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Monthly Archives: February 2015
Guest post from Roni Davis: Macadamia Nut Oil - The Other Super Oil
” From an obese couch potato to a fit and healthy champion figure athlete, fitness writer, personal trainer, and nutrition & wellness specialist, Roni Davis has made it her life’s mission to teach other women how good their bodies are designed to look and feel, how strong they are and how to love the skin they’re in.
”Macadamia Nut Oil - The Other Super Oil
Hardly a day passes that we’re not bombarded with the benefits of coconut oil and by now most of probably already know olive oil is right up there among the powerhouses of oils. But right up there, even outperforming them in a number of ways is one of the biggest superheroes of all: macadamia nut oil and I’m determined to give this little super oil its proper place in the spotlight.
One of the benefits of olive oil is its high content of heart-healthy monounsaturated fats and mac nut oil outperforms even olive oil in the MUFA department being 85% monounsaturated. It also contains a high amount of oleic acid, a particular type of monounsaturated fat that can lower your triglyceride levels, says nutritionist Dr. Jonny Bowden in “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth.” Oleic acid also has fantastic regenerative & moisturizing properties, has been shown to reduce inflammation, boost memory power, increase testosterone and reduce symptoms of asthma. It helps to lower LDL levels (bad cholesterol) while increasing HDL (good cholesterol). The monounsaturated fatty acids in macadamia nut oil increase the absorption rate of nutrients and fat-soluble vitamins.
Due to mac nut oil’s quantities of magnesium it supports nerve and muscle functions, stabilizes heart rhythm and aids in the overall strength of the body’s bones, tissues and cells.
Macadamia Nut Oil contains one of the highest sources of palmitoleic fatty acids; between 16 to 23%. As our skin ages it rapidly becomes depleted of palmitoleic acid and palmitoleic acid is vital for delaying skin and cell aging. Did you hear that? It’s anti-aging, ladies! It’s also high in linoleic acid which is a wonderful little fatty acid that helps prevent trans epidermal water loss from the skins delicate tissues.
More great benefits of macadamia nut oil are its smoke point and stability. Due to its low polyunsaturated fat content, it can be kept for several years. It doesn’t need to be refrigerated but should be kept in a cool, dark place. It has a high smoke point, making it great for cooking at higher heats. If we cook using an oil with a low smoke point (such as olive oil) we risk denaturing the fat; essentially turning it from a “good” into a “bad” fat.
Hair and Skin Benefits:
Because mac nut oil is high in phytosterols (which are the building blocks of our cell membrane) they have a real affinity with skin and hair and possess great penetration abilities. Phytosterols are also calming and healing which is why the oil is perfect for repairing the skin’s barrier function. Phytosterols are protective, aiding in skin recovery. It’s been successfully used for healing scars, sunburns, minor wounds and other irritations such as itchiness and inflammation. The linoleic fatty acid content in mac nut oil makes it great for a parched, dehydrated skin that has difficulty retaining moisture.
How To Use Macadamia Nut Oil
Besides cooking with mac nut oil you can simply drizzle it wherever you normally would use olive oil. It makes a wonderful salad dressing. A good quality macadamia nut oil (look for cold-pressed and organic) can stand on its own over greens or any other veggie. I also love adding a drizzle to my quinoa. With a nutty, slightly sweet taste it makes a good addition to baked goods. Try scrambling eggs with macadamia oil and cinnamon or adding it to a chicken and cashew stir-fry. The options are endless.
You can look for hair and skin products made with mac nut oil or as I prefer just use plain mac nut oil directly on your hair and skin. This eliminates other potentially unnecessary additives that come in commercial hair and skin products. As we speak, there’s a bottle of cold pressed mac nut oil sitting on the edge of my shower ready to soothe my parched winter skin.
Macadamia nut oil is undoubtedly the unsung hero of healthy fats and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t consider adding this little power house to your diet.
You Owe It To Your Patients To Teach Them How To Eat.
It’s wonderful to have a healthcare system and medications available to us in Canada like we do. As pharmacists we are a key part of a chain that gets these medications to those that need it. Depending on what list you look at, our life expectancy on this planet ranges from 4th to 10th. Pretty good. The United States has the same medications but because of a handful of States with really bad diet (in the South), the life expectancy for that country drops to 35th to 43rd . How can that be? The same medications and in most cases a healthcare system that advertises itself in a competitive environment so as to be available to anyone. Why the huge discrepancy in life expectancy? This speaks to the huge impact that diet and exercise can have on your life even when you have any medication available for any medical condition.
What do I tell my customers to quantify this relationship between diet and exercise and medication and how it relates to their life expectancy. I tell them that at best, ½ of their health comes from their medication use, the other half is diet and exercise. Where did I come up with this number? Well truthfully I pretty much came up with it off the top of my head, although I have heard this number in various settings before. Now before any number cruncher looking for a reference out there needs verification of this number before they read any further, let’s agree with the premise that the actual number means less than at least agreeing that diet and exercise are important, let’s say you think it is only 10% important. That’s fine. We agree that it is important. Personally, I think diet is more important marginally than exercise but both are needed.
A couple of years ago I was lucky to stumble across a contact, Cheryl Heppard, a dietitian who had branched out to lead generation. She had developed a script of a walk through in a grocery store for healthy eating. I added a few things to this script myself and spent a few months taping with the help of a small local crew at the local grocery store that was gracious enough to let us do this. After another couple of months of post-production work we were finished. There really didn’t seem to be any point in packaging this up in a form that I would sell to anyone. I put this on YouTube and continually reference it as a free service of how you should eat. One of my best lines from the tour is, “In order to eat in a healthy way you need to prepare your own meals at home, and in order to do this you need to go to the grocery store and you need to know what to buy”
These 42 minutes of video cover most sections of the store and can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgEbpNL9PSg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifej05LxKrg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxBwn5MxzlU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WOBAZ7CEhg
Of course I learned volumes in doing this video. My eyes were opened up to the category of Sea Vegetables, a family of various types of food that have so much health value in them. Of course there is mention of organic food but this is not an “eat organic” sermon at all.
You may question why so much of the grocery store is covered when we really should be focusing on the outer perimeter of the store for the healthiest food. Truthfully, there are healthy choices when you dive into the interior of the store and secondly, customers will wonder into this part of the store anyway. If they find themselves there for some type of variety they should have some sort of guidance as to what type of food helps and what doesn’t. Areas like coffee and tea, snack foods, grains, nuts and seeds, pasta, cereals, frozen foods, spices, various types of milk and so on are covered and the benefits and pitfalls are mentioned.
Overall, we owe it to our patients to inform them of every way we are aware of to keep them healthy for as long as possible. Medication alone cannot do this. Believe it or not, sometimes a healthy diet and some exercise can result in the removal of some medications from your customer’s profile. Where’s the money in that? I can tell you from experience that if this way of thinking becomes your belief, then it becomes a magnet to your customers and potential customers. If you are a customer and your pharmacist is determined on getting you off of medications, do you think this will instil a feeling of trust in that customer towards you? I am proof that this really does happen. You can gain customers by believing strongly enough in a concept and still make a profit, even if that concept involves volumes of free information and removing medications from that patient.