Susan Brady - Nurtured Bones

Intermittent Fasting: Is it right for you?

by Susan Brady | Aug 19, 2020 | Nutrition

Two weeks ago, in my Breakfast Makeover blog, I suggested that it was not “when” you broke your overnight fast that was important but “how.” Several wrote to me asking about my “take” on Intermittent Fasting. So, I am going to give you some insight on intermittent fasting, its potential health benefits, whether or not its right for you and how to get started.

Intermittent fasting is a pattern of eating which includes cycles of fasting and feeding.

It differs from what you typically think of as fasting where you go numerous days refraining from food. In intermittent fasting, there are certain hours during the day when you eat and certain hours when you refrain from consuming any food, or fasting.

For example, many will stop eating immediately after dinner and then won’t eat again until late the next morning, fasting for 14-16 hours.

How does intermittent fasting work?

At its very core, intermittent fasting gives your body a break from digesting and absorbing food and allows the body ample time to repair and rejuvenate. This happens through a process called autophagy. Autophagy literally means the consumption of the body’s own tissue. It is the body’s way of cleaning out old, damaged cells so it can rejuvenate itself with newer, healthier cells.

I like to use the analogy of changing your engine oil in your car. If you don’t change your car’s motor oil on a regular basis, over time the oil breaks down and accumulates contaminants, leaving your car’s engine at risk of overheating and failing.

Autophagy is one of the most important bodily functions for rejuvenating our cells and promoting health and longevity. However, when we are eating every 2-3 hours, our body is constantly putting time and energy into digesting food instead of cleaning our body. So, giving our body a break from digestion and allowing it to undergo autophagy is crucial for our health.

Intermittent fasting is one of the most effective ways of achieving autophagy. During your period of fasting, the body takes a break from digestion and goes into starvation mode. I understand that the word “starvation” has a negative connotation, representing a bad feeling that needs to be immediately fixed because we fear being hungry. However, to achieve true autophagy, you need to reach starvation mode. Once you achieve starvation mode, your body can stop being consumed with digestion and focus on replenishing and rejuvenating your body. In a society with an abundance of food, a healthy period of starvation is nothing to fear.

The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Here are several reported health benefits of achieving autophagy through intermittent fasting:

Aids in weight loss because it gives your body the opportunity to burn stored fat
Can help to lower cholesterol and blood pressure and improve blood sugar control
Improves the efficiency of the immune system by cleaning out toxins and enhancing the cells ability to protect against incoming microbes
Helps to reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease
May help to prevent cancer by slowing tumor growth
Improves body composition by reducing fat and increasing muscle mass

All of these benefits undoubtedly will also contribute to healthy aging and longevity.

Different Methods of Intermittent Fasting

There are a couple of different protocols for implementing an intermittent fast:

Daily intermittent fasting where you follow the Leangains method, also known as the 16/8 intermittent fasting protocol. This method has you fasting for 16 hours and eating all your meals during an 8-hour window. When following this protocol, most people choose to fast from 7-8 pm in the evening after consuming dinner until 11-12 the next day.
Alternate day fasting where you alternate “fast” days and “eating” days. With this protocol, you can choose to completely abstain from eating food on the fasting days or consume a single low-calorie meal once a day.
Fasting 2 days a week is another option. On fasting days you eat 500-600 calories and the other 5 days you eat a normal diet.

Is Intermittent Fasting right for you?

Intermittent fasting appears to be safe and effective for most people. However, if you are underweight, have unstable blood sugars (hyper or hypoglycemia), low blood pressure, are prone to eating disorders, or have recently undergone surgery, intermittent fasting might not be appropriate for you. Fasting does stress the body, so it also may not be beneficial for those who are already dealing with significant stressors, such as an illness. Although intermittent fasting can be beneficial for diabetics, please find a qualified health care practitioner that can guide you through the process. I also do not recommend intermittent fasting for women with osteoporosis who are underweight.

How to get started

First and foremost, if you decide to try intermittent fasting, keep in mind that maintaining a good diet is crucial. You can’t binge on junk food during the eating periods and expect to gain the benefits of fasting and/or boost your health.

I generally recommend you start with the daily fasting method. I find this is the easiest way for most people to faze into fasting and follows our body’s natural daily circadian rhythm. Start by finishing up your dinner by 7 or 8 pm and then not consuming anything but water until 7-8 the next morning. This means once you have finished dinner, the “kitchen is closed” until the next day. No bedtime snacks or nightcaps. From there you can gradually extend your fasting period until later in the morning. Lengthening your fasting intervals over a week or more will help you to adjust and accept the feelings of hunger and make intermittent fasting more sustainable. You should expect to feel hungry, and that is OK! Remember the goal is to go into a brief period of starvation.

Consuming non-caloric beverages throughout the morning can help stop the pangs of hunger. However, adding sugar or cream to your morning hot beverage will cause you to break your fast. If you are thinking no way can I go without consuming my morning Latte or Cappuccino, believe it or not, intermittent fasting will help you curb cravings for these beverages and other nutrient-poor foods and reduce hunger over time.

I am also not a fan of using artificial sweeteners. Even though they have no calories and won’t break your fast, they are linked to a variety of health issues. If you need to sweeten your morning beverage you can use a naturally occurring non-caloric sweetener like stevia or Monkfruit.

Exercising in the morning during the fasting period can also help to curb hunger and can actually increase your body’s rate of fat burning.

Once you get accustomed to fasting, you can experiment with the other types of intermittent fasting to see if they are better suited to your lifestyle.

Signs that intermittent fasting isn’t for you

Intermittent fasting isn’t right for everyone. If while following an intermittent eating protocol you find that you aren’t sleeping well, have fatigue or low endurance, feel more stressed and anxious, or experiencing hair loss, then intermittent fasting isn’t benefiting you. Everyone needs to listen to their bodies and find an eating approach that works and is sustainable for them.

Lastly, whenever you are looking to make changes to your dietary or exercise routine, it is best to seek guidance from a qualified healthcare professional.

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!

Astronauts and Aging: What do they have in common?

by Susan Brady | Aug 12, 2020 | Healthy aging

In a historic mission, SpaceX has safely sent NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) and safely returned them home again. This is the first time since 2011 that the US has sent astronauts into space on an American rocket. We are all aware of the perils of space travel, sending men and women to space and returning them safely is no easy feat. However, keeping them healthy and fit during an extended space mission can also be tricky. As many of us know, just staying fit and healthy here on earth, especially as we advance in age, is a challenge.

In the absence of gravity, astronauts lose bone and muscle mass at an accelerated rate. It is likely that the two Space Dads, Bob and Doug, lost 3% of their bone density and 20% or more of their muscle mass during their 3 months on the ISS. Here on earth, a similar thing happens as we age, but at a much slower pace. After age 30, you begin to lose as much as 3%-5% of muscle per decade. That can add up to 20% loss in muscle mass by the time you are 70 years old. This same rate of loss can occur in our bones as well, leaving them weak and fragile and susceptible to fractures.

Maintaining and optimizing muscle mass in our astronauts and ourselves as we age impacts health far beyond mobility. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, meaning that it produces proteins and chemicals that interact and influence other cells in our body. Besides moving our limbs, lean muscle mass is critical for maintaining proper weight, controlling blood sugars, managing cholesterol and lipid levels, regulating inflammation, helping to recover from illness, and preventing so many of our age-related diseases. In fact, low muscle mass is associated with an increase in all causes of mortality. Simply put, the more muscle you have, the less risk you will have from dying of chronic disease, the healthier you will be and, potentially, the longer you will live.

Fortunately for Bob and Doug and the rest of us, there is a thing called exercise!

Exercise, particularly restive exercise, is critical to maintaining muscle and bone mass both in space and here on earth. Bob and Doug spent 2 ½ hours a day, 6 days a week, exercising while on the ISS. To help mitigate the effects of gravity on muscle, they use a specialized machine called an Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED). The ARED has the capability to exercise all of the major muscle groups, focusing on squats, deadlifts, and bench presses to help the astronauts maintain their strength. They also have a modified treadmill which generates a force on the legs to get the impact loading that is so important for bone health. Since the addition of this equipment to the space station, our astronauts are coming back healthier than ever!

Upon return, the conditioning doesn’t stop. Bob and Doug will spend two hours every day for roughly the next 45 days with strength and conditioning specialists. Their program consists of stretching, aerobic exercise, strength training, and agility drills to get them back to the physical condition they had pre-flight.

You can see that NASA takes exercise very seriously and to optimize our health we should too. Although you don’t need to carve out 2 hours a day to exercise, you do need to spend a couple of hours a week prioritizing exercises that will boost your muscle mass. Walking, biking, and other “cardio” exercises are important, but to build and maintain muscle mass, you need to directly challenge your muscles. Resistive training, whether through weight lifting, bodyweight exercises, or use of resistance bands, is a critical component of any exercise program.

Most of us begrudgingly do our daily exercise with the focus of losing fat. But the truth is that we should actually be exercising to optimize muscle. How much muscle you have is much more important when it comes to enhancing health, vitality, and longevity.

To learn more about Click Here to Learn about 5 Reasons Why Muscle Mass Benefits Health Aging.

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!

Break your fast with foods to fuel your metabolism, not douse it.

by Susan Brady | Aug 5, 2020 | Nutrition

We have been long told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. For years, experts have talked about how eating breakfast can jump-start your metabolism, help you control your weight, and energize you for the day ahead. But now some new information coming out suggests waiting to eat later in the morning or even skipping breakfast, as is done with intermittent fasting, may be equally beneficial. However, in my opinion, it is not when you break your overnight fast that is important, but how.

The foods you consume for that first meal of the day have a tremendous impact on your metabolism, your energy levels, and your mood.

The typical modern breakfast foods of cereals, bagels, muffins, sweetened yogurt, orange juice, and toast are loaded with sugar, white flour, and processed ingredients. In fact, many of these foods will have you consuming more sugar in one meal than is healthy for you to consume in an entire day! You may get an immediate surge of energy as the sugar hits your bloodstream, but this will, in turn, leave you feeling fatigued, mentally sluggish, moody, and even hungry as the day progresses.

After an overnight fast, our body is depleted of fuel and it is important to provide it with a composition of nutrients that can give us both the short-term energy we need to jump-start our day along with nutrients that will deliver sustained energy.

When preparing a balanced meal that will both nourisd sustain you, I like to use the analogy of building a fire in your fireplace. When you build a fire, the first thing you do is put down the logs. The logs are going to burn steadily and give off heat for hours. However, to get those logs to burning, you need some kind of kindling like newspaper, twigs, or kindling sticks. The kindling burns very hot and ignites the logs, but also burns out very quickly.

You can view proteins and fats as being your logs. Because of the complexity of these two nutrients, proteins and fats take longer to digest and breakdown so they provide a steady and continual source of energy over several hours. Additionally, they don’t have an impact on our blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates can be viewed as your kindling. They are digested very rapidly, they help provide that spark to your metabolism, but if eaten alone can set off a blood sugar roller coaster. Eating a breakfast high in simple sugars and carbohydrates can cause a surge of sugar into the bloodstream. This may give you an immediate boost of energy but will leave you feeling fatigued and hungry again an hour or two later when your blood sugar comes crashing down.

Combining a protein, a fat, and a carbohydrate in your first meal of the day will build a lasting metabolic fire that will fuel your brain and your body and allow you to meet the ongoing energy demands of your day.

And not only that, but the composition of your breakfast meal also plays a role in what you eat later in the day. When you feel better, have more energy, and are in a better mood, you are more likely to make healthier food choices for the rest of the day.

Humans are creatures of habit and sometimes it is hard to change our ways, so I have provided you with a Breakfast Makeover. Here you will find suggestions on how you can increase the nutrient complexity of some of your favorite breakfast foods so they fuel, not douse, your metabolic fire.

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!

Measuring Key Health Indicators at Home!

by Susan Brady | Jul 29, 2020 | Healthy aging

We are all seeking optimal health. We strive to eat right and exercise to keep ourselves looking sleek and healthy on the outside, but do you truly know what’s going on inside? Is your body battling uncontrolled blood sugars, systemic inflammation or oxidative stress? You can guess, or you can test!

I am excited to announce that I am now offering an Internal Health Test through a partnership with Choose Health.

Choose Health has put together the first affordable, convenient and accurate at-home blood test. It measures the 6 key markers of long term health from the comfort of your own home:

Cardiovascular health
Oxidative stress
Insulin resistance
Visceral fat
Average blood sugar
Inflammation

These core markers have been scientifically and clinically been linked to longevity and disease prevention. Understanding what is happening on the inside can help you take control of your health and make the lifestyle choices you need for optimal health and longevity.

Here’s how it works:

All it takes is 10 minutes to collect your sample, then simply send your sample back in the mail to the nationally accredited lab. The results come back in less than 2 weeks and can be directly accessed through your mobile device and can even be shared with your health care practitioner.

You will also get personalized recommendations from a qualified clinician to help you improve your levels with simple lifestyle changes.

Take control of your health and learn what’s happening on the inside with the Internal Health Test by Choose Health.

No more begging your primary care doctor to order these tests, fighting with insurance or waiting 12 months to monitor your progress.

Test kits are $68, but for a limited time, use my name SUSANBRADY and you can get a 10% discount.

It’s simple and easy to get started! To order your test kit for $61, click here!

If you don’t measure, how can you manage?

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!

Stop and take a deep breath: The art and science of breathing

by Susan Brady | Jul 22, 2020 | Healthy aging

If there was ever a time we needed to remind ourselves to stop and take a deep breath it is now. In addition to the heated issues facing our nation, we continue to be plagued by a virus threatening our health and disrupting our education and economy. The continual uncertainty and fear are overwhelming and no doubt triggers stress in many.

I view stress as a double-edged sword. In a lot of ways, stress is beneficial. It helps us to meet our daily challenges, along with supporting our ability to adapt, become more resilient, and grow stronger.

But when stressors don’t have a defining end, like a pandemic that has gone on for months, it can start to wear us down, leading to significant health consequences.

One of the best things you can do when life becomes overwhelming is to stop and take a deep, long full breath. Breathing is truly one of the best ways to lower stress and help you relax.

We’ve known for years that breathing exercises are beneficial for our health. Now let’s take a look at the science behind why the routine act of breathing reduces our stress and the art of breathing correctly.

First the science.

We have all heard of the term “fight or flight.” It is known as the stress response. When our brain or body perceives stress, it prepares us to either face or avoid the danger.

It does this by activating the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system releases a hormone called adrenaline which in turn elevates our heart rate, increases our blood pressure, widens our bronchial passages, and fuels our muscles. All of these changes improve blood, energy, and oxygen flow that the body needs to rouse a response to a threat.

Once we are safe and no longer in danger, our parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and does the exact opposite of the sympathetic nervous system. This nervous system restores the body to a state of calm and promotes rest and recovery.

The vagus nerve is the key to activating the parasympathetic nervous system. It is the longest nerve in the body and innervates just about every one of our organs. It extends from the base of the brain and travels down around the heart, lungs, diaphragm, digestive tract, liver, spleen, and bladder. When the vagus nerve is activated, it releases a hormone called acetylcholine, which tells your body to chill out. It slows down your heart rate and breathing and stimulates muscle relaxation.

One simple way you can activate the vagus nerve is by taking a deep, slow diaphragmatic breath.

Now the art.

Learning how to breathe correctly, however, is the key. Many of us get into the unhealthy habit of shallow “chest breathing.” This type of breathing initiates breathe from the chest using the muscles in the neck and upper traps to open and fill the lungs. Not only does this lead to overuse of these muscles but the inadequate oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange leaves you feeling fatigued and anxious. Chest breathing is exhausting, rather than restorative.

Deep breathing, also known as diaphragmatic breathing or abdominal breathing is when you engage your diaphragm, that dome-shaped muscle that sits at the bottom of your rib cage. When you engage your diagram, it lifts and spreads the rib cage, draws oxygen deep into all corners of your lungs, and activates your vagus nerve. Activation of the vagus nerve stimulates the relaxation response of the parasympathetic nervous system reducing feelings of stress, anxiety, anger, and ease inflammation.

Diaphragmatic breathing is the way we are supposed to breathe, but over time, we get out of the habit of breathing this way and often need to remind ourselves or relearn how to do it.

Here are some simple steps to learn diaphragmatic breathing:

Start by lying flat with your knees bent or sitting upright in a chair.

Place one hand on your upper chest and the other on your diaphragm, just below your rib cage.
First take a shallow, short breath and you can see how the hand on your chest moves up and down, but the hand on your belly doesn’t move much at all.
Now breathe in slowly through your nose pulling the air all the way down into the hand on your belly. You should see this hand rise, but the one on your chest remains silent.
Now on the exhale, you are going to slowly blow the air out through pursed lips and you will notice that the hand on your belly flatten out again.
Be sure to breathe in and out slowly and rhythmically. Trying breathing in for a count of 4, holding your breath for a count of 4 and exhaling for a longer count of 6-7.
To reteach our bodies how to diaphragmatically breathe on its own, without consciously doing it….practice for 5-10 minutes several times a day….and then it will become a habit again.

In times of stress, you can further activate the vagus nerve by humming a song or repeating the “OM” sound as you exhale. Because the vagus nerve is connected to the vocal cord, singing or humming stimulates it even greater.

It is amazing how just this simple practice of deep breathing will help stop the stress response in its track and have a powerful influence on your overall health. Everything from squelching inflammation to improving cardiovascular health, digestion, mood, and even the health of your bones can benefit from stopping and taking a deep breath.

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!