Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
LET'S GET ENERGIZED!
Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.
— THORNTON WILDER, TIME MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 3, 1958
So here you are. You have the job you always wanted. And you are really good at it. Everyone knows you are a star. You worked pretty hard to get here. But lately you just do not have the energy and drive that you once had. You are still getting all your work done, but it just isn't as much fun.
Lately you have trouble sleeping; you heard on TV about a new pill that helps you to fall asleep faster. You need to get up early and be alert at work so you consider trying the new sleeping pill. Funny, because you used to sleep like a baby, right?
You are happily married and you have always enjoyed an active sex life. Now you don't care. You are just too tired!
You think you know what the problem is. You just need to finish one of your many projects that are on your mind, such as:
• Renovating the kitchen.
• Finalizing the proposal for the merger.
• Finding a nursing home for your parents.
• Getting your children into school.
• Selling your business, or whatever.
You think you know how to fix the problem. Think again. You don't know. The reason you are reading this book is that you do not know, and you need help. The truth is you need to change your life. But it isn't nearly as scary as it sounds. Several commonsense principles combined with new scientific findings can make an enormous difference in your health and energy. Nothing is all that difficult and most of it is fun. Chances are there are just one or two factors that are out of whack in what you are doing.
Are you working at your full potential? Do you feel that you are getting the most out of life? Are your overscheduled days making you sick? If you feel you need more vigor, don't despair. I have had patients who have had debilitating symptoms for years, but eventually they have overcome this troublesome pattern of feeling unwell to get back their confidence, vitality, and energy. It is definitely possible — and if you follow my plan, it will happen to you, too.
My patient Mary is a good example of someone in need of a lifestyle adjustment. This forty-two-year-old single mother came to see me four years ago because she was dragging herself to get through each day. She was tired when she woke in the morning and required at least two cups of coffee to get going. After readying her two young boys for school and dropping them off, she went to her office. (Mary works as an editor for a major women's magazine.) She was drowsy in the afternoon and used sugary snacks from a vending machine to pep herself up. After work she rushed to pick up her children at day care, then prepared dinner, and helped with the boys' homework. She had gotten in the habit of pouring herself a glass of wine while making dinner. Lately, the number had increased steadily to two or three glasses. When Mary turned off the lights, she had trouble falling asleep and slept fitfully. As an editor, Mary was expected to present a fashionable exterior, which she did brilliantly. Her colleagues knew little of Mary's stress or challenges. Mary's lack of energy was due to the unrelenting stress of doing too much and not taking care of her basic needs.
Because appearance was an important aspect of Mary's work, she was given beautiful clothes or shopped at private sales. She knew how to put together a look. But with little time for exercise, bulges had appeared on her body and her posture was poor. Her skin was dry and more wrinkled than her age warranted.
Her laboratory work showed borderline high cholesterol and her blood pressure was also in the borderline phase. She had not yet become ill and took no medications but she was by no means in good health. If she did not change her life, illness was a given. There are many people today whose lives are as complicated, stressful, and desperate as Mary's was. It was important for Mary to get control, for herself and for her children. Clearly, she needed to make a change, but like many people, she didn't know how.
Mary needed a health makeover plan but didn't know how to find time for exercise and healthy food. Her obstacles were obvious — time and money! Working ten-hour days at the office and then taking work home — there was little time left for Mary to exercise or concentrate on food or stress reduction. I explained to her that if she wanted this to work, she must immediately forgo her evening glasses of cabernet, increase her water consumption, and begin exercising.
Health Hour
Time management was at the heart of the program I designed for Mary. Without scheduling time for herself, she was compromising her health. Sacrificing time for others is a female trait. But the truth was, if Mary did not take care of herself, there would be no one left to take care of her two boys.
I asked her to identify the one time of day when she could carve out one hour. Mary stated that after her boys were tucked into bed she spent an hour sipping her wine and answering e-mails. She had just identified what would become her Health Hour.
During her Health Hour she was told to do only two things:
1. She was instructed to order her groceries for the week online. By doing so, Mary was able to free up valuable weekend time that had been spent in the grocery store.
2. Follow any one of three exercise videos I gave her. (Each exercise video was thirty to forty-five minutes in length, followed by a ten-minute stretch.)
She was to perform only these two tasks, and nothing else. While there are those who say morning exercise is best (I am one of those people), this does not mean that morning is the only time for exercise.
Maximum Eergy
While Mary worked hard to instill in her children the best nutrition with organic meats, fish, and vegetables, she paid little heed to her own nutritional needs. She started her day with large amounts of coffee and minimal food. Her days were so busy that she rarely stopped for lunch. Her dietary log revealed that she was deficient in both calcium and protein. Many women consume too little calcium, although they know they need it for their bones. Protein is also frequently neglected. The office vending machines were what she relied on at work. Mary was starving herself of nutrition and overfeeding herself with empty calories!
Initially, it was difficult for Mary to drink the recommended amount of water. She came up with the idea of setting her computer alarm to remind herself when it was time for another glass. By the end of the week, she no longer required the reminder. She made a point of eating a nutritious breakfast and ordered a light lunch. Difficult, too, was eliminating the vending machine snack; but because she had prepared ahead by bringing a protein snack to work, she was triumphant. Although the changes were unfamiliar to her, after a week Mary admitted that she felt "detoxified." The toxic effect of her past behavior had a numbing, addictive element in its familiarity. Once she broke free, replacing the old elements, which sapped her energy, with natural, health-enhancing new foods and behaviors, her energy began to return.
After four years, Mary has kept her basic plan. Her boys are older and are able to walk to school together. Mary's work is still time-consuming. But her evening exercise and eating plan sustain her. Her skin glows, her posture is erect, and she walks with a spring in her step. She is not overwhelmed by her busy life.
I think there are many people who, like Mary, are exhausted by the stress of doing for others. To excel as a caretaker it is vital to nurture your own health. As your energy increases you are more alive to the experience of giving of yourself. If you have ever visited an emergency room where the doctors are ending an eighteen-hour shift, you know what I mean. The physicians may be the most dedicated doctors on the planet, but after eighteen hours of high-intensity work, they are tired. Their energy has plummeted. If you visit them at the beginning of their shift, you will see an entirely different energy level. Early in the morning they are full of pep. If you are a patient, whom would you rather see? A tired and wornout doctor or one who is engaging and energetic? With children or whoever is being cared for — everyone appreciates energy.
Your body is designed to be energetic. If it is not energetic, you need to find out why!
If you answer "yes" to any question other than 4, 6, and 8, — you need some help! You don't have to feel the way you do. That's the good news. Being tired is a way for our bodies to tell us that we are doing too much. It is normal to feel exhausted after an episode of intense physical activity. It is abnormal to feel chronically exhausted; you should be evaluated by your physician. After you see your doctor to rule out a metabolic reason for your energy lag, you need to address the issue.
Amazingly, the most frequent cause of lack of energy is bad habits. That is both good and bad news: good, because we can fix it, and bad, because fixing it requires changing ingrained habits.
CHAPTER 2
THREE BAD HABITS AND HOW TO BREAK THEM
Imagine if you could stop a disease from developing within your own body. Imagine halting it in the very early stages, before the devastating effects are felt. Wouldn't it be grand? In fact, if that were possible, it is difficult to see why anyone would not do so. But the simple fact is we can prevent approximately 75 to 80 percent of all illnesses just by changing poor habits.
After years of talking to patients about their lives and diets I have pinpointed the top three bad habits that drain health and energy.
1. Eating foods that cause an inflammatory response in the body
2. Constant dieting
3. Insufficient physical exercise
The unfortunate fact is that the majority of people who are guilty of these bad habits really believe that they are living their lives in a healthy manner!
BAD HABIT #1: INFLAMMATIONNATION
Inflammation is the body's way of fighting off infection.
In medical school we were taught to recognize the classic signs of inflammation: rubor, turgor, calor, and dolor. Translating the Latin gives us redness, swelling, heat, and pain.
When bacteria enter our bodies, a remarkably orchestrated immune response occurs. First, blood flow to the area increases causing redness (rubor) and heat (calor). The capillaries to the area become "leaky," allowing the white blood cells to exit the circulation and surround the infection, causing swelling (turgor). The white blood cells are not only kamikaze fighters, sacrificing themselves to kill the infection, but they are also messengers, sending chemical signals of the danger to surrounding cells. They produce substance P, causing pain (dolor).
Inflammation has enabled us to survive the innumerable bacteria we are exposed to in our lifetimes. In a sense, inflammation is a survival mechanism. So, you may ask, how is inflammation "bad" for us? The protection given by inflammation is in defending the body against invading bacteria or viruses. The protective inflammation, described by the Latin phrase, is acute inflammation. It stops when the infection is defeated.
But chronic inflammation is a whole other ball game. Chronic inflammation is a persistent state and is not limited in time. It harms the body — much of the harm is from the white blood cell production of chemical signals, or prostaglandins. Autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, and scleroderma are examples of chronic inflammation. The joints, lungs, esophagus, heart, kidneys, skin, and virtually every organ system are affected by the inflammatory proteins. Autoimmune diseases are not the only times when chronic inflammation is present. Chronic inflammation is most commonly found in individuals who believe they are fine, except for the extra weight that's around their middle.
Belly fat actually causes inflammation. It contains types of cells called macrophages, which under normal conditions are Pac-Man–like cells cleaning up debris. But belly fat macrophages pump out inflammatory chemicals that attract the white blood cells and activate them to send out inflammatory proteins. The fat cells themselves are bigger and churn out inflammatory signals. The chronic state of inflammation raises the risk for blood clots, high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancers of the pancreas, gallbladder, colon, breast, and prostate. Chronic inflammation robs the body of energy.
Many people do not appreciate how their diets can lead to an inflammatory state. We can measure the degree of inflammation with laboratory blood tests that measure the levels of C-reactive protein. The chemicals of inflammation are produced from fats we eat. Trans fat and saturated fat increase inflammatory proteins and cause weight gain. Sugar causes inflammation also. American and British diets, particularly snack foods, set the stage for an inflammatory state. The marketing of the foods compounds the problem because some of the foods would seem to benefit our health.
For example: look at high-sugar yogurts. I was recently on a plane where the socalled "healthy option" for breakfast was fruit (melon, grapes, and pineapple) with a container of fat-free yogurt. Reading the yogurt label showed the first ingredient to be pasteurized skim milk, the second ingredient was sugar, and the third was high-fructose corn syrup. That doesn't sound very healthy at all. Later the flight attendant offered passengers a choice of greasy croissants or sugary Danish pastries, just to make matters worse.
The overconsumption of sugar is problematic because we all love sweetness. It has been hypothesized that the desire for sweets evolved as a means for prehistoric man to survive. Berries and edible roots are sweet but the poisonous alkaloids are bitter. Back in the caveman days, those who found the berries got a healthy boost of energy and survived. Cavemen who ate the alkaloids died. Thus, the genetic drive for sweetness was selected and endures. Maternal milk is sweet. Babies do not like bitter or sour foods.
We are so programmed to like sweetness that we call our lovers "sweetheart." Sweetness is endearing to us. The big problem nowadays is we have this innate liking of sweets and we are surrounded by sweet food. Doughnuts at the coffee shop and then coffee cake during the morning meeting; we might have a healthy lunch but when the afternoon energy lag sets in, there is always the candy machine down the hall. What about a soda with some sugar and caffeine to help pep us up in the afternoon? After dinner we allow ourselves a bowl of ice cream with (only) one cookie. I do not think that I am overstating the case, either. The day just described is more than one cup of sugar. That is more than the cavemen had to deal with in their entire life span!
The Modern Diet
In prehistoric times, humans had a very different diet. Grains that were consumed were small and difficult to harvest. Wild grains were hard to digest without grinding and cooking. Stone mortars and bowls first appeared in the Upper Paleolithic period (forty thousand to twelve thousand years ago). Grain seems to have played a minor role in early prehistoric time.
Before the Industrial Revolution, all grain was ground with the use of stone milling tools and contained the complete grain — bran, germ, and endosperm. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of mechanized steel rollers and sifting devices, we began our consumption of overly refined flour devoid of the nutritional value that was present in the whole grain. The flour that we now use is a recent invention of the last two hundred years.
Refined flour has the outer bran (with fiber) and germ (with vitamins) removed. Refined flour contains only the endosperm, which is starch. The reason this is done boils down to economics. Bread requires the elasticity of gluten to rise; bran interferes with the strands of gluten, complicating the rising of a loaf. And because the germ contains healthy unsaturated fat, which can become rancid, whole grains have a shorter shelf life than refined grains. Additionally, after years of being exposed to refined flour products, we have come to accept them as the norm. We have developed a "taste" for these foods. This in turn spurs the marketplace to produce more and more refined and overly processed foods. Starchy foods, which are composed of chains of sugars, are rapidly digested. We are not satisfied by eating them and become hungry quickly.
Refined sugar is a relatively new invention. Today we consume 155 pounds of sugar per person per year!
Crystallized sugar first appeared in India about 500 B.C. Honey is a natural sweetener that varied by season. Not only have we consumed increasing amounts of sugar, but the form of the sweetening has changed. It is not table sugar, or sucrose, that we find in most of our foods, but high-fructose corn syrup. The rise in obesity directly parallels our consumption of high-fructose corn syrup. Since 1970, when it was first introduced, its use has risen 1,000 percent. Today high-fructose corn syrup is used to sweeten most sweetened sodas and processed foods.
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Excerpted from "The Park Avenue Nutritionist's Plan"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Jana Klauer, M.D..
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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