Asparagus Nutrients and Preparation

Many of my readers ask for menus and preparation of nutritious foods and especially vegetables. The art of home-cooking is becoming a lost-art in many homes as we slip into the trap of "fat-food chains and restaurant-addiction." My mother often told me, from the very tender age of five years-old, "You don’t know what’s in the can and you don’t know what happens in the kitchen of a restaurant." At the age of fourteen, I learned first-hand what took place in the kitchen of a restaurant, and it would scare most people into learning, firsthand to prepare fresh home-cooked meals.
Asparagus is an excellent source of blood-building folate infection-fighting vitamin C. It also supplies small amounts of iron, potassium, and the B vitamin riboflavin, which helps the absorption of other B vitamins and is vital for mental balance. It is naturally low in sodium, fat, and calories, and great for weight watchers—if you skip the butter and hollandaise sauce.
It is most abundant and inexpensive when purchased in-season from April through June. This popular veggie comes in white and purple varieties, as well as the more common green type, which is the most nutritious. Select spears that have pointy closed tips, and are either young and firm or large and tender. Avoid stalks that have been sitting in water for a long time. If they are limp or soft, move on to another supplier.
Store asparagus in the refrigerator with cut stem ends immersed in water. To prepare asparagus is easy. Simply break off the bottoms at the natural point of firmness and discard the woody stem ends. Keep it simple. Steaming for about 10 minutes or blanching is excellent methods or preparation. Serve with steamed mushrooms and lemon juice. Asparagus is excellent in omelets or quiche, or added to stir-fries and they make a satisfying velvety soup!
Serving size: ½ cup
Calories: 23 Calories from fat: 11%
Fat: 0.3 g
Saturated: only trace amounts
Polyunsaturated: only trace amounts
Cholesterol: 0
Sodium: 4 mg
Protein: 2.3 g
Carbohydrate: 4.0 g
Dietary fiber: 1.5 g
Chief Nutrients:
Folate: 88.3 mcg
Vitamin C 24.4 mg
Potassium 279.0 mg
Vitamin A 74.7 RE
Vitamin B6 0.1 mg
Iron 0.g mg
Riboflavin 0.1 mg
Thiamine 0.1 mg

Cold and Flu Fighters

What are colds and flu? They are infections caused by viruses, not bacteria. A cold usually lasts a few days. But it takes most people a week or two to recover from the flu, or influenza. Unfortunately, some people develop life threatening complications from the flu, like pneumonia.
Who gets these infections? Viruses are continuously changing over time. This makes people susceptible throughout their lives. Those with immune systems weakened by stress are especially at risk.
What are the Symptoms?
* Runny nose, sneezing, coughing, and a sore throat
* Low-grade fever for colds; high grade fever for the flu
* Fatigue and muscle aches for the flu
Want some advice on how to stay healthy during the flu-season?
Eat breakfast, according to Professor Andy Smith of Cardiff University, who directed a study of 100 people in Wales. He found that people who had fewer colds were more likely to eat breakfast. And they weren’t just healthy because they got up early.
Breakfast is associated with a general healthy lifestyle, but we considered the special ingredients important in getting through the flu season unscathed.
Here’s some advice on what a healthy breakfast should look like:
1) A glass of orange juice or a well-sized orange cut into crescents.
2) Cantaloupe cut into chunks
3) A cup of low-fat yogurt (watch the sugar content) or a glass of low- fat milk fortified with live yogurt cultures. Acidophilus should be indicated.
4) A bowl of whole-grain cereal with a low-fat milk. Rolled oats or porridge.
Start with vitamin C. While vitamin C may not prevent a cold, research shows it might shorten the length of time you suffer from cold symptoms. You can get plenty of vitamin C from oranges, orange juice, cantaloupe, grapefruit and strawberries. And if you’re tired of these, try tangerines, pomegranate juice, mangoes, and guavas.
To boost your immune system, Dutch researchers recommend eating more when you have a viral infection and less when you have a bacterial infection.
You may have heard you shouldn’t drink milk when you have a cold because it increases the amount of mucus you produce, but studies show milk doesn’t affect mucus at all. In fact, researchers say drinking milk, even without live cultures, can improve your immune system and help fight off colds.
Get selenium from whole grain or meat. In one study, rats deficient in selenium developed a particularly vicious form of the flu. Low levels of selenium could make your bout with the flu much worse.
Ginger is a fragrant herb which can help rid your body of viruses. Gently simmer three to four slices of fresh ginger root in a pint of hot water for 10-30 minutes to make a refreshing and soothing remedy.
Pineapple juice and honey. All that coughing and hacking leaves your throat feeling scratchy and sore. Just mix together 8 ounces of warm pineapple juice with two teaspoons of honey for a delicious, soothing drink.
The Sicilian remedy was something like this: Mix a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, with some honey and a little lemon for a home-made cough syrup. Some Italians would find a tablespoon of Anisette very effective. When I was in my twenties, a friend had been given a bottle of apricot brandy he didn’t like, so he gave it to me. I used it as a cough syrup — only when I had a cold with a cough. It worked like a charm. At the time, I had an alcoholic uncle who was hooked on "Geritol" which just happened to be about 80 percent alcohol. It was intended to be a brand name liquid vitamin elixer but it was very addictive to my uncle. My aunt finally caught on when she looked at the content. She just happened to be working in a drug store and knew much more than the average person about the products she sold.
Chicken Soup. As President Reagan would say, "Here you go again." Health experts finally caught on to the healing power of chicken soup. Researchers discovered the hot liquid moistens and clears your nasal passages and soothes your sore throat. It can also relieve symptoms of an upper respiratory tract infection by reducing inflammation. To make your own medically proven home remedy, add some garlic, celery, onions, carrots, oregano and parsley to your homemade chicken broth. As I have said many times, my father considered it the best full course meal in a bowl you could possibly want or need to stay healthy.
Water is very important to keep your throat lining moist and supple so it won’t crack (which allows viruses in). Drink eight glasses a day at about the rate of one per hour until your urine almost turns clear.
Get a flu shot unless you are allergic to eggs. You should get a flu shot if you are over 50 or have a chronic condition. Because viruses are constantly changing, you must get a flu shot every year. For best results, be well-rested and relaxed. If you’re under stress, your body won’t respond properly to the vaccine.
WASH YOUR HANDS FREQUENTLY. Navy recruits lathered up five times a day and watched their rate of respiratory illness drop 45 percent. Wash vigorously with regular soap and water for 15 to 20 seconds, long enough to sing the famous "Happy Birthday" song, then rinse.
Exercise can help keep your immune system strong. But if you have a fever, sore throat, aching muscles and joints, vomiting, diarrhea, or you are coughing up mucus—wait until your infection runs its course before starting up again.

Rheumatoid Arthritis - Cathartic Treatment

Rheumatoid Arthritis Relationship to Stress
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, and if you have a chronic medical condition, new research finds that the pen may be as mighty as your medication.
A recent study found that people with chronic asthma or rheumatoid arthritis (RA) experienced improvements in their conditions after spending a total of one hour writing. What they wrote about, however, made all the difference.
Some of the people in the study were asked to write about the most stressful event of their lives in an emotional, insightful manner, and some were asked to write about a neutral topic—how they planned to spend the rest of their day.
Four months after the writing experiment, asthma participants were evaluated with spirometry, which is a way of measuring the air capacity of the lungs, and people in the RA group were examined by a rheumatologist.
The people with asthma who wrote about stressful events showed improvements in lung function, but the people in the other writing group showed no change.
The people in the RA experimental group also showed improvement—a 28 percent reduction in disease severity. The group who wrote about neutral topics had no change in symptom severity. Overall, 47 percent of the people, who wrote about stressful events in their lives, experienced improvement in the disease.
Although researchers aren’t quite sure why the writing exercise helped, it might be worth trying. Just grab a pen and some paper and start writing.
As an avid writer and editorialist with rheumatoid arthritis (24 years), I can attest to this result. I write to my congressmen and senators on subjects that are confrontational. Some of my best friends are very much aware of that flare in my writing and have told me so. Although, I mean no harm, it is a kind of catharsis and I do believe it has a subconscious connection to my effort to relieve or reduce the excruciating pain (24-7) of rheumatoid arthritis. The asthma, which I also have, is another source that is, apparently, addressed by this activity.
I have my insightful and inspirational rheumatologist to thank for a sudden burst of expression delivered by the power of the "pen." The large number of positive responses I get from my contributions in the health, recreation and political fields are undoubtedly another helpful source for well-being.
Although, this is not directly related to "Healthy Eating," it is another important consideration to resolving health problems in a more positive way.
Could writing about stress be a cathartic remedy for excruciating pain and improving both RA and asthmatic condtions?

A Jolt of Java May Ward Off Parkinson's

COFFEE LOVERS FIND SOME ADVANTAGES
If you need at least one cup of coffee to jump-start your day, you may be protecting yourself from Parkinson’s disease.
Exciting new research has found that people who drink coffee may be less likely to develop the disease. Although my beverage of choice is tea (one or two cups a day), some advantages are possible, from drinking at least one cup of coffee a day. Some of my research indicated that the caffeine was helpful to the lungs and now I find that a study of more than 8,000 men over 30 revealed other interesting information. Researchers found that men who didn’t drink coffee were three to six times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than coffee-drinkers.
Caffeine is not friendly to my nervous system nor my digestive system. I found that whenever I drank coffee more than one cup of coffee, I developed acid indigestion. But you don’t have to be a coffee-lover to take advantage of the beneficial effect. The study found the same results, regardless of the source. As you may know, caffeine is found in chocolate and tea as well as numerous other sources.
Researchers can’t be sure it’s the caffeine that’s responsible for the protective effect. It may be some other aspect of the coffee-drinking personality type. Nevertheless, the discovery of a positive protective factor may spark more studies that will someday lead to a cure.

The Battle Against Aging

The Real Cause of Old Age is Enzyme Depletion!
For decades, scientists and the medical community have focused their efforts on the cascade of symptoms that reveal a deficiency of enzymes in the body. Enzymes are needed by the body to do many important functions. In fact, our bodies cannot function without enzymes.
Enzymes are protein molecules that carry a vital energy factor needed for every chemical reaction that occurs in our bodies. There are approximately 2,700 different enzymes found in the human body.
Enzymes are team players, when combined with co-enzymes. The body has nearly 100,000 different biochemicals that helps us see, hear, move, digest food and even think.
Everyone of the 100 trillion cells, every organ and every tissue in the body depend on the reaction of enzymes and the remarkable energy factor they bring.
As we grow older, the body’s ability to manufacture enzymes begins to lag. The very process of aging has a great deal to do with decreased enzyme reserves.
Enzyme therapy slows down the aging process by building up the enzyme reserves and quenching free radicals.
Anytime we suffer from an acute or chronic illness, it is almost certain that an enzyme depletion exists. Individuals with digestive disturbances, blood sugar imbalance, endocrine gland imbalance, diabetes, obesity, high levels of cholesterol and triglycerides and those with stress-related problems, all need to take extra enzymes.
Enzymes help in detoxification by freeing up more metabolic enzyme energy to enhance this much-needed cellular house cleaning. Most experts would agree that if you have a very busy life, or if you fly, or travel a great deal, the chances are good that you are, depleting your enzymes.
There is little agreement among healthcare professionals, gerontologists and specialists in the human aging field as to what, exactly, aging really is. However, one point on which experts can agree is that cells in the body begin to die faster than they can be replaced.
After the age of thirty, the water content in the body as well as bodily energy reserves begin to noticeably decline.
The overall efficiency of the body—how well your body accomplishes its daily tasks–begins to decline by a rate of approximately one percent per year.
Tissues throughout the body begin to lose structural integrity and literally waste away. As enzyme levels plummet, gene replication begins to hiccup and falter, producing wall-eyed genes mor suitable for a cellular production of "Deliverance," instead of clean, pure, metabolic efficiency.
Typically in the body of an eighty–year-old man, fifty million cells die off each second, while perhaps only thirty million new cells replace them. His muscles, once thick and strong, have lost thirty percent of their total mass. His brain, once the picture of mental acuity, has actually shriveled by as much as 10 percent and nerve trunks have shed 25 percent of their fiber mass.
Every breath he takes brings in 50 percent less oxygen and every beat of his heart pumps one-third less blood. Oxygen absorption by the blood is cut in half, as is kidney efficiency.
The secret to youthful skin is found in maintaining healthy reserves of enzymes. More enzymes provides copious amounts of protease that not only helps break down protein in food that fees the cells of the dermis, but it also improves distributions of nutrients to the skin. It also provides skin–loving lipase, which helps keep your skin cells plump and skin, wrinkle-free. Amylase, another important enzyme, reduces skin inflammation and cellulase and helps to break down fiber and allows nutrients access to skin. Your skin feels softer, smoother and more toned. Your hair begins to appear thicker and shinier. You digest your food better so all the nutrients are delivered to your cells without heartburn, indigestion or acid reflux.
Your stiff, aching joints feel more flexible and young. Your energy level is boosted to that of a teenager’s. Some people find their sexual desire and performance astounds their mates—it’s as if they’ve undergone a complete sexual renaissance.
Your entire body grows robustly healthy as every critical organ and function is restored to its peak, youthful state.
This Nutri-Zyme Plus stimulates the duplication of perfect, new cells to replace old, worn-out ones in your joints, tendons and ligaments—helping to rebuild strong, healthy joint cartilage. It also zaps away inflammatory enzymes before they can attack your joints, so you stop pain before it starts and banish stiffness and swelling. The benefits go far beyond simply looking and feeling decades younger. Powerful changes in every one of the millions of cells that make up your skin, joints, muscles, organs and other systems occur. You may experience improvement in your walking without hurting, your fingers don’t creak like they used to and your knees bend and flex when you want them to. Most importantly you enjoy the rejuvenation of a restful night’s sleep—night after night.
Nutri-Zyme Plus has very potent and anti-aging properties that will no doubt impact your personal aging process, according to Dr. DieQie Fuller, Ph.D. D. Sc. Anti-aging researcher and formulator of Nutri-Zyme Plus.