Category: Healthy Living

Categories
Healthy Living

High Blood Sugar & why is that bad?

Apparently, blood sugar coats red blood cells (hemoglobin) and makes them sticky.  These “sticky cells” blocks the normal blood circulation, causing cholesterol to build up on the inside of your blood vessels. As you can imagine, interrupted blood flow is BAD news…The fragile blood vessels in your eyes, kidneys and feet are most susceptible, so problems are usually noticed first in those areas.

Controlling high blood sugar may help prevent or decrease many long-term complications and fatalities caused by it:  Otherwise, you stand the risk of dealing with:

  • Heart attack
  • Stroke
  • Eye problems that can lead to trouble seeing or blindness
  • Nerve damage in your hands and feet that can cause pain, tingling and numbness
  • Kidney problems, including kidney failure
  • Gum disease and tooth loss

Some damage may start occurring during prediabetes — a precursor stage to full blown diabetes in which your blood sugar is higher than normal but not high enough to be considered diabetes. Research proves that at prediabetes stage, you can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by almost 60 percent through lifestyle changes. These changes include increasing your physical activity and modest weight loss — losing as little as 5 to 7 percent of your current weight. Extreme exercise may actually increase the stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine, and may actually counter-active to the results you are seeking.  Stress hormones are produced when you are placed in a situation your body sees as being potentially dangerous.  And, extreme or irregular exercise schedule is indeed “potentially dangerous” especially if you have not dealt with the original stress level that enticed you to reach out for sugary foods to begin with.

Basically as far as this need to exercise is concerned, anything that you enjoy – dance, yoga, walking – if sustainable are all good.  Nothing needs to be extreme to get the benefits… I personally recommend a good hearty belly laugh as a form of exercise.  Life is hard as it is and “suffering” and “struggling” are choices you make.  I am all for taking on a challenge as long as it’s worth it.  Some struggles are definitely not worth it…  If you must fight and struggle to get what you want – then do it – but reward yourself with treating yourself to a self-care session where you can balance the nervous system which had to go into overdrive to achieve and win that something that was worth struggling for. And for some, you struggle to gain nothing, to not get what you want.  What then?  It was still worth it  – not the outcome, but the struggle itself represented something – whether it be “love” “courage” whatever – that struggle is worth it.  BUT is it on-going?  Or do you get to “settle”?  As Rolling Stones would sing, “you can’t always get what you want”… then?

ask again…

What do you really want?  What is your heart’s desire?  What is at the heart of it?

I don’t know what you want but I know what you need.

COMPASSION.

Compassion for self and then, you will naturally have compassion for others.  You can’t give what you don’t have yourself.

Categories
Healthy Food

Foodie’s Detox Holiday Luncheon Japanese Style

Holiday luncheon hosted by a local Japanese cooking teacher was just so amazing. Amazing in that as stuffed as you are, you feel good NOT guilty about stuffing yourself with this quality food. Normally after stuffing yourself, how do you feel?  Fat and sick? You may suffer from various not-so-good feelings normally when you over-eat.  Not with this food with its detox benefits in mind. Her cooking really brings home the idea “Food as Medicine” . Fresh ingredients are locally sourced and organic; other less known ingredients with health benefits were imported from western/southern regions of Japan.

Here’s the link with few of the dishes served but will try to translate onto this site in the near future…

Among many dishes, one and only dessert she served appealed to me especially because there’s no place you can find this kind of healthier version of a traditional sweets anywhere in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley  – typical oshiruko is a very sweet red bean soup that has a mochi, fluffy white sweet rice dumpling floating in the bowl.

Oshiruko, when done right has sweetness that’s subtle and not over-powering.  It is a dessert dish you don’t have to feel badly about upon eating but rather, feel healthier, stronger and energized from it with no worries over counting calories.  You eat this dish slowly as it’s served hot – thus, it feels you up s l o w l y… Guilt-free!  Indeed, this dessert is so good for you.   Like this dessert dish, each and every dish she served had significant health benefits.  The most convincing proof ?

I feel GOOD … no, No, NO

I feel GREAT!

 

Categories
Healthy Living Yoga

Yang vs. Yin Yoga

We need both in this life of dualism. Our body is a beautiful microcosm – it’s cosmic within. We know so much through advances in medicine and science but even to Dr. Hinohara (refer back to my 10/5/2013 post), much is still shrouded in mystery.  Some may refer to our body as a refined machine to marvel but as a non-medical person, I am in awe of it as a temple that houses our divinity… at its peak, I am in awe of it and …as it withers and ages, I am in awe of it. Modern medicine is amazing but it does not reverse the clock. What can we do? We need to tend to it … lovingly. Just like my grandmother used to pray with seasonal offerings, we need to make an offering to our own alter… in my case, through yoga and other movements …to lift the spirits.  All things important to us, we have to care for them or they wither away and languish or even perish…

More on this later – just realized I am subbing a yin class tomorrow for a wonderful teacher. May I just say that when I sub, I am not a replacement – I am just a provider of another style, another guide, a facilitator for you to find or stay on course on your own path. Just like there are many sherpas on the Himalaya, the maps we share are the same but we may not take the same route… the trail and the terrain may look a bit different … so please don’t expect me to replicate the same blue-print of your regular teacher whose style is unique and irreplaceable.

I like to sub as with me, I like breath of fresh air and enjoy the change in the routines. I tend to always unroll my mat at the same place, I always order green tea soy latte with no syrup, I always like to watch certain shows, I always like to X Y and Z… we are all a creature of habit. To me, it’s like this:  Subbing allows both the teacher and students to experience another style, another personality …. another way – it’s a good thing. Also it means that the regular teacher entrusted this humble sub just there to please by sharing her practice  – Thank you Myra & Marcella! I know this yoga tribe to be filled with brilliant gems…you are both precious, like such gems.  Thank you for your trust (that I won’t do something crazy!).

At Judith Lasater’s advance-level teacher training, we talked about how we hate subbing because of EGO…some egos have a distaste for anything called a “substitute”. Seems to me, there’s a prejudice or a perception that a sub is less than or not as good – it’s that notion you got from your school-boy/girl days growing up where subs really were there just to do the very minimum to get by, most with little passion. Post school, we need to see it as an opportunity to learn another way or a chance to enjoy a breath of fresh air. Prejudice clouds perception – why not see it as an opportunity to gain freedom from self imposed entrapments.  It’s an opportunity to explore something new.  Be assured it is not a waste of your precious time – Anything “new” is good for your brain circuitry!  As for your nerves, maybe you will grow new synapses just by coming in contact with me, serving as a sub:) What a thought!  My teacher, Judith Lasater herself started from subbing while she raised 3 children. I respect her authenticity for teaching regularly only when she felt she was able to really give all to her students. Because that’s what it takes… ALL.

I resigned from teaching regularly Thursday evenings at a lovely community center with lovely people for reasons I don’t feel like disclosing.  Yesterday, I was asked at a studio from a well meaning lady, “when would you be teaching?” – while it was flattering, I felt the pressure. I might have said something about ahhh, figuring out the schedule, etc. blah, blah (read “excuses”)- I should have said, thank you – let me know what works for you and I will try my best to accommodate. I am sorry I didn’t. I hope to be at that place sooner than later.

See you tomorrow AM – I will focus on stomach/digestive system… our “gut” so that you can live more true to your “gut” feelings. Your physical state totally affects your emotional state of being.  It’s all connected.  Unclog & detox (more through foods we eat) your meridians and allow the prana to flow to all your vital organs – feel the flow.  It’s my “gut” feeling – Very important region in our body as we head into the holiday season when we get overloaded with To Do list that snowballs. Hope to relieve you a bit through the magic of yoga:)