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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
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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
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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
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Change Your Brain, Change Your Life – Daniel G. Amen MD
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To quell anxiety and panic:
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Develop total focus with the One-Page Miracle
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Follow the “get unstuck” writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Materialism and Spiritualism:
- I’ll explain what materialism and spiritualism really mean
- I’ll talk about the dark and the light sides of each one
- Finally, I’ll share how you can best balance the material world with a spiritual life
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Depending on the definition used you could think materialism and spiritualism are two sides of the same coin or are totally unrelated.
The following set of definitions show how these two belief systems are actually connected.
Materialism is the belief that nothing exists except for physical matter.
Spiritualism is the belief that spirit is the fundamental element of all reality.
What we have here are total opposites and yet this is exactly what makes them totally connected. How?
In the podcast I did on the philosophy of Yin and Yang I explained how these two forces of the Universe are both opposing each other, but at the same time are interconnected to each other. The potential for Yin, the seed of Yin grows from inside Yang and vice versa. You cannot have one without the other.
For example day and night, hot and cold, fear and love, each of these are opposites of each other, but you could never know one without experiencing the other as it is from day that night comes, it is after heat cools that you feel cold, and it is after you’ve faced fear that love can be expressed… and vice versa for all of these.
Matter and spirit are different yes, but they come from within each other.
The physical world is made up of matter, right. The sun, the moon, the Earth, your body these are all material objects.
The spiritual world is made up of energy. The sun’s radiation, the moons gravitational pull, the Earth’s electromagnetic field, your body’s aura and light signature these are all spiritual elements or units of energy.
So here you have physical objects radiating, emanating, and producing energy. But, not only do physical objects produce energy, but physical matter itself is made up of and moved by energy.
If you had a powerful physics microscope and looked at your hand under the smallest zoom setting you would see the peaks and valleys of your skin. Increase the zoom a little and you’d see the individual cells that make up these peaks and valleys. Zoom in further and you’d see the organelles, the little organs inside one of these cells. Zoom in again and you’d see the molecules making up the parts of the cell and organelles. Zoom in even further and you’d see the individual atoms making up these molecules. Zoom in once again and you begin to see protons, neutrons, and electrons the building blocks of atoms. What, more zooming? Yes and this time you’ll see the fundamental building blocks of the universe called quantum particles and forces some of which include quarks, leptons, electromagnetism, and gravity.
Now if you were to zoom in one last time on a quark or a lepton, guess what you’d see? Nothing! You would see absolutely empty space. However, this space isn’t actually empty as it’s full of pure energy and this energy is constantly vibrating, it’s twirling and swirling, it’s moving and grooving. It’s a little vortex of energy constantly in motion.
So ultimately your hand is made up of, held together, and animated by energy in motion.
So we had physical matter producing energy and now we see that energy makes and moves physical matter. Yin and Yang at it again.
Energy is pure potential and unlimited possibility and it’s only when this energy accumulates and concentrates to form matter that you see that possibility come to life. So without energy there would be no matter, but without matter you wouldn’t even realise, you wouldn’t know that energy even existed.
In other words:
“Spirit expresses itself as matter and matter is proof that spirit exists.”
You may want to meditate on the last line I just said there as it’s actually quite a deep philosophical insight that could help you explain certain unknowns and mysteries about the universe.
So that’s how matter and spirit are connected according to the first set of definitions I gave earlier. If you’d like to have personal real world experience interacting with matter and energy I highly recommend two books by Pam Grout, E-Squared and E-Cubed. These two books have 18 experiments that you can do in your own home to see for yourself how matter and energy or spirit work together to create your reality.
Anyhoo… with this second set of definitions I’m about to give materialistic and spiritualistic ways of being look totally unrelated.
Materialism is to place more worth and receive more comfort from physical objects and material possessions. So materialism is all about receiving wealth and admiration through material possession.
Spiritualism is being able to communicate with the spirits of dead people. So spiritualism is all about receiving guidance and connection through spiritual communication.
So yeah according to these two definitions materialism and spiritualism don’t really seem to relate to each other… or do they?
As I go through the dark and light sides of each of these definitions there actually is a connection between the two.
Okay so the dark side of being too materialistic is that a materialistic person sees only what is directly in front of them and believes that they need to accumulate more and more stuff because they have been told that the more you have then the more important and the more successful you are. So unfortunately for people that follow this materialistic belief system to the extreme their self worth and happiness is directly connected to how much they have in the bank, how big and how decorated their house is, how many cars they own, or whether they have the latest clothing or tech gear.
The dark side of being too spiritualistic is that a spiritualistic person does not always see what’s right in front them and they believe that the solution to their physical world problems can only be found in the invisible spirit world. Unfortunately for people that follow this spiritualistic belief system to the extreme their ability to overcome problems in life and real world issues is directly dependent upon their relationship and abilities to connect with the spirits of the dead.
So the negative to both of these isms is that a person who follows them to the absolute extreme is either fully connected to the material world or fully connected to the spiritual world, but totally disconnected from the real world which is made up of the interactions and the connections between matter and energy. That is to say that people at either extreme take more care of their physical possessions and spiritual relationships then they do human relationships with family and friends and other people around them.
The light side of materialism is that you do understand the realities of the world as it is right now. You realise that what’s happening right now in this moment is something that must be dealt with. You understand that by having the best tools for the job you will be able to do the work you are meant to be doing fulfilling your Dharma or life purpose creating a happy and healthy life for yourself and others.
The light side of spiritualism is that you know that there’s more to reality than what you’re told and are led to believe by others. You realise that the possession of matter really doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things and that you can live a happy and healthy existence without the latest and greatest gadgets and do just fine with a minimalist approach to life that works for you and the people you care about.
So both of these isms can be very grounding. Seeing what is right in front of you and living life with the minimal amount of possessions.
So how do you avoid the trap of falling into the extremes of materialism where accumulation of matter is most important and spiritualism where relationships with the dead are more important? How do you balance living in a material world made up of spiritual elements?
First thing to do is to stop listening to all the noise around you as if it’s stated fact and truth. Marketing hype is full of nonsensical noise. Marketing hype comes in two forms.
The first is from advertising. Once you spray on that deodorant thousands of men and women are not going to be chasing you in the streets. Buying that car won’t necessarily mean instant happiness. Wearing those new sports shoes won’t make you a professional athlete overnight. Eating foods labelled healthy will usually end up making you sick. Advertising doesn’t equal fact.
The second form of marketing hype comes from news media. News on television, newspapers, radio, and yes even the Internet are full of exaggeration, scare tactics, and hidden agendas. News is told for a specific reason to make you feel a certain way, usually to feel scared and fearful, sad and unhappy. In between the news they give you the answers to all the world’s problems and your own problems through advertising. Again advertising does not equal fact and news does not equal truth.
Now the biggest noise you will have to learn to stop taking as gospel, the biggest marketing hype you will hear is that coming from your own mind – your thoughts! You think on average 68,000 thoughts a day a majority of which are negative and are thoughts you had yesterday. Most of your thoughts are marketing hype from your parents, your family and friends, your workplace, your community, news media or advertising.
When was the last time you had an authentic personally created thought? A thought that didn’t come from your mum or dad, from your doctor, your priest, or your boss. When was the last time you thought for yourself?
Don’t believe the hype whether it comes from advertising, the news, or your own thoughts.
The best way to filter this noise and to find out what is accurate and truthful information that works for you is to live life in the space of a question and become a critical thinker. Question everything. Everything you hear, see, taste, touch, smell, and feel, question whether it’s real or not for you.
Dietary guidelines, health practises, marriage, drug addiction, human sexual behaviour, religion, modern agriculture, schools and education, career and employment opportunities – I would guess that about 95% of western civilised society takes all of these topics and belief systems at face value.
People who are raised in a western society rarely ever question where cultural ideas come from. How did the dietary guidelines come to be? Where did marriage come from? What does the research actually say about drug addiction? Can modern agriculture really feed the world? Does a child in today’s information knowledge-based economy really need to go to school and pay large institutions large amounts of money for their education?
Some personal questions you can ask yourself include:
- Is that low-fat meal bar really improving my health?
- Is broccoli really as disgusting as I remember it?
- Was my ex-girlfriend really a witch or my ex-boyfriend really a dirty ape?
- Are my children really too much to handle?
- Am I as fat or skinny, mean or kind, forgiving or harsh as I say I am?
- Are my parents really to blame for my current life situation?
- Do I love my life right now?
- Have I ever put 100% effort into being healthier?
- Is what other people say about me true?
When you become a critical thinker and begin to live life in the space of a question you start to see things as they are and not what you thought they were and this gives you more clarity on how you need to be in this moment and the next.
Today people know more about what’s going on on the other side of the planet than they do their own backyard. People know more about certain celebrities and professional athletes than they do the person they sleep with in the same bed every night!
So my final tip for focusing your energy in a world full of matter is to connect, relate, and emote with the people in your life.
Fully engage in an emotional connection with people you interact with day to day. This isn’t restricted to just family, friends, and flatmates. I’m also talking about the clerk at the local supermarket or laundromat or the bus driver who always drives you home after school or work. Do you know their name? How long they’ve worked there? Whether they’re local or drive two hours in to work from out of town as it was the only job they could find at the time? Do you know your partner’s favourite colour? Do you know how your parents met? Do you know your child’s biggest fear and greatest love right now?
Be with the people who are in your life right now.
The more you can question what you’re being told and what you’re thinking and the more you can fully relate with the people in your life then the less you will need to use material possessions and spiritual communication as substitutes for peace and love.
“Having the latest in technology will not make you the best of humanity.”
Being one with the Almighty regardless of your actions here on Earth disconnects you from the rest of humanity.
Ultimately the key to receiving wealth and admiration as well as connection and guidance is through healthy relationships with your fellow human. Not by relating with objects or with people who have already passed on, but by relating to family, friends, and local communities. This is how you balance living a spiritual life in a material world.
Links and Resources
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Choice:
- I’ll explain how your choices create your life and how your life creates your choices
- I’ll talk about the three choices you can make in any one moment
- I’ll describe how meditation can improve your choice selection
- Finally I’ll share what’s really behind the Power of Choice
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Life is made up of moments and in between these moments is a gap. This gap represents the space between your thoughts. It is in this space where you will find pure potential and endless possibility, for it is in this space where you have all the power in the universe – the power of choice.
Choice has power because the choices you make determine the moments you experience.
Your life and everything in it including who you are, what you have, how you think, feel, and act, the people you surround yourself with, the job you have, the money you have, the happiness and the love you have, your entire life is a result of the choices you have made.
However, only a very small amount of the choices you end up making come from this space of possibility.
The majority of your choices I’d say over 90% of them actually come from your past, from earlier life experience. For example you know you like chocolate ice cream (well I do anyway) over vanilla ice cream because you’ve tasted them already. You know you have an issue with heights because the last time you stood near the edge of a cliff or you were on a bridge you felt dizzy and almost fainted. You know not to make noise at 2pm in the afternoon while your mother is having a nap because the last time you did that she woke up in a very foul upset mood leading to an unexpected meeting between you and her shoe… ouch!
So while you have the power to choose whatever it is you want in your life in between moments, it is your previous life experience that will determine the majority of your current choices which will determine the way you think, feel, and act in the future. Altogether these will lead to the results you get in your life.
Thus we have the circle of choice where:
“Your choices make your life and your life makes your choices.”
I’ve learnt from Holistic Health Practitioner Paul Chek that in life you have three choices.
The first is the optimal choice. The optimal choice involves having open and honest communication with yourself and the important people in your life. This choice moves you toward your dreams and helps you achieve your goals. Not only does the optimal choice improve your happiness and health, but it also helps with growing the happiness and health of people in your life. The choice that unites and is open to joy is the optimal choice.
The second choice is the suboptimal choice. The suboptimal choice means getting what you want now, but at a cost. This choice gives you instant pleasure, but will eventually cause pain within yourself or with another person. The suboptimal choice disrupts and slows your dream building and happiness and health progression. The suboptimal choice also interferes with the growth and improvement of the people you care about. The choice that divides, that is closed and depressing is the suboptimal choice.
The third choice is the choice of no-choice or doing nothing. Doing nothing has both a negative and positive side.
The negative of doing nothing is having an apathetic attitude where you lack interest in participating in life and just don’t care. This uncaring attitude means you will do nothing when in reality you should be doing something. This apathy will cause you to become isolated by creating distance between you and what it is you really want (your dream) as well as creating distance between you and the people in your life. Not only that, but by not choosing you prevent and stop altogether any further progress or growth or evolution of yourself and others.
The positive of doing nothing is you may not be able to make a choice in this moment due to not having enough information. You can use this time out to reflect on your options and to gather more info to learn more about the situation. This time of reflection may not be an optimal or suboptimal choice, but there is potential here for you to make one of the other two choices.
So the first two choices are awesome choices. They help change your way of being. They move you from one thought, feeling, and action to another. The optimal choice does it by being in flow with your dream and your dream team. Remember your dream team is anyone who is involved in getting you from where you are now to where you want to be. With the suboptimal choice even though you experience pain this choice still creates a learning experience from which change can happen.
The third choice of do nothing on the other hand keeps you from growing and evolving. However, there is the potential for change when you take some time out to gather more information before making a well-informed choice.
In today’s society where you are expected to always be on point and available and to not take any breaks to stop and smell the roses your thoughts end up going a million miles a minute and you become disconnected from your true feelings in that moment. Not being able to just sit with your own thoughts and feelings can create distance between how you think you’re being in this moment and how you’re actually being in reality. Meaning you may think to yourself, ‘Yeah I’m happy and healthy. I’m feeling good’, but that work colleague who just said hi to you and who you completely ignored and the oversized clothes in your wardrobe say something completely different.
If you don’t know who you are and what you want in life is it any wonder then that when you’re presented with a choice you either end up picking the choice that doesn’t serve you or you find the available options difficult to understand and end up not doing anything at all.
Mediation is a great practise that you can use to help you make better choices. During meditation you focus on one thing and anytime your mind wonders to different thoughts you bring it back to that one thing. Every time you notice and realise that your thoughts have strayed from what you should be focusing on there is this gap between your thoughts and a space of opportunity to choose to bring your thoughts back to your original focal point or your centre.
Daily meditation practise does one of two things.
First it increases your ability to become aware and mindful of your thoughts and feelings connecting you to your true self and how you’re being in reality
Secondly, and an even bigger benefit to practising meditation I believe is that it forces you to pause, to slow down in order for you to sense what you never sensed before… which are the gaps between your thoughts, the space where you have the power to choose.
It’s during meditation that you train your awareness of self and where you learn more about who you are. It’s also during meditation that your ability to choose improves because you learn to live not just in your thoughts, but also you learn to live between your thoughts. By living in the gaps between your thoughts you get more comfortable with emptiness and space and nothingness and will come to realise that here in this space anything is possible.
Then when you’re outside of meditation during your normal everyday life that’s when you get to put into practise this better knowing of self and improved ability to slow everything right down and to see what’s possible.
The next time you’re presented with a choice or two no longer will you be frantically trying to analyse the options trying to decide which is the wrong or right choice, and no longer will you feel flustered and confused, because now in this moment where you must choose you will know yourself better, you will know what it is you really need in that moment because you will sense your true thoughts and feelings. This will allow you to select the choice that aligns with your dreams, your core values, and your dream team.
Meditation comes in many forms including sitting, movement (such as Tai Chi and Qi Gong), and walking meditation. Whatever meditation you practise focus on one thing. This one thing becomes your centre. For example during sitting meditation you can focus on your breath. During walking meditation you can focus on your steps. You can also focus on a single thought like a mantra or positive affirmation such as ‘I receive love from the world, I give love to the world’ that you repeat in your mind or out loud. Another thing you can focus on is sound such as ‘oooommmmm’ or ‘aaaahhhhh’. No matter the meditation and focal point anytime your mind starts to think about something else bring it back to that focal point. Bring it back to your centre.
The more you practise meditation the more you will know your true self and the more aware you will become of these gaps between your thoughts, giving you more chances to pause, making it easier to bring your thoughts back to centre, giving you better focus and clarity of thought, so that you can make better choices.
I will share a couple of quotes to help show what I believe to be the true power behind choice.
The first quote is from Henri Nouwen a Dutch priest and professor who says:
“We can be unhappy about many things, but joy can still be there… it is important to become aware that at every moment of our life, we have an opportunity to choose joy… It is in the choice that our true freedom lies, and that freedom is, in the final analysis, the freedom of love.”
And along these lines are a few lines from the 80s hit song from the Back To The Future movie soundtrack ‘The Power of Love’ by Huey Lewis and The News:
“The power of love is a curious thing
Make a one man weep, make another man sing”
What these passages are saying to me is that the power of choice lies in the freedom you have to choose love in each and every moment.
“In reality the power of choice is the power of love.”
To be loving, to have love to give, and to do loving things for yourself and others in each and every moment of your life. That’s the true power of choice.
Of course you don’t have to choose love, right? Because as always the choice is yours or as Captain Planet a 90s cartoon superhero would say:
“The power is yours!”
Links and Resources
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Food Cravings:
- I’ll explain what food cravings are
- I’ll talk about three different types of food cravings and what causes them
- Finally I’ll share my top tips on how you can better manage yourself when it comes to food cravings
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Let’s first make the distinction between hunger and food cravings.
Hunger is a normal physiological response by your body meaning hunger is a normal physical function that your body performs. Hunger happens in response to your cells being low on nutrition and energy and information. You know you’re really hungry when you receive growling sounds and feel physical sensations from your stomach. Hunger leads you to eat any food in general.
A food craving is a physical, emotional, and mental want or need for a specific food.
As I always say life is in flow and always in motion and if you’re not moving then you’re not living, you’re not growing, and you’re not changing.
Food cravings come from the fact that your current way of being, your current lifestyle is stuck in a rut.
“I define food cravings as a craving for change.”
Having a fixed mindset or being stubborn or not being able to go with the flow will lead you to become physically, emotionally, and mentally stagnant. You will find yourself repeating the same actions, expressing the same feelings, and believing the same thoughts over and over and this my friend is the root cause of all food cravings.
A physical food craving is due to your body lacking specific nutrients. If you find yourself eating the same foods day-in-and-day-out for long periods of time you will be getting plenty of nutrients in fact probably in excessive amounts from that one group of foods, but you will be missing out on a lot of other nutrients found in different foods. If you’re also eating a lot of fake pretend food-like products aka processed and packaged foods well these have hardly any nutrients in them. I mean there’s plenty of energy and calories in these foods, but where’s the nutrition?
Movement, either too little or too much causes physical food cravings. Nutrients and energy and information from the foods and beverages that you eat and drink get digested, absorbed, assimilated, and metabolised when your digestive juices, your blood, and your lymph fluids are all in flow. When you don’t move and you stay in the same physical position for long periods of time your lymph fluid doesn’t flow and your heart has to pump harder to keep your blood moving causing nutrient traffic jams. When you’re doing strenuous exercise stress hormones increase and this stops your digestion in its tracks.
Now if your breathing is short and shallow and if you’re drinking tap water then the nutrients in your body will not be transported as effectively as they could be. Proper breathing massages internal organs and keeps your cerebral spinal fluid in flow helping to move nutrients in and waste out of your cells. Quality water has no industrial chemicals and has the right amount of minerals to form healthy blood vessels and other fluids needed to move nutrients around your body.
So to sum up physical food cravings while eating the same real foods all the time and eating fake foods may give your cells certain nutrients and plenty of energy your cells will still be screaming out for other nutrients and different building blocks they need to do their job. Now with no movement or with excessive movement not all the nutrients that you eat will even get to where they are needed most due to the lack of lymph flow, inefficient blood flow, and too much stress shutting down your ability to digest and absorb your food. Also proper breathing technique and quality water are needed for effective transportation of nutrients in your body.
An emotional food craving is due to certain feelings triggering physical hunger signals. When emotional needs are perceived to not be met by self or by others then food is used as a replacement for emotional support. If you experience chronic feelings of fear, resentment, apathy, anger, worthlessness, being lost, or pain (yes pain is an emotion) this usually means you’re missing out on love, connection, being cared for, peace, meaning, inspiration, and pleasure and food can act as a substitute when these are lacking in your life.
In fact deep-seated emotions, positive or negative, that have been repressed or ignored or neglected will show up in your bodymind in a number of ways and not just as food cravings. A bit of a sidetrack here, but while what I’m about to say hasn’t been shown in scientific papers I personally believe that cancer, yep the Big C, is the biggest symptom of unresolved emotional issues today. I say this from personal experience having witnessed family members make it through cancer therapy and having to say goodbye to other family members who have died from cancer.
Anyhoo… back to food cravings.
A mental food craving is due to your thoughts being out of alignment with your feelings and your actions. Remember back in the podcast episode about Dream Building I talked about how your dream must align and be in harmony with your core values in order to live a happy and healthy life and to achieve living your dream. Any time your thoughts, feelings, and actions do not correspond to your values and your dream then stress, pain, and suffering are not that far behind.
Another thing is if you’re constantly ruminating about past events or thinking about what may happen in the future this can cause depression and anxiety leading to food cravings.
A foggy head with stinking thinking stuck in the past or trying to forecast the future will cause you to crave foods that do not serve you or your dream.
Okay so how do you go about managing yourself when it comes to food cravings? First some prevention tips.
With all types of food cravings physical, emotional, and mental you want to nourish your body with nutrient, energy, and information rich real foods from Mother Nature. When you nourish your cells with all natural ingredients and building blocks your feelings and thoughts will also be in alignment with the principles of nature meaning you will feel happier, healthier, and start to think how you can be of service to others as opposed to how others can serve you. You want to eat seasonally and locally as well as. This will ensure your diet is varied and fresh and changes with the seasons.
Something to take note of is that different physical food cravings relate to different nutrient needs by your body. For example if you crave chocolate this may be a sign of magnesium deficiency. If you crave cheese this may be due to not having enough fat and/or calcium in your diet. A craving for sweet foods could be due to a lack of sulphur and the amino acid tryptophan. Craving salty foods is often due to a lack of chloride.
So based on what you are craving have a look at your current diet and see if there may be some room for improvement by including different foods with higher sources of the nutrients that you may be missing out on.
Okay do yourself a favour and do a ‘Kitchen Cleanse’ or ‘Pantry Detox’. This is where you remove all processed fake foods that you crave for. Out of house, out of sight, out of mind.
Do not stay in one position all day long. Sit, stand, walk, squat, lunge, and fidget if you have to. Set a timer to 25 minutes and change positions or go for a one minute walk every time it goes off. The more you can move your body the easier it is for nutrients to be transported to where they’re needed most.
Remember to breathe diaphragmatic breaths. Breathing through your nose with your mouth closed and tongue resting on the roof of your mouth behind your teeth and expanding your belly for the first two thirds of the breath and then allowing your chest to move only in the last third then letting the breath out naturally either through your nose or mouth gives your internal organs a nice massage and expands and contracts your muscles as well as your spine creating movement of fluids and nutrition.
Make sure you keep yourself properly hydrated with quality spring or filtered water. Depending on your body weight, your activity levels, and your environment your H2O needs can range from 2 litres a day to 4 litres a day.
So move often, breathe deeply, and drink real water.
Now when a food craving does hit you what can you do?
First thing to try is deep belly breathing for one minute. Count 4-8 seconds on the in breath and the same amount of seconds on the out breath. Do this for a minute and wait and sense if the craving is still there.
If you still got a craving try drinking a big glass of water and wait 20 minutes.
Still got the craving?
Try a spoonful of extra virgin coconut oil or a shot of extra virgin olive oil. Yep you heard me. Get some real fats into your body. Again wait 20 minutes and see if the craving is gone.
If you still have the craving what I’m about to suggest next may not make sense, but give in to the craving. Now this doesn’t mean to go chomping down on whatever it is you’re craving okay.
I’m about to describe a mindfulness ritual that you can practise that will help you to give in to the craving, but at the same time stay in full control and awareness of how you’re being around that food.
Okay so pick up the food you’re craving and smell it. Take a deep breath in… really sniff that scent in.
Now break up the food and crumble it between your hands and fingers or dip a finger into it and pick up a bit of the food listening to the sounds that are happening as you do this.
Fully be present with the smell, sight, sounds, and feel of the food. Does it have an intense smell or is it mellow? How many colours can you see? Does it sound hard and sharp or soft and quiet between your hands or fingers? Feel its texture and temperature and notice the differences. Is it cold or hot? Does it feel smooth or rough?
Now put a piece of the food in your mouth allowing it to rest on your tongue, but don’t eat it! Just savour the flavour. Can you describe it? Can you describe the taste?
Finally, start chewing. Don’t swallow it. Just notice what your senses are telling you as you eat the food. Does it taste good? Does it feel good?
Alright, choice time. Now you have to choose whether to spit out the food and be done with the craving or swallow it.
If you do swallow it you will have another choice to make. Do you take another bite and continue eating or are you done with the craving?
This mindfulness food cravings ritual doesn’t work for everyone and if it didn’t work for you then what you have on your hands is not a physical food craving, but more an emotional or mental one.
To help with emotional and mental food cravings daily affirmations and daily meditation can help.
Affirmations don’t have to be overly positive and they can be as simple as, ‘I am here in this moment and this moment is all there is’. This type of affirmation removes past and future thinking keeping you in the present.
Meditation helps train you to be aware of your thoughts and to keep yourself focused on one thing. There are many types of meditation. You can do sitting, breathing, movement, walking, even gardening meditation. All of these will help balance your bodymind. You could do two minutes a day, two minutes every hour, two hours a day, whatever works for you just make meditation a daily practise as consistency is king when it comes to changing habits and ways of feeling and thinking.
Again meditation is about focusing the mind and one of the best ways to meditate or focus your mind is through play. Go outside and play tag or hide and seek with family and friends. Climb trees, fall off a tree, play fetch with Fido. Whatever it is you do for play let go of any expected outcome and just have fun. That’s what play is all about.
Another way to manage your emotional and mental food cravings is to keep a Food Mood Diary. This is where you note down date and time, place, people nearby, and how you’re feeling every time a food craving comes up. Over time you will notice a pattern begin to emerge. Emotional and mental food cravings can be triggered by a number of things and you may be able to find out what your personal triggers are by using a food mood diary.
Your ability to manage yourself when it comes to perceived stress plays a huge role in balancing out your thoughts and emotions. Self-management in terms of stress comes down to how much integrity you have with your thoughts, words, and deeds. If you say you’re going to do something then do it. If you write down a date that a task needs to be completed by then when that date comes that task better well be completed. And if you fail to do something that you said you would do apologise to the parties involved and if it’s just you apologise to yourself.
Integrity and harmony are key to having a clear bodymind that includes clarity of thought and a light heart.
Listen to the podcast I did on stress (podcast #3) to learn more on how to manage yourself and the perceived stressors in your life.
Here’s a quote by American philosopher and psychologist William James:
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
Emotional and mental food cravings fundamentally come down to not feeling appreciated when you expect to be and by not showing appreciation when you should. This includes self appreciation and giving yourself a pat on the back and loving your true authentic self.
So put down that pint of ice cream, that piece of pastry, that sugary cookie, that bar of milk chocolate, those salty chips, that crispy fried chicken, and choose instead to give yourself a hug and I want you to think, feel, and say to yourself, ‘I appreciate my life. I am worth it. I love me’.
If you find that difficult and don’t believe those words (and I know for some of you it is a struggle to show yourself authentic self love) how about thinking and feeling and saying this, ‘I have the potential to appreciate my life. I have the potential to be worthy. I have the potential to love myself’.
If you’re listening to this to my voice right now hear this, what I’m about to say for it is true: I Jason Marinovich appreciate you and your life. You are worthy for you are the reason why I record these podcasts. I thank you and give you all the gratitude I can give for listening and for giving me purpose. I love you my dear beautiful listener.
I’ll leave you with this thought.
Sameness begets staleness creating an unbalanced lifestyle leading to sickness, disease, and food cravings.
So keep moving forward.
Don’t let yourself get stuck in one way of being.
“Be water and keep in flow.”
Links and Resources
- WGP 014: Dream Building – How to Create the Life You Really Really Want
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Carbohydrates:
- I’ll talk about the many different types of carbs
- I’ll explain which carbs are essential for health and which carbs can contribute to disease
- I’ll talk about how to find your sugar and starch tolerance level
- Finally I’ll share the best ways to get more healthy natural whole real carbs into your diet
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Carbohydrates are one of the three main macronutrients besides fat and protein. The most popular carb of them all is sugar. This pure white highly processed refined powder has been the cause and reason for many people failing to reach their body composition and health goals.
Sugar’s sweetness and ability to affect your hormones, your immune system, and your neurology should not be underestimated, and I’ll talk more about this later on. But there’s more to carbs than just this simple sugar.
Carbs in the modern age need to be differentiated into two groups: cellular carbs and acellular carbs.
Cellular carbs are minimally processed whole vegetables, fruits, stems, leaves, and seeds of plants. Cellular carbs are made up of living cells with more nutrients, structural fibre, and a lower density and percentage of actual sugar content per cell. These carbs get digested by your body and your gut microbiota without issue (remember your gut microbiome is the ecosystem of trillions of microorganisms living in your colon).
Acellular carbs are highly processed and refined sugars, flours, and includes the starch stored in whole grains. Acellular carbs are made up of dead cells with hardly any nutrients, non-functional fibre, and a much higher density and percentage of actual sugar concentration per cell. The digestion of acellular carbs creates an immediate excess level of sugar in your blood as well as an imbalance of your gut microbiome due to the fact that these naked sugars without the nutrition and without the fibre are rapidly digested and encourage the overgrowth of Candida and other pathogens.
All carbs are made up of single or groups of molecules called saccharides or sugars.
Monosaccharides consist of just one sugar molecule such as glucose, fructose, and galactose.
Disaccharides are made up of two sugar molecules. Examples include sucrose (your regular table sugar), lactose (milk sugar), and maltose (which is two molecules of glucose).
Carbs that are made up of 2-10 saccharide molecules are called oligosaccharides and any carb over 10 sugar molecules long is called a polysaccharide.
Now mono- and disaccharides can be considered simple sugars and oligo- and polysaccharides could be called complex sugars.
Starch is a storage form of carbs. Starch is a polysaccharide made up of hundreds to thousands of saccharide molecules, specifically chains of glucose.
Dietary fibre is also a carb. Fibre from foods are non-glucose oligo- and polysaccharides meaning that while your digestive system will breakdown and assimilate sugars and starch into glucose it will not breakdown and assimilate fibre.
Fibres can either be insoluble meaning it doesn’t dissolve in water or soluble where it does dissolve in water.
Insoluble fibre passes right through your entire digestive system from mouth hole to south hole and is not digested by your body and is also not digested or eaten as food by your gut flora.
Certain soluble fibres are digested and eaten by your gut flora. These fibres that feed your gut flora are known as prebiotics and they feed both the good bugs (probiotics) and the bad bugs (pathogens).
Another type of carb that acts as a prebiotic is called resistant starch. It is a polysaccharide made up of glucose molecules, but unlike regular starch which is digested by your body resistant starch acts like a prebiotic fibre where it is resistant to human digestion and so becomes food for your gut microbiome.
So there’s a lot of different carbohydrates some of which your body can digest, some of which your gut flora can digest, and some neither your body nor your gut flora can breakdown.
So which carbs are essential for health and which carbs aren’t?
If there was ever an essential carb it would be dietary fibre, especially prebiotics. Whole real vegetables and fruits will provide you with plenty of prebiotic, soluble, insoluble, and resistant starch fibres.
Insoluble fibre has the benefit of taking out toxins, cholesterol, and metabolised hormones ready for elimination in your colon, but insoluble fibre also has a dark side as it can cause damage to your gastrointestinal tract if eaten in excessive amounts or if eaten out of balance with soluble fibre. Think of insoluble fibre as steel wool rubbing up against your single-celled very thin gut wall.
Soluble fibre on the other hand can not only act as a prebiotic feeding your gut flora, but also provides a soft sponge bath for your gut wall. Aloe vera and chia seeds are high in viscous mucous gelatinous polysaccharides that can give your gut wall a soothing massage and are a lot better for your gut than insoluble fibres especially if you’re dealing with gut issues like constipation.
Beta-glucans are a type of polysaccharide and fibre found in certain mushrooms and seaweeds that supports immune function and has been shown to boost the immune system helping cancer patients overcome their cancer. I believe beta-glucans are essential to a long and happy life.
Are sugars and starches essential for health?
In general I would say no, but it really does depend on your ability to tolerate sugar and starch which I will talk about soon.
Whatever your sugar and starch requirements are keep in mind that carb quality matters when talking about simple sugars and complex starches.
If you’re getting sugar and starch from cellular carb sources like whole real vegetables and fruits then your chances of developing a chronic disease, gaining fat, and upsetting your gut flora will be very low compared to someone else who gets their sugar and starch from acellular carbs like highly processed and refined flours and sugars from baked goods, sports drinks, and table sugar.
When you eat acellular carbs these get taken up into your bloodstream quite quickly causing a massive spike in blood glucose levels followed by a massive surge and release of the hormone insulin. Insulin’s job is to remove glucose from the blood. When glucose is left in the blood for too long it will cause damage to your cells, body tissue, and your immune system. So insulin puts glucose into your muscle, liver, and fat cells for use or storage. When insulin is active your body turns from fat-burning mode into fat-storing mode. If you become insulin-resistant like a type-2 diabetic where your cells no longer respond to insulin then glucose will be left in the blood for far too long causing long-term damage to nervous tissue and other bodily tissues and your immune system will be unable to function properly leading to premature aging and cancer.
Basically a high fibre diet with more prebiotic soluble fibres made up of cellular carbs from real food sources is a lot healthier for you than a low fibre diet or a diet high in insoluble fibre that’s rich in acellular carbs. Sugars and starches are not essential for health, but may be needed depending on your individual needs and lifestyles.
You may have heard of low carb diets, high carb diets, slow carb diets, and even controlled carb diets. How do you know which diet is right for you? Find your personal tolerance to sugars and starches, that’s how.
You have a unique requirement for sugar and starch different to anyone else and this is called your carb tolerance. Since there are many different carbs I like to be more specific and call it your sugar and starch tolerance. Your tolerance to sugars and starches is based on you being able to eat a certain amount without increasing your waistline or increasing your fasting blood glucose levels, and by not having a decrease in performance in the gym, in the boardroom, or in the bedroom.
So how do you find out how much sugars and starches you should be eating?
One way is to look at your ancestral background. Cultures that live on or near the Earth’s equator have a higher tolerance to sugar and starch due to the high availability and cooling nature of fruits and some tubers. Cultures that live closer to the Earth’s poles have a lower tolerance to sugar and starch due to the lack of vegetation and therefore they have evolved to eat more animal foods higher in fat and protein as these have a more warming effect on the body.
Of course today most people (me included) are fruit salads made up of many different ethnic backgrounds so it’s impossible to take this information as fact, but instead use it as a guide and it’s good to have this knowledge in the back of your mind as you work through the next practical step.
To find your tolerable level of sugar and starch intake you will start eating a ketogenic diet meaning very low carb with very high fat and then by slowly progressing toward higher levels of sugars and starches and lowering your levels of fat you will find out how much sugar and starch you really need to meet your activity requirements and the unique biochemical needs of your body.
Because you are looking for your own unique tolerance to sugars and starches you will need to subtract the total amount of fibre from the total amount of carbs which will leave you with just the sugar and starch content of that food. This is also known as net carbs.
So for example a cup of cooked broccoli has about 12 g of total carbs and 6 g of fibre and after calculating for net carbs and removing the fibre content the total amount of sugars and starches in a cup of cooked broccoli is 6 g. Okay another example, a medium sized cooked sweet potato (that’s about 200 g worth without the skin) has 36 g of total carbs and 6 g of fibre. Subtract the fibre from the total carb count and you get a net carb sugars and starches content of 30 g.
Remember to focus on eating cellular carbs as much as possible during these diets.
Also stick to the same weekly routine in terms of activity levels whether that be in the gym or at home or at work. The goal here is to find the amount of sugars and starches that you can eat without harm in this current point in time of your life and if you find yourself not being as active or being more active than usual this is going to give you incorrect information affecting your results.
During each of the following four diets keep a journal and note down how you feel, your hunger and energy levels, your mood, your activity levels and performance in the gym, your libido, as well as your bowel movements. You will also want to note down any significant life happenings like a stressful event or celebration. And if you can, get yourself a glucometer or glucose meter which measures your blood glucose levels and measure your fasting blood glucose first thing every morning.
You will use all of this information after trying out each of the four diets to find out what worked, when it worked, what didn’t work, and what may have interfered when something should have worked because it was shown to have worked in the past.
Okay onto the diets.
The first diet you’ll begin with and follow for 2-3 weeks is the very low carb high fat diet aka the ketogenic diet. Total allowable net carbs on this diet will be 30 g a day and they will all come from non-starchy vegetables only. We want to restrict the sugars and starches on this initial diet. For an 80 kg male aiming for a 2000 calorie a day diet this means fat will be between 100-190 g a day and protein will be around 100 g a day. For a 60 kg female eating 1800 calories a day this means fat will be between 130-175 g a day and protein will be around 75 g a day.
So on a VLCHF diet (very low carb high fat diet) you could eat five cups of cooked broccoli and reach 30 g of your maximum allowance of carbs for that day.
After completing 2-3 weeks of the VLCHF diet move on to a low carb high fat diet for 1-2 weeks. This is where daily sugars and starches (net carbs) fall between 30-80 g and starchy vegetables are back on the menu. Again for the 80 kg male fat will now be between 120-165 g a day while protein stays around 100 g a day. For the 60 kg female fat now lies between 110-150 g daily with protein staying at around 75 g a day.
So on a LCHF diet you could eat a medium sweet potato (around 200 g worth) giving you 30 g of sugars and starches for the day.
Next diet to try out for 1-2 weeks is the moderate carb diet. This diet has net carbs between 80-150 g a day. So for the 80 kg male daily fat intake will be between 90-130 g and protein stays at about 100 g. For the 60 kg female daily fat intake becomes 80-120 g and protein sticks to around 75 g a day.
Final diet to test for 1-2 weeks is the high carb low fat diet. The HCLF diet is has net carbs between 150-300 g a day. The 80 kg male will have around 20-70 g of fat a day with protein still around 100 g. The 60 kg female will have about 10-60 g of daily fat with about 75 g of protein.
Remember all these are estimates and are based on your activity levels and whether you’re a pro athlete, a weekend warrior, or a sedentary office worker you will need to tinker with and play around with the protein and fat and net carb ratios.
Once you’ve done this sugar and starch tolerance testing you will once and for all know how much carbs you can handle without increasing your waistline, without feeling moody or hangry, and still being able to perform in the gym, the boardroom, and the bedroom. And remember this is just for where you are right now in your life and as I like to say life is a process never still, but always in flow. In a few years time you may find that this no longer works and you’ll have to figure out your new sugar and starch tolerance levels as well as protein and fat ratios that work for you.
Okay let’s talk about the best food sources for fibre polysaccharides and how to include more real carbs into your diet.
The following are all fantastic sources of prebiotics and resistant starch:
- Jerusalem artichoke
- Onions and garlic and leeks
- Asparagus
- Green bananas
- Beans
- Cooked then cooled potatoes and white rice
Shiitake, reishi, and maitake mushrooms and seaweeds are fantastic sources of beta-glucans. Remember beta-glucans help boost your immune system.
Aloe vera and chia seeds are full of gelatinous polysaccharides. This is great for gut health.
Imagine a meal made up of:
- Potato salad with red onion
- Roasted asparagus and garlic covered with butter
- Stir fried shiitake mushrooms and broccoli seasoned with kelp flakes and chia seeds
- Hummus
- Some reheated white rice
- Baked sweet potato mash with butter, cream, and cinnamon and
- Cauliflower puree with duck fat
In this meal you have altogether soluble, insoluble, prebiotic, and resistant starch fibres as well as a whole lot of phytonutrients, micronutrients, and sulphur with not that high a sugar and starch content and all of them are cellular carbs.
A favourite and simple vegetable dish I like is a starchy vegetable roast including potatoes, kumaras, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and carrots roasted in extra-virgin olive oil or duck fat. Very delicious and tasty and simple to make.
I also enjoy soups and smoothies that include more raw vegetables and herbs and spices.
If you feel you need to be living a lower carb lifestyle remember that most fruits today are bred for sweetness with higher sugar content so focus on heirloom varieties with more skin, less flesh or with more tart and sour flavours. Fruits with a higher skin to flesh ratio will have more fibre, phytonutrients, and antioxidants and less fruit sugars. So for example smaller berries are more nutrient dense then larger berries and won’t cause as large of a spike in blood sugar and insulin.
Hopefully the next time you hear that a certain carb diet is better than another you’ll think twice and ask yourself, ‘how much essential fibre compared to non-essential sugars and starches are there in this diet and would the net carb ratios work for me and my current lifestyle?’
Don’t guess. Test!
“With any recommendations and advice you hear the only real way to find out if it’s true for you and whether it will work for you is by trying it out for yourself.”
You’ll never know if that jersey or that dress looks good on you until you put it on.
I’ll leave you with this. You cannot treat all carbs the same. Some are more essential then others and some are downright detrimental (acellular carbs). Your individuality means your fibre and sugar needs will vary from moment to moment and will be different to other people.
As with all foods quality matters so make your choice of carbs a quality choice.
Links and Resources
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Saturated Fat and Cholesterol:
- I’ll explain how fats and cholesterol are needed by your body
- I’ll talk about how and why saturated fat and cholesterol were wrongly convicted of being the cause of heart disease
- I’ll talk about how industrial seed oils aka vegetable oils are very much non-essential and damaging to all life on the planet
- Finally I’ll share the best and most delicious ways to get more healthy natural whole real fats into your diet
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Saturated fat and cholesterol are essential for health, no doubt about it.
Saturated fatty acids form about 50% of the membranes of your cells. This is the cell wall and saturated fat gives your cells more strength and stability. Think about what happens to coconut oil or melted butter when left at a cool room temperature or if you put them in the fridge. They become solid. This is due to the high content of saturated fat which is much more stable and not as easily oxidised or damaged as the other two main types of fats monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Now if you were to put olive oil or fish oil in the fridge they would remain liquid as they don’t have anywhere near the same amount of stable saturate d fatty acids, but do have higher amounts of the more flexible monounsaturated fats and even more flexible and unstable and fragile polyunsaturated fats.
Besides making for strong cells by giving your cell membranes proper integrity saturated fatty acids also enhance calcium absorption which is critical for bone health. Saturated fats also help in the production of other essential fatty acids like omega-3 needed in the inflammatory response for healing. Saturated fats are also rich in fat-soluble vitamins A and D.
Now all fats in general have health benefits including helping your body to make use of fat-soluble vitamins. If you’re drinking low fat smoothies, you ain’t getting any of those fat-soluble nutrients. Fats also help stabilise your appetite and make you feel more satiated and full. There is no excessive release of the fat-storing hormone insulin when you eat fats compared to carbohydrates. Fats are a longer burning and consistent source of fuel compared to protein and carbs. Unlike fat protein and carbs, but more so with carbs these macronutrients get burnt up a lot quicker leading to sugar highs and sugar lows. Leaving you hungry and angry aka hangry.
Cholesterol is another very essential nutrient for health. Cholesterol is not fat, but a steroid alcohol and acts as a building block for hormones, neurotransmitters, and cells. Vitamin D for example is made when cholesterol in your skin mixes with UVB radiation from the sun. Your sex, growth, and stress hormones like testosterone and oestrogen and cortisol are made from cholesterol. No cholesterol equals no sex and growth my friend. Also cortisol is not only your primary stress hormone needed to help you deal with stress, but it also reduces inflammation in your body.
Cholesterol is also used in making bile that’s needed for proper digestion of ft. The protective coating surrounding your nerves is called a myelin sheath and these are made from fatty acids and cholesterol. Cholesterol is also an antioxidant fighting off free radicals in your body preventing DNA damage, premature aging, and cancer.
Finally and probably the biggest most important health benefit to saturated fats and cholesterol is that the dry weight of your brain is made up of at least 50% fatty acids and cholesterol. Without fat and cholesterol your brain would be nothing but a watery and mushy mass of stupidity. You want a fat head. You really do trust me.
As you can probably tell by now saturated fats and cholesterol are essential for a healthy and happy bodymind.
However, for many years now saturated fat and cholesterol have been demonised as the bad guys when it comes to health particularly heart health. This has never been true and fortunately the tides they are a changing. Whole natural real foods that the human organism was evolved to eat are coming back into favour while sales of processed and packaged fake pretend food-like products are starting to fall.
Our species of animal evolved and thrived on eating other animal meats, vegetables, and fruit. The coexistence of humans with these three main food groups has been going on for a few million years. Seeing as saturated fat is found predominantly in animal fat as well as coconut and cacao beans that humans have been eating forever and a day how could it ever be possible to think that an old-school food can begin to create new-school diseases.
For instance heart disease was a very rare and new disease over 100 years ago, but today it’s as common as canola oil and numero uno on the list of most fatal health conditions of all time.
To find out how saturated fat and cholesterol were framed for crimes they never ever committed we need to go back over 100 years ago when in the early 20th century a Russian pathologist called Nikolay Anichkov conducted studies with rabbits by feeding them high cholesterol animal foods. Seeing as rabbits are pure herbivores and raw vegans is it any wonder what the results were. Yep cholesterol damages arteries… in rabbits that don’t eat a high cholesterol diet.
Then in the mid 20th century we have Ancel Keys an American scientist who did a study on 7 countries showing an association between high rates of heart disease with high amounts of animal fat consumption. Problem is he cherry picked his data and picked only the 7 countries out of 22 countries he could have selected to show this connection. If you were to pick another 7 countries from that same set of 22 country data today you could show the complete opposite that high rates of heart disease were associated with very small amounts of animal fat consumption. Meaning ladies and gentlemen of the jury that. that man, Ancel Keys intentionally chose only the information that he knew would support his hypothesis and idea that saturated fat causes heart disease.
But wait because unfortunately there’s more… oh when will the hurting stop?
This is where money and food industry come into the picture. The American company Procter and Gamble who were in the candle and soap manufacturing industry in the mid to late 19th century used to use animal fats in their products. At the same time new oils extracted from plants were coming onto the market and these were a lot cheaper than animal fats. In the early 20th century the process of hydrogenating cottonseed oil had been invented. Hydrogenation is where you take a monounsaturated or polyunsaturated oil which as I mentioned before is naturally liquid as designed by Mother Nature herself and then turning that liquid oil into a solid saturated fat. So of course Proctor and Gamble would use this cheaper industrial seed oil in their candles and soaps.
It wasn’t long till electricity came online in homes and in cities and then candle sales plummeted. So what Procter and Gamble did next was pretty clever, deadly in the long-run, but financially smart indeed. They started to sell the crystallised cottonseed oil as a cooking fat called Crisco.
Ever since then other industrial seed oils and other vegetable oils have come on the market as imitation butters like margarine and as replacements for lard and tallow in big restaurant fryers. Even the fast-food chain McDonald’s used to use animal fats in their fryers until they were persuaded to switch to Crisco and other vegetable oils for health and financial reasons I’m sure.
The reason for the abundance and low cost to these industrial seed oils is that national governments subsidise seed farmers and growers. Authorities support and give money to grow more of these crappy crops. These crops are the highest growing food group in the world and were originally used as animal feed, but instead of throwing out the leftovers and newly created waste government officials working together with the food industry realised that if they market this stuff as healthy they could make more money from taxes and sell it as human food.
So here we have some really dodgy science showing that cholesterol damages arteries and that animal fats cause heart disease and then we have food manufacturing companies selling extremely cheap unhealthy industrial seed oils and marketing them as a healthy alternative.
So what is it that makes these crop oils, these seed oils, these vegetable oils not only bad for your health, but also damaging to the environment?
I’ll start with the environment first because even if you couldn’t care less about your own health maybe you’d think twice about buying and eating these crop oils if you knew how it affected the planet, the environment, and the future that your children will be growing up in.
Because authorities are paying to help increase the production of these crops which include cottonseed, canola aka rapeseed, corn, and soy they are knowingly or unknowingly causing massive damage to the ecosystem. How?
Just as the health of your body depends on the health of your gut microbiota which are the population of trillions of microorganisms living in your gut the health of the planet is dependent upon the health of the soil.
Topsoil is the first half metre or couple feet of soil. This soil isn’t just a mass of dirt like the subsoil beneath it. Topsoil is an ecosystem of microorganisms, worms, insects, fungi, plant roots, and broken rock. Together this entire ecosystem transforms light (sun energy) and matter (earth energy) into a natural compost called humus and into minerals, vitamins, hormones, enzymes basically every single nutrient under the sun and on the planet that’s needed to create life and make a happy and healthy human is made and found in the topsoil.
It takes thousands of years to create just one foot of healthy topsoil. Sadly topsoil around the globe is being lost due to food industry growing monocultures of seeds, that is the same single crop on the same land year after year. Once we lose this topsoil we will lose a huge supply of food.
Different soils will have different nutrients. All plants have their own unique nutrition needs and provide a different set of nutrition to the soil. When one crop is grown on the same soil year after year all the nutrients required by that one crop will be sucked out of the soil leaving the soil malnourished and lacking in those particular nutrients. Eventually this soil will be dead of nutrition and the crop will no longer thrive and production will need to be moved to another location.
We need to remember and I say this almost every show it seems that life is a process always changing and in flow. We must rotate the crops we plant on the land so that the soil never gets stripped of one set of nutrients. So until the food industry learns this, the future of the health of the soil, the planet, and future generations of people looks pretty dark.
Once harvested these seeds are turned into margarines and other solid fat substitutes that I call franken-fats through a process called hydrogenation. This involves pumping hydrogen molecules into these fragile polyunsaturated fats, saturating them with hydrogen turning them solid. This process damages these unstable fatty acids oxidising them creating free radicals. So here you have a brand new and damaged food-like product that your body does not recognise and the damaged fatty acids create inflammation and stress leading to disease.
Another process called partial-hydrogenation is even worse as this creates trans fats. Only recently have trans fats been labelled as unhealthy, but what makes things worse is that food standards state that if there’s less than 0.5 grams of trans fat in a single serving of food then a food company can put on the nutrition label 0 trans fat content. Lies I tells ya. All lies.
There are new seed processing methods used today that do not create trans fats, but still create rancid damaged franken-fats. Fractionation and interesterification are what these new processes are called so if you see fractionated or interesterified on a food-like product label… drop it, drop it like it’s hot.
Now the processing of seeds and fragile liquid polyunsaturated fatty acids into damaged solid saturated fatty acids involves many steps that make me wonder how we as a species could ever call ourselves the smartest animal on this planet. Really?
First there’s the hydrogenation, fractionation, or interesterification process followed by chemical extraction, deodorisation, degumming, bleaching, addition of additives, preservatives, artificial flavourings, and synthetic antioxidants, and so you want turn and run when you see a brick of grey goo looking back at you when you open up the packet unnatural colourings are added to make these franken-fats look like real food. Still can’t believe it’s not butter? Eww and yuck! Seriously!
Now some of you might say ‘but it has been shown that these vegetable oils lower cholesterol in the blood’ and you’re absolutely right. You know why?
Because these fatty acids are damaged and cause inflammation in the body guess who has to go about putting out the fires caused by them — cholesterol. Cholesterol has been labelled the bad guy just because it’s been caught at the scene of the crime. But what mainstream medicine fails to realise is that cholesterol is like your body’s own fire brigade and they are at the scene trying to put out the fire. The real fire starters are eating fake pretend food-like products like industrial seed oils. So of course eating these franken-fats will lower cholesterol in your blood because most of your fire brigade are in the cells and body tissue busy repairing the damage caused by these rancid oxidised fats!
Alright let’s talk about what fats are healthy and how to include them in your diet.
I already listed the healthy animal and fruit fats you want to focus on back in episode 8, but I’ll share them again here.
- Egg yolks
- Ghee and clarified butter
- Butter
- Lard
- Bacon fat
- Tallow — beef and lamb fat
- Duck fat
- Coconut oil
- Palm oil
- Cacao butter
- Macadamia oil
- Extra-virgin avocado oil
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Sesame oil
- Raw nuts and seeds
Remember all these fats should be minimally processed, extra-virgin, and cold-pressed so there’s no damage caused by heat.
“The best way to increase your intake of healthy natural whole real fats is by eating a lot more vegetables!”
Vegetables have a lot of antioxidant, anticancer, and longevity nutrients, but the real reason I love to eat vegetables and have eaten more of them in the past few years than I ever did in the first few decades of my life is because vegetables are the best vehicle for fats!
There’s nothing like lightly steaming up some broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage and tossing them in some butter that’s come straight from the fridge, but then you see the butter begin to melt and get all gooey and when you season it with sea salt and take that first bite wow, what a taste sensation. Believe it or not friend but yes vegetables can taste juicy… you just need to add some beautiful fat.
You can take raw vegetables like celery, carrots, and cucumber and dip them in some nut butters or spread some fat on them. I love almond and macadamia nut butters. Peanuts are legumes not nuts and can have an inflammatory effect for some people so as always no matter what I or anyone else says be sure to listen to your body as the body never lies. If it doesn’t like a food then stop eating it.
Don’t forget by eating fats with vegetables and fruits your body can better absorb the fat-soluble nutrients in the food.
I have a big super green fatty vegetable smoothie every night with dinner which weighs in at over 600 grams. That’s over a pound of nutritious, delicious, scrumptious, and highly precious plant and animal fat nutrition, energy and information. I chew and chew with every mouthful and it takes me about 20 minutes to finish and by the end I’m as full and happy as Santa on the day after Christmas.
Another tasty way to eat more fat is to eat more of the fatty cuts of meat. Now remember back in the detox episode toxins love fat and get stored in your fat cells when your body cannot eliminate them. This holds true for animals as well. So if you’re eating the cheapest animal meat you can find that wasn’t naturally raised and bred, free-range out on pasture, eating a species appropriate diet then you have a toxic fat bomb right there.
When you choose fattier cuts of meat especially when it comes to organs meats like liver you must 100% choose the free-range and naturally raised meat. If you choose fatty cuts of muscle meat you can simply cut off the fat, but with offal and other meat where the fat is mixed inside the meat, don’t waste your money, time, health, energy, mood, and vitality. It ain’t worth it.
My personal favourite fat is 100% cacao or dark chocolate. No added sugar or sweeteners, just the cacao seed, bean, or pod whatever you want to call it churned into a fat bomb of a bar. With cacao being one of the highest antioxidant foods everything’s coming up chocolate!
Probably the best and most nutritious way to include more fat and overall nutrition in your diet is to eat liver pate. I love chicken liver pate. It is a mix of chicken liver, herbs, heavy full-fat cream or butter and it comes out like a dip. Raw vegetables again come to the rescue to help transport this beautiful mixture of fat and protein and vitamins into your bodymind.
My favourite chicken liver pate recipe is by Diane Sanfilippo author of Practical Paleo. I’ll put a link to the recipe in the show notes for this episode.
I’ll leave you with this quote by George Bernard Shaw as a reminder you are meant to have a naturally fat head and be proud of it.
“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”
Amen George.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Non-Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity or NCGS and living Free of Gluten:
- I’ll explain what gluten is and how it can negatively impact your health
- I’ll talk about the differences between coeliac disease and non-coeliac gluten sensitivity
- I’ll also talk about the single biggest mistake people make when shifting to a gluten-free diet
- Finally I’ll share some simple and effective tips on how to make gluten-free a part of your lifestyle
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
So what exactly is gluten?
Gluten is a complex protein found in some grains. This includes all wheat varieties such as:
- Spelt
- Einkorn
- Emmer
- Durum and
- Khorasan aka Kamut
And also includes the grains barley and rye.
Oats don’t have the same gluten proteins, but the way that most of the oats are processed and stored today means that they do contain high amounts of gluten simply by being exposed to the same facilities and transport vehicles that are used for gluten-containing grains. So there’s a lot of cross-contamination that occurs with oats.
Gluten is made up of two different proteins gliadin and glutenin. Gliadin gives gluten its gluey stickiness and glutenin gives gluten its flexibility and stretchiness. This is why gluten-containing grains are perfect for baking and for manufacturing pretend fake food-like products. This viscosity and elasticity provides you the consumer with a delectable and delightful eating experience.
The problem with gluten today though is that it isn’t the same gluten our agricultural ancestors ate. The wheat you’re eating today is nowhere near the same wheat that is associated with biblical times commonly referred to as the staff of life.
In the past 60 years man has taken it upon himself to modify wheat into a more versatile and robust crop. Why would we do this? World hunger. There was a time in the mid 20th century where the main focus of society was on starving populations.
How times have changed eh. Today the main focus is on the war on terror or as I call it the submission to fear, but anyhoo… back to gluten.
In order to feed the world scientists and farmers hybridised different wheat varieties resulting in a wheat crop that was more resistant to temperature changes and drought and that would also grow more grains in less time. Specific wheat varieties were also chosen for their increased gluten content making for a better cooking ingredient.
And thus today we have modern wheat which is the third highest produced crop in the world behind corn and rice.
This wheat not only has higher amounts of proteins including gluten, but also has higher amounts of starch and sugar compared to ancient grains. Sure modern wheat has awesome baking characteristics and tastes nice and sweet, but unfortunately more gluten and more sugar make for more fat, more inflammation, more obesity, more diabetes, more heart disease, more cancer… and you get the idea.
So how does gluten contribute to making you fat, sick, and nearly dead? In more ways than one unfortunately.
First gluten damages your gut. You have this protective barrier lining your gut like a giant fortress wall and along the wall every now and then there are little gateways that open and close allowing certain nutrients in. Gluten actually causes these gateways to open allowing anything and everything to slip through into your body. This is known as intestinal hyperpermeability or leaky gut syndrome. When your gut becomes leaky you can get a whole cascade of health problems manifest as a result because now your immune system needs to go on high alert and has to battle all these foreign materials that should not be in your bloodstream. This heightened immune response creates stress and inflammation and chronic stress and chronic inflammation together are the main causes for all chronic degenerative diseases today.
Not only that, but any undigested food particles that leak through into your bloodstream will be targeted by your immune system and then out of nowhere you become sensitive to certain foods, foods that you’ve eaten your whole entire life and eat on a regular basis you will no longer be able to handle. So if a big piece of beef or broccoli or egg gets through a leaky gut the immune system will tag it for elimination and new immune cells are created specifically to get rid of that food molecule.
So let’s say a piece of undigested chicken got through your leaky gut wall. Your immune system sees it in the body and creates an antibody for it. An antibody is like an assassin that shoots to kill only specific targets, and you have many different antibodies each created for different kinds of threats. For example if you’ve ever had measles or chickenpox or had a vaccination for a specific disease your immune system would have created specific antibodies for them. So if you were to ever get measles or chickenpox those antibodies can quickly get to work and kill off the disease.
Coming back to the undigested chicken particles now that your immune system has seen it and created specific antibodies for it, anytime you eat chicken the immune cells, the chicken antibodies, the chicken assassin that has just been hanging around waiting for an excuse to fire off its weapon starts firing away causing inflammation. Your genetic weak link will determine where most of that inflammation and damage will occur so it could be in your skin, your brain, your heart, your muscles, your bones, your joints or even your gut it all depends.
So gluten activates the genes for intestinal hyperpermeability aka leaky gut and a leaky gut causes immune activation, inflammation, and food sensitivities all of which open the door for the development of autoimmune diseases.
Humans cannot fully digest gluten and because of this gluten alone can excite your immune system creating inflammation. Protein molecules like gluten are made up of polypeptides or long chains of amino acids. So as an analogy think of a protein molecule as a pearl necklace and an amino acid as an individual pearl. Through the process of digestion in your mouth, your stomach, and small intestines these pearl necklaces are broken down into single pearls allowing them to be absorbed and assimilated through your protective gut wall.
However, the human digestive system cannot digest and break down gluten into individual pearls. Gluten has a very unique and strange sequence of pearls, of amino acids that your gut enzymes do not recognise. So while your body will break up the long gluten necklace into smaller peptides or into smaller groups of pearls it will never be able to turn gluten into easily digestible single pearls. So just as I said before when you have a leaky gut and these larger chunks of gluten get into your bloodstream they will create havoc and mayhem and inflammation as your immune system becomes activated and goes about its business of wiping them out.
What makes matters worse is that the order of the pearls in the gluten necklaces, the sequence of amino acids that make up these undigested gluten molecules they look very similar to the amino acid sequence of organs and tissues in your body. This is known as molecular mimicry where foreign protein molecules are similar in structure to human tissue. So now your immune system which has created antibodies to these invading gluten proteins gets confused and instead of just taking out the gluten your antibodies, your assassins they begin attacking your gut leading to coeliac or Crohn’s or inflammatory bowel disease preventing you from fully digesting and absorbing the nutrients from the food you eat. Your immune cells will attack your thyroid causing hypothyroidism slowing down your metabolism making you feel slow and tired. Your skin is your largest organ and this can get attacked as well causing a whole range of skin disorders and even your brain tissue gets damaged by your own immune system leading to ataxia, multiple sclerosis, autism, depression, headaches, and giving you a foggy mind. Talk about a case of mistaken identity.
When your immune system reacts to your own body this is called an autoimmune disease.
Gluten can also disrupt the microbiota in your gut causing a reduction in probiotics the good population of microorganisms and an increase in pathogens the bad population. This imbalance is known as dysbiosis. This is due to the toxic chemicals and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) used in the production of gluten-containing grains. These foreign compounds kill off the probiotics and allow the pathogens to thrive. The more bad guys you have in your gut the more immune system activation you will have and the more inflammation your body will experience and the more stress you will have in your life.
One final and fascinating part (well I think its fascinating) to how gluten negatively impacts your health is how it affects your brain.
When your body attempts to break down gluten new pearl necklaces are created, new proteins and one of these new protein molecules is called gluteomorphin. Gluteomorphins activate opioid receptors in your body meaning your brain thinks it’s getting a dose of opium. Usually your body’s own endorphin chemicals stimulate your opioid receptors making you feel good and also reduce your perception to pain. But gluten as well as dairy (in the case of dairy these opioid and morphine-like proteins are called casomorphins) so gluten and dairy stimulate your opioid receptors giving you a bit of a high making you feel super awesome. Any wonder now why people fight tooth and nail when trying to give up bread and milk? It is rare, but some people actually do suffer severe withdrawal symptoms when coming off gluten due to the opioid drug-like effect that these gluteomorphins have on the nervous system.
Okay so if gluten contributes to gut damage, inflammation, and affects your neurology why is it that not everyone is keeling over in abdominal pain or experiencing depression right after eating gluten?
Three reasons: first one is genetics and epigenetics. Maybe you don’t have the genes that make you more easily affected by gluten. Awesome, good for you. That would put you in the estimated 50% of people who have been clinically shown to not be affected by gluten even though it does cause a few gaps in your gut wall.
Now even if you do have the gluten causing inflammatory genes remember epigenetics which is about how your environment and lifestyle determine which genes get switched on and expressed and which genes remain in the off position. So you have the genes, but your environment is helping to keep those genes switched off.
Second reason that people aren’t experiencing obvious gluten reactions is symptomatology. Diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s can take many years to manifest and express as a symptom. You could be experiencing hidden chronic stress and hidden chronic inflammation due to the consumption of gluten right now without even knowing it. Of all the people diagnosed with full-blown coeliac disease only around 15% of them express gastrointestinal symptoms, gut symptoms. The rest of people with coeliac express extraintestinal symptoms meaning they have issues in their skin, brain, joints, muscles, bones, anywhere but the gut. So just because you don’t feel the fire due to gluten doesn’t mean it’s not affecting you.
Last reason deals with time and immune tolerance. Some people suffer from an illness right out of the womb at childbirth; whereas it can take 60 years before somebody else will experience that same disease. This is due to your immune system’s ability to respond when needed and when your immune system becomes unresponsive this is known as a loss of immune tolerance. For example it has been shown that some people can go their entire life eating gluten without problem, but once they reached their 70s they developed coeliac disease because their immune system lost the ability to respond to gluten. So while you may not have coeliac disease or sensitivity to gluten now if you have the genes and you’re living an unhealthy lifestyle it is only a matter of time before that small amount of gluten in that delicious caramel slice acts like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back leaving you with an upset gut, crappy skin, and bad moods.
Okay so what exactly is coeliac disease?
Coeliac disease is an autoimmune condition where your immune system reacts to gluten attacking your own body causing inflammation and damage to your gut and other tissues in your body. As previously mentioned this can include gut symptoms in about 15% of coeliac patients such as:
- Diarrhoea
- Constipation
- Bloating
- Cramping and
- Vomiting
Most other people with coeliac disease, however, express extraintestinal symptoms such as:
- Excessive weight loss
- Dermatitis herpetiformis and other skin issues
- Iron-deficient anaemia
- Arthritis
- Neurological and psychiatric disorders
- Infertility issues
It’s estimated that about 3% of the population have coeliac disease. If you have a family member diagnosed with coeliac disease than your chance of having coeliac disease jumps to 20%.
Now why do the rest of us have to worry about gluten? Well the fact that no human can fully digest gluten and realising that nothing in life is neither black nor white, but different shades of grey should make you think that even though you may not be on the extreme end of coeliac perhaps you’re somewhere in the middle of that spectrum or if you’re lucky may be you’re on the other extreme end where you tolerate gluten pretty well.
This is where the condition known as Non-Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity or NCGS comes in. NCGS like coeliac disease is where your immune system reacts to gluten causing inflammation and damage to your gut and other tissues in your body. But NCGS is not an autoimmune condition so your immune system isn’t attacking your body, but can become overactive leading to the development of an autoimmune disease later in life. People with NCGS experience the same symptoms as people with coeliac disease plus the following:
- Headaches and migraines
- Obesity
- Fibromyalgia
- Ataxia
- Depression
- Parkinson’s
- Alzheimer’s
- Asperger’s
- Autism
- ADD/ADHD
- Diabetes and
- Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism
It’s estimated that about 10% of the population has NCGS, but due to the fact that testing for NCGS is still a new field of study with technology just catching up this number isn’t reliable. It has been shown in clinical practice where doctors work with patients that about 30-60% of sick people who change to a gluten-free lifestyle no longer show any signs and symptoms of disease. So it could be said that 1 in 2 people are sensitive to gluten.
Now there are many lab tests that you can pay for and take to find out if you have coeliac disease and if you’re experiencing any of the previously mentioned symptoms this would be a good idea. There are also other lab tests you can take to find out if you have NCGS, but as I said this form of testing is new and cannot be relied on 100%.
The best test for NCGS to find out if you’re sensitive to gluten is one you can do at home. It’s a gluten elimination and challenge test that involves the removal of gluten from your diet for 91 days, that’s 3 months followed by a gluten challenge. If you experience any symptoms after the challenge you’re most likely sensitive to gluten.
Okay so let’s say you do a lab test or the gluten elimination and challenge test and find out you’re gluten sensitive whether it be full-blown coeliac disease or NCGS well now what do you do?
Well whatever you do, DON’T DO THIS! The single biggest mistake that most people make when first switching to a gluten-free diet is to swap out all gluten-containing foods with processed and packaged gluten-free foods thinking they’re living healthier than before.
Processed and packaged foods whether they are gluten-free or not are still fake pretend food-like products lacking nutrition as well as having no energy and screwed up information. Swapping out gluten-containing pasta, cookies, rice crackers, for gluten-free versions does not eliminate the rancid oxidised and damaged industrial seed oils aka vegetables oils and does not eliminate processed and refined sugars and also does not eliminate the chemical additives and preservatives like colourings, thickeners, and MSG. Gluten-free junk food is still junk food. You eat junk, you feel like junk, and you produce junk in your life.
Now the other issue with processed and packaged foods labelled gluten-free is that labelling standards state that any manufactured food with a gluten content of up to 20 parts per million can be legally labelled as gluten-free. Why this number? Because gluten containing foods that are 20 ppm or less have been shown to not cause further gut damage when talking about coeliac disease, but what about damage to your skin, your bones, your heart, and your brain? If you end up eating a lot of these gluten-free foods even in the parts per million you’re still getting a few milligrams of gluten and Dr Aristo Vojdani a world renowned Immunologist says that only 1/1000th of a gram which is 1 milligram is enough to activate your immune system and produce anti-gliadin antibodies or gluten assassins.
So the bottom line is it only takes a little bit of gluten about the size of a kernel of wheat for it to activate your genes for leaky gut, for it to excite your immune system, and for it to produce antibodies that will start killing off both gluten proteins as well as your own body tissue and this goes on for a minimum of 3 months and up to around 6 months.
Dr Rodney Ford a paediatrician, gastroenterologist, and allergist with over 30 years experience uses the term Gluten-Zero which I like. Zero means just that. No gluten whatsoever. Just as you cannot be a little bit pregnant you cannot have just a little bit of gluten. You’re either on the spectrum of gluten sensitivity or not.
Right about now you’re probably thinking to yourself, ‘That sounds like too much work, that’s too hard, how exactly do I go gluten-free?’ and the first and best tip I can give you is to find a why. Find a big enough reason that’s going to surpass any challenges and obstacles that will most definitely come your way. What is your dream when it comes to living a gluten-free lifestyle? By having a dream you will make your health and being gluten-free the priority.
As part of the dream building process you can reframe how you see this new way of being.
Now it probably looks like a lot of work and a big hassle and stress that you just don’t have the time to deal with right now. Perhaps you can change your perspective to one of appreciation. How?
Appreciate the fact that you are like a canary in the coal mine and that you have heightened senses about what makes you feel bad. You are the lucky one. You have an obvious symptom teaching you to change so you won’t get a debilitating disease in the future.
Around 50% of the rest of population will continue to eat gluten without any obvious symptoms or are not mindful and aware enough of their own body language to know it’s talking to them daily and so these asymptomatic folk will eventually present with an illness and a disease later on in their life. The people that don’t know that they are sensitive to gluten will have an increased risk of death and will get colon cancer and Alzheimer’s and skin issues as well as gluten ataxia, congestive heart failure etc. Count yourself lucky that you do know that you’re sensitive to gluten and now that you know better you can do better!
Also please do not label yourself as the disease or condition. You are not a coeliac. You are not sensitive to gluten. Your body has a disease called coeliac disease. Your body has a condition called NCGS. You are not your body just as you are not your big toe, your hair, or your love handles. You have all these things, but are not these things.
As part of the dream building process communicate to all the people in your life who may be affected by and may also affect you in your gluten-free lifestyle. This can include family, friends, workmates, teammates, waiters and managers in restaurants anyone who will have a direct influence on your ability to live gluten-free. Communicate to them let them know what your dream is and what it is you need and how they can support you.
Go back and listen to the podcast I did on dream building to find out how you can better set yourself up for success when switching to a gluten-free way of living.
Next tip is to do the research and become an expert in gluten. Learn what foods contain gluten. Learn how gluten directly affects you and do not trust food labels. Research suspect food products by calling up the manufacturer. Get the word from the horses mouth.
Now is the time to clear out your house of all gluten-containing products. Could be food, personal care products, home care products anything that has gluten in it. You will replace all of these with gluten-free and non-toxic alternatives.
With regards to food you can replace tasteless and nutritionless pasta with delicious nutritious zucchini or courgette or butternut squash or spaghetti squash pasta. Actually any vegetable you can spiralise and peel will do the pasta trick.
For salad dressings make your own with extra-virgin olive oil mixed with some acid like fresh lemon or lime juice or apple cider vinegar.
Instead of wheat-based soy sauces use gluten-free tamari soy sauce or coconut aminos as alternatives.
Want to do some gluten-free baking? Swap out the grain flours for coconut flour, almond flour, linseed or flaxseed meal, and for something a bit more sugary and sweet use a mixture of white rice flour, tapioca flour, and potato starch.
People always complain about not knowing what to have for breakfast when going gluten-free. Try a bowl of chia seeds soaked in a liquid with some nuts to act as a cereal replacement. Why not have the classic free range bacon and eggs or leftovers from dinner? In reality there is no such thing as a breakfast, lunch or dinner food. Real food is nutritious, energising and informative no matter when you eat it. As always though listen to your body and learn what portion sizes and times of the day your body prefers meals.
Want a snack? How about a piece of fruit with some raw nuts or some vegetables dipped in nut butters. You can always have a tin of salmon or sardines, a couple hardboiled eggs or some real beef jerky and biltong.
Still wanting some bread eh? Try some plantains and eggs mixed and fried in butter or ghee or how about frying up some sliced round flat pieces of a root vegetable like potatoes, these can replace burger buns.
There’s always real food pancakes as well made with banana, eggs, coconut flour and some cinnamon.
Trust me you’ll find that there’s even more flavour, taste, and deliciousness and definitely nutrition when you live gluten-free.
Finally, you’ll want to start living not just gluten-free, but living holistically as well. Gluten is just one part of a bigger picture when determining how happy and healthy you feel.
- Manage yourself when it comes to stress
- Get quality restorative sleep
- Breathe deep belly breaths
- Eat real food and drink real water
- Move often
- Give gratitude
- Connect with nature and with other people and
- Lower your environmental toxin exposure.
Now above all else KEEP CALM.
It’s not the end of the world. The sky is not falling just because you can no longer have your toast, croissant, bagel or cereal for breakfast. Take a deep breath and remember to take this journey one step at a time. Patience and cool headedness are your allies on your path to health and happiness.
And if you’re really struggling hire a Holistic Lifestyle Coach. Professional sports teams, top CEOs these guys have sport coaches, business coaches. You want the best health for yourself? Hire a health coach.
Aim to live gluten-zero and you’ll at least get to living gluten-free where you’ll be exposed to gluten every now and then. It’s impossible to be 100% perfect in any way of being, but by shooting for the stars you’ll at least hit the moon.
Remember all we can ever do is take each day as it comes.
As Lao Tzu reminds us in the classic Chinese text called the Tao Te Ching:
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Alright here are a few resources you can use to learn more about gluten and living gluten-free. I will put links for these in the show notes for this episode.
Check out the books Wheat Belly by Dr William Davis and Grain Brain by Dr David Perlmutter to find out more about the perils of gluten, wheat, grains, and sugar. Also download and watch the awesome online seminar series The Gluten Summit created by gluten expert Dr Tom O’Bryan to learn more about gluten, wheat, and how to live a gluten-free lifestyle.
A few awesome grain-free and gluten-free cookbooks I recommend are:
- Danielle Walker’s Against All Grain by Danielle Walker
- Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo
- The Zenbelly Cookbook by Simone Miller
- Nom Nom Paleo by Michelle Tam and Henry Fong
- Ancestral Table by Russ Crandall and finally
- The Paleo Kitchen by Juli Bauer and George Bryant
I own all of these books. I use them all the time. These will help anyone from the experienced chef to the kitchen newbie.
Links and Resources
- WGP 014: Dream Building — How to Create the Life You Really Really Want
- Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao
- Wheat Belly — Dr William Davis
- Grain Brain — Dr David Perlmutter
- The Gluten Summit
- Danielle Walker’s Against All Grain — Danielle Walker
- Practical Paleo — Diane Sanfilippo
- The Zenbelly Cookbook — Simone Miller
- Nom Nom Paleo — Michelle Tam and Henry Fong
- Ancestral Table — Russ Crandall and finally
- The Paleo Kitchen — Juli Bauer and George Bryant
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