Inflammation Kills - Foods that reduce inflammation, part 1

What Inflammation Is and How You Know You Have It - And what healing foods can help reduce inflammation right away

So what is inflammation? Well, it's a reaction locally within your body - and adverse reaction that can manifest either in one place or several at the time time. Inflammation can occur due to injury, or an infection - and can even occur from an irritation such as (you may not want to hear this) too much sugar, processed food, coffee and some teas. It can, and does, occur when you're not feeding your body enough healing foods. Often we think of inflammation in regards to what we can see with our eyes: a swollen ankle, red areas about the skin, and painful arthritis for example. Inflammation can, and will, often cause loss of mobility to the affected area. No fun. If you've experienced any of symptoms just mentioned then you've experienced inflammation.

But inflammation isn't always so obvious, or painful, and all too often we're not even aware of its presence until its too late. Inflammation inside the body can start off as a soft whisper - but by the time its run its course and done its damage by compromising your vital organs - inflammation sounds more like a roar than a whisper. We all need to be educated on inflammation so that we can reduce it as much as possible. Did you know that asthma, digestive disorders, hormone imbalance and cancer are linked to the whisper of inflammation? These common diseases, recent research is finding, are linked with, yes you guessed correctly: inflammation.

Those of you who have been around 40 years or so might remember going into your family doctor's office for a routine checkup and being asked to stick out your tongue. It was commonplace for a doctor to look at your tongue and ask "So what are you eating"? In my own experience with my HMO, I haven't even heard the question asked recently, let alone be asked to stick out my tongue. Why bother looking at a tongue? Because the condition of the tongue can give immediate clues into our body and what's really going on in there. The signs of inflammation and stress manifest there too.

Sadly, these days some HMOs, in particular, simply rely upon volume of patients while the 1 on 1 intimate relationship between doctor and patient takes a back seat.

Be your own advocate in the fight against inflammation - Modifying your diet may be your biggest weapon against disease

A few important questions you can ask yourself, when no one else will, are:


What Am I Eating? Am I eating too much junk, sugar, processed foods, sodas, or "health foods" packed with sugars and hidden ingredients? Am I eating healing foods? Am I drinking enough water? What kind of water am I drinking? Is it quality water? Is it alkaline ionized water?

How's My Stress Level? Is work stressed? Are my family obligations overwhelming me? Am I able, and educated, to effectively face the stresses I'm under?


Take a moment and take stock of your answers because they're begging you to be heard. You matter. Your health matters. Your diet - recent research has found, and finally medical experts are conceeding - is a key factor when addressing inflammation at any and every stage.

The Main Inflammation Causing culprits

In no particular order - really, they're all bad for you on a very basic level

Candies, Cookies, Cakes (The Three C's. Yummy, yes. Inflammation causing culprits? Yes again)

Soda - Even "healthy" sodas often contain too much sugar or, eek, aspartame!

Chips - Yes, even those "healthy" chips should be closely scrutinized for alarming sodium levels, and certain spices, which can give inflammation a leg up!



Do you love Salads? A big green salad chock full of life giving, anti-inflammation foods such as Cauliflower, Chopped Leaks, Olives, Garlic, and Spinach leaves can be injected with inflammation causing foods simply by drenching it with the wrong kind of -

Salad Dressing - check that label - does your salad dressing contain inflammation causing ingredients like sugar or refined or hydrogenated vegetable oil?


A delicious and surprisingly simple time saving alternative is chopped garlic added to some virgin olive oil with a slight dash of sea salt. Very tasty!

Other foods that can reduce inflammation are healing foods you probably already eat - but perhaps are unknowingly adding stuff to that doesn't belong, such as margarine (loaded with the wrong kind of oil!) or sauces that may also be loaded with the wrong oils or ingredients. Sauces - can we live without them? I think not! But we can start to pay attention to what's inside them. Modifying your diet may be your most powerful weapon against disease.


A big plate of lightly steamed green veggies like red bell peppers and broccoli can be appreciated with a drizzle of organice Garlic Gold olive oil and sea salt.


We'll be talking more about inflammation in our next post. I realize that this information can be overwhelming. When I started my quest to reduce the inflammation plaguing me like a stalker I was overwhelmed - with a Capital O. I slowly began to take notice of what's inside that food? Is it a healing food or an inflammation culprit? Is it going to alkalize my body or send it into an acidic state, perfect for...no I won't say the word; I think you get it. One of the easiest changes I made, and saw quick results from (a matter of weeks) was drinking alkaline ionized water. The taste is amazing so it just goes down so smoothly that I don't even think about it. For those of you who might be going "Water, no thanks! I don't like how it tastes" - well, you haven't tasted Our Water.


We invite you to come to our office and try our water. As always, the information we'll give you is free and we provide water classes to the surrounding community to educate on the benefits of healing foods and alkaline ionized water. Visit healingwatermachines.com for more information. If you're in the Southern California area feel free to drop by and pick up a few gallons of our alkaline ionized water.

Top Foods for Sight

What we breathe drink and eat helps us maintain our biochemical composition and our body functions - and ionized alkaline water can speed the process of healing diet along!

Water, not strictly considered a food, should be the most important constituent in our diet and we should drink six glasses of alkaline ionized Chanson water a day while minimizing caffeinated and sugar-laden drinks. With the degradation of the soil, contaminated with pesticides and manufacturing chemicals, as well as processed food, we must be selective in terms of the foods we eat.

Here, then, are the top recommendations for food for sight:

Cold water fish (sardines, cod, mackerel, tuna): Cold water fish are an excellent source of DHA, which provides structural support to cell membranes, and is recommended for dry eyes, treatment for macular degeneration, and sight preservation.

Spinach, kale and green leafy vegetables: These plants are rich in carotenoids, especially lutein and zeaxathin. Lutein, a yellow pigment, protects the macula from sun damage and from blue light.

Eggs: Eggs are rich in cysteine, sulfur, lecithin, amino acids and lutein. Sulfur-containing compounds protect the lens of the eye from cataract formation.

Garlic, onions, shallots and capers: These items are also rich in sulfur, which is necessary for the production of glutathione, an important antioxidant for the lens of the eye, and the whole body.

Soy: Low in fat, rich in protein, soy has become a staple in vegetarian diets. Soy contains essential fatty acids, phytoestrogens, vitamin E and natural anti-inflammatory agents.

Fruits and vegetables: Our mothers always told us about these -- they were right. Fruits and vegetables contain vitamin A, C, and E and Beta-carotene. The yellow vegetables, such as carrots and squash, are important for daytime vision.

Blueberries and grapes: These foods contain anthocyanins, which improve night vision. A cup full of blueberries, huckleberry jam, or a 100 mg bilberry supplement should improve dark adaptation within 30 minutes.

Nuts and berries: These are nature's most concentrated food sources. Grains, such as flaxseed, are high in the beneficial Omega-3 fatty acids, which help lower cholesterol and stabilize cell membranes.

Virgin olive oil: This is a mono-unsaturated oil, and is a healthy alternative to butter and margarine.

Apart from the above foods that are considered great for your sight, a general precondition to good health is drinking adequate amounts of water. Alkaline ionized water is drinking water at its very best! Visit this site to learn more.
http://www.chansonwater.com/

Eating Before Exercise - Athletic Competition And Alkaline Ionized Water

Professional athletes understand the importantace of drinking the right kind of ionized alkaline water - and you should care too

What an athlete consumes before, during and after exercise is absoluately vital for comfort and performance. While eating soon before exercise doesn't provide the bulk of the fuel needed for the activity, it can prevent the distracting symptoms of hunger during exercise. The major source of fuel for active muscles is the carbohydrate which gets stored in the muscles as glycogen in the days before exercise. This is one reason that the post-exercise meal is critical to recovery and being ready for the next exercise session.

When To Eat
Exercising on a full stomach is not ideal. Food that remains in your stomach during an event may cause stomach upset, nausea, and cramping. To make sure you have enough energy, without causing stomach discomfort, you should allow a meal to fully digest before the start of the event. This generally takes 1 to 4 hours, depending upon what and how much you've eaten. Everyone is a bit different, and you should experiment prior to workouts to determine what works best for you.


If you have an early morning race or workout, it's best to get up early enough to eat your pre-exercise meal. If not, you should try to eat or drink something easily digestible about 20 to 30 minutes before the event. The closer you are to the time of your event, the less you should eat. You can have a liquid meal closer to your event rather than a solid meal because your stomach digests liquids faster.


What To Eat
Because glucose is the preferred energy source for most exercise, a pre-exercise meal should include foods that are high in carbohydrates and easy to digest. This includes foods such as pasta, fruits, breads, energy bars and water.


Lactic acid gets secreted during exercise which makes your muscles stiff. Lactic acid can make a happy performed downright miserable when it accumulates. This inhibits performance at the gym and in athletic competition. Have you ever had a lactic acid crisis right after a hard workout? Anyone who can answer YES! understands why this is something to be avoided at all costs. I sense someone just nodded. The good news is that lactic acid accumulation can be avoided, easily and economically by drinking Alkaline ionized water. Alkaline water water should be consumed by athletes - and in fact by a growing number of professional athletes is being consumed during exercise because, among other benefits, it rids the body of that often pain inducing lactic acid. Why don't Gyms have an in house alkaline water filtration system? They should. Obviously we recommended gyms to have water ionizers (not just plain old filtered water) installed for their members. It's a win-win situation. And we all want to win and keep winning.


For more information on alkaline ionized water, please visit http://www.chansonwater.com/

Green Tea Health Benefits.

Green tea doesn't just taste good. It does good. Make green tea with some freshly drawn ionized alkaline water!

The Chinese - who have a knack for great reverence toward the ancient ways while always seeming to remain on cutting edge at the same time - have known about the medicinal benefits of green tea since, well, ancient times. They have been using it to treat everything from headaches to depression. In her book Green Tea: The Natural Secret for a Healthier Life, Nadine Taylor states that green tea has been used as a medicine in China for at least 4,000 years.


Today, scientific research in both Asia and the west is providing hard evidence for the health benefits long associated with drinking green tea. For example, in 1994 the Journal of the National Cancer Institute published the results of an epidemiological study indicating that drinking green tea reduced the risk of esophageal cancer in Chinese men and women by nearly sixty percent. University of Purdue researchers recently concluded that a compound in green tea inhibits the growth of cancer cells. There is also research indicating that drinking green tea lowers total cholesterol levels, as well as improving the ratio of good (HDL) cholesterol to bad (LDL) cholesterol.


To sum up, here are just a few medical conditions in which drinking green tea is reputed to be helpful:


cancer
rheumatoid arthritis
high cholesterol levels
cariovascular disease
infection
impaired immune function


A great supplement to green tea is alkaline ionized water. This is also a powerful natural antioxidant as it helps wash away harmful toxins from the body. This water is electrically charged and is up to six times more hydrating than tap or bottled water. To know more, please visit http://www.chansonwater.com/

List of Acidifying and Alkalizing foods

ACIDIFYING VEGETABLES Corn Lentils Olives Winter Squash ACIDIFYING FRUITS Blueberries Canned or Glazed Fruits Cranberries Currants Plums** Prunes** ACIDIFYING GRAINS, GRAIN PRODUCTS Amaranth Barley Bran, oat Bran, wheat Bread Corn Cornstarch Crackers, soda Flour, wheat Flour, white Hemp Seed Flour Kamut Macaroni Noodles Oatmeal Oats (rolled) Quinoa Rice (all) Rice Cakes Rye Spaghetti Spelt Wheat Germ Wheat ACIDIFYING BEANS & LEGUMES Almond Milk Black Beans Chick Peas Green Peas Kidney Beans Lentils Pinto Beans Red Beans Rice Milk Soy Beans Soy Milk White Beans ACIDIFYING DAIRY Butter Cheese Cheese, Processed Ice Cream Ice Milk ACIDIFYING NUTS & BUTTERS Cashews Legumes Peanut Butter Peanuts Pecans Tahini Walnuts ACIDIFYING ANIMAL PROTEIN Bacon Beef Carp Clams Cod Corned Beef Fish Haddock Lamb Lobster Mussels Organ Meats Oyster Pike Pork Rabbit Salmon Sardines Sausage Scallops Shellfish Shrimp Tuna Turkey Veal Venison ACIDIFYING FATS & OILS Avacado Oil Butter Canola Oil Corn Oil Flax Oil Hemp Seed Oil Lard Olive Oil Safflower Oil Sesame Oil Sunflower Oil ACIDIFYING SWEETENERS Carob Corn Syrup Sugar ACIDIFYING ALCOHOL Beer Hard Liquor Spirits Wine ACIDIFYING OTHER FOODS Catsup Cocoa Coffee Mustard Pepper Soft Drinks Vinegar ACIDIFYING DRUGS & CHEMICALS Aspirin Chemicals Drugs, Medicinal Drugs, Psychedelic Herbicides Pesticides Tobacco ACIDIFYING JUNK FOOD Beer: pH 2.5 Coca-Cola: pH 2 Coffee: pH 4 ** These foods leave an alkaline ash but have an acidifying effect on the body.

ALKALIZING VEGETABLES Alfalfa Barley Grass Beet Greens Beets Broccoli Cabbage Carrot Cauliflower Celery Chard Greens Chlorella Collard Greens Cucumber Dandelions Dulce Edible Flowers Eggplant Fermented Veggies Garlic Green Beans Green Peas Kale Kohlrabi Lettuce Mustard Greens Nightshade Veggies Onions Parsnips (high glycemic) Peas Peppers Pumpkin Radishes Rutabaga Sea Veggies Spinach, green Spirulina Sprouts Sweet Potatoes Tomatoes Watercress Wheat Grass Wild Greens ALKALIZING ORIENTAL VEGETABLES Daikon Dandelion Root Kombu Maitake Nori Reishi Shitake Umeboshi Wakame ALKALIZING FRUITS Apple Apricot Avocado Banana (high glycemic) Berries Blackberries Cantaloupe Cherries, sour Coconut, fresh Currants Dates, dried Figs, dried Grapes Grapefruit Honeydew Melon Lemon Lime Muskmelons Nectarine Orange Peach Pear Pineapple Raisins Raspberries Rhubarb Strawberries Tangerine Tomato Tropical Fruits Umeboshi Plums Watermelon ALKALIZING PROTEIN Almonds Chestnuts Millet Tempeh (fermented) Tofu (fermented) Whey Protein Powder ALKALIZING SWEETENERS Stevia ALKALIZING SPICES & SEASONINGS Chili Pepper Cinnamon Curry Ginger Herbs (all) Miso Mustard Sea Salt Tamari ALKALIZING OTHER Alkaline Antioxidant Water Apple Cider Vinegar Bee Pollen Fresh Fruit Juice Green Juices Lecithin Granules Mineral Water Molasses, blackstrap Probiotic Cultures Soured Dairy Products Veggie Juices ALKALIZING MINERALS Calcium: pH 12 Cesium: pH 14 Magnesium: pH 9 Potassium: pH 14 Sodium: pH 14

Although it might seem that citrus fruits would have an acidifying effect on the body, the citric acid they contain actually has an alkalinizing effect in the system.

Note that a food's acid or alkaline forming tendency in the body has nothing to do with the actual pH of the food itself. For example, lemons are very acidic, however the end products they produce after digestion and assimilation are very alkaline so, lemons are alkaline forming in the body. Likewise, meat will test alkaline before digestion, but it leaves very acidic residue in the body so, like nearly all animal products, meat is very acid forming.

The Tortoise and the Hare

Well, I've stated eating healthier and making better food choices. Already my energy has increased. So Like the Hair in the fable, I'm out of the starting gate. The holidays have been hard for Ronnie, he seems to have been hit hard by depression over the loss of his Mother. He's putting off his New Year's resolution diet for a few days and comforting him self with food. I saw him eat an entire pint of ice cream last night which is not unusual. So having lost my guinea pig for the blog, I will have to step in and post my own fat pic. To summarize some of my last posts for those of you who haven't been following along, Ronnie lost 40 pounds last year drinking alkaline ionized water and eating a more alkaline diet. He gained it back eating comfort foods after he quit chewing tobacco and lost his Mother in the same month. He's vowed to lose it and more this year, but hasn't started trying yet.

My effort will include mild exercise, a more alkaline diet, and lots of alkaline ionized water. I am going to explore Vegan, Alkavarian, and Raw foods, but have not committed to eating them exclusively as I'm still an omnivore who loves Bar-b-que. Like any wise dieter, I will try to avoid the dreaded white foods, Rice, Potatoes, Sugar, Milk and Bread. But again, I not going to say never. As you will see from my food posts which will follow, I had Cream of Ham and Potato soup for dinner the first night of my diet and may have some more since the pot isn't finished. What I am doing is a very public TEST diet. Raw fooders eat lots of high fat items like nuts and avocados but burn the fat and lose weight. I'm going to see if a fairly inactive over 45'er can get weight loss results.

So here are the current stats: On January 1, 2008 I weighed 165.5 up about 3 pounds from before the holidays. I swear the new weight feels like it's all in my butt. It feels like I have a caboose waddling after me for the first time in my life. My weight is also up almost 30 pounds from my after baby weight from the second child who is now 23. I kept that weight for almost 20 years. My weight can fluctuate even if I weighed 3 times a day, so I'll only weigh in once a week or so.

My measurements, (don't tell anybody) Are a ghastly 41 - 35 1/2 - 38 1/2

What I ate: Jan. 1, 2008

Breakfast- Blueberry Smoothie

Lunch- Fresh broccoli florets dipped in store bought humus. (Broccoli is high in protein.)

Snack Trader Joes Spicy Ranchero Egg White Salad -Low fat, high protein, low carb, cholesterol free and only 50 calories. Tastes like cottage cheese with taco seasoning. Defiantly not raw, not vegn, not alkaverian. I bet that if you soaked almonds in water and chopped them in a food processor with the other ingredient you could make a vegan/raw version.

Another Snack- Store bought salad

Dinner 2 cups Cream of ham and potato soup.

Jan. 2, 2008

Exercised 20 minutes on a rebounder. (I've worked my way up from only five minutes.)

Breakfast- Blueberry Smoothie I buy my blueberries frozen and organic at Trader Joes for under $4 a pound which will make me about 6 smoothies.

Lunch- Tuna wrap because my last avocado was rotten so I couldn't have the avocado wrap that I had planed.

Snack- Apple Dinner- Pomegranate Salad- Don't freak out, it's not complicated, the pomegranate seeds were just a garnish on a purchased salad from Trader Joes. It had some goat cheese too so it wasn't vegan.

Snack- Celery with tuna and humus

By Nedalee Ruiz Nedalee is the author of The Desperate Parents Handbook http://www.desperateparent.com/

Nedalee recommends http://www.healingwatermachines.com/ for more articles on health and healing.

Copyright © 2007 By Nedalee Ruiz Permission granted to reproduce in entirety only including links and author credits.