I often recommend smoothies as an easy way to manage mental health symptoms, balance blood sugar, reduce inflammation and increase energy. I discuss the types of foods I put into my morning smoothie and their benefits on the body and mind.
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, I’m a naturopathic doctor with a special focus in mental health and emotional wellness and today I’m going to talk to you about how to make one of my favourite breakfasts to recommend patients: the morning smoothie. I always recommend smoothies in the mornings because it’s a great way to take care of a lot of your daily recommended nutrients in terms of protein, vegetable, anti-oxidant-rich berries and a healthy source of fat.
I always recommend somewhere between 20-30 grams of protein in the morning for people with depression and anxiety as well as digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, anything like fatigue or chronic stress because when we wake up in the morning we’ve been fasting for at least 8 hours. Sometimes in healthier cases, it’s actually better to fast for 12 hours and so throughout the night our blood sugar hasn’t been stimulated, we haven’t been increasing our blood sugar throughout the night and so, when we start our morning with something like, in North America, like we usually start, with a piece of toast or some sugar-rich cereal, our blood sugar goes from the lowest point, since we’ve been fasting for so long, and spikes. And then around 10 am, a couple hours after we’ve had our breakfast, our blood sugar will drop again, causing symptoms of hypoglycemia, which can worsen stress, it can trigger cortisol release and cause fatigue, worsening of anxiety and depression. And then throughout the day our blood sugar’s going to go up and down as we start to crave sugar again and it’s more likely to throw us off our balanced state that we want to be in.
So I start by recommending 20-30 g of protein to my patients in the morning and they often ask me what they can eat. And I’ll recommend something like leftovers from the night before, like a chicken breast has about 30 g of protein. Other patients ask “can I eat eggs?” And eggs are wonderful to eat but in order to get 30 g of protein you need to eat about 5 or 6 eggs, which is not typical. We usually eat 1 or 2. Although eggs is a great addition. You can throw eggs into your smoothie as well.
It’s also important to get a nice source of fat in your smoothie. So this is something that we often leave out, we don’t put sources into smoothies and so I recommend something like ground flaxseed or coconut oil, olive oil if you have that lying around, avocado, you can even through your fish oil in, if you’re that kind of person.
And I always throw in a leafy green, which you can’t taste. A cup of something like spinach or kale is a source of leafy greens. It’s full of fat-soluble vitamins as well as things that help us detoxify the estrogens from our body and keep our hormones balanced. This is something I always recommend for women with irregular periods or heavy periods, or things like PCOS, Polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, infertility. Anything that causes estrogen to go off and if you’ve read some of my articles you know that a lot of us suffer from estrogen-dominance. This is just more estrogen than progesterone in the female body. Even men can suffer from this and that’s because we’re just exposed to so many things, so many toxins in our environment that are activating estrogen receptors. So by eating leafy greens, we allow our bodies to detoxify a lot of those xeno-estrogens, those toxic estrogens in our environment.
So all you need is a blender. I like to throw in some baby spinach, pre-washed. I just eye it and throw in a couple of handfuls. That amount. Just a couple servings of spinach. The nice thing about things like spinach is it blends really well. You don’t taste it and depending on how much other ingredients you throw in, your smoothie might not even be green, so you can also fool your kids by throwing some spinach in their smoothies.
I always throw in some frozen berries. You can put in blueberries or a berry medley. I get it from No Frills for about $11 for a bag. Frozen’s nice because your smoothie gets icey. It might not be the best for winter but the days are still warm our digestive fire is still strong enough to be able to digest things that are cold.
Today the fat I’m going to add is coconut oil. Coconut oil is a saturated fat, but it contains medium-chain triglycerides, which our body doesn’t need to convert into sugar to be used as energy so we can just use them right away as an energy source. It’s great for the skin and it’s great for gut-healing because of its anti-fungal properties. It’s also really good for balancing blood sugar and boosting our metabolism. 2 tablespoons, I put in.
Fats are great medicinal foods. You can throw in a couple tablespoons of olive oil if you have cholesterol issues, blood sugar issues. The right kinds of fats are very anti-inflammatory and we know that inflammation is implicated in things like digestive issues, depression and anxiety, stress and so, by making sure we’re getting the right balance of fats in our diet, you can start in your morning smoothie, by setting your fat balance on the right track, be able to balance inflammation and feel really good throughout the day.
This smoothie will also keep you full really long, well into the afternoon because of the source of fats in it. I like to throw in things like eggs as well, just raw eggs. It’s difficult for me to really recommend it universally to all my patients because there is, of course, the risk of salmonella in raw eggs. So, at your own risk you can try it out, but I find it really makes it taste nice and rich as well as give us a good source of cholesterol. And cholesterol’s a good thing, because we need cholesterol to make hormones. Especially in depression and anxiety. You don’t want to be sacrificing cholesterol or taking—of course this depends on your health history—but there’s a risk of depression in people who are taking statin drugs, cholesterol-lowering drugs that are lowing our cholesterol in the body because how are we making our hormones if we don’t have enough cholesterol.
You can also throw in something like an avocado, it makes it nice and thick and rich or some peanut butter or almond butter, or nut butter. I’m also going to throw in some ground flaxseed.
Flax has two really great medicinal benefits. I use it for hormone-balancing in a lot of my patients with things like period irregularities or amenorrhea, this is not getting your period, infertility. So what flax does is it activates estrogen receptors. But it activates them weakly so if you’ve too much estrogen, the flax competes for the estrogen by binding to receptors preventing those hyper-estrogenic effects and if you don’t have enough estrogen, so in the case of post-menopause or ovarian failure, flax binds to estrogen receptors and causes the estrogen effects that we really want, like libido and energy and the expression of female sex characteristics. It can also clear skin and it’s great for acne, it’s great for regulating periods. It’s great for balancing heavy periods, bringing periods back and making them more regular.
Flax is also great for constipation because it’s a good source of fibre and you need to grind the flax, it needs to be milled. And this is because our body can’t break down whole flaxseeds. So you might have seen breads or crackers where there’s whole flaxseeds and they advertise flax on the package, well it really doesn’t so us any good. It just passes right through the body. It’s not adding those fibres or medicinal fats.
Finally, this is a protein powder that I just got from Bulk Barn. I find that Bulk Barn is the cheapest in terms of protein powders. I use a vegan protein powder. So this is great is you’re vegan or vegetarian. Whey is the best absorbed protein, but personally I have a food sensitivity to whey, caseine and other dairy products, so I go with vegan protein, which is a mix of pea protein, hemp protein and rice protein. But you can also use whey. If you’re sensitive to dairy and not sure if you’re sensitive to whey, always go with a whey isolate, because whey isolate doesn’t contain caseine, which is the protein in milk that most people react to. So it’s just pure whey.
In my protein powder, I also mix gelatin. So gelatin is just a crystalized powder. I put in one scoop of protein powder for 30 grams of protein. So gelatin comes from the hooves of animals. It’s rich in collagen and it can actually increase the amount of collagen in the body. It’s an incomplete protein, so it has a lot of an amino acid called glycine, which most of us are deficient in because we don’t get a lot of glycine from the meat of animals. It’s actually located in the collagen. Glycine’s a really calming neurotransmitter. We use it to bind minerals, so if you’re my patient you might have been prescribed magnesium glycinate, which is an easier absorbed form of magnesium, also a source of glycine, to help calm the body. It activates those suppressive neurotransmitters, the GABA pathways in the brain so it’s great for calming anxiety and great for preparing us for sleep. But it doesn’t make you tired for the rest of the day. What’s great about getting a source of collagen is that it can help with gut healing. It can help with the integrity of the gut in leaky gut situations and it’s great for the skin and hair because we know our skin is made of collagen as well as our joints. So, if you have acne, acne scars, if you’re suffering from premature aging or sun damage, a couple tablespoons of gelatin or collagen hydrosylate is a great thing that you can do every morning.
So I’m just going to add in, as your liquid source you can add in something like water, I usually just use water or almond milk. I’m going to use coconut milk today because it’s delicious. I’m going to mix a little bit of coconut milk with water. Just tap water. I’m going to add some tap water. So how much water you add depends on how thick you want your smoothie and the quality of your blender. I filled it up to about 500 ml. I like to eat a lot in the mornings.
Put it into your blender. So this is my smoothie pre. And then you just pour your smoothie in a glass. Mine’s kind of on the watery side. It turns out purple, not green at all, so you can still fool the kids. If you want to make it sweeter, you can add in half a banana, or even some maple syrup. But it tastes pretty good. It tastes like berries.
So this is great because liquid is obviously, it’s pre-chewed, so it’s easier for our body to absorb the nutrients, which is nice in the morning, especially for people who aren’t really into breakfast. It’s also really portable you can put it in a mason jar or a glass container and take it to work. You can drink it half before leaving for work and half while in your in the car or commute or on the subway. A lot of your nutrition for the day is taken care of. So, even if you, have not-an-ideal lunch or dinner you’ve gotten a great source of highly-absorbable protein, you’ve gotten some gut-healing in in the form of gelatin. You’ve gotten some healthy fats and a serving of leafy greens and anti-oxidant-rich berries. So, you’re on your way for a healthy day.
