Inflammation is a powerful immune response in the body when tissues are injured.

Inflammation helps infections and wounds to heal, and toxins to be eliminated. When it is acute and short term, inflammation is healing. But, like most good things in life, too much of it for too long is a bad thing. When it is continually activated, chronic inflammation is at the root of most chronic diseases. Join us this month as we highlight challenges proven to help you reduce inflammation.

HEALTHY IS LESS REFINED SUGAR

Sugar is naturally occurring in many healthy foods like fruits, but the added sugar in processed foods is the danger. Consuming too much added sugar negatively affects your mind and body, increasing disease risk. Because of the added sugar in processed foods, on average we consumer 5 to 10 times the normal amount of sugar we need.

In this challenge, we explore three rules to live by when it comes to sugar: eliminating all straight sugar, eating seven grams or less of sugar per serving, and avoiding white breads, cereals, and fried foods. We’ll help you identify the simplest strategies and alternatives to incorporate this practice into your life.

HEALTHY IS ELIMINATING INFLAMMATORY FATS

Maybe you’re already pretty good at avoiding refined sugar – that’s great! How about eliminating inflammatory fats and oils from your diet? Naturally occurring fats in whole foods give us energy, help us transport nutrients, assist in making hormones, and create healthy cell membranes. But, refined fats and oils can actually damage our cells, cause metabolic dysfunction, and wreak havoc on our immune system. We’ll show you exactly what to look for to eliminate these from your meal plan!

HEALTHY IS A COLD SHOWER

Here’s a different type of challenge to try: start or end your shower with 10 seconds of cold water, and gradually work your way up to 60 seconds. Not only does this help reduce inflammation, it also reduces muscle soreness and increases your metabolism.

All of these are simple changes that will lead to big impacts over time for your health. Sign up for your coaching session today to explore these challenges with our team of coaches. We can’t wait to see you there!

5 minutes per day of structured breathing can improve your mood and lower stress, even better than meditation.

WHY IT MATTERS

Using breathwork to reduce stress and improve overall well-being has been used by humans for centuries. Not only is it completely free to use your breath to help improve your health, it is also very powerful! Learning to control your breath is a direct path to control what is called your autonomic nervous system. In other words, it can help you control parts of the body that seem automatic or uncontrollable, including your heart rate, stress response, nervous system, thermoregulation, and more.

Although for most of the day your breath should be smooth and rhythmical (see our first Controlling Your Breath blog post), there are reasons to take control of your breath in a meaningful way. This is what we call “breathwork,” and science has proven that intentionally utilizing specific breathing patterns produces more benefit to mood than passive attention to one’s breath, as in mindfulness meditation practice. Just 5 minutes per day of breathwork has been proven to lower blood pressure, reduce stress, improve mood, reduce frequency of sickness, and improve creativity, learning, and memory.

Improve your mood and reduce stress.

5 minutes per day of intentional breathwork not only has physiological effects while doing the breathing exercise, but research shows these mood boosting effects continue throughout the rest of the day. To get started, try these proven, powerful methods.

BOX BREATHING

Breathe in through your nose, hold, breathe out through your mouth, hold, and repeat. Use equal times for the inhale, both holds, and the exhale (i.e. 4 seconds each).

CYCLICAL PHYSIOLOGICAL SIGHING

Take two inhale breaths through your nose (breathe in through your nose, pause, and breathe in again) followed by a full exhale via your mouth to empty out your lungs. Hold your breath for 10-15 seconds with empty breath (longer if you can) then repeat.

Exhale through your mouth.

Try out these methods this month as a way to add rhythm into your everyday life!

Integrating movement with your current daily habits is one of the best ways to exercise without going to the gym, because it removes the barrier of time.

WHY IT MATTERS

Dr. BJ Fogg is founder of the Stanford Behavior Design Lab and the creator of the science behind Tiny Habits®. What he saw was that too many of us have been told that it takes drastic changes to make any real difference, but the science says just the opposite: small changes lead to the biggest impacts! So this month, we hone in on the power of using what Dr. Fogg has termed “tiny habits,” and our focus is to use this science to increase the amount of movement each day.

The “tiny habits” science says to take any new habit you want, and then scale it back so that it’s super tiny. In the case of wanting to read more, that might mean reading one paragraph. In the case of moving, it means doing movements so simple they seem almost too easy to fit into your day. The science says that more movement, even in small doses:

• Leads to better sleep, more energy, stronger muscles, less stress and a healthier heart
• Treats your brain to a bubble bath of neurochemicals, neurotransmitters, and endorphins, thus leaving you feeling better, more creative, and able to focus better
• Reduces anxiety and frustration while boosting your mood and improving your memory

Use tiny habits to make a big difference.

It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!

STEP 1: IDENTIFY ROUTINE HABITS

This can be anything you frequently do throughout the day such as sending an email, brushing your teeth, or putting your shoes on to go to work.

STEP 2: IDENTIFY A SMALL MOVEMENT

This can be any movement that is appropriate for your environment (e.g. push up, squat, hamstring stretch).

STEP 3: COMBINE STEPS 1 AND 2

Every time you perform a daily activity from Step 1, perform a small movement from Step 2.

Keep the number of repetitions you do small (don’t increase over time) to ensure that you always do them. Over time, small changes make a big difference!

Scientific research has proven that the act of giving is a greater enhancer of mental wellbeing than any drug we’ve ever produced.

WHY IT MATTERS

A simple act of kindness completed regularly has been scientifically proven to produce more serotonin and dopamine throughout our bodies. Both of these are neurotransmitters – chemicals released by nerve cells to send signals to other nerve cells. And not only do they make us feel good, but they also enhance our ability to learn and absorb information. And it’s not just these two chemicals that kindness increases.

Science shows that simple acts of kindness:

• Increase oxytocin and induce a feeling of kindness
• Reduce cortisol and adrenal stress
• Eliminate signs of depression and anxiety
• Decrease pain through the release of endorphins
• Lower blood pressure
• Improve social relationships
• Reduce stress (which, by the way, also slows down our aging process)

Not only have acts of kindness been shown to improve heart health…

People who volunteer regularly – an excellent manifestation of kindness – had a “44% lower likelihood of dying early. This is a stronger effect than exercising four times a week!” (Carter, 2011)

Practice kindness.

PERFORM A SIMPLE ACT OF KINDNESS FOR ONE PERSON PER DAY!

A “simple act of kindness” is a simple, free, or inexpensive act that you do to spread a little kindness or brighten someone’s day. It can be a colleague, friend, family member, or stranger – the point is, it’s a selfless act.

Here are some of our favorites: when parking your car, leave a note on the car next to you saying that they did an amazing job at parking. Compliment the first two people you interact with today, or send a teacher a note saying how thankful you are for them. Post a positive review, smile genuinely at 5 strangers throughout your day, or pay for the next person in line. Donate old items or volunteer. It doesn’t have to take lots of time and money, the point is seeking out an opportunity to intentionally be kind…then doing it!

NOW DO THE SAME FOR YOURSELF!

Did you know that people are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication for their pets than themselves? In other words, we’re great at taking care of others, but often at the price of neglecting ourselves. Not even your pet thinks this is a good idea. So, extend the “simple act of kindness” to YOU by choosing to intentionally do something kind for yourself every day for the next 30 days.

This can be as simple as buying yourself that coffee you want…just because. It can also be high fiving yourself in the mirror first thing in the morning, sending yourself the same supportive message you’d send to a friend, or opening up time every day for yourself in the same way that you would for a friend who needed you. It also means finding ways to give yourself grace and a smile as you go throughout your daily life.

You have a superhuman power inside of every cell in your body, and this month we teach you how to begin to use it as we dive into harnessing the healing power of hormesis.

Which of the following do you think is true?

• To build muscle, you first have to tear muscle.
• To lower your body temperature, you first have to raise it.
• To make nerves grow, you first have to stress them.

The answer is: ALL of these statements are true. The reason is because your body is designed to come back stronger than it was before when it experiences acute levels of stress. This Herculean process of becoming more resilient in the face of stress is actually the default reaction of the body, and it is a well-studied phenomenon called hormesis.

This stress-induced process of resiliency evolved to enhance the survival of all animals. And through short, intense bouts of effort YOU can harness the power of hormesis!

Harness the power of hormesis.

It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!

STEP 1

Pick a timeframe that you can commit to for physically “stressing yourself to heal yourself” three times each week. This should be a timeframe that is very easy to commit to. We recommend 10 minutes to get started.

STEP 2

Pick an activity you enjoy, and turn it into a hormesis workout! This means go really high intensity for a short time, then take a break. Our recommended start time is 30 seconds of an exercise followed by 30 seconds of rest. Repeat until your time is up, and you’re done!

STEP 3

Enjoy the scientifically backed benefits of short, intense bouts of exercise! Studies have shown that even 30 seconds of all-out bursts of exercise can lead to increases in athletic performance markers like aerobic capacity and peak power, and can lead to these changes in only two weeks! They can also help build lean mass and burn fat, including visceral fat. This is the amazing power of hormesis!

Come see us at one of our October events to learn more and get started!

“If we always choose comfort, we never learn the deepest capabilities of our mind or body.” – Wim Hof

Our digital devices make us more connected than ever. However, the amount of time and frequency with which we’re using them may be causing more health issues than we realize.

WHY IT MATTERS

“There’s no denying that technology is convenient – indeed that is the whole point of it. It is far easier to keep in touch, to plan things ahead, and to multi-task with the help of it. But this almost complete reliance on technology is also making us suffer by introducing changes in our brain and body functions.” – Jim Kwik

It’s true. Our reliance on technology is introducing changes in our brain and body, and some of them are starting right when we wake up.

Consider the fact that 80% of us check our phones within 15 minutes of waking up.  The problem with this is that as you wake up the brain should naturally roll from delta waves (deeper sleep) to theta (daydreaming) to alpha (awake and relaxed) to finally beta waves (alert and looking for stressors).

However, when you look at your phone which contains messages, emails, notifications, etc., all of which the brain views as possible “threats,” it means your brain skips straight from delta to beta. Thus, robbing it of the priming it needs to appropriately align everything in the body: from your stress hormones, to your heart rate, to your neurotransmitters, to even the way your synapses are firing in the brain.

Just like you can reap the benefits of being in a fasted state from food when you wake up in the morning by allowing your body to burn some more fat if you wait a short time before eating, you can also reap the benefits of being “fasted” from your digital devices in the morning by taking advantage of the creative state your brain is in.  This is about health and about control, because smartphones make a good servant, but a bad master!

Start a daily digital fast.

STEP 1: WAIT ONE HOUR BEFORE LOOKING AT YOUR DEVICES EVERY MORNING

Just doing this one step can be a game-changer! Your brain is in one of its most creative and suggestable states first thing in the morning. Take advantage of this by writing out your intentions, working on a creative project, or doing something to advance your life goals.

Other great things to do that reduce stress and help your body / brain get into rhythm include: meditate, spend time with family (without your phone interruptions), go for a walk, mindfully make a cup of coffee, read, or just be present to your morning.

Charge your phone in another room, or make sure it’s on airplane mode. There are very few things in this world that can’t wait 60 minutes after your waking up to get your attention. Instead, give your morning attention and intention to the most important thing you can: yourself!

STEP 2: ADD ON OTHER TECHNIQUES

• Don’t look at your phone while you’re eating
• Have rooms in the house where technology is not allowed (i.e. kitchen, dining room, bedroom)
• Take larger technology breaks (4 hours or more of no technology) every weekend
• Take a digital-free vacation
• Don’t use digital devices to take breaks

Learn to be more present and get more out of every moment with a daily digital fast!