Strengthen Your Bones

Building and maintaining strong bones is essential for  happy and healthy golden years. And the good news is that is never too late. Here are some things you can do to strengthen and maintain your bone health:

1.  Increase your Calcium. Calcium is essential to building and maintaining strong bones.When you do not consume enough calcium, your body takes it from its stored supply, causing your bones to become porous and weak. Good food sources for calcium: milk, cheese, dark leafy greens, sardines, tofu, nuts, white beans, oats and blackstrap molasses. 

2. Increase your Vitamin D.  In order for the calcium in these foods to be absorbed, your body also needs lots of Vitamin D. Fortunately, one of the best ways to get Vitamin D is from the sunlight. Unfortunately, sunscreen and advanced age limit our ability to synthesize this vitamin from the sun. So, once again, food sources can be a good source: sardines, salmon, eggs, cheese, tuna to name a few.

3. Ensure you eat foods with Vitamin K. Vitamin K also seems to play a role in strengthening bones, and can be found in leafy greens, spinach, broccoli, bok choy and Chinese cabbage. 

4. Avoid caffeine. Four cups of coffee or more per day may increase risk of bone fractures.

5. Exercise. Especially weight-bearing and muscle-strengthening exercises. Running, jumping rope, walking, hiking, climbing stairs, dance, pilates, yoga, weight training, resistance bands, cycling and swimming are some good exercises for strengthening your bones. 

The Mayo Clinic has a very useful article that spells out the daily vitamin and exercise requirements for maintaining good bone health. 

Cellulite

Oh to still have skin as smooth as a peach.  Cellulite, the curse of as much as 90% of women, is caused by fat cells that have bulged around fibrous connective tissue, producing a dimpled skin surface. But is there anything that I can do about it without relying on invasive procedures?  Turns out perhaps there is a way to get rid of cellulite by strengthening  and hydrating your body's cells and the body's connective tissues.  Here's a list of things that just might help:

1. Avoid excessive alcohol and smoking. 
2.  Eat lots of leafy greens and fruit.
3. Avoid junk food, processed food, and artificial additives.
4. Limit sugar and salt.
5. Drink lots of water to hydrate and flush toxins.
6. Brush skin with a body brush to stimulate blood and lymph flow as well as to encourage new cell growth.
7. Exercise, a combination of cardio and weight-training.

Pu-erh Tea

Pu-erh tea (from Pu-er county in southern Yunnan Province, China) has been in the media lately for its curative properties. Made from leaves plucked from the Camellia sinensis plant, it is fermented and sold either as loose leaves or compressed tea bricks or tea cakes.


It is purported to have many heath benefits including weight loss and lowering LDL cholesterol. There are also claims that it lowers blood pressure, protects connective tissue and attacks free radicals in the body.


While it does have caffeine (though less than in coffee) so do all teas made from the tea plant Calellia sinensis. I love how brewing it and taking the time to sip this unique tea provides me with an opportunity to slow down and be in the moment.


Tea expert Jeff Fuchs (whose course I took on Asian tea at Carleton University) gave an informative interview about tea, and pu-erh tea in particular, for Ottawa Magazine.

Cooking from Scratch

I don't eat a lot of processed or packaged foods, but there is still room for improvement. In the summer, especially, I want to take advantage of eating what I grow myself or what I can buy from local farmers. Now is the time to eat in season.  One of the things I already do is make my own strawberry jam, enough to last us for the whole year until it is time to pick them again.  Going a little farther this year, I have also made raspberry jam (making the jam with an hour or two of picking the berries) and my personal favourite... apricot jam.

It is much easier to make jam than most people realise and what I learned recently, while suprising, makes sense. If you pick your own ripe berries, you don't have to make all the jam at once. By freezing the fresh fruit, you can make jam throughout the year. It will taste better that way than the jam that you made months ago and stored. I usually make enough all at once to last the year. But if you have a big freezer, then it's actually better to make a batch as you need it. How liberating!

Cooking from scratch not only allows you to make use of fresh produce, but also helps you to know what is in whatever you're eating. The result is more wholesome food with less additives, sugar and salt. I'll lnever know for sure what was in the soil or what it may have been sprayed with, but at least I can eliminate all the chemicals that were added in the processing.

Avocados

It took a friend's comment about how delicious she found this fruit to make me give it another look. I had tried them in my teens but wasn't keen, so I hadn't tasted them again since. Avocados had a bad rap for awhile because of their high fat content, but with J.'s rapturous endorsement, I did a little research and found that they are packed with all sorts of healthy properties.

Avocados:

1. Are rich is Vitamins A, C and E, and potassium.

2. Are high in protein.

3. Are high in oleic acid, a fat that activates the part of the brain that signals that you are full, thus helping with weight control.

4. While high in fat, they are monounsaturated fats and actually maintain the good cholesterol (HDL) and lower the bad (LDL). They also lower triglycerides.

5. With more carotenoid lutin than other commonly eaten fruits, they protect the eyes from macular degeneration and cataracts.

6. Protects against strokes

7. 1 cup of avocado contains 23% of recommended daily value of folate, which may lower the incidence of heart disease.

8. High in vitamin E, which protects against many diseases.

9. Contains glutathione, an important antioxidant, helpful in preventing symptoms of aging, cancer and heart disease.

Last week I bought my first avocado, tried it, and liked the mild creamy taste. So I will add avocado to the list of foods that I Iike and will aim to eat one a week, simply sliced and served without any embellishments, because I think it tastes great just like that.