Count Toxins, Not Calories

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What makes us fat? Well, contrary to popular belief it's not as simple as too many calories (check out "Why You Should Stop Counting Calories"). In fact, there are many factors that can cause us to gain weight, and one of the major factors is the hormonal and physiological affect certain foods and substances create when they enter our bodies regardless of calorie content. Do they cause a spike in insulin? Do they alter thyroid function? Do they alter gene expression? Do they create a stress response? Do they make you feel lethargic? There are even certain substances, when ingested, that actually cause disruption in hormonal processes and metabolism. 

So what is a hormone? Well, a hormone is simply a compound that is released into the blood that is designed to interact with another organ, tissue, or cell; organs that secrete hormones are called endocrine glands. Some examples of endocrine glands in the body are the hypothalamus that helps to create the brain body connection, the thyroid gland that helps to regulate metabolism, and the testes/ovaries that release different sex hormones. Basically, hormone communication can be compared to sending a letter to someone that instructs them to perform a certain task.
  
Unfortunately, toxins are everywhere, and when they enter our bodies they can wreak havoc on normal body function. Within the scope of toxic chemicals, there is a class known as Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs). These toxins are found in our environment, in our food, and products we use. These EDCs can specifically interfere with hormone synthesis, hormone metabolism, and interfere with normal hormone function by affecting the thyroid, neuro-endocrine glands, sex organs, and insulin/glucose regulation. When this happens, the delicate balance of hormones can be disrupted resulting in major issues. 

Now obviously we are talking about toxins in relation to weight gain, but these different EDCs can cause many other problems such as cancer and infertility. Many of these chemicals are found in different cosmetic products, pesticides, plastic products, industrial solvents, and some petroleum based products. So basically, in stuff that is around us 24/7, and that is why it is so important to try to eliminate as many toxins as possible in your daily life. There is a more extensive list at the end of this article. 

There is also a class of toxins that is closely related to EDCs called "obesogens", and just like the name suggests, these toxins can be a factor in weight gain and obesity. Obesogens are found in the foods we eat, in different pharmaceutical drugs, and industrial compounds. These toxins can cause the number of fat cells to increase, cause the fat cells to increase in size, affect hormones that control appetite and satiety, and affect overall metabolism. One of the scariest effects of obeseogens is their potential to act on DNA without actually changing the genetic code, not only causing the individual to be more prone to obesity, but also passing the trait of obesity to their offspring. Just like many toxins, obesogens can be found in synthetic products, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals. Some notable obesogens are fructose, MSG, nicotine, estradiol, and lead. Click here to learn more and see a more complete list of obesogens.

When we consume toxins, our bodies have different mechanisms in place to help neutralize them and make them able to be excreted via urine or stool (check out "How Our Bodies Detox" to learn more). When we are exposed to too many toxins, they can travel around the body, and since many are fat soluble they will embed themselves into different fatty organs like your endocrine organs or brain. These toxins can remain there for years causing that gland to function poorly. Over time, as more and more toxins build up in the body, these different organs and glands begin to malfunction more and more, and create the ideal conditions for hormone and chemical imbalances to occur. These malfunctions can lead to many different conditions and dysfunctions including weight gain.

The main function of fat cells is to store fat to be used as energy at a later time. However, there is some evidence that suggests our bodies use fat cells to store excess toxins because so many toxins are fat soluble. So just as fat is important for energy, it may also be important in keeping toxins out of other fatty organs such as the brain. So if you are consuming or are exposed to high levels of toxins, your body may be more inclined to increase fat as a means of toxin storage as well.

Another way toxins can affect you, when it comes to weight gain, is by affecting your mental status. There is a link between depression, fatigue, and lethargy caused by toxins that can be associated with excessive weight gain. If you think about it, eating healthy, working out, and putting the necessary disciplines in your life to live a healthy lifestyle takes a lot of motivation. Being exposed to different toxins and chemicals, whether from the environment or diet, can cause a lack of motivation and energy in people necessary to accomplish what is needed to lose weight. So without eliminating toxins from your diet or environment, it can be extremely difficult mentally to overcome the obstacles that are preventing weight-loss.

Hopefully at this point you aren't freaking out, but have totally re-thought the "calorie in, calorie out" model. So where do you go from here? Well, start eliminating toxins from your life. Try to eat organic foods, wash produce well, drink filtered water, use glass containers as much as possible, and avoid eating processed foods. The truth of the matter is, we will never be able to avoid all toxins, but our bodies have many very sophisticated mechanisms in place to eliminate toxins. Plus, because of epigenetics, we know that gene expression has a lot to do with the environment you place your body in. So by eliminating toxin exposure, your body will actually be less likely to express genetic traits that can lead to weight gain. 

In the end, don't use this as an excuse, because none of these factors override your free will, but it does mean some people will have to work a bit harder than others to lose weight. On the bright side, we all know people who overcame obesity, even though they might be more predisposed to it than others, proving it is possible.

Just like anything in the body, it all comes down to expression. Are you exposing yourself to toxins causing your body to express dysfunction, or are you trying to eliminate as many toxins as possible and providing your body with what it needs to help itself detox and expressing health? A little can go a long way when it comes to eliminating toxins from your life. So if you are looking to lose weight, instead of looking at the calorie content on the food label, look at the ingredient list instead. Try eating whole foods, eat until you are full, and avoid processed foods and chemicals as much as possible. I guarantee that if you do this, that you will not only lose weight, but also see a transformation in your overall physical and mental health as well!

List of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (1)

• Industrial solvents /lubricants and their byproducts 
• Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) 
• Polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) 
• Dioxins
• Plastics
• Bisphenol A (BPA)
• Plasticizers 
• phthalates
• Pesticides
• Methoxychlor
• Chlorpyrifos
• Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) 
• Fungicides
• Vinclozolin 
• Pharmaceutical agents 
• Diethylstilbestrol (DES) 
• Phytoestrogens 
• Genistien 
• Coumestrol

1) Functional Medicine University. Insiders Guide: Sources of Toxins. pg10.

You might have Candida, eh?

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Candida is a yeast that is normally present in the large intestine in about 50% of the population with no effect. So why should you care? Well, because it can actually cause problems ranging from ADD and autism-like symptoms to autoimmune type diseases, leading to stuff like a sluggish thyroid and fibromyalgia. It is actually some pretty nasty stuff when it starts to grow out of control.

So Candida itself isn't the problem, it is when it starts to grow out of control and/or spreads throughout the body that problems start to arise. In your gut there are many different types of microorganisms like yeast and bacteria, and it is very important for your overall health that you maintain the appropriate levels and ratios of good bacteria. What you put into your body plays a major role in maintaining the appropriate levels. For instance, eating a diet high in sugar, processed foods, and dairy can create ideal conditions for Candida to grow and spread out of control. Also, taking antibiotics can kill good bacteria in your gut and give room for the Candida to multiply unchecked. Other things that can lead to excess Candida growth is taking oral contraceptives, a history of thrush or vaginal yeast infections, a weakened immune system, dysbiosis, a parasitic infection in the gut, the presence of mercury, and altered pH.

When Candida is in excess in the gut, or has escaped into the blood stream, it can affect any organ of the body, especially female reproductive organs. One of the reasons it is dangerous is because it creates toxic byproducts that can negatively affect different cells, tissues, and organs in your body. Specifically, it releases neurotoxins, and that is one of the reasons that it can be linked to ADD and autism-like symptoms. Whenever there is a something actively releasing toxins into the body, there is going to be major problems.

Another way that Candida overgrowth is believed to cause problems is due to a phenomenon called Cross Reactivity. This is basically when the body's immune attack cells not only see Candida as a threat, but because of similarities, also views certain cells in your body as a threat and attacks. So basically it can lead to your body attacking itself; hence an autoimmune disease/disorder.

Here's what it comes down to; at what level is your body able to express health? If you have a substance growing and spreading in your body, like Candida, that is causing all sorts of problems in your gut (which is where about 70% of your immune system resides), then it spreads and infects different tissues and organs in your body causing them to malfunction, plus it is turning your immune system against your own body by attacking good cells, and all the while, it is releasing neurotoxins into your body, you are going to have MAJOR problems. Did you follow all that?

Here is a list of some different diseases/disorders that have been linked to Candida overgrowth: Gastric pain, nausea, vomiting, gas and boating, leaky gut, dysbiosis, ADD, autism, chronic fatigue, vaginal yeast infections, irritability, chemical sensitivity, eczema, psoriasis, hypoparathyroidism, Addison disease, hypothyroidism, diabetes mellitus, adrenal problems, fatigue, brain fog, constipation, irregular menses, decreased sex drive, mucous in stool, cold hands and feet, infertility, IBS, migraines, cancer, vaginitis, asthma, weight gain, fibromyalgia, food allergies, and depression.

So as you can see, Candida can be a major player in many health issues. It is estimated that about 15% of people have some type of Candida overgrowth. The good news is it's something that can be tested for via blood or saliva (stool testing is possible, but not as reliable), but an easy place to start is to take this questionnaire. Candida Questionnaire and Score Sheet. 

Obviously going gluten free is very popular right now and I recommend that everybody does it for multiple reasons. But if you have gone gluten free and are still having health problems, Candida is great place to start looking for the cause of your problem. It's kind of sneaky and many of the problems that it can cause overlap with gluten related issues.

Now, if you score high on the questionnaire, it would be a very good idea to avoid processed foods, dairy, refined carbohydrates, alcohol, vinegar products, bread, carrots, potatoes, aged cheese, and high amounts of fruit because these can all create a favorable environment for Candida to grow in your gut. Also, taking a good probiotic is essential because it will help to crowd out the yeast. Even if you do all of this, I still recommend seeing a doctor who is familiar with Candida and its related conditions because even if the Candida is gone, it can leave behind a wake of other problems due to its destructive nature.

Candida overgrowth is an opportunistic infection. So the best way to protect yourself from it, is to not give it the opportunity to grow by simply investing in good gut health, eating real food, and eliminating stress on your body.

Hate To Break It To You, But Herbal Medicine Is Still Medicine

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So I hate to tell some of you this, but herbal medicine is still medicine. By that I mean much of it is still based off of an allopathic model of health and disease, even though it's not utilizing pharmaceutical drugs. In general, there are basically two ways to approach health and disease. The first is what we are accustomed to, especially in the United States, and it is the allopathic model.


In the allopathic model, doctors look at a patient's symptoms, look at certain tests, and then place the patient into a category based off of what disease they have been label with. Then, the patient is usually prescribed some procedure or medication that is aimed to eliminate the symptom. Now, I completely understand that there is a difference between crisis care and chronic disease care. What I am talking about now, is chronic disease care. Health problems like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, musculo-skeletal pain, and fibromyaglia, to name a few. In an allopathic model, statins are given to lower cholesterol, pain medications are given to alleviate low back pain, and gallbladders are removed because of dysfunction. So basically, more effort goes into covering symptoms than determining and correcting the cause. After seeing thousands of patients, I have yet to meet someone who has low back pain caused by an Aleve deficiency.

Suppression is really what I am getting at. There are only two ways something can affect you (well I guess three if you count having no effect). Something can either help you to express health or it will suppress health. Where I see people falling into the trap of herbal medicine is they look at a health problem like acne, and instead of going to the dermatologist to get a medical ointment, they Google some "natural remedy" for it and use that instead. Now, truth be told, I would rather someone do that, especially if it is effective, than to take a bunch of pills and use harsh ointment. But what is causing the acne? In my experience, skin problems like acne are usually "downstream" issues. What I mean by that is something like acne is actually caused by gut issues, some form of excess stress on the body, or a breakdown of the brain-body connection causing imbalances. So no matter where the ointment or cream came from, it is still only treating the symptom and not the cause.

The second model is the cause model. I really wish the word etiology was more well known because the term "etiologic model" would fit perfectly. Basically the word etiology, when used in conjunction with disease, means the cause or causes of a disease or condition. Now, I know there are terms like vitalism or holistic, but there definitely seems to be some preconceived ideas attached to these words. Unfortunately when many people hear these terms they think of using crystals, magic potions, dream catchers, or middle eastern spiritualism, and that is not really what I am talking about. All dysfunction has a cause. I often talk about the only cause of disease is too much or too little of something or a combination of both. We need to be cause-focused, not effect-focused.

So if all disease is caused by too much or too little of something, or a combination of both, we need to look as upstream as possible in all disease. Health is all about expression. Are you giving your body everything it needs in order to function the way it was designed? Is your body in an environment that is too stressful or toxic? Are there more toxins entering your body than your body can eliminate? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then your health is being suppressed even if you are not experiencing symptoms yet.

Okay, so I am a realist. I know that nothing is ever perfect. No one eats perfect, everyone has some sort of stress, and there are toxins everywhere, but you would be amazed at how far it goes to at least try. One of those "aim for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars" things.

I do not want to come off as bashing natural products because I use many on a daily basis. I'm more aiming to highlight the importance of how we look at health, treatment, and disease. I know that it can be very difficult and take time to isolate a cause, and in the meantime if an herbal remedy helps you cope that's great, especially since they often have less side effects or chance of a reaction.

To put it all together, let's say you go to your doctor and find out that you have high cholesterol. He wants to put you on a statin drug to help lower your cholesterol and since you are smart, you know that statins can have some harmful side effects. So, since you don't like to take medications, you decide to take garlic instead without making any lifestyle changes. Well the thing is, elevated levels of cholesterol are not the problem, but rather an effect of damage to the blood vessels from stuff like inflammation, free radical damage, or chronic dehydration. Will your cholesterol numbers be lower? Yeah probably, and hopefully it may even help your body to repair some of the damage, but should your goal be just to lower numbers on a test or should your goal be to eliminate the root cause of the problem?

Natural products and herbal remedies can be great, especially if they work by boosting the body's ability to rid itself of a toxicity or help to restore deficiencies, but next time you are struggling with a health problem remember to look upstream and seek out the cause instead of trying to mask symptoms, regardless if you use a medication or an herbal remedy.

How Our Bodies Detox

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The word "detox" has definitely become a buzz word in the area of nutrition and health. It is somewhat amusing in a sense because many times when it is used it seems to imply that our bodies don't detoxify themselves every second of everyday. Detoxification is simply the body eliminating and expelling toxins after neutralizing them. When it comes to detoxification of the body, it is important to remember that no matter what type of diet you go on or what supplement you take, the body is actually responsible for executing the detox. Can different programs or supplements help? Absolutely. I am always in favor of aiding the body by giving it what it needs to function properly, and after reading this you will have a better grasp of how your body detoxifies and what happens when you engage in a detox program.

So what are these toxins, and where do they come from? To put it simply, a toxin is a poison. It can come from outside the body or be produced by different mechanisms within the body. Toxins can have detrimental effects on the body causing things like migraines, autoimmune diseases, brain-fog, organ dysfunction, and cancer. If you are reading information about toxicity, you might run into some of these words:

Xenobiotic is any substance or particle inside the body that should not be there.
Exogenous means that it came from outside the body. Some examples of exogenous toxins are pesticides, exhaust fumes, food coloring, artificial sweeteners, and medications.
Endogenous means that it was made inside the body. Some examples of endogenous toxins are hormones, metabolic byproducts, and compounds released by bacteria.

In the body, the liver is king of detoxification. Other than the liver, detoxification processes occur in areas such as the lungs, intestines, kidneys, and skin. The intestines are the second most important place of detoxification. It makes sense, considering most toxins from the environment are consumed and absorbed through the digestive tract, and the first place blood goes after it leaves the intestines is the liver.

When it comes to detoxification in the body, there are three pathways, or avenues. They are quite conveniently named Phase I (PH1), Phase II (PH2), and Phase III (PH3); with PH1 and PH2 being the primary means of neutralizing and removing toxins/xenobiotics from the body.

So how does it all work? Well as stated before, toxins can come from food we eat or from byproducts of internal mechanisms of the body. For right now, let's imagine that a certain toxin just entered your body from something you chewed up and swallowed. After the toxin leaves your stomach, it enters into your small intestines and is absorbed into the blood stream and is then carried to the liver via the hepatic portal vein. Once in the liver, the toxins in the blood are absorbed into liver cells and PH1 and PH2 begin to turn the toxin into something less poisonous. Now, not all toxins go through both PH1 and PH2. Some toxins bypass PH1 and go directly to PH2, but for the most part, if a toxin goes through PH1, it will also go through PH2.

Phase 1 detoxification uses a family of enzymes called Cytochrome P450 and there are about 20-30 of these. Essentially, PH1 burns the toxin and is the primary pathway used for activating prescription drugs. Because PH1 is used to activate drugs, quite a bit of effort has gone into understanding how it works. As a result of PH1, the toxin is more water soluble, which means it is able to be diluted with water easier. But just because the toxin went through PH1 doesn't necessarily mean that it is safe yet. The result of PH1 may neutralize the toxin, but it might also not change its toxicity at all, or even make it more toxic. In addition, PH1 creates free radicals that can damage cells and DNA, but ultimately it is just prepping the toxins for PH2. Some notable substances that go through PH1 are caffeine, acetaminophen (Tylenol), Ibuprofen, and alcohol.

After the toxin has gone through PH1, it is now ready to go through PH2, and remember some substances go directly into PH2. Phase II uses a process called conjugation to make the toxin even more water soluble and less toxic. After the toxin has gone through PH2, it is now able to be mixed with water and so that it can be removed from the body via urine or stool.

Phase III definitely plays a role in detox, but seems to work somewhat independently from PH1 and PH2. It is more of a cellular pump system that pumps toxins, metabolites, and byproducts out of cells, and when people talk about the body detoxing they generally are referring to PH1 and PH2.

Without going really in depth into all the different pathways within each phase, it is actually a pretty simple system.

Balance between PH1 and PH2 is vitally important, and this is where stuff gets kind of messy. Imagine the liver as a movie theater where PH1 is the window where you buy your tickets and PH2 is the usher that takes your ticket outside the door. Ideally, a person should walk up to the window, buy a ticket, walk through the lobby to the theater that is playing the movie they wish to see, hand their ticket to the usher, and go inside with no wait.

As we know, it is never ideal. If the ticket window is slow, there can be a large line of people build up outside the window just like if there are too many toxins that enter the body all at once or if the liver is not functioning properly. If there are not enough PH1 sites for the toxins to go through, then toxins will build up in the body. When this happens, the toxins can leave the liver and end up in different tissues and cause major health problems. Most toxins are naturally fat soluble, which means they will seek out fat tissue and fatty organs (such as the brain and endocrine organs) and they can remain in these cells, tissues, and organs for years. So if PH1 is slow or there are too many toxins for the body to handle, a bottleneck forms and the body essentially becomes toxic.

Here's another scenario: What happens if there are 100 ticket windows open, but a bus shows up of people who already have their tickets, and there is only one usher tearing tickets? Well, then a line of people builds up waiting for the usher. This is what happens when either PH2 is too slow to keep up with PH1, or if PH1 has become hyperactive. So now there are toxins that have already gone through PH1 and toxins that are trying to go directly to PH2 building up in your system. If you remember, after PH1, some toxins are still toxic and some are even more toxic than before, so you can imagine what happens if they have no place to go to become neutralized. They end up circulating throughout the body, embedding themselves in different cells and tissues, and causing damage that can lead to major health problems.

So how do detox programs or supplements work? Basically most are designed to boost the liver function and greatly reduce the amount of toxin exposure over a period of time, allowing the body to rid itself of the stored toxins that had nowhere to go when your PH1 and/or PH2 pathways were overloaded.

Remember, your body is designed to eliminate toxins, but it can be difficult if you are constantly bombarding it with more toxins than it can handle. Instead of trying crazy detox programs, then reverting back to the same behavior, why not eliminate the cause of the toxicity by making a lifestyle change? Try avoiding artificial sweeteners, caffeine, alcohol, food dyes, and food preservatives. Also, some rapid detox programs could actually be somewhat harmful because too many toxins may be released and start to circulate around your body. Other than avoiding harmful chemicals, try eating sulfur-rich foods like eggs, cruciferous vegetables, raw garlic, and onions. Also, Milk Thistle is a very good supplement that can help the liver boost its detoxifying power.

As always, it is always best to isolate the cause and provide a means of correction, and in the case of detox, eliminating toxins from your food and environment go a long way towards allowing your body to detox properly and be healthy.

Modern Cures For Modern Diseases

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This isn't 1914... obviously. The health problems people face today are so much different than what people had to deal with 100 years ago. In the past we were plagued by pathogen-induced diseases like measles, mumps, polio, and small pox. These types of diseases are caused by different types of bacteria or viral infections and possibly coupled with hygiene issues, and as a society we have done a pretty good job of managing these types of diseases. Let's fast-forward to present. The diseases and health problems that have embedded themselves into our society, and only seem to be getting worse, are culture-style diseases (if you will) like fibromyalgia, type II diabetes, obesity, and autoimmune disorders. Notice none of these are caused by bacteria or viruses.

We have left the age of "anti" medicine. What I mean by this is that for the modern diseases and health problems we face, simply finding an antagonistic pill won't work. For example, we know that bacteria can cause disease. So it makes sense that if we think there might be bacteria on a counter top or door knob to wipe it down with a disinfectant to kill the bacteria. Let's take it one step further; if a person has a sickness due to a bacterial infection, it makes sense why someone might be given an antibiotic (even though it may have some harmful side effects). Medicine was very successful with this approach. That is why the discovery of penicillin was such a monumental breakthrough because it gave doctors the ability to give an ill patient something that was somewhat designed to eliminate the cause of the problem.

Ever since their success, medicine has been riding this approach ever since. The problem is modern diseases and conditions are not pathogen-induced; there is no fibromyalgia bacteria or diabetes virus. So the idea that there will be a drug that will be discovered to eliminate the cause of modern diseases is virtually impossible. At least taking antibiotics aims to eliminate the cause of an infection, as opposed to most modern medicine that is created to only help people cope by suppressing their symptoms.

So the first step of modern cures for modern diseases is modern diagnosis. There needs to be a shift in the way disease is classified. Right now, a doctor looks at a patient's set of symptoms and labels them with a certain disease. Here is the problem, five different patients could all be diagnosed with fibromyalgia, but all five cases could have different causes. So does it make sense to treat everyone the same if their problems do not have the same cause? I don't think so. In actuality there is only one cause of disease and that is the body's inability to adapt to itself and/or its environment. To simplify it: all disease is caused by too much or too little of something or a combination of both. Diseases need to be classified by the toxicity and/or the deficiency that is present, not by symptoms.

The second step of modern cures for modern diseases is to aid the body in expressing health, by eliminating the cause, as opposed to suppressing it. I totally understand why people are on symptom-suppressing medications. Symptoms can be unbearable to live with and many people rely on medications to make it through the day, but it really isn't a viable long-term solution. Most people I talk with who have to take these types of medications hate being on them because they don't like the way they feel, but would rather deal with side effects than deal with the symptoms.

The cure is always in isolating a cause and providing a means of correction. Whenever there is an underlying dysfunction that is not corrected, it will eventually manifest itself as a disease and symptoms will be expressed. For modern diseases, long-term care and treatment should not be focused on symptom suppression, but rather the focus should be on restoring the body's normal function.

At the end of the day, the most complex and sophisticated disease fighting piece of equipment is the human body. So maybe the best cure for modern diseases is actually primitive. You see our bodies desire to be healthy, it's in our DNA to be self-regulating and self-healing. Maybe the cure for modern disease it to eliminate the harm of modern living so our bodies can actually function properly and heal the way they were designed. What is the harm of modern living? Well, living with high levels of stress, living off caffeine, eating nutrient deprived diets (click here to read my article of the effects of a low fat diet), consuming toxins, and a lifetime of over the counter and prescription drugs slowly causes health to be expressed at lower levels everyday. For this reason, the paradigm of having no symptoms equals health is wrong...way wrong. Just look at conditions like heart disease, cancer, and kidney stones. Do you feel the initial onset of each disease? Nope. A person only feels symptoms when the underlying dysfunction has been allowed to grow and the body is no longer able to compensate for it.

With all that being said, the biggest factor in overcoming modern disease is an individual's desire to restore their health. Problems like autoimmune disorders, type II diabetes, and fibromyalgia don't start overnight. A toxicity, a deficiency, or a combination of both occur, and when left unchecked dysfunction can grow for years until finally symptoms appear. So modern diseases take time to develop and will take time heal, and in our "I want it now" society that can be very difficult. The good news is I have seen many people overcome modern diseases by living primitive. By that I mean they change their lifestyle and start doing things like going for walks in the sun for exercise and vitamin D, eating fruits and vegetables, cutting out sugars and artificial sweeteners, and avoiding processed foods and this makes a HUGE difference. So the last way to overcome modern diseases to change your lifestyle. Is it hard? Yea, but I have yet to meet anyone who has overcome their obesity, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disorder, or diabetes that regrets it.

5 Ways To Super Charge Your Immune System

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We have been brought up to believe that symptoms are bad and that symptoms are actually the disease. Even though this is the mainstream way of thinking, it doesn't hold up. Symptoms are expressed when the body is trying to fix or heal a problem. Even though symptoms might cause us to feel miserable, they are actually good, because they let you know there is a problem inside. So, symptoms are not actually the disease, but rather, they are a result of an underlying dysfunction and the effects of the body trying to return to a normal state of function. If you have a fever, the fever is not the disease. A fever is actually a mechanism your body has to fight off infections. Same with nasal congestion, mucus production, vomiting, and diarrhea. It has never made sense to me to take medications that only suppresses the symptoms that your body is expressing, when the symptoms are just the body's way of trying to restore health. Instead of taking body-suppressing medications, we should do things that boost our immune system so that our body can fight off infection better and faster. So during this winter season of colds and flu, here are five ways to super charge your immune system. Remember, it is always better to be proactive rather than reactive.   

Coconut Oil

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Coconut oil can be a powerful way to boost your body's immune system. About 50% of coconut oil is made up of a substance called lauric acid and it is some pretty amazing stuff. In fact, the only other place that it is found in abundance is in breast milk and it's one of the substances that helps kickstart a baby's immune system. When you consume coconut oil, the body turns lauric acid into a substance called monolaurin which can be a powerful antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and antiprotozoal substance.  It is always best to take the highest quality form of coconut oil to get the maximum benefit. In one tablespoon of coconut oil, there is 6-8 grams of lauric acid, and taking three to five tablespoons a day should be adequate. I have found the most convenient ways to take coconut oil is either to warm some up so it liquifies and mix in a little raw honey, or to put a scoop or two into a healthy smoothie.

Vitamin D

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When it comes to vitamins, Vitamin C definitely has the reputation for boosting the immune system, but there has recently been a lot of research showing the benefit of have high levels of Vitamin D in the body and some believe that it has the ability to boost the immune system up to three to five times! Vitamin D, known as "the sunshine vitamin", has long been known to help people who have Tuberculosis, but now its benefits are being more widely understood. Vitamin D is now believed to play a role in activating and helping to regulate the body's immune system, and there are even links between chronic low levels of Vitamin D and autoimmune disorders. When it comes to elevating your Vitamin D levels it is best to take it in the form of D3, and also make sure you get as much exposure to sunlight as you can during these long winter months. Some foods that have high levels of Vitamin D are eggs, mushrooms, cod liver oil, and fish.

Increase Gut Health

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Most people don't think of their GI tract when they think of their immune system, but about 70% of the body's immune system is found in the gut. So, it would make sense that doing things to ensure your gut is healthy will also help to boost your body's germ fighting ability. The first step in increasing your gut health is to eliminate things that actually damage your gut like alcohol, NSAIDS (aspirin and ibuprofen), and certain types of grains. These types of substances can damage the cells that line the intestines and can also create a hostile environment for the good bacteria that live in your intestines and boost immune function.  Other than eliminating harmful substances, there are certain things that you can take that will help to repair damage to your gut and encourage the growth and development of good gut bacteria. Besides taking probiotic supplements, some foods that help encourage good gut bacteria are sauerkraut, kombucha, apple cider vinegar, and kefir. Other supplements that may help to repair damage to the gut lining are glutamine, zinc, and aloe. 

Garlic

photo from artur84, freedigitalphotos.net

Another immune boosting super food is garlic. Its benefits as an antibacterial and antiviral agent have long been known and used, and the research agrees. Even though it is available in a capsule, eating garlic in its raw form will produce the greatest benefit. In addition to boosting your germ fighting power, garlic helps to regulate blood sugar, can fight off heart disease, promote thyroid health, and even help prevent certain types of cancer. So whether you are looking to fight off a simple cold, ward off vampires, or just add some flavor to your meal you can't go wrong with choosing garlic.

Chiropractic Adjustments

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FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When people think of chiropractic, most think of back and neck pain, but did you know for over 100 years people of all ages have been using chiropractic care for its immune boosting ability? In fact, in the early and mid 1900's, people who were sick with things like the flu, colds, bronchitis, or pneumonia would visit their chiropractor to ensure a speedy recovery. Even Dr. Mayo of the Mayo Clinic utilized chiropractic for his dying wife after conventional methods had failed, and she made a full recovery. In more recent times, studies are proving what many people have long known about chiropractic's positive effect on the immune system; like increased levels of certain antibodies and immune cells, increased lymphatic flow, and reduced effects of stress on the body (which can suppress the body's ability to fight off infection), to name a few. In speaking from personal experience, I frequently have patients tell me how they are sick less often since they started chiropractic care. What it boils down to is when the body is out of harmony it will be more susceptible to infections and diseases. Chiropractic helps take stress off the body and allows for a higher level of health expression which can give a boost to the overall function of the body including your immune system.


"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." - Benjamin Franklin

Why You Should Stop Counting Calories

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Counting Calories is stupid. Pretty blunt, right? But before I tell you why counting calories is stupid, we must first understand what a calorie is. A calorie is a unit of measurement that is used in areas of science like chemistry or physics to measure energy.  Specifically, a scientific calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius, but when the term calorie is used with food, someone decided to make it worth 1,000 scientific calories. So, it takes 1,000 scientific calories to equal 1 nutritional calorie. Maybe it is to make us feel better about the food we eat because eating a hamburger that is labeled 350,000 calories would just be ridiculous.

So why is it stupid to count calories? Well, it's because we are not machines. You see, we can measure the amount of fuel put into a car and get a pretty accurate calculation of how much energy output there will be, but the idea of "Calorie in, Calorie out" doesn't hold up in the human body. In case you haven't noticed, our bodies have a lot going on inside of them, and many factors go into whether or not we lose fat. Can creating a negative caloric flow cause you to lose weight? Yea, but for most people it is a slow version of starvation and creates malnutrition that can actually cause other health problems. I know this from personal experience from when I wrestled in college. I got really good at limiting food to make weight and I was skinny, but I often felt weak and malnourished because I wasn't getting the food I needed. That is also probably why I always got sick during wrestling season and why after I graduated from college and started eating normal I grew over an inch. Solely focusing on calories can lead to malnourishment.

We get calories from three types of macronutrients: fats, carbohydrates, and protein. The kicker is we do not absorb all the nutrients that we ingest. There are some factors that come into play when talking about actually absorbing the food we eat. First is how much did you eat in one sitting and how big of a variety? There are only so many cells that can absorb nutrients so if there is too much food in the digestive tract some of the nutrients just pass on through. Also, how well you chew can make a difference. The more you chew, the more you will absorb because it is easier for our stomach and small intestine to break food down into smaller particles for absorption. Lastly, the health of your gut plays a role in absorption. If your GI tract is damaged from things like medications, alcohol, and inflammatory foods, then you won't be able to absorb food as well. So if you eat a banana that has around 100 calories in it, you won't actually absorb 100 calories. You will absorb quite a bit of it, but some of the carbohydrates, fats, and protein will end up being flushed down the toilet.  So another reason that counting calories is futile is because it's not accurate.

What you eat is more important than how much you eat. When it comes to gaining and losing weight and being healthy, hormones play a huge role. Due to the high prevalence of diabetes, most people have heard of insulin, a hormone that is released by the pancreas. When you eat food, it is broken down into simple forms and is put into your blood stream. Our bodies like to keep blood sugar levels pretty consistent so if there is a lot of sugar in the blood, your pancreas will release insulin and that tells the body to pull sugar out of the blood and store it as fat for later. So the idea of not eating a bunch of sugar and simple carbohydrates does hold up when it comes to weight loss.

Now, insulin is not the only hormone involved in weight gain/loss. Certain hormones released by the thyroid play a role in metabolism; hormones released by the adrenal glands affect weight; sex hormones definitely play a role. So the internal environment of the body actually matters greatly in whether or not you will lose fat. There are even articles that claim different types of good bacteria in your gut could help you lose weight. If your hormones are imbalanced and your body is highly stressed, you will have a difficult time losing weight regardless of calories.

The last reason I believe counting calories is a waste of time is because food is not just fuel, it also contains essential non-energy nutrients the body needs to function properly. In the body, only fats, proteins, and carbohydrates can be turned into energy, but there are many other substances the body needs to be healthy that it gets from food. Think about it like this, you would not be able survive off of only eating sugar, even though sugar is the simplest form of energy for the body.

I know many people who have struggled with their weight for a long time and had little to no results counting calories, but when they started to eat real food and avoid processed foods and sugars, they started to lose weight regardless of how many calories they consumed. Instead of looking at food as a means of being skinny or fat, we should look at it for what it does for promoting proper function in our bodies. What it boils down to is that eating high quality foods that nourish the body will actually help you lose weight and gain health. After all, being skinny does not mean you are healthy.

*photo courtesy of G. Cochrane, FreeDigitalPhotos.net