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My January Whole30 Experience

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Have you been struggling to stick to a healthy eating & exercising regime in the wake of the pandemic? I know I have. It’s been hard to admit because yes, I know these things, and I’m a health expert. In the middle of such uncertainty though, it happened to many of us that we lost the supports and structure for our normal health routines. 

Enter the Whole30.

I’ve known about the Whole30 for years; recommended to it many of my patients. I even tried one in June of 2018 that didn’t quite work out (I was doing it for weight loss, not health). Fast forward to this year and an email that inspired me to give it a go to kick off the new year. 

It’s not a D-I-E-T.

One of my favorite things about the Whole30 protocol is that it’s not a diet. There’s no counting of calories allowed. There’s no tracking what you ate and didn’t eat and you’re not even allowed to weigh or measure yourself for the 30 days. This combined with the focus on only eating real, whole foods helps shift the focus to mindful eating- am I really hungry? Hungry enough to eat a can of tuna from the pantry with some avocado mayo? Or am I snacky- craving sugar or salty treats? Many processed foods are designed to be hyperpalatable- that means its so much easier to override your body’s satiety signaling that’s saying ‘thanks I’ve had enough’ and plow headlong into a dopamine-induced stupor of ‘holy cow is that the bottom of this pint of Ben & Jerry’s already????’ Developing this mindfulness is hard, but it’s key to any long term changes in dietary habits. If you can’t stay in touch with whether you are actually hungry or thirsty or just craving something sweet to deal with stress, it can be very easy to over consume calories trying to ‘figure it out.’ This is why the results for willpower-based crash diets can be so poor. You’re starving, and all you can think about is what you can’t eat. Cravings can be hard enough to deal with, but when you add real hunger from caloric restriction on top of it- that’s why its so hard to have enough willpower to stay on the diet. Your brain is starving for calories so it will grasp at any justification to give up, give in and just eat the thing you aren’t supposed to eat and have been fixated on.  Again, since the Whole30 is not about starving yourself or calorie counting or focusing on a scale, you shouldn’t ever get to the point of having to try and white-knuckle it through hardcore hunger. You might be feeling snacky for sugary or crunchy/salty items, but without the calorie restriction on top of it, I found these cravings much easier to resist and they took far less willpower than so-called diets of the past. Without the calorie restriction or focus on metrics like calorie-restriction or weight loss, I never felt overly hungry. Part of this did involve preparation & planning. There were very few places I could eat out or just pick up a snack if I was hungry. I had to plan ahead my lunches and make sure that I had healthy snacks in my purse if I was going to be out for awhile. EPIC bars, plain almond butter packets, the occasional Larabar and chicken salad bowls with guac from Chipotle were my best friends for the month. As a healthcare practitioner, I think this a huge win in helping folks form long-lasting healthy eating habits for the long-haul. Focus on filling your plate with healthy, nutritious food. Indulge in a favorite treat every once in awhile- once you’ve checked in with yourself about why you want it and what you are expecting to do with it. From that mindful place, it’s easier to make a better choice about whether or not said treat is ‘worth it.’ With that mindful pause before eating you can much more easily asses if its worth it both in the moment and to your future self, who is trying to stay healthy for the long-term. 

Elimination Diets: The gold standard for food allergy testing

Another thing I appreciate about the Whole30 program is the clear elimination diet it sets up. Removing grains, dairy, legumes, alcohol, sugar and processed food additives like MSG will work as an introductory elimination diet for the vast majority of people. Following the Reintroduction phase after the 30 days follows the same protocol as a medical elimination diet- reintroducing one food group at time, observing the reaction and then trying another. Once you follow the Whole30 and do the Reintroduction, you should have a solid understanding of what foods help you feel great and which ones- well, not so much. Understanding the possible consequences of a certain food for you gives you more objective data to compute for the question of ‘is it worth it?’ when confronted with the choice to eat that food again. It’s a lot easier to say no to a food that you know will make you feel bloated, foggy, crumby or otherwise less than your best. I came down with a sinus infection just as I was finishing my Whole30 and moving into Reintroduction. This made it difficult to determine which foods made me feel ‘less than my best’, so I will definitely be doing another Whole30 again in the future to reset and try the Reintroduction phase again with hopefully a clearer result. In the meantime, I am practicing flexing my new-found mindful eating muscle with lots water drinking during the day and grateful “no thank yous, I’m actually full and satisfied and don’t need to eat more.”

Have you tried a Whole30 before? If so, what did you experience or think of it? Feel free to let me know in the comments below. 

The ‘Lazy’ Person’s Guide to Becoming a Better Fat Burner

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I’ll get into the secrets of becoming a better fat burner in a moment, but first, some perspective. Humans evolved to be lazy. We don’t like to admit that in this modern era, where our culture values doing and being ‘more,’ but the truth is, you wouldn’t be here today without lazy ancestors.

Back then food was harder to come by and you had to do more work to get it. It wasn’t as convenient as the drive-thru or even rolling your cart through aisles and aisles of caloric-offerings. Most hunter-gathers walked an average of 8-10 miles a day just to gather water, food, and medicines, so whenever they could, they took advantage of surpluses by lazing around. Visiting with community members, making art or crafts, even getting drunk or stoned. By reducing their activity, they reduced caloric expenditure and saved it for time when they might need it instead to save their lives. So if you have a hard time coming up with the willpower to go to the gym regularly- it’s not that you are lazy, its that you have your ancestor’s lazy genes.

Of course, this presents a problem in a modern age where we have ready access to whatever calories we want- without having to do any work to get them. Our bodies do what evolution shaped them to do- save those excess calories for leaner times to ensure our survival- but those leaner times never come, not really. So they keep saving and keep saving. We call this saving phenomenon ‘obesity’ and blame the individual for being ‘lazy’ instead of blaming our environment/society for capitalizing off of this adaptation.

So instead of trying to fight an uphill battle against your biology, how can you work with it to become a better fat burner and achieve a lean, fit physique healthfully and sustainably? Glad you asked!!! Here’s my simple, effective ‘Lazy’ Person’s Guide to Better Fat Burning.

  1.  Sleep more. Research shows that if you are sleep deprived one night, you are more likely to crave and indulge in higher calorie, carbohydrate-dense foods the next day. Don’t know how to curb late night food cravings? Simple- GO TO BED earlier! You need the sleep to repair and restore your body anyway. Turn off the TV, put the phone down, and just go to sleep. Simple.
  2. Fast. Do you find it difficult to cook healthy food for your meals, especially on certain busy days of the week? Tempted to get take out or grab-and-go junk food on days like this? Here’s a simple solution: don’t eat on those days. I know it sounds crazy at first, but stay with me. If you go 12-16 hours without any calories, it stimulates a process called autophagy, where your cells will put their energy into cleaning up debris and repairing or replacing worn out proteins instead of digesting and assimilating nutrients from food. Periodic fasting of this nature has been associated with lower rates of cancer and dementia, most likely because of this very mechanism. Drink plenty of water on the day you fast, but consume no calories and no fake sugar beverages like diet drinks. Just water or herbal tea. The hunger is more mental than it is physical. This strategy works best if you eat a higher fat, lower carb diet on non-fasting days, so you may want to start there if you’re don’t eat that way already. Doing so helps your body become more adapted at utilizing fat stores for energy. That way when you fast, you dip into those excess fat stores for energy. Over time, fasting 1-2 days a week, you wittle down your fat stores and your pants size at the same time, all while letting your body to do the decluttering it needs. (Note: if you have reactive hypoglycemia or take certain medications like insulin, you need to be careful with this approach. Please work with a qualified health care professional who understand how to do this and can help you monitor your meds/blood sugar.)
  3. Slow down your exercise. Some where along the line, we adopted this misguided “no pain, no gain” philosophy of exercise, where if you aren’t leaving sweat angels on the floor beneath you it doesn’t ‘count’ somehow. The irony here is that your body is very bad at utilizing fat to fuel muscle work during intense exercise like this. You actually increase your percentage of fat utilization at lower, aerobic intensities- 55%-65% of your max heart rate. For most people, this is achievable by simply walking. The problem is, it takes time to walk  as much as you need to in a day to starting seeing the benefit on a scale. (Remember the 8-10 miles a day your ancestor’s walked?) Because higher intensity exercise is anaerobic and relies on glycogen for fuel, it’s not the same thing to do a harder effort in less time. Certainly not if you’re goal is fat burning. Slow down your effort to a pace where you can comfortably and quietly breath through your nose to increase fat utilization.
  4. Move more throughout the day. So how does a modern human move the equivalent of 8-10 miles a day at a slow, aerobic, fat-burning pace? Well, you’re going to have find more ways throughout the day. Instead of coffee dates or meetings, have walking meetings. Use headphones to walk while on a conference call or other phone call. Park a few blocks from the playground or soccer fields and walk the rest of the way. Rely less on machines or tech for food processing and do more by hand. Functional movements like these don’t seem like they would fit a ‘lazy’ person’s guide to becoming a better fat burner, but given a choice, would you rather walk more throughout that day or face a beat-down, sweat session each day that in the end isn’t getting you closer to goal anyway?
  5. Natural movement training. Practicing a system of natural movement like MovNat is fun way to get more strength, more mobility and improve your physique without feeling worn out, beat down or injured all the time. The low intensity, constant movement favors fat oxidation for fueling. Building lean muscle mass through bodyweight exercises increases your metabolism at rest without getting too big/bulky/imbalanced. Best of all, these movements are directly transferrable to every day life.

And there you have it, folks. The Lazy Person’s Guide to Becoming a Better Fat Burner. Sleep more, fast occasionally, and move slower with more emphasis on function than just calorie burn.  Now go be lazy, be lean and be well.

 

Primal Beauty: My non-toxic skincare regime

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non-toxic skincareDid you know your skin is your largest organ? It’s a huge part of our detoxification pathways. Yes, skin is a barrier system, but it also absorbs things through it’s membrane and allows other things out.

I’m always flabberghasted when in one breath, we are told not to worry about chemicals in our beauty products being absorbed through our skin (the FDA has different safety standards for things that go ON your skin as opposed to IN your body), and then that same organization approves the use of a hormonal birth control patch. Errr…. um what?

Personally, I made the transition to non-toxic skincare and beauty products long ago because that didn’t make much sense to me. It also seemed that if I was going to do a lot of work caring about what I put in my body, I should also think about what I put on it as well.

The biggest problem with non-toxic skincare products is of course, finding ones that work half as well as their chemical-laden counterparts. The demand for non-toxic skincare has greatly increased the choices available however, and has even brought these products out of the back aisles of out-of-the-way health food stores to major chain retailers throughout the world. This unfortunately has lead to many products being marketed as ‘natural’ when really they are anything but. So how do you find effective and truly good for you skincare products?

For starters, look in your kitchen. There’s the axiom, ‘if its safe enough to go in your body, it’s safe enough to go on your body.’  This is why they call their products ‘skinfood’ over at Primal Life Organics. (Also because it’s deeply nourishing for the skin!) The great thing about using kitchen products is that you can make your own beauty products yourself. You can save money and know exactly what is them!

Being pretty busy though and having a pretty tiny kitchen, I don’t have a lot of time or space to make my own ‘skinfood,’ so I was thrilled when I found Primal Life Organics. I’ve been using their products almost exclusively for over two years. Here’s a few of the products I personally use and love!

  1. Peppermint toothpowder. You don’t need a lot or even any foam to get your teeth clean and freshen your breath. Especially if you are eating a low sugar, lower carb diet, you may notice like I have, that you don’t get that funky build up on your teeth. (Carbohydrates are the only macronutrients that start to be digested in the mouth. They are broken down to small sugars and as these sugars build up in the mouth, they feed the bacteria there. These bacteria ferment those sugars for food, and in the process, create acids that can erode the enamel of your teeth, leading to cavities & gum erosion.) This toothpowder is a fine clay that creates a gentle polishing paste, without any added sugars or weird foaming agents. I’ve had no complaints from my dentist since using it. I also find that it makes an excellent toothpaste for camping because I can practice Leave No Trace ethics and simply swallow it with a bit of water- without wanting to throw up (like I would with regular toothpaste).
  2. Dirty ‘poo. My hair has been a constant source of frustration for me. It’s super fine, there’s not a lot of it, and it’s pretty limp. I use to wash it everyday, otherwise, it would look greasy and the extra oils would weigh it down. A few years ago, I tried the ‘No ‘Poo’ method of using just baking soda and it was much too harsh for my fine hair. It broke a lot of my hair off at or near the root and I’m still trying to grow out some of those funky layers! Enter Dirty Poo, which has some baking soda in it, but is mostly clay based. The clay absorbs the dirt and excess oil which gets washed out when I rinse the clay out of my hair. The result is perfectly clean hair! I’ve also switched to washing my hair 2-3 times a week instead of everyday and this has cut down on the amount of oil that builds up. (The oil actually builds up in response to being constantly stripped away by typical shampoos.) Dirty Poo has kept my hair much more healthy and even allows it have some of its natural body!
  3. Stick Up deodorant stick. It was a hard transition to just deodorant. I’m definitely a sweat-er and I’m pretty active. It’s taken some time to get use to sweating after years of anti-perspirant use. At first, it seemed like the floodgates were opening and my armpits were making up for all the sweat they were forced to block for years. It’s finally settled out where I don’t sweat much unless I’m being really active and what I do sweat doesn’t have quite the odor to it. This detox and transition to just deodorant took me the better of a year but I’m glad I didn’t give up on it. Coconut oil, baking soda and some essential oils are all that is in my deodorant. No weird propolyene glycol chemical like even some of the ‘natural’ deodorants have. (Sweating is important for detoxing some chemicals!)
  4. Sugar-based hair spray. Given that I have some pretty fine, limp hair, I like to give it a little spritz with this and then scrunch it to give it some body and texture. It washes out easily and isn’t overly drying to my hair.
  5. Fallen face serum. My skincare regime in pretty simple. After a shower, I use some organic witch hazel on a cotton ball to cleanse & tone the skin, then I moisturize with this serum. It’s jojoba oil based, which closely resembles the chemical structure of the skin’s own natural oil. Hence your skin doesn’t have to replace as much oil because it’s not constantly being stripped away. The Fallen serum has essential oils from pumpkin that smell DEVINE and I love using it all the time- not just in the fall.
  6. Fallen body butter. I buy this two jars at time in the fall, when it’s made, so that I have enough to last all year. With a bit of cinnamon essential oil in it, it smells wonderful and the combination of oils is deeply hydrating- no more scaly, dry winter skin!

That’s it! Those are the only 6 non-toxic skincare products I need to use on a regular basis. All are completely organic with ingredients that come directly from nature. Most I could find in my kitchen. My skin and hair skin look great and are healthy too, and most importantly I don’t worry about the future health consequences of my beauty regime.

Paleo Diet: Top 5 Mistakes People Make on Paleo

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paleo dietThe Paleo diet has been gaining in popularity. I see many patients come into my office having tried it, but not quite getting the results that they hoped for or expected. Based on their experiences, I wanted to share what I think are the top 5 mistakes people make on the Paleo diet.

  1. Not eating enough vegetables. Meat & veggies are like yin and yang to each other. There’s evidence that the antioxidant chemicals in vegetables are what helps reduce the potential cancer-causing properties of meats. (Read more in this article I wrote after the WHO linked meat to cancer and nearly broke the internet.) I like the hashtag Stacy Toth at Paleo Parents uses on their Instagram account #morevegetablesthanavegetarian. Could you say the same about your plate?
  2. Not fully eliminating grains for at least 30 days. I see some folks who say that a Paleo diet didn’t work for them and then upon further investigation, they are still ‘cheating’ with a slice of pizza or having oatmeal for breakfast. Or maybe they are trying, but haven’t checked other foods for hidden gluten-containing ingredients- like sauces and salad dressings. As a functional medicine doc, I use a Paleo protocol as a way to jump start healing of a leaky gut and to reduce inflammation. The interaction of gluten proteins with the lining of the gut is happening on a microscopic, cellular level. This means, any amount of grains is too much. (Certainly if you can see enough of it to put it in your mouth it’s too much!) I support folks experimenting and finding out what works best for them and even finding ways of ‘relaxing’ a bit about food, but this should come after a full elimination period. So if you don’t see the results you want after 30 days on Paleo, but haven’t been honest about grain consumption, well please don’t tell your coworkers that Paleo failed you and is somehow all bunk. Ditto all of the above for dairy.
  3. Still relying on processed foods. Because of the increased popularity of the Paleo diet, a whole cottage industry as grown up around making Paleo processed foods. It’s a nice convenience, but it can be a reason people don’t achieve the results they want. Paleo bread might not have wheat or other grains in it, but the food has still been processed since it’s original form. As I tell patients- there is no Bread tree or plant that one can simply go and harvest loaves of bread from- Paleo or otherwise. Also, if you’re constantly making treats or using lots of almond flour to ‘bread’ things, you may be very quickly and easily exceeding your needed caloric intake with the fat content of the almonds (Fat is like what your first grade teacher said about glue- “a little dab will do ya!“) The goal is to have most of your food come from WHOLE sources with the most ‘processing’ it having gone through before you put it in your mouth is when you cook it. Beware of any foods that come in any package- but particularly a bag, a box or a can. If it bears a government-mandated nutrition label, that’s another clue that it’s no longer a ‘whole’ food. It’s not that these foods should never be apart of your diet, but the majority of your food intake should be real, whole sources, not processed foods.
  4. Not finding your best macronutrient ratio. Many folks assume Paleo is “low carb” or just another form of Atkin’s. I think that what sets a Paleo diet apart from just another Atkin’s diet is the emphasis on food quality and vegetable intake and also the emphasis on flexible macronutrient ratios. Though a Paleo diet is “low carb” compared to the S.A.D., the amount of carbohydrate can be flexible and based on an individual’s needs. For example, I think of 100-150g of carb/day as the ‘sweet spot’ that will be effective for most people, while still helping to maintain thyroid and adrenal health. However, in someone who is trying to address blood sugar issues or pre-diabetes, they may have a period where they need to go lower than that with their carb consumption in order to see results. Once they restore insulin sensitivity, they may be able to handle a slightly higher carbohydrate intake. The point is, we see a variety of macronutrient ratios in the diets of healthy, traditional cultures. Do some experimentation (with real, whole foods!) to find the ratio that works for best for you and bear in mind that this ratio may change as your health status or goals change.
  5. Not giving it enough time/expecting the quick fix. A Paleo diet can do wonders and change lives in very short order. But- usually when it has amazing results it’s because a person is reasonably healthy and still has good metabolic flexibility to begin with. If you have a chronic health condition that you have been trying to address for years, it’s not realistic to expect to see everything to be reversed within the span of a month. Many patients come to me with weight loss as their main goal. If they have had a pattern of chronic inflammation and immune system imbalance, it often happens that they have to heal from that before they can take on weight loss in a healthy way. Fat is the like an energy savings account for the body. If your body is getting constant signals that it is in crisis mode, needing to survive, it’s not going to give up or dip into that critical savings account easily. Be patient. Focus on healing and improving your health. Paleo is not another crash diet to try for short term results, but a sustainable philosophy and way of eating that can have  powerful & positive impact on your life.

I’d love to hear what you think. Have you made one or more of these mistakes yourself? (I know I have!) Is there another mistake you think people more commonly make than one of these 5? Let me know in the comments section!

 

Low carb: the solution for lasting weight loss & better health

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low carbLow carb diets seem to carry some sort of undeserved apprehension lately, so it was really great to see this article making the rounds on social media this week. Of course, this probably has to do with the fact that “low-carb” and Atkins have unfortunately become synonymous- like using a “Kleenex” instead of a tissue and “Chapstick” as opposed to lip balm. Let’s clear that up right here and now- Atkin’s is a type of low carb diet, but not all low carb diets are Atkin’s. My theory is that the apprehension comes about because most of us know someone who lost a ton of weight on Atkin’s- then gained it all back when they resumed eating “normally” again. The implied assumption then, is that Atkin’s (and by extension all low-carb diets) doesn’t work. This is a logical fallacy and is just plain wrong.

Let’s turn it around for a moment and make the opposite assumption. If eating “normally” is what caused a person to gain excess weight in the first place, doesn’t it make more sense that their return to “normal” eating after a low carb diet is a much better reason for why they gained that weight again?

Obesity rates decline with adoption of high fat, low carb diets

Emerging research is corroborating this assumption. The meteoric rise in obesity rates seems to originate in the late 70s- right around the time that policy recommendations were being implemented that vilified cholesterol, saturated foods and animal products. The 80s were the heyday of the low-fat craze, with new “fat-free” Frankenfoods being developed at an unprecedented rate. Obesity has continued to skyrocket despite our adoption of these policies and low-fat foods. Yet, in Sweden, up to 23% of the population embraces a high fat, low carb diet. And while obesity rates continue to climb steadily elsewhere in the world, Sweden is actual seeing a decline in their obesity rate.

High fat, low carb diets produce less insulin; body fat storage

What we know about the biochemical mechanism underlying this phenomenon also reinforces low carb diets as the answer to lasting weight loss and better overall health. Insulin is a hormone that is released in the presence of carbohydrate and to a lesser extent, protein. (Notice that fat does not provoke an insulin release.) Insulin’s job is to lower blood sugar. It does this in two ways. First, by triggering uptake of digested carbohydrates (glucose) into the cells to be made into energy to fuel them. But it also acts as a storage hormone, causing any excess sugars to be cleared from the blood and stored in the fat tissue as triglycerides for later use. This where many folks run into problems losing weight. They overeat carbohydrates, keeping insulin high and promoting storage of any excess carbohydrates and even calories, as fat. A high fat, low carb diet by contrast reduces the need for insulin. In the short term, this means less excess insulin to promote fat storage. Long-term, less insulin means less stimulus for the development of insulin resistance & type 2 diabetes.

Fat does not cause clogged arteries

The reputation of low carb diets also suffers from mistakenly assuming that saturated fats and cholesterol clog arteries. While it’s true that cholesterol is the main constituent of the arterial plaques, that doesn’t meant cholesterol causes the plaque. The analogy I use is of spackle. You don’t blame the hole in the wall on the spackle just because it is there plugging the hole. The same goes for cholesterol, which did not cause the “hole” in the artery. This damage is more likely to come from elevated blood sugar, elevated insulin or even turbulent blood flow in an area due to poor mobility and a sedentary lifestyle.

Low carb diets can be sustainable & healthy

We are left with the real culprit- the return to so-called “normal eating.” If people return to anything that approximates the Standard American Diet- they are likely returning to a diet full of bread, pasta, and other processed foods. I’ve worked with many patients who think they ‘eat healthy.’ When I investigate this further, they eat oatmeal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and often pasta for dinner. They’ve assumed that because their meals were “low-fat” they were healthy. Meanwhile, what they actually ate were carbs, carbs and more carbs. No vegetables, certainly nothing with much color, and they’ve insured that insulin level spiked several times throughout that day (with resultant plunges as well). The S.A.D. averages over 300g of carbohydrate per day. The health benefits of “low-carb” can start with carbohydrate levels as high as 100-150g/day. Atkin’s and ketogenic diets, also known as ‘very low carb’ are often under 75g of carbohydrate/day. If one’s primary carbohydrate sources are from vegetables instead of processed grain products, it can be very easy to sustain a healthy diet of 100-150g/day of carbohydrate. Some can even get by on less by including increased levels of high quality fats in their diet. By finding a healthy level of carbohydrates that works for you, you can achieve lasting weight loss while improving your health!

Collagen: The ONE biohack for better skin, hair, muscle tone, gut function & sleep

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collagen

Collagen has been getting a lot of press lately- and for good reason! It’s an amazing nutrient with a plethora of health benefits. It can improve wrinkles & cellulite by increasing skin elasticity, contributes to hair & nail growth, gut healing and repair, helps maintain muscle mass and even improves sleep.

What is collagen?

Collagen is a structural protein that is used in the building of many different types of soft tissues including skin, hair, nails, blood vessels, ligaments & tendons. It’s rich in amino acids glycine and proline. Vitamin C is a key nutrient needed to synthesize collagen.

What are some of the benefits?

How do you get it in your diet?

Traditionally, we would have acquired collagen from gelatin-bone broths, chewing the articular ends of bones and using the whole animal including shanks, marrow, skin, cheeks, feet, oxtails and ribs.

A nightly cup of bone broth is an easy way to take in collagen while also helping to get a good night’s sleep. Considering the skin-enhancing properties of collagen, this is really a fantastic way to make the most of your ‘beauty sleep.’

If bone broth isn’t your thing, (though it really should be!) another option is to use powdered collagen hydrolysate and/or gelatin supplements. I find it most convenient to add a tablespoon or so of either of these to my morning coffee. I prefer the collagen peptides only because they don’t gel, potentially creating annoying clean up. I find that when I use them regularly, my hair & nails grow very quickly!

Gelatin, because it does gel, is a natural thickener and can be used in soups, stews, sauces, smoothies, desserts- anything you want to firm up and thicken up really. You can even make healthier “gummie” treats for kids with some fruit juice and gelatin.

The best supplements to use are ones such Vital Proteins, that are made from pastured & grassfed animals.

Fat Loss Simplified!

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fat loss simplified

This time of year, many people aspire to lose weight and get in shape in the coming year. When they say “lose weight,” almost all of us mean fat loss. Unfortunately, there is so much conflicting and just plain wrong information out there, that most people will start a program, see little if any results, and give up before February rolls around. So how do you break the cycle and find a leaner, fitter you?

  1. Fat loss is 80% diet. If you’re killing yourself with an hour a day on the treadmill or elliptical, then coming home and diving into pile of junk food because ‘you earned it,’ then the point is being missed. You’ve probably seen the popular meme “you can’t out run a bad diet.” It’s true. You can drop 10 or 15 pounds and still have terrible blood lipid or sugar numbers because of what you are eating. Isn’t the whole point of doing all that exercise in the first place to be healthier?
  2. Instead of calories in, think about calories stored. This is a concept Mark Sisson talks about on his blog, Mark’s Daily Apple. Part of the problem with trying to increase your caloric expenditure (exercising) while simultaneously decreasing your caloric intake (dieting) is that this sends signals to the body that it is in danger. In the interest of your survival, several hormonal mechanisms are activated. First, cortisol is raised to increase your blood sugar levels. If you don’t immediately use this sugar for energy, it’s then stored as fat, under the influence of insulin. The hypothalamus, a control center in your brain, will send out signals to down-regulate (decrease) your metabolism, while simultaneously increasing your appetite in order to save energy and ensure your continued survival. So instead of trying to decrease your calories, to optimize for fat loss, focus on feeding your body high quality, nutrient dense foods like meat, fish, fowl, eggs, plenty of vegetables, a few fruits, nuts and seeds. (They contain fewer calories then processed foods anyway.) Also, make sure you get plenty of high quality fat in your diet. Fat DOES NOT make you fat! Repeat after me: FAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT! Fat is the only macronutrient that does not provoke an insulin release when digested. Carbohydrates do (and proteins to a lesser extent) and the more processed the carbohydrates, the more insulin is secreted. Under the influence of insulin, any excess carbohydrates in the body are stored for later use as fat. This was a very handy adaptation when our species was evolving and living as hunter-gatherers. It helped us survive in times of famine and food scarcity. Unfortunately, these days, with food always being plentiful, we just keep eating- particularly carbs and processed foods- and never signal to our bodies to dip into those stored fats. So, if you are currently overweight and trying to lose fat, you will have better success by limiting carbohydrate intake to just vegetables and increasing your intake of high-quality dietary fats in order to encourage your body to use fat as its primary fuel source. (High quality fats include coconut oil, grass-fed butter and ghee, animal fats from pastured & grassfed animals, occasional use of pure extra virgin olive oil, avocado or walnut oils. Do NOT increase consumption of processed trans and polyunsaturated fats like corn, soybean, canola or vegetable oils. These introduce dangerous free radicals into the body that actually make atherosclerosis worse! Eliminate them at all costs!)
  3. Focus on aerobic exercise. During aerobic exercise, we are able to take in enough oxygen to preferentially burn fat for fuel, the holy grail for fat loss. This discovery is what lead to the ‘aerobics’ craze in the 80s. (Remember Jane Fonda and all that Lyrca?) The thing is, we’ve gotten so focused now on “burning off” all those offending calories that we’ve missed what constitutes ‘aerobic exercise.’ We think “no pain, no gain” (another terrible T-shirt from the 80s) and work harder. Except once you’re working at pace where you can no longer breath through your nose easily, you’ve exceeded this aerobic threshold. Said another way, you are no longer burning fat. Regular old walking is great aerobic exercise for fat loss. If you’re an endurance athlete, get a heart rate monitor and use the Maffetone method to calculate your aerobic threshold and then train only below that heart rate until you see fat loss.
  4. Strength train. The rate of your metabolism is primarily determined by the amount of lean muscle mass you have. More lean muscle tissue = a speeder metabolism. Also, we have some good data that shows that strength training and building muscle helps ‘partition’ your weight loss to make sure that it comes preferentially from fat tissue instead of muscle tissue. If you’ve experienced the pain of yo-yo dieting- where you lost the weight only to gain it back and again (and then some) this is your best strategy to prevent this from ever happening again! By strength training, you will keep your lean muscle tissue and therefore keep your metabolism revved up while getting rid of excess fat tissue. The best strength training to do is to lift heavy a couple of times a week in the big compound lifts like the squat, deadlift, press and pull-up. If you don’t know how to do these lifts safely, please seek qualified instruction from a certified and credential trainer or strength coach. For women, please do not worry about getting bulky from lifting heavy. If you lift heavy, for a short set of 4-6 reps and then give yourself a rest of 3-5 minutes between sets, you will signal increased strength without increased bulk (hypertrophy). Conversely, the best way to increase the size of the muscle is to do light weight and high reps. Also for the ladies, it is so empowering to lift heavy and see how strong and capable your body is! Strength training is a veritable fountain of youth for both men and women as its keeps joints strong and healthy while keeping metabolism high so as to prevent those extra pounds from creeping on each year.
  5. Exercise really hard on occasion. Once you’ve got all that down- eating an appropriate diet, walking or slow running (or whatever exercise method floats your boat) and strength training, then its time to add in a few bouts of sprinting. This only needs to be and should only be done 1-2 times a week and doesn’t have to be very long. One study found that women who sprinted hard on a bicycle for 8 seconds, followed by 12 seconds of rest for a total of 20 minutes, over 15 weeks, had lost 3 times as much body fat as their counterparts who cycled at a steady pace for 40 minutes. (Most of this fat was from their thighs and buttocks too!) Research shows that high intensity interval training has the ability to decrease insulin signaling (decrease fat storage), decrease blood glucose and increase fat oxidation- all in way less time than steady-state cardio. And it doesn’t take much. One or two, short high-intensity session as week is all you need.

So there you have it- 5 simple steps toward obtainable and sustainable fat loss that will also help you become healthier in the process. Sure, there are other ways to lose fat- like crash dieting or becoming a cardio junkie, but those methods ruin your hormone balance and/or increase your level of inflammation and chronic disease risk.  And if you’re just going to ruin your health in the end, what’s the point of doing all that hard work in the first place?

If you’d like to start a journey towards losing fat and getting healthier in the coming year, but are unsure about how to start or need help staying on track, you may want to check out the New Year, New You! whole-food based cleanse that I am offering starting in January. You can learn more about the program here. 

Should you try The Paleo Diet?

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paleo diet Paleo. Some call it a “fad diet.” Many associate it with uber-lean, muscle-bound Crossfit-types. It’s been confused with Atkins and the low-carb craze. It’s philosophical underpinnings have been the subject of TED talks and scathing critiques throughout the media. Maligned by vegetarians and vegans, this juggernaut diet trend isn’t going anywhere.

The Paleo Diet is here to stay.

You may be curious about it yourself. You have a coworker or neighbor or fifth cousin-twice removed who lost a ton of weight and swears by it. Or maybe you are thinking that any diet where bacon is heartily embraced is your kind of diet. Perhaps you are enticed by the idea of not having to count calories and still losing weight.

Is The Paleo Diet the right choice for you?

Despite what the detractors say, the Paleo diet is not about trying to recreate the life of a caveman. We can, however, gain some important insights into how our bodies function best by looking to our past. The fact is there is a lot of very modern scientific research that backs up this intuitive & ancestral approach to eating. That’s why having my patients adopt a Paleo-type diet is one of the first steps in their nutritional treatment protocol. It’s about more than just rock hard abs. Here’s why I recommend it and why I think you should do it too:

  •  Nutrient-density. The Paleo Diet is the most nutrient dense diet on the planet. A paper published by Mat LaLonde, a chemistry professor at Harvard, showed that for the same number of calories, a Paleo Diet contained more vitamins, minerals and essential fats than the SAD (Standard American Diet.) Not especially surprising, but what was enlightening is that even when he tried to add dairy or whole grains, he could not come up with more vitamins & minerals without adding more calories. This raw data for this came straight from the USDA’s own database of the nutritional content of foods. When you give the body the nutrients it needs, it doesn’t crave more empty calories in a misguided attempt to get them. While eating a nutrient-dense, whole-foods diet, most people spontaneously lower their calorie consumption, without trying or having to resort to willpower.
  • Anti-inflammatory. Wheat, dairy, soy and peanuts (a legume) are common allergens, yet are absent from a typical Paleo diet. Gluten in particular has been shown to increase the amount of an inflammatory protein in the gut called zonulin. This protein opens up spaces between cells of the gut lining called tight junctions. When these tight junctions are opened up, it leads to a leaky gut. (In the scientific literature this is referred to as ‘increased intestinal permeability.) Pieces of undigested proteins than cross the gut lining where they meet the GALT- Gut Associated Lymphoid Tissue. Made up of the same white blood cells as the rest of your immune system, its estimated that up 70% of your immune system is hanging out in your gut. When the GALT starts having to react to pieces of undigested protein, it creates inflammation, both in the gut itself as well as the rest of your body. If you have aches or pains, brain fog or memory loss, depression or hormone imbalances (all of which can be caused by inflammation), you really should give the Paleo diet a try.
  • Whole-foods based. We can argue all day long about what cavemen did or didn’t eat and whether those foods still really exist, but at the end of the day I think we can all agree that whole-foods are way better and more nutritious for you than anything processed. Fresh meats and eggs from pastured and grassfed animals, wild seafood, plenty of vegetables in an array of colors and some fruits. Nuts and seeds. These are not controversial health foods, they’re just common sense.
  • Sustainability. Diets that leave you hungry and starved are not sustainable. For sustained fat loss and long-term recovery from inflammatory conditions, a diet has to be one that you can follow over the long haul. There are so many resources now; the number of Paleo cookbooks has exploded in recent years and the number of Paleo recipe blogs has grown exponentially. There really is no legitimate reason for getting bored on the Paleo Diet.
  • Lifestyle Factors. There’s more to health & fitness than just food, yet so many ‘diets’ fail to account for this. Many people will say that Paleo isn’t just a diet, it’s lifestyle. What that means is that food is just the start. Beyond diet, a healthy lifestyle should also include plenty of quality, restorative sleep, stress management, frequent movement & exercise, good posture & alignment, relaxation and time in nature. To heal from a chronic disease, all of these factors must be addressed.

Is Paleo the right choice for you? I think it happens to be the right choice for anyone who wants to build or maintain their health. Want some help getting started on your journey to more energy, less fatigue, clearer skin and less pain? Call my office today at 845-687-6387. I help people like you implement and tailor a Paleo approach to meet their health goals.

January is just around the corner. If you have been thinking of starting a Paleo diet as part of your commitment to get healthier in the coming year, but are a bit overwhelmed or unsure how to get started, check out my New Year, New You! whole-foods based cleanse program. To learn more, click here. 

WHO links red meat to cancer- what you need to know

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On Monday, the World Health Organization announced that processed meats like bacon & sausage were classified as “causing cancer” and red meat as “probably causing cancer.”

Let’s just say, its caused quite a stir. So does this mean that a Paleo or low-carb diet is going to kill you???

No. But there are a few things you should know before eating loads of bacon with impunity.

The risk is small

The report stated that 50g of processed meat a day (less than 2 pieces of bacon) caused an increase in colorectal cancer of 18%. What does that 18% increased risk really look like though? Let’s say 6 out of 100 people get bowel cancer in their lifetimes. And all of those 100 people eat an extra 50g of processed meat a day. An 18% increased risk means 7 people will develop develop bowel cancer instead of 6. That’s one extra case of cancer per 100 people eating 50g of processed meat every day.

The risk is still smaller than that from smoking or alcohol consumption

Cancer Research UK put it this way- 21% of bowel cancers can be attributed to processed and red meat consumption whereas 86% of lung cancer can be attributed to tobacco. In the larger context, 19% of all cancers can be attributed to tobacco, whereas just 3% of all cancers can be attributed to red and processed meat. So it would make no sense to stop eating red meat if you’re going to continue to smoke or drink alcohol excessively.

Red meat can cause cancer

There are several mechanisms by which it appears that red & processed meats can cause cancer. (And it should be noted that these mechanisms have NOTHING to do with whether the meat is of the grain-fed, feedlot-raised variety. That is, eating only grass-fed red meat will not protect you from these potential cancer-causing pathways.) One of those pathways is the digestion of the heme protein. Cytotoxic compounds can be created that damage the gut lining and can lead to cell proliferation- and increased cancer risk. Another mechanism is the metabolism of L-carnitine, an amino acid particularly abundant in red meat. Gut bacteria metabolize L-carnitine into a compound called TMA (trimethylamine). TMA crosses into the blood stream, goes to the liver and is metabolized into TMAO (trimethylamine-N-oxide). TMAO is strongly linked to cancer and heart disease. Another potential mechanism are mutagens that can be created when cooking red meat, particularly grilling and frying (heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons).

All these mechanisms are modified by vegetable consumption

Chlorophyll (the compound that makes plants green) and heme have almost identical chemical structures. Because of this similarity, chlorophyll can block the metabolism of heme into toxic, gut-destroying compounds allowing it instead to be metabolized to inert (inactive) compounds.

Indoles found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, cabbage, and cauliflower have been shown to suppress the growth of tumors caused by heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

As for the link between L-carnitine and TMAO, that is a little more complex. In turns out that a particular species of gut bacteria, Prevotella, is mostly responsible for increased blood levels of TMAO from L-carnitine consumption, according to a 2013 study published in Nature Medicine. Conversely, gut microbiomoes that have more Bacteroides sp. instead of Prevotella converted significantly less L-carnitine into to TMA and eventually, TMAO. Prevotella specialize in fermenting polysaccharides in grains (but not those in fruits & vegetables), so they appear to predominate in the microbiomes of those with high consumptions of grains. Though we can’t say this conclusively yet, it appears from what we currently know, that eating a grain-free diet and getting most of your fiber from vegetables helps moderate the danger of processed and red meat consumption from this particularly pathway.

So I don’t think anyone needs to give up red meat or enjoying bacon from time to time. It comes back to the same, basic, intuitive advice: eat a variety of foods (mix in white meats & fish in for protein sources) and make sure to get at least 5 servings of vegetables a day. That means that there should be veggies on your plate at every meal. I encourage folks to think of building their plates around 4 ounce of animal protein (about 1/3 of their plate) and to fill in the other two-thirds of plate with vegetables. Not only is it a simple way of creating a meal, but it helps ensure that you get the healthiest balance of animal to plant foods.

For further reading check out here and here.

Calcium supplementation: more harm than good?

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Are you taking a calcium supplement or has your doctor recommended one? You might be surprised to learn that the latest research suggests that calcium supplementation is useless at best, harmful at worst.

A study in the online British Medical Journal found that calcium supplementation in patients over 50 years old had no benefit. Neither did increasing calcium intake from dairy foods. This isn’t the case of a single, controversial, contrarian study either. Dr. Ian Ried of the University of New Zealand at Auckland and his team performed a meta-analysis, where they looked at results from all the high-quality studies they could find, and found the same thing.

The bigger problem though is that since this extra calcium intake is not ending up in the bone tissue, its accumulating in the arteries where it can lead to atherosclerosis and heart disease, or it ends up in kidneys where it may lead to the formation of kidney stones.

And yet, a very real problem remains. The National Osteoporosis Foundation estimates that 54 million Americans are at risk for developing the bone-thinning condition and half of American women over 50 suffer from a bone fracture because of osteoporosis.

So if calcium supplementation and dairy foods aren’t the answer to the osteoporosis epidemic, what is???

1.) Vitamin D. Among other things, Vitamin D helps increase absorption of calcium by the bone tissue. Its also vitally important to the regulation of the immune system. If you have any sort of chronic inflammatory condition, work indoors and wear sunscreen religiously, you are probably deficient in the crucial pro-hormone. Almost everyone I test for Vitamin D that is not already supplementing it, is at or below 30 ng/mL, the lower cut-off for “normal” Vitamin D levels.

2.) Magnesium. This mineral is necessary for over 400 different enzymatic reactions in the body, including the absorption of calcium. And yet, magnesium itself is blocked from being absorbed by calcium. So if you are relying on the magnesium from your Cal/Mg supplement to supply you magnesium needs, you probably aren’t getting enough magnesium. Magnesium glycinate is the best assimilated form of this nutrient.

3.) Vitamin K2. One of this vitamin’s main jobs is to determine where calcium should go- into the bone tissue or into soft tissue. When a person is deficient in K2, more calcium ends up in the soft tissue rather than the bone tissue. K2 is found almost exclusively in animal foods, in particular the butter from cows grazing on lush, green spring grasses. The more deep yellow or orange your butter is, the more nutrient-dense it is.

4.) Weight-bearing exercise. Walking, running and lifting weights are the best options. Bone tissue operates according to Wolf’s Law, which is basically that the tissue will respond to the magnitude of the loads placed on it. More loading = denser, stronger bone tissue. This is one of the bigger problems with space travel; the lack of gravity means there is not enough loading on the skeletal system and astronauts quickly develop osteoporosis. Given the lack of exercise and even just movement required by most people to function these days, this might be the biggest piece of the osteoporosis puzzle yet.

5.) Posture. Or maybe I should makes this 4B instead of 5. Its not just how much you load the bone tissue, but also the vectors of those loads. Imagine a stack of blocks and how much load they could take if we pressed straight down in the same line as gravity- a compression force. Now imagine if we could put a curve in the stack of blocks how much less compression force the curved column of blocks could handle. Now remember from above, more loading = denser, stronger bones. So proper alignment leads to stronger, denser bone tissue.

And if you have been taking calcium supplements? It might be wise to talk to your doctor about having a calcium score test done. This can tell how much calcium has accumulated in the soft tissue of your arteries and is a much better assessment of heart disease risk then looking at total cholesterol.

Use the grey box on the right to sign-up for my newsletter before October 25, 2015 and get an exclusive 10% site-wide coupon at my Metagenics webstore. Metagenics carries an awesome Magnesium glycinate supplement as well as many other high quality supplements.

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