Robyn's Blog

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl:  In one of Victoria Boutenko’s books, she recommends using a dental appliance that gives a person extra chewing time, since the green smoothies often are used in place of 1 or 2 meals.  What is your opinion of this?

Answer: I think it’s an interesting idea, totally untested both in theory and in result, and not a high priority for me, considering how many other more tested health habits are truly important to master.  I’m not really sure we are going to compensate for several generations of narrowing palates, with a gum exerciser.  (I think she suggests this exercise not because we’re drinking smoothies, but because we’ve degenerated our palate/jaw over the past few generations.)  Honestly, it sounds to me like the kind of thing you’d buy and not end up really using.  (Are you super motivated to work your jaw until it’s tired, daily, for months on end?)  Sounds like torture.  Personally, I like to chew gum.  I’m not sure it’s giving me the uber-jaws of my ancestors, or of the primates, though.

Eat salad for dinner and chew it well.  Make sure you’re using your BlendTec to its full potential with daily green smoothies and other 12 Steps to Whole Foods recipes, because the gorgeous thing about blended foods is, you don’t need strong jaws.

So I’ve been a little obsessed with duplicating the Turtle Mountain chocolate “ice cream” I blogged about recently.

Obsessed enough to dig the ice cream maker we got as a wedding present 20 years ago out of the basement. (It got used once. By my sister-in-law.)

Using the ice cream maker, the result was fabulous. Only problem is that it didn’t freeze up to ice cream consistency—only a thick milkshake consistency. Here’s the super-easy recipe, with two options, using an ice cream maker or the BlendTec:

WORLD’S BEST CHOCOLATE “ICE CREAM”

1 can coconut milk

½ cup raw, organic agave

¼ cup raw chocolate powder (you could use chocolate nibs, or nonalkalized cocoa)

¼ tsp. sea salt

Blend all in BlendTec until smooth and process in ice cream maker for 30 mins.

Or, what worked better for me was to freeze most of the concoction into 10 ice cubes, then blend the ice cubes and the remaining liquid mixture in the BlendTec, serving immediately.

Enjoy! (And this will be in Ch. 11 of 12 Steps to Whole Foods.)

Before I talk about sulfur, I belong to a Yahoo group called LDSRaw (for Mormon raw-food enthusiasts).  One group member lost a lot of hair and did a bunch of online research to talk to other raw foodies.  She said she mostly found, talking to others, that if they lost hair in a “detox” phase (for lack of a better explanation), it eventually grew back thicker and shinier.  Maybe that will give some of you hope.

She also said using the herb red raspberry leaf, to balance hormones, helped her.  (Her problem was the autoimmune disorder alopecia, where she’d actually go bald in patches, different than thinning hair, which is much more common.  She blamed severe stress in her life for the onset of that problem, rather than the raw diet that had resolved so many other health issues for her.)

My friend Row was telling me recently that her husband’s surgery to remove a melanoma from his face resulted in a large incision.  But she had been studying organic SULFUR and had him using it.  The astonishing consequence was that 10 days post-surgery, her husband’s mother did not even notice the scar, because it had healed so well.

Sulfur is supposed to be present in our foods (like onions and garlic), though it is one of the most pervasively depleted nutrients thanks to chemical pesticides and fertilizers, refined foods, and depleted soils.  If you don’t eat a lot of organic produce from good soil, you may be deficient in sulfur.  When Finland stopped using chemical pesticides, its disease rate dropped 90 percent from 1985 levels.  We in the U.S., of course, are totally enamored of our chemical treatment protocols in growing crops and have no plans to stop anytime soon, disease risk or no.

Sulfur is one of the most critical minerals involved in oxygen transport in the cells.  I believe that mineral deficiencies are behind many of the diseases we suffer from in the modern world, and sulfur is one of the most important and possibly easiest to address.  And when you improve oxygenation in your cells, you’ve solved much of your cancer risk, as cancer (as well as fungus, bacteria, mold, etc.) is anaerobic and cannot live in the presence of oxygen.

The ongoing study in the link I’ve provided below has documented impressive results using sulfur against diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, breast cancers and lymphomas, skin conditions such as acne, psoriasis, rosacea, liver spots, and disorders associated with lupus.  Other study participants have seen disappearance of improvement in respiratory, parasite, migraine, Attention Deficit Disorder, and gastrointestinal problems.  Study participants have reported grey hair returning to its natural color and thinning hair re-thickening.

The study has 1,100 participants using sulfur.  If you’d like to try it, obtain the sulfur from the study rather than the company promoting it, so you get it at a large discount.  I personally think even the price offered by the study is high (2 lbs. for over $50).  So you’ll have to decide if that’s too expensive for you.  Organic sulfur is non-toxic even in large quantities because it’s a food and is easily digested, assimilated, and eliminated (not stored in the body’s organs).

I cannot vouch for the methodology of the study or the efficacy of using sulfur.  However, I’d try this (an internal solution, trying to address the cause) before I’d try a pharmaceutical or some network marketing company’s hair cream.  The BEST, long-term answers that will help virtually everyone involve getting off sugar, processed foods, and most meat and dairy, and onto as much raw plant food as possible, which oxygenates cells and tissues and improves our ability to utilize minerals well.

You can read about the wide-ranging benefits reported in the now 9-yr.-old study about using sulfur here:

http://www.naturodoc.com/sulfurstudy.htm

I have been reading a bunch of scientific papers by David Brownstein and G. Abraham on iodine, as I have suspected that iodine deficiency may be partly to blame for the fact that 1 in 4 American women has a thyroid problem (countless men, too), and most of those are undiagnosed.

You may know that your thyroid is responsible for regulating metabolism.  If you have hypothyroidism, among a host of other symptoms, you are likely to have low energy and gain weight easily (and have a hard time losing it), regardless of your caloric intake.  (And hyperthyroidism, which is that gland revving and eventually burning out, often manifests with buggy eyes and manic energy.)  If your way of testing your thyroid is to go to an M.D. and ask for a test, you likely tested only T3, and that doesn’t show anywhere near the whole picture.  Also, the M.D.s accept a “normal” range that is inappropriately huge.

You need to go to a clinic specializing in hormones, and usually those are run by nurse practitioners.  Locally (Utah County), three clinics specialize in this, but I recommend Francine at Wellnique in Orem, who prescribes only bioidenticals rather than synthetics.  Get a full-panel blood test and have her analyze the interplay of a variety of factors including T3, T4, progesterone, and testosterone.  (Unfortunately most insurance companies won’t pay for this.)  You have to have iodine to synthesize T3 and T4.  And iodine is frankly hard to come by in food sources.

North Americans and Western Europeans have a high rate of goiter, or thyroid enlargement as felt by palpating the neck.  That’s a classic sign of iodine deficiency.  The studies I reviewed showed anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of Caucasions to have this disorder, rather easily rectified for most with iodine supplementation.

I’ve included a link below to quite a few iodine studies, for the meticulous, analytical, and detail oriented among you.  To find out if you are iodine deficient, you can get an iodine patch test from a pharmacy (Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo has it, locals).  You paint a 2” by 2” square on your inner forearm with the iodine.  If it is absorbed within 24 hours, you are iodine deficient (and you likely will be).  If the iodine isn’t absorbed, then you don’t need iodine supplementation.

You won’t be surprised to hear me say that the best way to get highly bioavailable iodine is through plant food:  the Japanese get it through sea vegetables, like seaweed, kelp, and dulse.  They have very low rates of breast and reproductive cancers and other iodine-deficiency problems, whereas we have high rates of all those problems.  If you like nori sheets, eat a few every day.  Roll hummus and/or veggies in it, or tear it up and put it in soup.  I personally don’t like it, so I season food with kelp, but that’s not enough.  I am using a Lugol solution of iodine and potassium iodine to try to achieve the average Japanese rate of iodine through seaweed consumption.

These are some papers regarding research on iodine:

http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/opt_Research_I.shtml

Hugs and thanks and prayers back, for peace for you, everyone who commented on my last blog (and all you lurkers who emailed me, too).  Your kindness and prayers for my family mean more to me than I know how to express.

Onward and upward.  One of my biggest frustrations in helping people improve their nutrition is that even those of us who eat the healthiest diet sometimes still have mineral absorption problems, despite massively improved health.  That’s possibly thanks to decades of eating the wrong food before we got on the “straight and narrow.”  Helping someone with these specific problems involves getting really detailed and scientific about what is going wrong, and what is missing.  It’s a trial-and-error process.

Lately I’ve been a bit obsessed with studying why some people who eat right have thinning hair.  My recent blogs about whole salts, and the next two about iodine and sulfur, are meant to help one reader of this web site and blog, with whom I’ve become friends.  She is a former Baywatch actress and Hollywood starlet in California, on a quest to find out why her gorgeous hair is dropping to the ground despite being 75-95% raw for some time now.

I’m not going gray, and I wouldn’t say I have thin hair, but it’s much thinner than it was before I had kids, and I am making myself an experiment as well, to see if I can change this.  I have found NO answers to the thinning and graying hair issue within mainstream medicine, and I’ve found no scientific studies on the issue, which is bizarre given the pervasiveness of the problems.  I wish I had the resources to undertake a truly scientific study on what might address this issue within nutrition, because many people are frustrated by hair issues.

So check out the next two blogs if these are issues for you.  I am synthesizing information on iodine and sulfur, but you can decide for yourself if one or both are worth a try for you.  I also think that addressing ALKALINITY has a strong probability of making a big difference.  That’s in Ch. 12, coming up in a couple of months for those of you who subscribe to 12 Steps to Whole Foods.

I promised recently that I’d tell you why I was stressed and my friends were dropping by with healthy treats. Like coconut-milk “ice cream” and whole-wheat pumpkin cookies and applesauce brownies.

It’s hard to talk about.  I’ve had this written a while but am finally getting the courage to post it.  So here goes.  Gulp.

I’m in the process of becoming a single mom, after 20 years of marriage.  I’ve been married virtually my whole adult life!  Because we don’t speak ill of each other, no one saw it coming.  Not the people closest to us or even our kids.

Sad times!  I think it’s tempting in the biggest crises of our lives to let go of our health, quit exercising, and turn to processed food for comfort.  I won’t do it, though—I’ve been there before.  That’s a good way to let anxiety or depression or low energy get the best of you, right when you need your health the most.

In an effort to simplify, instead, I did let my oldest three kids choose to quit piano if they wanted. (If you saw us on Wife Swap, you have to know that was hard!)  I’m proud of them—some decided to continue, caring about their goals even during what promises to be the hardest year of their lives so far.  I think they’re going to be okay, or at least, I’ll do all I can to that end.

And their dad has bought a house just a five-minute walk from here.  He and I are friendly, care about each other, and will always put the kids first.  I’ll be officially divorced probably next month, because we agree on all things financial and custody-related, and we’re both fully capable of supporting a household, so no lawyers or conflict are involved, and papers are filed.

That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a lot of pain, or that there won’t be lasting scars.  I am so tremendously appreciative of the sweet emails and blog comments from so many of you.  You are a balm to the brokenhearted, and I love you.

As this site went live only a year ago, I’ve been reflecting on its short history.  GreenSmoothieGirl.com has always been, first and foremost, a labor of love to help people understand and love and nurture themselves and their bodies, and their families, better.  But I could never have anticipated the way “e-relationships” would enrich my life!

Even if I had to release my death grip on my “one of these kids will dang well be a concert pianist” dream, I’m not letting go of good nutrition.  One silver lining in this dark cloud of my family’s life is that I will be of more service, more relatable, now, to single moms.  There are a LOT of you out there.  A friend of mine said I’m entering a subculture you really know only when you enter it. 

And honestly, I think what I’m going through probably is like what many of you go through, because life includes tragedy along the way for almost all of us.  Right now is a very scary time in the economy and lots of people are suffering.  It’s likely to get worse before it gets better.  It’s a time when we might be tempted to ignore nutrition and our physical health.  But we can’t afford to, because when those things go south, so do many other important things, like our optimism, energy, and ability to reach goals.  Our health is one of the most important things we have, and all parts of it are related: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

I know some people think, “Well, Robyn has more time than I do to spend in the kitchen.”  (I don’t know how that was possible, even before now!)  But now I really have to “do it all.”  So I will learn some new things as I keep on teaching people about the benefits of the whole, mostly-raw, plant-based diet . . . single.  Thanks for being in my corner.

Much love,

Robyn

If you garden, you should use nonhybridized, untreated, non-genetically modified seeds, known as “heirloom.”  Much of what you get at the local nursery has been chemically treated or mildly radiated to not produce offspring (so the seeds cannot be stored for more than one season).  Or their genetic components have been changed, so that we don’t know what deleterious effects that will have on our environment or our health.

I like www.heirloomseeds.com, not just because their seeds are untreated, unhybridized (many of the varieties dating back well over 100 years), and non-genetically modified, but also because they have a huge variety and good prices.  When I first read Eliot Coleman’s Four-Season Harvest, I got very excited about winter gardening.  I wanted to plant all the greens, like mache, that would grow even at zero degrees in my winter grow boxes.  But I couldn’t find mache anywhere, locally.  It, and every other variety of greens I read about in Coleman’s book, can be found at www.heirloomseeds.com.  For instance, New Zealand spinach, which isn’t really spinach, but similar, with a lot of vertical growing capacity up against my fence—and it doesn’t bolt in the heat.

If you’re going to plant this fall and/or winter, though, order now.  Heirloomseeds.com takes several weeks to fulfill orders.

For more information about how long you can store seeds, those of you who do food storage, this is a good source:

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/Garden/07221.html

This continues a review of one of my favorite things, OHCS, and a link for where to buy completely unrefined salt.

A double-blind study done in Austria in 2003 examined the effects of drinking a minimum of 1.5 liters of water with table salt, versus 1.5 liters of water with Original Himalayan Crystal Salt (OHCS).  Those who drank water with OHCS achieved improvements in respiratory, circulatory, connective tissue, nervous system, and organ functions.  They reported improved sleep, energy, and concentration, as well as weight loss, noticeable hair and nail growth, and heightened brain activity and consciousness.  (Those using table salt saw no such gains.)

Drinking a teaspoon of Sole (the solution of maximum OHCS dissolved in water) added to a glass of water every morning restores the body’s acid-alkaline balance, normalizes blood pressure, dissolves and releases cryallized deposits, cleanses the intestines, improves skin conditions, and has even been found to weaken addictions.  Electrolytes are created that improve the body’s conductivity and stimulate circulation. 

Taking a 30-minute bath in OHCS is said to be the equivalent of a three-day cleanse or fast: minerals are absorbed through the skin, and the “sole” maintains the natural protective film on the skin so it does not dry out.  You have to put lots of salt in the bath, though—about one whole 2-lb. bag of OHCS.  Think of it as a spa treatment.

Some have asked me if Real Salt (mined in Utah) is a good product.  The answer is that it’s much better than refined salt, but it claims to have only 50 minerals and is still somewhat refined.  OHCS has all 84 trace minerals. 

See the link below to get OCHS directly from the only importer I trust–others are not reputable and may be importing another product entirely.  Some are reportedly importing, for instance, road salt from India, which has a high profit margin but no benefit for your health!  I recommend getting some finely ground salt for use in your food, as well as salt stones to get started making your own Sole.  You may also like to get a salt inhaler to help clear and clean sinuses.  So, where to buy unrefined salt:

http://www.marketerschoice.com/app/?af=835790

Do you suspect you have mineral deficiencies?  I hope this review of one of my favorite products will help you.  I think many people, even those eating a decent diet, have mineral absorption problems.  I have been studying reasons for that.  I don’t have all the answers, but here’s one rather easy idea.

If I go to a restaurant and eat something with a lot of sodium, I can barely make a fist when I wake up the next day.  My fingers are like pudgy sausages.  My body hates salt—or so I thought.

You probably know that sodium chloride (table salt) consumption is linked to heart disease.  Your body can’t handle more than a minute amount, and when it gets too much, edema results.  Swelling of heart tissues is especially dangerous—and my pudgy fingers are just the first thing I notice if I eat food with refined (table) salt.

Your body needs 23 times the amount of water as it receives in table salt, to neutralize it.  The excess salt re-crystallizes, causing uric acid to form, binding with sodium chloride to form crystals then deposited in joints and bones.  The results?  Arthritis, kidney and gall stones, gout, and more.

Yet the body is made up of water and salt.  You’ve seen salt licks in fields for cows or horses, and you know salt is needed in the body.  Are you confused?  The problem is, first, the devastating consequences of REFINED salt, added to so many modern processed foods in, second, excessive quantities.  It bears no resemblance to natural crystal salt.  You need about .007 ounces of salt daily.  So what are the best salts for health?

I recommend drinking “Sole” first thing every morning.  Sole consists of 1 tsp. of a solution of Original Himalayan Crystal Salt dissolved in water.  (Not a teaspoon of salt—rather, a teaspoon of saltwater solution!)  You make it by filling a small jar with the OHCS stones, covering it with water, and letting it sit several hours. (It can be used indefinitely, as salt never goes “bad.”)

Why do this?  The combination of water and completely unrefined salt has a higher energetic vibration than either the water or salt alone.  You are getting a natural concentration of all 84 trace minerals in a natural form bioavailable to the human body—that mineral list is the entire periodic table except for the 10 inert gases!  You may be able to address longtime problems stemming from mineral deficiencies, merely by adding this simple habit to your routine while also eating a healthy diet.

I have zero water retention using this salt.  One tsp. of Sole every morning is only 411 mg of sodium, and the USDA recommends no more than 2,500 mg.  The average American gets 5,000 mg.  The only people who may want to avoid this are those who have been advised because of health problems by their doctors to severely limit sodium completely.  Everyone else should replace table salt with OHCS and stop eating salt that is stripped of critical nutrients, which agressively seeks out and binds to minerals from your body that you desperately need.

Table salt is cooked, refined, and doesn’t contain the 84 trace minerals needed for digestion, electrolyte production, and other bodily functions.  People who are salt deprived have aches (especially headaches), and muscle cramping, especially at night, among other symptoms.  And people who are mineral deprived suffer more symptoms than I can list here, but they include fatigue, hair loss, brittle nails, and graying hair.  Mineral deficiencies affect every system in your body.

The best salts for health are here:

http://www.marketerschoice.com/app/?af=835790

You probably don’t buy Jif brand peanut butter anyway, but what I saw at Costco today completely amazed me.  It’s a new low in deceptive advertising.  The boxes containing Jif Crunchy and Creamy Peanut Butter had this printed all over them:

Made with no partially hydrogenated oils!

So I was intrigued, since Jif is the lowest-common-denominator peanut butter that has always contained three lousy ingredients: refined salt, refined sugar, and hydrogenated fat.  I thought to myself, “How exciting! Jif got rid of the rapeseed oil!”

So I picked up the product and read the label.  It said, “Contains less than 2 percent fully hydrogenated oils (rapeseed).”

Unbelievable.  They’re bragging that they don’t have PARTIALLY hydrogenated fats, because they have FULLY hydrogenated fats!  I guess they’re hoping the moms who buy the peanut butter are dumb enough not to investigate fully.

Hydrogenated fats are when you heat the oil above 400 degrees and bombard it with extra hydrogen atoms.  It’s rancid and toxic and solid—both in the can and in your blood stream.  It’s an additive to peanut butter to keep the oil from separating—good for aesthetics and ease of use, terrible for nutrition.  A fake food that your body has no idea what to do with.  All your body can do is fight the free radicals clogging your bloodstream and damaging your cells—it can’t use that “food” for building, repair, or cleansing.

My suggestion: don’t buy Jif peanut butter.