CoActive Health Links from Around the Web: August 2010

CoAc­tive Health Links from Around the Web: August 2010

I would like to start a weekly series where I share some of the bet­ter health links I come across dur­ing the week. Dis­cus­sion encouraged.

Learn to live well.

• ADA Response to Accu­sa­tions on Part­ner­ship with Her­shey
  • “Bal­ance and Mod­er­a­tion” are words you here pushed way too much in the world of nutri­tion. Per­haps it’s a result of Cor­po­rate influ­ences on nutri­tion rec­om­men­da­tions and research? The ADA defends its asso­ci­a­tion with large food com­pa­nies for their abil­ity to influ­ence these organizations…in my opin­ion they over­look (or are try­ing to pro­tect) the obvi­ous influ­ence from the other direction.
• Liv­ing to Work VS. Lov­ing to Work
  • Well­ness is per­ceived to be dif­fi­cult because it chal­lenges long-standing habits. I have patients who could eat all of the right foods, but still strug­gle with their health due to the stress of their career or a rela­tion­ship at home. Some­times get­ting to the root of a health prob­lem, means look­ing indi­rectly into your social life — fail to address these and chance the ill effects of long-standing chronic stress. Change has to come from within — whether it’s your job, your health or your rela­tion­ships. Maren Kate opens us to the process of “mak­ing the shift”…
• Why Does Europe Deserve Safer Food than the US?
  • Cor­po­rate influ­ences appar­ently also have an effect on food safety in our coun­try. Some chem­i­cals such as food col­or­ings are banned in Europe or must be men­tioned on the label. We still can’t even agree if we should label GMO foods (obvi­ously the indus­try has an inter­est in push­ing against label­ing). In my opin­ion, when you pro­duce food on a large scale, you’re going to have prob­lems of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion — if its sal­mo­nella or E. Coli, some of the respon­si­bil­ity is back on the con­sumer. Sup­port­ing local farm­ers is the safer, as well as the more eco­log­i­cally and economically-sound habit.
• Fear and the Art of Cre­ation
  • Thought lead­ers Jonathan Fields and Chris Guille­beau put together an incred­i­ble 1–2 punch of ideas regard­ing fear and action. Fear is a lim­it­ing fac­tor in busi­ness, health, and just life in gen­eral — if you want to go places, you have to per­se­vere through uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions. The only nat­ural fears are of fear of loud noises and fear of falling, the rest…learned. Check out the links to their TED talks, amaz­ing stuff.
• Is Baby Food Fit for Babies? (fol­low Pre­ci­sion Nutrition’s RSS for access!)
  • I won’t even start on the breast­feed­ing issue, but this arti­cles brings up some very good ques­tions about what we are feed­ing chil­dren (and what we con­tinue to feed them as they age). Mak­ing your own baby food is eas­ier than it sounds and much more nutri­tious than many processed items on the mar­ket full of addi­tives and preservatives.
• The Squishy Sci­ence of Food Aller­gies (NY Times)
  • Com­pet­ing the­o­ries are dis­cussed, includ­ing some uti­lized at CoAc­tive Health such as IgG test­ing, elim­i­na­tion diets, and the hygiene hypothesis.
• Hos­pi­tal Food Gets a Makeover
  • Hot topic that just isn’t get­ting enough press. Peo­ple go to hos­pi­tals to get bet­ter, but are fed the same stuff that got them there in the first place. Whether its a McDonald’s next to Car­di­ol­ogy at St. Barn­abas Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal, or car­diac patients being fed cafe­te­ria ham­burg­ers and french fries, we have a long way to go in our hos­pi­tal systems.
• More Rea­sons to Avoid Fruc­tose?
  • Super­mar­ket Guru takes a quick glance at two recent stud­ies demon­strat­ing the neg­a­tive effects of high fruc­tose corn syrup and its poten­tial com­pli­ca­tions with obe­sity and cancer.
• Book Review: The Veg­e­tar­ian Myth
  • Mod­ern Paleo gives an in-depth review of The Veg­e­tar­ian Myth: Food, Jus­tice, and Sus­tain­abil­ity (affil­i­ate link). Veg­e­tar­ian diets have been the craze over the least cou­ple of decades, but new sci­ence pushed fore­most by the Paleo Diet move­ment has brought ques­tions to cho­les­terol, sat­u­rated fat and their links with heart dis­ease and poor health out­comes. In my opin­ion, meat is meant to be con­sumed by humans, but only if the indi­vid­ual has an ample intake of veg­eta­bles. High sat­u­rated fat com­bined with a lot of sugar is an inflam­ma­tory cock­tail that will lead to poor health out­coms, but the truth is always in the details, be care­ful of broad health state­ments — nutri­tion rec­om­men­da­tions need to be personalized!

Hope you enjoyed this month’s round of health links from around the web. Please share your thoughts and com­ments and feel free to share arti­cles that you feel I should men­tion next month! Also fol­low CoAc­tive Health on Google Reader for instant access to many arti­cles and jour­nal abstracts that I share almost daily.

Can You Prime Your Mind for Health?

Can You Prime Your Mind for Health?

It is dis­cour­ag­ing to see chronic dis­ease patients become more and more preva­lent. Some say it’s the Stan­dard Amer­i­can Diet, oth­ers blame Aging Baby-Boomers or the poor economy…Whatever your rea­son­ing, Amer­i­cans are in trou­ble when it comes to their health.

What’s most trou­bling for me is that so much of chronic dis­ease is pre­ventable — devel­op­ing over 10–20 or even 30 years. The issue with most chronic dis­ease is that we “get away” with eat­ing poorly, not exer­cis­ing and liv­ing stress­ful lives through our 20’s and even our 30’s. When peo­ple hit their 40’s, how­ever, I find them in my office won­der­ing “What happened?”.

Here’s what we know about chronic disease…

• Heart dis­ease can begin as early as in the womb! “Fatty Streaks”, the first stage of ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis, have been found in newborns!
• Can­cer? Caused by faulty cel­lu­lar divi­sion, due (most sim­ply) to chronic low-level inflam­ma­tion over time and the genetic changes that follow.
• Dia­betes? Caused by years of spik­ing your blood sugar with late nights out, binge eat­ing, processed foods and peri­odic stops at fast food restaurants.
• Alzheimer’s dis­ease? Sug­gested to be a Type 3 Dia­betes, yet another com­pli­ca­tion of poor blood sugar con­trol through­out life. The plac­quing — per­haps the body’s scar­ring and defense mech­a­nism against fur­ther sugar damage.
• Stress? Caused by poor cop­ing skills and the per­cep­tion of a lack of con­trol in our lives.

The moral of the story? Health is cer­tainly achiev­able for any­one, it’s up to us to choose how we roll the dice. We may be sus­cep­ti­ble to cer­tain ill­nesses, but our capac­ity for health is still within us if we give our bod­ies the raw mate­ri­als to express it — includ­ing pos­i­tive thoughts!

As a Cer­ti­fied Clin­i­cal Nutri­tion­ist and holis­tic chi­ro­prac­tor, I con­sider prior diag­noses, but my fore­most con­cern is to look for under­ly­ing pat­terns behind my clients’ symp­toms. Stress, poor diet, toxic envi­ron­ment, and a lack of phys­i­cal activ­ity underly most dis­ease. Inter­est­ingly, a person’s mind­set & per­cep­tion of their ill­ness is equally impor­tant in the heal­ing process.

As a Doc­tor, I have to be extremely care­ful in how I deliver good and bad news to my patients. I can make the right diag­no­sis, I can choose the right nutraceu­ti­cals or med­ical foods, I can coun­sel patients on the healthy habits required to jump­start heal­ing — but really I am only as effec­tive to the degree of my client’s will­ing­ness to heal.

Because chronic dis­ease is so preva­lent today, many peo­ple per­ceive a dis­ease label as a prison sen­tence. People’s lives become defined by their dis­ease. The mind works in sub­tle ways, but the reper­cus­sions are huge.

For instance, the accep­tance of the label “I have arthri­tis” could cre­ate a line of think­ing where the per­son slowly stops going for an after­noon walk, or going on weekly out­ings with their friends, or some­thing as sim­ple as want­ing to sit out­side and enjoy the sun­light and breeze on a beau­ti­ful morning.

What hap­pens to this per­son? They slowly stop social­iz­ing with friends. Their minds become less sharp. The lack of activ­ity pro­gresses their arthri­tis and the degen­er­a­tive changes that come along with it. They become more sus­cep­ti­ble to falls at home. They become depressed due to a lack of vit­a­min D and men­tal stim­u­la­tion. The dis­ease con­tin­ues to take over their life and they give up — first emo­tion­ally, then physically.

Did the arthri­tis cause it? Or was it the psy­cho­log­i­cal accep­tance that life had to take a back seat to their chronic dis­ease…? You decide.

A new web­site is being launched this month that I have the plea­sure of tak­ing a part in and I invite you to join the mail­ing list.

It’s called Zen­fully Deli­cious. The mis­sion? To help peo­ple with chronic dis­ease live a deli­cious life. The site will link indi­vid­u­als deal­ing with stress, food aller­gies, and other chronic dis­eases like fibromyal­gia with tools and resources from health pro­fes­sion­als, chefs, food blog­gers and oth­ers to help you learn to take care of your­self and enjoy life despite any diagnosis.

CoActive Health Book Review: Gluten-Free Girl by Shauna Ahern

CoAc­tive Health Book Review: Gluten-Free Girl

I like to keep track with things my read­ers and my clients are read­ing and like to give credit when I come across great work. A review for Gluten-Free Girl(affil­i­ate link), may seem odd com­ing from a 6’5″ guy from North­ern New Jer­sey, but keep in mind that most of my patients are women. I am always look­ing for resources that are going to appeal to my clients beyond my own research and clin­i­cal advice that can be dry and unmov­ing for some people.

Fore­most, I want to help indi­vid­u­als with chronic dis­ease con­tinue liv­ing a deli­cious life.

Too many peo­ple are liv­ing with chronic con­di­tions that could respond to an elim­i­na­tion trial of some highly aller­genic foods such as dairy, wheat and soy. The clin­i­cal test­ing out there is often not sen­si­tive enough to cor­rectly diag­nose and screen for some of these dis­eases. Celiac diets are dif­fi­cult for many.

For instance, for Celiac dis­ease test­ing to be pos­i­tive, you already need 50% atro­phy (dam­age) to the micro­scopic folds in your small intes­tine that allow you to absorb nutri­ents. I have heard about too many cases where tests came back neg­a­tive, but these indi­vid­u­als were still hav­ing poten­tially seri­ous prob­lems with wheat!

When I first thought about how to describe Gluten-Free Girl, the first thing that came to mind was that it read like a love let­ter...a love let­ter to food.

Foods held dear to the heart can quickly become a night­mare — gluten sen­si­tiv­ity being a com­mon cul­prit. Shauna Ahern talks a bit about her early strug­gles and leads us through her trans­for­ma­tion to a gluten-free lifestyle. She clev­erly trick­les use­ful  recipes for you to try at home through­out her story — includ­ing delec­table treats when you find your crav­ings in an uproar. Shauna cre­ated the pop­u­lar and award-winning food blog, Gluten Free Girl and tweets at @glutenfreegirl.

What I give Shauna most credit for is how she devotes min­i­mal pages to neg­a­tive self-talk. The major­ity of the book focuses on all of the amaz­ing aspects of food that she began to cher­ish even more once she became gluten-free. She takes us through each stage of her trans­for­ma­tion from tears to tri­umph — but cel­e­brates her vic­to­ries more than she reflects on her failures.

Shauna has a knack for tak­ing fancy sound­ing recipes that you might see in a posh, Man­hat­tan restau­rant and brings them to our home kitchens. When most peo­ple think of a gluten-free diet, they’re think­ing rice cakes and raw veg­eta­bles. Shauna opens us to a world of “Quinoa Salad with Horse­rad­ish Creme Fraiche” , and how to make “Red Wine Reduc­tion Sauce” — enough to have me sali­vat­ing on the pages as I read.

Healthy cook­ing for me is typ­i­cally look­ing at what’s left in the refrig­er­a­tor and mak­ing some sort of con­coc­tion from it, but Shauna opens us to a world of high qual­ity cook­ing oils, salts, and spices. If you thought liv­ing a healthy life was bland, Gluten-Free Girl proves this to be a choice, not a necessity.

So if you’ve been recently diag­nosed with Celiac’s Dis­ease or you sus­pect that you may be sen­si­tive to gluten, save your­self some strug­gle and heartache and add Gluten-Free Girl (affil­i­ate link) to your bookshelf.

Tips for Eating Healthy When Eating Out

Eat­ing Healthy When Eat­ing Out

Eat­ing out is always a risk. Besides issues of food safety such as the recent sal­mo­nella egg scare that has taken over the air­waves this past week, eat­ing healthy is next to impos­si­ble at many restau­rants. Recently, I went to lunch at a small ital­ian restau­rant and ordered a chicken and shrimp stir-fry from their “healthy” menu. I soon found that “healthy” is really not healthy at all. The stir-fry had veg­eta­bles, shrimp and chicken, but it was served on a bed of white rice and cov­ered in a thick, teriyaki glaze. It took three requests for the wait­ers to finally under­stand that really I just wanted it saute’d in oil and garlic.

Our nation suf­fers from a lack of health con­scious­ness. We see well­ness as noth­ing more than a fad — some­thing to aspire to, but deep in our nation’s con­science is the idea that well­ness is “too hard” and “unre­al­is­tic” to fol­low consistently.

This just isn’t true. We behave in accor­dance to what we value. We will pay $100 a month for a cell phone bill, but will balk at the price of a monthly gym mem­ber­ships. We’ll gladly pay money for reflux drugs or other med­ica­tions, but will balk at pay­ing a lit­tle extra for healthy food. Research shows that sig­nif­i­cant health ben­e­fits could be expe­ri­enced if fam­i­lies spent as lit­tle as $10 more on their gro­cery bills each week on fresh produce.

Some tips on eat­ing healthy when eat­ing out:

1.) Plan before­hand. Most restau­rants have their menus avail­able online. It is easy to plan your order ahead of time so that when your tummy is rum­bling before the meal, you’re not pulled by the fancy food descrip­tions on the menu.

2.) Ask ques­tions. Most places will be happy to meet sim­ple requests such as exchang­ing veg­eta­bles for french fries and putting salad dress­ings and other condi­ments like but­ter on the side instead of directly on your plate.

3.) Save some for home. Por­tion sizes at restau­rants tend to be a bit exces­sive. Have some of your meal wrapped at the begin­ning or sim­ply make a men­tal note that you can have left­overs for lunch the next day or for a snack.

4.) Face up to the facts. Just because its listed on the “healthy” menu, doesn’t actu­ally mean that the dish is healthy. Stick­ing with a salad and basic oil and vine­gar dress­ing can go a long way.

If you’re seri­ous about your health goals, you have to be seri­ous about your choices. A for­mer alco­holic can­not sim­ply just go to the bar with his friends and have a soda. Lifestyle change takes some deep com­mit­ments. Eat some­thing before you arrive at a restau­rant where you may be lim­ited by just a salad. If you have severe food restric­tions such as a gluten allergy, it’s impor­tant to keep an emer­gency stash of nuts or other allergy-friendly snack in case a restau­rant is unable to meet your needs.

It has never been eas­ier to live a healthy life. Healthy sec­tions of gro­ceries are tripling in size. Com­mu­nity sup­ported agri­cul­ture pro­grams and local farm­ers mar­kets are becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar, even for those liv­ing in urban neigh­bor­hoods. Gyms are pop­ping up every­where and com­mu­ni­ties are com­ing together to cre­ate walk­ing trails, clean up parks and improve other indi­rect fac­tors such as street light­ing to cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for safe exercise.

You are respon­si­ble for your health — eat on your own terms, not the restaurant’s.

Supplementing Diet for Wellness

Sup­ple­ment­ing Diet for Wellness

I am a firm believer in a whole food approach to health and nutri­tion. I also know that work sched­ules, finances, and time can inter­fere with the abil­ity to eat healthy through­out the day. Nutrient-rich foods are incred­i­bly impor­tant in our diet. Both macronu­tri­ents and micronu­tri­ents help us to fuel health pro­mo­tion and main­te­nance and fuel recov­ery from life stresses.

It is often dif­fi­cult to time meals cor­rectly or to find the time to pre­pare healthy foods. This is why many prod­ucts are out on the mar­ket to assist you while you tran­si­tion to well­ness and to pre­vent bing­ing on poor food choices when your sched­ule demands convenience.

At CoAc­tive Health, we have aligned with sup­ple­ment com­pa­nies that only dis­trib­ute through health pro­fes­sion­als. I stay away from net­work mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies such as NutraMetrix, that are becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar in health­care. Net­work mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies sell doc­tors on prof­itabil­ity for the their prac­tice, not nec­es­sar­ily increased health out­comes for their patients.

I mix and match brands to ensure my clients are pay­ing for qual­ity & clin­i­cal util­ity, not exces­sive mar­ket­ing or pre-packaged detox­i­fi­ca­tion pro­grams. Nutri­tion needs to be tai­lored specif­i­cally to YOU.

I pri­mar­ily use Meta­gen­ics sup­ple­ments. In my opin­ion, Meta­gen­ics is the leader in qual­ity and inno­va­tion. Their sup­ple­ments are clin­i­cally based, with some great options for well­ness. They also allow me to drop­ship directly to my prac­tice mem­bers, guar­an­tee­ing fresh­ness & enhanc­ing con­ve­nience. Some com­pa­nies also drop­ship sup­ple­ments, but I have not seen another com­pany that takes qual­ity to the level of Meta­gen­ics. Many lead­ers in health and nutri­tion, and even acupunc­tur­ists, align them­selves with Meta­gen­ics products.

Well­ness Supplements

Meta­gen­ics offers daily well­ness pack­ets care­fully for­mu­lated to meet the unique needs of men, women and chil­dren. Well­ness Essen­tials pack­ets include a fish oil, mul­ti­vi­t­a­min, as well as gen­der or condition-specific nutri­tion to meet spe­cific needs. For instance, those with joint Pain should try Well­ness Essen­tials — Joint Focus. Those hop­ing to become preg­nant? Try Well­ness Essen­tials for Preg­nancy.

I also like rec­om­mend­ing the Ultra­Meal shakes and Ultra­Meal bars to ful­fill crav­ings and to take place of quick meals that may oth­er­wise take place at a local fast food restau­rant. Using a Magic Bul­let or a  Blender Bot­tle are both help­ful means to add con­ve­nience no mat­ter your work sched­ule or envi­ron­ment. They offer rice and soy-based for­mu­la­tions to help meat allergy restric­tions, and are also free of many of the sugar and caf­feine addi­tives you find in more com­mer­cial products.

I do not see myself as a vit­a­min pusher by any means. My clients will tell you I use a mix of herbs, sup­ple­ments, Chi­nese med­i­cine, home­o­pathic and mind-body tech­niques with almost all of my patients. I try my best to tran­si­tion my prac­tice mem­bers to a whole foods, vegetable-based Paleo diet with some basic vit­a­min supports.

It is my goal that once patients are feel­ing bet­ter and have entered recov­ery and well­ness, that they sup­ple­ment with Vit­a­min D if they are unable to get sun­light dur­ing the day, or sup­ple­ment with fish oil or flax oil if they are not eat­ing enough fish or are con­cerned with heavy metal tox­i­c­ity.  Invest­ing in the Well­ness Essen­tials pack­ets along with optional vit­a­min D sup­ple­men­ta­tion would be ideal in this regard.

Most vit­a­min for­mu­la­tions found in the store are for­mu­lated to meet min­i­mal nutri­tion stan­dards set forth by the Amer­i­can Dietetic Asso­ci­a­tion. While meet­ing these needs is impor­tant to pre­vent objec­tive ill­ness, there are many con­di­tions that can smol­der beneath the sur­face and require short-term high potency nutraceu­ti­cals. This is sim­i­lar to how phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals should be used. Most phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals are designed for short-term use — giv­ing your body a win­dow to heal, or low­er­ing pain and inflam­ma­tion when it is clin­i­cally necessary.

The research and health com­mu­ni­ties are very cau­tious about the use of vit­a­mins, herbs, and min­er­als in this way, but many lack the advanced train­ing, clin­i­cal under­stand­ing, & expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary to approach patients in this man­ner. The med­ical indus­try has been defined by the last cen­tury by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and sur­gi­cal ther­a­pies. Now that the nation’s needs have shifted to well­ness, they are try­ing to treat chronic-conditions with reme­dies designed for short-term relief and emer­gency care.

I under­stand that health is a result of phys­i­cal, bio­chem­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tional, spir­i­tual and socioe­co­nomic fac­tors and that the stress of work and home can get in the way of pro­mot­ing well­ness. Food as med­i­cine (along with evidence-based nutraceu­ti­cals and med­ical foods) can help one reach their well­ness needs while still meet­ing the needs of work and life.

What Makes a Holistic Doctor Different?

What Makes a Holis­tic Doc­tor Different?

CoActive Health Practice Update

CoAc­tive Health Prac­tice Update

Greet­ings prac­tice mem­bers, friends and read­ers. This is a much needed update as I have changed office loca­tions and have some excit­ing things to announce.

I am now work­ing with Dr. Donna Can­talupo of East Hanover Chi­ro­prac­tic Cen­ter where I will be avail­able Mon­day, Wednes­day and Fri­day from 9am to 7pm, Tuesday’s from 2pm to 7pm and Saturday’s from 8:30am to 12:00pm. I start THIS Wednes­day, but will need a week or two to be acquainted with the new office. I also just sat for the CCN (Cer­ti­fied Clin­i­cal Nutri­tion­ist) exam which is a nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for health pro­fes­sion­als using “Food as Med­i­cine” as a tool to pro­mote opti­mum health.

I will be adding Gras­ton Tech­nique and Clin­i­cal Nutri­tion to the prac­tice, but by join­ing I am now also able to offer a non-adjustive tech­nique known as Pro-Adjuster. Pro-Adjuster is a neu­ro­log­i­cally based tech­nique that uti­lizes high-frequency, low-force adjust­ments. Pro-Adjuster is sim­i­lar to the “Acti­va­tor” which is used in many prac­tices which patients refer to as a low-force, spring-loaded “gun” or “clicker”. Dr. Can­talupo also uti­lizes Applied Kine­si­ol­ogy, a tech­nique that focuses on acupunc­ture merid­i­ans as a diag­nos­tic tool for mus­cu­loskele­tal complaints.

Pro-Adjuster is pop­u­lar with Medicare patients who may not be able to tol­er­ate tra­di­tional Chi­ro­prac­tic adjust­ments and other prac­tice mem­bers who may be hyper­sen­si­tive to Chi­ro­prac­tic soft tis­sue  and adjus­tive tech­niques. These are patients with Fibromyal­gia, mod­er­ate to severe degen­er­a­tive changes, as well as other chronic pain conditions.

CoAc­tive Health will still be offer­ing nutri­tion con­sul­ta­tions Tues­day morn­ings from 9am to 1pm at East Hanover Chi­ro­prac­tic Cen­ter and Thurs­day morn­ings from 8am to 12pm at Advanced Per­for­mance and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter in Short Hills, NJ. Phone con­sul­ta­tions are also avail­able in most cir­cum­stances, but may be lim­ited depend­ing a patient’s health con­cerns and appoint­ment avail­abil­ity. Also do not for­get about our A La Carte ser­vices which include medication-nutrient analy­sis reports as well as the Purifi­ca­tion Pro­gram that many prac­tice mem­bers find effi­ca­cious and affordable.

I am work­ing out a pos­si­ble prac­tice loca­tion in Mont­clair, NJ as well and will keep you updated. To make a long story short, I have Mor­ris and Essex Coun­ties cov­ered. But I am also offer­ing much more…

I am work­ing with an excit­ing new project at http://www.ZenfullyDelicious.com. The goal of Zen­fully Deli­cious is to pro­vide tools, resources and inspi­ra­tion for peo­ple with chronic ill­ness to live a deli­cious life. You can sign up for the mail­ing list and newslet­ter by click­ing the link above. The first newslet­ter is being sent THIS week!

Look ahead to future blog arti­cles as well as pre­mium webi­nars, recipes, meal plans and more. All cen­tered on help­ing those with chronic ill­ness find the resources and sup­port to con­tinue liv­ing  a rich and ful­fill­ing life.

Lastly, I am giv­ing a health talk on Tues­day August 17th at 7:00pm on ” Sports Nutri­tion for Per­for­mance and Injury Pre­ven­tion” at Advanced Per­for­mance and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter at 532 Old Short Hills Road in Short Hills, NJ across from St. Barn­abas Med­ical Cen­ter. Bring your ques­tions or just come to learn!

Be well!

Alexan­der J. Rine­hart, MS, DC

PS: Stay tuned to the much-anticipated (yet much delayed) release of the CoAc­tive Health Man­i­festo, a intro­duc­tory resource and guide to my vision for CoAc­tive Health.

Did you Know? Myths and Facts Regarding Meat Consumption

Did You Know? Myths and Facts Regard­ing Meat Consumption

Amer­i­cans eat meat more than any other coun­try in the world, yet we also boast high inci­dence of many chronic dis­eases like type II dia­betes, obe­sity and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease.  Meat has been given a bad rep­u­ta­tion the last few years as veg­e­tar­ian, raw and vegan diets have grown in popularity.

In fact, when most think of “healthy” diets, they auto­mat­i­cally assume that the per­son is going veg­e­tar­ian or vegan which has been glo­ri­fied over the last 15–20 years. We know that meat has a role in healthy diets, but the back­yard bar­be­cue is not the most ideal place to get it to say the least.

Our pale­olithic ances­tors ate meat, but the also ate a lot of veg­eta­bles too. In fact, many pri­mates eat pounds of veg­etable mat­ter through­out the day, which more than bal­ances their meat con­sump­tion. We have dis­tinct needs for iron, zinc, B12, and amino acids that can be dif­fi­cult to acquire solely from veg­e­tar­ian and vegan diets. Here is a list of facts to con­sider regard­ing meat.

• We need mod­er­ate sources of pro­tein through­out the day. Too many of us sur­vive on carbs and cof­fee in the morn­ing,  a deli sand­wich or fast food meal for lunch, and then finally con­sume a decent bal­anced meal for din­ner. Hav­ing a healthy source of pro­tein mul­ti­ple times in the day is impor­tant, oth­er­wise the body pulls from lean tis­sue in order to meet its require­ments to repair tis­sues and build impor­tant immune proteins.Limiting intake to 15-20g of pro­tein per sit­ting is impor­tant, sav­ing larger intakes fol­low­ing mod­er­ate to heavy exer­cise. This amounts to roughly a palm-sized por­tion which can be eas­ily met by adding a hand­ful of chopped grilled chicken or steak in a salad or enjoy­ing two eggs with break­fast in the morning.
• Excess intake of meat beyond  15-20g can cause undue stress to the kid­neys as they must fil­ter out meta­bolic byprod­ucts. Excess pro­tein over­whelms our diges­tive capac­ity, is then poorly digested, caus­ing your stom­ach to churn harder to process your meals. Reflux symp­toms, as well as gasi­ness and stom­ach dis­com­fort fol­low­ing meals can be a sign of too much pro­tein in your diet, and a resul­tant lack of stom­ach acid.The body metab­o­lizes and fil­ters out what it doesn’t need every two-four hours, so not eat­ing pro­tein over the rec­om­mended 5 small meals through­out the day can leave your body lack­ing for raw mate­ri­als nec­es­sary to fuel body processes.
• Meat can con­tain unnec­es­sary addi­tives, hor­mones, fla­vor­ings, and preser­v­a­tives. For exam­ple, nitrates and nitrates found in processed meats such as deli meat and hot dogs, and can be car­cino­genic — poten­tially lead­ing to increased risk of colon and blad­der can­cers seen with increased meat consumption.Many stud­ies that show harm­ful effects of meat do not nec­es­sar­ily dis­tin­guish between processed and nat­ural forms. Also, watch out for monosodium glu­ta­mate, which is often added to ground turkey as “nat­ural fla­vor­ing” to enhance taste despite its sug­gested role as a exci­to­toxin.
• Grass-fed, organic sources of meat is impor­tant as grain-fed ani­mals have higher inflam­ma­tory fats con­tent and can con­tain higher lev­els of poten­tially cancer-causing pes­ti­cides such as PCB’s and hormones.Fresh meat is actu­ally a source of healthy omega 3 fats when pro­duced nat­u­rally. Addi­tion­ally, wide­spread use of antibi­otics can lead to antibiotic-resistant strains of bac­te­ria as well as resul­tant phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the water supply.
• Links between meat and increased “acid­ity” have been sug­gested to lead to osteo­poro­sis and increased risk of other dis­eases. High-alkaline diets and sup­ple­ments are becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar and their link to pos­i­tive health out­comes is not to be ignored. A high-protein diet can cause sig­nif­i­cant meta­bolic stress on your body to keep your blood pH bal­anced, not to men­tion adding stress to your kid­neys as they work hard to fil­ter meta­bolic residues. A high-protein diet should be accom­pa­nied with sig­nif­i­cant intake of water.
  

  Research shows, how­ever, that the pro­tec­tive effects of the con­sump­tion of fruits and veg­eta­bles is greater than the neg­a­tive effects of meat con­sump­tion, par­tic­u­larly when it comes to osteo­poro­sis. There­fore, a high meat diet can and will be harm­ful over­time if not bal­anced with sig­nif­i­cant intake of fruits and veg­eta­bles. So be sure to reach the rec­om­mended 9–13 serv­ings of fruits and veg­eta­bles per day!

• High cho­les­terol and sat­u­rated fat diets and their link with heart dis­ease has been under ques­tion­ing recently. Statin drugs for instance, suc­cess­fully lower cho­les­terol, but are not very effi­ca­cious at pre­vent­ing heart attacks.

  In fact, you need to treat 100 peo­ple with statin drugs in order to save 1 heart attack.When con­sid­ered along­side the monthly cost of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ther­apy, a 1–2% chance of severe adverse side effects, and as high as a 30–40% chance of less seri­ous side effects such as mus­cle aches, one might con­sider bal­anc­ing their meat intake with more fruits and vegetables!

  The research shows high sat­u­rated fat and cho­les­terol com­bined with high starches (think steak and pota­toes) is a dan­ger­ous cock­tail that pro­motes free rad­i­cal gen­er­a­tion which pro­motes ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis, heart dis­ease, can­cer, and aggra­vate just about any dis­ease process. High intake of sat­u­rated fats and cho­les­terol alone do not seem to pro­mote dis­ease. Con­text is impor­tant. In fact, rub­bing meats with tea can be fla­vor­ful and pro­vide added pro­tec­tion against harm­ful free rad­i­cal formation.

• Char­ring meat and cook­ing it at high tem­per­a­tures can cre­ate harm­ful car­cino­genic com­pounds known as het­e­ro­cyclic amines that have been sug­gested to pro­mote var­i­ous can­cers. The typ­i­cal Amer­i­can hot dog, processed, charred, on a white bun, and slathered in condi­ments is not a rec­om­mended source of healthy pro­tein. Ground grass­fed, organic ham­burger meat, browned and added to a salad can be a healthy alternative.

Exercising a Health Consciousness

Exer­cis­ing a Health Consciousness

Health con­scious­ness is an aware­ness of how your thoughts, feel­ings, actions and envi­ron­ment lead to your health sta­tus at any given time. It is about sys­tem­at­i­cally break­ing away from a mind­set of sick­ness and disease.

Many peo­ple look at their health sta­tus as some­thing they have no con­trol over. Many peo­ple blame their genes, their par­ents, their job, their friends, and numer­ous other excuses as to why their health sta­tus waxes and wanes.

The truth is, how­ever, we have sole con­trol & respon­si­bil­ity over our health. We can choose to be healthy when we are ready. It comes back to a way of think­ing, a health con­scious­ness, that needs devel­oped and exer­cised just like any other mus­cle in your body.

Health con­scious­ness in its most basic form comes back to believ­ing that you are solely respon­si­ble for your health. Whether you have genetic sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ties or were born in a socioe­co­nom­i­cally dis­ad­van­taged envi­ron­ment, you still have choices. You can choose to be a vic­tim, or you can choose to give your­self the reigns to your future.

Hav­ing grown up in a single-parent fam­ily, I under­stand the stresses that fam­i­lies can face. Some turn to drugs and alco­hol, many oth­ers turn to a victim-mindset. The few that break out from the cycles are those that learn that they must be respon­si­ble for them­selves fore­most — and only then are they fully capa­ble to help others.

Many patients come to me only after their kids have moved out and they finally give them­selves per­mis­sion to take con­trol of their health. They work extremely hard to please their boss and every­one around them, at the sac­ri­fice of their per­sonal health. What if they took that same energy and effort and applied it to their own goals?

Before you know it, the years of stress, the processed meals on the run, and the focus on serv­ing oth­ers before your­self will catch up with you and you may find your­self in my office, hav­ing gained 20–30 pounds, fatigued, stressed, on mul­ti­ple med­ica­tions and a demand to have your prob­lems fixed yesterday.

One of the hard­est (and often the most reward­ing) aspects of my career is open­ing people’s eyes to the poten­tial they hold inside them to express health. Too many peo­ple are too quick to “set­tle”. They set­tle in unin­spir­ing careers. They set­tle in disease-promoting habits. They set­tle in let­ting oth­ers achieve their wants and needs at the expense of their own effort and well-being.

Plan­ning for Health Consciousness

Prac­tic­ing  a health con­scious­ness is not easy. It takes com­mit­ment and some exer­cise. Here are some steps to take in order to develop a pros­per­ous health consciousness:

1. Iden­tify your “Dream Lifestyle” — Grab a blank piece of paper and take 10–20 min­utes to write down every desire you could ever think of. Have fun with it. You want 15 sports cars, give your­self 15 sports cars. Where would you like to travel? Where would you like to live? What’s the weather like? What hob­bies do you see your­self doing?

Like a radio, you can dial in to dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies. If you are at the $10 an hour fre­quency, you’ll seek and find oppor­tu­ni­ties to make $10 an hour. If you’d rather make a six fig­ure income, then you need to dial in to a six-figure path.

What is inter­est­ing is that even the most extrav­a­gant lifestyles, when put on paper, actu­ally do not require hav­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in the bank. What they do require is some cre­ativ­ity and crit­i­cal think­ing — which we are all capa­ble of when we open our minds to it.

2. Cat­e­go­rize Your Goals — What goals will take 10 years to achieve? 5 years? 2 years? What goals could you achieve by next week? Pri­or­i­tize your goals and begin flesh­ing out an action plan to attain them. A goal requires action steps for com­ple­tion. If there’s some­thing that could be done today, DO IT!

3. Iden­tify Bar­ri­ers — What things keep pop­ping up in your head that seem to limit your abil­ity to achieve these goals? Do you have an unsup­port­ive rela­tion­ship at home? Is your job drain­ing you rather than invig­o­rat­ing you? Do you have friends who sup­port you? Some­times, things need to get worse in the short-term in order to put you in a bet­ter long-term posi­tion. Is there a habit or pat­tern that seems to under­lie your per­ceived limitations?

4. Remind Your Con­scious­ness Daily — Develop affir­ma­tions that sup­port your goals. I find it use­ful to write the affir­ma­tions as if you have already achieved them. I also find it use­ful to put the state­ments in the form of a ques­tion. Every time we read a ques­tion, our minds inher­ently want to seek out pos­si­ble answers. This trains your mind to think in terms of action­able steps, not pie-in-the-sky possibilities.

For instance ask “How did I become worth X dol­lars?” or “Why do I have such an amaz­ing spouse?”. “How did I become so good at attract­ing X new clients a week?” Just read­ing the state­ments primes your con­scious­ness to look for activ­i­ties and oppor­tu­ni­ties in which to make the pos­si­bil­i­ties a reality.

5. Make it a Habit — It takes at least 3 weeks to make a habit your rou­tine. This is why many of my diet plans are 21 days long. This is just the begin­ning. True last­ing change can take as long as 8 weeks to be incor­po­rated in to your life.

Many peo­ple look at a goal and are over­whelmed by the per­ceived time and effort it will take to reach it. When you break it into indi­vid­ual tasks such as mak­ing spe­cific phone calls, or read­ing a sin­gle chap­ter out of a book (or even mak­ing sure you go to the library to find that book in the first place), the indi­vid­ual tasks are often easy and can be fin­ished in a mat­ter of 15–20 minutes.

6. Keep Your­self Account­able — Jour­nal writ­ing can be a great tech­nique to keep your­self account­able. Some­times when you are aching for a bowl of ice cream or you just wish you could take a day off, writ­ing it down on paper makes the intan­gi­ble, tan­gi­ble and pro­motes a clear and focused mind.

Sur­round your­self with friends who have sim­i­lar goals. Wish to save money and become health­ier? Prob­a­bly not a good idea to make it a habit to hang out with peo­ple who just want to go spend their pay­check on wing & beer night at the bar every week.

Health con­scious­ness is very sim­i­lar to Pros­per­ity Con­scious­ness — in fact, the same habits that lead to health, also lead to wealth. We have deep-seeded ten­den­cies that we are not always aware of — we are primed every­day by our fam­ily, friends, and the media to have cer­tain beliefs. Pro­tect your mind and you’ll pro­tect your health.

Are you primed for health or dis­ease? Really give this some deep thought and start estab­lish­ing a health con­scious­ness today.

Any thoughts or realizations?

Let’s dis­cuss…

Contradictions in Our Healthcare System

Con­tra­dic­tions in Our Health­care System

If you have ever heard the phrase “I couldn’t even dream this stuff up”, this post pretty much encap­su­lates its meaning.

• We have a “health“care sys­tem focused on screen­ing, treat­ing and man­ag­ing disease.
• We have fast food in our hos­pi­tals (like the McDonald's next to Cardiology at St. Barn­abas Med­ical Center)
• We have candy stores part­ner­ing with the Amer­i­can Dietetic Association
• We have the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Fam­ily Physi­cians part­ner­ing with Coca-Cola
• Our health­care solu­tion is to increase access to an already fail­ing system
• Health insur­ance cov­ers acci­dents and acute ill­ness, not health pro­mo­tion and wellness
• It costs more to have an Health Sav­ings Account eli­gi­ble plan than a tra­di­tional insur­ance plan (higher deductible is sup­posed to mean lesser pre­mi­ums so you can invest more on your own!)

Con­tra­dic­tions cre­ate destruc­tion. The degree of destruc­tion is pro­por­tion­ate to the degree of con­tra­dic­tion. Sooner or later, some­thing has to give. A cell can­not be in growth and death at the same time. A health sys­tem can­not focus on man­ag­ing acute ill­ness and symp­toms and pre­vent lifestyle dis­ease at the same time.

What con­tra­dic­tions have you noticed in our health­care system?