Top 10 Supplements to Optimize Your Health, Part 1

       

          
          The topic of nutritional supplementation has always been a controversial one.  One train of thought states that you can get all your body needs from whole foods.  Then, you have another train of thought saying that there is no way you can obtain all the vital minerals, vitamins and nutrients needed in the human body from food without overeating on your calories.  So who is right?  I guess the decision is ultimately up to you the consumer, but to help you with that decision I have included my personal pick of 10 supplements that many of us can benefit from to maximize the results seen from a healthy nutrition and exercise program.

 These supplements help to round out your meal plan, especially given the typical on-the-go lifestyle most of us lead.  We don’t all have time to cook the perfect meals, nor do we all have access to the foods we would need to create the perfect meal.  Thus, supplementation could be a great way to achieve your nutritional goals in a reasonable manner without jeopardizing your health. 

As always, consult with your physician before taking any supplements.  Just because it’s on this list doesn’t mean that YOU as an individual, with your unique metabolic code and chemical makeup should be taking it. Don’t forget to do your own research as well and make sure you are purchasing your supplements from a reputable vendor.  Many supplements now come with a stamp of approval on the labels such as “GMP” (good manufacturing process), “Informed Choice” or “TruFacts” to ensure the consumer that what is listed on the label is in fact what you are putting in your body.  Many rip-off supplements appear on the market daily, using cheap manufacturing methods or ingredients to save on cost, which unfortunately could potentially harm your health.  This includes supplements found in many common stores and especially online.

With all that in mind, here is the list of my top 10 supplements to optimize your health:

1.      Multi-Vitamin

If you are not taking a multi-vitamin (MV), this is the first stop in your supplement journey.  It is outdated to think that food today, even straight from the farm, contains the same amount of vitamins and minerals that it did 50 to 100 years ago.  The soils crops grow in become stripped of their nutrients over time which leads to a decrease in the vitamins and minerals we get in our foods.  Even then, many of us are not consuming a variety of 9 to 11 fruit and vegetable servings a day as needed to achieve proper intake levels for our essential vitamins and minerals.  Meals today are heavily processed and pre-packaged, lacking the vitamins and minerals we need to sustain a healthy internal environment within your body.  Look for a MV that is gender specific, in a capsule as compared to a tablet, split into multiple doses per day (i.e.- morning and evening vitamins), and third party tested.  While this may mean you’re going to pay more per bottle/month on a MV, this will all ensure optimal absorption of your MV so you’re not flushing your money down the toilet. 

2.      Omega 3 Fish Oil

Many think that Omega 3 Fish Oil only benefits your cardiovascular system, helping to decrease bad cholesterol, increase good cholesterol and drop blood pressure.  While this is true, Omega 3 Fish Oil has many other wonderful benefits that make this the super-supplement that it is.  First off, the ideal dosage includes 2,000 to 3,000mg of Omega 3 Essential Fatty Acids (EFA) per day, specifically EPA and DHA.  This helps to reduce inflammation throughout your body by balancing out the typical high intake of Omega 6 EFAs found in the standard American diet, which are EFAs that actually increase inflammation throughout the body.  Further benefits of Omega 3 EFAs include speedier recovery from exercise and stress, increased fat-burning, reduced insulin resistance and hormones associated with obesity, and increased cognitive ability.  EFAs also have been shown to benefit those with psychological and learning disorders as well as auto-immune disorders.  It is important to know that if you have any fish related allergies, that you should consult your physician before ingesting Fish Oils.

3.      Whey Protein

Whey protein has been linked to a variety of health benefits including preservation of your muscle tissue, maintaining blood pressure levels within normal ranges, helping your insulin work more effectively to stabilize blood sugar levels after a meal, promoting your optimal intake of protein needed for your overall wellness, and supporting your immune system.  Optimal sources of whey protein come from raw, grass-fed milk with medium chain triglycerides (MCT) and are naturally sweetened (organic, no artificial sweeteners). The ideal time to consume whey is about one hour before and one hour after your workout as to supply your muscles with the fuel needed to build new tissue.  

4.      Greens

As mentioned, the optimal daily intake for fruits and vegetables is 9 to 11 servings PER DAY.  An example of a fruit serving is a medium apple or half of a banana.  A serving of vegetables includes 1 cup of uncooked or ½ a cup of cooked veggies.  If you are eating less then these recommended levels, then I would highly suggest looking into a greens supplement to fulfill your dietary needs.  My personal choice is the brand Dynamic Greens. This powdered formula is derived from almost 50 different freeze dried superfoods, contains 15 organic foods and 70 trace minerals, no added sugar (sweetened with stevia), and tastes GREAT with just water.  These greens are loaded with enzymes, probiotics and fiber to aid with digestion and detoxification in the gut so you get the most out of your food.  They also provide great anti-oxidant support to fight the ill-effects of stress on your body including the physical stress associated with exercise. 

5.      Probiotics

80 percent of your immune system lives in your gut.  Antibiotics, processed foods, sugar, and other common components of the standard American diet can negatively affect the balance of good versus bad bacteria in your gut. For this reason, I highly recommend supplementing with probiotics daily.  Benefits include better food digestion, enhanced synthesis of B vitamins, improved calcium absorption, and support for your immune system. Individuals with IBS or diarrhea can especially benefit from supplementing with probiotics.  No one probiotic supplement works for everyone. However, research shows that more individuals respond favorably to Lactobacillus acidophilus than any other probiotic. Probiotics can also help prevent the development of childhood allergies by strengthening their immune systems.  Look for child specific probiotic supplements as they contain more appropriate strands of bacteria as compared to probiotics made for adults. 

Next week we’ll review the remaining five supplements on my top 10 list.  Until then, happy training!

For more Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness advice contact Paul Wantuck or stop by the Fitness Center to schedule a consultation and get started on the path towards a healthier you!

Aerobic Cardio Makes You Fat

If you’ve ever wanted to lose weight, chances are one of the first things you added to your fat loss program was cardio.  Traditional thought has told us, if we put in our time on the road, treadmill, bike, or whatever means we choose that we will expend enough calories to lose weight.  So off we go, 30 to 45 minutes later we’ve burned through hundreds of calories and are feeling great.  We keep this up 3+ times a week for month after month.  At first we’re losing weight and feeling good.  Then it happens.  The weight loss stops and frustration sets in.  Why can’t I lose weight?!?!  Maybe I need to do more cardio to burn more calories…so off we go again.  60 to 75 minutes later we’re feeling accomplished again.  But why isn’t the scale changing?  I haven’t lost a single pound after weeks of doubling, maybe even tripling my cardio!  I lost weight at first, why isn’t it working anymore!?! 

It may be true that aerobic cardio can help you lose some weight when you first start exercising.  But plenty of research has been developed over the years to show that the more efficient you become with repetitive aerobic exercise (i.e. running) the LESS calories you expend per minute while exercising, requiring you to run further and longer to get the same calorie burning effect.  Even then as you increase your mileage again and again over time, unless you’re a professional endurance athlete who carefully plans their life around training, your body will reach a tipping point where the stress from overtraining will eventually lead to burnout or possibly even an injury. 

A 2006 study showcases this effect.  Over 12,000 runners were followed for 9 years.  A majority of these runners gained body fat and waist circumference over the years.  The ones who gained the most fat were the runners who dropped their mileage, primarily due to the unavoidable injury that occurs from a repetitive and unbalanced training program.  But the real highlight of this study was that even the runners who maintained or slightly increased their mileage saw an increase in body fat.  The body adapts to regular aerobic exercise by using less oxygen and energy to perform the most amount of work possible.  This increase in efficiency may help performance, but it doesn’t help your waistline.  At the same time, regular aerobic exercise will also create a catabolic affect in your body, breaking down muscle tissue from the stress effect of repetitive, long duration exercise.  Since a pound of muscle burns up to 10 times more energy then a pound of fat, this drop in muscle mass will decrease your resting metabolic rate.  Not only are you burning fewer calories during exercise, but now you’re burning less at rest.  Thus, you complete your recipe for weight gain.

Don’t get me wrong, there are benefits to aerobic activity, but not that many in the realm of long term weight loss.  Stop eating less and doing more cardio to lose weight.  Take a smarter approach to maximize your results.  With the proper dietary choices and a progressive exercise plan, you will become a fat burning machine.  Make sure to include weight lifting in your training routine at least 3 times a week and as many as 6 days a week depending on your training age.  Weight lifting has been shown to provide just as much heart healthy benefits as aerobic endurance training when performed properly.  Weight lifting will also help you to preserve your muscle mass, thus maintaining and possibly even increasing your metabolic rate at rest.  In addition to lifting weights, include anaerobic interval training to improve cardiovascular conditioning and maximize calorie expenditure over the long haul.  Interval training in general terms is defined as a short burst of work followed by a recovery period usually 2 to 4 times as long as your work period, repeated for a set amount of time.  This could include sprints of any distance or even demanding metabolic movements like burpees and kettlebell swings.  I would recommend starting with 15-20 minutes of interval conditioning directly after your weight lifting session or on days in between weight lifting.  This style of training will improve your metabolism and increase the release of fat burning hormones as well, leading to greater fat loss over time.

References:

Williams, P. Wood. The Effects of Changing Exercise Levels on Weight and Age-Related Weight Gain. International Journal of Obesity. 2006. 30)3), 543-551.

http://www.poliquingroup.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/1049/Three_Incredible_Lies_in_Mainstream_Training_Nutri.aspx

For more Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness advice contact Paul Wantuck or stop by the Fitness Center to schedule a consultation and get started on the path towards a healthier you!

How Daily Inactivity Can Hinder Results

           

           We all know that working out is a big part of a healthy lifestyle.  Indeed, if you want to maximize your health there is no way around it, you will have to exercise.  But what happens during the other waking hours of your day can have just as much impact on your health and wellness, if not more.  Most individuals believe themselves to be active during the day, but when measured up against the recommended level of daily activity for adults, only 5% of the population meets this mark.  That means all that “activity” that we claim to be performing is really just a busy and stressful lifestyle.  Running errands, dropping off the kids, picking them back up, buying groceries, etc. You may be on the go, but are you active?  

  Health and fitness experts recommend achieving at least 10,000 steps a day to maintain an active lifestyle and improve your health.  That’s the equivalent to roughly 5 miles of walking.  This level of activity in itself, can burn just as many calories as 1 hour of exercise in the gym.  Not only will moving more throughout the day help to burn some excess calories, but it will also help to decrease stress levels in the body and improve many health stats such as blood pressure, glucose and lipid levels. From a mental health perspective, achieving over 10,000 steps a day also results in a 50% decreased risk of developing depression.  To hold yourself accountable to achieving 10,000 steps a day I would recommend investing in a pedometer or activity tracker.  If you don’t measure it, you’ll be less likely to achieve it on a consistent level.  

On the flip side, sitting and not moving throughout the day can lead to serious health problems including increased insulin resistance, decreased metabolism, increased fat stores and a decrease in bone density just to name a few.  All of which are counterproductive to the goals of your workout program. Research has shown that people who moved for just a few minutes every 20 minutes or so had lower insulin and glucose levels. Lower insulin and glucose means the body is burning fat better and regulating energy levels better. When your muscles and cardiovascular system go without use, say when you sit down for 20 minutes at the computer, they become less effective. That’s why an active break every 20 minutes like walking around your office building can have a positive effect on your health and help improve oxygen flow throughout your system. In addition, chronic sitting negatively impacts the range of motion of your hips, hamstrings, back, shoulders and other muscles. Over time, it can lead to poor posture, back and knee problems and decreased muscular function. 

Avoid the idea that a workout by itself can help you achieve optimal health. Get to the gym to workout, but don’t forget to move and be active for the remainder of the day as well. Unless you train as a professional athlete, an hour’s workout is not the only activity you should be focused on in order to avoid the effects of a sedentary lifestyle.

For more Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness advice contact Paul Wantuck or stop by the Fitness Center to schedule a consultation and get started on the path towards a healthier you!

Do Artificial Sweeteners Create Artificial Expectations?

We make decisions everyday that will either help or harm our health.  Many of those decisions revolve around what we put in our body.  Whole milk or skim milk? Regular eggs or cage free? Butter or margarine? Sugar or artificial sweeteners?  With the abundance of health and wellness information that is available to us online, on TV, from our local gym and fitness professionals and more, it is important to ask ourselves what we are basing our decisions off of. The food industry has a way of highlighting just the right benefits to create buzz and demand for their product, while leaving out some critical information that could destroy their profits along with your health.  One such piece of knowledge that everyone should be aware of is that the artificial sweetener Aspartame is believed to be carcinogenic and accounts for more reports of adverse reactions reported by the FDA than all other foods and food additives combined.¹

Just because the packaging states it to be “sugar free” doesn’t make it good for you, and may not even be better for you as compared to its sugary filled counterpart.  Your body is not fooled by these zero calorie sweeteners.  Studies have confirmed that artificial sweeteners appear to cause even greater weight gain then calorie based sweeteners².  You don’t gain weight by eating too many calories and not exercising enough to burn off those excess calories.  You gain weight because you eat the wrong kind of calories which in turn negatively affect the hormonal and chemical balance within your body.  Even though is no sugar in artificial sweeteners, your body still responds to it’s consumption by releasing insulin into the blood stream in order to regulate blood sugar levels as interpreted by the brain upon consuming aspartame. Long story short, when insulin is abundantly present in the blood stream it is impossible for your body to burn fat. 

One other major explanation as to why you might gain more weight when consuming aspartame, is that any food with aspartame included in the ingredient list will further stimulate your appetite, specifically your cravings for carbs.  When your body digests something sweet without the calories to go with it, you disrupt your appetite control mechanism and increase your body’s need to eat more food in order to satisfy the demand for energy as interpreted in the brain.³  So that “harmless” calorie free diet cola that you sip through to spare yourself 180 calories, is actually teaching your body to eat more over the course of the day and at the same time store more fat. 

Besides the effect of aspartame on your waist line, it can also be life threatening.  According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson “Aspartame has been found to cause cancer - leukemia, lymphoma, and other tumors - in laboratory animals, and it shouldn’t be in the food supply.” Aspartame is primarily made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. The phenylalanine has been synthetically modified to carry a methyl group, which provides the majority of the sweetness. When digested, the methyl group on the phenylalanine breaks off and forms methanol. Methanol is a serious neurotoxin and is converted into formaldehyde within the tissues of your body, which wreaks havoc on sensitive proteins and DNA. All animals except humans have a protective mechanism that allows methanol to be broken down into harmless formic acid and excreted from their body.¹ If aspartame has cancerous affects on lab animals even given their protective mechanism against its dangerous affects, imagine what it can do to us humans who carry no such protection...

 To determine if you are experiencing any adverse reactions to artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, perform the following steps:

 

·         Eliminate all artificial sweeteners from your diet for two weeks to detox your body.

·         Then, reintroduce your artificial sweetener of choice about three times daily.

·         Avoid other artificial sweeteners during this period.

·         Do this for one to three days and notice how you feel following the detox as compared to before.

For more Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness advice contact Paul Wantuck or stop by the Fitness Center to schedule a consultation and get started on the path towards a healthier you!

References:

1.        http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/29/sweet-misery-documentary.aspx

2.        http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/08/28/soda-aspartame.aspx

3.        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18298259