SLOW MOTION MORNING. Last night after homework, a bike ride, playtime with friends, outside until the fading light, and a slow-cooked beef for dinner… my son went to bed happy, and asked: “can you wake me up super-early and pretend we’re very late for school so I jump out of bed? And then we’ll be early. And then we’ll have more time. I like our slow mornings together.” Heck yeah! What a fun and silly way to shake things up this morning and to make room for JOY. Amazing what one small change can do. Go on, Good Girl, get your SLOW MO on!
How Food Choices can Lead to Illness: Get The Health Edge with Mark Pettus and John Bagnulo
John Bagnulo and Mark Pettus continue their discussion in this latest podcast from The Health Edge.
This week they talk about the fundamental changes in our modern diet over the last 2-3 generations and how those changes are driving the current epidemic of chronic complex disease.
Growing rates of obesity, diabetes, inflammation, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, autoimmunity are all linked to dietary choices we make. Mark and John will explore the specific role poor quality carbohydrates are playing in disease and a diminished quality of life.
Tune in to you and Tune in to the podcast link below for top tips on self-care, what foods to avoid and why. Conventional wisdom to "eat everything in moderation" just doesn't work in this day and age.
If we were working out in the fields haying all day, it might still apply - but we're not...we're sitting at desks, behind steering wheels, stressed out and eating the wrong things.
It's time to CUT.IT.OUT. Listen to this helpful podcast to understand how and why to make some simple but profound changes to your diet.
To accompany this discussion, Mark's lecture Understanding Metabolism from the BHS Creating Health and Wellness series provides excellent additional reference.
Paradigms Change: Get the Health Edge with Mark Pettus and John Bagnulo
This is the inaugural podcast of The Health Edge. Mark Pettus and John Bagnulo introduce their reasons for The Health Edge and share some context for their professional journeys toward a more holistic, integrative, systems biology approach to lifestyle and health. In this episode, Mark and John introduce the themes of evolutionary biology and epigenetics and how they shape human biology and health.
Paradigms change. You are not a prisoner of your DNA. Here John and Mark talk a bit about that:
Gotta' Delicata!
Delicata Squash is delightful and easy to prepare. It can be stored for up to three months without losing its nutritional value. It is fat free, saturated fat free, sodium free, and cholesterol free, but the really good news is that it is an excellent source of Vitamin A and a good source of Vitamin C. Talk about The A Team!!! These two vitamins when joined together are ready to kick ass when it comes to protecting our cells. Vitamin A keeps skin and mucous membrane cells healthy and that means they are more resistant to fighting off cancers and diseases caused by viruses. Vitamin C acts as a natural antihistamine when fighting colds and allergies; aids in collagen production; has anti-oxidant properties that fight against cancer and protects cells from damage and mutation; and best of all, it helps to keep our eyes and hearts healthier so we can see and feel the beauty that is all around us. WOWZA! We all Gotta’ Delicata!!!
This beauty is only skin deep...
Boys, Listen Up: EAT YOUR TOMATOES!!
Tomatoes weren’t always so pretty and uniform in color, texture and size. They were once so gnarly, hairy and bumpy that they were given a serious makeover in the nineteenth century when in 1879, after years of fiddling with seeds, Alexander W. Livingston released the world’s first perfectly-perfect tomato, the Paragon.
This is not your ordinary tomato! It looks like a plum, but these Indigo Rose and Black Cherry tomatoes from Peace Haven Farm in Becket, MA are delicious and loaded with lycopene.
Sadly, its perfection was only skin deep. In perfecting its outward appearance the tomato had become less flavorful, and less nutritious with the loss of phytonutrients and lycopene.
While The Mayo Clinic has a very conservative take on the benefits of lycopene [read here], others feel waaay more optimistic. At a recent conference sponsored by the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy [CFNP], researchers reported a potential benefit for bone and skin health, and male infertility [read here]. No matter what the studies have yet to reveal, they all agree lycopene is good for you.
Boys, listen up – EAT YOUR TOMATOES!!! Research has shown that lycopene is a powerful anti-oxidant with benefits affecting areas of the body where its concentration is highest, such as in the prostate gland.
In her book Eating on the Wild Side, Jo Robinson gives us some great tips on how to select and prepare the most nutritious tomatoes, the ones with the most lycopene:
1. Deep red tomatoes have more lycopene and overall antioxidant activity than yellow, gold, or green tomatoes
2. The smaller the tomato, the higher its sugar and lycopene content
3. Store-bought “on the vine” tomatoes are NOT field-ripened tomatoes
4. Processed tomato products can be more flavorful and nutritious than fresh tomatoes [because they are field-ripened and processed shortly after harvest]. Canned tomato paste has the highest concentration of lycopene of all the tomatoes and tomato products in the store. Go on, find your Inner Italian Mama and ‘make-a’ some sauce!!
5. tomatoes should be stored at room temperature to preserve their flavor [chilling tomatoes breaks down their flavor and aroma]
6. Cooking tomatoes converts lycopene into a form that is easier to absorb [heat liberates three times more lycopene from the plant’s tissue.]
7. Use the skin, juice, and seeds of tomatoes whenever possible. The skin and seeds are the most nutritious parts of a tomato and the juice is rich in glutamate.
8. Lycopene is a lipid and should be consumed with oil for better absorption.
Quin-quoi?
Quinoa isn't so easy to find in France, but like all good things in France, we eventually find our special distributors and embrace the journey no matter how many villages we cross 'til we fulfill our Quin-quoi quest. ohlala love the journey. Life is not supposed to be fast and easy. Go Good Girl, Go!
Ginger's Got It Goin' On
Next time you reach for an Advil or Tylenol, think about using Ginger instead as a natural way to combat inflammation.
Ginger root has anti-inflammatory properties that can be beneficial for people with arthritis, fibromyalgia and seasonal allergies.
Ginger is a gastric stimulant that can kick-start your organs in the morning, influence a good digestive system and break down fat. It's known to alleviate bloating, flatulence, diarrhea and constipation; relieve dizziness and nausea; lower cholesterol levels and decrease systemic blood pressure.
Ginger possesses blood thinning capabilities that help in the treatment of heart disease and it boosts your immune system by warming the body and helping it break down the accumulation of toxins in the organs, particularly the lungs and sinuses.
KICK START YOUR DAY. Drink 8oz of “Good Girl Ginger Tea” first thing every morning. The anti-oxidant powers of ginger are a great way to clear your system and your sinuses. Here's a quick and easy way to prepare...
Peel and slice organic ginger into thin pieces, approximately 1 cup and place in a large 4 cup teapot. Boil water and wait for it to cool down to about 140°F/60°C to prevent burning all the goodness out of the ginger then pour water over ginger. Let sit until cooled. Refrigerate overnight and drink first thing on an empty stomach in the morning. Add lemon or [local] honey if you like. You can probably get a second pot from the same ginger, so go on, add some more hot water for another round! Do this every day and you might never need to pop Tylenol ever again. Go Good Girl, Go!
Here is a helpful article from Dr Oz in The Oz Blog .
Garlic: The "Allicin Wonderland Drug"
There's no need to wear garlic around your neck, but eating it most definitely keeps the baddies away. Garlic has antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-clotting, and anti-cancer properties BUT ONLY IF you let it sit for ten minutes after crushing or slicing it.*
Heating garlic immediately after pressing it adversely impacts its healing abilities by destroying the enzyme that triggers the all-important reaction when two substances in garlic come in contact with one another - the protein fragment alliin and the enzyme alliinase. The two won't commingle until crushed. When they join, they produce allicin - the mighty allium super hero. So chop, mince, slice, or mash your garlic but don't plunk it straight into that heated oil. Keep it away from heat for ten minutes so that the maximum amount of allicin can be produced, delivering a bounty of scientifically proven healing properties straight to your body. Garlic is known to:
- reduce heart disease as it helps prevent blood clots by decreasing the stickiness of platelets;
- lower LDL cholesterol without hurting beneficial HDL cholesterol levels;
- boost our immune system;
- lower blood pressure;
- fight certain cancers, particularly those in the intestines;
- reduce the size of cancerous tumors;
- reduce pain and other symptoms associated with rheumatoid arthritis;
- act as an antibiotic as it kills a range of microbes including viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites such as athlete's foot, thrush [a fungal infection of the mouth] and viral diarrhea.
* This healthy tip was provided by Jo Robinson, author of Eating on the Wild Side. For more wild tips from Ms Robinson, stay tuned as Good Girl learns "a radical new way to select and prepare foods to reclaim the nutrients and flavor we've lost."
Olive a little longer: Ditch the fat-free store-bought salad dressing
Did you know that we cannot absorb some of the most important nutrients in salad greens unless the dressing or the meal contains some type of fat? That's right, friends. Stay away from fat-free dressings as they limit your absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins found in greens. Soybean is the most common oil in commercial salad dressings and it takes almost seven times more soybean oil to get the same results as olive oil, which does the best job of making compounds bioavailable. From now on, keep it simple and healthy: make your own salad dressing using unfiltered extra virgin olive oil + garlic [crush to get all the healthy benefits of allicins] + organic apple cider vinegar + salt and pepper to taste.
This healthy tip was provided by Jo Robinson, author of Eating on the Wild Side. For more wild tips from Ms Robinson, stay tuned as Good Girl learns from Jo Robinson "a radical new way to select and prepare foods to reclaim the nutrients and flavor we've lost."
Salad Days!
Nothing beats a bag of fresh picked mixed greens from Peace Haven Farm in Becket, MA. It's filled with wild greens, baby kale, 5 different lettuces, rutabaga leaves, mizuna flowers, arugula, pak choi, tatsoi, mustard greens, collard greens and spinach too! If you frequently eat green salads, you're likely to have higher blood levels of powerful antioxidants [vitamin C and E, folic acid, lycopene, and alpha- and beta-carotene] especially if you include raw vegetables. Tear your greens and double [even quadruple] their anti-oxidant power. For more helpful tips from Jo Robinson, New York Times Bestselling author of Eating on the Wild Side click here and scroll down to “12 Terrific Tips.” Enjoy!