Fit, Fun and Fabulous: At Any Age
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About this ebook
Age. By the time you complete the steps outlined in this 12-week rejuvenation
program, you will be well on your way to enjoying a healthier, more vibrant life.
Learn why you have stubborn weight gain in your stomach, hips and thighs, why
you or your loved ones suffer with high blood pressure, high cholesterol or
osteoporosis, and how these conditions are related to accelerated aging.
More importantly, learn how to stop and even reverse the accelerated aging
process that can rob you of your longevity and vitality. Following the Fit, Fun
and Fabulous lifestyle approach will bring you in line with the same lifestyle
approaches supported by the:
National Institute Health Arthritis Foundation
American Heart Association American Cancer Society
American Diabetes Association
Your health is now in your hands with this all-inclusive program. Reclaim your
biological youth, vibrant health and robust energy for a lifetime!
Dr. Kathleen A. Hartford
For more than two decades, Dr. Kathleen A. Hartford has treated and nurtured thousands of individuals through her integrated wellness approaches. As patients reclaim their health, she coaches them on how to maintain their youthful vitality with practical guidance on nutrition, exercise and stress management. She is the author of Fit, Fun & Fabulous at Any Age which, along with its companion journal and cookbook, creates a lifestyle approach that reverses the biomarkers of aging. This program will jumpstart anyone on their road to health and vitality. Her on line Key to Vital Living, Healthy Aging and Weight Loss Program has been embraced by patients across the U.S., Canada, and as far away as South Africa. Dr. Hartford, the president and founder of Health Pyramid Longevity and Vitality Center in the Pittsburgh suburb of Natrona Heights, Pennsylvania, is also the founder of the philanthropically based Sister Support organization, which is dedicated to improving the lives of women through education, self-knowledge and sharing. Dr. Hartfords practice is based on balancing the five aspects of health: emotional, neurological, bio-chemical, bio-energetic and spiritual. She has been an integrated healthcare practitioner since graduating from Sherman College of Straight Chiropractic in 1986. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1978. With an international audience, Dr. Hartford enjoys hosting the online Key to Vital Living Radio Show & Podcasts, and is the author of the book Ramblings of a Mad Woman. Dr. Hartford speaks all over the world to promote understanding among the healing disciplines and to help individuals reclaim their health in a powerful way. She has logged thousands of postgraduate hours studying Chinese Medicine, Functional Nutrition, and Neurological Repatterning, and tens of thousands of hours applying this knowledge to enhance her patients lives. She has received numerous certifications in these techniques, including a Healthy Aging, Actual Age Certification.
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Fit, Fun and Fabulous - Dr. Kathleen A. Hartford
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
NEW BEGINNINGS
Chapter 2
BIOLOGICAL AGE VERSUS
CHRONOLOGICAL AGE
Chapter 3
HEALTHY EATING AND EATING FREQUENCY
Chapter 4
THE PERILS OF METABOLIC SYNDROME
Chapter 5
LIFE IS MOTION
Chapter 6
EXERCISE: THE ELIXIR OF YOUTHFUL VITALITY
Chapter 7
STRESS AND ITS EFFECTS
Chapter 8
HORMONE BALANCING
Chapter 9
BODY SHAPES
Chapter 10
TARGETED NUTRIENT SUPPORT
APPENDIX
A FINAL WORD FROM THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
To Khalehla, my daughter and my smile.
You are perfect and beautiful in every way.
To my husband, Dr. William F. Donaldson III,
for your continuous love and support and your amazing ability
to make me laugh every day.
To my grandmother, Concetta, who implored me at age 19
to help my parents understand the importance of nutrition.
Grandma, this book is a testament to my love for you—and don’t worry, Mom and Dad are just fine.
To my parents and my brothers for loving me unconditionally.
Perhaps my most endearing moment was when my father acknowledged that all of the non-conventional things concerning health that he has heard me say over the years, he’s now heard about on the evening news … or better yet, read about in the Wall Street Journal.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my professional mentors, who have always worked outside the box to create new realms of possibilities in the healthcare arena:
Dr. Verne Pierce, my father in structural chiropractic, for the most effective analysis through motion picture X-ray and the most freeing adjusting technique for the spine, dura and nervous system that I have yet to find. Correct the subluxations and the compensations will take care of themselves!
Dr. Victor Frank, my father in healing, who continuously proved that the Power that made the body can heal the body.
Create balance and all else will follow. He took healing out of cadaver physiology into functional physiology to create miracles for all he touched and all he taught.
Dr. Scott Walker, who had the vision to create Neuro-Emotional Technique. NET works with laser focus on the origins of so many of our mind patterns and limited belief structures that create pain, suffering and paralysis in our lives. It is a must for anyone wanting to integrate body, mind and spirit in a compassionate and enlightened way.
Dr. Guy Riekeman, President of Life University is perhaps the most eloquent orator of vitalism in the world today. Dr. Riekeman has lived his life ‘on purpose’ while maintaining the integrity of Chiropractic as a Philosophy, Science and an Art. While the philosophy is always an ideal and the living is always flawed, it is in the striving toward the ideal that creates vision, power and inspiration.
As humans we are flawed but it is in striving toward the ideal that we can create our best lives while reaching and maintaining our optimum genetic expression of health. Keep Dr. Riekeman’s words in mind as you begin your journey toward wellness.
Dr. Jeffrey Bland, whose work I admire and utilize in my practice, as well as in my Fit, Fun and Fabulous program; he is a renowned biochemist and leader in the fields of functional medicine, nutritional medicine and systems biology. He continues to take functional nutrition to levels never before seen—creating healing systems that, if incorporated, will alter the course of healthcare. I deeply believe that failing to incorporate his techniques and protocols into medicine is negligence.
Special thanks to all of my patients, most of whom have been with me for years. I appreciate your continued commitment and dedication to maintaining the highest level of health possible for yourselves and your families.
To my staff and, in particular, Melody—for all you do and especially for our companion Fit, Fun and Fabulous Cookbook.
Finally, special thanks to Gina Mazza, Linda Martin, Holly Wensel at NPS, and Martha Wasik for creating the beautiful words, images and designs that comprise this book.
INTRODUCTION
Congratulations! You have made a commitment to experiencing this Biological Rejuvenation Program, and this means that you now hold in your hands the key to remaining Fit, Fun and Fabulous at any age. My personal promise to you is that by the time you complete the steps outlined in this book, you will be well on your way to enjoying a more vibrant and healthy life. You will feel better, look younger, be more relaxed and have increased energy to do all the things that are important to you in life.
We’ll cover exciting and important subject matter in this lifestyle program, with an emphasis on what makes you sick, what makes your body age and how you can, in fact, decelerate that aging process. How is this possible? The steps for doing so are based around 12 Biomarkers of Aging that have been identified by scientists at Tufts University. The very exciting news is that all 12 of these indicators can be positively influenced by three basic areas that are in your control: nutrition, exercise and quality rest.
Briefly, the 12 biomarkers are:
1. Body cell mass (the lean muscle composition of your body)
2. Strength (your musculoskeletal fitness)
3. Basal metabolic rate
4. Body fat composition
5. Body fat distribution
6. Aerobic capacity
7. Blood sugar tolerance
8. Level of cholesterol / HDL ratio
9. Blood pressure
10. Internal temperature regulation
11. Bone mineral density
12. Resting heart rate
This Biological Rejuvenation Program includes an in-depth look at each of the biomarkers and how working with them can halt or reverse the accelerated aging process. I invite you to review the individual biomarkers in the appendix of this book. There is a bit more technical information there, some of which is covered in the body of this text and some that is not. My purpose is to outline a health-enhancing lifestyle to stop the accelerated aging process, which occurs as these biomarkers shift. If you’re interested in losing weight, following this program will absolutely achieve that for you but this program will also reframe things for you. You will discover that, instead of losing weight in order to become healthy, the weight loss occurs naturally after good health is achieved. Healthy people do not maintain excessive fat deposits in their bodies—only unhealthy bodies created by unhealthy lifestyle choices do.
Here is a quick rundown of the lifestyle topics that comprise this Biological Rejuvenation Program:
• Biological versus chronological age, and the importance of having a biological age assessment
• Healthy eating habits and the importance of eating frequently to stabilize blood sugar
• Syndrome X (better known as metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance) and determining if you or your children might have this and therefore be at risk of becoming a type 2 diabetic
• The body in motion and the biomechanical realities of bone and joint health
• The importance of exercise and which types of exercises are vital to reverse the biomarkers of aging
• Good stress versus bad stress and the emotional, biochemical and energetic effects of both types of stress
• Relaxation and the need for downtime, along with various types of relaxation techniques
• Hormone balancing for both women and men
• Body shapes, including where you hold your weight and what this fat distribution means in terms of stress on the organs and body systems
• Targeted supplementation with vitamins and nutrients—how to determine what is good, what is necessary, which nutrients should be taken together or apart, and why some should be taken with food and others on an empty stomach, as they relate to this program
Finally, we will finish the program with a summary of your biological age assessment to show that you can be biologically younger this year than last. We want to be able to chart your progress, and the biological age indicators will help us do just that.
So, get ready! It’s going to be a revolutionary time. If you follow these lifestyle changes, you can become biologically younger within just weeks, but you shouldn’t stop there. You can maintain your biological youth and vitality for a lifetime. Enjoy the journey to better health and a more vibrant you!
Chapter 1
NEW BEGINNINGS
The Biological Rejuvenation Program that you are about to undertake will change the biological aspect of your body called functional physiology.
My experience with patients has shown me that changing your biology can create a shift in your entire life—physically, spiritually and emotionally.
You are not a compartmentalized machine; you are a whole being whose parts are interrelated and adapting to each other every second of every day. When you think a thought, you change your body’s chemistry via neuropeptides, which give information to your cells, tissues and organs. We have all experienced a difference in our physical bodies when the information we tell ourselves is I feel happy, fit and accomplished
versus I feel sad, sluggish and undervalued.
Everything you say, eat, do or are is received as information in your body. Your body responds to the information it is given, and that data comes in the forms of: the food you eat, the thoughts you think, the water you drink, the exercise you choose to participate in, and more. Knowing this is dynamic and exciting, because it puts the power of your life experiences—physically, spiritually and emotionally—directly in your hands!
Given the fact that our human bodies operate in a holistic manner, I recommend that everyone consider a whole-body approach to their health and wellness routines, which often times falls outside the realm of traditional medicine. By its very nature, traditional medicine must be practiced in a compartmentalized way due to the depth of knowledge required to treat a disease or address a surgical condition. Case in point: you would not want your surgeon to assume the duties of your primary care physician, pharmacist, internist and anesthesiologist on the day of surgery. You would want each of these physicians available to focus on his/her own area of specialization, and to do it extremely well. If they lost focus, you could die.
Unfortunately, when it comes to maintaining health and wellness, I’m afraid this compartmentalized approach does not work. Chronic disease rates are sharply rising and the latest published study from Health Affairs revealed that the United States now ranks 49th for male and female life expectancy worldwide. This is down dramatically from 5th place in the 1950s. The chronic diseases that are killing us include diabetes, heart disease, obesity and cancer. They are rampant in our country and in many parts of our world. The purpose of this book is to educate you on the factors that cause and contribute to these chronic diseases and to return the power of health to your hands.
True health care is integrated wellness care that must be utilized in the hands of those best trained to do so. Traditional medicine is effective when dealing with emergency treatment, but I believe that the arena of total healthcare would be greatly enriched by merging traditional methods with those of the holistic practitioner. My vision for the future is traditional and natural healthcare practitioners working hand in hand to support their patients’ whole health needs by focusing on and acknowledging each other’s respective areas of competency. Throughout this book I will stress the differences between the traditional primary care provider and a natural healthcare provider. A natural or holistic physician sees your body as more than the sum of your parts and specializes in balancing those parts, to maintain normal healthy function. Natural health practitioners are interested in the prevention and reversal of dis-ease, whether for health maintenance, reversing a dis-ease process, preparing you for a necessary surgery or supporting your healing process post-surgically. The dash in dis-ease
is an important distinction between these two types of health practitioners. Integrative natural health practitioners identify where the body has lost its ease of healthy function and entered a state of lack of ease of function
or dis-ease.
Medical doctors are trained to detect the disease state where the body no longer is able to perform appropriate function. Remember, the disease process occurs over time, beginning first with dis-ease. If we can distinguish it