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Here's a fantastic seasonal favorite from the Best of Dr. Peter Borten articles vault! Enjoy, and please feel free to share YOUR favorite chilled summer treat recipes in the comments below!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, summer. The warm, bright sun, birds chirping, bees buzzing, and the sound of ice cream trucks in the air. We crave cold, sweet things like lemonade, ice cream, popsicles, and gelato. Somehow the specialness of summer convinces us to let ourselves and our kids indulge a bit more in the sugar. But summer treats don’t have to be full of refined sugar in order to be yummy and refreshing. Try these healthier variations on summer staples. You’ll feel in the spirit of the season, but don’t have to worry about putting on extra weight at a time of year when you may feel self-conscious of your body in skimpy summer attire.
In Chinese nutritional theory, sour foods are considered to help generate fluids in the body. When we’re hot and thirsty, the sourness of lemonade often feels even more refreshing than plain water. But the sugar just adds tons of extra calories (Minute Maid has about 12 teaspoons of sugar per 16 ounce glass) and makes you feel full if you drink too much. Your first healthier option is simply lemony water. A squirt of lemon (or lime) juice makes me much more enthusiastic about drinking enough water throughout the day. If you’re accustomed to drinking fruit juice daily, you can easily make the switch to lemony water and lose the extra sugar. If you don’t want to bring a lemon to work with you, try getting one of those lemon-shaped squeeze bottles of juice. If you have access to a juicer or juice bar, another excellent substitute for more sugary juices is cucumber juice. It’s wonderfully cooling in the summer. I like it with a squeeze of lemon and/or some fresh mint.
If you really want the sweetness of lemonade, try some stevia powder. It comes from the leaf of the stevia plant, it has no calories, and it’s much sweeter than sugar. You can also use it to sweeten your iced tea. (Bottled, sweetened iced tea, like lemonade, is full of sugar.) Also, you may wish to try a virgin mojito. Crush ice over fresh mint, add lime juice, stevia powder, and sparkling water. Very refreshing. Stevia powder varies a bit in quality. The lower quality stuff often has a bitter aftertaste. Generally, the 100% pure kind (which is also more expensive) tastes the best. A bottle will last you a very long time, because you only need minuscule amounts. You can find it at Trader Joes and natural food stores. It’s not quite as good as sugar, I’ll admit it, but you can get used to it.
Next are popsicles. The least healthy ones are made with high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and artificial flavors. Slightly better are the fruit juice sweetened kinds, but keep in mind that they’re made with concentrated fruit juice so as to maximize the sugar content. Better still are homemade popsicles made with just plain juice, though they still have a decent amount of sugar. If you want a sugar-free version, I’ve come up with a good recipe that we make at home:
Brew several cups of fruity herbal tea. I like to use Lemon Zinger or Red Zinger (Celestial Seasonings) though there are many other options. Then add some lemon juice and stevia powder until it tastes right and freeze it using popsicle forms (or an ice cube tray with foil or plastic wrap over it and tooth picks poked through). I you really dislike stevia (first, I'd encourage you to try a few different kinds, including both a powdered one and a liquid one), a second healthier option is xylitol crystals, a plant-derived “sugar alcohol.” It tastes more like sugar than stevia, and it’s also somewhat more expensive. However, it’s not calorie-free – xylitol has about 40% fewer calories than sugar. But it doesn’t raise our blood sugar the same way that normal sugar does, so it’s a safe substitute for diabetics. Xylitol has some other interesting properties, such as helping to prevent tooth decay and treating allergies and upper respiratory infections (usually used in nasal spray or gum form for this). While it’s quite safe, consumption of very large quantities can cause gas and/or diarrhea. Another promising sugar alcohol called erythritol has fewer calories than xylitol, the same health benefits, and less potential to disrupt the digestion. You can find erythritol and even combination erythritol+stevia products (including the popular Truvia) at many grocery stores.
One other easy popsicle substitute is simply frozen berries. Blueberries are the most popsicle-like to me, and because they take longer to eat, you won’t eat a whole box at once. We always have some bags of frozen blueberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, and blackberries in our freezer. They are my daughter's dessert of choice.
When you really want ice cream, frozen bananas can be a surprisingly close substitute. Break them into small pieces before freezing them. Once frozen, put them in a food processor or a strong blender with a dash of vanilla extract, and puree them. You may need to open the blender a few times and push the banana back down into the blades (I recommend turning it off before doing this) in order to get all the lumps blended. In the end, you should end up with something that has the consistency of sherbet or soft serve ice cream. Kids love it. You can also add other kinds of frozen fruit to change the flavor. Another option is the addition of raw, organic cocoa powder. Usually, the sweetness of the bananas is enough to offset the bitterness of the chocolate, but if not, let the bananas get extra ripe (brown) before you freeze them, or try adding some stevia extract. If it’s not creamy (fatty) enough for you, you can add some coconut milk or pureed cashews and re-chill it for a while to help it thicken.
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Over the past few decades we’ve seen a number of trends in popular supplements and so-called “superfoods.” First there was ginseng and echinacea, then ginkgo and St. John’s wort, then green tea, glucosamine, kombucha, fish oil, chia, maca, bone broth, magnesium l-threonate, vitamin D, and so on. Often, there’s a widespread hope that this substance is going to give us vibrant health, make us happy, perhaps even solve all our problems.
Turmeric has been on the charts for some years now, so I wanted to write about its uses and limitations – and why we need to take a broader view on health and supplements. First, it’s important to state that there’s some value to nearly all of these substances. Sometimes it’s a rather modest value for a fairly small subset of the population (like kombucha, most of which is essentially an overpriced mildly-caffeinated acidic soda with a little probiotic activity), other times it’s a significant value for a larger portion of the population (like vitamin D and magnesium). A food or supplement doesn’t need to be life-changing for everyone in order to be important; the key is that we’re realistic about what it can do and knowledgeable about who stands to benefit from it.
For several years, turmeric has been hot stuff in the West, though it has been used for at least 4000 years in Asia. Native to India, it’s a prominent herb in Ayurvedic medicine, though it’s even better known for its place in Indian cuisine and its use as a dye. Its particular yellowish-orange color is almost synonymous with Indian culture. It probably appeared in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) about 1500 years ago, but has always been a relatively minor herb in that system.
In both Ayurveda and TCM, turmeric is almost never taken as a single herb. Rather, it’s utilized in a formula of multiple herbs that’s prescribed by a trained practitioner, based on the specific constitution and presentation of the person who will be consuming it. However, as with many adopted herbs, Americans generally take it on its own, without any understanding of its traditional application or the diagnostic framework of the systems that have utilized it for so long. Consequently, many probably conclude that herbs aren't very effective medicines.
This is really the crux of what limits Westerners in their use of herbs – lack of context. The systems through which herbs have been historically defined and applied include methods for determining when and how and with whom to use them. One of the things that makes Ayurveda and TCM so special is that their diagnoses and their interventions utilize the same philosophical framework and terminology. That is, there’s a seamlessness between diagnosis and treatment. For example, for a TCM diagnosis of liver Qi stagnation, the treatment is clear because there are herbs and acupuncture points that specifically unblock stagnant liver Qi.
In contrast, knowing the Ayurvedic properties of turmeric – a pungent vipaka, a heating virya, a light, dry guna, which enters the digestive, circulatory, respiratory, and female reproductive srotas – is meaningless if we’re working from a Western biomedical diagnosis such as lung cancer, because the languages and philosophies don’t match. We can only guess at equivalencies.
For any given symptom presentation, there might be half a dozen or more possible diagnoses of the actual cause. When we take an herb without a diagnosis, it has a limited chance of working as we hope, because we may or may not have the underlying disease pattern that this herb addresses. It might even make things worse.
When we take an herb based on properties revealed by modern research – such as antibiotic, diuretic, or anti-inflammatory – it might work if we’ve correctly identified that we have the biomedical diagnosis corresponding to this biomedical terminology. But we miss out on accessing the body of wisdom developed by the traditions that have utilized the herb for centuries. It’s more like taking a brand new, poorly-understood drug, usually with very little human research behind it.
Years of discussion and trial-and-error in traditional plant-medicine systems reveals important nuances, and synergies with other herbs. Without that context, however, scientists were able to discover that turmeric possesses anti-inflammatory properties. Hooray! People started taking turmeric by the handful. But it didn't work as well as predicted. Later research revealed that unless the inflammation was in the digestive tract itself, the herb (specifically a compound called curcumin) wasn't likely to reach its target. Absorption into the bloodstream, it turned out, was very poor.
Eventually, researchers discovered that with absorption-enhancers, they could get more curcumin into the bloodstream. They came up with two main devices. The first is to combine it with a compound called
piperine that helps it pass through the lining of the digestive tract. The second is to attach it to a form of fat known as a
phospholipid, that's what our cell membranes are made of. This helps it move into cells more readily. Interestingly, equivalents of both strategies were utilized for centuries (if not millennia) in India. Piperine is a constituent of black pepper and a similar herb called pippali (long pepper), with which turmeric has been traditionally combined. And turmeric is also routinely taken with ghee (clarified butter) which happens to be rich in phospholipids!
In TCM, turmeric is called jiang huang, which means “yellow ginger.” Based on its primary function, it’s categorized as an herb that promotes blood circulation. Therefore (through that handy-dandy seamlessness of diagnostic and therapeutic terminology), it is used to treat conditions of stagnant blood. When we have a condition of blood stagnation, often the tongue takes on a slightly purple color and the veins on the underside of the tongue become more prominent and blue or purple. The pulse at the wrist feels “choppy” or “wiry.” The complexion often becomes dark. In women, the menstrual blood might be clotty and dark. And most obvious, there is usually pain – often sharp, stabbing pain in a fixed location.
Also, low grade blood stagnation – essentially impaired circulation – is thought in TCM geriatrics to be an almost inevitable part of the aging process. Whenever we see an older person with cold and/or purplish feet, hardened skin of the lower legs and feet, prominent purple and blue veins, and perhaps a history of cardiovascular disease and/or diabetes, it’s likely that a TCM practitioner would make a diagnosis of blood stagnation. Biomedically speaking, it’s probable that such an individual has chronic inflammation, and we could therefore think of the herbs that address stagnant blood as likely possessing anti-inflammatory properties, like those ascribed to turmeric.
In such cases, an herb like turmeric might be utilized, but if we look at the actual practice of TCM, we find it’s not especially popular among the herbs in its category. That’s probably because there are about thirty other herbs in this category, and thousands of years of tradition have shown that other herbs do just as good of a job – if not better than turmeric.
In addition, with a palette of thirty herbs to choose from, we have a great deal of specificity available to us. There are blood movers with an affinity for the head, or the abdomen, or the shoulder (one of turmeric’s affinities), or the legs, or the arms, or the back. There are mild blood movers and strong blood movers. There are blood movers with an ability to break up masses or to heal broken bones. There are blood movers that soften tight muscles and tendons and promote healing of unhealing wounds. And there are ways to combine them in order to make them exponentially more effective; to direct them to certain parts of the body; to prevent side effects, and so on.
Since I’m lucky enough to have all these herbs at my disposal (and the training to know how to use them), turmeric isn’t exceptional to me. It’s just an herb that got noticed by Westerners. There are thousands of others that are equally impressive. But don’t get me wrong – I love it, as I love all herbs, and I do occasionally recommend it.
If you don’t have training in traditional herbal medicine and you don’t have access to a practitioner who can help determine if it’s good for you, at least it’s a very safe herb. You can try it, and if it doesn’t work, you’re unlikely to do yourself any harm (though I still recommend checking with your doctor).
If you’re going to take turmeric, be sure to take it in a form that’s going to be well absorbed (unless you’re meaning to target your digestive tract). That means combining it with black pepper, long pepper, or piperine (and a little ghee may help, too); or using a brand that binds curcumin with acetylcholine (such as Meriva); or a brand that utilizes very small particles (such as Theracurmin).
Because I don’t have the ability to teach you traditional diagnosis through this format, we're actually best off banking on what the research shows. And while there's a lot of hope that it does many things, the only thing that it's been really clearly proven to do (on its own) is alleviate inflammation and some of its expressions. Pain, swelling, arthritis, and even hidden inflammatory processes will usually improve with ongoing consumption of turmeric/curcumin (assuming you’re using an absorption-enhancer). The degree of improvement varies. Sometimes it’s dramatic, other times subtle. Just remember that because you may or may not have the underlying diagnostic pattern that makes you a good candidate for turmeric/curcumin, it might not work.
I’d like to finish by discussing some broader measures for reducing the “stagnant blood” (and accompanying inflammation) that we’re prone to in our elder years. First, there’s exercise. Ideally, this isn’t the exercise of going to a gym and using weight machines (though if that’s what you like, keep doing it) – it’s the exercise of walking to the store, riding a bike to work, digging in the garden, shoveling snow, and above all, playing.
Second, reduce your sugar intake. If there’s one part of our diet that provokes inflammation and thickening of the blood more than any other, it’s sugar. By sugar, I mean caloric sweeteners of all kinds (and also white flour). If you’re up for improving your diet, you’d also do well to reduce or eliminate processed meats, deep fried foods, and margarine. Meanwhile, increase your consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts (dry roasted or raw), and oily fish. Third, if you smoke, quit. Smoking is terrible for circulation.
Finally, the best way to keep blood (and energy, and life itself) flowing is to be light-hearted. The circulatory system is an extension of the heart, and a light, open, joyful heart is best able to pump blood to all parts of us (much in the way it’s open to people and experiences of all kinds). Meditate (metta or lovingkindness meditation is especially good for this purpose). Laugh. Find ways to de-stress. Breathe deeply. Engage with community. Accept. Forgive. And love. Love yourself, love your family, love your environment, just love as much as you can. Even if you were to drop dead tomorrow, this is the stuff your soul wants you to prioritize.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => I’ve Been Taking Turmeric for a Year But Still Haven’t Found My Soulmate!
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[post_content] => Many traditional systems of medicine consider our digestion and nutrition to be central to the maintenance of health and (when imbalanced) the development of disease. If you look up almost any health problem in a textbook of Chinese Medicine, one of the possible causes will nearly always be “improper intake of food and drink.” This covers a lot of things - eating too fast, consuming very cold drinks, overeating, eating the wrong kinds of foods for one’s constitution, skipping meals, eating while upset, and more.
I appreciate that Chinese Medicine explains the origin of health problems in this way, because it highlights the most fundamental issue - and shows us the way to get the maximum results by changing our behavior. Whereas someone suffering from acid reflux (heartburn) might simply take an acid-blocking drug and think that’s the end of it, such an approach would not get to the real cause – which might be a food sensitivity, overeating, eating too fast, a structural imbalance, stress, or something else. Addressing the cause is better medicine; anything else is just a band-aid.
While “improper intake of food and drink” is a very common root cause of health problems, I think we can actually go one step deeper. If we’re eating and drinking in a way that is damaging to our health, much of the time
we know this, but there’s a mental disconnection occurring. The disconnection takes one of two forms – a split within the mind, or a split between the mind and body.
When the mind is split, we allow ourselves to ignore what we know to be true. We might do this consciously, such as in telling ourselves, “I know I shouldn’t eat this whole container of ice cream, but I had a really bad day.” Eating the whole container of ice cream is harmful to us and we know it, but we justify it with a belief that having done something good or endured something bad entitles us to this indulgence. We may also do it unconsciously, by simply avoiding thinking about how our eating choices are likely to affect us. In either case, there’s a part of us that knows how to care for our body properly, and another part that pretends not to know. Playing this game never feels good.
When the mind and body are disconnected, we tune out the feedback we get from our body during and after eating. It is this split that allows us to overeat, to eat too fast. All bodies give clear negative signals when we do this. When we don’t pay attention to how our body responds to different foods and ways of eating, we miss out on valuable physical information. Not only does our body tell us when we’ve eaten in a manner that it dislikes, it also tells us when we’re treating it well. Unfortunately, the concept of “listening to your body” strikes many as some kind of kooky New Age practice. I would guess that the great majority of modern humans ignore all but the most dramatic messages from their bodies.
A good way to start healing these disconnections is through a practice of doing nothing but eating for one meal each day. Engaging in other activities while eating makes it easy for our consciousness to stray from the vital and enjoyable act at hand. It’s hard enough for many of us to eat consciously even when it’s the only thing we are doing. Why complicate it by trying to multitask while eating?
Relax your mind: let go of worries before you start a meal. If this is hard to do, try making a deal with yourself – tell yourself you can worry all you want at a later time in the day and put it in your calendar. Turn off the TV, put away reading material, keep conversation minimal and light, and turn off any music (or keep it soft and light). Relax your body: no driving, standing, or walking while eating, and no exercise for at least half an hour after eating.
Try to keep a portion of your attention (like ten percent) on how your body feels before, during, and after the meal. With practice, we can learn to perceive which foods our body likes and dislikes - often from the moment they touch our tongue. As we stay connected to our body, it becomes harder to eat more than our body wants. Think like an Okinawan. They are some of the longest lived people on the planet and they embrace a practice called Hara Hachi Bu, which means, "eat only until you're 80 percent full." You'll feel lighter and more energized as you leave the table.
Emotions can strongly affect our digestion and the ability to stay focused on the act of eating. The nervous system is densely “wired” into the digestive tract. It’s why so many people experience nausea, appetite changes, diarrhea, constipation, or other forms of digestive upset when they’re stressed. The
sympathetic division of the nervous system excites us, it raises our level of arousal, and it’s responsible for the “fight or flight” survival mechanism. When the sympathetic nervous system is activated – whether or not we’re in actual danger – blood is diverted away from the digestive tract (because digestion is less important to our immediate survival) and is sent instead to our lungs, heart, and sense organs. For this reason, thinking about the bills we need to pay, a recent conflict, or politics is best saved for a time other than during or just after a meal.
Another reason to avoid being unsettled or engaged in other activities while eating is that it degrades something that should be a thoroughly enjoyable event. The frequency with which we do it doesn’t make eating any less special an act. When we eat, we are doing for ourselves what our mother did for us in the womb, and then while cradled in her arms. Later, she or another family member cooked meals for us and offered them with love. Eating reconnects us to these deep memories of being nourished and engaged with family. We put life-giving sustenance into our bodies and it keeps us alive; it makes us feel good; it gives us energy; it physically connects us with the earth, sun, plants and animals. So, when we eat while talking on the phone, while driving, or while working, we
miss out on something important – a level of sustenance that goes beyond the food itself.
Why not try this week to have one meal of
just eating each day?
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
Want to know more?
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Here's a fantastic seasonal favorite from the Best of Dr. Peter Borten articles vault! Enjoy, and please feel free to share YOUR favorite chilled summer treat recipes in the comments below!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, summer. The warm, bright sun, birds chirping, bees buzzing, and the sound of ice cream trucks in the air. We crave cold, sweet things like lemonade, ice cream, popsicles, and gelato. Somehow the specialness of summer convinces us to let ourselves and our kids indulge a bit more in the sugar. But summer treats don’t have to be full of refined sugar in order to be yummy and refreshing. Try these healthier variations on summer staples. You’ll feel in the spirit of the season, but don’t have to worry about putting on extra weight at a time of year when you may feel self-conscious of your body in skimpy summer attire.
In Chinese nutritional theory, sour foods are considered to help generate fluids in the body. When we’re hot and thirsty, the sourness of lemonade often feels even more refreshing than plain water. But the sugar just adds tons of extra calories (Minute Maid has about 12 teaspoons of sugar per 16 ounce glass) and makes you feel full if you drink too much. Your first healthier option is simply lemony water. A squirt of lemon (or lime) juice makes me much more enthusiastic about drinking enough water throughout the day. If you’re accustomed to drinking fruit juice daily, you can easily make the switch to lemony water and lose the extra sugar. If you don’t want to bring a lemon to work with you, try getting one of those lemon-shaped squeeze bottles of juice. If you have access to a juicer or juice bar, another excellent substitute for more sugary juices is cucumber juice. It’s wonderfully cooling in the summer. I like it with a squeeze of lemon and/or some fresh mint.
If you really want the sweetness of lemonade, try some stevia powder. It comes from the leaf of the stevia plant, it has no calories, and it’s much sweeter than sugar. You can also use it to sweeten your iced tea. (Bottled, sweetened iced tea, like lemonade, is full of sugar.) Also, you may wish to try a virgin mojito. Crush ice over fresh mint, add lime juice, stevia powder, and sparkling water. Very refreshing. Stevia powder varies a bit in quality. The lower quality stuff often has a bitter aftertaste. Generally, the 100% pure kind (which is also more expensive) tastes the best. A bottle will last you a very long time, because you only need minuscule amounts. You can find it at Trader Joes and natural food stores. It’s not quite as good as sugar, I’ll admit it, but you can get used to it.
Next are popsicles. The least healthy ones are made with high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and artificial flavors. Slightly better are the fruit juice sweetened kinds, but keep in mind that they’re made with concentrated fruit juice so as to maximize the sugar content. Better still are homemade popsicles made with just plain juice, though they still have a decent amount of sugar. If you want a sugar-free version, I’ve come up with a good recipe that we make at home:
Brew several cups of fruity herbal tea. I like to use Lemon Zinger or Red Zinger (Celestial Seasonings) though there are many other options. Then add some lemon juice and stevia powder until it tastes right and freeze it using popsicle forms (or an ice cube tray with foil or plastic wrap over it and tooth picks poked through). I you really dislike stevia (first, I'd encourage you to try a few different kinds, including both a powdered one and a liquid one), a second healthier option is xylitol crystals, a plant-derived “sugar alcohol.” It tastes more like sugar than stevia, and it’s also somewhat more expensive. However, it’s not calorie-free – xylitol has about 40% fewer calories than sugar. But it doesn’t raise our blood sugar the same way that normal sugar does, so it’s a safe substitute for diabetics. Xylitol has some other interesting properties, such as helping to prevent tooth decay and treating allergies and upper respiratory infections (usually used in nasal spray or gum form for this). While it’s quite safe, consumption of very large quantities can cause gas and/or diarrhea. Another promising sugar alcohol called erythritol has fewer calories than xylitol, the same health benefits, and less potential to disrupt the digestion. You can find erythritol and even combination erythritol+stevia products (including the popular Truvia) at many grocery stores.
One other easy popsicle substitute is simply frozen berries. Blueberries are the most popsicle-like to me, and because they take longer to eat, you won’t eat a whole box at once. We always have some bags of frozen blueberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, and blackberries in our freezer. They are my daughter's dessert of choice.
When you really want ice cream, frozen bananas can be a surprisingly close substitute. Break them into small pieces before freezing them. Once frozen, put them in a food processor or a strong blender with a dash of vanilla extract, and puree them. You may need to open the blender a few times and push the banana back down into the blades (I recommend turning it off before doing this) in order to get all the lumps blended. In the end, you should end up with something that has the consistency of sherbet or soft serve ice cream. Kids love it. You can also add other kinds of frozen fruit to change the flavor. Another option is the addition of raw, organic cocoa powder. Usually, the sweetness of the bananas is enough to offset the bitterness of the chocolate, but if not, let the bananas get extra ripe (brown) before you freeze them, or try adding some stevia extract. If it’s not creamy (fatty) enough for you, you can add some coconut milk or pureed cashews and re-chill it for a while to help it thicken.
[post_title] => Healthy and Refreshing Summer Treats
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Very thoughtful written and thought provoking! I have done a couple of juice cleanse events down in Palm Springs and felt like they made a difference. Looking forward to your suggestions on cleanses!
Thanks, Alecia!
I am due for a cleanse. Thank you for the seed.
You’re welcome!
Great article Dr. Peter!
Thanks, Elif!
Thank you Peter! As usual I so appreciate your balanced approach, anchoring the buzz in knowledge, depth and reflective practice. You do so with respect and ever for the goal of increasing our individual inner wisdom. I’m grateful for your grounding and inspiring messages!
Thanks for the kind words, Diana! I’m happy to have provided something useful.