WELLNESS–“TAKE 5” GAME-PLAN FOR LIFE/SPORTS-LESSON #3—DOES NUTRITION AFFECT THE RHYTHM OF HOMEOSTASIS?
Before venturing into a new lesson, one should always review what one thinks is best for them. During my time in the Education Business, I always told my students that they would take with them what is important to them.
Remember the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius.
If this is your first time to the website, welcome. If you are returning, welcome back. For those of you who are interested in ‘PLAYIN YOUR DREAMS’, read on.
If you are new, I would encourage you to review the posts, found in the “TAKE 5” Game-Plan for Life/ Sports section, Titled ‘Game-Plan’, and Lessons #1, before proceeding.
For you others let us continue to explore Lesson #3. If you did not partake in the assignments for Lesson #1, I would advise you to stop. The reason being is that you have not fully ‘Committed’ to the core principles of this or any personal Wellness Program.
Those two principles are explained in the previous Lessons.
The result that one should seek in any Wellness Program is ‘Homeostasis’.
‘Homeostasis’ as defined by Dictionary.com:
noun
1. The tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function.
2. Psychology. a state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated.
3. Entomology. the ability of members of a colony of social insects to behave cooperatively to produce a desired result, as when bees coordinate the fanning of their wings to cool the hive.
Homeostasis in layman’s term: Your body and brain are working at the level or higher as designed for your individual age, wants, and needs.
To assess your state of ‘Homeostasis’, I offer you the following test. STAND NAKED IN FRONT OF A MIRROR.
Depending on your results, you may, or may not, stop here.
If the results of this simple test are to your satisfaction, congratulations. If the results of this simple test are not to your satisfaction, congratulations. The reason for congratulating both parties is that you partook in the test and you got results.
Edison, among other greats, claims that people only get ‘results’ from their actions. People do not ‘Fail’. People only get results. Depending how one perceives the results, one will determine future actions.
In simple terms, if one sees the results of any action, resulting in satisfaction, one will probably continue the action until satisfaction is no longer the result.
Depending upon the individual, these results can be perceived as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’. These ‘results’ will have an impact on one’s Homeostasis.
Nutrition’s role in one’s Homeostasis needs to be defined. How important is nutrition? Three of the six, or 50% of the 6 Healthy Behaviors involve it. The question that should be asked is; “How important is nutrition to you”?
Nutrition is vital to your “Wellness”, that personal commitment to yourself to make healthy choices. At the end of the day, the more healthier choices you made, contributes to you getting better, not worse.
You do not need to be a saint; all you have to be is you. Be accountable for all you do, including what you eat and drink each day.
Question: Can this action of practicing daily ‘Healthy Nutrition’ create a ‘Rhythm’ for one’s personal Homeostasis?
Rhythm as defined by Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014
1. (Music, other)
a. the arrangement of the relative durations of and accents on the notes of a melody, usually laid out into regular groups (bars) of beats, the first beat of each bar carrying the stress
b. any specific arrangement of such groupings; time: quadruple rhythm.
2. (Poetry) (in poetry)
a. the arrangement of words into a more or less regular sequence of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables
b. any specific such arrangement; metre
3. (Art Terms) (in painting, sculpture, architecture, etc) a harmonious sequence or pattern of masses alternating with voids, of light alternating with shade, of alternating colours, etc
4. (Physiology) any sequence of regularly recurring functions or events, such as the regular recurrence of certain physiological functions of the body, as the cardiac rhythm of the heartbeat.
Before examining the relationship between Nutrition and the Rhythm of Homeostasis, the Law of Rhythm needs to be explained.
The Laws of Reality: The Principle of Rhythm (Excerpts By Iam Bloom on October 12, 2013) http://guardianlv.com/2013/10/the-laws-of-reality-the-principle-of-rhythm/ 
“All of life shifts from one pole to another, all situations shift from one kind to another. This may also seem to be a fairly obvious observation when you think about your daily human experience. We all experience highs and lows and swings from one extreme to another.
In the daily experience of our life, we can easily see that we swing from feeling great to not so great, from happy to sad, to excited to nearly indifferent. These movements don’t always happen in an instant, or by extremes, but by degrees and every movement in one direction is matched by movement in the other.
Newton’s third law of motion states that “for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction,”showing, simultaneously, that there is always rhythm and a redress of all actions, as well as being a mean level, or state, exerted throughout the Universe.
While I am disinclined to call this entropy, I do think there is a balance that nature is always seeking, thus, for every moment in one direction it must be balanced by moment in the opposite direction.
This principle is impersonal and is merely a force to be aware of as we move through life. If we can apply it to the larger context our own lives, then the periods of highs and lows would make much more sense. It could also be used in order to predict how things may unfold, in one context or another, since all movement has an opposite action.”
Excerpts from http://www.yourperfectuniverse.com/2014/06/transcending-law-of-rhythm.html June 23,2014
Transcending the Law of Rhythm
“The Law of Rhythm is well understood by modern science and is considered a universal law as applied to material things. But this law carries us much further because its manifestations and influence extend to the mental and spiritual planes as well.
It accounts for succession of moods, feelings and other annoying and perplexing changes that we notice in ourselves.
The importance of this can be appreciated by anyone who realizes that people are creatures of moods, feelings, and emotions, and how little mastery we have of ourselves as they manifest.
If you will stop and consider a moment, you will realize how much these swings of Rhythm have affected you in your life—how excitement seems to be followed by an opposite feeling of depression.
Likewise, with courage followed by fear. The tides of feelings have always risen and fallen and with them, most of us never suspect the cause or reason to lay within ourselves.
Understanding how the Law of Rhythm works will give one the key to transcending these rhythmic swings of feelings, and will allow us to know ourselves better and to avoid being carried away by these tidal changes. Although the Law itself can’t be stopped, we may escape its effects.
TRANSCENDING
This Law is tricky though, because as physical beings, we think that what is true on the physical plane must also be true in the mental and spiritual planes. This is only true if we as individuals let it be true.
We can transcend the Law of Rhythm by using its closet cousin the Law of Polarity. (The explanation of this Law can be found in the post titled, “College Football Playoffs—Why Are They Putting Pigskins in Dresses”? in the College Sports Section.)
One of the major differences between the two is that the Law of Polarity usually seems to pop out of nowhere, and the Law of Rhythm takes a long and steady trip back and forth.
When you feel the pendulum begin to swing backward, you should immediately begin the transcendence.
Don’t focus on your goals and desires during this time. Thinking of your goals and desires, can often magnify the feeling of the backward swing of the pendulum.
Instead, polarize yourself to the positive aspects of your life. Focus your thoughts and feelings on smaller, non-specific things that bring you joy and cast aside the feelings that are beginning to draw you backward.
This is known as neutralization. Awareness must be maintained during this time as one can easily fall back into old habits and ways of thinking. That is something to be avoided.
By neutralizing your feelings on the issue that is in the backward swing, you elevate yourself above this Law. When you feel the pendulum start to swing forward again, resume your focus back on your goals and desires.”
AS THIS LESSON UNFOLDS, YOU THE READER WILL HAVE TO CONNECT YOUR OWN DOTS. I WILL PRESENT THE INFORMATION ALONG WITH PERSONAL OPINIONS.
DOES NUTRITION AFFECT ONE’S RHYTHM OF HOMEOSTASIS?
The following are excerpts from other sources. For the complete story, I encourage you to go to their website.
Catherine Christie of http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Met-Obe/Mood-Food-Relationships.html writes:
Mood-Food Relationships
“Research on the connection between a person’s mood and the food he or she eats has reveled what many people have long believed, that eating a certain food can influence a person’s mood—at least temporarily.
Research by Judith Wurtman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has focused on how certain foods alter one’s mood by influencing the level of certain brain chemicals called neurotransmitters .
While many other factors influence the level of these chemicals, such as hormones , heredity, drugs , and alcohol, three neurotransmitters—dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin —have been studied in relation to food, and this research has shown that neurotransmitters are produced in the brain from components of certain foods.
Effects of Neurotransmitters
Wurtman has reported that people are more alert when their brains are producing the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine, while serotonin production in the brain has been associated with a more calming, anxiety -reducing effect (and even drowsiness in some people).
A stable brain serotonin level is associated with a positive mood state. It appears that women have a greater sensitivity than men to changes in this brain chemical. Mood swings during the menstrual cycle and menopause are thought to be caused by hormonal changes that influence the production of serotonin.
The two other important brain chemicals that appear to be influenced by foods, dopamine and norepinephrine, produce a feeling of alertness, an increased ability to concentrate, and faster reaction times.
There are two possible mechanisms for how this happens: (1) serotonin production is blocked by the consumption of protein-rich foods, resulting in increased alertness or concentration, or (2) levels of dopamine and norepinephrine are increased by the consumption of protein-rich foods.”
Ken Myers writes on May 29, 2014 in Coping. Wellness, coping, exercise, holistic health, self care, body image and stress relief.
– See more at: http://mindyourmind.ca/expression/blog/how-does-healthy-or-unhealthy-diet-contribute-or-affect-your-mental-health#sthash.ntSftS59.dpuf
How does a healthy or unhealthy diet contribute to or affect your mental health?
When many people think of healthy habits, they think of how it impacts their bodies. Fitness, exercise, proper eating and other aspects of health are usually visualized by a trim body in commercials.
However, proper health can also affect your mind. Although your muscles require certain activities and diets in order to remain trim, your brain needs just as much care if you want to remain alert and improve your mental prowess.
Some people may have difficulty realizing that their own way of thinking can be greatly affected by their diet. In fact, part of the reason why they have difficulty realizing this fact is because their current diet may not be supplying what is needed for improved rational thought.
Think about it for a moment. How much better do you feel emotionally when you eat healthier as opposed to processed foods or sugary snacks?
Your diet can be affecting everything from how you physically feel in the morning to your emotional status at the end of the day. By making a few simple changes in how you eat, you could vastly improve your personal outlook of life in general.
Don’t deprive your brain of what it needs to be efficient. It could affect your family relationships, career choices and relieve stress levels.
Brian Johnson writes on July/August 2012 @ https://experiencelife.com/article/mind-body-nutrition/
Mind-Body Nutrition
Nutritional psychologist Marc David explains why our mental and emotional responses to food matter far more than we realize.
Marc David, MA, is no ordinary diet guru. He’s the founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating in Boulder, Colo., a nutritional psychologist, and the author of two best-selling books: The Slow Down Diet (Healing Arts Press, 2005) and Nourishing Wisdom (Three Rivers Press, 1994).
Here are some notes from “Secrets of Mind Body Nutrition,” the en*theos course he taught on “nutritional psychology,” or why our thoughts and feelings about food are just as important as what we put in our mouths.
You’re going to enjoy your food a lot more after learning about his philosophy.
Food Without Fear
The field of mind-body nutrition explores food and digestion, but it also considers the thoughts and feelings we have while eating. Are you happy? Worried? In the big picture, are you satisfied with your life or hungering for more?
David recommends looking at all the factors that might affect how we eat, from breathing patterns to motivations. People may be motivated by fear to eat healthy foods, he explains.
But when we eat something because we’re afraid we’ll get sick or fat if we don’t eat it, what we’re really doing is feeding our fear. When fear is the motivation, fear will also be the end result. And who wants more of that?
Instead of fearing and judging what we put in our own mouths, David recommends we approach our food experimentally: “How does this taste? How does this make me feel?” This is an essential first step to healthier eating, he says, because it involves listening to your body and not some outside voice of questionable authority.
No Perfect Diet
Some people thrive on a vegetarian, raw-food diet. Other people feel incredible when they follow a Paleo program. David’s view is that, despite all the dietary dogma, there is no single eating approach that’s perfect for every person.
David instead advocates for a spectrum of nutritional perspectives, and a broad range of healthy foods. Age, gender, exercise level, personality, culture, upbringing, beliefs and even the weather all contribute to what makes the “perfect diet” at a given time.
He also identifies four types of diets that may be ideal at different times, depending on our situation and priorities of the moment (Maintenance, Therapeutic, Experimental, and Optimizing.)
Tips for Healthy Eating
David’s main take-home message is this: If you have a healthy relationship with your food, it will have a healthy relationship with you. Some of David’s best tips to keep in mind:
Relax. Make a point of calmly breathing before, during and after a meal. Oxygen acts like a nutrient in the body, and it’s as powerful as any digestive enzyme you can take.
Slow down. Give yourself more time to eat meals, and pay attention to your pace. If you normally take 15 minutes for lunch, take 30.
Regulate your rhythm.
Notice when you eat your biggest meals. Are you sluggish after a big breakfast but energized by a hearty lunch? Figure out a rhythm that works for you and adjust as needed.
Notice results. Digestion is a feedback system. Pay attention to how you feel after consuming particular foods and combinations. Do you feel sleepy? Foggy? Energized? Melancholic? Strong? Experiment with eliminating and adding different foods to see what produces the best results for you.
Prioritize pleasure. Enjoying and savoring our food activates the relaxation response and gives us maximum digestive power. So the more you consciously enjoy your meal, the better it is for you. The body is a powerful teacher, David reminds us. So slow down, taste your food, listen to your body and enjoy the eating process.”
Marc David writes @ http://psychologyofeating.com/nutrition-rhythm-metabolism/
NUTRITION, RHYTHM and METABOLISM
“One of the lesser understood but clinically useful nutrition strategies when it comes to weight, energy, mood and appetite regulation is the little known field of bio-circadian nutrition. Simply put,
Like all aspects of nutrition science, there’s a very elegant continuum of possibilities that exists from person to person. In other words, we’re all nutritionally different, so the only true hard and fast rules are the ones that apply to your unique nutritional experience.
I’d love to share with you some clinical, real world observations, along with some of the simple science behind eating rhythm. See if any of this might apply to you. Let’s say that you wake up in the morning and decide not to eat breakfast.
You figure “Well, I’m not hungry, I’ll just have some coffee, maybe a little bit of cereal or muffin or bagel. If I eat this meager amount of food until lunch I’ll be a good girl and lose weight.” But this really isn’t such a good strategy after all.
That’s because body temperature is naturally rising in the morning to prepare you for a metabolic resurgence.
In the absence of food, or in the absence of enough food, the body gets concerned. It says something like: “Hey, I thought I was preparing to raise metabolism with a morning meal. I thought my food source was abundant and dependable.
There’s nothing here. I must be shipwrecked on a desert island. Or maybe there’s a famine. Better slow down metabolism, store fat and don’t build any muscle because there are lean times ahead.”
This genetically programmed survival response is a brilliant mechanism for supporting the continuation of life in times of emergency.
When the brain senses trouble with the food supply, it does the most simple and impacting metabolic reprogramming to conserve energy – store fat and forget about building muscle. Just the opposite of what you’re trying to do by denying yourself food for weight loss.
Strangely enough, the chemicals that wreak the most havoc in our lives and prove to be the most toxic are often the ones we self-produce. That’s why the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world are busy behind the scenes perfecting home test kits so you can measure your own cortisol levels.
Of course, if you find that your cortisol level is too high, you can buy whatever drug they concoct to lower it. But you needn’t wait for the next magic bullet to improve metabolism and lower your weight.
No drug has ever worked for this purpose and none of them ever will. Just follow the inborn rhythms of the body and you’ll liberate yourself while putting the diet – pill pushers out of business forever.
These are but a few of the nutritional tricks you can experiment with to see if they work for you, your body, your weight, and your style of living. Experiment. Be curious. Be a scientist of your own body. Be willing to make a few mistakes, and have a few successes.”
IS THERE TRUTH IN THE OLDE ADAGE: “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT”?
The Phrase Finder writes @ http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/you-are-what-you-eat.html You are what you eat
Meaning–The notion that to be fit and healthy you need to eat good food.
Origin–This phrase has come to us via quite a tortuous route. Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, 1826:”Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.” [Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are].
In an essay titled Concerning Spiritualism and Materialism, 1863/4, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach wrote: “Der Mensch ist, was er ißt.” That translates into English as ‘man is what he eats’.
Neither Brillat-Savarin or Feuerbach meant their quotations to be taken literally. They were stating that that the food one eats has a bearing on what one’s state of mind and health.
The actual phrase didn’t emerge in English until some time later. In the 1920s and 30s, the nutritionist Victor Lindlahr, who was a strong believer in the idea that food controls health, developed the Catabolic Diet.
That view gained some adherents at the time and the earliest known printed example is from an advert for beef in a 1923 edition of the Bridgeport Telegraph, for ‘United Meet [sic] Markets’: “Ninety per cent of the diseases known to man are caused by cheap foodstuffs. You are what you eat.”
Mary Rogers writes @ http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/01/you-are-what-you-eat-the-mindbody-connection/ on 1/8/16:
YOU ARE WANT YOU EAT: THE MIND BODY CONNECTION
Did you know that every 35 days your skin renews itself? Or that your DNA renews itself every two months? Your liver takes approximately six weeks, your stomach lining about five days, your brain takes a year, your blood four months, and your bones literally build a whole new skeleton every three months.
Our bodies make these new cells from the food we consume. What you eat literally becomes you.
This idea intrigued me and I wondered, “Why wouldn’t food and nutrition impact my mental health—is my brain not made of living cells?!”
According to Gisela Telis in an article for The Washington Post titled “Can What You Eat Affect Your Mental Health? New Research Links Diet and the Mind,” it would seem I stumbled into an area that scientists have recently begun to investigate: whether food can have as powerful an impact on the mind as it does on the body.
Research exploring the link between diet and mental health “is a very new field; the first papers only came out a few years ago,” said Michael Berk, a professor of psychiatry at the Deakin University School of Medicine in Australia. “But the results are unusually consistent, and they show a link between diet quality and mental health.”
Cynthia Sass writes @http://cynthiasass.com/sass-yourself/sass-yourself-blog/item/116-why-you-really-are-what-you-eat.html:
WHY YOU REALLY ARE WHAT YOU EAT
The phrase, “you are what you eat” is literally true. Nutrients from the foods you eat provide the foundation of the structure, function, and integrity of every little cell in your body, from your skin and hair to your muscles, bones, digestive and immune systems.
You may not feel it, but you’re constantly repairing, healing and rebuilding your body. Here’s how it works, and why what you put on your plate is so very important:
Every cell in your body has a “shelf life” – a stomach cell lives about a day or two, a skin cell about a month, and a red blood cell about four months. So each and every day, your body is busy making new cells to replace those that have “expired.”
And how healthy those new cells are is directly determined by how well you have been eating. A diet filled with highly processed food that’s low on nutrients doesn’t give your body much to work with.
I always say it’s like constructing a house with cardboard and tape instead of bricks and mortar. But a clean, nutrient rich, whole foods eating plan can help you build cells that work better, and less susceptible to premature aging and disease.
On top of that “regeneration” you’re always repairing your existing cells. This includes recovering from the wear and tear of exercise, as well as every day life (stress, pollution, stubbing your toe, etc.)
Because your body is essentially one big miraculous 24/7 construction site, you can change the way you look and feel pretty quickly. That’s the power of nutrition. When you think about it, it’s just phenomenal!”
WOW! THAT IS A LOT OF INFORMATION TO DIGEST!!
DOES NUTRITION AFFECT ONE’S RHYTHM IN RELATION TO ONE’S HOMEOSTASIS?
Though new findings are just being discover, evidence and my personal insanity leads me to believe that such a relationship between Nutrition affecting one’s Rhythm of Homeostasis does exist.
With that said, if one wants to transcend the Law of Rhythm, one should consider using Nutrition as a tool. By keeping the body/brain in the Rhythm of Homeostasis, the ‘Art of Neutralization’ will be at one’s disposal.
As my journey continues, the next post in the continuing series Wellness—“TAKE 5” Game-Plan for Life/Sports will continue to focus on the vast, phenomenal world of Nutrition and its effects.
As winter turns to spring, the Jazz sounds of Baseball will start to fill the air. One of my categories on my Homepage is titled “Win a High School Title”. For this to occur, Fox-Feather will need to operate as George Feher, Executive Officer of the Nick Feher “TAKE 5” Foundation.
Last spring and summer was filled with twists, turns and unsettled business in my quest. I look forward to how my quest will unfold and to sharing it with my readers.
Remember to bookmark us @playinyourdreams.com and tell your friends about the ‘Insanity’ of Fox-Feather and his Friday Fixins.
Until our paths cross again, remember to PLAYIN YOUR DREAMS.
