Working with many girls on improving their chances for pregnancy in the Hormone Club I see how difficult is to quit musli. Funnily enough. So I came up with an alternative option.
Similarly to many trendy meals from the past decades musli gets proven to be a bad choice for those with feminine problems. Even if it’s gluten free, it contains plenty of unnecessary and risky grains, carbs, potentially sugar or harmful sweeteners (e.g. aspartame) and diary. The unreadable multi-syllable ingredients I don’t even consider, in case it’s a less cautious product. Multi-syllable ingredients that your grandmother could not pronounce are not for human consumption.
Here is the musli-like yammie I recommend instead of the classic musli with many benefits.
Ingredients for 1 cup: 3/4 cup yoghurt or kefir with live bacteria that you can recultivate. The best is if you keep cultivating it, so you can then trust that it is functional probiotics. 1/2 a cup of organic flax seed; 1 coffee spoon cinnamon; 5 almonds cut rough; Sugar free or gently sweetened berry jam for taste. The best is if you prepare the jam yourself, so you can control the content. The sweetener should be cocos blossom sugar, raw honey or raw maple syrup, which ever is available in your surrounding -potentially erythritol.
You grind the flax seed fine with a coffee grinder till it becomes powdery and mix all ingredients before sitting comfortably and finishing it pleasantly.
MusliLike
Why to use functional kefir or yoghurt? Functional if you can recultivate it, so you poor full fat, organic milk (it won’t work with ultra high temperature (UHT) pasteurized milk) on half a cup of kefir or yoghurt and on minimum 21C room temperature next day you find the cup full with kefir or yoghurt. It can happen because they contain live organisms, so called good bacteria and this makes them natural probiotics. Probiotics is good bacteria that help diversify your gut microbiome, so it improves your digestion and your immune function. Research has shown several probiotic genera can promote health, such as Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Lactococcus and Enterococcus. A certain yeast genus, Saccharomyces, is found to be beneficial as well. Kefir can be eaten by those with lactose intolerance when the fermentation time is long enough. The slow-acting yeasts, late in the fermentation process, break lactose down into ethanol and carbon dioxide. It has also been shown that fermented milk products have a slower transit time than milk, which may further improve lactose digestion. Your self made kefir is the cleanest and most economic solution for base ingredient of your musli. All milk made of nuts and grains is a result of a complicated process, mostly highly processed products, I would avoid their daily consumption unless you show clear symptoms, e.g. bloating, after eating clean kefir.
Why the flaxseed? Flaxseed contains the highest amount of powerful anti-carcinogenic substances, called lignans, among all edible plants. Lignans are shown to arrest and deter the growth of breast cancer in at least a dozen different ways. Lignans create more of the “good” kind of estrogen, and reduce the production of estrogen by fat cells. According to a study made in the University of Rochester, flaxseeds high in lignans also lengthen the menstrual cycle. If the cycle is only 28 days long consuming flaxseed daily may lengthen the cycle to 32 days. Lignans also lower the production of oestrogen by blocking the aromatase enzyme (similar to the anti-cancer drug Arimidex as Dr Christine Horner explains), block the oestrogen receptor (similar to anti-cancer drug Tamoxifen -see Dr Christine Horner), improve blood glucose and insulin resistance, decrease breast density, and show excellent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
Flaxseed is also abundant in fibre. High fibre diets are associated with a 54% lower breast cancer risk. Fibre helps to lower the amount of oestrogen in your body by binding to it in your intestines and then expelling it from your body.
Flaxseed is also rich in Omega-3 fatty acids that is quieting inflammation and decreasing the rate at which breast cancer cells divide in response to oestrogen. Inflammation is a key in the initiation and progression of a variety of diseases including heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, skin disease and cancers.
Why the cinnamon? Studies found that cinnamon increased pregnancy rates in sub-fertile Chinese women with PCOS. Cinnamon is a natural insulin-sensitizer -so it acts like metformin, but in natural way- stimulating glucose uptake by fat cells, which lowers both glucose and insulin levels. In a study of people with diabetes, cinnamon reduced fasting glucose and cholesterol. as a bonus, cinnamon lowers blood pressure (often elevated in women with PCOS and metabolic syndrome) and helps correct abnormal cholesterol levels. Cinnamon increases lean body mass. You don’t even need much for all this, the most effective dose is 1/2 teaspoon a day.
How to sweeten it? All sugars are inflammatory and disturb your endocrine system. Therefore I suggest to make this musli-like yammie nicer by your self-made berry jam that you sweeten gently with either cocos blossom sugar or raw honey, raw maple syrup, potentially erythritol (erythritol is highly processed though). This is the season of berries, you can either pick them often in the forests or buy them easily. From 1 cup fresh berry and 2-3 tbs cocos blossom sugar you could make a smaller jar of jam if you wanted to prepare it for the winter. On low fire bring the berries to boil and wait till they slightly brake their texture. That’s a perfect stage for using them later to season your sweets. Don’t cook them until they are creamy, you need fibre. Sweeten it after switching the fire off. When you sweeten it with raw honey or maple syrup, do it only when the jam is cooler than 40-60C.
When you want to keep some jam for the winter, boil your glass jars in water and a little vinegar for 5-10 minutes, with a clean spoon remove the jars from the water, and without touching the jam or the jar inside with your bare fingers, fill them with the freshly boiled jam. Turn them upside down, wrap them into towels or blankets and let them cool down slowly.
Most importantly:
Instead of highly processed milks made of different grains or nuts you use probiotics, kefir or yoghurt with living bacterium culture;
Instead of raw gains you add finely grinned flax seed, so you complete your recommended daily flax seed consumption;
You add a bit of cinnamon;
Sources:
Zhang J, Li T, Zhou L, et al “Chinese herbal medicine for subfertile women with polycystic ovarian syndrome” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2010.
Anderson RA. “Chromium and polyphenols from cinnamon improve insulin sensitivity” Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 2008.
Haggens C.J.A.N. Hutchings, B.A. Olson, at al. “effects of flaxseed consumption on urinary oestrogen metabolites in postmenopausal women” Nutrition & Cancer, 1999.
Christine Horner, MD. Waking the warrior goddess, ISBN: 978-1-59120-215-8, 2007.