Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

By

4 Permissions to Dramatically Change Your Health that May Make Your Doctor Hate You

Ready to make a change?  Feeling guilty about the choices you’re trying to make because it goes against everything you have heard or done the past 40 years?  Here’s 4 permissions to dramatically change your health…that May make Your Doctor Hate You.  Now go rock it.

Permission to Eat Fat

On my intake forms, I have a line of questions that ask the person if they feel better eating certain foods.  An overwhelming majority of people mark they feel better when eating higher fat foods.  But because doctors, media, and all things medical industry have villainized fat and cholesterol for 40 years, people shy away from it out of dogmatic guilt that they are harming themselves, not helping.  The reality is that we all know what has happened to diabetes, obesity, heart disease, auto-immune conditions, and dementia the last 40 years as we have removed fat.  We’re not any healthier.

If there’s something you should feel bad about eating, it should be sugar.  Sure it tastes good, gives you an instant energy boost but have you ever looked back an hour later and said, ‘I wish I just ate more cake, cookies, breakfast cereal, and whole wheat bread. I just feel so good.”  You’re chronically fatigued because you keep feeding the insulin-energy-store-overload reaction based on your high glycemic choices.

WORDS THAT MEAN SUGAR: Tango Yankee Nicole Recine RN, MSN

[Read more…]

By

Biohacking Your Biohacking

bi·o·hack·ing

/ˈbīōhakiNG/

noun
  • The activity of exploiting genetic material experimentally without regard to accepted ethical standards, or for criminal purposes.
  • Do-it-yourself biology, a social movement in which individuals and organizations pursue biology and life science with tools equivalent to those of professional labs.
  • What you get when you combine biology with hacking. It’s a way for individuals to effectively “hack” their bodies to achieve certain goals. Sometimes, this hack is as simple as taking a nootropic supplement every day to boost your cognitive ability.

Whatever fits your definition of biohacking is up to you, hopefully it isn’t the criminal end game.  But if you want amazing health and performance expression, it all comes down is the basics.  You don’t need to hack anything.  You already possess the most amazing blueprint and access to quality building materials to create sustainable longevity and a phenomenal quality of life.  You just have to follow some basic guidelines.  You need to biohack your biohacking.

[Read more…]

By

Genetic Pet Peeves

I have a number of pet peeves.  For those that know me really well, you know I can go from zero to maximum irritability in 0.2 seconds when I see random shopping carts in a major retail parking lot.  If I see you NOT put it away, even though the cart return is only 3 spaces away from your car, I’m ready to punch a hole in your car.   I’m considering creating a personality assessment and job interview process centered around your shopping cart etiquette.  If you can’t push a Costco cart without walking half bent over, leaning on the cart, you’re not even getting an interview.

For the sake of this post, your shopping cart habits are none of my business…unless you don’t put it away.  But a more pertinent pet peeve of mine are the analogies surrounding genetics.  I’m sure you’ve heard them and you thought they were clever and didn’t even question them.  Hopefully these become pet peeves of yours as well.

Functional Medicine Colorado Springs

Your DNA is NOT a Loaded Gun

[Read more…]

By

Silent Starvation

If you were to ask my wife, current and past co-workers, and kids what I really suck at, I’m sure it would take them about a microseconds to spit out EMPATHY.  It’s enormously difficult for me to relate emotionally with someone else’s struggles.  It doesn’t mean I don’t care.  I just hard for me to shed a tear…except for the movie Rudy.

But the more I dive into looking at the disruptions at the cell level and even genetic level, my view of individual’s health struggles is starting to change, especially when it comes to people that struggle with obesity.  The empathy really grows when I see them do so much that is right but can’t seem to have a break through.

One of the biochemical factors that keep the person unsatisfied is because often times they are starving.  Really.  In other words, what they are eating isn’t being shuttled into the cell to produce that universal energy currency we all learned about in high school biology called ATP.  One of those main reasons for an overfed but under nourished state is due to inefficiencies of the Kreb’s cycle. As a result, the person is going to crave more and more energy substrates (usually carb type foods) to flood the system to ultimately produce ATP.

[Read more…]

By

What’s for Breakfast? You Missed the Point

My last post was about about breakfast, I mean dessert.  What’s the difference?  The point of it is that if you break down the ingredients in your typical breakfast, it’s nothing more than dessert consumed early in the day.  My suggestion was that maybe you should skip it.  I thought that was pretty clear but then got tons of feedback with questions about what should they eat for breakfast?

Let me be clear.  Breakfast isn’t that important.  What sparked my writing of the last post was the news of the researchers being paid in the 1960’s to shift the blame of heart disease away from sugar and onto fat.  Then one of those scientists becoming the head of the USDA’s nutritional guidelines, which happened to start the ‘fat is bad’ campaign, brain washing you the past 40 years.

I feel I need to shed some light on another myth.

Breakfast is the Most Important Meal of the Day

Where did this come from?  It came from a major publication, Good Health.  I’m sure you have seen this in the check out lanes at your favorite grocery store or drug store.

Did you know it was once edited by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg?  And in that magazine in 1917, an article written called ‘August Breakfasts’ by Lenna F. Cooper makes a passing statement that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  I don’t know if Ms. Cooper was the first to ever say this but it becomes a catchy phrase to someone with the last name of Kellogg.  Yes, that Kellogg.

[Read more…]

By

Breakfast is the Most Important Meal…To Skip

Breakfast vs. Dessert

On my initial intake paperwork for people, I have the potential client list out their food items.  Under more investigation of the ingredients of those foods, I vote that breakfast is the most important meal…to skip entirely.  

Think about it.  Why is chocolate milk a ‘health food,’ great for recovery but chocolate ice cream will send you to an early grave?  Please don’t hit reply with, ‘that’s why I just let my ice cream melt and call it a smoothie.’  I’ve already used that line.

screen-shot-2016-09-16-at-10-11-26-am

Javier Zarracina/Vox

Breakfast...skip it.

Javier Zarracina/Vox

What’s the big deal?  The big deal is that in case you hadn’t seen it this week, the NY Times ran a column called, ‘How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat.’

[Read more…]

By

Are You Seeking Information or Affirmation?

In the age of information, are you actually seeking information or are you seeking affirmation?  When you accept something as truth, do you seek out other sources that may question that truth or do you seek out outlets that continually affirm your truth?

Functional Medicine Colorado Springs“If they would just be informed.”  I hear this statement often from people that are on a health journey and want the people in their closest circles to jump on board with them.  The statement should actually read something like this.  “If they would just accept my truth as their truth, they would then be affirming all the time and energy I have put into seeking out and creating this world view.  Whom do they think they are for not agreeing and affirming my views?”

I especially see this with diets.  Whether it’s vegan, paleo, keto, or the ‘hell no’ diet.  It’s easy to then seek out references and data points that back up your view point.  Seriously, how many 300 page books do you have to read that end with the same conclusion that gluten is bad?

If that is you (me included), you are practicing seeking affirmation, not seeking information.  The information you do seek regarding the other view point is often to show those supporters NOT how your view is right but how their view is ultimately dangerous.

If there’s something more annoying than arguing with a person seeking affirmation, it’s arguing with a person seeking affirmation through fear motivation.  This is our current presidential race right now.  If so and so is elected, look at all the ways our country will crumble under their leadership.  Relax, we will all be ok.

In honor of seeking information instead of just affirmation, I have a few challenges for you. [Read more…]

By

The #1 Thing To Impact Your Health

I had an ‘aha’ moment this morning that I think can potentially help a lot of people.  Most of my days begin between 4- 5 am…planned and willing (mostly).  Yesterday, Colorado had one of those Spring snowstorms that shuts down major highways, international airports, and causes mass hysteria on all local news outlets telling people to stay home.  The next morning, there’s always a good chance that local businesses and schools have delayed starts.  On a typical Thursday morning I go to CrossFit for the 5 am class and then I meet with a men’s group at 6:30 am.

With the knowledge that most people (the ones I workout with and the guys from the men’s group) are going to roll out of bed a little later than normal and there’s potential for icy roads that could still be a bit hazardous, there’s an internal dilemma.  Should I still get up early or create a lazy morning?

The #1 Thing That Impacts Your Health

Functional Medicine Colorado SpringsThe ‘aha’ was that the changes and success I have made and been able to sustain in my own personal health, my career, and other proud moments in life is that my strength is in the consistency of just showing up.  I’ve never been the most talented.  I’ve never been the smartest.  I’ve never had an abundant of resources.  I’ve made a lot of mistakes.  I have failed too many times to count.

But when you show up a lot more times than not, there’s a chance you get ahead of the curve.  Showing up that day doesn’t mean you will have a win that day or be greatly rewarded.  It means you showed up.  There’s a lot of things that I show up for that I still really suck at.  But I’m still going to show up.  Eventually, I will suck a little less at it.

The more you show up to do something about your health, the more impact you will create in your outcomes.  Keep showing up.

Why don’t people show up?  They let their emotions and feelings get in the way.  I know we’re in a post modern society where experience and emotion are more valued than information, but experience and emotion are the constant variable in the showing up equation.  Information is abundant.  Your lack of health success is rarely due to a “I didn’t know” factor.

[Read more…]

By

Breaking Fear

There’s a saying, ‘We fear that which we do not know.’  Many will recite this as a way of self comforting after being criticized.  While I think this is true, I also think ‘we fear that which we do know.’

After the birth of our 3rd son, we joined the ranks for minivan owners.  If I could give advice to my 25 year old self, I would tell me, ‘Don’t fear the minivan, those things are freakn’ sweet.’

We got a used one, with all the features possible.  Since it wasn’t a hassle to get 3 kids into the back of a sedan anymore, we were more open to driving around a bit.  Little did we know, we had a battery terminal that could pop off the positive terminal just by blowing on it.  My wife found out the hard way after being stranded in a parking lot after a mom’s group.  Thankfully, when it appeared to be a dead battery, the cable had come off.

It doesn’t seem like a big problem except now we know something.  We know that there could be a possibility of hitting a pot hole (a probability of that here in Colorado Springs), it could shake the cable loose and then risk the battery not being charged while driving. The fear of getting somewhere, enjoying our time together, and then not being able to start the van back up, permeated through our thoughts.

Constant #fear is just as damaging as drug addictions, trans fats, and cubicle living. Click To Tweet

I decided that I would use Google University to see how to change the battery terminal.  Surprisingly, it looked like something I could handle, and I’m not a car guy.  I built up the confidence, went to the car parts store, found all the parts I needed in less than 2 minutes and was ready to tackle the project of saving the minivan.

I opened the hood up, located the battery cables and was dismayed at all the extra cables that weren’t on the Google videos. I began to fear that which I did not know, especially when it comes to electricity.  Long story short, under the many suggestions from my wife, I called our car whiz, motor-cross racing friend.

He looked at it, assessed the situation and fixed the problem in about 8 minutes.

What’s the point?  The point is that fear is paralyzing, whether you know what you’re getting yourself into or you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.  As I watch and observe our nation during this political season, I think fear of the known and unknown is destroying our nation’s physical health just as much as our low fat diet recommendations, sedentary lifestyles, sugar obsessions, and badges of busyness.

[Read more…]

By

I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up

If you were conscious in the late 80’s and through the 90’s like me, you’ll remember the commercial and many parodies from the line, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”  It turns out the maker of Life Alert was ahead of the game in predicting someone’s ability to survive based on whether they can get up or not.

A study back in 2012, tracked 2002 adults aged 51-80 and graded their ability to go from standing to sitting and back to standing.  From standing to sitting, you can earn 5 points.  From sitting to standing, you can earn another 5 points.  The trick is that you can’t use your hands, knees, or any other appendage to assist your movement or balance.  If you do, you lose one point each time you need an assist.  If you wobble a bit and lose balance, that deducts 0.5 points.

Out of the 2,002 people studied, they found that for every point you lost, that translated into a 21% increase chance of death in the next 6 years.  They do use the term ‘all cause mortality’ so that can be misleading.  All cause mortality lumps any cause of death like lighting strikes, snake bites, and terrorist attacks in the same group as something more likely for this population like a heart attack, cancer, iatrogenic causes (doctor caused) or just dying of old age.  But maybe if these people were more agile, they could escape the snake, fight the terrorists, and tell their doctor where to stick it.

It’s a very simple test and you can do it at home.

Lifestyle Medicine Colorado Springs

Roen Kelly/Discover

Try It

1. Stand in comfortable clothes in your bare feet, with clear space around you.

2. Without leaning on anything, lower yourself to a sitting position on the floor.

3. Now stand back up, trying not to use your hands, knees, forearms or sides of your legs.

Lifestyle Medicine Colorado Springs

Roen Kelly/Discover

Scoring

Any time you use an assist, take a point away.  If you’re in the standing position and place a hand on your knee (-1 point), drop to the other knee (-1 point), put your hand on the floor (-1 point), and brace with the side of your leg (-1 point) before coming to a sitting position, you scored 1 point out of 5.  Coming up, you put both hands on the floor (-2 points) and put a knee on the floor to position the other foot (-1 point) before standing fully upright, you just scored 2 points out of 5 for a grand total of 3 points out of 10.  That should freak you out a bit.

The beauty is that you can use this as a baseline and improve on it.  How do you improve it?  Practice standing, sitting on the floor, and standing back up.  Why do people lose their agility, balance, and strength as they age?  Because they don’t practice it, it’s not just because they are ‘getting older.’  We now live in a society where the average adult sits 60% of the day and spends 5 hours in front of a screen, whether TV or computer.  I can’t tell you how many people have told me that their doctors told them not to do squats because it was bad for their knees or hips.

I always ask, how do you sit in a chair or on the toilette?  That’s a squat.  The cliche, ‘use it or you lose it’ is basic physiology.  Start using your joins in their full range of motion.  This isn’t only necessary for your joint health but for your brain and nervous system.  When you start favoring and limiting certain motions, this diminishes receptors to the brain called mechanoreceptors.  Mechanoreceptors will inhibit pain signals within the spinal cord before those signals get to the brain and compute it as pain.  Movement is the safest pain reliever and analgesic on the planet.  Pain is a perception in the brain.

Movement also stimulates the cerebellum.  For the longest time, the cerebellum was thought to only deal with balance and coordination but the role of the cerebellum is much more vast.  It helps coordinate your visceral function, like digestion, thyroid, and your colon via the Vagus nerve.  It helps coordinate concentration, memory, and learning at the hippocampus.  It inhibits stress in the amygdala.  And it triggers the left pre-frontal cortex, the side that initiates thoughts of love, kindness, patience, and gratitude.

Movement is life.  And now it’s been proven that the worse your ability to move, the worse your ability to survive.  Don’t exercise for weight loss or calorie maintenance, you’ll be frustrated.  Exercise because it’s a required nutrient for your body to express all functions.  Without it, you are literally starving yourself.