Nell Stephenson's Blog, page 40

Knowing your Body… and Your Body Worker

Sore knees?   Stretch out your hips.   Plantar fasciaitis?  Roll out those calves!  Chronic headaches?   Open up those shoulders!

If we stop and think about how many of us walk around on a daily basis with chronic pain, it’s alarming.  Even more so when we consider the number that will likely go to the doctor, get a prescription for pain meds, treating the symptom but not the cause.

And when we consider athletes, we reach a whole new level; in the sense that having tight muscles or a chronic imbalance issue can, over time, begin to cause serious disruption in training and even injury.

Over the years, I’ve had many clients who have cleaned up their eating, do a great job at getting in their workouts and make their way toward a trend to sleeping properly but when it comes to massage, for some reason, it still seems to be the common belief that it’s nice but not necessary… a luxury that would be nice, if only…

This couldn’t be further from the truth!

Massage is not to be grouped in the same category as facials, scrubs and mani/pedis.  Don’t get me wrong, as I am absolutely a tried and true spa girl, through and through, but if any of these services do not belong in this group, it’s body work.

Sure, the occasional fluff and fold version of a massage you might at a spa could be grouped this way, but not serious, deep tissue, shiatsu type of work.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simply as calling up the local massage place or PT clinic and zipping in for a treatment.

In my experience, it takes a long time with the right person to get to know your body and for you to get equally as comfortable knowing their work.

For obvious reasons, many a massage therapist at a spa will not work on certain areas of the body, for risk of being sued (I am told), or making the client uncomfortable.

Granted, working on the origin of the adductor muscle group (inner thigh- right near the groin) or on the psoas (deep into the abdomen) is not something that the typical spa-goer might want; it’s not relaxing and it can actually be quite painful as these two muscles are examples of some that are often overlooked both in bodywork and self stretching.

And as a client, of course, I don’t want any random person working on me who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

But to not address the entire body as a whole kinetic chain,  working on every muscle from every last to to the scalp and jaw, is to not look at the big picture.

The body can’t be looked at locally.  In other words, if you have a sore knee and the knee is the only thing that is addressed, it’s no different from having a flat tire on your car and wondering why the rest of the car feels wobbly, rather than just that area right around the wheel.

I am lucky enough to have found  a body worker who I feel is a true healer.   He’s been working on me for nearly five years, knows which my tighter areas are (hamstrings & psoas!), which are weak (gluts), which get tense from stress (neck) and which are typically always fluid (shoulders).

It’s a joint effort, too. It’s not a matter of me lying there, lifeless, getting stretched and poked.   It hurts. It requires pushing though the pain of tight, tangled muscles to let them release and move with ease and smoothness again.   And it requires communication and feedback between the client and the therapist.

Anything less is not an option.

Even if you’re reading this and thinking it sounds nice but it’s out of budget, or you can’t find the right person- there is a way.

I began getting massage as a recent college grad with not much extra cash.. but I was lucky enough to meet a recent massage school graduate who happened to have a natural intuition for the work and so for a very reasonable price, I began my bodywork journey.

If it’s not a weekly option, do it once every other, and learn to use self myo fascial release tools on your own between sessions, such as a foam roller or trigger point balls.

Hydrate, stretch, roll, do the body work and allow your body to keep itself healthy, strong and fluid.

There is no given that walking around in pain has to happen…ever, even if you are a certain age, or have run for a certain number of years or whatever the common misconceptions are.

Get your bodywork on!

221,314 Sugar Cubes

According to an article in Ad Age, that quantity of that drug is “the amount of sugar consumed during the average lifetime of a one-can-a-day soda drinker”, per Brita, the water filtration system.

They displayed an  “all-white metropolis, built of sugar cubes, meant to symbolize that very amount of sugar” in their new ad last week.

In addition, they’re “erecting a “sugar cube city” in New York’s Chelsea Market made from nearly four tons of sugar, which represents sugar consumed by a family-of-four during a lifetime”.

Horrified?

As we all should be.

Let seeing the quantity in these obscene proportions be the wake up call so desperately needed.

Set aside whether or not you’re Paleo, or vegan, or gluten free or don’t follow any particular eating regime… this is just appalling.

And there’s not a single argument as to why we should be eating this… any of it.

“A little of it in moderation” is nonsense.

Shall we apply the same sentiment to drugs?   As in, “A little heroin or crack now and then is fine”?

I’m not being funny. And I could go on… but we’ve simply got to stop.

Stop eating sugar, stop buying it and do so now.

There’s just no other way to put an end to this…(dare I write it?)… weapon of mass (self) destruction.

As long as there’s a demand, there will be a bigger and bigger supply, to suit the bigger and bigger people who’re being targeted and acting just as the distributors want them to.

Click here for the full article.

And please don’t read this thinking, well, it’s October 30th and Halloween is tomorrow, so I’ll stop on Saturday.

Cut the cord now!

Eating Poor Quality Food, Late Night Eating and Reflux

A NY Times piece from last Sunday entitled The Dangers of Eating Late at Night shed light on how, in addition to America’s “poor diet, with its huge increases in the consumption of sugar, soft drinks, fat and processed foods”, another critical variable that is often overlooked with the correlation between these behaviors and the development of acid-reflux is the time at which this (non) foods are consumed.

If I were to write that many of my clients tend to not eat enough during the earlier part of the day, for various reasons ranging from ‘saving calories for later’ to ‘not having time to eat’ to ‘not eating because they woke up still full from last night’s dinner’, it would be an understatement.

It’s no one’s fault; there’s simply a plethora of bad information online, on TV and certainly behind the numerous brands peddling their proprietary bars, shakes and packaged items, all of which do a lot for any particular brand’s financial growth but nothing for the health of our society.

In fact, one might even say these ‘foods’ in general make our health worse.

With the best of intentions, if someone’s day of eating consists of not consuming enough balanced calories from real food, leading to a 4pm blood sugar crash which feels so insatiable at that moment that anything edible in a small surrounding radius is fair game, it will all too often end in disaster.

Blood sugar crash, eat sugar, insulin response, another crash, more sugar and repeat, leading up until far too close to bedtime.

This isn’t an uncommon pattern, unfortunately.

Jamie Kaufman, who wrote the article in the Times, shared a similar sentiment:

“For my patients, eating late is often accompanied by overeating, because many skip breakfast and eat only a sandwich at lunch. Thus the evening meal becomes the largest meal of the day. After that heavy meal, it’s off to the sofa to watch television. After eating, it’s important to stay upright because gravity helps keep the contents in the stomach. Reflux is the result of acid spilling out of the stomach, and lying down with a full stomach makes reflux much more likely.”

I worked with a client a few years back who happened to be pulmonary specialist.  He put it very succinctly when he said that in his findings, acid reflux seemed to result most often from ‘stuffing too much food in when there was no more room and the food then has no where else to go than back up from where it was inserted’!

So what’s the answer?

Once again, we need to look at what we are eating and when and why.

If we eat real food, from natural sources at regular intervals, the chances of developing acid reflux are simply a lot less likely than if we follow the typical Standard American Diet model, or worse, a skewed version of what healthy eating is.

Whether based on a focus to ‘lose weight fast’ or the idea that there’s a magic bullet out there somewhere to get us quickly to an unrealistic weight or level of health in a very short period of time, despite the fact that it may have taken years to reach the current situation, any other approach is simply not sound or logical.

If you’re already being treated with medication for reflux, still take a look at what you’re eating and check in with your doctor about it.  If your doctor suggests that your diet won’t affect your ‘condition’, well, it may be time to look for a new one, perhaps a functional medicine doctor that will look at the big picture, of which food must be part of the foundation.

Why settle?

Wouldn’t it be better to address the cause, erase the symptoms and reach a point where the meds are no longer needed?

It’s not impossible!

Click here for the full article…

Learning to Run

I was not always a fast runner.

I’ve gotten more competitive but it didn’t start out that way.

For years and years I raced open marathons and triathlons as a very middle of the pack participant.

I was thinking about this today after a friend commented on a post I’d written recently about knowing it was definitely taper week when the long Sunday run is reduced to a 45′  session at a comfortable, 7:30 pace with perhaps a few pick ups at race pace.

My friend remarked that 7:30 seemed a lot faster to him than a comfortable recovery pace.

I thought the same thing before, too!

In fact, my first marathon was over six hours.

Partly due to a learning curve that most athletes go through in terms of simply being familiar with how to train and race, partly due to how I was fueling my body and mostly, I believe, due to how I learned to approach the entirety from a different mental angle, which I now feel could be more than half the equation of having a successful training build and subsequent race.

For me, it began with my husband, then boyfriend, simply suggesting I ‘just run faster’.   It didn’t  happen overnight, but I began to learn that I first needed to believe that I could get faster, and then I needed to learn how to become comfortable with being uncomfortable and how to chose not to react to said discomfort.

In other words, rather than picking up the pace, feeling my breath change and my heart rate start to rise and then reacting in a manner such as ‘Oh, this feels too hard (or too fast, or too…whatever)- I’d better stop or slow down’, I learned to…not.

This is not to suggest that if you’re doing a workout, step off a curb and roll your ankle so badly you can barely walk that you should just suck it up and not react.

The balance is learning your body enough to distinguish actual, true ‘pain’, like in the example of an acute injury as I described above, from ‘discomfort’ as in muscles starting to fatigue, or breathing rate increasing.

It has to start, however, with the belief that you can.  Whatever it is that your mind decides, whether good or bad, your body will  follow.

So why not spin positively?

There’s probably more likelihood of successful outcomes occurring than the frightening ones we might conjure up and worry about anyway.

If you currently run a 10 minute mile and have run marathons in the 4:30 ballpark and believe you’ll never break 4:15 let alone 4:00, then guess what?  You’ve already decided your outcome.

If, instead, you decide to hire a coach, get a better training regime, eat properly and spend enough time on the mental focus component, you have a great shot of bettering your time each time you compete.

So back to that post.  I don’t write much about training splits I do or pacing, however for the purpose of this particular post, I felt it was important to see that an average athlete, with dedication, commitment and a sound training plan can absolutely become a faster, more competitive runner…even if they take a while to get there.

Some of us actually need to re-learn how to run after years of not engaging in one of the most natural forms of movement; but even then, it’s never to late.

Need some extra inspiration?

Check out the NYC Marathon this weekend! I’ll be running; it’s one of my favorite races with such outstanding crowd support.

I have race goals and times I’d like to hit, but mostly, I am just so happy to have the ability to do something I love so much, that makes me feel so good and be a part of something bigger….something magical about running along with thousands of others beside you.

Try it sometime, if you haven’t already!

5 Quick Paleo Lunches on Livestrong.com…And They’re Really Paleo

When I saw the title “5 Quick Paleo Lunches” on the Livestrong site last week, I will admit I was a little fearful of what I might find.

Paleo (ish) sandwiches with “bread”?  A “pizza” with grass-fed cheese?

To my delight- neither applied; rather, the five recipes were relatively close to being True Paleo!

Aside from the ghee, salt and canned coconut milk (which some readers may view as me being nit-picky, but these food items are still not Paleo), the focus was on protein, veggies and good fats along with some nice seasonings & spices.

Very refreshing to see articles and recipes like this a bit more often amongst all the ones for “Paleo” brownies and ice creams!

What Can I Eat at A Vegan Restaurant?

Wondering what you can eat when joining a vegan friend for dinner?

It’s actually pretty easy.

If you consider the fact that both True Paleo and a vegan approach to eating share the emphasis on local, fresh, seasonal veggies, good fats like avocado and coconut and olive oils along with some nuts in moderation, the only difference, and it is a big one, of course, is the sources of protein.

However, this needn’t be ground for a friend-divorce.    I have a dear friend who’s vegan and we can dine at both vegan eateries as well as those that serve animal proteins and both find a suitable meal.

Don’t forget…former vegan myself, here..

While eating a good balance of macro nutrients at each meal is ideal, if, in the big scheme of things, you have a meal that is not high enough in protein but has ample fat with the veggies and / or fruit to keep the glycemic load low (versus eating, say, a big bowl of high glycemic fruit on its own), you’ll be able to stay perfectly Paleo even at a vegan eatery.

Just yesterday I popped into the local Cafe Gratitude in Venice and while perusing the menu, saw several very valid options.

Yet one more example of a type of cuisine that can be suitable for a meal now and then.

Please, however, do not confuse this with the idea that there is some such thing as ‘vegan paleo’.

The two, by definition cannot exist simultaneously.

That phrase is no different than a vegan steak eater or a Paleo approach with a focus on tempeh, soy and TVP as the protein source.

You might be Paleo, or you might be vegan, or you may have found your own balance of eating foods that you’ve tested and have found make you feel fantastic and have omitted those that do not.

Find your own approach, indeed, but let’s not go categorizing things erroneously.

That’s just too much confusing information in a space already hyper saturated with misinformation.

Is Dairy Paleo? Do I Really Have to Avoid it?

No, it’s not.

Even if it comes from grass-fed cows.

Even if you feel you can ‘tolerate it’ as in you don’t have an obvious physical reaction like a stomach ache, or gassiness, whether or not to avoid it could be deciphered on a few considerations:

Do you have a diagnosed condition such as celiac disease?  Dairy is cross reactive with gluten, as are several other foods that should be avoided…even if you think you’re ‘tolerating’ them.  The Paleo Mom does an excellent job on her site going in to great deal about these foods and why they should not be eaten.
Do you have acne?  There is a strong correlation between  milk (and all dairy products) to insulin resistance and to acne. Dr. Cordain has written an entire book on the subject.
How about your bones?  Are you drinking milk thinking it’s going to be helpful to building a strong skeleton?  Think again.  Unfortunately, the net acidic load of dairy does just the opposite.   Refer again, to Dr Cordain’s latest book, The Paleo Answer, where an entire chapter is devoted to why milk does not do a body good.

So here’s the question- is there room for grass-fed dairy on a Paleo regime if you’re not suffering from any known issues and you’re feeling fantastic?

That, my friend, is your call.

I’m not changing my tune and suggesting we alter what Paleo really is, but if we look at the subject, big picture and you’re coming from a place where you were eating a very low quality, acidic, inflammatory diet and now you’re moving in the direction of becoming healthier, losing weight, adding veggies,  omitting sugar and eliminating things one at a time, that approach can work, too.

It doesn’t have to happen over night!

Breast Cancer Prevention & Paleo

Can what we eat really help prevent this type of Cancer?

With October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it was an appropriate time to write about this topic for Dr. Cordain’s The Paleo Diet Newsletter.

Click here to read it, and if you don’t already subscribe to his newsletter, it’s a must do.

With all the other e-publications that abound these days which focus on how to make the best Paleo desserts or how to eat bacon at every meal, it’s quite refreshing to have a reliable source on True Paleo.

Are Nightshade Plants Paleo?

Cut out the gluten, the dairy, the white sugar and all should be well, right?

While that is a huge step in the right direction, it’s only a step.

For anyone with an autoimmune condition, you’ve got to be a little more focused both on making sure to stay true to Paleo and not have slip ups now and then as they’ll cause a much more noticeable reaction compared to someone who is not dealing with the same challenges.

Not only that, you’ve also got to eliminate a few more foods: eggs, nuts and seeds and nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, all peppers and eggplants).

Finally, you’ve also got to be extra cautious you’re getting mega rich sources of Omega 3 fatty acids (bring on the wild salmon!), iodine (seaweed, anyone?)  and a literal ton of all the local, colorful, seasonal veggies you can find.

(Incidentally, all of use should be doing the above three steps…just saying.)

Interestingly, some of the very nightshades that those with auto immune conditions need to avoid are the very same ones that are indicated for promoting women’s health, which coincidentally falls in line with one of the recommendations of TCM suggesting we eat foods that are deeply colored in rich reds and purples and shaped somewhat like our organs.

My recommendation is always such that you approach it with a short term goal.  If you love nuts, eggs, seeds and nightshades and cannot imagine how you’ll live without ever eating them again, give it a month.

See how your body changes, how inflammation decreases and how your doctor may even have a convo about perhaps tapering off potent anti inflammatory meds, which I’ve seen happen many a time.

One client in particular had taken methotrexate for years for her RA.  She wanted to have a baby so found a functional medicine doc who was able to guide her safely off while I helped her with her AI Paleo protocol.

Not only was she able to conceive and have a baby without having to take any meds, she felt leaps and bounds better than she’d felt in years.

Somehow not having nightshades or eggs didn’t matter that much in the end.

 

Is It Really Paleo to Eat Treats, Even if They’re Made from Dates, Honey & Almond Flour?

This is such a great question.

How Paleo are Paleo brownies, Paleo breads, Paleo Wraps and Paleo Ice Creams?

Honestly?

Not so Paleo.

Wait- there’s a but.  A big but.  (Clearly this big but has not been adhering to a True Paleo regime…ok, sorry, bad joke).

Don’t worry- I’m not changing my stance and suggesting we should begin partaking of daily Paleo waffles and grass-fed butter.   Rather, the but is modeling when we have these treats.

I’ev always been one to support special occasion treats.  Something to make you feel you’re not out of the running for something special simply because you opt to eschew gluten, dairy, white sugar and the like and focus on fresh produce and wild proteins.

The special occasion, my friends, is the key.

As Dr. Cordain suggests, let’s model what we eat on the diet that our ancestor’s ate with foods readily available to us in our farmer’s markets, grocery stores and our own backyards.

Let’s think about cavemen and honey.

Did they eat it?

Most likely.  They’d probably come across the occasional hive, gorge themselves and then not do so again until they happened across the next one.

So along those same lines- consider that birthday party, anniversary celebration or holiday meal as the occasion to enjoy a treat.  A small treat.  Made with foods that are more Paleo-ish than their traditional counterparts.

A gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free brownie made with dates, raw cacao, almond flour, coconut oil and honey is still a high glycemic thing to eat, very low in protein and not exactly rich in fiber, minerals and vitamins that we’d find in a proper Paleo meal.

This doesn’t come from me making up a scheme.  Or trying to be, as one blog reader wrote, “Militant Paleo”.

Quite simply- I’ve seen people change their lives by changing what they eat from not food, to food and beginning to move.  And it breaks my heart to think of the number of others who could be reached and healed if they did the same, who are not, because they understand Paleo to be focused on what is really the Faux Paleo approach.

Do it in stages, yes.  Find your own balance, yes. Educate yourself and try different approaches, yes.

Just please try to make sure you’re mostly eating local seasonal veggies with natural proteins and a good dose of fat and that you have that special occasion treat when it really is a special occasion.

(Every afternoon at 3:30pm isn’t really a special occasion…just sayin’.)