Editor's Letter
Why you need to start gardening!
Obtaining your nutrients from high-quality foods is the key to health. Unfortunately, our food nowadays is largely devitalised and nutrient poor, including many certified organic foods. Some people take supplements, but vitamins and minerals from powder or pill bottles are not the same as nutrients matrixed in wholesome foods. Research in nutrition focuses on the health effects of whole food products. In fact, a food product as a whole is more than the sum of its nutrients. Scientists call this the food matrix.
Nutrition-Grown Food
You can be empowered to optimise health by consuming foods that are grown for greatly increased nutrient density. Nutrition-grown foods that are grown well also taste delicious! Grow your own or otherwise obtain them by working together with a local farmer or gardener.
Producing nutrition-grown foods starts with getting the soil balanced with a full array of minerals, beneficial microbes and organic matter. Choose plant varieties that can uptake lots of nutrients and produce high amounts of healthful phytonutrients. Further nurture your plants with love and nutritional foliar sprays, and you will take responsibility for and grow your own nutritional status!
It’s springtime, and the right time to go out and start preparing your soil and plant more than flowers – plant health! You can use a brix reading (with the use of a refractometer) to keep track of your food quality. I do like the video channel Grow your own Herbs as John inspires as he teaches to grow your own. In one episode John explains what the refractometer does and why it is so important not only to measure the sugar content in the fruits and vegetables you are growing but how it can also be used to determine the nutrient quality of the food. In addition, he shares the three most important ways you can improve the brix scores of the produce you grow.
I hope you will be inspired to either start gardening or take your gardening to the next level. Nature is the best healer and I am sure the benefits of extra sun, exercise and grounding on the earth will show in your smile!
In this issue:
Find happiness with Sharni Quinn – it is very possible, we just need to make the right choices. Discover the many benefits of pink geranium, and advice on how to feed our children good nutrition. We look at functional sport drinks, diabetes and the heart, and growing evidence of a link between exposure to electromagnetic fields and cancer.
For updates relating to health around the globe, see our news and notes section here.
And now, for a simple recipe – perfect for school lunch boxes or for those on the go: Christa’s Health Squares.
Keep doing such a great job in looking after yourself!
THANK YOU TO OUR EXPERTS
Our authors receive no payment or any other form of remuneration from us or from the industry. They take time out from their busy schedules to write articles – and then we insist that they meet our deadlines, submit extra references, answer endless queries from reviewers and copy editors, and respond to the letters we receive from you, our readers. Here’s to all of them! May their tireless and tremendous efforts bring them well-deserved rewards.
Yours in Healthy Living
Finding Happiness
Table of Contents ↑|Finding happiness can be a life-long quest of enquiry, discovery and ultimately bliss. However, it is a journey and often a state that feels elusive, but by making the right choices it is very possible. One minute we are happy, the next we are not – that is life. One minute we are riding the wave and the next we feel we are drowning.
Diabetes and the Heart
Table of Contents ↑|Most of us have been bombarded by information warning us of the threat that diabetes poses to our health. But have you ever stopped to consider the strain this illness actually places on the heart?
Rose-scented Geranium
Table of Contents ↑|Rose-scented Geranium – Pelargonium graveolens – is one plant no garden should be without. Just a small bunch of fresh leaves under your pillow will calm and soothe you so comfortingly you’ll become enchanted with it!
Functional Sports Drinks
Table of Contents ↑|What do we mean by functional and how does what we consume affect the body? Ian Craig discusses your functional health through the lens of sports drinks.
Chronic Electromagnetic Field Exposure & Cancer Risk
Table of Contents ↑|There is growing evidence of a link between exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs), which are generated by electrical currents, and cancer. For this reason we need to be more mindful of how we can limit our exposure to these fields in order to safeguard our health and the health of our loved ones.
What we feed our children
Table of Contents ↑|Children must have good nutrition at crucial, developmental stages of their lives in order to promote early brain development, ward off childhood obesity and build up a strong immune system to fight illness.
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