Life Hygiene 101. Part 2 - TOXICITY

   Toxicity. In my mind the word strongly associates with a scene from Robocop movie, where one of the bad guys in the end of the movie falls into the pond full of something signed "Toxic!" and then has a whole bunch of unpleasant things happening to him, from skin peeling to truck hitting. I know, everyone has their own weird memories...
   Back to our topic of the day. What are toxins and what is toxicity? Toxins are various agents that are foreign to our chemical and hormonal balance and can create different disorders in our homeostasis. Toxicity is excess of toxins in the body that can disrupt healthy metabolism.

   Many toxins are chemicals that our body was never exposed to, therefore has no mechanism developed to neutralize and remove them. Among our regular mechanisms of chemical removal are
   a) blood chemical filtration in the liver;
   b) blood physical filtration in the kidneys;
   c) sweating;
   d) breathing
   e) digestive system.
   Sometimes these mechanisms are not enough, and we have to come up with new, more strategic approach.
Step 1 - not letting toxins into the body
Step 2 - remove existing toxins out of the body by improving and intensifying our natural cleaning systems.

So, lets break it down a little:
Preventing toxins from entering the body
   Air
Human can survive without food for as long as 20 days, without water - up to 6. Without air - maximum 4 minutes, then clinical death. It is crucially important for us to breathe. However, nowadays there is no control over what quality of air we are breathing. Two hundred years ago control like that wouldn't be necessary, since heavy industry was not developed yet. Today, however, if you think that what you are breathing is clean and will not affect your health, think again, and think seriously. Various industries throw out tons of chemicals in the air, even if there are filters, there is still air pollution happening, and there is statistics for it - frequency of lung diseases, such as COPD and asthma are increasing yearly. Add second hand smoking to it, as well as various household chemicals, such as air fresheners, cleaners, scents, etc... We do have a problem as a civilization, and the only solution out of it - accept the problem and start performing actions to solve it, one person at a time. So, here are my suggestions regarding air pollution and how to clean your body from toxins that are entering through airways. From easiest to most ridiculous B-) :

•  Once a week go to forest or outside of city for an hour or two. Breathing clean air for an hour will improve your longevity and health, even if it is not permanent
• Install air humidifier in your house. Humidifier will help chemical particles that are suspended in the air to settle down
• Quit smoking and become smoke and second-hand smoke intolerant. Dan John, one of the very prominent minds in strength and conditioning area once mentioned that people tend to overlook the most obvious things, such as they try to go on a new crazy diet or exercise regime, and never buckle seat belt or floss. Exactly the same concept with smoking - yes, there are awful things happening in the world, such as wars and epidemics, where thousands of people die every day. But guess what? Thousands of people die every day from a cigarette. Slow death remains death. Be mature and responsible. Fix it
• Carpool whenever possible. Less pollution from cars - cleaner air. 
• Adopt breathing techniques of Yoga, Tai Chi, Karate, or Wushu. Or you can search for "breathing gymnastics of Strel'nikova" if you want to have some Russian flavor of that. 
• Stop using air fresheners and commercial household cleaners - those things are carcinogenous, and cancer is a real threat to everyone's health these days.
•  On the more ridiculous note - if possible, replace your car to hybrid or to electrocar. I know, we don't have many of them yet, but technology develops, and as soon as they appear on the market, look up for them. 
• If possible, look up for alternative sources of energy for the house as well. Natural gas or oil for fuel is NOT a good idea. Solar energy, energy of wind and water - absolutely is.

Water

Water is what our body mostly consist of. However, it is way more then simple H2O formula. Water has structure that is very dynamic and can be influenced by many factors, both good and bad. It is the easiest substance to dilute chemicals. As Paul Chek mentions "The easiest solution to pollution is dilution", meaning whenever there are chemicals entering our body, the easiest way to dissipate their effect is to dilute them with water. 

But... What if the water that we are trying to dilute things is poisoned already? Then we have a problem. And as human beings that were evolving because of our ability to think logically, make conclusions and solve problems, this problem can be solved as well. Again, from simple and cheap to complicated and expensive:

• Filter the water that enters your body. Make sure you do your research about various filters and apply the best filters to remove bad chemicals out of drinking water
• Do NOT use tap water - it is not water, it is chemical liquid that doesn't allow organisms to live in it. And guess what? Your organism won't live either if you drink it
• Filter the water that you wash yourself with - install filters that capture chlorine particles. Chlorine in warm water goes through chemical reaction and turns into formaldehyde - poison that can penetrate the skin. Don't poison your body
• Learn if there are any springs in the area where you live, and try to get water from there. Spring water is naturally best filtered water
• AGAIN, don't use household chemistry - it pollutes water
• Be pro-active about water pollution - learn what we can do to minimize amount of chemicals entering to lakes and rivers, as well as what kind of testing is performed by government to keep control over it

Food

The most amount of chemicals we receive through food, there is no doubt. Meats, vegetables, fruits, grains and dairy are all filled up with hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, rodenticides, steroids, artificial flavors, sweeteners, and so on. That's foods. But there are also food products - things that we perceive as food, but its not. Candy, chips, breads, soft drinks are not foods, there is no nutrients in them, they cannot improve your feeling of satiety, and you can't live on these products. However, we have a long-term habit that is fortified by mass media informational hurricane that forces us to think that it is fine to eat white bread or candy instead of fruit and vegetables. One curious fact - would you drink from a pump at a gas station? Of course not. Well, majority of soft drinks and candy products are either made of or have additives of oil derivatives. Appetizing? Very much.

Think its a joke?

Points of how to prevent toxins from entering your body with food:

• Eat wild, raw and organic as much as possible
• Meats should be chosen wisely, and healthier choices, such as beef or rabbit versus pork
• Fruit and vegetables should be picked organic, and washed thoroughly. Some berries, such as strawberry, are among highest sprayed in the world, so even organic needs to be cleaned
• Pre-soak almonds, if they are staple of your daily nutrient intake
• When buying grocery, work only with list that you design beforehand, such as have meats, fruit, vegetables, nuts, berries, leafy greens, fish, eggs (if not allergic) and some dairy (again, if not allergic or intolerant) in your list. And thats it, no more travels to the aisles where your brain can say "hey, perhaps this bag of chips is not so bad"
• Seek for advice of professional nutritionist
• Do the research. You have one health, and down the road you will never be able to figure out what exactly could cause some nasty things, such as arthritis, Alzheimer's, or ulcer. But very often it is years of letting chemicals into your body with food. 

Cleaning the body from toxins:

Very often by preventing toxins from entering the body and providing plenty of fresh clean water can create significant changes in someone's well-being. However, more often than not our bodies are so clogged up that it takes quite specific approach to cleanse the systems to allow the body to function.
Key points:

• Always, always, always, when trying new health approach or method, consult with the specialist. Nutritionists, holistic nutritionists, dietitians, CHEK holistic practitioners, Biosignature certified coaches are few of many options available. Improving your health is everyone's responsibility, but experimenting with health can be very dangerous path. Don't do it alone.
• Learn how to cleanse your digestive system - colonics, liver and gallbladder cleanse, and basic parasites. Also assess and if possible, remove metal filings or implants in your mouth, since there is always high mercury content of these things. And, while we are speaking about mouth - don't use the toothpaste with fluoride. At some point it was a believe that fluoride strengthens the teeth enamel. Later research showed opposite plus more nasty side effects. Stay away

• Learn how to cleanse your excretory system - kidneys are your natural filter, and you only have one filter per lifetime, so treat it right and clean it regularly. Part of your excretory system is your skin, so make yourself sweat daily. 
• Speaking about the skin and underneath layers, learn what fat drainage and lymph drainage is and do it regularly. Even if separate systems are in better shape, but the connection between them isn't, you still have a problem
• Regular fasting is recommended by many specialists to mobilize reserves of the body and direct them towards healing and cleansing
• Muscles and supporting systems are easy to clean from toxins and daily metabolites by being active daily. Sports, activities, walking, cycling, swimming, dancing, yoga, lifting weights, tossing the football - options are endless, and for the purpose of making your muscles to move there is no right or wrong approach. If you have a specific goal, however, then your activities and training have to be specific as well. But we'll talk about it later
• Learn and start cleaning your body from candida, various fungi and parasites leave their life products in us. Disgusting? Absolutely. Fix it.
• Again, remember, seeing the specialist is a must. No joking. You wouldn't jump with parachute without some instructions, right? So what gave you confidence that manipulating your health is any less dangerous?

What is it that doctors refer as healthy person? Person with no distinctive disease that impairs him/her. It makes sense, but at the same time its very limiting - many people are chronically sleep deprived, with poor stomach micro flora, bad posture, weak digestive system and muscular system, as well as clogged up lymph and liver. But, as soon as blood analysis is good, the doctor will say "you're fine". However, person like that will NOT be healthy by any means. But, since this situation is outside of traditional medical scope of practice, lets take responsibility for our own health.

Well, in a very brief key point system I tried to cover this very interesting and very important area. There is not much official research about it, but if you are interested and serious about your health, then you can find the info. To create this piece I was using materials of my friend and training partner, Olga Kidanova. Olga is registered holistic nutritionist and holistic practitioner who was very kind to provide plenty of information on my request.

Next area that I am going to touch in my future post will be about psychology of change, and how adopting or rejecting new habits can affect your quest for better body and better health.

Life Hygiene 101. Part 1 - STRESS

Ah. Now its time to go into quite grey area for many people. Do you now how may times I had conversation like this:
Client: Alex, I do everything right, but see no results. I eat well, I exercise well, but nothing happens.
Me: Well, if you don't see results, it means you don't do everything right. Or maybe you don't do certain things that are crucial for you to see results.
Client: What do you mean? I exercise every day by doing this and that, I eat so well, I never touch McDonald's ever-ever-forever. What else do you want me to do?
Me: Where do I start...

Today I decided to cover some of the areas, so I will be spending a little less of my energy next time I have this conversation. So less facepalm moments will happen.

See, what's obvious for some people, such as fitness and lifestyle professionals, may not be so obvious for others, who don't deal with human body as their major object of work. However, it doesn't excuse anyone from not taking proper care of themselves. Even if you are not a health specialist, you still want to live long, happy and healthy life, right? So learn how to take care of it. 

Famous healthy lifestyle propagandists Charles Poliquin and Paul Chek say that reasons for any disease that can occur in the body are 

- malnutrition

- stress

- toxicity

I talked a little about the importance of a sound nutrition approach in previous blogs here and here, so in today's post I'll cover other two components.

Stress
   There are various sources of stress that we experience daily, both internally and externally. External stress is mostly linked to chemical and electromagnetic sources - radiation, sunlight, sound, and chemicals. Internal stress is mostly how our nervous system reacts. When someone is stressed, it is  primarily activation of sympathetic nervous system and hormonal response -irritations, anxieties, nervousness, and depression due to our relationships, friendships, financial issues, traffic and commute issues, work tensions, etc., etc. Our body doesn't differentiate much between various stresses - whether your boss had a bad day and yelled at you, or you got stuck in traffic on the way home, or your teenager talked too much on the phone and bill was huge, or you dropped the dumbbell on your foot in the gym - it is the same stress for body. Good news about stress - we, as human beings are adaptable to stress. We learn that in order to get further away from stressor we need to move, and change. Now, bad news about stress - when its too much of it, we break down.
   To keep things simple and relevant to the topic of life hygiene, here are few scenarios that are the most typical:

• The person is exercising regularly and maintains reasonably healthy diet in order to lose fat and build strength. However, after some initial success he/she hits the plateau. Changing exercising and/or adjusting and cleaning the diet may be the first solution that can work. Changing the stimulus can lead to new results. As I said above, under positive pressure, especially when its a new pressure, we tend to change. New positive stress equals new results. Its "working out". 
• Same scenario - person is exercising, clean food, and then boom, everything stops. Even new training and nutrition plan don't work. In this case it makes sense to look outside of just fitness and nutrition related areas and into lifestyle. It may be that the stress is excessive and it becomes negative. 12 hour work day? Little baby that is teething and crying in the middle of the night? Parents have issues and you're trying to help? Here is the key thought - when life becomes too stressful, don't add to this stress by pushing yourself too hard in the gym. Results won't come because you are trying to run the engine of your body on an empty tank of your energy. Instead of "working out" learn how to "work in", distract from stressors, build energy, and rejuvenate. Things like light workouts, yoga, tai chi, gigong are just for the case like that. Trying to burn a 1000 calories in under an hour doesn't belong here.
• Another scenario - person is dying working hard in the gym, but no results or results are extremely slow. When assessed, outside stress is manageable, the person has normal life. Diet is overall not bad either... So what can be the issue? Comfort zone with food. We all have our little treats that are so delicious but so bad for you. Have you ever noticed that when you just start exercising after a break, or for the first time, you immediately start feeling craving for those guilty treats? Your body is trying to even out the stressors - more stress while working out, therefore your body will look for comfort food to decrease that stress more frequently. Again, once you are aware of that trick that your body can play on you, you can progress more successfully. And, as it was mentioned many times before -  you cannot out-exercise a bad diet, so having extra mile run on the treadmill doesn't give you any permission for that extra slice of pizza. So put it down. Now. B-)

Toxicity

Another factor for our bodies to break down and experience all kinds of disorders and diseases, leave alone stagnation in the gym is excessive exposure to various chemicals that human body never had to deal before with. Water that we drink or bath in. Food that we buy or cook. Air that we breath. Household cleaners. Shampoos and soaps. Toothpastes and body lotions. Lawn fertilizers. Clothes. Gas in the cars. Air fresheners. Medications and pain-killers. Plastic containers, bags and boxes...

The list goes on and on and on. Can be scary, I know. But it is a game of tradeoffs - whether you are comfortable having your body slowly collecting toxins in it and eventually manifesting it with obesity, Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease or something else along the lines, OR you keep working on cleaning your life and life of people around you. As for me, I choose second way. 

Harsh? Maybe. But its something that we owe to ourselves to learn. Its our responsibility as human beings to learn how make our life worth living. One of the ways is to make your body healthier. Toxicity is such a huge topic, that I will discuss it in greater details in my next blog. 

Language of training, nutrition and life hygiene. Part 3

   Nutrition concepts
While there are as many various diets and opinions as drops in the rain, the good and worthy ones are far and few in between. And whats most important to us, they all share few common concepts. Lets take a look at them:
1. Good nutrition properly controls energy intake and energy output
2. Good nutrition provides nutrient density
3. Good nutrition achieves health, body composition, and performance goals
4. Good nutrition is honest and outcome-based*
   *Nutrition: Complete Guide. John Berardi
For average person to be able to differentiate whether certain diet approach fits all the above will require at least a certification course. If you don't feel like educating yourself in that area, then that is where you can reach out to a specialist - at least for information on how to pick the right approach in this endless ocean of new and old diets, tricks, and advice.
I want to give a quick overview of these components followed by some guidelines for each of the meals of the day - breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
   Energy intake and output - proper nutritional approach keeps in mind that in order to lose weight, you must eat less than you burn. Whichever diet you pick, check if they mention it. Oh, and obviously, if you want to gain weight, you must eat more than you burn. But in both cases exercising is important component, that cannot be omitted.
   Nutrient density - There is a wonderful book, really worth reading, that is called Food, Inc. The movie was good too, but the message in the book was just brilliant: "Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants" While "mostly plants" can be questioned by many, including me, the first part of the statement is undoubtedly great - eat real food. Not the food products. However, when you pay close attention to shelves in any supermarket, all you see is food products. Dairy products replaced milk, deli and processed meats replaced steak and pork, potato chips replaced potatoes, fruit juices replaced fruit. On top of this all, almost every food is fat free right now, but because fat is essential component of food quality, including taste, these products are enriched with sweeteners, artificial flavors, taste modifiers, added calcium, vitamins C and D, etc. etc. The end product is not food. Its a replacement for food, so the government and large food companies can feed larger amount of people for significantly less amount of money.
   Notice -  health is not mentioned nowhere in this statement. Pure conspiracy? No, just prioritizing. Big companies are concerned with their income and delivering to maximum amount of customers. There is no evil plan, just pure business.

However, if you are concerned about your health, then you should take pro-active steps and not to wait for your health to be destroyed. Therefore the food you put on your table has to be nutrient dense food - it has to contain enough proteins, fats, carbohydrates, water, minerals and vitamins. Ideally non of these has to come in a form of a pill, tablet, or capsule. Best if you can find balance with real foods. If thats impossible, then supplements can be applied, but carefully and with proper knowledge. Being armed with this knowledge your grocery shopping can become more automatic and less stressful. Out of all the options, look for the most real and natural. They will be the most nutrient dense as well.
Body composition and performance goals:
You are what you eat. If you put crappy fuel in your body, don't expect your body to function like a race car. Depends on what your activity or sport is, or what your goal - decrease body fat, increase muscle, improve sprint, jump, throw, or simply being able to tie your shoes and pick up grocery bag - proper food helps to achieve all of these goals. Just be patient with choices. And remember - our body wasn't originally designed to drink colorful fluids and foods that cannot become rotten. It is very important to remember - build enough patience to stay with your choices, and always, always, always remind yourself why you stick to these choices. Majority of us do things because we want to feel good. Or we don't want to feel bad. Here is the strategy though - whenever you crave something that you know is not going to help your body to become better, there is a reason for that - the reason is IT FEELS GOOD to eat that bad food. As a human beings, we are responsible for controlling the next step though - if you know the food is bad for you, and you want to eat eat, because it feels good at the moment, IT WILL BE BAD LATER. We have brain and logical ability to predict it, right? Now lets use our energy to override or to channel these emotions that throw you into bag of chips or candies.
Honest and outcome based:
Another point to what good nutrition is and how it can change us is:
      - Change is not happening very fast.
Get used to the idea that changing your body cannot be done in, how they say in infomercials, "in three fifteen minute long workouts a week. And you can eat whatever you want".

You think the gadget that was invented one year ago could build a physique of a professional model? Hmmm. Okay. Tooth fairy will be waiting for you at home

That's a lie that we often believe, because its easier to believe the lie than to brace yourself for a long journey of gradual improving of yourself. It takes longer than one week of adding breakfast and skipping late night binge eating to see results. It usually takes more than one try to figure out what foods your body digests and what doesn't. It makes a huge difference where the food comes from and what quality it it. Does anybody want to try plants and mushrooms that grow about 50 km away from Chernobyl'? Meanwhile in Ukraine, where I am from, these products were repeatedly spotted on the shelves. How do you know where meat or vegetables at your No Frills came from?
So, in a very quick summary - honest approach to nutrition accounts all these and much more details to achieve best possible results. Is it easy? Absolutely not. I mean, just finding the dietitian or nutritionist who will account all of that will be hard, leave alone the idea of analyzing all of that data yourself. I recently had a conversation with one of my clients, and she admitted that being exposed to all of that nutritional and exercising information details is very depressing and discouraging to her. I can understand her point, but giving up is to shorten your life, become sick or ill, rob your kids or relatives of happiness of having you around longer, not being a burden to your loved ones when you age... Its huge to me. That's why I think we don't have a choice. We must stick with healthiest options possible.
And, by the way, in the next article, about life hygiene, I will be talking exactly about it - what it is to be a healthy individual, and what consequences you will face when you choose this path.