The article starts out “The Jaguars’ high-traffic cafeteria used to be a snack trap, characterized by unmarked sugars, hidden calories and hard-to-see preservatives.  With its cookie buffet and pizza day, the players ate it up, never stopping to think the low-grade fuel they were pumping into their bodies could be making the team sputter.”  Hmm, does that sound eerily similar to any corporate cafeterias you have been too lately?

Nall Richesson started by giving the Jaguars’ kitchen a serious overhaul. The cookie buffet was replaced with whole fruits and gluten-free snack bars.  White flour pasta and standard canned sauce were replaced with gluten-free pasta and a red sauce with no artificial preservatives.  At the smoothie bar, which has fresh fruit and honey but no sugar or dairy, Nall Richesson was happy to spot a player reading the ingredients on the cartons of coconut milk and almond milk.

Under Nall Richesson’s supervision, tight end Marcedes Lewis lost his taste for pineapple upside-down cake and soda, and started craving salads. Lewis, 26, admits he had never given much thought to what he ate.  He was, in his words, a reckless eater, until a food sensitivity test uncovered an intolerance to many of his favorite foods, including pineapple.  Dining out one night at a steakhouse near his downtown apartment, Lewis was careful about his order.  He passed up steak for roasted chicken and asked for a side of green beans served dry, without butter.  He also ordered a shrimp appetizer and a sweet potato dish but passed on desert, skipped the soda and opted instead for a glass of water with a slice of lemon, and limited himself to one piece of French bread instead of devouring the whole loaf, as he said he often used to do.

So what have these nutritional changes done for Lewis?  Well, he started the season carrying 275 pounds on his 6-6 frame and now he is down to 254 pounds.  “I recover faster,” said Lewis.  “I’m running better.  I have more energy.  And I’m still strong.  This is Week 14 of the season and I feel good.  That is ridiculous.”

Actually, it’s not ridiculous at all.  You see, loading up on cookies, pizza, bread and other high sugar snacks isn’t just bad for your average Joe – it’s also bad for pro football players.  Yes, they are generally a lot more active than your average American and possess a tremendous amount of athletic talent, yet even with their high activity level comprised of rigorous training and competition they still suffer the ill effects of a poor diet: fatigue, difficulty losing or maintaining their weight, and poor recovery times.

So what does this mean for you?  Well, no matter what your level or ability as an athlete – recreational exerciser, weekend warrior or professional athlete – you need adequate calories and nutrients from healthy sources to balance the energy demands of repetitive training, competition, recovery and growth.  If you are looking for a performance edge, consider overhauling your diet.  Focus on whole foods: lean proteins, fruits, veggies, beans, nuts and seeds.  Also consider eliminating gluten and dairy from your diet for a few weeks and see how you feel, or consider getting a food sensitivity test.

Proper nutrition can provide you the “missing link” to enhanced performance.  Just ask the NFL Jaguars.  Who knows, with proper nutrition you might just be able to break that personal record you have been dreaming about!

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Do you feel changing your diet could improve your athletic performance?

Have you ever tried any dietary changes in the hopes of increasing your performance?

If so, what changes did you notice?

Even if you exercise religiously and eat well, you may still struggle to lose weight if you are sleep deprived.  Researchers found that depriving healthy men of sleep led to increases in the hormone grehlin (not to be confused with… but actually similar to in a weird way…gremlin), which increases hunger, and decreases in the hormone leptin, which decreases hunger and signals satiety.  This led to increases in their cravings and hunger for calorie-dense, high-carbohydrate foods.  Definitely not good for the waistline.

How Much Sleep Is Enough?

It’s actually pretty rare that people need 8 hours of sleep according to Breus.  A better number is 7.5 hours because it provides five full sleep cycles of 1.5 hours each.  Everyone is different though – some people may actually feel best after 6 hours and for others it may be 9.  Listen to your body by taking note of how you feel depending on how many hours you sleep you get.  Whatever your individual needs, not getting enough sleep slows down your metabolism.

Tips For A Good Night’s Sleep

• Your pillow turns out to be a critical factor in how well you sleep, so one of the easiest things you can do is get a new pillow, which should be replaced every 18 months (some need replacement every year), Breus says.  If you sleep on your side, choose a pillow that’s thicker.  If you sleep on your back, get a thinner pillow.
• Try counting backward from 300 by threes. “It sounds crazy but it works,” Breus says. “You can’t think of anything else, but it’s so doggone boring, so you’re out like a light.”
• Switch to decaf drinks by 2 p.m. Caffeine can stay in your system up to 12 hours.
• Avoid alcohol within 3 hours of bedtime.
• Complete any aerobic exercise at least 3 hours prior to bedtime.
• It may sound a little odd, but try setting an alarm clock to ring for bedtime, Breus says.  If you must awake at 6:00 a.m., count back eight hours and set an alarm for 10:00 p.m.  That allows you time to get ready for bed and still get 7.5 hours of sleep.  Otherwise, people tend to get on the computer at night or watch TV, then look up at the clock and see it’s late. “They don’t know where those hours went,” Breus says.

If you have been struggling to lose weight even though you feel you are doing all the right things in terms of nutrition and exercise, I encourage you to consider sleep deprivation as a potential cause and work on getting some more sack time.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Do you struggle with getting enough sleep?

Have you had success using any of the tips above?

Do you think sleep deprivation could be hampering your weight loss efforts?

Last week, The Story of Stuff Project released another compelling short film called The Story of Cosmetics (below), which employs the trademark Story of Stuff style to examine the pervasive use of toxic chemicals in our everyday personal care products, from lipstick to baby shampoo.

For more information about some of the startling facts discussed in the film click here.  And for more information on the recently introduced law discussed in the film see The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010.

Okay, so now what?  Here are some ways you can reduce toxic exposures in your home:

• Simplify: use less stuff less often, and choose products with shorter ingredient lists and fewer hazardous synthetic chemicals.
• Just Say No to Fragrances: it’s best to avoid the mystery concoction known as “fragrance” because it is often made from a dozen or more secret chemicals.
• Read Labels: there are great resources online to help consumers make more informed decisions.  One of the best is the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database at www.cosmeticdatabase.org, which ranks products for toxicity on a scale of 1 to 10.  Spend some time evaluating the products you use every day and odds are you will want to make some changes…I found out I need to find a new pomade and deodorant.

If this blog post strikes a cord with you, please pass it on to your friends and family.  Also, consider asking your U.S. Representative to support the Safe Cosmetics Act.

I am curious to know your thoughts:

Are you concerned about toxins in your personal care products?

If you looked up any of the products you commonly use on the Skin Deep database, were you surprised by what was in them?  If so, are you willing to switch products?

Current studies have implicated vitamin D deficiency as a major factor in at least 17 varieties of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity, chronic pain, autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, birth defects, autism, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, periodontal disease, and more.  That’s an impressive list.  Besides keeping many diseases at bay, recent studies have even suggested that higher levels of vitamin D can benefit athletes – improving muscle strength and power, lowering inflammation and the risk of stress fractures, and boosting the body’s immune system during training leading to less colds and flu.

Based on the research it is clear vitamin D is vital to optimal health.  It is also very clear that most of you are probably not getting enough.  According to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine last year, approximately 77 percent of Americans have “insufficient” levels of vitamin D.  Back in the days before the advent of indoor jobs and the diligent use of sunscreen due to concerns about skin cancer (some of you may remember slathering on oil instead of sunscreen – yikes!) we humans got plenty of vitamin D from that big yellow ball in the sky.  The skin produces approximately 10,000 IU of vitamin D in response 20–30 minutes of sun exposure.

While sun exposure is the fastest and easiest way to get more D, it is also the most controversial.  After all, those are the same skin-wrinkling, cancer-causing rays that make dermatologists squirm.  In their Position Statement on Vitamin D, The American Academy of Dermatology states: “There is no scientifically validated, safe threshold level of UV exposure from the sun that allows for maximal vitamin D synthesis without increasing skin cancer risk.”  Sunscreen blocks 97% of the body’s ability to make Vitamin D.

Okay, so getting enough vitamin D from the sun is probably not a good idea.  You should be able to get it pretty easily from your food then, right?  Unfortunately that will be tough, since even most foods fortified with Vitamin D don’t actually have that much.  One cup of fortified milk or orange juice comes in at a surprising low 100 international units (IU) and 4 ounces of salmon has 500 IU.  While there is still debate on how much Vitamin D you should be getting each day, many experts agree that most people need between 1,000 and 2,000 IU per day, and if you are deficient you may need as much as 5,000 to 10,000 IU per day (Note: If you take more than 5,000 IU per day you should only do so under a doctor’s supervision).  Simply put, to get enough Vitamin D most of you will need to take a supplement.  You want to look for Vitamin D3 – the biologically active form – rather than the inactive Vitamin D2 contained in many vitamins and prescription forms of Vitamin D.

The only way to know if you are getting enough Vitamin D is to get tested and then supplement based on your level.  Ask your doctor to test you for 25-Hydroxy (OH) Vitamin D.  The current range for normal at most labs is 30 – 100 ng/ml but many experts recommend that for optimal health you want your level to be 50-80 ng/ml.  I routinely check a Vitamin D level on all of my clients and unless they are already supplementing or spending a lot of time in the sun the overwhelming majority have levels below 30 ng/ml.  Once you get tested your doctor can then recommend the most appropriate dose, retest your level in a few months, and adjust your dose accordingly.

My recommendations for optimizing your health with Vitamin D: get tested, supplement, retest, and adjust your supplement dose to maintain optimal levels.

Now I would like to hear from you:

Are you getting enough Vitamin D?

If you have been tested, were you surprised by your results?

If you are already supplementing to correct a deficiency, what health benefits have you noticed?

Want to feel better, have more energy and live longer?  Who doesn’t?  Well, look no further than regular, old-fashioned, sweat-inducing exercise.  As this is my first post on exercise, my goal is to highlight the basic health benefits.  As a disclaimer, if exercising is a new concept for you, please consult with your physician or health care provider before embarking on an exercise program.

The merits of exercise — from preventing chronic health conditions to boosting confidence and self-esteem — are hard to ignore.  By introducing a moderate amount of exercise into your daily life (…I am not talking hours upon hours here), you can significantly improve your overall health, well-being and quality of life.  And the benefits are yours for the taking, regardless of age, sex or physical ability.  Studies show that people in their 80s and 90s can gain benefits from exercise similar to those seen in young men and women.  Need more convincing?

Check out 7 specific ways exercise can improve your life:

1. Improves your mood
2. Combats chronic diseases
3. Helps manage your weight
4. Strengthens your heart and lungs
5. Promotes better sleep
6. Can put the spark back into your sex life
7. Finally, it can be — gasp — fun!

Just think, there isn’t a pill out there that can boast all of those benefits.  If there were, it would be an overnight multi-billion dollar blockbuster!

How much exercise is enough you might ask?  If you are dreading the idea of long, sweaty hours in the local gym, I have some good news for you.  You simply don’t have to spend as much time as most people think to gain benefits from exercising.  You don’t even need to belong to a gym – you can get a great workout in the comfort of your home or in the great outdoors.  You want to aim for at least 30 minutes most days of the week.  Think of it this way, if you get an average of 8 hours of sleep per night (which I highly recommend!), you are awake for a total of 16 hours per day, or 960 minutes.  Those 30 minutes of exercise represent just over 3% of your total day!  Yes, you CAN find the time!  However, if you really think you don’t have the time to exercise, keep a log of your schedule for 24 hours and send it to me – I’ll find the time for you!  To give you fair warning, I may axe some TV time from your schedule.

Also, studies show that breaking exercise up into shorter increments does not diminish the benefits and is easier to stick with.  Feel free to divide up the 30 minutes into 2 bouts of 15 minutes, 3 bouts of 10 minutes, or…you get the idea.  Also, schedule exercise just like any other appointment on your calendar.  You are worth it!  The benefits of exercise discussed above will only last if exercise becomes a regular part of your life – make it a habit.

For more information on the health benefits of exercise click here.

If you aren’t a regular exerciser, are you motivated to start?

Do you put exercise into your schedule?

If you exercise regularly, what benefits have you noticed?

After years of working as an emergency physician I was burned out as well as saddened and frustrated at the realization that I was often only putting temporary “band-aids” on my patients’ chronic medical conditions.  When I decided to leave emergency medicine to open Live Fit Medicine, my goal was to provide advice and education on healthy nutrition, exercise and stress reduction in order to help my clients optimize their health and reverse any chronic diseases they had.  What I didn’t realize at that time was that there was an entire movement in medicine to do what I set out to do and so much more.

At my physician friend’s urging, I found myself flying to Baltimore a few months after I opened my practice to attend a conference put on by the Center for Mind-Body Medicine entitled Food As Medicine, which was my introduction into functional medicine…and I haven’t looked back.  Last year I attended the Institute for Functional Medicine’s flagship training course Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice (AFMCP).  I was not only inspired by all that functional medicine has to offer in terms of helping my clients achieve optimal health and vitality, I was also encouraged by the number of healthcare providers embracing this movement.

After hearing about functional medicine, many people wonder how it is different than conventional medicine.  Who better to answer that question than one of the pioneers of functional medicine, Mark Hyman, M.D. Check out his 4-minute video below:

For more information on functional medicine, click here.

What are your thoughts on this new approach to healthcare?

Do you feel conventional medicine often focuses too much on labeling diseases and treating the symptoms with prescription drugs rather than identifying and addressing the underlying root causes of disease?

Do you think you or someone close to you could benefit from functional medicine?

First let’s define what stress is not – it’s not the actual events in your life.  Events are simply events.  Stress is not what happens to you – it’s how your body reacts to those events.  When you are faced with a stressful situation, your body produces a “stress response” to give you a boost of energy to deal with the situation.  In evolutionary terms, this “fight or flight” response, produced by the sympathetic nervous system, is what helped us escape from that hungry saber tooth tiger that was eying us up for dinner.

A certain amount of stress is good for us and the stress response is essential to life because it allows us to deal with the numerous challenges that arise in our ever-changing modern day world.  But stress hormones are designed to work well over a short period of time for acute – not chronic – stress.  Another problem is that the primitive part of our brain which controls our sympathetic response can’t tell the difference between a real threat, such as that pesky tiger, or a mind-made threat, such as worrying about losing your job.

As you can imagine, most of us today spend far too much time in a sympathetic state. Whether the cause of chronic sympathetic activity is the ever increasing pace of our American lifestyle, our jobs, our relationships, traffic, bills, etc., the effect is the same: high levels of circulating cortisol and adrenaline – two hormones produced by our adrenal glands – leading to various health problems such as hormonal imbalance, poor sleep, impaired memory, depression, premature aging, muscle loss and fat gain.  Ouch!

Classic stress reduction techniques such as meditation, yoga, deep breathing and leisure activities (reading, listening to music, hobbies, etc.) can be very helpful and are all things I regularly recommend to my clients.  One of the things I personally like to do to unwind is head to a cafe with a favorite magazine or two.  While reading Outside magazine a few months back I was intrigued by an article by Kate Siber describing a new approach to beat stress.  For the article she interviewed Don Joseph Goewey, a leader in the field of stress management, and author of Mystic Cool, an excellent thoroughly researched book on how to transcend stress.

According to Goewey, many studies over the past decade have shown that it’s possible to increase blood flow to certain areas of your brain, create new neurons, and strengthen neural pathways simply by directing your thoughts.  That does sound cool, huh?  Neuroplasticity, as this phenomenon is called, has been used to treat such disorders as obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and even dyslexia.  Now stress management experts like Goewey have begun developing mental exercises to alleviate a more widespread affliction: stress.  Check out Goewey’s “The Clear Button” exercise described in the article by clicking here.

Just think, you can literally rewire your brain and over time reverse the ill effects of stress just by learning a new way of thinking.  More evidence that the most powerful pharmacy you have is between your ears!  I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Mystic Cool.  The book includes much more in-depth information regarding stress reduction as well as multiple exercises (you can download them as MP3s after purchase of the book) that you can use on a daily basis. Click here for more information on the book.

I plan on using Goewey’s approach over the next few months.  I know my brain could use a little rewiring…how about yours?

Thankfully the global impact of bottled water has fired up a lot of advocacy groups.  Some of you may be aware that this past Monday, March 22nd, was World Water Day (…I had no idea).  In honor of World Water Day, The Story of Stuff Project released a very compelling video called The Story of Bottled Water.  This 8-minute animated film (view below), hosted by Annie Leonard, the creator of the internet hit The Story of Stuff, was co-produced with five leading sustainability advocacy organizations: Corporate Accountability International, Environmental Working Group, Food & Water Watch, Polaris Institute and Pacific Institute.

Many of you probably already know bottled water has the potential to cause harm due to leaching of the plastic in the bottles.  Watch the video and you will learn some other startling facts.  Here are a few that struck me:

• Bottled water costs 2000 times more than tap water
• Americans buy half a billion (yes, billion) bottles of water every week – enough to circle the globe more than 5 times!
• Each year making the plastic water bottles used in the US uses enough oil and energy to fuel 1 million cars
• 80% of water bottles do not get recycled but instead end up in land fills

Bottled water may be the greatest marketing and advertising scam of all time.  Don’t buy into the hype!  For more information on the myths discussed in the film, such as the taste and safety of bottled vs. tap water, click here.

Do you often buy bottled water?  If so, are you inspired to “think outside the (disposable plastic) bottle” and start using a refillable bottle instead?  Are you willing to spread the word?  If so, please forward this blog post or the following link to friends and family: http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

Some of my clients struggle with this concept.  As their body starts to respond to changes we make to their nutrition and exercise plans their home scale initially doesn’t budge…but interestingly they notice that their clothes are fitting better.  Some of them protest when I prescribe an increase in both protein intake and strength training.  They quote the myth “But muscle weighs more than fat!”  My response?  While it may seem like semantics, the reality is that a pound of muscle and a pound of fat “weigh” the same on a scale, like a pound of feathers and a pound of rocks.  The skinny (pun intended) is the fact that fat takes up 3 to 4 times as much volume under the skin as muscle does.  Hmmm, weight vs. volume.  And you thought you would never use that grade school math again.  Building muscle while losing fat explains how people can see changes in their physique without much movement on the bathroom scale.

About two months ago a client of mine, who after a fair bit of humorous bargaining agreed to stop getting on her home scale twice a day, brought in an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal, which opens with the question “Can you be normal weight and fat at the same time?”  The short answer is yes.  The article is based on a report recently published by the Mayo Clinic, which coined a new phrase for this phenomenon: normal weight obesity.  The highlights of the report’s finding are as follows:

• The amount of fat in your body can cause you and your heart problems even if you don’t look overweight and if the scale tells you you’re healthy.
• The research suggests that body mass index, or BMI, the tool doctors and researchers often use to determine whether a person is obese, may fall short in some cases as an indicator of good health.  BMI is obtained by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared, but makes no distinction between muscle vs. fat.  As one commenter on the WSJ article pointed out, according to BMI, Olympic sprinters are overweight and Hollywood drug-addicted starlets are fit.
• High body fat among normal-weight men and women was associated with a nearly four-fold increase in the risk for metabolic syndrome—a cluster of abnormalities including elevated blood sugar and blood pressure.
• Measuring body fat using methods such as a bioelectrical impedence scale (which I use in my office) or body calipers could help identify previously unappreciated risk in the normal-weight population.
• One of the problems is that body composition measurement isn’t a widely accepted clinical measurement.  And there isn’t a consensus among medical experts about what percentage of body fat is “normal” or what level indicates higher risk.  Click here to read the entire article.

Clearly more research is needed to determine the most cost effective and accurate way to measure body composition as well as a consensus on what those numbers should be for optimal health.  In the meantime, consider having your body composition measured, which will help point you towards necessary changes in your nutrition and exercise plans.  Then you can also answer the question that may be on your mind after reading this post: Is your scale lying to you?