Vitamin C - My Wholefood Romance

A Breakfast for the Overwhelmed and Adrenally Fatigued – Overnight Oats

July 9, 2013 By Meg With 14 comments

overnightoatsfence So, I’ve had a bit on lately. It’s one of those situations where lots of opportunities come your way, and so you say “yes” to everything, and it’s all super fun and exciting and challenging….and exhausting! I am not complaining at all, but I am conscious enough to recognise that I need to put a few steps in place to make sure my brain doesn’t explode out of my skull which I was a bit worried about earlier today…

So, I thought I would write a quick post on adrenal fatigue – but I won’t go into great detail as I know we’ve all got smoothies to make, ha!

Our adrenals are lovely, small, walnut sized glands that hang out above our kidneys. They produce steroid hormones and help control our reaction to stress. The basic deal is that if we are stressed, a hormone called cortisol increases to help us to deal with it, and then returns to a baseline level. When cortisol rises, another hormone called aldosterone drops in order to lower our blood pressure slightly during this stressful time to keep us under control. Great! Our bodies can’t tell the difference between a lion attack, or the fact that you lost your car keys, and will respond physiologically the same way to different stressors. The problem is, this means that instead of short term lion attacks, we are responding this way long term to chronic modern day stressors like work, money, and figs only being in season for a short time… When we are chronically stressed, our adrenals are continually pumping out cortisol to cope – but there is only so far they can go. If our adrenals start to get tired, adrenalin comes to the party to pick up the slack and keep us going, but …

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Kitchen Pharmacy Part 2 – Prevention, plus an immunity hotpot

May 29, 2012 By Meg With 4 comments

Prevention.
It’s better that cure! That is definitely the word on the street. And it certainly saves a lot of time (and money if you think it terms of time off work) to be avoiding illness. By keeping yourself as well as you can you are also in a better position to bounce back faster and more completely if you do get sick.

So how do you stay well and avoid the dreaded lurgies?

There are certain key nutrients that help to maximise immune function, the big three being Vitamin C, Vitamin A/betacarotene and Zinc.

Vitamin C is widely recognised as being of assistance during colds / flu / infections for its ability to reduce the severity and duration of illness. Vitamin C supplements are one of the most widely consumed supplements on the market. They appear in varying quality, forms and strengths, and here is the basic lowdown. Powders are better absorbed than tablets. Smaller quantities taken more frequently is better than one huge dose. Don’t buy chewable vitamin C tablets as they are full of sugar/sweeteners which inhibit your immune system by up to 50%, and this is not what you want!

Having said this, nutrients work better, and are ultimately best absorbed if you have them as part of a whole food! Of course there are circumstances where we require higher doses, but for prevention and general wellness, wholefood is the go.

We are so lucky to have such an amazing array of goodies packed with Vitamin C to choose from, with capsicum, kale, broccoli, thyme and parsley, kiwi fruit, strawberries, citrus fruit, raw cabbage, sweet potato and tomatoes being the high flyers. Be careful though, you can destroy up to 100% of the vitamin C content of these foods during the cooking process as it …

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