Lifestyle vs Multiple Sclerosis & More
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This is Dr. Saray Stancic. She’s another from the ranks of “doctors who got a serious illness and it completely changed how they view the treatment of serious illness”.
In her case, Stancic was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and wasn’t impressed with the results from the treatments offered, so (after 8 years of pain, suffering, and many medications, only for her condition to worsen) she set about doing better with an evidence-based lifestyle medicine approach.
After 7 years of her new approach, she would go on to successfully run a marathon and live symptom-free.
All this to say: her approach isn’t a magic quick fix, but it is a serious method for serious results, and after all, while it’d be nice to be magically in perfect health tomorrow, what’s important is being in good health for life, right?
If you’re interested in her impressive story, check out:
Doctor With Multiple Sclerosis On The Collapse Of US Healthcare
If you want to know what she did, then read on…
Six key lifestyle changes
Dr. Stancic credits her recovery to focus on the following evidence-based approaches:
The plant-centered plate
This is critical, and is the one she places most emphasis on. Most chronic diseases are exacerbated, if not outright caused, by chronic inflammation, and one cannot fix that without an anti-inflammatory diet.
An anti-inflammatory diet doesn’t have to be 100% plant-based, but broadly speaking, plants are almost always anti-inflammatory to a greater or lesser degree, while animal products are often pro-inflammatory—especially red meat and unfermented dairy.
For more details, see:
Anti-Inflammatory Diet 101 (What to Eat to Fight Inflammation)
Movement every day
While “exercise is good for you” is in principle not a shocker, remember that her starting point was being in terrible condition with badly flared-up MS.
Important to understand here is that excessive exercise can weaken the immune system and sometimes cause flare-ups of various chronic diseases.
Moving thoroughly and moving often, however, is best. So walking yes, absolutely, but also don’t neglect the rest of your body, do some gentle bodyweight squats (if you can; if you can’t, work up to them), stretch your arms as well as your legs, take all your joints through a full range of motion.
See also:
The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More
Mindful stress management
Stress in life is unavoidable, but how we manage it is up to us. Bad things will continue to happen, great and small, but we can take a deep breath, remember that those things aren’t the boss of us, and deal with it calmly and conscientiously.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is of course the evidence-based “gold standard” for this, but whatever (not substance-based) method works for you, works for you!
About MBSR:
No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
Good sleeping habits
Getting good sleep can be hard for anyone, let alone if you have chronic pain. However, Dr. Stancic advocates for doing whatever we can to get good sleep—which means not just duration (the famous “7–9 hours”), but also quality.
Learn more:
The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
Substance intake awareness
This one’s not so much of a “don’t do drugs, kids” as the heading makes it look. Dr. Stancic assumes we already know, for example, that smoking is bad for us in a long list of ways, and alcohol isn’t much better.
However, she also advises us that in our eagerness to do that plant-based diet, we would do better to go for whole foods plant-based, rather than the latest processed meat substitutes, for example.
And supplements? She bids us exercise caution, and to make sure to get good quality, as poor quality supplements can be worse than taking nothing (looking at you, cheap turmeric supplements that contain heavy metals).
And of course, that nutrients gained from diet will almost always be better than nutrients gained from supplements, as our body can usually use them better.
And see also, some commonly-made supplements mistakes:
Do You Know Which Supplements You Shouldn’t Take Together? (10 Pairs!)
Human connection
Lastly, we humans are a social species by evolution; as individuals, we may enjoy relatively more or less social contact, but having access to such is important not just for our mental health, but our physical health too—we will tend to deteriorate much more quickly when we have to deal with everything alone, all other things being equal.
It doesn’t mean you need a busy social life if that’s not in your nature, but it does mean it’s incredibly beneficial to have at least a small number of people that you trust and whose company you enjoy, at least relatively accessible to you (i.e., their life need not revolve around you, but they are the kind of people who will generally happily spend time with you and provide support when needed if they can).
As for how:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Want to know more from Dr. Stancic?
We recently reviewed this very good book of hers, which goes over each of these six things in much more detail than we have room for here:
What’s Missing from Medicine – by Dr. Saray Stancic
Enjoy!
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Kiwi Fruit vs Pineapple – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing kiwi fruit to pineapple, we picked the kiwi.
Why?
In terms of macros, they’re mostly quite comparable, being fruits made of mostly water, and a similar carb count (slightly different proportions of sugar types, but nothing that throws out the end result, and the GI is low for both). Technically kiwi has twice the protein, but they are fruits and “twice the protein” means “0.5g difference per 100g”. Aside from that, and more meaningfully, kiwi also has twice the fiber.
When it comes to vitamins, kiwi has more of vitamins A, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while pineapple has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, and B6. This would be a marginal (6:5) win for kiwi, but kiwi’s margins of difference are greater per vitamin, including 72x more vitamin E (with a cupful giving 29% of the RDA, vs a cupful of pineapple giving 0.4% of the RDA) and 57x more vitamin K (with a cupful giving a day’s RDA, vs a cupful of pineapple giving a little under 2% of the RDA). So, this is a fair win for kiwi.
In the category of minerals, things are clear: kiwi has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while pineapple has more manganese. An overwhelming win for kiwi.
Looking at their respective anti-inflammatory powers, pineapple has its special bromelain enzymes, which is a point in its favour, but when it comes to actual polyphenols, the two fruits are quite balanced, with kiwi’s flavonoids vs pineapple’s lignans.
Adding up the sections, it’s a clear win for kiwi—but pineapple is a very respectable fruit too (especially because of its bromelain content), so do enjoy both!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More
Take care!
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Protein-Stuffed Bell Peppers
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Hot, tasty, meaty, and vegan! You can have it all. And with this recipe, you’ll want to err on the side of overcatering, because everyone will want some. As for healthiness, we’ve got lycopene, lutein and a stack of other carotenoids, a plethora of other polyphenols, and a veritable garden party of miscellaneous phytochemicals otherwise categorized. It’s full of protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, relatively low-fat but the fats present are healthy. It’s antidiabetic, anti-CVD, anticancer, antineurodegeneration, and basically does everything short of making you sing well too.
You will need
- 4 large bell peppers, tops sliced open and innards removed (keep the tops; we will put them back on later)
- 1 cup quinoa, rinsed
- 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 small zucchini (diced)
- 1 small eggplant (diced)
- 1 small red onion (finely chopped)
- ½ bulb garlic, minced*
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tsp dried basil
- 2 tsp dried thyme
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
*we always try to give general guidelines with regard to garlic, but the reality is it depends on the size and strength of your local garlic, which we cannot account for, as well as your personal taste. Same situation with hot peppers of various kinds. This writer (it’s me, hi) would generally use about 2x the garlic and pepper advised in our recipes. All we can say is: follow your heart!
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Combine the quinoa with the chia seeds, and cook as per normal cooking of quinoa (i.e. bring to a boil and then simmer for about 15 minutes until cooked and fluffy). Drain and rinse (carefully, without losing the chia seeds; use a sieve).
2) Heat your grill to a high heat. Combine the zucchini, eggplant, onion, garlic, and olive oil in a big bowl and mix well, ensuring an even distribution of the oil. Now also add the herbs and spices (including the MSG or salt) and mix well again. Put them all to grill for about 5 minutes, turning as necessary.
3) Heat your oven to a high heat. Take the grilled vegetables and combine them in a bowl with the quinoa-and-chia, and the black beans, as well as the tomato paste. Mix everything well. Spoon the mixture generously into the bell peppers, replacing the tops (it can be loosely), and bake for about 5–10 minutes, keeping an eye on them; you want them to be lightly charred, but not a burnt offering.
4) Serve! This dish works well as a light lunch or as part of a larger spread.
(before going in the oven with lids replaced to keep moisture in)
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- A Spectrum Of Specialties: Which Color Bell Peppers To Pick?
- Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)
- The Tiniest Seeds With The Most Value: If You’re Not Taking Chia, You’re Missing Out
- Chickpeas vs Black Beans – Which is Healthier?
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- Monosodium Glutamate: Sinless Flavor-Enhancer Or Terrible Health Risk?
Take care!
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Where Nutrition Meets Habits!
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Where Nutrition Meets Habits…
This is Claudia Canu, MSc., INESEM. She’s on a mission to change the way we eat:
Often, diet is a case of…
- Healthy
- Easy
- Cheap
(choose two)
She wants to make it all three, and tasty too. She has her work cut out for her, but she’s already blazed quite a trail personally:
❝Nine months before turning 40 years old, I set a challenge for myself: Arrive to the day I turn 40 as the best possible version of myself, physically, mentally and emotionally.❞
~ Claudia Canu
In Her Own Words: My Journey To My Healthy 40s
And it really was quite a journey:
- September: Changes That Destabilize
- October: Looking for Focus
- November: New Habits
- December: Analyzing The First Results
- January: Traveling & Perfectionism
- February: Habits & Goals
- March: Connection, Cravings, & Organization
- April: Physical & Emotional Changes After 7 Months
- May: Reflections & Considerations
- June: Challenge Is Over
For those of us who’d like the short-cut rather than a nine-month quasi-spiritual journey… based on both her experience, and her academic and professional background in nutrition, her main priorities that she settled on were:
- Making meals actually nutritionally balanced, which meant re-thinking what she thought a meal “should” be
- Making nutritionally balanced meals that didn’t require a lot of skill and/or resources
- That’s it!
But, easier said than done… Where to begin?
She shares an extensive list of recipes, from meals to snacks (I thought I was the only one who made coffee overnight oats!), but the most important thing from her is:
Claudia’s 10 Guiding Principles:
- Buy only fresh ingredients that you are going to cook yourself. If you decide to buy pre-cooked ones, make sure they do not have added ingredients, especially sugar (in all its forms).
- Use easy and simple cooking methods.
- Change ingredients every time you prepare your meals.
- Prepare large quantities for three or four days.
- Store the food separately in tightly closed Tupperware.
- Organize yourself to always have ready-to-eat food in the fridge.
- When hungry, mix the ingredients in the ideal amounts to cover the needs of your body.
- Chew well and take the time to taste your food.
- Eat foods that you like and enjoy.
- Do not overeat but don’t undereat either.
We have only two quibbles with this fine list, which are:
About Ingredients!
Depending on what’s available around you, frozen and/or tinned “one-ingredient” foods can be as nutritional as (if not more nutritional than) fresh ones. By “one-ingredient” foods here we mean that if you buy a frozen pack of chopped onions, the ingredients list will be: “chopped onions”. If you buy a tin of tomatoes, the ingredients will say “Tomatoes” or at most “Tomatoes, Tomato Juice”, for example.
She does list the ingredients she keeps in; the idea that with these in the kitchen, you’ll never be in the position of “oh, we don’t have much in, I guess it’s a pizza delivery night” or “well there are some chicken nuggets at the back of the freezer”.
Check Out And Plan: 10 Types Of Ingredients You Should Always Keep In Your Kitchen
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?
Preparing large quantities for three or four days can result in food for one or two days if the food is unduly delicious
But! Claudia has a remedy for that:
Read: How To Eliminate Food Cravings And What To Do When They Win
Anyway, there’s a wealth of resources in the above-linked pages, so do check them out!
Perhaps the biggest take-away is to ask yourself:
“What are my guiding principles when it comes to food?”
If you don’t have a ready answer, maybe it’s time to tackle that—whether Claudia’s way or your own!
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Mediterranean Diet… In A Pill?
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Does It Come In A Pill?
For any as yet unfamiliar with the Mediterranean diet, you may be wondering what it involves, beyond a general expectation that it’s a diet popularly enjoyed in the Mediterranean. What image comes to mind?
We’re willing to bet that tomatoes feature (great source of lycopene, by the way, and if you’re not getting lycopene, you’re missing out), but what else?
- Salads, perhaps? Vegetables, olives? Olive oil, yea or nay?
- Bread? Pasta? Prosciutto, salami? Cheese?
- Pizza but only if it’s Romana style, not Chicago?
- Pan-seared liver, with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?
In fact, the Mediterranean diet is quite clear on all these questions, so to read about these and more (including a “this yes, that no” list), see:
What Is The Mediterranean Diet, And What Is It Good For?
So, how do we get that in a pill?
A plucky band of researchers, Dr. Chiara de Lucia et al. (quite a lot of “et al.”; nine listed authors on the study), wondered to what extent the benefits of the Mediterranean diet come from the fact that the Mediterranean diet is very rich in polyphenols, and set about testing that, by putting the same polyphenols in capsule form, and running a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover clinical intervention trial.
Now, polyphenols are not the only reason the Mediterranean diet is great; there are also other considerations, such as:
- a great macronutrient balance with lots of fiber, healthy fats, moderate carbs, and protein from select sources
- the absence or at least very low presence of a lot of harmful substances such as refined seed oils, added sugars, refined carbohydrates, and the like (“but pasta” yes pasta; in moderation and wholegrain and served with extra sources of fiber and healthy fats, all of which slow down the absorption of the carbs)
…but polyphenols are admittedly very important too; we wrote about some common aspects of them here:
Tasty Polyphenols: Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain
As for what Dr. de Lucia et al. put into the capsule, behold…
The ingredients:
- Apple Extract 10.0%
- Pomegranate Extract 10.0%
- Tomato Powder 2.5%
- Beet, Spray Dried 2.5%
- Olive Extract 7.5%
- Rosemary Extract 7.5%
- Green Coffee Bean Extract (CA) 7.5%
- Kale, Freeze Dried 2.5%
- Onion Extract 10.0%
- Ginger Extract 10.0%
- Grapefruit Extract 2.5%
- Carrot, Air Dried 2.5%
- Grape Skin Extract 17.5%
- Blueberry Extract 2.5%
- Currant, Freeze Dried 2.5%
- Elderberry, Freeze Dried 2.5%
And the relevant phytochemicals they contain:
- Quercetin
- Luteolin
- Catechins
- Punicalagins
- Phloretin
- Ellagic Acid
- Naringin
- Apigenin
- Isorhamnetin
- Chlorogenic Acids
- Rosmarinic Acid
- Anthocyanins
- Kaempferol
- Proanthocyanidins
- Myricetin
- Betanin
And what, you may wonder, did they find? Well, first let’s briefly summarise the setup of the study:
They took volunteers (n=30), average age 67, BMI >25, without serious health complaints, not taking other supplements, not vegetarian or vegan, not consuming >5 cups of coffee per day, and various other stipulations like that, to create a fairly homogenous study group who were expected to respond well to the intervention. In contrast, someone who takes antioxidant supplements, already eats many different color plants per day, and drinks 10 cups of coffee, probably already has a lot of antioxidant activity going on, and someone with a lower BMI will generally have lower resting levels of inflammatory markers, so it’s harder to see a change, proportionally.
About those inflammatory markers: that’s what they were testing, to see whether the intervention “worked”; essentially, did the levels of inflammatory markers go up or down (up is bad; down is good).
For more on inflammation, by the way, see:
How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
…which also explains what it actually is, and some important nuances about it.
Back to the study…
They gave half the participants the supplement for a week and the other half placebo; had a week’s gap as a “washout”, then repeated it, switching the groups, taking blood samples before and after each stage.
What they found:
The group taking the supplement had lower inflammatory markers after a week of taking it, while the group taking the placebo had relatively higher inflammatory markers after a week of taking it; this trend was preserved across both groups (i.e., when they switched roles for the second half).
The results were very significant (p=0.01 or thereabouts), and yet at the same time, quite modest (i.e. the supplement made a very reliable, very small difference), probably because of the small dose (150mg) and small intervention period (1 week).
What the researchers concluded from this
The researchers concluded that this was a success; the study had been primarily to provide proof of principle, not to rock the world. Now they want the experiment to be repeated with larger sample sizes, greater heterogeneity, larger doses, and longer intervention periods.
This is all very reasonable and good science.
What we conclude from this
That ingredients list makes for a good shopping list!
Well, not the extracts they listed, necessarily, but rather those actual fruits, vegetables, etc.
If nine top scientists (anti-aging specialists, neurobiologists, pharmacologists, and at least one professor of applied statistics) came to the conclusion that to get the absolute most bang-for-buck possible, those are the plants to get the phytochemicals from, then we’re not going to ignore that.
So, take another list above and ask yourself: how many of those 16 foods do you eat regularly, and could you work the others in?
Want to make your Mediterranean diet even better?
While the Mediterranean diet is a top-tier catch-all, it can be tweaked for specific areas of health, for example giving it an extra focus on heart health, or brain health, or being anti-inflammatory, or being especially gut healthy:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean
Enjoy!
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Take Care Of Your “Unwanted” Parts Too!
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Meet The Family…
If you’ve heard talk of “healing your inner child” or similar ideas, then today’s featured type of therapy takes that to several extra levels, in a way that helps many people.
It’s called Internal Family Systems therapy, often “IFS” for short.
Here’s a quick overview:
Psychology Today | Internal Family Systems Therapy
Note: if you are delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic, or have some other related disorder*, then IFS would probably be a bad idea for you as it could worsen your symptoms, and/or play into them badly.
*but bipolar disorder, in its various forms, is not usually a problem for IFS. Do check with your own relevant healthcare provider(s), of course, to be sure.
What is IFS?
The main premise of IFS is that your “self” can be modelled as a system, and its constituent parts can be examined, questioned, given what they need, and integrated into a healthy whole.
For example…
- Exile is the name given to parts that could be, for example, the “inner child” referenced in a lot of pop-psychology, but it could also be some other ignored and pushed-down part of oneself, often from some kind of trauma. The defining characteristic of an exile is that it’s a part of ourself that we don’t consciously allow ourselves to see as a current part of ourself.
- Protector is the name given to a part of us that looks to keep us safe, and can do this in an adaptive (healthy) or maladaptive (unhealthy) way, for example:
- Firefighter is the name given to a part of us that will do whatever is necessary in the moment to deal with an exile that is otherwise coming to the surface—sometimes with drastic actions/reactions that may not be great for us.
- Manager is the name given to a part of us that has a more nurturing protective role, keeping us from harm in what’s often a more prophylactic manner.
To give a simple illustration…
A person was criticized a lot as a child, told she was useless, and treated as a disappointment. Consequently, as an adult she now has an exile “the useless child”, something she strives to leave well behind in her past, because it was a painful experience for her. However, sometimes when someone questions and/or advises her, she will get defensive as her firefighter “the hero” will vigorously speak up for her competence, like nobody did when she was a child. This vigor, however, manifests as rude abrasiveness and overcompensation. Finally, she has a manager, “the advocate”, who will do the same job, but in a more quietly confident fashion.
This person’s therapy will look at transferring the protector job from the firefighter to the manager, which will involve examining, questioning, and addressing all three parts.
The above example is fictional and created for simplicity and clarity; here’s a real-world case study if you’d like a more in-depth overview of how it can work:
How it all fits together in practice
IFS looks to make sure all the parts’ needs are met, even the “bad” ones, because they all have their functions.
Good IFS therapy, however, can make sure a part is heard, and then reassure that part in a way that effectively allows that part to “retire”, safe and secure in the knowledge that it has done what it needed to, and/or the job is being done by another part now.
That can involve, for example, thanking the firefighter for looking after our exile for all these years, but that our exile is safe and in good hands now, so it can put that fire-axe away.
See also: On Being Reactive vs Being Responsive
Questions you might ask yourself
While IFS therapy is best given by a skilled practitioner, we can take some of the ideas of it for self-therapy too. For example…
- What is a secret about yourself that you will take to the grave? And now, why did that part of you (now an exile) come to exist?
- What does that exile need, that it didn’t get? What parts of us try to give it that nowadays?
- What could we do, with all that information in mind, to assign the “protection” job to the part of us best-suited to healthy integration?
Want to know more?
We’ve only had the space of a small article to give a brief introduction to Family Systems therapy, so check out the “resources” tab at:
IFS Institute | What Is Internal Family Systems Therapy?
Take care!
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Feel Great, Lose Weight – by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
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We all know that losing weight sustainably tends to be harder than simply losing weight. We know that weight loss needs to come with lifestyle change. But how to get there?
One of the biggest problems that we might face while trying to lose weight is that our “metabolic thermostat” has got stuck at the wrong place. Trying to move it just makes our bodies think we are starving, and everything gets even worse. We can’t even “mind over matter” our way through it with willpower, because our bodies will do impressive things on a cellular level in an attempt to save us… Things that are as extraordinary as they are extraordinarily unhelpful.
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is here to help us cut through that.
In this book, he covers how our metabolic thermostat got stuck in the wrong place, and how to gently tease it back into a better position.
Some advices won’t be big surprises—go for a whole foods diet, avoiding processed food, for example. Probably not a shocker.
Others are counterintuitive, but he explains how they work—exercising less while moving more, for instance. Sounds crazy, but we assure you there’s a metabolic explanation for it that’s beyond the scope of this review. And there’s plenty more where that came from, too.
Bottom line: if your weight has been either slowly rising, or else very stable but at a higher point than you’d like, Dr. Chatterjee can help you move the bar back to where you want it—and keep it there.
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