- Discover the daily routine of this health writer
- Why onions should have a better press
- The damage done by poor newspaper reports
I have had lots of correspondence about natural approaches to better health and diet.
In general there was a desire to know a little more, so today I thought I would oblige!
Here are a few of the things I tend to do each day, when I can.
But that is not to say these are for everyone.
Indeed I know that not all natural foods are to everyone’s taste or constitution, I offer them merely as guidance and real life examples.
So here we go…
A few weeks ago I told you about ‘flavanoids’ – the chemicals you get in wine. They act as antioxidants which keep cholesterol from damaging your artery walls.
So a glass of red wine a day could help keep heart disease at bay, that’s my excuse anyway!
And if you don’t like red wine, then get hold of some purple grape juice. If you have a juicer, even better, as you will ensure you get all those flavanoids locked inside a fresh grape’s skin.
You should also eat at least a clove of fresh garlic each day.
Smelly, but true…
Garlic contains sulphur-containing substances, one of which is allinin. When garlic is crushed, the allinin becomes allicin.
Isn’t it strange what swapping a ‘n’ for a ‘c’ can do?
Allicin is also thought to reduce the blood’s tendency to clot and may help to lower blood pressure.
Similarly to wine, garlic also contains valuable anti-oxidants that may help to lower blood cholesterol levels.
Dietary levels of vitamin B6 and B9 (Folic Acid) can influence the build up of a compound that damages blood vessel walls (homocysteine).
As well as taking good quality bio-available supplements you can also improve levels of these vital vitamins through diet.
Natural sources of folic acid include liver, leafy vegetables, beans and fruits. While you can get B6 from fish, kidney, liver, soybeans, peanuts and walnuts.
So let’s look at your heart protection menu.
We’ve got plenty of garlic… red wine… fish and leafy vegetables…
Could this be why the French have one of the lowest rates of heart disease in the industrial world? Rather than the Mediterranean Diet have we discovered the French Diet?
The onion cure for heart disease
There was a time in my life when, if asked what a flavanoid was, I’d have guessed it was one of Dr Who’s enemies.
Now I can’t stop talking about them.
But they prevent many of those ‘diseases’ that the big pharmaceuticals waste billions of pounds trying to ‘cure’.
For example, a study at the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, Finland, found that people who consume foods rich in flavonoids are less likely to suffer from heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, asthma, and type-2 diabetes.
They claim that quercetin is one of the best flavanoids – found in apples wine, onions and green tea.
And that it works best combined with Kaempferol – found in onions and broccoli.
The Finnish scientists discovered that those who consumed high levels of these flavonoids had a 21% lower risk of heart disease than those who consumed low levels.
So it looks like onions, packed with Kaempferol and quercitin, could be the best flavanoid source you could think of.
Just think of that cliched image of the Frenchman cycling down a country path, with garlic and onions draped over his neck and a flagon of red wine in his basket…
He’s better equipped against disease than most modern doctors!
Take a stand against the drug barons
It’s time that we all took a stand against the misinformation pumped out by pharmaceutical companies and all their little helpers.
By ‘helpers’, I mean those in power who are too afraid to lose big business, or those medical professionals who push drugs they know are ineffective.
A few weeks ago one such group of ne’er-do-wells at the Daily Express published a piece entitled ‘How safe is your herbal medicine?’
In this piece they cite problems with Black Cohosh being taken to relieve the symptoms of the menopause causing liver problems in two instances, with a further 14 cases being reported across the UK, Sweden, Germany, Australia and the United States…
…so 16 cases in basically a quarter of the world’s population!
OK drug friendly health editor at the Daily Express how many children were affected by Thalidomide?
How many people are currently being damaged by the widespread use of statins?
What is the incidence of fibromyalgia due to the overuse of Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs?
I bet it is 100,000 times more than those 16 people who had a reaction to a widely used natural supplement across that population distribution.
The key is to all this is to educate ourselves and prevent these modern illnesses through our diet and our common sense use of proven natural remedies – the basis of the Good Life Letter.
According to Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, ‘Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.’
I couldn’t agree more, let’s all enjoy the French Diet!
