We had Kristy Russ the renegade pharmacist as our speaker this week. Kristy believes in emphasizing realistic changing and addressing underlying problems because as she says, there is nothing normal about feeling crappy! The Top 5 things she notices her clients struggle with is issues with weight, exhaustion, insomnia, constant pain and mood. She recommends working on key areas in your life starting with diet and understanding that a lot of our everyday diets are to extreme and unbalanced so our bodies decreased energy and storing fat is a natural reaction to that, especially because it is nearly impossible to achieve optimal nutrient levels based on diet alone. Nutrients is a big focus for her clients as 97% of Canadians do not get the RDA levels of nutrients, and that they are how our body functions without complication. She recommends higher quality, professionally recommended supplements as poor quality manufacturing or ingredients either lack what is actually needed or will not dissolve properly. In terms of exercise she wishes we realized how hard it was to build and maintain muscle mass  especially after 30 and that we’d stop doing long episodes of cardio and focused on 3 half an hour work outs a week with intensity and strength training. We should also address stress management and quality sleep more seriously, as busy people fail to recognize the body’s emotional and physical signs of stress, before they become to hard to manage. She also looks into nutrients to help balance hormones that may be changing rapidly and help ease the effects.  Her main question is, “Is your normal really normal?"