Wild Berry Muffins (gluten-free, paleo)

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Wild berries are all over the place right now!  If you are lucky enough to forage around and pick some, then you won’t regret it.  Otherwise, you could easily use any berry.
Wild Berry Muffins (gluten-free, paleo)
Ingredients:
6 eggs
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 softened butter
1/2 cup local honey
1 Tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup berries
zest from one lemon
Tbsp of fresh thyme (optional)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F.  Mix honey and butter together and then add everything else.  Fold in berries.  Fill muffin cups and bake for 30-35 minutes.  Allow to cool and enjoy.

Can Trampolines Improve Your Health?

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When I was a kid, my parents were pretty generous in the activity and toy department.  I honestly don’t remember wanting to do or be involved in something that they turned down…well Mom…because we all know who makes the decisions.  However, there was one line I couldn’t get her to cross, and that was getting a trampoline.  Back in the day you didn’t have to have the cages around them, but they did mess up a huge patch of grass.  So, that was a no-no in the beautiful backyard oasis department.  However, my friend that lived next door had one, and I’m pretty sure kids can jump on those things for hours without getting bored.  Ah the fond memories.

Fast forward 20 years later and I find myself at a trampoline park, bouncing my heart out with a few gems from the new generation.  I have read some articles about rebounding and how it’s good for your health, I’ve watched really funny workout videos where people are on trampolines with sweatbands, and I even had a small trampoline in my PT room at the chiropractic clinic to help with rehab, but is this rebounding thing actually good for your health?  Much of the studies done to prove that it’s beneficial were done of astronauts because when they come back to Earth, they were having issues with injuries trying to retrain their bodies to acclimate to gravity.

Anyway, that data basically says that the change in velocity that you receive when you rebound off of something has systemic health benefits.  However, other than that, I feel like the data out there really only shows the same amount of benefit you’d get from doing any other form of exercise!

The benefits that I could see over other forms of exercise are:

  • dispersed impact, so less injuries (although tell that to the kids that break their ankles landing wrong or on each other!)
  • it’s fun!  and doesn’t really require any skill
  • you could likely do it despite many types of injuries, so that’s a positive in rehab
  • it trains your feet, which we often support to the point of weakness when barefoot
  • you can get the same amount of cardiovascular improvement or more than running with less work from your heart

Conditions I love rebounding for:

  • Musculoskeletal rehab
  • Heart patients
  • Osteoporosis
  • Training the nervous system for balance and proprioception

Otherwise, I hate to burst the rebounding bubble, but I don’t think it’s any more beneficial for your health than other forms of activity.  I will say that I laughed the entire couple hours of jumping though and felt like a kid for second, so there’s that. So, before you invest in something that could take up lots of space or burn patches in your yard, decide if you’re just as excited to do another activity.  I may opt for an alternative, however, a little part of my soul is probably secreting still requesting a trampoline on every Christmas list.

My Favorite Paleo Recipes Using Strawberries!

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The best strawberries I have ever tasted are the ones out of my own garden and the one in this picture.  This little guy was straight out of the garden at a California vineyard.  Either way, I think it is because both scenarios mean the berries are fresh, perfectly ripe, and have zero chemicals.

Strawberries are in full swing, but they are something that have porous skin and therefore, absorb a lot of chemicals if they are sprayed.  If you have ever tried to grow berries yourself, you know that they ripen and get sniped by insects quickly if you don’t eat them first!  That’s why they tend to be heavily sprayed.  So, make sure to buy organic on this one!  I love getting organic strawberries by the flat from the farmer’s market because they are so cheap.  I’ll cut them up and throw them in the freezer for use throughout the year.  However, there are plenty of options to include them in your daily food, and you should try each and every one of the recipes listed below!! Eating in season is such an important (and overlooked) aspect of nutrition.  So, now’s the time to eat strawberries like they’re goin’ outta style because blueberries will be in season quickly!

Strawberry Shortcake Muffins

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Kale, Strawberry, Avocado Salad

Strawberry Jam

Strawberry Banana Breakfast Bowl

Balsamic Marinated Chicken with Strawberry Salsa

Stuffed Pineapple Teriyaki (Deconstructed)-paleo, GF

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Half of my enjoyment in traveling is to bring back everything that left an impression on me back to my life, share with the lives I touch, and create a more permanent memory of where I’ve been.  Food is a huge part of that, and I have been way too busy lately to create travel-inspired recipes, but I decided to take the weekend to get my life back in order.  This helped me carve out some time to experiment!!  My last business conference was down in Hollywood, FL and while at dinner one night, I have a roasted stuffed pineapple with shrimp.  It was the perfect marriage of summer flavors, and I wanted to share the idea with you guys!
As you know, I don’t have a ton of time these days to cook, but that doesn’t mean recreating the flavors isn’t completely doable and simple!  I created a simple teriyaki sauce to use, and the ingredients couldn’t be more simple for the deconstructed version.
Stuffed Pineapple Teriyaki
Ingredients:
Pineapple, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks
3 Bell peppers, seeded, cut into chunks
1 Red onion, chopped into chunks
2 Avocado, cubed
1 lbs. wild-caught shrimp
Sauce:
1/2 cup coconut aminos (or gf soy sauce)
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice
2 Tbsp of honey
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
Directions:
Place all the sauce ingredients together into a big ziplock baggie or glass container.  Place the pineapple, bell peppers, and onion in the bag to soak up the goodness.  You can go multiple directions here and make skewers with shrimp for grilling, you can grill it in a grill pan, or you can sautee it on the stove top over high heat.  If you sautee, place the veggies and pineapple in the pan until cooked through, add the shrimp for a few minutes so you don’t overcook it.  Top it off with fresh avocado.  You could serve this over rice or place in “pineapple bowls” if you want to be fancy!

Gardening for Beginners

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One of my favorite parts of summer is gardening, watching the plants grow, picking what they produce, and then getting to create a delicious dish that ultimately nourishes me and those I love.  Talk about being close to your food!  You know where it was grown, how it was grown, and you can’t get much more ripe than “just picked from the back yard!”  However, I know that many people think they don’t have time, it’s too complicated, or get overwhelmed at the idea of figuring it out.  I’m here to tell you that I am not a gardener, I have never researched it, I don’t know what I am doing, and yet I LOVE it and do it every year.  So, I’m here to share some basic tips because I think the single best piece of health advice I can give is for someone to grow their food.

Decide which is you:

  1. I have a space prepared and ready for a garden in my yard, but just haven’t done any planting
  2.  I have never had a garden and would have to create a space
  3. I don’t even have a yard, Dr. A

If you are:

  1. Then stop making excuses, go get some veggie plants (see below) and start planting
  2.  Consider buying an above ground garden box (or making one but we are keeping things simple here) and fill them with soil
  3.  Go get some pots, you can easily grow plants on your porch

I like to plant things that give me the most produce per plant.  Here is a list that I like to plant that will give you tons of produce to pick on a regular basis and it’s totally worth your money to plant it in the ground and make sure it gets watered:

These sort of need the ground:

  1. Summer squash like Zucchini and yellow squash- they need lots of room to sprawl; they produce in mid-summer
  2.  Winter squash like Butternut and spaghetti Squash- the need lots of room to sprawl, but I can keep butternut that I pick through winter in the house!; they are late summer, early fall producers
  3. Strawberries-this one can be fickle but I plant them in my landscaping and they come back every year with more berries
  4. Blackberries-Patience, these take 3 years to start making berries, so don’t even go there if you are going to move, but if you’re staying put, they will give you berries in your backyard! They come back every year

These could go in the ground or a pot:

  1. Cucumber-throw a cage around it, let it climb and produce like crazy all summer
  2.  Tomato- Throw a cage around it and it’ll produce all summer
  3.  Bell peppers- They all start out green, so have patience if you want red/orange/yellow
  4. Hot peppers- They will produce more than you could ever eat, so you’ll be giving tons away or drying them to make crushed hot pepper spices, etc.
  5. Kale- This an early producer and you will be able to start picking kale early and throughout the entire season into the fall
  6. Swiss Chard- This is an early producer and you’ll never have to buy greens at the store
  7. Herbs:  The ones that come back every year, I plant in the ground and make them part of the landscape: Sage, Chives, Thyme, Oregano, lavender, lemon balm. The ones that I have to replant every year either go in the garden or in pots: Parsley, Basil, and Mint (mint spreads and is invasive, so it always get a pot regardless of coming back yearly).

I have planted tons of other things and often do more than the above, but the one’s above are hard to screw up.  I also prioritize the things that are more expensive to buy.  For example, you can plant one bell pepper plant and save $2-3 with every pepper it produces or you can take the same space to grow and onion or two that costs you pennies at the store.  Things that grow underground don’t give you as much bang for your buck: onions, carrots, potatoes.  They are cheap and take up lots of growing space.

Don’t get intimidated, you just have to go buy a plant and plant it.  Just one!  Start with herbs!  I love having fresh herbs all summer and many come back every year, flower, and look just as pretty as your landscaping that you can’t eat.

*The picture is the outer peel of a tomatillo that I planted the year before.  I was fascinated that it stayed in tact, but I found it when I was planting my zucchini for this year!

5 Practical Tips for Creating Health

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I don’t think it’s a secret that health comes from lifestyle changes rooted in food, exercise, sleep, and stress management.  What I do think people get stuck on is HOW to implement these lifestyle changes successfully.  Let’s face it, we live in a world where health is inconvenient.  So, there are 5 tips I have for you to create a successful environment for implementing a healthy lifestyle.  The underlying theme in all of these tips is making it MORE CONVENIENT to do the right thing than the unhealthy thing.  That means creating obstacles for yourself if you’re going to choose an unhealthy option.  We are wired for convenience and ease over anything else, so the more you can create convenience and ease for healthy choices, the more successful you’ll be.

5 Practical Tips for Creating Health

  1. Don’t buy it.  It’s a fact that if it’s there, you’ll be tempted.  Am I right?  If all you have in the house are healthy options, it creates an obstacle to choose unhealthy options.  You may STILL choose the unhealthy option on occasion because the desire outweighs the cost.  However, most times, you’ll be too tired to go making special trips just to eat something bad.  Have lots of fresh fruit and veggies on hand, and you’ll never starve.
  2. Meal prep.  I am not a prepper.  I love cooking.  That means that I often will buy what sounds good and come up with imaginative combinations throughout the week.  If you are unfamiliar with cooking or just find it stressful, then you’re more likely to make a good decision when mentally fatigued if it’s made for you.  Making meals and having them available ensures that when you get home from a busy day, and you can’t muster one more decision to come out of your brain, you do what’s convenient.  As long as that convenient thing is prepped healthy meals, then you’re golden!
  3. Hang out with good influences.  Friends are friends no matter what, but you’d be lying if you said it’s easy to hang out with friends on a different agenda when you’re trying to make healthy choices.  There are likely friends that also want the same goals.  Make plans to hang out with them and choose food options that propel you both toward positive goals.  Don’t have any friends interested in turning around their health? Then ask them to join you!  Having company in the process can force you to make good decisions even when you don’t want to.
  4. Force yourself to create all junk food from scratch.  Yup.  Think about it.  French fries. Mmm.  Not so yummy if you have to make them from scratch.  They just became a lot more inconvenient.  Cake.  My mouth is watering.   Not so appealing if I have to bake the dang thing.  I’m not saying never indulge, but it’s the same principle as having to leave your house to make a bad decision.  If you have to bake or cook these indulgences from scratch, you will likely just say “no thanks” more often than not.  Who has time to do all that baking anyway?!
  5. Find easy ways to incorporate movement.  Make it a rule for yourself to park at the back of the parking lot.  Schedule hangout time with friends that involves movement…dancing, walking, paddle boarding, biking, yoga.  You will have the best of both worlds: time with friends plus getting in your activity.

 

These are simple and may seem like things you’ve heard 100 times, but how many times have you tried to implement them.  Maybe just choosing ONE would have a huge impact.  Heck, I know that if many people had to cook junk food from scratch, they would never go to the effort.  The key is to create an obstacle between you and the unhealthy decision.  That also means creating a convenience factor for the healthy decision.  The more you can do that, the more successful implementation you will see.  Try it and let me know how it goes!

Raynaud’s: Natural Solutions

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Raynaud’s.  What the heck is that?!  Well, you either clicked to read this article because you have the diagnosis, or you related to the picture, which essentially tells you what Raynaud’s is, visually.  In a nutshell, it’s the lack of blood flowing to the finger tip(s), most commonly.  There can be other areas involved, too, like toes or the tip of your nose;  however, most people who experience the garden-variety version have it happen to a finger tip or two.  When something happens to cause the vessels to the finger tips to constrict, they spasm and don’t open back up as quickly as they should.  That is why you will see white tips when the rest of the finger is red.  The cold is the most common reason for this to happen, but it could also be due to stress.  When the finger tips lose blood flow, they become numb, and the person can’t feel things with those fingers that they would normally.  Typically, it returns to normal in a short time, but it can be rather annoying.

What’s a person to do about this?!

The key to dealing with Raynaud’s is addressing the cause: lack of blood flow.  Sometimes, this can be a side effect of a more serious condition, such as an autoimmune disease (especially scleroderma), medication use impacting blood flow, or certain thyroid conditions.  However, most of the time the key is addressing the spasm of the arterioles.

Here are some easy tips to address to problem: 

  1. Wear warm gloves when in cold temps.  Duh.
  2. Exercise regularly.  Exercise forces blood to pump and keeps your arteries responsive.
  3.  Stop smoking.  It’s well-known that nicotine damages vessels, which is why smokers don’t heal from injury or surgery as well as non-smokers.  It’s all about blood flow to tissue when we are talking about healing.
  4. Address medication use.  Finding and correcting the need for certain medications that impact blood flow, like beta-blockers and even OTC meds for sinusitis!  The reason they stick chemicals in meds for sinusitis is to reduce the blow flow in order to decrease pressure.  Makes sense, right?  But the pressure is not the cause of sinus issues.  Many times, the best option is to address the reason someone is experiencing allergies, stop the release of histamine, or correct the underlying issues impacting recurrent infections.  That could mean taking a different approach to the nutrients you take for these issues.  I digress.
  5. Consider supplements that increase blood flow and oxygen while you are addressing lifestyle factors.  Nutrients such as niacin have been used for a very long time to increase blood flow, and if you have ever used it, you know there’s something called “niacin flush.”  You could also consider nutrients that increase nitric oxide, like l-arginine.  Often times, people with Raynaud’s have low nitric oxide levels.
  6. . Get massages and adjustments regularly.  Adjustments will make sure your nervous system is functioning in tip-top shape, and massages will enhance blood flow to all the areas of your body. I personally think a monthly adjustment and massage is what works best for me!
  7.  Use saunas.  Heat increases blood flow!  It’s not rocket science.  Use saunas regularly throughout the winter to enhance blood flow to tissues. In the winter, I will use a sauna a couple times a week, but I would do it more frequently if my schedule permits!

While many people experience this issue, traditional medicine approaches aren’t that successful.  Try these simple lifestyle changes to address Raynaud’s or heck, just move to the sunny states!  You have to admit, it’s not a bad idea.

 

Bras: Bad for Our Health?

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Let’s just get the point.  I’ll keep this short and sweet.  When you travel to other parts of the world, many countries don’t wear bras!  I remember being in Africa with the Peace Corps and culturally, knees are way more taboo.  So, women would need to cover their knees, but breasts were fair game, often out, and certainly without a lift.  When you compare the rates of breast cancer in the U.S. to those in other nations, you notice a trend in higher rates among Americans.  At one point, this correlation was made to the fact that we wear bras and the nations with lower statistics do not.  That led to the hunt for clues as to what bras could be contributing to the matter.  It was postulated that bras restrict lymph drainage, causing toxins to get trapped in the tissue, and this leads to cancer.  However,  I want to debunk this for a second.

Lymph for breast tissue actually drains in an upward direction.  This means that idea that toxins in breast tissue can’t drain out because of the underwire is somewhat perplexing if you understand physiology.  I may even argue that this correlation is similar to that you may have learned in college when learning that more murders occur in the summer.  More people also eat ice cream in the summer.  So, ice cream consumption must cause people to commit murders.  Hate to burst the bubble.  Correlation doesn’t mean causation.  I think the missing piece of this bra puzzle is really that our lifestyles are very different among countries and those that have less breast cancer rates NOT ONLY wear bras less, but they have less stress, less chemicals, better food quality, and just plain better epigenetics.  Epigenetics are the lifestyle factors that change the environment around your genes.  The better your epigenetics, the better your gene expression.  This can be the difference between getting cancer and not despite holding the gene in the cards you were dealt.

So, on a closing note, I may even argue that bras are good for our health.  The more you work with women who are ill, you know it’s not about the breasts.  It’s about the whole body, their life, their quality of life.  Bras make the girls look perky, they help women look great in clothes, they can boost a woman’s confidence.  These things have a positive physiological effect on our epigenetics.  It’s true.  So, shamelessly wear those bras, ladies.  Take them off at night, and rest in peace knowing it’s ok to wear it again tomorrow. The one pictured is from Third Love. I received some Third Love bras for Christmas, and who knew that I’m actually a half cup person!  Since we only sell bras in full cup sizes, I had missing out on the perfect fit all these years!

Natural Tricks to Jet Lag or Resetting Your Circadian Rhythms

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I have been traveling more than ever the past couple months and it seems that everywhere I go changes time zones.  I happen to be fairly lucky in the department of falling asleep and adjusting quickly; however, there are natural tricks that you can use to your advantage if you suffer from time changes.  Try to stay away from habit-forming pharmaceuticals that artificially alter your sleep-wake patterns because they end up doing you more harm than good long term.

  1. Eat on schedule.  Have breakfast when you want your body to start waking up and quit eating a couple hours before you want to fall asleep.  Even if this means eating at weird times as you a traveling back.  Much of your sleep/wake cycle is regulated by hormones and chemicals that your gut bacteria play a part in creating.  The bacteria living in your gut can’t see light though, so they use signals from you to tell what time it is.  When you eat, it signals to them that it is waking hours and they follow suit.
  2. Wear glasses that block blue light.  Many people are familiar with the glasses like Felix Gray that block blue light from computer screens, but most probably don’t use this to their advantage for jet lag.  Just like eating signals to your gut bacteria that it’s time to be awake, blue light exposure tells them and your body that it is daylight.  This is why people wear glasses to block computer light at night.  If they don’t, they can have trouble sleeping because that light is a signal to your internal clock to produce cortisol.  Cortisol is a hormone in the body that spikes when you wake up and gradually decreases throughout the day until it hits rock bottom at night.  When it is low, you get sleepy.  (If you’re a person that suffers from mid-day fatigue, then you may see this dip in cortisol happen in the middle of the day on labs, which explains why you’re ready for a nap!)  If you wear blue blocking lenses when you want to start falling asleep and keep them off when you want to be wide awake, it will help adjust those cortisol patterns.
  3. Take melatonin.  Just like blue light stimulates cortisol to make you feel awake, lack of blue light dampens cortisol and allows melatonin to rise.  When the sun goes down and your cortisol plummets, that’s melatonin’s signal to increase.  You should have high melatonin around the time you want to go to bed.  You can artificially mimic this by taking melatonin supplements before you want to go to bed.  This will make people drowsy.  Melatonin is a hormone, so you would not want to rely on this for long-term sleep aid, but it is helpful in resetting jet lag.  If you take too much, you could end up having vivid dreams or waking up with a “hang over.”  So, start with small doses and work your way up as needed.
  4. Go outside.  Following the suns schedule is a powerful tool to get in synch with the normal rhythms of the Earth.  If you get up to watch the sunrise and go out to watch the sunset, you’d be amazed how quickly you fall into place.  This happens mostly because of the light exposure having an impact on your cortisol and melatonin ratios.
  5. Exercise intensely when you want me to waking up. When you exercise, it raises cortisol levels just like light does, so if you time your exercise for when you want to be awake first thing, then your body will tend towards a cortisol spike during that time.  This will wake your body up, and help you fall asleep at night when the time is right.
  6. Have caffeine in the morning.  Once again, we want cortisol to be spiking when you would be waking up.  Caffeine stimulates cortisol production, so having a cup of coffee when you WANT your body to be waking up will help put that circadian rhythm back on track.  That also means avoiding it when you would want your body to be getting sleepy.

These practical tips are easy to do if you think about them ahead of time and plan.  I can’t emphasize enough how important light exposure is in trying to reset your internal clock, so if you can do things that make your body think it’s light when you want to be awake and dark when you want to sleep, the better off you’ll be.  Shift work and time zone changes is one of the hardest thing you can do your body and actually contributes to earlier death and heart attacks.  So, while this is somewhat necessary at times for work or travel, you should try to avoid it as much as possible.  Your immune system actually functions on this same rhythm, so having your body produce cortisol at the wrong times will actually dampen your immune system during those times, too.  This is one reason many people get sick when traveling.  Not only are you often stuck on a plane with recycled air from tons of individuals, but you are throwing off your body’s normal rhythm to fight infections and create immune cells.  This is something to really consider especially if you have disorders of the immune system, like autoimmunity.  Your immune system reacts to your cues, so try to make them as easily translatable as you can to what normal cycles are.

I hope this helps!

Avocado and Grapefruit Salad

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While doing my March detox, I stumbled on this salad when I had avocado and grapefruit to consume before traveling one week.  It was one of the most addicting combos I have ever tasted!   Why?  I have no idea, but you should try it even if you don’t like grapefruit.  It’s like when their flavors get together it creates something different than I have ever experienced!  I should also add that it’s super easy, too.
Avocado and Grapefruit Salad
Ingredients:
Avocado
Grapefruit
Lemon
EVOO
Salt and pepper
Protein addition optional
Directions:
Section grapefruit and slice avocado.  Place them together.  Mix juice from a lemon, a splash of EVOO, a pinch of salt and pepper.  Pour over the salad.  Add cooked shrimp or other protein if desired.