Nutrition

Adding spices to dishes enhances the nutritional value and activates genes in your body to reduce inflammation and oxidation.
 
Transcript: "Yeah, I love the question because whenever you add spices to any dish, it could be breakfast, it could be lunch, dinner, even snacks, anytime you add spices it enhances the nutritional value because spices actually activate genes to do different things in your body such as reduce inflammation and oxidation. So the more you can use spices, the better. Thumbs up."

Adding an avocado to your breakfast sandwich adds healthy fats which helps absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K from other foods.
 
Transcript: "Adding an avocado to your breakfast sandwich not only adds calories because avocado is a great source of fat, but it adds a healthy fat to your breakfast sandwich. And the good thing about adding a healthy fat to your meals is that it can actually help you absorb some of the nutrients within that meal that maybe you might not get as much of absorption from in if you didn't have that healthy source of fat there. So vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat soluble so having an avocado at the same time as having food with those vitamins in it, like let's say you put some veggies like spinach or something on your breakfast sandwich, it's gonna help you absorb those."

A high school baseball player should have a pregame meal 3-4 hours before the game that includes all of the complete plate components (carbs, protein, and fruits/vegetables). An hour or two before the game, they should have a small snack like a PB&J or smoothie. Finally, an hour to 30 minutes before the game, they should have simple carbs such as pretzels, goldfish, fruit snacks, applesauce, banana, or sports drink.
 
Transcript: "What should a high school baseball player eat before a game? So there are different time frames that you need to look at here. If it's three to four hours pregame, that should be a pregame meal. So this should include all of the complete plate components being carbohydrates, protein, and fruits and vegetables to make sure you have long-lasting, sustained energy. Then, as we move forward, about an hour or two before the game, you're going to want some kind of small snack to help make sure that we have continuous energy as we get closer to game time. So this might be something like a PB&J or a smoothie or maybe a banana and some trail mix. Something that's going to be somewhat light, but still is going to give you more energy. And then the third time frame to eat before a game is what I like to call the top-off-the-tank time frame. This is anywhere between an hour to 30 minutes before, depending on how heavy you like to play. But this is really just simple carbohydrates. So this would be some pretzels, some goldfish, fruit snacks, applesauce, a banana, some sports drink. Any of those things would fit into that category. The simpler you can keep it, the easier this is going to be, especially for a high schooler that has to pack snacks. But find the things that work for you, taste good, and are going to feel good in your body before that game."

Chocolate should not be cut out of a healthy diet, but it should be consumed in moderation. Dark chocolate may have health benefits, but the sugar and fat content may cancel out those benefits.
 
Transcript: "So the question is, is chocolate healthy or unhealthy? As a dietician, I think that a healthy diet is not only what you eat but your attitude towards food and eating. And if we cut out chocolate or perceive it as unhealthy, it can lead to guilt and shame around eating it. A healthy diet has a variety of foods, including chocolate. Does that mean that you should be eating chocolate at every meal? Absolutely not. But you shouldn't really be eating anything at every meal. In short, yeah, I mean, chocolate-- it's not the most healthful food. But it's still emotionally nourishing, and it's delicious. So don't cut it out. Dark chocolate also has a lot of polyphenols in it, which are antioxidants, which may have health benefits, although those health benefits may be canceled out by the fat and the sugar in the chocolate. And also, you might not like dark chocolate. You might prefer milk, which is totally fine. There are no real unhealthy foods. There are foods that you want to eat less of, or you want to eat them less often. And chocolate may be one of them. But definitely don't cut it out."

Cortisol is an important stress hormone that helps regulate carbohydrate metabolism, blood pressure and other bodily functions. However, chronic exposure to cortisol can have negative effects such as increased hunger, storage of belly fat, and an increased risk of conditions like Syndrome X, diabetes and pre-diabetes. To control cortisol levels, it is important to get enough sleep, exercise, and do stress management. There are also some dietary supplements that can help reduce cortisol levels.
 
Transcript: "Why is cortisol important? It's one of the most important of all the stress hormones. It's part of the whole fight-or-flight reaction. So cortisol is important because it helps regulate carbohydrate metabolism. It helps with blood pressure regulation. It really does a lot of important things. And, in fact, short-term exposure to cortisol is good for your brain. It's good for your immune system. It's good for your motivation. But chronic exposure to cortisol can be really bad, because chronic exposure to cortisol ends up being catabolic. It breaks down your tissues in your brain. It breaks down your muscles. It breaks down your skin. It breaks down your immune system. It breaks down every single tissue in the body except for one where it becomes anabolic, specifically for your fat tissue, so your belly fat will grow in response to cortisol overexposure. Your brain also responds to cortisol overexposure by telling you that you're hungry. So you get this hunger signal when you're stressed out and have a lot of cortisol, and you get a storage signal for your belly fat when you're exposed to cortisol. And that's not a very good situation. You're chronically hungry. You're eating those calories. You're storing them as belly fat. That's going to be bad for your long-term risk of things like syndrome X, diabetes, pre-diabetes, problems with blood sugar, problems with blood pressure. So you really don't want that. So some of the ways we can control cortisol, we can get better sleep. We can exercise. We can do stress management. We can also look at some important dietary supplements that can directly lower cortisol, things like saffron, theanine, pine bark, and I can talk about some of these in some of the other videos. OK? So control your cortisol. It's a good thing for you."

Sleep, diet and exercise are all important for boosting your immune system year-round, but also consider taking a supplement that helps your body produce glutathione - the body's most powerful antioxidant.
 
Transcript: "Hey, Greg, great question. Besides good diet exercise. Is there a natural effective and safe? Way to boost my immune system all year long. Well, I would say, yeah, definitely get great sleep in addition to that diet and exercise all year long. And then I recently learned a bit more, about the body's most powerful antioxidant that it actually makes, which is Glutathione. And you see a lot about glutathione has this anti-aging super antioxidant and it really is if your body's making it. But out of your home country Australia, there was a discovery out of the University of South Wales on the immediate precursor to Cellular glutathione. And that was an incredible breakthrough Johnson & Johnson. Give it a big award. There's all kinds of critical Acclaim for but in a nutshell what it is is supplement. You can take daily that your body uses what it needs to maintain. Cellular glutathione levels produced by your body above homeostasis, which basically means that it's the ultimate protection. You could have made by your body. And if your body doesn't need it because you're already where you need to be it just going to pass it. It's just an unused material. It's not like iron or something that's going to accumulate and be difficult. So hopefully that helps."