Are You Coffee Conflicted?

 Procaffinator-someone who has a tendency not start anything without a cup of coffee.

Devil or Angel-coffee is one of the most controversial beverages for health-minded people. Hard core purists scoff that coffee could have any benefits, citing the fact it dehydrates the body and is loaded with caffeine. But there is a tendency for a few to contend any food that is pleasurable cannot be good for you.

As a Nutritionist/Naturopath who comes from the “Real food is yummy food and the more organic butter the better” school of food science (note the strong French influence!) I like to look at the facts. All foods from natural sources have to be evaluated on an individual basis.

Coffee can be considered a herb. It is hot water extracted from the berries of the Cofea plant. All plants that are not poisonous to humans have medicinal benefits because that is just how Nature rolls. Coffee contains small amounts of potassium, Riboflavin (B2), pantothenic acid (B5) and manganese. Manganese is vital for pituitary health, for example. And potassium helps to hydrate the body, so Nature may have provided a degree of balance to the dehydration issue.

How much caffeine is in coffee? The average for an 8 oz. cup is 95 mg, unless you got your cup at Starbucks, which logs in at twice the average amount. Green tea contains about 44 mg caffeine, and espresso has about 60 mg.

On average most people can benefit from a couple of cups of coffee a day. Pregnant women should keep caffeine levels below 200 mg. What are the benefits?

Coffee contains powerful antioxidants, which help the body to combat oxidative stress. Think of oxidative stress as too much of a good thing. While we need oxygen for cellular activity, too much is damaging to cells. Anti-oxidants balance out the damage of the potentially corrosive actions of high amounts of oxygen, otherwise known as free-radical damage. Some free-radical damage is normal, and merely stimulates repair by the immune system. But too much overwhelms the body, and may be a pre-condition that allows cancer and other metabolic diseases to develop. http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400537/Stumped-by-Oxidative-Stress.html

Coffee is associated with lower mortality from all heart-related issues, such as stroke or heart-failure. It is also associated with lowered risk for neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and dementia, and mice studies show that coffee is helpful against memory impairment. Research indicates that it is the caffeine in coffee that has the brain benefits, so decaf does not help. http://draxe.com/coffee-nutrition-facts/

Coffee seems to improve athletic performance, test performance and alertness. However, coffee is not as effective for test performance and alertness as certain wave-lengths of light from the blue band spectrum.

Coffee appears to be protective against fatty liver disease and promote healthy liver function. A study showed that coffee plus exercise helped prevent skin cancer in mice. (Now you will know what to think if you see a couple of mice with their little laptops at Starbucks.)

And coffee can help with a weight loss program by boosting your metabolism.

Who shouldn’t drink coffee? If you are caffeine sensitive, suffer from stomach issues, have insomnia, heart palpitations or anxiety coffee and black or green teas may not be good choices for you. Insomnia, digestive discomfort, anxiety and palpitations can be addressed with natural and nutritional medicine, so you don’t have to suffer or worry about these conditions. Call us for help.

Don’t medicate with coffee. If you are burning your candle at both ends, get some sleep and exercise and increase your nutrition. Too much coffee will only put more stress on your adrenals and immune system.

Why do some people get a headache when they are deprived of coffee? As expected, the more coffee consumed daily the more likely you are to experience a headache during coffee withdrawal. Scientists have measured the changes in blood flow to the brain, and deprivation of coffee seems to increase cerebral blood flow, triggering the classic withdrawal headache. http://draxe.com/coffee-nutrition-facts/

The remedy may be to cut back a bit at a time if you are consuming so much coffee that it makes you jittery or interferes with sleep. Try using a herbal coffee like Teecino to mix with your coffee, to cut back, but still enjoy a rich coffee drink.

Bottom line is that coffee in moderation appears to have health benefits for most people. Note that this article is about natural coffee, not caffeine. I will blog about synthetic caffeine in another article.

So, if you tolerate coffee well, don’t feel guilty about the indulgence. Try using Stevia to sweeten and flavored Stevia can help you skip those Frappuccino’s, which are loaded with chemicals and artificial flavors. I carry Peppermint and Toffee Stevia in my purse. Try bullet-proof coffee, made with organic butter or raw coconut oil, instead of milk, if you are avoiding dairy and trying to increase healthy fats.

A little coffee humor: Latte is French for “You just paid too much for your coffee”.

“Mothers are those wonderful people who can get up in the morning before the smell of coffee.”  “Deja Brew-the feeling you’ve had this coffee before.”
Source : http://www.coolnsmart.com/coffee_quotes/

Lastly, “May your cup runneth over with Joy, love and really fabulous coffee!”

Could Herbal Preparations Help You?

You already know how important vitamins, minerals and proteins are for your health. Along with air and water, they provide the essential building blocks for the repair and maintenance of tissue, glands, organs and cells of the body.

How often have you wished that you could just shift gears as fast as life requires? Imagine if you could speed up or slow down your body’s responses as needed. The ups and downs of life are inescapable. It may be that those who can adapt the quickest have the best health, and likely have more fun.

To shift gears, your body has to be able to make fast changes in various systems that monitor the whole show. How do you ensure that your body’s “monitors” are working?  This is the true function of medicine, to help the body adapt to demands and challenges on the body. The immune challenges include chemicals, toxic metals, radiation, and bacteria, viruses and fungus. The demands include the various stresses from all the incoming messages and requests, the tugs and pulls on our time and energy, we each get every day.  These bring emotional responses ranging from joy and happiness to anger, frustration, anxiety and grief. Basically anything you run into in life requires the body to adapt to the new circumstances, every moment of every day.

Even a perfectly functioning body-machine needs to monitor how to adapt to changing conditions when more or less production is needed. This is the challenge of our modern world.  Generally speaking, there are more factors to interfere with normal function, and less vital nutrients available, than in previous times.

Herbal medicine can assist by acting to temper, or regulate, the reaction of an organ or gland to the degree of stress it is under. This can work in both directions. If you are exposed to a large degree of stress, such as missing sleep, experiencing emotional highs and lows, or suffering an injury, different body parts may have to shift into high gear, and herbal preparations help them do this efficiently. Likewise, when the stress has subsided, the glands or organs in question need to shift down and switch to a more normal or moderate amount of activity so they don’t burn too many nutrients, or send the wrong signals to their partner body-parts.

 This ability to shift up and down gives you more stamina, mental clarity, a stronger immune system, stress reduction, deeper sleep, a healthier libido, and can promote healing and longevity. Some herbal medicines can work quickly to help you through immediate needs. Other herbal preparations work over time to strengthen the body and minimize the wear and tear of every day living.

Herbal medicine must be prepared according to exact methods and standards to give you the full benefits. Look for companies that source and prepare according to standard herbal guidelines. At Well Body Clinic we use MediHerb brand from Australia. If MediHerb cannot source plants to their specification they will suspend manufacturing for weeks rather than make an inferior product. Potency and results are ensured this way.

Recently many of our patients have gotten help with sleep, stress, immune, fertility, bloating/digestion and allergies from MediHerb preparations. The herbs can be used when needed, or taken every day. Either way, herbs can improve your life and give you much-needed help to live a healthier/happier life. Ask for a sample at your next visit or email us to find out more.

The herbal world may not be quite as magical as suggested in Harry Potter, but getting on top of your world may be miracle enough.

Coconut Oil for Beauty and Health

You might call coconut oil the best beauty oil for inside or outside the body. As a skin oil, coconut oil can be used at any age. Coconut oil is an excellent moisturizer for moisturizing dry skin, or removing make-up and cleansing the face. For infants, coconut oil can be used for moisturizing or diaper rash.

Mix coconut oil with Epsom salts and use as an exfoliating treatment that won’t dry out the skin and may even be beneficial for acne, without drying out blemish-prone skin like harsher acne cleansers.

Added to shakes and smoothies, coconut oil may contribute to weight loss and has even been shown to decrease belly fat and improved blood cholesterol levels, as reported in The Journal of Clinical Nutrition.  Despite the increase in calories participants in the study lowered their body mass and increased metabolism. That means that the rate of calorie usage by the body was improved, making weight loss easier, and increasing energy.

Subject to flus, viral infections or cold sores? Coconut oil is 50% Lauric acid, which converts to Monolaurin in the body, which has powerful anti-viral effects. These days our immune systems need all the help they can get, so coconut oil could be part of your defense system. Children could benefit both from the immune enhancement and from the brain/nervous system support. Ulcers caused by H-pylori bacteria and candida infections have also been helped by the properties of coconut oil. http://www.livestrong.com/article/476661-coconut-oil-the-immune-system/

If you are concerned about Candida over-growth or have gut/intestinal issues, coconut oil contains caprylic acid, which is anti-inflammatory, discourages unhealthy bacteria and fosters the growth of healthy gut flora. We can’t live without the good bugs that line our intestines, so keeping them happy and strong is the best kind of prevention.  http://www.thealternativedaily.com/alerts/coconutoilsecret/click-thyroidspecial.php

You can check your own candida levels by spitting in a tall glass of water first thing in the morning, before brushing your teeth. Allow a few hours and see if the glass begins to look like a science experiment, with long strings and odd lumps forming. That means you need digestive help to restore normal gut function. If the water remains clear, that is a good sign of gut health.

Healthy fats like coconut oil are also vital for helping vitamins and minerals get absorbed. Some vitamins are fat loving, and they need fat to help them pass through the intestinal walls into the blood to be carried to the cells. Fats are a component of cell membranes and form a lipid layer that protects the cells. Fats may protect against neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Natural, unaltered, fats allow the transmission of nerve impulses. Processed fats like corn, canola, soybean oil, and margarine can interfere with nerve transmission. http://www.thenaturalvet.net/Fats-and-Their-Relationship-to-Cell-Membrane-Function_ep_61.html

Adding a good fat like coconut oil to your diet can make you feel more satisfied, so may actually help with appetite and over-eating.

What makes coconut oil so unique? Fats are arranged in chains of fatty acids. Coconut oil is composed of medium-chain fatty-acids (MCFA’s). In the 90’s it was discovered that medium-chain fatty acids helped control seizures in children and now elite athletes have discovered their benefits for endurance.

The beauty of MCFA’s is that they are burned easily for energy and cannot be converted into fat cells in the body. MCFA’s appear to improve mental clarity and provide energy for the heart muscle, so may be protective.

So, if coconut oil sounds like a good thing to you, try incorporating it into your diet for a month and see if you notice a difference.  All you have to lose is belly fat, excess appetite and dry skin or acne.  

One of the best ways to include coconut oil is to add it to a morning protein shake. If you would like a sample of the Standard Process Nutritional Shake, ask us and we will include healthy recipes. Ask us about our flavored Stevia that can turn your shake into a yummy snack or dessert as part of a detox, weight loss, or blood sugar balancing program.

Need More Healthy Energy?

One of the number one reasons people visit their medical doctors is because they are tired or fatigued. When is being tired a risk to your health? When your fatigue makes it too difficult to carry on safely with the daily tasks of living or it causes too much of a strain on your organs or glands so that they are unable to function adequately. So, being tired can have consequences that go beyond falling asleep at your desk.

Fatigue can cause driving and operating machinery to be dangerous. An Australian study showed that going just eighteen hours without sleep caused a similar impairment to alcohol. Shift workers, parents of young children and young males are most at risk. http://drowsydriving.org/about/facts-and-stats/

Relationships can suffer because a tired person is not a patient, understanding person. When a person is sleep deprived, there are mood changes and memory impairment. Anxiety is more likely. These all put a burden on relationships with family and friends, and can even put jobs at risk. http://hr.uiowa.edu/uieap/10-reasons-well-rested

The physical stress puts more of a burden on the organs, especially adrenal glands, which compromises your immune system and may be a factor in the healthy function of your heart. Weight gain and difficulty losing weight is a common issue, and there is a higher cancer risk, as well.

There are many reasons why someone may be tired and unable to get sufficient restful sleep. If you are a high achiever, or in a demanding job situation, you may simply not be spending enough time in bed to get enough sleep. Emotional stress and worry may impact ability to fall sleep and/or stay asleep. Congested organs from toxins and processed foods, or a weakness in the hormonal system, can make it difficult for the body to relax enough to sleep. Eating a high sugar, high carbohydrate diet can play havoc with blood sugar, causing the body to wake up hungry when blood sugar drops too low after a sugar spike. Iron deficiency can cause tiredness and listlessness, because the red blood cells need the mineral iron.

Vitamin deficiencies may be a factor when fatigue becomes debilitating, as in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. As a syndrome, and not an actual disease that can be measured or viewed under a microscope, Chronic Fatigue may have different causes or be a combination of factors.

The best course of action is to identify the factors that are involved in any type of fatigue. Often people crave a diagnosis, particularly when they are suffering and having a difficult time with their symptoms. But so many diseases today are lifestyle issues, and they need to be sorted out by someone who can evaluate diet and other factors, rather than simply diagnose a disease, and give it a label. The important factor is to find a way to help the body get well, and that takes more than medication.  Lab work may only offer part of the answer, or none at all.

Don’t ignore fatigue, especially if it lasts for more than a few weeks. You can push yourself, but push when your body is rested, if you do not want to make the problem worse.

B vitamins deficiencies, Adrenal-hypothalamus-pituitary function, liver congestion and blood sugar imbalances can all wreak havoc on sleep, mood and general health. If you know someone who is tired, urge them to get an evaluation and find help. There is no reason to go through life too tired to enjoy the special moments.

With Spring around the corner, it is a perfect time to do a Cleanse/Purification program, or a Blood Sugar Balance program, or a Liver Detox Program. Any of these will help sleep, as well as energy and weight loss. The programs can be tailored for your specific needs. Call us and find out how to Stop Being Tired, no matter the underlying cause. Coffee won’t fix it. Natural and Nutritional Medicine will.