Category: Organic Produce

Detox Group November 2013

Posted on by Dr. Lynn Mikel

Congratulations for stepping up and making a commitment to eat healthy for the next three weeks!  Motivation for doing the group for the first, second, third, even forth time for some, is to keep learning and being empowered to be our best and live our best lives!

Suffering is a good motivator for change but feeling good is an even better motivator for continued change and growth in personal empowerment!  My intention for this group is: Educate as to how food makes us sick and how it can keep us healthy.

Empower group members to make goals and reach them.

Offer the group an opportunity to see how a group can add support and be an opportunity to support others to be seen, to be heard, and to be cared for.

To bring the invitation for you to bring your spiritual values into your life with food and others.

We will share recipes and food ideas with one another on the blog and everyone will add tasty new cooking ideas to keep them motivated to incorporate whole food into a lifestyle.

 

Soup that we enjoyed this first evening:

  • 6 cups cubed squash  ( organic, cleaned and cubed… Costco)
  • 1 head cauliflower
  • 1 red onion
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 1 head Kale
  • 2 cups mushrooms
  • 3 boxes Carrot Ginger Soup

Put Squash in a bowl and toss liberally with olive oil.  Spread on baking sheet and cook 400 degrees for 30 minutes.  Cut Cauliflower into small like sized pieces.  Toss liberally with olive oil.  Spread on baking sheet and cook 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile… in large soup pan saute chopped onion and garlic in 2 tablespoons olive oil.  Add mushrooms and saute for another 5 minutes or so.  Add boxed soup and keep warming.  Once hot add roasted vegetables and chopped kale.  Add seasoning to taste:  red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, lemon pepper, etc.  ( any other combination of vegetables can be use such as zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, cabbage, green onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes)

Soups are often good to make enough for a few meals.  Heat the portion needed for each meal separately to keep vegetables from overcooking.

Baked Apples:

8 large apples:  peel, pare and cube.  Toss liberally with coconut oil.  Spread on baking sheet and sprinkle with pumpkin pie spice.  Bake 375 degrees for 20 minutes.  Enjoy warm or cooled.

 

 

 

 

Estrogen Dominance

Posted on by Dr. Lynn Mikel

Estrogen Dominance

This topic comes up with nearly every woman I see. The very common symptoms for women that we attribute to hormones are most often a result of imbalance between estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen promotes growth of tissue (i.e. the uterine lining in the first half of our cycle). But most women know breast tissue also can increase in size, we can gain weight, tissue can swell a bit, and mood can be affected. Progesterone helps to moderate these effects of estrogen, including the growth effects.

Here are some symptoms of estrogen not balanced well by progesterone:

PMS Breast tenderness
Excessive menstrual bleeding and cramps
Early onset of menstruation
Fat gain, especially around the abdomen, hips, and thighs
Hot flashes
Perimenopause sleep disturbance
Depression and anxiety
Fibrocystic breasts
Hair Loss
Irregular menstrual periods
Water retention, bloating
Low or absent libido
Infertility
Insomnia
Polycystic ovaries
Uterine cancer
Uterine fibroids
Cervical dysplasia
Breast cancer

Women make estrogen in their ovaries, adrenal glands, and fat cells. During the first two weeks of our cycle, estrogen is the hormone secreted to promote the growth of the uterine lining for implantation. After ovulation, the ovulating egg produces progesterone to maintain the lining and vascular system. If an egg is implanted, progesterone continues to be increased for this uterine sac to maintain the growth of an embryo. If the ovulated egg does not become fertilized, then the progesterone production falls off and the uterine lining is not maintained and it sluffs off with our monthly bleeding.

Women become out of balance with their total estrogen/progesterone hormones for several reasons. One reason is that we are being exposed to a huge number of chemicals that mimic estrogen in our body. These chemicals actually sit down on estrogen receptors and mimic the effects of estrogen.

These chemicals come from many places including:

Birth control pills
Hormone replacement drugs
Additives in lotions, shampoos, make up, and deodorants
Plastics and cookware
Growth hormones found in factory-farmed animal products beef, chicken, and fish
Pesticides and herbicides on foods and in the environment
DDT
PCBs – polychlorinated biphenyls
Foaming agents in soaps and detergents

Sometimes, women produce too little progesterone when under stress because the precursor hormone to make progesterone gets used to make the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands to help us fight or flee. It raises blood sugar, keeps us mentally alert, and heightens our immune system among other responses. Many of us under pressure at work or home or due to psycho/emotional stress maintain high cortisol and, over time, this depletes the resources to make adequate progesterone thus promoting the estrogen dominance or imbalance with progesterone.

Peri menopause is a time when we start missing some ovulations. Remember it is the ovulating egg making progesterone so a few missed cycles and our total load starts to be reduced. This often initiates the start of menopause symptoms like hot flashes, sleep disturbances, and anxiety or moodiness. The balance may have been leaning in that direction from chemical exposures or stress but with the missed ovualtions the imbalance is exacerbated and new symptoms or exaggerated symptoms develop.

The last thing I’d like to address are the functions of the liver and how they relate to estrogen dominance. The liver is the organ responsible for degrading toxins and our hormones. The liver is working hard for most people because of diets high in chemicals, environmental exposure, topical exposures, poor diet, and so on. The liver is sometimes at or past its capacity to do its job or under functioning because it lacks the nutrients from a healthy diet to work properly. Toxins that cannot be completely processed end up being stored in fat cells, including toxic estrogen. Estrogen that is only partially degraded and stored in fat cells can be recycled and has a higher growth promoting potential than regular estrogen. This creates a combined effect of more fat cells as a result of storing toxins that can potentially make even more estrogen.

What can we do?! Our past detox groups reviewed this information repeatedly to emphasize the benefit of improving diet and liver function to help remove toxins including toxic or excessive estrogen. Amazingly, almost all women see improvement in estrogen dominance symptoms – decreased hot flashes, improved sleep, lighter periods, easier premenstrual week, and they feel more calm and at ease.

Basic Recommendations to improve estrogen dominance:

Stop eating processed foods with chemicals.
Eat more vegetables and fruits, along with hormone/antibiotic free protein.
Eat at least one serving cruciferous vegetable a day. A specific sulfur chemical in these vegetables enhances the livers capability of degrading estrogen.
Reduce your exposure to xenoestrogen. A good list can be found here.
Join the next detoxification group in the new year.
Find support and learn ways to decrease your stress.

Dr. Mikel has a host of whole food products that enhance these recommendations and, depending on your symptoms can prescribe the right ones for you. SP Green Food, for example, is a combination of Brussel sprouts, kale, and alfalfa sprouts that many women love! This product has the vegetables that help the liver detox estrogen so they lose weight, have lighter periods, diminished hot flashes, and sleep better. Determining what is a appropriate for you and the cause of your imbalance will lead to the correct treatment. Salivary hormone testing is sometimes done and very useful in some cases. In my experience, 9 out of 10 salivary tests show some degree of estrogen dominance. Hormone supplementation is seldom needed for estrogen dominance if some of these other recommendations are maintained. Adding hormones for estrogen dominance may suppress symptoms by artificially balancing estrogen/progesterone but they can elevate both to alarming levels which increases the load of work on the liver which is why they often lead to weight gain from storing the by-products away in new fat cells.

There is hope and many women are finding safe and effective treatment for their complaints. I give this talk over and over and I have found that this information needs to be heard a few times in order to “get it.” Successfully using these suggestions to improve symptoms and overall health is really the best way to learn.

Resources

http://goodbyepms.com/fail.htm

http://www.sensiblehealth.com/Journey-04.xhtml

Estrogen dominance and men: http://www.greendivamom.com/2009/04/19/how-men-can-avoid-estrogen-dominance/

Are Endocrine Disruptors making us fat & making our children sexual mutants?

GMO

Posted on by Dr. Lynn Mikel
TIME TO PAY ATTENTION!!

Last month we talked about Organic labeling so I thought we would continue this month talking about Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO’s. You may be surprised to learn that you have a 75 percent chance of picking a food with genetically modified (GM) ingredients when you’re at the supermarket. This is because at least seven out of every 10 food items have been genetically modified.

In fact, the United States leads the world in GM crop acreage with 123 million acres in all (that’s close to one-third of the agricultural land in the United States planted with gene-altered crops).

And the blight of genetically engineered crops across the globe continues to grow. Worldwide, there are at least 222 million acres planted with GM crops, and the number keeps rising.
Although the major food giants are carrying on with their claim that GM foods are no different from conventionally grown varieties, the research begs to differ.
Here is just a sampling of the unsavory findings associated with GM foods:

  • GM peas caused damage in mice
  • GM potatoes may cause cancer in rats
  • Bacteria in your gut can take up DNA from GM food
  • They may be spurring the creation of weed-killer-resistant superweeds

Aside from the potential risks to your health, genetic modification known as “terminator technology” is now being used to create, you guessed it, seeds that “self-destruct.” In other words, the seeds (and the forthcoming crops) are sterile, which means farmers must buy them again each year (as opposed to using the seeds from their harvest to replant the following year, which is the traditional way).
This, of course, means bigger profits for the food companies that are patenting GM seeds, and more money shelled out from farmers. Worse still, this practice could actually threaten the entire food supply because the sterile seeds can spread to nearby fields.
There is an incredibly important documentary on this topic that I urge you to watch yourself and then pass on to ALL of your friends and family. This should be required viewing for everyone that is living in the 21st century. It will open your eyes to the dangers of GM foods and do it in a way that is very easy to learn. It’s called “The Future of Food”. This documentary will help you understand the very real threat that ALL future generations face as a result of genetic engineering, check it out here: http://www.thefutureoffood.com/.
Also, there is a new tool to assist you when shopping for food. It’s called The True Food Shopping Guide. Created by The Center for Food Safety. This shopping guide is an excellent start, as you can print it out and take it with you to the store so you can avoid GM foods like the plague. There is even a free app that you can download to your smart phone to use while you are at the store, check it out here: http://truefoodnow.org/2010/07/15/shoppersguideapp/.

Along with using The True Food Shopping Guide, you can also follow these tips to avoid GM ingredients:

  • Examine produce stickers on the fruits and vegetables you buy. The PLU code for conventionally grown fruit consists of four numbers, organically grown fruit has five numbers prefaced by the number nine, and GM fruit has five numbers prefaced by the number eight.
  • Buy organic produce as often as you can. By definition, food that is certified organic must be free from all GM organisms.
  • Stay away from processed foods. Most of these contain corn and soy products, and most corn and soy are genetically modified.

The major danger of genetically engineered foods may be related to the increased use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s weed killer Glyphosate, which is the most common weed killer in the US and just happens to be more toxic than DDT. Roundup, can accumulate and persist in the soil for years, where it kills off beneficial microbes and stimulates virulence of pathogens (not good).
Since organically-farmed fields are not doused with glyphosate, organic fields still contain beneficial soil bacteria that actually hinder pathogens in and on the food from multiplying out of control. This may be yet another reason why organic foods are less prone to be contaminated with disease-causing pathogens than conventionally-grown foods
When applied to crops, glyphosate becomes systemic throughout the plant, so it cannot be washed off. And once you eat this crop, the glyphosate ends up in your gut where it can decimate your beneficial bacteria. This can wreak havoc with your health as 80 percent of your immune system resides in your gut and is dependent on a healthy ratio of good and bad bacteria
Glyphosate is a strong chelator, meaning it immobilizes critical micronutrients, rendering them unavailable to the plant. As a result, the nutritional efficiency of genetically engineered (GM) plants is profoundly compromised. Micronutrients such as iron, manganese and zinc can be reduced by as much as 80-90 percent in GM plants
As you can see there is much to be concerned about in regard to GMO foods. The truth is we really do not know what the end result will be. We have never done this in the history of mankind. You, I, and our kids are the guinea pigs in this great experiment. It reminds me of a comercial from many years past that said: “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”.

Sources and further reading:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/31/monsanto-worst-company-of-2011.aspx?e_cid=20120131_DNL_art_1
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01
/15/dr-don-huber-interview-part-2.aspx
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/13/gmo-crops-destroying-food-system.aspx

Organic Foods

Posted on by Dr. Lynn Mikel

There is a lot of confusion in the marketplace in the use of the word “organic”. To be classified as organic there are many steps a producer must go through.

Making sense of organic labeling can be difficult, and many consumers do not understand the significance of the USDA Organic label. Since October 21, 2002, the following guidelines were established by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP) to assure consumers know the exact organic content of the food they buy.

 

Requirements involve a set of production standards for growing, storage, processing, packaging and shipping that include:

 

  • avoidance of synthetic chemical inputs not on the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances(e.g. fertilizer, pesticides, antibiotics, food additives, etc.), genetically modified organisms, irradiation, and the use of bio solids;
  • use of farmland that has been free from prohibited synthetic chemicals for a number of years (often, three or more);
  • keeping detailed written production and sales records (audit trail);
  • maintaining strict physical separation of organic products from non-certified products;
  • undergoing periodic on-site inspections.

While there are many different certification organizations, USDA Organic is considered the gold standard.

Single-Ingredient Foods
On foods like fruits and vegetables, look for a small sticker version of the USDA Organic label or check the signage in your produce section for this seal.

The word “organic” and the seal may also appear on packages of meat, cartons of milk or eggs, cheese, and other single-ingredient foods.

Multi-Ingredient Foods
Foods such as beverages, snacks, and other processed foods use the following classification system to indicate their use of organic ingredients.

100% Organic—Foods bearing this label are made with 100% organic ingredients* and may display the USDA Organic seal.

Organic—These products contain at least 95–99% organic ingredients (by weight). The remaining ingredients are not available organically but have been approved by the NOP. These products may display the USDA Organic seal.

Made With Organic Ingredients—Food packaging that reads “Made With Organic Ingredients” must contain 70–94% organic ingredients. These products will not bear the USDA Organic seal; instead, they may list up to three ingredients on the front of the packaging.

Other—Products with less than 70% organic ingredients may only list organic ingredients on the information panel of the packaging. These products will not bear the USDA Organic seal.

Keep in mind that even if a producer is certified organic, the use of the USDA Organic label is voluntary. At the same time, not everyone goes through the rigorous process of becoming certified, especially smaller farming operations. When shopping at a farmers’ market, for example, don’t hesitate to ask the vendors how your food was grown.

Buying organic food promotes a less toxic environment for all living things. With only 0.5 percent of crop and pasture land in organic, according to USDA that leaves 99.5 percent of farm acres in the U.S. at risk of exposure to noxious agricultural chemicals.

Our bodies are the environment so supporting organic agriculture doesn’t just benefit your family, it helps all families live less toxic-ally.

11 years ago genetically modified foods were not part of our food supply. Today 30% of our cropland is planted in GMO’s.
USDA Organic is the only de facto seal of reassurance against these and other modern, lab-produced additions to our food supply.

In addition, buying organic supports small local family run farms.

The quality of food we eat repairs and rebuilds our bodies every day. You and your families are worth the cost. Pay now or pay later…. “And what’s less expensive organic food or chemotherapy?” Ha! Remember even adding 30-50% organic over months and years reduces your exposure to chemicals 30-50% which means a huge relief to your liver and other organs in there ability to maintain health and vitality!

Juicing

Posted on by Dr. Lynn Mikel

Juicing

Juicing is a fun and delicious way to add nutrients from fresh vegetables and fruits in a way that is easy to digest and absorb. The dense nutrients are available then to repair, rebuild and promote the detoxification’s system of the body. The benefits of fresh juice is that most of the enzymes and nutrients are intact able to be used for the cleansing and regenerating processes. Almost all store bought juice is pasteurized which destroys these beneficial properties. Even fresh juice stored open or for too long will begin to lose nutrient potential through the oxidation process with oxygen. It is best to drink immediately and perhaps mix with a portion of purified water.

Juicing fruits is a fun way to start but like we emphasize in the detox groups smoothies add some greens to balance the sugar! All fruits except citrus and melons are good combinations. Add several along with acceptable vegetables, mixed green lettuce, and celery.

Vegetable juicing is more impacting for detoxification and regeneration. Small amounts of several vegetables including kale, spinach, and beets for detox impact are wonderful. A little apple and carrot will sweeten and keep you interested!

Four to eight ounces a day is a nice addition to your diet. It is best to do juices alone, that is in between meals for optimal digestion and absorption of the nutrients that will enhance your body’s healing power. Fruits with protein can cause mal-digestion. Attention to those fruit and vegetable combinations will also optimize digestive power and utilization.

Juicers can sometimes be expensive but often can be found used or on sale. Clean up can be an excuse to not juice often but the health benefits are the pay off! Remember taking time to clean and prepare fresh food is a nice way to reconnect with Nature! She is so willing to heal us if we get back to the foods put here to nourish us!

http://www.bastis.org/juicing.htm

http://juicing.mercola.com/sites/juicing/juicing.aspx

http://www.juicingbook.com/juicing_questions_and_answers/juicing_combinations