What to do if you have been told your blood 'fat' ratios are too high.
This blog is version 2 if you like following on from my ‘Know your numbers’ blog. If your numbers reveal that blood fats are too high what can you do?
There is a lot you can do with diet, lifestyle and exercise as well as supplements. I highly recommend working with a health practitioner but I have summarised some of the key initial steps below:
Keep the sugar and processed carbs low,
A low GL Mediterranean diet is ideal
Stop smoking.
Make sure you are eating enough soluble fibre – this helps to bind to cholesterol so it can be excreted from the body.
Eat healthy fats – avocado oil, olive oil, coconut oil, nuts and seeds, wild oily fish
Make sure you’re topped up on antioxidants – think eat the rainbow but also supplementing with vitamin C and fat soluble vitamins is key.
Raw garlic and onion are helpful for lowering cholesterol.
Avoid processed foods they often contain high levels of sugar and trans-fats as they are generally made with cheaper seed and vegetable oils. These oils are delicate (poly unsaturated fatty acids) and can oxidise to trans fats during the manufacturing process or when being re-heated at home.
Avoid trans-fats – this includes ready meals, prepared sauces and salad dressings which often contain them – see point above. Crisps and fried food contain trans-fats. Even home prepped food can create trans fats if we cook with the wrong type of fat such as vegetable oil or seed oils or heat food excessively. If you would like a copy of my handout on which fats to cook with please drop me a line.
Your Hba1c marker which measure diabetic risk is also a good marker to monitor. It provides an average of your blood sugar levels over the previous 90 days. Remember if we aren’t burning off the sugar we eat and if our glycogen stores in our skeletal and heart muscle are full then the excess will be turned to fat.
There are numerous key supplements from essential fatty acids, Co Q10 and enzymes such as nattokinase, which can help improve levels of lipids (fats) in the blood. However you need qualified advice to identify the ones most suitable for you and also the correct dose.
Hope this helps to guide you and feel free to contact me if you have questions or are concerned about your own numbers.
The 56 names of sugar
Trying to cut out sugar?
This blog is just for your info if you are trying to cut out sugar. Sugar has so many names. This graphic contains 56 names which are basically all sugar. There are probably more by now but this picture might be useful for you to help remember.
Breathing for stress, anxiety and panic.
Anxiety, panic and a racing mind are classed as psychological problems but there is a strong biochemical link. These feelings can be triggered by chemical changes, as well as cause chemical changes. Breathing is connected to our nervous system and we influence our biochemistry with how we breathe. So if we train the breath, we can start to intentionally influence our nervous system through beneficial biochemistry, created with good breathing practices.
Stress of all kinds causes tension in the body. When we are stressed the body responds by tensing up. Tension on the outside means tension on the inside so everything contracts including muscles, tissues, blood vessels and our airways. This constriction impedes the way our body functions and over time this tension affects how we breathe on a day-to-day basis. This is because we build neural pathways for breathing so poor breathing can become the habitual default pattern.
We can train the breath to calm the mind and oxygenate the brain so that we can think clearly. When you bring your attention to your breath this helps to quiet the mind and reduce over thinking. This brings us into the present moment which is usually fine. Anxiety and over thinking is usually about the future (worry) or about the past, perhaps regret or depression over something that has happened. When we quiet the mind we create space between our thoughts so we can question their validity and allow new ideas to surface.
We may not always be able to control sources of stress in our life. We can however work with our breath to interrupt our emotional and mental reaction to the stress. These reactions will otherwise continue to stimulate our stress response and restrict how our body functions.
Remember there are many sources of stress but they all generate the same type of reaction in the body. It doesn’t matter if it’s from toxins, poor food quality, negative emotions and feelings or illness and injury. The body’s physiological response is the same regardless of the cause.
The human body has a great response mechanism called the fight or flight response. This serves us well for acute short bursts of stress. You may have heard of the book ‘why zebra’s don’t get ulcers’. If they survive a predator attack they shiver and shake to process the stress and then return to their baseline parasympathetic state (rest and digest). Unfortunately the pace of modern life tends to generate chronic, low grade persistent stress on a daily basis. Without any kind of stress management our baseline will often reset to a far higher baseline and a constant pervading sense of anxiety. This means our reaction times get shorter and shorter and our fuse trips faster and more frequently. We weren’t built to withstand this continual, chronic stress but nature always has a solution.
The exercises I teach work on your daily functional breathing pattern. I teach you to breathe lightly, slowly and deeply. This increases your tolerance to the build up of carbon dioxide and nitric oxide. These molecules cause your airways and blood vessels to relax and dilate and make the oxygen you breathe in, accessible to the body. This means all of your automatic functions such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate and digestion can function better.
You can rewire your breath and the neural pathways for breathing to:
Oxygenate your body and your brain.
Switch your body to rest and digest / rebuild and repair.
Interrupt the stress messages from the body to the brain to remind yourself you are safe.
Increase the resilience you have to stress, by resetting your nervous system on a daily basis.
Learn how to calm the mind in stress and panic situations, as its very hard to use slow breathing techniques in an emergency.
When you work with the breath to relax the body you stimulate your vagus nerve. This one nerve controls whether you are in fight or flight or rest and digest. Rest and digest is the parasympathetic nervous system which controls all those automatic functions of the body which keep you alive, the autonomic nervous system (ANS). When you rewire your breathing you can begin to work with your ANS rather than hampering it with poor breathing patterns. Enhance and stimulate your health, rather than inadvertently damaging it.
For more information please do drop me an email or give me a call. I offer private breath training but I also have a new course coming soon. Please get in touch as soon as possible if you are interested.
How to Optimise Your Vitamin D Level
There are two major forms of vitamin D from two different sources.
Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) is our main source (80-90%) and it is produced in the skin following sunlight exposure but it is also found in foods of animal origin. Technically this makes vitamin D a pro hormone.
Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) is found in foods of vegetable origin and supplements
In the UK our main dietary sources of vitamin D are food of animal origin, foods fortified with vitamin D and supplementation. Naturally rich food sources include egg yolk and oily fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring and sardines.
Absorption
We probably absorb between 62 to 92% of our dietary vitamin D. It is fat soluble and absorbed in the small intestine from where it is transported via the lymph into the circulation. Vitamin D produced under the skin enters the fluid between our cells (extracellular) before defusing into the circulation and being transported to the liver.
Common food sources of vitamin D
Food sources
International Units (IU)
Salmon 140g
408
Sardines canned 140g
184
Mackerel 140g
476
Mushrooms 80g (enriched)
128
1 egg
64
Tuna 140g
60
Beef mince 100g
24
Lamb 90g
20
Butter 10g
4
Vitamin D content is taken from British Nutrition Foundation ‘Vital vitamin D’ resource sourced from McCance and Widdowson's The Composition of Foods: Seventh Summary
Total vitamin D production depends on a combination of factors:
Intake via the diet and from sunlight
The amount of vitamin D absorbed and then delivered to the liver
The amount produced by the liver
It’s half-life in plasma.
Uptake by body fat and muscle mass.
Rate of conversion to other metabolites
Levels of acute inflammation in the body appear to adversely affect vitamin D levels.
The body appears to store vitamin D in adipose tissue (fat cells) and possibly muscle tissue. Studies suggest that levels of vitamin D decline as our body mass index (BMI) increases, and increase as BMI decreases. However the ability of the body to access these stores is unclear and it may be sequestered rather than stored.
There are in fact, a whole lot of factors that affect how much vitamin D our bodies can make including:
how much skin we expose to the sun
the height and angle of the sun in the sky
the time of year
the duration of exposure
the health (and age) of our liver and kidneys
excess weight
Role in the body
The main role of vitamin D is to help regulate the absorption and metabolism of calcium and phosphorus from the gut. To a lesser extent it also regulates magnesium absorption.
Vitamin D is therefore vital for bone mineralisation, bone growth and bone health. Without it bones will be soft, malformed, and unable to repair themselves normally. This results in the disease called rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. Vitamin D also plays an important role in musculoskeletal health and neuromuscular function because of its’ role in calcium homeostasis.
However evidence is emerging of other roles for vitamin D including:
Appropriate muscular function
Better brain health and improved mood
Stimulation of anti-inflammatory pathways
Good gut function
Proper functioning of the immune system (immune-modulation)
Prevention of acute respiratory infections
Optimisation of blood sugar levels and weight loss
Cardiovascular health
Healthy pregnancy and reduction in pre-eclampsia risk
Reduction of cancer risk, heart disease, autoimmune disease and osteoporosis
Healthy aging
Latterly, more data is emerging for post-covid vaccine support
Measurement
Both vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 are converted by the liver to 25-hydroxyvitamin D written in shortform as 25(OH)D and then to the active hormone 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D. Tests measure 25(OH)D to estimate the status of vitamin D in the body because it is the most useful indicator. It remains in the blood longer and is present at much higher concentrations than the active form.
The National Osteoporosis society (NOS) guidelines (UK, 2013) and the Institute of Medicine (US) classify vitamin D results as follows:
Less than 30 nmol/L is deficient
30-50 nmol/L may be inadequate in some people
Greater than 50 nmol/L is sufficient for almost the whole population.
The Scientific Advisory Committee Report (SACN) report (2016) considers levels in the UK below 25 nmol/L to be inadequate with an increased risk of rickets and osteomalacia.
However the Endocrine Society Task Force concluded 50 nmol/L as the cut off for deficiency and recommended that concentration “should exceed 75 nmol/L” for maximum benefit on calcium, bone and muscle metabolism. Other researchers have proposed thresholds between 50-120 nmol/L to reduce the risk of adverse non-skeletal outcomes.
Dr Damien Downing, president of the British Society for Ecological Medicine and vitamin D expert, recommends a vitamin D blood level of at least 75 nmol/L for immune support and levels over 100 nmol/L to lower your risk of cancer and autoimmune disease. Grassroots Health (vitamin D global expert Group) suggest anything below 100 nmol/L is inadequate and recommend optimum levels of 100-150 nmol/L.
Your magnesium and vitamin K2 intake can also influence your vitamin D absorption. Magnesium is required for the conversion of vitamin D into its active form. If your magnesium level is too low you may store vitamin D in its inactive form.
How to supplement if blood levels are low
Low blood levels of vitamin D may mean that you are not getting enough exposure to sunlight or enough dietary intake or that there is a problem with its absorption from the intestines.
In the UK most people should be able to obtain enough vitamin D from sunlight from the end of March to the end of September.
During autumn and winter as many of us don’t get enough sun exposure a supplement may be required. The best way to determine your requirement is to measure your vitamin D (https://www.vitamindtest.org.uk/) level and then use the Grassroots vitamin D calculator to work out the correct dose. https://www.grassrootshealth.net/project/dcalculator.
Grassroots Health also suggest taking 600mg of magnesium and supplemental K2 of 90 mcg for women and 120 mcg for men daily. This helps to support bioavailability of your vitamin D as well as conversion to the active form.
Elderly people, those with darker skin tones, overweight or obese individuals or those exposed to limited sunlight have a much higher risk of becoming deficient. The Department of Health and Social Care recommends a daily supplement containing 10 micrograms (400IU) of vitamin D for higher risk groups like these.
You can also get some idea of where your level might be by using the D Minder Pro app from the App Store. This app is expertly designed to help you track and manage your vitamin D levels. It also provides other useful data related to your geographical location.
How much to supplement
Official recommendations on how much to supplement vary widely. In the UK it's 400 IU (international units) or 10mcg (micrograms). The EU and many countries go for 400-600 IU, the exception is Italy's 2000 IU (50 mcg), in the USA its1000 IU (25 mcg). Some vitamin D researchers and experienced clinicians, such as Professor Hollick, recommend 4000 to 5000 IU (125 mcg) for daily maintenance. A general guideline for adults over the age of 18 is between 50-100 mcg (2000 – 4000IU) for the colder months. It is recommended to work with a healthcare practitioner before supplementing at these levels.
Which form of vitamin D to supplement
Clinicians usually recommend vitamin D3 for supplementation as D2 isn’t so effective at raising vitamin D levels in the blood.
Toxicity
Commercially vitamin D is synthesised by UVB irradiation of 7DHC (from sheep wool) and ergosterol (from fungi). Prolonged sunlight doesn’t cause excess production but high dose supplementation can be toxic and can cause hypercalcaemia (soft tissue deposition of calcium). High levels will usually reflect supplement intake.
To evaluate how your sun exposure and/or supplement dose is working for you it’s a good idea to re measure your vitamin D level after three to six months.
N.B. 1 microgram of vitamin D is equal to 40 International Units (IU). So 10 micrograms of vitamin D is equal to 400 IU.
References
Alliance for Natural Healthhttps://www.anhinternational.org/campaigns/test-take-vitamin-d/
Bikle, D.D. (2009) Vitamin D and immune function: understanding common pathways; Curr Osteoporos Rep; Jul; 7(2); pp.58-63. doi: 10.1007/s11914-009-0011-6.
Haddad, J.G. et. al (1993) Human plasma transport of vitamin D after its endogenous synthesis; Journal of Clinical Investigation; June; 91(6) pp.2552-5. doi: 10.1172/JCI116492.
Holick, M.F. (2011) Evaluation, treatment, and prevention of vitamin D deficiency: an Endocrine Society clinical practice guideline; J Clin Endocrinol Metab; July; 96(7); pp.1911-30. doi: 10.1210/jc.2011-0385.
Ovesen, L. et. al (2003) Geographical differences in vitamin D status, with particular reference to European countries; Proceedings of the Nutrition Society; Symposium on optimal nutrition for osteoporosis prevention; 62 pp. 813-821.
SACN (2016) Vitamin D and Health; The Scientific Advisory Committee on nutrition; Available from https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-committee-on-nutrition. (SACN)
