Can we reduce preachy while thinking of the planet AND keep up its care?

It’s hard not to become preachy when thinking about

how we treat HOME.

During this time we may have lots of time on our hands to care about the state of the world. Some of that time may also be spent watching the news.

It strikes me we’re thinking about the planet incredibly LOCALLY.

In adjacent news articles on a morning news bulletin we were first horrified at the increase in littering in parks, beauty spots and laybys (which admittedly all looked pretty horrific) but then the next article was about getting back to flying again!

Do we care, really?

Plants, wildlife and insects have all benefited from no planes flying but the public it seems, are keen to get back to ‘life as normal’.

Flying through the air and throwing out more CO2 which litters the sky and heats the planet up we don’t see as bad as littering near where we live.

Do we think, really?

It’s tricky as in theory, going abroad gives us the chance to broaden our horizons allowing us better to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes.

Does travel do that, though?

International travel makes a mess in the sky and contributes to the acidification of our seas and oceans. Not addressing our impact on planet earth while we worry about the litter in the park next door or our wrecked beaches after a weekend of hot weather seems shortsighted at best.

Broadleaf woodland in background
Do we grow enough of the right trees today?

I’m all for supporting the environment

We need to encourage more growing of trees – the right kind in parts of deforested Europe (read UK). Broadleaf woodland that would be recognizable to the builders of the Armada for example instead of the cheap, fast growing pine and discouraging rain forest destruction as it cuts into the environments of animals we like looking at like pandas, koalas, monkeys, chimps and orangutans.

I’m not sure we can have it all.

Kit Kats, Skittles and Oreos (which many of us love) destroy the rain forests by turning land to palm oil production that various ‘fluffy bears’ live in.

The trees from these rain forests soak up carbon dioxide  we belch out through frequent flying. The habitat around us is also changing by producing Industrial rates of beef for our society. Meat free Mondays is just the start.

It seems sometimes we destroy ourselves AND our environment by not stopping and thinking for a minute by letting institutions serving ust to grow unchecked.

Do we have the balance right?

INCREASED DAYLIGHT – do the words fill you with horror or glee, right now?

The increased daylight of Springtime brings the season to us strongly and definitely. These are uncertain, unprecedented times we’re living in!
Keep safe, stay well, follow distancing guidelines and wash your hands, again.  Seems to be a worthwhile suggestion for us all, right now.

With all this extra thinking time I’ve been doing some digital housekeeping.

Two things I love but haven’t shared.

My bad!

increased daylight
Two pigeons sitting in a springtime tree

These hacks have both contributed to a thing very close to my heart – getting a meaningful night’s sleep.

You don’t notice when you’re not left drifting the gloaming hours of darkness or pre-dawn. If sleep is interrupted for even just one night life becomes pretty miserable.

We lose the ability to manage our mood and confuse our tiredness for hunger. Confusing dehydration for hunger is for another post.

Lots of people have experienced some form of insomnia sometimes. Often followed by an insatiable need to snack or have a cry with no end in sight.

This, for me, is a perfect time of year to address the issue. The clocks have changed which regularly changes how I sit with the world and how an increase in daylight sits with me.

Days get longer and nights are shorter both contributing to that increased daylight.

It’s strange as we curse and grumble about winter’s long nights and lightning fast afternoons.

But when change comes as it invariably will (assuming we don’t get knocked out of orbit) we get the day bringing increased daylight even earlier.

How is your sleep?

I ordered some daylight blocking fabric from a well known online retailer (it’s not just the river running through Brazil, Peru and Colombia).

I also found 6 large bulldog clips – most likely another online purchase to ‘line’ my existing curtains (I’m no Domestic Goddess).

when you’ve had multiple nights of reduced sleep you’ll be craving a few cherished hours sleep.

Not waking with the sun is a revelation.

ANOTHER online purchase (forgive me local retailers) was a pair of blue light blocking glasses.

I think there’s a fair amount of agreement that our screens and devices emit blue light (essentially daylight) taken in by our pituitary gland (sits behind the eyes).

There are also daylight sensors in our fat! When adipose tissue doesn’t see daylight it could start to get us feeding as winter is on the way.

Hormones are shuffled to prepare us for sleep.

Our bodies don’t get a rush or a gentle drip drip of naturally created melatonin because our eyes have sat near bright screens becoming confused by their endless daytime. Natural daylight is far more easily ‘read’ by our bodies.

Normally we are pleased when we are MORE connected to the world. Physically with outside and nature or digitally allowing us to spend time with family.

It feels wrong to cut ourselves off from everything around us but choosing to temporarily block out the sun (and fake sun) is well worth it!

A weird free hotel (that checked your BP every four hours – awake AND asleep): My recent experience of the NHS.

Tower to incinerate the waste at AddenbrookesHospital
Addenbrookes fixed my bimalleolar (broken ankle) very well

Happy 2020!

I’ve been away from my website for some time (some of which was under my control some of it less so).

I’ve been taking collagen most days especially while my broken ankle heals.

A bimalleolar fracture wasn’t talked about on the ward (many and fairly varied painkillers might have interfered with my memory at the time.)

Both bones in the calf required pins to stop the healed bones in the future growing unevenly. General anaesthetic and an operation (might also have got in the way of perfect recall). It was mentioned on the consultant’s rounds.

The discharge notes were far drier and used other long words.
This is the second week of my second cast (wasn’t mentioned).

Here I’d like to update a previous post about collagen. I hadn’t posted (my mistake) about collagen but ginger!

Both good for a body but in different ways.

With collagen we need to take vitamin C.

Preferably liposomal as it gets into our cells better than the traditional ascorbic acid (which can result in a gyppy tummy as the unabsorbed powder can leave the body quickly).

SO many processes are helped in a body that has enough vitC. Many processes won’t take place in a body deficient of vitC.

Discovering scurvy and it’s treatment helped modern day drug trials take shape!

With enough vit C the body makes energy better so working out ends up with energy getting produced and used better.

Vit C’s a good allrounder

It helps our bodies absorb iron, fight off disease by boosting our immune systems and hair and skin do well too. ODing on vit C I understand requires some determination!

I first started with collagen a few years’ back to keep my body feeling younger for longer.

Collagen works best and is best absorbed on an empty stomach (who knew?)

I’d been taking the powder sprinkled on my food (not being a smoothie fan) Collagen could minimise the menopause too.After after reading more about collagen I now have it b4 breakfast with green juice (no bananas) and liposomal vit C.

I choose the fish derived collagen out of personal choice rather than the beef derived sort but I believe both deliver a version of the jelly I I used to get from a homemade chicken stock using Sunday’s roast chicken bones?

Enhancing skin elasticity will hopefully ward off wrinkles but it didn’t work very well for my  easily snappable ankle!

I imagine that these two products together are doing for my bones what Lion’s mane mushroom powder might be doing by regrowing the damaged myelin in my brain and spinal cord.

With the help of ‘my IT guy’ (husband) I look forward to being in more regular contact.

The wonder of the NHS will form a future post

Proteolytic Enzymes

This post will look at proteolytic enzymes and ask what they can do for us.

The last post looked into a newly discovered, high cholesterol level. I didn’t ask for it but have been given a set of numbers to consider (I don’t do enough cardiovascular exercise). I think this is where I might see changes happen rather than dietary approaches. Proteolytic enzymes have the potential to help many different kinds of condition, it’s hard to know where to start!

Now is a good time to revisit a subject from a post written last year that mentions proteolytic enzymes very briefly. I’d just started them  on the recommendation of a practitioner I saw to help keep my body working as best as it could. They get referred to after the post’s last heading and before the photo at the bottom of the page.

Enzymes are amazing things, they seem to be able to do all things for all people (where needed) and they could be handy for most folk?
There are around 3000 different types of  enzymes in existence and those are just the ones that have names!

Have you heard of digestive enzymes to take with food? Proteolytic enzymes are similar things but work differently and best on an empty stomach.

We are born with some to start with as they help our body digest stuff. We make more in the pancreas as we go through life. Cooked food in particular requires more enzymes to digest it as we did a fair amount of evolving mostly before our skills with cooking came along!

If we make our own enzymes why do we need to take extra enzymes?

  • Because we don’t eat enough raw food/Eat too high a proportion of cooked food.
  • Enzymes are at the heart of almost all physiological processes in the body including digesting the food we choose to eat.  Mostly we ate more, raw veg than we do nowadays.
  • We can buy digestive enzymes to boost our own digestion allowing us to eat certain foods we may have been avoiding for the various ‘tummy troubles’ they cause.
  • Digestion starts as we chew, our saliva contains amylase which begins digestion even before we swallow.
  • We use a lot of energy to digest food so any help we can get in this process will give us more energy.

Have you ever had the feeling that a meal, once eaten, seemed to just sit in your belly? To digest the cooked food we eat uses up lots of our own enzymes. Often the processes that are needed for effective digestion work better with a little bit of warmth  but not too much heat as that can destroy them!

super digester

Proteolytic Enzymes are good for us outside of digestion.

  • Sports people use proteolytic enzymes when they have a sports injury that has caused inflammation.
  • people with high cholesterol levels (have tiny fragments of protein and/or fat which can thicken the blood and cause CVD later on).
  • Chronically ill people also have a greater amount of inflammation in their bodies (inflammation as part of the disease state).
  • to aim to look younger  by helping to reduce wear and tear on our bodies.

All these groups of people may take proteolytic enzymes to reduce mess in the body such as swelling from injury.

Enzymes are present in the food we eat. They help us get energy from food. Enzymes digest/dissolve stuff and when they have no food to digest they’re digesting no longer needed stuff in our blood and reducing our sticky blood (which can accumulate) if we’re not as active as we know we should be.

A certain amount of inflammation is good if it’s reducing the amount of movement an injured limb can go through but, after a point it’s damaging.

Enzymes a go go!

We can buy a range of enzymes which are more effective when taken with other types of enzymes. Serrapeptase is considered a good one at the moment (fashion seems to play a part in supplements?) Serrapeptase is collected from caterpillars that make silk and the protein they make is something special. Sometimes I wonder a bit about the type of life farmed silk worms have? Other enzymes available mop up different types of proteins but in a similar way:

I was going to list amylase, bromelain, papain, trypsin and other enzymes that process different carbs, fats or proteins in our food but there are more complete lists out there (that require a simple search) before finding the site that does it better than me!

All of these enzymes and more help our body do a range of things better.

High Cholesterol… Says Who?

High cholesterol… according to what measure?

Don’t leave before you read the last few lines! My lipid profile was checked when I was going in for other blood tests at the doctors. The GP surgery pointed me to a website to read as I had ‘high cholesterol’. My level could be considered borderline high according to some measuring, apparently.

My cholesterol numbers are not at the bottom of the UK’s range, but also not at the top.

It seems there are a number of cholesterol measures to take into account and a number of ways to skin this particular cholesterol cat?

This is a UK page I found (the UK and the US seem to measure things differently).

High cholesterol… Says who? There are SO many opinions to hear. We need to decide who to listen to.

I’ve been to have a look at whether my cholesterol levels are fine or not?

We (the Western ‘developed’ world) started avoiding eggs and saturated fat after listening to flawed research in the 1950s!

What follows is a quote from the guy who got us throwing out the best part of an egg (the yolks) to save our hearts and cardiovascular system. In a 2004 editorial in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, Sylvan Lee Weinberg, former president of the American College of Cardiology and outspoken proponent of the diet-heart hypothesis, said

The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet… may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. This diet can no longer be defended by appeal to the authority of prestigious medical organizations.

one of my favourite meals

I found this site very heartening (excuse the weak pun) in how it neatly debunks the heart health myths we’re peddled, daily.

Even if we eat NO cholesterol our liver makes cholesterol, this is a good thing as we need it to make hormones that are essential for our wellbeing. that FACT is mentioned less on heart healthy websites!

I can’t help but wonder whether our increasing talk of stranger danger is keeping our children from exercising and being able to deal better with whatever we throw into our stomachs?

It’s being proposed that children from the age of 9 ought to have their cholesterol levels regularly checked?

It’s now been established that eating cholesterol has little if no bearing on the fat levels in our blood. Thanks go to Chris Kresser for the link further up.

Continuing to make low fat margarine and low fat other stuff, has created a mighty industry to keep up. You would have thought this would be especially tricky in the face of uncomfortable truth!

Eggs and butter REALLY don’t cause high cholesterol!

I repeat, dietary fat and cholesterol are not our enemy but we have a huge industry interested in keeping us misinformed.

 

I’ve been using coconut fat in place of butter. It has  an equivalent amount of saturated fat to butter but I have been reading recently that butter is a ‘safe’ dairy food. It doesn’t contain as many of the proteins that other dairy products contain? Our bodies can get confused

Since I was little I’ve not liked the idea or taste of consuming another species’ growth fluid (breast milk from another animal) but apparently, because butter is higher fat there’s little space for the rest of the casein I’ve been avoiding by ditching dairy.

I’ll talk about avoiding dairy in another post, soon. Here is another post where I talk about lots of things that go into how our bodies function.

This nutrition lark and high cholesterol (?) is not straightforward!

I refer again to the link near the top of the page which had a number of myth busting bullet points (Myth No.5).

People who have heart attacks have LOWER cholesterol levels than those who DON’T have heart attacks!

I’ve gathered, if we want to live longer then let’s not be concerned with cholesterol levels? On the other hand, our weight and an out of control insulin response to sugar (and everything that contains it) WILL contribute to heart disease and possibly a shorter life!

Adaptive Stress deserves exploration and Three is my Magic Number.

Adaptive stress can make or break us. Today, we’ll look at 3 low cost strategies to better deal with adaptive stress. I believe these 3 strategies help me look younger than I am. I aim to do them at least a few times a week .

Recently, I was visited by a physiotherapist who specialises in walking. I believe she gives talks about fall prevention to hospitals and social centres for the elderly.

How lucky am I?

Her workplace is about two streets from where I live. I aim to be walking to her for our next visit.

Almost the best bit about the appointment was being told I don’t look old enough for my age (She works with elders quite regularly so perhaps this is a regular intro for her to help her clients feel at ease?)

I choose not to think so!

But it got me wondering about a handful of the things I do regularly that might be keeping me looking younger than I am?

Three is the magic number for studying my youth prolonging dealings with adaptive stress

  • A minute’s blast of cold shower at the end of a regular, hot shower.
  • Restricting eating to between an 8 and 10 hour window every day.
  • Drink tea made from grated ginger, regularly.

An Exploration of thriving with Adaptive Stress.

Hormesis can be used to explain the body’s benefit from cold showers, skipping a meal now and then and taking freshly grated, ginger tea. It basically works from Neitzsche’s principal that ‘whatever doesn’t kill us makes us/our cells stronger!

Our physiology could be said to panic a little/adaptive stress but then finds out that cold water won’t cause death and so can be safely experimented with. Actually, the shock seems to wake me up quite well. The bracingness creates a huge boost of mitochondria. This adaptive stress (the powerhouses of our cells is responsible for an efficient conversion of energy/gives us our ‘get up and go’.

  • Our cells panic for a while in the cold and become flooded with cortisol to help us avoid an undefined ill. This redirects blood away from digestion and to our limbs for running away to better escape the undefined ill.
  • Restricting our eating to a smaller window of the day is another adaptive stress and gives our body a chance to focus on other essential processes. Everything we eat needs to be ‘read’ and assessed by our body. In this process it passes through the liver which takes time and energy. The liver, brain, heart and kidneys are the biggest users of energy if we live a relatively sedentary life.

Our body decides (mostly thankfully) that it makes sense to keep our legs working ahead of our tummies digesting. Mostly, this is a good thing but not always please see an earlier post here. In times of action our bodies become less equipped to process lunch. There is some truth to ‘don’t swim straight after eating’ but it’s something we can experiment safely with on OUR own body.

To avoid the pitfalls of too much adaptive stress, there are a range of answers about what the optimal time for intermittent fasting is.

Women’s needs are different to men’s (we have different hormones and  fat deposition). Our processing of fat/energy is less forgiving than men’s who have a higher level of testosterone and, if chosen, are better suited to use energy and remain lean. Also, men aren’t built to potentially house developing babies. Women apparently won’t benefit fasting intermittently for longer than around 14 hours between meals without raising our cortisol levels high enough to promote  inflammation?

  • Grated ginger tea is another technique for keeping the body on its toes. I feel  this creates another, acceptable form of adaptive stress (hormesis).

Some types of stress are worth seeking out and can do us good. I wonder whether these tips/tricks/life hacks perhaps contribute to my body appearing younger than it is?

The image I’ve chosen to illustrate this post is of my neighbour. As he grows he gets more interested in the world around him. Just one way he is becoming better suited to cope well with adaptive stress.

Search High and Low

I watched an interesting show this morning on allfour (after forgetting to record it last night). I was expecting (perhaps wildly) a sharp focus on a new treatment or at least a Search High and Low ethos that perhaps didn’t involve further damage to an already damaged body.

The Search for a Miracle Cure

I’d read an article about arguably the UK’s most well known solicitor on his investigation into a treatment option. The Jewish Times (fleshed out a press release?) in the summer.

Very good at his profession to which Rupert Murdoch (News of the World closed thanks to Lewis’s court actions) and columnist Katie Hopkins (forced to say sorry!) can testify

Lewis said he wouldn’t go down without a fight against MS.

On the programme he didn’t appear to be considering the physical side of his being at all?
His long suffering partner helped him out so much he barely needed to move?

Perhaps having a career that involved lots of thinking and inhabiting the brain (whilst getting paid handsomely to do so) has helped him leave his body all the more?

In the show Mark Lewis wondered about stress playing a part in the progress of his disease. He seemed to be almost questioning whether anything as ‘simple’ as stress and emotion could have an effect on the functioning of his body!

After watching, I felt fairly sure that his somewhat chaotic early years had had a part to play in his body developing MS. Gabor Mate goes into this question very well in his book, When the body says No.

An exercise ball that is good to lie on the ground and rest your legs on whilst exercising them. Look on the page for further explanation.

In the programme he was hoping to get good results from a stem cell trial being carried out in Jerusalem. He needed to visit the country twice for two treatments (one was real and the other was a placebo). To keep the study resembling science it was ‘double blinded’ neither the doctors or the patients knew which injection into his spine was of stem cells harvested from his bone marrow on an earlier visit to Israel.

After the first treatment he was more mobile and wondered if he had the active injection of his stem cells. He was walking more easily, didn’t require a stick so quickly. His balance was better and life was easier all round.

6 months later when it was time for his 2nd injection he felt the first injection MUST have been placebo as the effects wore off after a time. Unfortunately we never found out how the 2nd treatment left him.

I think the solicitor was missing a trick.

Lewis didn’t appear to search high and low for help with his MS.

his body, all on its own  (functioning as the placebo) helped things work better without any active ingredient Joe Dispenza has written a very intriguing book You Are the Placebo which I mention in an earlier post.

The improved mobility could have been prolonged if he’d done some exercise to build up the muscles that have been inactive for a decade at least.

I don’t have the brains/doggedness to continue working as he obviously does but I do have the doggedness to not let my body go down without a fight.

A handful of sites  to continue our search high and low for healing from MS

  •  Bob and Brad (focussing on fall reduction for elders
  • a lady from Birmingham  working for Move it or lose it and looking at improving balance 
  • Trevor Wicken from the MSgym on facebook is under the age of 40 (unlike the others)

It’s not sexy or attractive

to be looking at fall reduction, but it can save us!

I keep a browser window open for all of them to encourage me to exercise (I was never a big exerciser even before MS). I get far less exercise these days. I’m sure none of these guys will mind me pointing out that none of them are wearing a speck of lycra or encouraging us to ‘feel the burn.’ They do break down (in their own ways) what processes go into the art of walking.

A few years back I was meeting with a Feldenkrais practitioner who handily, lived a couple of streets away mentioned on these 4 different pages.

SEARCHING (a box at the top on the right of this site) is the best way to make use of these pages. I think my IT literate husband (thanks T) is probably one of my more recent helpers.

Apologies for posts up until now.

I found myself regularly on a search high and low for content: I wrote the bl**dy things!

I will get better at categorising! Thank you for sticking with me!

This is belonging

This post looks at belonging incorporating the armed forces’ relatively recent advertising campaign.

There are lots of things that can give us that sense of belonging that don’t come along with the chance of becoming a killer or a casualty.

Becoming part of any relatively select club can also give a feeling of belonging?

My relatively select club, as most readers know is the MS Club.

We catch up with familiar faces on screen in various ms clubs and chat about the range of challenges we’ve most recently faced.

We find out that, quite a few other people are going through a similar thing.

As owners of a chronic condition we can, like highly trained soldiers also feel a sense of belonging.

Part of the reason I’ve been away from the keyboard are some things I’m aiming to help reduce some of my MS symptoms:

  • I’m trying out the new Stasis sock from Voxx thanks to my US cousin (Voxx don’t post outside the US and Canada)
  • I started Tavegil (Newsweek article shown to  me by my US auntie originally in 2014 except this time using a meaningful dose.
  • following more meaningfully the SWANK way of eating (very low saturated fat diet, basically.
  • Taking steps to follow Dr Coimbra’s protocol which involves taking in (what the NHS might consider a toxic amount) of vitD using supplementation). The UK recommend taking in 400 possibly up to 2000iu
  • I’m not even going to start on EMFs!

It can feel quite tiring to seek out various methods of healing when it feels like there are very few people that have ‘got our back’?

Really , I guess we’re all suffering from a chronic condition – it’s called being alive!

We can choose from a number of ways to distract us from the trudge that is life some of which work better than others.

The Toolwall I hope illustrates our need to approach life and be able to adapt to whatever situation arises.

Histamine apparently functions as a neurotransmitter. Candace Pert mentioning the work of her PHd tutor’s early continuation of HIS tutor’s work investigating the role of the histamine in human physiology (p.41 of Molecules of Emotion) probably has nothing to do with an OTC antihistamine functioning to help remyelinate the brain. Her talk of basic chemistry pointed out how little I know about the body we are housed in.

I just focus on the body being an amazing thing that WANTS to work.

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise for unsearchability of previous posts. Doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon?

tools

 

 

Aim to be the Master of your Universe

Aim to be the master of your universe

Amazingly, we can be the victims and masters of our own minds at the same time!

Remember, we are in charge of how our mind chooses to busy itself. We have the option to be the master of our universe.

I don’t always hear that recognition in the voices around me?

Aim to be the master of your universe

Before we continue I’d like to extend my condolences and best, best wishes to Ann Boroch’s  family and friends at this sad time.

I was writing this post when I heard about the suicide of a compassionate, determined and skilled naturopath in the US who, over a decade ago started to heal herself of MS. She was facing a life of increasing immobility but instead of accepting her fate she researched and found a form of no sugar diet to rid herself of overgrown candida could go a long way to keeping herself well!

Sadly, Ann Boroch seemed to have lost her fight in being the master of her own universe.

We all face a range of challenges every day.

Some of which can sink us but others we seem to be able to skip through.

Aim to be master of your universe.

What is it that can make that difference?

We know nothing of Ann’s personal demons but these

5 strategies can smooth life out and we can start to feel like the master of our universe, again.

  • staying in charge of our breathing can help knock the edges off a rising panic.
  • Feeling like we’re being listened to can make all the difference, too.
  • Finding something we like to do whether that be crosswords, jigsaws, catching up with friends, taking a walk in the park or pirating knitting patterns (illegal distribution is not recommended).
  • Visualisation: The first job of our brain is to keep us alive and has been for  a very long time. The brain goes through some mental gymnastics to stop us getting damaged, again. We imagine ‘what might happen if…?’

When we can feel in charge of something in a world where that’s often not the case life generally flows more smoothly. The image below shows it can be taken too far and we can feel isolated… but safe.

master of their universe?

 

I appreciate this is sounding very US West Coast/Californian especially to a society that’s just finding out what Brexit might mean for us and our universe but still, we’re in charge of what goes on in our heads.

‘Coping’ with stress is an adaptive function that has helped keep us alive.

The same turning over of ideas that so far has saved the human race can also work against us.  Be aware of any shifts in thinking.

We’re wired to worry and it takes conscious effort not to follow the same path. Endlessly going over stuff doesn’t serve us and can become addictive! Even more so if we don’t make any changes in response to the fretting.

One trick (easier said than done) is to get out of the habit of stressing about stuff!

How can we stop the release of cortisol that accompanies the fight or flight response? We become primed for action, our body stops digesting food, gives us a natural boost of anti-inflammatories to reduce possible pain, our arms and legs are ready to get us out of danger.

  • Before blind panic sets in write everything down and perform a mind dump. This simple action can nearly literally take the thoughts out of our heads.

Learning ways to reduce our worries is the first step toward leading a calmer life. as a 20 minute interview with Dr Rossman spells it out for us.

With some tweaks to what and when we eat life can feel a lot more rosey!

Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement mostly doesn’t involve chocolate!

Marginal Gains help us to reach similar actions of an industrial engineering expert writing in Linkedin. He talks about the squeeze on profits from multiple directions in the modern commercial world. Dave Harnett highlights the need for continuous, enterprise-wide improvements to shave spending here and there and protect the company’s bottom line in the process.

Team Sky (the UK cycling team from the 2012 Olympics) refer to the process when aiming to make Marginal Gains wherever possible. Looking at every tiny thing (outfit material and cut, breakfast choices, study of sleeping habits etc) that might shave hundredths of seconds off a competing time for their athletes .

Owners of chronic conditions also need to see the management of their bodies in a similar way to companies or elite sports people wishing to seek continuous improvement and become more competitive.

Continuous Improvement mostly doesn’t involve chocolate!

We may not have the bottom line and shareholders to worry about but we face the hardest manager of all, ourselves. We can choose to focus on aspects of our health… like inflammation or pay no attention to the food we bring into our bodies?

Inflammation is at the heart of many long term conditions. Runaway/unmanaged inflammation contributes to ongoing, long term  damage to cells in the body. It stands to reason if we can minimise its impact on our bodies our bodies might function better for longer?

Bearing in mind that Continuous improvement mostly doesn’t involve chocoloate I’d like to present some lists of anti and pro-inflammatory foods it could be wise for us to do more or less of?
We can experiment on ourselves by take stuff out of our diets for a week or two and observe if it has any beneficial effects on our bodies?

Pro-inflammatory

  • Sugar
  • Wheat
  • Corn
  • Milk
  • Alcohol
  • Soy

These 6 things are the most common foods for provoking an immune response in humans. It’s not an exhaustive list of inflammatory foods (we’re all different for a start).  It may be your body is utterly equipped to deal with these things in which case you’ve spent a week finding out and now you can go back to them without any worries.

Anti-inflammatory substances

  • ‘eat the rainbow’ not a psychedelic instruction from an earlier decade but the suggestion to eat a spectrum of fruit and vegetables in the diet every day.

including herbs, spices and dark green leafy vegetables.

  • Fish and fish oils (flaxseed oil if you’re not keen on fish it’s not as good as fish oil but still better than nothing).
  • Coconut oil for cooking
  • Olive oil for salad dressing
  • Berries as part of the rainbow.

Continuous Improvement mostly doesn’t involve chocolate!

All these things are good for a body. We’ve spent a few hundred thousand years evolving whilst eating versions of these foodstuffs.

delightfully created chocolate rabbits unfortunately are proinflammatory being made with milk chocolate (I’d imagine) which contains one of the taxing foods for our bodies that might not work for us?

Life ultimately is about finding our own middle way and not sticking to hard and fast rules. If we get to talk to people when we eat various foodstuffs we can find a benefit from that. Don’t get silly about it but instead, treat your body with the respect it deserves.

legomen talking about continuous improvement to chocolate rabbits.