As a fussy kid, I never thought that one day I would come to LOVE green vegies. And let’s face it – a steamed heap of vegetables on the side of your plate is hardly appetising for children or adults. But vegetables don’t have to be boring chores that we have to gulp down in order to justify our desert. Simply knowing how to flavour your vegetables can transcend them from begrudgingly boring to delectably delicious. 

Now, we’ve all heard of the so called ‘super foods’…. These wonderful, health promoting foods that contain an abundance of life-giving nutrients that support glowing skin, muscle relaxation, improved clarity and focus, deep-restorative sleep, happy life-affirming hormones, energy and vitality. I’ll let you in on a little secret ~ all green vegetables are superfoods! From the humble broccoli, sassy salty celery and crunchy kale, green vegetables are the very foundation for Hippocrates premise of “Food As Medicine” ~ providing us with the essential nutrients that are required for all the wonderful, autonomic (automatic) processes within our bodies that most of the time we are not even aware of. 

Nutrients are the very building blocks of our body’s and nature provides all that we need to live happy, healthy and vibrant lives.

Let’s break it down one step further. Magnesium is our body’s natural muscle relaxant. When muscles contract the body uses calcium and when the muscles relax the body uses magnesium. Every time you move a muscle, stretch, walk or eat you are utilising these nutrients in the give-and-take activity of your muscular system. And where can you find calcium and magnesium? Green vegetables of course! 

Our beloved magnesium is integrally involved in 300+ enzymatic process in the body and regulates our mood, sleep, energy production, bone integrity, controls inflammation and enhances blood sugar regulation. No wonder naturopaths can’t get enough of this super-nutrient! 

Calcium is also important for our bone health, muscle and nerve functions and acid-alkaline balance within our body’s and is abundant in broccoli and dark green leafy vegetables such as kale, bok choy, rocket and spinach. One of my personal favourite flavour enhancers and nutrient boosters is adding a fresh squeeze of lemon juice to my green vegetables. Not only does a dash of olive oil, lemon juice and salt transform these simple veggies to tantalise your tastebuds, but the added vitamin-C content of lemon juice naturally boosts the calcium content of these super-green super-foods! 

Folate is another essential nutrient found in asparagus, spinach and broccoli that plays many oh-so-important roles within your body. Folate is a very important B-vitamin required for the function of your brain and nervous system in optimising cognitive function (how you think) and your mood (how you feel). Folate also regulates your cardiovascular system and lowers your risk of heart disease, supports the production of your essential red blood cells and is incredibly important for foetal development in pregnancy. 

Green vegetables are nutritious gems packed full of vitamins A, C, and K, potassium, folate, magnesium and calcium ~ with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting qualities, fibre to regulate bowel movements and provide prebiotic food for your beneficial bacteria ~ a bowl full of green vege can go a long way in not only preventing disease but promoting health and vitality so that you can be the best you, you can be!

Still not convinced?

Try one of my tasty recipes below to see if you too can come to love these gorgeous greens as much as I do ?  

• Kale sautéed with a dash of olive oil, lemon juice and Himalayan sea salt are a great addition to top off any meal such as eggs on toast or kitchari (see recipe below)
• Sautéed greens with lemon and garlic.
• Roast Brussel sprouts and broccoli (or vege of choice) topped with a tahini dressing:

Method: cut broccoli into small florets and halve the brussel sprouts, sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper and bake for 15-20 minutes or until they start to become golden. 

Tahini dressing: Whilst your vegies are baking, whip up an easy tahini dressing with ¼ cup of tahini, ¼ cup of olive oil, ½-1 freshly squeezed lemon juice, 1 clove of garlic (optional), 1-2 tsp of honey or maple syrup, water to dilute, salt and pepper to taste. Pour the tahini dressing over your crisply baked vege and taste the difference. 

• Wholesome kitchari with steamed green vegetables, lemon juice and a sprinkle of salt: 

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup of split mung dal 
• 1 cup of basmati rice
• 6 cups of water
• 1 bunch of coriander
• 2cm square piece of fresh ginger 
• 2 cm square piece of fresh turmeric
• 3 tablespoons of ghee, grass-fed butter or coconut oil
• 2 teaspoons of ground cumin 
• Dash of salt and pepper

 Method: 

• Simply add split mung dal, rice and water in a big saucepan on the stove. Bring to boil and allow to simmer for 30-40minutes until soft. Add coriander, ginger, turmeric and spices to a nutri-bullet or blender with a dash of water to dilute and blend until smooth. Add to the pot with ghee or oil of choice and mix through. Serve with freshly steamed green vegetables, extra ghee, ½ a squeezed lemon and a sprinkle of Himalayan sea salt. 

Wired and Tired: How Stress Impacts the Immune Response

We are all familiar with the concept of “Stress” and have all suffered some kind of stressor in our day-to-day lives, whether it be running late for work when the old man in front of you won’t go the speed limit, being let go from your job after 20 years of loyal service, your kids fighting over the I-pad and wailing at you that “it’s not fair, it’s my turn”, or standing up in front of your peers to do an oral speech, your knees knocking and an internal voice screaming ‘RUN! RUN!’. Let’s be honest, in our busy and fast-paced modern day lives stress is very much the norm. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, stress isn’t always such a bad thing. During the Palaeolithic period when a Pterodactyl was swooping down on us, this fight-and-flight response was essential to our very survival. In fact, since the dawn of time, stressors have played a very important role in the evolution of all living organisms, helping us to adapt and evolve to the pressures of the environment such as predation and natural disasters. The physiological changes of acute stress are an adaptive energy required for growth and strengthening to increase our evolutionary fitness and have even been shown to enhance the immune system capacity to expediate wound healing and prevent infections from taking hold. 

However, chronic and mismanaged stress is another story entirely and can have very deleterious impacts on our health and wellbeing. Laying awake at night with looping, repetitive and negative thoughts of worry that ‘you need to call you mum because her health isn’t well and the kids need new shoes and did you remember to turn the stove off?’, overdoing the marathon training and winding up on bed-rest for a week because your body doesn’t have the reserves to recover, or feeling like the world is a scary and dangerous place and you would be safer just staying in bed for the rest of your days are clear examples of unhealthy stressors. Chronic stress causes high levels of cortisol to impact the inflammatory and immune responses. Similar to stress, inflammation plays a very important role under acute situations, but can become harmful to our health under chronic conditions.

A professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, Sheldon Cohen has stated that, “Stressed people’s immune cells become less sensitive to cortisol. They’re unable to regulate the inflammatory response.” (Cohen, 2004).

The field of neuro-psycho-immunology (yep – it’s a thing!) clearly demonstrates that chronic stress suppresses the immune system and makes us more susceptible to illness and disease. So, what can we do about it? Managing stress, anxiety and depression largely depends on the individual presentation and should be personalised to your needs. We all need care, compassion and support during the many life challenges that present to us and therefore finding the right healthcare practitioner to help you manage your stress is an essential step in taking charge of your physiological and psychological health.

A healthcare practitioner can help to hold you accountable to your self-care disciplines and guide your treatment, whether it be GABA-inducing herbs and activities such as passionflower, lemonbalm and yoga, serotonin and melatonin supporting nutrients such as magnesium and zinc, or changing the very neuroplasticity of your brain with regular mindfulness and meditation techniques. Finding the right fit for you is essential in managing your stress for prolonged health and vitality. 

Here are some helpful ‘Zen-activities’ to help you get started: 

• Gentle exercise of even 20-30 minutes walk a day helps to change the scenery, allowing you to take a break from your frustrating task and clear your mind and provides a good boost of feel-good endorphins. 
•  Focus on your breathing. Breathing techniques slow your fight-and-flight response. Simply observing your breath can calm the body and mind within minutes.
• Hug someone you love! Hugging releases the feel-good hormone oxytocin which reduces stress hormones and improves your sense of relaxation and happiness so that you both feel good. 
• Enjoy a cuppa. Inhaling the aromas of your cup of tea reduces your stress response. What’s more, research shows that 3 cups of chamomile tea a day can be therapeutically beneficial in managing anxiety. 
• Daily yoga practices of as little as 15 minutes helps to slow your breathing and increase your natural production of GABA – the muscle-relaxing, sliding-into-the-bubble-bath hormone that medications like Valium induce. 
• Practice gratitude ~ daily gratitude journaling helps us to re-wire our brains to focus on the positive aspects in our lives rather than the negative. 
• Release your creativity! Drawing, painting, sculpting, mandala colouring-in or making finger puppets with the kids – art in all forms can be meditative, helping to focus the mind and release some pent-up emotions. 
• Eat a balanced, wholefood diet. Reaching for those high-fat, high-carb, high-sugar food-groups may provide us with a temporary endorphin hit, but such emotional eating is unsustainable, and typically causes us to feel more stressed and anxious when our blood sugar crashes. Wholefoods provide sustainable energy and nutrients that help to regulate our mood and energy. 
• Make more time for fun! What excites you? What brings joy to your life? Whether it be sports, crafts, learning an instrument, reading a book in bed, or soaking up the sun at the beach, prioritising some down-time can be the best thing you can do for your stress levels, helping you to rest, recuperate and recharge so that you can live your best life. 

Written by Sophia Leighton. 

Resources: 

https://www.rn.com/featured-stories/stress-inflammation-immunity/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/

https://www.verywellmind.com/tips-to-reduce-stress-3145195

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/personal-best/pillar/wellbeing/15-stress-busting-activities-to-help-you-relax

Do you wake tired and unrefreshed, dose yourself up on caffeine and sugar just to make it through your day, struggle to concentrate on the simplest of daily tasks, and all day long feel flat, lethargic, achy and irritable?

Fatigue has become an epidemic thanks to our modern lifestyles and never ending ‘to do lists’, with women suffering from fatigue conditions 2 to 4 times more than men. And can you blame us? We almost need to be ‘Super-Women’ to manage the daily tasks of organising the family in the morning, packing bags, lunchboxes, clothes, hygiene, school drop-off, working part or full-time jobs, school pick up, managing extracurricular activities, homework, grocery shopping, dinner and quality family time. 

Sleep, rinse, repeat. 

Women are so busy caring for everyone else that they drop ball when it comes to self-care. This is even more problematic if the cause of your fatigue is more serious than the exhaustion of keeping up with a busy schedule. 

There are many causes of fatigue and it is important to figure which ones are affecting you. After all, even Super-Women needs fuel sources to function at her best! 

• Water is essential for life. Yes this is starting simply, but even mild dehydration can reduce your energy levels and mood, causing impaired memory and brain performance.
• Are you eating on the go? Making poorer food choices due to lack of time, energy and organisation? Foods are our essential fuel source! We require B-group vitamins, iron, magnesium and proteins for our basic cellular energy production. No nutrients = no fuel. Quick-fix foods often contain little nutritional value and provide a spike in our blood sugars, followed by a quick crash, leaving us feeling more depleted than ever. Weekly meal planning will be your saviour here – reducing the amount of time you spend shopping, mentally preparing what you can cook for dinner, and provide you with more substantial and energising meals.  
• Iron, B12 and Folate deficiencies can all contribute to fatigue and are especially prevalent in women due to our monthly blood loss. Checking these levels on a regular basis is an easy prevention of chronic energy insufficiencies. 
• Vitamin D levels are also necessary for your immune system to work at its best so if you feel ‘run-down’ or suffer from frequent colds consider testing your vitamin D levels or taking the time to enjoy the sunshine. 
• Are you consuming higher levels of so-called ‘energy robbers’ that further deplete your nutritional levels such as sugar, alcohol, coffee, medications, dehydration, stress, a sedentary lifestyle or over-training? How do these make you feel in the long run? Look at your attachment to these vices and question if they are helping or hindering? Are you simply putting a band-aid on your energy stores?
• No time or energy to exercise? Research shows that even gentle exercises such as a brisk walk can increase your energy levels by releasing hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine. It also promotes a more restful sleep.
• Ensure to get a good night’s sleep. Practicing sleep hygiene, taking some much needed ‘down-time’ before bed, listening to sleep hypnotherapy apps, taking an Epsom salt bath or some magnesium can all vastly improve upon your quality and quantity of sleep. 
• There are many medical conditions that can be at the root causes of fatigue syndromes, including, but not limited to chronic fatigue syndrome, anaemia, thyroid issues, endometriosis, anxiety, depression, autoimmune conditions, a weakened immune system and chronic infections. It is important to find the right support when it comes to managing your health care, getting regular check-ups and blood tests from your doctor and finding the right health practitioners for you and your needs. Even the Carers need care. 

Take time out for yourself! This is a big one and I don’t want you to pass it over as ‘too hard’. We are no good to anyone if we are not feeling our best. Taking the time out for yourself to re-charge, re-energise, and re-boot yourself should be your Number #1 priority! What activities make you smile? Socialise with friends, walk in nature, read your favourite book, take a bubble bath, take a yoga class, swim in the ocean, dig your toes into the grass and simply bask in the sunshine. Your options are endless ?

We are currently experiencing a fatigue epidemic in Australia. Unexplained fatigue is one of the most common complaints to general practitioners. Unfortunately, preliminary blood tests often fail to provide an answer for these patient’s, leaving them more tired, stressed out and fed-up than ever. This desperate search for answers can often lead to a generalised diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), a debilitating disorder of unexplained, persistent and/or relapsing fatigue that results in significant reduction in occupational, social and personal activities. Other diagnostic criteria for CFS includes:

• Impaired memory or concentration that severely impacts daily functioning
• Chronic or recurrent sore throat
• Tender lymph nodes
• Muscle and/or join pain
• Headaches
• Unrefreshing sleep
• Increased levels of fatigue after exercise

Although CFS has no definitive, singular cause, chronic infections such as Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), also known as glandular fever, and biotoxin exposure from tick bites and exposure to mould are among the most commonly associated causes. These suspected infective agents trigger an immune cascade that leads to immune dysfunction, chronic inflammation, hormonal imbalances and oxidative stress, which in turn presents symptomatically with a wide range of symptoms from altered perceptions of fatigue and pain, as well as cognitive, mood and sleep disorders.

However, there are other contributing factors from our modern lifestyles that are having an impact upon our energy deficits:

• Nutritional deficiencies including iron, B vitamins (especially B6, B12 and folate), Magnesium and Zinc.
• Dehydration is a common cause of fatiguability, especially if you regularly consume coffee, tea and/or alcohol.
• An inflammatory diet high in refined carbohydrates i.e. take-out, sugar and ‘white’ foods.
• Chronic stress can offset a number of health conditions affecting the immune system, gut, mind and thyroid health.
• Thyroid disorders exhibit a wide range of metabolic symptoms including fatigue.
• Gut dysbiosis and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) reduce nutritional absorption and are linked to a range of inflammatory and immune conditions.
• Exposure to environmental and household toxins i.e. chemicals in your skin care products, household cleaners, pesticides and fertilisers, mould, heavy metals etc.
• Electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure from mobile phones, telephone towers, Bluetooth devices, microwaves etc.
• Insomnia and sleep disturbances

For most people, it is not one singular cause but an accumulation of these modern-day assaults that provides the proverbial ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ when it comes to chronic fatigue symptoms. Considering the potential number of causative agents, as well as the multiplicity of symptomatic presentation when it comes to fatigue issues, is it any wonder that so few people are able to find a long-term resolution?

But there’s hope! From a Naturopathic perspective, there is a lot we can do to correct these imbalances. Such interventions may include:

• Identifying and removing the causative agent i.e. fungal, bacteria or viral infection
• Enhance the health and functionality of mitochondria, the energy powerhouses in our cells.
• Optimise nutritional intake and absorption for energy production
• Reduce inflammation
• Assist detoxification
• Restore gut health
• Normalise immune function
• Mediate stress and personalise some stress-coping mechanisms
• Provide natural pain solutions
• Improve sleep onset and duration
• Implement diet and lifestyle changes suited to the individual

If you or someone you know is suffering from the debilitating effects of chronic fatigue, book in for a complimentary 20-minute consultation to discuss how you can invest in your health for better energy, vitality and quality of life.