Nutrition and Wellness

Nutrition and Wellness go hand in hand. Food provides people with the necessary energy and nutrients to be healthy and for their bodies to perform optimally. By eating a variety of colorful foods, including good quality vegetables, fruits, whole-grain products and lean meats, the body can replenish itself with the essential macronutrient (proteins, carbohydrates, fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) to function effectively. Healthy eating does not have to be hard. The key is to eat a variety of foods, which include vegetables, fruits, and whole-grains. Eat lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, and low-fat dairy products and drink about half your body weight in ounces of water. Limit salt, sugar, alcohol, saturated fat, and trans fat. Saturated fats usually come from animals. Look for trans fat on the labels of processed foods, margarines, and shortenings. Dr. Alex Jimenez and his health coach offer nutritional examples as well as describe the importance of a balanced nutrition throughout this series of articles, emphasizing how a proper diet combined with physical activity can help individuals reach and maintain a healthy weight, reduce their risk of developing chronic diseases like heart disease, and ultimately promote overall health and wellness.

broccoli sulforaphane
Sulforaphane’s Protection against CVD

Oxidative stress is a critical factor in cardiometabolic conditions. As previously demonstrated by the PREDIMED study, high-risk CVD patients have low antioxidant enzymatic activity and…

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Heart disease screening
Dietary patterns and cardiometabolic disease

Patients’ dietary patterns are important triggers or modulators when it comes to cardiometabolic disease risk assessment. It has been stated that cardiovascular disease is the…

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Hormone Factors and Risks for Breast Cancer

If we take a look at breast cancer, there are common roads that everything links back to. Those roads are an increase in estrogen or activation of the estrogen receptor in the mammary epithelial cell. This is important because there are triggers in our lives that have estrogen or stimulate estrogen production, ultimately leading to an increased risk of developing breast cancer. 

Factors 

Environmental factors like pollutants and stress are highly associated with breast cancer. For example, the pollutant xenoestrogen has estrogen-like activity. From here, when women age and move towards menopause, they produce more estrogen. When there is a relative increase in natural estrogen plus the pollutants sending the body false signals, we see a relative increase in estrogen and stimulation through the estrogen receptors in the body. A great way to decrease these pollutants and fake hormones is to switch to all-natural products. These fake hormones are being stored in products like:

Aluminum deodorant 
Body wash
Shampoo 
Laundry detergent 
Air fresheners 
And more 

The other factor mentioned above is stress. The stress that is being referred to in this instance is emotional stress. The type of stress we do not have as much control over (aka physical). The reason we take a look at stress is that stress leads to more cortisol being released throughout the body. More stress can lead to less melatonin production. Consider the fact that those with breast cancer have a decrease in melatonin. Over time, a decrease in melatonin results in an upregulation of estrogen receptors, leading to an increase in estrogen. Ways to help reduce stress include:

Meditation 
Exercise 
Grounding 
Deep breathing techniques 
DNA

As we have learned over the years, the DNA we are born with is not the DNA we die with. Yes, we are given a specific set of genes when we are born but our environmental factors have been proven to alter the expression of these genes. When we have a highly oxidized reactive molecule, it can adduct with DNA. This ultimately leads to DNA adduct formation that clips portions of our DNA out causing a mutation. Over time, with enough mutations, we can see patients develop cancer and their immune system is unable to fight it off as it no longer works properly. 

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dyslipidemia
Dyslipidemia: The Proactive Therapy

The “pill for every ill” therapeutic approach is not enough to ensure its health improvement. In fact, ACC/AHA clinical guidelines are more interested in the…

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Slow Down The Aging Brain

Alzheimer’s disease is one that impacts many lives. There are multiple factors that go into the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, some people’s diet, environment, genetics, head trauma and more. The classic symptoms include loss of memory, memory issues that begin to disrupt everyday life (such as where you keep your coffee mugs), difficulty completing familiar tasks in the workplace or home, confusion with time or place, and trouble understanding images. 

Normal Aging vs Alzheimer’s 

With normal aging, we see brain atrophy, some neurotransmitter loss, and oxidative damage. These changes occur but they do not interfere with daily tasks or quality of life. To determine the difference, we can perform a simple test in the office that consists of a few questions. The score will determine if the aging of the brain is within normal limits. 

Synapse Loss 

As mentioned above, head trauma can lead to Alzheimer’s as it increases synapse loss. Things that contribute to head trauma include physical trauma, stroke, hypertension, and diabetes. Additionally, high cholesterol, high homocysteine, low exercise, and specific genes. 

Genes

Although we are unable to change the genes we were born with, we can alter their expression. There are steps that we can take to alter these genes to express in a positive manner rather than negative. This can help slow down the progression or onset of Alzheimer’s. The genes we specifically look at in reference to Alzheimer’s are those that impact lipid metabolism, inflammation, and are dopaminergic and neurotrophic. These include:

CRP
IL-6 
TNFA 
COMT 
BDNF 

We have the ability to perform genetic testing through DNA Life to assess your genes and your susceptibility. DNA Mind provides an identification of the level of impact of any genetic variant. It also provides us with a broken down explanation of the genes and their specific impact on the biochemical area and mental health. Additionally, this test not only reports on Alzheimer’s disease but also dementia, cognitive decline, addictive behavior, risk-taking behavior, and mood disorders. A sample report can be seen below: 

 

Lifestyle : InBody 

As previously mentioned, we see a direct link between lack of exercise, poor nutrition, and Alzheimer’s disease. We are able to create personalized nutrition plans for your body as well as determine other predisposing factors with the help of the InBody 770 system. This advanced machine provides a great deal of information for us regarding the patient. We track patients Anthropometric measurements in order to determine their lean muscle mass, fat density, visceral fat (fat surrounding the organs- a key indicator of disease risk), water percentage, and height and weight. We measure our patients every 8 weeks and keep a detailed record. These reports are great indicators for health and also assess inflammation and edema. There is more information regarding the InBody below. 

[embedyt] www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3_BEhgJCGc%5B/embedyt%5D

InBody_E_Book.pdf

GENETIC TESTING IS AVAILABLE NOW AND PROVIDES US WITH MORE INFORMATION THAN EVER BEFORE. WITH THIS INFORMATION AND THIS TECHNOLOGY, WE ARE ABLE TO CREATE PREVENTABLE PLANS GEARED TOWARDS YOU. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND GETTING TO KNOW AND UNDERSTAND YOUR GENES. -KENNA VAUGHN, SENIOR HEALTH COACH 

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dyslipidemia nutrition

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Metabolic syndrome

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Cardiometabolic disease
Cardiometabolic Risk: How to Manage it

Coronavirus definitely took us all by surprise. With an uncontrollable infection rate, the medical world seemed to forget about the chronic and metabolic diseases. Yes,…

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Root Causes of *GUT DYSFUNCTION* | El Paso, Tx (2021)

Welcome to our Functional Medicine episodes brought to you by Dr. Alex Jimenez. In this episode, we have a presentation by a Chiropractic Specialist; where…

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