Seeds to enjoy all year 'round

When my children were small, I used to love when we’d carve out all those pumpkins during the upcoming weeks.  I love the taste and smell of roasted pumpkin seeds.  Up until the past five to ten years, you did not easily find pumpkin seeds on the shelves of your local store all year round, but fortunately thing have changed.

Pumpkin seeds, also known as pepitas, offer nutritional benefits that should not be passed up.  They have a delicately sweet and chewy texture.  Although the shells are quite edible, some prefer the varieties without shells.

Native Americans were among the first to notice the health benefits of pumpkin seeds. They referred to them as cucurbita and used them to treat kidney problems and to eliminate parasites from the intestines.

For those concerned with urinary and prostate conditions, pumpkin seeds appear to improve bladder function and difficulty with urination.  People who have suffered from kidney stones will be glad to hear that they prevent calcium oxalate stone formation, which is the most common form of kidney stone.

Depression?  Pumpkin seeds contain L-tryptophan, which has been effective in treating depression. Because pumpkin seeds are high in zinc, they are a natural protector against osteoporosis and your immune system will benefit from this as well.

Some form of inflammation affects many individuals.  Pumpkin seeds have a natural anti-inflammatory (omega-3) affect as well as containing magnesium.  Just ? cup of pumpkin seeds contains 92% of your minimal daily need for magnesium.  Most Americans are extremely deficient in magnesium as evidenced by symptoms of nighttime muscle cramping and constipation.

These nutritional wonders also contain phytosterols, which have been shown to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol but only when eaten raw roasted.  In addition, they may be effective in the prevention of many different forms of cancer.

As a colon therapist I am privileged to see intestinal parasites on a regular basis.  I commonly recommend pumpkin seeds, as parasites hate them.

Mostly females will suffer from chronic anemia.  Pumpkin seeds may help alleviate this condition as they contain iron.  A half cup provided you with half your daily dose of iron and is much easier to tolerate that those pills.

Pumpkin seeds are a high-protein (10g in ? cup of raw), low calorie snack that also provides the body with manganese, phosphorus, calcium copper, some of the B vitamins and Vitamin K.  They also contain the essential omega-3 fats. Many individuals pay to take these supplements in synthetic forms.  Vitamins and minerals that have been created in a lab are far less efficient than getting them from food sources.  Your body actually knows what to do with them when they come from foods, they are much more efficient and require less of a dose.

Pumpkin seeds can be added to salads, cereals or can just be eaten plain.  Although many prefer to eat them roasted, the benefits of eating them raw are worthy to note.  Eating them raw does not mean eating them wet — they are just dehydrated at temperatures no higher than 105 degrees Fahrenheit in order to preserve the beneficial enzymes.  Some individuals add tamari, some just add a small amount of hand harvested sea salt.

I hope you might now consider adding pumpkin seeds to you diet year round and just not this time of year.  I hope some of you decide to carve out a few extra pumpkins this year in order to stock up!

Peru travel experts share Machu Picchu memories

I choose not to recall the time I passed a kidney stone there, or another occasion when a Japanese woman wearing high-heeled shoes, just ahead of me, fell to her death off Huayna Picchu. Notwithstanding these dramas, Machu Picchu has been very kind to me, and I’ll honor her (she is female, of course) with one of my fondest memories.

Back in the nineteen-eighties I was dragging my hot, sweaty boots down the last leg of the Inca Trail past Intipunku, facing that amazing view, when I noticed that something unusual was afoot down on the esplanade.

A crowd, tiny at this distance, swarmed around the eastern terraces, and as I watched, formed up and seemed to settle into place. Then I heard strange noises, formless and eerie, which resolved themselves into the sound of an orchestra tuning its instruments.

The volume swelled as I neared the Watchman’s Hut and coalesced into the opening bars of a classical piece. After a brief hassle with the authorities — who inevitably thought everyone should pay extra for this unannounced privilege but weren’t sure how much they should charge, or whether they should really charge at all, or whether actually a small tip would do the trick — I found myself seated with a group of my trekking clients and other visitors on the terraces below the Temple of Three Windows.

Gathered across the esplanade from us, solemnly attired in black and white on that warm, sunny day, sat the very same Lima Symphony Orchestra that will be playing there — probably on that very same spot — before the incoming and outgoing politicos and assorted dignitaries this week.

Why that spot? Because orchestras know a thing or two about acoustics, and so, evidently, did the Incas. The orchestra and choir had taken their stand within a large recess at the foot of what Hiram Bingham charmlessly named the Industrial Sector. The sound, often wispy and fugitive in open-air settings, leapt at us off the terraces, full-throated in the mountain air.

Inspired by the Incas’ acoustical magic, the musicians surpassed themselves. They were peforming Mozart’s Requiem, a piece that would wring blood from a stone.

Memory is hazy here, but I seem to remember that the performance was followed by a rapt, lengthy silence. Then the audience recovered its senses and remembered to clap.

Zezima: 'Jest what the doctor ordered'

You have to have the patience of a saint to deal with a devil of a patient.

That's what I learned recently when I went to the hospital for a ureteroscopy, a surgical procedure taken from the Greek words "ureter" (an extremely sensitive area of the lower anatomy) and "oscopy" (invaded by a scope the length of a boa constrictor).

The intention was to blast to smithereens a kidney stone that, because it appeared to be composed of concrete and asphalt, was barely dented by shock waves in a less invasive but unsuccessful procedure a few weeks earlier.

Despite the persistent fear that I would wake up as the lead singer for the Vienna Boys' Choir, I was in a pretty jaunty mood as I sat in the pre-op unit with my wife, Sue, who was at my side to provide comfort, support and, if necessary, information about my living will.

"Are you diabetic?" asked Janice, a nursing assistant.

"No," I replied. "I'm Italian." Janice laughed.

"It gets worse," Sue promised.

Sure enough, when Janice asked if she could take my blood pressure on my left arm, I said, "Either arm is fine. I have it narrowed down to two. Good thing I'm not an octopus or we'd have to do this underwater." "Is he always like this?" Janice asked Sue.

"Yes," Sue responded. "I just ignore him." I helpfully pointed out that I hadn't even been given drugs.

"If I gave you sodium pentothal, you'd be gabbing up a storm," Janice said.

"Please," Sue begged, "not that." "Do I have a pulse?" I asked Janice.

"Yes," she said. "It's 64. And your oxygen level is 100 percent." "I never got 100 on any test in school," I said.

"You just aced oxygen saturation," Janice replied.

"Too bad the oxygen isn't going to my brain," I noted.

Sue nodded.

Mary, a nurse, came in to continue the prep work.

"Turn toward me," she said.

"I'm taking a turn for the nurse," I told Sue.

Mary looked at Sue and said, "You're his daughter, right?" Sue chuckled. Mary smiled and said to me, "I'm giving it right back to you." She was just what the doctor ordered: nice, funny and very good at her job.

Then the doctor (or one of them) came in.

"I'm Dr. David Paul, your anesthesiologist," he said.

"What's up, doc?" I asked in my best Bugs Bunny voice.

"I'm going to knock you out," he said.

I thought Sue, Mary and Janice would kiss him.

After a brief discussion about allergies ("I'm only allergic to myself," I said), the doctor left and Brian, a nurse anesthetist, came in.

"Do you have any questions?" he asked.

"Yes," I responded. "Will you be giving me domestic beer or an import?" "You'll be getting craft beer," Brian said. "It's the best-quality brew." He should know because a friend of his owns a brewery. "By the way," Brian added reassuringly, "I won't be having any during the operation. I'll wait until tonight." "Cheers!" I said as Brian left. Then my urologist, Dr. Albert Kim, who would be performing the procedure, came in.

"Are you behaving?" he asked.

"Of course not," I replied.

"Good," he said with a smile. "See you in surgery." The operation was a success. I'm grateful to Kim and everyone at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson, N.Y., for taking such good care of me.

The next day, Louise called from the hospital to ask how I was feeling.

"Couldn't be better," I said. "It's been a rocky road, but the stone is gone." "Did she get the joke?" Sue asked after I hung up.

"I think so," I answered.