Back Clinic Weight Loss. People who are overweight or obese and are suffering from back pain may not realize that their excess weight contributes to their back pain. It is a known fact that overweight people are at risk for back pain, joint pain, and muscle strain. Not only is back pain an issue, but other symptoms of obese or overweight people may include fatigue, difficulty breathing, and/or shortness of breath during short periods of physical activity. When this happens, people begin to avoid physical activity, which leads to pain and various other unhealthy conditions.
Dr. Jimenez brings the PUSH-as-Rx System, which is a program designed by a strength-agility coach and physiology doctor with a combined 40 years of experience. The program is the multidisciplinary study of reactive agility, body mechanics, and extreme motion dynamics at its core.
A clear quantitative picture of body dynamics emerges through continuous and detailed assessments of the clients in motion and under directly supervised stress loads. This system with continual dynamic adjustments has helped many of our patients in their weight loss. Plus, they become faster and stronger. Results demonstrate clear improved agility and speed no matter the age. Along with physical training, Dr. Jimenez and the trainers offer nutritional advice.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, health coach Kenna Vaughn, chief editor Astrid Ornelas discuss about metabolic syndrome from a different point of view as well as, different nutraceuticals to combat inflammation.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Welcome, guys, welcome to the podcast for Dr. Jimenez and crew. We’re discussing today’s metabolic syndrome, and we’re going to be discussing it from a different point of view. We will give you excellent, useful tips that can make sense and are easily doable at home. Metabolic syndrome is a very vast concept. It contains five major issues. It has high blood glucose, it has belly fat measurements, it has triglycerides, it has HDL issues, and it pretty much has a whole conglomeration of dynamics that have to be measured in the whole reason we discuss metabolic syndrome because it affects our community very much. So, we’re going to be discussing these particular issues and how we can fix them. And give you the ability to adapt your lifestyle so that you don’t end up having. It’s one of the most important disorders affecting modern medicine today, let alone once we understand it. Everywhere you go, you’re going to see a lot of people having metabolic syndrome. And it’s part of a society, and that’s something you see in Europe as much. But in America, because we do have a lot of foods and our plates are usually bigger, we have the ability to adapt our bodies differently by just what we eat. No disorder will change so quickly and fast as a good mechanism and a good protocol to help you with metabolic disorders and metabolic syndrome. So having said that, today, we have a group of individuals. We have Astrid Ornelas and Kenna Vaughn, who will discuss and add information to help us through the process. Now, Kenna Vaughn is our health coach. She’s the one who works in our office; when I’m a practicing physician on physical medicine and when I’m working with people one on one, we have other people working with dietary issues and dietary needs. My team here is very, very good. We also have our top clinical researcher and the individual who curates much of our technology and is at the cutting edge of what we do and our sciences. It’s Mrs. Ornelas. Mrs. Ornelas or Astrid, as we call her, she’s ghetto with the knowledge. She gets nasty with science. And it’s really, really where we are. Today, we live in a world where research is coming and spitting out of the NCBI, which is the repository or PubMed, which people can see we use this information and we use what works and what does it. Not all information is accurate in PubMed because you have different points of view, but it’s almost like a finger on a pulse when we have our finger in. We can see the things that affect it. With certain keywords and certain alerts, we get notified of changes for, let’s say, dietary sugar issues or triglyceride issues with fat issues, anything about metabolic disorders. We can kind of come up with a treatment protocol that is live adapted from doctors and researchers and PhDs around the world almost instantaneously, literally even before they’re published. For example, today happens to be February 1st. It’s not, but we’ll be getting results and studies presented by the National Journal of Cardiology that will come out in March if that makes sense. So that information is early hot off the press, and Astrid helps us figure these things out and sees, “Hey, you know, we found something really hot and something to help our patients” and brings the N equals one, which is patient-doctor equals one. A patient and therapist equal one that we don’t do specific protocols for everyone in general. We do specific protocols for each person as we go through the process. So as we do this, the journey of understanding metabolic syndrome is very dynamic and very deep. We can start from just looking at someone to the bloodwork, all the way to dietary changes, to metabolic changes, all the way down to the cellular activity that it’s actively working. We measure issues with BIAs and BMI, which we have done with previous podcasts. But we can also get into the level, the genomics and the changing of the chromosomes and the telomeres in the chromosomes, which we can affect by our diet. OK. All roads lead to diets. And what I say in some weird way, all roads lead to smoothies, OK, smoothies. Because when we look at smoothies, we look at the components of smoothies and come up with dynamics that are abilities to change now. What I look for is when I look for treatments, I look at things that make people’s lives better, and how can we do this? And for all those mothers, they understand that they may not realize that they do this, but a mom doesn’t wake up saying, I’m going to give my kid food. No, she’s kind of doing a mental lavage of bringing the whole kitchen because she wants to infuse the best nutrition for their child and offer their best kind of options for their baby to go through the world or daycare or elementary school, through middle school, through high school so that the child can develop well. Nobody goes out thinking that I’m going to give my kid just junk and. And if that’s the case, well, that’s probably not good parenting. But we won’t talk about that well; we will talk about good nutrition and adapting those things. So I’d like to introduce Kenna right now. And she’s going to be discussing a little bit of what we do when we see someone with metabolic disorders and our approach to it. So as she goes through that, she’s going to be able to understand how we evaluate and assess a patient and bring it in so that we can start getting a little bit of control for that individual. Kenna, it’s all yours.
Kenna Vaughn: All right. So first, I just want to talk about the smoothies a little bit more. I am a mom, so in the morning time, things get crazy. You never have as much time as you think you do, but you need those nutrient nutrients and so do your kids. So I love smoothies. They’re super fast. You get everything you need. And most people think that when you’re eating, you’re eating to fill your stomach, but you’re eating to fill your cells. Your cells are what need those nutrients. That’s what carries you on with the energy, the metabolism, all of that. So those smoothies are a super great option, which we give our patients. We even have a book with 150 smoothie recipes that are great for anti-aging, helping diabetes, lowering cholesterol, controlling inflammation, and things like that. So it’s one resource we give to our patients. But we do have multiple other options for the patients who come in with metabolic disease.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Before you go in there, Kenna. Let me just kind of add that what I’ve learned is that we have to make it simple. We got to take homes or takeaways. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to give you the tools that can help you in that process. And we’re going to take you to the kitchen. We’re going to grab you by the ear, so to speak, and we’re going to show you the areas where we need to look at. So Kenna is about to give us the information in terms of smoothies that will assist us with dietary changes that we can provide our families and change its metabolic disaster that affects so many people called metabolic syndrome. Go ahead.
Kenna Vaughn: OK, so like he was saying with those smoothies. One thing that you should add to your smoothie is, which what I love to add in mine is spinach. Spinach is an excellent choice because it gives your body more nutrients. You are getting an extra serving of vegetables, but you can’t taste it, especially when it gets covered up by the natural sweetness that you find in fruits. So that’s a great option when it comes to the smoothies. But another thing that Dr. Jiménez was mentioning is other things in the kitchen. So there are other substitutes that we’re kind of wanting our patients to use and implement. You can start small, and it’ll make a huge difference just by switching out the oils you’re cooking with. And you’ll begin to see an improvement in your joints, your kids, and everyone will just improve immensely. So one thing we want to get our patients into using is those oils, such as avocado oil, coconut oil, and… Olive oil? Olive oil. Yes, thank you, Astrid.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That was olive oil. That was Astrid in the background. We’re getting the facts out excellent and continue.
Kenna Vaughn: When you switch those out, your body breaks things down differently with those unsaturated fats. So that’s just another option that you have in that kitchen besides making those smoothies. But like I said before, I’m all about quick, easy, simple. It’s way easier to change your lifestyle when you have a whole team around you. And when it’s easy, you don’t. You don’t want to go out and make everything super difficult because the chances of you sticking to it aren’t very high. So one thing we want to do is make sure that everything that we’re giving our patients is easy to do and it’s attainable for everyday life.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I’m very visual. So when I go to the kitchen, I like making my kitchen look like the cocina or whatever they call it in Italy, the cucina and I have three bottles there, and I have an avocado oil one. I have the coconut oil one, and I have the olive oil right there. There are big bottles there. They make them pretty, and they look Tuscan. And, you know, I don’t care if it’s an egg, I don’t care. Sometimes, even when I’m having my coffee, I grab the coconut oil one, and I pour that one in and make myself a java with coconut oil in it. So, yeah, go ahead.
Kenna Vaughn: I was going to say that’s a great option too. So I drink green tea, and I also add coconut oil in that green tea to help boost everything and give my body another dose of those fatty acids that we want.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I got a question for you when you have your coffee like that; when you have the oil in it, does it kind of lubricate your lips.
Kenna Vaughn: It does a little bit. So it’s also like chapstick.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, it does. It’s like, Oh, I love it. OK, go ahead.
Kenna Vaughn: Yeah, I also have to stir a little bit more just to make sure everything gets it right. Yeah. And then another thing just talking about something our patients can do when it comes to at home, there are tons of different options with eating fish. Increasing your good fish intake throughout the week, that’s going to help also. And just because fish provides so many great things like omegas, I know Astrid also has some more information on omegas.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I got a question before Astrid gets in there. You know, look, when we talk about carbohydrates, people, is it what a carbohydrate is? Oh, people say an apple, banana, candy bars, and all kinds of stuff people can rattle off carbohydrates or proteins. Chicken, beef, whatever they can rile up. But one of the things I found that people have a difficult time with is what good fats are? I want five. Give me ten good fats for a million dollars. Give me ten good fats like lard, like meat. No, this is what we’re talking about. Because the simple fact that we use and we’re going to add more to it relative bad is going to be avocado oil. Olive oil. Is it coconut oil? We can use things like butter oils, different types of margins, and not margins, but kinds of butter that are from, you know, grass-fed cows. We basically can run out of creamers, you know, non-nondairy creams, very specific creamers, those we run out of it, right? Real fast. So it’s like, what else is fat, right? And then we search for it. So one of the best ways to do it is that we’re not going to always put creamer on top or our butter on top, which by the way, some coffees they have, they put butter in it and blend it, and they make a fantastic little java hit. And everyone comes with their little ginger and oils and their coffee and makes espresso from heaven, right? So what else can we do?
Kenna Vaughn: We can, like I said, adding those fish in, which is going to help to give our bodies more of those omegas. And then we can also do more purple vegetables, and those are going to provide your body with more antioxidants. So that’s a good option when it comes to the grocery store. A rule of thumb that I love and heard a long time ago is to not shop in the aisles is to try to shop on the edges because the edges are where you’re going to find all that fresh produce and all those lean meats. It’s when you start to get into those aisles, and that’s where you’re going to start finding, you know, the cereal, those bad carbohydrates, those simple carbohydrates that the American diet has come to love but does not necessarily need. The Oreos?
Kenna Vaughn: Yes.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The candy aisle that every kid knows. OK, yes.
Kenna Vaughn: So that’s just another great point there. So when you come into our office, if you’re suffering from metabolic syndrome or just anything in general, we make your plans super personalized and give you so many tips. We listen to your lifestyle because what works for one person might not work for another. So we make sure that we provide you with information that we know you’ll be successful with and provide education because that’s another huge part of it.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: All roads lead to the kitchen, huh? Right? Yes, they do. OK, so let’s zoom on precisely for the fat and the nutraceuticals. I want to give you an idea as to what type of nutraceuticals are appropriate for us because we want to bust down these five issues affecting metabolic syndrome that we discussed. What are the five guys? Let’s go ahead and start them up. It’s high blood sugar, right?
Kenna Vaughn: High blood glucose, low HDLs, which will be that good cholesterol everyone needs. Yes. And it’s going to be the high blood pressure, which is not considered high from a doctor’s standard, but it is deemed to be elevated. So that’s another thing; we want to ensure that this is metabolic syndrome, not a metabolic disease. So if you go to the doctor and your blood pressure is 130 over eighty-five, that’s an indicator. But yet your provider might not necessarily say your blood pressure is super high.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: None of these disorders here by themselves are clinical states, and, individually, they’re pretty much just things. But if you combine all these five, you have metabolic syndrome and feel like not too good, right?
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, yeah.
Kenna Vaughn: Another one is going to be the excess weight around the belly and the higher triglycerides.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Easy to see. You can see when someone has a belly that’s hanging over like a fountain, right? So we can see that you can go to it sometimes Italian restaurants and see the great cook. And he sometimes I got to tell you, sometimes it’s just, you know, we talked to Chef Boyardee wasn’t a thin guy. I think that Chef Boyardee, you know what? And the Pillsbury guy, right? Well, it wasn’t very healthy, right? Both of them suffer from metabolic syndrome just from the outset. So that’s an easy one to see. So these are the things we’re going to be reflecting on. Astrid will go over some nutraceuticals, vitamins, and some foods that we can improve things. So here’s Astrid, and here’s our science curator. But here’s Astrid, go ahead.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, I guess before we get into the nutraceuticals, I want to make something clear. Like we were talking about metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is not a, and I guess per se, a disease or a health issue itself. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that can increase the risk of developing other health issues like diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Because metabolic syndrome is not, you know, an actual health issue itself, it’s more so this group, this collection of other conditions, of other problems that can develop into much worse health issues. Just because of that fact, metabolic syndrome has no apparent symptoms itself. But of course, like we were talking about, five risk factors are pretty much the ones we discussed: excess waist fat, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, low HDL, and according to health care professionals. To doctors and researchers, you know you have metabolic syndrome if you have three out of these five risk factors.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes. Three. Now, that doesn’t mean that if you have it, you have symptoms. As I see it was evident on. But I got to tell you in my experience when someone has more than three or three. They’re starting to feel crummy. They don’t feel right. They just feel like, you know, life’s not good. They have just an overall. They don’t look it right. So and I don’t know them, maybe. But their family knows that they don’t look good. Like mom doesn’t look good. Dad does look good.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, yeah. And metabolic syndrome, as I said, it has no apparent symptoms. But you know, I was kind of going with one of the risk factors with waist fat, and this is where you will see people with what you call the apple or pear-shaped body, so they have excess fat around their abdomen. And although that’s not technically considered a symptom, it is a factor that can; I guess it can give an idea to doctors or other health care professionals that this person who is, you know, they have prediabetes or have diabetes. And, you know, they have excess weight and obesity. They could have an increased risk of metabolic syndrome and therefore developing, you know, if it’s left untreated, developing other health issues like heart disease and stroke. I guess with that being said; then we’ll get into the nutraceutical.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I love this, I love this. We’re getting some good stuff, and we’re getting some information.
Astrid Ornelas: And I guess with that being said, we’ll get into the nutraceuticals. Kind of like, how Kenna was talking about what’s the takeaway? You know, we’re here talking about these health issues, and we’re here talking about metabolic syndrome today. But what’s the takeaway? What can we tell people? What can they take home about our talk? What can they do at home? So here we have several nutraceuticals, which I’ve written several articles in our blog and looked at.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You think, Astrid? If you look at 100 articles written in El Paso, at least in our area, they were all curated by somebody. Yes. All right.
Astrid Ornelas: Yes. So we have several nutraceuticals here that have been researched. Researchers have read all these research studies and found that they can help in some way and some form improve, you know, metabolic syndrome and these associated diseases. So the first one I want to discuss is the B vitamins. So what are the B vitamins? These are the ones that you can usually find them together. You can find them in the store. You’ll see them as B-complex vitamins. You’ll see like a little jar, and then it comes with several of the B vitamins. Now, why do I bring up B vitamins for metabolic syndrome? So one of the reasons like researchers has found that one of them, I guess, one of the causes of metabolic syndrome could be stress. So with that being said, we need to have B vitamins because when we get stressed when we have a hard day at work when we have, I guess a lot of you know, a lot of stressful things at home or with family, our nervous system will use these B vitamins to support our nerve function. So when we have a lot of stress, we will use up these vitamins, which increases stress; you know, our body will produce cortisol. You know, which serves a function. But we all know that too much cortisol, too much stress can actually. It can be harmful to us. It can increase our risk of heart disease.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, as I remember when we did this, all roads lead to the kitchen in terms of getting the food back in your body. All roads lead to the mitochondria when it comes to the area of the breakdown. The world of ATP energy production is surrounded and wrapped around with nicotinamide, NADH, HDP, ATPS, ADP. All these things have a connection with vitamin B of all sorts. So the vitamin B’s are at the engine in the turbine of the things that help us. So it makes sense that this was the top of the vitamin and the most important one. And then she’s got some other endpoints here on niacin. What is with niacin? What have you noticed there?
Astrid Ornelas: Well, niacin is another B vitamin, you know, there are several B vitamins. That’s why I have it there under its plural and niacin or vitamin B3, as it’s more well known. A lot of several are so clever. Many research studies have found that taking vitamin B3 can help lower LDL or bad cholesterol, help lower triglycerides, and increase HDL. And several research studies have found that niacin, specifically vitamin B3, can help increase HDL by 30 percent.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Incredible. When you look at NADP and NADH, These are the N is the niacin, the nicotinamide. So in the biochemical compound, niacin is the one that people have known that when you take it the good one or the one that’s supposed to be, you get this flushing feeling and it makes you scratch all your part of your body, and it feels good when you scratch because it makes you feel that way. Right, so lovely. And this huge.
Astrid Ornelas: Yes. Yes, and also, I just want to highlight a point about B vitamins. B vitamins are essential because they can help support our metabolism when we eat, you know, carbohydrates and fats, good fats, of course, and proteins. When the body goes through the metabolism process, it converts these carbohydrates, fats, and protein. The proteins turn into energy, and B vitamins are the main components in charge of doing that.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Latinos, in our general population, know that we have always heard of the nurse or the person who gives vitamin B injection. So you heard of those things. Right. Because you’re depressed, you’re sad, what would they do? Well, you know what would inject them with B12, right? Which are the B vitamins, right? And the person would come out like, Yeah, and they’d be excited, right? So we’ve known this, and this is the elixir of the past. Those traveling salesmen, who had the potions and lotions, made a living off of giving B vitamin complex. The first energy drinks were first designed with a B complex, you know, packing of them. Now here’s the deal. Now that we’ve learned that energy drinks cause so many issues, that we’re heading back to the B complexes to help people better. So the following vitamin we have there is that one that we have the D, we have the vitamin D.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, the next one I wanted to talk about is vitamin D. So there are several research studies on vitamin D and the benefits, the benefits of vitamin D for metabolic syndrome, and just how I discussed how B vitamins are beneficial for our metabolism. Vitamin D is also helpful for our metabolism, and it can help regulate our blood sugar, essentially our glucose. And that in itself is very important because, like one of the predisposing factors of metabolic syndrome, high blood sugar. And you know, if you have uncontrolled high blood sugar, it can lead to, you know, it can lead to prediabetes. And if that is left untreated, it can lead to diabetes. So research studies have also found that vitamin D itself can also improve insulin resistance, which is pretty much one that can lead to diabetes.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I just wanted to put out the vitamin D is not even a vitamin; it’s a hormone. It was discovered after C by Linus Pauling. When they found it, they just kept on naming the following letter. OK, so since it is a hormone, you just have to look at it. This particular vitamin D or this hormone tocopherol. It basically can change so many metabolism issues in your body. I’m talking about literally four to five hundred different processes that we’re finding. Last year was 400. We’re now almost 500 other biochemical processes that are affected directly. Well, it makes kind of sense. Look, our most significant organ in the body is our skin, and most of the time, we ran around in some sort of skimpy clothes, and we were in the sun a lot. Well, we didn’t stand to reason that that particular organ can produce a tremendous amount of healing energies, and vitamin D does that. It is produced by the sunlight and activated. But today’s world, whether we’re Armenian, Iranian, different cultures in the north, like Chicago, people don’t get as much light. So depending on cultural changes and closed people living and working in these fluorescent lights, we lose the essence of vitamin D and get very sick. The person who takes vitamin D is much healthier, and our goal is to raise the vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and one that embeds itself by it and is saved in the liver along with the fat in the body. So you can raise it slowly as you take it, and it’s tough to get toxic levels, but those are at about one hundred twenty-five nanograms per deciliter that are too high. But most of us run around with 10 to 20, which is low. So, in essence, by raising that, you’re going to see that the blood sugar changes are going to happen that Astrid is speaking about. What are some of the things that we notice about, particularly vitamin D? Anything?
Astrid Ornelas: I mean, I’ll get back to vitamin D in a bit; I want to discuss some of the other nutraceuticals first. OK. But pretty much vitamin D is beneficial because it helps improve your metabolism, and it helps improve your insulin resistance, at least towards metabolic syndrome.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: How about calcium?
Astrid Ornelas: So calcium goes hand-in-hand with vitamin D, and the thing that I wanted to talk about with vitamin D and calcium together. We often think about these five factors that we mentioned before that could cause a metabolic syndrome. Still, there’s, you know, if you want to think about it, like what are the underlying causes for a lot of these risk factors? And like, you know, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, people who don’t engage in an exercise or physical activity. One of the things that can predispose a person or increase their risk of metabolic syndrome. Let me put the scenario. What if a person has a chronic pain disease? What if they have something like fibromyalgia? They’re constantly in pain. They don’t want to move, so they don’t want to exercise. They don’t want to aggravate these symptoms. Sometimes, some people have chronic pain or things like fibromyalgia. Let’s go a little bit more basic. Some people just have chronic back pain, and you don’t want to work out. So just you’re not choosing like some of these people aren’t choosing to be inactive because they want to. Some of these people are legitimately in pain, and there are several research studies, and this is what I was going to tie in vitamin D and calcium with that vitamin D and calcium. You know, we can you can take them together. They can help improve chronic pain in some people.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Incredible. And we all know that calcium is one of the causes of muscle spasms and relaxers. Tons of reasons. We’re going to go into each one of these. We’re going to have a podcast on just vitamin D and the issues in calcium because we can go deep. We’re going to go deep, and we’re going to go all the way to the genome. The genome is genomics, which is the science of understanding how nutrition and the genes dance together. So we’re going to go there, but we’re kind of like we’re penetrating slowly in this process because we have to take the story slowly. What’s up next?
Astrid Ornelas: So next, we have omega 3s, and I want to specifically highlight that we’re talking about omega 3s with EPA, not DHA. So these are EPA, which is the one that’s listed up there, and DHA. They are two essential types of omega 3s. Essentially, they’re both very important, but several research studies and I’ve done articles on this as well have found that I guess taking omega 3s specifically with EPA, it’s just more superior in its benefits than DHA. And when we talk about the omega 3s, these can be found in fish. Most of the time, you want to take omega 3s; you see them in the form of fish oils. And this is going back to what Kenna discussed before, like following a Mediterranean diet, which mainly focuses on eating a lot of fish. This is where you get your intake of omega 3s, and research studies have found that omega 3s themselves can help promote heart health, and they can help lower bad cholesterol to your LDL. And these can also improve our metabolism, just like vitamin D.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Want to go ahead and blanket all these things under the fact that we’re also looking, and when we’re dealing with metabolic syndrome, we’re dealing with inflammation. Inflammation and omegas have been known. So what we need to do is to bring out the fact that omegas have been in the American diet, even in a grandma’s diet. And then, like again, we hear back in the day when grandma or great-grandma would give you cod liver oil. Well, the highest omega-carrying fish is the herring, which is at about 800 milligrams per serving. The cod is next when it’s around 600. But because of the availability, the card’s much more available in certain cultures. So everybody would have cod liver oil, and they’d make you close your nose and drink it, and they knew that it correlated. They would think it’s a good lubricant. Still, it was an anti-inflammatory specifically with people, and usually, grandmothers who knew about this right helps with the intestines, helps the inflammation, helps with the joints. They knew the whole story behind that. So we’ll go deep into the Omegas in our later podcast. We have another one that’s here. It’s called berberine, right? What’s the story on berberine?
Astrid Ornelas: Well, pretty much the next set of nutraceuticals that are listed here, berberine, glucosamine, chondroitin, acetyl L-carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, ashwagandha, pretty much all of these have been tied into what I talked before about chronic pain and all of these health issues. I listed them up here because I’ve done several articles. I’ve read various research studies that have covered these in different trials and across multiple research studies with numerous participants. And these have pretty much found, you know, this group of nutraceuticals here that are listed; these have also been tied in to help reduce chronic pain. You know, and as I discussed before, like chronic pain, you know, people who have fibromyalgia or even like, you know, let’s go a little bit simpler people who have back pain, you know, these inactive people who have sedentary lifestyles simply because of their pain and they can be at risk of metabolic syndrome. A lot of these research studies have found these nutraceuticals themselves can also help reduce chronic pain.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I think the new one is called alpha-lipoic acid. I see acetyl L-carnitine. We’re going to have our resident biochemist on the following podcast to go deep into these. Ashwagandha is a fascinating name. Ashwagandha. Say it. Repeat it. Kenna, can you tell me a bit about ashwagandha and what we’ve been able to discover about ashwagandha? Because it is a unique name and a component that we look at, we will talk about it more. We’re going to get back to Astrid in a second, but I’m going to give her a little break and kind of like, let Kenna tell me a bit of ashwagandha.
Kenna Vaughn: I was going to add in something about that berberine.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh, well, let’s go back to berberine. These are berberine and ashwagandha.
Kenna Vaughn: OK, so that berberine has also been shown to help decrease the HB A1C in patients with blood sugar dysregulation, which will come back to the whole prediabetes and type two diabetes situations that can occur in the body. So that one is also has been shown to decrease that number to stabilize the blood sugar.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: There’s a whole thing we’re going to have on berberine. But one of the things that we did in terms of metabolic syndrome definitely made the top list here for the process. So there’s ashwagandha and berberine. So tell us all about ashwagandha. Also, ashwagandha is the one. So in terms of blood sugar, the A1C is the blood sugar calculation that tells you exactly what the blood sugar does over about three months. The glycosylation of the hemoglobin can be measured by the molecular changes that happen within the hemoglobin. That’s why the Hemoglobin A1C is our marker to determine. So when ashwagandha and berberine come together and use those things, we can alter the A1C, which is the three-month kind of like the historical background of what is going on. We’ve seen changes on that. And that’s one of the things that we do now in terms of the dosages and what we do. We’re going to go over that, but not today because that’s a little bit more complex. Soluble fibers have also been a component of things. So now, when we deal with soluble fibers, why are we talking about soluble fibers? First of all, it is food for our bugs, so we have to remember that the probiotic world is something we cannot forget. People need to understand that, though, that probiotics, whether it’s the Lactobacillus or Bifidobacterium strains, whether it’s a small intestine, large intestine, early on the small intestine, there are different bacteria to the very end to see come to the back end. So let’s call that the place that things come out. There are bacteria everywhere at different levels, and each one has a purpose of discovering that. There’s vitamin E and green tea. So tell me, Astrid, about these dynamics in terms of green tea. What do we notice as it pertains to metabolic syndrome?
Astrid Ornelas: OK. So green tea has a lot of benefits, you know? But, you know, some people don’t like tea, and some are more into coffee, you know? But if you want to get into drinking tea, you know, definitely because of its health benefits. Green tea is an excellent place to start and in terms of metabolic syndrome. Green tea has been demonstrated to help improve heart health, and it can help lower these risk factors that pertain to metabolic syndrome. It can help, you know, several research studies that have found that green tea can help lower cholesterol, bad cholesterol, LDLs.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Does green tea help us with our belly fat?
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah. There’s one of the benefits of green tea that I’ve read about. Pretty much one of the ones that probably that it’s most well known for is that green tea can help with weight loss.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh my gosh. So basically water and green tea. That’s it, guys. That’s all. We limit our lives that are also, I mean, we forgot even the most powerful thing. It takes care of those ROSs, which are reactive oxygen species, our antioxidants, or oxidants in our blood. So it just basically squelch them and takes them out and cools their cool and prevents even the normal deterioration that happens or the excessive deterioration that occurs in the breakdown of normal metabolism, which is a byproduct which is ROS, reactive oxygen species are wild, crazy oxidants, which we have a neat name for the things that squashes them and calms them and puts them in the order they call antioxidants. So the vitamins that are antioxidants are A, E, and C are antioxidants, too. So those are potent tools that we deal with as we lower body weight. We free up a lot of toxins. And as the green tea goes into squirt, squelch them, cools them, and gets them out of gear. Guess where the other organ that helps with the whole insulin production is, which is the kidneys. The kidneys are flushed out with green tea and then also helps. I notice that one thing that you haven’t done, Astrid, is done articles on turmeric, right?
Astrid Ornelas: Oh, I’ve done a lot of articles on turmeric. I know because, from the list that’s up there, turmeric and curcumin are probably like one of my favorite nutraceuticals to talk about.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, she’s like gnawing on a root and a couple of times.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, I have some in my fridge right now.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, you touch that turmeric, and you can lose a finger. What happened to my finger? Did you get near my turmeric? The root, right? So. So tell us a bit about the properties of turmeric and curcumin in terms of metabolic syndrome.
Astrid Ornelas: OK. I’ve done several, you know, a lot of articles on turmeric and curcumin. And we’ve also discussed that before, and several of our past podcasts and turmeric is that it’s that yellow yellowish could look orange to some people, but it’s usually referred to as a yellow root. And it’s very popular in Indian cuisine. It’s what it’s one of the main ingredients that you’ll find in curry. And curcumin, pretty sure some of you people have heard of curcumin or turmeric, you know? What’s the difference? Well, turmeric is the flowering plant, and it’s the root. We eat the root of turmeric, and curcumin is just the active ingredient in turmeric that gives it a yellow color.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Guys, I will not let anything but the top type of curcumin and turmeric products be available to their patients because there’s a difference. Certain ones are produced with literally, I mean, we got solvents, and with the way we get things out and of curcumin and turmeric or even stuff like cocaine, you have to use a distillate. OK? And whether it’s water, acetone, benzene, OK, or some sort of a byproduct, we know today that benzene is used to process many types of supplements, and certain companies use benzene to get the best out of turmeric. The problem is benzene is cancer-producing. So we’ve got to be very careful which companies we use. Acetone, imagine that. So there are processes that are in place to extract the turmeric properly and that are beneficial. So finding suitable turmeric, all turmerics are not the same. And that’s one of the things that we have to assess since it has so many products in the world is running real crazy to try to process turmeric and precisely, even if it’s the last thing that we’re discussing today on our subject matter. But it’s one of the most important things today. We don’t even understand aspirin. We know it works, but the total magnitude of it is yet to be told. However, turmeric is in the same boat. We’re learning so much about it that every day, every month, studies are being produced on the value of turmeric into the natural diet, so Astris is in tune in on the target on that. So I’m sure she’s going to bring more of that to us, right?
Astrid Ornelas: Yes, of course.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So I think what we can do today is when we look at this, I’d like to ask Kenna, when we look at a metabolic syndrome from the presentations of symptoms or even from laboratory studies. The confidence of knowing that N equals one is one of the essential components that we have now in functional medicine and functional wellness practices that a lot of physical medicine doctors are doing in their scope of practice. Because in metabolic issues, you can’t take metabolic away from the body. Does the metabolism happen in a back problem? We notice a correlation with back injuries, back pain, back issues, chronic knee disorders, chronic joint musculoskeletal disorders, and metabolic syndrome. So we can’t tease it. So tell us a bit, Kenna, as we close out today a bit of what a patient can expect when they come to our office, and they get kind of put in the “Oops, you got metabolic syndrome.” So boom, how do we handle it?
Kenna Vaughn: We want to know their background because, as you said, everything is connected; everything is in-depth. There are details we want to get to know all so we can make that personalized plan. So one of the first things we do is a very lengthy questionnaire by Living Matrix, and it’s a great tool. It does take a little while, but it gives us so much insight into the patient, which is great because it allows us to, like I said, dig deep and figure out, you know, traumas that might have happened that are leading to inflammation, which how Astrid was saying then leads that sedentary lifestyle, which then leads to this metabolic syndrome or just kind of down that road. So one of the first things we do is do that lengthy questionnaire, and then we sit down and talk to you one on one. We build a team and make you part of our family because this stuff isn’t easy to go through alone, so the most success is when you have that close-knit family, and you have that support, and we try to be that for you.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We have taken this information and realized it was very complex five years ago. It was challenging. 300 300-page questionnaire. Today we have software that we can figure out. It is backed by the IFM, the Institute of Functional Medicine. The Institute of Functional Medicine had its origin over the last decade and became very popular, understanding the whole person as an individual. You can’t separate an eyeball from kind of the body as you can’t separate the metabolism from all effects that it has. Once that that body and that food, that nutraceutical that nutrient enters our body. On the other side of our mouth is these little weighting things called chromosomes. They’re spinning, and they’re churning, and they’re creating enzymes and proteins based on what we feed them. To find out what’s going on, we have to do an elaborate questionnaire about mental body spirituality. It brings in the mechanics of normal digestion, how the entanglement works, and how the overall living experience happens in the individual. So when we take into consideration Astrid and Kenna together, we kind of figure out the best approach, and we have a tailor-made process for each person. We call it the IFM one, two, and three, which are complex questions that allow us to give you a detailed assessment and an accurate breakdown of where the cause can be and the nutraceuticals the nutrient nutrients that we focus on. We push you right direction to the place where it matters into the kitchen. We end up teaching you and your family members how to feed so that you can be good to those genetic genomes, which you’re, as I always say, ontogeny, recapitulates phylogeny. We are who we are from the past to the people, and those people have a thread between us and my past, and everyone here’s past. And that is our genetics, and our genetics responds to the environment. So whether it goes in the south fast or exposed or predisposed, we’re going to discuss those, and we’re going to enter the world of genomics soon in this process as we go deeper into the metabolic syndrome process. So I thank you all for listening in on us and know that we can be contacted here, and they’re going to leave you the number. But we have Astrid here that’s doing research. We have a team established by many individuals who can give you the best information that applies to you; N equals one. We got Kenna here that there’s always available and we’re here taking care of people in our beautiful little town of El Paso. So thank you again, and look forward to the following podcast, which will probably be within the next couple of hours. Just kidding. All right, bye, guys.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, health coach Kenna Vaughn, Astrid Ornelas, Truide Torres, and biochemist Alexander Isaiah Jimenez discuss what is metabolic syndrome and the steps to fix it.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: All right, guys, we’ve come to another podcast, and welcome to Dr. Jimenez and Crew podcast. Welcome, and you have a family here. We’re going to go over metabolic syndrome today. Metabolic syndrome is a disorder that ultimately affects a whole lot of people. And what happens is, is it affects one of the largest populations in affecting El Paso, pretty much in this region. And what we have is it’s not a disease, OK? First of all, it’s a combination of presentations that medical doctors and the World Health Organization have determined high-risk factors to have a stroke, kidney disorders, and even problems with dementia. But overall, it’s pretty much if you have metabolic syndrome, you feel crummy. So today, what are we going to do is we’re going to discuss the issues, and we’d like to at least present it to you so that it becomes useful for you and the information provided by us is going to be helpful for you or a family member. So if you have the opportunity and something that you enjoy, please go ahead and at the bottom area. There’s a little bell to subscribe to. And a little belt in markets so that you could be the very first person to get information in the future when we ever posted. And also allows you to present or ask us for things that are important to you in the health-related realm. Now, what are we going to do today? My name is Dr. Alex Jimenez. I have my entire staff here. We’re going to go, and we’re going to present each one of them in different moments. And we’re going to do some fascinating dynamics. We will also have our resident biochemist at the National University of Health Science, who’s going to chime in and give us a little bit of foundational biochemistry. This information is going to be helpful. We’re going to try to make it as simple but as useful as possible. Now, bear in mind everything that we’re going to be talking about in and today revolves around the metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is what the health care organizations have determined, and the cardiac departments have five major symptoms. Now you have to have three of them, at least to be classified as metabolic syndrome. OK, now the first thing is to ask… What do you feel? Pretty much you feel like crap, OK? And it’s not a good feeling to feel this way, but you’ll see that if you have of these presentations, you’re going to notice that your doctor may give you a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome. Now, the first thing that happens is you usually have a bit about belly fat. Now, the belly fat that people have, people measure it. For men, it’s a belly kind of like the lonja, the belly that hangs over, and it’s about a good, I’d say, about 40 inches or greater in the male. In women is 35 inches or more. Now that’s one of the first presentations. Now the other presentation is high blood pressure. Now that high blood pressure that they use is 135 milligrams over deciliter. Sorry, yeah. Miller Mercury’s millimeters of mercury over these leaders to determine exactly on the diastolic and the systolic. So the diastolic is going to the systolic is going to be 135, the diastolic is going to be over 85. Now that doesn’t happen again; you’re going to notice something. These aren’t extreme ranges from OK. Metabolic syndrome has high triglycerides. Now the high triglycerides are going to be noted in the blood. OK, now one of the things that can be determined early on is high blood pressure, which is also so associated with metabolic syndrome. So the other final one is the elevation of or decrease actually of HDL. HDL or the good fragments of cholesterol. Alexander will be a resident biochemist and talk to us more about that in the latter part of the show. Now, bear in mind, I’ve given five things a. the fat, b. the high blood pressure, c. the blood glucose levels, and also the triglycerides, along with the lowering of the HDLs. The question is, how are we going to be able to control this now? I’m going to give you some real good basic ways that you can control metabolic syndrome. And by the time we’re done today, we’re going to be able to assess the situation. And even if you have it, you basically will be able to control it. There are rare diseases that you can be disordered. And again, this is not a disease; it’s a combination of syndromes or symptoms to be called a syndrome collectively. So metabolic syndrome can be construed. Now you’ll notice that the blood glucose level will be elevated, usually over 100; these are relatively average numbers people have. But if they’re higher than that, they do create issues now. Also, when you have the belly fat 40, and it’s not that much, many people have it. People also have blood glucose levels that are higher than 5.6 on their blood glucose A1C. These numbers and the 150 mg per deciliter of triglycerides are all normal but in combination. Together, they do ultimately create a scenario that is not favorable to cardiac issues. Cardiovascular issues do present as a result. So what we’re going to try to do is try to bring down and control these issues. Now, what are the things that cause metabolic syndrome? One of the things is stress, smoking, a sedentary lifestyle, and even sleep problems and disturbances. We can be elaborating on each of these we can we’re going to be elaborating on in the future podcasts. Still, we’re going to be able to tell exactly what’s going on in a better way. We also have issues with inflammation and processed foods. At the core metabolic syndrome, the main issue is insulin sensitivity issues and high blood pressure issues, and inflammation. So what are we going to do to control that? I want you to know that every single one of these five issues, whether it’s blood glucose, high triglycerides, low HDL counts, or blood glucose, they’re all relatable to one disorder. It’s insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity controls every one of these factors from raising high blood pressure. The kidneys are controlled by insulin, causing an increase in blood pressure, and we’ll discuss that issue and its correlation. So if we can control the blood glucose, we ultimately have the fastest and the surest way to provide the fastest route to heal and fix an individual with metabolic syndrome. So let’s go ahead about the issues that are going to result from that. Now, as I’ve got this, we’re going to notice that if over some time you continue to have a lifestyle that has high levels of these particular five factors, you’re going to notice that you’re going to tend to have high cardiac risks. Now we have a team here, and I want to introduce each one. We have Kenna Vaughn, who is our health coach. Our health coach is the one that’s going to be the one that explains to our patients what is going on. I’ll bring her in. We also have the clinical liaison, which is Trudy. Trudy is the individual who will be able to bring out the questions and determine what kind of issues are appropriate for you. So we’ll be discussing those. And we have our resident chief editor, Astrid Ornelas, who will be the one that explains the studies on it. From Illinois, we also have Alexander, which we have right in the back where you can’t see him, but he’s presenting and say, Hello, Alex, can you get them there? Hello. All right. So he’s out there, and he’s going to discuss the issues and the biochemistry side of things, and we’re looking forward to explaining those issues. Now, one of the things we have to do is go back to the issue of insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity is at the root of all these issues. So what we’re going to do is discuss exactly how insulin can be controlled. But what we’ve learned through these studies, and I’m going to bring in Mrs. Ornelas, is here to discuss the studies on how to control blood glucose and blood sensitivity. Astrid, what did you find out recently that shows the proof and presents the easiest way to control blood insulin and elevate HDL?
Astrid Ornelas: OK, well, first of all, just as you know, as you mentioned, metabolic syndrome, it’s a collection of health issues that can increase the risk of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. It’s basically like, you know, it can affect our overall health and wellness. And I’ve done quite some research, and I’ve found them through the National Center of Biotechnology Information, the NCBI. A variety of research states that metabolic syndrome or people with metabolic syndrome, one of the easiest, you know, quote-unquote easiest or one of the best ways out there that can be used to help… Restore? Yeah, to help restore or reverse all metabolic syndrome would be through the ketogenic diet. So the ketogenic diet or the keto diet is a low carbohydrate, high-fat diet, which, according to research studies, offers many benefits towards people with metabolic syndrome. It can help improve or promote weight loss, and it can help reduce diabetes.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I want to mention right there, I have found nothing faster to lower the blood glucose and reverse triglycerides issues and HDL issues than the ketogenic diet. So, in essence, if you want to do it fast, it’s incredible the speed at which it restores the body to what it is. What else is there?
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah. So, like the human body, usually, we use glucose or sugar. It is supposed to be our primary source of fuel, our main source of energy. But of course, for people who have metabolic syndrome, people who have obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, or the increased risk of diabetes. The ketogenic diet can be very beneficial because it is a low carbohydrate diet, carbohydrates essentially turn into sugar or glucose, and we don’t want that. Like if people have metabolic syndrome, they have, you know, diabetes and insulin resistance. You don’t want sugar in your body because they produce too much of it. They have too much blood sugar. And but by increasing your height, by increasing the number of fats that you eat, and decreasing the number of carbohydrates, you keep a low amount. You keep insulin low, and you, by eating more fats, basically what you would do is make the body go into a state of ketosis.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what? Let me ask you something. I’m going to feed this over right now to Kenna, and I’m going to ask Kenna in your experiences with the blood sugar issues. How is it that we contain and we learn to be able to manage someone’s blood sugar? The quick is the fastest. What is it that you do in terms of coaching individuals, helping them back?
Kenna Vaughn: For coaching individuals. I always evaluate their diet, and the main thing I like to focus on is education because so many people are not educated about, as Astrid was saying, carbs and how they fuel your body. A Big Mac might have 54 carbs, and a sweet potato might have 30 carbs, and people don’t realize that they’re that different, and they only see 20 points or something like that. But the way that the carbohydrate breaks down in the body is enormous. And that’s why the ketogenic diet works so well because you’re using those good whole carbs that are going actually to contain protein as well. And so it’s going to help to break it down slower versus a Big Mac, which is just going to spike your insulin way up.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And what part of the Big Mac is the thing that spikes the sugar? I mean, in terms of that?
Kenna Vaughn: Right. So the bread, the carbs in the bread, actually breaks down differently in your body than a sweet potato would. And so that’s what’s going to give you that high glucose level. And then after that, you’re going to have the fall of the glucose level, which is your blood sugar going up and down does not feel great. So it’s something you want to avoid.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I have a question for you. For the sugars. When you asked the types of sugars you have, you just mentioned that the variety of carbohydrates matters. Yes. Tell me a bit of that.
Kenna Vaughn: The quality, like I was saying, sweet potatoes, avocados, things like that. They’re going to have the carbohydrates that are better for you, meaning you break them down differently than you would. Faster sugars like sucrose and things like that.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So simple sugars are out, basically, which is why, first of all, metabolic syndrome did not even exist before the advent of refined foods. So refined sugars have caused this problem. So what we want to do is sugar leads to inflammation. Sugar leads to triglyceride issues. Sugar or insulin sensitivity issues are the things that are the basis of this process. All roads lead to insulin sensitivity in this process. And the organ that provides us with insulin, the most significant amount is is the pancreas. The pancreas is nonstop. And depending on how the pancreas responds to this blood sugar drama, it determines the fate of the individual. It will alter the triglycerides. It will transform the blood pressure by directly holding sodium in the kidneys, the kidneys the body prepares. It retains the sodium, and by the nature of sodium, the blood pressure soars. So the fastest way to lower your blood pressure is a ketogenic diet. And this is amazing because it is simple. It’s not that complex. We can go extreme. And I know that Astrid had an excellent research document on that. Tell me a bit of what you noticed.
Astrid Ornelas: Yeah, basically, like, what Kenna was saying. Before, many people didn’t know the difference between what type of carbohydrates they want to eat, like, for example, as you said, you know, a lot of people will eat a Big Mac, and they’ll eat that sweet potato, and they don’t know the difference between a good carbohydrate; basically, we want to eat what you call complex carbohydrates, which is it’s more like we want to eat like whole wheat or we want to eat like like good starches because those there break in the body breaks them down into glucose, into sugar. But they’re used much more slowly to where it won’t. The body won’t directly use them. And then you’ll get that crash, that sugar crash.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Because of the insulin spike, right? It controls the insulin spike. You know what? I want to bring in our resident biochemist here. OK, so our brilliant biochemist is Alexander. He’s got a presentation here, actually, if I can see it there and see if I pop up here. And there he is. Alex, can you tell us a bit about what you’re trying to explain here on the biochemistry side of things?
Alexander Isaiah: As you guys mentioned, just in general, glucose is the primary energy source in the way that we use it for the breakdown. Its breakdown on energy consumption is called glycolysis. So without getting too much into it, our end goal here is pyruvate, which then goes into the citric acid cycle to be turned into acetylcholine. In normal conditions, this is good to have a carbohydrate meal, but when in excess, do you produce too much acetylcholine? When is too much acetylcholine used? You end up inducing fatty acid synthesis, which is induced by significant levels of insulin. So by doing so, you have acetylcholine, which ends up turning into palmitate. And one thing that Kenna mentioned is that not all foods are of equal quality. So here, we can see all the different types of fatty acids. So without going too much into biochemistry, but just giving you an idea of what’s going on here? These numbers on the left side represent the number of carbons in a row, and then the numbers to the right of the semicolon are the number of double bonds. And usually, double bonds don’t play a significant role until you get into digestion and the way the body uses these. So by having more double bonds, it’s more fluid. So you notice the difference between a piece of lard and olive oil. What’s the difference? The only difference is the number of carbons and the number of double bonds. So here we have oleic acid, olive oil, and then we have some saturated fat. We can see that the difference is prominent in the number of carbons and double bonds. Double bonds allow for a lower melting point. That’s why olive oil is a liquid at room temperature versus fatty acids, and this plays a significant role in how the body uses these types of things.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Alex, are you saying that? We all know that the excellent work of olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil is the best thing is, this is why this happens.
Alexander Isaiah: Exactly. So the more double bonds they have, the more fluid it will be within the body and allow the body to use those fats on time versus clogging up artery arteries and creating plaques within those arteries.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Excellent. You know what? One of the things that insulin does, it pack away carbohydrates in energy in the cell. If you do that, what happens with this blood sugar? Eventually, insulin spikes it and puts it in the cells. Finally, the cell grows, hence the belly fat. Ultimately, The belly starts green and gains the fat cells, and they start getting bigger, bigger, bigger because they get injected in there. That stuff starts seeping out, and once it can’t go in anymore, it ends up in the places like the pancreas. It ends up in the places like the liver. It ends up in the intramuscular into the muscular tissue. And that’s why we have the accumulation. And when you have a big belly, that’s what tips off the doctor, not only with the triglycerides in the blood glucose levels but also the belly fat. And that’s one of the things we have to kind of assess. So are these now these fatty acids? What are fatty acids used for, typically, Alexander?
Alexander Isaiah: Fatty acids are used almost for everything within the body, especially for energy consumption. It’s like saying, would you rather be able to go five miles or 10 miles? You always want to go 10 miles, right? So gram for gram fat as an energy source is much more fuel-efficient than glucose or carbs. So carbs provide our four grams of four calories per gram and fats are around nine. So it’s almost it’s more than double the amount of energy that you’re producing from these fatty acids. The tricky part is just knowing which ones are good. So going into the good fatty acids, which will be the ones with the double bonds. So I mean, any plant oils, animal fats, depending on which ones, we tend to want to stay away from large amounts of wretched ionic acid, as they tend to cause inflammation responses through the inflammation pathway. But the rest of these are good, especially EPA and DHEA. So DHEA is used within the nervous system. It’s turned into neurotic acid and EPA as well. So getting these marine oils is going to be suitable for your system just in general.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what, as I understand these processes and start realizing the biochemistry behind it, bringing it home to this process down to the cellular component it honors. It shows appreciation in terms of what creates the fatty acid excess. Now again, what happens due to too much of these fatty acids or carbohydrates in the bloodstream? The body tries to store it. It tries to store in the form of fat, and it’s shoved into the pancreas. So you get this fat inside the pancreas. If it can’t do it there, it eventually puts it in the liver. And like we mentioned, it gets it in the stomach, or that’s when we see it as a final thing. So then I like to take the explanation and break apart one other point, the high blood pressure component. Insulin has a direct effect on the kidneys. Insulin tells the kidneys, Look, we need to pack this stuff into the fat. And without getting beyond too much of the chemistry dynamics, you can see that what’s going to occur is that the kidneys will be commanded to hold more sodium. In chemistry, biochemistry, and clinical science, we learned that the more sodium you retain, the blood pressure rises. In essence, that’s how quick the blood pressure goes. So you do that for some time, and then you force the collection of atherosclerotic plaques because that fat is in there, and it can’t go anywhere. You’re going to have a problem in the long term, in the long term future. So speaking about the oils, as Alexander just did, one of the things we ask is, Well, what oils cannot we should know? We use canola oil, corn oil, sesame seed oil. I love sesame seeds. But the problem is that sesame seed oil causes inflammation, as Alex said, with arachidonic acids. So what we have to do is figure out precisely what types of oils we can do and avocados, as Kenna had mentioned, are a great source of fats that we can use and make things more processed. Our bodies and the old pyramid of diet are really bad because it’s heavy on carbohydrates. So one of the things that we look at is maintaining all those components. So we talked about triglycerides, the belly fat, how it’s put together. And each one of these, I want to point this out again. The high blood pressure, which is 135 high blood pressure, is not considered at 135. Usually, it’s at 140. OK. So if so, why are we using triglycerides at 150 are not regarded as excessive. You know, HDL is lower than 50 is not considered horrible, but in combination together, if you have one at all, these three of these components are the five. That’s what leads to a pre-position of of of being sick and feeling crummy, let alone any prolonged period of this will end up leading to metabolic disorders, heart problems, stroke problems, dementias that occur as a result of protracted metabolic syndrome states that are within the individual. I want to ask Alexander. He’s got some fascinating dynamics, as I want to present right now, and we’re going to show his screen right here because he’s got some exciting components on what also affects metabolic syndrome. Alexander.
Alexander Isaiah: So kind of going into what it is, I guess ketosis, because everyone wonders what goes on. So I kind of got this diagram here that I drew out for you guys. We’re ignoring the ephedrine pathway over here, but just in general. So what’s going to happen first is you’re going to deplete any glucose that you have. So the body typically stores around 100 grams of glucose in the liver and around 400 grams within the muscle components of the entire body. So if you times 500 times for, that’s about 2000 calories, which is your daily limit, so you’ve got almost a day’s worth of glucose always stored within your body. But once you deplete that, your body’s going to start looking for other things. In the meantime, it takes a few days for your body to switch over from burning sugar, which is glucose, to burning ketone bodies from fat. So what’s going to happen? Your, first of all, your adrenals are going to start releasing epinephrine, its precursors, norepinephrine. And this is because of a couple of different things. You’re going to get a bit jittery first, and you’re going to feel bad for the first couple of days, but then your body and starts switching over as your brain starts to begin using these ketone bodies as an energy source. So as you’re producing norepinephrine, these are just like, this is the cell surface here. These are just different precursor markers. So we have B1, B2, B3, and A2. Doing these will mark and signal to the gas protein, which will allow aminoglycosides to activate ATP into cyclic AMP. Now, cyclic AMP is an essential component of the degradation of fatty acids. The cool part is it’s inhibited by phosphodiesterase. So when people come in and say, why is caffeine a good fat burner? The main reason why is because caffeine inhibits phosphodiesterase to a certain extent. You don’t want to go too crazy with the caffeine and start doing lots of cups of coffee.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Should I have eight glasses of coffee, or how many cups?
Alexander Isaiah: I think one glass of coffee is more than enough. So by having cyclic amp be more active, you activate the thing called protein kinase A, which activates ATP, and then it starts a hormone-sensitive life base. Once hormone-sensitive lipase is activated, it begins to degrade. It begins to break down fatty acids. Once these fatty acids enter and are broken down, they then enter into the mitochondria, and the mitochondria will then produce heat from this. So that’s why people who are ketosis are always really warm. So what do I recommend when people are starting to do a ketosis diet? Water? Keto diet, definitely water and as well as, I would say, L-carnitine. So as we’re looking at L-carnitine here, we could see that during fatty acid degradation, you use L-carnitine as the primary transporter between the outer mitochondrial membrane and the inner mitochondrial membrane. So by using fatty acids, here’s fatty asceloca; after we’ve broken down these fatty acids, it’s going to enter CPT one, which is carnitine, a seal translocated want or poly transferase one. It’s going to enter and interact with carnitine, and then it’s going to turn into seal carnitine. Once seal carnitine turns into it, it can enter the inner mitochondrial membrane through these two enzymes translocation and CPT two to be broken down back into a seal code, which does the same byproduct as glucose eventually. Also, then, your mitochondria can use these in beta-oxidation. One thing to know is you have to drink a lot of water because people going through ketosis will be upregulating the urea cycle. So you need to make sure that you pull a lot of water or drink a lot of water throughout the day. Anyone doing a keto diet today has a minimum of a gallon of water throughout the day, not all at once, but throughout the day.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s incredible, Alex, that you put that together because that makes perfect sense to me and also explains why people do say when we put them on the ketogenic diet, that they do increase body temperature and the water helps you kind of keep the whole system pumping because that’s what we’re pretty much made of. And also, the pathways that you indicated the hydrogen in the water are necessary for the process to occur.
Alexander Isaiah: Yes. Certain aspects within each of these fuel each other; it’s all an interconnected pathway. But you will upregulate the urea cycle during ketosis much more than when you’re not. For example, everyone’s notorious or cats are notoriously known for having a rotten urine smell. And we have to take a look at that from the reason why right? So general in humans there, urea content in the urine is three percent. In cats, on the other hand, it’s anywhere between six to nine percent. So you have to think about it. What is the only mammal on the planet that is a carnivorous animal that only eats meat? Since they only eat meat, the feline family upregulates their urea cycled, thus having more urea in their urine. So if you’re only a meat-eater, you’re going to have more urea. Therefore you need to drink more water to flush it out through your kidneys.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s amazing because it explains why we make sure that everybody drinks a lot of water, and then they feel better. And I guess if we don’t monitor it correctly, if we don’t do it right, we get that thing called the ketogenic flu, right? And then the body feels kind of crummy until it restores and it stabilizes the blood glucose through ketones. Now, the body can use ketones for sugar, as it’s known. So one of the things that we do is teach the people exactly how to go through the process. And I know we got some research articles here, and Astrid wants to discuss a bit of that.
Astrid Ornelas: So basically, like, as Alex mentioned, when people start going, they start following the ketogenic diet, we do want to, you know, as he said, we want to make sure that they stay hydrated, but more so than that. I guess another thing that we want to educate people on is that not many people know, you know, we need to store up the body with good fats so that as the body adjusts, it starts burning fat as a fuel than sugar or glucose. So we want to teach people, what are the good fats that we want them to like to eat, you know, because like, we need to store up in these fats of that the body can go into ketosis and we can go through the whole process that Alex just explains.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what? I would like to bring Trudy here because she’s the one that connects with the patients at the moment. We do assess someone to have metabolic syndrome. In terms of the resources, how do you go through the process of presenting? Hello, Trudy. Trudy, what are we going to do there? I’m going to ask you, how do you bring that? Because she’s our clinical liaison, our wellness liaison, and she’s the one that basically will give us the information that helps the patient in the right direction.
Trudy Torres: Well, hello. And I, you know, this is all excellent information, which is fantastic that we can provide this to the public. And I know this can be very overwhelming for people that are not don’t have this information. So that’s where I come in when people come, you know, either call us or come in inquiring about their different symptoms. They don’t necessarily know that they’re experiencing the metabolic syndrome. But you know, one of their main concerns is they’re waking. Based on their concerns, I connect them to our primary is with Kenna, and they go ahead and say, OK, well, what are the steps that we have to take and Kenna certainly educate them as far as, OK, this is the lab work that you’re going to have to take. We connect them with Dr. Jimenez after we know exactly their primary concern, and we’re going to start peeling things apart like an onion to get to the bottom of things and get them feeling better. They’re not only going to walk away with the specific results, but they’re also going to walk away with, like Astrid said, what are the good fats to have? What should I be eating? So they’re going to be walking away with a lot of information, but also structure. Another thing that we’re offering is that Kenna is always going to be there, you know, to answer any questions and also Dr. Jimenez, so they don’t have to feel overwhelmed with the process as they’re going through a better, healthy lifestyle.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, that one of the things is there’s a lot of confusion out there, and I’ve got to be honest with you. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. This misinformation can be categorized as intentional or old, or it’s just not up to date, with these five elements and an individual having three of them. It’s essential to repeat precisely how to fix this issue with the individual and change their lives because there’s nothing quicker to change the body than the ketogenic diet. We also have to monitor the individuals and monitor them through the process. Now we have Kenna Vaughn that she’s got some methods that we employ in the office and are helpful to her. Doctors do this around the country, but it’s beneficial in helping guide and allow for interaction and communication between us, the providers, and the patient. What kind of things do we offer, Kenna?
Kenna Vaughn: We have one-on-one coaching, which is great for when you’re just starting something out. Like they were talking about the ketogenic diet. You might be confused, and there is misinformation. So with this one-on-one coaching, it’s great because we can connect through an app that we have, and you pull out your phone. You can send a quick text message; hey, I saw one website said that I could eat this, but another said, this, can I have this? Things like that. We can clear up that confusion fast, which can keep you on track rather than doing that guessing game. We also have scales that connect to this app, which allows us to monitor the water weight they have and the fat that they have. And we can also monitor their activity through a wristband to constantly track the steps they’re taking. Ensure that they’re doing exercise because exercise is also great to help lower that blood glucose level.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, you mentioned that about the monitoring. We do that in the office along where we send the patients home with actual scales that are the mini BIAs and their hands and wrist. We can do pretty much for patients who want to connect with our office. We can directly get the information downloaded, and we can see their BIAs changing. We also use the in-body system, in which we do a deep analysis of the baseline basal metabolic rate, along with other factors that we’ve discussed prior podcast. This allows us to put together a quantifiable method to assess how the body is changing and rapidly restoring the body to or away from a metabolic syndrome episode. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling it really can. There’s nothing that destroys the body in these combinations of issues at one time. However, it’s easy to see that the body does everything quickly. It fixes a ketogenic diet, removes body weight, decreases the fat in the liver, decreases the intramuscular fat, restores blood sugar. It gets the mind working better. It helps the HDLs through some studies, and I know that Astrid knows there’s a study out there that pulls the information upon how the HDL are elevated with and with a ketogenic diet. We have a study here. You can put it on the screen right there that I think you found that shows the HDLs. Am I correct? And the apolipoprotein, the lipid part of the HDL, also is raised and activates the genetic component. Tell me about that.
Astrid Ornelas: So basically something that a lot of researchers, many health care professionals out there, doctors, they often say, is that when people have high cholesterol, you know, and we’re usually talking about the bad cholesterol. According to several research articles, it’s generally associated with a genetic predisposition when they have bad high cholesterol or the LDL fragment. If your parents, if your grandparents had high cholesterol, there is also an increased risk of you having a genetic predisposition to already having high cholesterol plus like add that like your diet. And if you follow a sedentary lifestyle and you know you don’t do enough exercise or physical activity, you have an increased risk of having higher bad cholesterol.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I’m going to pull the information from I’ve noticed that Alexander’s pulling something information up here on the screen. He’s presenting the monitor where you can see his blood glucose and the screens that he’s going ahead and putting that up there for him. There you go. Alex, tell me what you’re talking about right there because I see that you’re talking about the apolipoprotein, the lipoproteins, and the HDL fragments there.
Alexander Isaiah: So kind of going into a little bit of everything here. So what happens when you eat something that is going to cause an increase in cholesterol? So first of all, you have these genes called Callum microns within the intestinal lumen or your GI tract, and they have apolipoprotein B 48. They have a B 48 because it’s 48 percent of apolipoprotein B 100, so it’s just a little different variation. These microns will bring these through the body and transfer them into the capillaries using apolipoprotein C and apolipoprotein E. Once they enter the capillaries, they’re going to degrade and allow for different aspects of the body to use them. So I have three tissues. We have adipose tissue, cardiac tissue, and skeletal muscle. So cardiac tissue has the lowest KM, and adipose tissue has the highest KM. So what is KM? KM is just a measurement of the way that the enzymes are used. So a low KM means a high specificity for binding to these fatty acids, and a high Km means low specificity for them. So what are the three parts of the body? They use the most energy. It’s the brain, the heart, and the kidneys. Those are the most caloric consumption parts of the body to stay alive. So, first of all, the heart relies large amounts on these fatty acids here, and transferring them to the heart uses mostly fatty acids. I think it’s about 80 percent; 70 to 80 percent of its fuel comes from fatty acids. And to deliver these, your body uses these Callum microns. So once the Callum microns exit the capillaries, it’s already an LDL. It has two choices: the LDL, It can be taken back to the liver or can switch its contents with HDL, and the seals can deliver them correctly to the proper places. So that’s why HDL is so important because they deliver them to the appropriate places if these Callum microns or these LDLs aren’t transferred correctly back to the liver. So why is LDL so detrimental to the system of our body? So here’s a couple of reasons why. So as LDL scavenges throughout the body, they are seen as a foreign object by our macrophages, and our macrophages are our cells used for immune response. So the macrophages end up engulfing these LDLs, and they turn into these things called foam cells. Foam cells become atherosclerotic plaque eventually. But what they do is they embed themselves within or under the surface of the epithelial lining, causing a buildup of these foam cells here and eventually blocking the pathways, causing a plaque. So by eating better fats, having a higher amount of HDL, you can avoid these plaques and avoid atherosclerotic plaques, which clog up your arteries.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what, actually, the link between atherosclerotic plaques and metabolic syndrome you’ve made very, very clear at this point, and that is the reason why prolonged states of the metabolic syndrome do create these disorders. I want to take a moment to thank the entire crew here because what we’re doing is we’re bringing in a lot of information and a lot of teams. And if someone has an issue, I want them to meet the face they’re going to see when they walk into the office. So, Trudy, tell them how we greet them and what we do with them when they walk in if they feel they may be a victim of metabolic syndrome.
Trudy Torres: Well, we’re very blessed to have a very exciting and energized office. You’re always going to feel at home. If we don’t have the correct answer at that moment, we’re certainly going to research. We’re not going to toss your side. We’re always going to get back to you. Everybody gets treated as an individual. You know, each vessel that we have, it’s unique in its way. So we certainly don’t create a cookie-cutter approach. We’re always going to make sure that, as I said, you walk away with the most and valuable, informed option for yourself. We’re just a phone call away. We’re just a click away. And, you know, don’t ever feel that there’s not a reasonable question. We always want to make sure that all the questions and concerns you have always get the best answer possible.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Guys, I want to tell you, thank you. And I want to also share with you that we happen to be in the fantastic facilities when we do; there’s exercise involved with returning the body to a normal state. We function out of the PUSH Fitness Center. We’re doing the podcast from the fitness center. And you can see the information herewith Danny Alvarado. And he’s the one that or Daniel Alvarado, the director of Push Fitness who we work with a bunch of therapies and physical therapists to help you restore your body to where it should be. We look forward to coming back, and as I said, if you appreciate, are you like what we have here, reach down on the little bottom, hit the little button, and hit subscribe. And then make sure you hit the bell so you can be the first to hear what we got to go on. OK, thank you, guys, and we welcome you again. And God bless. Have a good one.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez and PUSH Fitness owner, Daniel Alvarado discuss how PUSH was created and demonstrate how the right motivation can help people achieve their goals as well as, improving their overall health and wellness.
Discussion
Dr. Alex Jimenez and PUSH Fitness owner, Daniel Alvarado introduce today’s podcast.
[00:00:01] Daniel Alvarado: You know what keeps them moving and growing and living? Tell me. It is another catfish or that predator. So we never have predators in our lives. We stay stuck, and we don’t progress anything. So every time we ask God to take away the stress or God take away this issue. We’re asking God to make us weaker, not stronger. OK. Because instead of asking like, “Hey God? Make me more creative. Make me more passionate, make me more patient.” We ask for, hey, take away this, but then we still want everything else that comes along with it. How does that work? It’s not easy.
[00:00:41] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I don’t know. I mean, if you think about it’s from the first time we’re born. It’s not easy. You got to be one in a trillion sperm, really, and only God is very clear that if you don’t get to that egg first, you’re done. So from the moment where we’re given a chance, we’re on the point of destruction from the beginning. Exactly. So, in essence, why did that sperm get to that egg? So you can pass and fight through it.
[00:01:19] Daniel Alvarado: All right, so then you think of everything else as far as how people complain, how people say, you know, I want more money, I want this, but they don’t look at everybody’s backstory, the backend and the behind the curtains. They think, “Oh man, Jimenez, you are a doctor?” You don’t know how many times you’ve lost and rebuilt your practice or if you’re a gym owner and you haven’t made it. You don’t know how often you have to go in at 4:00 in the morning to get a workout in because you have to train people all day long to ensure that this business stays afloat. You know, people don’t see the back. You see, they’re quick to say, Oh, must be easy. No, it’s not easy until you step into the person’s shoes because you’re the one that has to sign the checks. You’re the one that has to stay up at night and figure out payroll. You’re the one that has to be creative and figure out how you’re going to make ends meet. You are the one that constantly has to be on it. You know, as much as you want to kick back and say whatever and do this, and I would love to work out four or five hours a day. That’s my passion and your passion.
[00:02:23] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s my passion too.
[00:02:24] Daniel Alvarado: And can we? No, right. What do we have to do? Do we have to be meticulous? We have to be disciplined and ensure we have a proper order to stay on top of the schedule. Yes or no? Absolutely. Exactly. You know, so I’m saying at the end of the day that if you don’t have something chasing you, I mean, you become fat and dormant and become lazy.
[00:02:45] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I think nature is designed to eliminate you. Alex would say, you know, it’s survival, the fittest limiting the species or whatever he’d call it when he’s in biochemistry. You see, I got to tell you it’s not easy to be a business owner. It’s not. It’s not easy when you have no sleep. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve put the time in from early hours, and you here at 4:30 in the morning and here what time it is? Now you’re here, and we’re here sharing some stories. You know, it’s one of those things where it’s going to be nonstop all our lives. But here’s the thing if you don’t do it, it doesn’t stimulate you to become good at what you do, right? You become lethargic. Everything goes bad. You slowly begin the process of ceasing to exist.
[00:03:36] Daniel Alvarado: Right. So we all need rest to rejuvenate. Get creative. It’s scientifically proven. You need that to reset. You have to. Otherwise, you burn out. Right? But after how many days of rest, one or two where you get this disconnect spastic. Then afterward, you are like, “Alright, cool. I rested enough.” So you don’t stay stuck there.
[00:04:04] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No, and I pray for vacation, right? And when I get it, after about three days, I’m like, OK, all right. I’m done.
[00:04:10] Daniel Alvarado: Let’s go.
[00:04:11] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, OK, what I’m going to break. What am I going to do? That’s how we are.
[00:04:15] Daniel Alvarado: Exactly. But that’s what makes you so successful.
[00:04:17] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. Well, it drives us, and it drives us to create who we are. And it also gives us a vision as to what we’re going to do. When we start this podcast, you know, Daniel, we want to get or tell the people a bit of the story of what you do and tell them about, you know, where you’ve been and what’s been happening with you. OK. So for me, it’s very important to share with the people what is happening. I’ve always been one to say, you know, I see how hard you work, and I see how much effort you put into things. But I’d like to know a bit of you as to what made you and what kind of makes you click a little bit. When I discuss these things, I want to ask you what made you begin PUSH? What made you start this massive organization?
How PUSH Fitness Started
PUSH Fitness owner, Daniel Alvarado explains how PUSH started.
[00:05:16] Daniel Alvarado: I want to reach the masses of people and help people. So in all reality, my sister, my brother-in-law, my brother, we’ve all come from platforms as far as I’m speaking, preaching, singing, whatever it is. I was always kind of the black sheep. And I mean it in a good way because I wasn’t trained differently. I just was very rebellious. That makes any sense. I wanted to create my own. So if someone is going right, I go left. If the people go right, I go left. I was always trying to find a different way, and I was stubborn enough to become the most successful by the end. But that’s what allowed me to create this place to reach the masses of people and have my platform of change in people’s lives.
[00:06:14] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me ask you when you first started PUSH; what was your reason you started it out? You were always into fitness ever since I’ve known you; you’ve always been into a deep understanding. You see, I love sharing that story with people about when I first met you; you were driven. I mean, you were hunting for knowledge. You were trying to figure out what it was that made people tick, and you wanted to teach people… A little cocky, I’d say. But being 18 years old, I mean, who isn’t right at that age? You haven’t been thumped in the head a couple of times. But you did, and you shared it with people, and you did that. But what made you? What drove you? Because I got to tell you, I’m a big believer, Daniel, about when you evaluate families, I see how hard your dad works. I see how your mom’s incredible in terms of what she does. She wins these CrossFit competitions just on meer drive. You have to turn off the lights to get her off the wall because she keeps on going, right? I mean, what is it that what do you feel drove you and what started the whole philosophy of trying to help people out?
[00:07:24] Daniel Alvarado: I mean, you put in my parent’s work ethic; they just never stop. They still don’t stop and try to move forward despite what life throws at them, and they’re successful in their way. They never stop working towards their marriage, towards their love, towards serving each other. They showed me that we always have to help people, and they serve each other. They serve at the church, and they serve wherever they go. No matter where my dad is, he’s always trying to help. It doesn’t matter. You try to take out your trash can and table; whatever it is, he will help. But that’s where I learned it from him. You don’t just go anywhere and just be wherever you go. You always serve. And that’s my interfaith mentality. You know, it’s biblical. Wherever you are, we are supposed to serve people as husbands and wives. We’re supposed to serve each other. That’s what makes us so successful. You know, you look at Jesus in the Bible, and what do you do? You serve people. He helped people. Not the norm. The most unorthodox, nonreligious people. You know, all the people there that needed the most help, not the most religious. And I think that’s what I love to do. I love helping the people that need the most help. The unconventional. Not the people that are all ready to let go. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do love helping them. But I guess I like helping the unorthodox.
[00:09:08] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. You know what, when you mentioned that about your dad, one of the things I noticed is that I came here to work out at around six o’clock in the morning and it was freezing outside, literally freezing. You had a flat tire. Your dad was lifting in the car by himself to get that tire up. Yeah, it was crazy. By the time I got there, I was like, Is this guy working on it? There was no jack, and he was picking up the car himself. He’s pushing that thing up and lifting the vehicle to fit the tire on. I was like; You got to be kidding me. You didn’t even know until I told you, and you said, “Man, my dad never asked for help.”, you know, he does it. That’s one of the things you said, and that’s who we are. We are our parents. We eventually become our parents to some extent, and that’s very much how you are. Your philosophies have guided the PUSH fitness entourage, and the people who come here have been like extreme athletes. Tell me a bit of that in terms of what drove you to pick athleticism as your way of serving.
[00:10:11] Daniel Alvarado: I think I’ve seen the potential of what people can be pushed to if you believe in them. Often, people will, you know, people do believe in themselves, but it’s amazing what you see people become or individuals or athletes. When you say, Hey, I believe you. Someone that is not your mom, not your dad, because it’s kind of expected. You know, not that they have to tell you that, but you know, it’s kind of sometimes expected. You’re right. Yes, exactly. But then you have this stranger saying, I believe you genuinely wholeheartedly, and it brings out that much more in you. I know that’s how I was, and I still remember various times where you tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know. What are you doing? You can, and I’m very different; I don’t need someone to preach to me. It might get going, and that gets you going to move on to the next level of the mountain. And that’s what I love seeing as a potential that you could bring down in all individuals.
[00:11:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: When you see it, pretty much you’ve been able to see everyone crack. What is it you look for when you see them kind of hit that wall when you start working with an individual with a specific set, whatever sport they’re in, or whatever their dreams are? Weight loss or whatever it is. What is it you look for?
[00:11:50] Daniel Alvarado: To see the reason why they’re quitting. Are they genuinely tired, or have they been babied so much by society that they don’t know how to push for themselves anymore? It’s a sensitive society nowadays; you can’t push kids because they get their feelings hurt or feel this way or that way. And sometimes it’s like you got to wake your butt up; if not, you will not make it in this life. Nothing comes easy, and I think we’re expecting things to become easy because we’re, you know, microwave generation, where everything wants to be done so quickly. So I look for the reason as to why they’re quitting. This is genuinely why they are tired, and are they going to throw up? All right. But you remember firsthand that when I worked out with you, I went to the restroom and threw up. I came right back. Why? Because it’s what you build with that person that respect, you know, why would you want someone who is an equivalent you when he gets hard, you know?
[00:12:59] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, exactly right.
[00:13:00] Daniel Alvarado: How are you going to count on them? How do you depend on them? When it gets tough, they are going to jump off the wagon; that’s it. You are left alone.
The Right Motivation
PUSH Fitness owner, Daniel Alvarado explains to Dr. Alex Jimenez how the right motivation can influence not only kids but adults as well.
[00:13:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know you’re given responsibility. A huge one with a lot of the El Paso kids in whatever sports they do and whatever the sport, whether it be agility, sport-based or just some sort of sport-based system where they’re just kind of, you know, let’s say, hockey or even things like tennis or golf. But they all have a moment of reaching within. I love how you do that in terms of going ahead and seeing the depths of what is wrong with them, and you can connect with them like no other. I’ve noticed that every single time with my kids, too, when you train them. Did you ask why? So really, at that point, you know, no one cares what you know, they care that you care and that caring allows them to open up, huh?
[00:13:55] Daniel Alvarado: Right? Yeah, it does. You know, it makes them feel like, you know, I do have it in me. I need a quit babying in myself. And I need to get up and get after this because no one will give it to me, and I got to get up after it and work for it. Period.
[00:14:11] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I would tell my daughter when they would come in and say, “You know what? I’m not coming in, you know, I’m not going today.” And I said, All right, well, let me call Daniel. “No!” Now they sense the obligation and trust you have put into their hearts like no other? Because that’s what they want. They want someone to believe in them.
[00:14:35] Daniel Alvarado: Exactly, to push them.
[00:14:37] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s why the push to PUSH, you know, there’s another way there’s the adage the push. You know, these are vital points. Do you have to deal with the mind-stuff while working with them? How do you work on developing a child’s mind or working them through their mental impediments or their mental kind of dynamics to make them better of who they are? If that makes sense.
[00:15:04] Daniel Alvarado: You had to build a foundation with them. First, you had to build trust with them. You can just go in and yell at them, Hey, let’s go. Move your butt! You know, you can’t do that. You have to build a relationship first, have them trust you, and understand why you’re pushing them. And then when they’re at the brink of giving up, and you yell at them, and they know why you’re screaming at them. A good parent after they spank them and ground them. They’ll tell them the reason why they did that. But they don’t stop loving them. They appreciate it because they know they’re wrong. Right? It’s the same concept here. Obviously, I yell at them after they know, like, hey yeah, I was sulking, and you start feeling sorry for myself and get after it, right?
[00:15:53] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, from my own experience with what you did. You see, you have a lot of moms watching you train their kids. Moms are sharp. There’s nothing more intelligent than a mother in this world. And they intuitively, they understand, and they feel the depths of the change in the child. Right? So when they see the depths of the difference in the child, they trust you. And this is in mass because I have like a whole wall of families, moms, dads. They bring their kids no matter what. Tired, cold, sleet, rain, snow. They bring their kids here to train with you and your entire crew with the philosophies of pushing to those limits. You know, how does that feel when you see those kids excel?
[00:16:45] Daniel Alvarado: I feel proud. I’m pretty much over the moon because you see the hard work you took to instill that time into them and make sure their full potential came out. So it’s rewarding, and it’s inexplicable.
[00:17:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me ask you this. You’re not young, and you’re in your 30s, which is a very young age. However, you’ve lived long enough to see some of these kids go on in to do their thing. Tell me how that feels in terms of you watching them develop in terms of their they’re who they are, and what they develop because of the foundation, or at least influenced by the foundation of just don’t give up and keep on pushing through it. How does it feel? What do you think?
[00:17:36] Daniel Alvarado: In a lot of sense, a lot of pride, because you can see what they could have been in there, what they couldn’t have been in times. Some kids do come from poor extremities. And so to see them excel believing themselves, go to college, get a successful job, and be something of a higher profession that otherwise they thought they couldn’t build or settle for less and not letting them settle for less is amazing. That’s why I keep doing what I’m doing.
[00:18:17] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Do these kids keep calling you and talking to you personally?
[00:18:21] Daniel Alvarado: Yeah, they do. They still keep up with me as far as what they’re doing, how they’re doing. They’ll come in and work out. So, you know, to share with me everything. It’s fun. You build that long-lasting relationship.
[00:18:35] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: If you could come up with a couple of words indicating what makes PUSH unique and you can look deep inside your heart and figure out what it would be a word to get an obituary being read about you. What would they say about PUSH and you, huh? Would you want them to say?
[00:18:55] Daniel Alvarado: Honestly, that they had somebody other than their parents believe in them.
[00:19:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s amazing. That’s a considerable component of everything that’s going on. When do you think someone actually should be coming out to this place and enjoying the kind of lifestyle that this place, you know, helps enhance their lives with? When is that time?
[00:19:21] Daniel Alvarado: Whenever. Whenever you want to be a better version of yourself.
[00:19:25] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: What do you think people sometimes think about, you know, why shouldn’t they come in? What should not be an impediment of them coming in here?
[00:19:35] Daniel Alvarado: Their image. They can’t do it, that they’re not like, you know, they’re obese, having problems, low back problems, and looking foolish. You know, the whole thing is that in the day, we’ve all looked foolish to an extent or another. But the point is if I always assumed what others thought and paid attention to how I felt this was for members and not being good enough, then I wouldn’t be where I’m at.
[00:20:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I tell you, I’ve learned a lot from you, and if anything, my kids have learned a lot from you by just your persistence. You know, I can honestly tell you that my son is better as an athlete because of your relationship with you. But let me ask you, what kind of physical and emotional changes have you watched your clients attain their goals?
[00:20:34] Daniel Alvarado: Hearing people say. “He saved me from diabetic medications.” We hear people say like I would have died, been in this obese state, and you saved my life. And that’s how do you not get emotional with things like that? How do you not get emotional and people saying, like, you know, I thought I couldn’t walk or had this muscle imbalance, or how do you say where I have this one client that couldn’t build muscle? I can’t remember the terminology, but the fact that she can build muscle now, where the doctor told her she wouldn’t be able to squat a bar, and now she’s squatting over one hundred and thirty-five pounds, that’s phenomenal. How does that not keep you motivated to get up every day when you don’t feel like getting up? You know, and I’ll repeat it, in King David’s words. You know when you had to encourage yourself because somebody is not always there to inspire you. So you do have to encourage yourself so you can be the best or somebody else that needs it more than you. Ultimately, someone has more complicated than you, and you can always help somebody under you.
Conclusion
Dr. Alex Jimenez recaps today’s podcast.
[00:21:52] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, Daniel, you said it is very short and essential keywords. You know, we appreciate you. We’re here at the push fitness center. You know you got some information there that you can use to find Mr. Alvarado. The PUSH fitness center is a monster center with many people who care and change people’s lives. Suppose you guys have any questions, comments, or ideas about what we do for people. Let us know, and we’re here to serve as Daniel is. Thank you very much, brother, and I appreciate everything you’ve done. And God bless, brother.
Chiropractic medicine specializes in the musculoskeletal system. It treats the whole body because if one area of the body is inflamed, swollen, out of place, or damaged, it affects other areas. Chiropractic’s goals are to bring the body back into balance and get it functioning at an optimal level. Achieving overall health and wellness requires an individual’s body to be at its appropriate weight.
Obesity and Pain
Chronic pain and obesity are linked, according to various studies. Individuals dealing with chronic pain are more likely to become obese, and those who are obese have an increased risk of developing a chronic pain condition. Research studies also show that individuals that lose weight have a reduction to complete alleviation of pain.
The Pain Gain Cycle
The goal is to break the cycle. When an individual is dealing with pain symptoms, eating foods high in sugars and starches can be comforting. However, unhealthy food is fueling the pain and causing inflammation. Back pain commonly occurs in individuals that are obese. Chiropractic helps kickstart the weight loss process by relieving pain naturally and safely.
Spinal Alignment and Weight Loss
Spinal alignments go beyond relieving pain to help with weight loss. Adjustments improve the body’s ability to burn fat and maintain overall health. A spine that is out of alignment can affect the nerve pathways of the central nervous system and the communication signals affecting nearly every aspect of the body. Problems with the central nervous system can affect how the whole body burns fat and the metabolic system.
Hormone Regulation
Spinal misalignments can affect the body’s hormone regulation. These hormones include those for breaking down foods during digestion. Affected hormones can contribute to weight gain and prevent weight loss. Chiropractic corrects the nerve’s pathways, allowing for proper hormone regulation, which can help with weight loss.
Pain Relief and Exercise
Exercise is pivotal to losing weight, building muscle, and maintaining health. The problem for overweight individuals is that they are in too much pain to exercise. With back pain, just walking a quarter of a mile can become excruciating, and this is where chiropractic care for pain relief comes in. When managing pain through chiropractic, individuals can exercise regularly.
Nutrition and Lifestyle
The whole body is a unit where everything affects something else. Chiropractors are becoming or teaming up with certified nutritionists and health coaches. Part of a treatment plan includes nutritional recommendations personalized to individual needs and weight loss goals. They also recommend:
Specific exercises
Lifestyle adjustments
Third-party support
Whole Body Composition
Weight Loss and Cheat Meals/Days
A cheat day or meal every once in a while will not undo weeks and months of regular workouts and eating healthy. Cheat days can help individuals stay motivated for the long term. But this does not mean getting carried away and going on a bender or making cheat days a routine. The goal is to develop healthy eating habits that become the norm while decreasing the craving for junk food. Changing body composition and losing weight is a long-term journey, but done correctly and with support turns into a healthy body.
References
DeMaria, Anthony, et al. “A weight loss program in a chiropractic practice: a retrospective analysis.” Complementary therapies in clinical practice vol. 20,2 (2014): 125-9. doi:10.1016/j.ctcp.2013.11.007
James M Whedon, DC, MS, Andrew W J Toler, MS, Louis A Kazal, MD, Serena Bezdjian, Ph.D., Justin M Goehl, DC, MS, Jay Greenstein, DC, Impact of Chiropractic Care on Use of Prescription Opioids in Patients with Spinal Pain, Pain Medicine, Volume 21, Issue 12, December 2020, Pages 3567–3573, doi.org/10.1093/pm/pnaa014
Okifuji, Akiko, and Bradford D Hare. “The association between chronic pain and obesity.” Journal of pain research vol. 8 399-408. 14 Jul. 2015, doi:10.2147/JPR.S55598
Losing weight can be one of the hardest things to do. It is also one of the best things anyone can do to get rid of back pain and optimize overall health. Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight impacts the whole body, especially the spine. It is prevalent for individuals who are overweight to experience back pain. This comes from the added weight that the feet, legs, pelvis, and spine have to support. For many, once the weight comes off, the back pain reduces significantly and/or disappears completely. For those embarking on a weight loss journey, our:
Chiropractic team
Physical therapists
Health coach
Nutritionist
Can provide resources to plan, encourage, and assist in reaching health goals.
Overweight, Obesity and Back Pain
Spine pain is one of the top reasons individuals see a doctor. The need to lose weight is based on body mass index/BMI. BMI can be an indicator that an individual’s weight might not be in a healthy range. BMI ranges:
Normal weight – Body Mass Index of less than 25
Overweight – Body Mass Index of 25 to 30
Obese – Body Mass Index of 31 to 35
Extremelyobese – Body Mass Index of 36 or higher
If unsure about how to get an accurate BMI measurement, talk to our team about InBody Testing.
Added Weight Places Pressure On the Spine
Added bodyweight places added strain on the low back. Studies have linked obesity with degenerative disc problems. Combined with the physical impact the added weight has on the spine and overall health, it can also affect spine surgery outcomes. Studies have shown that some overweight/obese individuals have an increased risk for surgery-related complications like:
Infection
Issues recovering from anesthesia
Overall recovery struggles
The good news is that individuals do not have to lose a significant amount of weight to see and feel the benefits. Losing 15% of excess weight will improve chronic back pain.
Exercise
Successful weight loss is the ability to maintain the loss. It needs to be something that can be committed to and brought into an individual’s lifestyle. Trying to go hard with an extreme diet or intense exercise program is not recommended. This is like not having any long-distance running knowledge along with training but entering a 12345K race. An individual will collapse after a few blocks. And sustained weight loss is just that, a long-distance journey that requires:
Getting educated about what is going on with the body
Understanding how foods affect/impact the body
Understanding the body’s unique needs to lose weight
Developing a personal health goal plan
Following through
Lifestyle factors contribute to healthy body weight. Being able to embed healthy habits into one’s life is the objective. Although it can sound easy to do, it can be a challenging process. With professional help, individuals can:
Maintain a nutritious and balanced diet
Have an active lifestyle
Maintain healthy sleep habits
Keep stress under control
Discussing a weight loss plan is very important. A professional health coach, nutritionist, and chiropractor will develop the right program that considers an individual’s specific health status.
Overall Health
Achieving a healthy weight will reduce to relieve back pain completely and significantly improve quality of life. Weight management is challenging, but once the benefits are seen and felt, it becomes second nature.
Body Composition
Healthy Kidneys
The kidneys pump more than 400 gallons of recycled blood through the body every day. These organs work nonstop to filter blood and remove waste. If the kidneys become impaired, the body can become overloaded with waste. Unhealthy lifestyle choices can harm/damage the kidneys. Kidney disease progresses slowly over the years. Individuals can lose 90 percent of kidney function before symptoms become serious. Chronic kidney disease is not reversible. However, with lifestyle adjustments, an individual can lower their risk of developing kidney-related diseases.
Proper Hydration
Drink plenty of water to clear sodium, urea, and toxins from the body and prevents kidney stones. Try to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day. Every individual’s body water levels are different. A body composition test can determine what is normal for the individual.
Maintain healthy diet
Poor diet contributes to visceral fat gain. This has been linked to chronic kidney disease. Reduce visceral fat by eating a healthy diet of vegetables, fruit, and lean protein. Cut down on salty, processed foods. Body composition testing can help form an individualized diet plan to reduce visceral fat.
Supplements, antibiotics, and OTC medications
Overuse of common over-the-counter medications and supplements can cause kidney damage and disease. Consult with a doctor before taking medications and supplements if there is kidney function impairment.
Maintain fitness and physical activity
Cardio and strength training exercises are recommended. High blood sugar levels stress the kidneys. Building adequate muscle mass will help control blood sugar. A body composition test can make sure there are adequate amounts of muscle mass.
References
Liuke M, Solovieva S, Lamminen A, Luoma K, et al. Disc degeneration of the lumbar spine in relation to overweight. Int J Obes (Lond). 2005;29(8):903-908.
Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Fryar CD, Flegal KM. Prevalence of Obesity Among Adults and Youth: the United States, 2011–2014. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: National Center for Health Statistics.www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db219.htm. Page last updated: October 28, 2015. Accessed July 10, 2017
Samartzis D, Karppinen J, Chan D, Luk KD, et al. The association of lumbar intervertebral disc degeneration on magnetic resonance imaging with body mass index in overweight and obese adults: A population-based study. Arthritis & Rheumatology. 2012;64(5):1488-1496.
Belly fat is a gateway to back pain/spinal issues that can lead to various health problems. The bulging belly population has grown a bit since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 37% of individuals have gained weight since it began, according to a global Ipsos survey. If back pain is presenting and there is excess weight around the abdomen known as abdominal obesity, this could be a contributing factor.
Belly fat and posture
When the natural curves of the spine are normal, the core is stable and well-supported. Excessive weight, including a large abdomen, shifts these curves out of correct alignment. Excessive abdominal fat has been associated with lordosis, which is an excessive inward curve of the spine toward the lower back. One study found that severely obese individuals had pain and changes in posture. This was especially visible in the spine, knees, and feet.
Front-loading shift
The back pain felt from a bulging belly can be caused by a shift in posture and body mechanics. Studies show these can have a negative impact on back pain and body positioning. All or most of the weight is placed on the lower back.
Overloaded discs
Abdominal obesity can damage/injure the discs/shock absorbers of the spine. This leads to:
And a bulging belly can flatten the height of the intervertebral discs.
Fat pollutants in the blood
Fat can accumulate and secrete toxins that contribute to swelling and inflammation that can be painful. Over time, these toxins wear down components of the skeletal system.A study found potential links between obesity and degenerative disc disease. Scientists found a connection in obese men, but not obese women. This is believed to be because men tend to store fat in their bellies, and women tend to store fat in the buttocks and thighs.
Damage to the musculoskeletal system
The bones constantly renew themselves, but when there is excess body fat it can interfere with the process. This has the potential to turn into osteoporosis over time. Studies associate visceral fat with lower bone mineral density, and an increase in the risk of fractures.
Ankylosing spondylitis treatment and fat interference
Ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammatory disease that causes chronic back pain and can cause the vertebrae to fuse. The back can be extremely stiff, and the condition can lead to a permanently hunched posture. There are medications to improve symptoms and slow the disease. However, being overweight reduces the drugs’ effectiveness. This is because belly fat can cause medication absorption problems.
Rare spinal condition linked to obesity
Obesity along with a high Body Mass Index increases the risk of a rare condition called spinal epidural lipomatosis or SEL. This is an overgrowth of body fat in the spinal canal. Spinal epidural lipomatosis can cause various types of back pain. This is why it is recommended to have a doctor examine and evaluate any aches or pains.
Body Composition
Kombucha beneficial for gut bacteria
Kombucha contains a wide variety of bacteria and fungi that helps ferment the sugar in kombucha drinks. It is able to affect the existing microbes in the gut by inhibiting the growth of various gut-dwelling pathogens. These include:
It is a probiotic drink made from fermenting green or black tea
It is made up of healthy bacteria that produce acetic acid that is beneficial for blood sugar, insulin levels, and body composition
It helps the body process food by lowering insulin levels after a meal
It contains polyphenols that reduce oxidative stress, to help fight disease risks
It destroys unhealthy bacteria in the gut
It helps increase healthy bacteria
Kombucha can be thought of as a natural antibiotic. However, it does not come with the weight-gain side effect. Improving the health of the gut through fermented foods like kombucha help reduce the risk for weight gain/obesity, as well as restore gut health for those trying to lose weight by creating a healthy gut environment.
Disclaimer
The information herein is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional, licensed physician, and is not medical advice. We encourage you to make your own health care decisions based on your research and partnership with a qualified health care professional. Our information scope is limited to chiropractic, musculoskeletal, physical medicines, wellness, sensitive health issues, functional medicine articles, topics, and discussions. We provide and present clinical collaboration with specialists from a wide array of disciplines. Each specialist is governed by their professional scope of practice and their jurisdiction of licensure. We use functional health & wellness protocols to treat and support care for the musculoskeletal system’s injuries or disorders. Our videos, posts, topics, subjects, and insights cover clinical matters, issues, and topics that relate to and support, directly or indirectly, our clinical scope of practice.* Our office has made a reasonable attempt to provide supportive citations and has identified the relevant research study or studies supporting our posts. We provide copies of supporting research studies available to regulatory boards and the public upon request. We understand that we cover matters that require an additional explanation of how it may assist in a particular care plan or treatment protocol; therefore, to further discuss the subject matter above, please feel free to ask Dr. Alex Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC, MSACP, CCST, IFMCP, CIFM, CTG* email: coach@elpasofunctionalmedicine.com phone: 915-850-0900 Licensed in Texas & New Mexico
Understanding the difference between weight loss and fat loss will help promote a healthy change and improve an individual’s wellbeing. Fat loss can be a part of losing weight. However, individuals lose more than just fat. Fat loss is the goal for most individuals, so taking a deliberate, focused approach will generate the best results. Here we discuss how individuals can optimize for fat loss.
Understanding The Difference
Weight loss is the overall reduction in body weight
Fat loss is a reduction in body fat
When losing weight, the body is not just losing body fat, and changes are being made to each component of body composition. This includes:
Body fat
Lean Body Mass
Body Water
This is also true for weight gain. An individual cannot control how much is lost but can influence what is lost.
Weight Loss
Hundreds of diet and exercise programs can help achieve fat loss, some better than others. The ones that tend to work better focus on the same thing: reducing energy intake from food/diet while increasing energy output through exercise and regular physical activity. This forces the body to compensate for the missing energy by breaking down the body’s tissues, including fat and muscle. As an individual loses weight, they will also lose some muscle in the form of Lean Body Mass in addition to body fat.
Fat Loss
Body fat is a combination of essential fat and storage fat. Storage fat is adipose tissue that has accumulated for reserved energy. This type of fat changes with diet modification and regular exercise. Too much storage fat can negatively impact physical and mental wellbeing, so this should be the focus for better health.
Focus on fat loss and not weight loss
There is a clear association between obesity and chronic disease. Focusing on weight loss can lead to unintended consequences like eating disorders. This is why focusing on weight loss, and healthy body composition is critical. This is the recommended approach because it encourages the individual to move more and eat healthily.
Understanding health benefits of losing fat
Body fat percentage works better as a gauge of health than weight.
Weight is composed of lean body mass, body fat, and water, so any changes in these areas can lead to weight gain and not just fat loss. Excess body fat, specifically storage fat, has a close association with chronic diseases like:
Type 2 Diabetes
Hypertension
Heart Disease
Various Cancers
The key is understanding that a healthy body fat percentage will help reduce the risk of these diseases and improve mental health and overall health.
Different ways to measure fat loss
Tracking body fat loss means having body composition tracked and monitored. There are devices and methods for determining body composition, including:
For genuinely accurate results, get tested by a highly skilled professional who uses medical-grade tools for assessment. Cheap plastic calipers and at-home scales don’t tend to be the best options.
Metabolism changes with weight loss
When losing weight, there is more loss than fat. One loss can be Lean Body Mass, which is critical because the amount of Lean Body Mass has directly influenced Basal Metabolic Rate or the body’s metabolism. The Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the number of calories the body naturally burns when resting. When focusing on weight loss and not making changes to minimize lean body mass loss, the individual decrease the size of their metabolism. However, if an individual continues with the same eating habits, this could be a setup for weight regain.
Weight loss can slow down metabolism.
Here is an example of a typical set of body composition results of someone who would be clinically diagnosed as obese.
Along with weight and body fat mass measurements, the individual naturally developed muscles by carrying their body weight. This means that individuals that are obese also have relatively large metabolisms. Dramatic changes to Lean Body Mass and metabolism are not ideal, especially when the goal is maintaining a healthy body weight.
The weight and body fat bars on the above chart are significantly over average, and the Skeletal Muscle Mass bar. This is common for individuals that are obese. Individuals that are obese have developed this muscle by carrying a large amount of weight. Large amounts of muscle begin to build to move the heavy body. This is why it is essential to come up with a focused/customized approach for gaining strength, losing fat, and body recomposition, rather than just weight loss.
Stopping weight regain
Focusing on body composition, developing muscle, and Lean Body Mass is crucial. With weight loss, there will be some Lean Body Mass loss. This means a low metabolism and non-regulated eating habits can lead to regaining weight. With no development of Lean Body Mass and skeletal muscle to help grow the metabolism, there is an increased chance of weight retrieval. Along with continued changing eating habits after an individual reaches their target weight.
Building muscle, losing fat for healthy body composition
The main areas to focus on to change body composition, overall health, and wellbeing.
Focus on body composition, not on weight loss
Instead, track changes in body composition. This means optimizing programs for fat loss while minimizing Lean Body Mass loss. Weight loss will occur, but proper nutrition and strength training can reduce Lean Body Mass loss.
Develop new eating habits
An important step is understanding how to improve eating habits by choosing a diet plan that will be enjoyable. When optimizing for fat loss, it will take longer than weight loss. Effective dietary strategies go for half to one pound of fat loss per week. This is a manageable and sustainable goal that will not cause adverse effects on metabolism. Slow and steady is the better option and will lead to long-term changes.
Start strength training to increase metabolism.
Strength training/weight lifting is a great way to increase metabolism. Increased muscle benefits range from:
High ability to recover from disease/s
Reducing insulin resistance
Keeps the body mobile
Helps combat obesity by increasing BMR and metabolism
Body composition in the long-term
Fat loss is more important than weight loss and will lead to long-term changes. Understanding that working out smarter and finding out body composition numbers will promote getting fit while keeping the fat off. It will take longer than expected, but dropping 30 pounds in less than a year and then regaining it all back is counterproductive.Take the time to make minor, impactful adjustments that will lead to a lifetime of optimal health.
InBody
Dr. Alex Jimenez’s Blog Post Disclaimer
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic, musculoskeletal, physical medicines, wellness, and sensitive health issues and/or functional medicine articles, topics, and discussions. We use public health & wellness protocols to treat and support care for injuries or disorders of the musculoskeletal system. Our posts, topics, subjects, and insights cover clinical matters, issues, and topics that relate to and support directly or indirectly our clinical scope of practice.*
Our office has reasonably attempted to provide supportive citations and identified the relevant research study or studies supporting our posts. We also make copies of supporting research studies available to the board and or the public upon request. We understand that we cover matters that require an additional explanation as to how it may assist in a particular care plan or treatment protocol; therefore, to further discuss the subject matter above, please feel free to ask Dr. Alex Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900. The provider(s) Licensed in Texas& New Mexico*
References
Hall, Kevin D et al. Calorie for Calorie, Dietary Fat Restriction Results in More Body Fat Loss than Carbohydrate Restriction in People with Obesity. Cell metabolism vol. 22,3 (2015): 427-36. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2015.07.021
Merlotti, C et al. Subcutaneous fat loss is more significant than visceral fat loss with diet and exercise, weight-loss promoting drugs and bariatric surgery: a critical review and meta-analysis. International journal of obesity (2005) vol. 41,5 (2017): 672-682. doi:10.1038/ijo.2017.31
Tobias, Deirdre K et al. Effect of low-fat diet interventions versus other diet interventions on long-term weight change in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet. Diabetes & endocrinology vol. 3,12 (2015): 968-79. doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(15)00367-8
IFM's Find A Practitioner tool is the largest referral network in Functional Medicine, created to help patients locate Functional Medicine practitioners anywhere in the world. IFM Certified Practitioners are listed first in the search results, given their extensive education in Functional Medicine
