PEERtrainer Health

From the new PEERtrainer Guide To Building Muscle

Fish oil is also an important supplement to consider. 4 g of fish oil given for 6 weeks significantly improved lean body mass (muscle) and improved resting metabolic rate in healthy exercising subjects ages 18-55.

Fish oil will also reduce inflammation and is difficult to get in sufficient amounts from the modern diet without also risking mercury toxicity. A high-quality fish oil supplement provides all the benefits without any associated risk of heavy metal toxicity.

Related articles

The 7 Things That Cause Weight Loss Resistance

This is a segment of the PEERtrainer Complete Guide To Weight Loss Resistance

Sleeping less than seven hours a night or constantly awakening throughout the night can lead to more than just feeling spacey and requiring a caffeine IV to get you through the next morning. You also knock your fat-burning hormones out of whack and set the scene for weight loss resistance.

Too little sleep, for instance, elevates your insulin levels. Insulin is a storage hormone: it stores fat very well. A study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that even healthy people who got too little sleep for even one night increased your risk for insulin resistance.

Other studies show just one terrible night's sleep increases levels of your stress hormone cortisol and your hunger hormone ghrelin the next day. Translation: you're more stressed out and hungrier. You can predict how that scenario will play out!

But wait, there's more. Not getting enough sleep can make you leptin resistant. Leptin tells your brain to stop eating, but when your brain cells become leptin resistant, they stop "hearing" that hormone. You're more apt to get seconds at the buffet even if you're not hungry.

Related PEERtrainer Article: How To Sleep Better Naturally

This is a segment of a larger guide to weight loss resistance.

Stress makes you weight loss resistant on several fronts, and numerous studies confirm its affect on fat gain.

For instance, one study in the American Journal of Epidemiology looked at 1,355 men and women over nine years.

Researchers found that both genders had higher body mass index (BMI) levels if they worked super-stressful jobs as well as had other demands that increased stress. (BMI scores can determine whether you are overweight or obese.) "Interventions to address psychosocial stress may limit weight gain among overweight and obese men and women," they concluded.

On a more practical level, stress makes you head straight for the Krispy Kremes or whatever your favorite comfort food might be. After all, you're not exactly gravitating to quinoa and Brussels sprouts after your boss lets you have it for not meeting third-quarter quota.

Your adrenals respond to stress by secreting cortisol. This hormone gets a bad rap, but cortisol can actually be beneficial in certain situations. For instance, if you're working out, cortisol helps redistribute fat from your fat cells to your muscle cells, which need that energy to work (that's one reason cortisol increases during exercise).

But responding to chronic stress by continually secreting cortisol eventually wears your adrenals out. Adrenal burnout manifests as sleeping poorly, insulin resistance, decreased thyroid function, and lowered nutrient status. All of these symptoms contribute to weight loss resistance.

Strategies to address adrenal fatigue: Learn to manage stress levels through yoga, deep breathing, or simply staying in the present. Your adrenals store more vitamin C than any other organ, and stress depletes this crucial vitamin. Eat vitamin C-rich foods and take a supplement. 

Adrenal Fatigue is one of 7 key contributors to weight loss resistance

Read the complete guide here.

This is a segment from: What Is Adrenal Fatigue

What Are Your Adrenal Glands And Why Are They Important?

Your adrenal glands are two triangular-shaped glands that sit on top of your kidneys. Each gland has a medulla surrounded by a cortex, which together produce hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, steroids, and cortisol, along with chemicals such as adrenaline.

They're slightly larger than a grape but don't let their small size fool you!

Hormones and chemicals from the adrenals are secreted in response to messages coming from your brain. The main role of the adrenal glands is to help your body successfully manage stressful situations.

For example, let's say a car is coming towards you. Your brains determines that this is a stressful situation so in response it sends a signal to your adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol, which increases your blood pressure, respiration, heart rate, and blood glucose levels, allowing more blood and oxygen to flow through your body to immediately get you out of harm's way.

Why Do Adrenals Get Stressed So Easily?

The adrenals are easily stressed because of the cumulative effect of the many types of stressors we experience daily as well as our unique responses to the stress we have.

If the hypothalamus is constantly sending messages to the adrenals that the body is in a stressful situation (whether physically, mentally, or emotionally), the adrenals will continuously secrete adrenaline and cortisol in an effort to get your body prepared to "save you" from potential harm.

Read The Full Article: What Is Adrenal Fatigue

We just added a couple answers to common questions on our page about preventing cheating and keeping a relationship strong, from Dr. Jen Landa.

This is a very specific new tip: Have Sex After Strength Training!

Q.What can I do to spark up my sex drive and have a great sack session with my partner?

A. I tell my patients to try having sex after a workout, especially after strength training. Strength training boosts levels of Testosterone. Higher testosterone levels will help increase arousal, this translates to a stiffer erection for men and more natural lubrication for women.

Higher testosterone levels will also heighten sensitivity and shorten time to orgasm in men and women. Try some hot and sweaty sex with your partner, you'll be glad you did!

Read The Full Article: Why People Cheat And How To Keep A Relationship Strong

Link To Full Article: Natural Remedies For Depression and Anxiety

Article Summary: There is no definitively-known cause for depression yet, though there are a number of well-researched theories. Many of the theories deal either directly or indirectly with levels of certain neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. 

Another theory links depression to inflammation and increased pro-inflammatory cytokine activity in the brain. Regardless of the definitive cause, all medications, whether natural or pharmaceutical, attempt to correct one or more aspects of our brain's physiology, reducing depressive symptoms.

The following supplements have either been found to be effective in the treatment of certain forms of depression or they are specific compounds which are often found to be deficient in those suffering from depression, making them important to consider when treating depression, according to all available research and expert opinion.

Keep Reading The Entire Article

This ought to motivate you:

"Many studies have shown that being physically active has a tremendous impact on quality of life of cancer survivors. Now, studies have demonstrated that physical activity after cancer diagnosis is also associated with a lower risk of the cancer coming back and improved overall survival among multiple cancer survivor groups, including breast, colon, prostate, and ovarian cancer.

Among breast cancer survivors, a recent analysis showed that getting exercise after diagnosis was associated with a 34% lower risk of breast cancer deaths, a 41% lower risk of dying from all causes, and a 24% lower risk of breast cancer recurrence. Among colon cancer survivors, studies suggest exercise cuts deaths from colon cancer and all causes, and cuts the risk of the cancer coming back by up to 50%".

Cancer and Exercise

This is a new article published on PEERtrainer that goes into the issue of thyroid disease.

"The cause of hypothyroidism in the US is autoimmune in nearly all cases," says Dr. Alan Christianson, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Thyroid Disease. However, "autoimmune causes do not show up for the first several years of disease." 

What Is The Cause Of Hypothyroidism?

What is interesting about autoimmune disorders is that the diet protocols of Dr. Joel Fuhrman have helped many people recover from their autoimmune symptoms to some degree or another.

Additionally, the diet protocols of JJ Virgin we also see helping people. We find that people do a great job integrating all these different approaches into their diet routines!

A PEERtrainer study conducted late in 2011, found that only 10% of the audience consumed more than 30 grams of fiber per day.

So we created a short guide to teach people how to get more fiber in their diet. The basic answer to this question is that black beans are the best food for fiber. Once cup contains 15 grams of fiber.

For fruits, raspberries, pears and apples are your best bet. Lentils such as peas also contain a good amount of fiber.

We recently published an article on leaky gut syndrome. The article first outlined that this is a "proposed condition" and has been a subject that the medical community is just starting to understand.

The article then outlined how leaky gut is thought to work, and also outlined a two step process by which leaky gut is commonly treated.

We recently updated the article to add a detailed discussion of the current research into leaky gut syndrome. What is interesting is that there is a very broad set of issues that are currently being investigated.

For example, there is now pretty good evidence linking leaky gut syndrome with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as well as autoimmune disorders in general.

Read The PEERtrainer Article On Leaky Gut Syndrome