Food of the week: Brussels sprouts

I am willing to bet you wrinkled your nose when you saw this week's choice. Most people will. That's unfortunate, since this kissin' cabbage cousin is a nutritional powerhouse. It's especially high in vitamin C and vitamin K, it's got folate (which all of you ladies need as much as you can get of), and it contains that anti-Alzheimer's compound I've been writing about a lot lately....choline. It's one of those vegetables like cabbage and broccoli that has some powerful anticancer properties as well. They're low glycemic, and each one only contains 10 calories!

Most people have never eaten a properly cooked Brussels sprout, which is why they think they don't like them. They can taste sulfurous if cooked too long. It's best to cook them until they just turn a bright green. Here's a video on cooking them that may be helpful.

If you're really adventurous, and willing to reconsider, here are some interesting ways to cook them:

Roasted brussels sprouts

Caramelized brussels sprouts (You will need some sugar to do the caramelizing, but you can experiment with how little you really need.)

Brussels sprout stir fry

Browned Brussels sprouts with orange and walnuts

Brussels sprouts with grapes

Grilled Brussels sprouts

And my personal favorite, pictured above, Brussels sprout salad

Bon Appetit!

Top Ten PCOS-friendly (and Martha Stewart-worthy) Ways to Include Food in Your Holiday Celebrations

If you allow it to happen, holiday festivities can leave you feeling left out of the fun. It doesn't have to be that way if you think creatively. Here are some fun, PCOS-friendly ways to include food in your holidays.

Now go make Martha proud!!!

1. A high percentage of my clients love to decorate cakes. If it's the decorating part you love....why not make salt dough Christmas ornaments?






2. Make cranberry/popcorn garlands for your tree.






3. Make orange clove pomander balls for gifts and ornaments.






4. Donate food to or volunteer your time at a food bank or homeless shelter. It is a powerful way to gain perspective on food and your own relationship with it.






5. Decorate your home with rosemary garlands for a fresh, clean holiday aroma.





6. Make olive-oil based vinaigrette dressings placed in pretty bottles for holiday gifts.





7. Decorate your holiday table with cranberry ice candles.




8. Hang a nut/seed wreath in your backyard for the birds you enjoy watching.







9. Decorate your front door with chili pepper wreath.







10. Invest in a decorative nutcracker and set it near a pretty bowl of mixed nuts.

Are you effectively marketing healthy eating to yourself?

"Eat food that rots" has become a mantra of nutrition experts. It means you're eating things that have not been processed or filled with additives and preservatives.

"But it rots before I can eat it" is a popular excuse I hear for why my clients don't eat more fruits and vegetables!

I challenge you to consider that there is a more simple solution to this conundrum than you may realize.

I have a refrigerator in which the freezer is on the bottom. That means that my fruit and vegetable bin are practically at eye level. I am reminded to eat fruits and vegetables every time I open the door. I used to have a model with the freezer on the top. Food used to rot all the time.

The freezer-on-the-bottom model seems to better market fruits and vegetables to me.

Don't have that model? Don't have a new one in your budget? Simply consider changing how you organize food in your refrigerator. You can put lots of things in the bins...breads, deli meats, cheese, etc...and leave room for the produce on the shelves.

If you see it more often, you'll be more likely to eat it.

Before it rots.

Are you depressed because of your weight? Or are you depressed because you're depressed?

It's not uncommon to read blog posts, tweets, and chat room conversations in which women with PCOS describe their depression, and attribute it to the weight gain and appearance that their PCOS has promoted. It can be easy to blame the discomfort, fatigue, restless, and anxiety that depression provokes, on tangible and unwanted physical changes

A recent study helps to verify what I've believed all along...that depression, like hirsutism, weight gain, and infertility, is another condition that PCOS has potential to create. It is not the result of other symptoms associated with PCOS.

Here's the study.

Thirty women with PCOS and thirty women without PCOS participated in this study. All subjects had similar BMI's/weights. Only women who were not on any psychotropic medication were included. Women with PCOS scored higher on an anxiety scale than women without PCOS. They also slept less, worried more, and experienced more phobias than women without PCOS. Weight was not associated with any of the symptoms, except for sleep.

In other words, regardless of your weight, you can be depressed if you have PCOS.

If you attach or blame your depression on your weight, your appearance, or your infertility:

--you can set yourself up for an eating disorder...if you actually lose weight and discover it didn't change how you feel.
--you can feel even worse if you spend time and money on cosmetic surgery, only to realize you don't feel as good as you hoped you would.
--you can put yourself through the tremendous stress of infertility treatment, and get the baby, only to discover that you still feel depressed, and now you've got a baby who isn't sleeping through the night who is dependent on you.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the inCYST program is very helpful at reducing anxiety and depression. So in addition to helping you normalize your weight, reducing the progression of testosterone-related programs, and increasing your fertility, it helps you to feel better. It literally rebuilds your nervous system so it can reduce the influence depression can have. And in rebuilding the nervous system, it helps to balance hormones so that symptoms can lessen.

We like to focus on feeling better, since we know that in women who do, the other problems tend to fall into place. That's not to say that being anxious about your PCOS doesn't worsen when you focus on your symptoms, and that when you learn better coping skills you won't feel even better. Gretchen Kubacky has done a great job of discussing that here, on her blog, and on PCOS Challenge.

It's just that you want to be sure you're tackling the core cause of the problem, and not simply putting band-aids on the symptoms. Nothing can be more frustrating than investing all your time, resources, and money into diets and medical procedures, only to feel the same or even worse once you've done so.

Anxiety and depression symptoms in women with polycystic ovary syndrome compared with controls matched for body mass index

REFERENCE
E. Jedel1, M. Waern2, D. Gustafson2,3, M. Landén4, E. Eriksson5, G. Holm6, L. Nilsson7, A.-K. Lind7, P.O. Janson7 and E. Stener-Victorin8,9 Anxiety and depression symptoms in women with polycystic ovary syndrome compared with controls matched for body mass index

1 Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden 2 Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 3 Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA 4 Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden 5 Department of Pharmacology, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 6 Department of Metabolism and Cardiovascular Disease, Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 7 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Institute of Clinical Science, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 8 Department of Physiology, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Box 434, 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden

Food of the week: hazelnuts

Hazelnuts have always been around my house. When I was a little girl we even had a dog who knew how to crack them open and enjoy the kernel inside! They're a common ingredient in holiday cooking, which has me thinking of hazelnuts a lot right now.

Hazelnuts are not as commonly known in the United States as other nuts, but they are a great PCOS-friendly food to become acquainted with. Hazelnuts are very high in monounsaturated fatty acids, putting them in a category similar to macadamia nuts, olives, and avocadoes.

In addition, they are a good source of iron, calcium, zinc, and potassium.

You can enjoy them the way Coco used to, simply cracking them open and eating them, or you can grind them into powder to use in baked goods, breading for fish and poultry, and salad dressings...anywhere you might use ground flaxseeds. (I like the way my coffee tastes after I've ground hazelnuts then coffee in my coffee grinder!)

Here's a great recipe for hazelnut pad thai from the Hazelnut Council. To make it even more PCOS friendly, try it with Shirataki Noodles and use either hazelnut oil or canola oil for cooking.

Get Your Toes Wet With PCOS! Webinar Next Wednesday, December 2

PCOS affects 1 in 10 women and is the leading cause of infertility. Despite its strong ties to nutrition, much of the nutrition information available to women who have the syndrome is counterproductive. Invest in this hour of basic PCOS nutrition concepts and gain an understanding of how you can be more successful with women who need your expertise.

The focus of this webinar will be a summary of ten commonly prescribed nutrition practices that may actually work against your client's metabolism.

Participants in this webinar will be able to apply the registration fee to the 2010 inCYST Professional Training and Marketing Network.

Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009 12:00 noon Pacific Time

Cheers to everyone!

I am thankful for every single person who finds inCYST. It means we are connecting with people our information has potential to help.

I am thankful for all the professionals of inCYST who help to make it the amazing PCOS resource that it is.

And I am thankful for the support of family, friends, and colleagues as I navigate this project on its course.

I hope all of you also have much to be thankful for!

I thought you might enjoy this recipe, perhaps you can use it to toast your thanks with. It's beautiful, and tasty. Oh, and by the way...it is also healthy!

Cranberry Raspberry Green Tea Spritzer (adapted from recipezaar.com)
SERVES 8

Ingredients
3 cups boiling water
6 tea bags (preferably green tea)
1 cup cranberry-raspberry juice, chilled
1 cup club soda, chilled

Directions
1. Pour boiling water over tea bags, then cover & brew for 5 minutes. Remove & squeeze the tea bags over the brewed tea, then pour into a large pitcher, & set aside to cool. If it needs to be sweetened, add the sweetener of your choice, to taste.
2. When cooled, add fruit juice to the tea, & stir to combine. Chill at least 2 hours before serving.
3. When ready to serve, add club soda & pour into ice-filled glasses.