Recently I had the honor of hanging out with the dynamic duo behind Transformation Cafe, host Robin Masiewicz with co-host Amy Frost. The conversation centered on natural ways to overcome stress-induced fatigue, including the superheroes of the herbal world, adaptogens.
So, pour yourself a comforting cup of tea and join us as we explore the herbs that can help your body “adapt” to the moment. Does your body need a pick-me-up or does it need to relax? The adaptogens “know” what you need at the moment and help restore your body to a healthy balance.
Winter has shed her mantel and given way to the rebirth and rejuvenation of spring! Learn how to tap into the energy of this season by participating in this FREE online course. You’ll learn simple ways to use diet and lifestyle to…
Enhance your energy
Boost productivity
Clear brain fog
Rejuvenate your skin
During this 60-minute self-directed course, I’ll answer these questions and more:
What special role do B vitamins play in energy production and what foods contain them?
Why does time in the sun matter and how to do you safely get your daily dose?
How can you use naps and other sleep strategies to bolster your energy throughout the day?
What special needs does skin have as the season transitions from winter into spring?
The first five (5) people to register for this online course will receive a $125 gift card from Enhanced Health Solutions redeemable for coaching services and online classes.
Sign up to take this course at your own pace by registering at Teachable.com. Attendance is free and you’re welcome to invite guests (simply share the link to this event).
Many of us start a new year with a commitment to self-growth and self-improvement. I admire this habit and take this action myself.
I take a slightly different approach than the traditional goal and resolution setting most people equate with the New Year. I shared my approach, RISQ Take, on the radio show Transformation Cafe in December 2018.
Recently, I began writing a new post and realized the 2018 post did a thorough job covering the topic. So, rather than rewrite, I’m reposting the radio links and the support materials.
It’s National Relaxation Day, a holiday initiated on August 15, 1985, at the prompting of nine-year-old Sean Moelle of Clio, Michigan (Levine, 2017). This young person noticed that constant work without any down time could make us ill. Science supports his conclusion: too much work and no play can lead to chronic stress which contributes to the development of such diseases as insulin resistance, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension. In fact, the cardiovascular effects of stress increase your all-cause mortality risk by two to three times and decrease life expectancy by several years (Guilliams & Edwards, 2010, p. 7).
Last year, I observed the holiday by chilling out with an afternoon tea break. This year, I’m taking time to get outside and play for at least 15 minutes. Why play outdoors? Research has shown that humans experience reduced stress levels and increase overall health when engaging in activities in nature. A study conducted in Japan performed on the physiological effects of forest bathing showed that forest-like environments could lower concentrations of cortisol, reduce pulse rate, decrease blood pressure, increase parasympathetic nerve activity, and lower sympathetic nerve activity compared with city settings (Park, Tsunetsugu, Kasetani, Kagawa, & Miyazaki, 2010, p. 25).
Here are a few ideas of outdoor group activities you can enjoy:
Shooting hoops
Tossing a Frisbee
Playing corn hole / bean bag toss
Bocce ball
Badminton and tennis
Group games such as Simon Says, Red Rover, and tag.
No one to join you in play? Solo play also has a positive impact on health and stress management. Try skipping, doing a few somersaults and cartwheels in the grass, rolling down a slope of the lawn, or swing on the monkey bars at your local park.
What will you do for yourself today to observe National Relaxation Day? Please share your ideas in the comments section.
Bibliography
Guilliams, T. G., & Edwards, L. (2010). Chronic stress and the HPA axis: Clinical assessment and therapeutic considerations. The Standard, 9(2), 1–12.
Park, B. J., Tsunetsugu, Y., Kasetani,
T., Kagawa, T., & Miyazaki, Y. (2010). The physiological effects of
Shinrin-yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere or forest bathing): Evidence from
field experiments in 24 forests across Japan. Environmental Health and
Preventive Medicine, 15(1), 18–26.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12199-009-0086-9
Join Amy Lynn Frost and me for this week’s practical self-care action. This week, we’ll be practicing a virtual tea ritual each day. This mindful exercise serves as both a method for reducing stress and hydrating the body. Want to join us?
At 3pm (PDT) each day this week, make yourself a cup of tea as a self-care practice to enhance your well-being. Engage all of your senses in the process:
While having a nice chat with my friend Amy Frost this Sunday, we realized that we had allowed some of our daily self-care rituals to fall by the wayside. One of our favorite rituals involves us simultaneously preparing and enjoying a cup of tea at 3:00 pm each week day from our respective offices (mine in Mountain View, CA and hers in Las Vegas, NV).
We decided that this week we would re-institute this meditative tradition. We committed to do this ritual every day for the next 5 days. No big, long-term commitment. Just one small step towards enhancing our health through a simple meditative exercise that takes all of 5 minutes to perform. This hands-on experience provides both our body and our mind with a respite from the hectic work day.
As we chatted about self-care in general, we came back to a topic for which we both have a great passion: making self-care easy and practical. We all face a variety of constraints that can get in the way of self-care, including bandwidth, motivation, and financial pressures.
So, we pressed our “Easy” buttons and came up with the idea of a Weekly Health Quest to share health-enhancing actions that anyone can do in the real-world of deadlines and packed calendars.
How the Weekly Health Quest Works
Each Monday we’ll share on our Facebook pages (Catie’s Page and Amy’s Page) a Health Quest, an action we commit to take daily that will promote our personal well-being. We invite you to join us on the Health Quest and share your experiences via comments on the post. Amy and I will do likewise.
Together, we can support each other in practicing self-care on a practical level. Will you join us?
I have a bumper crop of rainbow Swiss chard in my veggie garden. I gathered an armful for lunch. Now I’m on the hunt for what to make with these dark leafy greens. Rather than rely on my go-to-greens recipes from Rebecca Katz, I decided to look around in my cookbooks and my favorite blog sites for inspiration.
During my hunt, I came across this recipe from Mark’s Daily Apple. It looks delicious and is definitely nutritious!
Antioxidant protection due to the high content of vitamins A (as beta-carotene), C, and E, and the minerals manganese and zinc. These micronutrients along with many phytonutrients help squelch the formation and damaging action of reactive oxygen species(e.g., oxidative stress or internal rusting).
Anti-inflammatory agents (i.e., beta-carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin, quercetin, and kaempferol) lower the risk of chronic unwanted inflammation by altering the activity of certain enzymes or preventing the production of pro-inflammatory messaging molecules.
Promotes blood sugar regulation due to the 3.5+ grams of fiber and 3+ grams of protein per cup. Fiber and protein help regulate the rate of digestion and assist with motility of food through the digestive tract.
Support bone health as a result of the calcium and vitamin K1 Swiss chard contains. Vitamin K1 (phylloquinone) helps prevent excessive activation of osteoclasts, the cells responsible for breaking down bone. Also, the intestines can convert dietary vitamin K1 into vitamin K2 (Okano et al., 2008) , a nutrient needed to activate osteocalcin, the major non-collagen protein in bone (Maresz, 2015).
Protects the cardiovascular system by helping inhibit arterial calcification and arterial stiffening as well as optimizes calcium use in the body (Maresz, 2015).
What’s your favorite Swiss chard recipe? Please share in the comments.
REFERENCES
Maresz, K. (2015). Proper Calcium Use: Vitamin K2 as a Promoter of
Bone and Cardiovascular Health. Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal,
14(1), 34–39.
Mateljan, G. (2015). The world’s healthiest foods: the force for change to optimal with health-promoting foods and nutrient-rich cooking (2nd ed.). Seattle, WA.
Okano, T., Shimomura, Y., Yamane, M., Suhara, Y., Kamao, M., Sugiura, M., & Nakagawa, K. (2008). Conversion of Phylloquinone (Vitamin K1) into Menaquinone-4 (Vitamin K2) in Mice TWO POSSIBLE ROUTES FOR MENAQUINONE-4 ACCUMULATION IN CEREBRA OF MICE. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 283(17), 11270–11279. https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M702971200
As part of the StressLess for the Holidays series hosted by Transformation Cafe, Robin, Amy, and I discussed the Pre-resolution Solution. What is the Pre-resolution Solution? Simply put, it is a process that helps you leverage your 2018 results (or lack thereof) to craft your goals for 2019 and define an effective action plan. During this process, you…
Acknowledge your achievements in 2018
Learn from your hits and misses
Identify and secure the resources needed for 2019 goals
Build a doable plan
Create a contingency plan
What are the steps?
The Pre-resolution Solution process has five steps, what I call RISQ Take:
The 5-step process for making your pre-resolutions.
We discussed each of the steps in detail during two recent sessions (Dec 11 and 18) of Transformation Cafe. In case you missed the sessions or want to listen again, click on the audio files below or download them to listen later.
Transformation Cafe – The Pre-resolution Solution (Part 1)Transformation Cafe – The Pre-resolution Solution (Part 2)
Click the picture below to download the presentation that outlines each step of the process.
Added sugars can lead to health problems such as weight gain and obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease (CDC, 2016). Added sugar refers to human-made sweeteners included in packaged foods. These sugars do not naturally exist in whole foods such as fruit and full-fat milk. On the food label, added sugar goes by many names: brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar, and sucrose. In the USA, women ages 51-70 consume approximately 474 kcal of added sugar daily (National Cancer Institute, 2018) or the equivalent of 29.6 teaspoons!
Refined sugars and artificial sweeteners provide no nutritional value yet your body must use nutrients to metabolize them. A diet full of the empty calories provided by refined sweeteners (real or artificial) contributes to the nutrient depletion already set in motion by chronic stress.
Furthermore, the sugar-laden diet contributes to insulin resistance. The abundance of refined sugars causes excessive blood sugar which the body will address by secreting more and more insulin. The blood sugar imbalance caused by sweetener-heavy diet exacerbates the development of insulin resistance triggered by chronic stress!
“Unless you avoid packaged and processed foods entirely, you probably eat way more sugar than you think! The foods available in today’s grocery stores are a veritable minefield, with added sugars hidden in nearly everything – bread, pasta sauces, salad dressings, “natural” peanut butter, “healthy” cereals, and even deli meats.”
Diane Sanfilippo, The 21-Day Sugar Detox (p. 11)
What to do?
Purge your kitchen of all added sugars. Read the label of all packaged food in your fridge, freezer, and pantry. Toss any products that contain refined and artificial sugar. The table below lists the many names for added sugar.
Choose less-refined naturally-derived sweeteners in moderation. Raw honey, molasses, and 100% maple syrup do have some micronutrients but they are still refined foods. If you must use a sweetener, opt for less-refined sources rather than white table sugar or the artificial sugars.
Preferred choices (use organic when possible):
Dates
Fruit juice (real, fresh)
Honey (raw)
Maple syrup (dark)
Molasses
Stevia (green leaf or extract)
(Table source: Sanfilippo, 2016, p. 73)
Swap out sugar-laden condiments for primal-approved versions. Commercially prepared mayo, ketchup, and even mustard can contain added sugars AND industrial seed oils. Marinara and other pasta sauce also often have added sweeteners to compensate for the use of less-than-ripe tomatoes.
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