wellness tips

Written by Karen Munro, M. Sc., Environmental Scientist

I have starting taking my physical body more seriously and recently met Vreni for a health assessment. As we talked, the conversation wandered and I commented on how a healthy body is like a healthy stream – all the activities in our life (i.e., the watershed) contribute to this health. Many health professionals and agencies promote the connection between healthy bodies and healthy environments. Ministry of the Environment

Environmental health is a passion of mine; it is my profession and my volunteer commitment. I have been a streamkeeper for over ten years and an aquatic scientist for almost three decades. Sometimes I take for granted everyone knows what I know, so when someone reminds that isn’t so, I feel re-invigorated to share my knowledge, enthusiasm and need for a healthy environment.

Vreni asked me to write a few columns about healthy streams. This one is about water quality. Subsequent articles talk about habitat, urban growth and the power of volunteers. Although I write from the Pacific coast (British Columbia), these issues apply anywhere there is water and land (i.e., everywhere).

In my neighbourhood, there are lots of streams, some still with salmon or trout in them. There are juvenile insects down in the rocky bottom, algae (the brown or green film) coating the boulders and cobbles, birds flitting through the vegetation, all contributing to the food web or ecosystem.

These streamside environments provide many “ecosystem” benefits (water and air purification, biodiversity, productivity) and they also provide an oasis for humans, a place to let natural sounds fill our ears, let the cares of the day slip off during a walk, and to appreciate the power and beauty of nature.

Now imagine a slug of silty or toxic water entering the system. This happens daily or weekly in urban streams, and kills aquatic life. I call it random acts of storm drain abuse.

We are connected to the nearest stream or lake or ocean through a network of storm-water pipes that drain our driveways, streets and even our roofs to the nearest stream. This network is not a sewer (as in storm sewer) and it does not connect to the wastewater treatment plant. The bigger picture is that all that water eventually ends up in the ocean, and many of those compounds are not good for the treatment plants either.

When it rains, the water runs over lawns, gardens, concrete and asphalt, carrying everything to the stream. At other times, people discard common but toxic substances that end up entering the storm drains. These and many other compounds end up in the stream:

• dog waste (contains E. coli and other bacteria);
• sand and silt from construction sites, especially from single family lots, (smother eggs and clogs or cuts fish and insect gills);
• caustic rinse water from cement installation and concrete cutting work (makes the water more alkaline, higher pH)
• excess fertilizers and pesticides from gardens and lawns (can create excessive algae blooms);
• oils, greases and heavy metals, including copper, zinc, cadmium, molybdenum and lead, from vehicles (road runoff);
• soaps and detergents from car washing or from house cleaning (fish don’t need to bathe);
• swimming pool and hot tub water; and
• drinking water (chlorine or chloramine are deadly, and burn the skin of fish).

Such “nonpoint” sources of pollution are not regulated the way that industrial effluent discharges or “point” sources are monitored and controlled, yet can cumulatively contribute as much or more to environmental problems (think of recent stories about toxin levels in killer whales and other marine mammals).

What to do about this? Knowledge is vital, then start close to home and expand outward.

1. Keep such toxic compounds out of the storm drains. Better yet, avoid using them at all.
2. Use water and a soft cloth to wash your car (no detergent or soap – this from a European friend who thinks more about cars than streams).
3. Paint a yellow fish beside the drain (many British Columbia communities participate in the storm drain marking program instigated by Fisheries and Oceans Canada). This reminds neighbours that the street drains to fish-bearing waters. Steal this idea if it isn’t in your area Storm Drain Marking Program
4. Read up on local sediment erosion control bylaws so you can watch to see that construction sites are doing their best to protect against contaminated waste water entering streams through storm drains.
5. Connect with a local stewardship group to develop a more widespread campaign.
6. Lobby your local government to improve protection (bylaws, oil and grit separators).

For more information, links and networking, check out

• the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation website
• the Stewardship Centre of B.C.

These sites have links to organizations across North America.

Written by Karen Munro, M. Sc., Environmental Scientist

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Salt or sodium chloride, is another one of those very controversial issues with most people coming down on the side that it is not healthy and should not be consumed.

I think it is important to remember that salt is actually useful to our bodies in many ways. It helps maintain electrolyte balance, helps with the absorption of food in the intestines, acts as an antihistamine, acts to clear the lungs of mucus, helps lower the acidity of the cells, and helps regulate blood sugar among other things.

As with everything with respect to food, it is the quality of the salt that determines whether or not it is healthy. The refined white table salt that is typically seen everywhere really does cause health problems, and should be avoided at all costs.

First of all, in the refining and bleaching process all of the healthful minerals that were in the salt have been removed to leave only sodium chloride. Anti-caking agents are usually added which are frequently aluminum-based, adding to heavy-metal toxic load.

Aluminum has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Sodium silico-aluminate and sodium acetate are also frequently added, and have been associated with kidney issues. The sodium acetate may increase blood pressure and water retention.

Sodium chloride is everywhere in packaged foods, so once again, try to eat fresh so you can control the amount of refined salt you are consuming.

Look for sea salt that has simply been air dried. There is far more magnesium and calcium in this salt, in addition to many other trace minerals, and the amount of sodium and chloride is much less than in refined table salt. This salt retains the mother liquor and therefore will be moist, and is usually gray or pink in colour.

Don’t put this moist salt in a grinder with metal parts, as the grinder will rust! Instead, keep in a glass jar and use a small spoon, or find a ceramic grinder. Be suspicious of salt that is completely dry.

Celtic, French or New Zealand unprocessed sea salt are the best sources. Only add salt after tasting your food. Adding a pinch of organic, unprocessed sea salt to each liter of water you drink can provide minerals in a form that is easy to assimilate, and can help maintain electrolyte levels, which may be helpful if you find that you frequently become dizzy upon rising.

Only do this if you are eating a diet fairly free of packaged foods, however. You can order quality sea salt here or here, if you can’t find it in your health-food store.

Related tips:
Remineralize your water

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Many of our hormones are intimately related to circadian rhythms, and their function gets thrown off when we completely ignore the fact that night follows day, and day follows night. During the longer days of summer, mammals are hardwired to find sustenance to store as fat, to help them last the shorter days of winter where they will be either hibernating or eating less due to lack of food availability.

In humans, this hardwiring shows up as a desire for carbohydrates. By choosing to stay up with the lights on, watching TV or doing computer work late at night long after the sun has gone down, our hormonal system is fooled into believing that it is still day, resulting in increased cortisol and insulin levels, which makes you want to snack, and most likely on carbohydrates. In today’s wealthy countries, winter does not mean a lack of food availability, so late night snacking is often the result.

Even if you do not snack, staying up late regularly causes cortisol to release a nightly dose of sugar into the bloodstream for energy, insulin then rises to store that sugar as fat. Constantly high levels of insulin are an important factor in developing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. And if you are insulin resistant, smelling a pastry will make you fat! Therefore, fat storage is largely controlled by the amount of light you are exposed to and the insulin resistance it causes. (note: protein types will often sleep better with a small protein snack before bed.)

Going to bed by 10pm lowers your night-time cortisol and insulin levels, and raises your melatonin levels, which prevents this whole cycle from developing. In the summer we can get away with staying up later, but when the sun goes down, bed should soon follow. In the winter most of us need about 9.5 hours of sleep.

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Eating quality food is ESSENTIAL to our health, and is particularly important to growing children so that they can develop to their full potential physically and psychologically. Processed food is slowly taking over our supermarkets and our diets, and I think is one of the most important contributors to disease. Even food that most of us don’t consider as a processed, like milk for example, is actually highly processed and frequently has additives. Next time you pick up a carton of milk, read the ingredients list. If the carton you chose is not organic, I bet “milk” is not the only ingredient in there. Do you know what those other ingredients are that you are drinking? And we haven’t even talked about how the milk is altered through the pasteurization, homogenization and the defatting process! Wikepedia’s definition of food processing “is the set of methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food for consumption by humans. Food processing takes clean harvested or slaughtered and butchered components and uses these to produce attractive and marketable food products.” Funny that they are saying transforming “raw ingredients” into food. I think it is more the other way around. The raw ingredients are the food, and in the processing they become a non-food. My definition of processed food is any real food that has been altered in any way in order to lower its production cost, lengthen its shelf life, make it look more appealing, or makes you want to eat more of it, and that results in the reduction of its nutritional content and/or the increase of toxins.

Processed food is a huge business, and by using slick advertising and packaging methods that make us believe they are healthy, we are replacing the real foods that provide us with quality nutrition with “food products” that not only have less nutrition, but also all kinds of other stuff like transfats, preservatives, flavourings colourings, etc., which greatly adds to our body burden if consumed regularly. So let’s go through a few of these processed foods and suggest real food alternatives.

I haven’t found one brand of commercial salad dressing that I would consider healthy. Commercial dressings are full of refined vegetable oils meaning they are heated in the extraction process oxidizing them and making them rancid. Often soybean or canola oil is used, both of which are usually genetically modified. These dressings are also full of preservatives, flavourings, emulsifiers, colourings, and they often contain MSG or “hydrolyzed protein”, which are a neurotoxins. Homemade salad dressing is so quick and economical to make, that if you care about your health and the health of your family there really is no excuse. Mix some organic extra-virgin olive oil from the first cold pressing with organic balsamic or apple cidre vinegar and some unprocessed mustard, and spice to taste. If you wish to up the omega 3 content, you can add a bit of unrefined flax oil. (Should be in a dark bottle and kept in the fridge.)

The next huge category of processed food that is very popular with families, is boxed breakfast cereal. Sorry folks, but despite the health claims on the box, those cereals that are made into flakes, shapes or puffs are terrible for you. The grains in these cereals are not prepared properly through soaking or fermenting so the phytates that prevent digestion are not destroyed, yet the heat and pressure of the extruding process does destroy most of the nutrition, and in particular the proteins which seem to be rendered quite toxic. These very difficult to digest cereals are often fed to very young children as one of their first solid foods, and one might ask if this is part of the reason for the explosion in gluten/wheat sensitivity. These cereals tend to increase blood sugar very rapidly, which is another major problem that is exacerbated when consumed with skim milk, as there is no fat to slow the sugar into the bloodstream. If you soak stone-cut or rolled oatmeal overnight in warm water with a bit of apple-cidre vinegar, it will cook up in less than 3 minutes for breakfast the next morning. Add pasture-fed butter and/or raw whole milk, sweeten with raw honey or maple syrup rather than white or brown sugar, and you have a healthy breakfast. Or have free-range eggs and vegetables for breakfast! Choose flourless breads made from sprouted grains, and eat them with a quality fat like pasture-fed butter or raw cheese as opposed to margarine or “butter spreads”. (Even if the margarine says “no transfats”, it is a manufactured fat, so it will mess up the body.) Soy cheese, soy milk, soy burgers etc. are made from soy isolate, which is processed junk that is cheap to produce and has been marketed as a health food. There is nothing healthy about it. For more info on the problems with soy, click here. Rice cakes are NOT a health food, and neither are crackers. Crackers often list vegetable oils in the ingredient list, yet the product is solid, so those oils have been turned into transfats. Don’t eat them!

Juices are also touted as healthy, but they are really just bottles of sugar, as almost all juice on the market is pasteurized. If it is in a tetra-pack that you can store for months, that is a tip-off that it has no nutrition and lots of bad stuff! Remember that real food spoils. You are better off eating whole fruit, as you not only get the nutrition, but also the fiber. If you want juice, juice your own and drink immediately as the vitamins degrade quickly once exposed to oxygen. Buy full-fat organic natural yoghurt and add your own fruit, as flavoured yoghurts are also just pots of sugar. Try to avoid all packaged food. If you are not sure, read the ingredients list and if there is anything there that you don’t recognize (what is sodium caseinate? What is xanthan gum?), don’t eat it. If the food did not exist in pre-industrial times, don’t eat it.

Stick to organic or biodynamic vegetables and fruit, medication-free pasture-fed meats, dairy, poultry and eggs, wild fish, whole grains, nuts and seeds that preferably have not been ground into flour many months ago (soak before you eat!). If you have access to raw dairy from organic pasture-fed cows take advantage, as that is indeed healthful food. Adding some unpasteurized fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, beet kavass, natural yoghurt (milk and bacterial culture should be the only ingredients in yoghurt), fermented meats etc. to our diet is a good idea, as the fermentation process increases the nutrition and the digestibility of the food. So stop the processed food, choose quality real food, and notice how much healthier, happier and more calm you and your children become. I feel like I have barely scraped the surface with regard to this critically important topic. For more info on the GRAS list and how food companies manipulate food to make you eat more, see You are what you eat – processed foods.

Related tips:
Food – Our Raw Material
Maintain bone mass by preparing grains, nuts and seeds properly
It’s not what you eat but what you digest that counts
The Soy Controversy

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We have all heard how meditation can be a useful way to calm the mind, reduce stress and gain energy, and yet the thought of trying may seem somehow daunting. The image of the yogi sitting peacefully for hours may just seem too far from our reality to consider meditation as a viable method to de-stress and centre oneself. Yet the fact of the matter is that probably every single one of us has at one time or another been in a meditative state when we are doing something that completely occupies us, whether it is painting, rock climbing, playing a musical instrument, or something else that completely captivates our attention. We are so focused on what we are doing that the rest of the world around us fades from existence, time gets away from us, and we are just enjoying the present moment. This controlled focus can be considered meditation.

Meditation is about focusing on the now. It brings about calm and peace because once we stop dwelling on our past or considering the future, there is nothing left to be anxious about. Suddenly joy can spring up as the confines of time passing drop away. Most of us have probably met people that are very present. It is as if they have roots anchoring them to the earth, and when they are with you, you have the sense that there is nowhere they would rather be, yet at the same time they stay completely true to themselves. They are very dedicated to their professions, as what they do is in line with who they are. I find these people to be very inspiring.

With practice, meditation can help us develop that ability to be grounded in the moment – to live in the now, and it can help us to learn who we really are without being confused by the expectations of others. We begin to hear our inner being and what is really important to us. Once we have found our authenticity, it becomes easier to make the decisions that are in line with who we are and what we believe in. In the long term this can do a lot to reduce stress and improve our health.

Even in the short term, meditation is useful for calming the mind and reducing stress. Just by focusing on the present moment, life stuff will fall away at least temporarily. For those of you that feel intimidated by the idea of meditation and think you are unable to focus on anything for very long, I suggest you try the One-Breath Meditation. As the name implies, your necessary commitment is only one breath long. Then after that breath, you can recommit if you so choose. The reason using the breath is so helpful is that it is ever present, and ongoing. By focusing on the breath you are instantly brought back to the now of feeling the breath enter your lungs, and the breath flowing out your nostrils. So, sit tall and comfortably on your sit bones, close your eyes gently, and observe your inhale. Note the minute pause before you feel the air coming out of your body. Were you able to concentrate on that one breath without your mind wandering? Good. You succeeded in meditating for one full breath. Now if you wish, you can add another breath and see if you can concentrate for two breaths. Ultimately, that is all there is to it. As you add breaths, you may notice your mind wandering, so without judgment, just redirect your attention back to your breath. Initially, thoughts and feelings are inevitable as you lengthen your meditation time, and that is okay. Observe those thoughts and feelings as if you were watching a movie, without analyzing or judging them, and then bring your awareness back to your breath. As you practice this over weeks, months and years, you will be able to focus exclusively on the breath for longer periods of time, and the many thoughts that flit through your mind will slow as you give them no attention. You simply are. Your meditation time will become the time to connect to your true self.

The One-Breath Meditation can also be useful if you find yourself suddenly stressing about something. Someone just cut you off in traffic and you can feel your blood pressure rising. So calm yourself down by focusing on your breath instead of the other driver for a cycle or two, and notice how much better you feel. This meditation technique can be your instant calm that you can pull out of your back pocket when you need it.

Related tips:
Meditation Corner by Yvonne Jaques

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We have come a long way in our battle against bacteria, viruses, and parasites etc. We don’t die of infections nearly as frequently anymore due to the effectiveness of antibiotics and other drugs, as well as better cleanliness in all aspects of our life. We know that germs can cause sickness, and so we do what we can to avoid and kill them. 

But are we killing too many of them?  Are we using antibiotics too frequently?   Is it possible to be too clean?   The Hygiene Hypothesis suggests that we are sanitizing our living and working environments to the point where we are increasing the incidence of allergy, asthma, and autoimmune disease.

We have two branches to our immune system that operate differently, and that need to balance each other for optimal health.   The Th1 system of specialized white blood cells attack infected cells in the body thereby preventing an infection from spreading. 

The Th2 system works by developing antibodies to microbes, thereby preventing the infection in the first place.   Infants tend to use almost exclusively the Th2 system to protect themselves, and the Hygiene Hypothosis suggests that infants and young children need exposure to harmless microbes in order to "exercise" the Th1 system and make it strong.  

If that microbe exposure does not happen because the environment has been sanitized with antibacterial products, the Th1 system isn’t developed and the balance between the two systems gets thrown off. The Th2 system then becomes too powerful creating an overreaction or allergic reaction to harmless substances like pollen or animal dander, and the child is then more likely to develop allergies and/or asthma.

Much of the evidence for this is epidemiological.   Researchers found that children that were raised on farms had far less hay fever than children that lived in cities. Young children that had many older siblings had less allergies than those that had few siblings suggesting that the germs that the older kids brought home were protective for the younger ones.  

A study in the Lancet showed that kids from small families that went into daycare before age 1 were less likely to develop allergies than those who began daycare later.

Erika Von Mutuis studied rates of allergy and asthma in East and West Germany and found that the kids that lived in the less clean areas of East Germany had less problems with asthma and allergies than those in West Germany.   The East German kids were more likely to be around other children and animals when they were very young.

There is also evidence that using antibiotics before the age of 2 is linked to allergy and asthma, as antibiotics also kill the “good” bacteria in the gut which is necessary for building a good immune response. Researchers also found that kids that are not vaccinated and are not given antibiotics have fewer allergies than kids that are.

Another group of scientists believe that in the case of autoimmune disease, it is the Th1 response that is dominant, leaving the Th2 system weakened. The concept that too little exposure to infectious agents may contribute to autoimmune disease is very controversial, but there is some evidence supporting the notion.

In an Israeli study, rats in a sterile environment couldn’t develop the immune cells necessary to suppress an autoimmune responses.

So what is the grand message in all of this? We need to be clean, but not too clean. Just like plants can’t be healthy in sterilized dirt, we actually need some contact with the germs, microbes and bacteria that are a part of our environment, so use regular soaps rather than antibacterial soaps and cleaners.

Sometimes it is better to allow a mild illness to run its course rather than to treat it aggressively with drugs and possibly develop allergies later.

Playing in the dirt is good, and having a dog or cat in the house along with the baby and kids is also good.

Taking a probiotic to repopulate the intestinal flora is especially important after finishing a round of antibiotics and may also greatly help the immune system in general.

Related tips:
Food Sensitivities, digestive problems and joint pain

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