Reverse Disease with 5 Health Strategies

Life is a journey and for most of us health is an important part of that journey, because if you have health challenges your ability to manifest your passions will be seriously impaired. The more I study natural medicine, the more it becomes clear to me that the solution for most illness involves some fairly basic concepts. If you apply these principles early enough with most illnesses you will activate your body's healing response and recover from your illness. In my experience most people who have just started investigating the power of natural medicine fail to comprehensively integrate all of these principles and reap the powerful synergistic benefits they can provide. 1) Safely Access Sun Exposure as Much as Possible - There are many benefits of sun exposure. The UVB in the sun will help your body produce vitamin D, and optimal levels are crucial to prevent diseases like obesity, heart disease, arthritis, asthma, Alzheimer's, and dozens of other diseases. Also, and this is important, if you have cancer or an autoimmune disease like MS, Crohn's, or rheumatoid arthritis, it is absolutely vital to raise your vitamin D to an optimal biological level. Regular sun exposure not only provides UVB but over 1500 wavelengths and we most likely will not fully appreciate the value of regular exposure to many of these wavelengths for hundreds of years. Many people are confused about sun exposure, and don't understand that to reap the benefits they need a significant amount of skin exposed to the sun for their skin to stimulate vitamin D production. Even if you live in a sunny climate during the summer, it is the rare individual that is getting adequate sun exposure. This is typically due to the simple fact that most people have responsibilities during the work week that keeps them indoors, out of the sun. Remember that 15 to 30 minutes of eating outside with almost all of your skin covered, is not going to give you healthy vitamin D levels. The time necessary varies based on your age, weight (as fat tissue sucks up vitamin D), skin color, season, latitude, altitude, cloud cover, and time of day. The range can be anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. The only way to know for sure is to make sure you never get burnt and to measure your vitamin D blood levels. 2) Drink Clean Water, Free of Toxins - Remember that most municipal water supplies are contaminated with chlorine and fluoride. It is relatively easy to remove chlorine and disinfection byproducts with high quality carbon filters. My favorite is the whole house water filter. The large filters are good for 5 to 10 years but the prefilters need to be changed every month or two. However carbon filters don't remove fluoride very well, so reverse osmosis or distillers are the best option. My favorite is reverse osmosis (RO) as they don't damage the water as much. The downside of RO filters is most have a holding tank that invariably becomes contaminated and needs to be regularly disinfected with chlorine, which is a maintenance hassle. 3) Eat Real Food - Getting proper nutrition is an important step in healing just about any disease. For some diseases, like type 2 diabetes, it will cure virtually every case. It will also prevent and treat most heart disease, cancers, and Alzheimer's. The key is removing the insulin resistance with diet and exercise. So what is the common thread that runs through these diseases? If you are a long time reader you probably know that the answer is insulin resistance. Resolve insulin resistance and you no longer have type 2 diabetes, and you dramatically reduce if not eliminate your risk of cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's. The simple key is to EAT REAL FOOD. Ideally growing it yourself is best. Next best is locally grown and organic. But if you can't do this for whatever reason, you still need to eat vegetables. Even non-organic ones are better than no vegetables at all. Avoid most processed foods, and especially sugars and processed grains, or even worse, heated oils. I am not sure which is worse, processed sugar or fats, but the key is to avoid both. That means industrialized polyunsaturated oils in a bottle, like corn or canola oil. Saturated fats like coconut oil are fine, as are olive oil, butter, avocado, and nuts (especially macadamia and pecans). But how do you know if you have insulin resistance? Simple: if you are overweight, have diabetes, high blood pressure, or taking a statin, you likely have it, but to know for sure, have a fasting blood insulin level test. If it's over 5 you're insulin resistant. The most powerful strategy I have ever encountered is to replicate our ancestral eating patterns. Remember, your ancient ancestors never had access to food 24/7 so it makes perfect sense that your genes and metabolism are optimized for regular periods where you don't eat. The key is to restrict your calories to a 6 to 8 hour window, and eat no calories for the remainder of the day. You can drink water, tea, or coffee as long as there is no dairy or sweetener in them. Why is it important to have a long span of time during which you're not eating before bed? Largely this is due to the way your body creates energy, which is through your mitochondria. These tiny bacterial derivatives live inside your cell and are optimized to create energy from the food you eat and the air you breathe. The mitochondria create energy by generating electrons that are normally transferred to ATP (adenosine triphosphate). When you don't have insulin resistance this energy transfer works quite nicely, but when you are insulin resistant or you eat excessively, all hell can break loose. If you eat excessive food and you don't burn the calories with movement fairly shortly after consuming the calories, the electrons back up inside the mitochondria as there is plenty of ATP that isn't being used. The problem is that these electrons are highly reactive and they start to leak out of the electron transport chain in the mitochondria, and if enough electrons leak out they wind up prematurely killing the mitochondria, and then wreak further havoc by damaging your cell membranes and DNA. There are many knowledgeable experts that believe this is one of the keys to accelerated aging. So how can you apply this knowledge? Simple: resolve your insulin resistance as soon as you can, and do not eat for AT LEAST three hours before you go to sleep. Your body will use the least amount of calories when sleeping and the LAST thing you need is excess fuel generating free radicals damaging your tissues. 4) You Must Regularly Move Your Body to Stay Healthy - The average American adult spends about 10 hours each day sitting, and more than 10,000 studies have now confirmed that chronic sitting is a potent independent risk factor for insulin resistance and an early death. Ideally, strive to sit for less than three hours a day, and make it a point to walk more. A stand-up desk is a great option if you have an office job, and a fitness tracker or cell phone can be used to ensure you're getting the recommended 7,000 to 10,000 steps per day. Next, you'll want to incorporate a more regimented fitness routine, and virtually any exercise is better than none. Benefits of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) includes cardiovascular fitness, improved muscle growth and strength, and the generation of "anti-aging" human growth hormone (HGH), also referred to as "the fitness hormone." It also effectively stimulates your muscles to release anti-inflammatory myokines, which increase your insulin sensitivity and glucose use inside your muscles. They also increase liberation of fat from adipose cells, and the burning of the fat within the skeletal muscle. Strength training is also an important component, and is recommended for all ages, including kids and seniors. Gaining more muscle through resistance exercises has many benefits, from losing excess fat to maintaining healthy bone mass and preventing age-related muscle loss as you age. Whatever you choose to do, please do take the time to exercise, and incorporate as much physical activity into your life as you can. 5) We All Need to Sleep Eight Hours to Stay Healthy - Most fail to fully appreciate how important sleep is to their health. I know, as I was one of them. However I have since learned to appreciate the major role that adequate sleep plays in recovery, repair, and optimal healing. I used to think I was immune to needing adequate sleep. I would routinely get less than six hours a night and thought I could function this way. But I've since realized that most adults really need about eight hours of sleep every night. Frequent yawning during the day is a major red flag that you're sleep deprived, as is nodding off when you're reading or in a meeting. If you need an alarm clock to wake up, and you wake up feeling tired and groggy, you probably need to go to sleep earlier (or get more restful sleep) as well. What to Do Next If you apply the 5 principles that I reviewed in this article, you could likely resolve over 80 percent of your health problems. Start today!! Source: The Week, 8/29/15.