Delicious greens recipe

Dr. Ben Kim has some wonderful recipes and I wanted to share this one with you as it is the best way I have found to make dark green vegetables delicious. I appreciate I may be in the minority who struggle with eating enough of these vegetables – something to do with the iron in them I suspect – but if anyone has my own aversion – or wants to get their kids eating more dark green vegetables then this recipe is a winner. Although many people eat them raw, cooking can help make vegetables like broccoli, kale, chard, spinach, and Asian bok choy easier to digest as it softens the fibre they contain and helps your body get the most of the vitamins and minerals It is actually his wife Margaret’s recipe and let me know if you enjoy it:

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 heads of broccoli, cut up into pieces
1 large or 2 small sliced courgettes
1 clove of garlic finely chopped or minced
2 cups organic vegetable or chicken stock Sea salt and pepper to taste

It is simple to make, you just heat the olive oil in a large lidded saucepan on medium and when hot add the broccoli and stir fry for a minute. Add the stock and garlic, put the lid on and once at the boil turn heat down low and simmer. Give it an occasional stir and once the broccoli has turned a bright green colour, wait a couple of minutes so that it develops a little bit of tenderness and then add the courgette plus salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until vegetables are tender and make sure there is a little bit of the stock left and serve that with it for maximum juiciness. Personally, I also add a dash of tamari or soy sauce for a bit of extra flavour, but if you do that then miss out the salt!

Massage after exercise – Not a good idea?

It is a given that if you exercise regularly that having a massage afterwards will be beneficial as it disperses the build up of lactic acid in the muscles and helps blood flow.

Apparently it’s not a given at all, but a widely-accepted myth that has not been really investigated until now. A team from Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada have found that massage actually impairs blood flow to the muscle after exercise, rather than the other way around.

As a great fan of the positive benefits of massage – though rather less so of exercise – I find this distressing as it gives you no excuse for a nice relaxing rub down. The theory that massage improves muscle blood flow and helps get rid of lactic acid is a firmly held belief by both the public and physical therapists – and certainly masseurs. However it is just a theory, no one has actually ever examined and proved it, until now when Kinesiology and Health Studies professor Michael Tschakovsky and MSc candidate Vicky Wiltshire undertook this study.

They are set to put the cat among the pigeons at the annual American College of Sports Medicine conference in Seattle at the end of May when their firm conclusion that massage actually impairs blood flow to the muscle after exercise, and that it therefore also impairs the removal of lactic acid will I am sure be hotly debated.

Meditation shows dramatic results for incontinence

It is no laughing matter, but ironically a laugh can be a real embarrassment if you suffer from incontinence. Sneezing and coughing can also cause leakage of urine and it’s something that affects around 5 million people in the UK. It’s not just your bladder that is affected either; regular incontinence can have other effects such as skin infections, sores and rashes. If you are getting up frequently in the night, then your sleep is affected and that can depress your immune system. In more severe cases sufferers feel ‘unclean’ and it affects their self esteem, sometimes leading to depression, and cause them to withdraw from social life and sexual activity.

Causes include infections and tumours, but the most common cause for women is the weakening of the pelvic floor muscles after childbirth, or as they get older.

There are many solutions available from the radical ones of surgery or drugs, but these do carry potential side effects. For example, the generic drug oxybutynin can affect the memory, make swallowing difficult, and been linked to blurred vision, constipation, drowsiness and confusion. The new generation of drugs are anticholinergics, generic name often prescribed is darifenacin and this has been linked to dry mouth, constipation, indigestion, blurred vision, decreased sweating leading to severe heat prostration, and abdominal pain. Natural methods have included commercially sold pelvic floor exercisers and simple home exercise plans to tighten the muscles. A new solution has just come from a Loyola University Health System (LUHS) study in the States which has found that meditation can be just as effective as drugs or surgery.

Meditation is usually associated with spiritual practice, or as a stress reduction technique, but whatever its purpose the effect is to use the brain to control the body. Meditation is known to be able to reduce blood pressure, but now it seems it can also control our bladders. One distressing feature of incontinence is the almost irresistible urge to urinate far more frequently than normal, and meditating helps control this impulse. This seems to be more effective for women than men, but certainly worth experimenting with for both sexes before taking drugs or resorting to surgery.

The study incorporated some cognitive therapy with meditation and visualisation focused on using deep breathing to relax the body. The average age of the study subjects was 62 and all had been diagnosed with ‘urge incontinence’ resulting from an overactive bladder. They practiced meditation by listening to a recording twice a day that took them through visualisation and relaxation exercises. Having done this twice a day for a fortnight, they also logged how many times they accidentally passed urine daily before and after participating in the study.

The researcher’s conclusion was that for the majority a dramatic improvement was seen. A sharp drop in the number of ‘accident’s was seen down from 40 to 12 which is very impressive, particularly when some subjects reported being able to leave home more often as they achieved a 98 percent leak-free day.

I don’t know what meditation they used, but if you want to try my meditation CD I would recommend you use the Blue Sky track and focus on visualising yourself going through a day being dry, comfortable and active. If you want to know more please visit www.catalystonline.co.uk/marketplace

Another simple technique is the ‘elevator exercise’ where you tighten and hold the pelvic muscles as you imagine them pulling upwards as if in an elevator. You ‘pause’ the elevator at each floor and hold and relax the muscles, then continue on up to the next floor. Doing this exercise of contracting, holding and releasing frequently during the day is also a good way of keeping the muscles toned and avoiding future episodes of incontinence.

MSG by any other name?

If you love the flavour – but not the accompanying headaches – of MSG (mono sodium glutamate), then here is a natural recipe to duplicate the flavour enhancing effect. Just mix together equal parts of Celery salt, Dill, Turmeric, Cayenne pepper and Paprika and use it to coat meat before cooking.

Help with inflammation

I am indebted to Julie for contacting me about a natural product she has found very helpful to reduce inflammation, pain and swelling in both adults, children and animals. It’s name is serrapeptase and as most diseases have inflammation as a major factor then it could have a number of applications and clinical use. This natural anti-inflammatory is derived from silkworms has been in use for over twenty-five years throughout Europe and Asia as a viable alternative to salicylates, ibuprofen and the more potent NSAIDs. Unlike these drugs, Serrapeptase is a naturally occurring, physiological agent with no inhibitory effects on prostaglandins and is devoid of gastrointestinal side effects.

For more information, and a free report on what serrapeptase can do, then visit the website at www.Serrapeptase.info

Mother-daughter breast cancer link

It was reported by the MLA University Health Network on 3 May that a unique mother-daughter study shows that the percentage of water in the breast could be linked to the risk of breast cancer in older women.

Breast density is an inheritable characteristic that is known to be a cancer risk factor and by using magnetic resonance to measure breast density in younger women the Canadian researchers at The Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research at Princess Margaret Hospital in Ontario. Higher blood growth hormone concentrations were also linked to higher percent breast water and results showed that each 5cm difference in height in daughters was associated with 3% increase in percent breast water, which suggests a mechanism by which growth might affect the risk of cancer. They believe this could help in developing prevention methods as breast density is a strong risk factor for breast cancer in middle aged and older women as the breast is most susceptible to the effects of carcinogens at early ages. Their findings suggest that by identifying the environmental and genetic factors that influence breast tissue composition in early life they may be able to develop safe and effective methods of prevention.

Childen and vaccination pain levels

If you have ever sat with a child having multiple vaccinations then you will know it can be a traumatic experience for all concerned. Now some new research may help reduce the pain levels, and make it an easier experience all round.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has carried out a study that reveals that if you give a child the least painful vaccine first, then that can reduce overall pain from multiple injections. If you want to pass this on to your doctor or clinic, the order they found most effective was to give the primary vaccine for diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, and Haemophilus influenzae type b (DPTaP-Hib) and the final shot was the pneumococcal conjugatevaccine. Giving them in this order definitely resulted in less overall pain than getting the pneumococcal vaccine first as this one causes most pain reaction.

As some parents do refuse vaccinations for their children because of the pain they cause, this could be a simple way of overcoming this problem. If you are interested, they measured the pain levels in two ways; first using the child’s facial expressions, body movements, and crying and also asked the parents to rate their child’s pain. Based on my own experience, I would just have used a sound meter!

Prostate and pomegranates

There’s new hope for men with prostate cancer when their disease doesn’t respond adequately to standard medical care. According to the results of a six year study just published in the Journal of Urology, pomegranate juice can lower PSA levels and slow down the progress of prostate cancer.

This was a two-stage clinical trial where each research subject had a rising prostate specific antigen (PSA) level after surgery or radiation therapy greater than 0.2 ng/ml and less than 5 ng/ml. The study participants were given eight ounces of pomegranate juice to drink daily for several years. Then patients who remained in the study and drinking pomegranate juice were compared to those no longer participating in the juice regimen.

Though both these groups of men with prostate cancer had demonstrated similar mean PSA doubling times at baseline when the study began, there was a clear and important difference in the groups after 56 months. The researchers are cautious about suggesting pomegranate juice could prevent prostate cancer, but anyone receiving treatment could add it to their diet and be getting a range of other health benefits.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK and over the last 30 years rates in Great Britain have almost tripled, although much of the increase is due to increased detection through widespread use of the PSA test. Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in UK men, after lung cancer, though happily the survival rate has more than doubled. Around 7 in 10 newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients now survive beyond five years whereas in the 1970s it was only 3 in 10.

Pomegranate juice benefits for everyone As it has very good antioxidant properties, it has been evaluated for its usefulness in fighting certain forms of cancer and been tentatively shown to reduce incidence of breast and skin cancer. It has many health benefits particularly for heart disease, heart attacks and stroke.

These include:

• it works well as a blood thinner
• is an agent for promoting blood flow to the heart
• reduces plaque in the arteries
• raises “good” levels of cholesterol
• helps lower “bad” cholesterol

Gold particles to treat tumours

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) researchers have been working on a difficult problem. Heat is an effective weapon against tumour cells, but the difficulty has been to heat patients’ tumours without damaging nearby tissues. The solution turns out be golden – in fact tiny gold particles that can home in on the tumour, and then, by absorbing energy from near-infrared light and emitting it as heat, destroy them with virtually no side effects.

Gold nanoparticles can absorb different frequencies of light, depending on their shape. Rod-shaped particles, such as those used in the research, absorb light at near-infrared frequency; this light heats the rods but passes harmlessly through human tissue. Once the nanorods are injected, they disperse uniformly throughout the bloodstream and then into blood vessels located near tumours which have tiny pores just large enough for the nanorods to enter. The nanorods then accumulate in the tumours, and within three days, the liver and spleen clear any that don’t reach the tumour itself.

During a single exposure to a near-infrared laser, the nanorods heat up to 70 degrees Celsius, hot enough to kill tumour cells, and at a lower temperature they weaken tumour cells enough to enhance the effectiveness of existing chemotherapy. Another use for this treatment is to kill tumour cells left behind after surgery. The nanorods can be more than 1,000 times more precise than a surgeon’s scalpel, and so could potentially remove residual cells the surgeon can’t get at.

The statistics on cancer are daunting. There are currently around 7 million people worldwide diagnosed and that number is projected to grow to 15 million by 2020. As the majority are treated with a combination of chemotherapy and/or radiation, they are subject to debilitating side effects because of the difficult in accurately targeting tumour tissue. At present, 99 percent of chemotherapy drugs are estimated to not reach the tumour, but the gold nanorods can specifically focus heat with a much greater accuracy to destroy the tumour.

Folic acid may help treat allergies and asthma

This is the season when allergies can begin to make themselves felt and among natural remedies available, including bee pollen, there is now new evidence that folic acid, or vitamin B9, may also suppress allergic reactions and lessen the severity of allergy and asthma symptoms. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, carried out at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in the US, and reported in the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.

The link between blood levels of folate – the naturally occurring form of folic acid — and allergies adds to increased evidence that folate can help regulate inflammation which is at the root of allergic reactions. This research showed that people with the lowest folate levels had a 30 percent higher risk of developing allergies and a 31 percent higher risk of allergic symptoms than people with the highest folate levels. On the asthma front, there was a 16 percent higher risk of having asthma in those with the lowest folate levels.

Asthma affects more than 5 million adults and children in the UK, and is the most common chronic condition among children. Environmental allergies have an even wider reach so anything that helps strengthen your system to resist them has to be worth considering, particularly if you are already suffering from allergies.

The researchers say it’s too soon to start recommending folic acid supplements to prevent or treat people with asthma and allergies, but you could check how many of the folic-deficiency symptoms you have from this list:

* Irritability
* Mental fatigue, forgetfulness, or confusion
* Depression
* Insomnia
* General or muscular fatigue
* Gingivitis or periodontal disease

Adult men and women (except during pregnancy) are recommended to have 400 micrograms of folate a day and many cereals and grain products are already fortified with it so you may be getting enough. If you think you might be deficient then you might want to increase, or add, excellent food sources such as broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, spinach, green peas, avocado, banana, lentils and nuts.

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