Podcast Episode #35 from https://nuvisionexcel.com/podcasts/episode-35/
Introduction: Hi and welcome to Excel Radio. This is your host and high performance expert, Dr. Nick Zyrowski. On this episode, I’m going to be speaking with Ashleigh and we’re going to be giving you some updates as to some of the cool things we have going on at NuVision Health Center. You see, on the show, I bring on entrepreneurs, health gurus, people who are really masters in their own space but one of the things that I rarely do is actually talk to you about what we’re doing in order to help you raise your level of health. So on this episode, what I’m going to do is talk to you about some of the things I’m doing in my life personally to raise my level of health, some of the things I’m doing with my coaching clients in regards to exercise and supplementation and some of the things that you should do in order to raise the bar when it comes to your health. We’ll talk about some of the details of those topics and also, Ashleigh’s going to share with you some of the details as to what she’s doing in order to raise her level of health as well. Lastly, we’re recording this show live on our Facebook page so in the future, we’ll try to announce when we’re going to be doing so and you can actually just go on there and you can drop questions as we are recording live and we will answer your questions live on the show. We want to make the show more interactive so look out for those announcements through email or just on our Facebook page. So if you’re not following us on Facebook, be sure to do so and we will try to announce in the future when we will do a live Q&A podcast and you can go on. As I already said, drop your questions in and we’ll answer them live on the show to make it more interactive with you, the listeners.
Dr. Z: Alright, so let’s go ahead and get started then. Like I said, we’re just doing this Q&A live and one of the things with our podcast is that I bring on a lot of guests. I bring on guests that are talking about all types of things. We talk about things in the health world, we talk about things in the entrepreneurial world and the reason that we talk about both of those things is because at NuVision Health Center, we work with entrepreneurs and professionals. Some people ask, “Why is it that you do that?” and it’s just because in the environment that I’m raised in and the environment that I hang out in, I really don’t know anything different. The entrepreneur community is something that I’m a big part of and these same people, these same working professionals that typically have many health concerns and so I work with a lot of them, one on one doing health coaching. First of all, we run lab tests on them and go into the whole gamut of what is necessary for them to get well. So we do that and we bring on these entrepreneurs, a lot of the same people even that I work with on to the show and they share an immense amount of value. The show is called “Excel Radio” if you’re just jumping on Facebook and following us for the first time. So what I wanted to do in this episode is go ahead and talk about what we’re doing here because I really never get a chance to talk about what we’re doing here at NuVision Health Center. Beyond the podcast and the radio show that we do, we also put out a lot of great things to help people, the podcast being one of the amazing free resources that we have to help people out. Beyond that, blog posts…what else?
Ashleigh: We’re on here, we have our NuVision Excel community where we’re answering questions, giving tips, resources, things like that. We are constantly involved with helping people and he was just mentioning about working with high performing individuals and professionals and the reason that there’s a group of people there that need our help and if you’re stressed, if you are running a lot, running to and from, the stress hormones that are working on your body, you’re making poor life decisions just because you’re busy, you’re grabbing the easiest option for food, you’re not working out because you’re busy and stressed. The stress hormones, cortisol, you have jacked up cortisol and hormone levels and this all over the course of a couple of decades or even just a few years, rather, can do some serious damage to your body and that’s why he works with those people as well, because there’s a serious need and unfortunately a lot of Americans suffer from these stress-related health issues. Anyway, back to the free resources, kind of went off on a little rabbit trail, back to what you were talking about. Free resources; there’s a variety of different ways to get connected with us about health coaching.
Dr. Z: Right, nuvisionexcel.com. You can follow the blog, you can follow the podcast, you can be on the Facebook community. We have all these different things where we’re answering questions and helping people out beyond the health coaching and working with professionals, we put a lot out there so we want to make sure that you guys are aware of this and you are going to nuvisionexcel.com, you’re able to use these free resources. With the health coaching that I do with the professionals, these guys are typically the people who, I have some people that I’m working with, that are working over 80 hours a week. For me, that’s even a little extreme and I do tend to work a lot of hours without a doubt, but it’s extreme and a lot of these individuals run themselves right into the ground. Recently, we’ve worked with somebody who reversed arthritis, we’ve worked with people who have reversed IBS, Crohn’s disease. We have worked with people in reverse…and we have test data to show this, this isn’t somebody that showed up and they said, “Oh..” and we said, “I think you have this”, then they got better. We run tests in order to determine that they have these things. There are people who have inflammatory markers in all these heart diseases, factors that are off the charts on their lab test and then, they reverse those as well. We see them start and they’re overweight, they’re suffering from heart problems or suffering from hormonal problems and all these different types of…
Ashleigh: They’re lethargic, they feel like they can’t be a part of day to day life, they’re missing out on opportunities at work, missing out on opportunities with their home life, really a quality of life issue on top of the serious biomarkers that we’re testing for. Biomarkers that are telling us that, “You will have a serious disease in your future if you don’t correct this now.” One of the other tests that I think is really interesting that you don’t usually talk about is the Telomere test to really.. I’ll let him explain that.
Dr. Z: So, there’s a Telomere test. Measuring one’s telomere is actually the most accurate way to know your age because as you age, the end of the telomere will lose its length over time and so, for instance, you may be 30 years old but you may have the body of a 40-year-old or maybe it’s vice versa. With the Telomere test, you can tell that and it’s quite fascinating to see. We run a lot of different tests with people to determine what their health issues are but like I said, beyond that, beyond the testing, beyond the health coaching, we have so many resources that we put out on a regular basis. Recently, one of the sections that we started up on the website was “Work Life” and it was just because I work with a lot of professionals and they struggle from a lot of the same problems so some of these topics that I consistently see come up, I’ve actually started doing some blog articles, starting a business and a family at the same time and I see people struggle with that. I’ve struggled with that. I see people who will struggle with burnout, people who struggle with, “Hey, what do I take to work?”, “What healthy snacks do I eat?” Anyway, we started that section just to fulfill a need and share great free resources.
Ashleigh: Why do we do it for free, right? Because that seems silly, why would we work so hard for free? It’s because we have a passion to help people. Unfortunately, we live in a very sick care system. People are getting sick and they’re spending thousands and thousands of dollars, after the fact, trying to regain their health. We believe that health can come from within and that you can maintain health well into your 80s and 90s. It’s definitely possible. There are centurions that are living and thriving, they’re out in the fields working and they’re enjoying life well into their 90s and unfortunately, that’s not something we see in America. People are getting sick. At 50 they’re already taking a handful of medications just to make it through and that’s not health. We think that you need to be able to take health into your own hands and really maintain optimal health for life and we want to help as many people as possible do that and that’s why we put these free resources.
Dr. Z: In order to help people out and get them to have the health that they deserve or the health that they dream of, we put all these things out there and one of the cool things, the cool topics that I recently have been focusing a lot on, I wrote a blog article a while ago about it, but one of the things that I did recently is I wrote an e-book that we’re going to be coming out with shortly and it’s on “Sleep” because sleep is a big issue for the people that I work with. The average person is not getting the proper amount of sleep whether you’re a working professional or you’re just a family person with a young family, raising a family, the struggle is real for many people out there.
Ashleigh: If you have kids, the struggle is real but even if you don’t have kids, people lay in bed hours at night and they can’t shut their brain off or they fall asleep at night and they’re waking up at three in the morning ready to go and they don’t know why.
Dr. Z: So, with us, with just doing what we do and having kids, it became an issue, for me, as far as sleep goes, it became a huge issue for me and what I had noticed is that, in March of this year, one of the things that I started having an issue with was my blood pressure which is really strange for a young guy like me. It’s funny because…
Ashleigh: A young guy who’s also taking really good care of his health.
Dr. Z: It’s funny because, I swear, at some point in my life, I suffer from every health problem out there but the good news is is that I learn from it. It really helps me out so much with my patients, as much as I don’t enjoy it a whole lot. One of the weird things that happened to me is my blood pressure was just really uncontrollable for a while. It became really frustrating for me because here I am, I’m exercising, what are all the natural things that they tell you to do when you have high blood pressure? Start eating right, cut the sugar out, cut the caffeine out, work out on a regular basis, cut out all the carbs. So anyway, all these things that they say to do on a regular basis is something that I was already doing, besides coffee. I would drink coffee with caffeine in it and/or I would have tea with caffeine in it as well so the only thing I really was doing was drinking caffeine. Anyway, this became this big issue for me and like I said, I started brainstorming and starting doing all the natural things, I was even doing the supplements that are suggested for it and it turns out that the reason that my blood pressure was an issue for me was because of sleep. So one of the things, looking back, I can correlate to this issue is that our son was born prior to that and so what happened through that whole process is that I basically was going and working normal days, long hours like I do and at night I was not sleeping because obviously, a newborn and even a very young toddler, they don’t sleep a whole lot at night.
Ashleigh: They do, but there’s the waking and the putting back to sleep and things like that. It’s disruptive sleep, let’s put it that way.
Dr. Z: Very disruptive sleep and so for someone like me who’s a light sleeper, it was actually a bigger issue than I would have ever thought. With that said, I would find myself sleeping 3-4 hours a night which isn’t enough. So after, probably just complete burnout, I don’t know how long I was doing this before it actually became an issue but the blood pressure became an issue. Nonetheless, I eventually figured it out that it was related to my sleep so after I started researching all the different things and topics about sleep and how to improve your quality of sleep, this issue went away for me. So when it comes to sleep and you’re having a newborn, I’m not the health guru who just sits back and doesn’t have kids and doesn’t have a business and doesn’t have any real things going in my life and then telling people who have all that going on, “This is what you need to do.” I’m not that guy. There’s plenty of other people out there doing that if that’s what you’re looking for but anyway, I’m in the trenches doing these things and so as I’m working to get patients well, in the same hand, I have to take care of myself too. I started researching all these different things that had to do with sleep and it was, “What hours are the best hours to sleep at night?” and things like the mattress that you’re sleeping on. You spend 24 and a half years of your life sleeping, you got to make sure that you have good quality gear to sleep with. You need to have a good mattress and good pillows and there’s so many things that affect your sleeping.
Ashleigh: Proper environment.
Dr. Z: Yeah, the environment, the temperature, what you’re doing, night time routine is a big deal. A lot of people talk about morning routines, night time routine is a big deal because your night time routine will determine how your morning routine is going to go and whether or not you’re going to be able to show up for it. I just researched all that and I compiled it all into an e-book and we’re going to be, hopefully, coming out with that next week. That’s our goal to get that done. I took some time off of writing blog articles just so I can knock that out and get that done for people but I wrote it and it is all things that I have done.
Ashleigh: Personally implemented into our lives, he has seen it work, he has measured the progress and that will be available to you.
Dr. Z: Personally done. It has tips on all the things I’ve just mentioned; temperature, what kind of bed, what kind of pillow, what you should wear to sleep, what good night time routine looks like..
Ashleigh: Do you eat at night, do you not eat at night, working out at night versus not working…just the whole..
Dr. Z: Everything. Because a lot of people actually, at night, they lay in bed and even though they might not actually be consciously aware of it, the next morning, they are not getting good quality sleep. Their hours of sleep are very slim and that what happened to me. I wasn’t aware that I was sleeping 3-4 hours at night and there’s plenty of ways to measure this, by the way. So, I wasn’t aware of it but my health was certainly aware of it.
Ashleigh: The restful sleep too, the actual healing and rejuvenating sleep. Are you in bed for the hours that are the most necessary to get that sleep? So, he’s going to help teach you all of that in the “Sleep” e-book coming out.
Dr. Z: Right and so, that’s one of the things that we have coming up that’s pretty cool. We’ve had a lot of new supplements that I’ve been formulating for patients, we got some cool new products that we’ve been working with, anything from regular multivitamins to the MCT oil…
Ashleigh: Neuro-Boost is a really big one, one we do every day, that’s the omega supplement.
Dr. Z: So let’s talk about that actually. Let’s talk about what type of supplementation you should take every day because here’s the deal. There are a lot of people that I talk to and when I say supplementation, they are like, “Well, why do I need to do that?” I talk to people and they go, “I exercise and I eat what I think is right” and that’s not enough. I eat a very good diet, I eat a very clean diet but I have also done many of the same tests that I do with my patients on myself and what I have found out is that I had a lot of different nutrient deficiencies. If someone who eats as clean as I do and a good balanced diet has nutrient deficiencies, imagine what..
Ashleigh: The typical American eating a standard American diet has.
Dr. Z: Yeah, going out to McDonald’s and all these other garbage food places a couple of times a week.
Ashleigh: Having a bagel for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and pasta for dinner, you’re not getting the proper nutrients in your body at all.
Dr. Z: That’s a reality for a lot of people. Taking a good quality supplement is very important. I really push people to do that because if I had nutrient deficiencies and I have a balanced diet..
Ashleigh: We both did.
Dr. Z: Yeah, you did too.
Ashleigh: Yeah. I took a nutrient deficiency test and I had several nutrient deficiencies and I thought I was doing really well. Come to find out I still had nutrient deficiencies and it was for a variety of reasons but I was able to identify them and correct them.
Dr. Z: So you should really make sure that you’re taking a good quality supplement every day. Here’s the one that I suggest. First of all, I’m not saying these types of things, some people are like, “Oh my gosh, you’re saying this to push your brand. How offensive!” I don’t care if you get them from me, I’m just saying do it because it’s good for your health. It’s the good thing to do if you want to take care of your health and so, first of all, a multivitamin with a mineral, though, because I can tell you first hand that from the testing I’ve done, people typically have mineral deficiencies. They don’t just have a vitamin A, B, C or D or one of these other ones, K2. Mineral deficiencies are a big problem for people and I’ll tell you why. First of all, most people are taking a multivitamin that doesn’t have a mineral; therefore, they’re just getting the vitamins but not the minerals. Then, with the way that mass farming techniques are today, many vegetables actually don’t have the minerals they used to. There are some statistics where they found 50% less vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables compared to 30 years ago. So you’re going to want to make sure that you’re actually supplementing above and beyond. I consider myself an athlete, I work out between 4-6 days a week, I have a busy family life, busy work life so all these things and these stresses will deplete the body as well. So, you got to make sure that you’re giving your body the right things and the right nutrients in order to make sure that you’re getting what is necessary because these nutrients, these vitamins, these minerals are the very exact things that your body uses to energize itself, balance hormones, create hormones..
Ashleigh: Build, restore..
Dr. Z: Yeah, build the cells that you’re made of. Our bodies are constantly rebuilding themselves and having old cells die off and new cells turning over. So one of those, “You are what you eat” type of thing, “Are you a Twinkie or are you a good healthy apple?” but on the same hand, you got to make sure that you have those nutrients that are necessary. So, a multivitamin with a mineral is an important one. Specifically, the one that I’ve formulated, I put a phytonutrient in it as well because once again, it’s one of those things that’s lacking from fruits and vegetables today. So I put a phytonutrient in mine as well. The other thing that I think is an absolute necessity is a probiotic and also a good omega 3, 6, 9 with a DHA in it. The omegas are so important for brain health, cell health, nervous system function. These are the bare essentials. This isn’t really going above and beyond, let’s say you have heart problems or if you have cardiovascular issues, we’re just talking about the basic maintenance here. So those things are where I would start if you want to start taking care of yourself.
Ashleigh: If you’re thinking about your children, what they should do for three and up, our daughter started taking Neuro-Boost and the reason we love it is it’s such pure, such high quality fish oil supplement that you can chew and it doesn’t taste fishy at all. So our three year old would just take them and she calls them vitamin gummy and she just chews them and eats them and she’s been doing that since she was three. Before that though, we did the Kid’s play supplements, they are liquid supplements that we would do with our kids. We would do Brainy Play and then Tough Play. Those are the ones that we would do with our kids up until they’re able to actually swallow a pill.
Dr. Z: I’m just trying to think of some of the more cutting edge things that are going on right now in the health world. I know that collagen is a big one.
Ashleigh: Collagen. I love collagen. We’ve been using that in our home and in our kitchen and I’ve seen some awesome results. I’ve kind of talked about it a little bit on Facebook already but as you get older, your skin doesn’t rebound like it used to and although I’m still young, I’ve had two kids already so no matter how much I was exercising, however much weight I was losing, I still had some baggy skin, some loose baggy skin that just wasn’t going away. Collagen has really made a significant difference with that so I’m really a big supporter of collagen. Collagen peptides is the one that we recommend from Vital Protein.
Dr. Z: When it comes to collagen, there are different ones. For instance, the collagen peptides, we have these in our store but you can actually put these in your coffee and..
Ashleigh: It doesn’t congeal.
Dr. Z: It doesn’t turn into a gummy coffee. If you try to get regular, plain old gelatin or collagen, you’re going to have…It’s good for making gummy treats for the kids and stuff like that. You can cook with it a little bit but if want to put it in your coffee or put it in your drink and you don’t want to even notice that it even exists in it, you can use the peptides which are really cool. People have been seeing great results with that. We have some people whose skin clears up. I’m really surprised because like I said, this is one of the new cutting edge health things right now that people are just starting to get into.
Ashleigh: Absolutely. MCT oil is another really hot one, the brain fuel, the brain (25:18 ?), that’s just a huge thing so MCT oil is another really awesome energy source. It’s basically liquid fuel for your body.
Dr. Z: Yeah and we added that to our product line a little bit ago. Since we’re on the topic of coffee, I’ll just throw one of these quick things in there because everybody loves coffee, right? So, when you make a coffee in the morning and you want to have a coffee that is a superfood, first of all, coffee’s a strong antioxidant but you can put the peptides in there and you can put MCT oil in your coffee as well, blend it and it’s an awesome superfood but it’s also kind of like a meal at that point too. Many people that I know that are just skipping breakfast, they’re having that coffee with the peptides.
Ashleigh: You’re getting your protein, you’re getting your good fats. It’s really awesome. I sweeten mine with xylitol and I use organic half and half in my coffee and it’s awesome. I love it and I’m kind of a coffee snob. It’s delicious. And another one, the most recent product that we just came out with was Methylation Support. Can you tell them why that’s important?
Dr. Z: Well, methylation support is important just because your body, with all the stressors going on, the methylation what it does is it literally turns on hormones, turns off hormones, it’s like an on and off switch in your body just sending billions of signals to turn things on and to turn things off. So when you are ran rugged and worn out, the methylation is depleted, our methyl groups, as they’re called, in the body are depleted and then from there on out your body just doesn’t turn those stress hormones off and the good hormones on. Taking a methylation support which is definitely a new Science, it’s definitely something that’s more on the cutting edge, when you take that support, it actually helps those hormones balance out, it helps that anxiety go down. There are so many people that say they feel so much better.
Ashleigh: Methyl groups also are important for preserving your DNA as well so if you’re methyl depleted, you’re not going to be expressing the proper genes, it’s a Science of epigenetics, you can turn bad genes off and good genes on or vice versa. So if you don’t have the proper methyl groups, you’re also not going to be expressing health at a DNA level.
Dr. Z: As a clinician with some of the patients that I’ve worked with, we’ve found out that you can go and work on all these things to balance hormones out however, if there’s a methyl group depletion, there’s a problem. People with heart problems and a lot of factors that are known to cause heart disease and cardiovascular issues, taking a methylation will actually improve those cases too. It helps with so many cases that I work with and it really helps people get that edge. I use a lot of it. One of the criteria too, by the way, is when I’m looking into the supplementation that I’m actually going to make our own and I’m actually going to spend the time to put the formula together, it’s something that I use quite often. Anyway, let’s switch gears a little bit. Let’s talk about what’s going on in our lives that’s new and exciting you think? Exercise. That’s a pretty big one. What is exciting with exercise?
Ashleigh: Well, it’s been really hot here in Michigan and although I love the heat, I sometimes don’t like being outside in it to work out so when it’s too hot and too muggy for me to be outside and exercise, I do a workout inside and the workout that I’ve been doing when I’m indoors is T25 with Shaun T. I really like it. It’s being based around the HIT principle where you workout really hard, really fast for a short period of time and take little breaks and really push yourself in a short period of time. It’s done in 25 minutes, that’s why I like it and I’ve noticed that just changing up from not just going out and doing the same thing everyday, I was able to cut my time off on 5k, I’ve dropped over a minute on my last 5k that I did. So, I thought that was pretty awesome.
Dr. Z: And that is important. If you want to actually perform at a higher level athletically, you got to change it up a little bit. Many people that I work with, they’re either lifters or they’re runners or they’re yoga people and it’s like if you want to have good health, you want to be fit, you got to do a little bit of everything. Get out there, go lift those weights, it’s going to help build a stronger muscle base, it’s going to help build stronger bones, it’s going to help strengthen the joints however, you got to also go out there and get that cardiovascular in too. That’s very important for a good functioning heart and then you can’t just run and lift weights either because there’s an issue in there too if you’re not going to spend the time to stretch. I typically tend to tell people to make sure they’re throwing that yoga in there because that yoga, not only is it a workout but it also allows you to get a really good stretch in and that’s what people tend to forget and I think the biggest reason people tend to forget to stretch so conveniently is because they don’t really see stretching equaling results. You lift that heavy weight, you’re going to get stronger. Go running, your cardiovascular…
Ashleigh: You’re going to shed pounds and tone up.
Dr. Z: You see benefits from that but if you’re doing that stretching, then you’re not becoming a faster runner, you’re not becoming a stronger guy in the gym, you don’t see that equal results however, in order to get those better results in the gym, you have to stretch because eventually whether it takes a couple years even, if you’re not stretching, it’s going to catch up with you and you’re going to have serious spinal issues, you’re going to have serious joint issues. You got to stretch, you got to take care of those muscle groups.
Ashleigh: Oh yeah. The other reason I love yoga is because it really helps with your core strength. If you don’t have good core strength, you’re not going to have good balance, you’re not going to have good definition in your midsection and everybody wants to have a toner, flatter stomach, right? You’re just not going to get that if you don’t have overall core strength and ab crunches are not going to get you there. One of the best ab workouts that I love doing is just a plank hold. You can even put one arm out and one leg out to hold the plank, you can do side plank holds, that’s going to work everything, not just your abdominal muscles, it’s going to work your back muscles, your oblique, it’s going to work everything and that’s really what you want, you want the most bang for your buck and overall core exercises seem to really be where the money is.
Dr. Z: Absolutely. As far as me for workouts, what I would say is pretty important for me is finding a balance. As I told you, I was going through a little bit of an adrenal fatigue issue, I was going through a little bit of a high blood pressure issue and I’m telling you this because this is real life. Other people actually have issues and I’m not going to sit here and take the guru mentality of “I’m a little butterfly that doesn’t have any health issues.”
Ashleigh: He’s not a butterfly!
Dr. Z: I don’t want to go there because I really don’t respect that when health professionals do that where they put their best foot forward. I’m here to be real with you. Anyway, this year, I took a step back from pushing myself. Last year, I was doing triathlons and 5ks and obstacle races. I was doing all these things but I took step back from that this year. So what I do on a consistent basis is I lift a couple days a week, I run a couple days a week and sometimes I’ll even do two a day every once in a while and that I make sure that I throw some yoga in there and I also make sure I’m throwing core workouts in there as well because having a strong core is very important and another thing that a lot of people tend to skip out on. With me saying I’m working on strength, I’m working on cardiovascular exercises with the running and then I also bike a decent amount.
Ashleigh: That’s one of the family activities that we really like to do. We have a trailer for the kids and we go out and we go biking along the trails. Exercise doesn’t have to be a solo thing either. If you’re a social person, then find somebody to exercise with you, have an accountability partner, workout with your kids. It’s important to have your kids and your family see you workout too. If you want to instill health and the importance of health in your family, they got to see it, they got to know that it’s fine and it’s important. My daughter loves to do dips and she tries to do pushups and burpees with us.
Dr. Z: Yeah, you should see her rip out the burpees. It actually is impressive for a four-year-old.
Ashleigh: She can do some serious burpees for a four-year-old.
Dr. Z: We’ll go out there and workout and invite her out to workout with us and then she will just start ripping out… she’ll be like, “I want to do burpees!” because she knows that she can and she’s good at it so she’ll just start doing burpees while we’re doing whatever.
Ashleigh: Or lunges. She can do serious lunges too.
Dr. Z: She likes lunges too.
Ashleigh: But you know, that’s a good healthy habit to teach your kids and that’s why we make exercise, as often as we can, we make it a family activity.
Dr. Z: Exercise is important, make sure you’re doing that. It’s very, very important for your overall health.
Ashleigh: If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t run, then swim. Find the activity that is entertaining for you. Rollerblading. Maybe you like to rollerblade, go out and do that if that’s what you want to do for cardio. Find what works for you. One of the apps we use is Tabata, we really like that for HIT training for doing some burst training and then I use Runkeeper so I have a little community on my Runkeeper and they see the activity that I did and we can encourage each other that way. I think that’s cool. I like the encouragement, I need the encouragement, I know personally that means a lot to me and it may to you, too, to have somebody hold you accountable, tell you that you did a good job. So check those out if you’re interested.
Dr. Z: Right. When it comes to exercising or eating healthy or doing any of these things, one of the biggest reason people fail is I believe that they try to take off, they try to take too big of a chunk on at once. They’re going to go exercise and I see it with patients all the time, trust me. They haven’t exercised in ten years and as soon as they feel good enough to go exercise, they’re going to go hit four miles of running and it’s just too much. Don’t set these goals or these expectations that are just too high. If you’re getting into it, I always talk about the 1% rule. It’s one of the things that I came up with when I was working with people and what your goal is is to make your health 1% better every day. So if you’re in terrible health or you know that you got some issues and if you’re being honest with yourself, you’ll discover that, make an effort to increase your health by just 1% every day. That’s not much.
Ashleigh: You can go to Panera Bread and instead of getting their bread, get the apple today. Make that one little change to make a difference in your life.
Dr. Z: Instead of drinking the whole 24 oz Mountain Dew or whatever size they come in, drink half of that. It’s very minute changes instead of sitting on the couch and not working out at all, put your workout clothes on, put your shoes on and go for a quarter mile walk. That doesn’t take hardly any effort, right? So just do that, 1% better because you imagine in 100 days, your health is going to be looking pretty stinking good. Throw one bad ingredient out of your kitchen every single day. Take it very slow, don’t determine that you have to start eating healthy and then get all upset because you just had to literally throw out everything in your kitchen and start over and now you don’t even know how to cook with it. Go very slow.
Ashleigh: Or if you made a bad meal, don’t call it quits altogether, it probably was just a bad recipe, try, try again. You can follow me on Pinterest, either my personal page or on NuVision Excel page if you’re struggling with figuring out how to eat healthy and you need some recipe ideas, follow me personally Ashleigh Zyrowski or NuVision Excel, there’s two ideas on there.
Dr. Z: I don’t personally do a lot of the cooking, the recipe thing, I know what needs to be done as far as ingredients, she really handles a lot of the meal ideas for our patients because when I work with different clients from all over the country, one of the things that we do is that we help them with meal plans and things like that. Like I said, 1% every single day and don’t let health scare you. I know when I’m talking to people and having better health scares them, literally. Exercising scares the death out of them. They’re just afraid, so afraid to actually have better health and I know who these people are and I can identify it from very far away and so when people are standoffish or they’re not really sure what they want to do, maybe this isn’t right for them, I know it’s because they’re not really truly committed. So, commit to better health, commit to a better life, commit to being there for your family and your loved ones. It’s not necessarily about quantity of life, it’s about quality of life too. You don’t want to be with an oxygen mask on and in a wheelchair at 70, even 60.
Ashleigh: Yeah, one thing, back to the eating healthy thing, if you’re not somebody who likes to be in the kitchen or you’re afraid of spending that extra time, “Oh it’s going to take time away from my family”, get them involved. Make it a date night if it’s just you and your spouse or your significant other or if it’s with your kids, get them involved in the meal prep, have a little garden or go to the store and have them pick out the fresh produce with you and then make it together. It’s fun and exciting and if it turns out mediocre then it was at least a learning experience and the kids, because they were invested in it, are more likely to try it too.
Dr. Z: Even for the guys out there who don’t cook. This is like one of those plasticity things. Doing things that you don’t know how to do is actually very, very good for your mental health and good for your brain, is to take on things and do things that are fun that you don’t normally do. Cooking is a good example for instance, many of the clients that I work with. A lot of the men, they do not cook so getting in the kitchen is good for their brain and it’s good to just switch things up, it’s expanding your mindset. What plasticity is the Science of that when you learn new things and when you consistently push your brain that you actually can maintain brain strength or brain integrity for a longer period of time into an older age. When you start looking at people who have Alzheimer’s and people who have the dementia and things like that, one of the things that they look at is “Were these people going throughout their career or throughout their daily life in a routine that never change, they never expand their mindset, they never read, they never did anything to really push their brain?” So it’s like lifting those weights in the gym in order to strengthen your muscles, it’s the same thing with expanding your mind and making sure that you’re constantly growing in that regard as well. Like I said, “science of plasticity”, just jumping in the kitchen and doing that, it’d be really beneficial for you.
Ashleigh: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, speaking of food and dinner, it’s getting late here in Michigan. So I think we are going to call it a wraps pretty soon here but I’m excited that we did this live Q&A podcast on Facebook here. Comment below and let us know what you think. If this is something that you want to see happen a little more often, give us a shout out and let us know.
Dr. Z: Right. Obviously, when we do these for the first time, people often get in the habit of knowing that we’re going to do it and of course time matters so we’re going to play with it a little bit but at the end of the day, if this is a cool thing and people really want to get involved in it, then we’ll continue to do it, if not, we’ll squash it and we’ll take it a different…
Ashleigh: We’ll still be on Excel Radio podcast either way.
Dr. Z: It’s just whether or not we’ll come on here and do this.
Ashleigh: There are great things to listen to while you’re driving, while you’re exercising, maybe while you’re doing things around the house. It’s a good thing to tune into, really help grow your brain, grow your life, grow your mind.
Dr. Z: Right and as I had mentioned in the beginning, I have best-selling authors who come on and they’re talking about their books, where their books are related to topics such as sleep, stress, brain health, all these things. People who have built incredible businesses and they come on and they talk about how they failed and how they destroyed their health in the meantime and they regained it all back. So, a lot of cool stories, a lot of cool things and we’ve done how many episodes at this point?
Ashleigh: 33, 34 something like that.
Dr. Z: Yeah, so you can go through and you can pick ones you want to listen to, it’s not like you have to listen to all of them so figure out which ones are..
Ashleigh: It’s a treasure box of gold. Really it is. It’s tons of information that you can grab from any and all of the podcasts.
Dr. Z: And it’s free.
Ashleigh: It’s free!
Dr. Z: So go ahead and check that out and guys, we look forward to possibly doing some more Q&A podcast. If this is beneficial to you and you liked this, comment below and give us a thumbs up, thumbs down, hopefully thumbs up! But just let us know and then share this video. One of the things that we can do too, is gauge how many people like these sort of things is just by watching how many shares, how many views. So share it…
Ashleigh: And if you got something useful, you might as well share it with people that you know because they may find it useful too.
Dr. Z: Yeah, share it, tell a friend. ‘Till next time, guys. Take it easy. Bye.
Ashleigh: Bye.