Let's Talk Heart Health!
Notes from the Video:
There are a few variables.
It's a disease of civilization. We live longer and therefore have more heart disease.
Hunter gatherers have very little heart disease. Some live longer than us but without the diseases of civilization.
If you exercise more, your heart will be healthier. Being sedentary compounds the problems of health.
Higher amounts of processed foods, processed oils, processed sugars leads to heart disease. It takes some planning to eat healthy.
Stress adds to the diseases.
M.E.D.S.
Remember your meds.
Mind State: How do you handle life's stressors? Are they debilitating or are they water off a duck's back? Prayer, community, yoga, meditation, all of these can help. Don't underestimate the role stress has in your life.
Exercise: How do you move? The body needs to move.
Exercise is critical to attaining every health and fitness goal. But exercise is about so much more than just health and fitness. Our bodies are designed to move, and when we don’t get enough movement, the negative effects ripple through every aspect of our lives. Inactivity is powerfully associated with depression, fatigue, problems paying attention, and a host of other mental and emotional complaints. Not to mention a dramatically increased risk of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
When we don’t get enough exercise, it undermines everything that we do. We can’t be as productive at work or school, or as energized and engaged in all of the other activities in our lives. Lack of exercise even affects our body’s ability to produce critical neurotransmitters like serotonin and endorphins, meaning that if we don’t exercise, we begin to lose the ability to experience emotions as fully. No matter what you want to do with your life, your capacity to succeed depends on your overall energy and vitality. Lack of exercise will invariably undermine your vitality, while a smart exercise program will help you maximize it.
The lymph system operates on hydraulics without a pump and movement is critical to good health.
Diet: How and what you eat? Avoiding process foods will go a long way in adding years to your life. Subscribing to healthy foods, vegetables in great amounts, less meats, and no processed carbs. This will add years to a healthy body and heart.
Sleep: The body needs 7 - 9 hours of recuperative sleep. Repairs are made, systems are reset during restful sleep. If you are not sleeping soundly for a good night's rest then health can be compromised. Snoring or sleep apnia can take away healthful sleep.
Top 10 Health Traps by Vaughn Gray
1. Reduced Fat Foods
In the 1980’s, food manufacturers rushed to cut the fat out of just about everything because some scientists came to the conclusion that eating fat made people fat. The low fat craze was born. But instead of reducing obesity, the low fat movement gave rise to an obesity epidemic. Quality fat is a critical part of any nutrition plan no matter what the goal. Reduced fat foods simply aren’t natural. Yogurts, cheeses, and meats are meant to contain fat. Proper digestion of these foods requires fat. Beans and grains needs to be eaten with fat to maintain energy levels. Some foods, like fruit, are naturally fat free, and eating them without fat is fine. But at the end of the day, between 20% and 40% of your calories, depending on your metabolism, should come from fat.
2. Only _______ Calories!
The number of calories in a given food doesn’t really matter if most of these calories come from sugar or white flour. These ingredients will shift your body chemistry into fat storage mode, so that you literally cannot burn fat no matter how few calories you eat. In addition, they will drive your appetite crazy, meaning you will probably eat a lot more. Almost no one ever loses weight by trying to limit calories. They key to weight loss and optimal health is to choose quality whole foods that fill you up naturally and help you to build the kind of healthy body that keeps weight off easily.
3. Low Carb Foods
Everyone needs a balance of nutrients – carbs, fat, and protein – for optimal health and fitness. Low carb diets result in rapid weight loss, much of this due to water weight since carbs hold water in the body. But cutting carbs wrecks your metabolism, actually making it harder to lose actual fat. In addition, low carb diets starve both brain and body of a critical source of fuel, undermining energy levels and performance. Your free ReEvolution Health and Fitness Action Plan includes individualized guidelines on balancing carbs, fat, and protein in your diet.
4. "Zero Net Carbs" or "Zero Impact Carbs"
Whoever thought up the “zero net carbs” and “zero impact carbs” ideas should be working for the cigarette companies (actually, they probablywere are since cigarette companies started many of the major processed food labels). Both are blatant attempts to obscure the facts and manipulate consumers. To calculate net carbs, food manufacturers subtract the amount of fiber in a food from the amount of carbohydrates. While it is true the fiber slows down the digestion of carbs, the idea of subtracting fiber content from carb content is ridiculous.
Zero Impact Carbs is generally a way of concealing sugar alcohol – a type of sugar that theoretically doesn’t affect insulin levels, and, therefore, supposedly doesn’t contribute to weight gain. Of course, sugar alcohol is still sugar meaning that it packs in loads of calories, stimulates appetite, and promotes overeating.
5. Energy Boosting Drinks and Supplements
Energy drinks and supplements are stop-gap solutions. They mask low energy levels for a short time while eroding our health and energy in the long term. Why have these products become so popular? Mostly because so many people feel so tired all of the time. For many people, low energy levels are a result of underperforming adrenal glands. Energy drinks work by lashing the adrenal glands up into a frenzy, producing a rapid burst of energy. But, of course, all this does is leave the adrenal glands even more exhausted. This is a classic example of whipping a dead horse. If your energy levels aren’t what you’d like them to be, you need to rebuild your adrenals and raise your metabolism with a smart nutrition and exercise program, and, possibly, some good supplements taken under the supervision of a health care professional.
6. Nutrition Labels
If it’s not on the label, it’s not in the food you’re buying, right? This really ought to be the case, but it’s not. Far from it. The FDA does not require food manufacturers to list chemical ingredients as long as they are classified as GRAS, short for Generally Regarded as Safe. You’d be amazed at the laundry list of chemicals that are classified GRAS. To get GRAS standing, a chemical must be “generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use” (quoted from the FDA website). Want to guess who provides this proof? The company that makes the chemical. As long as the manufacturer doesn’t discover that a given food chemical is unsafe, that chemical is considered safe.
This reminds us of the way that all of the cigarette companies kept failing to find evidence that smoking causes lung cancer from 1960 through the 1990’s. If you buy organic, the food you are buying is guaranteed to be free of GRAS chemicals. Unprocessed foods like fresh produce, fresh meats and fish, nuts, beans, and grains are likely to contain much lower levels of these chemicals. Processed foods and fast foods are loaded with artificial chemicals – often hundreds - that aren’t listed on the labels. No one really knows what all of these chemicals do to our bodies, but it’s a safe bet that they aren’t good for us.
7. Thinking That Organic Always Means Healthy
Generally organic foods are a lot better than commercial foods. But just because something is organic doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Cold breakfast cereals, baked goods, most breads, most pastas, and all sugary foods are still generally junk foods, even if they are organic. They are all over-processed, and our bodies just aren’t meant to consume processed food.
8. "Whole Grain"
Whole grain breads are always better than white bread, but, as mentioned, most are still pretty poor nutrition. The big problem with white bread is that it is so heavily processed that most of the nutrients are destroyed. What is left is the starchy carbohydrate component of wheat. This starch is “empty calories” – calories that provide no nutrition, disrupt the proper functioning of our cells, and contribute to weight gain. Whole grain breads have some of the fiber and other nutrients that white breads lack, and so aren’t entirely empty calories. But most whole grain breads are so heavily processed that these nutrients are altered and of little value. The best breads are sprouted grain breads, stone ground breads, and dark rye breads, all of which can be a valuable part of a healthy diet.
9. Atlantic Salmon
The Atlantic salmon has been fished near to extinction in the wild. As a result, all of the Atlantic salmon in stores and restaurants is farm raised. Farm raised fish are full of heavy metals, pesticides, and other chemicals. They are raised on unnatural diets, and are miserably unhealthy. As a result, they are far less nutritious. Wild salmon is a wonderfully healthy food (all Alaskan salmon is wild), but Atlantic salmon is best avoided entirely.
10. Soy Products
Not all soy products are bad. But the idea of soy as a replacement for meat is highly questionable. The protein in soy is not the same as the protein in meat. Further, soy contains high levels of phytic acid – a compound that draws minerals like calcium out of your body. Interestingly, more processed soy foods like tofu and soy milk have lower levels of this dangerous chemical than canned soy beans or edamame. A very rare instance where the more processed version of a food may be healthier! In addition, soy oil is high in Omega 6 fat, which most people consume too much of already. A diet high in Omega 6 fats reduces levels of Omega 3 fats in the body, and has been linked to higher incidences of heart disease. Millions of people are also allergic to soy. Finally, soy products contain “phytoestrogens” – plant chemicals that mimic female hormones. Many women actively supplement with soy to control the symptoms of menopause. Doing this is analogous to putting yourself on unsupervised hormone replacement therapy. Female hormones promote fat storage and may increase the incidence of breast cancer. Soy products, like soy sauce and tofu, are fine in moderation, but you should think twice before making soy a staple of your diet.
For more information email me at info@vaughngray.com