Ace-Anti-Ageing

Ageless Ageing: How Christmas can make you look younger

Natural Health’s youth guru Jayney Goddard on the top festive herbs and spices to hold back the years

Natural Health’s youth guru Jayney Goddard on the top festive herbs and spices to hold back the years

The ‘silly season’ is upon us and often through sheer ‘busy-ness’ our best intentions, nutritionally at least, seem to fly away with Santa and his reindeer. Here are a few tricks that you can use to easily maximise the nutritional impact of traditional Christmas fare – and stay aligned with a healthy, natural antiageing approach.
First, make sure that you are getting more nutrients into every meal, even when you are grazing at the office cocktail party, by choosing foods that are loaded with spices. When you flavour your food with herbs or spices, you are ‘upgrading’ your food without adding a single calorie. You are taking something ordinary and turning it into something nutritionally extraordinary by adding colour, flavour, vitamins, and often medicinal properties. Here’s why:

Spices and herbs maximize nutrient density. Herbs and spices contain antioxidants, minerals and multivitamins. So, at the cocktail party, choose the Thai chicken satay stick over the dodgy sausage rolls.
Because spices are nutrient dense, they are thermogenic, (naturally increasing your metabolism). Your metabolism revs higher and you’ll utilise more of the food you have eaten as fuel, storing less as body fat. At a dinner party, finish off your meal with coffee or tea sprinkled with nutrient packed cinnamon.
Certain spices and herbs increase your overall feeling of fullness, so you’ll eat less. One recent study demonstrated half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes eaten with a starter before each meal, decreased calorie intake by 10 to 16 per cent. So, consider starting with a tomato soup sprinkled with red pepper.
Spices and herbs have real medicinal properties. Cinnamon, for example, has been proven to lower blood sugar and improve insulin sensitivity – both of which are key when it comes to anti-ageing. Higher blood sugar leads to inflammation which underlies many chronic diseases associated with unhealthy ageing.

Spice it up…

Load up on the following traditional Christmas herbs and spices and reap their amazing health benefits

Cinnamon lowers blood sugar and improves insulin sensitivity. NUTMEG is a potent brain booster, increasing circulation and concentration. It also stimulates the cardiovascular system and is agood heart tonic and liver and kidney detoxifier.

Cloves are anaesthetic, antibacterial and effective against the superbug MRSA when combined with eucalyptus, lemon, thyme, tea tree and alcohol. They also combat flu, colds, and bronchial congestion. SAGE Tea made from the leaves is excellent for sore throats.

A little bit of what you fancy!

Mulled wine contains resveratrol, which has been shown to act as a caloric restriction mimetic – it tricks your body into acting as if it had consumed fewer calories. Why this is so important in youth boosting terms is that caloric restriction is the only method, currently, that is actually proven to extend healthy lifespan.

Article by

Jayney Goddard

President of the Complementary Medical Association

is the president of the Complementary Medical Association

Discover more

Article by

Jayney Goddard

President of the Complementary Medical Association

is the president of the Complementary Medical Association

Discover more