elizabeth baer, L.Ac

Can a Sweet Girl Give Up Sugar?

More than ever, I am convinced that nutrition is the key to a happy life. What we eat affects our moods, memory, physical health, spiritual health, longevity, and beauty.

Now, most of us over the age of 20 are accustomed to the labels “good food” and “bad food”. These can be great guidelines to go by ie.: Cupcakes=not so good for your body despite how delicious they feel in the moment vs. Kale=full of essential nutrients, anti-oxidents and tastes great too! However, they don’t always show the whole picture.

Despite all the hype out there, no one way of eating is right for everybody. The key is to take the basic guidelines and begin to experiment. When we listen to our bodies with this knowledge (how did that Kale feel in my belly vs. how did the Cupcake feel)— this is where wisdom and mastery of our health begins. 

My personal experiments with food and diet have led me to some challenging realities. The biggest, most recent realization is that I just do not tolerate sugar well. When it is in my body I break out, feel moody, overwhelmed and tired. I’ve known this for a long time, but have tried to squeeze my way around it over the years. A diagnosis of Intestinal Candida has forced me to face it head on, and it has been ugly.

So here I am, two weeks into a summer of no sugar. Because I am fighting Candida this includes all food that converts to or contains sugar (even in the smallest amounts). No watermelon, no beer, no margaritas, no ice cream, no hotdogs or ketchup. It feels very hard still, but I weigh the feeling that “I am missing out” with the reality that I already feel better inside and out. 

Wish me luck that I kick this Candida in three months, but even more so, wish me luck that I become a wiser inhabitant of my body and can honor this wisdom when the Candida is gone. 

Sweet Spring

Despite the fact that Springtime tends to be a wild ride between cold and warm weather, blustery winds, downpours and perfect blue skies, it is a time of expansion, growth and sweetness.

After Winter, we are so ready to get outside again that those days (sometimes hours) of perfect weather feel like the most delicious gift. The ancient Chinese medical texts talk about the energy of Spring as the time to “pace in the courtyard with great strides, hair loose, body relaxed, exerting the will for life.”

We see this “will for life” all around us. Baby animals are being born, little shoots of green are working their way out of dark soil, tight buds are transforming into explosions of color. I don’t know about you, but I feel so inspired seeing these transformations happen around me. Spring offers a sense of “live and let live.” Everything has worked so hard to make it through the Winter, you just want to cheer it on.

There is a particular emotion connected to the Spring energy, and this is Benevolence. Benevolence is defined as the “disposition to do good.” Nature calls us at this time of year to be especially kind, flexible and generous. This goes not only for the delicate new growth manifesting in nature, but for our desire to fulfill our own potential.

So now is the time to be kind to yourself, to nurse your dreams and personal growth, and to be generous to those around you who also hope to grow and change.

See you in the treatment room.

"If you take care of each moment, you will take care of all time."

— Jack Kornfield

In loving memory of Harbour Partesotti

Thank you sweet Harbour for sharing your last six months with me. You were a light of beauty and love and I always looked forward to our time together.

I miss you already. My heart breaks at your departure. I’ll carry your spirit into the treatment room always. You were a healer at heart.

Love your faithful practitioner,

Liz

Phys Ed: The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS for The New York Times Magazine
Ian Spanier/Getty Images

The holiday season brings many joys and, unfortunately, many countervailing dietary pitfalls. Even the fittest and most disciplined of us can succumb, indulging in more fat and calories than at any other time of the year. The health consequences, if the behavior is unchecked, can be swift and worrying. A recent study by scientists in Australia found that after only three days, an extremely high-fat, high-calorie diet can lead to increased blood sugar and insulin resistance, potentially increasing the risk for Type 2 diabetes. Waistlines also can expand at this time of year, prompting self-recrimination and unrealistic New Year’s resolutions.

But a new study published in The Journal of Physiology suggests a more reliable and far simpler response. Run or bicycle before breakfast. Exercising in the morning, before eating, the study results show, seems to significantly lessen the ill effects of holiday Bacchanalias.

For the study, researchers in Belgium recruited 28 healthy, active young men and began stuffing them with a truly lousy diet, composed of 50 percent fat and 30 percent more calories, overall, than the men had been consuming. Some of the men agreed not to exercise during the experiment. The rest were assigned to one of two exercise groups. The groups’ regimens were identical and exhausting. The men worked out four times a week in the mornings, running and cycling at a strenuous intensity. Two of the sessions lasted 90 minutes, the others, an hour. All of the workouts were supervised, so the energy expenditure of the two groups was identical.

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Their early-morning routines, however, were not. One of the groups ate a hefty, carbohydrate-rich breakfast before exercising and continued to ingest carbohydrates, in the form of something like a sports drink, throughout their workouts. The second group worked out without eating first and drank only water during the training. They made up for their abstinence with breakfast later that morning, comparable in calories to the other group’s trencherman portions.

The experiment lasted for six weeks. At the end, the nonexercising group was, to no one’s surprise, super-sized, having packed on an average of more than six pounds. They had also developed insulin resistance — their muscles were no longer responding well to insulin and weren’t pulling sugar (or, more technically, glucose) out of the bloodstream efficiently — and they had begun storing extra fat within and between their muscle cells. Both insulin resistance and fat-marbled muscles are metabolically unhealthy conditions that can be precursors of diabetes.

The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group. Like those sedentary big eaters, however, they had become more insulin-resistant and were storing a greater amount of fat in their muscles.

Only the group that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. They also burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently. “Our current data,” the study’s authors wrote, “indicate that exercise training in the fasted state is more effective than exercise in the carbohydrate-fed state to stimulate glucose tolerance despite a hypercaloric high-fat diet.”

Just how exercising before breakfast blunts the deleterious effects of overindulging is not completely understood, although this study points toward several intriguing explanations. For one, as has been known for some time, exercising in a fasted state (usually possible only before breakfast), coaxes the body to burn a greater percentage of fat for fuel during vigorous exercise, instead of relying primarily on carbohydrates. When you burn fat, you obviously don’t store it in your muscles. In “our study, only the fasted group demonstrated beneficial metabolic adaptations, which eventually may enhance oxidative fatty acid turnover,” said Peter Hespel, Ph.D., a professor in the Research Center for Exercise and Health at Catholic University Leuven in Belgium and senior author of the study.

At the same time, the fasting group showed increased levels of a muscle protein that “is responsible for insulin-stimulated glucose transport in muscle and thus plays a pivotal role in regulation of insulin sensitivity,” Dr Hespel said.

In other words, working out before breakfast directly combated the two most detrimental effects of eating a high-fat, high-calorie diet. It also helped the men avoid gaining weight.

There are caveats, of course. Exercising on an empty stomach is unlikely to improve your performance during that workout. Carbohydrates are easier for working muscles to access and burn for energy than fat, which is why athletes typically eat a high-carbohydrate diet. The researchers also don’t know whether the same benefits will accrue if you exercise at a more leisurely pace and for less time than in this study, although, according to Leonie Heilbronn, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, who has extensively studied the effects of high-fat diets and wrote a commentary about the Belgian study, “I would predict low intensity is better than nothing.”

So, unpleasant as the prospect may be, set your alarm after the next Christmas party to wake you early enough that you can run before sitting down to breakfast. “I would recommend this,” Dr. Heilbronn concluded, “as a way of combating Christmas” and those insidiously delectable cookies.

Where Am I? →

“OK. Maybe you’re in your desk chair. You’re in your office. You’re in New York, or Detroit, or Timbuktu. You’re on planet Earth. But where are you, really? This hour, Radiolab tries to find out.

How does your brain keep track of your body? We examine the bond between brain and body, and look at what happens when it breaks. First, author and neurologist Oliver Sacks tries to find himself using magnets. Then, a century-old mystery: why do many amputees still feel their missing limbs? We speak with a neuroscientist who solved the problem with an optical illusion. Up next, the story of a butcher who suddenly lost his entire sense of touch. And we hear from pilots who lose consciousness and suffer out-of-body experiences while flying fighter jets.”

Radiolab is one of my favorite shows EVER. Jad and Robert are excellent at sparking deeper questions about who we are, why we are, and the potential of our being. This particular episode resonates because of its implications of how the mind/body connection influences our health and perception of reality.

Enjoy the show!

"There is no perfection. Only perfecting our love for others and the world."

— Unknown

Is One the Loneliest Number? Maybe Not.

I loved this article because of its relevance to the holidays and to Winter in general. For some of us, that sinking feeling of loneliness begins its tidal movement this time of year. By February it has reached high tide.

Winter used to be the worst time for me mentally. My husband traveled for weeks at a time and most friends were in some level of social hibernation. Over the years I’ve begun to love this season for the same reasons I had disliked it. What changed? I got better at reaching out when I was at my lonely limit, but more importantly, I practiced liking my own company. Now cultivating comfortable solitude is a minor mission.

From Whole Living, September 2010

For some, solitude is an island of bliss. But for others, it’s uncomfortable, frightening — or at the very least, tedious. We asked a Harvard psychotherapist, a Buddhist meditation teacher, and a poet to tell us why one doesn’t have to be the loneliest number.

A Psychotherapist Responds
Srinivasan Pillay M.D., 
Harvard psychotherapist and author of “Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear”

One of the major factors that determine how lonely you get is your attachment style, or the quality of connections you have with others. If you have a more secure attachment style, you miss people you love, but you feel connected to them when they’re not around. If you have an anxious attachment style, you don’t just miss loved ones when they’re gone; you feel empty and distressed. 

It comes down to how much you trust people. Distrust activates the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, which in turn can make you feel vulnerable and scared. 

The good news is that you can cultivate a greater degree of comfort and begin to enjoy your alone time. And there are real reasons to do this: Loneliness can diminish immunity, making you more susceptible to pain and illness. 

When you pay attention to feelings of mistrust, your brain seeks out negative possibilities (“I’ll be betrayed,” “I’ll end up alone”). When you feed it trust, you can focus on more positive things. 

Being alone doesn’t have to be distressing; the accompanying emotions color the experience. Try not to ask, “Why do I feel this way?” Instead ask, “How are these fears serving me?” 

You just might start seeing those fears for what they are: relics of the past that you don’t need anymore.

A Buddhist Responds
Susan Piver 
Buddhist meditation teacher and author of several books, including “The Wisdom of a Broken Heart”

Being alone can be scary because it means slowing down and looking at your life and yourself. It’s very easy to avoid being alone — there are so many distractions. 

However, in one sense, we are always alone in our experience, whether we’re by ourselves, at the Super Bowl, or even having sex. So it’s good to get used to it. 

Buddhism teaches that self-knowledge is the path to enlightenment and that the only true wisdom is contained within your personal experience. Without solitary time, there is no chance to reflect on your life and find this wisdom. 

My advice is to cultivate aloneness as a habit — even for just five or ten minutes a day. See what it’s like. Sit there and allow whatever intrigues or bores or scares you to arise. The energy you spend in fearful reaction to things is much greater than the energy it takes to look at them. Out of that time will come amazing things: insight, creativity, courage, self-knowledge — and truth. I promise.

A Poet Responds
Alice Walker
Writer, activist, and poet; her new collection of poetry is “Hard Times Require Furious Dancing”

I have always been a solitary person — so much so that it surprised me that I married and went so far as to have a child. Being alone, for me, is very much connected to nature — I enjoy merging with it and disappearing into it. I feel at once present and unpresent. 

I counsel people to live as close to the earth as possible, because this is where we’re from. This is what supports you. 

It’s also through nature that I feel connected to ancestry and to spirit, and they are present in the sounds and silence of nature. We don’t have any real understanding anymore of how we’re connected to all who have come before us. We feel cut off — but how could we be? They are us, and we are them. 

I do think you can learn to love being alone. I think people who have a fear of being alone should consider a meditation practice, to be rather than think. Just try to develop love for yourself and compassion even for all your backward, stupid, mean-spirited, bad ways. Say to yourself, There you are, and I love you anyway.

 Read more at Wholeliving.com: Can I Learn to Love Being Alone?

Photo credit: Flickr Jam343

Doing Time and Doing Good →

An interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with Wilbert Rideau who spent 44 years in America’s toughest prison, Angola, Louisiana.

It is a story of shame, redemption, service, gratitude and ultimate transformation.

Let me know what you think.

Survival of the Kindest

Psychologist Paul Ekman reveals Charles Darwin’s real view of compassion—and it’s not what you might think. His belief that altruism is a vital part of human and even animal life is being confirmed by modern science. In 1871, eleven years before his death, Charles Darwin published what has been called his “greatest unread book,” The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. His little-known discussion of sympathy in this book reveals a facet of Darwin’s thinking that is contrary to the competitive, ruthless, and selfish view of human nature that has been mistakenly attributed to the Darwinian perspective. In the fourth chapter, entitled “Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals,” Darwin explained the origin of what he called “sympathy” (which today would be termed empathy, altruism, or compassion), describing how humans and other animals come to the aid of others in distress. While he acknowledged that such actions were most likely to occur within the family group, he wrote that the highest moral achievement is concern for the welfare of all living beings, both human and nonhuman.

See the November 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun for this complete feature.

Paul Ekman is a renowned expert in emotional skills and nonverbal communication, pioneering techniques to unmask deception and other mental states through facial recognition. He collaborated with the Dalai Lama on the 2008 book, Emotional Awareness. In 2009, TIME magazine named him one of its top 100 influential people.

Source: Copy directly from Shambala Sun magazine