How to have a holistic dog diet

Another winner at the Natural and Organic Shows was the ALLDOG Bakery and their holistic biscuits. These healthy dog biscuits are Certified Holistic by BAHNM (British Association Holistic Nutrition and Medicine) and they consult with leading veterinary surgeons for suggestions and guidance while developing their products. Naturally they contain no genetically modified elements, artificial flavours, salts, sugars or flavour enhancers. They only contain sodium and sweeteners that occur naturally in the ingredients.

You can give your dog a variety of treats from Salmon Snacks to Holistic Herbs for vegetarian dogs – if you know whether your dog’s preferences this could make you his best friend. As dogs can’t eat chocolate without danger to their health, they have also come up something called Carob Crunch which gives them all the taste, but none of the risk – and it is has 60% fewer calories than chocolate. More information on their whole range at www.alldog.co.uk

Health problems your dog can smell out

Dogs are wonderful friends, supports, playmates but they could also be an early diagnostic tool for your health as they can apparently smell cancer and low blood sugar. The Pine Street Foundation, a cancer-education and research centre in San Anselmo, California has just published a study showing it was possible to train dogs to identify, based on breath samples, which patients had lung and breast cancer. They are now recruiting for a second trial using dogs to diagnose ovarian cancer.

I have heard of dolphins diagnosing tumours and cancers through sonar, and certainly Chinese herbal practitioners often smell your skin to diagnose certain conditions but using dogs is a new one to me. In diabetics, the presence of ketones – substances made by the body during the metabolic process – can be smelled in urine and on the breath when blood sugars are high. Dogs can pick up on other smells that humans can’t when glucose levels drop.

Maybe you want to buy your dog a healthy treat and keep his nose in tip top shape as a form of health insurance?

p.s – If you are looking for a place to compare dog insurance visit a great little site we foun recently: www.whatdoginsurance.co.uk

Gardening by the moon

Not actually by moonlight, but using the phases of the moon. Something old and gnarled countrymen – actually my previous landlord in Burwash’s very old gardener – have been doing this for years, as have herbalists who gather plants at certain moon phases. However, it’s not something you would associate with a couple of our major food retailers – Tesco and M&S. It’s certainly something that you might want to investigate if you do any growing of your own vegetables, or fruit and flowers for that matter, and it uses something called the biodynamic calendar.

It divides days into roots, leaves, fruit and the senior product development manager at Tesco no less definitely gives it credence. For instance, if he is organizing a wine tasting he avoids root and leaf days and has it on a fruit day. Although risking sounding like an old hippie, he is very clear that if he that wine tasting on a root day then it alters the taste of the wine, making it worse, but if it is on a fruit day it tastes at its best. Nor is he alone as M&S wine buyer Jo Ahearne, said this week that “We swear by lunar cycles at M&S.”

As they are in business to make a profit, you have to give them credit for admitting to something which sounds odd – but that they definitely see a benefit to. To give you a heads up, this week Thursday and Friday are the days best for attending to fruit plants, (including tomatoes) and Saturday and Sunday are root days so good for root vegetables and apparently composting as well.

Where do the phases of the moon fit in? Well, the waning moon draws energy downwards and inwards, so a good time for planting whereas a waxing moon draws energy upwards and outwards, which is a better time for harvesting and picking. To save you gazing at the night sky and wondering, there is a very handy website which gives you each month the moon phases and biodynamic calendar. If it comes up in German – as it did when I went online – you just click English and then the white button next to it which resets it. The German word for reset isn’t in my vocabulary – but eventually I worked out that’s what it meant: www.astrologie-info.com/mocal.cgi

Exercise moderately for best effect

You know that you need to exercise to stay healthy and lose weight, but if you are feeling guilty because you haven’t enough time, don’t want to ‘go for the burn’ or end up red faced, sweating and out of breath then take heart. You don’t need to exercise like a fast forward Jane Fonda video, in fact it is much better if you don’t.

Aerobic and/or cardiovascular exercise for at least an hour, four days a week is often recommended, but the best way to lose fat, build muscle, strengthen your heart and lungs, and add years to your life is with short duration, high intensity exercises.

Typical cardio and aerobic exercises can not only put you at risk for repetitive motion injuries, but can make your heart and lungs less resistant to stress. Exercising over a longer period means they get used to the routine and don’t have to work as hard so can actually shrink. A recent study showed that the muscle fibre of marathon runners actually had decreased and atrophied – in other words they had shrunk.

If you exercise to lose weight and look leaner, then be aware that those who train at low to medium intensity for long periods have a much higher body fat percentage and less muscle than people who train for strength with short duration, high intensity, interval-type exercises. Working out in short bursts of high intensity exercise will burn glycogen stored in muscles as fuel rather than fat. This then teaches your body to store more energy in the muscles and not as fat. This process helps you burn fat and get lean.

A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that men and women who exercised at a higher intensity had lower blood pressure, lower triglycerides, higher HDL (good cholesterol) and less body fat. Plus, short bursts of high intensity exercise can also help you exceed your aerobic capacity, which increases your lung volume and lung capacity is the best predictor of longevity and absence of disease.

Back to that red-faced sweating, because when you push yourself to where you need to stop and pant, as with high intensity exercises such as a 50-yard sprint or a good set of calisthenics, you are asking your lungs to provide more oxygen than they are able to use at that time. This response signals your body to increase your lung volume. It is important because as you age, you lose lung capacity so that by the time you are 70, you will have lost 50% of your lung capacity. If you stick with high intensity, short duration exercise, you can prevent this from happening. But if you run marathons or do hour-long aerobics classes, you will make this loss even worse.

Ideal Workout? Really 10 to 20 minutes a day is ideal to strengthen your heart and lungs, and exercise so you work at a pace that gives them a challenge. You want to break a sweat, but not so intense that you can’t finish at least 10 minutes.

This is a simple routine you could try:

Run sprints, walk briskly on a treadmill, or cycle at high intensity for one minute and follow up with a period of recovery. During recovery slow down to an easy pace to give your body a chance to rest and recover. Repeat that sequence 5 times.

Do this outdoors if you can for maximum benefit and if you want to increase the degree of difficulty exercise on streets with an incline, or use your staircase.

Natural help to heal scars

As someone who has been naturally careless since childhood, I have obtained a number of small scars, not least from my propensity to iron over my hands instead of the garment and despite the longest oven gloves on the planet I can still manage to burn myself getting things out of the oven, so I have investigated natural remedies for some time. Recently I was talking to a client and the subject came up, and as I passed on what had worked for me I realized it might also be helpful for you too – so here goes.

Obviously scars will heal and diminish over time, but you can take action by using the following natural remedies to minimize them:

ACE is the combination nutrition supplement you need first, as vitamin A is essential to maintain healthy skin, collagen is vital for your skin and comes from an adequate supply of vitamin C, and to reduce inflammation and reduce your risk of scarring you can’t do better than vitamin E. Some people take this as a separate supplement and squeeze the oil out directly onto the skin.

Raw, organic honey – such as Manuka – applied directly to the skin will moisturise and its antibacterial qualities help heal scarring.

If you have an aloe vera plant you can cut the tip of a leaf and smooth the liquid gel directly onto cuts and burns to soothe and minimise scarring.

Herbal help comes from lavender oil and comfrey to promote healing and comfrey to help stop scar tissue forming.

At last – An accurate calorie counter – Even in your sleep!!

Anyone who has ever tried a calorie counting diet knows what a nightmare it can be – particularly trying to compute the calories you burn through your everyday activities and exercise. Now help is at hand from some bright students at Georgia’s Institute of Technology in the USA.

Your gym may have a fancy piece of equipment that will tell you how many calories you are burning as you exercise, but what about walking upstairs or hovering the floor? Well there is now the ‘Happy HR’, a device that gives you total fitness monitoring and management – even while you sleep. This personal monitor straps onto your ankle or wrist and collects data continuously on all your activities that are related to your heart rate and exercise. All you have to do then is to upload that information to your PC and then and analyse it through web-based software.

The project came through a senior design student who was a keen runner and wanted a really accurate reading of his calorie output during the day. Most monitors on the market are either very cheap and simple pedometers, or expensive health monitors and he is looking to develop this for sale at around $100 and aimed at the growing health and fitness market.

He co opted other students in electrical engineering, biomedical engineering and industrial design to bring his concept to fruition. It’s a simple, subtle device that is smaller than an MP3 player and is due on the market in the autumn. Any British students out there working on innovative health projects? If so, let’s hear from you.

Organic weed control

I know it’s not yet officially spring and weeds are something you are only dreaming about in the long hot summer to come – yes, I can dream too – but it’s best to be prepared. Healthy eating is dependent on healthy food and using organic methods to keep the garden under control is easier now than ever. Scientists at the US Agricultural Research Service have a new one way for you, they are suggesting you use white mustard seed.

It contains a compound called sinalbin; that’s the one that gives the mustard its bite and they think it could be just the thing for killing off or suppressing particular weedy grasses and annual broadleaf weeds

The scientists turned the mustard seed into a sort of mulchy meal (no I’m not a gardener but that’s what it looks like to me) and spread it thickly over a trial area and found that two weeks after application it reduced common weeds by up to 90 per cent. However, don’t apply it round your vegetables, particularly onions until they are past the two leaf stage as they didn’t seem to do too well. If you don’t fancy mulching the plants why not just plant some around the bed as it ought to at least have a deterrent effect and the strong aroma will certainly keep the neighbourhood cats away

How running could help your eyesight

Yet another good reason to get out the old running shoes has come a study done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that tracked approximately 41,000 runners for more than seven years. They found that vigorous exercise, particularly running, can help reduce the risk of both cataracts and age-related macular degeneration. Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness and macular degeneration can cause irreversible vision in older people and so far there have been few suggestions as to how to avoid these conditions. Running, or any vigorous cardiovascular exercise, may be one excellent preventive measure and certainly worth investigating by anyone with a family history of eye disease.

The trial was conducted with both men and women runners they found that men who ran more than 5.7 miles per day had a 35 percent lower risk of developing cataracts than men who ran less than 1.4 miles per day. The study also analyzed men’s 10-kilometer race performances, which is a good indicator of overall fitness. The fittest men had half the risk of developing cataracts compared to the least-fit men.

In the case of macular degeneration the results were even more remarkable. Runners who averaged between 1.2 and 2.4 miles per day had a 19 percent lower risk for the disease, and people who ran more than 2.4 miles per day had an impressive 42 percent and 54 percent lower risk.

If you aren’t keen on running, then the scientists involved in the study believe that it is quite likely that the studies’ results might apply to a lesser extent to smaller doses of more moderate exercise such as walking.

Why skin brushing helps more than just your skin

Our skin is the biggest organ of elimination that we have, in fact we get rid of more than 1lb a day in waste products through our sweat glands and pores. If our elimination is poor then the toxins become trapped in the system. One of the major factors in poor elimination is that the skin is being clogged with dead cells. Regular exfoliation is needed to keep these pores open and one of the simplest, and cheapest ways to do this is through regular dry brushing. The action of the brush stimulates the lymph and blood circulation and removes impurities from beneath the surface of the skin. This helps keep your pores clear, and as the bristles work directly on the lymph vessels and capillaries, you are stimulating the circulation so that toxins can be easily expelled through the pores.

When you brush daily you will see improvements in your skin texture, digestion and general energy levels. Because you are always brushing upwards you are also encouraging the flow of blood towards the heart and this is where the majority of lymphatic nodes are. In this way you are therefore improving the lymphatic drainage to your whole system and a sluggish lymphatic system can be the cause of many common ailments.

Clearing cellulite
Alternative practitioners have long advocated the use of dry skin brushing, but it is only in the last few years that its effect on cellulite has been recognized. There are many expensive anti-cellulite regimes on the market, but most experts agree that some simple steps are the most effective. The aim is to get rid of the toxins in the body, as it is these that cause the lumpy deposits we recognise as cellulite. Skin brushing works by gradually breaking down the fatty tissues and releasing the toxic fluids they contain so that they can be eliminated. It also stimulates the blood flow tothe heart and the lymph to the lymphatic ducts and this is the best way to gradually reduce those stubborn cellulite deposits.

Cleansing the Colon
Many practitioners advise skin brushing as the best start to any new health regime. It is a vital part of any colon-cleansing programme, and herbalist Kitty Campion recommends it to all her clients as a first step on their way back to health. As well as it’s acknowledged health benefits she believes it helps prevent premature ageing and brings a sense of well-being and energy as the blood and oxygen supply to the body is stimulated.

What’s Involved?
Dry skin brushing is suitable for everyone except if you have broken skin, eczema or psoriasis. The right brush is essential, you need one with sufficiently hard natural bristles to produce the necessary stimulating effect.

Dry skin brushing is simple, and is best carried out before your bath or shower. Your skin may feel tender at first, but you will soon gain the benefits if you persevere. Always begin with light pressure and move up the body from the feet to the head. Use long strokes upwards towards the heart for all of the body except for the head and shoulders where you will be brushing down towards the heart. For the buttocks circular movements will bring you the most benefit, particularly for working on cellulite. After a few weeks you can adjust the pressure of your strokes to what feels comfortable for you.

Never brush over areas of broken skin or varicose veins, and you can help the elimination process by paying attention to your diet. Make sure you are drinking a lot of water and minimising red meat, dairy, caffeine and sugar.

If you can’t find a good natural skin brush locally there is a very good one from Simply Nature. Call them on 01580 201687 or visit their website at www.simply-nature.co.uk.

New black tea for refreshment

I am a great advocate of the health benefits of green tea, but the truth is it’s flavour is not to everyone’s taste. If you are addicted to your ‘real’ tea, and usually drink it black with a squeeze of lemon, then a healthy option is a new blend of organic black tea with lemon verbena. From Hambleden Herbs, this blends leaves from, Africa, Ceylon and Southern India to produce a smooth, well rounded tea you can drink at any time and no need to keep slicing up a lemon.

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