You may have noticed that this month at Ways to Optimize we are focused on the immune system. Whilst we typically think about protecting ourselves from colds and flus when we discuss our immunity, I want to touch here on a less high profile aspect of the immune system that’s super important and for many not functioning well and that’s our Stomach Acid Production.
 
Are acid-suppressing drugs helping us?
 
Problems with heartburn and acid reflux are common. Acid-suppressing drugs are among the most commonly used prescription and over the counter pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical companies' sales rely on us accepting the idea that stomach acid is something that needs to be kept in check. It does sound plausible, doesn’t it, that symptoms of heartburn, indigestion and gastrointestinal reflux disease are caused by too much acid, because that burning is real. The reality is that it is much more likely that you have too little stomach acid production rather than too much. These medicines are actually working counter to what many people really need. Stomach acid is not something to be feared. We definitely need it. Our body is designed so that enough acid can be produced to bring our stomach pH to around 1.5 to 3.0. That’s a really strong acid!
 
Why is stomach acid important in immune health?
 
Stomach acid has several important roles in digestion but I’d like to highlight these in relation to a healthy immune system.

• It inhibits the growth of microorganisms that enter the body through food to prevent infection. Super important for keeping us from getting sick.
• It ensures proper absorption of many minerals, such as zinc. Zinc is a key nutrient for our immune system and (double whammy!) is critical for production of stomach acid. So it is a circular problem…less stomach acid causes less zinc causes less stomach acid and so it goes on!
• It helps protect us from duodenal ulcers and ensures proper digestion of food. Both are important as protection from a leaky gut. Leaky gut can result in food sensitivities, inflammation and autoimmune conditions.
• It is important to keep our essential gut flora healthy, a key aspect of our immune system.

 
Why do I feel burning when I have low stomach acid?
 
The stomach has two valves, the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) (at the top of the stomach) and the pyloric sphincter (at the bottom of the stomach).
The pyloric sphincter is a one way valve which is designed to open when the food in your stomach is digested to chyme with the correct pH. If you don’t have enough stomach acid the valve may not open.
The other valve, the LES, is designed to open both ways.  When excessive pressure builds up in the stomach, but the pyloric valve doesn’t open, the body releases the pressure by opening up the LES.  Even if your stomach isn’t producing enough acid, any amount of acid going into the esophagus will result in burning sensations because the esophagus is not designed to handle stomach acid and doesn’t have the same protections that the stomach has.  Frequent opening of the LES toward the esophagus will contribute to a weakened valve that compounds the problem.
 
Note:  There are also other causes that contribute to a malfunctioning LES.  Certain foods (e.g. hot peppers, citrus, tomatoes), drinks (caffeine, alcohol), overeating, overweight and obesity, pregnancy, hiatal hernia, and many medications (including NSAIDs, antibiotics, bronchodilators, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, nitrates, antidepressants, anti-anxiety, and anticholinergics) are associated with a weakened LES.           
 
Restoring your stomach acid levels
 
Don’t worry! If you suspect you may have low stomach acid, help is at hand. We can help you identify if low stomach acid is at play in your symptoms, support your digestion as you heal and help you identify and remedy nutrient deficiencies that may be at the heart of things.  Get in touch if you’d like to get help. We also have some Special Deals this month to help you address immune concerns and save you money.
 
 
 
 

Are you someone who suffers with seasonal allergies? Do you deal with sneezing and itchy eyes?  Most people turn directly to medicines to help, but believe me when I say you do have options besides heavy antihistamine use! In this article I’m going to look at some background around allergies and help you figure out what to avoid (and this may surprise some of you). More next time on foods and supplements you can eat to support you through the allergy season.

What is an allergy?
An allergic reaction happens when your immune system misidentifies something completely harmless as a threat and starts working hard to attack offending “foreign invader”. This causes an inflammatory response.

There are two ways our bodies interpret and react to ‘foreign invaders”.

The first is a true allergy, which is an immediate allergic reaction. These reactions are what you go to an allergist for. The standard test is a skin scratch test where a drop of the reactive allergen is placed on your back or arm and then the skin is pricked. If your skin puffs up, you are allergic to that substance. You might find you are allergic to ragweed, pollen, grasses etc.  An allergy is actually a disorder of the immune system and the key to fighting seasonal allergies is building a strong immune system.

Hidden food allergies can be at play.
The second type of allergic reaction is a delayed immune response. It’s not a true allergy. Sometimes called an intolerance or sensitivity these can occur in a matter of hours to days and can show up in a variety of symptoms in people. Very often the secondary immune reactions are due to unknown food intolerances. And since these delayed response reactions are not immediate they don’t show up on a scratch test done in an allergist office. Thus these types of secondary immune reactions frequently go undetected. Here are some of the symptoms people experience. When you look through you’ll understand why they might be mistaken for seasonal allergies.

•        Itchy eyes
•        Runny nose
•       Scratchy throat
•       Skin irritations; acne; psoriasis, red patchy skin
•       Headache
•       Joint/muscle pain
•       Bloating, gas, or other gastritis like symptoms
•       Poor focus and concentration or difficulty making decisions aka brain fog
•       Diarrhea
•       Constipation

Often the foods we eat on a daily basis end up being those that we are sensitive to. Interestingly, we also tend to crave the foods we are most reactive to. Because we are experiencing a delayed reaction in the following hours or days, we don’t recognize these familiar foods as being problematic for us.

The six most common trigger foods are:
Gluten
Casein from dairy
Soy
Eggs
Nuts
Corn

If you need help determining whether you have hidden food allergies, please get in touch and we can certainly help!

Gut Flora
With non-food allergies, the connection between the food you eat and the symptoms you feel is not always clear but that doesn’t mean the connection isn’t there.

Your gut is a crucial part of your immune system, because it’s the first line of immune defense against any item that you eat. One of its biggest jobs is identifying which things are harmless and which are dangerous. This is the part of the immune function that breaks down in an allergic reaction. The good news is, there’s strong evidence that probiotics help alleviate allergy symptoms by changing the immune response in the gut.

We see how gut flora affects things in practice when looking at children raised on farms. They have much lower rates of allergies. The hypothesis is that exposure to a reasonable level of dirt and bugs when young, gives them a better resistance to allergies because of its impact on the patterns of gut flora. 

Inflammation
Allergies, as I mentioned above, involve an inflammatory response. Anything that causes inflammation in the body is going to put the immune system on high alert and it will respond more to seasonal allergies. The key causes of inflammation include eating sugar, foods to which you are sensitive (see above), alcohol, caffeine, industrial seed oils (like canola and soybean oils) and processed foods as well as having a stressful lifestyle or lack of sleep. Anti-inflammatory foods and supplements like Omega3 fats and others have been associated with reducing allergies. More on this next time.

Cross Reactivity
Often those with a seasonal allergy will experience an allergic response to certain foods. Here’s a list of common foods that cross react with pollen allergies:
Birch pollen: apple, carrot, celery, pear, tomato, cherry, tree nuts
Goosefoot pollen: banana, melon, peach (infrequently: nectarine, asparagus, kiwi, potato, olive, onion)
Mugwort pollen (weed): carrot, celery, aniseed, peach
Ragweed pollen: melon, cucumber, banana, sunflower, echinacea
Timothy grass: apple, litchi, tomato, celery, corn, bell pepper, paprika
Source:
www.foodintolerances.org

Hopefully that was some food for thought for those of you who are popping pills this allergy season. 
Remember:
Medications only relieve symptoms of allergies & don’t deal with the underlying causes. 
A natural approach can often be more effective. 
Dealing with allergies takes patience and a combination of tactics. 
Start by removing foods that could be causing you trouble. 

As always, let us know if we can help.

​So last time we talked about why it is so hard for people to stop eating sugar and what chemistry is at play that keeps us hooked. So this time I wanted to discuss why we should try to kick the habit.
I’m pretty sure everyone now realizes at this stage that eating sugar is not healthy.  It makes us fat, right?  Empty calories and all that.  Rots our teeth…we all know this.
Well that’s true but that makes us think that if we want to splurge on sugar then we just cut back on calories elsewhere or work a bit harder in the gym and all will be well. And we all brush and floss so what’s the problem?

Well the fact is, excess sugar consumption is detrimental to our health in many other ways that you may not be so aware of:

Glycation
I’m putting this one near the top to appeal to your vanity. It’s not the biggest but maybe it is a motivator for you. Sugar bonds with protein molecules and impairs functioning causing stickiness in joints. It is particularly drawn to collagen and elastin in the skin. Here’s a picture of glycated skin – pretty isn’t it?!

So one of the most crucial anti-aging steps you can take is to get off sugar.

Depletion of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals)
Here are a couple of specific examples that illustrate how sugar depletes our storage of minerals but know that mineral deficiencies can cause leg cramps, muscle tightness, low blood sugar, diabetes, low blood pressure, PMS, ADD, depression and many more!

• It takes 56 molecules of magnesium to metabolize on molecule of sugar leaving many of us magnesium depleted and a prevalence of high blood pressure, poor sleep, neurological problems and immune issues.
• Calcium stores are drawn on to neutralize the affects of sugar.  We see direct links between sugar consumption and osteopenia.

Immune System Repression
White blood cells do not function well in a sugary environment.  It depresses our ability to fight viruses, cancer and parasites and especially bacteria.  1 tsp of sugar depresses the immune system for 5 hours.  Continued sugar consumption results in immune suppression and opens the door to infections and degenerative disease.
In a battle to gain entry to the cell, sugar wins over vitamin C which most of us know is one of our main immune boosting vitamins.

Feeding Cancer Cells
As adults we do not have many actively growing cells in our bodies except for cancer cells. Cancer cells move through each of us all the time and when we have a high sugar levels they gobble it up for growth. Remove the food for cancer cells and it is going to have a harder time taking a grip.

Insulin Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes
When our system is continually bombarded with excess sugar our cells start to become resistant to the insulin produced to deliver the glucose. The body tries to compensate by producing more insulin in the battle to get circulating blood sugar levels lowered (high blood sugar is toxic). When insulin is raised continually, the body is storing fat and there is weight gain. The consequent high blood sugar is also causing damage to the nervous system, suppressing the immune system and all that we talked about above.

Stress on the system
High blood sugar causes adrenaline production, which puts stress on the adrenals and the entire system. Many of us live in a constant state of stress anyway so our adrenals are already exhausted.  When your adrenals are working overtime they may be using up resources needed for other systems like digestion, sex hormones, thyroid hormones etc.

Inflammation
Sugar is one of the main causes of inflammation in the body. We’ve talked about it before so I’ll keep it brief here. Inflammation shows up as diabetes, autoimmune disorders, high blood pressure, and even autism, ADD, ADHD, eczema, asthma—even anger and aggression.

Candida
Candida is a fungal organism that is sometimes known as thrush or a yeast infection. The yeast is always moderately present in your intestinal tract but it can actually loom elsewhere in your body. Candida yeast cells live among the bacterial flora present in the gastrointestinal tract, mucosa, esophagus, small intestine, as well as on the body’s surface. In a balanced healthy state, candida is controlled and mitigated by beneficial bacteria and your immune system. Candida is a sugar-fermenting organism, feeding on blood sugar so it becomes problematic when we eat a high sugar diet. Also it can be a problem if we have a weakened immunity or we possess low levels of beneficial bacteria. Women are typically more susceptible to yeast growth but everyone has a potential to develop a yeast condition.


Does that all motivate you or depress you? It’s a tough one I know! Shifting something in your diet is not easy and particularly with sugar because of its addictive nature and prevalence, not to mention it is wrapped up with so many emotional connections (rewards, treats, celebrations). Most people need help to make lasting change in this area and sometimes it is helpful to check your nutrient levels to have something to really motivate you.  We offer support in these areas so please reach out if you need us.

​Sometimes being healthier is just a matter of an easy switch over from something unhealthy to a better alternative and doesn't have to be about deprivation or dieting.  Here's one that is simple; a great way to raise your micronutrient intake and reduce your exposure to toxins.

We have all experienced inflammation as a normal response by our immune system when it needs to deal with damage or infection.  It looks like the swelling of a bruise or hives after exposure to a toxin.  After the threat is neutralized, anti-inflammatory compounds should then move in to bring the inflammation down.  Clearly this kind of inflammation is useful to help us survive and heal!

The problem comes when the body becomes unable to balance the forces of inflammation and there can be too much inflammatory activity.  For many people, the inflammation becomes chronic and most of us in this country are walking around on “simmer”. If you have a significant disease, like cancer or MS, then clearly inflammation has already taken hold of your body.  But here are some earlier signs that something might be going awry in your body’s ability to balance:

• Ongoing, irritating pain in the body
• Allergies or asthma
• High blood pressure
• Blood sugar problems
• Ulcers and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (constipation or diarrhea)
• Constant fatigue
• Skin problems
• Bloodshot eyes
• Gum disease

If you are overly inflamed you are headed towards premature aging and illness and this is the cause of almost every modern disease including heart disease, cancer, obesity, dementia, arthritis, autoimmune conditions, allergies and digestive disorders.

Often times health practitioners don’t put it together that the causes of various health conditions are one and the same - they treat the symptoms of each inflammatory condition separately.  Someone might be on a high blood pressure medication, proton pump inhibitor for acid reflux and they may also suffer with allergies.  Multiple medications to control the symptoms of inflammation and no one might be looking for the underlying cause and attending to that.

At Ways to Optimize we help you work through the different potential causes that may be at work in your body and help you make the right lifestyle changes to help restore your body to a balanced state.

Don’t forget we have a spring cleanse special running until the end of April that is $60 off our regular programs.  This is a great way to get started on revamping your lifestyle.