Stress is something many of us struggle with. Some degree of stress is manageable, and even helpful to motivate us, but when stress becomes chronic it can take a toll on your mood and your health. There are many lifestyle changes that you might consider to reduce stress and nutrition is an important one that is sometimes overlooked.
 
Working with clients, I help them to shift their diet toward more health giving and less stress producing foods like avoiding sugar, flour and industrial seed oils like canola and soybean oil. You can get a copy of my Optimal You Nutrition Plan, by signing up for my newsletter on my website to see what types of foods I suggest for most people.
 
In the meantime, if you’re looking for some ways to reduce the impact that stress has on your system then you could consider some of my favorite options:
 
B Complex Vitamins
B vitamins are beneficial for mood, energy and mental sharpness. When we are stressed we may need more to keep us feeling good. This is my favorite formula from nutraMetrix as it contains activated forms that the body can use easily and the isotonic formula makes it very bioavailable. nutraMetrix Isotonix Activated B Complex
 
Adaptogens
These are natural substances that work with your body to help you adapt and normalize your body’s response to stress. There are many different adaptogens. Bliss is a formula containing a variety that I like to use when I know I will be under more stress than is typical. Take care if you are using an anti-depressant.
 
Essential Oils
Another way to deliver natural plant compounds to the body is through Essential Oils. Like many adaptogens, these have been utilized for centuries for their healing properties. I love these three oil blends for stress: Serenity, Balance & Peace. They also just smell delicious. You can search for them at my Essential Oils Store.
 

Bargain Supplements? It really is too good to be true!
 
I’ve had a couple of discussions with people this week who tell me that they buy their supplements on Amazon. I understand!....Good supplements cost money and may seem expensive. This is because it costs money to make quality supplements. It is tempting to want to cut costs and look for a cheaper source. You can find just about anything on Amazon, and, if you have Amazon Prime, then you can avoid shipping costs too. All sounds so reasonable. But here’s what you should know.
 
Bargain supplements might be worthless at best, and at worst they may be negatively impacting your health. Unfortunately it is possible to make huge amounts of money by undercutting the price of legitimate supplement companies and taking advantage of consumers.
 
I carry health professional lines from reputable manufacturers and many of these companies have regulations against those products being sold elsewhere on the internet. If they are showing up on Amazon then you have to wonder how they got there. Someone must be trying to take advantage of the consumer.
 
Now some reputable companies do list their products on Amazon but in this case you are buying directly from that manufacturer. If you are not buying from a reputable supplement company then these are some of the problems you might be encountering:
 

• The product may be counterfeit and possibly tampered with and dangerous. They may not have the correct amounts of the active ingredients they are supposed to contain. Some can have more and some have none at all.
• The supplements may be expired products that have been repackaged as new.
• They could have been stolen or purchased wholesale and released on the black market without any quality control.
• Products have been damaged and made ineffective or unhealthy (eg. rancid oils) because they have not been warehoused properly or shipped in appropriate conditions.

 
To serve my clients well, I carry health professional lines sourced from reputable companies for my clients. You can check out the options here on our Supplements Page. I suggest giving us a call so we can talk through your needs and recommend specific supplements. I always tell people that if they don’t want to buy from me they are better off going to a local health food store to get what they need rather than taking a risk with online shopping where you don't really know what you are getting.

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.

For most of us the holidays are a time for gathering with friends and family, enjoying special foods and drinking more than usual.  The shopping, cooking, planning, family gatherings etc. can add an additional layer of stress to your already full life.  Love it or hate it, this period poses a number of different challenges for your health and your weight.

When our body is stressed it actually responds by raising our blood sugar and putting us into fat storage mode.  Of course stress can also cause difficulties with digestion and abdominal pain, headaches, raised blood pressure and so on.  In other words, your health can really take a hit if you don’t pay attention!

So what can you do?  These are some of my thoughts and suggestions on how to support yourself so you can arrive at 2015 ready to tackle the New Year with enthusiasm and without an extra 5lbs of body fat to deal with.

• ·Don’t give up your exercise routine.   If you are away from home and can’t stick to your usual routine, do something!  I mean it!  Exercise should be top of your list!  This is one of the best ways to help your body handle stress and allows you to work off some of the extra calories.

• ·      Make sure you pay attention to how much sleep you are getting.  Sleep is so important for our body and if you don’t get enough sleep your body is essentially running on empty.  Typically people might use coffee or other caffeine containing drinks to get through the day when they don’t sleep.  Basically this just pushes your body more…. more stress!  Another go to is sugary food, which gives you a quick boost of energy but results in more fat storage.  If you do decide to stay late at a party, then try to catch up later whether by having a couple of early nights or a nap the next day.

• ·      If everything going on has you all wound up then you may need to find some techniques to wind down that are simple to build in to your day.  This could be listening to music that you enjoy, spending a few minutes quietly taking some deep breaths or calling a friend.  Make a plan for what you will do in stressful situations so that when you get there you don’t just eat ice-cream out of the tub and feel sorry for yourself.

• ·      Don’t set yourself unrealistic goals and deprive yourself.  The more you try to abstain from everything, the more you will want to indulge.  Then it’s just a case of how much willpower you can exercise, and most of us have a limited supply of that.

• ·      It is best to plan ahead for an event where there will be a lot of food and alcohol.  If you can, decide ahead of time where you will indulge because it’s worth it to you.  I have been gluten free for a year but at Thanksgiving I decided I would have a slice of pie because it was worth it to me.  I lived to tell the tale!!  But be moderate!  It doesn’t have to be a huge slice of pie, right?  The first two mouthfuls taste the best anyway.  And if you want to have a glass of two of wine maybe you should abstain from the bread.

• ·      Keep a regular eating schedule – our metabolism rebels if we starve it all day so we can pig out on a big meal in the evening.  Instead, make it a goal to have a lot of healthy options around that you like so that you can fuel up on those.

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• ·      I am a big believer in supplementation to support the body.  It is so hard even on a regular day to give your body the nutrition it needs.  At this time of year it is even more challenging.  My favorites for the holidays are included in my December 12th 2014 newsletter with a 15% discount by rebate as my holiday gift to you!  If you’re not on my newsletter list please contact me and I’d be happy to email it out to you.  We also offer complimentary sessions to help you design a healthy wellness focused supplement regime.

Have a Happy, Healthy Holiday!