Hello Friends, and Happy Easter one day early! We had a busy day here in Virginia welcoming my dad (and his furniture), as he moves in with us for an extended stay. We are looking forward to lots of memory-making with Grandpa! After getting spoiled with a few mild March days, we had another cold snap this week. The chilly weather provided the perfect opportunity to pull out an old favorite recipe for Mexican Braised Beef. My boys like to eat theirs taco-style, while the rest of us enjoy making a deconstructed version, a la taco salad. Potential accoutrements: white rice (I make ours with 50/50 bone broth and full fat coconut milk), crispy green lettuce, diced tomatoes, salsa, organic corn, shredded cheese, guacamole, and hot sauce if you like it extra spicy. The recipe calls for fish sauce, but it’s only a tiny amount and it’s totally fine if you don’t add it. I didn’t! I also served it with some homemade buckwheat corn muffins (made with freshly ground grains), and they exceeded my expectations…moist and delicious and not too sweet. |
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Upcoming Events for the Locals: Sunday, April 21, at 3:30 p.m. is our Healthy Babies and Homemade Bread workshop. You can email your RSVP here. |
Challenge #5: Check in with your body and become a symptom sleuth. Earlier this week I wrote a blog post called, “7 Symptoms You Shouldn’t Ignore,” and it seems to have hit a nerve with more readers than normal. If you ask around, you’ll soon find that many adults and children are experiencing various manifestations of disease-in-development like unexplained fatigue, inability to sleep soundly, troubling food sensitivities, irritating skin conditions, poor dental health, unusual bowel movements, and a general feeling of extreme stress and overwhelm. Unfortunately, most doctors don’t have an explanation or cure for these conditions, because they haven’t been trained to investigate underlying root causes. Usually the best they can offer is a generic medication (that you use indefinitely), or a referral to a specialist, who might not know any more than your primary. The constant search for relief can be extremely discouraging, and the worst thing is when you’re told these symptoms are normal for your age, your gender, or your stage of life, and to get used to them. How depressing and how wrong! There was an eighth symptom that came to mind later in the week after I’d published the original article. I wished I had included it in the list, so I decided to explain it here. Symptom #8 - Pay attention when you start becoming a slave to your hunger. While a healthy appetite is typically a good sign, you might be an individual who must eat on a fairly strict schedule. To delay or miss a meal would lead to irritability, foggy brain, fatigue, low mood, shakiness, blurry vision, dizziness to the point of passing out, and maybe even aggressive or violent behavior. These are folks who stash carby snacks everywhere for a quick hit of energy. They get “hangry” when they don’t eat, and they usually know exactly who they are. Don’t feel bad if this is describes you…I was one of them for many years, so I can empathize with your hyper-focused concern with the timing and reliability of your next meal. I thought it was because I was an active athlete burning lots of calories with a fast metabolism. Turns out, that wasn’t it. What I didn’t know at the time that these symptoms and others are telltale clues of prediabetes, which is a condition of blood sugar dysregulation, and about 98 million Americans have it. That’s 1 in 3 adults, by the way, so if it’s not you, look to your right and left, both at children and adults. It’s not just people or 50 or those struggling with their weight either. What makes these statistics so concerning is that of those who have prediabetes, about 80 percent are totally clueless they have it. I know I was! But there is good news. Prediabetes, and even Type 2 diabetes, need not be your destiny or your life sentence. It is within your power to find your way back to balanced blood sugar and a much healthier life! In a future newsletter, I’ll share the lab tests you can request from your doctor to determine for sure if blood sugar is an area of concern for you or someone you love. |
Weekly Podcast Recommendation: Radical Health Radio - Birth Control and the War Against Women with Kaely McDevitt. If you aren’t familiar with the many dangers of hormonal birth control, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. |