I give thanks for all of our patients and staff, at CCFM, that are excited and motivated to achieve optimal health. I am also thankful for a recent opportunity I had to give a lecture to an enthusiastic audience of health care providers (medical doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopathic doctors, and clinical nutritionists). My topics included how to use food as medicine and not as your toxin, and how to restore optimal Gastrointestinal health; an essential component to overall optimal health.
This month I wanted to provide you a few helpful health tips to apply in your daily life, and some ideas to implement in the new year. Here they are:
1.
Your food and anything you put into you mouth can either have a positive or negative effect on your body. Become a mindful consumer, think before putting things in, especially right now during this overabundant holiday season. Moderation is fine if avoidance is too difficult, but turn anything away that isn't at least a 9 out of 10 on your "worth it" scale.
2.
Drink adequate amounts of water each day. The basic formula is; taking your body weight, in pounds, and dividing it by 2. This is the lowest amount of water, in ounces, to consume in a day. You can safely drink up to your body weight, in ounces, as long as you spread it out throughout the day. Without enough water, every cell doesn't work to its best potential, and unwanted symptoms develop easily.
3.
Consider investing in a food intolerance panel for the new year so you have an accurate road map of what causes inflammation in your body. You can call our office for more details. I recommend everyone having at least one of these tests done in their lifetime, it has made a huge difference in my patients over the nearly 10 years that I have been doing these tests.
4.
Take a good quality probiotic everyday, to maintain a healthy good flora. I identified 17 beneficial processes from having a healthy microbiome. I recommend at least 20 billion colony forming units (CFU) of multiple healthy organisms, that tolerate the acidic environment of stomach acids. You can see us to discuss this in more detail, many times patients may need more organisms but may not be able to tolerate a higher count initially, and we can help you work through this.
5.
Do not take anything that lowers your stomach acid. Common examples include antacids like Rolaids and Tums, acid blockers like Tagamet or Zantac, or proton pump inhibitors like Nexium, Prilosec, Protonix, Prevacid, and Aciphex. Many patients end up on these medications long term from a bout of acid reflux, and never given a reason for the reflux and how to properly heal the digestive lining to resolve their symptoms. We specialize in finding underlying causes and restoring normal GI function.
6.
Do not consume anything that has been genetically modified, what is commonly called "GMO", which stands for genetically modified organism. The science for genetically modifying our food is in it's early stages, and many argue we shouldn't be tampering with genes this way at all. The way companies introduce genetic material into live organisms is not accurate, the final marker they use doesn't tell us where the new genetic material made its way into the organisms' DNA, so you could turn on and turn off the wrong genes along the way. Several books have been written on this topic, I recommend Genetic Roulette by Jeffrey M. Smith, if you need further convincing. Congress is trying to pass laws to allow salmon to be genetically modified, this will be the first animal food to be labelled GMO. If you really don't want to see this happen to our foods, you may want to consider going to ECW.org (Environmental Working Group) and making a donation to help stop Congress from passing this bill.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, hope to see you soon!
