Iceberg Lettuce vs. Romaine Hearts vs. Baby Spinach

Do they differ? Is one nutritiously superior?

Iceberg vs. Romaine vs. Baby Spinach

Have you ever wondered exactly how good that salad is for you that you have at lunch? 

All salads are not created equal, including the staple item, the lettuce. We will be looking at three common vegetables used for salads and compare their nutrition.

 Iceberg lettuce is often used in salads we buy premixed or at restaurants. Iceberg lettuce is cheaper for consumers. However, not a ton of nutrition lies with iceberg lettuce. According to Calorie King (now available as an app!) 3 oz of  iceberg lettuce yields 12 kcal, 1g of fiber, 0.8 g of protein, and 15.3 mg of calcium. 

Romaine Hearts are becoming more popular and usually come in packs of 3-5 at your local grocery store. While more expensive, romaine hearts are more nutritious  than iceberg lettuce. 3 oz of romaine hearts yields 15 kcal, 2 g of fiber, 1 g of protein and 20 mg of calcium.

Baby spinach is fantastic, I absolutely love it. Becoming more popular, baby spinach can be found at your local grocery store and is excellent to use as your salad base. 3 oz of baby spinach yields 20 kcal, 2 g of fiber, 2 g of protein and 80 mg of calcium. That's 4 times more calcium that romaine hearts and 5 times more than iceberg lettuce! 

I prefer baby spinach over both iceberg lettuce and romaine hearts. Now you can be informed the next time you want to pack a salad for work...go with baby spinach and load up with veggies to go with it! The RDI (recommended daily intake) of calcium for men & women 19-50 is 1000-1300 mg daily, so baby spinach is a great choice!

Sunscreen...is it important?

Today tanning has become increasing popular, especially no thanks to shows that promote it, such as Jersey Shore, Because of thus, sunscreen is tossed by the way side and what are we left with? Sunburns and skin cancer.

I'm 22 years old and battling basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer. Yesterday I had surgery to remove the initial tumor and will have to see if and when more tissue needs to be removed.

You can see progress here: BCC Journey

That being said, is sunscreen important? Absolutely YES . Hats are also particularly important concerning the scalp where most of us can't feasibly wear sunscreen. UV protection is extremely important.

Rules to live by:

1. Always apply sunscreen approximately an hour before going out in the sun.
2. Wear a hat! It protects your scalp, a very vulnerable part of the skin.
3. Monitor changes in the skin. Do you have moles? Have they grown, gotten darker, become asymmetrical, raised, etc?
4. Drink lots of water, because our bodies can't live without it. By the time you're thirsty, dehydration has already started.
5. Easy on the Gatorade. While the electrolytes in it are awesome to aid in bouncing back from dehydration, drinking it willy Billy throws off your electrolyte balance and has cause a whole slew of problems.

Protect yourselves friends. If you do end up with a sunburn, aloe works best and lots of water.

Take care,

Crystal

Collaborations

Since my life is just so darn crazy, I'm going to collaborate my three blogs into one. I have blogs about being a Doula student, an aspiring Nurse-Midwife blog & a "Nurse Mom" blog on how to keep your family healthy from a nursing students point of view.

That being said...I recently started LPN school & I'm proud to report I'm doing very, very well. I absolutely love it! I will be graduating February 13, 2013 & will take my licensing exam afterwards. From there, I'll be getting my RN and hopefully will continue to my BSN, MSN & hopefully my CNM. We shall see.

So the collaboration means you'll see different types of posts from time to time when my life permits.

Till then, take care!

Crystal

Welcome Charlotte Mae!

Wow, life has been busy! And when I say busy, I mean INSANELY busy! We just welcomed another member of the Clark family! Charlotte Mae Clark was born Monday, January 31, 2011 @ 7:01 am. She weighed 7 lbs, 7 oz and was 19 inches long. I was scheduled to be induced that very day but went into labor naturally. At 12:45 am the 31st I woke up with some cramping. Now at the time I was 39 weeks pregnant so I was used to the cramps. Just before 3 am I felt the need to get to the bathroom and quickly! The contractions started right after. At 4:45 am I called my nurse midwife. By 5:30 we were at the hospital. At 5:45 am the nurse did her first cervical check and I was 6 cm! Three pushes & out she came, healthy! She breast crawled (just like the video I have posted!) and we were left alone to bond. Her clavicle broke during delivery but other than that, everything has been wonderful!

Pictures coming soon!

Frozen Meals for Post Partum

As you can soon expect, you will have your hands very full with your new little one! That being said, there isn't much time for cooking & meal preparation. Frozen meals come in especially handy for new parents!

Frozen Section at the Grocery Store
The next time you're strolling through the grocery store, look at the frozen food section. You can find all sorts of meals frozen and just ready to throw in the oven or microwave. However, because they're frozen, they have a higher sodium content so they'll keep--but they're cheap, easy and accessible. I like foods like Voila Chicken Alfredo! All you do is put the package in a skillet with some water, add the alfredo sauce and let it cook. This meal can go quite aways if served atop rice. Also, many veggies are available to steam in your microwaves and even with buttery and herb sauces, yum!

Homemade Frozen Foods
Ever frozen lasagna? Works well doesn't it? All you have to do is throw that baby in the oven with some tin foil and voila, a delicious, home made meal! Lasagna is probably is the easiest to make, but there are others as well. Any type of casserole would work well too (I like green bean casserole! YUM!)

Here is a good lasagna recipe, sure looks yummy! Lasagna Recipe

Pelvic Girdle Pain...is it keeping you up at night?

You have three pelvic joints in your body: two sacroilliac joints and a pubic symphasis. During pregnancy, a hormone called Relaxin will help all of your joints loosen in preparation to childbirth (especially the pubic symphasis, directly in the middle of where the hips join). Relaxin is also the culprit of your new found clumsiness... you must be wondering by now, "Why the heck can't I hold on to things anymore and drop everything?!?", Relaxin!

Something that pains some women during pregnancy is known as Pelvic Girdle Pain. PGP often presents symptoms like a chronic back ache, lower pelvis ache on one or both sides and radiating pain down the bum and the legs. Other symptoms include:

* Present swelling and/or inflammation over joint.
* Difficulty lifting leg.
* Pain pulling legs apart.
* Unable to stand on one leg.
* Unable to transfer weight through pelvis and legs.
* Pain in hips and/or restriction of hip movement.
* Transferred nerve pain down leg.
* Can be associated with bladder and/or bowel dysfunction.
* A feeling of symphysis pubis giving way.
* Stand with a stooped over back.
* Malalignment of pelvic and/or back joints.
* Struggle to sit or stand.
* Pain may also radiate down the inner thighs.
* You may waddle or shuffle.
* Aware of an audible ‘clicking’ sound coming from the pelvis.

The cause of PGP is unknown for the most part, but there are several theories that can be found here.

How can PGP be treated? I can imagine how uncomfortable you must be at the end of your pregnancies and having to deal with this. Some women even experience it by 14 weeks! (ugh, can you imagine?!) But, it can be dealt with! Here are some self-help tips for PGP:

* When getting into bed sit on the edge keeping knees close together, lie down on your side, lifting both legs at the same time. Reverse this to get up.
* Try not to attempt to pull yourself up from lying on your back.
* Keep knees together when rolling over in bed.
* Sleep with a pillow between the legs; add more in other areas for support.
* When getting into a car: Sit down first and then swing legs keeping them together.
* Avoid sofas and chairs that are too low or too soft.
* Try to reduce the stress on the joint.
* Avoid any movement with your knees apart.
* Take smaller steps when walking.
* Avoid stairs if possible.
* Take breaks.
* Move within the limits of pain.
* Avoid twisting, bending or squatting.

Also, your doctor or midwife may suggest seeing a Physical Therapist that can help you tone the pelvic and abdominal muscles to releive some of the pressure on your pelvic joints. (Also, a little Tylenol can't hurt ladies! It's completely safe during pregnancy!).

Breast Milk Sugars Give Infants a Protective Coat

Interesting article in the NY Times today (Saw it through ACNM's facebook site on breast milk sugar's effect on an infant's GI tract. Here's the article:

A large part of human milk cannot be digested by babies and seems to have a purpose quite different from infant nutrition — that of influencing the composition of the bacteria in the infant’s gut.

The details of this three-way relationship between mother, child and gut microbes are being worked out by three researchers at the University of California, Davis — Bruce German, Carlito Lebrilla and David Mills. They and colleagues have found that a particular strain of bacterium, a subspecies of Bifidobacterium longum, possesses a special suite of genes that enable it to thrive on the indigestible component of milk.

This subspecies is commonly found in the feces of breast-fed infants. It coats the lining of the infant’s intestine, protecting it from noxious bacteria.

Infants presumably acquire the special strain of bifido from their mothers, but strangely, it has not yet been detected in adults. “We’re all wondering where it hides out,” Dr. Mills said.

The indigestible substance that favors the bifido bacterium is a slew of complex sugars derived from lactose, the principal component of milk. The complex sugars consist of a lactose molecule on to which chains of other sugar units have been added. The human genome does not contain the necessary genes to break down the complex sugars, but the bifido subspecies does, the researchers say in a review of their progress in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The complex sugars were long thought to have no biological significance, even though they constitute up to 21 percent of milk. Besides promoting growth of the bifido strain, they also serve as decoys for noxious bacteria that might attack the infant’s intestines. The sugars are very similar to those found on the surface of human cells, and are constructed in the breast by the same enzymes. Many toxic bacteria and viruses bind to human cells by docking with the surface sugars. But they will bind to the complex sugars in milk instead. “We think mothers have evolved to let this stuff flush through the infant,” Dr. Mills said.

Dr. German sees milk as “an astonishing product of evolution,” one which has been vigorously shaped by natural selection because it is so critical to the survival of both mother and child. “Everything in milk costs the mother — she is literally dissolving her own tissues to make it,” he said. From the infant’s perspective, it is born into a world full of hostile microbes, with an untrained immune system and lacking the caustic stomach acid which in adults kills most bacteria. Any element in milk that protects the infant will be heavily favored by natural selection.

“We were astonished that milk had so much material that the infant couldn’t digest,” Dr. German said. “Finding that it selectively stimulates the growth of specific bacteria, which are in turn protective of the infant, let us see the genius of the strategy — mothers are recruiting another life-form to baby-sit their baby.”

Dr. German and his colleagues are trying to “deconstruct” milk, on the theory that the fluid has been shaped by 200 million years of mammalian evolution and holds a wealth of information about how best to feed and defend the human body. Though milk itself is designed for infants, its lessons may apply to adults.

The complex sugars, for instance, are evidently a way of influencing the gut microflora, so they might in principle be used to help premature babies, or those born by caesarean, who do not immediately acquire the bifido strain. It has long been thought there was no source of the sugars other than human milk, but they have recently been detected in whey, a waste byproduct of cheesemaking. The three researchers plan to test the complex sugars for benefit in premature infants and in the elderly.

The proteins in milk also have special roles. One, called Alpha-lactalbumin, can attack tumor cells and those infected by viruses by restoring their lost ability to commit cell suicide. The protein, which accumulates when an infant is weaned, is also the signal for the breast to remodel itself back to normal state.

Such findings have made the three researchers keenly aware that every component of milk probably has a special role. “It’s all there for a purpose, though we’re still figuring out what that purpose is,” Dr. Mills said. “So for God’s sake, please breast-feed.”

Yet another positive outcome of breastfeeding! Very interesting article!