Reason 101 New Year’s Resolutions Must Be Permanent

ARE YOU STILL ON TRACK WITH YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS OR HAVE YOU FALLEN OFF THE WAGON… LEFT THE RESERVATION… AND CRAWLED INTO THE NEAREST CANYON? 
We are now 26 days into the new year and, if you’re like most everyone else, you’ve probably already cheated on your #NewYear’sresolutions… and maybe even given up on them altogether. Based on recent research, I’m going to share the physical and mental health impact of giving up on your New Year’s resolutions and how you can turn those nasty resolutions into permanent lifestyle modifications that you can live with.

 👉Key Points in this Episode
 🎆02:40    Funny Story about Body Hair
 🎆04:15    Overeating carbohydrates
 🎆06:38    Negative impact of air pollution on our brains
 🎆09:18    Nitrates increase risks for Alzheimers, brain fog, memory loss
 🎆11:58    If drinking Alcohol leaves you red faced, it might also be increasing your          risk for Heart Disease and Cancer.
 🎆12:53   Another case for drinking lots of water daily

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🧬Find more information about genetics, epigenetics and how they impact your overall health and performance🧬 in Dr Brian's FREE Master Class on Gene Hacking https://drbriangbrown.com/genehack/bootcamp

Transcript

ITZ_EP104_NewYearsResolutions

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

new year's resolutions, nitrates, genes, people, drink, processed meats, study, researchers, water, brain, eating, body, stay, detoxification, improving, gridlock, air pollution, lead, simple carbohydrates, diet

 Dr Brian G Brown  00:55

The mission is simple: to help high achievers naturally eliminate emotional and physical obstacles, so they can optimize their life for higher achievement. 

Welcome. You just entered the Genesis zone. Good day, and welcome to the Genesis zone show. This is Dr. Brian Brown. Thank you for taking time out of your busy Thursday to join us today. I know you've got a million other places you could be in a million other things you could be doing and you're here. Thank you for that. 

I have an important question for you. Are you still on track with your New Year's resolutions? Or have you fallen off the wagon left the proverbial reservation and literally crawled into the nearest Canyon? Well, according to Forbes health, 29% of people feel strong pressure to set new year's resolutions in the first place. 

60 to 62% of people place equal importance on improving both mental and physical health at the same time. 

In fact, about 45% of people feel mental health was their number one priority for the New Year this year, 

beating out fitness which was 39% 

of weight loss, which was 37% 

and improving diet, which was 33%. 

Amazingly enough. 77% of people rely on themselves only for the accountability necessary to follow through with their New Year's resolutions, 

and 81% of people feel competent and reaching their goals. 

But let's look at the hard facts. 

Only 11% of people will keep their New Year's resolutions for six months, 

and only 14% of people will keep their New Year's resolutions for three months. 

And worse yet, only 19% of people keep their New Year's resolutions for one month. 

So, the bottom line is this. If you're like most everyone else out there, as soon as the ball drops at midnight on New Year's Eve, and the last piece of confetti hits the ground, so does your willpower to follow through on your New Year's resolutions. 

At almost four weeks into this new year, you're probably already cheating. You've cheated on your New Year's resolutions that you set back before the New Year, and maybe even given up on them all together. 

Physical and Mental health impact of giving up

Well, based on recent research, I'm going to share the physical and mental health impact of giving up on your New Year's resolutions, and how you can turn those nasty resolutions into permanent lifestyle modifications that you can not only love but you can live with.

So, here's a funny study that I ran across while I was preparing for today's show. And I thought it'd be a good icebreaker. In a recent study, researchers found that every single human on living on planet Earth right now, still has the genes for body hair. And I'm not talking just regular body hair, I mean the Chewbacca style body hair that our cave dwelling ancestors used to have. 

These researchers were specialists in the field of what we call evolutionary genetics. And they looked at more than 19,000 genes and 350,000 regulatory pathways that control the body's ability to make keratin, which is the protein that hair nails and our outer skin layer is made of. They found that about 20,000 of these genes carry the instructional code for making that protein keratin. But over time, these genes have epigenetically kind of hit the dimmer switch, they dialed it down and they barely express at all

And a couple of side notes that I want to bring out personally just from clinical experience and other reading. But that were not brought out in the study that I think apply to new year's resolutions is this. ---Number one- people who live in colder climates tend to dial up their expression of these genes and grow more body hair, which helps insulate the body from colder weather. So if you live in a colder climate, naturally, you're probably going to have a little bit more body hair than most people. 

Number two- And this is related to New Year's resolutions, overeating carbohydrates, especially in a binge eating style with friends on the weekend or at the holidays, or while you're on vacation, can and often does lead to hormone imbalances that can not only make your periods irregular, if you're a female, but it can lead to facial hair growth. 

One of the number one complaints I get after the holidays and clients that are treating in my functional medicine practice is my home, my hormones are out of whack. All of a sudden, I've got facial hair that I didn't have, we review the diet, what's the diet been like over the past 30, 45 days, and invariably, they've gone off the reservation and crawled into the canyon. And then they need to get back on the wagon and get back on track. 

That's the answer. It's not a change in a hormone or a medication or this, that and the other, it's just getting back on track. Again, regardless of your ancestral genetics and the dumbing down effect of the expression of your genes. These genes can be dolled up to an annoying level in some particular instances, as I just described. 

And by the way, if example number two about the binge eating has been a problem for you in the past, then all you have to do is get the insulin resistance under control by significantly limiting simple carbohydrates. And that will regulate your genetic expression that controls those hormone levels.

Air Pollution Impact

Now, next, let's talk about how the air that we breathe can negatively impact us. Now, as far as a New Year's resolution goes. This is not one that people normally set, but I want you to think about some things because this is a really important study that popped up, that just came out. 

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria discovered that:

just two hours of exposure to traffic related air pollution, more specifically diesel exhaust or diesel fumes, severely limits what we call the default mode network or the DSM in network or area of the brain. 

Now, we've known for years that this area of the brain specifically as it relates to air pollution impacts and has led to cases of significant depression. But these researchers found in this particular study, that the same air pollution also leads to impairment and internal thinking processes, and memory recall centers of the brain. In other words, air pollution likely changes the genetic expression of the DMN within the brain, which leads to brain fog and poor short-term memory and recall. 

Even though things like air pollution are largely beyond our control, for those who live in the city, it does bring up some important questions about where we choose to live. In other words, how close of a proximity are you to the nearest interstate or freeway, okay, and how often we choose to get away from the highway and interstate areas where we can get exposure to fresh air. 

It also gives us pause for those times when we're stuck and gridlock traffic, and allowing ourselves to get out of that gridlock, take the scenic route to wherever we're going. And literally get away from that stagnant air that's in that gridlock area is hugely important. I wanted to throw this in there, just from the standpoint of if it's not on your radar screen and you live in the city, put it on your radar screen. Because getting stuck in heavy traffic and I know some metro areas, you just can't help it. Even on side roads, it's bad. But maybe on side roads are getting less exposure to those diesel fumes than what you would be sitting in gridlock on an interstate. And that's why I threw this in there is to get your wheels turning in the correct direction. But to also let you know that there are major changes in the brain that occur was something as simple as breathing the wrong air. Does that mean we need to carry your air purifiers in our car? You know,

 Dr Brian G Brown  09:42

I don't know if that's feasible. At the studies would have to be done to see if that can be done. See if that would improve things. I'm not sure. I do know that you can control where you are in proximity to those things and you can change your proximity. That is the simplest, easiest thing to do. 

Again, we're talking about New Year's resolutions that we want to make our lifestyle. Therefore, we want to keep it as easy as possible because we're more likely to follow through. So just change your proximity. 

A recent study showed that in this next thing that we're going to look at, that people who eat processed foods rich in a specific chemical called nitrates are at an 18% greater risk for developing type two diabetes. 

Now, a similar study, years prior also found that people who expose themselves to high levels of nitrates in their diet from these processed meats also had high risk for diabetes like the current study, but they also had higher risk for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases. 

Now, the mechanism of action by which this happens, was not discussed in either of these studies. This was simply they were both observational studies. So, I'll propose this. We've known for years that nitrates cause inflammatory responses in the body. 

But we also have to consider that these nitrates may be genetically modifying our cells and our organs at an antigen at a genetic level in the immune system and the inflammatory system and in the detoxification pathways the detoxification system. So, we have to consider these possibilities because when, with our current knowledge that nitrates cause inflammation, 

we definitely have to consider detoxification and immune function as well. So, what foods contain nitrates? Well, the simple answer is that they are processed foods that contain the dangerous nitrates, especially processed meats such as ham, bacon, deli meat and hotdogs. Okay. 

Well, there are some natural sources of nitrates that come from Mother Nature, which help us form a health benefiting substance in our body called nitric oxide, not to be confused with laughing gas or nitrous oxide. This is nitric oxide, very beneficial for our cardiovascular system, our brain, our immune system, decreasing inflammation, improving detoxification, everything nitric oxide is really important. And these foods that are beneficial and have the beneficial natural nitrates are spinach, bok choy, lettuce and carrots and these this lettuce of all kinds. 

So, I would tell you nutritionally, just as a side note, stay away from Iceberg lettuce, eat other things like butter lettuce, those other nicer lettuces that have a lot of flavor a lot of color to them. Stick with those. And then lastly, researchers have discovered that the genetic variant that causes your face to get flushed when you drink alcohol is the same genetic variant that increases your risk for heart disease. By Guess what? 48%!!! Yeah, you heard that, right. 

If you get flushed face when you drink any kind of alcohol, whether it be wine or hard liquor, beer, it doesn't matter. If you drink alcohol and you get a flushed face, guess what, you're at 48% increased risk for heart disease. It's the same genes involved there. 

Similarly, the study also found that you have an almost exact increase risk for cancer long term. Okay, so what do we do with this information? 

Well, number one: if we're on a lifestyle plan, something that's not a New Year's resolution, that we need to be really conscious about what we're putting in our mouth. And it can be simple steps. Okay? Stay away from simple carbs, only complex carbs, like sweet potatoes and things like that. 

Stay away from the simple carbs stay away from processed food. Stay away from alcohol. And I know that alcohol for some people socially is a big part of their life. But there are non-alcoholic options available now. And a lot of bars and restaurants and things are offering these options. You need to take advantage of those. 

However, I recommend stick with water. Why? Most people walk around dehydrated, and when you drink alcohol, you're dehydrating yourself even further, which makes everything worse for every part of your body from an organ system function all the way down to the cellular level all the way down to the genetic level. 

So just drink water, drink tons of water. I drink anywhere from three to four and a half liters of water a day and my body craves it you might be one of those people says I don't like water. If there's one thing you can do for yourself this year, making your New Year's resolution, make it your lifestyle commitment to learn to drink water. And once you get into the habit of drinking water, and I hate to say it force yourself to drink water, you will overcome that. That thirst drive that has been cut off. 

And the reason you don't like water is because your thirst center, your thirst drive and your brain has literally been cut off because your brain doesn't want to torture you with I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty. So, it will cut off the thirst drive, and you just won't crave water. But once you start drinking water, your brain gets the signals like oh, this is really good. And you will actually start craving water. 

For some people, that's two or three days, for some, two or three weeks, some people's two or three months. But stick with it and make yourself drink water and you will gradually see your water intake increase to a normal level. I always tell people listen to your body. 

There are some times in the winter where I'm not quite as active. On those days, I work out every morning for hour and a half. But there are some days that during the day, I'm less active. And I may drink closer to two and a half to three liters of water that day. And that's okay, listen to your body, your body will tell you if you have that thirst drive restored, and that's key. So, there's one thing you can do cut out simple carbohydrates. Number one, and 

Number two, learn to drink water. 

That's all I'm going to give you really and truly other than changing your proximity to bad air. You know if you live in an area like that, but that doesn't really impact everybody in the listening audience. It does impact some. But there's one kind of geographical thing that you can do if it applies to you. And there are two definite things that apply to everybody stopped drinking as much alcohol, drink more water and cut out simple carbohydrates from your diet, you will drastically improve your health you will drastically decreased your risk for type two diabetes and, and cancer and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease. 

These things will help you with longevity. 

And if there's a third thing, a fourth thing I could add there. Stay away from processed meats. I mean, processed meats are not good for anybody. If you're if you're eating animal protein, make sure it's organic, free range. It's good for you. It's better, much better for you than eating processed meats. Just stay away from processed meats. In fact, stay away from all processed foods. That's the advice I give you. 

I don't have anything particular for you today to ask of you, other than if you like the show, please go on your favorite podcast app like us, give us a star rating give us a guess. Give us some feedback there a review. And if you really like it, share this podcast, the show with your friends. We would love to love to have them here and you'd love to support them over time. Most informed and most trusted and most grateful you spent this time with us today. Until next time, this is Dr. Brian Brown. Stay in the zone