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Millar Chiropractic

Get Fit & Healthy

Get Healthy - Get Fit Program

Dr.Greg.jpg        Chiropractor Dr. Greg Millar has battled his weight all his life. He found out years ago at Vanderbilt University when they sequenced his DNA that he did not produce Leptin (chromosome 7q32.1) and then later found out that was missing the Leptin receptors (chromosome 1p31.3n).  For years, he thought it was his DNA fate to be obese. No diet seemed to work.  Listen he said, "I'm a Doctor and I understand weight loss perhaps better than most Doctors. I get calories in and calories out and the benefits of exercise.  But the more I tried, the worse it got.  I tried every diet out there. You name it I've tried it and stuck to it with NO success."  In the 1980's he strictly did the Low Glycemic Index diet and gained 4-5 pounds a month.   In the 1990's he even went see famed Dr. Robert Atkins, MD in New York and spent years on the Atkins Diet with no real success.  He further stated that, "In the 2000's what worked best for me was a combination of the Atkins diet with high protein and Low Glycemic Index carbs. But I kept gaining weight at 1/2-3/4 pound a week exercising 6-8 hours a week. In 2000's I tried Optifast and Medifast. Next came the Dash diet for a year.  No luck.  I really got discouraged when Mayo clinic told me you never lose fat cells. You are born with a certain number of fat cells and you will die with the same  number of fat cells. You can make them larger or smaller but you will (with a few exceptions) always have the same number of fat cells." 

      In 2012, Dr Millar says, "I got sick, really sick" (look at Millar Chiropractic Functional Medicine page for the story). After hearing Dr Mark Hyman, MD lecture at a conference he I went on Dr Mark Hyman's "The Blood Sugar Solution" diet.  That really helped.  Dr Millar shared, "strictly following The Blood Sugar Solution diet I was able to cut my sugar intake and cut my weight gain to 1 pound a month."  This is with me not eating any gluten grains, milk, corn, soy, alcohol and carb cycling. I was also exercising with a personal trainer 3 days a week lifting weights and interval burst walking 1 hour 3 times a week."  Dr Millar went on to say, "Dr Hyman taught me that i was NOT destined to  be obese no matter what I did. I did this diet for 4 years gaining 1 pound a month"  Dr Hyman really understood the problem of blood sugar and diabetes. This diet worked better for me than any diet I had ever been on. 

      "In early 2016 after 4 years on The Blood Sugar Solution, Dr Mark Hyman MD came out with another book "Eat Fat, Get Thin."  This was a paradigm shift for me.  I remember reading the chapter Eating Fat Does Not Make You Fat over and over again.  This was revolutionary thinking. So I started studying Hi Fat diets in the medical literature. And Wow. About that same time I had my DNA sequenced again and one of the reports said that I should be on the Ketogenic Diet. (Hi Fat Low Carb) I had only heard of the Keto Diet in connection with epileptic kids in the 1920's.  

Ketogenic Diet (Keto Diet)

       The ketogenic diet or Keto Diet is one of the most popular diets and health trends in the United States. In fact Keto Diet is the most searched Google diet term in 2019.  The Keto Diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate, moderate-protein diet that in allopathic or traditional medicine was been used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children in the 1920" and 1930".  Even though Keto worked great the, Doctors felt giving medication was easier and more patient compliant, so they dropped the Keto Diet. It was discovered in the 1890's that the body could run on two primary fuels, fat and sugar (carbohydrates).  The Keto Diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates.  For thousands of years, we have been primarily fat burners. It's only in the last 75 years that mankind, particularly in the United States has been eating sugar (carbohydrates) in any quantity. Normally, the body digest carbohydrates and extracts the sugar converting it to glucose. This glucose is then transported around the body for fuel. Of course one of the main functions of the body is to keep the brain working so this glucose fuels brain function.  

      However, if lower to little carbohydrate are in the diet, the body then switches over and the liver then converts the fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies, hence ketogenic diet.  The ketone bodies pass into the brain and body and replace glucose as the energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, is known as ketosis.  The keytones can be measured by blood, breath or urine. 

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Most dietary fat is made of molecules called long-chain triglycerides (LCTs). However, medium -chain triglycerides (MCTs) are made from fatty acids with shorter carbon chains than LCTs therefor they are more ketogenic and produce more ketones.  A variant of the classic Keto diet known as the MCT ketogenic diet uses a form of MCT oil or Coconut Oil rich in MCTs, to provide around half the daily fat calories. As less overall fat is needed in this variant of the diet, a greater proportion of carbohydrate and protein can be consumed, allowing a greater variety of food choices.   

Potential side effects of the Ketogenic diet may include constipation, high cholesterol, growth slowing, acidosis, and kidney stones.  So the Ketogenic has a good, bad and ugly. The good is weight loss, the bad is you can not stay in Keto for ever and it will harm you. And the ugly is the kidney stones and other serious side effects of the strict ketogenic diet. 

Dr Millar said, "So in 2016, I went on 'strict' Keto diet for a year and sure enough I developed kidney stones. Now my weight did for the first time ever, go down on keto. I lost 26 lbs.  Following a strict Keto diet I lost around 2 pounds a month, even with my DNA problems (see above). Wow that's life changing. The other problem is the longer I stayed strict Keto the less and less i lost each month until I wasn't loosing any more.  I had plateaued. So while I stayed on strict Keto I starting researching Keto based alternatives."  

"And in May 2017 I discovered Dr. Dan Pompa and Healthcare Centers of the Future." "Dr Pompa and I had gone to school together at Life University, College of Chiropractic in Marietta Georgia.  I remembered Dr Dan from Clinic he was an astute Doctor.  At the HCF Seminar in Atlanta, Dr. Dan introduced me to the concept of "Diet Variability" where you do strict Keto for so many days a week (say 5 days) then you add in  one day of much higher good carbohydrates and then one day of fasting.  Then every month you randomly throw in a high protein day or two. And every month you throw in a high carb day or two in a row. You vary the amounts of Carbs, Fats and Protein while on Keto. "The results were great. I immediately started loosing again. No more plateau. Wow." At that same Healthcare Centers of the Future Atlanta 2017 seminar Dr Dan introduced me to Time Restricted Eating, Intermittent Fasting, Fasting and Autophagy.  

Fasting

Traditionally most doctors and nutritionist consider fasting as not eating for a period greater than 24 hours minimum. So traditionally, the time after 24 hours of continued not eating, is called a fast. Fast can last 1,2,3,4,5,6, and 7 days or longer. Nearly every religion has a 24 hour sundown to sundown fast as part of it’s ritual and tradition. This has been going on for thousands of years. Fasting is literally part of our DNA.  

The time of not eating within the 24 hours is called TRE - Time Restricted Eating. So in our modern society most of us eat breakfast around 6 am and dinner around 6pm having a 12 hour eating window and 12 hour non eating window. That is TRE - time restricted eating not fasting. In order to achieve a fast we would need to not eat for longer than 24 hours.

Our fad diets have confused and tried to merge the two. They often call TRE fasting. The reason is there are just so many health benefits to fasting they want those that do their fad diets to think they are fasting when in reality they are doing TRE. Don’t get me wrong TRE has health benefits as well but not as many as fasting.  

Fasting has been a practice throughout human evolution. For thousands of years our ancestors didn't have supermarkets, refrigerators or food available year-round.  Sometimes they couldn't find or didn't have anything or enough to eat. As a result, we humans evolved to be able to function without food for extended periods of time. In fact, fasting is more natural to the human body than always eating 3 (or more) meals per day and snacks. Most people would fatten up during plentiful food times and lean out in lean times. Fasting was also often done for religious or spiritual reasons, including in Judaism, Christianity, Islam,and Buddhism.

The 2016 Nobel Prize was given to Japanese Researcher Yoshinori Ohsumi for the discovery of Autophagy mechanisms. Autophagy from the Greek, Autóphagos, meaning "self-devouring" is the natural cell mediated mechanism of the cell that removes and replaces unnecessary, underperforming and damaged or dysfunctional cellular components.  In simple terms, Autophagy is the body's way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells. 

The noble prize discovered that Autophagy could be turned on with Fasting.  Further the Nobel Prize winner discovered that around day 5 of a fast the body releases your own stem cells and that is where the magic happens in cellular repair. So shortly after the HCF Seminar in May 2017, Dr Millar did his first 5 day water fast. He said, "it was amazing. Not easy. But amazing. At 5 days I felt the burst of energy as the stem cells released."   The next month he did a 5 day Prolon (fasting mimicking diet) fast based on the work of Valter Longo.   

The ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet is the first and only meal program that has gone through clinical trials at the University of Southern California and been patented for its anti-aging and Autophagy effects!  This 5-day meal program provides scientifically researched micro- and macro-nutrients in precise quantities and combinations that nourish you, but are not recognized as food by your body and therefore mimics a fasting state! 

At the November 2017 HCF Seminar, Dr. Dan Pompa introduced Dr Greg to Dr Jason Fung, MD.  Dr Fung is a fasting specialist using fasting in his practice to treat diabetics successfully getting them off all diabetic drugs. 

Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting (IF) is currently one of the world's most popular health and fitness trends.   People are using it to lose weight, improve their health and simplify their lifestyles.  Many studies show that it can have powerful effects on your body and brain and may even help you live longer 

Intermittent fasting is periods of not eating followed by periods of eating.  

Time Restricted Eating- TRE

Time restricted eating is just that. You are going to eat all you food in window of time. Most of us have been on time restricted eating - TRE for years without knowing it. We eat dinner at say 6:30 to 7:00pm and don't eat again till morning when we eat breakfast again at 6:30 to 7:00am. So here we had 12 hours of eating and 12 hours of restricted eating (not eating).  The aim of TRE is to shorten the time interval or eating window. This will often result in eating two then one meal a day.  The eating window can start any time of the day or night whenever is the most comfortable or convenient for you.  TRE normally falls in predictable patterns:

Phase I.        Eating Window 8 hours. Also known as a 16/8.  Try to get at least two full meals in your eating window.

Phase II.      Eating Window 6 hours. Also known as a 18/6.  Again try to get at least two full meals in your eating window.

Phase III.     Eating Window 4 hours. Also known as a 20/4.  Again try to get at least two full meals in your eating window.

Phase IV.     Eating Window 2 hours (Best). Eat one large meal a day. Also know as dinner to dinner fast or sundown to sundown fast. 

As you reduce the eating window you naturally reduce the number of meals  eaten . When I do phase IV I still force myself to eat 2 meals in the restricted eating window. Make sure you get enough food for eating. Your Millar Chiropractor will act as your guide throughout the process. 


Now Dr. Greg has decided to win that weight battle once and for all, and he is not doing it alone. Dr. Greg and his weight loss buddy Tracy his wife are joining forces to loose weight and get healthy, Tracy  said, "Greg, If you will commit to a year of losing weight and getting healthy, so will I, together we can do this thing."

The Doctors don't want YOU to fight it alone either. Please join them on their quest to loose weight and get healthy. Along the way, they will candidly share their successes and failures. Together, we can all learn about exercise, fitness, diet, and getting healthy.

Dr. Millar being a Doctor himself knew he needed professional help and treatment to be safe to start such a program. If your over 100 lbs overweight like Dr Millar you need to be sure your healthy enough to start your program. Dr Greg first went to talk to his Chiropractor about overseeing his weight loss and fitness program. Next Dr. Millar went to his Medical Doctor for blood work, and a referral to the Cardiologist for an EKG and Stress test. Dr. Millar stated that "when starting a new diet program, get your Medical Professionals to clear you for that program." But remember, that the Chiropractor is the Doctor most suited to oversee the diet, weight loss and fitness parts of getting Healthy. Of all the Doctors generally speaking, Chiropractor's have the most training in nutrition, diet, fitness, wellness and health.  

The Doctors then sat down with the chiropractors at Millar Chiropractic - Madison, and Millar Chiropractic - Huntsville who told them "They were proud of both of them for making the decision to loose weight and get healthy. Your off to a good start. We believe you need to set realistic weight loss goals before you start. Dr Ken from Millar Chiropractic - Huntsville will be overseeing the Diet.  Dr Tyler a Chiropractor and a Kinesiologist will develop an exercise program. Dr Justin will help to individualize the work out program that is easy enough to do but tough enough to make a big difference in their life.

Dr. Ken went on to say "Diet is anything you eat. So if you eat all cheeseburgers then your diet is cheeseburgers. You don't go on a diet you change your lifestyle eating habits. Rest stands for sleep and downtime or inner peace. Are you getting enough sleep? Exercise is just that working out. We will talk much more about that later Activity - What age appropriate activity are you going to take up. Walking, dancing, tennis, golf - things you can do together that get you off the couch and finally Mental State. Attitude, fears and frustrations. How to handle the ups and down of weight loss".

Dr. Greg and Tracy have now signed the Buddy contract. Over the next year their goals are:   

1st Buddy Goal is loose 100 lbs over the next year. (50 lbs each)

2nd Buddy Goal is to gain lean muscle mass (as muscle burns more calories than fat) and tone up. We will measuring body fat and track the Body Mass Index.

3rd Buddy Goal is to become more flexible and increase Range of Motion.

4th Buddy Goal is to loose 80 inches overall. (40 inches each)

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