Susan Brady, Author at Nurtured Bones

Avoiding the Quaren-ten (pounds)

by Susan Brady | Apr 8, 2020 | Nutrition

I have heard from many of you that you are concerned about maintaining a healthy weight during this time of confinement. Emotional eating and being bored can lead to frequent exploration of the pantry and, if you combine that with a decrease in activity, the result can certainly be weight gain.

One thing that might help to keep you on a healthy track during the day is to make sure you start off with a nourishing breakfast. Consuming a well-balanced breakfast helps to kick start healthy habits for the day. The food you consume at breakfast, or whenever your first meal of the day might be, can influence your hunger levels as well as your mood.

I know there are differing opinions on the importance of breakfast. Traditionalist believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, while others believe that skipping breakfast and prolonging the overnight fast has superior health benefits. In my opinion, it is not when you eat “breakfast” or the first meal of the day, but what you are eating that is most important. The food you consume, no matter what time you break your fast, will influence your hunger levels, your energy levels, and your mood for the remainder of the day.

Starting your day off with a bowl of Cheerios, soaked in skim milk, accompanied by glass of orange juice will most likely leave you feeling hungry, lethargic and moody by mid-day. Here’s why: A breakfast of refined carbohydrates and sugars, even the sugars in fruit juice, will set off a blood sugar roller coaster. These simple carbohydrates rush into your bloodstream causing a spike in insulin (a hormone that lowers blood sugars) followed by a blood sugar crash. This, in turn, leaves you feeling hungry, sluggish and reaching for more food. Not only more food, but most likely more sugary foods, since sugar is highly addictive. The sugar coaster rolls on.

The consumption of refined, sugary foods also depletes many of our neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that affect our mood. Depletion of these neurotransmitters can contribute to symptoms of anxiety and irritability. So eating a breakfast high in refined carbohydrates can exacerbate the tension that many of us are feeling right now and sabotage positive thinking and healthful behaviors.

A balanced breakfast of protein, fats and complex carbohydrates will have an opposite and positive effect on your brain and your body. These foods take longer to digest, help stabilize blood sugars and will keep you satisfied for hours. Protein-rich foods actually aid in the synthesis of neurotransmitters that can boost your mood and increase brain function. Healthy fats, like omega-3 fatty acids, also play a role in helping you manage your moods and can ease depression. Eating whole grains provides a source of fiber, along with B vitamins that support energy levels and mood, and minerals that nourish every cell in your body.

So focusing on what you eat at breakfast can truly support healthy behaviors for the rest of the day. Better mood, more energy, and less hunger will decrease your temptation to turn to food later in the day to satisfy a sugar craving or lift your spirits.

Combining healthy meals that will satisfy your brain and your body with daily exercise, will allow you to successfully avoid the quaren-10.

Click here to see my favorite breakfast ideas.

Susan Brady
is a Physical Therapist,
Nutrition Consultant and
Doctor of Integrative Medicine.
She has been treating women with osteoporosis for over 30 years and is dedicated to helping people achieve
lasting good health and vitality.

Want to learn more about how you can improve your bone health? Contact me for a free 15 minute phone consult to learn more about the BONES Method™ and how it can help you achieve strong, healthy bones for life!

Protecting your Pet’s Health during the Pandemic

by Susan Brady | Apr 7, 2020 | Nutrition

Pets provide people with valuable companionship and unconditional love. They can also greatly contribute to our health. Having and loving a pet can help to reduce stress and anxiety, ease depression, encourage exercise, and even improve cardiovascular health by lowering blood pressure.

All of these benefits are even more essential during these nerve-racking times. For those of us who have and love pets, we also want to do all we can to keep them healthy as well.

As I am prepping for the re-launch of the Healthy Aging Summit in June this year, I had the privilege of interviewing an internationally renowned veterinarian Dr. Judy Morgan. While interviewing her about how to keep our pets healthy as they age, I also took the opportunity to ask questions about how to best care for our pets during this time of pandemic. Dr. Morgan responded that “our pets are sponges of our emotions, and if you are dealing with stress, anxiety and fear, your pets are feeling that way as well.” Just like humans, pets need to be reassured that everything is going to be OK.

Pets can exhibit anxiety and stress by urinating or defecating in the house, becoming destructive, restless, compulsive or aggressive, or showing signs of fear, such as hiding.

Dr. Morgan reiterated that our pets respond best to calm and loving manners in their human companions. She recommended that we try our best to maintain a normal routine, love and reassure them through snuggling and petting, and keep a sense of calm.

Some of her recommendations:

Playing soothing music in the house as opposed to the news
Maintaining daily walks and playtime
If you can’t get outside, play games inside like hide-n-seek (hide some treats around the house and have your pet seek them out)
Offer brain stimulation by teaching you pet a new trick or using a food dispensing toy or puzzle

This can also be a great time to work on obedience training.

One thing she warned against is showing love and affection with food! Like with people, if we use food to comfort our pets, we will all emerge from this time of quarantine 10 pounds heavier!

During this time of quarantine, you also need to prepare for your pet just as you would prepare your family. This includes having a 2-4 week supply of food, medications (don’t forget subscription medications), litter and other supplies.

And if you are wondering if your pet can contract COVID -19, so far, there have been a few reports of pets being infected: a cat in Belgium and two dogs in Hong Kong. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Organization for Animal Health have also said that there is no evidence at this time that companion animals can spread the COVID-19 virus.

If you are so inclined, now would be a great time to adopt or foster a pet. Many shelters are being overrun with people giving up their pets during this crisis. Additionally, animal shelters, like businesses, have had to go to skeleton staffs, so there are fewer people able to care for the animals. Please reach out to shelters and rescue groups in your area for more information. Even temporarily fostering a pet would ease the burden.

We can best help our pets and ourselves during these trying times by maintaining a healthy routine and finding ways to nurture a calm and peaceful household.

Susan Brady
is a Physical Therapist,
Nutrition Consultant and
Doctor of Integrative Medicine.
She has been treating women with osteoporosis for over 30 years and is dedicated to helping people achieve
lasting good health and vitality.

Want to learn more about how you can improve your bone health? Contact me for a free 15 minute phone consult to learn more about the BONES Method™ and how it can help you achieve strong, healthy bones for life!

Day 13: A message from Reverend Haffner

by Susan Brady | Apr 6, 2020 | Healthy aging

Monday morning in America. This traffic map should be lit up in RED! Instead, people are hunkered down in their homes protecting themselves and their families from this virus that has engulfed the world.

These are very odd and frightening times we are living through.

I would like to share with you a message from Reverend Debra Haffner, a minister from a local Unitarian Church in Reston, Virginia. She emphasizes why Baby Boomers need to take this virus seriously, despite our insistence that we are still young!

My goal is to help us all stay healthy and vibrant as we age. But we also need to be aware that with every passing year, we do become more susceptible to disease and illness. That’s why it is important to take daily action steps to strengthen our body and protect ourselves from all forms of dis-ease.

Enjoy this message from Reverend Debra.

Susan Brady
is a Physical Therapist,
Nutrition Consultant and
Doctor of Integrative Medicine.
She has been treating women with osteoporosis for over 30 years and is dedicated to helping people achieve
lasting good health and vitality.

Want to learn more about how you can improve your bone health? Contact me for a free 15 minute phone consult to learn more about the BONES Method™ and how it can help you achieve strong, healthy bones for life!

Day 12: Stress Resilience

by Susan Brady | Apr 3, 2020 | Sleep & stress reduction

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of sleep, and how our primary sleep hormone, melatonin, directly influences our immune system. Melatonin production at night helps boost our immune cells to seek out and destroy pathogens as we sleep. If you remember, the release of melatonin is dictated by our circadian rhythm.

But there is also another important hormone that is dictated by this daily rhythm, cortisol. Cortisol is released in response to the morning sun to help fuel our brain and body in preparation for the day’s work ahead. However, cortisol also temporarily dampens the immune system by interfering with the action of T-cells (an immune cell) and decreasing the production of white blood cells that also help fight off infection. Additionally, cortisol is also released in response to stress. Stressful situations throughout the day can create surges of cortisol that override the circadian rhythm, resulting in further suppression of immune function. This why prolonged stress weakens the immune system, puts us at greater risk for illness and damages our health.

Life is synonymous with stress. We all face stressful times…like what we are living through right now. However, it is not the stress itself, but how we respond to the stress that’s important. We have a choice; we can let stress overtake our lives and promote a continual flood of cortisol into our system, or we can find ways to manage it. Developing stress resilience or finding ways to cope with stressful situations is the key to managing stress and preventing cortisol surges.

We can take a 4 “R” approach when dealing with stress.

4 R’s for Stress Resilience

1. Reflect on the people and things in your life that you are grateful for. Taking a few minutes each day for this exercise will help you lower stress, improve your health, better handle adversity and feel happier.

2. Rejuvenate through self-care, exercise, and sleep. We are better able to handle stress when we are feeling physically and emotionally healthy. Spending time to pamper yourself and getting enough sleep and daily exercise will help rejuvenate you inside and out.

3. Restore with breathing, meditation, and/or prayer. Spending a few minutes meditating, performing breath work or praying can restore calm and inner peace.

4. Reconnect with nature. Spending time in nature helps to relieve stress and lighten our mood. Even if it is only sitting quietly outside on your deck taking in the fresh air and sunshine or soaking in the sights from a sunny window, reconnecting with nature has a way of nourishing our soul.

Good stress management skills will help to normalize the daily rhythm of cortisol and keep your immune system functioning at an optimal level.

Announcement: Today is the last day of the Pandemic Recovery Summit….over 50 experts have shared their knowledge on how to survive and recover from the Corona Virus. It is FREE for one more day!
Click here to register!

Susan Brady
is a Physical Therapist,
Nutrition Consultant and
Doctor of Integrative Medicine.
She has been treating women with osteoporosis for over 30 years and is dedicated to helping people achieve
lasting good health and vitality.

Want to learn more about how you can improve your bone health? Contact me for a free 15 minute phone consult to learn more about the BONES Method™ and how it can help you achieve strong, healthy bones for life!

Day 11: Sleep is Essential

by Susan Brady | Apr 2, 2020 | Sleep & stress reduction

Today I am going to share my most important tip for helping you create a home health haven. A tip for not only keeping your immune system strong in the presence of this virus, but also for living a happier, healthier life in general.

The Tip: Strive to get a full night of sleep

Sleep deprivation suppresses the immune system. When you sleep, your body makes cytokines, a type of protein that targets infection and inflammation. Sleep also increases the production and efficiency of T-cells, a type of immune cell that fights against pathogens, like viruses, bacteria and cancer cells. Without these night time soldiers at work, the invaders go wild.

One of ways sleep affects our immunity is through the production of the hormone melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone produced in the evening that causes us to become sleepy. Elevated melatonin levels directly influence the release of cytokines and T cells while we sleep.

Interestingly, as we age we don’t produce the same levels of melatonin as we did when we were younger. This is a strong reason why older people are more prone to infectious diseases than any other age group.

Melatonin is also a powerful anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory further enhancing the benefits of sleep by helping to heal and repair our tissues at night.

The daily, rhythmic release of melatonin is synchronized by our circadian rhythm. Taking measures to regulate our circadian rhythm and support the release of melatonin in the evenings can help you get a good night’s sleep and enhance the immune system.

7 Natural ways to support healthy melatonin levels:

1. Get morning sunshine. The hormone melatonin is made by a small gland in the body called the pineal gland. Morning sunlight directly into the eyes deactivates the pineal gland, suppresses the production of melatonin, and helps to “set” our circadian rhythm.

2. Avoid light after the sun goes down. Light is a direct inhibitor to the production of melatonin. Therefore, exposure to light at night, especially the blue light emitted from electronic devices, can prevent the secretion of melatonin… making it more difficulty for you to fall and stay asleep.

3. Escape the EMF’s or electromagnetic fields. EMF’s are not a new phenomenon, but we are getting a steady increase in exposure with all the advancing technologies. Studies have shown that exposure to EMF’s can influence our circadian rhythm by interfering with melatonin secretion. It is best to turn off your phone at night while you are sleeping. However, if it is your primary lifeline to your family, place it at least 15 feet away from your bed.

4. Sleep in complete darkness. A dark environment ensures a good production of melatonin throughout the night.

5. Eat foods rich in melatonin, tryptophan and magnesium. Almonds and walnuts contain melatonin. The amino acid tryptophan is needed in the production of melatonin. Tryptophan is found in protein rich foods such as turkey, chicken, almonds and cheese. Magnesium rich foods like leafy greens, nuts and seeds and legumes also naturally boost your melatonin levels. If you do snack in the evenings, snack on foods such as pumpkin seeds, almonds, walnuts or a slice of hard cheese.

6. Take a hot Epsom salt bath. The warm water will have a relaxing effect on the body and the magnesium in the Epsom salt will aid to naturally boost melatonin levels.

7. Limit coffee consumption late in the day. Caffeine reduces melatonin production, which might be fine first thing in the day, but may interfere with sleep in the evening.

Supplementing with melatonin is also an option, but because melatonin may interact with certain nutrients, herbs and pharmaceuticals medications, it is best to consult a health care practitioner before taking melatonin.

I am currently offering a 50% discount on my supplement review appointments. Please reach out if you are interested in having me review and update your current supplement protocol.

From living longer, to boosting your immune system and warding off disease, sleep is the foremost nourisher of health!

Susan Brady
is a Physical Therapist,
Nutrition Consultant and
Doctor of Integrative Medicine.
She has been treating women with osteoporosis for over 30 years and is dedicated to helping people achieve
lasting good health and vitality.

Want to learn more about how you can improve your bone health? Contact me for a free 15 minute phone consult to learn more about the BONES Method™ and how it can help you achieve strong, healthy bones for life!