Anita's Health Blog

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Garden update 6/10/13

6/10/13 - 5 Marketmore Cucumbers and 1 Oxford Tomato ready to transplant (more than ready!)

6/10/13 - Cages all set...

6/10/13 - MYKOS Mycorrhizal Inoculant in the lil hole to help with strong roots

6/10/13 - 8 Organic plant food spikes per plant...3 cucumbers planted 2 left to go

6/10/13 - All planted and ready to take off in growth ^_^

6/10/13 - Oxheart tomato planted

6/10/13 - looks like one row of Bok Choy all decided to bolt early:p Not a problem, excuse to harvest one early and have for dinner tonight! (check out previous blog for recipe)

6/10/13 - a couple of the Michihili cabbage bolted

6/10/13 - feels great to have the cucumber all in!

6/10/13 - A big bumble bee decided to join me in the garden

6/10/13 - the Bok Choy I harvested for dinner tonight

6/10/13 - Looks like somethin's been nibbling at my Collards under the cloth

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Ingredients
1 Bok Choy
1 red onion
1 tomato
handful of spinach
handful of cabbage
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds (jira)
1 tsp cumin powser
1 tsp corriander powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper powder
sliver of fresh ginger
1 can of coconut milk
2 tsps coconut oil
sprinkle of Himalayan salt (to taste)
Fresh cilantro

Recipe

Chop all veggies. Saute onions in melted coconut oil and add freshly ground up cumin seeds and mustard seeds. Then add in the tomato and stir for a couple of minutes. Proceed to add the cabbage and bok choy stems and stir for a couple minutes. Add the cumin powder, corriander powder and cayenne powder. Add a little bit of water if it dries out. Then add the bok choy leaves and stir in. After it's all mixed in, pour in the coconut milk and mix well. Cover and simmer for a few minutes. Then add some fresh spinach leaved and keep them on top of the food without mixing in, and close lid so they can steam for just a couple minutes. When they appear to be a little wilted, turn the fire off and mix all together. Then add some fresh cilantro on the top, and it's ready to serve! Cook up some quinoa, and pour the sauce over it.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Mushrooms For Breast Cancer Prevention

by Michael Greger M.D.
Breast cancer can take decades to develop, so “early” detection via mammogram may be too late. The breast cancer you may feel one day as a lump in the shower, may have started 20 years ago. We now suspect that all the epithelial cancers: breast, colon, lung, pancreas, prostate, ovarian—the ones that cause the vast majority of cancer deaths—take up to 20 years or more to manifest. By the time it’s picked up it may have already been growing, maturing, scheming for years, acquiring hundreds of new survival-of-the-fittest mutations to grow even quicker and better undermine our immune system. Early detection may in effect be really, really late detection.

People are considered “healthy” until they show symptoms, so if we’ve been harboring a malignancy for 20 years we may feel all right, but we haven’t been. Thus, many people who do the right thing and improve their diet in hopes of preventing cancer may, at that very moment, be treating it as well. In this way, cancer prevention and treatment may sometimes be the same thing.

What new developments are there are in the battle against breast cancer? Well, most breast tumors are estrogen receptor positive, meaning they respond to estrogen; estrogen makes them grow. The problem for tumors in postmenopausal women is that there isn’t much estrogen around—unless of course you take it in a drug like Premarin (so-named because it’s made from pregnant mare urine). Premarin appears to increase the risk of breast cancer (as well as strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots). Unfortunately, the plant-based bioidentical hormone replacement therapies don’t appear any safer (see my 4-min. video Plant-Based Bioidentical Hormones).

Thankfully millions of women stopped taking Premarin in 2002, and we saw a nice dip in breast cancer rates. Unfortunately, those rates have since stagnated. Hundreds of thousands of American women continue to get the dreaded diagnosis every year. So what next?

Well, with no estrogen around, many breast tumors devise a nefarious plan—they’ll just make their own! Seventy percent of breast cancer cells synthesize estrogen themselves using an enzyme called aromatase. In response, drug companies have produced a number of aromatase inhibitor drugs that are used as chemotherapy agents. Of course by the time you’re on chemo it can be too late, so researchers started screening hundreds of natural dietary components in hopes of finding something that targets this enzyme.

To do this you need a lot of human tissue. Where are you going to get it from? To study skin, for example, researchers use discarded human foreskins from circumcision. They’re just being thrown away–might as well use them! Where are you going to get discarded female tissue? Placentas. They got a bunch of women to donate their placentas after giving birth to further this critical line of research.

After years of searching, they found seven vegetables with significant anti-aromatase activity. You can see the graph in my video Vegetables Versus Breast Cancer. Bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, celery, green onions, and spinach dropped aromatase activity by about 20%, but mushrooms forced down the estrogen-producing enzyme more than 60%.

Which mushroom worked best? Woodear, crimini, oyster, Italian brown, enoki, button, stuffing, shiitake, chanterelle, or Portobello mushrooms? Don’t even try to guess—you won’t get it! Check out my 2-min video Breast Cancer Prevention: Which Mushroom Is Best? for the answer.
More on the magic of mushrooms in Making Our Arteries Less Sticky and Constructing a Cognitive Portfolio. Probably a good idea to cook them, though: Toxins in Raw Mushrooms.
I also have videos on breast cancer risk in relation to apples, broccoli, exercise, flax seeds, green tea, greens, meat, melatonin, saturated fat, soy, and trans fat.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Garden update 6/7/13

6/7/13 - Michihili Cabbage and Bok Choy Pak Choi

6/7/13 - bolted Bok Choy Pak Choi

6/7/13 - bolted Michihili cabbage

6/7/13 -Michihili cabbage close up

6/7/13 -Champion Collards

6/7/13 - Sugar Ann Snap peas

6/7/13 -a variety of Lettuces

6/7/13 - My favorite lettuce - Black Seeded Lettuce

6/7/13 -Lettuce...I think Paris White Cos - one of the most nutritious lettuces

6/7/13 -Lettuce and planted Spinach

6/7/13 - variety of Spinach - Monstrueux De Viroflay Spinach, Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach, Merlo Nero Spinach

6/7/13 - Blue Curled Scotch kale

6/7/13 - Black Beauty Zucchini

6/7/13 -Black Beauty Zucchini - I thought they all died!! I think 3 might make it through:)

6/7/13 - Black Beauty Zucchini

6/7/13 - 2nd Black Beauty Zucchini

6/7/13 - 3rd Black Beauty Zucchini

6/7/13 - Black Beauty Zucchini planted in the spot where the 4th one died

6/7/13 - Black Beauty Zucchini - I planted new seeds in all the spots just in case they did die off - this one is sprouting already

6/7/13 - Lettuces sprouting...looks like I should have planted less seeds! 4 new kinds in 4 rows- Green Ice Lettuce Seed Green Leaf Lettuce, and Summertime Lettuce