review by Wendy Millstine, NC

The Whole-Food Guide to Overcoming Irritable Bowel Syndrome offers helpful and nutritious guidelines for what to eat and what to avoid to prevent IBS symptoms, as well as supplements for healthy digestion and tips on lifestyle changes, stress reduction, and exercise. The best part is the recipe section. Among my favorites, the book’s mouth-watering recipes include: chicken breakfast patties; gluten-free golden carrot pancakes; liver pâté; Japanese-style fish soup; and sweet potato pie. They’re all delicious and easy to prepare, and even better, they don’t require too many ingredients. Savor and enjoy good food and good health!

by Carolyn Coker Ross MD, MPH, author of The Binge Eating and Compulsive Overeating Workbook

Eating foods that are healing have the power to not only nourish the body but also nourish the spirit. It is possible to find foods that taste good and that are good for you. Every meal should be a potential symphony of taste, joy and satisfaction. The healing foods listed below fit into this category and can help you make 2011 your healthiest year yet.

excerpt from The Whole-Food Guide to Overcoming Irritable Bowel Syndrome by Laura J. Knoff NC

The Eating4Health model is a regenerative food system to help you organize and plan meals and menus. Created by Edward Bauman, Ph.D., and used extensively by holistic nutrition consultants, the model shows a plateful of possibilities for healthy food and beverage choices (Bauman 2008). It emphasizes seasonal, organic, unrefined, and local foods (what I call SOUL foods). If you have digestive problems or Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), emphasize leafy and crunchy vegetables; good-quality whole-food proteins with their naturally accompanying fats; booster foods that speed up metabolism, such as spices and seaweed; and natural beverages. You may need to limit or eliminate some unrefined starches and fruits to avoid IBS symptoms. This model serves as a guide to choosing a wide variety of whole foods.

excerpt from The Healthy Gut Workbook by Victor S. Sierpina, MD

These SuperFoods and their sidekicks will make your eating choices even more varied, enjoyable, and healthy. Include these in your diet plan for snacks and as part of your meals, and you’ll feel better in the short term and in the long run.

excerpt from Urban Mindfulness by Jonathan S Kaplan, Ph D.

Many of us drink alcohol. The city’s plentiful diversity of bars, wineshops, happy hours, and events ensures that we can always find a drink when we want one. Usually, our reasons for drinking alcoholic beverages are fairly benign, based on enjoyment of the taste or a desire to unwind (as opposed to a pathological urge to numb emotional pain). The pleasant effects of drinking come pretty soon after we start. By mindfully attuning to the experience, we can continue to enjoy a series of pleasurable moments without drinking too much. When we get disconnected from our bodily feelings, we become vulnerable to drinking excessively. We fail to notice our diminished ability to taste our drinks and don’t observe the decline in our physical, mental, and social faculties. Many religious traditions eschew drinking, especially by spiritual leaders, because they consider it to interfere with awareness, purpose, and divine will. While it might be going too far for some people to consider not drinking at all, most can recall times when drinking led to some poor decision making or a nasty hangover.

Introducing mindfulness to the times when we drink can be an interesting and enriching experience. Consider some of the following activities:

excerpt from Yoga for Pain Relief

Reflect on different parts of your body with gratitude and appreciation. Practice:

• Anytime to repair your relationship with your body. .
• When you are feeling discouraged by pain or illness, or critical about your body, to consciously choose friendliness toward your body. .
• After a medical appointment, to remind yourself that your body is more than its symptoms and diagnoses.

A full practice will take five to ten minutes, but you can practice the essence of this reflection anytime by simply reminding yourself of one reason you are grateful to your body.

excerpt from The Holistic Baby Guide

It is unfortunate that your baby can easily develop recurrent and chronic ear problems. At about six months, babies lose the maternal antibodies that protected them from common viral and bacterial infections. After that age they become susceptible, and they need to develop their own antibodies to these pathogens. If one of these viruses or bacteria happens to cause an ear infection, then your pediatrician may prescribe antibiotics. This is often the beginning of recurrent ear problems. Continuing to treat the fluid that collects in the middle ear or repeated red eardrums with more antibiotics just exacerbates the problem. And sometimes babies will have these ear problems even if they don’t get antibiotics. In this chapter you will learn the reasons that these ear problems tend to plague babies and find out how to cure them.

by guest blogger Jackie Gardner-Nix, MD, Ph.D, author of The Mindfulness Solution to Pain .

There are five stages of sleep. You normally “cycle” through these about every 90 minutes as an adult. Stages 1 and 2 are light sleep: it’s easy to rouse you. Stages 3 and 4 are deeper, slow wave sleep: rousing you is harder and you may be disorientated on waking. The immune system is busy repairing your body from the usual wear and tear of your day in those deeper sleep stages. REM sleep is associated more with dreaming than the other stages. Having no, or too much REM sleep is associated with depression, and antidepressants can change the amount of REM. REM sleep is important for consolidating memory.

by guest blogger Leslie Cerier, author of Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook

Do it like the Clintons. Chelsea Clinton had a gluten-free wedding cake. Why gluten-free? Because millions of people are over eating gluten (wheat, rye and barley) causing migraines, indigestion, fatigue, depression among other chronic ailments. Not only people with gluten-intolerances will benefit from diversifying their diet and including a new variety of gluten-free grains. They are nutritious, delicious and fun to cook with. In fact, I am not gluten intolerant but for over twenty years have been enjoying gluten-free cooking and baking because it has given my family and me increased energy, stamina and variety in our daily meals.

Eating a gluten-free diet is good for you and the planet. The majority of the wheat grown is genetically modified and heavily sprayed with toxic pesticides that are hard for humans to digest. Our diets have been built around these wheat varieties that yield the highest quantities instead of the highest nutritional content. This book celebrates the earth’s bounty in the kitchen. Being adaptive, creative and conscientious is part of our recipe for reducing our carbon footprint.

You don’t have to be the Clintons to enjoy gluten-free deserts. Here is a hazelnut- chocolate chip brownie that will become one of your favorite recipes whether you’re gluten-free or not:

by guest blogger Laura J. Knoff, NC, author of The Whole-Food Guide to Overcoming Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Many people are discovering that they are sensitive to wheat, dairy and sugar. Is this a new phenomenon or just a key to the mystery of mood disorders in some people? In 1980, Dr William Philpott outlined the connection of food allergies and food addictions to many psychological conditions from autism to schizophrenia in his book Brain Allergies. The connection of food to mood is often not investigated, but just as the psyche can affect the body, the body has an affect on the psyche. In Psychology Today, October 30, 2009, depression is just one symptom of celiac disease, (an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine that is triggered by eating gluten containing foods). Celiac is not diagnosed nearly as often as it occurs and is frequently misdiagnosed as IBS or as many other conditions. Anyone with a family history of diabetes, heart disease, allergies, ADHD, autism, digestive conditions or celiac disease may find that by completely avoiding foods containing gluten, casein, and sugar they feel much better.