Spring is finally here! Like bears, many of us have been slowly coming out of hibernation and getting more active as the days get warmer and longer. I love it when my patients show me seed catalogs and tell me about starting their gardens. I share their excitement for our beloved earth and especially enjoy my outdoor activities, like stand-up paddle boarding (SUP).
While writing, I can see the still-frozen surface of the small lake outside my window and find myself thinking about my future paddle boarding adventures. I’m happy that the sun has already started increasing the water temperature so it will be more forgiving if (no!) when I fall in… Since cold temperatures stimulate health, this is actually a win/win situation.
I doubt anyone truly enjoys falling into the icy cold water but it’s good to get out into the cold on occasion. If you do this and feel chilled to the bone, as we all do at times, go back inside and take a tablespoon of coconut oil before going back out. This will switch you from burning sugar for fuel to burning ketones, a better heat producing fuel. Your body was designed to burn ketones as its primary fuel anyway, so get back with it, and you may see that your weight and health also begin to improve. Good fats and oils don’t make you fat and sluggish; sugar and grains that turn into sugar do that.
Each spring, I see an influx of injuries in my office, many of which could’ve been avoided with proper preparation. To get the most out of our all-too-short outdoor season, here’s a short list of my recommendations:
1.) Get ready for higher activity levels by stretching properly. We teach a class that shows you how to do this (at no charge) almost every month. If you don’t stretch correctly, you’ll invariably injure yourself at some point. Most of the stretching I’ve seen many people do just isn’t adequate to protect them.
2.) Ensure that your body is getting proper nutrition by taking high-quality whole food supplements. Bone mass can be increased 1-3% per year just through proper nutrition. In my office, we carry vegetarian-friendly supplements to help build muscle, help protect you from the effects of excess estrogen, help produce nitric oxide for circulation, CoQ10 to help with heart muscle, collagen builders to glue your parts together properly and help keep you looking young, along with many more amazing supplements.
Note: We used to live in a world where food provided all the nutrition you needed and natural programming guided us to eat right. Sadly, this doesn’t happen in today’s world. There’s a ton of worthless supplements that will suck the energy and your resources out of you. Over time, incomplete (bad) vitamins actually create new deficiencies by depleting the body’s reserves.
3.) Start incorporating weights into your daily exercise routine. According to Wolff’s law, bone in a healthy person adapts to the loads under which it is placed. As your bones become stronger through your work-out with weights, you may increase bone mass up to 15% per year (Dr. William Wong, ND, PhD.) Utilizing your skeletal muscles, you increase circulation to the bone and increase bone strength. Free weight exercises are ideal.
Note: Good news is that your blood is made in your large and long bones. If you want healthier blood, having its source be in a healthier condition only makes sense, right? As you move onto higher levels of exercise, kettlebells are great as they take up very little space and work large areas of the body in a short time. The work-out is similar to running without the extra wear and tear on your knees and ankles. You can do this indoors while it’s still cold out. You should do kettlebells year round, as I do, so you’re ready for whatever physical and mental stressors come your way; and they will come your way, especially if you’re not ready!
4.) Get your sunshine but don’t forget about protection. This year we’ve been seeing very high levels of ultraviolet rays in both the B spectrum (which changes your cholesterol to Vitamin D when it hits the oil that comes to the surface of your skin) and the C spectrum that can burn us. To help avoid getting a sunburn, we need a high enough level of Vitamin D along with what’s known as free fatty acids (the good ones – yep, there are bad ones, too, just to add to the confusion.) We use a supplement called Cataplex F that does a great job of moving calcium from the bloodstream to the tissues where it’s needed. This also keeps the body from building up excess calcium in the bloodstream which can adversely affect the heart. In more medically-oriented literature, this is referred to as Vitamin K2 and K7 generally thought to derive from K1.
5.) Increase your knowledge. At our next workshop on April 26, we’ll demonstrate the healing modalities we utilize in our Wellness Center. While the science behind them is different, each is designed to increase energy and improve health. The Erchonia cold laser increases mitochondria energy output to increase energy and the Erchonia ion foot bath helps release trapped toxins from the body, aiding in detoxification. Color therapy glasses rebalance energy in the body and help release toxins when used with the ion foot bath. Our Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy unit (PEMF) re-energizes the surface charge of the cells to bring them up to full potential and enhances healing through better cellular communication.
Just as spending time outside helps us heal faster and feel better, these high-tech devices facilitate healing. I love hearing stories and testimonials from patients that have had huge successes as they embark upon their healing journeys. If better health is one of your priorities, schedule your free of charge consultation with me or Dr. Jake, and come learn everything you need to know at our workshops!
