3 Very Important Ingredients

Thinking of getting the flu vaccine? Think again.....

So the 'experts' are telling us we MUST get the flu vaccination. Every year the mainstream media war drum beats for you to get vaccinated against the flu. They rarely discuss anything but the benefits of the vaccine.  Why? Maybe it is because many people are already skeptical about the flu vaccine.

You  rarely hear about the adverse reactions or about the toxic chemicals being injected into you. Do your own research and you will find out that every year the flu vaccination is just a guess as what the 'experts' think you need to be protected against, creating vials of vaccinations containing flu like strains and filled with toxins such as mercury. 

They say most that need it are children, elderly and pregnant women! Are you kidding? So doctors are even giving pregnant women double doses! Have you ever asked yourself why the pharmaceutical industry is giving this out for free? You must believe (like many) that they must 'really' care about us all!

The long terms effects are not published....... Children can develop autism, adults narcolepsy, elderly can die and your body becomes more and more toxic! Not to mention soon after being injected you run a high risk of actually getting the flu because your immune system weakens more, as well as becoming a walking virus infecting other people your cross. 

The best medicine to combat flu's & colds is FOOD! Try and stick to ORGANIC or start to grow your own. Avoid refined sugars, avoid processed foods, avoid refined salts, avoid artificial flavours and colours..... Just stick with fresh and seasonal produce along with complete proteins and essential fats, drink filtered  water and  exercise!

Georgia

Inflammation and Autoimmune Disease- Things you may not know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inflammation controls our lives. Have you or a loved one dealt with pain, obesity, ADD/ADHD, peripheral neuropathy, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, migraines, thyroid issues, dental issues, celiac or cancer?

If you answered yes to any of these disorders you are dealing with inflammation. Sadly, most of us are suffering from one or more of these disorders but have no idea how to eliminate inflammation. Most doctors are utilizing pharmaceuticals in lieu of getting to the root cause.

It often seems extremely foreign to most people when they realize the majority of inflammatory diseases start in the gut with an autoimmune reaction which progresses into systemic inflammation. To truly be effective at managing or hopefully overcome a disease it needs to be addressed on all levels. Taking a look at where this process starts is the key.

Where Does Inflammation Begin?

Your gut is made of an incredibly large and intricate semi-permeable lining. The surface area of your gut can cover two tennis courts when stretched out flat.
Its degree of permeability fluctuates in response to a variety of chemically mediated conditions. For example when your cortisol is elevated due to the stress of an argument or your thyroid hormone levels fluctuate due to burning the midnight oil your intestinal lining becomes more permeable in real time.

Then you sit down to eat and partially undigested food, toxins, viruses, yeast, and bacteria have the opportunity to pass through the intestine and access the bloodstream, this is known as leaky gut syndrome, or LGS. When the intestinal lining is repeatedly damaged due to reoccurring leaky gut syndrome, damaged cells called microvilli become unable to do their job properly.

They become unable to process and utilize the nutrients and enzymes that are vital to proper digestion. Eventually, digestion is impaired and absorption of nutrients is negatively affected. As more exposure occurs, your body initiates an attack on these foreign invaders. It responds with inflammation, allergic reactions, and other symptoms we relate to a variety of diseases.
So you might ask, what’s the harm of inflammation and ongoing allergic reactions?

It may sound relatively harmless, but this situation can and often does lead to numerous serious and debilitating diseases. Since your immune system can become overburdened, these inflammatory triggers are cycled continuously through your blood where they affect nerves, organs, connective tissues, joints, and muscles. You can probably begin to see how diseases develop.

Inflammation Triggers the Symptoms of Disease

The presence of inflammation is what makes most disease perceptible to an individual. It can and often does occur for years before it exists at levels sufficient to be apparent or clinically significant. How long it has been smoldering really determines the degree of severity of a disease and often the prognosis assuming the inflammation can be controlled. One could also argue that without inflammation most disease would not even exist. Take a look at this list of diseases and their relationship with inflammation:

Disease	Mechanism
Allergy	4 Immune Mediated Types + Sensitivities, all of which cause inflammation
Alzheimer's	Chronic inflammation destroys brain cells
Anemia	Inflammatory cytokines attack erythropoietin production
Ankylosing Spondylitis	Inflammatory cytokines induce autoimmune reactions against joint surfaces
Asthma	Inflammatory cytokines induce autoimmune reactions against airway lining
Autism	Inflammatory cytokines induce autoimmune reactions in the brain arresting right hemisphere development
Arthritis	Inflammatory cytokines destroy joint cartilage and synovial fluid
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome	Chronic inflammation causes excessive muscle tension shortening tendons in the forearm and wrist compressing the nerves.
Celiac	Chronic immune mediated inflammation damages intestinal lining
Crohn's Disease	Chronic immune mediated inflammation damages intestinal lining
Congestive heart failure	Chronic inflammation contributes to heart muscle wasting
Eczema	Chronic inflammation of the gut and liver with poor detoxification and often antibodies against Transglutaminase-3.
Fibromyalgia	Inflamed connective tissue often food allergy related and exacerbated by secondary nutritional and neurological imbalances.
Fibrosis	Inflammatory cytokines attack traumatized tissue
Gall Bladder Disease	Inflammation of the bile duct or excess cholesterol produced in response to gut inflammation
GERD	Inflammation of the esophagus and digestive tract nearly always food sensitivity and pH driven
Guillain-Barre	Autoimmune attack of the nervous system often triggered by autoimmune response to external stressors such as vaccinations.
Hashimoto's Thyroiditis	Autoimmune reaction originating in the gut triggered by antibodies against thyroid enzymes and proteins
Heart attack	Chronic inflammation contributes to coronary atherosclerosis
Kidney failure	Inflammatory cytokines restrict circulation and damage nephrons and tubules in the kidneys
Lupus	Inflammatory cytokines induce an autoimmune attack against connective tissue
Multiple Sclerosis	Inflammatory cytokines induce autoimmune reactions against myelin
Neuropathy	Inflammatory cytokines induce autoimmune reactions against myelin and vascular and connective tissues which irritate nerves.
Pancreatitis	Inflammatory cytokines induce pancreatic cell injury
Psoriasis	Chronic inflammation of the gut and liver with poor detoxification
Polymyalgia Rheumatica	Inflammatory cytokines induce autoimmune reactions against muscles and connective tissue
Rheumatoid Arthritis	Inflammatory cytokines induce autoimmune reactions against joints
Scleroderma	Inflammatory cytokines induce an autoimmune attack against connective tissue
Stroke	Chronic inflammation promoted thromboembolic events
Surgical complications	Inflammatory cytokines (often pre-dating the surgery) slow or prevent healing

Why Inflammation Must Be Addressed at its Root...

The fact that your immune system drives the inflammatory process in disease is well established. Unfortunately Western medicine offers little in the way of actual answers as to managing or overcoming the Autoimmune process. The typical approach to therapy is generally to suppress the immune response with Immune suppressive agents or sometimes steroids. Both approaches are designed to reduce inflammation but neither stops the underlying disease processes or allows for damaged tissues to regenerate.

Unless you turn off the actual cause of fire (inflammation), all you have done is postponed the inevitable and potentially destroyed more of the building (your body) in the process, by allowing the fire to smolder in a subclinical fashion.

Every day on TV you can see professional athletes and others acting as spokespeople for Methotrexate, Orencia, Enbrel, Humira, Remicade, and other drugs which largely are designed to mask inflammation or suppress the immune response. None of these drugs actually have the capacity to correct the underlying condition and yet the imagery the ads leave the viewer with is that you will have your life back.

The Link Between Gut Dysfunction and Inflammatory Diseases

The term inflammation rarely elicits a truly accurate image in the mind of someone unless they are experiencing it. Then it begins to make sense because of the pain and dysfunction associated with inflammation. The ability to be inflamed is absolutely necessary for normal repair processes to occur. It is when the regulation of inflammation is not tempered or controlled that we begin to have a problem with inflammation.

It has been shown that many of the inflammatory diseases we suffer from are gut mediated but not presenting as gut issues. Dr. Maios Hadjivassiliou of the United Kingdom, a world authority on gluten sensitivity, has reported in The Lancet, that "gluten sensitivity can be primarily and at times, exclusively a neurological disease." This means that people show gluten sensitivity by having problems with brain function despite having no gastrointestinal problems whatsoever. Dr. Hadjivassiliou indicates that the antibodies that a person has when they are gluten sensitive can be directly and uniquely toxic to the brain. For this there are specialty tests that have been developed.

Another author, published in a recent issue of Pediatrics, stated, "This study suggests that the variability of neurologic disorders that occur in celiac disease is broader than previously reported and includes softer and more common neurologic disorders including chronic headache, developmental delay, hypotonia and learning disorders or ADHD." Clearly we have to broaden our evaluation criteria and perhaps definition of disease when a patient presents with complaints that do not fit into a typical clinical box.

How to Evaluate Inflammatory Diseases

Since inflammation is commonly mediated by the gut it is a logical starting point in the evaluation process of any patient. There are seven common areas that should be considered when looking at causative factors for gastrointestinal dysfunction that create the environment for chronic inflammation. They are listed below along with key triggers within the category of evaluation:

• Diet: Alcohol, Gluten, Casein, Processed Foods, Sugar, Fast Food
• Medications: Corticosteroids, Antibiotics, Antacids, Xenobiotics
• Infections: Such as H-Pylori, Yeast or Bacterial Overgrowth, Viral or Parasite Infection
• Stress: Increased Cortisol, Increased Catecholamines
• Hormonal: Thyroid, Progesterone, Estradiol, Testosterone
• Neurological: Brain Trauma, Stroke, Neuro-degeneration
• Metabolic: Glycosylated End Products (inflammatory end products of sugar metabolism), Intestinal Inflammation, Autoimmune

Illustration from www.TxFibro.com - a private online neuro-metabolic physician study group

Inflammation and Autoimmune Disease

The truth of the situation is that FOOD MATTERS. That’s right, it’s not just a movie (which by the way you should all watch!). Hyper-permeability of the gut, regardless of whether you can feel it or not is often a significant cause of an extremely long and ever growing list of conditions. The inflammatory cascade that takes place by any inflammatory trigger (diet, medications, infections, stress, hormonal, neurological, or metabolic) can break down the intestinal permeability and allows for the leaky gut mechanism to initiate.

Due to the variety of triggers, it is often possible to reduce an individual’s immune reactivity but not cure it if leaky gut is not the primary trigger for the inflammatory process. There are multiple models of autoimmunity although it is becoming more well accepted that once you develop autoimmunity you will have increased Intestinal Permeability also.

Autoimmunity can be put into remission and this can have profound improved life consequences but it can also be turned on again if life circumstances change. It is considered "Incurable". You may be able to change the expression of it but to think that you are going to be able to take a boat load of supplements and change your diet and cure the condition you are generally going to be let down.

Waxing and waning responses are par for autoimmunity. When stress picks up despite dietary intake a person will be expected to flare up. This inflammation is initiated by increased levels of iNOS (inducible nitric oxide) which causes an immediate increase in intestinal permeability much like elevated cortisol levels from stress. Once this occurs serum protein particles leak through and become extremely reactive. Gluten is an extremely common serum protein in a situation of increased permeability simply due to the commonality of daily exposure.

If you take on too many projects, eat poorly, have limited or poor sleep patterns, then you can bet that intestinal permeability will increase and food will start to leak through. Your immune system will then begin to recognize these proteins as other similar proteins like cerebellum, thyroid, etc... When that occurs you will experience symptoms that generally are far removed from what someone would consider to be food related since they are not felt in the gut. Instead you experience brain fog, pain, fatigue, poor sleep, anxiety, or endocrine dysfunction.

When antibodies combine with our structural proteins, specific genes are turned on in a special type of immune cell in the body. Inflammatory chemicals are created called cytokines, which are strongly damaging to brain function. In fact, elevated cytokines are seen in such devastating conditions as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and even autism.
You see, autoimmune disease is not clinically diagnosed until you have tissue destruction. For some neurodegenerative conditions, you need up to 70 percent demyelination (nerve damage) before it will show on an MRI. You cannot afford to wait for that type of advanced destruction before taking action.

If you are symptomatic in any way and show to have antibodies or test positive on any of the tests listed above, you have Autoimmune Reactivity and that is enough to take action and make life changes to potentially stop the process from continuing. Inflammation can be a great friend in this sense. Look at it as an early warning sign and take action before it turns into a fire that rages out of control from one body tissue to another.

Recap & Treatment

Inflammation is rampant. In fact 1 in 12 women and 1 in 24 men are dealing with full blown autoimmune mediated inflammation. The number of undiagnosed people is going to be much higher. People with inflammation in the early phases of autoimmunity will often claim no dietary involvement. This is an inaccurate assumption however because the autoimmunity is often triggered by factors not strictly related to diet and the diet can become a secondary trigger later in the development of the condition. If you are dealing with inflammation then get a comprehensive evaluation to look at what is perpetuating your personal fire.

1. Lifestyle: Remove adverse mechanisms (Stress, Over-exercising, Poor Sleep, Blood Sugar Dysregulation, Poor Social Behaviors.) Lifestyle factors are huge, the stress response triggers immune marker IL6 which turns on the immune pathway TH17 which is the fast track to Autoimmunity.
2. Lifestyle: Restore beneficial mechanisms: Create conditions of love & appreciation, keep positive attitudes, maintain proper exercise (training to a maximum heart range; i.e. Peak Fitness exercises), have adequate sleep, restore blood sugar balance, and facilitate healthy social interactions. All these things promote natural systemic opioids which pushes the immune pathway TH3 which reduces Autoimmunity.
3. Dietary Support: Stabilize blood sugar, remove food Autoimmune triggers, and promote intestinal integrity with proper flora and nitric oxide and glutathione pathways. Include fermented foods and supplement appropriately as may be needed.

Remember, a wide array of health problems, including but not limited to chronic pain, obesity, ADD/ADHD, peripheral neuropathy, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, migraines, thyroid issues, dental issues, and cancer are all rooted in inflammation, which must be properly addressed if you wish to be healed.

Mercola

Boosting your metabolism tips

I receive a lot of e-mails on the topic of metabolism. What is it? Why is it important? How can I increase it? Metabolism can be a fairly complicated subject.

Metabolism is the amount of energy (calories) your body burns to maintain itself. Whether you are eating, drinking, sleeping, cleaning etc... your body is constantly burning calories to keep you going. Metabolism is affected by your body composition. By body composition, this means the amount of muscle you have versus the amount of fat. Muscle uses more calories to maintain itself than fat. People who are more muscular (and have a lower percentage of body fat) are said to have a higher metabolism than others that are less muscular.

For example, let's say you have two people who are the exact same height and weight. One exercises on a regular basis with weights, in addition to aerobic exercise, and has a low percentage of body fat. The other never exercises and has a higher percentage of body fat. The first person who exercises will have a higher metabolism than the second person.

Start exercising! If you've never exercised before, make sure you see a doctor before beginning a new exercise. You can increase your muscle mass by doing some type of resistance work (i.e. lifting weights, using resistance bands, hand weights at home etc...). You can also decrease your level of body fat by doing some type of aerobic exercise at least 4 days a week for longer than 40 minutes.
You also need to eat! - Do not 'diet', just watch the types of foods you eat. Consume foods that are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids, which regulate levels of leptin in the body, such as fish. According to researchers, this hormone is responsible for the speed of metabolism in the body, as well as for your body making a decision, whether to burn fat at the point, or to store it.

Foods that speed up metabolism also include meats. The body spends more time to digest meat (proteins) in comparison to easily digested carbohydrates and fats. According to many nutritionists, digesting proteins accelerates burning of calories almost twice. Danish researchers provide even more optimistic numbers. According to them, adding 20% of protein supplements in your daily diet will increase burning of calories by more than 5%.

Vegetables! Consuming 3-4 serves daily of low G.I veggies will keep your calories burning, as it works to break down and digest these. Low G.I veggies are also called 'negative' calories, as they don't contain nasties that the body can store as fat. Once you have added your chicken, fish or meat to your plate, fill the remaining plate with salads/veggies!

Lemons increase immunity and accelerate metabolism. Lemons are often used for various metabolic disorders. Tea with lemon or water with lemon will speed up your metabolism and fat burning processes. Start by cleansing your digestive track; Kick off your morning with a luke-warm glass of water with added lemon juice.

DON'T-

If you eat a very low-calorie diet, your metabolism will slow down in order for your body to survive (your body thinks it is starving). Don't be fooled by the belief that the less you eat, you'll burn fat. What will happen is that you will actually begin to lose muscle!

DO-

Speeding up metabolism can be achieved by eating 5 small meals throughout the day, instead of eating 2-3 large meals. Food (especially in many small portions) accelerates metabolism. In fact, 10% of calories that you burn each day go to metabolizing the consumed nutrients. For best results, split your meals into 5 small portions and be sure to have a breakfast, as it results in speeding up metabolism in your body.

This is where nutritional supplements can add multiple benefits. The average person who has been struggling to burn that stubborn fat does not consume enough and find it's difficult to get into the routine of 5 meals to speed up metabolism. I recommend consuming one or two Ultimate Slim shakes per day as this was designed to be added as a snack replacement to provide extra protein to fuel your muscles and has added fat burning enhancers to keep you energized throughout the day, resulting in burning extra calories.

Example:

A typical day for someone on a 'weight loss' program will only consist of breakfast, lunch and dinner. (Some actually skip breakfast which is the most important meal of the day)...
Using Ultimate Slim will see the above 3 square meals increase to 5 by adding the shake for a morning tea snack and afternoon tea snack. (UPS does not recommend using Ultimate Slim as a meal replacement; only as snacks)

NOTES-

When you are exercising aerobically, your focus should be on burning calories and working your cardiovascular system. Because it takes more calories to exercise, your metabolism is sped up during the activity. Also exercising first thing on an empty stomach will assist in reducing stored fat cells.
When you are lifting weights or doing other resistance work, focus on the activity itself which not only burns calories but increases muscle strength, tone and endurance. (Don’t just throw the weights around and think the faster you do this, the faster you burn fat - false. Keep it controlled and be sure you feel your muscles fatigue)

The combination of aerobic activity and weight training will result in a body that has more muscle and less fat - so the end result will be a higher metabolism.

*** Remember if you want a snack in between your main meals do NOT go for the chocolate..... instead try our Ultimate Slim protein blend which is high protein, low fat and low carbohydrate and is available in 4 great flavours. This is formulated to give you that extra kick with its added fat burning enhancers and fight sugar cravings while assisting to repair and tone muscles. Order online at www.ultimateperformancesupplements.com ****

What's stopping you from achieving your goals?

I wanted to share with you a before and after shot of one of my clients. This lady came to me with the want of changing her body shape and perhaps competing in her first figure bodybuilding competition but she was unsure is she could achieve her goals because she wasn't strong enough mentally. The usual things I needed to change were her training and nutritional intake but the most important was shifting her mind set.

The top left photo represents a lady the was feeling very inadequate with herself and weighed 69kg. After change is training regime, clean eating (6 meals per day) and a lot of self reflection work, she did not only achieve her goal to compete.... she lost 13kg and is the picture of good health and is mentally 'on top of the world'. No nasty post comp rebounds, no loss of identity but rather a more mature outlook on life and a healthy discovery of self worth.

You see,  many women experience feelings of unworthiness, incompleteness and low self esteem; but the fact is it is these very same feelings that stop us from fulfilling our deepest desires and achieving our goals. I too have learnt over the past years various ways to build self esteem, set goals and stop at nothing until they are achieved.

The journey in doing so is what some may call 'self discovery'. It is important to understand that this doesn't happen over night or by the end of any contest preparation or even in a year. It is and always will be an ongoing journey. But you need to decide weather you will be going along for the ride or being the driver?

Spend time with your self and listen to deepest desires and fears. Take control of your thoughts and change them if they are not doing you any good! You ARE in control and thoughts are just that and thoughts can be changed!

Georgia

8 Reasons to Eat Fermented Foods

1. Fermented foods improve digestion.

Fermenting our foods before we eat them is like partially digesting them before we consume them. According to Joanne Slavin, a professor in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota, “…sometimes people who cannot tolerate milk can eat yogurt. That’s because the lactose (which is usually the part people can’t tolerate) in milk is broken down as the milk is fermented and turns into yogurt.”

2. Fermented foods restore the proper balance of bacteria in the gut.

Do you suffer from lactose intolerance? Gluten intolerance? Constipation? Irritable bowel syndrome? Yeast infections? Allergies? Asthma? All of these conditions have been linked to a lack of good bacteria in the gut.

3. Raw, fermented foods are rich in enzymes.

According to the Food Renegade blog, “Your body needs [enzymes] to properly digest, absorb, and make full use of your food. As you age, your body’s supply of enzymes decreases. This has caused many scientists to hypothesize that if you could guard against enzyme depletion, you could live a longer, healthier life.”

4. Fermenting food actually increases the vitamin content.

According to the Nourished Kitchen blog, “Fermented dairy products consistently reveal an increased level of folic acid which is critical to producing healthy babies as well as pyroxidine, B vitamins, riboflavin and biotin depending on the strains of bacteria present. [1. Vitamin Profiles of Kefirs Made from Milk of Different Species. International Journal of Food Science & Technology. 1991. Kneifel et al]“

5. Eating fermented food helps us to absorb the nutrients we’re consuming.

You can ingest huge amounts of nutrients, but unless you actually absorb them, they’re useless to you. When you improve digestion, you improve absorption.

6. Fermenting food helps to preserve it for longer periods of time.

Milk will go bad in the fridge but kefir and yogurt last a lot longer. Sauerkraut, pickles and salsa will keep for months. And if you’ve got a huge batch of produce in your garden that you don’t know how to use up — ferment it!

7. Fermenting food is inexpensive.

There’s nothing fancy required for this hobby. And many of the foods required to make these recipes are very cheap. You can use inexpensive cabbage to make sauerkraut, or get yourself a kombucha scoby and with just pennies’ worth of water, sugar and tea, you’ve got a health elixir slash soda pop.

8. Fermenting food increases the flavor.

There’s a reason humans enjoy drinking wine and eating stinky cheese. There’s a reason we like sauerkraut on our hot dogs and salsa on our tortilla chips. It tastes good!

  Enjoy!

Cherry Ripe Trifle

A Berrylicious and coconut jelly with chocolate custard and chunks of chewy protein toffee.

A delicious cool dessert to enjoy in the hotter weather - it's high protein, sugar and carb free.

 

Berrylicious and raspberry jelly

200mls of strong raspberry or apple flavoured tea (I used Serendipi-tea's "

Chaucers Cup")
2 serves (4 scoops) of Ultimate Slim in Berrylicious
1 satchet of powdered gelatine
200mls of coconut water

Chocolate custard
400gm of low fat cottage cheese
1.5 serves (3 scoops) of Ultimate ISO in Belgian Chocolate
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
1 egg yolk

Chocolate toffee
1 scoop (1/2 serve) of Ultimate ISO in Belgian Chocolate
60g coconut butter
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 tablespoon psyllium husk

Organic dessicated coconut to garnish

Method:

Make the jelly first by placing the gelatine into a mug and topping with boiled water. Stir vigorously until all gelatine is dissolved and leave
to cool slightly. Add the tea, coconut water and berrylicious together in a large bowl and whisk until the protein has dissolved. Pour in the
gelatine mixture and stir once more before leaving in the fridge to set for 3-4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C.
Make the custard by placing all ingredients into a food processor and combining until smooth.
Set to one side while you make the toffee. Melt the coconut butter and place in a large bowl with the other ingredients, stir as vigorously as possible
or until the mixture becomes very very rich and sticky and hard to move.

Smear the toffee on the base of a casserole dish as evenly as possible before topping with the custard. Bake for 30 minutes maximum - the custard
should have developed a thin film on the top but should not be completely cooked through. The baking merely hardens the custard a little to give it more
shape and melts the toffee on the bottom.

Once done, remove from oven and leave to cool for 30 minutes before pouring your jelly mixture on the top.
Leave to set for another 3-4 hours before serving in bowls or in sundae glasses.

Nutritional info per serve:
Serves 7
Calories: 237
Protein: 31g
Carbs: 4.4g
Fat: 10.6g