Healing From Within Many Causes, Many Cures

We humans are complex. We, like nature are not linear. We are multi-dimensional. We are also like snowflakes. No two of us are exactly alike. So why do we think that there is one diet, one treatment, one solution that cures all?

The United States spends more money on healthcare than the next 15 countries combined. Yet, we are one of the sickest countries on the planet. Chronic disease in the United States is epidemic. Cancer is the number one killer for those under 65. Heart disease is number one for 65 and older.

Dr. Deborah Norris, PhD says we are the only country that looks at cancer like a death threat. I concur. The biggest threat to health and wellbeing is the fear surrounding the diagnosis. Both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda view cancer as fear stuck in the body. Some ascertain that kidney dis-ease is stuck anger.  We are, in fact, energetic beings.

The good news of course, is that there are many ways to heal.  The beauty of committing to work with a health coach is that it affords you the opportunity to explore the many different options available. It affords you time and space to explore what your unique body needs. It’s necessary for personalized health care.

Conventional medicine is a linear model. Optimal healthcare is multi-dimensional. You can eat all the broccoli in the world and still self-destruct with pent up anger and emotions. Fear keeps us stuck in “fight or flight” mode or sympathetic nervous system (SNS) overdrive. 

See the photo from my book:

As I’ve said so many times before, it is physiologically impossible to heal and repair while we are in the sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is the “rest and digest” or “mate and ovulate” mode. It is literally like a light switch, you are in one or the other. We need both. We need both light and darkness. If our light is too bright, we are blinding. If our flame is too big, we burn out. We need adequate darkness and sleep to heal and repair. 

To reduce the fear and mystery around cancer and disease, let's simply look at the body like an automobile. As I write this, I am here in Detroit with my daughter and son-in-law, so it makes sense to do so. This is a functional approach and the wave of our healthcare future. Each part is connected to the other and serves a function in the body.

The kidney, the liver and the lungs are like the fuel filter and carburetor.  They keep the engine (body) clean and running. Food and oxygen are like the gasoline you put into the car.  Engines can run on different types of fuel. They are built differently. You need diesel fuel for a diesel engine. The car cannot run without a fuel filter. It will sputter and spit and eventually stop running. It doesn’t matter how hard you press on the accelerator. Eventually it will not go. A car that has a stuck accelerator (stuck in SNS drive) will either run out of gas or crash and burn. This sometimes is called adrenal stress and fatigue.

Nutrition is NOT the food you eat. It is what is absorbed. If you have a hole in your gas tank (aka leaky gut or intestinal permeability), it doesn’t matter what you eat. Not only does the gas not get to the engine, it can create other problems in the car. Gas on a hot engine can create a fire. Same with the human body. Food and chemicals that get into the bloodstream create inflammation in the body. The body sends cholesterol and iron to the bloodstream (the highway) to put out the fire. Cholesterol and iron are the firemen and are markers of inflammation that you can monitor in blood tests. Elevated homocysteine is another (blood test) inflammatory marker and is also a sign of needing more vitamin b12 and folate (gasoline) in the diet. 

This is new medicine. This is the new paradigm. Neither I nor most doctors were taught nutrition in nursing or medical schools. Functional medicine is beginning to change that. Functional Diagnostic Nutritionists are trained to do functional tests to look for subclinical hidden stressors in the body. 

Often you can see evidence of erosion long before you get an actual hole in metal (and the body).  The earlier the detection, the easier the prevention.

For instance, an elevated MCV(mean corpuscle volume), or the size of your red blood cell is also a clinical sign of the need for essential nutrients, again vitamins B12 and folate. Anything over 90 is suboptimal. It is also subclinical, meaning it won’t be flagged on the test result, so your doctor or nurse may not recognize this important healing opportunity for you. 

Education is empowerment. Understanding the functions of the human body can empower you to be your own healthcare advocate and healthcare detective.

Why is folate (not to be confused with synthetic folic acid) and vitamin B12 important? The body uses them for energy production and detoxification. They are actually produced and assimilated in the gut (the gas tank and the fuel lines). The body eats them up when you are under stress. Signs and symptoms of deficiency include anxiety, depression, brain fog, neuropathy and more. Don’t waste your money on cheap vitamins that have folic acid in them. Look for bio-available forms like methyl-tetrahydrofolate or methyl-cobalamin instead. This is fuel that the body can actually use. Folate is necessary to prevent miscarriages. It is also necessary for energy production and detoxification. You need it to make the car run. Folate deficiency has been linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, cognitive dysfunction and birth defects. [1]

Some people have a genetic snp where you cannot convert synthetic folic acid to folate. This can add to toxicity in the body. It can clog your fuel filter. If your fuel filter backs up, so does your carburetor. It effects your liver.

The liver, the lungs, the kidneys and the skin are your major detoxification organs. When they are clogged, this indicates toxicity in the body. These are your warning lights on the dashboard. This is your wake up call. This may mean the wrong fuel or needing some additives (or supplements) to make the fuel more efficient. It may mean an oil and filter change to clean out the system (detoxification).

This is why the power on your plate is profound. 

You also need the right fuel mix for optimal performance. If you are under stress and in fight or flight mode, you do not produce the necessary stomach acid required for B12 and iron absorption. Almost all of our patients who have iron deficiency anemia are taking proton pump inhibitors. These also prevent the body from secreting stomach acid which you also need to break down proteins into amino acids (in addition to B12 and iron absorption). You need amino acids for growth and repair. 

Can you now see the direct connection in your thoughts (fear) and your ability to heal and repair? Our thoughts are like the master control that control the functions in the body. 

Breath, like air, is also essential to the right fuel mix in the gasoline to make the body and car run.

The body follows the mind. The mind follows the breath. (Cancer cells are anaerobic, they live without oxygen and feed on sugar, like fermentation. Oxygenate the body to kill them.) 

1.     Change your breathing patterns to consciously change your mind and your body. 

2.    Drink clean filtered water. 

3.    Eat the right diet for your unique body.  Eat clean fuel, free from toxins, pesticides, fungicides and GMOs so you don't gum up your systems. 

Simple solutions.

Carpe Diem.

With Love & Gratitude,

Lisa

---

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24494987

About Lisa Jackson, RN, CHC, RYT-500

Lisa is an author, inspirational speaker and coach with a mission to inspire others to feel and look their best at any age. 

She is also the Executive Director of the Integrative Wellness Program for the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders. Lisa's book, Savvy Secrets: Eat, Think and Thrive outlines her seven step process towards optimal health that is fun and transformational. 

Lisa is part of the New Self Health Movement and the Wellness Inspired Network. When she is not coaching, speaking or writing, you can find her practicing yoga and joyfully sharing Carpe Diem Dance.

Energy and Empowerment: How to achieve optimal weight and wellness

This week’s topic for our nutrition support luncheon was Energy and Empowerment; How to achieve optimal weight and wellness.

We started with great news from one of our patients! A patient with pancreatic cancer who decided to work with Victoria Wood and has attended almost every Wednesday nutrition group, changing her diet, working on self-care and taking lots of the Thorne Research supplements and her CA 19-9 (a cancer marker) dropped from 607.9 to 232.6 in 3 months! She also did the Spectracell micronutrient testing when she starting working with our team one year ago and again this past month. All of her deficiencies improved so much that she only had one low normal level! Her vitamin D is at optimal level of 65 ng/ml. Her cardiologist last week told her to keep doing what she is doing that he doesn’t need to see her for another year and her eyesight is improving! Proof that when you replenish nutrient insufficiencies and you address toxicity and inflammation, the body naturally begins to heal itself. Most importantly, is that the patient reported that she has good quality of life and that motivates her to continue to participate and make vital change.  She has the support of her daughter and husband who also attend our luncheon which is a powerful plus.

Another of our patients attending our nutrition support luncheon requested we discuss resting metabolism and mindful eating for this week’s group.  He read two articles in The New York Times and was hungry for a perspective based on wellness…how profound and wise! This gentlemen, by coming to our weekly luncheons has gone from 283 pounds to 243 without dieting or deprivation. He is now hovering between  245-250, and after reading the NYT articles is worried about moving in the “wrong direction.”

These two articles are great examples of the difference in disease management and wellness and why our current thinking regarding disease management is not very helpful for anyone with chronic conditions. The more we focus on what’s wrong with the body in the attempt to “fix it”, the more shame and stress we get in the process, interfering with the body’s natural ability to heal from within. 

The more we focus on what we really want, the more likely we are to achieve natural balance with ease.  Yes, you heard me, with ease. Robert lost the first 40 pounds with ease. Now he’s worried about not being able to lose even more or worse yet to regain the lost pounds back.

First, I’d like to comment on a few key points from the first article titled, “Never Diet Again” an opinion by Sandra Aamodt, and lessons learned from neuroscience. Here’s why diets don’t work:

#1 Stress holds on to fat. All kinds of stress, mental emotional as well a food sensitivities, gut dysbiosis, and all the hidden causes of inflammation that we discuss in our nutrition groups. This is why weight loss is the natural consequence to healing the body.

#2. Weight Anxiety. The fear of gaining weight leads to binge eating leading to weight gain. Yes, the body follows the mind; what we focus on is what we get. The article gave several examples in both teenage girls and rodents (who have common eating patterns!). Girls who diet in adolescence are three times more likely to become overweight in the next four years. Girls who dieted frequently were twelve times more likely than non-dieters to binge. “binge eating is a common mammalian response to starvation.” You are literally telling your body that you are starving and to save up fat cells for your own survival later on.

#3 Food Deprivation leads to changes in dopamine and neurotransmitters. Remember from our group classes that 90% of our neurotransmitters are produced in the gut. You need a healthy gut for a healthy mind, mood and body.  These changes linger long after the diet.

#4 Diets rely on rules rather than your own internal clues. Marketing mania further supports the false belief that we need to depend on external clues to “fix us,” Powerlessness does not lead to empowered.

#5 Diets are fear driven. We diet because we are worried about heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or just plain not being good enough, young enough, attractive enough, etc. This leads us back to #1 Stress holds onto fat….

I love how Sandra ends her article. She says, “I finally gave up dieting six years ago and I’m much happier. I redirected the energy I used to spend on dieting to establishing daily habits of exercise and meditation. I also enjoy food more while worrying about it less, now that it no longer comes with a side order of shame.”

So what’s the Savvy Secret? Now for the Remedy!

1.      

      First, we must love and accept all of us, exactly where we are. Ask, not, “What’s wrong with me, but what’s right with me…what is my loving body trying to tell me?”  The answer may not be what you think.  Newer studies are linking toxicity to obesity, diabetes, cancer and chronic dis-ease. Here’s a graph that points out the direct correlation to chemical use in the U.S. with the rapid rises in diabetes.

Could toxicity be the precursor to diabetes and obesity instead of merely the standard American diet laden with hyper palatable food? Understand the body’s loving way of storing toxins in fat is to protect you. Forget the guilt and shame, it serves no purpose and keeps you on the hamster wheel!

This leads to #2; the need to minimize toxicity in our food and water supply as well as the need to boost the body and support the liver’s detoxification pathways. How?

a.       First, address intestinal permeability (IP), (otherwise toxins just recirculate!), Enlist the 5 R’s of functional medicine we discuss in our group. Remove inflammatory food, Replace processed food with whole nutrient dense food, Restore probiotics, Repair the Gut and Rest and digest and rebalance.

b.      Address nutrient insufficiencies (like vitamin D and zinc which can lead to IP.

c.       Supplement to support the liver. 

d.      Consider a detoxification program to eliminate inflammatory foods, kick the sugar and carb cravings and eliminate toxins. Try the Kick-Start program and the new Tasty 6 juices.

The most important of the 5 R’s is to “rest and digest or rest and repair.” 

Lower Stress! Think HALT Don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired or Thirsty.

Recognize that you cannot meet any of your health goals if you are in fight or

flight mode. It is physiologically impossible to lose weight or to heal and repair

when you are stuck in sympathetic nervous system (SNS) overdrive.  Here's a

picture from my book on what happens when we are always in sympathetic

nervous system overdrive:

When you are chronically in "fight or flight" you become susceptible to eye problems, flu's, viruses and asthma, hypertension, constipation, varicose veins, anemia, anxiety, depression, insomnia and so much more. You secrete less stomach acid which is essential for nutrient absorption, creation of the stress b and k vitamins and  the feel good neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. This is why a practice in rest and relaxation, self-love and self-care is so essential!

The second article, That Lost Weight? The Body Finds It  gave the depressing news that nearly all of TV’s Biggest Loser’s gained back lost weight and gives great examples of what NOT to do, and again why dieting and deprivation are ineffective and create more stress, dis-ease and weight gain in the long term. The most intelligent take away is, “We need to explore other approaches.” And Dr Ludwig said, “simply cutting calories was not the answer.” Dr. Rosenbaum summarizes, “The difficulty in keeping weight off reflects biology, not a pathological lack of willpower affecting two-thirds of the U.S.A.” 

There is a great common myth that if you just eat less and exercise more you can meet your weight goals…WRONG!

The truth is counting calories is old school outdated knowledge, stressful, and ineffective. Simply put, a calorie does not equal a calorie. A calorie from a green juice is no way similar to the calories in a soda drink. The calories from a can of soda have so many other effects on the body (consider not only lack of nutrients, but the sugar, the BPA and heavy metal from the can and the negative effect on the pancreas and the adrenals, which affect the hormones, which affect the thyroid….) The body has interconnected intelligence; each body part is functionally related to each other and health begins in the gut.

As we discuss weekly, food is information to the body and can lead to healing the body or causing more dis-ease.

Before we ate lunch, we practiced this deep belly breathing. Inhale to the count of 4, hold for the count of 5 and exhale to the count of 7. We then did some yoga dance to, “Don't Worry, Be Happy”, stimulating the lymphatic system and shaking out the arms and legs and hips. Everyone was smiling and laughing; definitely the best way to decrease stress! It was so much fun we had to do it again to end our lunch.

We ended lunch with a mindful eating experience with chocolate and strawberries. We took our time to smell, taste, feel and chew the food to stimulate digestion and to get the peak enjoyment from eating. Food should be nourishing and decadently delicious. So many studies support happiness as a path to healing. We ended sharing what makes us happy and what each of us could do to increase happiness and decrease stress. Some examples were breathing, movement to music, walking, smelling flowers, cooking and for me it’s time with my Grandson. Now doesn’t it make you happy to see that beautiful baby smile!

Carpe Diem!

Lisa

Lisa is an author, inspirational speaker, retired RN, certified health coach, and yoga teacher.

Her book, Savvy Secrets: Eat, Think & Thrive: Seven Steps to Optimal Health is a self health book to enable healing from within. Her goal is to inspire wellness and to help others look and feel their best at any age.

Lisa is part of the New Self Health Movement, the International Health Coach Association and the Wellness Inspired Network. She is the mother of four adult children, a Grandmother, and believes that optimal health should not be a secret! When she is not coaching, speaking and writing, you can find her practicing yoga and joyfully sharing Carpe Diem Dance at every opportunity.

Optimal Health is Not Complicated; Maximize, Minimize & Prioritize

Do you, like me, have a hard time prioritizing self?

I start many presentations with this slide "Optimal Health is Not Complicated; Maximize, Minimize and Prioritize.”

...and yet doing this consistently is a challenge. Here lies the value of a health coach. I have my own coaches. I have a business coach and paid mentors that I work with. I still have to practice consistently prioritizing myself. Some of us are givers. We love to give, We thrive on giving, but we can give so much we wind up running out of gas.

We don't wait until our car runs out of gas before we fill it up. We don't put cheap gas in a Ferrari if we want it to perform with optimal performance. Why do we do this to ourselves? Do you ever fill yourself with cheap food or wait until you’re starving before taking a break? Do you plan and prepare a nutritious meal to fuel you for the day? Do you prioritize joyful activities and rest and relaxation every day?  It’s so easy to jump out of bed and get on the computer or get to the “to do list”.

So how do I prioritize me? I strive to practice treating my body and my soul as if it were my precious baby. 

Isn't it interesting how when you're pregnant, you don't drink? Most pregnant women sustain from alcohol, stop drinking coffee, and start taking vitamins. They start eating better foods and when they need to rest, they rest! This creates a healthy child, this creates a healthy body. As Mothers, we intuitively know this. So why do we stop these practices after the baby is born? What can you do today to nourish and nurture your body as if it were your baby? Can you love and nurture your body as you would your unborn and newborn child? Will you Begin today to consistently prioritize self? 

If you are local, join us today and bring your loved ones to Love Your Body Day at Reston Town Center. Bring your yoga mat and try different classes with different instructors from 10-3pm or visit some of the vendors that are in my Wellness Inspired Network, Beloved Yoga Studio, Neck Back & Beyond, Life Wellness Centre and Dr. Wes Rocki. In addition to having a booth with goodies and book signing, I will be giving a short talk on Seven Steps to Optimal Health at the Art of Healing Tent next to the pavilion @ 3pm.(I've touched on two steps in this post, Begin & Nourish.)  http://www.loveyourbodyyogafestival.com/ 

Here's to your health and nourishing choices; Carpe Diem!

With Love & Gratitude,

Lisa