My Year Off – Part One Sugar

Sam Macdonald Hair | Hairdresser Trigg Scarborough North Beach Sorrento Karinyup Carine Duncraig

Part One, Refined Sugar…

This year is going to be, my year off. My year off what you ask?

Well every month this year, I will be giving something different up and this month it has been refined sugar…

Very early this month, I was extremely inspired by one of my guests deciding to give up alcohol for an entire year…

Now whilst I’m in awe of this, I myself don’t want to do it, but it did get me thinking…

What if every month this year, I give up something that’s probably not the best for good physical and mental health and see what changes it brings…

So I started on January 5th with refined sugar because I didn’t think it would be a hard one to start with.

Frankly after having a couple of weeks off, eating and drinking too much and perhaps not being as active as I should be, I didn’t want to challenge myself too much.

In the first 5 days of my challenge, I ended up cheating a little. Deciding this wasn’t a good start, I reset myself at the 10th of January. This means I have to go refined sugar free till February 10th, even though I am starting with mt next thing off on February 1st.

So I’m writing this and I haven’t quite finished but I know I’ll be fine because you know what, refined sugar is not a big habit of mine.

So what did I get out of this if it wasn’t that hard?

Awareness of many of the place that sugar hides.

At the beginning of the month, I was having one soy coffee every morning with half a sugar.

The half a sugar went immediately but it took me longer to register that the soy milk itself has a bit of sugar in it, so I have now gone to black coffee.

This works with the small daily fasting I now do which is only eating between 10am and 6pm everyday. I absolutely cannot wait ill 10am for my coffee so black it is!

Did you know that not all sugar is bad for you? I didn’t know this until this month.

Apparently the bacteria that lives in our guts actually needs sugar to do its thing, though it has to be sugar that is balanced with polyphenols. A great source of this is things like blueberries, pomegranate, strawberries and many other berry type fruits.

If this sort of information is something you’d like to know more about, this podcast from the ATP project is the bomb. I’m completely addicted to it!

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/the-atp-projects-podcast/id978635940?mt=2&i=1000401814252

I also discovered that kecap manis is basically sugar. I guess its obvious now I think about it, but that’s the point right, you have to think about it…

The big thing I got out of this refined sugar free month is awareness. I have a feeling I will be saying the same thing at the end of every month.

I’m happy to keep most of this month changes I have made in place permanently.

I will be keeping my coffee black, which has health benefits with the polyphenols in it when you don’t add milk. (Listen to the podcast) Also if a recipe calls for kecap manis, I will be coming up with an alternative.

I’m not going to give up chocolate as I don’t really eat it a lot. However I am going to think twice with what I put in my mouth when it comes to sugar…

So what am I giving up for February? Well I looked at the calendar and only 2 months this year have only 4 weekends. February and September and since its my birthday in September, it has to be February.

Yep you guessed it, I’m giving up alcohol!

Photo credit rawpixel.com

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The Facts On Grey Hair

$The Fact On Greay Hair \ Sam Macdonald Hair | Trigg Hairdresser Scarborough North Beach Karinyup Carine Duncraig$

Firsts things first, there is technically speaking so such thing as ‘grey hair’.

We have hair that has colour and hair that goes white. When they mix together, they look all different kinds of ‘grey’. A good way to think of it is like the pixels on a screen on you TV for example.

Here’s a quick bit of science before we get to the good bit.

Within your scalp/skin there are tiny things called Melanocytes which create colour for your skin. Your hair follicle stem cells have a little collaboration with these Melanocytes, to create the melanin (colour) of your hair. When we start to go white/grey this process stops on the affected hairs and they start to grow out of your scalp white.

For the most part, white/grey hair is determined by your genetics.

Generally you will start to see some white hairs mixing in with the natural colour of your hair, sometime in your 30s. However it can start in your teens or sometimes not until your late 40s or even 50s.

Ethnicity plays a part as well. Caucasians tend to go grey sooner than Asians, and red heads before everyone. Scientists are not yet aware why this happens.

In some cases nutritional and hormonal factors can affect how quickly this happens to you. Things like diabetes, and thyroid problems can also create premature greying, but for the most part, white/grey hair is determined by your genetics.

Chemotherapy can cause the hair to grown back completely white after treatment, as well as a totally different hair texture.

In some cases of Alopecia Areata, the hair also comes back totally white and often softer in texture than it was before.

Basically the only way to prevent getting white hair is to not live past 30 and we certainly don’t want that!

Turns out there’s a great reason for these fabulous individuals called hairdressers, we can sort it out for you and know one needs to know when you start getting your sparklers coming through!