Hannah Wallace

Floating my way to Inner Bliss

This is not unlike the tank I floated in at Portland's Float On (though mine did not resemble a giant white clog)  photo credit: True Rest in Tempe, Arizona

Last fall, after a conference at which I darted from session to session, networking with colleagues and tweeting obsessively, I returned to work feeling uncharacteristically scattered. I was supposed to be finishing a book proposal, but try as I might, I couldn't focus on anything longer than 140 characters. Multiple windows on my laptop vied for my attention, as did e-mails from editors, texts from friends, and a never-ending stream of provocative Facebook updates. This in addition to the pressures of being a soon-to-be stepmom. I'm usually pretty good at keeping my multiple balls in the air, but on this particular morning I felt as though my Mach-speed lifestyle had finally gotten the better of me.

Wishing I had a meditation practice to fall back on—like many people, I’ve tried and failed at mindfulness—I left the house and went for a walk in my southeast Portland neighborhood. Soon, I was strolling up Hawthorne, a lively boulevard of cafes, boutiques, and theatres. I paused outside the steamed-up windows of a storefront emblazoned with the words “Float On.” Scanning the shop’s brochure, which described a relaxing-sounding therapy of floating in a tank of 93.5-degree water spiked with Epsom salts, I chuckled. “Being in a float tank is like relaxing in outer space,” the copy read. Only in Portland, I muttered to myself, thinking of my city’s other quirky practices of yarn bombing and naked bike-riding.

But I pocketed the brochure anyway. A few days later, still feeling overstimulated, I read through it. “Floating is about everything you won’t be doing,” it said. “For an hour and a half, the outside world is gone, and amazing things happen.” It promised stress relief, a decrease in cortisol levels, and a chance to experience the “theta” state of consciousness—the slowed-down brain waves that happen right before you fall asleep (and that expert meditators often experience). The idea of taking a 90 minute, gravity-free respite from all media—indeed from the responsibilities of daily life—suddenly appealed to me. I decided to give "floating" a shot. 

Continue reading about my floating adventure in the December 2012 issue of Whole Living (on newstands now). [Or Download Floatinghw]

Food Visionaries

I was proud to be a part of Whole Living's beautifully-produced Food Visionaries package, in their penultimate issue.

THE VISIONARIES

They're growing kale in abandoned lots, feeding hungry schoolkids, looking out for our laborers, and teaching us why cooking matters. In short, they're changing our food world for the better. We toast them all. 

See Whole Living's web site, for the first 8, including Mayor Bloomberg, Jeff Bridges, Bill Shore, Abeni Massi, Nell Newman, and the founders of FoodCorps. 

But here's my contribution:

THE BIG BUSINESS WOMAN

As vice president of strategy, responsible for the sustainability programs for Bon Appetit Management Company, Maisie Greenawalt could just do her job and go home at night, but she cares too deeply—about everything from troll-caught tuna to migrant tomato workers—to rest easy. Not only has Greenawalt ensured that all 500 of the company's cafés (from the one at Amazon headquarters, in Seattle, to the one at Oberlin College, in Ohio) serve only rBGH-free dairy products and beef raised without antibiotics, source at least 20 percent of all ingredients from within 150 miles, and adhere to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's strict Seafood Watch guidelines, but she's helped establish a code of conduct for produce suppliers and contributed to a report that will serve as a road map for creating farmworker labor standors. We're in awe, and slightly exhausted, just thinking about it.

A Seed Grows in (West) Oakland

Whenever you start to feel that our country—not to mention our planet—is going to hell in a handbasket (as my great aunt Holly used to say), it's encouraging to come across a youthful dynamo like Nikki Henderson, the 27-year-old executive director of People's Grocery. A food justice nonprofit in West Oakland, People's Grocery has had a circuitous history but today its mission is to improve the health and economy of West Oakland through the local food system.

What local food system, you might ask? Thanks to the folks at People's Grocery, who planted a garden here a decade ago, and other West Oakland nonprofits such as City Slicker Farms and  OBUGS, there's a lot of urban gardening going on in Oakland. There are also affordable CSA shares, farmers' markets with sliding scale prices, and free nutrition education classes.

I write about Henderson in the September issue of Whole Living (pg. 38). Though my article isn't available on WholeLiving.com, it is a part of the magazine's iPad issue.

(For a PDF of the article, click here: Download NaturalTalent.) 

 

 

Wholesome Wave, Practically Green, and Sustainable Sushi

I've been writing about a handful of forward-looking organizations and green trends: the awesome nonprofit Wholesome Wave (which doubles the value of food stamps used at farmers' markets) for Vegetarian Times; Practically Green, a site that gets you to publicly rate your green habits (and playfully compete with your Facebook friends) for Whole Living; and sustainable sushi bars for T: Travel. (Did you know that most of the seafood that's sold in this country is either net caught, farmed in an unsustainable way, or critically endangered?) Four new sushi joints are proving that you can source locally, seasonally, and conscientiously: Bamboo Sushi, Miya's, Tataki, and Mashiko. And this is not some flash-in-the-pan food trend: I just got an e-mail about a new sustainable sushi restaurant in San Francisco and Portland's Bamboo has announced it's opening a second location (on NW 23rd) this fall.  

 

 

The Kombucha Craze

Last summer, while visiting friends in Portland, Oregon, I had my first sip of kombucha. After a morning hike up the trails of hilly Forest Park, we stopped at a food co-op near Northwest 23rd.

Renee was keen on having some kombucha.

"What's kombucha?" I asked. Somehow, I hadn't yet noticed the fermented tea creeping into the aisles of Brooklyn bodegas and grocery stores.

"You know that jar of liquid on the sink with a blob fermenting in it?" she said. I had to admit, I'd been afraid to ask what that was. It looked like some sort of liquid compost. 

At first, I thought it was nasty. Sour with a slight carbonation and little wisps of what I would later learn is a SCOBY ("Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast"), kombucha tasted more like fizzy cider vinegar than tea. But over the course of a few days, kombucha started to grow on me. I learned that it's a traditional fermented tea with a long history in China, Russia, and the Middle East, and that it's packed with B vitamins, probiotics, folic acid, and organic acids of various sorts (though which ones is a matter of some dispute). I experimented with several flavors of GT's, a popular brand that I found in ready supply at Portland's New Seasons Market. On my return to Brooklyn, I began seeking out local brews such as Kombucha Brooklyn. Thus began my fascination with this tart, fizzy beverage.

As I write in the March issue of Body + Soul (Download Hannah Wallace- Strange Brew) kombucha is the latest health craze, with indie companies and giants alike jumping on the kombucha bandwagon. (Red Bull has its very own label called Carpe Diem, and Celestial Seasonings is about to launch their own line of bottled kombucha, too.) Purportedly, the drink has all kinds of health benefits—devotees say it boosts the immune system, promotes energy, and improves everything from acne and digestion to arthritis pain and tendinitis. (Others swear by it as a hangover remedy.) But in the course of reporting this story, I found it very difficult to find even one M.D. who would champion the beverage. One, a well-known integrative physician, wrote simply, "As far as I can tell, the buzz is mostly hype—not much research behind it. For that reason, I’ve been reluctant to recommend it to my patients, although I don’t actively discourage it either."

 As with many healthy foods and supplements, kombucha hasn't had a groundswell of research dollars to help prove or disprove the health claims. For now, we only have a few in vitro and animal studies that show kombucha has potent antioxidant and immuno-stimulating effects. (It also improves sleep and reduces pain in rats, apparently, though don't ask me how the scientists know the rats sleep better once they've imbibed kombucha.)

But many holistic doctors and nutritionists spoke to me of seeing their patients improve once they introduced kombucha (and other fermented foods) into their diets. Brooke Moen, a San Francisco-based acupuncturist, told me that B vitamins, live enzymes, and organic acids are all crucial for good digestive health. "B vitamins are one of the things that get wiped out when the gut is imbalanced," she says. "And enzymes catalyze processes. They move things along, break things down."

Though Moen is skeptical of many of the health claims made about kombucha, she says it's not uncommon for many conditions to improve when a person's digestive tract is working properly. "Digestion is the foundation of health. Anytime you improve assimilation and elimination, the rest of your symptoms resolve," she says. From a chinese medicine perspective, sour and bitter flavors can "move liver congestion and qi stagnation"—meaning they assist the liver and gallbladder in breaking down and removing toxins. "A fundamental treatment principle for much illness is to help move that which is stuck," Moen told me. 

See here for my guide to making your own batch at home.

 

Coffee: is it Good or Bad for your Health?

A latte at Portland's 3rd St. Stumptown, August 2009

The news about coffee couldn't get much better: drinking it lessens one’s risk of type 2 diabetes, liver cirrhosis and gallstones—not to mention heart disease and cancer. It's a legal performance-enhancer. And according to a recent Finnish study, drinking 3-5 cups a day can even stave off dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. Yet, as I write in the latest issue of Whole Living (pg. 127), coffee does have some downsides—and some people can tolerate the beverage better than others. To see the PDF:  Download CoffeeHealth 

Coffee actually has a long history of medicinal use. In the 14th century, Arab women would drink it to alleviate menstrual discomforts; the Turks, for their part, claimed coffee was an aphrodisiac. The Indian Materia Medica prescribes coffee for everything from infant cholera to spasmodic asthma and states that coffee “assists assimilation and digestion” and even protects against malaria. In Chinese medicine, coffee would be classified as a medicinal herb that regulates liver qi and purges the gallbladder—which is to say it improves mood and promotes the production and flow of bile. (This explains coffee’s ability to prevent the formation of gallstones and alleviate constipation.) 

Despite coffee's proven health benefits, many in the holistic health world scorn the beverage, saying coffee depletes the adrenal glands (among other things). Subhuti Dharmananda, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Traditional Medicine in Portland, Oregon, disagrees. “The frequently repeated comment that caffeine causes adrenal exhaustion was based on one old and not repeated animal study,” he told me. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that coffee is not right for everyone and says moderation is key: one to three 6-8 ounce cups a day is a good range. (A Starbucks “Tall” is 12 ounces—so try to limit yourself to two Talls. And lay off the Frappuccinos. Such sugar-laden beverages are “just a mess” says Dharmananda.)

Coffee—which comes from a berry, let’s not forget—is a traditional beverage with a long history of being enjoyed by various cultures: it’s been cultivated since at least the 13th century, when Arabians began roasting and grinding the beans before brewing the bitter elixir. Michael Pollan's by-now well known edict “Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food” has become my mantra. I’m sure my great-great-grandmother, who lived in Baltimore in the first half of the 20th century, wouldn’t know what to make of a Frappuccino. But I bet she drank and savoured her coffee. And so, then, will I.

 

Mercury + your health

Mercury is a heavy metal that’s found naturally in the earth’s crust. But there’s nothing natural about the amount of mercury that’s released into the atmosphere these days: 104 metric tons a year, according to the EPA. Coal-fired power plants, which generate over half of the U.S.’s electricity, are the nation’s largest source of mercury emissions. But mercury is also emitted from municipal and hazardous waste combustors, medical waste incinerators, and chloralkali plants (chlorine-producing factories) and it finds its way into our water via the improper disposal of batteries and other mercury-containing products such as thermometers, thermostat switches and even compact fluorescent light bulbs. 

From these combined sources, elemental mercury accumulates in lakes, streams and oceans, where it converts into methylmercury and is absorbed by fish. Large predatory fish—those that live longest and are higher on the food chain, such as tuna, swordfish, shark, king mackerel, and tilefish—contain more mercury than small fish. 

But as I report in the June issue of Body + Soul (tear sheet here: Download Hannah Wallace- Mercury+ Health), the list of high-mercury fish is much longer than the FDA would have us believe—and it's not just pregnant women and children who need to beware. Jane Hightower M.D., author of the riveting book Diagnosis: Mercury: Money, Politics, and Poison, discovered through diligent detective-work that many of her patients—otherwise healthy adults—were suffering from mercury toxicity. The reason? Thinking that fish (packed as it is with brain-boosting omega-3's) is healthier than meat, they were eating it (sushi, fresh swordfish steaks, you name it) two to three times a day.

I wouldn't doubt it if Jeremy Piven really did have mercury poisoning. His symptoms—extreme fatigue, dizziness, and neuro-muscular dysfunction—are the very ones that Hightower has seen in her San Francisco-based patients. Once again, moderation seems to be the key to a healthy life. Meanwhile, instead of listening to the FDA, I'll be consulting the Environmental Working Group's sensible, fact-based list of fish to avoid.

Portland's green side/eco-design pioneer Aysia Wright

I'm still reeling from the news that Nau, the year-old Portland-based sustainable clothing company, has gone out of business. (All clothes are half-off at nau.com!)   However, eco-design is still going strong in Portland—and Aysia Wright, founder of the Sellwood boutique Greenloop and its virtual shop, thegreenloop.com, is one of the movement's leaders.  I interview her about why she loves Portland in this month's issue of Body + Soul.  Also, check out my "power food" column on Quinoa, a grain I fell in love with two years ago when I was in Peru.   (Both stories have been edited for the Web; grab a copy of the May issue of B+S for complete versions and photos!  There's also a great feature on how to start an organic garden.)   

Happiness @ Work?

A few years ago, when I was an editor at Travel + Leisure, I was diagnosed with two herniated disks. Though far from incapacitated, I quickly realized that sitting made the pain much worse—unfortunate, since much of my job required me to plant myself at a desk or sit through frequent (and lengthy) editorial meetings. I tried taking periodic water cooler breaks and sitting with crossed legs (better), but the pressure was still intense and the sciatica eventually became unbearable. The only positions that gave me true relief were headstands, lying flat on my back, and standing. Since the former two were out of the question at the office, I focused on standing. Driven by pain, I knocked on my managing editor’s door. Could I possibly get a new desk?  One that’s 60 inches off the floor so that I can stand while editing? After hearing me out, he promised to put in a request for one. A month or two later, I had a chic black custom-made desk that was the envy of the office. Even the fashion-forward art director coveted my new setup, but more importantly, my action inspired another colleague who had been struggling with severe pain from her own herniated disks, to request a similar desk in her cubicle.

Sometimes, achieving a measure of happiness at work is as easy as the old adage, “ask and you shall receive.”

A former colleague of mine, now an editor at Body + Soul, asked me to write about what innovative U.S. companies are doing to keep their employees happy—and six things that you can do to take charge of your situation (be it office environment, setting boundaries, or initiating perks that no one else has thought of) if you're not lucky enough to work for one of these progressive companies.   Check out the March issue of Body + Soul, or click here to read an abbreviated version of the print edition.  (The online version is shorter and it's also broken down into two components, with the second part here.)    

Hung over?

For some tips on how to survive your hangover(s) this holiday season, take a look at this chart I wrote for Body + Soul's Jan/Feb. issue. Download Hangover I also recommend drinking one tall glass of water for each glass of wine, beer or liquor. (Note: the darker the beverage, the worse your hangover. So drink gin and tonics or white wine, not scotch or red wine.)