Vegan Fitness with Brendan Brazier – Superfoods Nutritional Over-Achievers and How to Harness Them Part 1

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Congratulations on your continued journey to whole-body health! Last lesson you learned what you can do to create an alkaline body that resists diseases like cancer and osteoporosis. This lesson you’ll learn how your digestive health is linked to immunity and overall wellness.

Digestive Health

Everything in your body is connected—it shouldn’t be a surprise that a healthy digestive system will greatly enhance your immune system while improving the absorption of nutrients and energy from the foods you eat. In our second lesson together, you learned that your body can experience stress from spending most of its energy on digestion. In this session you’ll discover ways to improve your digestive health and get helpful tips on what foods promote digestive efficiency.

Improving your digestive system helps your body assimilate nutrients more efficiently so you can use your energy for other activities. When you’re eating foods that are processed or acidic, your body has to work harder to digest and assimilate the nutrients it needs—having a healthy digestive system ensures that your body is efficient and effective at absorbing the nutritive value in the food you eat.

Welcome Unlikely Friends: Bacteria

Probiotics are the friendly, “good” bacteria that inhabit your body—especially your intestinal tract. These beneficial bacteria are the supportive intestinal flora that help your body digest, process and utilize complex carbohydrates and protein.

The regular consumption of probiotics increases the bioavailability of minerals (especially calcium), so your body gets more value out of what you feed it. But more than just helping your body get the most out of the food you eat, probiotics keep your whole digestive system balanced. Whether keeping your body’s other natural flora in check (yeast/candida, for example) or helping you get back in stride after antibiotic use, “traveler’s tummy” or other infections, you’ll be glad to have these microscopic friends aboard!

Primary probiotic strains include B.bifidum and L.acidopholous, though there are plenty of others. While usually cultured from dairy sources, you can find vegan-friendly, dairy-free probiotic blends in supplement form. A vegan-friendly whole food source of probiotics is brown rice miso paste.

Your team of friendly bacteria work for your digestive health by clearing out the indigestible remnants of food from your system. This clearing out activity has a two-fold benefit for you:
1) it eliminates residue that can cause gas, bloating and other discomfort, and 2) when a healthy population of friendly bacteria feeds off this residue and clears it out, it leaves a less-hospitable environment for the unfriendly bacteria that cause illness and infection, supporting your immune system by giving it fewer problems to fight off.

Prebiotics

The non-digestible components in food that support the growth of probiotics in your digestive track and essentially act as fuel for your team of friendly bacteria are referred to as prebiotics. If your objective is to encourage a healthy population of friendly bacteria to help with digestion, you’ll want to feed your friendly bacteria by adding food choices that deliver prebiotic elements, especially fiber and inulin. Prebiotic foods include:

• Soluble Fiber
• Chicory root (an excellent source of inulin which is a great prebiotic)
• Jerusalem artichoke
• Jicama
• Green tea (which studies suggest has polyphenols that help kill pathogenic, “bad” bacteria, while letting the good varieties thrive)

Energetic Enzymes

Want to get the maximum energy return from the foods you eat? Enzymes play a huge part in unlocking all the potential food brings to your body. Put simply: enzymes are the catalysts necessary for almost all biological processes to occur effectively—without the key action of enzymes, digestion fails, depriving your body of the nourishment and fuel contained within the food you eat.

Whole foods are naturally enzyme-rich—they come complete with the keys your body needs to unlock their nourishment. But when foods are cooked and processed, many of the important enzymes they offer are destroyed. Destroying these natural enzymes through processing means that before your body can make use of the food, it must first produce the missing enzymes which assist in absorption and assimilation of nutrients.

Producing enzymes that would otherwise be found in food creates additional work, and thus more uncomplementary stress for your body. Forcing your body to compensate for the processed food’s shortcomings in order for it to be digested is an inefficiency that can even result in lack of nutrient absorption altogether!

In fact, there is evidence to suggest many years of forcing your body to compensate for the enzymes lost in processing may actually exhaust the body’s enzyme-producing glands, resulting in poor digestion and assimilation of food later in life. Poor nutrition triggers symptoms associated with aging: wrinkles, fatigue, weight gain—all the things you’re not looking forward to!

I’ve said you can grow a younger body several times in our lessons and it’s true—if you actively seek out nutrient-dense, enzyme-rich foods that support your body instead of taxing it, your body will feel and appear younger.

Sprouts—An Enzyme-rich Fountain of Youth?

Obviously, you want a younger, more vibrant body—we all do! And getting the enzymes that will help you nourish that younger body is easier than you think. An unsung superfood awaits you in the produce section:sprouts.

Enzymatically-alive and nutrient-packed, sprouts are one of the most complete and nutritional foods you can find—and you can even grow them yourself in your own kitchen! Practically any edible seed can be sprouted: from radishes to flax, buckwheat to almonds, beans to classic alfalfa.

What makes sprouts such a superfood? When a seed sprouts, it’s literally digesting itself, using the protein and starch of the seed to feed the plant it will become—and creating amino acids in the process. This sprouting process gives your body a perfect, pre-digested food that yields high net-gain nutrition for the lowest energy cost possible. Sprouts are the most digestible protein source you’ll find—and they’re rich in the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and enzymes you need to help you achieve the younger body you seek!

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Brendan Brazier (born March 1, 1975, in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian endurance athlete, author, advocate of a plant-based diet for personal and environmental health, and creator of the Vega line of whole food nutritional products. Brazier is a former professional Ironman triathlete (1998–2004) and author of The Thrive Diet (Penguin, 2007) and Thrive Fitness (Penguin, 2009).

 
Brendan Brazier纯素健身 – 营养丰富的“超级食物”及如何利用它们 第一部分

翻译：Candice
审核：Sherry

祝贺你能够继续保持着全身的健康！上节课你学到了如何在抵抗癌症和骨质疏松等疾病时创造一个碱性体质。这节课你将了解到你的消化系统是怎么与免疫系统和全身健康联系起来的。

消化系统的健康

你体内的一切都是有联系的—-一个健康的消化系统将会在吸收食物营养成分和能量的同时有效地增强你的免疫系统。第二节课中，你了解了如果消耗大部分能量在消化上，会对你的身体造成压力。在这节课中，你将会了解提高自身消化系统健康的方法，和一些能够促进消化的食物类型。

改善你的消化系统可以帮助你的身体更有效率地吸收营养成分，这样你就可以把你的能量消耗在其他活动上。当你在食用加工食品或者是酸性食物时，你的身体必须更费力地消化和吸收它所需的营养成分—-拥有一个健康的消化系统可以确保你的身体有效地摄取食物中的营养价值。

欢迎意想不到的朋友：菌

益生菌是友好的，”好的”菌居住在你身体里—-特别是肠道。这些益生菌是帮助你身体消化，处理并利用复杂的碳水化合物和蛋白质的辅助肠道菌群。经常食用益生菌会增加矿物质中的生物利用度（特别是钙），这样你的身体将会吸收更多的营养，另外，益生菌维持了你整个消化系统的平衡。无论是制止你身体内的其他细菌产生（例如酵母/念珠菌），还是帮助你在使用抗生素之后，或者腹泻和其他感染之后迅速恢复，你都会很感激这些微不可见的朋友。

主要的益生菌包括两歧双歧杆菌和嗜酸乳杆菌，另外还有很多其它的。尽管通常是从奶制品中获得，你还是可以找到素食的不含奶的益生菌。例如糙米味增。

你体内的益生菌还会帮助消化系统清理未消化的残留物，这个过程会给你带来两方面的好处（I cant understand this
part）因为：1）残渣会产生气体，引起腹胀和其它不适感。2）当一个健康的益生菌群清理掉食物残渣以后，那些会引发疾病和感染的有害的菌就失去了适宜的滋生环境，这让你的免疫系统更加轻松。

益生元

在你的消化道中，食物中不易消化的成分会促成益生菌的增长，在本质上充当你体内有益菌群的燃料即被称为益生元。如果你想通过健康的益生菌群来帮助消化，那么你就要选择更多不同的食物来提供更多益生元元素。尤其是纤维和菊粉。益生元食物包括：
*可溶性纤维
*菊苣根（从菊粉中获取的极好的益生元原料）
*菊芋
*豆薯
*绿茶（研究表明含有可杀害致病菌并保留益生菌的多酚类物质）

活力充沛的酶

想在食物中获取最大限度的能量吗？酶可以很有效地释放食物的潜力。简单来说：酶作为催化剂，在几乎所有的生物进程中都是不可或缺的—-缺少酶消化就会失败，你的身体就无法获得食物中的营养和能量。

天然健康食物含有丰富的酶—-它们彻底地释放你身体所需的营养。但是当食物被煮熟或者加工过后，很大一部分的酶都被破坏了。在加工过程中会破坏自然酶意味着，你的身体在消化的时候必须先分泌这些有助于吸收和消化的酶。

分泌酶给身体增添额外的工作，从而增加不必要的压力。强迫你的身体去补偿加工食品的缺点是一件非常低效率的事，甚至会导致营养不足。

事实上，证据显示，如果你的身体连续多年一直在提供加工处理中遗失的酶，很可能已经耗尽体内的产酶腺，这会在你以后的生活中造成消化不良，吸收不好的情况。营养不良引发的与老化有关的症状有：皱纹，疲劳，体重增长—-全都是你不想要的！

我在课程中提到过好多次，你可以让自己的身体变得年轻—-如果你积极地寻找营养丰富、含有大量酶的食物，你的身体将不再感觉疲惫与沉重，取而代之的是更加的健康，年轻的身体。

嫩芽—-永葆青春的秘诀？
显然，你想拥有一个更年轻，更充满活力的身体—-我们可以做到！让酶来帮助我们拥有一个更年轻的身体其实比你想象中要简单得多。一种默默无闻的超级食品为你而来：嫩芽。

嫩芽含有丰富的活性酶和营养，是你能找到的最天然最有营养的食物—-你甚至可以在自己的厨房里面种。几乎任何可食用的种子都能发芽，水萝卜，亚麻，荞麦，杏仁，豆子，苜蓿。

是什么令嫩芽成为超级食品的呢？当一个种子在发芽时，它在消化自己，利用种子中的蛋白质和淀粉在向植物提供养分的过程中会产生氨基酸。这个发芽的过程会提供给身体一个完美的浓缩食物，在消耗少量能量的同时获得高纯度营养。嫩芽是你能找到的最易消化的蛋白质源—-并含有丰富的维他命，矿物质，植物营养素和酶，足以帮助你实现更年轻的身体！

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Brendan Brazier（1975年3月1日出生于英属哥伦比亚温哥华市）是一个加拿大耐力运动员，作家，倡导以植物为主的饮食习惯，也是Vega系列营养食品的创立者。Brazier也曾是一位铁人三项运动员（1998-2004）以及《The Thrive Diet》（企鹅出版社，2007年）和《Thrive Fitness》（企鹅出版社，2009年）的作者。