Most of us know about Macronutrients – Proteins, Carbohydrates and Fats. We eat these to give us enough caloric energy to fuel our activities. They get a lot of attention actually, especially around weight loss, as many of us calorie count, measure our macronutrient ratio or restrict certain macronutrients (maybe low carb or low fat etc.).
 
But let’s not forget about Micronutrients. These are nutrients that we need to ingest in relatively small quantities to function at our best and they are vital to our health. You are probably familiar with some or all of them: vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), essential fatty acids (omega 3s and omega 6s) and phytonutrients (chemicals found in plants). Each micronutrient has a wide variety of functions in the body so if you don’t consume enough to meet your needs then symptoms can start to show up. We call these Deficiency Symptoms. The following chart shows some of the major functions of some key micronutrients and an outline of their deficiency symptoms.

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How do nutrient levels become depleted?
Unfortunately, it is all too easy to get low on nutrients. Here are some of the ways it can happen.
 
Drug induced
Medications can block the absorption, synthesis, metabolism or storage of nutrients.  For example, statin drugs deplete our stores of CoQ10. Your doctor is supposed to tell you that when prescribing a statin, but I find many of my clients are in the dark on that one.
 
Inadequate intake
The recommended daily amounts, RDAs, are the best information we have on how much of each nutrient is needed to avoid deficiency symptoms. Our individual genes or lifestyle can determine an even higher level of need. National surveys show that many people in the US do not meet even that benchmark for many nutrients. Contributing factors can be:

• a lack of (micro) nutrient dense foods in the diet,
• a high intake of highly processed foods,
• the declining quality of the food supply due to farming practices,
• longer storage time for food between farm and table,
• a restricted diet, such as veganism.

 
Stress and caffeine
For some Americans this is a way of life! Being amped up and stressed takes a toll on your body and you burn through more nutrients. That can leave you depleted.
 
Sugar and white flour foods
Eating a lot of sugar and white flour foods that raise your blood sugar fast can deplete the body of key nutrients like magnesium and chromium, amongst others.
 
Alcohol
The process of metabolizing alcohol requires the liver to use nutrients. These nutrients are diverted from other roles in the body and can leave you depleted.
 
Mal-absorption 
You may be eating enough micronutrients but not absorbing them! There are a number of different situations where this could occur but common ones that I encounter with clients are leaky gut or low stomach acid.
 
If you have symptoms, you may have micronutrient deficiencies!
 
One of the most helpful tools I use in my practice to gather information about my clients and help them get to optimal health is a Micronutrient Test. It is one key for me to knowing how to support and restore health in clients. The results show me which deficiencies in nutrients could be playing a part in symptoms. Testing cuts down on a lot of the educated guess work that would otherwise be needed.
 
If you’re curious about getting your nutrient status checked then read more about our Micronutrient Blood Test or get in touch with your questions. You might also be interested in our Holiday Special Deal on a Total Nutrition Package. It’s a great way to start out 2019!

There is so much confusion out there about our lipid markers and sometimes our blood test results can be hard to puzzle through. Often we are concerned about an elevated LDL result but an elevated LDL number isn’t the end of the story. To find out if your cardiovascular system is healthy or what you need to do to get back on track, you often have to dig a little deeper. Here’s why….

What are LDL and HDL?
In order for cholesterol (and other fats, fat soluble vitamins and antioxidants) to be transported around the body in the blood, it has to be carried by special proteins called lipoproteins that are soluble in water. These lipoproteins are classified according to their density; two of the most important in cardiovascular disease are low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL).

Why do LDLs often get the name “Bad Cholesterol”?
Science used to tell us that the amount of cholesterol being carried around the bloodstream was an important measure for heart disease risk. When you get your LDL level tested it is measuring the amount of cholesterol in the particles.

Now we know that it’s actually the number of LDL particles that tells us more. The more particles there are in the blood, the more likely they are to crash into the lining of the artery and penetrate the artery wall. This would be where the damage starts to happen. This is not something your doctor typically measures but more LDL particles doesn’t necessarily mean more cholesterol in the LDLs and vice versa.

Get in touch for a more in depth Lipoprotein panel so you can see what your risk is. Also know that risk factors are just that, risk factors. A high number of LDL particles does not mean that you have heart disease!

What is the most common cause of high LDL particle number?
You’re probably sure the answer to this one is eating animal foods containing saturated fat. But no, that’s not the case!! Recent cholesterol feeding studies show that dietary cholesterol has very little impact on blood cholesterol levels in about 75% of us. This is because the body controls production levels of cholesterol tightly; when dietary cholesterol goes up, production in the liver goes down. The remaining 25% of the population show modest increases in both LDL and HDL, but it does not affect the ratio of LDL to HDL or increase the risk of heart disease. In other words, eating cholesterol isn’t going to give you a heart attack.

So, back to the most common cause…
The typical pattern for high LDL particle number is metabolic syndrome. The more factors for metabolic syndrome that you have, the more likelihood there is that your LDL particle number is elevated. These include insulin resistance, leptin resistance, obesity (especially abdominal obesity), high blood pressure and high triglycerides. Since triglycerides, along with cholesterol, are also carried in the blood by LDLs, when there are more triglycerides there need to be more LDL particles to transport them around even though the cholesterol in the particles may not be high.

If this is you, then eating a low carbohydrate diet is going to be a helpful track to follow to reduce your LDLs. Improving your body’s ability to handle the glucose-insulin interaction by making sure you have the right levels of the micronutrients involved is also key. Let us know if you’d like help navigating this with dietary changes and micronutrient testing.
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Other causes to consider or rule out

• Poor thyroid function can impact LDL levels in a number of ways, impacting production, absorption and metabolism. This can be the case even in subclinical hypothyroidism, where T3 and T4 are normal but TSH is elevated. Make sure you get these tested if you are concerned or have symptoms of poor thyroid function.
• Infections like H Pylori (symptoms include burping, bloating, abdominal pain or burning and nausea) and others can also be responsible for a high cholesterol profile, including high LDLs. The exact mechanism for this is not yet well understood. It is possible that the infections alter lipid metabolism in the infected cells. Alternatively it may be that LDLs have protective antimicrobial qualities.
• A leaky gut can be a cause. When your intestinal barrier is not strong it can leak toxins produced by gut bacteria into the bloodstream and cause an immune response. That immune response involves particles that are carried through the bloodstream by LDLs and so can increase LDL particle number. Let us know if you’d like to check on your intestinal permeability and get help healing a leaky gut.
• Genetics can play a role. Those with Familial Hypercholesterolemia have genetic mutations that impact the ability of LDLs to deliver nutrients to the cell so that they cannot be removed from the blood. Cholesterol levels can be anywhere from 350 to 1000 mg/DL for these individuals.

What else can you do?
Check out my blog next time for my list of heart-healthy nutrition and lifestyle choices. In the meantime, let me know if you have questions or comments. I’d love to hear from you.

​ A lot of people ask me about supplementation.  Here are the most common questions:

Do supplements really do anything?  Are they necessary?
You may have heard me say, "Not all supplements all are created equal." I would agree that many of the supplements out there are not helping because they are poor quality. For that reason we only use professional grade supplements with our clients.

Can't I get what I need from food?
Of course I am a strong believer in striving for a nutrient dense diet, and Supplements are just that, supplements to a healthy diet.  What I have found in my practice is that most people can definitely use the support of supplementation. When I do dietary analysis, it is rare to find someone getting 100% of all the recommended daily amounts of their nutrients and blood testing often reveals nutritional deficiencies or borderline levels in my clients.

Why are people’s diets nutrient depleted?
After all, we are living in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet.

There are 2 main reasons why today’s diets are depleted of essential nutrients:
Our busy lifestyles.
Modern lifestyles involve juggling work, family and other activities and don’t leave much time for quality food choices and meals. Additionally, nutrition is not a priority for most people. A survey of 2,000 adults showed that people rank convenience and taste as the most important factors in choosing their lunch followed by cost and then, last of all, health! Wow!

The declining quality of our food supply.
Even for those of us that try really hard to be healthy, it is still difficult to get what we need because food quality has declined. A comparison study looked at the changes in nutrient content of 43 fruits and vegetables between 1950 and 1999 and found, for example, a 38% decrease in riboflavin (vitamin B2) content, a 20% decrease in ascorbic acid (vitamin C) content etc.. 

What is causing the declining quality of our food supply?
Multiple factors are likely to be responsible:
Storage time for food: Nutrients are harmed during storage and transportation. For this reason, buying local is a great option.
Harvesting  before maturity: This diminishes nutrient content potential.
Farming practices: Factory farmed animals produce meat and dairy that is less nutrient rich. I recommend buying 100% grass-fed animal products for this reason.
Plants grown over and over again on the same land, have robbed our ground of nutrients. They are depleted faster than replenished, and the gap continues to widen. While soil does get nutrients from fertilizer, typically it does not include a comprehensive profile of nutrients.

What else causes nutrient depletion?
Another reason why we are depleted of nutrients is the balance in the nutrients we need vs. the nutrients we consume.  This can happen because of several issues:
Pharmaceuticals
Americans are, overall, participating in pharmaceutical drug use more and more. Did you know that pharmaceutical drugs deplete the body of nutrients? Specific drug categories impact specific nutrients. Contact us here, if you’d like help figuring out if your medication could be impacting you.
Mal-absorption of nutrients
Damage to our GI tract due to poor diet and lifestyle choices can impact our ability to absorb nutrients. This often shows up in micronutrient testing and we can help restore the gut to health.
Stress 
Stress on the body can mean we are burning through more micronutrients and have a higher than average need which may need compensating.

How can we help?
We are focused this month on helping you with supplementation so check out our Special Deals for April. Whether you just want access to great quality supplements at a 15% discount to retail or whether you’d like some help figuring out what to take, we have something for you! We use our a variety of methods to determine your needs including our intake form which covers your health history, current symptoms and current supplements, discussion during our sessions, your food journal, micronutrient and other blood testing and dietary analysis.

You may have given little thought to micronutrients. Often when we hear about nutrition and health, the focus is on caloric intake. We have been told for years “calories in vs. calories out” is all we needed to monitor to stay trim. Whilst we do need to pay some attention to calories from our macronutrient intake (proteins, carbohydrates and fats), I would say this is just a small piece of what matters to your nutritional health. Not enough emphasis is placed on MICROnutrients and their health promoting qualities.

Micronutrients are vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) and antioxidants. We only need these nutrients in small quantities, (hence the term “micro”), as compared with the calorie providing macronutrients. Deficiencies in micronutrients are associated with diseases and symptoms because almost every physiological function in the body requires micronutrients as part of the process. Think of your body as one big chemistry lab with reactions going on all the time. Micronutrients are key ingredients in these reactions and are necessary to keep all of the chemistry happening and our body working as it should. For example, magnesium is involved in over 300 essential metabolic reactions in the body.
What kind of symptoms might I be feeling?
Almost all chronic conditions that people suffer with, can be linked with micronutrients. Acne, allergies, mood conditions, diabetes, hormones, migraines etc.

Since we only need small amounts of micronutrients, you might think this is easily taken care of. Unfortunately, the odds are against us in getting enough of what we need.
Reasons why we may become deficient:

• The statistics on dietary intake of micronutrients are alarming. According to the data reported in a large national survey (NHANES), and true to the experience I have with clients, more than 90% of Americans are deficient in their intake of at least one micronutrient and many people have multiple nutrients where they don’t ingest adequate amounts on a regular basis. Much of our food supply has low micronutrient content due to mass food production and processing, so that these days you have to work extremely hard to make sure you get all of the micronutrient intake you need.

• We may think we are supporting our body by using a multivitamin but many of the supplements available in the grocery or drug store are poor quality. They may or may not actually contain the nutrients they say they contain. Many are packed with binders and fillers and baked hard so that they are difficult for our body to digest. Often they actually contain toxic ingredients!

• Medications deplete our bodies of micronutrients. Given that almost half of the adult population and over a fifth of children use at least one pharmaceutical, this is causing a drain on our collective micronutrient reserves.

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• Everyone is metabolically and biochemically unique so micronutrient needs can differ from person to person. Our needs can also be influenced by excessive physical activity, smoking, alcohol, stress, high sugar diet, mal-absorption of nutrients due to digestive issues and more.

What can you do?

• Eat a nutrient dense diet. The best way to do this is to eat whole, unprocessed foods.

• Find out where you might be deficient. Your symptoms are definitely a clue to where you need support but it can be helpful to narrow it down. We offer both micronutrient blood testing and dietary analysis to help you figure this out. When we have more complete information we can support your body in the most effective way. Check out our Ways to Love Yourself in February Special Deals.

• Work to get your health to a state where you no longer have to rely on pharmaceuticals.

• Adjust your lifestyle to reduce or remove those stressors that drain your body.