April 4, 2017 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Obesity: A Sign of Extreme Intelligence but a Monster Ego

This post is for all those fatties out there. You know who I’m talking about…fatty, fatty, fat, fat. Yeah, I called you fat, look at me I’m skinny. Never stopped me from getting…slapped in the face. Before you turn this off or post negative comments, hear me out for 3 seconds.

Being fat is a sign of extreme, high-level intelligence. Yes, that’s right. When you are assessing that booty and belly shake in the mirror, don’t think disgusting. Think Einstein, Hawking, or even Dwight K. Schrute.

Being fat is a sign of extreme, high-level intelligence. Click To Tweet

Your body NEVER does stupid stuff. It always gives you the absolute best chance of surviving the next 30 seconds, even if it’s at the expense of your next 30 years.

Why would the body take excess energy substrate and convert it to fat? Because it’s the preferred fuel for your brain and body to operate. Animals that go into hibernation are living off their fat stores. Humans don’t hibernate but there is (or was) a great possibility that we would go without food for a lengthy time.

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March 13, 2017 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Full Body Fix Radio: Pain, Inflammation, and Auto-Immune

I was recently interviewed on Dr. Scott Mills’ podcast, The Full Body Fix. You can subscribe to it on iTunes or click the image above for show notes. We dive into the topic of when your aches and pains are more than just aches and pain and where to look when traditional body work isn’t fixing the problem. Enjoy.

March 6, 2017 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Low Sodium Diets for Heart Health: Why Your Doctor and Dietician is Missing the Mark

If you are being treated for high blood pressure, I’m sure you’ve been told to watch your sodium intake. The traditional medical theory is that since you consume too much sodium, your body is so defective that it doesn’t know what to do with it, so it holds onto the sodium. And if you’re holding onto too much sodium, you will then unfortunately hold onto fluid. And if you are holding onto fluid, this makes your heart work harder, thus raising blood pressure. And if you don’t get that lowered, you’re going to die…like yesterday.

This all sounds good and logical…except that it isn’t. Well not exactly. Yes, sodium retention will create fluid retention which can create blood pressure elevation. But your body has too many checks and balances to just let sodium hang around from dietary intake.

The part that contradicts the notion that you need a low sodium diet is that your body never does stupid stuff. If your body is holding onto sodium to raise blood pressure, then there’s a very important reason. And that reason is because you are attempting to escape something that is potentially or perceived as dangerous (whether you are aware of it or not).

Sodium is a major player in the communication signals from the adrenals to the kidneys. If you’re in danger, those signals will create the retention of sodium so that there’s an end game expression of an increase in blood pressure. If you cannot get your blood pressure elevated to pump blood filled with all the nutrients and hormones necessary to engage muscle and nervous system activity to escape the danger, you’re done…like yesterday.

The general population experiences daily dangers from sitting too much, adverse childhood experiences that are unresolved, the Standard America Diet (not just salt intake), and staying employed at a job that is hated to earn money to impress people that aren’t liked, to buy stuff that isn’t even wanted. Just because you don’t have an immediate deadline doesn’t mean you aren’t stressed.

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January 20, 2017 By Dr. Kurt, DC

You Don’t Have Adrenal Fatigue | Stop Making Your Identity a Catch Phrase

For those that aren’t familiar with the adrenal glands, they have huge function in your health expression. Every second of your day, your nervous system has to organize and coordinate your life experiences: What you eat, how you think, how you move, wind changes, social influences, spiritual experiences, and congruency in purpose and practices.

With every single item, within microseconds, your nervous system has to decide if these particular influences will cause you harm or cause you happiness. More often than not, your nervous system will be cautious and engage functions that shift you into immediate survival and protection. The first set of organs that your nervous system talks to are your adrenals.

There are two major hormone groups (but many more) that the adrenals release to help you adapt when life throws curve balls at you. One group is the catecholamines (adrenaline, epinephrine, norepinephrine, etc) that primarily work on functions of heart rate, blood pressure, muscle contraction, and triggering your brain for reaction over reason. The other class is cortisol that primarily works to get your body to release stored energy (sugar) to give you instant fuel to escape a potential danger.

The longer someone is in the this state of protection, the more the body creates a default setting into that expression. And the longer than is expressed, the more apt you favor catabolism (tissue destruction). This sounds bad but no reaction or symptom is stupid. These expressions are creating pathways for you to buy time to escape what is potentially life threatening. The more this reaction is repeated, the harder it is to keep up with the demands. It’s like if you sprinted instead of walked to do everything. You’re going to get tired.

Tired ≠ Fatigue

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December 13, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

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.

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October 19, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

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.

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September 20, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

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.

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September 16, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

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.

Javier Zarracina/Vox

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.’

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August 2, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

When High Intensity Harms

I’ve been getting a very similar question/story lately. It goes something like this.

I’ve been eating paleo for months, doing high intensity exercise, doing everything right, and I still can’t drop the weight.

They often add fatigue into the equation as well. That statement in itself could mean a lot of things but for the sake of this post, I want to focus on the high intensity exercise piece.

I LOVE high intensity exercise. I do high intensity workouts in a CrossFit manner. But exercise is actually one of the poorest interventions for you to lose weight. Why? Because most measure exercise in terms of calorie expenditure. This mind set is when high intensity harms as it leaves you in the mental state of more it better. I don’t really want to get into the calorie-in, calorie-out falsehood of activity and weight. Instead, I’m going to focus on the bigger picture.

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July 8, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

The Bachelor Diet

For 2 weeks, I lived the bachelor life (not the TV show). While my wife and kids were visiting family for 2 weeks, I was to fend for myself in the eating department. I have an amazing wife that does all the meal planning and cooking for our family. At the beginning of each month, she pulls off the dry erase calendar on our kitchen wall and plans out every single dinner for the month. She even plans out a few days to eat out or super easy meals that I can prepare.

Sadly, this wasn’t my reality for the 2 weeks home alone. I had to actually make dinners for myself. The agony. Seriously, I hate cooking.

About 4-5 days per week, I make breakfast to help out. EVERY single morning, it’s the same thing. I crack 7 eggs into a bowl, whisk them and scramble them in a pan with butter. I divide the finished product between the four out of five of us that are eating solid food and add some fruit to the plate. That’s breakfast, every morning, 7 days/week in the Perkins house. Our kids have never had cereal, toast, or a glass of milk or OJ.

As simple as that is to make and with a routine of doing it, I only made eggs for myself ONCE in two weeks of living the bachelor life. That’s how inherently lazy I am and how much I avoid the agony of cooking.

What was I supposed to eat and make for myself? I ate what I liked and what was convenient to make. I call this the bachelor diet and I want you to experiment with this. I’ll give you the reasons why I think eating this way could create some big changes in your health, especially if you’re looking to shed some weight. I have no proof that it will cause you to lose weight or gain health but I have a theory behind it and if you’re game, I would love to hear your experience with it…if you choose to accept the challenge.

Rule #1: This is a NO JUDGEMENT zone. I wasn’t worried about nutrient content. I placed no limits on portions. Out of the standard 42 meals in a 2 week period, 10% did not include the list below. I was invited out a couple times and I also planned to grab a meal out after delivering a couple workshops.

These were my primary foods for 2 weeks:

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches. This was actually almond butter and organic strawberry preserves on gluten free bread, most often right after my workouts.
Ground beef.
Chicken wings.
Watermelon.
pureWOD Build (protein supplement) mixed in almond milk.
Kohana Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate.

All items were purchased at Costco except the gluten free bread and pureWOD Build.

Why do I think this could help your weight loss journey (not that I have any proof since I neither gained nor lost weight doing this)? I hypothesize that it comes down to calming your nervous system. The less decision making, the less mental stress. I think variety has good intentions but it creates paralysis by analysis for many people.

As a result, the nervous system shifts into protection mode, taxing the adrenals, with a resultant sugar and insulin fight inside your body. You could eat a nutritious meal but because there was so much mental anguish before that meal was prepared, your body won’t digest and absorb those nutrients as efficiently as hoped.

Your nervous system likes routine. The more you have to adapt to life, the greater the potential that your nervous system defaults to that protection side of life, which chronically puts you into a state of tissue break down. The more tissues break down, the more inflammation is created. It’s not just your meal choice that has your nervous system on edge, it could just be the tipping point. If your meal choice IS your only stress in life, you’re either a toddler reading this, which is amazing. Or you’ve given up on trying to change the status quo in your life and need to re-establish your purpose in life.

Seriously, when it comes to meal planning and eating, we cycle through the same meals multiple times in a month. If it were up to me, I would eat the same 2 to 3 things each week. What I suggest that you try is pick 5-6 meals that you like and repeat those for a month. Since it’s a longer time frame that my 2 week experiment, and if you’re actually doing it with intention of losing weight, ditch the wheat products and ditch the milk products. Wheat spikes your blood sugar, which spikes insulin and milk just spikes insulin.

What our typical month looks like:

Breakfast: Eggs and fruit
Lunch: For me, it’s snacking on some nuts and a protein shake. The family often eats leftovers from the previous dinner.
Dinner: Meat and veggies.

It may seem boring but boring brings rest, especially at the end of the day. Dinner is never boring when you’re eating with a hot wife and 3 kids. Boring is eating chicken wings alone. Boring is actually being a bachelor. Need help on how to be boring? You know how to find me.