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 Roberta's Vitality Tips
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Trinny & Susannah:
"With our high octane super-stressy lifestyles we need a practical and achievable regime to keep our bodies out of the knackers yard. Roberta Stimson is our personal goddess of goodness. With twenty years experience in holistic medicine we can only say that Roberta must have started out well before her tenth birthday – either that or she is doing something very right!"
Detox Your Liver Spring is the perfect time to cleanse the liver and blood with a detoxifying programme. A congested liver is the no.1 cause of bloating and slow weight-loss, cellulite, constipation, bad skin, aches and pains, recurring infections, premature ageing, high cholesterol and hormonal symptoms. Let’s get spring-cleaned in 2011! There is so much advice out there but my tried and tested method is based on a six-week exclusion diet. Six is the magic number when it comes to true liver cleansing because your liver is a big, tough organ programmed to store and hold on to everything so it needs lots of coaxing and TLC to convince it that you’re really ready to let go of your old rubbish once and for all! Daily skin brushing, a herbal liver formula, and colon hydrotherapy is recommended if you want to ensure a really good result! Deadly Nightshades You’ve probably heard of ‘Deadly Nightshades’ – they sound sinister, but they are actually a group of plants belonging to the belladonna family. Incredibly to me, they produce an array of lovely vegetables including potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines (egg plants) and capsicum peppers (also known as bell peppers, the sweet ones). Those are some of the foods that need to be excluded from a six-week liver cleansing programme because, healthy and delicious as they are – we tend to eat too much of them. The toxin belladonna can have an irritating effect on our liver over time, so it makes sense to have a break from eating them once a year and to experiment with other lovely vegetables; getting out of the roast Mediterranean vegetable, tomato sauces and spuds-with-everything habit that we can suddenly realise we’ve got! Coffee, chocolate, alcohol (other than moderate amounts of good-quality wine!) and wheat are the other main liver irritants.
Give Wheat A Rest Everyone I know loves to eat wheat. I find it such an amazing thing that so much can be created from a bit of flour and water, don’t you? You just have to look at the array of unusual patisseries from around the world to see works of art made out of dough. Although our mouths may start to water at the thought of a home-baked loaf, our physical bodies would prefer that bread was framed and hung on the wall! The gluten wheat is one of the reasons for that, because it’s a sticky glue-like substance that sticks and glues itself to our insides. It irritates the liver because it’s so hard to digest, and some people can’t digest it at all – as in the case of those with coeliac disease, a severe allergy to all types of gluten foods (including rye, oats and barley). On an annual 6-week liver cleanse, the idea is to rest the liver – allowing it to recuperate from a year (or a lifetime!) of struggling to deal with over-indulgences. Wheat products must be avoided completely during this rest period, and that includes cake, biscuits, pastry, croissants, cous cous, wafers, ice-cream cones, bread, cookies, pasta, spaghetti, and wheat flour – of any colour or type. What else is there to eat? If you need to ask that, it’s a testament to how much you rely on wheat – and in many cases white flour, the most mucous-forming and acidic grain of all. The answer is of course, plenty. Artichokes ‘What delicious, healthy foods can I enjoy freely while I’m treating my wonderful liver with respect for 6 weeks of every year?’ I ask myself! So many, but the most liver-friendly food? Artichokes! Honestly. Globe artichokes have an unusual, slightly sour taste and they compliment other foods very well. Tinned artichokes, amazingly, are just as beneficial to the liver as fresh ones, which have to have the bottom sliced off, and be placed in an inch or two of boiling water for 20 minutes or so. You can than easily pluck out the leaves, dunk them one by one in seasoned olive oil and nibble the soft fleshy bit on the end. These veggie medicines have been used throughout history to treat liver and gall-bladder disorders and reduce the level of fats in the blood. They gently detoxify and they restore your liver – if you eat them – and fairly quickly. And they decrease fluid retention and can also stimulate the metabolism – great news if your weight loss is not happening despite your efforts to stick to a healthy eating plan. A sluggish and congested liver/bile duct is a contributing factor to that common scenario. Roasted artichokes can be bought in delies and wholefood shops, or prepared yourself (using the artichoke heart – the middle bit), or you can buy roasted artichoke hearts in jars and they taste delicious! Milk Thistle January is kind of like ‘the morning after the night before’ – all month, depending on how wildly you let yourself go in December! Very gently, its time to give your liver a little TLC in the form of a herbal tonic (more about liver detoxifying closer to Spring!)
Milk Thistle is a liver strengthener, which is what you need after Christmas. It not only actually repairs damage caused by excessive alcohol intake, but its lesser-known qualities are as an antioxidant more powerful than vitamin E and an anti-viral against colds and flus. It also stimulates bile production to aid fat digestion and protects against refined carbohydrate and other types of food-allergies and sensitivities. It’s also a natural anti-depressant…what more could you need to start the year off with the right attitude.
Dandelion There’s nothing like sunshine to highlight all that’s beautiful and magical about spring. It makes me want to run around dusting and cleaning windows! The long awaited light highlights what’s not so beautiful as well, and that includes our dark circles and bloated tummies. This is the best time of the year to take a live and kidney tonic, and the best one I know is a combination of Milk Thistle and Dandelion (Milk Thistle 200, Nutri Ltd.) Milk Thistle is covered in another Tip Dandelion also protects the liver and stimulates bile production to help us mobilise our fats properly. It can help to treat eczema (because a clean healthy liver ensures healthy skin), and also supports the heart, pancreas, gall bladder, urinary tract, and bowels – by way of being a gentle laxative. Everyone who suspects they may have high cholesterol would benefit from taking Dandelion. You can take one capsule with each meal for a 6-week course. Do drink water as well – at least 6 glasses a day – that’s roughly 250 mls X 6. How much water to drink is a controversial subject but while you’re flushing out your system, it is crucial to drink plenty of filtered or bottled water. I’ll tell you some fascinating things about water next time! Water The type of water bodies love most is water from its most natural source – from a spring, or from fresh celery or juicy peaches. In actual fact, all other types of water are processed in some way and so pretty devoid of vitality. I suggest to anyone who asks, that a daily fix of freshly juiced carrot and celery juice is a scrumptious and healthy addition to the diet, providing bio-available vitamins and minerals as well. Munching on fruit and vegetables will provide you with a lot of water, so you don’t feel as thirsty. Spring water from a trusted source bottled in glass that’s then recycled is good. Any water bottled in plastic is not. Except in emergencies, tap water is a definite no-no, especially if you live in a city – you don’t even want to think about where its come from! Filtered water is fine, pretty devoid of chlorine (who wants to drink bleach?), fluff, poisonous metals like arsenic and other nasties. But the filters are expensive and must be changed regularly. The purest ‘man-made’ water is distilled. Distillers are not expensive. They boil the water, (removing bacteria, viruses, and parasites), turn it to steam (removing heavy metals), and condense it drip by drip into a special container that gradually fills, ready to drink. Such a small number of our minerals are obtained from water (even less if we’re not drinking mineral water), that only the positive aspects of distilling – safe, clean water – are left. More on water, another time. For now think love and gratitude for any of the water we drink, and as Masaru Emoto writes ‘when we pay respect to water it changes, you change and I change – because you and I are (70%) water’. Omega 3 If the time of year is getting you down and keeping you there, it’s worth eating more of that famous oily fish. Salmon has the greatest reputation but it is really worth trying to buy wild or organic-farmed salmon. The organic is not so pink but that’s because it is not artificially coloured. Mackerel, sardines, and herring are also full of Omega 3. Even the tinned varieties are good because, in most cases, the best quality of oily fish is used. Do watch the salt content of tinned fish; its best to pour away the liquid and discard it. If you just don’t eat fish then take Omega 3 capsules – good quality such as ‘Eskimo 3’ – about 500 mg a day. Omega 3 has an anti-depressant factor – it elevates mood by naturally improving seratonin levels. Hooray! It also speed up fat loss if you have any to lose, reduces appetite and cravings, lowers insulin levels so you’re less likely to store fat…as well as helping to stabilize blood-sugar levels. Its an immune-system enhancer, and an anti-inflammatory. It beautifies the skin and reduces skin symptoms including acne and eczema. Its good for the heart, blood-pressure and cholesterol levels. And it makes you brainy! At least it improves concentration, attention span, and makes the best of what you’ve got…are you feeling any more positive yet?
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