And God Divided the Light from the Darkness

The quick answer:  The more you ponder, the wiser you get.  For example, regular “burning of the midnight oil” may not be the virtue we were taught.  Get plenty of sleep, in the dark.

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Genesis

I’m fascinated by the health counsel buried in the first verses of the Bible—starting with chapter 1 of Genesis.  Verse 29 is a simple but life-saving guide to diet.  There’s more wisdom in the creation of light and dark.  Verse 4 notes the benediction given to light—A God saw the light, that it was good . . . .  The word “good” infers that sunshine is beneficial to mankind and scientists are now noting the many ways vitamin D—produced by the action of sunshine on our skin—is vital to health. 

After the creation of light, the light was divided from the dark.  So one might wonder about the benefits of darkness.  When we sleep in the dark, the pineal gland—a sort of 3^rd eye—triggers the production of melatonin.  Melatonin, the master hormone of the night, peaks in the 4^th hour of sleep and triggers the action of a host of hormones that act over the next 4 or so hours of sleep.  These hormones restore us and prepare us for the coming day.  (For babies, who require frequent nutrition in the first weeks, melatonin production doesn’t mature until the 3^rd month, when they’re mature enough to sleep through the night—at last.)

Melatonin is also a potent antioxidant that protects the DNA of your cells from free radical damage.  There are more benefits—scientists have linked some chronic diseases to insufficient sleep, as discussed in the post, Blessed Sleep.  These include depression, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and overweight, heart disease and cancer.  There are also mental effects including dementia and impaired judgment. 

A 2010 University of Chicago study of dieters found that those who got the most sleep were able to lose twice as much fat as those with the least sleep (8.5 Hrs. vs. 5.5 Hrs.).  As excess fat is a widespread problem in America, adequate sleep in the dark may be the cheapest health aid available. 

Industrial Revolution

From my youth the Industrial Revolution fascinated me—my university training was in Mechanical Engineering.  Yet one of the big lessons of my life is that it wasn’t all good—a current challenge of society is to sort out the good from the bad.  For example highly processed factory foods are generally bad, but meals cooked from scratch by Mom—an act of caring as old as mankind—are good for us. 

Ditto for Thomas Edison’s light bulb.  I’m happy to read by my favorite lamp in the evening hours, but the best sleep comes in the dark.  It’s not so easy to find dark anymore.  Our little community doesn’t have streetlights, which is good.  But the benefit is lost if neighbors leave outside lights on at night.  The dark of night enables maximum melatonin production, and that’s good for us.  So enjoy the dark—a gift from our Creator.

Please comment:  Are you able to get adequate sleep?  How much do you need?  Have you experienced sleep-related health issues?  Do you eat better if your sleep better?  What did you do to improve your sleep habits.

Building Strong Bones

The quick answer:  When dealing with complexity, simple rules (like the Word of Wisdom) can be the best guide.

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The Value of Simple Rules

Nutrition is incredibly complex.  In fact it’s so complex, scientists won’t figure out an optimal diet in our lifetime and likely never will.  In cases of overwhelming complexity, simple rules can be lifesavers.  Mike Pollan, in his bestseller In Defense of Food, suggested a diet based on just seven words:  Eat food.  Mostly Plants.  Not too much.  Actually, Pollan could have skipped the last three words because if you eat mostly plants, which are filling, it’s hard to eat too much. 

The Word of Wisdom could be paraphrased to this brief statement:  Eat seasonal plants (grains, vegetables, and fruits) close to how they were created, with a little (pastured) meat.  This eliminates the highly processed food-like products of the modern American diet (MAD).  So the simple counsel of the Word of Wisdom remains a reliable guide. 

For most people, the hardest things are to slash their sugar intake and eat more vegetables.  Fruit and grains aren’t hard to eat; it isn’t even that hard to be sparing with meat.  But replacing sugary processed foods with fresh vegetables requires a primal shift in our food culture—and the creative act of cooking.   For that reason, 8 of our 52 Healthy Changes address vegetable intake, and 4 aim to slash sugar intake.

Osteoporosis

Despite the past practice of broadly prescribing calcium pills to post-menopausal women in the hope of preventing osteoporosis, it’s starting to look like the Word of Wisdom was always the best advice.  In her book Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox, Kate Rheaume-Bleue cites studies showing calcium supplements do more harm than good.  One study, for example, showed that of 1000 patients, three would be protected from bone fractures but six would have a stroke or heart attack as a result of taking calcium supplements.  A bone fracture can usually be healed, but the consequences of strokes and heart attacks are more difficult. 

So what should you do to prevent osteoporosis?  The best advice is to study the subject and consult your doctor.   Patients who come prepared will get better guidance—most doctors plan just 15 minutes for appointments and that limits what can be done with the uninformed and perhaps confused patient.  Consider these Healthy Changes in your preparation:

1. For best mineral balance, eat vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than processed foods.  Basically, vegetables, especially the dark leafy greens, are rich in bone building minerals, including calcium.
2. Make strong bones by building muscles through exercise (for more go here). Muscles are attached to bones and both grow in unison.
3. Get a little noonday sun on your skin to make vitamin D (read more here.)
4. Eat animal products from pastured animals rich in vitamin K-2 (read more here).  Basically, vitamin K2 helps the body get dietary calcium to the right place—your bones.  Vitamin K1 is found in plants, K2 is found in animals that eat plants—meaning pastured meat and free-range eggs. 

Please comment:  Share you experience with bone-building, whether by exercise or diet.  Have you received helplful guidance from your doctor?  Please share.

Healthy Family Recipes

The quick answer:  Organize and save your healthy recipes as part of your family heritage.

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The King’s Food

Before I write about recipes, this week’s topic, here’s a deep thought from a Sunday School class.  The lesson was on the Mormon scripture known as the Word of Wisdom.  This lesson topic comes around every four years in the 30,000 or so congregations (called ‘wards’) of the LDS Church.  The Word of Wisdom (W of W) guides what goes into the mouth—nutrition—and includes both prohibitions and prescriptions.  The prohibitions exclude use of tobacco, alcohol, coffee and tea.  The prescriptions encourage a diet based on vegetables (herbs) and fruit in season, grains as the staff of life, and sparing meat intake. 

The scripture’s easy to read but difficult to live as it goes against our prevailing food culture, the modern American diet (MAD).  Mormons are generally compliant with the prohibitions, which are defined by church guidelines.  The prescriptions are left to the inspiration of each member—there is no social pressure to follow them and in fact those who do so may be considered “different.”   In fact, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you definitely are “different,” but in a wholesome way.

I taught this lesson in our congregation and had an insight about the “industrialization” of our food supply in the last century.  Today’s white flour came from the invention of the roller mill c. 1880 by separating the wheat germ and bran from the wheat berry.  This was bad for nutrition—weevils couldn’t survive in white flour, even the “enriched” form mandated in 1941. 

Before the roller mill, white flour was made for kings by “bolting” freshly ground whole wheat—using a bolt of cloth as a sieve to separate small particles of the endosperm, the starchy center of the wheat berry.  Only royalty could afford this labor-intensive flour, which was good for the common people as they ate the germ and bran so rich in fiber, minerals, vitamins, and omega-3 fats.  Likewise, in ancient times only kings could afford to eat as much sugar as they wished.

The phrase “king’s food” caused me to think of Old Testament Daniel and his friends who declined to eat the rich king’s food in favor of their traditional pulse, a healthy mixture of seeds, grains and legumes.  You know the story, how after a trial period they were healthier and smarter than the other students eating the richer royal diet.

My sudden insight was this:  The industrial revolution made the “king’s food”—unlimited white flour, white sugar, meat, alcohol, etc—available to all.  In America even the poorest people can be obese, and are more likely to be, unless they avoid the “king’s food” and eat like their ancestors.  So to survive, we need the wisdom and inspiration of Daniel—a Biblical story dramatically more pertinent today. 

I won’t bore you with my Sunday School lesson—you readers will understand what made me more passionate than is generally acceptable—but I did want to share my insight into the blessing of being as wise as Daniel.

Recipes

It’s crazy hard to create a recipe.  Believe me, I try to do it.  There are an overwhelming number of combinations that must be tried to find the optimum ratio of ingredients.  You do the math—even a relatively simple 12-ingredient recipe has 4096 possible permutations if you test just two levels of each additive. 

If you have a healthy recipe that the family has enjoyed enough times that it’s a favorite in your home—you have a pearl of great price, to borrow a phrase.  These healthy recipes are a treasure, a valued part of a family’s heritage.  When I was young our father would bake his special whole-wheat bread once a week, grinding the wheat on a hand-powered grinder attached to the kitchen table.  He would soak the flour overnight to improve the flavor, though we now know “soaking” helps reduce phytic acid.

After my father passed away in his 90^th year we sadly realized that he made his bread from memory—we didn’t have a written recipe.  So I have begun to collect healthy family recipes for a family history I’ll publish some day.  For example, I’ve written down the instructions for what we call “Aunt Kate’s Chili Sauce.”  It’s good with eggs, meat, or whatever. 

Value your recipes as a priceless part of your heritage and give them a proper storage.

Please comment:  Organize your family recipes and arrange to preserve them.  Share your method of saving recipes, even if you just stuff them in your favorite cookbook.

The Staff of Life

The quick answer:  For the best health value, eat a variety of whole grains, (unless you have a tolerance problem).

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Sunday School

If you’re Mormon and attend Sunday School, you can count on hearing a lesson on the Word of Wisdom (the scriptural guidance on nutrition) in the next week or two.  This scripture has two parts:

• Prohibitions:  Mormons are advised not to use tobacco, or drink alcohol, coffee or tea (herbal teas are allowed).  Among the faithful, there ‘s remarkable conformity to these proscriptions—a big reason for Mormon’s better longevity (5 years more life per one study).
• Prescriptions:   Things “to do” are left to each person’s judgment, but Mormons are counseled to eat herbs (vegetables) and fruits in season (meaning “fresh”), include (whole) grains as the “staff of life,” and eat meat sparingly. 

The purpose of this blog is to help people follow the prescriptions.  This is a big challenge because Mormons typically eat the same as the people in their community, meaning the modern American diet (MAD), which has been described as a “toxic food environment.”  So around the world, as Sunday School teachers approach this lesson, there will be a moment of attention to better eating.  In sum, this is a lot of attention so could be a really good thing. 

But there is one reality here:  Food habits are difficult to change.  It took Food Inc. a century to sell us on over-processed factory food, and it will some time for us to find our way back to healthy eating.  That’s why we spread the Healthy Changes over a year, and repeat them year after year.  Talk is easy; change is hard.

I spoke with a Utah book publisher about a book on nutrition according to the Word of Wisdom.  They were cautiously interested but balked at the idea of needing 52 weeks to undo a century of bad food advice.  “Couldn’t you write a book for a 30-day program?” they asked. 

Staff of Life

Grains really are the staff of life—2/3 of the world population would starve without them.  Depending on the region, rice, wheat or corn are popular forms.  Over the last century health enthusiasts have advocated a return to eating grains whole, rejecting the modern refined form for lack of vital nutrients.  (Whole grains are high in nutrients and low in calories; it’s the opposite for refined grains.)  Society has generally ignored this guidance, preferring the sweetness of refined grains, though this is now changing. 

In recent years advocates of the Atkins, or of the Paleo diet, have argued against grains.  In addition, a small, but growing, fraction of the population do not tolerate gluten so must avoid certain grains (wheat, rye, barley, spelt, karmut, triticale, and sometimes oats).   Celiac disease is a potentially fatal form of gluten intolerance.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 recommends eating at least three services of whole grains daily.  The Whole Grains Council notes these proven benefits of eating whole grains, vs. refined forms:

• Risk of stroke reduced 30-36%.
• Type 2 diabetes risk reduced 21-30%.
• Heart disease risk reduced by 25-28%
• Better weight control
• Reduced risk of asthma, inflammatory diseases, high blood pressure, and gum disease or tooth loss.

In our home, we eat a variety of whole grains and avoid refined white flour (except for making white sauce or the occasional cake).  Here’s a summary of recent posts about grains:

The Whole Darn Grain:  This was the first post on grain and it introduced the “fiber-greater-than-sugar” rule for purchased cereal products.

Are Carbs Good or Bad?  A post influenced by Gary Taubes’ book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, provided ten steps to a lower, and healthier, glycemic index.

The Bread of Life:  We eat our weight in flour each year; for most less than 10% is whole grain.  This post solicited reader’s favorite bread recipes.

A Few Good Women:  The story of May Yates, a food heroine, who fought for whole wheat bread in England. 

Flour and The Hundred Years War:  Discussed the issue of freshness and preservation of whole grain flours and suggested grinding close to time of use.

The Good Breakfast:  This is the easiest meal to make completely healthy.  See the link to Healthy Recipe #1:  Breakfast Compote.

Waking Up In The Bread Aisle:  This popular aisle visit discussed the practice of “slotting fees,” then examined the bread for sale in a typical supermarket and found just 3 of 70 met the fiber health rule. 

Trouble In The Cereal Aisle:  In this post we spend a Friday evening in the cereal aisle and find just 8 of 128 meet our fiber-greater-than-sugar rule.

Healthy Change

Comment:  Whole grains are one of the best food values but we think it best to enjoy a variety.  Please comment on how you include whole grains in the diet of your family, or share a favorite recipe.

Drink Milk?

The quick answer:  Modern milk may not be all that healthy, especially the low-fat versions.  Until better milk is available, we use it sparingly.

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The Industrialization of Milk

In an, ahem, excellent post titled The Untold Story of Milk, we reviewed how milk, a traditional food, was industrialized into a form of questionable healthiness.  The main steps in this process:

1. Cheap feed:  Cows traditionally eat grass; a cow needs 1-2 acres of pasture depending on the forage.  In the early 1900s, to save land and money, dairy farms were located next to distilleries and cows were fed the remains of grain used to make liquor and other waste products.  Naturally, unhealthy feed led to unhealthy cows, and diseased milk.
2. Pasteurization:  Rather than maintaining healthy cows to get healthy milk, the decision was made to pasteurize milk, which reduced, but didn’t eliminate, the pathogens.  (It makes me shiver when I think of pasteurized milk full of the carcasses of bacteria.)  The pasteurization heating process changes the nature of milk and has never been fully accepted, for various reasons.
3. Hormones in milk:  During the hard times of the ‘20s and ‘30s, it became common to milk cows deep into the next pregnancy, thus exposing consumers to higher levels of bovine hormones.  In addition, Monsanto introduced synthetic versions of these hormones to improve output, though this practice is mostly discontinued thanks to public criticism.   A researcher has looked at the issue of milk hormones—a suspected risk factor for prostate and breast cancer—you can read more about it here.
4. Homogenization:  Pasteurization also extended the shelf life of milk, which allowed shipping longer distances.  Because cream tended to separate, homogenization was introduced.  Basically, homogenization breaks the fats in milk into fragments, so the fat remains mixed in the milk and doesn’t float to the top.  There are still troubling questions about the healthfulness of these man-made fat fragments.  Homogenization, the standard now, is really unnecessary.
5. Reduced fat:  In the ‘60s the false idea was advanced that fat was unhealthy so the fat content of milk was reduced.  Because this changed the appearance of the milk, the government allowed milk processors to improve the look with additives like powdered milk and excused them from noting these substances as ingredients.  When you drink reduced fat milks, you don’t know what has been added.

Infertility and Reduced Fat Diary

The healthfulness of reduced fat milk has not been adequately studied however a 2007 study of 18,555 women in the Nurses’ Health Study II by Harvard researchers, found troubling issues with infertility due to reduced ovulation.  Women who drank two or more servings of low fat dairy foods per day, were 85% more likely to suffer from infertility, compared to women eating low fat dairy just once a week.  Women who avoided low fat dairy food had the lowest infetility risk  (25% less than the once per week group). 

What To Do

I like milk but until healthier milk is available, I’m mainly drinking water.  I try to limit myself and have started using half-and-half on cooked cereal.  I’ve tried raw milk and wish it were more available, especially from grass-fed cows.  The beautiful wife avoids milk; she even has the curious habit of putting orange juice on her breakfast compote. 

What would it take to have the healthy milk of our great-grandparents?  One answer is to get your own cow.  Another solution is to have an Amish friend who still farms the olden way.  Otherwise we’ll all have to wait until the government lets enterprising dairymen offer healthy milk from pasture-fed cows.  In the mean time, we follow this Healthy Change:

Please comment; share your thoughts about modern milk and what your family does.

Fasting

The quick answer:  Though we eat to live, fasting can improve our health as well as the quality of of our lives.

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Scripture

Of the three oracles that inform this blog, one is Scripture.  The other two are Science, and Tradition.  I like the idea of teaming Scripture—discredited in many a laboratory—with Science to create a more profound answer.  That said, we’d like to discuss a religious practice common to many faiths:  fasting.

In the Mormon faith, fasting is done monthly.  Typically this means skipping two meals (the money saved is given to a special fund for the poor).  This is done for spiritual, rather than health, reasons but fasting does have health benefits.

N. Y. Times

The N. Y. Times ran an article last year, “Regular Fasting May Boost Heart Health.”  The article cited a study that found regular fasting among Mormons was associated with a 58% reduction in heart disease.   Other lifestyle factors may contribute, but no medicine, to my knowledge, yields such a benefit. 

The same doctors then took blood samples from people undergoing a 24-hour fast.  Among other benefits, there was a surge of human growth hormone after fasting—a 20-fold increase for men, 13 times for women.  Human growth hormone is released during starvation to promote burning of fat and protect muscle and other lean tissue.  Want to reduce your fat level?  Ask your doctor of fasting is right for you.  Because excess fat is such a problem in our society, I’m surprised this benefit isn’t more discussed.

A recent study by the National Institute on Aging found that weekly fasting protected the brain from the effects of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other diseases.  The study suggested two days of minimal calories each week, followed by five days of normal eating.  However you do it, there seems to be a benefit to fasting.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman

Dr. Fuhrman writes regularly on nutrition and preventative health.  Fasting is recommended in his book, Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease.  I discussed his book in this post.  Dr. Fuhrman recommends that your doctor supervise fasts longer than three days, you should know.  Fuhrman found so many health benefits to fasting that I decided to try a three day fast.  Here is what I learned:

• Much of my eating, mainly snacking, is driven by boredom rather than hunger.  If you want to improve your health, replace snacking with . . ., well, a moment of jump-roping or a Sudoku puzzle.
• After the first day, I wasn’t really hungry.  Hunger diminishes as the fast progresses. 
• Your mental focus improves during fasting—as the physical appetites diminish, you get a better view of what’s important.  Fuhrman notes that people giving up addictions, including smoking, do better if they fast. 

Please comment:  Share your experience with fasting.

Lessons of the Vitamin Era

The quick answer:  As illustrated above, whole foods are the best source of vitamins.

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The Age of Discovery

We can learn from our nation’s response to the discovery of vitamins back in the ‘20s and ‘30s.  The discovery caused a public excitement for it seemed the scientists had their finger on the essence of life.  The response went like this:

Step #1:  Scientists discover vitamins.

Step #2:  The media, always on the hunt for exciting news, inform the public, perhaps overstating the facts.

Step #3:  Businessmen, alert to opportunity, learn to produce synthetic versions of the vitamins in pill form.

Step #4:  A health fad of taking vitamins in pill form is established with skillful marketing and becomes a big business.

Thoughtful people surely asked:  Is it a good idea to take these potent molecules by pill, rather than in whole foods accompanied by the traditional cofactor nutrients?  It was a good question, one that would take several generations to answer.  Unfortunately, when the truth is finally found a profitable business has become well entrenched.  

News Keeps Getting Worse for Vitamins

A 2008 N. Y. Times article summarized recent studies looking for a benefit from vitamin pills:

Vitamins C & E reduce male cancer risk?  In two large studies no benefit was found in taking vitamin pills, and in one the risk of cancer and diabetes actually increased.

Vitamins C & E for heart disease?  A long-term study with ties to the pill industry (always a reason to be wary of any positive findings) failed to find a heart disease benefit.

Vitamin E and selenium reduce prostate cancer risk?  The SELECT trial failed to show a benefit of vitamin E and selenium in pill form and there was evidence pills had made things worse.

Vitamin C pills reduce cancer risk?  No, actually a Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center study found no benefit and even saw a risk that vitamin C pills invigorate the cancer.

Vitamin E improves mortality?  No, actually these pills (doses >400 IU) actually worsen longevity according to a Johns Hopkins survey of 19 trials.

Vitamin A reduces lung cancer risk?  Unfortunately, vitamin A and beta carotene (a perform of vitamin A) taken in pill form seem to increase the risk of lung cancer, according to the Caret 1996 study.

The Times story included other examples but the bottom line is that a healthy diet of whole foods is the best way to get your vitamins, and that pills don’t offer a healthy shortcut.

Are Vitamin Pills Ever Needed?

Here’s the short answer:  sometimes, if prescribed.  Older people can become deficient in vitamin B-12—especially vegans as B-12 is found in animal products—a difficult to diagnose condition with serious consequences.  There is solid evidence that neurotube birth defects (NTDs) are reduced with folate pills.  Vitamin D pills help people who chronically get insufficient sunshine.  Other examples of proven benefit exist for certain medical conditions.  So there is a place for pills and your doctor is the best person to consult.  But the starting point is to eat a healthy and varied whole foods diet with minimal use of highly processed factory foods.

Please comment:  It seems that pills aren't the shortcut to health and longevity—a healthy Word of Wisdom diet is still needed.  It took most of the 20th century to learn that.  Please share your experience.

My Father's Garden

 

The quick answer:  Want to understand the mystery of (your) life?  Plant and tend a garden.

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My Father’s Garden

My father grew a beautiful vegetable garden in the deep lot behind our home.  He had always done this; he had a garden in his 90^th year, before he left.  There were fruit trees on one side, a shaded area for berry vines, a trellis to grow sweet peas for my Mother, wire cages for tomato plants, and raised beds for vegetables like carrots, onions, squash, and cantaloupes.  In the spring he would plant corn, one section each week to extend the time of ripening.   He loved fresh corn-on-the-cob but it had to be fresh; he wouldn’t pick the corn until Mother had the water boiling.  Do you know how at the end of summer, the tomato plants are full of almost ripe tomatoes that aren’t going to fully ripen?  With those we would make a family favorite, Aunt Kate’s Chili Sauce.  I’ll share the recipe with you one day.

Unlike myself, my Father had a beautiful voice.  One song was a love ballad of his time—I love You Truly—that he would sing to Mother when they were getting ready to go out.  When I wrote our family memoir I titled it, I Love You Truly: The Lessons of Our Lives.  Those lessons covered the gamut of our joys and sorrows.  Our family paid a high price for some of those lessons so I thought it important they be saved for our descents in a book. 

When I wrote the memoir I asked Father the “why question.”  Here’s his thoughtful response:  Why do I garden?  Why do you breathe?  I find peace from life’s cares in my garden.  A person needs a place for deep thinking, the kind of on-your-knees, hands-in-the-dirt pondering where life’s lessons are best learned.  I think about my children and the decisions they’ve made, about the people I’ve known, places I’ve been, the dances I took Nina (our Mother) to.  But mostly I think about my life, teaching myself from the pulpit of my memory.  My garden really isn’t work, for while I toil the birds fly about singing, the wind makes comforting sounds as it blows through the trees, and the sun warms my back.  Later, when the plants sprout in their rows it’s very satisfying.

Over the years the ten children grew up and left home.  It became a ritual when we returned to greet whoever was in the house and then go to the backyard and admire the garden.  Often Father would be there, ready to hear the news of your life.  Once I wrote a silly story for children, about a visiting grandchild who wakes up in the night and hears noises coming from Father’s garden.  The child ventures out to the garden and discovers that on moon-lit nights the various vegetables leave their beds to form a marching band, led by the gnarled old apricot tree that looks surprisingly like Father.  I’ll share one verse of the song that vegetable marching band played; you’ll know the melody so sing along:

Seventy-six cornstalks led the big parade,

With a hundred-and-ten cantaloupes close at hand,

They were followed by rows and rows of the finest vegetables,

The cream of Father’s marching band.

Well, I said it was a silly children’s story but it does touch on the magic every garden offers.  The grandchildren loved Father’s garden and delighted in vegetables eaten directly from the vine.  It’s an American tragedy that children grow up hating vegetables, but I could see these kids loved the vegetables they picked and ate.  Gardens, of course are about more than the harvest, though they do yield the healthiest food you can eat.  And they’re good exercise.  But even more, they teach reverence for food in the way it was originally created.  Which brings us to this week’s Healthy Change:

Comment:  Please comment on your gardening experience.  Whether you do it for truly local and organic food, to save money, or just for the joy of gardening, a garden is one of the best uses of your time.

Stretch Exercise

Wengen, Switzerland; photograph courtesy of Andrew Bossi

Note: One of our thirteen themes is not about nutrition—it's about exercise.   I can't do better than to repeat this article from last year, about the benefits of including stretching in your exercise routine.
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A Village Too Beautiful

Did I mention the beautiful wife is half-Swiss?  She is, which may explain how she avoids fights yet never surrenders.  A while back we thought it would be good to visit picturesque Wengen, birthplace of her great-grandmother.  The village, perched above an alpine valley and reached by cog train, is more beautiful than words can describe.  If you haven’t been there, put Wengen on your bucket list.

Despite the Alpine beauty, what I remember most about Wengen is the fitness of the people.  It’s a walking town—there are no cars.  Everyone walks; the walking paths are either climbing or descending.  People of all ages are fit and trim with muscular legs.  I don’t recall seeing anyone overweight and they had wonderful pastries.  A culture where people eat sensibly and live vigorous, muscular lives is a wonder to behold.  Which brings us to the subject of this week—exercise, with emphasis on stretching. 

Exercise

Exercise is the subject of four Healthy Changes—that’s how important it is.  The post referred to below called for 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week—a minimum of 2 hours.  A prior post, Not Quite Jack LaLanne, shared our family experience with exercise.  This week’s post will discuss stretching exercise.  Later this year we’ll discuss weight lifting, and then aerobic exercise.

To be healthy you must eat well, but you must also use your muscles.  Strong muscles build strong bones—they work together.  Note the cross-section picture showing muscle and bones for a 74-year old triathlete, equivalent to the bones of a 40-year old.  Note also the thin bones of the 74-year old sedentary person.  (In the picture, starting from the skin, fat is white, muscle is gray, and bone is black.)  This post also lists some of the life-extending benefits of exercise.

Flexibility and Aging

Have you observed how you become increasingly less flexible as you age?  Maintaining flexibility—through stretching—is one way to slow down the aging clock.  One study, reported in this N. Y. Times article, revealed a connection between the suppleness of your body and the flexibility of your arteries, including the coronary arteries critical to heart health.  Flexibility, like the touching of toes, is a marker for artery health. 

Here’s are common stretching benefits:

1. Increases flexibility
2. Improves circulation
3. Improves balance and coordination
4. Reduces lower back pain risk
5. Can improve heart health
6. Reduces the tension of stress
7. Improves energy

How to Stretch

The beautiful wife, depending on her stress level, can get painful muscle spasms in her back.  Stretching seems to help and we’ve had the intention for some time to add this to our exercise regime.  Time went by and we never got into a regular routine, though we bought books and yoga DVDs.  A few days ago, with a wedding coming up, we decided to get serious and made time in the morning after her walk, but before breakfast.  It seems to be helping so we’ve made a commitment to continue, daily at first, then 3 times per week.  Stay tuned; we’ll report back later in the year.

Women are better at stretching than men—I think it starts in the head.  Yoga is a favorite method, but there are other ways to stretch.  You don’t need to buy anything to get started—you can find resources on the Internet.  Go to YouTube and search under exercise.  You can even enter the part of your body you want to focus on.  Be cautious—an injury can delay your progress.  If you have concerns, check with your doctor.

Healthy Change

Please comment: Share your experience with stretching exercise.  How often do you do it, what do you do, and what's the benefit.

Family Dinner

The quick answer: Life goes by pretty quick; if you want to pass on the cultural DNA of your family, eat a home-cooked dinner together, and talk to each other.  Another benefit: you’ll all live longer.

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An Apology

In the morning, when you first awake, do you think about your dreams?  You have to do this quickly, before they fade away, but I’m told they offer clues for the coming day.  Today I awoke early, surprising the beautiful wife.  What was on my mind?  It was Saturday and I hadn’t put up my post for the week.  No wonder I couldn’t sleep.  So I apologize.

Remember that great movie about Ferris Bueller taking a day off from school?  How in the end he observes, “Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”  It was a quote that resonated but looking back at my own life, here’s what I might say: “Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t eat dinner with your kids they’ll miss the deeper stuff you have to share.”

So this post is about the family dinner, an institution that’s been fading away in our fast-moving society, much like the dreams of your night’s sleep.  I’m surprised when I poll people how seldom families are actually sitting down and eating a prepared meal.  For all the ill that is done by fast food, processed packaged foods, and such, I think the greater harm is in the failure of families to sit down and eat a home-cooked meal together.

The Ideal Family Dinner

Here are ten criteria of an ideal family dinner for your consideration.  If you were a hidden observer at any family’s dinner, applying these criteria in the brief time of eating meal would be a fair measure of the family.  After your next family dinner, ask the gang to score themselves—A, B, D, D or F—on these 10 criteria.  The most common score is your total score.  Is there room for improvement?

1. Participation: This is the glue that enriches and binds all together.  The success of family dinner increases with the proportion of the family engaged in preparation.  And what better way to teach nutrition and cooking skills?
2. Love at home: the degree of affection and kindness shown between family members is a barometer of family relationships.  The beautiful wife had a rule that the table was a safe place—no blows or digs were allowed. 
3. Conversation:  The family culture, even with children, is revealed by the topics discussed. 
4. Manners:  A good metric of self-control necessary for success in life.  The beautiful wife, when the children were young, used to read a paragraph after dinner from an author remembered as Miss Manners. The children remember those readings today with affection.
5. Laughter:  The more the better in my view but all in good taste.  It's said that laughter is the best sauce.
6. Gratitude:  Count compliments, as opposed to complaints, for those who prepare the meal.  What cook isn't encouraged with praise?
7. Face time:  In the hustle and bustle of life a day can pass without meaningful face time with family members.  Dinner is your best chance for regular face time.  How long do you spend at dinner?
8. Values: In the teaching and sharing of values, we give meaning to life.  But if they're not discussed, they're not given importance by children. 
9. Learning:  Family values and traditions are best taught at mealtime.  Reach beyond Dad lecturing—participation empowers and endows.
10. Healthiness:  Look for a meal of whole foods with plenty of vegetables but sparing of meat—you know that was coning, didn't you?

Single?

I spoke to a single group a while back and discussed the challenges of eating alone.  It's hard to do, but organizing some king of group dining at least a few days of the week has wonderful benefits.

Please Comment:  Please share your best family dinner practices and ideas.  This is a topic where everyone has expertise so please, lots of comments.