The body’s stress response is genius. When stress happens, the body shuts down all extra “programs” in favor of the “get out of dodge ASAP” one to give us the best chance at survival.  Well, like every other genius, our bodies are a little quirky too. You see our bodies don’t really distinguish between good and bad stress, nor does it prioritize what “programs” get shut down – they all do. As such, stress although designed to save us can often be the very thing that’s taking us down – healthwise.

When the body senses stress, one of the key systems to get shut down is digestion. While that could sound promising – if digestion stops then I won’t be hungry so I will lose weight thanks to stress? It’s actually the opposite.  The impact of stress on your digestion can be the worst thing for weight loss and overall health. When digestion stops it means that food you’ve eaten stops being broken down (for use) and waste stops being eliminated. This disruption yields gas, bloating, constipation and means that the body isn’t getting the nutrients it needs for energy and other functions and it’s not getting rid of the stuff it’s deemed not useful or even bad for you. And even worse, when stress happens the body goes into (fat) storage mode.

So what’s the answer? Stop stress? Well, yes, reducing stress would be desirable, but as noted above, the body responds to all stress – good and bad – so we don’t want to get rid of the good and some of the “bad” may actually be stress that motivates us to accomplish certain goals. So stress elimination is not the answer. But increasing your magnesium intake is.

Magnesium is Mother Nature’s anti-stress nutrient. This mineral goes inside the body’s cells and helps to downgrade the stress response. What this means is that muscles relax – including your digestive tract muscles – enabling them to continue their work. So whether stress produces headaches, cramps, constipation, muscle aches or all of the above, magnesium will help to address them.

The good news is that many foods are rich sources of magnesium.  You will likely be thrilled to learn that cacao, the original ingredient in chocolate, is one of the richest sources of magnesium so a cup of quality hot cocoa may just be your stress antidote. Whole grains are great sources of magnesium too so choosing to eat the actual grain versus a refined flour product can be another great way to reduce your stress. Many foods today that should be good sources of magnesium are less good sources due to food processing and poor quality soil, so magnesium supplementation may make sense (AKA recommendation: Natural Vitality’s Natural Calm).

When it comes to which fats, or specifically, which fatty acids the body needs, it can all sound like a alphabet soup – DHA, EPA, ALA and so on.  Well, as it turns out, there’s one more to stir into the soup pot – GLA, or gamma linolenic acid, is an essential fatty acid you want to make sure you consume regularly for optimal health.

Why do we call these fats “essential”? The fats we eat contain different fatty acids and some of them are called “essential” – meaning essential to eat – because the body can’t produce them. We need to eat these fatty acids to ensure our body has the building blocks it needs for several different functions. So when we distinguish certain fats as “healthy fats” versus others, it’s because they help us achieve our daily essential fatty acid intake.

While all essential fatty acids play key roles in the body, as women, GLA stands out especially as we move through different lifestages from puberty, to pregnancy, to menopause. GLA helps to optimize (ie “balance”) hormones in our body. In doing so, GLA helps address several of the complaints that can go along with hormone imbalance – dry skin, hair and nails – as well as helping to balance emotions and moods.

Such an important nutrient, in fact, an essential one, one would think that GLA would be found in numerous different foods. Unfortunately, that’s not the case and it’s why many healthcare practitioners prescribe supplements containing GLA like borage, evening primrose, and black currant seed oil. But good news! You can enjoy GLA-rich foods daily, easily.  These GLA rich foods include salmon and hemp seeds (or just hemp oil).  So consider adding hemp seeds to a salad or soup (AKA recommendation: Manitoba Harvest hemp hearts) or making a pesto sauce from them, or choosing salmon when you make fish, eat sushi, have wild salmon burger or make salmon salad versus tuna salad some days. For some additional ideas and recipes “like” Mom Energy on Facebook to access a FREE download of over 100 eating occasion ideas.

The holidays happen every year, and every year the thought happens that this will be the year that you and the family stay healthier. And then the holidays happen and the thought morphs to January is the time to focus on our health.  Well let’s compromise – follow these tips and you can stay ahead of the curve, or at least on the road, and then come January refine it further as desired or needed.

1. Support your immune system while still enjoying some holiday treats. Both sugar and alcohol suppress the immune system so the combo of them, colder weather, less sleep, and possible increase in stress can be a recipe for holiday cold or a January virus.
   Tip #1: Support your immune system: eat immune enhancing foods like mushrooms, wild salmon, organic fruits and vegetables; reduce overall intake of sugar by avoiding added sugars in packaged foods like peanut butter, breads, flavored yogurts and sauces; limit alcohol intake and make sure to consume water and coconut water when you do drink.
2. Let’s Move…together! When we are sedentary it doesn’t just make use gain weight, it slows down the body’s ability to remove the toxins that become a cold or even increase risk of disease.
   Tip #2:  Get Movin’ Daily: The family that eats together needs to move together and the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign has lots of ideas to keep you all moving – follow the blog at letsmove.gov.
3. Recover regularly. All work and no sleep leaves a body tired, irritated, and primed for weight gain, illness, and even injury. The body is designed to go, go, go but it relies on it’s downtime to catch up which includes sleeping enough and getting good quality z’s, catching a nap or stretch midday, and taking moments to breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.
   Tip #3: Calendar your recovery for the month of December – book yoga classes, massages, or even calendar five minutes in your day for breathing and stretching; set an alarm that signals a regular bedtime, turn off electronic devices at or before bed and don’t leave them next to your pillow or face when you sleep, and stock up on better quality sleep enablers like AKA favorites – Traditional Medicinal herbals teas, Natural Vitality Natural Calm, H. Gillerman Organics essential oils.

Excited to hear what modifications not deprivations you and your family implement this year. Tweet us at @ashleykoff @drgreene to share your new traditions to make 2012 your healthiest holidays yet.

Any cooking at home is a step in the right direction as it allows you to control ingredient quality, quantity, and nutrient balance. That said, there are better quality cooking methods, such as vapor cooking, which should be on your radar to get optimal health and taste results at home.

Vapor cooking is a cooking method that uses a small amount of water in appropriate cookware (designed so vapor creates a complete seal between the lid and the pan base) to deliver optimal taste and texture results for different foods like fish, chicken, vegetables, and legumes.  Because of the unique way it works, vapor cooking offers several health advantages over other cooking forms. First, rather than coating the pan with a fat to prevent sticking or to achieve desired moisture, vapor cooking relies on water so you eliminate the calories from the added fat (this can be as much as 200 calories per serving).  Second, the vapor does the cooking to so you don’t need to add salt or a sodium-based broth to achieve moisture thus reducing salt intake. And finally, while vapor cooking uses water it actually only works with minimal water – a few teaspoons – so the nutrients stay in the food you are cooking not in water that gets drained off prior to consuming.

When it comes to our health, we know that we can’t separate our health from the health of the environment, and as such, our cooking methods should support both. In addition to reducing water amounts, vapor cooking can reduce energy use in two ways – cooking at lower temperatures and cooking for less time (recipes call for removing the sealed lid and pan from the heat to allow the vapor to finish the cooking). Vapor cooking also reduces the potential for harmful carcinogen production when compared to other methods such as grilling or broiling of animal proteins.

Have more questions about vapor cooking or interested in checking out some cooking demos and recipes? Check out 360Cookware.com – if interested in purchasing you can save 15% with the code “AKA”.

I hate to say it, but maybe like millions of Americans, yes, there may be an internal glitch keeping you from optimal results…oh, and stressing about it, yeah, that’s only making it worse. So take this quick quiz and see, note 1 point for each Yes answer:

1. Do you feel tired despite having eaten regular meals made of better quality foods?
2. Do you have regular bloating, gas (and add an extra point if it smells “foul”) after eating?
3. Do you feel hungry shortly after a meal (30-60 minutes)?
4. Have you looked at your bowel movements and seen whole foods or pieces of undigested food?

If you scored any points, suboptimal digestion may be the reason. For numerous reasons (being raised on antibiotics, taking other medications, hurried or multi-tasking eating, consuming chemistry lab projects versus real food), your digestive system likely isn’t breaking all your food down into usable nutrients and getting those nutrients where they need to be – to your cells for energy and function.

What to do? Here’s the Rx:

1. The simplest, yet toughest: improve your eating behavior. Slow down, chew more, breathe more, take smaller bites, and for goodness sake stop eating while driving or being on a conference call or doing both! The body doesn’t take well to distraction, in fact it perceives it as stress. So no matter how “great” that kale salad is for you, it’s not getting where it needs to be. When the body smells stress, it abandons digestion and your food goes undigested either for elimination or fat storage.
2. Skip chemistry lab, head to cooking school (or at least ‘some assembly required’ prep class) instead. When we give the body what it recognizes, it uses it – efficiently and effectively. When we give it what it doesn’t, it gets confused and irritated.  In the beginning, it may slow down and try to figure out how to get what it needs, but the longer term prognosis is frustration and rebellion (ie gas, bloating, acid reflux, constipation etc). So instead of buying ready-made meals, buy better quality ingredients and assemble them yourself.
3. Get your digestive system a personal assistant. Because just chewing more and eating better quality may not do the trick, your system could use some extra help. Digestive enzymes (ie digestion’s “personal assistant”) naturally exist in our body with the sole task of breaking apart carbs, fats, proteins, and fibers into usable pieces for your parts. Thus, increasing enzymes in your digestive tract will help breakdown your food more thoroughly. You can increase your intake of foods which contain digestive enzymes (like papaya, grapefruit, and pineapple to break down proteins) or begin taking a quality digestive enzyme supplement (AKA rec: Enzymedica) with meals, especially ones that include heavier foods or ones you don’t eat regularly or ones that tend to give you issues.