Wellness Wednesday

Hello friends. Sorry, I forgot to post yesterday, so here we go on Thursday this time. Today I want to show you one of the videos where I get my information from that I present to you. Today I want to not tell you what I learned by watching the video, I want to show the video directly to you, because I don´t think I can summarize it any further. I am also thinking about doing this more often because I think that M. Greger can explain some things much better to you than I can. Anyway: Enjoy this video about nuts and their amazing ability to burn calories while you eat them:

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/nuts-and-obesity-the-weight-of-evidence/

Have a good time, may the Force be with you.

Tobias

Hallo friends.

To conclude our conversation about nuts and seeds: how much nuts or seeds should we eat in one day? Well, it seems that the best option would be to eat at least 30 g of nuts or seeds out of the list I posted 2 weeks ago OR 2 tablespoons of unsweetened nut butter.

Next week we are going to talk about the last of the nutrients I want to tell you about: whole grains. If we truly stick to a plant based diet, this is the stuff that delivers our calories for the day, that make as full and satisfied.

But Wellness Wednesday is not going to end after this chapter, we are still gonna talk about how much water we should drink in a day and how much exercise we are supposed to do.

And after all this I am going to keep you up to date with the newest results of research concerning nutrition.

So, until next week,

May the Force be with you.

Tobias

Hello friends.

So far we have talked about a lot of healthy stuff to eat, but finally we need something that makes us really full and satisfied. I don´t know what you think, but I can eat a lot of vegetables and fruit, but that doesn´t make me full for more than a few hours. But – whole grains – are on the one hand healthy and on the other hand they make us full for several hours and satisfy very well. In this series I want to first start about what whole grains are and how much we should ideally eat of them each day, and next week I am going to show you why it is a good idea to eat them.

So what are whole grains? Here we go:

Barley,
Buckwheat,
Millet,
Oats,
Popcorn,
Quinoa,
Rye,
Teff,
Whole-wheat pasta.

We are looking for the “whole grain”, so no refined wheat or anything!

How much should we eat ideally each day:

3 serving sizes

What is ONE serving size:

100 g hot cereal or cooked grains, pasta, or corn kernels
50 g cold cereal
1 tortilla or slice of bread
½ a bagel or English muffin
30 g popped popcorn

Yes, even popcorn is a very good idea! Great to hear isn´t it?

So, until next week!

May the Force be with yall.

Tobias

Hi.

I have decided to from now on show you Michael Greger´s videos directly, because I think no one can describe it better than him.

Today I have picked a video about whole grains and what effects they have on our microbiome and what that means for our health.

So have fun with the video.

Yours Tobias, may the Force be with you.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/gut-microbiome-strike-it-rich-with-whole-grains/

Hi friends.

Do you want to know, why it is a better choice to eat oatmeal than cereals?

Here you go, may the Force be with you all.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/which-is-a-better-breakfast-cereal-or-oatmeal/

Hello friends.

Look at this video and eat like a gladiator! Yes! May the Force be with you.

Tobias

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-gladiator-diet-how-vegetarian-athletes-stack-up/

Hello friends.

Let´s talk about something we haven´t talked about so far namely beverages. First of all what kind of beverages should we drink to stay healthy. Well, you should stay away from any beverage that contains alcohol. Yes, there is evidence that regular intake of small amounts of alcohol may improve your cholesterol and lower your risk of suffering from cardiovascular diseases. BUT. There is also evidence that alcohol intake does NOT do any of this. Only, you will perhaps not know about this kind of evidence because it is not that popular. Also alcohol consumption goes along with a high risk of developing cancer. You might get cancer in your mouth or esophagus or larynx. I can´t show you all the evidence here but believe me, seen from an honest perspective as a whole: you get off best if you avoid alcohol completely in your life. You might however decide that you don´t want to restrain from alcohol completely, well that is okay, but try to be honest about it and be aware of the risks, don´t make this mistake that most people make by claiming it might in the end be good for your health. Evidence shows that this is not true.

Coffee is a good option if you are looking for a good beverage. Coffee is addictive, yes, we will talk about this later, but coffee is also good for your health in many ways, I will tell you more about coffee next week.

Tea is an excellent idea also. We might talk about that as well later on.

In the end any beverage that does not contain sugar and / or alcohol and / or fat is a good option, something like… water for example.

Stay away from milk if you want to stay healthy.

Hibiscus tea is something very special and deserves its own Wellness Wednesday.

Now: HOW MUCH should we drink each day? That is a difficult question, or is it not perhaps? You might perhaps have heard very often that it is a good idea to drink very much water every day, that is good to drink “at least” 2 litres every day. Let me put it in a nutshell: This is NOT true. Evidence even shows that drinking too much water may actually damage your health in the end. Drinking not enough isn´t good either? Well then how much? One litre? Two litres? Thress litres?

I have a surprise for you: it is very easy.

Drink, when you´re thirsty. That´s it.

As long as you don´t suffer from any kind of condition, especially an illness of your kidneys, you can rely on your body completely! Your body knows exactly how much water you have already taken in by eating food, how much you lose through your skin and your lungs and so on. It shows you that you need water when you feel thirsty. Drink water or tea or coffee (yes, coffee, if you like it – which is important as you will see next week) when you feel thirsty until you´re not thirsty any more. It IS that easy! Wonder why? Well, our body hasn´t changed much in the last 10000 years. If it was complicated, who knows where we would be today? Haha.

Well, I am leaving you with the good news that is not difficult to stay healthy in the end. Have a nice week and may the Force be with you.

Tobias

Hello friends.

I have promised you to talk more about coffee this week, so here we go.

Coffee is a good beverage for your health, because evidence shows that drinking coffee has a lot of benefitial effects such as improving your cholesterol levels and your cardiovascular health IF you like coffee.

Isn´t that great? Nature has arranged that people who are so called slow metabolizers of coffee, who will NOT have any benefitital effects from drinking coffee, usually don´t like coffee because it feels agitating and uncomfortable for them to drink coffee. If you are a fast metabolizer for caffeine, which is most common, you will like coffee and drink it often, because coffee is addictive. Yes, it is addictive, nearly as addictive as nicotine. Restraining from caffeine after regular use leads to headaches, craving, being tired and having difficulties concentrating. So, if you like coffee, go ahead and enjoy because you will benefit from it.

Now, one last thing I have to tell you about coffee is, that coffee is the more healthy the less particles it contains. That means: the least healthy is coffee cooked on a stove like it is done in Turkey and Greece, next comes the French press, and then espresso from an espresso machine. The best coffee with only benefitial effects is coffee handbrewed; filtered coffee as ist contains nearly no particles at all.

So, go ahead and enjoy your coffee, if you like it, if you don´t, stay away from it.

May the Force be with you.

Yours, Tobias

Hallo friends.

I have to apologize, I have been very sick during the last weeks and because of that I completely forgot about posting here. This week I want to show you a video about tea, and about one tea in particular: hibiscus tea. After this video, I suppose, we have said everything about fluids and drinking that I think there is to say. In the next post I will briefly talk to you about exercise and then I will have said everything that I know about nutrition so far. After that I think I will just give you some interesting facts here and there that I stumble upon. So, well, here is the video, enjoy:
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/hibiscus-tea-vs-plant-based-diets-for-hypertension/

Wellness Wednesday

Have you ever asked yourself, how much exercise would be best for your health? Well, I want to keep it really short today, I am still very occupied, but evidence shows that 90 minutes of moderate exercise like walking or instead 45 minutes of vigorous exercise are optimal every day.

Welt, now you could say that this is probably not applicable for most of us. Indeed it is not. But evidence also shows that already 3 times moderate exercise a week for only 20 minutes makes a big difference for your health.

For my part I have decided to go on an approximately one hour walk every day, it the weather isn't too bad.

Most of you probably do more exercise than that. If not, you should give it a try, you will definitely feel the effects very soon.

May the Force be with you all.

Tobias

Sleep

It is a common thing we hear, see around us and do. Ignoring our needs for sleep. I ll sleep when I m dead , who need sleep? What is that thing you call sleep?? But what about what our body and mental health have to say? What re the consequences of the lack of sleep? So it seems sleep and mental health are tightly related and some time it can draw us in a vicious circle .

Key points about sleep and mental health
1. Sleep problems may be both a cause and result of mental health conditions.
2. Not enough or poor quality sleep affects your psychological state and can contribute to developing a mental health condition, such as anxiety or depression.
3. And if you have a mental health condition, it can be harder to get good quality sleep, which can contribute to developing a sleep condition, such as insomnia.
4. For these reasons, it's important to learn how to improve your sleep.
5. There are steps you can take on your own and there is also specialised help available.
6. Improving the quality of your sleep can help prevent mental health conditions from developing and have a positive impact on an existing mental health condition.

It is often difficult to realize the reason why we suffering , we often find ourselves adopting bad habits that have repercussions . Who knew that skipping sleep leads to insomnia !??!


From <https://www.healthnavigator.org.nz/healthy-living/s/sleep-and-mental-health/>

Today Wellness Wednesday will be about a little bit of survival natural knowledge. Earth offers all sorts of remedies, sadly our city life has had the effect to make us forget about it. Of course the city does not have those natural resources so we create our own. But acquiring those forgotten remedies might be interesting for some of us!
So today is about Spider webs, let s imagine that we re in the forest, gone for a jog or a long walk and that sadly we tripped and hurt our self badly enough to make a gash in our skin, that is bleeding quit alot. What to do? having no first aid kit. Well that is when spider webs come into action. "Spider webs make for an excellent natural treatment for healing cuts and scrapes! In ancient Greece and Rome, doctors used spider webs to make bandages for their patients. Spider webs supposedly have natural antiseptic and anti-fungal properties, which can help keep wounds clean and prevent infection. It’s also said that spider webs are rich in vitamin K, which helps promote clotting." Nature does offer alot of solutions to our various problems and getting to know them can be a very educational activity.
May the force be with you all

https://www.loredohands.com/blog/post/bandages.html

Vitamin D

I know its not Wednesday but thought I'd just post a little bit on Vitamin D (inspired by Edan's journal entry today).

All vitamins are important and the vast majority are available through a healthy diet. If you top-up with a daily multi-vitamin and have a healthy, balanced diet you are very unlikely to be deficient in any vitamins - apart from - Vitamin D.

There is a huge amount of confusion in the literature, in public health, and understandably amongst the general public regarding 'D' so let’s break it down:

Vitamin ‘D’ is unlike other vitamins in two main ways:
- Unlike other vitamins – which we must ingest – ‘D’ is synthesised in the body on exposure to sufficient sunlight.

- ‘D’ is not present in significant enough quantities in most food to achieve healthy levels. Fatty fish is best, but because ‘D’ is not stable under exposure to heat – you probably need to eat it raw. Even then it is not feasible to eat enough of it to meet your requirements.

How to produce enough of it:
- Primarily it is produced under the surface of the skin, when exposed to direct sunlight. However, the synthesis of ‘D’ in the skin occurs in a very narrow Ultra-Violet light range. Unless the sun is at least 45o high in the sky, the Earth’s atmosphere blocks this UV light. This means, at latitudes of 45o or higher you will not be able to naturally produce any ‘D’ for six months of the year, at least. Even during the summer, morning and evening sunlight will be insufficient. You must be in direct sunlight – glass will also block the necessary UV wavelengths. Sunscreen blocks this UV too.

- ‘D’ is fat soluble so providing you stored loads during exposure in the summer, this can be released by burning fat in the winter. Traditionally, this wasn’t a problem. We’d be outside in the summer, ‘fattening-up’ with fresh food and loading that fat with vitamin D. In the winter, calorie intake would drop, we’d burn the fat reserves, and release the ‘D’ whilst the sun was low in the sky.

- Now, with indoor lifestyles, and use of sunscreen when we are outside, this natural balance has been completely lost.

- The only alternative is to supplement. Here, however, there is a significant problem. Due to a statistical error, the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) for Vitamin D is too low:
Statistical Error in calculating Vitamin D RDA
RDA is currently 400 – 600IU (International Units). Recent research suggests 2000-4000 is safe, and reasonable.

- If you have darker skin, your ability to synthesise vitamin ‘D’ will be further constrained

Why is this a problem?
Vitamin D is incredibly important across a range of physiological processes:
- Bone development, strength, and repair
- Muscle Function
- Immune system effectiveness
- Normal inflammatory response
- Mental Health

- Vitamin D deficiency, and insufficiency, are linked to some cancers, virus induced respiratory diseases, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, type 2 diabetes, ADHD, some forms of clinical depression, geriatric dementia, and pregnancy complications.

- All cause mortality is also linked to Vitamin D deficiency, and insufficiency.

Although the threat of COVID-19 has greatly diminished, I include the following merely to highlight how much these health professionals supplement Vitamin
Vitamin D Letter
Vitamin D is rarely a cure for anything, certainly not COVID-19, however, the bottom line is that supplementing 2000-4000 UI of Vitamin D is probably the easiest and cheapest way to improve your long-term physical, and mental health.

Do it!