We're all gearing up for the New Year, so I thought I'd talk a bit about alcohol.
We recently had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Sarah Hammelman of Arizona's Sand Reckoner Vineyards (in Willcox, Arizona). She brought some of her vineyard's wine and shared with us what it has taken her and her husband to convert their vineyard to a pesticide-free operation.
(I am still in awe of Sarah's wine swirling technique…she had this way of whipping that wine around just to the top of the glass without spilling a single drop…I am going to see if I can talk her into sending me a video so you can see for yourself!)
I learned that many smaller vineyards cannot afford the true"organic designation", even though they're putting in tremendous effort to create a healthy product. It pays to get to know your vintners and distillers, since pesticides have been shown to have a pretty significant effect on fertility and hormone function in general.
I recently wrote an article for Examiner.com in response to the news that alcohol consumption was strongly correlated with breast cancer, considering the omission of analysis of pesticide exposure when interpreting the data. One of my Examiner colleagues, Dr. Robin Wulffson, commented that I'd only spoken to wine. In responding to his comment, I learned that there are many organic and pesticide-free hard alcohol options as well…be sure to look for them! Many of those spirits come from countries where there is far less attention to endocrine disruptors and chemicals than we have here in the United States.
By the way, here are Lisa Reinhart, Chief Chocolatier at Wei of Chocolate, and inCYSTer and yoga instructor Sarah Jones, along with Sarah. As you can see, at inCYST we firmly believe that it has to be fun as well as healthy!
Cheers to all of you, we'll see you in the New Year!
Over the weekend we hosted a fair trade chocolate and pesticide-free wine tasting in conjunction with Metta Community Yoga Center. We had the honor and pleasure of hearing our favorite local chocolatier, Lisa Reinhardt, talk about her passion, creating quality chocolate. Lisa spent a lot of time talking about the thought she put into how she would make her Wei of Chocolate product line, and how bothered she was by the many things she learned about traditional chocolate making. One of the things that she shared resonated with me very much, as I thought about its pertinence to PCOS.
I know that many of you struggle with cravings for sweets, and that often times that craving translates into a binge on chocolate. Lisa shared that since cacao tends to be grown in Third World countries, much of it is grown in conditions that would not be legal in the United States. In particular, many pesticides that are banned in our country are freely used elsewhere.
Lindane, a toxic and endocrine disrupting chemical both used as a pesticide and as a medication for head lice, is a commonly used pesticide in cacao-producing countries. Though banned in 2006 in the US, except for its medicinal uses, it is not banned in many primary cacao-producing countries. In fact, chocolate tested in 2007 did have lindane residues.
I suspect that the argument you would get if you asked one of our major corporate chocolate producers here in the US is that the residues are so minute that they pose no health risk. I've just learned, in all my years of working with PCOS, that this line of logic doesn't work. First of all, you all tend to have nervous and endocrine systems that are more sensitive to chemical insult; you need to stay away from these compounds more diligently than the average person does. Secondly, the relationship you have with sweets and chocolate is not the average relationship. When you eat it, you tend to eat much larger quantities of it than does the average person…giving those pesticides more opportunity to accumulate and cause problems.
You've got a couple of choices here. You can keep eating the stuff you get at Walgreen's because it's cheap and it's available and hope that someday someone at the top of the ant pile over at Willy Wonka Inc. is going to care enough about PCOS to take a risk and buy the more expensive, pesticide-free raw material, and accept the sales loss that decision will create on behalf of the greater good…
…or you can take action immediately and only purchase the organic stuff for yourself. You know it's more expensive, but don't you deserve to do the right thing for yourself?
By the way, that lindane stuff? It's not just toxic to YOU. It's toxic to all the people in those Third World countries who grow it, touch it, process it, etc. By shifting your spending and making it harder for all of the people in that supply chain to make a living off of lindane-laced cacao, you're helping people in far away places balance their own hormones.
Some important things to think about.
If you're looking for a newer, better chocolate to treat yourself with, check out Lisa's website. She's wildly popular in Phoenix and gaining popularity in other cities like Los Angeles and New York. It's not a bad bandwagon to get on. Her organic chocolate, by the way, comes from the rainforests of Ecuador.
If you happen to be interested in which countries do ban lindane, here it is.
Banned lindane for all uses(21):
Finland, Indonesia, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Saint Lucia, Sweden
I dedicate this post to Susan Dopart and Jeffrey Batchelor. Susan is a contributor to this blog…her post about the power of fish oil and flaxseed oil combination has been pretty widely read around the Internet.
Susan and Jeffrey e-mailed me from a recent trip to Switzerland where they were going ga-ga over the wonderful food. I mentioned that Emmenthaler Swiss cheese has been found to have a higher content of omega-3's than the average cheese, and Susan recently mentioned that she's found a store at home in Santa Monica, where she can special order the stuff she loved so much in Switzerland.
So today I walked over to the grocery store to get my lunch and it turned out it was cheese sampling day. Kara, the local Cheese Goddess, happened to be there and since she is so knowledgeable about cheese I call her the Human Cheese Rolodex, I pulled her aside and picked her brain about what might be some fun options for healthy cheese.
Her recommendations were based on the following criteria I gave her: --grass fed (corn fed cows turn out like corn fed people, too much inflammatory fat in their tissue) --organic (hormones are very chemically similar to estrogen and can disrupt hormone balance
She gave me a list of some options. She told me that artisan cheeses, made by smaller dairies, tend to grass feed over grain feeding, but that is not always so. You need to ask.
Point Reyes Bleu Cheese Cypress Grove Winchester Dairy Sierra Nevada Organic Dairy Rouge et Noir Bravo Farms Fiscalini Cheese Rumiano Gioia Bellwether Farms Maytag Dairy Carr Valley Black Goat Dairy Beecher's Cheese
Most of these come from California, hence the Happy California Cow picture.
The most interesting cheese Kara told me about was Beemster cheese from Holland. These cows graze on pesticide-free grass in pastures that lie below sea level. These pastures are located on top of a former sea lagoon, and their soil is made of a blue sea clay, and the combination of how this clay nourishes the grass these cows eat, produces cheese with 20% less sodium than the average cheese. I am curious whether this pasture history means somehow there are some omega-3's getting into this cheese…but I couldn't find anything online to answer that question.
If you are a true cheese aficionado and must have Beemster cheese…there is a little bad news…only 2000 wheels are made each year, in the springtime. The good news is, that could be an extremely fun pilgrimage.
http://www.beemster.us/the-cheeses/the-taste/
Now some science to round out Kara's trivia.
Cheese has its good qualities, when eaten in moderation. --It's high in protein and calcium --It contains CLA, an omega-3 intermediate which may help with weight control --It's convenient --If it's the right kind, it contains omega-3's --If you are like me, whose first language was German, there is no life without cheese.
Moderation is the key, for several reasons --Cheese is a good source of saturated fat --Cheese is one of the few nonprocessed foods that contains trans fats --Cheese has calories
Susan and Jeffrey and I will be at the first Fertile Intentions Couples Infertility Day Spa on October 25, 2008. Along with our co-hosts, we will be discussing cheese as well as many other great things about food, health, stress management, and environmental awareness as they pertain to balancing hormones and fertility.
If you're looking for pasta alternatives, consider soba noodles. This gluten-free Japanese creation is made with buckwheat, a food with potential multiple health benefits. Buckwheat has repeatedly been shown to improve blood lipids, by lowering blood pressure, total cholesterol, bad cholesterol (LDL), and triglycerides, and raising good cholesterol (HDL). It has also been reported to prevent the development of gallstones
Buckwheat is also a potent cancer fighter. It contains anthocyanin compounds (yes, that stuff that makes blueberries so healthy!), and it has been shown to fight tumor growth in a respectable list of body parts.
Photo credit: http://www.thekitchn.com/
Buckwheat is also good for people with insulin resistance. In one study, people who did not regularly consume buckwheat were five times more likely to have hyperglycemia (high blood glucose) than those who did. When it comes to our recent theme of increasing protein and maximizing muscle mass, buckwheat has been found to be a good vegan protein source for accomplishing this goal.
If you have been following my interest in bees and colony collapse disorder (important to PCOS because many hormone-friendly foods are dependent on bees for pollination), eating soba noodles is good for bee health as well. Provided the buckwheat is organic and not laced with pesticide, one acre of the crop supports an entire hive of bees, important in US locations where bees have been found to be declining because of exposure to neonicotinides used on corn. And buckwheat honey is good for you as well; it has a reputation for its antioxidant and antifungal content. You can make a difference! Increasing demand for crops that are healthy for everyone in the ecocycle is a win-win situation.
One note for celiacs: soba is only partially buckwheat. Be sure you read the labels and use a brand like Eden 100% Whole Buckwheat Soba.
The photo above is from a blog post I found on Pinterest. The recipe looked easy and like it was a great noncommittal Americanized way to put a little soba on your plate.
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Recently the Environmental Working Group's annual"Dirty Dozen" list came out. It is this group's awareness tool for the health risks of pesticides. What is important to remember, in addition to the important message that pesticides in our foods can pose health risks, is that this does not mean that you have to avoid these foods altogether. Here are some ways to keep your favorite fruits and vegetables on your list.
1. Avoid top ten lists of"best foods". Any time you narrow your list of foods you eat to a dozen or so, you automatically concentrate their risks, as well as their benefits. I noticed that on this list of foods (listed below), several foods showed up that are common on diet diaries of clients who are trying to eat"healthy". If you eat blueberries because they are brain friendly, vary them with kiwi and watermelon. Every food has a benefit, and you don't want to miss out!
2. Eat organically. Organic produce is grown without the use of pesticides, immediately eliminating their risk.
3. Use a fruit and vegetable wash. I find them in my local grocery store, but if you don't see them, you can also order them online. Here is a list of brands available at amazon.com.
4. Eat locally and in season. When you eat fruits and vegetables that are not in season, they must be imported. And regulations about pesticides differ in different countries. It's nice to eat cherries in January, but you're going to have a better idea of what rules governed their production if you wait until July and get the ones your local farmer grew. (They are likely going to taste better too, since they weren't picked early and trucked thousands of miles before getting to your table.)
5. Become familiar with the"Clean 15". This is the EWG's other list that doesn't get as much press, probably because good news doesn't sell as much viewership and advertising time. It's the list of the cleanest fruits and vegetables, and it includes: onion avocado sweet corn pinepple mango asparagus sweet peas kiwi cabbage eggplant papaya watermelon broccoli tomato sweet potato
OK, here's the list. Again, just because a food appears on this list doesn't mean you shouldn't have it. It just means these choices should be purchased, handled, and consumed with more delicacy, and should not be consumed in excess just because they're"healthy". If you'd like their wallet guide, and their upcoming iPhone application, click here. Celery Peacches Strawberries Apples Blueberries Nectarines Bell Peppers Spinach (this sample was found to contain as many as 48 different pesticide residues--wash thoroughly!) Kale Cherries Grapes Leafy greens Carrots Pears
It's Earth Month 2011, a good time to think about our connection to things much bigger than ourselves. It's easy to become overwhelmed when thinking about a problem as daunting as infertility, and to narrow your focus down to what you need to do to fix your personal problem. Nothing else can seem to matter except your own hormones.
At inCYST, one of our most important missions is to help our readers understand, that the reason many people these days are struggling with infertility, is because our unsustainable lifestyle has changed the balance on our planet. The more respect with which we treat the earth, the better the earth treats us.
I was thinking about this yesterday while running on the canal trail behind my home. I've been waiting several weeks for the baby ducks to come and they finally arrived! My run is so much more enjoyable when I can watch the little fluffballs swimming behind their mother, learning how to swim, how to dive for food, how to preen. I never cease to be amazed at how these ducks just seem to know how to do what they do.
Something that biologists are learning is that other species are having trouble reproducing as well. We've put chemicals in the water they drink, we've put pesticides in the food chain, we've encroached on their breeding grounds…and they're paying a heavy price. The only difference is, they don't have reproductive doctors and nutritionists to guide them to better fertility. Their populations decline and we lose them.
So when I was admiring the fuzzballs I thought a lot about how inCYST is about more than helping all of you. Though that's important!
It's about rallying all of you to adopt lifestyle choices that benefit EVERYONE on the planet, no matter the genus, no matter the species. I hope that this is a value that gradually blends into your pursuit of personal health.
Speaking of sustainable living as a value, we had a wonderful radio chat yesterday with Julia Bucciero of Maxim Hygiene, makers of organic, all cotton, pesticide-free, chlorine and dioxin-free feminine hygiene and personal care products. If you had not thought about the opportunity for hormone imbalance your current personal care purchases poses, it's time you should.
And consider what unnecessary amount of plastic accumulates in landfills and floats down waterways when we make certain choices! You can make a hormone-friendly, 100% biodegradable choice and with that, make a difference.
Maxim Hygiene has created a product that makes personal sense for women with PCOS, and an opportunity for each of us to live more sustainably.
If you can't find these products in your local store, be sure to contact Maxim Hygiene and let them know. They're happy to work with stores to increase their product availability. I found them on amazon.com if you prefer to purchase them online.
It can help to feel less personally picked on when you take a step back and understand how a bigger imbalance may be affecting your personal imbalance. The best way out of that corner, is to collectively start making choices that promote balance outside, as well as within, ourselves.
