Healthline podcast 08/09/2023

Good Wednesday morning and thanks for tuning in to Okanagan Country Radio KOMW and KNCW. Health line just getting started on this August 9th and of course we’re just one day away from most of the activities that will be happening with the OMAC stampede and world famous suicide race. In fact, tomorrow during open line the next two days will be broadcasting live from the stampede arena so you want to catch that for some of the flavor of the great OMAC stampede.

This morning we do have a full show. Later on we’ll have to bring you the nationally syndicated program, Radio Health Journal and before I even mention who our local guest is I want to thank our local sponsors. Good to do that once in a while. They are Mid Valley Hospital along with Okanagan Behavioral Health Care, three Rivers Hospital, Family Health Center, North Valley Hospital and Apple Springs, Sr. Living and in the studio with us is the dietitian from Mid Valley Hospital. We want to say good nice morning to Franco Lopez.

Chris
Good morning Franco.

Franco
Good morning Chris. Thank you for having me on the show today.

Chris
Yes, very nice to have you and we were chatting, had some nice chats before and about various subjects but and you’ve been on with us before so good to have you back.

Franco
Yeah, it’s exciting to be here and I have great information to share with our listeners today and about an opportunity with a program that we’re starting at the hospital, but also I want to talk about a condition that’s affecting you know not just our community but everybody around the nation and the world really and this is related to chronic inflammation. So I want to just talk about what that means and just give some helpful tips that our listeners can take away and you know implement themselves to try to help with this.

Chris
You bet and we’re chatting before the show that as we’ve done before with other people maybe this could be like a recurring thing and folks have questions and stuff so that’d be great.

Franco
So yeah I would love to I’m here you know we’re a source for the community so my job as a dietitian is really to interpret the science that’s coming out and then be able to translate this for community members to see what is actually useful and what’s useful for who and what so I’d love to be part of that.

Chris
I appreciate the efforts that you do to bring us the good information so tell us about an opportunity though.

Franco
Oh yes okay so yeah just I want to start talking about a program called the Diabetes Prevention Program. This is a program that I’ve been facilitating for several years now and it’s a very successful program helping people achieve their health goals. It’s based on a group class. The program actually lasts a whole year. The first six months of the programs we meet weekly and then the second half we meet every other week and then monthly and the purpose of it being a long-term program is that you know it’s easy to to start on a health journey or a weight loss program and see those immediate results.

The most difficult thing is to be able to sustain it over a long period of time you know so you go
through your ups and downs and have barriers and things that come out the way and you’re going on a good track and all of a sudden something comes in your life where you’re off track and then you find yourself right where you started or even you know farther back where you’re at. So really the statistics
show that only five percent of people are actually able to make health changes or weight loss and sustain it over a long period of time so this can be quite discouraging for a lot of people.

So with a program like this we provide the whole year support and we talk about everything from nutrition physical activities stress management good sleep everything that’s involved and being able to sustain healthy life for a long period of time. And the other benefit of the program is it’s a group class. So studies have shown that when you have that support from community members or you know other people with like-minded goals it’s more likely that you will be successful over long period of time. And in my experience running this program out of these groups there’s been strong connections have formed and then people started meeting together. And for example last group that I facilitated I was actually facilitating at the athletic club up in northern Cascades and from the group there they started forming a pickle ball community. So they were actually meeting outside of class and they started becoming a thing where they’re meeting and participating in pickle ball so finding something fun you know to do and some you know somebody to do it with will be what results in the greatest benefit so.

So yeah this program will be starting in the beginning of October. It is free for community members the criteria is that you must have some kind of metabolic disorder meaning like prediabetes. Or you have a high risk factor for developing diabetes so except we give you all the tools and the knowledge necessary to be able to implement these. We talk about about successes about you know challenges that people have and in that group setting we can discuss it amongst each other and then come up with solutions. So it’s a really good program that I’m really excited to be facilitating like said I’ve seen great success with it so I’m looking forward to our community being part of this again great deal and if folks want to find out more they can either go online or call the hospital or yeah they can call.

I’ll leave you with some information with my email then they can reach out to me and a phone number at the hospital that’s correct and then I’ll leave out some forms or maybe send you some where there’ll be more detail about that okay so. So yeah that’ll be on Thursdays from 2 to 3 I’ll be the one facilitating it at Mid Valley Hospital starting in the beginning of October. All right okay very good so a lot of the things that we cover in the program I’m gonna mention some of these things now just to like said give some listeners a few tips that they can take away and sure be able to implement into their life.

Chris
That’d be great!

Franco
Okay so what I want to talk about today is chronic inflammation. Okay so we’ve been hearing a lot of
this term being thrown around of inflammation so I really want to clear what it is and how it’s affecting us and what we can do about it. So there’s a difference between acute inflammation and chronic inflammation. So acute inflammation is something that happens suddenly where you have an infection or bacteria or even a cut your white cells elevate and it’s a protective mechanism of your body to help you protect from those invaders. Okay but what we’re referring to is a chronic inflammation and this is a low grade long-term inflammation that can last months years or entire lifetime from the first trigger. And this is particularly concerning because it’s related to four chronic diseases that are affecting our entire nation and really our entire world.

So these are cardiovascular disease or known as heart disease cancer diabetes or insulin resistance and Alzheimer’s disease okay so what the common factor that these four conditions have is that they are all related to inflammation and they are all metabolic disorder that we might have genetically or have exposed to due to changes our lifestyle or maybe exposures and certain toxins or insert environments.

So the issue with this chronic inflammation is that it starts kind of chipping away at you and if we’re lucky enough to avoid an early death it’s very likely that we will suffer from one of these or a combination of these that will contribute to lessening our quality of life and possibly a premature death. So these are really serious concerns they they it’s classified as the new for medical horsemen of the apocalypse so yeah these are four conditions so.

So now we have understanding what this inflammation is but what is it doing in their body is it elevates our blood sugars in their body. Okay so elevation of blood sugars results in inflammation then this causes our body to send out more insulin so our organs are now working harder and as this continues and as we age oftentimes our physical activity lessens our metabolism slows down. As we age after the age of 40 we begin to lose muscle mass and after the age of 60 unfortunately this really speeds up so the concern with that is when we lose muscle we lose strength. But also muscle is responsible for digesting sugar or burning sugar so we have less muscle than more sugar is accumulating in their in their system so glucose or blood sugar and as this accumulates if we’re not using it then this turns into fat and and this type of fat is particularly concerning because it tends to stick around your abdominal area.

So this type of fat is called a visceral fat and it sticks to your organs so sticks to your liver to your heart to your kidneys and also to your blood vessels so the sugar that’s being unused converts into fat this fat sticks to your organs and in your blood vessels it becomes too hardened and as this cycle continues where we’re accumulating more sugar and maybe we’re eating things that elevate our sugar more this causes this accumulation to oxidize and harden in our in our blood vessels so this can contribute to plaque which can then contribute to cardiovascular disease yeah.

Chris
Now these sugars are you talking about process sugar or you’re talking about just any kind of sugar.

Franco
Yeah that’s a good question so let me clarify what I mean blood when I mean sugar is I mean any really can be it can be fat or it can be sugar but any source of energy that’s not being used in their body then is being stored so it can come from carbohydrates and they can be sweetened beverages or sweets or processed foods but it can also be natural occurring carbohydrates are also something with fats whether they’re their healthy fats or unhealthy fats if we are not using this energy it is being stored so eventually all carbohydrates convert into sugar so when I’m saying sugar I mean really all foods that are not being used in that manner.

But yeah that’s a great question so so now we have a good understanding of what chronic inflammation is what it’s doing to our body so what are some things that we can do to help come come back this so three simple tips that are simple but really powerful and if we do them in a consistent manner then we will see really significant improvements.

Number one would be to schedule at least two minutes of structured exercise every day okay so you know you might have heard you know trying to get out and do something every day 30 minutes 60 minutes for people that aren’t used to this this is a kind of unreachable goal at times and I’ve been there myself where I’ve fallen out of regimens I’ve had injuries or not too long ago I had babies that were taking up anytime for me be able to engage in any physical thing for myself you know so I had to get back into this but I had to start with just doing two minutes at a time and and you know this is something that’s achievable and then if you do it day in day out it starts to slowly become a habit.

So you want to find a time of the day to do it you want to put up a reminder whether you just check off on your calendar you have something that you’re tracking okay and then lastly you want to reward yourself you know so if you go through a whole week of doing two minutes at a time you know reward yourself getting a new pair of shoes or or you know going to the rodeo or something fun you know preferably something non-food related reward like a big tall milkshake right yeah so.

So yeah but really two minutes at a time you know don’t do them more because oftentimes people are wake up really motivated they want to start making some changes you know they go to a gym or something 30 minutes 40 minutes now they’re sore for a week you know so so then they don’t do anything else yeah right yeah so there’s more benefit on doing small bursts of exercise every day or throughout the day than just doing one chunk and in one day and then not doing anything throughout the week these are called exercise snacks okay so they last less than 10 minutes and that’s something I can talk about further next time.

Okay the second thing that that’s people can start doing now is avoid all sweet and beverages as much as possible okay and this includes any soda pop energy drink sport drinks okay and then a big culprit for that is gonna be caffeinated drinks so those you know 24 ounce caramel macchiatos or whatnot those are a lot of hidden sugar goes in there and if we’re starting our morning like this then we have a big spike of sugar in the morning probably more energy or adrenaline that we need but these results would later having that crash.

So then we’re balancing that waves of up and down of our blood sugars which reflect with our energy levels so any sweet and beverage even natural juices will elevate your blood sugar very rapidly and this will contribute to that inflammation that we’re talking about so on alternative is just plain water even just regular milk okay or they have like these sparkly sparkling waters made with a night natural flavors so any of those things are infusing water so you have like a pitch of a pitcher of water and you had some some fruit or some like mint or something just giving a little bit of flavor but without that added sugar okay so really try a lesson or avoid those sweet and beverages.

And the third thing is gonna be really to prioritize your sleep so really try to have a good quality sleep what does that mean that means that you want to try to aim to sleep for or at least seven and a half hours there’s gonna be different for folks but that’s more or less right restful sleep means that two hours before you go to sleep you turn off all electronics so TV phones you dim the lights okay this is this way you’re sending signals to your hormones in your eyes receiving that information that it is time to wind down time to sleep so.

So you want to also try to eat two hours prior at least an hour and a half prior before going to sleep okay so this will all help us get a good restful sleep and then as we wake up the first thing we want to do when we wake up is try to get some exposure to sunlight or bright lights and this does not mean looking at your phone first thing in the morning so natural light will send again those signals to our brain that it is wake time it’ll help stabilize our hormones help us be more alert awake and avoid that crash later on so you want to avoid opening your phone to look at electronics two hours after you wake up.

Okay so rule of thumb avoid any any electronics phone use two hours before you go to sleep have a restful sleep dark cool wake up be exposed to sunlight and then avoid looking your phone and turn on the TV for those first two hours okay so the proper sleep is not only gonna help you feel better but it actually helps regulate your metabolism better you help regulate your blood sugars it helps with your cognition it helps you recover especially if your person started doing some exercise if you don’t sleep well you cannot recover regroup your muscles to be able to do the same activities the following days and then it will help stabilize your mood or emotional help okay.

So if we start doing these three things consistently every day you will you know try it for two days see how you feel take it out for seven days see what you’re able to do now and you know carry this on for 30 days you will feel different you’ll be a different person but really the key is consistency and just having those small small goals to be able to implement daily if you miss one day make sure that you don’t repeat at the second day because if you miss two days that’s three days four days turns turns into you know something that we can’t have it go the wrong way exactly yeah so.

So yeah these are only three small tips but this is something that we talk in the great detail in our program and any you know any other things that become factors that that affect us from getting to those goals we work through those challenges you know so as as you’re making plans to make these changes write it down share it with your family your friends then these goals become more realistic sure.

Chris
Does it matter what age you are?

Franco
Great question at any point in your life no matter what condition you have any changes that you’ll make will have a significant impact to improve the quality of your life and probably how long you live so there is no point where you if you makes a change that you won’t have any benefit at any point in your life you can make these small changes and have great benefits from it yeah.

Chris
Let’s go to question again oh yeah all right well Franco that’s now good stuff there to ponder and to start making those changes I heard that it takes well I remember hearing that phrase like six weeks to develop a habit I don’t know if that’s still that was it pretty close.

Franco
Yeah no and and the thing is is you just there there’s a not an exact time frame there there’s a great book called atomic habits that talks about making these small changes and how if you do them consistently then they just become part of yourself and nature not exactly you know so that’s really the key but you want to make them an attractive goal something that you enjoy you know so if you hate getting a treadmill you know if you make a goal to do that then that’s not gonna work out so but if you find something fun like like pickle ball you know frisbee you know anything that that’s fun involving your family or other people then you’re more likely to be able to do it.

So that’s what we want to do is we want to try to make this part of our habit just like we brush our teeth every day when we exercise when we move it kind of moves all the gunk or the junk out of it through our lymphatic system so if we’re just sitting down that is all accumulating so really having a sedentary lifestyle is probably one of the things that will contribute to us developing one of these offer conditions so just any movement throughout the day out will help at the end of the day.

Okay and also like you said as far as what we put in you know just stuff that’s not gonna cause further problems right yeah and things like like the sweet and beverages that I mentioned they have absolutely no nutrition value I mean maybe they have might have some vitamins or something but but the amount of calories that you consume with that that offer no nutrition value to to our improving our metabolic state or a muscle mass then then you know you’re kind of just wasting those calories away there they may taste good at the moment you know but then that feeling quickly goes away and then once it goes away you might have that craving come back so it just kind of becomes a cycle.

So when you start going off sweet and beverages it might be a little bit difficult at first because you’re used to not only the taste but the feeling but if you work through it and you keep those goals in your mind fresh in your mind then over you know maybe a week or two that your taste bus actually adjust and change where you know things that were maybe a sweet that you wouldn’t taste it now are really sweet you know so you adapt better to that.

Chris
So all right okay well Franco thank you so much for the time just flown by oh that’s great information we appreciate it and folks can find out more by getting ahold of you at Mid Valley Hospital.

Franco
That’s correct yep I’ll leave out my information here with you Chris and in the other questions that
folks might have later on I’ll be more than happy here to come again and I’ll talk with you all you people said something up.

Chris
Okay thanks again Franco.

Okay thank you very much for that we’ll bring you the syndicated program radio health journal
this is radio health journal a weekly news magazine with the latest in health medicine and technology and Shell Lustig.