Bison Steak with Horseradish Sauce

Bison Steak with Horseradish Sauce
By Laura LaValle, RD, LD

There is nothing like a delicious red meat with horseradish sauce for a pleasing taste combination. Try this old favorite using the new and popular red meat alternative, bison. As an alternative to conventionally raised beef, bison is lower in fat and cholesterol and even though grass-fed, it is not wild tasting, but has a very pleasing rich flavor.

Serves: 4
(A serving equals one bison steak plus one tablespoon horseradish sauce.)

Healing Nutrient Spotlight
Excellent source of iron, zinc, selenium
Good source of riboflavin, niacin, magnesium

Ingredients*
4 6- to 7-oz. bison filets
1 T. grapeseed oil
Grilling seasoning -- choose any favorite
Horseradish Sauce
1/2 c organic mayonnaise
1/4 c fresh parsley, chopped
1 T. prepared white horseradish

*Select organic ingredients for optimum nutrition.

Preparation
Bison meat is very lean. For leaner meats like this you'll get better results cooking at lower temperatures and cooking a little longer. Mix the oil and grilling seasoning together and rub into filets. If you have time, it is good to let the meat marinate in the oil and seasonings for 30 minutes or so. Sear the filets first, then lower the heat and cook to desired doneness.

To prepare the horseradish sauce, in a small bowl stir together mayonnaise, parsley, and horseradish. Season with your favorite salt and pepper, if desired.

Nutrition
360 calories, 20 g total fat, 3 g saturated fat, 2 g monounsaturated fat, 3 g polyunsaturated fat, 130 mg cholesterol, 0 g carbohydrate, 45 g protein, 100 IU vitamin A, 4 mg niacin, .2 mg riboflavin, 4 mcg folate, 5 mg iron, 700 mg potassium, 180 mg sodium, 50 mg magnesium, 54 mcg selenium, 6 mg zinc, .2 mg copper

What Can You Do To Fight Fatigue

Multiple Sclerosis: MS-Related Fatigue

Medically speaking, fatigue is not the same thing as tiredness. Tiredness happens to everyone -- it is an expected feeling after certain activities or at the end of the day. Usually you know why you are tired and a good night's sleep solves the problem.

Fatigue is a daily lack of energy; unusual or excessive whole-body tiredness not relieved by sleep. It can be acute (lasting a month or less) or chronic (lasting from one to six months or longer). Fatigue can prevent a person from functioning normally and affects a person's quality of life.

According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, 80% of people with MS have fatigue. MS-related fatigue tends to get worse as the day goes on, is often aggravated by heat and humidity, and comes on more easily and suddenly than normal fatigue.

What Can I Do to Combat Fatigue?
The best way to combat fatigue is to treat the underlying medical cause. Unfortunately, the exact cause of MS-related fatigue is often unknown, or there may be multiple causes. However, there are steps you can take that may help to control fatigue. Here are some tips:

1. Assess your personal situation.
Evaluate your level of energy. Think of your personal energy stores as a "bank." Deposits and withdrawals have to be made over the course of the day or the week to balance energy conservation, restoration, and expenditure. Keep a diary for one week to identify the time of day when you are either most fatigued or have the most energy. Note what you think may be contributing factors.
Be alert to your personal warning signs of fatigue. Fatigue warning signs may include tired eyes, tired legs, whole-body tiredness, stiff shoulders, decreased energy or a lack of energy, inability to concentrate, weakness or malaise, boredom or lack of motivation, sleepiness, increased irritability, nervousness, anxiety, or impatience.

2. Conserve your energy.
Plan ahead and organize your work. For example, change storage of items to reduce trips or reaching, delegate tasks when needed, and combine activities and simplify details.
Schedule rest. For example, balance periods of rest and work and rest before you become fatigued. Frequent, short rests are beneficial.
Pace yourself. A moderate pace is better than rushing through activities. Reduce sudden or prolonged strains. Alternate sitting and standing.
Practice proper body mechanics. When sitting, use a chair with good back support. Sit up with your back straight and your shoulders back. Adjust the level of your work. Work without bending over. When bending to lift something, bend your knees and use your leg muscles to lift, not your back. Do not bend forward at the waist with your knees straight. Also, try carrying several small loads instead of one large one, or use a cart.
Limit work that requires reaching over your head. For example, use long-handled tools, store items lower, and delegate activities whenever possible.
Limit work that increases muscle tension.
Identify environmental situations that cause fatigue. For example, avoid extremes of temperature, eliminate smoke or harmful fumes, and avoid long hot showers or baths.
Prioritize your activities. Decide what activities are important to you, and what could be delegated. Use your energy on important tasks.

3. Eat Right
Fatigue is often made worse if you are not eating enough or if you are not eating the right foods. Maintaining good nutrition can help you feel better and have more energy.

4. Exercise
Decreased physical activity, which may be the result of illness or of treatment, can lead to tiredness and lack of energy. Scientists have found that even healthy athletes forced to spend extended periods in bed or sitting in chairs develop feelings of anxiety, depression, weakness, fatigue, and nausea. Regular, moderate exercise can decrease these feelings, help you stay active, and increase your energy.

5. Learn to manage stress
Managing stress can play an important role in combating fatigue. Here are tips to help keep stress in check:

Adjust your expectations. For example, if you have a list of 10 things you want to accomplish today, pare it down to two and leave the rest for other days. A sense of accomplishment goes a long way to reducing stress.
Help others understand and support you. Family and friends can be helpful if they can "put themselves in your shoes" and understand what fatigue means to you. Support groups can be a source of comfort as well. Other people with MS understand what you are going through.
Relaxation techniques. Audiotapes that teach deep breathing or visualization can help reduce stress.
Participate in activities that divert your attention away from fatigue. For example, activities such as knitting, reading, or listening to music require little physical energy but require attention.

If your stress seems out of control, talk to your doctor. They are there to help.

When Should I Tell My Doctor About My Fatigue?
Although fatigue is a common and often expected symptom of MS, you should feel free to mention your concerns to your doctors. There are times when fatigue may be a clue to some other underlying medical problem. Other times, there may be medical interventions that can prevent fatigue.

What's Causing Those Freaky Dreams?

Freaky Dreams: What Do They Mean?
Whether it’s falling off a cliff or public nudity, find out what may be causing those vivid, crazy dreams.
By Suzanne Wright
FeatureReviewed by Matthew Hoffman, MD

Consider this freaky dream. You're at a black-tie gala in a fancy hotel banquet room with lots of other people. You're all having a good time eating dinner, dancing, and talking. When it's time to go, you look for your purse, but it's gone. As you anxiously search for it, a fast-moving river appears out of nowhere, bisecting the room. Your purse is floating on the river, but you can't reach it. It is moving too swiftly. When you awaken, you're filled with a sense of panic.

Now if you plugged the dream into an online dream analyzer, such as you might find at Freakydreams.com, you'd learn that a purse is a symbol for wealth and resources, a hotel represents transition, and a river connotes emotion. Since you have been living through a kitchen remodeling -- with its attendant financial stresses and upheavals -- this dream echoes and amplifies what's going on in your waking life.

What Are Dreams?
Human beings dream, and so do, scientists believe, most mammals and some birds. On the most basic level, a dream is the experience you have of envisioned images, sounds, or other sensations while you sleep. They are an internal mental process. But dreams are actually much more than that.

Sigmund Freud's theory was that your dreams are an expression of what you're repressing during the time you are awake. And Carl Jung believed that dreams provide messages about "lost" or "neglected" parts of our selves that need to be reintegrated. Many dreams simply come from a preoccupation with the day's activities. But some offer rich, symbolic expressions -- an interface between the conscious and the unconscious that can fill in the gaps of our self-knowledge and provide information and insight.

In his book The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination, Robert Moss writes, "Dreams are open vistas of possibility that take us beyond our everyday self-limiting beliefs and behaviors. Before we dismiss our dream lover, our dream home or our dream job as unattainable -- 'only a dream' -- we want to examine carefully whether there are clues in the dream that could help us to manifest that juicy vision."

Why Do We Dream?
Everyone dreams every night -- even if we don't remember our dreams.

Tom Scammell, MD, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, says no one knows why we dream. "There is a strong movement in the research community to research how sleep improves memory and learning," Scammell says. "One speculative possibility is that dreaming allows you the opportunity to practice things you may or may not ever have to do, like running away or fighting off a predator."

Three or four times a night, you have a period of sleep that lasts approximately 90 minutes called REM -- rapid eye movement -- sleep. It is during REM sleep that your brain is more active. And according to Scammell, it's then that conditions are right for "story-like" dreams that are rich in action, complexity, and emotion.

"You are most likely to recall dreams if you wake at the end of a REM episode," says Scammell. "Americans, who are chronically sleep-deprived, probably miss out on some REM sleep. This builds up pressure for REM sleep. So when you're catching up on your sleep, you may have more REM sleep with more intense dreams."

The Value of Dreams
Scientists have long debated whether dreams have meaning. But those who work with their dreams, either independently or with the aid of dream interpreters, believe that understanding dreams can provide meaningful clues to feelings, thoughts, behaviors, motives, and values.

Artists, entrepreneurs, inventors, and scientists often get creative ideas from dreams. Jeff Taylor dreamed up monster.com. Jack Nicklaus had a dream of a new golf grip. And Nobel laureate and scientist Wolfgang Pauli called dreams his "secret laboratory."

Kelly Sullivan Walden is a certified clinical hypnotherapist and dream coach. In her book I Had the Strangest Dream...: The Dreamer's Dictionary for the 21st Century, she divides dreams into eight categories:

Processing
Venting (nightmares)
Integration
Breakdown/breakthrough
Recurring
Precognitive
Prophetic
Wish fulfillment
The most common, she says, are recurring and venting dreams.

Moss gives an example of a predictive dream: "One of the biggest oil discoveries in history ... resulted from a dream of a retired British colonial official living in Kuwait in 1937. Colonel Dickson's dream revealed a specific location near an unusual sidr tree in the Burqan hills. The Kuwait Oil Company, which had been drilling dry holes far away, was persuaded to move a rig to the location identified from the dream and hit a gusher."

Processing dreams can be used to diagnose and solve physical and emotional problems.

"Some of our dreamscapes are living dioramas of what is going on inside our bodies," explains Moss. "The ancient Greek physician Galen used dreams to diagnose patients' complaints. A friend of mine was alerted to a problem when her dead father appeared to her in a dream, accompanied by a doctor and yelled 'Get to a doctor at once! You have breast cancer!' She acted on that dream and believes that it helped save her life."

Eva Van Brunt is the West Coast media manager at the law firm DLA Piper. She thinks pregnancy is contributing to the intensity and vividness of her dreams. "It's been remarkable -- and a little annoying. Last night I dreamt I was in the security line at an airport and couldn't find my license. I woke up in an utter panic, and it took a few moments to realize the dream was not real."

But she's also found her vivid dreams helpful.

"A few days ago, I couldn't find my camera anywhere in my house. I grew quite anxious and ended up looking for it until bedtime without success. Eventually I got to sleep. Next thing I know, I am having a very vivid dream." The dream, she says, was about a concert she and her husband were at a month earlier. She was walking up to the gate and saw a no cameras sign and found herself getting flustered because she had one in her purse. Her husband suggested she put the camera in an inside zipper pocket of her purse because it likely wouldn't get searched. "In the dream, that's what I did. And it's also what I had done on the night of the concert." The next morning, she found the camera in the inner pocket of her purse. "The only thing I can think," she says, "is that my body triggered the memory to alleviate the anxiety."

Worrying About Weird Dreams
What are we to make of the crazy dreams of adults?

Cognitive scientist and Duke University professor Owen Flanagan is the author of Sleep, Dreams & the Evolution of the Conscious Mind. He has written that "Bizarreness will increase ... the more you have on your mind."

Bert. O. States, professor emeritus of dramatic arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara, agrees. In a paper called "Dream Bizarreness and Inner Thought," he writes, "Dreams are a psychical prism through which reality somehow gets refracted -- as opposed to reflected."

Deidre Barrett is the immediate past president of the International Association of the Study of Dreams and author of Committee of Sleep. She says all dreams are a little strange by waking thought standards. "But artists and scientists report dreams we call bizarre or weird as quite positive or interesting or having creative potential."

Moss tells WebMD, "Crazy dreams may actually be crazy like a fox, using wild dramas and special effects to get us to remember and pay attention to something we have been blocking out -- or simply to lighten up."

Decoding Dreams
All of us can recall strange dreams. But interpreting and understanding them can be tricky.

Some of the most common dreams include teeth falling out (indicating a possible fear of aging or death), falling (loss of confidence or threat to security), or public nudity (feelings of vulnerability or exposure of weakness). These are examples of archetypal dreams that exist across time, culture, and people.

But most dreams are intensely personal. They reflect the underlying thoughts and feelings of the dreamer. Symbols -- images or objects with obvious meaning in daily life -- serve as metaphors, representing something partially known. A lion in a dream, for example, can mean something different to a circus performer than to a teen who claims it as her favorite stuffed animal. By examining each dream element and looking for parallels between associations, you can decipher a dream's meaning.

"Even if it doesn't initially make sense to you, contemplate the dream, meditate on it, marinate in it," suggests Sullivan Walden. "Pretend you are on a treasure hunt. Your interest in uncovering the mystery of what your dreams are telling you will lead you to the gold that is waiting for you."

Barrett says that you can explore dreams on your own, with a peer-led dream group, or with friends. "We are often blind to our own issues and associations. But someone else can see things objectively."

Moss recommends you play the 'What Part of Me' game -- pretending that everything in the dream is a part of you and notice what its condition or behavior may be saying to you about yourself. "In your dream house, for example, if there's a problem with the plumbing or a room you have never explored, what could that be saying about a part of you that needs some TLC or a part of your potential that is waiting to be recognized and opened up."

Another technique he offers is to listen for puns and double entendres. "If there's a train on the tracks in your dream, could it be prompting you to think about what 'track' you are on, what 'line' you are following? Say your dream features shoes. A shoe has a 'sole,' which sounds like 'soul,' so maybe the condition of your footwear in a dream says something about the state of your vital energy."

Recurring Dreams
Recurring dreams can continue for days, weeks, months, and even years.

Barrett says the majority of people over a lifetime have recurring dreams. "They are more important, on average, than other dreams. They are probably your unconscious trying to tell you something, a more significant issue."

She says there are two key clusters of recurring dreams. Most of them are nightmares, though some are positive or neutral in nature.

"The single likeliest [dreams] to get locked in are posttraumatic dreams, where you are reliving something that happened while you were awake," she says. Soldiers or victims of violence may experience such recurring dreams. "The details unfold like they do in real life but often go one step further. The thing you are most afraid of in real life presents in the dream."

The other type of recurring dream is one where you haven't experienced the trauma in your waking life. "These dreams include monsters and surreal, impossible settings," she says. "They are much more metaphoric. Sometimes symbolism is obvious, sometimes it's quite a puzzle."

Should we be concerned about recurring themes? Barrett says only if the content is troubling. In the case of disturbing posttraumatic stress dreams, she recommends seeking help from a therapist. "They will diminish over time."

Improving Dream Memory
Some people can remember several dreams a night. Others recall dreams only occasionally or not at all.

"People differ greatly in dream content, both the intensity and recall," says Scammell. Interestingly, according to Barrett, women and younger people report greater dream recall, as do those who sleep for longer periods of time.

Dreams are by their nature, uncontrollable. But there are things you can do to increase your dream retention:

Get enough sleep. Those who sleep for longer periods of time enjoy more REM sleep, resulting in more dreams and possibly greater memory of them.
Employ the power of suggestion. Experts recommend that before you go to sleep, remind yourself that you want to remember your dreams.
Keep a journal. Have a pen and paper or a recorder at your bedside so you can log your dreams when you awaken before hopping out of bed. If not immediately recorded, dreams become elusive and difficult to retrieve.
Get curious. When you first wake up, lie still, stay quiet, and see if you can recall a dream. It may flood over you. Mull it over. Having an open mind, reading about dreams, and discussing them actively with friends and family may encourage future dreaming.
Limit drug and alcohol intake. Sleep and, by extension, dreams are affected by alcohol. And medications, including antidepressants, can induce crazy dreams or even nightmares. Talk to your doctor about the effects of drugs on your dreams.