*

Featured Post

Nutrition and Hormonal Balance

  Good Morning,  Nutrition and Hormonal Balance As an acupuncturist in the area of fertility, I realize tha...

Subscribe Updates via email

Subscribe Updates via email

Enter your email address:

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Recipes: Crescent Moon Cookies

 

Good Morning!

Recipes: Crescent Moon Cookies

These cookied can be made to celebrate the Crescent moon!
Yet another one of my mother's specialties, these delicious cookies are always a favorite around Christmas time. It is impossible to stop at just one of these absolutely yummy almond crescent cookies. Infused with vanilla and lightly dusted with sugar, these beautiful cookies are crunchy on the outside and soft, buttery and crumbly on the inside.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, at room temperature
2/3 cups granulated sugar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 cup ground almonds (almond meal)
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar for dusting

Directions:

1.Place the butter and the sugar together in a large mixing bowl and use a electric hand beater to mix until light and fluffy for about 5 minutes. Add vanilla extract and mix well.

2.Add the flour and almonds. Mix thoroughly.

3.Line baking sheet with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 350F

4.The dough will be slightly crumbly. Take generous tablespoons of the dough and roll into a small ball, about 1" in diameter. Shape into a crescent shape. Place onto baking sheet about 1" apart. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a light golden brown. Remove from oven and dust with confectioner's sugar. Allow to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Re-dust with sugar.

5.Repeat with remaining dough.

6.Store in an airtight container.

Make about 24 cookies


__.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

How to Make Cultured Veggies at Home to Boost Your Immune System

Your digestive tract is probably the most underappreciated system of your body, often ignored until its screams of discontent become loud enough to grab your attention.

By the time your gut reaches this degree of disgruntlement, the problems have usually been developing for months — or years — and are challenging to resolve.

Instead of waiting for obvious signs of a problem, why not perform some regular “gut maintenance” that will lessen your chances of developing a problem in the first place?

Your gut is much more than a food processing tube — it houses about 85 percent of your immune system. This is in large part due to the 100 trillion bacteria that live there, both good and bad that can stimulate secretory IgA to nourish your immune response.

When your GI tract is not working well, a wide range of health problems can appear, including allergies and autoimmune diseases. If you suffer from any major illness, you simply will NOT be able to fully recuperate without healing and sealing your gut. Balancing the menagerie of microorganisms that occupy your GI tract is a key part of maintaining your immune health, which will be the focus of this article.

Your stomach is where digestion really gets rolling, with the introduction of more enzymes and a whole lot of acid. Fortunately, your stomach is uniquely designed for this process, as it is SO acidic. Its lining must actually regenerate at a feverish pace — just to keep up with the continuous digestion of itself! You require a brand new stomach lining every few days.
Your Stomach Actually Protects You from Infections

A recent article in Scientific American1 explores an alternate explanation about how your stomach works. The “sieve hypothesis” suggests your stomach may operate as a sieve or filter, preventing some of the more harmful microbes from passing through to your small intestine. Evidence for this is not new. It comes from a 1948 study by Dr. Orla-Jensen, a retired professor from the Royal Danish Technical College — a study that has essentially been “lost” in the literature for more than 60 years.

The professor argued that your stomach uses acid to kill pathogenic disease-causing bacteria, fungi, viruses, worms and protozoa, while allowing the more beneficial microbes (which are acid-tolerant) to pass through. If your stomach is unsuccessful at killing these pathogens, then they can dominate your intestines, damaging and eroding your intestinal walls and causing illness.

Your stomach generally becomes less acidic as you age, particularly after age 70. In his study, Orla-Jensen compared the gut bacteria of young people with that of healthy seniors, as well as with seniors suffering from dementia. He found that as people age, they have a greater proportion of pathogenic microbes to beneficial microbes in their intestinal tracts. This was particularly pronounced in seniors with dementia... which begs the question about whether dementia could actually be caused by an “intestinal infection.”

A study done at UC Davis found that E. coli and salmonella bacteria in mice produce fiber-like structures very similar to the inflammatory brain plaques seen in people with Alzheimer’s disease2. Your brain is shaped by bacteria in your digestive tract. Bacteria in your gut actually control how your brain cells express specific genes.3 Other studies report that disturbed gut flora in seniors contributes to accelerated aging, frailty and premature death.

More research is needed in order to understand the exact relationship between dysbiosis and dementia. But at the very least, these studies underscore the importance of maintaining high levels of beneficial bacteria in your intestinal tract. In fact, this bacterial community may be in charge of your entire metabolism.
Unhappy Gut Bacteria May Make You Fat

Inflammation from bacterial endotoxins may be a factor helping to drive the obesity epidemic.4 Junk food causes nasty microbes to bloom and friendly bugs to decline, just as sugar and refined carbohydrates feed the bacteria in your mouth that are responsible for tooth decay. Sugar and processed foods make your “friendly” microbe community unfriendly — even downright hostile. Humans today have lost the microbial diversity that once kept us healthy.

When dysbiosis occurs, bacteria release noxious byproducts called endotoxins. Endotoxins increase the permeability of your gut wall (“leaky gut syndrome”) and make their way into your bloodstream, triggering system wide inflammation. It’s been shown that the hypothalamus, which houses the appetite control center of your brain, is often inflamed and damaged in obese individuals. When inflammation affects your brain, and especially your hypothalamus, your entire metabolism changes.

So, here’s how it goes...

When you consume junk foods, certain bacteria flourish and produce endotoxins, which your immune system detects and, interpreting these endotoxins as an attack, responds with inflammation. Your body changes its metabolism to redirect energy for “battle.” The result is overproduction of insulin, increased fat storage, dampening of your appetite control signals, and eventually obesity. The best way to reverse this inflammation and restore a healthy metabolism is by eliminating excess sugar and processed food, and adding more friendly, beneficial bacteria from naturally fermented foods.
Cultured Vegetables Are the Ultimate Superfood

One of the leading experts in the optimization of intestinal flora is Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, who developed the GAPS nutritional protocol (Gut and Psychology Syndrome/Gut and Physiology Syndrome). For decades, Dr. McBride has successfully treated adults and children with severe illnesses, including autism, epilepsy, mood disorders, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, celiac disease and many more, with her GAPS protocol.

A key component of the GAPS program is the daily consumption of fermented foods. Fermented foods are potent chelators (detoxifiers) and contain much higher levels of probiotics than probiotic supplements, making them ideal for optimizing your gut flora. In addition to helping break down and eliminate heavy metals and other toxins from your body, beneficial gut bacteria perform a number of surprising functions, including:
Mineral absorption, and producing nutrients such as B vitamins and vitamin K2 (vitamin K2 and vitamin D are necessary for integrating calcium into your bones and keeping it out of your arteries, thereby reducing your risk for coronary artery disease and stroke5)
Preventing obesity and diabetes, and regulating dietary fat absorption
Lowering your risk for cancer
Improving your mood and mental health
Preventing acne
Introducing Cultured Vegetables into Your Diet — The Right Way
Now that you understand the importance of optimizing your GI flora, let’s take a look at just how easy it is to accomplish this task by making fermented vegetables at home, in your own kitchen. If you aren’t accustomed to these foods, you may have to work them into your diet gradually. Many folks really enjoy the taste of fermented vegetables, which really have a pleasantly salty-tart flavor.

According to nutritional consultant Caroline Barringer, just one quarter to one half cup of fermented veggies, eaten with one to three meals per day, can have a dramatically beneficial impact on your health.

If you’ve never eaten fermented foods, too large a portion may provoke a healing crisis, which occurs when the probiotics kill off pathogens in your gut. When these pathogens die, they release potent toxins. If you are new to fermented foods, you should introduce them gradually, beginning with as little as one teaspoon of sauerkraut with a meal. Observe your reactions for a couple of days before proceeding with another small portion, and increase your dose gradually, as tolerated.

Realize that many food preferences develop very early in life, so the sooner you can introduce fermented vegetables to your child, the better. Traces of the flavors of the foods mothers eat are perceptible in their breast milk and amniotic fluid. Babies whose mothers eat things like garlic or broccoli while pregnant tend to be more likely to enjoy these foods later in life.
Making Cultured Veggies at Home: Equipment Checklist

Culturing your own vegetables is not difficult, but as with anything, having the right tools makes the job much easier and more fun. I have spent the last six months streamlining the process and refining my basic recipe. One of the key ingredients though is the starter culture. We are in the middle of a very extensive testing process to provide a culture that will give you large amounts of vitamin K2 in your fermented vegetables. We hope to have that available later this year if all goes well. In the meantime, you can use the following kitchen tools to make your own fermented vegetables:
Food Processor: You’ll be cutting up large quantities of raw vegetables, which is very labor intensive without a food processor. Make sure yours has a shredding disc, as a typical S-blade will result in too fine a chop, which makes for a pulpier, mushier end product.
Juicer: My own experimentation has resulted in selecting celery juice as the basic brine for my cultured veggies, making a juicer necessary.
Good Knives: Make sure you have a set of good quality, sharp knives for prepping your vegetables.
Cutting Board: A large, sturdy cutting board is a must.
Very Large Bowl: This bowl should be large enough to hold the entire batch of shredded veggies, so a large capacity stainless bowl is a necessity.
Canning Jars: Basic wide-mouthed 32-ounce Mason jars are all that is necessary for both fermenting and storing the vegetables. These are inexpensive and easy to find at your local hardware store, grocery, or online. Make sure they are wide-mouthed, as you’ll need to get your hand or a tool down into the jar for tightly packing the veggies.
Krautpounder: This solid wood tool that looks like a small baseball bat is very handy for tightly packing the shredded veggies into your jars and eliminating air pockets.
Making Cultured Veggies at Home in Six Easy Steps

The following are the basic steps to making wonderful cultured vegetables at home. For additional information, refer to our previous article on this topic.
Vegetable and Herb Selection: The first step is gathering up your veggies. Make sure they are all organic. Cabbage (red or green) should be the “backbone” of your blend, comprising about 80 percent (I use green). Choose dense, tightly packed heads. Five or six medium-sized cabbages will yield 10 to 14 quart jars of fermented vegetables. Remember to reserve some cabbage leaves for the jar tops (see Step 3).

Add in hard root vegetables of your liking, such as carrots, golden beets, radishes and turnips. Peel your veggies as the skins can impart a bitter flavor. I also enjoy adding red bell pepper, Granny Smith apples, and even a hot pepper, like a habanero (make sure you wear gloves!). One pepper for the entire batch is plenty.

Aromatics can be added in small quantities — a little goes a long way, as fermenting concentrates the pungent flavors. Tasty additions include peeled garlic, peeled ginger, and herbs such as basil, sage, rosemary, thyme, or oregano. Onions tend to overpower the mix, no matter how little are used, so I avoid them.

Finally, you can add sea vegetables or seaweed to increase the mineral, vitamin, and fiber content. You can add pieces of whole dulse, or use flakes. Wakame and sea palm do not have any kind of fishy flavor but need to be presoaked and diced into the desired size. Arame and hijaki DO have a fishy flavor.
Culture and Brine: For your brine, I recommend using a starter culture dissolved in celery juice. One quart of celery juice is adequate for 10 to 14 quarts of fermented veggies. While you can do wild fermentation (allowing whatever is naturally on the vegetable to take hold), this method is more time consuming, and the end product is less certain. Inoculating the food with a starter culture speeds up the fermentation process. I currently recommend using two of our Complete Probiotics as the starter culture until we get our refined version which will make more vitamin K2.
High Vitamin K2 Starter Culture As I said above, we are in the middle of a very extensive testing process to provide a culture that will give you large amounts of vitamin K2 in your fermented vegetables and we hope to have that available later this year if all goes well. In the meantime i recommend using two of our Complete Probiotic Capsules for every quart of fermented vegetables as that is very close to what our final culture will be.
Packing the Jars: Once you have your shredded veggies and brine mixture combined in your large bowl, tightly pack the mixture into each Mason jar, and compress using a masher to remove any air pockets. Top with a cabbage leaf, tucking it down the sides. Make sure the veggies are completely covered with brine and that the brine is all the way to the top of the jar, to eliminate trapped air. Put the lids on the jars loosely, as they will expand due to the gases produced in fermentation.
Fermentation: Allow the jars to sit in a relatively warm place for several days, ideally around 72 degrees Fahrenheit. During the summer, veggies are typically done in three or four days. In the winter, they may need seven days. The only way to tell when they’re done is to open up a jar and have a taste. Once you're happy with the flavor and consistency, move the jars into your refrigerator.
Storage: Refrigerating your vegetables drastically slows down the fermentation. They will keep for many months this way, continuing to mature very slowly over time.
Enjoy! Always use a clean spoon to take out what you’re eating. Never eat out of the jar, as you will contaminate the entire batch with bacteria from your mouth. Make sure the remaining veggies are covered with the brine solution before replacing the lid.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

About Diarrhoea

Diarrhoea is passing loose or watery faeces more than three times a day, or more frequently than is normal for that particular person. It affects almost everyone from time to time and is usually nothing to worry about.

A common cause of diarrhoea in both children and adults is gastroenteritis, which is an infection of the bowel.

Bouts of diarrhoea in adults may also be brought on by anxiety or drinking too much coffee or alcohol. Diarrhoea may also be a side effect of a medicine.

In adults, diarrhoea caused by gastroenteritis will usually clear up in two to four days when the infection has cleared. If it lasts for more than a few weeks it may be a sign of a more serious condition and should be investigated by your doctor, especially if there is blood or pus in your faeces.

Diarrhoea in children usually passes within five to seven days, and will often clear within two weeks. Seek medical advice if your child has diarrhoea for longer than this.

If a baby or child has had six or more episodes of diarrhoea in the last 24 hours, then see your doctor. It can be serious in babies because of the risk of dehydration.

Facts & figures

While statistics are not kept on how many people have diarrhoea in Australia, it is a serious problem in poorer countries around the world. Some key facts to keep in mind are:
There are about 2 billion cases of diarrhoeal disease every year.
Diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five years of age and kills about 1.5 million children every year.
Diarrhoeal disease mainly affects children younger than two years of age and is a leading cause of malnutrition in children under five years of age.