Herbal Collective Source

By Marilyn Zink
Brendan Brazier is an athlete with a difference.
He is completely vegan yet he has a competitive edge over other athletes.
His edge is that he analyzed what he ate and made a note of what made him more successful. Brendan spoke to an audience in Nanaimo recently about what makes him different and why he chose to go vegan.
He said he noticed that the best athletes training programs differed very little from the average athlete.
The rate of recovery is what separated the best from the average, and that recovery came down to nutrition.
“That was the motivation for me. I wanted to live the life that worked for me,” said Brazier.
He tried a variety of different diets and then tried a completely plant-based diet. At first, it didn’t work and his own coach didn’t think much of it.
“That kind of spurred me on,” says Brendan.
He persisted , did his research and realized he was missing protein, Essential Fatty Acids, EFA’s, calcium, etc. He made a blender drink with the nutrients he needed and drank it every day.
He improved faster than everyone else and race professionally as a cyclist.
But the road to improvement was still bumpy. In 1997 he was training 38-40 hours a week but realized he was often tired, even though he slept 9-10 hours a night.
“I had stressed my adrenals to the point where they were chronically fatigued,” he says. As a result he gained weight because his adrenals were completely burned out.
“That’s one of the symptoms of high levels of cortisol,” he said. “What I needed to do is stop exercising
for a while to bring down the levels of cortisol.
He noticed that stress has a physiological effect. When the cortisol levels go up, the body doesn’t go into a deep phase of sleep, so people wake up tired.
The signs of adrenal fatigue are stress, weight gain, sleeping problems, afternoon fatigue and an increased like-hood of getting sick.
Brendan was learning all this and became the 2003 Canadian 50 km. Ultra Marathon Champion. Then he was hit by a car in 2004. It was then that he decided to write a book after receiving questions about what he was doing.
He wrote Thrive, which was published in 2004 and sold fairly well. Brendan recovered from his accident and in 2006 he was again named the Canadian 50 km. Ultra Marathon Champion.
A year later his book was expanded, recipes were added and it was picked up by Penguin Books and republished as The Thrive Diet
He has recently published a new book, Thrive Fitness, Mental and Physical Strength for Life.
While not everyone thinks of themselves as athletes or vegans, Brenda has many tips they can apply to their lives for better health.
“North Americans overeat because we’re hungry. We’re hungry because food is empty,” he notes. “What is really strange in North America is that we’re getting osteoporosis younger than before. We take too much calcium from the bones as the diet is too acid forming. When you eat acid-forming foods, the body has to pull calcium from the bones to keep the blood’s ph balanced.
One of his tips is to have a more alkaline-based diet, as food like meat, dairy and white flour are acidic-forming foods, and these foods cause inflammation in the body. Eating high quality protein from dark-green foods is one way to make the body more alkaline. Simply increasing the amount of raw foods in the diet can make the body more alkaline.
It’s the nutrient density of food that makes it worth eating.
“I call it the net gain of food,” says Brendan. It’s eating to get the maximum energy from food. But this doesn’t happen with the typical North American diet.
“It’s a very strange time,” says Brendan. “We’re overfed and under-nourished. Now people who are obese can show signs of malnutrition.”
He says people can improve their health by switching to non-acidic protein like hemp protein. Other good food choices are amaranth, buckwheat, quinoa, lentils, legumes, beans and peas. These foods have glutamic acids that help convert carbohydrates to energy.

This article was first published in the July/Aug,’09 issue of the Herbal Collective magazine, www.herbalcollective.ca. Sign up now to get the Free newsletter.

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