Jump-In January!

*This photo is 3 years old from when I first started swimming.

There are many small changes I've made to make my autoimmune arthritis feel better. Not all of them are always easy to do or the most enjoyable to participate in. Not all of them are things that make me feel like I'm living my life deliciously. 

As with the realization that my extreme love of sugary treats has been causing me more inflammation, so is my realization about how I feel when I'm not active. Though it may seem like a Catch 22, when I am in pain and feel like I don't want to move sometimes the best thing to do is get up and actually get my body moving. A body in motion stays in motion. So, over the years I've tried many types of movement and exercise. Many forms of movement can feel hard and rough on my joints and ligaments or feel like they are grinding my body apart. These have been the times that I did not feel like I was living deliciously. Other people with autoimmune arthritis might like Tai Chi, Qigong, golf, walking, low impact biking, swimming, dancing, or even yoga. I, for one, have found yoga to be the absolute worst thing for my arthritis and though I'm happy for anyone that it works for, I do not plan to continue trying to use yoga as my best form of movement.

I have found over the years through much trial and error that my four best forms of movement for my arthritis are:

1. Swimming: In my opinion, swimming is the best form of movement for someone with an autoimmune arthritis. Not only are you weightless and therefore not putting any weights on your joints, but you are also able to use all muscles, joints, ligaments, and bones in a continuous fluid movement as you swim. Swimming is one of the only activities that make me feel fully emerged in the moment. I find it meditative and rejuvenating. 
2. Aqua Aerobics: Though I'm often the youngest person in many of my aqua aerobics classes (by thirty or so years), I find them to be extremely enjoyable and really a great workout. I often make an effort to get to know the instructors so as to ask them how to get the most out of my class and to ask them if they might let me know how I can make any of the moves that they are leading, even more impactful. In addition to having tons of fun in the classes, I rarely feel self conscious as most of the other participants are so welcoming and kind. Unlike being at a gym where I sometimes feel judged by those around me, in aqua aerobics I often feel a communal sense of encouragement and play. I almost always leave feeling like my day is just a little bit better.
3. Swing Dance & Lindy Hop: I've been swing dancing on and off since 1997. When I began swing dancing as a preteen lead (often assumed to be the male role in dance), I fell instantly in love with everything about swing dance and swing culture. I read books about the swing era, watched any and all movies I could fine with great dance scenes, and tried really hard to get other friends excited about swing dance. Unfortunately it took me another twelve years before I met others who were as excited as I was about everything swing (during which time I learned how to be a follow). I'd only taken classes up to that point and had never participated in the dance scene. I had multiple year gaps in my training. No matter what though, I kept coming back to swing dance. Lindy Hop has always made me feel supremely happy. In 2009, I finally found other people my age who liked to swing dance and began dancing socially. At the same time though, I was going through a massive flare up that lead to my diagnosis of Psoriatic Arthritis in the summer of 2009. Despite my pain, I've found Lindy Hop and my swing dance community to be an anchor in enabling me to push through my pain to find joy in movement. Arthritis and dancing are not mutually exclusive. Knowing that I will dance again makes me feel motivated every day to reduce my inflammation.  
4. Long walks: As cheesy as it sounds, walking is known as "America's past time." It makes sense though, because walking is literally the easiest way to get up and move. I can always find a way to walk more in my daily life. Though some folks love hiking and walking in nature, my favorite walks are long walks through cities. I've been known to walk 13 miles through London in a day or 10 miles around San Francisco in an afternoon. The best thing about walking is that it costs practically nothing. Once you've found some good walking shoes, you're completely set.

In the spirit of my December challenge to go partially dessert-less, I've decided to use January as a motivator for me to get moving. I'm jumping in this January. I'll be spending the month jumping in to the pool, jumping back in to the dance scene, and jumping in to my walking shoes. In addition to continuing to experiment with how best to fight inflammation through the food I eat, I'll also be experimenting with how best to jump in this January. 

My goals for jumping in this January are:

1. Go to Aqua Aerobics a minimum of 3 times a week = Totaling a minimum of 12 classes.
2. Swim a minimum of 1 time a week = Totaling a minimum of 4 times.
3. Swing dance a minimum of 2 times during the month.
4. Go on at least 2 long walks during the month of January.

I'm beginning with these three very realistic goals with the hopes that they will help get me back in to old patterns. Since I'm luckily not currently in a big flare-up, I'm hoping that jumping in in the above ways will not overwhelm my body and will help me feel better and more agile. I plan to share updates with you here as well as tips around how to add more movement in to your life as well as how best to eat anti-inflammatorily while jumping in.

Recipe: Fructose-Free Swedish Snowball Cookies // Adapted Family Recipe

I am becoming more contentious about my sugar intake to reduce my inflammation.

Despite my desire to fight inflammation and generally be more aware of the effects sugar (fructose) has on my body, it has been hard getting through the holiday season without my holiday go to treats. One treat in particular has been hard to go without: Swedish Snowball cookies. These cookies consist of powdered sugar, SO MUCH BUTTER, walnuts, flour, and really nut much else. They are a tradition in my family and are really only made once a year during the holiday season. 

A christmas without Swedish Snowballs seemed impossible. So, in an effort to think outside of the box, I decided to purchase Dextrose. Dextrose is also called d-glucose and is what our body converts in to energy. So, unlike fructose or sucrose (table sugar usually used in baking), it is not solely absorbed by the liver. 

I did have to make a few adaptations because Dextrose absorbs moisture in a different way than sugar does. 

Ingredients:

1 Pound Butter (2 cups)

1 Cup sifted Dextrose

2 teaspoon vanilla extract 

1/3 Cup almond milk 

4 Cups unsifted flour

1 1/2 Cups chopped walnuts

Note: These directions can be made VEGAN by replacing the pound of butter with a pound of Earth Balance or other butter replacement. 

Directions:
1. To begin, pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees. Then use your hand or stand mixer to mix together the pound of butter and cup of sifted Dextrose.

2. Add in the vanilla extract. 

3. Slowly add in the 4 cups of flour. Mix until one solid ball of dough. 

4. If the dough isn't solidifying in to one whole unit, slowly add in the 1/3 cup almond milk.

5. Chop up walnuts.  

6. Add chopped walnuts into the dough until they are evenly distributed.

7. Once the dough is fully incorporated, roll dough in to balls that are approximately one inch in diameter. 

8. Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes.

9. Let cookies cool for about half an hour or until they are not warm to the touch. 

10. Once cookies are cool, roll them in Dextrose to make them look like they are covered in snow!

11. Enjoy!

I hope that you enjoy this recipe and that it helps you get through the holiday season! Adapting this family recipe has really helped me make the holidays better and made me feel like I wasn't missing out on my favorite holiday treat. I like knowing that though there is still a lot of butter and flour in them (and thus, I should still consume them in moderation, at least I know that the sugar I am consuming in the form of Dextrose/Glucose is giving me energy rather than just feeding my sugar addiction and inflammation. Despite the fact that these cookies turned out deliciously, they were nowhere near as sweet as traditional Swedish Snowballs. Though I love eating and enjoying them, I haven't felt an uncontrollable urge to eat all of them at once. 

***Warning: Just because these are made out of all healthy whole foods and natural sugars, does not mean you should eat a crazy ton of them. Just like with regular cookies, you should eat them in moderation. Enjoy!

Sugar Confusion

There are three primary forms of sugar:

1. Glucose 
2. Galactose
3. Fructose

These three forms of sugar are not interchangeable. Each is used by the body differently. Some forms of sugar are our life force energy and others are considered by our body to be tantamount to poison. I'm going to try to quickly sum up how each form of sugar works within our body:

1. Glucose
• Glucose is the energy of life. Almost all living plants and creatures run on glucose. Glucose is made through the process of photosynthesis. It is what is found in starch and when it breaks down, it can be burned down as energy by pretty much every cell in our body. Glucose consists of two elements that mirror each other, these elements are called L-Glucose and D-Glucose. Dextrose is another name for D-Glucose. 
2. Galactose
• Galactose is only found in milk sugar. It is almost instantly turned by our liver in to Glucose. 
3. Fructose
• Fructose is rarely converted in to glucose. It is seen by our body as extraneous and is regularly converted in to liver fat. 
• Unless we are an extreme athlete (think an olympian) or if we are literally starving, our fructose remains solely as liver fat. If you are an olympian, extreme athlete, or literally starving, then your body may convert fructose in to glycogen (liver starch) which can be fished out of your liver if your body desperately needs glucose. This rarely happens. "Chronic and excess alcohol or fructose exposure both cause fatty liver disease, which drives the pathologic process of insulin resistance, and causes the same chronic diseases - obesity, heart disease, and diabetes." 

There is much confusion over the idea that Fructose is bad for us. Because many of us grew up being told that "an apple a day will keep the doctor away," we are not willing to think of fructose as potentially negative. We associate fructose specifically with fruit and we associate fruit with health. When we eat fruit, our body consumes not only fructose, but also fiber. The fiber in fruit helps limit the absorption of fructose. When you refine sugar (which pretty much means that you remove the fiber from the sugar), you absorb the sugar (fructose) all immediately. Your liver becomes overloaded with fructose and ends up converting it in to liver fat. This is why consumption of straight fructose without fiber (fruit juice, soda, honey, agave, sucrose - the combination of glucose and fructose, or generally any time that the naturally occurring fibers that were attached to the fructose are gone) causes us to gain liver fat.  

The more fructose we consume, the harder our body has to work. When we eat too much sugar (read - fructose), our immune cells secret an inflammatory messenger called a cytokines. When cytokines are excreted, our bodies become inflamed. As someone with an autoimmune arthritis who is fighting inflammation constantly, I now monitor my sugar consumption for this reason.