In part 2 of this three-part series I covered some of the most important blood panel numbers you should focus on if you want to have a true understanding of your overall health. I also explained how looking at cholesterol numbers, in the absence of other metrics and how they compare relative to each other, does not provide a clear enough picture of your overall health. Looking at your key health indicators in this way does your health a tremendous disservice and may send you down an unnecessary path of medications and side effects which are totally preventable by making some basic changes with the foods you eat and your daily physical activity.

To recap, the blood panel markers you should be focused on improving, as a whole, are:

• Fasting Blood Glucose

• hs-CRP (C-Reactive Protein)

• Triglyceride-to-HDL Ratio

• LDL Particle Size (particularly Small LDL-P)

You can take Total Cholesterol into account as well, but once again this can be misleading unless you are looking at particle count and the other markers as well. Equally important is body fat percentage. Carrying excess body fat around your organs (i.e. visceral fat), being overweight or obesity can also increase your risk of developing health issues. As a guide, reference the American College of Sports Medicine’s body fat percentage norms here to give yourself an idea if you need to improve it. All this taken together will provide the clearest picture of your health. If several of these factors are out of their optimal range, you’re inactive, and you eat poorly, you know that lifestyle changes need to be made.

In this article, I am going to share with you three important strategies for improving all your blood panel numbers, reducing excess body fat, and making you the healthiest and fittest version of yourself!

Exercise (Resistance Training and/or Cardiorespiratory Training)

Exercise and nutrition really do go hand-in-hand when it comes to improving your health. This leads me to a question that is commonly asked: “If improved, which one would have the greatest impact on health?” That is such a difficult question to answer considering everyone has his or her own unique circumstances.

To shed some light on that question, let’s consider a couple follow-up questions:

• Can you improve your health by cleaning up your nutrition as you continue living the life of a couch potato? Sure, some aspects of your health will improve (you may shed some weight or excess body fat), but your muscles, bones, heart, and lungs will remain weak, predisposing you to health problems.

• Can you improve your health by having a structured workout program that you follow most of the week, but still eat a bunch of garbage food? Sure, maybe temporarily until chronic inflammation and gut issues catch up with you and create other health problems.

In either situation, have you optimized your health? Are you truly the healthiest version of yourself? I doubt it. Both factors need to be prioritized, but which one first? Based on my experience working with many people, I will more than likely tell you to prioritize physical activity first. Get your body moving and do what it was designed to do. While you are creating consistency with your workout routine, you can slowly work on creating sustainable behavior changes surrounding your food choices. This can take much more time and planning, and can be very frustrating, so get the exercise on the right track first! You will overload yourself trying to do everything at once.

In my recent article Top 5 Ways to Bulletproof Your Immune System, I went into detail in Tip #1 about different ways you can structure your exercise routine. You can do everything from cardio or resistance training-only to a mixed approach where you combine the two.

Regular cardiorespiratory training has been shown to lower fasting blood glucose, LDL, inflammatory markers like hs-CRP, and triglycerides while improving heart and lung function and keeping blood vessels strong and pliable. Regular resistance training has many of the same benefits while also increasing lean muscle tissue, strengthening bones, improving insulin sensitivity, and further reducing excess body fat percentage (1).

Reduce Processed Foods 

Probably one of the biggest contributors to poor health aside from general inactivity, poor sleep, and high stress is processed foods. These are items that you will typically find near the middle of the grocery store and include foods like potato chips, pastries, artificially sweetened foods, frozen dinners, cereals, and other packaged/boxed items on shelves. However, just because foods aren’t located near the center of the store doesn’t mean that they’re not highly processed and shouldn’t be limited. Processed meats and dairy like most sausages, bacon, and shredded cheese also contain additives that prolong shelf life and contribute to poor health, so it’s important to eat higher-quality versions of these foods.

Many processed and highly refined foods are cleverly manufactured using a combination of sugar, fat, salt, and vegetable oils to make them what is called ‘hyperpalatable.’ This means that our brains have an insatiable urge to continue eating them even when we are past our point of fullness. What does this lead to? You guessed it…weight gain (i.e. increased body fat and triglycerides), chronic inflammatory responses in the body (i.e. increased hs-CRP), higher cholesterol and small LDL-P levels, lower HDL levels, higher fasting blood glucose levels, and so on. To make matters worse, if there is no structured physical activity routine in place these factors significantly increase the risk for developing one of the many chronic diseases plaguing the world.

Start to reduce your processed food intake (meaning you are eating one or two servings of processed food less than four days per week) and you will find that these markers of health will start to improve. The idea is to make ideal food choices the majority of the days in your week (i.e. at least four out of seven days). What are ideal food choices? Start here and do some research on whole foods, or read the book Wired to Eat (cited at the bottom of this article).

Most foods we eat are processed or transported at least a little to get to us, but there is a difference, for example, between grain that has been broken down so many times and stripped of its nutrients to make refined sugar as a filler in cereal versus a zucchini squash that’s been transported from a local farm to your grocery store. That’s the difference you need to focus on when making an ideal food choice.

Whole foods, in the general sense, are those that are minimally (or not at all) processed and don’t need an ingredient label. Foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, pasture-raised and grass-fed/finished meats, wild-caught fish, nuts, and seeds are foods that are essentially the opposite of the processed foods I’m talking about. These are what your body needs and wants to feel its best.

Increase High Omega-3 Fatty Acid Food Consumption

There are many different types of fats that we consume (e.g. saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, omega-3, omega-6, etc.) based on their chemical structure and the effects they have on the body. It can get overwhelming so I am going to keep it simple by focusing on omega-3:omega-6 fatty acid ratio.

It is recommended that this ratio be kept somewhere in the range of 1:1 to 1:4. However, eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) of highly processed, nutrient devoid, high-calorie foods will get you well above that to 1:16-1:20.

This is a problem because omega-6 fatty acids tend to have a pro-inflammatory effect on the body and can start to wreak havoc on your health markers, also lowering your HDL. Omega-3 fatty acids tend to be anti-inflammatory, so having an ideal ratio of the two will keep your body in better balance, increase your HDL, lower systemic inflammation (e.g. hs-CRP), and lower your risk of chronic diseases caused by excessive inflammation in the body.

If you are an athlete this is particularly important because you train hard and constantly break down muscle and create inflammation. If this inflammation is not managed, this can lead to poor recovery, injury, and burn-out.

So, how do we bring this ratio into a more ideal balance? Eat less processed food and increase foods containing higher amounts of omega-3 fatty acids like fish, avocado, nuts, and olive oil. You can also supplement with a fish oil supplement from a mix of fish, cod liver oil or krill oil. Just be sure to check that the supplement is third-party tested and sustainable.

In summary, you’ve learned about the benefits of implementing structured exercise, reducing processed foods, and adding omega-3 fatty acids to your daily routine. I also provided you with some resources you can use to kickstart your way toward healthier blood panel numbers.

I hope you will use the information in this three-part series to optimize your overall health, and share it with those closest to you so that you can begin to take ownership over your health and start to reverse the trend of rising inactivity, obesity, and chronic disease.

Please feel free to leave comments, thoughts, or questions below.

References

1.     Lin X, Zhang, X, et al. Effects of Exercise Training on Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Biomarkers of Cardiometabolic Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2015;4:e002014 doi: 10.1161/ JAHA.115.002014).

2.     Moore, J., Westman, E. C. MD. Cholesterol Clarity: what the HDL is wrong with my numbers? Victory Belt Publishing. 2013. ISBN 13: 978-1-936608-38-6.

3.     Marcus, Aubrey. Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex. Harper Wave. 2018.

4.     Wolf, Robb. Wired to Eat: Turn Off Cravings, Rewire Your Appetite for Weight Loss, and Determine the Foods That Work for You. Harmony. 2017.

about the author

Coach Adrian Wolff has been working in the fitness industry as a personal trainer and group fitness coach since 2016. He grew up in Chicago, IL playing ice hockey, soccer, and tennis, and developed his passion for fitness while serving as an officer in the United States Navy.

Shortly after leaving active duty, he began a career in the fitness industry as a CrossFit coach. Then he decided to pursue a master’s degree in Kinesiology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. While working on his degree, he continued to coach people of various backgrounds in the aspects of sports performance, functional fitness, and nutrition.

He graduated with a Master of Science in Kinesiology with a concentration in Exercise Physiology in 2019, then moved to Las Vegas. He continues to work with youth to Division 1 collegiate athletes and everyday people to help them achieve their health and fitness goals.