3 Essential Strategies for Aging Gracefully

3 Essential Strategies for Aging Gracefully

by

Look good, feel great!

 

1. Hydrate your skin from the inside out

You’ve heard it a million times….you need to drink more water! Most of us are ready and willing to open our wallets to purchase the latest anti-aging creams and potions but we often neglect to hydrate our skin from the inside out. Drinking an insufficient amount of water will dehydrate your cells including those in the skin making fine lines and wrinkles more visible.

I always get asked “How much water do I need”? It all depends on a variety of factors such as your weight, your activity levels, and your levels of perspiration. I generally suggest that most adults need between eight to ten 8 ounce glasses daily with a couple extra glasses if you’re a coffee drinker or like to have a glass of wine with dinner. If you’re having trouble fitting in all that water, try having 500mL of water with some fresh lemon first thing in the morning.

Another easy way to hydrate your skin from the inside out is to increase your intake of healthy oils and fats. These include raw olive oil, coconut oil, flaxseed oil, avocado oil, avocadoes, organic butter, and raw nuts and seeds. Each cell in the body is surrounded by a layer of fat. By including healthy fats in your daily diet you make your cells more fluid and plump thereby improving the appearance of your skin. Want glowing skin? Include at least 2 Tbsp of healthy oils in your daily diet.

2. Boost Your Glutathione Levels

Glutathione is the body’s most powerful antioxidant. It works to help neutralize damaging free radicals and is a key nutrient needed for detoxification.  The good news is that your body makes its own glutathione. The bad news is that toxins for a poor diet, medications, stress, infections, and aging all deplete glutathione. Boosting up your levels is key for aging well. While you can’t get glutathione through your diet or supplements, you can consume glutathione supporting nutrients to help your body make more glutathione. These foods include whey protein isolate (caution if you have a dairy sensitivity), resveratrol found in red wine, and cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts. Glutathione can also be given through IV to help replenish levels more quickly.

3. Give your face a lift with Facial Rejuvenation Acupuncture

Facial rejuvenation acupuncture, sometimes called the “acupuncture facelift” is a safe, effective and natural treatment to reduce the signs of aging and improve the overall appearance of the skin. Facial rejuvenation acupuncture helps to promote a more youthful, glowing appearance by supporting overall health and wellbeing. Its benefits include: reducing the appearance of pores, fine lines, and wrinkles; increasing skin tightness and collagen production; reducing oil production and balancing hormonal skin.

How does it work?

By inserting fine needles into the skin, we create a micro (aka teeny tiny) injury which triggers the healing process in the same way your body heals itself after a cut. Part of the healing process involves increasing blood flow to the area which provides fresh oxygen and healing nutrients.

How many sessions do I need?

Some individuals will notice the appearance of their skin improves after one treatment. However, significant lasting results usually occur after 6 or 8 treatments. A full treatment series includes 12 weekly treatments. The effects can last several years will regular maintenance treatments.

Reading Between the Lines: Nutrition Labels Decoded

by

Confused by nutrition labels?

 Not sure what “maltodextrin” is or what the % daily value means? Nutrition labels are only helpful if you truly know what to look for and become well-versed in nutrition “lingo”. Here’s my go-to guide to decoding nutrition labels so you can quickly decide whether a product is worthy of making it into your shopping basket.

1. First and foremost, look at the serving size!

This tells you how much of the product you get to eat in order to ingest the calories listed below. Food manufacturers are tricky and they often use very small serving sizes to make their products look healthier and lower in calories. One of my favorite examples: Gatorade presents Nutrition Facts for a serving that is ½ the bottle. How many people do you know who drink half a bottle of Gatorade? Always compare the serving size to how much of the food you will actually consume in order to get a more accurate picture of the caloric content.

2. Fat: good or bad?

Most people look at the total fat content of a product , but they never check what type of fat it is. Food labels must provide values for Total Fat, Saturated Fat and Trans Fat (aka mostly the bad stuff). But you can use that information to figure out how much good fat is in the product.

For example: if there are 9 grams of total fat (of which 2 grams are saturated and 1 gram is trans fat). That means that there are 6 grams of unsaturated fat [9-(2+1)=6]. Using simple math, we discover that a product that looks high in fat may actually be a great source of health unsaturated fats.

3. Sugar

I think this is the most important thing to look for on a label. Most of us consume copious amounts of sugar each day and it’s hidden in all foods (even the ones that look really healthy). Your added sugar intake (not including fruit) should be less than 25 grams per day(or approx. 5-6 tsp). When you start reading labels, you realize very quickly that this is not much! For example, a small container (100g) of yogurt can contain up to 12 grams of sugar (half a day’s worth!).

4. Ingredients

Ingredients are listed in descending order of weight which means that the ingredients that make up the bulk of the product are listed first. My advice: avoid anything that has sugar in the top 3 ingredients (and yes that will eliminate 95% of cereals and granola bars). But beware, food manufacturers have a trick up their sleeve in order to avoid having sugar in the top 3 ingredients….they use up to 5 different types of sugar so that each type only makes up a small % of the ingredients and therefore can be listed further down the list. Avoid this trap by referring back to the Nutrition Facts table to look at the total sugar content.

I hope that helps to simplify the mystery of Nutrition Labels. Happy label reading! Or better yet, focus on eating more foods that don’t come with a nutrition label.

Yours in health,

Sarah