Tag Archives: anti-inflammatory foods

watercrest

Food Facts: Spinach

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Food facts from the anti inflammatory kitchen: Spinach.

Beyond its beauty benefits, it’s no news that spinach and other dark green leafy vegetables are excellent sources of nutrients and anti aging antioxidants and pigments. However, you might not be getting the calcium you think you are from spinach due to its high levels of oxalic acid, which blocks calcium absorption. To help mitigate this, pair spinach with a healthy fat such as raw chopped nuts, extra virgin olive oil, goat cheese or feta to your salads to enhance calcium absorption.

What are your favorite spinach recipes or preparation tips?

 

Apples and cinnamon 2

The ABC’s of Stabilizing Blood Sugar

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The following 3 foods are ideal in stabilizing blood sugar. Enjoy them several times per week as part of the anti inflammatory diet.

Apples: While apples do have significantly higher levels of sugar than berries, they’re actually incredibly effective at stabilizing blood sugar due to their high fiber content and a unique phytonutrient called phloretin which is only found in apples.

Beauty bonus: Apples contain the antioxidant Quercetin, which helps strengthen skin and clear blemishes on acne prone skin.

Beans and lentils: Legumes in general raise blood sugar very slowly- and even can help moderate the blood sugar response to the next meal you eat, whether it includes beans or not. Fiber-rich, beans and legumes also contian a substance called resistant starch (RS), which are fiber-like carbohydrates that increase the rate at which the body burns or oxidizes fat.

Beauty Bonus: Beans contain a variety of nutrients such as  fiber, magnesium and protein which help neutralize the damaging compounds that harm your skin and prevent skin damage and signs of aging.

Cinnamon: The USDA have found that cinnamon helps stabilize blood sugar. They phytonutrients responsible for cinnamon’s effect on blood sugar are the flavon-3-ol polyphenol class of antioxidants, which enhance the stabilizing effect of insulin on blood sugar and decrease insulin resistance.
Beauty Bonus: Cinnamon has powerful antimicrobial and antibacterial capabilities.
What are your favorite anti-inflammatory foods for controlling blood sugar?

Asparagus recipe

Grilled Asparagus with Cashew Curry Sauce

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Lately in my anti-inflammatory kitchen, I’ve been gravitating towards making nut-based recipes, especially those featuring the versatile cashew. Tasting as I was adding each ingredient that came after the base, this became a fun kitchen experiment. I thought I was done, but something seemed like it was missing. That’s when I thought to try a bit with a smidge of molasses, and I decided that I needed to add a teaspoon into the batch. It may sound curious, but trust me on this one.

Cashew Curry Sauce

  • ½ cup cashews, soaked, rinsed, and drained overnight
  • Juice of ½ small lemon
  • 2/3 cup filtered water + more if needed depending on the consistency you want
  • 1 tsp Bragg’s amino acid or low-sodium soy sauce
  • 1 tsp curry powder
  • ½ tsp cumin powder
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1-2 tsp molasses, optional
  • Pepper and sea salt, to taste
  • Red chili pepper flakes, optional

Asparagus

  • 1 lb. asparagus
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • Sea salt

Directions

  1. Put the soaked cashews in a food processor with the lemon juice and filtered water. Pulse till it becomes a smooth consistency.
  2. Add the rest of ingredients, and pulse till everything is well incorporated.
  3. To prep the asparagus break or cut off any tough bottom ends.
  4. Coat the spears with olive oil, and grill or sauté them in a pan. Be sure not to get them charred by turning them every once in awhile.
  5. Drizzle the sauce over the asparagus, and serve right away. You can decide if the sauce has enough flavor or if you would like to add more salt.

 

Katharina Knoll, a Manhattan-based food and art enthusiast has prepared a series of anti-inflammatory recipes celebrating simple, rustic foods. Enraptured by the intersection of health and nutrition, Kat is the founder and director of Behind Foods. Follow Kat on her blog, Katharina’s Food Adventures, and keep in touch through her Facebook fan page and Twitter

Sunscreen

6 Foods to Fight Sun Damage

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These foods can help protect against sun damage from the inside out:

1. Wild salmon This fish is an outstanding source of the carotenoid antioxidant known as astaxanthin, (1000 times more effective than Vitamin E), which helps to repair damage from UV rays and keep skin radiant and youthful.  The omega 3 essential fatty acids in salmon also act as powerful, protective anti-inflammatories.

In addition to salmon, mackerel, trout, herring and sardines are also rich sources of omega 3 fatty acids that can protect skin from deadly melanoma and other forms of skin cancer from sunburn.

2. Green tea Along with strawberries, blue and blackberries, apples, and cocoa, green tea is an antioxidant food high in catechins which also protect the skin from UV damage. The deeper and richer the color, the higher the catechin content. The most powerful catechin is Epigallocatechin-3 Gallate (EGCG) which is 100 times more potent than Vitamin C and 25 times stronger than Vitamin E.  Green tea is one of our richest sources of EGCG.

3. Cocoa The ingestion of high flavanol cocoa led to increases in blood flow of cutaneous and subcutaneous tissues, and to increases in skin density and skin hydration. Dietary flavanols from cocoa contribute to endogenous photo-protection, improve dermal blood circulation, and affect cosmetically relevant skin surface and hydration variables.

4. Tomatoes A study, performed in 2001, looked at volunteers who ate 40 grams of tomato paste over a ten-week period. The group was forty percent less likely to experience sunburn when exposed to harmful UV rays.  But don’t forget to add a little olive oil to insure absorption of the special skin-protecting phytochemicals.

5. Watermelon This summer melon is rich in lycopene, making it a great choice to protect your skin from sunburn and possibility of developing skin cancer.

Lycopene can prevent UV-induced sunburn. It is rich in the aforementioned tomatoes and tomato paste, watermelon as well as apricots, pink grapefruit and red (not orange) carrots.

6. Broccoli Sprouts A member of the cruciferous family, broccoli sprouts contain sulforaphane, which is linked to increasing the skin’s ability to protect itself from cancer. Broccoli sprouts are the richest source of cancer-fighting glucoraphanin, the precursor of sulforaphane.

How do you incorporate these photoprotective foods?

Beauty, Health and Longevity Secret #2: Lose Weight And Keep It Off

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We don’t need to fanatically count grams of fat, carbs or calories to maintain an ideal weight and/or to lose excess weight. All we have to do is learn how to control our blood sugar. Healthy weight management in addition to its obvious overall health benefits has significant anti-aging benefits as well.

We can experience cellular rejuvenation in the body by helping to ‘reprogram’ our genetic code to stop the storage of excess fat and the loss of youthful muscle mass. As we will demonstrate, we can even turn on the genes that suppress appetite and turn off the genetic switch that tells the body to store fat by controlling blood sugar levels. If blood sugar levels are too low, we cannot nourish our muscles and they begin to break down. We lose precious muscle mass. If insulin levels are too high, we put a lock on the body’s ability to burn fat for energy, and the body will store the fat instead.

How to keep blood sugar levels steady
-Beans and lentils stabilize blood sugar and and are a key component of an anti-inflammatory diet from other sugary or starchy foods.
-A meal with legumes raises blood sugar very slowly and moderately, and even moderates the blood sugar response to the next meal you eat, whether this next meal includes beans or not.
Just ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon mixed in water or tea will help stabilize blood sugar for days—in one study, the group that took the cinnamon reported healthy blood sugar levels up to three weeks after consuming the cinnamon!
-Omega-3 rich foods and fish oil turn off the gene that instructs the body to store fat
-Caralluma Fimbriata, a plant used for centuries in India, blocks fat formation by blocking a vital enzyme called citrate lyase forcing the body to burn its fat reserves, accelerating the rate of fat loss by the body, supresses appetite and generates lean muscle mass by not only inhibits fat synthesis but also increases the burning of fat.
-Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) When taken in effective doses, decreases body fat, especially in the abdominal area, helps block the absorption of fat and sugar into fat cells and increases insulin sensitivity, which will then decrease blood sugar and circulating insulin levels
-Niacin Bound Chromium promotes proper insulin function and normal blood sugar levels, healthy blood cholesterol levels, normal blood pressure, and cardiovascular health

Other key nutrients for weight loss and blood sugar stabilization
-Carnitine and acetyl-l-carnitine, which enhance the sensitivity of insulin receptors, helping to decrease blood sugar and circulating levels of insulin.
-Maitake SX Fraction enhances insulin sensitivity for controlling blood sugar levels. .
-Gamma Linoleic Acid (GLA) from borage oil improves cell sensitivity to insulin, reducing our chance of developing diabetes, heart disease and excess body fat. as a dietary supplement or as recommended by your health professional.
-Alpha lipoic acid increases insulin sensitivity by increasing the body’s ability to take glucose into the cells.
-CoQ10 maximizes the burning of foods for fuel, helping to normalize fats in our blood.

Foods and supplements that help maintain healthy weight:
Cinnamon, Chromium, Lipoic Acid, Caralluma fimbriata, Apples, Beans and Lentils, Salmon, Sardines, Trout, Omega 3 fish oil, Vitamin C ester

Food For Travel

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When traveling, bring wholesome, anti-inflammatory foods such as unsalted nuts, fresh fruit, all natural sliced turkey or chicken, an omega 3 hard boiled egg or a small container of plain yogurt. These foods follow the Perricone Prescription Diet and are important parts of staying healthy and young looking!

Remember to check if you can get your products through security or fill up before going through.

Avoid Boom and Bust Blood Sugar Cycles

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The best way to avoid the vicious boom-and-bust blood sugar cycle is to limit intake of high-glycemic carbohydrates and increase your intake of antioxidants, supplements (such as chromium) and anti-inflammatory foods proven to help stabilize blood-sugar — especially beans, nuts, seeds, healthful proteins, all members of the onion family (including garlic), and green vegetables.

New studies now indicate that we can add fragrant spices like cinnamon, cloves, and turmeric to the list.

Stress-Busting Strategies For Optimum Beauty, Health and Longevity – Part 1

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Many of patients ask me the following question:

What is – in simple words – a neuropeptide? And how did you come up with the idea of an Anti-Aging Aromatic?

First, we need a little background to learn where this idea came from and most importantly, why.

Initially it might seem to be a very interesting departure from my normal lines of research which focus on cosmeceuticals and nutriceuticals, as well as anti-inflammatory foods and nutrition. However, as you will see, a neuropeptide-based Anti-Aging Aromatic dovetails perfectly with my Inflammation-Aging Connection and is an important adjunctive therapy to any successful beauty, health and longevity program.

My initial quest for just such a substance arose from extensive research I and other scientists have done on stress. As a dermatologist, I have seen first hand the deleterious effects of stress on skin. And since the skin and the brain are closely related, being formed from the same embryonic tissue, what is damaging to the skin is also damaging to the brain—more about this later.

Stress and Aging

It seems that the news about the negative effects of stress becomes grimmer with each passing day, impacting our physical health in ways we never dreamed possible. It is now common knowledge that stress weakens our immune system and makes our bodies more susceptible to disease as we age. In fact, stress actually accelerates the aging process itself—making us old before our time. Unfortunately, this is especially true when it comes to women.

Tomorrow we will report on a fascinating study of women with elevated stress and the alarming results.