Author: jdadmin

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Who remembers Lard?

Who remembers this lovely stuff?  When I first met my husband in 1995, I was horrified that he was still frying in Lard!   He still owned a chip pan, filled to the brim with this solid white stuff!   I didn’t even know you could still buy it.  I did know, as I’d been told by many an expert, that it made you fat, clogged your arteries, caused high cholestrol, strokes, heart attacks, you name it is was BAD STUFF!  I mean come on, we had sunflower, olive, rapeseed, corn, sunflower, safflower, every loving looking and sounding oil you could name and oh yes, Ovenchips!  They were the best thing since sliced bread and low-calorie!   Lard unfortunately, along with Coconut and many other incorrectly classified ‘unhealthy fats’ were demonised by the Diet Industry.  Everyone, including me believed them.  Well, almost everyone, except my Jonathan, who as skinny as a chip, had never had a weight problem, never been to or even heard of Weight Watchers, although he lived off mega lard fried breakfasts, home made cakes and desserts baked by his Mum and delivered almost daily and had to have Lard Fried Chips with everything.    In the 1940s and 50s virtually every household cooked with Lard and there was no obesity epidemic then! So what happened? Read here

 

 

 

 

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Treatment for Headaches

New guidance from the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) suggested headaches are not always correctly diagnosed or treated, with a significant minority of cases indicatiing that painkillers taken to reduce the pain could actually be causing it!

The NICE guidline highlighted that although common over-the-counter treatments tend to be effective for occasional headaches, in approximately two percent of cases headaches may be caused by the medication, in particular painkillers or triptan drugs taken for tension or migrine headaches occurring more often than 10 to 15 days a month. This most typically results from a cycle of taking more medication for frequent tension-type heaaches or migraines, which actually worsen the pain. The NICE guidlines aim to increase awareness of drug-induced headaches and empower healthcare professionals to recognise and manage the different types of headaches, with more effective, targeted treatments.    Source:  BMJ 2012;345:e6281 (www.bmj.com)  NICE(www.nice.org.uk)

Trigger points in these areas can be easily and quickly located and ‘switched off’ by a professional registered massage therapist  Under the skull is usually a good place to start to look for Trigger Points that can be the cause of the common tension headache.  The suboccipitals are a small group that really have a lot of work to do, balancing your ‘bowling ball’ weight of a head on top of your spine. ………so  give me one hour……

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Massage Works!

(NaturalNews) Brush aside any thoughts that massage is only a luxury splurge that has no real health benefits. To the contrary, hands-on healing helps you unwind, lowers blood pressure, promotes muscle relaxation and boosts your immune system.

Massage heals the tissues of the body and more  read here

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Kids 5 A Day – Simples!

Struggling to get your kids to eat their 5 a day?  Me too!  Even with all my best attempts at hiding and bribing, yes, even all my attempts at Earth Motherliness have failed!   With the best will in the world and a good diet, including plenty fresh fruit of veg,  our diet  is now lacking  nutritional value. Due to aggressive food production methods, the current yields of fruit, vegetables and grains, no longer contain enough of certain needed minerals. Vitamins without minerals are useless to the human body. .  So what do I do?  Supplement!    This then caused an additional battle with the Kids, as not only do I still try to encourage a healthy diet, when looking at the list supplements needed, was also trying to get my 2 kids to take about 5-6 tablets a day!  Now, I have my own brand of supplements, so my expense and inconvenience was not as great as some other Mums, but, of course, the majority stayed on the dining table, or I found them hidden at the back of the settee, in drawers and my suspicions were raised when our mongrel Dog developed a fantastic shiny coat, the wettest nose and brightest eyes!    Then a  good friend of mine Neil Asher, who was starting to have the same concerns over his daughter Isabellas’ diet (that’s her on the font of the pack), took the bull by the horns and decided to come up with mix that would solve his problem and in doing so has developed  a fantastic way that will help us all.   Kidz 5 A Day, does exactly what it say on the the tin!  Mix it up with a banana and milk, add a bit of honey to sweeten, sprinkle a tad of chocolate dusting powder on the top, (the stuff that comes with the sachets of  Cappuccino, that I will not throw away and have cupboards full of!),  To coin a phrase – My Kids 5 a day, Done!  (btw, Neil used to work with Gordon Ramsay so he certainly knows his foody stuff, but  probably wouldn’t dare nick Gordons’ phrase!) My Kids love it so much, they fight over whose turn it is to make it!!   PS.  Neil has given me a special link for you to try this for free (well ok, £2 postage!)  I’m not sure how long this will last so go get it here Kidz 5 A Day.

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WHO Mobiles Phones cancer risk – Your Call

As regular followers of Chris Woollams at Cancer Active, whose daughter Catherine died of a brain tumour, know, he has been arguing this for 9 long years – at times (like when Cancer Research UK confidently stated on their blog that there was no research that mobile phones increased cancer risk) it seemed no one was listening to him. As he sees it, this is just the start!  Click here.  Read the World Health Organisation press release.

But that’s not all. This week the European Parliamentary Assembly has come to a resolution stating that member Governments should urge fixed-line internet in schools rather than WiFi, regulate school children’s use of mobile phones, take action on antennas (masts) and urged Governments to send out information on the dangers of EMF’s to teachers, parents and children. They have even said Governments should adopt the ‘Precautionary Principle’. Keep Informed

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What on Earth … are Antioxidants?

It appears, or so we are told, almost every food you can think of,  is rich in antioxidants.  So what are they and why are they important for good health?

I think the easiest analogy is if you think about Oxidation being the process that creates the breakdown which causes rust, usually on the surface of something, then Oxidation occurring on the inside of the body causes a breakdown of  body cells,  which then attack healthy cells, DNA, proteins and fats. This weakens the immune system and speeds up the aging process as well as being linked to several diseases such as cataracts, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s , diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, to name just a few.

Oxidants, aka “free radicals,” are introduced to the body by pollution, stress, alcohol, sun exposure, unhealthy food, and cigarette smoke.

Antioxidants, or anti-oxidation agents, reduce the effect of dangerous oxidants by binding together with these harmful molecules, decreasing their destructive power. Antioxidants can also help repair already damaged cells.  Certain antioxidant enzymes are produced within the body, unfortunately, todays’  fast paced lifestyle, pollution and and poor diet has once again dramatically tipped the natural balance of things.

Other antioxidant agents are found in dark green leafy vegetables, foods high in vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotene are believed to be the most beneficial. These can be found in fruits and vegetables, those with the strongest colours being healthiest. Orange and red peppers, tomatoes, spinach and carrots are examples. You can also supplement, but supplements are exactly that and should never be used as an alternative to a healthy, preferably organic, diet!

It all comes down to your ‘5 a day’, which is now being considered for an upgrade to a 7 and even that’s a minimum!

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What’s the best type of Massage?

To tell you the truth it  ‘aint what you do, it’s the way that you do it’,   It is important to ask your therapist  if they can combine different treatment approaches for different clients, or the same client at different points in their pain cycle or are they just a one trick pony?   Sometimes you need deep therapeutic work and other times very light touch. I know as a client myself that I need something different every treatment I have. (Which is every 2 weeks, by the way!)  More importantly I think,  is to ask,  how often does your Therapist have a treatment?  I am constantly amazed, certainly here in the UK,  when asking that question, that the therapist often admits to ‘not as often as they would like’ to ‘never’!  So if they never feel it, how can they have any idea how you feel on that table or how good this stuff is?  Come on, do you ever see a hairdresser with a birds-nest hairdo, beautician with bad skin, or a nail technician with chipped nails?  This is serious stuff, so please leave Massage Therapy to those few serious solely dedicated professionals, who can bring it the professional courtesy it so obviously deserves.