Words For All Website Helps Us Draw On Our Faith During Times Of Stress
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing)
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During times of great stress, such as we’ve experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us depend on our faith.
Dr. Pieter Noomen was a man who studied the Bible and other religions throughout his life. After completing his doctoral studies in Amsterdam, he moved to the US and was a senior minister of 3 churches and later a psychotherapist at a Los Angeles church.
During a period in his life when he was unhappy, Dr. Noomen experienced an extra-ordinary change that took him on a journey of communication with a presence on his innermost spiritual level. He believed that either directly or indirectly, all life stems from one common source and to be able to connect with that source would be the highest level of existence we can achieve on earth. Dr. Noomen passed away last year but through his website www.wordsforall.org, he left this special gift so anyone in the world can share his experiences.
An example from Dr. Noomen’s insightful writings at www.wordsforall.org on Joy:
When in ‘heaven’ issues do arise, viable options are considered until there’s a satisfying solution. There’s not a thing as a ‘loser.’ In the so called ‘Positive State’ no fear of rejection ever occurs. A ‘no’ means there is a better choice, but thank you for asking. Even when serious matters need attention or planned actions, any discussion is above board, they unite all involved factions. Unlike on earth, conceived by negative forces, fear nor anger fills any celestial agenda. They all trust the ultimate outcome, so in ‘heaven’ rules a happy laugh, a smile and a teasing twinkle.
Trish Stevens Caroline Shaw Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone 800.854.2207 Fax
Short On Inspiration While Dining In? My Pinewood Kitchen Dishes Out Some Quarantine Cuisine Tips
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With COVID-19 keeping us at home more and shopping less, home chefs need to get creative while cooking tasty, healthy meals for their entire family. Chef and author Mee McCormick is an expert: she healed herself of Crohn’s disease, gut issues, and other immune system challenges with whole food recipes when doctors couldn’t help her.
The mom/rancher/restaurateur can share tips for “quarantine cuisine” when you’re hankering for variety in your meals but you’re short on ingredients and inspiration. Perfect for social distancing, many of her recipes are made with items you probably already have in your pantry (for example, her Black Bean Chicken Chili and Immune-Boosting Chicken & Quinoa Soup); she can teach home cooks how to repurpose items to reduce food waste (cilantro pickles, anyone?), and reveal the healthiest foods you need in your pandemic pantry.
My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure offers more than 100 gluten-free, whole foods recipes that can be customized for Keto, Paleo, or vegans, making it a truly “all-inclusive” eating plan for the entire family. From smoothies, soups and salads, to dinners and desserts, every recipe is gluten-free and gut-friendly. • Curb Your COVID Anxiety with healthy chocolate with Mee’s Chocolate Avocado Mousse & Five-Ingredient Fudge Cups • Soups for Social Distancing – Black Bean Chicken Chili and Immune-Boosting Chicken & Quinoa Soup (nutritious, delicious, and they use what you likely have in your home already!) • Plenty of plant-based offerings • Reduce Waste: Learn how to make cilantro pickles from cucumbers, sweet potato chips from sweet potatoes, a falafel burger from canned chickpeas, and how to make your own healthier ketchup and mayonnaise if you run out • 10 Gut-Friendly Foods for your Pandemic Pantry
Mee McCormick is a rising Southern culinary and wellness innovator, restaurateur, author, TV cooking personality, farmer, rancher, wife and mother. She splits her time between Nashville and nearby Nunnelly, Tennessee; a tiny, unincorporated community in Hickman County, which is also home to her biodynamic farm and restaurant Pinewood Kitchen & Mercantile.
Mee authored her first cookbook My Kitchen Cure, which led to wild success and a book deal with HCI for her second cookbook My Pinewood Kitchen, published on April 14, 2020. She frequently appears on Today in Nashville, and she participates in nationally-recognized food festivals and events, spreading the same level of care and hospitality to audiences everywhere that she has become known for throughout the state of Tennessee. Visit: www.meemccormick.com or www.pinewoodkitchenandmercantile.com.
My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure/130+ Crazy Delicious, Gluten-Free Recipes to Reduce Inflammation and Make Your Gut Happy By Mee McCormick HCI BOOKS Released: April 2020/ $26.95 ISBN: 9780757323522 Available wherever books are sold
Trish Stevens Allison Janse Health Communications Inc. The Life Issues Publisher 1700 NW 2nd Ave Boca Raton, FL 33432 800.851.9100 [email protected] www.hcibooks.com
Emotional Brain Training – A New Antidote to Pandemic Stress
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing)
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We urgently need two vaccines, one for COVID-19, and another for the overwhelming stress the pandemic has caused. Bestselling author and health psychologist Dr. Laurel Mellin in her new book, “What’s my number?” One Simple Question that Unlocks Your Brain’s Power for Health, Happiness & Purpose, maps out a simple, scientific way to protect ourselves from the stress overload of our time.
“To be truly safe, we need 2 vaccines; one for COVID and the other for stress for 3 reasons: Stress suppresses immunity, making us susceptible to catching the virus. It is an underlying cause of hypertension, diabetes, and obesity, which increase COVID severity and its stress, resulting in an epidemic of mental health issues,” says Dr. Mellin.
When stress is triggered, harmful chemicals are activated by a ‘stress reactive wire.’ Using simple tools, we can switch off that wire and activate a ‘stress resilient wire’ that spews healing chemicals. “Using this system, stress can be good for us,” says Mellin. “The stress reactive circuits only change when activated and we switch them off.”
Consider the following:
Why is a stress vaccine so important for all Americans to have now? Stress suppresses the effectiveness of the immune system and is a root cause of the co-morbidities that make COVID more lethal. Stress hormones activate unhealthy habits like overeating, drinking, sitting and sleep problems, and stress is the underlying cause of our epidemics of anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
What was the scientific breakthrough that led to EBT? We discovered that the emotional brain has 5 resiliency pathways that mirror the emotional processing res-ponse mothers use to encode resilience in their children. We made techniques that enable anyone to use these 5 simple pathways anytime to release stress.
Why does our nation need to reboot our approach to stress with EBT? Research shows that traditional methods only use 2 of the 5 resiliency pathways, and work well in low stress but fail the test even at pre-COVID levels. Stress levels are more extreme now and our nation is ill-prepared to deal with these overwhelming levels. As a public health effort, we need to reboot for high-intensity stress effectiveness, and there is no better time to do it than right now.
Why does the EBT system make stress good for us? By resetting our brain to become highly stress-effective, we bring out its natural healing powers. It’s only during high-stress times when we’re connected to our feelings that we automatically update the brain with expectations that are in harmony with our changing world. If we are stress-effective, our daily dose of stress strengthens our resilience, which is the foundation of health and happiness and enhances our capacity to live a more purposeful life.
Dr. Laurel Mellin is the founder of Emotional Brain Training (EBT), a neuroscience-based solution to stress. She is a health psychologist and Associate Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine and Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Mellin is a New York Times bestselling author/researcher, speaker and clinical trainer. EBT is the only method that maps the emotional brain; the seat of health, happiness, spirituality, relationships and productivity in a structured way that empowers people to self-direct their own emotional health and well-being.
“What’s my number?” One Simple Question that Unlocks Your Brain’s Power for Health, Happiness & Purpose Released: April 2020 / Publisher: EBT Books ISBN-10: 1893265013 ISBN-13: 978-1893265011 Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Teresa Hinojosa Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 832.569.5773 Direct 281.333.3507 Phone 832.569.5539 Fax [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
Short On Inspiration While Dining In? My Pinewood Kitchen Dishes Out Some Quarantine Cuisine Tips
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
With COVID-19 keeping us at home more and shopping less, home chefs need to get creative while cooking tasty, healthy meals for their entire family. Chef and author Mee McCormick is an expert: she healed herself of Crohn’s disease, gut issues, and other immune system challenges with whole food recipes when doctors couldn’t help her.
The mom/rancher/restaurateur can share tips for “quarantine cuisine” when you’re hankering for variety in your meals but you’re short on ingredients and inspiration. Perfect for social distancing, many of her recipes are made with items you probably already have in your pantry (for example, her Black Bean Chicken Chili and Immune-Boosting Chicken & Quinoa Soup); she can teach home cooks how to repurpose items to reduce food waste (cilantro pickles, anyone?), and reveal the healthiest foods you need in your pandemic pantry.
My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure offers more than 100 gluten-free, whole foods recipes that can be customized for Keto, Paleo, or vegans, making it a truly “all-inclusive” eating plan for the entire family. From smoothies, soups and salads, to dinners and desserts, every recipe is gluten-free and gut-friendly. • Curb Your COVID Anxiety with healthy chocolate with Mee’s Chocolate Avocado Mousse & Five-Ingredient Fudge Cups • Soups for Social Distancing – Black Bean Chicken Chili and Immune-Boosting Chicken & Quinoa Soup (nutritious, delicious, and they use what you likely have in your home already!) • Plenty of plant-based offerings • Reduce Waste: Learn how to make cilantro pickles from cucumbers, sweet potato chips from sweet potatoes, a falafel burger from canned chickpeas, and how to make your own healthier ketchup and mayonnaise if you run out • 10 Gut-Friendly Foods for your Pandemic Pantry
Mee McCormick is a rising Southern culinary and wellness innovator, restaurateur, author, TV cooking personality, farmer, rancher, wife and mother. She splits her time between Nashville and nearby Nunnelly, Tennessee; a tiny, unincorporated community in Hickman County, which is also home to her biodynamic farm and restaurant Pinewood Kitchen & Mercantile.
Mee authored her first cookbook My Kitchen Cure, which led to wild success and a book deal with HCI for her second cookbook My Pinewood Kitchen, published on April 14, 2020. She frequently appears on Today in Nashville, and she participates in nationally-recognized food festivals and events, spreading the same level of care and hospitality to audiences everywhere that she has become known for throughout the state of Tennessee. Visit: www.meemccormick.com or www.pinewoodkitchenandmercantile.com.
My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure/130+ Crazy Delicious, Gluten-Free Recipes to Reduce Inflammation and Make Your Gut Happy By Mee McCormick HCI BOOKS Release Date: April 14, 2020/ $26.95 ISBN: 9780757323522 Available wherever books are sold
Trish Stevens Kim Weiss Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone 800.854.2207 Fax
Chocolate: A (Healthy) Anxiety Cure For COVID-19 Stress
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In this virulent climate of self-isolation and serious immune system compromises, author/chef, Mee McCormick is mindful of how a rise in anxiety can find us craving snacks. Instead of a quick fix, she goes straight to her kitchen with the intent to shift her gut bacteria – important for keeping our immune systems strong – as addressed in her new book, My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure. An expert whose personal experience healing her Crohn’s disease, gut issues and immune system challenges makes her well equipped to share the whole food recipes doctors couldn’t prescribe to help her.
Enter one of our favorite snacking foods, chocolate. Says McCormick, “Cocoa is a pre-biotic plant food – this means it feeds the good probiotic bacteria or, as I like to call them, The Good Gut Homies. These Gut Homies live in our intestines.”
McCormick says the consumption of dark chocolate has been found to lower the risk of diabetes and heart disease, protect our DNA and improve gut bacteria. She points to research at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research where they designed a study to test whether eating chocolate could mitigate the stress-related effects on the microbiome. Dividing participants into two groups – high anxiety and low anxiety and testing their urine and blood for stress markers – each participant ate one chocolate bar (containing 74% cocoa) a day for 2 weeks. The study found cortisol and adrenaline decreased as well as their p-cresol and Hippurate; metabolites created from the Good Gut Homies. High anxiety group levels dropped down to the levels of the low anxiety group – all within a 2-week period, thus the importance of cooking with cocoa.
Take, for instance, how combining cocoa with black beans takes our gut health to another level as they also have a profound influence on our microbiome by feeding the probiotic bacteria that support the mucosal lining of the intestines. Bean eaters have been found to have an 81% decrease in the harmful gut bacteria that break down the protective mucosal lining. Supporting our intestinal lining is key in preventing leaky gut. Mee McCormick has a Chocolate and Black Bean Hummus that will surprise you with its nutritiously delicious taste and texture. Shown below is an example of another chocolate -centered dish, a super easy recipe to whip up during COVID cabin fever.
This chocolate recipe is mixed with avocado in a delicious mousse (found on page 277 of Mee’s book, My Pinewood Kitchen):
Chocolate-Avocado Mousse (Makes 4 servings) In the bowl of a food processor, blend 4 ripe avocados until smooth. Add 1/3 cup local honey or coconut nectar*; 1 ripe banana; 1/2 cup raw cacao powder; 2 tbsp. organic coconut milk; 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract and a pinch of sea salt. Blend until the mixture is uniform. Pour into a dish and chill for 2 hours in a refrigerator or 30 minutes in a freezer.
If watching sugar, use an equivalent amount of stevia; however, coconut nectar is low glycemic.
Mee McCormick is a real food maven, community food advocate, a restaurateur, a rancher, a mother, and the author of My Kitchen Cure: How I Cooked My Way Out of Chronic Autoimmune Disease with Whole Foods and Healing Recipes. When Mee isn’t running her restaurant or working on her biodynamic farm, she is touring the country as a speaker and community kitchen organizer. She has appeared on national and local TV, on radio and in print nationwide. She is a regular on-air contributor to Today In Nashville and a vital part of the Nashville restaurant scene. Visit: www.meemccormick.com or www.pinewoodkitchenandmercantile.com.
My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure/130+ Crazy Delicious, Gluten-Free Recipes to Reduce Inflammation and Make Your Gut Happy HCI BOOKS – April 14, 2020 — $26.95 ISBN: 9780757323522 Available wherever books are sold
Trish Stevens Kim Weiss Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone 800.854.2207 Fax
Trish Stevens Claire Downing Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone 800.854.2207 Fax
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Code-At-Home Tech Toys Keep Girls Engaged, Away From Computer Screens, During COVID-19 School Closures
Are you looking for constructive ways to keep your children stimulated and engaged during the COVID-19 school shutdown? The line of groundbreaking toys from SmartGurlz Inc. uses an award-winning robotics platform to teach basic coding skills to girls as young as 6.
“Many girls’ toys lag behind in the development of spatial skills, hands-on problem solving skills, and confidence with coding and computer science,” explains SmartGurlz founder Sharmi Albrechtsen. “These are exactly the skills that SmartGurlz aims to develop.”
The SmartGurlz line of unique, interactive, self-balancing robots and dolls are controlled with the SugarCoded™ App than can be downloaded onto an IOS or android phone or tablet that once downloaded requires no Wi-Fi, just Bluetooth.
A full, step-by-step tutorial teaches basic coding strategies so young girls can maneuver the toys around obstacle courses of their own design. With several levels of learning and chal-lenges, the toy keeps kids occupied several hours a week for 4-6 months.
The company is also offering a free weekly webinar for parents and kids affected by COVID- 19 that includes getting started, tips and tricks, and weekly home assignments.
Girls playing with SmartGurlz products learn three key concepts:
Spatial Reasoning. Girls learn how to direct/orient their robots in new environments and in-terpret maps.
Computer Programming. Girls learn to program their robots using our kid-friendly coding App called SugarCodedTM.
Storytelling & Problem Solving. Girls learn to tell stories and solve missions via coding.
The SmartGurlz product line also includes an e-book series available through the App that focuses on the everyday adventures of four talented young women studying at the fictional New York Institute of Technology — N.I.T.
We’re all adjusting to a new normal. You can use this extra time at home to inspire the female tech leaders of tomorrow with toys that integrate the power of play with the power of technology.
SmartGurlz CEO Sharmi Albrechtsen is a robotics aficionado, educator, author and mom with a passion for closing the diversity gap in technology.
In 2015, Sharmi started SmartGurlz after becoming frustrated with the lack of STEM toys available for her daughter. The SmartGurlz flagship product, Siggy, was the first robotics product designed specifically for girls. More than 30,000 girls have been educated with SmartGurlz. SmartGurlz partners include BlackGirlsCode, Girl Scouts of America and Morrison Mentors.
SmartGurlz recently expanded its product line to include Smart Buddies (a joint-venture with Pitsco Education), which features a diverse set of characters suitable for both girls and boys, targeted towards schools.
Sharmi was recently given AdWeek’s Disruptor Award in Championing Gender Diversity in Advertising and Tech. She has also been named Women Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 by the Asian Chamber of Commerce as well as named a Morgan Stanley Multi-Cultural Innovation Lab fellow. Sharmi has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Financial Times, Fox Business News, Fox and Friends and CNN. She is also a featured TEDx speaker.
