Health exhirbition plus my oxidative stress result

Me and Whitley had a great day at the health exhirbition in Stockholm today. We took pictures of famous people and ate free healthy samples.

Magnus Nylander (nutritionist I've talked about) was there and he took a blood test on me to check my oxidative stress. Short explanation: Free radicals are not good for you (you need some, but too much isn't good) and they can react with other things in your body and make you sick. This is why we need antioxidants - because they will make the free radicals harmless. The oxidative stress is what damage the free radicals have done to you. If you get 200-300 on this test, then that's good. I've done this test a few other times a few years ago and I then had about 460-480, which is way too high. This time I got 361!! Which is MUCH better, but still a bit high. I'm so motivated to eat even more healthier now to get it down below 300.

Here are some pictures from the day.

Magnus about to take the free radical test on me

Famous person no 1

Plastic free bottles!! Yay! :D

Tea from America... obviously made me think o Texas were we drank these every day...

Famous person no 2 from yorkshire (?)

Famous person no 3

... no 4

We also went through the food/wine exhirbition but as me nor Whitley drink alcohol, and most of it was wine, this wasn't as good as the health exhirbition

Famous person no 5

Whitley with the Swedish horse!!

And we walked through the boat exhirbition

Oxidative stress article by Magnus Nylander

My dad was at the health exhirbition today that me and Whitley are going to tomorrow. He got this newspaper with him home and Magnus Nylander (the nutritionist I've mentioned several times before) has written a 2 pages long article about oxidative stress in it.
I haven't had time to read it yet but I will still recommend it already because I'm pretty sure it is a great article. And a very interesting subject! If you want to know what antioxidants are good for then you should read this. The magazine is called STARK and its number 3 this year.

Life is great!

I know what you are thinking.. how can you think life is great in November? I don't know.. Maybe because this has been the warmest November ever recorded in Sweden? I saw an article yesterday about that it has never happened before that there is no snow in the whole of Sweden a 10th of November. So yesterday was the first time. Still no snow. It's actually pretty crazy..
Last year at this time, I was in Dallas. It was really warm there, like a swedish summer and my mind never understood that. People walked around in shorts and t-shirts even the day before I left which was 20th of December. I didn't wear shorts a single time, and only a few days I wore a t-shirt... My mind just couldn't understand that it could be warm in november/december. It's to weird for me (in a positive way).

Anyways... Maybe life is great because God is so great! I've been catching up a bit on the podcasts from the village church lately. The time it takes to bike to school and back is perfect for one normal lenght sermon. And they help me so much. If you want to hear any then you can find them here: http://www.thevillagechurch.net/resources/sermons/

School is going so good now as well. We didn't have any lessons this week and I think I'm made for distance studies because I got so much done this week and I love planning my studies myself. We have 4 seminaries coming up that I have to prepare for and 2 papers to write. This week I got one paper done and prepared for 2½ seminaries. Might not sound like a lot but there's quite alot to prepare for each one. On monday we will start with minerals, water, alcohol, metabolism etc etc..

Tomorrow there's a health exhirbition that me and Whitley are going to in Stockholm. I normally go to that one every year and they also have a food exhirbition going on at the same time so we will be going there as well. Pictures and a short post about that will come tomorrow.

My american running buddies

Took a break from my studies today to run with two of my american friends; Whitley from Oklahoma and Jake from Colorado. We did 11,9 km (7 miles) on about an hour. I know peanut butter contains a lot of protein and such but for a swedish person, it was still funny to see Jake eat peanut butter afterwards as we don't really eat peanut butter here at all. It was like an american experience happening in Sweden! :)

It's getting darker...

 

This is 4.23 pm today. Time to go to bed maybe?

I should be positive and think that at least it wasn't this dark at 2:30-3 pm today, which it will be in a month or so..

A piece of my testimony/story part 2

Copy and paste this link to read the first part:
http://lifebyevian.blogspot.com/2011/11/piece-of-my-testimony-part-1.html

So, when I was 19, almost 20, I got saved. God did a huge miracle in my life. I never thought I would get saved, it all seemed so false to me and I never understood the people that gave their life to something that "didn't exist".
Something changed when I met Him (- refering on God). I could hear him speak to me at times and I could feel his presence, his love and the forgiveness he gave me for everything I had ever done wrong. I know that it was God who healed me from the depression, the eating disorders and other health problems I had.

I applied to go to bibleschool before I even became saved. I knew I would soon going to take that step and I knew that I needed to take time to focus on getting to know God deeper for it to last. I wanted so badly to live for God for the rest of my life, but knowing myself, I knew it wouldn't be easy.
I first went one year of bibleschool. It was a year of healing, starting to hang out with christians, getting to know God and also relaxing in God - the time without Him was over and I really feel that he gave me that year to just rest in him and enjoy him. Many people said bibleschool was tough.. I never understood them because I thought 1st year was pretty much perfect.

I felt that God wanted me to go a second year on bibleschool which was more focusing on other people through missions and counseling. I went to Armenia and Georgia on my missiontrip. I learned so much there and started to understand more that mission was really on my heart and that it will be a bigger part of my future some how.
I also believe God had a purpose with me learning about counseling.. As I have been through some really rough times in my past - I hope to be able to help other young girls out of similar things.

After that, God told me to be a volunteer in England for the christian school organisation New Generation. I was there almost a year. That was a very hard year. The "safe" bibleschool was over for my part and here I had to put my faith into practice more. I was, with two other people, responsible for the south part of England and Wales. It was a tough area and it took me a long time to understand why God wanted me there. I still wonder about that sometimes but I know it was for a purpose even if I can't see the whole picture of it yet.
We were 11 people living in one house and we all worked together with this. I must say I learned a lot by living with 10 other people from all over the world. I also met my best friend during that year as we shared room the whole time.
I also got to hear about the village church the first time during that year. That is the church I went to visit in Dallas a year ago and a half year ago.

You have to excuse me, I'm a girl so I sometimes write long posts. (Starting to realise that this will be a long one...)

Since I became saved, I have started loving americans so much. I don't know why yet but I deeply believe that God has a purpose with that. I want to live and work there in the future. God also put Israel on my heart when I got saved. I've been there twice now and I have never experienced a love for a country as I have for Israel.

After I lived in Birmingham, England, I went back here to Sweden to work for two years. They were really hard years. I had listening to sermons from the village church since I lived in England and I decided to get in contact with them so I emailed them. I wanted to have someone that I could ask questions about the bible too and this really sweet girl answered me and we emailed for almost a year I think (?)... And now a pretty cool part comes.
One day at work, I was outside on my lunch break and asked God if he wanted me to go to this church. I asked him: If you want me to go, then let the next car that comes be blue... - A blue car then came. Then I asked again: Okay, if you mean it, let the next car be red... And then a red car came.. I can't remember exacly how many times I asked him things like that but I believe it was about 8-9 times and EVERY time, God showed me what I asked for. I then went inside and continued with this; "God if you really really mean it, then let it only be one other person behind these doors - and it was. I understood that God wanted me to go, so I talked to the girl I was emailing with about that I believe I should go. My parents thought it was a really good idea - which they normally never think (then I knew it must have been God :))

I left in the end of October last year, stayed two months and lived with an incredible family. That was really a match made in heaven! I got to spend a lot of time with their two young girls and their mom who was a stay at home mom. I feel strongly that I want to invest in my children and be home with them when they are small - something that I have never really seen in Sweden so I never knew how that could look like. Here I could see it and learn so much of how it could work. I also got to learn a lot from the parents about parenting, how a christian marriage should look like and many more things. The dad in the family is a missions pastor which was also so cool as I also have that on my heart.
The family made me feel so much at home. I never really knew what to answer people when they asked what I was doing there.. I knew why but couldn't explain the whole story to people so I just told them I was kind of on a long retreat or something like that. I was there to spend time with God and get to know him even deeper and also to get healed from past things. God did so much those two months.

I must mention here that since I was maybe 17-18, I have always wanted to go to Texas.. For some reason it has been especially close to my heart since God also put the american people on my heart when I got saved. And even though I've now been there twice, I feel strongly that God has more for me waiting there.
I also believe that God has prepared me for some kind of stronger connection to America in the future - not only because of the love for the people I have but also all the americans he has put in my way. We have had 5 americans living a year each here in our house and also other english speaking people from brittain so I got to practice my english, and also as I lived in an english speaking country for a year..

Especially the last year, God has done a lot of healing in my heart. I never thought it would take this long to get healed from some things that I went through before getting saved. God is so amazing and he has given me a second and a third new chance. I can not explain the love I have for God. Give him a chance, he is wating for you and he loves you so much.

Summary on Stig Bengmarks lecture

I realized that I actually didn't write many notes on the lecture the other day. Reason being that it all went really fast and it would have been impossible to write down all the important things. They will post his power point presentation online so maybe I can link to that later on.. Most of it is results from different studies and most of it is also in english.

But, here is a "short" summary of what I did take notes on;

AGE (look at the link about the AGE/ALE article I posted yesterday) - Stands for advanced glycation end products and it's reduced sugars that reacts with proteins. This is a process that is very bad for us and can be the starter of many diseases. For example, the crust on a baked bread is AGE and other things as coca cola and fried food. This happeneds when you heat up food - from degrees of 80C/176F and up.
From 100 degrees C (212F) - cancerogenic substances are being created in the food.

He mentioned that one problem with obesity is a lack of information problem - It's not the doctors that can make a difference here because they don't have much time to actually teach their patients, but the teachers that can make a change. This encouraged me personally as I want to work with nutrition as teaching it to different groups.

Your DNA only determines 5-10 % of how your healths outcome will be like. 90-95 % Has to do with environmental aspects such as diet, alcohol, obesity, infections, tobacco and other things.
Lifestyle is more important than genetic predisposition. A healthy lifestyle can prevent diseases and premature aging.
To maintain your health you need to get appropriate exercise, controll your stress/emotions, maintain normal body weight, controll your insulin levels, normalize your vitamin D levels, consume enough fish based omega 3, get enough high quality sleep, maintain your flora, eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables, avoid environmental toxins and transfatty acids etc etc

The best thing would be if you could eat as much as possible raw, but then because of vitamin A - you need to heat up some vegetables as this vitamin is much harder to use if you don't. The second best option would be to steam vegetables and then let it cool down again before you eat it. Third best would be steaming and eating it hot.

And a few other short things:

As I've talked some about vitamin D lately - he recommended 4000 IU per day.

Children has 5 more essential aminoacids than grown ups do (we have 9...)

If sugar was being introduced for the first time now - the changes are very high that it would not be approved to be used.

The most important period in your life to eat healthy and live a healthy life is when when you are pregnant and also breast feeding. This is extremly important. It is also very important to prepare your body for a pregnancy before you get pregnant with eating the right things. This interest me a lot personally and I'm considering writing my big last paper (whatever you call that in english, c-uppsats) on this subject.

We get about 250 different chemicals in us through our skin when we put on makeup.

If we would live as our ancestors then we would have 1000 times more good bacterias then we have cells. As it is now we have about 10 times as much.

The heart and lungs are aging fastest of all organs.

People with food abuse are shortening their lifes by 20-25 years. Alcohol shorten lifes by 4-5 years...

The hormones that they gives for example cows get stuck in the fat - the fat we eat through meat, milk, cream, cheese etc. These products have a high risk of creating inflammation in us.

I will write more about cholesterol later on but just want to mention one thing he said that people are starting to agree with much more now - high cholesterol is not the reason for diseases but more a sign on that something is wrong.

BUT - he also mentioned that he and his wife are not fundamentalists. It's important to remember that food is not only nutrition but ofcourse so much more! (Don't take that as an excuse to have a habit of eating bad though - make healthy eating a habit and bad food an exception)