Remember the movie “Persepolis?”
My favorite scene was when the granddaughter asks her Iranian grandmother why she still has so beautiful breasts, at her age. The grandmother divulges her two secrets:
1. Wash your breasts with cold water every day. That can be part of a cold shower at the end of your warm one. Or you stand in front of the sink and wash your breasts with a cloth and cold water – about a dozen times.
2. Put jasmine flowers in your bra and carry the scent around you all day – it makes you feel beautiful.
I love that advice! From my experience, I have a few more bits to add for better breast health and more beauty:
3. Eat a diet high in fresh vegetables, with low meats, no dairy and little sugar.
4. Avoid all milk and dairy – they are causing breast pain and breast cancer. They contain growth hormones. Growth hormones are unnecessary and harmful beyond the infant stage.
5. Do not wear a bra at night. Your skin needs to breathe and your lymph needs to circulate. – Don’t wear a bra if you don’t need one.
6. For the same reason, do exercise: Let your arms swing. Brest cancer seems to occur more often in the left breast. Since 85 percent of people are right-handed, it stands to reason that we are not moving enough lymph around in the left breast and get less toxicity removed than on the right side (that is just a theory of mine – don’t listen if it doesn’t convince you).
7. Don't smoke or drink.
8. Find out if you are gluten-intolerant. Nearly all cancers are higher in celiacs than in non-celiacs.
9. Drink enough water – room temperature or warmer. Never ice-cold. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
The Biological Clock
October 17, 2010
Our biological clock is ticking – but not the one you are thinking about. “Nature,” the eminent science journal, published an article that a team of scientists found a “clock” in pancreas cells. The pancreas is the organ responsible - when failing - for diabetes.
We used to think that diabetes was a “sugar” disease. Too much sugar (and starches, which are nothing else than one sugar after the other in a row like beads on a necklace) definitely play a role in the worst (and most preventable) disease of our times. Bad fats are the other culprits – mainly trans-fats, fats that are heated (frying!) or hardened (margarine!) – let’s call them h & h fats.
The “Nature” article gives us evidence that WHEN we eat plays a major role, too. Granted, the studies so far have only been done in mice. But I am convinced that it is only a matter of time that the same biological clock will be found ticking in the human pancreas also.
And not only in the pancreas. It is already known that fruit flies (drosophila) have such a clock in every single cell. I can’t believe that our bodies are less sophisticated than fruit flies’; our bodies are just harder to study. Chronobiology is the branch of science called that concerns itself with biological rhythms. From beginning of times, the Earth has indulged her majestic rhythms: ebb and flow, day and night, coming and going, death and renewal - think of compost pile!
What does the biological clock mean for you and me? Nothing new, actually. Natural Medicine has long stressed the importance of enough sleep, regularity and good habits. A little more of one hundred years of electricity has changed the world profoundly. But it hasn’t made a dent in our ancient bodies and primordial souls: They still have the same physiological and emotional needs as they always had.
Yes, you can raid the fridge in the middle of the night, go shopping in the wee hours, or sit at your computer all night long – but in the long run, going against your natural sleep-wake cycle will take a toll on your body – might even trigger diabetes, as we are learning. Read More
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Cravings
October 15, 2010
Some thoughts about cravings:
1. The more you eat, and the more weight you gain, and the hungrier you get. When we lived in caves, this was a survival tool (“Eat the whole mammoth before it spoils!!”). People with thinner bodies suffer fewer hunger pangs. Life is not fair.
2. Food allergies induce cravings, too. And food allergies are on the rise (Why? that is for another article.)
It comes down to this: If you crave something, it could mean either that you NEED the craved food, or you should AVOID it like the plague, because you are allergic to it. It takes a lot of wisdom (or a very good doctor) to tell the difference! Read More