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More Energy Now in 2022

AHA Publisher — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 08:00:59 +0000

Dr. Don Colbert – As you move into a New Year, you may be ready to make health changes. You may be motivated and optimistic. Or, you may feel overwhelmed, fatigued or even discouraged by everything going on in the world today. No matter your current mood, to accomplish any goals this year, start with more energy! Feeling “more energy” is often subjective. In its simplest form, energy is derived from consuming calories, or units of energy. However, there’s more to it than that. There are vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and other compounds at work in our bodies that make consumed energy usable to the body. There is the health of cells, tissues, and organs, and whether or not they effectively respond to the compounds. There are also emotional, mental and physical factors that drain our energy and cause feelings of fatigue. Where can you start to get more energy? Let’s start with units of energy and compounds that help our body use them. Then, let’s focus on ways to make your cells healthy enough to effectively and efficiently use the energy. Lastly, let’s conquer a few “energy” drainers with simply healthy habits. Ready? Divine Health® Energizing Smoothie For More Energy Now! Ingredients 1 cup coconut or almond milk (from a carton, not can) 1/2 scoop Divine Health® Fermented Green Supremefood® 1/2 scoop Divine Health® Organic Red Supremefood® 1/2 cup frozen raw berries 1 cup fresh greens 1/2 avocado 1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar 1 scoop Keto Zone® Collagen Powder (Unflavored) 1 scoop Keto Zone® Fiber Zone (Unflavored) 1/2-1 cup brewed green tea or black tea ice cubes (optional) Instructions Mix all ingredients in a blender, adding water as needed for desired consistently (I typically use about 1 cup water). Makes 1 large serving. Enjoy! Nutrition info: 415 calories, 13 grams fat, 8 grams net carbs (26 grams carbs, 18 grams fiber), 26 grams protein More Energy Ingredients Teas and Caffeine While there’s not much caffeine in this smoothie, there’s enough to “wake up” the brain and provide a subtle pick-me-up any time of day. How does caffeine affect energy? Caffeine crosses the blood-brain barrier to inhibit adenosine in the brain. Adenosine is a neurotransmitter that quiets the central nervous system (1). Then, without adenosine in the way, epinephrine increases. Epinephrine stimulates the body and brain. These effects are enough to increase subjective feelings of energy, physical performance, and brain alertness. What’s more, green and black tea contain antioxidants and phytochemicals to support cellular and whole-body health. In fact, green tea contains a compound called L-theanine. L-theanine promotes steady energy (2). Green tea has also been shown to boost physical performance, increase the breakdown of fat for energy, and stimulate norepinephrine(3, 4, 5). Chlorophyll Chlorophyll, found in Divine Health® Fermented Green Supremefood® and fresh greens, is the lifeblood of plants. When consumed by humans, it’s one of the best energizing foods. Similar to hemoglobin, chlorophyll carries nutrients in the blood. However, it doesn’t carry iron. It carries another energizing mineral, magnesium (6). Magnesium supports the production of energy throughout the body as well as healthy sleep cycles. Furthermore, chlorophyll helps alkalize the body and urine pH. This supports liver function and helps the body remove toxins like metals, pesticides, and more. Look to chlorophyll to energize your body in many of the same ways it energizes and stimulates plants! Organic Apple Cider Vinegar Organic apple cider vinegar is an ingredient in many folk medicine cures. It is known to fight both bacterial and viral infections, yeasts, and more. How does it energize? One great effect of consuming apple cider vinegar is that it causes the sinuses to drain and throat pathways to clear. As they clear and dilate, they allow for better oxygen transport from your head to your lungs to your body. Essentially, it promotes clear breathing! Importantly, you should never drink it straight. Always dilute to just 1-2 tablespoons per 8 ounces liquid to protect your esophagus while supporting immune health, liver health, and alkalization of the body. Beets Beets are vibrant and nutritious. They contain amazingly energizing compounds, called betanins. Betanins are responsible for beet’s many health benefits in the human body, including antioxidant and anti-inflammatory actions (7). What’s more, beets also support the production and work of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant our cells make to fight damaging substances. Beets also promote vasodilation. This makes them one of the great energizing foods! Beets contain natural nitrates that are converted to nitric oxides in the body. Nitric oxides dilate blood vessels, allowing more oxygen to circulate more efficiently. Nitric oxide may also increase muscle tissues’ ability to use oxygen (8). One of the best ways to get the power of beets is through a fruit and vegetable powder like Divine Health® Organic Red Supremefood®. Fiber Believe it or not, your digestive tract health is one key to energizing your body. In fact, specific fibers, called inulin and psyllium husk, directly support digestive health and energy. They both stimulate the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut, improve digestion, and support immune health (9, 10). When digestion is working right, your body can absorb and use all the energizing foods and nutrients you give it! For a great source of inulin and psyllium husk, try a high-quality fiber powder such as Keto Zone®Fiber Zone (Unflavored). More Energy Habits for the New Year Of course, there are many factors, lifestyle habits, and individual characteristics that contribute to feelings of energy or fatigue in each of us. Here are a few to focus on as you work for more energy this year: Sleep. Obviously, if you don’t get enough sleep, you’re going to feel tired, low, and fatigued. What’s more, lack of sleep actually contributes to many health issues (11). Aim for at least 7-8 hours of high-quality sleep every night for better energy and mood this year. De-Stress. When stress and cortisol build up, we feel a cascade of effects. These effects include fatigue and overwhelm. Chronic high stress can even affect your health (12). Use daily tools, like these, to reduce stress and feel more energy. Exercise. Exercise, especially outdoors, is a great mood lifter and energizer (13)! Hydrate. Did you know that dehydration promotes feelings of being overwhelmed, fatigued, and foggy? Amazingly, dehydrated adults often feel more stress and have more cortisol (14)? Did you also know that most adults function in a state of dehydration each day? There’s an easy fix! Try to drink 32-48 ounces of water by noon, and another 32-48 ounces of water by 6pm each day. If you exercise, drink more! Sunshine. Natural sunlight is one of nature’s best mood lifters and energizers. In fact, sunlight has been shown to decrease depressed moods and increase serotonin levels (15). Cold Shower. Even though it may be frigid outside, an icy blast in the shower is still a good idea! Why? It invigorates and energizes the body and immune system. Nature’s Best Stress Relief. Amazingly, nano-particle hemp oils like those Dr. Colbert’s Nano-Science Hemp Oil, can help you feel more energy by supporting stable moods (16), stress relief and normalized cortisol levels, healthy sleep habits (17), healthy brain and nervous system functions (18), and healthy cardiovascular functions(19). Bottom Line Before working on a list of positive changes for the new year, simply learn how to energize your body better! Start with our Divine Health More Energy Smoothie, add delicious, healthy, energizing foods to your diet, and work on lifestyle habits that support health and energy. It’s a new year. Get more energy now! To read the original article click here.

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What to Eat & What Not to Eat for Optimal Mental and Brain Health According to a Nutritional Psychiatrist

AHA Publisher — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 08:00:45 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – How you think affects how you eat, because the food you eat is determined by your specific choices and desires. But did you know that what you eat also affects how you think? In this week’s blog and podcast, I talk to Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Georgia Edeabout how certain diets can affect our mental wellbeing, what foods help the brain function best, and what foods to avoid if we want to heal and improve our mental and physical health. Dr. Ede, in both her personal life and practice, has found that making certain lifestyle modifications can help treat major mental health issues such as ADHD, depression, anxiety and panic attacks. Through her research, she has found that nutrition can help heal and restore brain function, empowering people to take back control over their mental state and their lives, without the stigma and negative side-effects so common to pharmacological treatments for mental health. Her nutrition-based approach focuses on finding the root causes of the mental health issue someone is experiencing in their life and helping them overcome it by: 1. Making sure the brain is getting all the nutrients it needs from real, whole foods like animal proteins and other healthy sources of fat. 2. Eliminating highly processed and refined junk foods that are damaging the brain, especially foods high in sugar and vegetable oils. 3. Boosting the brain’s metabolism, which fuels the brain and balances the production of hormones and neurotransmitters that affect how we think and feel. Unfortunately, when it comes to brain and body health, many people believe that they need to eat a high-carbohydrate and low-fat diet, but this is simply not true. Most of this kind of dietary advice is based on epidemiological studies, which make populations fill out questionnaires on what they eat over time, and use this information to analyze health trends. Yet, when many of these results are tested in clinical trials, they fail to corroborate the original observations of the researchers—we cannot take the results of these studies at face-value, and should certainty not be basing our nutritional guidelines on them! In fact, the brain loves good, healthy fats. This is a clean source of energy, which is great for our ability to think well and handle the vagaries of life. Diets high in sugar, however, especially the refined and processed sugars and vegetable oils that are widely available today, can cause all sorts of problems in the brain: 1. Refined and processed junk foods that are high in carbohydrates make it easy to become addicted to certain kinds of foods, especially from a young age. This, in turn, exacerbates the problems these kinds of food cause in the brain over time, and make them that much harder to give up! 2. These types of food can also lead to insulin resistance by constantly spiking our blood sugar levels, which, in turn, damages the brain and body’s ability to process carbohydrates and turn them into energy. Indeed, this process is like an internal roller coaster, throwing our hormones and neurotransmitters out of balance, damaging the protective blood-brain barrier and causing all sorts of health issues, such as inflammation, oxidative stress and decreased BDNF production (which is need for learning and building memories). These biological changes, in turn, can lead to dramatic mood swings, panic attacks, overeating, a lack of energy and so on, affecting the overall quality of our lives. Yet many doctors and mental health professionals are not taught about the importance of diet when it comes to mental health. Their focus is often on the problem at hand—it is reactive by nature. Nutritional approaches to mental and physical health are, on the other hand, both reactive and preventative, and consider the whole person, mind and body. If we learn how to feed the brain and body well, we can start to improve our mental health, no matter how old we are. As I discuss in my book Think and Eat Yourself Smart, when we learn to eat real, whole foods mindfully, we not only change our health, but also the way we think and deal with life. This does not mean that we should all follow the exact same diet. As Dr. Ede notes, we are all different; there is no one way of eating that works for everyone. There are, however, several principles that we should all try to follow as we explore and find out what works for us: 1. Be careful of fad diets and fad foods. There is no one superfood that will heal you and fix all your problems. When it comes to nutrition and mental health, it is important to think about your diet as a whole, eliminating junk foods and eating nutrient-dense foods that boost your brain’s metabolism and ability to function. If you choose to follow a specific kind of diet, such as the keto diet or a plant-based diet, try avoiding processed products and packaged foods. Focus on eating real, whole foods that you “process” in your own kitchen. For example, if you are going plant-based, avoid the processed vegan burgers you find in a store or at a restaurant and make a vegetable burger at home using whole, natural ingredients like broccoli and sweet potatoes. 2. Don’t be afraid of fat! Healthy fats from whole foods like meat, eggs, fish, avocados, nuts are natural, clean sources of brain fuel that do not cause sugar spikes and insulin resistance, so don’t be afraid of fat or the calories in these foods. In fact, many of the nutrients we need are fat-soluble; without fat, they are of no use to us! 3. Consult with your healthcare provider before you take supplements. Don’t just go to the store and buy a whole bunch of supplements you think you need. Work on your diet, and consult with your healthcare practitioner if you feel like you are missing certain nutrients. This is especially the case with plant-based diets, as you may not be getting all the nutrients you need to energize the brain and body. Historically, we have evolved to eat animal proteins, so if we decide to go plant-based we need to make sure we get the most from our foods and supplement where we can. This article has been modified. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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