The Quantum Leap 

Dear NITC readers, here is another guest blog from a friend I affectionately call Zen Dog.  She will be doing a few blogs whilst I am away which will be more focused on Chinese Medicine, yoga, massage and, I am sure, many other interesting things thrown in!

 

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Hi NITC readers!  I thought I would start my guest blogging with a subject close to me, that subject being acupuncture...it's a tiny bit longer than normal but hopefully interesting....

I started to have acupuncture a few years ago for back pain issues and was so amazed at the results that, to cut a long story short, I am now studying it!

One of the things I have found is that acupuncture has had a very positive effect on many people's lives, but they are not sure why. I'd like to just share with you how I was able to make sense of acupuncture. 

If we start at the very beginning then we know that the body's building blocks are cells and cells produce energy as they actively do their jobs to keep us alive and functioning. This energy is called qi in Chinese medicine.  Changes to our health, in the very beginning, are said to occur at this cellular level. The changes are then reflected in the energy of those cells. 

Stress on cells can occur through things such as overuse of a certain area of the body, long term emotional frustration, changes in environment and also diet.   These issues cause contraction of the cells and they start to dysfunction and simply not work effectively, with potential that they eventually stop being able to rid themselves of cellular waste.  This tends to make them particularly tired and irritated just as we can become tired and irritated when stuck on a platform filling up with people but not going anywhere during tube delays! Unlike the tube though, we are very fortunate that the body is an amazing feat of biological engineering and has an innate mechanism for self healing. Every second of every day systems are running checks on things like pressure, volume, chemical levels and temperature to then send in help where necessary to maintain a balance so we can function optimally. This balance is called homeostasis in the west and yin/yang in the east. 

The closest related theories that gel with the approaches of Chinese Medicine are those of the quantum physicist. Quantum physics describes everything as interrelated and a continuum. A change in one will inevitably cause an effect in another and incidents cannot be isolated.  So after quite detailed questioning, your acupuncturist will be thinking along the following lines; Where could this issue have come from? Why is it affecting this person this way? Do they have symptoms of any progression of where the next likely place to experience changes could be? How can we help nourish this energy to facilitate a positive outcome?  Is there anything underlying that keeps making this issue arise?

Now to the needles! The energy, or qi, of the body can be accessed via the meridians. There are 12 main ones running up and down the body. These meridians are the gateway to being able to tweak the energy - using needles. Needles are not the cure. Needles facilitate the bodys healing mechanism when placed on specific points that are linked to the presented condition of the patient.  The aim is for your qi to be in a healthy state and flowing evenly around the body.

The tradition of Acupuncture is over 3000 years old and the premise was to maintain wellness over treating illness. In the west, we are used to not really thinking about our bodies until they are sick and there is a physical manifestation that we can label  and symptoms start affecting our daily living. 

If we try to listen to small changes then the potential big changes may not get so big.  And this could be be true for any area of life! The quantum world is in our hands... 

Zen Dog

Time for a break

I happen to love working in the city, but it certainly has some downsides and after a long stretch without a holiday I'm certainly feeling like I need a break. Thankfully our regulator, the FSA, requires we take two weeks consecutive leave each year so I now have to take a two week holiday ... drats!

For me this doesn't just mean a break from the day job, but also from all things Nutrition so I'll be logging off for a couple of weeks. I have however lined up a couple of fab guest bloggers whilst I'm off so there won't be total radio silence. I hope you enjoy their blogs.

In addition I've finally setup a recipe page on my site, so you might want to take a look and add a couple of tasty yet healthy recipes to your repetoire. One of the keys to adopting a healthy lifestyle is finding healthy meals that you enjoy the taste of - I'm totally against eating food that doesn't taste good. I've certainly had a few failures, but I've only uploaded the recipes I and my friends have enjoyed. And, as always, if you have any healthy recipes to share, or any old favourites you need help healthing up just send them in.

Ciao for now

NITC

ps Happy Halloween!

Being ego-friendly - why environmentalism has good effects on how you feel

Greetings NITC readers ... today's guest blog is brought to you from the wonderful Lisa, a totally green goddess and a contagiously happy bunny.

Most people equate environmentalism with not having fun, going without things and generally having a hair-shirt mentality. But this certainly doesn't have to be the case and I see myself as living proof that you can have varied experiences and laugh a lot at the same time as minimising harm to the world. So I am going to talk about some of the ways I have become a bit greener and how they have added value to my life.

There is of course no such thing as a carbon free lunch, but there is lots you can do to reduce the environmental impact of your shopping habits. As I'm sure you all know, reducing or stopping eating (particularly red) meat has health benefits, but also cuts down on your carbon footprint. Farming cattle causes the most environmental damage of any non-human species, causing deforestation, methane production and it just doesn't make sense to expend so much energy on growing soya and other products to feed to animals that we have to keep feeding to eventually eat. I stopped eating meat in 2003 and as well as feeling smug about my environmental impact reducing, I have been continuously healthy, spend less on food and never get food poisoning!

As the saying goes, the fruit does not fall far from the tree, but with so much of our fruit and vegetables being imported from thousands of miles away this is often not the case. Somehow it feels instinctively right to eat things that are in season; there is nothing better than a good squash or pumpkin soup now as it starts to get nippy outside or a crunchy salad at the height of summer. Plus eating things that are seasonally specific reduces pointless expending of carbon on flying or shipping things long distances. There is nothing that annoys me more than visiting the supermarket and seeing apples from New Zealand on the shelves, when the UK has well over 1000 native apple varieties. Plus different varieties are harvested at different times and some of the popular varieties can be stored easily for months to ensure that we never go without. It doesn't mean you can never have a treat or the odd exception, but with minimal changes to shopping habits you can vastly cut down on environmental impact. I find the easiest way is to have a vegetable box delivered weekly by a company that commits to the lowest possible food miles. This means guilt free eating, exposure to seasonal vegetables that challenge my cooking skills and taste buds, as well as a lovely present to open on my doorstep once a week. Jerulsalem artichoke burger anyone?!

If we were meant to fly we would've sprouted wings and there are a surprising number of places you can get to within a day without having to experience the joys of Easyjet. On average, travelling by rail results in about a third of the CO2 emissions of the equivalent domestic or short-haul flight in Europe. I have recently returned from the best holiday I have every had travelling around Spain and even visiting Morocco without my feet leaving the ground once. In addition to the means of travel having less impact on the environment, I saw wonderful sights that I wouldn't have seen if I'd just gone direct to one location, experienced no delays and felt an enormous sense of achievement putting together my itinerary. The best website for finding out how you can get anywhere in the world is: www.seat61.com

These tiny changes benefits the environment, but also seem to benefit me. I would describe myself as one of the most contented and happy people I know and abstaining from eating meat, flying, driving and minimising my waste is part of that rather than in spite of it.

Hope it works for you!

Lisa

Eating with the ancestors

During my rapture party to celebrate the world not ending on Friday (it was meant to be the apocolypse) I was asked a couple of nutrition questions by two different guests.

It's not unusual for me to be asked nutrition questions at any time and I'm always happy to answer them even when everyone around me is partying! But I thought I'd share these both with you also as they were both interesting questions and had related answers.

The first question was 'Do you think adults should drink milk?' and the second was 'Is it good for you to eat tropical fruit?'

Milk is very much a part of the British and American diet so it may seem odd to think we shouldn't drink it, but that's very much my opinion. Firstly non-organic milk can contain all sorts of antibiotic and hormone residues due to the nature of modern day farming, and secondly it clearly isn't meant for adult consumption.

Milk is mother natures amazing way of feeding babies on a nutritious easy to digest liquid diet. But once you're too old for breast feeding you're too old for milk - your digestive system changes to deal with solids, meaning alot of adults are lactose intolerant without even realising. And that's just human milk, if we're not able to cope with that then we clearly shouldn't be drinking the milk of another animal.

Just think of your ancestors - they may well have spent time and energy hunting an animal, but once they caught it do you think they'd start breast feeding from it? Ewww, clearly not!

Thinking of what your ancestors wouldn't have eaten is a good way to logically work out which foods we should be eating less of. Certainly processed foods, fizzy drinks, artificial sweeteners and sugar, other than sugars found naturally in fruit, would all be off the menu. But even within fruit there are types we would and wouldn't have eaten.

If you have ancestors from a tropical climate they would have eaten and been suited to plenty of tropical fruit, but our ancestors here in the UK wouldn't have been eating papayas and mangos. They would have eaten wild fruits such as blackberries, wild strawberries and damsons and more recently orchard fruit such as plums, apples, pears and cherries.

These are all much lower in sugar than tropical fruit so we're not as predisposed to digest sweeter fruit as our caribbean counterparts. This also applies to dealing with any sugars as we wouldn't have had sugar cane, which means an overgrowth of bad gut bacteria and yeasts such as candida is pretty common in the UK.

In short, yes in an ideal diet we wouldn't eat any milk/dairy products or tropical fruit, amongst other things. But that's not to say you can never have them - sticking to the 80/20 rule means not having them 80 per cent of the time and then 20 per cent of the time eating whatever you fancy regardless of what your ancestors would have eaten. Which is why, having answered these questions, I promptly tucked into the cheese board!
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Can stilton make you stupid?

In the film Limitless the main character manages to access the large proportion of his brain capacity that is supposedly unused by taking a special drug and thereby becomes super intelligent. The film is clearly ridiculous, but surprisingly enjoyable, and Ms Haribo was at pains to point out that the whole premise is sheer nonsense.

But what if you could alter how effective your brain is, thereby becoming smarter without having to take some illegal (and entirely fictitious) drug?

Well you can ... Just by eating! As per my blog last week, food can have surprisingly significant effects on the body including on brain function. Concentration, synapse function and neuron condition can all be affected by what you eat speeding up the connections you make between brains cells, thereby making you smarter.

I remember getting clued into this fact quite early on and eating a tremendous amount of fish in the run up to my exams at university! It wasn't a very scientific experiment and I'm not sure it helpeds but plenty of evidence suggests the benefits of essential fats on brain function.

This probably won't be news to you, although if you're not a lover of fish you may want to consider taking a fish oil supplement.

What you might not be aware of is that eating the saturated fats found in animal products such as meat, cheese and eggs can prevent your body from processing the good fats in your diet. Therefore eating cheese can actually reduce the positive effects of eating oily fish.

Water is also super important - your brain cells produce energy in the same way as every other cell in your body - by combining water with carbohydrate in the presence of oxygen. If you're dehydrated your brain cells won't have as much energy and so will be less effective.

As far as specific vitamins go Coq10 is one of my top picks for protecting the brain from damage and ageing, unfortunately there's not enough in food to make a big difference so I take mine in combination with an essential fat supplement in Eskimo brainsharp.

Other fat soluble antioxidants - such as Vitamin D and Vitamin E are also important to protect the delicate fats in the brain (your brain is 60per cent fat). Vitamin D is found once again in oily fish but also eggs and dairy products. Vitamin E is found in avocados, buts seeds, pulses, rice, oats, such as chickpeas and eggs.

So a dinner of avocado starter, salmon and brown rice is great brain food whilst a pizza and a beer won't be getting you on Mastermind!
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Guts for glory

Generally in sport it pays to be lean, and dropping even a few spare pounds can make a noticeable improvement in performance. Djokovic triumphed at Wimbledon this year having lost a few pounds on a gluten free diet and Layton Hewitt cited losing weight as a key factor in his successful comeback.

But there are some exceptions ... and tonight's American Football game between the Chicago Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers featured some excellent examples!

Whilst most of the players looked muscular but athletic, a few of the defensive players had some substantial spare tyres! Despite all the kit they just didn't look like athletes and certainly weren't healthy looking. Top of the charts was J'Marcus Webb of the bears, weighing in at 333 pounds - 3 times my weight!

But these players aren't accidentally this heavy - to be a defensive block you need to be hard to knock over and basically act like a human wall ... being light on your feet is of no help!

What all this illustrates is that being sporty doesn't necessarily equate to being healthy, even though I think a lot of people think they do. Infact in England sport and unhealthy habits often go hand in hand, rugby teams post-match pub crawls, rowers post-training fry ups and generally eating large amounts of sugary foods in the name of 'carb loading'.

Being sporty is great, but just because you're burning off more calories than the lazybones at the desk next to you doesn't mean you can eat more chocolate or biscuits.

Certainly it's important to up your calories if you're training alot but not through loads of sugar - infact the more you train the higher nutrient intake you need so eating the empty calories in junk food is counter productive.

But there is one exception to this which gives you an opportunity to satisfy your sweet tooth. Post intensive exercise (60minutes plus) you should have a high GI recovery snack within 30minutes to replace glycogen in the muscles and reduce recovery time.

Alot of sports people will use sports drinks, but if you fancy a sweet treat then this is the time to eat something sugary. It should still be low-fat so could be a sugary cereal (frosties, crunchy nut), white toast with jam, a low-fat muffin, sweetened yoghurt or even sweets (yes even Haribo!). As a guide this snack should contain one gram of carbs for every kilo of body weight, per hour exercised. So for me that would be 51g of carbohydrate after a one hour spinning class (I weight 51kg).

The good news is that this post-workout snack won't just improve your recovery time, by reducing exercise related fatigue, it can also help bring down the levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is produced in response to intensive exercise. Cortisol encourages weight gain round your waist, so doing a lot of intensive exercise can infact encourage central weight gain and by having a sweet treat after exercise you're less likely to develop one of the substantial guts that I saw at tonight's game - sweet!

ps the Bears won :-)
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Banana drama

My beloved's favourite fruit is the humble banana and he eats one almost every day, so during a recent trip to the supermarket he seemed particularly perplexed when I put one single banana in my basket rather than a whole bunch! When quizzed I pointed out that I only wanted one and that I don't eat the same fruit every day.

Whilst I often extoll the benefits of varying your food, it turns out there's a particular reason not to eat huge amounts of bananas ... coming surprisingly from the Nuclear Threat Initiative think tank. They've started measuring radiation in Bananas ... no seriously! Using the Banana Equivalent Dose.

It turns out that Bananas are naturally radioactive ... but don't panic you don't have to avoid them - 400 (roughly hot docs annual banana intake) is the equivalent of a flight from London to New York. You'd have to eat 20 million to get radioactive poisoning, so I'm not recommending you stop eating them if you enjoy them ... it just serves as an amusing reminder that even healthy foods can be harmful in high doses.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15288975

It's not just bananas - there has been a case of someone dying from drinking excessive quantities of carrot juice due to vitamin A poisoning and someone dying from kidney failure from drinking 6 litres of water daily.

It's unlikely any of you would be so foolish but it is a caution to not get carried away with the latest food fads. There are always the latest superfood of the moment ... goji berries, acai, green tea, and it's great to incorporate these into your diet .. but just a sprinkle here or a handful there ... not huge amounts everyday!