The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

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The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

By Dr. Mercola

It’s long been known that calorie restriction can increase the lifespan of certain animals. More recent studies suggest that intermittent fasting can provide the same health benefits as constant calorie restriction, which may be helpful for those who cannot successfully reduce their everyday calorie intake. “Undernutrition without malnutrition” is the only experimental approach that consistently improves survival in animals with cancer, and extends overall lifespan by about 30 percent.

Both intermittent fasting and continuous calorie restriction have been shown to produce weight loss and improve metabolic disease risk markers. However, intermittent fasting tends to be slightly more effective for reversing insulin resistance. Besides turning you into an efficient fat burner, intermittent fasting can boost your human growth hormone production (aka HGH, the “fitness hormone”) by as much as 1,200 percent for women and 2,000 percent for men.

Intermittent fasting can also improve your brain function by boosting your production of a protein called  brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which protects your brain from the changes associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and  helps prevent neuromuscular degradation.

 

Metabolism Boosting Tips to Optimize Your Weight

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Some Great Tips Here:

By Dr. Mercola

Do you feel like your metabolism is stuck in first gear? Is your body refusing to let go of that stubborn extra body fat, in spite of making good dietary choices and exercising? Fear not—there are a few simple tricks you can try that are backed by solid nutrition science.Your lifestyle can be “tweaked” in a variety of ways, from what you eat to when you eat, how and when you exercise, and other daily habits such as sleephygiene and stress management. ALL of these play a role in your metabolism

People today move much less and consume more inflammatory foods than they did hundreds and thousands of years ago, and this takes a toll on your metabolism.

A recent article in Time1 makes some excellent metabolism-boosting suggestions, and we will take a look at several of these in detail. But first, let’s examine one of the most common causes of metabolic sluggishness: chronic inflammation.If Your Metabolic Engine Has Stalled, It Could Be Inflammation

If your metabolism is stalled

—or stuck in reverse—it would be helpful to look at what might be keeping your body in a state of low-level inflammation. It’s well established that weight gain is often a sign of chronic low-level inflammation, and frequently this is related to the foods you are eating.

Food sensitivities can lead you down the road toward insulin and leptin resistance and can seriously hamper your metabolism.2 When you have a food sensitivity or allergy, your body feels “attacked” by a food rather than nourished by it.

Inflammatory molecules are then produced and circulated to protect you from your body’s perceived threat, causing you to decrease insulin and leptin sensitivity. Your body is under stress so it uses its resources differently. This is typically accompanied by a gut dysbiosis, an imbalance in the microorganisms in your digestive tract.

In addition to food allergies and sensitivities, inflammation can be caused by a number of different factors, including poor sleep, environmental toxins, stress, and other factors. Even overexercising may stall your metabolism by triggering inflammation, pain, water retention, etc.

The foods most likely to be pro-inflammatory are junk foods and highly processed foods, grains, foods high in sugar (especially fructose), and GMOs. For help with dietary strategies, please refer to my Optimized Nutrition Plan. However, many people have food sensitivities to what would normally be consideredhealthy foods, such as gluten, nuts, and dairy products.

It’s important to not rule out the possibility that you may be having an unhealthy reaction to a “healthy” food. These food sensitivities can be very subtle, so they can sometimes be challenging to identify, requiring some trial and error.

Whey Protein Fuels Muscle Growth and Repair

The featured article suggests that whey protein may be effective for kicking up your metabolism, and I couldn’t agree more. According to Paul Arciero, a professor in the Health and Exercise Sciences department at Skidmore College:

“Whey protein increases calorie burn and fat utilization, helps the body maintain muscle, and triggers the brain to feel full.”

Protein in general has a tendency to rev up your metabolic engine due to its thermogenic effects—meaning, it makes your body produce more heat and in turn, burn more calories—but whey is particularly effective for this.

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that fat oxidation and thermogenic effects are greater with whey than with soy or casein.3

Consuming a high-quality, rapidly absorbed, and easily assimilated whey protein concentrate, not isolate within about 30 minutes of resistance training may maximally stimulate muscle building in young healthy individuals, but this is equally important, if not more so, for the elderly.

People tend to lose muscle mass as they age. The leaner you are, the better your metabolism will be, regardless of your age. There is only about a two-hour window after exercise for optimal muscle repair and growth, and supplying your muscles with the right food at this time is essential—and whey is among the best.

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Breathing Away Depression

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This is what why we always start and our workouts with the “Return to breath”

Breathing Away Depression

BY Rolf Sovik ON December 22, 2014

 

Few of us are completely untouched by depression. And when our mood is upended, the loss of hope and confidence can be almost paralyzing. Work accumulates. We smile and interact in familiar ways, but are not really engaged. We avoid calling friends, withdraw from social settings. And as time passes we find ourselves increasingly cut off from the sources of energy that normally sustain us.

Fortunately, most of us have recovery strategies for times when moods turn sour and energy wanes. We listen to our favorite music and spend time reading, or drawing, or whatever refreshes us. Often there is someone we can talk to. We exercise, take walks, or pray. For some, medication may also be a necessary part of mending. All these things can help—and it is important to keep every option open.

The meditative practices of yoga offer a simple and nurturing technique that you can add to your repertoire—the practice of relaxed breath awareness. A powerful tool for preventing the onset of depressed moods in the first place, breath awareness restores energy during acute phases of depression, lightens your emotional load, and creates needed distance from gloomy thoughts. And it complements other healing strategies by providing an underpinning of relaxation and emotional stability. So when low moods threaten to take the joy from life, breath awareness provides a consistent and ever-available inner focus that will help you make the journey back to health.

Three Dimensions of Life

How can the awareness of breathing be so useful? The importance of breathing is accented in a story from the Chandogya Upanishad. There, the eyes, ears, mind, and breath are found arguing about their relative importance. The eyes and ears, representing the body, claim that they are the most indispensable for life. But in turn, the mind and the breath argue their own cases. To resolve the issue each agrees to vacate the body for one year, leaving the others to manage without it. At the end of four years, when each aspect of the self has returned, a winner will be declared. One by one the eyes, the ears, and the mind depart but even through blindness, loss of hearing, and a coma-like existence, life continues. Then the breath begins to leave. Suddenly, all the remaining functions are uprooted, as if a strong horse, hooves bound with ropes, was tearing its fetters from the ground. Awestruck, the body and mind beg the breath to return and humbly accept it as supreme.

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Caffeine – Ally Or Foe?

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By park jeery
Posted Tuesday, November 18, 2014 at 01:54pm EST
Keywords: CAFFEINE – ALLY OR FOE?

For most of us, the best part of our morning is that cup of steaming coffee we sip. But is this cup of java actually good for us? We show you how to decide where you fall in caffeine scale.

Caffeine for a healthier brain

We usually drink coffee when we want re-energise at work place especially in the gloomy afternoon. Caffeine on account of its stimulant effect on the central nervous system both, raises metabolism as well as increases the oxidation of fatty acids. It not only keeps you awake but also makes you sharper, more efficient and active.

Coffee to the rescue

An alcohol binge often ends with you being drunk which in turn leads to a bad hangover. Do this on a regular basis and you will have to deal with problems like memory loss, drowsiness, as well as liver and kidney failure. If you consume alcohol often, then ensure that you have a cup a cup of coffee a day, which reduces your chances of developing liver cirrhosis (disease caused by excessive alcohol consumption that could lead to liver failure and cancer) by 20 per cent.

Glowing skin

Coffee can also be used to get glowing skin. Pamper yourself with a coffee grounds facial. You need:

2 tablespoons freshly ground coffee

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon honey

Massage this chocolate-coffee mask to your skin in the morning. Allow to dry for 15-20 minutes then rinse it off. This mask will tighten pores, add moisture to your skin and remove oil and also reduce puffiness and swelling.

If you don’t have time to whip up this facial then simply take some coffee grounds and directly apply on your face. Scrub it gently on your dull skin for five minutes. For a more intensive treatment, add sugar and some olive oil which will moisturise your skin.

Emotionally lethargic

Caffeine certainly has phenomenal benefits but it also carries a side-effect when you intake more than 500 – 600 milligrams per day. One shouldn’t increase the consumption of coffee because it will energise you but it doesn’t let your body rest and leads to you experiencing mood-swings, and feeling restless and emotionally drained.

Sleep deprivation

The consumption of coffee will meddle with your sleep especially if you’re drinking this late evening. People claim that coffee doesn’t affect on them but that’s even worse because it signifies that you’re already having too much coffee and your body is building resistance towards it. Too much coffee causes insomnia and overall leads to a bad night’s sleep!

Cut back slowly

If you want to reduce your coffee intake, then gradually go from consuming 500 mg to 100 mg of caffeine as regular consumption can make you addicted to it and a sudden withdrawal can cause headaches, fatigue and decreased alertness.

Source of Article

http://www.bebeautiful.in