Nutrition Space

Sleep and Body Composition

rest We've heard it a billion times, make sure you sleep well for around 8 or so hours each night. Why? And why is it so important to our body composition.

MUSCLE BUILDS AT NIGHT
When we sleep, and predominantly between 10pm - 2am we are releasing loads of lovely Growth Hormone along with other anabolic hormones such as Testosterone and Melatonin. When we train in the gym we are in a catabolic state, a state of breaking down our tissue. It is the anabolic rebound that builds us lean and strong, and this rebound takes place when we rest and especially when we sleep.

WE BURN FAT AT NIGHT
I can hear fist pumps around the world! Those same anabolic hormones are also powerful fat burning hormones, particularly our friend Growth Hormone. If we are sleeping restfully our stress hormone cortisol should be sitting at its baseline allowing for anabolic processes to take place. Cortisol = catabolic, or breaking down, unfortunately it doesn't mean breaking down fat necessarily.

OUR HUNGER SIGNALS ARE BETTER REGULATED
Through some pesky hormonal signals, tiredness makes us want to eat, and usually makes us want to eat lots of bad food. Have you ever heard of a really tired person craving a salad?

How much is too much salt?

What are the dangers of too much sodium? How much sodium is too much and where is hidden sodium in the diet.

Sodium is one of the key electrolytes in the body. We need it, but too much of it (like anything) throws the system out of balance and health related concerns present. Too much sodium can lead to the following:

Fluid retention, mild or severe Edema
High blood pressure
Heart disease
Stroke
Hypernatremia (high blood sodium)
Renal disease (kidneys)
Stomach cancer

Stacey's Top 10 Winter Boosters

A healthy functioning body picks up less winter bugs and if it does happen to pick something up, then it recovers much quicker. I'm not a huge fan of the flu vaccine and I always ask the question to seemingly healthy people, Why is your immune system unable to handle the flu? It often amazes me that those who I have spoken to who get vaccinated just get sick anyway, and more often than not, multiple times.

Your immune system knows what it's job is, but if you've beaten it into submission with a poor diet, stress and an unhealthy environment - then it's not able to do this job properly. You may not be able to see your immune system, but it's there, working with you or against you if you let it.

Here are my top 10 immune boosters.

1.       Olive Leaf Extract - antiviral, antibacterial and antioxidant. 1 tsp a day, increase to 3 tsp at the earliest onset of illness.

2.       Vitamin C. 500mg 2x daily, increasing to 500mg 6-8x daily at the earliest onset of illness

3.       Powdered Green supplement - for bio available, non-synthetic nutrients. Daily 1tsp.

4.       Daily probiotic. Most of your immune system is housed in the gut, so an imbalance here will unbalance your immunity. In addition, winter is damp and creates a great environment for bugs to flourish in our bodies

5.       Reduce or eliminate carbohydrates like bread and sugar. Sugar and refined carbs depress the immune system. At the earliest onset of illness, cut out completely and fight the cravings off with some lean protein, which is also supports the immune system.

6.       Water. Water helps to move toxins through the system. At the onset of illness increase your water intake to assist mucous production, which helps to package up and eliminate bugs

7.       De-mould your home. Don't treat mould lightly, the spores are getting into your body every time you take a breath. Look at getting a dehumidifier or other damp reducing product.

8.       Sleep well, or at least make an attempt to improve your sleep. Poor sleep depresses the immune system and raises stress hormones, which further affect immunity.

9.       Get your stress under control. Yes, this may mean a life change. Stress depletes nutrients and depresses the immune system. Along with (amongst other things) its affects on mental and digestive health, your energy levels and quality of sleep, this is one thing you really want to start working on for the good of your health.

10.   Get rid of the toxins now. Smoking, drinking, drugs and any other chemicals you frequent yourself with. These things produce free radicals which seek and destroy cell membranes, putting an extra load on your immune system that it doesn't need. Toxins also deplete nutrients, and some of these nutrients are crucial to your immunity.

There are many other remedies and strategies including, Garlic, Echinacea, colloidal silver, essential fatty acids, glutamine, iron, B-Vitamins, Zinc, herbal and homeopathic remedies. In my opinion the ones I have listed are the top ones for strengthening the immune system, so your body can do the work of fighting off bugs.

We all have health and fitness goals, but I believe every single one of us should be adding 'balancing body chemistry' to those goals, once you have done the hard yards to achieve this, maintaining a happy healthy body is easy.

And a final note about toxins/sugar/poor sleep and immunity - Easter's coming up, count how many of your colleagues come back from Easter break with illness.

Stacey
13 April 11

What's the difference between hypertonic and istonic sports drinks?

What's the difference between hypertonic and isotonic sports drinks? Which one is better?

Tonicity is a measure of osmotic pressure, or in very non science terms, it tells us how much solid type stuff (solutes) are in a liquid. Hypertonic means there is a greater tonicity than the control subject, isotonic tells us its equal to the control and hypotonic means there is less than tonicity or osmotic pressure than the control.

The ‘control' is whatever we're comparing tonicity. For example, blood has an osmotic pressure of 7.65atm at 37.5degrees, so anything the same as this is isotonic.

And this is where sports drinks come in.

•· Isotonic sports drinks provide around 6%-8% CHO and sodium (typically). This makes it the closest "formula" to your blood and is thought to provide the most rapid absorption. But note, if you eat a CHO or gel or even drink water along with your Isotonic sports drink the entire ingestion will be either hypertonic or hypotonic. So when practicing your sports nutrition, try just having your isotonic sports drink on its own to see if the rapid absorption produces better results for you.

•· Hypotonic sports drinks provide less than 6%-8% CHO and sodium, so is a little better for those wanting a lower sugar hit or who may already be taking an electrolyte supplement. Some athletes perform better on a hypotonic solution than an isotonic, so have a play around with the different tonicities and see what feels better for you. Wapnir & Lifshitz suggest, with good evidence that hypotonic solutions provide the most rapid hydration.

•· Hypertonic sports drinks provide greater than 8% of CHO and sodium, and is greater than the ratio your blood is carrying. This ratio makes the fluids from the drink slower to absorb, but good for long term replenishment of carbs and sodium. If you need a quick hit of carb or sodium, isotonic may be the better choice for you. But again, each athlete is different. If you are quite dehydrated the rate of absorption of a Hypertonic sports drink may not be fast enough for you and make your dehydration more severe.

If you're trying to lose weight or just doing your daily hour at the gym you don't need a sports drink. And if you've got a good balanced diet, even a 2 hour gym session doesn't require a sports drink.

In a nutshell, it basically means how much sugar and sodium is in your water. Each athlete is different, and different conditions may require a different formulation. For example you may do well on a hypertonic drink doing a marathon in winter, but an ultra-marathon in summer can dehydrate you quickly, so an iso or hypo tonic solution may be best for rapid fluid absorption.

Whatever you decide to use, keep rule number one firmly in mind:

If you haven't practiced it first....don't do it on the day.

Stacey Hancock
23 May 11

What is 'green powders' and how important is it to my health?

Stacey, I see you mentioning “green powders”. Can you please tell me what these are and the benefits I’d get from using them?

You’ve no doubt heard or probably even used Spirulina at some point – this is just one of the many “green supplements” around. Green powders (or powdered greens) are essentially greens that have been dried and packaged to make it easy for us to consume. Without high potency green powders, our other alternative is to spend time juicing our greens.

For the sake of this article, the types of greens were are talking about are primarily grasses, sprouts and algae – we still need to make sure we’re eating our other veg also!

Along with spirulina we have things like wheat grass, barley grass, chlorella, alfalfa, broccoli sprouts, oat grass, parsley and loads of others.

The main health message that is promoted with these greens are their alkalising effects on the body. Dr Robert Young claims that the root cause of all disease is acidic body tissues, whether or not you choose to believe this claim, there is one fact that is true, and that is that our bodies must maintain a pH balance of around 7.3 to be healthy. Eating lots of greens and especially taking a daily powdered green supplement helps to maintain this acid/alkaline balance. All serious disease aside, my personal opinion is that a balanced alkaline body will get sick less, as I discovered myself at the end of a very acidic winter last year.

What I really like most about powdered greens is the nutritional content. I can’t comment on all powders, but pHresh greens contains around 30 different nutrients, a great multivitamin that your body will find easier to deal with, as it is a whole food. 1tsp of powdered greens is equivalent to around 3-4 servings of veges.

So, with a happy alkaline body that is properly nourished with vitamins and minerals, this can help with weight loss, energy and digestive function, from digestion right through to elimination.

Now, I’m about to share too much information but this is my personal experience with powdered greens. I’m “regular”, like clockwork, but since I included pHresh greens I have been going 2x every second day. This is not like me at all. Many naturopaths say we should be going 2x per day, but I support the 1-2x a day camp. I also noticed my energy improved (it was pretty good to start with), and a few spots I had on my legs disappeared (can be a sign of a nutrient deficiency).

Most powdered greens are quite earthy, and some have quite a sea-earth taste. pHresh greens is one powder that doesn’t have a strong taste and didn’t really taint my protein shake at all. The most amazing thing is that pHresh greens does that I haven’t seen other powders do, is it sticks to the spoon in the same way that you would see iron filings stick to a magnet. This indicates it has a high electrochemical potential and is very much a living food. We want food with high electrochemical potential, as molecules with high ECP will move to areas with low ECP (which may exist in our unbalanced bodies)

Other benefits of powdered greens are detoxification, boost immunity and antioxidant action. I can’t really see any reason not to include them in a healthy balanced diet.

If you’d like to know more about pHresh greens or buy a tub to try please contact either Lisa or myself.

As with any supplement, powdered greens and pHresh greens are not intended to diagnose, prevent, cure or treat any disease

Stacey Hancock
14 March '11