NMA: Newsletter 5 Article 11

Ann McCloud Sneath holds up a mason jar holding two inches of sugar. “Do you know what this is?” she asks a room full of women gathered at the public library in Wayne. “This is a Pepsi and a candy bar.” Sneath, a former midwife, has been working in women’s healthcare for twenty-five years and she doesn’t beat around the bush.

“The American diet is laden with sugar, wheat and dairy- that’s coma food. Do you wonder why you get tired around three o’clock each day? When I was a child”, Sneath explains, “we used to go out to the ice cream parlor once in a while. Today, everyone keeps half-gallon containers of ice cream in their freezer. We used to go out to the pizza parlor once in a while. Now kids have pizza every day at school and often for dinner too”.

Sneath’s practice focuses on hormonal issues for women and you can’t discuss hormones without discussing nutrition. She knew she was not interested in ever taking pharmaceutical hormone replacement therapy herself and she didn’t want to offer it to her patients. Through her research she developed a plan to treat women in a way that empowered them by listening to what they had to say and offering them supplements and dietary changes.

“Most women know the cause of their fatigue, hair loss, weight gain, mood swings or hot flashes. They just need to have their intuition affirmed. The emphasis in healthcare must be on the whole woman, not just her cervix, uterus, or toenails. Women of all ages are like pregnant women in terms of their need for careful diet, exercise, and general health.”

Sneath holds up a poster of colorful, raw fruits and vegetables. “This poster was made by the American Cancer Society. Cutting sugar out of your diet and eating these are the best ways we know of to protect yourself from cancer”.

She stresses the importance of buying organic products whenever possible. Today our food is filled with pesticides, herbicides and petrochemical residues from plastics. These have estrogen-like qualities that upset the natural balances in our bodies. Too much of the wrong estrogen causes cancer. Another potential hazard is the microwave. When you microwave in plastic containers or use plastic wrap, you risk the plastic leaching estrogen-like substances into your food. Always heat up food in glass or ceramic containers, don’t let plastic wrap touch the food.

“The worse food I ever saw”, Sneath says, shaking her head, “was a hot dog wrapped in plastic for the microwave”.

She also cautioned against plastic sippy cups for your kids. Some of them may contain hormone-disrupting chemicals such as BPA (Bisphenol A: a chemical building block of plastic. You can spot these products by looking at their recycling code. Products containing BPA polymers carry the recycling symbol #7. For more information visit Children’s Health Environmental Coalition at www.checnet.org/healthehouse.

Sneath is not an advocate of taking excessive vitamins; she prefers to get nutrients straight from a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables. The exception to that is a cod liver fish oil gel tab, which is rich in cancer fighting omega-3 fatty acids. Fish is another great source, especially wild salmon. (The farm-raised salmon is too high in pollutants). Pregnant and breastfeeding women must avoid tuna, tilefish, swordfish, shark, king mackerel, red snapper, orange roughy and other high mercury fish. For further information on mercury and fish visit www.cfsan.fda.gov.

Sneath offers one last suggestion. Add 2 tablespoons of ground flaxseed to your food every day. It is high in omega-3 and studies have shown it may be as effective as the pharmaceutical drug, Lipitor in lowering cholesterol. (This research is being done by the University of Pennsylvania.) Flaxseed can be found in health food stores and should be kept in the refrigerator after being ground. (Whole flaxseed is not digestible.)

At the end of her talk, hands go up all around the room. Ann answers everyone’s questions with patience and kindness.

“It’s really not that complicated”, Sneath explains sympathetically. “Every day our bodies need EFA’s (essential fatty acids), protein, fruits and vegetables. Everything else is a treat.”