And the Loser Is . . .

A recent study looked at what foods are the worst if you are attempting to lose weight.  They found that the food that caused a person to gain more weight per serving than any other food out there was potato chips.  They also concluded that eating the right foods and avoiding the wrong foods may be more important than just eating less food in general when it comes to losing weight.

In a similar study, researchers looked at what diet strategy was the most effective.  The two dietary programs that topped the list were the D.A.S.H. program (standing for the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension) and the Mediterranean diet.  Both of these diets promote the consumption of vegetables, fruits, lean protein, whole grains and low-fat dairy (in this order of priority).  Likewise, both approaches recommend avoiding sugars, red meat and salt.  In the end, both diets are quite effective in reducing high blood pressure and reducing weight at the same time.  You should also take note that these approaches turn the food pyramid that we’ve been taught since grammar school upside down.  Rather than grains and dairy as the foundation of our pyramid, they are found in lowest priority while vegetables and fruits make up the base.

Whether it’s these two diets or any other effective diet, one thing is clear.  Sugar and table salt must be reduced while vegetables and fruits must be increased.  Our eating habits are just that – habits.  And to change any habit, you must start by changing your beliefs.  You must start looking at sugar, processed snack foods, fried foods, and artificial sweeteners as poisons that are as toxic as arsenic.  They may not kill as quickly as arsenic, but over time the effect is the same.  Commit to making vegetables and fruits along with lean meats such as chicken, fish, turkey, and low fat beef (preferably free-range sources for all of these) the staples of your diet for just one month while cutting sugars, chips, crackers and snacks for just one month and see what happens.  If you don’t notice a favorable change, consider it a failed experiment and go back to your old habits.

Cleaning Out

Even the American Cancer Association recognizes that around 80% of cancer is related to environmental toxins – from what we eat, drink, and breathe.  According to all sources, despite some futile efforts to control it, the toxic load that we take in only seems to increase.  This is why I always recommend an annual detoxification or cleanse to attempt to flush out all the impurities, toxins, and general unwanted goop that builds up in our system over the year.

In researching different types of cleanses, I discovered that detoxification programs are considered somewhat controversial as there is not a great deal of scientific data to support their significance.  Even though I’m a fan of the data, sometimes common sense must prevail and cleaning out your system once in a while is just that.  There are dozens of methods by which to cleanse, but you must realize that just like with everything in nature, your body will do this naturally if you just give it a chance.  The first step of any detox is to clean up your lifestyle for a few weeks.  This means taking a break from the sugars and artificial sweeteners, the processed grains, the hydrogenated oils, and any other chemicals such as caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol.  For a few weeks, try committing to just fruits, vegetables, and lean meat that has never seen the deep fryer.  This toxic vacation will give your liver, kidneys, colon, and skin to work naturally and clean out.

If you simply cannot commit to this amount of time, you could do an accelerated cleanse by using different herbs such as milk thistle, dandelion root, or burdock.  Unsweetened green tea and diluted cider vinegar have also shown benefit.  Every major vitamin company has their own detox program using their supplements.  Any of these programs should include extra water and fiber to help clean out.  Fresh squeezed lemon water first thing in the morning is effective as are foods such as spinach, kale, red peppers, garlic, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and cilantro.  Join us for our Detox Wellness Talk next Monday, July 2^nd at 5:30 p.m. to learn more about detoxing. Register on Facebook, on Eventbrite or by calling our office at 812-273-HEAL (4325).

Belly Fat

O.K.  I don’t believe there’s anyone out there that is particularly fond of belly fat or as it is often referred to -- the “muffin top.”  In the past, I’ve discussed that the excess around the girth starts producing its own hormones including estrogen.  In that article, I shared how this abdominal fat is a primary predictor of not only cardiovascular disease, but also of diabetes and cancer.  These are 3 of the 4 top killers in our society.  So obviously eliminating the belly fat is a big deal, but for anyone who has tried, it can be a challenge.  One of the reasons losing belly fat is so difficult is that it’s not there only as a result of poor diet and lack of exercise.  Chronic stress will also contribute to the spare tire.

When you have any perceived stress, your body releases certain "fight-flight" hormones including cortisol, norepinephrine and epinephrine.  This is a normal healthy response to any threat or perceived stress. Typically, these hormones will go up and down throughout the day with stress. The problem is that when you are chronically stressed your cortisol levels goes up and stay up. These elevated cortisol levels cause the body to resist weight loss because your body thinks times are hard and you might starve.  So it hoards the fat you eat and takes fat from healthier areas and moves it to your abdomen causing increased inflammation and insulin resistance in the body. This belly fat then leads to more cortisol because it has higher concentrations of an enzyme that converts inactive cortisone to active cortisol.  This increased cortisol retains more abdominal fat and the cycle continues.

So what can be done?  To lose the weight in this area you must reverse the cortisol and fight-flight reaction.  Fortunately, as long as you can find a form of exercise that you don’t resent and get more stressed over; all exercises will at least temporarily inhibit the stress and cortisol response.  Secondly, stress is most often a perception – we are not truly in a life-threatening situation.  Thus, you need to practice shifting your mind and your thoughts from what is wrong in life (stress) to what is right (gratitude).  Meditation to quiet your mind is also critical.  This change in the brain will change the hormones released.  Finally, your fuel sources need to be appropriate.  Caffeine, nicotine, sugar, flour and processed grains all act as stimulants that stimulate stress.  Lean protein, healthy fats (omega 3’s) and the minerals found in raw fruits and vegetables help to shut off the stress response.  In essence, if you eat, think, and exercise appropriately, you can reverse this deadly epidemic to our health and society.

The Trouble of Toxins

A toxin can simply be defined as something found in the body that is not supposed to be there.  The trouble is that most toxins we experience are things you cannot see, smell, or feel and you don’t know they are there until you come down with a chronic disease.  Over 3000 chemicals are added to our food supply and another 10,000 are used as solvents and preservatives.  Add this to the heavy metals and the 77,000 other chemicals produced in North America and you can see that toxicity is unavoidable and is a common denominator in chronic disease.  In fact, the British Medical Journal estimates that about 75% of all cancers are caused by environmental and lifestyle toxins and Americans have somewhere between 400 and 800 chemicals stored in their bodies.

What can you do about this?  The first objective should be to reduce the toxic load.  This means watching everything you eat and drink.  You should eliminate all processed and fast-food and eat only real food that walks on or grows from the earth.  Your food sources should be organic and free-range.  You should drink mostly purified water from a reverse osmosis source.  You need to watch your household products as well.  There are more and more companies that sell natural cleaning products.  You should try to use natural sources of toothpaste, cosmetics, antiperspirants, soaps and shampoos as well.  While you cannot necessarily control the quality of the air you breathe outside, you can get a filter for your inside air – most agree that this is the primary source of airborne toxins anyway. 

In the end, toxicity is a fact of life even if you take these measures.  For this reason, I also recommend that you do a detoxification at least once per year.  Numerous herbs and minerals are known to bind to toxins and help eliminate them from your body.  There are numerous programs out there that work.  But don’t forget one of the simplest ways to clean out your system – regular exercise is as important as anything.  Next week I’ll share some of the most common sources of the most dangerous toxins.

A Heavy Head

I feel compelled to discuss a problem that I consider totally preventable, yet, that I’m seeing more often and in younger populations.  The condition or symptom relates to neck and shoulder pain and headaches, but the real problem or source has to do with posture and position of the head.

The human head filled with circulating blood weighs about the same as a full-sized bowling ball.  In saying this, yes, I realize I sound like the kid from Jerry Maguire; but it’s a very real thing.  When head posture is where it’s designed to be – with the ears directly above the shoulders, hips, and ankles there’s very little problem.  However, as is so common, when the head starts to shift forward, this creates unnecessary tension on the neck, shoulder and upper back muscles that causes pain in these areas as well as tension headaches and spinal misalignments.  Think of this as if you were holding a bowling ball with arms outstretched away from your body.  It gets heavy and pulls on the muscles. 

This forward carriage of the head has always been common as posture is compromised by sitting in front of a computer, driving a car, or reading.  I believe the reason I’m seeing this more often and in younger people has everything to do with smart-phones, tablets, gaming systems and other handheld devices.  As we spend more and more time with our head forward and looking down, we set ourselves up for future problems.  Fixing this problem begins with mere awareness and attention to our own (and our kids’) posture.  Another helpful tip is to hold these devices up, raise them higher by using a lap pillow or sit them up on a counter or table during use to avoid forward head bending.  Beyond this, chiropractic adjustments, massage, and simple head and neck exercises do the trick.  They may not appreciate it now, but educate your kids about head and neck posture to avoid future problems.

Pasteur Knew It

Louis Pasteur was a French chemist known for his creation of the first vaccine, the pasteurization process, and thought of as the father of the “germ theory of disease.”  I heard a tale of Pasteur late in his career that happened during a presentation to his colleagues.  Allegedly, the chemist was attempting to explain that germs were not actually the ultimate cause of disease, but that germs are opportunistic and can only cause illness when they have a vulnerable host.  The story goes that Pasteur, to prove his point, broke a couple vials of Staph. Bacteria and spread the contents all over himself assuring the others that he would not get sick because his immune system was working properly. 

I found this story relevant because I’ve seen so many people lately with allergies, colds, sinus infections, and even bronchitis that they’ve “caught”.  Understand that germs are everywhere all the time and unless you come in contact with that rare bug that your system has never come in contact before, your immune system is equipped to recognize and eliminate the threat.  This is always true except on the occasion when your immune system is not working properly.  The question then should be what factors cause our immune system to become weak and vulnerable?  As for myself, since I’ve been looking at things this way, I’ve only missed a total of 1 ½ days of work due to illness in nearly 18 years.

Just ask yourself the following questions.  Have I been getting enough rest?  Is my diet o.k. or have I been eating too much sugar and fried foods?  Has my stress level been high or has my exercise level been too low?  Whenever I ask these questions, I usually get my answer and when I address the shortcoming, my immune system bounces back.  Just like Dr. Pasteur, you need to remember that infection from bacteria and virus are the result rather than the cause and always address the cause.

Sound Sleep

The psychology textbooks will teach you that there are four stages of sleep. This is true, but when it comes to health and vitality, there are two levels that are highly restorative. These are the deep sleep level and the rapid eye movement (REM) level of sleep. Sleep experts like to refer to these levels similar to nourishment where deep sleep is like water and REM sleep is like food for the mind. In the end you need both! While required amounts of sleep vary from person-to-person, most experts agree that if you’re getting less than seven hours per night, you simply are not getting enough of these deeper levels of sleep. For this article, I found some data on why getting the proper amount and the proper type of sleep is so important.

To prevent sleep deprivation and the host of health problems it accompanies, we should commit to at least seven hours of sleep per night. In general, you should look at your energy levels through the day. If your energy is steady and consistent you’re probably doing o.k. The next question is how deep is your sleep? It turns out dreaming is very important and it occurs in the latter third of our sleep time within that REM stage. It generally takes 4-5 hours to get into this level. Research has proven that dreaming is tied to our memory and our ability to learn from the information that we’ve acquired over the last few days. When we dream, the hippocampus portion of the brain becomes very active. This part of the brain is known to convert short-term memory into long–term memory. Think of this as downloading recent information that you’ve learned or experienced onto your hard-drive. When you’re not getting into this deepest level of sleep your memory will suffer and you stop adding to who you are.

I find that many people simply have trouble sleeping. Many times this is due to pain or discomfort and many times it is due to a chronic level of subconscious stress. Fortunately for me, one of the most common “side-effects” of chiropractic adjustments to remove stress from the nervous system is . . . better sleep. If you are someone who has trouble sleeping, you will want to make certain your sleep area is dark, quiet, and cool. For many people, the electromagnetic fields created by cell phones, TV, alarm clocks, and electric blankets will mess with your energy and deter proper sleep. Try to move these devices away from your bed. Likewise, the blue light that comes from television, computers and phones will suppress melatonin production. Melatonin is important for sleep, but it also has potent anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer benefits. For these reasons, you should try to shut down all electronics for about an hour before sleep. 

In the end, most sleep problems are not the result of inadequate sleepiness, but are due to excessive wakefulness. Most people are simply running too hard and are revved up due to stress and stimulants. Find some habit after you unplug the electronics to slow your system down! As I’ve reported numerous times, meditation and yoga can be very effective for slowing your brain down and calming the stress hormones. Go to the internet or YouTube and find guided meditations. Even if you just listen to these before going to sleep, your results will often be improved.