I decided to write this because right now, at this very moment, I am experiencing one of life’s biggest pains that can be avoided fairly easily – withdrawal from caffeine. My symptoms when I withdrawal after several days of caffein consumption, which I do allow myself occasionally when I’m running ragged one week to the next, always consist of a gigantic headache that just won’t go away no matter how much stuff I take.

I can take Advil and Aleve til I’m blue in the face ( and not I don’t OD on them, I do watch my intake of pain relievers because they can significantly damage the liver if you’re not careful), and it makes nary a dent in my tension-filled, fuzzy thinking head.

However, even though my particular brand of caffeine withdrawal consists of unrelenting headaches, it doesn’t mean that everyone experiences the symptoms the same way.

Some people may become incredibly irritable, for example, when their body has become accustomed to caffeine intake and it is suddenly taken out of the diet for a day. Usually though, the symptoms are visible the day that you take it out of your diet, which shows how quickly your body perceives a withdrawal of this substance.

It can be “healthy” caffeine, like caffeine from a green tea or another natural plant that has antioxidant properties and also happens to have caffeine in it too, or it can be a big old chemical laced energy drink too, it doesn’t really matter, the withdrawal will be the same, depending on the levels of caffeine your body is used to consuming every day and how quickly you take it away or reduce it.

You can help caffeine withdrawal by gradually reducing your intake if you’re thinking about trying to either cut back on caffeine or cut down on it, to help avoid the more extreme bouts of withdrawal. You also can make sure you are totally, 100% hydrated with water at all times, this will help with any headaches that come on.

Also, try not to go cold turkey, maybe sip a little here and there until you are confident that your body has gradually reduced it’s physiological need for the substance. It’s like quitting anything else, you need to ween off of it first.

We all know that organic produce tastes better, and is always the better choice when it comes to picking out the fruits and veggies we eat from our grocers or local market. But, there are some foods that are even more vitally important to buy organic, because of their increased ability to absorb pesticides and chemicals, and house them more efficiently so that they may be delivered to your body easily. And that, my friend, is precisely what you are trying to avoid when you purchase organic fruits and vegetables!

One of the fruits that is much better for you when it is bought organic, is the delicious, convenient apple. Apples are a great snack food to carry around because they are so portable, and as long as you don’t drop them, they don’t blemish, and they don’t go bad quickly if they are kept in somewhat of a frigid or temperature controlled environment, making them the perfect healthy snack on the go if you are looking for a healthy snack.

They are very high in fiber, and they contain something called pectin, which is a fiber that delivers multiple benefits to the body, besides just “keeping you regular”. In fact, there are studies that this sort of fiber helps to keep you thin, which makes apples the perfect choice for dieters.

Besides the fact that organic apples taste a hundred times better than their mealy, and often flavorless, counterparts which are drenched in pesticides, they are much better for the body because the skin of apples is especially absorbent when it comes to pesticides. Not only that, non organic apples are coated in a sort of food grade wax preservative, that’s why they look so polished at the store.

When you buy an apple that has been organically grown, not only do you often find that they are larger and taste much better, but you are not ingesting the abundance of chemicals that you are when you are buying the non organic variety. Trust me, the taste alone of an organic apple, especially my favorite organic variety, the Fuji apple, you will never want to go back to non organic ones again, the flavor, texture, juiciness and crunch will keep you coming back for more – organic, that is!

I just talked last time about the importance of eating not only for weight control and health optimization, but also for the control and improvement of your concentration and focus. After all, how productive can you be in life if your diet isn’t allowing you to be able to sit down and focus intently on one accomplishment for several hours?

Chances are, your diet may be sabotaging your chances of concentration without interference, and your ability to think critically by the foods you choose.

And, what’s the most important meal of the day when it comes to your concentration and focus? Well, it is breakfast, of course. The reason that breakfast is so important is that it starts your body off on the right foot, so to speak. It basically makes your day start off with the best intentions by prepping your brain to focus on the tasks at hand so you can accomplish a lot.

It preps those neurons to bump off of eachother with precise inegrity, and if you don’t get the right foods, or enough calories, or enough of the right nutrients that will carry you and your blood sugar through the next several hours, then, well, you just might as well kiss the majority of your day goodbye.

One of the best breakfasts I’ve found that helps me get through to lunch without buckling from starvation or low blood sugar, is oatmeal and nuts. I love this combo not only because of the way it tastes, but also because it helps me get through several hours with concentrating, feeling pretty good as far as mood, and being generally highly productive for a while. I may even add some blueberries and maybe a tasty chicken sausage to it as well to increase the protein balance.

When we eat, we really tend to think of only a few things. First, of course, is what tastes good and what are we most in the mood for. Do we crave sugar, fat, salt? That dictates what we will eat, but mostly what dictates what we will eat is our lifestyle. If your lifestyle is to eat whatever you want and you’re not really concerned with your weight or overall well being, or even if you are and you’re just having a self proclaimed “off day”, then you are apt to pick something like the Mickey D’s drive thru, or some other comparable high fat, salt and sugar/carb meal.

However, if you are more health conscious, or are conscious of watching your weight, then you might want to eat something like a salad, or maybe some tuna and some veggies, and a piece of fruit for dessert. Maybe you would pick something that is premade, like a light meal made by Lean Cuisine or some other similar diet type meal.

What we don’t usually think about in most cases, but which I do think of incidentally, just because I’m a little neurotic about this, especially if I have something important to do which I feel requires critical, focused thinking, is how that meal will affect my concentration and focus over the next few hours. And, because it is closely related to concentration and focus, I also tend to think about what meals or combination of foods will provide me with the most blood sugar balancing combination of foods I can find.

This is one of the reasons I found The Zone Diet, by Dr. Barry Sears, to be so effective for me, because it combined all the foods that you need for optimum concentration, in all the right portions and combinations, so that your blood sugar and concentration and overall functionality were at peak levels for several hours after eating.

Some of the foods that you should consider for optimal concentration are things like blueberries, strawberries, apples (organic preferred here, since the skin tends to absorb a lot of toxins from bug spray), walnuts, almonds, olive oil, avocados, dark leafy greens like broccoli and spinach, and lean protein like fish. Chicken is ok, but fish is even better because it sticks with you more and it really is “brain food” because of the omega 3 fats it usually contains that help you concentrate for longer periods of time.

The recession has allowed a lot of businesses to step back and rethink both their mission and their business plan, due to changing spending habits and ideals that tend to come with economic downturns, and Whole Foods, the mega health food store that seems to still be popping up everywhere (I was just hoping today that either Whole Foods or their biggest rival Trader Joe’s would pop up around here, I would love that!)

Whole Foods is no exception. With their stock price plummeting over the past 2 years, which has just now started to get the swagger back in it’s step after it aquired a formal rival Wild Oats stores, and had some subsequent huge dips in profitability, Whole Foods really struggled to prove that their business plan still had solid ground in a changing vista of socieconomic change as well as American’s nutritional awareness and of course the rise in obesity that was happening for a good reason – because people either couldn’t afford to shop at higher end health foods stores, or because they simply didn’t want to.

Well, Whole Foods has fought it’s way back up, and their stock price is now doing much better, but their profits are still a little on the wane, which is to be expected as Americans inch back on decadence and go more for the tried and true bargain stores like Wal-mart, who also incidentally recently stepped into the organic and health food market, albeit with not nearly as much selection.

Whole foods CEO John Mackey has states recently that he intends for Whole Foods to gradually get more back to it’s healthy roots, and to maybe scale back on the higher end imported decadent foods that are more on the fattening side of things. While Whole Foods was known for a place to get healthy, organic foods, it also has gained a reputation for getting the more gourmet, naughty indulgences as well. He wants to change that and start focusing more on the organic, natural, healthy and nutrient rich foods that are life-giving rather than life-robbing.

Along with more food classes and cooking classes and clubs that focus on healthy living, he also wants to get labeling in the stores of all the food products that tells you how nutrient dense these foods are for their weight, so in other words, whether you are eating “empty calories” or not by consuming these particular foods, so that the consumer can make more informed decisions about what food choices to make for weight control and overall healthy promotion.