What are they?
Fermented foods are foods that have been left to sit until the sugar and starches have become food for natural bacteria. This process not only makes for some delicious foods but also preserves it longer and keeps its nutritional content high.
 
What Foods are Fermented?

• Yogurt – We all know this one. Look for organic, pastured, plain, whole milk yogurt.
• Kefir – Like a yogurt drink.
• Kombucha – Another drinkable fermented food.
• Sauerkraut, other Fermented Vegetables.
• Kimchi - Spicy Korean Fermented Vegetables
• Tempeh and Natto, - Fermented soybean products.
• Miso – A paste from fermented soybeans, barley or rice which can be used to season soups.
• Raw milk cheeses.

 
What are the Health Benefits of Fermented Foods?

• Contain microflora that creates a protective lining in the intestines and shields it against pathogens, such as salmonella and E.coli. 
• Result in more antibodies and boost the immune system.
• Help heal candida and reduce cravings for sugar and refined carbohydrates.
• Contain Vitamin K2, which is difficult to get in other foods. Deficiencies can cause osteoporosis, inappropriate calcification like heel spurs and kidney stones, heart disease, heart attacks and strokes, brain disease and cancer.
• Reduce inflammation, which underlies most modern chronic disease.
• Easier to digest than non-fermented alternatives
• Packed with micronutrients that have a variety of health advantages.

 
As always, let us know if you have questions or need help on how to incorporate these into your diet.

Here is a guest blog from our Women Wine, & Wellness - Lowry speaker for September, Jan Haas. To receive an invitation to this private event you can sign up here:  http://www.waystooptimizehealth.com/women-wine-wellness-lowry.html​.

As I am preparing for my presentation at Women Wine and Wellness next week, it is not a coincidence that I have been reading Brene Brown’s book, Rising Strong.  The concepts of reckoning with who we are, rumbling with all the stories we tell ourselves, and having the courage to transform, or revolutionize ourselves is a path to joy.
 
I will be speaking about the body’s chakra system, and what we can learn from the wisdom of our bodies.  Every experience we have in our lives is coded in our cells, and when we choose to push aside the negative and not look at it, it doesn’t just go away.  It shows up in our bodies as dis-ease. 
 
For example, the heart chakra helps you to receive and give love, and yet, if you have been hurt, there is a limit or block to how well you are able to receive and share love, based on your experiences. 
 
Using the body as a guide, we can learn to heal our emotions as well as our physical bodies by tuning in and paying attention.  While there are many body healing modalities to choose from, I will be sharing a little about my experience with healing touch.
 
I will also be sharing my journey toward healing through creativity. Creating artistic expressions to share has allowed me to step into the joy in my life, by embracing, not shoving away my experience as a perfectionist.
 
We can only experience true joy when we are free to recognize it aside from the other emotions that are locked in our bodies.  I will be sharing a few tools that will teach you how to listen to your own intuition.  When you are authentic to your true self, and you share your gifts and talents with the world, you can experience the highest expression of joy.

I'm looking forward to connecting with amazing women at Women, Wine and Wellness - Lowry next week and sharing these tools for Joy.  Hope to see you there!

​Contact Jan:  www.JanHaas.com | Jan@JanHaas.com | 720-935-0733

As I’ve been focused on writing a new workshop on Anxiety, I’ve been digging more into the many connections between food and nutrition on the one hand and mood and brain functioning on the other. Despite the fact that there are so many logical links between the two, what I find is that many people really don’t think of nutrition and food as serious contenders when they are considering ways to deal with their mental health. More often than not, people go straight to pharmaceuticals or to a therapist before they consider cleaning up their diet.
 
If you think about it though, you already know that food makes a difference in how you feel and your brain functioning. If you’ve ever been really hungry, you have probably experienced feeling grumpy and angry, plus it’s hard to focus and you make more mistakes. If you’ve never been really hungry then just ask anyone you know who’s been on a very calorie restricted diet and they will confirm…It is just not fun!
 
For more evidence on this matter of hunger impacting mood, we can look at Judges’ decisions, which we tend to hope and believe will be logical and balanced. But no, not entirely! Did you know that Judges make more lenient decisions just after they have eaten breakfast or lunch, whereas before a meal break they are more likely to rule unfavorably?
 
This is a blood sugar issue and something that many people overlook as a very simple way to improve their mood and brain functioning.  Just in the last week I’ve had several clients who skip breakfast or go most of the day without food. Sometimes people are trying to eat less to lose weight (which is often counter productive anyway!) and sometimes people say they are just too busy to pay attention to it.
 
Clearly many people are just not connecting the dots and realizing the impact that food has on their brain. Blood sugar is just the tip of the iceberg. We also need to consider neurotransmitters, hormone balance, micronutrient deficiencies, gut health, and more. But if these links are just not tangible enough for you, then how about this?
 
Recently, the SMILES Trial was published. It is the first randomized controlled trial to test whether dietary improvement can actually treat (yes, I did say ‘treat’) depression. In the trial, dietary changes from a junk food diet to a real whole foods diet reduced depression in 30% of the participants.
 
I can only imagine what the results could have been if the participants had taken a deeper nutritional dive and been given more individualized dietary changes to work on.
 
So if I haven’t already made it clear, if you’re experiencing mood or brain functioning issues, I highly recommend paying attention to your diet. The brain is a key organ connected to the rest of our body and it cannot function well without the body functioning properly. If you can fix your body, you can likely fix your brain.
 
If you have questions or need further help the please reach out to us. We’d love to support you!