Some bugs are good bugs

I have bragged a bit that one of my (few) Covid accomplishments is I learned how to make Sourdough bread. I had a neighbor who suffered through and recovered from Covid early on last year. Phoxay offered me lessons and converted me to her easy method for making sourdough bread and I've actually baked this probiotic bread nearly every week since! 

I was excited to learn that sourdough bread is considered a probiotic food. And probiotics (as always variety is best) are a blessing to our gut and microbiome. In fact because of the fermenting process in making sourdough bread some people that are sensitive to gluten are able to eat this bread with no ill affects. 

In our currently over sanitized world where there is hand sanitizer station every few feet we need to make extra efforts to introduce the good bugs into our diet. 

This week we are going to enjoy the world of probiotics as  I challenge you to eat some bugs. You’ll be relieved to know I’m not referring to the creepy crawly, and maybe even leggy and crunchy roaches, ants or crickets-- I’m talking about microscopic bugs—the beneficial bacteria that are naturally present in foods like yogurt or kefir. 

We focused on Prebiotics during the weekly challenge where we worked on eating 30 different plant foods in a week . Probiotics (fermented foods containing beneficial bacteria) are another key to your gut health. Recent studies are linking poor gut micro biome (gut) health to maladies such as bloating, ulcers, gallstones, lactose intolerance, diverticulitis, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel disease, celiac disease, constipation, food allergies, acid reflux, depression, low immunity and many other ailments. It seems our gut health is key to our overall health.  A healthy microbiome – in turn protects the gut wall, regulates inflammation, and assists with hormone and neurotransmitter production. We are just beginning to learn how crucial this is to your overall health. 

According to one of my favorite nutrition bloggers Monica Reinagel M.S.,L.D./N. from NutritionDiva.com  “Every traditional cuisine has developed some sort of naturally fermented or cultured food. There’s Japanese miso, Bulgarian yogurt, Polish sauerkraut, Indian lassi, and Korean kim-chee. And each of these plays a central role in that culture’s cuisine … and for good reason. All of these foods contain lactobacillus bacteria, which are extremely beneficial to your health. In the days before antibiotics and other drugs, cultured and fermented foods were critical to staying healthy.”

Monica goes on to explain that “The friendly bacteria found in these foods actually set up housekeeping in your gut, where they do all kinds of good things for you: They help digest your food and produce certain vitamins for you. They keep the lining of your intestines slick and shiny. Most of all, they make it harder for unfriendly bacteria to take hold and make you sick.”

In other words if we have a basic population of beneficial bacteria in our gut our digestive system will work better and our body will be healthier and better able to fight off disease.

Monica goes on to explain that “Unfortunately, the traditional methods of fermenting cabbage in stoneware crocks, or burying salted vegetables in pits in the back yard, or culturing warm goat’s milk on the hearth are just not as common as they used to be. Instead, we have ultra-pasteurized milk that keeps for six weeks. Let me assure you that no beneficial bacteria survive the ultra-pasteurization process.”

Personally I love kimchi (I had a Kimchi taco last week- yum)  and Kefir (Kefir is a fermented milk drink made with grains and is believed to have its origins in the Caucasus Mountains. It is available in health food and many grocery stores and it tastes like a yogurt drink but almost like it has a bit of carbonation) but probably the easiest way to get our daily lactobacillus fix is to eat yogurt regularly 

Which brand of yogurt should you buy? Look for brands that advertise “living cultures” (Recent studies show Stonyfield to be the brand with the most active and live cultures)  but it is not necessary to pay extra for fancy yogurts that promote digestive health. Regular yogurt contains all that you need.

It’s pretty easy to work some yogurt into your daily diet. Besides eating it as a breakfast or snack you can easily add it to smoothies or use it in dips or spreads. 

And I’m a step ahead of you ladies in your day dreaming. Does frozen yogurt (one of my all time favorite treats) contain live active yogurt bacteria and qualify as “eating yogurt’?  Maybe and maybe not. It seems that while the freezing process does NOT kill the yogurt bacteria some frozen yogurts use heat-treated yogurt, which does kill the live and active cultures. The best way to find out is to ask at your local frozen yogurt shop or look for the NYA Live & Active Cultures seal. What you want is live active yogurt bacteria. And remember if you find a frozen yogurt which contains live culture but also has sugar it DOES count as a sugar day! You might enjoy plain or unsweetened yogurt with some fresh fruit or non-caloric sweetener added. 

For every day that you eat at least 1/4 cup of a fermented food (sauerkraut, miso, yogurt, kefir, kim-chee etc.)  containing live and active cultures and/or take a probiotic supplement you earn the daily 5 bonus points. As always variety is best for your health so try to try at least one that you have not tried before! 

Measuring and Weighing

When you announce “weighing” as one of your healthy eating habits you are probably referring to weighing yourself regularly to make sure there are no surprise upward trends, but there is another type of weighing that can be a helpful part of your personal health regime. 

Take for example the story of a friend that wasn’t extremely overweight but was carrying some extra pounds that were causing knee pain (1 extra pound of weight exerts 4 additional pounds of pressure on your knees!)  She spent her mornings running the canyon trails near her home, but because of knee pain she thought losing a few pounds would make running more enjoyable. After getting advice from a nutritionist, she began weighing and measuring his food to get an accurate idea of how many calories she was eating. She was surprised to discover it was a lot more than he realized.

So here I was thinking I’m eating 200 calories, but I’m really eating 600.

This woman had the same lunch every day- a protein shake with an apple and peanut butter and it’s like, “Oh that’s totally a healthy lunch — this is a great lunch.” But when she measured the peanut butter for the first time she discovered she was taking about three servings when she thought it was only one.

“So here I was thinking I’m eating 200 calories, but I’m really eating 600,” she said.

Weighing Food Gives You a More Accurate Understanding of Portion Sizes

A small kitchen scale (If you don’t yet have one you still have time to purchase one on Amazon in time for Wednesday’s challenge) is an important tool in guiding your healthy eating choices . Your best strategy is to get out the scale and measuring spoons and weigh or measure all of your food, from the apple you have for a morning snack  to the chicken you eat at dinner. And then input this accurate information into the MyFitnessPal app on your phone, which calculates the exact number of calories in your food. 

Besides giving you a more accurate record of your food choices for the day this will eventually lead you to more clearly understand the portion sizes you are eating, especially when it came to calorie-dense foods.

A lot of times we make assumptions. For example, if you were to list a banana — generic banana — in a calorie counting app, [the results] could be more than what you  actually ate or it could be less. But weighing the banana gives you an exact calorie count. This clear measurement is even more important with calorie dense foods like nuts. Weigh them to be completely sure how much you are eating. 

I also find weighing foods helpful when eating crackers or chips that are often broken making counting the total number difficult. Simply piling them on the scale measures exactly how much you are eating and can also shut down any habit of deciding to eat 8 and then maybe just 2 more and then 2 more and now you have lost count and eaten too many.

Skinny pop is one of my personal favorite snacks and no one in my family is surprised to find me (always) eating it out of a glass pyrex measuring cup.

One other tip from my healthy living challenge partner Gail is that to accurately measure your snacks and also help in controlling your portion choices buy them already pre-packaged and weighed. Gail always buys her skinny pop, chips etc. in individual packets.

And while we are promoting measuring let’s include our water consumption this week. Don’t just grab a cup here or a glass there. Let’s measure the clear clean water we drink and make sure we are meeting the daily requirement of our challenge. (at least 48 ounces)

To earn this week’s  bonus challenge points

• Purchase or borrow a kitchen scale.
• Weigh or measure (measuring spoons and cups) all of your food and input the results into Myfitnesspal this week. This will tell you the real number of calories you are consuming.
• Note: No you don’t have to take measuring cups, spoons and your scale along with you for fine dining or a dinner party at a friends home. You will have to use on-line dietary information to make your best estimate on these meals. But consistent weighing and measuring of food at home will eventually lead you to some solid skills in estimating portion size. 

Making life style choices for your unique self

My daughter called the other day with questions about the passing of her grandparents. She was establishing herself with a new doctor and double checking our family medical history - good and bad. As we all know our unique family DNA predisposes us to certain illnesses and disease. 

And yet lifestyle choices have perhaps an even larger influence on our health as they are what can activate our individual DNA markers. Despite our personal family medical history we retain a lot of power in our overall health throughout our lives.

How Not To Die by Michael Greger does a thorough job of pointing one in the right direction as far as how to eat to combat the particular weaknesses in our family medical heritage. And while it’s a huge book it is easily organized with chapters on the various maladies we might be concerned about facing. So you can easily grab a copy and study up on the chapters that address your particular needs. 

Additionally if you go to Dr. Greger’s website nutritionfacts.org ,you can view hundreds of short videos dealing with lifestyle choices and their power to affect your health and well being. 

I recommend you query your extended family about your unique medical history and begin to steer your lifestyle choices to circumvent any concerns.

Another tool you can use in this effort is myfittnesspal.com . I would hope you have all noticed that besides tracking your exercise output and calorie input it tracks nutritional elements as well. I hope that you will look more closely at those this week. If heart disease runs in your family you might want to track your salt intake. Diabetes should steer you toward keeping your eye on sugar. Colon cancer would encourage you to keep track of your fiber grams etc. etc. 

And did you know you can change the default settings on your myfitnesspal.com account? Just go to settings and scroll down to choose what nutrients you most want to track.

In the past I proffered challenges to track and focus on fulfilling certain nutrients such as fiber or protein.  But instead this time I would like you to pick a nutrient to track. 

So our weekly bonus challenge is to:

1. Investigate your medical history and it’s weak points and choose a nutritional element you feel would be helpful to track.
2. If needed change your settings in myfitnesspal.com to track the element you have chosen
3. Make extra efforts each day this week to totally complete the recommended allowance of that element.

For each day that you complete this you will earn the 5 bonus points,

 

Sitting is the new smoking

How Your Chair May Be Hurting You

I have a friend that complains of continued back problems. Not only does he complain but his back pain has started to curtail his activities-  so he often opts out “due to his bad back.” He has sought continued medical help with his problem only to have each doctor in turn tell him that there is nothing wrong with his back. I have a theory about his back pain and that is that it might stem from hours of sitting in a recliner chair each day. Recent studies have shown that sitting or sleeping in a recliner chair has been known to cause hip, knee and back contractures. The muscles tighten over the joints and restrict your posture and mobility. It can lead to lack of flexibility, pain and even a bad  fall or injuries. It’s another evidence of “If you don’t use it you lose it.” Not moving actually impairs your ability to move. 

A new motto has been popping up recently and that is SITTING IS THE NEW SMOKING. ”Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV, and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death," says James Levine, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, in an interview with the LA Times. "The chair is out to kill us.”

When you think of something that could threaten your life, you probably don't think about your chair. But according to many researchers, it’s one of the biggest potential threats to your health.Research shows that you can reduce your chances of cancer, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and back pain, all with one simple lifestyle change: reduce the time you spend sitting.

"We weren't designed to sit for long periods of time,” claims Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA's Life Sciences Division and author of the “Sitting Kills, Moving Heals”. "The body is a perpetual motion machine.”

Dr. Levine estimates that, in the US, we spend more than half of our waking hours sitting down, either watching TV, driving, or sitting at a desk at work or home.

Exercise Doesn’t Negate Extended Periods of Sitting

You may be thinking, “But I work out several times per week.” The research shows that though exercise is good for you, it doesn’t negate the damage done by extended periods of sitting.

As Katy Bowman, a scientist and author of the book: Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement, told Reuters: "You can't offset 10 hours of stillness with one hour of exercise.”

Gavin Bradley, director of Active Working, an international group aimed at reducing excessive sitting, explains part of the process, “Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting. The enzymes that move the bad fat from your arteries to your muscles, where it can get burned off, slow down. The muscles in your lower body are turned off. And after two hours, good cholesterol drops 20 percent. Just getting up for five minutes is going to get things going again. These things are so simple they’re almost stupid.”

Sitting and the Increased Chance of Obesity

Dr. Levine started his research into the hazards of sitting and the benefits of standing desks because he was trying to figure out why some people seem to gain weight and others don’t. For his study, he put office workers who weren’t exercisers on a 1,000 calorie diet and had them not change their exercise routine. The result: some gained weight, some lost weight.

He then had the participants wear underwear that was lined with sensors that would tell him how much each worker was moving throughout the day. They discovered the missing link: the group that was losing weight was moving around 2.25 more hours per day than the group that put on weight.

You burn on average of 50 calories more per hour by standing. If you stand for 3 hours per day, five days per week, it adds up to 750 calories burned. In a year that adds up to 30,000 calories, which is almost 9 pounds. This is the equivalent of around 10 marathons per year and why Dr. Levine is a huge proponent of standing desks.

Back, Neck, & Sciatica Pain From Sitting

At Cornell University Department of Ergonomics, researchers found that up to 90% more pressure is applied to your lower back when you sit versus when you stand.

According to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, back pain is one of the American’s most common health problems, with 1 out of 4 people experiencing back pain 1 day out of every 3 months.

Excessive Sitting and Cancer

Several types of cancer that are believed to be caused by inactivity. Christine Friedenreich, an epidemiologist at Alberta Health Services-Cancer Care in Canada, estimates that 173,000 cases of cancer in the U.S. are due to inactivity, with 49,000 cases of breast cancer and 43,000 cases of colon cancer. The other cancers linked to inactivity are lung cancer (37,200), prostate cancer (30,600 cases), endometrial cancer (12,000 cases), and ovarian cancer (1,800 cases). Each of these could also be related to excessive sitting.

Anxiety and Depression

According to an Australian study published in the journal Mental Health and Physical Activity, employees who reported sitting for longer than sitting than 6 hours per day had higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to those who sat less than 3 hours per day.

Another Australian study with 9,000 female participants in their fifties found that those who sat for 7 hours per day were 3 times more likely to have symptoms of depression compared to those who sat less than 4 hours per day.

Posture

In his article about his 30-day standing experiment, Dan Kois explains  “Dr. Jack Callaghan of the University of Waterloo tells me that in his research on standing and back pain, the primary difference he sees between “pain developers” and “non–pain developers” is posture.”

My friend that spends so many hours in his recliner now has a permanently bent over posture when he stands or walk that makes him look 10 years older. I think he literally cannot stand up straight anymore. 

Excessive sitting cause the muscles to permanently retract making good posture painful and eventually impossible. Sitting in recliners or bent down looking at your phone or computer screen for hours a day can interfere with your possible good posture. 

Try to keep your chest open and shoulders back, and pull your chin back so your head is centered over your shoulders while sitting and standing. Develop the habit of squeezing your shoulder blades together several times per day to train yourself not to slouch.

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How to Develop a Movement-Based Lifestyle

One of your goals in this regard needs to be NOT sitting in the same chair in the same position for many hours a day. Think about using a sit-stand desk if you work long hours on the computer or try a creative chair solution like an exercise ball or other offering that encourages the engagement of your core muscles while sitting. Even a straight back chair as an alternative to the cozy couch or recliner—can encourage you toward better posture and core engagement while sitting. 

"The goal is to minimize sitting, especially continuous sitting, and follow a regular exercise program," says Timothy Church, a researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. At work or at home:

• Drink a lot of water. Besides being a good habit, it will make you get up and walk to the bathroom often. And use a bathroom that’s further away if possible.
• Go to a colleague's desk if you have a question as opposed to sending them an email.
• Have walking meetings.
• Set an alarm on your phone or computer to stand and stretch or move every 20 minutes.
• Park further from the entrance.
• If you take public transportation, get off one stop early and walk further.
• Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
• Use your still time (television watching, chatting at home with family etc.) for stretching rather than just sitting. 

So what is our challenge for this week? To do as experts recommend and get up every 20 to 30 minutes to do any kind of activity to prevent all of the problems that can come from extended periods of inactivity. Even if you are engaged in a long time task change seating options often if possible, stop periodically and stand up and stretch, keep your chest open and shoulders back, and pull your chin back so your head is centered over your shoulders while sitting and standing. Develop the habit of squeezing your shoulder blades together several times per day to train yourself not to slouch.

So for every day you make a concerted effort to sit less and move more you can claim the daily exercise points.