Health Boot Camp for Life

I am speaking The Foundation Fighting Blindness’s National Conference this Saturday.  The seminar title is titled “Cooking Tips & Techniques for the Visually Impaired.”  My guest of honor is my sister, Erin, who was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa when she was 5 years old, and is now blind.  We will be providing tips on how people with low or no vision can still enjoy cooking and do it just as successfully as a sighted person.  Most of you know that I love to cook, and this article below gave me inspiration before my speech.  Go Laura, you deserve the spot with one of the best Chef’s in the world, and you can do it!

Laura Martinez reaches out her hands, delicately running her fingers atop the kitchen counter and across several sharp knives and a vegetable grater.  She isn’t afraid of getting cut.  She never does, Martinez says.  Picking up a very large knife, she feels the top of the blade.  “This one is for vegetables,” the 25-year-old former resident of Moline softly says. “It has ridges.”  The other knife is even longer and heavier. She picks it up, explaining that this one is called a chef’s knife and she uses it to cut meat.  But right now, Martinez needs to dice some fresh parsley. So, she feels around on the counter again for the cutting board, using her sense of touch to make sure the parsley is lined up just right.  Then, without an ounce of fear, she begins chopping up the parsley with the fast-moving technique employed by professional chefs — because she is one.  Martinez works as a chef in the kitchen of Charlie Trotter’s, an exclusive gourmet restaurant in Chicago.  She also happens to be blind.

Fast learner gets inspiration

When Martinez was little, she did not realize she was different from anyone else. She thought everyone lived in darkness. She adapted to it.  She wanted to become a surgeon someday.  “I always liked knives,” she said with a smile.  When she got older, she learned that she had been diagnosed with retinal blastoma, a type of cancer of the eyes, as a very young child. That is what caused her blindness.  Doctors removed one eye. Then the chemotherapy and radiation used to treat the cancer ultimately ruined the vision in her other eye.  Martinez cannot see anything. She cannot even detect light.  In fact, she cannot remember ever seeing anything at all. She uses her active imagination instead.  She is also a fast learner, which came in handy after spending her early childhood in a Mexican town that did not have a school for the blind or special education classes. The closest school she could have attended was a three-hour car ride away.  So, she stayed home and never learned to read or write in Spanish, English or Braille until the family moved to Moline. She began her formal education at the age of 10.  Martinez caught up eventually, blossoming even more when she reached Moline High School and met her one-on-one education aide, Pam McDermott. The two spent every school day together, starting when Martinez was 15, and they remain very close.  McDermott spent a lot of time talking to Martinez, describing situations and reading her books about the blind-and-deaf pioneer Helen Keller and other people who overcame life’s challenges.  Martinez’s mother does not speak English. Neither did her late father.  McDermott found herself explaining so many unexpected things to the quiet, shy teenager — such as what flirting is and how some people have different skin colors. She hated to be the one to tell her, but the subject came up at school.  Martinez began to dream about her future, but she faced people who told her, “You can’t do that. You’re blind. There’s no way,” she said.  “Kids would not come near me,” Martinez said. “I was afraid to talk or do anything. But I don’t give up.”  McDermott’s influence helped open a whole new world of possibilities for her, Martinez said.  She learned to play piano. She moved away to take life-skills classes for the blind. She took community college classes.  She dreamed about becoming a psychologist.  Eventually her interest turned to cooking. She figured it might be a little like surgery. Why not give it a try?  Martinez knew she would have to work harder than most to convince people that she could work as a chef. And she was up to the challenge.  “I don’t give up,” she said.

Culinary school brings challenges

Martinez applied to the Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in Chicago, an open-enrollment institution where most people are accepted as students but not everyone graduates from the program, said Marshall Shafkowitz, the school’s vice president of academic affairs and student services. The curriculum is tough.  So was Shafkowitz, who admits he was “the biggest skeptic” when it came to considering how a blind student could succeed at Le Cordon Bleu. The school had never enrolled a visually impaired student before Martinez, he said.  Initially, he was concerned how her presence in the classroom might impact the other students’ learning. Then he worried about how the teachers could present the same curriculum, without lowering their standards, but do so in a way that would accommodate her.  He did not know whether she could handle the fast-paced environment of working in a commercial kitchen, which is so much different than cooking at home.  “It’s a faster pace, with bigger knives and a lot more fire,” he said.  After watching Martinez at school and witnessing her “drive and desire” to become a chef, Shafkowitz said he was amazed. He said her heightened focus via the other senses, in the absence of sight, is her “superpower.”  “Her sense of touch is amazing,” he said. “The only way I can describe it is the touch that a surgeon has when they’re working on your organs. She just has that delicate way with a knife.”  “She’s not going to let anything hold her back,” he added. “I think that’s 90 percent of who Laura is. Nobody’s going to tell her no.”  The school hired an aide to help her get around. She labeled things in Braille.  Mostly, though, she learned by using her hands to feel everything — especially the food she was preparing and cooking. She uses her sense of smell to figure out which spices to use. She uses both senses to determine whether meat and other dishes are done.  Her favorite culinary class was the one in which she learned how to debone chicken and take the fat off beef before cutting it into chunks and feeding it into a grinder. The teacher asked everyone to close their eyes and feel the joints and bones, the meat and the fat. That’s how they learned where and what to cut, Martinez said.  “Fat feels different. It feels slippery, kind of like Jell-O,” she said. “I focus on the smell, sound and the feel.”  An article about the school’s first blind student was published in the Chicago Tribune during December, which inspired the “CBS Evening News” to feature her on national television. During the filming of that segment, CBS brought along internationally famous chef Charlie Trotter.  They hoped he would observe Martinez in the kitchen and maybe give her some advice.  What he ended up giving her was a job offer: to work as a chef at his exclusive Charlie Trotter’s restaurant in Chicago. No one expected that, least of all Martinez.  “It’s a big honor for me,” she said. “It’s very exclusive.”  Rochelle Smith Trotter, a spokeswoman for the Charlie Trotter Corp., said Chef Trotter was very taken by Martinez’s passion for food and her strong determination — “two attributes which he utilizes to evaluate any potential team member,” she said.  Martinez graduated Feb. 11 from Le Cordon Bleu. A week later, she began working at Trotter’s, where she is familiarizing herself with the kitchen and the restaurant’s French-contemporary gourmet cuisine.  “We use very expensive herbs from all over the world,” she said, sniffing assorted spices in plastic containers at her childhood home in Moline.  She kept picking up the spices and putting them down, hunting for just the right one to season the sauce for her lasagna.  “Where’s the salt?” she asked.

Still dreaming

Reaching her arms out in front of her, feeling for walls or other obstacles she might bump into, Martinez moves around the kitchen in Moline. She is lost because her family recently remodeled.  “Where is the trash can?” she asks.  She feels around until she finds the sink to wash her hands, which she does repeatedly. She needs to stay cleaner than a sighted person, she says, for food safety and sanitation reasons. That is because she touches the food that she cooks a lot.  Sometimes she browses cookbooks written in Braille or recorded on CD, but she likes to make up her own dishes or give her own special twist to an old favorite. For example, she added grated jalapeno pepper to her lasagna, just to give it some kick, she said.  She imagines herself someday opening a restaurant in Miami, offering a mix of French, Italian, Mexican and Asian cuisines. She would call the place La Diosa, which, she said, is Spanish for “The Goddess.”  To those who might scoff at the idea, she says, “I’m not giving up.”  Skeptics don’t discourage her. They just “give me the energy to fight,” she added.  “I just say, ‘I have to work harder to show you that I can.’ ”

June’s Goal: Add strength training to your fitness regimen at least two times per week.

By now you’re doing ­cardio at least 30 minutes, three times a week.  Now, add strength training to your fitness regimen at least two times per week.

The benefits of strength training go beyond strength: Lean muscle burns calories more efficiently than fat, even when your body is at rest. But it’s hard to overstate how important strength training can be for reducing the risk, the symptoms, and the progression of chronic conditions such as arthritis and osteoporosis.

Even though you probably know how good strength training can be, you still may not be doing it enough, if at all—because of your super-busy schedule, or because you have little clue how to get started. It’s intimidating to do muscle work: You walk into the gym and stare, intimidated, at the profusion of metal and machines—and decide to just do more cardio.

Don’t be intimidated!

What you need to know: Strength training is defined as the use of resistance to build muscle size and strength.  Strength-training plans vary by age and fitness level. Do not increase your exercise level without consulting a doctor first.

Celebrate National Women’s Health Week and become involved in your healthcare!  Check out my video above!!!

I’m always amazed at how much “crap” one can eat at theme parks.  But…there is no excuse, because there ARE healthy choices.  You just have to look!

A proposed tax for “unhealthy” may become a debate in AZ!

You TOO can choose healthier options when you go to Theme Parks, you just have to be conscience of the choices available.  Have fun but be careful because it’s easy to eat unhealthy!!!

A great summary of a very serious disease that affects the entire world.  Make sure you are screened every year with a simple blood test, especially if you are “not young” anymore!  It is another one of those “silent killers”, as most people don’t know they have it.  Talk to your provider today!!!

Obesity and type 2 diabetes are like “Twin Illnesses”, it is very common to see people having those 2 illnesses at the same time. Although not all obese people are having diabetes and not all diabetes patients are obese, but the more over weight you are, the higher your chance of getting type 2 diabetes. Statistic researches show that almost 90% of all type 2 diabetes patients are obese.

To date, scientists still cannot explain the exact cause of type 2 diabetes. It could be a combination of multiple factors that causes the drop of the efficiency of insulin in transporting glucose into the cells. This condition is known as insulin resistance. Among the unknown factors, obesity could be a major cause to the formation of insulin resistance.

A healthy adult starts to gain weight when he is around the age of 30. As his waist line grows larger and larger, it is the same for the size of his body cells. There are only a certain amounts of insulin receptors and glucose channels available on the cell membrane of a particular body cell, the cell will not create more insulin receptors as the size of the cell increases.

When the size of a body cell grows due to the excess storage of fat, the concentration of insulin receptors per unit volume will decrease accordingly and this means there will not be enough insulin receptors available to open up the glucose channels that allow the entry of glucose molecules into the cell.

When these glucose molecules fail to get into the cell for storage or metabolic purposes, they will be reabsorbed back into the bloodstream and this will make the blood glucose level to remain high. This high level of glucose in the blood will keep on stimulating the pancreas to produce more insulin hoping that will help to lower down the blood sugar level.

The problem is not because of lack of insulin, it is just that the insulin cannot be properly utilized by the body cells. This is why type 2 diabetes is also known as insulin independent diabetes. The blood sugar level will not show any significant drop even if you inject more and more insulin into your body.

If you ignore the problem at early stage and do nothing to reverse it, one day the pancreas will become fatigue and weak due to constant stimulations from high blood sugar. When your pancreas fails, you will get ‘Type 3 Diabetes’ which is both insulin dependent and independent. By then, it may be too late for you to do anything to reverse it except depending on insulin injection everyday to keep yourself alive.

Unfortunately, I am over that “30″ age…But, that doesn’t mean I can just eat whatever I want and not exercise.  One of the main messages or “homework” I  give my patients is to start exercising, to help “stave off” Diabetes through weight gain.  The other good thing is, that when you loose weight, your sugar levels improve, and for some people, their Diabetes can go away!  I have seen it first hand.  So, get off the couch and take a walk.  You don’t even know how much good you will do yourself!!!

Hi everyone.  Today I am officially launching Health Bootcamp for Life, my new campaign regarding Health and Wellness.  I am passionate about helping people improve their health, whether it be through prevention, changing habits, or managing chronic illnesses.  Join me in this quest and let us all be accountable for our health!!!

• 3 oz french bread or baguette
• 2/3 cup baby arugula
• .75 oz imported prosciutto (fat trimmed)
• 2 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• fresh cracked pepper

Whisk together balsamic and oil. Cut bread, top with arugula, prosciutto and top with balsamic, oil and fresh cracked pepper. (You can toast or broil your bread also for a crisp crunch)

Servings: 1 • Serving Size: 1 sandwich

Calories: 289.8 • Fat: 6.8 g • Carb: 40.8 g • Fiber: 1.7 g • Protein: 10.8 g

I  found this recipe from “Gina’s Skinny Recipes” which looks delicious!!!

Prosciutto di Parma, peppery arugula, sweet balsamic and heart healthy olive oil on french bread is a winning combination.

The addition of prosciutto in this sandwich is a perfect example of using meat as a condiment.  It has so much concentrated flavor, that a little goes a long way.  I load this up with arugula and balsamic (sometimes I add fresh tomatoes and shaved parmesan) and I’m one happy camper!

French bread or baguettes are usually fat free, so that’s my bread of choice when I make a sandwich.  Always check nutritional info because some brands add oil.  And by the way, I cheated and scooped out some of the bread to give me a larger sandwich for less carbs.  Enjoy!