The Optimise Health Blog

Here in the UK its the season for soft fruit. Fresh, wild and cultivated fruit is literally dripping from hedgerows and orchards all over the country at this time of year. Today for breakfast I had swiss musesli with fresh blackberries and blueberries - yum! This mix of fast acting fruit sugars with slow release carbs from oats and nuts is the ideal start, providing one of your 5-a-day. The added fruit bulks up the meal to keep you going for a long morning while giving added vitamin C to fight off cancer and colds into the mix. The sweetness of soft fruit avoids the need to add refined sugars to cereals for taste. You may eat less muesli as volume is replaced by the fibre in the fruit so overall its a healthy addition to your dietary intake of vitamins, energy and fibre! Collecting fruit is quite a relaxing past-time which can be beneficial for stress reduction and provides an excuse for some activity outdoors on a summers evening. So go get some blackberries from the near...

People have been eating oats for millennia. Oats have been traditionally linked to porridge and the Scots, but have made a resurgence in modern dietary advice due to new found cholesterol reducing properties. So why are Oats so good? Wel, when eaten they provide a slow release supply of energy as they take time to digest keeping you fuller for longer. Recent research has discovered that they absorb cholesterol in the digestive tract, taking it out of the system rather like a sponge. Oats are also an excellent source of fibre to keep the bowels regular, reducing risks of bowel cancer by avoiding slow transit and removing toxin deposits. Muesli is a mix of various rolled grains and nuts and dried fruit in an oat base. This forms an excellent combination as the nuts and dried fruit add taste, fibre and variety of energy sources and vitamins which are hard to gain elsewhere in the diet such as selenium which is good for the prostate. So even if you don't have high cholester...