LILL's LIST

Many times, when we try to lose weight, the first thing we do is give up dessert. After all, you can’t lose weight eating sweets, right? Wrong. As long as you eat the right ones, adding something sweet to your meal can actually be good for you.

Now that summer has finally arrived, it’s even easier to indulge in a little treat after you eat. Let’s start with summer’s most powerful health boosters: berries. Strawberries, with their ellagic acid and vitamin C are superstars and so are blueberries, which are loaded with antioxidants.

Of course, if you dump spoons full of sugar on them or slather them with whipped cream, they’re not going to help you lose weight. But if you add a half cup of either or both to a cup of lowfat or fat-free yogurt, you’re doing your body good. You can even sprinkle a tablespoon or two of lowfat granola on them to make them a perfect parfait.

Blueberry pie and strawberry short cake are certainly not on the list of approved diet desserts. Or are they? Well, if you make the pie with just a bottom crust, as little sugar as possible and just a few little cutouts of crust on the top, you could have it once a week and still lose weight.

Or, how about strawberry shortcake, made with lowfat biscuits made with lowfat biscuit mix, and just a spritz of canned “whipped cream”, which has very few calories, fat or sugar in it? As long as you don’t have them every day, they won’t add enough calories to sabotage your weight loss. Just compensate by making sure that the rest of your meals are on the light side for calories.

Besides berries, there are other super healthy treats in the summertime. Watermelon, grapes, plums, cherries and peaches all are low in calories and high in vitamins, fiber and antioxidants. All of them can be combined with low calorie options like yogurt, cottage cheese, granola, a few nuts or a sprinkle of coconut. Use your imagination and your calorie counter to come up with innovative ways to indulge your sweet tooth.

If you really want to top off a low cal meal, you can melt a square of chocolate and then dip fresh strawberries in it. Chocolate is good for your heart, your blood pressure, your immune system and your mood. Pair it with strawberries and you have the perfect healthy dessert to round off your summer meal.

Everyone is weighing in on what type of health care plan we should have. Some people think it should be universal – a government funded and run system that covers everyone from cradle to grave. Other people think that’s too radical and prefer a system that more closely resembles what many people have now – privately run, for-profit health care insurance companies funded by employers and employees. My opinion is that it doesn’t much matter which of the current versions of health care plans eventually gets through Congress and into circulation. None of them will help very much because they don’t address the real health problems in America.

They’ll work for the pharmaceutical and food companies, who are the real cause of our health care crisis. They’ll work for the lobbyists who make sure that the drugging of America and the sorry state of our food supply aren’t even mentioned as a contributing factor in why so many people are sick in America or not as healthy as they could be. They’ll work for the Cancer Society and the Heart Association and the other organizations that have people wearing pink and donating money to “cure” the big diseases that kill so many of us. But they won’t help most of us get cured or – more importantly – prevent cancer, heart disease, diabetes and the conditions that are so intimately connected with the “Big Three”: Obesity and Poor Nutrition. Nor will they do anything to address the fact that almost half of the population takes at least one prescription drug and almost all of us eat way too much sugar, empty calories and food with pesticide, fungicide and herbicide residue in it.

How in the world can we expect to be healthy when we eat crap? Sometimes, in the case of animals that have eaten feed made from other animals – literally. Does no one else think that it’s ironic that so many people take prescription medicine for heartburn, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes rather than make better food choices, eat less or exercise so that they’d lose enough weight to reduce or eliminate these problems?

And, even if everyone of us gets a health care plan, where are the doctors who will care for us? There aren’t enough general practice physicians now to see everyone who can afford to go to them. So, if all of a sudden there are millions more people able to go to a doctor, how will this work? It’s obvious that the educational system we have for producing doctors needs an overhaul immediately and that should be part of any health care plan. However, there are still quotas for how many doctors can be trained and it still costs way too much for that training. How about if doctors could get subsidies if they “gave back” to communities that need physicians? That would allow them to start their professional lives without the burden of huge loans to pay back.

And, how about if we go back to billing for doctor’s visits and not for procedures? That all started when insurance companies got involved, because the bean counters needed to have a code for every little thing that happened during a doctor/patient visit. It’s also how visits went from around a half hour to between ten and fifteen minutes.  And, back to increasing the number of doctors again, that also would help with the time factor. A doctor just can’t get to know a patient in fifteen minutes. A patient can’t cover everything they need to say in that amount of time. Maybe if doctors had more time to talk to patients about eating healthier, losing weight and exercising, more people would get the message.

Unfortunately, because most people spend a lot more time watching TV than they do in their doctor’s office, it’s the drug companies with their endless commercials that are listened to and taken to heart. When did we accept the completely irrational idea that most of us need a prescription drug every day? Think back to as recently as twenty years ago. How many prescriptions did it take to keep you alive then? How many pills did our parents and their parents take? My grandfather lived to be 89 and never took so much as an aspirin. My mother lived to be 87 and, until the last few years of her life, never took anything except for two prescriptions for antibiotics for a urinary tract infection.  When I heard about it, I told her about how cranberry juice can prevent them and she started drinking a small glass daily and never had any more problems.

And this leads to my last concern about how health care is viewed in this and other industrialized nations. Natural is bad and unreliable and only doctors and pharmaceutical companies know what’s good for us. Now, I’m not advocating that we completely avoid allopathic drugs. There’s a place for them in modern medicine and it would be foolish to say that they’re bad or worthless. On the other hand, I’m really tired of reading about how dangerous it is to rely on natural methods, because they’re unproven, don’t work and are outright dangerous. Dismissing all naturopathic treatments, herbs and home remedies as worthless is just wrong. There are many time-proven natural remedies that work as well – or better – than anything. I’m thinking of a recent study I just read about that found that dark honey worked better than dextromethorphan for coughs in children and another study on Manuka honey’s ability to cure MRSA infections – even ones that are resistant to Vancomycin.

I know from personal experience that drinking vinegar and honey helps my digestion and lowers my blood pressure. I also know that ginger helped my friend’s morning sickness and that cinnamon lowers blood sugar. Not all natural treatments are worthwhile, but then again, neither are all allopathic drugs and treatments. We need to use common sense for health care, which brings me back to why our nation’s brand of “health care” doesn’t care for our health. It focuses on fixing what’s wrong with us, instead of preventing what goes wrong if we don’t eat and live the way we should. Until we understand that, we’ll just keep getting sicker and no amount of drugs or money will be able to save us.

Do you like mushrooms? This is a good thing from what I’ve been reading lately. Mushrooms are just full of beta-glucans. What’s that when it’s at home? Well, it’s a soluble polysaccharide, if you must know, and they’re some of the best immune-system boosters you can find.

They support your immune system by ramping up the macrophages, the white blood cells that search out and destroy invading viruses and bacteria. The quicker the macrophages get to the source of the infection, the sooner they destroy the germs that are causing your cough, sniffles or sore throat.

Although there are other foods like oats and barley and such that contain polysaccharides, they’re just not as effective as the beta-glucans in mushrooms, especially the more exotic – to us – mushrooms. That doesn’t mean that eating white button mushrooms isn’t good for you, it is. So if they’re your favorites, by all means add them to salads and sandwiches and your favorite recipes.

Most mushrooms contain a good amount of beta-glucans, but Shitake and Reishi contain the most. This is why they’ve been popular in both Ayurveda and Traditonal Chinese Medicine for centuries. Whether you get them from an extract or in your stir-fried noodles or in a Bella burger, it’s all good.

So, with flu season upon us, what better time than now to order in pizza with ‘shrooms, add mushroom soup to the menu or dine on pasta with mushroom sauce. And don’t forget the onions and garlic which are also good for fending off the flu and colds.

Xenoestrogens are so pervasive in our world, that no one can avoid them. So, how can you detoxify your body and eliminate them as much as possible? Luckily, there are many natural xenoextstrogen detoxifiers to add to our diet or supplements.

Phytoestrogens are probably at the top of the list. Why would you want to put MORE estrogen into your body, you ask? It’s because phytoestrogens, found in plants, bind to the receptors that xenoestrogens bind to and keep them from accumulating in your body.

These weak estrogens, found in beans, leafy green vegetables and oils, are a very good way to detoxify and remove xenoestrogens naturally. Another good detoxifier and cancer preventive is Indole 3-Carbinol found in cruciferous vegetables like kale, cabbage and broccoli.

You can find Indole 3-Carbinol in capsules, but getting it from vegetables also gives you the rest of the plant’s nutrition. It helps your liver remove xenoestrogens and also provides vitamins and minerals that enhance your body’s immune system.

One thing that may NOT be good for reducing xenoestrogens is coffee. Some studies show that caffeine boosts estrogen levels at more than a single cup a day. Of course, there are many more foods and drinks that contain caffeine, so it would be wise to be aware of this when choosing beverages and meals.

By choosing natural foods and personal care products and avoiding plastics, it’s possible to cut way down on the xenoestrogens that enter your body, but you can’t eliminate them entirely. To avoid the weight gain and health risks they pose, use the tips in this article to detox naturally.

We all know that sleep is good for us, but most of us don’t get the recommended 7 hour minimum. So, we’re tired and maybe a little irritable the next morning, but after our first cup of coffee, we’re fine.

NOT!

First of all, sleep isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. We might think that we’re “getting away” without enough sleep, but it’s a deficit that mounts up until it crashes and so do we. One of the most damaging results of too little sleep is that it makes us fat.

It has to do with cortisol, a hormone that encourages our bodies to store fat – especially in our bellies. While lack of sleep isn’t the only reason our bodies produce cortisol, it’s a major reason. The less sleep we get, the more cortisol we produce and the more belly fat we put on.

Empty calories and poor nutrition add to the cortisol deficit and we end up overweight, overstressed and overwhelmed. We’re so tired that we find ourselves living on stimulants like coffee, sugar and energy drinks. Well, all that energy has to come from somewhere.

Too often, instead of the natural energy we get from a healthy lifestyle of good food and enough rest, we get our energy from caffeine, nicotine or sugar, which stimulate our cortisol production, but don’t put any nutrients into our bodies to support our hormonal systems.

Instead of staying up and surfing until 1 in the morning, you might want to think about reading for a few minutes and turning the light out at 10. A short stroll after dinner and then a warm bath a half hour or so before bedtime will encourage sleep, also.

Along with a healthy weight loss plan, cutting down on cortisol production will help you shed pounds of belly fat. Start your cortisol-reducing plan by cutting out all stimulants, if you can, for at least a month.

If this is too difficult, slowly reduce the amount of stimulants until you’re down to almost none and then quit for a month. After that, slowly add one or two cups of coffee a day, a dessert once or twice a week or an energy drink only on Saturday morning.

You might find though, that you feel so good from the restful sleep and calm unstressed out feeling of living without cortisol boosters, that you don’t want to go back to them.