LILL's LIST

Every day, most of us unwittingly put toxic substances into our body. These substances – xenoestrogens – increase our risk of everything from obesity to cancer. They’re in our food, our water and our personal care products. They’re even in the washer, so while you’re washing out the dirt, you’re washing IN toxins that are worse than any mud stain you’ve ever encountered. No one ever died from a grass stain, but people die from the effects of xenoestrogens in increasing numbers.

They also get fat. Xenoestrogens, which mimic the natural estrogen that our body needs and produces in appropriate amounts, increase belly fat. For this reason, alone, even without the extra risk of cancer and reproductive system problems, it would be a good idea if we could avoid them.

Unfortunately, that’s very hard to do. They’re in plastic, pesticides, animal feed, dish and laundry detergent and too many of the lotions, potions and cleansers we pour onto our skin every day.

When we eat xenoestrogens, they go through our liver, as it tries to detoxify them and eliminate them from our bodies. Our livers know what’s good for us and what’s bad and it valiantly tries to get rid of the bad stuff. It does a pretty good job and may eliminate up to 90% of xenoestrogens. But the other 10% gets into our system.

When we apply xenoestrogens to our skin though, they go into our bloodstream without going through the liver at all. That’s why we get 10 times as high a dose as when we ingest them. So, pour some dandruff or body shampoo on your hair and it goes right to your scalp and into your bloodstream. Because almost all commercial, non-organic shampoos – even the so-called “natural ones” contain xenoestrogens, there’s a pretty good chance that you got some along with the nice shiny body the shampoo promised you.

What to do? Well, there are a lot of things you can do to avoid this fat-increasing, cancer causing menace. Stop storing, freezing, cooking, eating or microwaving food in plastic. As much as possible, use alternatives to plastic. Glass or ceramic is the best choice.

Eat organic. This avoids pesticides, herbicides and the xenoestrogens in animal feed that gets into your steaks, chicken breasts and eggs. Also avoid using pesticides or herbicides at home.  Buy personal care products that are certified organic by the USDA. Ditto for detergent for dishes and clothes. Avoid caffeine, because it raises estrogen levels in the body, which can contribute to the effect of xenoestrogens.

The best way to minimize damage from the chemicals and harmful substances in our food supply and in what comes in contact with our bodies, is by being very aware of what’s in them. Read labels. Research before you buy. Most of all, realize that it’s your responsiblility to do as much as you can to avoid what makes you fat and sick.

Studies show that people who eat breakfast lose more weight than people who skip it. One way to turn yourself from a breakfast-skipper to a breakfast-eater is by making sure that you have something that you’ll really WANT to eat in the morning.

Muffins are a great choice. They’re easy to eat right out of hand. They can be as healthy as you want them to be with the addition of fruits or veggies. Best of all, if you make them yourself, you can keep the calorie count to a minimum and the nutrition to the max.

Here’s a recipe that uses a boxed mix as a shortcut, although you could also use your own Oat Bran Muffin recipe. Just remember that this will probably change the calorie count.

The apricots can be exchanged for any similar fruit. Dried apple, pineapple, cranberries or blueberries are good substitutions. Also, you can vary the juice to suit the fruit that you use. Think cranberry juice cocktail or pineapple juice.

Apricot Muffins

Number of Servings: 9

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

1 box oat bran muffin mix or recipe for oat bran muffins, prepared according to directions except for the liquid

3/4 cup juice (apple, orange, etc)

1 large apricot, peeled, pitted and chopped

1/2 cup golden raisins

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 ºF. Use light olive oil to just coat 9 muffin cups. In a medium mixing bowl,

combine muffin mix and juice just until moistened. Do not over-mix. Gently stir in raisins and apricots. Spoon the batter into muffin cups until almost full.

Bake 12-14 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when you insert it into the center of a muffin. Remove muffins from pan and cool them on a wire rack.

Nutrition Facts

Servings: 9

Serving size: 1 Muffin

Calories: about 260 when prepared from boxed mix

If, like most people nowadays, you’re terribly concerned with keeping yourself and your kids completely germ-free at all times, you may want to reconsider. I’ve just read about some recent scientific discoveries that shore up my belief that cleanliness isn’t next to godliness, after all.

Here are some of the interesting stories I came across as I ankled across the internet doing research on the relationship between how healthy we are and how clean we are.

Helminthic therapy, or treatment with worms that are usually considered parasitic, is not something most of us would want to contemplate. However, it’s already being tried on autoimmune diseases, autism, MS, IBS and asthma.

Researchers are also interested in how it might affect inflammation in the body, even when there’s no obvious disease causing it. Patients are injected with worm ova at intervals, depending on the type of helminth involved and its lifespan. Reportedly, there is a high rate of improvement in some diseases, compared to conventional therapies, although there are side effects, sometimes severe ones.

I would think that the biggest hurdle would be just getting people to consider the idea of being injected with parasites that mankind has spent most of its history trying to eradicate, but I suppose if you’re sick enough, you can endure anything that promises a chance at a normal life. That is, if you can call hosting parasites for a few months to a few years normal.

Not quite as radical as the worm therapy,  getting dirty is looking like the way to go if you want to be healthy. Scientists have discovered that there’s a bacteria in the soil that encourages the human body to make serotonin. This little Prozac mimic also seems to be connected to a bacteria that causes tuberculosis, but further research is needed to determine the connection.

For now, researchers are working on whether the organism will be of use in fighting Depression. I’d say it might explain why those of us who garden always feel better after we dig around in the dirt for awhile, wouldn’t you?

And now, unfortunately, I have to report that although leech therapy is still hanging in there,  maggot therapy turns out to be slightly less successful than it first appeared to be. I know I was pretty chuffed about it, but we’ll all have to ramp down our expectations a little. While it does help somewhat at debriding, it’s not all that great at the healing part. Still, what can you expect from the larval stage of a fly anyhow?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The worm turns (blisstree.com)
• Is Crohn’s disease on the rise because we’ve eliminated hookworm infections? (boingboing.net)
• Maggot therapy hope ‘premature’ – BBC News (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Leeches Have Health Benefits But Not Beauty Benefits (shoppingblog.com)

It’s unfortunate that the words “holiday” and “stress” seem to go together nowadays, but they do. The financial meltdown that has us downsizing our holiday shopping lists and cringing every time the boss pokes his head out of the office to beckon someone into the unemployment line hasn’t done our nerves any favors.

This time of year is supposed to be about families and getting together with friends and relaxing, but that’s hard to do when you’re worrying that you’ll have to fit the Christmas tree in your car this year, because your home is in foreclosure. I can’t help you with the mortgage payments, but I can point you to some proven stress-reducers that have helped me through more than one rough patch.

My first line of defense is Ashwaganda. I discovered this Indian herb many years ago while doing research on Ayurvedic herbs. Back then, it was little-known outside of India, but now many natural health practitioners and even The National Institutes of Health have given it the thumbs up for stress relief.

I like it because it energizes me, rather than sedates me like some stress-relieving herbs do. If you’re prone to irritability and anxiety, this is a good herb to try. Even my nearest and dearest will testify to my crankiness when I’m stressed out, but they’ll also tell you that I’m a whole different person when I take Ashwaganda. Why, a child could play with me after I’ve swallowed 200 mg of the stuff with a glass of water.

Ashwaganda is also good for insomnia, because it boosts serotonin. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather do it with an herb than with an SSRI. I don’t know if it’s the extra sleep that helps with depression and anxiety, but I do know that unlike SSRI’s, Ashwaganda doesn’t have the love-life squelching side effect of libido loss and that’s definitely a mood lifter for you and your significant other both.

In addition to Ashwaganda, I can personally recommend the following for stress and winter depression:

• Light! If you can get outside, couple a walk in the sunshine with some fresh air for even more depression-beating power. If the wind is blowing a forty-knot gale, better sit in front of the lightbox for a half hour in the morning.
• Vitamin D. If you live in Maine or someplace like it, like I do, no way are you going to get your quota of the sunshine vitamin between October and April, so supplement. You might want to read the latest information about Vitamin D too. Many researchers think that we’re not taking enough to ward off everything from colds to cancer.
• Exercise. Yeah, I know, who the heck wants to go outside in nasty winter weather and walk 3 miles? Not me, that’s for sure. That’s why I have my trusty Gazelle Exerciser which stands beside my computer desk. True, over the eight years I’ve had it, it’s gotten about 4 years worth of workouts, but that’s better than none. Find something you can stand to do and do it, even if you only do it for a fraction of the time you’re supposed to. When it comes to exercise, any is definitely better than none. If nothing else, you’ll get your brain in gear.
• Socialize. We’re all working longer hours to try to stay solvent, but we know that life is about more than money. If you don’t have time to socialize with friends and family, you need to rearrange your priorities and your life. I know from personal experience that life is short and as we get older, we can’t depend on all of our friends and family being there from year to year. Make time for loved ones while you have them. It’s good for reducing stress and also keeps you from being a dull boy or girl.
• Sleep. I hear you. Who has time to sleep? Well, if you don’t sleep, you may be shortening your life and your quality of life. Sleep isn’t a waste of time, although many of us seem to think it is. It’s like taking our cars into the shop for repairs. Don’t do it with your car and it wears out. Don’t do it with your body… Well, you get the picture.
• Laugh. Life is a funny old thing and much easier to handle if we don’t take ourselves and the rest of the world too seriously. We get all wound up and scrunch down on our emotions so tightly until we’re frowning all the time and looking on the dark side. Find a funny movie and watch it with your kids. Go outside and throw a ball for the dog. Read a kid’s book. There are a lot of funny books written for children, so share them with your kids and recapture the joy that we lose as we get too old to be silly.

If all else fails, take a long, hot bath in a tub filled with lavender scented bubbles, while sipping a glass of wine. Close your eyes and pretend that you’re just starting a long vacation with an unlimited amount of money at your disposal. If you want to, add the latest Hollywood hunk to the scenario and daydream away an hour or two. If that doesn’t lower your stress level, I can’t help you.

It’s winter time again in the Northern Hemisphere and many people are suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Are you one of them? If you’re tired, depressed, cranky, craving carbs and low on energy, you’re not alone.

According to researchers, up to 10 percent of New Englanders report these symptoms and even people in the Mid Atlantic and Southern states suffer from them to a lesser extent. When the Northern Hemisphere is tipped away from the sun so that it doesn’t receive as much sunlight each day, many people report that it affects them.

So, what can we do? Well, maybe a trip to Spain or Italy if we can afford it. A couple weeks of lying around the French Riveria or drinking coffee in a sidewalk cafe in Provence probably wouldn’t hurt. But if, like me, you can’t quite afford any of that and have a job you have to show up for each day, there are alternatives.

Many people report that they feel better after 2-6 week’s worth of lightbox treatments. Lightboxes are – well – boxes with flourescent lightbulbs in them. You sit in front of them for a few minutes each morning and they stimulate the natural hormones that sunlight stimulates. People who use them report that they sleep better, have more energy and have reduced carbohydrate cravings. They range in price from under $100 to over $500. So why can’t we just sit under a bright light, which is much cheaper?

Unfortunately, even the brightest light in our homes isn’t bright enough to replace the light from the sun. Lightboxes are designed to provide the equivalent to an hour’s worth of sunlight in the morning on a summer’s day. That’s what most people need to produce serotonin, the hormone that regulates many body functions, including sleep and appetite.

What else can you do if you suffer from SAD? Well, don’t just stay home sinking deeper into a routine of sleeping and eating too much. Get out and move around, even if that’s the last thing you feel like doing. Visit friends. Walk around the mall window shopping. Exercise is good for SAD symptoms. Go to the library or a bookstore and get a new book that everyone is talking about. Then join a reading group and talk about it with other people.

Sampling perfume and sniffing candles is aromatherapy. Taking a bath with stimulating bath oils in it is another way to perk up. Using new and exotic spices for cooking can substitute for overeating and give you a lift. Anything you do to stimulate your senses will help your energy level and give you a reason to stay awake.

Whatever you do, don’t just sit around, watching tv and eating and drinking too much. Force yourself to do things and you’ll find after awhile that you’re doing them because you want to. Get through January and February this way and your SAD symptoms will diminish as spring sunshine beckons you outdoors.

As soon as possible, get back into gardening or walking or just puttering around the yard. Get out into the sunshine while you can. Natural sunshine is nature’s best remedy for the blues.