Low down on Health and Wellness.
The links I put in here are quick
and many wont get overly specific. They are simplified but they give
you a quick overview. The rabbit hole gets deep and quickly.
It comes down to 2 things
- Stress rest and Recovery (SRR)
- Nutrition
All the problems that are associated
with being unhealthy can be affected by both of these. They just
happen by different mechanisms. With this said, you need to get them
both tied up tight so you can keep your health and wellness. This
also allows for a nutrition or other lifestyle choice to be slightly
compromised every now and then and you probably won't fall into
dysfunction. You may still have a little funkiness happen but not
enough to fall apart and it is much easier to recover from.
What being on top of these two things
(SRR and Nutrition) accomplish.
- Protection of the Gut.
- Glucose Control
- Control of Inflammation.
Compromised gut lining has been
directly correlated to every disease that has been tested for it.
This number is in the hundreds. This is everything from cancers and
Alzheimer's to Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia. If you have a disease
or dysfunction you can probably find a medical paper that has shown a
DIRECT link to compromised gut lining. (here is a way to find any
medical publication/paper you could want. http://scholar.google.com/
)There are 100s of blog posts on goofy gut linings but the key is eat
well and lower stress. So, what does eating well mean.
- Meat
- Fruits, Veggies
- High Quality Fat
Eat like this and you will get better.
Now, if you are severely compromised then there may be a specific way
to introduce meat fruit and veggies but this is the path to a happy
gut.
The gut houses most of your immune
system. If you screw it up then you are going to destroy your immune
function.
I like the way robb wolf has presented
nutrition but another view that is similar and effective is the GAPS
method.
Glucose Control.
Glucose is the primary fuel of the
body. It is also toxic! Gasoline is awesome for running your car but
you put it into the tank. If you just poured it into the seats or
floorboard what would happen? Yeah you would ruin your car! Same
happens with the body if glucose isn’t stored it screws up a bunch
of stuff.
Glucose can be stored in 4 places
- Brain, which uses 50% of available glucose.
- Muscles
- Liver
- The muscles and liver store it as a sugary starch called glycogen. Glycogen is a “holy shit I am in a fight with a tiger fuel system”
- Fat
The stuff that tells glucose to get
into the cells, is insulin. (Insulin also tells cells to take in
amino acids, or the building blocks of the body.) If insulin is
always running around yelling at the cells to take in glucose the
cells stop listening. Think a parent, partner, boss or teacher that
is always yelling. Eventually you tune them out. This happens on a
cellular level. A couple of problems that happen with insulin
resistance is that glucose gets a chance to run around and damage
tissue, then the body has to increase the amount of insulin so the
body will listen. This means that the body has to scream more loudly.
The current medical model is once the body has reached its max
insulin production and can keep up with the demands of trying to
clear excess glucose from the blood stream is to add insulin from an
outside source. A compromised individual begins to supplement with
insulin. (If a cell is not bringing in fuel or building blocks the
cell is starving. This means that a person can be eating enough
calories but still starving on a cellular level.)
A more holistic and kinder way for the
body to begin to work properly is to put things in your mouth that
don't require as much insulin, that are not as hard to process and
put away. (Meat, fruits, Veggies and high quality fats.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwE1osnb5qc
Inflammation
We need Inflammation but we need it in
a localized fashion. There are 3 types of inflammation.
- Acute
- Chronic
- Systemic
Acute and Chronic are okay. These are
for healing some damage to the system. Quick concepts to describe
them:
Acute is a road system team that comes
in and does a small project, like filling a pothole or a small 3 day
repair to a section of street. This slows traffic but not enough to
really make anyone late.
Chronic is the rebuilding of a street
or building new lanes along a current thoroughfare. It slows traffic
and will do so for sometime. This is significant and needs time but
if given all the building blocks and workers it will not only be done
well it will allow for better travel and smoother transit once it is
completed.
Systemic is the problem. Imagine
all the roads getting worked on at the same time. This is what
happens when the swelling stuff goes from localized where the problem
is everywhere. This is not GOOD for the body. Everything gets tired
gets assaulted and your body cant keep up with all of the nutrient
demands, partitioning and clearing all the garbage out of the way and
everything begins to swell. This causes the immune system to
overwork.
Food stresses the body by putting stuff
into your system that wears away at the gut lining, causes the immune
system to go into overdrive and/or spikes your insulin dramatically,
quickly and often.
Food that supports health and wellness
doesn't do the above. It gives you all the raw materials that you
need to make healthy new cells, fuel the ones that need fuel and
clean up the ones that are supposed to die.
Stress comes in two flavors. Hormetic
and non-hormetic. Hormesis is the idea that it is just enough stress
to cause a positive adaptation.
Non hormetic stress, shuts down
digestion, reproduction, repair and any long term projects that the
body may need performed. Stress also eats away at the end of your dna
strands making it easier for the dna strands to unravel and
potentially screw up during replication. Stress can also cause Gene
expression of stuff you don’t want to express much sooner that it
would normally. If you are genetically predisposed to a certain
disease or dysfunction non horemtic stress will speed up that
expression.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNYlIcXynwE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLUU0b-VuD0&list=UUUs-TdjC1Z0Upwt9K1TPIqg&index=4&feature=plcp
So control your stress
Eat well
Sleep
Live better longer and with more
playfulness.
Two great books or people to get deeper
in a controlled way is Robb Wolf, The Paleo Solution, and Robert
Sapolsky, “Why Don't Zebras Get Ulcers”.
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