Make A Date with Health November 29, 2008

Due to demand, we will now schedule cooking classes and Introduction to Macrobiotics sessions. This will enable better planning for our counsellors and for class participants.

Our other courses are on-going. Please click on the Courses tab above for a complete list of courses at Lusher Than Life.

Seats are limited – bookings are a must. Sessions by appointment (outside of the scheduled times are still possible – call Simone on +65 9004 2645 to enquire).

Every meal is Thanksgiving at Lusher Than Life

‘Life is Delicious’ cooking classes (9.30am – 3.30pm)

Fee: $250-00 (A 10% discounts applies for group bookings of at least 3)

Every Sunday; classes by special arrangement possible.

By the end of each class, students will understand the basics of food energetics, and nutrition, and be able to plan and cook a macrobiotic meal. As students books their classes, they will be asked about any health issues they might have and the menus for classes will be tailored to specific needs and issues as much as possible. Classes begin with hands-on cooking. Lunch is followed by a dialogue on macrobiotic food theory, and how to prepare a meal with ingredients already in students’ refrigerators. Students will receive a binder with a macrobiotic food pyramid, food nutrition tables, recipes and other relevant articles.

Using a pickle press for yang energy - photo courtesy of Palate Sensations

Introductory Macrobiotics Education Session (Every Saturday – 10am – 12 noon)

Fee: $120-00 (A 10% discounts applies for group bookings of at least 3)

Every Saturday. Classes by special arrangement possible.

Each lecture will teach the basics of the macrobiotic approach to eating and the effects of the practice on lifestyle. We will also cover various testimonials from people who have been helped by macrobiotics, and look at views from the medical fraternity on food and healing. Each student will receive an information pack on macrobiotic basics, what it takes to get started, resources needed, and a selection of background reading.

Journey to Health

Fee: 2-day course $370-00, 3-day course $520-00 (A 10% discounts applies for group bookings of at least 3)

Bookings for Journey to Health courses is by by special arrangement only.

This is a series of seminars and cooking classes for those who would like to seriously transition to the macrobiotic diet. The Journey to Health course lasts 2-3 days depending on the needs of participants. The two-day session comprises an introduction to macrobiotics and the macrobiotic lifestyle and a hands-on cooking class. The two-day session covers topics such as: What  is Macrobiotics, Science and Macrobiotics, Epidemioloical Research on Health and Nutrition,  The Energy of Food, Menu Planning for Health, and a Hands-on Cooking Class.

The three day session covers: What  is Macrobiotics, Science and Macrobiotics, Epidemioloical Research on Health and Nutrition, The Energy of Food,  Menu Planning for Health, a Hands-on Cooking Class and a Transitioning to Macrobiotics Counselling Package for those who feel they would like the extra support as they transition  to the macrobiotic way of life. The Transitioning to Macrobiotics Counselling Package comprises a macrobiotic consultation, a 30-page booklet outlining macrobiotic eating practices for your particular health issues and lifestyle, as well as 3 follow-up phone calls to tweak the diet further to your body’s needs.

In all classes, students will receive an information pack comprising PowerPoint slides used during the class, background reading, nutritional tables as well as recipes for the cooking classes.

Enquiries/bookings on +65 9004 2645.

For information on our other classes, please click on the Courses tab above.

Dairy Milk – Sustenance or Killer? August 12, 2010

Like most adults walking the earth today, my brothers and I were brought up on the concept that milk is a whole(some) food. Whenever we were ill, out came the choc0late milk, the cocoa, and cream cakes, custards and Mars bars – the theory being that even if we did not feel like eating food because we were sickly, we would still get all the proteins, vitamins and minerals we would need from that perfect whole food, ie milk.

Now, after a diagnosis of cancer, I annoy all my friends at the dinner table when I see them adding milk to their coffee, or downing their chocolate after-dinner mints by making pronouncements of: “Killer food”!

There is, of course, all sorts of research to both prove and debunk the view that milk is indeed linked to a range of degenerative disease. But I have to say, the pro-milk voice is getting comparatively weaker, and the best it can say is – it ain’t the milk, it is the fat in the milk. Order low-fat milk and you’ll be okay. Say, what?

The perfect food

Macrobiotic sages such as George Ohsawa have said that dairy milk is indeed the perfect food…for cows. Mother’s milk is the perfect food for human babies. It is no accident that in the animal kingdom, the young are weaned after a certain amount of time. Humans, on the other hand, are the only mammals that do not actively wean their young. Surely Mother Nature, in all her wisdom, would have ensured that animals would breast feed their young for decades past infancy if it was required? If we look at the largest mammals on earth – whales, elephants and so on – we see that their bones are phenomenally strong, yet none consume milk past infancy. Why should humans be different?

Effects of milk consumption

1. Auto-immune diseases

Dr T. Colin Campbell in the seminal The China Study[1] links the consumption of dairy products to a range of chronic illnesses, ranging from heart disease, to cancer to autoimmune diseases including MS, Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus.

Fifty years ago an average cow produced 900 kg of milk per year. Today the top producers give an amazing 22,700 kg, made possible by drugs, antibiotics, hormones, forced feeding plans and specialized breeding, all of which set us up for a range of allergies and auto-immune diseases as well as other conditions we are making links to all the time.

Any lactating mammal excretes toxins through her milk. This includes antibiotics, pesticides, chemicals and hormones, including the recombinant bovine growth hormone, which encourages continuous and copious lactation.
A huge study showed that human breast milk in over 14,000 women had been contaminated by pesticides. Further, it seems that the sources of the pesticides are meat and dairy products, which traditional wisdom would have lactating mothers drink to boost the quality of their own milk. These pesticides are concentrated in fat and that’s what’s in these products. By contrast, a subgroup of lactating vegetarian mothers had only half the levels of contamination.
Another report showed an increased concentration of pesticides in the breast tissue of women with breast cancer, compared to the breast tissue of women with fibrocystic disease.

2. Osteoporosis

Diagram: From the China Study, page 207

Doctors tell menopausal women to drink more milk to offset their risk of osteoporosis. Yet we know, for example, that the US is the number one milk-consuming nation on this earth, and at the same time, the country with the highest incidence of hip fractures in the world[2]. Japanese women, on the other hand, don’t consume dairy products as part of their traditional diet and have one of the lowest rates of osteoporosis in the world.

Societies that eat large amounts of meat have a high incidence of osteoporosis. How does this happen?

Well, when you take in more protein than you need, your body cannot store the extra protein, so it converts the amino acids from milk protein into organic acids that acidify the blood. The kidneys are then required to buffer  the acidity by pushing large amounts of calcium into the urine.

After looking at 34 published studies in 16 countries, researchers at Yale University found that the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis – including the US, Sweden, and Finland – were also those in which  people consumed the most meat, milk and other animal protein. This study also showed that African-Americans, who consume, on average, more than 1,000 mg of calcium per day, are nine times more likely to experience hip fractures than are South African blacks, whose daily calcium intake is only about 196 mg per day. An in fact, cultures who enjoy good bone health often have much less calcium in their diets, but also eat less protein.

In fact, from a macrobiotic perspective, people with bone cancer often find themselves urinating more frequently, even during the night. This is because the body needs to excrete the calcium and this necessitates frequent urination and is why bone cancer is usually accompanied by weakened kidneys.

3. Cancer

There are researchers who postulate that the recombinant bovine growth hormone in milk encourages the aggressive growth of human cells, and opens the doors to uncontrolled growth of mutant (cancerous) cells.

Dr Robert Bibb is working on a book called Death by Dairy. His research reflects that when cows are treated with a genetically engineered growth hormone to boost milk production, they produce more insulin-like growth factor, which stimulates cell growth. Bibb’s theorises that dairy-rich diets may render children less resistant to cancer.

“A gene can be turned on or turned off,” said Bibb, “Suppose your consumption of dairy turned off some of the switches, but you didn’t get cancer. You pass your gene on to your daughter or son and they have some of those turned-off switches … this is all theory, but I believe it explains the phenomenon of prostate and breast cancer occurring in younger people.” In Singapore, for instance, oncologists have noted that we are diagnosing women with breast cancer at an increasingly younger age, sometimes as much as 10 years younger than the average age of diagnosis in the US. Epidemiological studies are under way to assess the possible reasons for this.

The Cancer Project, based in the US, groups physicians together to advocate more responsible medicine. While there is a wide range of information available linking dairy products to a range of cancers from lymphoma to leukemia and all the reproductive cancers, The Cancer Project says that the strongest relationship appears to be between diary consumption and prostate as well as breast cancer: “Prostate cancer has been linked to dairy products in several studies. In Harvard’s Physicians Health Study, including more than 20,000 male physicians, those who consumed more than two dairy servings daily had a 34% higher risk of developing prostate cancer than men who consumed little or no dairy products. Several other studies have shown much the same thing.

Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain this association. Dairy product consumption increases levels of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-1) in the bloodstream. IGF-1 is a potent stimulus for cancer cell growth. High IGF-1 levels are linked to increased risk of prostate cancer and breast cancer.”

Many people are reluctant to eschew milk consumption for the calcium, maintaining that despite the risks, milk is still the best source of calcium.

Alternatives to milk

There is a growing group of physicians who now feel that calcium offered by milk is, in fact, poor quality calcium. Rather, calcium derived from dark green leafy vegetables such as kale, collard greens, kai lan, broccoli and brussel sprouts and all seaweeds is preferred. Analysis has shown that a wide range of minerals account for 7-38 per cent of their dry weight. All of the elements essential to health – including calcium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, iodine, iron, and zinc – are present in sea vegetables in sufficient amounts. Of the wide variety of minerals present, calcium, iron, and iodine are of particular importance to people eating a dairy-free, grain-based vegetarian, or macrobiotic diet. For example, 1 cup of cooked hijiki contains over half the calcium found in a cup of milk and more iron than in an egg. And it is cholesterol free too!

One needs to remember that a lot of the general dietary recommendations that we see are directed at people on the standard modern diet. In the standard diet, people tend to eat protein as the main food component, while vegetables tend to used as a side-dish or garnish. Certainly, if you ate the modern diet, you would need the calcium in milk because you would not otherwise be getting enough.

However, if you dropped the dairy products and animal protein, and increased your consumption of vegetables and seaweed, you would have adequate amounts of calcium to keep your body in homeostasis and in better health.

Now, isn’t that worth giving that ice cream sundae and Sunday roast a miss?

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[1]   T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell (2006), The China Study, Benbella Books, USA.

[2] Frasetto :A. Todd KM, Morris C, Jr et al: Worldwide incidence of hip fractures in elderly women in relation to consumption of animal and vegetable foods”, J. Gerontology 55 (2000): M585-M592

Noise, common courtesies and disease June 30, 2010

Do you have time to watch the clouds?

DOES anyone out there feel that life is become less than civilised, despite our huge technological advances over the last half century? I would even go so far as to say that these very technological advances has led to a certain amount of de-civilisation…and a corresponding increase in stress-related illness.

Years ago, people had time for leisure, time to sit and stare, or have conversations with families and friends. To actively build relationships. Time where the ‘connection’ was valued. (Remember when we would sit on the front porch and chat after dinner?)

Today, no-one has the time – I just met a couple who conducted their entire courtship via text message  because both were so busy travelling for their jobs. I’m convinced that it won’t be long before marriages are solemnised via videoconference and Skype!

Of course, here in Singapore, the noise level makes contemplative time a luxury few achieve. The constant groan and whine of traffic, of renovations all around because of an active construction industry and home sale market, the shouting from people who need to make themselves heard above the noise. Is this what we call civilisation? Or progress?

From a macrobiotic perspective, we say that people are living more ‘yang’ lifestyles – rushing about, highly active, where the body and mind never gets a chance to simply ‘sit’ still to simply be, to contemplate, think and reflect.

Couple this with an increasingly yang diet, and what you have is simply…too much yang. Even in the emerging countries, traditionally more vegetarian, we see an uptrend in chronic illness. As economic development takes hold, meat consumption increases – a common phenomenon. And later, so does chronic illness.

It is my belief that the constant stress of simply getting through each day takes its toll on our bodies. The strain of being in motion all the time, of having to juggle several tasks, of working around the clock because remote teams and international business connections make time-zones irrelevant. The  stress makes people impatient, eager to get to the next thing – so much so that the basic civilities of human contact have gone the way of the dodo.

When was the last time you chatted with your neighbours, had morning coffee with them? Spent hours talking to your kids, rather than palming them off on the TV cum babysitter, or the tuition teacher, or tennis coach or their school teacher? Or simply picked up the phone (not text messaged or emailed!) to talk to someone without agenda – just to re-connect?

I think this modern way of living has almost de-humanised us in the sense that it takes us away from a community of other human beings where our interactions were focused on relationships, rather than agenda.

People need people! Chronic illness is our body’s way to telling us so. I have met many people who tell me that the diagnosis of illness was a wake-up call, and that it took that diagnosis for them to listen to their bodies, to slow down, to review priorities. No-one ever died saying: Gee, I wished I had made another million bucks! But many have passed on saying: I wish had I more time with my spouse/partner/kids/parents/lover…

So won’t you take some time today to make a human connection, without agenda? No talk of work, jobs, business, money, the latest Hollywood blockbuster or the new ‘It’ bag.  Just focus on things which touch your essential human-ness – kindness, love, peace, friendships, spirituality, community. These unite us all and respecting this part of ourselves is respecting the natural order and our place in it.

It is the recognition of this that is the beginning of healing.

Avoid carbs, they say June 27, 2010

This is a frequent battle cry amongst many people I speak to about healthy eating. “Carbohydrates cause my weight to balloon,” they say. Even in the gyms around Singapore, people are recommending low-carb consumption and when I recommend a 40%-60% whole grain diet, people begin to roll their eyes.

This is the big problem in our modern diets – there isn’t anything to hang your hat on, so to speak. People today are picking and choosing from fruits and vegetables and a range of protein but this system of eating has no ballast – hence the tendancy towards nervous energy and twitchiness in our human relations.

First of all, most of us are eating several helpings of fruits each day. This is consistent with the recommendations from nutritionists. However, we tend to choose fruits we like ie, the sweet fruits. With the general movement towards juicing, many of us are ingesting alot of fructose – which is, at the bottomline, still a sugar and therefore very yin. Very few people try to rebalance their fruit or juicing with vegetables, or with a pinch of sea salt.

The vegetables we eat tend to be leafy vegetables – found in the salads which have become the mainstay of any weight loss plan. No wonder frequent fatigue is a corollary of a weight loss plan! Leafy vegetables, doused in vinaigrette, is too yin.

With these being the mainstay, it is no wonder that the standard modern diet is full of BIG YANG ie, animal protein and eggs.  Many people I know say: Oh, but I only eat fish. Fish, beef, veal, pork, chicken, capon, turkey…name it, in macrobiotics they all go by the same moniker…YANG.With the tendancy towards yin eating, the body feels it needs to ‘energise’ itself and looks for the same degree of yang to balance out the yin.

So, when we do not take any carbs, we leave our bodies open to eating out of balance by pushing it towards animal protein, simply because when we don’t have a strong balancing influence in our daily food intake, we swing from yin to yang. And this is reflected in the increasing stress and snappishness of daily communication.

Let me leave you with one final thought on eating grains – refined grains tend to be empty calories, and also more yin. Its blandness cries out for strong tasting foods such as highly seasoned sauces, and animal protein. Whole grains, on the other hand, are more balanced, with good proportions of potassium and sodium, close to the proportions that occur naturally in human blood.

This means that it doesn’t need such strong seasoning, which in turn lowers the salt content required in food, which in turn lowers the tendency towards yang food, which lowers the need for yin food…and so on…and so on.

Ultimately, this means that see-saw is slowed, reduced, and balance is achieved.

Avoiding carbs, therefore, is not the answer to better health and weight loss. Rather, eating the right carbs will lead to better health and weight loss, and more stable mental health.

Why do people sabotage their own healing? March 30, 2010

I have spent the better part of today trying to talk people out of their need to cheat on their diets, or trying to persuade them to release old food habits, such as eating hot cross buns during Easter, or continuing to juice or eat raw salads on a daily basis.

Once having started on the healing diet, with the body working on redressing its intrinsic homeostatic balance, eating at the extreme ends of the food spectrum will throw the body out of whack again, and therefore, more work will need to be done to rebalance the body.

The see-saw proccess, especially for those in delicate health, is not good and takes alot out of the body – taking up energy and other resources that could be directed towards healing.

Today, I realised that the relationship with our food goes so deep that in spite of an intellectual acceptance of the efficacy of macrobiotics, people still cannot break the link. Food is linked to childhood choices, rewards for good behaviour, the food eaten on the special first date…loads of emotional baggage is linked with food choices.

I think of this as the last frontier in the road towards total health.

Once people are able to cut these ties, and exorcise themselves of this unhealthy tie, they will well and truly be on the road to healing. Until then, the diet, true healing will remain elusive.

Macrobiotics means a total break with everything that brought you to the point in your life when you decided that you had to try macrobiotics – in my case, it was a cancer diagnosis.  In my practice, these tend to be cancer patients with no further medical options. It is very painful to watch people at this stage of their lives still sabotaging their own healing with poor food choices.

Ironically, it is at this stage of their lives that they reach for familiar comfort provided by food. And even more ironically, it is at this stage of their lives when they need most to make a break with the past, understand how they have arrived at this state of health and decisively take steps into their own, healthy, future.

It is frightening to make this total break with everything that has defined you in the past. But in order to survive, and to become the new, better and healthier you, that break is essential. Let go, and reach for the future – the first step is the hardest. The rest becomes an adventure of discovery.

Just what does ‘cheating’ mean? June 10, 2009

IN A previous post, I wrote that it was possible to ‘cheat’ on the diet, if it was well planned. Well, I’m afraid it is now time for me to eat my words.

First of all, let’s think about the word: cheating. It implies that something is verboten, forbidden. It implies that we are out of bounds if we reach for that something. For the macrobiotic practitioner, you might think it would be that 400g steak, or that triple chocolate cake. And you would be wrong – just a little bit.

One of the things I love about macrobiotics is its flexibility. You want a steak? Go for it! Macrobiotics doesn’t forbid – it just asks you to balance things out. But it will take some doing to balance such big yang as a steak.

But now, putting on my macrobiotic counsellor hat and say this – have that steak as long as it is with the full awareness of what toll it will take on your body and ultimately, your health. One steak a year won’t kill you. But if that one steak turns into the monthly steak, and if that steak leads to sticky gooey super sweet desert to balance out its strong yang energy, and then a roast leg of lamb to balance that out…well, you see what might happen. That first decision to cheat could be a slippery  slope, the thin end of the wedge. Pretty soon, your body will start to signal that it feels rotten – something small first – heart burn, then the see-saw between a lack of energy and a trigger temper, increased weight, shortness of breath…and so the spiral begins.

But that’s an obvious ‘cheat’ – the big fall off the straight and narrow path, as it were. It’s the little ‘cheats’ that are more dangerous because we hardly notice them. Very often, people eat the odd small bite off the macrobiotic diet – and excuse themselves because it’s, well, just one curry puff. Or one cream biscuit. Or just a scoop of icecream. Maybe just a couple of French fries.

In my experience, it takes an extraordinary person to just have that one curry puff, then get back on the path. Usually, that one ‘cheat’, if it results in no physical reaction, will lead to another, then another, and when you do start to feel out of sorts, it is when the damage within has been done and your body  feels that it has to signal you.

If you are in good health, it might take a little longer for your body to signal you that all is not well, with symptoms such as weight gain. Or zits. Or a sore throat. But if you are on a healing diet and want to eat outside the recommendations, my sincere advice to you if you want to cheat is: resist.

The fact is, the more I understand macrobiotics, the less I think I know. There is so much we do not know about the workings of the body. It is a huge and remarkably complex topic, and there are so many areas that baffle even the experts. Think of all the illnesses that we cannot heal or predict with any accuracy – cancer being one of them. All I know is that over time, science has begun to recommend dietary practices that are increasingly  closer to the macrobiotic recomendations that originated thousands of years ago. So, just because science has not proven macrobiotics conclusively, it has proven enough of its precepts that makes me think that there is more to this than meets the eye. And so, I eat within the guidelines.

In working with people with illness, and in navigating my own health journey with a macrobiotic compass, I have to say that if you believe in macrobiotics enough to want to try making the changes, don’t shortchange  yourself, your health, and your chances of a recovery by eating food that is not recommended. Persistent cheaters who are on the healing diet need to ask themselves why they are sabotaging their recovery. The healing phase is about 4-6 months. Isn’t  your continued good health for the long years in front of you worth eating well and strictly for an initial 6 months?

Because that’s what ‘cheating’ really means. You are not just rebelling against the counsellor. Or against macrobiotics. You are rebelling, ultimately, against the idea of good health.

And why on earth would you want to do that?

Beating Rheumatoid Arthritis Macrobiotically!

I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 26 years ago as a young girl and over the years the condition  worsened. When I first saw Simone Vaz at Lusher Than Life, I had had surgery on two fingers as well as my right wrist, was lacking in energy and had accepted that pain would be a  part of my life. After my consultation, I went cold turkey into macrobiotics  with nothing but hope and the loving support of my family. After 2 weeks of  eating macrobiotically, I  found I could make a fist when I woke up, and  that my energy levels were increasing. After 5 weeks of macrobiotics, I found  I could hold that fist. I also had greater mental clarity. Where before my  workload meant that I had to leave the office at 8pm, I found myself getting  home in time for dinner with my family at 7pm. And I was able to extend my  cardio workouts on the stationary  bicycle.

The improvement in my  condition has surpassed all my expectations. My friends and colleagues notice  the change in me. My family rejoice with me. I now feel like a different  person, and I know that as I continue with the macrobiotic diet, my condition  will continue to improve. I am embarking on a new adventure, taking charge of  my health and growing into a whole new me!

- Juliana Rajam, Ang Mo Kio,  Singapore.

Thanks from a bladder cancer survivor

From YW Cheong, 54-year -old bladder cancer survivor, who came to see Simone Vaz with his wife, Grace, for help in transitioning to a healing macrobiotic diet to help support him as he took chemotherapy. During chemotherapy, after starting to eat macrobiotically, he saw some of his key health parameters improve. He sent in this lovely note to Simone Vaz at Lusher Than Life.

“For now, I feel my health and energy level have improved, thanks in part to the macrobiotic diet that Grace and I learned from you!

We found you are a very patience and nice lady without air. It has been our pleasure talking to you during those phone consultations when you made the efforts to answer our queries or explain things.

Take care of yr health and have sufficient rest too!”

Best Regards
Cheong & Grace