Sum Total of Nutrition
Gut Health
- The Gut houses approximately 70% of the body’s immune system.
- About 100 trillion diverse microorganisms live in the Gut.
- Human genes to organismal genes are about 23 to 3000.
- The organism’s functions influence a person’s fitness, phenotype, and health.
- The gut-microbes collectively communicate with the brian influencing protein metabolism, the nervous system function, and especially mental health.
Key takeaway - It has been found that an unhealthy gut influences many autoimmune and chronic diseases. Treat your gut well with proper nutrition for optimal health outcomes.
Herbs & Nutrition
Should I include herbs in my diet?
Including macronutrients such as fats, carbohydrates, and proteins seems to require little effort. But finding the right combination for proper nutrition can be challenging. Did you know micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals not only can be obtained through fruits and vegetables but also herbs and spices.
Herbs and spices are shown to not only assist with micro-nutrients but have healing properties. Some examples include but are not all inclusive:
- Turmeric - Anti-inflammatory and depression. It contains flavonoids, iron, niacin, potassium, and zinc
- Basil - Antioxidant an anti-inflammatory. It contains vitamin A, K, calcium, iron, and manganese.
- Black pepper - Helps mediate the absorption of iron and beta-carotene
- Cinnamon - Lowers blood sugar. It contains iron, calcium, and magnesium.
Caution: Like all good things an excessive amount of any food, herbs, or spices can have alternate side-effects. It is important to use caution and seek out a healthcare provider for further advice.
Eat the Rainbow
Why and what is eating the rainbow?
It’s simply eating a variety of whole fruits and whole vegetables ranging in all colors from purple cabbage to a yellow pair.
- The human gut microbiome requires a variety of nutrients to function properly. Including various fruits, vegetables, proteins, nuts, herbs, spices, and grains that help maintain the metabolizing process needed for a properly functioning body.
- A varying diet will ensure the body receives adequate amounts of fiber, potassium, magnesium, calcium, folate, iron, and vitamins A and C to name a few.
- Many people assume a diet of vegetables and fruit alone can cause a lack or excess of one or more macro-nutrients such as proteins; however, this is completely untrue.
- Different vegetables and fruits vary in the quantity of macronutrients and micronutrients but they all have their role in building the body’s health.
Pill Mill
Some older adults refer to a “pill mill” as a place where people receive pills but no cure. The words alone remit a cadence of repetitive hopelessness. One may ask, how can Americans have so much freedom but somehow missed the bus for top-tier healthcare. Unfortunately, it’s quite complicated and hovers around pharmaceuticals, finances, and industry.
Complaints
People have to get past expecting a quick fix, surgery, or pill to miraculously put everything back in place. In the past, practitioners have been reluctant to focus on diet and nutrition possibly due to lack of formal nutritional training or concerned about patient willingness to make changes. Patients can no longer depend on the healthcare system to be solely responsible for their health and well-being. It is imperative that people become knowledgeable and involved past just being obedient in taking medication. In the recent pandemic, the key takeaways were chronic illness of obesity and hypertension had some of the highest death rates from Covid. Companies raced to produce vaccinations and treatment for Covid; however, no campaigns or laws were made to reduce the obesity, diabetes, or hypertension epidemic. To put things in perspective of pills and shots over diet and nutrition - Obesity affects 19% of children and 42% of adults; Moreover, Obesity costs the US health care system $147 billion a year (CDC, 2021).
The answer is …
It is obvious that pills and shots alone are not the answer. Conventional medicine should be used where it is appropriate and temporary if possible. Unfortunately, the temporary status is clearly seen when medication is stopped such as blood pressure medication or blood sugar medication, levels skyrocket to a new normal high. Good news! We are not hopeless and there are answers. The bigger question is are we willing as individuals to take actionable steps for change. Health without a doubt, starts at home with proper nutrition, stress-reduction, and exercise. Even the person that has already been diagnosed with a chronic illness still can achieve better health outcomes and less pills.
Resistant Hypertension
According to the American heart Association (2018), persons are considered to have resistant hypertension when they have the following:
- Hypertension despite the concurrent use of 3 antihypertensive drug classes.
- The three or more medications are administered at maximum or maximally tolerated daily doses.
- Patients meeting goal blood pressure parameters on 4 or more medications are considered to have resistant hypertension.
- “White coat” phenomenon has been excluded by monitoring home blood pressures that are above goal.
Healthcare providers response:
- Identify contributing lifestyle factors (Poor nutrition, smoking etc…)
- Detect other drugs that interfere with blood pressure medication.
- Causes of secondary hypertension (sleep apnea and endocrine problems)
- Assessment organ damage (kidney failure).
The examples ( ) listed are not all inclusive.
What should you do:
- Limit Salt to 2000-2400 mg daily (FYI:1 serving of spaghetti sauce 500 mg)
- Achieve 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep
- Weight loss: At least 5% of current wait to start
- Exercise: 150 minutes per week for adults
- Lifestyle diet: Whole food plant-based (WFPBD), mediterranean diet, debt Dash Diet (Remove saturated fats, Hidden salt, boxed/canned items)
Definitions:
- Hypertension: Blood pressure greater than 130/80.
- Antihypertensive: Against or a lowering high blood pressure.
- Antihypertensive drug classes: Calcium channel blocker (“pine”), angiotensin-renin blocker (“artans”) or angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (“pril”) or angiotensin receptor blocker), and a diuretic (“Water-pill”).
A Health coach can assist you with meeting these achievable lifestyle changes and getting your blood pressure to goal. Even in people diagnosed with secondary causes of hypertension can better their outcomes with the strategic plan.
Reduce the Stress
How to reduce stress in your life?
Create a system of organization:
Lack of organization and clutter speaks volumes to your emotional and mental clarity. When psychologist studied people with hoarding and obsessive compulsive disorders, they found these behaviors were associated with traumatic life events; Planning and creating habits, along with support can help change behaviors. When you create order in your life and routine, it’s much easier to accomplish trivial every day task so you can focus on the more important things that require more engagement.
Get rid of unnecessary things:
We fill our lives with memorabilia hoping to capture the moment forever. But we have to remember unless it’s a flash drive, a photo, or a recording it later becomes clutter. Unfortunately, even those things deteriorate, even memory recorders can be lost, damaged, or deemed unusable by technology advances. It doesn’t actually retain the memory. It’s your experience and emotional response related to that time or event that is retaining the memory; not only in our brains, but our physical bodies too. With that being said, memories can play a positive or a negative way and our psychological and physical health creating happiness or exacerbating anxiety and depression. This goes along with simply holding on to old clothes you can’t fit while setting yourself up for unrealistic expectations. It’s new you, new day, new style. Let those old clothes go.
Forgive people
Why should you forgive people? In reality, a person or those persons that have offended you. They have not apologized, so they don’t deserve forgiveness. But your forgiveness is not the same as forgetting, and most importantly the purpose is for you not them. Along with all the other stress mentioned throughout this article, anxiety and anger peaks certain hormones in our body such as, adrenaline and cortisol causing your blood pressure to increase, your blood sugar to increase, which are all proper functions of the body; however under long-term use of these hormones creates chronic illness.
Laugh:
Laughing not only brings happiness to our spirit but releases endorphins in our physical body reducing stress. The physical active laughing helps increase oxygen throughout your body and relaxes muscle tension.
Move away from toxic relationships:
Toxic relationships can be found in the friendships we keep; and unfortunately, Family members can be a part of our unhealthy relationships. It’s important to set boundaries and be OK sticking to them through practice. If people in your life are not willing to follow your boundaries or are not willing to except who you are it is OK to move away from them. It is not a betrayal of friendship or family ship by preserving your own sanity, which in turn, is preserving your physical health.
Meditation:
Meditation or prayer are optimal ways to stress reduction; furthermore, studies have shown that meditation or mindfulness can help reduce pain. Prayer and religious or faith based affiliation have been historically associated with better health outcomes. If you’re curious on how to incorporate meditation or mindfulness into your daily life click the link below by Bright Side…
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