Shift Your Metabolism

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

What is “metabolism?”  Well essentially your metabolism is your body's ability to create energy.  The more energy you have, the better you look, feel and perform generally speaking.  Ideally we want to create sustainable, lasting ways to shift our metabolism instead of just downing a few red-bulls and a bunch of sugar for a short kick!  For the sake of simplicity lets review a couple of body systems that help create energy:

Hormonal system

The Hormonal system includes the adrenals, thyroid and genital organs.  These play a very important role in maintaining blood sugar, dealing with inflammation/stress, and produce specific compounds that rebuild every cell in our body on a daily basis.

Step 1: Eat high quality protein and fat every 3-5 hours, this helps take stress of your adrenals to keep your blood sugar stable and keep your metabolism up.

Step 2: Getting to bed before 11pm gives you a nice bump in growth hormone.  Growth hormone eats up fat and keeps lean muscle on your body.

Step 3: Keep foods like grains (gluten) and gut irritating foods out of your diet.  Sugar and grains increase cortisol and cortisol increases belly fat (the spare tire effect).

Gastro-Intestinal system

The Gastro-Intestinal system is the next system that plays an important role on our metabolism and how we look, feel and perform.  I always use the old anology of a construction site to get this point across.  Lets say you are trying to remodel your kitchen, the right raw materials need to be present to get the job done.  If there is a shortage in regards to the wood, nails, tiles and cement your going to have a kitchen that doesn't look so hot!

Click here if you want to improve your metabolism.

Now connecting that same analogy to us humans, if there is a shortage in regards to the nutrients (raw materials) that are going into your body, the common symptoms that are typically experienced come in the form of fatigue, weight gain and mood imbalances most of the time.   The great thing is all of this is preventable.

Step 1: Make sure you are eating a high quality (organic, hormone/antibiotic free) diet based on your nutritional needs.

Step 2: Make sure you are able to break down and assimilate the food and supplements you are putting in your body.  If you have any stomach burning (GERD) or experience consistent gas, bloating and or consume gluten containing products chances are your ability to absorb nutrition is not optimal.  Some diestive support like HCl and enzymes more than likely would more than likely make a big difference.

Step: Research shows that 70% of the population has a G.I. infection such as a parasite, bacterial or fungal infection.  These bugs compete for nutrition and actually excrete toxins (endotoxin or mycotoxin to name a few) in the process.  Get checked to see if you have one these infections, it's easy via a take home stool test.

Detoxification system

The Detoxification system your body is constantly taking toxins in from our environment that we are exposed to, breaking them down and pushing them out of our body via the skin, kidneys, breath, and through stool.  When our body has increased exposure to toxins we tend to wall off a lot of these toxins in our fat cells.  So when you have stubborn weight that just won't come off with the correct dietary, lifestyle and exercise habits usually a well rounded detox program can be the right trick.  Simple steps to start are:

Step 1: Just avoid toxic exposure coming in from pesitices, chemicals and hormones in food.

Step 2: Avoid chemicals in skin care products that can be adding to your chemical load.  Check http://www.ewg.org/skindeep to see whats in your products.  I carry Marie Veronique Organics skin care line in my practice because they are food grade and have the best rating on skin deep.

Step 3: “The solution to pollution is dilution.”  The more water you drink, the easier it is for your body to flush some of these toxins out.  1/2 ounce per pound of body weight is a great starting point.  I.E. 200 pound man = 100 ounces of water.

I am a big fan of detoxification programs that focus on herbs, nutrients and sulfur base amino acids to help upregulate your body's natural detoxification mechanisms.  Feel free and reach to Office@JustInHealth.com to see if a program like this would be right for you.

Click here to know more about regulating your natural detoxification mechanisms.