10 Reasons to Do a Headstand Every Day

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-5501/10-Reasons-to-Do-a-Headstand-Every-Day.html

10 Reasons to Do a Headstand Every Day

By Lisa Mitchell

As for our minds, well…if we have any kind of emotional ‘stickiness’/dependency around food, our minds may surely be calling for food for any and every reason – because we’re happy, sad, lonely, upset…or we feel like we ‘deserve’ it, we’re celebrating, we’re stressed, anxious, miserable…you name it
Seldom do we seem to eat because we’re genuinely physically hungry…indeed many people do not even seem to recognise what true physical hunger even feels like – it’s like a pulling in the stomach, which intensifies if left unfed…

So when we feel an intense pull to eat, we might do well to ask ourselves WHERE this desire is coming from – is this our mind and tastebuds asking for entertainment, or is it actually our body asking for some more nutrition? So often we seem to listen to the whims and demands of the mind and tastebuds over the genuine concerns of the body…yet we can only ignore the body for so long though, before issues start to show up in the form of illnesses, sluggishness, excess weight and so on…

If we want to side-step these sticky patterns, we might do well to ask ourselves a few QUESTIONS as and when we feel the pull to eat…questions such as: when did I last eat? Have I fully digested that last meal yet? How much water have I drunk today? …and so on…take a few moments to inquire of yourself around these ideas and then, if you do decide indeed to go ahead and consume something, there are three questions I love to encourage people to consider first about their food choices, all of which could be grouped together under the idea of ‘could I be making a better choice right now…?‘

Here are the three ideas to consider:

*how could I make this meal lighter? (e.g. instead of grabbing a handful of nuts, or a heavy nut+dried fruit bar, how about whipping up a greeeen smoothie in a few minutes instead?)

*how could I make this meal greeeeener? (Search for ways to get more leafy greeeeens into you – juices, smoothies, salads, soups, greens hidden in salad dressings, green powders sneaked into desserts, cookies and so on

*how could I make this meal more nutrient/mineral-dense? (e.g. how might you be able to add seaweed into a meal – kelp sprinkled over a salad, dulse in a soup, salad wrapped in a nori sheet? Instead of grabbing just a banana, how about blending that nana up with some yummmmy nutrient-rich kale or parsley and topping with a few goji berries…? …and so on…)

I hope these ideas have given you a little extra ‘food for thought‘ when it comes to making food choices…so many of us seem to ‘automatically’ reach out for food in any given situation, following the promptings of those monkey minds and twisted tastebuds…well, perhaps now you’ll feel the desire to listen more to that beautiful body of yours and get lighter, greener and more nutrient-dense by the bite

ENJOY

Contaminated Fruits and Vegetables

Jeannine Salvo, 32, always prided herself on being fit. She ran the Boston Marathon twice in her 20s, and she regularly did 10Ks. But one day a few years ago, she started getting terrible stomach pains. “I’d wake up at night in agony, and I was constantly dashing to the bathroom,” says Jeannine, a physical therapist in Schenectady, New York. “It was not the kind of running I wanted to be doing.” She toughed it out for more than a week, then went to the doctor. Tests showed that Jeannine was infected with E. coli 0157:H7, a potentially fatal strain of food-borne bacteria. “I couldn’t believe it. I’m such a healthy eater, I never thought I’d get food poisoning,” says Jeannine, who suspects she picked up E. coli while dining at an Italian restaurant.

After a course of antibiotics, the pain gradually eased. But Jeannine has never felt the same since. She has suffered three bouts of pancreatitis, a complication that can sometimes result when E. coli enters the blood and deposits toxins in the body’s organs, as well as abnormal heartbeat and gynecological problems. “I’m more prone to illness now,” Jeannine says. “Day to day, I don’t know if I’ll have enough energy to do activities I’ve enjoyed my whole life, like go for a bike ride. It’s so frustrating to have these constant health issues.”

Contaminated food has become a major health concern in the United States, responsible for an estimated 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What’s especially troubling is that some of the worst outbreaks have been caused by the healthiest kinds of foods. In the past year alone, thousands of people became sick after eating alfalfa sprouts, jalapeno and serrano peppers, and peanut products tainted with salmonella. This past March, a California manufacturer recalled pistachios and 249 products containing the nuts were pulled from shelves after salmonella was discovered at one of its processing plants. Dangerous bacteria have also contaminated spinach, cantaloupe, and bagged lettuce.

In fact, fruits and vegetables have been to blame for more known outbreaks of food-related illness during the last 16 years than poultry, beef, pork, or eggs, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a watchdog organization. One key reason: Produce is mass-produced and distributed today in ways it never was before. “We didn’t have bagged salad 20 years ago,” says Jim O’Hara, director of the Produce Safety Project, a policy group at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Much of it comes from a handful of large operations that chop the greens up, mix them together, and ship them all over the country. “A problem in one field can cause a nationwide outbreak,” O’Hara explains.

Before you swear off vegetables, however, consider this: The FDA, manufacturers, and even the president have put food safety on the front burner. The Obama administration has pledged to upgrade our laws and better enforce the current regulations, and some food companies are spending millions to improve their standards. Here’s what’s being done right now to bust the biggest bugs in our food supply, plus the steps you can take to protect yourself.