Archive for healthy living
7 Eco-Friendly Wellness Tips from Spices in your Pantry
Posted by: | CommentsPart of living an eco-friendly lifestyle is finding new uses for items you have around your household. Did you know that your spice rack could help you stay healthy this winter? Yes, everyday herbs and spices can help you live a healthy and eco-friendly lifestyle. These tips come courtesy of Naturopath Dr. Natasha Turner author of The Super Charged Hormone Diet during an appearance on The Marilyn Dennis Show. Remember these are only suggestions and before you make any changes to your diet or add supplements you should consult your physician.
Cinnamon Image Credit: natures-health-foods.com
First up is cinnamon, which is a versatile spice that lowers insulin. Insulin is the only hormone that tells our bodies to store energy as fat. Any spice that lowers insulin is an advantage; as it helps reduce sweet and salty cravings, reduce belly fat, and can help stabilize your appetite. How can you incorporate this into your daily diet? Add 1/2 to 1 tsp to your morning coffee, oatmeal, or protein shake. Within twenty to thirty days you will experience the benefits of cinnamon.
Second is ginger, which is excellent for calming nausea and is a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. An excellent way to store ginger in your home is to wrap it well in cling wrap and keep it in the freezer. Cut about an inch sized piece of a root put it in water and drink it though he day. You can enjoy this in hot or cold water; it will not change its beneficial properties. Another easy way to enjoy ginger is to add it to your stir-fry.
A third spice that is incredibly beneficial is curry. This potent spice is a super food as it helps to improve heart and brain heath. Studies have also found that is can help reduce risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Not to mention it is an anti-inflammatory, good for cholesterol, and can help you lose weight. If you don’t enjoy curries as a main dish add a little of spice your chicken or egg salad. Basically ½-1 tsp added to your cooking or to you taste.
A fourth spice that will help you stay healthy this winter is garlic. Garlic is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and helps boot your immune system. Try to add 1-2 cloves of raw garlic daily to a stir-fry or other entrees. Winter is a great time to enjoy pasta sauces, and that is an easy way to add garlic to your diet. Roasted garlic is also another alterative that is sweeter and less potent without losing the health benefits.
Rosemary is a fifth herb that can aid with wellness as it is known to help lower blood pressure, it’s an anti-inflammatory, and it’s good for vision. For best results you should use fresh and not dried rosemary, which is easily available in most grocery stores. Add to omelets and pasta sauces. You can easily infuse the herb in olive oil and dip your bread in it.
Sixth on the list is oregano, much like rosemary it is best used when fresh and not dried. Oregano is an anti-fungal, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory. Add it to pasta sauces, and pizzas. Again as with rosemary you can infuse oil with it and enjoy it with bread. Some people like to take 3-5 drops of Wild Oil of Oregano in water if they feel a cold coming on and continue until the symptoms pass.
The seventh and final remedy on our list is Caraway. It is an amazing digestive aid, as caraway can help with bloating, gas, and indigestion. Infuse “1 ounce of caraway seeds to 1 pint of water. Then steep the seeds for twenty minutes. Usual dosage is 1 to 2 tablespoons every half hour until symptoms disappear.”
These tips illustrate that you can find new uses for things that are already in your home. Also, using these herbs and spices you can help maintain your health in an organic and eco-friendly way. This is just another example of how you can easily live a greener lifestyle starting from the inside out.
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Posted by: | CommentsThe 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London are now just a little over a year away and the organising committee for the event have just published the first environment report for the Games. Pre-construction targets were set to reduce the carbon footprint by over 100,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions and the report says that this goal will be met due to strategies invested in during material selection and the building process. It’s a very bold claim but the committee claim that July, 2012 Games will be the Olympic’s first ‘truly sustainable’.
This initial report was the first of three that are scheduled to be published which will assess the environmental impact of what has been a gargantuan project. Former British Olympic medalist Sebastian Coe is the chair of the organising committee and explained:
“Before these Games, no-one had cleaned two million tonnes of contaminated soil on-site. No-one had tried to calculate the complete carbon footprint of a Summer Games, and no-one had built an 80,000-seat stadium as light in structure and environmental impact as ours.”
Encouragingly, sustainability has been far more than a caveat to the whole project. According to David Stubbs who is operating as head of sustainability for the project the entire approach and decisions made were with the environmental impacts at the forefront:
“It is not just the stadium, it is the velodrome and other infrastructure that we are putting in. All venues have a strong sustainability story to tell. If you have got the commitment at the beginning and you make it an important part of how you procure your contractors and designers, and you put it in the brief then people will come up with solutions. Put simply, it is a lightweight stadium and has a much smaller carbon footprint as a result.”
The report analyses five distinct aspects of the Olympic project including : waste; climate change; biodiversity; inclusion and healthy living. The results were all very much part of the advanced planning as the committee were formed to truly understand the impacts and then help develop a strategy to alleviate much of that pressure. Where possible existing structures are being used instead of building temporary locations which has often been a practice at previous games.
Another positive after the games will be the development of a huge 250-hectare site for parkland, recreation and sports. This will be the largest new park created in a major European city since the 1800′s. Much of the area will be reclaimed land which was previously polluted and derelict urban zoning. Rivers have been cleaned up and better flood protection has also been part of the infrastructure improvements. Overall the report makes for encouraging reading and perhaps will serve as a blueprint for future events of this scale. I remain in favour of selecting just 3 or 4 sites around the planet to continually rotate the Olympics, World Cup and Commonwealth Games which would be a far more sustainable long term approach. The time will come when that logic is applied rather than massive construction projects that too often result in under utilised infrastructure improvements after the events have concluded.
Momentum Reel Mower Makes Ecomowing Possible
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You can really pick up all kinds of ecofriendly living tidbits listening to Martha Stewart’s daily talk show. For example, she recently talked about this product that will make going green easier and it wasn’t self-promotion. The product was the Momentum Reel Mower from Fiskars. For those interested in adding a little green to their lives can switch from a gas powered mower to a push mower and reduce their carbon footprint in the process. Some may scoff at the idea of using a push mower because of the added exertion required when going over rough patches like very high grass but they have considered that.
Fiskars’ solution to this problem is their “InertiaDrive™ Technology [which] combines a large diameter cutting reel and heavy blades to store energy (like a flywheel) until a burst of extra cutting power is needed”. The InertiaDrive™ Technology is what makes this change towards ecofriendly living easy. The mower even boasts a “StaySharp™ Cutting System [which is] precision engineered to cut grass without the blades touching – greatly reducing friction & blade wear”. Fisker even stands by their product with a four-year warranty – the best on the market for a push mower. All this is topped off by the fact that the mower was designed not only to be good for the environment but also for the person pushing.
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