Do You Burn Fat Or Sugar?
January 29, 2013
Do you know there are two different ways that your body creates energy throughout the day? One is an immediate energy system (from burning sugar) that provides short bursts of energy, while it increases your appetite, makes you crave harmful foods, causes your body to be weight-loss resistant, lowers your energy, fuels cancer, lowers your immunity, and increases your risk of many chronic diseases. The other system (that burns fat) is an energy storage system. When your body draws energy from this fat burning system, you will maintain consistent energy all day long, sleep better at night, crave healthy foods, increase your immunity, and prevent most diseases including cancer and heart disease.
The crazy thing is that YOU determine which one of these systems is operative in your body. You likely agree that the fat burning system is clearly the preferred way to get energy. Yet most Americans have programmed their bodies to seek and produce short-lasting energy from burning sugar.
According to Ron Rosedale, MD:
“Health and life span is determined by the proportion of fat versus sugar people burn throughout their lifetime. The more fat you burn as fuel, the healthier you will be. The more sugar you burn as fuel, the more disease ridden you will be, and the shorter your life will likely be.”
So how do you know if you are a sugar burner or fat burner?
- You are a sugar burner if you:
- wake up tired and find you need caffeine/sugar to keep you going throughout the day.
- crash at 3pm, and get a second wind at 10pm at night.
- take naps often and don’t wake up from them feeling rested.
- are a restless sleeper, waking up often (especially around 2am).
- crave sugar and carbohydrates.
- are hungry often, and can be ravenous if you go without food for long periods.
- can’t lose weight no matter what you do.
- notice that you are gaining weight with no explanation for it.
- experience mood swings, cloudy thinking, and/or brain fog.
- get colds often.
- take several medications (including high blood pressure & cholesterol).
- often have headaches.
- have chronic musculoskeletal pain.
- feel exhausted all the time.
You are a fat burner if you:
- can go several hours without food and don’t feel like you will pass out.
- have a moderate to low appetite.
- have a strong immune system.
- have consistent energy throughout the day and don’t crash at 3pm.
- don’t need caffeine to keep you going.
- go to sleep easily at night and rarely wake up.
- wake up energized and refreshed.
- find you lose weight easily.
- take little to no medications.
- rarely have musculoskeletal pain.
- have injuries and illnesses that heal quickly.
- have good mental clarity and often feel optimistic.
- can workout in a fasted state and don’t feel the need to carbo load before a workout.
- feel the healthiest you have been in a long time.
Regardless of where you are today, you can program your body to burn fat instead of sugar. It just takes the right combination of foods and the correct type of exercise. This is EXACTLY what you will learn at our Makeover on Saturday, February 2nd.
If you haven’t signed up yet for this life-changing event, do so now before we sell out (we are super close to being out of tickets). This will be the most important nutrition and fitness event that we teach all year!! Rearrange your schedule, get a sitter, cancel a prior engagement, and make a commitment to YOU!
Together we can make 2013 your BEST year yet!!
What Can I Do To Stop The Shootings?
December 19, 2012
Like it may have for many of you, the shootings last Friday ignited something inside of me that said, enough is enough. I have come to a place where I realize it’s not ok to just sit back and be thankful that my children were not the victims. The time has come for all of us to engage in the solution. But where to start? There are so many issues wrapped up in what allows a 20 year old to walk into an elementary school and single handedly change the destiny of over 25 families.
As I watched CNN on Friday, Sanja Gupta pointed out that most likely the killer had a neurochemical imbalance. Of course he did. As did the other crazy killers that have been linked to prior mass shootings. In fact, it is public knowledge that all of these shooters were either on or withdrawing from antidepressant or antipsychotic medications. Obviously giving chemicals to a neurochemically imbalanced child is not the answer.
Angels on the hill; a tribute to those lost.
Photo Credit: Donna Morrissey/American Red Cross
We need to be more proactive. We need to stop searching for a drug that will cure all our children’s problems. As parents we need to do more. Every parent should be asking themselves what can they do to raise neurochemically BALANCED children.
Although I am a parent, I am by no means a parenting expert. But as a family chiropractor, I do know a few things about nurturing healthy families. After 16 years of working with thousands of families, it is clear to me that we should all be implementing Five Key Essentials into our family’s lives to keep them physically & mentally healthy.
Five Essentials for Healthy Family Life:
1. Give your kids a purpose.
Teach your kids that the greatest joys in life come from within. Model for them that there is no deeper satisfaction in life than working hard, serving others, and dedicating oneself to something bigger. Teach them that compassion, love, and forgiveness are as important as getting straight A’s or winning a little league game. As the wise Dalai Lama once said:
“My hope and wish is that one day, formal education will pay attention to what I call education of the heart. Just as we take for granted the need to acquire proficiency in the basic academic subjects, I am hopeful that a time will come when we can take it for granted that children will learn, as part of the curriculum, the indispensability of inner values: love, compassion, justice, and forgiveness.”
2. Keep your kids nervous system functioning at 100%.
Our brain and nervous system releases thousands of chemicals every second into our body. These chemicals make us happy, sad, hungry, sleepy, and drive every human function. The only thing protecting this amazing system is your skull and spine. So why do many parents take better care of their kids teeth then their spine?
Keeping your spine healthy is the most important thing you can do to keep your brain and nervous system functioning at 100%. A recent study of over 2000 patients revealed that chiropractic care significantly improved their well being: including emotional well being, negative feelings toward self, depression, difficulty sleeping, and family relations.
3. Teach your kids the power of eating healthy foods.
Our food has a powerful effect on how we feel and function. Today, more man-made and unhealthy chemicals exist in our food than ever before. Chemicals used to preserve food such as monosodium glutamate, and others such as dyes, high fructose corn syrup, and nitrates are poisoning our children’s bodies and minds. Studies demonstrate that these Chemicals cause countless physical and mental health problems. If you’re not taking action to ensure that your family is eating fresh, non processed foods, you’re asking for health problems down the road.
4. Model for your kids that exercise is NOT optional; it’s one essential key to a happy life.
When did exercise become a choice? It is a necessary daily habit that can bring you joy, energy, health, and vitality better than any drug can. Yet, many Americans still don’t carve out time to engage in daily exercise. Researchers have shown that walking for 30 minutes each day quickly improves patient’s symptoms faster than antidepressant drugs do. It’s simple, it’s free, and there are no side effects.
5. Detoxify your household.
We live in a massively toxic world. In order to raise healthy children we have to begin to be aware of the toxins that are harming us both physically and mentally. Take small steps to detoxifying your world: buy organic, unplug the microwave, throw away your plastic containers, limit your prescription medications, buy paraben and SLS free hair & skin products, and stop allowing preservatives and dyes that are so prevalent in our foods today into your home. Begin to get educated on this topic. In 2013, we will be doing more workshops on toxin-free living in our office to get you up to speed.
I realize there are no easy answers to this complicated subject. I know that mental health experts debate treatment protocols all the time. The answer is NOT going to be found in a new medication. It’s going to be in getting people OFF of medications and getting back to health basics. It’s time to look at what causes a child to be neurochemically imbalanced, starting at the chemicals that we inject into a child on the day he is born.
Parents need to stop blindly allowing prescription drugs to be the answer for all their children’s health needs. We need a better health plan than that. The above 5 essentials is that plan. Please share this information with the families in your community. Mental health is no longer one family’s problem, it has now become ALL of our problems. Once we begin to take responsibility for our community’s health, and stop relying on medications, we can stop this madness.
Stress and the Mind-Body Connection
December 18, 2012
For many years, the medical profession considered the mind and body to be separate spheres with little effect on each other. However, researchers have begun to take much greater notice of the connection between the two in recent decades.
Not only is it obvious that bad physical health will affect your mental well-being, but it is now generally recognized that our thoughts also have a profound influence on many parts of the body, including the immune, nervous, endocrine, digestive and cardiovascular systems.
Since the discovery of the opiate receptor in 1973, scientific research has shown how emotional states are caused by the release of hormones and neurotransmitters, a process that is greatly influenced by events in our lives as well as our thoughts and emotions. Researchers now understand that these “molecules of emotion” (as the author Candace Pert has described them) affect a much larger number of body systems than previously thought. Anyone who has experienced “butterflies in the stomach” before an interview or exam can certainly testify to the truth of this!
The stress response evolved in order to prepare the body for fight or flight in the presence of great danger such as a lion or an enemy from another tribe. Even though we may be surrounded by 21st century technology, human physiology is still based on what we needed as hunter-gatherers. The stress response is designed to be a short-term reaction to immediate danger that is then followed by relief and relaxation after that immediate danger has passed. In response to serious threat, the body will release chemicals such as adrenaline (epinephrine) and cortisol, which divert blood away from non-critical organs in the body such as the digestive system and send it to the muscles. The heart rate also goes up in readiness for intense activity.
As a short-term response, stress has few lasting physiological effects and stress chemicals break down quickly in the body once the stressor is no longer there. However, most physical threats in our modern world are imagined rather than real. And our modern-day fears and anxieties can lurk beneath the surface for weeks or months. So it turns out that the kind of physiological responses helpful for fighting a lion are not so useful in helping us cope with our modern causes of stress. In fact, our bodies’ response to stressful situations (designed to help us cope with short-term, fight-or-flight situations) can even have a detrimental impact on the body when it’s switched on over prolonged periods. Digestive disorders such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), high blood pressure, low immunity and even chronic illness such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) are just some examples of illnesses that can be brought on by long-term stress. In addition, researchers have also discovered that stress can worsen many preexisting medical conditions and can lead to changes in the brain. These changes tend to make chronically stressed people more impatient and aggressive. This can further reduce their ability to cope with problems.
While we are still running on what may be considered outdated stress technology in our bodies, we certainly do not have to be controlled by it. Fortunately for us, the fight or flight response triggered by our sympathetic nervous system is not the only mode our bodies can operate in. We can also learn to trigger the parasympathetic “rest or digest” mode, which allows the body to rest and reverse the physiological changes brought about by stress.
Making sure you have enough time to unwind is critical to combating the effects of stress throughout the day, week and month. So is eating well and exercising. And learning a relaxation technique such as meditation can also help. Yoga is a particularly good “stress buster” as it combines gentle exercise with meditative breathing and relaxation. Counseling and anger management can also be appropriate during periods of intense difficulty to ensure that stress doesn’t get the better of you and your body.
