Mundance superfoods – part 5
My final swap is nettles for spiralina.
Spirulina’s deep blue-green color reveals its active ingredient — chlorophyll — clearly. Health.com explains it as one of the oldest life forms on Earth and possibly consumed in Aztec and African diets centuries ago.
Today it’s touted for its ability to strengthen the immune system, reduce fatigue and combat allergies. Nettles are another plant with chlorophyll that even rivals the amount found in spirulina, but they’re often found in ditch banks, forests and riverbanks. It’s sometimes called “stinging nettle” because it does just that; if you touch it without wearing gloves, the tiny hairs on every surface sting like a bee due to the presence of formic acid, leaving small red welts. But internally, Bon Appetit asserts, it acts like a tonic:
“Taken over time, nettle will strengthen your circulatory, immune, and endocrine systems to promote peak function. The stronger these systems, the better position our bodies are in to deal with whatever might come our way.”
Cooked or dried, though, this pesky stinging problem goes away completely; good thing, too, because this free foraging food is highly nutritious, containing fiber, lecithin, chlorophyll, sodium, iron, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium and vitamins A and C, according to Mother Earth News. It’s been used in birth rooms and battlefields to stop bleeding, both internally and externally, and is considered to purify blood, as well. As a tea:
“It has been found to help cure mucus congestion, skin irritations, water retention and diarrhea … stimulate the digestive glands of the stomach, intestines, liver, pancreas and gall bladder. Applied externally, nettle tea … relieves rheumatism in both people and animals, makes a first-class gargle for mouth and throat infections, helps to clear up acne and eczema and promotes the healing of burns.”
To complete the series I want to point out that brocalli is arguably one of the most nutirtious vegatables readily available in supermakets. Not only does it support normal cell function and division, it helps your body detoxify and reduces inflammation and damage from reactive oxygen species (ROS). Another vegatable that I would highly recommend is rocket. It has many of the same nutrients and healing compounds, including fiber, vitamins A, C (to boost the immune system) and K (for bone strength), folate, calcium, potassium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus and manganese that are found in cabbage and brocalli. One study showed that rocket can be a powerful aid against gastrointestinal ulcers, psoriasis and skin, lung and mouth cancers. Many more vitamins and minerals help lower blood pressure and improve blood vessel function.
References
Mother Earth News March/April 1981
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Are you an eMail Junkie?
Most people now have at least one smartphone, normally a work phone, a blackberry and a personal phone. With our professional and personal inbox's bulging, is constantly checking our email turning us all into unproductive email junkies? An article in this Thursday's Evening Standard called "Supertask me", made me think. Now that we live in a world where we only are without email on a flight (a blissful respite that I am sure we will loose soon) are we all email junkies? Checking your email is a double edged sword. On the one hand if you check it too often then it becomes too frequent an interruption, you feel very busy but checking it too often will adversely impact your productivity. On the other hand we’ve constantly got to be checking it, or risk the wrath of the bosses and co-workers that are trying to communicate with us. If we don’t respond to an email within 5 minutes, we’re seen as lazy or unproductive. As calling a co-worker when you want an urgent response has been replaced by email, the temptation is to constantly check your emails to demonstrate you are at the top of your game. With the amount of email we receive now and need to respond to now, its very easy to feel overwhelmed. In today's world we are all adept at multi-tasking but really this means we are great at switching from one task to another. So how often so you switch from your real work to checking our email? This constant switching requires more mental effort than our actual work. Remember there’s a huge difference between being busy and being productive. So how often should you check your email? There is no accepted norm, and you know your job better than any expert, so take the time to reflect on what will work best for you. Some experts suggest that you don't check your email first thing in a morning or you only check your email first thing in a morning. Personally I think these strategies only work if you are very high up on the food chain. Rod Kurtz of Business Week argues that you ought to be checking your work email five times per day. “Check your inbox only five times daily–first thing in the morning, mid-morning, after lunch, mid-afternoon, and end of day. Or even less if you are capable. This works when you turn off the automatic send/receive function, allowing you up to two hours to focus on your work, rather than to be continually interrupted. It works when you group the sorting of your e-mail, making you more productive and efficient in dealing with it.” With regards to dealing with email, every time you open a new email, ask yourself 3 basic questions: 1. Is this relevant? 2. Can I solve this? 3. Will it take less than 2 minutes of my time to deal with this? - If so deal with it straight away. Make sure that you schedule your email time in such a way that you avoid confusing the being busy with email and real work. If you approach your email with the correct attitude, you can boost your productivity by leaps and bounds and you free yourself from being an email junkie.
More tips on how to reduce severity of a cold
Following on from last weeks blog article on the benefits of garlic in fighting colds and flu, I wanted to share more tips on how to reduce the severity of a cold.
- Take a zinc supplement: Take zinc lozenges or syrup within 24 hours of the start of a cold, as this may reduce the duration of the cold. The important thing is to take the zinc within 24 hours.
- Rest. You body needs rest to heal.
- Soothe a sore throat. I personally like to gargle with sea salt water - 1/2 tea spoon of sea salt dissolved in a large glass of room temperature water. Note: This is in appropriate for children as they may not be able to gargle properly.
- Sip warm liquids. This could be chicken soup, team or warm apple juice. Personally I like a wedge of lemon in hot water with a little chunk of ginger sweetened with manuka honey.
- Vitamin C. The scientific jutry is still out on Vitamin C. Personally I dose up with 1000mg of vitamin C throughout my cold. Taking vitamin C before the onset of cold symptoms may shorten the duration of the symptoms. Vitamin C may provide benefit for people at high risk of colds due the the frequency of exposure.
- Echineacea. Study results on whether echinacea prevents or shortens colds are mixed. Some studies show no benefit. Others show some reduction in the severity and duration of cold symptoms when taken in the early stages of a cold. Different types of echinacea used in different studies may have contributed to the differing results.Echinacea seems to be most effective if you take it when you notice cold symptoms and continue it for seven to 10 days. It appears to be safe for healthy adults, but it can interact with many drugs. Check with your doctor before taking echinacea or any other supplement.
