Lifestyle

Is binge-eating synonymous with Christmas?  Too often, merry turns into miserable when gas, indigestion, and heartburn strike after a night of gorging on goodies! Functional Nutrition can help you digest and absorb your food better in order to end holiday bloat.

Use these five tips to keep your holidays happy:

• Eat real. Focus on foods that don’t come with a nutrition label. You are more likely to be satisfied with less when you eat whole foods. Consider which of these offerings is likely to give your body what it needs so it will turn off the hunger signals. They are both fish: Atlantic salmon, and Swedish Fish candies.

• Sip herbal tea: Used for centuries, peppermint and chamomile are two pleasant herbs that can power up digestion, relieve gas, reduce bloat, and end indigestion. Additionally, sipping the hot water can soothe your stomach. As the water moves through your your system, it hydrates your organs so they are better able to eliminate waste.
• Nibble bitter food. Fennel seeds and ginger root are classified as digestive bitters. A little at the end of your meal will promote gall bladder contractions and intestinal movement to prevent stagnant stomach. You can toast fennel seeds in a dry skillet until golden brown for enhanced flavor and performance. Ginger can be shaved to be eaten in thin curls.
• Stretch into some yoga poses. Marichyasana improves digestion by twisting and massaging the abdominal organs. Pavana muktasana releases trapped gas and cures indigestion by stimulating peristalsis, the wavelike motion of the intestines.
• Go for a walk. Rather than slumping onto the couch, which accentuates lethargic digestion, get up and move! Even just a slow stroll will stimulate your organs to work better.

Now, on the list of don’ts: avoid reaching for Tums or Zantac. We believe in functional nutrition that what you absorb is just as important as what you eat. To rev up sluggish digestion, you need MORE stomach acid, not less. So, enjoy good food and good company, don’t rush your meals, chew thoroughly, and implement the strategies above to prevent and end holiday bloat, gas, and indigestion.

You know washing your hands helps prevent the spread of germs, but there are 4 more action tools you can use to fight colds and flu.

1. Deeply Nourish Your Body

Your immune system is a nutrient hog. It uses more nutrients than any other system or organ – even your brain. To work optimally, it needs vitamins A, C, E, D, K, B6, B9, and B12. In addition, it requires the minerals zinc, selenium, iron, iodine, magnesium, and copper. Also, your immune system needs antioxidants and essential fatty acids.

So while it might be easy to gulp an “Emergen-C” tablet with a glass of water when you feel a sore throat coming on, you need a lot of nutrients all the time to fight colds and flu. It’s smart to regularly eat foods that are nutrient dense. These include dark leafy greens, brightly-colored produce, omega 3-rich fatty fish, and organ meats. I posted about how these foods are also anti-inflammatory. It’s as if nature is showing us their benefit by displaying such rich, vibrant colors.

2. Relax a Lot!

We know that stress raises inflammation. Did you know it raises your blood sugars, too? That’s bad news if you’re under chronic stress. Why? Chronically high blood sugars lead to insulin resistance and even more inflammation.

But that’s not all. Scientists think they have found a link between insulin resistance and decreased immunity. Insulin appears to boost immune T-cells. When mice were genetically engineered with missing insulin receptors in their T-cells (to mimic insulin resistance), they were unable to fight certain infections, including the H1N1 flu virus.

So the bottom line is that to fight colds and flu, you need to guard against inflammation and insulin resistance that can impair immunity. In order to do that, you need to manage your stress effectively. Take time every day to unwind. It only takes a few minutes to employ one or two of the 50 stress hacks I have compiled.

3. Feed the Right Bugs

Since as much as 80% of your immune system lies within your digestive tract, it makes sense that the micro-organisms that live there should be healthy. If you feed the symbiotic bacteria that lie in your GI tract, you can boost your immunity. These helpful bacteria serve as “bouncers” against pathogenic strains of microbes that cause illness.

Your “good” bacteria like to eat fiber! They especially like to feast on cruciferous vegetables, the onion family, and asparagus! But they don’t digest simple sugars. In fact, white sugar and white flour are fodder for pathogens.

Cutting out refined carbohydrates from your diet does not guarantee you can fight off all colds and flu. But your odds are much higher if you do get sick, that you’ll bounce back quicker if you cut down on the sugar.

4. Sleep More

When you sleep, your body “cleans house.” It repairs what is broken, sweeps up what is dirty, and takes out the trash. This is the time when your immune system is most effective at fending off invaders and reducing inflammation. So, reason says that if you are sleep deprived, you are less able to fight cold and flu viruses.

But there’s more. When you are chronically sleep-deprived, your body actually initiates a stress response, raising blood sugars and creating inflammation. You can become insulin resistant with just 36 hours of sleep deprivation.

Ultimately, you end up with an impaired immune system. That means greater susceptibility to illness.

Here are some suggestions for better sleep:

• Create a bedtime that allows for 7-9 hours of sleep.
• Eat a nutrient dense diet (see #1).
• Exercise, but do it at least 4 hours before bedtime.
• Stick to the same sleep schedule every day.
• Get sunlight in the morning.
• Cool your room.
• Avoid blue light before bed.
• Engage in evening meditation.

Fight Colds and Flu

No one can avoid all illness forever. But taking care of your health by eating well, relaxing frequently, sleeping enough, and nourishing your microbiome will keep you strong so that if you do get sick, you can recover rapidly.

Dieters and health-seekers talk freely about food elimination diets. They report leaving grains, or dairy, or meats out of their diets. Then, they debate which foods should be removed from your menu. But have you ever considered a food addition diet? The focus of our conversations should be on how we can broaden our food plans to include more nutrition, not less.

Whether you are concerned about blood sugars, inflammation, or immune function, loading your body with nutrients will be healing. While no diet is perfect and each person is unique in his needs, food scientists agree that you can increase your consumption of vegetables, high quality protein, minerals, healthful fats, and prebiotic foods.

Adding Vegetables to Your Diet

Antioxidant, mineral-rich, anti-inflammatory, high-vitamin vegetables are the basis of an optimal diet. Up to 2/3 of your plate can be vegetables. How many servings of vegetables do you eat per day?

Regardless of where you are, you can do a little better each day, adding more quantity, quality, or diversity. If you eat mostly salads, you can add cruciferous vegetables, such as cabbage and cauliflower. On the other hand, if you eat a lot of steamed vegetables, try more dark leafy greens, including kale, spinach, and chard. Consider also brightly-colored vegetables, which rich plant pigments of red, purple, and orange that lend powerful nutrients to your body. Examples of colored vegetables are eggplant, beets, and pumpkin. As a base for all meals, remember sulphur-rich vegetables that help the liver detoxify your body. These include mushrooms and plants in the onion family.

Not sure you can prepare anything more than corn and peas? This post contains recipes for 70 distinctive vegetables. Challenge yourself to try a new one each week!

Protein on an Addition Diet

The human body cannot live without protein. It forms the building blocks that create blood cells, hormones, enzyme, and antibodies. Protein shapes bones, muscles, skin, hair, and organs. Meat, fish, poultry, dairy, eggs, and even tempeh (traditionally-fermented soy) contribute to a well-rounded diet, as long as they are raised on their natural diet.

Already eating a Goldilocks portion of protein that is just right? Then you could replace some of your muscle meats with offal, which is much higher in nutrients. Concerned that you’re getting too much protein? Switch some of your sources for amino-acid rich broths, made from the bones of animals. The proteins in bone broth are more bio-available, meaning your body absorbs and uses them more easily than proteins it must break down from meat sources.

Boosting Your Mineral Intake

Would you drive your car on a cross-country trip with 50% of the spark plugs not working? Minerals are the spark plugs of your body, setting off almost all the the chemical reactions that have to occur each second for you to function. If you are eating a rainbow diet by including lots of produce on your plate, and if you are incorporating bone broths and organ meats into your meal plans, then you are already augmenting your mineral stores.

But there are always ways to do even better. One way is to use an unrefined sea salt or Himalayan salt to season your food. Another way is to drink herbal teas throughout the day. Plants grown in mineral-rich soils take these minerals into their roots and leaves. Nettle, alfalfa, and horsetail are famously strong in mineral content, with nettle boasting four times the amount of calcium as kale.

Incorporating Healthful Fats

No addition diet is complete without the inclusion of both unsaturated and saturated fats. Your brain is largely made up of saturated fat. But your cell membranes require unsaturated fat. So, both plant and animal fats are beneficial. But, stay away from man-made fats.

For generations, Americans have eaten a low-fat diet. The results have been rather disappointing. Instead of reducing heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity, low-fat diets seemed to have contributed even more to the epidemic. While going to extremes in fat consumption is not necessarily desirable, you can saute, grill, fry, and dress with the kinds of fats that occur in nature. Additionally, snacking on olives, avocados, whole-fat dairy products, raw nuts, and seeds definitely trumps eating potato chips, cookies, and other commercial snack foods.

You can learn more about which fats to use in this post.

Increasing Prebiotics

Maybe you’ve been adding vegetables to your diet. Perhaps you’re conscientious about getting adequate protein. You might even be using adequate fats to maintain your health. The next step, then, is to add foods to feed your microbiome. That’s the trillions of beneficial bacteria inside your gut that help manufacture vitamins, break down fiber, signal the immune system, and a thousand other jobs for your health.

It’s not enough to take probiotic supplements. Your microbes need food everyday for them to grow and multiply. They need the insoluble fibers that you do not digest well. They break these down, making butyric acid to feel your colon cells. Foods that support your healthy gut bacterial colonies include onions, asparagus, and artichokes. Beans and legumes are important, too.

Not only that, but food containing live cultures can augment your microbial populations. Fermented vegetables, miso, natto, kefir, and kombucha are just a few to choose from. I found that I could add a tablespoon of sauerkraut or sauerkraut juice to just about any dish to enhance its nutrition without affecting taste. This book has some great ideas.

Add Before You Subtract

It may be discouraging to think about removing sugar or processed foods from your diet. Yet, by the time you add the bounty of options nature has provided, you will not have room for artificial and refined products! Truly, an addition diet is an abundant way to eat!

Whether you just love breads and pastas,  or whether you’re unaware how skewed your diet is, you have to stop carb- loading if you want to balance your blood sugars.

Choose Protein at Every Meal

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

You crave sugar when you are undernourished or overstimulated. But by eating a nutrient-rich diet, you stop sugar cravings now and prevent them in the future. Why? Because you are providing deep nourishment and reducing the physiological stimuli that drive sugar cravings.

How Undernourishment Starts

By definition, undernourishment means your energy output is greater than your fuel input. You can develop this energy debt in a number of ways.

To begin with, perhaps you cut your night’s rest a bit short. Then, who wouldn’t want a doughnut in order to keep running on fumes? Sugar provides a quick source of fast-burning energy – like kindling on your metabolic fire. So, when the coals are almost dead, a sugary snack fans the flames.

But it doesn’t provide the essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and phytochemicals your body needs to be well. So that empty calorie food just increased your energy debt! Did you know that it takes more than a dozen molecules of magnesium to change one molecule of sugar into energy that your cells can use? Further, the processes that change that sugar into fuel require certain enzymes to get them started – the way a car engine requires a spark plug to ignite the gasoline. Your body makes enzymes from proteins. If you’re not eating enough proteins, your body has to “cannibalize” its own tissues to get the raw materials it needs.

Another way you become undernourished is through blood sugar imbalances. When your sweet snack burns out, you drop into a state of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. Like a stalled car on the freeway, you can no longer stay in the fast lane. So, you reach for emergency rations – a candy bar for instant relief. Like a bad dream, the cycle starts all over again.

Eventually, these habits cripple your ability to use the sugar you are eating. The lack of vitamins and minerals arrest your body’s natural metabolism. Finally, insulin resistance sets in, blocking the limited nutrients you have from entering cells. You are in a permanent state of fatigue and even more dependent on empty calories to function from one moment to the next.

Stop Sugar Cravings Resulting From Undernourishment

The answer to this hopeless cycle is really very straightforward. You make sure you have enough gas in the tank at the outset of your journey. That means you make sure arise well-rested each morning, and eat a nutrient-rich breakfast. The most nutrient-dense foods on the planet include vegetables, seafood, and organ meats. But not coffee and pastries, or even Cheerios. So, why not make a skillet of Fisherman’s Eggs to start the day? (See the end of the article for the recipe.)

How Overstimulation Happens

First, like the lack of sleep, stress raises your demand for energy. But in this case, your body is stimulated by stress hormones to quicken your breath, send blood to the brain and muscles, and increase your heart rate. You need more energy now!

Second, in a nightmarish way, you become addicted to the surge of dopamine the stress created. Your body now wants constant stimulation, and it turns to sugar and other stimulants to keep the rush going. But none of these fixes gives you the deep nourishment you need for optimal health.

Then, down in your gut, the beneficial bacteria begin dying, starved of the fibers and Omega 3 fatty acids they need for vitality. Meanwhile, pathogenic strains of bacteria feed on your high-glycemic diet. When you don’t supply their sugary feast, they demand it by creating cravings.

Stop Sugar Cravings Resulting from Over-Stimulation

But the answer is always the same. Go back to your roots. Skip the commercial, man-made foods and nourish yourself with the foods of nature that have sustained mankind for millenia. Eat fresh vegetables and fruits. Take the time for unprocessed grains, nuts, and seeds. Make sure to get some wild-caught, pastured, or grass-fed protein. Then cook and dress your food in unrefined, natural fats. Check out these ideas on how to eat traditionally without spending endless hours in the kitchen!

If you’d like to delve deeper into how to stop sugar cravings, Dr. Jockers has an excellent article.