Let's Get Juicing

I’ll try to make this my last post for a while about foods and what we should eat and not eat.  Alex, my other half, found out that he is suffering from an ulcer.  I did a presentation on ulcers back in high school anatomy so I felt like I knew a decent amount about them.  Considering his diet, it is not surprising that he has an ulcer.  Our bodies have mechanisms that regulate our blood PH to be between 7.35 and 7.45.  But most of what we eat and what we consider to be filling is either mildly or highly acidic.  Most grains, meats, dairy, favorite beverages, sweets, and condiments are acidic.  Fruits, vegetables, and some nuts are basic.  A family friend suggested trying juicing vegetables and fruits to add quantity to his daily diet.  

What is “juicing”?  It is essentially blending up vegetables and fruits to make a drink.  You can do this with a blender and then strain most of the pulp out if you like, or buy a juicer.  They range from $30 to $300.  The difference?  I don’t know.  There is another blog that I read, Health Blogger, that also did a post on juicing.  I thought I would look more into it.

It has been shown that making up to 75% of your diet “raw” will improve overall health significantly; from mental, physical, and emotional.  People have written books on how it has saved their lives: Raw Energy by Leslie and Susannah Kenton, Juicing for Life by Cherie Calbom, and etc.

There are also books that give juicing recipes that will help prevent or alleviate the symptoms of almost any illness that you have (acne, alzheimers, ulcers, depression).  A good start to your research of this topic is juicingbook.com.  There are recipes to try and precautions to be aware of.  The author of the Juicing Book, teaches responsible juicing.  Vegetables are powerful and cause upset stomachs and headaches if too much of certain vegetables are eaten in excess.  To start, make juices using common vegetables that you already eat.  “Start slow.  Don’t start out juicing like a kamikaze.” 

Alex and I are going to start experimenting with a borrowed juicer.  I look forward to hearing if anyone else has done this before. 

Self Evaluation 2

I have worked hard to improve my blog.  I was unaware of how many blog post were expected of me.  Initially I thought we only needed 1 per week but now I am striving for at least 2 and have done so since I found that out.  I have been striving to make my post interesting with titles that will make people want to read them.  My goal is to make my blog enjoyable to read.  We all read technical research everyday for school.  I try to incorporate science into a topic, making a common topic interesting to us knowledge-yearning folk. 

I like to read blogs that are similar to mine.  I am interested in Biotechnology so I like blogs that incorporate it.  I like hearing what people think about my articles and I like to comment on other's posts.  I am not a very controversial person so I have struggled in posting controversial things.  I do have some topics in mind that will almost for sure change that. 

I have posted 33 comments on other blogs since the last grading period (yes I keep track or I will have no idea).  I try to comment on all the posts of the blogs I follow.  Sometimes I cannot relate to them so I will not comment but I probably make about 6 comments a week but read about half the class's posts that are posted that week.

I hope to have more stimulating posts in the remaining few weeks.

Dairy is good... No its bad!!

I attended Wellness Day last Friday.  It was interesting to see things there that counted as wellness, like Planned Parenthood.  I don’t know how Planned Parenthood can help your wellness.  Apparently babies aren’t good for your health or well-being.  But that is beside the point.

I picked up a bunch of fliers from most of the booths.  One flier, from Natural Grocers, taught how to “build a healthy meal”.  It states that a healthy meal means that you need HALF your plate to be vegetables; the second half of the meal is split up into approximately equal sections including whole grains, protein, fruit, and healthy fats.  What happened to the food pyramid that we learned in school? 

Healthy Meal Wheel

  vs

The Food Pyramid

This brings up the question again, how do we know what is good for us?  As you will notice, dairy products are not even shown on the first diagram as its own food group.  People live many different lifestyles and I think that is the root cause of these differences.  After attending yoga classes for a few semesters, I have gotten to see the lifestyles and beliefs that a lot of these, I will call them "yoga people" share.  I think people that don’t eat meat are crazy; it is one of my favorite things.  I think this Healthy Meal Wheel is skewed towards those who live the ‘yoga lifestyle’ and don’t see animal products as being a necessity in the diet. 

The realization that I am beginning to have its this: choose what you think is important in your diet.  Vegetables are proven to be very beneficial to your health.  Some fats are better for you than others.  Calories are what give you energy to make it through the day.  From there, choose your proportions as you wish.  These are all just guidelines from various government agencies and health food stores.  If you would die if you had to give up eating ice cream or drinking wine every day, then don't give it up.  Wellness is balancing things that make you happy with things that are good for your body.  The latter is obviously still up to debate.  So take your best guess and do what makes you happy.

Bananas: The cure-all or just another tasty fruit?

I received an email not too long ago claiming that bananas could cure everything from hangovers and depression to PMS and morning sickness.  I wanted to look more into the scientific benefits of bananas and see if these were based on fact or just speculations.  You can read the email for yourself on the Truth or Fiction website.  The website editors checked with a spokesperson for Chiquita Banana Company.  She/he commented that although bananas have a lot of nutritional benefits, a lot of the claims in the email are merely assumptions and have not been proven.  

So are bananas more than just a tasty fruit?  Here are some of the nutritional benefits of 1 large banana:

140 calories

2 g protein

4 g fiber

602 mg of potassium

About 10% of daily value for the following (rough estimate so I wouldn’t have to put down the mg of each for all of them):  Vitamin A, Full range of B vitamins, Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, and Magnesium

 For actual data, visit here.

Is ~10% a lot?  It is more than other fruits.  The banana is ranked one of the healthiest fruits (after cooked plantains) when nutritional figures such as protein, vitamins and minerals, fiber and calories are compared. 

Proven benefits:

Bananas are a great source of instant energy because they have natural sugars.  The potassium helps muscles contract properly during exercise and prevent cramping after exercise.  And since your heart is your hardest working muscle, bananas are good for your heart too!!

Ripe bananas contain serotonin and tryptophan; they boost your happiness and can help you sleep. 

Less ripe bananas help relieve constipation; riper bananas help relieve diarrhea.  They are easy to digest and the fructooligosaccharide nourishes the probiotic bacteria in the colon that help us absorb nutrients. 

Bananas act as an antacid and help protect against stomach ulcers.  They activate cells that compose the stomach lining and protease inhibitors in bananas help to eliminate bacteria that cause stomach ulcers. 

For more fun facts go to Chiquita.

So although the email was not completely true, I don’t think there was any negative impact on the general public by advertising the healing power of bananas.  To my knowledge, you cannot overdose on any of the vitamins and minerals by eating too many bananas.  People who read the email are now filling their bodies with potassium, lots of B vitamins, and natural sugars.  Sounds pretty healthy to me.  No harm done. 

Train your brain: Toolbox Project

Mark A. Collin created a method of implementing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) into elementary schools.  What is SEL?  It is a group of skills to help children manage their own attention to become powerful learners.  The skills help them to manage emotions, care for others, establish positive relationships, make responsible decisions, control their focus and solve problems.

Collin’s method is called “Toolbox”.  It is a set of 12 tools that give children a concrete way to solve problems and interact with others in a positive way.  The kids learn that their brain is resilient; they can train it to react to situations in certain ways.  This video is from a 3^rd grader that gives a brief description of the 12 tools and tells (in a very powerful way) how it has affected him.   

The 12 tools are the following: breathing tool, quiet/safe place tool, listening tool, empathy tool, personal space tool, using our words tool, garbage can tool, taking time tool, please and thank you tool, apology and forgiveness tool, patience tool, and courage tool.  They are very easy language and the kids can use and implement them on a daily basis.  Backed by Richard Davidson's neuroscience research, these types of methods for teaching SEL will bring kids up to be able to control their anger, have better relationships, and lead to happier future adolescents and adults.

I think this is a good idea, mostly the part that lets kids know in the very beginning that they can control their emotions.  Their brains adapt and they are the ones in charge of making themselves happier.  Here at Mines, I see a lot of people that just sit around wallowing in their sorrows.  They like to feel sorry for themselves and let others know how unhappy they are.  WE control our happiness.  If you aren't happy right now, change it.  If you are surrounded by people who are also unhappy, find some friends that love life.  School is hard but there are plenty of ways to train your brain to have a better outlook on life. 

Train your brain part 2

I began to look deeper into social and emotional learning to follow up on my earlier post.  Traditionally, school was for the 3 Rs: Reading, Rriting, and Rithmetic.  Now, school systems are trying to implement a more well-rounded program for children.  This includes social and emotional learning (SEL).  Social emotional learning’s goal is to give children the tools necessary to control their emotions and use that power to be successful in the educational, social, and emotional environments.

As I mentioned in the last post on this topic, Richard Davidson is well known for doing the ‘science’ of this topic.  He is a neuroscientist that has conducted many studies including the benefits of SEL on the brain.  In his talk given in the last post, he studied children’s brain activity to identify the differences in their response to various situations.

Here is a summary of his 20-minute presentation (He presented it very well so hopefully this does justice to it).

·      Take home message: SEL changes the brain; even down to the gene level

·      Neuroplasticity- our brain is built to change with experiences, it is very dynamic and resilient

·      Children are constantly having their brains molded by experiences; we want to mold them in positive directions; we can do this using SEL

·      Behavioral changes are biological (physically change the brain)

·      Behavioral changes can create more specific changes than medications have been able to achieve (could SEL potentially sure ADD in children??)

·      The reactions of a child to a negative event vary from child to child; neuroscientists study what brings about these differences and how children can learn to recover more quickly to these incidents

·      One example of a study to measure these differences of reactions: show a very sad picture and monitor the brain activity with respect to time (pictures at one period of time are similar to the image shown above).  The individuals that recover quicker from this negative event have a greater ability to regulate their emotions

·      Regulating one’s emotions is good for not only the emotions, but for one’s health.  Cortisol is released in response to stress.  With quicker recovery to negative events, adolescents with greater emotion control have lower cortisol levels in the evening

·      With large amounts of stress and anxiety, the memory and learning ability is greatly impaired

·      Conclusion: we can positively change the brain through SEL

So how is this “Social Emotional Learning” implemented?  Stay tuned for next post