Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Investing with Purpose

This past weekend I finally finished one of my most favorite TV programs of all time, Breaking Bad.  I’m really excited because I just learned it may not be totally over with extra seasons being produced.

Walter WhiteIf you’re not familiar with the series, it’s about a high school chemistry teacher, diagnosed with lung cancer.  Long story short, Walter White became the greatest Meth cook in the southwest US amassing over $80,000,000…all in the name of helping his family.  It’s not the feel good story of the year as he has had to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to accumulate this wealth. The people that are most affected are the very reasons that he went into this shady industry.

If you’ve ever read anything previous, you may have seen me quote a statement that ‘contradictions lead to destruction.’  Walter White lead a life of contradictions that lead to destruction upon destruction of everything he valued in life.  He committed criminal acts to gain wealth all in the name of  supporting his family.

My question to you is, would you invest in Mr. White’s ultra pure blue Meth drug cartel to make a couple bucks to retire comfortably? Would you invest in ISIS so they can get buy up some more weapons and persecute and destroy more lives?  Would you look at Hitler and think, ‘that guy’s onto something, I gotta get a piece of the action?’  If you’re running in my circles, I bet the answer is easily, no.

You’ve probably heard that you are your greatest investment and asset and I don’t deny that.  But I want you to take a look at your actual monetary investments.  What type of investment vehicles are your IRA and 401K parked?

Are you cursing pharmaceutical companies for lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering yet have 80% of your retirement in funds with Merck, GlaxoSmithKline,  Novartis, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson?  Then why not put your money in the local meth dealer?  It’s no difference.

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Homophobia for Homocysteine

Homophobia is defined as a ‘dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people.’  I would rather you turn your attention to a dislike or prejudice of another word with the ‘homo’ prefix in it…Homocysteine.  If you want to change your future health outcomes, I would encourage you to create homophobia for homocysteine. 

I was delivering a recent workshop on the Thyroid and I was asked, “if you could only test for one value, what would it be?”  This was difficult to answer as your lab values interconnect so much and to base anything on one value is lazy and ignorant.  But to play the game with the audience member, I said I would test for homocysteine, not an analyte directly used to measure thyroid function.

Here’s why.

Homocysteine, when in a nice range of 4 – 8 umol/L  is a good thing.  This range is definitely tighter than what you see on a standard lab panel of 0 – 15 umol/L.  Why do I like a tighter range?  Because of what homocysteine indicates and contributes to when it’s elevated and I don’t want to wait until it’s outside the ‘normal’ ranges before action is taken.

homocysteine_metabolism

 

Homocysteine is actually a middle step in the formation of the amino acid cysteine, which is a precursor of one of the most power antioxidants in your body in glutathione so to be low is a bad thing as well.  Homocysteine is actually a good thing.  But often times too much of a good thing has the opposite desired effects.  

Homocysteine is one of those scenarios but takes it up a level too.  Homocysteine has been called the single best indicator of your longevity and quality of life.  It’s not just an indicator of many disease processes like cardio-vascular disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Auto-Immune disease, diabetes, Hypothyroid, Osteoporosis, liver disease, hormone imbalance, autism, and anemia, to name a few, but a massive contributor to them.

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Getting worse before getting better? Here’s why?

Many times when people undergo treatment for something, they experience getting worse before getting better.  I’m not talking about the obvious chemical poisoning like with chemo therapy.  I think most people realize why they get worse before getting better.  It’s literally poison.

What I’m talking about is when you start doing things that are good for you; adding purity and sufficiency into your life.

To understand this, you have to look to the nervous system.  The nervous system coordinates EVERYTHING in your life.  Every second of every day your nervous system is organizing life to keep you functional and going.  It doesn’t matter if you’re awake, asleep, happy, sad, drunk, or in the middle of running a marathon.

Your nervous system is organizing and coordinating how to best respond to temperature change, oxygen levels, heart rate, pulse, neurotransmitters, nutrient assimilation, waste excretion, communication, and thousands upon thousands of other stimuli each and every second of the day.  All this is happening subconsciously; you don’t have to think about any of it.  All this is happening while you’re consciously reading this post.

Pretty freakn’ amazing, right?  As conscious as you are of life’s busyness, if you had to juggle what your nervous system juggles consciously, we would all be in a mental wards or no one would live past the age of 5 because we would probably forget some major function to coordinate.

The more we add more stimulus from physical, chemical, and emotional inputs, the more our nervous system has to juggle.  No wonder people can’t concentrate, can’t sleep, and medicate themselves to ‘just keep going.’

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Creating Division

The single best way to create division is to make decisions.  The problem people run into is that their decisions are creating division in their own life affecting the matters they value.

I’m sure you have heard the quote, “You can please some of the people all of the time and you can please all of the people some of the time.  You just can’t please all of the people all of the time. “

EVERYTHING

If you fall into the category of trying to please everyone all of the time you risk many health factors coming your way.  You risk living life at an unsustainable speed for too long and risk the many consequences of this form of busyness.

Decisions have to be made but there’s a sure fire way to make sure you’re making the right decision.  The right decision is one based on enhancing and supporting your personal values.  I have talked about this in how to choose the right doctor.  If you and your doctor have differing views on why people get sick, you will have differing views on how to get your health better.  It won’t be a productive working relationship.

How do you know what you value?  There’s a couple ways to figure out what you value.

Assessment #1.

Take 5 minutes with a piece of paper and a pen.  Imagine you had a new born baby that you were going to raise until adulthood.  At the age of 18, your child is taken away from you and placed as leader of the free world.  The only influence on that person’s life up to age 18 was you.  His/her leadership is a direct reflection of the values you taught that child. 

On the piece of paper, write down every single characteristic you would want your child, now the leader of the world, to exhibit in his/her leadership decisions.

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Auto-Immune Roller Coaster

At a workshop I gave over the weekend I had a woman come up to me afterwards to ask about her auto-immune disorder.  She ate amazingly clean but was still having many ups and downs with her progress and symptoms.  I could tell in the first minute of this conversation that she was someone that always had to be in control of her life.  

So I asked about her home life and marriage.  “They’re great but my husband and son won’t do what I tell them to improve their health.”  

Would you say you are often frustrated and irritated by their lack of drive to seek health like you do?  She said, “yes, they just don’t get it.”

rollercoasterI said, that’s why your symptoms go on roller coasters.  You like control and the easiest thing to control is what you put in your mouth.  You can’t control other’s motivations, especially grown men and children.

Your immune system has 2 basic branches.  TH1 and TH2.  Simplistically, the TH1 side is more responsible for the symptom side of sickness like coughing, runny nose, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, etc.  The TH2 side is more for antibody formation.

In times of stress (physical, chemical, emotional, social, and spiritual), your body, via Cortisol, will suppress the TH1 side.  It’s not going to be efficient to your survival if you have to stop and throw up or stop to fill your pants if there is a lion chasing you down.  Short term, no problem.

Long term, you suppress your first line of defense (TH1) enough to the point that the antibody side (TH2) gets over enhanced and makes your auto-immune progress up and down.  I know this first hand.

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Maximize Recovery…Reassess These

The point of exercise and training is to break the body down.  Your workout is actually doing damage.  This damage is essential and intelligent to you getting stronger, faster, quicker, and more efficient.  The only way the body gets better is through challenges. 

The problem is that many think it’s the workout that creates the magic.  The actuality is that it’s the recovery that is key.  Most people might workout 30 minutes.  That leaves 23 1/2 hours to recover.

Reassess these 3 common practices that put a damper on your recovery and ultimately your performance.

caffeineCaffeine

Many consume coffee pre-workout to boost their performance.  It’s essentially a performance enhancing drug.  There’s no denying that coffee boosts energy.  Just ask the 54% of Americans over the age of 18 who consume coffee daily.   It’s also no mystery that kids consume caffeinated beverages like energy drinks and such, which would drastically raise that 54%, if you included the entire population.

The problem is that this habit may boost short term performance at the expense of longevity, injury prevention, and recovery.  If you ever have lab work, usually there is a panel that lists out the type of white blood cells.  You will see these as neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils.

Monocytes are cells that clean up inflammatory damage as well as debris from destroyed microorganisms.  They differentiate into macrophages and play a huge role in tissue repair whether you are injured, you are sick, or you have been training hard.  Without monocytes, muscles would not be able to heal after training or injury.

Cortisol and adrenaline (hormones released during times of stress, which can be physical, chemical, or emotional) lower macrophage activity and count.  In essence stress lowers your immune system.  Your immune system stimulates inflammation.  Caffeine is a direct hit to the adrenals, causing release of cortisol and adrenaline, lowering your healing inflammatory response triggered by your immune system.

Think about this way.  If you’re running from a bear, it would not be efficient if you had to stop to cough, sneeze, or dig a hole and pop a squat because you’re fighting the flu.  It also wouldn’t be conducive to your survival if you rolled your ankle and it ballooned up and caused you to be immobile.  Ever get injured during the heat of competition but not realize it until it was all over?  That’s the cortisol and adrenaline kicking in to keep you surviving.  Caffeine is a stress on the body.

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The Flu Season Hoax

The media bonanza regarding the flu is starting and you will notice 1 of 2 things.  First, they are using massive scare and fear tactics to persuade you into getting a flu shot.  B. The media reports on what it wants to report to persuade you to think how they want you to think. That’s their job.  Your job is to think.  Watching hours of media causes you to think less.

The media reports on what it wants to report to persuade you to think how they want you to think. Your job is to think. Click To Tweet

Their agenda is to please their advertisers.  In this case, a massive chunk of their budget comes from the pharmaceutical industry, who have a lot to gain by getting you to think there is a horrible bug out there and the only defense is to get a vial full of toxic chemicals and puss.

I look it this whole Flu hoopla as a giant hoax.  Let me give you an insight into why.

fatigued womanIf you look at “flu season,” I see a bigger common denominator than an elusive virus.  Look at the American lifestyle starting in September.  Most people go from a warm season where they are outdoors, eating fresh food, being active, and are generally a lot happier.  Kids move indoor all day in school and told to sit still for 8 hours at a time and rewarded with ice cream, pizza parties, and candy for getting correct answers.

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