Month: April 2022

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Easily Add Some Cross-Training To Your Outdoor Excursions

Tim Irvine

It won’t surprise you that our society is forward-focused. This is also true with how we move our bodies.

Typically, we move forward in a straight line for our activity. Walking, running, and cycling are good examples of this. While any movement is positive, as we get back to outdoor activity after a long winter there is an opportunity to move differently as well. Mixing up directions of movement to keep your body guessing and promote cross-training is a good example.

Let’s focus on walking/hiking and running. This article by Alex Hutchinson shows how rough trail running requires greater energy use than smooth trail running. This isn’t entirely surprising, but the reason this happens is related to the amount of side-to-side movement necessary to avoid some of the ground covers on a rough trail, including rocks and tree roots. The idea of making your run harder may not be particularly appealing but the benefits for your body are substantial. Sideways steps, small jumps, the landing of those small jumps, long steps, etc. All this extra motion takes more energy, but it also requires your body to move in different ways. This ‘cross training’ helps you be a better mover overall.

Here are some ways you can accomplish these bonus movements in your regular routine:

  1. Walking/running
    1. Typical – paved or cement trail
    2. Cross Training – dirt, grass, or gravel trails; incorporate sideways or backwards steps (safely)
  2. Hiking
    1. Typical – smooth, low incline trails
    2. Cross Training – higher incline trails; rough trails; a combination of these two
  3. Biking
    1. Typical – road riding on paved trails
    2. Cross Training – dirt, grass, or gravel trails; mountain biking

As a bonus, you can also stop on your outdoor adventure and do some step-ups onto a tree stump, push-ups against a low branch or rock, and more.

As with anything that has higher levels of difficulty, proper safety approaches are important. Some considerations include proper footwear, avoiding wet or slippery surfaces, making sure there is adequate light, bringing along a friend, etc.

This spring and summer, get outside and enjoy the world around you a bit differently. Your body and brain will thank you.

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This little-known way we can help our overall health – Gut Health Series Part 1, Partners in Slime

Dr. Tamara Kung, ND

Did you know that we produce 10 litres of mucus a day?

That gooey, slimy stuff we cough up, is a lubricant for our food as it makes its way through our digestive tract. As icky as it seems, it has a crucial role. Imagine swallowing a bite of an apple in a mucus-free esophagus, food would stay lodged in there for days! We need mucus.

It’s like living in a house with a sturdy roof that keeps you sheltered, warm, and protected. Now imagine life without a roof, leaving you vulnerable and exposed to harsh elements and triggering pain and suffering.

Why is mucus so important?

Mucus is our protective shield from the caustic elements of digestion (think stomach acid and digestive enzymes), and is our front-line barrier, preventing food particles and the trillions of microbes that live in your gut from passing through into your blood. The health and strength of our mucus layer mean the difference between resilient health and conditions like ulcerative colitis. 

How do we produce mucus?

Our intestinal cells secrete some, but a significant amount comes from healthy bacteria (aka your microbiome) as well!  The bacteria that produce our protective mucus layer thrive and feed off prebiotic fibers. But less than 3% of us get enough prebiotic fibers daily, finding it a struggle to pack in such fibrous plant foods like lentils, beans, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Add onto that, when we consider the near-sighted benefits of high fat and low carb diets, paving the way to long-term digestive problems and symptoms related to chronic inflammation.

What destroys mucus?

When there isn’t enough food for our healthy bacteria, they turn to munch on our mucus instead! This leads to the destruction or loss of our mucosal layer inviting digestive dysfunction and body-wide inflammation that can take many forms such as constipation, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome and disease, as well as other autoimmune conditions.


Even worse, processed foods use emulsifying agents. This is how food chemists prevent the separation of ingredients, so things stay creamy and uniform. Think ice cream, salad dressings, and nut butter which are some of the most common culprits for their emulsifying effects. Emulsifiers like polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose disrupt mucus-like dishwashing liquid and disperse oily film. It thins and breaks apart the mucus layer, opening holes for bacteria, and harmful proteins to get direct access to our intestinal lining. The best way to avoid emulsifying our protective and precious mucus is to eat Real Food and avoid foods that have more than 5 ingredients, or ingredients you can’t picture in your mind.

A 3 Course Meal for Mucus Building

  1. Enjoy lentils and beans ¼-½ cup daily, you may need to slowly ramp up the amount as your body regrows bacteria to help you break this down.
  2. There’s a species of mucus-producing bacteria that thrive off olive oil. So, while there is no fiber in this product, some of the anti-inflammatory benefits of olive oil can be due to this mechanism.
  3. Matcha green tea contains compounds that provide extra scaffolding for our mucosal layer. It makes mucus thicker, stronger, and more resilient to damage.

We are just scratching the surface of what our incredible microbiome can offer us, so stay tuned as the science continues to unfold better ways to understand the components of health and longevity!

Reference:

Charlotte, A. et al., (2020). Impact of diet and the bacterial microbiome on the mucous barrier and immune disorders. European Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 76(3), pg 714-734. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/all.14548

Paone P, Cani PDMucus barrier, mucins and gut microbiota: the expected slimy partners?Gut 2020;69:2232-2243. Retrieved from https://gut.bmj.com/content/69/12/2232

Annika Braun, MD, et al. (2009). Alterations of phospholipid concentration and species composition of the intestinal mucus barrier in ulcerative colitis: A clue to pathogenesis, Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Volume 15, Issue 11, 1. Pg 1705–1720. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1002/ibd.20993

Davis, W. (2022). Super Gut: reprogram your microbiome to restore health, lose weight, and turn back the clock. Harper Collins, Toronto CA.

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For your Info Performance Recommendations Resources Success Story Tips

Belly Laughs Are Good For You

By Dr. Stacy Irvine

I was reading a fantastic book called “Train Your Brain Like an Olympian” and I came across a very interesting passage.  Did you know that on average children laugh approximately six times per day?  This number drops off dramatically as we get older, and our lives become more serious.  Here is the problem…Laughter provides both our neuromuscular and hormonal system with essential feedback and stimulation that helps keep us healthy and ultimately happy.

Now let’s talk a bit about the last two years.  How much do you think you missed out on great belly laughs?  I am sure, like almost all of us, that joyous sound and feeling has been hard to come by.  Anyone living in Toronto has had a particularly hard time with our extreme levels of lockdown and restrictions.  This is part of living in the largest city in the country.  Hopefully you and your families are working towards a full recovery and are starting to feel like life may be returning to a time where laughter becomes a part of your regular life again.

But how can we make sure of this?

Try these three things:

  1. Social Time – A critical component to mental health, as well as physical health, is social activities. These are situations where you are spending time with friends and family, and they almost always involve laughter.
  2. Sign up for a daily laugh – There are many sites that will send you daily content that will make you laugh. Daily Laugh is a good example.
  3. Turn Up Humor – It is virtually impossible to avoid bad news. The media loves it and for some reason we love consuming it. Instead of trying to avoid it altogether, let’s reduce the amount we take in and replace it with content that makes us laugh. Just searching for the ‘funniest’ anything will be sure to discover many segments that put a smile on your face.

And to help you kick off some laughable time in your day, take a look at any of these three segments. Enjoy the amazing feeling that laughing brings you.