Do you eat lots of brightly colored fruits and vegetables? The colors correspond to different plant chemicals or phytonutrients. Many fruits and vegetables contain flavonoids, a very large and diverse family of antioxidant phytochemicals.
Blueberries are the richest sources of potent antioxidants in our American diet, but the following foods are also high in flavonoid life-preservers:
Two clients came to my inaugural cooking class today and we all enjoyed a great time sharing with one another and a wonderful lunch of brown rice topped with tasty stir fry and crispy tofu. Cooking started at 11:00 and we were done eating by noon.
Here’s the recipes although I really didn’t follow the stir fry very closely as I had different vegetables on hand and no seaweed. That’s one of the great things about stir fries - you can use whatever you have. Just try to have some green veggies and some orange and/or red to give plenty of contrast.
When I cut up the vegetables, I put the ones that take longer to cook in one bowl and the ones that cook quickly like tomatoes, peppers and summer squash in another. I start frying the harder veggies first and then add the others along with the garlic and ginger after a few minutes.(more…)
Melatonin is manufactured by the pineal gland in the center of our brain and secreted during darkness. Besides its well known functions of setting the biological clock and controlling circadian rhythms, melatonin is also a powerful antioxidant. It is able to significantly reduce levels of oxidative stress in the body due to damage by toxic molecules called free radicals. These reactive species are produced by the thousands every second of the day in most body cells as a normal byproduct of metabolism.
It’s Also in Food
According to Russel Reiter, Professor of Neuroendocrinology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, “Melatonin is found in all vertebrates and invertebrates, even in algae, slime molds and bacteria, so we not only produce it in our bodies, but we eat it in our diets.” Happily, this health enhancing hormone has been found to be present in walnuts in greater amounts than in any other plant food. Reiter conducted research that shows the melatonin in walnuts to be easily absorbed and utilized by the body.(more…)
Our diet and lifestyle have direct effects on the amounts of good and bad bacteria in our gut. Intestinal microflora can be adversely affected by stress, medications, poor diet, disease, aging, and a variety of other factors.
Probiotic bacteria require food to thrive and their preferred diet is dietary fiber. Fiber is a component of plant cell walls that lends form and structure to the plant. There exist many types of fiber and it’s primarily found in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, seeds, and nuts.
When probiotic organisms digest fiber, they produce acids that keep the pH of our gastrointestinal tract low (acidic). Beneficial bacteria thrive in an acid environment while harmful bacteria thrive under alkaline conditions.
People who eat mostly refined and processed foods with very little roughage sometimes suffer from bacterial dysbiosis - an under population of beneficial bacteria along with an overgrowth of harmful bacteria. Subsequently, health problems can ensue from an overpopulation of disease-promoting organisms.(more…)
Frequently supplements are needed to make up for what’s missing in the diet, repopulate after antibiotic therapy, or to improve the health of our digestive tract.
Following are some very different probiotics which contain greater viability and larger numbers of colony-forming-units than most of what you can find on the shelves in drug and health food stores.
Human Micro Flora
Seroyal is the U.S. provider of HLC High Potency and other probiotics made by Pharmax in the United Kingdom. The original samples of hundreds of different bacterial strains were originally isolated from healthy human intestinal walls in the 1940’s. Human formed colonies have been shown to grow and establish themselves faster in the intestinal mucosa and with longer lasting results than those grown from dairy or animal strains.
Four varieties of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are used in all of the HLC products. Lactobacillus predominates in the upper portion of the small intestines, while Bifidobacterium colonizes the lower portion.(more…)
