fusionhealthandwellness@yahoo.com, Author at Fusion Health and Wellness

Keys to the Good Life – The Investor’s Mentality

There are a lot of great things that come out of adopting a healthy lifestyle, and many of those things come quickly. Change up your eating habits and exercise routine, and you start losing weight. Eat clean foods, manage stress and get enough sleep, and your mood and energy levels improve. Do a few fasts and cleanses, and your skin becomes clear and eyes more vibrant.

That’s all well and good and an excellent reason to start paying a bit more attention to your health and wellbeing, but you should also consider the benefits that come further down the road. It’s important to drop the consumers mentality and adopt an investor’s mentality, not just with money but with health as well. A consumer thinks, If I do x, y or z now, then I’ll be happy/rich/lose weight/fill in the blank. Investors have a very different thought process. An investor says to themselves, If I do x, y or z now, then in a few weeks/months/years, my efforts will be multiplied a hundred-fold. A consumer is a slave to instant gratification. An investor is in control of his or her desires, and plants a seed now so that he or she can have a field of rewards later.

If you instill healthy habits now, you can more or less coast on autopilot, making tiny adjustments along the way, adding things as needed, and remain healthy for the rest of your life. If you cut out junk food and focus on eating a whole foods, plant-based diet and make that your normal, think of all the problems that will be avoided down the road.

How much money will you save in hospital bills, doctors visits and insurance?

How much will your quality of life improve and remain elevated due to being fit, strong, happy, healthy, emotionally balanced and self-reliant?

How much will a little self-love go towards improving your relationships with others?

Problems in general and health issues in particular have a nasty habit of snowballing out of control. This is easily prevented by just putting a little bit of effort in now, while you’re ahead. Put a little effort into eating cleaner and expanding your pallet. Find a few forms of exercise you love and that don’t feel like work. A few times a week, go to bed early, by at least 10 pm, and make sure to have a few stress management techniques up your sleeve. These few things alone are powerful enough to keep you thriving well into your 90s and beyond. Even if health issues have already cropped up, it’s never too late to take charge and start to fix things.

I do one-on-one and group health coaching, so if you’re looking for specific solutions to your individual health problems, contact me. Adopt an investor’s mentality, and put time and effort into yourself now – you can thank me later.

The Highway to Health

Lemme be honest with you – if you want to be on the fast track to being healthy and feel absolutely fantastic, you need to improve your intestinal health. This should be your first priority, no ifs, ands or buts about it. Your intestinal health affects everything from your mood, your energy levels, cognitive function, and weight, all the way to your outer appearance, as the skin and gut are intimately connected.

How can all this happen just from the gut? Mainly due to inflammation. Controlling inflammation is the key that unlocks a more vibrant life, and the way to control inflammation is largely through improving intestinal health. Everything you consume affects your body’s level of inflammation, either positively or negatively. Think about it – all the stuff you cram down your gullet comes into contact with you via your intestines – all the irritants in food, all the artificial dyes and colorings, all the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, everything is in direct contact with the largest organ in your immune system, your intestines. It makes sense that if you’re eating crap, you’re going to feel like crap as well.

Further, the digestive system is your “second brain”. Called the enteric nervous system, this second brain not only has 100 million neurons, as many as your spinal cord, but also produces a bevy of neurotransmitters which have a huge effect on how you feel.

You want to have more energy, a better mood, less brain fog, lose weight and have better skin don’t you? Thought so.

Your Gut – What Went Wrong

In a perfect world, your gut would be in tip top shape – it would digest the food you put into it, absorb the nutrients and speedily discard the waste products. Sounds easy right?

It should be, but we’ve messed things up in the modern world. Rampant use of antibiotics have completely destroyed our beneficial intestinal flora, leading to overgrowth of bad bacteria like candida or contributing to SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth. A lack of fiber further gunks things up, as fiber is the food for beneficial bacteria in the gut, and helps to sweep debris out of the intestines.

Intestinal hyper-permeability, or “leaky gut syndrome“, is another way intestinal health can go way wrong, as certain irritants, be it undigested food sitting in the intestines, candida or constant exposure to gluten, can actually cause the intestines to become more permeable than they should be. This allows microbes, undigested food particles and toxins to escape the digestive tract and enter the blood stream, where they further cause damage and feelings of malaise.

Lack of fiber, water and magnesium can cause constipation, something affecting some 63 million Americans. Artificial dyes, chemical pesticides, aluminum and plastics leached from cans and bottles.. All these things irritate the gut and affect your energy levels and moods.

The list goes on – Crohn’s disease, Celiac’s disease, lack of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, parasites… A lot can go wrong. The good news is, it’s easy to fix. Read on.

Healing Your Gut, Step 1 – Fasting

It doesn’t matter who you are or what your current health status is, everyone can benefit from periodic fasting. While intermittent fasting has it’s benefits, prolonged fasts are the type recommended for improving intestinal health.

Think about this – when was the last time you gave your digestive system a rest? Here you are, shoveling food into your face all day, every day, and demanding that your digestive system break all that food down, absorb the good stuff and eliminate the bad stuff before you start eating more food. Can’t a homie catch a break?

All joking aside, a 3-7 day juice fast is the most therapeutic technique I know of for boosting health. 24-36 hours after you cease consuming food, the body begins the process of autophagy, where it starts to clean out cellular junk, detoxify, and even destroy old, worn-down cells and replace them with shiny new ones. The intestines get a chance to purge built up waste products (lovely), and get some much needed rest. All the organs and glands in the body get revitalized and re-calibrated. After the initial discomfort of not eating, the body’s energy levels skyrocket as it is no longer expending massive amounts of energy breaking down, absorbing and excreting foodstuffs, and turns to stored body fat as energy.

Fasting is powerful stuff, and after my first couple of 3 day juice fasts, the rosacea on my face and the persistent rash on my chest cleared right up. Spring is the best time for a prolonged fast, as the weather is warm and it gives you a chance to clean out some of the junk stored up from winter, a time of year when most people eat heavier foods to stay warm. Spring is the time nature provides us with the most detoxifying foods as well – sprouts, grasses, dandelion and nettle greens are all very powerful and natural detoxifiers, and if you have access to them and a juicer, all the better.

Here’s how to succeed at your first fast – choose two days that you don’t have much to do, when you preferably aren’t working. On the first day, eat a larger breakfast and a larger lunch before noon. Then consume nothing but fresh juices, teas and water until noon the following day. This gives you a full 24 hours of fasting, and you’ll be sleeping through the worst part, when hunger and fatigue would be peaking. The following week, repeat the process above, but extend the fast until dinner time. The third time you fast, try to hold out a full 3 days – so if you start your fast at noon on Friday, you wouldn’t eat again until noon on Monday. Keep in mind that by halfway through the second day, any feelings of fatigue and aches should disappear and be replaced with mental clarity and energy, and you likely wont even be hungry. It’s important to break the fast with very light foods – fresh fruit, preferably soft ones like bananas and melons, and soft, steamed veggies are best.

If you’re like me and enjoy a cup of joe in the mornings, you can use Dandy Blend during a fast, a blend of roasted chicory, beet and other detoxifying herbs that tastes surprisingly good. Wheatgrass, beet, dandelion, celery and cucumber are excellent choices to juice while fasting, although you can get by using just a combination of apple and grape juices too. Make sure you’re not only consuming citrus juices, as they are too acidic to be the only juice on a fast.

I highly recommend using Healthforce’s Intestinal Drawing Formula during your first few fasts for a few reasons. First, it adds bulk to your stomach, helping to ease a bit of the hunger and encourage bowel movements. Second, it’s loaded with natural demulcents, or substances that gel up and help to heal and soothe the intestines. Finally, it has Zeolite clay, Activated Charcoal and Volcanic Bentonite clay – these natural substances bind to toxins and irritants and help draw them out of the body, very useful during your first few fasts as your body will be purging toxins left and right. I highly recommend using the pills, as the powder tastes like, well, clay.

After your first few fasts, the Intestinal Drawing Formula is optional, but it’s also a great thing to have on hand for anyone with a highly irritated digestive system, as the demulcents are quite soothing. You can always add in some Vitamineral Green for enhanced detoxification during a fast as well. Aim for 3-4 three day fasts per year, as a minimum.

Step 2 – Eliminating Irritants

Figuring out what your trigger foods are can take a bit of work, but it’s critical to find out if you have certain foods that irritate your digestive system. For many people it’s gluten. Next in line is unfermented soy products, and for millions of people it’s processed dairy. MSG and artificial sweeteners do a lot of damage as well.

The best way to suss out suspected food irritants is to do an elimination diet. For one whole month eliminate all gluten, processed soy and processed dairy from your diet. Not only are you likely to lose a few pounds, you’ll likely discover that you have more energy. After the month without the offenders, slowly add each one back into your diet and notice how it makes you feel. If you start getting brain fog, stomach aches or fatigue, you’ll know that it’s an irritant for you.

While I don’t have any food allergies or intestinal irritants per se, I do feel better the less gluten, unfermented soy and highly processed, non-organic milk products I use. If you’re following a whole foods, plant-based diet, these will naturally be minimized.

Step 3 – Smart Eating Strategies

Both Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine say all disease originates from a faulty digestive system. In Ayurveda, an energy known as Agni rules over the digestive functions. Agni is a type of “fire” that breaks food down into it’s smallest components, which are then absorbed and utilized by the body, getting turned into Prana (energy), Tejas (radiance, relating to metabolism) and Ojas (strength or vitality, the equivalent of TCM’s Jing). However, if Agni is depleted or malfunctioning, it can’t fully digest food and results in an accumulation of Ama, or toxins, which leads to disease. This is an amazingly accurate description of how the digestive system actually works, and how many diseases arise in the first place.

Personification of Agni

Ayurveda stresses the importance of doing all you can to keep the flames of Agni fully stoked, or put in modern terms, to keep all your digestive juices and enzymes fully stocked, and there are many ways to do so.

First and foremost, don’t over eat! This is the quickest way to accumulating Ama in Ayurveda and the quickest way to deplete Jing and shorten your lifespan in TCM. Following the Japanese idiom “Hari hachi bu”, or eating until 80% full, goes a long way here.

Preventing overeating can be difficult at first, but is easily corrected with a little practice. Focus on sloooowwiiiingg doowwnnnnn when you eat. There’s roughly a ten minute time delay between your stomach becoming full and your brain realizing that fact. Take a bite, set down your fork, chew thoroughly, and take a second to really taste the food. Many people recommend chewing each bite anywhere from 30 to 100 times – frankly I find this to be a bitch, but I do recommend chewing each bite of just one meal 30 times, not only to prove to yourself that you’ll feel full before the meal is done, but also to show how much more energy you’ll have when your food is properly chewed and ready for digestion.

Many yoga postures, through all the bending and twisting, improve the secretion of digestive juices and enzymes. A favorite method of mine to improve Agni is using digestive bitters. Using digestive bitters was a common practice throughout Europe, and many countries around the world still make it a habit to consume a very bitter/pungent substance prior to meals – think green chutney as a condiment with Indian food. Very bitter foods increase the amount of bile released, helping to digest fatty, heavier foods.

Salt is a simple and effective way to increase digestive powers. Salt is mainly comprised of sodium chloride – the chloride in salt helps to increase the hydrochloric acid of the stomach, the main acid involved in the dissolving of foods. Lightly salting your meals with a natural salt such as Himalayan salt or Celtic sea salt can go a long way.

Spicy, pungent foods also improves digestion – ginger, black pepper, red pepper, cinnamon, turmeric, cloves and many other spicy herbs increase the flow of digestive enzymes and gastric juices, as well as increasing peristalsis, the rhythmic movements of the intestines that expel waste. They also improve circulation, enhance detoxification and many boost the metabolism, so add some spices to your life.

Making lunch your biggest meal of the day is a great way to improve digestion as well. Your metabolism is naturally highest around 12-2 pm, making lunch a great time to digest your bigger, heavier meals. Breakfast should be just enough food to last you to lunch, while dinner should preferably be the lightest meal of the day, maybe just soup or a salad. It’s also important to have a light dinner before 7 so that your stomach is empty come bed time – if it isn’t, your liver won’t get the time it needs to detox as it’s busy processing food, and the insulin released from dinner will impair many a metabolism regulating hormone. To top it all off, your digestive powers are greatly weakened as you sleep.

Both Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine recommend not consuming cold foods, and not consuming too much liquid around meals. Cold foods are said to “shock” the digestive system – while I can’t find any hard facts on this topic, I have felt that I digest warm foods better. Avoiding liquids near meals makes perfect sense, however. Lets say you were trying to melt some object with a bunch of acid – would it melt better if you added just acid, or if you diluted the acid with water? Liquids dilute the digestive juices and enzymes that help to break down the food you eat, so try to limit liquids around meal times. However, a shot of espresso, glass of red wine or some kombucha all help to actually improve digestion, just don’t over do it.

Make sure to consume plenty of fiber as well. Not only is fiber the food for probiotics, but it helps to sweep out undigested bits of food from the digestive tract. Keep that colon clean!

Finally, if you’re consuming a very large meal, say at Thanksgiving, or consuming something you know you’ll have a hard time digesting, make use of digestive enzymes. These make a HUGE difference in how easily and quickly you digest and absorb food.

Step 4 – Pre- and Probiotics

I already touched on the importance of probiotics here – long story short, they improve digestion and assimilation, improve mood and decrease stress, improve immunity, and even create new nutrients for you, some that help you to even lose weight. No discussion of digestive health is complete without paying due to our little friends in our gut. I suggest this brand here for daily maintenance, as well as consuming a wide variety of fermented foods in order to get a variety of probiotics, foods such as yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kombucha, kimchi, miso, natto and fresh pickled veggies. It’s important to also provide prebiotics, the food for probiotics, in the form of fiber, or through supplementation.

You are a reflection of your digestive health. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel after a few fasts, upping your fiber intake, using bitter and spicy herbs to improve digestion and after regular use of probiotics. Watch as your mood improves, your skin clears up and your energy levels skyrocket. And remember, this is an ongoing process! Don’t think just because you fasted once you don’t have to ever again, or that you don’t need any probiotics after your first bottle. Trust me when I say improving digestive health is key to feeling amazing, and it will be easy to keep at it.

Some Love for my Vegan and Vegetarian Friends, Part 2

A vegetarian and especially a vegan diet can leave some gaping holes in your nutrient consumption. Luckily in today’s world we can eschew animal foods completely while still being able to supplement those missing nutrients back in.

In case you missed Part 1 in this series, it’s here. It covers the most well-known and the most important nutrient deficiencies that can occur on a vegan or vegetarian diet, including

1. Vitamin B-12
2. Vitamin D3
3. Omega 3 fatty acids EPA and DHA
4. Pre-formed, true Vitamin A

But we still have a few more to go, and these nutrients can make a huge difference in how you feel.

Carni-nutrients – As the name implies, these are compounds that are only found in animal foods, namely creatine, taurine, carnosine and carnitine. The healthy body does synthesize these compounds in small amounts, but tissue levels tend to be lower in vegans and vegetarians than in omnivores.

Creatine – Creatine is an amino-acid like compound synthesized by the human body. It helps create and recycle ATP, the energy molecule used by our cells, and I think we all can agree more energy is a good thing.

One study states – “A battery of cognitive tests were performed by the women, both before and after the five days of study, with results showing that memory improved by about 40 percent in the vegetarians consuming the creatine supplements, compared with placebo.” 40% improvement in just 5 days of using creatine?

And another – “However, in vegetarians rather than in those who consume meat, creatine supplementation resulted in better memory.”

Because creatine supplementation didn’t seem to improve cognitive effects in omnivores as stated in the last study, it seems to show that vegans and vegetarians are experiencing a deficiency in the nutrient, as opposed to something like caffeine, which would show a boost in performance across the board. Most creatine supplements are vegan-friendly these days, and it’s dirt cheap and flavorless. Your dose need not be more than 3 grams a day, and no loading phase is necessary as some companies would have you believe. It’s also one of the few proven and safe athletic performance enhancers, so it will help all you athletes out there.

Taurine is another amino-acid like compound that is only found in animal foods, and one that is crucial for heart health. Here is a very in-depth article on taurine for anyone who’d like to do some further digging. Taken straight from the article – “Taurine promotes cardiovascular health, insulin sensitivity, electrolyte balance, hearing function, and immune modulation. In animal research, taurine protected against heart failure, reducing mortality by nearly 80%.” (bold and italics my addition) Yeah, 80%, that’s huge.

Taurine does not come from bull urine as some people believe, although it was first discovered in bull bile. Most all of the taurine on the market today is synthesized in labs and is therefore vegan. This is the product I use and it will last you quite a while, or you can save a few dollars by buying this product, which combines creatine and taurine as well as glutamine, an immune boosting, gut-healing amino acid.

Carnosine is a crucial nutrient that prevents glycation within the body. From the LEF website – “A fascinating paper recently published in the journal Mechanisms of Aging and Development presents an entirely new theory to explain why vegetarians do not live longer. It turns out that those who avoid eating beef suffer a deficiency of a nutrient (carnosine) that is critical to preventing lethal glycation reactions in the body.

For the benefit of new members, glycation can be defined as the toxic binding of glucose to the body’s proteins. Glycation alters the body’s proteins and renders them non-functional. While wrinkled skin is the first outward appearance of glycation, most degenerative diseases are affected in one way or another by pathological glycation reactions.” (bold my addition)

These Advanced Glycation End products, aptly called AGEs, are a major contributing factor to aging, disease states and yes, the dreaded wrinkly skin. Without nature’s most potent anti-glycation agent, carnosine, AGEs can potentially build up fast, especially if the diet is high in sugar or other fast digesting carbs, or in rancid vegetable oils. To increase your body’s levels of carnosine without consuming meat, you can supplement with Beta-alanine, which is a rate-limiting factor for the production of carnosine. Just 3 grams a day is plenty, although for fair warning, some people may notice a “flush”, where your skin gets tingly. I am one of those people, but usually I barely notice it. This is a normal side effect of consuming beta-alanine, known as parasthesia, and is in no way harmful.

Carnitine is yet another nutrient that is plentiful in animal foods that exerts beneficial effects in the human body. Carnitine is a key player in the breakdown and utilization of fat for energy, helping you to lose weight and increase energy levels; it is a powerful antioxidant, and improves bone and heart health. This study shows a reduction in fat and an increase in muscle mass, as well as a reduction in fatigue and increase in cognitive function through supplemental carnitine. Acetyl L-cartinine is a form that provides the biggest boost to your brain, improving memory, mood, and motivation, and is the kind I personally use, and it’s quite cheap; doses range from 500 to 2000 mg.

CoQ-10 is one more nutrient which may be lacking on a vegetarian and vegan diet. While some plants do contain Coenzyme Q-10, it is found much more abundantly in animal foods. In one study, a third of patients had CoQ-10 levels below what they should be, and this wasn’t even in vegan or vegetarians. CoQ-10 is used by every cell in your body to produce energy; it’s a potent antioxidant and boosts the immune system, but our bodies start producing less as we age. Our hearts contain the highest amount of CoQ-10 in our bodies and this should come as no surprise – the constant pumping of blood obviously requires a lot of energy, and CoQ-10 is vital for energy production. Further, anyone taking statins to lower their cholesterol should be required to take supplemental CoQ-10, as statins inhibit your body’s production of this essential nutrient. Pretty ironic, considering people are prescribed statins to protect their heart, while actually depriving their heart of this key nutrient. Here is a very well priced, vegan CoQ-10, using the form of this coenzyme that is most bioavailable. At 100 mg per pill, you wouldn’t have to take one each and every day – maybe twice a week for readers below 40, every other day for those over 40-50, and once daily for readers above 50, those on statins or anyone doing lots of marathon, triathlon, or Iron Man training, as these have been shown to have deleterious effects on the heart.

Finally, vegans and vegetarians may be deficient in zinc and other minerals as well. Whereas our bodies can produce the other nutrients listed in this post if given the right raw materials, minerals must be obtained from the diet. Plants are abundant in certain minerals like magnesium, while other minerals such as zinc are much better obtained from animal sources.

Another confounding factor is that many grains, nuts, seeds and beans, which can make up the majority of a vegan/vegetarian diet, contain antinutrients such as phytic acid, glucosinolates, lectin and oxalic acid, which actually inhibit the absorption of certain nutrients. Phytic acid in particular binds with minerals in your digestive system, rendering them unable to be absorbed. Maintaining proper mineral levels is beyond crucial for preventing disease states, achieving optimal health and feeling generally badass – the difference in how you feel when you get adequate magnesium and iodine, for example, is pretty profound.

These antinutrients can be reduced by soaking and sprouting your seeds, nuts and grains before consuming them, a process that does takes some time and foresight, but many companies are now selling pre-sprouted grain and nut products, eliminating the need to do so yourself. This product is a nice blend of minerals, and all of them are actually in highly absorbable forms, which is a rare find.

Sound like a lot to keep up with? It kind of is, but try some of these supplements and notice the difference in energy levels, immunity, improved mood and the improved quality of your hair, skin and nails. I don’t think every single vegetarian needs to use all of these supplements, but I wanted to provide this information for those who are interested or for those who may notice less energy after giving up animal products. These supplements are more important for vegans, who abstain from all animal based products, and for the aging or extreme exercising vegetarians.

These nutrients are so important that I supplement with all of them from time to time and I’m not even a vegan or vegetarian. You don’t have to break the bank all at once either; go buy some creatine, it’s dirt cheap, and play around with that for a while. Then try out carnitine and notice how your energy levels go up and cognition improves. Pay attention to how your mood gets lifted and stabilizes after using the Country Life Mineral Blend, and how your skin becomes clear and hair becomes lustrous after getting adequate Omega 3s.

The nutrients listed in the first post are likely more pressing, along with getting adequate minerals, so if you’re tight on cash and can only afford a few items, stick to those.

smiling_cow

Fellas – Why Red Wine is Manlier than Beer

Bad news guys – beer makes you less manly.

Not only are men experiencing record-lows in testosterone levels, but it turns out our most beloved beverage, beer, may be a big culprit.

Testosterone is a critical hormone, for both men and women, but it clearly has a bigger impact on males – it’s not just responsible for muscle growth and a healthy libido, it’s responsible for decreasing male stress levels, warding off depression and cognitive decline, keeping us lean and even delaying death.

Why the record lows in T levels? I suspect a huge factor is the overwhelming presence of xenoestrogens – foreign substances that act as estrogen does in the body. Where do these xenoestrogens come from? Plenty of foods, PCB, BPA, phthalates and other plastic chemicals, as well as many pesticides and herbicides. In a nut shell, they’re everywhere. Add to this a general lack of healthy, testosterone boosting foods, lack of exercise, and sedentary, stressful lifestyle, and you’ve got a great prescription for excess estrogen and lowered testosterone levels.

So how does beer come into play? Beer is made out of just four ingredients – barley, hops, yeast and water. Unfortunately, those lovely, delectable hops are loaded with what appear to be pretty potent phytoestrogens, or plant-derived chemicals that act as estrogen would in the body.

It seems that in Germany, women with gynecological disorders would bathe in “brewery sludge baths”, which contained up to 30% hop extracts. Sounds fun. A 1953 study reported that young girls who came to pick hops off the vine in hop gardens regularly began menstruating two days after arrival. The authors of the study concluded that hops contain “the equivalent of 20–300 μg estradiol/g”. Estradiol is the main form of estrogen within the human body, and the average levels of estradiol within the blood stream of women are 30 to 400 TRILLIONTHS of a gram per milliliter. Hops contain 20-30 millionths of a gram of estradiol per gram of hops – that’s quite a lot.

In Europe a condition called “brewers droop” is widely known; it refers to the lack of ability some beer brewers have in being able to “get it up”.

I’ll be the first to admit that I love a good hoppy beer; more than a few IPAs come to mind, and with the explosion of craft brewing and turning away from watered down, adjunct lagers (BUDWEISER), beers are becoming more and more hoppy. But with the rampant exposure to xenoestrogens, should us men be going out of our way to consume a potent liquid estrogenic cocktail?

Luckily, we have red wine to the rescue.

Red wine is one of the richest sources of a lovely little antioxidant called resveratrol. Resveratrol has many interesting health boosting properties, among them improved heart health, increased endurance and possibly increasing lifespan. But as it relates to this discussion, resveratrol just so happens to be an aromatase-inhibitor. Aromatase is this enzyme in our bodies that goes around converting testosterone into estrogen. Anything that inhibits this enzyme therefor increases testosterone and lowers estrogen, a boon for the modern man. And don’t worry ladies, you need some help too as you’re getting exposed to just as many xenoestrogens as men are.

Now, this isn’t going to be some massive effect. It won’t get you “jacked” or give you ‘roid rage, but it will help to balance your hormones in this xenoestrogen-laden world. If you’re a guy who frequently experiences low libido, depression, that “spare tire” around your belly, lack of drive and motivation, and just generally feel less “you”, I recommend giving the beer a nice month or two break and switching to some red wine. You can thank me later.

I haven’t given up my beer – in fact I drank one while finishing this article, a stout called Old Engine Oil. I have cut back on beer, however, and begun to use certain foods and supplements to detox my body of excess estrogens and prevent the hormonal disturbances caused by hops. If you’re interested in knowing how you can do the same, or how to balance your hormone levels in general, we should talk.

Some Love for my Vegan and Vegetarian Friends, Part 1

This is a big topic so stay tuned for the follow up post!

It’s important to remember one thing when it comes to the debate out there over whether one should eat animal foods, either by the truckload, in moderation, or eschew them completely – don’t let your dinner become your dogma. Don’t bash others or look down on them for their food choices, because you don’t know where they’re coming from or their reasons for eating the way that they do. Keep an open mind and remember – it’s just food, and you’re lucky to live in a place of the world where you have access to it.

While it sounds completely unsexy, correcting nutrient deficiencies plays a major role in body composition, mood and energy levels – those things that contribute to your actual sexiness. And while everyone across the board needs to be aware of nutrient deficiencies, most vegetarians and especially vegans should be because the human body has evolved eating both animal and plant foods. This is non-debateable and a fact a life, and because we still have the same body and genetics as our prehistoric ancestors had, we need the same nutrients, and some of these nutrients are only obtainable from animal sources. Luckily for all you vegans out there, you live in a time where you can use supplementation to fill in the gaps.

We’re all just modern cavemen

First, let’s get straight with our definitions. For the purpose of this article, a vegan is someone who completely avoids consuming anything of animal origin, even things that don’t involve that animal’s death, such as dairy, honey, or any animal-derived ingredients in various products such as gelatin. A vegetarian is someone who only allows some milk and/or eggs and/or honey into their diets, but avoids anything that contributes to the death of any creature, which, considering modern factory farming methods and inhumane treatment of bees, could easily include some milks, eggs and honeys.

Remember, I’m not here to tell you being a vegan is better than being an omnivore or vice versa, this post is only to shed some light on nutrient deficiencies so that those who wish to avoid animal products can do so in the healthiest way possible.

We’ll start with the more well known deficiencies that can occur on a vegan/vegetarian diet. First up is vitamin B-12. Let me be very precise when I say that there are NO vegetal sources of this vitamin, zilch, zero. Any time they test plants for this vitamin and get a positive result, they have only detected Vitamin B-12 analogues, which can’t be used by the body and actually block the absorption of real vitamin B-12. If you are hearing otherwise from someone, they are either selling you a vegan product/diet/lifestyle, they haven’t dug deep enough or they have let their dinner become their dogma. The good news is vitamin B-12 is easily supplemented and sourced from yeast. This is a nice broad spectrum B Vitamin product and is the one I personally use – it’s derived from yeast and contains the biologically active forms of all the B Vitamins. Omnivores that eat a healthy diet likely get ample amounts from meat sources.

Except for possibly a certain type of moss, there are also no plant-based sources of Vitamin D3, the kind preferred and used by our bodies. Mushrooms and a few other plants do contain Vitamin D2 but it is poorly utilized by the body. You can easily make this Vitamin from sunlight if and only if you spend at least 15 minutes in the sun during midday, aren’t wearing sunscreen, and you are consuming enough cholesterol, as your body synthesizes it’s own Vitamin D3 from cholesterol (be on the look out for a future post on why your body needs cholesterol and even saturated fats). So if you live somewhere that is sunny year round and you get plenty of time outdoors without sunscreen on, and aren’t following a low fat/cholesterol diet, no need to supplement this vitamin. If you live a bit further away from the equator and have to deal with winter, I highly suggest getting a Vitamin D supplement and using it at least during the months with less light. A good dose is 1000 IU on days during the summer you don’t get much sun, and anywhere from 2000 to 5000 IU in the winter – it’s always best to get blood levels checked, aiming for 50 nanograms per milliliter. I recommend something like this for vegans, as it is purely plant sourced, but even animal sourced Vitamin D just comes from sheep’s wool. This is the product I use as it combines Vitamin D3 with Vitamin K2, another sorely lacking nutrient, has over a years worth of servings in one bottle, and is also suitable for vegetarians.

Most everyone these days know about the importance of Omega 3 fatty acids – they’re essential to health, promoting lustrous skin, improving mental performance, boosting mood, and reducing inflammation. DHA is the star player of Omega 3s, being critical for brain, nervous system and retinal health, and represents a whopping 97% of the Omega 3s in the brain – in fact, it improved memory and reaction time in those lacking the fatty acid in their diet. Further, “DHA has a positive effect on diseases such as hypertension, arthritis, atherosclerosis, depression, adult-onset diabetes… and some cancers.” It is especially important when it comes to pregnant women, newborns and infants as it supports healthy brain and nervous system development. DHA is found in large quantities in fresh, cold water fish, and in decent quantities in breast milk, milk from grass-fed cows and goats, and in eggs from pastured hens. Unfortunately, DHA is rarely found in plants, in fact only in a few algal sources. While the body can convert the plant-based Omega 3 fatty acid ALA into DHA, it does so at an extremely poor conversion rate – up to a meager 9% in healthy women, and a whopping 0-4% for men. So for any vegans and vegetarians out there, I would make sure to have a good algal-based DHA product on hand – at least if you want to remain smart, ward off depression and cognitive decline, and have nice skin and hair.

Fun side note – it is presumed that the reason men are attracted to women with curvy bottoms is because women store large amounts of DHA in their hips, thighs and butts. This signals to males that this particular woman would rear a healthy child, as she has ample DHA to ensure proper fetal development.

Freddie Mercury loves fat-bottomed girls because science

Vitamin A is often thought to be adequately supplied by a vegetarian diet, but this is not technically true. True, preformed Vitamin A is only found in animal foods, but many animal and plant foods do contain an abundance of Vitamin A precursors called carotenoids, the most important and well known one being beta-carotene. Vitamin A is a major player in growth and development, skin, eye and brain health, testosterone production and even the onset of puberty.

So are vegans and vegetarians able to get adequate amounts of Vitamin A through consuming plant based precursors? Well, it’s murky waters – Vitamin A and it’s precursors are fat-soluble nutrients, meaning they can only be utilized by the body when consumed with fat. So for any vegans or vegetarians out there eating a low-fat diet, chances are pretty high you’re deficient in Vitamin A. Further, only 1/12th of the beta-carotene obtained from food sources gets converted into actual Vitamin A. And because Vitamin A is one of those nutrients crucial to proper fetal development and as such is drained from the mother during pregnancy, if you’ve ever been pregnant, you may be Vitamin A deficient.

So what’s the plan for vegans and vegetarians? For the vegetarians, make sure to consume plenty of milk, butter and dairy from humanely raised, grass-fed cows, as well as eggs from pasture-raised hens – these products are rich in preformed, ready-to-use real Vitamin A and don’t involve any slaughtering of animals. Consume this in addition to carotenoid rich foods. For vegans, I recommend buying a Vitamin A supplement that supplies you with the real deal, preformed Vitamin A. I’d suggest something like this supplement, preferably taken until blood levels reach 50-200 micrograms per deciliter (yeah, that means you’ll have to ask your doc for a test next time you’re there), then taken only two or three times a week afterwards as a maintenance dose. Because the product I recommended is Vitamin A palmitate, it is synthetic and thus not animal based, but because it is an isolated synthetic vitamin, be sure to consume Vitamin D3 along with it to prevent toxicity.

For both groups, and for any omnivores reading this, when you eat foods high in pro-vitamin A carotenoids, use liberal amounts of healthy fats, such as olive oil, coconut oil or grass-fed butter. Foods high in carotenoids include dandelion greens, kale, sweet potatoes, carrots, spinach, goji berries (my favorite source) pumpkin, butternut squash and many others. Oddly enough, most of these foods taste great along with some fat – who doesn’t like butter on their carrots, squash and sweet potatoes? Perhaps the easiest way to consume carotenoids is by simply having a few tablespoons of red palm oil – one tablespoon provides 80% of your RDA of carotenoids, already emulsified in a healthy source of fat, plus huge amounts of Vitamin E for nail, skin and hair health. I suggest adding it to low-heat dishes, as a straight tablespoon isn’t the greatest, trust me.

Vegetarians whom consume fish can also get a lot of bang for their buck by simply consuming Fermented Cod Liver Oil, or this Fermented Cod Liver / Butter Oil, as both are naturally rich in Vitamin D3, Vitamin A, Vitamin K2 and DHA. Omnivores can also consume everything listed above – grass-fed dairy and pastured egg products, cod liver oil, as well as other liver products, which are no where near as gross as they sound, I promise. A good pâté, with crackers and a fig spread is hard to beat – trust me, you will love it.

Make sure to stay tuned for the second half of this post, as there are many more nutrients that will make a BIG difference in how a vegan or vegetarian will feel.

Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends

It’s a little disconcerting to think that the 100 trillion cells in our microbiome, the term for the collection of microbes living both in and upon us, out number our human cells 10 to 1. The genes of our microbiome outnumber human genes 100 to 1. Craziest yet, our microbiome plays a huge role influencing how we feel and perhaps even how we act.

Surreal landscape, or the bacteria crawling all over your face?

Do you have intense sugar cravings that you just can’t seem to overcome? It’s quite possible that certain bacteria within your gut, which feed off of sugar, are influencing you to consume more for their own survival. Is chocolate a must have every single day? It might not be just because it’s loaded with feel-good chemicals and may have more to do with the fact it feeds certain bacteria in your gut.

As usual, the modern world has interfered with our good health. While I don’t advocate a Paleo diet per se, they do hit the nail on the head in terms of the fact that our bodies have evolved to require certain things, one of which is a profusion of mixed bacteria in the gut – prior to a few hundred years ago, nothing was very sanitary. And for hundreds of thousands of years, the food we were able to consume had various levels of bacteria upon it, through which we’ve evolved to thrive. We later learned to use fermentation as a means to preserving our food, which further increased our exposure to bacteria in the form of probiotics.

But it’s not all bad news, far from it. We’re just starting to learn how critical these little guys are to our health, especially the good bacteria, or probiotics, in our intestinal tract. Probiotics (pro=for or towards, bio= life) mean literally for life.

First we need a little background on our digestive system, and one thing I’ll be touching on in the future is that you are a reflection of your intestinal health. It’s not the most poetic sentiment, sure, but it’s true, and if you’re trying to lose weight, have more energy and a clear mind, you need to pay more attention to intestinal health.

The human digestive system, a 30 foot long tangle of mass, is a huge player in our wellbeing, but the focus of this post is centers around probiotics and their interaction with us, and to understand that we need to understand a simple fact : your gut is your second brain. This second brain is in constant communication with the one in your head and the two are always influencing each other, which is one reason why food affects your mood, and why your mental state affects your digestion.

Technically know as the enteric nervous system, this “second brain” contains over a 100 million neurons, more than in the spinal cord or in the peripheral nervous system. And how do neurons communicate with one another? Through neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters have a profound affect on your mood, energy levels, behavior and outlook on life in general, and are largely a “missing link” when attempting to improve one’s health. For example, lets say you don’t produce enough dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in motivation, pleasure, increased mood, focus, and energy, as well as goal-seeking behavior. So if something’s going on that is disrupting the proper functioning of dopamine, you will experience less pleasure, less energy, have poor focus, little motivation and won’t be motivated to accomplish goals and tasks at hand. Other neurotransmitters include serotonin, a key player in mood and the target of most anti-depressants; GABA, a calming and relaxing neurotransmitter, our body’s natural Xanax; and quite a few more.

This all relates to your digestive system and probiotics in a large way. If your intestinal flora isn’t flourishing, not only is your digestion going to be wonky, but so will your mood, energy levels and outlook on life. Probiotics, those lovely little critters that call your digestive system home, produce the whole gamut of neurotransmitters, which your body then absorbs and responds to.

For example, Lactobacillus helveticus and Bifidobacterium longum, two strains of probiotics, have been found to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Lactobacillus rhamnosis produces GABA which we then are able to utilize, keeping us feeling calm and collected throughout the day; you know that wonderful relaxed feeling you get after a long yoga session, or from a glass of wine at the end of the day? GABA at work. Bifidobacterium infantis helps produce serotonin, the same neurotransmitter targeted by most anti-depressants, as well as reduces inflammation and helps send “I’m full” signals to the brain. Lactobacillus reuteri stimulates the production of oxytocin, the hormone used to promote social bonding and which is released when we relax with loved ones.

Help them help you

So if you want to be depressed, stressed, anxious, hungry, on edge, less motivated, and experience less pleasure, don’t consume any probiotics or fermented foods.

“Say, how might I improve my intestinal flora?” So glad you asked. First, start by avoiding things that kill off the good bugs in your digestive system. The worst offender is by far antibiotics – these are a nuclear bomb to probiotics, killing off the bad bugs as well as the good. If you have a thriving microbiome you likely won’t ever need antibiotics, but if you are prescribed them make sure to take some very strong probiotics along with them and afterwards. Limit consumption of coffee, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs as well, as all damage your intestinal flora. Avoid consuming too many refined carbs, junk food and sugar, as these feed the bad bugs and promote their overgrowth, while starving off our little bacterial friends. Many pesticides and herbicides do damage to probiotics as well, so go for organic as much as possible.

Promote a healthy intestinal flora by consuming a wide variety of fermented foods. Things like unpasteurized yogurt, unpasteurized sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, kvass, kimchi, lassi, organic dark chocolate, and even high quality, unfiltered and unpasteurized beer and wine, though be careful not to overindulge. These are all fermented foods, teeming with a wide variety of bacterial good guys.

Consume plenty of high fiber foods, as fiber, while undigested by humans, is actually the food for our microbial friends, and is thus termed prebiotics. Berries, especially raspberries, apples, dark leafy greens, avocados, beans, certain whole grains, oatmeal and celery are all good choices. Onions, leeks, garlic and beets are high in inulin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS), which are basically crack for probiotics. You can also buy some potato starch, which feeds certain bacteria in the gut that then produce butyrate, a fat-burning, hunger suppressing compound. If you wish to supplement inulin and FOS, I’d go with this product, as it’s high quality and the price can’t be beat.

There are two high quality probiotic supplements I’d like to recommend as well. Renew Life’s Ultimate Flora Super Critical is a high quality probiotic, with a full 200 billion living organisms of 10 different strains. This would be my suggestion for anyone who has multiple courses of antibiotics in the past and is looking to boost their intestinal flora up to healthy levels, or for anyone who has to go on a course of antibiotics. My second recommendation would be Lee Swanson’s Ultimate Probiotic Formula, which has a very respectable 66 billion organisms and even comes with it’s own prebiotics. These are good supplements to have on hand in case you get sick, or to use in addition to a diet high in a variety of fresh fermented foods.

Just as a side note, I personally get my probiotics from fermented foods and from Vitamineral Green and Green Vibrance, two greens powders that I gave a detailed description of here.

To recap, if you want to avoid digestive issues along with depression, anxiety and a lack of motivation, be sure to pay attention to consuming fermented foods. Developing a healthy intestinal flora really is critical to maintaining not only proper digestive health, but emotional, physical and mental wellbeing as well.

Consuming Zombifying Fungi, Deer Antlers and Sheep Placenta – The Quest for Everlasting Youth

Over the past five years I’ve done many an odd thing to explore the realm of boosting health and achieving peak performance – I’ve eaten plenty of organ meats, with sweetbreads being my favorite (sweetbreads are a euphemism for the thymus and pancreas of calves and lambs); experimented with multiple nootropics, or substances that boost mental performance, some that even grow your brain; changed my diet every which way imaginable, with accompanying changes in workout routines; and spent more time than I’d like to admit on various scientific journals reading up on studies that might provide me with the next big biohack that would improve my life.

But hands down, the strangest things I’ve done in the quest to improve my health and perform at higher levels always seem to revolve around increasing the quality and quantity of my Jing – having consumed things such as the tips of deer antler, deer and sheep placenta, geckos, sea horses and sea dragons, as well as spending $70 on the most foul tasting of the bunch, a liquid extract of male silk moths. Yes, it tastes exactly like what you would imagine liquid bugs would taste like.

Want some?

Why all this fuss about Jing? According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jing is your “Regenerative Essence”, the equivalent to the fountain of youth – the more you have, the more youthful you’ll remain, the more energy you’ll have, the less likely to get sick you’ll be, and ultimately, the longer you’ll live. When the body runs out of Jing, you die, plain and simple.

Jing is one of what’s known as the Three Treasures, the other two being Qi and Shen. Jing is the basis for Qi, and Qi for Shen, so by improving Jing, you can improve all three. This makes Jing of prime importance, for if you focus on building your Jing, your Qi and Shen will increase as well.

Traditional Chinese Medicine dictates that Jing is particularly related to the bone marrow, the reproductive system, the brain and nervous system and especially the kidneys, which, in TCM, include the adrenal glands. Jing is associated with longevity, youthfulness, regeneration, as well as your mental prowess, courage and will power. In modern terms, Jing can be associated with your stores of hormones, the integrity of your DNA as well as your genetic potential in general. Therefore, consuming herbs or supplements or doing certain practices that build your Jing increase your vitality and resilience, boost mental power, enhance your fertility, improve your youthful appearance and ultimately increase how long you’ll live. In other words, it’s important. And yes, the things you consume and experience do actually change your genetic expression, something I will write a post or two about in the future.

As a little aside here – whether you speak of “Jing” as some ancient, almost romantic concept coming from China, or speak of it’s equivalent in modern day language, you’re still talking about the same thing. The youth-preserving processes within the body and the same nourishing properties of food and herbs are all pointing at the same thing, whether you call it Jing, hormonal balance or regenerative essence.

Someone who has a lot of Jing stored up is brimming with vitality, is in high spirits, never seems to fatigue, has that youthful appearance and demeanor and may even have that special extra “something” about them, that je ne sais quoi. On the other hand, someone with depleted Jing is constantly tired, can’t handle even minor stressors, may have thinning, frail hair and nails, saggy or wrinkling skin, bags under their eyes, and is often a big ol’ grump.

Two metaphors for people with lots of Jing are healthy teenagers and healthy pregnant women. A healthy teenager is able to wake up early, go to school, go to gym class during school hours, then practice their sport after school hours, finish their homework (just kidding), stay up late at night and wake up the next day with almost no ill effects – and they may not even be using the crutch of coffee yet at this age. This is because they’re brimming with hormones, which are under the domain of Jing, and they haven’t yet had much of a chance to deplete their Jing as they are still relatively young. Pregnant women are also brimming with hormones; because they’re with child, they’re also using a lot of Jing to build and nurture that baby. Unfortunately, if not paid attention to, this may leave some women feeling drained due to a loss of Jing, especially after the second or third child.

My favorite example of someone who is depleting their Jing too quickly is the Marathon runner who isn’t recovering properly in between runs. And true enough, long-distance running depletes youthful hormones such as Human Growth Hormone and DHEA, and results in a long-term increase in cortisol, a catabolic stress hormone.

Sprinter on the left, marathoner on the right. While both have relatively low body fat, the sprinter clearly has more muscle to her. Guess which is approaching Jing depletion…

I love it when modern science backs up ancient wisdom, and this is exactly what’s happening in today’s world with the concept of Jing. Many of the substances used to supplement Jing from TCM have been found to have profoundly rejuvenating effects on the body; many are adaptogens which improve hormone levels, and almost all of them benefit the adrenal glands, the storehouses of sex hormones and “youth” hormones, lending credence to the Kidneys (which include the adrenals in TCM) being the seat of Jing.

For example, Rehmannia is one of the primary Jing tonics in TCM. Rehmannia is rich in a compound called catalpol, which “has been shown to have anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, anti-apoptosis and other neuroprotective properties and plays a role in neuroprotection”. Rehmannia benefits learning, protects the kidneys, enhances longevity by increasing superoxide dismutase, the body’s “master antioxidant”, and boosts the immune system.

Deer antler extract is said to be perhaps the most nourishing substance to Jing, along with Placenta. While many are hearing about deer antler from NFL scandals or as a “natural” source of steroid hormones, it’s best to keep in mind that any ingested hormones are swiftly broken down by digestive enzymes, and thus not absorbed. Ancient Taoist hermits marveled at how each year, a young buck’s antlers would grow up to 2 cm daily. If cut or damaged, the antlers simply regrew, something common in lizards or starfish but extremely rare in higher order animals. This made the Taoists believe that the deer’s antler must be a potent source of Jing (read – regenerative essence), and modern science has backed this up – it’s rich in collagen, proteins, minerals, and especially rich in growth factors. Our bodies naturally produce high amounts of growth factors when we’re young, but this production starts to decline as we age. Deer antler is also rich in interleukins, which are powerful immune boosting cells.

Two Taoist Immortals

This study states “both in vitro [in a petri dish] and in vivo [in an actual animal or human] pharmacological studies have demonstrated that deer antler base possess immunomodulatory, anti-cancer, anti-fatigue, anti-osteoporosis, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-stress, anti-oxidant, hypoglycemic, hematopoietic modulatory activities and the therapeutic effect on mammary hyperplasia. Although the mechanism of actions is still not clear, the pharmacological activities could be mainly attributed to the major bioactive compounds amino acids, polypeptides and proteins. Based on animal studies and clinical trials, deer antler base causes no severe side effects.” (Brackets and bold are my addition) Interestingly, this is in reference to the base of deer antler, and not the tips, which are replete with much more biologically active compounds and which are the parts used in a high quality product.

Deer antler is highly praised in TCM and highly sought after. Nowadays, depending on which brand you buy, the antler tips are harvested using as humane methods as possible. The deer have local anesthesia applied, the very tips of the antlers, the most potent part, are surgically removed, and the deer are then bandaged and set free to continue grazing on their pastures. This antler trimming is even said to help prevent fights amongst males. I personally make sure the deer antler I’ve used comes from New Zealand, where there are strict standards set by the government for treating animals humanely. If you do use deer antler, make sure it’s coming from a company that uses New Zealand products and preferably one that specializes in selling Chinese herbs, as many deer antler products are absolute trash. This is a great product from Dragon Herbs.

Cordyceps is a fungus that infects certain insects, mainly caterpillars and ants. It causes them to climb to higher locations, at which point it sprouts out of the insect’s head and spreads its spores.

Cordyceps infected tarantula

Yeah, it’s basically a mushroom that turns insects into zombies. However, if consumed by humans, it turns them into superheroes – in the 1993 Nationals in Beijing, Chinese women amazed the world, breaking records left and right. One ran the 10,000 meters a full 42 seconds faster than any woman in the world had prior, with other women beating other records as well. Of course, steroid use was suspected, but when all the women tested negative for steroid use, the press asked the coach what could have possibly caused such a huge uptick in performance. The answer? In addition to intense, high-altitude training, the coach had his trainees consume a drink prepared with a “caterpillar fungus” as the main ingredient. This fungus was none other than cordyceps. Mind you, it is not possible for humans to be infected by cordyceps, and any cordyceps you buy is the fruiting body and not the spores, and thus is inert and unable to infect anything whatsoever, even if you were indeed a caterpillar.

Cordyceps has been found to be anti-depressive, anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, kidney-protective, improves neuromuscular performance, protects the brain from hypoxia (lack of oxygen), and is also anti-inflammatory. It’s quite the amazing little fungus. I’ve noticed huge improvements in workout quality – I’m able to push harder for a longer period of time. It also helps prevent mental fatigue as well, great for long days at the office, which, to me, means long days sitting on my laptop in Starbucks. If only they’d come out with a cordyceps Frappucino..

There are plenty of other Jing enhancing substances, many of which I’ll be doing future posts on. A few of my favorites are Rehmannia, He Shou Wu, Deer Antler, Cordyceps, Goji Berries, Eucommia, Cistanche, Ashwagandha and Shilajit. There are also many blends available from a few good companies – I mainly stick to Dragon Herbs or Jing Herbs. For those interested, I’m currently using a 250 gram bag of Jing Herbs’ Restore the Jing, to which I’ve added 50 grams each of Jing Herbs’ Cistanche and He Shou Wu, and add some Deer Antler whenever I feel I need a little boost.

If you’re at all semi-interested in enhancing the quality of your life, increasing your longevity, increasing your mood and energy levels, improving your fertility and libido, preserving youthfulness, and generally being all around more badass, consider adding one or two Jing supplements to your regimen.

Into the Abyss – Sensory Deprivation Tanks and How the Internet is Ruining Your Brain

Yesterday I treated myself to something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time – a session in a Sensory Deprivation Tank. Sometimes called floatation tanks, they’re basically a pod filled with water that has been super saturated with epsom salts – in my case, 1000 pounds of epsom salts in just 10 inches of water. You hop in, turn the light off and shut the lid. Inside it’s pitch black, the water and air is body temperature, and while the pod itself doesn’t make things completely sound proof, the addition of ear plugs do. So you’re literally floating in what feels like nothing, with no sights, no sensations, and no sounds other than your own breath. It’s just you and the infinite abyss of your mind.

My floatation tank at Regenerate

Why would anyone voluntarily do this? Not only is it quite relaxing, it helps decrease inflammation, reduce stress, lowers blood pressure and may help one recover from strenuous workouts or other stressors. It also helps top off your body’s magnesium stores, as Epsom salts are simply magnesium sulfate. This is important as magnesium is critical for over 300 reactions in your body and the majority of Americans are deficient in this crucial mineral.

But that’s not why I’ve been wanting to try one.

I’ve been big into meditation for a while now and am always looking for ways to further explore my mind. Once you begin any meditation program or just take some time to investigate your mind, you’ll come to realize what a strange, ephemeral beast it really is. It’s hard to control; it’s constantly hungry for new stimuli; it’s able to be aware of and observe itself; and strangest of all, it seems to disappear if truly examined.

Here’s a little exercise for you – observe your thoughts as they come and go, and the accompanying feelings, emotions and sensations. Notice how your mind sometimes has pictures that accompanies thoughts, and sometimes doesn’t. Notice what the sensation of boredom feels like, or the desire to go do something else. Now go back to observing your thoughts, and as you observe them, ask yourself, Who is it that is observing these thoughts? Are “you” your thoughts, memories, desires and habits, aka the content of your mind, or are you that silent observer that watches these thoughts and feelings come and go?

So anyway, it’s been posited that while in a sensory deprivation tank, your mind, deprived of it’s usual bombardment of signals, starts to open up a bit, with thoughts and images flowing up from your subconscious. This can be very therapeutic, enlightening, frightening or some combination therein. You may remember things from the far past that you’d forgotten, or perhaps insights into a problem you’ve been trying to solve may suddenly flash into your mind. I personally didn’t notice much more than a profound relaxation and a sense of exhilaration as my body floated in what seemed like zero gravity, but I suspect that after a few longer sessions I may have more success in the psychonautics department.

But this session in the tank made me think; how many of us can handle an hour plus of pure black, silence and even a complete lack of physical sensations? In today’s world, my guess is very few, and we have technology and society to thank for that. In the West we’re literally trained to live a fast-paced lifestyle, to constantly seek out immediate stimulation, and we’re told that what we already have isn’t good enough. Just look at the ads on tv – your car could be better, your body isn’t up to par with this model’s body, and you’d attract more “babes” by drinking Bud Light. Instead of living a relaxed life, content with what we have, it’s being drilled into us that we never have enough.

Social media, the internet in general and even texting on cell phones further amplify our discontent. Take Facebook for example. Unchecked usage literally rewires your brain, causing a shorter attention span, decreased self worth and the desire for constant, immediate updates.

See, we’re biologically built to seek out rewards, and in the past these rewards were wholesome, they mattered, they meant the difference between life and death, and they were much fewer and more spread out. Quality over quantity can best sum up the difference in rewards in the past versus current times. When you achieved a goal, whether its eating food when hungry, or having sex with an attractive partner, or getting some physical activity, or experiencing something novel, or basically doing anything that ensures your survival and the survival of the human race, your brain releases the neurotransmitter dopamine in order to reinforce that behavior. Dopamine is a molecule that plays key roles in goal-oriented behavior, pleasure, focus, mood and energy levels. Next time you’re hungry and take a nice big bite of some tasty dish, pay attention to how satisfying it feels – that’s dopamine at work. That pleasurable feeling you get from coffee or chocolate? Dopamine.

The problem is that the internet and social media in particular are hacking into this system of reward and using it to their advantage. These things are intentionally designed to be addictive, to keep you coming back multiple times throughout the day. When you see that little red number for the notifications of all the likes you’ve gotten on your new status, you get a nice little hit of dopamine, which encourages you to keep updating your page and checking back to see how many likes you’ve gotten. Why is your brain rewarding you for this? Because to be a social outcast in the past meant to be ostracized from the tribe. A tribe can defend itself out on the African safari. A single person? Not likely.

Facebook is further compounded by the novelty factor – if you keep scrolling long enough down your Facebook feed, you’ll eventually find something interesting and novel. BAM! more dopamine.

But perhaps most addictive of all is that Facebook is ego-based and takes advantage of intermittent reward. It’s well known that the best way to train lab animals is not to give them a reward each time they do something correctly, but to give them rewards only some of the time, at random. This keeps them guessing and in suspense, and more eager for that next hit of dopamine.

Facebook makes good use of intermittent reward. When you make a status, you’re never exactly sure how many people are going to like it, or who out of your friends will like it (will your crush like it??) And when you open your Facebook app, you’re never sure what kind of notifications, if any, you’ll have. Did someone friend request you? Did someone post something funny on your page, or did nothing happen involving you at all? Poor you..

Over time this behavior reshapes the brain, due to neuroplasticity.

Neurons that fire together, wire together

Neuroplasticity is the term for how the brain will reshape itself according to the stimulus it receives. So the more often you get angry when someone insults you, and the more often those certain neurons fire together in the brain when this occurs, the more likely it is to happen in the future because you’ve already laid down the neural network for this to occur. So when you’re opening your Facebook app 10, 20, 30 or more times a day, you’re actually rewiring your brain to crave this constant immediate reward, which makes it a bitch to stick to longer tasks that don’t have these immediate rewards. Unfortunately those tasks are usually the ones that matter, whether it’s paying attention to your kids, getting your school work done, or finishing that big project that’s due at work next week.

One more doozy from all of this – overusing social media actually damages the brain. See, the brain, like the rest of the body, is always trying to maintain homeostasis, it’s always trying to keep thing in a state of balance. So if the brain starts getting bigger releases of dopamine more frequently, it will compensate by desensitizing the receptors that are getting the extra dopamine – this makes them less sensitive so they don’t burn out. However, if elevated dopamine levels are sustained, eventually the brain starts destroying some of those receptors to compensate for the extra dopamine. This is the basis for drug addiction.

The red square of dopamine

Let me give you an example. Remember the first time you had a cup of coffee? Caffeine has quite a few effects in the body but a major one is a nice big hit of dopamine. It likely lifted your mood, enhanced your focus, improved your sense of well being, and you may have gotten giddy and excited about things, possibly even euphoric.

I remember my first cup vividly – I was in the 10th grade and my teacher prepared us some cheap Folgers coffee. I had one 5 oz cup of very weak coffee. It was the last class of the day, and I left school laughing maniacally on the bus, and then promptly crashed a few hours later. Now what happens when you drink coffee? You may feel like a zombie prior and feel just “normal” afterwards, but certainly not euphoric or giddy. This is because your brain has adjusted to the extra dopamine by becoming less sensitive to it.

So whether this desensitization occurs through caffeine, other drugs or things like social media, it leaves you with a brain that is less sensitive to dopamine, the main neurotransmitter involved in pleasure, reward, and goal oriented behavior.

This doesn’t mean you should delete your Facebook account, it just means to practice some moderation. If you’re going to use social media, try to limit it to just checking once in the morning and once in the evening, avoid the mindless scrolling, and turn off the notifications from your phone so you’re not getting those constant pings and buzzes. Try a going a few days or a week without it – I promise you’ll be able to function just fine. If, while on your sabbatical, you find yourself constantly checking your phone, or wanting to, to see if you have any updates, you may need to be a bit more strict with your usage.

Remember, there’s a reverse side to everything. Some things leave you less sensitive to dopamine, which makes you less motivated and lead to experiencing less pleasure. But there are also ways to improve your sensitivity to dopamine, and thus increase your drive, motivation and the pleasure you’ll get out of life. If you’d like to know more, contact me.

Adaptogens, Pt. 1

Let’s say you’ve got your diet nailed down, and your exercise routine is going along great, and you’ve even started taking a few supplements to fill in some gaps. You have more energy and hey, you’ve even lost a few pounds without trying, you sly dog you.

But then you hit that wall. It could be that 3 pm, post-lunch-take-a-nap wall, or the wall you hit when you get home from work that turns you into a zoned out zombie. It could be that wall you hit each time you try to go to the gym only to find you don’t have any energy.

The wall has been hit

You realize there’s something missing, something more you could be doing. And the truth is there is more, a lot more you could be doing – small tweaks you could be making that will make a big difference. One of which is making use of adaptogens.

No doubt about it, getting your diet honed in and specified to your goals, getting a healthy dose of exercise and improving your sleep habits are the foundation of any health promoting regimen, and the cornerstone of your success. But once that’s in place, how do you take it to the next level?

The Missing Link in Your Life

Today’s world is a high-stress world – we’re actually built to handle, even thrive, on small doses of stress, but chronic stress? Thats a killer. Good news is, nature has once again provided us with all we need, this time in the form of adaptogens.

An adaptogen is any substance that improves our ability to handle stress. Many of them lower or modulate levels of cortisol, our main stress hormone. Some adaptogens help us to actually rebuild our over-worked adrenal glands, helping to prevent or reverse adrenal fatigue. They provide us with sustained, jitter-free energy throughout the day, many improve libido, and they work in too diverse a way to sum up in this little paragraph.

Further, some help us to relax, much as a glass of wine does after work. Others can be more stimulating, great for the start of the day or before the gym, and yet others are neutral and balanced, while still being strongly anti-fatigue. I recommend picking either one neutral adaptogen to try out, or one that is stimulating and one that is relaxing, so you have one for day time use and one for the evenings.

Ginseng – This is the big boy on the block, the granddaddy of all adaptogens. Ginseng is the highest ranked herb in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for a reason, and that’s because it is so broad-spectrum in its actions, and because it’s the primary Qi tonic, it increases energy levels and stamina tremendously. Ginseng normalizes the activity of both the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, meaning it brings you into balance between your “rest and digest” mode and your “fight or flight” mode. Ginseng also regulates your endocrine system, helping to keep your hormone levels in check.

Ginseng root looks like a human body

In addition to being strongly anti-fatigue, Ginseng is also

Neuroprotective
Cognitive Enhancing
Immuno-regulatory (increases immune response in those with low immune function, and decreases response in those with over-active immune systems)
Anti-diabetic
Anti-cancer
Pro-libido
Hormone-regulating

It should be noted that true Asian ginseng, called Panax Ginseng, is a different plant than either American Ginseng or Siberian Ginseng, although all three have similar effects. Panax Ginseng is generally more stimulating than the others, with Siberian Ginseng being neutral, neither stimulating nor relaxing, and American Ginseng being ever so slightly relaxing. Further, when it comes to buying ginseng, you get what you pay for. Higher quality roots will produce much better results, and will cost more, with some very mature and potent roots easily reaching close to a thousand dollars. I personally have used Dragon Herbs products with great results. Their House Ginseng and Ginseng Sublime are excellent choices.

Ashwagandha – This bad boy, sometimes referred to as Indian Ginseng, is a helluva plant. A mainstay in Ayurvedic medicine, the ancient healing system of India, Ahswagandha is my top pick in terms of relaxing adaptogens, and may well be my favorite adaptogen overall.

It has been proven to lower cortisol, our main stress hormone, in a dose dependent manner, making it a gift for today’s fast-paced, highly strung world. It excels at treating anxiety, as it actually works on the same receptors in the brain as pharmaceutical anxiety meds, without addiction or side effects. For this reason, it can be used in smaller doses throughout the day as a calming agent, and in larger doses in the evening to relax, much the way you would drink a glass of wine.

It provides a nice big boost to the libido, enhances fertility in both women and men, and boosts thyroid function, aiding in weight loss, as well as being anti-fatigue and immuno-regulatory.

But perhaps it’s greatest benefit is that it’s been shown to enhance the release of BDNF within in the brain. BDNF stands for Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, which protects brain cells from stress and toxins, repairs damaged brain cells and even promotes the growth of new brain cells! For this reason it deserves a place in anyone’s medicine chest, and especially for those who may be worried about cognitive decline. For this benefit to bear fruit Ashwagandha must be taken continuously over long periods of time.

Yeah, it makes you smarter, thinner and more fertile

Tulsi – Also called Holy Basil, this herb is known as the “Queen of Herbs” in Ayurveda (ashwagandha is sometimes referred to as the king). Tulsi is a highly revered medicinal plant that is found in almost every home in India, and for good reason. It’s said to be the most Sattvic of all herbs, meaning it promotes a sense of ease, peace and clarity and benefits spiritual practice.

This 2014 study sums Tulsi up quite nicely – “Tulsi has been found to protect organs and tissues against chemical stress from industrial pollutants and heavy metals, and physical stress from prolonged physical exertion, ischemia, physical restraint and exposure to cold and excessive noise. Tulsi has also been shown to counter metabolic stress through normalization of blood glucose, blood pressure and lipid levels, and psychological stress through positive effects on memory and cognitive function and through its anxiolytic and anti-depressant properties… Cultivation of tulsi plants has both spiritual and practical significance that connects the grower to the creative powers of nature, and organic cultivation offers solutions for food security, rural poverty, hunger, environmental degradation and climate change. The use of tulsi in daily rituals is a testament to Ayurvedic wisdom and provides an example of ancient knowledge offering solutions to modern problems.” Bolds and Italics my addition.

Tulsi is a calming herb, but not as relaxing as Ashwagandha. It promotes feelings of peace and well-being more than anything, and is a solid choice for evening or morning use. This product has been the most potent form of Tulsi I’ve yet to try, though it’s very common in tea form as well.

Which adaptogens have you tried, and which of these sound most interesting to you? Keep your eye open for more posts on adaptogens in the near future.

The Perfect Diet – Is It a Myth?

Let’s face it – we live in a world where we like to have things nice and tidy, where things can be cut and dry. We like our lives to be simple, clear cut, black and white, yes or no, and we want answers, dammit. This way of living has its uses, but we have to remember that while our outlooks may be black and white, the real world isn’t.

“The map is not the territory.” – Alfred Korzybski

No where is this more evident than in the world of nutrition. I chose a really contradictory and confusing field to immerse myself in (or maybe it chose me). Point is, while we all want there to be a perfect, one-size-fits-all approach to health, and particularly diets, this is just not the case.

So I’ll come clean and stand in direct opposition to many health gurus out there. Is there a perfect diet for people to follow?

No.

There is not, never was and never will be a perfect, one-size-fits-all diet that every person can abide by. Humans are just too complex and varied, and that’s a good thing! That’s what has allowed us to survive this long, our adaptability. We can live on an Atkins, meat-based diet or we can live on a raw vegan diet.

However, there are definitely some rules to abide by when designing your ideal diet, and I don’t think these are negotiable. So without further adieu, I’d like to present to you my

8 Rules for an Ideal Diet

Make sure that your diet is…

Whole-foods based – This one’s a no-brainer folks! If you’re eating highly-processed denatured foodstuffs, aka the Standard American Diet, aka SAD, aka garbage, you’re not only denying your body the nutrients it needs, but draining it of further nutrients as your body attempts to digest and assimilate it. Whole foods come with all the necessary nutrients within, in the proper ratios, and with all the necessary cofactors needed for absorption and assimilation. Nature’s no dummy, so stick to whole foods.
Organic – Again, so simple and obvious yet still overlooked. The pesticides, herbicides and fungicides used on crops are absolutely terrible for our health! They make us fat, tired, depressed, give us cancer, ruin our moods and energy levels, lead to birth defects and fetal death, and throw our hormones out of balance. But hey, if you’re into that kinda stuff…
Plant-based – I’m not saying you have to be a vegan, (I’m certainly not one), but you do want plants to be the backbone, the foundation, of your diet. Why? Plants are loaded with powerful phytochemicals (phyto=plant) that have amazing effects on our bodies. That nice buzz you get from your morning cup o’ joe? From the phytochemical known as caffeine. How is it that turmeric is such a powerfully healing plant, able to reduce inflammation, boost brain power, fight off dementia, Alzheimer’s and depression, improve skin conditions, beat cancer to a pulp, diminish pain and boost digestion? Cuz it’s loaded with phytochemicals! If you’re looking for disease prevention, enhanced cognition, energy and mood, and faster weight loss, get some phytochemicals in your life right now.
Nutrient Dense – Your food’s doing nothing for you if it’s devoid of nutrients. You want to make sure the foods you eat are as nutrient dense as possible, so that your body is supplied with all the goodies it needs to keep you performing at tip top shape. Foods such as liver, kale, collard greens, seaweeds, spirulina, chlorella, bee pollen and cod-liver oil are at the top of the nutrient density list. As just one example of a nutrient you’re probably missing out on… Do you like being stressed? Want brittle bones? Do you love having low energy levels? Make sure you’re getting enough magnesium (highest concentrations found in dark leafy greens, bone broth, pumpkin seeds and dark chocolate), a nutrient the majority of Americans are deficient in and one that probably wasn’t on your radar.
Irritant / Toxin-free – Goes without saying, you don’t want to be ingesting any more toxins than you’re already getting from modern day pollution. This means going organic as well as looking for food that comes from clean sources, aka wild-caught fish, pasture-raised animal products, vegetables that aren’t grown in some highly polluted city or coming from China or South America, etc. As for irritants, well.. Some of us know for sure that a food has irritating compounds, as many with celiac disease will tell you. For others, we may not know how awful gluten makes us feel until we go a good month or two without it. I personally handle gluten well, but I get very little in my diet anyway. Experiment around with elimination diets and see if you have any problem foods.
As local as possible – For those of you living in beautiful sunny California, where it’s easy to find local food and the only season is Beautiful, this may be less of an issue. Here in Maryland it’s different. I have to search out local foods at the few local farms in my area or at the one local Co-op. Local is better because it cuts down on pollution and energy waste – it’s “greener”, has a smaller carbon footprint and because there aren’t any long transit times, it retains more nutrients. And of course it helps support your local community.
Seasonally Appropriate – Eating local also keeps your diet seasonally appropriate. Our bodies need certain nutrients or foods in higher quantities depending on the season. Winter usually has us eating heavier and more energy dense foods to offset the diminished sunlight and cold temperatures. Come Spring, nature gives us a fresh bounty of cleansing sprouts and other foods to help detox our bodies after the harsh Winter. In Summer we have more access to fresh leafy greens and berries, lighter foods that don’t weigh us down in the heat. Fall is full of foods to help us transition from lighter foods back to heavier ones.
It Makes You Feel Fantastic – If your current diet doesn’t leave you feeling like a million bucks with energy to spare at the end of the day, you’re not eating your ideal diet. This is where trial and error comes in. It’s also what I do for a living, so if you’re looking to speed up the process and feel better than you ever knew possible, come talk to me.

I know some of you are left with your mouths agape in horror as I never mentioned how many carbs or how much fat you should eat, whether you should count calories or if being vegan is better than being paleo. That’s up to you and your body.

Speaking of vegans and paleo heads, one last word of wisdom – don’t get caught up in the hype of some diet/lifestyle/nutrition dogma. If you’re paleo, cool, be paleo. If you’re a vegan, be a vegan. But remember everyone’s different and throughout the world, many people are thriving on diets that are vastly different from yours. Don’t think you’re special because of the foods you do or don’t eat, and don’t look down on others for the foods they eat, even if they’re eating Big Macs and slurping down gallons of soda. But please, don’t be that McDonalds person…