When we eat right and exercise we know we are improving our physique but does it really make that much of a difference in our brains? The answer is YES! Choosing the right fuel for our brains is as important as choosing the right foods for weight loss and a healthy heart. Our brain accounts for 2% of our body weight but uses roughly 20% of our daily calories to function. When the brain is given the right fats and nutrition it will perform optimally, stave off depression and effectivly calculate it’s daily tasks. B-vitamins and Omega3 fats are the key ingrediants to a healthy brain. B vitamins can be found in eggs, brown rice, leafy greens, mushrooms, beef, avocados, nuts, seeds etc. Omega3 fats can be found in cold water fish especially sardines and salmon (wild-caught, please), olive oil, avocado and alfalfa. Pregnant women, children and people recovering from TBI’s (traumatic brain injuries) should pay special attention to their intake of these nutrients especially because the reconnection of neurons is essential to brain development and recovery. This is also good advice for students and most people who want to walk around with a clear head instead of a cloudy one. Remember, your body is like a car. You drive it around all day long and if you put the right fuel in your tank you’ll be able to go for miles and miles!
Archive for the ‘Supplements’ Category
Feeding the Brain
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010If Beauty Is Only Skin Deep, Why Do We Spend So Much On Cosmetics?
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010Got Sugar Craving? Try Glutamine!
Friday, March 5th, 2010By Wilma Young
Every morning I make my first shake of the day. I use Ultrameal protein and add a few ingredients to make the recipe more delicious (like cinnamon) and nutritious (Wholesome Fast Food, a good fats and flax blend) and the “mama” of all additions for me is glutamine. This powerful amino acid is vital to your health. I have used it for years for muscle repair and brain support but when it started to help with sugar cravings, I was a “lifer” as they say! Glutamine is a free form amino acid found in the muscles of the body. Glutamine optimizes nitrogen balance, speeds recovery, and helps maintain cell volume and hydration too.
It also helps prevent muscle wasting and is essential for mental activity and cerebral function. These two things alone should make us all believers but it also supports the treatment of arthritis, auto immune diseases, intestinal disorders, peptic ulcers and connective tissue diseases. It can also be used to help developmental disabilities, epilepsy, fatigue, impotence, depression, schizophrenia and senility. We can all relate to one of these disorders (and maybe a few of us can relate to MANY of them). And yes, many plant and animal substances have glutamine in them but cooking easily destroys them so a supplement is key. It will also help when recovering from any trauma sustained by the body like surgeries, car accidents and after intense work outs, which let’s be honest, can be traumatic to the body if you’re pushing yourself. When I am having an extra hard time with cravings I will increase my protein intake and take an extra dose of glutamine after dinner. Remember that cravings of sugar (or alcohol or simple carbohydrates) can represent the need for a quick energy fix which means we didn’t get ENOUGH of the right foods prior to the energy crash. Glutamine is a terrific addition to your shake or supplement routine especially if you work out, but please take heed. The cravings are your body’s signal that you need to ADD more food, the RIGHT food and at a CONSISTENT level. if you invest in supplying your body with sustainable energy from whole foods, fresh produce and lean meats you will have the energy to accomplish your day, the emotional balance to manage stress and the well being to sleep restfully at night! Now that is better than any craving could ever promise!
How Can It Be That Spending More for Your Vitamins Can Cost You Less
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010By Wilma Young
I had a pregnant client in the store today to get her fish oil supplements. She proceeded to tell me how tired she is (of course, who wouldn’t be when you are 2 weeks away from delivering) and her eyesight has been blurry. She asked her doctor about the blurry vision and he said “it was because of the baby taking all of the vitamins and nutrients from her body for it’s own growth”. I agree that this is what the baby needs right now but not at the expense of Mom’s eyesight. I asked if she was taking her prenatal vitamins and she said yes but she was using a drug store vitamin. Hearing this made me concerned for her and for the baby knowing that the cheap vitamin will not break down well, provide inferior nutrients and basically become “bedpan bullets”. This is not the foundation to a healthy and happy baby! In my usual mischievous tone I asked her why she would be using such poor quality vitamins and a high quality fish oil supplement. “I need to save money right now and thought the fish oil was more important to spend the money on”. “I completely empathize with your economic ordeal but the drug store vitamin isn’t giving you what you and the baby need. You HAVE to invest in the health of your baby AND you and skimping on vitamins right now is not the way to go. Spending the money now to help your baby develop his brain and body is like saving for his college fund. Remember an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The only time you will have 100% control over what he ingests is right now while he is inside of you, Let’s look at the cost!” We then went to the Prenatal Vitamin packs from Metagenics to calculate the dollars. The packets have the fish oil (which she was already going to buy), the multi vitamin and the added bonuses of choline, calcium/magnesium and added DHA, critical to brain development. Taking into consideration the drug store vitamin cost and the fish oil she was already going to buy the difference came out to @ $5.00. This didn’t take in to account the extra nutrition she was getting in the packets with the added DHA etc. “Isn’t it imperative for your own mental and physical health during this phenomenal and monumental time to invest the extra $5.00? You and your baby’s body and mind are worth it! Cutting cost now will only make you pay dearly in the future”.
Isn’t our next generation worth the investment.? Can we change our world by bringing healthier children into it? I say Yes!! What do you say?
P.S. She did start on the Metagenics Prenatal vitamins…who wouldn’t after a badgering like that!
I am Passionate about what I do
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009On a recent call, I mentioned that I had my own skin care product line and exercise DVDs. I had a few people ask me how I did this. So, I figured I would spill it all out in this post.
First, you have to be passionate about what you do. When I graduated from college with my bachelor’s in science, I was desperate to jump into the work force and pay off my college debts. I found a job doing R&D (research and development) with Nutro Products (a dog and cat food company). The job paid extremely well and had plush benefits. I could have worked here my whole life – it was comfortable. But, several things happened to me that changed that course of action. I started to gain weight from sitting long hours testing products. I started to have health problems – at times I had difficulty forming a sentence. I thought I had a brain tumor or something. After seeing a doctor, I found out I was suffering from hypoglycemia – low blood sugar. He told me that I needed to lose weight and to start exercising or that I would be a diabetic with in 5 years. This scared the heck out of me.
I hired a personal trainer and started to eat better. I knew I needed to be motivated to change so I joined a competition I read about in a magazine. It was a three month transformation competition. To make a long story short, I lost the weight, started to feel great, and I won the competition!
With my new energy for life, I no longer felt satisfied testing dog and cat food. I knew there was more out there than that. I left my job and started working at a local nutrition store. They paid substantially less (with no benefits) but they offered to pay for me to take classes in nutrition.
As I learned about nutrition, herbs, and supplements, I felt this passion inside me to get the word out to others about being healthy. I decided to get my personal training degree so that I could teach others how to exercise correctly. I later went back to school to get my nutrition degree and license.
Let me tell you though. This was a scary time for me – though I was excited about it. I had those questions in the back of my mind “How can I make a living doing this?” “How could I possibly be successful at this when there were so many others doing this line of work?” I even thought at first that being a personal trainer seemed like such an elementary job – how could I do this for a living after all the schooling I had paid for?
But that’s when it hit me. People need to know how to exercise properly. Most of the trainers, at that time, where kids in high school looking for something to do part time. They had no passion for what they were doing, they had no real knowledge of how the body worked, they were just putting people on machine after machine for 30 minutes – 1 hour, and then sending them home.
That’s when I realized I had a mission – to educate others. So my first product I produced was an exercise video – Abs by Angie. I asked my current clients if they knew of a video company and was told of a local one down the street from my work. I scripted my video and set a date to film. The whole video was filmed in one day – starting at 8 am and finishing at 9 pm! With only quick bathroom breaks, make-up touches, and protein drink/water chugging. But how accomplished I felt afterwards!
Withing 2 years of the first video, I decided to make my 2nd video – Shoulders & Back by Angie. Now with experience, this video had better lighting and music and a much more comfortable Angie behind the camera. -I think this was a big breakthrough for me. I think sometimes we get stuck not doing something because we think it won’t be good enough. But if we just do it once, we only get better from there. It’s just like Nike said, “just do it!” So, my word of advice to you, if you are thinking about making something (writing a book, making a video, singing a song), – just do it. That’s what revisions are for! But you can’t revise something you never have done once!
My next product I developed was my fat burning gel. This idea came when my favorite product for ridding my body of subcutaneous water was no longer being imported from France. (I use this one to two weeks before a photo shoot or bodybuilding show) I think this had to do with the war and we started boycotting/banning(?) products from France. So this product was no longer available…for whatever reason. Companies started making this product locally but they were 4 times as expensive. At the time, I was training a pharmacist that had a skin care company. I asked him if he could make it for me. He said, “sure what’s in it?” After researching it, I gave him the ingredient list. He then said, “Well, what other products do you like?” I then gave him a list of other products I also liked. He then took that information and made a new formulation based on the current research. And that’s how angioblasty gel was born! At first, I made it just for me, and then my clients starting asking about it. I soon started selling it to my friends, clients, and family. It became so popular that the local pharmacist couldn’t keep up with demand. I then found a company in New Mexico that could produce a larger volume. At that time, they reworked the formula to make my product even better.
Once I started working with this bigger company, we came up with two new products: angiosoothe – topical cream for muscle soreness, and angiosoak – mineral soak for the bathtub for sore muscles.
I am always open to new ideas and new products that will help my clients. I am now thinking about making another video – legs by Angie.
So, I hope this answers all the questions you may have had. Feel free to reply/post questions.
Be passionate in whatever you do.
What’s in your vitamins?!
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Recently I was having a follow up nutrition consultation with one of my clients. I noticed, using the BIA, that her toxic load had been increasing. I went over the list of possible suspects: excess caffeine? ‘no’, artificial sweetners? ‘no’, pain medication? ‘no’, antibiotics? ‘no’…. hmmm. New prescription? ‘no’. I was stumped. She then preceded to show me the vitamins she has been taking that she bought from a vitamin shop. She thought they should be good because there was a doctor’s name on it. I asked her if she knew the doctor and she said ‘no’. I then asked to look at the ingredient list. BINGO! We found the toxic ingredients she had been consuming! Inside her multivitamin was food colorings (red #40, blue #2, yellow #5), sugar (why? She was swallowing these pills!), many carbonate forms of vitamins (calcium carbonate is not absorbable and is known to cause bone spurs! Carbonate is the cheapest form available, which translates to more profit for Mr. Doctor!), and, the icing on the cake, TALC!
Yes, you heard me – Talc, the stuff you put on baby’s butts. I couldn’t understand why talc would be in a multivitamin so I looked it up in one of my favorite books, “Food Additives” by Ruth Winter, M.S. This is what Ruth says about talc:
TALC Fresh chalk. Magnesium Silicate. The lumps are known as soapstone of steatite. An anticaking agent added to vitamin supplements to render a free flow; also to chewing-gum base. Gives a slippery sensation to powders and creams. Talc is finely powdered native magnesium silicate, a mineral. The main ingredient of baby and bath powders, face powders, eye shadows, liquid powders, protective creams, dry rouges, face masks, foundation cake makeups, skin freshners, foot powders, and face creams. It usually has small amounts of other powders such as boric acid or zinc oxide added as a coloring agent. Prolonged inhalation can cause lung problems because it is similar in chemical composition to asbestos, a known lung irritant and cancer-causing agent. There is no known acute toxicity, but there is a question about it being a cancer-causing agent upon ingestion. It is suspected that the high incidence of stomach cancer among the Japanese is due to the fact that the Japanese prefer that their rice be treated with talc. Talc is not considered food grade by the FDA as it contains asbestiform minerals. GRAS.
Wow! Maybe you should take a look at your vitamins if you aren’t buying them from me. At Angie’s World, we only carry the purest products that are GMP (good manufacturing practice) certified and NSF (national standard federation) certified. These certifications mean that third parties go into the supplement companies manufacturing plants to make sure that the place is clean (free of bugs, debris, etc.) and that each pill you take gives you exactly the dose it claims on the bottle. Without third party testing you are rely on the vitamin company to tell you the truth. How honest do you think Mr. Doctor is?
Killer Stomach Bug?
Sunday, May 24th, 2009Most of us have been busy worrying about the Swine flu as it continues to spread around the country. The good news, the flu season is just about over and we shouldn’t hear much more about it till our next flu season. The bad news, there are other super bugs that are raising their killer heads.
One highly contagious and potentially deadly bacterium is called Clostridium difficile. The U.S. reports that this bacteria cause 350,00 infections each year in hospitals alone, with tens of thousands more occuring in nursing homes. The illness kills an estimated 15,000 – 20,ooo people annually and is spreading at an alarming rate , with reported cases doubling from 2001 to 2005. (NY Times.com)
The scary part about this bacteria is that it is often spurred by antibiotics . Antibiotics not only kill bad bacteria but they also wipe out the healthy bacteria that normally live in the digestive tract and fight off such bacterias. This gives C. Difficile an opportunity to flourish if a person becomes exposed to it or already has the bacteria.
The public health community has been warning us for years about the overuse of antiobiotics and the emergence of “superbugs” – bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Unfortunately, the typical treatment for bacterial infections, including C. Difficile, is more antibiotics! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported on several cases of minor infections of C. Difficile that developed into life-threatening conditions were the only treatment is to remove the patient’s colon. Reportedly, even after surgery, patients still suffer from regular bouts of diarrhea and 20% suffer a relapse.
The easiest answer to keep this bacteria in check is to take a probiotic- a supplement that contains good bacteria for your gut. Unfortunately, this sort of preventive medicine is not taught in hospitals.
Whenever you have to take an antibiotic, make sure it is for a legit reason. Do not take antibiotics for a common cold – let your own immune system fight off every day colds. Not only will this help reduce the rate at which super bugs are being created, it will also help you strenghten your own immune system naturally.
Of course, there are situations in which antibiotics are necessary. When this is the case, make sure that you finish the complete prescription, even if you are feeling better. (Often, this is how super bugs are created – the bugs are not completely killed off, you are no longer at risk but then you spread it to others, and now the antibiotics you took will no longer work for the next guy.) Next, you want to follow up your prescription (or take concurrently) with a probiotic to re-introduce the good bacteria into your gut. Remember, the bad bacteria proliferate four times faster than the good bacteria. Which means, the weeks following an antibiotic leave you highly susceptible to catching another bacteria.
As a preventive measure, I highly recommend taking a probiotic as a daily strategy for optimum health. Please see my past blog on why you should take a probiotic.
Why you may need a probiotic
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009Inside your intestines live many health-promoting bacteria. These “healthy bacteria” are responsible for: * helping your body absorb and/or synthesize essential fatty acids and vitamins, including vitamin K, *aiding the digestive process by helping you digest lactose (milk sugar), *detoxifying the colon and promoting regular bowel movements, *producing natural antimicrobials that prevent the growth of harmful bacteria and fungi, * helping strengthen your immune system, *reducing hypersensitive reactions to food allergens, *creating beneficial acids, which promote a healthy intestinal pH, *helping in maintaining healthy cholesterol levels, *preventing the formation of carcinogenic compounds in the colon, *and helping you achieve vibrant health.
Unfortunately our unhealthy lifestyles of excessive alcohol intake, stress, and exposure to toxic substances like smog, paint fumes, and other chemicals can drastically decrease the amount of these active cultures living in our gut. Even normal aging can disrupt the balance of friendly bacteria and can lead to poor health.
In addition, antibiotics will wipe out the healthy flora inside your gut. While antibiotics are necessary in certain situations to fight infections and unhealthy bacteria, repeated use can contribute to increased susceptibility to infection and intestinal dysfunction. And the bad news is that bad bacteria grows 3 times faster than healthy bacteria. Which means, if you are currently on or have recently used antibiotics, your gut is highly susceptible to being re-infected. The best way to stop re-infection is to take a probiotic during antibiotic use and to continue for at least one month after finishing your antibiotics. (And whatever you do, do not stop your antibiotics early after deciding to take them! You must finish the full dose to completely irradicate the infection you are fighting. If you don’t, two things can happen: You won’t kill the bad bacteria completely and you are highly likely to be re-infected. If this happens you will need a stronger antibiotic to kill off a second time. OR, you will kill off the infection enough were your own immune system wipes it out BUT not fast enough and you become a unhealthy bacterial donor to all your friends, family, and co-workers. And the bad news is that this bacteria may become resistant to antibiotics which makes it harder for newly exposed people to fight it off.)
Other factors that diminish healthy bacteria in your gut are: * if you are taking antacids or other gastric acid inhibitors (when you take medications that reduce stomach acid, you are allowing unhealthy bacteria to grow where they would otherwise would not), *if you eat a high fat or low fiber diet (a poor diet makes it difficult for health promoting bacteria to thrive), *if you do foreign travel (traveling abroad increased your risk of exposure to intestinal parasites and bacteria that upset the natural bacterial balance), * and if you are exposed to food and water contaminants (chlorine -think Splenda-, pesticides, antibiotics, etc). We often unknowingly consume compounds that alter the intestinal environment.
You may think that all you have to do is eat yogurt. Though yogurt contains some active cultures, the main culture they use is acidophilus. But there are many cultures: each with its own benefit. Some are used for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, others for bloating or inflammation, others for pain or discomfort in the lower abdominals, etc. I would also like to mention that a quality probiotic supplement will contain between 5 and 60 billions active cultures, depending on the culture. When you eat a yogurt, a typical serving will provide 1 billion active cultures. Thus, you may need to eat up to 60 servings of yogurt to achieve the desired result! If you are concerned with which probiotic is right for you, feel free to email me and I would be happy to assist you in the proper one for you.