Renewed Energy - Less Cravings: Day 3 Update

It's the end of Day 3 of Intermittent Fasting using Beyond Organic's amazing Cultured Whey and Dairy products (SueroGold and Amasai Plain). Had an awesome dinner tonight of taco seasoned Beyond Organic GreenFinished Ground Beef with some more sauerkraut and steamed broccoli. Today was by far the least cravings I've had. It could have been getting back into the work week that kept my mind more preoccupied with things other than food cravings, but the increased energy I've had today can only be attributed to the Intermittent Fasting. I'm kind of bummed I only have enough product to continue for 3 more days.

Life has gotten much simpler in the food department not worrying about what to eat for breakfast or lunch. The only part that got a bit more confusing is how it has affected my workout routine - which you can't really call a routine as much as a "find 15 minutes and get in a session of Burst Training" when I can. Ideally, a workout would take place in the morning or early afternoon followed by a SueroGold with a scoop of Grass-fed Whey protein or Vitol (egg protein powder). I got in a session last night right before dinner, so I just made sure to get plenty of protein in the meal to aid in recovery. Perhaps with this increase in energy, I'll be able to drag myself out of bed before 6am to get into an actual workout routine.

I know I've mentioned Burst Training before, but have yet to explain it. I'm planning on putting together a video explanation for my patients that have not been able to get to any of my Burst Training workshops, so when I get that done, I'll be sure to add the link in a blog devoted to Burst Training. If you can't wait, you can search YouTube and find a few other docs that have already done something similar. Dr. Pompa's is probably the best demonstration of it.

Go Beyond Organic!

Day 2 of Intermittent Fasting

Just providing a quick update on how intermittent fasting is progressing. In retrospect, starting any kind of fast 2 days after Thanksgiving probably wasn't the best idea in terms of dealing with cravings. Even those of us on the healthier side of the spectrum indulge on Thanksgiving. Needless to say, the sugar cravings have hit already. It's not so much hunger, although on occasions I have been hungry. It's more the desire to consume something savory. Last night's dinner was simple - steamed broccoli and some turkey and sauerkraut. I was mostly thirsty after dinner - cured by a couple glasses of water.

My energy levels today are very low, but I attribute that to my toddler deciding that 3am was a good time to wake up today, so needless to say, I did not get much sleep. On a tangent, tried giving my son (who has had a quick and aggressive allergic reaction to organic yogurt in the past) a sip of the SueroGold. He didn't care for the taste, as I expected since he eats mostly sweeter baby foods and breast milk, but he had absolutely no reaction so far. This is consistent with many of the people I have encountered that have a "dairy allergy" when they take the leap of faith and try Beyond Organic dairy. I have no doubts that my son has massive reactions to the Alpha 1 Beta Casein in most dairy. The next test is something a bit more substantial for him - the Peach-Mango Amasai. Essentially a drinkable yogurt, containing some of his favorite flavors, I'm hopeful he'll like it first. Second, I expect no bad reaction either. I'll keep you all update on that front as soon as we take the leap with him.

I am looking forward to dinner more with this fast. Going to finish off the turkey and sauerkraut for dinner tonight with some more steamed broccoli...then tomorrow I break open the Beyond Organic Ground Beef, I can't wait! I'm thinking of either doing burgers, a taco seasoning blend stuffed in lettuce, or meatballs with sauerkraut in a red pepper sauce. There's an Amasai with my name on it in the fridge.

Remember, Beyond Organic products can be purchased here:

http://joeramirezdc.mybeyondorganic.com

Intermittent Fasting

I'm planning to do some intermittent fasting for the next week. Dr. Mercola and others have posted reviews of research recently on this topic and before I started recommending it to patients, I figured it would be good to try it myself since there is no harm in doing it and I stand to benefit from it as well. I'll explain what intermittent fasting is, the benefits of doing it, and how I'm implementing it.

Intermittent fasting is simply going 16-18 hours without eating food. At first, it sounds miserable: low blood sugar most of the day, being hungry, irritable, tired, etc...and wouldn't that make me more prone to overeat when I break the fast? After hearing several well respected colleagues promoting intermittent fasting, I decided to check it out in further detail and discovered it is not that bad if done properly. Essentially you are restricting calories to somewhere between 500-800 every 24 hours with 16-18 of those hours resulting in consumption of negligible calories to maintain nutritional requirements. The goal is to restrict the energy expended by the digestive, immune, and endocrine system in response to food so that the energy typically expended on food can be redirected to healing. So consuming extremely low calorie and high nutritional content liquids like grass-fed organic beef broth or cultured Whey Water is done every few hours to keep blood sugar normalized, energy levels from crashing, and prevent the body from going into "starvation" mode.

Why do this? The benefits are truly amazing when you understand the body's hierarchy of needs. The immune system is one of the most metabolically expensive functions of the body. Healing and repair is often put on the back-burner while the body deals with more immediate stressors like creating enough cortisol to deal with that work deadline while you worry about how you are going to pick the kids up from school on-time and still find the time to drop of the rent check to avoid late charges. Other more immediate stressors could be breaking down that BigMac you scarfed down without chewing sufficiently because you didn't have time to make yourself something for lunch and you definitely didn't have time to chew properly (not that it would really help that much with a BigMac). Even if you chose a healthy salad for lunch, your body still prioritizes digestion over healing and repair. This is very important to understand because our digestive system along with our endocrine system (responsible for most of the hormones in our body) are typically in the mode of constantly working. The only real time they get to heal and repair is when we sleep. I'm sure it's starting to make perfect sense now why you seem to get sick after several days of insufficient sleep. There comes a time when the body says, "Enough is enough! You need to rest so I can heal." 

Intermittent fasting is great, because you give the body 16-18 hours to heal/repair your gut and endocrine organs. Most of the cellular inflammation we have comes from the foods we eat unfortunately. Intermittent fasting allows that to be resolved quicker as well. With reduced cellular inflammation comes increased hormone sensitivity. With increased cellular inflammation, hormone receptors are damaged and become resistant to the hormones trying to bind to them. The scenario most people are familiar with is Type II Diabetes, where the body's insulin receptors are damaged and the body is unable to get glucose into the cell efficiently, causing increased blood sugar. Hormone sensitivity is the exact opposite of hormone resistance. Intermittent fasting helps repair the hormone receptors by both reducing cellular inflammation and allowing the body to dedicate energy stores to healing receptor sites.

So now that the benefits are known, how do you go about doing this without the miserable side effects of fasting I talked about in the introduction to this post? Beef Broth and Cultured Whey Water are both nutritionally dense liquids that are extremely low in calories. Consuming 8-16 ounces of either of these liquids every 2 hours or so is never enough calories to officially "break" the fast, yet it keeps the hunger urges satisfied (some people, especially diabetics will have a harder time with this - Suero Green can help with this as the sprouted Wheat Grass provides some extra nutrients to regulate blood sugar better), keeps energy levels normal, and provides key fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals to support the body through the fast. If you do this with Cultured Whey Water, you will find yourself not even needing to drink extra water as the Whey Water contains enough to meet your daily intake requirements of water, but you can drink extra water if you feel the need to. The dinner you consume should be a Healing Diet dinner (for more information on the Cellular Healing Diet, you can search amazon for the Cellular Healing Diet Book) - meaning no grains, no sugar, no high carbohydrate/high glycemic/starchy veggies. It's even best to do fermented veggies and quality grass fed beef/cheeses (Beyond Organic is the only source I know of that does not contain A1 Beta Casein which is highly inflammatory to the human digestive system). 

So basically, I get up in the morning and around 10am, I have a Suero Gold (Cultured Whey Water from Beyond Organic). I will have a Suero Gold every 2 hours - up to 6 per day as needed. Around 7pm-8pm, I have a healing diet dinner consisting of either soft/steamed veggies (peas, carrots, green beans, broccoli) and a quality protein (Beyond Organic Beef/Cheese, Eggs, Free Range Chicken/Turkey) and when it's available, some fermented veggies like sauerkraut (still need to increase my range of options here). So it is essentially 14-15 hours before I'm taking in any calories, and when I do, it's 50-100 calories which is hardly enough to break the fast. If I'm having a particularly rough day, I can add in an Amasai (Beyond Organic Cultured Dairy Beverage - similar to drinkable yogurt). Or if it's a workout day, I can put some Vitol (powdered Egg protein with digestive enzymes) or Grass Fed Whey Protein (Designs for Health makes a great product called Whey Cool and another called PaleoMeal that work perfectly) in the Suero Gold to give the extra protein needed for repair and recovery from exercise. Another great benefit of using the Suero Gold product is that it contains the perfect ratio of sodium to potassium, helping to keep vital electrolyte stores in proper balance (most people are sodium dominant due to the Standard American Diet).

Generally, you can do this for 3-4 days at a time to give your body a much needed rest to focus its attention more on healing and repair. Those who need more than an occasional boost or are looking to repair faster can extend this type of an intermittent fast as long as they can tolerate it. I have a friend who pretty much does the routine I described above day in and day out because it makes him feel great, reduces the stress of finding quality foods throughout the day, and the increased hormone sensitivity improves many aspects of his life. I hope to be able to implement that one day, but for now, I'm starting with 6 days. I'll try to keep the blog updated with my progress.

Again, you can learn about and purchase Beyond Organic products at:

http://joeramirezdc.mybeyondorganic.com

Finally found food I can get excited about again!

I've known about Beyond Organic for a while now. I was apprehensive about participating in and promoting such a project because I was concerned about sustainability using old world methods of processing dairy and beef. There is a reason farmers switched to ultra-pasteurization and grain-feeding cattle - increased profit margins. 

Unfortunately, it was at the expense of the consumer. Denatured proteins from high heat pasteurization, astronomically high Omega 6:Omega 3 ratios from feeding cows grain, and the toxins stored in their tissues from liberal usage of antibiotics, medication, hormones, and vaccines are the bulk of the problem. Factor in GMO grains being used and conventional dairy/beef products could possibly be one of the unhealthiest foods to consume. I know it tastes good, but there comes a time in your life when you look at your wife and children and start thinking about what you need to do to be the best dad and husband possible; to be around for as long as possible and pass on what wisdom you've gained in life to your grandchildren.   

If you do not know my health history, take the time to review the previous posts and you'll begin to understand why I'm so picky about what I put in my body. I don't like being in pain. I especially don't like being limited in the things I can do with my 20 month old son when he wants to climb all over me, chase me around, or walk around while holding him for extended periods of time. My 14 year old daughter understands that there are certain things I can't do physically anymore due to the permanent damage in my spine. It doesn't make it any easier for me knowing she's disappointed. Now add in that my son has a 50% chance of developing the same condition as me if I don't raise him up on healthy foods and exercise habits, and you've got the ingredients for inspiration.

Getting back into doing all of the things that got me on the road to healing in the first place is a lot tougher now that my job is so demanding time-wise. There's no such thing as a 40-hour work week for me, so maximizing my spare time (I laugh using that term) is critical. I've implemented a combination of burst training and resistance training over the last three weeks and I have noticed a difference in my lean muscle mass already. I'll talk more about burst training in a future entry...it's time to get back to food.

The genesis of every autoimmune condition is a leaky gut. More and more research is confirming this to be true. Without healing the gut, you can do all the things I was doing in the past and you'll feel better while you are doing them, but as soon as you stop/slack off - the vicious cycle begins again and the disease strikes back with a vengeance. 

This is where Beyond Organic comes in. In cases of autoimmune diseases, many of the good bacteria in the gut are so diminished (or wiped out completely) that supplementation with probiotics in a pill or powder will never give you enough live organisms to repopulate your gut. Bacteria outnumber the cells in our body 10:1 and much of what current research in genetics is showing is that the bacterias in your gut trigger your body's DNA. Geneticists believe the makeup of the bacteria in your gut could be the largest determining factor in your genetic expression. Most probiotics are lucky to give you bacterias in the billions per serving - and typically are limited to an average of 5-7 different types. Consuming fermented foods can provide trillions of bacteria per serving and include species of bacteria you can't get in a pill or powder. Ancient cultures would consume fermented dairy beverages and whey water on a regular basis. They would calls these beverages "healing water". Science is catching up finally and confirming that these fermented beverages can indeed repopulate the gut with essential bacterias that cannot currently be found in a supplement.

So where can you get these beverages? Beyond Organic has a line of cultured whey water and cultured dairy beverages called SueroViv and Amasai, respectively. The biggest difference in these products from other items you could buy in the health food store is the source of dairy. These cows graze on grass and other greens all the time. They are never fed grains. They are not vaccinated, and any cow that cannot be treated with natural methods is removed from the herd so that they are all free from antibiotics, hormones, or other meds. The dairy is low-heat pasteurized - where the dairy is never taken above 102° which is normal cow body temperature - so the proteins are never denatured. These cows have also been bred so they do not produce Alpha 1 Beta Casein - a protein shown to be 23x more toxic to the human gut than gluten and responsible for most people's dairy intolerance. The downside? The process takes a lot longer than current methods, so it's not cost effective compared to current methods.

In addition to these "healing" beverages, their cheese products are loaded with great probiotics and the beef has the perfect ratio of Omega6:Omega 3. The SueroViv products also have the perfect ratio of potassium:sodium which adds to its "healing" properties. When compared to the prices of "grass-fed" beef in the health food stores (which are traditionally grain-finished the month leading up to slaughter), these products are competitive and often cheaper (depending on where you live). The prices are able to be competitive because they use network marketing methods of distribution (which turns some people off) and 100% of Beyond Organic's profits are donated to charities.

I've been watching this company for a year now. With less than a handful of times I have seen notices about products being unavailable, I am impressed with their ability to grow and keep up with demand. I am eagerly awaiting my first order which includes 3 cases of SueroGold, 3 cases of Amasai, and 3lbs of the ground beef. Next post, I'll share how I plan to use these products to heal my gut.

If you want to learn more about Beyond Organic, are interested in purchasing their products, or just want to browse what's available, go to:

http://joeramirezdc.mybeyondorganic.com

Or you can always post in the comment section if you have questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Detox Update

So craziness is probably too tame of a word to describe what goes on when you are in the process of building a practice in a new town where you don't really know anyone. Add to that the mounting stress of trying to sell your house in another state, raising a high maintenance teen and a higher maintenance toddler, and the daily tasks that come with life and keeping up with a blog sometimes falls by the wayside. I'll try to be better at updating this.

The Detox was more intense than I expected. My goal was to go 30 days. I figured I didn't have a ton of cellular detoxing to do before picking back up with the mercury detox protocols. I was very wrong. At day 5, I was reminded of the draining feeling I had when I originally started detoxing from the high levels of biotoxins (mostly mold) that had built up in my body over the years. It makes sense when you consider a recent mold exposure I had in Florida. I still have no idea how long that mold was there. I discovered it when I was breaking down our Sleep Number bed to put on the moving truck. I unzipped the air chamber cover to find both air chambers covered in black mold. It was so bad we didn't even bring it with us...it could not be salvaged. There is no telling how long my wife and I (our newborn slept with us too) were sleeping on that toxic bed. I now know that I'm pretty much back at square one with my detox. As such, I was able to make it 10 days before I had to give my body a break.

True cellular detox should be done in cycles for several reasons:

1) The detox pathways main organ systems (kidney, liver, gall bladder and intestines) need rest. At day 9, my kidneys were actually sore. Intense detox should really be done in 4-7 day cycles with 7-10 days of rest between cycles.

2) Toxins work on concentration gradients. This means we pull the toxins out of the tissues closest to the lymph system/blood stream first. Then the body allows the toxins in the deeper tissues to work its way to the outer tissues. The off cycles allow this to take place.

3) It is metabolically expensive to detox. ATP stores need to be replenished for effective detox to take place in subsequent cycles.

With the holidays coming up, my plan is to get a few cycles in between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. I tend to get more irritable when I detox (which is common for most people while they detox) so it's probably a good idea not to be detoxing when I am celebrating with family.

I don't tweet often yet, but you can follow me @joeramirezdc

You can also keep up to date with various workshops and seminars I'm doing in the office at my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/freeyourhealth