Healthy Living Tips for the New Year
Like many of you, Anna and I are trying to live a healthier lifestyle in 2020. We are very fortunate to have our own homegrown meats/eggs/milk/produce and other organic goodies in the farm store to help us eat well. But there are many other aspects of our lives that are not as healthy as our diets, including work-related stress (2019 was a doozy), poor sleeping habits, and a general lack of life balance outside of our farming world. So we are offering up some healthier living ideas below, and at the end a nice offer to help everyone save a little money while eating better in 2020.
While at the ACRES USA Eco-Farming Conference in early December ago, Anna had the opportunity to attend a lecture as well as workshop hosted by her favorite Naturopathic physician, Dr. Nasha Winters. Dr. Nasha is a cancer survivor and author of The Metabolic Approach to Cancer, a book that advocates for an integrative approach to cancer treatment as well as many diet and lifestyle ideas to live a healthier life and prevent cancers. Anna was kind enough to compile from her notes many of Dr. Nasha's tips and strategies for living a long, healthy, and productive life.
LESSONS FROM THE BLUE ZONES
Nine Important Factors contributing to Longevity in Blue Zones (places where people tend to live the longest lives):
1. Move naturally - Blue Zone centenarians stay active with gardening, chores, walks
2. Take a daily “happy hour” - those that drink 1-2 alcoholic drinks per day live longer
3. Live with purpose - having a sense of purpose adds 7 years to an average life
4. Portion control- most Blue Zone cultures stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full
5. Eat a plant-based diet - more fruits and vegetables and less meat (good quality meats)
6. Loved ones first - centenarians put their families first, and thrive with family support
7. Belong - attending faith-based services regularly will add up to 14 years to your life
8..Right Tribe - the worlds longest lived select social circles that support healthy habits
9. Downshift - most Blue Zone residents develop daily routines that help reduce stress
Learn more about the Blue Zone research HERE.
START FASTING
Greeks (one of the blue zone places) fast for up to 200 days! Start fasting for minimum of 13 hours – eat last meal at 6-7 p.m. and don’t eat until 7-8 a.m. the next day. Liquids are OK. Increase fast time after that.
Benefits of fasting:
Immune system reboot - Mitogenesis (building new mitochondria) - Autophagy (take out the garbage) - Enhances insulin sensitivity - Builds muscle oxidation - Improves clarity -
Improves brain function - Increases Hormesis - Improves autoimmune functions
Most common nutrient deficiencies in the chronically ill: Vitamin D3 (superhero of our genome) - Zinc - Vitamin K2 - Magnesium - Selenium (master of our genome) - Vitamin B12 (only from real foods source but cant be absorbed if you have leaky gut or inflammation)
Other diet tips:
Leeks are the best probiotic out there
Shallots are 40 times more potent than onions and have less carbs
Add raw apple cider vinegar to EVERYTHING – even laundry and to clean pipes!
You should be drinking ½ of your body weight (in ounces) worth of liquids daily – add a little bit of good quality Himalayan and/or natural salt
For wine drinkers, wines from dry regions (France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Croatia) show less glyphosate and sugar in them than those that are irrigated during grape growth.
Love hummus? Chick peas (even organic ones) contain highest levels of glyphosate. Next on the list were peanuts and coffee.
INCREASING LONGEVITY
Additional suggestions from Dr. Nasha to increase our health and longevity:
- Drastically improve our diets - reduce processed foods, carbohydrates, sugar
- Take control over our health - follow our intuition and practice self care
- Try medicinal herb therapies
- Release suppressed emotions/Increase positive emotions
- Embrace social support/Have purpose in life/Deepen your spiritual connection
- Reduce EMF exposure – we can't escape it but we can minimize it/put wifi on a timer
- Sweat - it helps take body garbage out
- Finish hot shower with cold water blast
- Follow your body's circadian rhythm – in bed by 11 PM/Watch the sunrise every day
- Ground yourself every day - go barefoot and get your feet in touch with the bare soil
We hope that some of these ideas will help you on your path to live a healthier life in 2020. To assist with the eating healthy aspect, we are offering up our once per year 10% discount on all items on our website, including the meat packages, as well as in the store, but you have to ask for the "FRESHSTART" discount or coupon code. This discount will only be available for the next 7 days (expiring Thursday Jan. 9th at midnight), so don't.delay!
Happy New Year!
Cliff, Anna, and the Farm Team