Why What You Eat and Drink Affects Your Sleep Quality

July 21, 2021 by Liz Carter

Why What You Eat and Drink Affects Your Sleep Quality

When you eat and drink can affect your sleep, and how you sleep can impact how much and what you eat and drink. Meeting health-related goals like weight loss warrants attention to this interconnected relationship. Come explore the physiology so you can guide your clients thoroughly.

The body has many separate parts but ultimately (and ideally) works as a fluid system. Paying attention to the various components of human physiology helps all the parts work together fluidly; leading to more complete wellness.

How Sleep Affects Appetite

Sleep scientists have examined how a low night of sleep affects food choices by presenting study participants with a buffet of food the day after a full night’s sleep and after a low night of sleep. Food choices and caloric intake are recorded to determine the effect of sleep on appetite.

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How to Use Your Coaching Certification in Creative Ways

July 19, 2021 by Liz Carter

How to Use Your Coaching Certification in Creative Ways

Being a successful coach means more than relegating yourself to the confines of a gym, studio, or office. It means expanding your reach in creative and inventive ways. Here are 5 ways to creatively leverage your certified coach status. [Read more…]

Helping Your Clients Improve Heart Health

July 15, 2021 by Liz Carter

Helping Your Clients Improve Heart Health

Heart disease remains the leading cause of mortality in the US. One-fourth of all deaths occur due to a heart problem. Each year about 610 000 people die of the condition, and half of them die due to coronary artery disease caused by arterial plaques. Total deaths due to cardiovascular diseases are around 859 000 when we add deaths related to stroke to these numbers. Another, 735 000 Americans have a heart attack each year.

Most people are aware of the symptoms of the condition like chest pain and discomfort, pain in the arm, stomach, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, cold sweats, and so on.

Heart disease may occur due to many reasons, and most of these causes are modifiable and preventable. High blood pressure remains the most significant contributor to heart disease, followed by high cholesterol and smoking. Other underlying causes of cardiovascular diseases are diabetes, obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol abuse.

Are Heart Diseases Preventable?

Not all heart attacks are avoidable, but a considerable number of them can be prevented or delayed by several years with mere lifestyle interventions. After all, 80% of all heart diseases are due to preventable reasons. CDC says that about 200,000 deaths each year are preventable through lifestyle modification, and in many more cases, such events can be delayed significantly.

Heart health can be improved by non-pharmacological means is a proven fact and not just an opinion. From 1972 to 1992, just in a period of 20 years, Finland was able to reduce mortality due to coronary heart disease by as much as 80%. Ireland reduced mortality due to heart disease by 48.1% from 1985 to 2000.

Treating with Medications and Lifestyle Changes

Many people may think that taking a statin or low-dose aspirin may help prevent a heart attack. However, they are partially wrong. Lifestyle changes are the primary way to prevent cardiovascular diseases, and medications are just adjuncts. No, medication can help as exercise, dietary corrections, quitting smoking, and so on. In fact, medications may not even work if such changes are not carried out. This means that natural methods are superior in prevention to pharmacological drugs.

Regretfully, many people think that medications alone can save them. One of the reasons for such a mindset is that popping up a pill or two a day is much more comfortable than sweating out for an hour in a gym, or planning a diet, cooking at home, and so on.

This is not to say that medications have no value in preventing heart diseases, but they should always be used along with lifestyle interventions. Undoubtedly, controlling blood pressure, diabetes, dyslipidemia, with the help of medications, will make a considerable difference.

Preventing heart disease, improving heart health naturally, will only work when one combines a number of elements into the disease prevention program. Doing one of two things will still help, but not as much as one would like. So, healthy heart program should include dietary changes, daily exercise, stress management, reducing substance abuse, and so on. [Read more…]

Simple Stress Management Strategies

July 12, 2021 by Liz Carter

Simple Stress Management Strategies

Think about your current training or coaching career. I am willing to bet your clients experience stress (not the good kind) on a regular, or semi-regular basis. It’s called life…

As a trainer or coach, do you know all the physiological and psychological signs and symptoms of stress? Do you know the leading causes of stress? How do you define the distinct difference between good and bad stress? Do you have an action plan for clients who experience high levels or extended periods of stress? [Read more…]

Is Excessive Weight Aging Your Brain?

July 7, 2021 by Liz Carter

Obesity and Brain Health

There is no question – obesity has negative effects on health, overall. Most of us know this already. But maybe less known is its role in brain health. Science continues to conduct research studies to measure the impact of elevated weight on brain function.

It is normal for us to think about the brain and its well-being when it may be after a traumatic brain injury – or repeated impacts arising from contact sports. Indeed, these events have been linked to chronic problems in brain function; other factors seem to just make sense on the disease continuum – from high blood pressure to the increasing prevalence rate of Alzheimer’s disease, the latter being exacerbated by lifestyle habits that are omnipresent in our daily lives. This can include a long list, such as harmful diet, excess alcohol consumption, and chronic sleep deprivation. We commonly think about these disorders once symptoms arise. however, the underlying neuropathology has been present for years – even decades – prior to any symptomatic onset.

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Enhancing Support for Brain Functions with Supplements and Nutraceuticals

June 28, 2021 by Liz Carter

Enhancing Support for Brain Functions

Note: the nutraceuticals and supplements discussed in this post is not intended to be understood as an endorsement of their usage. Any changes to intake in the form of supplementation should be discussed with a physician prior to use.

As a Certified Brain Fitness Coach, the need to expand your knowledge of nutraceuticals cannot be overlooked. Often credited with serving to support optimal cellular functioning, nutraceuticals play an important role in ensuring your clients have the foundational building blocks that allow them (and their physical form) to continually produce neurotransmitters and co-factors at levels essential to supporting optimal brain health.

Aging occurs when cellular death from reactive oxygen species occurs at a faster rate than cellular growth. What is interesting is the science that allows us to see the brain as the most metabolically active organ in the body, causing it to generate a large amount of reactive oxygen species in the process. The brain is also quite vulnerable to oxidative stress; these reactive oxygen species often get neutralized by the brain’s natural antioxidant systems in a healthy individual.

These systems operate efficiently for most of our lives but in an aging individual, the reactive oxygen species are often in excess of the antioxidant capacity…resulting in cellular aging. The solution is to incorporate nutritional solutions to support the brain’s antioxidant capacity.

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The Relationship Between Your Gut and Brain Health

June 18, 2021 by Liz Carter

Science is gradually discovering the secret of gut feeling, as researchers have started to understand gut functioning better. Our Gut not only feeds the body and the brain (through absorption of nutrients), but it also has more neurons than the spinal cord.

The gut produces more serotonin and other similar neuropeptides than the brain or any other organs. Studies show that more than a trillion microbes reside in our body, weighing few kilograms, and the majority of them are in the gut. It seems that the role of gut is more than merely providing nutrients through digestion.

Whether you specialize in nutrition, health, and wellness, sleep science, or brain fitness and function, understanding how our gut health affects the other aspects of our body and mind, and being able to relay that knowledge to your clients in a clear and succinct format so that they can improve gut health. [Read more…]

The Link Between Sleep and Depression

June 16, 2021 by Liz Carter

Sleep is a basic need of every human being. But the fact is your survival literally depends on your ability to sleep. Cortisol, a hormone released during stress has a very powerful influence on sleep and waking in an individual. Cortisol interacts with our circadian rhythms and sleep cycles.

What is Cortisol?

It is a stress hormone produced by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA). HPA includes the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal gland. For the production of cortisol, the hypothalamus sends signals to the pituitary gland which in turn releases a substance known as corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH). CRH sends another hormone into your bloodstream that is adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). ACTH travels through blood and cues the adrenal glands to produce cortisol. It is a complex and sensitive feedback loop and it has a profound effect on our body, mind, and sleep.

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Harnessing Your Brain’s Power to Achieve Your Goals

June 15, 2021 by Liz Carter

Harnessing Your Brain’s Power to Achieve Your Goals

The reality: we are only a thought away from significant change. Experiencing wellbeing can be dialed in at the level of our brain. Thoughts create emotions and emotions color our every life experience. Emotions are what give our life meaning. The unpleasant ones inspire us to take on challenges; the pleasant ones bring us peace and happiness.

Let’s look at how to take our thoughts and train our brains into how to use these thoughts productively. We do this by shifting the thoughts that no longer serve us as needed; this allows us to successfully achieve our goals. In order to understand this, we have to acknowledge the work of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. One of his most famous quotes states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.

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What’s Unique About Dialectical Behavioral Therapy?

June 11, 2021 by Liz Carter

What’s Unique About Dialectical Behavioral Therapy?

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy to help people with mood disorders, traumatic brain injury, eating disorders, and substance abuse.

DBT was originally intended to treat borderline personality disorder (BPD), but it has been adapted to treat other mental health conditions. It can help people who have difficulty with emotional regulation or are exhibiting self-destructive behaviors (eating disorders and substance use disorders).

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