Compassion

It was a bad morning. One of the many mornings when I feel like a failed parent. After failing to get  my one year old to eat anything for breakfast I gave up and was trying to make my own. While I stood at the stove cooking oatmeal, I scanned my Facebook feed which was full of articles and posts about all the things parents are doing to screw up their kids. We let them watch too much t.v.; we let them play too many video games; we give them formula--even once is a crime you know!; we give them baby food from a jar, which is similar to feeding them rat poison if the articles are to be believed; we don't give them enough exposure to nature; we don't brush their teeth often enough; we yell at them sometimes; we fail to achieve the ideals of attachment parenting by putting them in a stroller and walking for hours because it's the only way to gain some silence; we just never do enough as parents and the message out there is that if our kids turn out badly it's our fault. Let's forget about their own natures. Let's forget about any other formative factor. The message I'm getting is that I am the only thing standing between my child and a life of crime and if one day I crack and let him eat sugar or stay up too late I'm going to unleash a monster.

While I was skimming these posts my one year old was throwing a fit because I was making oatmeal instead of playing with him. He was screaming and throwing himself at my legs, the noise reaching an unbelievable volume and I just lost it. It was all too much. I sat down on the floor, with my oatmeal burning to the pot, and I cried. I cried because my kid won't eat solid food at 14 months old. I cried because he throws tantrums multiple times a day and there's nothing I can do about it. I cried because all those stupid articles about what not to do as a parent are making me feel like a failed mother. I cried because motherhood suddenly felt so huge and overwhelming that I didn't know what else to do.

While I was sitting in a heap on the kitchen floor losing my mind my son stopped crying. He sat beside me silently while tears dripped off the end of my nose. I turned to him and he was looking at me. Then he reached out and patted my leg. I was so shocked that I started laughing. Here is this one year old child who suddenly reached out to perform an act of comfort. How did he know to do that? Was he just imitating an action he had seen or was it something else? Where did this act of compassion come from?

He soon went back to throwing tantrums, but it made me think. It made me think about how we all need to step back and give each other a pat on the back. If you're anything like  me you went into parenthood having read 800 books about how to be the perfect parent, and you held carefully crafted ideas about how to do everything right. And then, if you're like me, you were faced with the reality of raising a child and realized that no book holds any answers, because every child is a unique hurricane force that is completely unpredictable and shakes you to your core. And while you want to stick to all your ideals, some days you just can't because there's too much rice cereal to scrape off the floor and you're trying to wrestle your kid into a stroller so you can go home from the park and there's a load of peed on sheets to wash and you haven't actually eaten anything yet today so....so I'm sorry...Ideals? What are those? I'm just trying to survive here.

And in the middle of it all my infuriating, beautiful child calmly reaches out and pats my leg and I have to believe that maybe I haven't screwed up so badly after all. So here's my new rule: If you have a hundred ideals in relation to being a parent, and if you aim towards those ideals, and if you come even remotely close to realizing even one of those hundred ideals you should congratulate yourself and throw the biggest freaking party in the world and invite all the other parents who are going insane from lack of adult contact and we can all remind each other that we're doing our best and check our guilt at the door. Just for an hour. Just for second. Who's with me?

Fine, I'll Make it Myself

My husband has a lot of allergies--from food to environmental irritants. Putting on an "all natural" hand lotion before bed a few weeks ago resulted in an all night cough fest and lost sleep for both of us. It also meant looking for alternatives for my sad dry hands, and it turns out that almost everything on the market contains toxins, poisons, and irritants.

Here are a few of  the big ones:

1. Parabens: Substances that soak into the skin easily and enter the blood stream. They mimic estrogen and are implicated in various cancers.

2. Parfum: a mystery term that could refer to thousands of chemical fragrances. These fragrances are known to trigger migraines, allergies, and asthma.

3. Phthalates: Substances added to products to make the smell of fragrances linger. Studies prove that this stuff is extremely toxic. The David Suzuki Foundation Survey of Chemicals in Cosmetics lists phthalates as hormone disruptors and may cause liver and kidney failure in young children who chew or suck on products containing phthalates.

There are a lot more toxic substances lurking in your hand cream, your cosmetics, and your hair products and the question I have to ask is WHY? Why isn't this regulated? Currently there are very few laws in Canada that prevent the use of toxic substances in cosmetics, even though it's common knowledge that your skin absorbs everything you put on it and sends it straight to your blood stream. A quick look at the ingredient list on my hand lotion turned up dozens of unrecognizable ingredients. What are they doing in there? What are they for? All I want to do is moisturize my hands! Surely that doesn't require toxins and poisons.

The general rule that I see coming up again and again is that if you wouldn't eat it, don't put it on your skin. So I got rid of all my commercial hand lotion and set out to make my own. There are tons of recipes online that use fairly easy to source and clean ingredients. And hand lotion is ridiculously easy to make. I ended up making up my own recipe to use ingredients I could get at Galloways--a specialty food store in Richmond, BC that carries a whole array of soap and cosmetic making ingredients.

Here is my recipe (keep in mind that the amounts are approximate)

1/3 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup shea butter
1/4 cup shredded beeswax
250 ml Macadamia Nut Oil

Put all ingredients in a double boiler and heat until all ingredients combine into a liquid. Pour liquid into small, decorative Mason jars or other glass containers. Leave at room temperature to cool back into a solid or put in the fridge to speed the process.

Don't leave out the beeswax, because it acts as an emulsifier for the oils. The hand lotion this recipe produced was quite soft. If you want a more solid lotion use less macadamia nut oil (or whatever liquid oil you're using). Almond oil is popular for use in hand creams as well and you could use that instead. You could also add some essential oils for  light scent. I left it out, wanting something basically scent free. The cream does have a vague scent of honey and nuts from the beeswax and oil. Quite pleasant, but faint, and dissipates quickly.

This was a really easy, reasonably affordable project. And I would argue that it works even better than commercial moisturizers. Throwing out your old moisturizers and making your own is an easy way to eliminate thousands of toxins from your life and your body. Let me know how your experiments go!  I also have left-over materials so if you want to come by I would be happy to run a personal tutorial for the cost of supplies.

Sorry, What Kind of Irrigation?!

There are a lot of things that people don't tell you about parenthood. You expect to lose sleep, you expect to be puked on, you expect your social life to disintegrate, but I think I missed the part on the job description that said you need nasal irrigation skills. It must have been way down at the bottom with things like "must be able to scrape manure off a one year old's tongue" and "must not have a fear of eye snot."

My one year old and I have been sick with three consecutive colds over the past two months. It hasn't been pretty. I woke up one morning so sick and sleep deprived that I was actually in tears and begging not to have to care for my equally sick son. Thankfully he was shipped off to Granny and Grandad's for the morning allowing me to get some much needed rest. But the illness has lingered on. While I'm feeling much better, my son's nose has been an oozing disaster for weeks and he's now developed a terrifying cough that flares up at night and makes me think that a slimy alien is about to crawl out of his throat. We're off to the clinic this afternoon to see if the witch doctors have any ideas, but in the meantime I went to the drug store in desperate search of something that would ease his cough and allow him to get some sleep.

I came home with a NeilMed Saline system and a container of baby Vicks Vaporub. I already own a NoseFrida snot sucker. These are my tools. The task is to perform nasal irrigation in the hope of removing some mucus and quelling the cough. The term "nasal irrigation" makes me think of tractors and water bombing and automatic sprinkler systems and digging ditches to filter water onto parched land. I didn't know I needed an agricultural degree to raise a child, but come to think of it, it probably would have been good training. A one year old is pretty similar to a farm animal I think--endlessly eating, endlessly producing poop and gas, and endlessly becoming filthy.

So with my arsenal at the ready:

I prepared to do battle with all things snot and cough related. I think you will especially appreciate the adorable image on the NoseFrida package of a mother sucking snot out of her smiling child's nose. Let me tell you, that illustration is a big fat lie. You  try sucking the snot out of a screaming, flailing child, who is crying so hysterically that you literally can not keep up with the snot production. It's a lost cause. Of course, the snot sucking took place after my attempt at nasal irrigation. This involved taking a small ampule of saline solution and trying to hold my child still, tilt his head to the side, and squirt liquid up his nose. Let's just say he didn't like that. Can't imagine why. But it did sort of work. Once I got some saline into his ravaged nasal passages the snot started flowing and I had the snot sucker at the ready.


Yeah, it was traumatizing. My kid probably thought I was trying to suck his brains out through his nose in preparation for mummification. I would have been upset too.

The last step was a nice relaxing pre-nap bottle and a giant smear of Vicks BabyRub all over his chest. He didn't protest about the Vicks. It doesn't have as strong a smell as the adult version. He's down for his nap now and he coughed a little but seems to have settled in now. This is a huge improvement on the all night cough session that has had me awake since 3:30 am this morning. We may have a winner with the Vicks. Least invasive and potentially most effective. Though I can't really say if irrigation contributed to the lower level of coughing. Let's all just have a moment of cough-free silence and thank the nasal irrigation gods for their intervention on my behalf.

Green Juice!

Green Juice. Copyright Andrea Paterson. Amaranth Road Studio. 2013.

I've been reading a lot about the health benefits of green juice so I went out and bought my very first juicer. It was a huge pain in the butt trying to figure out which one to get so I'm hoping I might be able to help prospective juicers to sort through the process. Here is my contribution to the Omega vs. Breville debate.

The bottom line is that there is no juicer out there that will do everything perfectly and any decent quality juicer will make juice. Don't buy a cheap $100 juicer because it will break and have horrible juice yield. But I'm beginning to think that beyond that any of the popular juicers will work. The two main contenders are the Omega 8000 series masticating juicers and the Breville Juice Fountain Elite centrifugal juicer. I went back and forth between them in agony trying to figure out what to buy and eventually settled on the Breville. Not because I thought it was definitely a better purchase but because I could get it at my local kitchen shop and they would take it back if anything went wrong. Given the fairly large number of reviewers who complained about broken juicers of all kinds, I didn't want to deal with an online purchase. I couldn't get the Omega locally so that ended that.

So here are some thoughts about centrifugal juicers, and the Breville in particular:

The main bone of contention when it comes to juicers is that centrifugal juicers suck at juicing leafy greens and the masticating juicers are finicky about soft produce and tend to get clogged. The general rule is that if you intend to juice primarily leafy greens you should get a masticating juicer and if you want to do a lot of fruit and hard vegetables you should go for a centrifugal. So what do you do if you want to do a wide range of fruits and vegetables? I assume most new juicers are in this camp and this is where I got stuck. I've never used the Omega juicer but I can tell you that if you hope to make green juice, fruit juice, hard vegetable juice, or just about any juice at all the Breville does a decent job. The big complain out there is that it doesn't handle leafy greens well. I'll admit that the pulp from the greens probably still contains some juice but I've been able to make juice that is very VERY green indeed. Use the lower speed for leafy greens, roll them up as tightly as you can, and feed them through slowly, and you do get decent juice yield.

There is also some debate about whether centrifugal juicers degrade the nutrient and enzyme properties of your juice. I haven't run any studies myself, but my research suggests that if you drink your juice right away juice made from a centrifugal juicer is just as nutrient rich as juice made from a masticating juicer. Breville provides some third party studies on their website that outline the nutrient profiles of juice made with centrifugal juicers and suggest that there is no degradation in the first half hour after making the juice. It does degrade and oxidize more quickly however, so if you plan to make huge batches of juice and store it in your fridge you should probably get a masticating juicer.

The picture above is today's juice, made with the Breville juicer. I used:

3 large black kale leaves
1 apple
1 grapefruit (peeled, but with lots of pith still on it)
3 small carrots
1 medium broccoli stem

I ended up with over 10 oz of juice, which seems quite decent given the fairly small amount of produce used. And you can see from the picture that there is a lot of green going on! The resulting pulp was a bit moist, but there really wasn't much left of my original vegetables and fruit. I'm fairly certain that the majority of the nutrients ended up in my glass. And here's the kicker--my one year old sampled this and actually came back for more! Believe it or not green juice can be delicious. This recipe resulted in a really fresh and zippy juice thanks to the tartness of the grapefruit.

Is the Breville Juicer perfect. Well, no. It sometimes spits entire pieces of unprocessed fruit and vegetable into the pulp bin and I do wish that the pulp was a bit drier. But I doubt the Omega is perfect either. Reviews suggest that the Omega mesh filter tends to break easily and the auger sometimes scrapes against the filter resulting in small plastic flecks in your juice. Customer service at Omega is notoriously awful and they currently have no filter replacements in stock due to the high level of breakage. These points are what drove me to buy locally to avoid a customer service disaster and choose the Breville over the Omega. In the end, I doubt it matters which one you buy. If I was rolling in cash I would have bought a Super Angel or a Norwalk juicer, but regular people simply can't afford a $2000 juicer. So at the very least, let me put your mind at ease about the Breville Juicer. It does make green juice, and it does juice leafy greens if you're careful about technique. Come on over if you want to sample some!

Swamp Water and Algae Crackers

I'm embarking on some food adventures. The newest addition to my kitchen is a juicer. If you already have a diet high in unrefined plant foods, juicing is a great way to kick your nutrient intake into high gear. Yes, you do need fibre. And yes, juicing removes fibre. But I'm finding that a glass of fresh, green juice in the morning packs a serious punch and I'll be getting plenty of fibre later in the day. The key is to juice vegetables primarily and use fruit sparingly. You don't want to give yourself a sugar high. If you can juice green vegetables your body is going to thank you.

People just don't know what to do with kale even though it's probably the healthiest food floating around these days. An easy way to sneak some kale into your diet is to juice it. I promise--it won't taste like you're drinking scummy pond water and you may be able to give up your coffee habit for good! It's probably best to use organic produce for juicing so you don't end up sipping a cup full of pesticides. If you're using conventional produce I would consider peeling it, even though  you'll lose some nutrients.

This morning's juice recipe:

1 bunch of  black kale
4 carrots
1/3 of a large cucumber
1 small apple
1 small pear

This made 20 oz of juice in a Breville Juice Fountain Elite--definitely enough for two people! And it gets a thumbs up from the husband for not tasting like death. (Our failed Daikon juice experiment goes in the tastes like death category).

Image from chicvegan.com

Now what to do with a bucket of organic produce pulp? Seems like a terrible waste to throw it out. So after being inspired by a number of recipes online I'm currently working on a batch of dehydrated vegetable crackers.

I used all of the this morning's juice pulp, put it in a food processor and added:

1/4 cup almond meal
2 tbsp soy sauce
Water until the mixture formed a wet batter.
Spread batter on a non stick dehydrator sheet and stick it in the dehydrator until the crackers are completely dry and crisp. The time will vary widely depending on your local humidity. And yes, they do look like they're made of algae, but they taste good if you can ignore the extraordinary green-ness.

So, you may be asking "why didn't you just eat the vegetables?" The answer is that it's just not as much fun. I'm unlikely to sit around and consume huge quantities of raw veggies by themselves. There's only so much salad one person can  happily eat in a day. You'll eat way more vegetables if you turn them into things you like to eat. I'm far more likely to enjoy a glass of fresh juice and some raw veggie crackers with hummus than a plate of raw carrots and kale. I'll be sure to let you know how the crackers turn out!

An Ounce of Prevention Isn't Covered in BC

I've been to a lot of doctors. I've been to family doctors and specialists, I've been to naturopaths and midwives. What I have found again and again is that strictly allopathic doctors never seem to be able to improve my health. They send me for scans of various sorts, they throw some pills at me, I don't get better and they give up or start saying things are all in my head and I should take SSRIs or something else. Allopathic doctors are overworked and unable to devote adequate time to uncovering the whole picture of someone's health. They tend to treat symptoms, not causes of illness, and practise heroic interventions when things are already really bad instead of preventative medicine.

I thought this was an issue primarily of training. Most doctors are not trained in nutrition which should,  in my opinion, be the first line of health defense for everyone. Changing your diet can frequently have wide ranging health effects. Food really is medicine and more and more research is showing the dramatic health benefits of eating an individually optimal diet. So many people eating a Standard American Diet are nutritionally lacking and/or suffering from undiagnosed food intolerances, yet they don't get the guidance they need to make simple changes to their diet that would improve their overall health. After suffering from various health complaints for two years I finally started working with a naturopath who prescribed an elimination diet and helped me to track down food intolerances that weren't picked up through conventional allergy testing. Full blood work-ups uncovered a few vitamin deficiencies that could be easily remedied with supplements. After discovering I was intolerant to gluten, dairy, and eggs my health problems disappeared. This is after a family doctor, an allergist, and three various specialists told me there was nothing wrong with me that they could discern and sent me away to continue suffering with no further options for investigation.

What I am now discovering is that in addition to lack of training, doctors are NOT ALLOWED to give advice that falls outside of general allopathic practise for free. Complementary medicine falls outside of MSP provincial coverage, so even MDs who have training in alternative medicine are not allowed to practise it without charging the patient extra money.

For instance, the website of Vancouver Doctor G.B. Ryder, who practises integrative medicine states that: Our office visits are only covered by MSPBC if they are Limited to prescrition medications and/or conventional medical investigations. Integrative medicine office visits are not covered by MSPBC. 

The other services he provides include:

Biological Medicine:
-Use of non-prescription pharmaceutical-grade herbal/homeopathic medications
-Individualized assessment of vitamin/mineral supplements

Functional Medicine:
-Investigation and treatment of symptoms with few or no clinical findings
such as fatigue, digestive dysfunctions, immune dysfunctions, hormonal
dysfunctions, multi-system disorders

Environmental Medicine:
-Inhalent/pollen/mold allergies
-Food intolerances
-Chemical sensitivities

These other services sound like pretty basic health issues that plague a TON of people. Yet your regular allopathic doctors, even if they have specialized knowledge in these areas, literally cannot give you medical guidance because it's not covered by MSP. If there isn't a pill for it, if there isn't a surgery, if there isn't some sort of test that takes place in a hospital then you're just up shit's creek.

Does this seem absolutely insane to anyone else? It's no wonder we're living in a pill saturated society. If your doctor's only free option is to prescribe a drug then that's what they're going to do, because not many people can afford to fork out up to $500 for an integrative medicine consultation that  might actually address their real problems. The human body is complex. Sometimes allopathic medicine is amazing. If you need antibiotics for a serious infection allopathic approaches work. If you need emergency surgery for your gallbladder, well thank god for allopathic medicine. But when it comes to preventative measure, when it comes to issues that involve more than just the body's chemical systems, when stress, environmental toxins, psychological issues, or food intolerances come into play, allopathic medicine seems somewhat useless. And it turns out that government funding is part of the problem. 

The government should provide medical funding that allows doctors to treat the whole patient--body, mind, and soul. Just treating human chemical systems isn't going to provide anyone with optimum health. I had to pay a ridiculous amount of money to have someone provide me with simple dietary solutions to my health problems. That's just nuts. The amount of money the government could have saved on hospital visits, expensive tests, multiple visits to specialists, and prescription drugs if only I had been told to explore my diet in the first place, is mind blowing. How is it that the government doesn't see integrative consultation as valuable, and even money SAVING, is beyond me. We all know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, yet the government would rather pay for the far more expensive cures than the often simpler prevention.

Allopathic medicine has it's place, but it shouldn't be the front line of health defense. I don't know what people can do to change the system, but you can bet I'll be looking into it. 

In the meantime if you're looking for integrative care (and have the money to pay for it) Connect Health Centre seems to have a number of interesting health practitioners and programs. The group health programs (basically seminars on various health topics) are actually covered by MSP in some instances. But an integrative health consultation will cost you big bucks.

Some extended health plans do cover complementary care in some cases. This is a step in the right direction, but not everyone has extended health. When I was working at UBC my health plan covered $1000 worth of naturopathic care a year. Sounds great, except the costs add up REALLY quickly and only consultations were covered, not prescriptions or tests. $1000 only covers 6-10 visits and if you're dealing with a chronic health issue you may need more visits than that in a year. I ended up paying about $1500 out of pocket to cover the rest of my treatment before I was feeling better.

I also know that we have things pretty good in Canada compared to places that don't have universal health care coverage at all. But that doesn't mean things couldn't be better than they are.  In a society plagued by chronic inflammatory illnesses, we need more than last minute pill based medicine. We need lifestyle changes, and allopathic doctors are just not providing adequate guidance on that front.

A Guide to Non-Dairy Milk

Cutting dairy out of your diet for whatever reason is tough. It's hard to beat the taste and texture of milk products and I just don't want to drink my tea black in most instances. I have tried pretty much every milk alternative out there, trying to find the best replacement. I have decided to share my research with the world, if only to spare other people the terror that is Hemp milk. Here's my breakdown of milk alternatives, their best uses, and my taste testing analysis:

SOY MILK

The most ubiquitous of non-dairy milks. This is the place to start.
Taste/Texture: smooth, creamy, sweet (unless you opt for a sugar free version). Silk brand foams well in a milk frother for lattes etc. though some other brands don't foam up for some reason.
Uses: A good all purpose milk replacement. Good for baking, tea, cereal, smoothies etc.
Drawbacks: high in sugar, many people want to avoid soy in their diet

COCONUT MILK

You can now get coconut milk for drinking in a carton. This is essentially a watered down, fortified, emulsified version of the stuff you get in cans. It comes in sweetened and unsweetened versions.
Taste/Texture: smooth texture, very mild taste to the point of not having much flavour at all, more watery than soy milk and less rich.
Uses: awesome for baking and smoothies but not my favourite for tea or coffee. It's too watery and flavourless to make a satisfying hot drink with the exception of hot chocolate. If you're adding enough sugar to your cocoa it works really well. For those avoiding soy this is a great alternative.
Drawbacks: sugar free version is not very tasty on its own but sweetened version is quite high in sugar. It won't foam in a milk frother.

ALMOND MILK

A milky beverage made from blended and strained almonds.
Taste/Texture: slightly gritty (as would be expected when you're drinking almonds), slightly watery, but with a really pleasing, nutty flavour, even in sugar free versions.
Uses: a workhorse milk that will go with everything. Foams well in a milk frother and adds a delicious flavour to teas and hot drinks. I find that this is the best tasting milk in unsweetened form. You can also find an almond milk/coconut milk combination which combines the best qualities of each of these milks into one amazing super milk.
Drawbacks: Obviously not good for anyone with a nut allergy.

HEMP MILK

Milk made from strained hemp seeds.
Let me just save you from yourself. Don't even try it. Don't waste your $3.99 for a one Litre container.  This is by far the most vile milk replacement I've ever tried. It's bitter, a yucky brown colour, and just has no redeeming qualities. With so many other nut milk options I would never go with hemp milk.

OAT/QUINOA MILK

Just tried this for the first time today. My verdict is that it's passable but not amazing.
Taste/Texture: similar texture to almond milk, a bit brown in colour, and slightly bitter. I wouldn't want to drink this by itself, but in tea with a bit of honey it's okay. I always buy the unsweetened milk so I can control what sweeteners I use so I can't comment on the sweetened variety.
Uses: not amazing for tea or by itself but I'm sure it would work well in baking or smoothies.
Drawbacks: unappealing colour (I want my fake milk to be white and creamy so I can at least PRETEND it's real milk!), bitter flavour. Perhaps not okay for celiacs due to oat content.


RICE MILK

Just not tasty. Gritty, watery, essentially just sugar water with no real nutritional profile. I would avoid this.

CONCLUSION:

If I had to pick my favourite every day milk I would go with the almond/coconut blend. For a special treat (hot chocolate, or a rich latte) I would go with sweetened soy milk.

I would caution using too much of any processed milk substitute though. They're not exactly healthy and contain a lot of additives, some of which are potentially carcinogenic (carageenan for example is a thickening additive that you'll find in most non-dairy milks). Like everything else, a bit of milk in moderation is probably okay.

I actually find that full-fat canned coconut milk is a good one to use in smoothies, on oatmeal, and sometimes in baking. To avoid extra additives I use whole coconut milk whenever I can and save processed milks for tea and cereal. If you're baking with coconut milk be aware that it's oily, so you may want to cut back on other oils in your recipe a bit.

If you're being super health conscious you can make your own nut and grain milks at home, which avoids the additive problem. There are 7 really easy recipes featured here:

Nut and Grain Milk Recipes

I may just try some of these out and let you know how they taste. Oat milk (if tasty) would probably be the cheapest to make. I'm not sure if making your own nut milk would be cheaper than buying it in a store since nuts are so expensive, particularly organic ones.

Is there a milk that I've missed? Tell me what your favourite non-dairy milk is in the comments and if you know of any good recipes please share!