Wellness Embodied Live is our free Weekly Facebook live series for people in isolation, or those who are keen to learn and improve their health.

Videos will be available to watch online on our Facebook page or on our Youtube channel 

This week, Practice Principal Suzanne Rath will share some insights from her recently completed training on Nutrition for musculoskeletal complaints- assisting you to improve your healing!

You can view it here on our youtube page!

We stock a large range of BioCeuticals products in our Cairns City Clinic, pop in to take a look, we can even set you up your very own account!

Here is the text if you would like to read about it 🙂

Hi everybody, Suzanne here the practice principal at Wellness Embodied. Today I’m going to talk to you about nutritional hacks and supplementation to assist your pain management journey and healing. Now disclaimer obviously, with any of these videos this is general advice. And we are not nutritionists, dietitians or naturopaths. However we do stock BioCeuticals as practitioner grade products, and we work in close conjunction with a lot of really great nutritionists and naturopaths and dietitians within Cairns and obviously as allied health professionals and the type of clinic that we run, we have a really keen interest in whole person health. Basically if you’re not healthy in your diet, in your activity levels and in your mindset, you can’t go on to achieve your goals as quickly as what we or you would like. And those goals include healing. So I’m going to talk you through a few common nutritional issues that we see in the clinic, and some of the most common supplements that we would tend to prescribe for people in here. We are of course happy to answer any questions, please feel free to post anything as you’re watching, and I’ll get back to you during the video or else after the fact. And this video will be available for sharing and with subtitles, it will go on to our blog post and it will be on YouTube in the next few days. So yeah, really keen to hear from you and hear your comments or suggestions. So first off, let’s start with the absolute darling of physios and anyone in musculoskeletal medicine, Magnesium. If you are an athlete, if you sweat because you live in the tropics, if you have an increased urine output, because of medications or kidney issue, if you take proton pump inhibitors, such as Nexium to manage gastric ulcers, there’s a number of reasons why you might be deficient in magnesium but the chances are you probably are. So this is one of the most common things we prescribe. This is the Ultra Muscleze Night by BioCeuticals. It’s a bit of a cult product because it can really help people with relaxation and sleep and muscle pain and spasming. And it’s got a really nice flavor, it’s a powder. But we do also have it in a known night format. We have it in a cream and we have it in a tablet format, which is also vegan. Depending on your needs, we would talk you through what will be best for you. Now, one of the things to know with magnesium or with any supplementation, is that you get what you pay for. So one of the common things that people tend to complain about with magnesium is a dicky stomach. I very rarely find people with issues with the BioCeuticals products. So, it’s really great for muscle cramps, but it’s also great for relieving some mild symptoms of anxiety and for improving your sleep, and an interesting fact that we’ve noted recently, we’re all in the process of doing the complete Concussion Management Accreditation to become a concussion management clinic and we already treat a lot of Post-concussion syndrome suffers and magnesium has a really protective effect against Post-concussion syndrome. So if you are somebody who has sustained a bang on the head recently, you may want to think about upping your magnesium pretty quickly. You can come in and talk to us. Some of these things we can’t sell over the counter and some of our magnesium we can sell over the counter. Some of that, you’ll just need to kind of check in with one of the physios, but we are around Monday to Friday.

Second thing I want to talk to you about is protein deficiency. So, protein guidelines from the government are within the range of about point eight grams per kilo to around two grams per kilo. Now the lower range of that is going to be based on you having a sedentary lifestyle, not exercising very much, not being under too much stress, and not requiring extra capacity to heal. Obviously, we’re a physiotherapist so that’s not the client base that we see. We want to encourage everybody to be physically active. So the guidelines for muscle repair, recovery, and building, are much more starting from the 1.4 grams per kilo of body weight up to the two plus, depending on what your goals are. Now, there are lots of people that use apps, to calculate the protein in every single meal. I mean, the majority of our clients aren’t necessarily that interested in that. But just thinking about, if something taking a bit longer to heal than what you normally would expect and are you training and training but you’re really tired, you’re not putting on muscle? Can you get away with that little protein in the guidelines? We also have to look at the effects of things like immobilization. So if you’ve just had a hip replacement, you’ve just fractured something, and or if you’ve had a big infection or a big illness what effect is that having on your protein stores? What the general guideline is, that if you have had,  say a sickness for about four days, restoration of normal protein levels in your system takes about three times that much. That might take you 12 days to get your normal protein levels back up. So really to give yourself the best shot of maximizing protein in your system and maximizing your healing and recovery you want to be aiming to have some protein with every single meal and this is why a lot of people tend to opt for protein shakes, and protein powders. We have two options on this, we’ve got the BioCeuticals products, which again BioCeuticals is a practitioner, great products, Really, really high quality products, and they have the IsoWhey and this is a particular weight management one. They do have a number of other products- there’s protein bars, so you can have a protein bar and, or you can snack on some nuts. You can have some tofu, but just being mindful of what you have with every meal. And then the second option that we have is through Arbonne. If you wanted a vegan protein powder or protein bars we have got a number of things in the Arbonne nutritional range. There’s meal replacement shakes, there’s protein powders, there’s all sorts of different bits and pieces and we can just order those or those for you at any time, you can give us a ring or drop into the clinic and have a chat to us about what you need.  Protein is broken down by chronic stress states, which a number of people are in right now or have been over the last couple of months, and post pregnancy, you need some more protein. If you’ve got chronic inflammation and autoimmune condition, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and type two diabetes, you might need to take on a little bit more protein. Now if you have a serious medical condition or an issue that might cause problems with absorbing protein definitely talk to your doctor or talking to someone about that.

The third thing I wanted to talk to you about, we can see protein are like, I guess the foundations. And as I mentioned, things not healing properly and just have a think about how much protein you’re getting in during the day? But now we’re going to talk about some of the other construction material in your body. If we talk about joints, and healthy joints have a little bit of space in between the bones, they’ve got synovial fluid, which is kind of like the lubricant. They’ve got, nice covering on the bones. The bones are nice and smooth. You’ve got your cartilages intact. That’s what a really nice healthy joint looks like. When we start to get over a certain age, it might be as low as 40 or 50 which is super low at the moment. If you start MRI-ing and X-raying, everyone will see little degenerative changes somewhere. So that might be some joint space narrowing. It might be like the sort of early signs of a little bit of arthritis, somebody that’s maybe smashed on the rugby field for a number of years, or even I was talking to a client about this yesterday, like physios, we spend a lot of time, doing joint mobilizations with our thumbs. So lots of physios develop some arthritis in this joint here. So most people will do some sort of chronic repetitive movement that’s a little bit hard on their body, even if you’re a runner. What we really want to do is to limit that joint space narrowing and obviously limit any of those signs of arthritis or degeneration, that might start to lead to pain in the long run. A really great supplement for that is ChondroPlex. Just going to tell you what’s so amazing about this. In Europe and some parts of the world, you might have heard of sulfur baths. People take baths in sulfur, for all kinds of joint pain. There have been studies on the positive effects of these baths and also on people actually drinking the sulfur. Now, that sounds disgusting and it’s probably not that feasible for people to go and have sulfur baths every single day. So there’s been a number of studies on different compounds containing sulfur, and different joints supplementation that can help your joints. The great thing about this, is it actually contains the three top things that have been studied. Let’s talk about glucosamine. Back 10 years ago, when I did my Sports Medicine Masters what we were hearing about glucosamine, was that you would take glucosamine for about six weeks. See if there’s a difference in your pain or your function, maybe it’s easier to climb the stairs after six weeks. And, if there is, great, keep taking it if there’s not don’t. The really interesting thing about a lot of the reviews that are coming out now, is that, they’re not necessarily finding as much of an effect on pain, but they’re finding a big impact on that lessening that joint space narrowing. So lessening those kind of degenerative arthritic changes and that’s really exciting as a long term thing. But I guess the thought is if you’re going to take the glucosamine, or any of those products, it’s maybe a bit of a long term investment in your body. So thinking about that, if you hammered your body out when you were younger, playing rugby or playing a contact sport, or you’re in a really physical job or you want to be able to keep playing sport for longer or avoid pain for longer or maybe delay a joint replacement and give your joints the best chance you can thinking about taking some glucosamine is a really good thing to do. Now glucosamine needs to have glucosamine sulfate, which is what is in this. Glucosamine hydrochloride just doesn’t really work as well, that’s one of the reasons why you want to bu  a more expensive product rather than potentially the cheapest product that you can buy because you really will see a difference in terms of quality. Now, the other thing that is in this that also decreased joint space loss is Chondroitin. Chondroitin, three out of four studies showed a significant decrease in cartilage loss after 12 to 24 months of taking chondroitin. And again, chondroitin sulfate, which is what is in this. Combining the glucosamine with the chondroitin, is really amazing. The other thing which is in this product is MSM, which is like a natural painkiller and again because it’s a bit of a longer term one you can just get MSM on its own, it’s actually really cheap. It’s probably like 20 dollars for a packet of the bioceuticals one that we sell just with the MSM and studies have shown that it inhibits some of your inflammatory cytokines, which are like little inflammatory mediators within your blood but it’s also been shown to help the effects of glucosamine and chondroitin. So when you get the supplement ChondroPlex, and you combine the three of those together, great. Again, an investment supplement, it’s one that we might discuss with you during your treatment, and see if that is something that might work for you.

The next supplement is vitamin D. I do have a BioCeuticals vitamin D spray, which I take at home. I want to talk to you about vitamin D. We live in the tropics, so we assume that we’re getting enough sunlight to get Vitamin D but there’s a number of studies that show that people just aren’t. Vitamin D can be compromised at a number of latitudes. So if you live in Edinburgh or anywhere a little bit higher than that you probably can never get enough vitamin D just from the sun, so you’re going to have to supplement. Whether you get your vitamin D from a supplement or from the sun, Vitamin D is actually an inerse vitamin until it enters your body. Which means it gets activated once it enters your body, and it’s fat soluble, so you need to take it with a meal. Even studies in Queensland, though, have shown vitamin D deficiency. So it is a really interesting one. Now, if you’re taking a calcium supplement with vitamin D, you’ve got to look at the level of vitamin D and often there’s just not enough. So there’s a baseline level that people might say, “oh, there’s around 400 in there.” That should be okay. The fact of the matter is for a lot of people it isn’t. It’s pretty easy to get a serum vitamin D blood test done. So that’s worthwhile. Generally, with our patients who aren’t pregnant and don’t have other health conditions and so on, it’s safe to supplement up to about 1000 without getting the serum for vitamin D levels checked, but it’s certainly worth getting them done. The other thing about getting a blood test checked and serum and vitamin D levels as an example is, you’ve got to be aware that the range of normal is very wide. So if you’re at the lower end of the normal range, you still may be a candidate for supplementation just to improve your general well being and improve healing and metabolism. Some studies on vitamin D have shown improved healing in rotator cuff tendons. Lower levels of vitamin D during pregnancy have been correlated with lower pelvic floor muscle strength after pregnancy and vitamin D deficiency is also associated with pain such as in conditions like Fibromyalgia, where you get multiple areas of muscle pain, so sort of achy muscles and so on. Certainly in an ideal world, getting those serum for vitamin D levels checked and putting you on a decent dose of vitamin D, and then just rechecking that serum vitamin D is the thing to do.

The next thing I want to talk about is fish oil. You need a high grade of fish oil. The Ultra Clean is an omega three complex, omega three being the anti-inflammatory complex. The other thing with the bioceuticals EPA’s and DHA fish oils, is that they have a high focus on sustainability and where they actually get it from. So fish oil is one, the higher quality the better, basically. This is in a capsule format. It’s not going to stink of fish and it’s anti inflammatory. It’s really great for mental health and it has been shown to lessen the loss of skeletal muscle mass because of illness or injury. It’s also been shown to increase muscle strength in response to exercise. Now, there are ways that if you are vegan or vegetarian, you can get your omega threes in things like flaxseed oil and chia seeds, and there are some algae derived supplements as well, which you can try, and all of those are really great. But in the case of pain, inflammation, even stress, maybe worth thinking about getting. I wanted to touch on curcumin or turmeric. We do have a supplement called Theracurmin. So first basic principles, spice, great. Any spice, great, for their anti-inflammatory properties and health properties. Obviously thinking about fresher spices and not things that have been sitting in your cupboard for the last 20 years in a bag. But if we look at turmeric, there’s a lot of things that affect the absorbency of turmeric. We do sell theracurmin, which is a BioCeuticals product that contains the active ingredient from turmeric and that can be useful in cases of acute and chronic pain, headache, neuralgia, and arthritis. There has been some studies of it. There’s a couple of caution notes with theracurmin, with high doses of curcumin, potentially, it’s not great to mix them with some pharmaceutical meds. So some other anti-inflammatories, but that’s definitely something we would discuss with you. A couple of other products which I brought in here for no particular reason, except they were the first things that came off the shelf, and they’re things that I recommend quite a lot. We have a product called Migraine Care, which is a Bioceuticals product, that was formulated by a neurologist. This is something that I have given with great success to some of my post concussion patients and some of my chronic headache sufferers. So just to go through some of the things that are in this, it’s got your magnesium and it’s got a thing called Coenzyme Q10, which is a really interesting supplement. People who have been on long term statins for cholesterol that can block the CoQ10 pathway in the body and maybe after a number of years of them taking the cholesterol medications, all of a sudden they start to develop muscle cramping. CoQ10 is a great supplement for assisting with that. Lots of other really great benefits too. And, so it’s got magnesium, it’s got your CoQ10 and it has got a number of B vitamins. B vitamins are really great for nerve function. Something which I recommend for energy support and neuro system function a lot of the time it’s like a B complex. Now, if you take a multivitamin already, that’s really great. A lot of the times the over the counter multivitamins, there’s so much stuff in it that there’s kind of just trace amounts of lots of things. But the good thing about taking a multivitamin over the counter, its you probably are getting some vitamin B’s. Vitamin B is particularly important if you are vegan. I say a lot about this because I’m vegan. I take a bioceuticals B 12 spray and I have taken a variation of this one before, which is their activated B complex. That one has a coenzyme Q10 as well. Think about those people with delayed nerve function, nerve pain and things like that, that might be something we would go into. Last but not least, is our zinc. Zinc is used at all of the stages of healing. So basically, if you get anything from a muscle tear, to a broken leg, to a big cut your body goes through a pretty standard series of steps to heal which leads into scarring and restrengthening of the tissue. To describe it in laypersons terms, it’s almost like at the start, a wrecking ball has to come in. So there’s always almost like you get that muscle sprain or tear and for that first kind of 24 to 48 hours, it’s like a wrecking ball, there’s actually more damage that happens around the tissue and then little things like phagocytes, and things like that come in and they sort of mop up all the damage and we start to get healing and we get that area remodeling of tissue and scar tissue formation and strengthening of that tissue. Zinc is needed at every one of those stages. So something to bear in mind, and it’s something through blood tests, you can look at things like your zinc and copper imbalances and zinc insufficiencies and things like that. But zinc can be achieved by supplementing or it can be achieved in a big way in your diet as well. That is one that I commonly talk to people about and I think that’s it for me, for the moment and like I said, this will go online, love to hear any of your questions or suggestions. I will be posting a series of blog posts on nutritional supplementation in the next coming few weeks and one of the things I’ve done during the partial lockdown, even though we have been open, is do a nourished and nimble course, which is basically a nutritional course for musculoskeletal practitioners. As I mentioned before, Clara, Alyza and I are doing the complete Concussion Management course right now and there’s really interesting modules on that around nutrition for brain healing, and specifically nutrition post concussion, which is not something that a lot of people specialise in. So it’s really nice to have that awareness of that. We use this as just some of the icing on the cake to help people to get better that bit quicker, Our complex cases. And people really want to go a bit further with that nutrition and dietary stuff, which I highly recommend. We do people we work with, and we refer to them all the time and kind of cross work in with them. So that’s really great. And great, thanks for watching everyone. Have a wonderful day.

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