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Hormone imbalance

Hormone imbalance is a true epidemic in our country. The average American female and male over 35 years of age suffers from some form of hormonal imbalance. With the poor diet, stressful lifestyles and declining popularity of physical exercise, more and more young men and women are developing hormonal imbalances. The effects of such imbalances increases as we age and become more devastating and harder to treat the longer they go on and the worse they become. Because most of the symptoms come on gradually, it is difficult to figure out initially, until the problems become more pronounced and the hormones become even more imbalanced.

It becomes a vicious cycle that slowly robs you of your energy, your vitality and your life and lifestyle. It also robs your loved ones of their lifestyle. Unless properly diagnosed and evaluated, proper recovery is very difficult to achieve. This is where a properly trained healthcare professional is so important. You will require a doctor who is up to date on hormonal function and can discover “subclinical” hormone imbalances, not just “diseased” glands or organs.

Often times it is the simplest of signs that indicate hormone imbalance, but these signs are blamed on other factors. Some of the initial symptoms include:

  • Fatigue not relieved by rest
  • Tired all the time/no energy
  • Difficulty getting up in the morning
  • Poor sleep
  • Craving for salty or sugary foods
  • It takes more effort to perform every day tasks and duties
  • Decreased sex drive
  • Decreased ability to handle stress
  • Increased time to recover from illness or injury
  • Light headed when standing up quickly
  • Depression
  • Lack of enjoyment or happiness
  • Weight gain/loss
  • Excessive allergies
  • Anxiety
  • Digestive disorders
  • Dry and thin skin
  • Excessive hunger
  • Hair loss
  • Unexplained headaches
  • Immune deficiencies
  • Inability to concentrate
  • Chronic pain
  • Inflammation
  • Blood pressure problems
  • Low body temperature
  • Hot flashes
  • Night sweats
  • Mood swings
  • Poor memory
  • PMS
  • Sleep disorders
  • Tender breasts
  • Weakness
  • Difficulty building muscle
  • Cramping
  • Fluid retention
  • Slow metabolism
  • Irritability
  • Chronic illness
  • And more and more and more

Various clinical conditions are the direct result of hormone imbalance that, in most cases, can be completely preventable. Such conditions include:

  • Chronic viral infections (EBV, Herpes, etc.)
  • Yeast overgrowth
  • Allergies
  • Chronic fatigue syndrome
  • Migraines
  • Autoimmune disease
  • Cancer
  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Insomnia
  • Hypoglycemia
  • Type II diabetes
  • Osteoporosis
  • ADD/ADHD
  • Irritable bowel disease
  • Celiac disease
  • And more and more and more

Quite simply, hormones affect body function.

Hormone imbalances affect body functions in a detrimental way. The more hormones and systems involved and the longer the time that the imbalances have been present, the more symptoms will devastate your life.

This isn’t how the story ends, however; there is hope! Hormone imbalances can be corrected by taking the correct action steps and supplying the body with what it requires to heal – This first requires the correct testing to determine what the TRUE cause of your problem is.

Be sure to read my next upcoming 3 articles on Female Hormones, Male Hormones and the Correct Testing!

One of the most common questions I get asked is “how do I know if what I’m eating is healthy or not?”

There is so much deception in our food industry today that it has become difficult to determine what is healthy and what is not. Every food manufacturer is competing for your dollar, so they come up with catchy commercials, campaigns, slogans and buzz-words to attract your eyes and buy their product.

I’m going to share with you some simple tips that will allow you to easily and quickly determine is a product is healthy for you and your family.

Okay, so let’s dive in

Tip #1:   This may sound a little crazy or unorthodox, but DON’T  focus on the amount of calories, fats, proteins and carbohydrates. When we are eating healthy foods, the amount of calories, fats, etc… don’t matter. The type of foods you’re eating is much more important to focus on.

Tip #2:   What I DO want you to focus on is the ingredient list.  This is where you’ll actually find what’s in your food. If you see a long list of ingredients with big words that you don’t recognize or are hard to pronounce; odds are this product does not belong in your shopping cart.

Smaller ingredient lists with easy-to-read words that you recognize are best. Also, whole foods that don’t come with a nutrition label are obviously your best choice; fresh fruits and veggies, good quality meats and healthy fats are whole foods that don’t need a nutrition label.

If there is one ingredient quantity/amount you do want to look for, it would be the amount of SUGAR in a product. Even if a product says “organic” or has few ingredients, if the sugar content is high, skip this product.

Tip #3:   Organic foods are preferred because they are not exposed to the amount of harmful pesticides and herbicides of conventional produce.

When it comes to meat or animal products, look for words such as “grass-fed”, “free-range”, and “wild-caught”.

Tip #4:   Shop the perimeter of the store; this is generally where you will find the healthier quality foods. The inner aisles of the store will generally contain the most processed, pre-packaged and boxed foods.

Tip #5:   Avoid buzz words that are intended to catch your eye. They are misleading and often do not deliver a healthier product. This words include: Diet, Zero-Calories, Calorie-Free, Light, Fat-Free, 0g Trans-Fat and even the words All-Natural, which has a very vague meaning in today’s world.

The 7 most dangerous food ingredients to avoid:

1) Artificial Sweeteners – This will include sucralose, aspartame and saccharin. They are found in many zero-calorie drinks and the blue/pink/yellow packets on diner tables.

2) Synthetic, Man-Made Fats – Trans fats, partially hydrogenated oils, vegetable oils, canola oil.

3) Artificial Flavors – Typically labeled as “artificial flavoring”.

4) MSG – Monosodium Glutamate is known as an “excitotoxin” that causes brain-chemistry problems and brain cell death.

5) Artificial Colors – These include the blue, red, yellow dye’s added to many foods.

6) High Fructose Corn Syrup – See below.

7) Preservatives – BHT, Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Nitrate, Sulfites and many other chemicals that are toxic to your body and raise cellular inflammation.

Finally, it is hard to look for GMO foods on labels because North America is one of the only countries in the world that does not require food companies to label GMO ingredients; however, some companies have taken the initiative to self-label that their products do not contain GMO’s.

Some of the highest concentrations of GMO food crops in the world are found in corn and soybeans. For this reason you want to avoid almost all products that contain corn, high fructose corn syrup, soybeans and soybean oil unless labeled organic and non-GMO

During the winter months your immune system is working harder and your body is spending more energy to stay healthy.

Use this alkalizing tea to keep your immune system running on all cylinders or to boost healing time from a cold or sinus infection!

Ingredients:

  • Steeped/Hot Organic Herbal Tea (this is really left to your preference, I think black tea goes best)
  • 1/2 Organic Lemon (Squeezed)
  • 1 Spoonful of Raw Honey (If not using raw, then do not use honey).
  • 1 Tbsp of Raw Apple Cider Vinegar (Bragg’s brand is best)
  • 2-3 Slivers/Slices of Ginger Root (cut and mashed)

Drink a glass before bed or as needed to reduce inflammation, help sinus infections/sore throats, and to alkalize your body!

In Health,

Dr. Zac Cole

 

When embarking on our Advanced Cellular Healing Nutritional Program, it can require a little planning to make sure that you are receiving enough nutrients in your daily diet.

One of the things I find easiest to do (especially with a busy schedule) is to blend the most nutritious Superfoods into one smoothie that I call my Superfood Green Drink.

This is great for people who don’t have time or the desire to prepare traditional meals. It also ensures that you are receiving the foods necessary to alkalize and energize your body!

Here’s what I cram into my smoothie:

  • Kale (3-4 leafs)
  • Broccoli (4-6 florets)
  • Spinach (one large handful)
  • Wheatgrass
  • Broccoli Sprouts
  • 10 oz bag of organic frozen berries (I use half a bag)
  • Banana
  • Granny Smith Apple
  • Kiwi
  • Apple Cider Vinegar (2-3 tablespoons)
  • Grated/Sliced Ginger Root
  • Avocado
  • Chia Seeds (1 tablespoon)
  • Flax Seeds ( 1 tablespoon, freshly ground)
  • Hempseeds ( 1 tablespoon)
  • Coconut Oil (1 tablespoon)
  • Raw Honey (1 spoonful)
  • Stevia (as desired to sweeten)
  • Ice

Blend together in large food processor such as Ninja or Vitamix (these will pulverize the food and leave no chunks). Regular blenders are okay too, but you might have to use lesser amounts of each ingredient if the blender isn’t large enough; also, there will be more chunks.

This super smoothie is loaded with the top nutrient-dense veggies, anti-inflammatory foods, and tons of healthy cellular-regenerating fats.  The fruits, apple cider vinegar, and raw honey make it taste great too!

*Note* You do not need every single ingredient to make this smoothie; things like broccoli sprouts and wheat grass are difficult to find. As long as you have the majority of items this will be an amazing, healthy addition to your diet.

Drink 8-24 oz per day. I would recommend one glass in the morning and one about 1-2 hours before bed as a minimum; especially if you are already not consuming enough healthy fats and raw green vegetables. It will last in your refrigerator for 24-48 hours.

This is a great addition to your current diet and is Advanced Cellular Healing Diet approved. If you are on the diabetic program, omit the banana, kiwi and honey until your initial 3-month sugar-free period is over.

Bottoms up!

Dr. Zac Cole

This is an extremely insightful article, written by Dr. Mark Hyman about the dangers of consuming wheat; beyond the gluten-free reasons. When it comes to diet and lifestyle changes, I’m always educating my patients about Cellular Inflammation and how it is the one underlying commonality in every one of the chronic, degenerative diseases we see today.

Cellular inflammation can come from a variety of sources, but one of the things we most commonly discuss is sugar’s role in raising inflammation -and not just table sugar, but anything that breaks down to sugar. This includes nearly all grain, as Dr. Hyman indicates.

This article will set the record straight and show you physiologically why it is so important to eliminate grain and wheat from your diet temporarily if your goal is to reverse a chronic disease or to lose weight. Once your health goals are achieved, there are healthier grains Dr. Hyman discusses; such as ancient einkorn grain, that have healthy benefits once your body is no longer in an inflamed state.

Click here to read the article

 

If you’ve been to one of our health seminars or are a current patient, you’ve probably heard me say that weight-loss is 70-80% diet. The types of food you eat on a regular basis (not the amount of calories) play by far the largest role in determining what type of physiology your body experiences.

There are only 2 types of physiology when it comes to the type of fuel your body uses for energy; you’re either a SUGAR burner or you’re a FAT burner. Everybody desires to have the metabolism that burns fat with ease; you know, when you wake up in the morning looking more lean and vascular than the night before? Don’t we all hate those people? Haha.

Well the truth is that this internal physiology is capable and achievable for everyone -it just takes the right type of training.

We’re not going to get into the dietary aspect of that, here; in a nut-shell one must be following our Advanced Plan Nutrition Protocol for at least 90 days to begin reshaping physiology. The simple version is that if you wish to switch from being a sugar burner to a fat burner, you must stop eating so much sugar and grain.

Once that is in order –and it MUST be in order first– there is an extremely powerful way to exercise that almost seems to good to be true. If you would like to:

  •  Massively boost your fat-burning hormones like Testosterone and Growth Hormone
  • Lose weight while you sleep
  • Maximize your time by only exercising short amounts -Like literally 10-20 minutes!
  • Only have to work out every other day

Then Burst Training is exactly what you’ve been looking for! Gone are the days where you must toil in the gym on the treadmill, trying to maintain your presence in the “anaerobic” zone; those exercises are outdated and only burn calories while you’re exercising.

The phenomenal benefit of Burst Training is that you actually burn more fat after you’re done exercising, for the next 24-48 hours! This is because when you work in in short bursts at a very high intensity level, your body will dramatically raise your fat burning hormones and they remain elevated. Better yet, if you’re truly going all out during each “set”, you only need to perform this exercise for around 10-20 minutes every other day!

Make sure to watch the posted video of Dr. Josh Axe demonstrating a simple, 6-set Burst Training workout for a visual example, but the premise is simple: Perform an chosen exercise at a very high intensity (90 % of your maximum) for a duration of 30-60 seconds. You then rest for another 30-60 seconds before doing a second set of the same or different exercise. That’s it! It may sound easy enough, but trust me, if you’re doing this correctly, these sets of a minute or less will KICK YOUR BUTT! And if you get to the minute mark and you don’t feel tired or feel like you could have done more, ramp it up!

Add this workout to an awesome diet and watch your body transform!

When it comes to the topic of cancer, it is important to disclose up front that we DO NOT treat cancer. That is left up to the medical experts who specialize in this area.

What we do focus on, however, is strengthening the body through natural means to boost immune function (the part of your body that fights cancer daily), while simultaneously removing sources of interference to the body that hinder healing.

It’s no secret that cancer is a modern-day epidemic. The reason that the words “you have cancer” strike fear in the hearts of Americans more than any other disease is because we KNOW the truth…we are losing the war.

Since President Nixon declared the “War on Cancer” in the early 1970’s and billions of dollars were released to fight this ravaging disease, we haven’t really made that much progress in stopping it. Media and medical propaganda would have you believe that death rates are going down and survival rates are going up, but is that actually the case?

While it may appear that cancer patients are living longer, when you dive a little deeper into the statistics one is able to see that this is largely due to the fact that we are diagnosing cancer earlier. What relevant data really shows us is that a person diagnosed with most types of cancer will live for about the same amount of time today as a person diagnosed 40 years ago. This is also confirmed with current cancer death rates.

Currently, over 500,000 people die from cancer every year in America. This amounts to over 1500 people per day, every single day of the year. To put this in perspective, this is equivalent to 3 jumbo jets, loaded to capacity, crashing and killing everyone on board every day of the year!

Eventually there has to come a point where we ask ourselves, is it really a matter of throwing more time and money at this disease, or are we looking in the wrong place to begin with?

Be A Cancer Killer:

To begin to reverse any disease, you have to get to the CAUSE. You cannot merely chase the symptoms. This next statement is often hard for many people to accept at first but it remains true: Cancer is not a sickness, it is a symptom. Cancer is the end-result symptom of an unhealthy person.

Conventional cancer treatments mainly focus on addressing the symptoms of cancer, itself, while never addressing why a person has developed it in the first place. Let alone the fact that in many cases the Standard of Care actually contributes to further cancer development and leaves many wondering if it was the cancer that killed their loved-one, or the treatment, itself.

TIME magazine did an in-depth study almost a decade ago, now, titled “Inflammation: The Silent Killer”. The study was a first-of it’s kind and has since unleashed a multitude of studies linking cellular inflammation with all of the chronic diseases we know today; including cancer.

Every human body has health requirements that must be met in order to fight disease and function optimally (Proper nutrition, oxygen, healthy nerve supply, etc). When these requirements are not met, the body will begin to develop sickness instead of health. This sickness usually results in cellular inflammation (watch Dr. Tips video in the detox section for more on cellular inflammation). In order to get a person well, again -or to prevent sickness and cancer in the first place- we must remove the sources of cellular inflammation and support healthy immune function.

This comes from applying the 5 Core Pillars of Health at a high level; no dabbling, here.

To take this one step further, the body will achieve what the mind believes it is capable of. Henry Ford put is best when he said “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right”. If you are hesitant to believe something as simple as radical lifestyle changes can reverse a disease as devastating as cancer, then I would suggest you watch Dr. Charles Majors’ powerful story.

Dr. Majors is one of the lead doctors of Dr. Cole’s affiliate group, Maximized Living.

As you will see in the video below, in 2008, Dr. Majors was diagnosed with terminal, stage IV brain and bone marrow cancer. He had four tumors on his brain stem and was given weeks to live. Rather than going the conventional route and poisoning his body with dangerous treatments that even his doctors told him would not cure his condition, he chose to get to the CAUSE of his cancer; which was years of accumulated toxicity, sub-par nutrition and exercise and less-than-optimal nervous system function. He REVERSED the “incurable” cancer by living the Maximized Living Lifestyle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkIpWpm9M9o&hd=1

 

American’s are finally coming around to the idea that not all calories are the same; nor do they do the same things to your body. The type of food you eat is dramatically more important than how much food you are eating. Hormone’s like Leptin, Testosterone and Growth Hormone play a major role in how well your body burns fat.

On the other hand, Insulin and Estrogen are strong fat-storing hormones. The food you eat and the lifestyle you live plays a MAJOR role in regards to what hormones are most active in your body. Read this awesome article by Dr. Jocker’s for more information!

Raw, fermented foods are some of the biggest nutrient powerhouses on this planet.

I love drinking fermented beverages like Kefir and Kombucha; fermented vegetables are another avenue to get nutrient-dense superfoods into your diet. In ancient cultures, fermentation was a way to make their food last longer; something that we have gotten away from with the advent of the refrigerator. Not only does food last longer when fermented, but it also begins to produce a massive amount of healthy bacteria and enzymes that your body needs to dramatically boost gut health and immune function.

This is a great article on how to make homemade Sauerkraut – which is worlds away from the processed, heated version. Simple to make and extremely cheap; who says eating healthy has to be expensive! I just bought a whole head of organic cabbage for .69 cents! Replace one meal/snack per day with raw fermented sauerkraut and not only will your health improve, but your grocery bills will be lower as well.

Click Here to read the article

Great article by Dr. Mercola on the benefits of consuming raw, organic milk from grass-fed cows.

America is one of the only Countries in the world to outlaw this amazingly beneficial product in many States; coincidentally, we also lead the world in allergies and food intolerances. Raw milk contains wealth of healthy bacteria that repair the gut and boost immune function as well as a fatty acid called CLA that actually stimulates your brain to begin burning body fat. Both of these benefits of raw milk are lost when pasteurized and homogenized.

Click Here to read Dr. Mercola’s entire article.