Know your ABCs- B Vitamins

I always give my patients B vitamins to help them with the “it is” conditions and to help fight gut-inflammation generally. The B vitamins also helps counteract an extremely inflammatory substance called homocysteine that can build up in the body. Particularly important are B6, B9 and B12. Whole grains are excellent sources of the B vitamins, except B12, which is found in meat and eggs, so vegans need to supplement with this. You need 1.5 mcg a day.

Know your ABCs- Vitamin A

This helps my patients who have gut-inflammation the intestines, the lungs and the skin. Those with inflammatory bowel disease, acne and chronic asthma, and lung issues all improve if I spruce up their vitamin A levels for a short time. Good dietary sources include liver, but as you can consume too much of pure vitamin A, it’s better to get it from green, orange or yellow vegetables as these convert the betacarotene they contain to vitamin A. It’s particularly important not to supplement or consume too much pure vitamin A if you are pregnant or trying to conceive, and no one should exceed more than 1.5 mg daily via food, supplements or a combination of the two.

Your BMI

It’s not a perfect measure of you are an athlete or naturally carry a high muscle mass, but for the general population, Body Mass Index (BMI) does give a good basic idea of whether your weight is healthy or not, especially in conjunction with waits measurement. To find your BMI, divide your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared. Now check your result against the below:

18.4 or under: you are underweight
18.5 - 24.9: you are a healthy weight
25 - 29.9: you are overweight
30 or over - you are obese

Cortisol - the stress hormone

Released when you are under stress, cortisol is another of the hormones produced by the adrenal glands. Its normal jobs include vital functions, such as shuttling sugar into the muscles during stress and shutting off the inflammatory response that occurs at this time. Released as and when we need it, cortisol is an extremely helpful hormone to the body- and actually fights aging because it switches off inflammation. The problem is that our stressful lifestyles mean our bodies are now often in a state of near cortisol production.
Cortisol is the Goldilocks of hormones- your levels have to be just right. Too low and you develop adrenal fatigue (which triggers aging), too high and you’ll also age faster as cortisol loves to damage skin, attacking it up to 10 times faster than any other tissue in the body.