Exactly How To Support The 7 Key Areas Of Your Body For Thriving Health
Our bodies are made up of brilliant biochemistry. Every system works together in unison to ensure you are healthy. But as I’ve seen in my telehealth functional medicine clinic, things can go awry and contribute to a slew of health problems.
Ultimately, there are a few key areas of the body that need our attention the most when it comes to our health. Let’s take a look at these areas and what we can do if we start to experience health problems.
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1. Brain
Brain problems are growing by leaps and bounds and can manifest in multiple different brain health problems:
- ADHD
- Anxiety
- Autism
- Brain fog
- Chronic fatigue (HPA-axis dysfunction)
- Dementia (Alzheimer’s)
- Depression
- Memory problems
- Parkinson’s
- PTSD
….and the list goes on. While there are many potential triggers for these problems, it often goes back to inflammation. In fact, a whole area of medical research known as “the cytokine model of cognitive function” is dedicated to researching how inflammation of the brain is correlated with brain problems caused by damage to the blood-brain barrier and increased autoimmune activity.
Inflammation and other triggers can also impact neurotransmitter function that plays a role in a lot of these brain problems. Thankfully, research has shown that both inflammation and neurotransmitter function can be improved through dietary and lifestyle changes as well as supplementation.
What can help:
The Magnesium: Magnesium is necessary for healthy neurotransmitter function. But most over-the-counter magnesium has poor bioavailability. Magnesium is formulated with Albion chelated magnesium plus MagteinTM (magnesium L-threonate), since it is the only form of magnesium proven in animal studies to cross the blood-brain barrier.
The Curcumin: Target stress at the source by adding in a targeted curcumin supplement proven to drive down inflammatory pathways in the body. You can cook with turmeric which contains the anti-inflammatory compound curcumin, but a supplement can help calm chronic inflammation quicker.
2. Hormones
Your hormones are the chemical messengers of your body. If one is out of balance, chances are the rest are as well. This can lead to symptoms like low libido, acne, brain fog, thinning hair, weight gain, and more.
One of the biggest hormone imbalances I see is adrenal fatigue. Our adrenal glands secret several hormones, and one of them is cortisol, your body’s primary stress hormone. Adrenal fatigue happens when there’s an imbalance in this cortisol rhythm: Cortisol is high when it should be low, low when it should be high, or always high or always low. Adrenal fatigue is really a dysfunction of your brain’s communication with your adrenals – not the adrenal glands themselves. Because adrenal fatigue is mainly a brain stress problem, the functional medicine solution focuses on minimizing chronic stressors.
What can help:
The Brain-Adrenal Balancer: Rebalancing your hormones and lowering stress goes beyond just taking a supplement and includes making the effort to change your daily habits. But that’s often easier said than done and it can take time for hormones to go back to normal. The Brain-Adrenal Balancer offers targeted support with hormone supporting adaptogens that help the overstressed body and mind work toward their normal state of balance and resolve many of the biochemical changes that occur as a result of repeated, frequent exposure to stressors and cortisol.
The Omega+: What many people don’t realize is that In order to restore hormone balance, you need an adequate amount of healthy fats for healthy hormone production. However, since many people don’t eat enough healthy fats from high-quality food sources, a supplement like The Omega+ can help which has a three times greater EPA+DHA absorption rate than an equivalent dose of other leading fish oils.
3. Detoxification system
Your body’s detoxification system (your liver, pancreas, gallbladder, and digestive system) is responsible for filtering out toxins from the food you eat and environmental stressors. But when your liver is overloaded with toxins because it can’t process them fast enough, this creates a cascade of systemic chronic inflammation in your body, which further affects your liver’s ability to rid itself of these toxins.
It becomes a vicious cycle: toxins build up, the body becomes more inflamed, detoxification is inhibited, more toxins build up, inflammation increases, and on and on. When this happens, inflammation runs rampant and can lead to multiple different autoimmune-inflammatory health problems.
The only way to break the cycle is to reduce your toxin exposure and support your liver’s natural ability to detox, allowing the liver to restore itself and catch up with the detoxification workload.
What can help:
The Detoxer: In addition to minimizing your toxin exposure, certain herbs and vitamins have been shown to support your body’s own detoxification process while you are working on cleansing your body of toxin buildup. Combining liver-supporting milk thistle and activated B vitamins, The Detoxer is formulated to support your body’s natural ability to detox by facilitating optimal function of both phase I and phase II of the detoxification process.
The Methylator: Methylation is a biochemical process that happens a billion times every second in your body and plays a role in your detoxification process. B vitamins act as fuel for methylation but few people get enough from their diets. The Methylator combines 5 bioactive forms of B vitamins for enhanced bioavailability and methylation support.
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4. Gut
As Hippocrates said “All disease begins in the gut.” The trillions of microbes and colonies located in your microbiome are the manufacturers and managers of how you look, feel, and think. It makes up 70-80% of your immune system and produces a large amount of your “happy” neurotransmitter serotonin. (1)
When your microbiome is healthy your health is likely to be quite good. However, many lifestyle behaviors, toxic exposures, and dietary choices can compromise gut health and lead to many downstream health issues from depression to autoimmune conditions.
What can help:
The Probiotic: The first step in restoring your gut health is making sure your microbiome contains more beneficial bacteria instead of problematic bacterial strains. With 100 billion CFUs per capsule, The Probiotic contains four strains of beneficial bacteria, including the extensively studied HN019 strain of Bifidobacterium lactis. This can be extremely helpful when you first start your gut healing journey since it is a simple way to make a big difference.
5. Inflammation
Inflammation is an important bodily process that, when triggered by factors like an unhealthy lifestyle, stress, and toxic exposures, can spin out of control. When inflammation is allowed to run wild, it can damage the body by creating too many pro-inflammatory cells and molecules, such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF), interleukins (ILs), nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB), prostaglandins, and free radicals. Having too many of these pesky pro-inflammatory substances being produced can cause damage to the body, leading to inflammation-related health issues and conditions, such as autoimmune disease.
The problem is many of us don’t realize our inflammation levels are out of control until we start noticing health problems. That’s why it is so important to continually support healthy inflammation levels with our lifestyle and dietary choices.
What can help:
The Curcumin: Curcumin has been proven to lower inflammation in multiple inflammatory health problems from weight loss resistance (2) to autoimmune disease. (3) When you are dealing with chronic inflammation, a supplement like The Curcumin can help fight inflammation more aggressively with it’s extensively studied form of curcumin - BCM-95® - for its proven efficacy and enhanced bioavailability without additives.
6. Cellular health
Considered “the building blocks of life”, every one of your 37.2 trillion cells come together to make up various areas of your body including your muscles, organs, bones, and skin. They are responsible for taking in nutrients, converting nutrients into energy, keeping all systems of your body properly functioning, and skin looking youthful. However, cellular health is often overlooked.
Needless to say, if your cells aren’t healthy, you won’t be either!
What can help:
The Antioxidant: Antioxidants are compounds found in fruits and vegetables that inhibit oxidation from outside triggers like toxins, poor diet, stress, excessive sun exposure that can damage your cells. Since most people don’t get enough antioxidants from food, The Antioxidant contains concentrated whole-fruit extracts from all 6 extensively studied antioxidant-rich fruits - blueberry, grape, pomegranate, cranberry, chokeberry, mangosteen, goji berry, bilberry, and apple.
7. Immunity
No other vitamin can hold a candle to vitamin D when it comes to importance and influence on health, including your immune system. In fact, low levels of vitamin D are associated with autoimmune conditions such as MS (4) and Parkinson’s. (5)
Vitamin K2 is one of the most common nutrient deficiencies in the Western diet, but it is essential for controlling inflammation and regulating your immune system. One study in the Journal of Neuroimmunology found that vitamin K2 was effective at inhibiting the pro-inflammatory iNOS in the spinal cord and the brain immune system in rats that had multiple sclerosis symptoms. (6)
Taking vitamin K2 and vitamin D together will not only help boost your immunity but it will also help make vitamin D more bioavailable to your body!
What can help:
The D3-K2: Unlike other synthetic forms of vitamin K The D3-K2 contains MK-7 as Vitamk7™, a naturally derived and solvent-free vitamin K2 that has been obtained through a patent-granted biofermentation process of Bacillus subtilis natto cultures.
The Probiotic: Since so much of your immune system is located in your gut facilitating a healthy microbiome balance is going to be your first defense against any sickness. The Probiotic contains 100 billion CFUs of beneficial bacteria in gastro-resistant capsules to ensure a more targeted release.
The Takeaway
Ultimately, you need every one of these systems functioning optimally for thriving health. While there are a lot of steps you can take in terms of diet and lifestyle changes, sometimes supplementation is necessary to help take your healing journey to the next level.
That’s why for a limited time, I’m offering 15% off The Collection Bundle so you can take advantage of all 9 of these personally curated supplements!
From now until October 16th, use the code WELL at checkout for 15% off The Collection Bundle!
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References:
- Yano, Jessica M et al. “Indigenous bacteria from the gut microbiota regulate host serotonin biosynthesis.” Cell vol. 161,2 (2015): 264-76. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.047
- Li, Jian-Mei et al. “Curcumin inhibits hepatic protein-tyrosine phosphatase 1B and prevents hypertriglyceridemia and hepatic steatosis in fructose-fed rats.” Hepatology (Baltimore, Md.) vol. 51,5 (2010): 1555-66. doi:10.1002/hep.23524
- Bright, John J. “Curcumin and autoimmune disease.” Advances in experimental medicine and biology vol. 595 (2007): 425-51. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-46401-5_19
- Simpson, Steve Jr et al. “Higher 25-hydroxyvitamin D is associated with lower relapse risk in multiple sclerosis.” Annals of neurology vol. 68,2 (2010): 193-203. doi:10.1002/ana.22043
- Knekt, Paul et al. “Serum vitamin D and the risk of Parkinson disease.” Archives of neurology vol. 67,7 (2010): 808-11. doi:10.1001/archneurol.2010.120
- Moriya, Masayuki et al. “Vitamin K2 ameliorates experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis in Lewis rats.” Journal of neuroimmunology vol. 170,1-2 (2005): 11-20. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroim.2005.08.001
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BY DR. WILL COLE
Dr. Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC is a leading functional medicine expert who consults people around the globe, starting one of the first functional medicine telehealth centers in the world. Named one of the top 50 functional and integrative doctors in the nation, Dr. Will Cole provides a functional medicine approach for thyroid issues, autoimmune conditions, hormonal imbalances, digestive disorders, and brain problems. He is the host of the popular The Art Of Being Well podcast and the New York Times bestselling author of Intuitive Fasting, Ketotarian, The Inflammation Spectrum and the brand new book Gut Feelings: Healing the Shame-Fueled Relationship Between What You Eat and How You Feel.
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Healing The Shame-Fueled Relationship
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