So many times you hear people blame their weight on a slow metabolism. While it’s true that metabolism is linked to weight, it’s more about your food and calorie intake, as well as your physical activity that determines how much you weigh. Your metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories to sustain life.
What is a RMR?
Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is the rate at which you burn energy or calories when resting. Calories are constantly required to perform essential body functions such as heartbeat, respiration, elimination of wastes, etc. On average around 50-75% of one’s daily energy expenditure is attributed towards this resting metabolic rate. Simply put, it converts the food we eat into energy.
What Makes Metabolism Slow Down?
Like so many think, it’s actually due to lack of muscle. You lose muscle due to the lack of physical activity. One common mistake of many is that they starve themselves instead of eating sensibly. Most people think that eating less often or skipping meals will do the trick when dieting. This actually is the worst thing you can do.
Going long periods of time without eating stimulates fat storage and can make fat cells even larger. By not eating frequently, three sensible meals and two snacks a day, you’re actually slowing down your metabolism. The longer you go between meals the more your metabolism slows down again to conserve energy.
People with a low or slow metabolism do not convert their food calories into energy efficiently, therefore making them gain weight due to lack of energy. A person with high or fast metabolism can burn the food calories before they are stored in your fat cells, helping them to maintain a healthy weight.
What’s the Solution?
It’s actually quite simple. Invest in yourself and have a willingness to make some changes.
Below is a list of 10 easy and effective ways to boost your metabolism:
1. Don’t starve yourself.
It actually causes you to lose much more water weight and muscle than fat. Dropping below 1,000 calories a day can cause your body to go into starvation mode.
2. Eat smaller meals more frequently.
Depending on your brain type– eat a balanced meal with enough calories to sustain energy to fuel metabolism.
3. Eat breakfast.
If you don’t eat breakfast, you slow your metabolism and send the body into “hoard mode”, thinking it’s starving because you’re going too long in between meals without food.
4. Drink water!
Drink a minimum of ½ your body weight in ounces. The energy burning process of metabolism needs water to work effectively.
5. Schedule sleep.
Try to get in at least 7 hours of sleep a night and stick to a consistent sleep schedule.
6. Eat wholesome organic foods.
Eat foods that will stabilize blood sugar levels and assist in fat loss.
7. Incorporate strength training.
Two to three times a week incorporate some form of resistance training into your schedule. Muscle burns more calories than fat. The more muscle you have the more calories you burn.
8. Avoid alcohol.
It prevents fat burning and can add hundreds of calories. Can also reduce testosterone levels, which is a not good for men who want to lose fat and get lean.
9. Take your B vitamins.
If you’re feeling fatigued and lack energy, be sure to take a B complex.
10. Healthy fats.
Sources include nuts, extra virgin olive oil and Omega 3’s. Omega 3 supplements reduce your insulin levels throughout the day. When insulin levels are high you can’t burn fat. Fish oil directly increases the oxidation of fat within fat cells.
We Can Help
At Amen Clinics, we understand the pain and frustration trying to lose weight can cause. We approach each individual with a sense of compassion and respect. Our experienced clinical staff will take a full history of each patient using The Amen Clinics Method before beginning treatment with SPECT imaging or making other recommendations. Connect with us today by calling 888-288-9834 to learn more – we are waiting to help you, or schedule a visit today.
The link between alcoholism and anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been well established by doctors for some time. Heavy alcohol use increases the risk for traumatic events like car accidents and domestic violence, but that only partially explains the connection.
A study conducted by scientists at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and UNC’s Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies suggests that heavy alcohol use rewires brain circuitry, making it harder for alcoholics to recover psychologically following a traumatic experience.
What Research Says
Chronic exposure to alcohol can cause a deficit about how our cognitive brain centers control our emotional brain centers. “A history of heavy alcohol abuse could impair a critical mechanism for recovering from a trauma, and in doing so put people at greater risk for PTSD,” said NIAAA scientist Andrew Holmes, PhD, the study’s senior author. “The next step will be to test whether our preclinical findings translate to patients currently suffering from comorbid PTSD and alcohol abuse. If it does, then this could lead to new thinking about how we can better treat these serious medical conditions.”
Over the course of a month, the researchers gave one group of mice doses of alcohol equivalent to double the legal driving limit in humans. A second group of mice was given no alcohol. The team then used mild electric shocks to train all the mice to fear the sound of a brief tone.
The Results
When the tone was repeatedly played without the accompanying electric shock, the mice with no alcohol exposure gradually stopped fearing it. The mice with chronic alcohol exposure, on the other hand, froze in place each time the tone was played, even long after the electric shocks had stopped.
Alcohol & Anxiety
Understanding the relationship between alcohol and anxiety at the molecular level could offer new possibilities for developing drugs to help patients with anxiety disorders who also have a history of heavy alcohol use. This study is exciting because it gives us a specific molecule to look at in a specific brain region, thus opening the door to discovering new methods to treat these disorders.
We Can Help
You CAN change your brain, and change your life. At Amen Clinics, we want to help you. Call us today at 888-288-9834 or visit us online to schedule an appointment.
Do you floss regularly? Brush your teeth after every meal? If you do, you might be preventing more than just cavities and gum disease.
A study found that people who keep their teeth and gums healthy with regular brushing may have a lower risk of developing dementia later in life.
What Research Says
Researchers at University of California that followed nearly 5,500 elderly people over an 18-year-period found that those who reported brushing their teeth less than once a day were up to 65 percent more likely to develop dementia than those who brushed daily.
Why?
Inflammation stoked by gum disease-related bacteria is implicated in a host of conditions including heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
Some studies have also found that people with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, have more gum disease-related bacteria in their brains than a person without Alzheimer’s. It’s thought that gum disease bacteria might get into the brain, causing inflammation and brain damage.
The Results
All were free of dementia at the outset, when they answered questions about their dental health habits, the condition of their teeth and whether they wore dentures. When the researchers followed up 18 years later, they used interviews, medical records and in some cases death certificates to determine that 1,145 of the original group had been diagnosed with dementia.
Of 78 women who said they brushed their teeth less than once a day in 1992, 21 had dementia by 2010, or about one case per 3.7 women.
In comparison, among those who brushed at least once a day, closer to one in every 4.5 women developed dementia which translates to a 65-percent greater chance of dementia among those who brushed less than daily.
Men vs. Women
Among the men, the effect was less pronounced with about one in six irregular brushers developing the disease, making them 22 percent more likely to have dementia than those who brushed daily. Statistically, however, the effect was so small it could have been due to chance, the researchers said.
Can Other Factors Contribute?
Head injury and malnutrition are also important causes of tooth loss in adults, and either of those might increase the dementia risk, said Amber Watts, who studies dementia at the University of Kansas and wasn’t part of the study.
It’s probably a bit of a stretch to say that by brushing your teeth you will not develop Alzheimer’s Disease, but certainly keeping a good dental hygiene regimen is never a bad idea.
We Can Help
Did you know that despite the natural aging process, you have a choice in how fast your brain ages? Your behavior and habits can speed up or slow down the rate at which your brain declines with age. Being mentally and physically active, eating nutritious foods and avoiding unhealthy habits can help you maintain optimal brain health and ward off dementia.
The best way to sharpen recall, reduce brain atrophy, and eliminate all the risk factors that steal the mind is with a BRIGHT MINDS approach, which addresses memory problems, aging and Alzheimer’s disease.
To learn more about Amen Clinics Memory Program based on Dr. Amen’s BRIGHT MINDS approach, check it out HERE, or call 888-288-9834.
