Dr. Ritamarie’s Food Allergy Spy Training: FAST Relief From Leaky Gut, Fibromyalgia, and More

If you have any of these problems, you should find out if underlying food allergies are the cause:

If you have persistent weight issues that won’t go away
If there are dark circles under eyes
If you ever experience upset stomach and poor digestion
If you’re embarrassed by skin eruptions
If you suffer from fibromyalgia (long-term, body-wide pain and tenderness in the joints, muscles, tendons, and soft tissues)
If you have autoimmune disease (an overactive immune response where the body mistakenly attacks its own cells)
If you’re struggling with hormone imbalance
If you have concerns about your thyroid health
If you’re experiencing fatigue and adrenal burnout
If you struggle with depression
If you need to correct blood sugar imbalances
If you suffer from headaches

These unwanted health symptoms may actually be a “good” thing if they are the early warning signs that your body is trying to get you to hear. The sooner you listen to what your body is telling you, the sooner you can heal the inflammation that’s causing the problems and avoid more serious health risks.

For a limited time, Dr. Ritamarie’s Food Allergy Spy Training program (FAST) is being offered for $100 off the regular price.  You’ll receive 30 days of step-by-step guidance to help you detect your hidden food allergies through a proven Food Elimination-Provocation Process (FEPP) and get a handle on your symptoms.  After, you can participate for two months in the new VITAL Community (Vibrant Ideas and Tools for Awesome Living).

The first live group run of the FAST program begins on January 17th, 2012.

Click HERE to learn more:

http://www.FoodAllergySpy.com

Thyroid Health: Assessment and Care for Hasimoto’s Thyroiditis and Low Thyroid Function

Thyroid problems leave you feeling tired and unmotivated.  Learn to assess yourself and balance your nutrition for better health.  Jumpstart your energy with our free 7-day e-course!

http://www.JumpstartYourEnergy.com

Vitamin D, Bone Health, Cancer and the Importance of Testing

In Vitamin D: Are You Getting Enough? I talked about the role of Vitamin D and why we are finding such an epidemic of deficiency in our modern world.   The widespread use of sunscreen in an attempt to protect you from basal cell carcinoma, one of the easiest to treat cancers, increases  your at risk for more serious disease, like colon, prostate and breast cancer.

Part 1 of a two part video series about Vitamin D discussed the role of vitamin D and why it’s important to test.

Today’s video shares how to interpret the test and bring your blood Vitamin D level up to a range that helps protect you from cancer, osteoporosis, autoimmune disease and a whole lot more.

It’s easy to get your vitamin D tested.  If you don’t have a practitioner, or your doctor is unwilling to order the test for you, you can order it yourself through Direct Labs, an online testing service that allows you to take charge of your health and order your own blood tests.

If You’re Suffering from any of the Issues listed Below, Get Your Vitamin D Level tested Right Away.

1. Obesity or excess bodyweight
2. High blood pressure
3. Osteoporosis and osteopenia
4. Autism
5. Autoimmune conditions (such as Hashimotos, lupus, ankylosing spondylitis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis)
6. Cancer
7. Depression
8. Asthma
9. Migraines
10. Cystic fibrosis
11. Diabetes(both types 1 and 2)
12. Multiple sclerosis
13. Schizophrenia
14. Epilepsy
15. Osteoarthritis
16. PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome)
17. Musculoskeletal pain, including joint pain and low back pain
18. Muscle weakness
19. Poor balance
20. Systemic inflammation
21. Fibromyalgia

Simple Strategies for Improving your Vitamin D status

• Get outdoors and enjoy the sunshine for at least 20 – 30 minutes a day during, preferably when the sun is highest in the sky.
• Avoid sunscreen for a full 20 – 30 minutes.
• Expose your arms and legs.  You need to expose 40% of your skin to make sufficient Vitamin D.
• Be sure to avoid washing the exposed parts with soap for at least 48 hours to give your body a chance to absorb all he Vitamin D it produced as a result of the sunshine exposure.
• Get tested for vitamin D. The 25, hydroxyl vitamin D test is the one most commonly used.
• Supplement with Vitamin D if you’re low.

Vitamin D Levels — what’s optimal?

Remember, it’s important to test.

If you decide to skip the test and just supplement with 2000-4000 IU you run the risk of not correcting the problem.  If you supplement with 10,000 – 20,000 without testing, you run the risk of vitamin D excess.

It’s important to work with a trained practitioner.  Fortunately it doesn’t have to be one on one anymore.  I’ve pioneered training people to assess themselves with my guidance in cost-effective group programs, where you do the assessment and can ask me questions to guide you.  The program is called Assess Your Own Body Chemistry and it’s intended to teach you to read your own body’s signs, symptoms and lab tests so you can create a nutrition plan customized to your needs.

Additional reading on Vitamin D from Dr. Joe Mercola

[1] Mercola.com “Daily Sunlight Can Keep Cancer Away” August 7, 2008

[2] Mercola.com “Lack of Sunshine Causes One Million Deaths a Year” August 24, 2007

[3] Dr. Joe Mercola Comments How Much Vitamin Do You Need?

[4] Video by Dr. Joe Mercola.   1 hour video with lots of details about Vitamin D

Medical research papers on the Vitamin D cancer connection

[1]Annals of Epidemiology April 14, 2009  Dr. Cedric Garland

[2] Annals of Epidemiology July 2009, Volume 19, Issue 7, Pages 468-483

[3] Science Daily, “New Model of Cancer Development: Low Vitamin D Levels May Have Role” May 26, 2009

[4] The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology March 2007; 103(3-5):708-11

[5] American Journal of Clinical Nutrition June 2007; 85(6):1586-91.

[6] American Journal of Epidemiology October 12, 2007

Question of the day:

Have you been tested for Vitamin D yet?  If yes, what was your level?  How much are you supplementing if low?

COMMENT BELOW and LET ME KNOW if you’re supplementing and what your level is if you’ve been tested recently.

With Love and Gratitude,

Dr. Ritamarie

Vitamin D: Leaky Gut, Autoimmune Disease and Lack of Sunshine

Vitamin D deficiency is a common problem in our modern world.  We spend too much time indoors, use too much sunshine and have too much stress to maintain healthy levels.

How do you know if you need to supplement?  Listen in as I explain.

In “Vitamin D Are You Getting Enough?” there are lots more detail about how vitamin D works.

Go get some sunshine and get your Vitamin D level tested ASAP.

Love, Health and Joy,

Dr. Ritamarie

Raw Foods Diet: Should you consume Raw Dairy Products?

There’s a lot of disagreement amongst health professionals about the role of dairy products in human nutrition.  Some believe dairy is a cornerstone to strong bones and teeth; others believe it to be a poison to be avoided at all costs.

My personal opinion, based on over 25 years of research and clinical application is that dairy products are not a good idea for humans.  I strongly believe that species specific milk is an ideal food for infants of that species.  In nature we rarely see cross species milk consumption, except in the rare case of when a nursing mother animal takes on the care of an animal whose mother has been killed, leaving behind her newborns.

Animals in nature do not drink milk after weaning.

Species specific milk is ideally suited for the physical and brain development of that species.  One of the clearest explanations I’ve seen is in a set of YouTube videos called Udderly Amazing with Dr. Walter J. Veith. There are 8 videos in the series.

Video 2 explains why drinking milk of any species after weaning is a bad idea.  He discusses casein, the primary protein in cow’s milk, and how that effects human growth.  He offers a nice chart that compares the milk of different species alongside the typical growth rate for that species.  Feeding cow’s milk to human babies causes their bodies to grow rapidly and their brains to grow more slowly.

Here’s a good video by Dr. Mark Hymen, MD on the subject of the adverse effects of dairy on humans.

In it he references evidence that drinking milk does not result in better bone health, as is widely believed,  and shares an overview of the link between dairy consumption, insulin like growth factor and cancer rates.

Eliminating dairy from your diet is an effective way to increase your energy and boost your zest for life!  It will also decrease your health care costs in the long run.  Eliminating dairy can reduce allergies and decrease your risk of autoimmune disease, cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

Many people believe that as long as the dairy is raw and organic that it’s ok to consume.  I disagree.  While raw and organic is certainly better than commercial dairy, there are still problems.  One is the casein.  Raw or heated, casein is allergenic, contains opiate like peptides, called caseomorphin that appears to act as a histamine releaser and has been implicated as a cancer promoter.

If you choose to consume dairy products, it’s best to limit to raw, organic and fermented or cultured products, such as raw organic goat yogurt or kefir.

Making the shift away from milk is not that difficult for many people.  There is such a wide variety of milk substitutes to choose from.  Typically, when you enter a grocery store, there will be almond milk, soy milk, rice milk, hemp milk, and sometimes even coconut milk on the shelf.  There are sweetened and unsweetened options and some milks come in different flavors.

If you would rather try to avoid the processed milk substitutes at the grocery store, you can make always make one yourself.  It is a fairly easy process to do at home.  You just need the right tools.  Basically, a nut milk bag and a blender is all you need.  You’d be surprised at how simple it really is.

The hardest part of eliminating dairy for most people is letting go of cheese.  Cheese seems to be an almost universal comfort food! Cheese and crackers, wine and cheese, or simply cheese by itself has an appeal unlike no other food.

Great tasting cheese substitutes are harder to find.  Most of the cheese substitutes sold at the store are highly processed and are not even really dairy-free because they contain casein, the protein extracted from cow’s milk that’s used to make them creamy. Casein is the protein that causes dairy allergy symptoms as well as many of the problems Dr. Veith discusses in his video. It seems like it would defeat the purpose to make a cheese substitute with casein in it. There are a few almond or rice based cheese substitutes, but they’re all highly processed and they include iffy ingredients like canola oil.

If you have a blender and are willing to invest about a half hour a week, you can learn to make your own cheese substitute right in your home kitchen!  Your dairy-free cheese substitute includes probiotics to boost your digestive system and other nutrient dense ingredients that will promote health and energy.  You can make cheese from raw nuts and seeds, probiotics, some lemon juice, seasonings and binders like psyllium husk and a sea vegetable called Irish moss.  These cheeses are so delicious and bursting with nutrition.  They support digestive as well as immune system health.  And they’re easy to make, once you know how.

I’ve teamed up with Chef Karen Osborne to teach our secret cheese making techniques on January 16.  The live class is in Austin, Texas and it will also be broadcast over the internet and available on digital video afterward.  We’ll be teaching recipes for soft ricotta like cheese (we use it to make ravioli), cheese ball rolled in nuts, white and cheddar cheese blocks, macadamia nut feta cheese, Swiss cheese slices and a beautiful party spread made with a white cheese layered with pesto and sun dried tomatoes.

These cheeses taste fantastic.  Karen gifted me with two types of cheese as a Christmas gift.  One was a spreadable block and the other was firm enough to cut into slices.  I enjoyed both on chia crackers, topped with sunflower sprouts!  I couldn’t get enough.  It was such a great feeling to enjoy the tangy creaminess of cheese, knowing it’s so nutritious.

If you can’t make the class, you can register for the online videos and the pdf e-book with all the recipes.  We’re offering a discount for early sign-up.

Sign-up for Raw Cheese Making Class HERE