Healthy Body, Healthy Life?

Over the past 9 months, I have done tons of research online on what food I should be consuming, what are the best food to help strengthen the immune and/or wore off cancer cells! My family, relatives, friends and colleagues have also been sending me health and cancer related articles for my review!  Thank you so much!  I definitely read up all of them!  Many doctors, nurses, and other cancer patients that I have met also shared with me their own health and diet tips.  Therefore, the following list of foods is what I collected and feel that it is important for all of us to try to consume more to build a healthier immune system!  At the end of the day, when you think about it, we work to get paid, to of course buy and enjoy life. But the primary reason is to be able to 'eat'.  To feed ourselves so that we can work another day, see our family and friends, and fulfill goals we've laid out in this life.   So, eating the right food is very important. How much or little of the good stuff you want to consume is all up to you!  For me, I have consumed many of the items below in the past but now, I make sure I have it on a more frequent and regular basis!  I highly recommend, anyone who reads my blog to look up each item on the internet to fully understand its health benefits since I am really giving you the cole's note version:

1. Hemp Seeds: Add 2 tablespoons to your favorite yogurt, salads, and/or cereal. Great source of Omega 3 & 6, excellent source of fiber and helps digestion (even better than flaxseed), and reduce cravings! Great for everyone including kids and those who have diabetes!
2. White/Green Tea/Chamomile Tea: Detox and reduce your cancer risk with Green Tea. It also helps to reduces bad breath by removing some bad bacteria in the mouth. Chamomile tea is caffeine free and great to drink it an hour before bedtime to help you sleep better, relax and de-stress the body. Not to mention, it helps to reduce stomach cramps and muscle spasms!  
3. A few slice of raw ginger & honey: great for soothing soar throat, reduce muscle spasm...
4. Honey & lemon: a great drink at any time!  Soothing, coating the throat when you have a soar throat or when it feels dry, a source of vitamin C, the lemon also helps breakdown small calcium build-up in the kidney that you may not aware of.
5. Pomegranate: Excellent to eat this year round but especially when it is in season during the fall. As the winter approaches and the air gets drier, pomegranate has shown to hydrate the skin! A great fruit full of vitamin C and fiber when you eat the seeds too!
6. Any Berries! It has shown to strengthen the immune and due to its natural deep colour, in some cases it has shown to fight some bad cancer cells in your body! Load them up when you have your breakfast or put it in your shake!
7. Green and colorful vegetables such as tomatoes, carrots, purple and orange sweet potato, kale, broccoli, etc...  all shown to be great immune strengthener to fighting cancer cells!
8. 70%+ Dark Chocolate/Cocao: great for the heart, reduce bad cholesterol in your body, has a lot of good minerals for your body, helps those with diabetes, and improve blood circulation because it breaks down the bad fat in the blood! It has a lot less junk in terms of ingredients vs. other chocolates (i.e. milk chocolates, white chocolate etc..)
9. Mushrooms: low calorie, great source of potassium, and contains selenium which is an antioxidant that works with vitamin E to protect cells from the damaging effects of free radicals.
10. Beans: rich source of cholesterol-lowering fiber and can protect from some types of cancer!
11. Maple syrup, honey, brown sugar, cane sugar vs. white sugar!! Artificial sweeteners and aspartame are the worst! Use this only if it is necessary based on your own health assessment with your doctor!
12. Fish, Pork, Chicken are less acidic than beef!
13. Himalayan salt and sea salt are better than regular salt!
14. Load up on HERBS! Literally any.... especially basil, cumin, mint, rosemary, cinnamon, 
15. Goji - load it up! I have heard lots of stories how great it worked for other people in terms of improving vision and those with optical issues! Rinse a small handful and fold it into your yogurt or cereal in the morning!  You can also try to steep it in a glass of hot water and just drink it like you would with tea.

Organics or Not?
In the past, I never really bought or consider organic foods. However, now I have considered and bought more organic produces.  If I can afford it, the item I want to buy is part of the dirty dozen (see list below) and the grocery I am shopping at has the item that I need and it looks fresh, I will buy it!  My husband and I both agree that when we go out to eat, we can't control the ingredients that the chef uses.  So, whenever we cook at home, we try to buy the best food and cook with minimal 'bad' ingredients.  I now buy organic milk more often vs. the regular version.  I do try to buy organic eggs, berries, carrots, butter, and follow the list below that are consider as the dirty dozen.

Current Overall Diet, Nutrition, and Health Approach 
In terms of what I cook and eat, it hasn't had a huge change vs. the past. Something that did change is that I do now look at the package food labels closely and carefully. If I can't understand more than 50% of the ingredients, I ask myself the question if I need to buy it, if it is an item that we just want to indulge a little, and if I can find an alternative that has less bad and unknown ingredients.  Never have I known that my favorite rice crispy, frosted flakes, honey combs cereals as examples have colour and a lot of ingredients that I don't even know what they are.  Do I still buy them? Of course but I try to eat it in moderation! I have explored other healthier cereals and included it in my pantry so that I help balance our entire family diet between the good and bad.  Many foods that we consume actually have colour, preservatives, artificial flavours, and scientific ingredients that I don't even know what it is for or what it is! Of course, I think going to extreme and overly concerned/serious with this ingredients label reading is not good. So, I try to find a balance whenever I can and once in a while, we do indulge a small amount what we would call 'junk food'.  At home, we try to cook healthy. We try to use less pre-made sauce, seasoning, salt and oil in preparing the food.  We make sure we include more recipes with the list of foods I called out at the beginning of my blog.  Pretty much more fruits, veggies, beans and less meat.  We know already we go out to eat 2-3 meals a week.  So for those meals, we try to enjoy it and be less concerned because we can't really control what and where the produce and ingredients came from.  This is how we try to balance our diet and nutrition.  How do you or not balance your current diet? How do you make sure you consume enough fruits and vegetables? Does this even matter to you?

Latest Health Condition
I have been eating more but my stomach and digestion cannot tolerate it.  I still have digestion pain once in a while, definitely a lot less vs. October but I still get it!  I also somehow injured my lower back. Not sure what happen but definitely went to see the doctor about it. I managed to get an Xray completed on my lower back and pelvis. I also did 4 days of stool testing to ensure I don't have an infection/cancer in my colon.  Hopefully, these tests come out clear and confirm my assumptions that the digestion pain is related with the fact that my body hasn't fully recovered yet.  The past two days, my throat felt a little weird as if I might be coming down with something. My husband had a small cold last week so don't know if I am catching it or not.  So far, I have been trying to drink up a lot of honey and lemon, and boiled coke and lemon together to drink! Another pain I have been feeling is my mid-back is hurting. I know I will get a big tap on my hands from everyone because I am pretty sure this is related to me trying to shovel the little snow from our driveway the other day.  I thought using the smallest shovel and do it gently shouldn't hurt. Besides, I made sure I did it slowly and enjoy the fresh air outdoor but obviously, I sure got a lot of fresh oxygen but my body didn't like the fact that I shoveled!  It is too bad... I guess I now know why my family doctor raised her eyebrows at me when I told her I wanted to try to do some light yoga two weeks ago.  She told me to not do any downward dogs and it is ok to take it very slowly and limit myself to slow motion stretches. In fact, she prefer that I try to walk more and slowly increase the pace to a little speed walking.  Overall, it really sucks to see all of this happening and the fact that I started to eat more, not only I didn't gain more weight but I ended up losing 1 more pound!?!  What is going on....  I'm now down to 107! OMG. My weight for the past 10 years excluding when I was pregnant was 120 lbs.  When I was pregnant, I hit no more than 145!  I can't believe I am now 107!  Not trying to brag here cause I will be really honest, I am not happy with the way I look and trying so hard to gain weight.  I have a feeling that my lower back was hurting because I don't have enough strong muscles/fat to support the bones in my body. So, when I am standing, walking etc.. it is putting a lot of pressure on the bone.  The recovery is not easier than the treatment itself.... I guess it is a little less tough but I am too anxious.... it is going way slower than I hoped for.  Fingers crossed! Hopefully in the early new year I see more improvement.

I will blog again before the end of next week! I am developing my own recovery program and want to share it to help make me more accountable for it.  I am not 100% loving how I look but I decided to go out and print some Christmas cards with my family picture on it.  Thanks to  my 2 lovely cousins who purposely came over and took the picture for us. I will share that next week.