Why is olive oil good for me on salads but bad for me if I cook with it?

All foods have a thermic threshold. What this means is that above a certain temperature, there is a reduction in the quality of the nutrients that food will provide you with. With most carbohydrates, it’s not a huge deal, as you are simply altering the glycemic index and potentially diminishing the potency of the mineral and vitamin profile. However, with fats, heat is a big deal. When cooked, most fats or oils will surpass their thermic threshold, turning them into an oxidised and slightly toxic compound that no longer has any positive health benefits. Basically, you take a fat that could have provided you will all kinds of beneficial functions, and you kill it. Cold-pressed olive oil served cold has so many different positive benefits, but when you cook with it at high heat, all that good stuff is gone. Save olive oil for salads and dressings, and use coconut oil or organic grass fed butter or ghee to cook with in the future.

I’m encouraged by health experts to drink a lot of water, but I can’t drink the recommended amount, especially after surgery. How important is hydration, and are there any other ways to get hydrated other than drinking water?

Remember to heed your regular physician's advice. We typically remember drinking eight glasses of water a day as the norm, however, the recommended adequate daily fluid intake is:

• About 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids a day for men

• About 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) of fluids a day for women

This also covers water content from food! For example, a lot of food like watermelon and spinach are 100 per cent water by weight. Other beverages contain water too like coffee, juice, and soda. But be careful of the other ingredients that our bodies don't need that come with those choices.

If you think you are not meeting your hydration needs, establish a plan to increase hydration with a plan personalised to address your barriers to getting adequate hydration. If water is unappealing, look to make it appealing, such as adding fresh fruit to your water. We eat with our eyes; why not drink with our eyes? Sometimes it is just a matter of changing out the container with which we are drinking fluids from, such as drinking out of a clear vs. opaque water bottle vs. a disposable water bottle.