Walks, Docs & Nutrition, Leaves, Most Satiating Food!

Walks, Docs & Nutrition, Leaves, Most Satiating Food!

In This Issue: 

• Do You Know More Than Your Doctor?
• Why You Need to Walk Every Day!
• Leaves Feed Our Planet—and You!
• What’s the Most Satiating Food?

Find lots of healthy recipes in my Whole Food Plant-Based, Gluten Free Diet & Recipes Facebook Group

Message from Bernadette Wulf

Greetings,

It’s that spooky time of year again—bats and black cats, glowing Jack-O-Lanterns, and… CANDY!

I don’t know about Halloween in your neighborhood, but we get swarms of kids in mine. It’s fun and festive… but I always feel a bit guilty about handing out candy.

I try to find the healthiest options (don’t the kids just love that? LOL), but I also try to find some other alternatives that are both healthy and environmentally sustainable, i.e. not a bunch of plastic crap.

So far, the most popular items have been pencils with Halloween images on them, and little notebooks. The nerdy kids love them. Found both at the Dollar Tree.

It’s been a funny month, health-news wise. Either I already know everything, or I haven’t been paying attention—obviously the latter.

I actually had to search for interesting articles this time… and I found some great ones: a good reason to question your doctor’s dietary advice, a fascinating article about how walking activates a “heart” in our calves, why we need to hang onto our autumn leaves, and a surprise food that satisfies hunger better than any other.

WulfWorks News

I have a fun Samhain/Halloween workshop planned for November 1st. We’ll be meeting the “Loathly Ladies” of Arthurian lore. They’re shapeshifting faeries from Avalon who bring important lessons to Arthur and his knights—and to you!

Keep an eye on your inbox in a few weeks. I’ll be sharing more as the date approaches.

Have questions or comments? —>>> Email Bernadette <<<— Please use this link and do not hit reply to this post or I may never get your message.

To your health and happiness!
Bernadette Wulf
WulfWorks.com — HealItAll.com — Eat Plants for Life
Visit me on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/wulfworks

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Do You Know More Than Your Doctor?

When it comes to nutrition, you probably DO know more than your doctor, especially if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a few months or years.

Many doctors are even clueless about their own lack of nutrition knowledge. And, sad but true, they’re handing out nutrition advice like candy on Halloween.

Usually it’s telling people to stick to a Keto diet or some other high-fat diet, when all the signs point in the opposite direction (unless the patient actually suffers from seizures, in which case Keto might help).

People have told me that their doctors recommended Keto for: Heart disease! Cancer! Alzheimer’s! Diabetes! NONE of which have been reversed with a Keto diet… or anything close to it.

Heart disease in particular is a glaring example. There’s a mountain of evidence showing that heart disease can be stopped and even reversed with a low-fat, whole plant foods diet. Same with type 2 diabetes.

Very few doctors even seem to know this. I suppose it’s relatively new information… like from the last 10 or 20 years, but heck—if you’re in the healing business you need to keep up with the research.

Cancer and Alzheimer’s are more complex and the results are not as straight forward, but my bet is that Keto will only add fuel to the fire.

Our bodies just aren’t designed to process large amounts of fat and protein without a lot of stress on our organs. And starving our cells of glucose by avoiding carbohydrates just makes the body work harder to produce it—from our own muscles or the excess fat and protein in these diets.

From NutritionFacts.org:

How bad is it? One study, “Assessing the clinical nutrition knowledge of medical doctors,” found the majority of participants got 70 percent of the questions wrong—and they were multiple choice questions, so they should have gotten about a fifth of them right just by chance. “Wrong answers in the…knowledge test were not limited to difficult or demanding questions” either. For example, less than half of the doctors were able to guess how many calories are in fat, carbohydrates, and protein; only one in ten knew the recommended protein intake; and only about one in three knew what a healthy body mass index (BMI) was. We’re talking about really basic nutrition knowledge.

Even worse, not only did the majority of medical doctors get a failing grade, but 30 percent of those who failed had “a high self-perception of their CN [clinical nutrition] expertise.” They weren’t only clueless about nutrition; they were clueless that they were clueless about nutrition, a particularly bad combination given that doctors are “trusted and influential sources” of healthy eating advice.

So, unless you are lucky enough to have a doctor who is well versed in nutrition, take their dietary advice with a grain of salt and do your own research. It could save your life!

Read more about the nutritional knowledge of doctors — https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/are-doctors-knowledgeable-about-nutrition/

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Why You Need to Walk Every Day!

We’ve all heard that sitting is the new smoking, but most of us don’t really know why. This article explains it in the best way I’ve ever seen.

From sayerji.substack.com:

This study pooled data from nearly a million participants across 24 cohorts worldwide—the most comprehensive analysis of step counts and health outcomes to date. The numbers were staggering:

• • 47% lower risk of all-cause mortality at ~7,000 steps/day compared with 2,000
  • 25% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease
  • 47% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease
  • 37% lower risk of cancer death
  • 14% lower risk of type 2 diabetes
  • 38% lower risk of dementia
  • 22% lower risk of depression
  • 28% lower risk of falls

The benefits started with as little as 3,000–4,000 steps and grew progressively stronger, plateauing around 7,000 for some outcomes but continuing toward 10,000 for others.

According to the article, we have something like a heart in each calf called a soleus. It pumps blood upward when we move it. So every step is like another pump of the heart.

Even if you can’t walk due to a disability, or being stuck at a desk all day, you can still reap the benefits of walking:

[ ] techniques like the soleus push-up provide an accessible alternative:

1. 1. Sit with feet flat, knees at 90 degrees.
   2. Keep the ball of the foot on the ground.
   3. Lift heels maximally, then lower with control.
   4. Repeat continuously at a steady rhythm.

There’s a lot more to this article about how your daily steps can prolong your life—read it here — https://sayerji.substack.com/p/how-walking-saves-lives-47-less-likely

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Leaves Feed Our Planet—and You!

First off, it’s often funny to see what AI comes up with—and what people are willing to post. Like this image of leaves and a “rake” that was posted along with this article. Has anyone ever seen a rake like that?

AI images can be amazing, but you do have to keep an eagle eye on details. Otherwise it just looks lazy!

I almost didn’t notice that my image of the woman with the Jack-O-Lantern above had an extra finger when I first downloaded it. With most programs I would have had to trash it because of the messed-up hand, but Midjourney allows me to fix small sections, so I was able to salvage it. (Just a little tip from the graphic designer part of my brain.)

On to the leaves.

Because our health depends on the health of our planet, the way we handle yard clean up is vitally important. Many critters depend on fallen leaves for survival—here’s a short list (thank you Perplexity):

Insects and Invertebrates

• Numerous butterfly and moth species (e.g., Luna moth, Mourning Cloak, Red-banded Hairstreak) rely on leaf litter for overwintering as eggs, caterpillars, or pupae.

• Beetles, solitary bees, fireflies, millipedes, earthworms, and soil mites use fallen leaves for food, habitat, and winter insulation.

Amphibians and Reptiles

• Salamanders, frogs, toads, and some lizards use leaf litter for moisture, camouflage, and refuge from predators throughout much of their life cycles.

Birds and Small Mammals

• Birds forage for insects within leaf litter, while some small mammals and reptiles use it for shelter and nesting material.

Fallen leaves thus support a complex web of life, sustaining everything from tiny microbes and insects to birds and amphibians by providing both food and vital habitat.

According to this article, “some 10.5 million tons” of leaves and plant materials end up in our landfills every year. What a criminal waste!

Meanwhile our fertile top soil is being depleted at an alarming rate, because all that organic matter isn’t being returned to the soil.

From One5C:

“The best practices for leaves are just like the best practices for water,” says Doug Tallamy, an ecologist at the University of Delaware and founder of Homegrown National Park, a group dedicated to restoring our yards’ natural ecosystems.“ You want all the water that falls on your property to stay on your property, and you want all the leaves that fall on your property to stay on your property.” 

But not everyone can let a thick carpet of leaves pile up in their yards. Even the most environmentally minded among us may feel compelled to succumb to pressure from judgmental neighbors to rake, or some folks may be required to do so by an HOA. Even if that’s the case, there are still ways to practice responsible leaf removal—and levels of what that can look like. 

• Good: Compost leaves
• Better: Pile leaves in tree beds
• Best: Leave the leaves

The article explains the whys and hows of each choice.

Let’s keep our local environments healthy—the ones we actually have some control over—and make sure we aren’t helping to drive more species to extinction.

Read more about the importance of keeping your leaves at home — https://one5c.com/fall-leaves-rake-136980021/

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What’s the Most Satiating Food?

And the winner is……….

From NutritionFacts.org:

In the landmark study “A Satiety Index of Common Foods,” in which dozens of foods were put to the test, boiled potatoes were found to be the most satiating food. Two hundred and forty calories of boiled potatoes were found to be more satisfying in terms of quelling hunger than the same number of calories of any other food tested. In fact, no other food even came close, as you can see below and at 1:14 in my video Exploiting Sensory-Specific Satiety for Weight Loss.

Isn’t that interesting?

Most people would guess things like steak or other fatty, high-protein foods, but no—it’s the lowly boiled spud.

This is important, both for weight control, because eating less is more filling when it comes to potatoes… and also for satisfying those eager eaters like my grandson who is always “starving.”

For me, adding a little raw onion makes it even more satisfying for the long term. Bring on the potato salad!