Squashing Your Bones
Written by
Irma Jennings, INHC
Uploaded
November 14
I don’t have to look at the calendar to see when fall arrives. I feel it in my bones. They get very excited when the first beautiful butternut squash appears at the farmer’s market.
Butternut squash is related to pumpkin and, in fact, my friends in Australia and New Zealand know it as “butternut pumpkin.” And the pretty pumpkin color inside tells you why butternut squash is so good for you and your bones.
When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki in World War II, 21 hospital workers were caring for 70 tuberculosis patients. Even though the hospital was only 1.4 kilometers from ground zero, NO ONE developed acute radiation poisoning.
How can that be? One of the doctors explained that everyone was protected by consuming daily cups of miso soup with wakame seaweed.
Got Almond Milk? You’ve heard me say this before. When it comes to healthy bones I don’t recommend drinking milk. Yes, milk is high in calcium. But it’s also an acidic food that over time can lead to weaker – not stronger - bones.
Americans rely on milk for their bones thanks to a huge marketing push by the dairy industry. But studies are increasingly showing that higher dairy consumption is associated with a higher risk of broken bones.
I was recently intrigued by a report on PBS about how the rising acid levels in the oceans are eating away at the coral reefs. Those mineral-rich “bones” of the sea suffer from their own version of “osteoporosis.”
And it’s not just the coral. Marine animals like scallops, oysters, and clams that rely on calcium to build their shells are having a harder time as carbon dioxide raises the acid levels of their environment. Shells are becoming thinner, and shell growth is slowing down.
I like to feed my bones red meat especially during the winter months and the transitional months of spring when my body craves heartier fare.
Now, you don't have to have meat for healthy bones. But if you're a person like me who feels more energetic eating some meat, it's a good choice.
Red meat is a great source of bone-building protein. That’s what makes your bones flexible so they bend instead of breaking. Adults need about 50 grams of protein a day, with women needing slightly less and men needing slightly more. Just 4 ounces of red meat has about 28 grams of protein.
When I heard about Newark Mayor Cory Booker's (now Senator) one week Food Stamp Challenge on the Sunday Morning Show, I was intrigued. As a bone health and nutrition coach, I wondered whether you could not just survive but eat well on food stamps.
When I say eat well, I mean eating fresh, unprocessed, organic, non-GMO food. Now that's a challenge!
With my friend Vicki, we set a goal to eat well on a budget of $4.40 per person, per day -- the same "per day" budget Mayor Booker used.
Food budget:
Daily: $4.40 per day, per person
Weekly: $30.80 per person, $61.60 combined/per week.
What We Ate
By guest blogger: Margie King, Nourishing Menopause
What makes an apple good for us? Is it the Vitamin C? Vitamin K or B6? Is it the soluble fiber or the insoluble fiber? Is it the potassium or the phytosterols?
Or is it the apple? What a concept.
Western science is obsessed with deconstructing food, researching and analyzing its component parts, isolating the "active ingredients", repackaging them in pills or powders and prescribing them in daily doses. But according to Annmarie Colbin, PhD., author of Food and Healing, this chemistry-based theory of nutrition is completely upside down. (more…)
This news is so upsetting that I had to share it ASAP.
I've spoken (and screamed) about GMOs in my free educational webinar.
And now take 12 minutes to view this video and you'll understand why I was chilled to my bones. Be advised this study uses lab rats and for my animal lovers and vegetarian readers, some of the images may be disturbing. (more…)
Rosie O’Donnell and I have something in common. Recently we both had the same health scare – chest pains. I was luckier than Rosie. Her pain turned out to be a heart attack. Mine - we think - was indigestion.
I’m pretty careful about my food, so indigestion was a puzzle. Was I eating too many of those delicious candy like but acidic cherry tomatoes from my backyard garden? Was it stress? Or lifting too many heavy boxes during my move from Philadelphia to New Hope (don’t ya love that name…New Hope)? Or the heavy metals detoxification program I’ve been following? But that’s another story…
Whatever the cause, it got me thinking about how important good digestion is to everything – especially your bones. If you’re not digesting your food, you’re not breaking it down into the vitamins and minerals your bones need.
