WE ALL KNOW THAT STROKE IS A BIG DEAL. BUT ARE YOU DOING ANYTHING TO REDUCE YOUR RISKS?

This week’s blog continues the conversation around heart disease, specifically stroke.

Stroke falls under the umbrella of heart disease, along with high blood pressure and heart attack.

I want to share with you the five most important things that you need to do to reduce your risk of stroke, and the two conversations that you need to be having with your doctor today.

FIRST OF ALL, WHAT IS A STROKE?

Stroke is a medical term that is used to define the death of brain cells.

Just like in the heart attack, heart attack is the scientific term that we use to define the death of cardiac cells or heart cells.

There are two main categories of strokes:

1. Ischemic (90%)

2. Hemorrhagic (10%)

Ischemic strokes are caused when an artery is blocked.

WHEN BRAIN CELLS DIE, WE CALL THAT A STROKE.

There are two sub-categories of ischemic stroke which are embolic and thrombotic.

1. Embolic strokes: These are caused by a plaque, formed from cholesterol build up, that develops downstream and travels to blood vessels in the brain through the blood.

2. Thrombotic strokes: These are caused by a blood clot that develops within the brain’s blood vessels.

Hemorrhagic strokes are caused by bleeding.

Less than 10% of strokes are hemorrhagic, but they are the deadliest.

HERE ARE THE 5 MOST IMPORTANT FACTORS IN REDUCING YOUR STROKE RISK.

1) Improve your cholesterol numbers.

Total cholesterol really means nothing.

What we really need to be looking at is the numbers within the total cholesterol.

HDL (good cholesterol) needs to be above 55 and as high as possible.

LDL (bad cholesterol) and small dense LDL needs to be as low as possible, and under 100.

Triglycerides need to be under 150, preferably under 100.

2) Lower your blood pressure.

Listen, a blood pressure that’s mildly elevated isn’t a problem today, or next week, or next month.

But, the long term wear and tear of having high blood pressure hitting the blood vessels in your brain is really devastating.

By definition, hypertension is a blood pressure above 135/85.

Normal blood pressure is under 120 for the systolic (top number), and under 80 for the diastolic (bottom number).

3) Fix your diet.

Most of us are chronically eating things that raise blood sugar.

When your blood sugar is elevated, it triggers an insulin response which also increases all of the inflammatory markers in your body.

The best way to normalize your blood sugar is to limit your carbohydrate intake to low sugar fruits, and veggies.

Eliminate or restrict bread, grains, rice, pastas, and soft drinks.

4) Stop smoking.

Smoking is a big, big deal.

Cigarette smoke is a toxin which irritates the lining of blood vessels and causes inflammation and weak, penetrable vessel walls where cholesterol embeds and forms plaques.

And, if you’re a diabetic that smokes, goodness, you are feeding the dragon of heart disease and stroke.

So please, I know it’s hard, but…

You’ve got to find a way to quit.

5) Normalize your blood sugar.

The holy grail of weight loss and all diseases, is normalizing your blood sugar.

When your blood sugar is high, you are in a hyper insulin state, which causes diseases like heart disease to flare up.

HERE ARE TWO CONVERSATIONS YOU NEED TO BE HAVING WITH YOUR DOCTOR AROUND STROKE.

1. How can I normalize my blood sugar?

Strict carbohydrate control should be the backbone of your plan.

Carbohydrates raise blood sugar and cause a hyper insulin state, leading to in

DESPITE THE LOWEST CONSUMPTION OF FAT AND DIETARY CHOLESTEROL IN HUMAN HISTORY, RATES OF HEART DISEASE ARE CONTINUING TO SKYROCKET.

Nearly one million people a year die in the United States from heart attack. That’s 1/3 of all deaths.

THE GOOD NEWS IS, THERE ARE SEVERAL THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW TO PREVENT HEART DISEASE!

In this blog, I’m going to give you the seven most important things that you need to be doing to minimize your risk for heart disease, and the conversations that you need to be having with your doctor to make sure you’re at the lowest risk possible.

Heart disease is an umbrella term that encompasses heart attack, stroke and hypertension, or high blood pressure.

In a normal situation, a nice slick blood vessel supplies the heart with oxygen rich blood. When you have heart disease, trauma causes a weak spot in the lining of the blood vessel to form. This weak spot makes the blood vessel vulnerable for things that are normally in the blood to deposit in it’s wall, such as cholesterol.

IT STARTS WITH AN INJURY TO THE LINING OF YOUR BLOOD VESSELS.

Notice, I didn’t say cholesterol causes the heart attack, because cholesterol is only involved in this story because there was an injury to the blood vessel to begin with.

If there’s no injury to the blood vessel, you can never start the cascade of events that lead to having a heart attack.

Once cholesterol starts to migrate into the wall of the blood vessel and begins to collect, a plaque begins to form. The plaque hardens, grows larger, and becomes unstable.

CHOLESTEROL THEN MAKES A PLAQUE.

The plaque can become so unstable that fragments of it break off and can get wedged into a smaller blood vessel. This blocks arteries, or blood vessels, and blood flow. If there is no blood flow, that tissue dies.

When heart tissue dies, it causes chest pain and a heart attack.

Unlike other cells in our body, brain and heart cells, do not regenerate. Once they’re deprived of oxygen and die, they’re gone.

If a heart attack is big enough, and enough heart tissue dies, it can result in sudden death.

PLAQUES RUPTURE. BLOOD FLOW STOPS. AND TISSUE DIES.

Here are are the most important things that you can do right now to reduce your risk of having a heart attack.

1) Increase your activity level.

Human beings are designed to be in motion, pushing and pulling against things, and meeting resistance.

When we don’t engage in our environment in an active fashion, there are a long sequence of negative consequences. So find ways to increase your physical activity.

2) Reduce excess body fat.

Our bodies are designed to be in motion, not overweight or obese. Extra weight puts excess wear and tear on our joints, and causes metabolic consequences like insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.

80% of chronic diseases are directly linked to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.

The holy grail of fat loss is stabilization of your blood sugar which limits excess insulin, so that you are free to burn fat.

3) Improve your cholesterol numbers.

To reduce heart attack plaque formation, you need to focus three things related to your cholesterol:

Reducing triglycerides.

Raising HDL.

Reducing small-dense LDL.

4) Lower your blood pressure.

Blood pressure above 130/85 is a risk factor for heart attack.

High blood pressure pushing against your blood vessels causes injury, making it vulnerable for cholesterol to deposit in them.

It can also be the metabolic “flick” that causes a plaque to rupture, leading to a heart attack.

5) Improve your diet.

If your current diet does not take captive every carbohydrate you put in your mouth, you’re going to have a hard time winning at this.

COULD HIGH BLOOD SUGARS, ELEVATED TRIGLYCERIDES, LOW GOOD CHOLESTEROL, HIGH BAD CHOLESTEROL, AND DIABETES ALL BE CONNECTED?!

This week’s blog tackles one of the most under-rated phenomena in all of health care.

One topic we’ve discussed at length is insulin resistance. I’ve even gone as far as to call it the most important concept for you to grasp in all of health.

IT’S CALLED METABOLIC SYNDROME.

In order to understand metabolic syndrome, we need to revisit insulin resistance.

All living beings need energy to stay alive. Humans get energy from nutrition, specifically the nutrition that we crave the most – sugar. Not because it’s the best, but because it’s the most readily available, easily used for energy, and easily stored as energy for later.

When we eat foods that raise our blood sugar, there are mechanisms in place to save that energy for longer term storage to be used during times of famines. Only today, there are no famines.

In both hidden and free sugar, there is a narrow window of blood sugar we need to maintain. Our body doesn’t want diabetes, but it certainly don’t want blood sugar to be low.

We have this incredibly efficient mechanism for taking extra blood sugar and making fat. In order to do that, these high sugar levels trigger an insulin response from our pancreas. Insulin shows up, sugar lowers and we go on our way.

The challenge becomes when we always have elevated blood sugars, because if we always eat things that raise our blood sugar, we always have insulin present. Over time, this chronically elevated insulin level begins to get ignored.

AND IT’S ROOTED IN INSULIN RESISTANCE.

This is where the road splits. This is where we go from normal, healthy nutrition — and human beings who are thriving disease free — to where the disease processes begin.

It starts with elevated blood sugar and insulin, which leads to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and eventually diabetes.

What is metabolic syndrome?

Metabolic syndrome is a group of symptoms, or conditions, that we find due to a particular metabolic phenomena.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS?

1. Increased waist circumference.

A waistline greater than 40 in men and greater than 35 in women.

2. High Triglycerides.

Triglycerides greater than 150 on your fasting cholesterol panel.

3. Low HDL.

In men, an HDL less than 40. For women, an HDL less than 50.

4. Hypertension, or high blood pressure.

A top number (systolic) above 130, and bottom number (diastolic) above 85.

5. Elevated fasting glucose.

A blood sugar greater than 100 after at least 8 hours with nothing to eat.

TO BE DIAGNOSED WITH METABOLIC SYNDROME, YOU NEED THREE OF THE FIVE CRITERIA IN ANY COMBINATION.

What is the root cause of metabolic syndrome?

Insulin resistance.

When your body ignores elevated blood sugar, it results in insulin resistance which leads to metabolic syndrome and, eventually, diabetes.

Why is insulin resistance such a big deal? Because if left untreated, it always gets worse.

It leads to obesity, heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer.

80% OF ALL WESTERN DISEASES ARE DIRECTLY CONNECTED TO METABOLIC SYNDROME WITH ITS ROOTS IN INSULIN RESISTANCE.

Here are the conversations that you need to be having with your doctor so that you can put yourself in the best position to be the healthiest version of yourself possible.

1) How do I shrink my waistline?

If you’re like most folks, you’re walking around and you’ve been putting on anywhere from 2 -7 pounds every year of fat, no matter what you do or don’t do. Your waistline always seems to be getting bigger.

There probably isn’t one thing that you can do that will be more bene

DID YOU KNOW THAT YOUR BODY ONLY HAS ONE MECHANISM TO LOWER BLOOD SUGAR OTHER THAN EXERCISE?

Insulin.

But what happens when that one mechanism that you have begins to fail?

In today’s blog, we are going to unpack the concept of insulin resistance. I believe it is one of the most important and critical topics in all of medicine for the next 20 years.

TO BE DIABETIC IS TO BE INSULIN RESISTANT.

Most people think you just wake up one day with diabetes. This is just not the case.

Diabetes is actually a continuum, or spectrum. This means that you become diabetic over the course of five, ten, or fifteen years.

The spectrum begins with mild insulin resistance that progresses to a blood sugar of 126, or seven teaspoons of sugar in your bloodstream – just two teaspoons of sugar above a non-diabetic.

In order to do understand insulin resistance, we first need to answer some critical questions.

WHAT IS BLOOD SUGAR?

Blood sugar is a mechanism by which we deliver fuel or energy to our body so that we achieve the primary goal of all living things, which is to stay alive.

Blood sugar is energy.

WHY IS SUGAR SUCH A BIG DEAL?

Because sugar is the simplest, most readily available, form of energy that our body uses to keep us alive, which is our body’s primary goal.

Once our blood sugar hits a level of 100, or 5 teaspoons of sugar, the body begins to store the rest as fuel for later. This is for 2 reasons: a blood sugar of 7 teaspoons = diabetes and we need a mechanism to survive famines. So, in efforts to not to waste any of the sugar while not giving you diabetes in the process, the body pushes it all excess sugar into fat.

SUGAR IS CONVERTED INTO FAT THROUGH ONE STEP.

One intermediate step is all it takes to take sugar and drive it into a fat cell. This is hugely important.

So how does insulin resistance occur?

In order to answer that, we need to understand normal first. In other words, what does our body normally do by design in the presence of elevated blood sugar? When your blood sugar rises above 100, a signal is immediately sent to your pancreas to release the hormone insulin.

Insulin does two things – it lowers blood sugar by driving it into the cells, and it coverts sugar to fat.

So as blood sugar normalizes, insulin goes away completely and you have this relationship in a normal scenario where…

SUGAR RISES, INSULIN RISES, SUGAR FALLS, THEN INSULIN FALLS.

This is normal.

Over time, as blood sugar remains elevated even in the presence of insulin, the body release even more insulin to correct the high blood sugar, and then your blood sugar drops. But our body starts resisting insulin which results in a chronically elevated blood sugar.

THE MORE INSULIN RESISTANT YOU BECOME, THE HIGHER YOUR BLOOD SUGAR AND INSULIN LEVELS BECOME.

The basic premise of insulin resistance.

But why is this a big deal?

Insulin resistance is a chronic progressive disease, which means, if left alone, it not only doesn’t go away, it gets worse. And eventually, our blood sugar becomes so elevated that we diagnosed with diabetes.

This is how tightly our body controls blood sugar. It’s super important to be alive but we want no extra because we don’t want diabetes.

TO BE DIABETIC IS TO BE INSULIN RESISTANT.

You are just profoundly insulin resistant with diabetes as opposed to mildly insulin resistance with pre-diabetes.

An out of control diabetic is also insulin resistance, they’re just out of control. They have the inability to respond to any level of insulin that their body is able to produce.

And what happens to those people when they go the physician? What does your doctor put you on when your pancreas is working overtime and you can’t produce enough insulin to get that s

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED IF YOUR THYROID WAS CONTRIBUTING TO YOUR HEALTH PROBLEMS?

Are you cold all the time?

Do you struggle with a healthy weight?

Have you even tried thyroid medicine before and felt better?!

IF SO, THIS POST IS FOR YOU.

In this week’s blog, I’m going to give you some important conversations to have with your physician about optimizing your thyroid levels.

It’s challenging to manage because many people exhibit the symptoms of low thyroid, yet are told their levels are normal.

Having every symptoms of hypothyroid with “normal” thyroid blood tests is called, subclinical hypothyroidism.

Your thyroid is responsible for dozens of bodily functions including metabolism, iron production, menses in women, your basal temperature, mood, and fat burning.

THYROID DISORDER IS USUALLY MISDIAGNOSED AND MISMANAGED.

Let’s start with understanding thyroid hormone.

Thyroid hormone is released from the thyroid gland under the direct stimulation of the pituitary gland and thyroid stimulating hormone.

The pituitary gland receives a signal that your thyroid level is low, and submits a signal to the thyroid gland by releasing thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH into the bloodstream.

THERE ARE 2 FORMS OF THYROID HORMONE.

1. Inactive thyroid hormone, T4 (90%).

2. Active thyroid hormone, T3 (10%).

90% of of all thyroid hormone is in it’s inactive, protein-bound form, T4. At the cellular level, T4 gets converted into it’s active form, T3.

In other words, at the cellular level, T4 has zero biochemical effect.

IF YOUR BODY IS NOT PERFECTLY CONVERTING T4 TO T3, YOU COULD HAVE A NORMAL T4 LEVEL, BUT STILL BE EXPERIENCING SYMPTOMS OF LOW THYROID.

The mainstay of treatment for low thyroid levels is Synthroid.

What’s Synthroid?

SYNTHROID IS SYNTHETIC T4.

Again, this is the inactive form of thyroid hormone.

Let me review this one more time. I really want to make sure you get this.

Your thyroid, in nature, produces T3 and T4. T4 is inactive. T3 is active. When we treat low thyroid, we give you more of the inactive stuff assuming it converts to the active form. This is why many of you who have been diagnosed with low thyroid and who are on Synthroid still feel hypothyroid.

WHAT YOU NEED IS T3, NOT SYNTHROID (T4).

It turns out, the number one culprit for blocking the conversion of T4 to T3 is excess body fat in the periphery. That’s right.

While most people go around their whole life thinking, “Man, I must be heavy because I have a low thyroid.” In actuality, most people have a low thyroid because they’re heavy. This is hugely important.

EXCESS BODY FAT BLOCKS THE CONVERSION OF T4 TO T3.

Most physicians typically end the conversation on thyroid at the level of T4. But T3 is what actually does all of the things that thyroid is responsible for.

You may be asking ”How can you have a normal thyroid numbers but still feel low thyroid?” It’s because when most physicians check thyroid levels, they are only checking TSH and T4. They don’t look at T3 levels. Ever.

MOST PHYSICIANS NEVER CHECK T3 LEVELS.

Why? 2 reasons…

We are never taught to. I know I wasn’t.

Because there is a drug (Synthroid) that we can give you that will suppress your TSH and make everybody who’s treating you feel better about what they are doing, but yet you still feel bad.

This is a really big deal.

HERE ARE SOME CONVERSATIONS TO HAVE WITH YOUR PHYSICIAN ABOUT THYROID MANAGEMENT.

1) Do I have a low or suboptimal thyroid and I don’t even know it?

Suboptimal levels are common, especially in females age 35 to 40.

Ask your doctor to check your TSH level, a free T4 level, and especially a free T3 level.

The free T

EAT LESS, EXERCISE MORE — THE UNIVERSAL ADVICE GIVEN TO ANYBODY WHO NEEDS TO LOSE WEIGHT.

Yet, when you work out, your appetite goes up along with the scale, and you end up frustrated every time.

Never fear, there is a solution.

In this blog, I’m going to give you some clear perspective on exercise – the benefits, how to do it correctly, and the conversations you need to have with your doctor about it.

BUT THIS DOGMA IS FOUNDED ON 35 YEARS OF BAD DOCTRINE.

First, what is a calorie?

At the most fundamental level, a calorie is a unit of measurement that measures potential heat.

Calories that come from nutrition sources that raise our blood sugar have a profoundly different effect on our biochemistry than calories that we consume that don’t raise our blood sugar, because of the hormone insulin.

ALL CALORIES ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL.

Although calories all represent the same amount of potential heat, not all calories are created equal.

Is eating 2000 calories of M&Ms, the same as eating 2000 calories of broccoli? Of course not. Yet, we’ve all been led to believe that all calories are created equal, and it’s just not true.

This is critical. Are the calories you burn with exercise coming from coming from fat? Not necessarily.

The purpose of nutrition is to keep us alive in the easiest way possible. And the way our body does that is by using sugar from carbohydrates.

Sugar is the preferred source of fuel for the human body, not because it’s the best, but because it’s easily burned and easily stored.

If you carb-load before you work out, which every performance based trainer over the last 35 years has told you to do, you elevate your blood sugar from a normal state of about 100. This triggers an insulin response.

INSULIN BLOCKS FAT BURNING.

When you exercise you are in fact burning calories. But you’re not burning fat. What you’re really burning is all of that free sugar.

This is important.

Most of us are walking around with mild to moderately elevated blood sugar because we consume things from our diet that raise our blood sugar.

We go to the gym to burn fat, because we don’t want to be fat, but the calories that we’re burning are just getting us back to a baseline where we would ever be able to burn fat in the first place.

NOBODY LOSES WEIGHT WITH EXERCISE ALONE.

Here’s why:

1. It increases your appetite.

2. It increases the number on the scale as your muscles grow.

3. You end up treating yourself for working out and end up undoing all of hard work you put in.

4. This is a triple effect that causes a lot of frustration when you approach weight loss with exercise first.

BUT EXERCISE DOES HAVE TREMENDOUS HEALTH BENEFITS.

1. It increases lean mass, which is muscle. Lean mass sets the foundation for basal metabolic rate, or your metabolism.

2. It increases your insulin sensitivity. It is the perfect non-pharmacologic antidote for insulin resistance. It decreases blood sugar and keeps it stable.

3. It decreases belly fat, improves your sleep, decreases depression, and is an incredible social outlet.

I TEACH MY PRIVATE CLIENTS THE 5 PHASES OF FITNESS.

1. Lose 10% of your body weight with diet alone.

I gave you lots of information and a great strategy for a diet that will support a healthy weight in my podcast and blog on nutrition. That’s a great place to start if you need help on what to eat to lose weight.

Lose 10% of your current weight first. If you’re 150 pounds and you wanna be 100 pounds, start with losing 15 pounds. Then, move on to phase 2.

2. Increase your activity to at least three days a week.

Just get off the couch. Just be moving, be active for three days a week. Then move on the phase 3.

3

DID SOMETHING CHANGE ABOUT THE EGG TO MAKE IT “HEALTHY” AGAIN?

Absolutely not.

The truth is, there are no shortage of “experts opinions” on the topic of nutrition. It can seem overwhelming at times to find truth. Especially if you have diabetes.

In this post, I’ll unpack some of the greatest nutritional myths out there, and I’ll give you absolute clarity on what you need to know, and give you some simple, yet powerful conversations to have with you doctor about nutrition.

FIRST, WE MUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, “WHAT IS NUTRITION AND WHY DO WE NEED IT?”

At the most fundamental level, all living things have one primary job — to stay alive. All living things stay alive from energy.

And as humans, you and I get energy from nutrition.

WE GET OUR ENERGY FROM NUTRITION AND THIS ENERGY KEEPS US ALIVE.

Nutrition is broken down into two groups: micronutrients and macronutrients.

Micronutrients are beyond the scope of this discussion, but I’ll dive into them in greater detail in a future post.

SPECIFICALLY, WE GET ENERGY FROM MACRONUTRIENTS: FATS, PROTEINS, AND CARBOHYDRATES.

Let’s take a look at what happens to each of these 3 macronutrients once they pass your mouth…

1) Fats

When you eat fat, it immediately breaks down into the basic building blocks of a fat cell which are called triglycerides. Whether it’s the fat from the avocado, or the fat from a steak, it immediately gets broken down into triglycerides.

These triglycerides are what we use for energy. Energy for now or energy for later.

If the signal, insulin is present, the triglyceride will be driven into its storage form, fat.

If there is no signal, then triglycerides are utilized as energy in the form of a ketone.

2) Protein

When you eat protein, it is broken down into its basic building blocks, called amino acids. These are used to build and repair our muscles.

Amino acids follow one of two pathways.

Either they are utilized immediately for muscle repair or lean muscle growth

Or they are funneled into a chemical process that turns them into sugar, know as the Krebs Cycle.

3) Carbohydrates

It turns out, at the core of every carbohydrate on the planet is sugar. To be a carbohydrate is to be sugar. This is really, really important.

Carbohydrates are immediately broken down into sugar, plus or minus fiber

Fiber is the musculoskeletal system of a plant. We have no need for that because we already have muscles and bones. That’s what the amino acids are for.

Fiber passes through our GI tract and ends up in the toilet. We don’t absorb fiber because we don’t use it, which means

All non-fiber carbohydrates are sugar.

Remember, our primary goal as a human being is to stay alive, and we need to do that by taking in energy from nutrition.

By design, we crave the simplest, most readily available, easiest to use form of energy that we can possibly get.

This makes sugar is our body’s most readily available fuel source.

Do you know what the storage-form of sugar is? Fat.

This is very, very important, but it’s by design. We are designed to survive famines. We store all the extra sugar as fat for famine protection. Only, in this age of fast food and grocery stores, the famine never comes. This is critically, critically important.

All excess sugar gets converted into fat by insulin.

Insulin is the hormone God gave us, and it’s released from the pancreas, in the setting of elevated blood sugar.

When we eat things that raise our blood sugar, it triggers an insulin response. When insulin is present, it takes two of the three forms of macronutrients (Fats and Carbs) that we can consume and it makes fat.

Insulin makes us fat.

Did you catch that?

We’ve got three options for nutrition (protein, fa

WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE DAYS WHEN YOU COULD SLEEP ALL DAY AND STILL BE READY FOR BED AT NIGHT?

Getting enough “Z’s” can seem impossible.

As a fast-track executive, you’re always trying to manage your time and find balance between family life with your work ambitions.

IT CAN BE REALLY HARD TO TURN OFF ALL THE NOISE IN YOUR HEAD.

At the end of a very productive day, you are just supposed to magically turn it all off and get a good night’s sleep – – seems impossible, right?

In this week’s blog, I’m going to give you three conversations that you need to have with your primary care physician as it pertains to sleep.

THERE ARE TREMENDOUS SHORT-TERM CONSEQUENCES OF NOT GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP.

You can’t learn anything new.

You’re irritable.

You’re at risk for auto accidents.

It causes a mood depression.

Worsening of high blood pressure and blood sugars.

THE LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION ARE JUST AS DEVASTATING.

Obesity

Chronic fatigue

Alcohol abuse

Heart disease

Hypertension

Diabetes

Depression and Anxiety

Let’s be honest. When you’re chronically fatigued, you’re no fun to be around.

Getting enough sleep is a really big deal.

HERE ARE THREE CONVERSATIONS AROUND SLEEP THAT YOU NEED TO BE HAVING WITH YOUR DOCTOR.

No matter what camp you call into, this is a really important conversation to have with your doctor, because whether it’s you or someone you love, struggling with sleep is real.

CONVERSATION #1: “DO I NEED SLEEPING MEDICATION?”

When you address this question with your doctor, you should have done everything you can without using medication to address your sleep first.

There are two lanes when it comes to using medication as a solution to help you sleep: habit- forming and non-habit forming.

The two non-habit forming medications you can talk to your doctor about are Benadryl and Melatonin.

You may know Benadryl for allergies, but it’s actually really, really good for sleep. The active ingredient in Benadryl is a first line treatment for insomnia. I personally take Benadryl regularly after working a lot of night shifts, when my sleep-wake cycle is off.

In about 10% of the population, Benadryl has a paradoxical effect – It makes them hyperactive. But in most cases, Benadryl is a fantastic first line treatment for insomnia.

Melatonin is most famously and most widely-used for treating insomnia. One of the most common comments I hear from my private clients is, “Oh, doc, I’ve tried melatonin. It just doesn’t work for me.” The truth is, some people need very high levels of melatonin to initiate and maintain sleep, so if you’ve tried it before and it hasn’t worked, chat with your doctor about the dosing. You might be somebody that just needs a higher dose to get the benefit.

The habit forming sleep medications include drugs like Ambien and Lunesta.

Ambien and Lunesta work very similarly, have very similar side effect profiles, and have a very similar net effect. They’re both considered hypnotics and they work very well at making you sleepy and helping you maintain sleep. They’re intended, like lots of medication, to be used in short-term to help you transition back into a normal sleep-wake cycle after it’s been interrupted.

The challenge is that your brain and the chemical in these compounds develop a relationship very quickly. If you use Ambien and Lunesta every night, understand that there is a clear correlation with potential for abuse and dependency on these medications.

The benefit of these medications is that they work fantastically for most people. If your goal is to get to sleep, they will usually put you t

THE UNIVERSAL ADVICE OF, “EAT LESS AND EXERCISE MORE” DOESN’T WORK.

Despite the pushing of this dogma for the past 35 years by main-stream media and pop-culture, obesity rates continue to rise and heart disease and stroke numbers are at all time highs.

The challenge is, you to have to run 700 miles, and take 117 hours of your life to lose 20 pounds.

70% OF ALL AMERICAN ADULTS ARE OVERWEIGHT OR OBESE.

That means it doesn’t matter if you’re a truck driver, or a CEO of a Fortune 500 company — you’re either one of these statistics, or you’re at risk at becoming one.

To say unhealthy weight is a big deal is an understatement. In this post, you’re going to learn why it’s so important to have this conversation with your doctor. The age-old advice to eat less, exercise more has literally been the dogma we have believed for at least the last 35 years. “Just push away the plate. Go work out a little more. That’s how you’ll lose weight.” Meanwhile, this dogma, although really good for selling gym memberships, is not doing a very good job of helping us lose weight, and the statistics tell us that we’ve never been fatter as a nation.

WEIGHT IS JUST A THEORY.

We are all obsessed with the number on the scale, and somehow we extrapolate that number to mean our health is up or down based on our weight being up or down. For example, if I told you a client of mine weighed 278 pounds, you would probably assume they were unhealthy, right? But what if I told you this client was 6 foot 8, had, 7% body fat, and was named LeBron James? He doesn’t seem so unhealthy now, does he?

WEIGHT = EARTH’S GRAVITATIONAL PULL ON YOUR BODY.

The number on the scale has absolutely nothing to do with how healthy you are. Now, sure, there might be a correlation between the two, but correlation does not always equal causation. I’m not concerned about your weight as much as I am concerned about how much of that weight is fat. That’s the question. How much of your body weight is fat? Because there IS a specific correlation between body fat and overall health.

TWO THINGS THAT HAPPEN WHEN YOU EXERCISE: YOUR APPETITE INCREASES AND YOUR SCALE GOES UP.

Have you noticed what happens the very first week you’re at the gym? Have you noticed how hungry you get? Well, of course you do. That’s by design. When you work out, you break down muscle. Broken down muscles needs to rebuild. In order to rebuild our muscles, we need to increase the basic building blocks of muscle. And as a human, our basic building blocks are nutrition. So the harder you work out, the greater your appetite becomes.

The other thing that happens when you go to the gym is that you can’t wait to jump on the scale, right? But what happens to the number on the scale? It goes up. Of course it does. When you break down small muscles and they grow back bigger, you have bigger muscles. Bigger muscles weigh more than smaller muscles. So you have this double effect of an increased appetite, along with the psychological burden of gaining weight while you’re working out. This is an awful recipe for somebody who’s really trying to lose weight.

CONVERSATIONS TO HAVE WITH YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS.

1) Whatever goal you have for your weight, 80% of that achievement will be done through what you put in your mouth and 20% will be done in the gym. As a general rule, I prescribe a low carbohydrate diet to my patients, because low carbohydrate diets stabilized blood sugar which prevent you from making fat.

Examples of low carbohydrate diets are, Atkins, Mediterranean, Paleo, Ketogenic, South Beach, and many others.

FIX YOUR DIET, FIRST.

2) Talk with your physician about medications. Specifically, identify medications you are currently taking that cause weight gain. Some examples include high bl

What if I told you that the symptoms of menopause didn't have to happen?

And what if I also told you that by treating the symptoms of menopause with

bioidentical hormones you could not only feel better, but you could live

longer?

Well, it's true.

Symptoms like hot flashes, insomnia, moodiness, and weight gain..... GONE.

In this post, we're going to discuss one of the most controversial topics

in women's health, estrogen therapy for postmenopausal women. 

And, I'm going to give you three conversations to have with your doctor

about estrogen replacement.