Ice cream for breakfast??!!
It's simply shocking. This naturopathic physician, nutrition writer and (most horrifying) mother of a small child is actually eating ice cream for breakfast and feeding it to her little son. Oh my gosh!
Well, this is not just any ice cream. In fact, my 6-year old son and I sort of threw it together by accident from some pretty healthy ingredients, and it's so tasty, we really like it. Here is our recipe:
Put the following ingredients in an ordinary blender in this order:
- 1-cup raw goat milk, and/or kefir, and/or organic or raw cream or cow milk
- 2 scoops Primal Defense probiotic powder
- 1 scoop Jay Robb or Whole Foods whey protein (or any other whey protein powder you can find that is sweetened with only stevia)
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
Put a few frozen berries on top.
Start to blend on high for about 20 seconds. You will have a smoothie. But leave it in the blender. And now put about ½ cup to 1 cup of frozen berries in. Blend on high again, adding more berries if necessary, until the motor starts to choke and you have a soft "ice cream" that is too thick for the blender to really move. Scoop it into bowls, and enjoy your healthy "ice cream."
Here are the benefits of the ingredients:
Raw goat milk - The protein in goat dairy is a more manageable size than cow dairy for human consumption, and seems to be less antigenic than cow dairy for many people. Raw milk still has enzymes and proteins in a form that is best metabolized by the body. Pasteurization, especially the flash pasteurization that is used by industry today creates a very distorted molecule that is more antigenic (meaning antibody-creating) once it gets into your bloodstream. You want to find a goat farm in your area that will allow you to buy a goat share or some other arrangement where you can legally buy the raw milk. You may pay about $10 per gallon, so you will want to take 4-quart size containers and freeze what you don't use right away. It will keep just fine and that way you can get the most out of the gallon.
Probiotics - Our guts are battlegrounds for good microbes (the billions of bugs that we have in our guts enabling our digestion vs. the nasty pathogens like candida and E. coli). We enhance the work of the good guys by throwing in a few billion of them now and then with a good quality probiotic.
Whey protein - is a wonderful detoxifier of the liver, and the most benign of the available protein powders. As the only sweetened ingredient in our ice cream, we scrutinize the sweetener most carefully. Stevia is a plant in the mint family, which has the very useful property of tasting sweet but not raising blood sugar or insulin. It has zero glycemic index.
Vanilla extract - just makes it taste a little better.
Frozen berries - Everybody should add berries to their diet. The immense benefits especially to our cardiovascular system are from the flavonoid based anti-oxidants. The advantage of frozen over fresh is that the cell walls in the berries are broken down enough to make those flavonoids more available to our digestion.
Sunscreen smokescreens
We have been writing about this for years, but with peak summer exposure now here in the northern hemisphere, it bears repeating: sunscreens are not even slightly good for you. Sunscreens actually cause more cancer than they prevent.
There are two problems with sunscreens. One is they have out and out toxic ingredients like oxybenzone and methylcinnamate, which are known to cause cancer and known to be absorbed into the skin. The other problem is that they block ultraviolet rays to the skin and thus interfere with the body's absorption of Vitamin D. Now Vitamin D has been found in research labs all over the country up to Harvard Medical School to be the best prevention we have for all kinds of cancer.
Our most effective way of having sufficient Vitamin D is absolutely free: our skin makes it from sunlight, where it is then further processed in the liver, then the kidney. Our immune system loves it because it helps fight off cold, flu, other infections and cancer. There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but as long as the sun keeps on shining, only sunscreen peddlers can take away your Vitamin D if you let them.
Although sunscreen marketers claim that sunscreen prevents sunburn, it really makes more sense to moderate sun exposure. If more than an hour or so, have some clothing for covering up available. Sunburn damage is minimized by the antioxidants available in foods with flavonoids, such as the colorful fruits and vegetables.
For a description of the outrageous double-dealing of the public by an unholy alliance of sunscreen manufacturers and the cancer industry, see Mike Adams' horrifying, yet familiar, description of their collusion.
Gut function: What is your transit time?
Transit time is the time required for food to traverse the long gut tube running from the mouth down to the anus. There may be problems with digestion at various places along the tube.
The ideal transit time is from 18 to 24 hours. Here is an easy way to determine yours. Take 3 large charcoal tablets or four charcoal capsules. Or eat either beets or whole kernel corn. Note the time that you take these. Depending on your choice, your stool will either turn grayish black or beet red or will be checkered with bits of yellow corn, respectively. Note the time when the first color change is observed in the stool. Calculate the number of hours between the two events. This is your transit time.
If your transit time is less than 18 hours, you may be one of the many people who have irritable bowel syndrome. This is frequently related to undiagnosed food sensitivity, and may be easily corrected by eliminating that offending food or foods from the diet. However, food sensitivities are not so easy to identify. See your local naturopathic physician for a simple blood test that can identify which foods you are producing antibodies to, and which foods your body accepts without problems.
Other possible causes of rapid transit time include overgrowths of gut pathogens. These can be tested for in the stool, and there are two especially reputable labs that can determine these for you. One is The Parasitology Center in Scottsdale, AZ, and the other is Genova Diagnostics, formerly Great Smoky Mountain Laboratories in Tennessee. Your naturopathic physician will be familiar with at least one of these and can send off your sample for testing, then work with you for natural ways to resolve such problems.
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On the other hand, many more people have prolonged transit time, meaning constipation and the whole set of medical signs and symptoms that go along with this. If your stool changes color more than 24 hours after you ingest the coloring agent, then there is a whole range of possibilities to explain what is happening. You could have poor bowel muscle tone. Good muscle tone is necessary to squeeze the food through your gut in an action called peristalsis. Or you could be dehydrated. It's possible you have low level functioning of one or more of the following glands and organs: thyroid, pancreas, and stomach. There may even be emotional reasons for your wanting to hold back stool. Maybe you have not always felt safe when needing to produce stool. Many people have at some point in the past taught themselves to be constipated, because it was not convenient or safe-feeling or comfortable to go to the bathroom. Regardless of the cause, these are issues that should be brought up on your next visit to your naturopathic physician, because they are all treatable, and you are not doomed to be constipated your entire life.
Sometimes more serious and urgent conditions underlie excessively rapid transit time, and it is important to get some health care attention even if there are no naturopathic physicians in your local area.
Herb of the month: Turmeric
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Turmeric is the one of the most wonderful herbs anywhere. It is a potent flavonoid antioxidant and as such has demonstrated strong protection against such oxidative diseases as cardiovascular disease, age-related mental decline and age-related vision problems. Scientists at UCLA and elsewhere have found that turmeric actually reverses the amyloid plaques that are characteristic of Alzheimers. [1] It is also strongly anti-neoplastic, which means it fights cancer cells, and has been shown to kill them. [2, 3]
If you do not recognize the word turmeric, you have still probably eaten it, if you have ever had Indian curried food. The brightly yellow-colored pigment of this herb is the flavonoid that contributes to turmeric's strong medicinal properties.
You can search online for curry recipes that will help you start incorporating this wonderful herb into your diet. Everybody should eat this for long term heart, brain, liver and eye health.
references
- Cole G, et al. Mechanisms of prevention of Alzheimer pathogenesis with turmeric extract curcumin and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA. Greater LA VA GRECC and Depts of Medicine and Neurology, UCLA.
- Kuttan R, et al Turmeric and curcumin as topical agents in cancer therapy. Tumori. 1987; 73:29-31.
- Azuine M, et al. Protective role of aqueous turmeric extract against mutagenicity of direct acting carcinogens as well as benzo [alpha] pyrene-induced genotoxicity and carcinogenicity. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 1992;118(6):447-52.