Exercise - Carolina Total Wellness

March 3, 2023March 19, 2023

Hormesis: The Beneficial Type of Stress

Sara Yadlowsky, FMHC

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We’ve all heard the saying before. Science has revealed it is surprisingly accurate when it comes to our health and longevity.

Hormesis is the idea that short, intermittent bursts of certain stressors can start a cascade of cellular processes that slow aging, improve overall health and make you more resilient, both physically and mentally. It is a hot topic in longevity research right now.

We all know that chronic stress caused by relationship issues, financial problems and working too many hours is detrimental to our health. However, hormetic stressors are controlled and acute, triggering healthy adaptive responses.

What does all this mean in real life? Hormesis is the common thread found in some popular health and fitness trends such as HIIT (high intensity interval training), cold exposure, heat therapy and intermittent fasting. Prolonged doses of these behaviors are not healthy or sustainable. For example, if you spend too much time in a sauna you will become dehydrated. But, in short bursts, the bodily stress caused by these practices are enough to bring about health benefits such as reducing inflammation, supporting elimination of toxins, repairing DNA, combatting oxidative stress, repairing cellular damage and reducing risk of cancer.

Here are three ways to strategically stress your body and reap the rewards:

HIIT – Do a HIIT workout 1-3 times a week. HIIT workouts are intermittent bursts of intense effort for 30 seconds, followed by 15 seconds of rest. These workouts are usually short, around 15-20 minutes. You can easily find these HIIT videos on YouTube.
Hot or Cold Therapy – Infrared sauna is a great way to heat up and sweat out some toxins. It also reduces inflammation and pain. In contrast, ice baths, cold showers and the new cryotherapy chambers that are popping up everywhere will cool you down quicky. Cold therapy is also known for reducing inflammation and pain. Both types of therapies may help strengthen the immune system.
Intermittent Fasting – Fasting triggers a cellular “clean up” response called autophagy. Autophagy results in several health benefits such as lowered cholesterol, reduced blood pressure and reduced inflammation. For many, a 16:8 intermittent fasting schedule (16 hours of fasting followed by an 8 hour feeding window) works well. However, we recommend that you experiment with the timing to see what works best for you.

Be aware that adding stress (even the good type!) to our lives can backfire if done at the wrong time. When life is already very stressful, it is best to wait until a better time when you are more relaxed to try out these new practices.

Your Partner In Health,

Sara Yadlowsky, FMHC

June 3, 2022August 2, 2022

Health Coaching

Erica Nelson, MSPH, NBC-HWC

The legendary basketball coach, John Wooden once said, “A good coach can change a game. A great coach can change a life.” At Carolina Total Wellness, our coaches help our patients change their lives every day.Every patient at Carolina Total Wellness that sees a doctor or physician assistant is paired with a health coach. Some patients may also choose to work solely with a health coach to achieve their dietary and lifestyle goals. This article will help you know what to expect when you work with a health coach.

Here are 3 key aspects of the health coaching experience at Carolina Total Wellness:

The Space Between
Health coaches hold space for you to pause… and decide how you want to respond to your circumstances. The world today is a seemingly relentless onslaught of stimulation, and it can feel like there is an urgency to react to all of that stimulation.

George Mumford, meditation coach to Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and other world-class athletes offers another way, ‘Think about the eye of a hurricane.’ He says, ‘No matter how intense the storm or what’s swept up in its gale-force winds, that calm, blue center is always there. We all have this quiet center within us.’ Your CTW coach will help you respond from that quiet center within, rather than reacting from the chaos of the storm.

In our office, health coaches hold space for you to make sense of what is going on in your world and in your body and decide how you want to respond. Health coaches always honor the fact that you are the expert on your own life and display unconditional positive regard for you and whatever lifestyle decisions you choose. They pay attention to what matters to you and may offer suggestions for adjustments that fit into your life.

Translator
The science of the body and its systems are the physician’s expertise. Science of behavior change is the coach’s expertise. Our coaches help you translate medical science you discuss with your doctor or PA into evidence-based behavioral change strategies to optimize your health. When you combine the medical knowledge of our physicians and PA with your coach’s expertise in the science of motivation, habits, and change, many of the barriers to experiencing health fall away.

Each of the coaches at CTW has at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university and training in coaching from either the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy or Duke University. Some of them also have master’s degrees and other specialized training in nutrition, exercise, counseling, and other relevant fields. Unless otherwise specified, CTW coaches are not registered dietitians, licensed mental health professionals or certified fitness professionals.

Guide
In the words of Michael Jordan, ‘A coach is someone that sees beyond your limits and guides you to greatness!’ CTW coaches come to the table with empathy for whatever you are facing and feeling and confidence in your ability to overcome. Each coach has faced their own struggles in life and knows what it is like to work hard to overcome. However, coaches never replace you as the expert on you; they serve as your guide on your journey to health. Coaches can help you understand all the different ways you can try intermittent fasting or yoga or what, exactly, is ‘glycemic index.’ Maybe our most important job, though, is to help you get very clear on your vision of the healthiest version of you. Once you decide where it is you want to go, coaches provide education, support and accountability to knock down any stumbling blocks that may come up along the way.

Call us today to schedule your appointment with one of our health coaches.

Erica Nelson, MSPH, NBC-HWC

May 20, 2022August 25, 2022

Heart Rate Variability

Didem Miraloglu, MD, MS

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO MEASURE YOUR WELL-BEING?

Ever heard of Heart Rate Variability (HRV)? Exactly as its name states, heart rate variability is a measure of the variability between heartbeats. Your heart beats a specific rate, anywhere from 60-100. There is a variation in this rate, depending on whether you take a deep breath, exercise, are under stress or are at rest. HRV is dependent on our nervous system to pick up cues from our environment. In order to understand how these cues are translated into physiological response, we first need to understand how the nervous system works.

Our nervous system controls our heart rate in two opposing directions.

One is the sympathetic nervous system, “fight or flight.” It is responsible for increasing the heart rate when we are stressed, like running away from a saber tooth tiger. In our present world since we are not normally faced with tigers, sympathetic drive kicks in during other emergency situations. This is exactly when you want more blood pumped from the heart to your muscles so you can fight or run. The blood pressure and heart rate increase as a normal response to the feedback from our environment.

Its counterpart is the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the “rest and digest” system. When our senses detect the emergency is all clear, our parasympathetic system takes the lead and tells our heart rate to slow down and lowers the blood pressure. Our body starts to relax.

This is the normal sequence of events that occurs by increasing and decreasing the heart rate appropriately according to the environmental cues. Studies have shown people with high heart rate variability are usually less stressed and are happier.

The problem occurs when there is low heart variability. This means the nervous system is not responding adequately to the environmental cues and hence your body is less resilient and struggles to handle changing situations. This may occur with diabetes, asthma, anxiety, depression and high blood pressure. This is also seen as we age.

You can improve your heart rate variability by taking care of your body and mind. Regular exercise along with a healthy diet, staying hydrated, avoiding alcohol, getting a good night sleep, being exposed to natural light, taking a cold shower and mindfulness, all help with reduction in HRV. Controlled breathing has also been shown to boost HRV and help fight stress which can decrease HRV.

The gold standard for measuring HRV is an EKG. But you don’t have to buy an EKG, since there are smaller and more affordable gadgets on the market with which you can measure HRV in the comfort of your home. Here are some of those:

Apple Watch – Uses an optical sensor (green light) to record heart rate automatically, however, you need to obtain the Health app on iPhone to look at the data.

Oura Ring – A sleep tracker, takes the mean of all 5-minute samples measured while you are sleeping. The changes in your HRV are accounted for every 5 minutes throughout the night which makes it one of the most accurate devices out there to measure HRV. This is in comparison to other wearables that only take HRV measurement at a single point during the night.

Fitbit – Heart rate tracker automatically measures the HRV and sends stats to the Fitbit app. The only problem is that the technology used in Fitbit does not accurately record or report heart rate.

AIO (All in One) Smart Sleeve – It is a sleeve you wear that can measure your EKG real time. It also does sleep analysis, workout optimization and stress level monitoring.

Frontier X – Worn directly over your heart, like a chest belt, provides continuous ECG monitoring.

There are also apps that help you increase your HRV. They do this thru teaching breathing techniques via biofeedback, which changes the heart rhythm to create a physiological balance in physical, mental and emotional systems. Some of these include HeartMate, HeartRate + Coherence Pro and HeartMath. HeartMath is the gold standard in the industry for coherence and the one with the most science behind it.

So, how do you measure your well-being? Mainly with tools that provide feedback on your heart rate variability. But remember, your well-being does not have so much to do with what is going on in your environment, as it does with how you perceive and react to your environment. And working on those factors will in long term help with your well-being.

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

Marcus Aurelius – Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher (161-180 AD)