Hi folks, it’s Abi here and  I am back with another blog about my gardening experience and today I’d like to focus on my lovely peppers. To avoid repetition, I won’t go into the details of how I grew my peppers as I used the exact same technique I used when growing my tomatoes which you can read here.  What I thought I would do is focus on what I learnt from growing peppers, some of the challenges I encountered and how I overcame these.

Over the past 8 months or so I have been trying to grow four types of peppers – sweet peppers (or bell peppers), Scotch bonnets, Jalapeno peppers and Caribbean seasoning peppers (very similar to Scotch bonnets, but without the heat). Growing these peppers has been a huge challenge and I suppose I was lulled into a false sense of security as I started my gardening journey with tomatoes and okras which have been a breeze in comparison to peppers. If I had to score myself on my pepper assignment I would have to give myself a big fat D, I have failed miserably. I have only had some success (after several attempts) with sweet peppers and it looks like my third attempt at Scotch bonnets may (I don’t want to speak too soon) have produced some results.  Here are some of the challenges that I encountered that led me to give myself a big fat D.

Germination Was a Struggle

Whilst reading up on how to grow peppers, I did learn that germination of peppers does take a lot longer than tomatoes, up to a month. So, I was prepared for that. On my first attempt I planted 24 bell pepper seeds and 24 Scotch bonnet seeds in my seed starting tray (egg containers!), and patiently waited. I watered my soil regularly and with no sign of seedlings at 3 weeks, I wasn’t worried, I thought: ‘well, I have read that it can take up to a month so no problem.’ I waited. After a month, nothing happened, but I was still optimistic and continued to wait patiently. At 6 weeks, I started to get worried and then after two months, I gave up and started again. This time I added Jalapeno and Caribbean seasoning peppers to my pepper collection and sadly I got the same results (I gave up after 6 weeks). I was disappointed. I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong, so after 4 months and 2 attempts I took a trip down to the St Kitts Agricultural Department to get some advice. They were lovely, really helpful and friendly. They explained it could be the seeds and that peppers can be a bit “particular” and I should keep trying. They did say maybe I should cheat and buy some of their young pepper plants which were growing well in their nursery and so I did, I cheated. I bought a row of pepper plants and transplanted them into the garden, thinking perfect I have a head start, but I had challenges with their growth too – I don’t think peppers like me.

I still wanted to try to grow peppers from seed so I tried again and again with the seeds and  finally I was able to get my bell peppers and some hot peppers to germinate (yay!). These are going well, but slowly.

Peppers Are Slow

Having cheated and bought some seedlings and then finally had some success with my own seeds, I have quite a few pepper plants growing in my garden. Starting my gardening journey with tomatoes spoilt me because they grew relatively fast and I was expecting the same for my peppers, but pepper plants, or I should say my pepper plants, were sloooow! They really are taking their own time (but it may be my growing technique as I am a newbie!). If you’re going to grow peppers, you’ll need some patience.  As I sit here now I do have some really cute bell peppers developing and I have harvested about two (Very tasty!), but the Scotch bonnet is growing extremely slowly. So, with all the attempts and buying of seedlings it has taken me about 5 months to get my first bell pepper.

They Need Lots of Water

I live in the Caribbean and it has been really hot over the past few months and some of the challenges with the slow growth could be because they weren’t getting enough water (I am not sure).  I may have underestimated the amount of water that they needed. I am always worried about watering too much and my plants dying of root rot, so I suppose I am a little conservative when it comes to watering.  A couple of months ago, we had a guest over and they were looking at my garden and she felt I needed to give my plants a lot more water. So, she took over for a few days and soaked my peppers. I was really worried thinking they might drown. After about a week, my peppers seemed to perk up and looked a lot happier. Since then I can’t say they have grown any faster but they certainly look a lot healthier.

My Peppers Were Bugged!

Just as I was having some success with my bell peppers and feeling really good about them, I ventured out into the garden one morning and found that my largest pepper plant had lost ALL its leaves. I was shocked. How did that happen in just one night or morning? I looked around and spotted the culprit. A sneaky little green worm, which I later learned was a hornworm, ate my pepper leaves for breakfast. It was so greedy! It didn’t leave anything, all the leaves were gone. I was so upset and I thought that was it for that pepper plant. To my surprise and joy, about a week later my pepper plant started making a come-back, some new leaves were growing happily. I’ll see how it goes, I have my fingers crossed that this plant will survive.

Now, everyday I check my garden for hornworms and I have spotted a few which I have swiftly thrown over the wall!

It Has Been Fun

Although I haven’t been so lucky with my peppers it has been a lot of fun and a nice challenge. It has also been very rewarding too. When I noticed my first pepper, I was elated and when I picked my first pepper I was so proud of myself for persisting, it really was worth it. Although the bell pepper was a lot smaller than I expected, it tasted lovely.

A Great Learning Experience

I have learnt a lot about peppers over the past few months. Through my reading I have learnt that there are thousands of types of peppers (Wikipedia says about 50,000!!), which came as a real shock to me, I was only aware of five different types of peppers before I started looking into them. This means there is a type of pepper for every taste bud (sweet, hot, fruity, woody and smoky) and peppers come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours (red, green, orange, yellow, purple and more).

When we look at the history of peppers, they are native to Mexico, Central America and South America. They made their way to Spain in 1493 and from there spread to other countries.

Peppers are also quite nutrient rich, their nutrient content is dependent on the type of pepper, but most peppers contain vitamin A, C, K, B6, dietary fibre, thiamine, niacin, folate, magnesium, copper, potassium and manganese.

I have also learnt some personal lessons about the importance of patience, persistence and hard work (they really gave me a good workout).

I’m really looking forward to picking more bell peppers and watching my Scotch bonnets develop. I’ll keep you posted.

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If you missed my previous blogs you can read them using the links below:

1. Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: An Introduction
2. Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: How I Got Started
3.  Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: Growing Tomatoes
4. Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: Growing Okra

Wednesday 16th May, 2018

We’ve had a  lot of interesting meetings, which we’re quite exited about so we thought we’d take a few minutes to update you on what we’ve been planning. 

We are absolutely delighted to have teamed up with Tola Okogwu, of My Long Hair Journey, to see what we can do to begin to address the issue of harmful chemicals in black hair products.

This issue has persisted for too long and we have to take a stand and do something about it. Before we do that, we’d like to hear from you and would be very grateful if you could complete the survey below, which should take about 5 minutes.

If you have problems with the survey below, you can complete it on Survey Monkey’s website here

We’re delighted to let you know that OH Services will be launching their first set of live online courses. Their first course will be on fibroids and will explore the emotional impact of fibroids. The course will be led by counsellor Olivia Haltman and will run over several weeks. This new course will allow attendees to:

• Look deeper into how fibroids can affect a woman’s emotions
• Explore how they can effectively change their wellbeing
• Focus on themselves and their healing
• Take their emotional awareness to another level

This course is open to women affected by fibroids, friends or family members of fibroids sufferers and health professionals who would like to better understand this issue so they can support their patients.

You can register your interest in taking this online course here  and if you have any questions about the course, please  email OH Services , call them on 00 44 577 565 218 or follow them on Twitter (@OHServices2018)

To find out more about OH Services, you can read our blog post here or visit their website.  You can also listen to our interview with Olivia Haltman about the emotional impact of fibroids by clicking on the link below.

Episode 7: We talk to counsellor Olivia Haltman about the emotional impact of fibroids

Back in November 2017 we published a blog post where we summarised research on hair dyes, relaxers and breast cancer, and (sigh) we’re sorry to say we’re back here again writing about black hair products and their harmful effects.

A couple of weeks ago the results from another research study was published and this showed that 80% of black hair products contain endocrine disrupting and asthma causing chemicals. Endocrine disrupting chemicals are of concern as some studies have linked these chemicals to hormone-related health conditions including breast cancer and fibroids.

Latest Research

On 25^th April 2018, researchers from the Silent Spring Institute and Battelle Memorial Institute in the USA published the results from their study which investigated the endocrine disrupting and asthma-associated chemical content of black hair products. They tested 18 black hair products that cut across 6 types of products. These included hot oil treatments, anti-frizz/polish, leave-in conditioners, root stimulators, hair lotions and relaxers. Within these products they tested for the presence of 66 chemicals including BPA, phthalates (a solvent) and parabens (a preservative).

What Did They Find?

Researchers found that the black hair products tested contained 45 endocrine disrupting or asthma-associated chemicals. They stated that they found cyclosiloxanes (used for conditioning and spreadability), parabens and the fragrance marker diethyl phthalate (DEP) at the highest levels, and DEP most frequently in these products.

In their study, root stimulators, hair lotions and relaxers more frequently contained nonylphenols, parabens and fragrances whilst anti-frizz products tended to contain cyclosiloxanes.  Worryingly hair relaxers for children contained five chemicals that are regulated by California’s Proposition 65 or were prohibited from being used in the EU.

What we found particularly disturbing was that ingredients lists were incomplete, meaning that the researchers found chemicals in the products that were not listed on product labels. This is disturbing because many women do try to avoid chemicals such as parabens, but researchers found that butyl and ethyl paraben were never listed on labels and 12% of products with methyl paraben didn’t include this on their label. This is extremely misleading and means that women can’t make an informed choice about the products they purchase. Other chemicals that were frequently not included on ingredients lists were fragrance chemicals and cyclosiloxanes.

You can listen to  Dr. Jessica Helm from the Silent Spring Institute and Tola Okogwu from My Long Hair Journey discuss this latest study in the video below.

California’s Proposition 65 and EU Regulation

There are regulations in place to protect consumers and deter manufactures from including chemicals that are hazardous to our health in their products. Two such regulations are Proposition 65 and the European Union Cosmetics Directive.

California’s Proposition 65, more formally known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, aims to “help Californians make informed decisions about protecting themselves from chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” By law, all businesses selling products to people in California must ensure clear and reasonable warnings are included on items that contain harmful chemicals so that people are aware that they will be exposed these chemicals. Some chemicals that are regulated by Prop 65 are o-phenylphenol, BPA, phthalate, ethanolamine and benzophenone.  Businesses don’t have to include any warnings if the chemicals are at concentrations that don’t pose a health risk. Now, in this current study,  it was found that even though two no-lye hair relaxers for children contained a Prop 65 regulated chemical, no warnings were included, and researchers made the point that these would not meet the Prop 65 labelling requirements.

The EU Cosmetics Directive states that all cosmetic products sold in the EU must be safe and they prohibit the inclusion of chemicals in products that have been shown to cause cancer, female reproductive toxicity and developmental toxicity. Some of the compounds prohibited by the EU include BPA, phthalate, alkylphenol and ethanolamine. In this study, some products were found to contain products prohibited by EU law – BPA, phthalate, nonylphenol and diethanolamine. So these products would not be fit for sale in the EU.

What Can We Do?

Well… ladies, we must demand better from brands. We must see what we can do to get companies to remove these chemicals from their products. In the meantime, we have to be very selective and only buy from brands that sell products that are safe, but this can be hard to do if brands are not listing all the chemicals in their products on their labels.

 Here are some brands that we use, or have used in the past, and we believe are safe, but we recommend that you do your research too.

Afrocenchix
Almocado
Camille Rose Naturals
Pure Goodnes
Root2Tip
Shea Butter Cottage
Shea Decadence
Yaphene

Finally, we are currently in discussions with the team behind My Long Hair Journey to see what we can do to start addressing this problem. We’ll keep you updated and let you know how these discussions go. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts on this topic. How do you feel about this new piece of research and are you concerned about the hair products that you use?

More Information

You can download the full research paper below as well as the study’s supplementary material which lists the brands tested in this study and information about EU regulation and California’s Prop 65. And, you can purchase some of the products from the brands listed above on Amazon below.

We are so delighted to announce that we will be launching our fibroids self-care webinar series in the autumn. The aim of this series is to empower women affected by fibroids with information, knowledge and practical tips to take action to improve their health and wellbeing.

The series will include four webinars led by experts in the field of gynaecology, nutrition, exercise and mental health with a fifth session being an Our Stories session. In this final session attendees will hear from women who have conquered fibroids and will have the opportunity, if they wish, to share their own experiences. We will also explore challenges, useful tips and discuss solutions. Lake Health and Wellbeing will use this session to listen, understand the current experience of women with fibroids and work with attendees to explore how we can best support women with fibroids.

If you have fibroids, this webinar series will be perfect for you. It will give you the opportunity to meet other women with fibroids and provide you with access to experts in the field, all from the comfort of your home. This is not to be missed.

The webinars will be held every two months and there will be a small charge.

For more information and to register your interest, please contact us on events@lakehealthandwellbeing.com  or you can sign up to our fibroids mailing list here

More details will follow very soon.

Disclosure: this post contains an affiliate link. Find out more here

Wednesday 9th May, 2018

In this episode we put the spotlight on an interesting public health project, Brothers Thrive, a community-based mental health project aimed at black men in New York.

In today’s blog post Abi shares her sweet and sour broccoli recipe – yum!

We recently changed our diet and started cutting down on the amount of meat we consume. We had already pretty much cut out red meat (we only eat this rarely) and now we eat chicken or fish once or twice a week, the rest of the week we are vegetarian, but our diet is flexible and we’re not perfect, we do indulge every now and again, our overall aim is to achieve a balanced, healthy diet.

I am constantly looking for creative vegetarian recipes. After reading online that many vegetarians replace chicken with cauliflower and broccoli to make dishes like cauliflower buffalo wings (huh!), I decided to get a bit creative and try sweet and sour broccoli.

We love sweet and sour chicken and I have been making a very simple version of this at home for years, so I simply used this tried and tested recipe but replaced the chicken with broccoli, and oh boy, it was a hit! We absolutely loved it, so much so that I had to make it again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke and it was just as good the second time around. It was delicious and honestly (it may be hard to believe) it tastes just like the chicken version.

I loved this dish so much that I decided to share the recipe. If you’re looking for an easy and delicious way to introduce more vegetables into your diet, then I highly recommend you try this recipe. If you do try it, please let me know what you think.

Happy cooking! (and eating!)

In today’s blog post we hear from Silvia who shares her experience with fibroids and explains why she started her blog, Life With Fibroids.

Well, let’s start off with a little bit about me. My name is Silvia and I am married to an amazing man who is so supportive and have an adorable dog who from time to time drives me nuts, but that is okay because I adore him.  I have fibroids and have been living with them for two years and have come to a place in my life where I want to share my story and my personal opinions and connect with others and learn about their stories as well.

I was diagnosed with Uterine Fibroids two years ago officially but have lived with them for just about 6 years now and since then I have done a lot of research but there is still so much more to do, so in no way am I saying I am an expert and I am not a doctor.  I decided to start my website, Life with Fibroids,  to create a space where women of all ages, creeds, backgrounds, religions, and parts of the world could come together and know that having fibroids does not mean that you are alone. Although fibroids is very common it is crazy to think that it is not a very talked about subject for most women and there is really no place to connect with others and ask how they are living with it and going through life with this. I was diagnosed with Uterine Fibroids two ago and they do affect my life they make me have the worst menstrual cycle of my life for example I have more bleeding and the first couple of days is so painful and the cramps sometimes can drop me to my knees. It hurts so much let me just say.

I guess, for me at least, that is the biggest inconvenience and it is so crazy to think that they can develop like they did for me because of the fact that your body can produce too much oestrogen and they can grow over time as well and can cause other problems like infertility if they block the Fallopian tubes and get in the way of implantation but to know that it is on a case by case situation and if you come to find out  that you have them and are worried about that then I would definitely set up an appointment with your doctor and get your situation checked. I did and thankfully they are not going to stop me from getting pregnant but I think for the best option since they have gotten bigger is to get them removed before we try for a baby again since I have experienced a miscarriage due to fibroids and want to avoid any further complications due to fibroids, so that is another reason for me to write this post and try to reach out to those who are in the same situation and be an outstretched hand and let others know you are not alone and I am here for you. I guess I just want to help people share and get connected and help support each other because there are lots of stories like mine but there are also lots of stories that end up with a happy mommy and a happy baby, so like I said it is case by case and if I can help even one person then I think that writing this post and creating my blog, Life with Fibroids, is worth it.

Now let’s get a few things clear about fibroids first:

1. Fibroids are not cancerous and from what I have come to learn not life threatening, so you can take that stress off your mind right now.
2. What my doctor has come to teach me is that for every woman’s fibroids are different and can affect them in different ways and with fibroids especially the kind that I have which is Uterine Fibroids is always a case by case situation so in no way am I saying that I know everything about you and your situation so please feel free to write about your story and connect with others.
3. Fibroids can happen anywhere in the body but the most common fibroid I have come to read about is Uterine Fibroids which is what I have.
4. Even though many women have fibroids they can go their entire lives without knowing it due to having no symptoms and doctors not having any indication to look for them.
5. Women who do have them and do have active symptoms can have a variety and cannot have their daily lives affected in any way and then there is the other side of the coin where women have their everyday life come to a standstill and cannot function and then of course there is the middle ground where you have good and bad days but nothing too drastic, which for the most part is where I fall, well for the most part anyway.
6. My final point on this never-ending list is that for every woman with this diagnosis there is a story and it is different and each and everyone is valuable and important.

So with all that I have said again I just want to say that I created my blog, Life with Fibroids, as a place to connect and share your individual stories and remember that you are not alone and you are one of a kind and that you and I and everyone else living and not living with this is beautiful and amazing. Please feel free to visit my blog, share your stories and help me to connect with others from all over. Thanks for taking the time to read my post and even though I am not the most talented writer I want to share my story and hope that it can help at least one person out there. Thank you again for visiting and taking the time to read my post. At Life with Fibroids I do my best to keep everyone up to date on what is happening with me and my fibroids and try my best to keep it active and hopefully on-going. Have an awesome day and you rock!

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Lake Health and Wellbeing  would like to say a big thank you to Silvia for sharing her experience with fibroids, we hope that through her experience you have gained some useful insight into this condition. You can find out more about Silvia at Life With Fibroids

If you have any questions or comments please do leave these in the comments section below. 

Disclosure: this post contains an affiliate link. Find out more here

Wednesday 2nd May, 2018

In this week’s episode we have a really interesting and insightful conversation with Le’Nise Brothers, the founder of Eat Love Move, about fibroids, hormones, diet and lifestyle.