August 17, 2015

 Can’t Stop Eating? Here’s How

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

 

Think of your body as a machine. If you give it the correct fuel it will run smoothly. If you give it incorrect fuel or eat at the wrong times, it will not run smoothly. It’s that simple!

Your body runs on the fuel called ‘blood sugar’. Blood sugar comes from food, real food not caffeine, sugar, or alcohol. To keep your energy stable and balanced you have to give your body fuel at frequent intervals or it will get out of balance even cause binge eating.

When you sleep all night you aren’t feeding your body so it is like a mini fast. That’s why the first meal of the day has traditionally been called ‘break the fast’ which we have shortened to breakfast. Yes, people used to eat breakfast first thing in the morning.

Now, however, times have changed and many people are not even eating breakfast let alone first thing in the morning. This can cause an energy problem all day.

I like to call it ‘the first half hour.’ This is the most important time of the day to prevent binge eating and overeating all day long. It’s the best time to gain self-control. You can do that by eating something in the first half hour of getting up. Why?

When you don’t eat your blood sugar drops; that’s the mini fast that happens while you sleep. When your blood sugar is low you will have no self-control. By eating first thing in the morning you can raise your blood sugar levels and get a great start to the day. It doesn’t take much a hard-boiled egg, a spoonful of cashew or almond butter, some celery sticks with peanut butter on them, a piece of real cheese not processed cheese food, a quarter of an apple or orange with some nuts or cheese, leftover meat or tofu from the night before. It must not be wheat, items containing sugar, caffeinated beverages, or tobacco. Part of a puffed rice cracker well chewed is also fine with a little protein with it. Protein is the key to stabilizing your blood sugar. Then exercise and eat breakfast.

If you don’t eat first thing or if you have sugary foods, wheat products, caffeine, or tobacco you can set yourself up for a day of blood sugar spikes up and down. When your blood sugar drops or if it is up and down all day, you might have allergies, anxiety, confusion, poor concentration, depression, crying spells, insomnia, headaches, lack of sex drive, weak spells, leg cramps, nightmares, fears, and anger. The list is long of the ways going without eating can create health issues for you; this is just a partial list. But one of the most interesting is that you will have no self-control. You won’t know when to stop eating and you won’t be able to pick healthy food.

Going without eating breakfast can create binge eating later on in the day. Once you set up the cycle of your blood sugar dropping and going up and down all day you will want to eat something to raise your blood sugar, and eat, and eat. Yep out of control eating. Or you might grab a caffeinated drink, something with sugar or wheat and sugar, alcohol, or even gum, something that will bring up your blood sugar right away and stop the pain or emotions that are out of hand. Unfortunately that will be a temporary fix and your blood sugar will come crashing down in an hour or so and you will once again reach for caffeine, nicotine, or a sugary or high carbohydrate snack or perhaps binge eat.

The real cure is not medication; it is eating within the first half hour of getting up. I suggest you eat a little something as described above, do some exercise, and then have breakfast. That will balance or stabilize your energy levels. Even a liquid protein drink is fine as long as it doesn’t have sugar or HFC (high fructose corn sugar or syrup) in it. If you don’t exercise then just eat breakfast. I hope you don’t skip exercise; it can bring up your blood sugar levels and keep you fit.

The ideal lifestyle would be to get up in the morning and have a small snack, exercise for an hour, eat breakfast and go about your day. Then have a small snack every 2-4 hours. Avoid caffeine, nicotine, and foods with sugar and/or wheat in them. Learn to carry a small packet of nuts and seeds with you. Pumpkin or sunflower seeds are especially good so are almonds and Brazil nuts. If you carry snacks you will always have something handy to eat to keep your blood sugar balanced. It is especially important for people of all ages to eat to balance their energy.

For snacks I like to have leaf lettuce spread with cashew butter and rolled up, individual cheese sticks, or part of an apple and 5 or 6 almonds. Baby carrot sticks are fine but can be sweet so eat some protein with them. All vegetables can serve as a snack: zucchini sticks, slices of red or yellow pepper, lightly steamed broccoli or cauliflower. I have a friend who eats beets as a snack. The first time I saw him eating a beet like it was an apple I was really taken aback, but I got used to it and now suggest it, with a bit of protein of course since beets can be sweet. Beets are in some of the supplements holistic practitioners suggest to clients to help with blood sugar problems.

Many so-called diseases are the result of having blood sugar out of balance. Epilepsy type episodes, crying spells, depression, even agoraphobia. I had a client once who was so fearful of going out she was bed ridden and on anxiety drugs. She got an alarm clock and plates of snacks and kept them by her bed. Every 2 hours she had a bite or two of the snack and set the alarm to wake her to eat the snack in another 2 hours. The next day she was up and out and going shopping at the mall, something she hadn’t done in many months.

If you want more specific instructions you can find them in The Anger Cure book. There are also questionnaires to fill in to assess if you have a blood sugar problem. Don’t be a slave to sweet foods and caffeinated drinks. You can gain control of your life and stop binge eating and more by simply balancing your energy by balancing your blood sugar levels.

Kathleen O’Bannon is a Certified Nutritional Consultant and 3rd generation healer. Her 12 books on nutrition and healing and frequent radio and TV appearances have guided thousands of people to better health in their body, mind, and spirit. Kathleen does private consultations and can also speak to your group on many topics on health and healing including: The Love Diet; Food and Mood at Home, Work, and School; and Eat Right-Feel Right. She can be contacted through her web site, now under construction:http://www.kathleenobannon.com or http://www.healthalive.net

 

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May 2, 2015

Healing with Roy G. Biv

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

 

This system of healing has been in place for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Hildegard of Bingen used it. She was a visionary, poet, composer, naturalist, Abbess, theologian, nun, and healer who lived in Bingen, Germany from 1098 to 1179. She fought hard to maintain her position as an Abbess when women were considered no more than servants. She also used wine, mostly white wine. Often the wine was heated slightly and then diluted with more white wine and then drunk to eliminate a lot of health issues of the day. (Wine is made from grapes or other fruits.) But the Roy G. Biv system, along with prayer and other spiritual healing techniques, was her major emphasis. Most of her work, and it includes several very large compendiums of healing with plants, herbs, stones, metals, etc., is published in books, one of which has 300 chapters on healing and medicine.

Many well-known doctors and healers use Roy G. Biv for healing. I first started in 1964. I started on myself and then branched out in 1968 when my co-workers at TV Ontario started asking me about healing. Many of them were healed with this system, I’m happy to say.

Roy G. Biv is easy to apply to healing almost any disease or health challenge. And if it doesn’t heal it completely, it will improve the condition of the patient/client.

I have written about using Roy G. Biv for healing in many of my books like The Anger Cure; Whole Foods for Seniors; Sprouts; The World’s Oldest Health Plan; Nutrition and Health in the Bible; Kathleen’s Health Dictionary; and Energy, Health, and Beauty…After 50.

 

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I’m sure that most nutritionists use it, many yoga teachers teach this system, perhaps even your mother or grandmother used this system or tried to get you to follow it. Your health can benefit greatly from using Roy G. Biv for healing. It can help heal body, mind, and spirit.

By now you must be thinking something like: “I’ve never heard of this system of healing and certainly can’t imagine that my doctor or nutritionist uses it.”

Roy G. Biv Explained

It’s pretty simple, really. Roy G. Biv stands for the colors of the spectrum. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. These are the colors of  the most healing foods on the planet: vegetables, herbs, and fruits.

When most of your diet is composed of Roy G. Biv foods, you might have more energy, be more alert, sleep better, have fewer aches and pains, think more clearly, and even have better poops.

“But what about brown and white foods like mushrooms and cauliflower?” you ask. Yes, you can also include them as many mushrooms can be healing. Some sprouts might even be included in the white food category until they are in the sunlight and develop the green of chlorophyll. I like to include sprouts in the green category, the G. in Roy G. Biv.

I’d love to include some supporting medical information for each of the colors, but that would make this little article into a book, or a multi volumn set of books. There is a huge amount of material published on the healing power of vegetables and fruits.

If you want to see the latest information for any food just go to www.pubmed.com and put in the name of the food. I put in cherries and got 3,657 published medical journal articles on cherries. Of course some of  the articles might be about more agricultural interests than healing, but still there are many uses for all the foods. In pubmed there are subgroups that you can select for more specific information and under cherries they listed: gout, exercise, inflammation, melatonin, arthritis, sleep, and health.

There were 61 listed when I selected ‘cherries and inflammation’. One article discussed the use of tart cherries in soothing skin care cosmetics to be applied to the skin to overcome inflammation. Inflammation is the current hot topic in nutrition and healing, and generally, articles about it mention Turmeric, but tart cherries or tart cherry juice is also helpful for reducing inflammation and a lot easier to get your family and friends to eat than turmeric.

I selected cherries because they are red, and  that’s the first letter of Roy G. Biv. You can select any fruit or vegetable and look for medical journal articles in PubMed. If you do the advanced search you can select human rather than animal or agricultural uses.

The Michigan Cherry Commission and cherry growers were warned by the FDA in 2005-6 for publishing articles in the newspaper extoling the virtues of eating cherries for your health. This seems rather silly when you consider that there are so many articles showing that cherries can contribute to better health and better sleep. However, the FDA said if they continued talking about the health benefits of cherries they will have to register them as drugs, as if drugs actually did healing.

Generally the FDA only comes down on companies that publish health information for their product, not for fruits or vegetables. In many cases companies cannot even say what their food product is good for because it will be considered prescribing their product for a health problem and that is only allowed to be done by doctors. The FDA also has allowable claims that can be made for food products. A product or food item has to go through rigorous testing, and lots of expensive paperwork, to show that it will do what they say it will. Which is good when there is a new food or food product, but a lot of foods have healing powers attributed to them from centuries of use. That doesn’t count as far as the FDA is concerned. Your grandmother could be in trouble with the FDA if she tells you that eating beets is good for you and can clean toxins out of your liver. Ooops, that’s a health claim that is not allowed by the FDA even though people have been prescribed beets for cleansing by holistic doctors and nutritionists for decades.

Many herbs are now outlawed from mentioning their health-giving properties because the FDA doesn’t allow it to be said because they haven’t approved the claim. If a company or grower doesn’t spend the time and money to produce the required tests and paperwork to obtain an official claim, nothing can be said about the health properties of that food.

That’s why you can find out for yourself many of  the healing properties of food by researchng the published articles and clinical trials on pubmed.com

The Roy G. Biv healing system is simple: Eat vegetables and fruits of these colors every day. The more fresh vegetables and fruits you eat, the better you will feel. I have had people tell me that a sprout formula I developed for five network marketing companies had healed them of the following health challenges: 3 kinds of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, MS, lupus, insomnia, frequent colds, and more. Sprouts are green vegetables, the essence of the plant.

If you want to feel younger and more vital, reverse aging, sleep better, and get more out of life, please consider following the Roy G. Biv system of healing and eat 6-10 servings a day of fresh fruits and vegetables. The official definition of a serving is a half cup, 4 ounces. Even a small bottle of veggie juice is at least one serving of vegetables.

An easy way to start is with parsley. This healing green food is high in vitamins, minerals, and chlorophyll. Start by adding freshly chopped parsley to your current meals, even oatmeal! Gradually add in sprouts like alfalfa or fenugreek. Have a salad with your evening meal that is made with Romaine, butter, or leaf lettuce. Add beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, red and yellow peppers, onions, garlic, and lemon juice and olive oil. Have a baked sweet potato at least every week. For dessert have fresh fruit and nuts. Put fresh fruit on your cereal. Have tomatoes with your eggs. Grab a bottled juice in the grocery or gas station that has fresh fruits and vegetables in it.

There are a lot of ways to follow the Roy G. Biv system of healing. Just eat more vegetables and fruits and you’ll be on your way to vibrant health.

 

Kathleen O’Bannon is a Certified Nutritional Consultant and 3rd generation healer. Her 12 books on nutrition and healing and frequent radio and TV appearances have guided thousands of people to better health in their body, mind, and spirit. Kathleen does private consultations and can speak to your group on many topics on health and healing including: The Love Diet; Food and Mood at Home, Work, and School; and Eat Right-Feel Right. She can be contacted through her web site, now under construction: http://www.kathleenobannon.com

 

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April 4, 2015

Are You An Adult?

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

After 40 years as a nutritionist, healer, author, and TV personality, I am still shocked by this. When I was a nutritionist in the Nutritional and Preventative Medical Clinic in Toronto years ago I met an interesting client. He was about 35 years old and had a health problem. We worked on a special diet and exercise plan to get him healthy. He did really well and was almost like a different person. I was so happy for him.

Then I said: “Now that you are healthy you will want to think about getting out more and going out on dates.” He looked at me with a shocked look and said: “Oh, I can’t, girls don’t like me.” “What makes you think that?” “Well”, he replied, “I asked a girl out once in high school and she said no. So I know that girls don’t like me.”

I couldn’t believe him. He was saying that something that happened to him almost half his life ago was running his life as an adult. “Did you ask another girl out after that?” “No,” was his reply, “Why bother. They don’t like me.”

Here was a man who was running his life as an adult based on an assumption he made as a teenager.

Since then I have found dozens of clients who do the same thing. Just yesterday I was talking to a friend and said “I had beet borsch for lunch.” He looked at me and wrinkled his nose and said, “Yuck, beets.”

“You don’t eat beets? You had massive surgery recently and are still taking medication for it. You are filled with chemicals that should be detoxed from your body and that’s what beets are good for, and they taste great.” He still wasn’t convinced that beets tasted good or that he should even try them again. I guess I need a more childlike approach.

“A lot of people don’t eat beets because they had them as children and saw the red in the toilet and got scared they were bleeding and associated that with the beets and don’t want them anymore. Did this happen to you?” “Nope, I don’t like the taste of them.”

“How long ago was this?” Can you believe it? It was more than 30 years ago since he last had beets. He is an adult running his life with at least one decision he made as a teenager.

Is this you? Are you still holding on to something that you decided when you were 6, or 12, or 17?

Spring is the time for spring cleaning. Let this spring be the time to examine your likes and dislikes and see if they are rooted in a decision you made years ago. Is it eating beets or spinach or liver? Is it dressing in a certain way? Is it not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk? What actions are you doing that may not be serving you anymore that you might like to change so you can move forward?

Keep a log of the things you do, say, and feel and see if any of them are no longer serving you. When you find beliefs that you made years ago and don’t need anymore, make a conscious choice to let them go and move into a new freer life.

It’s easy. Sit in a straight backed chair with your feet on the floor. Relax and feel your body and mind becoming heavier and heavier and yet at the same time you feel lighter and lighter. Let your spirit soar and then, consciously and out loud, release those unwanted beliefs or actions, made so long ago, that are no longer serving you. Then make some adult decisions based in science, faith, fact, emotion, whatever style you find fits you best, but fits for this time in your life.

While you’re at Spring Cleaning, look into cleaning up your diet as well. Remove all items made with sugar, wheat, corn, and GMO grown foods. Eat as close to the way foods grow as possible. Chew each mouthful until it is liquid to ensure complete digestion and assimilation of the nutrients in the food. That doesn’t mean you can’t cook food, but you will want to avoid packaged and prepared foods that could contain a lot of additives. Eat green leafy items every day, at least a handful. Replace soft drinks and beer with water or vegetable juice. Include sea vegetables; cultured natural yogurt or kefir; bitter herbs like Romaine lettuce, parsley, watercress, dandelion greens; and lots of other colorful vegetables and fruits like pumpkin, sweet potato, turnip, tomato, Brussels sprouts, peas, okra and more. Medicinal sprouts can build the entire body, strengthen the immune system, and ward off many health challenges. Look for my latest book: Healing with Sprouts, Grow your own medicine, available in late 2015.

My favorite sprouts right now are Fenugreek sprouts. Fenugreek is known for helping to stabilize the blood sugar levels. This means it can help with a lot of diseases not just diabetes. But fenugreek is also known to remove sludge from the body. Drinking fenugreek tea can remove sludge from the body mostly through expelling mucus. Eating the sprouts will do an even better job of removing sludge and mucus from the intestines.

Beets have been used for decades for removing toxins from the liver and stabilizing blood sugar levels, so spring is also a great time to eat beets. I often make a salad of cubed beets and carrots (cooked or raw)  tossed in a light dressing of Extra Virgin olive oil or coconut oil, fresh lemon juice and the zest of half of the peel, cumin, chopped fresh basil and parsley, and several cloves of fresh garlic squeezed into the dressing immediately before serving it.

Plate up the Beet and Carrot Salad on a bed of shredded Romaine lettuce and watercress and top it with fenugreek sprouts.

Now that’s Spring Cleaning!

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November 17, 2014

Oh, Those Brussel’s Sprouts!

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

chef with baconEvery year at this time there is a lot of information and recipes with winter vegetables like Brussel’s Sprouts, broccoli, and winter squash.

As a child I had a hard time with Brussel’s sprouts. The taste was so strong for me and nobody else thought so. “Oh, it’s just because you are a child and can still taste food. You haven’t been drinking hot or icy beverages or smoking to destroy your taste buds. You’ll learn to like them and even like rutabaga, eventually.” Adults were always saying things like this to me. Did they say the same to you?

Many articles were published about how children could taste foods that tasted really strong to them, that adults couldn’t taste as strong or bitter. And they said due to all the hot and ice cold things adults drink and eat, their taste buds have been dimmed or toned down.

My mother was, what I like to call, an English cook. She never used herbs or spices unless she had to like in pumpkin pie. Everything had to be cooked for an hour no matter what it was. You can imagine how the house smelled the days she boiled cabbage for dinner for an hour. Sulfur city! Liver or chicken cooked for an hour seemed nearly inedible to me.

Yes, there were days I would sneak herbs and/or garlic into the food she was making. She loved the taste, until I mentioned I had added garlic, and then she would throw a fit and say the food wasn’t right with all that garlic. So I quit telling her what I was adding to her food. I often used to say, when I had Kathleen’s Cooking and Nutrition Centre for 20+ years, that I learned to cook to save my life. Oh, her food was always well-made and tasty, but very bland and predictable. Same old— same old at every holiday.

Thanksgiving was the time for Brussel’s sprouts. They are a fall vegetable. But they were so bitter I had a hard time eating them. The same with cabbage and spinach. Unless they were drenched with something like cole slaw dressing or mashed in with cream cheese to make creamed spinach. But Brussel’s sprouts were not able to be disguised like that in our house, just a little bit of margarine on it and maybe salt and pepper, but not too much pepper. So I always had an attitude towards them. “Why would anyone want to eat something so bitter”, I often asked myself and grownups when I was a child. But adults would just chuckle a little and say something like: you’ll get used to them and eventually grow to like them.

It took a long time. I eat them now, but prepare them myself. I have learned the secret to it. Yes, for me and thousands of others like me Brussel’s sprouts take a lot of work and time to get used to. About 35% of women and 15% of men in the United States are supertasters and have this problem with not just Brussel’s sprouts, but also kale, spinach, broccoli, green peppers, grapefruit juice, tomatoes, coffee, and dark chocolate.

These are the foods that contain chemicals that supertasters can taste and nontasters can’t. It’s the bitter principal that they can taste. I have often recommended eating bitter herbs to improve digestion of fats, but as a child I never thought about the bitter taste being one of the good qualities of these foods. There is a lot science around this taste sensation and some psychologists use these genetic tasting with their clients. There are nontasters, medium tasters, and supertasters.

I’m a super taster! I’ve known about it since university biology classes at Wayne State University in Detroit in the 1960s. We were studying Gregor Mendel’s genetics of inheritance theory. How two blond parents are most likely to have blond children, but a dark haired parent and blond parent have chances of several different hair colors in their children. So geneticists make charts of the probability of the hair color to show all the different possibilities, kind of like a guessing game for parents. To illustrate this scientific theory the professor gave us all a small piece of paper and said to wait until he told us to before we put it in our mouths to test us. Apparently, there were people who could taste something on this paper that others couldn’t and it was genetic.  Cool, I thought, a practical use for biology.

So he gave the word and we all put the little square of paper on our tongues. Before it was saturated I was spitting it out, wiping my tongue with my hankie (it was the 1960s after all) and running out to the drinking fountain to rinse my mouth out. It was horrible, so bitter I couldn’t stand it. Of course the class thought I was faking it, but I was not! It was nasty. When I came back in the professor declared: Kathleen is a supertaster.

Yep, I could taste it whereas very few others in my class could. I had never heard of a supertaster. But I suspect that being a supertaster is the reason I can’t handle the taste of most stevia and quinoa. I can’t even imagine why someone would eat quinoa, it is so bitter, even the kind that says it has reduced the bitter taste is still bitter to me. I can’t eat pasta where quinoa is only a small proportion of the entire pasta, still too bitter.

There are two tastes that are the tastes that define supertasters: PROP and PTC. PROP is short for propylthiouracil , PTC is phenylthiocarbamide. The gene they think is responsible for this supertaster phenomenon is TAS2R38. So if you can taste the bitter part of these listed foods, you might be a supertaster.

You also can tell if you are a super taster by looking at your tongue. Supertasters have more taste buds than nontasters. They show this by using a small sterilized paper with a hole punched in it by a paper punch. This is put on the front of the tongue and then the red raised up taste buds are counted. If you have at least 35 of them in that tiny little hole you are a super taster. This was not covered in my book The Anger Cure in the graph titled “Stories the tongue can tell”. This was too weird and too rare to put in there, and I wasn’t talking about genetics.

What can be done about it? If you have family members who complain about the strong or bitter taste of Brussel’s sprouts, spinach, kale, etc. there is hope for your Thanksgiving dinner this year. The bitter taste is covered up by oil and dairy (presumably full fat dairy), sugar, and salt.

Here is the sad news. You can use more salt on the food or add sugar, both block the ability of the tongue to taste these two chemicals in food. Now you know why people develop a taste for highly salted and sugary fast foods. Strangely enough supertasters often dislike fat. So drenching Brussel’s sprouts in a lot of butter and bacon fat is not going to appeal to them either. But adding salt to their portion will help or even adding a little bit of sugar can stop the bitter taste from being overpowering. Sad news because adding salt and sugar to foods is not always a good idea healthwise.

So if you have picky eaters this holiday season make sure you serve Brussel’s sprouts with an added topping like a mild cream sauce, or oil and vinegar and herbs. Roasted Brussel’s sprouts often have the added advantage of having some form of oil or butter on them. Most of the recipes for roasted Brussel’s sprouts call for bacon and/or bacon fat on them with additional herbs or even grated lemon peel. If your family follows vegan eating you would not want to use dairy or bacon, but a nice vegan béchamel sauce would be nice. Soy is also one of the foods in the category of bitter for supertasters, so keep that in mind as well if you decide to use soy on Brussel’s sprouts.

A perfect addition would be CocoBacon. This vegan product contains all the tastes that will make Brussel’s sprouts tasty and reduce the bitter taste for your supertaster. CocoBacon is coconut with organic mesquite smoke flavoring, organic coconut sugar, Celtic sea salt, and other organic seasonings. It contains both sugar and salt and tastes like bacon. I heard about these fabulous coconut products at Selina Naturally when I was a guest on the Frankie Boyer radio show out of Boston. Frankie recommended them and they are really fabulous.

If you suspect that you or someone in your family is a supertaster you might want to do some research on what it is and how to make the bitter foods palatable to supertasters. All you have to do is ask them if they find that any of the foods listed above taste bitter to them. You might already know because they would not want to eat these foods and might be described as ‘picky eaters’ when in reality they might just be supertasters. Happy Thanksgiving, hope you are having Brussel’s sprouts.

Kathleen O’Bannon, BA, DD, CNC, is the author of 12 books on nutrition and healing. As an international Television and radio personality and corporate speaker, she is available to speak to your group on health and healing, Food and Mood at Work, or customize programs to fit your needs. She can be reached at kathleen@kathleenobannon.com.

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October 9, 2014

Build a Coat of Armor Against the Flu and Colds

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

Just like any super hero, you can build a coat of armor to protect yourself against getting the flu and colds this winter.

It’s pretty easy and offers great protection against illness. Of course you must still wash your hands frequently, avoid touching contaminated surfaces, and all the other things that we know help protect us against illness like wear a scarf over your face in the really cold weather, use boots or rubbers to keep your feet dry, eat lots of veggies, and get plenty of sleep.

AND build a coat of armor to protect you from germs and viruses.

The skin is one of the largest immune system organs in your body so it stands to reason that you will want to keep it in tip top shape during the winter. Here’s how to do that.

There is a protective coating that is supposed to be on your body at all times. It is called ‘the natural acid mantle’ and it is designed to protect you from external assault by germs and viruses. This is a thin layer of oil that is naturally secreted by your skin. It’s slightly acidic, that’s why it’s called the natural acid mantle.

Soap and water are alkaline, the opposite of acid. Every time you use soap and/or water on your skin you strip off that natural protection. If your hair is stripped of this natural layer it will become ‘fly-away’ and hard to manage, especially in winter. If your skin is stripped of this protective layer you might have dry skin, chapped skin, or chapped lips.

If you come in contact with someone who has a cold and your armor layer is stripped of its protection, you might be more likely to catch the cold.

So how can your protect yourself? Certainly not by avoiding showering! You can apply a protective coating every time you shower or take a bath.

Yes, you can restore your natural acid mantle and keep your skin from being susceptible to colds by a simple and old-fashioned trick.

Simply keep a spray bottle of pure, organic apple cider vinegar, diluted half and half with water, in your shower. Each time you finish a shower spray yourself down with the cider vinegar armor coating and wait a few seconds then quickly rinse it off and hop out of the shower. Many people don’t even rinse it off. If you are taking a bath, add about a cup or so to the tub to give you the protection. It’s just that simple. Make sure you use organic apple cider vinegar; there are several brands on the market.

If you are washing your hair not in the shower or tub you might also want to apply a final rinse of apple cider vinegar and water, diluted half and half. Use equal parts of cider vinegar and water to get a good mixture.

I had a friend in Toronto years ago who had no hair on the top of his head. The skin on the top of his head looked like alligator skin. He made several mistakes, the first one was he used a bar of harsh soap to wash with and the second was he also used that to wash his hair and head. He was hoping to find a girlfriend and was concerned about the alligator skin on his head being a turn off. It was, of course, but he fixed it easily. I couldn’t convince him to get better soap but I did convince him to make a spray bottle of half water and half organic apple cider vinegar and spray his head after his shower. With the very first application his head was smooth and nice. And yes, he got a girlfriend, got married and moved out west.

Apple cider vinegar is a real super hero. It can restore dry fly-away hair, dry skin, and act as a mantle of protection this winter.

If you feel a sore throat coming on you can nip it immediately by gargling with a different dilution of apple cider vinegar. A gargle should be one teaspoon of organic apple cider vinegar to one glass of water. Tip your head back as far as possible, stick your tongue out and gargle deep into your throat. Spit it out, do not swallow it. This will restore your mucus membranes and help protect you from getting a sore throat. You might need to repeat it every 15 to 20 minutes. This can even recover your throat from laryngitis as well.

Organic apple cider vinegar is an essential to have in your house this winter. It provides a natural coat of armor against all kinds of health issues.

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August 26, 2014

The Cause of Most Headaches

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

anger_1

If you suffer from headaches you have probably tried many different remedies including prescription drugs, treatments, chiropractic, and even herbal and homeopathic remedies. There are at least 150 different kinds of headaches known to allopathic doctors and even more known to homeopaths.

The descriptions can range from pressure in the sinuses, pain behind the eye, pain that starts in the eye and travels behind the ears or just debilitating pain so bad you have to stay in bed or keep moving to blot out the pain. In homeopathy they talk about how the actual pain feels like a metal band tightening around your head, or a nail hammered into your skull.

Many years ago I had massive headaches. Screaming, in bed, rolling up in a ball pain. Nothing helped. Sometime there was vomiting. Often my husband had to take me to hospital to get an injection to stop it. There were many things that might have triggered it. His cigarette smoke, mold in the basement, weather changes, trigger foods. I looked into them all.

I had been to see an MD who was supposed to be a natural practicing doctor who told me if I didn’t get rid of them he would have to shave my head and attach electrodes and more scary things that sounded like worse torture than the headaches. I was a certified yoga teacher and did yoga every day for at least an hour sometimes more. Even my strict yoga practice didn’t eliminate the headaches.

Until I met Dr. Elmira Buxton. She was a gentle soul and a Seventh Day Adventist doctor who was into nutrition years before it was popular. She took one look at me, asked a few questions and declared that she could help with some simple dietary changes. She had me eat certain foods and test my urine and saliva and alter my special foods accordingly. It really helped.

It opened my eyes to nutrition! I had always eaten a good diet, no junk food to speak of. And then she told me why I had them and to study about it. Yep, that’s how I became a nutritionist. I studied with Adele Davis, the Mother of Modern Nutrition; Dr. Abram Hoffer; and Paavo Airola. I met with herbalists and studied herbs. I foraged for wild food in the woods and ate only organic. And this was in the early 1970s when it was difficult to get organic foods in Toronto. I had to travel out of town to get food that was grown with no chemicals.

I devised a kind of log that I kept of what I ate, what I did, and how I felt and discovered a pattern that was the key to the headaches.

When I was in middle and high school I often had headaches on Saturday morning. “Let down headaches” they called them. They postulated that when you have been rushing around all week and then you sleep in and rest on Saturday, it causes a headache. Well, I had that as a teenager many Saturdays, but it wasn’t as intense as the headaches I had in my early 30s.

Many people have frequent headaches and sometimes they are severe and almost crippling. Many of my students at Kathleen’s Cooking and Nutrition Centre in Toronto complained of headaches. Many had found no way to stop them. I’m not talking about the headaches after a night of drinking alcohol or overeating. These are obvious. I’m not talking about true migraines that can be triggered by certain foods like sharp cheddar cheese or red wine or severe changes in the atmospheric pressure. I’m not talking about headaches that might come from a sensitivity to certain foods or spices like chocolate or MSG. What I’m talking about is something totally outside of most doctors’s understanding.

This is the severe headaches caused by low blood sugar or blood sugar and energy fluctuations. Sometimes articles report this as ‘tension’ headache. And it might be from tension. But what I look at is the reason for the tension.

It’s really simple: Every part of your body runs on a fuel we like to call ‘blood sugar’. Blood sugar is made in your body from food, not sugar. When you don’t eat or eat the wrong things it can throw the balance off in your body and create the problem.

I have met people who have been bed ridden in pain because of this. I have met people who had agoraphobia because of this. I have met people who had depression and terrible headaches because of this. So many health problems are directly related to keeping your blood sugar stable that I can’t mention them all here. But I can say that headaches, depression, overweight, addictions, allergies, confusion…the list goes on and on, all can come when you let your blood sugar get imbalanced. Yes, fluctuating blood sugar levels can cause headaches and a lot of other intense pains.

Take a look at this list of symptoms that can be caused by low blood sugar. (I’m not talking about diabetics who are using insulin. If you are under a doctor’s care for diabetes, you must keep him or her informed of what you are doing in your lifestyle. Do not go off any medications without checking with your healthcare provider.)

Take his test and see if you can relate to any of these other symptoms that might be causing your headaches and many other health issues.

 

LOW BLOOD SUGAR TEST

 

Put 0, 1, 2, or 3, on the line next to all the symptoms that in any way apply to you, no matter how mild they seem to be. The value to you of this survey depends on your honest, objective answers. Take your time!

 

  • Use “0” if you have never had it. Or just leave it blank.
  • Use “1” if it is mild—you have it once or twice a year.
  • Use “2” if it is moderate—you have it monthly or several times a year.
  • Use “3” if it is severe—you have it daily or weekly or you may not always have the symptoms, but you are always aware that you have the problem.

_____ Allergies

_____ Anger/rage

_____ Anxiety

_____ Blurred vision

_____ Cold sweats

_____ Compulsive eating

_____ Confusion

_____ Convulsions

_____ Crave sugar/starches

_____ Crying spells

_____ Depression

_____ Dizziness/tremors

_____ Drowsiness

_____ Excessive hunger

_____ Exhaustion

_____ Faintness

_____ Fears

_____ Forgetfulness

_____ Headaches

_____ Indecisiveness

_____ Insomnia

_____ Irregular meals

_____ Irritability

_____ Lack of sex drive

_____ Leg cramps

_____ Muscle aches/pains

_____ Muscular twitching

_____ Nervousness

_____ Nightmares

_____ Personality changes

_____ Poor coordination

_____ Sighing/yawning

_____ Skip breakfast

_____ Staggering

_____ Weak spells

_____ TOTAL SCORE


 

What’s Your Score?

Add the numbers together—2 + 3 + 1 = 6 and so forth—until you have the total number. What was your total? 105? 75? 53? 25? 15? This may surprise you, but if you scored higher than 15 on this test, chances are really great that you have fluctuating blood sugar problems that contribute to your and headaches.

(This quiz used by permission of the author from The Anger Cure: A Step-by-Step Program to Reduce

Anger, Rage, Negativity, Violence, and Depression in Your Life, Basic Health Publishers.)

 

What is the Solution?

 

The simplest solution is to eliminate sugar and anything made with it, white flour, caffeine, alcohol, and processed foods. Eat small frequent meals starting with something within the first half hour of getting up in the morning. Many people find  that they cannot eat bananas or drink juice because the sugar throws off the levels of their blood sugar and creates this chemical imbalance we have called ‘low blood sugar’ for four decades.

A simple diet of whole foods spaced evenly throughout the day can be the first step to solving your headaches. It is important to eat a lot of fresh vegetables throughout the day, including sprouts and other live foods. It is important to eat every 3 hours. It doesn’t have to be much: a small handful of natural or sprouted nuts and seeds, a firm cooked egg, lettuce with nut butter. Always carry your snacks with you to avoid going too long and creating the problem.

A small meal might be a hard cooked egg, a piece of cheese not cheddar, leftover meat not processed, celery and cashew butter, the list of snacks and meals is endless, as endless as your imagination.

You should find that you have more energy, fewer headaches or even eliminate them altogether. If you want more details you can find them in The Anger Cure. Don’t let the title fool you, this program will help eliminate your headaches, and perhaps a lot of other health issues in your life. All of the symptoms listed in the quiz above can be eliminated by following the plan in The Anger Cure.

When I see the ads on television for erectile dysfunction or insomnia, it makes me know that many people need to follow this simple plan. Eliminate the imbalance; don’t cover it up with drugs!

The Anger Cure also has instructions for keeping a log to tell which foods and lifestyle habits might be causing the headaches.

 

You can change your life and your health!

 

Kathleen O’Bannon is a Certified Nutritional Consultant, international speaker, author, and radio and TV personality. She is available for speaking engagements and private consulting through http://www.kathleenobannon.com.

 

 

 

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June 2, 2014

A fabulous book

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

51yf02G30PL__SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp,TopRight,12,-18_SH30_OU01_AA160_As a writer I know what it is like to get publicity for a new book. Dr. Edward L. Murray, III, has just posted a mini press release about his book available on amazon. Dr. Murray is a wonderful man who was a psychologist until an accident prevented him from continuing with his practice. He especially loves helping children. His book can do just that. If you are a teacher or educator, please take a look at this fabulous book. Dr. Murray is available for speaking engagements and can come and talk to your class or group.

Edward L. Murray III, Ph. D., has recently published a book, When Push Comes to Shove: A Tale of Three Goats Lives, which is available at Amazon.com.  This book was developed over the course of 20 years of experience working as a clinical psychologist with children and their families.  It is designed to address some of their most important developmental cognitive and emotional needs.  This semi animated work is written in rhyming verse and is an engaging and delightful story, as well as a teaching tool for middle and high school students.  With wonderfully scintillating illustrations, it presents a story about dealing with crises, change, or challenge, while featuring three distinct personalities embodied in the main characters of the story: one that is impulsive, one that is avoids dealing with issues, and one that is a critical thinker or problem solver.  The book teaches crucial life skills in a very entertaining fashion, but also provides substantive fodder for an English literature class.  Appendices offered at the end of the book provide learning formats for parents, educators, and counselors to inculcate these lessons. This book is a creative triumph and helps shape young people into winners!  If this work were included as a core part of any educational system of any country, it would categorically uplift that country in a favorable fashion. Amazon.com: when push comes to shove: Books

Murray #-619-750-3838

 Kathleen O’Bannon, CNC, is a nutritionist, healer, and the author of 12 books on nutrition and healing. She can be reached through her web site: http://www.healthalive.net

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March 24, 2014

Cravin’ Bacon? Here’s Why.

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

 

chef with baconBacon is everywhere these days. There’s even bacon ice cream.

Bacon has a kind of cult following. They even have conventions all about bacon. Once I even saw an ad for one of these gatherings and the woman speaking was wearing a dress made of bacon. Now that is a real bacon lover. People come to bacon conventions to eat bacon ice cream, wear clothes made of bacon, and talk about bacon while gorging on bacon products.

Why is bacon so popular? I have several nutritionally oriented reasons that people want, need, and even crave bacon.

Can you guess what they are?

Fat, Salt, and sugar! They can make you crave them and also can negatively affect your health. That’s often why we think people love bacon. That might be part of it. There is another reason why people want bacon (as well as salami, ham, and other meats).

It’s the smoke. Smoke! (I’m ignoring the fat and salt for this article.)

Yep, they smoke the cuts of meat to make bacon. Many prepared meats contain that smoke flavor, but bacon is the only one that has its own conventions.

As a nutritionist I look at things differently from most people. I know why they crave bacon. There is a simple explanation: a yeast problem. This yeast, called candida albicans, is on almost everything you come in contact with and you don’t even know it. People with a yeast problem often crave sugar and smoked foods.

When yeast is inside your body and living in you that’s when the trouble begins. This is called a yeast problem and it is triggered by eating fermented foods like beer, wine, pickles; sugar and products containing sugar; yeast products like bread, rolls, and some crackers; moldy cheeses like camembert and blue cheese; hard cheeses; and left overs. For many people eating fruit can also be enough sugar to trigger yeast growth in the body.

If you go to a party and have wine or beer, fruit, bread, and cheese you might even wake up feeling like you have a worse hangover than you would normally experience. This is because the yeast feeds on these foods and then produces the byproduct of alcohol. So you are turning your body into a still to make alcohol. Of course this only happens when you have the yeast living in your body. In the 40 years since information was first published by Dr. William Crook on yeast problems, I have seen thousands of people who have yeast problems and ill health directly related to the excess yeast in their body.

How does bacon enter into this? Aside from craving sugar, fruit, carbohydrates, wine or beer, craving smoked foods is also a symptom that you have candida living in your body. Bacon has both sugar and smoke on it so it gives the yeast in your body two reasons to want bacon. If you find that you must eat bacon or sugar or beer or wine then you might want to look into whether you have yeast in your body making you crave these foods to feed it.

There are many symptoms that often are mistaken for a disease when they are actually signs of too much yeast in your body.

  •         Itching skin especially in moist areas or areas where you sweat
  •         Headaches
  •         Constipation and/or diarrhea
  •         Discharge from the vagina or penis
  •         Nerve deafness hearing loss
  •         Numbness in hands and feet
  •         Bloating and gas after eating
  •         Frequent colds and flu
  •         Feeling spacy
  •         Some experts even believe that cancers and MS are directly related to yeast problems

There is no way I can list all the symptoms, there are so many that can directly affect you when you have too much candida in your system. There are a lot of detailed books on the yeast problem so getting help is easy. The Anger Cure has an entire chapter, Your Expanding Universe, devoted to yeast including a simple questionnaire to take to see if you have any of the major symptoms. Any books on yeast by Dr. William Crook or Dr. Carolyn Dean will be very helpful. WebMD often writes about yeast problems and the skin. M.D.s didn’t recognize yeast problems for many decades, and now they do. Chances are that in 2014 your doctor won’t think you are crazy if you talk about yeast problems.

What can you do if you suspect you have a yeast problem? It’s simple:

  •         Avoid sugar and sugary foods
  •         Avoid coffee
  •         Avoid fruit and grains together
  •         Avoid fermented foods like beer, wine, cheeses, soy sauce
  •         Avoid yeasted foods like bread and crackers
  •         Avoid processed foods, especially bacon, salami, ham, etc.
  •         Avoid cigarette smoke
  •         Eat yogurt with no sugar
  •         Eat garlic or take odorless garlic extract
  •         Eat a lot of vegetables, wash them in a veggie wash first
  •         Exercise every day
  •         For more ways to overcome yeast in your body, read books about it

Once you have taken a yeast test and read up on it, if you find you have a yeast problem that is undermining your health, see a naturopath or nutritionally oriented doctor for some personalized advice. There are still many doctors who don’t believe in the yeast problems, so don’t despair if your own doctor doesn’t want to talk about it. Find one who does. You will be surprised how much better you can feel if you are free of yeast in your body.

 

Kathleen O’Bannon, CNC, is the author of 11 books on nutrition and consults with clients in person, on skype,  or the telephone. She is available for speaking to your group on health and nutrition.  She can be reached through her email: kathleen@healthaliveproducts.com.

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March 5, 2014

Anger and Your Heart

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

anger_1Angry outbursts can kill you. The more you have the more chances you have of having an acute myocardial infarction (AMI). A study published in 1995 in the journal Circulation reported that an angry outburst can often trigger a heart attack within 2 hours. Twenty years before the time of this research I was a nutritionist at The Nutritional and Preventative Medical Clinic in Toronto where we planned diets and chelation therapy for thousands of people to help reduce clogged arteries and reduce their chances of dying. We used many tests to determine the balance in a client’s body to plan an appropriate healthy eating pattern. We used a plant-based diet under the supervision of Dr. Jerry Green. During the 1970s practitioners used to refer to the ‘Type A Personality’ which was a description of a person who had massive stress and anger. The Type A personality person was known to finish your sentences before you could, asked you to speak faster, ran hither and thither doing things really fast, tried to do way more than they could possibly do and worked at getting everybody else to do the same, and got mad easily. By the 1990s they determined that the A in Type A Personality actually stood for anger.

This is when I first realized that there was a simple answer to this problem by using nutrition to stabilize the blood sugar and prevent anger and rage. We used a nutritional and holistic approach. Many of the clients who didn’t have chelation but did follow the personal diets we planned reduced their anger, chest pain, total lipids, and panic attacks. They felt better, looked younger, and enjoyed life more.

Anger, regular frequent outbursts, can trigger the production of lipids that clog arteries. We have known this for decades. Most research does not go into the aspect of diet, but reports on the percentage of incidents associated with anger.

A newer study published in August 2013 in the American Journal of Cardiology repeats the same information. They found “The incidence rate of AMI onset was elevated 2.43 fold within 2 hours of an outburst of anger.” They also found that “greater intensities of anger were associated with greater risks.” So the more times you get angry and the stronger your anger is, the more chances you have of experiencing a myocardial infarction.

The latest review published in March 2014 of all the literature on anger and heart problems showed a connection between angry outbursts and all cardiovascular events including arrhythmia and ischemic stroke. All the results showed it happen most often within 2 hours of the angry outburst.

Reducing the incidents of angry outbursts should be the aim of anyone who has a history or family history of cardiovascular problems. This can easily be attained by following a heart healthy natural food diet. This means eating a lot of vegetables, especially dark green and dark orange ones. These foods contain the minerals that can help with relaxation of the muscles in the heart and chest. Eating the right foods at the right time can also prevent the drop in blood sugar that often triggers the adrenal cascade that creates the angry reaction in the first place.

My favorite radio show host in Boston, Frankie Boyer, is fond of me talking about the phrase “the first half hour”. This is the most important thing to remember in your lifestyle to prevent almost all health problems associated with anger. What is the first half hour? That’s when you need to eat something first thing in the morning that will raise your blood sugar levels and prevent your blood sugar from dropping and creating anger or a need for sugar, caffeine, or nicotine, which can trigger a stress reaction that can lead to anger. If you do not eat something to raise your blood sugar, you can create the ideal situation in your body to cause anger and many other reactions that are bad for your health.

The simple solution is to eat a little snack within the first half hour of getting up and then eat healthy foods throughout the day. What can you eat first thing? A few unsalted unroasted nuts, a small piece of cheese, nut butter on some lettuce or celery, a small piece of an apple and some nut butter or cheese, a sardine, a green smoothie with no sugar, or even a hardboiled egg.

You can eat a small snack so you can do a workout and/or meditation and then eat breakfast. Or you can eat your breakfast then. A protein smoothie with a vegetable protein source like hemp, soy, or sprouts can be a really fabulous way to start your day and reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems. You’ll have more energy and feel better.

This way of reducing anger is fully explained in The Anger Cure. This book is a total nutritional system for reducing anger and includes personal questionnaires that can show you which habits need to be changed to have better cardiovascular health and reduce anger, rage, negativity, and depression.

You can reduce your anger levels and feel better, look younger, and have more energy.

Kathleen O’Bannon, CNC, is the author of 11 books on nutrition and healing including The Anger Cure: A Step-by-Step Program to Reduce Anger, Rage, Negativity, Violence, and Depression in Your Life and Sprouts, The savory source for health and vitality. She has a private Wellness Practice and teaches nutrition and natural food cooking. She can be reached through the email on her web site: http://www.healthaliveproducts.com.

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January 26, 2014

Eat Right – Feel Right™

by Kathleen O'Bannon, CNC

foodThe human machine was designed to survive by eating food. Real, whole food is best. Food supplies the fuel to run your body. What most people miss out on is all the vitamins and minerals that are found in vegetables, seeds, and nuts. These are called the ‘micro nutrients’ because they are in small quantities. The ‘macro nutrients’ are protein, fats, and carbohydrates that are in larger (macro) quantities. These nutrients should comprise our entire diet.

For centuries there have been groups in society that have maintained health eating vegetables, nuts, and seeds, and in some cases whole grains. The current popularity of eating vegan or vegetarian foods has raised some questions as to the validity of eating this way.

All vegetables contain protein, some more than others. Foods like soy (which contains complete protein for humans), spirulina, and Moringa oleifera leaves can sustain human life because they contain high amounts of protein along with other macro and micro nutrients. Of course these foods should always be organically grown to avoid contamination from GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms).

It is important for good health to ensure that you are eating enough vegetables to sustain health. That’s why we have the food pyramids. The United States government says that we need to eat 8-10 half cup servings of vegetables a day to maintain health. Are you eating that amount? Are you eating fresh, whole, organically grown vegetables and fruits every day?

If you would like some ideas of what to eat and how much, take a look at this food pyramid produced by OldWays.

You can see their recommendations of the amount of vegetables to be eaten in one day. This is called a plant-based diet because plants comprise the largest amount of the foods to be eaten; they are the basis of your diet every day.

One good way to get enough vegetables in every day is to drink a vegetable smoothie first thing in the morning. Vegetable smoothie is a fancy name for vegetables that have been blended up, whole, with enough liquid added to make them totally drinkable. What vegetables can you drink this way? Cabbage, carrots, green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, kale, collard leaves, mustard greens, avocado, tofu, beets, the list is as endless as the variety of vegetables available. Some people add fresh berries, peach, pear, or even apple to the veggie mixture as well. Fresh sea vegetables would be a nice addition. Sprouts of any kind would be nice so would nuts and/or nut butter. Make sure your blender is strong enough to blend the vegetables to liquid.

Eat some vegetables at every meal. A great way to get started is to add chopped fresh parsley, watercress, dill, or other green leaves to every main dish just before serving. This colorful and flavorful garnish is also nutritious. Have a salad at every meal or better yet have a salad as your meal.

If reading about the nutritional advantages of vegetables and fruits doesn’t make you want to eat more of them than perhaps watching the movie “Forks over Knives” might do it. This film has several case histories that show people who were ill with the regular health issues of Americans like diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease who all reversed these health issues by eating more vegetables. You can see them change right before your eyes. It’s very inspiring. Of course they also reduced the amount of the things they were eating that were causing the health issues like high fat and the empty calories of white flour products, sugar, and refined and processed foods.

Vegetarians eat a diet based on vegetables (which also includes grains since they are vegetables). There are several kinds of vegetarians. Lacto vegetarians also include milk in their diet. Ovo vegetarians include eggs. Lacto-ovo vegetarians include both dairy and eggs, but no other animal products, and they eat lots of vegetables.

People who eat no animal products are called vegans. Many vegans eat this way as a religious and/or political choice. Some people eat this way for health. Many vegans do not do anything that would harm animals so they don’t wear leather either. Many people become vegans as a way to stop the pollution of the planet from the residue of animals raised for food.

Many religious groups support vegetarianism because they are against killing and especially killing animals. So health isn’t the only reason many people are vegetarians or vegans, there are many reasons someone might want to adopt this lifestyle.

With any eating and/or lifestyle plan, it is up to the person to educate himself on the ins and outs of changing. If you have any health problems or are under the care of a physician, notify them of any changes you are planning to make so they can monitor your progress.

It is possible to enjoy better health by avoiding processed foods, saturated and/or hydrogenated fats, tobacco products, sugar and flour products, any foods grown with GMO (genetically modified organisms) seeds, or foods containing chemicals known to be harmful.

It is also possible to enjoy better health by including the recommended amount of vegetables daily, especially unprocessed and raw veggies. Eating vegetables every day is essential to good health. Consider your own body and activity level when choosing a healthy lifestyle. It isn’t essential to be a vegetarian or vegan to be healthy. It is essential for you to monitor how you feel when you make any changes in your lifestyle. You might want to keep a diet and lifestyle log. The instructions for doing so are included in my book The Anger Cure.

 

That’s why I say: Eat Right – Feel Right™

Kathleen O’Bannon, CNC, is the author of 11 books on nutrition including Sprouts, the savory source for health and vitality, Whole Foods for Seniors, and the Anger Cure. She is a dynamic speaker and media personality. For 30+ years she has helped people feel better using her own unique brand of nutrition consulting. She can be reached through www.healthaliveproducts.com or email her at thecarrotlady@hotmail.com. Start the new year right with nutrition. Sometimes simple changes in your lifestyle can bring huge rewards in your health and mood.

This article is for informational purposes only. It is not to be construed as prescribing or claiming to cure any disease.

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