Tag: mental health

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Think You Are In Pretty Good Shape? So Did This Guy.

By, Tim Irvine

I was recently talking with a friend of mine about a hiking trip he was planning and it reminded me of this article I read several years ago. If you want to read about an objective, physical transformation, give yourself five minutes to do just that and be amazed at what a consistent, sustained approach to physical activity can do for you.

The author, and subject, is Kyle Boelte, and he is a self-described active person, who also, at the time the article was written, happened to have a job where he sat at a computer for eight hours daily.

In the eyes of society, Kyle was in good shape and lead an active life. This allowed him the physical capability of planning and completing a 29-day hike of the Colorado Trail. This is no small feet (486 miles), but the compelling part was how he measured himself before and after. He took several different physical measurements and was completely blown away by the changes. So was I.

From my perspective, the most remarkable changes were his cortisol and testosterone levels. He was at the high end of normal cortisol before he started (17.8 ug/dL) and this dropped 40% by the time the hike was over. What surprised me much more was his testosterone which more than doubled. Incredible!

So what does this have to do with us ‘normal people’? The main messages are twofold.

One, even though we do some daily physical activity, if we sit all day for our work, our body will respond appropriately. We just won’t be in as good of shape as we think we should be. This can be helped by mini-breaks during the day where you literally move through a five to ten-minute movement routine to make sure you counteract the sitting. This needs to be done multiple times daily.

Secondly, consistent, sustained movement will make a big difference over the long term. For some, this might be three times weekly. For others, it might be 30-60 min every day. It’s the consistency piece that is the most important that your body will get the most positive impact from. The point is, make this your own so you start where you are at. That’s the only thing that really matters. Progress will come with consistency.

Of course, if you want to do a 30-day hike, by all means, go for it. Just make sure you prepare yourself properly beforehand. It is clear that it can be a game-changer.

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Sleep: Some Essential Facts You Likely Don’t Know

Dr. Tamara Kung, ND

Humans try all kinds of rational to shortchange sleep. Deep societal and cultural shifts have brought in an era where sleep is seen as second rate, an afterthought, a passive thing we do when there’s nothing else to do. We think sleeping means laziness and we’ve been actively fighting against it, with the false notion that we can be more productive and have something to show for our efforts. But what does sleeplessness really do?

As a result, two-thirds of adults around the world aren’t hitting the recommended 8 hours of sleep specified by the WHO and National Sleep Foundation. Countries where sleep time has declined the most, the US, UK, Japan, and South Korea, are seeing noticeable increases in physical disease and psychological disorders.

If that’s not enough, new research and scientific literature provide clear evidence that indicates the shorter your sleep, the shorter your lifespan.

Humans are the only species on Earth who deliberately deprive themselves of sleep. Sleep deprivation can be so devastating to our health that the WHO has classified shift work (jobs that are known to mess up our sleep), a probable carcinogen (being linked with prostate, breast, and colon cancer). The reality is, we are all Shift workers, which is defined as someone who stays awake for more than 3 hours between 10 pm-5 am more than once a week (official European definition).

Believe it or not, most of us fall under this definition because of how we live our lives. Do any of the following situations apply to you?

  • Traditional: Emergency responder, health care worker, flight attendants, pilots, ground transportation, food services, custodial staff, call centers, construction, manufacturing
  • Lifestyle: high school, college students, musicians, performing artists, new parents, in home caregivers, spouses of shift workers
  • Gig economy jobs: ride share services, food delivery services, freelancers
  • Jet Lag: traveling between across 2+ time zones in a day
  • Social Jet Lag: Sleeps and wakes 2+ hours later on weekends (more than 50% of population)
  • Digital Jet Lag: chatting with friends / colleagues, family several time zones away, over social media

Those that get paid massive sums for their physical jobs, professional athletes, have taken notice. The impact of sleep deprivation, or an erratic sleep schedule, has become a major priority for pros and elite athletes everywhere. World sports organizations like the International Olympic Committee have established guidelines for better quantity and quality sleep.

Why for athletes?

Because data shows that motor skills, reaction time, endurance levels all get boosted with 8 hours of quality sleep. Take NBA player, Andre Iguodala of the Golden State Warriors. Here are his stats on when he got 8 hours or more of sleep on a consistent basis compared to less than 8 hours.

  • 12% increase in minutes played
  • 29% increase in points/ minute
  • 2% increase in 3-point percentage 
  • 9% increase in free-throw percentage
  • 37% reduction in turnovers
  • 45% reduction in fouls committed 

This isn’t just for athletes though. We mere mortals also benefit as we try to gain more strength and endurance. When we’re sleep-deprived, we’re often burning more lean muscle mass and less fat which makes it really tough to build muscle. 

Getting enough sleep also drastically reduces the risk of injury. There’s nothing worse than being motivated to finally get active and then get injured and forced out against our best intentions! To put this into perspective, a study assessing sleep and injury risk in young athletes found the following:

  • 9 hours 15% chance of injury
  • 8 hours 34% chance of injury
  • 7 hours 62% chance of injury
  • 6 hours 74% chance of injury

Did you notice that the risk is not a linear one, it’s exponential with each hour of sleep loss!

What does sleep deprivation do for our brains? These are some of the major areas on how sleep affects our mental function and health. 

  • Impairs our ability to think on our feet 
  • Ability to take on new information becomes severely impaired
  • Reactions are blunted (less witty comebacks, or articulate responses) 
  • Increased chance we do something we’ll regret
    • Going for the junk food/ chips vs. healthier fruits/ veggie snacks
  • Long & short-term memory gets dulled – learning new skills, language, topic, becomes overwhelmingly more difficult vs. those who get sufficient sleep are more likely to master skills
  • Increases susceptibility to more extreme mood swings, and on top of that, it’s biased towards a more negative state (anger, anxiety, irritability) 
  • Significantly raises your risk for Alzheimer’s

How does sleep impact so many cognitive processes? 

When you’re asleep, a big neurological bath washes over your brain, clearing it of waste products (garbage) and toxins (tau proteins associated with Alzheimer’s) accumulated throughout the day. Additionally:

  • Sleep enriches our ability to learn, organize memories for storage and easy retrieval, make logical choices.
  • Recalibrates our emotional brain circuits to navigate day to day challenges with a cool-headed composure. 
  • A good night’s sleep promotes those “aha!” moments, where you figure out a novel solution to a problem you were previously stuck on. The saying “Sleep on it.” has its merits, as being uncovered through studies of sleep and dreaming. 

Tips for Unlocking Your Sleep Super Power

Just like everything else we value, sleep comes with our actions and the work we put into it. That being said, working on your sleep doesn’t have to be a drag. It should be something that feels good, is calming, relaxing, and something you look forward to enjoying.

Tip 1: A good night’s sleep comes begins with your daylight exposure. Aim for 30 minutes of outdoor daylight (overcast counts!) without sunglasses. This helps set your circadian rhythm up so that it guides you to sleepiness at the end of the day. Most effective for those who have trouble falling asleep before midnight.

Tip 2: Smaller dinners and finishing your meals before 7 pm is ideal. Late-night snacking tricks your body back into daytime mode and becomes stimulating. These mismatched signals of the environment and what we’re trying to achieve at night leave us tossing and turning. Instead of snacking, make a cozy tea and or go for a walk, stretch or a good read. 

Tip 3: Put on blue light blocking glasses after dinner and leave them on until you turn the last light off (never during the daylight hours because blue light is helpful in the daytime). Clear lenses block 15-30%, while orange lenses block 98%. opt for orange if you can. Here is a link for some sleek Bono glasses. 

Tip 4: Create a sleep sanctuary. Imagine the sensation you have walking into your favourite yoga session. The room is inviting, cozy and if someone brought in their phone, you’d zero in on them and internally yell “get that outta here!”. That’s how your bedroom should feel. Bring in plants, cozy pillows, dim the lighting and leave your devices (phone, computers, tablets) outside. 

Building a new routine takes practice, but each time you practice, you are voting for the path you want to live in.

I’ll leave you with this:

“Just in, scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer. It also enhances your memory and makes you more creative. It makes you look more attractive, keeps you slim, and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia, and wards off colds and flu. It lowers your risk for heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes. You’ll feel happier, less depressed, less anxious. You’ll also be a much better athlete. Interested?”

If this were a drug, it’d be unbelievable! Many of us would pay big money for just a small dose of this!

This ad describes not a tincture, a new superfood, or drug, but the proven benefits of a full night’s sleep. Yours to pick up on repeat prescriptions every day!

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Mindfulness: Training For Your Brain

Tim Irvine

The rise in the popularity of mindfulness has been a big help to people everywhere. With awareness of mental health issues being much greater in general, mindfulness is a tool that can help our brains manage better. At least that’s what people tell us. What does science say? In short, it’s the real deal!

At this time, there is still a lack of volume of good, credible research to concretely back up all of the benefits that are claimed. The good news is, there is solid research proving some of the claims, and there is more of this good work coming.

The most conclusive benefits have been identified across several studies. Most of those studies focus on meditation as the trait being examined. It is also the most prominent component of mindfulness practice, even though there are various styles. These styles need their own individual examination to tease out the differences between them, but in general, meditation has been shown to clearly benefit in several ways.

Improvements In Attention

If you think about our typical daily environments, they are full of literal and figurative noise. This noise is fatiguing and when coupled with the incredibly fast-paced lives we now live, our attention spans suffer. Mindfulness has been shown to sharpen our attention and focus at the moment, but also over the long term.

Increased Grey matter

This one is a physical change, but it shows itself behaviorally because the prefrontal cortex is positively affected. This part of the brain governs the emotional regulation of external stimuli, our reactions to those stimuli, as well other higher-level functions. Training our brains with mindfulness meditation increases the size of this area and others, and this allows us to manage better emotionally.

Stress Resilience

Mindfulness practices appear to decrease the activity in the amygdala. When this part of the brain is stimulated, it is done so by fearful or very stressful situations. That’s why a mindfulness practice helps reduce our responses to stress and fear. When done so over a longer period, our capacity to be resilient in stressful situations improves as well.

Reduced Anxiety

Just 8 weeks of brief, daily meditation can lower anxiety. This was found in a study that used the Trier Social Stress Test, which is an anxiety measurement tool. The really great thing in their findings was that this applied to those individuals that did not have previous experience meditating. This means that you don’t have to be a meditation guru to benefit in this way, you just need to commit for eight weeks or more.

One other consideration in this conversation is how we’ve come to this point in the first place. From an evolutionary standpoint, we would have had many situations where we were by ourselves in nature, content and performing tasks we enjoyed. This would have provided a great deal of mindful time for our brains. That’s not to say there wasn’t stress, but we certainly were not bombarded with ‘noise’, information, and people like we have in our modern society. So take this as a hint to get outside in nature and do some things you love. Meditating in nature may even compound the benefits. You will reap similar rewards to the mindfulness practice you perform in your home.

Happy brain training!!

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_state_of_mindfulness_science

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016643281830322X

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/prefrontal-cortex

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Forest Bathing – What it is and why you should do it

Tim Irvine

Last weekend I spent three spectacular days hiking on the Bruce Trail here in southern Ontario. It reminded me about how important getting into nature is for our physical and mental health. It also reminded me that I had to let more people know about the practice of forest bathing. No, I didn’t take my clothes off and roll around in the leaves, I just had to be in the forest for a good chunk of time.

Forest Bathing is an Asian concept that has been around since the early 1980s. It was officially named in Japan as Shinrin-Yoku but quickly gained momentum in China as well. You can imagine that living in some of the most densely populated cities in the world created a need to get back to nature in some meaningful way. Our modern, fast-paced, and stressful lifestyles create the tension we are not always aware of but is consistently there. One of the ways to effectively deal with this tension is to get out in nature.

This concept isn’t new, but the conscious practice of it is. I would argue that getting into nature in any way possible is helpful, but Forest Bathing suggests that being stationary, or moving very slowly, in nature is the most effective way to get the benefits. That could be swinging in a hammock, sitting on a stump, hanging out by a stream, or any other way to be still and at one with your natural surroundings. The length of time can vary from 30 minutes to hours. It’s really your choice.

Research on this subject is fairly sparse overall, but what has been done has shown a direct relationship with time spent in forests with a reduction in physical and psychological symptoms of stress. While time spent in any type of forest is valuable, it appears that evergreens, such as fir, pine, cedar and spruce, provide the greatest benefits. This is due to their production of phytoncides which help to protect them against rot and mildew.

To put a bit more of an objective spin on this, adding some metrics can be helpful. It can be as simple as measuring your heart rate before and after you ‘bathe’, or something more involved if you have the type of wearable technology that can provide blood pressure or brain activity. You can also subjectively score your level of anxiety before and after to provide a reference of how this works.

Even with a lack of substantial research, people are using forests as part of the treatment of many mental health-related issues. While the empirical evidence is not there to support it yet, it seems logical based on the simple fact that we take a break from the stressful environments of city life. This would explain why the rooms with a view in hotels are the ones most sought after. Our instinct is to be in those types of environments but often ignore them. That’s the problem with city life, we train ourselves to ignore what we intuitively know we should have. For more on this subject, you can check out a great read entitled Your Better Instincts by Dr. Stacy Irvine.

The key is to make sure you can get yourself into a forest or natural environment as often as possible. We know enough to know it works, so it’s something we all need to incorporate into our daily or weekly routines. Happy bathing!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793341/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7504269/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580555/

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Living Your Best Hybrid Lifestyle

The Time to Figure Out Your New Hybrid Lifestyle is Now…..

Written by: Dr. Stacy Irvine Bsc. Kin, M.Sc., D.C., C.S.C.S
Co-Owner Totum Life Science

As things begin to slowly open and our lives return to the more interactive ways of the past, you could be wondering……” How can I best take advantage of some of the new technologies that have helped me from a work and lifestyle perspective over these past twenty months?”  

The time to start organizing your new, and hopefully improved, work-life balance is now.  It seems that a vast number of work opportunities in the future will use a combination of scheduling.  Some workdays will be “in-person” and some workdays will be virtual.  We should take some time to think about what this “Hybrid” life will look like and then figure out ways to make it work best for our performance, our health and ultimately our happiness.

There are a few questions to ask yourself as you address this process:

  1. What things in your life do you enjoy doing virtually and what do you enjoy doing in person?
  2. What things are not an option for virtual and how much time do you need each week to make sure you can accomplish these things in the best way possible.
  3. How will these scheduling choices impact your health and where can you carve out time for activities and social life.

Like your work environment, you will now also be able to participate in many aspects of your health care virtually, along with many aspects of your regular fitness routines.  It is important to develop an efficient strategy to make this new hybrid system work well for you from a health perspective.  The most important part of this is understanding what you are comfortable with.  Do you enjoy meeting with screens, or is it very stressful?  Do your healthcare providers even give you this option now that things are opening up a bit more?  What times of the day will work best for you to schedule health-related appointments?  Maybe it is easier to schedule personal appointments that are closer to your home because you might have more flexibility on the days you work from home.

Like your work environment, there are parts of health care and fitness that do not work well virtually.  For example, you may not benefit as much from a virtual massage, but seeing your doctor for a virtual appointment to renew a prescription could be very efficient and helpful.  However, if you take the time to book a virtual appointment, and then find out you need to be seen in person, it can feel like you wasted your time with the initial appointment.

As a healthcare provider, if I was booking an initial assessment with a new patient I would always want to see them in person first.  I need to be able to watch closely how they move, what their posture is like, and I also want to be able to assess their overall health unrelated to their injury.  However, if someone I have been working with in-person wants to do a quick exercise review, this is a perfect type of appointment to do virtually.  I can easily watch them do their exercises and make any corrections needed during a virtual appointment.  Also, if you are travelling and you have an incident that causes an acute injury this could be a good time to book a virtual appointment with a trusted provider as opposed to trying to find someone in a location you are unfamiliar with.  The initial management of an acute injury can be very influential on the long-term outcome, and I often find that people want to do the wrong thing because they are in pain and are looking for fast relief.  If you can jump on a virtual call, you can often find some peace of mind along with a good plan to move forward safely.

I believe that fitness and many types of training can work well in a similar way.  If you are starting a new class, with a new instructor I would suggest you begin in person.  This way the instructor will get to know you and what your specific needs are.  It gives you an opportunity to connect and understand what the goals of the class are and the types of things you will be working on.  Once you have a good idea of these things and you feel comfortable performing the movements required on your own, it is a great time to try the option of taking the class virtually.  Personal training is no different.  Seeing someone in person is more effective, however, virtual is great for “homework” between in-person sessions.

Finally, we all need to understand, that from a health perspective, connecting with people in person has many additional and important benefits.  Interacting with people enhances our hormones, our motivation, and our mental wellbeing in very positive ways.  If you add to this the fact that, working from home drastically decreases our overall movement for the day, we need to make sure our plan takes these important concepts into account.  To maintain, or possibly even improve your health and fitness you will need a good strategy.  It could be as simple as meeting a friend for a walk and coffee on the days that you work from home.  The planning is up to you, but the important thing is to have a plan that allows you to benefit from our new way of working and living.

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Gut Health For Your Mental Health

The second most important structure in your body for mental health!

Tamara Kung, ND

Many of us are looking for ways to boost our brains to support mental health as well as to prevent neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. 

But did you know that you may have an untapped source of treating the root cause of many mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, and dementia? That source is in your gut!

Science is paving the way in understanding the role of what they call our ‘second brain’, the microbiome. The microbiome consists of trillions of microbes that live within our gut, and studies are showing that it can influence our mental health, and risk for chronic diseases.  The latest science is just scratching the surface on how our microbiome can be your heavy hitter in boosting our mood, keeping us calm, motivated and focused. 

Scientists have discovered that 90% of our serotonin (happiness neurotransmitters) and 50% of dopamine (motivation/ reward neurotransmitters) are actually produced by our microbiome by 39-100 trillion microbes that live within us!  With this new understanding we are starting to appreciate how mental illness like anxiety and depression emerge when our gut is not healthy. 

The old thought is that upstairs is your brain, the center in command, and downstairs is your gut responsible for… processing food and making waste. We previously thought of these two as unrelated organs. What we are learning is that the connection between the two is impressive. Both are in constant, rapid, communication, hooked together by five hundred million neurons that form the longest nerve in your body – the vagus nerve. It carries five times more nerves than you’ll find in your spinal cord. This is a superhighway, and our bodies evolved this way for a reason.

Scientists are learning that brain health and gut health are totally intertwined. The magic is in gut microbes, and mainly gut bacteria and their by-products (ie. serotonin, dopamine, and anti-inflammatory molecules) which communicate and protect our brain.

Your Inner Rainforest

So how can we make sure we keep our guts healthy, and our microbiome working to protect us? Think of it this way – your microbiome is like your inner rainforest. It thrives when it maintains its diversity, just like any forest who’s inhabitants all contribute to a healthy and resilient ecosystem. We’ve got trillions of microbes, and their favorite food that helps them grow healthy and strong is… fiber!

Unfortunately the Standard American Diet (SAD) is seriously lacking in fiber. On top of this, nutrition information is heavily skewed to focus on the macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Fiber is too often forgotten because we think that it’s just something that helps us poop. We think it is not digested or absorbed, and that our human cells don’t use it – so we disregard its function. This leads to behaviours that ultimately do us harm. Did you know less than 5% of North Americans reach their minimum daily intake of fiber?  Beans and lentils for example are not often regularly consumed in North America, while highly processed grains in which most of the fiber has been stripped away is the majority – especially in breakfasts, and snacks. 

So here is your big takeaway – understand that you are composed of more microbes than human cells, at a ratio of 10:1. This means you are actually more microbe than human, and our microbes love to eat fiber. They are the ones using it, digesting, absorbing and making by-products like neurotransmitters and anti-inflammatory compounds.

Just like any ecosystem, the health of the entire organism, our body and mind, depends on the symbiotic relationships that support the health of all parties (human and microbe). Ideally we want a bountiful amount of diverse microbes to generate their helpful by-products which our body uses to thrive. So let’s shift our focus from just human cells, so we can take care of our ecosystem, our inner rainforest, and utilize this astounding, untapped source of health that’s internally generated and sustainable!

Some fiber rich meal examples:

  • Lentil curries with your favorite greens
  • Sweet potato noodles with ginger tempeh and kimchi
  • Seeded crackers, or red pepper boats with avocado and sauerkraut
  • Farro in salads
  • Artichoke hearts with your whole grain pasta

Fiber Fueled

The ecosystem within you depends on you. Every bite you take influences who thrives, and who dies. The good bacteria can make serotonin & dopamine for you, and help quench inflammation, but only if we feed them their favorite meal which is fiber. There are also bad bacteria, and they are connected with the production of inflammation, obesity, chronic disease. Not surprisingly, they love processed foods, refined sugars, and alcohol. So when we eat, we want to be considerate, and know that we’re not just eating for one, we’re eating for trillions, 39-100 trillion to be exact. 

Tamara Kung, ND, Book An Appointment!

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