Since February is the month for love and heart health, this is the perfect time to share Tip#7 — Don’t Forget the Chocolate! Although any kind of chocolate can show love, only the right type of chocolate is healthy for our hearts and mind.
What’s the Right Type of Chocolate
Theobroma cacao is the botanical name for chocolate and it means “food of the gods.” As with most food items in today’s society, chocolate is processed every which way. Processed chocolate is high in sugar and fat with very little nutritional value. The right type of chocolate is dark chocolate with a high concentration of cacao (at least 70%).
Chocolate: Are You a Cacao or Cocoa Writer by Kathryn Ross
Kathryn Ross wrote a wonderful article, Chocolate: Are You a Cacao or Cocoa Writer? This article delves deeper into the differences between chocolate and cacao, and in her creative and talented manner, Kathryn applies it to your writing.
Potential Health Benefit
If you combine the right kind of chocolate with a healthy lifestyle, research shows that potential health benefits include:
improved blood pressure;
enhanced heart health;
decreased LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol); and
increased blood flow to your brain.
Dark Chocolate – Good for Your Heart and Mind
Studies also show that dark chocolate may reduce the risk of diabetes by improving insulin sensitivity and blood sugar levels. Diabetes is a growing problem and a known risk factor for heart disease, with an even higher risk for women. Keep in mind, a healthy lifestyle is critical. For more information, check out my article, Dark Chocolate & Love’s Heart Healthy Month.
Karen Van Den Heuvel Fischer
Your writing and life can benefit from the “food of the gods” so long as you combine it with a healthy lifestyle. Tip #3 — TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF will provide you with guidelines to make that a reality. Remember, your best writing, your best work, your best time happens when you’re at your best self.
The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious.
Isaiah 60:13
The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words
by Kathryn Ross
Christmas past
I remember when Daddy brought home the Christmas tree each year. In those days, we’d never think of using a fake tree. We weren’t quite into the trendy silver trees with revolving multi-colored lights, either.
No. Mom and Dad would only have a real tree!
Christmas Tree Farm
Two weeks before Christmas we’d head to the tree lot and choose a nice full pine in just the right shape. Dad trimmed the base, dragged it through the front door into the living room, and secured it in the tree holder.
We had to wait for the lights to be strung and each bulb tested. But soon, we could begin opening all the ornament boxes and set to tree-trimming. We gently placed three or four silvery icicles on the branches and spaced out the colorful glass bulbs and home-made ornaments. Daddy made sure the tree-topper angel was in place. Together, as a family, we stood back to assess our festive work.
The Beauty of the Christmas Tree
The beauty of this glorious work of nature, strung with man-made embellishments, immediately transformed the house. It cast a warm, restful glow throughout the living room—and our hearts. The pine scent’s restorative qualities alleviated stress and anxiety as it deodorized and freshened the entire house. With a deep breath, my whole body seemed rejuvenated and overflowing with a sense of great joy.
Our anticipation for Christmas Day increased as each morning passed with the comforting sight and scent of our wonderous Christmas tree. Mother kept it well-watered and checked the branches to be sure the greenery remained supple and soft. Tiny green needles peppering the carpet were easily removed with a daily vacuuming.
My favorite time to sit with the tree was in the evening. I’d turn all the lights off except for the glow of the bulbs on the tree. My once familiar home seemed entirely changed and beautified by its presence. Sitting in a chair facing the tree, breathing deep the healing properties of pine, and snuggling with my blanket or cat, the peace of the season permeated the sanctuary.
In these early days of my writing career, Christmas and its celebratory elements inspired me to wax poetic on the glory of the season. I still have my little green composition book from my childhood with neatly hand-written poems and short stories. Stirred by the delight, beauty, and sacred nature of mystery and wonder I felt deep inside, my words seemed to bubble forth from my spirit, ignited by His Spirit. Not that I understood such a truth then. In matured hindsight, I know these things now. I treasure them—as Mary—pondering them in my heart.
Christmas Present
I expect this is why the Hallmark Channel, in recent years, has become so popular with their nostalgic, romantic, guilty-pleasure Christmas movies we all love to joke about and binge watch—savoring every sappy moment of them. Their writers employ predictable cliché plots, lines, settings, and characters, and we don’t try to edit them. Only at Christmas could they get away with this, and we are happy to let them do so.
We all want to live in Hallmark Christmas villages with every small-town pleasure in kith and kin. Hallmark writers have tapped into a shared sense of wonder that Christmas bestows on young and old. But perhaps what they’ve tapped into is more akin to hunger—for the innocent, childlike, simple joys that Christmas awakens in our humanity. That restorative quality Christmas brings with it. We never want it to end.
I never want Christmas to end. Or my tree to leave.
But as in Christmases past, time marches on. Year after year, the big day comes and goes—followed by a week of family visiting. We see everyone’s trees and gifts—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. They pay a call to our home, too. Parties. Shopping. And counting the days before a new year supplants the old, and our Christmas respite is packed up in boxes until next time.
On New Year’s Day, the tree, which has brought us so much joy, is dismantled and removed to the trash pile, awaiting the garbage truck and its ultimate destination in the dump.
A sorrowful melancholy washes over me when I see disposed Christmas trees abandoned by the side of the road.
Even so, the pine scent lingers, and random needles might be stumbled upon in forgotten corners of the room in ensuing months. I may pause before vacuuming them up and cherish a transporting moment when I mentally return to my sanctuary in the glow of a glorious Christmas tree.
The Glory of Christmas
I’m glad we have seasons. There is a comfort in the repetition of precious moments throughout our lives. We hope that when Christmas comes around each year, we are grown a bit wiser and more able to appreciate the glory and beauty of the day. We hope we can better capture it in words on paper that may only ever be read by its writer—and the loving God Who so generously inspires our words with His Word made Flesh, dwelling among us.
Under the glow of the Christmas pine, I’m reading. I’m writing. I’m pondering things in my heart. Deep things shared with my Savior. I remember His birth and the beautification of the pine tree trimmed in lights and ornament remnants of lives lived from year to year.
A tree that was planted purposely for this job. Lived its allotted number of years. Was chopped down, to die. And then raised up in my home, alive again in a more glorious manner than before, transforming the entire atmosphere of my home with a newness of life.
It is a metaphor of Jesus Christ—His birth, life, death, resurrection, and the transformed life He lives in the home of my heart. Like the healing scent of pine, He vanquishes stress and anxiety, deodorizes and freshens the atmosphere of my life—beautifying the place of my sanctuary—and rejuvenates me with an overflowing sense of great joy, a glorious place for His feet to rest.
Be ye blessed this Christmas as you ponder—and write—about these truths in your own life.
The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words
By Kathryn Ross
Writer-speaker, Kathryn Ross, ignites a love of literature and learning through Pageant Wagon Publishing. She writes and publishes homeschool enrichment and Christian living books for home, church, and school. In addition, she shepherds writers through the steps book development and production. Her passion to equip women and families in developing a Family Literacy Lifestyle, produces readers and thinkers who can engage the world from a biblical worldview. She blogs and podcasts at TheWritersReverie.com and PageantWagonPublishing.com. Connect with Miss Kathy on Facebook.
Heart health requires magnesium. Not only is magnesium a major mineral required for heart function, it is also required for nerve function and acts as an aid in a significant number of enzyme reactions. This article will provide a closer look at magnesium, its sources and needs.
Magnesium: Location & Use
Heart Health Requires Magnesium
Bone is the repository for sixty percent of the body’s magnesium stores. The remainder circulates in the blood stream and works inside cells. Magnesium is used in more than 300 enzymes and within cells. Quite a few energy-yielding compounds require magnesium in order to function properly. The hormone insulin also requires magnesium. (5) (7) (8)
Magnesium Deficiency:
A magnesium deficiency creates an irregular heartbeat in humans. This may be accompanied by:
muscle pain,
weakness,
seizures, and
disorientation.
Blood Pressure: What’s Healthy – What’s Not Hypertension: The Silent Killer
The risk of cardiovascular disease is decreased by a sufficient intake of magnesium. This is a result of its ability to decrease blood pressure through dilating arteries and hindering heart rhythm abnormalities. Magnesium intake should be closely monitored with people who have cardiovascular disease, especially since they are often on diuretics that decrease magnesium levels. It is important to remember because our bodies readily store magnesium — a deficiency in this mineral develops slowly. (5) (7) (8)
Both hypertension and diabetes have been linked with decreased magnesium levels in the blood. It is unclear however, what the cause is for lower magnesium levels in diabetic or hypertensive people. Currently research is ongoing to determine magnesium’s role in the prevention and/or treatment of these diseases. (5) (7) (8)
Magnesium Needs:
Heart Health & Magnesium
The RDA for magnesium in adult women is about 310 milligrams per day and in men about 400 milligrams per day. This amount is determined by the amount the body needs in order to offset the losses incurred daily. On food and supplement labels, the Daily Value for magnesium is based on 400 milligrams. The average consumed by women is approximately 220 milligrams, whereas the average consumed by men is 320 milligrams daily. Accordingly, most adults need to improve their intake of magnesium-rich foods. (1) (2) (3) (4)
Magnesium Sources:
Nutrient Rich – Magnesium Plus
Refined grain products, common in most American diets is a very poor source of magnesium and magnesium supplements are not well-absorbed. Although animal products like meat and milk provide some magnesium, plant products are richer sources of magnesium. Some of these plant products include potatoes, squash, seeds, nuts, beans, and whole grains. (1) (2) (3) (4)
What is your favorite magnesium rich food? Do you have a recipe to share?
Take heart with potassium… . In order to live, you need minerals. Not just any mineral — eating dirt won’t be helpful, but everyone needs those major and trace minerals required for basic life functions. This article will take an in-depth look at the major mineral, potassium.
Heart Health: Potassium and Sodium
Potassium and sodium share many of the same life functions, namely transmission of nerve impulses and fluid balance, but in different locations. Where sodium operates outside the cell, potassium operates inside. Fluids found inside the cell (intracellular fluids) contain most of the potassium found in the body — 95%.
Your Blood Pressure: What’s Healthy – What’s Not
Additionally, where sodium intake increases blood pressure, potassium lowers blood pressure. Potassium is a critical element for cardiovascular function. (1) (2)
A person who has low blood potassium is in a life-threatening situation. Often, symptoms include:
muscle cramps,
loss of appetite,
constipation, and
confusion.
Eventually the heart will beat irregularly, thus decreasing its ability to pump blood. (1) (2)
Potassium Needs:
Whole Grains – Mineral Rich
Adults need to consume 4700 milligrams (4.7 grams) per day in order to fulfill the Adequate Intake for potassium requirements. The food and supplement labels use the Daily Value based on 3500 milligrams. Although approximately 90% of the potassium we eat is absorbed, the average North American only consumes 2000 to 3000 milligrams of potassium per day. Most need to increase their intake. (3) (4)
Where sodium is often added to foods, potassium is not, contributing to a lower intake. Also, those with high blood pressure being treated with diuretics are at risk of depleting their body’s potassium stores. Therefore, people who take diuretics waste their body’s potassium and must carefully monitor their intake of this mineral. Foods high in potassium are healthy additions to their diets. (3) (4)
Take Heart with Potassium – The Role of Your Kidneys
No Upper Level for potassium is set since potassium toxicity is not a risk with typical food intakes as long as the kidneys function properly. Those with unhealthy kidney function, however, are at risk for the build up of potassium in the blood. This prevents the heart from functioning and slows the heartbeat. If left untreated, it results in death. (3)
Potassium Sources:
The most healthy way to meet your potassium requirements is by increasing the consumption of foods rich in potassium. Unprocessed foods are generally rich sources of potassium, including vegetables, fruits, whole grains, milk, meats, and dried beans. (4) (5)
What’s your favorite potassium rich food? Do you have a recipe to share?
