Rebuild from Depression Blog

Perhaps your mother has never told you, so let me tell you in case you did not know: raising chicks in your house creates very bad indoor air.

My poor husband Sander has an office next to the porch room where the chicks were living and he has lung problems. It's a bad combination.

Researchers are concerned about indoor air. The air in most of our homes is of poorer quality than the air in Los Angeles on bad days. That's not good. Fumes seep from glues in particle board and other manufactured lumber. Vinyl floors and carpet fibers emit fumes. Carpet glue and carpet pads emit fumes. Animal dander irritates our skin and our respiratory system. All of these irritants must be processed by our body and filtered out. That filtration system requires nutrients.

Chick dander doesn't make the list of scientific studies because most people put the chicks outside in a chicken coop. That's a real good idea. I am not sure how much B-6 or B-12 I've burned through with this chicken dander, but the chicks are moved out now into their permanent home. They will be a bit cold, but Sander will breathe a whole lot better and the house already smells a lot less rangy.

In my book I discuss the importance of dietary nutrients in fighting depression. We need to add them to our diets. But the flip side of the coin is that we need to preserve the nutrients we have. We need to avoid activities that will require more nutrients. Stress and toxic exposure, for instance, can actually deplete our body of nutrients. A previous version of the book had an expanded section on structures and an entire chapter was dedicated to "food structures." We have cut this area out of the book to keep the book focused on food nutrients, but it is still an interest of mine and may be another book at some point. In researching that part of the book, I intended to include research on the microwave - does microwaving our food affect its nutrient content?

There is research on nutrient loss in microwaved food. The loss is not much greater than other cooked foods and it may be less in some cases. But what I hoped to find more studies on is whether the microwave does something really sinister to food. I've wondered about that for years and heard a lot of rumors.

There is Hans Hertel's swiss study as reported widely on the internet by Tom Valentine. Although Tom Valentine lives on the central coast here in California where I vacation regularly, an email to him about the study got me nowhere.

There have been discussions on message boards about microwaved water not supporting life. These discussions increased about a year ago when a grade school student did a microwave-related study for a science fair. Here results were posted by her grandmother here:

http://www.execonn.com/sf/

I was intrigued. I decided to replicate the science fair project. I have much less patience, however, than a student preparing for a science fair. I took a much quicker path to determine if microwaved water supports life: I sprouted sunflower seeds.

I used four waters: boiled, warmed tap, warmed distilled, and heated microwaved water. (Why all the waters? Why not.) I cooled them all to about 105º Fahrenheit and soaked ¼ cup of sunflower seeds in each for eight hours. I left the remaining water out at room temperature and used it to rinse the sprouts. After the eight-hour soak I drained the seeds, put each of the four samples in a mason jar, and let them sprout. I rinsed the seeds about every twelve hours with their respective room-temperature water.

Yes, I realize the sloppiness in the design elements. But I figure it would be like the pregnancy test I took with Frederick: the first one I gave a passing glance and went back to sleep. When I noticed a line two hours later, I took another test. I was not sure that I administered it properly, so I did another and another until my administration of the test might as well have been for an Olympic trial. Then I went to the hospital for a real test. So you can fix sloppiness with later trials if you find a reason to do so.

I found no reason to do another test. All seed samples sprouted nicely. In the picture below, the microwaved sprouts are on the left and the warmed tap sample are on the right.

As the microwaved sprouts were coming along, I wondered why the science project results would have turned out as they did.

"Mom, do you think she microwaved the water in plastic?"

"Yes, of course. Everyone does."

"Really?"

I am so microwave ignorant that I could not imagine microwaving in anything but glass. And as it was I had to walk into a neighboring house to get our microwaved water sample.

Notice on the science fair site that she has updated it with information that the water was microwaved in plastic.

I see another sprout experiment in our future.

Word is spreading that indoor air is typically far worse than outdoor air. You may live in the middle of Los Angeles, one of the worst places for outdoor air in the country, and your indoor air is likely much worse.

Your body must filter out the chemicals in that indoor air and that filtering process requires nutrients. If nutrient deficiencies are aggravating your depression, toxins in your indoor air are making your depression even worse.

This time of year we have had the windows closed for a a few months. I cleaned the bedding, dusted the bedroom, and deep-cleaned the bathroom one last time before shutting those windows.

And now we wait for a nice day to open everything up for an hour or two. Our home has great airflow when everything is open and it takes very little time to move the stale winter air outside and replace it with something fresh.

On that day I typically do a mini-spring cleaning as well if I have time. I wash all of the bedding and hang it on the line. I wash the bath mat and shower curtain and hang them in the sun as well. We've had two sunny days this week and have been able to open the windows. The laundry is next on the list I think that means I'm pretty spoiled with sunny days.

I am in the middle of a very busy work season in my data analysis work. Add to that the Easter holidays, a festival next weekend, and my son's 5th birthday party the following weekend and I have a very busy month.

I came back from Easter dinner looking and feeling a bit like a water melon, so I administered a bit of some figurative shock therapy and did a three-day juice fast last Tuesday through Thursday. While fasts are always hard, by Friday I had much more energy and was ready for a very big weekend.

It's hard to believe that was just two days ago. I have accomplished far more than I had imagined possible.

While I don't usually do fasts (and frankly don't usually need them quite like I did after Easter), I always try to follow a few diet-related principles as I head into a busy season.

Cut the Caffeine

I have spent my life either weaning from or becoming re-addicted to caffeine, so I consider myself an expert in this department. I have found that the groggy feeling I have in the morning that says "give me coffee" will go away if I stop drinking it. I even wake up bright-eyed. Who knew.

And then at the end of the busy week or busy season I don't have that feeling of "ugh, who poured slime all over me?"

As a struggling addict, I try to cut caffeine deliberately before a busy season. That way when the craziness is on, any caffeine I do have will pack a bigger punch and my total cups consumed will be fewer. Today, in fact, with a very large workload, I had 1 ½ cups of black tea. That ain't bad. I believe this time last week it was more like four cups of coffee, but like I said, I needed that juice fast very badly.

Drink Other Energy Drinks

Three drinks work for me as an energy booster: a yogurt-like dairy drink called kefir, a fermented juice concoction called water kefir, and a particular type of lemonade.

Milk kefir is cultured milk, but it is more runny than yogurt. It can also be more sour, so I use it in smoothies. It can work as a meal replacement too when you are busy and definitely gives me an energy kick. You can make it easily at home if you can find someone with the starter. There is a community of people here who share their grains.

Water kefir is a variant on the milk kefir. It's actually a different grain than the dairy grain and creates a juice drink that's a bit fizzy. I ferment a combination of water, sugar, and juice for a day or two or more until the sugar levels are reduced to my satisfaction. It is a refreshing drink that brings energy to a sit-down job or to a day of physical activity. This drink is harder to find information about, so I'll write some more here soon.

The lemonade I found when doing (or attempting to do) "the lemonade diet." This drink comes from a cleansing fast, but I also find that if I make a quart of this, I can cut my desire and need for a cup of coffee or tea. It definitely gives me a boost.

Easy Healthy Foods

When I am busy, my brain has a hard time even remembering what easy foods I might be able to eat. What I am going to do is make a list of ten-minute meals and to put on my refrigerator and I'll keep some of those ingredients around. A simple omelet, for instance, takes less time to make at home than it does to run out and get take-out.

My easy food for this particular crazy weekend has been soup and salad. Yesterday morning I put on a put of broth according to my mom's instructions for broth (she has a vegetable broth page too). By dinner, the broth was ready. I took some out of the pot, warmed it a bit more, and added a raw scrambled egg and some spices. This is a basic egg-drop soup and it is fantastic.

Salad was some of that bagged lettuce dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, loosely following my mom's salad dressing instructions, topped with canned salmon, pine nuts, and tomatoes. I should have topped it with leftover Easter eggs. Like I said, I should have a list going.

Today's food looked a lot similar except I ran out of bagged lettuce and haven't wanted to fight the rain to harvest some lettuce from the garden. I'll eat extra soup.

A Food Supplement

I have written about the effect of liver and brewer's yeast in increasing your ability to handle stress and giving you more energy. In these busy times, I take extra freeze dried liver tablets. I have more energy, I am generally less grumpy, and I keep a clearer head.

~~~

I use these four tools regularly and have used them diligently in the last few days to get through this weekend. I will need to stay diligent for another two weeks or so and I should be in pretty good shape.

So far, so good.

I have slain a lot of dragons just this weekend. It makes the next two weeks seem do-able, albeit a little bit crazy.

My concern with makeup lies in its ingredients. We know that to some degree our bodies do absorb the chemicals we apply to our skin. The Environmental Protection Agency has an interesting article on its website called the "Dermal Exposure Assessment." They review studies of skin absorption using mice, rats, and other unlucky lab animals and discuss the factors that increase absorption rates. Factors that increase our skin's absorption of toxic chemicals (or beneficial skin treatments for that matter) are the following:

I live in a fairly isolated mountain community on the edge of one of California's most productive agricultural counties. Local agriculture news here is often national news as a result. But I was still surprised by a press release that hit the news yesterday.

Lindsay Residents Find Pesticide Contamination in Their Bodies

The full press release is here. The local ABC affiliate reported on it as well.

There is an increasing amount of research on the potential dangers of indoor air in our homes. It is widely accepted that indoor air is more toxic than outdoor air, even in areas with smog problems. Inside our homes we have so many manufactured items that emit fumes regularly: plywood furniture, vinyl flooring, carpet, and others. They may have no odor and we may never notice them, but our body still inhales them and has to detoxify them. What is not yet known is the health impact of the proliferation of these chemicals.

Indoor Air Matters
Studies of air toxins have rigged participants up with various toxin meters that they carry around with them throughout the day. They also place a meter in the participant's home and outside in the geographic area that defines the participant's environment, such as various locations in a city. In this way, they can distinguish between the participant's exposure to toxins inside and outside as well as any specific exposure a participant may have had over the course of a day in another venue. What these studies have found is fascinating:

We all want our skin to stay healthy and cleaning it effectively and gently is part of skin health. I have tried quite a few facial care systems with a range of price tags. What I find works best for me is very simple, inexpensive, and probably sitting in your kitchen.

That should have been the video we made for the 60 Seconds to Save the Earth Contest at Current T.V. and the Alliance for Climate Protection.

It really does help. Over two years ago now I made it my summer project to reduce our electric usage. We dreaded the bill each month and they were often approaching $300.

With $2000 in new appliances, our bills are always at most two digits and have even been as low as $35.

Now when I see the bill, I smile.

What a change from three years ago.

It does help my mood to be sure, but that wasn't the focus of our video.

I got an email from Al Gore Friday night telling me to put in an "all nighter" if I had to. And before you are terribly impressed that Al Gore is emailing me, he would email you too if you sign up for his list.

The email came in the middle of our busiest work season ever. I have been working at least ten hours a day so focused on the computer screen that my eyes are starting to crust. I probably need to add a load of B vitamins to the regimen to get through the next month. But even in the midst of all of this, Sander and I took a day to make a video

It's hard to say no when you have a chance to win a Toyota Highlander Hybrid and get an email from Al Gore.

I haven't pulled an all nighter in a long time and, luckily, we didn't have to do so last night. However, we did have problems uploading and had to use the U.S. Mail to send in our entry.

Our video did focus on our electric bill success story, but with a unique twist. Our home was the first home in the Sequoia National Forest to have electricity. It continued to guzzle until we bellied up and put in the two thousand bucks. We paid back that $2000 investment in about ten months and now we make a return on it monthly. That $2000 also protects the forest from carbon emissions.

Back when we made changes in our appliances, I actually maintained a house blog and documented some of the changes there. I'll have to post an update one of these days because I expect our reduction is a bit better than the 68% in that old post.

Speaking of the impact on the forest, below is a picture of forest smog I took just yesterday.

Air inside our homes in the winter is much more toxic than in the summer. Researchers from Columbia and Harvard teamed up in the TEACH (Toxic Exposure Assessment, Columbia and Harvard) study to monitor airborne toxic exposure. They found that indoor air has much higher concentrations than outdoor air of many volatile organic compounds (VOCs). We spend eight hours or so every night breathing that indoor air. The quality of our indoor air matters. Researchers are finding that poor indoor air is related to respiratory problems like allergies and asthma, particularly in children.

In the context of depression, any toxins we breathe we must process in our bodies. That processing actually requires nutrients. As we work to rebuild from depression, it is important to reduce our toxic exposure. Toxins rob us of our nutrients. Our indoor air is one key source. Those same air toxins may also aggravate our depression in their own right.

The wrong cookware will put more into your food and your air than what you bargained for. The toxins in your food and air will increase your requirements for nutrients. As the liver detoxifies foreign substances, it needs nutrients to do so. Of our depression-busting nutrients, B-vitamins, magnesium, and zinc are critical to detoxification that happens in the liver (see Yang and Yoo 1991; Campbell and Hayes 1974). Our lungs have nutrient needs as well as they filter air toxins. If we can select cookware that will reduce our toxic exposure, we have effectively improved our nutrient status.

Non-stick coatings

Non-stick cookware, notably the popular brand Teflon®, has made the news recently because researchers are questioning its safety. For decades Teflon®'s maker DuPont, has warned not to heat Teflon® above 600˚F because at about 680˚F, Teflon® will emit six toxic gases into the air. There have been studies of birds dying from these fumes. But even when the cookware reaches 446˚F, researchers argue that it begins to emit toxic particles. For an interesting discussion, visit the Environmental Working Group's analysis.

I am a strong supporter of all things organic. The farming methods used in organics tend to be more sustainable. In regular farming, small pesticide residues can stay on the food product or in the cotton fibers. The exposure may be small, but when I can afford to do so, I buy organic to reduce my toxic exposure. (In a similar vein, I buy all-natural products for my home and body, so I am not really attempting to single out agriculture here as a culprit.)

With my organic frame of mind, I tried some organic cotton sports socks when all of my other socks finally wore out after over five years of solid wear. I tend to buy a dozen or so pairs of socks at a time and wear them until they fall apart. And then I continue to wear them for another few months before I get around to replacing them. By the time I finally replace them, I am always shocked at the prices and disappointed that I waited until a sock crisis to buy rather than to take my time looking for deals. My husband points out that I get a pretty good value out of those dozen pairs of socks.

I found some cotton organic socks for wholesale prices and decided to give them a whirl.

For those of you who found this website because you are desperately seeking to avoid medication and for those of you who take it to stay stable, it looks like we all may be getting a far bigger dosage of just about all medications from municipal well water.

Trace levels of anti-anxiety medication were found in Los Angeles water. Apparently it is a popular drug to help commuters get through their schlep to work.

Rural areas may have issues too, particularly due to medications escaping the leach fields of a septic system and making their way into the ground water. Our own well is 102 feet from our leach field. The requirement is a distance of 100 feet. Of course, we take our own medication more directly. It’s the medication of the neighbors upstream in the underground river that serves our well that is more of a concern to me.

So what to do? Worrying in any active way about your water is probably worse than your water. What you need to do is make sure you are taking in adequate nutrients so that your body will be able to filter out toxins. The B vitamin family is critical. The minerals in our depression list are critical. Basically, rebuild from depression and help your body filter ground water medications at the same time.

It appears that surfing the Internet can help keep your brain healthy. A study found that folks can keep their brains sharp by surfing. Surfing provided better brain-building than reading. Getting lost on the Internet may be an effective tool for middle-aged and older folks to keep their brains sharp. Of course, I figure that I am close enough to middle age that these findings apply to me as well. Like I need encouragement.

This result is kind of like buying organic ice cream because the cow may have been eating grass and that ice cream may have a higher content of the body-slimming and health-improving fat conjugated linoleic acid. You might even argue that ice cream fights depression. I am all for this sort of rationalization in appropriate doses.

It does appear, however, that there are probably better ways to sharpen our brains. We could sit down with friends and play games like Parcheesi or Mancala, some of this family's favorite games. They work your brain and you get some social interaction at the same time. If no friends are around, you could play Rush Hour, one that is very effective in keeping my brain focused. These activities require more focused gray matter and may well keep your brain even sharper than it would be surfing the Internet. Furthermore, the games fit my whole goal of keeping my brain focused on something other than life's current anxieties (the Internet doesn't likely do as well in this department). I've mentioned a number of times here that I find it effective in troubled times to engage in an activity that requires brain power so that my brain is focused on the activity, not on the troubled times. Rush Hour is a good one for me, so is my site on data for California public schools.

But before working on graphic displays of school data, I just need to check on one small thing online... I'll be back to data after about two hours of brain sharpening. ;)

Technorati Tags: depression, brain exercises

I love storing food in glass. Glass does not absorb flavors and smells as does plastic and it is cheaper than stainless steel. In the pantry we store in jars ranging in size from gallon jars (recycled pickle jars) down to half-pint jelly jars. For leftovers, we make use of the same jars, particularly gallons and half-gallons for soups and sauces, but generally I prefer containers I can stack so I can more easily seen everything in my refrigerator. I have tried some expensive glass storage containers with glass lids. They can be very heavy once they are packed with food and the price is unreasonable to start with.

This summer I found a great deal at Costco on this collection of nine storage containers -- "Glasslock" containers from Snapware (see the items at the Snapware website). The lids are plastic with silicon seals which can be removed and cleaned. The set includes square and rectangular containers. The squares have blue seals, the rectangles green seals. The color difference would keep you from going bananas in trying to figure out whether the smallest seal goes on a rectangle or square.

While the containers retail anywhere from $7 to $13 each depending on size and vendor, I paid just under $30 for all nine at Costco. (It was such a great deal I am posting this find on Pennywise Platter, a blog carnival worth reading.) I have used these containers for about three months and just bought a new box, knowing that Costco deals don't last forever. We will add some of the new containers to the rotation and store some in the pantry.

All Costco locations have some of their own inventory so this product may very well be missing in the Costco nearest you, but give it a look. Check in the kitchen section near the cookware and dinnerware.

Why glass
In an early version of the book Rebuild from Depression, there was actually a Part III. Part I is the memoir, Part II the nutrients and food science, Part III was establishing structures that reduce our need for nutrients. Basically, stress and toxic exposure eat up our nutrient stores. Reducing both is a good idea for a whole lot of reasons, though depression is one of them.

Whether plastic is toxic is controversial though now even the government acknowledges that a common chemical used in plastic, BPA, is unsafe (though it also says that levels in plastic are too low to cause concern). I really don't see waiting for the other shoe to drop. We use very little plastic in our kitchen and have been phasing it out for years. It helps that plastic is an inferior choice in food storage anyway with its ability to retain the flavor of last month's dinner.

January is such a great time to reflect not only because of the inspiration that comes with a new year, but here in the northern hemisphere I find that, by January, I really need to be looking much further into the year to keep my head on straight. It's cold here and it feels like it may never be spring again. The sunrises are fantastic (if only I could capture it better with a camera), but they provide little comfort when you're freezing in an old house heated only by wood stoves. Of course, spring will come and I would like to be ready to enjoy it. Just like we are ordering seeds and bareroot fruit trees for our garden and orchard, now is the time to lay the groundwork for our best year yet.

Technorati Tags: depression, TypePad