moving back to happy...

Hi everyone! Apologies for the two month hiatus, it has been a doozy of a few months. I said goodbye to my dear sweet Cosmo on June 1st, and was so grateful to be able to be with her, safe and warm and at home when she moved out of our world. It has been rough adjusting to her being gone- I didn't realize how much energy one tiny little cat contributed to our household until she was gone. I still catch glimpses of her out of the corner of my eye in our house sometimes, and I find comfort in knowing she had a great life. We buried her right out in the garden, with a big pink dahlia on top of her grave.

I have also been dealing with some health issues, and since this is a health related blog and I strive to be open with my life and struggles, I will explain what has been going on. I have been dealing with pelvic pain and benign ovarian cysts for a while now, and have been using acupuncture to help treat these issues. In late May, I had an ovulation that was excruciatingly painful, and was able to see the doctor the first week of June for an ultrasound. I was fearing that my cyst had returned- but not so. My right ovary had hemorrhaged during ovulation (hence the pain) and the blood was not moving out of my ovary. My doctor (who is wonderful) explained that there is no western diagnosis or treatment for such a thing, but that clearly something was/is going on with my ovarian health- he seemed to think that after being on birth control pills for so long (12 years), my body is still learning how to make hormones, ovulate properly, etc. (When you take hormonal contraception, your body doesn't have to do things like make hormones because the pill supplies them already, so when taken for a long time to body stops making hormones, which facilitate things such as proper ovulation, and it can take a long time for the body to relearn how to do all this when you remove the artificial hormone source from you system). My doctor suggested acupuncture to treat this, which I was glad to hear because I currently use acupuncture to treat the other issues (cysts, etc). I have a fabulous acupuncturist who specializes in women's health and fertility, and we set up a plan to remove stagnation from my reproductive organs and clean out all the old stuff that is preventing my body from functioning properly. It has been interesting treatment, and I have made a lot of progress in the short amount of time we have been addressing the hemorrhage. It was painful recovery and I felt like I was a water balloon ready to pop at any moment (major bloating) for the entire month of June, but I am starting to feel better and I can see positive changes in my health recently. I am hopeful that a healthy lifestyle (good food, good rest, good mental health practices) plus targeted acupuncture and herbs will get me on track and hopefully pregnant by the end of this year!

It was my 33rd birthday yesterday, and my husband has been off work all last week and this week as well. We have been doing lots of celebrating- we hiked to the top of Fremont Peak and stood on 300 million (!!!!) year old marble looking out over the entire Salinas Valley, Monterey Bay and even back towards Gilroy... we had a decadent dinner at La Posta in Santa Cruz...we spent an afternoon wine tasting at Alfaro winery in Corralitos, and this week we are planning a day in Big Sur. This time has been wonderful to just get some joy back, to lift a bit of the sadness of Cosmo passing and the frustration of my health issues, and I am feeling well. I haven't felt like blogging much, but I feel my mojo coming back, and writing is feeling good again.

I hope everyone is well and enjoying our beautiful summer (whilst conserving water!). I am going to take the rest of this vacation off from writing and will be back next week with a fresh new post to get myself back in the blogging game. Happy Summer!

Life's sunsets...

Just a quick update today- people have asked about the next blog installment, and I wanted to let you know what is going on and why I haven't posted this week. Our beloved cat, Cosmo, is making her exit from this world right now. She is 15 years old, and has kidney failure and a lung tumor that is restricting her ability to breathe. We have known that she had not a lot of time left for awhile, but in the last few years she has bounced back incredibly from multiple health issues, so we weren't sure if this downturn was the final downturn... now we are sure. She seems to be free of pain, and we are just trying to keep her warm and cozy until she decides to make her exit. I will update the blog next week after she moves on and we have had some time to say goodbye to our beloved little girl who has been with us for so long. Thanks for all of the well wishes some of you have already given me. Death is part of life, and I am trying to honor it and her as best as I know how.

From Functional to Flourishing: Part One- the first steps

Hello Loves! Here we are today, ready to jump into the new series I will be writing, "From Functional to Flourishing". As I said in my last post, I have gotten many requests lately from friends and internet readers who are feeling crappy and don't know where/how to start feeling better. I SO UNDERSTAND HOW YOU FEEL! Two years ago, I was sick, stressed, frustrated and exhausted with no idea how to change my life in order to not be those things! It can be so overwhelming to change anything about your life when you are feeling crappy, and you may defeat yourself by trying too much at once and failing and thinking that you can't get it together so you just don't try. Now I understand that little changes can facilitate big changes, so I encourage everyone to start small- you probably don't have the energy for big! I am going to break this series up into a bunch of posts on different things, but today I am just going to start with 2 easy things for you to incorporate into your life right now- baby steps, right?

(I have to put this out there- I AM NOT A DOCTOR. If you feel unwell, see a doctor. I encourage you to see a Naturopath rather then a conventional doctor, but do not rely on the internet to solve your issues. Everything I say here is only based on my personal experience, and may not work for you.)

I am a firm believer that food can heal you or harm you, so that is the first place I am going to focus on. Many people have asked about cleanses- do I do them, how do I do them, what do I think of them...? In my mind, there are two different ideas floating around about what a "cleanse" is. Some people think it's a juice fast or the Master Cleanse. Others think it is a pure whole foods based plan (like Whole 30 or the 21 Day Sugar Detox). I believe a fast is different then a cleanse. A fast (consuming only juice or liquids for a set amount of time) sets most people up for failure. We need whole food. Period. In my opinion, you only screw with your metabolism when you fast to "cleanse", and if you go right back to eating pizza and beer after you juice cleanse, you really haven't helped yourself at all. A whole foods cleanse where you can set yourself up for a new way of eating/a new mindset about food permanently is going to be much better for your health, because it sets up a healthier lifestyle rather then restricting for a few days and then going right back to where you were. I of course think fresh pressed veggie juice is a part of a healthy diet, but it shouldn't be your whole diet. This brings me to my first baby step to thriving:

DITCH THE PROCESSED FOODS! In my next post I am going to talk about elimination diets and what you can do to feel better via specific foods, but today I just want to start slow with all this... If it comes in a bag or box and it has more then 2 ingredients (I am not talking about dried pasta or beans or flour and things like that) DO NOT EAT IT. No processed salad dressing (oil and vinegar is a winning homemade combo that is super quick and lacks all that extra sugar and chemicals and processed crap that store bought salad dressing has), no cheese puffs, no crackers, etc. Shop around the outside of the grocery store (dairy, fruits and veggies, meat, bulk bins for beans, nuts, etc) and stay away from the inside isles that are full of junk (even at health food stores, organic packaged food is still processed!). You can have easy, lovely meals with beans and spices and veggies thrown into a crock pot in the morning for dinner that evening that taste better then the packaged equivalent and it will be so much better for your body. Just walk away from shelf stable foods. It will take a little bit more time to cook rice and veggies and meat, or crock pot a stew, or chop veggies for a fresh salad then it would to microwave a dinner, but you are going to have to start somewhere and this is it! Invest in a crock pot, it is by far the easiest way to get fresh food when you have no energy to spend a bunch of time in the kitchen- and make extra so you can freeze it and have a ready meal when you need it!

Second baby step to thriving:
Drink a cup of warm water with lemon in it right when you get up in the morning. I drink 16 ounces of warm water with a half a lemon squeezed into it every morning, and this goes a long way to helping you feel well. Even if you are a coffee drinker, I am not telling you (right now at least) to stop drinking coffee- just start with a cup of warm lemon water first. The warm water hydrates and activates your digestion, and the lemon is very cleansing to the liver (and helps your skin glow). After sleeping all night, your body is dehydrated, so putting warm water into it straight away will do you good. I find that it helps my bowels to move properly, and actually gives me energy because it hydrates my body quickly.

So that is it for today: no more processed food, and warm lemon water in the morning. Start there, and please let me know how it goes and how you are feeling! Next week I am going to talk about elimination diets and removing inflammatory foods to foster wellness. Until then, have a fabulous packaged food free weekend!

Wellness series: Radiate

Hello Blog readers! Happy May! The month of April has flown by, and mine was filled with lots of awesome stuff- visits from beloved friends with their new babies (the best kind of visits!), a re-commitment to a way of eating that helps me thrive (back to the Paleo template and feeling great), a new acupuncturist who specializes in and is treating us for Fertility (which has been super interesting and we have seen lots of positive changes already), and a huge new addition to our garden project (even more yummy food growing this year!). In the last week or so, I have gotten 4 requests from friends and blog readers who are trying to start down the path to wellness, and are looking for some "where to start" guidance. It seems more then a coincidence that I have been asked about this repeatedly recently, and I started mulling over the idea of doing a sort of "where to start when you feel like crap" series to highlight what worked for me and give some easy recommendations for starting your journey back to feeling well. I am going to try and focus on basics that will work for everyone- it is so overwhelming when you feel like crap and know you need to eat better/heal your gut/deal with your life/get more energy, etc etc etc- feeling terrible and trying to do so much at once to change is unmanageable and will just make most people throw in the towel right away. It's all about little steps that then add up to big changes. Nothing is going to change overnight, but you can and will get to a place where you think to yourself "hey, I haven't had a headache in a few days... and I didn't even notice" (or something similar, that was just my first experience with starting to feel better). I will break it up into categories, such as food, hormones, sleep/stress, supplements/herbs, and mind/emotional work... something along those lines - this is a fluid process, so I don't have it all totally mapped out now. Food will be the first topic, as that I feel food is the most important part of any healing journey. Food has the capacity to help us to thrive or help us to die, and I firmly support letting food be thy medicine... So my next post will focus on that. Today I just want to suggest something a little "woo woo" (that's the phase we use when I talk about something hippie-dippie around these parts), but something that I used as a tool when I began my healing journey (so bear with me, we are about to get flowery and mystical up in here!). I am a reader and a writer by nature, so words and images are very powerful to me. I love the sounds of certain words, and the colors and images that they invoke. Even just thinking about a word or an image can change your mindset (think mantra or power phrases) and focus your brain. When I started trying to get better, I sat down one day and thought "what do I want? in one word, what do I want to feel?" and I started writing down all these words that were inspiring to me in terms of wellness... such as "heal", "thrive", "nourish", etc. I picked my favorite of those words, and wrote it in colored markers on a piece of paper in my journal (you could just do this on a piece of paper too) and doodled pretty things around it, and it became my mantra- when I felt like shit or felt like eating something that I knew would make me feel sick or when I felt like I couldn't get a handle on my emotions, I envisioned my word. It helped center me, helped to remind me why I was trying to motivate to cook dinner instead of grabbing packaged food. I know you are probably all smiling a little smile and thinking "Oh Steph, you're so cute you are such a hippie", and while that is true, it really did change something for me. And it might work for you. It is really easy to get overwhelmed by the bad stuff when you are feeling unwell ("I always feel crappy and I won't ever feel better so I am just going to resign myself to feeling like this because cancer is unavoidable and the world is horrible" etc etc etc)- it is good to have a little mental gong of sorts, to bang on and remind yourself that you can get better and you will get better. If that sounds crazy to you, no worries, I get it, but it worked for me and I still use my word frequently to motivate me to keep moving towards thriving.

So we begin the wellness series with a word. I will share mine with you, feel free to use it or to come up with your own. When I asked myself what I wanted, when I was feeling completely sick and bogged down and in a big mud puddle of unwell, I decided I wanted to radiate. Bright beautiful light, radiating on everything and making everything warm and sunny and nourished. So I leave you with that today, go out into the world and RADIATE! Even if all you can muster up today is a smile at a stranger, or a compliment to a friend who is exhausted too, do it and radiate and feel a little glimmer of a glow. And feel free to chuckle at my hippie dippie-ness while you think it :)

A skin clearing "latte" that tastes almost as good as the real thing...

The humble dandelion. Who knew such a cute little weed could help our skin look beautiful and clear? Dandelion is a wonderful herb for helping the liver function better, clearing the skin (because a happy liver = happy skin) and building blood in the body. Come springtime, we see Dandelion pop up in all sorts of cleanses, juices, etc, and for good reason. Who doesn't want clearer skin and a happy liver?

My body has a hard time with cold foods/drinks. I love my juicer, but I can only make fresh veggie juices in the summer, when it is very warm out and my body temperature won't get too cold when I consume a cold food. Raw salad, cold beverages, sushi- they are all very cold foods per Traditional Chinese Medicine, and when I started going to my acupuncturist she advised me to stay away from cold foods since I have a tendency towards a low body temp. I notice if I drink/eat something cold, I will get a little headache and a stomach ache, a sure sign that my body is unhappy. So I look for ways to use cleansing foods and herbs in warm ways, such as warm veggie soups and warm teas.

Dandelion tea is a great way to incorporate the highly cleansing plant into your life. I buy the Traditional Medicinals brand, I trust them and they make some great teas. Dandelion tea is a good substitute for coffee or black tea, if you are tying to limit your caffeine intake. My husband and I have been completely caffeine free for about a month now, and I tell ya, it is liberating! I stopped drinking caffeinated coffee about 2 years ago, after being a 3-5 cup a day-er in my past life as a grad student. Coffee makes me crazy jittery and sweaty, and I needed to get off of the "needing it to function" train. My real love is black tea- for me, there is nothing quite like a strong cup of good black tea with a splash of cream in it. But, alas, even my black tea was affecting me, albeit less then coffee, but I was still noticing some side effects. Since we are trying to get pregnant, and I knew I wanted to be caffeine free once we get a baby cookin' in there, I figured why not get a jump on it now and get through the groggy mornings post quitting caffeine before I was knocked up. Enter Dandelion tea. Roasted Dandelion tea has a great bitter roasted flavor, not unlike black coffee or black tea. Now, I'm not saying it's the same, IT'S NOT. But it's close enough for me to enjoy it for now instead of black tea, and the added health benefits of drinking it are worthwhile too!

Here is a simple Dandelion tea "latte" recipe:
Brew a strong cup of Dandelion tea (make sure it is organic!)
Add about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of coconut milk to it.
Drink and enjoy.

The coconut milk adds good fats to the drink, and lends a hint of sweetness to cut the bitterness of the Dandelion tea. I make my coconut milk at home, to avoid canned coconut milk which always contains emulsifiers and other weird ingredients, as well as to avoid BPA. It is super easy to make:

Put 1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut into a blender. Add 2 cups boiling water. Blend until well shredded, to a nice creamy consistency. Let it cool. Poor it through a very small gauge sieve or cheese cloth to separate the coconut meal from the liquid. The liquid is your "cream" and you can use the leftover coconut meal for any number of baking projects... it can be used to make some super yummy macaroons! This makes about a cup to a cup and a half of coconut milk.

I hope you give the humble Dandelion a try this spring, and let me know if you try the Dandelion latte. Cheers!

How to whiten teeth naturally for a happy healthy smile.

Between my husband and I, we have had more then our fair share of "tooth issues" over the years. Knowing what I know now about how diet, specifically grains and other inflammatory foods, affects the body, and seeing how much our health has improved by removing almost all grains/legumes and vegetable oils from our diet, and consuming properly soaked nuts instead of un-soaked,  it's no wonder we have dealt with quite a few cavities in our time (before said new diet). Sugar is not the only villain in tooth decay, phytic acid (mostly found in grains, legumes and nuts) and gut imbalances play a huge role as well. We have been on a mission in the past few months to remineralize our teeth (that sounds weird at first, but your teeth are bones, and your bones remineralize- like when you break a bone and it heals, or you work on adding bone mass when you have osteoporosis). The remineralizing protocol is for another post, but introducing it is pertinent to this post- I also wanted to whiten my teeth, and after reading about some of the ingredients in my "super clean hippie" toothpaste (I was using Desert Essence SLS/Flouride free with tea tree oil and neem oil), I decided I was going rogue and getting rid of the toothpaste for good. Screw putting questionable ingredients into my mouth just to give me a false sense of protection from decay! Side note: Please don't use commercial toothpastes - Crest, Colgate, etc- they are full of plastics (yep), chemicals and sugar (seriously) and do more harm then good.

So then, what are we doing to naturally clean and whiten our teeth?

It's super simple. And I promise you, my mouth is just a clean and fresh and tingly as it was when I was using store bought toothpaste- more so, actually.

My tooth whitening/chemical free tooth care regiment:

MORNING:
1. Tongue scrape first thing in the morning. LITERALLY first thing. I wake up, go to the bathroom, and scrape my tongue. It is a key player in maintaining a healthy mouth- there are a lot of toxins and gross things that accumulate on your tongue in the night, and you want to clean it off first thing (before you eat or drink anything) so that you don't swallow them back into your body.

2. Oil pull. I am currently using sesame oil (helps to warm the sinuses and clear sinus congestion) but coconut oil is great for overall mouth health and whitening. I have dedicated a whole blog post to oil pulling, so if you want details check that post out. This step is a huge part of the whitening.

3. Floss and brush. I floss with silk floss (no plastic!) and then brush. Right now I am using my remineralizing tooth powder that I make at home (which I will follow up this post with info on that), but you can easily replace toothpaste with baking soda and peppermint essential oil. Take your clean toothbrush, wet it, dip it in a jar of baking soda (aluminum free) and then put one drop of essential oil (spearmint and clove oil work well too) on it and brush away. It will feel very different the first few times you do it, but I promise your mouth will feel nice and clean. The baking soda is a mild but enamel safe way to clean and lighten teeth, and the essential oil is antibacterial.

4. Rinse with homemade mouthwash: 3 parts water to one part hydrogen peroxide and 2-3 drops essential oil (I use peppermint, it is refreshing as hell). The peroxide naturally whitens, and the essential oil leaves you fresh and minty.

EVENING:
1. Brush with activated charcoal. Here is the real whitening superstar! Activated charcoal is something we should all have in our medicine cabinets. You can use it for poisoning situations (food poisoning, actual poisoning, etc), and it absorbs toxins from the body rapidly, then moves them out of your body without harming you. The same is true for your mouth- when you brush with activated charcoal, it binds to all the crap deep down inside your (porous) teeth and in your gums, and pulls it out. Who doesn't want that? The only funny thing is that you look kind of crazy, like a little kid who ate a bunch of oreos and it's all over their teeth. Brush brush brush, spit, rinse (be careful in your sink- porous material will soak it up and it can stain!) and then move to the next step...

2. Brush and floss and rinse as outlined above. I swear the charcoal will come out of your teeth entirely, and you won't look like a very scary person with black teeth. But you will look like a person with a fresh, white smile that was obtained without using really scary bleaching chemicals!

Simple as that. I have noticed a huge difference, and my mouth feels great. I feel better knowing I am not putting anything questionable into my mouth (therefore my body), and that I am not spending a bunch of money on scary chemicals to assuage my vanity. Let me know if you try it, and good luck not laughing at yourself in the mirror when you have black teeth!

The simplest thing you can do to improve your health and your life...

I am going to hit you with a profound statement right now, are you ready?

Every single thing you put in your mouth either fights potential disease or feeds it.

BAM.

That is a pretty life changing statement... well, at least to me it is. My view on food has changed drastically over the past few years. I thought that I used to "eat well"- I for the most part avoided junk food (although I ate my weight in taqueria burritos), don't have a sweet tooth, and ate kale and blueberries on occasion . Little did I know that even though I thought I was eating "well", my body was breaking down. Stomach aches, heartburn, gas, bowel "flow" issues- you have probably had them in your lifetime, perhaps more frequently then you would like. You may even know the foods that trigger these issues, but "it's all good, just pop a tums!". I am here to tell you that those symptoms are not good. Even on occasion. We all get food poisoning every once in awhile, or the stomach flu, but I am not talking about symptoms from those ills. I am talking about symptoms from crap food. Or symptoms from foods that your body just can't handle (lactose intolerance, anyone?) Our modern medicine system (or more on point, our modern pharmaceutical system) has a "cure" for every symptom, so that we can go on eating the shit that is making us feel like shit- just pop a pill afterwards and don't worry about how those chili fries are treating your insides! But here's the thing- gas, bloating, etc-those are all just SYMPTOMS, symptoms of something greater going on. Maybe a little heartburn is worth the taste explosion of joy that are those chili fries... but I would be willing to bet your stomach and intestines, if they could speak, would not agree with you. We know so much about inflammation, and how chronic inflammation is the root of most western disease (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc). A stomach ache, or diarrhea, or heartburn, creates inflammation in the body (well, it's a sort of chicken and egg situation really- inflammation caused by a substance creates the heartburn which creates more inflammation... but I won't get into the biochemistry behind all that). And over time, that inflammation adds up (like in my case, where inflammation caused leaky gut, triggering my Celiac Disease). For many people, all that inflammation results in a leaky gut, which we also know so much more information about now, and are finding that leaky gut contributes to/triggers a host of ills- Celiac disease, Diabetes, Heart disease, Cancer, ADD/ADHD, Austim... the list goes on and on. It's interesting to me that one of the newer ways to help deal with Austim for some children is implementing the GAPS diet, which removes almost all inflammatory foods (all processed foods, gluten, nightshades, egg whites, etc etc) and many people are seeing vast improvements in their children via this diet. Back to the point- yes, a stomach ache or a bout of heartburn here or there *won't* kill you (now), but over time the effects of those things do add up in the body. Everything in moderation may not be the way to go when it comes to putting crap in your body.

So on to a really, really easy way to deal with all that. I could create a list with all the things that contribute to inflammation (eating foods made with processed vegetable oils, GMO's, questionable meat made with pink slime, etc), but let's just keep it simple here. Most of this stuff can get really overwhelming really fast, and I think it's important to take easy steps first to change your health, so that you see results and can encourage yourself to continue. So here it is:

Stop eating processed crap.

That's it.

If it's "shelf stable" and has more then 2-3 ingredients (I'm not talking dried pasta here), don't eat it. If it's packaged and says anywhere on the label "vegetable oil/canola oil/soy anything" don't eat it. If it was made anywhere where you can get a burger for less then 5 dollars, don't eat it. If sugar is in the ingredients list and that seems weird to you (there does not need to be sugar in pasta sauce, that is ridiculous), don't eat it. A simple way of dealing with this in the grocery store is only shopping around the outer sides of it- fresh fruits and veggies, fresh quality dairy and meat, bulk grains and beans, etc. I shop this way- we have virtually no packaged food in our cupboards- only dried beans, a few flours and other baking ingredients, and spices and vinegars... I understand that not everyone has the time to cook home cooked meals every day. Of course you don't! But that doesn't mean you can't make better choices- maybe trade Taco Bell for a Taqueria where they grill real meat instead of weird "meat product". Maybe that means trading the crappy Lays potato chips for chips made with avocado oil or olive oil (or better yet, air pop some popcorn instead!). Switch to eating the clean fifteen and avoid the dirty dozen to get some more organically grown veggies and fruits in your diet (http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php). Make burgers at home, where you can control the ingredients rather then going to Burger King.  STOP DRINKING SODA (period). Little steps. Most importantly, LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. When you get gas, or heartburn, or whatever symptom after eating a meal, listen. If eating a meal makes you feel heavy and crappy and bloated, listen. I did not listen to my body when I felt this way, and I continued to not listen until my body screamed at me to stop. Many of us think, "oh I don't have symptoms of IBS (or whatever issue) so I am not going to worry about it", but the effects of crap food are cumulative, and may add up to IBS (or something worse) for you at some point. Don't pop a tums and move on, ignoring what your body is telling you. Respect the gift of being alive by supporting your body's ability to CONTINUE BEING ALIVE. Strive to be well, rather then to be just "okay".

Just put down the processed crap. Your body will thank you for it, I promise.


Side note: I got an overwhelming response from my last post- so much love and support and "thank you I needed this right now!" was given about what I wrote, I was moved to (happy) tears by things that people had to say, in facebook messages, comments on the blog, and directly to me. I appreciate everyone's love and support so much, and hope to continue write things that you guys need and want to hear. Thanks so much!