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Food, Mood and Women's Health – Be your healthiest, look and feel great!

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Kiva is for always and not just during the season of giving!

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M
Margaret lives in Kenya and she sells groceries, a business she ventured into 13 years ago

As stated on their site “Kiva is the world’s first online lending platform connecting online lenders to entrepreneurs.”  Their tag line is this: “Kiva – Loans that change lives.”

Kiva is all about microfinancing i.e.

“microfinance is a general term to describe financial services to low-income individuals or to those who do not have access to typical banking services.”

“By supporting women’s economic participation, microfinance helps to empower women, thus promoting gender-equity and improving household well-being.”

This is how it works: make a loan, get updates, get paid back, repeat!  You can make ‎micro-loans to entrepreneurs across the globe for as little as $25.  Read more about microfinance on the kiva site.

“100% of every dollar you lend on Kiva goes directly towards funding loans; Kiva does not take a cut. Furthermore, Kiva does not charge interest to our Field Partners, who administer the loans.”  Wow, this is quite something!

My passion is educating women about how important real whole food is, so I choose to lend money to women who have businesses related to food and farming. In the past I’ve given loans to Marilyn, who lives in the Philippines and sells fish; Consolata who has a grocery store in Kenya; Mirian who lives in El Salvador and has a small farm; and Nubar who sells fruits and vegetables in Armenia.

One of my current loans is to 48 year old Margaret who comes from Kenya. According to the Kiva site she “is married to Wilson, and they are blessed with four children. She sells groceries, a business she ventured into 13 years ago” and “wants to purchase cereals, fruits, and vegetables.” “Margaret dreams of owning a personal vehicle in the near future.” 

It’s so rewarding knowing that I can affect the lives of four entrepreneurial women who are in turn improving their lives, the lives of their families and the lives of those in their communities with real whole food!

If you are looking for an organization to give to, Kiva is a 4-star charity on Charity Navigator and if you’re looking for a last minute gift, they offer gift cards.  But, best of all, you get to give all year round!

How women entrepreneurs can reduce business stress and anxiety with food

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It was wonderful being a guest on Spotlight on Success, hosted by Dr. Shannnon Reece and I was honored to share food-mood-stress-anxiety information with her viewers and readers. It’s so important for balance in our often hectic lives! Now I get to share it with my readers too! The topic was Food & Mood: Calm Your Anxious Mind and covered all aspects of how women entrepreneurs can reduce business stress and anxiety with proper nutrition. (It also applies to all women and men too).

Today I had a delicious and satisfying breakfast of boiled eggs on a bed of cooked spinach. What a difference a good breakfast makes to how we feel the rest of the day – mood, energy, anxiety and stress levels, and focus and mental clarity! I also often enjoy a fruit smoothie with whey protein and coconut milk so do whatever appeals to you. The important thing is to ALWAYS eat breakfast! This is just one of the many tips shared in this interview – enjoy…breakfast and the interview!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_e_aDNbW5g[/youtube]

 

Shannon shared before the interview: “Trudy believes (as do I) that life is meant to be spent feeling well, mentally and physically, and that stress and anxiety don’t have to be the status quo that we accept.”

Here is what we covered:

  • Do women really need to focus on doing something about their stress and anxiety?
  • What are the 3 biggest food-related factors that contribute to stress and anxiety?
  • What other dietary factors play a role?
  • And, what should you do if you’re eating a healthy diet but are still feeling anxious and stressed?

After the interview Shannon shared this “It was a pleasure to have you on the show to share your expertise with me and my audience. I always learn something new from each guest, and that makes each one so exciting. Women often don’t take their health needs seriously, so I am thrilled to have had you give us all a good “kick-in-the-butt” reminder. 🙂 Shannon”. This is your good “kick-in-the-butt” reminder!

Dr. Shannon Reece is an amazing business resource for women entrepreneurs and I thoroughly enjoy her blogs and interviews. This is from her website: “My background as a competitive athlete, sport psychologist, and a woman in the male-dominated business world taught me the importance of hard work, effective strategy, sound tactics and leveraging my strengths. If you want to succeed, conformity is not an option! After too many years “working for the man” I turned my life right side up becoming an entrepreneur and I’ve never looked back. With a global reach, I am helping like-minded women — just like you — through the start-up and launch of their entrepreneurial dreams and am having loads of fun in the process.”

I encourage you to check out her articles and other Spotlight on Success interviews! And to follow these tip to reduce business stress and anxiety!

You can also find out more in The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood and End Cravings, available in major books stores, at Amazon and via www.antianxietyfoodsolution.com.

Food, exercise, biofeedback and nutrients for anxiety at ADAA

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Trudy scott antianxiety adaa 2012

Great three days at the 2012 Annual Conference of Anxiety Disorders Association of America. I was accepted to do a poster presentation on Saturday night: Food and Mood: Case Study of Woman with Anxiety (using food changes and nutrients) and I had a lot of firsts – the first time attending this conference, my first poster presentation at a mainstream conference, first time meeting some of the excellent researchers in the field and first time exposure to some of the newest research on anxiety.

I thoroughly enjoyed it from the start… submitting my proposal, creating the poster, figuring out how big to make it so it could be read easily (it was 3ft high by 5 ft wide) and then standing with my poster answering questions for an hour and a half during the poster session. I am now I’m inspired to do some of my own food mood research.

My poster was a case study of a woman using real whole food, no gluten, no sugar, 5-HTP, GABA, zinc, vitamin B6 and other nutrients to end her anxiety and panic attacks. I was very pleased with the interest and was thrilled to share this important info about the food-mood connection!

Some other highlights from the conference (there were many!):

  • Keynote by Dr Spiegel on self-hypnotism – in one study, participants were able to increase their gastric acid secretion. We learned that hypnotism has much good research for anxiety but is not used that extensively.
  • Meeting and talking to Lindsey DeBoer, lead author of Dietary Supplements for Anxiety Disorders: A Systematic Review – to be included in a chapter in a new book called Psychobiological Approaches for Anxiety Disorders that I look forward to checking out
  • Great quote from a session on Exercise for Anxiety: “Do your exercise before a stressful event and you’ll do much better” ~ Michael W. Otto, Ph.D. At the same session Jasper Smits, PhD shared much of the evidence of the benefits of exercise for anxiety, OCD, panic attacks and social phobia. Otto and Smits have a new book Exercise for Mood and Anxiety that I look forward to checking out.
  • This short 2 min totally cool video!!! “Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here. http://www.thefuntheory.com/piano-staircase With thanks to Michael W. Otto, Ph.D and Jasper Smits, PhD for sharing this at the exercise presentation
  • Doing a biofeedback relaxation session
  • Meeting, listening to and learning from researchers, authors and editors of some of the major journals
  • Meeting new people and making new connections

(On a side note, the ADAA was previously Anxiety Disorders Association of America, and was just renamed this weekend to be Anxiety and Depression Association of America.)

More research and conference highlights will be shared in future blogs… and all this and more will be included in future editions of The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood and End Cravings, available in major books stores, at Amazon and via www.antianxietyfoodsolution.com.

Total cholesterol that is too low: anxiety and depression in women

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If your total cholesterol level is too low, you’re at increased risk for anxiety, depression, and even suicide, as well as increased risk of strokes, cancer, digestive diseases and respiratory diseases.

A study by Suarez in 1999 in Psychosomatic Medicine found a relationship between low cholesterol and increased anxiety and depression in women. And in a 2008 paper in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry it was reported that when total cholesterol is less than 160 mg/dl (milligrams per decililter), there may be an increased risk of suicide.

An interesting 1992 editorial in the journal Circulation reported that these same levels were also associated with increased risk of death from strokes, cancer, and digestive and respiratory diseases. In addition, this editoral emphasizes that, among women, there is no association between high blood cholesterol and cardiovascular deaths.

Dr Mark Hyman, MD is one of my favorite integrative physicians and he writes extensively on cholesterol and why it may not be the cause of heart disease.  He talks about the importance of ratios (total cholesterol to HDL and triglycerides to HDL) and considering additional testing if you’re concerned about heart disease: NMR Lipid Profile to look at particle sizes, Hemoglobin A1c, Cardio C-reactive protein for inflammation, Homocysteine, Fibrinogen, Lipoprotein (a) and others.

Low total cholesterol is a topic that I address in The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood and End Cravings, available in major books stores, at Amazon and via www.antianxietyfoodsolution.com.  It is just one of many factors that need to be considered for anxiety and mood issues.