Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring Vitamin D and Smart Sun Exposure:
- I’ll explain the importance of Vitamin D and how it is made
- I’ll talk about how conventional mainstream sun safety advice and practises are causing more harm than good
- Finally I’ll give tips on how to practise smart sex (that’s smart Sun EXposure) and how to optimise your vitamin D levels so you can continue to live a happy, healthy, and holistic life
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
In the previous podcast I talked about some very important hormones that you needed to know about. By living a holistic lifestyle you can keep these hormones in a beautiful state of harmony and balance which in turn keep you and your body happy, healthy, and in harmony and balance as well.
One hormone I didn’t mention in the last podcast was vitamin D. I didn’t talk about vitamin D in the previous show because I believe that no matter the chaos in your physical, emotional, and mental body’s vitamin D has the power to bring all of you back to centre, in harmony, in balance, in peace and one with the universe. Yeah I know sounds pretty hippy dippy and I’ll talk more about this at the end of this, but for now let me talk more about vitamin D.
First up vitamin D has been given just the worst name ever because it isn’t a vitamin at all. A vitamin is an organic compound that your body cannot make and vitamin D is created by your body when your skin gets exposed to the sun. Technically vitamin D is a fat-soluble secosteroid so it’s a steroid hormone much like cortisone and testosterone, but let’s not get too technical here shall we.
I like to call vitamin D the sun hormone… sounds nice right.
The sun hormone controls the expression of over 1000 genes in your body meaning it can turn on or off about 5% of your entire genetic code. Whoa! The sun hormone also reduces inflammation, boosts your immune system, destroys disease, prevents tumours, fights cancer, strengthens your bones, is a powerful antioxidant, improves mood, enhances and activates the actions of the nutrients you eat, so overall vitamin D (the sun hormone) helps you live a longer quality of life.
Right now there is a worldwide deficiency in vitamin D levels in the human population. Even those in equatorial regions are vitamin D deficient can you believe it.
On top of that skin cancer rates continue to rise despite people following national health guidelines for sun safety.
In New Zealand where I live we have the SunSmart campaign where we are advised to slip on a long-sleeved shirt and into the shade, slop on copious amounts of high sun protection factor (SPF) broad spectrum sunscreen, slap on a wide brimmed hat, and wrap on some wrap-around sunnies (that’s sunglasses for you non-local folk). So Slip, Slop, Slap, and Wrap… pretty catchy right.
This campaign also recommends the following:
- During September to April (the warmer months of the year) we should be sun protected between the hours of 10a-4p, and in the early morning and late afternoon have some form of outdoor activity for 30 minutes without sun protection
- During May to August (the cooler months of the year) we should be outdoors for 30 minutes with face, arms, and hands exposed in the hours around noon
Now unfortunately it is this exact misinformation that is leading to both decreased levels of vitamin D and increased levels of skin cancer in the human population.
How so?
Well first I’ll talk about how your body actually makes vitamin D.
Okay I know I said earlier that I didn’t want to get too technical, but the way the human body makes this potent healthful hormone from sunlight or light energy is pretty cool.
When UVB rays from the sun hit your skin they react with a precursor molecule in your skin called 7-dehydrocholesterol to create vitamin D3. Now you can find this particular form of vitamin D in supplements. When this D3 is released from your skin into your bloodstream it travels to your liver where it’s converted to 25-hydroxyvitamin D3. 25-hydryoxyvitamin D3 then gets transported to your kidneys where it’s activated into the steroid hormone form that your body actually uses. This active form of vitamin D is called 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 and it’s this form of the sun hormone that regulates gene expression and makes you a happy and healthy human.
Now the sun gives off a few different ultra violet rays, but its UVA and UVB that are relevant here. Here are some details about these two different spectrums of sunlight:
- UVA does not get absorbed by the ozone layer and reaches the Earth’s surface year round. UVB is mostly absorbed by the ozone layer and only reaches the Earth’s surface during summer and the warmer months of the year.
- UVA penetrates a few layers into the skin. UVB does not.
- UVA causes skin to thicken and age, but not burn. UVB does the opposite. It burns, but does not thicken or age skin.
- UVA damages melanin-producing cells (melanin gives colour to your skin and acts as an antioxidant, meaning melanin protects against skin cancer). UVB promotes melanin production.
- UVA overexposure leads to malignant melanoma (the aggressive type of skin cancer). UVB overexposure leads to non-melanoma skin cancer (the least dangerous of skin cancers).
- UVA passes through glass. UVB does not.
- UVA will not produce vitamin D. UVB will.
Also take note that due to the fact that most of the UVB rays get absorbed by the ozone layer the angle of the sun to the Earth will determine the amount of UVB that actually hits the Earth’s surface. So during the summer and warmer months of the year when the sun is high between 10a and 4p there will be full UVB exposure on the Earth’s surface, as well as UVA of course. However, in the winter months when the sun is low on the horizon then very little to no UVB penetrates the ozone layer, but there’s still full UVA exposure on the Earth’s surface.
So if you’re living north and south of the 33rd parallels of the Earth’s latitude then you’re not getting any UVB during the cooler months of the year, but you’re getting plenty of UVA.
Okay enough about sunrays. I want to talk about sunscreens now.
Sunscreens are just the icing on the proverbial cake of misinformation. They are meant to protect the skin of the human race, but as it turns out most commercial sunscreens or sunblocks are nothing but a big disgrace.
Your skin can also be called your second mouth as approximately 60-70% of what you put on your skin gets absorbed directly into your bloodstream – bypassing your liver and its detoxifying processes. What goes on your skin goes straight to your blood.
The majority of sunscreens sold in supermarkets and pharmacies today are made with toxic chemicals that will actually increase your chances of getting skin and other cancers. These chemicals include:
- Retinol
- Retinyl palmitate
- OMC or octyl methaxycinnamate
- Octocrylene
- Avobenzone
- Oxybenzone
- Homosalate
- Octinoxate and
- Octisalate
Add to this fact that many sunscreen SPF factors are based on blocking UVB exclusively meaning you get no vitamin D producing rays, but plenty of the UVA cancer causing rays. As for the broad spectrum sunscreens, which block both UVA and UVB, most of them don’t block both rays evenly. Instead it’s more 67-95% of UVB being blocked compared to only 5-33% of UVA.
Let me put it all together then and summarise how modern living, national sun safety guidelines, and sunscreen care products create vitamin D deficiency and skin cancer.
You work indoors most of the day missing out on vitamin D production. Even worse you sit next to windows that are not UV-rated thinking that you’re getting a daily dose of sunshine. Problem is because glass filters out UVB and not UVA it’s more of a daily dose of cancer that you’re getting.
When you’re outside you’re told to cover up during the hottest part of the day which is also the time that UVB penetrates and gets through the ozone layer to the Earth’s surface. Then when it’s cooler you uncover yourself a bit more, but there’s no longer any UVB and only UVA hits your skin.
You use toxic chemical heavy sunscreens and sunblocks that not only block more UVB than UVA, but they also block your body’s ability to function 100% by overtaxing your innate detoxification system, meaning they overload your liver and this leaves the door wide open to diseases. Plus the chemicals themselves (the ones I mentioned before) they are carcinogenic, meaning they cause the overgrowth of cancer cells in your body.
So here you have two sources of cancer. You get cancer externally via UVA rays penetrating deep into your skin and into your cells and you can get cancer internally from the toxic chemicals used in sunscreens that get absorbed through your skin.
Alright so let’s get into some tips on how you can practise smart sex, smart Sun Exposure.
First, go outside during UVB penetration times. This will depend on your location, time of the year, and is based on the sun’s position in the sky. Remember when the sun is high, vitamin D production is high.
Expose as much of your skin as possible without sunscreen for the appropriate amount of time based on your skin type. You want to get a nice tan, but you never ever want to get sunburn. Sunburn causes a cascade of inflammation and immune activity in your body that over time will turn into a chronic disease. So if you’re very light skinned maybe 5-20 minutes is all you can do before the damaging effects of UVA kick in. Whereas if you have darker skin you could do between 20-60 minutes easy depending on how much melanin you have in your skin and how tolerant your skin is to the sun’s rays. Once you sense the burn in your skin then it’s time to slip, slop, slap, and wrap!
So during the summer season and the warmer months of the year expose yourself to the sun between 10a and 4p. During any other time of the season, year, or day cover up.
Second tip, keep away from windows during the day otherwise cover up as much as possible if stuck behind one.
Third tip is to eat your sunscreen. That’s right you can consume plenty of “sunscreen-like” compounds from real food that will protect you from sun damage from the inside out. How cool is that eh!
So eat plenty of antioxidant rich foods like small berries, vegetables, herbs and spices. The lycopene in tomatoes has been shown to be protective against sun damage. Omega-3 and saturated fats are great internal sunscreens so eat more oily fish and animal fat from grass-fed free-range pasture-raised happy animals. Astaxanthin is another great skin protecting compound that you can get from krill oil or in supplement form.
Fourth tip is to only buy and use all-natural organic sunscreens. A healthy sunscreen will have the active ingredients titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. These do the actual UV blocking. Also almond, coconut, sunflower, jojoba, and eucalyptus oils or any other ingredient you would normally think of as natural and even eat are fine. Shea butter is another popular natural ingredient. If you wouldn’t eat it don’t put it on your skin. For a basic sunscreen recipe all you need is some zinc oxide and a nice plant based lotion.
Fifth smart sex step is if you are unable to get enough sun exposure then eat your sun hormone. You can get vitamin D from real foods like wild caught oily fish, grass-fed butter and raw full-fat dairy, free-range pasture-raised egg yolks and lard, fermented cod-liver oil as well as other organically raised animal livers.
If you are unable to eat enough vitamin D foods then you can take vitamin D3 supplements, not D2, but D3 and make sure the capsule is infused with some fat like extra-virgin olive oil as the sun hormone is a fat-soluble molecule and is a lot easier to absorb when taken with fat.
When supplementing with vitamin D it is important to get your vitamin D levels tested. What you want is the blood test for 25-hydroxyvitamin D. A healthy range is between 35-65 ng/mL. Your results will then determine your actions, meaning do not blindly believe you are vitamin D deficient or sufficient and go overboard on the supplements or not supplement enough. Test is best, do not guess. A good guideline to follow when supplementing vitamin D3 (while you wait for your results) is to take 1000 IU (international units) per 11kg/25lbs of body weight. Once you do find out your vitamin D levels you can increase or decrease your sun exposure and supplementation as is required.
Final and crucial tip and this has to do with optimising the vitamin D you do produce, eat, or supplement with, is to reduce your body fat. Remember vitamin D is a fat-soluble molecule so the more fat cells you have and the larger those fat cells are then the more vitamin D your body fat will hold onto and the less vitamin D there will be in your bloodstream to be converted into the more important active hormone needed for maintaining and building the wealth of your health.
Listen to the podcast before this one that I did on balancing your hormones to optimise your fat-burning potential for more information on how to reduce your body fat the easy way without having to count calories.
I’ll leave you with this.
I personally believe that Vitamin D is the most important hormone in the human body. The reason I say this is because the majority of multicellular life on this planet lives and dies by the sun and human beings are no different.
You and I,
“We are beings of light energy”
and none of us, not me, not you, not even the moon would be here if it weren’t for the beautiful unconditionally giving and loving sun that supports all the life in our little region of the universe.
The more disconnected you are from the source of your existence the more you disconnect yourself from who you really are, your true being.
The more you disconnect yourself from that light that birthed you, that light that currently breathes you, and that light that will one day return you to source, the less happy, the less whole, and the less complete you will feel.
In order to live an awesome life you need to get back to your roots and there’s nothing more rooted in human ancestral tradition and culture then having fun out in the sun man.
You want sun? Go get sun.
Links and Resources
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring Calories and Hormones:
- I’ll explain what calories are and how counting calories won’t do much for your health
- I’ll talk about hormones and how they affect your health a lot more than calories
- Finally I’ll give a few tips on how to balance your hormones naturally to turn you into a fat-burning machine
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Calories are all people talk about when it comes to dieting and changing body composition. Funny thing is most people have no clue what a calorie actually is.
Well a calorie is a unit of heat energy where 1 calorie equals the amount of energy needed to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree Centigrade.
The way calories are measured is to burn the dry weight of the object you want to find the calorie value of and then measure how much heat is given off. So if you wanted to find out the number of calories in a banana, for example, you would first dehydrate it and then burn it and by measuring the amount of heat it gives off you will be able to work out the amount of calories it contained.
Now this is all fine and dandy when measuring calories using a calorimeter in a stale, stable, stagnant setting like a scientific laboratory, but when you’re talking about measuring the burning of foods in the human body or the metabolic-effect of how food calories are utilised by human physiology then Houston… we have a problem.
You see if you were to ask an aboriginal tribe in a South American jungle or African bushland or Australian outback who are excellent specimens of optimal human health whether they weighed, measured, and counted the amount of calories or energy or foods they ate on a regular basis, they would just look at you sideways, show off their bright-white teeth with a wide grin, and then they’d start laughing their bottoms off. They have a lot more important things to be concerned with than calories like maintaining shelters, hunting and gathering food, and getting back to telling stories and playing around all day. Sounds like the life right?
Your ancestors as far back as 100 years ago were not concerned with counting calories and obesity wasn’t even an issue back then. Today, however, it seems like the more calories we count as a society the more obese we seem to be getting. What’s up with that?
The reason is human beings are not calorimeters. You are not a simple input and output device. Your body is one of the most complex biological machines in the universe. Your body is an interconnected system of trillions of inputs and outputs.
For someone to say that they know exactly what happens to the hundred calories they eat from food or say that they know exactly how much calories they burned during exercise is human hubris at it again, meaning we think we know better than Mother Nature. It is impossible to know the exact amount of fuel energy you get from food and how much energy you burn from movement.
Another thing is that not all calories are created equal. 2000 calories of sugar water, for example, if you were to compare this to 2000 calories of coloured vegetables, yes they are the same amount of energy, exactly the same amount of energy, but when your body begins to digest, absorb, assimilate and metabolise and make use of the macro and micronutrients you will see a totally different effect in how your body looks, in how you think and feel, and how you act in life. A human body made up of sugar water compared to one made up of vegetables would be the same as comparing a house made up of straw and one made up of brick and mortar. One is weak and full of holes (tumours) whereas the other is strong and solid (healthy).
Ask yourself are the calories that you’re currently consuming on a regular basis turning you into a person of straw or into a solid piece of human awesomeness?
There are a number of ways the foods you eat and the movements you perform affect your biology way beyond calories and energy expenditure. You need to stop focusing on calories when it comes to happiness and health because there’s more to your wellbeing than just energy in and energy out.
The foods you eat and the movements you perform will absolutely determine the physical structure and functionality of your organs, they will determine your mood, and food and movement have a huge impact on your hormones.
Speaking of hormones these are molecules that your body uses to communicate between the many different organs, glands, and tissues. Hormones affect your body’s metabolism, immune function, growth and repair, your mood, your stress levels, and your body composition.
The major hormones you need to know about are:
- Insulin
- Cortisol
- Melatonin
- Leptin
- Ghrelin
- Oestrogen and testosterone and
- Thyroid hormones
Insulin is an anabolic or growth hormone released by your pancreas and helps transport nutrients from your bloodstream into your cells. Excessive amounts of glucose (sugar) in your bloodstream leads to the transformation of most of this glucose into fatty acids and high levels of nutrients in your blood causes your pancreas to release large amounts of insulin. Once insulin gets into your bloodstream it then does its job of storing all those nutrients into your cells as well as putting any leftover fatty acids into your fat cells, so insulin plays a major role in fat accumulation.
Cortisol known as the stress hormone is catabolic meaning it breaks things down and it is released by your adrenal glands in response to physical or perceived stress, low blood sugar levels, or low leptin levels. When your blood sugar levels get too low this will cause a cortisol spike. This sudden increase in cortisol then raises your blood sugar levels and when blood glucose gets too high insulin will need to be released to bring it back to a healthy low level and if your blood glucose drops too far then cortisol comes out to play again and this sugar and hormonal rollercoaster continues on and on making for a fatter and heavier you.
Melatonin is your antioxidant, anti-tumour, circadian clock time for bed hormone. Melatonin needs to be low in the morning and high in the evening for the best sleep and recovery as well as for the most growth hormone release during sleep, which helps you burn fat as you dream. This is the opposite rhythm to cortisol. Cortisol needs to be high in the morning and low in the evening. So if you don’t get enough daylight exposure during the day, you’re exposed to too much blue and bright lights after sundown, and if your cortisol rhythm is not normal, this will cause your melatonin levels to be low making it difficult for you to fall asleep and to get a full nights rest.
Leptin is a satiety hormone meaning it signals to your brain when you have enough energy in your body and is released by your fat cells. The more fat you have the more leptin your fat cells release signalling to your brain that you have plenty of energy on board and you don’t need to eat. The less fat you have the less leptin gets released signalling to your brain that you don’t have enough energy on board and that it’s time to eat. The problem for obese individuals is something called leptin resistance where you have so many fat cells releasing a lot of leptin that your brain just can’t take the excessive amounts of communication anymore and just stops listening. So even though your fat cells are signalling non-stop to your brain that your body has more than enough energy on board and that you don’t need to eat, your brain ignores these signals and still thinks you’re low on leptin and therefore low on energy and fat stores. Chronically low leptin levels as perceived by your brain will cause an increased release of the stress hormone cortisol and high cortisol levels keep your leptin levels low.
Ghrelin is a hunger hormone and works opposite to leptin. Low levels of leptin usually mean you are low on energy reserves and this causes a release of ghrelin which then increases your appetite. Once your appetite is satisfied and enough leptin hormone reaches your brain telling it you have enough energy on board then ghrelin hormone reduces which also lowers your appetite. Now if you have high levels of cortisol in your body this will cause leptin levels to be low meaning ghrelin will increase giving you an appetite. So the more stress you have the hungrier you get.
Oestrogen and testosterone are sex hormones used for growth and for reproduction. Women have slightly higher levels of oestrogen hormones compared to men and men have a lot more testosterone than women. Chronically high levels of insulin in your bloodstream (due to a high sugar diet for example) leads to an increase of testosterone in women and a decrease of testosterone in men as well as an increase of oestrogen in men. When cortisol is low testosterone and insulin are high, but when cortisol is high testosterone and insulin are low making cortisol a muscle wasting hormone. Chronically high levels of cortisol interferes with the normal production of your sex hormones, so too much stress overtime leads to low libido or sex drive, infertility, and the end of sexy times in the bedroom.
Last group of major hormones you really need to know about are your thyroid hormones. Your thyroid hormones are responsible for your body’s overall metabolism, meaning your cells ability to process energy. The two main thyroid hormones are T4 and T3. T4 is the inactive thyroid hormone and this is produced by your thyroid gland. The conversion of T4 to the active form T3 takes place primarily in your liver and in your gut. If your thyroid, liver, or gut are unhealthy and unable to do the work that they should then the production of T4 and T3 hormones will be dramatically impacted. Your body will either produce too much thyroid hormones leading to hyperthyroidism or having a very fast metabolic rate where you feel nervous or anxious a lot of the time, have irregular heartbeats, trouble sleeping, dry skin, excessive weight reduction, and excessive bowel movements. Or your body won’t produce enough thyroid hormones leading to hypothyroidism or having a very slow rate of metabolism where you feel depressed and irritable, experience hair loss and memory loss, feel tired and weak a lot of the time, find it difficult to reduce weight or have a dramatic increase in weight, have muscle cramps, feel cold a lot, have brittle nails, and constipation. High levels of perceived stress interferes with the production of T4 and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol interferes with the conversion of T4 to T3 causing abnormal metabolic function throughout your entire body.
Okay so that was a lot of information to take in about your major hormones. Now I’m not sure if you noticed, but there was one constant between them all. There was one hormone that popped up time and again and it has an impact on all the other hormones. Do you know the hormone I’m talking about? Yes, the stress hormone cortisol. That’s the hormone I’m talking about.
High cortisol leads to the increase of glucose in your bloodstream eventually causing a spike in insulin and this high insulin release causes fat storage and an increase in fat cell number and fat cell size.
High cortisol at night prevents melatonin from rising leading to trouble with sleep, less growth hormone release, less fat burning, a weakened immune system, and an increased risk of cancer.
High cortisol levels equal low leptin and high ghrelin levels meaning even if you’re obese or if you’ve eaten a big enough meal that normally would have satisfied you in the past, you will still have an appetite and feel hungry and will want to keep eating and you may never feel satiated.
High production of cortisol equals low production of your growth and sex hormones. More cortisol means less growth and more stress means less sex.
Finally high stress and rich cortisol production equals poor thyroid hormone production causing an abnormal rate of metabolism, either too high or too low. The majority of thyroid issues deal with a very slow rate of metabolism leading to difficulty reducing fat cell number and fat cell size.
So the big takeaway from all this hormone talk is that if you can control your cortisol you can control the rest of your hormones and you can determine the overall health of your body.
Not only that, but by taking control of your cortisol levels and the levels of all your other major hormones you can determine the amount of muscle and fat that your body synthesises and burns… without the need for counting calories.
Imagine that your hormones are an orchestra and that when they play in perfect harmony you get to hear wonderful music a beautiful symphony being played. However, when you have disharmony in the orchestra, when there’s a group or single instrument out of tune, out of sync, out of beat and rhythm then you’re left listening to something that would probably even make the walking dead turn and run in the other direction.
Homeostasis is a term that means a system is in balance and functioning as it should. When your many hormones are in harmony and playing sweet beautiful music together then you can consider your body to be in a homeostatic state. When your body is in homeostasis, where you’ve achieved hormonal harmony, then your body’s ability to burn fat and maintain or build health and muscle will be easy peasy lemon squeezy.
However, if your hormones are not in harmony with each other well then your ability to reduce fat and maintain or build health and muscle go right out the window. It doesn’t matter how many calories you count or restrict and no matter how hard you push yourself in the gym because if your cortisol and other hormone levels are not in healthy ranges then your body has bigger issues to deal with than worrying about energy in and energy out.
What I’m ultimately saying is that when your hormones are in balance with each other you’re a lean, mean, and very keen playful, happy, and healthy human being. But when your hormones are ‘out of whack’ (yes that’s a scientific term where I’m from) when your hormones are out of balance then oops-a-daisy you become flabby, fat, and lazy.
So what causes hormone imbalances?
High levels of stress and inflammation and stress and inflammation are caused by unhealthy relationships, disconnection from Mother Nature, exposure to toxic compounds, improper sleep, too much not enough exercise, eating inflammatory foods, not drinking enough quality water, and incorrect breathing patterns.
To get your hormones in a happy and healthy harmonious state you need to reduce your stress levels and lower the amount of inflammation in your body and you can do this by living a holistic healthy lifestyle. If you listen to episodes 2-15 of the Whole Guidance Podcast I go into detail about how to do this, but I will share a few quick and easy tips here on how to keep cortisol your stress hormone in check which will reduce the amount of stress and inflammation in your body.
First tip is to remove sugars and grains from your diet. Pasteurised dairy too if you’re really serious about keeping your cortisol levels balanced. Sugars and grains and highly treated dairy products are pro-inflammatory causing a lot of fire in your belly and in your body and also cause a lot of insulin to be secreted by your pancreas. By removing these foods from your diet for 21 days you can then try reintroducing them again to see how you feel and I bet you’ll notice a difference. With less insulin in your bloodstream your body’s metabolism will gradually shift from burning sugar and storing fat to not needing sugar and burning fat. Replace the sugars, grains, and dairy with more animal and fruit fats and oils.
Second tip is to get quality sleep. Now I said quality, not quantity and this means consistently going to bed before 11p and getting up around 6 or 7a for at least 21 days. This will reset your circadian clock and help restore your melatonin to its correct levels, low in the morning and high in the evening.
Third tip is to breathe deep diaphragmatic belly breaths through your nose. This helps keep your body in a rest, digest, calm, and connect state and so reduces your cortisol and increases your fat burning potential as well as your growth and sex hormone levels. Listen to episode 4 on how to practise proper breathing technique.
Fourth tip is to sprint more and cardio less. What I mean is that instead of doing 30 minute, 60 minute, or 2 hour long duration cardio sessions, why not try 4 minutes of high intensity interval training. H I I T or HIIT is where you go all out at 80-100% effort for 30 seconds and then rest for 90 seconds and repeat this seven more times. Timing isn’t set in concrete so you can go hard for 60 seconds and rest for 60-240 seconds if you wanted to. There’s no set rules. Find what works for you. You can do HIIT on a spin bike, sprinting up hills, or by performing exercises like burpees. Sprint training burns fewer calories during the exercise than long duration cardio does, but it produces a healthier hormonal profile after the exercise is completed meaning cortisol levels don’t stay elevated for long periods after a sprint session and your metabolism remains higher for longer periods after HIIT as well.
Fifth tip is to support your liver and gut health to ensure optimal conversion of your inactive T4 hormone into the more active T3 hormone making you a metabolism beast. Easiest way to support your liver is to reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals in your environment. You can do this by swapping out commercial home and personal care products for organic plant-based ones. Easiest way to support your digestive system is to eat real food. Real food is from Mother Nature. Anything from Father Industry I consider fake pretend food-like products and these will only create inflammation in your gut.
As Michael Pollan an author who writes about real food says:
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Sixth tip is to manage your self when it comes to stress. I did a whole podcast on how stress affects your health and how to identify and reframe your perspective on the stressors in your life so listen to that for more details. Also meditation and practising mindfulness and awareness is another way to move away from past regrets and future failures and to just be in the present moment. The more you can be ‘in the now man’ then the less you will be stressing about stuff in your head.
My seventh and final tip for reducing stress and inflammation and on how to best balance cortisol and all your other hormones is to get some smart sun exposure. Vitamin D is a powerful hormone that regulates over 1000 genes in your body and today about 70% of people living in western society are deficient in vitamin D and do not have enough of this health building hormone. You need to be exposing your skin to the sun on a regular basis to get the right amount of vitamin D, but of course you don’t want to get too much sun as too much of a good thing will burn you on the outside and cause fire and inflammation on the inside. I’ll talk more about smart sun exposure and vitamin D in the next podcast.
I’ll leave you with this final thought.
Throughout human history calories were never counted or measured in order to be healthy. Building muscle, reducing fat, achieving a happy mindset, all of these were and still are easily accessible to anyone living with balanced hormones without the need for calorie counting.
When you focus on the quantity of calories this will cause an imbalance in the quantity and quality of your hormones. So at the end of the day if you want quality hormones you must focus on quality calories.
To learn more about how calories really don’t matter read The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor. This book lays out the science on how hormones beat out calories time and again for achieving the best health ever.
“Health is not a math equation.”
When your body is healthy, whole, and complete you’ll never have to think about calories ever again because health has always and will always be instinctively and innately and naturally easy.
Links and Resources
- WGP 004: How to Breathe for an Awesome Life
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
- The Calorie Myth — Jonathan Bailor
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring Supplements:
- I’ll explain why supplementing with vitamins and minerals is a necessity
- I’ll talk about some vitamins and minerals that you need on a daily basis
- I’ll give some supplement and food recommendations for these vital nutrients
- Finally I’ll share how you can lower your supplement requirements
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Today human society of the western variety follow many practises that are not very beneficial to life on this planet. One of these practises is modern agriculture.
Way back in the day about a few generations ago farmers and growers did not need to use chemical fertilisers, man-made pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, and other chemicals or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in order to grow plentiful and bountiful crops that were also packed full of nutrition. Farmers did not grow a single crop time after time on the same plot of land and soil, also known as a monoculture. Farmers did not grow and breed vegetables and fruit just so they could make them bigger and sweeter.
Today the way society practises farming leads to a lot of these agricultural chemicals leaching into the soil poisoning the microorganisms and worms needed to create a healthy soil. This sick topsoil that is depleted of vitamins and minerals creates sick plants, sick animals, and sick humans. Not only do the chemicals poison the soil, but they get into waterways and flow into local rivers and lakes and eventually hit the ocean creating more sickness and disease for sea life.
The vegetables and fruits of today have lost their medicinal properties and have less fibre and a lot more sugar. The bland iceberg lettuce and sweet supersized apple you’re eating today are not the same bitter and tart, smaller varieties your grandparents had in their day. Before agriculture you could actually gather lettuce that was quite bitter and full of plant nutrients that would act as medicine in the body. Today that bitterness and medicine has been lost due to the commercialisation of the food industry and also due to consumer demand. So it’s not all the producer’s fault as buyers over the years wanted bigger and sweeter tasting foods so society has to take some of the blame here for why food today does not have the same nutrition density and medicinal benefits as the foods of previous generations.
Not only is the food supply low on nutrition, but the environment is high in pollution. Industrial chemicals are being pumped into the air, land, and oceans all over the world every second of every day and the more toxins your body is exposed to the more work your innate detoxification system has to do and this detox process requires nutrients. So unless you live in a bubble your body is already working overtime to detoxify the chemicals you’re exposed to on a daily basis and this detox process is soaking up all the nutrients it can find within your body.
Another thing that soaks up a lot of nutrients in your body is stress. Whether it’s physical, mental, or emotional stress will drain your body of the nutrition it needs to thrive leaving you with a body that has barely enough to survive. The more physical stress your body is dealing with and the more perceived emotional and mental stress you believe yourself to be under then the higher your vitamin and mineral needs become.
So because it’ll take you a few heads of broccoli today to get the same nutrition from one single head of broccoli grown 100 years ago and due to the constant barrage of toxins your body is being exposed to and the increased amount of stress in modern life these all cause an increase in your nutrition requirements meaning that supplementing with vitamins and minerals and other vital nutrients is a necessity to achieve optimal health in this day and age.
Now with so many vitamin and mineral supplements on the market today where do you start or how do you know which to take?
Well I’ll talk about just a few vital nutrients I believe everyone should be supplementing with on a regular basis.
First up are probiotics. Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms that live on, in and throughout your entire body. Most of your probiotics live in your gut, your intestines. These little friendly single-celled organisms help maintain the health of not only your gut, but your whole bodymind. Your gut is where 80% of your immune cells live and your immune system needs probiotics in order to function properly so it’s crucial to keep your gut probiotic population in a happy and healthy state as a weakened immune system may eventually leads to many many diseases including cancer.
Next is magnesium. Now magnesium is required for over 300 chemical reactions in your body. Adenosine triphosphate or ATP is one of the energy molecules used by your cells and ATP needs to bind to magnesium for it to be used. During the replication of your DNA magnesium is needed by enzymes that make sure no errors or mutations occur and when there is a mutation these enzymes need magnesium to repair the damaged DNA. Damaged DNA is one cause of cancer. Magnesium is also needed to move calcium around the body and helps muscles to relax and work more efficiently making it the perfect mineral to support the health of your heart.
Probably the most important vitamin today, actually a hormone, is vitamin D. This hormone that we mainly get from the beautiful unconditionally loving sun regulates the expression of over 1000 different genes. Meaning vitamin D can turn on or off about 5% of your entire genetic code. That’s pretty powerful stuff. Vitamin D does so many things including helping the body to absorb calcium supporting bone mineralisation, boosts your immune system reducing cancer risk, reduces inflammation, and makes you feel good as it helps with converting the amino acid tryptophan into the feel-good neurotransmitter serotonin.
Alongside vitamin D I must mention vitamin K. There are many types of vitamin K and I’ll focus on K1 and K2. Vitamin K1 is responsible for helping your blood to clot properly. Vitamin K2 helps prevent the calcification of your arteries by activating proteins that will pull calcium out of blood vessels and arteries and bring it to the bone where vitamin D then does its job of helping calcium absorb into the bone.
Another vital nutrient is vitamin A. Now I’m not talking about beta-carotene found in the orange pigments of vegetables and fruits. I’m talking about real vitamin A found in animal fat. Vitamin A works synergistically with vitamins D and K2, meaning the beneficial effect of these three vital nutrients is multiplied to a whole new level when they combine and altogether they help ensure that calcium gets to your bones and not stick in your arteries. Not only is vitamin A needed for proper bone formation, but it’s also used in new cell formation and growth and development and so helps prevent birth defects, it’s required for healthy eyes, skin, and hair, for protein metabolism, and for the production of hormones.
Finally omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Now I’m not talking about the alpha-linoleic acid (ALA) that you get from plant foods. I’m talking about eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) that can only be found in animal fats. EPA and DHA are two critically important nutrients I highly recommend getting on a daily basis, preferably through food. EPA is needed for its anti-inflammatory properties and DHA is one of the building blocks of your brain cells.
Also the modern western diet is extremely high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 fats found in grains and industrial seed oils. Now I’m not going to argue that croissants, bagels, fried fish and chips don’t taste good, but the way these are made today is causing fire in your body, more inflammation. By consuming more omega-3 fats and lowering your omega-6 intake you can help calm the inflammation in your body. Remember Yin Yang where we never want to go too extreme on one thing or the other, but today most people are just eating far too many omega-6 fats which are highly Yang.
Alright so as far as my supplement recommendations go, I have already created a page outlining the brands and supplements that I recommend in the resources section of my website. So if you go to wholeguidance.com/supplements you will find the list of supplements I recommend there.
Now for the best food sources…
For probiotics you have to eat fermented foods. Fermented foods are foods that have been prepared in such a way that after they’ve been made they are chockfull of probiotics. Examples of fermented foods include:
- Fermented vegetables like sauerkraut and kimchi
- Kefir
- Aged cheeses
- Kombucha
- Lassi and
- Fermented soy such as miso, tempeh, and natto
As for magnesium you can’t go past 100% cacao. I’m not talking about your typical chocolate bar, I’m talking about the whole cacao bean or raw cacao nibs, which is the bean chopped up, and raw cacao powder. A chocolate bar that says 100% cacao with no other ingredients added would also work. Most people know that chlorophyll is the molecule that makes plants green and at the centre of that molecule is magnesium. So all your green leafy and cruciferous vegetables are full of magnesium. Pumpkin seeds are another great source of magnesium.
For vitamin D your skin being exposed to the sun during the middle of the day when the sun is high during the warmer months of the year, this is your best source of vitamin D. As far as food is concerned cod liver oil, fatty fish, mushrooms, free-range pasture-raised pork, full-fat dairy, and everybody’s favourite liver are your best food choices. I love eating free-range pork crackling that I bake at home. I can just taste that sunshiny goodness, mmm mmm.
Okay vitamin K. Vitamin K1 can be found in green vegetables. Vitamin K2 can be found in grass-fed free-range pasture-raised animal fats such as full-fat dairy and eggs. So if you were to put some quality butter on top of your organic green veges you’d be getting a one two combo of both vitamins K1 and K2. Natto is very high in K2, but also tastes like crap… so not my first choice for K2. Brie and Gouda cheeses are fantastic foods sources of K2 as well.
For vitamin A grass-fed free-range pasture-raised animal fats are the only way to go. So egg yolks, butter and heavy cream, as well as liver will be the best sources of vitamin A.
You will find EPA and DHA omega-3 fats in cold water fatty fish like salmon, herring, sardines, and mackerel. You can also get EPA and DHA in grass-fed full-fat dairy and meat products as well as free-range pasture-raised eggs.
Now one superfood I recommend that combines vitamins A, D, K2, and omega-3 fats into one potent product is fermented cod liver oil mixed with butter oil. You can find this in a pretty little package from a company called Green Pastures. I list this on my supplements page, but will also put a link up for it in the show notes for this episode. It doesn’t taste the best, but it does the best for your body.
Okay now there are a few things you can do to lower your nutrition requirements and therefore lower your need for supplements.
First is to eat real nutrient dense food. Earlier I spoke about how modern food practises have created nutrient poor foods. Well in order to get nutrient rich foods you need to buy local organically grown produce and local grass-fed, free-range, pasture-raised farmed meat. You want food that has not been treated with chemicals and that has not travelled over great distances losing its nutritional value along the way. You want food that has been grown and raised naturally in and on healthy soil that is full of microorganisms and worms and vitamins and minerals. So fresh local organic foods will be packed full of nutrients.
You can lower your nutrient needs by lowering your exposure to toxins and chemicals in your environment. I did a whole podcast on how to support your detoxification system and the big takeaway there was to swap out all your commercial home care and personal care products for organic plant-based ones. The less work your liver, kidneys, lungs, and lymphatic system have to do the more nutrients you will have for growth and repair processes.
Finally if you can manage yourself when it comes to perceiving stress in your life and learn how to not take every little thing so seriously you will be doing your body a huge favour. The less stress hormones running through your veins then the more nutrition your body will have available to do more of the growth and repair processes. Go back and listen to the podcast I did about managing yourself and stress for more information.
I’ll leave you with this thought. You cannot supplement your way out of a poor diet and unhappy lifestyle. So to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to taking supplements make sure that as you’re popping those vitamins and minerals that you’re also eating real food and living a happy and healthy holistic lifestyle.
As Linus Pauling a Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry says:
“I believe that you can, by taking some simple and inexpensive measures, lead a longer life and extend your years of well-being. My most important recommendation is that you take vitamins every day in optimum amounts to supplement the vitamins that you receive in your food.”
Not bad advice from a Nobel Prize winner.
Links and Resources
- Whole Guidance Supplements Resource
- Green Pasture’s Blue Ice Royal Butter Oil / Fermented Cod Liver Oil Blend
- WGP 012: How to Love Your Liver and Detox Your Life
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring Inflammation:
- I’ll explain how inflammation can be both beneficial and harmful to your health and wellbeing
- I’ll talk about some of the different causes of chronic low-level inflammation
- Finally, I’ll review the best ways to reduce inflammation in your body
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Inflammation is your immune system in action and what a beautiful natural act of Mother Nature it is. Your body has the innate intelligence to heal itself and works best when you feed it real food, water, sleep, movement, breath, and healthy relationships.
You have seen inflammation in action when you’ve had a cut or a bruise or had an infection. That part of your body gets red, it swells up, heats up, and sometimes there’s pain. If you can support your body’s innate healing process with natural healing therapies and then get out of its way and not interfere too much then overtime the injured area gets better and heals.
Inflammation is key to healing. Without it your immune system would never be called into action and you would never heal. However, there is a dark side to inflammation.
Acute inflammation is obvious to spot and simple to manage. With acute inflammation the inflammatory reaction is massive like a Hollywood movie explosion. Chronic ongoing inflammation on the other hand is hidden and difficult to deal with. With chronic inflammation the inflammatory response is more like a small match lighting up. No big ‘hey look at me!’ as with acute inflammation, but still a calling card for your immune system to wake up and to get into action. So your immune system reacts the exact same way whether you have acute or chronic inflammation.
Now there’s nothing wrong with your immune system doing it’s job, but there is an issue with the amount of work your immune system has to do. Acute inflammation comes and goes — job done. Chronic inflammation comes over like an unwanted family member who overstays their welcome and your immune system does everything it can to heal and so reduce and remove the inflammation, but that stubborn chronic guy just won’t leave. The more your immune system is active the more energy and nutrition it will use leaving you tired and without the proper building blocks to support other areas of your body.
Now as a result of your immune system being overworked and frustrated another more serious problem arises. The quality of the work that your immune system does starts to go down. Meaning your immune system that includes white blood cells, T cells, and B cells starts to confuse your own body tissue with foreign and infectious objects. So now your immune system begins to attack you causing damage to whatever part of the body is being mistakenly attacked. This is what an autoimmune disease is. The body reacting to and attacking itself. Examples of autoimmune diseases include:
- Multiple sclerosis
- Crohn’s disease
- Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
- Type 1 diabetes
- Vasculitis
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Psoriasis
- Systemic lupus erythematosus
- Coeliac disease
By the way if you are dealing with an autoimmune condition I highly recommend the book The Wahls Protocol by Dr Terry Wahls. Dr Wahls has MS multiple sclerosis, but by following an ancestral evolutionary diet and lifestyle was able to get herself out of a wheelchair and onto a bicycle. A truly inspiring story and individual.
Anyhoo… Not only does chronic inflammation send inflammatory signals throughout your body causing the breakdown of bone, nervous tissue, and organs, but it also sends out fat-storing signals and interferes with normal hormone communication.
It is this chronic low-level inflammation that is barely detectable by you and your health practitioner that is at the root of almost every single disease not just autoimmunity.
Another thing with chronic inflammation is because it acts on such a low level throughout your entire body and remember that inflammation causes redness, swelling, hotness, and pain so if you are dealing with skin issues, are holding onto extra weight that just won’t leave, have areas of your body that are hotter than they should be or you’re dealing with pain realise that all of these are huge symptoms of being inflamed.
Okay so what causes chronic inflammation?
Well a pro-inflammatory diet made up of fake pretend food-like products would be number one on the list. Remember 80% of your immune system lives in your gut because it has to deal to all the foreign stuff that comes through your gastrointestinal tract. So if you’re eating highly inflammatory foods your immune system will go into overdrive. Hello inflammation and hello disease.
The biggest fake food culprit of them all is industrial seed oils aka vegetable oils. These oils are full of trans fats as well as oxidised rancid damaged fats. When your fat-burning enzymes attach to a trans fat to metabolise it they can’t. It’s not a real fat. But now they’re stuck to this trans fat molecule stopping them from burning other fats. This can lead to an increase in your waistline.
Your cell membranes are made up of fat. If these trans fats get integrated into your cell walls then their integrity and stability begins to weaken leading to a damaged dysfunctional cell. Also, the cell receptors on the surface of the cell will be morphed into unnatural shapes preventing them from receiving nutrition and eliminating waste in and out of the cell. Trans fats are deadly to the cell and deadly to your body.
These seed oils are mostly made up of fragile omega-6 fats that get easily damaged when exposed to heat, light, and will go rancid after very short periods of time. When eaten these fats create damaging free radicals in your body and without enough antioxidants these free radicals will cause a whole host of diseases.
Second biggest baddie when it comes to chronic inflammation and food is processed and refined sugar and grains like flour and products made with them. When you eat any processed grain like bread, doughnuts, cooked corn even these metabolise in the body and turn in an instant into sugar. So there’s literally no difference between eating a piece of wholemeal bread or a cookie and eating a few teaspoons of sugar. Same goes with fizzy drinks and fruit juices. These are all sugar when they hit your mouth, your gut, and your liver.
A diet high in sugar leads to too much sugar being left in the blood causing the sugar molecules to stick to cells in the bloodstream. This process is called glycation and the new molecule that forms is called an Advanced Glycation Endproduct or AGE. AGEs block immune cells from getting into damaged tissues in need of repair stopping the reduction of inflammation.
Excess sugar consumption also raises insulin levels. Insulin is a fat-storing hormone and when this is high fat-burning is switched off. Insulin also triggers the release of interleukin-6 or IL-6 which is an inflammatory and anti-inflammatory molecule, but tends to create more inflammation in your body.
Wheat, pasteurised milk, table salt, instant coffee and any other processed and packaged industrialised fake food-like product are pro-inflammatory to your body. So if you love fast food, cheap food, and don’t know the difference between a spinach leaf and a cabbage leaf you my friend are probably full of inflammation.
Another cause of chronic inflammation is having the omega-6 and omega-3 ratio of fats in your diet out of balance. These two fats are essential to health and essential here literally means your body cannot make these fats therefore you must eat them. Now omega-6 is a pro-inflammatory fat, whereas omega-3 is anti-inflammatory. Our ancestors had the perfect 1:1 ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s in their diet. Today western societies have been estimated to be eating a ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s of 20:1 or more!
Going back to the seed oils and grains these are mostly omega-6 fats. Any wonder now why we live in an inflammation nation!
Stress of all types physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual cause the release of stress hormones in the body that can have an anti-inflammatory effect by suppressing your immune system. However, chronic stress with stress hormones left to linger in the body for long periods of time makes for a weakened immune system and creates more inflammation. Stress can cause damage to the mucosal barriers in your body making them more permeable and porous than they should be. So stress can cause your skin as well as your gut to become leaky leading to skin and gut inflammation and disease.
Sleep deprivation can make you as insulin resistant as a diabetic. Insulin resistance means your cells no longer pay attention to insulin leaving a lot of insulin and sugar in your bloodstream. So with insulin resistance comes more inflammation due to high levels of insulin and sugar.
Being overweight and obese is also inflammatory. Fat isn’t just a grouping of cells sitting around waiting for you to burn it as energy. Fat is actually an endocrine organ meaning it produces hormones. Adiponectin is a fat hormone used to control the metabolism of fats and sugars. It also makes you more insulin sensitive.
Another hormone that fat produces is called leptin. Leptin has been called the master hormone because not only does it tell you when you’re full it also looks controls other glands and hormones in your body. Problem with leptin is if you have too much leptin you will have a lot of inflammation to go with it. This is because leptin is also an inflammatory signalling molecule. So the more fat you are holding onto the more leptin you will have and the more inflammation you will get.
One last thing about food. Even if you’re eating organic and naturally raised real food you still may be causing yourself more harm than good if you’re eating foods you are allergic or have a sensitivity to. A food allergy is an immediate reaction to a food that you’ve eaten. A food sensitivity or intolerance could take hours, days or even up to a week before you get a reaction from that particular food. Food allergies and sensitivities are serious business when it comes to causing stress and inflammation in your body. These foods can cause inflammation in the gut making it leaky. If these foods were to get into your bloodstream further inflammation would go on in your body.
Being exposed to toxins industrial or natural makes for more inflammation in your body in more ways than one. The toxins alone cause inflammation and an immune response. Along with this though any toxins that are not metabolised properly by your liver get stored in your fat cells. The more toxins your body cannot eliminate the fatter you get (it’s not just about the calories people, in fact it hardly ever is). Anyhoo, remember with more fat there’s more leptin and more inflammation.
Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) cause a buildup of positive electrons in your body that act as free radicals damaging you from the inside out creating more inflammation.
All this fake food, stress, and toxin exposure also creates an imbalance of the microorganisms in your gut. A healthy gut will have a ratio of 85% probiotics (the good guys) to 15% pathogens (the bad guys). People with unhealthy diets and lifestyles have been shown to have a ratio of 15% good to 85% bad microorganisms. This imbalance is called dysbiosis. Dysbiosis causes many issues in your gut including malnutrition, leaky gut syndrome, and inflammation. Pathogens create endotoxins in your gut that will create inflammation and if these endotoxins get through a leaky gut into your bloodstream then inflammation will occur in other areas of your body.
Alrighty then let’s get into how you can reduce the heat in your life and be more cool like a cucumber, i.e. reduce your inflammation.
Eat an anti-inflammatory diet.
As an old English proverb says:
“Don’t dig your grave with your own knife and fork.”
By eating foods that are less pro and more anti-inflammatory you will dramatically reduce the immune response in your system. Stick to real foods organically and naturally raised that give more life force than they take. My free e-book describing the top superfoods in the world is a good guide for this. You can get it for free simply by signing up to the Whole Guidance newsletter at wholeguidance.com.
If you have some excess weight you’d like to let go of maybe a lower carbohydrate diet would be a path you can try walking down just for a month or two. By reducing your sugar intake not only will you reduce the inflammation and your risk of disease by reducing your insulin production, you may just find your body composition begin to normalise back into a healthy range reducing your leptin production.
Eat for a better omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. A healthy ratio of these essential fats would be 4:1 omega-6s to omega-3s with 1:1 being the ideal. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean get more omega-3 and drop the omega-6 because you don’t want to go to the opposite extreme as well. Take a good hard look at your diet and try and calculate how much more omega-6 fat foods are you eating compared to omega-3 fat foods. Are you eating a lot of seed oils or foods made and cooked with them?Are you eating too many baked food products made with flours? Cut back on these high omega-6 pro-inflammatory foods. Instead focus on omega-3 sources of food the best being cold water oily fish like wild-caught salmon, sardines, mackerel, and herring. Even chia seeds and flax seeds can provide a little omega-3 nutrition and by little I do mean very little, but I tells ya’ I love me some chia cacao vanilla cinnamon pudding way better compared to a gooey glop of porridge.
Eat for gut health. So don’t just eat for you, but also eat for your gut microbiome. Your probiotics need to eat just as much as you do and they love soluble fibre and resistant starch. So basically eat plenty of fibrous vegetables. Grains have too high of a fibre to nutrition ratio so even if you did go with some whole grains you’d want to limit them. If you’re wondering about fruit sure eat plenty of fruit as long as you don’t have any weight and metabolic issues such as diabetes or heart disease.
Taking a probiotic with many different strains of bacteria and with high potency meaning it has a high number of them per serving is also a great way to support your gut health.
Obviously the best way to support your gut health is by eating fermented foods. Sauerkraut and kefir are my favourite. You can learn more about fermented foods in my free e-book.
Drink quality natural spring and artesian water or water that has been filtered. The best solution for pollution is dilution and seeing as inflammation is your body on fire some nice cooling water will be exactly what the holistic doctor ordered.
Get quality restorative sleep. Your body runs on a circadian cycle that follows the cycles of the sun and the moon. As a general guideline you want to be in bed by 10p and up around 6a. Listen to episode 5 on sleep for more info.
Manage your ability to handle stress. There are many different ways to improve your stress resiliency including meditation and mindfulness practises. I explained how I personally reduce my perception of stress back in episode 3 so you might want to listen to that.
Finally, reduce your toxic and EMF exposure. You will never ever be able to live a toxic and EMF free life, but you can dramatically reduce how much exposure you get to these pro-inflammatory materials everyday. Check out the previous Whole Guidance podcast episode I did on how to detox your life for more information.
Links and Resources
- The Wahls Protocol — Terry Wahls MD and Eve Adamson
- WGP 005: Are You Getting Enough Sleep?
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
- WGP 012: How to Love Your Liver and Detox Your Life
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring the topic of Detoxification:
- I’ll talk about the health impacts of having excess toxins in your body and explain how your innate detoxification system works
- I’ll talk about the hidden toxins that could be lurking in your environment
- Finally, I’ll share some tips on how to support your innate detoxification system
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Today there are over 85,000 industrial chemicals in the environment. Globally this equates to 310 kg (685 lbs) of toxic chemicals being released into the air, on land, and in waterways every second.
Toxic industrial chemicals are all around us and are the price we pay for civilisation and advanced technology.
Even newborn babies have been shown to have on average over 250 toxic chemicals in their umbilical cord blood. 180 of these chemicals were carcinogenic meaning cancer causing compounds.
The health impacts of toxic exposure include:
- Neurological disorders
- Endocrine disruption causing hormonal imbalances
- Unstable blood sugar
- Accelerated aging
- Digestive disorders causing malnutrition
- Fatigue and low energy
- Reduced bone integrity and muscle mass
- Increased fat gain
- Autoimmune diseases
- Weakened immune system
- Increased inflammation and of course again
- Promote tumour growth aka cancer
Now our ancestors never had to deal with such an overload of toxins. They would only have been exposed to a foreign toxic chemical if they lived by an active volcano, were exploring underground caves, or came across an unknown species of plant or venomous animal.
Your body has an innate intelligence that breathes you, that beats your heart, that helps you grow, that heals and repairs you, and also detoxifies you.
Fortunately for our ancestors their innate detoxification system could function without much strain or stress. Unfortunately for us that’s just not the world we live in today. Industrial chemicals, heavy metals, naturally occurring biotoxins, electromagnetic fields and radiation, high levels of perceived stress these all create a toxic load on the body and your body’s innate ability to detox is near breaking point every day.
There are two types of toxicity or toxic exposure.
Acute or sudden toxicity means your body has been exposed to a high dose of a single toxin creating an immediate reaction in your body also known as being poisoned.
Chronic or gradual toxicity means your body has been exposed to extremely low doses of many different toxins creating a slow and steady response over time.
This doesn’t mean chronic toxicity is not as bad as acute. Far from it. Both acute and chronic toxicity are equal in how they affect your life. While one will kill you in the moment the other will kill you slowly, but surely over time.
In order to explain how chronic toxicity makes for a slow and painful death I need to talk about mitochondria. These are the parts of a cell that convert fatty acids, lactic acid, and glucose a sugar molecule into physical energy. So these guys are the power-plants, the energy centres of the cell and your entire body.
A quick side note it is believed that mitochondria were one of the first single-celled organisms to have evolved billions of years ago and the fact that they have their own DNA separate to the cell and to you supports this idea. So mitochondria are bacteria that use the human body as a vehicle to feed themselves. Trippy huh? Now if you also think about the fact that there are 10 times more microorganism cells than human cells and 100 times more microorganism DNA than human DNA in your body it kind of makes you wonder… who’s running what now? I mean that’s a bit of a mind cluster right there. Definitely makes me come back to that age old question, ‘Who am I?’.
Anyhoo back to chronic toxicity… any excess toxins that your body cannot detoxify and process gets stored in your fat cells. Now why I bring up mitochondria is that these guys metabolise fat for energy and it is believed that low levels of fat-soluble toxins can poison the mitochondria. So these poisoned mitochondria are unable to metabolise these fat-soluble toxins leaving your body no choice but to store them in your fat cells increasing your waistline.
Also poisoned mitochondria are unable to metabolise glucose which leaves more sugar in the blood. Sugar in your blood begins to stick to other cells and proteins damaging them leading to accelerated aging, tumour growth aka cancer, and diabetes.
Finally with less mitochondria creating energy in your body you become fatigued and tired all the time.
So the next time you hear some authoritative figure say that your exposure to environmental toxins, to toxins in your food, at home and at work is too small to have an affect on your health realise that they’re right. But at the same time they’re wrong because these very small toxins will affect the very small energy centres in your body called mitochondria and one day you’ll wake up fat, sick, and nearly dead.
Your liver is the main detoxifying organ of the body, but it also plays many other roles that help keep you alive.
Your liver:
- Filters blood containing food nutrition from your gut
- Produces protein and cholesterol
- Stores energy as glycogen
- Turns excess sugar into fats
- Produces bile needed to digest fats
- Stores iron and vitamins and
- Detoxifies toxins and breaks down medications and drugs
As you can see your liver is a busy bee. Remember liver stands for life, for living, and the more you can support it the better your life will be. No doubt about it.
There are two phases that toxins, leftover hormones, medications and drugs, and other waste products go through when being processed by your liver.
Phase 1 neutralises the toxin setting it up for phase 2 which prepares the toxin for elimination via your bowels or your kidneys. If you find yourself constipated due to dehydration, poor nutrition, lack of movement, improper breathing, or high stress levels then the waste products in your poo will be reabsorbed back into your body and will either cause harm or have to go through a second round of detoxing causing extra strain and stress on your liver.
Phase 1 mainly uses vitamins and phytonutrients (plant nutrients), whereas phase 2 uses sulfur and amino acids. So you want to be eating plenty of vegetables and some animal and fruit fats to support phase 1 and plenty of sulfur-rich veggies as well as some animal meat to support phase 2.
I’ll put a link to the different micronutrients your liver uses in each phase in the show notes for this episode up on the Whole Guidance blog.
Your liver has a family of detoxification enzymes used to process external foreign toxins as well as internal natural toxins. There are different pathways in your liver a toxin can take in order for it to be processed for detoxification and elimination. If your liver enzymes or detox pathways get overloaded with a particular toxin then that enzyme and pathway will no longer be available to process other toxins that need them. Not only that, but if a toxin has to use an alternative pathway additional toxins, waste products, and damaging free radicals get produced causing more strain and stress on your liver.
For example, pain killers and alcohol these use the exact same detox enzymes and pathways in the liver. If you take these two toxins (yes alcohol is a low dose toxin), if you take them together then one or the other is going to last longer in your body causing side-effects. Now your liver will usually begin detoxing the alcohol first leaving the pain killer to have to use a different detox route. The problem with the pain killer having to go down this other detox pathway is that it creates a new waste product. This new waste product can only be taken care of by your body’s own innate antioxidant called glutathione. So now your body is having to produce more glutathione to neutralise this new waste product and your liver is having to do double-duty in having to process this new waste product again creating extra energy and nutrient demands on your body.
Bottom line is your liver requires a lot of energy and resources to function properly and if there’s an overload of toxins in your system then your liver is going to have to do more work draining energy and nutrients from other parts of your body. The less work your liver has to do the more energy and the more vitality you will feel and the better you will perform in life.
Toxins are hiding in everyday consumer products. You would think that if something was bad for you that your national government and local authorities wouldn’t allow it to be displayed on a store shelf and sold. But unfortunately we live in a world where dollars talk louder than cents. Literally money is more important in current society than common sense and well-being.
When it comes to food there are organophosphate chemicals used to poison life sprayed on crops and produce. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are sold as healthy. Growth hormones and antibiotics are used to increase sales of cattle, pork, and chickens. Naturally occurring metals like lead and mercury and other industrial chemicals bioaccumulate in seafood with the larger fish biomagnifying the effects. You are what you eat and your liver detoxifies what you eat and if you think your poor liver doesn’t have to deal with the chemicals, foreign genes, hormones, and drugs you get from the food you eat — you’re living in a dream world my friend.
Your kitchen is a potential toxic bomb. Are you still using teflon and non-stick cookware because it’s easier to cook with and to clean. Uh-oh. Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are what makes things non-sticky and are bad news for your liver and for your life if you wish to live it cancer free.
How about food containers? Do you use plastic food containers made with polyethylene, polypropylene, phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol S (BPS)? These are all endocrine disruptors causing you to have unbalanced hormones and interferes with proper child growth and development, e.g. girls maturing earlier and boys developing more physical female attributes.
Don’t forget tap water is laced, yes I said laced with bleach aka chlorine and an industrial waste product that makes you and your children stupider than a single-celled amoeba called fluoride.
Home cleaning, air freshening, and laundry products are definitely a mass of toxic sludge.
- Ammonia
- Chloramine gas
- 1,4-dioxane
- Chloroform
- Bleach
- Phthalates
- Toluene
These are but a few of the chemical ingredients lurking in your living and working habitats.
Shower curtains! Most of these are made out of polyvinyl chloride aka PVC plastic and outgas, they release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as dioxins, xylene, and toluene that have no business anywhere near your liver. Every time you’re having a hot shower the increase in temperature only makes the PVC outgas even more.
Personal care products. Oh man talk about a toxic soup of epic proportions. Hair, skin, mouth products, deodorants and antiperspirants, cosmetics, antibacterial sanitisers (I used to love those things), soaps, sunscreens, baby wipes, diapers, tampons, pads etc these all have the following toxic crap. It’s a bit of a long list, but let’s do this.
- Aluminium or aluminum
- Chlorine
- Dioxins
- Furans
- Phthalates
- BPA and BPS
- Benzyl acetate
- Parabens
- Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)
- Sodium laureth sulfate or sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES)
- Ammonium lauryl sulfate (ALS)
- Sodium pareth sulfate
- Triclosan
- Cocamide diethanolamine (cocamide DEA)
- Diethanolamine (DEA)
- Monoethanolamine (MEA)
- Triethanolamine (TEA)
- Monoisopropanolamine (MIPA)
- Ethoxylated alkyl amine (PEG)
- Oxybenzone
- Avobenzone
- Octisalate
- Octocrylene
- Homosalate
- Octinoxate
- Sodium polyacrylate
Phew!
Finally synthetic fragrance. Whenever you see fragrance on a product remember that this one single word will have 10s of ingredients hidden behind it. It’s a loophole that businesses use to hide what they don’t want consumers or their competitors to see.
The clothing you wear also affects your health. If your clothes contain synthetic plastics and metals than these will interfere with your hormones and energy signature. This includes stain-resistant clothing.
Your furniture and carpets will be outgassing toxic chemicals including flame retardants. Baby’s new crib, could be a cesspool of poison. That new car smell, that ain’t sunshine and roses my friend. That’s a burden on your liver.
Also electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and toxic relationships create additional stress for your liver. Wifi signals, cell towers, electronic gadgets, stress, and stinkin’ thinkin’ all create an imbalance in your energetic being, your aura, your energy vortices known as chakras. Chakras that are out of sync create havoc with your physical, emotional, and mental bodies. This is due to the EMFs and perceived stress in your life causing a buildup of positive electrons in your cells that act as free radicals that damage your body from the inside out.
Okay I know that was a lot to take in, but if you want a happy and healthy life you need to know what could be causing your liver to be weak and tired and in turn making you feel weak and tired.
So right now you need to ask yourself one question:
“Do I have toxins in my body?”
The answer is a brutal yet life-changing YES!
Brutal because industrial chemicals have been found in Antarctic ice and at the tops of mountain ranges around the world. We live in a toxic world and there’s no running or hiding from it.
Life-changing because now that you know better you can do better.
So your goal isn’t to go fleeing into the woods or some cave high up in the Himalayas. You cannot escape being exposed to toxins.
What you can do though is dramatically reduce that toxic load.
The following is a list of the top 10 things you can do to love your liver and detox your life:
1. Eat organic naturally raised produce and animals that aren’t genetically modified and haven’t been treated with chemicals. You can grow and raise your own food or buy local from farmers markets.
Eat large fish like tuna on rare occasions and focus more on small fish like wild-caught sardines and salmon as well as seafood.
Remember to eat a variety of different coloured vegetables to support your liver’s first phase of detoxification and eat plenty of sulfur-rich vegetables and some animal protein to support the second phase.
According to the 5 Element theory in traditional Chinese medicine sour foods are great for supporting the liver. So a tea made with freshly squeezed lemon juice and freshly grated ginger would be ideal for loving your liver.
Drinking fresh vegetable juices (not fruit juices) with some lemon or lime and ginger is another liver tonic.
2. Drink spring, artesian, and filtered water.
3. Take liver supporting supplements that contain milk thistle extract silymarin and dandelion root.
4. Use cast iron, ceramic, stainless steel, or glass cookware and food containers.
5. Swap out standard home care and personal care products for ones with organic natural plant-based ingredients or make your own. There are plenty of recipes online on how to make natural all-purpose cleaners, toothpaste, and deodorants.
6. Wear clothes made of natural fibres. Hemp and wool are awesome choices as even some cotton today is genetically modified.
7. Buy furniture that is made without volatile organic compounds and fire retardants. Air out any new furniture, a new car, or a newly renovated house for a few days to a week before using.
8. Turn off wifi and any electronics that aren’t in use. Ground yourself to the Earth every day by spending at least 30 minutes with bare skin to soil, grass, and sand.
9. Let go of resentment. See everyone as another version of you living in another set of clothing in a different pair of shoes. Just as you had no control on the body you were given and the parents that you were born with neither did anyone else. Realise we are all finding our unique way through life and we all have our own personal ways to express love. Doesn’t mean we will understand each other’s expression, but at least we can understand we are all trying to express that One Love that drives us all.
10. Manage yourself when it comes to handling stress through proper breathing, meditation, sleeping, hydration, nutrition, exercise and play, and by being out in nature.
Links and Resources
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring Connecting with Nature:
- I’ll explain the importance of relationships and connecting with others
- I’ll talk about the different types of natural connection that nourishes your bodymind
- Finally, I’ll share some simple and effective relationship and nature rituals you can put into action to grow your natural social network
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
All life came from a single cell billions of years ago. Now this cell wasn’t alone for long as it soon multiplied into a community of cells. Over time this community of cells adapted and evolved and grew and developed into all the different life forms we see today.
Human beings are social creatures. We live and we love and we fight in communities. Wanting to be with other people and feeling a connection with another person is built into your DNA going way back to that very first cell.
Now if you think about it how do we punish someone who’s already in prison? Solitary confinement. This is where people are physically separated from the main population and put into a room by themselves isolated from the rest of the world.
There’s no worse prison than that of a mind of someone who has lost connection to their friends and family.
Whether you experience pleasure or pain as long you’re with other people there’s a hidden sense of safety and security that makes you feel like it’s okay to feel this way. You can call on another person for help or you can blame that other person for causing your problem. A shared experience also tends to feel more alive and vibrant in the moment then if you were to have it by yourself.
But when you are cut off from family and friends this is where feelings of loneliness and solitude begin to creep in. Every time I bite into a delicious piece of dark chocolate or drink a tasty smoothie the first thing that comes to mind is ‘I want to share this experience with someone else’. But if I’m alone at the time there’s a split second where I get a little bit sad at not being able to share what I’m having.
Sadness is an emotion that you can feel and deal with on your own quite easily. Grief on the other hand can hit you pretty hard and it usually comes from a major sad event happening in your life suddenly, out of the blue, and unexpectedly. Dealing with grief alone is never easy. You need support and people around you to help you to see a different perspective of things and to see that this time of grieving is only temporary, eventually things will get better. Without support that grief if left to linger may turn into depression.
To paraphrase a line from The Lord of the Rings:
“Grief must move on, grief cannot linger.”
The saying it takes a village to raise a child is very true if we want that child to grow into a happy and healthy adult. Today many families are having to raise children alone. I’m not talking about single mums or dads, but families that have no extended relations nearby to help them. No grandparents, no aunts or uncles, no-one to act as a babysitter or teacher or guardian. This raising of kids without proper support puts too much stress and strain on the family and eventually on society as a whole.
Obviously us human beings are happier and healthier together than we are apart — up to a point as we do get on each other’s nerves every now and then, but as a society we are all in relationship with each other whether we like it or not. It is this relationship, this togetherness that moves you as an individual and us as a society forward and helps every single one of us to learn and to grow.
“Relationships are the key to experiencing the fullness of life.”
A lack of relationships equal a lack of experience leading to a lack of learning and growth and a lack of living.
Now even if you were the last human on this beautiful planet you still wouldn’t be alone. Animals, trees, and plants you are also in relationship with these guys. You have a relationship with the planet itself and even the sun.
The three key relationships in your life include:
- The relationship you have with your self
- The relationship you have with other people and
- The relationship you have with Mother Nature
The primary relationship you have is with your self or should I say selves. You are not only a physical being, but also an emotional, mental, and spiritual being. Your inability to live an awesome life comes down to the fact that your many different beings are out of sync with each other. For example, if you say to yourself ‘I want to be happy and healthy’ which is an expression from your mental being relating to your emotional and physical being, but then you eat fast food full of rancid plastic vegetable oils, sick drugged animal meats, and processed sugars then your emotional and physical beings are going to express something a lot different to what you were intending.
Another example let’s say you’re a person of faith who follows a creed of ‘love thy neighbour’, but more often than not you gossip about other people behind their back in order to make yourself feel better than them due to a lack of self-esteem. Well here you have a disconnection between your mental, emotional, and spiritual beings.
In order to have a happy and healthy relationship with your self you need to have a clear intention on how you want to be in the world and then you need to live your life in harmony with that intention. If your intention and way of being are incongruent, are not in harmony with each other you will never truly be able to love your self and who you are.
Once you can live a harmonious life and love your self then the relationships you have with other people are a lot easier to be in. You won’t have the need or feel that you have to defend yourself when other people question the way you live because you know that your intention and your way of being are 100% in harmony. So no matter what vile crap other people might spew in your direction to try and rock your boat, you can stand tall and simply agree to disagree because you can only control how you feel. Their feelings are not your responsibility.
As my mentor Paul Chek says you are 50% responsible for every relationship you are in. You are 100% responsible for how you think and feel toward your self, but you can only take half that responsibility when in relation with another person.
You want to nurture the relationships with the closest people in your life. This doesn’t just mean family or friends, but anyone that you interact with on a regular basis. Even the relationship with the local shop owner you buy your lotto ticket from every week needs to be nurtured.
We are social creatures after all and were made to live in communities sharing experiences and ourselves with each other.
“Isolation leads to desolation, whereas integration leads to celebration.”
The final and most vital relationship is the one you have with Mother Nature. This means the Earth, the sun, and all other life forms.
Your body is of this planet, this planet is of a star, and stars are of the universe so you literally have the Universe inside you. You are made up of the Universe. You are made up of stardust. You my dear beautiful [reader] are made up of the Earth and soil.
Our human ancestors before the dawn of air-conditioning, television, malls, and high-rise buildings spent 100% of their time on soil, on grass, on sand, or in the sea. Even huts and shelters were made out of natural organic materials meaning our ancestors were connected to the Earth even while sleeping.
Why is this important?
Your body is a biobattery where your cells hold an electrical charge and positive electrons build up overtime and act as free radicals in your body. These free radicals cause damage to your body like rust damages a car. Now think of the world we live in today with WiFi signals, cell towers, and all these new consumer electronic gadgets our world is full of electromagnetic fields and these EMFs disrupt your battery, your energy signature, your aura. EMFs also cause a buildup of positive electrons in your body leading to more free radical damage, more rust.
Guess what electrical charge the Earth is? It’s not neutral, it’s not Sweden right it’s negative. So every time you ground yourself to the Earth and come into physical contact with it the Earth sucks up those positive electrons, those free radicals and gives you more health affirming negative electrons. This is called grounding or earthing and has many health benefits besides fighting off free radicals. Earthing can also:
- Reduce stress
- Improve sleep
- Speed up healing
- Decrease recovery time
- Increase energy
- Improve the flow of blood normalising blood pressure
- Reduce inflammation
- Boost immune function
You can find out more about earthing and grounding at earthinginstitute.net.
Okay so that’s your connection with the Earth now let’s have a look at why you need to connect more with the sun.
Vitamin D controls the expression of over 1000 genes in your body. Vitamin D actually isn’t a vitamin, but a steroid hormone like oestrogen and testosterone. Vitamin D is a powerful antioxidant combating those damaging free radicals. It also boosts and activates the actions of vitamins and minerals and controls how these micronutrients work with your body benefiting your bones, skin, and blood vessels. Vitamin D is also involved in fighting certain cancers.
Now your main source of Vitamin D comes from your skin when it’s exposed to UVB radiation from the sun. Note I said UVB rays not the cancer causing UVA rays. So slapping on a pile of toxic UVB blocking sunscreen and sunbathing behind glass which filters out the UVB and only allows in the UVA is the exact opposite thing you want to be doing for better health. You can also get some vitamin D from food and supplements, but your best and original source of vitamin D will always come from the sun.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a healthy relationship with the sun right now, I’ll give some tips later on how to rebuild it.
Last point about your relationship with Mother Nature involves being surrounded by her loving embrace and by this I mean being within and with her natural forms. So this means connecting with other life forms other than the human ape.
This could mean having a pet or how about NOT stepping on a snail or killing other small bugs. This could mean having a garden and tending to it regularly or going for a swim in a natural body of water like the ocean or a river.
In Japan they have a natural organic therapy that has been shown to heal many diseases and prevent illness called Shinrin-yoku translated as ‘Forest Bathing’. Another translation would be ‘getting outside and going for a hike in the woods’.
Animals, trees, and plants, all living beings release signalling molecules called pheromones to communicate subconscious intention to other members of their tribe. Now trees and plants also give off other organic compounds called phytoncides that can influence your bodymind and by being in a forest surrounded by nature breathing in these plant chemicals you can experience the following benefits:
- Reduced stress
- Improved sleep
- Faster healing
- Decreased recovery time
- Increased energy
- Improved blood flow normalising blood pressure
- Reduced inflammation and
- A stronger immune system
Have you noticed that these are also the exact same benefits you get from earthing and grounding. Coincidence? Yes! Life begets life and the Earth, the sun, animals and plants all boost your life force energy.
Remember we are all of this one song this Uni-verse. We are single notes of a symphony or individual pieces of a giant puzzle. As this quote from Alan Watts nicely puts it:
“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”
‘We are the world‘ as they sang for Africa 30 years ago and it’s true. We are all in this together my friend.
Okay so here are a few ways to improve your connection with self, with others, and with Mother Nature.
To have a better relationship with your self meditation is a great option. Meditation isn’t so much about reaching a point of enlightenment, but moreso about being in a focused state of mind where you can keep your mind on a single thought. By practising meditation on a regular basis you can train your mind to stay in the present moment giving your thoughts full attention
Meditation is also a time for quiet and in a world where we are drowning in noise from other people, from the media, from our own thoughts having a daily me time and quiet time ritual will help reduce your stress making you more resilient and better able to handle stress in your life.
Now there’s a 1001 ways to meditate. You don’t have to be sitting in a cave in silence for days on end chanting a mantra although you can if that floats your boat. There are movement meditations like Tai-chi and Qi-gong.
Personally I like walking and cooking meditations.
During walking meditation I time my breaths with my steps and count my steps as I walk counting 1 2 3 4 as I inhale and 1 2 3 4 as I exhale through the nose with my mouth closed.
Cooking meditation involves me being fully in the moment where I may have some music playing in the background and where I may or may not dance while in the kitchen and I time my chops of the knife or stirring of the pot to the beat of the music. I stay away from intense house or dance music as these can be a bit of a health hazard when wielding a knife in the kitchen.
There are some fantastic books out there on finding your self and being true to who you really are in all forms of being. I recommend reading:
- Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
- Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard
- The Music Lesson by Victor L Wooten which is best listened to as an audiobook
- 10 Secrets For Success and Inner Peace by Wayne Dyer and
- The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
These five books are a great start on your journey to integrating your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual beings into one harmonious force of awesomeness! You can find all these books in the Book Reading Club on the Whole Guidance website at wholeguidance.com/brc.
To enhance your relationship with others try finding ways to be of service to them. Giving is a fantastic way to serve. You can give your time and attention. You can give money. You can give knowledge or you can give others responsibility.
Receiving is another way to serve where you can receive what other people have created like a beautifully cooked meal and you can receive by letting others authentically express and share with you what’s really on their mind without judging them.
By giving and being open to receive others in their true and honest form you will see your relationships with the people in your life go from artificial and superficial to rich and more intimate.
Tips for getting outdoors in nature… get outside and get into nature!
Go hiking, walk trails, mountain bike riding, swimming, play on the beach, take your dog for a walk — don’t have a dog then get one from an abandoned animal shelter (definitely on my list to do). Get your thumbs green and get into gardening and horticulture or how about climbing a tree like you used to as a kid before getting told off.
Ideally you want to spend 30 to 90 minutes a day earthing your body to the ground, on grass, soil, or sand to reduce the stress of EMFs and boost your immune system.
At the same time why not get some sun exposure to produce some vitamin D.
You want UVB vitamin D producing rays not UVA cancer causing rays. While UVA rays penetrate the atmosphere and reach the Earth’s surface at all times of the day and throughout the year UVB rays only come through the atmosphere when the sun is high enough in the sky and this is usually around 10a to 2p during the summer and warmer months of the year (remember the sun doesn’t run by daylight savings time so keep that mind if you have that where you live). Also if you live in the upper and lower latitudes of the globe during the winter months UVB rays will not reach the surface of the planet even between the hours of 10a and 2p. So be sunsmart and protect yourself when the sun is low in the sky and expose yourself (go on I know you want to) when the sun is way up high.
Your skin colour will determine how much time you should be exposing your skin to the sun. Fare and white skinned people only need as little as five to 20 minutes a day in the sun. Dark skinned individuals may need to spend 30 to 60 minutes. Basically you want to be out long enough where you see the first signs of a tan happening on your skin, but not so long that you get burnt. You can gradually increase your time out in the sun as your skin will get used to being in the sun for longer periods. Keep in mind though that too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.
Now Shakespeare wrote:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question.”
So you could choose not to be, but that’s no fun at all!
So I’ll leave you with this poem I was inspired to write describing who we are all to be in relation to everything else.
You were designed
To be
Under the sky and
On soil
On sand and
In the sea
You were created
To be
In the bush and
In forests
With plants and
The trees
You were embodied
To be
The same as animals and
Bugs
As well as the birds and
The bees
You were born
To be
Giving
Loving
Happy and
Healthy
You are
To be
A unique
Expression of
The Universe living
Your own reality
Links and Resources
- Earthing and Grounding — EarthingInstitute.net
- ‘We Are The World’ music video
- Way of the Peaceful Warrior — Dan Millman
- Motivation Manifesto — Brendon Burchard
- The Music Lesson — Victor L Wooten
- 10 Secrets For Success and Inner Peace — Wayne Dyer
- The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success — Deepak Chopra
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring Movement:
- I’ll explain how movement is one of the most essential nutrients for your body
- I’ll talk about how a lack of movement affects your health
- Finally, I’ll talk about the different types of movement that your body expects and how to increase your consumption of real movement nutrition
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Movement is life. Life is movement. If you’re not moving you’re not living. Movement nourishes your body and mind.
Your body and mind are actually one and the same. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Dr Dan Siegel defines the mind as the following:
“The mind is an embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.”
Your mind is embodied within your entire being, your whole body, cultivating the many different life processes happening within. From your left pinky toe to your right ear lob.
Whenever I refer to your body I’m also referring to your mind and vice versa. So you can think of your body and mind as one entity called the bodymind.
Movement then moves not only the body, but the mind your entire bodymind.
Movement acts as a pump. Every time you move you contract and relax different muscles in your body and this process of restriction and expansion within each muscle acts like a pump. These pumps move water, blood, oxygen, nutrients, energy and information throughout your body. No pumping action means no nutrition for your cells.
Your lymphatic system is your waste management system and does not have a pump of its own as does your circulatory system that has the heart as a pump. Lymph fluid in your lymphatic system only moves when you move. If you don’t move then all that toxic waste just sits around in your lymphatic system and doesn’t get into your bloodstream where it can be processed for detoxification and elimination. Overtime this causes a toxic buildup in your body and when you do decide to move this will eventually overwhelm your detoxification organs such as your liver, skin, lungs, and kidneys.
You must get into the groove and move in order to transport nutrients to where they are needed the most inside of your cells and in order to transport and eliminate waste out of your body.
If you’re not moving and remain in one position for long periods of time and I’m not just talking about sitting, this applies to any long held position standing, kneeling, then your cells begin to starve due to a lack of nutrition and you also create a buildup of waste.
One of the symptoms you will experience due to a lack of movement is tiredness and low energy. When your cells do not receive the nutrients, energy and information that they need to function your metabolism begins to slow down, your bodymind begins to slow down because it’s low on nutrition and energy. Even though the energy is there inside your body your lack of movement is not transporting that energy to where it’s needed the most.
Not only does a lack of movement cause you to feel tired, but because the nutrients aren’t being transported to vital organs in your body such as your gut, heart, and brain your bodymind begins to lose focus and attention and you also begin to experience unstable mood swings and can begin to feel irritable.
Having unstable energy levels isn’t just due to a lack of nutrients reaching your cells, but also due to your inability to handle carbohydrate and sugar. Eating excess carbs and sugar creates many issues in the body including having unstable levels of blood sugar. So while you may experience an energy high at first after a carb-heavy meal or snack as the sugar rushes throughout your bloodstream it’s not too long before your energy comes crashing down as all that sugar gets quickly burnt up for energy and any excess sugar gets put into storage and then you begin to feel hungry again. You may get hungry or you may feel angry after such a sugar crash, but for me I definitely get both hungry and angry after I eat too many carbs. A phenomenon known as HANGRY!
Muscle is one area of your body where excess sugar (glucose) gets stored as glycogen. Now if you do not have enough lean muscle mass then your tolerance for carbs will be lower than someone else who has more lean muscle. One way you can maintain lean muscle is by moving. Move it or lose it right.
Also movement makes muscle cells more sensitive to the carbs you eat. After doing some high-intensity movement your muscle cells begin to scream out for nutrients and they are extremely hungry for carbs. Now your fat cells are always screaming and always hungry for additional fats made from the excess carbs and sugars you eat. But by moving your body you can at least make your muscle cells scream louder for nutrients compared to your fat cells.
So by moving you can maintain lean muscle while at the same time you can tell your muscle cells to take up most of the sugar you’re eating keeping your blood sugar levels from rising and falling too quickly. This allows you to step off and skip the next ride on the energy roller coaster.
Peristalsis is the wave-like contraction of the muscles that make up your digestive system and the more you move the more peristalsis occurs in your body meaning you will have better elimination of faecal matter — that is to say you’ll poo like a champion. Lack of movement reduces peristalsis and can make you constipated. When you’re constipated your poo sits in your colon longer than it should and water and toxins in the poo will be absorbed into your body. This reabsorption of toxins that were meant to be eliminated creates double overtime work for your liver. This extra work for your liver makes it very hungry for energy and this will cause you to feel tired and fatigued as other areas of the bodymind are not getting the energy that they need.
Also chronic constipation and exposure to toxins in your environment (such as chemicals in food and in personal and home care products) will overwhelm your liver and it will not be able to do its job 100% and usually the next organ that takes the hit for an over toxified body is the largest organ — your skin. So crap starts to come out of your skin and you can get rashes and acne all because you’re constipated and all because you are not moving and of course if you’re not well hydrated.
So if you want to move-it move-it down there you’re going to need to move-it move-it up here.
Your heart pumps blood through your circulatory system, however, it’s not a lone ranger. Your heart is part of your bodymind and works together with all other parts of your body. When you’re moving, even if it’s just fidgeting. anytime you use your skeletal muscles you’re providing additional pumps to move blood and nutrients around your body. This supports the heart so the heart no longer has to work as hard. Movement can create less strain and less stress on your heart… unless you’re doing long duration cardio, but I’ll talk more about that later.
Now this is also why sitting has been called the new smoking and why chronic sitting can lead to heart disease because without frequent movement you’re causing your heart to do more work on its own. This can create constriction in your arteries causing high blood pressure and gradually overtime due to the chronic high blood pressure and constant rushing of blood through constricted passageways in your circulatory system this will cause damage to your arteries.
Another issue with a lack of movement is your body can no longer grow and repair itself. Living life causes wear and tear on your body particularly in your muscles and joints. These are the workhorses of your body the slave workers doing hard physical labour. The cells in your muscles and joints are constantly being damaged and are dying off. If these cells are malnourished and not getting enough nutrients and energy they will not be able to repair the damage done by daily activities and the dead cells will not be replaced as quickly as they should be or will not be replaced at all. This will lead to muscle aches and joint pain. This is where slow energy-building movements come in and I’ll talk more about these soon.
So does this all mean you have to be moving 24/7 even in your sleep? No. But you do need to be moving often and change up your physical position throughout the day.
There are many different ways to incorporate movement into your life. There are informal types of movement that include play and random bouts of physical expression where there is no end goal in mind when you’re participating in the activity. So you can play outside, you can walk, run, hop, skip, jump. You can climb trees and literally just hang out and pull yourself up. You can swim, ski, go hiking, or mountain climbing. All this movement counts and yes this even includes sexy times.
Formal types of movement include training and exercise where you have particular disciplined movement patterns that require skill, proper form, and correct technique to perform.
Just as there are nutritious foods with different types of nutrients and fake foods with no nutrition whatsoever, there are also nutritious movement patterns with different types of movement nutrients and fake movement patterns with barely any movement nutrition.
One fake movement pattern that does more harm than good overtime is chronic long duration cardio. Yes joggers, cyclists, and marathon runners alike are all performing an unnatural act as it relates to your bodymind. Long duration cardio has many benefits as most movements do, but unfortunately chronically performing this type of exercise has one massive downside and that is the increase in heart muscle mass and rigidity. Your heart is a muscle and with chronic overuse this turns to abuse as the heart becomes rigid leading to heart conditions as endurance athletes age.
Another fake movement is seen in the competitive sport of bodybuilding. Again another unnatural act that puts too much strain on the bodymind as a whole and couple that with the use of artificial enhancements and drugs and it’ll lead to a lower quality of life as these athletes age.
Now there’s nothing wrong if you participate in these activities to a point. You can run marathons and become a bodybuilder for health reasons, but once you get competitive at these sports health tends to go out the window. Once you realise that you are doing something your body was not designed for and knowing that you may have to do unnatural things in order to participate you will be able to modify other aspects of your lifestyle to compensate.
There are three main types of nutritious movement your body really loves and was designed for in terms of living a happy, healthy, and long quality life.
Now before I get into these three nutritious movement patterns understand that your body doesn’t run off calories alone. Hormones play a huge role in determining the health of your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. These three nutritious movement patterns turn on fat-burning and growth hormones, and increase sex hormones. While these three types of movement may not burn as many calories as other forms of exercise they also won’t put your body under massive amounts of stress like other forms of exercise [cough] chronic long duration cardio. Anyhoo…
First nutritious movement is lifting really heavy things aka high intensity training. Strength training can involve weights and machines, but there’s nothing wrong and everything right with using your own body as resistance. If you’re new to lifting heavy things you will want to go through three different stages of body conditioning and preparation work beforehand to reduce your chance of injury: mobilisation, stabilisation, and flexibility. By making sure your joints and muscles are mobile and flexible enough to handle weight and by conditioning your core muscles to share the load evenly you will dramatically reduce your risk of injury. You’ll need to find a skilled exercise coach and personal trainer for this and I suggest looking for CHEK Practitioners in your area. Highly skilled with holistic and functional training CHEKkies are one the best trainers, rehabilitators, and physical therapists in the world. You can find them at chekconnect.com.
Two more great resources for conditioning your body are the books Foundation by Dr Eric Goodman and Peter Park and Becoming A Supple Leopard by Dr Kelly Starrett and Glen Cordoza.
With this strength training you want to be lifting at high intensities. So this doesn’t mean 5 sets and 30 repetitions of the same exercise. High intensity is more like 1-5 sets of 3-5 reps of a single exercise with 3-5 minutes of rest in between each set. You only need to spend about 30-50 minutes in the gym for one of these workouts. Another way to perform at high intensities is by lifting and lowering weights very slowly. This type of slow resistance workout takes less than 20 minutes to complete and can be done by anyone over the age of 16. Check out the book Body By Science by Doug McGuff and John Little for more on this slow resistance training.
Next nutritious movement pattern is sprint intervals or high intensity interval training. If you were to look at a marathon runner’s body compared to a sprinter’s body you’ll notice one isn’t quite as lean and muscle bound as the other. The sprinter’s body looks healthier because of the hormonal effects that sprint training provides.
Sprint interval training involves warming up for a few minutes and then going all out for a certain period of time and then resting for a certain period of time and repeating this pattern a certain number of times. You can use a spin bike, treadmill, or a real bike and sprint for real. You can even use weights. Any movement can be turned into high intensity interval training as it’s based on working at your hardest energy output for a set period then resting. I personally use a spin bike and warm up for three minutes. My first interval starts off with 30 seconds of going all out and then resting for 90 seconds where I go at an extremely slow recovery pace. I repeat this interval seven more times with a five minute cooldown afterwards. So that makes a total of eight sprints and a total of four minutes of actual physical high intensity activity.
I used to do 40 mins on the bike before I learnt about sprint training and it’s made me more time efficient and has been a lot more effective at improving my health.
So right away you can see these first two movement patterns are not exactly long workouts, but they are definitely intense and once done your bodymind bathes in the positive hormonal afterglow that follows.
Final nutritious movement pattern involves moving slowly and moving often aka not being stuck in one position all day every day. These movement patterns you can call working in instead of working out. Workouts drain your body of energy, whereas working in cultivates and builds energy within your bodymind.
The most simplest and easiest work-in of them all is to breathe. You don’t even have to get out of bed for this one. Taking relaxing diaphragmatic belly breaths through the nose as described in a previous episode I did on breathing moves your body in all three dimensions as your belly expands forward, ribcage expands sideways, and your spine expands up and down.
Another easy work-in movement pattern is walking. Very simple, you don’t have to strain yourself, just walk. Maybe start off with 30 minutes a day so get a timer, set it for 15 minutes, start off on your walk and once the timer goes off you walk back.
Next work-ins are Tai-chi and Qi-gong. These are very slow forms of movement and are more meditative in nature. Along these lines of movements are Zone exercises which are a form of Qi-gong where you do the exercise not so much for meditation (but they can be used this way), but more for healing a specific health complaint that you may have. To find out more about these Zone exercises look up the book How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! by holistic health practitioner Paul Chek.
Yoga is another form of working in. Now I’m not talking hot Bikram melt-in-your-clothes yoga that’s more of a workout, but Hatha and Iyengar yoga. That’s the yoga you want for working in.
One final tip for those stuck in a chair most of the day or stuck being in one set position for long periods of time. No amount of movement can reverse the damage caused to your arteries from being chronically stuck in the same position all day. You need to break up the static pattern with either frequent dynamic movements or by simply changing position. So set a timer to 25 minutes and every time it goes off get up for a few minutes and go for a quick stroll around the building or go outside or simply do air or chair squats, lunges, or march on the spot. If you’re fortunate enough to have a workstation that can be raised and lowered simply change from a sitting to a standing position throughout the day.
Just don’t stay in the one position for longer than an hour.
I’ll leave you with this:
“Life is a dance and Mother Nature only dances with those who dance and move along with her.”
If you ain’t movin’ and you ain’t groovin’ then Mother Nature’s bouncers aka bacteria, fungi, and parasites will gladly show you the door.
Links and Resources
- ChekConnect.com for Holistic and Functional Exercise Coaches and Therapists
- Body By Science — Doug McGuff MD, John Little
- WGP 004: How to Breathe for an Awesome Life
- Foundation — Dr. Eric Goodman, Peter Park
- Becoming a Supple Leopard — Dr. Kelly Starrett, Glen Cordoza
- How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! — Paul Chek
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring a topic I’m very familiar with Digestion:
- I’ll explain how proper digestion works and its many different stages
- I’ll talk about poor digestion and how it can affect your health
- Finally, I’ll give some digestion rituals that you can practise to increase the absorption and usage of the nutrition and energy and information you get from eating real food
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Digestion can be broken up into two main phases. First is the psychic phase. Second is the physical phase.
The first phase deals with your mind, with your emotional and mental state and the choices you make when it comes to eating. So what you choose to eat, when you choose to eat, how you choose to eat, and the whys behind each choice are the beginning of your digestive process.
I will focus on the second phase of digestion in this episode the physical phase and there are many different stages.
Remember from a previous episode that your enteron, your alimentary canal, your entire digestive tubing from your mouth hole to your south hole is technically outside your body. It is your body’s first line of defence against anything you put into your mouth. It is in your gut where the stuff you eat finally gets absorbed into your body.
The first stage of physical digestion begins in the mouth when you eat and chew your food. Mastication, that is the mechanical physical act of chewing, breaks up the food into smaller pieces making it easier to swallow and mixes it with the digestive enzymes in your saliva. These enzymes begin to break down the macronutrients in the food, specifically carbohydrates into smaller starch molecules. So properly chewing your food makes it easier for later stages of your digestive process to function.
The second stage of physical digestion happens in your stomach. The acidity of your stomach is very high. It can burn skin and dissolve metal and if it wasn’t for the thick mucous membrane that lines your stomach it would eat itself. One reason for the high acidity in your stomach is to further digest and breakdown food molecules, specifically proteins from long chains of amino acids (polypeptides) to smaller ones. Another big reason for a very low pH (meaning a very high acid level) in your stomach is to ensure that any bacteria, fungi, or parasites that have stowed away in the food and come along for the ride are killed and destroyed. You do not want these bad bugs to go any further than your stomach.
The next stage of physical digestion is in your small intestine. Now your small intestine has a very different pH level compared to your stomach meaning it is more alkaline and not acidic at all — in fact its neutral. This is because your pancreas, an organ that secretes digestive enzymes and hormones, also releases bicarbonate into your small intestine to neutralise the acidic foods coming from the stomach.
The digestive enzymes secreted by your pancreas further breakdown the carbohydrates into saccharides (smaller sugar molecules) like glucose and fructose, the proteins get broken down into individual and very small chains of amino acids, and fats are also broken down into individual fatty acids. As the food travels further into your small intestine the digested macronutrients and micronutrients (remember micronutrients include vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, and plant nutrients) so the macros and micros begin to get absorbed through the gut wall of your small intestine. Once absorbed saccharides and amino acids travel to your liver to be processed and detoxified before they enter your bloodstream. Fats take a different route to your bloodstream by hitching a ride through your lymphatic system, your waste management system.
Once in your bloodstream the absorbed macros and micros get transported to where they are needed most and assimilated by your cells and metabolised, used for cellular function. The waste products of metabolism are then taken back to the liver for processing and elimination through the skin by sweating, lungs by breathing, kidneys by urination, and the large intestine your colon by defecation, that is pooping.
Now going back to the small intestine any undigested food particles, macros, micros, and fibre that are not absorbed through the gut wall of your small intestine will move on to your colon for the final stage of digestion.
The colon is where your gut microbiota lives and has a lower pH and higher acidity level than your small intestine, but still nowhere near as acidic as your stomach. You will have a diverse population of microorganisms here and what you really want is a well-balanced ratio of good bugs (probiotics) to bad bugs (pathogens). That ideal ratio is about 85% probiotics to 15% pathogens. The more probiotics in your gut the more lactic acid they produce. The more lactic acid produced the higher the acidity of the colon. The higher the acidity of the colon the lower the number of pathogens as the bad bugs cannot thrive in an acidic environment.
Your gut microbiota take up any undigested food particles, macros, micros as well as prebiotic soluble fibre and use these as their food. As a result of your gut microbiotas digestion more nutrients and waste are created.
Nutrients such as vitamin K, some B vitamins, and short chain fatty acids are produced by the probiotics. The pathogens on the other hand produce toxic waste products. These additional nutrients produced by the probiotics as well as water in the colon will be absorbed into your body. At the same time any leftover foods, macros, micros, and fibre that are not digested by your gut microbiota along with any waste products made by the pathogens and also any dead cells of your gut microbiota these will all form into faeces, into poo for final elimination.
So to summarise the many different stages of digestion in a sentence: digestion begins in the mouth and ends in the south and involves mastication, digestion, absorption, detoxification, transportation, assimilation, metabolisation, and elimination.
If there is a problem in any one of these stages you will encounter many symptoms of poor digestion including:
- Diarrhea
- Constipation
- Gas
- Bloating
- Belching
- Stomach reflux
- Feeling tired after meals
- Feeling hungry after meals
- Muscle and joint pain including neck, shoulder, and back pain
So a few causes of poor digestion include dehydration due to not drinking enough water.
Your saliva, mucous membranes in your stomach and small and large intestines are mostly water. If you’re dehydrated you won’t be providing enough enzymes in your mouth to begin predigesting your food. Your stomach lining which protects it from the acid will be weak leading to the formation of stomach ulcers. Your small and large intestines will not be able to breakdown food and push the food through your gastrointestinal tract effectively causing lack of nutrient absorption and blockages.
Your poo is also mostly water so when you become dehydrated you get constipated. The longer poo remains in your colon the more water is extracted and absorbed into your body and the more constipated you get. Not only that, but the waste in your poo which is meant to be eliminated begins to get absorbed into your body as well. So you want to make sure you’re hydrated otherwise you will begin recycling your waste back into your body.
Another cause for poor digestion is eating the wrong foods and taking pharmaceutical drugs and prescribed medications. So if you’re eating processed fake pretend food-like products such as vegetable oils, table salt, instant coffee, pasteurised dairy, wheat and any other packaged junk foods you will cause problems with your digestion. This is due to the fact that these foods are very micronutrient poor and are filled with chemical agents, preservatives, additives, colourings, thickeners, emulsifiers, synthetic minerals and vitamins which are very damaging to your gut and feed more of the pathogens and less of the probiotics. Medications have the same effect.
Eating a lot of these foods and taking drugs also causes your liver to work overtime to get rid of the toxins and because there’s more energy being drawn to your liver to process this junk there’s less energy available to other areas of your body. So instead of building muscle, burning fat, thinking clearly, healing and repairing, fighting off infections your body is too busy trying to detoxify what you’re putting into your mouth.
Plus by not eating enough micronutrients you end up with cells in your body starving of nutrition unable to function leading to illness
Drinking municipal town and city water that has chlorine in it can also upset your digestion. Chlorine is an antibiotic meaning it will kill a lot of your gut microbiome leaving behind the perfect environment for opportunistic pathogens to takeover leading to less nutrient production, more waste production, a weakened immune system and eventually sickness and disease.
So if you’re not drinking enough water, not eating real food, not staying healthy and so not having to take medical drugs, and if you’re not drinking high quality living structured water then you are putting more stress on your body than it can handle.
Stress of any kind whether it be physical, mental and emotional, or biochemical and physiological will cause digestive issues.
How you think and feel about events in your life affect your stress levels and determines whether your body stays in parasympathetic mode your rest, digest, calm, and connect mode or shifts to sympathetic mode your fight, flight, flee or freeze mode. Remember sympathetic mode is all about survival and not about digesting, growth or repair which is what parasympathetic is all about.
So even though you may be eating the highest quality organically farmed, naturally raised food blessed by the Pope himself you will not be digesting and absorbing any of the nutrients if you are in a high stress state. If you’re rushing out the door late for something, arguing with someone, getting frustrated in traffic, watching and reading bad things in the news, these are all causing your body to shift from digestion to survival mode.
So the first phase of digestion, the mental game is really huge when it comes to properly digesting your food. If you can correct the psychic phase of digestion your physical digestion will work a lot better.
The biggest problem with stress of any kind is that it causes physical damage to your gut. Your gut wall is made up of finger like projections called villi that stick out to breakdown food and absorb nutrients and they are connected to each other by tight junctions at their base. When you eat the wrong foods or a toxin or experience stress which will cause the release of stress hormones and other chemicals, all of these act as irritants in your gut causing those tight junctions between your villi to open up. This is bad news as only nutrients should be allowed through your gut wall, but now your gut has become leaky meaning any substance in your gut whether it be nutrient or toxic or parasite, small or large, can slip into your body. This causes a whole cascade of stress, immune responses, inflammation and damage to whatever bodily tissue that foreign substance attaches to. It may attach to your arteries, your joints, your thyroid, your bones, your muscles, your brain, leading to a whole bunch of diseases.
Remember what Hippocrates said:
“All disease begins in the gut.”
A leaky gut is serious business and I should know because I used to have one!
So you must be very aware of what you’re thinking and how you’re eating and that’s what I’m going to go into now — how do you eat for better digestion?
As I mentioned in a previous episode on water drinking a huge glass of water 20-30 minutes before a meal will improve digestion by lubricating your gut and your stomach and helping with the production of stomach acid as well as more saliva in your mouth giving you more enzymes to breakdown food.
The biggest tip I can give you is to eat real food and drink high quality water. The less toxins you ingest the more nutrition you will digest, absorb, and assimilate.
There’s an old saying:
“Drink your food and chew your water.”
You want to chew your food until it turns into a liquid. There’s no specific number of bites, but you’ll know what it is by the fact that you should not need to drink during a meal. If you’re finding yourself having to drink during a meal to get your food down that’s a huge sign telling you that you ain’t chewing enough.
Chew your liquids. Swirl your drink around in your mouth to allow your saliva and enzymes to infuse into the liquid so that your stomach and later stages of digestion recognise it as food and digest it as normal. Not chewing your water leads to it going right through your body with hardly any absorption at all.
Don’t watch or read the news. 99.9% of it is negative causing stress in your subconscious and your body. If you want to watch something or read something it should be a comedy. It should be inspirational and motivational. Or listen to music that makes you more mindful. Calming music not rev-yourself-up music. Me I love to watch the Food Channel of course or I’m listening to empowering podcasts while I eat.
Final tip if you have to go, number two that is, then go! I used to hold it in and I had trained my body to not go even when it wanted to go and eventually that lead to constipation with acute and sudden bouts of diarrhea, also known as constirrhea. If you’re currently fighting the urge to go number two it’s not too late to retrain your body back to its natural state by listening to it and when the urge comes you go and you go hard.
I’ll leave you with this:
“You’re not just what you eat, you’re how you eat as well.”
So eat real food and eat it well to keep your gut happy, healthy, and leakproof.
Links and Resources
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this podcast I’ll be exploring Water and Hydration:
- I’ll explain what water is and what it does in your body
- I’ll talk about how not getting enough water affects your health and the importance of water quality
- Finally, I’ll give some simple tips on how to know if you’re dehydrated and how to improve your hydration and overall health
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
You cannot survive a week without water making H2O one the most important nutrients for your body. Water covers around 70% of planet Earth. Your body is about 30% solid and 70% water. Also, your blood has a similar amount of salinity as ocean water. Isn’t it amazing how similar your physical body is to that of the Earth? I mean it’s as if you and Mother Nature are intimately connected and ultimately come from the same place. Well I think it’s an awesome idea.
Anyhoo…
Water comes in three well-known forms or phases — liquid, solid, and gas — but there is also a fourth phase of water called Exclusion Zone, EZ water, or living water. If you’d like to learn more about EZ water I recommend the book The Fourth Phase Of Water by Gerald Pollack. It’s a beast of a book too nerdy for me believe it or not, but was still a very profound read for me personally.
Water is a solvent meaning it dissolves other substances creating a solution, a mix of water and whatever is in the water. The best quality drinking water is not naked water meaning it’s not just H2O. Health affirming water also has minerals, trace minerals, electrolytes and other stuff inside of it. The measurement of these inorganic and organic substances found within water is called Total Dissolved Solids or TDS. I’ll come back to this later.
When you look at water in its frozen phase you can see crystals within the ice. In its liquid state water still has these crystal-like structures. So water is a liquid crystal and just as LCD technology makes use of these liquid crystals to store and transmit energy and information in LCD televisions your body uses water in much the same way.
Energy, nutrition, hormones, neurotransmitters, and waste products are stored, transmitted and transported around your body and eliminated in your sweat, in your urine, and in your poo all thanks to water. Water!
Your blood is mostly water. The lymph found in your lymphatic system your sewage system is mostly water. The cerebral spinal fluid that surrounds your brain and spine is made up of water. Synovial fluid, which provides lubrication for your joints and the discs in your spine, again water. About 80% of your brain is water.
Water also provides stability and integrity to the cells in your body giving them proper structure and form as it makes up part of the cytoplasm, which is the thick solution or gel inside each cell.
If your body is too acidic due to high sugar consumption and chronic stress for example it will retain water in order to buffer and stabilise your pH levels leading to additional weight gain. Also, for every gram of carbohydrate you eat your body will hold onto 4 grams of water. Meaning if you’re eating too many carbo-HYDRATES your body will be heavier on the scale and look softer in the mirror. So unless you like feeling bloated and looking so fluffy dropping a lot of processed and refined sugars from your diet may be action step number one in your ‘improve body composition’ plan.
So without the right amount of hydration all of these different areas of your body will begin to slowly, but surely breakdown and as a plum becomes a prune your body will become a flat wrinkled empty skin-bag of puny muscles and porous bones. It’s crucial to keep yourself hydrated with high quality water.
According to internationally renowned researcher, author, and advocate of the natural healing power of water Dr F Batmanghelidj in his book Your Body’s Many Cries For Water (which I highly recommend) the Doc says:
“… even 1% dehydration of the central nervous system can cause significant psychological disorders. “
Other symptoms of dehydration include:
- Weight gain as mentioned earlier
- Thirst and hunger
- Low energy
- Lower fat-burning
- Infrequent urination and dark coloured urine
- Constipation — your poo is about 70% water
- Headaches, back pain, other aches and pain in general
- Reduced sweating
- Arthritis
- Asthma
- Irregular blood pressure
- Poor digestion
- Dry eyes
- Dry mouth — actually the last thing to occur when your body is dehydrated is when you get dry mouth
Water water everywhere yet why are we so sick? Water quality is crucial to proper hydration and functioning of your body and mind.
Municipal tap water or town and city water is probably the lowest quality water available today. Due to the water source and the fact that water has to travel through a system of pipes decades old local governments add a few chemicals to treat tap water in order to make it safe to drink. Unfortunately this so-called safety comes at a cost.
One of those chemicals is chlorine, which is a bleach and it definitely works and does the job of killing the bad bugs in the water. However, drinking chlorine kills the good bugs in your gastrointestinal tract. Your gut is filled with billions of different colonies and species of microorganisms called your gut microbiota. In fact there are more microorganism cells than human cells in the human body meaning your body actually isn’t your body at all! These microorganisms provide many beneficial functions such as:
- Improving digestion
- Producing vitamins
- Boosting the immune system
- Keeping the bad bugs in line
I’ll talk more about your microbiome in another show, but taking antibiotics, which includes drinking chlorinated water destroys the balance of your microbiota and basically wipes out your microbiome leaving behind a wasteland in your gut similar to that seen in post-apocalyptic futuristic movies like Mad Max. Now just as a city with no law enforcement ends up with rioters and looters first on the scene ransacking the place guess who are the first to show up in your gut after antibiotic exposure? The bad bacteria.
So being exposed to chlorine and antibiotics are bad for your health.
Another chemical used in tap water is a known neurotoxin called fluoride. Authorities say ‘fluoridated water is required for dental health’. So they’re basically telling you ‘we’re going to medicate you because you have no clue how to look after your own teeth’. They are literally treating us with a chemical they call medicine and last time I checked I never gave them permission to drug me with this crap. I mean where does this end? Why not put statins or beta-blockers in the water or how about vitamin C and omega-3s.
Fluoride is an ingredient used in pesticides and is also an industrial waste product. It has no health benefits and has been shown to contribute to many diseases:
- Cancer
- Hip fractures
- Dental Fluorosis (even though it’s meant to improve dental health)
- Neurological impairment
- Learning disorders
- Lower IQ in children
All of this has been researched and proven, but because governments and big industry are so intertwined and in bed with each other of course they’re going to want to recycle their waste products and want to make more money at the expense of their fellow man. They did it with genetically modified corn and soy so why not toxic chemicals as well. Soy protein isolate is a waste product of soybean oil production, but instead of dumping the stuff they market all forms of soy as healthy tricking you the consumer into consuming that toxic rubbish. Soy protein isolate is found in health bars, protein powders, and worst of all baby formula!
Man! I just get so frustrated with the fact that you put your trust in the authorities to do what’s right, but it’s blind faith and it’s misplaced and you need to do your own research and not trust anything anyone says. Including me! Always try out for yourself what I recommend. It’s not true, it’s not real until you give it a go and see if it works for you.
Dr Robert Carlton a former US Environmental Protection Agency scientist himself said that fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud of the century.
Okay another thing when you eat something it has to go through your liver first before it’s allowed into your bloodstream. Now 60% of anything you put on your skin gets absorbed directly into your bloodstream and anything you inhale also goes directly into your bloodstream as both of these pathways bypass the liver. When you’re having a hot shower not only are you absorbing chlorine and fluoride via your skin the heat vaporises the water turning it into a gas and you’re breathing this stuff in. So you’re getting a double whammy of toxic exposure! Ouch!
Oh it gets worse.
Effluent water (water that’s drained from sewage waste) is allowed to be dumped as natural waste leaving it to penetrate groundwater (water in the soil), streams, rivers, and oceans with a lot of it ending up in aquifers (underground lakes of pure clean water). Also, effluent water is recycled in water treatment plants allowing it to be reused as tap water. Finally, effluent water is used for irrigation of crops. Problem is sewage water is full of pharmaceutical drug, pain-killer, antipsychotic, antidepressant, birth-control, hormone, antibiotic, and other prescription drug chemicals due to them being pirssed and pooped out of sick people and flushed down the toilet. So the tap water you’re drinking, bathing in, and gardening with and any food that you eat that’s been grown with recycled city sewage water could be overdosing you with medications, making you infertile, disrupting your hormone levels, and killing the microbiome on your skin and in your gut.
But wait there’s more. Listen to this extract from a book called Under the Veil of Deception by Paul Chek:
“Today we drink water that is heavily contaminated with nitrates, heavy metals, and synthetic chemicals, including pesticides and medical drugs. No commercial sewage system or water treatment purification plants can entirely remove all these contaminants and some barely remove any.”
So now you can add even more toxins to the list of bad things for your health that are in your tap water and the fact that water treatment plants don’t remove 100% of those toxic chemicals from the water.
Bottled water isn’t the ideal solution for your dilution requirements as well. Specifically water in plastic bottles. The reason plastic bottles are bad are due to the fact that they contain xenoestrogens. A xenoestrogen is a foreign chemical compound found in the environment that when it enters your body acts in a similar way to your own estrogen hormones. Plastics are one big xenoestrogen bomb. Overtime and especially when exposed to heat say a plastic bottle left inside a car on a hot summer’s day the chemicals in the plastic start to leach into the water. Remember water is a solvent so it’ll dissolve those compounds right into itself. Now I remember the taste of water from a plastic water bottle left in the heat or even the taste from a frozen plastic bottle of water that I’d leave to thaw overnight or during the day. They had a very distinct and interesting flavours. No doubt about it. Now I know why.
Once consumed these xenoestrogens get picked up by the cells in your body and can affect your body in many different ways. Once your cells have picked up these xenoestrogens your own natural estrogen hormones have no place to go so are eliminated. Overtime this will tax your liver and elimination pathways causing them to overwork and this will eventually lead to an imbalance in your hormonal profile due to the fact that your cells think they have what they need and are telling your brain ‘hey, we got plenty of estrogen, no need to make so much’ and so your body produces less estrogen and has to deal with eliminating both your natural estrogen and the foreign estrogen-like compound. Problem is the xenoestrogens have massive hormonal impacts on your cells. In some people it makes your body estrogen dominant meaning too much estrogen leading to cancer in women and man boobs or moobs in men. For others it can make you deficient in estrogen making you testosterone dominant leading to cancer in guys and excess facial hair growth in women. So yeah eventually you will get illness and disease showing up due to a lack of your own estrogen and because of the ill effects of those xenoestrogens in your cells.
Now how do you go about getting the highest quality water available to you?
One thing you can do at home is install a water filtration system. Home, tap, and shower head filters are ways you can treat the municipal water entering your home. You want to make sure that your filter gets rid of chlorine (the chemical itself, not just the odour and taste) as well as fluoride if you have fluoride in your local city water. There are a few filtration systems to choose from.
Reverse osmosis systems can be expensive not just for the equipment, but also due to the fact that it takes three parts water to produce just one part of drinking water. Now RO water does filter out the toxins, but the problem is RO also filters out the minerals in the water leaving you with naked, hungry, unstructured water. Hungry water when drunk will leach minerals from your body so daily drinking of this type of water will cause mineral deficiencies in your body overtime leading to, you guessed it, illness and disease. Short-term use of hungry water is fine for detoxification purposes, but I would not go more than a week personally of drinking hungry demineralised water. You can fix this issue by restructuring and remineralising hungry water by adding pinches of real sea salt or juice from a lemon.
Distilled filtering systems actually do a much better job of removing all material from water compared to RO systems making distilled water the hungriest water of them all, basically dead water. Even adding sea salt and lemon juice won’t be enough to feed this water and to make it living water again so use sparingly for detox purposes only.
Carbon and charcoal filtration systems are a cheaper option and keep the minerals in the water.
You can filter just your drinking tap or your showerhead or if you’re able to you can install a whole house water filtration system. Right now in the house I’m living in there is a whole house filter for chlorine and a drinking tap filter that removes both chlorine and fluoride. It cost about a grand to install and $250 a year for replacement cartridges. Not a bad investment I think. No need to go running out for bottled water and definitely notice the health improvements from no longer drinking chemicals with the water. It has also improved the flavour of stews and other meals cooked with the water. I’ve also noticed after a shower my skin isn’t as dry and my eyes aren’t as red.
Filtered water isn’t the best water though with spring and artesian well water being the best two choices of living, structured, mineral water. Spring water is the purest form of water that has bubbled up from aquifers (underground lakes) picking up minerals as it travels through the rocks giving it a high mineral content, a high total dissolved solids count, and a neutral pH. Artesian well water comes from the same aquifers, but hasn’t matured so to speak and sprung up out of the earth hence having to dig a well for it. Still very pure with a neutral pH, and good TDS reading, but not as high a mineral count as spring water.
If you don’t have access to a local spring look for bottled spring or well water with a neutral pH between seven and eight and a TDS of 200 minimum with 300 or greater recommended.
When going for plastic bottled water make sure to buy the most popular brand in that area as these bottles are not going to be sitting around for long periods of time meaning there’ll be less chance of plastic chemicals leaching into the water.
What you really want in terms of bottled water is glass. Glass bottled water will remove the issue of foreign chemicals leaching into your drinking water entirely.
Also again with bottled water whether it be plastic or glass you really need to check the source of the water. Most bottled water is just tap water remarketed so be cautious and make sure the source of the water is from a spring or artesian well. As an example Coke Cola has a few different brands of bottled water out there and they have been shown to be acidic malnourishing liquid leechers. I’ll put a link to a YouTube video showing fellow holistic health practitioner Angie Lustrick testing the pH of different brands of bottled water to prove that point.
Side note if you’re an athlete in need of quick rehydration with electrolytes get rid of those Gatorades and Powerades, which are full of sugar and artificial sweeteners. Stick to coconut water. Coconut water is Mother Nature’s electrolyte elixir that will both fuel and rehydrate you to the finish line without any negative side-effects.
Alright how do you know if you’re drinking enough water? A few things you can look at. Check the colour of your piss. Your urine should be a light pale yellow colour. Not completely clear as this is a sign of either over-hydration or your body trying to get rid of toxins and irritants (such as those found in teas and coffee). Your piss shouldn’t be a dark colour it shouldn’t be orange or brown. If it is you’re dehydrated.
Next tip is actually one of the best at-home medical tests you can do to figure out not just your hydration status, but also how healthy you are overall and it’s free. Examine your poo. Yes you need to turn around and expect the results of your bowel movements and yes I do this every time. Saves going to the doctor when I can just read the cues in my poos and change how I’m living accordingly. You should be expressing from your bottom pooping easily without strain nice smooth fluffy non-foul smelling sausage like poos. There is a chart of different types of poos called the Bristol Stool Chart (BSC) (I like poos better than stool) that you can look at and ideally you want type three and four poos. I’ll put a link to the chart in the show notes. If you’re constipated and pooping out little sheep pellets (types one and two on the BSC) then you need more water. If you have diarrhea (the last three types on the chart) you also need to increase your water intake as your body is quickly removing toxins from the system and this process uses up a lot of water.
Another simple thing you can do to check your hydration levels is to use the pinch test. So on the back of your wrist grab a pinch of skin for a few seconds — go on do it now — let go and it should return to normal in less than a second. The longer it takes to return to normal the more dehydrated you are.
Some bonus tips to help you with digestion.
Drink water at room temperature. If you’re drinking icy cold water it’s just going to hang out in your stomach. Your intestines don’t like the shock of extreme cold so the water will stick around until it’s warm enough to be released in your gut.
Also drink a big glass of water 20-30 minutes before your meals. This helps lubricate your gut and helps with the production of stomach acid and digestive enzymes getting your digestive juices primed and ready for action. Don’t drink a lot during your meal as this will actually dilute the acid in your stomach causing the food to hang out there longer than it should. If you need to drink take small sips throughout the meal. Don’t skull it down.
Last tip is to chew your water! Take a sip, swirl the water around your mouth for 1-2 seconds and then swallow. By doing so you are infusing the digestive enzymes in your saliva into the water meaning when it does reach your stomach your body recognises the fact that you’ve purposefully ingested this liquid and will begin to take it in. Water that you skull down that doesn’t have your salivary enzymes in it goes in and out your body in one fell swoop. So to stop wasting the water you’re drinking and to reduce the number of visits to the toilet — chew your water.
Finally, how much water should you be drinking? A good rule of them, remember this is a general guideline it is not law and it depends on what you’ve been doing that day, your activity level, the stress in your life, the temperature of your environment. It’s a guideline a place for you to start from, okay. So a general guideline multiply your body weight in kgs by 0.033 and that’s how much water in litres you should be drinking daily or if you’re still in the dark ages and measure your body weight in lbs then drink half your body weight in ounces of water a day, okay.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Dr Batmanghelidj:
“You’re not sick, you’re thirsty. Don’t treat thirst with medication.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself Doc. Next round of spring water is on me!
Links and Resources
- The Fourth Phase Of Water — Gerald Pollack
- Your Body’s Many Cries For Water — F Batmanghelidj MD
- Under the Veil of Deception –Paul Chek
- YouTube Video — Is Your Water Making You SICK?
- Bristol Stool Chart
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS
Rebounder
(view product page)
Rebounders are mini trampolines that support your body’s innate detoxification system through the act of rebounding (jumping on a mini trampoline).
Toxins are moved out of cells and transported out of the body through the lymphatic system, which is a circulatory drainage system for anything the body cannot utilise and is a major player in detoxification. The lymphatic system functions only during muscular contraction. This includes any type of movement.
Rebounding is an extremely low impact mobility/detoxification practise with no long-term adverse effects on your joints making it the best way to work your muscles and to move lymph within the body.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links that may provide monetary compensation to help support the Whole Guidance Vision of Creating a Happy and Healthy Planet should you make a purchase. We very much appreciate and thank you for your support.