Archive for Personal Health
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Kate
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One of my favorite gifts this Christmas is a book by Sandor Katz “Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods”. I had forgotten how much I love all those fermented foods, and how easy it is to make them at home. What I didn’t know was how very good they are for our digestive tracts! However they have to still be alive to help us out. This means unpasteurized, and fresh so that these little organisms can re-populate our systems with the good stuff every day.
We don’t realize how dependent we are on these good guys until we start having them again – whole and living – and feel the changes for the better in our guts. There are many different ones in every culture around the world (pun intended). There are the vegetable krauts and kimchis, miso, tempeh, yogurt & kefir, cheese, pickles, meads, wines, and beers. There are also breads, vinegars, soy sauces, and fish sauces. The reason that they are always found on the table in many cultures, including ours just a few decades ago, is because they aid in digestion and elimination – not to mention helping manufacture B vitamins!
But those little organisms have to be live! So it being winter and loving all the heavier foods of winter, I decided to start some sour kraut in a crock on the counter in the kitchen! I’ve made kraut before, years ago, in a #10 crock with a large number of cabbage. It was for the whole winter and little did I know that by canning it, I was killing the best part! So this is a very small batch, less than one large cabbage, layered with sprinkles of sea salt and kosher salt.
A week later when I remove the weight and the plate which keeps the kraut under the brine, it has begun to ferment. The taste is a little bit sharp, salty, and still definitely crunchy to the teeth. Already the kraut tastes yummy and I can hardly wait to see how it tastes next week. I may have to try it every day!
After reading this book, I’ve discovered why my beet borscht was never the right amount of sour. I fiddled with the lemons and the yogurt or sour cream, and still not quite right. Now I find it contains saueruben, or fermented beets, done just like the cabbage kraut! I’ll let you know how it turns out after I’ve fermented the beets for a month or so…
Consider this to be another way to get back to basics and begin to enjoy real, live foods again. We all know the industrialized, factory foods are making us sick; now lets get some real and healing foods back in our lives and on our tables. Start anywhere, making sure the yogurt you buy is alive, making your own sourdough bread, starting sour kraut, eating unpasteurized and/or raw milk cheese. Or there is always making beer at home!
Posted by:
Kate
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A lot has been written about keeping your brain active and learning new things to activate your ‘little grey cells’ as we add more and more Birthdays. All of this is an important part of keeping the brain vital and young. New circuits are formed and old synapses are rejuvenated. This is all very well and good as far as it goes. For continued all around youthfulness all the rest of our body systems also need to be gently challenged as well.
What does this look like? Well, staying physically active is a part of this, of course. However there are some specific attitudes and intentions that are of particular importance. You don’t have to do hard physical labor to keep limber and fit. Yoga, T’ai Chi, and other forms of movement will achieve the same result without the wear and tear of hard labor. There is also a practice of body awareness that only takes your attention. It is one of the most beneficial additions to overall youthful well being and doesn’t cost a penny. You can practice it anywhere, at anytime as well!
Very simply you need to put your awareness on your body frequently and then pay close attention to what information you ‘hear’. Let me give you some examples of this practice. When I am drying myself after a bath or shower I am also appreciating every part of my body. I pay close attention to each part as I dry it off, thanking my arms for working, my legs for carrying me forward, my back for holding me together, and my skin for covering everything so well. It’s all about noticing me as my body and appreciating every cell. It’s about exuding gratitude as I notice each part, being thankful and grateful I have a body to get around in on this earth.
I also regularly listen to my body when it requests movement. This takes a little more attention since it is not in words at all. When my arm feels stiff, it is asking me to move it, loosen it up. When I am stiff getting up, my body is asking me to limber up. When I am stressed and weary at night, I put on some good dance music and move to the music. This is not always the same as dancing because when I feel a limit in my movement, a hitch in my back, I stop and move just that part slowly and gently until there is more freedom.It may look very odd however it feels very good.
As I move through my day I have made a practice of thanking my legs for carrying me, thanking my hands for opening and closing things, and thanking my whole body for putting up with so much from me! I’ll have sympathy for the parts that need that and praise for the rest. The more I do this, the more grateful I become, which makes me joyful. The more care and attention my body receives from me, the better I feel all over.
I also regularly see a very good ‘body mechanic’ (Osteopath, chiropractor, etc) and also get massages. These are not luxuries to me and my body, these are the very bare bones of being young!
Posted by:
Kate
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05/02/2009
There are a lot of different ‘bugs’ going around all the time, and with the spectre of flu raising it’s ugly head again this season I became concerned when I started to feel very uncomfortable intestinally last Wednesday. The food I was eating lost it’s taste; my stomach and intestines hurt; and I was uncomfortable bending over.
So I started to assess the situation with questions to my body, about my body. Does this feel like flu? No. There is no feverish feeling, no bone aches, and accept for the discomfort in my alimentary canal, no other complaints. Did I eat something spoiled? No. There is no rapid onset of pain, vomiting, diarrhea, or cramping – not to mention sweats, dizziness or general weakness. Hum-m-m, what does this feel like? My body has stopped digesting food and the food I ate has not gone anywhere!
How did I come to this conclusion? I am burping and it smells and tastes like what I ate more than three hours ago. Everything in my stomach should be gone in three hours, passed on to the small intestines. I am starting to bloat and it feels like the food in my stomach is fermenting instead of digesting. What to do?
Stop eating was the first step. Then I took some enzymes that cover all of the various foods I have in my system to help them digest fully. Next I took a mild antacid like Tums to calm and sweeten the stomach. Drinking ginger and/or peppermint tummy tea always helps.
[One of the best stomach and intestinal teas is made with bay leaf, mint, and periwinkle leaves (vinca minor). Put equal amounts of bay leaf and periwinkle leaves in a cup or teapot (i.e.: 1 big bay leaf and 3 smaller periwinkle leaves); add as much mint (peppermint, spearmint) as you like; and steep for 6 to 10 minutes. This can be drunk hot or cold as often as you wish. This is fine for all types of tummy complaints since it contains bay leaf for gas and bloating, periwinkle for relaxing the intestinal cramping, and mint as a soother for the whole alimentary tract. Other good tummy soothers you can add are ginger, licorice, fennel and anise.]
This time home remedies were not enough and after a whole day of this regime I realized it was probably a closed Ileocecal valve, the valve that goes from the stomach to the intestines. Sometimes it can also be a mucus plug that stops the ‘action’; however I was not particularly full of mucus at the moment. So off to my favorite chiropractor and sure enough that was the problem. Luckily this is a quick fix with a practitioner that knows what s/he is doing!
Ah-h-h-h! Feeling good again! It’s so nice to be able to assess myself and have a good idea of what I can do safely to either confirm or rule out various possibilities! It helps with my Grandchildren as well. Just last week my youngest Grandchild was cranky, teething, and ‘off her feed’. I was able to explain to my daughter that chances are she had a ‘mucus plug’ that was stopping her digestion and she would feel much better after she threw up. Several hours later when she suddenly did throw up, settled down, took a nap, then ate with a hearty appetite, my daughter wasn’t scared or concerned. It went exactly how I described that it would for a mucus plug.
Use deductive reasoning first when faced with a health concern. Use your intuition and try low-level, non-invasive and harmless alternatives before going to the emergency room. Ask a Grandmother! Use your own knowledge of your body before assuming the worst. And remember emotions, work, stress, poor eating habits and environmental toxins also play a large role in how we feel. Ask yourself helpful questions and use past experiences as good ways to assess something you are facing. One of my two doctor Uncles told me something very useful when I was a girl. He said to remember that Doctors could not keep up with every condition and disease as there was too much information! When you get sick, he went on, become the expert on what you have. Do the research yourself so that you get the care you need! Don’t depend on the Doctor to know everything! And that was back in the ’50’s!
