One aspect of my cold pool experience is that, every day, with my twenty-one laps, I am sucking up vitamin D - so to speak. The vitamin is manufactured under the skin with sunlight – or even just daylight, on a cloudy day.
There is not one vitamin D but several. The precursors are taken up with food – all vitamins D are fat-soluble, so a fat-free diet doesn’t do a thing for you. And then these precursors are metabolized under your skin with sun exposure. As we age, or with darker skin, we require more light to do the job.
And don’t think that “fortified” milk, yogurt or cheese will provide you with the right amount of vitamin D. They will only make any disease in your body worse because they are inflammatory. Also, there are several forms of vitamin D, your physician should supply you with a vitamin D preparation, particularly in the winter and particularly if you are living in the inner city where light might be filtered away by high buildings and smog.
Vitamin D is important for several reasons:
1. It protects you from all kind of cancers. And, please, don’t be afraid that you catch skin cancer from that short of an exposure – not more than twenty minute. On the contrary! The other mostly unknown fact about skin cancer is that vegetables protect you from skin cancer much better than a sunscreen. Disclosure: I don’t use any sunscreen, ever. I usually dress with long sleeves, long pants and a sun hat. But I don’t fool myself with sunscreen: They are not doing the job they advertise they are doing.
2. Sun and day light protect you from the so-called winter blues – Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The more northern you live, the more at danger you are for depression, and the higher the incidence of alcoholism is. So, go out daily, at around noon, sun or rain, and fill up on light! You also get the exercise and the joy of walking in a park, or even just on a bustling street.
3. Vitamin D is essential for your bone health. Vitamin D is important for uptake of calcium and phosphorus, among others, from your bowels – without vitamin D the food or pill just passes you by. You also, of course, need a diet high in plant material so that you have access to all the minerals your body needs – because calcium alone doesn’t do a thing for your bones.
4. Vitamin D is essential for immune function - it protects your health in so many ways, not only against cancer. It also plays a role in warding off the common cold and the more dangerous flu. A virus alone can’t kill you – you also have to have a weakened body and a low immune function to make you susceptible to death and disease.
5. Insufficient vitamin D seem to lead to diminished intelligence and autism in children, and to dementia in older people.
6. The lack of vitamin D seems to be involved in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS). Being outside - especially in your youth - protects you.
7. Low vitamin D in your blood makes you more vulnerable to stroke – it is easy to see if you don’t eat fresh food and never get out of the house, that you immediately are at higher danger of vascular events.
8. Vitamin D seems to prevent or improve several other diseases like rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and asthma – and it protects against radiation damage.
All this I get from my twenty minutes in the pool each day. And that is apart from the cold stimulus and apart from the exercise I get.
Should we not start a movement making people use their unheated, underused pools more? – If I only knew how! I am such an apolitical person.
And I admit publicly: It is hard every day to walk into that cold pool. – But isn’t everything worthwhile hard? Like raising a family, doing your job day-in, day-out, learning a new skill – and being afflicted by a bad, possibly preventable disease? Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
The Bounty Of Now
September 1, 2011
This is the time of harvest bounty: Vegetables are cheap in the produce aisle, and can happen any moment that your friends dump a load of zucchini on your door step or hand you a plastic bag filled with mixed greens and things they pulled out of their own soil.
Do you groan and say: "Oh, not again!" or are you gratefully receiving that bounty?
Here are three very easy veggie recipes:
1. Good for potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes zucchini, and so on: Wash the zucchini or potato, cut in slices, lay them on a baking sheet that has some olive oil, and drip more olive oil on the slices. Put the baking sheet in the oven and heat to 350 degree Fahrenheit. Check from time to time (takes twenty minutes, give or take) with a fork. Turn them when they start looking dry.
2. Good for leafy greens and broccoli: Wash shortly, cut off bad spots. Put in a lidded pot with little water, olive oil, pepper and salt, and plenty of garlic (dried or fresh). Bring to a boil, then turn low and let simmer until leaves look a bit wilted and broccoli still has its bright green color.
3. Good for mixed stuff: Brown one or two onions in coconut oil, add the washed and cubed vegetables plus pepper and salt, garlic and either a handful of fresh herbs or dried (Italian mixture taste good). Simmer with little or no water (cucumbers have enough water, they don't need added) until done.
Since the kind of vegetables will change, these three recipes will get you through the end of the summer and the fall - or, for that matter, through your life. Recipe Number Three with water makes a great soup, with less water and some meat a wonderful stew.
Never let the bounty of now go to waste - this is the best life offers you: garden-fresh vegetables and the generosity of your friends. Read More
Why Haven’t You Heard Kangen Water Mentioned Here?
June 26, 2011
Water is our Earth’s precious resource; I spend my time writing about the importance of keeping water pure and how to use it for health. But Kangen water?
From time to time I get sucked into a discussion on the Internet – so this time again; over Kangen water.
What I tell them is that not a single scientific study validates Kangen water, that it is nothing but a multi-level marketing scheme, and that if you want to alkalinize your body you better eat vegetables. But do I have an impact? No, because there are mostly two kinds of readers: People who sell this product and are vested in its success. And gullible customers.
And those poor gullible customers should save their money instead of running after the age-old dream that a simple device can make you healthy. Exactly to dispel that myth I am here. Because, in reality, it is a gradual process of improving your life in so many ways – water, movement, food, herbs, order might be a concept you are familiar with by now. No miracle pill. No magic machine. No positive thinking.
Just doing a little bit better every day. Read More