How many times a week are you eating salmon? I suggest you aim for at least once because the health benefits are numerous. As you may have heard, salmon contains valuable omega-3 fats (essential fats) that are easily absorbed by your body (vegetable sources of omega-3s, on the other hand, need to be converted by the body to the form naturally found in fish). These omega-3 fats are important for a number of reasons including eliminating inflammation, keeping cell walls flexible and healthy and helping to form the protective coating around nerve cells.

On top of that, salmon is also high in the amino acid tryptophan, the protein component needed for the 'good mood neurotransmitter' serotonin and the sleep hormone melatonin. Salmon is also a great source of vitamin D, which also makes it a good winter food when we're not getting as much vitamin D from the sun. It's also high in protein, the hard-to-come-by mineral selenium, as well as magnesium and phosphorous.

So we've established that salmon is a welcome addition to a healthy diet, but don't stop there because to get the health benefits you need to buy the right kind of salmon and it all comes down to the health of our oceans. In addition to oil spills and other toxins dumped into our seas, there is rightful concern about the sustainability of our seafood as over-fishing also takes a toll on these troubled waters. I recommend checking Seachoice.org as a means of evaluating which fish and seafood, and even which type of salmon, are sustainable and safe (hint: wild Alaskan salmon is your best bet).

Here are five suggestions on preparing this health-promoting fish that are delicious but don't involve sugary sauces or processed foods. The best thing about these tips is that you can mix and match them, incorporating several ideas into one dish.

Natasha Turner, N.D. is a Toronto-based naturopathic doctor. She is the founder of the Clear Medicine wellness boutique and author of the bestselling book The Hormone Diet. Each week in her column for That's Fit.ca, Dr. Turner advises readers on how to remedy common health issues as well as improve their overall health.


According to the Canadian Cancer Society, in 2010:

• An estimated 23,200 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 5,300 will die of it.
• An estimated 180 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 50 will die of it.
• On average, 445 Canadian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer every week.
• On average, 100 Canadian women will die of breast cancer every week.

More encouraging current statistics suggest that mortality rates have declined in every age group since at least the mid 1980s. This is due in part to early detection, new drug therapies and also to lifestyle changes as the majority of women diagnosed with cancer change their diet and begin taking supplements.

Here are some simple tips to stay healthy and cancer-free.

Natasha Turner, N.D. is a Toronto-based naturopathic doctor. She is the founder of the Clear Medicine wellness boutique and author of the bestselling book The Hormone Diet. Each week in her column for That's Fit.ca, Dr. Turner advises readers on how to remedy common health issues as well as improve their overall health.


Weight loss is a delicate process, and one that's dependent upon healthy hormonal balance. One of the key components to slimming down successfully is to identify your current state of hormonal imbalance through a proper assessment, which then allows the formulation of a strategic formula for weight loss success. Let's consider six formulations for some of the main hormones that influence your body composition:

Insulin

Insulin is a signal in the body that allows glucose from the food we eat to be used as fuel. These sugars, if not used or burned off, will be stored as fat, so essentially, insulin is responsible for our flab. When nsulin levels are too high, weight tends to accumulate in the "love handles" area around the waist.

Feeling stressed? Andrea Donsky, co-founder of NaturallySavvy.com, explains how to eat to feel great and fight stress.

Q: How can food affect stress levels?

A: Believe it or not, they can. Certain nutrients such as L-Tryptophan are the building blocks for manufacturing serotonin – the feel good chemical – in our brain. Eating foods high in these amino acids, as well as B vitamins, magnesium and omega-3s, can help minimize the body's reaction to stress.

Q: Do certain foods contribute to stress while others relieve it? And which foods contribute to stress most and which foods minimize stress most?

A: Yes, the foods we consume definitely can help relieve our feelings of stress – or add to them.

• B vitamins: As the building blocks of our nervous system, B vitamins play an important role in brain functions such as mood and mental performance. Dark leafy greens and eggs are a good source of the vitamin.

The best stress-fighting foods after the jump:

Have you been unable to lose weight even with a healthy diet and exercise? Our bodies are wired to send us signals when something isn't right, but often we're too busy to hear them. The symptoms of hormonal imbalance are experienced by many every day. Recognizing and treating these subtle warnings is essential to weight loss, yet so many of us have been imbalanced for so long, we don't even know what normal is anymore.

Do you find yourself looking to a cup of coffee or glass of red wine when you are feeling down in the dumps? According to nutritionist Patrick Holford, author of The 10 Secrets of 100% Healthy People, the best way to feel happy is to encourage your brain to produce its own feel good chemicals.

Q: What does being "naturally happy" mean?

A: The brain naturally produces feel good chemicals – such as serotonin, dopamine and endorphins. Eating nutritious food, supplementing certain amino acids, exercising and many other actions such as sex, listening to great music, yoga, meditation or being in nature all promote these feel-good chemicals. There are no downsides to getting "high" these ways.

Q: Why is a natural high better than common alternatives?

A: Many drugs – legal, illegal and prescribed – are attractive precisely because they temporarily promote more feel good chemicals. This is true for caffeine and cocaine, alcohol, heroin and ecstasy. The problem is that they create artificially high levels of feel good chemicals, and the brain fights back by shutting down receptors for these feel good chemicals. This means you become deafer and deafer to the effects of your own natural feel good chemicals. The net consequence of this, in time, is that you need more of the drug to get the same effect. After time even more of the drug doesn't make you feel good – it just takes away the withdrawal.

Natasha Turner, N.D. is a Toronto-based naturopathic doctor. She is the founder of the Clear Medicine wellness boutique and author of the bestselling book The Hormone Diet. Each week in her column for That's Fit.ca, Dr. Turner advises readers on how to remedy common health issues as well as improve their overall health.


The verdict is in; the latest research shows our favourite treats, in moderation, can be good for us!

Dark Chocolate: A one-inch square per day

A research team from the University of Helsinki, Finland, asked pregnant women to rate their stress levels and document their chocolate consumption. Guess what they found? Six months after birth, the mothers rated their infants' behaviour in various categories including fear, soothability, smiling and laughter. The babies born to women who had eaten chocolate daily during pregnancy smiled and laughed more and were more active. Even the babies of stressed women who had regularly consumed chocolate during pregnancy showed less fear of new situations than babies of stressed moms-to-be who abstained. Awesome news for new moms and chocoholics!

Each week, holistic nutritionist Joy McCarthy tells us about a common health problem she's seen in her practice and how she came to a solution.

This Week's Client: Claire, a school teacher, single mom and self-professed chocoholic

The Problem: Claire was eating chocolate every evening, but it wasn't good quality, 85 percent dark, organic chocolate, her poison was processed chocolate bars such as Kit Kat and Snickers. She was desperate to kick her habit but felt she was literally addicted admitting that she was binging on these sugary treats after dinner.

Thus, she came to see me as she realized it probably wasn't a good thing that should couldn't go a single night without chocolate. And, of course, there was the fact the extra calories weren't doing her waistline any favours.

Does Claire's problem sound remotely familiar? I know I've been there, particularly during that time of the month. And it's not surprising to me as chocolate is one of the most common foods that women find themselves "addicted" to and want to break. So the question is, why are we so addicted to chocolate?

• Chocolate contains a component called theobromine which has a stimulating effect, but to a much lesser degree than caffeine, some find this addictive.
• Serotonin-connection: Foods with sugar give us an initial happy-high similar to that of serotonin. However, it's short-lived.
• Magnesium-deficiency. Dr. Natasha Turner, ND and women's health expert advises that when her patients experience chocolate cravings she has them supplement with magnesium.
• Craving sweets, especially chocolate is a sure sign you are an "emotional eater". If this describes you then read what Deepak Chopra advises for this, after the jump

These little chocolate covered bites of deliciousness are always such a hit at parties. Guests understandably think you slaved in the kitchen all day when you present them with an oh-so-fancy tray of these. But let me tell you, they are as easy as boiling water, if you have the right ingredients. Good quality ingredients are absolutely essential to making them memorable. If you are struggling with what to give your Valentine this weekend, why not surprise him or her with something sweet and homemade?

Chocolate is one of my favourite foods and we go waaay back. We've actually been best friends since childhood and I'm not alone. I once read an article that said women prefer chocolate to sex!! I thought that seemed like an outrageous statement at first, but apparently there are scientific reasons behind our love of chocolate. Not that I'm encouraging chocolate over sex of course - the two are equally important for Valentine's Day.

Not only does chocolate protect our DNA, it has these health benefits:

• Brain happy hormones: It stimulates endorphin production, which gives a feeling of pleasure and it contains serotonin, which acts as an antidepressant.
• May lower "bad" estrogen: That's Fit.ca columnist and naturopath Dr. Natasha Turner spoke about this benefit at a seminar I attended a few months ago. This is important for women with estrogen dominance, a very common health problem
• Heart Health: Dark chocolate contains flavanoids, antioxidants which protect the heart from free radical damage. In fact, some studies say dark chocolate contains nearly eight times the amount of antioxidants than strawberries!
• Lower blood pressure: These flavanoids also help to lower blood pressure through the production of nitric oxide which balances certain hormones in the body.

Recipe after the jump.

Do you find yourself eating mindlessly or shoving cookies into your mouth every chance you get? According to Judith J. Wurtman, author of The Serotonin Power Diet, it doesn't have to be that way. Here, she offers her opinions and tips on how to eat to turn off your hunger.

Q: What role does serotonin play in how and what we eat?

A: It plays an extremely important role. The most important and overlooked thing is that serotonin will shut off your appetite. When it's working properly, it makes you feel satisfied. You can eat less food than you would like to eat, and you can decrease your portion sizes if you need to lose weight, but triggering serotonin will make you feel full. My co-author, Nina T. Frusztajer, and I use this example all the time: You go to a restaurant for dinner, and you're very hungry, and while you're waiting for dinner to be served, you munch on some bread and a little salad. Twenty minutes go by before your dinner arrives and when it finally does you say, "Gee, I'm not hungry anymore." It's not from the roll or the bit of lettuce, it's because once you digested those carbohydrates your brain makes new serotonin and sends a message that you're not that hungry. It's a natural appetite suppressant.

Natasha Turner, N.D. is a Toronto-based naturopathic doctor. She is the founder of the Clear Medicine wellness boutique and author of the bestselling book The Hormone Diet.
Each week in her column for That's Fit.ca, Dr. Turner advises readers on how to remedy common health issues as well as improve their overall health.

Have you ever gone from one room to another, only to stop and wonder what you were going for in the first place? How many times have you known the word but just couldn't quite grasp it? How many times has someone's name been at the tip of your tongue? Is that what happens to all of us? Or is there something we can do to prevent this nervous system demise?

Your brain is made up of an intricate network of wires (neurons) that connect with each other via chemical messengers. Communication is a complex process. There are many factors involved, such as the integrity of the fatty coating (myelin sheath) around each neuron (which insulates the neurons and aids in signal transmission), or the chemical messenger levels in the end of one neuron and receptor endings on another. Even your mood or emotional state on any given day can affect your concentration and memory. It is well established that chronic anxiety or depression dramatically reduces your short-term memory and ability to focus.

Now, let's devise a simple plan to keep your brain working optimally...

How often do you come home late from work or after an evening of socializing with friends and stare into your fridge, hoping a magnificent meal will jump out at you? And when it doesn't, you end up eating a bowl of cereal right before bed. Sound familiar? (Don't worry, I used to do this, too.)

Unfortunately, you may be sabotaging your weight loss goals with this seemingly innocent habit. The reasoning behind this is simple: You eat a high-glycemic carb like a bowl of cereal and you increase your blood sugar levels. Insulin has likely been working hard all day long to balance your blood sugar from the sandwich you had a lunch or the muffin from breakfast and it might be getting a little tired. Not to mention the fact that at nine p.m. your metabolism is slowing down and you are likely not going to be hitting the gym to work off those excess calories. So what does insulin do with this excess sugar in your blood from that bowl of cereal? Well, it may store it as fat, sabotaging your weight loss or maintenance goals.

Now, ideally you don't want to scarf down an entire meal right before bed, but if you are hungry when you get home and it's after nine, there is a fabulous little snack you can eat that has some great benefits -- a simple, yummy smoothie.

Smoothie Benefits:

• Stabilizes and balances your blood sugar.
• Contains tryptophan, a precursor to serotonin (a brain-happy neurotransmitter responsible for keeping you calm, relaxed and getting you in the mood for sleep).
• Lowers your stress hormone cortisol (especially if you've been working late). Cortisol is a hormone that will shuttle glucose to the blood stream and may cause you to feel more hungry. By eating a balanced snack with carbs, protein and good fat, you can help lower your cortisol output.
• Tastes yummy!

Get a delicious smoothie recipe after the jump