NOW Is The Perfect Time to Repair Gut Health and Improve your Immune System

We are home for now, eating too much bored. What a great time to think about making those lifestyle changes we’ve been meaning to make. Many people say they are cooking more,, many are ordering take-out. This is perfect timing to make changes.

So, you ask, what is the first thing I should do? Most Americans have damage to the ling of the stomach. A look at all of the digestive aids in the drug store will tell you that we need help. But using Tums, probiotics, prebiotics are problematic. Common antacids can lead to 20% increase of risk of heart disease, prebiotics and probiotics can cause brain fog and can lead to excess growth of bacteria in the lower intestine.

So how do you get started? Begin by slowly weaning yourself off dairy over a couple of weeks. This way the detox from it will not be so heavy. Start minimizing flour products, and gluten containing products. Start adding a salad to lunch and dinner, in addition to a protein source and several vegetables. Lean heavily on sweet potatoes as they are extremely healthy. Make sure to get plenty of green leafy vegetables as they are crucial for gut health.

What you will notice is that within a week or so you start to feel better, you sleep better, you have more energy. The only foods that have vitamins and minerals, enzymes, and phytochemicals are fruits and vegetables, live foods. These are the foods you need for adequate gut health. Foods that are hard to digest are hard on the stomach and harm the epithelial cells which leads to leaky gut. Truthfully most Americans have leaky gut.

So a great looking dinner would be a sweet potato some kind of green leafy vegetable, about 5 oz of protein leaning towards seafood and eggs. Begin or end with a small salad. be careful about the salad dressings you use as every single one in the grocery store has soy oil, you want oil and vinegar using extra virgin olive oil.

It’s fine to have coffee in the morning, two eggs cooked anyway you like with a big bowl of fruit is a great breakfast. add a smoothie at some point during the day.

Remember you need 1,800 to 2,000 calories a day to meet your nutrient needs. Taking in adequate calories and nutrition allows you to return to having a normal appetite as well as allowing your body to release weight that you have in excess.

It really is that simple, just return to eating mostly real foods. If the food you’re eating needs a label then it’s going to have chemicals and things in it that you do not need. You should be able to look at the food you’re eating and know exactly what it is. Return to eating the way our great-grandparents ate, mostly all real food.

You will begin to repair the gut and have much more energy.

Start here. work on this for a few weeks. If you need more help I offer nutrition coaching either in person after the virus is over, or in the meantime I do video conferencing.

Coffee Can’t Repair Your DNA, but It Does Do Something Potentially Even Better

The health benefits of drinking coffee never seem to end.

Measured by how much people spend on it, coffee is the most popular beverage in the world. In America, the amount of coffee consumed each day is greater than the combined total amount of teas, juices, and soft drinks.

Coffee, however, isn’t a guilty pleasure; it’s a superfood that reduces your risk of serious diseases like diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and Parkinson’s, as well as a host of minor afflictions, including constipation and premature ejaculation.

Most important of all, it’s now clear that coffee drinkers are less likely to get cancer than people who drink other beverages, including tea.

Just to be clear, coffee can’t repair your DNA directly, so it’s in no way a cure for cancer. But scientists now know that coffee does reduce cellular damage, including mutations to your DNA that otherwise might lead to cancer.

For example, a meta-analysis of 500 academic papers conducted at UCLA found that coffee had a “strong and consistent protective association” with liver cancer and cancer of the uterus, and a “borderline protective” association with colorectal cancer.

Similarly, a study of 43,000 Norwegians found “a positive association between coffee drinking and risk of lung cancer.” Meanwhile, the Gifu University School of Medicine found coffee had “inhibitory effects on chemical carcinogenesis.”

The effect of coffee on each individual varies according to that person’s specific DNA. Because of this, there exist some unfortunate people in this world whose systems, sadly, can’t process caffeine and must therefore avoid coffee.

On the brighter side, though, some individuals are on the other end of the scale and thus receive outsize benefits. I suspect, or at least hope, that people who write online columns for business magazines fall into this category.

Dance, Garden and Swim your Way to a Better Brain as You Age, Study says

Walking, gardening, swimming, dancing and other leisurely activities may prevent brain shrinkage in older adults, a new study finds.

To examine the association between physical activity and brain aging, researchers from Columbia University assessed activity levels of older adults and analyzed the quality of their brains via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

They found that those who were more active had larger brain volumes than their inactive counterparts, indicating that physical activity may help to slow brain volume loss, said Dr. Yian Gu, study author and assistant professor of neurological sciences at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Shrinkage of the brain typically starts around the age of 60 or 70 years, slowing processing and cognitive functions.

“Our results add to the evidence that more physical activity is linked to larger brain volume in older people,” said Gu, speaking about the research she’s presenting at the American Academy of Neurology’s 72^nd Annual Meeting in April.

“It also builds on evidence that moving your body more often throughout one’s life may protect against loss of brain volume.”

The activity level of more than 1,500 older adults with an average age of 74 was measured according to calories the researchers thought they burned by performing activities they self-reported engaging in within the last two weeks. They also measured the frequency, duration and intensity of the participants’ activities.

The activities were separated by three different categories: vigorous (aerobic dancing, jogging, playing handball), moderate (bicycling, swimming, hiking, playing tennis), and light (walking, dancing, calisthenics, golfing, bowling, gardening, horseback riding). Adults were then separated into three groups judging by people who had the least to the most activity.

MRI scans measured their brain volume and the volumes of their gray matter, white matter and white matter hyperintensity.

Gray matter of the brain is the cerebral cortex, which controls sensations and functions such as speech, thinking and memory. Beneath the cerebral cortex is the white matter, which coordinates communication between different brain regions. White matter hyperintensities are signs of damage to the white matter, which are common in older adults, according to a 2019 study.

Judging by the MRI scans, the adults who engaged in the highest levels of activity had 1.4% more total brain volume than those who were inactive, which was the equivalent of slowing brain aging by about four years, the report said.

“Brain volume is one marker of success, along with cognitive test performance and daily function,” said Dr. Richard Marottoli, medical director of the Dorothy Adler Geriatric Assessment Center at Yale-New Haven Hospital, who wasn’t part of the study.

One limitation of the study was that information on physical activity relied on a participant’s ability to remember how often and how long they were active. And the study found an association between activity and brain volume, but not a causal relationship.

“However, there’s no apparent downside to incorporating these activities in our daily routine until we have more definitive evidence, and there may be other benefits as well, such as cardiovascular health,” Marottoli said. “[The findings] add to an expanding body of evidence that a variety of things under our control may have beneficial effects on cognition.”

If larger brain volume is a result of activity, it could have generated from biological processes including growth of nervous tissue, anti-inflammatory benefits of exercise and strengthening of synaptic plasticity, which contributes to learning and memory, Gu said.

Brain shrinkage can stem from degeneration of nerve cells in the brain and diseases of the nervous system, which can result from multiple insults such as inflammation and oxidative stress, an imbalance between free radicals and antioxidants in the body, Gu said. Free radicals are unstable molecules from environmental sources such as cigarette smoke or pesticides that can damage the body’s cells.

Other causes of brain aging include stress, because of the high levels of the stress hormone, cortisol and brain injury induced by stroke events.

To foster brain health, Marotttoli said older adults can identify a mix of low, medium and high intensity activities they can safely enjoy and incorporate into their regular routine, increasing the likelihood they’ll be able to maintain them on a long-term basis.

In a recent study by the same authors, using the same study population, physical activity was associated with a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

“Given the close relationship between brain atrophy and cognitive decline or dementia risk, it will be very interesting to formally test in future studies whether the protective role of physical activity on cognition or reducing dementia risk is indeed through slowing” undesirable changes of the brain such as shrinkage or pathological changes, Gu said.

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What Are the Symptoms of Magnesium Deficiency and How to Treat It

By Ashley Laderer

Leafy greens, fruits, and nuts are magnesium-rich foods. Westend61/Getty Images

Magnesium is a mineral that’s crucial for your body to function. It’s found throughout the body in bones, soft tissues, and cells, and plays a part in over 300 enzyme systems responsible for everything from controlling blood pressure, to synthesizing DNA, to generating energy for your body to function.

Since the mineral is responsible for so many bodily functions, a magnesium deficiency has the potential to be detrimental to your health. Here’s what you need to know.

Causes of magnesium deficiency

Magnesium deficiency is not common, but it does happen. It’s estimated that 2.5% to 15% of the general population have hypomagnesemia, aka low levels of magnesium in the blood. There a few possible causes of magnesium deficiency:

Long-term excessive alcohol consumption: Drinking can trigger your body to excrete more magnesium than normal.

Gastrointestinal diseases: Certain gastrointestinal diseases such as celiac disease or irritable bowel disease (IBD) result in chronic diarrhea and hinder the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.

Old age: According to a 2008 study published in Magnesium Research, aging itself is a risk factor for magnesium deficiency. In fact, people most at risk of magnesium are the elderly and people who are critically ill. As we age, the body has a harder time absorbing magnesium and other nutrients, due to changes in stomach acid. Older adults are also more likely to be taking medications that might interfere with magnesium absorption.

Type 2 Diabetes: Diabetes, particularly type 2, is a risk factor. People with type 2 have insulin resistance, which makes them more likely to pass excessive amounts of magnesium through their urine.

Symptoms of magnesium deficiency

According to Tyler Ladue, MD, a family medicine physician at Loma Linda University Health, symptoms of magnesium deficiency are as follows.

Early signs:

• Loss of appetite
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Fatigue
• Weakness

Advanced magnesium deficiency:

• Numbness or tingling
• Muscle contractions and cramps 
• Seizures 
• Personality changes
• Abnormal heart rhythms
• Coronary spasms

According to Cleveland Clinic, the most common symptoms are fatigue, weakness, and nausea. Fatigue and weakness are due to the fact that magnesium is necessary for converting food into energy for the body to use.

Magnesium deficiency can also result in low levels of other minerals. “Severe magnesium deficiency can manifest as hypocalcemia [low levels of calcium in the blood] or hypokalemia [low levels of potassium in the blood] due to magnesium’s important role in mineral homeostasis or balance,” says Ladue.

However, a severe deficiency isn’t common, though insufficiency is very common. “Despite most individuals in the United States not getting their daily estimated average requirement of magnesium, the above symptoms are relatively uncommon in the general population with a balanced diet,” says Ladue.

How to treat a magnesium deficiency

Treating a magnesium deficiency is relatively easy since many foods are rich in magnesium. The National Institutes of Health recommend that men get 400 to 420 milligrams of magnesium daily and women get 310 to 320 milligrams.

Foods that are rich in magnesium include:

• Leafy green vegetables (such as spinach or kale)
• Nuts (almonds, cashews, peanuts)
• Beans and legumes (black beans, kidney beans, edamame, peanuts) 
• Fruits (avocados, bananas, apples)
• Fortified cereals (meaning vitamins and minerals have been added)

Of course, you can also take magnesium supplements, but it’s preferred to get nutrients straight from foods since food is packaged with complementary nutrients that can help you absorb magnesium better and that aren’t found in supplements.

If you’re considering a supplement, it’s also worth talking to your doctor or registered dietitian. Magnesium supplements come in different forms with varying absorption. Some of the most commonly sold forms are poorly absorbed and may cause unpleasant GI symptoms, like gas, bloating, and diarrhea.

Ladue recommends asking your healthcare provider about your magnesium level if you’re at increased risk of magnesium deficiency. Additionally, if you’ve been experiencing the aforementioned symptoms and think a magnesium deficiency could be the culprit, head to your doctor for testing. Physicians can test for magnesium deficiency by measuring magnesium in your saliva, urine, blood plasma, or serum.

Leafy greens, fruits, and nuts are magnesium-rich foods. Westend61/Getty Images

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How Dieting May Have Helped Cause The Obesity Epidemic

• February 09, 2020

If you’ve stepped outside at some point in the last few decades, you’ve probably noticed two things. One, we’re in the middle of an “obesity epidemic,” and two, we have entire aisles in our stores dedicated to weight loss products. But shouldn’t that second thing have nullified the first? Isn’t it kind of weird that this epidemic has grown right alongside the industry that claims to sell its cure? What if these products and plans aren’t merely wasting your money? What if they’re a cause?

An estimated 45 million of us go on a diet every year. We’ve covered before how losing weight and keeping it off is almost impossible with dieting alone. But there’s a theory that takes this idea much further. And the more you learn about it, the more it makes sense.

At Least One Study Says Dieting Is Actually The Problem

Let’s start with a 2015 study from the American Journal of Public Health. It claims that not only does dieting not work, but also that it may be a major cause of the so-called obesity epidemic. I know, it sounds nuts. Isn’t watching what you eat a good thing? How could people eating less and trying to be healthier cause them to gain weight? Wouldn’t this run contrary to decades of data we’ve been give in the form of “before” and “after” photos in dieting ads? “The person on the left is overweight and sad! The one on the right is clearly thin and happy! Checkmate.”

But if you know a little bit about the physiological effects of dieting — i.e. abruptly changing eating habits to drastically cut calories — this makes a scary amount of sense. When it comes down to it, dieting is a form of self-imposed famine. And when we’re starving, our bodies do some seriously intense stuff in response. Stuff that may keep you overweight forever.

Other Studies Back This Up

There’s a reason nobody seems to know anything about long-term weight loss, and why every year there’s a new diet fad that’s just the flip of the last one. (“Actually, you should only eat the bacon! It’s the bun that was bad!”) Most studies of food and nutrition are notoriously unreliable. They often get their data from self-reporting, which any fourth-grader who has “totally finished their homework” knows is questionable. But studying nutrition any other way would actually be pretty unethical. I mean, you can’t just lock people up and force them to eat exactly the way you want them to. Except in the best study we have, that’s pretty much exactly what they did.

The Minnesota Semi-Starvation Experiment was originally embarked upon to study how to re-feed starving people at the end of World War II, but its most compelling findings were about what happens to our bodies when we starve in the first place. The wartime desperation meant volunteers were happy to put up with constraints that under normal circumstances would result in the researchers involved getting called into the chief’s office to have their science badges taken away. And unlike most modern nutritional studies, this study used perfectly healthy men who had no history of attempting weight loss.

The men in the study were fed an average of 1,800 calories a day (more than many modern weight-loss diets suggest), and their reactions to this deprivation were telling. These formerly happy and healthy dudes experienced severe psychological problems, temper tantrums, violent outbursts, and an extreme obsession with food. They basically became hangry toddlers. And most importantly, even after the experiment was over, they experienced lifelong changes in desires and attitudes around food. Even when they were allowed to eat normal amounts, they had serious trouble following basic hunger cues, like figuring out when they were full, and reported frequent binge-eating. One man even compulsively broke the diet with a huge string of ice cream sundaes and malted milkshakes, and wound up having to be removed from the study.

It Turns Out That Dieting Can Really Mess You Up

So to break that down, the very caloric limit that we now see in modern-day diets like Noom, Jenny Craig, Medifast, and Nutrisystem made the men in that study way hungrier and way more likely to binge if given the chance. And it’s not just this experiment that tells us restriction leads to binging. Studies also show that eating disorders like binge eating are a physical response to starvation — even self-imposed starvation like dieting.

If you’re wondering whether this is a psychological or physical response, please remember that those are not separate things. Your brain is just another organ, and like all of your organs, it has built-in mechanisms to help you survive. Under the right circumstances, though, those very reflexes can work against you; ask any lifeguard how hard it is to save a drowning person who is thrashing around. That’s why dieting long-term can also mess with your metabolism, making it much harder to burn calories efficiently. Your body is trying to adjust to these mixed signals. “Are we starving? Or is there lots of readily available food around? It can’t be both!”

And while some people, like your cousin Deb who has been on and off Weight Watchers 15 times, will desperately disagree and say that [Insert Latest Diet Fad Here] saved their life, the scientific argument for rapid weight loss plans is very thin (sorry). Most studies that claim dieting works have some major flaws. They often define success within a short time frame, like under a year, even though most people who regain weight after diets do so in the two-to-five-year range. Oh, and they’re also usually based on self-reporting. How well do you think that works when people have been trained to credit the diet when they lose weight but blame themselves when they gain?

One of the largest databases of “successful” weight loss is the National Weight Control Registry, which you stay on even if you stop reporting your weight. So if you’ve regained weight and are ashamed to admit it, you’re still on that list as a skinny person. Those factors — along with small sample sizes, an inability to isolate specific factors, and other shortcomings — are in virtually every pro-diet study. If you want to pull back and see the real results, well, it’s not hard to find that data. Obesity rates are higher than ever. If any other industry had this kind of track record, the backlash would be massive. Would we keep buying fire extinguishers if it turned out that instead of putting out a blaze, they just made the flames invisible for a while?

Dieting Is To Blame For A Whole Lot Of Unhealthy Habits And Attitudes

For what seems like such an intractable problem, the obesity epidemic doesn’t actually go back that far. It started in the 1980s, and accelerated from there. There is no shortage of theories about what caused it, from a rise in sedentary hobbies and jobs (thanks, computers) to increased sugar consumption (thanks, lobbyists) to a shift toward fast food (thanks, chaotic work schedules). But the weight loss industry itself probably deserves a spot on that list.

The ’80s, after all, saw the rise of extreme fads like the Cabbage Soup diet. It’s hard to look back on people eating nothing but fruit for 10 days followed by bread and three cobs of buttered corn and think it was a good idea. It’s also easy to see the formation of a vicious cycle. Obesity starts rising, and along with it comes an extreme cultural fear of being overweight (think of Oprah’s enormous wheelbarrow of fat). But where you’d think this cultural obsession with weight loss would shift the tide (the way Americans drastically cut back on smoking thanks to awareness, legal restrictions, and stigma), the opposite happened.

Remember, these weight loss diets aren’t just unhealthy and ineffective. There’s an entire marketing-driven culture that comes along with it. Obese people declare their weight gain to be a personal moral failure, rather than trusting the overwhelming amount of research that says weight loss is not about motivation or willpower. If it was, a generation of sitcom fat jokes would have shamed everyone back into shape. Instead it turns out that stigma can cause physical effects, like spiking cortisol levels that can lead to a loss of self-control, binge-eating, and weight gain. It’s like if every time you thought of how much you hate spiders, a spider walked up and slapped you in the face. And then everyone around you said “Oh my god, she is not doing enough to avoid spiders.” And then more spiders showed up and everyone was suddenly drowning in spiders. I’ve lost the metaphor, but I think you get it.

So What Do We Do?

If scientists and dietitians agree that dieting can make obesity worse in the long term, how else can we solve the supposedly big problem of our big selves? How are we supposed to get to a healthy weight if we can’t diet?

If we were selling a diet plan, here’s where we’d hit you with the sales pitch, something like “Westerners need to learn the diet secret ancient tribes have known for centuries. You can kill hunger and burn fat with GUAVA ROOT EXTRACT GUMMIES (TM).” But this is one of those cases where any answer that’s simple is also wrong.

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Experts have been studying nutrition for decades, and humans have been eating food for millions of years, but the more we learn about the subject, the more complicated it gets. Even something that sounds simple, like calorie absorption, can fluctuate wildly depending on how a food is cooked, the length of our intestines, and even how we feel about what we’re eating.

So it’s ridiculous to suggest that eating nothing but cabbage for a month will undo all of the dozens of factors that got us here, from our genes to our hormones to habits that took a lifetime to cement. Our mental health, our sleep schedules, nonstop marketing of foods high in salt, sugar, and fat … it all ties in to an increase in hunger urges that, statistically, cannot be resisted by “pride” or “grit” or “willpower.” Telling an overweight person to “just stop eating” is like telling someone with bronchitis to “just stop coughing.” They can do it for a while, if they really concentrate. But eventually the body takes over.

Maybe we can start by building a culture of being healthy versus just looking healthy. Many a coke addict has had co-workers tell them they look fantastic because they dropped 40 pounds in two months. Our health is impacted by our environment, how much money we have, our mental health, how socially isolated we are, and even the buildings we spend time in. Some people live to 104 by drinking Dr. Pepper, while others get cancer in their 20s. Excess weight is just one component, and is often just a symptom of what’s really wrong.

That’s part of the point of movements like Health At Every Size. Instead of setting goals around making your body conform to beauty standards, find healthier habits that you can stick with for the rest of your life. It means realizing you have to find healthy foods and activities that you actually want to do, versus bitterly complying out of fear of ridicule. And maybe most of all, it means realizing that the weight gain/loss cycle will never be broken by the industry that profits from that cycle.

Not Eating Enough Fruit and Vegetables Linked with Increased Risk of Anxiety Disorders

New Canadian research has found that eating less than three portions of fruit and vegetables per day appears to be linked to a higher risk of having an anxiety disorder.

Led by researchers from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, the new study looked at data gathered from 26,991 men and women between the ages of 45 and 85 taking part in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

From the data, the researchers found that participants who ate less than three portions of fruit and veg per day had at least a 24 percent higher chance of being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

The findings, which are published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, also showed that as a participant’s levels of total body fat increased past 36 percent, the likelihood of anxiety disorder increased by more than 70 percent, which the researchers say could be partly explained by the lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet.

“Increased body fat may be linked to greater inflammation. Emerging research suggests that some anxiety disorders can be linked to inflammation,” explained lead author Karen Davison.

The researchers also found that in addition to diet and measures of body fat, the rate of anxiety disorders among the participants also appeared to be linked to gender, marital status, income, immigrant status and several health issues. While one in nine women had an anxiety disorder, just one in 15 men had been diagnosed with anxiety; 13.9 percent of participants who had always been single had been diagnosed with a disorder compared to 7.8 percent of those who lived with a partner; rates of anxiety were almost double among those with household incomes under $20,000 per year compared to wealthier participants; rates of anxiety among those with three or more health conditions was 16.4 percent compared to 3 percent among those with no chronic conditions; and 6.4 percent of immigrants to Canada had anxiety disorders compared to the 9.3 percent of participants born in Canada.

The results were unsurprising for the researchers, with previous researchers suggesting that women are more vulnerable to anxiety disorders than men, while factors such as poverty and chronic pain can be stressful and anxiety-producing situations to be in.

“It is estimated that 10 percent of the global population will suffer from anxiety disorders which are a leading cause of disability” says Davison “Our findings suggest that comprehensive approaches that target health behaviors, including diet, as well as social factors, such as economic status, may help to minimize the burden of anxiety disorders among middle-aged and older adults, including immigrants.”