Beth Anderson
I live in the Midwest amongst huge corporate farms full of beautiful fields of grains and beans. Well, at least they LOOK beautiful at times. I’m not so sure I am willing to eat the stuff. From what I understand a huge majority of what is grown around me is genetically modified GMO produce.
Many people (even here!) here have no idea what is happening or that anything potentially dangerous is being grown in their own backyard. For hundreds and maybe thousands of years, people have been genetically engineering foods. We have trees that grow both lemons and limes. We have new fruits and vegetables made by crossing two plants together such as loganberries and limequats. We have selectively promoted different strains and species based on their color, taste, and growth patterns.
But the kind of GMO manipulation that is going on now just isn’t safe. At least it hasn’t been proven safe. Studies around the world are linking it to cancer and many other health issues. There are too many correlations between these GMOs and food allergies in children (and adults). Doesn’t it seem strange that dozens of countries overseas have banned our GMO produce based on their own scientific health studies? Is it a coincidence that since GMOs have been heavily marketed there are huge spikes in children’s food allergies, along with the severity of the allergies? Doesn’t it seem strange that SOMEONE is profiting off of these GMO seeds and it isn’t the farmers, but instead big businesses?
There are two types of GMO that I am most concerned about.
The first type is GMO seeds that are herbicide resistant. Supersized companies have engineered grains that don’t die when they are doused with toxic herbicide. This means that the farmers can spray as much herbicide all around the crops to kill off every weed and stray plant, but the produce won’t die! This is one sure way to guarantee that you will be ingesting much more pesticide than you would have before. Does this sound safe to you?
The second type is GMO seeds that have pesticide DNA built into them. There is a toxin that causes pests stomach’s to explode when they ingest it. This is the pesticide that has been genetically “built-in” to your GMO grain. They have found this pesticide in the stomach of pregnant women. If it kills bugs by making their stomachs explode, what does it do to humans?
If you haven’t heard yet, there are dozens of countries around the world that have banned the import our GMO grains. They have banned it because they have done scientific studies linking GMO to cancer and other diseases. You would be surprised to find out that the same GMO grain is in hundreds and thousands of your grocery products, but how would you know? They certainly don’t tell you on any label. The vast majority of grains that are grown in the USA by big agricultural farms now are GMO, which means the vast majority of ALL grains grown in the USA are GMO. Try to find out if your crackers, chips, cereals, even tofu have GMO grain/soy in them!
I recommend buying products that are clearly labeled “No GMOs” or “Organic”, as organic products cannot contain or come from animals who are fed GMO. Let’s get healthier by protecting ourselves against what hasn’t been proven safe!
(Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth is helping people improve their lives through nutrition and lifestyle education, health coaching, and by helping others to learn to make informed choices. Beth continues to spread understanding of the connection between body, mind, and spirit and encourages all to discern the truth about food, consumer products, environment, and life choices. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)
You can change one simple habit and it may change your whole life. It doesn’t cost anything, plus you’ll end up eating less and feeling more energetic. You may even have less anxiety and a new appreciation for life and the world.
The next time you eat, count how many times you chew each bite before swallowing. Most people chew their food only a few times before swallowing which results in gulping down entire meals in just a few minutes. Swallowing large chunks of food can cause you to eat more, have digestive issues, and be tired after eating! Slow down and chew more.
The Macrobiotic lifestyle recommends chewing your food up to 100 times; however, I have found that nearly impossible. Try chewing your food 30 or 40 times before swallowing. The food should be completely liquefied and mixed with important digestive juices before it reaches your stomach. By the time you finish a bite of food, your dining companion may have eaten 3 or 4 bites.
Chewing more enables you to eat less. It takes your brain 10 – 20 minutes after filling your stomach to realize that it has had enough food. Chewing your food 30-40 times will slow down your eating and your brain will tell your stomach it is full while it has less food in it. Chewing more and slowing down will enable you to eat much less food and feel the same satiety.
Chewing more helps alleviate digestive issues. By chewing your food completely and liquefying it before swallowing, you have mixed the proper digestive juices completely with the food before allowing it to enter your stomach. This means your stomach will have less work to do. Many times this can relieve digestive issues such as pain, bloat, gas, and other nasty annoyances.
Chewing helps you feel less tired after eating. Since your stomach has less work to do, you will have more energy after eating that can be devoted to other things. If you frequently feel overtired after eating, simply chewing your food can be a big boost to your energy level.
Slowing down will allow you to enjoy your food more. You may not have even paid attention before to the beauty, taste, smell, or texture of your food. You may not have observed how it makes you feel, and how much you can enjoy a fresh strawberry or a cup of green tea. Once you appreciate your food and what you are eating, you may start eating healthier food.
Slowing down and enjoying your food may cause you to relax and think about slowing down and enjoying life more. You may realize that life isn’t about rushing around, getting lists of things done, and stressing yourself out anymore. The simple act of slowing down at meals may allow you to extend the principle into your whole life. May you will slow down and enjoy your children, or enjoy talking to a friend instead of rushing off to work.
Chew your food more. From the simple act of chewing your food, you may eat less, feel better, enjoy life more, and get healthier. You may end up noticing and nurturing the beautiful people and things that were right there all the time.
(Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth is helping people improve their lives through nutrition and lifestyle education, health coaching, and by helping others to learn to make informed choices. Beth continues to spread understanding of the connection between body, mind, and spirit and encourages all to discern the truth about food, consumer products, environment, and life choices. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)
If you are tired, irritable, stressed out, sleep-deprived, burned out, or exhausted, there are quick changes in food and behavior you can implement to reduce your symptoms, heal yourself, and, in the long run, prevent disease. Stress causes and accelerates chronic and terminal diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and depression. Chronic stress will give you adrenal fatigue and make you feel like you are always either exhausted or wired or alternating between both!
The stress of daily living has an enormous impact on your physical and emotional health – both good stress and bad stress. If you are experiencing back pain, dizziness, heart palpitations, low stamina, chronic infections, poor sleep, or food cravings, you may have adrenal fatigue. The adrenal glands sit on your kidneys and control hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. If your adrenal glands aren’t working properly, your thyroid and immune system will not function correctly. You may get infections repeatedly. You may lose your immune system function and your energy level may plummet.
Here are 7 things you can do to reduce your stress level:
1. Get enough sleep and sleep regular hours without exception. Go to bed at a decent hour every night. Go to bed at about the same time every night.
2. Re-evaluate your priorities.Do you need to work after normal work hours? Do you need to check your email and smart phone constantly? Do you have normal conversations and relationships with people, or are you living on electronic and social platforms? You may have relationships, family, children, and friends who miss you and want to spend time with you relaxing and sharing. Slow down and enjoy life! Figure out what life is about – is it about money and “things”? Aren’t the people in your life worth more than things? Don’t forget about your pets!
3. Eat whole foods – fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and grains. Eat only 100% whole grains and don’t consume bleached, refined, or processed flours.
4. Cook at home as much as possible. Your recipes should be built by combining foods that just have one ingredient in them. This will automatically replace your consumption of processed foods with whole, healthy foods. You will know exactly what you are eating.
5. Eliminate sugar, syrups, and artificial sweeteners. Drink water or green tea unsweetened instead of sodas, sweetened drinks, or coffee. Sweeten drinks with stevia extract – it is a natural super-sweet plant that has no calories or chemicals! Eat fruits instead of sweets. Start reading your food labels and figure out how much sugar you are really eating! It’s okay to eat 20-30 grams of sugar a day if you are healthy, but you might be surprised to know that there are 65 grams of sugar in that 20-ounce bottle of soda or sweetened drink.
6. Eliminate or reduce coffee consumption. Eliminate caffeine altogether or, if you must, limit it to a cup of coffee in the morning. Be aware of everything you consume that contains caffeine. Carry fresh water with you at all times and drink it instead of anything else.
7. Do an emotional cleanse. Most people benefit from digestive cleansing, but an emotional cleanse can also help dramatically. A Harvard study showed that men who are angry are three times more likely to develop heart disease. UCLA has found that stress seems to reprogram immune cells into more toxic cells that feed disease. An emotional cleanse can allow the body to reduce stress and toxicity. The most prominent stress-causing emotions are guilt, anger, shame, and negativity. Start doing self-reflection and identify the causes of these feelings if you have them. Work to rid yourself of the negativity, and if you need help, seek help from friends, support groups, or a counselor. While you are ridding yourself from the negative emotions and thoughts, replace them with positive ones that appeal to you – family, pets, friends, hobbies, work, art, anything that you love.
Try one or more of these quick fixes and let me know how your stress level is!
(Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth is helping people improve their lives through nutrition and lifestyle education, health coaching, and by helping others to learn to make informed choices. Beth continues to spread understanding of the connection between body, mind, and spirit and encourages all to discern the truth about food, consumer products, environment, and life choices. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)
Everyone seems to be tired, stressed out, fatigued, lethargic, or burned out today. We work too much, become caregivers for parents or children, and spend way too much time worrying about others instead of ourselves.It’s time to focus on YOU and making yourself feel better. Let’s start by looking at what is stealing your energy and vitality from your system!
There are four kinds of stress that will deplete your energy store – chemical, emotional, mental, and physical. Here are some examples of each type of stress and what you can do about it.
Chemical stress can come from your food, air, water, and environment. You ingest hundreds of chemicals daily simply from the food you eat. The more processed foods you eat, the more chemicals you ingest. By processed foods I mean foods that have been changed or transformed from their original state in nature, packaged, and sold to you through a grocery store, restaurant, or shop.
You are eating food coloring, artificial and “natural” flavoring, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives in every bite of your pre-prepared foods. You eat pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers in your conventional and GMO foods. You drink in the water pollutants in every soda or glass of unfiltered water. You are surrounded by air pollution in your workplace, airport, and even outdoors depending on where you live.
Read your food labels when you buy food products. If the ingredients list is long, has confusing words or unpronounceable words, or has recognizable chemicals in it, don’t buy it. Make it yourself. Cooking isn’t that hard and doesn’t take that much time. If you can’t cook it, get it from a place where you know who made it and what went in it. For today, just make a better choice. Try to drink filtered or purified water when you can, and get outside in a clean natural environment whenever you can.
Emotional stress can come from toxic relationships, caring for children, or lack of boundaries. There have been many studies done that show that the better your relationships are, the healthier you are and vice versa. If you are stuck in an unhealthy relationship, either figure out how to improve it or leave it behind. You can do this by setting healthy boundaries for yourself even if it is your own children you are dealing with. Learn to say no, and teach people how to treat you by letting them know what is not acceptable, enforcing your boundaries and following through.
Mental stress can come from your work environment, school or education pressures, and especially self-inflicted standards and expectations. If you take your work home with you, work at all hours, check your emails or are on call while you are “off,” or can’t stop studying, then you probably need to look at your standards and expectations. Set a time when you are truly off work. For example, after 7:00 p.m. stop checking your email, stop studying, and stop beating yourself up in general for not being perfect. If you don’t start taking care of yourself, no one else is going to do it for you.
Finally, physical stress can result from your immediate environment – loud or constant noise and lack of sleep are some great examples. Try to get some quiet time daily and make sure your sleep schedule is regular and enough. Most people need 7-8 hours of sleep a night. If you sleep less on a regular basis, you might need to make some changes in your schedule. Too much partying or alcohol can also put your body in a state of physical stress.
The biggest and most common source of physical stress on your body is a lack of nutrients. There are no nutrients in packaged cereals (except what they fortify it with after removing the natural nutrients!), fast food, processed foods, sugar, alcohol, white flours and rice, and much more of what we eat on a regular basis. Try to start eating whole foods – foods with one ingredient. Cook more of your own food with whole ingredients. You will at least know for sure what is in your food!
Take a look at what kinds of chemical, mental, emotional, and physical stress you are putting your body through and start making changes here and there to improve your life. You will end up with more energy!
(Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth is helping people improve their lives through nutrition and lifestyle education, health coaching, and by helping others to learn to make informed choices. Beth continues to spread understanding of the connection between body, mind, and spirit and encourages all to discern the truth about food, consumer products, environment, and life choices.)
