I strongly believe that it is better to start with a small step than not to start at all by waiting for a perfect moment. Our body constantly interacts with the environment, including what we eat. Every little step counts.

My favourite recipes include the ones that combine plenty of different benefits and can be easily added to a daily routine. One of them is the Golden Latte.

Turmeric has a long history of medicinal use. Curcumin which is the most bioactive compound in turmeric gives it this beautiful orange colour. Turmeric has anti-inflammatory properties and we know that many conditions and symptoms are associated with chronic inflammation in our body including cardiometabolic, neurological or dermatological conditions.

The only problem is that curcumin is not easily absorbed from our gut.

Fortunately, there are some tricks we can use to increase its absorption including:

• adding black pepper
• adding some fat
• using fresh turmeric root

However, even if we are not able to fully absorb this precious compound, our gut loves turmeric and healthy gut means a healthy body!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 teaspoon grated turmeric root
• ½ teaspoon grated ginger
• cinnamon stick
• 1 star anise
• 2 cardamon seeds
• 4 cloves
• pinch of black pepper
• a small amount of oil e.g coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1.5 cup of oat milk

TIP: If you are short of time use spices in powdered form

Pour milk into the pot. Heat it up, but do not boil. Add turmeric, ginger, anise, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves. Simmer for 10 min, add black pepper, oil and then let it rest for 5 min. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve. Add honey and you are ready to nourish your body and mind!

The post TURMERIC LATTE – for Your Body and Mind appeared first on Convalia.

But have you ever thought about the similarities between your gut health environment and the nature ecosystems?

Diversity

In order for the ecosystem to function properly, adequate diversity is required. And if you ask any scientist working on the gut health, while many may disagree on types on microbes that are beneficial for us or not, they all say that the diversity of gut bacteria is the key to the healthy gut environment. The point is, that different bacteria in your gut produce different metabolites and contribute to different aspects of gut health. The same situation takes place in nature where all creatures play different roles in the ecosystem. Species diversity ensures sustainability for all life forms.

Balance

Balance is essential to all aspects of life. Balance in our gut microbiome, where all bacteria work in harmony as opposed to the situation where the overgrowth of bacteria, or not a sufficient number of bacteria is present, which is called dysbiosis. Some bacteria groups, which are considered potentially pathogenic, in small amounts do not cause any troubles and there is also a positive side to their presence. The problems begin when the things get out of the control and we have too much of them, and when they compete for space and resources with our good bacteria. Likewise in nature, when we add or remove certain species we may introduce imbalance to the ecosystem, such as hunting wolves will lead to increase of numbers of herbivores, which in turn may result in decreased plant diversity leading to the ecosystem imbalance.

Dynamism

There is a constant change in our gut as well as in the nature ecosystems. Everything is dynamic and subjected to transformation. Changing your diet will result in a shift in your gut bacteria in just 24h. Our gut bacteria follow the day-night cycle (circadian rhythm) and their behaviour differs during the day and night. In nature, change is related to different seasons, weather, time of the day, change is just ever-present. Nothing stays the same for long unless the optimal circumstances are provided.

We would like to think that we are much better and smarter than nature. However, there are thousands of similarities between us and the environment. The gut environment is only one of them. You can be sure you can easily find more examples!

The post Do the Nature Ecosystems and Gut Health have something in common? appeared first on Convalia.

We are often hard on ourselves.

We beat ourselves up for not being up to the standard. Often forgetting who set this standard for us. We are very good at criticising ourselves. At pointing our flaws. We are good at creating pain and imbalances in our bodies, minds and souls.

We punish ourselves for not being perfect. We punish ourselves for not eating a perfect diet, not having perfect exercise regime, even for not having time to relax on a yoga mat as we are too tired to participate in a relaxation session…

What if I tell you that there is a different, more gentle way?

The way where our Inner Critic stays silent and you discover what is best for you in the silence of your being, where things seem to flow. Where you can create health based on your principles, not on somebody’s advice.

When you look deep inside you, you will discover that balanced life and health is not about the diet, exercise or sleep understood in a traditional way, as a part of a healthy lifestyle. It is about the meaning you attach to those areas of your self-care routine. And yes, nutrition, sleep and relaxation, movement are part of your self-care rituals. Not another thing on the endless to-improve list.

Self-care will become your priority when you start loving yourself, trusting yourself, respecting yourself. When you come home to yourself.

There is nothing selfish about it.

It is also about the mindset, removing limiting beliefs about health, finding what matters to you. Shifting focus from the disease to health. The is no disease, there is only dis-ease and imbalance in the body which took enough assault and finally decides to talk to you through the pain, fatigue, anxiety…

You will not find the answers on the Internet or in the medical journals. Maybe not even from all the health experts. The only person who has the answers is You and your Inner Wisdom. Your body wants to communicate with you. Will you listen?

The post The Secret of Self-Care appeared first on Convalia.

Do you fight? Do you flight? Do you freeze? Or maybe you do not recognise the danger any more?

We have incredible systems in our body that help us to stay in harmony and balance. We have feedback loops for hormones, we have up and down-regulation of receptors, we have redundancy in some of our organs (just in case) and we have a beautifully designed nervous system.

Out of balance

Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system are part of the so-called autonomic nervous system. Autonomic, means involuntary. It means we have no control over it. But is this completely true?

You will see endless examples of the need for balance in nature and in your body. Hot and cold, fast and slow, Yin and Yang. But what if we are stuck predominantly in one mode? What happens to the balance?

Regardless of the degree to which we can control our nervous system which is controversial, we can still ask questions.

Stress response in the 21st century

The sympathetic part is our fight, flight or freeze response. It is our survival friend. We should be thankful, otherwise, our ancestors would not have survived for long. When you see danger, do you run or you fight back? Or freeze and pretend to be dead? All of this is very useful if you are a wild animal or prehistoric human. But what if you live in the 21st century? What if you cannot escape from a room full of people when feeling panic, what if you cannot fight back a rude shop assistant? What if you cannot just drop and pretend to be dead before your exam?

Have you ever thought about what is happening to your body at this time of panic and anxiety?

First you release adrenaline from your adrenals (small glands on top of our kidneys), your heart beats faster, your blood sugar rises, your palms sweat, you feel the need to urinate. Then you release cortisol. And then instead of putting all the energy into action or just completely shutting down, you go into the situation and pretend you are fine. Is this energy stored in our body? Is it transformed into something? Wild animals are known to “shake off” after being chased by a predator. Science shows that shaking dancing movements help reduce anxiety. Do we have something in common with animals?

Long term consequences

Your body will take some time to clean your bloodstream from excessive levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. It will try to wipe them out quickly as excessive long term rise in cortisol is not a good thing – if anyone has seen a person with Cushing syndrome they will know. But if we are in “fight or flight” all day long, stressed by everything, a the burned dinner to work deadlines? Do we also develop subclinical excessive stress hormones levels which results in excessive belly fat, frequent infections, loss of muscle mass, puffy, rounded faces, limb weakness, depression? 

Does our body have the capacity to cope with a constant flow of stress hormones?

Was it designed to do it?

Some things we have no control of, like the weather. And it is fine. Some things we can control, like how much work we take home or if we can say ‘no’. Small amounts of short term stress (called hormesis) is even beneficial for us. One of the reasons we should eat organic vegetables and fruits is that they are more likely to be ‘stressed’ by insects and parasites, allowing them to produce more health-related phytonutrients. 

But long term stress, regardless how small it is, is not our friend.

Can you forget that you are stressed?

Sometimes it feels like we forgot that we can live in a different state, where the lion which chased us is now lying next to us purring. It feels like we even forgot that we are stressed. To some of us it feels like we are not stressed as we have been living in that state for so long that we see it as the norm and just push through. But our bodies did not forget their natural flow state, where you switch smoothly between two parts of the autonomic nervous system, and arguably spend more time in rest, digest and repair mode. The effects of stress will likely show somewhere in your body. Stress cannot be numbed by a package of biscuits, half a bottle of wine, or compulsive buying. At least not for long. 

Fight, flight or freeze

But some of us shut down or developed mental health problems feeling that we somehow do not fit. There is too much to take. We are not enough. We cannot cope. So we freeze. We are lethargic, we have no energy. We don’t want to get up from the bed in the morning. We feel depressed.

Or we have an urgent need to run away from our current lives, jobs, relationships, the place where we live. We feel stuck, but our body listens to us and it is prepared to run away, it increases heart rate, blood pressure, releases sugar to the bloodstream, decreases peripheral vision for maximal focus. But we do not run anywhere. We misinterpret our body’s good intentions for another betrayal. We only feel anxiety and tension. Another panic attack.

Or we fight. We fight in our jobs. We fight in our families. We are angry at others, angry at ourselves. We are impatient and aggressive. Everyone seems to be an enemy. We do not trust anyone, not even ourselves. And we want to have everything under control, also other people. But we are not bad people, we just want to feel safe. So we fight for ourselves.

They are just different responses to the same thing.  

We need to learn to slow down, breathe, and enjoy what is already available to us. And when this annoying back pain, exacerbation of eczema or digestive problems come back can we see the possibility of the suppressed, unrecognised stress in our lives? When we feel depressed or lethargic can we pause for a moment and ask ourselves why we choose to freeze and what is so painful or uncomfortable that you cannot cope with? When we are anxious can we ask ourselves what we are trying to run away from? And when we are angry can we ask ourselves, what are we trying to protect ourselves from?

The answers may be completely obvious, or not at all.

There may be pain, discomfort, confusion or denial. Invite those feelings. There are here to protect you from something. And it is in your power to find what it is.

The post How to recognise the imbalance in our nervous system (Part 1)? appeared first on Convalia.

There is a body…

There is a mind…

There is a soul…

And there is the environment we are surrounded by…

The health definition

The definition of health is not an easy one.

WHO defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’.

Why did conventional medicine forget about it?

Sanus in Latin means healthy but also ‘sound, whole, well, sane’. There is no mention of the lack of the disease.

Can we work together?

We focus so much on the disease. We forgot about health. Do we want to be less diseased or more healthy? I am humbled by the achievements of science and medicine over the past decades and centuries. Diseases that once seemed incurable, now can be treated and symptoms alleviated, we can undergo surgeries, take sophisticated drugs, have new hearts and parts of eyes. But does it make us healthier or less diseased? Well-being has been given away to the holistic or ‘alternative’ medicine practitioners which in Western understanding, or rather lack of understanding, consist of an unvalidated, grey area, woo woo, placebo treatments. But sometimes we are talking about the practices which have thousands of years of tradition. How can the young Western Medicine brother be so dismissive towards elder wise Chinese Medicine or Ayurvedic Medicine sisters? Can the lack of robust scientific evidence mean that something does not work? Or is it just that there is no available proof at the current moment? Do we have the means to examine everything? Do we always need evidence? Can we listen to our inner voice instead, which may be telling us to take the unconventional path?

We can see so much hostility, distrust or just indifference towards ‘alternative’ or sometimes called complementary medicine and vice versa. But maybe there is common ground here. Maybe if we work together we can achieve something better and bigger? If there is a way to relieve somebody’s pain and suffering, does it really matter by which means? And is there anything you can do about it?

Why or what?

Coming from a doctor’s perspective, I recommend safety first. Conventional medicine is great at making diagnoses, this is what doctors are well-trained in. Talk to your doctor, they will know what to do next, trust them. They really care for you and want to help. Your pain is their pain. They work with the tools they have. Anyone who went through medical school must have had some desire to help others. But what if even with good intentions, we just cannot put our symptoms and signs in a fixed box of diagnosis? And does it always matter to have a diagnosis? Or even if we get the diagnosis, does it tell us about why or only about what?  

Can we think for ourselves?

When I went to medical school, I was told that we cannot create new neurons and that type 2 diabetes is a chronic progressive disease that cannot be reversed. Now we understand much more. Do not take things as they are only because you were told so. Make your own research. But be humble and careful. Ask questions but don’t blame or point fingers.

If it is your twentieth trip to the doctor with the same symptom, all your tests are ‘normal’ maybe it is time to think for yourself? Maybe it is time to listen to your body. Maybe your body is trying to tell you something? Is it your job? Is it your relationship? Is it the toxic environment (literally and not) you live in? Is there something you are suppressing?

Do not give up. Slow down. Stop. Look at the signs given to you by your body. There is a solution. It may be outside or it may be inside you. And ask yourself, what does ‘being healthy’ mean to you? Where is your imbalance? Is it in your body, is it in your emotions, is it in your soul?

I can already see a small shift happening.

There are more questions than answers. And I don’t have all the answers. But it is certainly the time for reflection.

The post What does being healthy really mean? appeared first on Convalia.

Changes in our body do not happen overnight – not for better not for worse. We ‘work for’ our symptoms reinforcing the same brain circuits, releasing the same neurotransmitters, stress hormones, inhibiting certain enzymes, exposing ourselves repeatedly to human-made substances like plastics, phthalates from shower gels and perfumes, off-gassing our bed mattresses, over and over again. We create our environment. 

Health is a vector of many variables. We like the reductionist approach as it makes us feel safe and knowledgeable and makes things predictable. But health, is it always predictable?

Our environment and genes

The link between cigarettes and lung cancer has been well established. But why do some people who smoke get cancer and some do not? Is it genetics? Is it an attitude towards life? Is it a loving family? Is it a highly effective detoxification system? Will we ever know? We learn these things from research, but also from conversations and careful listening. Do you know people who have terrible lifestyle but seem healthy and enjoying their lives? I am sure you do. And vice versa, people who have a perfect diet and lifestyle and still seem unhappy or even unhealthy? Studies conducted on identical twins (meaning that have the same genetic material) showed that they can have completely different health outcomes.

If you put a weak, diseased animal or plant in the right environment it will likely regenerate. Have you ever seen an abused dog thriving with the new family just months after being physically hurt? I am not saying that it is always the case, I am only saying it is possible. Can we also put ourselves into the ‘right’ environment where we will thrive? 

Healthy balance

If you do not water a plant it will die, if you water it too much it may also die. There is only so much that we can control internally, the rest depends on the environment that surrounds us. Too little and too much may not be good for us.

We need balance and harmony. Balance within our minds and bodies and harmony in our souls. 

We can influence the environment by choosing nourishing food, a long walk in nature, inspiring conversations with our friend, prioritising sleep, laughter, giving an unexpected gift to someone you love. You can change the environment outside but also inside you.

Can we label gens as good or bad?

Genes only give you a predisposition to better or worse health outcomes. The environment does the rest. Even genes cannot be simply labelled as good or bad as the same gene variant may protect from infections but also increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, like in case of APOE4. It looks like genes that once protected us, today became a risk factor in the industrialised world.  

The surprising truth

Although researchers did a wonderful job, the results of the Human Genome Project which aimed to map all the human genes, brought a lot of confusion. For example, we share about 60% of the same DNA with bananas, and we are more genetically similar to the C. elegans worm than we would like to be. It just tells us that we are a part of nature, much more than our prefrontal cortex wants us to believe.

So maybe it is our environment?

So what if the answers are not in our genes, but rather in our environment? As we now know, there is no single gene which indicates the risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure or depression.

Does it paradoxically feel uncomfortable? Does it feel like we can no longer blame our genes or family history for our health problems? Does it feel like some responsibility landed on our shoulders and we can no longer point fingers at something or somebody else? Being the victim of our circumstances may seem easier, but the real health transformation requires taking the control back and being in charge of our health and environment around us. 

Uncomfortable, but freeing. 

We were all given a unique genetic blueprint. We cannot change it but we have a choice over what we will do with it. Let’s choose wisely.

The post Is it your genetics or is it the environment? appeared first on Convalia.