The 7 Keys To Ultrametabolism
The 7 Keys To Ultrametabolism
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Control Your Appetite
Step 1: Compose the Perfect Meals
Include good fat in your diet. Try eating plenty of omega 3 fatty acids (wild fish, nuts, flax seeds)
Eat a low glycemic load diet which is easily accomplished by eating whole, unprocessed real, unrefined foods in meals that contain a mix of the good fats, the good carbs, and good protein (whole grains, beans, vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds)
Eat a high fiber diet (ease up to 50 grams) and try konjac root or glucomannan capsules or powder just before meals to reduce sugar, insulin, cholesterol and weight.
Avoid refined sugars and refined carbohydrates
Eliminate high fructose corn syrup by carefully reading food labels
Avoid artificial sweeteners
Be conscious of your food intake and portion size, but dont count calories
Step 2: Eat Early and Eat Frequently
Eat breakfast every day (ideally whole, high-fiber foods)
Include adequate protein for breakfast
Eat regularly every day 3 meals and 2 snacks a day
Finish eating 2-3 hours before you go to bed
Step 3: Foods to Enjoy and Foods to Avoid
Enjoy whole foods with plenty of good fats, a low glycemic load, and a high phytonutrient content
Avoid garbage foods and processed carbs
Step 4: Herbal Remedies
There are some herbs that can help you including ginseng, green tea, fenugreek, and cinnamon.
Step 5: Supplements
Taking certain supplements can help you further optimize your appetite control mechanisms. These include: alpha lipoic acid, GLA, arginine, and PGX
Step 6: Testing
Check your insulin and glucose tolerance test and your cholesterol including the HDL and triglycerides.
Subdue Stress
Step 1: Identify and Reduce the Causes of Stress
Reduce as many of the psychological and social stressors as possible and take an honest look at which you can eliminate from your life and others than you can reduce. Many of our stressors we choose our self in one-way or another.
Reduce as many physical stressors as possible including poor diet, exposure to allergens, toxins and more.
Balance your blood sugar (see Key # 1, Control Your Appetite) by reducing refined sugars, high GL carbohydrates, trans and saturated fats, and increasing whole grains, beans, nuts, fruits and vegetables in your diet.
Get regular aerobic exercise daily to burn off stress hormones. (This can be just a 20- 30 minute walk, although 30 minutes 5 x a week is better.)
Get enough sleep (at least 7-9 hours per night) to avoid increased hunger and reduce stress hormones.
Practice the rhythm method: wake and sleep at the same time every day and eat at regular times during the day. This helps keep your stress hormones in balance.
Expose yourself to bright sunlight or a full spectrum light for 20 minutes every morning to rebalance your circadian rhythm, which is very important in keeping the stress hormones in balance.
Step 2: Practice Active Relaxation
Practice the relaxation response every day do something even if for 5 minutes such as the exercises in this chapter for breathing and guided imagery. You might also try yoga, deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation (see resources for tapes and suggestions).
Try saunas or steam baths.
Step 3: Foods to Enjoy and Foods to Avoid
Foods like wild fish, fiber, dark green leafy vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, and flax seeds can all help you overcome chronic physical stressors.
Other foods like sugar in any form, refined flours and nutrient poor processed foods should be avoided.
Step 4: Herbal Remedies
Try adaptogenic herbs such as ginseng, licorice, rhodiola or Siberian ginseng.
Step 5: Adding Supplements
Consider adding stress modulating supplements like the B vitamin complex vitamins, magnesium, vitamin C, and zinc to your basic supplement regimen.
Step 6: Measure Your Stress Response
Confirm problems with your stress response by dong further testing with the adrenal stress index, urinary cortisol test, and IGF-1.
Cool Inflammation
Step 1: Eliminate the Factors that Cause Inflammation
Research and eliminate factors that play a role in inflammation. These may be specific foods you are eating, a sedentary lifestyle, toxic molds in you house, or allergens of which you are unaware.
Step 2: Talk to Your Genes
Eating good fats, antioxidants, and foods that are high in phytonutrients send your genes the right information and help counteract inflammation.
Exercise also plays a major factor in inflammation. Refer to chapter 13 for what constitutes an appropriate amount of exercise.
Use stress management and deeply relaxing to reduce inflammation
Step 3: Eat Foods that Reduce Inflammation and Avoid Foods that Cause It
Your diet is one of the most important factors in helping you control inflammation. Eat foods that keep inflammation down such as fish, fruits and vegetables (and, of course, dark chocolate) and avoid foods that turn up inflammation such as sugar and trans and saturated fats.
Step 4: Herbal Remedies
Try herbs that cool off the fires like quercitin, ginger, ginseng, green tea, and capsaicin (cayenne pepper), turmeric, and cocoa.
Step 5: Adding Supplements
Expanding your basic supplement regimen can be helpful. Try adding probiotics, bromelain, and other enzymes to help you reduce inflammation.
Step 6: Testing for Inflammation and its Causes
Test for inflammation by checking your CRP level and using the other testing information given in this chapter.
Oxidative Stress
Step 1: Eliminate the Factors that Cause Oxidation
Many dietary, environmental, and lifestyle factors lead to oxidation. You need to remove these to heal from its effects.
Getting enough exercise, avoiding overeating, being moderate with alcohol, reducing your exposure to petrochemicals, and eliminating toxic fungal mold are all ways for you to reverse the process of oxidation.
Step 2: Eat Foods that Reduce Rust and Avoid Foods that Cause It
Antioxidants are the key part of the solution to this process.
The big problem is that we eat a nutrient poor diet full of empty calories that is simply not nearly rich enough in antioxidants.
Eating a variety of plant foods with a high phytonutrient index is one way to increase your antioxidant intake and reverse the rusting that is going on in your body.
The deep dark color of the food you eat is the best indicator if the food is rich in antioxidants.
If your plate is full of colorful fruits and vegetables, youre doing fine.
Many different foods help you reduce the rust in your body. Make sure that you are eating the right foods and avoiding those that cause your body to rust.
Step 3: Herbal Remedies
Specific herbal remedies can help you reverse the effects of oxidation. Remember to include herbs like gingko, ginger, green tea, milk thistle, rosemary, and turmeric as spices in the foods you cook or in supplement form.
Step 4: Adding Supplements
Adding proanthocyanidins to your supplement regimen can help reduce your oxidative stress.
In addition consider the other keys and the supplements necessary to heal from them. Remember the body is a web, one thing affects another. When you are stressed, inflamed, or toxic you are liable to be rusting to. Make sure you consider these elements in your path to healing as well.
Step 5: Testing for Oxidation in Your Body
Test your body for the degree of rusting and pinpoint the causes by taking a variety of tests including urinary 8 hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine, lipid peroxides (TBARS) in urine or serum, and Assessment of Iron Overload
Boost Your Mitochondria
Step 1: Eliminate the Factors that Damage Your Mitochondria
Seek out and eliminate hidden factors that may be damaging your mitochondria. These could include poor nutrition, oxidative stress, inflammation, or environmental toxins. Seek out these causes and eliminate them.
Step 2: Intelligent Exercise
The main way to tune up and increase the power of your metabolic engine is exercise.
Interval training is a critically important part of your exercise program. It offers you a way to exercise less and burn more calories.
You can also increase the amount of mitochondria you have by building up your muscle mass through strength training.
Step 3: Eat Foods that Turn Up Your Metabolic Metabolism and Avoid Foods that Turn It Down
You also need to eat a whole foods diet to limit the damage that is done to your mitochondria.
Step 4: Add Supplements
Dr. Bruce Ames has done a great deal of research pointing out that you can give yourself a metabolic tune-up by taking the right supplements.
The most effective mitochondrial-supporting supplements are: n-acetylcysteine (NAC) acetyl-l-carnitine, lipoic acid, creatine, coenzyme Q10, and NADH.
Step 5: Testing Your Mitochondria
To refine your understanding of the damage done to your mitochondria you can take two tests: a cardio-metabolic stress test and urinary organic acids.
Fix Your Thyroid
Step 1: Eliminate the Causes of Thyroid Problems
Eliminating the causes of thyroid disorder like gluten intolerance, food allergies, built up toxins like mercury, pesticides, and other petrochemicals is a critical step in balancing your thyroid function.
Step 2: Exercise and Take Saunas
Another critical step is coping with stress using relaxation exercises, taking saunas for detoxification purposes, and establishing a regular exercise routine.
Step 3: Eat Foods that Offer Your Thyroid Nutritional Support and Stay Away From Those that Dont
You should also switch to a whole foods diet if you want to obtain the nutritional support you need for your thyroid.
Step 4: Add Supplements
Getting the right nutritional support and adding the right supplements to your regimen is another important step to take in balancing your thyroid.
Step 5: Doing the Right Thyroid Tests
Make sure you get the full panel of thyroid tests needed to discover what is really going on including TSH, free T4, free T3 and TPO antibodies.
Step 6: Choosing the Right Thyroid Replacement
Each person is an individual and finding the right treatment is essential. It usually involves a combination of T4 and T3 and I have found Armour thyroid to be the best for most people. Some people however do well with just T4 or need some other special combination. Remember this is the era of personalized medicine where one size does NOT fit all.
Love Your Liver
Step 1: Minimize Your Exposure to Toxins
There are a number of easy and practical ways that you can minimize your exposure to toxins. Try eating organic foods, filtering your water, cleaning your air-conditioning and heating systems, and avoiding environmental petrochemicals.
Step 2: Sweat It Out and Sweat It Off
Another important and helpful factor are saunas. These mobilize the toxins in your body and help you expel them as you lose weight.
Step 3: Eat Foods that Help You Detoxify and Avoid Foods that Make Your Toxic
Eating a whole foods diet is a major step toward detoxification. Try eating plenty of colorful vegetables especially the broccoli family and watercress.
Step 4: Try Herbal Remedies
Some herbs help with detoxification. You should try milk thistle and green tea.
Step 5: Add Supplements
There are a number of supplements that have been shown to improve detoxification. Add vitamin C, amino acids, alpha lipoic acids, and bioflavinoids to your standard supplement regimen.
Step 6: Testing Your Detox System and Looking for Toxins
Sometimes identify genes or problems with your down detoxification system is very helpful. Looking for mercury is also an important part of the detective work for hidden toxins.
