Learn about what the seven tenets of Functional Medicine are and how they work to improve your life.
Let’s focus this week on functional medicine-
There are seven aspects to conquer to achieve optimal health. Start with one each day this week and see if you don’t feel a little better by next Monday.
1. Sleep (the most important of all)
Aim for 8 hours of sleep a night. Try to get to bed around 10-11. Having trouble? A few things that will help: Magnesium glycinate 240-360 mg prior to bedtime (Pure encapsulations) 5-HTP in the form of Neurocalm 2 at bedtime (Designs for Health) Melatonin 3mg at bedtime (Pure encapsulations) and finally progesterone. We like micronized progesterone- depending on age and lab values 50mg-200 mg. If you are one who goes to bed at 2 am- start moving it back a half and hour every day.
Deep breathing exercises prior to bed are also a great way to wind down. Dr Garrett utilizes a Dodow- deep breathing light. It projects a light onto your ceiling at bedtime and you breathe with the light. The intensity of the light changes to help you follow a pattern.
Link below:
https://a.co/d/4dNp1Ww
For those who need noise to help them sleep- we recommend the Hatch. This machine incorporates sound and light to help lull you into relaxation and peace and wake you up gently- keeping your body out of that startle response.
Link below:
https://a.co/d/1dLZq8D
You can do all of these treatments together, especially if you have a horrible time falling asleep or staying asleep. Try to improve your sleeep every night this week.
Follow our link tree to Fullscripts to order your vitamins and supplements at 20% off.
Linktr.ee/empoweringhealth_spa
Day two of improving your health from a functional medicine perspective!
2. Water- drinking water is the best thing you can do for your body. It helps in more ways than you can ever imagine. You need to be drinking 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water a day. This will help your body with its normal functions. Without it you will notice a sharp decline in health. As a bonus, start your morning with 8 ounces of warm water with fresh lemon squeezed in. This will help to jump start your health and improve all bodily functions. Because it is warm, the stomach does not have to churn it to warm it up, so the less amount of time it sits in the stomach acid the better. It is considered an alkalizing concoction.
SCIENCE LESSION: (Feel free to skip ahead) -Now you are probably saying, whoa, it is an “Acidic Fruit”! There is a difference in what we are discussing (think kernel and colonel). When you ingest anything, the body has to pull out of it what is necessary for bodily functions and buffer out the toxins (things not needed for the body), we have to maintain homeostasis. The body cannot be too acidic or too alkaline. In order to do this the body has to neutralize certain things, this can be utilizing certain things such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium (alkaline salts). Because fruits (including acid fruits) do not have any issues in creating acidic molecules, the body does not have to pull calcium from the blood or bones in order to buffer it. So, it is considered alkaline. Whereas, meats and grains are considered acidic foods, the body has to steal alkaline salts from other places to buffer out the toxins. (END OF SCIENCE LESSON)
What kind of water do I need?
1. Keep it in a glass or stainless container- xenoestrogens from plastic is a real thing. Microplastics are a real thing. BPA (bisphenol A) is just one toxin they have discovered in plastics, there are hundreds of others…
2. I like distilled water. We live in Indiana and our well is pretty much limestone, I don’t want that in my body. City water is recycled sewer, don’t want that in my body either. I have a countertop distiller, that creates a gallon of water in like 4 hours. It is steam distilled so the heavy metals and minerals are removed. Now, if you are saying, wait I need minerals. Just eat your fruits and veggies and you will be fine.
link below:
https://a.co/d/fzvPn0a
3. Does tea count? Oh my gosh, I love tea. Unsweetened iced tea, matcha, green tea, hot tea, the stories are endless about tea with me, however, tea contains caffeine- which can act as a diuretic (causing you to pee more) therefore, you lose fluid. So, the answer is no, it needs to be 1/2 your body weight and tea is a bonus. Our favorite teas are from The Tea Spot (#bestteaever)- Oh, and Ms. Maria Uspenski- founder of the Tea Spot has a great book, called “Cancer Hates Tea” which talks all about the health benefits of tea! (find it on her website).
link below:
https://www.theteaspot.com/products/cancer-hates-tea-book
So far: You should be trying to improve your sleep and drinking 1/2 your body weight in water… You will actually find that drinking more water can improve your sleep dramatically!
Day 3 of your approach to better health from a functional perspective:
You need to move your body. I am a firm believer that if you stop moving your body starts breaking down and decaying. So, move!
You don’t have to start a marathon, but you need to move. Take a walk before dinner. Park further out in the parking lot from shopping or work. Walk on your lunch. Spend 30 minutes at least 5 times a week being active and 45 minutes 3 times a week doing focused exercises. Physical activity needs to continue for at least 10 minutes to be considered a session of exercise. So, you can break up your 30 daily minutes into two to three shorter sessions, each at least 10 minutes long.
Cardio- make sure that you are getting your heart rate up, you shouldn’t be able to sing…
(*There is a slight caveat to this- if your body is in adrenal fatigue and you are a stage two or three in adrenal fatigue -Your cortisol and DHEA is plummeted, you need to do more restorative exercises to begin with)
Strength training: This is great for boosting testosterone, building lean muscle that will actually help to burn fat faster, and help improve bone health and blood quality (strength training helps to produce better stronger red blood cells). Do you get neck tension and headaches? That is because you have an 8 lb bowling ball sitting on top of your shoulders and your body does not have the muscles to hold it up… so your back is pulling down hard on those muscles to keep your head from snapping off.
Stretch: You need to be stretching out the muscle fibers and helping to provide flexibility to your muscles.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF EXERCISE… is to make sure you are doing the exercises correctly. You have to breathe correctly, you have to posture correctly, you need to exert correctly. We team up with Unexpected Warrior with Laura Moore. She can help you to learn how to exercise correctly.
Reach out to her at llmoore71@yahoo.com or https://www.unexpectedwarriors.com/
Today is day four of our functional medicine journey. Today we are going to focus on nutrition. The body is designed to heal itself, detoxify itself, maintain its own balance (homeostasis) and to adapt to change. However, you have to put the right fuel in the tank for all of these processes to take place.
4. Nutrition…we could write a book on this as this is so vitally important. Most people want a “pill for every ill” not realizing the havoc it is going to cause in your body. Every medication you take will cause a chain reaction in some aspect of your body. Have the sniffles for one day, go to urgent care and get an antibiotic, what are you left with? You have destroyed the good commensal bacteria in the gut and now have allowed yeast to take over. You are no longer absorbing your nutrients, you may end up with diarrhea- further damaging the mucosal cells of the small intestine, you may end up with a yeast infection. How should you have fought this? Drink your fluids, increase your vitamin c, rest, eat bone broth soup, increase the bioavailability of the nutrients (polyphenols, catechins, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids) your body needs to heal itself and remove the pathogen.
What does proper nutrition look like? It is definitely not fast food or processed foods. Did you know that according to US statistics that 41.9% of American adults are obese and 19.7% of American children are obese? This isn’t from eating a healthy diet. Approximately 70% of Americans are on at least 1 prescription medication and 24% are on 4 or more prescriptions.
How do we stop this?
Eat a diet that is plant based. About 2/3rd of your plate should be fruits and veggies. Try to measure your vegetable intake for one week. You need to be eating about 30 servings of vegetables per week. Fruit is your friend, the antioxidants in fruit will help with oxidative stress in the body and studies have shown cardiovascular disease (hypertension, heart failure, heart attacks) are caused by oxidative damage to the body.
Incorporate healthy nuts and seeds into your diet. This will provide good fats in the form of Omega 3 and Omega 6 that help to improve functionality of the body.
Limit dairy, large portions of dairy is inflammatory to the body. If you can remove gluten from your diet, you will notice inflammation will also decrease. Remove the excess sugars. Soda is horrible for your body, even diet soda, so just get rid of it.
Meat should be a treat- so make sure it is divine if and when you eat it! Go for fish a couple times a week. Lean meats like chicken and turkey are better than red meat food choices. Go for grass fed red meats if you are going to eat a red meat.
Food combining- this is a real thing. If you don’t combine your foods correctly you will end up indigestion and poor digestion. Our nutrition counselor, Kate, has a whole video on food combining. Google food combining and you should be able to find a chart about proper combinations.
Clean 15 vs Dirty Dozen. Follow the link below to find out more about what foods should be organic, which foods you need to clean in vinegar, and which are ok to eat.
https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/clean-fifteen.php
