Varicose Veins
Varicose veins affect around fifty per cent of middle-aged adults and occur four times more often in women then men. They occur when valves in the veins become damaged, especially when people have jobs that require them to stand for long periods of time. Short of quitting work altogether, there are two key things you can do to encourage varicose veins to disappear - get more exercise (especially walking, riding a bike or jogging) - and improve your diet!
The key aspect of an improved diet is to eat high-fibre foods such as fruit, vegetables, legumes and grains. The problem with eating a diet low in fibre is that the person needs to strain more when going to the toilet. Straining increases the pressure in the abdomen, obstructing the flow of blood up the legs.
Here's my recipe for Berry and Yogurt Crunch - a 'double-whammy' for people worried about varicose veins because it's high both in fibre AND some amazing nutrients known as 'flavonoids' that are abundant in berries.
Berry and Yogurt Crunch - serves 4
Ingredients
75g of a mix of millet flakes, barley flakes and rice flakes
4 tbsp malt barley extract
500g dairy-free yougurt
1 orange rind, finely grated
225g mixed berries - blueberries, blackberries, cherries
Directions
- Heat a dry frying pan; add flakes and toast for 1 minute; add 2 tbsp malt extract and stir until flakes are slightly golden.
- Stir remaining malt extract and rind into the yogurt. Gently add berries while stirring.
- To serve, layer the flakes and yogurt, and place the berries on top.
Read also:
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An A to Z of Healthy Eating - H
There's a fish called 'halibut' and there's honey and hummus, but that's about as far as I got for foods beginning with 'H'. And I wasn't sure that I liked the sound of honey-glazed halibut with hummus, so I've decided to take the opportunity to tell you all about herbs instead! -
Colour Yourself Healthy!
When talking fruit and veg, the government advises that we eat 'Five a Day'. That's certainly a good start, but if I was the Prime Minister I'd change that to 'Five Colours a Day'. That way we'd hopefully find ourselves eating more than five different kinds of fruit and vegetables daily, but it would mean we'd also benefit from the additional health-promoting properties of eating naturally pigmented food. -
Psoriasis
Psoriasis is a very common condition that affects about 1 in 30 people. It's caused by a pile-up of skin cells that have replicated too rapidly (around a thousand times faster than normal), resulting in the characteristic silvery scale of the condition. Although there's a strong genetic link, sufferers can make a number of changes to their diet that will help to alleviate the problem.
