Gluten-free Bread Option: Try Pancakes

May 23, 2013

A gluten-free pancake sandwich with SunButter and organic strawberry-rhubarb jam.

One of the most frustrating aspects about going wheat-free or gluten-free is the loss of bread. For more than 5,000 years, bread in some form has been a staple food for human civilization, and it can be hard to find substitutes for those familiar, bread-centric food items. Like a sandwich.

Let’s face it: there are a lot of things to love about sandwiches. They’re portable, easy to assemble, and contain a good ratio of carbs to protein to give the body energy and satiety. Many gluten-free breads are crumbly, hard, or generally unsatisfying to use in a sandwich. That’s why I’ll often use gluten-free pancakes in place of sliced bread for a pancake sandwich.

I’ve enjoyed these gluten-free pancakes by Elana Amsterdam of ElanasPantry.com, but sometimes I take the easy route and use Pamela’s Gluten-Free Baking & Pancake Mix. Regardless, I always triple the recipe so that I have lots of extra pancakes for later snacks and sandwiches. Pancakes are easy to pull out of a freezer-safe bag or container and pop in a toaster oven or microwave to thaw and heat for a quick breakfast or lunch without a mess.

This pancake sandwich is spread with organic SunButter and Colorado Mountain Jam‘s Organic Strawberry Rhubarb jam. Yum!

Playing In the Grass Makes Me Itchy: Natural Relief for Itching, Rashes

May 22, 2013May 16, 2017

homeopathic relief for itches and rashes. — Natural relief for itches and rashes.

Last night, after an hour or so of rolling around and playing games in the park across the street from our house, my daughter came into dinner and began complaining that her arms, legs, and face were itching. I could see her skin was looking irritated.

I sent her directly into the shower and held her plate aside. I knew exactly what she was feeling because I’ve been known to react the same way after sitting on a lawn.

Not only does grass contain pollen to irritate eyes, nose, lungs, and skin, but today’s commercially-maintained lawns are cared for with heavy chemical fertilizers and pesticides which can transfer onto skin during the course of playing games and running around.

Natural Relief for Itching and Rashes

What should you do if you find yourself itching after contact with an allergen? Here are some good steps to take:

1. With any topical exposure, the first step is to rinse and cleanse the area to remove any lingering substances.

2. A clean lotion may then be applied all over the body. I like Everyday Shea lotion, but just be sure that whatever you choose is free of fragrance, colors, and petroleum products that could cause further irritation.

3. If the skin is still red and itchy in spots after cleansing, a good soothing spot creme is Florasone Cardiospermum Creme.

4. If the skin is still not calming down, or the person is still literally coming out of their own skin, try a homeopathic anti-histamine remedy* like Histamantium. This works like Benedryl, but without the side-effects, and is safe for babies, too.

* To order a homeopathic anti-histamine remedy mixed just for you and ready to take at any time, purchase the hayfever remedy here and specify that you want the anti-histamine remedy in the Comments field when ordering.

Fruit Smoothies Are Easy and Healthy

May 21, 2013May 25, 2017

Carrotjuice — Huge carrots ready for the juicer in a Tel Aviv market.

I love getting freshly blended fruit and vegetable juices when I travel to tropical locales: maracuja juice at the Jugo bars in northeastern Brazil and papaya juice in Costa Rica stand out in my memory. And now I can add to that the fresh watermelon-mint juice smoothie I enjoyed at the Israeli markets last week.

Back at home, mangoes are coming into season somewhere as low-priced mangoes are all over the grocery stores. I’ve loved mangoes in the tropics since childhood, and now that they are available up north, I’m thrilled to hook my kids on this vitamin C powerhouse. Strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, cantaloupe… I’ll throw almost any fruit (or vegetable) into a smoothie. Sometimes I’ll add a “milk”; other times, not. There is not a “magic” recipe for a smoothie as any combination of fruits or vegetables and ice or water or juice or a milk or milk substitute will turn out a frothy delight. Lately, I’ve been making fresh mango-banana-almond milk smoothies and my kids are going crazy for them.

mango-strawberry-smoothie — Loading a mango-strawberry smoothie into a Magic Bullet blender cup.

When I received a Magic Bullet mini blender as a gift, I wasn’t sure I’d ever use it. But when it comes to producing quick, delicious, healthy smoothies for my kids, the single-serving Magic Bullet sure comes in handy.

Be sure to always wash mangoes before cutting into them, as filth, pesticides, or bacteria can travel into the fruit on the knife if it cuts through a dirty peel. I use a veggie wash on all produce before cutting to reduce the risk of contamination.

To cut a mango, hold it up on end so it’s a flat, vertical oval. Slice the “cheeks” off on either side. Lightly score each cheek, taking care not to cut through the skin, then invert it and slice the mango flesh from the peel. You can find great instructional videos on YouTube for peeling mangoes.

Beware of packages of pre-sliced mangoes as they likely have been sprinkled with anti-microbial product like sodium bisulfate or sorbic acid, which may cause headaches, stomach distress, inflamed joints or other symptoms in sensitive people.

Tart Cherries Combat Jet Lag

May 20, 2013

EY_TA_souk — Here I am walking through the market in Tel Aviv.

Jet lag doesn’t have to be an unavoidable byproduct of traveling if you eat some dried tart cherries.

My family recently returned from a fantastic family reunion on the other side of the world. It was a short vacation – only 10 days – without a lot of time to spare recovering from jet lag from the 20+-hour travel day and 9-hour time difference from our home in Colorado. Jet lag can be a serious bummer when you only have a short amount of time to enjoy a distant locale.

Dried cherries contain melatonin, which is known to help encourage and regulate sleep. My family ate the cherries while my sister’s family on the same itinerary didn’t. Besides a few early mornings in the beginning when we all woke up around 4 or 5 am, my family was generally on-schedule and feeling good within a day or two. Because of the nature of a city vacation, my kids stayed up later and slept longer in the mornings than they do at home, which worked perfectly for our plans.

My sister’s family struggled more with the effects and discombobulation of jet lag. Given: a toddler with jet lag can thwart all best efforts to re-set everyone else’s clocks. Yet, I feel as if my family handled the jet lag better. It’s possible the cherries helped, along with some of the other strategies we employed.

Tips for Minimizing Jet Lag

1. Sleep as much as you can on the plane. Take your cues from the in-flight schedule for dinner service, and aim to be asleep within an hour after dinner is cleared.

2. Eat a handful of cherries an hour or so before you’d like to sleep, trying to come as close to your new local time as possible, and they will help you sleep more deeply and longer, getting you closer to your target schedule. Do this until you are on-schedule with your new time-zone.

3. After you arrive at your destination, try not to nap or sleep when it is not nighttime, and try to stay awake during daylight hours as much as possible. Push yourself to stay awake until you simply can’t stay awake any longer. Then sleep through until it is morning, or as close as you can get to morning.

4. During the day, get outside and open your eyes to the sunshine as a cue to your body to adjust your internal C ircadian rhythm.

Diet Can Help Heal Chronic Anal Fissures

May 10, 2013

File this one under: There’s not much that a change in diet can’t help heal…

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Apr 29 – Along with medical treatment, a diet that curbs food hypersensitivity might help chronic anal fissures to heal, Italian researchers suggest.

Roughly a fifth of patients whose fissures healed with this combined approach had recurrence on double-blind placebo-controlled challenge with wheat and/or cow’s milk proteins, but they didn’t react to placebo administration, Dr. Antonio Carroccio told Reuters Health by email.

Anal fissures are seen in up to 15% of proctology patients, said Dr. Carroccio of the University of Palermo and colleagues in a paper online April 16th in The American Journal of Gastroenterology. Chronic anal fissure prevalence in the general population isn’t clear, but Dr. Carroccio says diseases of the rectum and anus are common, “and the prevalence in the general population is probably much higher than that seen in clinical practice since most patients with symptoms referable to the anorectum do not seek medical attention.”

Research has suggested that anal fissures might be at least partly related to a high resting anal pressure due to unrecognized food hypersensitivity.

To investigate, the researchers randomly assigned 161 patients to follow one of two diets for eight weeks. The first was a “true oligo-antigenic diet.” It eliminated cow’s milk and its derivatives, as well as wheat, egg, tomato, and chocolate. The “sham diet” eliminated rice, potato, lamb, beans, and peas.

All patients also received treatment with sitz baths and bran supplementation during the eight weeks of the study, plus topical nifedipine 0.3 % and lidocaine 1.5% cream three times daily.

By the end, the anal fissures had healed completely in 69% of the “true diet” and 45% of the “sham diet” group (p=0.0002). The intervention group also had a significantly higher number of evacuations per week in the second half of the study.

In a second phase of the study, 60 patients who were cured on the oligo-antigenic diet were challenged with cow’s milk protein or wheat, or placebo. They continued to avoid dietary wheat, cow’s milk, egg, tomato, and chocolate.

While no one reacted to the placebo, 13 had fissure recurrence during the two-week cow’s milk challenge and seven had recurrence during the wheat challenge. Patients who reacted had significant increases in anal sphincter pressure over baseline. They also had more significantly more eosinophils in the lamina propria, and more intraepithelial lymphocytes, compared to non-reactors.

In all, 65 (40%) of patients remained uncured at the end of the study and underwent lateral internal sphincterotomy.

Dr. Carroccio concludes that “anal fissures could be etiologically related to a food hypersensitivity condition.” More work will be needed to confirm that, he admits.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/15Uvg8i <http://bit.ly/15Uvg8i>

Am J Gastroenterol 2013.

Gluten-free Bread Option: Try Pancakes

Playing In the Grass Makes Me Itchy: Natural Relief for Itching, Rashes

Natural Relief for Itching and Rashes

Fruit Smoothies Are Easy and Healthy

Tart Cherries Combat Jet Lag

Tips for Minimizing Jet Lag

Diet Can Help Heal Chronic Anal Fissures

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