Need Motivation?

Music is such a powerful force.  The right piece can change my mood from 'just can't do it' to 'Not only can I can do this, but I can do anything!' in a few seconds.

This always gets me started (as does the vid at the bottom of this post... check it out if you need some funnies in your day).

Recently, I went ahead and purchased a violin. It's old, Austrian, and has a few chinks, but the sound is gorgeous.  It has been at least 20 years since I last played, but I used to be quite good, so am hoping those skills have just gone to sleep, not vanished completely. 

Sadly, the bow was broken, but once I get that sorted over the weekend, I'll get right back to it. I'll aspire to the level of Salvatore Accardo in.. say... 30 years? 

With daily practice? 

(I wonder how long Razzy will put up with being my audience.  He doesn't like it much when I practice singing.... puts his ears at a sideways angle and gives me the 'are you done yet?' look).

... 40 years.

Do you play a musical instrument?

Apart from the violin, I can play the flute relatively well, and strum a few chords on the guitar relatively badly.  What I would love to do is master the piano.  Unfortunately, I don't have one right now, and even when I did, I never really connected with it.  I dream about being a fantastic pianist, but even with lots of practice, I never got to a position of ease with it. It's fun to keep trying though..

Here is another song that gets me in a 'bring it on!' mood.


Do you use music to get yourself in the right mood for the task at hand?
If you have any favourites, please link it up in the comments.  There is nothing I like better than connecting with someone through music that we both like.

Of course, if you REALLY need a boost. There's always Tough Love (it's short and well worth a watch).

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Tomorrow, there may actually be some food on this food blog.  In the meantime, if you are looking for eats, check out the recipes and meal ideas tab.  Time to crank up the Vivaldi and bake a vegan fruit crumble? Yes, I think so.

Piccy Post - Shadows

What I love about this time of year is the amazing shadows that come out to play early in the evening.   Not too much shadow, but just enough to make things seem more lovely.

.. something to think about, yes?

10 years ago!

I couldn't let this anniversary pass without a mention!

I'm sure other people can make post-kidney surgery look good, but not me (BTW, if you saw an earlier version of this post, I hope you weren't too grossed out - I have now cropped out all the gory drainage tubes... blech).

Although there were many physical challenges with recovery (injured abdominal muscle and nerves is not the most fun thing), I also remember this time as being an important turning point. The start of a new personal era.

The 6 weeks recovery time was a gift. A gift of space and time to think about my direction and myself (my 'self'). Being helpless like that delivered some much needed perspective to my enormous ego.  I went through some crazy emotional stuff around being a patient, having people care for me (including some people I'd judged as "useless" in the past) and wondering why my previously reliable body had bailed on me so dramatically. I felt the sensation of living underneath a fat cloud that rained empathy for people with health issues, hammering me with the realisation that not everyone has brought these things on themselves. It struck me that what I really wanted to do is help, somehow, relieve the suffering in the world.

While recovering, I changed my course of study from linguistics to health psychology then took off to clear my head and solidify my lofty new goals with some therapeutic backpacking around Europe. Returning to NZ I walked into a job in the health industry, kept up my studies, eventually gained entry to postgrad nutrition and ... here we are.  Not quite there yet, but at least still heading in the right direction.

All because of a faulty kidney.  As the taoists say:

"Good Luck, Bad Luck, Who Can Say?"

Of course, there is someone to thank for the success of the surgery and the impeccable, cool scar.  Cheers, Dr Mark, (now not just my knight in Armani*, but also an earthquake hero); as far as I know, your designer kidney still works.  Good Job!

*Mother's Day 2003, he did the hospital rounds in a very expensive suit. Every woman present either swooned into unconsciousness or was inspired to historical deeds.

Even More Deadly

I decided to veganise the Death by Chocolate cake, thereby rendering it even more deadly.  This version actually gives me a speedy pulse.

It's intense and you already know my problem with photographing chocolate cake. It never looks as good as in real life.  You'll have to use your inner visualisation to mentally ramp up the yum factor. 

Here's a better pic from a day when my camera was loving me, the lighting was outdoorsy and I had time to mess around with editing.

Maybe just the thing for Mother's Day tomorrow?

I used the old favourite recipe, with some replacements:

* Replace the butter with coconut oil (2/3 cup - don't go by weight - butter is heavier for its bulk)
* Replace the eggs and sour cream with 1.5 bananas and 4 tbsp apple sauce
* Use coconut milk in the frosting instead of cream
* Make sure your chocolate is vegan. I used this one
* As usual, it was gluten-free: rice flour with 1 tbsp arrowroot to give it some springy-ness.

I intended to use all that vegan chocolate energy as a 'power up the study' treat buuuuut... burned through it sweating over some Sana software/human fallibility issues, which you'll know about by now if you were affected (and if you were.. a bazillion more apologies).

Which means today, Saturday, is rather more about surveys and questionnaires than it should be. Partying hard on the weekend, just me and surveymonkey.com. :D   That really does sound more exciting than it is.

Some Previous Deaths by Chocolate

Give me Chocolate or Give me Death (by Chocolate)
Happy Food (why Cake can be Healthy)

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Something to think about over the weekend:

Should genes be patentable?

Stuie

This is one of those deeply personal blog posts that happen about.. once every two years or so ;) Maybe I should put more of myself out there but, you know, I tend to think there's too much of that these days and nobody really needs to hear the minutiae of my personal/spiritual journey.

Besides which, some of it may be a bit 'out there', and I'm not quite ready to be labelled a crack-pot just yet (maybe next month, huh?).

Today I'm going to talk a little about this guy, I'm sure some of you have heard of him.

This is Stuart Wilde (www.stuartwilde.com). His book 'Affirmations' was the first thing I ever read that made me realise life could be both spiritual and completely down to earth. You don't need to live on a mountain to gain enlightenment; just start where you are. This is where you are supposed to be.

Do what you do, but do it impeccably. Connect with people and honour the divine spark in them. Honour yourself.  Don't take anything too seriously. Infiltrate everything with love. These ideas resonated with me, echoed what I had already been studying (such as the Anthroposophical works of Rudolf Steiner) and so I commenced reading everything he had written. I also took up spiritual exercises and personal disciplines like meditation and viewing my fellow humans with compassion and without judgement (20 years later, I'm not even half-way there with the non-judgement thing... I'm a bit thick sometimes).

From his books I learned the most important skill of my life, which is to question my own thoughts and automatic actions/reactions and to see the thoughts and actions of others in a different light. Just because I think it, even if I "believe it", that doesn't mean it's true, and doesn't mean it originates from me. I may have done things a certain way all my life, but that doesn't mean I can't wake up today and do something completely different. He taught me how to handle my mind and emotions through the discipline of detachment. Very useful.

I did some training with 'Stuie' in the early 90's when he came to NZ and we had some drinks in the First Edition Bar (the old Park Royal, which is now a pile of earthquake rubble). I can't remember  anything about that except laughing so hard my face ached.  Once the internet came along, I kept in touch with fellow 'fringe dwellers' via forums, most of which didn't last long due to the annoyance of internet trolls, something Stuie had no tolerance for.  Over the past decade I wandered away from Stuie's ideas, as his direction and mine diverged - I'm not interested in Ayahuasca and couldn't make up my mind about the focus on ghoulls, darkness and trinkets. However, in the middle of last year I picked up 'The Sixth Sense' and started reading again, feeling like it was time for me to re-establish my connection to what I suppose is my inner self after many years attention to external things. Shortly after that I accidentally reconnected with Anthroposophy also. 

Over the last few months, it has been my happy habit to log on to the Stuart Wilde blog every morning and see what he'd come up with.  Often it would be just the thing to set me right, like this gem: Emotional Techniques for Healing Yourself, or something touching and lovely: Bullfighter Quits from Compassion. 

This one, In Quest of the Spotless Mind, alarmed me. A lot. I thought 'that's angina', googled the symptoms to confirm my suspicions, and wondered if I should send a bossy email telling him to get to a doctor. I wish I'd done it, even though I doubt he would have paid attention, and even though I'm sure I wasn't the only one concerned about his health, because 6 days later he suffered a fatal heart attack and the blogging stopped forever.

So now he's gone.  No more writing, no more funny videos.  Of course, the man himself would consider death a big adventure, but there is still some sadness over here in '3-D'. We will miss his presence, it was big and warm, irreverent, fierce and irreplaceable.

Here are some links:

Getting What you Want (probably my favourite video of his, very to the point)

The Tears of Gaia

My Friend Stuart by Soren Dreier (also that site, zen-haven.com has a lot of good stuff on it).

If you find any more, please feel free to link them up in the comments. 

Regular programming will resume in a few days. :D

Choleserol Series #1: Curcumin and Cholesterol

Cholesterol.  Now there's a topic, and I've decided to start blogging about it (tag: cholesterol series).

It used to be very simple. High cholesterol was bad, if you have it, you might have a heart attack and therefore should pull out all the stops and get it down. The things that caused it were saturated fat and eating cholesterol.  That was then.

Now we know that most cholesterol is made in the liver and that levels are genetically controlled. There are various types of cholesterol, some of which are helpful (HDL) and some of which are seriously damaging (VLDL). We understand that cholesterol is not the only biomarker of actual disease risk, but that inflammation markers (C-reactive protein, homocysteine), Apolipoprotein-B levels and Apo-E genotype status all factor into it.

We know that certain fibres like beta-glucan from oats, and other plant substances like phytosterols can affect cholesterol absorption and that other plant substances do cool stuff to cholesterol metabolism in the liver. They may, for example, increase breakdown of  HMG-CoA-R (the enzyme that facilitates cholesterol synthesis) and/or increase cholesterol removal by, for example, upregulating bile acid synthesis.

This, of course, is my current field of research.  There's a lot to say, but let's start with the simple stuff.  When it comes to lipid metabolism, turmeric (Curcuma Longa) is a good thing to eat.

Turmeric Chicken Stirfry

The active component in turmeric is curcumin, which makes up about 2% of actual turmeric. If you are only interested in therapeutic effect, you can buy curcumin capsules.

The main benefits of curcumin:

• Upregulates expression of the LDL receptor, increasing LDL (bad cholesterol) removal from the body
• Inhibits the processes of inflammation and  early atherosclerosis
• It is an antioxidant
• May lower triglycerides at higher doses

There are a few caveats, the main one being that most studies have been either on animals or cultured liver cells rather than humans - obviously, it's not really feasible to feed people curcumin then biopsy their livers - I can see issues with recruiting volunteers for that.  There don't seem to be any randomised controlled studies that have focused completely on curcumin as a method of lowering blood lipids in humans.

The other issue seems to be dose. My best guess for minimal effective intake is 1.7 mg per kg of curcumin (based on a rabbit study), so about 5 g (1 tsp) a day of turmeric for a 60kg human.  There doesn't seem to be any upper limit or evidence of toxicity.

1 tsp is the amount sprinkled on my chicken stirfry in the pics and it was about right, flavour-wise. Another tasty method of consumption is sauteed turmeric cauliflower (that's a trick I learned from Kek). Also, who needs another excuse to eat more curry?  Not me. 

For those of you that want to geek out a bit, I'll list some references below, and if you have any favourite turmeric recipes, please link it up in the comments. Ranting about cholesterol is also ok. ;) Just go right ahead.

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Some light bedtime reading:

    Coban, D., Milenkovic, D., Chanet, A., Khallou-Laschet, J., Sabbe, L., Palagani, S. Berghe3, W. Mazure, A. & Morand, C. (2012). Dietary curcumin inhibits atherosclerosis by affecting the expression of genes involved in leukocyte adhesion and tensendothelial migration. Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, 56, 1270-1281.

Fan, C., Qian, Y., Wo, X., Yan, J. & Gao, L. (2005). Effect of curcumin on the gene expression of low density lipoprotein receptors. Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine, 11(3). 201-204.

Fan, C., Wo, X., Dou, X., Xu, L., Qian, Y., Luo, Y. & Yan, J. (2006). Regulation of LDL receptor expression by the effect of curcumin on sterol regulatory element pathway. Pharmacological Reports, 58. 577-581.

Ramirez-Tortosa, M. C., Mesa, M. D., Aguilera, M. C., Quiles, J. L., Baro, L., Ramirez-Tortosa, C. L., . . . Gil, A. (1999). Oral administration of a turmeric extract inhibits LDL oxidation and has hypocholesterolemic effects in rabbits with experimental atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis, 147(2), 371-378. 

Curious...

Today I found a mushroom that appears to be three mushrooms that somehow became one.

I'm trying to figure out how this could happen? Did their little mushroom spore selves get talking and decide to unite their shared destinies of a starring role in today's turmeric chicken stirfry? 

Obviously I know nothing about how mushrooms develop. I had thought that they must come up from under the ground (which would make a configuration like this a bit hard to achieve), but now I think they could possibly float around in the air, land, and then grow in two directions - up and down.

Yes, I do occupy myself with the big questions of life. How does a 'shroom grow?  Could I get away with another espresso at 1.13pm? 

and

Is this a duck or a goose?

Really, it's too much thinking for a Sunday.. ;)

X

Autumnal Beauty

Well now, well now, how is it with you?

I have to confess that there probably won't be much action on the blogging front for the next few months, but please keep checking back because I do have some interesting posts in the works, it's just a matter of when.  Also, if anyone wants to guest post, or has a cool article or recipe I could link up to, please email me with 'guest post' in the subject line.

Since the last post, I've been back up to university for my block course. Palmy is becoming my second home.

Burger King = Ewwwwww

I got home last Sunday, bashed out a nutrigenomics assignment and then set up a study schedule that would scare me, if there were any spare seconds to indulge those sorts of emotions.

**no fear!** 

I did escape my office today for a wholesome lunch.

ahem...

It is gluten free. And Dutch. And almondy.  No sugar in the yogurt.  Thinking burns glucose, so it's all ok. :D

Also ok?  The colours of nature right now. Very pretty. Enjoy!

Sooo comfy...

You know I live in an actual house? Yes. It has beds, couches and chairs with cushions.

And yet...

Sika & Lunch with The Girls

So, there's these three Nutritionists walk into a room and..

.. unbeknownst to each other, order identical meals.

The beetroot and feta patty with side salad was whispering 'eat me' at a frequency that only Nutritionists can hear.

That was Saturday afternoon - a welcome visit from two out-of-town classmates (my people!). We.. talked about food.  As you do.

Saturday evening, we headed over the hill to SHE Chocolat and I shook out all the stress in my bod to the sounds of Sika, live.

It was more than amazing. It was.. transformational.

Afterwards, I intercepted his exit to deliver a big hug and almost squealed "I am your biggest fan!", but, you know.. it's best to maintain a level of cool detachment when possible.

;)