Risky Business: Are Your Vitamins Good For You?

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Are your #supplements certified by the #FDA to be in #compliance? Look for #NPA GMP, and #NSF GMP certified supplements. These are industry regulated and exceed the current FDA regulation of dietary supplement.

What are Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs)? What is the difference between compliance and certification? What do the alphabet of names

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Glutathione: Power Antioxidant

Glutathione is the mother of all antioxidants, the master detoxifier and maestro of immunity. GOOD NEWS, our body produces it. BAD NEWS, when the body becomes overloaded with toxins, it switches off the gene that allows for Glutathione to be created and recycled within the body.

Nearly every person who suffers from chronicfatigue syndrome, heartdisease, cancer, chronicinfections, autoimmune disease, diabetes, autism, Alzheimer‘s disease, Parkinson‘s disease, arthritis, asthma, kidney, liver disease and more is missing the functional ability of the GSTM1 gene.

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Daily Mantra: Stay With Yourself

Monday morning can be difficult but it always presents a new opportunity to start fresh. You can change how you feel physically by taking a small step today towards a goal. Monday is a day to practice staying with yourself. Being present, being aware of yourself in your surroundings. Stop reflecting on the resistance that’s pushing in around you. Quiet the external thoughts that bombard you while you workout. Feel whatever your body wants you to feel. Allowing yourself to feel the momentary physical awareness will quiet your mind from the chatter going on around you and let you be open enough to progress forward. It’s a physical revelation. And when you start trusting your deepest feelings, whether or not you can explain them, you start trusting your body to do what it was designed to do. Before getting to this point, I wouldn’t let myself do something unless I knew I could explain it. Now the explanation can come later.

1. Relax into yourself. Trust your body not to lead you astray.

2. Stay with your experience; whatever you are feeling–tightness, pinching, opening–stay with that feeling and acknowledge it as temporary.

3. Feel the joy of your ability to experience. Many people in this world don’t have the ability to experience physically what you can.

4. Surround yourself with this joyful thing, this experience. Know that you are loved by this joyful thing, this gift of physical experience. Love it back, in the moment.

5. Relax into yourself, because you know you are this joyful thing. You are this physical gift.

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Review: My Fit Foods

Today my fitness/beach/stylist partner-in-crime Jen and I stumbled upon My Fit Foods in the Boystown neck of Lakeview. I had seen it open up shop in Chicago on North Ave., just east of Wells and this was my first opp to check out a fast food concept that “strives to make fresh, healthy meals to go that are designed to increase energy levels and help you lose weight safe and naturally.”

“Ok, let’s give it a shot,” we say as we shift gears away from our go-to snack spot (Starbucks).

When you’re literally running your business from your cell phone and trying to fit in that all too important beach date with the dogs in, eating on the go is a must. That’s why a company that boasts 90% of their meals gluten free, calorie and fat reduced and has several portion size options is a road we’re willing to traverse.

Walk in and go immediately to the fridge where the meals are broken down into easy to decide categories; snacks, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Okay, easy enough.


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We head over to snacks. Not only do they have a ton of options (in this category alone, I saw 8), they also have portions–small, medium and large–with the calories and fat literally printed on the side. So even these lazy beach combers can’t plead the fifth when it comes to not being aware of what we’ve just stuck in our mouths.

I had the tuna salad snack which consists of a yummy scoop of spicy and crunchy tuna salad, some zucchini wedges, grape tomatoes and a few rice crisps for good measure. Turns out, this was the perfect serving size and I felt full and satisfied after.

I love that it’s fast, love that it’s portion controlled and that it displays the nutritional information as clear as day. You really can’t screw it up when you eat here.

Be sure to pick up the snack cookie and gluten-free energy bar too for later. They were both low cal, high protein and extremely tasty. Especially the cookie :)

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I Love This

“”

She closed the door with the intention of not looking back
But missed her step because she didn’t have a steady track
She can’t be bothered by the mistakes she’s made
But she’s forgetting that’s what guides you to the rightful path

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Apps Are So Out

I know, I know… Apps are the next “It” thing if you are in business. But I am proposing that you NOT carry your cell phone everywhere you go. And hey, especially when you are exercising. Because, if anything, exercise is your hour to yourself everyday. And it should be peaceful and quiet and you shouldn’t have emails buzzing and text messages being sent and you shouldn’t be looking at yet another florescent screen just to follow an exercise routine. No, I’m thinking all you need is your eyes, your ears, your heart, your arms and legs to carry out the most physical part of your day. Forget technology, get in touch with something even more intelligent and complex–your body.

So I’m developing a CoreFit Deck that you can take with you. Get the first of these workouts here and print out so you can just grab them and go to the gym. In fact, why not just take a few in your gym back so all you have to do is follow the pictures and do the routine. Simple. And it won’t even show up on your data usage.

 

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Plastics Chemical Tied to Increased Blood Pressure

By Shayna Robinson, MSPT, PhD

There’s a new blood pressure trigger in town, folks.

Thought if you exercised and ate right you could prevent heart disease? Turns out research is piling up against more chemicals found in plastics. The latest study adds further credence to a growing concern that plastic chemicals not only throw off hormones and cause obesity but also cause oxidative stress internally on major organs within the body.

Researchers from New York University’s Langone Medical Center, the University of Washington, and the Penn State School of Medicine recently made a first-of-its kind connection between phthalates, a common chemical used to soften plastic, and higher blood pressure in children and teens. The study appeared in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Similarly, BPA has been shown to trigger abnormal heart rhythms.

9 Ways to Dodge Phthalates (DEHP):

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The Power Poses

We know our minds change our bodies. But do our bodies change our minds?

 

 

 

 

Powerful people typically are assertive, confidant, optimistic, risk takers, tend to think more abstractly. Physiologically they have more testosterone (dominance hormone) and less cortisol (stress hormone). High power alpha males in nature have high testosterone and low cortisol and powerful and effective leaders also have high testosterone and low cortisol.

Amy Cuddy describes her 2 min experiment;

“this is what we did; we decided to bring people into a blast and ronaldo experiment and these people adopted for two minutes either high-power opposes or low-power poses.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The results

High Power Poses produced a 20% increase in testosterone (dominance hormone) and a 25% decrease in cortisol (stress hormone).

Low Power Poses produced a 10% decrease in testosterone (dominance hormone) and a 15% decrease in cortisol (stress hormone).

Simply expanding your body for two minutes produces very significant increases in your hormonal levels. These hormones are the same hormones that drive our confidence and our success in many cases. Amy Cuddy makes a strong case for the body’s ability to influence the way we think. Simply faking a motion for two minutes can convince you that you do belong, you can be successful and that you are powerful.

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The Heart Loves Yoga

Yoga for Atrial Fibrillation

The first ever yoga study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found yoga to be a safe, effective and relatively cheap therapy for improving the lives of heart patients.

The study conducted by The University of Kansas Hospital found that,

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Snowy Exercise

Think the snow will slow down your exercise? You could be right–but only in the best way possible! Snowshoeing burns about 45 percent more calories than walking or running when done at the same pace and on the same type of terrain.

Don’t have snow shoes? No worries–just walking or running in your regular shoes with clips or without will produce about a 30 percent higher calorie burn. Plus the cold weather challenges your body to maintain an internal homeostasis, further burning calories.

Don’t use a snowy day as an exercise to skip your workout. Use it as a training tool and best yourself next time the street is clear :)

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