Food Is Medicine

Food over Pharma.

The food we eat affects every cell of our bodies, it determines which hormones are released, which neurotransmitters are released, it regulates our immune system, can be inflammatory or anti-inflammatory and determines whether genes are expressed or suppressed.

It never fails to amaze me that people will put a pill in their mouth expecting it to affect their health, yet not have the same thought process about the food they consume.

Around 90% of health conditions are lifestyle-related diseases; they are caused by our lifestyle choices, not by our genetics. Our genes are modified by the environment and only express if given the conditions in which to do so.
The science of epigenetics proves that even though you may have a genetic predisposition for a particular condition, the gene will only switch on if the internal environment is favourable, meaning that genetic conditions of disease manifest in a body that promotes disease.

I'm not saying that your health issues are your own fault.

It's not easy to make healthy choices in a society that doesn't support our choices to be healthy; highly processed food is cheap and convenient for most people and our food is being not only sprayed with chemicals but also genetically modified.
We don't learn about the power of food in school and even medical doctors only do about 4 hours of nutrition training!
We are led to believe that we have no power to determine our health and that we must rely on medications.

The truth of the matter is, you DO have the power to determine whether you are healthy or not.

Lifestyle diseases, determined by lifestyle choices, include many of the most prevalent conditions we suffer from in modern society. Just because these conditions are common doesn't mean that they are normal.
We unfortunately accept and expect a decline in health as we age, but if we know that our cells are constantly renewing then logic should tell us that our new cells are not old and shouldn't be deteriorating. If we create new cells from healthy input they won't regenerate with the same old structure. The reason we decline with age is because of the continual internal abuse we subject ourselves to from the choices that we make.

Normal is to be healthy, vital and disease-free, well into our advanced years.

If you have a lifestyle disease listed below you may be taking medications intended to reduce inflammation and regulate your immune system.

• Hypertension
• Diabetes 
• Fibromyalgia
• Arthritis
• Psoriasis
• Endometriosis
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Crohn's disease
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Cancer
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Lupus

As I mentioned earlier, food has the power to reduce inflammation and regulate your immune system too!

So, in essence, we eat foods that make us sick and take medications to make us well.
The medications though have some nasty side effects, for which we tend to take more medications, and all the while we literally feed the disease with our suboptimal food choices.

You see the cycle here right?  The only winners are the processed food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. We are the losers!

Instead of seeking medications to fix us, we need to be taking responsibility for our own health and realise that we have the power to prevent disease and give ourselves the opportunity to heal by making better lifestyle choices.
If we make optimal choices regarding the nutrients that we feed our cells we will have a strong enough foundation of health so that we can withstand the odd slip now and again. We will have stronger immunity, improved recovery and be able to enjoy our lives in the manner in which our bodies are designed to. 

When thinking about making better food choices, consider the following:

• Real food doesn't have an ingredients label.
• Real food isn't advertised on TV.
• If your food has been sprayed with chemicals, you are eating those chemicals.
• If your animal-based foods have been injected with antibiotics or hormones, you are ingesting those too.

Mother nature gave us all the food we ever needed in the form of animals and plants; a diet of vegetables, fruits, nuts. seeds, meat, and fish can give us all the nutrients we need to fuel our cells for healthy regeneration and prevent the most common lifestyle diseases that we suffer from. 

You can make your body a place where healthy genes are expressed and unhealthy ones are suppressed.

Stop putting your health care in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, they don't want you to be healthy, there's no profit for them if you're healthy, they want to keep you on medication. 

The only health they are interested in is the health of their bank balance!

TAKE YOUR POWER BACK!

Just Breathe.

 "The Breath Knows How To Go Deeper Than The Mind" ~ Wim Hoff

Are you breathing?
Silly question, right? Of course, you are! You'd be in trouble if you weren't.

We all breathe automatically, our body does it without our conscious awareness, to get oxygen in, nutrients to the cells, and toxins out.
All-day long we breathe and stay alive because our autonomic nervous system takes care of proceedings, we don't notice it until our breathing pattern changes due to physical exertion or mental/emotional stress.
Most of us never even realise that we're breathing unless we're exercising or having a panic attack!
But, whilst we all breathe, the majority of people have an inverted breathing pattern at rest, whereby they breathe into the top of the chest, rather than deep into the lungs.

A functional breath should fill the lungs from the bottom up, causing expansion in the belly before the chest. The first 2/3 of the breath should be observed in the belly, with the last 1/3 seen in the rise of the chest.
An inverted breathing pattern is very common, especially when we get stressed out.  When we perceive stress, our breathing rate tends to become faster and more chest dominant, it's part of the fear response. Our emotions, feelings, and thoughts activate the sympathetic nervous system and hormones related to survival which causes muscles in the neck and shoulders to be overworked to help expand the rib cage to get more oxygen in.  This can cause tension in the muscles, resulting in stiffness in the neck and shoulders, and reduces the body's ability to remove toxins, leaving our inner environment more acidic, and therefore, more susceptible to disease.

Conscious breathing is one of the best ways to calm our nervous system in times of stress.  

When the mind is racing and we're lost in thought, the breath can bring us back to balance by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system which is the rest, digest, recovery and repair branch of our nervous system.
When the two branches of the system are balanced, we have greater mind/body coherence and our inner environment becomes a health-promoting place that is less conducive to the onset of disease.

There are many methods and breathwork techniques out there that you can use to change your inner state of being, but the first thing to do is to actually become aware of your breath, to breathe consciously. 

I like to start each day with breathwork. Morning tends to be the best time to practice because when you have an empty stomach after your night's sleep, the body isn't being chemically challenged by the digestive process.  Just 5-10 minutes of conscious breathing at the beginning of your day can get your nervous system balanced, increase the alkalinity of your body, get more oxygen to your cells, reduce inflammation and generate coherent thought patterns.

There are many techniques that I like, box breathing being one of my favourites, that I recommend to my clients.
Box breathing involves inhaling through the nose for 4 seconds, holding the breath for 4 seconds, exhaling through the mouth for 4 seconds and finally holding the lungs empty for another 4.
This method has been used in the military, it's great in times of perceived stress for calming the mind and body and increasing the ability to focus.

Time your breath with the circle, inhale as it expands, hold while it's static, and exhale as it contracts.
Repeat for as long as you need, to calm the monkey mind.

Another great breathwork practice is to make the exhalation longer than the inhalation.
Try breathing in for 4 seconds, holding for 7 seconds and exhaling for 8 seconds. This method can be particularly useful if you are having trouble falling asleep at night.

There are lots of more advanced techniques that can actually help us to achieve higher states of consciousness by activating our natural psychedelic brain chemicals, enabling us to experience different dimensions.

The breath is truly magical, especially when we know how to use it.

For now, though, I would suggest just becoming aware of your breathing.  Do it at home, in the office, in your car, whilst walking. Just notice the air going in through your nose, filling your lungs, feeding your cells and keeping you alive.

The Tiger In The Mind

Why Stress Makes Us Store Fat.

Too often in the fitness industry, I see coaches preaching the calories in v's calories out theory of fat-loss, with total disregard for human biology.

Calorie deficit works well for weight loss, not fat loss. So, as long as you're not concerned with what the composition of the weight is, then it's a great way to lose muscle and bone density too. You may lose weight but you will end up 'skinny-fat', with less muscle mass, weaker bones and a general decrease in overall health.
There are far more important things to consider if you want to lose body-fat and actually be healthy.

The truth is, no matter how calorie focussed you are, no matter the deficit between calories consumed and calories burned, your body will still store fat if your system is stressed.

If we go back to the earlier days of human existence, our primary stressors were predators and lack of food. Our physical survival was literally under threat and our physiology responded accordingly. The fight or flight response would shunt blood away from the digestive system to the arms and legs to enable us to move. We would rely upon glucose as our preferred fuel because it provided faster energy release than fat and our bodies could store the fat in case of starvation.

In modern society, there are no tigers chasing us, instead, our stress response is triggered by the tigers in our mind.

Our financial stress, relationship stress, success stress, acceptance stress, chemical stress, they all stimulate the release of stress hormones into the blood and our chemistry adapts to survival mode.

The metaphorical tiger is very much as real to our biochemistry as the actual tiger of days gone by. Our body responds to the stress by firstly releasing adrenalin and moving energy stores to the muscles of the extremities and away from the digestive system. Cortisol is then released, which tells our cells to store fat. This process teaches our bodies to use glucose as our primary fuel, so we then crave sugar.

Health isn't about looking good. It's about feeling good and functioning well.

If you are already highly stressed and trying to lose body-fat by restricting calories and exercising at an intensity that represents a physical stressor you are setting yourself up for long-term disappointment and a yo-yo pattern of weight problems.  In essence, you are adding chemical and physical stress to your already emotionally stressed out system, thereby further instigating the stress hormone response and leading to more fat storage.

Start with the Stress.
Tame the Tiger!