Fit Tips

Doctors Reveal Which Everyday Habits Trigger Aging And Inflammation

November 30th, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

The visible effects of aging are different for everyone, which is super unfair if you ask us.

“Aging affects us on a genetic level.”

This article is from our friends at HealthyWay

But rather than lament early crow’s feet or thinning hair, we decided to ask doctors what aging really is—what causes declining health over time—in the hopes of learning how we can slow down the unpleasant bits of growing older while enjoying the wisdom and greater clarity that often show up at the same time as your first gray hairs.

What we found out suggests that our lifestyles need to seriously change if we plan to keep a youthful look well into our golden years.

1. Your Contemporary Job

The sedentary lifestyle is literally killing us. Studies suggest that women who spend at least six hours a day in a chair are 34 percent more likely to die early, and their cancer risk increases by 10 percent. The risk of early death for similarly sedentary men is 17 percent.

One study even indicated that standing up every 30 minutes throughout the day can have similar health benefits as quitting smoking. Either way, the picture is bleak. And the problem goes deeper than a simple lack of exercise.

“This is not just about getting regular exercise, but also pertains to prolonged periods of sitting,” Hamilton tells HealthyWay. “Recent studies show that sitting too long can lead to higher mortality and early death.

Maybe you’ve heard that “sitting is the new smoking.” That’s pretty much what this study says, just with a lot more data and hard-to-read scientific lingo. There’s no shortage of studies showing how important it is to get off of our heinies every once in a while.

But it’s not that simple. So many of our jobs require us to sit at computers for eight hours a day. What can we do to mitigate the damage our careers are doing to our bodies?

Reporting by the Washington Post that included interviews with doctors, researchers, and biomechanists offer a few solutions. Sit on an exercise ball at work, they say. When you’re watching TV, get up and walk around every time there’s a commercial.

“This is applicable to many people with sedentary jobs,” Hamilton says. “People can simply stand and move at [their] workstation, walk down the hall, or take a bathroom break.” These are small things, but they add up over a lifetime—which may be considerably longer if you follow these suggestions.

2. Skipping the Cheese

You’ve probably heard that the “sunshine vitamin” helps our bodies build calcium into bone. In fact, vitamin D is crucial for preventing inflammation-related disorders that come with age.

Registered dietitian Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen reviewed and approved a list of the risks of a vitamin D deficiency that was published on WebMD, and they’re pretty scary.

The hazards of low levels of this crucial nutrient include aging-related dementia, cancer, and an increased risk of fatal cardiovascular disease. Ideal vitamin D levels differ from patient to patient, so ask your doctor if you’re getting enough through diet and time in the sun.

“Physicians recommend getting at least 10 minutes of sunlight (with sunscreen) every day and a balanced diet rich in vitamin D,” Hamilton says. “Some people may need to take…vitamin D supplements.”

There’s some good news for people who need to get more vitamin D into their diets, at least. Cheese is packed with the stuff. Not as much as cod liver oil, maybe, but which would you rather eat?

3. Laser-Focusing on Cardio

It’s hard enough to get to the gym in the first place. Once you’re there, it can be tempting to zone out on the bikes or the treadmill. Although cardio is great, there are real risks related to a lack of strength training.

“The aging process is associated with changes in muscle mass and strength with the decline of muscle strength after the 30th year,” write Karsten Keller and Martin Engelhardt in the journal Muscles, Ligaments, and Tendons.

While your muscles are wasting away, your metabolism slows down. This combination of factors can lead to unhealthy weight gain, which carries its own list of horrors. The point is, arm day may be more important than you think. Don’t neglect the weights.

4. Trying to Wring Even More Hours Out of the Day

We have a very sad fact to share. Brace yourself: Coffee cannot replace sleep. We know, we know. We’re grieving too.

The truth is that doctors are serious when they tell you to get between seven and nine hours of sleep a night, every night, at least between the ages of 18 and 64. Less than that could affect your productivity and, worse, encourage your arteries to harden. The importance of sleep cannot be stressed enough.

An article in the Harvard Business Review written by Harvard Medical School professor Charles Czeisler warns us that people who sleep less than five hours a night for five years in a row are three times more likely to develop hardened arteries.

“The importance of sleep cannot be stressed enough,” says Hamilton. “Sleep allows your body to process nutrients
taken in during the day and allows your mind to process events of the day.”
There isn’t really a problem that insufficient sleep doesn’t make worse. “Memory loss and mood disorders such as anxiety and depression have also been linked to sleep deprivation,” Hamilton says.

Even worse, skimping on your Zs can wreak havoc on your genes themselves, leading to DNA damage that raises your risk of cancer. We don’t know how to get more hours in the week either, but it’s clear that skipping sleep is not the way to do it.

5. Hating Your Job

If you want to live a long, happy life, free from the damaging effects of growing inflammation, you need to follow your passion. That’s not just a feel-good platitude; it’s medical science.

A systematic literature review published in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine found that “job satisfaction level is an important factor influencing the health of workers.”

Hating your job can even spark or exacerbate mental health issues, explains Hamilton.

“Mood disorders such as depression or anxiety can be linked to job dissatisfaction,” she says. “There is an intricate interplay between health and job satisfaction in which both affect each other. When dealing with mental health, it is important to assess outlook on work as well as work-life balance.”

This all makes perfect sense when you think about it. When you hate your job, you spend every day stressed out and angry. According to the American Psychological Association, chronic stress makes existing health problems worse. It encourages the formation of bad habits, such as smoking and overeating. It can even increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

According to the latest report from the Pew Research Center, a discouraging 15 percent of working adults say they are “somewhat” or “very dissatisfied” with their jobs. But it’s important to remember that many of us do have other options. No matter how restricted you may feel, there’s always another job (or career!) out there, and remaining stuck in an unpleasant environment can actually speed up the aging process.

Tying It All Together

Okay, so what have we learned? Sleep enough, get off your behind, find a job you like, and work out. But no one of these things alone is enough to stop the hands of the clock entirely.

To hold off the visible signs of aging as long as possible, you need to adopt a holistic approach to health, says Ellie Cobb, PhD, a psychologist who focuses on the mind-body connection in wellness.

Aging affects us on a genetic level, Cobb tells HealthyWay, citing research by Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel that suggests the telomeres at the ends of our chromosomes actually shorten as we age. And these shorter telomeres that cause the negative health effects of aging. That’s because when these DNA caps reach a certain reduced length, the cells that contain them stop replicating. They die.

“The positive news is that scientific research also shows that we can change our telomere length by what situations we experience in life and how we chose to react to those experiences,” Cobb tells us.

So, like, how?

“Some positive ways to reduce inflammation (and therefore reduce negative aging effects) are [to] aim to get regular sufficient sleep, adopt a consistent meditation practice, be conscious of eating healthy fats and vegetables like avocados and leafy greens instead of refined sugars, exercise moderately, and find joy and thankfulness in the little things in life,” Cobb says.

So that’s it! Mindfulness is like calisthenics for your telomeres. We’ll see you and your lanky telomeres on the dance floor in many, many decades.

Staying Lean Over the Holidays!

November 24th, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

Most people gain fat during the end-of-year holiday season. They eat anything and everything in sight. But, you don’t have to be “most people.”

Here is how to start off the New Year lean!

You can either make excuses (we all do this easily enough, especially during the holidays) or you can take positive action. Which one is most likely to happen if you are prepared, have a goal, and have a plan?

When you’re prepared, you can still indulge and enjoy your favorite holiday foods without your fitness goals falling apart.

A nutrition program high in fiber is a vital key to any fat loss plan. Fiber helps you to feel full, making it easier to eat fewer calories. In addition, more calories are burned from digesting high-fiber foods. Good sources of fiber include lots of veggies and plant materials.

Getting enough of the good fats will help you lose fat, build muscle, and recover faster from your workouts.

Good fats include: polyunsaturated (especially Omega-3’s), such as those from fish and nuts, as well as monounsaturated fats, such as those from peanut butter, olive oil, egg yolks, and fish oil. There are lots of ways to be smart about eating fat. The key is knowing what to look for. A few of my favorite fat sources include:

Avocados
Avocado oil
Salad dressing made with avocado oil
Olive oil
High-quality lard and tallow from pastured animals
Grass-fed meats
Grass-fed butter
Coconut oil
Coconut butter
Flaxseed Oil
Walnuts
Almonds

An increase in your protein intake will boost your metabolism and help to maintain your muscle mass, both key ingredients in losing fat and keeping it off.

Think Can You Out-Train Your Diet?

November 18th, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

People often come to me saying they need to “work out more” to lose weight. And many of them shed plenty of pounds in two half-hour weekly personal training sessions with me. However, the truth is that you CANNOT out-train your diet, no matter how hard you work.

You simply cannot burn enough calories to eat like King Henry. I know this from personal experience and the science behind strength training! Strength training DOES elevate your metabolism, and replacing fat with lean muscle developed through a rigorous strength training program will certainly make you LOOK, and feel, slimmer.

But a good personal trainer will not leave nutrition out of the equation. I coach my clients to remember that “real food” doesn’t have an ingredient label!

Sometimes, even when your caloric intake isn’t the problem, there are other things that interfere with weight management. I help clients determine what’s beating them in the battle of the bulge. Here are a few things to consider:

Allergies – Are you having a difficult time shedding pounds? You may have some food allergies. To find out you can start by removing wheat, grain, and dairy (these are the biggest culprits) from your diet for two to three weeks. Also eliminate corn, soy and consider nixing additives such as food coloring and preservatives.
Bad Breakfast – Another habit that sets you up for failure is eating too many carbs at breakfast, which leads to spikes in insulin levels and sets you up for cravings later in the day. It’s best to have protein and healthy fats in the morning. An omelet (with the yolk), or a smoothie blended with healthy fats such as avocado, almond butter, coconut oil, or MCT oil would be a much better option than cereal or a muffin, even the healthy, whole wheat kinds.
Trans fats have been shown to raise bad cholesterol (LDL) and lower good cholesterol (HDL), factors that contribute to the risk of developing heart disease, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes.

Your best bet for avoiding partially hydrogenated oils:

Shop the periphery of the store. Stick to whole food items in the produce, meat, and dairy departments. Bring home foods that are as close to their original state as possible.
Read the label and the ingredient list. Check for the grams of trans fats per serving, avoid anything over 0 grams (if it is within your power to do so), and even if the grams says “0,” ensure that the ingredients do not list any “partially hydrogenated” oils.
Cook your own foods from scratch. The best way to avoid trans fats is to prepare foods the old-fashioned way with natural ingredients like how your grandparents would have done. This is the only way to really control what goes into your body.
Select products with the fewest ingredients. More is not necessarily better.
Avoid processed foods that come in a box, bag, or can.
If it contains ingredients that you can’t pronounce, it’s probably to be avoided.

Looking for a personal strength trainer in the Grand Rapids area to help you navigate nutrition and get you working out in two half-hour sessions a week? Contact me to get started!

3 Health Benefits of Strength Training Exercises

November 16th, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

Even if you don’t plan on bulking up or competing in weight lifting competitions any time soon, strength training is a crucial part of any exercise regimen.

Here are three great reasons to incorporate weight training into your workouts.

1. It promotes strong bones. Weakening bones is a concern that all people have to face as they age. The stress that strength training puts on your bones increases their density and prevents osteoporosis, keeping you strong and healthy as you age.

2. It helps to control your weight. While you might relate weight loss with intense cardiovascular workouts, strength training is just as important if you want to lose weight. Gaining muscle increases your metabolism and causes your body to burn calories more efficiently.

3. It gives you more energy. Like all workouts, strength training increases your stamina and helps you to stay alert and focused. After a few weeks of regular weight lifting or bodyweight exercises, you’ll notice that you feel more energized throughout the day. Some scientific studies even show that years of regular strength training exercises help to sharpen your focus and keep your mind attentive as you age.

There are many other reasons to begin a strength training regimen, both for physical and mental benefits. To get started, contact us today and I will customize a plan that works for both you and your schedule.

Post Halloween: What Sugar Does To Your Brain

November 1st, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

We know that too much sugar is bad for our waistlines and our heart health, but now there’s mounting evidence that high levels of sugar consumption can also harm brain health — from cognitive function to psychological wellbeing.

While sugar is nothing to be too concerned about in small quantities, most of us are simply eating too much of it. The sweet stuff — which also goes by names like glucose, fructose, honey, and corn syrup — is found in 74 percent of packaged foods in our supermarkets.

It’s easy to see how we can get hooked on sugar. However, we should be aware of the risks that a high-sugar diet poses for brain function and mental well-being.

Here’s what you need to know about how overconsumption of sugar could wreak havoc on your brain.

It creates a vicious cycle of intense cravings.

When a person consumes sugar, just like any food, it activates the tongue’s taste receptors. Then, signals are sent to the brain, lighting up reward pathways and causing a surge of feel-good hormones, like dopamine, to be released. And while stimulating the brain’s reward system with a piece of chocolate now and then is pleasurable and probably harmless, when the reward system is activated too much and too frequently, we start to run into problems.

“Over-activating this reward system kickstarts a series of unfortunate events — loss of control, craving, and increased tolerance to sugar,” neuroscientist Nicole Avena explained in a TED-Ed video.

In fact, research has shown that the brains of obese children actually light up differently when they taste sugar, reflecting an elevated “food reward” response. This suggests that their brain circuitry may predispose these children to a lifetime of intense sugar cravings.

It impairs memory and learning skills.

A UCLA study found that a diet high in fructose (that’s just another word for sugar) hinders learning and memory by literally slowing down the brain. The researchers found that rats who over-consumed fructose had damaged synaptic activity in the brain, meaning that communication among brain cells was impaired.

Heavy sugar intake caused the rats to develop insulin resistance — a hormone that controls blood sugar levels and also regulates the function of brain cells. Insulin strengthens the synaptic connections between brain cells, helping them to communicate better and thereby form stronger memories. So when insulin levels in the brain are lowered as the result of excess sugar consumption, cognition can be impaired.

“Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain,” Dr. Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new.”

It may cause or contribute to depression and anxiety.

If you’ve ever experienced a sugar crash, then you know that sudden peaks and drops in blood sugar levels can cause you to experience symptoms like irritability, mood swings, brain fog, and fatigue. That’s because eating a sugar-laden donut or drinking a soda causes blood sugar levels to spike upon consumption and then plummet. When your blood sugar inevitably dips back down (hence the “crash”), you may find yourself feeling anxious, moody, or depressed.

Sugar-rich and carb-laden foods can also mess with the neurotransmitters that help keep our moods stable. Consuming sugar stimulates the release of the mood-boosting neurotransmitter serotonin. Constantly over-activating these serotonin pathways can deplete our limited supplies of the neurotransmitter, which can contribute to symptoms of depression.

Chronically high blood sugar levels have also been linked to inflammation in the brain. And as some research has suggested, neuroinflammation may be one possible cause of depression. Teenagers may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of sugar on mood.

Research has also found that people who eat a standard American diet that’s high in processed foods — which typically contain high amounts of saturated fat, sugar, and salt — are at an increased risk for developing depression, compared to those who eat a whole foods diet that’s lower in sugar.

It’s a risk factor for age-related cognitive decline and dementia.

A growing body of research suggests that a sugar-heavy diet could increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. A 2013 study found that insulin resistance and blood glucose levels — which are hallmarks of diabetes — are linked with a greater risk for developing neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s. The research “offers more evidence that the brain is a target organ for damage by high blood sugar,” endocrinologist Dr. Medha Munshi told the New York Times.

Courtesy of The Huffington Post

Why Lowering Your Weights Slowly Is Important

October 19th, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

It is not only about how you LIFT those weights, it’s about how you LOWER them, too! Slow, controlled lowerings help build muscle and strength faster.

I found this article from Self Magazine interesting and you may too. I’ve hit the highlights below.

An eccentric movement is the lowering part of a move. It’s when your muscle works as it’s lengthened like your glutes do when you’re lowering into a squat, or like your biceps do as you’re lowering a dumbbell after a curl. And, it turns out, every muscle fiber in your body is the strongest as it moves eccentrically.

It’s not just because of gravity. When muscles work eccentrically, more of the parts of the muscle used for contracting remain attached to each other at any given time, so together they can produce more force. There may also be increased tightness in some proteins within the muscle fiber during eccentric actions, which make the muscle stronger. This is why lowering into a squat feels a heck of a lot easier than getting back to standing.

Through eccentric training, you turn the focus of every rep away from the concentric (contracting) portion to the eccentric (lengthening) portion. Why should you do such a thing? Check out these five body-rocking benefits of eccentric training:

1. Faster muscle gains

Rep per rep, eccentric training is superior to concentric training at building both muscle size and strength. After all, since your muscles are strongest when they move eccentrically if you want to push your limits, you’ve got to work eccentrically. Warning: Eccentric exercises increase delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), that soreness you feel up to 72 hours after a tough workout, in a big way. That’s because, in eccentric actions, the weight is greater than the amount of force produced by the muscle, so it creates more microscopic damage to the muscle.

2. Greater metabolic boosts

To recover from your sweat sessions, especially those that leave you riddled with DOMS for days, your body has to work super hard to recover. Although the studies are small (fewer than 20 subjects), some research shows found that slowing down the eccentric phase of your lifts can significantly increase your resting metabolic rate (RMR)—the number of calories you burn at rest. One study of 16 participants in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that eccentric training boosts RMR for up to 72 hours post-exercise. In the study, subjects performed the concentric phase quickly over one second and slowed down the eccentric over three seconds. Another study of 16 male participants found significant increases in RMR for up to 48 hours after leg presses that stressed the eccentric movement. Even though the research is limited, the mechanisms make sense: Eccentric exercise does more muscle damage, which then requires more energy to repair.

3. More flexibility

Perform eccentric exercises, and you may reduce the need for performing dedicated “flexibility” workouts. In a study of 75 athletes with tight hamstrings, those who performed eccentric hamstring exercises improved their flexibility twice as well as those who stuck with static (bend-and-hold) stretching. The trick is to move through your entire range of motion as you perform the eccentric phase of your exercise. Over time, that range of motion will get bigger and bigger. A research review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine confirmed that eccentric training is an effective way to increase flexibility.

4. Lower risk of injury

Eccentric exercises strengthen not just your muscles, but also your body’s connective tissues, helping to both rehab any aches and pains as well as prevent injuries ranging from tendinitis to ACL strains. Eccentric exercises are vital in sports rehab settings and are great for people sidelined with exercise injuries.

5. Better sports performance

Eccentric actions aren’t just something you do in the weight room. They are a given in any workout—from beach volleyball to 10K races. (Eccentric actions are why your quads feel destroyed after a long run downhill.) So, by performing strength training routines and focusing not just on concentric or isometric, but also eccentric moves, you better prepare your body for any challenges to come.

Symptoms Of Vitamin D Deficiency That Most People Ignore

August 24th, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

Vitamin D deficiency can be responsible for many different symptoms. How many of these do you have? Do you take Vitamin D daily? I recommend 5000 IU’s per day for those living in northern latitudes, especially in the winter when sunlight is diminished. Read this article from HealthWay for more insights.

Today, more than 40 percent of Americans are deficient. The potential health consequences of this epidemic are serious, as vitamin D deficiency is linked to osteoporosis, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, high blood pressure, and poor pregnancy outcomes.

D-ficient? Odds are you don’t know.

According to the Vitamin D Council, symptoms can be subtle—or even nonexistent—in the early stages. You might experience some tiredness and general aches and pains, but these symptoms are easy to dismiss because there are many things that cause them.

Aches and pains? You can easily chalk them up to the aftereffects of your last workout—or simply not being 20 anymore. Tiredness? That could be because you aren’t getting enough quality sleep.

Here are 15 signs that will help you know if you’re vitamin D deficient.

Muscle Weakness
You should be aware that muscle weakness can present as generalized body fatigue. If you’re experiencing more general fatigue around your body, muscle weakness issues in specific areas may stay hidden and go unnoticed for months.

Bone Pain
In a study of 150 patients referred to a clinic in Minnesota for persistent, general musculoskeletal pain, 93 percent had vitamin D levels equal to or below 20 ng/mL, a level considered deficient by most experts.

Constant Respiratory Problems
Studies show that vitamin D may help defend against respiratory illness, and this is especially true in children. If your child has severe asthma, you may want to increase their vitamin D intake.ll breath may quickly spiral into a panic that your life is in immediate danger.

Sweaty Head
Years ago, doctors used to ask new mothers if their newborns’ heads were sweating more than normal. This can be a very early sign that a baby is vitamin D deficient. If you’re breastfeeding, it may be helpful to consume more foods that are rich in vitamin D or include some vitamin D drops in your regimen to make sure your baby is getting a sufficient amount.

Depression
As it turns out, the sun is vital to keeping a smile on your face. Vitamin D is often referred to as the sunshine vitamin because it is activated in your skin by sunlight. If you live in a place that sees less sunlight than global averages, the lack of light could literally kill your mood. According to the Vitamin D Council, this essential nutrient helps your brain’s neurotransmitters produce serotonin, which affects our feelings of happiness.

Infertility
Research suggests that vitamin D deficiency may play a role in the development of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a leading cause of female infertility. One common symptom of PCOS is acanthosis nigricans, which results in dark, velvety skin patches.
“In the fertility world we like to get a baseline on all of our patients and we see many who are deficient,” said Seattle-area registered dietitian nutritionist Judy Simon MS, RDN, CD, CHES, of Mind-Body Nutrition.

Chronic Infections
Vitamin D is known to have an effect on over 2,000 genes in the human body, so it’s no surprise that the strength of your body’s immune system is also tied to how much vitamin D you are taking in. When there’s a healthy amount of vitamin D being processed by your body, your immune system is resilient and able to fight off infections and disease.

Cardiovascular Disease
Cardiovascular diseases are heart conditions that may include damaged blood vessels or frequent blood clotting, among other issues. Articles published by the National Institutes of Health have shown that deficiencies in vitamin D can lead to congestive heart failure.

Psoriasis
Psoriasis may present itself as a scaly rash on your scalp or other parts of your body. Often it can be agitated by stress (unfortunately, finding out you have psoriasis tends to cause stress too). Although psoriasis is not always connected to a lack of vitamin D, the vitamin is sometimes used during treatment. The Mayo Clinic claims that if you have a lack of vitamin D, it will be harder for your body to defend itself against psoriasis.

Chronic Pain
If you experience chronic, widespread pain throughout your body, it could be due in part to a lack of vitamin D. This connection was only recently discovered. In 2010, researchers began looking into the link between chronic pain and a lack of vitamin D.

Tiredness
Vitamin D is one of the vitamins your body needs to create energy, and without it, you can end up feeling tired most of the day. This will make it hard for you to get around or even get to work. Without much energy, you may start changing your daily behavior in negative ways, which in turn may impair your overall health.

Hypertension
Harvard University conducted a review of health studies across numerous cohorts that associated increased risk of multiple health outcomes including cardiovascular disease and hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure) with vitamin D deficiency.

Crankiness
As we mentioned in relation to depression, vitamin D affects the levels of serotonin in your brain, which is what affects your mood. If you’re feeling cranky, it might be because you’re not producing enough serotonin. Vitamin D will help your moods stay balanced by ensuring your brain is working with the materials it needs to stay energized and focused.

Chronic Kidney Disease
Kidneys help remove waste from your blood. When they’re not functioning correctly, your bloodstream can fill up with waste, seriously damaging your health. Doctors have recently connected kidney health to cardiovascular disease. They’ve also discovered how important vitamin D can be to your kidneys’ health.

Reduced Endurance
If you’re an athlete and you’re seeing your endurance decrease for no apparent reason, it might be because you have low vitamin D levels. Experts in athletic circles now realize that vitamin D is crucial to energy levels, especially when it comes to endurance. Even active people who get outside every day can experience these issues, despite getting more than the recommended amount of sunlight per day (20 to 30 minutes).

A Side Effect of Modern Life?

For many of us, work means days spent at a desk and leisure means binge-watching the latest Netflix series or catching up on social media. That’s a lot of indoor time, but even when we are outdoors we’re likely to double down on sun protection to prevent premature aging and skin cancer.

Dairy products are fortified with vitamin D, but milk sales are in decline, as more people avoid dairy due to restrictive diets, milk allergies, or lactose intolerance.

What’s your risk?
Although 4 in 10 Americans may be deficient in vitamin D, some people have a higher risk. As mentioned, if you spend a lot of time indoors and protect your skin with clothing or sunscreen when you are outdoors (as you should), your risk increases. Living in northern climates—where winters are longer, colder and darker—amplifies this risk. But a few other risk factors might surprise you:

Dark skin. The darker your skin, the more sun it takes to make vitamin D.
Body mass index (BMI) over 30. Vitamin D can become “sequestered” in excess body fat instead of making its way to the bloodstream.
Past gastric bypass surgery.

Why It Matters
Linke says that bringing vitamin D levels back to the normal range has been a “game-changer” for many of her clients who have autoimmune conditions. She cites another client—a woman in her late twenties—whose vitamin D was a 4.

Within 10 days of starting vitamin D, along with magnesium (magnesium deficiency can interfere with vitamin D metabolism) and dietary changes, she was able to wear regular shoes and walk without assistance.

As with all health-related issues, talk with your doctor or another medical professional if you are seeing any signs or symptoms that concern you. Deficiency is simple to test for and simple to treat. If in doubt, talk to your healthcare provider.

Read the complete article here http://bit.ly/2lP2SE7.

DIETS Don’t Work

August 3rd, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

D.I.E.T. Let’s break this word down to the 1st 3 letters DIE, not very motivating!

A diet typically involves avoidance, restriction, and often a time period, which, in the long run, is very difficult to maintain. Most diets are not even made for maintenance or long-term use, so why are so many of you doing them?

Most people who go on diets soon gain back any lost weight, a UCLA study suggests. Why don’t diets work? The first is that it’s just plain hard for people to change their eating behaviors. And the second reason is that even if you do succeed at a diet, the rule of diminishing returns comes into play.

Most who go on diets gain the weight back; lifestyle changes are needed

Lifestyle changes will work if you have realistic expectations, good support, and choose a plan that you can stick with — a plan that will give you moderate change over a long time. Most people who have a healthy weight have to work at it.

Elements of this lifestyle change include moderating food intake, increasing physical activity, managing stress without food, and getting treatment for depression and other illnesses that get in the way.

A healthy lifestyle is easier than you think

Changing your eating and physical activity habits can be difficult at first. But once you’ve started, it’s easy to sustain. Here are a few tips to help ease the transition:

Combine an active lifestyle with healthy eating.
Make small, achievable, lifelong changes to your lifestyle and eating habits.
Fill up on nutritious foods.
Keep portions moderate in size.
Eat until you have had enough – not until you are full.
Do your best to avoid eating when you are not hungry.
Recognize that on some days you might be hungrier than on other days.
Eat slowly and enjoy your food and put your fork down between bites.
Reduce the amount of ‘extra’ or ‘sometimes’ foods that you eat.
Be active with daily activity you enjoy, keep your body moving
Lift heavy! Our bodies want challenges. Hire a personal trainer to challenge you.
Recognize the difference between hunger and boredom.

Once a wide range of nutritious foods and physical activity becomes part of your everyday routine, the idea of “D.I.E.T.ing” will start to seem strange.

Food: What We Are Made From

July 27th, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

Some advice is just so sound that I feel the need to share it. Your diet and nutrition are hugely important!

Every cell in our body turns over every 7 years. Some turn over daily, some weekly, and some take longer. Ever wonder how we make new cells, organs, tissues, skin, muscles, bone, and even brain cells? The raw materials all come from what we eat. Do you want to be made of Doritos or grass-fed steak? Coca-cola or wild blueberries?

Our structure, which determines our function, is dependent on what we eat. The building blocks—the proteins, fats, minerals, and more, make up who we are.

If you are a healthy, lean male, your body is made up of 62 percent water, 16 percent protein, 16 percent fat, 6 percent minerals, less than 1 percent carbohydrate, and small amounts of vitamins. The problem is that our processed diet is about 50 to 60 percent carbohydrate, mostly low-quality, refined starches and sugars that are the raw materials for processed food.

Funny enough, we are not actually made of carbohydrates and they are not considered an essential nutrient. If those carbs don’t become our structure, where do they go? We burn some, but most get turned into dangerous disease-causing belly fat.

Every part of you has a structure and function. If you are made out of poor-quality parts, you will create a poorly functioning body.

Muscle loss and bone loss are huge factors in aging and age-related diseases. Muscle is where our metabolism is (low muscle mass equals slow metabolism and worse). The effect of poor quality muscles is an increase in diabetes, inflammation, and aging.

Imagine building your house out of rotten wood or disintegrating bricks. Why would you build your body from defective ingredients? For example, we need the best quality fats—our brain is 60 percent fat, our nerve coverings are all made from fat, every one of your 10 trillion cells is wrapped in a little fatty membrane. Do you really want to make them from oxidized damaged refined oils in your French fries or KFC?

We also need the best quality protein. The body makes most of its important molecules from protein including muscle, cells, and immune molecules. Not all protein is the same. The best type of protein to build muscle is other muscle—animal protein. You can get protein from plant foods, but the quality is lower and it has lower levels of key amino acids needed to synthesize new muscle, especially the branched-chain amino acids (leucine, isoleucine, and valine, and also lysine and sulfur-based amino acids). And don’t forget all the vitamins and minerals we need to build tissues, muscles, and bones, including vitamin D, vitamin K, calcium, magnesium, and more.

Next time you chomp down on something, ask yourself if you are fine with it becoming part of you for the long term. If not, don’t eat it and find the best quality ingredients you can, ingredients that help you thrive!

by Mark Hyman MD

Why You Aren’t Seeing Results When Strength Training

July 19th, 2021 by Debbie Martilotta

As a trainer, people often ask me how frequently they need to train to achieve results, and there isn’t one perfect answer: Our bodies are all different, which means they can respond differently to the same stimuli. But if you’re lifting and lifting and still not seeing results in your strength training routine, it’s probably because you’re lacking consistency in your workout or diet or both.

The process of getting stronger doesn’t have to be complicated, but keep reading for the three main reasons you may not be reaching your gains goals.

1. You’re mixing too many different modalities

To see measurable results in any fitness routine, you’ll want to stick with one primary training modality. If you’re only strength training one day a week (and spending your other sessions doing cardio), it’s going to be challenging to build muscle. The reason? Your muscle fibers won’t be exposed to the level of stress they need to grow. Muscle stress is imperative to building strength because it causes micro-tears of your muscle fibers, and when your body repairs these tears, they come back stronger. Most of my clients find success in 2 30-minute sessions with me weekly.

If your goal is to build muscle and get stronger, resistance training is your best bet. If you’re a beginner, working with your body weight is a great place to start, and as you begin to build strength, you can add more resistance with weights. And to help maximize your results and save time, your workouts should consist of compound exercises, like squats presses, walking lunges with bicep curls, and deadlifts, that target multiple areas at once and force you to exert more energy than the isolated movements that target a single area.

2. Not sticking to a workout plan

Doing the same activities over and over can feel mundane, but it’s necessary if you want to put on muscle and increase your strength—which is why it’s essential to develop a workout plan. For example, let’s say your goal is to strengthen your legs. Doing four sets of 12 deadlifts once isn’t going to make much difference – but doing that same workout for four to six weeks and progressively increasing the weight will.

In addition to your nutrition, you’ll need to focus on your recovery. Properly warming up and cooling down will better prepare you for your training sessions, and help you prevent injury and burnout. Adding mobility work into your routine can also help maximize your performance as you train, improve your overall movement, and reduce and prevent pain and injury.

Another factor to focus on is getting quality sleep; it’s recommended adults get at least seven hours of sleep each night. A good night’s rest is essential for muscle repair and growth. As you sleep, your body secretes a muscle growth hormone, which works to repair the micro-tears that occur from strength training and make your muscles stronger.

And if you’re someone who likes to mix things up, schedule activities where you can do other modalities like yoga, cycling, biking, or running.

3. Not focusing on your recovery and nutrition

Lifestyle variables—like nutrition, recovery, and sleep—also impact your ability to get stronger. You’ll want to make sure you’re eating enough to support your energy needs when you’re training and in your everyday life. Your caloric needs will vary based on your lifestyle and goals, so you will want to work with your trainer on an individualized nutrition plan for you.

Because training is nuanced and individualized, use these tips as a starting point. If you have the access and means, consider working with a certified personal trainer who can provide you with more specific tips and tools to help you reach your fitness goals.

In part from our friends at Well+ Good