Workout of the Day

Benchmark 1/5

“Karen”  [mov][wmv]

150 Wall Ball Shots for time

… then recover with a light rowing pace for 5 minutes

This is a test of primarily stamina, accuracy and coordination. If all of those are in order it will test endurance as well. If not, you may find your balance put to the test. Then, of course, there’s the mental toughness aspect… “this too shall pass”…. And, of course, if any of these areas are found wanting, Karen – at 150 repetitions – is an excellent opportunity for practice

Happy Holidays!

Start off 2010 right,  with a team workout followed by a paleo potluck brunch.  We usually have the team workouts at 9:00 but I think it’s wise to push this one back a little.  So we’ll have the team workout at 1:00pm, followed by a post workout brunch.  We’ll keep the workout very short and I want you all to bring your favourite recipes.

“I think the biggest accomplishment anyone can achieve is to be the cause of something rather than the effect. A cause makes something happen ideally a positive outcome such as losing weight, finding someone amazing or getting a new job. It puts you in a position of control and confidence, rather than reaction and reluctance.” — Kirstie Alley

I can’t say that Kirsti Alley is a standard go-to source of inspiration for me, but this quote got to me.  It describes perfectly why I think I have the best job on earth and why 2009 has been my best year ever.   When I set out to grow the CrossFit Winnipeg community, my mission was clear: to make people happy by making them healthy.  We are all selfish creatures; so why did the thought of making others happy make me happy?  Because finding purpose and meaning independently of the world around us is a very difficult thing to do.  I’ve often described CrossFit itself as empowering, but even more empowering is how we can use it to bring about positive changes in the world around us.  You’ve all made some amazing changes; how have those changes affected your friends, family, co-workers?  Do you have someone in your life who could use a little CFW love?  Then be the cause and pay it forward. Print off this registration form and get them signed up for our new On Ramp program and change their life.

CFW On Ramp Registration Form

Here’s an excerpt from one of several testimonials I’ve received from CFW members over the last couple of months. We’ll be posting them on the blog every once in a while so if you have anything to share, feel free to post to comments or shoot me an email.

CFW really did not start to change me with my body image but more my self worth image.  It all started in my head.  After walking through those doors for the first few times something changed within my mindset.  At that point I was not worried about my gut, my legs, arms, etc.  I was just enamored by the certain things I was about to embark on in terms of everything CFW promised to offer me.

THEN my body began to change.  It was not odd for people (friends and family) to mention that I was looking great.  Looking like I lost weight.  Looking different.  When people told me I was losing weight. I correlated it to feeling great.  So that alone indicated to stop with this “getting big” thing and live your fucking life!…

My mind has allowed me to live my life without these pains.  Without these degrading thoughts.  I know I can do things that most people cannot do.  I know I try my absolute hardest at everything I do at CFW.  This is slowly finding its way in to my everyday life.  Changes to a lifetime of a certain thought process will not happen overnight – nor do I want it to.  But change is happening.

I always wanted kids.  But never thought I could have two of the most amazing little girls you can ever imagine.  They make me smile, they make me laugh, they make me want to live forever.

And for that I owe it to them to be around as long as possible. I owe it to them to be able to throw them up high in to the air, run with them, chase them, teach them sport.  I want to show them what strong means.  And before training with you and everyone else at CFW this was not going to be possible.

Sincerely….THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

Chris S.

On Ramp Session #2 starts January 18th: Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings, from 6:00AM to 7:00AM for 4 weeks.

Our On Ramp class as a precursor to the regular CrossFit regimen. This one-month, 12-class program is an “on-ramp” to the “highway” that is CrossFit. We will train you proper exercise mechanics and techniques at relatively light loads. You will become consistent with those mechanics under the watchful eye of our coaches. Finally, you will learn how to bring up the intensity to increase your work capacity. We will be showing you movements in the beginning that are relatively non-technical, then progressively become more technical. Clients are welcome to stay in this program as long as they feel necessary, and also return to this program at any future time to reinforce their fundamentals.

The cost is $150 for all 12 classes. Download the CFW On Ramp Registration Form Jan 2010 and return with payment to CrossFit Winnipeg via email, fax, or in person.

On Ramp Session #1 starts January 4th: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday evenings, from 6:00pm to 7:00pm for 4 weeks.

Our On Ramp class as a precursor to the regular CrossFit regimen. This one-month, 12-class program is an “on-ramp” to the “highway” that is CrossFit. We will train you proper exercise mechanics and techniques at relatively light loads. You will become consistent with those mechanics under the watchful eye of our coaches. Finally, you will learn how to bring up the intensity to increase your work capacity. We will be showing you movements in the beginning that are relatively non-technical, then progressively become more technical. Clients are welcome to stay in this program as long as they feel necessary, and also return to this program at any future time to reinforce their fundamentals.

The cost is $150 for all 12 classes. Download the CFW On Ramp Registration Form Jan 2010 and return with payment to CrossFit Winnipeg via email, fax, or in person.

Food Fridays

This week, Kimberly sent us a sweet recipe for the holidays.  The original recipe was from Erika, Kimberly made a few substitutions and from what I hear, the end product turned out wonderfully. This has more sugar than you would want to consume day-to-day; what with the dates, the cranberries and the honey, but it’s probably better than most other treats you’ll find at the office X-mas party.

Something Sweet for the Holidays (Thanks Erika!)…

Cranberry Bar

1 cup raw pecans
5 dates
1 tblsp grapeseed oil
1/4 tsp sea salt
6cups fresh cranberries
3 Tbs of honey
1 tblsp orange zest

Place pecans and dates in food processor and pulse until coarsely ground. Pulse in oil and salt until mixture forms a ball. Press into 8×8 baking dish (I used a loaf pan).  Bake at 350 for 8-12 mins until lightly browned. Place 4 cups cranberries, agave and orange zest in a pot on stove. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer for 10-15 mins until cranberries start to dissolve. Add remaining 2 cups cranberries and cook uncovered for 5 mins (I skipped this step, not a fan of whole cranberries). Remove from heat and cool for 10 mins. Pour over pecan crust and allow to set for 60-90 mins.

There seems to be a significant amount of sugar in these (depends on serving size) but they are really delicious and my roommate (my sugar-eater taste-tester) agreed, so they would be great to bring to a non-primal event and no one would be the wiser.  As a side-note, I haven’t had time to cook much for supper or lunches this week…but it doesn’t matter because I did a big roast in the slow cooker Sunday and prepped veggies for salads.  This is my way of saying don’t let the busy holiday season deter you from healthy eating, dinner doesn’t have to be fancy or elaborate, keep it simple and keep your sanity.

Training is no guarantee of health
by Mark Sisson

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: Endurance training is antithetical to anti-aging. So it amazes me when guys in their 40s and 50s who are training for a marathon or Ironman suggest that doing so will keep them young. It won’t. You may feel like a stud now with your shaved legs and your magic marker biceps tattoos, but endurance training speeds up the aging process almost as fast as watching TV, drinking sodas and eating potato chips. Actually, in some cases, it speeds it up even faster.

I know, I know, you’ve been told that exercise is the great panacea — the fountain of youth — and that the more you do, the greater the benefits will accrue. Well, science has started to prove that concept wrong, and I suspect the evidence in support of my thesis will accumulate exponentially now that the first generation of Frank Shorter “psychophants” has started dropping. There is a middle ground where there’s a perfect balance of diet and exercise that will lead to the longest, most productive and “youthful” existence possible. But it certainly isn’t found in endurance training. That said, I do think there are ways (some legal, some not) to mitigate the damage and extract the healthiest life possible if you do choose to train long and hard.

First, if I may, a little history lesson:

Humans were just not designed to work for extended periods of time at 80-90% VO2max. Our evolutionary blueprint, the last draft of which was completed well over 10,000 years ago, set us up as great slow-movers and occasional fast sprinters. Our two primary energy systems are: (1) fat-based, which allows for long slow steady walking across the Savannah (or the Queen K after dark); and (2) ATP-based, which gave our ancestors 20 seconds of balls-out sprint speed to escape the charging saber tooth tiger (or let grandma lift the ’67 Ford truck off gramps when the jack failed). We just weren’t designed to operate at high revs for long periods of time. Doesn’t mean we can’t, we can, but it’s at an appreciable cost that I will explain shortly. It just means we weren’t evolved to. Even our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably relied more on superior tracking skills and walking than they did running for hours or days after their prey. In fact, the energy costs of doing the latter were so high as to almost guarantee extinction. (Imagine your predicament when you run after an antelope for four hours and he gets away. Now you not only don’t have any food, you’ve used up all your glycogen and, oops, there’s that frikkin’ saber-tooth again, licking his chops.)

But our bodies are among the best in Nature at adapting to hostile environments and self-destructive lifestyles. It’s that capacity to adapt that allowed our ancestors to pass along their DNA blueprints to us, but it’s also what allows us to today to weigh 500 pounds when we overeat a little, or allows addicts to thrive on a 60 Vicodin a day, when the rest of us would die taking 10. During the Irish potato famine, many went from living on nothing but 14 pounds of potatoes per person per day to living on nothing but seaweed and shoe leather for months. Now that’s what I call adaptation. But, I digress.

Back when the concept of extended games playing was invented — long before Dan Empfield was even born — it was a natural alpha male thing to want to test the endurance of one guy against another. And because the first real endurance games probably only happened after the introduction of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, you could say that it was largely because of access to these new-fangled high-carbohydrate grains that we could first fully explore our adaptive endurance mechanisms. You could even argue that grains and sugars fueled the endurance fire as our early frat-boy ancestors attempted to one-up each other every generation until today, where we have type-As doing triple-ultra Ironman and Marathon de Sables back-to-back. Sure, they burn a little fat here and there, but most of it is based on a maladaptive second-rate carbohydrate energy system that was never contemplated in the original design prototype! OK, enough endurance history. What does this have to do with aging?

Turns out that carbohydrate metabolism is an inefficient and costly way to locomote, especially if you intend to operate at high revs for long periods of time. Your muscles and liver can only hold 500-600 grams of precious glycogen (stored glucose) at any one time. Even for a well-trained runner, that’s only about two hours worth of fuel when you’re cranking sub-sixes. So it behooves an endurance athlete to consume lots of carbs — the simpler the better — and to accelerate the burning of fatty acids if s/he chooses to continue training and racing. And that’s where the philosophies of endurance training and anti-aging agree to disagree.

The requisite high intake of carbohydrates to provide fuel requires that an enormous amount of insulin be produced and circulated to help store it. Chronic high blood insulin levels promote inflammation. Anti-aging scientists will tell you that insulin is one of the best markers of longevity in all animals… that the less you produce (type 1 diabetics notwithstanding) the longer you live.

Chronic high-level training naturally depletes glycogen, which causes the body to release the adrenal hormone cortisol to cannibalize muscle tissue in order to help make new glucose (gluconeogenesis). Besides tearing down valuable muscle, chronic cortisol release carries with it a litany of negative effects. It suppresses immune function, which opens the door not only for short term upper respiratory infections, but may leave the door open for longer term, more serious issues (asthma, cancer, heart disease [which we know has a strong inflammatory component]). Chronic cortisol release also reduces calcium uptake by bones, and it’s not surprising that so many runner/triathletes — especially women — have low bone density. Anti-aging experts will tell you that among elderly, low bone density is a pretty accurate predictor of mortality. Break a hip bone when you’re older and your chances of dying skyrocket.

Speaking of cortisol, not only does training and racing tend to produce it, but even the training meals can produce it. A meal high in sugar and other simple carbohydrates can cause a dramatic rise in cortisol (as part of an insulin-adrenaline cascade). That’s one reason why sugar is known as a powerful immune suppressor.

The beta-oxidation of fats during heavy training generates oxidative fallout (also known as “free radical damage”) at a rate that is often 20 times what you generate at rest. Oxidative damage of cellular constituents such as DNA, proteins and lipids can result in progressive destruction of cells and tissues. This oxidative damage is believed to be a contributing factor to many diseases including cancer, heart disease and aging in general. Your body has natural antioxidant systems designed to keep pace with your normal low-level fat-burning systems (walking and at rest) and even your occasional ATP-based “life or death sprint” systems, but it really wasn’t designed to compensate for hours of high-level aerobic performance. Oxidative damage to cellular DNA is usually cleaned up by the immune system, which destroys damaged cells, but if your immune system is compromised, it may set the stage for major problems later on. The cumulative effects of oxidative damage are visible on the faces of many long-time mileage junkies, but it’s the damage underneath that most aggressively counters any anti-aging efforts.

Lean mass in general is one major defining predictor of longevity. The concept of dying of “natural causes” is, in reality, better described as “dying from organ failure due to loss of organ reserve and lean tissue.” Organ reserve (the functional capacity of any or all organs necessary to support life) and skeletal muscle mass tend to increase or decrease together depending on the stimulus or lack of it. So, as a rule of thumb, anything you do to build muscle generally tends also to build or improve other tissue, including vital organs (heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, etc). Similarly, anything you do to diminish muscle tends likewise to have a negative effect on organ reserve. We call it “atrophy.” Of course, the old adage “use it or lose it” has significance here, since it is presumed that by moving about, by doing work and generally being “vital” you give your body a reason to “adapt” to the work. Furthermore, because your muscles are generally fed either directly or indirectly by those organs, they are also called upon to adapt and stay vital. Stay in bed for a few weeks and you’ll lose both muscle mass and organ reserve. If you are young, you can build both back with diet and minimal exercise. If you are old, it’s often the beginning of the end.

Generally, exercise is a great way to increase muscle mass and, hence, organ reserve. We were, after all, designed to move. The difference is that our DNA blueprints were fine-tuned to have us operating optimally when we walk long distances, sprint like hell periodically, move occasional heavy loads, climb trees and generally tap into our fat-based energy system and our ATP-based energy systems. The benefits of true low level activity are many: We develop an extensive capillary network to bring fatty-acid fuel to each and every muscle cell, we up-regulate the production of fat-mobilizing and fat-burning enzymes which take fat out of storage and present it to the mitochondria for combustion, we improve cardiac muscle efficiency and cardiac capacity and we increase natural internal antioxidant levels. As for the ATP-based system, intermittent heavy loads do increase muscle mass very effectively, also stimulating growth hormone release, as well as improving insulin sensitivity and promoting bone density. The net effect of surviving that run in with a saber tooth tiger was that you got stronger and better adapted to do it again next time.

The problem with many, if not most, age group endurance athletes is that the low-level training gets out of hand. They overtrain in their exuberance to excel at racing, and they over consume carbohydrates in an effort to stay fueled. The result is that over the years, their muscle mass, immune function, and testosterone decrease, while their cortisol, insulin and oxidative output increase (unless you work so hard that you actually exhaust the adrenals, introducing an even more disconcerting scenario). Any anti-aging doc will tell you that if you do this long enough, you will hasten, rather than retard, the aging process. Studies have shown an increase in mortality when weekly caloric expenditure exceeds 4,000.

That’s why I stopped racing and training ten years ago and why I prefer hiking, sprinting and weight-training today. But what’s a competitive type-A to do if s/he wants to kick age-group butt in Kona and NOT fade away prematurely?

Given carte blanche to take advantage of all that medicine has to offer, I would aggressively consume antioxidants during my training (10-20,000 ORAC units per day), I would increase the amount of healthy fats (omega 3-rich) in my diet to 50% of total calories and I would only consume quality complex carbohydrates during my training. In fact, I would calculate my carbohydrate requirements on a daily basis and not exceed them. I would use simple sugars (e.g., gels) during long rides and races only to the extent they are necessary. That means I would do most of my training without them, saving them for races. I would work closely with a trained anti-aging doctor to monitor my fasting glucose, fasting insulin, free and bound testosterone, liver enzymes, cortisol, DHEA, hematocrit, ferritin and other parameters.

I would incorporate therapeutic amounts of testosterone (yes, I know it’s illegal, but I’m giving you the best-case scenario), to balance out high levels of cortisol when I have gone to the well too much. (On a side note, I find it doubly ironic that Floyd Landis was allowed to take thyroid hormone because of his exhausted thyroid and cortisone because of his necrotic hip, but was not allowed to take testosterone during training. If he had been allowed the testosterone, it’s quite likely he would not have required the other two meds! And I believe he did not take testosterone).

I would take at least 6 months away from training each year and focus on building lean mass and recovering from the prior season. Under those conditions, I am fairly certain that I could mitigate most of the damage done by any unnatural endurance endeavor I elected to do — such as IM and marathons — despite the known consequences.

Now, what does all this mean for the generation of us who bought into Ken Cooper’s “more aerobics is better” philosophy? Is it too late to get on the anti-aging train? Hey, we’re still probably a lot better off than our college classmates who gained 60 pounds and can’t walk up a flight of stairs. Sure, we may look a little older and move a little slower than we’d like, but there’s still time to readjust the training to fit our DNA blueprint. Maybe just move a little slower, lift some weights, do some yoga and eat right and there’s a good chance you’ll maximize the quality of your remaining years… and look good doing whatever you do.

Probably the one thing that has changed my mentality about food most significantly is something I learned from a Robin Sharma book. In one of his books he writes that how you feed yourself is related to how you love yourself. “I eat the best foods available. It’s a sign of self-respect.” I copied that onto a little piece of paper and put it on my fridge. Every time I went to open the fridge I was thinking, “which of these food items is the best available?” This may be something very helpful to those of you who live with other people who have not chosen to eat a Paleo diet.

Related to this, Charles Poliquin has a great article on his site called The Myth of Discipline.

“Accept that all your choices are reflections of what you truly love.”

I’d love for you to give it a read and post your thoughts to comments.

- Coach B-ring the love

P.S. Train hard this week and keep on top of your recovery. We’ve got some benchmark workouts coming up next week.

2010 Crossfit Games

The dates and locations have been announced for the 2010 Crossfit Games Sectionals and Regionals.

Sectionals:
Central Canada Sectional: March 27-28
Bldg 185 Corner of Mons Ave and Range Road. 244 Lancaster Park AB, A2HO (Edmonton)
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba
Regional Seeds: 15 men, 15 women

Regionals:
Canadian Regionals: May 29-30
Calgary, Alberta
All Provinces
CrossFit Games Seeds: 6 men, 6 women

Crossfit HQ will launch a special Registration Website with detailed information on each event, hopefully on Monday, December 21st. Athlete and spectator registration for the Sectionals will open at launch. Crossfit HQ will do their best to allow everyone in who wants to compete, but at some point they may have to cut it off. Spectator attendance at most Sectionals will be limited, so you’ll want to act quickly.

Similarly, affiliate teams will have to qualify to compete in the Games this year. The Regional events will also serve as the team qualifiers for this year’s Affiliate Cup. There will be no team workouts at the Sectionals. The Regionals are not until May, so you have time to prepare. More information about the Affiliate Cup competition coming soon.

New addition:
Also, there will be a limited Master’s competition (50+) for both men and women. Like the Affiliate Cup qualifiers, the Master’s qualifiers will also take place at the Regionals in May. There will be no separate Master’s workouts at the Sectionals. More information about the Master’s competition coming soon.

How Do You Repair Your Immune System After A Lifetime (Or Just A Few Months) of Damage?

by Scott Kustes

I have a friend that from all appearances should be healthy. She is thin and active. Yet she is constantly sick. A cold. The flu. Strep throat. Just goes to show that being hot and sexy doesn’t necessarily make one healthy.

Then I got to thinking about how this isn’t all that abnormal. So many people accept illness as a regular part of being alive. But is it really? Is illness the normal human life, an inevitable part of drawing breath? I don’t think it is. And I say that as someone that’s rarely ever sick. Of course, when you’re surrounded by sick people, you’re eventually going to get ahold of something, but with a strong immune system, what puts others down for days, you’ll deal with in hours.

So how I would advise someone to repair their immune system after a lifetime of destroying it? What can one do over the course of, say, 3 months to turn around (or at least start to turn around) the damage of years and years of poor diet, poor habits, and poor health?

First, Do No Harm

The very first thing that has to be done is to stop damaging your immune system! There are three dietary elements that are prevalent in most people’s diets that do a good bit of damage to the immune system. So if you’re one of those people that catches every single bug that rolls through the neighborhood, your first order of business is to deal with these trouble spots.

Sweet Temptations

Yeah, I’m going after your sweets first and foremost. Candy bars, cakes, cookies, pie, ice cream…there’s no place for these things when you’re trying to repair your immune system. Why? The sugar and processed grains cause a sharp rise in insulin levels, which suppresses growth hormones, which suppresses the immune system. If you’re constantly beating your immune system down with sugar and processed grains, you have no hope of repairing yourself. How bad is it?

These studies show that in adults, cell mediated immunity is significantly depressed after sugar ingestion (75 grams). A 100g portion of sugar can significantly reduce the capacity of white blood cells to engulf bacteria. Maximum immune suppression occurs one to two hours after ingestion and remains suppressed for up to five hours after feeding.

Replace your high-carb foods of processed grains and sugars with more vegetables and fruits. Your waist-line will thank you, as well.

Skip The Sauce

I’m not talking about the Hollandaise sauce. I’m talking about the beer, wine, vodka, gin, rum, or bourbon that we all love so much. Every time you sit down and have three or more drinks, you’re suppressing your immune system:

One drink (the equivalent of 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1 ounces of hard liquor) does not appear to bother the immune system, but three or more drinks do. Damage to the immune system increases in proportion to the quantity of alcohol consumed. Amounts of alcohol that are enough to cause intoxication are also enough to suppress immunity.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a drink. It means you don’t want to get tanked.

Avoid New Fats

Once upon a time, mankind ate three kinds of fat, in naturally-occurring proportions: mostly monounsaturated, a good bit of saturated fat, and little in the way of polyunsaturated fats. But then some well-meaning, but misguided scientists decided that saturated animal fats were a bad idea and told us to eat more of those polyunsaturated vegetable oils.

Unfortunately, polyunsaturated fats are highly immunosuppressive, and as Ray Peat has pointed out, are used for their ability to suppress the immune system in organ transplant patients.

Immunosuppression was observed in patients who were being “nourished” by intravenous emulsions of “essential fatty acids,” and as a result coconut oil is used as the basis for intravenous fat feeding, except in organ-transplant patients. For those patients, emulsions of unsaturated oils are used specifically for their immunosuppressive effects.

So go back to the past…swap out your corn, peanut, canola, and other new oils for butter, lard, and coconut oil. And definitely avoid trans fats, the absolute worst thing you can put in your body.

Now, Start Repairing

So basically, the above three guidelines push you towards a diet of real foods. But for the average person, that’s not going to be enough to get back to health in any reasonable amount of time. You need to call in some reinforcements to help your body make use of all the good fuel you’re giving it.

Bacteria Are Your Friends

Pop-quiz…what is the most abundant thing in your body? It’s not cells. Your body has about 10 trillion cells. And your intestines have about 10 times that many bacteria in them, helping you digest food and serving as a first-line of defense against pathogens coming in orally. So what happens when you take antibiotics, which you probably turn to at the first sign of a sore throat? Antibiotics are like shooting a fly with a bazooka. They kill off everything, including those beneficial bacteria in your guts. Any wonder your digestion sucks?

So find a good probiotic supplement and start getting your intestines back in shape. These bacteria will serve as your friends, fighting off invaders, as long as you keep them happy with plenty of nutrient-dense foods. And that sugar I told you to stop eating? It helps the bad bacteria flourish and overwhelm your good bacteria.

Fermented foods like kefir, kombucha, and sauerkraut are great food sources of probiotics.

Turn Off Conan And Go To Bed

When you’re asleep, your body is repairing. While you’re trying to get healthy, you need to get at least 8 hours of sleep per night and preferably more. Since you probably have daily obligations, that means you need to go to bed earlier or grab some naps. If you can’t get more sleep, everything else becomes even more important. “The Late Late Show” really isn’t worth your health, so you better come up with another excuse for why you can’t go to bed earlier.

Soak Up Some Vitamin D

It’s a beautiful thing that vitamin D is one of the most important vitamins there is and that it’s free! Get outside and get some sun. Some sun without sunblock! Food sources of vitamin D can’t even come close to the amount of vitamin D your skin produces. And since we’re told to avoid the sun because it’s going to kill us, most of us are vitamin D deficient.

Eat Nutrient-Dense Foods

Meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds, tubers, squashes, fruit, and healthy oils like butter, lard, olive oil and coconut oil. That’s really all there is to it. These foods are full of vitamins and minerals that will support your health instead of destroying it.

Add A Few Important Vitamins

I’m not a big fan of individual vitamin supplementation. Most people are focusing on taking a ton of vitamin C or extra this or that. But the body is far more complex than just adding some vitamin C, a bit of vitamin E, a dollop of B-complex and stirring. However, there are a few that most of us are getting far too little of.

As I mentioned above, vitamin D is very important and few of us get enough. I’ve heard recommendations to take 1000IU per 25lbs of bodyweight. You can get your vitamin D checked as part of the D-action study. I bet yours is low…mine was and I very rarely get sick, so don’t assume your vitamin D levels are good.

Magnesium and zinc are two important minerals that most people don’t get much of. And exercise only increases the need for these two minerals. I take a cheap zinc-magnesium supplement (ZMA) from NOW Foods most days of the week to make sure my zinc and magnesium levels stay at optimal levels where they can help with testosterone production.

And Finally, Try To Relax

Constant stress is an immune system killer. With our daily hustle and bustle, most of us are like racecars in the red. Eventually that engine is going to blow. We keep our cortisol levels sky-high with work stress, family stress, the stress of the commute, hurried lunches, and late nights.

So turn off the news, which tends to do nothing more than stress people out, and take up a hobby. And being outside in a natural setting, perhaps hiking or just hanging out at the park allows you to relax AND get some sun.

Why Is This So Important?

Boy, that sure sounds like a lot of work. Dropping sugar? Keeping more fresh food around the house? Supplements and sleep? Why not just take advantage of modern medicine and its ability to keep us well?

One simple reason: modern medicine does not keep you well. It typically does no more than mask the symptoms of the damage you are doing to yourself.

Do you want a prime example of how futile modern medicine is against illness? Study: Drug not working against flu:

With Tamiflu no longer effective against this particular flu strain, known as H1N1, physicians are turning to zanamivir, which has problems of its own. The drug, which is inhaled, is not recommended for some of the very populations that would need it most – very young children and people with respiratory problems

Drug-resistant flu, Methicillin-resistant Staph (MRSA), antibiotic-resistant bacteria…everytime we dose the population with drugs indiscriminately, we’re sowing the seeds of our own illness by creating these strains of bacteria and viruses that can resist our drugs.

You’re Your Only Hope

In the end, you can rely on modern medicine, which is very good at treating things like broken bones but not so good at keeping people healthy, to kill off every little bug. Or you can recognize that illness isn’t normal and there’s no reason that you should be laid up multiple times per year with a cold or the flu or strep throat.

You can recognize that there are people that stay healthy for years on end because they treat their bodies right. They eat right, they exercise, they sleep, and they avoid toxic environments. There’s no reason you can’t do the same.

That doesn’t mean you’ll never get sick. A couple weeks ago, I took my first sick day since sometime around 4th grade. Seriously. It’s been that long since I’ve felt bad enough to have to stay home from work or school. Okay, I might’ve missed a few college classes due to feeling bad, but that wasn’t driven by illness. Hah!

But remember that it takes time. You didn’t get 50 pounds overweight overnight, so you wouldn’t expect to lose 50 pounds overnight. You didn’t get to where you are in 3 months. This is just a set of things you can do to start feeling better. But it’s a journey you have to continue. And believe me that all the cookies in the world aren’t worth the feeling of vomiting your guts out.

Take charge of your health…live well, be well.

Any other advice on repairing the damage most people are doing to their bodies?