hormone balance Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Need Thyroid or Hormone Support? Take Our Quiz Today!

AHA Publisher — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 05:47:26 +0000

Dr. Don Colbert – A woman’s body is constantly changing. Every decade, every year, even within each month, women experience hormone ebbs and flows, and changing bodies. While this may seem unsettling, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it can be a great opportunity to learn to nourish your body with thyroid and/or hormone support as needed. You may be at the point in your life where some extra nutrients are needed. Your body may no longer be in balance. Here are 12 signs you can benefit from thyroid or hormone support (1, 2, 3). Thyroid and Hormone Support Quiz Are any of the following true for you? You feel chronically fatigued, and you can’t explain why. You are increasingly sensitive to cold or heat. You cannot lose weight no matter what you try. You’ve suddenly lost weight and did not want to. You’re experiencing thinning hair including eyelashes and/or eyebrows. You’re experiencing unwanted hair growth (on face, etc). You’re experiencing newly on-set acne, especially along your jawline. Your muscles and joints feel increasingly stiff or painful. You are experiencing night sweats or sweating profusely during the day. You are experiencing newly-onset urinary incontinence. You are experiencing sleep disturbances; trouble falling asleep and/or staying asleep. You feel like you are constantly in a PMS state: feeling anxious, overwhelmed, irritable, crampy, bloated, etc. Why These Symptoms Are Important If you answered yes to at least 3 of these questions, you may benefit from all-natural thyroid and/or hormone support. Unfortunately, for decades or even centuries, most of these symptoms have simply been chaulked up to “aging” or menopause. While women certainly age and experience body changes, and go through menopause and experience body changes, we don’t have to experience many of the negative and uncomfortable symptoms that come with them. In fact, most of these issues are easily soothed with thyroid and hormone support. The right nutrients can actually reduce many negative symptoms, improve balance within your body, and support whole-body wellness. You don’t have to feel poorly year after year. You can feel great again! Here’s how. How Thyroid Zone Can Help Your thyroid affects almost all of your body systems. Many thyroid issues are due to an imbalance or inadequacy of minerals, many of which are difficult-to-obtain in the diet. How can you support your thyroid? Consider Keto Zone® Thyroid Zone. This supplement specifically supports your thyroid by providing a variety of minerals and nutrients that promote healthy thyroid function. These nutrients are important for whole-body health and may improve the symptoms of hypothyroidism. In fact, Keto Zone® Thyroid Zone contains natural iodine, selenium, zinc, copper, vitamins A, D, and B12, Ashwagandha extract, Guggul extract, Coleus Forskohlii, L-Tyrosine, Schizandra, Kelp, Bladderwrack, and Cayenne – important minerals and nutrients for thyroid health (4). Thyroid Zone has been designed to encourage: Optimal Thyroid Hormone Production T4 to T3 Conversion Thyroid Hormone Activation Balanced Iodine Levels Optimal Thyroid Enzymes And Function Protection of the Thyroid From Oxidative Stress Weight Loss Healthy Metabolism Balanced Energy Thyroid Zone promotes balance and health in your thyroid, and therefore, your entire body. How Hormone Zone Can Help In addition, Dr. Colbert has formulated a ground-breaking supplement that supports women’s hormones. Specifically, Keto Zone® Hormone Zone contains Diindolylmethane (DIM), Vitamin D3, and Vitamin K2. Together these nutrients support balanced hormones throughout a woman’s life while also promoting bone health, heart health, and whole-body health. Here’s a summary of each: DIINDOLYLMETHANE (DIM) FOR HORMONE SUPPORT Diindolylmethane (DIM) is an important compound produced by our bodies when we eat cruciferous vegetables. If you’ve ever heard the advice to eat more greens to lower breast cancer risk, it’s due to the resulting production of DIM. DIM alters the metabolism of estrogen in order to help our bodies balance hormones. How? First, it can block an enzyme that converts testosterone into estrogen. Next, DIM converts “bad estrogens” (there are many forms) into good estrogen metabolism. It’s the bad estrogen forms that cause most PMS (pre-mentrual syndrome) and menopause symptoms). Further, DIM encourages pathways that encourage good estrogen production. DIM is a powerful compound for balancing a woman’s hormones and reducing negative estrogen symptoms (5). VITAMIN D3 Vitamin D3 is a prohormone, or nutrient that is readily converted to its hormone form in the body. It is extremely important for a myriad of health functions, including calcium regulation, mental health, immune function, healthy bones and teeth, and metabolism. The vast majority of adults are low in vitamin D3. When it’s deficient, they may experience more infections and illness, lower bone density, cardiovascular disease, and mental illnesses and disorders like depression (6). Adding more Vitamin D3 supports women’s health! VITAMIN K2 Vitamin K2, or menaquinone, is found in animal foods and fermented foods. Most people have heard of vitamin K1 because it’s important for blood clotting, from birth onward. But the importance of vitamin K2 for bone health has only recently been discovered. What’s more, K2 is often deficient in adults. Vitamin K2 is extremely important for bone health, especially in post-menopausal women. Supplementing vitamin K2 and vitamin D together may reduce spinal fractures, hip fractures, and osteoporosis. Further, vitamin K2 supports good dental health from infancy into advanced age (7). Together, these powerful ingredients work to promote: Healthy hormone levels throughout adulthood Optimal estrogen ratios and testosterone levels Bone density and reduced risk of fractures Dental health Immune function Cardiovascular health Healthy skin Daily energy Healthy weight It’s never too late to focus on your hormone balance and health. A great step is to add a natural, hormone-balancing supplement which includes DIM, Vitamin D3, and Vitamin K2, such as Keto Zone® Hormone Zone. Can You Take Thyroid Zone & Hormone Zone Together? If you’re looking to support your thyroid health and encourage healthy hormone balance, you can certainly take Keto Zone® Thyroid Zone and Keto Zone® Hormone Zone at the same time! In fact, they work great together as their compounds synergistically support women’s health! Want Testosterone Support As Well? Of course, it may seem like we’re overlooking the men (or the testosterone needs of women). This article is about women’s thyroid and hormone health, after all. But, we’ve not forgotten testosterone. In fact, Dr. Colbert has also formulated a testosterone supplement that supports men’s health. Keto Zone® Testosterone Zone is men’s answer for healthy testosterone levels through every decade. It is formulated with all-natural, potent ingredients including Testofen, a powerful all-natural testosterone-supporting compound. And best of all, you can get all three products, Keto Zone® Thyroid Zone, Hormone Zone, and Testosterone Zone in a cost-effective, convenient combo pack: Dr. Colbert’s Hormone Health System! Bottom Line Many people benefit from all-natural thyroid and hormone support and supplementation. Is it time for you to try them? Are you experiencing negative health symptoms that could be soothed or alleviated? Dr. Colbert’s Keto Zone® Thyroid Zone and Keto Zone® Hormone Zone are great supplements with which to start. You can experience positive thyroid, hormone, whole-body health effects. In addition, try Dr. Colbert’s Hormone Health System to add testosterone to the mix! To read the original article click here.

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Sleep and Biological Rhythm Variables Linked to Severity of Depression, Anxiety During Pregnancy

AHA Publisher — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 08:00:54 +0000

McMaster University via News-Medical – A set of parameters including sleep and biological rhythm variables are closely associated with the severity of depressive and anxiety symptoms, starting in the third trimester of pregnancy to the third postpartum month, according to a new study. The three-month period before and after giving birth is a vulnerable time for women’s mental health. It is estimated that 15 to 18 per cent of women experience anxiety and seven to 13 per cent experience depression during this peripartum period. In addition, nearly 10 per cent of women experience clinical levels of comorbid anxiety and depression during this time. In the largest observational study to date investigating changes in sleep and biological rhythms during the peripartum period, researchers identified several variables that are linked to depression and anxiety. Most notably, changes in the circadian quotient (the strength of the circadian rhythms), the average amount of activity during nighttime rest, and the amount of fragmentation of nighttime rest were strongly linked to higher depressive and anxiety symptoms. “Our findings highlight the importance of stabilizing the internal biological clock during the peripartum period to maintain healthy mood and minimize anxiety,” said Benicio Frey, senior author of the study and professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at McMaster University. “Given the findings, future efforts should be made to standardize evidence-based interventions targeting these biological rhythms variables identified by our team, either as treatment or prevention strategies.” Frey and his research team conducted the study from the Women’s Health Concerns Clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. This clinic specializes in psychiatric disorders during the peripartum, premenstrual, and perimenopausal periods. Researchers recruited 100 women, 73 of whom they followed from the start of the third trimester to three months postpartum. They analyzed subjective and objective measures of sleep, biological rhythms, melatonin levels, and light exposure using a variety of tools, including questionnaires, actigraphs (wearable sleep monitors), laboratory assays, and other methods. Interestingly, the findings indicate that certain biological rhythms variables may be important to depressive symptoms at specific points along the peripartum timeline. For instance, higher fragmentation of nighttime rest was linked to a decrease in depressive symptoms at six to 12 weeks postpartum – a period that tends to coincide with a higher risk of developing postpartum depression. To read the original article click here.

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How Trauma Impacts Hormones + How to Use Mind-Management to Treat Hormonal Imbalances

AHA Publisher — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 08:00:32 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #329) and blog, I talk to leading hormone expert and N.Y. Times best-selling author Dr. Sara Gottfried about hormone balancing and education, how our hormones can impact our mental and physical health, and more! For a long time, Sara battled with her own health, and found that her hormonal balance was off. Through changing her lifestyle and other interventions, Sara was able to heal herself, but her story is not unique. As she notes, we are failing so many people when it comes to hormonal issues! Yet there is hope. When it comes to our hormonal balance, there is so much we can do. We can change the way we eat, how we think, our lifestyles, and so on. Hormones drive what we are interested in; they drive our mood, our metabolism (the biochemical pathways in the body) and so much more. Hormones play a key role in both our mental and physical health. When it comes to hormonal imbalances and how they can affect our wellbeing, we need to get the root causes, not just treat the symptoms. A holistic approach, like what Sara uses in her own practice, is vital. Indeed, as Sara points out, it takes time to balance hormones and improve health. There is no “quick fix”. Our hormones are part of a complex feedback system, which means we need to take a step back and see how they all work together as a symphony. Our hormones do not work in isolation! There are also more gender specific hormonal periods that need to be examined separately. Changes in female hormones like estrogen and progesterone during puberty can increase a young person’s anxiety levels, for example. On the other hand, postpartum can be a preview of perimenopause, which can lead to more mood disturbances and other health issues. It is important to understand that estrogen is the primary regulator of the female body, including the brain. This is why perimenopause often has an effect on female cognition. After the age of 40, many women experience forgetfulness and other issues as their hormonal levels change. And, if we wait too long to intervene, it may be too late to manage these changes, especially when it comes to our brain and heart health. Trauma is also a major disruptor of the hormone system, yet there is not enough awareness about this. As Sara notes, we need more information on how trauma impacts the control system of our hormones. We need to broaden our definition of trauma, which can be any overwhelming experience that can impact our development and health. Trauma is an ongoing experience in the body, which we can see in our ability to self-regulate, our inflammation markers, our hormonal pathways, and more. Yes, it can take time and hard work to deal with the root causes of a hormonal imbalance, but it is worth it! As Sara notes, living with your hormones out of balance is so much harder than the work it takes to get your hormones back into balance. To read the original article click here.

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Don’t Have Access to a Sauna? Research Reveals a SIMPLE Way to Simulate This “Heart Healthy” Habit

AHA Publisher — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 08:00:02 +0000

Sarah Middleton via NaturalHealth365 – A growing crop of scientific papers continues to reveal the incredible health benefits of sauna bathing. Unfortunately, many of us don’t have access to a sauna, nor even a hot tub … fortunately, you can still reap the benefits of heat exposure just by running yourself a hot bath. In fact, a recent observational study involving over 800 people discovered that weekly hot baths provide some impressive heart healthy benefits. New Study: Taking Regular (HOT) Baths Supports Healthy Heart and Blood Vessels … Plus, Help to Fight Hardening of the Arteries The observational study was published in June 2018 volume of Scientific Reports. Researchers from Japan – a country where hot bathing has a long history of use – collected data from 873 participants, asking them questions about how often they bathed and at what water temperature. The researchers also took various measurements from the subjects, including brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (a primarily Eastern-based method for measuring atherosclerosis) and plasma levels of a compound called B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP). BNP is a hormone secreted by heart muscles; high levels of BNP suggests the heart is not pumping effectively. After compiling and statistically analyzing the collected data, the Japanese discovered that people who reported bathing at least five times per week tend to have better heart health, as indicated by lower BNP levels and lower brachial-ankle pulse wave velocities. In their paper, the researchers also cite other studies which show that habitual hot water bathing is significantly associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and hypertension, can boost cardiovascular function in people with heart failure, and can lower heart rate, and increase cardiac output and stroke volume while reducing peripheral vascular resistance. Indeed, hot water immersion “is comparable to low-temperature sauna bathing in terms of cardiovascular effects,” they say. In addition to boosting your heart health, sauna use and hot bathing have also been suggested to: Reduce the risk of stroke Positively influence hormone balance Enhance toxin excretion via sweat Makes it easier to fall asleep Decrease stress Alleviate pain So, don’t stress if your gym is currently closed due to COVID-19 or you simply don’t have a sauna or hot tub at your disposal. If you have a bathtub, then creating your own spa-like experience at home still appears to be worth your while. This Is How Long You Should Soak in a Hot Bath to Reap the Heart Healthy Benefits, According to Japanese Researchers (Plus Two Other Ways to Optimize Your Bathing Routine) In the study, the researchers found that the mean reported duration of a bath was just 12 minutes, with a water temperature of 106°F (41°C). So, consider using this as a guideline for creating your own hot bathing routine. In addition, there are two other research-supported tips you can use to get the most out of your bath time: Add Epsom salt to your bathwater: according to Cleveland Clinic, Epsom salt helps alleviate mental and physical tension and reduces muscle fatigue (they recommend adding about 300 grams of Epsom salt into a bathtub) Take your bath about 90 minutes before bedtime: according to a 2019 paper published in Sleep Medicine Reviews, this can help you fall asleep faster by initiating a sleep-inducing change in body temperature (the hot bath actually ends up lowering your core body temperature since your pores open up to cool you off, and this low body temperature helps signal processes in the nervous system associated with sleep) Sources for this article include: MedicalNewsToday.com, NIH.gov, Nature.com, NIH.gov, ClevelandClinic.org, ScienceDirect.com To read the original article click here. For more articles from NaturalHealth365 click here.

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The Mental & Physical Health Benefits of Circadian Fasting + Simple Schedule Tweaks That Can Boost Your Mood & Reduce Stress

AHA Publisher — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 08:00:15 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – I am sure by now you have heard of the benefits of intermittent fasting. But can skipping meals or only eating during certain time periods really improve our health? In this podcast (episode #228) and blog, I speak with intermittent fasting expert Dr. Amy Shah about how fasting can greatly improve your mental and physical wellbeing, the different types of fasting, why Dr. Amy prefers circadian fasting, how women can fast safely, common fasting mistakes, how to get started, if fasting is safe for people with eating disorders, and more! When it comes to our health, what we eat, how we eat and our other lifestyle choices can have a dramatic impact on our gut health, which, in turn, can impact the brain and body. The gut-brain connection is incredibly powerful. If your gut is inflamed and you fix that, your brain will feel better, and vice versa. Even though we are learning more and more about the gut-brain connection, our overall health and immunity, many people are not told about this when they are feeling ill or battling with their health. Yes, Western medicine is good for many things, but it doesn’t know everything! One of the best ways to harness the power of the gut-brain connection to improve our mental and physical health is through intermittent fasting. Yet, before you just stop eating for several hours, it is important to understand that fasting impacts men and women differently. Unfortunately, most of the research is done on male animals—we are only now starting to study the different impact certain types of fasting have on women. There are many differences between the male and female body, including our hormones and how we process stressors, which need to be considered when we study fasting and how it impacts our overall health. There are also differences between each individual. When it comes when we eat and when we don’t eat, there is no “one size fits all”! Women are impacted more by stressors like long-term dieting, excessive exercise and aggressive, long-term fasting, which will disturb your hormones and health. That is not to say that women cannot benefit from intermittent fasting, but they need to be aware the risks of aggressive, long-term fasting on the brain and body. GnRH is the master hormone that is linked to our circadian rhythm—it pulses in accordance with this rhythm, telling the pituitary gland to release its hormones, which signals to the ovaries and adrenal glands to release hormones like estrogen in a feedback loop. In women, this system is very sensitive to external stressors. If we fast, exercise or diet aggressively, it affects the pulsing of the GnRH, which has repercussions throughout the brain and body. Some signs of this are: feeling fatigued, bloated or anxious, sudden mood changes, weight fluctuations, and upset sleeping patterns. For most women, aggressive fasting can dramatically impact their hormones and affect their health in the short and long term, especially when they start fasting or do longer fasting intervals on a regular basis. We need to be very careful about listening to what we hear on the media or from the wellness industry! Long-term fasting is not for everyone, just like an Iron Man challenge or ultra-marathon is not for everyone. If you do decide to go this route, train for it, and monitor its effects on your health with the help of a medical professional. We cannot escape the fact that how we live our lives affects our wellbeing. As Amy notes, our hormonal pulses and circadian rhythms are completely intertwined. Every cell in our body has a “clock” that follows these 24-hour rhythms. In fact, 80% of our genes are based on our circadian rhythm! Our bodies are meant to have a rhythm—we are not made to do everything at once. When our circadian rhythm is out of whack, we can suffer from many kinds of health issues, including mood disorders, brain health problems, diabetes, heart disease and so on. On the other hand, if we tweak our schedule just a little bit and let our brain and body know when it is day and when it is night, we can improve our overall wellbeing by improving our sleeping patterns, metabolism, mood and so on. Circadian fasting is one great way to tap into these natural rhythms and create an environment that boosts our mental and physical resilience. If we stop eating 2 to 3 hours before bed, this will prepare our body, telling it that it is nighttime and it should go into “gut repair mode” and deep clean the cells. This can only be done when we do not have more glucose from food entering our bodies. If we eat late at night or before bed, however, the body does not go into this deep clean mode, which can affect our health. Circadian fasting also helps our body harness the power of the metabolic switch. The body generally uses sugar as fuel—this is its preferred source of energy. When we have used up all this glucose and the body needs energy, it switches fuel sources and uses stored fat (fatty acids). This is known as the metabolic switch, which turns on when we are hungry or fasting. When the body does this, it can have many downstream health benefits, such as suppressing excess inflammation, increasing stress resilience and improving cognitive function and emotional health. Circadian fasting essentially trains your body to switch fuel sources. Yes, at the beginning this can be tough and we can feel a little off, but our body will get used to this shift over time. It is a type of good stress—circadian fasting gives the body a little push to get stronger, like a good workout. And it is a lot easier to do than many other fasting regimens because it can be incorporated into a busy schedule. If you have battled with fasting in the past and are not sure how to make the process easier or effective, Amy has some great tips to help you harness the power of circadian fasting: Don’t start too extreme, as changing your eating schedule can be challenging, especially if you are used to eating late at night! Start from 7pm-7am, and slowly increase the number of hours you fast at night over time. Give your body time to adjust! You can also alternate the number of hours you fast for during the week—listen to what your body needs and find out what works for you. Expose yourself to daylight first thing in the morning before 10 am for around 20 minutes, even if it is cloudy outside, which will help balance your circadian rhythm and boost your metabolic switch. Do a fasted workout/movement early in the morning. Get moving before you eat breakfast! But don’t push yourself too hard too quickly—find out what works for you and start there. Try get 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night. This doesn’t have to happen every night, but we should aim for good sleeping patterns around 5 times a week. Our peak eating times is between 12 and 5 pm, so you want to eat your main meals during this time. Eat a smaller meal before noon or after 5 pm if desired, and stop eating 2 to 4 hours before bed. Eat lots of plant fibers, which help improve our gut health by feeding the good bacteria in the gut that are essential for brain health, immunity and hormone function. Around 2 to 3 hours before bed, turn off your artificial light devices, such as your smart phones or TV. It is also a good idea to switch the light bulbs in the bedroom to yellow light or use candle light. Research has shown that just one bout of bright light at night can delay your melatonin for up to 90 minutes! Avoid these common fasting mistakes: Fasting too long. Eating too much sugar in your eating window, which will make it harder for your body to turn on its metabolic switch, and, when your sugar levels fall, you will experience hunger cravings and jitters that will affect your ability to avoid eating and experience all the benefits of intermittent fasting. Thinking that fasting is a shortcut or magic bullet that will take away all our issues. It is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, not a quick-fix solution. It is also important to remember that fasting may not be for everyone, especially someone with a history of disordered eating. Fasting is not generally good for someone who has a history of eating issues, especially if they cannot do it in a safe way, as it can trigger a restrictive eating response. In a situation like this, it is better to focus on what the person is eating, and how they can cut out processed and refined foods and improve their diet. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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How Fiber Can Improve Your Mental and Brain Health + Tips on Boosting Gut Health and Overcoming Food Sensitivities with GI Specialist Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

AHA Publisher — Mon, 18 May 2020 07:00:30 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – We all know fiber is good for us, but did you also know that it can help with your mental health? In this week’s blog and podcast, I spoke with GI specialist and epidemiologist Dr. Will Bulsiewicz about how a high-fiber diet can help boost mental and brain health, heal food sensitivities and reduce inflammation in the brain and body! In his amazing new book, Fiber Fueled: The Plant-Based Gut Health Program for Losing Weight, Restoring Your Health, and Optimizing Your Microbiome, Dr. B notes how even though he was very successful as a medical doctor, his processed food diet was making him miserable, tired and anxious. When he met his wife, he began to understand how real, healthy whole foods could transform his life, which led him on the path he is on today: meeting people where they are in their journey and helping them live their best and healthiest lives. As Dr. B points out, although the current healthcare system is really good at treating acute diseases, it falls short when it comes to preventative medicine and chronic health issues. Indeed, as a medical doctor with multiple qualifications, Dr. B was taught little about the impact lifestyle choices such as diet and exercise could impact our mental and physical health—he had to learn that from his wife! Thankfully, times are changing, especially as more and more research is being published on the importance of our lifestyle choices. We now know that pills and procedures are not everything; around 20% of diseases are genetic, which means 80% are related to our diet and lifestyle. This is great news! It means that our health is largely in our hands, which very empowering. In fact, we are just beginning to understand the importance of the gut-brain connection and diet on our mental and physical health. 15 years ago, we largely dismissed the role of our gut, but now we know that it is integral to our mental and physical health. As I discussed in a recent blog and podcast (episode #156), the gut is your brain’s best friend. They are constantly talking to each other like teenagers! There are 500 million nerve cells in the gut (5 x more than the spinal cord!), which send signals through vagus nerve to the brain, affecting our sympathetic and para-sympathetic nervous systems, hormones and the rest of your brain and body. Indeed, 90% of the neurotransmitter serotonin is produced in the gut, which not only regulates our mood, energy levels and focus, but also impacts our motility, that is our ability to digest, absorb and eliminate food products. When you damage the microbiome, you damage serotonin production, which affects and mood, which then impacts the rest of brain and body! One of the best ways we can ensure that our gut microbiome is happy and healthy is what Dr. B calls the production of postbiotics. We have all heard of probiotics (good bacteria) and prebiotics (the fiber that feeds the good bacteria in the gut). The magic happens when these two come together to form postbiotics which are necessary for a great digestive system, such as short chain fatty acids. These postbiotics not only heal things like leaky gut, but they also help with “leaky brains”, repairing the blood-brain barrier and helping us think clearly and quickly and boosts our mood, while helping protect us against the onset of cognitive decline. We get these postbiotics by eating a healthy, plant-rich diet, which is high in fiber that exercises the gut, feeding the good bacteria we need for digestion and keeping us happy and healthy! In fact, a high fiber diet can even reduce the inflammation associated with cardiovascular disease. When we eat a wide diversity of plants from fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, grains and so on, we are supporting a wide diversity of good bacteria in our gut—every plant has a unique mix of fiber that feeds a unique mix of bacteria. This way of eating helps us live long and healthy lives, just like the people in what is known as the blue zones—areas of the world where there is the highest life expectancy, which I talked about in a recent blog and podcast (episode #149). A high fiber, plant-rich diet can also help with food sensitivities. As humans, we only have 17 digestive enzymes, so we need some digestive help from the good bacteria in our stomach. If, however, our microbiome is damaged or unhealthy, we can develop food sensitivities, especially if we are eating a highly processed and refined Modern American diet, known as MAD, that is so common today (I discuss this in detail in my book Think and Eat Yourself Smart). If we eat a diet rich in plant fibers, we can start to heal the gut microbiome, feeding the good bacteria that helps break down our food. However, like many things in life, this is a process and takes time, so learn to listen to your body and give yourself grace! Start small and where you are, and realize that the healing process may involve some pain and discomfort. Like training your body at the gym, you are training your gut to be healthy and strong again! There Are Also Other Non-Diet Related Ways We Can Boost Our Gut Health and Heal Our Microbiome 1. Get more sleep! A good night’s rest helps heal and repair the brain and the gut, so make sure you are catching those z’s! You can do this by avoiding blue light exposure before bed (for more on this see my blog and podcast episode #114). If you are battling to fall asleep at night, you can also try eat dinner earlier and water fast before bed. For more on sleep, see my blog and podcast episode #97. 2. Exercise. Exercise does wonders for our mental and physical health, and can really help boost our gut health and aid digestion! For more on the benefits of exercise, see my recent blog and podcast episode #139. 3. Practice mind management. As I have mentioned many times before, we need to manage our mind, which plays a massive role in our gut health! Toxic stress and chaotic, uncontrolled thinking both directly and indirectly impact the balance in our gut (as discussed above), so we should take the time to control our thinking through practices like yoga, meditation and mindfulness. My SWITCH app is a great tool for helping you learn how to manage your mind, deal with the root of your stress and anxiety, and overcome negative thought patterns and behaviors that impact gut health through the mental process of reconceptualization. It is now on sale less 50% for a 3-month subscription! I also recommend taking a lot of “thinker moments” throughout the day, where you switch off to the external and just let your mind wander and daydream. These moments give your brain a rest and allow it to reboot and heal, which increases your clarity of mind and ability to problem-solve when faced with a tough situation. So, be intentional about creating “thinker” breaks throughout your day by taking a few moments every day, or when you are feeling stressed out! For more information on thinker moments and how to make them a part of your daily routine, see my book, Think, Learn, Succeed. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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Why Are Depression, Anxiety, and Alzheimer’s More Common in Women?

AHA Publisher — Sat, 16 May 2020 07:00:07 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – Science is science, right? Unfortunately, this is not always the case, especially when it comes to women’s health. Our understanding of the human brain and body has been clouded by years of gender bias—for decades many scientists and doctors have assumed that men and women are really the same, except for the bits and bobs that can be covered by a bikini. Yet, as this week’s podcast guest and renowned researcher Dr. Lisa Mosconi points out, this kind of “bikini science” has dramatic implications for women’s mental and physical health that go beyond our reproductive organs, affecting every part of the brain and body. Dr. Lisa Mosconi, PhD, is the Director of the Women’s Brain Initiative and Associate Director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC)/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where she serves as an Associate Professor of Neuroscience in Neurology and Radiology. She is also an adjunct faculty member at the Department of Psychiatry at New York University (NYU) School of Medicine, and at the Department of Nutrition at NYU Steinhardt School of Nutrition and Public Health. Dr. Mosconi holds a PhD degree in Neuroscience and Nuclear Medicine, and is a certified Integrative Nutritionist and holistic healthcare practitioner. Her expertise lies in examining the way gender impacts the health of the brain and body, and in overcoming the massive gender gap in the world of medicine. As she describes in her amazing book, The XX Brain, since the time of Darwin there has been a long-held assumption that women’s brains are inferior because they are smaller, but women are generally smaller than men, which was not taken into account for decades, and still persists subconsciously in many areas of medicine and neuroscience. Moreover, in the 1960s, after the drug thalidomide had terrible effects on the babies of pregnant women, the FDA ruled that all women of childbearing age must be excluded from research trials. Although this ruling was made to protect vulnerable populations, it excluded women from research, which has had dramatic implications for the way we understand the female brain and body. Decades of research focusing only men, based on the incorrect assumption that, apart from our reproductive organs, a woman’s heart, brain and body are basically the same as a man’s heart, brain and body. Yet even the way we metabolize drugs is different! A woman’s heart, for example, may look the same as a man’s heart, but it is not, which means that we experience heart attacks in different ways to men, such as intense nausea. Yet, because there is this underlying assumption that our hearts are for all intents and purposes the same, this means that many doctors do not recognize that a woman complaining of nausea in the ER may actually be having a heart attack—they not trained to see gender specific symptoms! No wonder research shows that women are 7 times more likely discharged from ER while having heart attack! In fact, women are 3 times more likely to have an autoimmune disorder, are 2 times more likely to have anxiety and depression, are 4 times more likely to suffer from intense headaches and migraines, are more likely to die of stroke, and are more sensitive to infections and inflammation. This is a disaster at the heart of medicine! The same can be said for female brains and cognitive decline. As Lisa points out, nobody talks about women’s brains, even when we are talking about women’s health. Yet there is direct, two-way communication between female reproductive systems and the brain, which impacts how we build memories, our mood, our energy levels and so much more through the production of estrogens like estradiol and other gender-specific hormones. Yet, because we do not understand these differences, many scientists, researchers and doctors assume that women are more likely to get Alzheimer’s and the dementias because they live longer than men. Yet, as Lisa notes, this conclusion is based on two incorrect assumptions: that women live much longer than men, and that Alzheimer’s and the dementias are associated with aging. First, it is important to note than women generally only live a few more years than men. Second, Alzheimer’s and the dementias are not the inevitable result of aging, or our genes. Alzheimer’s actually starts in mid-life, although we often only see physical symptoms later on—it is not a disease of old age. Nor is it predominantly genetic in origin, as was originally thought to be the case. We now understand that only around 2% of Alzheimer’s cases are based on specific genetic mutations! When it comes to cognitive decline and memory loss, a lot more than our DNA is involved, as I discussed in a recent blog and podcast(#87). Early onset Alzheimer’s, which starts roughly in the 40s, is largely inherited and the result of genetic mutations, but late onset dementia, which begins roughly in the 60s, is unlikely to be associated with specific gene mutations. The question remains: why are women more likely to get Alzheimer’s and the dementias? Lisa, based on her ground-breaking research, has shown how there is a close relationship between the female brain and reproductive system. As a result, when women go through mid-life changes during menopause, or if they have surgeries that remove parts of the reproductive system like the ovaries, their brains can be affected, which can contribute to memory loss and cognitive decline. As mentioned above, estrogens have a lot of roles in brain health through the HPG axis—they are not just important for fertility. Estradiol, for instance, is a master regulator in the brain, and helps increase energy production, allows for better plasticity and memory formation in the brain and can even boost immunity! In fact, the symptoms we commonly associate with menopause are a result of changes in the female brain. Hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, sleeplessness, mood swings and so on start in the brain—these are the neurological symptoms of menopause. Thankfully, there are things we can do now to prevent and combat these changes in the brain and body, as Lisa notes in The XX Brain and in her book Brain Food. As women, we can give ourselves time to change and allow our brain and body to adapt through: 1. Hormone Replacement therapy. Although we need to understand this therapy better, it has been shown to help mitigate the negative effects of menopause. Lisa prefers bioidentical hormones, which may be safer because they are more natural and come from plants, but we need more clinical trials to assess this. 2. Diet. We can also get low doses of hormones from the phytoestrogens in foods like dark chocolate, soy products, dried fruits like prunes, fruits such as berries and cantaloupe, and so on, which have fewer side effects than hormone replacement therapy. Lisa has some great diet plans in her book Brain Food, so check them out! 3. Exercise. Not only is exercise great for our brain health, but also helps keep the brain and body strong and healthy, giving you more energy and increasing your capacity to deal with the negative effects of hormonal changes, and helping you manage toxic stress, which also impacts the communication between the reproductive system and the brain in women. 4. Mind management. As mentioned above, chronic stress can really impact brain health, decreasing estrogen levels and accelerating brain shrinkage and memory loss in women. Stress can literally steal our hormones! This is why it is so important to manage our mind and how we react to what happens to us. We need to remember that the brain is a muscle and needs to be strengthened and exercised through mindfulness, meditation and learning, just like the body needs exercise and training. My SWITCH app is a great tool for helping you learn how to manage your mind, deal with the roots of your stress and anxiety, and overcome negative thought patterns and behaviors that impact gut health through the mental process of reconceptualization. It is now on sale less 50% for a 3-month subscription! I also recommend taking a lot of “thinker moments” throughout the day, where you switch off to the external and just let your mind wander and daydream. These moments give your brain a rest and allow it to reboot and heal, which increases your clarity of mind and ability to problem-solve when faced with a tough situation. So, be intentional about creating “thinker” breaks throughout your day by taking a few moments every day, or when you are feeling stressed out! To learn more about thinker moments and how to make them a part of your daily routine, see my book, Think, Learn, Succeed. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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The Anti-Anxiety Diet, How to Balance Your Hormones and Heal from Adrenal Fatigue, Nature’s Prozac and More with RD Ali Miller

AHA Publisher — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 07:00:56 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – There is so much to be anxious about these days, including what to eat. But did you know that there is a way of eating that can actually help reduce the level of anxiety you experience on a day-to-day basis? In this week’s blog and podcast, I discuss the anti-anxiety diet with RD Ali Miller, and how you can balance your hormones, and heal the brain and body by changing what you eat! Ali is an integrative functional medicine practitioner and bestselling author. She focuses on functional medicine, that is looking at the body from a holistic standpoint and helping people achieve and maintain optimal mental and physical health. She is known as the “body’s detective”, and has made it her life’s work to find the root causes of the chronic conditions many people today battle with. In many cases, the problems we face come down to stress. As Ali notes, stress is one of the most overlooked or normalized experiences. Many people fail to acknowledge how their stress and anxiety levels are connected to their mental and physical health—chronic stress is the Achilles’ heel of whole body wellness. It creates dysfunction in all our regulatory systems, leaving us in a constant fight or flight state, which affects our immune systems, sleep, digestion and so on. In women, unmanaged stress and anxiety often impact our hormonal balance, which can cause all sorts of health issues, and end up making us feel more depressed and anxious! This is not just the case with adults. More and more children deal with health issues like childhood obesity, diabetes, behavioral challenges and anxiety, which is negatively impacting their development and their overall wellbeing. In many cases, these changes are a result of what we eat: the highly processed and refined MAD (modern American diet), as I discuss in my book Think and Eat Yourself Smart, has caused all sorts of health and environmental problems around the globe, severely affecting our mental and physical health by impacting blood sugar levels and our ability to nourish ourselves. Thus, Ali places great emphasis on what she calls diet optimization, that is making our diet work for us and not against us. We must go back to the basics, and focus on real, sustainable whole foods that are high in protein and good fats, which help balance hormones and blood sugar levels, maintain our development, produce neurotransmitters, help with satiety and weight management, help us focus and so on. We can use the way we eat to help the body heal the mind, and vice versa! Ali’s anti-anxiety diet approach focuses on six different areas, meeting each person where they are in their personal health journey: 1. Removing inflammatory foods, such as highly processed and refined foods, and foods high in sugar and carbohydrates. 2. Resetting the gut microbiome. Rebalancing our neurotransmitters and reducing our stress and anxiety starts in the microbiome. The gut-brain has over 500 neurons and 100 trillion cells, and produces most our neurotransmitters, including GABA and serotonin, which help reduce our anxiety and calm us down. We can help heal and strengthen the gut microbiome and manage our stress response by eating a healthy diet high in probiotic foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, yoghurt and fermented teas like kombucha, as well as taking good quality probiotics (which populate the gut with healthy bacteria) and prebiotics (which feed the good bacteria). In fact, probiotics and prebiotics are often called nature’s Prozac because of the healthy effect they have on the microbiome, and how they encourage the production of GABA and serotonin, which help calm us down! However, if you take digestive aids and eat a healthy diet and are still experiencing discomfort or distress in your gut, it may be beneficial to do a gut cleanse, which Ali discusses in detail in her book, which helps reset the gut microbiome. 3. Repairing the gut. As mentioned above, we want the gut to be healthy and in a symbiotic state, that is working with the brain and body, because it is integral to the production of neurotransmitters that help manage the stress response and our anxiety levels. A healthy gut helps calm us down, while an unhealthy gut can cause nutrient deficiency, digestive distress, bloating, irregular bathroom habits, flatulence, inflammation, immune sensitivity, leaky gut and so on, which can make us feel anxious by putting the brain and body into a stressed state. 4. Restoring micronutrient status, such as adding good quality, tested and safe supplements like B vitamins and diet optimization. Ali has her own supplement line called Naturally Nourished, which offers third party-tested and pharmaceutical grade supplements that are both high quality and effective, so check them out! For more on the issues associated with supplement industry, see my book Think and Eat Yourself Smart. 5. Rebounding the adrenals. As with all hormones, if cortisol is in overdrive, or if it is suppressed, it can make us feel stressed out and anxious. Generally, our cortisol levels peak in the morning to help us feel awake and ready for the day ahead, and start decreases as they day goes on, so that we can rest at night. If cortisol functions in this way, it is anti-inflammatory, helps stabilize blood sugar, helps the anti-histamine response and so on. However, if our cortisol levels are too high, we can experience the opposite, which can lead to excessive belly fat, disrupted sleep, irritability, mood swings, a physiological stress response (such as the need to move about) and so on. Likewise, if our cortisol levels are too low, we tend to have more allergies due to the dampened anti-histamine response, more inflammation and more fatigue, which can also make us feel stressed and anxious. This is why it is important to focus on the health of our adrenals and make sure that they are functions properly, as adrenal fatigue can severely impact our mood and anxiety levels. 6. Rebalancing neurotransmitters. Our neurotransmitters work in a delicate symphony; when we have too much or too little of any neurotransmitter, we can experience negative affects like an increase in our anxiety levels or a toxic stress response. In conventional medicine, medications like anti-depressants tend to focus on the receptor site of one neurotransmitter, not the whole system, and this is often done blindly. This approach does not take the time to look at everything associated with our mood and how we feel: genetics, nutrients, diet and so on, so they are not rebalancing the intricate symphony of neurotransmitters we need to be healthy. The conventional approach is reductionistic, rather than holistic, and does not make the mind-body connection work for us. This intricate balance is also important when it comes to female hormones like progesterone and estrogen. When they work in tandem, they help balance blood flow and our moods. However, if we are in a constant state of flight or fight, our body’s perceived need for survival affects the production of these hormones, particularly progesterone, which is turned into cortisol. This can lead to a hormonal balance in women, which can result in relative estrogen dominance. This, in turn, can lead to mood instability, stress and anxiety, and can negatively affect the microbiome and serotonin levels, which only increases our body’s sense of “danger ahead!”. As a result, hot flashes and hormone issues are not just a problem for women going through menopause. Younger and younger women are experiencing hormonal imbalances, which can lead to problems such as hot flashes, PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), infertility and irregular menstrual cycles. This is why Allie recommends her Relax and Regulate supplement, which helps balance the production of hormones like estrogen and progesterone, and puts the body back on track. Hormone replacement therapy is another option for people who deal with hormonal-related health issues. However, don’t just take any old hormones! Hormone replacement therapy needs to be regulated by annual testing, and the hormones need to be bioidentical, which means they are identical in molecular structure to the hormones produced in our body, not synthetic like certain kinds of birth control. Rather than suppressing regular ovarian functions, bioidentical hormones work with your body and help heal you from the inside out. Your diet can also help heal you from the inside out, balancing your hormones and neurotransmitters and helping you feel great. The keto diet is actually great for issues like PCOS and infertility! Ketones can cross the blood-brain barrier, helping the hypothalamus produce leptin, which makes us feel full and safe, and aids the production of GABA, lessening our fight or flight response and calming us down. This, in turn, helps the body exit survival mode and start producing the hormones and neurotransmitters we need to function on a day-to-day basis, including estrogen and progesterone. Our metabolism starts returning to normal, and we can access our body fat and start using it a fuel, which also helps balance our hormones by helping the pituitary gland function as it should. Yet it is not just important to go keto. How you do keto is equally important. A healthy low carb/high fat diet should include real, whole foods, and should avoid trendy food items that say they are keto, but are processed and refined foods with unhealthy ingredients. As Allie says, don’t replace the foods that got you into trouble with the keto versions of the same food, such as keto cakes and keto donuts. In fact, it is important to be careful of natural and non-natural non-caloric sweeteners. These products tend to sterilize the microbiome, which can work against you over time, and can develop into an addiction to sweet things. If you are doing keto, it is far better to create a savory palate that focuses on vegetables and meat, which will give you a different level of food freedom. You won’t have to trick yourself with keto versions of the foods you miss, and you will get lots of great prebiotic fibers, to help heal the microbiome, which means a healthier brain and body! It is also important not to demonize any macronutrient. Don’t be afraid of carbohydrates; rather, match your carb intake to your metabolism. You may want to start at 30g a day to kick start the healing process, but you can increase this as needed. It is important to find your metabolic flexibility. You may even find that carb-cycling or a low glycemic diet can be helpful, especially if you have a low-percentage body fat, are at an ideal body weight or have irregular periods (adding more carbohydrates may help restore ovulation by balancing your hormones). This article has been modified. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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Should Endocrine Dysruptor Bisphenol A (BPA) Be Banned Completely?

AHA Publisher — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 08:00:51 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – “The number of new chemicals is increasing exponentially, with approximately 12,000 new substances added daily…”—yet data aren’t available on the hazards of even some of the high-volume chemicals. Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the highest volume chemicals, with billions of pounds produced each year. Studies have raised concerns about its possible implication in the cause of certain chronic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, reproductive disorders, cardiovascular diseases, birth defects, chronic respiratory diseases, kidney diseases, and breast cancer. Given this, BPA is the topic of my video Why BPA Hasn’t Been Banned. A new study on the health implications of BPA comes out nearly every week. BPA was first developed over a hundred years ago as a synthetic estrogen, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that industry realized it could be used to make polycarbonate plastic, and “BPA rapidly became one of the most produced and used chemicals worldwide, even though it was a recognized synthetic estrogen” with hormonal effects. About a billion pounds are also used to line food and beverage cans, especially for tuna and condensed soups. Today, nearly all of us, including our children, have BPA in our bodies, but not to worry: The government says up to 50 µg/kg per day is safe. Even those working in Chinese BPA factories don’t get exposed to more than 70 times lower than that so-called safety limit. Why then did exposure seem to affect male workers’ sperm counts? In the United States, the general population gets less than a thousand times lower than the safety limit, yet, even at those incredibly low doses, we still seem to be seeing adverse effects on thyroid function, weight control, blood sugar control, cardiovascular disease, liver function, and immune function. Indeed, “[t]he fact that there are significant adverse effects in populations exposed to BPA at concentrations [thousands of] times lower than the TDI [tolerable daily limit]…indicates that the safe exposure to BPA may be much lower than previously thought in humans.” Despite this, the limit hasn’t been changed. BPA has been banned from “baby bottles and sippy cups,” but nearly unlimited doses are still apparently okay for everyone else. What’s the disconnect? It has to do with the fascinating world of low-dose effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals. “For decades, studies of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) have challenged traditional concepts in toxicology, in particular the dogma of ‘the dose makes the poison'”—that is, the concept “that lower exposures to a hazardous compound will therefore always generate lower risks.” Indeed, that is the core assumption underlying our system of chemical safety testing. Researchers start giving animals in laboratories a super-high dose and then keep lowering the dosage until whatever adverse effects that had occurred disappear. Then, they add a safety buffer and assume everything below that dose should be okay, assuming a straight line showing the higher the dose, the higher the effect. However, hormone-disrupting chemicals can have all sorts of curious curves. How is it possible that something could have more of an effect at a lower dose? A study was done to see whether BPA suppressed an obesity-protective hormone in fat samples taken from breast reduction and tummy tuck patients. At 100 nanomoles of BPA, hormone levels were no lower than they were at 0nM of BPA. And, since most people have levels between 1 and 20, BPA was considered to be safe. But, although there was no suppression at 0 and no suppression at 100, at the levels actually found in people’s bodies, BPA appeared to cut hormone release nearly in half. As the world’s oldest, largest, and most active organization devoted to research on hormones concluded, “even infinitesimally low levels of exposure—indeed, any level of exposure at all—may cause [problems].” In fact, it may come to nearly $3 billion in problems every year, counting the estimated effects of BPA on childhood obesity and heart disease alone. There are alternatives the industry can use. The problem, though, is that they may cost companies two cents more. This article has been modified. To read the original article click here. To read more articles from Dr. Greger click here.

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