Fitness Nutrition, Health and Wellness

The Unknown That’s Killing People

Posted on September 19, 2016March 5, 2023 by Travis Wade

19
Sep

The Unknown That’s Killing People

By Travis Wade

Vitamin K2

One of the most overlooked nutrients we have is vitamin K2. When I mention vitamin K2 most people don’t know what I’m talking about and others say I get it in my cruciferous vegetables. The lack of vitamin K2 may be causing a lot of the blood clotting disorders in North American. Things like angina, heart attacks, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, stroke, and T.I.A or mini stroke.

If you read an article on how to prevent any of these issues, I’ll put money down that you won’t read about vitamin K2. It is very commonly overlooked, however, it is the third leading nutrient deficiency in North America. Also, it takes about 18 years for medical discoveries to go mainstream.

The way vitamin K2 works is it deposits calcium in the body where it needs to be. Without it you get calcium build up in the veins and arteries or gallstones or kidney stones. When plaque builds in the lumen of the blood vessels calcium can be deposited there and hardening of the vessels happens. It is called atherosclerosis or arteriosclerosis. The hardening then becomes brittle and breaks off causing what is called an embolism. Depending on where that embolism gets lodged determines the disorder. If it’s in the brain then it’s a stroke, in the heart it’s a heart attack etc.

Take vitamin K2 and your calcium goes to the bones and into the cells where it’s needed. A lot of people with osteoporosis don’t have a lack of calcium. They just have a lack of vitamin K2. Cruciferous vegetables have an abundance of vitamin K1. Fermented foods like sauerkraut, miso, kimchi, yogurt, and kefir have vitamin K2.

I eat some of these fermented foods at every meal and my favourite are the yogurt and kefir. I use them as my protein supplement as well. If you’re using a supplement for vitamin K2, you need a plant derived form of the nutrient. MK-7 is the form you want.

Toxins

One thing I should mention that I have heard before from Dave Asprey and heard it again tonight from Mike Adams is that North America is kinda the world’s dumping grounds for toxic foods and supplements. Other countries ban toxins in the ppm or ppb and in North America our rules are much less stringent and in some cases non-existent.

Stuff that’s considered toxic either gets sold here or on the internet. In general, stay away from food and supplements from China, India, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico even if it’s labelled certified organic. They don’t test for heavy metal toxicity. The safest tends to be from Canada, U.S., and the continent of Australia. You can also have your stuff tested on Mike Adams’ website here.

One more thing that’s just as shocking is the source of organic fertilizer. They use human feces and toxic waste from the job site. All kinds of things go in it and then packaged as organic fertilizer which is sold at places like Home Depot and Rona. My brother saw an organic fertilizer company come to his job site and and empty the porta-potty in their truck.

How do you fertilize then? You can use compost and you can use inorganic forms of minerals which turn to the bioavailable form of organic minerals in plants. The plants use the minerals and when you eat the plant you’re getting a form of the nutrients your body will actually use. I hate to say it but the vitamins and minerals you buy are probably doing more harm than good. Feed them to your plants then eat the plants.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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Fitness Nutrition, Health and Wellness

Why Do People Eat Breakfast Food At Breakfast?

Posted on July 28, 2016March 5, 2023 by Travis Wade

28
Jul

Why Do People Eat Breakfast Food At Breakfast?

By Travis Wade

I know, cuz they’re hungry. I know, I know, but why do they eat breakfast food? And why are they hungry? Some people eat differently than others. What’s all that about? Let’s have a look at some of these questions and the answers.

Breakfast food. Eggs? Bacon? Fruit? Cereal? Toast? Jam? Ham? Hamburger??? Why does someone eat hamburger at breakfast? And another is vegan and sticks to tofu and oats? How active is the vegan? And do they care about building muscle?

If you’re a bodybuilder, you’ll need a lot of protein and your body is begging for protein in the morning. Is there such thing as a vegan bodybuilder? There aren’t many and that’s cuz a bodybuilder craves meat. The vegan is probably a little more sedentary; they don’t want the meat.

Carbs or Fats

Want to know why I eat bacon? Besides the addiction, which could mean I have a food sensitivity to it and that can be common with pork products. Besides that. I like bacon because I like a keto-diet. A diet where I get my energy from fats instead of carbs. I still have carbs in the form of fruits and vegetables, but not in the morning.

Carbs are good before and after a workout and towards the end of the day because they can make you sleepy. You’ll get the initial rush with the increase in insulin, then the crash. I never eat anything white due to its high calorie content and high glycemic index which is perfect for storing fat. Also, the number one thing you are trying to accomplish with food is to get the nutrient your body needs. All things white like sugar, salt, trans fats, grains, potatoes, parsnips are low nutrient and high glycemic leaving you tired.

Fibre

So why do people eat fruit in the morning? Well, there are 3 parts to the digestive system and you have to keep all three running smooth. Eating is first, then using the food, then excretion. What part do you think the fruit helps with…? Lots of fibre… After everything in your gut is sitting and fermenting all night, fruit is a good idea for excretion of waste.

Intermittent Fasting

Why do people do bulletproof or intermittent fasting at breakfast? The idea is to remain in ketosis for as long as possible in order to lose weight. Ketosis is the process of using fats for energy. You can get the fats from food or from your stored fats and your body doesn’t care where it gets it from; it’ll take from both until you run out of the fats from food, like in the morning, and then it has to take from your stored fats.

So why the bulletproof? It provides your body with much needed energy in the morning and if you do it the Dave Asprey way, (he’s the guy who founded Bulletproof Coffee), you’ll be in full ketosis right away. It usually takes about 10 days to be in full ketosis when you stop eating carbs and use fat for energy. Compliance is the hardest part of a ketogenic diet but, it certainly works.

Eggs

Why the eggs? The yolk is packed full of nutrients your body needs and the whites are full of protein. Like I said before, your body needs protein in the morning. Eggs are great because they can keep you in ketosis and you get some protein. Add some bacon and bamb! That’s enough protein and fat to keep you going for a while.

Addictions

So why do most people eat the white foods in the morning? Oats, toast, cereal, jam is so much sugar. Cuz they’re hungry! We’ve been over this. They are all addictions. They provide almost no nutrient but, they feed visceral adipose tissue on the stomach. It’s a hungry fat that causes you to crave the white foods so you eat the white foods then more visceral adipose tissue gets created leading to more cravings and the slippery slope continues. These foods cause much more damage to your body then the fat on your stomach; that should be the least of your worries. Check out the article on bread here.

You are what you eat? Hell ya! I eat fat and protein for breakfast. Want to see my abs? It’s not easy to quit all the foods that create visceral adipose tissue but, I can help and I have seen amazing results. Time and time again people lose weight and put on muscle and feel great! They talk about their increased energy and how they keep looking better and better. I love results!

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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Body Building, Fitness Nutrition, Health and Wellness, strength

What Vegans Know That You Don’t

Posted on June 6, 2016March 5, 2023 by Travis Wade

06
Jun

What Vegans Know That You Don’t

These are the secrets vegans are keeping!

By Travis Wade

Oxidative Stress

Oxidants are highly unstable compounds because they are missing an electron. They steal an electron from their neighbor, but now the neighbor needs an electron, so it steals one from its neighbor, and so on. When this happens in the body, it is called oxidative stress and it’s very damaging to our cells if it’s not stopped.

How do we get the oxidants in the first place?

Free radicals or oxidants can be caused from processes in the body like metabolism, exercise, phagocytosis, and inflammation. External causes of free radicals are toxins, radiation like the sun, and medications or drugs. I looked on the internet to see if I could find a table that shows the oxidative stress of foods, but there is no such table. One thing people should know is carbohydrate metabolism causes exponentially more oxidative stress than fat metabolism.

We need a balance between antioxidants and prooxidants. However, if you look at the list of things that cause free radicals it’s easy to see we have enough prooxidants. All the toxins we are exposed to make it vital to get as many antioxidants as we can.

Antioxidants

Antioxidants are a molecule that have an electron to give without becoming unstable itself or it can steal an electron from its neighboring antioxidant buddy.

The compounds in fruits and vegetables giving them all their colors are called polyphenols and flavonoids. They are very potent compounds and thousands of them are found in plants. They are only found in plants; nowhere else. They serve as a defense for the plant against the oxidation of the sun. The reason plants don’t get sunburned is because they have these flavonoids, and carotenoids to some degree, that protect them from the oxidization of the sun. They are very potent antioxidants.

They have the same function in us. They lower inflammation very dramatically, they quench the carcinogens directly halting cancer growth, they improve our immune system, they affect our stress response system making us more likely to be calm, and they support detoxification. They do it in a way no other compound can.

Your cruciferous vegetables are high fibre, low calorie, and high nutrient making them essential daily. Check out World’s Healthiest Foods to see the nutrient content of these superfoods! All the nutrients and antioxidants may be the reason fruits and vegetables may be the cure for cancer. Any diet that staves off cancer has to be good for you! Check out Chris’ story here.

The Problem Vegans Encounter

Iron, zinc, coenzyme q10, collagen, protein or certain amino acids, omega 3 fats, and Vitamin B12 are very difficult for vegans to get from their diet. These nutrients are essential. Check out the links on these nutrients to find out more about how they are beneficial. I can’t explain all that here or this article will get really long!

Juicing Recipe

Because I don’t like vegetables, I juice them daily. One of the key ingredients Chris used to cure his cancer is carrots. And by the way, he used his method because he read God’s Way to Ultimate Health by Rev. George Malkmus with Michael Dye; he is not the only one who was successful curing their cancer with raw vegetables. There has been many. One thing I may add is, some doctors will use vitamin C intravenously to help with cancer treatment.

This is what I juice daily.

Ingredients:

1 bunch of spinach
2-3 carrots
1/2-inch knob of ginger
4 celery stocks
5 leaves of cabbage

Directions: Juice ingredients together and drink.

These are a great combination of vegetables for antioxidant and nutrient benefits. Spinach is on the Dirty Dozen list on ewg.org which is a great resource for toxic rating of all kinds of products. If you can get organic, it’s preferred, but if not make sure you wash your spinach really well. Celery is also on the Dirty Dozen list so the same goes. You can usually get organic spinach, carrots, ginger, and celery at Superstore. Cabbage is on the Clean Fifteen list.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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Is Your Vitamin Supplement Doing More Harm Than Good?

Posted on May 24, 2016March 5, 2023 by Travis Wade

24
May

Are Your Supplements Doing More Harm Than Good?

By Travis Wade

The Truth About Your Supplements

Sayer Ji is an expert in vitamin and mineral supplements. It was his first love in the wellness industry and he is now well known in the wellness industry as the guy who puts it all together. At first I didn’t like this guy because he has no credentials, so I thought “Why is this guy speaking?” He’s now one of my favourite speakers to listen to because he knows his stuff better than anybody. He has the world’s largest evidence based natural health resource. Check him out here www.greenmedinfo.com

Multivitamins

According to Sayer Ji, Centrum and Flintstones multivitamins have known toxins in them and do more harm than good. Sodium selenite, for example, is a toxin commonly found in a multivitamin. Centrum is the number one most common brand of multivitamin recommended by doctors. Flintstones multivitamin is the leading children’s multivitamin. Bauer and Pfizer are the pharmaceutical companies making these multivitamins.

In their ad, Flintstones vitamins say that 82% of children don’t eat enough vegetables and if they are not eating enough vegetables they may not be getting the nutrients they need. So you would think that taking a cheap Walmart multivitamin is better than taking no vitamins at all.

Some of the ingredients in Flintstones vitamins are aspartame, cupric oxide which is known as a pesticide, artificial colouring agents that have been banned in the European Union because of known problems with neurotoxicity and attention deficit disorder, zinc oxide which is used in sunscreen and isn’t very bioavailable, sorbitol, hydrogenated fat, and GMO corn syrup. All of the above are found in Flintstone’s vitamins.

The Top 10 Most Common Nutrient Deficiencies

The number one nutrient deficiency over all is vitamin D which is why I wrote an article on it. You can’t get enough sun my friends. People around the equator are getting 40,000 units of vitamin D a day. Get out in the sun and take your clothes off. Wear shorts. Not only will you get Vitamin D, but you will get infrared rays which detoxify heavy metals better than anything. The difference between D2 and D3 is D2 comes from plants and D3 comes from animals. The D3 is 87% more effective and converts to its active form 500% faster. Other sources of vitamin D are fish, beef liver, and bone broth.

The second most common nutrient deficiency is omega 3’s. I was just talking to a masters student and she was reminding me that through evolution, human brains grew massively after we starting eating fish with omega 3s. Our brains are made from omega 3s. It is true brain food but it is also the third leading legal performance enhancer. We die without omega 3s. If you want more info on omega 3’s; read my article on omega 3’s here. Common sources are the SMASH diet: sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon, and herring. I’d like to add a few more of my favourites: cod, oysters, and bone broth.

The third most common nutrient deficiency is vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 makes sure calcium is being used where it needs to be used. I’ve seen people with kidney stones; it’s a medical emergency due to the extreme pain. Take your vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 also prevents calcium from building up in your vasculature preventing heart attacks, deep vein thrombosis, strokes, and other blood clotting disorders. It prevents cancer and builds strong bones. Menaquinone-7 (MK-7), is the kind of vitamin K2 you want to look for in supplements as this form is extracted from real food. The foods that have vitamin K2 are fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and grass fed butter.

#4 is magnesium found in spinach, Swiss chard, beet greens, bananas, bone broth, and pumpkin seeds. I’ll get into this one in detail later.

#5 is vitamin B12 found in grass fed beef and beef liver, lamb, snapper, venison, salmon, shrimp, scallops, organic-pastured poultry, eggs, and bone broth. Vitamin B12 is involved in every process of the body and deficiencies will commonly result in lethargy, brain fog, and possibly numbness of the extremities. A lot of people will have a bacteria in their gut that steals vitamin B12 and taking an oral supplement will feed this bacteria and grow it. I take an injectable form of vitamin B12.

#6 is vitamin E found in hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, olive oil, legumes, spinach, broccoli, and bone broth. If you take a supplement, natural vitamin E is always listed as the “d-” form (d-alpha-tocopherol, d-beta-tocopherol, etc.) synthetic vitamin E is listed as “dl-” forms. You want the natural forms to get the benefits.

#7 is vitamin A. Retinol is pre-formed vitamin A, found in animal products such as grass-fed meat and poultry, liver, fish, grass fed butter, and bone broth. This is the form of vitamin A your body can actually use. Beta-carotene is pre-vitamin A. You need to have a well-functioning digestive tract and sufficient bile produced by your gallbladder for the conversion into retinol. My favourite supplement for vitamin A is fermented cod liver oil. It also has vitamin D, a probiotic, Omega 3s, and vitamin K2.

#8 is iodine found in sea vegetables, eggs, spirulina, and bone broth if you use fish bones. Iodine is really important for your metabolism. Having iodized salt can help.

#9 is calcium found in leafy green vegetables and bone broth. If you want a pill form, calcium from eggshells is a great supplement.

#10 is iron found in grass fed meats, oysters, lentils, sesame seeds, spinach, and bone broth. A great resource I use to look at nutrient content of food is World’s Healthiest Foods. They used to have a website but it appears to be offline now.

Dr. Mercola and Bulletproof are where I get a lot of my supplements and health products. Things you should look for are, chelated minerals for good absorption. They are attached to an amino acid. Glycine is the amino acid commonly used to bind to a mineral for a healthy supplement.

Some forms will give you problems and if it does then you obviously have to try a different form. Oxides for any supplement tend to have a low bioavailability. Bioavailability is the ability of the body to absorb and use a substance. Citrates tend to cause toilet destruction. Not a great form either.

Get Your Nutrients From Food

In reality, I do my best to get all nutrients from food because it will be much more bioavailable and beneficial. Most food will have much more than the specific nutrient you are looking for and a lot of times those other nutrients will help the nutrient you are looking to absorb. When the nutrient isn’t possible to get with food is when I look for supplements.

I personally use creatine because I will not eat the amount of meat required to get what I need from meat. I use a collagen peptide supplement, glycine, melatonin, a couple different kinds of magnesium, L-glutamine, vitamin D, and a few others as I see needed.

Dr. Longo recommends a multivitamin every 3 days instead of every day. Dr. Longo did 30 years of research to come up with what he calls the longevity diet. It’s a great book that explains fasting as well.

I avoid some supplements altogether like omega 3 supplements. Omega 3s are poly-unsaturated meaning there are lots of double bonds with hydrogens “missing” all over it. Poly-unsaturated fats will get oxidized easily, meaning they go rancid very quickly. What you will likely be taking if you take an omega 3 pill is rotten fish oil. Rancid fish oil is a toxin that causes all the problems you are trying to cure by taking omega 3s in the first place. Please read my article on omega 3s.

Magnesium

Magnesium is the number one leading mineral deficiency in our society. It’s not in the soil anymore and the toxins in the environment deplete our minerals. When I say environment I mean the air, water, things we eat, things we touch, and our inner environment in our bodies.

Things like heavy metals such as mercury or phthalates and other things like glyphosate bind to our minerals and deplete them even more. All kinds of things deplete our magnesium including stress. Magnesium is the first thing to be released from our cells when we are stressed. Not just mental stress but physical stress too.

Jane Goodall (famous anthropologist), has talked about the decline of nutrients in the soil and how the soil has dozens of nutrients, but we use 3 nutrients to fertilize our soil; nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The lack of nutrient in the soil is the number one reason why magnesium is the most deficient mineral in our society.

I’m just saying you may need to take a magnesium supplement. It’s needed for over 300 processes in the body. It’s recommended by Wendy Myers, to take a variety of magnesium supplements. Meaning take magnesium that is bonded to various substances. Stay away from oxide. When bonded to oxide, magnesium has a 3-4% absorption rate. Citrates are also terrible for absorption but they are great for destroying toilets; be careful with them.

Wendy Myers recommends magnesium glycinate which raises red blood cell magnesium, magnesium malate which helps with detoxification, and magnesium threonate is the only magnesium that can cross the blood brain barrier. As we get older we become more deficient of magnesium in the brain. It helps memory and cognition and in the mitochondria it helps make energy. You need about 5x your body weight (lbs), in milligrams for dosage.

Mineral Deficiencies

Everyone Wendy Myers (detoxification expert), has tested has been mineral deficient. The good news for me is that meat is very rich in minerals. Lamb and bacon are high in selenium. Unless you’re actively doing something about it, you’ll likely be deficient in selenium. If you don’t like bacon then fish, beef, turkey, chicken, and eggs are other great sources.

Selenium also detoxes the body from mercury which we all tend to have. Selenium needs to be taken in the form of se-methylselenocysteine. Or bacon. I stay away from Brazil nuts because they can have a mold toxin that is a very powerful neurotoxin called aflatoxin.

Chromium is another very common deficiency along with sodium and potassium. Sodium isn’t the big enemy we thought it was. The ratio of sodium to potassium is much more important and according to Dr. Joseph Mercola we should be taking 5x as much potassium as sodium. Thallium is a heavy metal found in gasoline that blocks our usage of potassium which prevents us from producing hormones. We all breath in massive amounts of thallium if you live in an urban area.

Trace mineral supplements can have heavy metals bonded to them. Wendy advises against taking them unless you are working with a qualified practitioner doing a toxic metal detox. For more help with minerals and your heavy metal detoxification you can go to www.liveto110.com

I know doctors and our health care system have their place, but so does proper diet and exercise. A lot of the things I talk about are cutting edge topics in the health industry and some stuff you probably never heard of before, so I encourage you to do your own research. A couple of resources you can and should use are google scholar, National Library of Medicine, and pubmed. Pubmed is a government agency that shows you the research that has been done. You can look all this stuff up yourself and make your own decisions on what’s right.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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