Nutrition Tips

Find nutrition tips to get more energy, lose weight, lower blood pressure and cholesterol and more. The less ingredients in the foods we eat, the better. Always eat real fruits, vegetables, fish and lean meat as opposed to processed foods that have a long list of ingredients.

Does your practice offer customized nutrition plans based on individual lifestyles?

Dr. Edward Camacho: That is something we can absolutely do for someone. Our practice is newly into the nutrition realm since I’ve joined this office. It’s a passion of mine and we do have the ability to go over with new patients an extensive intake form that gathers a lot of information to help me better suit their needs. Individually, I think nutrition is something that needs to be attacked in a customized manner because not one way works for everybody.

For someone who is looking for more energy during the day, what nutrition tips do you have?

Dr. Edward Camacho: For more energy in the day, I guess my approach is always to keep it simple in the beginning. Hydration. Most people don’t drink enough water and that can definitely be a sign of dehydration when someone has low energy. People who have too much carbohydrate intake or too much sugar, it has a little bit more of a sluggish energy expenditure. Some tips I give normal people is to eat a little bit more fruits and vegetables. Clean up your diet. Get some more water in your body and definitely get some more rest. I think those three things together can absolutely make a huge impact on someone’s energy throughout the day.

Can you offer nutrition tips for people suffering from seasonal or environmental allergies?

Dr. Edward Camacho: That can get somewhat tricky, but yes, there are some tricks we can do with that. Allergies are actually an inflammatory response that our body is actually allergic to. There’s inflammation within the body, whether it’s because of a seasonal change or different toxins in the environment. What we can do is change a person’s nutritional dietary intake to what is called the anti-inflammatory diet where they’re not having foods that will worsen the inflammatory process but actually lessen the inflammatory process.

What are some nutrition tips for people battling high blood pressure and high cholesterol?

Dr. Edward Camacho: For high blood pressure a lot of times because most foods these days are now processed, there’s too much sodium in the diet. There’s not enough potassium in the diet. Potassium actually does a negative effect against sodium so if you intake a lot of sodium, a quick, easy tip is to intake a lot of potassium. Potassium, yes, is found in bananas which a lot of people automatically associate with. Coconut water is also another option to stay hydrated but to also get more potassium in their body. For high blood pressure, a lot of times alcohol has an issue on the blood pressure and sometimes even coffee or caffeine consumption can temporarily affect the blood pressure. A lot of times, blood pressure can be also controlled with stress. A lot of people endure stress on a daily basis and eat very good diets but have high blood pressure because of their work life or home life. The nutrition tips can only go so far if we’re not attacking the cause of the high blood pressure.

As far as high cholesterol, cholesterol is getting a bad rap for a lot of different reasons. People feel cholesterol is a bad thing. Cholesterol is actually a very important part of our body and our makeup. Cholesterol is used by our liver and different parts of our body to make our bodily hormones. When you decrease cholesterol too much, you affect the body’s ability to effectively create hormones or make them. One sign we see a lot with blood work is when someone has a high-sugar diet or a high-carbohydrate diet, their cholesterol increases. That’s just something that you kind of see as far as a trend. Staying away from a high intake of saturated fat and getting better quality fats such as what is called a polyunsaturated fat or monounsaturated fat – avocados, nuts, coconut oil, different types of fat that are actually beneficial for the body – and decreasing the saturated fat can make a big change in someone’s cholesterol in their lifestyle.

Do you have a universal nutrition tip that seems to help everybody trying to lose weight?

Dr. Edward Camacho: That’s kind of a funny one. Like I mentioned before, I like to keep things simple. I get a lot of questions from patients asking, “I need to lose weight. What can I do?” There is no magic pill. The quickest and easiest and most effective way that’s worked for hundreds of years is exercising and eating right. Getting your vegetables in, staying hydrated, and getting the body moving. Staying away from an excessive amount of carbohydrates – breads, rice, pastas – and eating a little bit more fish, some lean meats, and really just being cautious about the type of food they’re putting into their body. If it’s a fruit or a vegetable or coming from a living animal, it’s probably better than a packaged little pastry or something that was made or found in a box that has a bunch of ingredients in it. The less ingredients in the product, the better. My one little tip I tell people is, if you need an ingredient list that tells you what it is, it’s probably not food.

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