Due to the recent finding of another NFL player testing positive for Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), I am re-posting an earlier post about muscle metabolism. I think it is sad that these professional athletes are getting such poor advice when it comes to their nutritional supplementation. There is a plethora of healthy, safe and effective natural supplements out there that are not BANNED by the NFL and other professional organizations.  In a world where performance and recovery are absolutely critical, all the more important it is to be able to trust the quality of the supplements and advice you take!

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When we exercise, we are striving to get our bodies in shape which usually translates to creating more muscle tone with the loss of fat.  Let’s look at what happens after working out your muscles because I think this is an important analogy to health and wellness overall.

After working out and stressing your muscles, you expect to have some soreness as your muscles are damaged.  This is the fact of exercising your muscles–you will not be able to build muscle unless you stress the muscle.  The main factors that contribute to muscle damage are:

• Physical stress
• Hormonal stress
• Oxidative stress

Physical stress: this involves the literal stretching and tearing of muscle fibers.  Without this process, you will not get muscle remodeling which is important in order to build strength.

Hormonal stress: due to stress of exercise, cortisol is released as cortisol is our stress hormone.  Cortisol has direct catabolic action upon the muscle which causes further muscle breakdown.

Oxidative stress: this results from free radical production that occurs with muscle stress. These free radicals, in turn, come back and can further contribute directly to muscle break down.

Indeed there needs to be balance here; in order to get your muscles to grow (toned) you need to stress them. But too much stress results in too much muscle damage and not enough muscle remodeling.

The interesting note here is that many elite athletes and professional athletes attempt to manipulate this process through the use of banned substances. Deemed Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), these range from different types of steroids to stimulants. The goal for the athlete is to manipulate the “stress” process to increase muscle growth and improve recovery times.  This can all be obtained with proper understanding of the physiological and biochemical processes and no athlete needs to rely on any PED when there is so many other natural options.

Our bodies work best when we work with nature and don’t try to manipulate nature.  Also, while we are in the age of designer PEDs, we are also in the age when there are so many powerful and acceptable natural options for helping both grow and rest our muscles.

Let’s look at how these same principles, when applied to health in general, are applicable. Anytime you get sick or don’t feel good, our bodies are not keeping up with stress demands. We need to be cognizant of this so that we can optimally manage this stress and our health.

From an exercise point of view, we try to utilize the following strategies to reduce stress after exercising to improve muscle remodeling and decrease muscle break down:

Physical: REST…if we attempt to exercise our muscles too quickly after a work out, we do not allow for proper down time and therefore, remodeling cannot occur. Also, we want to help with the extra inflammation that has occurred due to the muscle stress (fill in any other type of stress)…..here proteolytic enzymes can be very useful…this includes plant based enzymes such as Amylase, Lipase and others

Hormonal: too much cortisol reflects a poor adaptive response to a stressor–here we need to take strides in stress reduction including stress reducing activities such as reading, meditation, yoga, stretching, as well as taking stress reducing supplements such as B-vitamins, Green Tea, Theanine, GABA, Phosphorlyated Serine.

Oxidative: too much free radical production is bad; to limit and temper this we need adequate antioxidants such as Vitamins C and E, CoQ10, Resveratrol, Alpha Lipoic Acid, Lutein, Quercetin and others.

I think these three components that are significant when applied to the context of muscle damage and repair are useful for the context of really any health stressor. I believe the more we look at our individual health concerns through this lens, the more easily we will be able to make strides towards optimal health and well-being. And so while it is tempting for the elite athlete to reach for the banned hormonal manipulator, know that working with nature and all it’s bounty provides a wealth of health resources waiting at your fingertips.

With the wave of bigger government and more regulations, our individual health freedoms are being threatened. This is clear with the actions and intentions of Senator McCain who is trying to introduce more legislation to increase the regulation of natural supplements.  I know I have written about this before, but I do so again because this issue is critically important to me.  I never want anyone to legislate how I can choose to naturally take care of my health and my patients’ health.  Unfortunately with ever increasing movements to regulate our food and now our supplements, we are heading down a scary path.

Specifically, Senator McCain is totally off base with the legislation about food supplements. It would take many safe and useful products off the market. It would virtually undo the DSHEA legislation that has allowed the food supplement industry to flourish and provide useful formulations that are hurting the sales of drugs, so someone got to him. He is seriously misinformed and it will take all of us working together to kill his bill, wasting needless time and effort.

He is co-sponsoring a bill that COULD eliminate your access to most of the dietary supplements you use in your supplementation regimen today. This link will enable you do take action now to help prevent this massive attack against the products that we need for our overall health and well-being.

Click here to read more and take action: Life Extension Legislation Action Center.

The FDA has all the power they need to correct the abuses that do exist, but every time government sets up to kill a fly, they shoot it with a cannon!  We cannot afford to needlessly drive up the cost of supplements and/or lose over 1/3 of the special formulations that are helping people today deal with issues they have and who know how dangerous the drugs they would otherwise need to take are. The “approved” drugs are either the First, Second or Third LEADING cause of death in America today depending whose figures you use.

Click here to read more and take action: Life Extension Legislation Action Center.

This is a common question.  Others include: does it matter if it is a capsule or liquid or tablet? Does it matter what brand it is? Does it matter if there is 100% RDA vs 5000%? And what do those percentages actually mean? How do I know if the supplement is being absorbed properly? How do I know if the supplement is working for me?

Let’s start with the basics.

RULE#1: Choose a nutritional supplement from a reputable company.

You want to feel good about the supplements you are taking and you want to trust that the ingredients listed actually are the ingredients in the supplement.  By choosing a well known, reputable supplement brand, you will be able to put those questions to rest (hopefully). It is obviously impossible to test the ingredients of all the supplements out there, but if you choose well known brands such as Whole Foods Brand or Earth Fare Brand or Carlson’s or Thorne or Udo’s or the Organic Performance Lab brand, then you can know that your supplements are full of 100% the ingredients listed and nothing more or less. I know for a fact that all of the supplements I sell are tested and 100% pure–they are the absolute highest quality supplement you can purchase–my brand is the only brand I personally take.

RULE #2: When in doubt, start with a Multivitamin and Fish Oil.

Everyone, including children, benefit from a comprehensive multivitamin and fish oil.  There are no downsides here.  Yes, there are literally thousands of different natural nutritional supplements you can choose from, so start slowly and simply. A multivitamin fills the gap for all that you are not getting from food and fish oil is so powerfully anti-inflammatory that every cell in your body benefits.

RULE #3: Forget about RDA

RDA or Recommended Daily Allowance tells how much of a vitamin or nutrient is needed to prevent disease. We don’t really care about this. We are shooting for optimal health and well-being so we want large doses of vitamins and minerals.  For the water soluble vitamins such as Vitamin B and Vitamin C, there is no upper limit–you can take as much as you want.  For the fat-soluble vitamins (A,D,E,K) you don’t have to watch (somewhat) how much you take in.  However, for Vitamin D, we know that most people are severely Vitamin D deficient, so chances are you are not going to take too much. Compare a comprehensive multivitamin ingredients with a Centrum multivitamin to see what I am referring to.

RULE #4: At first, don’t worry about formulation (liquid vs. capsule vs. tablet)

The reason I say this is that we don’t really know how you are going to absorb what you are taking unless we test.  So start with one that seems to be a good fit for you. If you are taking that particular one for a little while and notice that you feel worse, then it is time to switch or test and see what your vitamin/ fatty acid status is.  Certainly don’t switch because you don’t necessarily feel better–I don’t think most people feel much better from adding a multivitamin and fish oil–the benefits are there and certainly accumulate so that if you supplement well, you are setting yourself up for a healthier aging process. There are times when we need to switch formulations (poor absorption is the number one reason) but that generally takes time to figure out. If you are concerned at all, go with the liquid formulation up front as it is the best absorbed.

RULE #5: Pay extra for high quality ultra-pure Fish Oil

You don’t want your Fish Oil to contain any mercury or other metals and you don’t want your Fish Oil to be impure and taste fishy. So pay extra for high quality fish oil that is tested to ensure purity.  Fish Oil is such a crucial part of a supplement program that it is the foundation for which the entire supplement foundation rests upon, so make sure you choose this one wisely.

Those are five basic tenets to get you started.  I will go into more detail about other categories of supplements including Adaptogens, Essential Phospholipids, Botanicals, and Amino Acids to name a few.  I will also go over why I think lab testing is critical to formulating a balanced and optimal supplement program.,

What is the ONE thing you want to achieve this year? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to have more energy? Do you want to stop smoking or drinking? Do you want to run a marathon? Do you want to feel more like yourself again? Do you want to be able to bench press more weight?

We all have at least one goal that we set for the new year. I want to help you achieve that ONE goal you are really going after. We all have great intentions as we make goals at the beginning of each year, but many times, life gets in the way of our aspirations, and then even those little goals get pushed aside.

This year, I would like to help you with that one goal of yours, no matter what it is.  As you know, I like to look at things from different angles and sometimes that is all the help you need. Other times you may require a certain type of lab test or trying a certain range of supplements to get to the health goal you want.  No matter what the process, the goal is to get to the goal.  I think many times when trying to accomplish things in our life, the process gets in the way.

In the next few months, I am going to be telling you about adaptogens and phytochemicals and glutathione and cell membranes and antioxidants and biotoxins and the latest and greatest from the sports nutrition world. I will keep you updated about the newest health trends.  I will make sure you know what the best foods to eat are, what the best way to exercise and the best supplements to take.  We live at a time where there is too much information and I will try to sift through all of that and make sure you know what to know.

Through that, my one goal for everyone of my patients’ is to help them with ONE goal.  If you can change one thing in your life, what is it and how do we get started?

There truly is a natural solution for every health question, no matter how complex. Let us use this year to accomplish the ONE goal you want the most.

Happy 2010!

Two separate thoughts today. First, check out this article that appears in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine (a highly acclaimed medical journal). The take home point is that over the counter supplements often do not deliver on what they promise.  And many times, you do not even know what you are getting in the supplement–that is displeasing if the supplement is poor quality, but dangerous when you are getting things you did not realize.

That is why I always recommend getting supplements from well-known brands, including my own line of supplements.  I can guarantee that all of my supplements are of the best quality and are pharmaceutical grade meaning they are the highest purity.  We put a lot of trust into our nutritional supplements, so make sure that you really know what you are buying.

And my second thought today is about anti-oxidants.

Take a look at this chart depicting phenolic compounds from plant sources.

And here is more information about what foods contain all of these powerful anti-oxidants.

I bring this up because I think the more we learn about anti-oxidants, the more we will find amazing health benefits.  So for now, do your best to get as much anti-oxidants as you can: blueberries, raspberries, green tea, black tea, broccoli, apples, dark chocolate, dark green lettuces, strawberries, cranberries. Remember, the more vibrant the color of the food, the more anti-oxidant potential.

In a few weeks I will be telling you about a new Anti-Oxidant drink I am putting together that will allow incorporating all of these anti-oxidants into your diet lot easier.

Due to FDA mettling and other reasons, the natural thyroid hormone, Armour Thyroid is now back ordered and not readily available.  This has caused a lot of problems for many patients, and therefore a good time to discuss the bio-identical, natural, organic differences.

Here are some quick definitions as I see them:

• Bio-identical: the exact same molecule as the molecules in our bodies
• Natural: from the Earth and not synthetic
• Organic: from the Earth as well, but unaltered by ANY means: chemical spraying, preservatives, etc.

The terms bio-identical and natural generally refer to hormones such as bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, whereas organic and natural generally refer to food items.

Ideally, everything we consume (food, supplements, hormones) are both bio-identical and all natural. Here is a breakdown of some hormones and their status:

• Armour Thyroid: Bio-identical and Natural T3 and T4
• Synthroid: Bio-identical and SYNTHETIC T4
• Cytomel: Bio-identical and SYNTHETIC T3
• Estradiol: Bio-identical and Natural Estrogen
• Premarin: Synthetic estrogen (not Bio-identical)
• Progesterone: Bio-identical and Natural Progesterone
• PremPro, birth control pills, Nuvaring, Minerva IUD: Synthetic and fake progestins
• Teststerone (compounded): Bio-identical and Natural
• Testin, AndroGel: Bio-identical and Synthetic

For those needing thyroid replacement there are other bio-identical, natural thyroid hormone options such as Nature-Thyroid, but it is very difficult to get as is the compounded hormones themselves. So for now, the only option may be trying Bio-identical Synthroid and Cytomel.

Did I confuse you yet?