CoQ10 & Greens, Weight Control, Stroke Prevention, Dates, Figs, Prunes

In This Issue: 

• • Healing Dates, Figs & Prunes
  • Healthy Fig Bar Recipe
  • Greens + Sun = CoQ10
  • Preventing Stroke with Diet
  • Control Weight the Healthy Way

You’ll Find More Fascinating Health Posts on my HealItAll Facebook Page –

and Whole Foods Plant-Based, Gluten Free Diet & Recipes Group

Message from Bernadette Wulf

Greetings!

Today is the old Celtic festival known as Lughnasadh in Ireland and Lammas in Britain. It is the celebration of the first harvest of the year and it marks the end of summer.

What are you harvesting in your life today? Did you plant a garden? Have you cultivated talents, relationships, a career, good health, or a hobby? Now is a great time to take stock of the results – to appreciate our bounty and give thanks.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere we are enjoying the bounty of peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, tomatoes, and lots of summer vegetables. Our local Gravenstein apples are just starting to arrive in stores for their brief season of abundance – the very best apples for pies and applesauce, in my opinion.

Soon we’ll have our local figs and prunes ripening. You will see how beneficial they are in the first article. And did you know that you can make your own CoQ10 by eating leafy greens and sitting in the sun? What an amazing bio-chemical wonder!

Leafy greens are also great for weight control. They are rich in vitamins and minerals and low in calories. Put them in smoothies for the perfect “diet drink.” See final article for recipes.

As always, I would love to hear what you want to read about. Feel free to send your requests, suggestions, questions, or any sort of feedback. I always appreciate hearing from my readers – Email Bernadette

To your health and happiness!

Bernadette Wulf

http://healitall.com – Visit my new website Plant Based for Life

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Healing Dates, Figs & Prunes

These days, many people are afraid to eat fruit, especially sweet fruits, because they have been misled by the high-fat, ketogenic, Paleo diet craze that several popular diet “experts” promote. While ketosis can be helpful and healing in the short term (and it can help people lose weight temporarily), it is not the long-term panacea it is being made out to be. Far from it!

If you care about your liver, your heart, your brain, your blood pressure, and your general health, it is important to cut back on fats (especially pork, dairy products, oils, and eggs) and include lots of fruits and vegetables. It would take too long to explain why here (see previous newsletters), but I highly recommend reading Dr. Michael Greger’s How Not to Die and Anthony William’s Medical Medium books to find out more.

There are lots of other reliable nutrition information sources you will find listed on the home page of my website Plant Based for Life! Do your research. Search out the best information that science has to offer. Don’t trust the media hype. Your body will thank you!

That being said, here are some interesting facts about the health benefits of three super-sweet and very healthy fruits. From greenmedinfo.com:

Dates

The [pregnant] women who ate the dates also needed significantly less drugs: 47% of women who did not eat dates had to be administered prostin/oxytocin while only 28% of women who ate dates did. The women who ate dates also had shorter labours: latent phase of the first stage of labour was 906 minutes in the no date group but a significantly shorter 510 minutes in the date group.

Figs

The [constipated] people who got the fig paste improved significantly more. Their [bowel] Transit time went down significantly more: it was reduced from 63 hours to 38 hours. Their stools were significantly softer, and they experienced significantly less abdominal discomfort than people in the placebo group.

Prunes

At the end of the 6 month study, both doses of prunes had significantly increased bone mineral density. The lower dose was as effective as the higher dose, suggesting that 5-6 dried plums a day should be enough to build bone.

Read more about the amazing health benefits of dates, figs, and prunes – http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/surprising-benefits-dates-figs-and-prunes

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Healthy Fig Bar Recipe

Here’s a great recipe that includes both figs and dates. You could even replace some of the figs or dates with prunes. Use organic gluten-free oat flour to make these even healthier. If you can’t find GF oat flour, just grind your own organic GF rolled oats in a blender. Bob’s Red Mill is a good source.

Vegan Fig Newtons

https://www.feastingonfruit.com/vegan-gluten-free-fig-newtons

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Greens + Sun = CoQ10

I love listening to Dr. Greger. He is a master at taking complicated scientific data and presenting it in short, easy-to-understand soundbites. He and his research team review every single nutrition study that is published in the English language. They weed out the bad science (often paid for by the junk food, pharmaceutical, or meat & dairy industries) and give us the real scoop on the very best nutritional options available.

In this video Dr. Greger explains how we can make our own CoQ10 by eating green vegetables and spending time in the sun – another great reason to eat your greens! CoQ10 is so important for heart health and slowing aging, and it tends to diminish as we get older. Here’s a natural way to boost your CoQ10 levels without taking pills!

Chlorophyl-CoQ10 Video

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Preventing Stroke with Diet

Strokes are scary. I remember seeing my grandmother after her stroke, unable to speak and paralyzed on one side of her body for several years. I don’t want that to happen to you!

Fortunately, we can dramatically cut stroke risk factors by adopting a healthy lifestyle, improving our diets, and moving our bodies. According to foodrevolution.org:

Basic lifestyle changes can have a big impact in reducing stroke risk. In fact, according to research, stroke is 80% preventable by addressing lifestyle factors, including improving diet, stopping smoking, and getting regular exercise.

The Best Way to Avoid Stroke Is By Improving Your Diet – According to Food Revolution expert Michael Greger, MD, the best way to avoid suffering from a stroke is to eat a whole food, plant-based diet centered around vegetables, lentils, beans, seeds, whole grains, fruits, and nuts.

But to get the full benefits, plant-strong eaters must have a regular, reliable source of B12 — meaning B12-fortified foods or supplements. [VeganSafe B12 is the one recommended by Anthony William, the Medical Medium – and even if you are not vegan, you should probably be taking a B12 supplement as you get older – Ed.] 

Include: lots of leafy greens, beans, berries, citrus fruits, small amounts of nuts, omega 3-rich seeds (freshly ground chia, freshly ground flax, hemp), raw onions, mushrooms, garlic, tomatoes, small amounts of dark chocolate or raw cacao, and other foods rich in potassium and magnesium.

Avoid: High cholesterol foods, salty foods, dairy, meat (especially pork), eggs, diet soda.

For more information on preventing strokes visit – https://foodrevolution.org/blog/food-and-health/best-and-worst-foods-to-prevent-stroke

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Control Weight the Healthy Way

If you have a problem shedding unwanted inches or fat, you may be drawn in by all the popular ketogenic weight-loss claims, but hold on a minute before you make that leap. Sure, you will probably lose weight on a ketogenic diet, and for awhile you may look and feel better. That doesn’t mean it is ultimately good for you.

People often feel better on a keto diet at first, because they are cutting out junk food, dairy, and gluten, which is great, but what else is happening?

• They are replacing juicy raw fruits with high-fat foods (mostly cooked) like meats, eggs, and nuts, which leads to dehydration. In other words, a lot of the weight they lose is water weight. Not good.
• Foods high in glucose are eliminated in favor of these high-fat foods, which leads to lack of glycogen reserves in the liver. The lost glycogen means more weight loss, but at great cost to the liver. Not good!
• Ketosis forces the liver to turn fat into the all-important glucose needed for brain and muscle function. The liver has to work much harder to create glucose out of fat, because without glucose we would die! 
• The liver is overburdened with fat and protein, which also makes it work much harder to clean the blood.
• Excess fat that the liver is not able to process accumulates in the arteries, heart, and other organs, causing high blood pressure, fatty liver, and heart disease. 
• Toxins accumulate in organs and fat, because the liver cannot handle the load of environmental, dietary, and metabolic toxins in addition to all the extra fat in the diet. Really not good!
• Because fat lacks vitamins and minerals, and fruits are rich in them, there is a net loss of these vital nutrients when fruits are replaced with fats. This will eventually lead to malnutrition.

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea. The question is how to control weight in a healthy way, right?

Recently, I discovered Thomas Tadlock, a personal trainer with a pretty great plan for healthy weight control. Of course, I added a few Medical Medium tweaks to give it the heavy metal detox edge it didn’t have.

Here’s his basic smoothie recipe:

• 1lb. leafy greens packed into a high-speed blender
• Add enough water to blend
• Add about 25% fruit, plus 1/2 cup flax or chia seeds (for the Omega 3s)
• Blend until smooth

Then he says to get twice your usual amount of exercise, which could be way too time consuming if you are already an exercise buff – but then you probably wouldn’t be overweight anyway. Basically, get some exercise – a little more than you usually do.

He also wants you to drink 96 ounces of water every day. I think that is excessive unless you are a big person or you are sweating a lot.

Here are my tweaks with Medical Medium heavy metal detox ingredients in bold print:

• Pack 1 cup (about a bunch) cilantro plus 5 cups other leafy greens, the darker the better in a high-speed blender. (It’s a good idea to rotate greens so you don’t have the same ones all the time, but always include cilantro.)
• 2 tsp. Hawaiian Spirulina powder
• 1 tsp. Vimergy Barley Grass Juice powder
• 2 Tbs. Atlantic dulse flakes (I usually leave these out and eat dulse strips separately. I like to massage them with a mixture of smoked paprika, tomato sauce, maple syrup, and coconut aminos and dehydrate them, which is a pretty tasty “mock bacon!”)
• Add enough water to blend and do a quick initial blend
• Add 1 or 2 cups wild Maine blueberries and another strong-flavored fruit like orange with some of the zest, mango, or strawberries
• You can add soaked dates, raw honey, banana, or other sweet fruits to improve the flavor

You will end up with about half a gallon of green smoothie, which covers at least two meals for me. If you don’t have a high-speed blender, you will have to make the smoothie in smaller batches.

I don’t add the chia or flax seeds to the smoothie, because that could interfere with the heavy metal detox. Instead, I make a separate chia/hemp seed pudding in the blender with 1/4 cup chia seeds and 1/4 cup hemp seeds, plus a cup of water and a cup of whatever fruit I have on hand.

You could also add raw cacao, cinnamon, lemon zest or other tasty flavors to the chia pudding, or replace the chia with flax. Add a little more water if using non-juicy fruits like dates or banana. You can make several batches and keep them in jars in the refrigerator for a quick breakfast or snack each day.

I feel like it is an accomplishment if I can get 2 quarts of lemon or lime water down in a day. I’m not even going to try for 96 ounces! Of course, you can count the water you added to the smoothie, which is mostly liquid. Then I take my dogs for a little longer walk than usual and I’m good for the day.

Check out Thomas Tadlock’s SmoothieShred website for more recipes. (If you want the heavy metal detox effect, don’t add any fats like avocado or seeds. Eat them separately.)

Smoothie Recipes

http://smoothieshred.com/smoothie-recipes