Nutritional Awareness – the dos and don’ts of healthy eating

by Caroline Shaw arch cnhc arica itec

AVOID (as much as possible)

‘Normal’ wheat that appears in most bread, biscuits, cakes, pasta and also a lot of processed prepared foods (check the label). Gluten in wheat is particularly challenging to break down and digest. It is being exposed by scientists as one of the leading culprits of leaky gut leading to chronic inflammation and a whole host of health debilitating side effects including Celiac Disease, Auto-immune disorders Diabetes and Dementia.

Alternatives: Quinoa, Buckwheat, Spelt, Amaranth, Oats, Rye. If you are gluten intolerant you may need to avoid Spelt, Rye and Oats.

Refined sugar and artificial sweeteners including fructose. These can appear in prepared foods and drinks (check the label). A diet high in carbs and sugar can set up an inflammatory microbiome leading to High blood sugar, High blood pressure, Heart disease, Diabetes, Hormonal imbalances, ADHD and Alzheimers. Research from the Mayo Clinic US, has found that diets overly rich in carbohydrates are associated with an 89 percent increased risk for Dementia.

Alternatives (in moderation): Raw honey, Manuka honey, Maple syrup, Green Leaf Stevia, Date Sugar, Coconut palm sugar, Coconut nectar, Fruit.

Cow’s milk dairy and its derivatives including cheese and yoghurt. Most cows are fed a cocktail of antibiotics, bovine growth hormones, and steroids. These get into the milk supply. It can cause inflammation in the gut resulting in Bloating, Gas, Constipation, Diarrhoea, Acne, Eczema, Hormonal imbalances, Infertility.

Alternatives: Almond Milk, Coconut Milk, Oat Milk, Rice Milk (organic where possible) Goats and Sheep’s’ preferably raw and unpasteurised milk (unless intolerant).

Alternatives sources of calcium: Almonds, Kale, Oranges, Broccoli, Figs, Spinach, Enriched rice, Almond, Hemp, Coconut milk, Sesame seeds, Tofu

Trans fats Artificially produced trans fats raise your LDL (bad) cholesterol. Sources of bad trans fats; Commercially baked goods: biscuits, cakes, muffins, pie crusts, pizza dough, hamburger buns. Packaged snack foods: crackers, chips, sweets. Solid fats: margarine and vegetable shortening. Fried foods; French fries, fried chicken, chicken nuggets, breaded fish, hard taco shells. Pre mixed products; cake mix, pancake chocolate milk. Anything with ’hydrogenated’ or ‘partially hydrogenated’ listed as an ingredient.

Alternative oils and fats: Extra virgin olive oil, organic sunflower oil, sesame oil, Flax Seed Oil, coconut oil (good for high temperature cooking). Butter only from grass fed cows or and goats milk butter. Organic Goat’s and Sheep cheeses preferably unpasteurized. Natural live goats, Sheep’s yoghurt, Coconut yoghurt, Kefir.

FOODS TO EAT

Organic where possible, Alkaline foods (75 per cent) including, Vegetables, Salads, Fruit, Seeds, Nuts

Proteins for Non-Vegetarians

Outdoor, Grass Fed Beef, Lamb, Venison etc

Organic/Free Range Chicken, Duck, Turkey etc

Wild responsibly sourced fish –Salmon, Tuna, Sardines, Pilchards etc

Proteins for Vegetarians

Quinoa, Buckwheat, Tempeh, Tofu, Beans, Pulses, Hummus, Chia Seeds, Organic soy beans, Hemp Seeds, Non wheat Ezekiel bread, Aramanth, Spinach, Guava, Peas, Lentils, Organic peanut butter, Pumpkin seeds, Sunflower seeds, Almonds, Walnuts, Hazelnuts, Pecans, Macadamia nuts.

Vegetables for Healthy Eating

Asparagus, Broccoli, Carrots, Cauliflower, Cucumber, Garlic, Kale, Onions, Jerusalem Artichokes, Beetroot, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Celery, Leeks, Lettuce, Radishes, Spinach, Parsnip, Turnip, Squash, Swiss Chard, Swede, Sweet potatoes, Peas, Green beans, Pak Choy, Avocado

In moderation from the deadly nightshade family (if intolerant avoid); Potatoes, Peppers, Tomatoes, Aubergine, Chillies,

Fruits

Acai berry, Apples, Bananas, Grapefruit, Blueberries ,Cantaloupe, Cherries, Cranberries, Fresh Figs, Grapes, Blackberries, Kiwi, Lemons, Mango, Oranges, Plums, Pomegranate, Raspberries, Strawberries, Papayas, Pumpkin Pineapple, Avocado, Tomatoes

Foods Containing Probiotics.

Sauerkraut, Kimchi and other cultured vegetables contain Lactobacillus Plantarum one of the most beneficial bacterial in your body and also Lactobacillus Brevis. Fermented, Raw Dairy Products such as Yoghurt, Kefir, Soured milk, etc, contain Lactobacillus Acidophilus, Bifidobacterium Lactis, Thermophilus, Bifidus, Bulgaricus. Unpasteurized Miso (fermented soybeans) contains the fungal microorganism Aspergillus Oryzae. Kombucha, (started by using a SCOBY –symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast). All help to create and maintain a healthy Microbiome.

Foods Containing Prebiotics

Raw Jerusalem Artichokes, Raw Dandelion Greens, Raw Garlic, Raw Leeks, Raw Onion, Cooked Onions, Raw Asparagus, Raw Banana, Raw Chicory Root, Acacia Gum

Organic Black Tea and Green Tea, Coffee and Dark Chocolate are rich in Flavonoids and Polyphenols which increase Bifidobacteria, helpful for gut permeability, cognitive function, and blood pressure.

SHIATSU MASSAGE EXCHANGE – JEFF DOCHERTY

The Idea
We are living in a time where we can find ourselves lost in a whirlwind of activity, where stress and strain seem prevalent.

Massage is ideally placed to help bring us back to a more grounded and calm sense of ourselves.

My idea is to form a weekly drop in where people can learn about and explore Shiatsu Massage. An exchange over 1.5 hour sessions where people can enjoy receiving and giving.

A Shiatsu exchange can provide a time and place in our week where we are able to let go fully, regenerate and experience ourselves anew.

Frequent, long held emotional states effect our health.
The Telegraph (20.09.16) reported that scientists have studied 16,000 people over 15 years with the conclusion that they are now calling for Doctors to treat anxiety as a major physiological health risk.
Men who suffer from anxiety it seems are twice as likely to die from cancer.

Why Shiatsu Massage
Shiatsu is an ideal group practice, with two key advantages. Firstly the recipient keeps fully clothed and secondly there are no lubricating oils. In addition no special apparatus is needed, just a comfortable floor covering to relax on. Its easy.

Learning the techniques is straightforward too. After all our sense of massage is natural and instinctive and Shiatsu follows our innate sense; it is only an elaboration of ‘rub and press’, ‘push and grasp’, literal translations of traditional Chinese Massage forms.

The case for Massage
In most traditional cultures the role of Massage was considered a more fundamental part of health care.
In the Tang Dynasty of China (618-907 AD) it is recorded that there were 56 massage doctors in the imperial hospital – more than the total number of herbalists and acupuncturists.

The compassionate power of touch and its effectiveness has been largely forgotten in the development of modern medical techniques, an approach that can make us feel objectified, disassociated and disconnected from our bodies.

Being grounded in our bodies is essential, it is literally the felt sense of how we are.

It is becoming increasingly clear that it is not possible to separate the body from the mind or heart. Our experience of ourselves tells us these sensations, thoughts and feelings are an integrated whole.

Understanding how essential bodily sensation is takes us back to the very beginning of our lives.

As an embryo movement and by extension touch is our first contact with physical reality. Before we can hear or see, we feel by touch.

An embryo begins to move between 5 and 6 weeks.The embryo’s first movements are both spontaneous and reflexive. A light touch to the mouth causes the embryo to reflexively withdraw its head. At the same time as movement and touch begin the cerebral cortex and nerve cells in the spine begin to develop.
This is how fundamental, how far reaching touch is.

We experience the world through touch and we embed our felt sense into our nervous system, into patterns of memory, constructions of mind. We embody our personal world and experience.

Just as any form of abusive touch can be potentially damaging, forms of supportive touch can be immensely healing.This can help explain why body work can have such a profound effect not just on the physical body, but on deep psychological and emotional levels.
We have devalued its importance to our detriment.

We now know that therapeutic touch automatically triggers a coordinated response between the nervous and endocrine systems. These hormonal circulations have far reaching effects.

For example Oxytocin, commonly referred to ‘The Love Hormone’ has a well-established reputation in facilitating bonding, eliciting feelings of happiness, a sense of connection, trust, gratitude, enhancing our social functioning.Affairs of the heart.
It maybe an extraordinary complex and powerful hormone but it is released by the most natural of means- a hug will do it!

Oxytocin is released by touch, by Massage, and it is no suprise to find many oxytocin receptors secreted in the heart, where we feel the world.

So a Shiatsu Exchange can give us an opportunity to redress the balance of our rushed lives, calm the mind, soothe our nerves, release our tension. It can improve our sense of well-being and lighten the load. Shiatsu can change your felt sense and experience of yourself and that is quite a gift.

Starting on Fridays in January 2017.  Register your interest with Reception on 01242 584140. Contact Jeff on 07970303694 to find out more.

PSYCHOTHERAPY /COUNSELLING

Are you creating the space and time you need to reflect and find compassion for yourself as we enter into the darkness of Mid Winter?

If the time of year is evoking difficult feelings due to relationship dynamics or unresolved issues, perhaps you would like to explore this further in a confidential and supportive relationship.
Lisa Kimberley, Psychotherapist at Cheltenham Holistic Health Centre is now available on Tuesdays at the centre.
All new or returning clients who book in for an appointment with Lisa in December will receive an  initial consultation at the reduced price of £20.

Ongoing weekly sessions that are booked in advance for the New Year will also be reduced for the month of January, a block of four sessions will cost £150 for January only.
Contact Lisa on 07971 675432

Wishing you blessings, peace and strength. Lisa. 

“First, do no harm” was Hippocrates’ most famous words, and they are particularly important in the care and treatment of infants and children. Most people don’t know it, but most conventional drugs are tested on adults, and then, doctors estimate the appropriate dosage for children on such crude measures as a child’s weight.

The second main reason that parents bring their children to homeopaths is that children respond so well to homeopathic medicines. You can really change a child’s life, both physical and psychologically, with the correct homeopathic remedy. And you can help make a parent’s life much easier and much better.

How do children respond to homeopathic medicine?

Children respond extremely well to homeopathic remedies, even when the perfect medicine is not always prescribed

I talk to the child as much as possible, I watch the child, both in the waiting room, as she or he approaches me, and throughout the interview. I have a lot of respect for children, and I try to show them this respect by talking directly to them, and usually in a quite adult fashion.

Often parents need a lot of reassurance and relevant information to make a good choice for their children. The best way to treat parent’s fears about their children’s health is with education about the wisdom of the body and about certain acute symptoms as an important defence. Physicians and physiologists today recognize that fever is a useful response of the person’s body to infection. While it is true that certain high or long-lasting fevers need to be treated, such fevers represent an extreme minority of fevers in children.

The overuse of conventional drugs to lower fevers is concerning. Homeopaths assert that we create a lot of chronic disease when we suppress acute illness.

I am often amazed at how well and how fast homeopathic medicines work in fevers. I can and will refer the child for immediate medical treatment if fever is experienced in newborns (within first 4 months) that does not respond to homeopathic treatment within two hours, or if a fever in any child is over 40 degree Celsius and doesn’t respond to home treatment after 6 hours, or if high fever in any child leads to great lethargy and neck stiffness.

Children seem to get a lot of ear infections and, of course, antibiotics are the only treatment offered. Is there anything wrong with this?

Antibiotics may have a place in treating ear infections but not necessarily as a treatment of first choice. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines for the use of antibiotics in acute ear infections in children is actually that they should be avoided for the first three months. It may surprise some people to learn that a meta-analysis of the best studies on ear infection (British Medical Journal, 1997, 87:pp.466-74) found no benefit of using antibiotics as compared to placebo.

To make matters worse, some evidence suggests that administration of antibiotics lead to three times the number of ear infections as those children left untreated. Part of the problem with antibiotics is a basic premise of healing that is commonly ignored, that is, anytime you get something done for the body, the body doesn’t learn to do it on its own as well.

The long-term consequences are unknown and scary. This over-prescribing of antibiotics for both newborns and any child is a part of what I call “medical child abuse.” I look forward to the day that homeopathy and other natural medicine receive the appropriate acknowledgment.

What is the general benefit for children who are treated homeopathically?

Good homeopathic treatment during childhood can and will help create healthier teenagers Good homeopathic treatment will also help build healthier adults, physically and psychologically; all of which then helps to create a healthier world. This is homeopathy at work!

(Some of last section quoted from Dana Ullman)