Wellness Mama®
Simple Answers for Healthier Families
“Is a Low Carb Diet Healthy?” This question has been swirling around the blogosphere lately with many different answers. Some claim that really low-carb is the only way to go, others claim that eating low carb messed up their thyroid or other hormones. One important distinction that must be made is between low-carb and grain-free. …
When trying to implement nutrition changes, it can often be overwhelming to think of all the changes that need to be made and figure out what should be done first. Choosing healthier, unpackaged food options requires more planning, so I’ve outlined below some of the most important steps to take in order of importance. Nutrition …
Nutrition has a tremendous impact on overall health, and is a huge focus of the Wellness Lifestyle. If you’ve been a Wellness Mama reader for a while, you know that I’m not a fan of grains, sugars and starches, or vegetable oils and recommend removing them from your diet. My real food prescription, in a nutshell: In …
Grains are a controversial food in modern times, and perhaps with good reason. They aren’t the food they were thousands of years ago, or hundreds of years ago, or even 50 years ago. Are All Grains Bad? Maybe you’ve wondered why grains have become so controversial when people from other countries (usually Asia and Italy …
In my time blogging, I’ve had the honor of “meeting” some other great bloggers. Through sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and others, I’ve been able to connect with many of these bloggers and definitely consider them (online) friends. Today, I’m just sharing a list of blogs that I read and who’s authors I’ve “met”… …
Chances are, if you follow mainstream medical advice or watch the news, you’ve seen some negative press about salt. In fact, the low-sodium industry is booming! Thank goodness that this sodium reduction, along with a low-fat diet and eating more whole grains has so greatly increased the health of Americans over the last few decades… …
The answer is likely “Yes” that you are deficient in Magnesium. Magnesium is the eighth most abundant mineral on earth, and the third most abundant in sea water. More importantly, it is the fourth most abundant mineral in the human body and it is necessary in over 300 reactions within the body. Magnesium isn’t just …
A while back, I interviewed Dr. William Davis, MD, author of the New York Times bestselling book Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health. He’s a preventive cardiologist whose surprising approach to a heart-healthy diet allows him to not only help people prevent heart disease but potentially …
Many women shy away from lifting weights, and especially heavy weights, because of fears of getting too bulky or putting on too much muscle. Thanks to a couple of hormones (estrogen and progesterone) and lack of another (testosterone), this is almost impossible without some artificial hormone help, and lifting heavy weights can provide women with …
After more than a decade of writing about wellness, I’ve come to the realization that not only is there no “one-size-fits-all” approach to health, but that the idea of trying to find one may actually be harmful. I found the things that worked for me to reverse my Hashimotos and gut issues, but those things …
Fitness is a vital part of any overall wellness regimen, though it should follow a healthy diet and lifestyle, rather than take the place of it. There are hundreds of options for improving your fitness, from gyms and weights, running, swimming, and numerous others. Since I have approximately zero hours of free time to drive …
I’ve written about the many benefits of humic minerals and fulvic acids and how they can dramatically impact health and I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to practically incorporate these substances. To recap, these substances can improve digestion, cell function, energy levels and even brain function. When combined with soil based probiotics, there is …
One (of many) problems that I see with our modern diet is that it is not varied and the majority of the foods we consume contain similar (but boring) ingredients like processed grains, potatoes, sugars and vegetable oils. Around the World… Many cultures around the world have consumed a much more varied diet, including some …
I often get this question from people who are new to a healthy way of living and are experiencing some uncomfortable symptoms. Especially if you are switching from a conventional low-fat, high grain diet, you might be noticing that you are tired and have some uncomfortable symptoms like headache, fatigue, achy muscles or brain fog. …
With all the news about the old USDA Food Pyramid being replaced by the new MyPlate (which only cost the government $2 million to create!) I thought that an in-depth look at the old Pyramid is in order. I actually had a post planned about how the Food Pyramid desperately needed to be updated, but …
I often (ok, basically always) encourage readers to ditch the grains for the sake of their health, and many do see tremendous health improvements by doing so. One question/objection I often get is “If grains are unhealthy, why are they consumed in the Bible and why did Jesus use so many references to bread” or …
Hippocrates was once quoted for saying “all disease begins in the gut.” Time is proving Hippocrates to be a pretty smart guy, and science is even now linking poor gut health with a myriad of health problems. From eczema to poor immune health, it seems that our gut health influences much more than we previously …
Keeping a well-stocked, real food kitchen is essential for sticking to a healthy lifestyle. If you’ve got healthy foods at your finger tips all the time and no processed foods to fall back on, you won’t be tempted to reach for the cereal on a busy morning. For me, keeping a kitchen well stocked and …
Before I started eating real foods, ferments like sauerkraut, plain yogurt, kombucha, and aged cheese were not even on my radar. These fermented foods tasted and smelled too strong to me, and I had no interest in eating them. I preferred my bland carbohydrates, thank you very much! Fast forward a couple of years, and …
You’ve probably heard horror stories of 3 foot tapeworms that cause serious problems for some people, but did you know that most parasites are very tiny and some can only be seen by microscope? Did you know that there is actually a very good chance that you could have a yeast or parasite infestation? The …
Note: this article is long and goes into a lot of science. If that isn’t your thing, watch the movie Fat Head. It explains much of this in a very entertaining way! I’m sure you’ve heard or seen the commercials telling the dangers of high cholesterol levels and the various life saving drugs that lower cholesterol …
Diabetes rates are rising, in fact it is now considered an “epidemic” in the medical community. The American Diabetes Association reports that: 23.6 million Americans have diabetes 57 million Americans are pre-diabetic 1.6 new cases of diabetes are reported each year For those over age 60, almost 1 in 4 have diabetes Diabetes is the …
Dairy is a tricky subject when it comes to health. While we all depend on it in some form for the first few years of life, the question of adult consumption of dairy is a tougher one to answer. “Foods” like grains and man-made fats are more easily recognizable as having no place in healthy …
Conventional wisdom (at least for the last few decades) says that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you and contribute to heart disease…. but what does the evidence say? How it Began… The fear of saturated fat began in the 1950s when Ancel Keys published a paper supposedly linking saturated fat/cholesterol with rising rates …
