Stop depression 90 percent or more part 5.....

Today's post:  Tuesday, 2-28-2017

The drugs now given for depression don't work or barely work; they are as addictive as hard drugs; and they have recently found to help cause Alzheimer's disease.  Most doctors still know little else to try.  Some even think these drugs work; but they don’t.

But depression is a hardware and software problem of the brain.  

1.  We now know:  how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software; 

2. We now know how to fix the hardware;

a) We know what drugs directly harm the hardware and reliably cause depression.  So knowing never to take them even once and to stop them as fast as is safe to do so helps.  Knowing what to replace the drugs with instead also helps.

b) We know things that repair or replace nerves and brain cells and their connections. Successful talk therapy changes the part of the brain used and has this effect!  And, when people do the things that grow new brain cells enough to show on a brain scan, most cases of depression and many cases of PTSD ALSO show dramatic improvement

3.  We know a few things that make people feel better right away.  The best two are low tech and people can simply do them.  One high tech treatment and one drug have been shown to work right away but may not be available for many years yet.

So, most people get harmed by treatment when at the same time, we do know safe and effective ways that cure depression for over 90% of the people who use all the parts." 

Our first post and second one the following Tuesday and the third one had the details of 1. “how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software” and 2. “how to fix the hardware;”

THIS post has an expanded version of:

3.  We know a few things that make people feel better right away.  The best two are low tech and people can simply do them.  One high tech treatment and one drug have been shown to work right away but may not be available for many years yet.

Last time in Part 4 we covered a low tech high level “software” procedure, creating a plan to build a worthwhile life.

This sometimes helps people feel better as soon as they do it.  They often feel more hopeful and effective and worthwhile.

Taking action to make it happen can be a long term project.  It can take work and repeated efforts.

THAT does take work.  So the next step is to boost your ability to do that work.

So, our next step in this series is the things you can do that work even faster to give you that ability AND make you feel better immediately.

Many of them are quite easy to do.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Some are a bit more of an effort but DO make you feel better as soon as you do them!

In Part 6 coming next week, we list a new way to feel better fast that gives you enormous leverage.  AND, it’s proven to work even for people in quite challenging situations now!

It can take as little as two or three days to do to a couple of months to finish well.

But you begin to feel dramatically better the first day!

In this post we cover things that you can do that you can start immediately and begin to help you feel better from the first day.

A.  Do the several things that boost your mood from poor to good from instantly to within days:

*SSRI drugs are poor at boosting serotonin levels in the brain because the boosting they do is in the blood levels which does little for your brain and causes side effects.

But many people are deficient or even severely deficient in vitamin D3.  AND good to optimum levels of vitamin D3 DO boost blood levels of serotonin in the brain where it IS helpful.  So taking the likely minimum real daily requirement of D3 in people who are rarely in the summer sun of 7,000 to 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 does sometimes lift depression.

Doing this also makes getting sick from viruses and bacteria less likely AND makes serious harm and even death from such illnesses much less likely.  It also makes cancers and osteoporosis and mental decline less likely.

So taking that much D3 can help you lift depression and protect you at the same time!

*Dopamine also helps people feel good and people who are low in it are often depressed. 

Drugs and supplements tend to be poor or temporary or unreliable at meaningful boosts of dopamine.

But thinking loving and warm thoughts of someone or giving them a hug when they are willing DOES reliably boost dopamine quickly. 

Doing this a few times a day can go a long way to lifting depression fast!

*Be less depressed by giving your brain the fuel that rebuilds the hardware in your brain because you begin to get the benefits in removing your worst moods and irritation right away!

1.  Begin taking and eating enough fish or seafood or algae derived omega 3 oils also often has a fast effect on mood!

Take one or two softgels a day of Nordic Naturals Omega 3 oil supplement with lemon to help the taste be mild.

Take one or two a day of Jarrow DHA.

Eat wild caught fish low in mercury and high in omega 3 oils one to three times a week.

This helps your body release the nerve and brain cell growth hormone, BDNF, to repair your brain hardware which often lifts depression caused by reductions in the white matter that connects the parts of your neural net by rebuilding it.   (Alaskan salmon is wild caught with sockeye the best kind for this.  Small fish that are wild caught also work:  sardines, small mackerel, herring, etc.)

This works even better for BDNF release when you also do regular, vigorous exercise most days of every week.

AND, many studies also show that almost immediately doing this reduces your worst moods AND it makes you much less irritable! 

You feel better right away and the people in your life are less likely to treat you badly or avoid you.  You literally are easier to be around.  In some cases that can triple the effect!

2. Take Phosphatidyl Serine also.  If you are over 50 or have eaten packaged and other foods that tend to cause glycation or calcification of the cells in your brain, your cell walls in your brain cells harden and prevent enough oxygen and nutrients from entering your brain and waste leaving.  Phosphatidyl Serine restores these cell walls to pliable good health that can then move nutrients in and wastes out normally. (Jarrow makes a PS 100 formula that I take.)

So, when you take PS for a few days you begin to have fewer down moods and you think better.

3.  Would you like to have less of your worst moods and be less irritable right away?

Do both!  Take the omega 3 and DHA and the wild caught fish AND take Phosphatidyl Serine also.

B.  Sometimes building something or fixing something or gardening will lift depression almost immediately.

Creative cooking when you become better or good at it also works.

This happened to me once.  I felt really down.  But since I didn’t feel like doing any of my normal activities and there was a challenging repair needed in our kitchen, I decided to take that time to see if I could do the repair.  Much to my surprise my efforts and solutions to the problems I had DID work.

THEN I noticed I felt dramatically better!

I’ve lost my record of their names.  But this once happened to a couple.  The woman was a therapist and realized if she knew why it worked, it could work for her clients too.  And, her husband was a researcher who knew which parts of the brain did which things.

He knew that HALF our brains were wired to everything else.  AND the other half our brains were wired to our hands!

So if you fix something or make something or even clean something extra well with your hands instead of watching TV, wool gathering on the couch, or even reading, you can feel better right away too!

C.  If you do it right away, STOPPING things that depress you and doing it quickly can also speed relief from depression.

There was a study which found that the more packaged snacks and treats and soft drinks of any kind people ate the more likely they were to be depressed.

THEN, there was a study showing that depressed people who began eating only health OK foods, particularly vegetables and fruit, became less depressed.

And THEN the two heavy hitters showed up!

*A study found that people with severe depression that nothing else was helping who stopped all the packaged snacks and treats and soft drinks and commercial baked goods and began eating only health OK foods, particularly vegetables and fruit, became significantly less depressed!

These people went from little nutrition and things that caused mood swings and reduced blood flow to the brain to great nutrition with stable mood and better blood flow to their brains!

**Just recently, the second heavy hitter showed up!  It turns out that removing things that depress you and adding things that help you feel good may only be HALF the reason that making this switch turns off depression even in severely depressed people!  Even I was astounded.

I’ve been very worried since I discovered it was happening that nanoparticles in foods and spices and in clothes were putting a contaminant into human cells which had zero or near zero ways to remove it.

It seems that packaged snacks and treats and condiments and spices used in them and in commercial baked goods, nanoparticles of titanium dioxide are included to keep the ingredients well mixed and of consistent taste and texture.  The study found that this had two dramatically depressing effects. 

These particles damaged the villi in the small intestine prevented as much as half the nutrient absorption from all the foods people then ate.

These nanoparticles of titanium dioxide also caused rips and tears in the walls of the small intestine allowing things that caused excessive inflammation when the body reacted to them.

So these nanoparticles both stopped the things that reduced depression from reaching the people who consumed them AND they turned on conditions that depressed people!

In our Thursday posts on fatloss that you keep off, we posted that overall achieving fatloss you can sustain and keep off requires you to stop eating and drinking things that fatten you and also make you sick and age faster -- AND to boost your metabolism.

So, if you want to stop ALL the bad things that also cause depression and consume only the things that help you prevent it, what do you eat instead? – AND what do you stop consuming and the other reasons why to do so? 

You can both here on our blog at this URL, https://iehealth.blogspot.com .

Paleo AND Healthy Priority List.....Tuesday, 1-24-2017 -- We posted first on what foods and drinks are best to eat and which ones help most to include.

Then in --

Beat Sugar Cravings.....Thursday, 1-26-2017 – We posted on the many thing to stop eating or drinking and why.

As the title suggests, this post also has tips on how to have fewer cravings as you do so!

D.  One of the two common causes of depression is taking statin drugs.  They literally pull the plug from the energy generators in your cells, the mitochondria, by depleting them of the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 that keeps them healthy.

This often weakens the heart causing reduced blood flow to the brain and contributes to heart failure if it continues long enough.  AND people taking statins have less energy, think less well, and feel older.

Since this happens every day, taking statins is often a very effective way to induce depression that is hard to get rid of.

The wonderful news is that stopping all the foods and drinks that are harmful ALSO stops several kinds of heart attack starters.

And, the organic vegetables and fruit, the monosaturated oils, and the omega 3 oils to eat instead, are many times more protective against heart attacks and strokes and all causes of death than statin drugs in the third of the people who get some benefit.

So, if you stop the bad things and eat and drink the good things only, you have zero need for the tiny protection of statins!

So, once that is in place, you can stop statins and their depressing effects too!

E.  Beta blockers are even more effective at causing depression that makes people feel bad every single day than statins. 

So, once you stop beta blockers and recover from them, you WILL be less depressed.  In some cases more than half people’s depression will be gone from just this cause alone.

But beta blockers are somewhat addictive AND you need to stop taking them by reducing the dose in steps over several weeks to avoid very dangerous blood pressure surges.

But you can feel better immediately by focusing on being up to making that effort soon, you will be rid of beta blockers also!

Then do most of these steps to lift depression fast and you WILL be up to stopping beta blockers.

At that point you will be far less depressed!

You can then do the work that can take time to repair your brain’s software and repair and reconnect your brain’s hardware!

Once that is done you will rarely be depressed or remain depressed long!

Boost your metabolism to lose fat, part 4.....

Today's post:  Thursday, 2-23-2017

In some ways there are two basics for permanent fat loss.

1.  Stop routinely ingesting the things that reliably fatten you.

Then you stop making the problem worse!

2.  Boost your metabolism so you burn more calories twenty-four hours a day.

Over time that will remove your excess fat.

People who succeed at anything we now know take consistent action and keep doing it;

-- and they use what Reverend Bob Schuler called “experimental persistence”: They not only keep at things until they get the results they want, they take action and test things; they scrap the things that fail but learn from what happens, they look for new things to try and try them, they put in the time as a priority increasing their abilities and trying again. 

A new book describing this is called “Grit.” 

Use that on these two actions and you can lose fat and keep it off!

2.  Boost your metabolism so you burn more calories twenty-four hours a day.

Over time that will remove your excess fat.

There are four ways to do that:

a) Increase your muscle mass and healthy bone mass. AND, do the things that prevent losing them.  (Part 2 last week had those methods.) 

b) Make sure your thyroid levels which control your metabolism are high enough to give you energy and burn fat and NOT low enough to do the reverse. 

AND, make sure your mitochondria that are the power centers for each of your cells that supply their energy remain plentiful and healthy. This ALSO slows aging; and the way that MSG & its cousins reliably fatten apparently is to do the reverse!

c)  Eat the foods that actually have tested to enable you to eat more calories and food -- yet be lighter AND less fat!  (There ARE some; and eating them is a key to losing fat you keep off because you can do it without excess hunger.)

d) Ensure that the bacteria in your gut aren’t making sure you gain and store fat. 

(Research shows that if you import otherwise healthy gut bacteria to cure the dangerous C. Difficile infection but do so from a fat person, these gut bacteria then make YOU fat.

And, more recent research has found that when you lose fat even without triggering the low energy plus increase in hunger of the famine response by using calorie cut backs only some days each week or by properly done fasting, a separate genetic program causes those same bacteria to increase unless it’s blocked.)

Last time we ended on ways to keep your thyroid at a level that burns calories and gives you a feeling of energy and ways to keep the power centers of each of your cells, the mitochondria plentiful and healthy – part b) above.

Before we resume and cover part c), Eat the foods that actually have tested to enable you to eat more calories and food -- yet be lighter AND less fat!, here’s one more way to keep your metabolism high:

Somehow I saw this recently from a study written up by Women's Health initially:

"....new research sheds some light on how exactly anxiety may lead to weight gain: Women burn fewer calories in the 24 hours following stressful events, according to a new study from the journal Biological Psychiatry. 

For the study, researchers from Ohio State University interviewed 58 healthy women about the stressors they'd experienced in the previous 24 hours, then served them a high-fat meal that included eggs, turkey sausage, biscuits, and gravy (the meal came to 930 calories and 60 grams of fat).

Afterward, researchers tested the women's metabolic responses -- how quickly they burned calories and fat -- for the next seven hours.

Although all of the women simply rested after eating, those who struggled with stressors the previous day expended significantly less metabolic energy than those who reported no stress; on average, they burned 104 fewer calories.

At this rate, they could gain 11 extra pounds per year without changing any other diet and exercise habits.

Why? In addition to slower post-meal energy expenditure, women who reported more stressors also experienced lower fat oxidation and higher insulin production. The less fat your body oxidizes, the more fat you store and the higher your risk is for obesity; high insulin levels also enhance fat storage."

Insulin has two effects: with high protein and low carbohydrates and low blood sugar, as it does with grass fed dairy foods, particularly for those who strength train, it acts as a growth hormone to rebuild and repair lean muscle and bone.  It even tends to remove fat a bit!

However, when that kind of exercise is low and carbohydrates and blood sugar are high, insulin acts to fatten and lock down fat stores!

Hydrogenated oils are likely to add to that effect.  Note that in this experiment, gravy has refined grain, hybrid wheat and biscuits also do and in most fast food places and premixes also have hydrogenated oils.

So, clearly when these stressed women ate those foods and stress boosted their insulin, it reduced their metabolism and fattened them.

It’s long been known that not over-stressing over minor problems, solving many of them easily, and being able to recover to a low stress state quickly after that tends to prevent this kind of metabolism drop.  That’s a big subject by itself! 

But, by doing those 3 things the best you can and avoiding foods like refined grain hybrid wheat that slam up blood sugar, you can reduce this effect.

Next, in part 4 this week we cover:

c)  Eat the foods that actually have tested to enable you to eat more calories and food -- yet be lighter AND less fat!  (There ARE some; and eating them is a key to losing fat you keep off because you can do it without excess hunger.)   

There are three kinds of such foods:

*Foods high in the omega 9 monosaturated oils.

*Protein foods from animal sources that only eat unpolluted foods themselves that are their natural foods and can move around normally to do so.

*Organic, nonstarchy vegetables of several kinds.

****

*Foods high in the omega 9 monosaturated oils.

For those who are not allergic to them and can buy them readily, raw and unsalted and shelled tree nuts such as almonds, pecans, and walnuts – and Brazil nuts-- are the best of these.

The effect is striking.  People who eat a moderate amount of such nuts most days of every week burn MORE calories than people who do not do so; they consume more calories each day than people who do not; AND they are LESS fat and weight LESS.

That bears repeating.  People who eat raw nuts take in MORE calories and become less hungry but are LESS fat and weigh less than people who do not!

It also helps that many of these nuts have other health benefits.  The amount of badly needed minerals and tiny amounts of rare minerals your body needs but normally does not get are significant.  Because these foods can be eaten with no boost to inflammation unlike grain oils including canola that DO have lots of omega 6 oils to boost inflammation, they prevent people from eating as many of those or ideally ANY of those.

They satisfy hunger so well because they have their monosaturated oil and protein and fiber all at the same time.  And, with no to very tiny amounts of sugars, they have a glycemic index of ZERO and create no blood sugar surge or rebound hunger.

And, because they are so filling and taste so good, they help people to eat less sugars and high glycemic grains too!

Extra virgin olive oil is in this category too.  In addition to its high monosaturated fat content, extra virgin olive oil contains olive leaf extract and similar micronutrients.

Lastly, for those not allergic, avocados, avocado paste, and guacamole with only health OK other foods, are also in this category.

And, where nuts are almost a perfect mineral provider, avocadoes are an almost perfect vitamin provider! 

*Protein foods from animal sources that only eat unpolluted foods themselves that are their natural foods and can move around normally to do so.

These foods have no pro-inflammatory high omega 6 content from being fed grains.  They have no antibiotics every day to overcome the illnesses animals fed such grains get.  They have no bioconcentrated herbicides and pesticides that the grains are sprayed with in their fat.

And, animals fed only unpolluted foods themselves that are their natural foods and can move around normally to do so have saturated fat that is actually good for you to eat but less of it. Because they move normally instead of being penned up, they are less fat AND less stressed.

And, wild caught fish that only eat unpolluted foods themselves that are their natural foods and can move around normally to do so have the omega 3 oils that REDUCE inflammation.  (Smaller kinds of salmon and mackerel and smaller fish like herring and sardines are low in mercury too.)

One piece of research found that a very low calorie diet with low protein resulted in severe hunger, depression, and low energy but a diet with the same very low calories but high in protein did not.

*Organic, nonstarchy vegetables of several kinds. 

Some parts of hunger are due to having an empty stomach. And super low carb diets while effective for fat loss have such low carbs that some people get low mood and reduced metabolism from eating them.   (As we just covered, this is less true for high protein, very low carb diets.)

Organic, nonstarchy vegetables of several kinds at least partly solve both problems.  There are so many kinds worth eating for their huge health benefits in fact, and they are so high in fiber and low in calories that you can almost be full all the time without taking in too many calories.

Organic, cruciferous vegetables of all kinds fit here.  They are enormously heart protective and nutritious.  And between their hundreds of carotenes hidden by their dark green color and natural vitamin C and several kinds of micronutrients that prevent cancer AND that prevent cancers from spreading, people who eat them have far less cancers and even less cancers that spread and cause pain and death!

Organic onions, leeks, green onions, red onions, and both deodorized garlic supplements and crushed raw garlic fit here.  Well used by a skilled cook, they can add enormously to flavor.  And, they are both enormously heart protective and as cancer preventive as cruciferous vegetables.

Other organic greens fit here.  Romaine lettuce has more nutrients and flavor than organic iceberg lettuce; but even organic iceberg lettuce will fill you up and provide your minimum intake of carbs without cutting the low carb fat loss effect.

Raw organic, tomatoes fit here.  Botanically they are a fruit.  But they are eaten as a vegetable and have almost no fructose.

Also, cooked and mashed or blended cooked tomatoes and all these other high carotene vegetables  provide the most bioavailable carotenes to you when you eat them with avocados or nuts or extra virgin olive oil.  For blended, cooked tomatoes this works better with thorough cooking.  For the others, their anti-cancer nutrients are best boosted by adding these oils to raw or lightly steamed nonstarchy vegetables.

Onions have more flavor and a different flavor when cooked over low heat than they do raw; but cooking them on low heat for a short time preserves more nutrients.

In part 5 next week we will cover:

d) Ensure that the bacteria in your gut aren’t making sure you gain and store fat.    

Stop depression 90 percent or more part 4.....

Today's post:  Tuesday, 2-21-2017

The drugs now given for depression don't work or barely work; they are as addictive as hard drugs; and they have recently found to help cause Alzheimer's disease.  Most doctors still know little else to try.  Some even think these drugs work; but they don’t.

But depression is a hardware and software problem of the brain.  

1.  We now know:  how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software; 

2. We now know how to fix the hardware;

a) We know what drugs directly harm the hardware and reliably cause depression.  So knowing never to take them even once and to stop them as fast as is safe to do so helps.  Knowing what to replace the drugs with instead also helps.

b) We know things that repair or replace nerves and brain cells and their connections. Successful talk therapy changes the part of the brain used and has this effect!  And, when people do the things that grow new brain cells enough to show on a brain scan, most cases of depression and many cases of PTSD ALSO show dramatic improvement

3.  We know a few things that make people feel better right away.  The best two are low tech and people can simply do them.  One high tech treatment and one drug have been shown to work right away but may not be available for many years yet.

So, most people get harmed by treatment when at the same time, we do know safe and effective ways that cure depression for over 90% of the people who use all the parts." 

Our first post and second one the following Tuesday and the third one on Tuesday last week had the details of 1. “how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software” and 2. “how to fix the hardware;”

THIS post has an expanded version of:

3.  We know a few things that make people feel better right away.  The best two are low tech and people can simply do them.  One high tech treatment and one drug have been shown to work right away but may not be available for many years yet.

The most powerful one is to be working on a plan to build a worthwhile life.  Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten who I learned this from.  But the therapist who began to use it found that it was extremely effective.  Once a client went through to process of creating the key parts of such a plan, they became far less depressed and their chances of stopping depression completely went way up!

That’s partly because having such a plan that you set and keep working on makes a key good thing in your life permanent.  That’s because you see yourself as building something that you can do and are doing.  So it helps you see yourself as competent and in control.  That’s because even if something goes wrong or some actions to build it fail, others may work when tried or you can overcome what went wrong by continuing to work to build it.

Note that this returns this to this that was in our posts on how to beat cravings for sweets and stop ingesting things that make you fat and sick:

“People who succeed at anything we now know take consistent action and keep doing it;

-- and they use what Reverend Bob Schuler called “experimental persistence”: They not only keep at things until they get the results they want, they take action and test things; they scrap the things that fail but learn from what happens, they look for new things to try and try them, they put in the time as a priority increasing their abilities and trying again. 

A new book describing this is called “Grit.”  “

Setting up to create this in your life is a way to get both parts of what the book Grit describes.

You have something that you care about that you persistently return to again and again no matter what else happens.

And, because you keep doing this and care about the results, you become able to try new methods and work very hard at things that will work or are working.  This is the second of the two methods that the author found are the components of Grit.

How do you create such a plan?

Many people find it difficult while others already have personal mission they already care about and have the key part of it done already.

So, if you don’t have that now, how do you create such a plan?

There’s two ways that work and doing first one and then the other is very effective:

*People who find themselves drawing a blank on what to set as the goals of the worthwhile life research found CAN list things that they DON’T like and wish they could stop.

In fact, they can often list a dozen such things or more!

Then though the list may be shorter, most people can remember a few things that happened that they liked or tend to like the few times they do happen.

Most people can list at least one or two. And most people who list one or two often remember others when they revisit their list.

Of course at that point, you can make a list of things that you want to stop happening and a list of things you like that you want to happen more often.

Do that first.

That gives you some of the plan of the worthwhile life that you can build.

*The next step is from Peter Drucker and Tony Robbins.

   In his book, The Effective Executive, Drucker found that effective people—not just executives-–focused on contribution to some worthy goal.

What worthwhile thing are we working to achieve?  Am I doing all I can to make sure we achieve it?  What else do we need to do?  What else might help achieve that?

Drucker himself learned this from the pattern set by a nurse Bryan.  The hospital where Drucker learned it operated by what they called “Nurse Bryan’s Rule.”  Everyone in that hospital from orderlies to Nursing administrators went by it. 

It was a simple practice, every time they saw a patient or the patient’s records, they asked themselves:  “Are we doing all we can for this patient?”

They did this because of how extremely effective it was when Nurse Bryan used it.  Fewer patients on her floor died.  More patients recovered fully.  And most of her patients were able to go home sooner.

Tony Robbins found that people who were unable to set goals or find solutions when asked to found that when they were asked to think up what “might” work almost always could list several things that might work.

So, going over your list of things you want to stop happening and things you did like you want to happen more AND things you care about enough they might be something you could include in building a worthwhile life.

THAT will give you a list of things that might work!

Then decide which ones you like best or think most important.

Each step of this is doable.  And, almost everyone who gets this far feels better.

The second step is to find the steps that will achieve these things or increase them or remove things that block them.

THAT does take work.  So the next step is to boost your ability to do that work.

So, our next step in this series is the things you can do that work even faster to give you that ability AND make you feel better immediately.

Many of them are quite easy to do.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

My Monthly Fatloss Report.....

Today's post:  Monday, 2-20-2017

A.  Here's the key news:

1.  Since last month I gained 7 pounds exactly

I gained a half inch on my chest; I lost a quarter inch off my waist; & I gained a half inch on my hips.

Since I was sick but had a fever and a LOT of nose blowing and coughing up junk so much each day I may have lost fat to be at 157.4 last month.  (The fever, the nose blowing so often, and the coughing up vigorously to clear the gunk out of my chest both likely burned extra calories.)

And, since I had to cut way back on strength training and vigorous cardio too, I also may have lost muscle to be at 157.4 last month.

Whichever one it was -- or if it was both last time, this time it was good news indeed to gain on the scale and lose a bit on my waist measurement!!

2.  I was able to lose weight and lose inches not once but twice with a 5 day fast.  But both times the weight and inches came back when I began my normal eating again.

In my case, there were three likely reasons for this:

*Stress

*Lack of muscle mass

*A few too little calories burned per week from my current set of exercises.

*Stress.  I have that triple because without having a reliable increased income, I owe more money than is wise and don’t yet have a way to turn off that threat.  Second, I have some help but not yet enough to relieve this stress.  Third, my body tends to over-react to threat and not recover after it’s been stopped. (This over-reaction does get better when I have enough money to relieve the financial threat.  It does get better when I have help.  So the first step is to do the first two things.  Once I have those, there are some ways now that I can use to turn off this third problem for future temporary stress.)

Long ago I found a study on Medical News Today that found that stress tends to lock down fat and resist its removal.  Fasting may remove the lock but only if the stress is gone.  This may mean in my case that when I fast, it removes less fat.

I just found out that stress ALSO tends to add as much as 11 pounds a year by reducing the calories you burn if you are always under stress.

Stress directly reduces the calories y 213ou burn even if you avoid comfort foods!!

Somehow I saw this from a study written up by Women's Health initially:

"....new research sheds some light on how exactly anxiety may lead to weight gain: Women burn fewer calories in the 24 hours following stressful events, according to a new study from the journal Biological Psychiatry.  

For the study, researchers from Ohio State University interviewed 58 healthy women about the stressors they'd experienced in the previous 24 hours, then served them a high-fat meal that included eggs, turkey sausage, biscuits, and gravy (the meal came to 930 calories and 60 grams of fat). 

Afterward, researchers tested the women's metabolic responses -- how quickly they burned calories and fat -- for the next seven hours.

Although all of the women simply rested after eating, those who struggled with stressors the previous day expended significantly less metabolic energy than those who reported no stress; on average, they burned 104 fewer calories. 

At this rate, they could gain 11 extra pounds per year without changing any other diet and exercise habits.

Why? In addition to slower post-meal energy expenditure, women who reported more stressors also experienced lower fat oxidation and higher insulin production. The less fat your body oxidizes, the more fat you store and the higher your risk is for obesity; high insulin levels also enhance fat storage."

This suggests that, in my case, fasting may remove fat but will do so only if I turn down my stress levels.  And, it may do so better than now once I can add a way to turn off temporary stress faster once it’s gone.

*Lack of muscle mass.  When I was doing heavy weight lifting with barbells once a week at the gym AND running a total of 7 fast miles in four parts, I weighed 161 pounds – 3.4 pounds LESS than now; and my waist was about 5 inches smaller.

Once I get back to a gym with the heavy barbells even once a week I will have enough calories burned by regaining at least some of the muscle I had then that I believe I’ll regain less of any weight and fat I remove when fasting.

*It’s likely that adding that hour a week of heavy strength training will increase my calories burned by 400 calories a week.  By training hard during that hour my body may burn as much as another 200 calories a week to power the recovery of my muscles from the work.

Conclusion:

For now, focusing on adding the income and the team of people to help create it will be my focus because it will reduce my excess stress and enable me to resume working out in the gym.

So, these reports will be focused on a summary of that and my work to add muscle until it looks likely that fasting will remove fat for me that stays off afterwards.

Boost your metabolism to lose fat, part 3.....

Today's post:  Thursday, 2-16-2017

In some ways there are two basics for permanent fat loss.

1.  Stop routinely ingesting the things that reliably fatten you.

Then you stop making the problem worse!

2.  Boost your metabolism so you burn more calories twenty-four hours a day.

Over time that will remove your excess fat.

People who succeed at anything we now know take consistent action and keep doing it;
-- and they use what Reverend Bob Schuler called "experimental persistence": They not only keep at things until they get the results they want, they take action and test things; they scrap the things that fail but learn from what happens, they look for new things to try and try them, they put in the time as a priority increasing their abilities and trying again.

A new book describing this is called "Grit."

Use that on these two actions and you can lose fat and keep it off!

The post this time is, Part 3 of:

2.  Boost your metabolism so you burn more calories twenty-four hours a day.

Over time that will remove your excess fat.

There are four ways to do that:

a) Increase your muscle mass and healthy bone mass. AND, do the things that prevent losing them.  (Part 2 last week had those methods.)

b) Make sure your thyroid levels which control your metabolism are high enough to give you energy and burn fat and NOT low enough to do the reverse.

AND, make sure your mitochondria that are the power centers for each of your cells that supply their energy remain plentiful and healthy. This ALSO slows aging; and the way that MSG & its cousins reliably fatten apparently is to do the reverse!

c)  Eat the foods that actually have tested to enable you to eat more calories and food -- yet be lighter AND less fat!  (There ARE some; and eating them is a key to losing fat you keep off because you can do it without excess hunger.)

d) Ensure that the bacteria in your gut aren't making sure you gain and store fat.

(Research shows that if you import otherwise healthy gut bacteria to cure the dangerous C. Difficile infection but do so from a fat person, these gut bacteria then make YOU fat.

And, more recent research has found that when you lose fat even without triggering the low energy plus increase in hunger of the famine response by using calorie cut backs only some days each week or by properly done fasting, a separate genetic program causes those same bacteria to increase unless it's blocked.)

 Here they are:

a) Increase your muscle mass and healthy bone mass. AND, do the things that prevent losing them.

Last week in part 2 we covered those exact things.  Many people can use those methods to boost their metabolism and gain many other health benefits.

AND people who do NOT do them have their metabolism go DOWN.  That causes some fat gain every year in people who don't use them.

This week we begin to cover these:

b) Make sure your thyroid levels which control your metabolism are high enough to give you energy and burn fat and NOT low enough to do the reverse.

AND, make sure your mitochondria that are the power centers for each of your cells that supply their energy remain plentiful and healthy. This ALSO slows aging; and the way that MSG & its cousins reliably fatten apparently is to do the reverse!

Thyroid levels can fatten you if they are low or drop to a lower level.

*One of the two ways MSG fattens is that it harms your thyroid and reduces its output.  The longer you ingest it and the more foods you eat often that contain it the more likely this becomes.

The good news is that almost all the foods that contain MSG are also fattening or harmful.  So when you stop them all, you both turn off other foods that have it and are fattening AND stop having MSG cut your metabolism.

*In the early stages of menopause and just before it, women have a drop in their metabolism.  Unfortunately, it's also about when the thyroid reduction from MSG ingestion kicks in.

This can prevent fat loss if you are doing a lot of things right.  And, women who aren't doing the other things to lose fat and prevent gaining it, often gain fat rather quickly during this time.

*Worse, MSG boosts chronic inflammation.  When women who have been taking in a lot of MSG or who keep doing it, they have more hot flashes and night sweats and insomnia.

At the same time, the process itself boosts chronic inflammation which boosts their risk of heart attacks and strokes and osteoarthritis and cancers and Alzheimer's disease.

But women who completely avoid MSG and do all of the things that reduce inflammation that also includes stopping many fattening foods, can slash hot flashes and night sweats and insomnia - AND sharply reduce all those health risks.

*The even better news is that there is evidence that women who cut inflammation in all these ways can safely take an estrogen replacement.  This is even more likely I believe if they use bioidentical estrogen.

As we've posted that reduces bone loss which helps maintain metabolism.  AND, when combined with the very low chronic inflammation that further reduces hot flashes and night sweats and insomnia.  For some women this also helps them with love making.  At the very least it helps prevent pain from it.

*MSG also reduces your metabolism directly!  People who ingest MSG and take in the same foods and calories as people who do not get heavier and fatter.

The reason for this is that MSG apparently harms your mitochondria which are the power centers in each of your cells that deliver their energy!  That directly lowers your metabolism too!

*In addition to NOT eating the fast foods and processed foods that are loaded with MSG, to avoid it you have to read labels on foods, particularly condiments.

When you do this, you may be astonished as I was to find not only high fructose corn syrup in many but the very large percentage that list "spices" or even "organic spices" on the label.

(To make MSG even from organic ingredients, as many steps and solvents are used to do so it's comparable to making gasoline from crude oil.  The end result is NOT what people think of as organic!)

Since MSG makers know people work to avoid it, they deliberately hide it by doing this!

For example, mustard should be a health food; and it has zero calories and very little salt!

But nearly every mustard in mainstream chain stores DOES list "spices" on the label.

Whole Foods and some healthfood stores carry Organicville Yellow Mustard.  It does not list "spices" because it has no MSG.  It has no need of it.  The mustard seed itself is spicy enough!

*Taking 1,000 mg a day of Tyrosine just after you get up (two capsules of 500 mg does this) was found to help soldiers and pilots and special forces people like Navy Seals to be more stress resistant and resilient.  That's primarily because it helps your body boost its dopamine levels.

[I began taking it when I first heard this and have taken it ever since.]

AND your body uses tyrosine to make thyroid hormone!  So taking this much ensures your body has this supply to use to do that.

*Some people are allergic to iodine.  But it also is essential for your body to have abundant iodine to make enough thyroid hormone to ensure your metabolism stays high.

Some people eat enough foods to have plenty, particularly if they get the 150 mcg of iodine standard in most multivitamin plus mineral supplements.

But other people who don't have those food sources or who need more iodine to make enough thyroid hormone will make enough less thyroid to have low metabolism need more iodine than that.

I found a great way to fix this:  Whole Foods Market carries a Kelp supplement.  Each capsule has the many minerals you need tiny amounts of AND about 400 mg of iodine!

So by taking their daily multivitamin plus mineral tablet with 150 mcg of iodine and the kelp capsule with 400 mcg, I get at least 550 mcg a day of iodine.

*I found out recently that 200 mcg of selenium a day helps your body turn the inactive form of thyroid into the form that keeps your metabolism high. [Solaray makes that exact amount of selenium per capsule.]

Some multivitamin plus mineral tablets have 50 mcg of selenium.

But your body only uses the amount that it can process from what you ingest.  This form of selenium is not very effective for some people.

There is a very bioavailable form of selenium however.  You can get plain raw Brazil nuts in bulk at Whole Foods.  And each Brazil nut has about 50 mcg of selenium.

By eating five to seven Brazil nut a week, you get the best blood levels of selenium.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Do NOT take more selenium than this.  Higher amounts are less usable for its benefits AND neurotoxic!

*Most people who do not make an extra effort to fix it are not just deficient in magnesium but severely deficient.

This is very dangerous for your heart.  One cardiologist wrote in Medscape that in his opinion, the sudden cardiac death of Carrie Fisher was likely caused by severe magnesium deficiency.

He also said that because most people who do not make an extra effort to fix it are severely deficient in magnesium, it should become a policy that everyone at least take 400mg a day of magnesium to prevent this.  He takes 400 mg a day of magnesium citrate personally.

I've been taking more magnesium than that to minimize my high blood pressure and keep my bones strong which enough magnesium is also essential to do.  [In my case it's imperative because I take acid reflux drugs - now Zantac.]

Enough magnesium has also been shown to prevent migraines and all other kinds of headaches!

So when I saw an article by Dr Al Sears to that effect, I read it only to find that getting enough magnesium ALSO ensures your body makes enough of the active form of thyroid hormone to keep your metabolism up!

"When patients come to me complaining of migraines, I do something they don't expect

I test their thyroid levels. Most doctors would never think of that at all. But let me explain why it makes sense.

Over the years, I've found that migraines and hypothyroidism go hand in hand.

And now a new study proves what I've seen in my own practice.2:

For 20 years, researchers studied 8,412 residents of a small town in Ohio. They found that people with frequent headaches had a 21% higher risk of hypothyroidism.

And people with migraines had a 41% increased risk.

Hypothyroidism occurs when the body can't make enough thyroid hormone. It can cause mood swings, weight gain, hair loss, fatigue and constipation.

Most doctors prescribe synthroid or similar drugs for low thyroid. But I don't treat my patients with chemical hormones. Natural hormones are safer and less expensive.

I've found that addressing my patients' hypothyroidism also helps with their migraines.

But even before trying natural hormones, there's something else I recommend first. I advise many of my patients to take a simple and natural thyroid booster that also relieves migraines.

It's a magic little mineral called magnesium. Here's why it's so important for your thyroid…

The thyroid is a small, butterfly-shaped gland in the front of your neck. It produces hormones that drive the metabolic rate of every cell in your body.

Magnesium helps you make more of the T4 hormone in the thyroid. Without it, many of the enzymes that make thyroid hormone could not function at all.

This important nutrient [magnesium] also helps convert the inactive T4 hormone into the active T3 form.

This is critical because the metabolism of your cells is boosted by T3, not inactive T4.

Magnesium also helps avoid migraines. Studies show that migraine sufferers have low blood levels of this mineral.3

Other research shows that taking 500 mg of magnesium for just 12 weeks can vastly improve the frequency and severity of migraines.4

To boost your magnesium levels, start with your food. Add green leafy veggies, tree nuts, yogurt, berries, halibut, avocado, bananas, and raisins to your diet.

Supplements are also widely available. Look for magnesium that is bound to citrate, malate or aspartate. Take it with vitamin B6. It will increase the amount of magnesium that accumulates in your cells.

Also:

Some people have trouble absorbing magnesium from pills. If you eat a high fiber diet, for example, your body doesn't absorb as much magnesium. Also, taking diuretics, antibiotics, or proton pump inhibitors for acid reflux all interfere with magnesium absorption."

[Minimizing diuretics and H2 blockers and antibiotics and NOT taking proton pump inhibitors, which are harmful, DOES help with this some.

Eating heavy on foods high in magnesium; taking over 600 mg a day of magnesium in divided doses; taking two kinds magnesium citrate and magnesium asporotate each help with this.

Magnesium threonate may also work when the others do not AND it may work for migraines best because it enters the brain & spinal fluid when other kinds do NOT:

"In pre-clinical models, the magnesium L-threonate .... boosted magnesium levels in spinal fluid by an impressive 15% compared to no increase with conventional magnesium."  [Life Extension product quote.]  

** The other way to boost your metabolism and prevent it from dropping is to maximize the health and number of your mitochondria.

Your metabolism is the summary of all the energy generated by your cells.  In each of your cells the component that generates its energy and therefore yours is the mitochondria.

[This next section is from the post I did two days ago about how to stop being depressed.

In that section I cover how to protect yourself substantially better from strokes and heart attacks than the tiny protection some people get from statin drugs.

I repeat the section on mitochondria from it here because statin drugs directly harm them and lower your energy and metabolism.

We list what to do to increase the health and number of your mitochondria.  This not only boosts your metabolism and keeps it from going down, it also is an anti-aging effect!]

**I ran across this sobering description of how taking statins can depress you directly:

"In a recent study, researchers at the University of Illinois looked at the effects of statins on mice.
They found that animals on statins definitely had lower cholesterol.

But they also moved less. And when they did move, mice on statins didn't go as far.
They were less fit, lost more muscle strength, and got tired faster.

And at the cellular level, they didn't develop the muscle cells that help produce energy more efficiently.

In short, statins stopped the desire to exercise and the benefits of exercise."

[This is caused directly by statin drugs harming and turning off your mitochondria!]

THAT is depressing even if you think well.  Tired all the time.  Easy to run out of energy.

Since there are MUCH more effective ways to protect your heart, causing depression by taking statin drugs the data show are a very bad idea, particularly if you want to stop being depressed.

AND, since vigorous exercise, if only for 7 to 10 minutes a day - almost every day of every week -- releases the nerve and brain cell growth hormone BDNF that repairs your hardware and restores full access to your hippocampus where you store your memories is the most important way to repair your brain's hardware, like beta blockers, taking statins prevents the repairs!

*Here's more on repairing your hardware that works well if you stay off of beta blockers and statin drugs.

Taking the omega 3 DHA as a supplement and eating it in wild caught fish high in omega 3 such as salmon and sardines and others helps release BDNF.

And, doing both the vigorous exercise AND getting the DHA releases more BDNF.

That is well established.  Adding the herbal supplement bacopa also is thought to add to this effect.

(Note that doing this combination of vigorous exercise and DHA when combined with eating NO wheat and the rest of the low inflammation lifestyle has been shown to be very heart protective.

So doing this set of things, the vigorous exercise, the DHA, and eating no wheat does TWO things.  You make abundant nerve and brain cell repairs and reduce any depression damage was causing you before AND you get better heart protection than statin drugs too!)

Scientists have done brain scans in people with PTSD and depression and found that when these repairs are there, the PTSD is less and the depression is often gone!

These techniques are the most important ones to repair your brain's hardware. They can restore your brain's neural net and white matter that fully connects you to your memories.

But what about the other half of the hardware repair, turning up your brain's energy and your feeling of energy and energy reserves?

To be less depressed you want to find it easy to move, feel up to doing things, and have a deep energy reserve.

Not taking beta blockers is clear enough.  You are unable to boost blood flow to your brain because your heart's control that enables that is shut down.

Statin drugs turning those things off is much more direct.  EACH cell in your body, particularly your heart and brain cells, has energy centers called mitochondria.

Statin drugs badly deplete the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 that boosts the mitochondria's energy production and helps keep the mitochondria healthy.

So, to not be depressed, NOT taking statins is imperative.  But there is another problem with ubiquinol.  As you get older, your body converts less of your food to CoQ10 and its ubiquinol form.

Vigorous exercise overcomes this by releasing stem cells that boost your mitochondria directly.

BUT, we now know that taking the supplement, ubiquinol, can resupply this mitochondria fuel.

Doing so is also heart protective since ubiquinol also boosts the mitochondria in the heart.

[I take 100 mg of Jarrow Ubiquinol before breakfast and another before lunch.  And I do the vigorous exercise almost every day also.]

If you also lose mitochondria as you get older, would it also help to grow new ones?

Oh Yes!  Vigorous exercise has been shown to release stem cells that grow new mitochondria.

And, UC Davis researchers found that a food component in kiwi fruit and some other foods called PQQ not only grows new mitochondria it does triage on sick ones.

When you take PQQ your body makes new mitochondria!  AND PQQ restores slightly sick ones to health and PQQ causes very sick or dead and senescent mitochondria to undergo aptosis allowing your body to remove them!

[I take 20 mg a day of Jarrow PQQ to ensure I have that protection.]

In part 4 next week we cover:

c)  Eat the foods that actually have tested to enable you to eat more calories and food -- yet be lighter AND less fat!  (There ARE some; and eating them is a key to losing fat you keep off because you can do it without excess hunger.)