inflammation Archives - Hudson Valley Chiropractic & Wellness

Barefoot: 5 reasons to ditch your shoes for better health

April 18, 2016 by drchrista 2 Comments

People going barefoot is not something you see often in modern Western society outside of a swimming pool or similar body of water. And what a shame! There are many health benefits to be gained from going barefoot.

April is National Foot Health Awareness Month, so before I get into some of the specific benefits let’s talk a little first about your feet, what they are capable of, and a little bit of their anatomy, because form = function.

Fun fact: 25% of your muscles & bones live below your ankle. (Another fun fact: your foot is a hydrostat. That means it can change its shape without changing it volume- like an elephant’s trunk.) There are 33 joints that make up your foot and your foot has a very similar anatomy to your hand. Now, imagine for a moment what your life would be like if an evil person came along and put your hands in casts from the moment you started crawling around on them and you wore these casts 75% of your day. It wouldn’t be pretty right? Your hands would be more like paddles or fins than hands. You certainly wouldn’t have all the dexterity that you do now. Wearing stiff shoes from the first moments of walking is really no different.

‘Sure Doc, but we don’t walk on our hands like we walk on our feet. Shoes protect our feet from glass, and sharp rocks and things like that.‘

True enough. But again, that is because most of us walk around on altered foot. If we have a shoe to protect our feet, we don’t build up callouses or tougher skin on the soles of our foot. With shoes, the muscles and other tissues of the feet become weaker and lose their ability to respond quickly and reflexively to sensory stimuli from the bottom of the feet. Remember those 33 joints in your foot? In a fully articulating foot, you have the ability to move them independently of each other, allowing you to ‘lift’ one part of the foot off of a sharp object without unweighting or lifting the entire foot.

Imagine that I took your hand and quickly & forcefully pushed the palm of your flattened hand down on a table. Your hand would stay flat. Now imagine we repeated this experiment, but this time I placed a tack, sharp side up, on the table and lined up your hand to land right over top of this. Hopefully, you wouldn’t let me do this to you, but if somehow I did manage to slam your hand down on the tack, you could articulate your hand in such a way that it tented up over the sharp end of the tack so as to lessen and potential injury from the tack. Your feet innately have this exact same capability when it comes to sharp objects on the ground. Hopefully, you use your eyeballs to scan for any potential danger and avoid stepping on them, but in case you miss it, or miscalculate how sharp the object is, reflexes in the foot should engage to protect you from most injuries.

The reflexes become extremely dulled by shoe wearing for most our lives, so at first going barefoot may be a painful experience to you. With time and patience though, your feet will ‘toughen up’ as your reflexes, range of motion, and muscle strength come back.

If it’s going to take some work, time patience and little pain to get your feet ready to go barefoot, why even bother??? I’m glad you asked. Here’s 5 reasons that going barefoot can help improve your health.

Improved balance. In senior citizens, the greatest health risk is falling, which is directly related to a lack of balance that seems to come with aging. You don’t have to lose your balance just because you are getting older though. We lose our balance because we don’t use it enough. If your feet are articulate enough to go barefoot regularly without pain, then you’ve trained those reflexes in your foot to a very high level, which means you will have much better balance. Better balance = less falls = less likely to break a bone. In fact, I would say that if your are worried about keeping healthy, strong bones as you age, but aren’t regularly working on your balance, you’re missing a huge opportunity to prevent broken bones.
Better posture. You might not wear ‘high heels’ but even most athletic sneakers have a positive heel. That means your heel is higher than your toes relative to flat, level ground. Structurally, even a few millimeters of height difference pitches your skeleton forward. You don’t fall forward though because your muscles along the back of your body- the calves, hamstrings, gluts and low back muscles- overly tense in order to keep you upright. If you walk around like this all the time, those muscles will eventually physically shorten by decreasing the number of sacromeres- the repeating contractile units that make up the muscles. Once they are shortened, they stay that way, unless you give them enough stimulus to lengthen again. Going barefoot puts you in a ‘zero drop’ or neutral foot position and allows your skeleton to achieve a balanced, “stacked” position over the feet without having to shorten your muscles.
Less foot/knee/hip/low back pain. As above, if your muscles have started to physically accommodate their length to keep you from falling over, they are probably very tight too. This means they are putting an increased amount of force on the bones to which they are attached and the joints which they cross. For example, the calf muscles attaches to the lower part of the femor (thigh bones) in the back and the hamstrings cross the back of the knee to attach to the lower leg bone, the tibia. If both of these muscles are short and tight, they are going to pull and compress the knee joint. How many people do you know who have “bone on bone” in their knees, or are losing the space (and therefore cartilage) in their knee joint? Do your knees grind, click or pop? Taking supplements to increase the synthesis of cartilage in the knee can be helpful, but if there is no space for that cartilage to grow because the joint is compressed, how effective will that be? Perhaps that real reason clinical trails fail to find a conclusive benefit from taking glucosamine, chondroitin and/or MSM. By walking around on a neutral foot, going barefoot can help correct these imbalances that lead to poor posture and increased compression forces on certain joints. Also, if you have bunions, let me correct a misconception right now. Bunions themselves are not hereditary. The tendency to wear shoes with a narrow toe box that squish the toes together, can be taught or even encouraged by family members, which is why it might seem to ‘run in the family.’ Also, the shape of your foot- how wide or narrow it is, may be under some genetic control. So if everyone in your family has wider-than-average feet, but all insist on cramming them into average width shoes, most people in the family will end up with foot malformations at some point in live.
Less foot odor/nail fungus. Fungi love dark, moist environments. So do most of the bacteria that lead to foot odor. If you want to clear up these conditions, you don’t need a lot of expensive creams, sprays or powders. You do need to let your feet air out and dry out though. Going barefoot around your house or yard more often can be a great way to do this. (Note: if you have an advanced case of nail fungus where most or all of your nails are thick brittle and yellow, please see a doctor for a medication. Once the fungus is cleared, going barefoot more often can help prevent it from coming back. Especially since some of that fungus is probably now living in your shoes….)
Earthing. When we walk with our barefeet directly on the earth, there is a measurable exchange of ions. Specifically, we discharge excess positive ions. Holistic health experts believe that a build up of these positive ions in our bodies can support inflammation and have negative health consequences. One clinician did a small experiment and found that just 15 minutes a day of walking barefoot on the ground helped her patients reduce inflammation. If their inflammatory load was already low, it helped them lose weight.

If you’re excited about and ready to start adding some barefoot time to your life- excellent! Stay tuned for next week’s post where I will give you some guidelines for incorporating this in your life safely and without injury! Can’t wait? Check out my favorite book on this topic by Katy Bowman.

Also, feel free to follow me on Instagram (@primaldoc) for some inspiration from my own barefoot adventures!

Or sign up for my email list with the link below to get my free report and to receive emails with important information for living your best, healthiest life!

Should you try The Paleo Diet?

December 21, 2015 by drchrista 1 Comment

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

October 27, 2015 by drchrista 1 Comment

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.

6 “hidden” sources of stress

July 21, 2015 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Stress. It is ubiquitous in this modern age, so much so that most of us consider it inevitable. However, our relationship with stress over the last hundred years or so is vastly different from our relationship with it for the vast majority of our evolution as a species.

For most of our time on this Earth, stress was a punctuated, limited experience. The saber-tooth tiger chased us, we ran away and once safe in our cave, we could rest, relax and repair wounds, tissue damage and even metabolic damaged incurred on our getaway.

Unfortunately, nowadays that ‘rest, relax and repair’ phase never comes and so the damage builds and builds. Even if we don’t feel ‘stressed,’ our bodies may be experiencing stress. Though most of us associate ‘stress’ with psychoemotional stressors, we can experience ill effects from physical stressors too- and the body does not distinguish between physical and mental stresses.

So what are some ‘hidden’ sources of physical stress that might be contributing to your overall stress and slowly eroding away your health?

1. Food intolerances. Intolerances are different immunologically than a true food ‘allergy’ so the symptoms can be a lot more subtle. Headaches, fatigue, joint pain, skin rashes, and other chronic conditions can be symptoms of a gut being assaulted regularly by foods it doesn’t tolerate. Since the majority of the your immune system resides in your gut, this can create imbalances that can set the stage for autoimmune disease.

2. Poor sleep. Not just a lack of sleep, which most of us have experienced as a stress, but a lack of quality, restorative sleep. Sleep apnea is an all-to-common manifestations of this. If your body is not getting enough oxygen and alarms are constantly going off in your brain to wake up and breathe, you can be in bed ‘sleeping’ for 8-10 hours and still be tired and fatigued throughout the day. Another thing that can negatively impact your sleep quality is electromagnetic radiation from any electronics. Current evidence suggests that EMR disrupts the circadian rhythms that govern our sleep-wake cycles deep in a part of the brain called the pineal gland. Set your phone to ‘airplane mode,’ turn off the wireless router and unplug whatever electronics you can at night. They draw a small current even if plugged, but ‘off.’ Put all bedroom electronics on a power strip so you only have to unplug one thing to kill the electricity to them all at night.

3. Nutrient deficiencies. Most of us have moved away from eating nutrient-dense whole foods for most of our calorie intake. Modern farming practices can often deplete the soil of important minerals like magnesium and selenium and because of this, even organic produce may not be as nutrient dense as the food our grandparents ate. Additionally, in trying to digest process foods, our bodies are often depleted of more vitamins and minerals that we receive from the food itself. In dealing with increased stress, we use up our stores of B vitamins, Vitamin C and magnesium.

4. Blood sugar imbalances. Have you ever experienced the feeling of being ‘hangry,’ when you are so hungry your mood tanks and you get mad at everyone and everything until you get something to eat? Or have you ever had that afternoon ‘food coma’ where all you want to do about an hour after lunch is take a nap? These are symptoms that your blood sugar is unbalanced. One way that your body deals with low blood sugar is to secrete cortisol, our stress hormone, which mobilizes stored glucose from the liver in order to make it available to brain cells. Though this is a key survival adaptation, particularly in times where food is scarce, when this leads to elevated cortisol levels on a daily basis, it can suppress the immune system and lead to problems regulating our inflammatory response.

5. Sex hormone imbalances. Cortisol is made primarily from progesterone, but can be made from estrogen, testosterone and DHEA as well. Poor libido, changes in menstrual cycles, changes in PMS, infertility and erectile dysfunction may all have their route cause in stress that robs of us of our sex hormone balance.

6. Exercise. Bet you didn’t see that one coming? Exercise is a stress, usually a good one. But too much, too frequently, especially ‘cardio,’ can overtax the adrenals and result in overproduction of cortisol. In a healthy person, this is not problematic, in fact, it helps the body be better prepared for future stresses, but if you have a chronic health condition, or any one of the hidden sources of stress listed above, it may useful to reevaluate what kind of exercise you are doing and for how long. Strength training workouts are less ‘stressful’ to the adrenal glands then long steady-state cardio workouts. Additionally, short, high-intensity interval workouts appear to be less taxing on the adrenals glands than a steady-state cardio workout as well. If a patient is suffering from stress from too much of the wrong kind of exercise, I will also recommend moving more and exercising less. Focus on things like walking, playing outdoors, standing instead of sitting, gardening, etc.- activities that are fun, can be fit into your daily routine (as opposed to having to carve out extra time in an already hectic schedule to go to the gym) and move your body in new and novels ways, instead of the repetitive motion of most cardio exercises.

Glutathione: What it is and why you need (more of) it!

September 29, 2014 by drchrista Leave a Comment

The short answer here is that glutathione is your body’s main antioxidant. As with any antioxidant, its main function is to reduce free radicals within the body. The damage caused by free radicals accelerates the aging process, as the free radicals destroy essential compounds and tissues, like the lining of your arteries or even your DNA itself.

Inflammation can also increase the production of free radicals and therefore the need for glutathione. In fact, almost any inflammatory condition can be helped by ensuring the body is adequately synthesizing glutathione.

Outside of inflammatory conditions that might call for more glutathione synthesis, we may become deficient in glutathione because of insufficient dietary intake of the necessary building blocks of glutathione. In particular, the amino acid cysteine, which is rare in food, is often a limiting factor in glutathione synthesis.

Magnesium and selenium are two minerals also necessary for the production and function of glutathione. Due to modern farming practices, both of these minerals can be hard to come by in adequate amounts through just diet alone. Vitamin D3 has also been shown to augment glutathione synthesis.

So how can you insure that you have adequate amounts of this very important antioxidant on hand?

Whey protein has been shown to increase glutathione synthesis.
Supplementation with N-acetyl cysteine has been shown to be useful. SAMe has also shown to be beneficial
Optimize your Vitamin D levels by making sure you get 15-20 minutes of sun (or more if you have darker skin) on unprotected skin daily, year around. Consider supplementation if this is difficult.
Make sure you get adequate magnesium and selenium. Magnesium is a safe & effective supplement that almost everyone should be on. Three Brazil nuts eaten daily can help insure adequate selenium levels.

Why going ‘gluten-free’ is not enough

September 22, 2014 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Gluten-free is all the rage now with major restaurant chains offering gluten-free menus and even the smallest grocery stores having aisles dedicated to gluten-free products. With the proliferation of gluten-free offerings, one might be tempted to think we are making healthier choices.

This is not the case.

I remember when I first started working with Hashimoto’s patients. After delivering the news that their thyroid condition was in fact an autoimmune condition, I informed them that they needed to go gluten-free in order to prevent their bodies from making antibodies that attacked and destroyed their thyroid gland. Knowing that this can be quite a drastic change for some people, I tried to encourage them by reminding them that this was an opportunity to eat healthier by filling out their diets with vegetables instead of processed wheat products. What quickly became apparent though, is that people simply started swapping their processed wheat products for processed gluten-free products.

Let me be plain: Gluten-free foods are NOT health foods.

Gluten-free products are highly processed. It takes the marvels of modern machinery to make something made of rice flour to not taste gritty and chalky.
Gluten-free foods are high in sugar. What’s the best way to cover-up that chalky taste? Sugar. Lots of it!
Gluten-free foods are terrible for blood sugar regulation. Another way to improve the taste & texture of a gluten-free food, besides adding a lot of sugar, is to using highly refined starches like cornstarch, potato starch & tapioca starch. These are very fine powders that are often a solution to that ‘gritty’ texture of rice flour. The problem is that they are so refined, there is nothing to digest and their carbohydrate content hits the bloodstream very quickly, provoking an insulin spike. This is very hard on the pancreas and is the same mechanism that leads to the development of Type II diabetes.
Gluten-free foods use refined vegetable oils. Fats are another way to cover up the chalky taste & texture. This wouldn’t be so problematic if we were using heat-stable, traditional fats like coconut oil or butter. However, most refined foods have refined fats in them like canola and soybean oil. These oils are not stable at high temperatures and have gone through a complex treatment process to deodorize and clean them before they are even sold to you. Why would they have to go through this process? Because they are so delicate, they become rancid just going through the extraction process. They have to be cleansed and deodorized or they would be too disgusting to eat. While the smell may be gone, the artery-destroying free radicals and inflammation-promoting omega 6 fats are not. Avoid these.
Gluten-free foods are not a good source of nutrients. This is a problem with any processed food. Processing removes and/or destroys the nutrient content. The more highly processed, the more of the nutrients that have been destroyed. Compared to vegetables, grains aren’t that great a source of nutrients to begin with. Refining them further into flours and even starches, removes what little there was to begin with. If health is really your goal, its best to swap out gluten-free wanna-be foods for real, whole foods that are naturally gluten-free. Like vegetables 🙂

It’s for the above reasons that I started recommending a Paleo-type diet when I need my patients to go gluten-free. Paleo is about whole, real foods. It’s also about healing the gut. Because here’s the other thing I began to notice when my patients just started swapping their processed wheat products for gluten-free processed products: they started developing sensitivities to other grain products- particularly the ones that they started consuming more often in the processed gluten-free foods. In the scientific literature this is known as ‘cross-reactivity.’ This occurred because the underlying problem- often a leaky gut- was not fully healed by simply switching to a ‘gluten-free’ diet.

I also noticed this pattern in my Celiac patients. Their symptoms greatly improved on a gluten-free diet, but they still didn’t feel fully well or healthy until they started eating more whole foods and less processed food. Again, years and years of irritation and inflammation in the gut could not be fixed simply by going gluten-free. All grains needed to be eliminated and more nutrient-dense foods like vegetables and bone broth needed to be added.

If a product has to be labeled ‘gluten-free,’ its probably not healthy for you. If health is truly your goal, you would be better off investing in naturally gluten-free foods like animal products, vegetables, fruits and nuts.

Ancestral Health

August 20, 2014 by drchrista Leave a Comment

We have more access to more information about health and disease than at any other period of human history and yet, we are arguably the most unhealthy we have ever been.

Here in the U.S., the sky-rocketing rates of obesity are a daily news story. Rates of chronic illness like heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and autoimmune disease are increasing at alarming rates. Diseases we thought only happened in aging adults are occurring in younger children.

Ironic isn’t?

If you’re old enough, you may remember a time when obesity was rare; when cancer was rare and only your rapidly aging grandpa has developed ‘diabeetus.’ So what happened? What has caused such a profound change in our health?

There are many answers to that question and as of yet, no proven smoking gun. Searching through the myriad of possibilities would take time we don’t have. What we need is a framework for understanding what effects health and gives us a blueprint to search for the place where we seem to have gone off the map.

The concept of ancestral health is that framework.

We think that cavemen lived ‘short, brutish’ lives, but archeology says that is not really the whole story. Sure, life expectancy was low, but that was a population average, mostly skewed because childbirth was such a dicey proposition. There were plenty of early humans who survived well into old age if they managed to survive disease epidemics, broken bones or becoming a meal for another creature. The point is, even if they made it to past all those hurdles, obesity heart disease and poor health weren’t destined for them simply by virtue of having reached that age.

From what archeology studies tell us, hunter-gatherers were lean, well-built with little tooth decay and no need for orthodontics. By studying modern hunter-gatherer tribes, we have inferred that they spent an average of 20 hours a week engaged in activities necessary for survival, spending the rest of their free time visiting relatives, creating art, or engaged in other leisure activities.

Can you imagine? All your needs met in the space of a part-time job? Very little stress and plenty of time to kick back, relax and enjoy life. No running yourself ragged, running in literal circles, going to gym to keep fit. No having to watch every last piece of food you ate in order to stay trim. No smartphone constantly ringing with requests from people who need something from you…right now! Growing old gracefully, with a strong, supple body. Getting plenty of restful sleep each and every night. Unburdened joy. Not sounding so bad, eh?

So how do this relate to health?

Well I’m glad you asked because you see, we have those same bodies. Bodies that want to be lean and fit and healthy and strong. It is our genetic potential and can be our genetic reality under the right circumstances. The problem is that we have changed the rules of the game much faster than our ancient bodies can keep up with and adapt sufficiently to. Since World War II, we have introduced 50,000 novel chemicals into our environment. We haven’t studied the long-term safety of most of these, let alone the combinations of them that we are exposed to daily. GMOs in our food supply, animals raised on grain instead of grass, pharmaceutical drugs, indoor lighting, smartphones, tablets and laptops, constant stress, automobiles- all are things that are completely new to humans beings in the last 100 or so years. All are interacting in ways that eroding our health.

The sad fact is that many of us don’t eat real food anymore. Many of us spend hours a day only exercising the tiny muscles in our hands while sitting on the biggest muscles of our hips and thighs. This is not how our bodies were designed to function and it is slowly killing us.

Using this framework, I make recommendations to my patients to get their current reality to be more congruent with their ancient genetics. Why? Because when these two are aligned, improved health is often the outcome. I may encourage patients to eat a more whole food diet, or to sleep in pattern that aligned with their brain’s ingrained circadian rhythms or to move and exercise in way that builds so-called ‘functional movement’ patterns. In doing so, we honor the innate wisdom of our bodies and their desire to be healthy.

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!