Make your own porridge in the morning/anytime
It is cheaper and more nutritious to make your own porridge. Have bags of organic whole grains on hand like millet, brown rice, or buckwheat groats, and grind up 3 tablespoons in your coffee grinder and add to 1 cup of water; keep stirring to prevent lumping and bring to boil; then lower to simmer for 3 to 5 minutes until desired thickness is achieved; this makes 1 portion. You are getting far more wholesome nutrients in fresh ground grains then with ground grains that have been sitting in a box for months/years on a shelf. Or if you prefer oatmeal stick to making steel-cut oats; however, these take longer to cook. Be sure to add your own favorite ingredients [Continue reading…]
Posted in Nutrition
Comments Off on Make your own porridge in the morning/anytime
Eating Habits: Loreta’s Tips
Health challenges often respond well to the use of clean, preferably organic, whole foods, that are cooked from scratch. When your body receives all the macro and micro nutrients it needs from whole foods, cravings for junk food or sugar will be drastically reduced.
TIPS TO TRY:
Keep organic whole grains around to cook from scratch. You can use them whole, in salads, or freshly ground to a powder for quick-cooking porridges. All whole grains are high in fibre, which helps clean the colon of possible toxins.
Give up refined fruit juice and eat your fruit whole, unless you have a juicer.
Give up convenience foods as much as possible: anything in a bag, box, or can, or frozen.
Purchase a grain mill to grind grains [Continue reading…]
Posted in Nutrition
Tagged balance, nutrition, tips, weight loss
Comments Off on Eating Habits: Loreta’s Tips
Weight Loss
Weight loss is a never-ending debated topic. Without assessing the whole health of the individual it is like putting the “cart before the horse”. Generally there are other factors at play in life; it is not just a matter of an individual simply overeating. Stress, as mentioned in other blog posts, can lead to too much cortisol production which impedes thyroid function and will aggravate weight gain. And often stress means less quality and quantity of sleep which also impairs glucose metabolism thereby altering blood sugar as well as decreasing the secretion of thyroid stimulating hormone and again increasing blood levels of cortisol. Everyone is a different metabolic type; some individuals are slow oxidizers and some are fast oxidizers; there [Continue reading…]
Immune System Function
Often when you are sick you just need a boost of Vitamin C, fish oils, or probiotics along with herbs, but sometimes a compromised Immune system is related to stress, fatigue, lowered adrenal and thyroid function. A sluggish immune can be boosted with the proper use of herbs like astragalus, or reishi mushrooms. When stress is elevated long term the immune is often lowered and eventually the adrenals and thyroid can suffer. At this point, some adrenal-helping herbs can be utilized as well as vitamins which contain glandulars to help rebuild adrenal tissue. If the adrenals are dealing with long term stress and releasing too much cortisol this can inhibit the conversion in the thyroid of T4 to the more active [Continue reading…]
Posted in Immune System
Tagged adrenal gland support, fatigue, immune system, stress, thyroid function
Comments Off on Immune System Function
Circulation
Circulation definitely slows down as we age and anti-oxidants like vitamin A, and E, or fish oils, and niacin have an affinity for keeping arteries healthy and reducing inflammation. Herbs which have blood circulating properties are hawthorne which is a tonic and astragalus which is an adaptogen. Caution must be exercised if there are actual arterial blockages (which would be diagnosed by your doctor); if this is the case, all medications, if there are any, must be carefully reviewed especially when taking anything else with the meds. Sometimes, less than ideal circulation is simply a case of sluggish blood or lymph circulation due to lack of activity and an unhealthy highly processed diet.