Here’s a little article I wrote recently for people who suffer from neck pain, shoulder pain, and/or back pain.   Download it below and let me know how you do!

Click Here —> 3 Drills for Common Pain (article)

 

Keep moving,

Peter

The first question I get when it comes to nutrition is “What should I eat?” 

If you saw my latest post, “Let’s Take A Fitness Journey,” you know I have a big goal to win the World Handball Championships in 2017 here in Las Vegas.  While on my quest, I’m documenting and sharing my process with all of you.  That includes my training schedule, training programs, and diet.  The food journaling will be coming soon as I’m in my first week, but until then I thought it would be a good idea to list some of my go-to foods and meals just to give you a starting point.

Let’s just get right into the list and then I’ll briefly discuss the thought process behind the combination of foods in meals, macronutrient ratios, and micronutrient concepts.

An off the top of my head list of foods I usually depend on for my everyday eats:

Proteins	Fats	Sugars	(mo’ Sugars)
Lean Beef	Coconut Oil	Watermelon	Orange Juice
Eggs	Grassfed Butter	Applesauce	Cherries
Shrimp	Dairy	Cantaloupe	Cane Sugar Soda
Lamb	Whatever I get from meats	Honey Dew Melon	Table Sugar (usually just in coffee)
Collagen (Gelatin)		Apples	Small White Potatoes
Milk/Icecream		Oranges	Various Cooked Veggies
Cottage Cheese, Part Cheese, other cheeses		Grapes

This is a short list.  I do ad variety in the form of other red meats, shellfish, and tropical fruits/fruit juices when available.  I also drink a lot of coffee.  Coffee gets a bad rep, but if it’s consumed with ample amounts of milk and sugar then the “bad effects” of coffee are generally nonexistent for most people.   

In terms of foods I try to avoid, if I have any bread it comes in the form of sourdough.  I strictly avoid PUFA (polyunsaturated fats like nuts and seed) and refrain from eating super fibrous things like raw veggies and legumes.  

I do eat veggies.  They’re just usually cooked well with the exception of carrots which are the only veggies I eat raw.  Raw carrots are like metabolic magic.  Here’s a great little video by Danny Roddy on how to make a carrot salad:  http://www.dannyroddy.com/weblog/raypeatdietcarrotsalad

When I’m this active I’m usually around 3000 calories a day or more, but we’ll discover where I really am once I post my food journal next week.

I also try to eat as often as possible.  I generally eat about 4 meals per day and eat fruit or sip on orange juice and milky coffee the times in between.  
My meals tend to be a ratio of approximately 2-3 times more sugar than protein and as little fat as possible.  Again, we’ll explore this even more when I get the journaling done.  It’s been a while since I’ve taken heart rate and body temperature before and after meals, and considering metabolism can fluctuate with stress levels, it’ll be necessary for me to get back in touch with my macro ratios.    

 

Supplements

 

When I workout:

 

Creatine –  This is a great supplement for immediate energy and building muscle mass.  This supplement has truly lasted the test of time and has proved it’s value.  It went through some tough times when Mark McGuire tried playing off his illegal steroid usage as “just creatine.”  Everyone then related it to other steroids.  There are rumors of blood in the urine as a result of supplementing creatine, but a person would have to take massive amounts to experience something like this or they’d already have to be dealing with other physiological issues unrelated to creatine usage.  Either way, it’s always a good idea to check in with your physician, and monitor how you feel if you decide to take ANY supplement.  I just take the recommended 5 grams per day during my workouts.  I don’t necessarily cycle it or 

BCAAs – Another old school supplement which increases protein synthesis.  Coaches have been using this stuff for years with their athletes to help them regenerate muscle after training.  The protocol that’s always worked for me is about 10grams per 40 lbs of body weight.  So I take about 40-50g/workout.

Beta-Alanine – This supplement increases contractually ability making the strength gains a bit quicker along with increasing muscular endurance.  This kicks and pre-workout supplement’s ass!  I take 3 grams 3x/day.  If you decide to start taking this one, just know some people are more sensitive to it than others so you may just need to start off with smaller amounts and build your way up to 10g/day.  You know if you’ve taken to much if if makes your skin itchy.

 

Daily Supplements:

Vitamin K2 – My diet just isn’t very high in Vitamin K and therefor I supplement it to ensure the mobilization of all the calcium I consume daily.  It also helps with male pattern balding.  

Aspirin – I take a daily dose of pure aspirin powder.  The benefits are countless.  Dr. Ray Peat discusses the many benefits of aspirin in detail on his web blog RayPeat.com.  

Collagen Powder – I try to add protein into my day by adding a tablespoon or two of collagen to my coffees. Collagen is high in mains acids that counter the inflammatory effect of eating too much muscle meat.  One such amino is glycine.  It aids in the healing of gut tissues and has a de-stressing effect on the body.

Let’s get this started!

Again, this is just what I do which means if you wanted to eat this way you can use this just as a starting point, but the real magic happens when you start testing which foods and macronutrient ratios work for you.  Taking heart rate and body temperature will let you know what works for you along with observing symptoms.  There are other foods and supplements I could be taking, but I’m just currently not at the time.

Here’s one of my videos on nutrition for more info on this stuff: https://fitlifefusion.com/new-youtube-series/

For more info or if you have any questions don’t hesitate to email me at info@fitlifefusion.com, reach out on social media, or call 702-220-8222.

I wanted to share with you a helpful tool I use when working with my clients… SALT.

I, like so many other people was convinced salt was a bad thing, and limiting your intake of it was a wise and health-conscience decision. We are told that a diet with a “high” salt intake could lead to issues such as high blood pressure, hypertension, edema, and heart disease. However, my personal experience with salt has been a positive one. In the past when I’ve cut salt out or decreased intake, it led to more health issues.  Finally, my confusion lead to a whole lot of researching and experimenting.  The following is my experience with salt.

Working with my clients and through research on how to help issues such as high blood pressure and edema, I discovered increasing salt intake was the answer to fixing them. The more I studied about the human body’s functions the more dumbfounding contradictions I found in the medical literature. For many years they have told us to stay away from salt, however, in an emergency situation, like dehydration, poisoning, or major blood loss,  you would be given an intravenous drip of saline… SALT!!

Some doctors have been known to use salt to reduce inflammation, improve sleep, aid muscle recovery and function, increase insulin sensitivity, improve thyroid function, and stabilize blood pressure. So why is there so much conflicting information our there?!

When and How Did Salt Get Its Bad Rep?

In the 1950s drug companies marketed newly discovered (thiazide) diuretics to the general public.  This new drug was being sold as a solution to deal with swelling, edema and hypertension.  Pregnant women found themselves as a big market for the sale of diuretics.  The one noticeable side effect of taking the drug was the loss of sodium in a person’s urine.  This raised a few flags, but instead of questioning the safety of the drug, the diuretic company claimed this excessive sodium loss must be a result of too much salt consumption in the diet.

It is the belief of several doctors, including Dr. Ray Peat, that the diuretics industry convinced a whole generation of doctors that pregnant women should limit salt in their diet, take a diuretic for preventive measures, and restrict calories to prevent “excessive” weight gain.  The advertising campaigns created also created a strong belief that salt was the culprit in hypertension.

Millions of women and their babies were harmed by these claims.  The prescribed diuretics intended to treat high blood pressure, pulmonary edema, heart failure, “idiopathic edema,” orthostatic edema, obesity, and other forms of water retention, including pregnancy.  The loss of all this sodium in their systems caused various disfunction in their bodies.  And since they caused sodium to be excreted in the urine, their sale was accompanied by advising patients to reduce their salt intake to make the diuretic “more effective,”  compounding the problem.  Modern diuretics use new chemical mixtures, but still have a damaging and negative side effects on the kidneys.

The Study…and 50 deaths… or maybe more.

What about the actual studies regarding salt and the effect on the body? David McCarron, M.D., (professor of medicine and head of the Division of Nephrology, Hypertension and Clinical Pharmacology at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland) looked at the government’s recommendations and the figures they were based on.   He found that people who limited their sodium intake had the highest blood pressure.  In contrast, people who consumed more sodium had lower blood pressure or became  “healthier”.  [McCarron found this to be inaccurate and in his research he claim a calcium deficiency to actually be the cause of  hypertension. Sadly, even though Dr. McCarron wrote 150 articles on the subject, the CA university where he taught, asked him to leave. Sodium was just an innocent bystander, but we’ll come back to this in a moment.]

Dr. Michael Alderman, a blood pressure researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and editor of the American Journal of Hypertension, said medical literature on salt and health effects were inconsistent.  Allow me to explain…

The study was published in the May 4, 2011 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/899663.  The objective of the study was to see whether the amount of urinary sodium excretion in a 24 hour period could predict blood pressure and health outcomes.  The initial study only involved participants without high blood pressure.  The results were considered at best suggestive and not conclusive.  It included 3,681 middle-aged Europeans with high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease who were followed for approximately 8 years.

The researchers analyzed the participants’ sodium consumption at the start and end of the study, and  measured the amount of sodium that was lost over a 24-hour period.  All the sodium a person consumes is lost in urine within a day, so this method is the most precise way to determine sodium consumption. However, that may have been inconsistent as well.

Dr. Peter Briss, a medical director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, “its subjects who seemed to consume the smallest amount of sodium also provided less urine than those consuming more. This acted as an indication that they might not have collected all of their urine in an 24-hour period.”  Briss thought the urine samples of those with lower sodium levels weren’t properly collected.

A follow up was implemented on all 3,681 participants over a period of around 8 years.  Researchers found that the less salt people consumed, the more likely they were to die of heart disease — 50 people in the lowest third of salt consumption died during the study.  24 in the medium group, and 10 in the highest salt consumption group. Those eating the most salt had, on average, a slight increase in systolic blood pressure — a 1.71-millimeter increase in pressure for each 2.5-gram increase in sodium per day — they were no more likely to develop hypertension.

“If the goal is to prevent hypertension” with lower sodium consumption, said the lead author, Dr. Jan A. Staessen, a professor of medicine at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, “this study shows it does not work.”

What’s the cause for high blood pressure then?

Dr. Ray Peat teaches  how low-salt diets have been shown to increase inflammation and activate the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone (RAA) system, stimulating greater activity of the sympathetic nervous system. Meaning, that low-salt diets trigger the stress and inflammation chain reaction in the body that can lead to hypertension.

Also having a deficiency in calcium causes an increase of the para-thyroid hormone to pull calcium out of the bones and moves into cells. When too much calcium enters a cell it activates many enzymes, prevents muscle, blood vessels, and nerve cells from relaxing, and eventually kills the cell.

How to fix the problem

Having a diet with a good amount of salt and calcium will relieve symptoms of hypertension, high blood pressure and edema. Sodium stimulates energy production and protects against inflammation and other stress reactions. It also activates thyroid function and pushes calcium from the cells and helps cells to relax.

Dr. Ray Peat recommends  2,000 mg of calcium and other alkalizing minerals: magnesium, sodium, and potassium to relieve your symptoms.  Sodium also aids in the production of CO2. Increasing carbon dioxide  eliminates calcium from the cells which will relax the blood vessels, allowing  the calcium to move out of the blood vessels, and back into the bones, ultimately decreasing blood pressure, water retention and more symptoms of hypertension. Other ways to increase carbon dioxide in the cells, is to breathe into a bag, add a pinch of baking soda to your drink, or  baking soda to your bath.

 

 

References

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/899663

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04salt.html

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/salt.shtml

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/calcium.shtml

 

You had a stressful day at work and you just wanted to treat yourself to your favorite flavor of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. On the drive home you begin the mental debate  “should I take that gamble?” You think about the last time you had dairy and rationalize why  this time won’t be as bad. That last time was just an fluke. So you take the leap, go to the store, and buy your ice cream. Already starting to regret your decision, you take that first bite. You wait a couple seconds waiting and listening for your stomach to let you know how your night is going to be. After awhile you finish your bowl and you lay on the couch and settle in for a nice night… Then it happens.. your stomach comes alive!. You sit up right away clutching your stomach and your doing the dash down the hall.

Sound familiar? Many people deal with a dairy sensitivity today.  If you are someone that personally struggles with this issue, you’re in luck.  It can be fixed!

First let me go over what milk is.  As you already know, milk comes from mammals.  Milk from cows, sheep, and goats have great nutritional value.  Milk contains magnesium, potassium, selenium, and vitamins A,B,D,and K, as well as high levels of Calcium.  Whole milk contains about 87 % water, 4.6 percent lactose (sugar), 3.4 % protein, and 4.2 percent fat ( about 70 % saturated fat, 25% monounsaturated fat, and then less than 2% is polyunsaturated fat).  Did you know that higher milk consumption has been linked to lower body fat, lower levels of hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), improved bone density, bone mass, and healthier teeth?

Something to keep in mind..

The media, cultural morals, and the way we were raised, have all had major influence on our thoughts and beliefs about nutrition.  From time to time it’s good to step back and question or test the beliefs that we have taken on through the years.

When reading research relating to nutrition and health, we should ask what alternative possibilities are being neglected for “practical” reasons, cultural preferences, and business interests.

For example those who pay for research are those with an investment in or a commitment to the preservation and expansion of the existing systems of production and distribution. Producing a cheap product, and ensuring its durability and long shelf-life are more important than the effects of these foods on your health. The biggest companies are usually able to keep public attention away from the harm they do. Dairy products definitely fall under this category.

Where does the intolerance come from?

Some people with digestive milk issues have found just changing brands have helped with their problem.  Milk with a reduced- fat content is required by U.S. law to have vitamins D & A added.  The methods used in the vitamin preparation, and the chemicals that come in the “pure” vitamins themselves, are  possible sources of allergens in commercial milk.  So when choosing a milk, whole milk would actually be a better option as it commonly found to be less irritating amongst my clients.

A thickening agent found in many dairy products is carrageenan.  It is a powerful allergen that has been found to cause a “pseudo-latex allergy” (Tarlo, et al.,1995).  Carrageenan has given good reasons to believe that its toxic effects are the result of the human body having issues with metabolizing calcium. (see for example Abdullahi, et al., 1975; Halici, et al., 2008; Janaswamy and Chandrasekaran, 2008).

In my experience with people, I find the common problem of digesting dairy is actually a sugar sensitivity.  Lactose, or milk sugar, requires the enzyme lactase to digest properly.  A hormonal condition that may contribute to someone having a lactase deficiency is being deficient in progesterone. A lack of progesterone in the body can come from stress and an increase of estrogen and cortisol. When this happens, a common problem is that the production of the enzyme lactase decreases.  When a person is  deficient in the enzyme lactase, symptoms such as diarrhea, constipation, bloating, gas and more severe distress for some, such as a “shards of glass” feeling in the intestines.  Lactase is produced in the microvilli of the small intestine, and is released once lactose enters the intestines.  The problem starts when the gut and intestines become inflamed and damaged (usually happens over time with the consumption of alcohol, drugs, poly-unsaturated fats (PUFAs), grains, processed foods, additives, etc.) and lactase production shuts down.  When this happens, lactose cannot be broken down and what we develop is intolerance to anything containing lactose.

So how do you fix this…. 

Since the issue is inflammation within the gut, cutting out foods that irritate the stomach and intestines would be a good move. Foods that are in high in fiber cause more damage and increased inflammation and irritation to our already damaged guts.  So cutting out or minimizing raw veggies, and fibrous fruits would be ideal. When we consume that much fiber on a daily basis on a inflamed gut, the fiber, which is essentially wood pulp, just sits in the gut and ferments.  This encourages unhealthy bacterial growth and brings stress on the body.  By limiting or cutting out consumption of alcohol, nuts, seeds, grains (PUFAs), and junk foods, you’ll give your stomach and intestines a break allowing them to heal.

To help with the healing process, add good sugar to your diet such as fruit, juice, honey, and even at times table sugar to your daily diet. Sugars can reverse the damage of stress that your body is under.

Today I consume probably 24-32 0z of milk daily, as well as eating plenty of cheese and good quality ice cream.  Whenever I have a few extra pounds i’d like to lose, dairy is the first thing I increase.  

You may find adding dairy into your life will simplify things.  A glass of milk with a little added honey contains a sufficient ratio of protein, fat, and sugar to qualify it as a small meal.  It’s the easiest meal you’ll ever prepare.  Adding a small amount of milk with your meals is a good place to start when attempting to build up your production of lactase.  We’re talking 1 or 2 ounces of milk with a complete meal consisting of protein, fat and sugar.  For example, I may eat a small piece of steak, a side potato, some melon and a glass of sparkling water. I’ll then just add a couple ounces of milk to chase the meal.

Another great way to add milk into your day is by drinking it in your coffee.  So many people find they can handle milk when it’s in coffee.  

Give it a shot!  Be sure to leave a comment and keep me posted on your progress.