Blog - Page 4 of 6 - Hudson Valley Chiropractic & Wellness

Start Here

July 5, 2014 by drchrista Leave a Comment

How do you feel, right now?

You don’t feel well. You’re tired and achey all of the time. You knew getting older wasn’t going to be any walk in the park, but this has got to be something else- you’re too young to feel this old. No matter how well you eat, you can’t seem to stop your weight from creeping up and most days you feel like you would lose your own head if it weren’t attached. Restful, rejuvenating sleep is a thing of the past. If you don’t wake up sweating, you wake up feeling like you could sleep for another 10 hours. Your relationship with your partner or spouse is straining under the weight of your mood swings and chronic pain, not too mention the nonexistent libido. At work, its been awhile since you’ve really felt on top of your game. Your memory use to be so much better…

Worse yet, your doctor doesn’t seem to know what’s wrong. They were sympathetic at first, running plenty of lab tests in an attempt to figure out what’s wrong, but once the lab tests came back ‘all normal,’ they began to suggest it was ‘all in your head’ and perhaps you should try taking an antidepressant…

And you’re beginning to wonder if they are right. You didn’t think you were crazy or imagining these things, but friends, family members and coworkers can’t seem to understand why you look fine but complain that you feel so terrible.

If this sounds all too familiar, you’re in the right place.

You believe that good health starts with good nutrition, that Grandma was right when she said ‘you are what you eat.’ You want to feel better and you know it begins with food. But with so many contradictory opinions, where do you even start? You want to know what diet is going to work for you. And more importantly, you need something you can stick to, that’s sustainable, not some fad diet, because this isn’t about being skinny, its about feeling healthy for a change.

Are you looking for an answer beyond just another prescription?

Or maybe you’ve already made some big dietary changes and are seeing some improvement, but there is still something going on. You know you need help on a deeper level, but all your doctor can offer is a prescription drug. You know there has to be something in between. You’ve tried tons of herbs and supplements, sometimes even chasing the latest thing with such high hopes, only to find lackluster results and a lighter pocketbook. It’s so hard to know which supplement is going to be the right compromise of quality and effectiveness beforehand and you don’t have a nutrition degree to be able to decipher all the labels.

When was the last time you felt heard by your doctor?

You want a partner. Someone who will take the time to listen and make decisions about your healthcare with you, not for you. Someone who understands that the way you’re feeling is not all in your head, and what’s more, they even know how to figure out what the real problem is! Someone who will work with you to fine tune your diet in order to support your health and who knows what herbs and nutritional supplements will help and not be a waste of your time & money.

If you are nodding your head and saying “yes!” to any of this, I’m going to invite you to do one (or all) of three things:

Please keep reading here on my website. Go here to learn more about me or head over to my blog to read more about some of the specific conditions I work with. And please like my Facebook page so you can get more helpful tips & information from me.
Use the box to the right to sign up for my e-newsletter. As a thank you for signing up, I’ll send you my free report Health food or Hype: 7 UNhealth foods to ditch to lose weight & feel great! This free report will help you cut through the hype and learn which ‘health’ foods may actually be making you feel worse and struggle even more to lose weight.
Call my office at 845.687.6387 or email me at drchrista@hvchiropracticandwellness.com. I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation so you can learn how I can help you with your specific health concern.

7 Paleo diet weight loss mistakes

February 18, 2014 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Did you start a Paleo diet this year hoping to lose weight? Have you seen all the buzz about other people who have lost weight on a Paleo diet without counting calories, all while eating bacon and butter to their heart’s content? Are you becoming frustrated that you aren’t seeing the same results???

You aren’t alone!!! If you aren’t losing the weight that you want to, it doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong with you or that “Paleo doesn’t work.” There are several common mistakes that newbies and seasoned veterans alike make when it comes to Paleo eating for weight loss. I’ve made a few myself. In this post, I’d like to share with you 7 of the most common reasons people don’t realize their weight loss goals on a Paleo diet.

You’re eating too much. At some point, calories do matter! I wrote more about this here, but the ‘unweighed, unmeasured’ ideal of Paleo works best for people who have a lot of weight to lose, who are making the switch away from a really poor diet to begin with or who already have good appetite control. If you only have 10-20 pounds to lose, already eat a decent diet, or tend to struggle with strong cravings or emotional eating, you really need to do some tracking of your caloric intake for a few days. You don’t need to to obsess about it, but you may find that you are eating 800 calories just in nuts. Or maybe you’ve been a little too liberal with the grass fed butter. Healthy fats are good for you and essential to a healthy diet, but remember that they do have more then twice the number of calories per gram as protein or carbs, so they are easy to overeat.
You are too inflamed to lose weight right now. Whenever there is chronic inflammation in the body, cortisol is secreted in order to control and suppress the inflammatory response. It acts like the brake on the whole thing. Cortisol will also affect blood sugar regulation and under the influence of the cortisol, we tend to store more adipose (fat) tissue, particularly in the abdominal region. If you have unaddressed food allergies/intolerances, autoimmune disease or hormone imbalances, your cortisol is going to be too high and this will make weight loss more difficult. In this case, the first and primary focus should be calming down the inflammation. Once that is addressed you can begin to eat and exercise in a manner that will support your weight loss goals.
You aren’t sleeping enough. Yes! You can sleep your way to a skinnier you! Sleep deprivation increases cortisol levels. Also during sleep, the body produces growth hormone, which helps build & repair muscle and burn fat. It has also been shown that a lack of sleep can lead to increased cravings and less ability to resist those cravings. If you aren’t getting enough sleep or aren’t sleeping well, you’re not going to be able to reap the full benefit from any exercise that you are doing or from the diet changes that you have made. Eight hours of sleep a night needs to be the minimum. Sleep in a dark room with as little noise as possible. Remove electronic devices from your bedroom. You can read more about good sleep hygiene here.
You are over or under exercising. Exercise is a stress to the body. It works by actually tearing the muscles a bit or putting stress on the bones, and when the damage is repaired, our bodies make the tissue a little bit stronger in order to be better prepared for future stresses. This means that adaptation and the benefit from exercise technically comes from the REST period AFTER the actual physical exercise! So if you are doing hard workouts 5-6 days a week, going for broke every time, you are probably over training and causing too much stress and damage while not giving the body a chance to repair and adapt to the stress. At the same time, if you aren’t doing any sort of physical activity and you have a pretty sedentary job or sedentary hobbies, you may not be giving your body enough of a stimulus to lose weight. At the end of day, fat loss depends on a calorie deficit. The most fun and beneficial way to do this is to eat a nourishing, whole foods Paleo diet while increasing your activity a bit. You don’t have to be an exercise junkie or have a gym membership, just try incorporating more walking into your day, riding a bike to do errands in town, etc. You can also find plenty of quick, bodyweight exercise routines you can do from home on the internet. Jump squats, push-ups, pull-ups, planks, burpees are all great full-body exercises that can be done in various combinations and sets to get a short HIIT workout in without even leaving your house.
You aren’t eating enough protein. Protein helps repair muscles and tissue and also provides satiety from a meal. A minimum standard for protein is 0.8 grams per pound of body weight. If you are trying to lose weight and especially if you are exercising more, I recommend people aim for 1 gram per pound of body weight in protein a day. (Also, the math is WAY easier!) So a 150-pound person should aim for 150 grams of protein a day. A large egg contains approximately 7 grams of protein. So if you are only eating 1-2 eggs in the morning, you might need to add a denser source of protein to your breakfast. Try adding some leftover chicken, pork or beef from dinner the night before. I also like to add a tablespoons of grass fed beef gelatin to my coffee for additional 12 grams or so of high quality protein.
You are eating too much or too little carbs. If you followed the USDA food pyramid guidelines, you’d be eating 300g or more of carbs a day. Processed foods, because they often contain a lot of hidden sugar, are also really high in carbohydrates. Carbs in and of themselves are not bad, but carbohydrate intake has to be matched to activity level. If you sit at a desk all day and don’t exercise regularly, eating lots of sweet potatoes and bananas is probably going to stymy your weight loss efforts. Conversely, if you are doing Crossfit 4 days a week and eating 50g of carb a day, you may find that your performance is suffering. Also, you may find your carb carving increase to the point where you can’t resist gorging on non-Paleo dense carbs, which defeats the whole purpose of trying to eating healthier in the first place. A good range for most people to start is 100-150g of carb a day. After a month or so, see how you look and feel. If you are leaning out, but still have energy and aren’t craving sweets all the time, you’ve hit the sweet spot with carbs. (Bad pun definitely intended.)
You are eating to many nuts/snacks/treats. I find a lot of people are addicted to snacking. A question I hear often, is “what can I eat for snacks?” Ideally, you shouldn’t need snacks. If you have to pound two fistfuls of almonds between breakfast and lunch or you become a hunger monster, then you aren’t eating enough protein and/or fat at breakfast. Nuts are great and certainly worth eating, but because of their portability and Paleo-friendliness, a lot of folks new to Paleo over-do them at first. I also see people go over board on the Paleo ‘treats’- muffins, cookies and breads made with almond or coconut flour instead of regular white flour. These can pack an even greater caloric punch without having the same feedback mechanism that tells the brain, ‘stop, I’ve had enough’ as the whole food. Treats should be just that- occasional treats, not everyday food items. The same goes for snacks. Nuts can be great to carry around and have when you’re in a pinch, but if you are trying to lose weight, don’t rely on having them everyday as a ‘snack.’ Before having a snack, check in with yourself to make sure you are legitimately hungry. A lot of people snack for reasons other then hunger- they are bored, stressed, tired or even just because its a certain time of the day. If you aren’t hungry, then find something else to do to break the habit. Drink water, stand up & stretch or even just do a mini-meditation session where you take 10 deep breaths, and just focus on the breathing. If you, however, legitimately hungry then have your snack and try to make tweaks to your next meal to make it more satisfying for longer.

Have you been making any of these common mistakes? Feel free to share your experience in the comments below!

When calories count and when to count your calories…

January 29, 2014 by drchrista 1 Comment

In my last post, I explained why the simple “eat less, exercise more” approach doesn’t work for everyone. I laid out how several different hormonal systems of the body regulate and control metabolism and appetite. Severe calorie restriction diets often don’t work, certainly not for the long term, because these hormone systems are designed by nature to decrease our metabolism and to store fat as a way to survive if the amount of food going into our bodies is too low. Many of the patients I work with in my practice have metabolic dysfunction. Their hormones and endocrine system are all over the place from years of stress and chronic illness. Because of this, I encourage them eat freely of a healthy, Paleo-type diet, the type of diet that will allow them to begin healing the metabolic dysfunction by stacking their diet with the most nutrient dense foods available. Their first priority is to heal the metabolic dysfunction.

But what about the healthy person who just wants to get fit, lean out and maybe drop a few extra pounds of fat? Or what about the person who has been following a Paleo diet for a while, but would like to make some progress on some aesthetic goals? For people with this sort of goal, monitoring calorie intake and maintaining a calorie deficit is what they will probably need to reach their goals.

It’s OK, and even useful to count calories if:

You are generally active and healthy and just want to drop a few extra pounds of fat.
You have been following a regime of healthy, whole food eating for some time (I would say at least a year.)
You have a history of disordered eating and have not learned to eat according to actual physical hunger.

The key to making a calorie restricted diet effective for the long term is to keep the calorie deficit mild. If you are say, a moderately active 140 pound woman with TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) of approximately 2,100 kCal a day, suddenly dropping calories to 1,200 calories/day may trigger some of these hormonal mechanisms that will slow your metabolism and make weight loss difficult. It also means that when you return to “normal” eating you are more likely to gain back all of the weight you lost. So if you are going to go to the trouble of counting and monitoring caloric intake, use the following strategies to insure that your hard work and effort pays off and that you can maintain your new, HEALTHY body for the long term.

Gradually increase your caloric deficit. If you are aiming for a 500 calorie/day deficit, start with 100 calories one day, then 200 calories the net and so on. This is less likely to flip off the “warning bell” systems in the brain.
Consider keeping calories from food constant and burning more through exercise. An extra 10 minutes of cardio at the gym, doing errands on bike or by foot where possible, and playing outdoors more are all ways to increase your calorie a burn a bit more each day without feeling like you need to ‘refuel’ more to keep your energy up.
Lift weights. When people say they want to lose weight, they usually mean they want to lose fat. When dieting alone, the body will burn fat, but it will also burn some lean muscle tissue as well. Lean muscle tissue is very metabolically active and the more lean body mass we have, the more calories we burn at rest, so its important to preserve as much of it as possible. The research is clear. When restricting calories, people who lift weights while dieting lost less lean muscle tissue then those who simply restricted their calories. Since the amount of weight each group lost was similar, this means the group that lifted weights lost more fat tissue then those who did not. The other bonus to lifting weights and maintaining your lean body mass is that when you return to ‘normal’ eating, your BMR (basal metabolic rate, or the rate of your metabolism at rest) while be higher, meaning you’ll burn more calories at rest then if you had lost lean muscle tissue. This helps to prevent the rebound or ‘yo-yo’ effect of dieting.
Get some sleep. Several studies have shown that when people are deprived of sleep, they eat more calories and make poorer food choices the next day. This seems to be related to cortisol and stress mechanisms that protect the brain. Getting enough sleep also helps you recover from exercise and may increase you metabolism by boosting levels of growth hormone and testosterone release, both of which help to boost your metabolism.

One of the reasons that the Paleo diet helps so many people lose weight is that they decrease inflammation and subconsciously decrease their caloric intake as well (usually). Whole foods are nutrient-dense, but not as calorically-dense as processed foods. In many cases, this creates enough of a calorie deficit that many people will lose weight, especially if they increase their activity level a bit. However, if you are eating a whole-foods diet, have cut out all the junk and are still having trouble losing weight, it may be time to go over your diet with a fine tooth comb, count up the calories and see where you might be “leaking energy” or unconsciously taking in more calories then you need. I did this recently and discovered I was probably taking in way more healthy fats then I needed to be. With this awareness and a little work to maintain the calorie deficit, you can be on your way to reaching your aesthetic goals in a healthy, effective manner.

Why you should ditch your diet

January 8, 2014 by drchrista 1 Comment

It’s January 8, 2014 already. Are you still on the straight and narrow, following your resolutions to get leaner and meaner this year? Or have you given up and gone back to your old habits already?

If you resolved to eat better this year, what happened? Wait, wait don’t tell me. You got too hungry. At some point your stomach was growling, your blood sugar was dropping and you said, ‘to heck with it, I need to eat, now!’

And that is exactly why diets don’t work.

I’m here to tell you, you’ve been sold a wrong bill of goods. If you’ve been told you just need to “eat less and exercise more,” and have done just that, to no avail, it’s not you, it’s them. You are not lazy, you are not gluttonous, you are not weak, but you are metabolically broken.

See, calories in = calories out is a math equation. It even has some basis in physics. It works on paper. It doesn’t work in real-live human beings. Here’s why:

HORMONES.

Think about it. Long ago, the amount of fat tissue we carried was crucial. Fat is very energy dense and is our stored reserves of energy. We needed a certain amount of it in order to survive, especially if food became scarce. If you’re female, you definitely needed a certain amount of fat in order to support a pregnancy, which is why females have a higher body fat percentage then males and why they will stop menstruating if their body fat percentage gets too low. Too much fat tissue isn’t ideal either. Back when we lived on the savannas, too much fat tissue would have made it more difficult to escape predators. It’s just like Goldilocks, we need the amount to be “just right.”

Ever notice how some people seem to have no problem maintaining a certain weight, despite their eating habits, while others just look at food and seem to gain weight? Well, there is a reason for it. Several actually, but its a complex topic so I’m only going to address a small part of it here. Researchers who study this sort of thing have proposed a ‘set-point’ hypothesis of weight regulation. What that comes down to is this… the brain has a set point, or weight, that it would like to maintain. It then does everything it can to maintain this weight.

This means that when we eat LESS, our brains DECREASE our metabolism and INCREASE our appetite, to make sure we take in and hold on to enough calories to maintain that set-point weight. Conversely, if we are eating too much our brains should be telling our bodies to INCREASE our metabolism and DECREASE our appetite in over to burn off the excess energy.

Ever notice that animals in the wild don’t get fat? They can get big… there’s enough food out there to make an animal as big as an elephant or as small as a mouse, but they don’t get obese out there. Part of the reason for this is the set-point theory.

Now, how does that come back to hormones? Well, hormones are how your body talks to your brain- and vise versa- about regulation of energy. The thyroid gland, for instance. Normally, if your thyroid gland is humming along and putting enough thyroid hormone out there, the brain is happy and doesn’t need to ramp it up by secreting TSH, thyroid-stimulating hormone. But if thyroid hormone production gets too low and metabolism drops, normally the brain will increase the amount of TSH in order to stimulate the thyroid gland to make more thyroid hormone. Normally. In the case of hypothyroidism, the brain may be telling the thyroid gland to make more thyroid hormone, but the gland can’t for some reason or other. Or maybe it can, but it can’t get delivered to the cells where it will increase metabolism for one reason or another. The result is that metabolism is slowed, while appetite stays the same or increases and the net result being weight gain. Is this person lazy? Are they a pig? Are they lacking self-control with food? NO! Their endocrine system is out of whack and foiling their efforts! (Having hypothyroidism is a not a get out of jail free card here. You still need to watch your diet and exercise, but just know that there is a right way and a wrong way to do this to get results, and if you are going with the old ‘calories in= calories out’ model, this is definitely the WRONG way to get the results you want.)

Another hormone that plays a key role in weight regulation is leptin. Leptin is actually secreted from the fat cells. It then talks to the brain about how much energy we have stored in the fat. The more fat tissue we have, the more leptin we make and vise versa. In normal, metabolically healthy individuals, more leptin signals from the body, especially if we are already at or slightly above our set point, means that our brain tells our body to increase metabolism and reduce appetite to burn off some of extra stored fat tissue that we don’t need. Less leptin signals do the opposite- decrease metabolism and increase appetite. Here’s the problem though, most obese individuals have what’s known as leptin resistance. The fat tissue is making plenty of leptin, but it has been doing so for so long that the brain doesn’t respond to it anymore. Imagine if someone is yelling at you all the time, so you start wearing ear plugs all the time. The ear plugs protect your ears from the yelling, but if that person decides to start whispering, you can’t hear a thing. It’s the same idea with leptin resistance and the only way to get more leptin to get through to the brain is to make more fat tissue.

(Breathe. Most of the science stuff is over. :-))

So if we have an obese individual with leptin resistance, what do you think happens when they try to eat less and exercise more??? That’s right, their body is now afraid that it is in danger of starving to death. It then sends out the message to DECREASE metabolism and INCREASE appetite, the LAST two things you want to have your body do if you are trying to lose weight.

Now, how do we start getting back on track and healing our metabolism? Well, first of all EAT. Think of your metabolism like a fire- if you don’t put a piece of wood on the fire every so often, it goes out. So don’t starve yourself and make sure you eat meals at regular intervals. Some people find that eating SMALL meals every 2-3 hours is really successful for them for this reason. It keeps their metabolic fire stoked. Second, pay attention to what you do eat. Calories in=calories out became popular for a reason- because there is a certain amount of evidence that at some point, the amount of calories you do or do not take in matters. Your best bet is to eat lots of nutrient dense, WHOLE foods. Animal proteins with their accompanying fat will help keep you satisfied by preventing wild swings in your blood sugar levels. Eat most of your carbs as veggies- they have more vitamins and minerals and fewer calories then processed wheat and grain products. By getting the nutrients you need, your body doesn’t need to increase your hunger to get them. And since they are lower in calories, you can eat more while feeling fuller, sooner and longer with fewer calories. Bonus: this method of weight loss doesn’t trigger the brain to defend the set-point weight in the same way as simply forcing a drastic calorie reduction on the body.

In time, when your body learns and begins to trust that it will be fed enough food on a regular basis and it will be fed nutrient dense foods with all the vitamins and minerals it needs to be healthy, it can heal the metabolism and begin to let go of the excess energy it was holding on to, thinking a famine was imminent. Losing weight this way is more natural, requires less discipline and lasts much longer then ‘crash diets’ with drastic calorie restrictions.

So ditch your diet. Eat real, whole foods exclusively. If it has a label with a calorie count on it, it’s probably a good idea to put it back on the shelf. Steer your cart over to the produce aisle and the meat case, where the food requires no labels, because its just food.

Making your resolutions stick! Part 1- The Mind

December 12, 2013 by drchrista Leave a Comment

We are coming up to that time of year when most people like to make New Year’s resolutions, but 95% of people will have given up on those resolutions before the end of January. Its to the point where gyms count on you buying that full-year membership on January 1 and then not using it for the majority of the year!

What is perhaps most sad about this state of affairs is that the most common things people resolve to do in the coming year revolve around their health- giving up smoking, losing weight and exercising more are the most common. So as a HEALTHcare provider, I feel that this an important part of my job to help people keep their positive, health-related resolutions.

To this end, for the month of December, I am going to do a series of posts about how to go about successfully implementing long-term changes that will help you achieve your health goals.

Let’s start here: Your mind.

Did you know that when you have an emotion, receptors on the cell surface get ‘locked’ into a specific shape that fits that neurotransmitter? It’s true and if you want to know more, I encourage to explore neurobiologist Candice Pert’s seminole work on the subject, “Molecules of Emotion.” The point is, there is a biochemical mechanism for how our thoughts create our reality and can either create or destroy our health.

So how can we use this knowledge in the achievement of our health goals?

Know where you want to go. When your goal is simply “to lose weight” or “eat better” its too vague. How much weight? What kind of time frame? What does ‘eating better’ mean to you? We’ve all had the experience of having a project to do. When there is a deadline for when that project needs to be done, its much more motivating then when there is no deadline. Set a deadline for your goal. Define specifics- i.e., ‘I’m going to eat at least 5 servings a veggies a day.’ If your goal is a big one, break it down into smaller, more realistic ones. ‘I’m going to lose 10 pounds in two months’ or ‘I’m going to start by eating 3 servings of veggies and day and drinking 2 glasses of water for the next three weeks. Then I will add two more servings of veggies a day, drink 3 glasses of water a day and cut sweets down to 3 treats a week.’ The other advantage of this is that it gives you clear measures of success along the way. When you succeed at the smaller goals, it creates a ‘motivation snowball’ that helps you keep the momentum and motivation up to continue moving forward.
Know your why. What is your core motivation? Why do you want to achieve this goal? Do you want to be a better example to your kids? To your family? Are there activities you enjoy that you are not able to do because of your current health? Identifying your ‘why’ is what often separates people who succeed at their goals from those who don’t. The catch is this: your ‘why’ needs to be powerful and intrinsic. Saying ‘I want to lose weight so I look better in a bathing suit’ generally isn’t’ powerful enough for most people. Why? Because it is a temporary and external goal. Very few of us, when tempted with pizza or ice cream, can say,’ but that bathing suit….’ Most of us will think, ‘screw it, give me the pizza, I don’t really care that much about what other people think.’ So your why needs to be something that is more powerful then what you may want at the time. Suppose your goal is to exercise more. Your motivation needs to be stronger then the comfort you get from sitting on the couch. It also helps if this goal is for you. Losing weight because you want to feel better about yourself is generally more powerful then doing it to please someone else.
“Fail to plan and you plan to fail.” This relates to knowing where you want to go. Once you know where you want to go and your why, break it down and make a plan for how you will arrive at that end destination. If your goal is to eat better, are you going to go Paleo, vegan, or follow some other diet? Do you know how to eat that way? Do you have cookbooks to give you recipe ideas when you’re not sure what to make for dinner? Have you cleaned out your cupboards so there are no unhealthy foods to tempt you in a moment of weakness? This is a really powerful and important step. For most people, making a resolution stick in not about having enough willpower, but having a detailed plan. We all have moments of weakness, moments where it is very tempting to give up and go back to the comfort of our old habits. Having a plan in place to deal with such moments is the key.
Visualize your success. I mean really visualize. Before bed and first thing in the morning, close your eyes and visualize what achieving your goal will be like. Be as detailed as possible. How does it feel? How is your life improved? Feel the happiness of having achieved this goal. Be grateful for it in that moment, treat it like its already true in your life. This is a powerful exercise that begins to align all the cells of your body with your new reality and sets the stage for lasting change.

So spend some time really thinking what your health goals are this year and why. Write them down. Write down why you want to achieve and then write down a detailed plan for how you will go about achieving them. In the post of this series, I will talk more about the specific ACTIONS to take to be successful at your goals.

Sleep your way to a skinnier you!

November 5, 2013 by drchrista 1 Comment

It sounds too good to be true, right? Like one of those late night infomericals selling little more than empty promises.

I can’t promise you that just by sleeping more, you’ll lose weight. You still have to do the hard work of making better food choices and doing your workouts daily. What I can guarantee however, is that based on the research, if you are not sleeping well, you are missing an important key to fat loss success.

A 2010 study in the Annuals of Internal Medicine found that participants who got less sleep, an average of 5.5 hours a night, were hungrier during the day, lost more lean tissue and less fat tissue, despite also eating less food, then participants who slept an average of 8.5 hours a night.

How exactly does a lack of sleep stall weight loss efforts? Glad you asked! Let’s look at a couple of mechanisms at play here.

Elevated cortisol. A lack of sleep is perceived as a stress by the body, causing our good old stress hormone, cortisol, to be secreted. Elevated cortisol over prolonged time periods will lead to increased abdominal adiposity (fat) and will also cause our bodies to catabolize our lean muscle tissue in order to make sugars to feed brain tissue. Like the participants in the study mentioned above, when we are sleep deprived, we will tend to lose lean muscle tissue instead of fat tissue, which is what we are all trying to get rid of when we say we want to lose ‘weight.’ Chronic sleep debt is also correlated with low-grade chronic inflammation, which can also stall weight loss.
Poor food choices. Several studies have shown that when we are sleep-deprived, we make poorer food choices. We have a much harder time resisting the fat, sugar and calorie laden foods that block our fat loss efforts then we are well-rested.
Lack of recovery. Exercise is a stress, albeit, a positive one, but only if we can recover from it. When we exercise, we actually breakdown muscle tissue and in response to this, the body repairs itself, but does a better job this time around in order to handle a bigger stress in the future. This is why muscles get bigger when we use them! However, this favorable adaptation happens when we rest, in between bouts of exercise. Most people know for instance, that you shouldn’t lift legs two days in a row, but if you’re not sleeping well, you may need even more time to recover in between workouts. Pushing too hard too soon when you are under-slept can slow your progress, increase your risk of injury and even lead eventually to adrenal fatigue or burn-out.
Hormone dysregulation. All that cortisol running around because you’re stressed out and not sleeping enough, can be toxic to certain types of cells in the brain. For instance, too much cortisol will kill off neurons in the hippocampus, which not only converts your short-term memories in to long-terms ones, but also helps regulate your sleep-wake cycle in the first place. If you’re starting to forget little things you use to remember, or are having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, this part of your brain may be affected. Cortisol can also impact your hypothalamus’s ability to regulate other hormones, such as thyroid hormone (controls metabolism), sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone as well as hormones that regulate appetite like insulin, leptin and gherlin.

As you work towards a healthier, fitter you, don’t forget to schedule time for plenty of sleep. Make it part of your routine, just like you do with your workout. Plan for a minimum of 8-9 hours of sleep a night. In this post, I’ll talk about some things to do if you’re having trouble getting a good night’s rest.

7 reasons I recommend a Paleo diet to all my patients

October 28, 2013 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Diets fads certainly come and go and it would be easy to consider the Paleo diet another one such ‘fad’ diet. I often hear people argue that ‘everything is healthy in moderation’ and ‘eliminating whole groups of foods is never a good idea.’

Whereas the name ‘Paleo’ may be new, the diet is anything but a fad. I like to think of it as ‘optimum human nutrition;’ it’s the diet our bodies adapted to eating a million years ago. We like to think that cavemen lived ‘short, brutish lives,’ but if the lifestyles of modern hunter-gatherer cultures are any indication, our ancestors enjoyed vibrate health; had lean, strong bodies (this is true according to anthropological data); and enjoyed plenty of leisure time, spending the equivalent of 15-20 hours a week hunting or gathering for their basic needs.

Rhetoric aside, I started recommending a Paleo diet to my patients after seeing the research- indications of how modern foods were eroding way our health and leading to chronic disease. At first, I didn’t know it even had a name, let alone a following. It was just the best foods to eat to facilitate health. When I first read about the Paleo diet, it all ‘clicked’ together and now I had a direction to send my patients in for recipes, meal sharing ideas, and community. More specifically though, here’s my list of the top 7 reasons I recommend a Paleo diet for my patients.

It’s gluten-free, without all the junk. Before discovering Paleo, I prescribed a gluten-free diet for many of my patients. The problem was, they would eat the same foods, just gluten-free versions of them. Instead of swapping breads & pastas for more nutrient dense veggies and animal foods, they would simply fill up on gluten-free breads and pastas. Worse still, several thought that being ‘gluten-free’ made certain junk foods somehow healthier. Not only are these foods often even more heavily processed then their wheat-containing counterparts, it was missing the whole point of the gluten-free diet AND it was much more expensive for them. Paleo has been useful in teaching my patients to eat a more whole-foods diet.
It eliminates cross-reactive foods. I’ve had several patients with Celiac disease who definitely felt better after going gluten-free, but still weren’t 100%, even after years on a strict gluten-free diet. Since other grains can cause gluten cross-reactivity, these folks found that they did much better not just eliminating gluten, but all grain products.
It’s the ultimate elimination diet. When it comes to food allergies, the gold standard for testing is still an elimination diet. I hope one day we have easier & more convenient testing, but at the moment, this is not the case. One thing the food allergy testing via blood doesn’t take into account is that if your immune system is not functioning properly, you may or may not make the antibodies that will show up on the blood test. Some people are over-reactive. When I see an allergy test that has someone reacting to a lot of ‘normal’ foods like green beans or blueberries, I often suspect a leaky gut situation where the immune system is reacting to everything because the gut is not working properly as a barrier system. The Paleo diet eliminates all the common foods that would lead to a leaky gut, thereby facilitating gut healing. Since the gut lining will replace itself in 21 days (in a fairly healthy person), after a month of Paleo, we can reintroduce certain foods and usually get a pretty clear indication of which ones a person has an allergy, intolerance or sensitivity too.
It can help balance blood sugar. Some people think Paleo is the same as low carb or Atkin’s. It’s not. You can do carbs on Paleo, the key is to find the right amount for you based on your health history and activity level. That being said, because carbs on the Paleo diet come from minimally processed, whole foods sources, its much harder to eat the same amount of carb contained in the S.A.D (Standard American Diet). A S.A.D., following the USDA food pyramid guidelines of 8-11 servings of ‘whole-grains’ a day, will have upwards of 300g of carb a day. Unless you are a marathon runner, this is probably way too much carbohydrate for you, especially if you have a job that has you seated most of the day. Conversely, a typical Paleo eater will take in an average of 75-100g of carb a day without paying too much attention to it. By lowering carbohydrate levels, the need for insulin and the dramatic swings in blood sugar are reduced. This helps most people have even energy throughout the day, without the typical after lunch food coma or the need for excessive amounts of coffee and caffeine to keep you going. Lowering carbohydrate intake and getting carbohydrate from whole food, vegetable sources can also reverse insulin resistance and even Type 2 diabetes, especially when coupled with appropriate exercise.
It’s nutrient dense. We’ve all heard of people who have done crazy diets like an all Twinkie diet or all McDonald’s food diet and lost weight, but at what cost? These foods contain very little in the way of micronutrients and even if the body isn’t starving for calories, it will be starving for these missing nutrients. Since a Paleo diet focuses on eating the most nutrient dense of whole foods, many people easily meet their body’s need for micronutrients in far fewer calories then with a diet based on processed foods.
It doesn’t require a bunch of fancy or hard to find super foods. ‘Superfoods’ have become quite the fad lately and many of us seem to think that adding some acai or goji berry to our daily smoothie will forgive a multitude of nutritional ‘sins.’ Variety is key however, especially when it comes to plant foods. It is also helpful to remember that antioxidants, especially those in so called ‘super foods,’ follow a dose-response curve- too little isn’t good for you, but neither is too much. Overloading on super foods not only hurts you by luring you into a false sense of security about the quality of your diet, but also potentially hurts your wallet as you pay more for the marketing and fancy package then actual nutrition. It’s best to stick with nature’s original ‘super foods,’ grass fed butter or ghee and organ meats from grass fed animals.
It’s easier to stick to then a starvation diet. I encourage my patients to eat!!! If it’s a whole food, eat as much as you want. You have to feed your metabolism, both for healing and for fat loss. The main reason typical ‘diets’ (such as calorie-restricted, starvation type diets) fail is that the body’s response to calorie-restriction is to slow metabolism down, ensuring that while you may lose weight temporarily, this effect won’t last. Aside from yo-yoing numbers on the scale, this is not the way to build true health. By feeding the body nutrient dense, whole foods, not only does it keep metabolism humming along, but it gives you freedom- freedom from counting calories, obsessing over food grams and the like.

In the end, I have yet to have a patient who gave it an honest go tell me, “Doc, this Paleo diet thing sucks. I’m quitting.” More often then not, my patients tell me “I feel fantastic! I wish I would have listened to you before and started this Paleo gig sooner!” Which I guess could be reason #8 why I recommend a Paleo diet to my patients- it works!

If you’re local to the Hudson Valley and already a Paleo enthusiast, I’ve started a Paleo Meet-up group just for you! Come join us over here!

10 tips for getting a good night’s rest

October 7, 2013 by drchrista 1 Comment

a good night's sleep

While it seems like getting sleep should be pretty straight-forward, its not always as easy at it would seem for some. If you struggle with falling asleep, waking during the night and being unable to get back to sleep or waking up in the morning feeling like you haven’t slept at all, you’re not alone. These are often symptoms that there is hormone disruption or dysregulation in the parts of the brain that control our sleep-wake cycles. Because of this, if you are not working on bringing these systems back into balance, getting a good night’s rest can be much harder then simply going to bed at a certain time. Follow the tips below to make sure you are doing all you can to help your body get quality, restorative sleep.

Sleep in a dark room. Light stimulates the pineal gland in the brain and begins the process of cortisol secretion. Cortisol is antagonist to melatonin, the hormone the helps us sleep. Use black-out curtains, cover up any lights from electronic devices, including alarm clocks or even remove electronics from the bedroom altogether.
Sync your sleep cycle with natural light-dark cycles. Our bodies and our brains are still very much adapted to the natural rhythm of light and dark. Recent studies have shown that these natural rhythms even affect the expression of our genes. To keep it simple, sleep when it is dark, and be active when it is light out. This also means that there are seasonal variations in how much sleep we need. In the summer, with its long days and short nights, we can function better on less sleep. In the winter, however, our bodies crave more sleep due to the longer nights and shorter days.
Avoid screen time within an hour of bed. The blue light emitted from computer screens, TVs, tablets, smartphones and other electronic devices actually stimulates certain parts of the brain, leading to cortisol release and suppression of melatonin production. The corollary to this is to make sure you get a few minutes of bright light during the day.
Use these. If you must use computers in the evening, wear orange lens to block the blue light. This will help protect the parts of your brain that are stimulated by the blue light.
Avoid carbs before bed. Many people crave a carbohydrate-rich snack before bed. This helps boost serotonin production and melatonin is made from serotonin. However, a carbohydrate rich snack will also cause a large release of insulin. When the blood sugar then drops too low, cortisol and even adrenaline may be released to bring blood sugar levels back up by releasing stored glycogen. Since cortisol is antagonistic to melatonin and adrenaline revs up your fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system, this may result in waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to get back to sleep.
Eat to manage blood sugar throughout the day. Focus on getting plenty of protein and good fats to keep blood sugar levels even. Get your carbohydrates from whole foods sources like vegetables and some fruits instead of breads, pastas and baked goods. Large fluctuations in blood sugar levels throughout the day are perceived by the body as stress, prompting the release of cortisol. Cortisol levels that are too high, especially late in the day, will impede sleep.
Avoid caffeine and other stimulants, especially late in the day. Caffeine stimulates the adrenals and also certain parts the brain. While this may be helpful earlier in the day, it can negatively impact sleep later the day. Caffeine has a half-life of 12 hours, so count back twelve hours from your planned bed time to determine when to have your last cup for the day.
Exercise. A survey by the National Sleep Foundation found that those who engaged in vigorous exercise reported the least amount of bad sleep. Exercise can help improve your sleep by reducing stress and helping to reduce the effects on diabetes and obesity, which can both disrupt sleep. If vigorous exercise is too much for you, even a ten-minute walk daily can be a good starting place.
Meditate. Any technique that you practice regularly to reduce stress will work, the key is to pick something that you can easily make into a daily habit. By reducing stress, you help to reduce your cortisol levels and get a better night’s sleep.
Get your cortisol rhythm tested. If stress has been a long-standing issue for you, your hippocampus may have been become dysregulated, leading to an irregular daily cortisol rhythm. Cortisol should be high first thing in the morning and then slowly taper off till bedtime. In some individuals, this pattern may be flip-flopped, resulting in having a hard time falling asleep and then waking up feeling as if you didn’t sleep at all. If this is your case, you may need to work with a functional medicine practitioner who can get you started on supplemental support for hippocampus and adrenal glands.

Better sleep is possible to achieve and worth the effort to improve your health! Improved sleep will not only lead to improve energy levels during your day, but also helps with your weight loss goals by decreasing fat-storing cortisol and decreasing cravings throughout the day.

5 things you should know if you’ve been diagnosed with Hypothyroidism

July 19, 2013 by drchrista 1 Comment

In the U.S., the most common cause of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid. It is estimated that this autoimmune disorder is the cause of 80-90% of hypothyroid cases. This means that in most cases of hypothyroidism, the health of the immune systems must be addressed in addition to the function of the thyroid gland itself!! If you are only taking thyroid medication, you’re missing the actual problem.
You can have all the symptoms of hypothyroidism and still have blood work that comes back as ‘normal.’ The lab ranges for ‘normal’ TSH are based on a statistical average and do not represent what is an optimal range for health and feeling good. It is quite common for people to have all the signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism and yet, be told it can’t be that because their lab work is ‘normal.’ If this is your case, you should seek out a functional medicine doctor who can help you understand what is really going on with your thyroid gland.
You can have all the symptoms of hypothyroidism without anything being wrong with your thyroid gland itself. The thyroid gland doesn’t function in isolation. To begin with, it is controlled by the brain. The gland itself only makes thyroid hormone, which then has to travel to every cell in the body, enter that cell, and then travel into the nucleus of the cell where it has its effect. Just like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, if there is a problem anywhere along the line, the whole process breaks down and results in the same symptoms. If you have hypothyroidism, you need to have a full thyroid panel done periodically, including TSH, T4, T3, T3 uptake and TPO antibodies at the very least.
Diet can be an important part of managing your symptoms. Especially if you do have Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid, adoption of a gluten-free diet can have a big impact. Eating gluten actually causes more antibodies to be made to the thyroid tissue, causing more destruction of the gland over time. This can be a common reason why you have to keep upping the dosage of your thyroid medication. Eliminating gluten and adopting an anti-inflammatory diet can go a long way toward helping you keep your thyroid gland intact as well as managing your hypothyroid symptoms.
You can do more to take charge of your hypothyroidism other than just take another pill. While ditching the medication altogether may not be in the cards for you, by managing your immune system through proper diet and lifestyle changes, you can control your symptoms and slow the development of the disease. Using a more holistic strategy may also help prevent the future development of other autoimmune diseases.

Did my breakfast cause my back pain?

November 6, 2012 by drchrista Leave a Comment

The simple answer is, quite possibly, yes. Maybe not just this one breakfast, but most of us have a routine, so whatever has been the menu for awhile may be the culprit.

What did you have for breakfast this morning? Coffee and a danish? Perhaps a bagel with cream cheese. Maybe even doughnut or a cereal bar. Unfortunately, these are all part of the Standard American Diet (S.A.D. for short) that generally contains too many simple carbs, trans fats and refined grains that are devoid of any nutrients and all to often lead to many degenerative diseases rampant today- diabetes, heart disease, cancer and yes, back pain.

Consider this. It is estimated that more than 80% of adults will experience at least one episode of dehabilitating back pain in their lifetime.

Most people can’t afford to be laid up for several days after an episode of back pain. There are bills to pay and mouths to feed and the stress of those things certainly doesn’t help.

But there is something you can do to help prevent such an episode from occurring. And its as simple as what you eat everyday.

Eat less sugar and refined grains. Let’s face it- sugar and refined carbs are literally killing us. Sugar and white flour are so refined they have no nutrients left, so when we digest them, it actually takes nutrients, like B vitamins to do so creating a negative balance within the body of these essential vitamins. B vitamins are necessary for your body to make energy. Lack of B vitamins may also play a key role in heart disease. The latest research shows that blood levels of a chemical called homocysteine, are the strongest predictors of heart attack risk, NOT cholesterol or triglycerides as previously thought. B vitamins, specifically, B6, B9 and B12 are needed to break this homocysteine molecule down so it can be eliminated from the body. Without adequate amounts, homocysteine builds up in the blood, damages arteries and leads to artherosclerosis.

As for your back pain, carbohydrates are needed to provoke insulin secretion. Fat and protein do not cause insulin to be secreted. Insulin will cause excess carbs to be stored as fat, particularly abdominal fat (this type of fat is also known as an insulin meter. The more of it you have, the more likely you are to have insulin resistance and hyperglycemia. Remember its called a beer gut, not a Filet Mignon gut.) As the abdominal fat increases, it changes the center of gravity within the body and thus changes body mechanics. The curve of the low back increases as the muscles on either side of the spine become short and tight, trying to counterbalance the increased weight in the front so as to maintain an erect posture. The abdominal muscles are stretched out and weakened, leaving the lumbar spine without support and vulnerable to injuries, especially from twisting. In short, the muscles that use to have the job of stabilizing the low back can no longer do their job effectively, leaving the joints of the spine vulnerable to injury.

Get more essential fats. You know, the ones you hear about all the time in the news. Omega 3 fatty acids like DHA and EPA. The optimal ratio for human nutrition is a ratio of 2:1 Omega 6s to Omega 3s. But in the S.A.D. this ratio is more like 20:1. Even though Omega 6s are essential fats too, they tend to work in pathways that create inflammatory mediators, whereas Omega 3s decrease inflammation. In addition, Omega 3s give flexibility to cell membranes and positively effect low HDL/high LDL and cholesterol and have been shown to protect against heart disease. Most people known that Omega 3s are in food like cold water fish, walnuts, and flax seeds. The problem however is what Omega 6s are in- everything. Corn and soybean oil are the biggest culprits as well as cottenseed oil which are in just about every food that comes in a package. Avoid them.

Fiber is you friend. Think about it, your large intestine lives directly in front of you lumbar spine. When the moves are bound up or moving slowly, extra fluid tends to accumulate around them in an effort to detoxify the toxic excrement. The spongy cartilage discs between the lumbar vertebrae are not well supplied with blood, so they get food and drop off their waste through the opening and closing of the spaces between the vertebrae (think of an accordian). When there is too much fluid in the general vacinity because the bowels are moving too slowly, the discs can take up some of this excess fluid and swell. This can lead to back pain. So, not only does fiber lower your risk of colon cancer, but can also decrease back pain through the same mechanism- helping move waste out of the body faster.

And last but not least….

Drink more water. That coffee you’re addicted too every morning? Well, caffeine is dehydrating. It causes your body to secrete extra water. Over time, this cause your body to have deficient of water. One of the things that makes the discs in between the vertebrae soft and able to absorb shock is water. If your body is dehydrated, the discs will be too. When the discs lose water, we say they are “dessicated” and all kinds of fun things happen then. Without enough water, the discs will loss their height and the vertebrae will begin to get closer to each other. This changes the joint mechanics and in short, leads to arthritis in the spine.

So tomorrow morning instead of that coffee and danish, why don’t you try some free-range eggs and a mug of herbal tea instead? Your back will thank you.