How To Kickstart Health - there's an app for that!

I’ve got some great news today:  Sociidot just launched and I’m in the app as a featured expert!

Sociidot is a tool to help you visualize and achieve your dreams. The Sociidot team built the app with the innate understanding that while many people go after their “big” dreams, they may need some help and motivation to get there. Sociidot is designed to push you to spend time on the things that are really important to you.

As a featured nutrition expert in Sociidot, I provide the roadmap of how to get where you want to go. You simply take one tiny action at a time and move forward. Since I’m a food-as-medicine expert, I know the steps it takes to meet your health goals. So I’ve put together what I know and created a couple of roadmaps for Sociidot’s Health Maven category. The roadmaps outline how to achieve certain health goals, so anyone who really wants to can follow the dots and achieve the goal. Whether it be how to reverse diabetes in 30 steps, how to burn fat or simply kickstart a healthy lifestyle that makes you FEEL great in the skin you are in!

Sociidot is available for download here. Look for my roadmaps in the Health Maven category. It was a lot of fun putting them together, and now I’m looking forward to seeing people follow them!

Lick it! Nature's Viagra: This Valentine's get your SEXY on!

Do you know that your sex drive is an indicator of your overall health?
If your libido is diminishing, then this is simply a symptom of imbalanced hormones and a messed up brain chemistry! Factors that put you at risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes type-2, dementia and other inflammatory based diseases!


Before you resort to Botox in the quest of eternal youth do this...
Yes, your passion in the bedroom affects one of our greatest anti-aging hormones being HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE. This secret-to-eternal-youth hormone helps boost collagen production and keep cellulite at bay. Yes, you heard me... sex may very well be an underestimated cure for cellulite. Cellulite being a major issue for most women when they hit menopause - as their hormones drop, their libido vanishes and their mood fluctuates... just coinciding with those less-than-flattering derriere dimples appearing. It's NOT a coincidence. Hormonal imbalance sets off a major cascade of aging biochemistry reactions in your body!


And no, I am certainly not recommending Viagra here - the side effects are vast and many, and quite frankly, this is a disaster of a drug.


Lick it, baby!
What I am recommending is that you eat these two foods daily for a period of 6 weeks, and watch your sex-drive rise!
Apart from that you hereby have Rx to eat dark, decadent chocolate daily, the health impact of these two natural aphrodisiacs  go far beyond the bedroom, as they help to boost dopamine and serotonin levels, as well as balance your hormones NATURALLY and without any side-effects! 
So yes, lick every drop of that dark chocolate!


The scientific low-down on the two SEXY foods:

The Mayan Super food of the gods...
Dark chocolate contains a high concentration of phenethylamine. This chemical stimulates the nervous system and triggers the release of pleasurable opium-like compounds known as endorphins. It also potentiates the activity of dopamine, the neuro-chemical associated with sexual arousal.


The Incan secret to strong stamina... from the bedroom to the boardroom!
It's called MACA baby! And to be honest I have never seen anything quite as efficient with regard to boosting your sex drive! MACA is a Peruvian root that is one of the few foods that act like an adaptogen (balancing your hormones), support exhausted adrenal glands by lowering cortisol levels. However, dosage is crucial to notice any effect whatsoever; I have found that 1-2 tbsp. daily boosts libido for the majority of my clients dramatically within 6 weeks! Mix it in smoothies, yogurt or add it to flour in recipes when baking.


The taste of SEXY is dark, decadent and delicious...
You can get hold of RAW, high-potency and organic cocoa nibs and MACA here.


Reference: 

Dillinger TL, et al. Food of the gods: cure for humanity? A cultural history of the medicinal and ritual use of chocolate. J. Nutr. 2000 Aug:130(85 Suppl):2057S-72S

The legal psychostimulant drug that could make you smarter, leaner or spike your insulin, frazzle your nerves and add inches to your waistline...

Inhaling my morning Cappuccino.
Some alley cafe in La Gomera

What did Balzac, Kant, Rosseau and Voltaire all have in common? They loved coffee! The rich aroma... the sensual lingering aftertaste... smooth yet strong.... I have always been fascinated by contrasts in life: textures, tastes, places, people, paces, ideas.... and then there is coffee.

Today coffee beans are the most widely traded commodity after oil, and caffeine is the world's most commonly used psychostimulant drug. And I am hopelessly addicted.

Caffeine raises blood pressure slightly, ups your metabolism, dilates the bronchi of the lungs, and allows the body quicker access to fuels in the blood (explains the popular choice of red bull and vodka...). It increases the flow of urine in your kidneys and acts as a laxative in your colon.

How you react to coffee reveals how your brain is wired!
People who are low in GABA will be very sensitive to anything containing caffeine and will not benefit from it - physically nor mentally. Also, the severity of depletion is of utmost importance to consider: if you are diabetic type-2 you will have a severe dopamine depletion, as this chemical has been found to be a key indicator in this condition. That means, coffee is completely off-limits, as it tends to spike your cortisol levels which again causes insulin to spike 'n crash - a recipe for disaster. For someone with a more balanced brain chemistry, coffee can be a great mood and metabolism booster.
The secret ingredient to anti-aging
Apart from that, studies have found it to be one of the most efficient ways of reducing visible signs of aging such as cellulite and wrinkles when the green coffee bean extract is used topically.


The science in your coffee cup
The secret to coffee's stimulating effect is this: it binds to the body's receptors for adenosine, a natural chemical important in sleep and wakefulness. As the cells in your body use up energy, they make adenosine as a byproduct; the harder they work, the more of the chemical they make. The adenosine attaches to receptors on cells everywhere in the body and quiets their activity. In this way it calms heartbeat, lowers blood pressure, decreases the release of stimulating neurotransmitters, and induces sleepiness. Caffeine enhances alertness by binding to adenosine receptors and inactivating them - thus preventing the chemical from exerting its quieting effects. So ultimately caffeine works by foiling the process by which the nerves are calmed, rather than actually exciting them!

Coffee could make you smarter... or simply just an anxious nutcase.
FMRI scans have been used to measure coffee's action on the brain, and the studies showed greater activity in the parts of the brain involved in attention and concentration.
That said, whether you will benefit from adding in coffee depends on how your brain is wired - if you are already severely depleted in GABA, the calming neurotransmitter in your brain, then you will react negatively towards caffeine, as it lowers your ability to handle stress even more.

I know that I had to cut my coffee intake drastically since moving to New York, since the pace of life here is quite different than from the West coast, and I really didn't need anything that lowered my stress threshold, since I have high dopamine already. And while high dopamine is great, as it is your body's natural battery, so to speak, and controls everything from your energy levels in the bedroom to the boardroom, your body needs a balance between calming and excitatory neurotransmitters in order for you to be focused and driven yet calm and collected.

There is no point in joining the club of neurotic overanxious nutcases due to excessive caffeine consumption - apart from you most likely will end up contributing to your shrink's growing wallet.

Want to know how YOUR brain is wired?
Again, eating right for your brain chemistry type and understanding which supplements, herbs and amino acids to take as well as - as a last resort - prescription medications and psychotrophic drugs, should always be matched to your genotype as well as tailored to which neurotransmitters in your brain that are out of whack. And this is where conventional doctors and nutritionists go wrong - they are not treating the cause, nor do they match the treatment protocol with the patient's genetic profile, rather it is simply geared at suppressing the symptoms.

However, if you fail to connect the myriad of symptoms with the actual cause and the underlying key imbalance in your brain and biochemistry, then you will not be able to ever get off any prescribed drugs nor benefit fully from whatever supplements you are taking for overall health. THAT is why people get addicted to medication or don't experience any progress on supplements - and THAT is a waste of your money and time!

Get your tailormade treatment program to reach your peak performance today based on your specific brain wiring and biochemistry type!

Make an appointment with The Nutrition Doctor today!

Reference: 
Hiroshi S. et al. Inhibitory effect of green coffee bean extract on fat accumulation and body weight gain in mice. Altern Med. 2006; 6: 9