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Fueling the body

10/16/2021

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Pre- and post-exercise nutrition, specifically high-intensity or endurance exercise, is extremely important in the recovery and longevity of the muscles. The body taps mostly into glycogen (a form of glucose) during periods of high physical exertion, using this as fuel. Every “body” will be different in how much of what nutrition is necessary, both prior to and after exercise, in order to replenish and build. A general guideline is to not have the stomach be full or digesting a big meal within two hours of exercise. If your body is one that needs a fuel boost prior to exercise, it’s better to consume something lighter such as yogurt, small amount of oatmeal, fruit, smoothie, or anything that’s easily digestible and has a good balance of carbohydrates and protein.

After intense exercise, a good rule of thumb is to replenish as soon as possible. The body begins key functions after intense exercise, including protein synthesis (process of making new proteins) and glycogenesis (assisting with insulin production). Glycogenesis aids the protein synthesis process which requires glucose or simple sugar. But just as every body is different in it’s pre-exercise nutrition, post-exercise nutrition will differ as well. Post-exercise protein benefits might not be necessary for females as estrogen has a protective effect on skeletal muscle, minimizing the damage caused during exercise. On the other hand, males might need a higher amount of post-exercise nutrition due to the damage of muscle proteins and the diversion of amino acids and energy away from the process of protein synthesis during exercise. Getting simple sugar within 30 minutes of exercise both replenishes the glycogen used, plus provides necessary glucose for muscle recovery and building during the protein synthesis function in bodies when needed. 

Without key nutrients at the right time, the body can begin breaking down rather than building up, which can affect the ability to reach fitness goals. If you’re feeling like your body is taking too long to recover or having difficulty reaching goals such as strength building, re-evaluating your nutrition is a good place to start—both what you’re intaking, and when. 


Best,
Katherine

References
  1. Beck, K. L., Thomson, J. S., Swift, R. J., & Von Hurst, P. R. (2015). Role of nutrition in performance enhancement and postexercise recovery. Open access journal of sports medicine, 6, 259.
  2. Bonci, L. J. (2011). Eating for performance: bringing science to the training table. Clinics in sports medicine, 30(3), 661.
  3. Levenhagen, D. K., Gresham, J. D., Carlson, M. G., Maron, D. J., Borel, M. J., & Flakoll, P. J. (2001). Postexercise nutrient intake timing in humans is critical to recovery of leg glucose and protein homeostasis. American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology And Metabolism, 280(6), E982-E993.
  4. MEAL, M., & PLAN, M. The Science Behind Eating Before/After Exercise.
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How do I know I'm full?

10/15/2021

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We can gauge our developing appetite by our felt sense of hunger arising. At the other end of things, we often aren’t clear of a felt sense of fullness until it feels like maybe we’ve eaten a little too much. Have you ever eaten a wonderful meal and then felt a little too full? Have you ever thought about how we can tell when we are full?

From the Ayurvedic perspective, there are a couple of signs that indicate that the body is replete. 

One such indicator is that you will likely pause during a meal and take a deeper breath. The other is that you’ll have a little burp. Try paying attention to the possibility of these things when you’re eating, and notice if they arise. Body intelligence at its finest!

Warmly,
Carla
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The alchemy of eating right for yourself can benefit from a mini plan, and a little tracking.

10/8/2021

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Nutrition is one of those keys that can seem just too daunting to tackle and certainly that is part of the reason why there are so many “simple” and “easy” or even “magic” dietary plans to follow. Yet, as we all know, the way to accomplish a project that seems overwhelming is to break it into manageable tasks. The added challenge when it comes to nutrition is that the end goal is not obvious. Should you eat a low fat diet? Does it make sense for you to make your meals mostly plant based? Can you count carbonated water as your water intake? And do you really need to be drinking 64 ounces of water a day? Seriously, this list could just go on and on with science supporting and refuting nearly every answer.

One of the reasons that the science isn’t clear is that humans aren’t the same. Starting with the way we digest, there are variances in our ability to break down foods and the mechanisms of motility. Then the variability of the microbiota in our intestines plays such an immense role that research is continuing to find never before imagined connections with our health. And all of that happens before the absorbed nutrients get a chance to make it to our cells where things like the difference in mitochondria (7 types have been found in humans) may provide differences in how we get energy from the food. Check out The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Out Genetic Ancestry if you want to explore more on the topic of mitochondria. To simplify, we are all different and our lifestyle choices create even more differences among us.

Just trying to determine the right nutrition for an individual is complicated, but in our modern society that is also not seen as enough because we are inundated with how our food industry is not doing right by us nor the earth. Really?! Is there no end to the negatives associated with this basic need for our survival? It is almost as if money is to be made confusing and shaming us. And, along those lines, there is research demonstrating that foods which we are designed to crave when stressed actually don’t satiate us but exacerbate the craving- the opposite of other primates- and the researchers speculate that is due to our belief that the “bad” food is causing us harm, and thus, is increasing our stress.

Rather than hide your head in the sand only coming up for fast food, I encourage you to set some small steps. Start tracking the foods you eat and how they make you feel, decide that you will increase your water intake, or maybe watch the documentary Kiss the Ground (https://kisstheground.com/). There are so many small actionable steps that you can take that will give you more control, and while the ideal magic miracle foods are appealing, they are not the path of you using your ownership to take the best care of yourself.  

As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam
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Chewing: Choking prevention and beyond!

10/5/2021

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My friend told me I was bad at chewing~
I found that rather hard to swallow.

As a fitness trainer I’m a movement professional, so for this month I thought, ‘why not focus on the movement of eating: the chewing.’ In truth, the idea of writing about the human's use for chewing came around the backdoor: I am in a renewed place of interest around the gut microbiome, how you build a strong gut ‘garden’, how you maintain it and what it means to the health of your body when you have a good gut biome. What I realized while reading the sometimes murky and ever-abundant content regarding the study on gut microbiome, is that the role of competent chewing in digestion is an easy first step to better support your gut.

My personal experience with chewing is ‘slight’. I’m in my 4th decade of this life span and I essentially use chewing for its core competency: prevent choking. Beyond that, I do not spend any further time with chewing my food. Which just said a lot, without saying much.

Chewing your food well has some obvious benefits, as in breaking down the food particles into more passable and more accessible bits for the digestive organs. Chewing your food well also has benefits that surfaced from lab work, testing the bodies values of hormones linked with absorption and satiation of our foods.

A hallmark of the Chewing Challenge (of course that’s a real thing, this is America) is to chew each bite 30 times... since I think that is a great way to rob pleasure, I like the idea that you chew each bite to a near liquefaction state. When the food in your mouth is nearly liquid, I make 2 assumptions, that your teeth crushed the food into tiny particles and that the food is loaded up with digestive enzymes from your saliva. It looks like saliva contains digestive enzymes that break down starch and fats if given a chance, and that is linked with easier digestion properties in the stomach and esophagus. Likewise, the higher concentration of salivary enzymes can lead to less acid production, and they are responsible for helping to signal the digestive tract to prime itself for the presence of food to digest. Further, it is believed you may absorb more essential amino acids the longer proteins are able to be with the saliva, which is important since we don’t make essential amino acids ourselves and we must eat to acquire them (they are used to build muscle/hormone/neurotransmitters- critical human body tissues).

Chewing your food to liquefaction does take more time, AND it gives the body more time to respond with the awareness that it has been fed. This is where the lab work can show us that our gut hormones have a relationship to our chewing, in such a way that they tell us we are connecting with satiety. Otherwise stated, chewing your food to liquid slows how much food you can consume over a given amount of time, but it also allows for the hormone response to kick in that inhibits hunger. Lots of chewing does seem to correlate with a more ‘pragmatic’ quantity of food than we consume if we use the choking-prevention style of eating. Additionally, while increased presence of salivary enzymes and well crushed down particle sizes aid digestion, they are also thought to ease digestion. Chewing your food well is thought to help with bloating and gas, food coma, and constipation—common digestive dysfunction that we invest a lot of time in trying to fix by changing what we eat, may have substantial resolution in simply chewing our food better.

Historically, I catalog myself as a healthy eater. I have determined that my food servings host the right amount of calories with the right nutrients. My healthy eating was all plenty thought through, as it’s the result of planning and portioning out servings of food that I have attentively constructed within my mind. With the chewing model, I have a significantly greater physical experience with the mental project of eating. I find it oddly relaxing, which is also how I would prefer to consume food, as a relaxed person and not a voracious maniac. This is a very different relationship to the process of ingestion. I find fulfillment in this doing-chewing, that I’m not used to.

For all the effort I’ve given trying to understand the macronutrients and their impact on the body, with the aim of feeling real good a lot of the time, I don’t recall much experience of fulfillment. With the planned and portioned model, I actually had a lot less physical experience with eating my food. For me, chewing my food to liquefy is radically different. I feel my body more as it relates to the food I am putting in it, weird as that is. I don’t exemplify being ‘in the moment’ but I have to be in the moment to liquify bite upon bite of an entire meal. It’s so simple, and it’s a challenge. Perhaps feeling fulfillment happens when my mind is behaving for my body the way my body needs my mind to behave—albeit one blip at a time.

In robust health,
Tami

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/94/3/709/4411851
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16846622/
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/heres-what-happens-to-digestion-when-you-actually-chew-your-food
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21121612/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/essential-amino-acids
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The body adapts.

10/4/2021

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​Recently there was a report that referenced how at the start of the pandemic shut down there was great concern that children's vision would be impacted due to the excessive amount of close up vision used and how the signs now prove that that those concerns were justified. Statistically, kids have a significant increase in the number of cases of nearsightedness. And as I read this I wonder why is it so easy to accept adaptation of the body in some directions, usually what is seen as the negative direction, and not in others. Whether you follow the belief structure of allostasis or homeostasis, the fact that the body adapts based on how it is used is not in dispute. Why, then, do we readily accept progression of change when it is an undesirable direction? Is it because change in the direction that we want requires concerted effort and that can seem to take such a long time? Or, is it because we have a mistaken mechanistic view of the body, and like a machine, we accept that use will lead to wearing out?

The body is alive and as living tissue it will respond to become better at what is asked. If this is not the paradigm that you are trained to see the body, it might take some practice. For instance, sometimes you hear people recommend that drinking lots of water directly before or even with your meals to provide you a full feeling and help you eat less. But there are those who say that this water would dilute the acid in your stomach and, thus, make your digestion less efficient, and the body's response to this would be to increase acid production of the stomach. Seems simple, yet without such a perspective we might be tempted to take something like an antacid to deal with the increased acid and this would further limit the acid effectiveness, and perhaps stimulate even greater production of acid. In this scenario it is easy to see how a mechanistic controlling approach to the body might cause a negative cycle that would not occur with an approach of working with the body.  

Changing your view of your body and understanding how it is trying to become better at what you want - based upon what you do - can have a significant shift in how your body responds to your concerted efforts. Certainly there are limits to the body's ability to adapt, but with a greater understanding of how the body is actively and continually adapting we can have greater control over the direction of the adaptation. For the greatest range of ability it is important to have the greatest variation of activities. For your eyes that means you need to give the close focus a break by focusing on some distance. Finding the right balance can be hard, but realizing the power you have to make a difference is a great start.

As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam
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    This blog is written and updated by the staff that support EQUIVITA. Individual blog posts are the thoughts of the staff member that submitted the post.  The content of these posts often support the thoughts and ideas of our organization, but do not always(and we scarcely use definitives) reflect the same thoughts or ideas of the organization as a whole.

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