Healthy Eating

I had some food classes at the rehab for a heart healthy diet. Some of you probably read the book from Dr. Ornish and also Dr. Andrew Weill wrote a lot about it. The first thing they advised us about was to skip on salt. Just use a maximum of 2,000-2,300 mg of salt per day. And it really helps to read the food labels! It is amazing how much salt and sugar is added to processed foods nowadays. Very addictive stuff. And what also surprised me was, what huge amounts of salt and sugar are added to processed food. Soy sauces, soup powders are especially high on salt, but you can also find smoked salmon with lower amounts of salt at Whole Foods and Traders Joe. I mention fish, since fish is recommended in these days for a heart healthy diet.

Today I got some news from Germany, that diet only helps about 10% for heart patients, but I am still investigating this info and fact is that the medical doctors and the industry still seem to grope in the dark and finding out new stuff every day. But I always felt, it is important what we put into our bodies and for people with heart problems and maybe for everybody else too it is important to do daily exercises and add meditation as a practice.

Of course we still have to live with what our ancestors gave us as free gifts in our DNA.

So once again I started a quest to discover hidden unhealthy agents in my daily food and I found a few things, which I had shared on my facebook page and will repeat here.

Soy milk: I stumbled upon some discussions at Google about soy milk. I personally love unsweetened organic soy milk and always bought Silk soy milk and also sometimes the private label from Trader’s Joe, which my friend Alicia informed is the same thing. I also read about the problems associated with soy products, but it is always such a nice morning meal together with muesli, fresh ground flaxseed, flax seed oil and blueberries or raspberries.

I always soak the muesli for at least one hour to make it easy to digest.

Now on the Internet there were a lot of discussions about GMO free soy milk and although Silk was a brand of highest quality in the past, this Boulder based company (White Wave) came under heavy discussion, when you google them. Apparently a lot of their soy products in the past has been bought from China and Brazil and any organic food product from China freaks me out., since they do not allow foreign controllers into their country. And the company was sold to Dean Foods and might have changed their standards. I am not sure, where the truth lies and Alicia used to work for White Wave (before she joined New Earth Records in the past), so she still feels friendly towards her old buddies, but this could also be a case of a billion dollar corporate company takes over a successful organic brand and changes its business model.

From my research I decided to switch to Eden soy milk, which also now has an unsweetened organic soy milk and that is GMO free soy milk from smaller US farms, with which Eden works together since decades. And Eden products have been tested many times and always came out clear of GMO.

I invite you to make up your own mind and read:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/141134/why_silk_soy_milk's_parent_company_is_throwing_american_farmers_and_consumers_under_the_bus

Here is the report on Eden:

http://www.non-gmoreport.com/soy_milk_eden_foods.php

Here are some discussions on the Silk brand:

http://vegandad.blogspot.com/2009/07/regarding-silk-soy-milk.html

While I was reading these I found a story on Steve Demos, who was the original founder of White Wave Boulder. I have utterly respect for Steve, one of the real pioneers in the organic food industry.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2008/09/feature-interview-boulder-colorados-steve-demos-natural-products-titan-of-silk-soy-white-wave-and-next-foods-good-belly/

http://thewellnessrevolution.paulzanepilzer.com/stevedemos.php

Another thing I have always been struggling with is dairy. I was a vegetarian and often also vegan for over 35 years. As a vegetarian I often used dairy as my main protein and of course dairy has lots of fat and also the tendency to add weight very quick. I had my years on and off dairy for most of my life as a vegetarian. One thing I can say, when eating dairy I always gained weight and when I was off dairy I lost weight.

Right now I am off dairy and just have occasionally a spoon of Greek low fat yoghurt added to my muesli. But I found I feel better without this actually. More and more I come to the conclusion, that cow milk is for cow babies and there are many issues with dairy:

http://www.alternet.org/food/145378/got_milk_a_disturbing_look_at_the_dairy_industry

Whenever possible I like to buy organic products. In the summer it is easier to get organic products from the Farmers Market, but here in Santa Fe we also have Whole Foods, Montanita Food Co-Op, Vitamin Cottage now Natural Grocery and Traders Joe.

Here is some info on buying organic:

http://www.davesoucy.com/2009/07/the-12-most-contaminated-foods

Osho once said in the Osho Upanishads series, that no vegetarian ever won the noble price. Later on in that series he recommend to his sannyasins to eat 2 unfertilized eggs per week. Osho considered unfertilized eggs vegetarian and ok for a holistic lifestyle which includes meditation and awareness. Here is some extra info on how to choose reasonable healthy eggs, since most of us do not have chickens in our backyard.

http://www.drgrisanti.com/eggs.htm

I like to eat organic raw almonds or organic almond butter to keep my cholesterol in check. The issue with raw almonds in the USA is that these almonds get irradiated. California produces 85% of the world’s almonds and it is only possible to get non-irradiated organic almonds in the US, when you buy directly from the farmer in amounts of less then 100 pounds. A small loophole in the law: if you like more info, please check this link.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5231.cfm

And last, if you buy pre-washed, bagged organic salads, please read this. It is still important to wash also pre-washed organic salads.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-starkman/packaged-salad-bacteria-s_b_445275.html

In my next blog I will share my recent experiences with healers and sessions givers in Santa Fe. As a feedback and as a warning.

Stay healthy, stay sane, namaste.

Bhikkhu

2/6/2010 (some)how life continues.....

My heart attack on the surface did not leave many symptoms to my daily life. Of course I noticed that my energy levels had changed. In the morning I woke up with pretty good energy, which was maybe also due to the extra oxygen I received at night. The doctors had me hooked up to night time oxygen, since my oxygen levels at night were too low. We had the machine placed in the bathroom, so we could not hear the sound. A long plastic tube with two endings lead into our bedroom. As long as this was for nights and temporary only, I did not mind at all.

After one month we did a night monitoring of the oxygen levels, which always should be above 90. The levels still had dropped for 57 minutes to levels down to 85. So I am staying on night oxygen for another month at last. The levels did improve against the monitoring we did at the end of December, but are not high enough yet at night. Day levels are ok. It shows that the heart is not up to 100% strength yet.

My mornings were occupied with the rehab Gym and sessions, so there was not time for much else. In the afternoon my energy went lower and I could feel, that my heart was not up to its usual energy yet. So I spent most of my afternoons on our sofa. From there I could set up meetings with our office stuff, do emails, skype and spend time on facebook or the phone. Due to the medications my blood pressure was low 90/60 and I had an average heart rate of 68.

Waduda was great. Not only did she take care of me 24 hours per day, run the office, drive me - she also accompanied me to the gym all the time. So much, that she joined the spouse program and we are both at the machines at the same time. In on way we both had a heart attack and from her point of view it all must have been much more unsettling.
We are both together walking on a fragile rope of life.

It was now one month after my heart attack and generally I felt, that I was very lucky and things seem to heal pretty well. My emotions had calmed down and I felt much safer. It is strange, since in a way I do not feel sick in the normal way, since my symptoms are not that intervening. At the same time I am quite aware through my mind, that this has been a major event and interference into my life and I feel much more fragile, then I used to be.

It is an illusion to think that we decide anything about our lives. We do not decide how long we are going to live, how long we are going to breathe, we have no influence about this. Each moment can be our last, we just don’t know. I realized this, when my life suddenly nearly came to an end while sleeping. Bum, pain…next moment in the ambulance, unconscious, operation and 24 hours later I woke up. I could also never been waking up again. Gone, gathe, gathe…. I was lucky, it was a signal and it made me understand, how really precious each moment is. How life is full of love, trenched with love energy and how easy it is to miss it all, moment to moment. Just bypassing these deep moments with every day stuff like news and gossip.

But now since I experienced this, life has a different quality. This fake security of living forever, of being in deep sleep has disappeared. Life has become very fragile. I do not know, each moment can be the very last again – or not. So what to do with this new life, what to change, how to stay conscious each moment?

I feel it is about choices. There are many moments, where I can make a positive choice. Do I watch TV, or do I listen to music? Do I read a paper or do I do some fitness workout? Which part of mine do I agree to, the lazy one or the one, that wants to kick me? And at the end the realization, that I am part of the whole and in the hands of a larger force, which is always here, the creator of all, called life.

In the gap day between my Gym days I mostly book sessions with holistic healers. Beside bodywork, acupuncture and lymph drainage, I also started to do some trauma work Somatic Experiencing. Altogether I have been busy with treatments and fitness for 5 days a week every morning.

Last Saturday a treadmill arrived in our house. So now I have home training equipment and started to walk on the treadmill in the mornings. I have been seeing in the rehab gym people coming regular for workouts. Older people, who had bypass operations, heart attacks and heart valve replacements. I felt very touched to see, how much energy everyone put into their physical work outs, to stay connected to life. I felt very honored and it was quite humbling to be part of this group of ‘survivors’.

In my next blog I will write about my inquiry into diets and healthy living, followed by another blog about some very particular experiences with healer(s).

Namaste and stay well, Bhikkhu