12 Indoor Exercises to Avoid the Cold 🥶
Movement is essential to health! If you don’t want to brave the cold and don’t have a gym membership, here are some things that anybody can do in their own living room:
🔹 Jump Rope
🔹 Push-Ups
🔹 Jumping Jacks
🔹 Squats
🔹 Run in Place
🔹 Free Weights
🔹 Skip
🔹 Dance
🔹 Stretch
🔹 Shake
🔹 Yoga
🔹 Push-Ups
Health is not hard. You just have to commit.
You've got this! 🙌
What’s in season?
There are lots of benefits to eating seasonal produce—the most important being that it tastes better!
It’s easy to eat local produce through the summer months, but the winter gets a bit trickier. Here are some produce options that are in season in parts of the US and Canada in February & March:
▪️Broccoli: Roast it in the air-fryer with some olive oil and salt or stir-fry with garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes!
▪️Brussels sprouts: So good when roasted in the oven and topped with a sauce of peanut butter, tamari, and hot sauce 🌶️
▪️Cauliflower: There are so many things you can do with this veg, from simply roasting and topping with parmesan cheese to making gluten-free breadsticks 🥖
▪️Kale: People like to slam kale, but it’s so versatile that you can make it into chips, stir-fry, or even smoothies.
Another bonus of this seasonal produce is that they are all cruciferous vegetables, which means they support healthy detoxification and even hormone health 👏
Other produce in season includes citrus fruits, squash, sweet potatoes, fennel, radishes, and potatoes 🥔
My holistic approach to heart health ❤️
Here's a sneak peek into my whole-body approach to cardiovascular health (hint: it goes a bit beyond managing blood pressure & cholesterol!)
Here are some things I consider when it comes to heart health:
1️⃣ Functional Medicine Testing can identify risk factors that are overlooked by routine screenings (things like a more specific breakdown of cholesterol, markers of inflammation, and levels of omega-3 fatty acids).
2️⃣ Stress is a massive contributor to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. We have a toolbox full of strategies to help your body better manage stress for heart health.
3️⃣ Poor metabolic health and elevated blood sugar can lead to cardiovascular disease if they are not recognized and managed early. We take prevention seriously.
4️⃣ Nutrition & supplements can be used proactively to support heart health before any medications or interventions are needed.
5️⃣ We look at the whole person—from gut health to inflammation to sleep and mood. Body systems do not function separately but very much depend upon and influence each other. If we want to optimize heart health, we need to optimize the whole body, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
If you are concerned about heart health because of a family or personal history, we can help.
💻 Visit our website to schedule an appointment with Dr. Cantrell!
🔎https://www.elementsnatmed.com/naturopathic-visits
Nutrition for the Vagus Nerve?
It’s true!
Foods can increase vagal tone through the gut-brain axis. For example:
🥦 Fiber sends signals through the vagus nerve to the brain and back to slow gut movements and make us feel full.
🥗 The Mediterranean Diet is associated with higher heart rate variability, which is a measure of vagal tone.
🐟 Probiotics, omega-3 fatty acids, and B vitamins improve heart rate variability too.
The vagus nerve regulates everything from heart health to metabolic health to immune function, and it is strongly influenced by what is going on in the gut! That means that anything you do (or eat) to affect gut health will probably also affect vagal tone.
We love to nerd out on how everything in the body is connected. If you are trying to make sense of what is going on with your own health or how your symptoms relate, we can help.
Visit our website to schedule an appointment today! 📱
Young HA, Benton D. Heart-rate variability: a biomarker to study the influence of nutrition on physiological and psychological health?. Behav Pharmacol. 2018;29(2 and 3-Spec Issue):140-151. [link]
Have you heard of the inflammatory reflex?
Most people believe the nervous system and immune system function independently.
Not true!
Actually, it was discovered 20 years ago that a reflex involving the vagus nerve helps to reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines and resolve inflammation.
Since then, clinical trials have successfully used vagal nerve stimulation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.
There are a lot of simple ways to increase activity of the vagus nerve, like deep breathing, meditation, and yoga.
Want to know more about how to boost vagal tone?
Drop a ❤️ in the comments if you want tips on simple ways to increase vagal tone for better health.
Falvey A. Vagus nerve stimulation and inflammation: expanding the scope beyond cytokines. Bioelectron Med. 2022;8(1):19. [link]