Staying healthy and keeping things moving

I’ve long believed that good health depends on eating a proper diet, getting plenty of exercise, keeping a positive attitude, and avoiding stress as much as possible. That includes acknowledging our emotions as they arise but not allowing them to control our behavior. Feelings are to be felt and to be recognized as messengers to our rational side that something in our past has triggered a reaction. There is the tendency to blame the person or event that has triggered the feeling and to lash out, but that only causes more pain for ourselves and those around us and leaves us stuck in our patterns. There are many approaches to personal growth that can be effective in helping us to become more happy and whole. I leave it to the reader to seek them out.   

But this essay is about a specific physical problem I’ve had and how I’ve been dealing with it. With advancing age, problems with constipation become more chronic and worrisome. Bowel movements often become less regular and more difficult, the elimination urge less intense, and stools drier and sometimes hard to pass. Over the past few years that has been my own experience. “I’ve tried everything” as they say, and had not found a satisfactory solution, until recently. Although I’ve gotten results from herbal laxatives, magnesium supplements and glycerin suppositories, I’ve been concerned about becoming dependent upon them from continual use.

Now I think I may have found the answer I’ve been looking. It involves the addition of plain wheat bran (not bran cereal) to my diet. I’ve been using it now for several weeks, including it almost daily in many of the things I am accustomed to eating, plus a few new ones. I’ve been adding some bran to the smoothies I make to pour over my homemade granola a few mornings each week, and when I make pancakes or waffles I substitute bran for about a quarter to one third of the flour. I like to bake and I’ve started making bran muffins and it seems that if I eat one or two the next day I have better regularity, stronger urges, and softer stools. Bran, which I buy in bulk at a local supermarket, is inexpensive, has an excellent nutrient profile, and works even better than the expensive fiber supplement that I had been using previously.

Besides the consumption of bran as I’ve described, I take most mornings a teaspoonful of the magnesium supplement, Calm, which is a powder that fizzes when warm water is added. I think that may also be a factor in my bowel improvement but I will try gradually reducing the frequency to see if that makes any difference.

The muffin recipe I use has been adapted from one I found at https://www.tasteandtellblog.com/classic-bran-muffins/#tasty-recipes-49688. I’ve reduced the amount of sugar because I find that most recipes make things much sweeter than I like, and because I add raisins which are naturally sweet.

Here’s the recipe in case you’d like to try it.

Classic Bran Muffins
Adapted from https://www.tasteandtellblog.com/classic-bran-muffins/#tasty-recipes-49688

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups wheat bran
• 1 cup buttermilk
  (You can simulate buttermilk by adding 1 Tbsp lemon juice to a cup measure and filling with milk to the 1 cup mark. You can do the same using almond milk instead of cow’s milk, which I’ve found provides excellent results.)
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil (I prefer olive oil or coconut oil)
• 1 egg
• 1/4  to 1/3 cup light brown sugar (or more depending on your taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup white or whole wheat flour (or a combination of both)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup raisins

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin with butter.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the wheat bran and the buttermilk. Let it sit for 10 minutes.
3. In a large bowl, combine the oil, egg, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add the soaked wheat bran mixture and stir to combine. Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir just until combined. (If the batter is too stiff, add a little more milk or water).
4. Mix in ½ cup raisins.
5. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups .
6. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 15-20 minutes.

Here’s the nutritional profile of wheat bran that I found on Healthline at https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/wheat-bran#what-it-is, which in turn is based on data provided at the Self Nutrition Data website: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/5742/2.

Nutritional Profile

Wheat bran is chock-full of many nutrients. A half-cup (29-gram) serving provides (1):

• Calories: 63
• Fat: 1.3 grams
• Saturated fat: 0.2 grams
• Protein: 4.5 grams
• Carbohydrates: 18.5 grams
• Dietary fiber: 12.5 grams
• Thiamine: 0.15 mg
• Riboflavin: 0.15 mg
• Niacin: 4 mg
• Vitamin B6: 0.4 mg
• Potassium: 343
• Iron: 3.05 mg
• Magnesium: 177 mg
• Phosphorus: 294 mg

Wheat bran also has a decent amount of zinc and copper. Additionally, it provides over half of the daily value (DV) of selenium and more than the DV of manganese.

Not only is wheat bran nutrient dense, it’s also relatively low calorie. Half a cup (29 grams) has only 63 calories, which is minuscule considering all the nutrients it packs.

What’s more, it’s low in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol, as well as a good source of plant-based protein, offering about 5 grams of protein in half a cup (29 grams).

Arguably, wheat bran’s most impressive trait is its fiber content. Half a cup (29 grams) of wheat bran provides almost 13 grams of dietary fiber, which is 99% of the DV (1).

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Klaus Schwab’s Brave New World

This guy is serious. What could possibly go wrong?

How to Wash Vegetables and Fruits to Remove Pesticides

Here’s a great article from the Food Revolution Network.
How to Wash Vegetables and Fruits to Remove Pesticides

An important takeaway for me is this:

Here’s a quick and easy way to wash veggies using baking soda:

For leafy greens

• • Fill a salad spinner with greens, then fill with water.
  • Add a teaspoon of baking soda and mix well.
  • Soak your greens for a minute, swish, dump, then rinse, and spin dry.
  • If you don’t have a salad spinner, you can add the greens, water, and baking soda to a bowl, let them soak, drain in a strainer, rinse, then pat leaves dry with a clean lint-free kitchen towel or paper towels.

For mushrooms

There is some debate in the culinary world about how to clean mushrooms.

Some chefs prefer to gently wipe mushrooms with a damp towel. However, to clean mushrooms thoroughly, you can gently scrub mushrooms using a mushroom brush and then rinse them quickly under running water. After that, blot the mushrooms dry with a clean kitchen towel or paper towel.

For other veggies

• • Fill a large bowl with water.
  • Then add a teaspoon of baking soda.
  • Add the veggies.
  • Soak for a minute or two.
  • Scrub with a brush.
  • And finally, rinse off the veggies.

How to Wash Fruits

Smooth skinned fruits, such as apples, nectarines, and cherries, can be washed in a baking soda bath the same way as veggies.

Berries can be rinsed under cold water in a mesh strainer, then gently patted dry with a clean kitchen towel or paper towels just before you intend to eat them.

Although your instinct may be to rinse off berries when you bring them home, doing so actually increases moisture and accelerates spoilage, microflora, and mold. Which is why it’s best to rinse them soon before you eat them.

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Is it necessary to force vaccines on children?

This article looks at the relationship between vaccination policies and children’s health and draws some surprising conclusions. It needs to be widely distributed and read.

Japan Leads the Way in Child Health: No Compulsory Vaccines. Banned Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) Vaccine

 

Eyes on the road

 

Your Health and Big Pharma

I don’t much trust the drug companies (or the medical establishment for that matter) and I take no prescription drugs. I’m especially suspicious of drugs that are advertised on TV.
I eat right, get exercise, and I trust my body to know what it needs and to use it’s built-in mechanisms to stay well. I make occasional exceptions after I’ve exhausted all other approaches and I’ve done my research. The last one was 4 years ago when I took antibiotics and anti fungal meds to deal with a severe digestion problem.

Everyone ought to read the new book, Do You Really Need That Pill?: How to Avoid Side Effects, Interactions, and Other Dangers of Overmedication by Jennifer Jacobs, MD. I happen to know her personally, as she is one of my bridge friends.

And watch this 60 Minutes expose on how drug companies and their minions in government put profits ahead of the public’s health and welfare: Ex-DEA agent: Opioid crisis fueled by drug industry and Congress.

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Promising cure for prostate cancer

This article, How highs and lows in testosterone levels ‘shock’ prostate cancer cells to death, reports some research that was conducted at John Hopkins University that suggests a cheap and effective treatment for prostate cancer may soon be available.

According to the article,
“researchers reported that results from 47 men who have completed at least three cycles of bipolar androgen therapy (BAT) showed that the strategy was safe and effective. Prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels fell in the majority of the men, tumours shrank in some men, in several the disease did not progress and this included some whose disease continued to be stable for more than a year. One man appears to have been “cured”, in that his PSA levels dropped to zero after three months and have remained so for 22 cycles of treatment, with no trace of the disease remaining. The researchers are planning to treat a group of 60 men in total.”

Read the full article here.

 

Your food and your health

I’m a longtime fan of Dr. Andrew Weil and consider him to be the foremost leader in the field of holistic health. He is Clinical Professor of Medicine and Director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. His medical philosophy leans heavily toward disease prevention, primarily through proper diet, exercise, and wholesome lifestyle choices.

I recently read his book,  Eating Well for Optimum Health: the essential guide to food, diet, and nutrition , and I strongly recommend it. You will find in this book important information about the various food groups—carbohydrates, fats and protein, critiques of the various “fad diets,” and specific advice on what to eat (and drink), what to avoid, and how to enjoy delicious wholesome foods. Healthy eating does not mean sacrificing satisfaction for health, quite the contrary, it’s just a matter of taking the time to inform yourself of a few basic facts, reading labels, and making the right choices. –t.h.g.

Chicken and your health, the latest from George Monbiot

Game of Chicken
Posted: 27 Jul 2017 06:56 AM PDT

Global trade once made us rich. Now it unleashes a full-spectrum assault on our well-being.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 26^th July 2017

What’s wrong with chlorinated chicken? It’s not as if chlorine is absent from our lives: we drink it in tap water every day. Surely it’s a small price to pay for the trade deal with the US the British government seeks? There are several answers to this question, that range from the instrumental to the existential. Let’s begin with the immediacies.

Washing chicken carcasses with chlorine allows farmers and processors to save the money they might have spent on systemic sanitation, throughout the chicken’s life and death. You need only dunk the meat in a chlorine bath to kill any accumulated germs. Does it work? It is true to say that rates of foodborne illness are similar between the EU and North America*. But chlorine-washed chicken, remarkably, could be the least offensive of the US meat regulations a trade deal might force us to adopt. It has been pushed to the fore because it’s less politically toxic than the issues hiding behind it.

While European Union rules, that currently prevail in the UK, take a precautionary approach to food regulation, permitting only products and processes proven to be safe, the US government uses a providential approach, permitting anything not yet proved to be dangerous. By limiting the budgets and powers of its regulators, it ensures that proof of danger is difficult to establish.

An investigation by Reuters discovered that chicken companies in the US use a wide array of antibiotics as routine feed supplements, both to prevent disease and as growth promoters. Among these drugs are some listed by the US Food and Drug Administration as “critically important” in human medicine. They’re administered to the chickens in low doses, creating perfect conditions for bacterial resistance and the emergence of new superbugs.

Further reports reveal that chickens are dosed with antihistamines, to make their meat more tender. Some carcasses contain steroids and ketamine. A hormone injected into US cattle to fatten them more quickly, according to the latest scientific paper on the subject, “promotes breast cancer cell growth”. And all this is before Trump completes his assault on the US regulatory system.

Trade agreements today have little to do with reducing tariffs, most of which have already been eliminated. Now they have two principal functions. The first is to extend intellectual property rights, that tends to raise prices and help the biggest corporations eliminate smaller competitors. The second is to “harmonise” regulations. When you have an asymmetric deal – between a very large country with low standards and a smaller one with higher standards – there is going to be only one outcome. We will end up with US standards. How many people in this country, offered a vote on the matter, would accept such a deal?

But there are still bigger issues in this game of chicken. On the day that the Adam Smith Institute published its misleading report, the Guardian carried an article by a consultant called Colin Cram, complaining that the UK is not engaging sufficiently in China’s Belt and Road programme: a series a vast infrastructure schemes the Chinese government is funding to facilitate its exports (Manchester’s Airport City is one component). The UK, Mr Cram claimed, “must” become a full participant in this programme, “massively revitalising its infrastructure so that all parts of the country, not just the south-east, can engage with these huge markets”. That’s because we suffer from a deficit of air pollution, noise, climate change and plastic waste. We must accelerate the Gadarene rush over the environmental cliff.

A study published by researchers at the London School of Economics last year discovered that the regions that voted most strongly for Brexit were those that had been hit hardest by “the Chinese import shock”. Anger towards immigration, they argue, became a proxy for the loss of manufacturing jobs and incomes: many of the strongest Leave votes were in places with the least immigration. Their data suggests that Brexit was globalisation’s blowback. But our government wants to seize this opportunity to accelerate the process. So much for taking back control.

So the existential question the chicken issue raises is this: why do we want more trade? What is it for? The old promise was that trade led to prosperity. But what if we have enough already? What if enhanced global trade, far from promoting well-being, now undermines it?

To people of Mr Cram’s mindset, rainforests and ancient woodlands, coral reefs and wild rivers, local markets and lively communities, civic life and public space are nothing but unrealised opportunities for development. Where we see the presence of beauty, tranquillity and wonder, they see the absence of palm oil plantations and soybean deserts, container ports and mega dams, shopping malls and 12-lane highways. For them, there is no point of arrival, just an endless escalation of transit.

Nowhere is a place in its own right: everywhere is a resource waiting to be exploited. No one is a person in their own right; everyone is a worker, consumer or debtor whose potential for profit generation has yet to be realised. Satiety, well-being, peace: these are antithetical to globalised growth, which demands constant erasure and replacement. If you are happy, you are an impediment to trade. Your self-possession must be extinguished.

So this is where the chickens come home to roost. Enhanced global trade now threatens our health, our sovereignty, our democracy. Once, it made us rich. Today it impoverishes us.

www.monbiot.com
* This article previously stated that the Adam Smith Institute’s claim that the rates of Salmonella infection in the two continents were “not out of line” was false. I had failed to notice that an item marked Non-typhoidal S.enterica in the WHO report cited by the ASI referred to a Salmonella species. My apologies.

What’s wrong with the American health care system?

This video, Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? goes a long way toward answering that question.