One of the secrets of relieving pain and chronic inflammation is understanding the potential of your kitchen. This is the food your prepare in your home and eat to rebuild your body. Just open your fridge, pause, and look at what your body will be made of tomorrow.
Food for thought? Good – Now we can get started.
In this article we will create a wonderful natural anti-inflammatory and antioxidant breakfast that will give you energy and a great start to your day. Interested? Excellent.
First I would like to introduce you to what I consider to be the greatest culinary invention of the last hundred years. The magical blender. No, not the juicer which separates the vital fiber from everything. Nor the food processor which does no more than a good knife and spoon and takes away the meditation from cooking.
Several mornings each week start with the Hamilton Shake, THE natural anti-inflammatory breakfast.
Nothing comes out of a plastic tub at vast expense from a health store, in fact this is very economical. It goes like this:
The Ingredients for an Anti-Inflammatory Diet
I usually cut a pear, which are my favorite, into chunks and put it in the blender.
Depending on what is in the grocers it could also be an apple, papaya, mango, kiwi, grapefruit, pineapple or something that catches my eye.
Then I add half a cup of my seed mix made from equal parts of sunflower, sesame, flax and pumpkin. This delivers Essential Fatty Acids (Omega 3) and protein with all the goodies of the whole seed with its fiber. I buy a pound of each at a time. Mix them and store this in a big jar in the fridge.
Then I add berries. The dark berries, blueberries, blackberries and so on, are loaded with antioxidants called flavonoids and are just as good as the exotic, highly priced stuff from the Amazon. They freeze really well. My freezer is nearly full by the end of the season and this lasts the year.
This is the base. Then in go the super extras:
Tumeric is one of the very best anti-inflammatory herbs in nature. I can get fresh Turmeric in my local store, I put in a chunk about the size of the top joint of my thumb. This is a huge dose of curcumin with all the extras of the whole food.
I can also get fresh Burdock root, a wonderful liver and blood cleansing herb. A chunk the size of my finger goes in. This is called Gobo in Asia and eaten as a vegetable.
The Stinging nettle season is on where I live and I pick this from the wild.
They don’t sting you when you blend them. The mix inactivates the sting and the natural minerals and anti-inflammatory action does you a power of good and suppresses allergies too. In goes a handful. They are great dried.
You can also cut up raw carrots or celery.
Here is the key: I put in all sorts of other things according to my mood and what’s looking at me out of the cupboard.
The only limit is your imagination and your growing level of knowledge.
Play with it. You will save yourself hundreds of dollars in supplements and drugs.
Add water and blend until smooth, adding cold or warm water (almond milk unsweetened is also fine) as needed to achieve your preferred consistency. If you have more than you need for breakfast save some until later.
This mix, taken for breakfast or at any other time, is an excellent nutrient meal and a well tolerated delivery system for large quantities of nutrients and healing herbs.
Have fun and know that you are reducing inflammation, oxidation and pain.
Rowan Hamilton is a Herbalist and writes about natural anti-inflammatory foods, among other health related topics
