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Blood Sugar

Adaptogen Herbs To Heal Your Thyroid and Boost Metabolism

By Dr. Josh Axe | February 4, 2014
Adaptogen Herbs To Heal Your Thyroid and Improve Metabolism

If you are looking to restore your energy, look younger, and reverse disease, then aswagandha and rhodiola may be the herbs you’re looking for.   Ashwagandha is an adaptogenic herb…

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Do You Have FLC Syndrome?

By Mark Hyman, MD | January 22, 2014
Do You Have FLC Problem

What is FLC Syndrome? Chances are, you have it. It affects nearly half of our population. It causes weight gain and resistance to weight loss. And it causes a whole list…

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The Real Truth About Sugar (The Good, The Bad, The Substitutes) – And How To Break Out Of The Cravings Cycle Once And For All

By Sara Gottfried, MD | October 21, 2013

 By JJ Virgin A Note from Dr. Sara… If you have a sticky relationship with sugar (no pun intended), now is the time to take action and take back control…

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PRAISE

“For the first time in my adult life I feel that I have gained control over food. I feel healthier, look better and have gained an interest in making sure that what I am putting into my body is the best it can be. And I lost 10 pounds in all the right places.”

– Janice Lunde, Dr. Sara’s Detox Challenge Participant

“Dr. Sara is the height of excellence! She is incredibly knowledgeable and gives very generously of her time. I feel so blessed to have been able to work with her.”

– Yvonne Varah

“You don’t have to settle for being stressed out, binging on sugar and chocolate, and aging prematurely. Stop blaming yourself and step into sacred action. It’s your birthright. You can have the joyous, mission-driven life you want, and Dr. Sara is here to show us how.”

– Marci Shimoff, New York Times Bestselling Author of Happy for No Reason and Love for No Reason

“Dr. Gottfried offers powerful and effective tools for addressing the most difficult health issues facing women and men today. She is warm and kind and has so much experience to draw upon, it’s inspiring. Thank you Dr. S!”

– Cassandra Mick

“Dr. Sara Gottfried is a modern-day healer goddess if ever there was one, and she also happens to be a Harvard Medical School graduate and rigorous physician-scientist.”

– Christiane Northrup MD, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

“Dr. Gottfried’s book and detox came at a time when I was ready to give in to old age. Hot flashes, low energy and libido, weight gain, increasing blood pressure and cholesterol levels were unacceptable to me. I now know that hormone levels and what I eat are a huge influence on how I feel and look. To now be able to control something that was out of control is empowering…”

Cheryl V., Dr. Sara’s Detox Challenge Participant

“My health coach told me about your book and I took the [hormone] test, and lo and behold, I found I was a mess, hormonally speaking. Now I’m getting on track and I love your videos and your book. I feel like I’m getting my life back again, when not long ago I truly thought I was losing it!”

-Tracy, Registered Nurse

“You don’t have to accept the hormonal hell of being tired, stressed, overweight, and never in the mood for sex as you grow older. In her fabulous new book, the brilliant Dr. Gottfried gives you an effective, easy-to-follow plan to balance your hormones and become lean, energetic, and loving life again. Stop settling and reclaim your sexy!”

–JJ Virgin, Author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy and The Virgin Diet

“I lost 10 lbs., reset my hormones and metabolism and eliminated my sugar cravings! I have also found that I respond to stress much differently, I feel it, notice it and move on from it. Stress no longer has a grip on me. Dr. Sara’s conference calls and detox information was invaluable. I am so grateful for this program. Thank you Dr. Sara!”

–Sophia, Dr. Sara’s Detox Challenge Participant

“The Hormone Cure is the playbook for your mojo, your mind, and your bootie. With every chapter I thought, ‘So THAT’s how that works.’ I wanted to call every girlfriend and give them the goods on how to glow… now and always.”

-Danielle LaPorte, Author of The Fire Starter Sessions and The Desire Map

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Sara (Gottfried) Szal M.D.

saragottfriedmd

Author of 4 NYT bestsellers 📚
Setting an intention to exercise more in 2025? He Setting an intention to exercise more in 2025? Here’s some motivation. There are many benefits to exercising, too numerous to mention in one post, but here are my top five: 🔘 Improves methylation Methylation improves with even a single session of exercise. Greater intensity in exercise begets greater changes in methylation and other epigenetic patterns and results in a leaner you by making your muscles soak up blood sugar better and get stronger. 🔘 Turns off the FTO gene This gene is strongly associated with your body mass index and, consequently, your risk for obesity and diabetes. If you have a variant of this gene, it gives you sloppy control of leptin, the satiety hormone. In other words, you’re hungry all the time. 🔘 Increases insulin sensitivity Exercise can help turn off the diabetes genes. Plus, the more consistently you exercise, the more your cells adapt to help you maintain blood sugar 🔘 Raises good cholesterol Researchers have learned that active women with the same variant of the LIPC gene may improve good cholesterol (HDL) levels and have fewer heart attacks than inactive women with this gene variant. 🔘 Lowers blood pressure High blood pressure runs in my family, but I inherited the solution: exercise. The gene EDN1 codes for endothelin-1, a potent constrictor of blood vessels. My variant of gene EDN1 puts me at a greater risk of high blood pressure if I’m inactive. As long as I keep exercising I am able to maintain normal blood pressure. Find out more about the impact of exercise on your genetics in my book YOUNGER
Methylation. It's a simple biochemical reaction th Methylation. It's a simple biochemical reaction that tells your cells what to do, usually by turning off a gene. You need methylation to inactivate estrogen so it doesn’t keep circulating and causing harm. Methylation helps produce glutathione, a major force in your detoxification cycle and arguably your most powerful antioxidant. If your body doesn’t methylate well, you won’t be able to detoxify well—potentially making you more susceptible to heavy metal toxicity and more likely to be harmed by other poisons, like pesticides, environmental toxins and pollutants, and lipopolysaccharides (a toxin you encounter when you have bad bacteria in your gut). In general, a greater susceptibility to toxic overload happens because the body is not able to detoxify properly. Signs of impaired methylation ▪️ Fatigue— either low or inconsistent energy ▪️ Poor exercise tolerance ▪️ Obesity and weight gain ▪️ Pain, such as chronic muscle aches ▪️ Mood issues, including depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety ▪️ Immune dysfunction, such as autoimmunity or being virus- prone ▪️ Detox problems, such as heavy- metal toxicity or yeast overgrowth ▪️ Infertility ▪️ Recurrent miscarriages ▪️ Insomnia Your genes and lifestyle control your ability to methylate. It’s a bit of the chicken-and-egg quandary. For example, consider the following scenarios I’ve seen in my precision medicine practice. 🔘 You may have totally normal genes for methylation but eat so much sugar that you have dysbiosis, an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in your gut. The dysbiosis may block you from absorbing key B vitamins and cause you to methylate poorly. 🔘 You may have faulty genes for methylation but eat so well and attend to your gut so assiduously that methylation is normal. 🔘 You may have had a period of poor methylation, and, once it’s addressed, you may become a hypermethylator. Seems like a good thing, but it makes you feel like crap, like you’re coming down with the flu, because you are processing the backup of toxins that have been stored in your body. It’s just temporary, but it can make you feel worse before you feel better.
Do you measure your HRV? 💓 Heart rate variabil Do you measure your HRV? 💓 Heart rate variability (HRV) is the variability between heartbeats. I think of HRV as a measure of the flexibility of your nervous system, and more flexibility is better. Your HRV is the pattern of your heart rate— if you have a resting heart rate of sixty, you might think that’s one beat per second but the heart does not beat like an unchanging metronome; the intervals between one heartbeat and the next are variable HRV is the beat-to-beat variation in consecutive heartbeats. You actually want variability between the time of each heartbeat; for example, the first gap between heartbeats is 1.00 seconds, and the second is 1.02 seconds, and the next 1.05 seconds, and so on, in order to indicate good HRV. A healthy heart rate is always variable because a body is in a constant state of physiological and emotional change. A certain level of variability is considered healthy and advisable. Your sympathetic nervous system controls your heart rate via the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine, which increase HRV. Your parasympathetic nervous system controls heart rate via acetylcholine, which decreases HRV. Many things influence HRV, including respiratory rate, blood pressure, temperature, stress level, and mindset. If you’re rested and recovered from exercise, there’s a balanced state between the two parts of the nervous system, and you have a high level of HRV, ideally around 60 to 100 (the higher, the better). There are many options available to monitor HRV at home, on the go, and while working out. I currently use the @ouraring to track my HRV. What do you use?
Do you want a quick way to upgrade your health? 💥Floss. Flossing fosters longevity, independent of brushing one’s teeth, as does seeing the dentist at least twice yearly. If you don’t floss, your risk of mortality is higher, and if you see the dentist only once per year, you raise mortality by 30 to 50 percent (Paganini-Hill, 2011) If you wonder how that works, it may interest you to know the following: 🔘 You have more than seven hundred species of bacteria in your mouth. 🔘 The tongue is a common place for biofilms to form— that’s a group of microorganisms that behave like a gang, sticking to each other and adhering to the surface in a coating. They can cause bad breath, inflammation (gingivitis), plaque, cavities, and premature aging. 🔘 More bad bugs in your mouth are correlated with thickening carotid arteries, a sign of atherosclerosis and precursor to stroke, which reduces blood flow to the brain (Desvarieux, 2005). 🔘 Powered toothbrushes reduce plaque and gingivitis more than manual brushing in the short and long term (Yaacob, 2014). Aim for a two- to three-minute date twice per day with your electric brush. 🔘 In men, periodontal disease is more common and is linked to early atherosclerosis and heart disease (Desvarieux, 2000; Wu, 2000) Flossing can prevent periodontal disease after as little as one month of regular use. Floss at least twice a day. Buy a power toothbrush, and use it twice a day or more.
💥It's not your age that’s your enemy, it’s 💥It's not your age that’s your enemy, it’s the loss of function in your body. Five key factors make aging more pronounced after age 40. MUSCLE FACTOR ❌ Your metabolism slows down with age, which means you accumulate more fat and lose muscle. Aging begins in your muscles. ✅ Focus on preserving and building your muscle mass as you age past forty. BRAIN FACTOR ❌ Your neurons (nerve cells) lose speed and flexibility. Alcohol makes you foggier than it did, and you lose sleep. Connections between neurons, called synapses, are not what they used to be, so finding words may become an issue. The balance shifts toward more forgetting and less remembering ✅ Focus on keeping your brain regenerating and malleable (or “plastic”) as you get older. HORMONE FACTOR ❌ Your hormones change for the worse ✅ The right food, sleep, exercise, and support for detoxification can reverse many hormone problems associated with aging. GUT FACTOR ❌ Poor gut health can disrupt hormone balance, stress can poke holes in your gut and lead to food intolerances, and make you absorb nutrients poorly. ✅ With the right food and stress management, you can turn your microbiome around to decelerate your aging clock instead of speed it up TOXIC FAT FACTOR ❌ Toxins from the environment accumulate in your fat. Scientists call them gerontogens. They are similar to how carcinogens increase your risk of cancer, and they can work against you and cause premature aging. ✅ With the right support, we can go after what causes you to accumulate them. Have you read my book YOUNGER? It shows you how to disarm, prevent, and reverse these five factors and change the expression of genes that influence them. If you are tired of the sinking feeling that you are losing control over your weight, how you age, move, and sleep, it's time to discover how you can unlock your genes and live longer, stronger, and better than ever.
Next time, take the top off. Next time, take the top off.
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