Stress And The Adrenal Glands

Posted on: October 17, 2018

Posted in: Podcast

Modern world stress has been greatly affecting how we function without us learning how to prevent or get rid of it, especially at the hormonal level. In this episode, Dr. Trish Murray dives deep into how stress and the adrenal glands affect each other in the body. She also discusses where the cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones and neurotransmitters come from and how they work together. Check out hos episode to get more knowledge on how to prevent or treat stress and adrenal gland dysfunction.

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Listen to the podcast here:

https://tmwellnessom.podbean.com/e/stress-the-adrenal-glands-with-dr-trish-murray/

Stress And The Adrenal Glands

Welcome to the discussion on the adrenal gland and stress. On this episode, it’s just going to be me talking about the adrenal gland and how stress in our modern world is affecting your adrenal gland, your hormone cortisol and how that can have an effect on a lot of your other hormones. We’re also going to talk about how do cortisol, adrenaline and these different hormones and neurotransmitters work, where do they come from and to try and understand the physiology of it. We’re going to talk about circadian rhythms and the different hormones and how they interact with each other and about how stress in general can affect our overall health. If we get dysfunction in our adrenal glands or in the function of our hormone system that produces our cortisol or we’re overproducing cortisol, it can be typically the initial cause or underlying root cause of many of the chronic diseases of our western world.

Adrenal Gland

First of all, what is adrenal gland? It is a glandular organ that sits on top of your kidneys. Your kidneys are in the back of your abdominal cavity. If you think of your rib cage and your diaphragm and above your diaphragm inside your rib cage, sits your chest cavity where your heart, your lungs, your esophagus and all that are. Below your diaphragm sits your abdominal cavity. In your abdominal cavity, there are intestines in your stomach and your pancreas, but also your kidneys sit in the back of that abdominal cavity. On top of the kidney sits your adrenal glands and your adrenal glands are extremely important in your ability to handle stress. They are very involved in your hormone production of particularly cortisol.

HPA Axis

We’re going to talk about what’s called the HPA axis first. That stands for the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis. What this is, is that all of your hormones, no matter which hormone system you were talking about. We are talking about your adrenal and cortisol hormone flow and production with the HPA axis. We could be talking about, for example, the HPT axis or the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis. Hormones follow the bouncing ball. One hormone gets put out by one organ in your body. Let’s say the hypothalamus in your brain and then that goes into your bloodstream to a different organ in your body. That organ puts out a different hormone and then that hormone goes and tells another organ to do something. Hormones are like chemicals that are produced by different organs and send messages to other organs and tell them what to do. All hormones need to be in balance with each other.

When we talk about the HPA axis, the hypothalamus is an organ in your brain and it puts out corticotrophin-releasing hormone. That hormone travels in the bloodstream to your pituitary gland, for example, which is also in your brain. The pituitary gland, if CRH comes and tells it to, it puts out ACTH or adrenocorticotropic hormone and that goes in the bloodstream down to the adrenal cortex or the adrenal gland and tells that gland to put out cortisol when you are in a stressful situation. That is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. It is stimulated by stress. I’d also like you to realize that if you are overstressed all the time and you are producing too much or an overproduction or a continuous production of cortisol all day long at higher levels than normal. That cortisol and some of the hormones that came down to cause the cortisol to be produced, like the cortisol-releasing hormone from the hypothalamus inhibit when they’re too high the function of the production of your thyroid hormone and the glands that are in the path to produce your thyroid hormone.

DH Stress | Stress And Adrenal Glands — Stress And Adrenal Glands: In our modern world, we’re all under way too much stress that the sympathetic nervous system and adrenal gland are overactive, leading us down a path of chronic diseases.

This is why many Americans, more women than men, but men too, have hypothyroidism. One of the number one causes is our stress levels. This is an example of how one hormone can affect another. If you have high cortisol levels that are, for example, causing dysfunction in your thyroid gland, then you’re going to have symptoms like fatigue, cold intolerance, weight gain, even though you’re eating like a bird, memory problems and brain fog, poor concentration and inability to stay focused. If it goes on too long, you’re going to develop depression, you’re going to have hair loss in the shower and there’s all this hair in the drain. You’re going to have dry skin and you may develop infertility. You notice, we need to look upstream at the adrenal gland.

The one thing that I want you to understand is that the majority of traditional medical doctors out there are not trained to look at the adrenal gland or to do any testing of your adrenal gland in a way that’s going to look at its function. I was trained as a traditional medical doctor. I was trained in internal medicine. I was a primary care internist and until I went into functional medicine and learned what I’m talking about now, I had no idea how to look at these things and I never really assessed the adrenal gland. This is very important. We’ve talked about the adrenal gland in relation to your hormones, but also cortisol and your sympathetic nervous system and a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine are also important in the function of our handling of stress. Our dealing with fight or flight situations and our ability to be balanced in these situations from neurotransmitters from your nervous system as well as hormones from your hormone system.

Sympathetic Nervous System

I also want to go over what’s called the sympathetic nervous system physiologically and anatomically if you will.We have multiple nervous systems in our body. You have your central nervous system, which is your brain and your spinal cord and those are running our show as far as movement and things like that. You also have your central nervous system then can send messages out through your peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system is the nerves that leave your spine and go out into your body, your arms, your hands, down your legs into your pelvis and so on. They allow us to move and feel pain and that thing. You have your central nervous system and your peripheral nervous system. There’s also a third nervous system in our body called the autonomic nervous system. That has two parts. There are the sympathetic and the parasympathetic parts of your autonomic nervous system. I wanted to go over this with you so that you understand this as well.

Your sympathetic nervous system’s main neurotransmitter is norepinephrine. The primary hormones that can affect your sympathetic nervous system are also epinephrine, which is also called adrenaline, and what we’re talking about and our focus is on cortisol. These chemicals, when you’re faced with stress or danger or trauma or fear or things like this increase in your body and these chemicals have a physiologic response of increasing your heart rate and cause constriction of blood vessels to increase blood pressure and divert blood flow away from your skin to your muscles, so that you can either fight something or run away from it in your fight or flight response to any threat in your life.

This is the system that we’re focusing on that can affect your adrenals, your cortisol and your overall health if it’s always elevated. That’s the problem is that we’re not imbalanced in our Western world. In our modern Western world, we’re all under way too much stress, so the sympathetic nervous system and your adrenal gland are overactive and leading you down a path of many chronic diseases. The nervous system or the other part of the autonomic nervous system that’s supposed to be in balance with your sympathetic nervous system is called the parasympathetic nervous system. The main neurotransmitter of your parasympathetic nervous system is called acetylcholine. The major communication from the brain or the central nervous system to the periphery of your body of the parasympathetic nervous system is through your vagus nerve. Your vagus nerve goes through your gut. The vagus nerve has been looked at now as a major highway of information and communication between your brain and your gut.

You notice the vagus nerve innervates your gut, your liver, your spleen, your lungs and your heart. The parasympathetic nervous system is meant to slow your heart rate, reduce your blood pressure and allow for improved digestion and breathing and also it is the part of your nervous system and the automatic nervous system that allows you to relax and to have increased libido and sex drive. You want a good balance between your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system. What you also need to understand is that emotions and your perception of events in your life are what causes your brain to initiate messages that are going to increase your feeling of threat or fight or flight. Whether you have emotions that are more positive, hope, understanding, sympathy, empathy, praise, grace and things like this. You may be faced with difficult situations, but your emotional reaction to them is not quite as anxious, not quite as frustrated, not feeling helpless, but instead feeling hopeful and positive even though you are faced with adversity.

You notice we also need to work on our emotions and our perception of our experiences in our lives because that can determine which pathway that’s going to be overproduced. That is whether it be sympathetic fight or flight or whether it be more understanding and more parasympathetic and being able to balance yourself and come back to a more relaxed state more quickly. The other thing now that we’ve taken a look at hormones and the HPA, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis of hormones. We’ve talked about the autonomic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system.

Circadian Rhythm

I’d like to focus now even more back on the cortisol hormone and the fact that the HPA axis and cortisol should have in our body is called a circadian rhythm. What that means is that when we first wake up in the morning, you’ve been sleeping all night, you’ve been resting and you are, the alarms have gone off or the sun has come up and you’ve woken up and your cortisol level should rise. That’s normal. Meaning we have to shift from sleeping and being completely relaxed and at peace and at sleep and our brain at the quietest frequency of our brain waves, we got to wake up. It is normal for our cortisol to increase by more than 50% within the first 30 to 45 minutes of waking up. We need to work on our emotions and perception of our experiences because that can determine which pathway is going to be overproduced.

That’s called the cortisol awakening response. From that point on throughout our day, our cortisol level should start to lower and deplete throughout the day. That’s why by the afternoon and into the evening, we should be more tired. By the time we go to bed, our cortisol level should be at the lowest level of the entire day. You notice if you were to measure it and look at a chart, it should drop like a slide from a high level as you climb the slide down to the lowest level at the bottom of the slide at the end of your day right before bed. An opposite hormone that is supposed to be up when we’re sleeping and opposing cortisol in our lives is called melatonin. The circadian rhythm of melatonin should be completely the opposite of the path or the flow for cortisol. Melatonin should be the lowest level when we wake up in the morning and should be at the bottom of it, slide, if you will. Then it should be increasing throughout the day and especially after dark, melatonin should be rising to its highest level at our bedtime and then start to slowly deplete throughout the night to its lowest level when the alarm goes off or when the sun comes up and we wake up.

Cortisol and melatonin are supposed to be in circadian rhythm balance with each other. If you are someone who has trouble falling asleep when you first get into bed, then you want to take care of your slow dose of melatonin, maybe three to five milligrams about an hour or so before you get into bed. You will notice then it will help you fall asleep better. If you’re someone who wakes up in the middle of the night at 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM and you feel wide awake, it can be because your cortisol and melatonin are out of balance. Your cortisol is too high in the night. It’s not low enough. To take melatonin right at bedtime may help you stay asleep but the other thing about melatonin is many patients come to me and say, “It’s not helping me sleep. I took it for a few nights.” Then they’re missing the point. You want to take a low dose of melatonin anywhere from even one milligram to maybe at the most five milligrams in the evening. Not necessarily like a sleeping pill, but more for the fact of trying to balance your cortisol. If your melatonin’s up and balances or show decrease your cortisol, then you’re going to stay asleep and you’re going to sleep better and you’re going to have a better circadian rhythm of these two hormones in relation to each other.

Dehydroepiandrosterone

Another hormone that I want to talk about in relation to cortisol and stress is called DHEA, dehydroepiandrosterone. This hormone is another hormone that when it’s normal or when it’s in optimal levels, gives us our resiliency, gives us energy and again gives us our sexual drive and our sexual libido. We want DHEA, melatonin, cortisol and others to be inappropriate balance with each other. Another hormone we’ll bring up in our category is our sex hormones, estrogen and testosterone. If you look at any chart that tells you what hormone comes from other hormones in the pathway I’ve talked about of this produces and to follow the bouncing ball, I will tell you that all hormones of the steroid pathway start and they come from fat and they come from cholesterol and lipids.

We need fat in our body. We need our lipids, we need our cholesterol in the right balance, but first of all it all starts from fat. Then it comes down through chemicals and if you are overstressed and if you are producing too much cortisol all the time, there is a concept called cortisol steal. If you come down the path and then you always go down and produce cortisol, you don’t have any leftover chemicals to go over and spill over into the more downstream hormones such as DHEA or into the androgen hormones such as going into testosterone or the female hormones going into estrogen. This is why if you’re overstressed all the time and you have cortisol steal and the production of your adrenal glands and too much cortisol is stealing from the production of your DHEA or the production of your testosterone or the production of your pathways to estrogen. You’ll notice you’re going to be wired. You’re going to be tired. You’re not going to be motivated. You’re going to get depressed or you’re going to be anxious. You are not going to have a sex drive and you’re going to deplete the production of your thyroid hormone. The top supplements that would benefit anyone with adrenal dysfunction are B vitamins.

Do you see that the whole thing starts up at the adrenal gland and your cortisol and can become a mess? The other thing is I talked before about cortisol awakening response. First thing in the morning is when we want our cortisol to rise. In the first 30 to 45 minutes after awakening, you want at least a 50% increase in your cortisol. If it’s intact, it provides the energy, the anticipation of the upcoming demands of your day and it is a sign of resiliency and vitality. If this is not intact, you’ll notice you’re not going to have any mojo. You’re going to feel depressed and you’re also going to have problems with your brain function. You’re going to have brain fog and you’re going to have cognitive decline.

Cause And Effect Of Stress

What causes all of this in the first place? What’s the cause and effect and what initiates this? In that regard, like all functional medicine, we have to come back and look in the mirror and look at our lifestyle because daily hassles, work stressors, shift work like if you’re working at night and awake when the sun is down and trying to sleep, when the sun is up, you notice that opposite of what we’re physiologically and naturally supposed to be doing. It confuses and throws off your sympathetic nervous system and your adrenal gland and your hormone function. If you are someone who had a lot of childhood adversity, maybe whether that be emotional trauma or physical trauma as a child, that’s still playing into your adult life, if you haven’t done any work on trying to process it for yourself. If you have poor relationship quality in your life, if your relationships in your life are not positive for you, then that’s causing excess stress. If your diet is too high in sugar and you develop insulin resistance and dysregulation of your sugar and your glycemic diet is too high, then that’s going to throw off your sympathetic nervous system and your HPA axis of your adrenal glands.

If you have chronic infections like poor teeth hygiene and your gums have inflammation all the time or if you’ve had chronic viral infections or you’re exposed to mold on a chronic basis in your home or office or workplace, these are causing problems. If you have poor nutrition, if you have increased toxicity, if you have increased inflammation and we’re all doing this, as we get older, aging. All of these things can alter your adrenal function and your effect increased cortisol and cause dysfunction and imbalance in your adrenal hormones. When this starts to happen and if too many of these things are going on in your life, then they’re the cause of an imbalance in your adrenal hormones. This can have a wide range of negative consequences. It can adversely impact your overall quality of life and create many chronic diseases and conditions and symptoms such as. They’re not direct specific in focal things either.

The HPA axis and adrenal dysfunction, the symptoms can be vague and they can be highly variable and they may include things like fatigue, lack of motivation, insomnia, as we’ve talked about. They can cause weight gain where you feel like you’re eating like a bird, but you still can’t lose weight and you’re gaining that weight all around the middle of your belly. That is very commonly a sign of adrenal hormonal cortisol dysfunction. You’re going to feel depressed, you’re going to have GI complaints, whether that be diarrhea or constipation or heartburn and you may have chronic pain. As you notice, lots of different systems are getting affected by this dysfunction that starts with your lifestyle and how much stress you’re under. HPA axis dysfunction or adrenal hormone dysfunction or sympathetic nervous system dysfunction is associated with many conditions. It includes high blood pressure, heart disease, gastrointestinal and immune dysregulation or dysfunction, autoimmune diseases, diabetes and metabolic syndromes such as insulin resistance, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, persistent chronic pain, neurodegenerative diseases like MS or Parkinson’s and cognitive decline like Alzheimer’s disease.

There is a lot of cause and effect here. It could all start with how stressed out you are, how much stress there is in your life and your diet and your nutrition. I’ve had many other podcasts that I’ve done one for example, nutrition and macronutrients. The vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients that you want to make sure you get from your diet. You always want to start with lifestyle in order to correct any of the problems we’re about to go into as far as the stages of stress, adaptation or dysfunction. Because you don’t go from being perfectly normal to being completely exhausted and you can’t even get out of bed. There are stages of dysfunction that happen. Let’s go over them now.

Stages Of Adrenal Gland Dysfunction

First of all, stage one of the beginnings of signs that your adrenal gland is dysfunctioning is called the alarm phase or stage one. What happens here is that a person may be asymptomatic. You may not necessarily feel exhausted. You may have a cortisol level and flow and physiologic process that is still happening normally. Even if you test your cortisol, the cortisol increases normally in response to stress or trauma and it typically falls normally back to normal at the end of a stressful event. In the same way that when a lion chases a deer or something and if the animal’s stress level goes up, then their cortisol goes up so they can run away. If they survive and they get away and the lions now left the area, all of a sudden, they shake it off and their cortisol level drops down to a more relaxed state.

In the alarm phase or stage one, your body and your physiology are still doing this normally. It’s a normal adaptation to increase stress. It may be asymptomatic. However, it may not necessarily be asymptomatic. You may know you’re stressed out, you may know your stress levels are too high. You may be having a little bit of problem with sleeping, but not as bad as it’s going to get if you don’t make changes now. Your cortisol awakening response again would typically be normal. Your other hormones, you’re still going to have a sex drive, but you may notice it’s not as good as it had been or when you’re relaxed or on vacation. This is stage one. It doesn’t mean there’s no problem at all, but if we were to do testing, essentially would come back normal.

Stage two is if you don’t do anything about your lifestyle and you keep staying under the high-stress levels and things progress and then you go onto what’s called stage two or the resistance phase. The resistance phase is a sign of early decompensation of your HPA axis and early decompensation and early signs of adrenal hormone dysfunction in response to your stress. If we were to measure it, your cortisol would typically be found to be elevated and your DHEA in response to that might be low or it might be normal. If you tested your DHEA ratio to cortisol, they typically might be low because your cortisol is too high. The symptoms you may present with in the resistance phase as you move along this dysfunctional pathway is you’re feeling more stressed.

You’re feeling wired. You’re feeling anxious. You may be having anxiety attacks. You may be having panic attacks. You’re going to have mood swings. You’re snapping at your spouse or you’re snapping at your children or your grandchildren. You’re snapping at your best friend and you’re like, “Why am I doing that? That’s not like me.” You’re going to be having decreased libido and sex drive. You may develop high blood pressure now. You may have low motivation and you may feel depressed. You may have thyroid dysfunction and be diagnosed by your doctor with low thyroid because it starts out with your adrenal dysfunction. You’re going to have blood sugar imbalances and your doctor may be telling you your blood sugar is starting to become too high. You’re becoming insulin resistant and you’re putting on weight and it’s gaining around the middle. You notice things are progressing. The majority of traditional medical doctors are not trained to do any testing of your adrenal gland.

If you don’t do anything about it and it keeps progressing, some of us are going to progress to stage three. That is adrenal insufficiency and adrenal exhaustion. Your adrenal gland cannot keep up with your stress levels. It cannot produce enough cortisol. Your DHEA is low, your cortisol is low and you have lost your mojo. You’re exhausted. You’re depressed. You have no motivation. You’ve lost the circadian rhythm of your cortisol. It’s really low if we were to test it or your bottom line is the graph of your cortisol. It should look like a slide and flat when it’s tested. This is concerning.

Adrenal Gland Tests

If you are someone who is saying to yourself, “I need to get my adrenals tested,” that’s something we do at our office, Discover Health Functional Medicine Center and it’s usually the advanced functional medicine labs out there. There are many of them. Genova Diagnostics is one that we use in my office.

Doctor’s Data is another and there are others. There are some that focus specifically on the adrenal testing. I will tell you that in the traditional medical model, if you go into your primary care doctor and say, “I want my adrenals tested,” they are not going to do this test because what it is usually is a saliva spit test. Your best way to test your cortisol in your body at the different times of the day, such as first thing in the morning and maybe if you’re trying to test your cortisol awakening response, you’ll test it again, 30 minutes or within 45 minutes of awakening, late morning, mid-afternoon and at bedtime. You notice if we do that and we’re testing your cortisol level at each of these different time periods to look at whether you have an appropriate circadian rhythm or not. Meaning the highest level should be in the morning and it should get lower until the lowest level at bedtime. We’re also looking to see is it in the normal range or not.

You also then from your saliva can test your DHEA and you can do a ratio between the two. This is called the Adrenocortex Stress Profile by Genova Diagnostics. We do it in my office at Discover Health Functional Medicine Center. If you are interested in this testing, you could go to our website, DiscoverHealthFMC.com and even right on the home page, be able to become a patient. You can schedule yourself for a 30-minute free session with myself or our nurse practitioner to talk about your interests and see what your needs are. See if there are a match and a fit and see whether we can help you. We do offer this test through Genova Diagnostics and it is something that we could have sent to your home. You could do it by a kit at your home. You send it out to Genova and we get the results and we can go over it. We do telemedicine through my office. These are things you could be considering.

Once we determine if someone has stage one, stage two or stage three of adrenal dysfunction, the treatment of any type of adrenal dysfunction requires tiers of treatment, meaning levels or stages of treatment. It is not just a pill in order to resolve this problem. There is way too much going on. As we said in the beginning, the cause of this is your lifestyle. If you’re not going to bed at a reasonable hour, you’re not winding down to be able to go to bed at night. You’re on your computer or your cell phone right up until you put your head on your pillow, that’s got to stop because the number one way to replenish your adrenal gland is through sleep. You notice just to give you a sleeping pill is not going to help.

It’s also if someone has depression and they’re on the most typical antidepressant, like an SSRI, a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. There have been studies that have shown that it depletes your cortisol awakening response. That’s going to add somewhat to your depression. It may balance your up and downs of your emotions, but it may not be the answer to resolving your underlying problem of cortisol imbalance, for example.

D.E.N.T Program And Treatment For Adrenal Dysfunction And Stress

We need to first start with lifestyle modification. At Discover Health Functional Medicine Center, we have a program I call the DENT program. That’s an acronym that stands for Diet and Detox, Exercise is for the E, N is for Nutrition and the T is for Self-Treatment. We’ve got to start there and we’ve got to individualize and optimize your diet. We’ve got to help you get rid of the toxins in your diet as well as in the rest of your world, such as cosmetics or cleaning products and things like that.

We’ve got to help optimize your exercise, come from where you’re at and what you want and what you feel is fun for exercise. We need to improve your nutrition and we’ve got to help you figure out a daily practice in order to quiet your mind and either meditate or deep breathe or be mindful in some way and do guided meditations or something. We’ve always got to start there with lifestyle. That’s the biggest rock that people need to pick up and start thinking about when it comes to adrenal fatigue or adrenal dysfunction. Once we get that going and along the way with that, we could overlap with tier two or stage two of treatments, which includes supplements and supplements are meant to be exactly that. Supplements are not the pill that’s going to solve the problem if you don’t go back to stage one or tier one and change your lifestyle.

The top supplements though that would be a benefit to anyone with adrenal dysfunction are B vitamins, first, B1, B2, B6, B9, B12. The B12s are the Folate, Riboflavin, Niacin, and Biotin. These are excellent B vitamins. If you are concerned on your adrenal gland, then you want to be on a good B complex every day. Besides that, zinc also. Zinc needs to be in the right ratio with copper. Taking 30, 50 milligrams of zinc every day and not taking any copper is not a good idea. Many times, you can find a good multivitamin that has a good ratio of zinc to copper in it. You’ll also want to be on magnesium and magnesium L-threonate for example, is something someone could take closer to bedtime, help quiet the mind and improve sleep. Sleep is the number one time that you are going to replenish your adrenal gland and balance your hormones.

Another supplement would be vitamin C, anywhere from 500 to a 1,000 or more a day. Fish oil and the Omega-3 fatty acids are the next supplements. CoQ10, 100, 200 milligrams a day would be the next supplement, and the final one I’ll mention is NAC which stands for N-acetyl cysteine. N-acetyl cysteine is a precursor to glutathione. Glutathione is the number one detoxifying agent in your body. You notice these supplements are trying to balance your hormones, improve your detoxification ability, improve your energy production and improve your overall health.

Tier one and tier two, and now what would be tier three? This is very unique to adrenal dysfunction and the adrenal gland and its production of cortisol because the next tier in the treatment of adrenal dysfunction deals with adaptogenic herbs. Adaptogens are herbs that are specific to be helping the adrenal gland adapt to your stress. I’m going to go over the different ones in a moment that is consistent with the different stages of adrenal dysfunction that we went over. Tier four, the last and final step of any type of treatment for adrenal dysfunction, and I say that with caution, and possibly hormonal replacement with DHEA or pregnenolone. DHEA, dehydroepiandrosterone, if you take any hormone endogenously, meaning it’s made synthetically by humans and you put it in your body and you cause your DHEA or another hormone level, estrogen or testosterone or pregnenolone to go up higher than all the other hormones, you notice that’s going to throw everything out of balance.

You don’t want to be going on any type of hormone replacement if you will for long periods of time. This needs to be individualized to you. If you’re going to get in to taking hormone replacement or stages three or four of these treatments we’re talking about, I strongly recommend you find yourself a functional medicine provider and be able to work with them. With an educated and trained professional, figure out what’s best for you as an individual. If we go into the adrenal adaptogens and we talk about which ones are touted best for the different stages of adrenal dysfunction, for stage one, the arousal phase, ashwagandha is one of them and ashwagandha is unique. It’s the only one I’m going to list off here that is consistent with all three stages of adrenal dysfunction. Stage one, the arousal phase. Stage two, the resistance phase and stage three, the exhaustion phase. You are going to hear that ashwagandha is one adaptogen that is positive for all three stages.

The other one for stage one with the other list continues with L-Theanine, which comes from green tea, 5-Hydroxytryptophan, Valerian root and something called Romania. Stage two, Ashwagandha, but something then called Rhodiola or Siberian ginseng, St. John’s Wort, Phosphatidylserine, dark chocolate. Dark chocolate can help and adapt your adrenal gland to keep up with the stress. Finally, for stage two, something called Cordyceps. Stage three, ashwagandha, Romania, Cordyceps, but then also something called Asian Ginseng and finally licorice. You don’t want to be getting into these adaptogens all on your own without any support or any input from a functional medicine provider or an integrative medicine provider that’s familiar with the adrenal dysfunction and how to appropriately treat it. Take that as a caveat.

We’ve talked about treatment. We’ve talked about the stages of dysfunction. We’ve alluded to a little bit about testing but to finalize this, I want to make sure you realize there are tests out there. They’re typically by advanced functional medicine labs such as the one we use is Genova Diagnostics and they do have kit tests where the way to test your cortisol levels is best through saliva. What you do is you get a kit with these little tubes and you generate enough saliva spit in the tube at multiple times throughout your day. The Adrenocortex Stress Profile tests and the Cortisol Awakening Test are something we do through my office and can be very helpful to identify if your adrenal gland is functioning normally. If your adrenal gland and your sympathetic nervous system are in balance or if they’re the underlying root cause of some of your problems such as mood disorders, insomnia, high blood pressure, obesity and even the development of diabetes. This is extremely important concept to consider. In the traditional medical model, they don’t look at this test and they don’t do it. The number one thing that can help your adrenal gland and your cortisol is to get optimal sleep.

In summary, we’ve covered now the adrenal gland and how it puts out the different hormones and how hormones are all in balance with each other. We’ve talked about the sympathetic nervous system or the autonomic nervous system and the fact that the two parts of it. The sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system need to be in balance with each other. We’ve talked about the fact that cortisol and melatonin should be in a balanced circadian rhythm with each other at night and during the day. We’ve talked about DHEA, estrogen and testosterone and how if you’re producing too much cortisol, there’s something called cortisol steal, which steals from those hormones and you lose your sex drive, your strength, your vitality and your resilience. We talked about the cortisol awakening response, which is normal and needs to be intact and can be tested through saliva to see if it’s intact. We’ve talked about the fact that this is all upstream medicine and the fact that if you are having vague and varied symptoms, this is the type of thing we want to be testing to see if we can help you with your lifestyle, get you back on track and balance your physiology and your nervous system.

If you don’t, you’re going to go down the path of the different stages of adrenal dysfunction. If you get to stage three, you’re depressed, you’ve lost your mojo, you can’t get out of bed and you feel exhausted. The number one thing that can help your adrenal gland and your cortisol is to get optimal sleep. I hope this has helped. Go to my website and you scroll right down the homepage. There are little educational programs. One of my favorite ones is 10 ways in 10 days to Stop Your Suffering and Live a Pain-Free Life. I would recommend that one to everybody. Once you are listening to that, you’ll get a little video every day for ten days with a challenge or a solution or something for you to try to improve your life and decrease your pain and your suffering. We’ll also tell you how to schedule if you’re interested for a free 30-minute consult with myself or my nurse practitioner at certain times during the week. We hope to hear from you. I hope this talk has helped. Take care.

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Understanding Macronutrients – Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Typically Work

Posted on: May 8, 2018

Posted in: Podcast

Posted by: Trish Murray

With the food options we have these days, it has become quite hard to decipher which ones are healthy or not. Dr. Trisha Murray shares her knowledge about macronutrients – carbohydrates, proteins, and fats – and how they benefit and/or harm us. She reminds us of the rainbow concept of eating fruits and vegetables while also touching on proteins that contain amino acids, as well as fats and calorie counting. Know more about the good and the bad of these macronutrients and the different food sources that you may consume or avoid.

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Listen to the podcast here:

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ywvp2-11a1d38

Understanding Macronutrients – Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Typically Work

This episode is on macronutrients. The macronutrients that we get from our food predominantly are carbohydrates, proteins and fats. We’re going to spend our time talking about these three different macronutrients and how they benefit us or how they may not benefit us. Let’s start with carbohydrates. For every gram of carbohydrate you eat, you get four calories per gram. When you count your calories, you’re counting the amount of energy that’s produced per gram of whatever that food may be. When you eat a gram of carbohydrate, fruits, vegetables, but many of us eat too many processed packaged carbohydrates like grains and crackers, breads, muffins, rice, we get too much sugar. 40% to 60% of the total calorie you eat each day should come from carbohydrates, but we also want to get them from the right source of carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates serve as the body’s main fuel source, 40 to 60% of your diet, because they are easily broken down into simple sugars that the body can use immediately for fuel that particularly breaks down into glucose which is sugar and is a fuel for your body. There are three categories of different kinds of carbohydrates. One, there are starches, so starchy foods like potatoes or grains or beans. Those would all be starchy examples. Number two, fiber. Different types of fiber for example are wheat bran or oat bran or vegetable cellulose, the different fibers within the grains or the vegetables. The third category within carbohydrates is glycogen. Glycogen is a very quick–release high–energy fuel that is typically stored natively in muscle and liver. These are the different kinds of carbohydrates that you’re ingesting when you eat plants and animals.

The one thing I want to emphasize though is that most of us are getting far too many of our carbohydrates from processed foods. You need to be getting the majority of your carbohydrates with nutrient–rich, antioxidant fruits and vegetables. Every fruit and every vegetable give you carbohydrates, but they are the right kind of carbohydrates. Back to the rainbow concept. You want to eat all the colors of the rainbow: red, yellow, green, orange, purple, blue. I don’t mean Skittles, I mean fruits and vegetables. We should be eating exactly 40% to 60% of the food we put in our mouths. When you count calories, you are counting energy that is produced per gram of your food intake.

However, I will say make sure you tolerate gluten because 20% to 40% of us do not tolerate gluten. If you do tolerate gluten, then grain-sprouted breads do have some essential nutrients and they have essential fiber in them. However, I and the rainbow concept recommend, that you do not eat more than one to two servings of breads or grains a day. If you think about it, the typical American is probably eating anywhere from four to seven servings of grains a day, and that’s why we have diabetes and an obesity epidemic. We’re all getting far too many grains which get converted to glucose which causes problems with our ability to metabolize sugar.

Let’s move on to proteins, the next macronutrient in our diets. When you ingest protein, every gram of protein gives you the same as carbohydrates, four calories. It’s four calories per gram of every gram of protein. Protein should be about 20% to 30% of the total calories of your diet. How are you going to guesstimate this? It is estimated that an average person who doesn’t have any kidney disease for example and is a healthy person essentially, should eat about one gram of protein for every one pound of lean body mass. For example, if the average person weighs upwards of let’s take 175 pounds, whether that be male or female. You can take other numbers, but the idea would be let’s say 175 pounds and let’s say 30% of that is not lean body mass.

If we go down to give or take about 125 pounds of lean body mass, depending on whether you have more fat content on your body or not. The lean body mass is your bones, your muscles, your water. Let’s say it’s 125 pounds of lean body mass, then you would want to be ingesting 125 grams of protein a day. A lot of people out there are not getting enough protein or the other thing they’re doing is they’re eating too much protein at one sitting, like when you have dinner and you get a sixteen-ounce steak. You can’t absorb, metabolize, break down and utilize all that protein in one sitting. The other thing you want to remember is that you need to spread out in smaller portions your protein intake.

DH Macronutrients | Understanding Macronutrients — Understanding Macronutrients: Carbohydrates are the body’s main fuel source.

Why is protein important? Because proteins provide the building blocks for your tissues, bones, muscles, skin, nails, hair and those building blocks are called amino acids. We need them to build our structure and maintain our structure. The best type of protein that’s out there is grass-fed meats, wild-caught fish, which means when you go to the store, you’re going to look at the little signs through the counter and you’re not going to buy the ones that are domestically raised on farms that raise fish. You’re going to buy wild–caught fish or pasture-raised eggs. Sometimes, meat will be labeled organic or sometimes not, but it will be pasture or grass-fed. You don’t want to buy the commercially industrialized raised beef, cattle, meats and pigs. Why? Because they are typically given synthetic hormones.

Many times, they’re given those synthetic hormones to have them gain weight faster so that they can get them to market faster. When you eat that meat, you’re ingesting those hormones and it can make you sick, so you need to consider finding yourself grass-fed, wild-caught, pasture–raised animals in order to eat. I live in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and so for me, in a rural area where I live, there are many farmers out there that are raising their own and I’m able to find my neighbors and buy from them. If you have that ability, then please look for it and it’s growing more and more all over the country. As long as you look, you’re going to find it.

The other thing about the amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins is that there are essential amino acids and nonessential amino acids. In order to get what’s called a complete protein, it needs to contain all of the amino acids. To eat a substance or to eat a food that has all of the amino acids that make it what’s called a complete protein, it has to be an animal protein. Fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts do not make a complete protein. Eggs, meats, fish and animal proteins do and are complete proteins. What you need to realize is animal foods such as the meats I’ve listed contain more saturated fat, so you do want to choose lean meats like turkey or chicken. You can eat beef, lamb or these other meats, but mix it up and don’t eat too much all the time of the red meats and monitor the amounts you consume. How much you want to eat at a serving would be to look at your palm and eat a serving about the size of your palm at any one meal. Most of us are getting far too many of our carbohydrates from processed foods.

Incomplete proteins found in beans or nuts do not contain all of the amino acids but if you research it, you will find that you can combine for example rice and beans and that’s a typical vegetarian way to combine rice and beans in a meal and get a complete protein. The best protein source is eggs. Whole eggs contain high levels of lecithin and choline which reduce bad cholesterol. “What? Eggs reduce cholesterol?” We’ve had it wrong that eggs are bad for you because they’re high in cholesterol. Eggs are not bad for you. They have things in them that can help you reduce the bad cholesterol. They are one of nature’s perfect foods as the proteins are used more efficiently by the body than any other food. The thing you do want to realize is if you hard boil an egg or if you harden the yolk, the yolk becomes oxidized which produces free radicals in your body and will cause negatively formed LDL cholesterol. That’s the problem. What you want to do is soft boil an egg or over easy an egg so that the yolk stays somewhat liquefied and doesn’t get burned or hardened.

The other thing is there are quite a few grams of protein we’re all supposed to be ingesting and you’re not always going to eat that much meat throughout the day. One of the other things you could think about are protein supplements. Adding a smoothie for example with a protein supplement in it or just adding it to water in a water bottle of a protein–powdered supplement and shaking it and then drinking it could be a way for you to get enough protein such as at the breakfast hour or lunch or another time of the day. Things to keep in mind in any protein powder or any supplement you’re going to buy is absolutely avoid the unhealthy artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharine, Equal or these types of things. You do not want to be ingesting those. Those are not going to help you. They’re going to make you sick.

The best types of protein base of a protein supplement is you can find protein supplements in a powder that are egg white based. That’s a good idea. Hemp protein is good, brown rice protein, and the another one that’s good is whey. The thing you have to remember is whey comes from dairy. Whey is absorbed extremely rapidly and is great, particularly after let’s say a gym workout or an exercise workout, but if you have sensitivity to dairy, you can’t use whey because whey is dairy based. Let’s talk about fats. Fat is supposed to be 20% to 30% of the total calories you eat in a day. One gram of fat will give you nine calories of fuel. Fat has gotten a bad rep. We all have been taught, “No fat. Low fat. Don’t give me fat or I’m going to get fat.” What I want you to make sure you understand and one of the biggest messages of this show is that fat is not bad for you, if it’s the right kind of fat. Good fats are good, so we’ll need to talk about what are the good fats and what are the bad fats. What do you want to avoid and what do you want to eat?

The other thing I want you to make sure you understand is I’ve mentioned if every gram of fat gives you nine calories of fuel and what we said for protein and carbohydrates is they only give you four calories per gram of fuel. What I want you to understand is that when you have cereal, pancakes, grains, breakfast, doughnuts and muffins., you are giving yourself processed carbohydrates which is empty calories, hardly any nutrition.

The other thing is it’s not giving very much fuel that’s going to last very long. You’ll notice that you eat your breakfast at 8:00 in the morning and by 10:30, you’re already hungry again. What I would recommend is that we need to start putting more good fats back into your diet. It’s like if you have the concept of a wood stove and you put kindling to light a fire to get it going. If you keep putting more and more kindling in your wood stove or on your fire and you want to go to bed at night and stay warm, you’re going to be up all night long putting more wood on that fire. If you get it going with the kindling but then you put a big solid hardwood oak log on that fire and it’s able to get going and burn slowly, you’ll notice you’re going to be able to sleep through the night and stay warm. The same thing is true for fat. If you ingest good fats in your diet, you are not going to get hungry until four or even five hours later for your next meal. You notice you’re more satisfied, more equally, evenly burned fuel within your system and you’re actually going to lose weight eating fat. What a concept. Trans fats or hydrogenated fats in junk food or processed foods are poison.

Let’s talk about what are the correct fats to be reaching out for. Coconut oil, the actual fiber of the coconut, coconut milk, palm oil are excellent saturated fats. They are medium–chain triglyceride fats and they feed your brain. That’s why you’re seeing so many more coconut products out on the market because they are very good for you. The other thing you want to reach for and eat a lot of is olive oil or olives. They are monounsaturated fats and they are awesome for your health and decrease inflammation. Fish is high in omega-3 fatty acids, cold water fish in particular like salmon. Nuts, almonds, cashews and pecans are all excellent forms of fat and they’re going to sustain you for longer periods of time. Meat products like animal proteins also have higher amounts of saturated fat. We do want to eat animal products to get the protein from them, but we also don’t want to overdo it. Back to that size of the palm of your hand and the fact that the animal protein should be a condiment, a quarter of your plate and the other three-quarters of your plate should be fruits and vegetables in color. When it comes to fats that are called trans fats or hydrogenated fats, you’re going to find margarine or vegetable oils or in many packaged processed foods like potato chips and such. This is poison. You should be avoiding it because what it does is it’s made to increase the shelf life of the food so it never goes bad. If you think about that, that’s going to make you sick and they’re bad fats that are a poison, so trans fats and hydrogenated fats are not good for you.

Fats are going to deliver you long–lasting energy much more than carbs or proteins. Researchers think that 80% of the US population consumes an inadequate amount of essential fatty acid, like the omega–3 fatty acids. Fats are also important for your skin, your hair and your nails. Fats allow the transport of fat–soluble vitamins like vitamin D and vitamin A, to be able to transport around your body. Hormones, come from cholesterol. Cholesterol is a fat and is where all of your hormones just about start from. We need fat in order to have balanced hormones. The final thing here is that your brain is 60% fat, so we need good healthy fats in our diet. Why are we having Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline and dementia epidemic too along with our diabetes and obesity epidemic? Because we aren’t eating the right percentage of macronutrients to keep us healthy. I hope this has helped. I hope you’ve learned something and I will catch up with you on our next episode.

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The Health Benefits Of Medicinal Mushrooms

Posted on: December 4, 2017

Posted in: Podcast

Posted by: Trish Murray

Dr. Trish Murray talks about the scientific research that supports the health benefits of medicinal mushrooms. She dives deep on how mushrooms affect the immune system in positive ways to benefit people with many different issues with their immune system, particularly allergies, autoimmune diseases, and even cancers. Dr. Trish also covers the multiple pharmaceutical effects of mushrooms and the variety of disease it can potentially cure. Vegan or not, this episode will encourage you to add more Oyster, Chaga, Reishi, or Shiitake mushroom to your daily diet to optimize your health.

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Listen to the podcast here:

https://tmwellnessom.podbean.com/e/the-health-benefits-of-medicinal-mushrooms/

The Health Benefits Of Medicinal Mushrooms

The Mushroom

I’m going to talk about mushrooms in general and then I am going to be having two purposes in this talk. First, one of the purposes will be to review a bit of the immune system with you. Mushrooms, one of their most powerful things is they’re immune modulators. They modulate our immune system to help us affect many different disease processes. They also then have that pharmaceutical-type effect, but they have numerous other pharmaceutical effects. The second part or aspect of this theme are the multiple different pharmaceutical effects of mushrooms that research has supported. Let’s get started. First of all, in general, there are estimated to be as many or even more than 140,000 different mushroom species. We humans are only familiar with about 10% of those mushroom species. 50% of the ones we are familiar with, we know are edible. Of those known, 700 species are known to possess significant pharmacological properties.

If you are a vegan or vegetarian, your issue is how are you going to get enough protein. Mushrooms contain up to 40% protein by dry weight. Those of us that want to cut back on our meat intake, but don’t want to drop our protein intake, mushrooms would be very high on the list to add into our diet. There’s a small amount of lipids or fats in mushrooms. They also carry or include many essential vitamins and minerals in them. These last three, lignans, polysaccharides and triterpenes, are the main things within mushrooms that I read in the many different research articles that are the beneficial items when you talk about the pharmaceutical aspect of mushrooms. We’re going to go over what are lignans, polysaccharides and triterpenes. Lignans and polysaccharides are both fibers, essentially. They are carbohydrate fiber material. Fiber and lignans are chemicals found in plants, but lignans are also a class of phytoestrogens. Phytoestrogens are estrogen-like chemicals that also act as antioxidants. They are also anti-inflammatory and they can be anticarcinogenic or anticancer. Lignans is one of the major things in mushrooms that we’re touted in the research as their beneficial effects.

Polysaccharides, another fiber, are full of b-glucans. What is this? It’s a carbohydrate or essentially a sugar, a starch or a fiber or a carbohydrate molecule that’s composed of long chains. Polysaccharides, meaning so many saccharides, is a long chain of mono, one, saccharide units bound together. These lignans and polysaccharides are both fibers. They’re also both soluble fibers. Why is that important? It’s important because soluble fibers bind to bile acids in the small intestine. Bile is produced by your gallbladder and put into your gastrointestinal tract or the small intestines. What happens is soluble fibers will bind to these bile acids. Bile acids are fats and they make them less likely to then be absorbed into the bloodstream or into your body. This in turn lowers your cholesterol level in your bloodstream because lipids or fats are cholesterol. There’s your mechanism of decreasing cholesterol with the use of soluble fibers, whether they be mushrooms or even oatmeal.

Another effect is that soluble fiber also decreases or attenuates the absorption of sugar which therefore reduces the sugar response after eating, so your insulin doesn’t have to go up as high. You don’t absorb as much sugar into your bloodstream. If you are a diabetic or if you have metabolic syndrome, you absolutely should be considering increasing your fiber. Mushrooms are an excellent source of that. Finally, this third mechanism is when you eat fiber, we do not break down fiber well in our intestines. What happens is the fiber passes through our GI tract and gets to our colon. It’s the bacteria that we live in friendly relationship within our colon that either ferment or digest these fibers in our colon. When they ferment or digest these fibers in our colon, those bacteria then produce short chain fatty acids as a result of that fermenting process. The short chain fatty acids they produced feed our cells that line our intestines. Triterpenes, this third one, comes from either animals, plants or fungi, meaning mushrooms. All create triterpenes. They form the bases of almost all steroids, so the immune system is going to be affected as well as our structure.

Let’s talk about these pharmacological potentials of mushrooms. The very first one we’re going to talk about and the one that was touted the most in all of the books I read and all the research so far that I’ve been reading is number one, the immune-modulating properties of mushrooms. There’s a quote, “The therapeutic effects of mushrooms such as anticancer activity, suppression of autoimmune diseases and allergies have been associated with the fact that they’re able to modulate our immune system. Possible efficient treatment was listed in many different articles for asthma, food allergies, dermatitis, inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis is a vessel plaque that can lead to heart attack or stroke, hyperglycemia, HIV, tuberculosis, septic shock and even cancer.”

The Immune System

Let’s now talk about the immune system, and this is not a level 300 talk. This is a level 100. I’m going to introduce the basic concepts of the immune system and how the fibers and the things from mushrooms that we found in scientific research are affecting and modulating your immune system. What you need to understand here and what I want you to come away with is that our immune system has predominantly two different parts or phases to it. Even before we get into that, make sure you understand that your immune system is your defense system. It is your military, and its job is to defend you and protect you and keep you safe from foreign things that try and enter your body. The first part of your immune system is your innate immunity. That innate immunity takes effect in the first 0 to 96 hours of defense against any stranger danger or any bug that enters your bloodstream or gets on your skin or you chew or put in your mouth or in your sinuses or wherever it enters your body.

DH Mushrooms | Health Benefits Of Mushrooms — Health Benefits Of Mushrooms: Your immune system is your defense system. Its job is to protect you and keep you safe from foreign things that try and enter your body.

This innate immune system is nonspecific. It has a broad response to foreign-appearing agents. What’s foreign? You can talk about a pathogen molecular pattern, meaning any bug or virus or fungus that enters your body is going to have a molecular pattern. When your immune system sees it, it is going to recognize it as different from ourselves and different from our immune systems. It’s going to recognize that molecular pattern as a pathogen or a stranger and it’s going to react against it. Another type of foreign agent might be a damaged molecular pattern, AGE. It stands for Advanced Glycosylated End products. Glycosylated is sugar, so glycosylated end products are advanced sugar end products. What that means is first, I’ll give you an example. It’s summertime and you’re out cooking on your grill and you’re making hotdogs and hamburgers. How about those burnt hotdog or the burnt hamburger? Some of you out there I know love those. I hate to tell you this and burst your bubble, but the cells of that meat when they’re burnt are damaged molecular patterns.

When you eat them, they are going to turn on your innate immune system to attack them because your immune system looks at that burnt muscle cell in that meat as if it is a foreign agent. Examples of cells that are active in our innate immunity in a broad way, against any stranger or molecular pattern that comes into our body that’s looked upon is our white blood cells, macrophages and natural killer cells. What can these guys do? What do they do to kill the foreign agent or get rid of it? Phagocytosis, for example, a natural killer cell or a macrophage cell can engulf something that they think is foreign. They’ll go and engulf it and take it inside the cell and destroy it is one possibility. Another possibility is they can become an antigen-presenting cell. They might still phagocytize it, meaning take it inside themselves, but instead of killing it right then, that foreign thing inside that cell causes that cell to become an antigen-presenting cell. Meaning it’s going to put receptors on its cell membrane to go and tell other cells in our body that this bad thing is here and to become active against it. It’s going to go tell the adaptive immunity to get their act together and come help destroy this foreign agent, so it’s going to go get supportive backup guys to come help.

This is the acquired immune response. The acquired immune response as you can see takes time to develop. It takes anywhere from four to five days to be initiated. Those antigen-presenting cells from the innate immunity need to be activated and then they are going to go and tell other cells such as B cells or T cells to become activated and produce antibodies against the specific foreigner or they’re going to tell T cells to produce cytolytic cells. You’ll notice cytolytic is where lytic is lysis or destroy so different cells are going to become active now. You can create the adaptive immunities the way that we create long-lasting pathogenic-specific memory. For example, with the cold virus. We’ve all had a cold. We get a cold with the sore throat, cough, fever and things like that. It lasts anywhere from six to seven days and it runs through. If you’ve never been exposed to this particular cold virus that you get, then your innate immunity needs to try and attack it, but it can’t. It isn’t strong enough to destroy it and get rid of it completely, so they become antigen-presenting cells. If you want to cut back on meat intake, but still need protein, mushrooms should be very high on your diet list.”

They go tell B cells and T cells to come in and support them and they develop the memory for this specific cold virus. When your children have first started school, what do they come home with all the time? When they go to kindergarten or nursery school, they come home sick all the time. That’s because their adaptive immunity has not built up yet and developed any memory against these viruses that all the kids are being exposed to. They come home and they get sick a lot and their innate immunity then develops an attack and then they go tell their adaptive immunity to attack. Once their adaptive immunity has developed, we no longer are susceptible to that particular cold virus. When your children come home with an illness, you might get that virus or you might not. The viruses you don’t get means you’ve seen before and your adaptive immunity has long-lasting pathogen-specific memory against it, so you don’t get sick. The ones you do get sick with, you have not seen before, so you have to go through this process of a six or seven-day attack on this foreign agent or bug in order to destroy it.

I hope this has helped give you an overview of your basic immune system. This is a summary of what we’ve covered. Any immune response, you first are going to have a natural or innate immune response. The cells in your body that are most involved in are dendritic cells, neutrophils, monocytes, natural killer cells and so on. The processes that they can attack foreign things are with phagocytosis. That’s engulfing before an agent and trying to destroy it or they can engulf it and put receptors on their own cell membranes. B cells in the adaptive immunity then creates antibodies against that specific foreign agent, whether it be a virus, bacteria, fungus or whatever. Another process that the innate immunity can do is an oxidative burst. Oxidative burst is some toxic chemicals to kill a foreign agent. Finally, the process here with cytokine production. We produce cytokines that also then go to the specific adaptive immunity as a signal to T cells and the cytokine production tells macrophage activation, so T cells can then go after foreign agents and lyse them or destroy them.

Activation Of Adaptive Immune Response

Let’s get back and look at how the mushrooms or the medicinal fungus has an effect on different invasive things or how it modulates our immune system. One study talked about medicinal fungus water extract. It consisted of multiple different tinctures from different mushrooms. The turkey tail, the shiitake, the reishi are the three that were talked about in many different research articles. The dose of this particular tincture that’s listed here for you was 400 milligrams per kilogram in people and this extract was found to possess the ability to activate natural killer cells in your innate immunity to either directly kill tumor cells such as the cancer cells or to induce natural killer cells to secrete cytotoxic agents to elicit apoptosis of tumor cells. Let’s talk about apoptosis. Apoptosis is when any cell in your body, whether it be a tumor cell or one of your natural cells in your body that’s not cancerous, live out their life and die naturally. Meaning when a cell turns over or dies, that term apoptosis is the term for that process. What this is saying is that the natural killer cells can secrete cytotoxic agents to elicit the death, apoptosis, of cancer tumor cells.

Antimicrobial Effects

These two things are showing you how the mushrooms and the different agents within the mushrooms can cause your immune system to start destroying tumor cells or cancer cells. Polysaccharides bind to innate immune cell receptors. They’re called Toll-like receptors, which activate number one, phagocytosis by macrophages and natural killer cells in the innate immune system. Two, activate dendritic cells which then become antigen-presenting cells which lead to the activation of your adaptive immune response. Another pharmacological effect of mushrooms is antimicrobial effect. Microbe is a bug, like bacteria or a virus. Your immune system is attacking these things. Mushrooms were very effective in the studies I read to help you against bacterial or viral infection.

From an antibacterial perspective, reishi, artist’s conk and shiitake were the top ones that were discussed. Some of these even showed inhibition of what’s called MRSA or Methicillin-Resistant Staph aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staph aureus is a bug that has become resistant to just about any antibiotic. To know that these different types of mushrooms would help you inhibit or become resistant for yourself against these bad bacteria, that’s awesome information if your immune system is at risk. Antiviral mushrooms, reishi, but also chaga, turkey tail, shiitake and maitake. These showed effect against herpes simplex virus, influenza. Herpes simplex virus can be when you get the blisters on your lip or cold virus. You can also get them genitally. It even showed effect against HIV.

Anti-Cancer Effect

Let’s talk about another pharmaceutical effect of mushrooms and that’s the anticancer effect. What I learned also throughout my research is that first of all, in the Asian countries such as China, Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries, that is where majority of the research on the medicinal aspect of mushrooms has been done. They’ve been using for over thirty years medicinal mushrooms in adjunct treatment of cancer, so that’s where a majority of the research information is from. They have found over many years of research that mushrooms exert antitumor activity by stimulating this hosts defense or immune mechanisms. They talked the most about the following mushrooms: maitake which has MD-fraction in it, shiitake, birch polypore and turkey tail which has PSK or Polysaccharide-K, oyster mushroom, chaga, and reishi.

What types of things did they find? First of all, stomach and colon cancer. They found that these mushrooms increase survival time and quality of life compared to those treated with chemotherapy alone. This can be an adjunct. You can use mushrooms along with chemotherapy and they’ve been found to be safe. Reishi mushroom was found to suppress cell adhesion, so the cells adhering to and cell migration of highly invasive breast and prostate cancer cells. Continuing with a different aspect of the research on anticancer, MD-fraction from maitake mushrooms, the method in which it works appears to repress cancer progression and primarily exerts its effects by stimulating natural killer cell activity to destroy the tumor. This maitake and MD-fraction has been approved here in the United States by the FDA as an investigational drug to conduct phase-two pilot study on patients particularly with advanced breast and prostate cancer.

Further anticancer information, polysaccharide-K, PSK, and polysaccharide peptide, PSP, both are derived from derivatives of turkey tail mushroom has been used in cancer treatment in Asia for over 30 years. It’s been used in adjunct treatment of gastric esophageal colorectal, breast and lung cancers. It again increased the host versus tumor response, so it’s affecting the innate and the adaptive immune system through natural killer cells and through lymphocyte activated killer cells to destroy the tumor cells. Inhibition of tumor cell proliferation ranged anywhere from 22% up to 84% by increased cell cycle arrest and apoptosis causing natural death of the tumor cells. This mushroom derivative had antimetastatic effects inhibiting enzymes that promote the spread of the cancer.

When cancers metastasize into the bloodstream, that means they can spread into other parts of our body and these mushrooms inhibited enzymes that promoted that spread stopped those enzymes. These derivatives of the mushrooms also act as antioxidants which neutralize free radicals or toxicity within our bloodstream. What’s absolutely amazing to me is that PSK and PSP have been developed as pharmaceuticals in Japan and have been commercially available worldwide since 1977. In 1985, this tincture from these mushrooms ranked nineteenth on the world’s commercially most successful drugs. Why do we not know this more in the United States? This is why I’m doing these talks. This is why I’m trying to express this information.

Anti-Allergy Effect

Let’s move on to antiallergy effects of mushrooms. The mushrooms that I talked about in the articles I read so far are reishi and Tricholoma populinum. They inhibit histamine release in rat mast cells. Histamine is what causes allergy responses in people with asthma and people with skin allergy responses or sinus reactions with histamine. You’ve heard of drugs called antihistamines and you use them if you have a lot of allergies. Reishi, for example, is a mushroom that would be helpful to you to stabilize your histamine and therefore not have as many allergic reactions.

Antiatherogenic And Antiatherosclerotic

Next and the fifth pharmaceutical effect of mushrooms, antiatherogenic. Atherosclerosis is the buildup of plaque in your arteries that can then lead to heart attack or stroke. What I want you to understand is that your total cholesterol number, if it is not astronomically high, is not what causes heart attacks and strokes. What causes heart attacks and strokes is if your cholesterol or your lipids and the fats in your bloodstream are inflamed and toxic.

They cause damage to the cells that line your arteries, cause an injury to the inner lining of your artery, get in behind those cells and inside the wall of your arteries and that’s when plaque starts to develop. What this is saying about oyster mushrooms is that oyster mushrooms decrease cholesterol and inhibited lipid peroxidation. Lipid is fats and peroxidation is the inflammation or the oxidation or the toxicity of those fats. That therefore is what leads to the development of the plaques. If you’re going to inhibit that with the oyster mushroom, then you’re going to decrease your possibility of developing plaques and decrease your risk of heart attack or stroke. You notice in this study, oyster mushroom decreased the size of atherosclerotic plaques that were being followed in the rabbits in the research study. The other thing that’s amazing is that oyster mushroom has a compound in it that is lovastatin-like.

You’ve heard of lovastatin or statins. Statins are the most common prescribed medication for people with high cholesterol or high triglycerides. Oyster mushrooms naturally have a lovastatin-like compound in them. That’s an effect of how they can be atherosclerotic. Meaning antiatherogenic or anti-atherosclerotic. Reishi, shiitake and maitake mushrooms are also anti-cholesterol or anti-atherosclerotic. They act as antioxidants. They inhibit platelet aggregation. Meaning keeping your blood thin so you don’t build up plaques. They inhibit LDL oxidation or inflammation. That’s what really causes plaques. They block the monocyte adhesion to endothelial cells. Your endothelial cells or the cells that line your arteries, they block the damage or the cells that are going to cause damage and adhere to those cells and cause damage. They inhibit cholesterol absorption as fiber by binding to the bile acids.

Hypoglycemic Or Lowering Blood Sugar

The sixth pharmaceutical effect of mushrooms is hypoglycemic or lowering blood sugar. Fermented chaga or reishi, turkey tail, shiitake and maitake mushrooms, and many of these mushrooms have different pharmaceutical effects. In the studies that I read on these mushrooms, not only did they decrease someone’s appetite and decrease the overall food intake but they also increased their serum insulin levels and decreased their overall blood sugar levels or glucose levels. One of the example studies had 71 patients with type 2 diabetes which is adult-onset diabetes. These patients took 1,800 milligrams of polysaccharide fractions from reishi for twelve weeks and they demonstrated statistically-significant reductions in postprandial, after eating, glucose levels compared to those that did not take any of the reishi fraction. There’s an evidence-based study, random controlled, showing positive effect of using reishi mushroom tincture to decrease blood sugar in diabetics.

Pain Control

Reishi protected mice against hepatic necrosis caused by chloroform in one study. In another study, multi-centered, double-blind randomized control trials, these are the top-type studies to be done on humans with hepatitis B. 33% treated patients had normal liver enzymes and 13% cleared hepatitis B surface antigen from their serum completely. None of the control group had this level of an outcome. What did they take? They took 600 milligrams of reishi tincture three times per day over a twelve-week period to have this effect. The eighth pharmaceutical effect of mushrooms is pain control and one mushroom that they talked about predominantly was lion’s mane. Lion’s mane is highly selective against opioid receptors and they have an anti-pain activity, but not the same side effects as morphine, brain fog, fatigue and constipation. The lion’s mane didn’t have that effect so that can be very beneficial to people with chronic pain. Other mushrooms that were discussed with pain effects were birch polypore and artist’s conk. They also had selective inhibitors of certain enzymes that can help decrease pains similar to opioids.

In summary, mushrooms are an excellent source, first of all, of protein. They are full of many vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, meaning nutrients from plants. Two, they affect the immune system in positive ways to benefit people with many different issues with their immune system, particularly allergies, autoimmune diseases and even cancers. Third, they have also numerous other pharmaceutical or pharmacological effects such as lowering blood sugar, lowering cholesterol, liver protection and even pain control. I sure hope this helps. Take care.

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Fitness, Fascia And Fun

Posted on: November 6, 2017

Posted in: Podcast

Posted by: Trish Murray

Research shows that living a sedentary lifestyle decreases your life span by seven years. That’s a lot! If that fact does not motivate you to get up and exercise, listen to this episode as Dr. Trish Murray lays out the facts on how our body is designed to move and live actively. She elaborates about fascia and its connection to your physical, mental, and emotional health. Stop making excuses and start moving! Catch her tips on the small steps you can do right now, even right there in your chair, to improve your mobility and balance.

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Fitness, Fascia And Fun

Welcome to this talk entitled Fitness, Fascia and Fun. What I would like to focus on is exactly the title. First of all, I want to talk about fitness, movement and exercise, and what is the research showing about these things. One of the biggest things it’s showing is we’ve got to move. We’ve got to move multiple times a day in some way that is fun, flowing and enjoyable. We’re going to be talking about the research and what it shows about fitness and the highlights and pearls about what is the best type of exercise and movement. Besides that, I’m going to be talking about fascia. Fascia is the connective tissue in your body. I’m going to elaborate on that more and more when we get to that section.

First of all, exercise or movement is not just for those who can but for those of you and anyone out there that thinks you can’t. We all can move in some way. We do not have to be standing to do it. We could even be laying down and moving. The point is we all can move, no matter what our state of health or structure. You need to ask yourself these questions. What is possible with my body now? Two, what type of movement do I find fun? Exercise is not going to happen unless you enjoy it. Finally, another question to ask yourself is how can I keep moving more freely, more fully, and in a joyful and fun way? Ask yourself these questions. What would you put at the top of the list to answer these questions?

Balance is extremely important to our overall health and to not get injured, especially as we age. Astronauts that return to Earth from the zero gravity of space have trouble walking. We’ve been able to study them a bit. The idea that they walk with a wide-based gait and a waddle like older people as we age, and why? The vestibular system which is deep in our ears is what helps us with our balance and our equilibrium. When people are out of the Earth’s gravity, then the vestibular system atrophies in that lack of gravity. Astronauts, being obviously healthy or they wouldn’t have gone to space in the first place, regain their balance in only a couple of weeks by practicing standing multiple times per day on one foot. This is the way to maintain and increase your balance, is to actually practice, by standing on one foot, each foot one at a time three times per day with your eyes closed.

Let’s make sure you understand that this is not easy to do. When you stand on one foot with your eyes open, you have multiple systems of your body, your nervous system and your visual system, helping you maintain your balance. When you close your eyes, you take away your central nervous system’s ability to help you with what’s called proprioception or your balance. Be very careful when you start doing this. You will notice that, “I can lift one foot up and stand just fine on one foot with my eyes open,” and maybe you can’t because your balance does need work. You get really wobbly right away even with your eyes open. When you close your eyes, that wobbliness and that imbalance is going to become even worse. What I strongly recommend you do, especially when you first play with this and work with this, is to have some support right near your hands. “Exercise or movement is not just for those who can but for those out there that think they can’t.”

I’ve even taught people to take a chair, like a kitchen chair, and put the backside of the chair closest to you, with a hand on the back of the chair. Take another chair and put it next to you close to you on the other side. You could have your right hand on the back of one chair and your left hand on the back of another chair, and you’re holding on. What you would do is lift your hands so you’re not holding on and stand up on one foot. See how that goes with your eyes open. Go ahead and close your eyes and see how that goes. If you need to, place your hands down and support yourself. You could also do it close to a wall or near a banister, but the big point here is this could be dangerous as when you first start. Start out with some support near you and put the other foot down. You may get your balance so off that you would fall if you don’t have support. Work up. Start with ten seconds, work up to fifteen seconds, work up to twenty seconds, with the goal of being able to stand on one foot with your eyes closed for 30 seconds. Switch and stand on the other foot for 30 seconds with your eyes closed and you’re done. Go on with the rest of your day and then do that again two other times throughout your day. You will see over a couple of weeks to a month, your balance is significantly improved.

Sedentariness or sedentary jobs in health. Research is showing that nonstop sitting all day long is extremely unhealthy as we already know. Many of us go to the gym or go out and walk or go out for a run or go out and exercise for let’s say up to as much as an hour of aerobic or some type of activity a day. The research is showing that even if you exercise for one hour before or after your long day at work, this still increases the risk of multiple chronic issues such as cancer, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and decreases a person’s life expectancy by as much as seven years. That’s a lot of time that we’re going to lose out on if we don’t move. We’ve got to move in order to fight against disease. I understand that many of our jobs are sedentary but there are options now that you could be thinking about.

One is sit on an exercise ball. I sit on an exercise ball in my office. I will tell you that at first, I could not sit on that ball for an entire day because it was too uncomfortable. I sat on it almost like when you put an orthotic in your shoe and they tell you to only wear it for an hour at first and work your way up. Do the same concept with the ball. Sit on an exercise ball only for an hour or so and then change back to a chair. Each day, increase the length of time in which you sit on the ball and see if you’re able to increase to the entire day. Variety is good, too. They do make exercise balls with stands where the ball is not going to be moving around underneath you much. It even has a back to it and it still would show benefit to your postural muscles. An exercise ball is a great thing to think about. Other than that, stand up. Stand up every fifteen minutes and maybe do a little calisthenic and sit back down. Even that would make a difference in what they’re referring to here with sedentary jobs. Finally, another option is what are called adjustable desks where you could be moving your desk up and standing while you work. Move the desk an hour later back down to the sitting position. You could be playing with that variety all day long. All of these are options to consider.

Exercise for those who out there do not like competition does not have to be competitive. Research is showing that competitive exercise isn’t even the best form of exercise. This longitudinal study of people greater than 75 years old conducted over a period of 21 years by Albert Einstein College of Medicine looked at all sorts of activities that people did as they age and movements. The number one physical activity that reduced the rates of dementia was actually partner dancing. Partner dancing lowered the risk of dementia by as much as 76%. It’s theorized that first of all, the hippocampus in our brain is where our learning and our memory stays. If you’re constantly moving, reacting, repeating and responding to a partner in dance, you also have to memorize the movement. You’ve got memory, you’ve got creativity, you’ve got response to another human being. These are huge aspects of keeping the hippocampus exercised and strong.

Also, dancing requires a need for making rapid decisions. If your partner goes one way, you’ve got to go the other and so on. This interactive rapid decision making is also going to keep the hippocampus active and strong. Social interaction. As a member of Discover Health, you know that to be amongst the community and to be amongst your family, to be amongst your friends has always brought you joy. We are social beings. To be isolated, research has shown, increases inflammatory markers. To go out and dance and to partner dance or even just dance with a big group, is a positive thing for your health. Finally, it’s going to affect your balance and your coordination to dance with a partner.

DH Fitness | Fitness And Fascia — Fitness And Fascia: The number one physical activity that reduces the rates of dementia by as much as 76% is partner dancing.

Let’s shift now to a discussion of fascia. First of all, what is fascia? Fascia is the connective tissue of your body. I am a specialist with the musculoskeletal system and the connective tissue. Fascia is dear to my studies and my heart. It’s what I love to try and understand more and more. Fascia, the connective tissue in your body, is one of only three holistic systems in your body. There are only three. The first one that we’ve studied quite a bit is the nervous system. The brain and all the nerves of the brain and then the nerves that go out through your entire body. The second holistic system in our bodies is the cardiovascular system: the heart, the veins, the arteries and so forth. If you took these systems out of your body and you made a three-dimensional model, it would look exactly like you as an individual. There’s one other system that you can do this with and only one. That is the fascia, the connective tissue of your body.

We have studied in depth the nervous system and the cardiovascular system. There have only been, in the history of medicine, four International Fascia Congresses ever where the scientists, the physicians and the people who focus on the connective tissue of the body have come together and shared what we know with each other about the fascia. The first one that ever happened was held in 2005. Fascia is extremely important. Andrew Taylor Still was the Founder of osteopathic medicine. He wrote in 1899, over a hundred years before the first International Fascia Congress and the Philosophy of Osteopathy, this quote, unbelievably ahead of his time, “The fascia proves itself to be the probable matrix of life and death. Beginning with the mucous membrane, penetrating all parts to supply and renovate the fluids of life, and nourishing all the nerves of nutrition and assimilation. When harmonious in normal action, health is good. When perverted, disease is destructive unto death.” We’ve got to move, we’ve got to keep our connective tissue fluid, lubricated, pure and clean. Dr. Still knew this way before its time or anyone else seemed to realize the importance of this.

Another quote by Dr. Still to help you understand the fascia and the connective tissue of your body is, “As the student of anatomy explores the subject under his knife during dissection and under the microscope, he easily finds this membrane, the fascia. He finds that this membrane goes with and covers all muscles, tendons and fibers, and separates them even to the least fiber. All organs have covering of this fascial substance, though they may have names to suit the organs, surfaces or parts spoken of.” Every organ in your body, every nerve, every vessel, every muscle, every organ, whether that be the heart, the kidneys, the liver, the intestines, every single organ in your system is covered by fascia, your connective tissue. It is a three-dimensional holistic system of our bodies. Back to the quote, “A knowledge of the universal extent of the fascia is imperative, and is one of the greatest aids to the person who seeks cause of disease. That the fascia and its nerves demand his attention first, and on his knowledge of the same, much of his success, and the life of his patients do depend.”

Fascia is the ultimately most important aspect of your connective tissue that we move with every single day. Fascia is one, the primary connective tissue of the body. Let’s show you some of the other significance of the fascia. Two, fascia is the master designer of your body. When any egg in the uterus of a woman is fertilized by a sperm and the fetus starts to develop, the nervous system starts to develop. Basically, that nervous system is surrounded by the fascia. It is the fascia and the connective tissue of the fascia that starts to fold, unwind and create the master design of which the nerves, the vessels, the bones, the muscles and all the organs are going to develop into the fascia that’s showing it the way. For example, when a fetus is developing, we use the term that a limb bud has developed. A bud develops and then the limb starts to grow and develop into that bud. Guess what the bud is made from? The bud is the fascia. The fascia buds out and starts to show the rest of the parts of the body to grow and develop into the fascial system.

Number three, fascia is made primarily from a chemical structure called collagen. Collagen’s chemical structure is universally repetitive. It’s similar to crystals which have a very repetitive and simple, unique structure. When you have structures that are simple and repetitive like that, energy can flow through that repetitiveness very simply as a system upon which the energy can flow. Energy flows in the fascia. It’s like a secondary nervous system and it has meridians in it. The meridians in your fascia are what acupuncturists are putting their needles into. They put through the skin and down into the fascia, so your fascia is where the acupuncture meridians lie. Those meridians are where the energy is flowing in our bodies and that’s what the needles are interacting with. The other thing is that our connective tissue is like a spider web, a web or a matrix throughout our entire system. Again, it flows with energy. It goes into every cell.

We used to think of a cell as a round cell with a membrane. We thought that inside the cell was just fluid and then outside the cell was the extracellular matrix. It didn’t touch the cell or go into the cell. We have learned that that’s not right, that the extracellular matrix or skeleton goes to the membrane of the cell. It attaches and goes through it inside the cell, the intracellular space. The intracellular space is not fluid. It has fluid in it, there’s the gel, the cytosol and the gel-like substance within every cell, but also, it has a cytoskeleton. The extracellular matrix goes to the membrane and goes down through the cell as still the same web or matrix, and that matrix continues and attaches, too. The nucleus of the cell also has a nuclear membrane. Down into the nucleus is where your genes live in your chromosomes. This fascial skeleton in your body that is completely holistic and completely three-dimensional goes all the way down into your genes. When you move, you flow and you exercise, you are communicating all the way down into your genetics, a positive healthy messaging.

Number four, the fascia is also where the body, the mind and the spirit meet. Have you ever heard of someone talk about exercising or getting a massage or getting some sort of osteopathic manipulation or any type of physical therapy and all of a sudden either break out in a really happy emotion or break out in some sad emotion as a result of the therapy just spontaneously out of the blue? Physical trauma, negative thoughts and emotions can get stuck in your fascia. They can make your fascia thick, dense and tight. The opposite of that, positive, joyful feelings, thoughts and emotions, and movement can make your fascia loose, lubricated, flowing and healthy. We now know that epigenetics, the science above the genes, is what affects whether certain genes get turned on or certain genes get kept quiet. If you don’t want negative disease processes that you might have a genetic risk for to come up, you’ve got to keep your fascia healthy and your whole being healthy. Science now knows through studying the fascia that massage, manipulation, movement, exercise is absolutely playing in when you move from your skin and your muscles all the way down into your genetics. We must move.

Let’s talk about some specific pearls around movement. We’ve talked about choosing something fun. We’ve talked about the fact that you’ve got to move, and you’ve got to move based on what your body will allow. Exercise is not just for those who can but for those who think they can’t. You could be doing exercise sitting in a chair. You can be doing high-intensity exercise from a chair or even from a stool or a chair or holding on to something. Evidence and research are showing more and more that we need to work and exercise our cardiovascular system, our heart. We also need to work our muscles and increase the strength of our muscles. We are realizing more and more that hormones such as growth hormone are affected by the intensity of the level of exercise you do.

Also, remember that exercise is stress. We don’t want to have high-intensity stress that’s ongoing continuously for long periods of time. The best type of interval training exercise is to have only 20 or 30 seconds of a really high-intense type of movement then followed by a gentler type of movement for up to anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds. Increase the intensity again for 20 to 30 seconds and then decrease the intensity for 60 to 90 seconds. You increase intensity, lower intensity, increase intensity, lower intensity. Eight cycles of this once or twice a week will increase your growth hormone, will increase your metabolism, will improve weight loss, will improve your cardiovascular health and will improve your brain function. Research has shown that this is the type of exercise or cycles of exercise to be considering. If you’ve ever heard of Dr. Mercola. He’s been an integrative medicine doctor out there for many years. He was one of the first and he has huge numbers of people to his website every day.

We’ve got to maintain our muscle, we’ve got to maintain our strength. From the age of about 30, we start to lose our muscle mass and before 30, we’re still building it. When we get sick, we’ve got to have enough muscle and protein to develop the antibodies against the bugs or to help us heal. We’ve got to maintain and build muscle. If you don’t exercise, you don’t do any weight resistance-type of exercise, you’re not going to build your proteins, you’re not going to build your muscle. Weight resistance exercise has also been shown to improve cognitive abilities, to improve energy and it fights against disease.

Many of us think that we have to work out every single day for hours and hours. That is not true. If you can create one session a week where you do twenty minutes of weight resistance exercise, that’s where I would start. Even start with one ten-minute session a week and then build up from there with the goal of only one or two twenty-minute sessions per week. That’s it. You don’t need to do any more than that. You can go to a gym, you could have weights at your home, or you could even be moving around in your day in your office. You could have a couple of dumbbells in your office and pick them up intermittently throughout your day and do a set of some exercises. Bodybuilding or weight resistance exercises are not rocket science. They are really basic repetitive movements that you do slowly and methodically. There is no rocket science to it and there’s not a lot of variety to it. Just learn how to do the basic movements, pick up the weights. You don’t have to have a weight in your hand, use resistance and your mind and intention. There are no excuses not to be doing these types of exercise and not moving.

In conclusion and summary, fascia is the universal connective tissue of your body and must be kept fluid and mobile. Two, fascia transmits and stores energy that can be physical, emotional or spiritual. Three, movement is imperative to maintain the health, hydration, fluidity, clarity and purification of one’s fascia to maintain your overall health of body, mind and spirit. Finally, this movement should be fun, enjoyable and nurturing. I hope this has empowered you to optimize your health. That truly is my mission, to help educate people so that you can learn more about how to find your way to health and wellness and feel as optimally healthy as you possibly can. Please go to my website and learn much more about the information you need and about the services we offer at my office. It’s DiscoverhealthFMC.Com . I also have my own curriculum or program I call the D.E.N.T. Curriculum, which is an acronym for Diet and Detox, Exercise, Nutrition and Treatment. I offer weekend conferences where anyone in the world can come and learn about how to put a dent in your chronic disease processes through exactly that. Please go to my website or give my office a call at (603) 447-3112 and learn more.

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