Achieve Your Greatest Dreams - one step at a time.

Sociidot is a new app to help you reach your goals step by step.
I designed the roadmaps featured in the app for:

• How To KickStart Health
• How To Reverse Diabetes
• How To Burn Fat.

Downloadable in the app store.

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!

3 Things That Matter More Than What's On Your Plate.

Christina Santini offers nutrition target therapy + coaching + meditation/yoga .

Your body's biochemical functioning + brain chemical rebalancing takes place ONLY during those deep layers of sleep. If you are not sleeping at 10PM which is where we know from Ayurvedic Medicine that our body's main healing takes place, your body is simply not capable of healing from whatever stressors it has encountered during the day - that means that you can be an overly fanatic health-nut, cutting out this and that and carrying around Spirulina bags and whatnot, and yet you will suffer from a body that is slowly but surely breaking down.

Hormones such as testosterone and insulin are STRONGLY sensitive to sleep and the way you deal with stress.

In other words, if you can't seem to be losing that stubborn fat (particularly abdominal fat is due to an imbalance in testosterone/estrogen), and your energy levels are going down the drain - and especially for any sexual dysfunction - you may want to reconsider your sleep and meditation habits.

And if the word habit is not part of these practices, well, then you don't need to look at what's on your plate to improve your health in these areas - because it's a waste of time before your sleep and stress management tools are in place. Before that happens, your blood labs will be reflecting hormonal imbalances that are all over the map, including borderline diabetic tendencies. And this is true, EVEN if you eat a strict low-carb Paleo diet or whatnot. Doesn't matter - sort out your sleep and take some herbs that will help you calm down your mind. Everything else will fall into place after that.

Managing your nutrition before your sleep habits is like painting a house before the fundament is laid out.

Reference: J Pediatr. 2007 Apr;150(4):364-9. Association between inadequate sleep and insulin resistance in obese children. Flint J et al.

STRONG is the NEW skinny!

Get fingerlicking recipes for health a-z here.

TEDTalk Peter Attia on Understanding weight loss.

CAUSE OR EFFECT?
What if obesity is the coping mechanism for an underlying cell defect that we are not addressing via aiming to "just lose weight" - this is a profound difference in how to target weight issues.
What if this cell-defect is programmed to store fat rather than burn fat - and what we are eating does nothing to disrupt this message regardless of calorie restriction?

Saturated fats rate high on satiety index

One of the biggest issues for dieters today -  and that I constantly hear from my clients - is the struggle against hunger. A couple questions quickly reveal that most of them have cut saturated fats down to nothing - something that they've been brainwashed to do by the diet industry. Please keep in mind that the diet industry depends on you failing in the weight loss battle, otherwise they don't get repeat customers: they need you to lose weight and then struggle with cravings and a sluggish metabolism to ensure you gain it all back and come crawling back to them and spend more money.

Your brain, hormones and cells are mainly made up of saturated fats. So common sense will tell you, that this is something your body also needs from your diet for healthy functioning. Mother's milk is made up in large by saturated fats, because it is so essential for brain development etc.

In fact, I often start my mornings with heavy cream in my coffee, grassfed butter on my Ezekiel toast topped with a softboiled egg and a couple slices of delicious avocado and a bowl of banana/blueberries/macademia nuts. So fingerlicking good!

I do not struggle with cravings. I do not go to the gym. I do not count calories. My bodyfat is 18%. This is not due to great genetics - on the contrary, I have low serotonin symptoms running on both my parents side, so I need to pay attention to my metabolic type in order to keep my brain chemistry balanced and inactivate my genes of disease.

This breakfast rich in saturated fats keeps me satisfied without feeling stuffed for a good 5 hours. Whenever I skip my saturated fats and do something commonly thought as healthy, such as oatmeal with almond milk or low fat milk, I feel physically stuffed without being satisfied - I will have more food cravings for sugar and quick carbs that day. Not really a great feeling.

It is imperative that you know your own brain chemistry dispositions in order to know what to eat to feel great. And the right types of fats play a huge part.

Which fats did you eat today?

Why Even Non-celiacs May Need To Skip Gluten.

Change Your Body Set-point.

If you've reached a weight-loss plateau, or even having difficulty losing any weight in spite of monitoring every morsel that passes your lips, you need to change your metabolism and brain chemistry, as these two factors are what will ultimately determine if you are able to keep your body-fat down, get ripped abs and no longer struggle with the munchies. I've said it a million times and I'll say it again: fat-burning has NOTHING to do with willpower, but everything to do with brainpower, and understanding how to harness the power of your brain chemistry and genotype - matching it with the right supplements, amino therapy and dietary strategies for your unique genetic blueprint and brain chemistry wiring.

There are, however, a couple factors that you may not be aware of that are crucial in order to kickstart your body into fat-burning gear:

You can change your metabolism:  A study of sets of twins where one was fat and the other thin found that fat cells in heavier twins underwent metabolic changes that make it more difficult to burn fat.  Physical activity can reverse the effect.

Stress can make you fat: Stressful circumstances can cause cravings for carbohydrate-rich foods. Stress hormones also increase fat storage.

Zac Efron- His physique is not a matter of willpower:
He doesn't stick to a fanatic diet or exercise regime;
it simply flows - because what he is doing,
whether conscious or not about it,
matches his genetic blueprint!

Sleep more to promote weight loss:  Sleep deprivation upsets your hormone balance, triggering a decrease in leptin (a hormone that helps you feel full) and an increase of ghrelin (a hormone that triggers hunger).

Sugar is addictive:  Research has determined that foods people like excite the same parts of the brain that are activated in drug addicts.

Antioxidants are also anti-fat:  Free radicals damage the cells that tell you that you're full. Get rid of them by eating colorful, antioxidant-rich vegetables.

Pine Nut Oil Suppress Appetite: In a paper being presented in an American Physiological Society session at Experimental Biology 2006, "the greatest effect was observed after just 30 minutes, with the 18 women reporting a 29% reduction in "desire to eat" and a 36% drop in "prospective food intake" scores. The experiment found a parallel and significant increase in cholecystokinin (CCK) of 60% and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP1) of 25% that remained as long as four hours after ingestion. CCK and GLP1 are appetite suppressors, which "send signals of satiation to the brain diminishing the desire to eat and food intake usually significantly


To determine your genetic blueprint you can sign up online for a metabolic typing session with The Nutrition Doctor here - the web portal will be online in September.

Iodine: The underestimated nutrient - and yes, YOU are NOT getting it! 95% Americans estimated deficient!

Seaweed is really the only significant
dietary source of iodine.
The Japanese average 50 mg of iodine.
Lowest rate of almost all cancers
and coronary heart disease to beat!

Today's medical establishment is wary of iodine - as they are of most naturally occurring, nonpatentable, nonpharmaceutical agents. Where's the money - show me the money. It's natural? No money, we can't patent it. Not interested - no let's call it off as a quark, and load them up with drugs instead. That's how it usually goes - guilty until otherwise proven.

As far as Rx drugs go - oh well, good to go, until we have too many death counts to count. Until then - do continue to add the profit to my Amex thank you very much. I need someone to pay off my Rolex no. 10, my Mercedes Benz and my Salmon caesar - the dressing? Oh on the side; just how I like my girlfriends. Integrity covers all aspects of life... for the side-viewer to watch like a domino effect. And when we choose to earn our money taking care of other people, it's imperative that we are able to say no to the temptation of selling lives for cool cash.

If one can't say no to temptation, then one should not work with human beings. Because one thing is the choices we make that hurt our own lives: We pay. But the effects on ourselves and others are far further reaching when playing god. When you hurt others, you not only hurt them: You hurt yourself - the scars go much deeper than the pain you inflict directly upon yourself. Hurting others, hurts YOU on a soul level. And Karma is a tricky mistress - she always gets the better end, no matter how smart we think we are; covering all our tracks. She finds a way to make us slip. Ah, so is the game of what we call life.

How many lies can one tell before one suffocates. I think many in big pharma finds it tough to sleep at night, even on a bed of money. But then there's always a pill for that.

Iodine - RDI sufficient to avoid mental retardation, but NOT cancer!

Everyone agrees that a lack of iodine in the diet causes a spectrum of disorders that includes, in increasing order of severity, goiter and hypothyroidism, mental retardation, and cretinism (severe mental retardation accompanied by physical deformities). Health authorities in the U.S. and Europe have agreed upon a Reference Daily Intake (RDI), formerly called the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), for iodine designed to prevent these disorders, which the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates afflicts 30 percent of the world's population. The RDI for iodine, first proposed in 1980, is 100—150 µg/day. Organizations advocating this amount include the American Medical Association, National Institutes of Health's National Research Council, Institute of Medicine, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, WHO Expert Committee, and the European Union International Programme on Chemical Safety. These health authorities consider an RDI of 100—150 µg/day of iodine sufficient to meet the requirements of nearly all (97—98%) healthy individuals.

This consensus on iodine intake flies in the face of evidence justifying a higher amount. This evidence includes animal studies, in vitro studies on human cancer cell lines, clinical trials of iodine for fibrocystic breast disease, and epidemiological data. An intake of 150 µg/day of iodine will prevent goiters and the other recognized iodine deficiency disorders, but not breast disease. Prevention of breast disease requires higher doses of iodine. Indeed, a reasonable hypothesis is that, like goiters and cretinism, fibrocystic disease of the breast and breast cancer are iodine deficiency disorders (also uterine fibroids).

Case in point: The Japanese eat 12 - 200 mg of iodine. And they have the lowest rate of cancers in the world!

Of course this doesn't make for a causal relationship per se, but taken together with animal experiments where tumors have dissipated upon given high-dosage of INORGANIC iodine, one might speculate of a causal relationship here.

Dr. Guy Abraham, a former professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA, mounted what he calls "The Iodine Project" in 1997. The project's hypothesis is that maintaining whole body sufficiency of iodine requires 12.5 mg a day, an amount similar to what the Japanese consume. The conventional view is that the body contains 25—50 mg of iodine, of which 70—80 percent resides in the thyroid gland. Dr. Abraham concluded that whole body sufficiency exists when a person excretes 90 percent of the iodine ingested. He devised an iodine-loading test where one takes 50 mg and measures the amount excreted in the urine over the next 24 hours. He found that the vast majority of people retain a substantial amount of the 50 mg dose. Many require 50 mg a day for several months before they will excrete 90 percent of it. His studies indicate that, given a sufficient amount, the body will retain much more iodine than originally thought, 1,500 mg, with only 3 percent of that amount held in the thyroid gland.

Iodine has other extrathyroidal functions: It removes toxic chemicals — fluoride, bromide, lead, aluminum, mercury — and biological toxins, suppresses auto-immunity, strengthens the T-cell adaptive immune system, and protects against abnormal growth of bacteria in the stomach.

What about toxicity you ask?

A critical evaluation of some review articles on iodine-induced hypothyroidism and iodine-induced hyperthyroidism reveals that in most cases, organic forms of iodine are involved. However, the titles of those articles suggest that the review is about inorganic iodine/iodide. For example, in the published review on "iodine-induce hypothyroidism" by Markou, et al in 2001, the list of iodine-containing products causing hypothyroidism consisted predominantly of organic forms of iodine, such as amiodarone and radiology contrast agents. The title of that review should have been "Drug-induced hypothyroidism." In 1984, Leger, et al. reported 85 cases of "iodine-induced thyrotoxicosis." Amiodarone alone accounted for 50% of the cases. All the patients received organic forms of iodine-containing drugs. The title of that review should have been "Drug-induced hyperthyroidism."


References
Wartofsky L, Ransil BJ, and Ingbar SH. "Inhibition by iodine of the release of thyroxine from the thyroid glands of patients with thyrotoxicosis." J Clin Invest, 1970; 49:78-86.
Abraham GE, Flechas JD, and Hakala JC. "Orthoiodosupplementation: Iodine sufficiency of the whole human body." The Original Internist, 2002; 9:30-41.
Pennington JA and Schoen SA.,  "Total diet study: Estimated dietary intakes of nutritional elements, 1982-1991."  Internat J Vit Nutr, 1996; 66:350-362.
Vobecky M and Babicky A. "Effect of enhanced bromide intake on the concentration ratio  I/Br in the rat thyroid gland."  Kio Trace Element Research, 1994; 43:509-513.
Velicky  J, Titlbach M, Duskova J, et al.  "Potassium bromide and the thyroid gland of the rat: morphology and immunohistochemistry, RIA and INNA analysis."  Ann Anat, 1997: 179421-431.
Van Leeuwen FXR, Hanemaauer R, and Loeber  JG.   "The effect of sodmide bromide on thyroid function." Arch Toxicol Suppl, 1988; 12:93-97.
Abraham GE.  "Iodine supplementation markedly increases urinary excretion of fluoride and bromide." Townsend Letter, 2003; 238;108-109.
Shimomura K, Mullinix MG, Kakunaga T, et al. "Bromine residue at hydrophilic region influences biological activity of aplysiatoxin, a tumor promoter."  Science, 1983; 222:1242-1244.
Sangster B, Blom JL, Sekhuis VM, et al.  "The influence of sodium bromide in man:  A study in human volunteers with special emphasis on the endocrine and the central nervous system." Fd Chem Toxic, 1983; 21:409-419.
Markou K, Georgopoulos N, Kyriazopoulou V, et al.  "Iodine-induced hypothyroidism."  Thyroid, 2001; 11:501-510.
Leger AF, Massin JP, Laurent MF, et al, "Iodine-induced thyrotoxicosis: analysis of eighty-five consecutive cases."  Euro J of Clin Invest, 1984; 14:449-455.
Fradkin JE and Wolff J.  "Iodide-induced thyrotoxicosis." Medicine, 1983; 62:1-20.
Gaitan E, Nelson NC, and Poole GV. "Endemic goiter and endemic thyroid disorders."  World J Surg, 1991; 15:205-215.
Weaver DK, Batsakis JG, and Nishiyama RH.  "Relationship of iodine to 'lymphocytic goiters.'"  Arch Surg, 1968; 98:183-186.
Weaver DK, Nishiyama RH, Burton WD, et al.  "Surgical Thyroid disease." Arch Surg, 1966; 92:796-801.

New Aspects on Obesity: Sodium increases white adipose tissue and leptin resistance!

A calorie is not a calorie, and how you respond to your diet depends on your genotype and how your brain is wired. Nutrition is information that speaks to your genes, and activates messages of health or disease. 

You need to understand the language of your genes to match it to the right diet for you.

Leptin is the satiety hormone in your brain and involved in regulating your fat-burning hormones. Your fat cells secret leptin, and under normal circumstances signals to your brain that you are fine; no starvation in sight. However, when you reach obesity and your leptin continues to rise you develop LEPTIN RESISTANCE. In other words, you no longer react to the message of fullness that this hormone is sending you - so you continue to eat as your hunger/appetite switch no longer functions, and your metabolic rate drops big time. Your body thinks it is in starvation mode as it is not receiving the feedback from leptin telling it that the fat stores are indeed full.

What is interesting is that there are certain nutrients that have an effect on leptin beyond calorie control.

One is sodium: Apart from that it makes you look like a bloated goldfish, raises blood pressure, research now shows that it increases the inactive, cytokine-producing white fatty tissue in your body as well as increases leptin and leads to resistance, which bottom-line means that SALT MAKES YOU FAT!

Again, calorie counting doesn't work - understanding the science behind what's on your FORK is the key to optimize your metabolism to turn on your fat-burning hormones.

Now you can still sprinkle sea salt on your eggs, you do need sodium to keep your electrolyte balance in order, but everything that is packaged, processed and man made is loaded with refined sodium - it's not the calories in as much as it is the chemicals that are adding to our waistlines!

Try using Braggs liquid aminos to season your dishes - it has a rich, salty flavor to it and dense in nutrients as well as being low in sodium.

Reference:

Miriam H. Fonseca-Alaniz, Luciana C. Brito, Cristina N. Borges-Silva, Julie Takada, Sandra Andreotti, and Fabio B. Lima. High Dietary Sodium Intake Increases White Adipose Tissue Mass and Plasma Leptin in Rats. J of Obesity vol 10 2007