Making homemade bone broth has been a proven method for staying healthy during the winter months.  It’s been around for generations and is well known for it’s medicinal qualities.

From broth, made from the bones of animals, you get precious minerals your body craves as well as gelatin, which is an essential protein to include in your diet.  Gelatin is ideal for regenerating and repairing your body during sickness or after an injury.  It’s pure collagen, so it keeps your skin hydrated and beautiful too.

I add my broth to recipes, make soups or  just drink it.  Who doesn’t love a bowl of hot soup in the winter time?   It’s fantastic!

If you’re like me and you want more, I prefer to supplement with hydrolyzed gelatin in a powder form.  Great Lakes Gelatin is the company I use.  Their gelatin is of the highest quality made from the bones of healthy cows.  You can purchase Great Lakes Gelatin from me if you’re local.

I always say food is the best medicine.

Here’s a simple recipe I use myself…

Simple Crock Pot Chicken Stock:

Place your chicken carcass and bones in the crock pot (I either buy an organic rotisserie chicken for a dinner, then use the carcass and bones to make the broth or I use the chicken carcass and bones after I roast an organic chicken)

Fill with filtered water

Add 2-3 TBSP sea salt and/or seasoning

1 TBSP of vinegar

Break one carrot in half and add to the mix

Cut an onion in half and add to mix

Add 1-2 chicken feet for extra gelatin production (you can find these at most international farmers markets)

Put Crock pot on a low heat setting and let it sit for 24 hours

Strain the broth and place in glass containers ( I prefer big mason jars)

Store in fridge or you can freeze (use containers you can freeze in if you do this)

Deepak Chopra

Swami Sivananda

While growing up in the 1980′s I witnessed how saturated fat was demonized.  When I was a junior in high school, my father had a heart attack and lived to tell about it.  As a result, our family experienced the low fat diet first hand.  To this day, when I talk to people about fats, they still consider saturated fat to be extremely detrimental to one’s health.  Even coconut oil, which has been heavily proven over the years to be one of the healthiest fats known to man, is still considered to be an unhealthy fat by most.

I think we’ve been conditioned and marketed to about what’s good for us and what’s not, all in the name of cheap food.  The big food companies have learned that if they market a concept to the public long enough, it becomes truth, even if there’s no research to back it up.   Unfortunately so much of the research out there is funded by the very companies that are selling the product.  When this happens you get tend to get biased research.  On top of that you get a complete belief system changed when it comes to how we eat.

The campaign on eating low fat foods was originally started in the 1950′s when the lipid hypothesis was first introduced.  The lipid hypothesis theory suggests that a diet high in saturated fat will lead to high cholesterol, which will lead to blockage in the arteries and eventually cause a heart attack.

Saturated fat being the #1 cause of heart attacks sounded great in theory, but most scientists never really accepted it since they could not prove it to be true.  What’s even more surprising is that there’s no scientific evidence that proves saturated fat causes heart disease, but yet this is what we base our medicine and nutrition on.

As soon as the pharmaceutical companies got word of the lipid hypothesis, they saw a great opportunity to develop a new cholesterol lowering drug, and they’ve been making billions from it ever since.  The vegetable oil industry also saw a great opportunity to make billions by adding veggie oils to just about everything and calling it low saturated fat.  These industries have been misinforming people for years and have not been truthful about the detrimental health effects of both cholesterol lowering drugs and vegetable oils.

Cholesterol is actually not the problem.  Cholesterol is your bodies natural reaction to stress and inflammation.  Your body produces cholesterol so that you can make hormones to reduce the inflammation in the body.  The ability to convert cholesterol into hormones like T3 and pregnenolone is the issue.   If the cholesterol builds up too much, your body is telling you that there is a problem converting cholesterol into T3.  Conversion happens in the liver, but this becomes a burden on both the liver and the thyroid if the body does not have the glucose to convert or if the metabolism is slowing down.

Therefore, healing the metabolism should be addressed when cholesterol is high.  Cholesterol lowering drugs are not getting to the root of the problem, in my opinion.  They can actually make it worse by placing more of a burden on the liver and slowing down the thyroid.

By simply supplying the liver with glucose, teaching the body how to use glucose for energy, and up-regulating the metabolism, you can naturally lower cholesterol to a normal level and begin converting cholesterol to T3 properly again.

To find out more about how you can learn to do this contact Allison Pelot for your free consultation.

When we think of conditioning the core the first picture that generally comes to mind is a person performing endless crunches on the floor.  Year after year, we’re taught by TV and trainers, that  excessive crunching on the floor is the only true path to attaining beautiful abs. I’d like start by debunking this myth.

In addition to the desire to look great,  it’s important for the core to function well.

The most important job the core has is to stabilize the back when lifting heavy things, twisting, bending, squatting, etc.  A healthy functional core can be extremely beneficial to any person who wants to lift and play with their kids, stay active or experience a high level of performance in their sport without injury.

A deeper understanding of how our body works is essential.  The aesthetics will always come if the function is there first.  So start by assessing your body to find out how you can improve function, posture and stability.  Flat abs will come much easier if you improve function first.

Certain things like poor food choices can actually shut off your abdominal muscles and create inflammation in the gut.  When this happens, the muscles around the intestines have to shut off to make room for the added inflammation of the organs.

The inner unit muscles are now shut off and no longer functional when you need to stabilize during a heavy lift.  This is a recipe for disaster for someone who’s not aware  and goes to perform a an intense workout.   This person could end up with a nasty back injury because their core was not able to stabilize when they lifted weights or were playing sports.

Doing crunches on the floor can even make matters worse by creating more dysfunction.  If you’re not able to access the deeper stabilizer muscles of the core (inner unit), you end up over stimulating the rectus abdominis muscle, the superficial abdominal muscle also known as your six pack.  This could cause your abs to protrude out even more, if done excessively.

How much time are you spending on your back during the day?  People generally do not do things on their back, but rather in a standing position.  So why are people training there abs this way?  It makes no sense.Training your core on your back may be essential for the beginning stages of a training regimen, but after than one needs to move on to a more function stance.

Doing crunches on a Swiss ball can be more beneficial for someone than on the floor.  If done properly, the ball provides and unstable surface.  This helps with stability, and you can get much more range of motion on the ball.  This can be really helpful for people who do not have enough curve in the lumbar spine because it holds the lower back in a curved position.  Doing crunches this way can help a person establish a natural curve position in the lumbar spine while conditioning the core.

Once one can establish true activation and coordination of the inner unit and core musculature, I recommend moving on to working the core in other planes of movement.  Like frontal (side) and transverse (twisting) planes and in a standing position.  Exercises like, cable wood chops, side lifts on the Swiss ball and alternating superman on the Swiss ball can be extremely beneficial for the core.  Because your core consists mostly of fast twitch muscle fibers, less repetitions are better when it comes to conditioning your abs.  Once you establish a foundation of stability in the core, it will respond best to faster exercises and less reps.

For more information on this or to schedule your free consultation please contact Allison Pelot at allisonpelot@gmail.com or 404-606-5581

Sugar can be used medicinally to help regulate metabolism efficiently.  It’s funny because, when we think about what we’ve been taught about sugar, using it as a medicine is not the first thing that comes to mind.  I’m talking about fructose and sucrose, the sugars you get from fruit, organic table sugar, honey and below ground root veggies.  Not the kind of sugar you get from starchy foods like pasta and breads and especially not from high fructose corn syrup, that’s an entirely different thing.  The glucose in starchy complex carbohydrates can actually cause a spike in insulin, stimulate appetite and get stored as fat.  Sucrose (glucose and fructose) actually inhibits that insulin spike, and glucose gets used for energy.  So if you have a starchy veggie like a potato as part of your meal, have some fruit with that meal and make sure to add some fat and protein to the potato, like butter and cream.  That way, you avoid the insulin spike from the glucose you get from the potato.

Sugar is a great tool for regulating metabolism, simply because it’s virtually impossible to do this efficiently without it.  Your body craves a quick source of energy to work efficiently, and that is glucose.  But if you get glucose from starchy complex carbohydrates only, you end up raising insulin levels rapidly and storing the excess glucose as fat.  Ideally you want to use the glucose for energy, not store it as fat.  Since sugars like fructose and sucrose are insulin inhibitors they get metabolized for energy right away and are not stored in the body as fat.

Eating a diet void of sugars can actually shut the thyroid down, since the process of breaking down protein and turning it into glucose for energy becomes very inefficient, using extra energy and resources.  This process also leads to oxidation of free fatty acids in the body, which causes free radical damage, premature aging and sets the stage for disease.

Of course, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how much good fat and clean protein works for you in conjunction with eating the sugars (from fruit preferably), which can be discussed in a later blog.  I really think it comes down to understanding on a deeper level how our bodies regulate themselves and what works for you.  When we understand this, nutrition begins to make sense.

References:

Ray Peat

East West Healing

Gluten free has become a popular marketing term in the food industry, and for some, a way of life.  Many people are asking about it and demanding that more gluten free products become available in the market place and at restuarants.  One reason may be that studies have shown gluten can cause inflammation in the gut, even for those who do not have an extreme condition such as celiac disease.  In my opinion more people than we think have trouble digesting gluten (which has a much higher content because of genetically modified seeds) as well as the starchy complex carbohydrates in foods like bread and pasta.

This can pose a problem when it comes to being able to digest and assimilate your food.  The protein in gluten can actually block absorption of minerals and vitamins for some people.  This happens when gluten burns off the tiny villi in your intestines.  The tiny villi’s main function is to absorb nutrients, but if the villi are no longer there, you can develop a condition called leaky gut syndrome.  This is when large undigested food particles go straight into the blood stream through the intestinal wall, which leads to an immune response in the body.  Your body then thinks the food particles are invaders and it ends up attacking itself.  If a person is hypothyroid, gluten can even make that condition worse by causing an autoimmune response in the body and attack the thyroid.

I’ve experienced this personally and have been gluten free for about 6 years now.  I first got turned onto gluten free when my youngest son experienced digestive issues at the age of two.  He was always grumpy, didn’t sleep very well, cried constantly and had temper tantrums daily.  I later did some research and found out that gluten could be causing this.  Sure enough, as soon as we took the gluten out of the diet, he was a new child, it was amazing.  After this, I realized how much damage gluten can do to the body and we’ve stayed away from it as a family ever since.

If you want to find out if this could be you, the best strategy I’ve found, is to eliminate anything with gluten for 7 days.  If you begin feeling better immediately, are no longer bloated, and have no more brain fog, etc., this is a good sign that gluten could be affecting you.

The good news is that there are so many options from which to choose.  You can find everything from gluten free breads to pasta.  It’s really wonderful how the market has changed in such a short period of time.  Since much of the gluten free breads and pastas are still highly processed I make sure to limit these, and the core of my diet consists of organic fruits, above ground veggies and clean meats with healthy fats like coconut oil.

Microwave ovens emit radiation into your food as well as your surroundings.  They’ve also been proven to change your food at a molecular level, so in other words, the food you put in the microwave will not be the same food that comes out.  I can remember when I was a kid, I would attempt to cook an egg in the microwave, but it just didn’t look the same as when I’d cook it on the stove.  It had a rubbery texture and tasted awful.

What’s interesting is that your body may not even be able to digest the food that’s been radiated because it’s not technically a food anymore.  This is because the radiation can cause changes in your blood chemistry which can potentially lead to lymphatic and digestive disorders, and an increased rate of cancer cell formation. There is also potential for chemical leakage from the packaging, a decrease in nutritive value and carcinogenic substances can be found in microwaved food.

Microwaves were actually developed by the Nazis who used them for medical research. As a result Russia got a hold of some microwave ovens and did some research of their own.  What they found, was that the radiation emitted from the ovens was a major environmental and health hazard.  So they banned microwave ovens in their country and issued an international warning on the health hazards.  Why has the US ignored this and why do we still sell this product in our country?

#2.  Eat Saturated Fats. 

Saturated fats are solid at room temperature.  Many people still think saturated fats are unhealthy, this is simply not true.  If this was true, incidence of disease in this country would have fallen as a result of saturated fat being taken out of our food and substituted with polyunsaturated fatty acids, but this has not happened.  Instead, the rate of heart disease and cancer  in this country has risen rapidly.   Common sense tells me that what we are doing is not working.

I simply do not understand why doctors and dietitians continue to recommend a low saturated fat diet to patients when the evidence is clearly out there.  Makes no sense, unless you’re a company who manufactures food.  It’s much more cost effective to use polyunsaturated fats in foods and gives the foods a longer shelf life.  So it makes sense that these companies would contribute money to Universities to fund nutrition programs based on the food pyramid.  Did you know that General Mills created the food pyramid?   It’s all about selling food and unfortunately for people who buy food, it’s not about the health of the consumer.

Some saturated fats I highly recommend are organic coconut oil and organic butter.  You can also get saturated fat from organic full fat dairy which also provides natural thyroid hormone and calcium carbonate – two nutrients that are great for the metabolism.  Coconut oil, specifically, possesses thyroid stimulating effects and therefore, helps to up regulate the metabolism.  Coconut oil also has antioxidant properties and reduces our need for vitamin E.

#3.  Avoid Foods High In Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids. 

Unsaturated oils or all liquid oils except olive oil.  These include soybean, canola, fish (salmon and cod liver), flaxseed, corn, seed, nut or bean oils, DHA, borage, omega 3 and 6 or “essential fatty acids” and all products containing them.  These oils are found in essentially every processed product out there.  Also included are margarine, vegetable shortening and veggie juices.  The fiber in the vegetable is essential for not taking in too much of the toxic PUFAs.  Also, cooking the vegetable can eliminate this too. 

According to Dr. Ray Peat and Dr. Lita Lee, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) can potentially cause thyroid suppression and lead to hormonal imbalances.  This can lead to an increase in estrogen levels which can cause problems with the liver and the metabolism.  When your thyroid is suppressed you can no longer make anti-aging hormones like progesterone, pregnenolone and DHEA.  This causes your metabolism to slow down and also can lead to high cholesterol because of low thyroid function.  PUFA’s can also increase free radicals in the body which can speed up your aging process and increase inflammation.  Consuming a diet high in PUFAs can also lead to blood sugar handling issues and inmmunosupression.

#4.  Drink Clean Non-Fluoridated Water. 

According to the Fluoride Action Network, fluoride is a byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry. When fertilizer plants are producing their product, fluoride emissions tend to occur.  These companies are required by law to scrub their smokestacks before emissions are released into the atmosphere.  Instead of paying to dispose of the toxic waste that’s left over, they sell this byproduct (fluoride) that they scrub from the smokestacks, to our public water facilities, where it gets added directly to the water supply.  According to Dr. Lita Lee, some cities spend between $60,000 and $70,000 of taxpayer’s money to fluoridate the water supply.

Fluoride is a highly toxic substance and is banned in most European countries because of this and is widely known to cause thyroid disease and suppression of the thyroid.  Accumulation in the brain can inhibit brain development and cause brain damage over time.  It’s surprisingly more toxic than lead and a little less toxic than arsenic, but yet we’re drinking this stuff daily and using it to clean our teeth.  Fluoride is a cause of cancer, which has been well known, verified and documented for years.  It tends to accumulate in the bones causing bone cancer and osteoporosis.

My suggestion is to filter your entire household water system.  Use a company that can remove all of the fluoride from your water, even the water you shower and bathe in.  It’s the best investment you’ll ever make and the water will taste so much better.  There are not too many water filtration companies who do this.  Lita Lee suggests a company called Friends of Water, who claim to be able to remove all of the fluoride from the water.  I personally have a whole house filtration system, but I’ve recently found out that the company I use can only filter out 60% of the fluoride in my water.  So, my next step is to attach a few of the Friends of Water filters to the sink and shower heads to add an extra layer of filtration.

#5.  Eat Organic Foods. 

Look for the best organic foods you can get.  Whole milk, whole eggs, clean meats, whole fruits and veggies.  Organic foods have less toxins than conventional, and are more nutrient dense and better for your hormonal system than conventional.  Organic foods are more satiating because they’re more nutrient dense and although they may cost a little more, you do not consume as much because the nutrient content is much greater than a conventional food.  Your thyroid and digestive system will thank you.

Choose organic whole foods over processed organic foods.  Even if it’s labeled organic this does not mean that it doesn’t have a host of other toxic ingredients added to it.

Learn how to cook.  Cooking can be very simple and doesn’t have to be complex.  Cooking can also bring you to a certain awareness level with your food.  You’ll discover how easy it is to make your own food, there becomes a sense of empowerment from doing it yourself and you’ll realize real quick how you may be over paying for the processed foods you buy.  Plus, you can choose what ingredients you want to put in the food you prepare.

#6.  Get To Sleep. 

This is the only time your body, brain and DNA get to fully regenerate and repair.  So, if you’re not sleeping, you stay in a constant state of inflammation and stop producing anti-aging hormones.  Disruptions in thyroid function can also lead to problems with sleep and insomnia, so sometimes just healing the thyroid can bring you towards a better nights rest.

#7.  Make Exercise A Regular Practice. 

Exercise, as long as you are not depleting your energy, is a great way to build energy and stay healthy.  If you exercise and it depletes your energy so much that you have no energy for anything else,  you may be doing too much.  When beginning a new exercise program, build yourself up slowly to it and make sure you’re performing exercises that are functional with proper form.  A basic understanding of how to do the exercises as well as what you’re targeting and what your intentions are is extremely important.  If you need help with this, I’ll be happy to help you get started.  Contact me…

#8.  Meditate Weekly or Daily.

Meditation can come in many forms.  Some people feel more comfortable starting with a moving meditation others can sit still with themselves in silence for long periods of time.  Mediation teaches us how to be still with, love and mother ourselves.  It also teaches us how to work within.  I can’t stress enough how important it is to journey within yourself first before you journey outside yourself.

Do this any way you feel comfortable, for any length of time.  There is no right or wrong way to meditate, everyone is different and you do not have to be a guru to do it.  Start small, take a yoga or qi gong class and do the physical work first to help quiet the mind which prepares you to go within.  Walk barefoot in the grass, go on a hike, connect with nature, sit with yourself for five minutes a day, there are many different ways you can do it.  Find another person or group who are experienced in meditation who can teach you techniques that are of interest to you.

#9.  Have A Creative Outlet. 

Creativity is what stimulates the right side of the brain.  Without this stimulation we stay in the left (logical) side of the brain all the time and there’s no balance of the two sides.  Creativity is needed just as much as logical thinking, if not more.  Having a creative outlet keeps you young, creates more neuron connections in the brain and makes life fun.

My school of thought, is that we’re not here to work like robots, we’re here to learn and grow through our own individual personal experiences.  You can’t do this unless you have a way to be creative.  Take a cooking class, learn how to draw or paint, play music, go to a workshop, etc.  Do whatever makes you feel good and follow your passion.  This is more important than most of us realize.

#10.  Be Aware of Your Emotions. 

Your emotions are clues to you about the present state your body is in.  The definition of emotion is energy in motion, so sometimes emotions need to be moved through the body either though movement, talking, singing, music, crying, laughing, feeling, etc.  Becoming aware of where your emotions and beliefs come from is a big step in the direction of personal growth and empowerment.  Not just continuing to do things because that’s what you’ve been taught, but instead looking at the emotion and asking yourself where it’s coming from.

Stuffing and powering through emotions, we’re now discovering, can potentially cause disease, if not dealt with.  So just start with awareness, talk to a lifestyle coach, friend or therapist.  Learn techniques you can use to become more in touch with your feelings and emotions.  Once you let go of your own limitations, like certain belief systems, there’s no limit on what you can do.

Now that we’ve entered the winter months, movement is just as important as it is in the summer, only it serves a different purpose.  We need exercise in the colder months to circulate and move energy through the body.  It also helps to warm and balance hormonal levels in the body.  The best movements for creating warmth and circulation are full body functional movements, like squatting, bending, twisting, pushing and pulling.  You can even combine some of these movements to create a whole body exercise.  For example, a dumbbell squat press, a bend with a pull, or a twist with a push.  The combinations are endless. Exercise can be a fun experience and it doesn’t have to be grueling hard work.  Especially in the winter months, when there’s not as much light and we’re sleeping more, you want to avoid pushing your body as hard as you did in the warmer months when there’s more light.  Make movement more about quality not quantity.  You can both energize your body and reserve energy for other things through exercise and have fun while doing it.  I would be happy to work with you and show you how functional exercise can not only be fun and rewarding but actually CREATE energy for your life rather being an energy DRAIN on your life like so many exercise programs.  Contact me today for your FREE consultation!

Coconut oil is one of my favorite super foods.  With natural anti-oxidants which protect your body against free radicals, it’s my top choice for a healthy fat.

Oils like soy and canola tend to increase free radicals in the body because of the extremely high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids they contain.  This can noticeably speed up the aging process.

Unlike destructive veggie oils, coconut oil can actually slow down the aging process and prevent free radicals from being released through free fatty acid oxidation.

Coconut oil has the potential to balance hormones by boosting metabolism naturally and stimulating the thyroid.  Since the thyroid is the master regulator of the metabolism, stimulation of the thyroid can lead to weight loss.

It’s a great saturated fat which is solid at room temperature.  Saturated fats are needed throughout the year and especially when there is less sunlight available.  Coconut oil can help your body absorb fat soluble vitamins, like vitamin A and D, which can only be absorbed with saturated fats.

Coconut oil has also been proven to lower cholesterol naturally.  A healthy cholesterol level is needed in order for the body to make essential hormones that keep you young and healthy.

I like to add coconut oil to my diet by cooking with it, eating it with a spoon or even brushing my teeth with it.  It’s an excellent choice to use with high heat cooking.

Coconut oil acts as a natural anti-fungal and anti-viral in the body.  You can use it on your skin and as a mouth rinse.

I mix it with vitamin E  to create my own natural toxin free lotion.  Use it as a sunscreen in the summertime since it naturally blocks the harmful rays and lets the healthy rays in.

When buying coconut oil make sure you get virgin organic and it’s solid at room temperature.  Avoid the refined coconut oils as these have been heavily processed and are not the same.  Here’s a link to buy coconut oil if you can’t find it locally.