Let Kale Salads Rock Your World

You know I'm the Queen of Greens. I eat greens every day: chard, kale, spinach, arugula, mache, chard, collards. Gram per gram, kale provides more iron than red meat, and we don't eat red meat while on the Gottfried Cleanse. Kale is nutrient dense in other aspects as well: one cup provides 1327% of the daily value of Vitamin K, 192% of daily value of Vitamin A, and 88% of Vitamin C.

Let's leave out the bread crumbs and cheese while your cleansing. Click here for another favorite recipe for marinated raw kale.

This traditional Tuscan salad is made with strips of Italian black kale, fresh lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, crushed garlic, red pepper flakes, grated pecorino Tuscano cheese and bread crumbs. These bright, refreshing flavors combine to bring the sunny taste of Italy to your table.

Ingredients
4-6 cups kale, loosely packed, sliced leaves of Italian black (Lacinato, "dinosaur," cavolo nero) midribs removed
juice of 1 lemon
3-4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, mashed
salt & pepper, to taste
hot red pepper flakes, to taste
2/3 cup grated Pecorino Toscano cheese (Rosselino variety if you can find it) or other flavorful grating cheese such as Asiago or Parmesan
1/2 cup freshly made bread crumbs from lightly toasted bread

Instructions
Whisk together lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and a generous pinch (or more to taste) of hot red pepper flakes.
Pour over kale in serving bowl and toss well.
Add 2/3 of the cheese and toss again.
Let kale sit for at least 5 minutes. Add bread crumbs, toss again, and top with remaining cheese.

Check out the video right here.

Glee Over Ghee

Today, I got a great question from a cleanser about why ghee is acceptable on the Gottfried Cleanse, but not butter.

Here's my answer. Short version: butter contains the common allergens of dairy, casein and lactose, whereas ghee has them removed or cooked off. 


Say more....


Ghee, also known as clarified butter, is made by cooking unsalted butter until all water has boiled off, the milk solids (or protein) have settled to the bottom, and froth has floated on top. After removing the froth, the clarified butter is then spooned or poured off fastidiously to avoid disturbing the milk protein on the bottom of the pan. Depending on how fastidious one is (or the producer of your ghee), there may be trace amounts of casein and lactose, but usually not enough to trigger an allergic response.

Ghee vs. Butter 

• Great for cooking: Ghee does not contain milk solids (casein and lactose), which makes it very stable at high heat. Ghee has a high smoke point (~485 °F), which makes it one of the best oils , along with coconut oil, for baking, sautéing and frying. When you choose butter for a sauté, the milk solids precipitate to the bottom of the pan and can burn causing an unpleasant odor, appearance and taste. When you sauté and fry with ghee, there is no hissing or splattering. It also has a sweet aroma and actually becomes richer in flavor as well.  
• Stable shelf life. Because ghee has very little moisture content, you do not need to refrigerate it for 2-3 months if you keep it in an airtight container. When kept in a refrigerator, ghee can last up to a year. In India, aged ghee is considered to have healing properties and some families have ghee that is over 100-years old. Ghee such as this is rare and very expensive. Old ghee is only used externally, and by experienced Ayurvedic practitioners only. 
• Yummy Flavor. Ghee has a nutty, sweet, rich flavor. Small amounts add significant flavor. One tablespoon of ghee can replace up to three tablespoons of oil or butter. 
• Alkalizing. In our Gottfried Cleanse, we are trying to alkalinize the body, which reduces inflammation, bone loss, and perhaps risk of cancer. Ghee has alkalizing effect on the body (butter has a slightly acidifying effect). 
• Ayurvedic Use. Ghee heals many skin conditions. I prescribe medicated ghee in women with thyroid problems which leads to dry skin, and also in perimenopausal and menopausal women who have vaginal dryness. Try it on dry lips. Ghee is considered in Ayurveda to be "sattvic" food whereas butter is tamasic. Sattvic is a Sanskrit term, or one of the gunas, which refers to food or objects that are uncontaminated and should not spread evil or disease in the world - sattvic food must purify the surroundings. Thus when an individual consumes such a food, one must feel that one is eating pure food. The food should be healthy, nutritious and clean. It should also not weaken the power or equilibrium of mind. Tamastic foods benefit neither the body nor the mind.  Tamastic foods are thought in Ayurveda to withdraw energy and destroy resistance to disease. Over-eating is also called Tamastic eating. Foods in this category include, besides butter, meat, alcohol, overripe or stale foods, and vinegar. For more details on using ghee while cleansing, check out Panchakarma (I've consumed up to 3 tablespoons per day while performing Panchakarma, as it is considered very healing to the gut lining). Love those Ayurvedic concepts!

Happy sattvic eating!
Yours in alkaline,
Sara

Is Gluten the New Evil?

This week, I taught a webinar on "How Cleansing Alters Hormones and Brain." Scroll down to watch a clip. While synthesizing the data, I read even more alarming statistics about gluten that I feel compelled to share.

According to gluten guru Peter Green, MD, a gastroenterologist at Columbia University, 1% of the US population has gluten allergy, and yet 97% of these millions have not been diagnosed. And, equally bad, it takes nine years on average for a celiac, the most severe form of gluten allergy, to be diagnosed.

Gluten is composed of the sticky proteins found in wheat. Most of our processed food is contaminated with gluten, which is present even in spices and shampoos and beer. 

What's alarming is that our overexposure to gluten is leading to dramatic increases in the rate of gluten sensitivity - in fact, it doubles every twenty years.

Many don't know about the link between gluten and insulin resistance, which can develop into pre-diabetes and diabetes. 

Here's a clip from my webinar on this topic.

Did you know that the malabsorption of gluten allergy triggers unsuspecting people to crave and overeat refined carbohydrates (e.g., chocolate, pastries, cookies), which can set off an addictive process? Here's how that process rolls.

• Eating refined carbs results in excessive glucose spikes
• Excess glucose stimulates excess insulin release (and contributes to insulin reistance)
• Excess glucose and insulin leads to hypoglycemia; this causes fatigue, irritability, and cravings for more carbs.
• You eat more refined carbohydrates 
• Pleasure from satiation of hunger reinforces both the cravings and the cycles of addictive overeating

What about the link between gluten and insulin resistance? 

• Diabetics are 50x more likely to have celiac disease
• Gluten directly damages islet cells, the pretty cells of the pancreas that make insulin 
• Patients with celiac disease have high levels of diabetes- and thyroid-related autoantibodies that resolve when the patients are placed on a gluten-free diet (Ventura, J of Pediatrics, Aug 2000)
• Babies exposed early to gluten-containing cereals have a greater risk of developing diabetes later in life

Here's a good definition of insulin resistance from medterms.com - the diminished ability of cells to respond to the action of insulin in transporting glucose (sugar) from the bloodstream into muscle and other tissues. Insulin resistance typically develops with obesity and heralds the onset of type 2 diabetes. It is as if insulin is "knocking" on the door of muscle. The muscle hears the knock, opens up, and lets glucose in. But with insulin resistance, the muscle cannot hear the knocking of the insulin (the muscle is "resistant"). The pancreas makes more insulin, which increases insulin levels in the blood and causes a louder "knock." Eventually, the pancreas produces far more insulin than normal and the muscles continue to be resistant to the knock. As long as one can produce enough insulin to overcome this resistance, blood glucose levels remain normal. Once the pancreas is no longer able to keep up, blood glucose starts to rise, initially after meals, eventually even in the fasting state. Type 2 diabetes is now overt.

So, do you know get a feeling for why I want you off gluten? Many women find their bloating and difficulty with weight gain resolves when they are off gluten for 4 to 6 weeks. Try it out - dump the junk.

Dump the Junk: Reasons to Dump Caffeine

I recommend to all my patients that they limit caffeine intake and completely detox for at least 14 days twice per year. And I getta lotta push back. Why? Probably because mostly of my patients have some degree of adrenal dysregulation, and caffeine gets them going in the morning, and keeps them going during the day.

What's so bad about that? I took a page out of Dr. Daniel Amen's book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body. He's the psychiatrist who is all over PBS with his cute black jeans and balding head.

Caffeine restricts blood flow to the brain. When you restrict blood flow to the brain, you get premature aging, lousy memory and brain fog.

Caffeine makes your sleep suck. Sleep, you know, is key to brain health, skin rejuvenation, repair work globally in the body, and weight management (particularly appetite control).

Caffeine dehydrates your brain and your bod. Your brain is 80% water and needs lots of water to keep hummin' along. Result? You're less likely to think quickly.

Caffeine inflames you. Amen quotes two studies which showed that 200mg caffeine (about 2 cups of coffee) raises homocysteine, a biomarker for inflammation and heart disease.


Caffeine linked to the muffin top. Come for the vanity and stay for the sanity. Caffeine raises cortisol, which makes you store fat at your mid-section for a rainy day.

So if you have not yet completely kicked caffeine, do it slowly over the next 7 days. Stay off for 14 days. Report back what happens with your sleep and executive functioning. Bet it'll change for the better. And if you think you may have adrenal fatigue, test your cortisol and DHEAS levels.

Meet Your Hormones

Today Imma be yackin' online about hormones and how they shift when cleansing, and why.  Was thinking I need a li'l reference guide to each hormone: who they be and what they do.

So...I'm a scholar, seeker, yoga teacher and a doctor. It's serious, sacred stuff.

But.

Imma be honest. I frequently quote The Blackeyed Peas. 

Want me to Quote Top 40 lyrics to you? (Or, if you’d prefer, we can talk very professionally about your hormones, nutrition, thyroid, libido, and lovely lady lumps. Oops, I did it again. Those pesky pop stars.)

Meanwhile, back on the hormone ranch....

Estrogen is the hottie of the group. Keeps you juicy, joyous and jonesin' for sex. Estrogen has over 400 jobs in the female body, and what you feel when there's too much or too little varies from creaky joints to brain fog to depression. As with most hormones, don't want too much or too little. Find your sweet spot with estrogen (estradiol to be precise), and she'll repay you in droves.

Progesterone. Every kite needs wind. Estrogen needs to be sufficiently balanced by progesterone. Progesterone is the soothing compliment to the upper, all-business estrogen. Irregular cycles or you're on the rag more frequently than 5-10 years ago? Probably your ovaries making less of the stuff. Keeps you sleeping all night too.
 

Cortisol. Powers through a car wreck ("fight") and gets you to run fast after your kids ("flight") and makes you fall in bed exhausted at the end o' the day ("collapse"). When your cortisol is too high, welcome the muffin top. When it's too low: depletion. Tank empty. Finito. Done.

Testosterone. Hormone of vitality. Gets you either hungry for sex or receptive. Big difference, and difficult for women to attune to the latter. Key player along with estrogen in governing the perimenopausal and menopausal mood. When cycling regularly, peaks on day 9.

Pregnenolone. Mother hormone of the whole fam, the matriarch, the precursor to absolutely every sex hormone. Involved in your memory, particularly word finding. Involved in keeping your vision in technicolor. Never heard of it? I know, me neither, until I did an advanced course with a very handsome fourth generation endocrinologist from Belgium, and let me tell ya, most European women have heard of it. Disappears when you are stressed.  

Thyroid. Masta of metabolism. Keeps you energized, at a manageable weight (sans extreme measures that many of us in premenopause become reluctantly familiar with), and your locks glossy. Keeps your cholesterol reasonable. Keeps joints working well and pain-free. Keeps those finger and toenails from chippin'. Keeps mood and libido hummin' where it should.

Oxytocin. Hormone of love and bonding. Men need to be hugged three times longer than women to get the same release of oxytocin. Babies produce this in us, which is why most of us women still want to have another baby even when it makes absolutely no rational sense.

I loved the "Cast of Neuro-Hormone Characters" from Louann Brizendine's book, The Female Brain. I credit Louann for inspiring the idea for this post. xoxo

Is That Acrylamide in Your Coffee?

Now that I've talked you off coffee, let's dive deeper into some of the badness of the stuff. Do you recall the debate that surfaced in 2002 about a potential carcinogen found in fried foods, called acrylamide? There was much sound and fury when the discovery landed on front pages nine years ago, and like Japan's nuclear crisis, it all died down rather fast. Initially, acrylamide was thought to be mostly a problem in French fries (the most commonly eaten food in the US... um, how sad is that?) and potato chips, but it turns out to be present in both regular and decaffeinated coffee too. In fact, 20-40% of your acrylamide consumption appears to be from coffee. Yikers.

Who cares? I care. One study showed greater risk in women of uterine and ovarian cancer with increased acrylamide consumption. Not good.

Problem is this: proving carcinogenicity as causal in humans takes a long, long, long time, and more sinisterly, allows the big Agricultural complex lots of time to administer disinformation and quell fears. The Grocery Manufacturer's Association is one example of this type of campaign. and popped up as the top promoted site on my google search today. They are quick to quote talking heads with credentials (and on their payroll?) that there is no proven risk of acrylamides to humans.

Creepy. When this happens, when a deep-pocketed powerful lobby has a conflict of interest and the science is not fully formed, I favor the Precautionary Principle. In other words,  if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action, as offered up by Wikipedia.

I also favor the Swedish National Food Authority who first made the discovery of acrylamide in our food when carbs are heated with oil back in 2002. Here's a list of their publications and citations.

While data on human risk is mixed, I'm not so sure we've settled the issue. Even the erstwhile conservative National Institutes of Health states it is  ''reasonably anticipated'' that acrylamide is a human carcinogen. And the Environmental Protection Agency, considers acrylamide, which does cause cancer in test animals, a probable human carcinogen.

I tend to trust European sisters and brothers to uphold the precautionary principle to protect their people more than the US. For instance, they don't import cotton laced with DDT, another known carcinogen, but here in the US, we do. No surprise then that the European Chemicals Agency added acrylamide to the list of substances of very high concern in March 2010.

With thanks to my dear friend, brilliant psychiatrist Seth Robbins MD, who talked over a yummy, hopefully low-acrylamide meal last weekend at Plum about the acrylamide story with me.

Here's the chemical formula of acrylamide for my friends, the science geeks: C3H5NO.

I'll be writing more about acrylamide as I learn more about it, in the meantime, rethink that cup of Joe. And, as always, share with me your insights, concerns, knowledge, delicious coffee suggestions that are acrylamide-free, and general love. xoxox

5 Burning Questions: Get Your Deep Cleanse On

Part of cleansing is letting go of mental structures that no longer serve, along with choosing more fitting structures that would serve you more optimally. My best mentor?  Danielle Laporte. Check out the 5 burning questions (below) Danielle created along with Rich, Happy and Hot Marie Forleo and let them cleanse your mind.

Q's FOR SELLING YOUR SOUL...

1. Say your "official" job title out loud. Three times. Deep breath. How does it make you feel?

2. How much money would you like to make, annually? Visualize that number. Feel its energetic value. What's happening in body, as you hold that number in your heart?

3. What's on your "stop-doing" list? What do you need to delegate (or eliminate), to make space for magic?

4. What do people thank you for, consistently? What's the common thread of golden praise?

5. So...for real, now. What would you like to do with your life and career? {Money is no object. Dream.}

Hope these questions provoke and carry you to new insights. I'll show you my answers if you show me yours!

BTW, join me in New York May 12 for deep cleansing with Danielle and Marie in a program they call Selling Your Soul. Be sure to check out their bad-ass video on their page. Makes my heart go pitter patter.


Ancient traditions such as Yoga and Ayurveda view our lives as a perpetual search for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual food. Our optimal health is based both on successfully digesting the nutrients of our lives as well as on regular removal of the metabolic, energetic, and psychological waste/toxins. Old metrics that make you feel bad or less than are toxic and need to be removed and replaced with the jewels of greater authenticity.