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RETHINKING FOOD II: The Real Dairy
It’s crazy how good life is now that I’ve discovered The Real Dairy.
You see, for years I suffered from chronic symptoms: gall bladder attacks, infertility, eczema, acne, bloat and gas. And I had no idea it was my ridiculous diet. In fact, it was all the result of eating commercialized wheat and dairy.
I had no idea the wise women like our grandmothers and great grandmothers were on to something when they would do things like soak beans, culture milk and cheeses from raw milk, make sourdough starter for delicious nutritious real bread.
We’ve commercialized the hell out of all this stuff, and in the process we’ve shown all the nutrients and probiotics the door.
So if you want to feel really good about what you’re eating, order yourself some kiefer grains, follow the simple instructions and make yourself some healthy cultured dairy products. Kiefer is the king culture and has all the probiotics you will need for a healthy gut so don’t bother with the others. Find a local source for some grass-fed, organic raw milk and get yourself started on culturing. I used to think man was not meant to drink the milk of another animal. What I now know is man is not meant to drink MAN’S commercialized fake version of dairy, we are meant to drink REAL dairy that is cultured with all the good stuff and does NOT have all the enzymes stripped out of it. Don’t be scared: kiefer is nutritious and delicious and can be used in place of milk. You can also make the most sumptuous cheeses by adding your kiefer culture to heavy cream. Your tummies will be so happy and so will your taste buds! So wake up people. Don’t eat commercialized dairy any more (skim milk is the worst, btw). Your body needs the healthy fats in milk, and culturing raw whole milk with good probiotics will blow your mind.
Contact me if you have any questions.
Namaste.
4 Ways to Kick High Blood Pressure
What is High Blood Pressure? Check it:
– in the U.S. alone, 95% of all reported high blood pressure cases are classified as “undetermined.” This is called essential hypertension.
– Ninety five percent is a big number at which to be shrugging our shoulders — this is a condition that the Centers for Disease Control claims affects 1 in 3, or 68 million Americans.1
High Blood Pressure is often a precursor to the #1 and #3 leading causes of death in the United States, heart disease and stroke. Technically, it’s the measure of the force of blood pushing against the walls of the arteries. When your blood pressure rises, it means the heart is has to work harder. It also contributes to hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) and causes heart failure.
Western medicine attributes: smoking, obesity, lack of physical exercise, too much processed salt, more than 1-2 cocktails a day, stress, old age, genetics, chronic kidney disease and adrenal and thyroid disorders.
It also attributes it to genetics (high blood pressure runs in families) to gender (it’s more likely to affect men than women), to race (it afflicts twice as many African-Americans as Caucasian Americans, although the gap begins to narrow around age 44. After age 65, black women have the highest incidence of high blood pressure).
Here’s the key: it’s not the behavior that causes the problems, it’s whatever is driving us to choose the behavior that will unlock the key to change. What is that drives behavior?
Emotions. It’s how we process (“deal”or “don’t deal” with them), which can be both learned and genetic in families. In Ayurveda, unprocessed emotions can lead to:
- smoking (many holistic practitioners feel smoking is an attempt to inhale words we are too afraid to say).
- overeating and obesity (often a sign of an unresolved, wounded childhood).
- depression, which can lead to malaise (lack of exercise); over drinking, stress, premature aging, cancer, etc.
You get the picture.
Break the Cycle
In Ayurveda, there is no predetermined outcome because of demographics or genetic code. The mind controls the body always. Which means, “Everything is reversible but death.”
Here are four ways to get started eliminating high blood pressure naturally — important because side effects of blood pressure medication are numerous and range from sexual dysfunction to depression, poor circulation to skin rash, insomnia, headaches, constipation, dizziness … the list goes on. There are also a zillion different classifications of high blood pressure medication as western medicine tries manipulating the body from a variety of angles in an effort to control the symptoms.
Get to the root and control the cause.
If you need more information or a consult, contact me through comments.
Namasté.
Four Ways to Naturally Lower High Blood Pressure
1. Change your Salt.
Get rid of table salt. It’s evil, and lacks the full spectrum of minerals and other nutrients that protect and enhance your health. It is a highly refined, processed white substance that in addition to hypertension can cause gastrointestinal problems, kidney stones, fluid retention and calcium depletion (this is very bad). For the body to metabolize table salt, it must waste tremendous amounts of energy to keep the body at optimum fluid balance. This creates a burden on the elimination systems in the body. Water is removed from other cells in attempt to neutralize the unnatural sodium chloride. Studies show that for each gram of table salt your system cannot process, your body will use over twenty times the amount of cellular water to neutralize the sodium chloride in chemically treated salt. This can lead to cellulite, rheumatism, arthritis, gout, as well as kidney and gallbladder stones. The average American consumes 5,000 mg of sodium chloride a day, the issue is serious and needs to be addressed.
Switch to Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt which contains 84 minerals and trace minerals.
Choosing to use Himalayan Sea Salt as an alternative can have a big impact on your total health and well-being. And remember, restaurants are the biggest culprit when using table salt.
2. Do a daily inversion.
Hubby Demonstrates Modified Shoulder Stand
Make a point to spend 1-3 minutes a day in a mini-inversion. Start off slow. Doing this even 2-3 times a week will not only reduce your blood pressure immediately, but by having the heart higher than the head you also give your heart a break. It’s very rejuvenative for the body and is an incredible pose for restoring balance to the mind, body & spirit.
This modified version is super easy to do:
– Take two yoga blankets if you have them, (the best ones are available at The Blanket Connection, and are about $13 each). If not, use thick towels.
– Fold one into thirds to support the spine, and fold the other in half and place it at the head of the first blanket, making a “T.”
– Grab the legs of a folding chair at the bottom of the T. Place the feet on the edge of the seat, and push the pelvis up. Keep the knees pulling towards each other, and if this is too hard to do, get a yoga strap to hold them in place.
– MAKE SURE NOT TO LET GO OF THE CHAIR or it will go flying across the room. Hold the pose for 2-3 minutes, being mindful to breathe, pushing the belly out with each in hale and pulling the belly in toward the spine as you exhale.
You are revitalizing the pads in between the vertebrae, giving the kidneys a fresh flush of blood, giving the adrenal glands on top of the kidneys a fresh flush of blood, refreshing the pineal and pituitary glands at the base of the skull, giving the face a fresh facial with fresh blood, AND you are also keeping the blood vessels in the BRAIN open — an important way to stave off memory loss and senile dementia.
Did you know there have been autopsies done on yogi’s in their 90s in India, and their brain tissue was like that of a 12-year-old because they did daily inversions?
Oh yeah, and it reduces hypertension.
Where can you get all of that from a 3-minute pose?
3. Take Carditone.
I LOVE Ayush herbal products because they are clean and organic. And Carditone is an Ayurvedic herb that for years has helped people reduce high blood pressure. If you have already been diagnosed with high blood pressure, start taking Carditone as well as the other three things on this list. Then, under the supervision of your doctor, start weaning yourself from your hypertension medications. If your doctor won’t work with you to do this, find a doctor that will work on your terms.
4. Eat more Fruits and Veggies, fresh fish and meats, and whole grains.
Duh. Get rid of the McDonald’s and the Burger King, and keep processed foods as a rare treat. You will find you won’t enjoy it nearly as much as you used to.
References
- CDC. Vital signs: prevalence, treatment, and control of hypertension–United States, 1999-2002 and 2005-2008. MMWR. 2011;60(4):103-8.
Five Ways to Prevent Diabetes
Ailments don’t just happen overnight, they happen over time.
That’s why today’s post is about Diabetes and how to minimize your risk of getting it.
Diabetes currently affects 25.8 million people of all ages in the United States (8 percent of the U.S. population). It is especially debilitating because it forces a radical alteration of lifestyles and often includes manual injections with insulin to keep stabilized.
So this post is to help you be more aware of how to minimize your risk now so you never have to experience this dis-ease.
Namasté.
Five Ways to Prevent Diabetes
1. Avoid hidden sugars by reading labels. Be especially mindful of condiments and processed foods which almost always contain sugar.
2. Moderately consume foods that turn to sugar: bread and pasta; milk & cheese; beer, wine and other alcohol; balsamic vinegar.
3. Moderately consume sweets. If you have an aggressive sweet craving, do a parasite and liver cleanse and take a probiotic to rebalance.
4. Do an annual cleanse to rid your gut of undigested food bits and parasites, and to jump-start your enzymatic action (spleen, pancreas, gall bladder and liver).
5. Eliminate coffee — it starts your day off acidic and makes your pancreas work harder to process other foods.
Raw Milk Debate Goes to Harvard Law
I am not a fan of drinking milk. As a natural health practitioner for 16 years, there have been too many people I have treated that suffered from lactose intolerance for me to recommend it to anyone. Moreover, I believe fundamentally that when we are born we are supposed to drink milk from our mothers, and not the milk of another animal. We are the only animal that does this. Cow’s milk is made for baby calves to drink, not humans.
However, I do know that the nutritious benefits that exist in milk have long been destroyed by processing (homogenizing, pasteurizing), leading the way for a boomerang effect of health problems — everything from arthritis to fibromyalsia, hormonal imbalance to endocrine dysfunction, diabetes to heart disease. Man cannot process foods that have been stripped of all their enzymatic content. And when we process dairy products that’s exactly what we are doing.
So even though milk is not for me (we drink homemade almond milk, see my earlier post on “Why Milk is Bad (and not Michael Jackson Bad)” for the recipe), I do support The Weston Price Foundation and their efforts to make information about nutritious foods more available. And now, this heated topic is making its way to the ivy walls of Harvard University.
On Feb. 16, at 7:15 pm – 8:45 pm EST, the Food Law Society at Harvard University will present a debate covering the legal, health, and nutritional merits of raw milk. This is a very important event for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the significance of the raw milk debate in our society — an issue that has escalated significantly in the past six months following federal raids and arrests that occurred at private food clubs in California. Second — and most importantly — it is proof positive there is a vacuum present between our government and corporations that manufacture food (whom lobbyists make certain remain in bed together), and the people they supposedly serve. This vacuum needs to be removed so that issues surround food regulation, supply and production and how they affect our health can see the light of day.
If you can’t get to Harvard Law to see the debate in person, no worries — you can stream it live. Go to http://www.foodsoc.org for information on how to do so.
Participants will be Fred Pritzker, Pritzker & Olson Law Firm
Dr. Heidi Kassenborg, Director, Dairy & Food Inspection Division, Minnesota Department of Agriculture
vs.
Sally Fallon Morell, President, Weston A. Price Foundation
David Gumpert, Author, The Raw Milk Revolution
If you are in the Boston area and can attend in person, the location at Harvard Law School is the Langdell South Classroom, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138.
The video will also be archived on this YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/HLSFoodLawSociety.
Namasté.
*Special Thanks to Food Freedom for this story. To see the Food Freedom blog, go to https://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/harvard-food-law-society-to-host-raw-milk-debate-feb-16/ to subscribe.
Why Milk is Bad (…and not Michael Jackson Bad)
One of the best decisions I ever made was to stop drinking milk.
As a ‘dairy queen,’ by the age of 38 I was drinking on average two gallons of milk a week. I was starting to have joint pain, continued gall bladder attacks, and a general stiffness that made getting up in the morning very difficult.
The famous Loretta (see my ‘about’ page), enlightened me, and I eliminated milk from my diet completely.
“We are the only animal that drinks the milk of another animal,” she explained. “Cow’s milk is for the baby calves, just like when we are born we are supposed to drink the milk from our mothers. And when it’s done, we’re supposed to be done with it. That’s it.” She went on to explain that milk was a product invented by dairy farmers as a way to increase profits.
Oh, and did you know that the National Dairy Council is the most powerful lobbyist group in Washington, D.C.? They are the creators of that sexy ad campaign, ‘Got Milk?’ Did you ever wonder: if milk is so good for us, why do they have to pay celebrities millions of $$$ in endorsements to pose with white mustaches on their faces?
But don’t take my word for it, read the writings of Dr. Frank Oski, author of “Don’t Drink Your Milk!,” and former Director of the Department of Pediatrics of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief of the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Dr. Oski is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 19 medical textbooks and has written 290 medical manuscripts.
Repeatedly, in my Ayurvedic practice, I treat clients who have such a hard time giving this up. Many of us still drink milk, even well past the age of 30, and most adults drink 1 or 2% which is even worse, since reduced fat milk is even more processed than regular milk and contains even less digestive enzymes and is therefore even harder for the body to break down. Now, as parents, we have to worry about additives like bovine growth hormone (BGH) and antibiotics… there has never been a better time to stop.
If we are having a hard time giving up milk, we can benefit from taking a look at a lack of feeling nurtured in our lives. Usually the need to drink milk or eat creamy ice cream at night is a symptom of still wanting that motherly nurturing or nourishment. Taking a look at that, consciously, will enable us to find other, healthier ways to have this primal need met.
If you are willing to stop drinking milk, below is a great recipe for a dairy substitute. My friend, Melody Elder, gave me the original idea and I’ve embellished it slightly with coconut milk to make it creamier. Our three-year-old son LOVES it, and I often drink it straight. The cost is less than a gallon of milk on average, and it makes for a great base for shakes and green drinks.
If you stop drinking milk (keep in mind it takes 3-6 months to detox from dairy and you may feel worse before you feel better), on occasion you may be able to enjoy ice cream or cheeses without any issue (be sure to take a good digestive enzyme before you do). And if you really want to be sure your kids are getting enough calcium, remember milk causes so much mucous in the gut it PREVENTS the absorption of vitamins and minerals! So eliminating milk and upping your intake of green vegetables like broccoli and kale will do wonders for your ingestion of calcium. Plus, taking a calcium magnesium supplement can never hurt.
Namasté.
Almond Milk
Homemade YUMMY Almond Milk
This recipe is for a creamy batch, makes little over a half a gallon.
1/3 cup raw, organic almond butter (about $15/jar at your local health food store, yields about 4 gallons total per jar)
5 organic dates, pitted (about $9 for a bag of 25)
3/4 cup coconut milk (I use a half a can of Thai Kitchen cause it’s super creamy, you may want an organic brand… minimize your use of canned products as studies are showing evidence of BPA in canned goods)
3 quarts of clean water
Place all ingredients in a Vita-mix or a high-speed blender. Store in the fridge in a glass jar. Good luck keeping it in the house, it will be gone before you know it!!
THE MOM STREET JOURNAL 