Gardening for Beginners

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One of my favorite parts of summer is gardening, watching the plants grow, picking what they produce, and then getting to create a delicious dish that ultimately nourishes me and those I love.  Talk about being close to your food!  You know where it was grown, how it was grown, and you can’t get much more ripe than “just picked from the back yard!”  However, I know that many people think they don’t have time, it’s too complicated, or get overwhelmed at the idea of figuring it out.  I’m here to tell you that I am not a gardener, I have never researched it, I don’t know what I am doing, and yet I LOVE it and do it every year.  So, I’m here to share some basic tips because I think the single best piece of health advice I can give is for someone to grow their food.

Decide which is you:

  1. I have a space prepared and ready for a garden in my yard, but just haven’t done any planting
  2.  I have never had a garden and would have to create a space
  3. I don’t even have a yard, Dr. A

If you are:

  1. Then stop making excuses, go get some veggie plants (see below) and start planting
  2.  Consider buying an above ground garden box (or making one but we are keeping things simple here) and fill them with soil
  3.  Go get some pots, you can easily grow plants on your porch

I like to plant things that give me the most produce per plant.  Here is a list that I like to plant that will give you tons of produce to pick on a regular basis and it’s totally worth your money to plant it in the ground and make sure it gets watered:

These sort of need the ground:

  1. Summer squash like Zucchini and yellow squash- they need lots of room to sprawl; they produce in mid-summer
  2.  Winter squash like Butternut and spaghetti Squash- the need lots of room to sprawl, but I can keep butternut that I pick through winter in the house!; they are late summer, early fall producers
  3. Strawberries-this one can be fickle but I plant them in my landscaping and they come back every year with more berries
  4. Blackberries-Patience, these take 3 years to start making berries, so don’t even go there if you are going to move, but if you’re staying put, they will give you berries in your backyard! They come back every year

These could go in the ground or a pot:

  1. Cucumber-throw a cage around it, let it climb and produce like crazy all summer
  2.  Tomato- Throw a cage around it and it’ll produce all summer
  3.  Bell peppers- They all start out green, so have patience if you want red/orange/yellow
  4. Hot peppers- They will produce more than you could ever eat, so you’ll be giving tons away or drying them to make crushed hot pepper spices, etc.
  5. Kale- This an early producer and you will be able to start picking kale early and throughout the entire season into the fall
  6. Swiss Chard- This is an early producer and you’ll never have to buy greens at the store
  7. Herbs:  The ones that come back every year, I plant in the ground and make them part of the landscape: Sage, Chives, Thyme, Oregano, lavender, lemon balm. The ones that I have to replant every year either go in the garden or in pots: Parsley, Basil, and Mint (mint spreads and is invasive, so it always get a pot regardless of coming back yearly).

I have planted tons of other things and often do more than the above, but the one’s above are hard to screw up.  I also prioritize the things that are more expensive to buy.  For example, you can plant one bell pepper plant and save $2-3 with every pepper it produces or you can take the same space to grow and onion or two that costs you pennies at the store.  Things that grow underground don’t give you as much bang for your buck: onions, carrots, potatoes.  They are cheap and take up lots of growing space.

Don’t get intimidated, you just have to go buy a plant and plant it.  Just one!  Start with herbs!  I love having fresh herbs all summer and many come back every year, flower, and look just as pretty as your landscaping that you can’t eat.

*The picture is the outer peel of a tomatillo that I planted the year before.  I was fascinated that it stayed in tact, but I found it when I was planting my zucchini for this year!

Flu Prevention 101

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2018 Flu Pandemic.  In full swing.  What should we do?

Well, flu statistics tell us that February is the month with the highest rate on infections.  So, the worst is yet to come.  Pharmacies are having difficulties keeping Tamiflu in stock, and they are saying this could be the worst flu season since the bird flu scare.  As a functional medicine practitioner, I have never been a fan of the flu shot for a couple reasons:

  1. The flu shot is a vaccine that we produce BEFORE flu season.  This means that we GUESS which pathogen will be the issue, and we are notoriously wrong.  That means that massive amounts of people are convinced to get a shot that includes adjuvants.  What are those?  Things that wake up the immune system.  Often times they use things like components of an egg.  It always makes me wonder if they has anything to do with why so many people have egg allergies now.  It’s just not normal to have egg anything in the bloodstream and it actually makes sense that the immune system would recognize this as abnormal and produce antibodies against it.  Hello food sensitivities.   Anyway, that’s exactly what happened this year.  We dispersed vaccines against a strain that was not the correct one.  So, even if you had a flu shot, you are just as susceptible as everyone else.  Sorry, Charlie.
  2. The flu vaccine was created specifically for immunocompromised populations.  The elderly, HIV patients, you know, people that will DIE if they catch the flu.  However, a healthy individual may be down for a few days, but then they will be fine.  We shouldn’t need to intervene with toxic therapies.

We can’t take back the fact that the vaccine was against the wrong strain.  So, is there anything we can do now?  Yup.  Here are my tips for preventing and treating the flu naturally and effectively:

  1. Wash Your Hands.  When you go around touching surfaces and then touching your face, you expose your mucus membranes to all the organisms that may have been resting on those ledges, hand rails, door handles, dollar bills, pens, you name it. So, washing your hands before you eat is huge deal right now.  Just do it.
  2. Eat plenty of plants and organ meats.  Plants are full of phytochemicals that keep your immune system robust.  Spices also contain compounds that can stimulate the immune system, so use them generously.  Organ meats (from appropriately-raised animals) are full of fat soluble vitamins like A and D.  These are heavy-hitters for the immune system.  They also have minerals like Zinc.  Zinc is a well-known immune-supporting mineral, which is why zinc lozenges adorn the shelves of every pharmacy.
  3. Get 8 hours of sleep.  When you sleep, cortisol levels go down.  When you wake up, cortisol levels go up.  Cortisol levels are inversely related to immune system function.  That means that you immune system is allowed to its best work at night when cortisol is down.  If you deprive yourself of sleep, then you don’t do much to support your immune system’s ability to fight infection.  Why do you think people just want to stay in bed when they are sick?  Sleep matters.
  4. Take supplements.  I’m not a huge supplement person, but there are a couple supplements to consider in these types of situations.  The first one is colostrum.  Colostrum contains antibodies.  The antibodies have the ability to bind up viral antigens like those present in influenza to eliminate them before they would get into your bloodstream.  The other supplement is one that has a mixture of herbs and nutrients that specifically support immune function.  You should be looking for beta-carotene, zinc, Vitamin C alongside herbs like Echinacea and Andrographis.  If you feel the slightest tickle in your throat or “off-ness” start taking an immune stimulating formula right away.

A word of advice:

The flu is caused by a virus, which means antibiotics have absolutely zero impact on it’s treatment.  If you have confirmed flu, consider denying the antibiotics and letting it run its course if you are healthy.  Most people will be just fine.  Keep hydrated, get rest, get some nutrients, and consider taking some supplements to boost immune function, but DO NOT take antibiotics and expect them to treat your flu.  What they will do is wipe out the healthy bacteria in your gut that is fighting for you  It will take 3 months to rebuild that bacteria, so think about it!

Cheers to a happy and healthy winter season!

Peanut Butter Cup Christmas Cookies

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You want to know the tragedy about peanut butter cup Christmas cookies?  The peanut butter cup is often gone in one bite!  I like cookies that have the goodness in every bite, personally.  This cookie recipe has peanut butter and peanut butter cups, so it is not paleo.  However, you could sub sunbutter for the peanut butter and replace the top with your favorite flavored chocolate bar….or….you could make paleo almond butter cups and chop those up if you are feeling really ambitious!  I tried a few different versions of this recipe, and I’m here to tell you that butter is where it’s at!  So, don’t mess with the butter!
Gluten-free Peanut Butter Cup Christmas Cookies
Ingredients:
  • 2 cups almond flour
  • 1/4 cup grassfed butter, room temp
  • 1/4 cup peanut butter
  • 3 Tbsp pure maple syrup
  • 1 Tbsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp salt
  • coconut sugar
  • 2 packages Justin’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups, frozen, chopped
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F.  Mix together almond flour, butter, peanut butter, maple syrup, vanilla, salt until well-combined.  Create tablespoon balls and roll in a shallow dish of coconut sugar and place on baking sheet.  Bake for 12 minutes or until the coconut sugar starts to brown.  Immediately after removing from oven, press peanut butter cup pieces into the top.  Let cool.  Enjoy!

Herbal Series: Echinacea for Cold and Flu

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This photo of a purple coneflower was taken over a year ago before I even realized it was Echinacea!  Often times, we have medicinal plants growing all around us, and we are completely unaware.  Therefore, I wanted to highlight some of the herbs you may see around or that may pop up in your supplements.  I’ll let you know what they are, what they’re good for, and anything you should consider when taking them!

What is Echinacea?

Echinacea is a wildflower native exclusively to North America, and Indians used it therapeutically more than any other herb. In 1895, an Ohio drug firm manufactured the first preparations of Echinacea in the US, and by 1994, German physicians had prescribed Echinacea over 2.5 million times.  To this day, it remains popular in Europe, and is used most to shorten the duration of the common cold and flu.

What is it good for?

Echinacea is one of the most studied herbs in herbal medicine and it has shown many effects on the immune system.  It increases antibody responses to viruses and it signals to WBCs to fight infection.  This is a great tool to take when you feel as though you may be coming down with something, but it’s not that great for prevention.  So, look for Echinacea to use short-term during cold season.

Precautions

Autoimmunity: Echinacea boosts the immune system and unfortunately, in today’s world, there are many people that suffer from autoimmune conditions.  These people have an over-activated immune system and should be careful using herbal remedies that boost immune activity, such as Echinacea.  These patients would do better using beta-glucans instead.

Medications: Echinacea can have an effect on liver enzymes and increase blood levels of certain medications including statins, allergy medications, and birth control.  Like I have mentioned before, herbs can work just as well as medications and therefore can react with medications or affect their ability to work properly.  The more you can rely on herbs PRIOR to using medications, the less interactions you have to worry about.

*This is not intended to diagnose or treat any conditions.  Please consult with a knowledgeable physician to decide it is right for you.

 

Guide to Health-Conscious Foodie Dining: OneFourteen

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I have had a series of restaurant reviews in the hopper for a long time now.  Like 3 years… I’m officially ready to give you my opinions on some dining options.  I wanted to accomplish a couple things when doing these reviews so it fits the needs to my readers.

  • Quality of ingredients
  • Adaptability for dietary needs
  • Taste
  • Experience
  • Price and accessibility

I wanted to follow a set of rules when going through the dining experience because I believe food is somewhat of an art, and I think going in changing everything alters the original intention of how the dish was intended, the experience around it, and the flavor profile.  So, here are couple rules I plan to follow with every review:

  • Order as it’s intended on the menu
  • Order anything that is hard to find elsewhere
  • Order a meal and a cocktail (if available)
  • Ask the server about their favorite thing on the menu

Welp, here it goes.  A review of my experience at the new restaurant in Mishawaka/South Bend called One Fourteen.

Here is the website. Here is the menu.

What I ordered: Parm Fries, the Onefourteen burger and the Cold Killa cocktail

Quality of ingredients:

While there isn’t a lot of information provided on the ingredients used, it does appear that they are trying to use ingredients that are thoughtful.  You will not find grassfed beef on the menu despite the array of burger options, but you will find plenty of options that include plants.  Since quality screams nutrient content in my opinion, this is important to how high somewhere rates for my readers.  The burger I ordered had pate and marrow.  These are ingredients you won’t find in many places and are packed full of nutrients!  Organs are one of my favorite things that patients are recommended to experiment with, and if they can have someone else prepare them, it’s a win-win.

*Update: I got some more details that I thought I should update!  The get their meat from Sawyers Meats in South Bend Farmers Market, buns from Breadsmith of South Bend and as much local produce as they can find.  Every sauce, dressing, and condiment is made in house!

Adaptability for dietary needs:

If you are trying to avoid gluten, meat, or dairy, you WILL be able to eat.  I ordered the burger with the bun, which came to me packaged with gold leaf on top.  You heard me right.  My bun had actual gold leaf on top. A nice touch that you may miss if you order sans bun.  I ate some of the burger with the bun but, quickly ditched it.  You could order any burger without a bun.  They also have plenty of vegetarian and vegan options for those avoiding meat.  Since vegan options are available, that means some alternative dairy, as well.  If you are trying to stay low carb, there are veggie options to replace fries.  I do not know if they rotate, but asparagus was the option when I went.

Taste:

This is the one everyone cares about, right?  Who cares how healthy or unhealthy if it doesn’t taste good.  The burger was good.  Since my burger choice was fatty in nature, I thought it could have used an acidic addition to cut through the richness.  I notice they do this with many dishes by using kimchi.  It was messy, which doesn’t bother me because I usually don’t hold it anyway.  The fries were amazing.  They are thoughtfully seasoned with herbs that I couldn’t pinpoint exactly, but I do believe rosemary is part of the blend.  They are well seasoned and there’s nothing fake about them.  I have a place in my heart for places that do fries well.  The cocktail was a smoky mescal garnished with a beautiful flower and the rim dipped in coarse salt.  I usually HATE smoky drinks, but this was pretty perfectly balanced.  I would definitely order it again just to drink with my eyes if nothing else!  I also tasted the herb spritzer and this is right up my alley being refreshing, herby, and light.  This would be my go-to if I was a frequent flyer.

Experience:

The service was attentive but not pushy, which is just how I like it.  The place is a little gangsta with a modern twist.  The décor is clean with thoughtful touches such as a penny floor as you enter, navy napkins that liken to denim, and a winged selfie wall in the bathroom.  I love the idea of interaction.  There aren’t many places you can go where Tupac adorns the wall and gold leaf tops your burger.  The perfect match for the age group that grew up listening to Biggie, Tupac, and Dré but has developed a palate for interesting flavor profiles and twists on the classics.

Price and accessibility:

I order the most expensive burger on the menu topping it out at $18.  However, I’d say most pricing was standard for a sit-down burger joint with craft cocktails.  It is somewhat quaint inside, and they do not take reservations.  So, it may be a wait if you go during peak times and if you are coming from Elkhart, it’s a jog.  However, it’s got an antique shop next door that can occupy the time while you wait, and they have plenty of standing room in the bar area for a cocktail.

Overall, I would give onefourteen an 88% if I’m throwing back to my professor days.  I think they have done an awesome job as a new restaurant because let’s face it, starting a restaurant isn’t easy!  They have dared to experiment and offer interesting options, and they have thought about the experience.  I have to take away some points for quality in terms of healthy meaning top shelf: grassfed, organic, local, etc.  I would love to hear about your personal experience!  If there are any other pieces of information you would like me to touch on, let me know and I will try to include that in future reviews.

Supplementation: Probiotics

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Probiotics are one of the essential supplements that everyone should be taking.  Most people do not realize that they have 10 times more bacteria in their body than they do cells!  There’s about 1kg of probiotic bacteria in the intestines alone, and about 90% of your immune function is dictated by bacteria levels.  Most people have come across a yogurt label that says L. acidophilus.  That is just one strain of healthy probiotic that lives in our body.  In addition to the healthy bacteria, there are also infectious bacteria strains living in our bodies.  Everyone reading this post right now has Strep. in their throat and E. coli in their stool.  However, most of you probably do not have Strep throat or explosive diarrhea!  What’s the difference between those that have an infection and those that simply have the bacteria but NOT the infection?  It comes down to the balance of bacteria levels.  If the levels of the good bacteria outweigh the levels of bad bacteria, then sickness stays at bay.

If bacteria levels have so much influence on our immune function, what can we do to ensure we have enough?  Every time you put something in your mouth, you are deciding whether to feed the good bacteria or the bad bacteria.  Guess what the good bacteria like to eat?  Fruits and vegetables!  Guess what the bad bacteria like to eat?  Sugar!  So, every time you choose a donut, cookie, pasta or sandwich over a salad, apple, or guacamole (had to throw in my favorite snack), you are choosing to HELP THE BAD BACTERIA REPLICATE!  If anyone has ever been in a biology lab, they know that the best way to grow infectious bacteria quickly is to put it on a petri dish full of agar (aka sugar).  Think of your gut as a petri dish, and the environment within it decides which bacteria will grow. Plain, unsweetened Greek yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, and kombucha all have very high levels of probiotics in them.  Fermented foods are great sources of good bacteria; however, most people do not consume significant amounts of these foods on a daily basis.  In addition, if you take an antibiotic, drink alcohol, consume medications or have high levels of stress, you are negatively affecting good bacteria levels in your gut.  As a result, I find most people benefit from supplementing with a probiotic.

I encourage people to take a multi-strain probiotic.  That means that when you look at the label, it has at least 5 weird names on the back.  I also advise patients to take 1 capsule a day for maintenance.  Our capsules contain 22 billion live, active cultures.  Often times, patients will bring me the probiotic that they purchased at a convenience store, and I quickly point out that they would have to be taking 10 pills in order to get the amount of organisms needed.  What seemed like a cost-effective alternative has now cost more in the long run.  Also, probiotics that you find at doctor’s offices are highly regulated in terms of temperature regulation at the production facility, refrigeration during storage, and cooling mechanisms during the shipping process.  Once the probiotics are in a temperature controlled facility, their bacteria levels are guaranteed until the expiration date on the label.  Bacteria quickly die when exposed to excessive heat.  If you purchase a bottle of bacteria from a store that has not ensured its temperature regulation, you may be wasting your money on dead probiotics!  I also encourage patients to take them away from meals in order to ensure the least amount of digestive activity; this allows more active cultures to make it to the intestinal tract.

If you are someone who has digestive issues, an autoimmune disease, ear infections, autism, or chronic infections, you need probiotics the most!  I hope this clears up some confusion about what probiotics are and why they are important, but I encourage you to leave me questions! Once again, the “store” tab on the blog has suggestions for my favorite brands that I use with patients including Orthobiotic, PrescriptAssist, and Biokult.  I have different reasons for choosing different brands with people, but they are all generally good.  It’s also a good idea to rotate your probiotics to increase strain exposure.  If you have been taking one kind for months, try switching to a new kind this month.

Medications and Autoimmune Healing (Part VI)

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Before we get started, let me say that I am not rendering advice on what to do with your medications in this article!  I am simply going to explore how some common medications may be obstacles in your healing process.  If you have followed this journey, we started with how an autoimmune disease happens, touched on the involvement of heartburn, gluten, nutrient deficiency, and discussed how leaky gut is involved.  Most of the medications I talk about, I will place in the category of things you can control.   That means I will not be talking about immunosuppressants or other common autoimmune meds; I will be talking about drugs like: antacids, antibiotics, birth control, steroids, and pain relievers. Let’s get started with heartburn meds because we talking about heartburn and stomach acid one of the first articles.

PPIs (aka Nexium or Prevacid) and H2 blockers (aka Pepcid and Zantac):

If you would like a reminder of how important stomach acid production is, feel free to re-read the heartburn article.  If we consider that any disease healing process requires adequate nutrients, we also must consider if we are able to get those nutrients based on the health and performance of our digestive system.  Stomach acid is a major component for the beginning of our digestion and without adequate amounts, we develop issues such as GERD, heartburn, H. pylori, and intestinal dysbiosis.  If you are taking a stomach acid reducer, you are hindering the first step in food breakdown.  This sets you up for impaired digestion, decreased nutrient absorption, possible infection, and leaky gut.  That’s a very basic understanding.  If we get more technical, PPIs have been shown to interfere with antigen presentation mechanisms by affecting lysosomes.  They also obstruct the work of cytotoxic C cells. These are IMPORTANT for immune function, so you can imagine if you have created the perfect environment for leaky gut, which can trigger an autoimmune disease, then impaired digestion setting you up for infection which can trigger an autoimmune disease, then took a medication for the heartburn that interferes with appropriate immune system functions…insert cry emoji here.

Birth Control Pills

I have spoken before in brief posts about hormone health and how taking the pill to correct hormone imbalance may be doing more harm than good.  I have also been vocal about the pill and it’s ability to significantly increase clotting risks in women that can result in strokes or pulmonary embolisms!  This is not a medication to be taken lightly, and from first-hand experience, I know these risks are not brought up.  I was speaking to a nurse the other day about how interesting pregnancy can be in autoimmune conditions and how that speaks to hormone involvement.  I have had autoimmune patients tell me their autoimmune condition completely goes into remission while they are pregnant, and they wish they could trick their body into believing it’s pregnant all the time!  Sex hormones play a role in immune system function, so the decision to artificially alter them, may be causing an immune system issue.  In addition to directly changing hormones, they cause disturbance in the gut flora resulting in dysbiosis and many times leaky gut.  Remember leaky gut being how autoimmune issues start?!

Antibiotics

Antibiotics save lives.  Period.  However, they are way over-prescribed and many people take them multiple times a year.  If you are doing everything right, it can still takes months for the assault of antibiotics on your gut flora to fulling repair.  If we KNOW that the bacteria in your gut account for the majority of your immune system, then how could you not be worried to take a medication that would wipe them all out?!  Antibiotics are often broad spectrum and will have no issues wiping things clean, good and bad.  Imagine having to rebuild your house every time it got messy.  That is the task you ask of your body when you take antibiotics for every sniffle, sneeze and infection.  It is often common for antibiotics to be prescribed without a culture which means your infection could be viral.  Viral infections are not killed by antibiotics.  Antibiotics kill bacteria.  Oops.  In a nutshell, antibiotic need may be more scarce than you think, it has a dramatic effect on the bacteria balance in your intestines, and they should be avoided if possible.

NSAIDS (aspirin, advil, aleve)

These anti-inflammatory drugs are non-steroidal but they are used widely to control pain and inflammation.  So widely, that you probably have bottles in your purse, your bathroom, your desk drawer, etc.  I can say that I don’t even have a single bottle of these around and if I needed one on some off chance, I would have to go purchase them.  Most people know the dangers of taking too much because your doctor will warn you about how bad it damages your gut, which can result in ulcers.  I hope this connection is screaming at you before I tell you….wait for it….if they damage the gut, and your gut houses your immune system, then it can’t be good for conditions concerning the immune system! A SINGLE DOSE OF NSAIDs damages the intestine of even a healthy person.  It does this by inhibiting an enzyme called cyclooxygenase which is essential for maintaining the gut mucosal barrier. They also inhibit the formation of the proteins that keep tight junctions together (remember that cell lining gate being damaged).  These drugs are popped like candy because most people see them as harmless when you can buy them in the store.

Well, those are the major ones I wanted to hit because so many people are unaware of the negative side effects.  If these are part of your “health” routine, you may be causing more damage than good.  If you have an autoimmune disease, these may be a part of your routine that you can control.  There are tons of natural compounds that fight infection and decrease inflammation.  These can be found widely in foods and many supplements now exist.  Try cooking with turmeric, adding garlic to everything, using onions abundantly, and fresh herbs are crazy good in the medicinal department.  Funny how all this complex material always lands us back at basic lifestyle changes.  Nature is so smart.

 

French Onion Dip (primal, gluten-free)

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With football on the horizon, party food for snacking is a must. I like to find a balance between real food ingredients and catering to the tastes that everyone likes to enjoy.  That may mean I include some non-glutinous grains like organic corn chips with guacamole. That may also mean I include real, grassfed cheese or other dairy to a dish.  I’m fine eating those things on occasion, and I know it will help open the options for guests to eat all the things they love (even if I made a healthier, homemade version!).  This dip tugs at a special place in my heart because if I could pinpoint one junk food I remember being obsessed with when I was younger, it was ruffles with french onion dip.  Since I avoid rancid oils and don’t eat dairy or preservatives, it has been years since this flavor hit my tongue.  I attempted my first homemade version for a party, and I got the thumbs up from healthy and non-healthy eaters alike.  It’s a keeper and is easy to whip up if you are having a party.  I served it with a bunch of veggies, but you could easily grab a few bags of Jackon’s honest potato chips from Whole Foods for the classic chip and dip combo!

Don’t be afraid by caramelizing onions.  It sounds complicated and time consuming, but it’s really just about low and slow.  You can have them working while you are getting other dishes together.

French Onion Dip
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp butter or bacon grease
1 large sweet onion, chopped
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup full fat or 2% Greek Yogurt, plain
1/2 cup paleo mayo (Whole Foods as Primal Kitchen version)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp celery salt
handful fresh dill, chopped
1 green onion, green part chopped
Directions:
Heat butter over medium heat and add the sweet onion and salt.  Put on low/medium and allow the onions to cook slowly over low heat until browned and caramelized.  This should take about 30 minutes.  Stir regularly to prevent burning.  While those are cooking, Mix the other ingredients together and put aside. Once the onions are cooked to a nice brown, puree in the food processor and add to the remaining dip mixture.  Serve with some chopped green onion on top for garnish.

Adrenal Fatigue: Understanding Cortisol

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This is a condition that really doesn’t discriminate between healthy and unhealthy individuals.  I have had countless patients end up at my door with relentless fatigue when they believe they live a healthy lifestyle.  They workout, they don’t eat excessive carbs, they have successful jobs, and they take their daily supplements!  Then why are they SO tired all the time?!  These cases are almost always issues with cortisol production and the ability of the adrenals to keep up with stress.  Athletes especially can be affected by this issue because of overtraining, chronic stress, or lack of appropriate recovery.  Sometimes less is more, but let’s take a look at what actually happens in someone with adrenal fatigue.

Adrenal Glands: You’ve go these two little organs that sit on top of your kidneys that are responsible for releasing epinephrine and norepinephrine, aldosterone, cortisol, sex hormones, and precursors such as DHEA.  Cortisol is a steroid hormone that is responsible for all kinds of things in the body including:

  • mobilizing protein stores
  • water excretion and electrolyte balance
  • mobilizing fatty acids from adipose (fat tissue)
  • precursor to cortisone (and anti-inflammatory agent)
  • directing immune function
  • stimulation/inhibition of gene transcription
  • affecting bone calcium
  • affects behavior, mood, and hormones
  • affects numerous CNS biochemistry

Basically, it has a hand in tons of things.  Like most body chemistry, it is definitely not on an isolated island!  When stress levels are high, the demand for cortisol production goes up.  However, the building blocks are things like progesterone and pregnenolone which are needed for the production of other hormones.  When your body starts stealing these building blocks to keep up with stress, it will eventually let your other hormones like estrogen and testosterone suffer in order to keep up.  This is important because many people are known to have hormone imbalance, but if you never assess the adrenals, how do you know this isn’t the reason?  If it is, then the answer is not hormone replacement, the answer is stress reduction that will in turn lower cortisol demand.

When you start thinking about how important hormones are to the body, one may ask why on earth your body would make that kind of sacrifice?!  The simple answer is that our body is still expecting stress to be a short-lived event driven by a life or death incident.  In that moment, we would sacrifice anything in order to get out alive.  We never adapted a mechanism to take care of chronic stress.  Stress that never goes away. Stress that takes all we have.  Stress that leaves us feeling defeated at the end of the day and dread the start of the next.  Am I ringing any bells here?  Life is HARD these days!  We have all kinds of stress!  Work!  Kids! Relationships!  But, we also have stresses that people don’t think about like food sensitivities, sleep deficit, overtraining at the gym, and infections.  There are ALL stress to the body.

This is how people can function from day to day, still go to the gym, think they are doing it all, and still feel like crap.  When I run cortisol panels, it’s not uncommon for me to find cortisol levels that are in no way keeping up with the demand.  There are symptoms many complain about:

  • hypoglycemia
  • chronic fatigue
  • ligament/cartilaginous injuries
  • depression/anxiety (this one I see a LOT!)
  • insomnia
  • irritability
  • short term memory issues
  • pain that persists
  • poor wound healing and workout recovery
  • frequent colds
  • hypothyroidism (tons of my ladies out there have this along with adrenal fatigue!)
  • PMS
  • infertility
  • menopause symptoms (can we say hot flash club?!)
  • insulin resistance
  • fat around the trunk

The test for this is pretty simple, but it’s important to have it checked multiple times throughout the day.  So, many physicians will test it once.  That is not helpful unless there is pathology.  We are looking for optimal function.  Therefore, we want to see a high number in the morning and a gradual decrease until it bottoms out at night so you can go to sleep!  If we don’t see that, we need to assess where we are in order to know where to go from there.  In the early stages, people will make too much.  They usually don’t come in for help at this stage because they are “keeping up” as far as they’re concerned.  By the time we hit stage 2 or stage 3, we are starting to not be able to keep up and we start stealing those building blocks from other hormone pathways.  THIS IS USUALLY WHAT BRINGS THEM IN!  On top of fatigue, they now have stray hairs growing in random places, excessive fat that won’t budge, inability to recover from their workouts, trouble sleeping, up and down emotions, loss of sex drive.  At this point, we can’t just fix it with food, typically.  We need to “help your body over the hump” so it can catch up and produce enough cortisol again on its own.  This not only takes time, it takes lifestyle changes that may include cutting things out that are contributing to stress.  This is the toughest thing for patients to do.  If they don’t workout as much, say no to responsibilities, sleep more, etc, they feel LAZY!  You wouldn’t call a cancer patient LAZY!  This is taking care of yourself, and I can’t stress it enough (no pun intended).

If this sounds like you, and you like help, my door is open.  The saliva test I use to measure cortisol, DHEA, hormones, and melatonin is around $200 and it is done at home.  Doesn’t get much easier than that for a little piece of mind and direction.

Sleep: How It Impacts Your Life, Your Looks, and Your Health!

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For as long as I can remember, I have been a good sleeper.  I would be that friend at sleepovers that would sleep so long that my friends would go to church and come back and I’d still be in bed!  For a long time, my parents wouldn’t call me before noon because otherwise there was a wrath to follow.  I’m happy to say that I still love sleep, but I am up before noon. ;)  Last weekend, I sat in on a presentation by a former Navy Seal named Dr. Parsley and listened to all the things he was doing in his clinic to keep patients healthy, beautiful, and free from hormone imbalance.  You want to know what his secret is?  SLEEP!

We tend to see sleep as a luxury in the US because you can sleep when you’re dead, right?  However, many cultures value sleep, build naps into their schedule of working, and see it for what it is: a requirement for normal hormone function.  Losing hours of sleep mimics the aging process in so many ways.  Not only does it make you look older, it makes you hang on to excess weight, become cranky, and slows down your nervous system’s ability to adapt.  REM sleep specifically is when your brain converts short term memory into long term memory and without REM, you may feel as though you need to be told the same thing over and over again or read the same page in your book over and over again.  This decrease in memory and cognitive function isn’t just for the elderly, its for anyone at any age that isn’t getting enough zzz’s.

Lack of sleep also decreases your thyroid function by about 30 %.  When you have decreased thyroid function, you also have lowered cognitive capability and tend to lose your ability to react to stressful situations without being overly emotional.  Can we say “middle age sob-fest?!”  If I see anything in practice becoming a huge concern, it’s hypothyroidism.  There are thyroid receptors on every single cell in your body.  If you’re not making enough, you could experience things like anxiety, constipation, cold intolerance, skin issues, and a complete lack of energy.  I won’t go off on a tangent, but the normal ranges for TSH these days are NOT normal.  If this sounds like you, have someone take a closer look with you….please.

For all of you out there trying to fight the aging process, decreased sleep decreases your collagen, elastin, and keratin production in your skin which results in wrinkles, dull skin, and brittle hair.  UGH.  Who knew that you could bypass all those appointments with the dermatologist by just getting more sleep!?  Have you ever wondered what actually makes people look their age?  Think about it.  How do you know someone is 20 vs 28?  20 vs 35?  puppy vs dog?  It’s hard to pinpoint how you KNOW someone is around a certain age when it’s not due to grey hair or wrinkles, but we usually know approximately what age someone is.  It’s actually because of fat pad distribution.  You have fat pads above and below your eyes which open them up and a fat pad behind the eye that pushes your eye forward.  As that fat decreases, your eyes sink in ever so slightly and you continue to age.  Many people get BOTOX to look younger, but according to Dr. Parsley, it makes your muscles atrophy and you ultimately end up looking older because as your fat pads redistribute and muscles harden, you get something he calls “skeleton face.”

As if beauty, cognitive function, and thyroid production wasn’t enough, lack of sleep also decreases your testosterone production and insulin sensitivity by about 30%!  Tons of people are flocking to get testosterone replacement to stay youthful and lean; it is HUGE for what your body looks like.  Lowered testosterone also contributes to sex drive in both men and women!  Decreased sleep results in lack of sex drive, getting pudgy, and developing signs of diabetes!  Man, if only we just valued sleep, we could avoid being dumb, fat, ugly, and slow, and possibly diabetic!  Let me put sprinkles on the cake here and say that if you are an athlete, REM sleep is when your body rebuilds by producing anabolic hormones. So, yes, even the young, lean, athletes require sleep.

EVERYONE NEEDS SLEEP!  Aim for 8 hours a night and anything less is building a sleep debt. If you have trouble sleeping regardless of all your attempts, you may have something bigger going on and should consider testing; your health relies on it. We can’t escape aging but we can age well, age gracefully, and be a badass at any age!