Happy, Blessed Easter and Passover

As we celebrate the joyous holidays of Easter and Passover, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading my posts and for your comments, support and encouragement. They mean more to me than you know.

I wish you and your family every blessing as we begin these joyous celebrations. In the spirit of Easter and Passover I want to share this little thought someone sent me in an email once again:

Jesus died over 2,000 years ago.

No one has ever referred to Him as the “late’ Jesus,

not even those who don’t believe; nowhere in history.

Nowhere has He ever been referred to in the past tense.

Because He is The Living God!

May He smile on you and your family today.

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Osteoporisis: Have We Put The Cart Before the Horse

It is commonly believed that fractures that occur in older adults are mainly caused by osteoporosis, that patients at high risk can be identified via screening and that the risk is then responsive to bone-targeted treatment and medications. Isn’t that what you thought as well? If an older person falls and breaks a bone, they must have osteoporosis, which weakened their bones and caused the fall. Well this is now being disputed.

According to the new study referenced above, while most fracture patients have fallen, they actually do not have osteoporosis. As people age and tend to become frail, their likelihood of falling increases. So it isn’t the osteoporosis that caused the fall as we have been led to believe. It is the frailty as a result of aging.

Furthermore, the study shows the screening currently available doesn’t effectively identify those people who are most likely to sustain a fracture and some of those who have a high risk score will never actually break a bone.

Finally those pharmaceutical drugs advertised on TV to prevent bone loss and hip fractures not only have dangerous side effects, but have not been shown to be effective in preventing hip fractures in real life studies.

The bottom line of this study is that falling and not fragile bones is the primary reason why fractures occur. Since it is a statistical fact that the older you get the more often you fall, and since the older you get the less dense your bones become, it is easy to confuse the lower bone mineral density as a “cause” and not just an “association” with increased fracture risk.

What do you think about the results of this study?

Want to see more articles like this?   Subscribe to this blog (just click on “Follow”) and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.  To follow me and get even more tips on how to live your life in 3-D, including improving your diet, choosing cutting edge nutritional products and effective weight loss strategies be sure to like me on Facebook here and here, sign up for my FREE weekly No-Nonsense Nutrition Report (and get a free gift!), follow me on Pinterest and Twitter!

Make gradual changes. Boost health, vitality and energy. Become your best YOU.      

Weight Loss: To Snack or Not to Snack

For years I heard people recommend eating 6 small meals a day. I tried it and felt awful! I actually gained weight back then and that definitely was not the goal. For a long time I just figured it didn’t suit my particular metabolism. I know people who feel they need a snack between breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner and others who prefer to graze all day long. While I don’t tell people they can’t snack, in Today is Still the Day, I do talk about this:

“One of our goals in this plan is to switch over from being a sugar burner to becoming a fat burner. One effective strategy is to stop snacking between meals because every time you eat, you spike your insulin levels, which prevents fat burning and encourages fat storage. Eating between meals creates insulin resistance, so I strongly suggest cutting out snacks and just eating properly structured meals.” p. 62

I talk about eating properly structured meals that include the highest quality foods from each of the three macronutrients – protein, carbs and fats. The carbs are primarily from fiber-rich, non-starchy veggies and the fats are healthy fats from olive, avocado, hemp and flax oils, pasture butter and coconut oil as well as nuts, seeds, olives, avocados and meat from grass fed and finished animals.

When you truly nourish your body at the cellular level, you will find you are not looking for snacks because you are truly satisfied. Well-structured meals turn off hunger hormones and normalize blood sugar and insulin levels.

Eating constantly throughout the day sets you up for exhaustion and premature aging as well as less fat burning and here is why:

When you eat, the process of digestion begins. This requires your body to expend time and energy breaking down that food into molecules that can be absorbed and utilized. Complete digestion usually takes six hours or more. When you snack in between meals, in effect you are asking your body to restart a process it has not completed from the last time you ate. This leads to weight gain because when your body cannot absorb and utilize food, it stores it as fat. Additionally, restarting the process of digestion by snacking cuts short your body’s ability to burn fat in between meals because there is almost no “in between” meal time.

That makes sense, don’t you agree? And I haven’t even touched on the quality of most “snacks” which are usually high carb, junk foods. But it is true even if they are healthy foods. This is why intermittent fasting, which restricts your feeding to one or two meals within a small window of time, is so effective. It gives your body that down time it requires to process the fuel you put in it.

Are you a snacker? Do you eat 5 or 6 small meals throughout the day? How has that affected you?

Want to see more articles like this?   Subscribe to this blog (just click on “Follow”) and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.  To follow me and get even more tips on how to live your life in 3-D, including improving your diet, choosing cutting edge nutritional products and effective weight loss strategies be sure to like me on Facebook here and here, sign up for my FREE weekly No-Nonsense Nutrition Report (and get a free gift!), follow me on Pinterest and Twitter!

Make gradual changes. Boost health, vitality and energy. Become your best YOU.      

Sugar and Inflammation: My Experience

When I work with clients, regardless of whether they are trying to lose weight, normalize blood sugar or cholesterol, dealing with arthritis and joint pain or some other health issue, inflammation is at the root of it. Chronic inflammation has been proven to be the underlying cause of heart disease, not cholesterol levels.

Here are links to two previous newsletters where I dealt with inflammation and digestive health and how emotions influence inflammation in case you’d like a bit more info.

Inflammation is caused by oxidative stress, which in turn is triggered by emotional or physical trauma, nutritional or environmental pollutants. There are many things known to cause chronic inflammation, including:

Processed and fast foods

Refined sugars

Artificial sweeteners

Pesticides and herbicides

Heavy metals

Pollution

Prolonged stress and emotional upset

Prolonged, intense exercise

Excessive alcohol intake

I want to share an experience I had over this past Thanksgiving that I hope will really clarify this for you. Normally, I do not eat sugar and grains. I pretty much follow the detox weeks of my Today is Still the Day plan 5 days a week and then eat what I want on the weekends. That being said, I still pretty much avoid refined sugar and most grains. This is true except during the holidays. While I bake with healthier flours and use organic sugar or coconut sugar in my holiday recipes, I don’t deny myself anything and I enjoy every bite. I go right back to normal eating within a few days.

This past Thanksgiving that’s what I did. I noticed that following Monday when we went for a walk on the local trails, my left knee was extremely sore and painful as we walked. I never have pain when I walk so this was new and definitely concerning.

As I do whenever there’s any muscle strain or pain, I started taking a turmeric supplement and within two days was perfectly fine. When I really thought about it, I realized that it came on suddenly after eating a lot of carbs. Thanksgiving is definitely a carb-heavy meal and very different from my normal pattern. Once I got back to normal eating and supplemented with turmeric, the knee pain totally resolved.

I thought that was really interesting so I decided to do an experiment over the Christmas holiday. I still ate all the cookies and holiday foods I cook once a year and definitely look forward to, but I supplemented with turmeric throughout the holiday season. I only enjoyed all the cookies and goodies for the two days of Christmas Eve and Christmas day (who doesn’t love the left overs?), and I did not experience the joint pain this time.

I realize this isn’t scientific, but it is definitely evidence-based and the results were clear to me. Excess sugar – even organic – and grains, even organic or heirloom flour that has less gluten, was still inflammatory to my joints. And turmeric was definitely protective.

If you experience regular or periodic joint stiffness and pain or any other inflammatory symptoms, pay attention to your diet and see if there might just be a connection. It’s a simple fix. Why not try it?

Could your diet be increasing inflammation in your body and causing symptoms?

Want to see more articles like this?   Subscribe to this blog (just click on “Follow”) and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.  To follow me and get even more tips on how to live your life in 3-D, including improving your diet, choosing cutting edge nutritional products and effective weight loss strategies be sure to like me on Facebook here and here, sign up for my FREE weekly No-Nonsense Nutrition Report (and get a free gift!), follow me on Pinterest and Twitter!

Make gradual changes. Boost health, vitality and energy. Become your best YOU.      

Heart Health: A Novel Method to Keep Arteries Clear

Chances are you’ve seen pomegranates in the supermarket, bottles of pomegranate juice or even containers of their arils, the juicy red seeds they contain, but may have never tried it. I even find the frozen arils which I love in my smoothies. I hope you will try them because not only are they delicious but they have numerous health benefits. I explained some of those benefits in more detail in this past No-Nonsense Nutrition Report.

Today I wanted to just highlight the benefits of pomegranate juice in unclogging arteries. Clogged arteries are known as atherosclerosis. When arteries become inflamed, the body sends out cholesterol and immune cells to smooth over the damage. When this happens too often the arteries become stiff and thickened from all the cellular debris. This can ultimately result in a blockage, heart attack and damage.

Most often doctors will prescribe statins to prevent this from happening but besides having devastating side effects, they don’t address the root cause which is inflammation. This study found that consuming pomegranate juice daily for a year reduced the arterial thickness by up to 35%, with no dangerous side effects. Even more exciting was that those in the control group experienced increased carotid artery stenosis of 9% within 1 year. So in the pomegranate juice drinking group, it is possible they reduced thickening of the arteries by over 60% beyond what would have occurred had the natural progression of the disease been allowed to continue with no intervention.

Would you consider a simple intervention like drinking pomegranate juice daily over taking a statin or other drug to prevent atherosclerosis?

Want to see more articles like this?   Subscribe to this blog (just click on “Follow”) and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.  To follow me and get even more tips on how to live your life in 3-D, including improving your diet, choosing cutting edge nutritional products and effective weight loss strategies be sure to like me on Facebook here and here, sign up for my FREE weekly No-Nonsense Nutrition Report (and get a free gift!), follow me on Pinterest and Twitter!

Make gradual changes. Boost health, vitality and energy. Become your best YOU.      

Healthy Weight Loss: Why Meal Timing Matters

Most people are used to eating dinner anywhere between 6 and 8 pm and we think of those “early bird specials” restaurants run as being only for old people.  Well in Today is Still the Day I strongly urge not eating past 7 pm and I have some good reason for that recommendation.

We are learning that when you eat is just as important as what you eat. There are numerous benefits to practicing intermittent fasting, which I discuss in more detail in Today is Still the Day and explain ways you can try it pretty effortlessly. Some of those myriad benefits include regulating the body’s hunger hormone (ghrelin), clearing out toxins and regulating insulin levels, allowing your digestive system to “take a breather” and promoting better sleep.

However, even if you aren’t practicing intermittent fasting, not eating past 7 pm can not only help you lose or maintain healthy weight, but also improve heart health. When you restrict your eating to before 7 pm, you allow your digestive system some all-important down time. It takes several hours for your stomach to empty after your last meal of the day. If you have a late dinner or snack it won’t have time to be digested before you go to sleep. Your body has restorative and renewal activities to tend to during the nighttime hours and if you haven’t digested your last meal it has to focus on that process instead.

You want to give your body time to rest at night and also to digest and use the good fuel you provide during the day to nourish your body. And if weight loss is the goal, calories consumed late in the day are more likely to be stored as fat, because your body does not have time to burn them off before you hit the hay.

Do you restrict the bulk of calorie consumption to earlier in the day? Or are you a late night snacker?

Want to see more articles like this?   Subscribe to this blog (just click on “Follow”) and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.  To follow me and get even more tips on how to live your life in 3-D, including improving your diet, choosing cutting edge nutritional products and effective weight loss strategies be sure to like me on Facebook here and here, sign up for my FREE weekly No-Nonsense Nutrition Report (and get a free gift!), follow me on Pinterest and Twitter!

Make gradual changes. Boost health, vitality and energy. Become your best YOU.      

 

Fitness: A Novel Way to Change Things Up

It’s a good idea to change up your workouts to gain maximum benefits. If you do exactly the same workout in exactly the same way each time your body adapts to it and you no longer get the benefits from it you did when you first began. That’s why it’s important to change things up periodically. In fact, as I share in Today is Still the Day, Dr. Timothy Miller, sports medicine specialist advises: “Don’t do the same workout every day. Add something that makes your body work differently.”

You can do that any number of ways – change the type of exercise (choose a sport, alternate cardio with strength training, try HIIT, Zumba, kettlebells, kickboxing), vary the intensity, number of repetitions. But here is something you can include that can change things up and provides many other health benefits that you may not have ever considered: include walking backwards!

It’s actually nothing new. It is also called retro walking and originated in Ancient China as a health strategy. Today people use it to build muscle, improve sports performance and promote balance. Recent research also shows walking backwards sharpens your thinking skills, boosts memory and enhances cognitive control.

When you walk backwards, it puts less strain and requires less range of motion from your knee joints, making it ideal for people who have knee problems or injuries. Also, because walking backwards eliminates the typical heel-strike to the ground since the toe contacts the ground first, it can lead to changes in pelvis alignment that help open up the facet joints in your spine. This could potentially alleviate pressure that may cause low back pain in some people. You are also working out your quadriceps and calves, which typically take a backseat to your hamstrings and glutes, during regular forward walking. You also burn more calories since it takes close to 30% more energy than moving forward at the same pace.

You can try backward walking on a treadmill (just start slowly to avoid tripping or falling) or use a backward motion when using an elliptical machine. What I do is this: I usually do 4 or 5 sets of high knees throughout the day. Sometimes I do them in a stationary position and often I will just move 5 or 7 steps forward and then 5 to 7 steps backward. It gives me some backward walking in a safe environment and changes up my usual routine.

How do you change up your fitness routine to get the biggest benefit?

Want to see more articles like this?   Subscribe to this blog (just click on “Follow”) and get each new post delivered to your email or feed reader.  To follow me and get even more tips on how to live your life in 3-D, including improving your diet, choosing cutting edge nutritional products and effective weight loss strategies be sure to like me on Facebook here and here, sign up for my FREE weekly No-Nonsense Nutrition Report (and get a free gift!), follow me on Pinterest and Twitter!

Make gradual changes. Boost health, vitality and energy. Become your best YOU.