The question should be what can’t they do for you? This is a powerful combination! There are benefits to all three separately but all together their pretty much unstoppable!
Healthy digestion is at the core of all health. Without a healthy digestive system and gut you will feel sluggish and not adequately absorb the nutrients from your food. An unhealthy digestion and gut also leads to health problems and weight gain and really who wants that!
Low Carb way of eating is a great way to encourage hormone balance, lower risk of metabolic syndromes such as type 2 diabetes, weightloss, lower risk of cancer, lower inflammation, as well as a whole host of other benefits. I used to think just eliminating grains and gluten was enough and though it’s a great start I can tell a huge difference with the lower carbohydrate amounts. Carbohydrates are not an essential macronutrient…what’s a macronutrient you say? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t really know in the beginning either. There are 3 macro nutrients: carbohydrates, protein and fat. Protein and fat are essential, carbohydrates are not. Remember this is not no carb but low carb. Many vegetables have carbohydrates in them, even spinach….mmmmmm spinach! We should be getting the majority of our carbs from above ground veggies and very very little, preferably none, from processed foods. Dairy has lactose which turns to carbs as well, but most have good fats so I don’t worry about it but just know there are some carbs even if the cheese package says 0. Please do not get low fat or zero fat dairy. Not only has it been processed to death and items like skim milk are linked to cancer, but the low-fat dairy items are actually higher in sugar than their full fat counterparts. Now I am not militant about tracking my carbs and if I want a sweet potato I am going to have a sweet potato from time to time even though they are higher in carbs they are higher in fiber too.
This brings us to the dreaded F word….FAT. Won’t fat cause you to have a heart attack, heart disease, or high cholesterol? In a word, NO. For many years we have been fed this cholesterol myth and told low fat, low fat, low fat even though there was really no proof for this. There is now plenty of data, studies, and science to prove that it isn’t fat that causes high cholesterol and heart disease but that it is actually sugar and carbohydrates and elevated insulin levels(I will talk more on this in another post). Your body is going to make cholesterol, if you’re on a statin(a cholesterol blocking drug) you are blocking what your body is supposed to do, I will post more on this as well, and if you are getting dietary cholesterol you won’t produce as much. You brain needs cholesterol to function which is why many people on statins have depression, foggy brain and many other side effects. When we eat a low fat diet that means we’re eating a high carb diet because energy has to come from somewhere. In nature protein and fat go together. Healthy saturated fats from butter, olives and olive oil, avocado, quality meats, coconut, coconut oil, full fat coconut milk and so on are all super good for you. What is not good for you is transfats! Stay far away from margarine, processed vegetable and seed oils…those are the fats that will kill you.
What about energy, doesn’t our body need glucose for fuel? Won’t you get tired and sluggish without glucose? While I will answer in more detail in another post it’s actually quite the opposite. Higher carbohydrate diets spike our insulin, especially those from refined carbohydrates like breads and pastas, which then come crashing down and drives up our hunger. This is an oversimplification but high insulin leads to high fat storage. So then what does the body run on if it’s not running on a bunch of glucose? Fat! The body will switch from being a carb burner to a fat burner. Our brain loves fat! Think about a baby, mom’s milk is full of good fats for baby’s brain. When baby is weaned at around 1, though I let my babies nurse as long as they want, dr puts baby on whole milk because of the fat for baby’s brain. Somewhere along the way it seems to have been thought that after 2 years old the brain no longer needs fat…this leaves me scratching my head. The brain actually runs much better and prefers to run on fat, well actually it doesn’t run on fat perse, when the fat is burned it is converted into ketone bodies(very simplified here) and that is what the brain loves. Everything else in the body loves fat and ketones as well. We run very well on fat and ketone bodies. Our liver makes enough glucose, through a process called gluconeogenesis, for the couple areas that need it. Of course this is all very simplified but gets the point across. It may also interest you to know that weight gain really has little to do with calories in and out and all to do with hormones! More to come on that.
This brings me to my last point…supplementation. You will hear many people saying it’s not necessary, especially on a low carb diet, even some of the folks I follow but hey you don’t have to agree with everything, which I totally disagree with. You simply cannot get everything you need from your diet, I don’t care what kind of diet you are on. Our soil is depleted from quality nutrients, we are bombarded with toxins every which way we turn, we are stressed from busy lifestyles and the list goes on and on. Supplementing to fill our dietary gaps is essential. I know this first hand as my husband has been able to reverse his diabetic retinopathy with high quality whole food concentrated nutrients. The key to this is knowing your company. A company with a 60 year old spotless track record, so not just some new fad pop up company just out to sell the latest and greatest products. A company with a scientific advisory board that is in charge of what products will be sold and not the sales force. A company that only uses whole food ingredients, is so pure there’s not even a warning on most of the products, and the products are all concentrated food nutrients. Products that work. A company that is based in nature and backed by science. A company that isn’t afraid to pull a product if they can’t source pure enough ingredients. A company that has a pharmaceutical license so you know everything is standardized and will not vary from bottle to bottle. I have researched a lot of different companies and used many different companies, the only one that has checked everything I just listed and then some is NeoLife. It actually saved my husband’s life when the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. We healed his digestion! Of course neither NeoLife nor I claim any products cure anything. The human body is able to heal when given all the right things. Of course this all turns back to diet because no matter how many supplements you take you can’t outrun a bad diet!
So to recap. Low Carb helps to balance hormones and keep insulin low. Lowers risk for heart attack and cancer. Lowers inflammation and allows our bodies to function in a better state. Helps to prevent and reverse metabolic syndromes Saturated fat is not evil. Cholesterol is not evil. Fat burning is good and our brains like that. Eat a whole food diet, don’t count calories, eat till satiated and supplement with high quality whole food supplements. In 2019 lets strive for progress, not perfection!
Finally what Low Carb, Great Digestion and Supplementation have done for me:
Disclaimer: Nothing I have posted here is to be taken as medical advice or diagnoisis. This is purely my thoughts and opinions on things I have been studying. Always check with your doctor before messing with medications or anything of the like.
