With temperatures in the 20's today and the windchill hovering around 10 degrees here in The Windy City, I thought it might be a good time to post on how to make bone broth soup!!! The benefits of bone broth are many, including healing your gut and promoting healthy digestion, inhibiting infection, reducing joint pain and inflammation and promoting strong healthy bones, hair and nails. 

                                                                                                                                                     

(Adapted from A Good Food Day, by Marco Canora)

Ingredients:

Directions:

  As we're getting ready to offer our on-line 7 Day Fall Online Detox Program consisting of whole food based recipes, I would like to share this article from Harvard Medical School on how to use food to lower your risk for inflammation: http://www.health.harvard.edu/family_health_guide/what-you-eat-can-fuel-or-cool-inflammation-a-key-driver-of-heart-disease-diabetes-and-other-chronic-conditions

Inflammation is an essential part of the body’s healing system. Without it, injuries would fester and simple infections could be deadly. Too much of a good thing, though, is downright dangerous. Chronic low-grade inflammation is intimately involved in all stages of atherosclerosis, the process that leads to cholesterol-clogged arteries. This means that inflammation sets the stage for heart attacks, most strokes, peripheral artery disease, and even vascular dementia, a common cause of memory loss.

Inflammation doesn’t happen on its own. It is the body’s response to a host of modern irritations like smoking, lack of exercise, high-fat and high-calorie meals, and highly processed foods.

Medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies are hot on the trail of inflammation-busting drugs. Don’t bother waiting - they are a long way off, are bound to be expensive, and will almost certainly have side effects. Instead, you can turn to simple tools that ease inflammation. We’ll focus on diet here, but don’t forget about avoiding cigarette smoke (yours or someone else’s), exercising, watching your weight, and taking care of your teeth.

Inflammation’s aim is to defend the body against bacteria, viruses, and other foreign invaders, to remove debris, and to help repair damaged tissue. Inside arteries, inflammation helps kick off atherosclerosis and keeps the process smoldering. It even influences the formation of artery-blocking clots, the ultimate cause of heart attacks and many strokes.

What you eat may fan the fires of inflammation. Here are some suggestions:

Get an oil change. Swap saturated and trans fats for olive oil, which has potent anti-inflammatory properties, or polyunsaturated fats, especially omega-3 fats from fish.

Don’t be so refined. The bolus of blood sugar that accompanies a meal or snack of highly refined carbohydrates (white bread, white rice, French fries, sugar-laden soda, etc.) increases levels of inflammatory messengers called cytokines. Eating whole-grain bread, brown rice, and other whole grains smooths out the after-meal rise in blood sugar and insulin, and dampens cytokine production.

Promote produce. The more fruits and vegetables you eat, the lower the burden of inflammation. Why? They contain hundreds, perhaps thousands, of substances that squelch inflammation-rousing free radicals; some act as direct anti-inflammatory agents.

Go nuts. Adding walnuts, peanuts, almonds, and other nuts and seeds to your snacks and meals is another tasty way to ease inflammation.

Cocoa lovers rejoice? In laboratory studies, cocoa and dark chocolate slow the production of signaling molecules involved in inflammation. The trick is to get them without too much sugar and fat.

Alcohol in moderation. A drink a day seems to lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a powerful signal of inflammation. Too much alcohol has the opposite effect on CRP.

Spice it up. Herbs and spices such as turmeric, ginger, garlic, basil, pepper, and many others have anti-inflammatory properties.

If you are a do-it-yourselfer, pick and choose foods that ease inflammation and eat them instead of those that promote it. If you’d rather follow a plan, the so-called Mediterranean diet encompasses many inflammation-fighting foods. So does the Healthy Eating Pyramid, developed by Dr. Walter Willett and his colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health.

If you adopt an anti-inflammatory diet, you probably won’t see or feel any different. Angina won’t suddenly disappear or heart failure reverse itself. But you will be doing your heart, arteries, and the rest of you a huge favor that will pay off in many ways.

  Thanks to Dr. Alex Vasquez, DC.,ND.,DO.,F.A.C.N. and Biotics Research and for their very enlightening webinar yesterday on Gluten and Chronic Disease: Common Problems from A Common Food Component 

The part that I found most useful was Dr. Vasquez's solution which I've highlighted below:

1. Paleo-Mediterranean Diet: fruits, vegetables, 

nuts, seeds, berries, high-quality protein; allergy 

avoidance.

2. Multivitamin/multimineral: high potency 

broad-spectrum nutritional supplement

3. Vitamin D3: 2,000 – 4,000 – 10,000 IU/d to 

optimize serum levels

4. Combination fatty acid therapy (CFAT): 

ALA, GLA, EPA, DHA, Oleic acid

5. Probiotics: especially with allergies, IBS, and/or 

antibiotics

If you would like assistance with starting The 5-Part Nutrition Protocol, please feel free to e-mail me at [email protected]  

Hi all!  As you're preparing for your holiday celebrations, I thought that I would include this easy video recipe that you may want to serve at your next holiday celebration: http://www.thewellnessminute.com/new.php? p=OReilley_Kathy&topic=cheeseappetizer

I would love to hear your feedback on it!!! So Bon Apetit and Happy Holidays!!!

  One of the great summertime pleasures at our house is actually juicing!!! Just this evening, I opted to juice instead of serving a sweet dessert after dinner.  My youngest found a lot of fun in helping me to make the following juice: watermelon (including the rind and seeds), pineapple, purple seedless grapes and cherries.  Juicing can be a nutritious and refreshing addition to a healthy lifestyle. On that note, I thought that I would include a few useful tips that I learned recently from a juicing class by Vera Kulezic, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M., MSTOM from Acubalance Wellness Center located at 6015 N. Nina Ave. in Chicago, IL.

 

1.) Use organic when possible. If a fruit or vegetable is not organic, always peel it first or else use a fruit/vegetable wash, found at many grocery stores or health food stores.

2.) Cut away any bruised, moldy or rotten areas.

3.) Juice primarily vegetables as fruit juices are high in sugar. 

4.) Remove pits, stones and hard seeds from such fruits as cherries, peaches, plums, apricots and mangoes. Softer seeds from oranges, lemons, watermelons, cantaloupes, grapes can be juiced without a problem. Large quantities of apple seeds should not be juiced for young children because of their chemical composition.

5.) Juice the stems and leaves of most produce. For example, beet stems and leaves, strawberry caps, celery leaves, and small grape stems offer valuable nutrients. Discard larger grape stems as they can dull your juicer's blades. Remove carrot and rhubarb greens because they contain toxic substances. 

6.) Some fruits and vegetables don't juice well because they don't contain a lot of water, ie., bananas, mangoes, papayas, and avocados. Instead, they can be used in smoothies or cold soups, by first juicing any other produce, and then pouring the juice in a blender and adding the avocado, for example, to make a cold soup.  

7.)  Drink your juice as soon as it's made, if possible.  If you can't drink it right away, store it in an insulated container such as a thermos or an airtight, opaque container in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours.  Light, heat and air will destroy nutrients quickly.  Be aware that the longer juice sits before you drink it, the more nutrients it loses.  If juice turns brown, it has oxidized and lost a large amount of its nutritional value.  After 24 hours, it may become spoiled.  Melon and cabbage juices do not store well so you may want to drink them soon after they've been juiced.

 

  If you are interested in learning more about how to use food to heal your health issues, then you may want to register for Acubalance Wellness Center's class "Healing With Whole Foods Nutrition Course". This 4-part series, starts July 23rd and meets every other Tuesday evening 6-7:30 PM, until Sept. 9th. Cost is $125 per person. Classes will meet at Acubalance Wellness Center in the Norwood Park neighborhood at 6015 N. Nina Ave., Chicago, IL. To register, call 773-775-4257.

 

In watching PBS's broadcast of Dr. Fuhrman this evening, I found these main points that he presented to be extremely helpful in building up your immune system in order to prevent cancer:

 

1.) Eat 3 fruits per day.

2.) Eat half a cup of beans per day.

3.)Eat one large salad per day.

4.) Eat some mushrooms (not many are needed because they are so potent) and a half cup of onions per day.

5.) Eat an oversized portion of a steamed green vegetable per day.

6.) Eat 1 ounce of seeds, and/or raw nuts of your choice.

 

  So this seems straightforward enough. I'm thinking that a trail mix could take care of the daily portion of nuts, seeds and some of the 3 servings of fruit.  Another option could be a nut and fruit topping to a hot cereal like oatmeal. A half cup of beans could be added to a large salad. A marinara sauce could contain the mushrooms and onions, complemented by the oversized order of a steamed green veggie.

  What are some other ideas of how to incorporate these tips into your daily eating plan in a simple, painless way?? I would love to hear other people's ideas and suggestions!!