digestion Archives - Christina Najjar

7 Foods to Include in Your New Year Cleanse

January 17, 2017 by Christina Najjar Leave a Comment

With motivation being renewed in January, many people decide to exercise, lose weight, or do a cleanse. For those suffering from PMS, PCOS, digestive issues, and other health concerns, it often seems like the perfect time.

While cleanses should be conducted in the spring and the fall, sometimes right away is better. After all the junk food that tends to be consumed over the holidays, it may feel nice to reset the system.

I’m not a big supporter of most boxed cleanses since many of them are too harsh. Others depend on strong laxatives to flush the bowels without supporting the body overall. I’m a fan of using whole foods, (i.e. unprocessed foods) to regain health. Read on to learn which foods to include in your cleanse.

7 foods to include in your new year cleanse

1. Beets

Beets contain phytonutrients that help support the liver. They help digestion, and support the gallbladder and the kidneys. When we think of detoxification, we often think of the liver. The kidneys are an extremely important piece of the puzzle, however.

The role of the liver is to turn fat-soluble toxins into water-soluble toxins. Once the liver has done its job “modifying” a toxin, this toxin still needs to come out of the body. The kidneys then need to ensure that the toxin is escorted out of the body.

Try this recipe for grain-free beet hummus from Chocolate and Zucchini.

2. Parsley

Parsley is a diuretic, which means that it helps you pee. As we mentioned, it’s important to pass toxins out of the body once they’ve gone through the liver. It is also a mild laxative – key word being “mild”. Strong laxatives are a bad idea because they teach your bowels to stop moving on their own.

An occasional mild laxative while cleansing, on the other hand, helps ensure that more toxins are being moved out of the body. When toxins sit in the digestive tract for too long, they can be reabsorbed into the body.

Try the classic Middle Eastern tabbouleh (recipe from David Lebovitz) to get more parsley. You may want to consider using quinoa instead of bulgur, or eliminating the grain altogether.

3. Turnips

Turnips are so underrated when it comes to cleansing. They help reduce mucus in the body. Mucus tends to accumulate in the body as a protective mechanism. For instance, when something keeps hurting the intestinal lining over and over, mucus builds up to stop the injury. However, this gets in the way of proper nutrient absorption.

Turnips are also an awesome food for detoxifying excess estrogen in the body. This is especially important in the case of conditions like PMS, PCOS, endometriosis, and infertility.

Did you know you can make fries out of turnips? Turnips and rutabagas are practically interchangeable in this recipe for Baked & Spicy Oregano Rutabaga Fries on Be The Happy Soul.

4. Dandelion root

Dandelion root helps increase the flow of bile. When you eat fats, bile emulsifies them. Kind of like soap, it surrounds the fat molecules. This allows the body to better digest fats. It is also a mild laxative.

I consume my dandelion root in the form of tea. Traditional Medicinals makes a great tea using roasted dandelion root. This gives it a flavour similar to coffee.

5. Garlic

There is a lot to be said about garlic, but I’ll keep it short and sweet. Garlic helps kill unwanted beasties in the gut, like bad bacteria, and excess yeast. The best part is that it does so without killing off the good stuff, unlike most antimicrobials.

Garlic is high in sulphur, which makes it a great heavy metal chelator. This means that it attaches to the heavy metals, which is a necessary step to remove them from the body.

Enjoy garlic in my Zucchini Con Aglio et Olio (zucchini with garlic and oil) recipe.

6. Arugula

The Standard American Diet is very acidic to the body. The body has mechanisms to balance out occasional consumption of acid-forming foods. However, when it becomes a frequent thing, the body struggles to keep up, and chronic disease settles in more easily. Arugula is a powerful alkalizer, making it a helpful addition to a cleanse.

You can eat arugula in salads, or try it in this variation of pesto from Paleo Grubs.

7. Radishes

Radishes also help support the liver and the gallbladder, while being a diuretic. Just like turnips, radishes help break down mucus. This makes it a cleanse goldmine! The fun thing about radishes is that they come in many varieties. This means that you can get the benefits from eating them straight, adding them to soups, salads, or even roasting them.

My 4-Ingredient Beet Radish Salad kills two birds with one stone (is there a less gruesome expression) by combining both beets and radishes.

7 Easy Ways to Eat More Healthy Fats

November 29, 2016 by Christina Najjar Leave a Comment

Almost everyone would benefit from adding more healthy fats to their diet. This is especially true for those with conditions where blood sugar levels fluctuate a lot, such as PCOS and diabetes. Fats from healthy sources help slow down your body’s absorption of sugars in your food. They also help your cells better listen to your hormones.

Use the following tips to increase your intake of healthy fats. And don’t worry about possibly gaining weight. Healthy fats have too many functions in your body to simply be stored as fat for future energy (unlike unhealthy fats).

Add nut butters to smoothies

Are you making smoothies for breakfast or after workouts? Use a chocolate protein powder and add a tablespoon of nut butter to make it nut butter cup flavoured. Alternatively, you can add a tablespoon of chia seeds, hemp hearts, or coconut oil to your smoothies to boost the fat content.

Put a dollop of coconut oil or sesame oil to your food

Planning to make a stir fry or steam some vegetables? Sauté or steam your dish with water, and add some coconut oil or sesame oil at the end for extra flavour. Waiting until the end to add the fats will keep them in their healthy form.

Include some avocado on your plate

Making a meal that just doesn’t require fat? Add some avocado slices to your plate as a side. Some vitamins can only be absorbed when consumed with fat. Because avocados can be expensive, all you need is 1/4 or 1/2 of an avocado.

Yolks have healthy fats!

Are you eating egg white omelettes to boost your protein while keeping cholesterol down? Eating more cholesterol won’t increase your cholesterol levels. Your body produces most of its cholesterol for hormones, and as a protective mechanism. Egg yolks not only have healthy fats, but they’re also incredibly nutrient dense.

Eat a handful of almonds

If you’re looking at your plate and see nothing but vegetables, lean protein, and/or grains, save a bit of room for a handful of almonds. You don’t need much – 10 almonds or so will do.

Take a fish oil

A good quality fish oil is a great supplement for most people. It’s an anti-inflammatory, it helps anxiety, depression concentration, diabetes, hormonal issues, and makes skin and hair healthier. It’s also a natural blood thinner, so it should be avoided if already taking blood thinners. If your meal is lacking healthy fats, take a teaspoon of fish oil with your meal.

Make a dip for vegetables

Are you eating vegetables without fats? As previously mentioned, some nutrients can only be absorbed into your body if eaten with fats. Make an easy dip for your vegetables by combining tahini with lemon, or make hummus or a curry dip.

Which strategies are you using to boost the healthy fat content of your meals?

You Absolutely Should Not Ignore Your PMS Symptoms

November 15, 2016 by Christina Najjar Leave a Comment

When you spend a lot of time studying a subject, it’s easy to think that everyone knows what you know about that subject. I find PMS fascinating because you can learn a lot about a person’s health simply by looking at their PMS symptoms. I had forgotten that most of those who experience PMS simply see it as an inconvenience or a dreaded time of the month.

In reality, PMS is so much more than a pain or an inconvenience. It’s actually a red flag for health. This is easy to forget because according to the latest estimates, as many as 85% of the menstruating population experiences PMS symptoms of some kind.

This figure is alarming, especially when you think of what PMS can indicate. But it should come as no surprise as the rates of infertility, cancer, and autoimmune diseases rise.

I’ve mentioned before how PMS is highly connected to adrenal fatigue and digestive issues. However, I feel that it’s important to talk about what happens if these two main roots of PMS aren’t addressed.

Adrenal fatigue to PMS to cancer?

Adrenal fatigue is what happens to your body when you’ve been stressed for too long. Your adrenal glands produce many hormones in your body, including your stress hormones and sexual hormones.

When you’re consistently stressed, your body spends a lot of resources on stress hormones, especially cortisol. After a while, your body has to start choosing between producing cortisol and other hormones, such as progesterone. When cortisol and progesterone have to compete, cortisol tends to come out on top.

But even then, adrenal glands eventually run out of resources to support cortisol production. When adrenal fatigue has fully set in, both progesterone and cortisol levels can be too low.

Low progesterone is often behind PMS symptoms like cramps and dark blood at the beginning and/or the end of your period.

So how does that tie in to cancer?

Our cells use our DNA as instructions for everyday protein synthesis. Sometimes, mistakes pop up in our DNA, and that’s completely normal. Usually, the body fixes these mistakes when we relax. But when we are in a constant state of stress, the body cannot fix these mistakes. Our cells end up reading instructions to produce cancerous cells, instead.

PMS itself is not the cause of cancer. PMS warns us that something is malfunctioning somewhere. Popping a painkiller when your cramps hit will not address the potential adrenal fatigue. And, if that adrenal fatigue is ignored, the long term stress could just be the beginning of a tumour.

PMS and autoimmune diseases

The organisms in our gut play a large role in our overall health. In a healthy individual, the friendly organisms should highly outnumber the unfriendly organisms. But when they don’t, the unhealthy guys can takeover and cause just about any health issue you can think of.

When the liver deactivates excess estrogen, it needs to pass through the bowels to leave the body. When there are a lot of unfriendly organisms in the gut, they intercept that estrogen and reactivate it to pass it through the body again.

This is an issue because estrogen needs to be balanced out by progesterone. When there is too much estrogen, or what is called an estrogen dominance, it’s as if progesterone levels were too low. And as you know, low progesterone can equate to PMS symptoms.

So where do autoimmune diseases come in?

The disproportion of good to bad organisms in the gut can have all kinds of repercussions. An excess in unfriendly organisms can make the existing pores in the gut lining larger than they should be. These large pores then begin to let large particles into the bloodstream. Because those particles don’t belong there, the immune system has to launch repeated attacks.

An immune system that keeps having to work overtime can become very tired. Usually, the immune system knows how to recognize the body’s cells as its own. But, as it becomes tired, it starts to make mistakes, and can attack the body’s cells. This is what is known as autoimmunity.

So once again, PMS is not the cause of the bigger issue, but shares a root cause with that issue. So, while PMS is a pain in the butt, it’s a fantastic indicator of what’s going on in the body!

PMS symptoms as a warning sign of infertility

Your body has a lot of mechanisms that are necessary for immediate survival. In fact, the only body system that isn’t absolutely necessary to keep you alive is your reproductive system. When your body can’t come up with enough resources to run all its processes, the reproductive system is usually the first to misbehave.

As mentioned above, PMS is often a symptom of other important imbalances in the body. These imbalances often result in hormonal levels that are less than optimal. Because the female reproductive cycle is very delicate, it doesn’t take much to turn conception into a challenge.

As I keep repeating (like a broken record!), low progesterone levels are responsible for many PMS symptoms. In order to conceive naturally, you need to ovulate. Ovulation happens when progesterone levels begin to rise. But if your body can’t produce sufficient progesterone, it may struggle to ovulate.

I hope I’m helping you understand why you absolutely should not ignore your PMS symptoms. PMS is not just a monthly inconvenience. It’s a nice and loud message from your body.

Do you struggle with menstrual issues? Click the button below to join the FREE Nutrition for PMS, PCOS, and endometriosis group on Facebook.