WSJ on HIIT – more weight loss and cardio benefits for your buck http://ow.ly/VifO9

You name the disease – exercise “treats” it #ExerciseAsMedicine http://ow.ly/Vi3kh

Relationship of oxidative stress, inflammation, and obesity = SOD feeding reduces fat cell inflammation http://ow.ly/Vi2dL

Check out this great new article about how to balance stress hormones to increase energy levels – from Celeste Peron in the December 2015 issue of Shape magazine

Read the article on the Shape website

Read more great articles from Celeste Peron

Download a PDF scan of the article = Wake Up Energized Shape Dec 2015

Here are a few sections from the article:

Having to drag yourself out of bed even after a good seven hours means something’s off.

Your hormones maybe the culprit. Find out how to reset them.

You got plenty of sleep, and yet It takes Herculean strength to move from the mattress. If this is a typical morning for you, don’t blame it on laziness. Studies have recently confirmed the physiological reason behind your a.m. exhaustion: Your Cortisol levels are out of whack.

While we usually think of Cortisol as affecting stress, it’s also responsible for making you feel alert and awake. Normally, as morning approaches, your level of the hormone begins to rise—gradually at first, to draw you out of the deeper phases of sleep, and then more dramatically, to help you pry your eyes open. This boost, known as the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR), is like a shot of espresso. Besides giving you mental energy. It also gets your body primed and ready for the day ahead by stimulating your digestive, central nervous, and cardiovascular systems, all of which power down at night.

Within a half hour of your alarm going off, your Cortisol level will have risen by roughly 50 percent, and you’ll be ready to dive Into your morning routine. That is, unless your

hormone response has gone haywire. Factors like chronic stress, nutritional shortfalls, bad bedtime habits, and even your body clock can mess with your CAR, explains Shawn Talbott, Ph.D., the author of The Cortisol Connection. “Cortisol normally follows a pattern of being high in the morning and subsiding over the course of the day, with temporary spikes in response to stressful events,” Talbott explains, if you’re always stressed, though, the hormone is released more frequently, and its level remains high when it shouldn’t be. One of the ways your body compensates for the excess Cortisol is by suppressing your CAR. As a result, you wake up feeling sluggish and exhausted.

Cortisol is also closely connected to our individual circadian rhythms. Some people’s internal clocks are hardwired to kick in later in the morning. If you’re a night owl, it’s possible that your CAR is occurring a few hours after your alarm goes off, which is the reason it’s so hard for you to get up.

One of my favorite (and most effective) approaches to internally-balancing cortisol levels and the overall stress response in the body is to eat the right energizing foods. Berries, citrus, and certain teas are rich In flavonoids. These plant compounds have been shown to reduce excess Cortisol during the day and, as a result, set you up for a bigger, more energizing boost the following morning. Eating a half cup of berries and drinking two to four cups of brewed green, oolong, or black tea dally will do the trick. Other good sources of flavonoids include red onions, black beans, and (happily) wine.

Those are just a few of the tips from the article – so check out the links above to read them all.

Thanks for reading,

Shawn

====================================

Shawn M Talbott, PhD, CNS, LDN, FACSM, FAIS, FACN

Nutritional Biochemist and Author

smtalbott@mac.com

www.shawntalbott.com

Follow me on YouTube 

Follow me on Amazon 

Follow me on Twitter  

Follow me on LinkedIn 

Follow me on ShareCare 

Follow me on Facebook 

Follow me on  Facebook (Author page)

–The Secret of Vigor – How to Overcome Burnout, Restore Biochemical Balance, and Reclaim Your Natural Energy

–Killer at Large – Why Obesity is America’s Greatest Threat – an award-winning documentary film exploring the causes and solutions underlying the American obesity epidemic

–The Cortisol Connection – Why Stress Makes You Fat and Ruins Your Health (Hunter House)

–The Cortisol Connection Diet – The Breakthrough Program to Control Stress and Lose Weight (Hunter House)

–Cortisol Control and the Beauty Connection – The All-Natural Inside-Out Approach to Reversing Wrinkles, Preventing Acne, And Improving Skin Tone (Hunter House)

–Natural Solutions for Pain-Free Living – Lasting Relief for Flexible Joints, Strong Bones and Ache-Free Muscles (Chronicle Publishers – Currant Books)

–The Immune Miracle – The All-Natural Approach for Better Health, Increased Energy and Improved Mood (GLH Nutrition, 2012)

–The Health Professionals Guide to Dietary Supplements (Lippincott, Williams & Wilkens)

–A Guide to Understanding Dietary Supplements – an Outstanding Academic Text of 2004 (Haworth Press)

I have a few things to say in the recent “Food Habits That Age You” article by Catherine Guthrie in the November 2015 issue of Experience Life magazine.

Read the article on the Experience Life website

Read some of Catherine Guthrie’s other fantastic articles

Download a PDF scan of the article =  Food Habits That Age You Experience Life Nov 2015

Here are some of the interesting tidbits from the article – the major “Big Offender” foods that will accelerate aging:

Partially hydrogenated oils (a source of trans fats), which manufacturers manipulate to increase stability and shelf life.

How It Ages You: Lurking in many processed convenience foods, partially hydrogenated oils take their aging toll by promoting inflammation. Chronic inflammation is a low-grade, systemic irritation that smolders deep inside the body. Like rust that spreads through a car, inflammation erodes the body’s basic mechanics.

Specifically, chronic inflammation ages the body by nibbling away at telomeres — the caps on the ends of your chromosomes that are key to protecting your genes. Telomeres shorten naturally with each cell division, and eventually telomeres are used up and cells become inactive or die. Cell death is natural, but lifestyle factors — such as eating a lot of hydrogenated oils — can shorten telomeres prematurely and accelerate aging.

“Inflammation is the No. 1 enemy of telomeres,” says Shawn Talbott, PhD, CNS, a nutritional biochemist and author of The Secret of Vigor. He explains that prematurely shortened telomeres are linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. Partially hydrogenated oils are full of trans fat. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently made moves to ban its use in human food products, a legal loophole allows small amounts of trans fats to go into processed foods while still permitting those foods to be labeled as trans-fat-free.

Sugar, whether sucrose (the refined, highly processed and crystalized version of plant sugars), glucose, dextrose, fructose, or other types of added sweeteners.

How It Ages You: Excess sugar in your diet loiters in the blood and causes trouble by glomming on to protein molecules. This process, called glycation, causes cellular aging in several ways.

First, it slows the body’s repair mechanism. Although glycation’s effects are mostly internal, aging skin is a prime external sign. “Sugar molecules gum up the collagen in your skin,” says Talbott, making skin less elastic and causing it to wrinkle faster.

Glycation also ages the body by creating oxidative stress. Oxidation eventually leads to a buildup of toxins called advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. The accumulation of some AGEs is normal, but eating poorly is like hitting the fast-forward button on aging. That’s because AGEs build up in the body and damage our cellular engines: mitochondria. The loss of cellular energy gives rise to such age- related complaints as loss of memory, hearing, vision, and stamina. Some findings show AGEs build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s (increasingly referred to as “type 3 diabetes”). AGEs are also linked to the more rapid development of arterial plaque in people with heart disease, and appear to be associated with Parkinson’s disease as well.

If you can go cold turkey on processed sugar, great. If not, cut back as far as you can. For the sweets you do eat, choose foods made with less heavily processed natural sweeteners, such as honey or maple syrup, instead of refined (white) sugar. “Although natural sugars aren’t much better for your health, foods sweetened naturally tend to be less refined and contain other whole-food ingredients, and that is beneficial for reducing sugar load,” says Talbott. Cut back on the sugar you use in recipes at home, and try adding less sugar to your coffee, tea, and other frequently consumed beverages.

Crashing and spiking blood sugar, which wreaks hormonal havoc, promotes inflammation, and drives unhealthy food cravings.

How It Ages You: when the stomach is empty, its secretion of ghrelin, also called the “hunger hormone,” doubles. When the stomach is full, secretion of ghrelin slows and its hormonal opposite, leptin, signals that the body is satiated. But it can take 20 minutes for this process to unfold. During this time, it’s easy to overeat.

“Going for a long period without food and then gorging is the textbook way to gain weight,” says Talbott. “When you gorge, you eat more, your blood sugar spikes higher, and your body stores more calories for later because it’s in feast-or-famine mode.”  Significantly, frequent blood-sugar spikes are linked to insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, and to body- wide inflammation.

Some of the other “Body-Aging Habits” covered in the article are cortisol overexposure and refined carbohydrate overload (two of my “favorites”) – so check out the entire article.

Thanks for reading,

Shawn

====================================

Shawn M Talbott, PhD, CNS, LDN, FACSM, FAIS, FACN

Nutritional Biochemist and Author

smtalbott@mac.com

www.shawntalbott.com

Follow me on YouTube 

Follow me on Amazon 

Follow me on Twitter  

Follow me on LinkedIn 

Follow me on ShareCare 

Follow me on Facebook 

Follow me on  Facebook (Author page)

–The Secret of Vigor – How to Overcome Burnout, Restore Biochemical Balance, and Reclaim Your Natural Energy

–Killer at Large – Why Obesity is America’s Greatest Threat – an award-winning documentary film exploring the causes and solutions underlying the American obesity epidemic

–The Cortisol Connection – Why Stress Makes You Fat and Ruins Your Health (Hunter House)

–The Cortisol Connection Diet – The Breakthrough Program to Control Stress and Lose Weight (Hunter House)

–Cortisol Control and the Beauty Connection – The All-Natural Inside-Out Approach to Reversing Wrinkles, Preventing Acne, And Improving Skin Tone (Hunter House)

–Natural Solutions for Pain-Free Living – Lasting Relief for Flexible Joints, Strong Bones and Ache-Free Muscles (Chronicle Publishers – Currant Books)

–The Immune Miracle – The All-Natural Approach for Better Health, Increased Energy and Improved Mood (GLH Nutrition, 2012)

–The Health Professionals Guide to Dietary Supplements (Lippincott, Williams & Wilkens)

–A Guide to Understanding Dietary Supplements – an Outstanding Academic Text of 2004 (Haworth Press)

Higher antioxidant intake from WHOLE foods reduces risk of skin cancer http://ow.ly/UYEfw

Nitrate-rich foods (beetroot juice) reduce the oxygen cost of exercise and enhance endurance http://ow.ly/UYDjo

Here is a little segment from Good Morning Orlando that ran yesterday (Nov 16, 2015) – where I talk about some of my favorite foods for battling stress and restoring balance in the body. Balancing stress now, during the high-stress Holidays, is a great way to keep your body weight and belly fat under control – so you can head into the New Year ready to tackle every challenge.

Foods like pumpkin seeds, green tea and asparagus can help us relax; foods like onions, apples, carrots, cranberries, almonds, and sweet potatoes provide flavonoids, carotenoids, and full-spectrum vitamin E that can help our bodies to fight cellular stress; and foods like dark chocolate, New Zealand pine bark, and ginger can help reduce stress-induced inflammation to improve mood.

Hope you enjoy this short video (two formats below).

Thanks for reading/watching…

Shawn

NEW 90 Second Nutrition #90SN – short bursts of usable nutrition info to restore balance in body, mind, & spirit. http://www.90secondnutrition.com

I’ve been studying metabolism for more than two decades – especially how balancing metabolism can help us to lose weight, feel our best, and perform at our highest levels.

Every Holiday Season is full of stress, which can sap our energy and depress our mood. Those holiday celebrations also represent a lot of opportunities for us to indulge – and we often indulge in sweets and treats and all sorts of goodies. What this means for the average person is that the combination of holiday stress and holiday celebration typically results in a weight gain of 10-12lbs in the weeks between Halloween and the New Year.

On New Year’s Day, many of us make the most common of all resolutions – to lose weight. Losing weight is the most common New Year’s resolution because the average person gains those 10-12lbs during the holidays. But, the average person also only loses 5-6 of the 10-12lbs that they gained.  Do that for a few years and pretty soon you find yourself with 10 or 20 or 30 or even more extra pounds that nobody wants.

This Holiday Season, I want you to ask yourself whether or not you want to be “average” – or whether this year you’d like to do something different? If you’re tired of being “average” and gaining those Holiday pounds, then you might be interested in the new Holiday Survival Kit from Metabolic Research Center (MRC).

This amazing kit contains some of my favorite MRC products, including:

• High-Protein Drinks to help keep appetite in check
• Corti-Trim to help manage stress, cortisol, and belly fat
• Metabolic Glucose Formula to help manage blood sugar levels and cravings
• Fat & Carb Blocker to help reduce digestion and absorption of fat and carbohydrate calories

MRC’s Holiday Survival Kit can help you to strike the proper balance between the stress of the holidays – and the celebrations. Each of these individual products works in a different way with your body to maintain metabolic balance. The result is that you feel great with abundant energy, good mood, focused mind – and yes, successful weight loss.

Starting with Metabolic Research Center now, during the holidays, is a great way to get a jumpstart toward your ultimate weight loss goals. Imagine coming out of the holidays fully motivated and engaged instead of feeling stressed and bloated? MRC’s Holiday Survival Kit can help.

Thanks for reading,

Shawn