Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Super-bacteria L. plantarum might be as close as your garden. Zucchini is a good source of the bacteria, and by fermenting it, you can up the benefits like slightly lower blood sugar, improved insulin, improved exercise capacity, improved sleep and mood, and many others. Don't give away that zucchini--ferment it! This recipe has a milder flavor than most fermented foods--it's only slightly tart. And of course it's an alternative to yogurt.  Equipment needed 1 quart jar (or 2 pint jars) with lid(s) Canning funnel (optional) Fermentation device (I use an insulated grocery bag, plastic grocery bag and a heating pad)  Ingredients 2 apples, peeled and cored 1 medium zucchini, unpeeled 4 dates, chopped 1 T cinnamon 1/2 T ground ginger 1 t salt 1/4 t ground cloves 1/4 t nutmeg Filtered water 2 capsules or equivalent of your favorite probiotic that ferments at ~95F (I used Biotiquest Antibiotic Antidote) Shred the apples and zucchini and put them in a large bowl. Add the spices, s...

Do Calories Matter on Atkins? As the saying goes, just because you're not counting calories doesn't mean that calories don't count. Dr. Atkins wrote in Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution that you'll lose weight faster on fewer calories, but you won't necessarily have a sense of well-being. Most readers knows what he means: low mood and flagging energy. Lack of Energy, Low Mood This was how I felt Sunday afternoon and Monday. Part of my low mood was from having to fill out an application for Medicaid for both my parents, mostly so that my father can go live in a nursing home. It's too hard for my mother to take care of him and I can't be with them enough to help day-to-day. I was thinking about my parents during yoga that evening and fighting tears. I didn't have a physical sense of well-being, either. The climb from the train station up to the street took more energy than it should have; so did the yoga class. I went back to the book for advice and r...

I've found myself frequently depressed over the past several weeks. It helped to think of it as my brain being depressed and that everyone gets sad sometimes and it passes. Thinking this way helped me start looking for causes and solutions. I haven't been dancing as much over the past few months: it's too discouraging when there are two or three followers for every lead. So much for Denver being "Menver," a term used by men who evidently look for women under the seat cushions. (Maybe I exaggerate, but Denver County is half women according to the last census and we leave the house a lot more according to my observations.) I've decided to quit being like the proverbial drunk who looks for his keys under a street light just because he can see there. I'm giving up dancing to resume martial arts because I need the physical exertion. (You didn't think it was to meet men, did you?) I noticed going to a difficult yoga class (with a bunch of women) impro...

I don't know much about inflammation. What I do know is that immune cells can run amok, mistaking your own tissue for invaders, damaging it and inflaming it. It's also called autoimmune reaction and it can be systemic, throughout your body. And it's miserable. Food, especially wheat and dairy, is a major cause of inflammation for some people. We focus on carbs around here, but it's funny proteins that cause problems from paranoia to arthritis: gluten, gliadin, whey and casein, for instance. The proteins can also come from your own body: serious injury can cause a release of the DNA from your mitochondria, tiny organelles in your cells, but with their own DNA separate from yours.( 1 ) Interleukin-6 is an inflammatory protein your body makes ; homocysteine (another protein) may cause inflammation when there's too much of it. How do we get these rogue proteins under control? Tess wrote a post on systemic enzymes , calling them THE BEST anti-inflammatory supplement...

Everyone loves a good mystery, but in real life, we all love a good solution even more. The book Why Isn't my Brain Working? by Datis Kharrazian is the latter. Even if your brain is working (and I think mine works pretty well), it's worth reading for the insights into the gut-brain connection, cross-reactivity of foods, and what you can do if you get glutened. In my younger days, I read self-help books and went to counseling to be happier. It didn't help much--all they talked about was attitude. Relying on attitude to solve a biological problem is like trying to smile your way out of an infection of H. pylori. I guess I was lucky that I didn't go in for drugs and didn't think doctors could help me. Good thing. I now know my problem was largely hypoglycemia. The management of [certain patients with poor blood sugar control] is so fundamentally basic and easy....[Yet] It is not uncommon for [them] to be put on psychotropic drugs, sleep medications, or labeled ...

My mom is back to normal, able to walk a little with a walker and doing a little cooking. Perhaps because her recent infection is gone and she isn't eating any more hospital food, her blood sugars have gotten low enough that she's decided to reduce her insulin dose. My TMJ pain has been acting up. But last weekend, a friend invited me to her restorative yoga class, and the next day, for the first time in weeks, I didn't need any aspirin. I'm planning to take her class on a regular basis. I had some anxiety that's now gone. I've always been good on the phone, and good on the Internet, but tended to get kind of freaky in person. I was the weird girl in The Breakfast Club. The anxiety defied all reason and most experience. And yet it just evaporated over the past couple weeks. Why? I quit all dairy except butter around two months ago and I'm finally finished healing from my bike wreck. Those are the only things I can think of that happened recently. There...

What if one or two little tweaks could transform your life? Instead of spending years in therapy, hours a week on the treadmill, gagging down whole grains every day, or tearing your hair out over a positive test for an illness, it's possible that making a few little changes could change everything. I've added a list of posts that could do this for a lot of people (see the list below my profile). Don't worry, there's nothing to buy. You might need to check out a library book and do some N=1 experiments on yourself. Overall, these should save you time and decrease your aggravation. Cardio: A Waste of Valuable Dance Time. Actually, there's a school of thought that cardio is a waste of any kind of time (unless you enjoy it). Sure, you burn calories, but you move less later and get hungrier. Studies have shown that it's not effective for losing weight. I don't do cardio (I lift weights instead) and don't need to lose weight. That wasn't the case when...

As much as people complain about stress, they go out of their way to create it. They over-schedule, overspend, under-sleep, and under-nourish themselves. I'm still working on getting enough sleep, but I've found some ways to reduce other sources of stress. Poor diet will affect your mood. Contrary to what's written by a lot of self-help authors, your mood isn't just a matter of attitude. Your brain is mostly made of fat and cholesterol and requires various nutrients to run properly. It needs glucose, but the glucose needs to be in your bloodstream, not your stomach in the form of carbohydrates. (Your liver can make glucose out of protein.) Drs. Phinney and Volek describe how low-calorie, high-carb diets can affect the brain in The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living. (The short answer: depending on how much you exercise, you can mentally and physically hit the wall.) If for example you decide to eat 1200 kcal per day, composed of 25% protein (75 grams), 25...

I mentioned a few days ago I'd stopped taking my new multivitamins with megadoses of vitamin B. I haven't resumed taking the GNC Hair, Skin & Nails vitamins, which also have vitamin B but in a moderate amount. Based on a few incidents, I believe that added vitamin B was making me lethargic and depressed. I don't believe added vitamin B has those effects on most people, but I may be sensitive to it. I don't know if the change in my vitamin regimen had anything to do with it, but today I got up at 3:30 a.m. (couldn't sleep), washed the clothes, washed the curtains, cleaned the refrigerator, finished painting the living room and entry (a project I started in April and resumed yesterday), cleaned, repaired and painted the heat registers, dropped off a bunch of items at Goodwill, did the grocery shopping, skipped dinner, and watched a movie at my parents' house. (Except for the painting, that's typically what I might get done in a week, outside my job.) It...

You've probably attended a family holiday dinner like this: the dinner is served a few hours late, the adults are slumped in front of the TV, and the kids run around the house screaming. What can account for these different behaviors? It could be what I've heard called sugar hangover, and when I say sugar, I mean carbohydrates in general. Consider a typical Thanksgiving Day: breakfast is some combination of cereal, juice, toast, jam, fruit, waffles, granola bars, pastries, yogurt, smoothies, and so on. It's all high carb food. Four hours later, everyone's blood sugar has crashed. For most adults, this means feeling tired and hungry. They won't snack because they don't want to ruin their appetite for dinner. For kids, though, some research has shown that they get a big adrenaline rush when their blood sugar crashes. Adrenaline is the fight-or-flight hormone--the one that sends them screaming around the house while their parents are too tired to send them outsi...

Although it's been some time since I got over my sinus infection (after three rounds of antibiotics, the last of which ended a month ago), I haven't felt quite right: lethargic, unmotivated, and painfully bored. As I took my new multi-vitamin pill Friday morning, I thought, " It's just like that time I had those drinks with the B vitamins ." (See Feb. 13 comment in linked post.) Indeed, the vitamin pill label showed B vitamins in amounts 25 to 33 times the recommended daily allowances. This was for three tablets, and was taking only one, but that's still way over the top. Even a 100-gram serving of liver has B vitamins in the low single milligrams, or less, not the 50-gram doses of B-1, B-2 and B-6 and the 200 microgram dose of B-12 per three tablets of the vitamin. The bottle recommends taking three to six pills daily. Of course, I stopped taking the vitamins, and today I felt peppy enough to try a new hairdo, buy some clothes and take my dog to the dog park...