Friday, November 03, 2006

4th November 2006

A yummy receipe from my kitchen

GROUND BEEF PATTIES (Hamburgers) - can be gluten free if you substitute the wheat flour with rice flour.
Ingredients
1 kg of ground beef
2 eggs - break into a bowl and mix well with fork.
1 grated carrot
1 small grated potato
1 small finely chopped (or grated) onion
½ cup of wholemeal plain flour
½ teaspoon of salt
a dash of pepper
Chilli flakes - optional

Method
Combine all ingredients in a bowl. The mix should be sticky.
Roll and then flatten so that they are as thick as a pen and two thirds the size of a CD.
Fry or grill on one side until the meat changes colour and is not bloody and then turn over and fry for a short time on that side.
Makes 12 good sized patties.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

4th October 2006

Every heard of Dr. Baroody's book Alkalize or Die. It's hard to stick to what he suggests is a good diet but it does make sense.

Every time we stress, eat junk food, food that has been made from refined products e.g. white flour, white rice, sugar, and battery eggs and chickens and veal (antibiotics to keep them free of disease) these are making our bodies more acidic. I told this to my cousin who is an intensive care nurse. She said that they are always monitoring the patient's ph level. If the acidity goes above a certain level the person dies. So, to keep free of disease we need to eat more alkaline foods like watermelon and rockmelon and another good one is juiced wheatgrass. If you drink wheatgrass every day, you will notice a marked improvement in your health and even your nails will be stronger.

Olha

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Sugar holics anononymous

Hi

You may wonder why I would start up a blog like this? I am a reformed sugar holic. No not alcholic/smoker or drug addict or anything like that but something more insidious and labled as good for you...although cigarettes were too once, and so was cocaine and opium 65 years ago.

I used to look forward each day to eating at least one cake/bun per day. Also I added sugar to my tea/coffee. When I went out to buffett dinner I would make sure I had room for at least 4, 5 or even 6 cakes for afters. No I wasn't fat but I never felt well for a long time.

After the operation to remove some cartlidge from my knee is when I really felt sick but looked...slim and well. The more I ate cake wise the slimmer I got. I would get a bloated feeling in my stomach sometimes and I was burping all the time but didn't know why? I would get stomach pains and diarrahoea but any doctor/specialist I went to told me that I was nervous and should just get on with life and stop worrying. The burping began immediately after the knee operation I didn't get one night's sleep without waking at least 6 times from the burping. I was getting thinner and thinner. This went on for 5 years.

I finally found a doctor that diagnosed me with systemic candida or candida albicans. It's a yeast infection in the stomach. Any sugar, mushrooms, vinagar, wine, cheese, yeast was making me worse. I had to give up my cakes and chocolate.

Why did I get it? I was told it can be caused by antibiotics (which I took after my knee op and sometimes for chests infection before), stress, the pill, amalgam fillings (of which I had plenty), and steriods. It was the antibiotics after my knee op that really set the ball rolling on the bloating and burping - I was just like a brewery but didn't know it. I also often felt off balance, like I was thinking through a fog, in air conditioning - just like I was floating, and forgetful all the time. There are many more symptoms you can get which I will list below:
Cystitis, vaginitis or prostatitis
endometriosis
Thrush (oral or vaginal) more than once
Athlete's foot or fungal infection of the nails or skin
Severely affected by exposure to chemical fumes, perfumes, tobacco smoke. Are symptoms worse after taking yeasty or sugary foods or drinks?
Suffer from a variety of allergies
Abdominal distension - bloating, diarrhoea or constipation
Premenstrual syndrome - fluid retention, irratibility
Depression, fatigue, lethargy, poor memory
Crave sweet foods, bread, alcohol
Vague muscle aches and joint swelling
Vaginal discarge or irritation or menstrual cramps or pain
Lack of impotence or lack of sexual desire
If you answer yes to at least one of these then Candida may be present in your system.

What did the doctor tell me to do?
I was put on a anti candida diet -
  1. No SUGAR of any kind that includes - glucose, sucrose, and all the other ones. Raw sugar, brown sugar is still sugar.
  2. No fermented products - vinegar, salad dressing, wine, pickles, beer
  3. No mushrooms - fungus makes it worse
  4. No fruit that is old
  5. No grapes - as they can hold fungus
  6. No cheese - has fungus
  7. No yeast - no yeast breads and that includes sour dough, rye, lebanese flat breads, yeast biscuits, etc
  8. No raw peanuts as they grown under ground and can hold fungus.
  9. No yeast spreads
  10. No chocolate.
  11. Avoidance of all goods that use refined white four.

So what could I eat:

  1. Yeast free bread which can be purchased in the supermarket or Irish bread which is yeast free too. Damper - Australian.
  2. Fruit and vegetables which are fresh and not stored for weeks.
  3. Savoury biscuits - check packet for yeast and sugar
  4. Any nuts other than raw peanuts.
  5. Any nut spreads (not raw peanut spread - must be roasted) that do not contain sugar.
  6. Tahini spread
  7. Fish spreads
  8. Honey - it's natural not refined
  9. Brown rice
  10. Wholemeal spagetti
  11. Milk - preferably skim.
  12. Butter - marg
  13. Fish
  14. Chicken
  15. Meat
  16. Shell fish - i.e. prawns, etc.

It wasn't so bad. I packed up any sweet things I had in my pantry and threw them in the bin. The next few weeks I went through withdrawals. I nearly went crazy walking up and down in the house wanting a chocolate or a sweet biscuit. I felt better for the first time in years. I kept to this diet for nearly a year and found that if I slipped up I paid for it by feeling lousy. But I couldn't get free of this candida. Then a friend told me about a naturopath that had helped them and I saw him. He put me onto some homoepathic drops (I had to still stick to the diet), and acidolphilus and bifidus and eventually I rid my body of this disease.

Why did I bother to put myself through all this? I read a book on candida by Leon Chaitow (Candida Albicans) which opened my eyes and make me realise that this was a serious disease and it would lead things like cancer.

Do not live life in the yesterdays, live life in the todays.

Bye for now.