquids.” An intelligent saying Dr. John Christopher, Naturopath, repeated over and over in the classes I took in Natural Healing and Herbal Medicine. When the solid food you swallow is in liquid form from chewing, your body can absorb all the nutrients in that food. (Whole food eating is expensive. Chew well to get your $$$ worth!) This ensures healthy cell regeneration and deposits into your nutritional banks (not withdrawals and degenerative cells!). This is a foundational practice for good nutrition and whole health.
When consuming liquids, chew them thoroughly also, so you are doing a fine job mixing those salivary enzymes with all the food that passes slowly through your mouth.
Chewing helps you lose weight!
When you slow down and thoroughly chew your food, you create a consciousness around what you are eating and your body’s satiation response (feeling physically satisfied). Chewing food well means your body can digest it better (break it down into usable nutrients) and absorb it better into your blood stream. This means that your each and every body cell will be delivered plenty of whole food nutrition. Your body will not be begging you for more food all the time if your cells are well nourished. Much of the time our hunger is not for more quantities of food and calories but it is a cry from our body for better nutrition, more nutrients at the cellular level. Slowing down to chew food into pudding like consistency (or chewing already liquid foods very well before swallowing) delivers more nutrients to the cells, squelches your body’s begging for food, prevents over eating calories every day, and ultimately supports your body in losing excess weight.
Chew well… life depends on this!
How to Chew Properly
•To get into the habit of chewing correctly, try counting the chews in each bite. It helps if you put your fork down between bites.
•Chew every mouthful of food at least 30 times each, until the food becomes liquid. Chew a minimum of 50 times if what you are eating is a really solid food (raw carrot).
•Chewing preps the digestive organs telling them food is coming. Better digestion is the result as the organs get prepped to release the necessary digestive enzymes.
•Chewing breaks down food and makes it easier on the stomach and small intestine to digest and prepare the nutrients for your beautiful body cells.
•Saliva assists in the digestion of carbohydrates, makes the food more alkaline, and creates less gas.
If under pressure at meals: take deep breaths before you begin your meal, chew, and let the simple act of chewing relax you. Taking the time to chew will help you to enjoy the whole spectrum of tastes and aromas that make up the meal. Taking the time to chew will increase cellular health as the nutrients are more available to your body cells!
Slowing down and taking the time to chew is actually a stress reduction exercise. It is a mindfulness exercise, the yoga of eating, around your food.
Good Meal Prep and Eating Suggestions
•Wash up.
•Create quiet spaces and peace for eating, turn off the “screens”.
•Use candle light to create peace and relaxation.
•Sit up with good posture.
•Say a prayer thanking the local farmers for their hard work, the earth that grew your food, your higher power, whoever cooked your meal, and your family and friends who dine with you. The simple act of gratitude slows and calms the body, mind, and soul.
•Put your utensil down when chewing.
•Relax, breathe, and experience the textures and flavors.
•Eat in a relaxed setting: not the car, your desk at work, standing at the kitchen counter, or while on the run.
•Say thanks after you eat as well.
•Create post meal conversation instead of bolting to the “next” activity
•Go for a walk, sit on the porch just listening, create a post meal relaxation experience
Enjoy every meal for the gift of life that it truly is, Paula
5 Shocking Ways Yoga Causes You To Lose Weight
updated 8/3/2210-18-2024 Update: this link is no longer active to the Sivana Spirit blog. I am working on getting the article contents back from the company and I will post it here.
Yoga is an awesome healing tool!
I confess, I did not write the title to my article published on the international Yoga blog: Sivana Spirit.
Had I written the title, I would not have used the work "shocking" as Yoga's affects no longer shock me. I am not certain they ever did. I do know, had I been asked 20 years ago when I started doing Yoga postures, I would not have expected all the benefits Yoga has brought into my life. (Notice I put postures in italics up there. I have been doing Yoga meditation, guided visualizations, and mindfulness work since I was 26. I sincerely had no idea this was Yoga. When I started doing postures, I thought like so many others do, that the postures were Yoga. I have learned a lot!)
But these Yoga revelations have not been "shocking." They have been smooth and silky, warm and fuzzy, and oh so stealth in sneaking into my life.
To read more about these "shocking" Yoga weight loss impacts and benefits, click here.
Yoga truly is an easy and amazing tool for health and healing. Maybe this fact is the shocker in a culture that prefers more difficult answers.
Yoga tones the vagus nerve… this is a huge factor in creating awareness of what triggers you to do the things you do & react the way you react. You become a calmer, more peaceful person, able to stop - reflect - and chose healthy choices as opposed to knee jerk reacting into emotional outbursts and choices that do not serve your highest good or healing energy.
Namaste good people.
Yoga Supports these things in Your Life (photos added 7/17/19)
Weight Loss with Chai Tea
My Yummy, Warm, Soothing, Morning Chai
Ah, caught your attention didn't I? I have discovered that when an article has information about weight loss it, that article:
Flies around the internet at break-neck speed and
Gets more reads than almost any other topics I write about.
Wait! Just one second there, don't you go clicking "delete!" I am a woman of my word and I DO promise to deliver on my weight loss information but I am wrapping it in a package with so much more. I want to sing the praises of Chai tea:
the health benefits of the spices and the black tea, (herbs and spices are so medicinal!)
the calming ritual of making and enjoying it (sharing it with loved ones too; like how about a Valentine's Chai Party with Girl Friends?! Guy Friends too! Share the Chai Love!), and
the thermogenic and weight loss benefits of sipping a bit of Heaven.
So how does Chai tea help with weight loss?
1. Herbs and spices can help boost your metabolism.
Black pepper increases your body’s metabolism and burns unwanted fats, including the fat on your belly. Black pepper stimulates blood and lymphatic circulation. Better fluid movement in the body creates better nourishment, better oxygenation, and better waste removal from body cells. This all stacks up to better metabolism and weight loss benefits. Black pepper contains a substance called piperine which blocks the formation of new fat cells.
Black tea has caffeine like compounds that stimulate metabolism. A healthy weight loss plan includes eating a 100% whole food diet and moving your body. Adding black tea can help keep your metabolism humming along at a healthy rate. (No, black tea will not help you burn the extra calories when indulging in high calorie foods. Whole food eating for weight loss is the answer. And, black tea's caffeine like properties are easier on the body than coffee. Coffee, in excess and over the long haul of life, tends to burn out the adrenal glands from over-stimulating them. Black tea has 1/2 the caffeine punch of a typical cup of coffee, unless you long brew - steep your tea bag or loose tea. Black (and green) tea has the balancing ingredient called l-theanine, an amino acid which promotes GABA uptake in the brain and is thus calming and helps to counter epinephrine surges. L-theanine also increases Dopamine. Thus, one can enjoy a nice combination of both focus and calm from tea. Tea is not as hard on the adrenals as coffee.)
Cinnamon (real Ceylon cinnamon, not cassia bark) increases your body's circulation of fluids. See black pepper above. Cinnamon contains compounds called polyphenols and the mineral chromium. Both of these compounds help improve how your body uses insulin in turn regulating blood glucose. Cinnamon has been shown to increase glucose metabolism by about 20 times, which would significantly improve your ability to regulate blood sugar.
Cardamom is another thermogenic herb that helps boost your metabolism and may boost your body's ability to burn fat.
Ginger is a warming spice that has anti-inflammatory properties. Ginger may have thermogenic properties that help boost your metabolism, as well as an appetite-suppressant effect. See ginger for its potential role in your weight management goals.
Nutmeg is a good digestive aid. When we properly digest food we better use the nutrients in the food. When body cells are better fed, better nourished, we do not crave food in unhealthy ways.
Some Chai recipes include turmeric as a spice to add to the mix. Curcumin, turmeric's most active ingredient, reduces the formation of fat tissue. Turmeric suppresses the blood vessels needed to form new fat tissue (it is an anti-inflammatory herb and excess fat formation is an inflammatory response) and therefore may help prevent fat build-up. Curcumin use, from turmeric, results in improvements in insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and other inflammatory symptoms associated with obesity and metabolic disorders.
Cayenne. Ok, this is not a regular chai spice. It just happens to be in the honey I gently sweeten my chai tea with. Cayenne is another thermogenic herb. Capsaicin is the compound that gives cayenne peppers their heat. Cayenne may help fight obesity by decreasing a person's calorie intake, lowers blood fat levels, and helps to shrink existing fat tissue.
2. Regular consumption of chai spices stimulates digestive and pancreatic enzymes.
See nutmeg above. Good digestion is key to obesity prevention, reduction, and healing.
3. There is also improved oxygen uptake and fat breakdown with chai spices.
This has to do with better circulation throughout your whole body, better digestion, and the stimulation to all body cells from improved circulatory effects.
Healing Suggestion: Herbs and spices of the thermogenic nature work best in the context of a whole food eating and whole health living plan. Herbs cannot help shed excess weight within the context of an unhealthy diet that is comprised of calorie dense and nutrient poor manufactured foods.
Making Chai Tea
Black tea of the organic nature, spicy / raw honey, chai spices, peppercorns, local / raw goat's milk.
First, I gather my chai ingredients:
black tea (sometimes I use loose black tea)
cayenne and ginger raw honey
a spice blend of cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon (I keep this pre-mixed in my cupboard)
I recently added star anise and cloves (use 1/4 cup each spice EXCEPT the nutmeg and cloves, 1 heaping tbsp of nutmeg, slightly less than 1 tbsp cloves)
black pepper corns in the mortar waiting to be ground
raw, local goat's milk
missing in the picture is the organic vanilla extract
Making the tea:
Bring 1 cup water to boil and turn off heat.
Add black tea, cover, and steep for 3 to 5 minutes. Yes, time this.
Remove black tea from how water.
Add 1 tsp. of chai spice mix.
Cover and steep 2 to 3 minutes.
Add 1/2 to 3/4 cup full fat milk from well raised and well fed lactating animals.
Cover pot and re-warm gently on low heat for a minute or so. Do not walk away or you will over heat and scorch the milk.
Grind the black pepper so you are not tempted to walk away to get that load of wash started.
Pour tea into tea mug.
Add a bit of vanilla.
Add ground pepper.
Add 1/2 tsp. or so of local, raw honey.
Stir, sip, enjoy, and relax!
Chai Tea and Me!
Are you looking at all the steps and saying... I don't have time for this Paula? Can't I just use one of those Keurig cups of chai tea? Sure go ahead but the above results are so much tastier. And the process becomes a meditative ritual. Think Asian Tea Rituals... sacred time.
Compare the taste a cup of Keurig coffee to a cup that you fresh grind the coffee beans and brew in a time honored fashion. There is no comparison.
Fast and easy is, well, fast and easy.
But taste is so much more! Would you prefer instant mashed potatoes or homemade mashed potatoes from local, organic potatoes cooked with the skins still on, mashed to perfection with plenty of butter from grass-fed cows, and a splattering of full-fat local raised, raw milk. Your choice! I am very clear on which one I would choose!
Share your thoughts. It is good to hear other's voices, thoughts, ideas...
Examining Fertility
No, no, this article has nothing to do with sex, reproductive issues, and human fertility (well, not human egg and sperm fertility, per se).
Fertile fields at Birdsfoot Farm, Canton, NY
What are these two farmers sitting and squatting on?
Come on, guess....
It is soil. Fertile soil makes the world go round. Dirt is one of the earth's most precious resources, period.
How so you ask?
Read on my friend!
Fertile soil grows food that is intact, whole. I am always talking about how important it is to eat a 100% whole food diet. That whole food diet starts in whole soil; soil that is rich in nutrients and life, loamy, and fertile.
The fertility of the soil is the fertility of your body... and not just your reproductive fertility. Your body cells reproduce every day. Cellular health in reproducing vibrant, new cells is dependent on what feeds the parent cell. Read on for some soil and cell enhancing wisdom.
Soil is one of the foundations of all food, life, on this earth.
Healthy Soil = Healthy Food!
Soil + Sun + Water (and a seed or two!) = Food / Life!
Gratitude to: http://www.lappolis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Sun-Soil-Water.jpg
When we pay attention to soil, maybe that plot of garden where we grow herbs or veggies, we see a microcosm that is teeming with life. Healthy soil is a living, breathing, dynamic organism: sand, silt, clay, air, water, minerals and organic matter crawling with earthworms, moles, grubs, centipedes, millipedes, snails, slugs, beetles, ants, fungi, insect larvae, bacteria, mushrooms, and many other organisms and micro-organisms. The sum of the whole, all parts working in synergy, is a well-orchestrated symphony. Nature is truly poetry in motion and that very poetry is what contributes to the heath and wholesomeness of the food you eat.
Your food is only as healthy as the soil it grows in. Your animal based foods? Only as healthy as the soil supporting the plants that the animals are free-range grazing on.
Farmers who understand and live / work in harmony with this soil symphony are amazing people contributing to your whole health.
I have always loved dirt: playing in it, smelling it (dirt in your yard smells different than dirt in the woods...), smelling dirt after a warm summer rain. You know... when you go outside and all you smell is that damp, musky, wet dirt smell? That is a smell that always makes me smile.
Learn more about the dirt that grows your food.
Know your soil.
Know your farmer.
How does your farmer(s) interact with the soil they grow food in and on? Do they compost, rotate crops and animal in the fields, use cover crops to feed the soil... what are the soil nourishing habits your farmer uses to grow your food?
Rich soil, teeming with life and inorganic matter, grows food rich in vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients, and anti-oxidants. Get into your dirt. Study the dirt that supports your health and life! Find a farmer who makes soil care a top priority. (Consumer demand for good farmers, real farmers, will create better food, better soil, and a better world!) Thank your farmer for caring for the soil.
Please, share your dirt loving stories below!
Looking for some interesting reading on Dirt? This is one of my favorite books. I read it when it first was published and it is a book I keep in my "loved" book collection.
The below kid's book on dirt was one of my favorites to read to my kids. Not sure they were so enamored with the life in our soil but I was!
Yoga IS Snake Oil!
Snake Oil, urbandictionary.com, comes from the 19th-century American practice of selling cure-all elixirs in traveling medicine shows. Snake oil salesmen would falsely claim that the potions would cure any ailment.
Snake oil, wikipedia.com, is an expression that originally referred to unproven medicine.
I made this bold statement, the blog post title, with a big chuckle and a twinkle in my eye. Snake oil is such a fun pairing of words!
My making the statement that Yoga is snake oil is only in fun as Yoga IS now being recognized for the amazing healing modality; the healing tool that it is. India has been aware of and using Yoga as a healing tool for somewhere between five and ten thousand years. Yoga has a very long history of healing body, mind, and spirit!
Yoga IS My Drug Of Choice For EVERYTHING.
Snake Oil, urbandictionary.com, comes from the 19th-century American practice of selling cure-all elixirs in traveling medicine shows. Snake oil salesmen would falsely claim that the potions would cure any ailment.
Snake oil, wikipedia.com, is an expression that originally referred to unproven medicine.
I made this bold statement, the blog post title, with a big chuckle and a twinkle in my eye. Snake oil is such a fun pairing of words!
My making the statement that Yoga is snake oil is only in fun as Yoga IS now being recognized for the amazing healing modality; the healing tool that it is. India has been aware of and using Yoga as a healing tool for somewhere between five and ten thousand years. Yoga has a very long history of healing body, mind, and spirit!
I started my yoga practice over 25 years ago. I was not looking for healing; I was looking for change. I had been lifting weights and running for too many years. I was bored of the same old, same old. I wanted something new, something challenging to mind and body. Little did I know I would be challenging my spirit as well!
Yoga builds strength in body, mind, and soul. Yoga is a great way to keep the body physically toned, flexible, and fit. While all of this physical transformation is going on, seeds for deep inner transformation are being planted. The very act of deep breathing through and with your body movements creates a gentle binding of body, mind, and spirit. This creation of the whole is the healing transformation.
My first Yoga pose book. I borrowed it from the Potsdam Library, 17 years ago. This is my library copy; an Amazon purchase of some library's throw away book.
Another book I have used for years to share healing Yoga poses series with clients is:
This book has healing Yoga sequences for every ill health issue you can imagine. There is a lot of prop use. I do the poses as close to the pictures as possible.
A new Yoga book I picked up in the last year has become another favorite of mine:
Tera's pose series are simple and easy to incorporate into a busy life.
Yoga's Effects:
Yoga is a valuable tool to place (and actively use every day) in your holistic toolbox for healing body, mind, and soul.
I will give you 7 simple reasons that yoga IS what you have been looking for, a tool to take you to the next level on your personal path of healing.
Your body will respond physically to the beauty of yoga. Your muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments will become longer, stronger, and physically fit. Stick with yoga; you will see the results in your mirror!
You will intuitively move towards healthier choices in your life. Around food, this is a healing event! Your food choices will become healthier, whole foods. Your body will respond by balancing your weight into a healthy space for you.
Your mind will become calm. The breath awareness, on the mat yoga poses, will follow you off the mat. A calm, centered, grounded life is the benefit. Bonus: you will sleep better and move through your day in bliss!
Your body will be in the flow of life. Your Chi life force energy flows, unimpeded, when you regularly practice yoga. This healing energy, flowing freely through your body, helps to heal ill health symptoms. Your body heals!
Better circulation of blood (not just Chi life force!). This means heightened nourishment of your body’s cells and more efficient removal of cellular waste. Every organ will function better as your cells glow with vibrant health. Results: higher level of thoughts, your intelligence will shine, intuition flows, creativity sparks, and your spirit soars.
Yoga is Movement Magic! In a world where much sitting happens, Yoga is a gift of movement, flexibility, and balance.
Yoga creates inner peace. ☮️ It’s the breath thing and vagus nerve toning. Your vagus nerve is the seat of Chakras & kundalini energy flow. Patience & peacefulness relaxes body-mind-spirit and aids your healing.
When we are stressed, even our DNA gets tight. Peaceful presence relaxes DNA & the healing energy of your being can easily buzz up & down the DNA strands repairing & healing. Healing happens when you sleep 🛌 because you are relaxed. Yoga supports you living in relaxed peace mode. Yoga supports your DNA healing 24-7. 🧬🧘🏽♀️❤️🩹🧘🏻♀️💕🧘♀️🧬
Truly, I could go on and on about the benefits of yoga. My purpose here is to somewhat quickly entice you to engage in a daily yoga practice; even 10 to 15 minutes a day. With a regular yoga practice, the benefits become obvious and you will yearn for more.
Yoga IS an answer to your mind, body, and soul’s healing prayers! Your personal healing snake oil!
Namaste'
De-Mystifying Detox Diets
Information on detox diets, detoxing the body, and all the lingo and hoop-la around this issue tends to be confusing as well as misconstrued; depending on who is sharing the information. But seriously, is that not the case with anything? Everything?
The biggest confusion, in my eyes, lies in the modern medicine vs. traditional - holistic healing's views around detoxing.
Teaching people the power of supporting their body's detox process is teaching them to take their healing into their own hands; creating an independence from the health care industry. Which please, do not be misled. Our country predominantly has a disease care system. It is a system that flourishes if your disease symptoms are only suppressed not healed. This means you are a patient, a customer, in this system for life; dependent on the health care professionals and their prescription drugs.
Understanding detox efforts in healing requires a quick look at human biology. Our bodies are built for detoxing. We are detoxing every minute of every day. Your liver is the main organ of detox; constantly filtering your blood and eliminating the "toxins" via the colon. Your colon, obviously, is an organ of detox as it eliminates solid wastes and the products of metabolic breakdown (liver) from the body. Your kidneys keep themselves busy filtering the blood and eliminating waste products down through the ureters, into your bladder, and out through the urethra.
Your lungs eliminate waste, toxins, through your breath. Your skin eliminates waste through the process of sweating. Your lymphatic system moves fluids around your body and helps to eliminate waste, toxins, as well.
Gratefully borrowed from: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/273241902367567074/
So what does "detox dieting" do for all these bodily processes?
The medical profession, our health care system, debunks detox diets from many angles and for many reasons. For example: Detox is a term used by medical personnel to label the process of cleansing drugs or alcohol from a person's system that has been imbibing in excess and/or for long periods of time. For western medicine trained professional to think about detox in different terms means stepping into a realm they were not trained in, natural healing, and thinking from a space that most western medical training scoffs at and actually teaches practitioners is quackery. This is not the important thing here; so let us not focus on it any longer. (For a little history lesson, scroll down to "suppression and decline:" http://www.mygenerationsclinic.com/about-naturopathic-medicine.htm. Another history lesson: http://www.healingmountainpublishing.com/articles/NPmedicine.html )
Instead, lets us focus on what natural, holistic detox is! It is simply assisting and supporting your body in what it does every minute of everyday: detoxes itself and heals itself. When a natural healer (Naturopathic Physician, Herbalist, Holistic Nutrition Professional, etc.) prescribes a detox plan, the detox foods and herbs are simply to nourish and support the organs that do the detox work in the body.
The misconception lies in that people think these herbs and foods are doing something detox special... like scrubbing dirt from the body. These foods and herbs are not a dust buster, vacuum cleaner, or scrubbing bubbles of any type. They are simply foods (herbs are whole foods too!) that are high in nutrients that build cellular health and support healthy body organs. If your body organs are well nourished from whole food eating; they do their jobs better. This is truly simple nutritional physiology. The body is beautiful; poetry in motion in every way.
Now, I will admit, any opportunity some people and corporations have to market and profit from an idea, they will. If there are profits to be made, someone(s) will create scams to go along with it. This happens with everything around health. Let me give you several examples of the recent over marketing of reasonably healthy concepts but the concepts get taken to an extreme or used out of context for someone's profit:
- kale being made into every marketable food possible. I am not against kale chips but seriously... they are now the national health food?
- coconut in everything... we need to eat it, drink it in milk and water form, slather it on our bodies, etc.
- blueberries as the amazing superfood... do NOT go a day without eating them or your health will be in jeopardy.
- quinoa... we just cannot survive, nutritionally speaking without it. What did we do for 100s of years without this powerhouse of food from the Andes Mountains?
- any food, spice, or herb that is shown to up the metabolic rate and it is quickly slapped into capsule forms and sold as the latest "get skinny quickly" scheme.
My point? Plenty of health claims out there for all sorts of supposed healing products.
The wise thing to do is use your common sense in these situations. Products, especially expensive and exclusive products, are not needed!
Human beings have been supporting and assisting their organs of detox from time beginning. The natural cycles of life support this detox action: wild leeks and dandelion greens in the spring open our winter congested digestive tract and get things moving. The liver is stimulated more than it has been all winter, from these traditional spring foods, and aids in moving shit out of the body, literally and figuratively! Traditionally what did people do in the spring? Why they reveled in the wild leeks and dandelion greens, waiting anxiously and happily for their arrival in the spring. Time to dig wild leeks, time to gather dandelion greens and guess what... you are naturally, with the cycles of life, supporting your organs of detox.
Next in the seasonal flow of plants comes stinging nettles; another fine green plant that supports the body's natural detox systems and contributes amazing nutritional support to each and every body cell.
We can follow the seasonal appearance and growth of plants all growing season to discover the very plants people have traditionally used for supporting their organs of detox. In the winter, non-growing seasons, people prepared for this. Roots, barks, leaves, and berries of medicinal plants were gathered and dried for the long winter months. These foods were used when needed to support detox: when ill health symptoms arise or true microbial sicknesses.
Have you ever been constipated for 3 or 4 days in a row? How about a week or more? Remember how you felt? The colon is an organ of detox. Supporting detox (in just one example) is supporting colon health. Who wouldn't want this? Sure beats chronic constipation and the yucky, whole body feelings of ill health that result. Use this "constipated" thought process for all your pathways of detox: sweating, urinating, exhaling respiratory waste, lymphatic movement, and bile production and release into the small intestine. All of these detox mechanisms work more smoothly and efficiently when we support whole body detox.
Detox is not a hoax. Your body is doing it in every second of your life! How it is presented, promoted, and sold for profit may be what can get a bit shaky. Your body has always detoxed and will continue to do so until your life force energy is finished in your physical body. That is life and death here on this planet.
I am, right now whipping up a pot of nettle, peppermint, and rosemary tea. All of these herbs support circulation, cell nourishment, and ultimately detoxification. Simple 'lil pot 'O tea!
Cream of Spinach Soup:
This was an easy pot of soup to whip up last eve. Then I let it sit in the refrigerator for the next day's dinner; all the flavors meld together better this way. All veggies came from the Kent Family Farm and the milk is from local, loved, and well cared for goats.
- Saute' a medium purple onion.
- Add a medium potato and carrot or two to this saute'. Cook them just long enough to slightly soften but still have some crispness. They will cook a bit more when you re-heat the soup the next day so you do not want to create mushy veggies.
- Clean up spinach and steam in a tiny bit of water. I had about a pound of fresh, local spinach and it only takes a few minutes to steam it gently.
- Put spinach and 2 1/2 to 3 cups milk into your blender.
- Add a clove or two of garlic.
- Blend well and pour back into the steam pot. Add the saute' veggies.
- Add any herbs you like the taste of (rosemary, parsley, oregano, basil, thyme, curry mix, etc.) or not!
- Voila' a pot of soup that is loaded with whole foods for detoxing!
