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The Secret Supplement to Kick Your Cold

12/4/2019

We all know the drudgery of the common cold. It saps your energy, and makes your face hurt in ways you didn’t know were possible! You feel sick and unproductive, but you always wonder if you’re sick enough to cut back on your daily obligations and stay home from work.

What if there was a way you could not only reduce the likelihood of getting a cold, but also a scientifically verified way to shorten it’s duration?

In the past, you may have come across the Mediterranean Diet while researching ways to eat healthier, and found that the World Health Organization recognizes it as a healthy and sustainable diet. One of the main ingredients of the Mediterranean Diet is olive oil, which is rich in polyphenols, particularly oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol. These polyphenols have antiviral, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties leading to a host of health benefits which can be encapsulated in nutrient dense Olive Leaf Extract (OLE).

OLE has been linked to a decrease in chronic diseases with benefits such as reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease, helping to manage blood sugar and Type 2 Diabetes, and is even protective against depression. But did you know it’s beneficial for immune health as well?

OLE has antiviral properties that stop viruses replicating and causing an infection. This boosts our ability to prevent or fight the common cold, the flu, respiratory infections, and other common viruses and disease-causing microbes.

A 2019 New Zealand study “The Effect of Olive Leaf Extract on Upper Respiratory Illness in High School Athletes: A Randomised Control Trial” studied high school athletes for 9 weeks during their competitive season. Thirty two students were randomly split between two groups. One group was given OLE (20 g of olive leaf, containing 100 mg oleuropein), the other group a placebo.

The results showed there was a 28% reduction in sick days in the group taking OLE which meant the students could get back to competing sooner. For you this means getting your energy back, and getting back to life as you know it much faster!

The Oleuropein found in Truehope OLE (Olive Leaf Extract) is a liquid extract made from fresh olive leaves, and is standardized to 17% Oleuropein. This concentration allows you to get all the benefits but at a greater concentration than you can get from olive oil.

The recommended dosage for Truehope OLE is one 500mg capsule twice a day.

Truehope BMD for Bone Health

11/27/2019

Our bones are in a continual process of being broken down and rebuilt, with calcium and other minerals moving in and out of them as this happens.

When we’re young, our body builds considerable bone mass because it’s building bone faster than it’s breaking it down. This continues until we’re about 30 when bone building and bone breakdown start happening at about the same rate. In older adults and especially in post-menopausal women however, bone is broken down at a faster rate than it is built. If intakes of calcium and other bone support nutrients are too low, the risk of bone density concerns increases.

The optimal way to achieve adequate calcium intake is through the diet. However, when dietary sources are scarce or not well tolerated, calcium supplementation is a good idea. We recommend Truehope BMD which provides the ideal mineral balance to support bone health.

Why Truehope BMD works Properly balanced and bioavailable, BMD goes well beyond simply assisting in the development and maintenance of strong bones and joints. Using our proprietary processing method called Apex Biosynthesis Chelation Technology, the optimally balanced minerals are micronized and then chelated (bound to organic molecules) over 4 days. This mimics the way plants absorb and provide to us their highly bioavailable nutrition. Ultimately, BMD is fast absorbing and ensures the right balance of minerals to the right areas of the body.

BMD contains:
- Calcium for bone strength
- Phosphorous to aid calcium in strengthening bones
- Magnesium to support vitamin D in the absorption of calcium
- Vitamin C for collagen production which aids in the repair and maintenance of bones
- Vitamin D3 to help with the absorption of calcium
- Vitamin K2 to ensure calcium goes to your bones and teeth (and nowhere you don’t need it)
- Zinc to help with bone mineralization
- Selenium for its antioxidant protection
- Copper to maintain the right ratio with zinc Boron to support joints

Using Truehope BMD while focusing on your nutrition and exercise, as well as managing risk factors, is a well rounded way to lower your risk of reduced bone density and conditions like osteoporosis.

Add These Foods to Your Grocery List To Boost Your Bone Density

11/20/2019

In Canada, almost 30,000 hip fractures happen every year, and the International Osteoporosis Foundation says that by the year 2030, that number is expected to quadruple. But fear not! There’s a lot you can do to reduce your risk of developing osteoporosis.

A good place to start is to consider the many ways you can prevent bone density loss, which includes integrating the right kind of exercise into your daily routine. Then you need to consider the specific foods that will give you the nutrients you need to support bone health.

The top 4 nutrients to focus on are calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, and vitamin K2, and there are easy ways to pick them up while you’re in the grocery store.

Calcium Calcium is the mineral that makes bones and teeth hard and strong. When calcium intake is too low, it is associated with lower bone mass and an increased risk of fractures, reduced bone density, and osteoporosis.

Add these foods to your grocery list to boost your calcium intake:
- Leafy greens like collard greens, kale, spinach, and bok-choy
- Full fat dairy for the most bioavailable sources of dairy-based calcium
- Nuts and seeds like almonds and sesame seeds
- Canned fish with bones such as sardines, mackerel and salmon Shellfish like scallops
- Ingredients like homemade bone broth

Vitamin D Vitamin D plays a crucial role in maintaining a mineralized skeleton. It helps you absorb calcium and phosphorus (another important bone building mineral), and maintain the right concentration of these nutrients within your bloodstream. Even if you have a calcium rich diet, being deficient in vitamin D means your body will not have the means to absorb it and use it. In fact, vitamin D deficiency is recognized as a key player in the increasing numbers of metabolic bone disease in the elderly.

Try these foods to boost your vitamin D intake:
- Fortified foods (not the ideal source and not to be relied upon)
- Fish eggs known as roe (although we don’t expect they’ll be on your everyday grocery list!)
- Exposure to sunlight without sunscreen. In the summer months, we recommend full body skin exposure (as much as you can bare!) to the sun for 10-15 minutes a day.
- Vitamin D supplementation during the winter is a necessity in Canada to avoid a deficiency.

Magnesium When we think about bone health we first think of calcium, but magnesium is right up there on the winners podium with it. Magnesium helps convert vitamin D into the active form that will aid in the absorption of calcium. It also preserves bone by pulling calcium out of the blood and soft tissues, and back into the bones.

Look for these foods in your grocery store to boost your magnesium intake:
- Pumpkin seeds
- Spinach
- Brown rice
- Tuna
- Almonds
- Avocado
- Dark chocolate

Vitamin K2 Vitamin K2 ensures calcium goes to where your body needs it (like your bones and teeth!) rather than causing problems like creating kidney stones, or building up in your blood vessels where it can contribute to heart disease. Just like with vitamin D, if you are consuming calcium without the supporting nutrient of vitamin K2, you cannot reap the benefits.

Experiment with these foods to boost your vitamin K2 intake:
- Dark chicken meat
- Liver: we find liverwurst or chicken liver pate to be the most palatable
- Fermented soy beans, known as natto
- Hard cheeses - especially Jarlsberg cheese from Norway
- Pasture raised eggs which have higher levels than factory farmed eggs
- Grassfed butter which has higher levels than regular butter Leafy greens

As you integrate these foods into your diet, try adding Truehope BMD, and of course a daily vitamin D supplement.

Remember that you can eat the most nutritious foods but if you’re not absorbing the nutrients, they can’t contribute to your health. Check our recent article Decrease Your Risk of Osteoporosis for clues on things that might contribute to malabsorption of those precious nutrients.

Exercise to Support Bone Health

11/13/2019

I know that if you don’t currently work out, it’s especially overwhelming to hear that exercise is a crucial part of building bone health and preventing osteoporosis.

We get that building an exercise habit can be HARD, often harder than the exercises themselves! So with that thought, keep an open mind about the what, and then we’ll get to the how to get into the routine of exercising.

You may never have thought of it this way, but bone is a living tissue just like muscle, and it responds to exercise by getting stronger. After the age of 30, it’s important for us to work at maintaining our bone mass with regular exercise, or risk seeing it decline. A side effect of this exercise is that it also builds muscle, and helps us practice coordination and balance which helps prevent falls and broken bones.

The best kind of exercise for your bones is weight-bearing exercise, the kind that forces you to work against gravity. Consider trying jogging, playing tennis, badminton or squash, climbing stairs, dancing, or jumping rope.

Did you notice that there’s no need to step into a gym to do any of these?

Resistance exercise is incredibly effective too. You can try lifting weights or using weight machines, using resistance bands (a great option for home), and doing bodyweight exercises like squats, lunges and push-ups. Even carrying your bags of groceries from the car to your kitchen is considered a resistance exercise.

If you’re already at a risk of fracture, or are concerned about falling, you can try low impact exercises like the step machine and elliptical machine at the gym, low-impact aerobics, or simply going for a walk or a hike.

Try and get out there and exercise at least 3 times a week, but don’t sit around and wait for motivation. Motivation isn’t always there when you need it, and is more likely to come after you take the first step and do something. So before you have a chance to talk yourself out of it:

- Put it in your calendar.
- Recruit a friend to do it with you.
- Sign up and pay for classes ahead of time.
- Put your workout clothes out the night before.
- Promise yourself you’ll go to the gym and just do 5 minutes. If you want to stop after 5 minutes you can.
- Pay a trainer to meet with you regularly to safely lead you through effective exercises. - Join a class and tell everyone your goal, and keep each other accountable.
- Tell everyone you know of your workout plans and ask them to encourage you when you waiver.
- If you don’t feel like it, just do it anyway and see how you feel once you’ve started. - - - Choose exercise you ENJOY!

Exercise has a huge impact on your bone health, and it packs a punch when it comes to many other variables of health too. If you want to add something to your routine that’s super efficient, then make it exercise. Your bones, muscles, heart, mental health, detoxification systems, digestive system, endocrine system, metabolism, neurological health, stress levels, sleep, pain levels and sex life will all thank you!

Author

We want to provide nothing but the highest quality information and advice for our followers to improve their health, which is why at Truehope Canada, we're happy to say our writer is a Certified Life Coach and Registered Holistic Nutritionist.
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