Healthy Is Spending Time in Nature

Healthy Is Spending Time in Nature

Practical Health

Research shows that spending a little time each day surrounded by nature has been proven to improve mental health and boost your immune system. Time to get outdoors!

WHY IT MATTERS

As cities have grown larger, our worlds have actually grown smaller. So small, in fact, that we can do most of our work on a device that fits in our pockets. The consequence of this is that we are spending less time outdoors while experiencing more muscle aches, headaches, and increased stress with the demands of being available at all hours of the day via those small devices.

New research shows that simply taking a walk in a park can reverse many of the effects of screen time and can give you other benefits, such as:

 

  • Boosting the body’s natural immune system
  • Boosting creativity
  • Reducing anxiety and depression
  • Reducing mental fatigue
  • Reducing the impact of stress
  • Mitigating the impact of dementia, including Alzheimer’s

This month it’s time to get reattached to nature and start implementing a dose of the “nature cure.”

Embrace nature.

This month try to spend increased amounts of time at a park, woodland, a beach, or on a nature trail. How much time? 15 to 20 minutes a day has been shown to improve health and well-being.

AT HOME
  • Walk in the grass either at your house or in a park without your shoes on; this is a connectivity strategy and only takes 15 minutes a day
  • Hike a trail for a total of 2 miles
  • Walk around your neighborhood looking at all the trees, look for birds’ nests and animals; this will connect you to the local nature that you have
AT WORK
  • Take a 10-minute break by putting on headphones and playing ocean sounds at your desk
  • Take a 30-minute walk every day at lunch to a nearby park
  • Keep live plants in your office that require your attention and care every day
Start small

Your goal is to increase your exposure to natural beauty of the surrounding area. If you live in a large city, then find an urban park. Take small steps at first and when you are ready for bigger adventures head further outside city limits.

I took a walk in the woods, and came out taller than the trees. – Henry David Thoreau
Healthy Is Eating Your Way Into Mental Wellbeing

Healthy Is Eating Your Way Into Mental Wellbeing

Practical Health

Can you “eat to beat” depression, stress, anxiety, and brain fog? According to the science coming out of the field of nutritional psychiatry, the answer is absolutely: yes!

WHY IT MATTERS

The world can prove to be quite stressful, especially recently, and your mental health can suffer during times where the environment feels out of your control. Unfortunately, too often we turn to foods that compound the problem by adding more stress and inflammation to your mind-body system. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, did you know that:

  • Nutrition is the most important environmental factor within your control that affects your mental health
  • Overeating refined sugars, ultra-processed carbs, and inflammatory fats – some of the foods we crave to reach for when stressed – has been shown to directly inflame our mood, brains, and temper
  • There is a direct correlation between anxiety, depression, and memory loss, and too little of key nutrients like magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, zinc, selenium, and the B-vitamins
  • A deficiency in omega-3 fatty acids and other nature-based nutrients makes it so your body’s messenger molecules won’t be able to communicate effectively with your brain

Make a change this month by using food to boost your mental health and improve your mood!

Boost your mental health and improve your mood: with food!

The first step to improve your mental health through nutrition is to eliminate refined sugars, ultra-processed foods, inflammatory fats, and artificial sweeteners. Then introduce more high-quality foods like the ones below to optimize your mental health.

NUTS & SEEDS

Nuts and seeds contain tryptophan, the precursor to serotonin, which stabilizes our mood, happiness, and memory. Other foods high in tryptophan include chicken, eggs, and turkey.

BERRIES

The purple, red, and blue colors found in blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and others come from anthocyanins which have been shown to reduce depressive systems and boost cognitive function.

FATTY FISH, SALMON, & OYSTERS

60% of your brain is made of DHA – an essential anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acid. Oysters, salmon, and fatty fish like tuna, sardines, cod, and trout are high in omega-3s and should be consumed regularly.

FERMENTED FOODS

Sauerkraut, yogurt, kombucha, kimchi, miso, and other fermented foods feed and improve your gut microbiome which makes serotonin, manufactures vitamins, and improves your immune system.

HERBS & SPICES

Spices like cinnamon, cloves, turmeric, and even black pepper; and herbs like rosemary, sage, and oregano are especially high in polyphenols which can keep your blood vessels healthy and flexible, and improve every part of your mental wellbeing.

“Let food be thy medicine.” – Hippocrates

Healthy Is Win the Morning

Healthy Is Win the Morning

Practical Health

“Creating a morning ritual that includes priming is the perfect way to start your day.”

 

– Tony Robbins

Did you know that scientific research shows that you can prime your body and mind to be in an enhanced state of readiness?  In other words, you don’t have to rely on luck or just hope you have a successful, good, happy day; you can actually make that happen with a proper “warmup” morning ritual.

Professional athletes know this well.  A professional athlete doesn’t just leave it up to luck or hope that they have a great game. They prepare and prime their bodies and minds to be in the best possible state through an established pregame warmup routine. And what matters most is not the length of that warmup, but rather making sure that the routine has the few proper ingredients necessary to properly prime the body and the mind to perform at their peak states.

You can take advantage of this same priming effect to make every day the best possible day, full of happiness and success, by choosing each day to prime your mind and body with a short “win the morning” routine!

Don’t Underestimate the Power of a 5-Minute Routine

You’ve probably heard before about the benefits of a morning routine, but if you aren’t implementing one right now it’s probably because you’re not making it convenient and easy enough for your unique, busy schedule. Just like a warm-up to prime the body for a sporting event doesn’t have to be very long – it just has to open your body’s range of motion, fire muscles through that full range of motion, and get the body ready for the movements it’s about to make in the event ahead – your “win the morning” routine does not have to be very long.

It just has to include these 3 steps:

Step 1: Prime Your Body

Your body is what allows you to move in this physical world, and its state of readiness affects everything else you’ll do today. Start your morning routine by firing your core and large stabilizing muscles, then perform a short stretch of any muscles that tend to get tight throughout the day (i.e. ankles, hip flexors, shoulders).

Step 2: Prime Your Mind

Your mind is the entity that consciously directs the body, and also subconsciously scans your internal and external environments constantly – taking in millions of bits of data per second.  You can immediately set yourself up for a better interpretation of that data and more positive, productive day by “priming your mind.” Priming your mind includes taking time to spark your creativity, aligning your thoughts and emotions with your goals, and prepping to live each day of your life in a peak state.

Step 3: Prime Your Whole Nervous System

In sports we use the term “neuromuscular activation” to describe the high-intensity sprints or all out sports movements that a player performs as they end their warm-up and prep to go into the game at their maximum.  The point of this activation is to prime the whole nervous system to be ready to take on the challenges of the game ahead. Though it can be accomplished through things like sprints or all out efforts that involve the whole body, it can also be accomplished through more feasible at home activities like the ones listed below.

Just Breathe

Just Breathe

Practical Health

Just Breathe

Written by Dr. Nich Pertuit, PhD

Healthy Is Wellness is here to empower you… all you have to do is breathe!
Want to know who is in control of your health?

YOU!

Want to know what is NOT in control of your health?

Anything that is outside of you.

Want to know one, simple, easy thing you can start doing today (and you already do it anyway) that immediately leads to controlling and lowering the stress in your body?

Just breathe!

BREATHE ONLY THROUGH YOUR NOSE

Not just any type of breathing. Breathe only through your nose. In through your nose. Out through your nose. Gentle. Easy. Smooth. Nose only breaths.

Is there science to this?

Yes! Nasal breathing releases nitric oxide (which opens up your blood vessels letting blood flow smooth and easy), it helps keep you hydrated (yep, you read that correctly), and it activates the parasympathetic nervous system (“para” like in “parachute” in this context means to bring down safely and gently; so it brings down the sympathetic/stress system to a de-stressed mode).

The Most Natural Method

This strategy is used by professional athletes and meditation experts alike. You can feel the benefits of this within 30 seconds, and if you spend the whole day breathing through your nose you will be using the most natural method of de-stressing that you already have built into your amazing human body system.

Your challenge today and this week:

Just breathe through your nose.
In through the nose.
Out through the nose.
Smooth and relaxed is what you should be thinking about.
The Mind-Gut Connection

The Mind-Gut Connection

Practical Health

The Mind-Gut Connection

Written by Dr. Nich Pertuit, PhD

Did you know it is not just the type of food that you eat, but also the mood you are in when you eat that food, that can influence everything from how your body digest the food to even the hormones you release?
We already know that eating more plant-based fibers – in particular eating a rainbow of colors of fruits and vegetables – is critical to the health of your gut microbiome.

Your gut is very complex and, as we know, very important to your overall health. The lining of your gut, though, is not just mechanical in its breakdown and digestion of the food you put into our body. The lining of the gut is actually studded with a huge number of endocrine cells – specialized cells that contain up to 20 different hormones!

In fact, if you could clump up all of the endocrine cells in the gut into a single mass, it would be larger than all other endocrine organs – your thyroid gland, pituitary gland, gonads, and adrenal glands – combined. This means that the way that hormones are released throughout the body is drastically influenced by the gut and its amazing internal nervous system.

Hyperlinked

The gut and the brain are linked through bidirectional signaling pathways that include nerves, hormones, and inflammatory molecules. The close interactions of these pathways play a crucial role in emotions and in optimal gut function. What you eat affects how you feel, and how you feel affects the way your body digests food.

Bet you didn’t know that your gut has its own nervous system? This system is so complex and intricate that it has capabilities that surpass all other organs and even rival your brain’s nervous system!

This system is called the Enteric Nervous System, or ENS. The ENS is made up of hundreds of millions nerve cells – more than contained in your spinal cord – and the only organ that outnumbers it in number of nerve cells is your brain. For this reason, the ENS is often referred to as your “second brain.”

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Although the ENS is a part of the autonomic nervous system, which is ultimately controlled by subconscious regions of the “first brain” like the hypothalamus, it can also operate independent of that system.

In other words, its neurons aren’t just there to receive input from your central nervous system, they are there to send signals back into the brain itself.

Over 90% of your serotonin and over 50% of your dopamine, the neurotransmitters that you know for making your brain feel good – they are formed right there in the ENS. Providing even more evidence that when take care of your gut, your brain and body also thrive.

As amazing as your gut’s enteric nervous system is at turning food into energy for all cells in your body, your emotional brain can mess up nearly every single automatic function when you eat in a stressed out state.

If your brain decides there is a threat to deal with, it will aim to take care of that threat by responding within milliseconds to put your body into a “fight or flight” mode. New research shows that eating while in this stressed out state can negatively change your microbiome, increase fat storage, damage the lining of the gut, increase inflammation, and even cause the stomach to reverse its process and empty its contents upward.

Needless to say, finding a way to relieve some stress before you eat is paramount in your overall health.

Do Not Eat In A Stressed Out State

Find ways to eat your food while in a calm state. The research on this is clear: if you eat while you are stressed out, your body will not digest the food properly, you are more likely to store what it does digest as fat, your colon secretes more water and mucus, your gut wall begins to leak, and the amount of blood flowing through the lining of your stomach and intestines increases. 

Some of our favorite strategies for calming yourself before you eat:
  • Practice gratitude right before you eat. If you’re eating a meal it means two great things: you’re alive AND you have food to keep yourself alive. Those are two great things to be thankful for! Pause before you eat, give thanks for the food in front of you, smile, and then enjoy your meal.
  • Take four deep breaths. Expand your rib cage out so it feels like your ribs are opening up like an umbrella, hold your breath for just a two count, and then breathe out fully. Taking just four deep breaths before you eat lowers your stress significantly.
  • Sit down at a table and enjoy the process of eating. This can be accomplished with friends or by yourself. But working, driving or rushing from one spot to another while you eat will only increase your stress. Consider meal time a break in your normal busy day, and sit down to enjoy this process.
  • Listen to music that calms you and makes you happy while you eat. Restaurants have long used music to set the mood for your eating experience. You can utilize this strategy by turning on your own calming and enjoyable music at every meal.
  • Prepare the food yourself. The act of preparing a meal has been shown to be as soothing as meditation. Plus, it’s a great social thing to do with friends and family. The Italians are well known for this, and they consistently are ranked as being one healthiest countries in the world. If possible, make the preparation of food part of your family or social eating experience.

Want to know more about more about the Mind-Gut Connection?

Check out this excellent book by Mayer, Dr. Emeran. The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health. Harper Wave, 2016. https://emeranmayer.com/book/

The Mind-Gut Connection

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Coloring Your Microbiome

Coloring Your Microbiome

Practical Health

Coloring Your Microbiome

Written by Dr. Nich Pertuit, PhD

You’ve probably heard the advice “eat a rainbow” of food colors every day… but do you know why?
One of the reasons is that this variety is good for the bugs that live in our gut, and their associated genes, collectively known as our microbiome. Think of your microbiome as like a micro-bug staff that are made up of different experts for different jobs, but all working together. To maintain optimal health, we need to ensure that all departments are adequately staffed, and that all teams are appropriately proportionate. A healthy microbiome has all departments busily working on different functions, while an unhealthy microbiome has departments that have been shut down or are understaffed, so not working properly.

So how do you fix your microbiome to become a healthy, fully staffed factory helping us in all areas of our health?

Good news: Our gut bugs love plant-based fiber! For example, when the fiber in broccoli gets as far as your large intestine, it finds itself in the place where a vast majority of your microbiome lives, and the gut bugs feast on it! When we feed these little guys different colors of vegetables, our microbiome will start changing within two to three days!

Different colors = feeding a variety of beneficial bacteria!

Getting 5 different vegetables (and some fruit and nuts) into your diet will accelerate the process of optimizing your microbiome!
Scientists have been diving deeper into understanding our microbiome, and now know that without a doubt they are extremely important to both our physical and mental health:
According to a 2014 research study, the incredible complexity of the microbiome means that in healthy individuals there are more “non-human” cells in our body than actual human cells.
These non-human “bugs” have evolved over millions of years and live off the food that we take in, and in return they provide services like making serotonin (the hormone linked to your mood); manufacturing vitamins; regulating allergies; and improving our immune system.
Heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer’s are just a few of the diseases that can be prevented and reversed by properly feeding the diversity of our microbiome.
Challenge yourself to keep track of your veggies for 2 weeks:
These charts come from Chatterjee, Dr. Rangan. How to Make Disease Disappear. HarperOne, 2018.

To find out more about Dr. Chatterjee’s book and his methods, check out his website: https://drchatterjee.com/how-to-make-disease-disappear/

Color Your Microbiome

Print out this PDF version and post on your fridge!
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