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What’s in your Coconut Milk or Almond Milk?

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Teri Goetz

Coconut and nut milks may be healthier alternatives to cow’s milk for many people, especially those following a paleo or elimination diet. For most adults, cutting down or cutting out dairy is a great idea. From a Chinese medicine perspective, dairy is basically phlegm! And, if you are like most Americans, your diet is already full of mucus producing, inflammatory foods.

I recommend coconut, nut, or rice milks as alternatives to my patients, but there are definitely some issues to consider, especially if you have any kind of digestive issues including IBS or IBD.

Many packaged non-dairy milks like coconut milk and almond milk as well as non-dairy (whole food) creamers contain the following dicey ingredients:

sugars – Probably goes without saying, but um, sugar is killing us. Refined is worse.

guar gum – There has been a bit of controversy over this so I’ll go into it a bit more. Made from the seeds of the guar or cluster bean plant, it thickens foods, improves texture, and stabilizes ingredients. Used since the 50s, guar gum is also added to foods to boost fiber content. It is generally considered safe, though not necessarily as a supplement as it can block the esophagus in larger quantities because it holds 20 times its volume in water, among other issues. However, guar gum poses some potential problems. Consuming guar gum powders while eating may significantly reduce the absorption of antioxidant carotenoids, such as beta carotene, lycopene, and lutein found in many vegetables.

Guar gum has been studied and seems pretty safe if you don’t have a gut issue like SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) or a leaky gut (and more people have leaky gut than realize it).

Because of its high fiber content it can cause gas and bloating, but, interestingly, studies have shown that it actually reduces blood glucose and insulin demands with supplementation, and may help with weight management. Long term studies have yet to bear this out. The jury is still out on this one.

carrageenan – Made from red seaweed, this ingredient is found in many health-food products as a thickener and emulsifier and found in many health-food products. If it’s from seaweed it must be healthy, right? Not so much. It turns out that it causes inflammation in the body and increased intestinal permeability (leaky gut), and has been linked to colon irritation and ulcers. It appears to trigger an immune response just like when a pathogen like Salmonella enters the body. Some say it’s okay in moderation, others say uh-uh, and that it is potentially carcinogenic.

According to veteran carrageenan researcher Joanne Tobacman, MD as reported in Prevention, “Carrageenan predictably causes inflammation, which can lead to ulcerations and bleeding.” Not to mention it has no nutritional value. That’s all I need to hear!

titanium dioxide – Famously used as a sunscreen and colorant, titanium dioxide is also used in many paints, papers, and skin products. (Why are we eating this?) It has been linked to cancer in rats in some studies.

dipotassium phosphate – This chemical, which is used to control acidity and prevent coagulation, is generally regarded as “safe”…but I’d rather not add it to my diet.

Bisphenol-A (BPA): Welcome to the packaging dilemma. BPA is used in consumer goods from reusable drink containers to DVDs to auto parts. It’s also used to line many cans, as well. It is leached out from the lining or container when it comes in contact with high fat, salty, or acidic contents. So, if you’re buying canned coconut milk (or anything!), make sure it says, BPA-free!

The CDC found 93% of adults had BPA in their urine! (PS, quite unnerving is that it’s also in baby formula packaging.)

So what to do?

I personally can’t digest milk very well and it definitely causes inflammation in me, so I have to do without, or substitute. For a few years I was buying packaged milk alternatives and suddenly I started to develop digestive problems and increased pain in my joints. The light bulb went off in my head: maybe it’s the additives and gums in the packaged milks! I was never particularly comfortable with them, but felt I didn’t have much choice. Sure enough, I took them out of my diet and everything returned to normal. I learned how to make my own milks at home for a fraction of the price. They are tastier, cleaner, and healthier.

I have to mention one other thing about almond milk in particular (and I’m totally going to bum your high on this one). Growing almonds and making almond milk has a huge and negative imprint on the environment. According to Mother Jones, “Given that it takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow a single almond in California, where 80 percent of the world’s almonds are produced, drenching the finished product in yet more water seems insane”

And, they point out, it’s not nearly as nutritious as a handful of almonds.

The bottom line is that we have to balance this all out and consider our impact on the environment as well as human rights issues. Buying organic and fair trade, whenever possible, will help.

So, this environmental argument could be made for cows, too, but that’s not what this article is about! I am talking about unnecessary added ingredients…and there you have it.

Now, let me show you how completely easy it is to make your own coconut or cashew nut milk!

Next week, I’ll talk about the benefits of coconut and nut milks!

Enjoy ~

Fast and Easy Coconut Milk

Ingredients

1.5 – 2 cups flaked unsweetened coconut (more will make a thicker milk)
4 cups of hot (not boiled) water.
optional: vanilla extract or cinnamon
1 or 2 dates for sweetness (if you don’t want sugar, avoid this)

Tools:

blender
cheesecloth of “nut milk bag”
bowl glass jar or bottle to store milk in

Put it all in a blender and mix for 2-3 minutes in a Vitamix or other high-powered blender, and a few minutes more for a regular blender.

Set cheesecloth or nut bag over a bowl and pour blended mixture over it, squeezing out the milk. (You’ll get quite a bit of milk by squeezing, but watch your hands—it can be hot.)

If you need to do it in two stages, add half the water to all the coconut and finish the process as above. Transfer pulp back into blender with remaining water and repeat.

Delicious home-made cashew milk

Ingredients:

1 cup of raw, unsalted cashews, soaked overnight in water
3 cups of hot (but not boiled) water.
optional: vanilla extract or cinnamon
1 or 2 dates for sweetness (if you don’t want sugar, avoid this)

You essentially follow the same process as for coconut milk above! How easy is that? The only difference here is that I actually don’t strain my cashew nut milk because I like the fiber and it’s pretty indistinguishable to me.

Try both of these right after they’re made, when they’re hot and fresh. What a winter treat!

The Biggest Secret to Better Health

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Teri Goetz

If you’re interested in health, you can’t but help hear all the buzz about the micro biome or microbiota (microbiome = all of our microbes’ genes) but we’re mostly talking about those that hang out in our gut. The rate at which your food moves through your system, the mucus lining the intestines (which feeds healthy microbes), and nutrients extracted from your food—all that is controlled by your central nervous system.

vibhealth

Nicknamed the “second brain”, the lining of our gut has more neurons (umm that would be hundreds of millions) than our spine or even our peripheral nervous system! This enteric nervous system in our bellies is responsible for everything from “butterfly feelings” to how we digest our food. It sends signals to our brain through the nervous system, as well as tons of chemical and hormonal messages. This brain-gut axis seems to play quite a few roles — in our digestion, detoxification, moods, and disease.

This enteric brain—or we can call it “gut brain”— helps us break down and assimilate our food without having to communicate through the spinal column. But it’s so independent and complex, it is believed to do so much more than simply tell the body to break our food down into nutrients and excrete what’s left through the colon! Scientific American reports that “scientists were shocked to learn that about 90 percent of the fibers in the primary visceral nerve, the vagus, carry information from the gut to the brain and not the other way around.

Based on what we now know, our emotions are highly affected by what happens in the gut. (In fact, did you know that you make up to 95% of your serotonin in your gut?) So, those feelings of butterflies in your stomach or a “gut instinct” have real validity.

But importantly, that one thing you can do that will impact your health? Eat mindfully.

If the gut is THAT important (and it is!) then wouldn’t it seem that taking really good care of it is really important? Given what we talked about and the fact that up to 70% of our immune system is aimed at the gut to expel what is ailing us, I’d say it’s a superb idea. The best idea of the day. Or year!

I’ve talked about “leaky gut” (aka intestinal permeability) where the integrity of the gut lining is breached and we “leak” contents into our bloodstream, which causes an enormous host of problems from achy joints to autoimmune disease. But can we influence the gut and digestion through our thoughts as well as the other way around?

The answer is yes! Your thoughts, emotions, and stress level are crucial to optimal health. Optimal health comes from the complete digestion and assimilation of nutrients—in other words, the messages that come from the food and drink we take in. One of the best ways to describe this phenomenon is by referring to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This ancient medicine has an amazing ability to describe what Western science is only now figuring out.

In TCM we see digestion as being the job of the Spleen (and Stomach). The more important of the two viscera, the Spleen, is responsible for taking the food and drink and turning it into qi and blood, which then gets distributed throughout the body. If the Spleen isn’t functioning well, it can’t do its job and we see symptoms like gas, bloating, nausea, and fatigue after eating. The Spleen becomes burdened by “overthinking” and it’s recommended that you not work or get distracted while you’re eating so that it can do its job.

This makes a lot of sense given the science I just presented, right? In order to take food in and extract all possible nutrients from it, we should make sure our digestion is in optimal form. This means ensuring that we are peaceful, focused, and calm when we eat. Doing so will allow for optimal nutrition, which is what keeps our guts, brains, and bodies healthy!

Western science says breaking down our food gives us nutrients and energy. These nutrients become the building blocks for everything in our bodies. What we feed ourselves creates our inner physical (and mental/emotional) world. How we digest is crucial to those building blocks as well as to detoxification and elimination.

So, what IS the biggest secret to better health? Be in a state of mindfulness and relaxation when you eat.

If we’re in any kind of a stress response, we are simply not going to be able to digest and assimilate our foods, let alone detoxify. We won’t even realize when we are satiated. Science shows that it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to receive the signal that you’ve eaten enough. Eating mindfully also allows you to experience the food you are eating and for your brain to understand when it has had enough.

You can even start craving food that your body thinks it wants because your microbes are dictating your desires! Another Scientific American article states:

“Recent evidence indicates that not only is our brain ‚aware‘ of our gut microbes, but these bacteria can influence our perception of the world and alter our behavior. It is becoming clear that the influence of our microbiota reaches far beyond the gut to affect an aspect of our biology few would have predicted—our mind.”

But remember, it goes both ways. When you are under stress, experiencing fight or flight response, your body shuttles blood elsewhere—to your legs for running and your mind for figuring out how to survive. If you’re in full blown “lion is chasing you down” kind of stress, your body will totally shut down digestion. Your body doesn’t know the difference between a lion and a big deadline or a fight you had with someone — it just thinks: survival!

When a group of gazelles is being chased down by a lion, their adrenaline starts pumping, their digestion shuts down, and they sprint to save their lives. However, once one is captured, the others actually relax and go back to grazing. They never perseverate about an earlier argument (or a past run-in with a lion) while eating. That past trauma is over and done.

But not so for humans. Once the fight is over, we still fixate on it. Once the deadline is met, we can’t so quickly calm down and get back to normal.

And what’s going on within us can have a powerful influence on the nutrients and energy we get from our food and the way we excrete and detoxify. We need to be relaxed to do all of these things. When you relax, you’re experiencing optimal signaling of the nervous system, and those chemicals and hormones are all singing a beautiful song, instead of shutting down.

So please, if you do one thing to improve your health, eat mindfully and in a relaxed state. Don’t read, watch TV, argue or bring your mental baggage to the dinner table! Spend time tasting the flavors and noticing the textures of your food. Ask your body to digest the food as well as it possibly can. Focus on the energy and nutrients circulating effortlessly in your body because you are in a relaxed state. Then, reap the benefits of better health, greater energy, and vitality and maybe weight loss (or gain if need be.)

If you found this interesting, remember, sharing is caring. Help someone move toward better health.

How and Why? Bone Broth for Your Health

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Teri Goetz

Bone Broth: the Why

While wild animals and grandma know best, now there’s science to back up their wisdom. Scientific studies now provide clear evidence that the gut microbiome is key to ultimate health. Why? Without getting too technical, there is a gut/brain axis and when we have a healthy gut, we have a healthy brain. And when the brain is affected by trauma, it can affect the gut. It goes both ways.

When the gut is compromised, we have what’s called a leaky gut, and you can read a bit more about that here later. What’s important to know is that the single lining of epithelial cells in both the gut (and now we’re learning, the brain too) is actually fairly easily breached. When that happens, particles leave the intestines and actually enter the bloodstream, wreaking havoc. Leaky gut is now believed to be one of the keys to autoimmune disease, irritable bowel, joint diseases, mood disorders like anxiety and depression, arthritis, and even Alzheimer’s.

Bone broths help both the cause and the symptom, something Western pharmaceuticals tend not to be able to do (see, food IS medicine!). In other words, the “medicines” within the broth ease our joint pain, and go to the root of the problem: a leaky gut and less than stellar performance of the gut-brain axis.

When made properly, bone broths produce amazing health results. Bones can be up to 50% protein by volume, and when you add in the connective tissue that binds them, that number only increases. Bonus prize: that bone protein? It’s anti-inflammatory!

Another key component of bones, as well as skin, nails, joints, and all cartilage and connective tissue, is collagen. During the cooking process, that collagen is broken down into gelatin, another protein. While gelatin doesn’t contain all essential amino acids to form a complete protein, it contains something very important: non-essential amino acids like glycine, proline, and arginine, all of which have very special functions in the body.

I want to talk about glycine because of its importance in decreasing inflammation, improving gut health, and detoxifying. Glycine has been shown to help with colitis and other inflammatory conditions. Importantly, glutamine, which is synthetized from glycine, (and glutamic acid and cysteine), is necessary for a healthy gut lining, lymphocyte production, and cell-mediated immunity. It also helps produce the “mother of all antioxidants,” glutathione.

There’s more. Glycine helps stimulate stomach acid—and that’s a GOOD thing! Here’s why— there’s a lot of evidence that shows that reflux, GERD, and other acid problems actually come from lack of stomach acid (so taking proton pump inhibitors actually serves to worsen the very problem it is supposed to treat!). Glycine also helps produce bile acid, which helps you break down your fats, and helps the liver’s detoxification function. BTW, as if all that is not enough, glycine also helps you relax and has been shown to improve sleep.

Besides helping the gut lining, bone broths are also incredibly healing for joint-related diseases like rheumatoid and osteoarthritis. For one thing, it contains GAGs (glycosaminoglycans) like glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate. While a lot of people take these as supplements, the medical literature is not showing consistent results. However, when you get these things from food sources (like collagen extracted in a bone broth), the improvement seems to be better and more consistent.

One of the lessons we always seem to be relearning is that taking as much of our nutrition from nature—from the whole plant or animal—is always best!

Bone Broth: the How

You can use any animal bones, but the most beneficial are marrow bones (there’s a whole lot of information on the benefits of marrow in the paleo blogs). I tend to use whole chickens, because I love the flavor and as an ex-vegetarian, it’s more palatable.

RECIPE

Ingredients:

4 lbs of beef bones (with marrow and a little meat on them) or a whole roasted chicken.

2 onions quartered

1-2 leeks cut into 2-inch chunks

2-4 celery stalks, cut into 2 inch chunks

2-4 unpeeled carrots and/or parsnips cut into 2 inch chunks

garlic to taste. (I like a lot of roasted garlic, at least half a head!)

2 TB peppercorns

1 TB oregano or other favorite herbs

2-3 bay leaves

1 TB apple cider vinegar

salt to taste

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400-450 degrees

Toss bones or chicken, half of the carrots, parsnips (if using), and celery and all of the garlic into a baking pan. Roast for 20 minutes. Toss after 15-20 minutes and let cook for another 10-15 minutes. Using roasted bones provides a much richer broth in terms of flavor and nutrients.

If using chicken, remove meat from bones (or you can leave it on if you don’t want to eat it). Place bones (with some meat) and all vegetables, pan drippings and fat into a large stockpot, with approximately 12 cups of water. Add more if needed. Add chopped leeks, second onion, a couple of freshly chopped carrots and celery. (This second addition of veggies is not necessary. I think it adds another layer of flavor.) Add the apple cider vinegar (which helps draw nutrients out of the bones).

Cover the pot and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce heat to low, and cook with lid ajar. You can skim the foam off the top, but it does contain a fair amount of protein if it doesn’t bother you. You can skim excess fat if you must, as well. Let it simmer for at least 8 hours, but 24 would be ideal. The longer you simmer it, the fuller the flavor. Add water as necessary to keep the bones submerged. Feel free to add more garlic toward the end of the cooking, as well.

Let cool slightly, then strain into a bowl.

You can drink as is, or use it as a base for soups, sauces, or even smoothies. (You can scoop a couple of tablespoons of gelatin out of the chilled broth.)

Keeps for about 5 days, 6 months if frozen.

NOTES:

For beef bone broth, you might want to cook it even longer – up to 48 hours.
Fish bone broth can also be made but in less time – approximately 8 hours.

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