The 5 Pillars of Health
Before we kick off with the 5 pillars of health that have become paramount in setting up a foundation for good health, let’s start with my approach to food and living. As a Naturopath, Clinical Nutritionist and Mumma Bear to 3 kids that are 5 and under, I’m passionate about helping people get back-to-basics without overcomplicating it or confusing you.
Here’s what I’m not into... calorie counting, extreme fads or anything that’s temporary. It’s a boring way to live and it’s just not sustainable, right? Often we read about this different approaches to life and food and they’re seen as the magic bullet as a one-size-fits-all approach. Plus, they often cost us an arm and a leg, both financially and energetically!
Here’s what I am into… good coffee (joking - kinda). Seriously, I am into nourishment, nutrient-dense foods and finding strategies that suit you. I want to cut through the noise, confusion and BS of what’s been considered ‘the norm’ and the misinformation of what the ‘right’ foods are, and get back to eating foods our bodies recognise.
These 5 pillars of health are the starting point, which alone can change the trajectory of your health.
Water - most important nutrient
In every single consultation, program, masterclass, webinar and workshop I check-in with someone's water intake. We know eating a nutrient-dense diet is one of the key ways to prevent chronic disease. And water is the most important nutrient, hands-down.
It doesn’t matter if someone is doing all the ‘right’ things like eating vegetables, taking supplements, moving their body, etc. if they’re dehydrated because they won’t get the full benefits. Water transports nutrients into the cells to nourish the cells and help transport toxins out of the cells so the body can effectively eliminate them.
Water also supports digestion, absorption and bowel regularity - it keeps you pooing nice and regularly (which for most people, is ideally once a day)! Water enhances immune resilience and supports weight management - you see, the same part of the brain that tells you you’re hungry also tells you you’re thirsty, so there can be confusion sometimes around whether it’s water or food you need! As you can see, water impacts every cell and organ in the body.
However, water and salt go together - think of them as the ultimate duo! Unrefined salt like Himalayan salt, contains over 80 minerals that can lower blood pressure, support thyroid health, improve energy, support happy healthy hormones, aid digestion, support immune function, and so much more! For this reason, most people need to reduce their table salt intake (which is found in processed foods, including anything in a glass jar, cardboard box or takeaway food) and increase the amount of unrefined salt they eat
For this reason, I can’t stop talking about the importance of water and her little sister, salt. I provide an abundance of water education, including a 2-part Water for Life short program, which is completely free and accessible HERE
In this program, Water for Life, I teach you why your body needs water and you learn your personalised water formula (for most people it’s 33mls x kg of body weight, which gives their total water requirements for basic metabolic needs, plus they’d need an additional 500mls per hour of exercise), as well as the importance of eating unrefined salt. Some people still need more or less water, depending on their needs. I also teach you how to integrate water into your everyday life with ease, and give you a handful of strategies that really work, as well as additional resources.
Read more about salt here and how it could be a missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to your health!
2. Sleep
Sleep comes at zero cost and ‘resets’ entire body including hormones and digestive system. Sleep enables the body to ‘reset’, repair and rejuvenate.
Sleep helps balance hormones, regulates hunger hormones and supports weight management, modulates immune function, supports detoxification pathways, enhances digestion and so much more.
For example, two hormones - grehlin and leptin, which govern our food cravings and food choices, regulate appetite and have a direct impact on weight gain, weight loss or weight management. Poor sleep can cause ghrelin, the hormone that stimulates appetite and tells your brain “find food, we’re hungry”, to spike, and to overeat the following day. A study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that sleep-deprived people consumed an additional 385 calories per day, on average, the following 24 hours, which is equivalent to about 4-5 slices of bread! We want to support healthy leptin levels, as leptin resistance occurs years before the development of insulin resistance; directly caused by a high sugar diet.
So, prioritising good-quality sleep each night is paramount to your health. In an ideal world, to match your body’s circadian clock, we’d aim to sleep between 10pm - 6am. Adults should be aiming for about 8 hours of sleep each night. I know this isn’t always possible (I’m in that category because #mumlife), but do what you can!
3. Stress (& Connection + Hormones)
Stress ‘switches on’ the sympathetic nervous system and sends our bodies into ‘fight-or-flight’; you know that racing heart, edgy, anxiety feeling?
Stress is all around us; from financial stressors to family commitments and environmental stressors. We can’t remove stressors, because we live in the real world and remember, some stressors are positive, for example when your alarm goes off in the morning it’s a positive stress - it gets you up and at it so you can go about your day. Problems arise when there’s an accumulation of stress (day after day) or a specific chronic stressor, such as losing your job, a relationship breakdown or the death of a loved one.
The good news is that we can help our body better adapt to stress by fuelling ourselves with good-quality foods.
Chronic stress or prolonged stress can send the body into overdrive and an inflammatory state, which can increase your hormones including cortisol and insulin, which can leave you feeling tired, fatigued, moody, sleepless, overwhelmed, anxious and hungry, which has a knock on effect in every aspect of your health.
Chronic stress or prolonged stress drives inflammation, which is at the core of every chronic disease.
In fact, the American Medical Association has noted that stress is the basic cause of more than 60% of all human illness and disease.
Stress leaves your nervous system in a ‘switched on’ state, aka as ‘fight or flight’, and essentially leaves your nervous system paralysed, where it’s in overdrive of producing stress hormones. The only way to ‘switch off’ this sympathetic nervous system response is to practice natural stress management techniques into your day; exercise, meditation, breathing, stopping to eat a meal (without the tele on), slowing down from activities, sleep, connecting with people, and creating space for your hobbies, whether it be cooking, swimming or shopping!
Feeling a sense of connection and belonging with others should not be underestimated, as a health strategy. For example, a hug directly causes the release of a hormone, oxytocin, often called the “love hormone”, and increases release of serotonin, often called the “happy hormone”. These hormones can stabilise mood, lower anxiety, lower blood pressure and reduce stress hormones, which has a direct impact on mood, behaviour, energy, cardiovascular health, immune system and general wellness.
Since we’re talking about hormones, ladies - it’s important to note that your menstrual cycle directly affects your appetite and calories/nutrients consumed! Yep, there are times of the month when you can blame the afternoon choccie cravings on hormones! ;-)
The fact is, the more oestrogen you have, the less you eat.
Think of oestrogen as an appetite suppressant - when oestrogen is high you tend to feel satiated sooner, which means you eat less. Now, there is an oestrogen surge during the first part of the cycle - the follicular phase, which is from day 1 (this is the first day of bleeding) to approximately day 14 (when the egg drops). This is the time of the month that it can be easier for women to get into a fat burning metabolic state.
The other main sex hormones, progesterone, rises during the second half of your cycle (aka luteal phase), from day 14 to day 28 (this is also when oestrogen drops), and this is when we have an increase in appetite and tend to thrive on an extra snack or more carbohydrate-rich foods during the day (think starchy veggies - potatoes, pumpkin, carrots, etc.) or oats/rice! Most women tend to eat up to 250 calories a day more during the this phase!
So it makes sense that we really listen to our bodies and know where our hormones are at when it comes to supporting mood, appetite, cravings, fat burning/weight management and general wellness.
4. Nutrition (gut and detoxification)
As I mentioned, switching to a nutrient-dense lifestyle makes sense; it’s how our bodies were designed to eat; to breakdown protein, fats and carbohydrates. You think about how your great-grandmother ate - there wasn’t packaged, sugar and additive loaded food in abundance! Our cells haven’t evolved in time; we need to ease the load on our gut and liver and foods they can adequately breakdown, absorb and eliminate.
We can wave good-bye to calorie counting and overthinking the ‘right’ foods to eat. We can get back to basics and learn about macronutrients and portion sizes, so we can naturally start eating intuitively.
To start, there’s three strategies within nutrition I teach patients:
Macronutrients
Portion sizes
“Crowding out” method
These three strategies are all discussed in greater detail here and you can see ‘A Healthy Plate’ here; a visual representation of what we want to be eating at meal times!
Nutrition is energy for our body; the food we eat provides us with three macronutrients: fat, protein and carbohydrates, which enables us to thrive. Our body’s can’t produce these macronutrients, it must come from our diet. Micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) are found in your macronutrients.
Typically, we are eating these macronutrients in a ratio that puts our bodies into a fat storage metabolic state, stressed and immune compromised state. Australians eat 2-3 x more carbohydrates (sugar) than is recommended. As you can see, we tend to over-do carbohydrates and opt for fast-release carbohydrates, which means they’re released into the bloodstream quickly and don’t sustain us, such as pasta, bread and sugar, and we don’t eat enough vegetables, which is where majority of our carbs should come from! For example, 93% of Australian’s don’t eat the recommended daily intake of vegetables, so what this means is our macronutrients are off. We’re not eating food that fuels us.
My first solution for changing how you eat is to focus on macronutrients and portion sizes, and has 3 steps to make up a healthy plate. Read more about ‘A Health Plate’ here.
5. Lifestyle - Movement, green space and sunshine
Let’s talk about the power of lifestyle on health. I choose to use the word movement rather than exercise. I don’t know why, I feel like the word exercise can bring emotional baggage with it, where people think of a forced behaviour or a spin class or 45. Movement seems to bring more freedom to choose how you want to move your body and joy.
Movement has long been known to be an effective stress reliever and can balance hormones, ‘use up’ stress hormones, use stored fat as primary fuel, enhance immunity, support digestion and elimination. I mean what doesn’t movement do? The human body was designed to move.
Our national exercise guidelines from the government recommends we accumulate 150 to 300 minutes (2 ½ to 5 hours) of moderate intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes (1 ¼ to 2 ½ hours) of vigorous intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both moderate and vigorous activities, each week. This would mean we’d be moving our bodies approximately 30-40 minutes, five days a week.
Have you heard the “sitting is the new smoking”? This refers to the fact that we are now sitting and more sedentary than ever before. The average person sits for more than half the day. Incorporating conscious movement into your day, as well as incidental movement is best.
Getting into nature and being in the sunshine has a direct effect on our gut microbiome; playing in the dirt has been shown to increase the diversity of bacteria that live in your gut and support your immunity, and Vitamin D is known as the ‘sunshine vitamin’.
Low or deficient levels of Vitamin D has become commonplace for many children, teenagers and adults. Vitamin D is anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, antioxidant, immune-modulating, cardiovascular supportive and mood supportive. It’s also useful for fighting common cold and viruses.
I recommend patients get their Vitamin D levels checked as part of a yearly routine full blood test. You can get your Vitamin D tested by a GP or Naturopath, and deficiencies can usually be quickly addressed with supplementation for a few months.
Research shows that low levels of Vitamin D can make you more vulnerable to colds, flus, respiratory infections, immune dysfunction, osteopenia, osteoporosis and mood swings, as well as depression, post natal depression and anxiety.
Given up to 80% of Aussies are low or deficient in Vitamin D, I recommend children take 1,000-2,000 IU/ day and adults take at least 2,000-4,000 IU/day to support their body during the COVID-19 pandemic and for general immunity.
I recommend getting Vitamin D levels tested through your GP or Naturopath, as part of your yearly blood test check. I educate patients on Vitamin D and optimal levels, which are 80-100+ ng/mL. Please be aware the acceptable range is over 50 but we don’t want you falling into the category of acceptable - you should be thriving!
I truly hope this information brings a simplicity and inspiration to your thoughts about health, food choices and behaviour.
There’s a lot of short courses and masterclasses that may tickle your fancy and help you further develop your knowledge, so you can reach your true health potential and vitality! You can read about them here
I’m here to help - if you’re after a personalised nutrition plan or naturopathic consultation you can book one in here!