Heidi Strickland-Clark

On Thursday  25 October my trusty Nordic Walkers undertook their first ‘Long Walk’ with me.

The route was a combination of two smaller routes I offer.

Our Route 25/10/12

It turned out to be 11.67 miles and about 3.25 hours.

We crossed paths and fields

Paths...

Fields...

Walked up roads and across meadows

Roads...

Meadows...

And finished still smiling!

Smiling!

To join in further walks (long or shorter) drop me an email to heidi@strickers.org.uk

I’ve just got back from another delightful walk. This is why I love it so…

1. I am not in an office doing this…
2. I get to see views like this, this and this each time I go out.

3. It can be social, where you can chat your way around with a walker pal or two.
4. It can be personal, where you walk on your own, with your own thoughts enjoying the surroundings.
5. You are outside…bliss!
6. It helps with back aches — one of my ladies has seen improvement in her back and hip pain since Nordic Walking regularly.
7. It helps with mood — another of my ladies has seen huge improvements in her mood by adopting a regular walking programme as part of her fitness schedule.
8. It doesn’t matter if you are very fit or new to exercise, all levels can be catered for.
9. It’s a movement we do naturally already, adding in the poles is an easy addition to enhance the exercise.
10. You get to see bits of your neighbourhood and environment you can’t get to by car, and it is beautiful. Wildlife is abundant, fellow dog walkers and horse riders are all very friendly and sociable, there is no ‘road rage’ when you’re walking!

If you’d like to join me on one of my walks please email me at heidistrickers@gmail.com and I’ll include you on the newsletter that gives you dates, times and locations. I do have a long walk coming up on Thursday 25 October starting at 09.30 for about a 3 hour walk if you’d like to join us for that!

In the space of two days I was asked by two different people why I promote butter and coconut oil. Both are saturated fats which, if you believe what you read in the printed press, GP surgeries and TV, is the food of the Devil and you will die a horrible death if you dare to even have them in your kitchen.

The hypothesis that permeates our media is that eating foods high in saturated fat will cause a rise in your cholesterol. This high cholesterol will eventually cause a blockage in your arteries and you are at a much higher risk of heart attack or stroke. This is not the case.

Cholesterol is a vital part of our make up. Without it in our cell walls we would be slug like and floppy! Our cells are making cholesterol all the time, so ask yourself why would you want to reduce a substance that the body makes naturally? Why does each cell churn out cholesterol almost constantly?

• For the structure of the cell membrane
• 25% of all the body’s cholesterol is used in the brain for function and memory.
• Nerve function
• Hormone production
• Sex hormone production (research in 2007 showed eating full fat dairy cured infertility in women and that the most fertile women were those eating high fat foods and dairy)
• Bile is made from cholesterol. Bile is essential for digesting and absorbing fats and fat-soluble vitamins. These vitamins are essential to life, they are A, D, E and K.
• The action of sunlight on the cholesterol in our unprotected skin makes vitamin D. A vital vitamin for the prevention of all manner of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, auto-immune disease, rickets, high blood pressure, poor immunity, chronic pain plus many more. (The scaremongering of the dangers of sun light is also causing huge health problems like the return of childhood rickets in London boroughs.)

Finally for now, consider why we would need to reduce a substance that we make naturally and also why is 95% of our bile recycled by the body rather than excreted? Because the main components of bile are cholesterol and the body doesn’t want to waste what it has spent a lot of energy producing — it’s that vital!

We need cholesterol. If your levels are low naturally or through medication you are going to be prone to:

• depression
• aggression
• memory loss
• poor immunity
• poor digestion

So why do some of us have higher levels than others?

Because cholesterol is the body’s natural healer. It is sent to a site of infection, inflammation, damage or disease and so people with higher levels are suffering with some other problem elsewhere. If your cholesterol level is high, it’s because something is wrong somewhere else in the body. Don’t shoot the messenger! Find the reason why cholesterol is being produced at a higher rate. Then address that!

One final point here on cholesterol. Our bodies make about 85% of the cholesterol we need. If we don’t consume enough we make more with raw materials (carbohydrates, proteins and fats) but if you ate a lot of cholesterol rich foods, the body would just produce less. We mustn’t forget how clever our bodies are! It has been shown in research that cholesterol from food will not effect the cholesterol in your blood.

So enjoy your butter, coconut oil, lard and goose fat. Guilt free. They are nature’s health foods!

If you want to try coconut oil for cooking, baking or roasting click through to http://fasttrack-fitcamp.co.uk/health-foods/

On Friday I had the pleasure of attending the last Ladies at 11 Conference in Surbiton. It was a small group of ladies in attendance but that didn’t mean the event was to be sniffed at. It was a fascinating day with many great speakers talking passionately about what they do and why.

Sarah Martin is the founder of Ladies at 11 and opened the meeting with how we can have it all. A good career, family life and a fun time. She spoke of how and why things get out of balance and got us to measure where we all were currently. I am having the time of my life at the moment and whilst the ‘social/fun’ part of my life was probably a bit lacking — I don’t feel deprived in this area as what I am doing is already giving me such a lot of satisfaction.

Jo James was next up. She runs Amber Life, a business set up to help women in business with all aspects of selling, getting results and getting passionate about what they are doing. She is one confident lady and you just felt that those people who employed her services got a great deal of mentoring and support as she had a robust and ‘can-do’ air about her. Her top tip for getting more sales in your business was just four words. Pick up the phone! I found this interesting as just recently I have been calling people rather than emailing them. I’d got to the point of resenting emails, the message never really gets across with email. So I call nearly all the time now. So much easier! It’s quicker, problems are resolved and a better customer relationship formed. It was how we used to communicate afterall!

Next up was Tamsin Fox-Davies from Constant Contact. Her presentation was slick and filled with facts and useful tips for enhancing your business. In our business when people ask us how to get in shape we say nutrition first and nutrition second. Tamsin had the marketing equivalent when her most important tip was to build your mailing list. So important was it that she said it many, many times!

Lunch was sarnie and skinny fries and yes, I got stuck in!

After lunch we had the real pleasure of hearing Siobhan Benita talk on how she decided to give up her career as a Senior Civil Servant and run as an Independent candidate for London Mayor against Boris and Ken. She was so authentic and self assured, she was a pleasure to listen to. One of her main values during the campaign was to ensure she never slated or canvassed negatively against the other candidates. At the end of the election independent surveys showed that she was the only candidate not to issue any negative or defamatory comments about the other candidates. Pretty unusual in this day and age.

Siobhan had to whizz off and Wendy Kerr took the stage to talk us through what is your time worth?. This was an interesting part of the day as it is a subject that has been covered several times in the business mentoring programme Vida and I are in with Paul Mort. It really makes you realise just how ‘expensive’ it is for you (as the business owner) to do the less productive but equally necessary jobs. Also realising what you are good at in your business and what you can (and should) delegate can be uncomfortable but welcoming! I have recently off-loaded a huge amount of work I no longer wanted to do for our business. The relief was huge!

Finally Lynne Parker from Funny Women came along and got us to think differently about our body language, listening and communication skills and how to free up your creative thought when it all gets a bit stuck!

I had a very enjoyable day, the speakers were varied and interesting and once again I came away with a to do list rather than a page of doodles!

Aliment Probiotic Complex

Pro-biotics. Just a load of bugs?
Do you buy those products that are advertised as containing ‘friendly bacteria’, that ‘help bloating’ and generally are touted as being a health food? Are they working? Are they worth it? The pro-biotic market is quite noisy. Just think about Yakult, Activia yoghurt, Actimel there is even a Galaxy pro-biotic drink product! Just what is it all about?

What are pro-biotics?
Pro-biotics are the friendly bacteria that we want to encourage to live in our digestive system. Pro-biotic means ‘pro-life’ so they are really useful. Their importance is constantly being researched and evaluated as more and more conditions are being discovered to be a cause of an imbalance of these bacteria.

Why do we need them?
I am sure you know that we are made up more of bacteria and bugs than we are of cells. Infact I heard at a conference just two weeks ago that we are 90% bugs! We are just a mere shell of cells by comparison! The relationship between the bugs (beneficial flora) and us is completely symbiotic. We need each other. These mini bugs live all over and in us and when the balance is disrupted we get ill and if we were ever completely sterilised from them, we would almost certainly not thrive.

The largest numbers of micro-flora live in our digestive system. This is where we need a lot of protection.

There are three main groups of flora:

1. Essential / Beneficial flora: these are the bugs we want to encourage as they are of the upmost importance to our health and will be the largest occupants in healthy people. These are the ones called ‘pro-biotic’.
2. Opportunist flora: this is another large group of 500 or so different microbes that are really regulated strictly by the beneficial flora group. If any one of these 500 or combinations of these 500 get out of control then we are likely to suffer in some way (dependant on the microbe). The types of conditions caused by an imbalance of the opportunistic flora are auto-immune diseases, digestive problems, susceptibility to allergies, atherosclerosis and heart disease to name a few.
3. Transitional flora: these are the ones we take in from food and the environment. In a healthy body they will pass through not causing us any harm. If we’re not balanced then they too can take hold and cause problems.

The essential bacteria are necessary for:

• providing a physical barrier between gut lining and the opportunistic flora and other invaders trying to get in.
• providing protective substances, like natural antibiotics, to dissolve the membranes of the bad bugs to render them useless.
• joining and working with the immune system for protection.
• keeping the digestive system neutralised. Many substances we consume become toxic in our bodies, they help to neutralise this.
• absorbing carcinogenic substances making them inactive.
• maintaining good digestion. Without a thick layer of healthy pro-biotic flora in our guts we will not be able to digest and absorb our food properly. This leads to problems like undigested foods being absorbed into the system causing inflammation, allergies, auto-immune reactions and toxic overload producing head aches, liver, kidney and blood problems.

Research into conditions like autism, dyspraxia, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, attention hyperactivity disorder, depression, eating disorders and schizophrenia have been shown to be linked to chronically damaged or inherited poor micro-flora.

You can see why they are so essential.

What damages our micro-flora?

• Anti-biotics
• Contraceptive pill
• Steroids
• Alcoholism
• Excessive and chronic stress
• Illness
• Processed food
• Poor maternal health (your gut health comes to you from your mother at birth)
• Caesarian section delivery
• Opportunistic bacteria…always ready to pounce!
• Very low calorie diets
• Medication
• Gluten

How can we repair it?

• Removing toxins
• Remove inflammatory, irritating foods
• Clean up the diet
• Eating fermented foods (live yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir)
• Supplementing with pre and pro-biotics
• Boosting when necessary (after antibiotic treatment)

Antibiotics are one of the biggest problems for gut health. If you have been on many courses of antibiotics over the years and never seem to be able to shift that cold, or clear the cough or are always getting ill, its because your beneficial gut flora has never had chance to regrow and your immune system is now quite compromised.

If you are taking antibiotics, take the course as prescribed but take a high strength pro-biotic supplement three times a day with food but NOT with the antibiotics. Continue to take the pro-biotics at a higher dose for a month after the medication has finished to give your flora a boost. Then resume to a normal level of supplementation.

How can we boost and maintain our gut flora?

• Remove or reduce the things that damage it!
• Eat small amounts of live yoghurt and/or fermented foods each day.
• Remove processed foods from our diet.
• Choose raw milk products.
• Avoid the processed ‘friendly bacteria’ products previously mentioned. Firstly the amount of bacteria they contain is minimal by comparison to a supplement and secondly they are wrapped into a processed product.

Do I need to supplement?
I think that with the types of lives we lead now supplementing with pro-biotics is a good insurance against future health problems. By consuming a clean diet, consuming a small amount of fermented foods each day, reducing the things that damage our micro flora and taking a pro-biotic supplement will set us up for good long term health and vitality.

If you are interested in knowing more about pro-biotics then watch this video with Dr Nigel Plummer, on his research with pro-biotics.  Dr Nigel Plummer talks about pro-biotics

Aliment products are available from FastTrack Fit Camp. Email info@fasttrack-fitcamp.co.uk for more information and pricing.