Last week I wrote about getting the New Year off to a great start by setting a health resolution to eat simple traditional foods. The research is in and the biggest culprit damaging our health from the world of food is not the type of basic food you choose, but rather how much processing it goes through before it hits your mouth. The advice was to eat more like how your great
grandparents ate. The challenge is to embrace the time and effort it takes to make real food instead of downgrading into convenience foods. Most real food is very perishable and has to be purchased fresh, although modern freezing methods are able to preserve the nutrition of fresh foods. The goal is to avoid foods that are precooked and packaged, so they can be put on a shelf. To do this they have to use all sorts of body-damaging chemicals to preserve them as well as synthetic flavors and
colors to make them appealing. These are not good for your health.
I can already hear the words “but I don't cook.” I see four answers to this situation – one: get over it and learn to cook, two: get into a relationship with someone who does cook, three: sign up with a subscription fresh meal plan like Factor or Meal Pro, or four: go out to eat for all your meals at restaurants that specialize in preparing fresh healthy foods. I prefer choice number one, but I like the
chance to be creative in the kitchen. Not everyone likes kitchens – too many memories of failed casseroles past I guess. Choice two works if you are good at creating win-win relationships. I have not tried choice three, but a few of my patients have and they say it has worked quite well for them. Choice four would sound good to me if I had the time and made at least triple my current income. So if health is of interest to you, make your choice. There are no healthy, quick, and convenient foods
that will sustain your body long term. Sorry. (Fresh fruit is healthy, but it cannot sustain you.)
Health priority number two – movement. I heard an excellent perspective from a longevity researcher the other day. She said that if we could put exercise in a pill, it would be the most powerful longevity drug ever invented. That kind of says it all. Exercise is that important. The big point I want to make about exercise is that we are talking about a lot more than going to the yoga studio or gym once or twice a
week. There are many kinds of exercise and all of them are important in their own ways.
Back in 2008, I wrote a similar article about health priorities and I started with walking. Back then the prevailing advice was to get in 10,000 steps per day. This advice was basically made up without any real research behind it. Since then the research has happened and there are some robust real world answers in terms of outcomes with heart disease and diabetes. The many different studies are coming in with the
magic number being about 7000 to 8000 steps per day to get the big improvements in health. Back then I told everyone to get a pedometer. These days step counting is much more sophisticated and gets done with health rings and watches. Even your phone will count your steps if you always carry it with you. So walking is a super important part of your daily health regime. It does not need to be all at once. In fact there are advantages to walking just being normal moving around during the day as you
do your daily stuff. That said there is some fabulous research that alternating fast walking for 3 minutes with slow walking for 3 minutes for one half an hour every day does amazing things for your blood pressure.
Another critical factor in getting in the exercise you need requires pushing your limits. The body is very lazy, which is a good thing in an environment of lack. When calories are hard to come by, the body that adapts to that situation by chucking any unnecessary energy-using tissue comes out the winner and survives. That means that unless you demand your body do more than it is capable of doing, it wastes away.
Use it or lose it is the basic rule of the body. If you don't tell your body that you absolutely need all your muscle tissue, it will eat it up and use it for energy. (Interestingly this does not happen if you are on a Keto diet.) Your body will turn muscle into sugar and burn it, unless you tell it you need that muscle to survive by asking it to do more than it is able to do. What does that look like? That means lifting, pushing, and pulling things to the point that your muscles reach failure.
This is most easily done in a gym using weights. I do this every Wednesday and Saturday. Only two to three times a week is necessary to convince the body that we need that muscle tissue. I use 13 different weight machines, and the work-to-failure part of my workout only takes 30 minutes. I also do 20 minutes of cardio, 10 minutes of steam room, and 10 minutes in the spa.
Cardio is another type of exercise we need fairly regularly – 2 to 3 times a week. Quite a bit of research has been done in this area and there is a lot of nuance here that I won't go over today. If you have a busy lifestyle and want to get the most bang for your buck, the research says that interval training is the best for the least amount of time. What that looks like is four or five short bursts of very high
intensity cardio. Basically, you want to go for it as fast as you physically can for 30 to 60 seconds. It does not matter whether you are running, bicycling, rowing, elliptical training, or whatever as long as you are fully weight bearing. Unfortunately, that means swimming is out. Over the years lots of different protocols have been taught, but the research has shown that the rest period between bursts does not matter, you get the same results. So you could go fast for 30 seconds then slow for
2 minutes then back to fast, or you could go fast one time several times a day. The goal is about 5 high speed sessions in a day 2 to 3 times a week.
The fourth type of exercise that is vital is balance. While this is less of a need when you are under 30, as the years start to add up it becomes more and more critical. The consequences of falls are the number one cause of death in older folks. (The typical consequence of a fall is being bed ridden for a time and developing pneumonia while stuck in bed.) The nerves that are for balance are different than all the
other nerves in the body. Most nerves are always there, protected by special insulation. Balance nerves are bare wires that come and go with use. If you don't challenge the balance system regularly, those nerves go away and along with them go your balance. Those nerves mostly go to stabilizer muscles which also work differently than regular muscles. Stabilizer muscles only hold things still. If you move, they let go. These muscles are in many places in the body, but the ones we work with the
most are the low back stabilizers. They are the most common cause of that low back pain that goes across the low back. We use Foundation Exercises to address this weakness.
The last super important health priority for today is sleep. A few hours after you fall asleep your body starts producing growth hormone to signal your body to kick into repair mode. Repair mode takes 4 to 6 hours. So right off the bat you can see that you need at least 7 to 9 hours of good quality sleep every night. The night typically starts off with a few hours of deep sleep
during which all the experiences from the day are processed and shuttled into long term storage. After that, the night is spent in bouts of light sleep and dream sleep. Exactly what dream sleep does is still not completely understood, but experiments on soldiers have shown that if they do not get their dream sleep they go insane. The government has been experimenting on soldiers for decades in hopes of creating a soldier that does not need sleep. Without our daily 8 hours of good quality sleep,
our hormones go wacky, our metabolism tanks, we gain all sorts of weight, lose our ability to think critically, and we are generally miserable to be around. So don't skip on your sleep.
Back in my 2008 article I wrote about other important issues like clean water, clean air, sunshine, and whatnot. To that I want to add the importance of high quality supportive relationships. This single element has been found to be the most important factor in why some cultures live long,
healthy lives while others that do all the other right things still die at younger ages. Connection matters.
Take care,
David
We still have C15 at the office. This is the twice as potent as the popular Fatty 15 supplement. What is it for? Well:
Immune function
Heart & lungs
Metabolic health
Joints and red blood cells
Longevity
Cell membranes stronger/less fragile
Fight rancid oils from
diet
Pick yours up now! Learn more about it in this video!
We survived! All the preparations for my mother's 95th birthday worked out well and a whole crew of folks arrived to celebrate. Actually she had three birthdays, one Sunday with her church friends, one Wednesday with four generations of us family types, and one Thursday with her local garden club friends.
Intermittent movement fights aging
Brief regular bursts of movement throughout the day boosts immunity, boosts muscle and joint function, improves cognition, aids cardiovascular health, and so on. Movement is a miracle anti-aging drug that any of us can use. Even Ellen, who is pretty much in a wheelchair most of the day, does much better when she gets more movement on the days her trainer works her out.
"It is no one’s job to give you what you want; it is your job to either create it yourself or negotiate an equitable exchange for
it."
~ David DeLapp
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When to drink coffee
Fun new research looking at coffee consumption has shown significant effects in reducing heart disease and death in general, however these benefits only happen with morning coffee drinkers. Folks that drink coffee all day don't show these benefits nor do non-coffee drinkers.
"You must pay in some way for everything you ever get, there is no free ride. You can not take more than you give or the resources run dry. "
~ David DeLapp
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Electric salty spoon
Some people do need to cut down on their salt intake, such as those with kidney disease. But as we all can attest, no salt can leave foods very bland. A new electric spoon is able to make food taste about 50% saltier by causing sodium ions in the food to travel into the taste buds.
Our address is 9725 Fair Oaks Blvd. suite A Our hours are M, Tu, Th, F 10 to 3:30
Finding our location is very easy. Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block. We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop. If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.
If
you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek. It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3 more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left. Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center divider ends. We are on the left.
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free to reprint this article in your newsletter as long as you include the following statement in the same size type and color:
"This article appears courtesy of Fair Oaks Health News, offering natural and healthy solutions for body, mind and soul. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.fairoakshealth.com"
Referral doctor for when we are out of town: Jennifer Webb DC
