Put a Lid on it

A friend of mine came to me the other day wondering what he could do to help him fall asleep at night. I told him the simplest, safest, cheapest and most effective thing to do is drink chamomile tea about half and hour before bed. A few days later I ran into him again and asked if it worked. “No.” he replied sadly, “I guess I’ll just resort to drugs.” Argh. I really hate hearing people say that, especially after one of my recommendations. I asked him whether or not he had covered the tea while it was steeping and he said no.

“Well that’s why it didn’t work!” I exclaimed. “All medicinal herbs contain volatile oils which give them their ‘magical’ properties. When you steep tea without covering the cup or using a teapot, the volatile oils will escape in the steam, rendering the herb useless.” He was astonished as he had never heard that before and said that he would go home that night and try it. The next day he told me all about the miracle of chamomile tea as if I didn’t already know. “I fell asleep in a matter of minutes! It was incredible! Why don’t they put directions on the package?” Good question.

The moral of the story is to always cover your tea when steeping (about 10-15 minutes for herbal / medicinal tea) in order to take advantage of those precious volatile oils that you spent your hard-earned money on. Otherwise you’ll just be drinking tasty hot water and lying awake all night!

And while we’re on the topic of tea…
I always like to buy tea in loose-leaf form and the whole flowers themselves, instead of the bags. Whole tea leaves and flowers are of much higher quality than the tea you can buy in bags. If you break open a bag of tea you will notice how it’s filled with something that resembles dust. That is literally the bottom of the tea barrel where the leaves have been broken up so much; all the natural oils have left the leaves and dried up, which is why they are so inexpensive. Whole tea leaves and flowers can be purchased at your local health food store, often in bulk. Chamomile flowers (pictured above) look very similar to daisies and when they are dry, the petals fall off and the bright yellow centers are clearly visible. The smell and flavour of the real thing is truly mind-blowing. And I promise, in the case of chamomile, you won’t stay awake long enough to tell anyone about it.

Second Photo: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Chamomile_flowers.jpg/800px-Chamomile_flowers.jpg

I Want Candy?

For those of you who have known me for a while, you’ll recall the insatiable appetite I used to have for sugar. There was always a bag of skittles in my purse, ice cream and cookies at home, and most study sessions would involve at least one chocolate bar. I couldn’t go a day without a major dose of the white stuff, and sadly, part of my personality was being a “sweet-aholic”. For most of my life it never occurred to me how addicted I was to sugar, until I tried quitting.

The average North America eats 150 pounds of sugar a year. Don’t think that includes you? Consider that anytime you eat something from a bag, a box, a bottle, or a can, you are probably eating sugar. Sugar has many aliases, most of which are unknown to the layman. Always check the ingredient list for anything ending in “ose” (glucose, fructose, sucrose etc.), or better yet, don’t eat anything with an ingredient list!

Someone posted a question on my last blog entry about refined sugar, how bad it really is and if an ideal diet has none at all. Well, if you seriously want my opinion, I would say yes, if you want to see your health improve, cut it out of your life.

Eliminating processed sugar from the diet is no small feat. I really didn’t think it would be that difficult, but my withdrawal symptoms spoke for themselves, since it truly is dietary crack. The road to where I am now has been very slow because I changed everything I ate instead of just cutting out sugar. As I moved away from processed foods and began eating things in their most natural state, the cravings naturally subsided.
I wouldn’t recommend taking this journey expecting it to be easy or fast. Here are some tips to help you kick this habit:

1. Consume a whole foods diet.
2. Cut back on processed foods. As mentioned above, almost all processed foods contain hidden forms of sugar.
3. Eat fruit. Fruit is a great way to eat something sweet, and control calories. Just stay away from dried fruit or sweetened fruit.
4. Eliminate ALL the white stuff. White flour, white rice, and white potatoes. These have the same affect on blood sugar as sugar, and this will make sugar harder to kick.
5. Avoid juice. Even 100% juice is sugar water in disguise. Drink water, and if you must, only a splash of juice for flavor.
6. Limit alcohol. Alcohol is made from sugar. It acts like sugar in the body. Especially when you first are trying to kick sugar stay away from any alcoholic beverages.
7. Avoid artificial sweeteners. These are just a crutch. They keep you from learning to enjoy the natural sweetness of real food. There are also studies that show that they can make you crave sugar, not to mention the studies that show other dangerous health effects like cancer.
8. Keep sugar out of the house. Do not temp yourself with your child's pop tarts or your husband's ice cream. Tell your family what you are doing and then put your foot down. It is hard enough with out sweets calling your name all day long.
9. Stop treating sugar as a comfort or reward. This is one of our biggest problems because it perpetuates the psychological hold sugar has on us in addition to the physical one. Use other things that you love as incentive.

If you fall asleep after meals, have allergies, experience gas, bloating, joint pains, headaches, chronic fatigue, constipation, diarrhea, if you are over weight, if you have skin problems, or high blood pressure, there is a chance you have a sugar problem and would benefit from eliminating it from your diet.

In other entries I will address sugar substitutes and the downside of artificial sweeteners. The topic of sugar is really huge and I can’t possibly discuss every aspect of it. If you would like to do some reading on this subject I recommend the following three books: Sugar Blues by William Dufty, Nutritional and Physical Degeneration by Weston Andrew Price, and Lick the Sugar Habit by Nancy Appleton.

A Garlicky Miracle

Hello everyone! Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written, but I was waiting for some inspiration…unfortunately it came to me in the form of a scratchy throat on Friday morning. The good news is I feel 100 percent healthy again and I would love to share with you my secret weapon against that I’m-getting-a-cold feeling, even when you think it may be too late.

Garlic. It’s truly a miraculous little bulb of seemingly endless benefits. But I’ll cut to the chase: garlic has very powerful anti-bacterial and anti-microbial compounds that annihilate just about any nasty bug that’s decided to set up camp in your body. Garlic is also a very good source of vitamin C, which boosts the immune system. It’s like a perfect little package of prevention that you can pick up for less than a dollar at the grocery store. Imagine that.

So the next time you start to feel that evil little tickle in the back of your throat try this: take one large clove of garlic, mince it up very fine and put it on a spoon, or in a glass with about 3 – 4 tablespoons of water (enough to swallow in one gulp). Then just down it. DO NOT CHEW!!! If you chew it, your mouth will burn like you won’t believe and I guarantee that no one will want to come within 10 feet of you for the next 24 hours. The next minute or so may feel a little intense as the raw, minced garlic makes its way down into your stomach, but do not drink any water as this may make you feel nauseated. Just sit back, take a few deep breaths, and relish in the fact that you have not succumbed to the evils of Neo-Citran.

That’s it. That’s all I did, even though I really thought it was too late. Now of course drinking 2-3 liters of water a day (like you do everyday, right?) is also very important as it helps to flush everything through your system, but I didn’t even go stock up on oranges. I just swallowed some garlic.

Please do not use pre-minced garlic from a jar, or the powdered stuff – it’s not the same and it won’t work.

You can take one minced clove 2-3 times a day as you feel necessary, but if you don’t feel better within a couple days, or your cold is taking a turn for the worse, just know that your body needs to be sick for a bit and take a well-deserved rest. You can also do everyone else a favor by keeping your distance so as not to spread your germs around– you probably stink anyway.

**IMPORTANT REMINDER**
Just one teaspoon of sugar can suppress the immune system for up to six hours. A 12-ounce can of soda has 10 teaspoons. Yeah.