Fruits & Vegetables

Recently, a couple studies came out regarding diet that recommended what we should already know.  The first study performed by Harvard nurses, monitored the diets of 110,000 people for 14 years.  They found that the people who ate more fruits and vegetables had lower risk of developing heart disease.  Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S. accounting for almost 1 out of every 2 deaths!  The nurses concluded that increasing your daily fruit/vegetable intake will decrease your risk of heart disease by 4 percent per serving.

A similar study done at University College London found that diets including plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and fish help decrease the risk of depression.  In the study, those who ate a diet based on fresh, whole foods had a 26% lower risk of depression.  Furthermore, those who ate diets high in fried food, processed meat, high-fat dairy and sugar had a 58% higher incidence of depression.  Despite their risk of suicide, deeper depression and outcomes that are often not any better than placebos, anti-depression drugs are one of the most common prescriptions in the U.S.  What if simple changes in diet along with regular exercise could eliminate depression for most people?

The recommendation on fruits/vegetables is five-to-thirteen servings per day depending on whether your sources are organic or lower quality mass produced sources.  As I’ve discussed in the past, fruits, vegetables, and fish are the foods rich in omega 3 fatty acids that reduce the inflammation associated with heart disease, depression and most other common ailments.  One of the best health tips you could ever implement is to include a fruit or a vegetable with every meal.  Plan this for yourself and your family and you will see the results within a very short time.  I don’t care if it’s the same vegetable every single meal; just do it!  The only thing I would recommend is that you try to keep your fruit/vegetable sources raw or lightly cooked.  Heavy cooking, freezing and canning can destroy the fiber, enzymes, and vitamin/mineral complexes you are trying to gain by eating these foods.

Sauna Benefits

We have recently added an infrared sauna to our office and are excited about the potential benefits this can offer to our patients. Perhaps you have used a sauna in the past. Most of us are familiar with steam saunas which generally operate at a lower temperature than a dry sauna. An infrared sauna simply relies on heat and not steam for its overall effects. A traditional sauna heats you from the outside in. Infrared saunas heat you from the inside out. “By heating your tissues several inches deep, the infrared sauna can enhance your natural metabolic processes and blood circulation.”  There are numerous reasons to implement sauna use in your wellness routine.

Researchers in Finland did extensive studies to discover multiple benefits of sauna use. In relation to brain health, they “found that men who used a sauna four to seven times a week for an average length of 15 minutes had a 66 percent lower risk of developing dementia, and a 65 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s.” An added benefit is that the stress hormones, norepinephrine and prolactin were released increasing focus and attention as well as repairing nerve cell damage.

In addition to brain health, the Finnish researchers also found numerous benefits to the heart. “Men who used the dry heat sauna seven times per week cut their risk of death from fatal health problems in half.” The stress placed on the body during a sauna session can mimic that of exercise. Athletic endurance is increased due to the blood flow to the heart and other muscles.

Use of the sauna can aide in detoxification and skin purification by increasing blood circulation which stimulates sweat glands. Heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic and mercury are excreted from the body while sweating.

One of the most popular reasons for sauna use is weight loss. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, “regular use of a sauna imparts a similar boost on the cardiovascular system to running. As you relax in the gentle infrared heat, your body is hard at work producing sweat, pumping blood and burning calories.”

Additionally, sauna use reduced pain in fibromyalgia and arthritis. “In one small study, 44 patients with fibromyalgia found a reduction in pain between 33 and 77 percent.”

The information contained in this week’s article was derived from the following Mercola.com article and Clearlight Infrared Sauna website:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2017/02/09/benefits-of-sauna-therapy.aspx

http://infraredsauna.com/infrared-sauna-health-benefits/

Think Happy Thoughts

Several times, I’ve discussed the importance of lowering stress and monitoring your thoughts to promote health and prevent disease.  I even cited the studies showing negative thinking changed the expression of our DNA (in a bad way).  Massive amounts of medical research have been performed in the last few years looking at this brain-body connection.  The basis of this research is that the brain runs the body and what the brain puts out will be expressed in the body.  This is precisely why many experts are now coming to believe that our thinking may be the most important lifestyle factor even over diet and exercise. 

With the use of functional MRI, they have identified the origin of negative and positive thinking and have discovered that positive thoughts originate in the front of the left side of the brain and negative thoughts originate from the same spot on the right side.  The importance of this discovery is when they had someone think a negative thought and then asked them to stop thinking that, nothing changed on the MRI.  Researchers quickly learned that the only way to turn off the right side of the brain associated with negative thinking is to turn on the left side associated with positive thinking.  This means that feelings of depression, anger, frustration, fear, and regret cannot just be turned off!  They have to be replaced with feelings of joy, peace, love, faith, and gratitude.  My belief is that these thought patterns, positive or negative, are habit forming.  Like anything, we get better at repeating these patterns with practice.  What are you practicing?  Even if you are practicing the negative thoughts that have a devastating effect on your health, you have the choice to change even just a little at a time.  Next week, I will share some tested strategies on how to start making this change.