Tag Archive for: time

Timing for Enzymes, Prebiotics, and Probiotics

/in /by

My digestive system has undergone changes—it doesn’t work like it used to work. Hence, I’ve been paying closer attention to digestive supplements. My voice had been getting raspy, and I had occasional reflux; I was concerned the two were related. I had an endoscopy and found I was correct. They also found a hiatal hernia.

When your body doesn’t work as well as it should, you look for something to help. In this case, digestive enzymes, probiotics, and prebiotics are where you begin.

Digestive Enzymes

These are products that contain pancreatic enzymes that will help digest proteins, fats, dairy, and several kinds of carbohydrates. For them to be most effective, take them just before or as you begin eating, about five to ten minutes before.

Here’s a change in my recommendations from the past: You can take the digestive enzymes up to an hour after you began to eat. They work all through your small intestine, and that takes hours. They’ll catch up to the food you’ve eaten.

Unless you are taking them only because you know that protein gives you excessive gas or you need them to digest a meal with cheese, take them before every meal. Even snacks? Yes, unless you know the specific food. How do you know? Trial and error.

Will using the supplement cause your body to stop making the enzymes naturally? Apparently your body already isn’t making them, so don’t be concerned. The only other thing to work on is the volume of food you eat. Maybe for you, the amount is the issue, not the enzymes you naturally produce. It’s really trial and error.

Prebiotics and Probiotics

The only real research that’s been done on timing of probiotics and the foods that feed them, the prebiotics, was done with models of the digestive system in test tubes. Based on that, the best time to take probiotics with prebiotics is just before or with meals. Personally, I take my probiotics with a fiber prebiotic any time because the right food for the probiotic is going with them. But if it helps you to remember to take them, take them before, during, or after a meal. Just take them and if it’s with some fruit and vegetables, that’s great—more food for them to eat.

The Bottom Line

Your digestive system changes at various stages of life. That’s not a bad thing; it’s normal. Digestive products can help adapt to changes in your gut, as they helped me.

I’ve tried to give you the best approach for maximum benefits from your supplements. While the timing may be important, nothing is as important as taking them consistently. We tend to stop when we feel better; don’t do that! Remember, these are supposed to be made by our body or obtained from the food we eat. Take digestive supplements consistently to get results.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Benef Microbes. 2011 Dec 1;2(4):295-303. doi: 10.3920/BM2011.0022

Timing May Be Everything

/in /by

I’ve recently gotten a few questions on the timing of dietary supplements. That means it’s time for a review.

The first category would be multivitamins-multiminerals (MVMM) and other single- or multi-nutrient vitamin-mineral combinations such as calcium plus magnesium and vitamin D. The best time to take them is during or after a meal. The reason is that food has chelators for minerals and nutrients that can help with absorption.

What if you take a MVMM and want extra calcium? It depends on your objective. If you take them separately, you’ll get better absorption of the calcium and other minerals. As I said, there are substances in food that help absorption. But if you want to take them together, some will pass through but most will be absorbed.

The question is maximal absorption versus convenience. It won’t make a major difference, but consider what would be easier for you to remember; if you consistently forget to take them at separate times, you won’t absorb anything!

Consistency. The body adapts to what you do on a consistent basis. Timing for enzymes and microbes on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

The Power of the Pause

/in /by

When talking about discrete time intervals, there are two specific examples that come to mind. As a professional speaker and a Distinguished Toastmaster, I’ve learned one of the most difficult things to do in giving a speech isn’t selecting the correct words, it’s knowing when to pause. It’s one of the most difficult techniques to learn because when you’re speaking, you think every available second needs to be full of sound. You can say more with a moment of silence than you can with a shout.

Discrete time intervals also apply to ballroom dancing, and that’s even harder to master because it can involve the entire body. A specific move in a waltz or a tango can be broken into smaller and smaller pieces. They don’t seem important individually but when they flow together, they make the simple seem elegant; a pause speaks even more loudly in the context of that flow.

The pause allows us to make the ordinary appear and sound extraordinary. While it takes a lot of practice to make the sounds or the moves appear to be seamless, once mastered it becomes a habit. Then it’s no work at all.

Where is the going? You’ll find out on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

What Is a Zeptosecond?

/in /by

In a football game on Sunday, the ball was intercepted and the defensive back started to run the ball back about 90 yards for a touchdown. Only he never made it. A wide receiver took off after him and caught him at about the 7-yard line. To watch it happen was simply amazing. He reached a speed of 22 mph.

That’s fast for a human being, but it’s a lifetime in physics. Scientists are trying to measure things in smaller blocks of time. They measured how long it took for a single particle of light to cross a single atom of hydrogen and came up with 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a one after a decimal point followed by 20 zeros! That’s a trillionth of a billionth of a second. That’s relevant to science but not practical to us as humans.

However, time is something we should all think about. By breaking tasks into more discrete time intervals, we can focus on the individual elements that make up any task. I’ll give you a practical example in Thursday’s Memo. Until then, think about the tasks you perform and how many discrete intervals are involved in them. It will all make sense on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: DOI: 10.1126/science.abb9318.

No Time for Exercise!

/in /by

One complaint that I get all the time is this: people tell me they don’t have time to exercise. I can understand that. There are some days exercise just isn’t an option, especially when you’re sick. But that’s supposed to be the exception, not the usual situation, and it just isn’t true for most people.

A recent study was published by the CDC using survey data from the American Time Use Survey. They collected data on over 30,000 people on how they spend their time. That includes working, total leisure-time activities, and time in exercise. They collected data on gender, education, and of course, age. What they found is that in spite of what people say, they have between three to five hours per day of leisure time.

Where did they seem to be spending that time? They’re spending it on a screen: their phone, their computer, or their television. And that seems to suck up the time they could be exercising. There’s a lot more to this study and I’m going to cover that in a future Straight Talk On Health (free to Members and Insiders), but for now, I think it’s time to take an honest look at how much leisure time you really have, because it seems most of us have the 20, 30, or 45 minutes we need most days to be able to work out. No excuses. Do your job.

Reminder: there are still seats for the Nutrition in the 21st Century seminar in Chelmsford this Saturday. If you have the time, you could learn a lot about nutrition and supplementation.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Prev Chronic Dis 2019;16:190017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5888/ pcd16.190017.