Our modern lifestyle is way too inert for the composition of our bodies. I personally spend hours in front of a computer. It isn't good. Our muscles, bones, connective tissue, internal organs, and brain cells all need us to move.
Mini Post: My Favorite Anti-inflammatory Soup
I felt the urge to embrace the coming autumn yesterday. The urge came in the form of making butternut squash soup. I love having a big batch of soup in the refrigerator to add to my lunch, or for a snack. Butternut squash has a significant amount of vitamin C and fiber. It also has iron, potassium, magnesium, B-6, calcium, and small amounts of protein. Mixed with the nutrients in the onion, garlic, and apple, plus the oleic acid in extra virgin olive oil, this nutrient-dense soup is a great addition to your anti-inflammatory diet!
Mini Post: Let's wrap it up. I mean our food.
My favorite lunch is served in a wrap: leftovers - maybe hummus or a veggie burger - add a little avocado, some arugula, a little salty or spicy sauce, and I am delighted with the mix of flavors.
Mini Post: Skin-Care
Hydrating vegetables like iceberg lettuce, celery, cucumbers, and fruits like apples, oranges, berries, and melons are super-hydrating and great to add to your diet. Sweet potatoes (and yams, which are very similar) help with your body’s production of hyaluronic acid, which helps hydrate your skin.
Mini Post: Nine Ways to Adjust Your Self-Care When Healing
You need to pay extra attention to how your body is responding to food. The heating or cooling aspects of different food can affect our healing. Warming spices like ginger, cayenne, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg can keep our internal systems warm and fight inflammation.
A Cup of Chai
Chai is a great addition to a meal, whether you have it before or after, because the spices in it are all helpful with digestion and inflammation.
Mini Post: Vitamin D
Vitamin D helps us regulate phosphate and calcium, essential for bone health and quality of sleep.
Healing from Chronic Pain
I am so passionate about helping women in the second half of life. At 45, my own thoughts about the second half of my life looked bleak.
On the outside, my life looked great. I had BFA in dance and was at the height of my career, choreographing on aerial equipment in a full-size theater in Hawaii. After years of struggling to make ends meet, my life was finally looking good. I was making more money than I ever had. As a single mom, I was able to comfortably support my daughters. The show I was directing that year was supported by an NEA grant. We danced to live music written for my choreography. I was feeling at the top of my game.
But on the inside, I was living out a message that had been drilled into me. I had been given the message that dancers in the second half of life lived with chronic joint pain, and I thought it would be how the rest of my life played out, because - I was living in chronic pain.