Integrative Medicine

Yes, it is necessary to take nutritional supplements in order to get all the nutrients you need and to maintain good health.
 
Transcript: "Is it necessary to take nutritional supplements? Well, I think the answer is yes. As much as I'm a huge fan of getting all the nutrients you need from your food, the reason why I think it's important to add supplements to your life-- remember the word is supplement. It's not meal replacement. It's not replacing nutrients from food. But the reason why we should be consuming it is first of all, depending on your caloric intake needs, you may not be able to get all the nutrients that you need from your food every single day. And the other reason to consider supplements is adding on what I consider clinically relevant, or clinically significant levels of nutrients that are beneficial for maintaining health, for preventing certain diseases. And that is the main reason why I feel that supplementation is beneficial."

In the last 50 years, the percentage of Americans that are obese has skyrocketed from 10% (male) and 12-15% (female) to 43% (male) and 41-42% (female). This increase is mainly attributed to the increased availability of fast food, the shift in agriculture away from agrarian production, and the presence of endocrine disrupting chemicals in our food supply. Additionally, people are eating too many macronutrients and not enough micronutrients, and being much more sedentary.
 
Transcript: "The question is, "How many Americans are obese and how has this become such a problem in the last 50 years?" Well, let's first define what we normally refer to when we talk about body composition, and that is a quick and dirty measure called body mass index. Body mass index is your weight or your mass relative to your height. It's usually expressed in meters per kilogram squared. So it's not a perfect measure of body composition because if you are muscular or very fit, you might possibly be considered overweight or obese according to this metric. But if you look at someone who's very fit and very muscular, then you obviously know that person's not overweight. They're just very muscular. But nonetheless, it's defined as 30 and above, according to BMI. And from the early 1960s when the average American male was about 10% obese and the average American woman was about 12% or 15% obese, now, today, the latest figures are somewhere around 43% of men and 41%, 42% of women. This is just ridiculous, how this has occurred over the last 50 or so years. So why has this happened? Well, this perfectly correlates with the rise in fast food, number one, the change in the way we produce our food, the agricultural shift away from an agrarian economy over 100 years ago to now. Less than 1% of the population is involved in agriculture in any way. So we changed the way we produce our food. We have much more synthetic inputs. We have genetic modification of our plants and species, and all these other chemicals and contaminants. So these are certainly two of the biggest problems. You have all these endocrine-disrupting, hormone modulators or mimickers in our food supply today, in our water, in our soil, in our air. There are a whole host of reasons why we are now so obese, but to me the biggest one is that we are simply overeating and undernourished. We're eating too many macronutrients, not enough micronutrients, and this is the problem in the context of obesity today. This is the major problem. And to a lesser extent, we're much more sedentary, but you cannot exercise your way to weight loss. So that's much less part of the problem than the nutritional piece."

Brain spotting is a neuro experiential method that processes memories held in the conscious and unconscious brain. It works through neuroplasticity and has been researched using fMRIs. It was developed by Dr. David Grant, and is based on the work of Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. People report changes in their symptoms after going through brain spotting sessions.
 
Transcript: "Brain spotting is a neuro experiential method that processes memories held in the conscious and the unconscious brain. It was developed by Dr. David Grant. It seems to work on neuroplasticity that is rewriting the neural pathways around the event. So when people come in with anxiety or panic attacks, phobias, depression, OCD, or addiction, we're able to find brain spots or neural networks around those targets, and process through the unconscious brain whatever it is that it is the root of those issues, which is often experiences that were stressful, overwhelming, painful physically or mentally, distressing in some way. And we process those memories until they go down to a neutral emotional charge. So if they were rated at a 9 out of 10, we keep going until we get down to a 0 or 1. And once we do that, the brain seems to no longer pay attention to those experiences, and the symptoms go away. This seems to be working through neuroplasticity. As you probably know, neuroscience has been exploding the last 20, 30 years. And we're always learning new things and revising our theories. But currently, our theory is based on the work of Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, among others, as well as on fMRIs, which are MRIs that track the blood flow in the brain during, before, and after brain spotting, and from the descriptions people give us of what they experience during brain spotting, and how their life changes after brain spotting. This is a really simplified version of brain spotting because I have a limited time here. So please let me know if you have other questions. Thanks."

Taking specific strains of probiotics, such as Lactobacillus helveticus 52, Bifidobacterium longum 175, and Lactobacillus rhamnosus 11, can help improve your mood by raising serotonin levels, increasing production of GABA, and lowering cortisol respectively.
 
Transcript: "Hi there. This is a great question, what nutrients or supplements can help with depression? And when we talk about depression, we're talking about small-d depression, the mood state that most of us experience on a fairly regular basis where we're just not feeling as happy or as motivated or as engaged as we want to be. We're not talking about treating major depressive disorder, which is a disease state, and we don't want to do that with supplements and nutrients. But if we want to improve our mood, there's all kinds of ways that we can do it, and one of the ways that I love to do that is through the gut-brain axis, how we can modulate what's happening in the second brain, our gut, and especially our microbiome, to send signals to the brain in our head, our first brain, so that we can improve how we feel. So one of the ways that we can do that is with a specific strain of bacteria called Lactobacillus helveticus 52. That 52 strain we know will raise serotonin levels, and that can help us be happier. It's not like the serotonin goes from the gut and leaks out into the bloodstream and leaks into the brain. We know it doesn't work that way because serotonin from the gut cannot pass the blood-brain barrier. But having more serotonin signaling in the gut does send a signal, probably through the vagus nerve, maybe through your cytokines, maybe through your immune system, to signal well-being in the brain. As a result of that, you feel happier, so we can consider helveticus 52 to be an anti-depression strain in certain ways. There's another strain called Bifidobacterium longum 175 that can help increase the production of GABA, the body's primary relaxing neurotransmitter, and when you're anxious and stressed, that can lower that anxious feeling and make you feel calmer. We also have a strain called Lactobacillus rhamnosus 11. That 11 strain we know can lower cortisol, the body's primary stress hormone, so in a lot of ways, we consider Lactobacillus rhamnosus 11 to be an antistress strain that can help us feel calmer. So helveticus 52 for depression, longum 175 for anxiety, and rhamnosus 11 for cortisol are all different ways that we can help ourselves feel better in terms of overall mood, overall calmness, overall stress levels. Check them out, you guys. Thanks. Bye-bye."

There is no one-size-fits-all answer for the optimal amount of protein to put in a shake, as it depends on your body weight, activity level, and muscle mass. You should assess your daily nutrient intake to determine whether or not you need an additional source of protein and then decide from there what to include in your shake.
 
Transcript: "What is the optimal amount of protein to put in my shake? Well, let's start with, do you even need an additional amount of protein in your daily food intake? Most Americans do not have an issue with inadequate protein consumption. So the question really is looking at your entire day and whether or not the protein that you need to take in or you're desiring to take in, is that a meal replacement? Is this in addition to because your other protein intake is inadequate? So there is no right answer for this in terms of giving you direction about what would be considered optimal, because everybody's protein intake varies based upon their body weight, the amount of activity they do, and the amount of muscle mass that they have in their body. So that's a great question. And one that really requires looking at your total daily intake as far as nutrients. And then assessing whether or not you need a protein. And then deciding from there what you're going to put in your shake if you even need one."

To build confidence, create a log of your workouts and write down one to three positives from each session. Visualize success using all five senses and make it as real as possible. Take something that you feel is a weakness and focus on it until it becomes a strength. Lastly, do brainspotting to strengthen neural networks around confidence.
 
Transcript: "This question in how to build confidence is a great one, and I get asked it by almost every athlete I work with. So I have a few things I recommend you can do to build your confidence. The first one is to create a log. Write down all your workouts, and after each workout, write down one to three positive things from the workout-- things that you did well, things that you succeeded at. And even if you had a bad practice, go ahead and try to find some things you can do well, whether it's staying positive mentally or working on the details. The second thing you can do is to visualize your success and make it as vivid and real as possible. Use all five of your senses and include the aftermath-- the hugs, the high fives, the congratulations you get from teammates and friends. The more you see yourself succeeding, the more real it will feel, because the brain can't tell the difference between a vividly imagined scene and something that actually happened. So the more you see yourself succeeding, the more you'll believe it. Third, take something that you feel is a weakness and really focus on it. Take extra time before or after practice. Get your coach's help and work on it until it becomes a strength. This is a great way to build confidence. So find one or two small weaknesses and work on them throughout the season so that by the time you get to your big competition, it's a strength. The last thing I would recommend is brainspotting. Brainspotting is something I talk about in other videos. But brainspotting works on the neural networks in the brain, and it strengthens those around confidence. It can also connect to different areas of confidence together to build a stronger sense of confidence. So those are my recommendations for building confidence. I hope you found that helpful."