The Artichoke

I don’t know how to open one or how to cook one, but I recently received some information on the numerous health benefits of the artichoke.  As it turns out, prickly vegetable is particularly good for the liver.  It’s very high in Silymarin and Cynarin which are known to help detoxify and clean out the liver.  Studies have shown that they may even help regenerate the organ.  By helping the liver, artichokes have been shown to raise HDL (good cholesterol) while lowering LDL (bad cholesterol) at the same time.  Likewise, the vegetable increases bile flow which improves gall bladder function and aids in digestion of fats.

Artichokes are also good for the colon due to their high fiber content.  A medium artichoke contains more fiber than a cup of prunes.  One of the biggest benefits of artichokes is that they have more antioxidants than any other vegetable and ranked seventh in a study of antioxidant levels of over 1000 different foods.  This may be part of the reason why studies using artichoke leaf extract have killed cells involved with different forms of cancer including leukemia, prostate and breast cancer.

While this was all new information to me involving this one particular vegetable, I believe you will find similar health benefits of nearly every vegetable and fruit out there.  Nature provides us with everything we need.  In general, the more fresh, natural, and alive the foods you consume are, the more energy, vitality and health benefits you will receive from these foods.  Likewise, those foods that are unnatural, processed and manmade will generally detract from your energy, vitality and health.  Make a commitment for you and especially for your kids to have a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables with every meal.

The Missing Link

What are the necessary components to better health?  Certainly diet, exercise, water intake, and proper sleep would all be high on the list.  But there is one critical dimension that people often overlook and that is how you think or better yet, how you relax.  In our 8 Weeks to Wellness program, people are expected to practice simple relaxation or meditation for just 10 minutes each day.  Understand that all we’re talking about is simply quieting the brain and resisting the constant chatter of your left brain for just a few moments so that you can start developing a habit of relaxation and calmness.  My experience is this is the hardest part of the program for most people and the part that people most often fail to implement.  Perhaps it would help to share some of the reasons why this is a good practice.

Meditation has been taught in hospitals for years to relieve the physical pain as well as stress of those with chronic illness such as fibromyalgia and even cancer.  It has also proven helpful to boost the immune system in these subjects.  Recently, the National Institute of Health (NIH) reported that meditation may work by reducing the activity of the sympathetic (fight/flight) nervous system.  Studies at Yale and at Harvard showed that regular meditation directly coincided with increased brain size and increased thickness of the gray matter and that this increase could be associated with decreased deterioration of the brain due to aging.  As recent as 2010,  Blue Cross-Blue Shied found that factors such as high blood pressure, insomnia, and heart failure actually decreased amongst meditators.  Another study found that meditators had 30% higher levels of telomerase – an enzyme that protects the chromosomes of DNA from deteriorating and aging as quickly!

Everything I’ve studied shows that the NIH is right – meditation helps shut off the stress response in the body.  This is the very reason that meditation provides all these other benefits listed and any more.  Of course, there are many schools of thought and even spiritual outlooks on meditation.  All I’m advocating is that you take 10 minutes of your day to sit comfortably and start practicing the art of quieting your mind and shutting off the stress.  Try to focus on your breathing and think of nothing!  For many people this is a tall task and getting a meditation C.D. or some relaxing music to focus on may prove helpful.  There are also several meditation apps available, some of which can be found at the bottom of this article.  But my experience is that meditation/relaxation provides the most dramatic effects for those whom it is the hardest to perform.

Recommended Meditation Apps:

Insight Timer, Stop, Breathe & Think, Calm, Aura, Omvana

Spice it Up!

The Journal of Medicinal Foods recently published a top-ten list of herbs and spices that decrease aging.  Mostly due to their antioxidant values, this list included spices such as: cloves, cinnamon, allspice, apple spice, pumpkin spice, Italian spice, oregano, marjoram, sage, and thyme.  As a general rule, all herbs and spices are health-promoting largely due to their inherent minerals and vitamins.  With this in mind, I uncovered some specific cooking spices that have been well recognized in boosting health.

If you are looking to boost your general immune function try the following:  Licorice can reduce inflammation by boosting the steroid production of the adrenal glands.  Turmeric and oregano act as very strong antioxidants which will reduce stress to the immune system.  To help with other inflammatory and infectious disorders try these:  Cloves, ginger, and nutmeg all reduce inflammation and help fight against bacteria.  Likewise, cinnamon helps fight various bacteria and has even been known to kill E. coli and assist with urinary tract infections.  Although it’s only been proven in mice studies thus far, nutmeg has elicited significant reductions in anxiety and depression and also insomnia.

In addition to its immune benefits, turmeric has also been proven to provide numerous anti-cancer benefits.  Turmeric is a spice that is mostly found in Indian food where rates of colon, breast, prostate, and lung cancers are all 10 times lower than what we see in the U.S.  How does it do this?  Numerous studies have found that turmeric inhibits the production of tumor cells, it boosts liver function to help detoxify, and it also helps destroy mutated cancer cells so that they cannot spread through the body.  Just like the rest of these spices, turmeric only works if you cook with it and this only happens when you are in your kitchen cooking real food.  Don’t look for many of these spices when you are going out to eat.  My advice would be to look up a few recipes containing these spices that you could start cooking routinely.

The only downside to turmeric is that most of it is bioavailable at 15%. This means that however much you eat or take in a capsule is only getting into the cells at 15%. Inflavonoid by Metagenics has solved this problem. When they combine curcumin (the active ingredient in turmeric) with fenugreek fiber, absorption into the cells is increased by 45 times making it that much more effective. We carry this as a regular supplement in our office if you’re interested in trying it.