Tag Archives: weight loss program

Digestion: Key to health

Gentle Reader,

Here we are in a New Year.  I hear murmuring around me about changes in eating, in exercise, in work habits.  People everywhere seek balance in their lives, which seem to be uncontrollably hectic.  We interrupt ourselves and forget what we hoped to accomplish in the next hour.  There is no peace.

This time of year solutions abound.  Your favorite person on Facebook asks everyone to comment on their resolutions and past successes.  The radio and TV, pod casts and news articles have the answer if you would just listen, please.  Of course, I am going to recommend a better diet, one with supplements.  Ha! It just could be that digestion is the key to health.

Years ago I learned a very important lesson that relaxed my need to save the world all by myself.  Food, diet and nutrition are one small part of the total health picture. A wise woman, Angela Arriens, lectured on the 8 common threads across all cultures that lead to a health filled life.  As a cross-cultural anthropologist, she knew what she was talking about from years of research.

It turns out that our diet per se is only one/eighth of the picture.  Other factors–exercise, spiritual practice, friends and relationships, music and color (art), and deep rest are the aspects I remember to this day, 24 years after hearing her speak.  What a relief to know what a small part I might play in advising someone’s health picture.  My supplement program is not the key ingredient to a healthy life, just one aspect.

Having said that, I want to suggest that digestion is a key to health, one of the most important aspects of nourishing our bodies.  We can eat whole foods and never contaminate our bodies with junk food, but if we don’t have a functional digestive system, we may still miss the nutrients we need.  If you struggle with acid reflux or bloating and gas after eating, perhaps your digestive system needs some fine-tuning.  If you suffer from arthritis, joint pain, or are developing spinal stenosis and osteoporosis, it could be that your nutrients are not doing their job in the body.

Goal of Digestion

Take whole foods and turn them into energy and nutrients to allow the body to function, grow, and repair itself. When we swallow food we have chewed in the mouth, the esophagus carries the mass to the stomach.  The first potential problem is the esophageal sphincter, or trap door that opens to let the slurry of food pass into the relaxed upper stomach.   If the food is well-chewed, broken down evenly, the weight will easily open the trap door and the mass will pass into the stomach, letting the sphincter close behind it.

Chew your food well to aid this process.

Problems occur when we swallow chunks of food and the sphincter explodes open to let the material pass.  Gas results.  Flow back of acid results.  In time, the sphincter wears out and doesn’t close firmly or quickly.

In the stomach, an acid excretion further breaks down the food into the nutrients that can be absorbed by the tiny cilla in the small intestine.  The stomach must be acidic to do this job or food continues down the digestive track un-dissolved and its nutrients are not absorbed.

When people feel discomfort from the escaping acidity up the esophagus into the mouth, called heart burn or acid reflux, the go-to remedy is an antacid.  This might give a feeling of relief but the nutrients that need to be broken down into their absorbable components remain unavailable to our system.  Antacids neutralize the acid the stomach provides to break down food.

Ideally, the stomach breaks down proteins.  When this is not functioning as designed, a better intervention is to increase the stomach acid by drinking warm water and lemon juice first thing in the morning.  Not coffee.  And chew, chew, chew until the slurry that drops to the esophageal sphincter gently pushes the trap door open.

If there are foods that are hard for you to digest like dairy or refined carbohydrates (cookies, crackers, breads, cakes), the cruciferous foods—broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, or legumes—beans, you might need digestive enzymes to hit the stomach first thing before a meal to help break those things down.  (This is where Shaklee’s EzGest comes in handy,  Take one before each meal.)

Most of us do not feel the peristalsis—muscle action of the small intestine as the slurry passes on down.  When functioning normally, the digestive acids in the intestines break down starches, proteins and carbohydrates.  Nutrients are absorbed into the body all along this passage as they become dissolved.  Certain vitamins like the 8 different B vitamins become absorbed in specific areas of the intestines whether the B’s come from foods or supplements.  When not functioning normally, we feel gas and bloating moving down the intestinal track, often producing pain and even severe discomfort.

Finally, the pancreas introduces pancreatic acid to break down starches, fats and protein and the liver produces bile acid to further break down fats.

Alcohol is absorbed into the blood stream from the stomach.  (Eating grapes and other high sugar content foods seems to have the same quick absorption rate for me, but I know there has to be some breakdown beyond the stomach acids.  Still the same rush alcohol brings happens with these high sugar foods.)

The most common drugs prescribed by the medical profession and purchased over the counter are meant to correct mal-functions in this digestive process.  They often eliminate the discomfort that occurs when the acids do not stay where they belong but they weaken  natural digestion.  It is possible to return your digestive system to a drug-free, comfortable state.  It takes changing your eating habits.  Since digestion is the key to health, you’ll be glad you did.

These supplements help:

Ez-Gest digestive enzymes

Optiflora pre- and probiotics  for maintaining a healthy digestive balance  Healthy bacteria

Herb Lax for constipation and blood cleansing  Healthy colon

Fiber Advantage Bars, and Fiber Tablets  Promote colon health and regularity

Changing your digestive process may be the key to losing weight along with the other benefits.  Many of us take on the goal of getting to our healthy weight by summer time.  The Shaklee 180 Turnaround is an excellent program to help you on your way.  It could be that dealing with the digestive issues will make all the difference.

Remember, just losing 10 pounds will ease up on those aching joints, the arthritis in your knees, hips and feet.  Could better digestion help?  Didn’t we say that digestion is the key to health?

Let us know your solutions to the struggles you have with digestion.

Be well, do well and Keep Moving,

Love,

Betsy

Betsy Bell’s Health4u

206 933 1889

betsy@hihohealth.com

 

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No Magic Pill to end Arthritis Pain

Gentle Reader,

In the end, and in the beginning, there is only one thing we –you and I– can do to bring lasting health to our aching bodies.  Life style change.  As I travel the Alaska Marine Highway, eat in the cafeteria on board, snack along the wharf in the various Inside Passage towns, I struggle with how to maintain my eating habits with poor choices everywhere.  Some people go on vacation and throw their healthy life-style to the winds for those 7 – 21 days.  Unfortunately the stomach doesn’t know you are on vacation and when the deep fried foods, extra sour dough bread with butter come rolling down the intestinal track, the joints react.

I’ve been having a few digestive and joint issues until yesterday when I found an IGA in Skagway with a ripe peach, some snap peas, and carrots.  Amazing how getting back to the healthy routine will quickly restore one to their mobile less-pained body.  Did I mention I also found a 4 mile round trip hike up to Dewey Lake right out of Skagway on 2nd Ave?

hiking in Skagway
hiking in Skagway, Dewey Lakes

So good to move after strolling.  What a difference.

This article about the new weight loss drug Dexaprine came across my desk.  Dr. Chaney talks about the hazards of relying on a magic pill to take care of the pounds that weigh our joints down.  It simply doesn’t work. Read his whole article here.

Want to really make a difference in your health?  Lose 10 pounds.  Safely.  Let the fat go, keep the lean muscle.  Have the energy to work out, or a least begin a walking program.  Change the way you eat, permanently.  That’s what the 180 Turnaround kit and the Lean and Healthy Kit are all about.  Consider these Shaklee products as a way to launch yourself into a permanent life-style change.  Personally, I’ll be drinking –or pouring over my breakfast cereal–a Shaklee 180 smoothee for the rest of my life, just as I have been doing ever since I achieved my goal weight 25 years ago with the Shaklee shakes and vitamins.  Why not?  Excellent science behind the product.  Delicious. Sustains energy all day. Convenient to use (I have packets with me on this trip.)  Cheaper than the fast food items at Starbuck’s or McDonalds.  Begin today.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving,

Betsy

PS to catch the latest on the Alaska expedition, click here

PPS Leave me your diet success/struggle stories in the comment section.

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Speaking of weight

Dear Reader,

Have  you sat with your plans for the New Year and included weight management?  If you are suffering from arthritis pain and stiffness, and you are even 15 pounds over-weight, your plans will turn out better if they include weight management.  The bloggers are full of advice on this topic.  I would like to share some new research with you that may help you realize just how challenging it is to establish a new “normal” weight.  You may forgive yourself for all that struggle without permanent results.  You may decide to figure out what you must do to change your own future, a daunting but not impossible task.

Take heart.  There may be an explanation for why we get stuck at certain weight.

In a recent study, scientists discovered a change in the appetite regulator in the brain that interferes with our internal conversation

about what to eat when.  Apparently the hypothalamus gets inflammed when a person eats a fatty meal (fried clams, fudge, ice cream, cheese cake, sugar cookies, onion rings, you know, fried foods and buttery sweets).  It takes a few days for the repair mechanism of a normal healthy body to quiet down this inflammation and restore the hypothalamus to its regulating job.  Repeatedly eating a high fat diet day after day interferes with the body’s ability to repair the organ that helps us say ‘no’ to weight gaining foods.  If we do manage to stop eating them as we try to lose all the weight we put on while the hypothalamus wasn’t helping, it is extremely difficult.  We just can not hit the re-set button.  The mechanism is broken.The study is reported here.  http://www.gpb.org/news/2011/12/28/could

-obesity-change-the-brain

The actual published abstract is here http://www.jci.org/articles/view/59660?search%5barticle_text%5d=obesity+&search%5bauthors_text%5d=schwartz

You may have seen Carol Ostrom’s report in the Seattle Times on 12/30. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017122171_brain30m.html

Scientific discoveries like this tend to make the obese shake their heads grimly and say “no wonder it is so hard to loss 10 lbs. and have that be my new ‘high'”.  Their brain is urging them toward the old higher set point.  More research needs to be done.  An MRI scan of the brains of 34 obese individuals tells us there is inflammation there, but leaves a lot of questions.  While they are rare, some people who drop 15 to 100 pounds are able to maintain their weight loss for years.  In my own case, I spent eight years with a psychotherapist dealing with childhood issues, and at the end of that time I was no longer uncontrollably tempted by cookies in the house.  I’ve been at my healthy body weight for a while now after many years of yo-yo diet struggle. There was a time when I couldn’t bring a box of cookies in the house and I certainly never baked them.  I would plan my behavior carefully before attending a stand up party with hors d’oeuvres and deserts. I still eat a healthy protein snack before going to a stand up party.  If I put on 3 to 4 pounds during the vacation, I drop it easily.  Did my hypothalamus recover and establish a new, lower set-point?  Could yours do the same thing?

When I first went into business as a wellness adviser, I held weight management classes in my home.  The attendees came at lunch time for 8 weeks.  I prepared healthy food, taught them about the way our body handles sugars, how the pancreas reacts to coffee/black tea/cola drinks all day long and how to recover from exercise so they could get up and do it again the next day.  I taught them how to prepare and carry healthy snacks, introduced them to thin slices of jicama, Jerusalem artichokes, turnips, and bean sprouts.  They learned about alternatives to wheat flour: rice bread, soba and rice noodles, rye breads, breakfast cereal of cooked rye, barley and oat flakes.  Today the stores are full of gluten free foods.

My students fell into two groups:  people whose metabolism had slowed down as they aged and one day they realized they had gained 15 pounds and needed some help to change their eating and exercise habits; people who had put on a lot of weight over the years and developed a real love/hate relationship with food. Learning these tools helped this second group, but did not guarantee permanent weight loss.  Both groups found the extra weight caused creaky joins and discomfort.  The first group relieved their arthritis pain considerably by following the dietary suggestions and moving more.  The second group were discouraged.  I was discouraged that I couldn’t seem to help them.

If you are in this second group and suffer from a chronic over-weight dieting cycle and you feel this weight is causing or increasing your arthritis pain, take heart from this new study. Inflammation is real.  It is present whenever there is disease.  The immune system can repair inflammation and does so every moment of every day.  Perhaps, with careful healthy eating, even the hypothalamus can be repaired.
I take a lot of food supplements manufactured by the Shaklee Corporation.  They have helped my body repair tissue damaged by inflammation.  Food alone could not do the job for me.  After reading this study, I wonder if 10 years of daily intake of extra nutrients provided by the Shaklee Wellness Program actually repaired the hypothalamus. I don’t think it can be done in 6 months or even 2 years.  A long term approach is necessary.  Perhaps you need the help of a top quality line of food supplements to pour massive amounts of nutrients into your damaged body.  If you would like to learn more about the weight management program Shaklee has to offer, please email or call me.  betsy@HiHoHealth.com or 206 933 1889.  Wordpress doesn’t allow me to put an active link to my shopping website.  I prefer to discuss these nutritional issues with you first anyway. So be in touch.

Be Well, Do Well, and Keep Moving.

Betsy

Watch for a review of an independent study showing how resveratrol and polyphenols can literally stop this inflammation process at the cellular level.  I will present this information in my next blog.

BTW here is an interesting blog on weight management.  I pass it along to you.  http://kirbsfitness.wordpress.com/

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