Last time I mentioned controlling blood sugar as one important issue to tackle to escape from your sugar addiction and establish some healthy eating habits.
But what is poor blood sugar control and what other clues might you have that it’s a problem for you?
 
The main cause of poor blood sugar control is Insulin Resistance. Here’s how it works:
When we eat a food that contains a carbohydrate (except insoluble fiber) our digestion breaks it down into glucose (blood sugar) to be used as fuel for our cells. 

Blood sugar is best kept within a Goldilocks range – not too high, not too low, but just right – so as to avoid a whole host of problems with our health. Our body produces insulin to carry the glucose to our cells. Most cells just take what they need but liver and muscle cells store extra glucose as glycogen. The liver also converts excess amounts to fat for storage.
Particularly when you continually ingest more carbohydrates than your body needs, your cells start to become
 resistant to the insulin. This leaves glucose and insulin backed up in the blood stream and out of that Goldilocks range, wreaking havoc on your health.
 
Why is this happening?

• Genetics can play a part. Some of us have cells that are more naturally resistant to insulin. People who store fat around the middle or who have a family history of diabetes are more prone.
• Some pharmaceuticals can cause the body to become more insulin resistant.
• Micronutrient deficiencies can play a part. When your body is low in certain key nutrients (and it is certainly likely if you haven’t been focusing on a healthy diet) then insulin resistance can either be a consequence or can be aggravated. For example:
  • Carnitine improves insulin sensitivity by increasing glucose uptake and storage.
  • Chromium helps insulin attach to the cell’s receptors increasing glucose uptake into the cell.
  • Deficiency in Magnesium reduces insulin sensitivity.
  • Alpha Lipoic Acid enhances glucose uptake into skeletal muscle tissue.
  • And more…

• Toxins in our food supply (pesticides, herbicides, plastic packaging), water, cosmetics and personal care products, cleaning supplies, cigarettes, smoked and charred foods and more can cause insulin sensitivity and some also impact the pancreases ability to produce insulin (another component in blood sugar control).
• Chronic stress raises our blood sugar, ready for fight of flight activity, but typically we do neither and the stresses we deal with don't go away. This contributes to the problem of too much blood glucose.

 
Do I have poor Blood Sugar Control?
If you’re a carboholic then there’s a good chance your blood sugar control is not good but what else could be happening that would indicate a potential problem?

• Eating sweets doesn’t relieve your sugar cravings…You just want more!
• You become irritable or light headed if you miss a meal.
• You rely on caffeine to get through the day or feel fatigued a lot.
• Eating can make you feel exhausted.
• You feel weak, shaky, or jittery pretty frequently.
• You get agitated, easily upset, or nervous.
• It's difficult for you to lose weight.
• Your waist is equal to or larger than your hips.
• Your vision is blurry.
• You have a low sex drive.
• You're always hungry or thirsty.
• You have to pee a lot.
• You have skin tags.

 
If you think you may have poor blood sugar control then please reach out for help. There are many ways to improve the situation and we’d love to support you. We work with clients on their food behaviors with our Food Relationship Reset Program ($50 OFF this quarter) and on establishing a strong nutrient status through improving their food intake and targeting nutrient deficiencies identified through blood testing or otherwise. We’ve put together a new range of service offerings around our testing of nutrient status to make it more affordable for more people so take a look here for more information.
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Fran Gallaher, intuitive coach and owner of Really Flourish, and I have talked often about this issue because we both believe in the intelligence of the body.
 
Fran looks at things from an energetic perspective. She believes that sometimes we unconsciously give our body messages and that we may be asking it to hold onto our weight for a reason. She has great insights about this to share. For a teaser, have a read of her recent blog,  Are You Learning to Trust Your Body?
 
What I can share from a nutritional perspective is that food is not simply calories, or energy, that you have to burn or else gain or hold on to weight. The long-term failure of the “eat less, exercise more” approach to weight loss is evidence that there must be something more complicated going on. The fact is food is so much more than just energy. It is information! It is a message to our body to do something and it changes the way in which our genes express themselves. Our body has intelligence and responds to the information we are giving it. If you are resistant to weight loss there is likely something deeper going on that needs to be uncovered. It is not just that you don’t have enough will power and are lazy and there are some solutions out there for you.
 
So what basic things do you need to take care of and understand first to move forward with weight management and weight loss?

• First, understand that a temporary fix isn’t going to work. Whatever method you use, in the end you are going to have to create a new lifestyle that manages your weight rather than just going on a diet and returning to your old habits.
• Overall health has to be part of your goal. There are unhealthy weight loss approaches out there that can help you shed pounds in the short term but in the long run they do more harm than good. Any program that involves eating highly processed foods is going to be counter-productive.
• You need to be exercising regularly. Our body was designed to move and we need that activity to function properly.
• Factors other than food and exercise can be at play. (More evidence that the energy in/ energy out formula doesn’t work and that lifestyle solutions are key.) Stress, sleep, pharmaceuticals and toxins can all play a part as can our habits and programming.
• Everyone is different because we each have different genes and different lifestyles, which impact our nutritional requirements. You are going to need to find out what works for you and your body may need additional support in certain areas to function optimally.

 
Fran and I have so much more we want to share and so we’ve decided to come together to share this information in a workshop on Saturday October 13th: Unlock Weight Loss – Little Known Keys that Open the Door to Your Success. We’ll be taking a deeper dive into some of the areas that we find are in the way of success for our clients when they have found weight loss to be unattainable or unsustainable. We are really excited for this collaboration and can’t wait to share what we know.
 
So if you are you curious about why you don’t seem to be able to lose weight and why it is a constant struggle;
If you’d like to understand more about why some people seem to lose weight easily but when you follow the same program, nothing seems to work;
If you’ve been counting your calories and try to get in shape and find that still nothing seems to shift;
If you have a difficult time sticking to a program at all and feel like you fail over and over, seeming to sabotage yourself;
Then consider joining Fran Gallaher and me on Saturday October 13th to find out if we can help you Unlock Weight Loss! Early bird pricing applies until Saturday October 6th so get your ticket now for just $67 (reduced from $77) for this information packed afternoon.

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.
 
 
 
 

As I’ve been focused on writing a new workshop on Anxiety, I’ve been digging more into the many connections between food and nutrition on the one hand and mood and brain functioning on the other. Despite the fact that there are so many logical links between the two, what I find is that many people really don’t think of nutrition and food as serious contenders when they are considering ways to deal with their mental health. More often than not, people go straight to pharmaceuticals or to a therapist before they consider cleaning up their diet.
 
If you think about it though, you already know that food makes a difference in how you feel and your brain functioning. If you’ve ever been really hungry, you have probably experienced feeling grumpy and angry, plus it’s hard to focus and you make more mistakes. If you’ve never been really hungry then just ask anyone you know who’s been on a very calorie restricted diet and they will confirm…It is just not fun!
 
For more evidence on this matter of hunger impacting mood, we can look at Judges’ decisions, which we tend to hope and believe will be logical and balanced. But no, not entirely! Did you know that Judges make more lenient decisions just after they have eaten breakfast or lunch, whereas before a meal break they are more likely to rule unfavorably?
 
This is a blood sugar issue and something that many people overlook as a very simple way to improve their mood and brain functioning.  Just in the last week I’ve had several clients who skip breakfast or go most of the day without food. Sometimes people are trying to eat less to lose weight (which is often counter productive anyway!) and sometimes people say they are just too busy to pay attention to it.
 
Clearly many people are just not connecting the dots and realizing the impact that food has on their brain. Blood sugar is just the tip of the iceberg. We also need to consider neurotransmitters, hormone balance, micronutrient deficiencies, gut health, and more. But if these links are just not tangible enough for you, then how about this?
 
Recently, the SMILES Trial was published. It is the first randomized controlled trial to test whether dietary improvement can actually treat (yes, I did say ‘treat’) depression. In the trial, dietary changes from a junk food diet to a real whole foods diet reduced depression in 30% of the participants.
 
I can only imagine what the results could have been if the participants had taken a deeper nutritional dive and been given more individualized dietary changes to work on.
 
So if I haven’t already made it clear, if you’re experiencing mood or brain functioning issues, I highly recommend paying attention to your diet. The brain is a key organ connected to the rest of our body and it cannot function well without the body functioning properly. If you can fix your body, you can likely fix your brain.
 
If you have questions or need further help the please reach out to us. We’d love to support you!
 

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.

​ 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.