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In these crazy times, people are giving lots of advice on how to keep viruses from getting to you and spreading to others. A few examples that the government has given on preventing the spread of the coronavirus are avoiding handshakes, isolating yourself, and remembering to use soap and water. While these are simple and practical tips, there's some advice from experts that I think is helpful and not as well known that I would like to share. Let's face it, most millennials like myself are pretty good at isolating themselves and seem to have been training for this scenario our whole lives but I don't think quarantining yourself and being in fear of germs is the greatest way to live. Here are some actionable tips that experts have given on how we can improve our immune systems: 1. Eat Plenty of Leafy GreensSalads are a great way to get the antioxidants your body needs. Spinach, kale, and other leafy greens are essential but other vegetables help as well. Dr. Steven Gundry and Dr. Catherine Shanahan are well-respected nutrition experts and strong advocates for ensuring you get plenty of vegetables in your diet. On the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, Dr. Cate suggests that 4 days a week, you should have a salad that includes 4 cups of vegetables of 4 different colors. In Dr. Gundry's book, Diet Evolution, he states that garlic, onions, leeks, mushrooms, asparagus, and artichokes are all great vegetables that help with immune function as well (p. 81). Here is another tip that Dr. Cate gives in her book, Deep Nutrition - “Remember, cooking burns up antioxidants and damages many vitamins. So the more you eat cooked foods, the more you need to balance your diet by eating fresh, uncooked, pungent-tasting herbs and vegetables (p. 265).” 2. Get Your Vitamin DIf there is one supplement that all health experts seem to agree on, it is Vitamin D. Unless you get more than 30 minutes of direct sunlight per day, you are insufficient on a critical vitamin that has been shown to benefit mood, heart function, bone health, and immune system function. Dr. Steven Gundry, nutrionist and former cardiac surgeon, has strong evidence that supports Vitamin D is beneficial for anyone looking to better their heart and immune system. He has tested this theory with thousands of patients and suggests between 5,000 and 10,000 IUs per day (which is actually just 1-2 tiny pills per day and is reasonably cheap - $15 for 360 pills that are 5,000 IUs each here). Some nutritionists have even suggested 10,000-15,000 IUs per day around times that you want to protect yourself from being sick and that no negative health benefits are observed from this amount. 3. Get in a Cold Bath and SaunaBen Greenfield, triathlete, blogger, and highly respected health and fitness expert, suggests that exposing yourself to extreme temperatures, hot or cold, greatly benefits your immune system. In his book, Beyond Training, he explains how Cold Thermogenesis has been shown to increase the amount of natural killer cells and the activity of them and how heat from saunas have been shown to increase your white blood cell count. He also states that German and Finnish studies have shown "regular sauna bathing leads to a 30 percent less chance of getting colds and influenza (p. 73-78)." I know this may seem extreme and many of us do not have access to saunas or cryogenic chambers but hot and cold baths have been shown to have similar effects, just to less of an extent. ConclusionThis post is not to discount what the CDC has provided us on how we can prevent the coronavirus and other illnesses from spreading. If you haven't already, I highly suggest going to CDC.gov to get information on the coronavirus including: symptoms, how to prepare your family, areas COVID-19 has reached, etc.
I'm not a doctor but think that the advice these respected experts have to share is valuable and should be shared. Thank you for reading and if you would like to subscribe to my blog, please go to my Contact page. Also, please give this post a like and share as well if you found it beneficial. Simply copy the link to Facebook, Twitter, or wherever or if you clicked on a post to arrive at this page, just hit the share/like button there. Comment if you have any questions.
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Here's to my first year researching the world of health and fitness! Here are all the books that I read related to this subject and this is only the start. I know it does not look like much for a year's worth but if you go to my About page, you'll see that there is much more that goes into the research than just the books. Plus many of these books are around 400 pages in length and I take notes while I am reading.
It's amazing how much these experts have to teach. They are not only experts in their field but leaders who have affected millions of peoples' lives while working their tails off creating content and helping their communities in all different ways. One of my main goals is to research experts from all different disciplines and focuses - from nutritionists to strength coaches/personal trainers to physical therapists so that I can get a full understanding and compare their beliefs and practices. One amazing thing to me is how many similarities many (if not all of them) have that I think we can all learn from:
Some of these experts are all about eating a high fat diet and being able to burn fat for fuel, some focus more on a plant-based diet, and some say you should focus on getting enough protein while eating a well-distributed mixture of carbohydrates and fats. None of these individuals are wrong - each side has its specific benefits and different diets work better for different people. Experiment with what works best for you and your goals. A lot of times, the best diet for you is the diet you can stick to. As I've said before, something these experts have taught me is how to live happily whether I am on a diet of 1,500 calories per day or 3,500 calories per day. I look forward to continuing my research and experimenting more with different diets and exercise programs to really find what works best for me. To give a bit of a sneak peak, I'll let you know the expert I have started to research now - Greg Nuckols of Stronger by Science. Greg is a young expert and powerlifter who goes deep into the science of what works best for hypertrophy and strength training while also having plenty of anecdotal evidence by being a strength coach himself. Lastly, I apologize for the delay in posts, I did not get to post last week so I need to make that up. I see many exciting things around Twelve Paths in the year to come! Thank you for reading this, go to my Contact page and subscribe if you are not on my email list already! We all know Morgan Spurlock's infamous documentary, Super Size Me, which was made in 2004 to show what can happen if all you eat is McDonald's for 30 days. He didn't do this because he loved McDonald's, he did this to show America the issue with eating fast food on a regular basis. Morgan explains how fast food has really taken over our diets due to its convenience and goes deep into not only the negative effects on your nutrition but also the corruption and ugly practices taken on by companies like McDonald's. I recently found out that some (I'm not sure how many) public schools still routinely show Super Size Me in Health class. It is insane the impact Morgan has made from this movie.
Well, Super Size me 2: Holy Chicken! is Morgan coming back 15 years later to take it a step further in an attempt to start his own fast food chain. After talking to several Marketing experts and studying other fast food chains, he decides to base it all on chicken. Fried chicken, of course, since how would a chain make it anywhere if they only served grilled chicken? Morgan was soon to find out how difficult it is to simply find large chicken farmers that don't solely have contracts with companies like Purdue and Tyson. He repeatedly got shut down and questioned on what he was doing. As you can see in the photo above, Morgan got deep in the weeds again and wanted to see every step of the process - on the sides of both starting a restaurant with the best possible team and working in the farms to see where the chickens come from, how they are raised and handled, and learning about the farmers themselves. Once again, Morgan doesn't fail to reveal some eyeopening facts on where the chicken we consume, whether from the grocery store or from restaurants, comes from. You'll be surprised by how chickens are optimized to be as young and fat as possible for production and the little it takes to be called "free-range" by the USDA. He also reveals the poor treatment from farmers talking about their work with companies like Tyson. These companies force consistent production 365 days a year and have full control over these farmers' lives. In my opinion, the sequel was better than the original! In the end, he shows how "honest, healthy fast food" is simply a contradiction and impossible here in America. Even though his restaurant looks to be closed as of September of last year, this movie hopefully makes as big of an impact as the first. A big takeaway from this documentary is how we vote with our dollars. My mindset used to be, "I'm only one person. Me avoiding certain companies won't affect them. I like it, and it tastes good. Oh well." Understand that this is ignorant and the reason these companies are so big is because we have this mindset. If you have the opportunity, turn to your local farms and farmers markets. These are hardworking people who got away from the corruption of Big Food companies. Also, it is not a bad idea to avoid fast food in general - nutrition experts like Dr. Cate Shanahan even suggest skipping a meal if your only option is convenient fast food. From my personal experience, avoiding fast food is much easier than it sounds. It is just a simple decision to extend your healthspan and lifespan and will show less support for Big Food companies. Thank you for reading! Please either like, share, and/or comment on this post and go watch the film for yourself! Currently, this documentary can be found online through Amazon Prime or you can rent it on YouTube, Google Play, or Vudu. OverviewThis podcast episode is really what first got me interested in Kelly Starrett. He has a very interesting point of view that I agree with - that due to modern technology, we're not moving or sleeping enough. “We’re contending with a lot of the demands of being modern humans and it sets us up to not really reap the benefit and the bounty that is so extraordinary about being human. Because these bodies, they’re badass, man (Ever Forward Radio Podcast Ep. 242).” Here are some of the key topics that Kelly hits in this episode that struck me as important:
“This is why we do sport in the first place. Not to win Olympic medals, not to be on a team for any other reason than it helps us know ourselves and it helps us know our friends and it helps us see the world very cleanly. And I think this is why I hope that everyone has some kind of competitive or at least a physical practice because it really simplifies in a really easy model what’s working in your life and what’s not working in your life.” Here are also a few helpful, specific tips:
ConclusionOf Kelly's dozens and dozens of interviews, this is one of my favorite because he covers many different topics and gives great tips to go along with it.
Whether you are an elite athlete or the average person who exercises for strength of longevity reasons, this is what Kelly sees as most important, in this order:
This podcast episode can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and several other media apps as well as the YouTube video above. Thank you for reading! Go to the Contact page to subscribe to this blog!! Stir-Fry is a pretty typical food prep I will do about once every 6-8 weeks. It is not always like this - I alternate vegetables, meat, and sauce but I made this is one yesterday and it's of my favorites. Since I am working on bulking up, I am less worried about carbohydrates but still care about getting plenty of vegetables and protein. This is a great, easy way to get a couple cups of various vegetables in each meal. Ingredients
Procedure
Enjoy!Thanks for reading! Comment with your favorite stir-fry ingredients!
Also, go to my Contact page to subscribe to the Twelve Paths blog! I realize this is almost a year old but I just recently got these results from my doctor since I never received a call about the results being in or to set up my next appointment - so I called and requested they'd be sent to me. The main two things I want to look at are blood glucose and lipid profile. I'll also evaluate my numbers based on Dr. Catherine Shanahan's recommendations. Dr. Cate is a highly respected nutrition expert who has been a physician most of her life. Since the images may be difficult to see, I'll spell everything out. A couple things to note:
Blood GlucoseMy fasting blood glucose: 59 mg/dL Normal range: 60-99 mg/dL ADA guidelines on blood glucose: < 100 mg/dL = Normal, 100-25 = Impaired, > 125 = Diabetic Even though my blood glucose is "low", I believe if I had only been fasting for about 12 hours, my blood sugar would have likely in the 60-65 range. It is good to know that, next time I experiment with fasting, if I go past 20 hours fasted then I will want to closely monitor my blood glucose so it does not get much lower than that. Lipid ProfileMy Results vs. Target: Total Cholesterol = 173 mg/dL (< 200 = Target) Triglyceride = 32 mg/dL (< 150 = Normal) HDL = 72 mg/dL (> 60 = High) LDL = 95 mg/dL (< 100 = Optimal) non HDL = 101 mg/dL (30 above LDL goal = Target) To me, this is nothing to worry about. My HDL shows as slightly high but from what I've heard from experts, people (especially my age) should not be too alarmed by numbers being slightly high. Dr. Cate's Standards
Dr. Cate also states that if your fasting blood glucose is > 89, that may be a sign that you are pre-diabetic and, for her patients, she suggests to eat < 100g of carbohydrates per day (p. 214-215 Deep Nutrition). Kelly Starrett is a strength and conditioning coach as well as a physical therapist who has clients from and has consulted with organizations from the NFL to the NBA to all of the branches of the military, not to mention some of the top athletes in the CrossFit universe that show up in his gym - San Francisco CrossFit, which Kelly has been co-owner of since they opened the doors in 2005.
Kelly is a strong believer in that everyone, not just athletes, should know how to move properly as well as how to conduct basic maintenance on themselves in order to live up to your full physical potential for as long as possible. This book has over 500,000 copies sold and Becoming a Supple Leopard has made a huge influence in the worlds of physical therapy and professional sports. Kelly's mobility program is based off of 7 archetypes that are used for all basic positions that are used throughout every day life as well as in the gym. For example: the way you set up for a squat should be the same way you set up when picking up a heavy box and the way you set up for a deadlift should be the same way you set up to pick a baby out of the crib. Kelly goes from teaching you how to:
These mobilizations involve basic stretches as well as variations of rollers, resistance and compression bands, and balls. Kelly believes that if you lay on a lacrosse ball and roll around, whether you are on your back or stomach, any area where you feel pain is a tight spot that you need to work on - so, as you can imagine if you know how stiff a lacrosse ball is, some of these techniques are pretty painful until you get used to it. I came to appreciate how this book shows you what basic forms everybody should be able to get in (without actually saying that). For instance, if you can squat all the way down with your feet together as a child, there's no reason you shouldn't have that same capability when you are 20 or 30 years old. He also helped me correct my form on things like my bench press and push up so that my elbows are forced not to move away from my body and to appreciate the quality of my form over the amount of volume (weight and repetitions) I can do. At the end of the book, he teaches you how to create your own 14-day mobility plan (which includes 10 to 15 minutes of mobility work) - I will show what mine looks like at the bottom of this post. I like to do these at the end of the day or any time I would normally be sitting on the couch. I based my mobility program on the fact that I need to improve my ankle range of motion, to minimize pain in my feet and lower back (and possibly gain some arch in my foot), and to work on the pistol archetype. I also organized the days to prepare myself for the next day's workout. Anyone would benefit from reading this book and trying out Kelly's mobilization techniques. Kelly has other books as well, which are somewhat similar to this but more specific toward certain lifestyles. If you have a desk job, I highly recommend his book Deskbound: Standing Up to a Sitting World (which I am currently reading). His other books include: Ready to Run (teaching you how to run properly) and Waterman 2.0 (for paddling and surfing). Let me guess how your typical day goes... You wake up. You eat breakfast. You go to work. You work for four hours. You eat lunch. You work another four hours. You come home. You eat dinner. You watch TV. And then, you go to bed to do it all again the next day. Day in, day out, you do this on repeat. Just mindless action after mindless action, day after day... Am I right? Well what are you doing between all of that or during? You should be challenging yourself and being human instead of being a machine or entertaining yourself with TV or social media. Whether it be in your relationships, your career, or your general health and well-being, there is always room for improvement and we live in the 21st-century where whatever your passion is or information on how to improve is right at your fingertips. Know what your goals are and make a plan so that you make them happen. It’s that simple. Figure out gaps in your schedule where are you can work on yourself like working out in the morning or the evening or making sure you get better sleep so that you have energy the next day to do the things you want. Another idea is: instead of entertaining yourself, educate yourself. When you’re at work, instead of listening to music, listen to podcasts. When you’re at home, instead of watching a movie or TV show, read a book. This new age of easily accessible entertainment is just as dangerous as the easily accessible fast food. As Kelly Starrett, physical therapist and fitness expert, is saying, we are really starting to see a “wholesale de-evolution of the human being” and it’s sad. We are not made to stare at a screen for 8-12 hours a day and sit on our butts. We’re made to move and we should be pushing ourselves to our full physical and mental potential. We are given 100 years (if we play it right) so make the most of it. Wake up. I realize this is a bit of a rant but listening to these experts has really woke me up and made me realize I should not be wasting any time. These people are not just health and fitness experts, they are savvy entrepreneurs and CEOs who are examples on how to live to your full potential. The American Dream isn’t about money and fame. It’s about doing what you love and leaving your mark.
“I think happiness is an outgrowth of pursuing goals that matter to you - that have meaning to you. Making progress,you know? Kind of going back to the idea of flow, where you are spending your time doing things that are challenging to you, that you’re getting immediate feedback on... you can see your progress, that you lose yourself in, and you don’t, you just don’t get that experience watching youtube videos all day.” - Mike Matthews IntroFittingly, Taylor and I are just coming back from a trip down to Florida from New York, in which we flew. I'd much rather take a 4 hour flight than a 20 hour car ride, especially for a short trip but there are obviously some negatives to flying. There are a lot of unknowns on what it does to your health but even just being in an enclosed space with that many people for that long can inevitably get you sick. This post is to share some tips I have learned from health experts like Ben Greenfield and Shawn Stevenson, that they give to help with things like jet-lag. Dr. Cate ShanahanI have not heard Dr. Cate specifically talk about flying but one of her common nutrition tips is, "there is no such thing as a healthy snack (p. 334 - Deep Nutrition)." She states that you should avoid snacking and that if your only option for a meal/snack is unhealthy, skip that meal and just wait for the next. This is very suitable to flying because it is difficult to find a healthy snack in an airport (or on a plane) and most of the restaurants are McDonalds, Starbucks, or the like so the healthier option is to just wait until you get off the flight. Shawn StevensonThe biggest thing that flying negatively affects is your energy levels because of how it drives several hormones out of whack. Shawn's book, Sleep Smarter, is all about the topic of circadian rhythm - providing tips on napping and getting the best quality sleep while giving you an extensive knowledge on hormones like cortisol and melatonin. One suggestion he gives in his book when it comes to flying is to "get grounded" after a flight. Grounding is making contact with the ground with bare feet, which has been shown to reduce stress, inflammation, and cardiovascular risk (p. 183-184 - Sleep Smarter). Ben GreenfieldBen Greenfield is the most qualified expert that I know for this topic because of how much he travels and for the fact that he has done speaking events for CEOs and a hot topic is avoiding jet-lag so that they can be at the top of your game after a flight. He goes in-depth into this topic in his book Beyond Training, laying out nine useful tips, and he also discusses this topic in multiple podcast interviews. To keep this post short, I will give you some key points.
ConclusionEssentially, the key to flying is minimizing the negative affects on your circadian clock and making sure you are eating healthy so that you have a strong immune system. These are all helpful tips, which I have found to help (especially exercising when you land by swimming or running outside). I highly suggest reading the books these tips come from. Deep Nutrition is all about the topic of nutrition by researching our ancestor's diets from all over the world, Sleep Smarter is full of sleep knowledge and hacks, and Beyond Training is full of all types of bio-hacking. Go see my Recommended Books page for summaries or my post on Deep Nutrition.
I found this segment with Dr. Catherine Shanahan to be a fascinating discussion on cholesterol and she states why she believes this myth that fat clogs arteries is the main reason we have been seeing a decline in our health over the past century. She is a strong believer that vegetable oils are an enormous harm to our health and that the key to being healthy is through eating natural foods. Here is my favorite quote from Dr. Cate in this documentary, which illuminates how serious this topic is: “So before we started this experiment, the rates of Type 2 Diabetes were almost non-existent. But the rates of obesity and our unhealthy diets have so dramatically accelerated that now children at age 2 are being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and at age 3 and 4 are having complications of it like strokes and heart attacks. So this one idea that saturated fat was bad that came from Ancel Keys was like setting off an atom bomb in our health and it has changed the course of history for human health.” |
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