Well, Dr. Oz almost immersed one of his audience guests in a vat of yogurt while he pointed out that it was good for reducing inflammation in the mouth, of benefit to the bones, and that pairing a fruit with fiber might be a good idea.

I beg to differ with the pineapple and yogurt combination. Don’t DO that!

If you are familiar with Food Combining guidelines at all, you know that you don’t pair an acid fruit with any dairy product. Different enzymes are necessary for proper digestion of food types. We’ve talked about not combining acid fruits with whole grains. If you must add some type of fruit to your yogurt or your cottage cheese or other dairy products…DO choose sub-acid fruits like berries or peaches.

Yogurt is tart and you don’t really want to make it super-sweet. It will do its job of providing probiotic cultures to your digestive system when you keep it plain. So many companies try to make yogurt into a dessert, so you’ll be more likely to eat it regularly. The problem with all that sweetener is that it feeds the yeast and helps to populate the very beast that you are trying to tame!

If you need to sweeten your tart yogurt; then use stevia or honey. Eat your yogurt on an empty stomach and don’t drink anything at that time for best results. It is important for the cultures to be in the intestines to colonize and set up house.

The alternative to a milk-based yogurt is the So Delicious Coconut Milk yogurt that you’ll find at your local Whole Foods Market or Food Coops. Coconut milk and fruits like blueberries and strawberries are find together. Try some and you’ll feel the difference that getting six cultures make, instead of only acidophilus or bifidus.

The most ideal method to get healthy flora into your digestive system is to take one or two bottles of Life Science’s Nature’s Biotics. It is the most complete and bio-active supplements that I have found and will do more for you than the Activia Challenge! LOL

A pain in the neck needs more care than pain relievers, drugs, or surgery to be your only choices for alleviating that unfriendly pain. Although those are options for some, other people will want to develop better Lifestyle choices that eliminate the root cause of pain along your spine.

The way you sit in a chair at work, the bed that you sleep in every night, the shoes that you wear when you walk, the tightness of your shirts and neckties, and even the way you hold the phone make a difference which determines whether or not you place stress on the muscles, tendons, bone, nerves, or connective tissue. If you address the causes of inflammation and injury; then the body has no reason to alert you to its discomfort using pain as the signal.

Gentle stretching will strengthen the neck gradually. Rotating your head in a circular motion in both directions will help to keep your vertebrae in alignment and you might even hear sounds when they are returning back to their natural positions when you do your rotations.

Massage Therapy and Bodywork along with Chiropractic are very useful for addressing the root causes of pain in the back and neck. Acupuncture and Tui Na have been used for thousands of years for this type of pain successfully. Before you opt for surgery or other invasive procedures, use non-invasive methods to bring you relief first.

MSM and CieAura PureRelief Holographic Chips are going to be extremely useful in correcting the causal factors that lead to the experience of pain when key nutrients or bio-energetic frequencies are missing from a human body or an animal. This type of sulfur goes deep into the tissue and you can purchase a fragrance-free MSM Lotion that penetrates and brings relief from pain when applied topically to the area of the neck or the rest of the body that hurts. If there is a deficiency of this important mineral; then the pain will go away.

If there is an organic injury, then the MSM will help support the healing process indirectly. Minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium are key elements in the conductivity of nerve impulses. When you over-excite the nervous system with irritants or with synthetic chemicals, you can soothe the irritation or inflammation with calcium using pearl powder or other products with minerals and essential oils which are known for their calming effects. Marjoram Essential Oil is good for muscle pain in the neck.

A grouping of EOs for pain is available and can be applied hourly until the pain is gone when it is due to circulation, inflammation, or strain. When you have an injury, rest and time are two great factors in your recovery along with a supplementation of minerals, including silica and boron if the bone tissue has been injured. If the nerve tissue has been injured, then additional Vitamin B Complex is also indicated. Siberian Ginseng has long been used when there is an injury.

There are just too many substances that I could describe as beneficial for pain in the neck here…just not enough space nor time to do it adequately. These are only a few ideas that come to mind in this post. One last idea that few people will bring to your attention are your word choices!

When you say, “You’re a pain in the neck” to someone, guess what happens to you? Your brain perceives that you sense or expect to experience pain in your neck. Your Mind creates a ‘reason’ for pain in that particular area of your body which you just described in words. You ARE that powerful…even if you don’t realize it yet.

We liked the Banana and Potassium Game on Dr. Oz. People actually get paid to dress up like a big banana and make an audience laugh to make the point that this delightful yellow fruit is rich in potassium. Bananas are one of the fruits that you can eat with yogurt or dairy products or whole grains.

We love to make bananas into a frozen sweet treat using a Champion juicer or comparable juicer that can mash frozen bananas into a cream. It’s better than a traditional banana split, especially when you drizzle an organic carob or chocolate sauce over the frozen banana cream. You can top it off with freshly sliced strawberries and bananas along with some chopped walnuts or other nuts. Delicious and nutritious!

A few days ago, Dr. Oz had a woman demonstrate her oatmeal mixture that helped her reach her health goals. It is important to make your healthy foods taste good, so you’ll eat them in lieu of the processed food items. The woman adds chocolate, walnuts, and cranberries to her oatmeal. Let’s face it, oats are plain and rightly so. The trick is to combine healthy ingredients to make your healthy whole grain taste fabulous.

Bananas, cinnamon, and cashews do that for me when I make my oatmeal. You can alternate the pairable fruits like blueberries, blackberries, marionberries, and apricots with bananas or peaches. Maple syrup makes a good sweetener with oatmeal. You can also combine oats to many other foods for savory dishes. We make our veggie patties this way with lentils or beans or tofu and oats or oat groats. We DO love our groats…even with tamari and scallions as a side dish with our beans and legumes.

Experiment and don’t be afraid to explore the tastes from other cultures that have been using oats for centuries. Even if you want a simple breakfast or snack with a bowl of oatmeal, some raisins, and some almond amasake; it can be satisfying and healthy. Much better than packaged cereals… Just refuse to settle for plain lack of flavor which leaves you with a sense of having cardboard in your mouth!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 20th, 2010 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.