Time to relax, time to reflect.

Take some time to be true to yourself

If you're one of the many people with a stressful lifestyle with too much to do and not enough time, it may be worth thinking NOW about ways in which you can address your stress, before you reach "burn-out".

Everyday, not just on holiday

When we go on holiday we often find the time to relax - it's easy whilst skipping on a beautiful sandy beach, swimming in warm ocean waters and during sunset dinners under the stars. Whilst on vacation you may treat yourself to healthy food, fresh fish and wonderful local cuisine, take a daily massage or even check yourself into a health spa. Being away from home allows you to see the world through the eyes of a child as you discover new things. The challenge however begins when you go back home again and get on with your normal, daily life. How much time do you make for relaxation and fun everyday?

Not enough time?

One of the best ways to beat stress is with effective time management. Running around without planning is stressful in itself. People with effective time management skills set aside time for relaxation, contemplation and have a clearer sense of what they need to do for the day ahead. For example, building activities into a busy schedule that help to reduce stress, such as listening to soothing music, meditation or quiet reflection, or simply sitting down to enjoy a leisurely cup of tea, are not a waste of time. In fact they will recharge and energise you and allow you to cope better with the stresses that the day may bring.

Practical steps for effective time-management

1. Make a to-do list.
2. Prioritise tasks. Get the important ones out of the way first
3. Use a planner, either a phone or a diary, to help you keep on track
4. Allocate enough time for each task. Don't rush. 
5. Learn to say no! Do the tasks that you enjoy. Don't commit to too many things.
6. Schedule time for yourself to recharge.
7. Delegate! You do not have to do everything yourself.

Nourish your adrenal glands

It's important to identify and reduce the cause(s) of stress. As well as a busy work load and emotional stress, the body interprets physiological stressors, such as imbalanced blood sugar levels, lack of sleep or intensive athletic training, in the same way as psychological stress due to divorce or bereavement for example.

Providing nutrients to support your adrenal glands is crucial in managing your body's ability to cope with stress and to avoid burn-out. 

Stress busting diet

This doesn't mean reaching out for a chocolate bar at 3pm or getting a quick energy boost from yet another cup of coffee. Eating to manage your stress involves ensuring that your blood sugar levels stay steady throughout the day as adrenal function is significantly influenced by blood sugar levels. When the blood sugar level drops too low the body starts pumping out stress hormones. Stress uses up many nutrients such as vitamin C, magnesium, B vitamins and zinc, so ensuring your diet is packed with these nutrients is crucial.

• Never skip meals! Ensure that you eat at least every 3 or 4 hours, taking healthy snacks as necessary. Small, regular meals help to maintain energy levels and mood, while decreasing tiredness, irritability and fat storage.
• Avoid highly refined foods such as white bread/ pasta/ rice, chocolate, biscuits, sweets or anything with added sugars. Replace processed foods with the unrefined foods, such as wholemeal bread, brown rice, oats and rye. Note that excess alcohol can also cause imbalanced blood sugar levels.
• Limit your intake of tropical fruit (melon, grapes, banana etc), dried fruit and fruit juices as they are very sugary, therefore eat small portions of these at a time. Snack on cherries, berries, apples and pears, which are less 'sweet'.
• Ensure you eat plenty of protein, such as lean meat, chicken, fish, eggs, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds. This will slow the release of sugar into the blood stream and is needed for adrenal hormone formation.
• Stimulants such as tea, coffee and cigarettes may provide a temporary energy boost, however these not only deplete many essential nutrients, but always reduce energy levels in the long run.
• Aim to drink at least 1 – 1.5 litres of filtered/ bottled water throughout the day, including herbal teas, such as chamomile.
• Eat in a relaxed environment and chew thoroughly to promote optimum digestion and absorption of nutrients.
• Eat foods that specifically support the adrenal glands. Vitamin C is found in most fresh fruit and vegetables. Magnesium is dramatically depleted in times of stress, and symptoms of a deficiency often include fatigue, anxiety, insomnia and a predisposition to stress. Include plenty of dark green leafy vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds to supply adequate levels. The B-complex vitamins can help to support adrenal function, particularly vitamin B5, which directly supports adrenal cortex function and hormone production. Sources include whole grains, nuts and seeds.

Quality of life – finding the balance
Getting a good night's sleep is crucial for long-term health and regeneration. Few people can cope with less than 7 or 8 hours of sleep per night. If you under-sleep you'll be less efficient, not more. Make your bedroom a place for lovemaking and sleeping only. The bedroom isn't a place for working. It should be your haven of relaxation.

Regular exercise is very beneficial for relieving stress and decreasing negative emotions such as worry or anxiety. However in people with significantly depleted adrenal hormones, intensive cardiovascular exercise will further deplete adrenal reserves. Gentle exercises such as yoga, pilates, swimming and brisk walking are all excellent alternatives and are often calming in themselves.


Have a think about how much time you actually set aside for the fun, sensual and relaxing things in life. Focus on building relaxation into your day. Soak in a bath with essential oils and candles, listen to soothing music, try deep breathing exercises, meditation or join a yoga class. Simple things like taking a lunchtime walk to the park, or quietly sitting under a tree appreciating nature, can do wonders for reversing the build-up of daily stresses. Life is all about finding the balance. Make time to play and laugh and build satisfying relationships, bring more mindfulness into everything that you do, relax, take a deep breath and appreciate all that you have.

Jo Rowkins dipNT MBANT is a nutritionist and the executive health adviser for The Spa Resorts, Lamai.

She is available for one-on-one nutritional & lifestyle consultations as well as online support.

+66 (0)82 281 3078

jorowkins@hotmail.com

www.awakeninghealth.co.uk

Beat the blues with bananas

Do you often feel sad, de-motivated or have mood swings? You may need to start eating more of the right type of foods to support your brain chemistry. Mood foods provide the body with the nutrients it needs to enhance your feel-good neurotransmitters.

When you are low in brain chemicals, you may begin to crave foods for emotional reasons. Forget heroin, your brain chemicals are much stronger! If you are low in them, you may become addicted to sugary foods or start over-eating. Depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, irritability, tension and cravings are a sign that your brain is deficient in mood enhancing chemicals.

All aboard the depression express!

Think about how you feel throughout the course of a day. Do you ride high and low on an emotional roller-coaster unable to find your equilibrium? Everybody at some stage in their lives will experience low moods, be it because of stress at work, relationship challenges or simply feeling demotivated and apathetic. This is a normal part of life's challenges, however if your mood swings are consistent or you are feeling low on a regular basis, you may wish to begin looking at what is making you unhappy and taking positive steps to improve the way you feel. It's important not only to look at lifestyle factors, like relationships and work, but also to consider the effect your diet is having on your moods.

Sweet misery

It's not just pre-menstrual women that are affected by cravings, mood swings and emotional outbursts. Diet and mood effects men as well as women. We've all seen children who have been fed sugary foods or drinks go from excitedly high to crazy monster in the blink of an eye. Sugary foods will have the same effect on adults as in children. Being more emotionally free and uninhibited a child will react by screaming, crying and throwing a tantrum, where adults are more likely to feel sad, irritable, demotivated and unhappy. So what exactly do we need to eat to avoid mood swings and make us feel happier?

The biochemistry of happiness

It's possible to eat foods that boost a substance in our brain called serotonin, our “feel-good” neurotransmitter. This feel good chemical is made out of an amino acid called tryptophan, so feeding the body with tryptophan-rich foods will make you feel happy naturally. Carbohydrates can improve your mood as they also boost serotonin in the brain. Avoid the white carbohydrates however as they will play havoc with your blood sugar regulation leading to more mood swings!

Protein not Prozac!

Another brain chemical, dopamine motivates us and keeps us interested in things. It is made from protein-rich foods containing an amino acid called tyrosine. It's interesting to note that tyrosine is also needed to make thyroid and stress hormones, so if we are stressed or have sluggish thyroid function, it is likely that we will also be depressed and demotivated.

Nature's helpers

B vitamins, zinc, vitamin C and essential fats help to improve our brain chemistry and function, as they work as cofactors in the production of our “happy chemicals”.

Top ten mood foods

1. Turkey & chicken
2. Oily fish like salmon, sardines & tuna
3. Vegetables, especially green leafy ones like spinach
4. Bananas
5. Cashews and other nuts like almonds
6. Wholegrains, like brown rice and oats
7. Eggs
8. Pulses & beans like lentils & chickpeas
9. Sunflower seeds
10. Not forgetting chocolate (the dark stuff, not the sugary one!)

Its all in the balance

Like the crazy kid at the party who ate too many sweets, we are constantly affected by our body's blood sugar levels. Avoiding the sugar rushes is the most effective way to avoid the resulting sugar lows. It's during those “sugar lows” that our moods drastically drop contributing to mood swings and irritability. The drop in blood sugar levels will also lower our energy, creating even more demotivation and apathy, graze regularly on healthy foods to keep your levels even. Find joy in your food, bring awareness to what you pop in your mouth and watch yourself transform. Outrageous joy. It's your birthright!

by Jo Rowkins dipNT MBANT, nutritionist

www.awakeninghealth.co.uk

jorowkins@hotmail.com

Message in a Bottle

It’s on every supermarket shelf and is sold as the next best thing to fresh sliced bread and mother’s love. Many of the world's nations are milk drinkers and people, young and old, consume large quantities of it. Thousands of products are made from the stuff but criticise it and your sanity is questioned. So what's the story with milk?

Milk is the first food that passes our lips - our mother’s if we're lucky. For babies their mother's milk is wholesome, comforting and nurturing, providing all the nourishment they need, until like all mammals, the time comes for them to be weaned. Humans however seemed to have disregarded this basic rule of nature and continue drinking milk into adulthood, not just that, we are drinking the milk of another species – cows.

If you allow your mind to think about this it does seem rather odd. No other mammal on this planet consumes milk after weaning. Mother's milk naturally dries up and will only be produced again once a further pregnancy takes place and another baby is born, of which the resulting milk will be unique to that particular baby's needs. If your dog had puppies or your cat had kittens, the last thing you would do is rush over to the new mother for a glass of milk. Surely if we are to be drinking milk in adulthood we should at least be drinking our own species' elixir. Your sister has a baby, you drink her milk. Right?

Mother Nature knows best

Cows are like us in that they have to give birth in order to produce milk. And like us, their milk has been designed to be drunk by their young – a baby cow. A cow's milk is very different from human milk, as human and cow babies have very different needs. For example, in human babies the brain develops rapidly, tripling in size within a year of birth thanks to the high levels of brain-building polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in mother's milk. Cow's milk doesn't need to have so many PUFAs as the little calf doesn't need the early brain growth but relies on mother's milk for its high saturated fat content for rapid growth in body size. Saturated fats in humans on the other hand cause increased cholesterol levels and cardiovascular disease.

As cows, like us, have to have a baby to produce milk, dairy cows are artificially inseminated every year, their pregnancy lasts nine months, then just two days post birth, the new baby calf is taken away from its mother so that her milk can be used for humans instead. So, within two months of giving birth, she is made pregnant again and is continued to be milked throughout the pregnancy (except for the last two months). This means she is lactating and nourishing a developing calf inside her for seven months. This pattern will continue until she is literally worn out, usually three pregnancies down the line. Then she is killed.

Pump up the volume

Artificially impregnating cows and keeping their milk flow “productive” involves using hormones and growth promotors as well as antibiotics and other drugs to stave off disease. The fact that most dairy cows are pregnant when milked should be of concern to humans who drink it because of the high levels of oestrogen it contains. Many doctors are now recommending that breast cancer patients avoid meat and milk to minimize their oestrogen load.

A substance called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) is naturally present in milk for the growth of the baby, and it's naturally present in blood, of which even a small increase can lead to abnormal cell growth and division. Increased IGF-1 levels have been linked to breast, prostate, lung and colon cancer.

These are not opinions or judgements and this is not an anti-milk protest. Simply facts. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg. Of all the foods we consume there is much to be said about milk beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say that we could literally be talking about it until the cows come home.

by Jo Rowkins dipNT MBANT, nutritionist

www.awakeninghealth.co.uk

jorowkins@hotmail.com

Let the sunshine in. A focus on vitamin D

We've been told for years to avoid the sunlight and slather on chemical sunscreens to avoid the “damaging effects of UV radiation”. Now however, the viewpoint is beginning to change. Recent research shows that the suns rays actually do more good than harm.

Recent studies underly the importance of vitamin D for optimum health but did you know that vitamin D deficiency has reached epidemic proportions across the world? Forget swine 'flu, this epidemic, in comparison, makes H1N1 look like a case of the sniffles.

The sunshine nutrient

Vitamin D starts life in your body as cholesterol in the skin, which on contact with the sun's rays, gets converted to cholecalciferol, commonly known as vitamin D3. Your body has the ability to produce 10,000IU of it after 20-30 minutes of being exposed to the sun.

So, why is there such a widespread Vitamin D deficiency?

Unlike us, our ancestors lived naked in the sun, spending most of the day working and travelling outside, we however cover our skin with clothes and spend most of the day inside, travelling in cars and living in urban areas where buildings block out the sunlight.

Scared of the sun

Our sun exposure has been reduced even further, especially for children, because of skin cancer scares. Using high factor sunscreen blocks the production of natural vitamin D in the skin. Before we became so scared of the sun 90% of our vitamin D came from skin production, not dietary sources.

Some facts about vitamin D deficiency:

• The majority of the western population is deficient in vitamin D.
• It can easily be corrected with vitamin D supplementation or through sensible sun exposure. Sunscreen products block the natural skin production of vitamin D.
• It promotes cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, kidney disease, depression, obesity, immune system challenges and heart disease among many other health problems.
• Degenerative diseases across the world could be greatly reduced through correcting this deficiency. This would save millions of dollars in health care costs. (Yet would be a huge loss of profit to the pharmaceutical and medical industries).
• Vitamin D supplementation is not expensive and is extremely safe even at doses higher than the recommended daily allowance (which is actually extremely low). A high dose is considered between 4000 - 8000 IU per day, however this isn't so high, considering that the skin can make up to 10,000IU from 20-30 minutes in the sun.
• Vitamin D helps activate the immune system making it more effective in defending against viruses. Lack of vitamin D will increase the body's chances of contracting H1N1 and winter 'flu. Lack of sunlight in the wintertime reduces vitamin D even further, at a time when the body needs it most.

Preferable supplements

People living in colder climates and those with health problems may choose to supplement and should therefore choose vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) preferably in liquid form at around 3000-5000IU per day.

From sunshine not food

Not many foods naturally contain vitamin D. Egg yolks, oily fish and fortified milk are the best sources, but we cannot rely on these foods to provide us with our vitamin D.

80 – 100% of vitamin D that our bodies need is from our skin's contact with the sunshine! The skin will stop producing vitamin D when the levels in the body get high enough, so you cannot get too much vitamin D from the sunshine. In fact, the body produces enough vitamin D in only a fraction of the time it takes the skin to burn.

Everybody loves the sunshine

A perfect excuse to connect with nature, relax and get some healthy exercise at the same time. Even better still, kick off your shoes and walk barefoot and you'll not only benefit from the sun's rays, but also the negative ions naturally generated by your skin touching the earth. So, what are you waiting for? Get yourself outside with bare arms and legs in the morning or late afternoon sunshine today.

Jo Rowkins dipNT MBANT, nutritionist.

www.awakeninghealth.co.uk