http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
The vibrant green of matcha, the finely ground green tea powder, has earned it legions of fans. We’re just as smitten with its distinct bittersweet flavor. Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, we’re whipping up this matcha-dusted popcorn and sweetening it with a drizzle of chocolate. You can use milk chocolate if you want a sweeter, smoother taste, but really, any chocolate will do.
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
I went from owning no slow cooker to owning a very fancy, expensive slow cooker. (It’s the one pictured above!) I’m not sure I would have spent $300 on a slow cooker, but it was given to me and I have zero complaints about it. Yes, it’s effective and works better than I ever could have imagined. (How did I live for 33 years without a slow cooker?) It’s also incredibly pretty. And I often find myself falling for things because they’re pretty. (Chocolate in a frame-worthy wrapper? Two, please!)
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
I graduated from college in the wake of the Great Recession, with a mathematics degree that didn’t easily translate into gainful employment. During a stressful stint as a call center customer service rep (not a good fit for an introvert who hates talking to strangers on the phone), I realized that my best course of action would be to quit my job and go back to school full-time to earn a paralegal certificate.
I was incredibly fortunate in that my husband earned enough money to cover the necessities. But there wasn’t much wiggle room, so we eliminated discretionary expenses and carpooled to save on gas money.
Another obvious thing to trim? Our grocery bill. When I studied our receipts, I noticed that a good chunk of our food budget was going to meat. If we replaced the chicken, beef, and pork with something more cost-effective, it would make a substantial dent. Vegetarian options aren’t always more inexpensive, but we wanted to explore this diet to see if it worked for our budget.
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
Leave it to Dr. Seuss to inspire a breakfast as whimsical and cheery as green eggs and ham. It’s probably safe to say since the book Green Eggs and Ham was published in 1960, parents have been trying to find a way to create the titular dish for eager children.
The challenge with green eggs and ham is making a version that you actually want to eat. After trying every variation of this silly pairing to be found on the web, I can confidently say that this version — creamy scrambled eggs tinted with a flavorful and, most importantly, bright-green spinach sauce — is the best recipe for actually getting your kids to eat the green eggs and ham they read about.
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
The pegboard is a utilitarian yet ingenious way to organize so many things in the kitchen without using precious cupboard or drawer space. Just ask Julia Child; she was a big fan. But while you may have seen Julia’s copper pans on her pegboard, there are so many other ways to use one.
Take spices, for instance. You certainly need spices (can you imagine a pasta sauce without spices? No thanks!) — you just don’t need them taking up valuable real estate in your kitchen. Instead, build a home for them on your wall with a pegboard.
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
When it comes to holiday celebrations, St. Patrick’s Day holds an array of delicious possibilities. It might not be traditionally Irish, but we’re just as excited to don something green and whip up a Shamrock Shake as we are to load our plates with corned beef and cabbage. From Irish soda bread and colcannon, to a Guinness-spiked chocolate cake and festive drinks, these are the 24 essential recipes for a memorable St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
Costco is known for lots of things — humongous shopping carts, a generous free sample policy, and cheap hot dogs, to name a few — but it’s not just a fabulous place to go when you want to stock up on giant jars of peanut butter or massive containers of dish detergent. Costco also has a fabulous selection of healthy snacks.
I’ve rounded up my favorite healthy snacks that you can only find if you go to Costco. Some of these picks are made by Costco’s in-house brand, Kirkland, and some are made fresh daily by their in-house staff. Other items on the list are in packaging and quantities you can’t get anywhere else. All of these foods are not only good for your wallet, but they’re also good for you.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
Last month, I installed an infrared sauna in my house. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been following a new bedtime ritual: a half hour in the sauna, a cold plunge in the pool, bed. The reasoning is that after warming up my tissues in the sauna, I drop them back down to prepare for sleep. So far, it’s working. I wasn’t exactly starting from a deficit—my sleep has been consistently good ever since I changed how I consume alcohol—but I’m really happy with the new setup.
Why infrared?
A traditional sauna heats the air around you. An infrared sauna uses infrared light to penetrate your skin and warm you directly without affecting the ambient temperature. This makes them great for home use.
Okay, but do they actually work? What good is heating your skin with infrared light?
I’ve covered the benefits of traditional saunas before—they’re great and many of them apply to infrared saunas—but today I’ll discuss the unique advantages of infrared saunas.
Perhaps the most robust evidence for the benefits of infrared saunas concern their effects on various measures and determinants of heart health. For decades, the Japanese have used an infrared sauna protocol called Waon therapy to treat heart disease and heart failure patients.
In patients with an elevated risk for heart disease, Waon therapy (spending 15 minutes a day for two weeks in the infrared sauna) reduced urinary levels of a prostaglandin linked to oxidative stress. It also reduced blood pressure.
In another group of men with an elevated risk for heart disease, the same protocol also improved endothelial function—how well the arteries hold against stress.
In men recovering from heart failure, the same protocol boosted their endothelial function and improved how well the heart performed its duties.
In people with heart failure, Waon therapy also increased exercise tolerance by improving endothelial function.
Infrared sauna therapy has also:
Proponents make big claims about the ability of infrared saunas to reduce pain of all kinds—chronic, arthritic, (as you’ll see later) fibromyalgic, post-workout. Any truth?
For people with chronic pain, adding infrared sauna therapy to a grab-bag of exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy, and rehab was better at reducing pain than the grab-bag alone.
In another study of both rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis suffers, infrared sauna therapy reduced stiffness, pain, and other clinical symptoms of the respective diseases.
Later on, you’ll see that infrared saunas can improve fibromyalgia symptoms.
Clinicians aren’t sending kidney disease patients down to the local infrared sauna spot, but they are using localized infrared radiation.
In hemodialysis patients, infrared therapy improved blood flow and reduced the incidence of arteriovenous fistula (AVF) malfunctions (AVFs are artificial connections between arteries and veins often surgically created in dialysis patients).
Another study in hemodialysis patients found that infrared therapy accelerated maturation of AVFs after surgical creation.
Chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are terrible to experience. What’s worse, the two—crushing, unending fatigue and constant, unjustified pain—often go together. Luckily, it seems that infrared saunas might be able to help.
In one study, researchers placed CF patients on Waon therapy (15 minutes a day in the sauna) for five days a week, 4 weeks. They didn’t report many changes during the sessions, but after four weeks they all showed improvements in depression, mood, fatigue, anxiety, and performance. An earlier study had similar results, with some patients even able to discontinue medication.
A single session of Waon infrared therapy was enough reduce fibromyalgia-related pain by 11-70% in 13 female patients with fibromyalgia.
By pre-gaming, I’m not talking about drinking cheap plastic bottle vodka with your friends before hitting the bars. I mean preparing your body for certain stressful situations. Evidence suggests that infrared saunas can improve your resilience and performance in the face of several different kinds of stressors.
Decompression stress: Pretreatment with infrared sauna can help free divers prepare for deep dives. Those who hung out in an infrared sauna for a half hour before diving were more resilient in the face of decompression stress.
UV stress: Pretreatment with infrared light can help sunbathers improve their resistance to the damaging effects of UV radiation. This is probably an evolutionary adaptation to ancestral sun exposure patterns—early morning sunlight, rich in infrared wavelengths, preparing us for the hotter, more UV-rich midday sun.
Training stress: Rugby players who exposed themselves to infrared lights (with prior consent, of course) before training showed enhanced performance and accelerated recovery. Infrared light applied before lifting weights may also reduce post-exercise strength loss. Applied during activity, it increases time to fatigue.
Nursing stress: Breastfeeding mothers who used infrared saunas enjoyed increased milk production. Many of the subjects were having trouble producing enough milk, and infrared application allowed about half to successfully nurse until weaning.
Folks make a lot of big claims online. Sometimes they cite literature, sometimes not. And many times the literature they do cite isn’t really relevant. But not always. I’ve sifted through them to pull out what look to be the most plausible yet speculative benefits.
Mitochondria: Near-infrared light—which penetrates human tissue— triggers mitochondria to produce more ATP.
Cancer: Near-infrared light may be able to target cancer cells.
It won’t equal the power of a targeted infrared sauna, but the morning sun is rich in infrared light. Get up in time to bask in it.
The one I have comes from Clearlight. There are less expensive options, too, like the dome tents.
All in all, infrared saunas seem very promising. I certainly enjoy mine, and the scientific literature is quite persuasive and expansive—especially for an “alternative” therapy like infrared saunas. For those who have the means and the need for help with some of the conditions infrared may treat or a desire to see how it affects their recovery and resilience to stressors, I can heartily recommend either buying one or signing up for a few trips to the local infrared sauna spot.
Anyone else an infrared sauna devotee? I’d be interested in hearing from people who have been doing it for a long time—what benefits have you noticed?
Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care.
The post Are Infrared Saunas Beneficial? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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