Is sugar toxic?

Excellent article:  Is sugar toxic?  Worth the read.

Maternity Leave

I’m on maternity leave until the beginning of August 2011. Until then, please see one of my colleagues at the Vancouver Wellness Centre.

Preventing car sickness for your kids

Want to avoid using medication for motion sickness?  I find it’s often necessary to combine natural treatments, so try using these strategies together:

Look outside and ahead

Have your kids look constantly ahead (not to the sides), outside the car at the environment, rather than inside the car.  This creates balance between their eyes and organs within the inner ear, which helps prevent the motion sickness.

The inner ears respond to the car’s movement and so if a child’s eyes focus within the car, as the car moves or goes around a corner, the brain receives one type of signal from the ears and another type of signal from the eyes, about where it is in space.  These differing signals to the brain leads to the nausea.

Keep the kids looking outside and ahead by playing games identifying certain types of cars or special license plates.  That means, avoid reading and playing computer games, which brings the focus back inside the vehicle.  It may help to have them sit in the front seat as it’s best to look ahead rather than to the sides.

SeaBands

Try Seabands for Children which work for many kids.  It’s a wrist band that uses acupressure to stimulate specific areas of the wrist’s nerves to prevent nausea. Research shows they are more effective when the that wrist area is moved around so don’t have them sit completely still.  Interestingly this spot on the wrist corresponds to the acupuncture point used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for treating nausea.

Ginger

Gravol now makes a Natural Source Ginger Soft Chewable Lozenges for Anti-Vomiting/Nausea for children.  Take it 30 min before departure and during the trip as needed.

Homeopathy

Cocculinum by Borion, available in many healthfood stores and pharmacies that sell homeopathy.  Cocculinum is a blend of various anti-nausea homeopathic remedies. Follow the dosing on the package.

Relaxation

Pop in a relaxing cd that uses visualizations or calming breathing exercises. For example, this children’s CD is great for teaching them how to relax in stressful situations.  Mental stress plays a role in motion sickness (feeling nauseous or vomiting or being worried about experiencing motion sickness from previous experiences).  Relaxation, especially through deep breathing, helps break this cycle of mental and physical stress.

Finally, if they do get sick, stop for awhile and have them lie down with their eyes shut.

Mental Health: an innovative treatment

I went to the Vancouver Public Salon this week.  It’s a collection of speakers giving short talks on a wide variety of interesting topics.  Their moto is: “Interesting People. Interesting Ideas. An evening to inspire and educate.”

Check out what one of the speakers, David Granirer is doing:  Stand Up for Mental Health, is a health project that teaches people with mental illness how to do stand up comedy.   An unlikely approach and I admit, not the first therapy that would have come to my mind.  But it’s a wildly popular class with training now all around Canada and the US, including Vancouver, Victoria, Courtenay, Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Fort Frances, Guelph, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax.

“There’s something amazing about having members your community take the stage at an event and rock the house, says Granirer. It’s incredibly empowering and a great way of fighting public stigma. Most so-called normal people would never want to go anywhere near stand-up comedy. Seeing people with mental illness do it forces the audience to re-evaluate their perceptions of and prejudices against people who have a mental illness.”

“I’ve had students overcome long standing depressions and phobias, not to mention increasing their confidence and self-esteem. There’s something incredibly healing about telling a roomful of people exactly who you are and having them laugh and cheer.”

“Seeing people talking about their mental illness through comedy would have made such a difference to me [at the point in my life when I was suffering from depression]. To have mental illness brought out of the closet in that way, to have role models who were funny and courageous would have been huge in helping me to overcome my shame.  I remember going around thinking, ‘I am nothing, I am no one.’ My whole personality changed from being an extrovert to a hermit who isolated and avoided people. I’d be walking down the street and see someone I knew and run around the block to hide from them.”

Says David, “I got tired of all those self-help books that say you have to be completely confident and spiritually centered in order to succeed. I think those books set people up to fail. I’m basically a neurotic guy, and my fear and anxiety are a fabulous source of motivation. And I think there are lots of people out there like that. We need to be able to celebrate our neurotic ways of getting things done rather than feel ashamed.”

Here is the local calendar if you’re interested in catching a show or want to learn more about the program.

What you need to know about your breast density, breast cancer and mammograms….

I highly recommend listening to this TED talk by Dr. Deborah Rhodes, an expert in managing breast cancer risk.

The density of your breasts determines how well a mammogram will pick up a tumour. Breast density decreases with age but many, many women, especially younger women who haven’t reached menopause, have dense breasts that reduce the efficacy of a mammogram.

Based on the current available technology, for women who haven’t gone through menopause and who have dense breasts, it is recommended a digital mammogram is used, rather than the film or regular mammogram, as this increases the ability for the radiologist to see the difference between breast tissue and a tumor.

Because x-rays are influenced by breast density, Dr. Rhodes started looking into other detection methods that didn’t use x-rays.  She and her team developed a breast cancer detection device using very low level gamma rays (which results in the same radiation exposure as a mammogram).  The MBI, the gamma ray tool she and her team developed, can capture very tiny tumors in dense breast tissue and can detect three times as many breast tumors as mammography in high risk (high breast density) women. She advocates the use of the MBI as an additional tool, not a replacement to mammograms.

Please watch this short talk and learn some key points every woman should know about breast cancer and breast density.

Detoxify, Balance and Rejuvenate

Although at times it may seem cliche to make New Year’s resolutions, there is something very inspiring and therapeutic about using the start of a new year to spark other new starts.

Why not start feeling better about yourself and your everyday life?  Why not try to eat healthier, become more fit, and feel energetic? The problem can sometimes lie with maintaining these goals.  So here are a few tips to help keep you on track:

How to keep your goals

1. Break your goal down into a series of smaller and more quickly reached goals.  It’s much more motivating to start and keep forging ahead when you see that the tasks can be finished quickly.

2. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks, big or small. It is well researched that people who have accomplished much also experience failures and setbacks, just like everyone else.  The unique difference with these people is they keep going and don’t let the setbacks keep them back.  So keep going!

3.  Track your progress and reward yourself along the way.  Take pleasure in what you do accomplish.  This causes certain hormones to be released which creates a positive-feedback-cycle in the brain, and makes you want to continue.

Weight loss on your list of goals?

If one of your New Years resolutions is to lose weight or detoxify, then you need to learn more about the new cutting-edge weight loss program I am offering.

The Healthy and Active weight loss program is based on the latest research between the relationships of metabolism, hormones and nutrition.  You can’t have a healthy weight without balanced hormones.

The program restores your metabolism, balances your hormones and activates your immune system to help keep the weight off.  The Healthy and Active Weight Loss Program was developed in Germany and is used by over 800 medical practitioners and doctors in Germany, the UK and Canada.  Read more about it here.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll have what you’ve always had.” ~unknown

Healthy and Yummy Banana Cake – Healthy holiday dessert

Banana Cake - this time I put some plums on top

This is my favourite banana cake recipe. It is incredibly simple and feels great to eat a second helping guilt free.

I’m certainly not suggesting you replace your Christmas pudding but here is a healthy suggestion for one of your holiday meals.

Recipe below:

Ingredients

• 1 cup bran
• 1 cup milk (almond or other)
• 1 cup wholemeal self-raising flour (or use half whole-wheat and half
• buckwheat)
• 2-4 ripe bananas (very ripe works best)
• 1 cup chopped dried fruit and/or nuts: prunes, almonds, figs, rasins,
• sunflower seeds.  You could also try fresh fruit like apples, etc

Preparation

• Heat oven to 180 C
• Soak bran with milk for couple min, then add other ingredients.
• Mix well.
• Pour into greased baking/caking pan or tin loaf (works as a loaf or flat as a cake)
• Bake for 1-1.25 hours (until sharp knife comes out clean)

More healthy recipes

Kale Soup – Healthy holiday dinner

Healthy and tasty soup with lots of Greens

Ever wonder if there was any way to make kale taste good?  Try this soup.

Recipe below:

Ingredients

• 750g Kale (approx. 3-4 cups)
• 350g potatoes (approx. 2 cups)
• 1 onion
• 3 carrots
• 1 garlic
• 50g butter
• 125 ml cream (approx. 1/2 cup)
• 1 litre broth (msg free)
• salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste

Preparation

• Cut kale in stripes, wash, blanché in saltwater (cook quickly for 3min or so)
• Peel potatoes and carros and dice
• Dice onion and garlic
• Fry onion and garlic in butter
• Add kale, carrots and potatoes and saute for a few minutes
• Add broth and cook until soft
• Puree it all and add cream
• Season with nutmeg, salt, pepper

Consider adding a small piece of chicken or fish on the side, to accompany the soup. For example, sprinkle basil, salt and pepper, and drizzle grape-seed oil on a piece of chicken and pop in the oven for approx. 30 min.

More healthy recipes

Whole Foods in Canada will stop selling non-sustainable fish

An update on where to buy fish:

Whole Foods will stop selling species of seafood from sources that are non-sustainable by April 22, 2013 (Earth Day).  In Canada, Whole Foods stores are working with the SeaChoice organization and their labelling system that shows which species are sustainable harvested.

SeaChoice has a colour-coded labelling system that allows you to see which species are sustainably harvested. Download the wallet sized chart you can carry with you.

I’d love to recommend some local, independent fish shops – please let me know when you find sustainably harvested fish in Vancouver.

Great deal at our clinic – today only through Groupon!

$69 for a Naturopathic Sapphire Microdermabrasion and Cool Light Therapy Treatment at West Vancouver Wellness Centre ($185 Value)