What’s New - My assistant Charlene has been awarded a promotion at the Post Office. She will be transitioning to that full time. I am searching for her replacement. She has been so wonderful in so many ways she will be sorely missed. Please join me in wishing her well. I hope you understand we will be doing our best during this time of change and hope to have someone in place as soon as possible. In the meantime I hope you are enjoying this fabulous summer weather with friends and family near and far....
Dr. Forbes
Interesting Fact: 40% of daily calories of US children and adolescents aged 2-18 come from added sugar and solid fats. Approximately half of these empty calories come from six sources: soda, fruit drinks, dairy desserts, grain desserts, pizza, and whole milk.
Listening When Your Body Talks
There is an extraordinary two-way communication going on between your body and mind that affects both physical and emotional health. The language the body speaks is in the form of symptoms. For instance, anticipating an important interview at work can make you anxious: your mind starts racing, your heart beats faster or maybe you get a tension headache. Sure, that headache might just be a headache, related to stress. But what if it's something more?
Having no clear understanding of your symptoms can lead to a depressed mood, making the physical illness even worse. It's important to understand your "body talk."
Prolonged, persistent symptoms - physical or emotional - that appear suddenly and affect wellbeing are the body's way of saying something is wrong. Suppressing symptoms hinders the body's ability to communicate what it needs - and more importantly - hides the underlying cause. Many holistic physicians, such as Naturopathic Doctors, are uniquely trained to translate the meaning of symptoms and identify what needs to change in order for health and wellbeing to be restored.
Here are strategies to help make correlations between the language your body is using and what it means for your health.
Keep a Body-Mind Journal. Record your physical and emotional (feelings and thoughts) experiences upon waking and throughout the day. Do you feel energetic upon waking? What are you thinking and feeling in the moments when you experience physical pain? Another example is a diet diary in which you can assess possible relationships between symptoms, such as headache or stomach issues, and emotions and thoughts associated with what, when and why you eat.
Illness & Lifestyle Inventory. If you're experiencing chronic symptoms, you may need to dig deeper to discover the initial event and triggers that have accumulated over time, resulting in the health problems you're having today. This inventory can include experiences that put you at risk for exposure to toxins (at work, school, an accident); tragic life events; and significant illnesses from childhood, as well as your adult years. Try to pinpoint when symptoms first started, how long they existed before you sought treatment, and what steps have been taken to address symptoms.
Don't Go to Dr. Google. Information on the Web can scare you and easily lead to an incorrect self-diagnosis. Seek the care of a holistic practitioner who can guide you in understanding your body's talk.
Here are some tools that holistic physicians may use to understand and translate symptoms:
Food Allergy/ Sensitivity Testing: reveals links between health conditions and the food you are eating. By removing foods from the diet that create symptoms, you allow the body to repair and heal, alleviate symptoms, and restore health.
Gut Function Tests: helps determine problems with nutrient absorption.
Nutrient Status Testing: identifies deficiencies that bring about symptoms.
Physical Evaluation: assesses how your body moves, sleep patterns, and mental focusing, which can reveal factors that contribute to the presence and intensity of symptoms.
Ultimately, your body's talk is unlike anyone else's. With careful listening and attentive guidance from a holistic practitioner, you can discover the meaning of your symptoms and create a dialogue with the body and mind that leads to more vibrant health.
"The best gifts anyone can give to themselves are good health habits." - Ellen J. Barrier
The Nutrition Power of Chicken
For those who haven't gone vegan or vegetarian, organic, free-range antibiotic-free chicken is a nutritious and versatile choice. Check out these health benefits of incorporating chicken in your diet - a few may surprise you!
Protein Packed. Chicken is a great source of lean, low-fat protein that contributes to muscle growth and development.
Heart Healthy. Eating chicken breast (white meat), compared to beef, reduces your intake of unhealthy saturated fats, which are linked with heart disease.
Phosphorus a-Plenty. Chicken is rich in phosphorus, an essential mineral that supports the health of teeth and bones, as well as the kidney, liver, and central nervous system.
Abundant in the B's. Chicken contains several B-vitamins, in particular Vitamin B6 which is important to the health of blood vessels, energy production, and metabolism. A typical serving of chicken also contains a good amount of niacin, which helps guard against cancer. Riboflavin (or Vitamin B2), found in chicken livers, is important for healthy skin.
Three Categories of Chicken:
Conventional chicken is kept caged and does not move about freely; these conditions are often unhygienic. Conventional chicken is injected with hormones to quicken growth and make supposedly resistant to certain diseases.
Free-range chicken is allowed to roam freely in the pastures.
Organic chicken is the most expensive because it is bred freely and is allowed to eat only organically prepared grain (as per the USDA standards). It is kept in clean, hygienic conditions and is not injected with any medications to disturb its natural growth and hormone cycle. The flavor and nutrient density of organic chicken is also more robust.
Whenever possible, choose organic. It makes a difference. Shop smart and keep chicken on your menu; there's a lot of good nutrition in that bird.
Easy, simmered slow-cooker chicken is perfect for a back-porch meal. To insure optimal flavor and a tender entree, opt for bone-in thighs instead of white meat which can dry out when cooked for long periods. Make prep easier with pre-peeled organic garlic, and pretty-up the platter with lemon slices and sprigs of thyme or rosemary.
Coat bottom and sides of a 6-quart slow cooker with cooking spray.
Combine stock, wine, flour, butter, and 1 tablespoon lemon juice in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk; pour mixture into slow cooker. Sprinkle chicken thighs evenly with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Place thighs in slow cooker, skin side down. Arrange potatoes, garlic, and thyme over chicken in slow cooker. Sprinkle ½ teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper evenly over garlic and potatoes. Cover slow cooker; cook on LOW for 8 hours.
Transfer chicken to a platter. Transfer potatoes and garlic to platter with a slotted spoon; discard thyme sprigs. Sprinkle chicken and potatoes evenly with remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, remaining 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and parsley. Strain cooking liquid from slow cooker through a sieve into a liquid measuring cup; let stand 3 minutes. Discard any fat that rises to top of liquid. Serve jus with chicken, potatoes, and garlic cloves.
Among the millions of U.S. adults who use nutritional supplements, multivitamin and mineral formulas are the most popular. It's a smart choice for everyone, even active, healthy people who eat a variety of fresh, organic foods. That's because every biochemical process in the body relies upon vitamins and/or minerals to facilitate processes that help maintain physical health and achieve optimal performance.
When there is even a mild deficiency, or a problem with absorption of nutrients, those processes cannot take place and can cause us to become ill or lead to chronic disease. A multivitamin formula helps support the body as it confronts things such as:
Depleted mineral content in the food supply due to soil erosion and chemicals used in conventional farming and food production.
Hectic lifestyles that create too much opportunity for consuming overly processed, preservative-laden convenience foods that are low in nutrients.
Failure to consume at least five servings of fruits and veggies a day.
Inability to manage stress, which increases the body's need for nutrients.
Exposure to environmental toxins at home, work/school, and in transit, not to mention those lurking in the water supply and runoff into the soil.
Overuse of antibiotics, affecting immunity and leading to dysfunction in the gut.
Chronic illness, serious acute illness, or surgery, and use of medications that can interfere with the body's ability to absorb nutrients.
Your Multivitamin Insurance Plan
While multivitamins provide "dietary insurance" for our modern lives, we need to be educated on the various types and what works best for our individual needs. There are a wide variety of formulas and methods of delivery (e.g., tablet, capsule, time-release, liquid). Some formulas contain herbs, which can interact with other medications. The purity and quality of a supplement is critical to its effectiveness.
Everyone has different nutritional needs based on age, activity level, and health status. The type of multivitamin that is best for you will be different from anyone else's, even a family member of the same age. The best way to determine what type of multivitamin or mineral supplement you need is to consult with a holistic physician.
Fondly known to herbalists as "the stinking rose", Garlic (Allium sativum) has been used for centuries for a variety of health concerns ranging from treatment of skin conditions to fighting infection. Today, research shows that garlic contains more than 200 phytochemicals that have protective health benefits, such as regulating blood pressure, lowering blood sugar and cholesterol levels, enhancing immunity and working against bacterial, viral, and fungal infections.
Garlic contains several vitamins and minerals that support health, including vitamin B6, vitamin C, manganese, and selenium. It's also rich in sulfur-containing compounds - allicin, alliin, ajoene - that help reduce inflammation and have antioxidant properties. These unique compounds (along with enzymes, minerals and amino acids) make garlic a powerful medicinal that helps reduce the risk for chronic diseases where inflammation is an underlying factor, such as heart disease and cancer.
Though generally safe for most adults, taking a garlic supplement can cause heartburn, upset stomach, an allergic reaction, and breath and body odor (common with raw garlic). Because it can impair the body's ability to form blood clots, garlic should not be taken if you're preparing for surgery or have bleeding disorders.
Be aware that garlic supplements (powder, capsule, extract or oil) can vary significantly because allicin (the active ingredient) is sensitive to how the supplement is prepared. For example, aging garlic to reduce its odor also reduces the allicin present and compromises the effectiveness of the product. Check with your holistic physician about the benefits garlic may have for you and which formula will work best for your needs.
Confused about Your Symptoms? Keep a Symptom Journal
Whether you have a known medical condition or are experiencing vague clusters of symptoms that don't fit nicely under a given medical definition, a symptom journal can help you make sense of what you are experiencing. It provides an organized way to gather and track information related to your health.
A physician might ask you to keep a symptom journal for a specific concern or illness, such as migraine, asthma, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, arthritis, PMS, heartburn, sleep disorders, weight management, and during recovery from surgery, just to name a few.
The key information to include in your journal includes:
Date and time
Type of symptom (pain, numbness, nausea, headache)
Duration of symptom
Triggers (what brought it on, made it worse)
Relief factors (what alleviates the symptom, e.g., medication, meditation, exercise)
Lifestyle Notes (what else is going on in your life at the time, what did you eat/drink)
Be descriptive, but also concise on the key points in your entries. Your doctor might ask you to use a rating system for certain symptoms (e.g., 0-5 or 1-10). Be sure to do that honestly as your entries may make a difference in treatment approaches. Leave room at the bottom of each page for notes on things such as your emotional state, stressors or other factors that might contribute to how you're feeling that day.
For a symptom journal to be most helpful to you and your physician, you need to use it consistently. If you think a symptom journal will benefit how you care for yourself and treat a medical condition, speak to your physician about setting one up.
The information offered by this newsletter is presented for educational purposes. Nothing contained within should be construed as nor is intended to be used for medical diagnosis or treatment. This information should not be used in place of the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider. Always consult with your physician or other qualified health care provider before embarking on a new treatment, diet or fitness program. You should never disregard medical advice or delay in seeking it because of any information contained within this newsletter.
