At Kooshi Gourmet, we understand the importance of nourishing your body with healthy and delicious food. But did you know that taking care of your mind and emotions can also play a role in boosting your immune system? In fact, recent studies have shown a correlation between poetry and the immune system, suggesting that expressive writing can have a positive impact on our overall health.

What is Expressive Writing?

Expressive writing is a form of therapeutic writing that involves exploring your emotions and experiences through written words. It’s a way to release pent-up feelings and process difficult experiences, which can be incredibly healing for both your mental and physical health.

Studies have shown that engaging in expressive writing can have a variety of benefits, including reducing stress, improving sleep, and boosting immune function. In fact, one study found that participants who engaged in expressive writing for just 20 minutes a day experienced a significant increase in the number of immune cells in their blood.

The Correlation Between Poetry and the Immune System

So, what does poetry have to do with the immune system? Well, it turns out that writing poetry can be a particularly effective form of expressive writing. This is because poetry often involves exploring complex emotions and experiences in a creative and metaphorical way.

One study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles found that writing poetry can help to reduce inflammation in the body, which is a key factor in many chronic illnesses. The researchers found that when participants wrote about traumatic experiences using poetic language, they experienced a significant reduction in levels of interleukin-6, a protein that is associated with inflammation and a weakened immune system.

How to Incorporate Poetry into Your Wellness Routine

If you’re interested in incorporating poetry into your wellness routine, there are a few different ways to get started. Here are a few ideas:

• Write your own poetry: Even if you’ve never written poetry before, it can be a powerful way to explore your emotions and experiences. Try setting aside some time each day to write a poem about something that’s on your mind.
• Read poetry: Reading poetry can be a great way to connect with your emotions and find inspiration for your own writing. Check out some of the classic poets like Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Robert Frost, or explore contemporary poets on social media.
• Attend a poetry workshop: If you want to take your poetry writing to the next level, consider attending a poetry workshop. These can be a great way to connect with other writers and get feedback on your work.

At Kooshi Gourmet, we believe that nourishing your body and mind go hand in hand. By incorporating expressive writing and poetry into your wellness routine, you can boost your immune system and promote overall health and well-being.

The Sugar Association 

We may look around at the wealth of reliable scientific information surrounding just about every aspect of our lives and take it for granted, however the emergence and widespread adoption of such information is a relatively novel occurrence in the grand scheme of things. 

In the 1960s a trade group named "The Sugar Research Group" known today as the "Sugar Association" funded a research paper that was later published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine that downplayed the link between sugar consumption and heart health, and cast the blame on to saturated fats. It could be argued that the reason you see a low fat variant of almost every product at your grocery store links back to this article. The biased and inaccurate information presented in that article propagated it's way through government public health programs to become commonly held knowledge in most households before other researchers had time to discredit it.

As it turns out, fat is not your enemy! A high fat diet can be so beneficial in fact, that is it used in the treatment of serious ailments, and even in undoing the damage caused by a high sugar intake. 

So What is the Ketogenic Diet ?

The ketogenic diet is a very low carbohydrate and high fat diet that shares many similarities with the famous Atkins diet. It consists of drastically reducing carbohydrate intake and replacing it with with fat. After sticking to the diet through the adaption period, referred to colloquially as the "keto flu" because of the flu like symptoms of carbohydrate withdrawal that some people experience, your body becomes incredibly efficient at utilizing fat for energy, and your liver starts breaking down fat into "ketone bodies" which are a superior energy source for your brain compared to glucose. As a result many of the loyal followers of the ketogenic diet acquire a mind state commonly referred to as "keto clarity", a state of heightened mental focus and awareness, increased productivity and elevated mood (trusted sources: 1,2,3,4,5,6)

The keto diet can massively decrease your blood sugar and insulin levels, which are both inflammatory markers, and combined with the ketone bodies the diet can provide a wealth of health benefits including potentially treating and/or preventing diabetes, cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease (7,8,9,10)

Different Types of Ketogenic Diets

There are several versions of the ketogenic diet, including:

• Standard ketogenic diet (SKD): This is a very low-carb, moderate-protein and high-fat diet. It typically contains 75% fat, 20% protein and only 5% carbs.
• Cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD): This diet involves periods of higher-carb refeeds, such as 5 ketogenic days followed by 2 high-carb days.
• Targeted ketogenic diet (TKD): This diet allows you to add carbs around workouts.
• High-protein ketogenic diet: This is similar to a standard ketogenic diet, but includes more protein. The ratio is often 60% fat, 35% protein and 5% carbs.

 However, only the standard and high-protein ketogenic diets have been studied extensively. Cyclical or targeted ketogenic diets are more advanced methods and primarily used by bodybuilders or athletes.

The information in this article mostly applies to the standard ketogenic diet (SKD), although many of the same principles also apply to the other versions.

The Kooshi™ Take on The Keto Diet

At Kooshi Gourmet we are constantly reimagining what your experience on the Keto diet can be!

Because carbohydrates are much more economical and easier to source and store than high quality fats and proteins, the majority of your food options on a daily basis will contain high amounts of carbs, and the healthier keto-friendly options are few and far between.

Imagine what you could accomplish if you had a personal chef sourcing the highest quality fat and protein rich ingredients, hand preparing them into meals you've come to expect from fine dining establishments, and delivering them to you fresh, every day! 

Kickstart your keto diet with our 5 Day Keto Meal Plan which is specifically designed to get you into ketosis ( it takes most people 3-5 days to become keto-adapted) 

Nutritional Details

• Our Keto program contains no grains, no fruit, no tubers, and no refined sugar
• The emphasis is on energy rich proteins, nutrient dense superfoods, and healthy fats.
• Prepared with minimal carbohydrates and excludes high carbohydrate vegetables
• Ketosis is one of the effects of this program which will spike your energy levels, begin to shed excess weight, tone and reshape the body for optimal health and fitness

 

We owe many of our current nutritional philosophies to our ancestors - in some cases our ancient ancestors. Let's explore 4 major cases.