Unhappy backs

In the past, it’s been hard for me to get clients to iron out their posture unless they’ve got a good toolbox for daily, effective release of stubborn connective tissue.

Opening up the breath capacity is typically the place we start, with work to get extension back in the thoracic spine.  That means straightening up in the spine in the ribcage are so the lungs can expand properly.

Easier said than done.

We used to use foam rollers.  A 4-inch foam roller can be a good tool to start loosening up spines that have been locked into flexion from years of desk typing, or cycling, or whatever.  Mostly effective, but didn’t quite do the trick.

Then, we started taping tennis balls together, but that got old quick, and it was never exact enough to get the job done right.  Too squishy, not precise enough, and on down the line.

Eventually, after seeing that basically every-single-person-in-the-whole-damn-world needed some kind of work with thoracic mobility, we decided to just step in and develop a tool to do the job right;

Enter the RAD Roller;

We love this little thing.

We’re proud to promote it because it’s the only tool of its kind, and it actually gets the job done!

There’s been a  lot of talk around about thoracic mobility ( Mark’s Daily Apple has a great post about some general tips)…..And we hope you understand the importance.  Flexion in the thoracic spine can come from all sorts of things, mainly;

-Poor Thought Patterns: think a few bad thoughts and see how it affects your posture……Negative thinking manifests in the posture, often times the simple observation of these kinds of thoughts can clear it up……now think some happy thoughts come back!  Conversely, poor posture can manifest poor thoughts…….look around and you’ll see what I’m talkin’ about!

-Poor Breathing Patterns; Think chest breathing.  Lifting the ribcage up instead of relaxing the belly and letting the ribcage naturally expand.  We all get into chest breathing with stressful situations, it only becomes a problem when we adopt this kind of breath all the time.

-Too much Abdominal work; A lot of people, athletes included, like to spend a lot of time at the gym doing ‘core work’……..Which usually translates into a million different kinds of situps.  Too much abdominal work will end up pulling the ribcage down and bringing the head forward. Sexy, I know.

Well, if you want a simple solution to get the ball rolling so to speak, here you are.

We’ll be doing some video tutorials soon, on all the different ways you can deal with muscle tension, but in the meantime, check out radroller.com, and leave us your thoughts!

Oh, and if you want one, use the discount code “RADBALANCE” for 15% off your order.

cheers-

This is straight up jacked from Crossfit SF, but it’s just such a strong point that it needs a bigger audience!

I LOVED this video. I’ve been in a number of anatomy labs, seen my fair share of cadavers, but this is something that you usually don’t see because the cadavers are almost always prepared in advance.  The pertinent structures are always exposed, and they don’t treat the fascia as an actual structure to be looked at and thought about in itself.

You watched the video right?  Are you dealing with your daily fuzz?

Foam rolling?  Stretching?  yoga?

I know I usually roll around in bed for a minute before I get rolling, but I also know that there are definite areas that I don’t get on a daily basis, and every once in a while I’ve got to have ‘em beaten out by a massage therapist.  Ellen deals with the fuzz if I don’t.   You can always take the massage therapist route, but it’s better to empower yourself and deal with the issue head on, at your own level.

But back on track here.  You don’t need to go into crazy yoga poses to deal with what builds up on a daily basis.  All you need to do is see that each joint gets to go through its full range of motion at least once per day.  A lot of us go days without even raising our arms above our heads!

Personally, I like to take some time every day to roll around the carpet, stretch out, and just let go of all the daily tension.  Deal with my ‘fuzz’ that is.   Deacon, our household ruffian, does this about 35 times per day;

Deacon deals with his Fuzz on an hourly basis

Roll the shoulders around, do some upward dogs, a few full squats, neck circles……..don’t forget the feet and lower legs too.

You get the idea…….Take a little time to deal with your fuzz tonight, and every other night.

Nevermind the Gluten, Here's Duck

It’s come to my attention that most people don’t actually know how to go gluten free.  I’ve gotten so used to it that I forget the challenges some people face in changing their lifestyle.

Changing over is quite easy if you have enough healthy, satiating alternatives to fill the void.  The shift comes with adding in other, more health giving foods into the mix while you consciously drop gluten.

Most folks who are having trouble with keeping sugar, gluten, or grains in general out of the diet aren’t eating enough protein and fat. Switching primary energy sources from carbohydrates to fat will stabilize your energy and mood, without offending the gut.

When you remove a huge source of carbohydrates in the diet, like that pasta beneath you’re chicken, you need to up the chicken, veggies, and maybe the most important; fat.  Here’s my cheesy artistic rendition of the usual meal I see in a diet log.  Low protein, low fat, hardly any vegetable, and the bulk of the energy coming from a cheap and nutritionally inadequate grain.

The standard american plate;

Thinking differently about meal planning is the way to start.  You need three basic things to make a well proportioned meal;

Protein…….The easy one.  Pick anything; chicken, beef, pork,lamb, fish, shrimp, etc., etc……Your protein source is the best bang for the buck as far as spending.  Since this is the most nutrient dense part of a meal, make sure it’s wild, organic, and all that jive.  If you have to choose, spend the extra for organic HERE.

Carbohydrates……….Go green, go big, or go home.  Fill up half the plate with broccoli.  Put butter on it.  Make it fun and add seasonings as necessary.  Green vegetables get a bad rap because most people don’t put much more effort into ‘em besides putting bland steamed vegetables on a plate. Booooooring.  I make big huge salads with homemade dressing.  I add feta cheese and bacon bits.  I love ‘em!  Get creative and aim for every meal.

Fats………. Add fats, liberally.  Butter, olive oil, avocado, coconut oil, nut butters, whatever.  Fat is an amazing slow burning energy energy source that doesn’t spike insulin (aka fat storing molecules), and it’s the main satiating element in a meal.  If you’re hungry a couple hours after eating a meal, chances are you didn’t eat enough fat in the first place.  Don’t make this very common mistake!  I tend to gravitate towards fattier cuts of meat in the first place, which fill me up and don’t leave me needing starchy carbohydrates for energy.

Check out this chart.  This is the starting point for tweaking.  Half the plate is vegetables, 1/3 is protein, and the fat is variable, but always there in good quantity.

Make simple meals that can be cut into those three parts, and then take stock of how you’re maintaining energy throughout the day.  Learning how macronutrient ratios affect you is paramount to creating healthy, energizing meals.  Diet logs are very helpful here.

Pick a protein, pick a veggie, then add fat as necessary.  It’s really that simple.

Here’s what I ate last night;

2-3 Roasted Chicken thighs

Curry Cauliflower (apprx. 2 cups)

and BUTTER for the chicken thighs.

Nutrient dense, energy dense, and fully satiating.  Most people won’t do well on that much fat, but I exercise a tad more than most.

Take a protein, take a vegetable, and then add fat until you feel satiated.

not so hard right?

You can take photos of it, as long as you don't eat it

As it is, I’ve basically stopped eating grains altogether.

A number of years ago, I kicked gluten cold turkey and felt some immediate lasting changes for the better, and almost without thinking, the other grains have also fallen by the wayside.   After a while of being off ‘em, you start to lose desire to add them to meals;  they’re just fillers for other flavors.

For a while I included a lot of gluten free substitutes, but eventually I just came to realize for myself that almost none of them work well for me, and I felt a hell of a lot better with none at all! No rice, no corn, nada (I do toss in rice and corn sometimes; sushi, tacos, etc….Just a delivery method for other foods, never gluten though)

Have you ever taken into consideration what a grain actually is?

The part we eat is actually the reproductive organ of the plant.  Nature has expertly engineered this part of the plant this little portion of the plant to be indigestible for all involved.  Why is that?  Because in nature, you would have an animal or plant that would eat the seed (accidentally in the case of the cow), then it would travel through the digestive system without breakgin down at all.  Because it doesn’t break down, it can end up in some completely different location where the seed would sprout out of the fertile manure; spreading its offspring beyond the reach of the wind.

There’s an often spoken about molecule that’s notorious for stealing nutrients from the body, phytic acid.  This little guy has an important function in the plant growing up from a seed; uptaking nutrients from the soil.  The effect it has on the body is chelating minerals that the we would normally utilize for important functions…….You could also say it ‘steals’ them.

We’re taking something that’s not even meant to be eaten, then processing it to an even more nutrient deprived form!  You may not feel so bad about eating those two slices of pizza, but your pancreas will.

occasional exceptions to the rule?.......Oohhhhhh yes.

Bottom line is,  grains are one of the few foods that every single one of my clients can kick in their diet and feel better.

Never have I heard about anyone from anywhere who said, I introduced more grains into my diet and I feel 100% better!  There’s a big sway in how much people can tolerate, but I can say without question, that replacing grains by healthy fats, proteins, or vegetables will have long lasting improvement in your health and vitality.

Everyone out there has a certain tolerance for grains that differs greatly from individual to individual, but it doesn’t actually do any specific good for anyone out there.  There’s no nutrient that you can get from a grain that you can’t get somewhere else.

Do they have a place? I think so.

At least for the time being, they provide an extremely cheap way of merely sustaining life for those who can’t afford otherwise.  Not middle or lower class Americans, I mean like Somalia-poor.  Do they have a place in the US?…….No.

Eating gluten and grain free is easy, you’ve just got to try it for a couple weeks.  Once the habit is instilled, it’s there for good.

Try this; take gluten (and grains altogether if possible) out of your diet completely for a minimum of two weeks, then go for a big pancake breakfast with extra syrup.  If you’re like most people, you’ll feel like a train hit you head on!  It’s good to experiment a bit and try these kinds of things so you can get a real emotional, visceral response to how these kinds of things are affecting your body.

Read up before ya eat up!

Ligth at night is screwing up our society more than you could ever imagine.  The average person around the early 1900′s would get about 9-10 hours of restorative, healthy sleep a night………What do we get now?

A measly 6-7 hours on average.

For all you late night computer hounds, this thing is a life-saver.  F.Lux is a program that automatically tailors the light coming out of your computer screen to keep your eyes happy no matter when you’ve got the screen on.  More importantly, it’ll change the way your hormones react to the light.  Melatonin and growth hormone (DHEA) need darkness to be able to complete all their tasks in the body at night.  Photoreceptors in the skin and eyes determine whether its day or night, and act accordingly; hormonally speaking.  If the body thinks its the daytime, it’s not going to be putting out the highly restorative, and anti-inflammatory melatonin.

If you’re staring at a bright screen that’s built to look like natural daylight, you could be curtailing your ability to sleep well, repair damaged tissue, and feel healthy and happy in general.  I’ve screwed around with the program on at night, and I can’t tell you how much I like it.  No more feeling wiry and burned out at after looking at the computer screen.

Obviously, the thing to do is to just shut off the computer at night, but even if it’s 6-7-8 pm, you’ll still gain benefits from having F.lux running in the background.

It takes a grand total of five minutes to install, and takes a tiny amount of your available RAM.

Give it a shot!

So what if you actually stepped over the line?

If you’re already sick, you don’t need people telling you what went wrong, or how you shouldn’t have shook that person’s hand, or whatever……You just need to put out the fire and get back to your life.

So how do you do that?

Remember that sickness is a way of speeding up the function of the immune system and giving the body a way to rid itself of foreign invaders.  It heats up, it flushes things out, and it slows down the rest of the function of the body that would typically take a lot of energy; like the muscular system.  The feeling of being sick is you’re body’s way of saying that you need to slow the hell down!

If you support the body’s ability to get the job done, you’ll be speeding up the recovery process and putting yourself back in the driver’s seat in no time.

When you’re sick, you want to take as much burden off the system as possible.  If you keep feeding yourself junk food and drinking coffee, it’d be like harrassing a firefighter while he’s trying to battle an inferno.

Think about what stressors affect you’re body, and where you can limit them in the short term;

• Mental/Emotional; Read good books, watch comedians, think happy thoughts, and turn off the murder-death hour (the news).
• Chemical; Eat unadultered food, keep away from industrial fumes, etc…..Detox is VERY energy intensive, so go organic.
• Nutritional; Eat REAL food…..no grains or processed foods; period!  Allow your blood sugar to be nice and stable for your healing process.  Drink good clean water.
• Hormonal; BIG ONE:……get off the coffee!  I’m amazed that people still push coffee and sugar while they’re sick.  When you do that, you’re literally averting the healing process, hormonally.  Coffee will flood the system with cortisol, which is antagonistic to the immune system.

The hormonal and nutritional end is huge. The way we constantly wreak havoc on our system with caffeine and sugar is going to seriously derail the effects of ditching a minor sick spell.  It’s pure self sabotage; ramping up the body from outside sources when the inside is trying to slow itself down.  Take out anything that could even remotely raise your blood sugar, and remove any stimulants……at least for a few days.  Eat low carb caveman food and relax while you’re at it.

Candy bars with caffeine; the epitomy of the worst thing you could eat while sick

Make sure to not work or train while you’re sick……The body is sending a strong message that it needs a break, so let it win this one and get back to regular activities when you’re ready to hit it at full steam.

In a word; relaxation.

It sounds obvious, but we’re sometimes unaware of how we stress ourselves out from the inside and outside.  Everyone has external and internal stressors that we have to handle on a daily basis.  The standard american lifestyle is so chock full of both that it’s amazing that we’re actually continuing to reproduce!  Some don’t think we will if we keep going at the same rate.

Anyways, take some time to learn about what stresses the body, and I’m sure you won’t be sick for long…….If you didn’t catch the Part 1, then take a minute to back-pedal and learn what ti takes to stay away from the gunk for good.

buh bye-

It’s always surprising to hear how many people are always sick.  You hear the chitter-chatter of how different viruses and colds are ‘coming around’ or how it’s now the flu season and how we all need to stay away from germs and on down the line.

Well………I haven’t bought into any of this nonsense for years.

Why? because if you maintain some simple lifestyle habits, you don’t…..ever…..get……sick.  It’s really that simple.  I get sick now, around once every few years.  Among some of my peers, this is considered way more than necessary.

If you’re sick more than once ever few years…..then its’ time to rethink things.

Being sick, having colds, getting the flu, is not normal…….it’s just common in an unhealthy population.  Getting sick means that there’s enough of a compromise in your immune system that the body has to completely ramp down the system to deal with the oncoming invaders, something that should usually be taken care of behind the scenes.

The main part of your immune system that you should be concerned with is the mucosal tissue that resides in your mouth, nose, stomach, etc……This mucosual tissue contain little molecules that attack oncoming invaders in real time. It’s the main barrier that connects the inside of our body with the outside.

invaders gets stuck in mucus–>immune cells destroy invaders

That’s how it’s supposed to work anyway.

The mucosal membranes are most sensitive to two thing; Hydration and Stress

Hydration

Very simply, the mucosal membranes can’t possibly be thick enough to deal with the constant attack if there isn’t enough water in the system to start with.  They’re made up of water……go figure.

In the chronically dehydrated, the available water goes to the more important organ systems before the mucosal membranes get a chance to hydrate themselves.  Dehydration is very common. Most everyone you see on the street is dehydrated.  How many people go for coffee in the morning before water?  They’re already starting at a massive deficit in hydration, leaving them open to whatever kind of sickness is going around at the time.

Staying hydrated is a matter just doing it for a couple weeks.  Drink a couple glasses of water before you do breakfast or a morning coffee.  I usually take a glass to bed with me, and when I wake up its’ right there for me to drink down.

Aim to get 1/2 your body weight in oz. per day.  That means if you weigh 200lbs, you shoudl be downign 100oz. of water each and every day.  That alone can keep you from becoming sick, not to mention all the other health benefits you’ll reap from it.

Stress;

Hopefully you manage your stress better than a stuffed chicken

Stress shifts the focus of the body. The brain says to the body:  ”we’re in an emergency right now, so act accordingly”.

Acting accordingly means only doing what needs to be done immediately.  Keep the brain running fast, pump blood out to the muscles to avert danger, and do away with the need for rest, digestion, and repair.  If you’re stressed (nutritionally stressed counts too!), you’re body will not be spending the energy on things it would if it was relaxed and at peace, like keeping viruses at bay.

A cold, in the grand scheme of things, isnt’ very important at all.  it’s one of the last things your body cares about in terms of safety.

If you reduce the stress your body needs to handle, you are automatically shifting the needs of the body from emergency remediation to more health giving processes like digestion, detox, and repair in general.

Some stressors are impossible to avoid.  What if a family member passes away?  These are the things you can’t plan for.  You’re gonna be stressed; it’s not up to you.  These levels of stress don’t come around that often (at least they shouldn’t if you’re taking responsibility for yourself in general), but this is the reason why even the healthiest of folks can come down with a cold every few years or so.

So in terms of actions steps; it’s fairly simple

1.  Drink water, all the time……Have it within arms reach wherever you are. Not so hard right?

2.  Reduce your biggest stressors.  For most people this is going to be nutritional stress.  Foods that make your blood sugar go nuts.  Foods that cause inflammation.  Do whatever you can to eat REAL foods at each meal and your body will thank you.  One of the most common things I hear when clients eat a lot more vegetables is “I just don’t get sick anymore!”

Eat real food, drink lots of water, and stay happy, and you probably won’t be sick until at least 2013.  Then of course you can get back to gayly jumping around on the beach;

Generally speaking, I only shop at independent retailers.  It doesn’t stem from any riffs about big business, because it CAN be done right if the intention is there, it’s just that the quality typically goes down as a function of the size of a business.

Starbucks, if you want to serve me the same charco-broiled espresso wherever I go, I’m not going to support your business (not that I do with any frequency anyway).  Quality is important to me.  Having repeatable precision represents a good business model, but not if its based on a poor quality products to start with.

It may be just a rumor, but I’ve heard that there’s an Applebees planned to open a location in Cancun.  Cancun! You’re tellin’ me that people fly half-way around the world,  then eat at the same gross restaurant that’s two blocks from their house?

hmmmph.

Coffee and Applebees are just examples, but it extends everywhere (and gives me a place to rant).  If we settle for low quality in all of our products, what type of values are we supporting?

Value isn’t simply about buying a less-expensive product.  It’s an amalgam of what goes into a product versus how that product interacts with the world, and what the end price is.  When we don’t take into account the whole life of a product, and the subtle effects of cutting costs (like carcinogens in burnt coffee), we often overlook the real value of what we purchase.

soooo….Take some time to ASK retailers about where products come from, how it’s best used, and what the actual value of their products are.  Just a reminder-

Honorable Mention.

It takes a lot to shake the foundations of what I think’is correct about exercise and evolution, that’s why I want to share this book with you;

Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall

The book is loosely based on the Tarahumara, a reclusive tribe in Northern Mexico whose recreational activities include running hundreds of miles in a stretch, directly following all-night, corn-beer feuled orgies.

These guys came up to Colorado to run the Leadville 100, a greuling 100 mile running race that starts at 10,000ft…..

The Tarahumara tribesman stood at the starting line, put out their cigarettes, and promptly smoked the best ultrarunners in the world.  Not only that, but they did it wearing leather straps for shoes, and comfortable smiles through the whole 19 hour race.

Crazy.

Aside from amazing stories, the book holds a place in my heart because of the long breakdown of why modern running shoes are just plain terrible for running.  If you want to wake up your feet and become a much stronger runner in the meantime, ditch your shoes and start going barefoot…..or get a pair of these.

Check it out, it’s a great read.

Let’s start off with a few key points for you dairy conneusseurs:

• Most dairy studies and blanket claims are bogus, because they utilize pastuerized milk (the same as using cooked carrots for a study on carrot nutrition)
• What a cow eats is paramount to the health of it’s milk/cheese/etc. (this goes for all other milkable animals)
• Did your ancestors drink milk?  Depends on where you came from. Domestication happened anywhere from 4,000-40,000 years ago, depending on what part of the world your talking about.  These statistics are under constant scrutiny, so just take that as a ballpark reference.

These three bullet points will help you to decide if using dairy products is a good choice for yourself.  Dairy is good for some people and bad for others, it can’t be classified into simply “milk is good or milk is bad“.

Let’s dig in a little deeper:

1.  Most dairy studies and blanket claims are bogus because they utilize pastuerized milk.

What is pastuerization? It’s a process of heating milk to a temperature below boiling that will reduce the number of pathogens that could possibly cause disease in the human being.  Scientists do not consider a product pastuerized until all of the enzymatic life has been destroyed.

In the case of milk, you end up with a product that is safe from a bacterial standpoint, but hardly digestible and usable for human consumption.  A cooked, dead product.

The primary reason why milk catches a bad rap is because of ‘lactose intolerance’.  Well, junior scientists:  what do you need to break down and assimilate lact-OSE?  You need Lact-ASE.

The Suffix -OSE means ‘sugar’………..The suffix -ASE refers to it’s enzyme counterpart.  Enzymes speed process up exponentially, in this case digestion. The sugar and the enzyme come together in nature, and both of them are necessary for healthy digestion.  When milk is pasteurized, the enzyme is destroyed, forcing the body to synthesize the enzymes necessary for digestion.  This is a significant stressor.

Pastuerization rancidifies a significant proportion of the fats in milk.  This is why you get that absolutely awful stench if you leave milk to sit for too long.  It rots……..Unpastuerized milk will not do this, because the beneficial bacteria are still intact, allowing the milk to transform into sour cream.  Its still an edible product after weeks, not the same with pastuerized products.

2. What a cow eats is paramount to the health of it’s milk/cheese/etc.

Just like how strong athletes put out a good performance, a healthy cow will put out lots of high quality milk.  Unless your some kind of bovine expert, you won’t be able to go to the farm and visually tell how healthy the cows are.  Forego all that by asking the farmer (or reading the label) if the cows are grass-fed or grain-fed.  This is very important.  The prime reason why cows need antibiotics…..Why I should add, amounts to around 55% of the world’s production of antibiotics…….is because they are fed an improper diet in the first place, weakening the immune system.  Cows are not meant to eat grains!  You don’t see cows out there stripping the wheat berries off the stalk, there out there eating GRASS!  When cows are fed grains, they develop a whole host of digestive imbalances that lead them to need a whole host of pharmaceuticals.  Healthy animals make healthy milk, so stick with grass fed dairy products.

3.  Did your ancestors drink milk?  Depends on where you came from.

Lactose intolerance nicely correlates with how long your ancestors have been utilizing dairy products.  Domestication was very recent in some parts of the world.  In other places they’ve been sluggin’ milkshakes for 40,000 years.  This relates to your genetic capability of digesting dairy products.

Use your own judgement here.  If you getting symptoms like fatigue, inflammation, etc., then it may be something to relate to if you’re from one of the countries with high incidence of lactose intolerance.  Check out this map for a little more in depth review.

But hey…….You don’t need milk to survive.  Take it or leave it.

If you do take it, then take it RAW!