Reducing fat is a sought after goal for a lot of people. Exercise, a proper diet, bio-identical hormone balancing, the proper mind set, getting adequate sleep, and detoxification are all an important piece of the fat loss puzzle. It is important to address all of these things to achieve your goal.

Let’s talk about exercise. Often people are exercising hard and regularly but with no results. Everyone has a different fat burning heart rate. This is the heart rate range where your body efficiently uses your stored fat. If you exercise at a heart rate above this number, it does not effectively burn fat.

If your heart rate goes a lot higher than the fat burning rate for a prolonged time you can actually cause damage to your mitochondria. The mitochondria are the engines in each of your cells. When your mitochondria start failing, you start aging rapidly. You want your mitochondria to be healthy.

When you exercise you want to spend only a short time at the anaerobic threshold (the heart rate where you stop utilizing oxygen and fat to generate your energy). And you also want to spend only a short time with your heart rate above that threshold. The key is to spend enough time at the threshold heart rate and above to stimulate your mitochondria, but not too much time that damage is caused

When you know the heart rate that is best for your body to burn fat and the maximum heart rate for your mitochondria, now you can exercise effectively for your own body. How do you find out the heart rate range that is best for you? The Bio-Energy test is the most accurate way to determine this information.

The Bio-Energy test can give you the heart rate ranges I just spoke about. Plus it can determine if your thyroid is functioning optimally and how healthy your mitochondria are. It can also measure your VO2 max, overall fitness, ability to burn fat at rest, and the calories your body needs at rest and exercise. It is a great test for those who want to lose weight, ensure their cells are healthy, or simply want to assess their fitness. Contact our office at 951-461-3021 if you are interested in getting this test done.

Fatigue, feeling tired, is a common complaint these days. Sadly, many people simply accept fatigue as part of life. You should not feel tired–you should have the energy to enjoy your days.

There are many causes of fatigue. You should first be evaluated for serious causes of fatigue. If you are told that everything is fine, do not accept that fate. A hormonal imbalance can be the cause of a loss of energy and this is missed by medical providers who are not specially trained in hormone balancing. Often, your hormone levels are interpreted as normal, when they are not optimal.

A sluggish (underactive) thyroid is often overlooked. Optimal thyroid levels are critical for a good energy level. If you have trouble waking up and/or have mid afternoon fatigue this is often a sluggish thyroid. If you are always tired, you may have adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue is a disorder of cortisol production. This is seen in people undergoing chronic stress. A deficiency in testosterone can affect your sleep as well as overall energy, mood, and motivation. This is seen in both men and women. With a testosterone deficiency you feel as if you have passed your peak even though you chronologically should not feel that way. There are also other hormone imbalances that can cause fatigue.

Fatigue has a cause. If you are feeling tired and have been told that “nothing is wrong” , it is definitely time to get your hormones checked by a medical provider properly trained in identifying hormonal imbalances and working with bio-identical hormones.

Your thyroid is important to your body in many ways. With an optimal thyroid level your mood is more balanced, you are able to lose weight when doing the right things, your skin and hair are not dry, your bowel movements are normalized, you have good energy, etc.

If you require thyroid medication it is important to replace both T3, the active thyroid hormone, as well as T4, the storage thyroid hormone. You need both types of thyroid hormone for optimal functioning. The easiest way to do this is to take a thyroid medication that has both of these in them, such as armour thyroid or nature thyroid. These are considered the most natural thyroid replacements available.

When you start taking a thyroid replacement it is important to go slow and follow your symptoms. The key is to increase the dose in small increments as needed every 3 to 4 weeks and assess your symptoms. The labwork does not always show an accurate picture. I have seen plenty of people who had symptoms of low thyroid but were on suboptimal levels of replacement because their doctors would not look at the person and relied on lab values with arbitrary “normal” values.

Under the care of a properly trained physician who understands bio-identical hormones you can achieve an optimal thyroid level. The goal is for you to feel your best and minimize any adverse effects. This can be achieved with patience and communication, a process that is available when you do not rely on insurance based office visits.

An optimally functioning thyroid is important for many reasons. A low functioning thyroid can result in difficulty burning fat, dry skin, dry hair, constipation issues, depressed mood, low energy, cold intolerance, etc.

Sadly, a low functioning thyroid is overlooked quite often.

Traditional medical care is usually focused on lab values and not on the patient. Every person is unique and the optimal level of thyroid hormones for each person is often different from what the labs have determined is “normal”. The “normal” values that you are compared against are basically the average numbers that were determined by testing a sample of the population. But what if those people were not optimal? And, what if your body requires a different level?

If you have symptoms of a low thyroid but your lab values are “normal” do you just ignore it? If you are the type of person who takes control of your health, than the answer is no! There are always risks to taking action and also to not taking action. Addressing low functioning thyroid symptoms when your lab values are “normal” is a personal choice and it can be done safely under the guidance of a physician trained to think outside the box. This is what integrative customized medical care is about—figuring out what your body needs and helping to guide you to optimal health.