Healthier Me Blog

Aubergine, Sweet Potato and Chick Pea Curry

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:25:00 +0000

I've been making chickpea curry with potato for a long time now, but I found a recipe whilst browsing the internet that suggested sweet potato instead. Sweet potato has lots of antioxidants and is really healthy, so it sounded like a good idea! The aubergine helps add to the texture, although tends to break down. I use coconut oil to fry with as again, it's a healthier oil that doesn't saturate easily. It doesn't taste of coconut unless you use the extra virgin variety, so you can use it savoury dishes. My recipe is a little bit vague admittedly, but it's very forgiving so you can throw in extra ingredients or swap in with what you've got to use up. Serves about 6 portions.1 onion, chopped1.5 teaspoons turmericBig lump of ginger (about 5cm), grated or finely chopped2-3 garlic cloves, finely chopped1 aubergine, chopped into cubes (the smaller they are, the...

How An IBS Sufferer Eased His Suffering

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:10:00 +0000

This is a guest post from Nigel Thomas giving his view on how he helped his irritable bowel syndrome.After being diagnosed as suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), my doctor advised me to change my diet by eating more fruit and fibre.Well, if this simple change would ease the severe stomach cramps, bloating and bad indigestion I suffered I was up for it.I'd also read that drinking goats milk could help me and those with respiratory problems too. As my daughter suffers from asthma it seemed worth a try. I must say it did help us both although it costs a lot more than cows milk.I found the new diet changes weren't to hard to follow, while at home anyway, but at work it was a different matter.I ate sandwiches each day and would often be left feeling bloated and suffering from bad indigestion after eating them.One day my wife...

Is Soy Safe to Eat?

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:04:00 +0000

I watched The Food Hospital last night and as quite a lot of people will have seen, they were recommending soy products. However, when you look at the clinical evidence (on websites such as GreenMedInfo.com, which looks at all research published in scientific journals), it seems that we have too much soy and in the wrong form so I believe the Food Hospital got it slightly wrong.When you look at Japan and China, and their rates of certain cancers compared with ours, it certainly seems sensible to eat soy and if you look at the supermarket shelves there's many different soy products available. However, aside from such issues such as much of our soy is genetically-modified and we don't know the long-term effects of this, and the massive deforestation that occurs, we need to look at the processing of soy and what it means for our health.Eastern cultures tend to...

Artificial meat - no thanks!

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:47:00 +0100

A new article on the BBC website mentioned the idea of growing meat from a meatless source i.e. grown in a laboratory petri dish. It does sound very admirable and proponents say you could help feed the world's starving. However, first of all most of the world's population live a predominantly vegetarian diet, so this isn't necessarily the case.More importantly though you've got to think about where your food comes from. The more divorced we become from the source of our food the easier it is to lead a poorer and poorer diet. We have to trust food manufacturers more and more, eating more heavily processed foods, and we're moving away from a natural diet.There are already enough children out there who don't know that cows come in colours other than black-and-white, that all apples aren't exactly the same shape and size and that carrots come from the ground. As...

Things that make you go "burp"

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:18:00 +0100

This was actually a requested blog post after someone mentioned having to sit through business meetings where there was a buffet lunch and lots of tea and coffee. Oh, and the odd burp too! Burping, or belching is caused by a build up of gas, generally in the stomach. Lower down, too much gas tends to cause bloating and farting. It's a natural thing and can be caused by a number of different foods or habits. Medically, it's called eructation, but I'll just stick to calling it a burp for this article - I'll tell it as it is! So where do burps come from? Eating or drinking too fast - eating large mouthfuls, too quickly with no chewing or gulping down large amount of liquids can lead to larger amounts of air being swallowed. It can also lead to indigestion, which can cause over-acidity and burping. Fizzy drinks - well, duh! Chewing gum -...

Step to it!

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:47:00 +0100

Do you walk ten thousand steps a day? Well, if you don't you're not alone. The average Brit is supposed to walk about three thousand, far short of the ten thousand target. Start incorporating more steps into your day and it will become a great, regular and healthy habit. Ten thousand steps, about five miles or eight kilometres is admittedly a slightly arbitrary figure but has a real purpose. It helps promote weight loss (ten thousand steps equates to about 350 kcals) and if 30 minutes of brisk walking is incorporated, has a real benefit for heart health. There's also the advantage of helping reduce blood pressure and reducing the risk or improving control of type 2 diabetes. And don't forget that it's FREE! The best way to start is to buy a pedometer; you don't need to spend much, about £5. That way you can see exactly how far you walk...

The Dangerous Truth About Your Supplements

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:30:00 +0100

If you're not already aware of the snappily entitled "Food Supplements Directive (2002/46/EC) (FSD)", you soon will be. It is this that is responsible for the gradual disappearance of many well-known and useful supplements off our shelves under the guise of protecting our health. Yes, we do need to make sure that what we supplement our diet with is made safely and won't do harm, but this is also true of any medication we take. Research has pointed out that aspirin and statins for example, both very commonly prescribed, as not necessarily as safe or effective as desired. Despite this, they are still widely available without having to go through any re-accreditation process, or additional warnings to the consumer. If the Food Supplements Directive is allowed to go through, it will prevent you as a consumer from making choices about your health, as well as the closure of many independent health food...

Why do we always fight our bodies?

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:50:00 +0100

If you see any adverts for medicines in magazines or on the television, or listen to people talk about cancer, you'll realise that they always talk in terms of violence "the fight against hayfever" or "the battle against cancer". Now don't get me wrong, these things aren't pleasant but do we always have to fight? What if ill-health or dis-ease (as in the the opposite of ease, or health) is a function of our body trying to do the best it can with what it's got? What if we "suffer" hayfever because actually we're chronically dehydrated and our body produces more histamine to try and keep hold of the water it does have, for example? What if we drank more water and our hayfever symptoms improved? Our bodies can be in one of two modes, either stress or relaxation, but it has to be one or the other. This harks back...

Drinking too much water is bad for your health

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:23:00 +0100

A recent Daily Mail article warned about the dangers of drinking water, after an article was published in the British Medical Journal. As a nutritionist, who directly sees the effect of dehydration on health, I find this sort of misinformation really worrying. My weighing scales measure weight, body fat and hydration levels and very few people meet even the lower limit for hydration. If you read "Your Body's Many Cries for Water: A Revolutionary Natural Way to Prevent Illness and Restore Good Health", you'll see the following synopsis. Many thousands of people have benefited from the book, but these people have not been involved in clinical trials to test how water affects their health, so according to the medical and pharmaceutical industry, there's no evidence: With sales of over 1 million copies worldwide...outlines, in his extraordinary book, the breakthrough medical descovery, that if we drank more water daily degenerative diseases such as...

Quality not quantity when dieting

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:37:00 +0100

It appears that experts finally agree that counting calories is bad for you! If you come to my Healthier Me Club on a Tuesday night you could have found that out long ago. It seems that as a population obsesssed with dieting, we get so fixated on the number of calories, that we forget about the quality of food that we eat. Fat does contain about twice as many calories weight for weight as protein or carbohydrate, and losing weight does ultimately rely on the "fewer calories in than out" equation and it seems that many people are following a low-calorie diet by cutting out fats. However, it's better to eat a healthy balanced diet with good quality fats in, that supports all our body's functions than concentrating on cutting out just one food group. If we concentrate on one aspect of our diet, we're more likely to neglect other areas and...

Top Free Android Health and Cooking Apps

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:34:00 +0100

After recently releasing my first Android app and after having used a few apps myself since getting my phone, I thought I'd do a quick roundup of some of the apps I either use or recommend: Raw Food Secrets - This is a 45-page guide to everything about raw food, including the benefits for your health, juicing, sprouting, detoxification and more. If you are interested in a healthier diet, then this will definitely help you. Dinner Spinner - If you're stuck for recipe ideas, then this will really come in handy. Each recipe has photographs and is user-rated, so you can see whether other people have had successes or failures. Choose by dish, ingredient, or time it takes. MyFitnessPal - Enter your meals, snacks and drinks daily, as well as your exercise regime and MyFitnessPal will track all your calories for you. What makes this app stand out for me is that you...

A Simple Weight Loss Trick

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:06:00 +0100

Water is essential for our survival - we can live without food for several weeks in extreme situations, but only survive for a few days without water. This means the importance of drinking water cannot be underestimated. However, the majority of us are chronically dehydrated, and I see this time and time again in client consultations. My scales don't just measure weight and body fat but hydration levels too, and so many people don't even reach minimum hydration levels. If you imagine that your body is 75% water, you'll begin to understand why we have this water need. All our chemical reactions need a fluid environment, and one that isn't too acidic or alkaline. When dehydrated, our blood thickens and becomes more acidic - we slow down and become sluggish as our metabolism struggles to keep going as efficiently as it should. When our metabolism slows, our liver...

Are you ready?

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 18:33:00 +0100

I speak to a lot of people about their health, it's inevitable. As soon as people hear that I'm a nutritionist, they seem eager to pour out their health issues. Sometimes they expect me to give them a full consultation on the spot and give them lots of suggestions for improving their health. I might give them one or two pointers but then I see most of them start to switch off. This is different from people who have booked me - they want my advice and do act on it, seeing some great results. BUT the main obstacle with the 'instant consultation' is people want to feel better, but aren't prepared to take any action. As soon as they realise that my advice would mean taking action, they don't really want to know. It's far easier to take pills from the doctor, or supplements from the chemist but not change...

Bye Bye Lincolnshire Nutrition, Hello Healthier Me

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 22:48:00 +0100

You may have noticed that the Lincolnshire Nutrition website has had a bit of an overhaul. The website has been redesigned, a new name has been chosen and a lovely new logo* sits in pride of place at the top of the page. This blog has suddenly appeared and the website has more personality and reflects more of who I am and what I do. I think it's really easy to pigeonhole nutritionists as people who help others to lose weight, but you know what? I do other stuff too. Like helping Gary get his blood sugar levels sorted through a healthier eating plan, or helping Gill future-proof her health, or aiding Mike in reducing some of his pain-related symptoms. You can see more people I've helped in the testimonials section, and I hope they show that changing what you eat really can really make you feel a lot...