The Low Insulin Lifestyle with Dr. Ali Chappell, PhD on the Good Mood Podcast

The Low Insulin Lifestyle with Dr. Ali Chappell, PhD on the Good Mood Podcast

I am excited to introduce a new podcast episode (I know it’s been a while). I’ve been deep in the weeds of research about insulin resistance for a course I’m working on (for a health education platform that I’m very excited to tell you more about in the coming months).

I came across Dr. Ali Chappell, PhD, when researching my course. She helped hit home for me this idea that we’ve been focusing too much on blood sugar when the real focus for better metabolic health, body composition (i.e., weight management), energy and mood needs to be on INSULIN.

For years, I’ve been telling patients to “put clothes on their carbs” by adding fat and protein to higher-carb meals to regulate blood sugar. I’ve also recommended whey protein for protein powders. I didn’t realize this was the wrong approach for supporting metabolic health when someone is dealing with insulin resistance (as many of us are).

While these foods and practices DO regulate blood sugar, they don’t minimize the root of blood sugar and insulin resistance issues, which is insulin spikes.

You might have heard of the “glycemic index,” which tells us how much a food spikes blood sugar. Well, there is also something called the “insulin index.” Dr. Ali Chappell, PhD, decided to look more deeply into this concept when developing a lifestyle to treat her PCOS, an insulin resistance hormone condition, and the number one cause of infertility in women.

She found genuinely remarkable results in herself and decided to turn to science to test her theory.

In this podcast, we discuss her research done on women with insulin resistance and PCOS. These women got incredible results, losing an average of 19 lbs and reducing their fasting insulin levels by 50% in 2 months—eating all the nuts, fruit, vegetables, fat, and animal proteins they wanted. In this study, the women counted no calories, carbs, protein, or macros. They just avoided foods that spike insulin. It’s very simple.

This research has been repeated three times, and a randomized control trial is set to be published soon. In this trial, the lifestyle was tested against conventional medical advice for PCOS and insulin resistance (eat less, exercise more, and take medication).

We talk about the science of insulin resistance and how food impacts insulin, why we need to start focusing on insulin as a medical community, and how to take back your life, manage your appetite, and stop cravings—all the good things—so you can live with lower inflammation, better mood, and better energy.

We might have discussed this lifestyle plan if you’ve seen me in the past few weeks.

This podcast is a must-listen if you’re struggling with

  • Abdominal weight gain and difficulty losing weight
  • low energy
  • hunger and cravings
  • considering Ozempic or other GLP-1 medications
  • PCOS and other insulin-resistance conditions
  • Have seen high insulin, high blood sugar, or high cholesterol on your bloodwork
  • have hypertension, insomnia, energy crashes throughout the day, irritability
  • inflammatory conditions (anything that ends in “itis”)
  • a family history of Alzheimer’s and dementia
  • a family history of cardiovascular disease

…and so on and so on- everyone can benefit as 90% of us are insulin resistant, and I’m becoming more and more convinced that conditions like “adrenal fatigue” or menopausal weight gain are due to elevated insulin levels affecting our bodies’ ability to get energy and burn fat.

I’m so excited that Dr. Ali agreed to speak with me and that she was so generous with her time and information.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Episode Chapters

0:05 

Introduction to Insulin

2:22 

Dr. Chappell’s Journey with PCOS

4:06 

Research and the Low Insulin Lifestyle

6:04 

Reassessing Medical Approaches

9:45 

Challenges of Measuring Insulin

10:50 

Insulin Resistance and Dietary Implications

13:35 

The Vicious Cycle of Insulin

18:57 

Insulin Resistance in Pregnancy

20:53 

The Impact of Insulin on Women

24:12 

Dairy and Its Effects on Insulin

29:15 

Protein Sources and Insulin Response

34:47 

The Importance of Balanced Nutrition

39:33 

Study Findings on Insulin Management

51:06 

Miscarriage and Insulin’s Role in Fertility

53:03 

Glucose vs. Insulin

54:29 

FDA and App Development

56:50 

Study and Research Insights

59:24 

GLP-1 Drugs Discussion

1:06:49 

Managing Cravings and Appetite

1:10:45 

Long-term Effects and Sustainability

1:17:21 

The Role of Fruit in Diet

1:21:38 

Bounce Back Blueprint

1:31:37 

Insulin Resistance and Dietitians

1:32:44 

Men’s Health and Insulin Resistance

1:36:55 

The Conspiracy of Insulin Testing

1:42:10 

Final Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Speaker1:
[0:02] So welcome, Dr. Ali Chappell. Thank you for meeting with me.

Speaker0:
[0:06] Thank you for having me.

Speaker1:
[0:07] Yeah, and how I found you, just for the audience to know, is I was on a very popular Instagram account about glucose regulation. We may not mention the name, and that shows a lot of continuous glucose monitoring. And one of the things that it highlighted was if you combine, like if you eat if you combine chickpeas with fat, you get less of a glucose spike. And I was drawn, my attention was drawn to your comment. And you had a very thorough, very interesting comment about how, I know, partly why that glucose spike is reduced is because when you combine starches and fats together, you get this big insulin spike, which is lowering your glucose. And it, you know, as a naturopathic doctor, you know, I think, you know, we pay a lot of attention to insulin resistance, we pay a lot of attention to blood sugar, glucose, metabolic health, but there’s something about how the medical community and even natural health doctors tend to frame everything about glucose, you know, and this is a very popular Instagram account. Everyone loves it. It’s like all about how to lower your glucose. And we forget that it’s actually insulin that we’re trying to regulate. And so then I started following you, you know, read your book, read your research. And so I’m really excited to have you on.

Speaker0:
[1:25] It’s my favorite topic.

Speaker1:
[1:26] Yeah.

Speaker0:
[1:27] I, Sometimes I get a little frustrated when I scroll through Instagram because it is this very glucose-centric, but that’s not just Instagram, that’s the medical community as well. So I think we’re turning a page and I think we’re moving in the right direction from a medical perspective, but we’re not there yet completely.

Speaker1:
[1:47] Yeah, like we’re hearing the word insulin mentioned more, but it’s still all about glucose. And so maybe we can start by you explaining a little bit about, you know, blood sugar, insulin resistance and insulin, you know, and I mean, I told you in the email and in our communication that my audience knows, they have a bit of a background about insulin resistance, but it’s always helpful to hear it again. And also for newcomers that are just joining, it would be helpful for them to hear a bit of an explanation.

Speaker0:
[2:14] Yeah. Well, maybe I’ll start with how did I even get into this, right?

Speaker0:
[2:19] And where did Um, you know, I have PCOS. I started having symptoms at 14, just a lot of weight gain and acne. And at 21, uh, and I had one period a year. Um, and at 21, I was studying to be a dietitian, never heard of PCOS. I went to the on-campus clinic and a women’s health nurse practitioner diagnosed me and basically said, well, you need to lose weight, which every dietitian loves to hear.

Speaker0:
[2:46] And that, you know, I need to watch my weight. And, you know, here’s a brochure and a pat on the back and here’s some of my pentacle pills. And that was, that was it. And I was like, how does my diet and my ovaries have anything to do with each other? Like I literally am about to graduate with a bachelor’s in nutrition. I’ve never heard of PCOS. So that really where I started researching this and was like, it has all to do with insulin resistance. And at that point, the only thing I knew about insulin was, you give it to diabetics to lower their blood sugar. That was all I knew. So it was understanding really how insulin is the driving factor of PCOS. So then I thought, okay, well, what raises your insulin levels? And that really led me down this journey of, well, okay, so there are certain foods that raise insulin, even if they don’t raise blood glucose. And what does that mean? And what are those foods? And that is really what started this journey. So, you know, I incorporated this kind of what low insulin diet, although I just don’t like the word diet. It’s kind of a four-letter letter word, especially because I struggled with binge eating for so long because of PCOS and because I couldn’t lose weight. So I called it a low insulin lifestyle.

Speaker0:
[3:52] And that really started the journey. It worked, you know, it was amazing results for myself, you know, with acne and, you know, helping me lose weight. And so that’s when my PhD advisor was like, well, why don’t you just do a study

Speaker0:
[4:05] and see if it works for other people? And so, you know, I was very lucky. I got grant from the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women’s Health Research, you know, a prestigious research scholar grant for $25,000, which allowed me to kind of start the study. And that really, the results were, you know, better than I could have expected. I was working with a reproductive endocrinologist, and she was sending only all of her patients. And so that really led down this journey. So now we’ve been, we’ve done three studies now, a randomized control trial. And So here’s what that is kind of what’s launched this whole low insulin lifestyle and all the data to support it. But, you know, I think when you start with understanding that over the past several decades, more than that, probably.

Speaker0:
[4:52] Medical establishment focuses on glucose, and they don’t really care about how you lower glucose. They just want glucose within a normal range. And so that has led to the development of many, many drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, that stimulate the pancreas to make more insulin, right, in an effort to lower blood glucose. And once that patient’s glucose is in the normal range, they get a glurine check, and they’re off on their way, and they’re healthy.

Speaker0:
[5:19] But the problem with that is that so many people, their pancreas is just overworking so hard to keep that blood glucose in the normal range that there’s a class of medications I’m sure you’re familiar with called sulfonylureas, and they stimulate the pancreas to make insulin. And yes, the glucose levels normalize, but the long-term side effects of these medications are pancreatic cancer and worsened insulin resistance. Because when you’re raising insulin levels in the blood, you’re going to have worse health outcomes. And so we’re now beginning to realize that it wasn’t ever the glucose that was the problem. It’s always been the insulin.

Speaker0:
[5:58] And so I try to explain it as, imagine you hire somebody to fix your foundation of your home. And they come in and all they do is patch the cracks in the wall, right? And they fix the cracks. So you don’t see the foundation, you know, the cracks anymore. And you’re like, they’re like, all right, it’s fixed. And you’re like, did you really fix it or did you just fix the symptom? Because that’s the problem. Glucose imbalance is a symptom of an insulin problem. And so I think now, finally, we’re starting to really turn the page and say, well, you know, if I’m not measuring insulin, then how do you really have the full picture of what’s going on in the background to make that blood sugar go well? Does that make sense?

Speaker1:
[6:42] Yeah. Yes, definitely. Yeah, it’s infuriating, as you said. I mean, people will have all the symptoms, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, of high insulin, insulin resistance, but their blood sugar will be normal, even ideal. Their HbA1c will be ideal. And then it’s like, okay. So often what I have to do when people bring in blood work if we’re not ordering it ourselves is like kind of look peripherally at the signs and symptoms like, oh, you have high triglycerides, you have low HDL. Oh, you’ve noticed weight gain, you’re not sleeping. So it’s looking at kind of all around it when we could just directly measure insulin. It’s not very expensive.

Speaker0:
[7:18] It’s not, but you know, there’s some problems with that. So historically it was using what are called immunoassays, which are We’re not always very consistent, but now we’re using mass spectometry, which is very consistent, very accurate. So a lot of the providers and the things, why the reason that measuring insulin isn’t in standard practice guidelines is because they say that the results are not necessarily always accurate, and so they don’t want to test that. That’s not true anymore, right? We have devices that can measure hormones in urine using your phone. And you’re telling it, we can measure insulin accurately in the blood.

Speaker0:
[7:58] The second problem is that we haven’t developed standard normal ranges. Okay, so if you go and get your insulin tested today, whether it’s through Quest or wherever, all of them are going to have a different range of normal and they’re all wildly inaccurate. So they’ll say that anything between 3 and 30 micro units per milliliter are normal. Like anything over eight is considered to be too high. And some even say even above six is too high, but eight is as a more well accepted, you know, they’ve been, they’ve done some studies looking at this and over eight really is where you, it sets you up for, you know, problems. So for somebody, I’ve had plenty of people say, well, I have all these symptoms, but I’m not insulin resistant. And I’ll say, well, did you get your insulin tested? And they said, yeah, it was 22. I’m like, well, that’s three times higher than it needs to be, you know, but we don’t have the standard normal ranges. So until we have mass awareness that testing insulin is important, normal ranges so that people actually know what is and is not considered a problem, then I think we just, and also just the general education of the healthcare community that measuring insulin is the other part of the conversation and even a bigger and more important part than just glucose um because otherwise people are just walking into a house and you know assessing the foundation by whether or not there’s cracks in the walls and that’s just not how you do it.

Speaker1:
[9:27] Yeah and i think too um knowing how to treat it right because a lot of people and and also for the canadians eight uh is about 42 or 50 in the standard units so people looking at their blood ever being like that.

Speaker1:
[9:45] But still, you know, the ranges in the SI units go up to 300. And I have seen people over that range, but not commonly. But often people will have a HOMA IR value that is abnormal. So it’s a little bit more nuanced and helpful, which is a calculation with fasting glucose, fasting insulin. But another part is just knowing how to treat it because people are told like, well, you’re already eating well, very general term, and moving. So let’s just watch and wait until you have type 2 diabetes, and then we’ll give you drugs for it, basically.

Speaker0:
[10:22] That’s absolutely what’s happening. And that’s where really the issue is. And what I’m trying to do is that the standard nutrition recommendations don’t really work for insulin resistance, because they’re not focused on minimizing insulin spikes. So I’d always like to use this like an orange with thumbtacks. I don’t know if you saw that post on my profile.

Speaker1:
[10:49] Yeah, that was good.

Speaker0:
[10:50] Yeah, I thought I.

Speaker1:
[10:50] Was stealing your idea from my course I’m doing. It’s a great vision.

Speaker0:
[10:54] The more education gets out there, the better. So, you know, I kind of show this orange with these thumbtacks. And I say, well, this is a cell. And these thumbtacks are your insulin receptors. And when you eat foods that spike insulin, and I’m gonna say insulin, not glucose, although sometimes they’re together and sometimes they’re not, but we’ll talk about that later, is that when you eat foods that cause these insulin spikes.

Speaker0:
[11:16] Those receptors become overwhelmed with all the insulin in circulation, and they start basically saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m overwhelmed. I’m going to start removing these receptors from my surface. And when that happens, there are fewer receptors where insulin can bind and pull glucose in because the only way they get glucose out of the blood is to have insulin bind to a receptor and it pulls the glucose into the cell. Well, if you have less receptors, then you have less ability to get glucose from the blood.

Speaker0:
[11:45] Well, pancreas then says, hey, wait, there’s too much sugar in the blood. We can’t have all this sugar in the blood. So it sends out more insulin. And that kind of starts this vicious cycle. So now you’ve got the pancreas compensating for these reduced number of receptors, which then makes more receptors disappear. And here you are eating every two hours foods that are causing more insulin spikes. And it really causes this huge vicious cycle because more insulin in the blood means more of the food you’re eating is going to be stored as fat as compared to used. And it also means your metabolism is going to slow because your brain says, whoa, my cells are starving. We don’t get enough glucose. I don’t know where my next meal is coming. I’m going to slow everything down so that we don’t have to start burning muscle for energy. And that’s when you go take naps. And that’s when you have chronic fatigue. So all of it really starts with what you’re eating and whether it’s spiking your insulin, because that is the stimulus that gets the snowball rolling.

Speaker0:
[12:50] And then, you know, at that point, the problem that most people find is that they will have all these symptoms. And like you said, their glucose will be normal because your pancreas is still able to secrete enough insulin. It just… It just can’t get the job done. It can keep the blood glucose level stable for long enough, but eventually it starts to get out of hand. I think of like the I Love Lucy episode. I’m dating myself. But, you know, when they’re in the chocolate factory and they’re like, oh, this is okay. Like, we’re good. And then the machine like starts going and they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I can’t keep up to date. But that’s basically like your blood sugar, essentially, where it starts to

Speaker0:
[13:32] get too out of control and they no longer can get it managed. The pancreas can’t manage it. So I hope that I like to give these visuals so that we understand like what’s happening below the surface.

Speaker1:
[13:42] Yeah, I often use the like beach ball. It’s like, OK, your beach ball, you’re pushing it down. But the more buoyant it is, the harder you have to push. So the amount of insulin is telling us how hard are basically is your pancreas working to keep your blood sugar where it is. So your HbA1c is, let’s say, 5 percent or your fasting glucose is 5. These are the Canadian units, which is normal, which is ideal. But there’s two people with the same blood sugar. One may have really high insulin pressing down on that fasting glucose and someone else may have low insulin. So their cells are a lot more sensitive. And so it’s like only when you can no longer suppress it, then you start to see rises in blood sugar. And then you start to, you know, have your doctor call you in to say, hey, you’ve pre-diabetes, you know.

Speaker0:
[14:29] Yes. I think that’s the other thing. I wish that the diabetes community would come up with different terms for the different types of type 2 diabetes, right? Because if you’re just measuring a glucose, well, you don’t know if that person’s making so much insulin, it’s just not working very well. Or if their pancreas is, I call it a lazy pancreas, if you saw in my book, right? Or they have a lazy pancreas. So, you know, I think there’s quite a bit of people now talking about these very thin people who say, I’ve always struggled to gain weight. I’ve never been able, I’ve never had to struggle with my weight, but now I’m pre-diabetic. What’s going on? Well, and that also is kind of, and I talked about how you can’t look at other people and say, well, look, they, you know, Asian people eat all this rice and they’re very skinny. And how can they get away with it? It must be good for you. Oh, they have a definite, a very different metabolism. They can’t make enough insulin, right? They’re not going to gain weight no matter what they do. So, you know, it’s just, it’s like we need a type A, a type 2A and a type 2B.

Speaker1:
[15:29] Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, it should be called different things ultimately because it’s, yeah. I mean, one of the things I was seeing in practice, not so often, but my type 2 diabetic patients were being prescribed insulin, which is wild, right? Because you’re getting more of the thing that’s driving the disease process is very short-term, short-sighted thinking based on a paradigm that’s not, the whole paradigm is shifted off of what’s actually true, which is weird. Because it’s not that hard to just shift it to more accurate, which is what you’re doing.

Speaker0:
[16:04] And even if you have, let’s say you have a lazy pancreas, right? You can’t make enough insulin to keep up with the food that you’re eating. Giving them a medication like a sulfonylurea to just force that poor little overworked, you know, pancreas to make even more insulin is like kicking a dog while it’s down. Like it can’t keep up. And now you’re going to force it to make more. And all that’s doing is going to lead to beta cell failure. And then they are going to have to take insulin because their pancreas is going to be so worn out, it can’t function anymore. And that does happen to the other group too, right? I mean, eventually their pancreas is like, I’m retiring. I’m done. I’ve been overworked for so many years. I’m just not, I’m just, I’m just done. And then they then become. So I wish that we could get to a point where diabetes management is insulin management and not glucose management. But there’s just a lot of education that would have to be done, I think.

Speaker1:
[16:58] Yeah. And I think, you know, you were coming at it from your own experience, which is having PCOS, which for anyone listening, if you don’t know, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a condition of insulin resistance. But it’s often not framed that way or treated that way. I mean, one of the therapies is metformin, which is a diabetes drug. But, you know, people are also prescribed, like, testosterone blockers and anti-androgens and birth control to regulate the period, which, you know.

Speaker1:
[17:31] But, yeah, and I think, yeah, a lot of conditions that are not being flagged as being insulin-resistant conditions, you know, and again, this is kind of more of that same problem. And how insulin resistance can affect you know aside from sort of diabetes it has all of these other symptoms in the body potentially Alzheimer’s weight gain and these changes in in menopause and perimenopause that can increase insulin levels that can contribute to all these symptoms that people notice like I’m having difficulty sleeping you know I’m irritable my I’m noticing all this weight gain and I haven’t changed my diet or I haven’t changed my exercise and all these really frustrating symptoms that people are just left to deal with on their own. And they’re told to exercise and diet more, which is difficult because as you mentioned, you’re fatigued, you have all these cravings, your blood sugar’s cycling, your insulin is spiking and it’s making you starving and tired. And so, yeah, we’re sort of missing a huge opportunity to treat people.

Speaker0:
[18:38] You know, if, first of all, insulin resistance affects 89% of U.S. Adults, but just as many, you know, abroad as well, as well as children, you know, insulin resistance really starts in the womb.

Speaker0:
[18:52] So before a mom even gets pregnant, they’ve done studies where they can take

Speaker0:
[18:56] insulin in a mom before she even conceives. And it will predict whether her female child would have early puberty because when they have too much insulin over the course of pregnancy, and pregnancy is a natural state of insulin resistance because insulin resistance helps you store fat and it helps you grow. And so insulin resistance is super important in pregnancy. But if you already had too high before you even got pregnant, then you’re even higher. And that leads to the baby to have genetic changes that leads them to over-secrete insulin. And your breast milk, because milk has insulin in it, it’s what helps cause insulin resistance in a newborn baby because insulin resistance is important in newborn babies because what are they doing? They’re growing and they’re storing fat. So that breast milk is helping do that because their pancreas isn’t advanced or mature enough to make enough insulin, so they’re getting their insulin from the breast milk, which happens from cow’s milk too. We can talk about that later.

Speaker0:
[19:58] So, you know, they’ve even looked at moms who have high insulin levels. Their breast milk has higher insulin levels, which means that baby’s getting more insulin from the mom. And that leads them to this spiral. So when we look at all these intervention programs for young kids who are overweight and obese, the intervention is like almost too late by that point. The intervention needs to start in the reproductive age women to get them as healthy as possible before they even have a baby.

Speaker0:
[20:24] But you know I say all that to say you know.

Speaker0:
[20:28] There could be nothing more important than insulin management because, like you said, especially menopause is the same thing. It’s this very, I wouldn’t say natural phase of insulin resistance, but it is. I mean, when estrogen drops, insulin rises, and they start having all these symptoms, including cardiovascular disease. That’s why heart disease risk increases after menopause.

Speaker0:
[20:49] And it’s definitely something that we’re missing, for sure.

Speaker1:
[20:53] Mm-hmm. Yeah, I also in my course talk a lot about these sort of vicious cycles of inflammation driving insulin resistance and vice versa. And then you mentioned like muscle breakdown in order to get glucose levels normalized, which, you know, reduces some of our insulin sensitizing capacity because we have less muscle. And so there’s all these, you know, stress and how that affects our blood sugar and how that affects our insulin. And so we’re kind of caught in these like snowballs and, you know, which also resists kind of very basic treatment recommendations like, oh, just eat less, exercise more. Eat less, exercise more. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker0:
[21:33] So, you know, that kind of goes back to this journey and what I just realized and what I understood about what foods really spike insulin. And so I think, you know, I can get wrapped up in how bad insulin is and what it causes and all these things. And people are sometimes like, OK, I get it. But like, what do I do? So, you know, the thing about insulin is that first, what we’ve been teaching for nutrition perspective, you know, all through my dietetic education and everything was more whole grains, more beans, less meat, more low-fat dairy. I think that’s been pretty much the advice that we’ve been given. And the problem with that is that, you know, when you look at whole grains and beans and sweet potatoes, they’re all starches, right? And starch is the only carbohydrate source that is pure glucose. Now, of course, those foods give you protein and fiber and vitamins and minerals, right? But they also give you lots of starch. I mean, a third of a cup of quinoa is 36 grams of starch. That’s a lot of starch. Well, the problem with that is because starch is essentially just made up of pure glucose. Pure glucose chains, that’s what starch is. So when you eat that and you break all those glucose molecules up, all that is doing is causing a huge insulin spike. So when people say, well, we should be able to have some starch, it’s not that this is a never thing.

Speaker0:
[23:00] It’s like telling somebody with a peanut allergy that they should be eating peanuts because they’re healthy for them. When you’re insulin resistant, it means you’re glucose intolerant. That is essentially the medical term to our glucose intolerant. That’s why we give them glucose tolerance tests. And if you fail that, which most people do, it means you’re glucose intolerant. So the last thing you want to be doing is eating sources of pure glucose, right? That’s not going to really help you towards your goal. So when you think about carbohydrates, it’s not about limiting your total carbohydrates or having to count them. It’s simply getting them for foods that are lower in glucose, which are non-starchy vegetables and whole raw fruit versus starches. And the other thing is that, yes, those foods give you fiber and protein and vitamins and minerals, but you can get all of those same vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber in more insulin friendly options. So that’s one component that’s kind of against conventional nutrition recommendations that’s part of a low-insulin lifestyle is limit the starches as much as you can. Eat as many carbs as you want just from fruits and veggies. The second is around dairy.

Speaker0:
[24:13] So remember, breast milk, the purpose of breast milk is to provide insulin and insulin growth factor. Insulin growth factor is this very, very potent growth hormone.

Speaker0:
[24:24] In infancy, it’s so important. It’s what helps babies double their length and triple their weight in the first year. It’s the most rapid time of growth. I mean, just look at the clothing sizes. Anybody who has a head of baby sees that these babies are growing. But adults, or really even after infancy, were not growing really. that much. The next time that IGF-1 or insulin growth factor levels increases, again, is during puberty when we’re growing. You don’t want, you know, insulin growth factor, IGF, you don’t want IGF levels to be high throughout the lifespan because IGF-1 is the strongest predictor of cancer risk because cancer at its most basic is an overgrowth of cells, right? And so that’s just a growth hormone that’s telling your cells to grow. So milk provides both insulin and insulin growth factor. And cow’s milk provides even more than human milk because look at how much a cow has to grow. So from a milk perspective, milk is very, very insulin spiking because you’re essentially just drinking insulin. Okay. Now, the second component of dairy that’s very insulin spiking are the proteins in milk. So the proteins in milk are whey and casein. They have a very unique amino acid profile. They’re the most concentrated sources of branch chain amino acids, which are essential. You need them to build muscle.

Speaker0:
[25:46] You don’t need to overdo them because overdoing branch chain amino acids causes excessive insulin secretion. And there’s tons of research looking at branch chain amino acids and type 2 diabetes. So, you know, that really begs this question of, well, we have whey protein in everything. I mean, when one walks down the-

Speaker1:
[26:04] So popular you know protein cereal it

Speaker0:
[26:07] Is in everything and the reason it’s in everything is because it’s a waste product from the dairy industry to make one pound of cheese it makes nine pounds of whey waste and they didn’t know what to do with it all so in the 70s and 80s somebody was like oh let’s powder this and dry it and we’ll aggressively market it to the fitness industry and you know it’ll be a high protein we’ll market it as protein and put it in everything because it’s a waste product and it’s they couldn’t they’re not allowed from the environmental protection agency if that still exists um they’re not allowed to pour it down the rivers because it killed all the fish because it causes algae bloom so they literally didn’t have anything to do with it um and so they started marketing it to people and it’s now a multi-billion dollar industry so now you look at, anything and everything. And it has whey protein in it, not because it’s healthy, but because it’s very abundant, if you can imagine.

Speaker1:
[27:06] I’m so guilty of recommending it. And there’s also this conflicting, I think you made a good point about how it’s not like people get confused and they get wrapped up in emotional. And so for anyone listening, it’s not about like foods being, it’s not about like quinoa being bad. It’s about what your underlying health concerns and health goals are and whether it’s appropriate like glucose you’re not glucose tolerant just like someone who can’t consume peanuts they’re not peanut allergy but it’s some right and so when we hear of like branch chain amino acids and whey protein stimulating protein muscle synthesis it’s like okay that is appropriate for that context maybe but if we look at the context of someone who’s insulin resistant you don’t need to be spiking your insulin and this could be working gains too and this is what I was on a keto diet which we’ll probably talk about and I was like why am I not really getting that great results while I was mixing my whey protein into some yogurt high fat yogurt natural yogurt and I was like when I read your stuff I was like oh okay that’s why I’m starving after I have this

Speaker0:
[28:18] Well, and let’s go back to, because I do get a lot of criticism when I make posts about whey protein from the bodybuilding community, because let’s talk about why is it effective for stimulating muscle growth?

Speaker0:
[28:30] Because it spikes insulin and it spikes insulin growth factor. And those are growth hormones. I mean, they’re not that different than anabolic steroids. An anabolic steroid means growth hormone. And insulin and IGF-1, especially IGF-1, is a growth hormone. So if you’re eating things, I mean, there are some bodybuilders who are just injecting IGF-1. Like that’s now part of the doping, the doping, like where the Olympic Association is now measuring blood levels of IGF-1 to determine whether people are doping. That’s how strong of a growth hormone it is.

Speaker0:
[29:06] For somebody who’s like taking a walk around the block and then coming home

Speaker0:
[29:09] for a whey protein shake is not only counterproductive, but possibly worsening. And so that’s the thing is you’re going to the grocery store and you’re buying these protein pancakes thinking, well, there must be better than regular pancakes. And actually they’re worse because it’s the same processed flour, but now you have processed flour with whey protein in it. And that manufacturer of those protein pancakes paid nothing for that whey protein because it was just a waste product. And they’re charging you more for it because you think it’s healthier because it says high protein. I mean, it’s just, and even then, even if you’re not buying the protein pancakes, it’s in everything. I love Birch Bender’s pancake mix, the keto pancake mix. Well, they recently reformulated their recipe to add whey protein in it, but it’s not high protein. It’s not a high protein food. They added whey protein as an additive for who knows what. So it’s just, it’s literally in everything. And it’s like, why would, you know, to think about it, even in one cup of milk, right, if you just get a cup of milk.

Speaker0:
[30:12] 20% of the protein in a cup of milk comes from what? Only 20%, which is probably biologically being like, well, we want these babies to grow, but like, let’s keep it kind of regulated, right? Let’s not make the whole thing just this huge insulin spike. But yet now we’re concentrating it and adding multiple scoops to a propotein shake and having way more branched chain amino acids and insulin spike than nature ever intended. And it’s scary. So, you know, that’s kind of the whole thing about dairy. But I’m not dairy free. Because, and I’ll, sorry, you had a question.

Speaker1:
[30:52] No, no, no, go ahead. No, I think, well, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker0:
[30:55] Yeah. I’m not dairy free. You would think, well, obviously she doesn’t eat dairy. No, because fermented dairy, when you think about Greek yogurt and cheese, to make Greek yogurt and cheese, you have to remove all the way. Okay. That’s why they’re, that’s why Greek yogurt is very thick compared to other types of yogurt. Skier is very thick compared to other, like regular Yoplait yogurt or whatever at the store. It’s kind of runny. That’s because it still has a lot of whey in it. Same thing with cottage cheese. It has a lot of whey in it because whey is liquid. But Greek yogurt and cheese, the way to make those is to completely remove the whey. So you’re just left with casein. Now, casein still raises insulin and insulin growth factor, but when you ferment those, the bacteria changes those branched-chain amino acids to branched-chain ketoacids. It changes the actual structure of those branched-chain amino acids, which lowers that insulin response. So when you look at these studies that look at dairy and health, they all will say, well, yogurt’s still good for you and people see a benefit because you have the probiotics from the fermentation, but you also have fundamentally changed the insulin component, the insulin spiking component of that casein. So you have a much more insulin friendly product. So I still, so it’s Greek yogurt and I recommend full fat because if you take out the fat, what are you concentrating? The protein.

Speaker1:
[32:23] And the sugar.

Speaker0:
[32:24] Protein is, yeah. So you want the fat in there because you don’t want so many dairy proteins. You know, dairy proteins, their biological purpose is to stimulate insulin. So I still recommend that if they’re going to, you know, for a low insulin lifestyle, we recommend getting rid of all dairy except full fat Greek yogurt and aged cheese.

Speaker1:
[32:44] Yeah, which is great because it still gives you, like you said, there’s a lot of studies where it’s like, you know, yogurt can reduce belly fat, so it can be confusing for people when they hear. But I was going to say when you were talking about whey protein and the insulinemic effects, if you are monitoring your glucose with a continuous glucose monitor, adding whey protein would probably lower your glucose. Yeah.

Speaker0:
[33:11] Yeah. And so that’s another thing. It’s so funny. I get, I get these people that are like, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I wear a continuous glucose monitor and it doesn’t spike my glucose. I’m like, I didn’t say it spiked glucose. Whey has no glucose in it. It’s not going to affect your glucose. It’s going to drive insulin. But you know, one of the things that protein also does naturally is it also, this might be too sciencey and we don’t even have to get into But.

Speaker0:
[33:37] You know, you have glucagon also, right? So you have insulin and glucagon. And when glucagon rises, it releases glucose from the liver. And so they’ll say, oh, well, it increases glucagon, which makes people more full for longer. And that’s all true. But the reason it stimulates glucagon is because if it doesn’t, a person’s going to be hypoglycemic. It has to have that glucagon release the glucose into the bloodstream so that it doesn’t overcompensate and drive the blood sugar down too low. Does that make sense? So you have a net neutral of glucose because you’re releasing more glucose into the bloodstream from the liver, but you’re also blocking, you know, pushing glucose down lower because you’re trying to drive it into those cells. That’s why it’s great for muscle building but you don’t whey protein after a workout yes you need insulin to drive muscle growth and get those amino acids into the cells to build um but that’s like whey protein is like starting a fire and throwing gasoline on it like you can start a fire without gasoline yeah it may be faster with gasoline but you’re going to cause potentially a lot more.

Speaker0:
[34:44] Problems than you intended by doing that. So yeah, definitely if people want to have a protein powder, I recommend foods with a much more balanced amino acid profile like egg white protein is great. My husband loves J-Rob. We’re not affiliated. That just seems to be a really good one. J-Rob egg white protein is good. Bone broth protein powder is also a good one or if they’re plant-based um, hep C protein is, uh, is a good one as well.

Speaker1:
[35:14] Okay. Yeah. Thank you. That’s good. What about pea proteins? People ask me this all the time. So often they’ll remove the starch, although peas would naturally have starch, but do you know about the branch amino acid?

Speaker0:
[35:26] Well, they are not going to have many. They are, they do have some, so they are like a complete protein, although that’s not even necessary. Like you don’t have to have every single protein source have to be a complete protein every time. As long as you’re eating a variety of protein foods, you’re going to get all you need. So when people say, well, bone broth protein is not a complete protein, you’re going to be fine. But with pea protein and brown rice protein, yes, they do remove the starch. So from an insulin spiking perspective, it’s better. It’s okay. It’s just that they’re very processed, right? They go through a very extensive processing to remove all that starch so that you can get that concentrated protein. Whereas hemp seed protein is just hemp seeds, Right now, it does top taste like the inside of a lawnmower, so you better like that earthy taste.

Speaker1:
[36:19] It’s pretty rough, but you can doctor it up and make it taste pretty good.

Speaker0:
[36:23] Or you can just sprinkle hemp seeds into your smoothie and they don’t have a taste at all. But the same thing with like now they’re coming out with these new protein powders like almond protein powder and pumpkin seed protein powder. They’re just processed to remove all the extra fat which you should be getting anyways because fat is good for us but it concentrates the protein because everybody is so obsessed with getting more protein getting more protein but i’d like to challenge that a lot of that came from the marketing of the whey protein powder industry um that’s interesting to make people think they needed 200 grams of protein a day yeah.

Speaker1:
[37:02] I mean well and also and i’m definitely guilty of pushing the protein thing. But when people have high insulin, like generally just high fasting insulin, I mean, you’re already kind of set up to technically build muscle.

Speaker0:
[37:17] Yeah.

Speaker1:
[37:18] That’s a big complaint.

Speaker0:
[37:19] Yeah.

Speaker1:
[37:20] People are like, I easily put on muscle. I just can’t lose weight. It’s like, well, okay, then you don’t need whey maybe.

Speaker0:
[37:27] No, you definitely don’t need whey. I hope that I don’t ever sound like I don’t think protein is important. Protein is absolutely important. I do not track protein at all. I did track one day just to see like, what do I get? I’m curious, you know, and I had about 95 grams of protein and that’s like from peanut butter. I love shelled, I love shelled edamame and like, you know, for lunch, I eat a pound of frozen vegetables that I put in a pan and I cook it in some avocado oil and I throw shelled edamame, like a half cup of shelled edamame and I sprinkle some grated Parmesan cheese and some toasted a pecan and it’s like this big and I will eat the whole bowl. And it’s like 30 plus grams of protein just for that. You don’t really need to track it as long as you’re being mindful that every meal you’re having fruits and veggies, you’re having something protein and you’re having some fat, you’re going to be fine. I think this idea of these excessive protein goals came from the fact that the only way you can meet that goal is by using protein powder, which then plays into the industry, you know?

Speaker1:
[38:33] Yeah, I mean, we’ll get into this, but I think I was going through one of the studies where it showed sort of the macronutrient results because they had people do diet diaries. You had people do diet diaries a couple times during the two months. And yeah, they were eating about 90 grams a day, which is a lot of people struggle to get that much. And I wonder if maybe there’s something about kind of removing the food noise by having like, OK, here’s the foods that you’re eating. And, you know, a huge chunk of that is protein foods. Um maybe there’s something about how starch kind of changes our appetite or or our satiety so we’re not really interested in protein but yeah it’s interesting that we’re kind of falling into it you know

Speaker0:
[39:13] They i mean these were patients who were you know very overweight they their average fasting insulin was 31 now remember it needs to be eight so their average fasting is eight or less Their average

Speaker0:
[39:26] fasting insulin was 31 and their A1C was 5.2 or 5.3, like totally normal. If they went to the doctor, the doctor would be like, you’re healthy as a horse. I don’t know why you’re having all these symptoms, you know, come back when you’re in bed. Right. That’s basically what they’d be told. And behind the scenes, their insulin is three or four times higher than it needs to be. And we basically said, okay, well, you’re going to follow this plan. You’re going to eat as much as you want, whenever you want. at these foods that don’t spike insulin. Non-starchy vegetables, whole fruits, you know, lean proteins. We didn’t even stress the lean on the protein, but we were like, just trim visible fat. By no means do you need to eat egg whites. Like eat the eggs. Make sure you’re getting lots of healthy fats. I even was encouraging them. I was like, I want you to eat a whole medium avocado every day. Like I want you to make that a goal.

Speaker0:
[40:19] And that was it, right? And then we told them, you’re gonna, first eight weeks, we want you to not eat anything on this list of insulin spiking foods. Also, you can have either Greek yogurt or cheese, but only one serving a day. And you could have red wine. If you want to, because it’s a sustainability, am I saying red wine is a health food? No, but… It is part of like just having something that’s sustainable that you can have as a treat and they could have an ounce of dark chocolate. And, you know, what’s really important is we didn’t allow them to exercise. And not the exercise is, of course, important. And we recommend exercise for a clinical research study. You have to make sure that the results they’re seeing are from the diet changes and not that exercise. So they couldn’t exercise. And that was it. You know, and two months later, they lost 19 pounds. They had a 50 percent reduction in insulin. They had a 50-plus percent reduction in HOMA-IR. They had a 35% drop in triglycerides. I mean, two months. Their testosterone levels went down by 25% because they had PCOS. I mean, it was crazy. The results and those results have been extended to all of the studies that we’ve done. And what was great was that they did these diaries. And so for whoever’s listening who hasn’t read the studies, their average calorie intake was just around 1,400 or 1,500 a day. I mean, again, not counting calories, eating whatever they wanted, their carb intake.

Speaker1:
[41:42] As many nuts as you want.

Speaker0:
[41:43] As many nuts, as much fruit, whatever they want.

Speaker1:
[41:46] Red meat.

Speaker0:
[41:46] Red meat.

Speaker1:
[41:47] Yeah.

Speaker0:
[41:49] And one girl told me, she’s like, I ate an entire pack of bacon. I know I wasn’t supposed to do that, but I kind of like just binged on a pack of bacon.

Speaker0:
[41:58] I’m not saying bacon’s healthy. You should not eat bacon. It was uncured bacon, thankfully. But because their body is able to burn that fat, it wasn’t just circulating in the blood causing triglycerides, right? And so their fat intake was very high, right? I think they had 70-plus grams of fat, which coming from avocados, the actual breakdown was it was largely monounsaturated. It was coming from nuts and avocados and oils and whatnot. So, you know, that’s the thing. It’s when people get their appetite hormones more regular or regulated, they just don’t feel as hungry. I mean, that is one of the most common in the very first place. Testimonials that people tell me is when I make an, when I take an insulin first approach, not glucose, not calories, not protein. When I take an insulin first approach and insulin levels lower, your appetite hormones regulate. And they’re like, I’m just not hungry. Like I can’t believe that I have no cravings for anything. Like I’m just content and satisfied. It’s like, because your body can access your stored body fat now. And it doesn’t need to force you to eat all the time because prior it was like okay you have a lot of fat in here but like I can’t use it so I need you to keep eating because that’s the only thing I can use for energy, and now it can tap into that fat stores and so it’s like oh I’m good I don’t you can eat if you want but like I’m good yeah that’s essentially what your brain is saying.

Speaker1:
[43:22] Yeah I remember reading that thing in the 1400 I was like wow because you’re eating ad libina which means just whatever you want like you can eat as much of all those allowed foods I mean there’s restrictions for the dairy in terms of portions but nothing else has portion restrictions and so people are kind of naturally settling into 1400 calories which i wonder if i mean on a diet diary day i probably wouldn’t eat my pound of bacon so it might oh no not be she didn’t report

Speaker0:
[43:49] That that was not on the diet.

Speaker1:
[43:50] I think that’s probably maybe like i’d be on my best behavior so that might be a little i don’t know if you agree it might be like lower than what they were eating um but they were the weight loss And I know it’s not all about weight loss, but I think it’s so difficult to lose weight when you’re insulin resistant. And a lot of like ketogenic diets and kind of zone diets, I’ve been looking at a lot of research for a course that I’m producing on insulin resistance. And 19 pounds in two months is like amazing. With no exercise. With no exercise. And no counting, no tracking, no restriction. They’re not restricting. I mean, they’re taking out certain foods. So maybe there’s an element of, you know, psychological restrictions like that. But you’re not hungry is the point, you know.

Speaker0:
[44:37] And did you read our second study was really, you know, not to get too sciencey, but I think it really helps explain this concept is that, you know, we had patients get under this machine and it basically just measures oxygen and how much you breathe in and out. And it tells you whether you’re burning fat or carbs. I know science is cool. So it tells you whether you’re burning fat or carbs. Well, you know, these patients were coming in after not eating for 12 hours and they were coming in and they were burning almost no fat. Like even after fasting for all night long, their body still had so much insulin in their system that they couldn’t burn their fat. And then after that, we gave them this very high shake, high fat shake. It was just basically an insure that I added 70 grams of fat to butter melted.

Speaker1:
[45:22] And also, they’re probably suffering 12 hours of no eating and they weren’t burning fat.

Speaker0:
[45:28] Well, it was just that they hadn’t eaten since 7 p.m. the night before. They came in the morning. They, you know, we took them there at rest to see how much were they burning, how much fat were they actually burning after not eating for 12 hours, which most people should be only burning fat, right? You’re not, you haven’t eaten in a while. Like, you should be getting your energy from fast stores. None. They drink this high fat shake. Basically shows they stored all that fat from the shake and just burned the little bit of sugar that was in the Ensure. And that was it. All right. After eight weeks, they come in to do it again, burning almost all fat because now their insulin has dropped after the eight weeks of following this approach. They’re burning almost all fat. They drink the high fat shake, burn almost, you know, their fat burning from that after five hours was significantly higher than before. And it just shows while you go tell a patient with insulin resistance that the only way that they’re going to reverse insulin resistance is to lose weight and eat less and exercise more and come back, you know, and they’re like, I can’t even burn fat when I’m eating nothing. And it’s true. Like I lived to that. That’s why I was a binge eater. Like I would eat nothing because I was like, nothing else works. I’ll just stop eating. And then you eventually get to a point where you eat everything and then you just have this terrible cycle. But, and it’s, it’s so validating. I mean, that study was just so validating to the people who are like, I am doing everything and nothing is working.

Speaker0:
[46:56] Um and then you know like just for the randomized control trial i’ll just say it was a it was an independent study right because with research like you have to have an independent group that can replicate your findings because that’s just that’s just important like i can’t run all the studies and be like this is so great somebody else has to do the same thing and see what they find um and they did they did a randomized control so half the patients just did general nutrition they They followed the NIH nutrition guidelines, which was more whole grains and beans and more low-fat dairy, and eat less and exercise more, and they got put on metformin.

Speaker1:
[47:32] So they also had exercise and they had metformin.

Speaker0:
[47:35] And exercise. And the other group just followed our plan with no exercise. And this was during COVID. So, I mean, this study started January of 2020. So you’ve got a lot of cortisol going along. You’ve got all these things happening. People stuck at home. And the group that followed our plan lost an average of 17 pounds. During COVID.

Speaker1:
[47:58] When everyone gained the COVID-19.

Speaker0:
[47:59] When everybody gained the weight. So they had, on average, it was between 12 and 17 pounds. And the group on the metformin and eat less and exercise more was, they gained a third of a pound. And their insulin levels went up. So it was just, yeah. So it really just is continuing to validate this. We’re missing the wrong biomarker, right? Insulin is really the only thing that matters and we’re just ignoring it. And it’s frustrating.

Speaker1:
[48:26] I think, too, in that study, if I remember correctly, the control group, so like the high grains group, was also in a calorie deficit. Like they were told to eat 500 calories less. So they were supposed to be losing a pound per week kind of thing. And then they were exercising.

Speaker0:
[48:43] Like everybody else. Yeah. They tried it because they were just standard nutrition advice, that control group. So the group that did the study was a group of reproductive endocrinologists. And they basically said, we just treated them like every other patient we treat. We have a brochure it talks about, you know, it’s just based on like the NIH nutrition information, eat less and exercise more. And if their fasting insulin was too high, which was pretty much everyone, we gave them metformin. And that was like just the standard of care. Like that’s what every other patient, except for most patients go to fertility clinics. We’re not getting their insulin tested because most fertility specialists don’t even understand that that’s the reason why these patients aren’t getting pregnant. And so, yeah, they just submitted the paper for publication. And so hopefully we’ll have that data published soon. But it was really great to have a completely independent group replicated. That study independently.

Speaker1:
[49:39] Yeah, so how many studies are there in total? There’s three, I believe.

Speaker0:
[49:44] So the three actual prospective clinical studies, one of those was a case series because out of the 24 patients in the original study, about 10 of them, not everybody was trying to get pregnant, first of all. Some of these patients were just trying to lose weight or improve their symptoms. But 10 of the patients, even though they, you know, were infertile, they had issues with pregnant, were getting pregnant. They were seeing a fertility specialist, which should say a lot. They got pregnant very quickly. And we had some, we had probably four or five patients who had to drop out of the study because they got pregnant in the two-month study. And they actually, so the fertility specialist wrote that up as a case series to said, you know, they talked about each patient. It was like, this patient has been infertile for this time. They’d done these different things and essentially showed that the average time to conception in these patients was 86 days after starting this lifestyle change. 86 days.

Speaker1:
[50:42] That’s the average. So it had sooner. Yeah.

Speaker0:
[50:45] And it blows my mind. You know, I have a friend, a couple of friends who have PCOS. And they, one of them had five miscarriages in like an 18-month period. And her doctor would refuse to test her insulin. And he said, your A1C is normal. You don’t need to test your insulin. Like, refused.

Speaker0:
[51:06] And, I mean, it just blows my mind. It just blows my mind.

Speaker1:
[51:09] Yeah, I think in your, there’s a lecture that you have on YouTube where you talk about how high insulin can increase the risk of miscarriage and pregnancy complications. So it’s not even just about getting pregnant. It’s also what the high insulin does to the health. Yeah.

Speaker0:
[51:24] And that’s not even just PCOS. I mean, you know, that’s there was this really awesome study out of Columbia University, this group that their fertility division and their maternal fetal medicine department that was that does a lot of research on miscarriage. And this was published in Fertility and Sterility, which is, you know, the biggest fertility journal. And what they did is they said, okay, we’ve been testing glucose and A1C standard when somebody comes in with recurrent miscarriage, which means they’ve had at least two miscarriages within account, two repetitive miscarriages. And so they were like, but we’re testing their glucose and their A1C and it’s normal and it’s not necessarily associated with a higher risk of miscarriage. So what they did is they took some of these, they had patients who miscarried, and they took some of these early placenta cells, okay, and they put them in a petri dish, and they exposed them to either high levels of glucose or high levels of insulin.

Speaker0:
[52:26] And what they found was that high glucose levels did absolutely nothing to those early placental cells. Nothing. High levels of insulin was as toxic to the developing placenta as chemotherapy drugs. And yet somebody comes in with recurrent miscarriage, and we don’t even test insulin. We only test glucose. And so that group alone, I mean, they’re a huge fertility center in back Columbia. And they were like, we’re missing the boat. In our clinic, we’re going to start testing insulin in every person. So it’s just, there are people that are out there talking about it,

Speaker0:
[52:59] but it just hasn’t made it fully there.

Speaker1:
[53:04] Yeah, it’s like it needs to kind of just, like, it’s like a Venn diagram. We’re not quite focusing in properly on what we should be. Yeah, and so back to the results. I mean, amazing. Like, people are getting pregnant. They’re losing consistently. Like, it’s not, I mean, I have a friend who’s started your program. Um, she’s on like day five and she’s like giving me a daily update. She’s like, I was so hungry. Now she’s like, I’m not hungry anymore. I feel amazing. I’ve lost just like half a pound, like almost a pound a day. It’s wild. She’s just like dropping. It’s just coming off. Your body’s like

Speaker0:
[53:40] Can actually access that stored fat and do what it’s supposed to do, which is. Burn it for energy.

Speaker1:
[53:47] And this is her like trying carnivore and keto just before and it wasn’t really working. And she was like, she’s trying to breastfeed. It wasn’t, you know, so this is like she’s like mind blown. And so she was telling me to ask you certain things. But, you know, I was when I was kind of selling her the protocol, I was like, no, she’s legit. She’s like, she’s repeated these results. It’s not just, you know, a one time study where people lost a bunch of weight. Like this is it’s a consistent result. where people are losing 17 to 19 pounds in two months by following this plan, you know, so you don’t have like a super loser in your group or something like that that’s doing the results.

Speaker1:
[54:24] So it’s pretty miraculous. Like it really is amazing. Yeah.

Speaker0:
[54:29] Well, so, you know, I don’t know if I don’t share it too much on my page yet, but I am working with the FDA. So I don’t know if you’re aware of that. So I’ve been working with the FDA for the last year. I’ve met with them five times. I have my next meeting with them in a week and a half because I’m trying to get my this app. So I’m launching an app. So it will officially be launched on May 19th. It is in the app stores right now. Do not. We’re still working on the back end, but we have to make it to get it in the app store and then we’re working on it. So I haven’t told anybody it’s there. It’s it’s there. It’s not really functioning yet. So we are officially launching it on May 19th. But one of the things that we’re trying to or that I’m trying to do is get FDA cleared as a what is called a software as a medical device. People have heard of software as a service, whatever. So now the FDA regulates this type of medical device, which is a software. So apps are considered software as a medical device. So, you know, there’s a few that are approved for diabetes, some that are approved for depression. So this would be the very first approved for insulin resistance or PCOS.

Speaker0:
[55:34] But, you know, I have to do this big study. right? You have to do a big, study, uh, to support that clearance. Um, and I have an entire independent group, a different independent group. So, um, I’m very, very proud to say that my, the PI or the person who’s basically the ringleader of this study is, um, Dr. Timothy Garvey. He’s the director of obesity research at, um, University of Alabama, Birmingham, which is a huge research center. Um, he’s an, you know, internationally known endocrinologist. So he is taking the study and like, I have a dermatologist dermatologist, a clinical dermatologist at University of Texas. I have an obstetric neurologist who’s doing all of like the mood evaluation changes after using this. She’s at Baylor. I have another dietitian, PhD dietitian who’s out in California. So, I mean, it’s truly independent, right? Like I can’t have anything to do with it. And so, and they’re basically where they’re having patients use our app. So, they’ll use the app for eight weeks, follow the guidance. It has recipes and meal plans and all the things. And after eight weeks, we test their blood before and after and submit it to the FDA for approval. So we’re hoping to have that next year, which would really just be, you know.

Speaker0:
[56:50] Amazing for patients and amazing to like really have this become like the standard treatment for insulin resistance is an insulin first approach.

Speaker1:
[57:02] Yeah like to just have your doctor be able to give you that advice it’ll actually work so it’s motivating you feel a lot better you’re not as hungry um you’re even your taste buds change because you’re like you’re you’re interacting with whole foods that aren’t spiking your insulin so your like cravings and your appetite are all regulated and oriented towards what the food that you’re getting as opposed to like random you know you’re not ending up at the bottom of a bag of potato chips because you’re like blood

Speaker0:
[57:30] Sugars drain i need more glucose and i can’t get it and i need to eat this.

Speaker1:
[57:34] Yeah and

Speaker0:
[57:36] So that’s why you know i don’t necessarily i don’t necessarily condemn the use of the glp1 drugs because GLP-1 is an important appetite hormone. And tons of data, research has shown that when people have high insulin levels, they have lower GLP-1 because insulin is a master hormone. It affects everything, including your appetite hormone. So when insulin is off, your appetite is really unregulated. And the GLP-1 drugs are kind of just like bypassing that whole system just to like flood the body with GLP-1 so that you don’t feel as hungry, which is fine. But the thing is is that if you were just to focus on this you would increase naturally levels the glp1 because insulin is suppressing that you know so um that’s where i’m like you can you could do that that drug but you have to realize like you’re not fixing the problem and the problem’s going to come back the appetite problem the weight problem is going to come back until you fix the underlying hormonal problem cause of why you are hungry all the time in the first place you know Yeah.

Speaker1:
[58:40] Yeah, because, I mean, the problem, I think, it’s a common criticism with those drugs is that it can be a really important tool. I mean, some people have a lot of weight to lose, you know, it’s causing a lot of problems. But if you’re just having less Doritos, like it’s just about appetite suppression, and you’re not shifting your dietary patterns, and you’re not kind of using it as an opportunity to learn and to change things, then you’re either stuck on them forever, getting nutrient deficient and losing muscle mass, or you’re just going to gain the weight back. So you have to kind of change things. So it’s why not try the diet first, the exercise first, and then use them as a tool if you have like 300 pounds to lose or something.

Speaker1:
[59:22] You know, if you have a lot of weight to lose, maybe they could be helpful. But yeah. That’s what Dr.

Speaker0:
[59:26] Gardy wants to do, right? He’s like, after we do this study, you know, if you would be interested in sponsoring another study to look at patients on GLP-1 drugs who also follow this plan, right? Because taking a GLP-1 drug actually stimulates insulin secretion. And so if you’re eating foods causing even more insulin secretion and you’re in a calorie deficit because you’re not eating as much, you’re just eating less of insulin spiking foods, you’re actually losing muscle because it goes back to the body not being able to burn fat. And so it needs to make up that calorie deficit somewhere and it’s going to pull from your muscle. So that’s really why you’re seeing a lot of muscle mass on these drugs. And so when you, he was like, if we could pair something like this with the GLP-1 drugs, then while you’re getting your own appetite hormones more regulated, you have this. And then when you come off of it, you don’t see such a huge shift in making, you know, wanting to go back to eating all the time because now you’ve fixed the underlying cause. That is how those GLP-1 drugs should be used. But they’re not being used because they’re not giving the right information. They’re not giving the right education. And they’re sending them home telling them to eat more whole grains and beans and low-fat dairy and then they’re just in this cycle of bad. And so if we could come out with that data, I think it would be, you know, life-changing, I think.

Speaker1:
[1:00:46] That’d be really interesting. Yeah, it’d be interesting to see, like, what people actually, I’m wondering if there’s data on, like, what do people end up eating when they’re on a GLP-1? Like, what are their macronutrient spreads? Because people tend to lose appetite for, like, high-fiber foods, protein foods. Like, you don’t want satiating foods. You want just kind of easy to absorb, easy to digest. You’re nauseous. So you’re probably going to go for more starchy foods i would assume but

Speaker0:
[1:01:12] Well except for now everything it’s like well you need to be a you need to be making eating more protein so you don’t lose so much muscle mass it’s like the reason they’re thought the reason they’re losing muscle mass is not because they’re not drinking whey protein shakes like in fact that might worsen it so it’s it’s that message and so now you’ve got all these food companies that are going about to come out with tons of protein rich snacks because they’re trying to attack they’re trying to attach themselves to the people who are taking these drugs who are trying to eat more protein and those snacks are just the same processed crap with now processed way back i saw that that there’s like very like.

Speaker1:
[1:01:57] Big food is trying to design foods that kind of override the natural appetite suppression so that you still stay addicted so it’s like a whole hot mess

Speaker0:
[1:02:07] I don’t know if it’s that or they’re just trying to appeal to this new customer who’s like well i’m not really hungry but i have to get my protein in so i’m gonna eat this protein snickers and it’s gonna be better for me so it’s just, and it’s sad and it’s scary and you know that’s that’s where we’re going because everything you scroll on instagram one time and all it talks about is if you don’t get 50 grams of protein for breakfast and you can just kiss your biceps goodbye. And it’s like, hmm.

Speaker1:
[1:02:37] Yeah. But maybe, yeah.

Speaker0:
[1:02:39] I’m not saying protein is important. I’m saying you don’t need 50 grams.

Speaker1:
[1:02:44] Yeah. Like if you’re, yeah, regulating your insulin levels, are you just, are you going to be better at using and maintaining your muscle mass and burning fat instead of burning your muscle, you know, the protein from your muscle to make glucose?

Speaker0:
[1:02:58] Yes.

Speaker1:
[1:03:00] Like those people, those sugar burners in your, in the study that you referenced were probably just breaking down their muscle mass.

Speaker0:
[1:03:06] Yeah they’re breaking down like shake yes the amino acids that they because you know when you eat protein it your body breaks it down into the amino acids and then it uses those whatever it needs right whatever amino acid it needs to build whatever that is whether it’s hair because there’s like you know whatever amino acids they need at the time for those things so that’s like an amino acid pool which is why every single food you eat doesn’t have to be a complete protein because it’s just getting broken down into these bricks right and they’re just pulling the bricks as they need them. But that’s what’s happening is that those sugar burners were essentially just burning yesterday’s excess protein that he didn’t need, which because a lot of times we’re eating more protein than we actually need. Not everybody. Some people are not. But now I feel like people are.

Speaker0:
[1:03:51] Putting a scoop of whey protein into their Greek yogurt, which is like a lot of protein in one sitting. And it’s just breaking that down into those bricks that they can then use for energy if they can’t get enough body fat. So that’s basically what they were doing because you can break amino acids down into like essentially glucose and just burn that. So metabolism is very complex, right? It can definitely overwhelm people.

Speaker0:
[1:04:16] But I think at the end of the day, if it if it seems excessive it probably is um and if it seems too good to be true it probably is like going back to the instagram account on glucose regulation you know if you are adding there’s this idea of food combining of if you add if you’re going to eat carbs you need to make sure you add fat or proteins to it and it will make sure that your glucose doesn’t rise too fast and sure, there are all kinds of beautiful CGM reports that will support this message that as long as you add butter to your bread, then it will be okay because your glucose doesn’t rise. But what that’s doing is when you have a lot of fat and a lot of glucose in the bloodstream at one time, it actually, the fat, I remember my biochemistry teacher in college said, When you have too much fatty acids and too much glucose in the bloodstream at one time, what that does is it’s like throwing gum in a lock. Those fatty acids block the insulin from working. So then the pancreas does what?

Speaker0:
[1:05:28] Sends out even more, right? So you have this huge insulin spike happening in the background, which is driving that blood glucose down. So what you see on your CGM is adding butter to my bread stopped that glucose spike. That’s so great. But what you don’t know in the background is the insulin bomb that happened to keep that glucose level normal. And that’s what the problem is. So, yeah.

Speaker0:
[1:05:52] It’s unfortunate because I think now 5 million people think that as long as they add peanut butter to their ice cream or their, you know, whatever, that it’s like better. Again, I’m going to do that. It’s more nuanced than that.

Speaker1:
[1:06:07] Yeah, like I, this is why yours have blew my mind because I, I was sort of recommend, I mean, there is a separate benefit to regulating blood sugar, obviously, but it, it, the story is more holistic. Think it makes more sense in the context of insulin because insulin is damaging. So it’s like not about regulating blood sugar at the expense of insulin spikes. It’s, but you know, so I would recommend to people, okay, you’re addicted to donuts and you’re going to get a donut nut to put some peanut butter on it to regulate it. And there’s a bit of like maybe delayed gastric emptying or delayed release of glucose. But when I saw your comment, I was like, yeah, I knew this from biochemistry, but for some reason didn’t put it together.

Speaker1:
[1:06:49] And it may speak to, to give myself some compassion and credit, it may speak to just how we’re so not focused on insulin, even in holistic space.

Speaker0:
[1:06:58] Like you said, there is an aspect of managing glucose. That’s true. But if you are managing the insulin, then it’s working well. It’s working, it’s doing what it needs to do. And you don’t really need to focus on the glucose. So I have a lot of people say, well, if I have commented to that post or sent me direct messages, they’re like, well, so does that mean that I should just, well, what if I want to eat gummy bears? Like, is it worse to add almonds to my gummy bears or just eat the gummy bears by themselves? And I said, well, this is the actually, what you need to realize is that, you know, if you want it, if you want to eat Oreos, do it infrequently and enjoy them. And if you want to dip them in peanut butter, do it because it’s delicious but don’t lie to yourself that the peanut butter has somehow made the oreos better for you because it didn’t and it actually was probably worse but it’s it’s more about enjoying the foods you want to eat and enjoying them and not feeling like you have to add something to it to make it better because then you’re then you’re mentally thinking well oh i can just i’ll eat you know whatever i’ll eat the bread because i’ll just put the butter on it and it will cancel it out that is just human nature and that is what people do because their cgm tells them that that’s better and that’s just not the case and so it’s it’s not necessarily that that eating it by itself is good by any means but i don’t think anybody needed to tell you that eating gummy bears wasn’t good for you right i’m trying to tell you that yeah adding almonds doesn’t make them better yeah.

Speaker1:
[1:08:27] It’s like just let them serve their purpose which is

Speaker0:
[1:08:30] Just serve their purpose enjoy them enjoy them and try make them as infrequently as possible because life is meant to be lived, enjoy the things occasionally, but, adding protein and fat. And like you said, with the delayed gastric emptying, my challenge to that is ideally what you want is you want insulin to be released after a meal, help bring your blood and then you want it to come down, right? And you want it to be low so that between meals, you’re pulling fat from your body fat. And then it goes up again after a meal and then it comes down. And then after dinner and while you’re sleeping, it’s low. I mean, that’s really the idea, ideal. You want it to go up and then back down, up and then back down quickly.

Speaker0:
[1:09:09] When you are adding protein to gummy bears now you’re adding like you know some cheese to gummy bears or something what that’s doing it is delayed delaying that gastric emptying but it’s not, it’s not getting rid of the glucose you’re still going to absorb all the glucose from those gummy bears but now you’re just doing it over time well what does that mean that means glucose levels are higher in the system for longer and insulin levels are higher in the system for longer right versus just having it go up and then come back down i’m not saying you should just eat the gummy bears you shouldn’t eat gummy bears but if you do just do it because you like it and try to do it as least less frequently as possible but if otherwise if you’re just eating fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and proteins and all of that then you would eat your insulin would come up moderately do what it needs to do and then come back down versus you know eating a biscuit with eggs on it. Like, okay, it’s not going to have a huge glucose spike, but now you’re just going to have glucose higher for longer as it slowly enters the bloodstream. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And then really at the end of the day, there is no way that you’re going to slice it, cut it or whatever. Starch is going to lead to higher glucose and there’s nothing you’re going to add to it that is going to make it better. So if you have to have it, enjoy it. Don’t lie to yourself that doing something has made it better for you. Just move on and try to do better at the next meal. That’s my advice.

Speaker1:
[1:10:31] Drink water. Yeah. And also, if you’re healing insulin resistance in the background, you’re able to kind of come down again, right? You’re dealing with this cause.

Speaker1:
[1:10:40] So maybe you’ve better tolerance for those random spikes and you eat your Oreos and you get done.

Speaker0:
[1:10:46] And your liver is better able to clear that insulin from the blood. So like one of the studies that that influencer likes to use a lot is a study that shows, well, if you add protein and fat to starch and sugar, it leads to lower glucose levels. Well, yes, but in the exact same study, it talks about how insulin levels rose 52%, in the same period, right? And part of that was because it increased insulin secretion, and part of that was in decreased insulin clearance. Because when you add the fat and the protein to your fat and the starch, the body’s like, well, I can’t get rid of this glucose or this insulin. I have to have this insulin here because something has to get rid of this glucose. So that’s why it increases insulin secretion and prevents the liver from actually getting rid of excess insulin from the blood. So you just have more insulin, right? More insulin means less less blood sugar. So, you know, if you read the article, it says that very, very blatantly. Like, I think it was on like the sixth line. It was like, it increases insulin secretion and decreases insulin clearance. And it’s like, you’re.

Speaker1:
[1:11:50] Yeah, but you’re an insulin researcher. So you’re like, you see it right away, but everyone else is like, that’s great. Higher insulin is what we want, right? That’s, that’s what we do with our job.

Speaker0:
[1:11:59] Exactly. I commented on her post like a year ago, or this person’s post like over a year ago. And I said something to that effect. I was like, you can’t manage a glucose and just ignore the insulin. And I think she has some moderators. And one of her moderators said, she’s not an insulin expert. She’s a glucose expert. And I was like.

Speaker1:
[1:12:17] Like, okay.

Speaker0:
[1:12:18] Okay, I have to walk away.

Speaker1:
[1:12:20] I know everyone knows exactly what we’re talking about. I mean, there’s no reason to not say the name, but it’s funny too, because the approach isn’t, like, clinically, when I’m working with people, it’s not an easier approach necessarily. Like, you know, I actually had one patient I’m just thinking of who, you know, we got blood work back, she’s insulin resistant, I started educating her on what that means. And she’s like, you’re not going to make me follow the, you know, this influencer stuff, are you? Where it’s like, you know, fiber before your meal, which is maybe not a horrible advice. And like adding, it’s like, you’re not going to make me follow that, are you? But when I’m recommending the low insulin lifestyle, which I have been doing, actually, a lot of people are like happy to receive it. Like it’s, there’s something very validating about understanding the symptoms. And the diet is very manageable for people, like kind of psychologically. You can eat what you want. It’s logical. It makes sense. It’s not like like low FODMAP diets. There’s certain fruits and vegetables that people don’t categorize that you’re allowed and you’re not allowed. At this one, it’s you’re allowed all the fruit you want, all the non-starchy vegetables, all the animal protein, your six ounces of Greek yogurt or an ounce of cheese, all the fat you want and avoid sugar. And then you have like it’s a very little it’s a small blur that I send people.

Speaker0:
[1:13:36] Yeah, it’s a small little thing. And there’s always, you know, you have allulus and monk fruit and all these other things. So you can still have those. I cook with almond flour all the time. I mean, I make almost, I have tons of stuff with almond flour. I mean, I make Cheez-Its. Like I just mix almond flour and egg and some cheddar cheese and I roll it out and I air fry them. And it’s like, you know, so I, there are so many, and that’s part of, you know, what will be on the app is just hundreds of recipes, like things like this to really help. And I’m, I’m not doing a plug, but I’m just saying I am coming out. A guidebook, because I feel like the original book is very silency, but in a layman’s perspective. And if we need to stop, we can. I mean, I’m good. But… Is this guidebook that’s like, if, okay, you know, this is a lot of science. I like to know, and it’s important to know, but I want to know, like, how do I really incorporate this? And some people want something tangible. So in the next month or so, I’m launching a guidebook, which is like, it really still goes into the details of the studies and the data and the science, but with more pictures, less words, more, you know, recipes, meal plans, how to eat at restaurants, what to do in the holidays, how to build a grocery list, how to read a nutrition label. Like, I mean, just kind of like this more reference guide that’s more tangible for people who don’t want to use an app. You know, they can have a book, be very colorful. They can set it in their kitchen and like reference whenever they want. So that’s, I think will help be helpful too.

Speaker1:
[1:14:59] It’s so good. Yeah. It’s your Instagram account is great too. You have lots of good recipes. Like, but I think, I think one thing we might’ve missed is why is fruit allowed? Because I think people might be wondering that. I don’t know. Okay.

Speaker0:
[1:15:11] So fruit is part glucose and part fructose. Now, fructose gets a very bad reputation for good reason. Too much fructose overwhelms the liver, leads to fatty liver, which is like high fructose corn syrup. So fructose in large amounts, really bad. Actually, just a history lesson. One of the reasons why they came out with high fructose corn syrup, aside from it just being very cheap and very sweet, was because it had less glucose. They thought it would be better for diabetics. Because it wouldn’t lead to the same glucose response. Does that make sense?

Speaker1:
[1:15:43] Yeah. They didn’t realize that. We’ll throw this in. It’ll be great.

Speaker0:
[1:15:47] What could go wrong? It’ll be so healthy. And then they were like, oh, this was a problem. They don’t care. They still add it to everything. But we know that excess fructose is a problem. Now, whole fruit.

Speaker0:
[1:15:58] Well, sorry. The good thing about fructose in its naturally occurring form amounts is that it requires zero insulin release for metabolism. So fructose does not elicit any insulin relief. So that’s, again, why they thought, oh, high fructose corn syrup would be great, but no. So the amount of fructose in a whole raw fruit is not going to overwhelm your liver, right? You have that fiber. It is going to slow that digestion. So you’re getting a slow trickle of the fructose instead of just, you know, a soda. So because it’s part fructose and because fructose does not elicit any insulin response, fructose as a whole has a lower insulin response. Now, fruit still has glucose and you still might see something on your CGM or something, but it’s still going to be far less than, you know, having a whole apple as compared to a third of a cup of quinoa is very different, right? And so the amount of glucose in a whole apple is maybe 10 grand. It’s like 6 grams of fructose, about 10 grams of glucose, whereas 36 grams in a third of a cup of quinoa. So it’s really just thinking about that perspective is that fruit doesn’t have that huge insulin response because it’s part fructose.

Speaker0:
[1:17:22] And I always like to tell people, too, agave nectar.

Speaker0:
[1:17:27] Is worse than high fructose corn syrup. Agave nectar is 90% fructose. High fructose corn syrup is only 55% fructose. So you’re drinking straight fructose when you’re having agave nectar. So I just try to tell people just because it’s natural sugar doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s better.

Speaker1:
[1:17:47] Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah. And I think one thing that you stress is that there’s no limits on fruit. So people are eating as much food as they want, which when I hear that, I’m like, Dr. Allie, I don’t think you know me. Like maybe you’ve done research, but maybe you haven’t met people like me. Like I could eat a lot of fruit if you’re just going to let me go. But it looks like people were eating about 90 grams of carbs, which is fairly low carb. And your desire, yeah, kind of.

Speaker0:
[1:18:14] Your desire goes down. You’re like, I eat fruit every day, but I probably eat like, I don’t know like two pieces of fruit maybe like sometimes one sometimes two sometimes more but again it’s one of those things where you’re just full you’re eating a lot of fiber you’re eating a lot of fat and protein and you just like fruit is great but you’re just not as hungry and you’re definitely not as hungry for carbs so it’s just one of those where you still eat them but it’s not one of those like I want to eat you know this whole bowl of fruit you just have your your taste buds and your appetite changes.

Speaker1:
[1:18:48] Yeah, this is so good. What have you seen beyond two months? I don’t know if you’ve tracked people or worked with people or just in personal experience. How long does it typically take for people to get their insulin into the normal range? It looked like people’s HbA1c was all normalized after two months.

Speaker0:
[1:19:06] It was normal to begin with. Yeah.

Speaker1:
[1:19:10] Sorry, their HOMA-IR. HOMA-IR was what I wanted to say.

Speaker0:
[1:19:12] Yeah, yeah. So we haven’t done any studies beyond eight weeks. Okay. Right. Just from financially, right? The longer the study it is, the more money. And even the new study, it’s called the Lilac study, the Lilly App clinical study. The Lilac study is also eight weeks. Because from research, it’s hard to like do these. Now, after the eight weeks, we will give the participants the ability to say, would you be interested in continuing to follow this? and, you know, continuing to even just report patient-reported outcomes, like how their acne has changed. There’s some of these very validated, like, PCOS quality of life surveys that we’ll administer once a month just to continue to keep that data, have them self-report their weight once a month. You know, so I’m excited about doing more research. You know, part of the revenue from our company as a whole will go to continuing to provide more funding for research because I want to do all kinds of, you know, research. But.

Speaker0:
[1:20:13] Beyond what after you know eight weeks like I have quite a few Instagram influencers like one girl I think she’s lost she went from like 190 and now she’s 135 she’s pregnant right now so but she’s she’s been following me for over a year a year and a half um and then a personal friend or a family friend of mine she was four foot 11 and 190 and she’s now 135 and she’s that’s been two and a half years and she’s been like just steady at 135 and she she had a stroke like 10 years ago and her doctor now took her off all of her meds because her her blood levels of everything are normal so it is sustainable because it teaches you to think about food in a different way you’re not thinking about of calories and i need to eat more i need to exercise to burn off something it’s it’s thinking of it you know in a different way and i i’ve plenty of people that are like i’ve lost so much weight i’ve gotten around i got rid of all of my fat clothes because i have no concern that i’m ever going to keep it off like i i have no no issue um or others will say i’ll go on vacation and like i’ll do whatever i want but it’s okay because i come home and i get right back on it and the water weight that i’ve gained is off in a week you know and i’m back right back to my normal so it’s like you can still enjoy your life um and have those moments where you can just.

Speaker0:
[1:21:35] Eat what you want as long as you know what your default is. You’re going to come home and you’re going to get back on your default and you’re going to give your pancreas a break from the damage you just did. I don’t want to say damage. From the enjoyment that you’ve had and then you’re going to go back and you’re going to give your pancreas a break. So I have what’s called a bounce back blueprint that I put in the it’s like, you’re going to wake up you’re going to drink a bunch of water or you’re going to go for a long walk. Like how to get back into all right I’m going to get back into mine.

Speaker1:
[1:22:04] That’s good. Yeah, it’s good from kind of like, like a binge eating perspective, right? It’s like, okay, like, no all or nothing thinking, just get back on it. And, and, you know, you’re not, I think you’ve talked about the keto diet. And this is because you’re eating carbs, and you’re just getting your carbs from fruit and vegetables. You’re not like, going on vacation, getting out of ketosis, then having a switch back in going through that whole metabolic process,

Speaker0:
[1:22:29] Like you’re just a few weeks.

Speaker1:
[1:22:30] Yeah, you’re just okay, I’ll just I’m just probably going to eat a lot of bananas the first day until everything regulates and then and then my appetite will settle and I’m not having to like metabolically switch in that way that, you know, can cause side effects for people or this idea of like, you’re either in it or out of it.

Speaker0:
[1:22:50] Because ketosis is I mean keto basically lowers insulin that’s what it’s that’s what it’s doing it’s just doing it in a very aggressive way and when your insulin lowers that that low and you don’t have any glucose that you’re eating your body has no choice but to switch over and burn only fat which is what is releasing those ketones and what your body is using but, That that leads to that keto flu, because until your insulin level is lower enough to where you can burn that body fat, your brain is like, I don’t have anything here. Like, I don’t have enough glucose. I don’t have enough fat to eat to use because your insulin is too high. You really have to wait until you get to that switch where you can lower insulin and you can start burning all that body fat. But here is this more of a middle ground because your insulin levels are lowering, but you still have some glucose that you’re eating from the fruits and the vegetables. So it’s more of like what’s called metabolically flexible you’re you’re you’re able to burn glucose when you need to and then your insulin levels fall and then you can burn some body fat and then you eat again and you can burn some glucose and then you can burn some body fat you’re just your body is and that’s a term like that’s an actual term metabolic flexibility that you are flexible and that you can burn whatever it is that you need um most people can’t do that right most people can’t burn body fat can’t burn fat for energy um and then keto it’s just a very aggressive way of lowering insulin and wanting to just never have a glucose well you don’t really have to do that right like you can there is a middle ground yeah.

Speaker1:
[1:24:17] Which is yeah which is so refreshing to see and like you know it’s well received like people love it like oh i can have as much fruit okay because we’re told often that fruit is bad and everything is confusing you know

Speaker0:
[1:24:30] Because it’s glucose right they think oh if carbs are bad carbs are bad like think of it more of like how it’s affecting your metabolism, right? And how you’re, and people think of metabolism as just like how many calories you burn every day. No, no. Metabolism means how you use the food that you eat for energy or store it as fat. And if you’re eating foods that are constantly forcing insulin release, then you’re storing it as fat. You know, that’s just what’s happening. So, and eating big breakfast to boost your metabolism, that’s, eat when you want if you’re not a breakfast person don’t eat breakfast right like this is getting rid of every single food rule there is one rule if it spikes your insulin you should avoid it as much as you can if it doesn’t spike your insulin eat it whenever you want you know that is there is one rule you know and that really it makes people feel refreshed like the amount of, brain space that I don’t spend on food because I just and you know for 10 plus years the amount I mean the amount of time I spent worried about food and calories and carbs and working out and protein and everything else like it’s just like free up your brain for other things in life that bring you joy you know that’s really the most important thing.

Speaker1:
[1:25:52] Yeah I can relate to that so much you know and even the being a sugar burner like being metabolically inflexible when I first learned about it I was like yeah that’s me every two hours I need to eat and it feels like you’re not you know especially if you’re if you are a calorie like I was a calorie tracker for a while and I’d be like how am I burnt like if this has 500 calories why am I hungry you know based on this whole calories in calories out all the biochemistry that you learn like I should be full for i don’t know longer than two hours i’m not burning 500 calories sitting here and studying um and so when i learned about that i was like oh yeah i’m not accessing the fat from my food or my body i’m just running on sugar it’s like a bat like a car with a race car engine or something i’m like burning all the gas out and having to refuel constantly and it’s mad

Speaker0:
[1:26:40] And this is nine out of ten i think it’s like four out of ten kids they did a study you could test the insulin levels of a five-year-old right now. And it will tell you whether they’re going to be overweight, have type early diabetes, a five-year-old. And they did finger pricks at school for like thousands of kids. And they measured them. They followed them over the course of like, I think, 10 years or so. And they said the number one strongest predictor of early, you know, adolescent obesity was elevated fasting insulin at age five. And it’s so sad. It is. There’s so much to be done. And I will say, people are going to be like, well, why are people not talking about this? Why are doctors not talking about this? Why are you measuring it? I can tell you in one very simple way. Because the only time that clinical guidelines actually change is when somebody foots the bill. And it’s usually Big Pharma. So when Big Pharma came out with cholesterol-lowering drugs, they had the teams that worked with the clinical societies. They worked with the insurance companies. They worked on developing the standard ranges because they had a solution to a problem that they needed to make sure that everybody understood the problem so they would buy the solution.

Speaker1:
[1:28:02] Mm-hmm.

Speaker0:
[1:28:03] And unfortunately, there is no drug in development for lowering insulin levels. And so because of that, there is nobody footing the bill for increasing access to this information, to making sure that we have standard ranges, to make sure the insurance companies are reimbursing for this. I mean, it is, it takes deep pockets to do that. And the only people who have pockets deep enough are big pharma. And there’s no drug on the horizon to lower insulin. And that is the reason. Because they have huge field forces to go out and educate every single doctor about you need to measure this and why. And look at our data. And this is so important. And look at the outcomes for people who lower than, there’s nobody doing that.

Speaker1:
[1:28:40] Yeah. It was a whole task force around fat, cholesterol. It was like decades of people all getting together and deciding on these guidelines. And, you know, and that I’m just thinking about the kid with high insulin who, you know, let’s say the parents are like, OK, we’re going to put some effort in and we’re going to look at your diet and we’re going to follow the guidelines. We’re going to put, you know, pay attention to labels and we’re going to probably be eating our six.

Speaker0:
[1:29:05] We’re going to eat whole grain.

Speaker1:
[1:29:09] Yeah. Which, you know, so it’s like we take our effort, our best intentions and then we’re we’re not applying the right interventions. And people give up you

Speaker0:
[1:29:19] Know yes and then they’re like but whole grains are good for you i’m not saying that they don’t have nutrition that doesn’t mean they’re good for somebody with glucose intolerance which is essentially almost everyone so you know yeah they think that they have the best intentions they go to the store they buy the whole grain goldfish instead of the regular goldfish and they buy the protein special K because it has more protein and low calories and they mix it with the low fat skin milk. And literally every single one of those choices could not put more insulin into the system. I mean, it is literally flooding it. And it’s like, Oh, there’s another dietitian influencer on, on Instagram. And she basically was like, if your kid is struggling and you should, if they want to have KFC and they want to eat the biscuits, you just need to make sure that you give them the chicken leg with the biscuit because the chicken leg gives you the protein and the fat. And so that’ll offset the biscuit. I mean, this is a dietitian. She has hundreds of thousands of followers and it’s just maddening. It’s maddening and so and i feel like nobody can win for losing because they’re just they’re like i’m following all this advice and my kid’s getting worse or you know and it’s just yeah.

Speaker1:
[1:30:38] I really feel like it doesn’t work or i’m broken work or yeah

Speaker0:
[1:30:41] I made a i made a post recently that we go to conferences we go to the big conflict the big fertility conference and whatnot and i i have i’ve had many doctors tell me fertility specialists tell me i don’t send my pso my pcos patients to dieticians anymore because they come back worse than they started because that they get told eat more whole grains and beans and low-fat dairy and they come back and they’re heavier than they started yeah i.

Speaker1:
[1:31:03] Have a patient i’m thinking with prediabetes who’s already on like maxo and the metformin dose and her dietician is like okay when your blood sugar drops because you’re on metformin and you’re not diabetic so your blood sugar is going too low and it’s but you know metformin is lower in blood sugar it is lung insulin a little bit but not enough and uh it’s like just have a candy. Take candies with you and have candies to bring your blood sugar up. I put a diabetic patient.

Speaker0:
[1:31:28] It’s just granola bar. Like, oh my God.

Speaker1:
[1:31:31] Terrible. So it’s just, and even she was like, this isn’t working. I feel like trash. Like, I’m not going to go anymore.

Speaker0:
[1:31:38] Dietitians do not understand insulin resistance. It’s not taught in school. I mean, I graduated in from my bachelor’s in 2009. So that was a long time ago. And I was really hopeful that they’d at least caught up with the data. But I have another follower who’s currently getting her bachelor’s in nutrition. She’s like, The only thing I’ve learned about insulin is that you give it to diabetics to lower their blood sugar and that’s it. Like they do not learn about this. So if everything looks like a hammer, if all you have is a hammer and everything looks like a nail, everyone’s getting the same advice. Yeah.

Speaker1:
[1:32:10] Terrible. It’s flashy.

Speaker0:
[1:32:12] You can tell I’m very passionate about this.

Speaker1:
[1:32:14] This is so good. This is so informative. I think people are really going to love this. My last question is, you know, about men. So I know your research is PCOS. We’re talking more broadly about insulin resistance. I think what’s really beautiful about your research is that it’s done on women because so much is not done on women at all. And so conventional advice like intermittent fasting, cold therapy, all this stuff that’s so great and influencers are recommending may not be great for women who have different hormones, different considerations.

Speaker1:
[1:32:42] But this is like these are results done on women. And everybody who’s done a diet with their male partner knows like he loses like 50 pounds, I lose one, you know? Yeah. But my friend wanted to know if if this applies to men, which I think the answer is obvious. But yeah.

Speaker0:
[1:32:59] I mean, it applies to everyone. Right. Kids, pregnant women, men, everything. Because for men, you know, one of the bigger issues is around the age 35, they start to have a reduction in testosterone. Right. Let’s call it menopause. They start to have a reduction in testosterone just naturally, which coincides with an increase in insulin. So a lot of times they’ll see that they’re having Dabod, which may not be anything to do with what they are changed in their eating or exercise. But when you have higher insulin, you start to gain weight and a large part of that goes to your stomach.

Speaker0:
[1:33:31] And more so, that’s even more problematic with that is that when you have more fat tissue, That fat tissue has an enzyme called aromatase. And what happens is testosterone gets converted to estrogen into that fat tissue. So now not only do you have this natural decline in testosterone, but now whatever testosterone is left and being pumped out is getting turned into estrogen, right? So you have a, that’s what’s causing men to have low testosterone. And the only therapy we’re giving is to do testosterone injections or testosterone replacement therapy, but you’re not getting to the real reason why they have the low testosterone in the first place.

Speaker0:
[1:34:13] That’s one of the problems, but that also leads to erectile dysfunction because now you have more chronic inflammation, which inflames, you know, all of your vascular system, but also, you know, having lower testosterone. So all of that kind of compounds to lead to erectile dysfunction, which is one of the earliest symptoms of insulin resistance in men. People, I had no idea. A third of men experience erectile dysfunction. That is a very early sign of problems. Before they have anything wrong with their labs, before anything happens, if they’re experiencing erectile dysfunction at an early age, it’s not just psychological. There is definitely something wrong going on. So that’s something I would say if you’re having a husband that’s experiencing that, they need to probably go get a workup. But, you know, the other thing is like sperm, high insulin and that chronic inflammation leads to changes in the sperm. So, you know, if you’re trying to get pregnant, you need to be following it. But so does he. He needs to have the healthiest sperm he can have. And that starts with, lowering insulin, making sure there’s not enough testosterone, making sure there’s not chronic inflammation. So I shared earlier, my husband, he’s part Hispanic. His dad died of a massive heart attack at the age of 41.

Speaker0:
[1:35:28] And he was about 200 pounds when we started dating. He’s 5’11”. And he has now, I mean, that’s been 10 years, 10, 12 years since we started dating. And he is, he’s at 175 and has stayed at 175 like completely and he’s not perfect I told I told you that he doesn’t realize you can eat a pint of ice cream in more than in different settings like he just eats the whole thing so he’s not perfect but he is very very you know if he goes up a little bit he stays strict for like a few weeks and he’s back down and it’s just you know very even keel And I will say, you know, we, there was a study in 1966. So back in 1966, where they said fasting insulin is the strongest predictor of heart disease, strongest predictor of heart disease in the Lancet in 1966. So he went to his cardiologist like two months ago, because I told him, I was like, you know what? I don’t care that you look healthy. You obviously have genetic history. You need to go and start getting work up with your cardiologist. He’s 38. And uh, he went and he asked his doctor his cardiologist to test his insulin levels and she literally said I don’t think you can test insulin Wow And he was like, yeah, I know you can test insulin. She goes, I don’t know how to do that I’m gonna have to go talk to my colleagues.

Speaker1:
[1:36:50] In 1966, so right before the low-fat cholesterol kind of paradigm.

Speaker0:
[1:36:55] Everything. We have known for decades on decades that insulin is a problem, and yet here we are in 2025, and we’re not measuring it. And their excuse is that, well, the assays aren’t predictable. Then develop a better assay. That’s not the answer. It’s just like, oh, well, we can’t measure it.

Speaker1:
[1:37:15] What? I mean, there’s developments for type 1 diabetes, So they must have figured out how, I mean, we can isolate insulin. We can make the peptide. We can inject it in people. We have long act, we have all kinds of insulin.

Speaker0:
[1:37:27] We know how to do it. You can pee on a pregnancy test and it will measure a certain small hormone in your blood in a few seconds. And you’re saying we can’t develop assays for insulin? I mean, it’s mind-blowing. But I think personally, it’s probably a little bit of a conspiracy because if we start managing the insulin, then how are we going to treat the cancer? And who’s going to make money on treating the cancer? and the Alzheimer’s and the diabetes and the weight loss.

Speaker1:
[1:37:51] Yeah, like all of our health issues go away.

Speaker0:
[1:37:53] The testosterone replacements. I mean, all of the health care would go away. Yeah.

Speaker1:
[1:37:58] Everybody’s talking about this idea of metabolic health, metabolic disease, and this is exactly what you’re working with. And I was just listening to Andrew Huberman. I know we’re almost at our time, but he’s talking about, he’s like, you know, a lot of my friends follow this really great diet, and he was describing your diet. I don’t think he knew about your diet. Hopefully he will one day. But he was like, yeah, lots of fruits and vegetables and proteins. From animals and they feel great and everything’s great and their cravings are managed and so we all intuitively know that’s the way to eat eat plants and animals

Speaker0:
[1:38:26] Less processed nuts and seeds and like things that are just yeah normally available like people don’t realize as how the amount i think i used ai because i said okay imagine that all of human evolution was one year how long have we been eating starches and dairy? And if you were to do that, what would your guess be? If all of human evolution was compacted into one year, how long do you think we have actually as a species been eating starch or dairy?

Speaker1:
[1:39:03] It’s, I mean, I have a little bit of knowledge. In like the 12-hour clock, it’s like the last second or something like that. So I imagine it’d be like the last month.

Speaker0:
[1:39:14] Two and a half seconds. Yeah. Oh, wow. We have been eating starches and dairy for two and a half seconds and so when people are like we’ve been eating bread from the beginning of history i’m like no no no no and.

Speaker1:
[1:39:28] It was different bread and we had different we had different like

Speaker0:
[1:39:31] A different bread and we also didn’t eat bread we ate bread when we became societies and we didn’t want to have to look for our next food and that makes sense and that’s great we built societies but we also work we we exercised a lot more we were just active right like we were going out and bothering that around that.

Speaker1:
[1:39:49] Time we had like bad bone structure like things changed not you know all of these diseases ran rampant and

Speaker0:
[1:39:56] Right like we there is nothing that’s naturally available to us that spikes insulin fruits people are like oh well like you know the fruits today are so big they’re not the same well, Have you ever seen a fruit tree that’s like heavy with fruit? If you were like a hunter-gatherer or like an ancient person and you just happened upon this fruit tree, you might sit there and eat three or four apples. Like who cares if an apple today is this big when you just would eat, several of them you know like that’s and they’re like oh well they’re sweeter i’m like no no no i spent two two weeks in the amazon when i was 18 and that fruit is unadulterated and is sweeter than i’ve ever tasted in a grocery store so it’s not because it’s sweeter it doesn’t matter that it’s bigger fruit has always been very available i live in the coast the orange trees here get so full of oranges that the branches touch the ground i mean fruit would have always been available to us vegetables would have always been available to us like my parents are drowning in pecans we live in texas i mean the amount of pecans and they have six countries at their house like these are foods that would have just been available to us you know and it’s like, going and gathering enough oats to make your morning bowl of oatmeal that you cooked in the microwave for 90 seconds and added milk and honey to.

Speaker1:
[1:41:18] You don’t you don’t know how to do that like you know how to pick an apple you can theoretically imagine how you kill an animal, but how you make oats, even what an oat looks like when it’s growing, nobody knows, right?

Speaker0:
[1:41:30] No, and it would have just been wild oats, right? Like you would have had to go forever to find enough oats to like put in your bowl and then somehow make it, I mean, steel cut oats take forever to cook and just, it wouldn’t have been part of our life. And now people think nothing of a bowl of granola and skim milk, which is just oats and sugar and milk or a bowl of oatmeal with, milk and honey in it and they’re like oh it’s oatmeal it’s like um it’s so much more than oatmeal it’s a bowl of glucose you know and it’s hard for people to get their head wrapped but hopefully with the this conversation they understand

Speaker0:
[1:42:08] a little bit more behind what’s going on yeah.

Speaker1:
[1:42:11] I think minds will be blown so really one why i wanted to talk to you i wanted to be like listen to this conversation to patients who are like what like you know but um dr ali any last thoughts? Any last words? Thank you so much.

Speaker0:
[1:42:23] No, I think that, you know, I think we covered everything and more. People might need to watch this on 2X to get this.

Speaker1:
[1:42:31] Yeah, watch it a couple times. I might have another episode kind of going over the signs with PowerPoints to kind of like reinforce what we talked about. But yeah, this is really great.

Speaker0:
[1:42:41] Yeah, I think the free webinar, right? That free webinar I have on YouTube, I think it really helps also just, you know, put some perspective i have a free guide on my website with kind of all the foods that you can eat freely of um and then yeah so and i have i have the app coming out i’ll have tons of free education um it’ll have a subscription because that’s just you know part of the world we live in but if you want to access some of the tools and resources but a lot of the education will be free so perfect i’ll.

Speaker1:
[1:43:08] Link to everything in the show notes for people to check you out and to follow you so your website and your instagram um is that the best place people can find you kind of website Yeah,

Speaker0:
[1:43:16] I think I’m not very active on any other social platform. I can only handle one. But Instagram is where I’m at. Yeah, where I do the most.

Speaker1:
[1:43:25] Thank you so much. This has been so great.

Speaker0:
[1:43:27] Thank you for having me. Love it.

Some Like it Cold: the therapeutic benefits of “freezing your butt off”

Some Like it Cold: the therapeutic benefits of “freezing your butt off”

In the winter of 2019 I took a surfing lesson in Costa Rica. I fell in love–the sun and salt water on my skin, the beautiful view of the beach, the spray off the back of the waves, the loud crashing of translucent turquoise, and the feeling of power, ease, flow and grace as I stood on a board, using the energy of the earth to fly across water.

The problem was, however, I would be going home in a week to a landlocked part of the world that spends a lot of its months covered in ice.

It was depressing.

Then I met a girl from Toronto, a psychotherapist who worked at a clinic just down the street from my old one.

“You can surf in Toronto, you know”, she informed me.

Where? I thought, astounded.

“On the lakes!” She exclaimed.

I was flabbergasted–perhaps I could be a surfer after all. The beach bum lifestyle, the rock hard abs, the zinc oxide cheek bones, the chronically wet hair, watching the winds and tides and slipping out for a sun-soaked hour during a work break. Could this be true–could you surf the Great Lakes?

“The thing is,” she continued, “the surf season is from October to March”.

Oh.

Winter surfing.

It was still interested, though.

Back in Toronto, I waited for the next strong February East wind and headed to a surf spot I’d heard about on Lake Ontario. I was met with a crowd of black neoprene-clad surfers, soaked by water, wind and sleet. The elements were harsh. The stoke, however, was infectious.

Ok, I could do this, I thought.

My next stop was the surf shop. I purchased gear and the rest is history.

Not a lot of us are built to slip into near-freezing water during the frigid winter months to catch a few waves. Lake waves are harder to catch, the currents are strong, ice chunks are a thing to watch out for, and… it’s friggin’ cold! But, surfing is surfing. The lakes provide beautiful landscapes, just like the ocean, and the feeling of catching a wave and riding it is the same.

There’s also the benefit of body hardening.

We modern humans are very different from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Our genes may be the same, but our lifestyles couldn’t be further apart. Down-filled jackets and central heating protect us from the discomfort of the elements. In a sense, our lives are temperature controlled.

However, our incidence of chronic degenerative disease has never been higher.

Body hardening practices involves exposure against natural stimuli, such as intense cold, that results in increased resilience–resistance to disease and improved health.

A 1998 study in QJM: an international journal of medicine looked at antioxidant production in German winter swimmers.

Winter swimming, just like winter surfing, is a thing. As of the 90s, there were 3000 Germans who participated in winter swimming clubs. They were known to experience a 40% reduction in respiratory diseases compared to the rest of the population, debunking the notion that if you exposure yourself to cold you’ll “catch a cold”.

The study looked at 23 male and 13 female who had been members of a Berlin winter swimming club for more than two years. On average they swam for 5 to 10 minutes on a weekly basis in water between 1 and 5 degrees celsius. Their blood levels of glutathione were compared with that of 28 healthy men and 12 healthy women who had never participated in cold-exposure body hardening therapies such as winter swimming.

Glutathione is our body’s main antioxidant. It protects us from free radicals (reactive oxygen and reactive nitrogen species, ROS and RNS, respectively) that are harmful to our cells. It is produced from three amino acids: glycine, cysteine, and glutamine.

Glutathione reduces oxidative stress produced by these free radicals that occur in cells as a result of their energy production, as well as toxins, pollutants and other stressors. A deficiency of glutathione is associated with an increased risk of cancer, accelerated aging, and other diseases, such as metabolic disease like diabetes and cognitive diseases like Parkinson’s. It decreases as a result of aging, chronic disease, toxin exposure, and chronic stress.

Elevating glutathione status has been shown to improve conditions like insulin resistance, autoimmune diseases, cognitive and mental health conditions, fatty liver and cirrhosis, autism, and respiratory diseases.

It was found that after cold water exposure, blood levels of antioxidants like glutathione decreases, indicating that cold water exposure induces oxidative stress on the body. However, after a period of time, glutathione levels rose higher than that of baseline.

Baseline blood levels of glutathione were higher in cold water swimmers, indicating that their bodies were more efficient at producing glutathione in response to the temporary oxidative stress imposed on them by the cold exposure.

In essence, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

This is called hormesis: when temporary stress is imposed on our bodies, we respond with adaptive measures, such as increased glutathione production to combat that stress. However, our bodies are smart. They figure that if we’re exposed to some cold stress, there might be more coming. Therefore, it might be a good idea to invest energy into hardening, preparing for more of that same stress in the future and, in essence, becoming more resilient. And so, when exposed to a stressor, we often produce more antioxidant than is needed to simply overcome that stressor, and this results in an overall net benefit to our health and well-being.

Just like lifting weights makes us stronger for the next time we lift weights, we become stronger and more resilient at our baseline as we prepare for the next hit of cold, heat, exercise, or stress.

The 1998 study also revealed that cold water swimmers had more enzymes that combat free radicals such as superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and catalase, meaning that their cells were better prepared to ramp up antioxidant production quickly and neutralize free radicals at a moment’s notice, if needed.

Cold water swimmers also produced four times more norepinephrine after their cold exposure. Norepinephrine is part of our fight or flight response, but is also associated with increased energy, mood, motivation and well-being. Imagine a hit of caffeine–that’s a bit what cold burst can do to you via norepinephrine. Heart race increases, and we’re filled with an excited euphoria.

Norepinephrine is part of the reason why cold therapy has been touted as a remedy for depression. Cold exposure provides a much-needed burst of mobilizing chemicals to kickstart feelings of well-being and motivation for people who are struggling with low mood and arousal.

Cold therapy also increases dopamine by 250%, according to a 2000 study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. Dopamine gives us the sense of motivation and meaning in pursuing a goal. It fills us with purpose and drive. So many of us are starved of dopamine and therefore so much of our culture involves trying to increase dopamine: scrolling social media, consuming sugar, playing video games, and so on.

The problem with many of these attempts to boost dopamine is that they come with a cost. We get a hit of pleasure from consuming sugar, for example, followed by a dip in our baseline levels of dopamine. Overall, we’re left feeling empty, foggy, purposeless, and addicted. We experience cravings that need to be filled.

Even supplements like Macuna pruriens and l-tyrosine, designed to boost dopamine levels, result in crashes 30 to 45 minutes after they peak.

Cold exposure, however, gives us a hit of dopamine that remains elevated for hours without a resulting crash. This provides an intense boost to mood, motivation, cognitive function, concentration, focus, purpose and drive. Like norepinephrine this can also contribute to cold therapy’s anti-depressive effect.

It seems that if we engage in something hard and uncomfortable, something that requires effort–like cold exposure–our body rewards us with an increase in mood, motivation and drive through the enhancement of dopamine production in our brains.

Winter surfing has been an immense gift to my health and well-being. It’s given me purpose, community, exposure to nature, and a wonderful outlet for body hardening. If I go more than a week without a surf session I start to feel a bit of withdrawal. There is nothing more therapeutic than hours spent checking the forecast, and driving to chase waves in order to end up floating in the middle of a beautiful lake, surrounded by nature and friends.

With regular winter surfing I feel invigorated, energized and fit–the mood-lifting effects of the cold exposure is comparable to nothing else.

This winter my message to everyone is: get outside. Exposure yourself to cold. Expose yourself to nature. Use the elements and the changing seasons as tools to enhance your health.

There are incredible mood-elevating, immune system-boosting and anti-aging benefits to becoming more resilient. While it may be uncomfortable, cold adaptation is a sign of your improved vitality and disease resistance.

Nature’s harshness evolved us. Temperature extremes helped to shape our DNA. Our genes contain codes for amazing mental, emotional, and physical resilience. They are waiting to be turned on at a moment’s notice, if only they’re given a reason.

Cold exposure flips the on-switch to your body’s incredible superpowers. Let’s explore the potential of this beautiful vessel in which we all live.

References:

Šrámek, P., Šimečková, M., Janský, L. et al. Human physiological responses to immersion into water of different temperatures. Eur J Appl Physiol 81, 436–442 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/s004210050065

W.G. Siems, R. Brenke, O. Sommerburg, T. Grune, Improved antioxidative protection in winter swimmers, QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, Volume 92, Issue 4, April 1999, Pages 193–198, https://doi.org/10.1093/qjmed/92.4.193

Image: Dean Weare at www.dweare.com

Crafting an Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle

Crafting an Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle

It’s day one of my period and I’ve been healing a broken foot for 6 weeks. The weather is overcast, thick, humid and rainy.

My body feels thick and heavy. Clothing leaves an imprint on my skin–socks leave deep indentations in my ankles. My face and foot is swollen. My tongue feels heavy. My mind feels dull, achey, and foggy. It’s hard to put coherent words together.

I feel cloudy and sleepy. Small frustrations magnify. It’s hard to maintain perspective.

My muscles ache. My joints throb slightly. They feel stiffer and creakier.

This feeling is transient. The first few days of the menstrual cycle are characterized by an increase in prostaglandins that stimulate menstrual flow and so many women experience an aggravation of inflammatory symptoms like depression, arthritis, or autoimmune conditions around this time. You might get. a cold sore outbreak, or a migraine headache around this time of month. The phenomenon can be exaggerated with heavy, humid weather, and chronic inflammation–such as the prolonged healing process of mending a broken bone.

Inflammation.

It’s our body’s beautiful healing response, bringing water, nutrients, and immune cells to an area of injury or attack. The area involved swells, heats up, becomes red, and might radiate pain. And then, within a matter of days, weeks, or months, the pathogen is neutralized, the wound heals and the inflammatory process turns off, like a switch.

However, inflammation can be low-grade and chronic. Many chronic health conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, PMS or PMDD, depression, anxiety, migraines, even bowel and digestive issues, have an inflammatory component.

As I tell my patients. Inflammation is “everything that makes you feel bad”. Therefore anti-inflammatory practices make you feel good.

Many of us don’t realize how good we can feel because low-grade inflammation is our norm.

We just know that things could be better: we could feel more energy, more lightness of being and body, more uplifted, optimistic mood, clearer thinking and cognitive functioning, better focus, less stiffness and less swelling.

Obesity and weight gain are likely inflammatory processes. Insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome are inflammatory in nature. It’s hard to distinguish between chronic swelling and water retention due to underlying low-grade chronic inflammation and actual fat gain, and the two can be closely intertwined.

It’s unfortunate then, that weight loss is often prescribed as a treatment plan for things like hormonal imbalances, or other conditions caused by metabolic imbalance. Not only has the individual probably already made several attempts to lose weight, the unwanted weight gain is most likely a symptom, rather than a cause, of their chronic health complaint. (Learn how to get to the root of this with my course You Weigh Less on the Moon).

Both the main complaint (the migraines, the PMS, the endometriosis, the depression, the arthritis, etc.) and the weight gain, are likely due to an inflammatory process occurring in the body.

To simply try to cut calories, or eat less, or exercise more (which can be helpful for inflammation or aggravate it, depending on the level of stress someone is under), can only exacerbate the process by creating more stress and inflammation and do nothing to relieve the root cause of the issues at hand.

Even anti-inflammatory over the counter medications like Advil, prescription ones like naproxen, or natural supplements like turmeric (curcumin) have limiting effects. They work wonderfully if the inflammation is self-limiting: a day or two of terrible period cramps, or a migraine headache. However, they do little to resolve chronic low-grade inflammation. If anything they only succeed at temporarily suppressing it only to have it come back with a vengeance.

The issue then, is to uncover the root of the inflammation, and if the specific root can’t be found (like the piece of glass in your foot causing foot pain), then applying a general anti-inflammatory lifestyle is key.

The first place to start is with the gut and nutrition.

Nutrition is at once a complex, confusing, contradictory science and a very simple endeavour. Nutrition was the simplest thing for hundreds of thousands of years: we simply ate what tasted good. We ate meat, fish and all the parts of animals. We ate ripe fruit and vegetables and other plant matter that could be broken down with minimal processing.

That’s it.

We didn’t eat red dye #3, and artificial sweeteners, and heavily modified grains sprayed with glyphosate, and heavily processed flours, and seed oils that require several steps of solvent extraction. We didn’t eat modified corn products, or high fructose corn syrup, or carbonated drinks that are artificially coloured and taste like chemicals.

We knew our food—we knew it intimately because it was grown, raised, or hunted by us or someone we knew—and we knew where it came from.

Now we have no clue. And this onslaught of random food stuffs can wreck havoc on our systems over time. Our bodies are resilient and you probably know someone who apparently thrives on a diet full of random edible food-like products, who’s never touched a vegetable and eats waffles for lunch.

However, our capacity to heal and live without optimal nutrition, regular meals that nourish us and heal us rather than impose another adversity to overcome, can diminish when we start adding in environmental chemicals and toxins, mental and emotional stress, a lack of sleep, and invasion of blue light at all hours of the day, bodies that are prevented from experiencing their full range of motion, and so on.

And so to reduce inflammation, we have to start living more naturally. We need to reduce the inflammation in our environments. We need to put ourselves against a natural backdrop–go for a soothing walk in nature at least once a week.

We need to eat natural foods. Eat meats, natural sustainably raised and regeneratively farmed animal products, fruits and vegetables. Cook your own grains and legumes (i.e.: process your food yourself). Avoid random ingredients (take a look at your oat and almond milk–what’s in the ingredients list? Can you pronounce all the ingredients in those foods? Can you guess what plant or animal each of those ingredients came from? Have you ever seen a carageenan tree?).

Moving to a more natural diet can be hard. Sometimes results are felt immediately. Sometimes our partners notice a change in us before we notice in ourselves (“Hon, every time you have gluten and sugar, don’t you notice you’re snappier the next day, or are more likely to have a meltdown?”).

It often takes making a plan–grocery shopping, making a list of foods you’re going to eat and maybe foods you’re not going to eat, coming up with some recipes, developing a few systems for rushed nights and take-out and snacks–and patience.

Often we don’t feel better right away–it takes inflammation a while to resolve and it takes the gut time to heal. I notice that a lot of my patients are addicted to certain chemicals or ingredients in processed foods and, particularly if they’re suffering from the pain of gut inflammation, it can tempting to go back to the chemicals before that helped numb the pain and delivered the dopamine hit of pleasure that comes from dealing with an addiction. It might help to remember your why. Stick it on the fridge beside your smoothie recipe.

We need to sleep, and experience darkness. If you can’t get your bedroom 100%-can’t see you hand in front of your face-dark, then use an eye mask when sleeping. Give your body enough time for sleep. Less than 7 hours isn’t enough.

We need to move in all sorts of ways. Dance. Walk. Swim. Move in 3D. Do yoga to experience the full range of motion of your joints. Practice a sport that requires your body and mind, that challenges your skills and coordination. Learn balance both in your body and in your mind.

We need to manage our emotional life. Feeling our emotions, paying attention to the body sensations that arise in our bodies—what does hunger feel like? What does the need for a bowel movement feel like? How does thirst arise in your body? Can you recognize those feelings? What about your emotions? What sensations does anger produce? Can you feel anxiety building? What do you do with these emotions once they arise? Are you afraid of them? Do you try to push them back down? Do you let them arise and “meet them at the door laughing” as Rumi says in his poem The Guest House?

Journalling, meditation, mindfulness, hypnosis, breath-work, art, therapy, etc. can all be helpful tools for understanding the emotional life and understanding the role chronic stress (and how it arises, builds, and falls in the body) and toxic thoughts play in perpetuating inflammation.

Detox. No, I don’t mean go on some weird cleanse or drinks teas that keep you on the toilet all day. What I mean is: remove the gunk and clutter from your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional plumbing. This might look like taking a tech break. Or going off into the woods for a weekend. Eating animals and plants for a couple of months, cutting out alcohol, or coffee or processed foods for a time.

It might involve cleaning your house with vinegar and detergents that are mostly natural ingredients, dumping the fragrances from your cosmetics and cleaning products, storing food in steel and glass, rather than plastic. It might mean a beach clean-up. Or a purging of your closet–sometimes cleaning up the chaos in our living environments is the needed thing for reducing inflammation. It’s likely why Marie Kondo-ing and the Minimalist Movement gained so much popularity–our stuff can add extra gunk to our mental, emotional, and spiritual lives.

Finally, connect with your community. Loneliness is inflammatory. And this past year and a half have been very difficult, particularly for those of you who live alone, who are in transition, who aren’t in the place you’d like to be, or with the person or people you’d like to be–your soul family.

It takes work to find a soul family. I think the first steps are to connect and attune to oneself, to truly understand who you are and move toward that and in that way people can slowly trickle in.

We often need to take care of ourselves first, thereby establishing the boundaries and self-awareness needed to call in the people who will respect and inspire us the most. It’s about self-worth. How do you treat yourself as someone worthy of love and belonging?

Perhaps it first comes with removing the sources of inflammation from our lives, so we can address the deeper layers of our feelings and body sensations and relieve the foggy heaviness and depression and toxic thoughts that might keep us feeling stuck.

Once we clear up our minds and bodies, and cool the fires of inflammation, we start to see better—the fog lifts. We start to think more clearly. We know who we are. Our cravings subside. We can begin to process our shame, anger and sadness.

We start to crave nourishing things: the walk in nature, the quiet afternoon writing poetry, the phone call with a friend, the stewed apples with cinnamon (real sweetness). We free up our dopamine receptors for wholesome endeavours. We start to move in the direction of our own authenticity. I think this process naturally attracts people to us. And naturally attracts us to the people who have the capacity to love and accept us the way we deserve.

Once we start to build community, especially an anti-inflammatory community—you know, a non-toxic, nourishing, wholesome group of people who make your soul sing, the path becomes easier.

You see, when you are surrounded by people who live life the way you do–with a respect for nature, of which our bodies are apart–who prioritize sleep, natural nutrition, mental health, movement, emotional expression, and self-exploration, it becomes more natural to do these things. It no longer becomes a program or a plan, or a process you’re in. It becomes a way of life–why would anyone do it any other way?

The best way to overcome the toxicity of a sick society is to create a parallel one.

When you’re surrounded by people who share your values. You no longer need to spend as much energy fighting cravings, going against the grain, or succumbing to self-sabotage, feeling isolated if your stray from the herb and eat vegetables and go to sleep early.

You are part of a culture now. A culture in which caring for yourself and living according to your nature is, well… normal and natural.

There’s nothing to push against or detox from. You can simply rest in healing, because healing is the most natural thing there is.

Getting Meta on Metatarsals: Boredom, Loneliness, and Broken Feet

Getting Meta on Metatarsals: Boredom, Loneliness, and Broken Feet

About a month ago I fractured my right 5th metatarsal (an avulsion fracture, aka “The Dancer’s Fracture” or a “Pseudo-Jones Fracture”).

As soon as I laid eyes on the x-ray and the ER doctor declared, “Ms. Marcheggiani,” (actually, it’s doctor, but ok) “you broke your foot!” things changed.

I have never broken anything before, but if you have you know what it’s like. In a matter of seconds I couldn’t drive. I could barely put weight on it. I was given an Aircast boot to hobble around in, and told to ice and use anti-inflammatories sparingly. My activities: surfing, skateboarding, yoga, even my daily walks, came to a startling halt.

I spent the first few days on the couch, my foot alternating between being elevated in the boot and immersed in an ice bath. I took a tincture with herbs like Solomon’s Seal, mullein, comfrey, and boneset to help heal the bone faster. I was adding about 6 tbs of collagen to oats in the morning. I was taking a bone supplement with microcrystalline hydroxyapatite, pellets of homeopathic symphytum, zinc, and vitamin D.

We call this “treatment stacking”: throwing everything but the kitchen sink at something to give the body as many resources as possible that it may use to heal.

My brother’s wedding came and went. I was the emcee, and the best man. I bedazzled my boot and hobbled around during set-up, photos, presentations, and even tried shaking and shimmying, one-legged on the dance floor. The next few days I sat on the couch with my leg up.

I watched the Olympics and skateboarding videos. I read The Master and the Margarita and Infinite Jest. I got back into painting and created some pen drawings, trying to keep my mind busy.

I slept long hours–an amount that I would have previously assumed to be incapable. The sleep felt necessary and healing. I was taking melatonin to deepen it further.

I closed down social media apps on my phone to deal with the immense FOMO and stop mindlessly scrolling. I journaled instead, turning my focus from the outside world to my inner one.

It was a painful process, and not necessarily physically.

I was confined to my immediate surroundings–not able to walk far or drive. I was at the mercy of friends and family to help me grocery shop. The last year and a half has made many of us grow accustomed to social isolation and a lot of my social routines from years prior had fallen by the wayside.

My world, like the worlds of many, had gotten smaller over the last 18 months. With a broken foot, my world shrunk even further.

The loneliness was excruciating.

It would come in waves.

One moment I would relish the time spent idle and unproductive. The next I would be left stranded by my dopamine receptors, aimless, sobbing, grieving something… anything… from my previous life. And perhaps not just the life I had enjoyed pre-broken foot, but maybe a life before society had “broken”, or even before my heart had.

I thought I would be more mentally productive and buckle down on work projects but it became painfully obvious that my mental health and general productivity are tightly linked to my activity levels. And so I spent a lot of the weeks letting my bone heal in a state of waiting energy.

My best friend left me a voicemail that said, “Yes… you’re in that waiting energy. But, you know, something will come out of it. Don’t be hard on yourself. Try to enjoy things… watch George Carlin…”

During the moments where I feel completely useless and unproductive, waiting for life to begin, I was reminded of this quote by Cheryl Strayed. This quote speaks to me through the blurry, grey haze of boredom and the existential urgency of wasting time.

It says,

“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”

These things are your becoming.

Something will come out of it.

When I did a 10-Day Vipassana (silent meditation) retreat in the summer of 2018, I learned about pain.

It was Day 3 or 4 and we had been instructed to sit for an entire hour without moving. The pain was excruciating. The resistance was intense. I was at war with myself and then, when the gong went off and there was nothing to push against, I noticed a complete relief of tension. I was fine.

The next time I sat to meditate (another hour after a 10 minute break), I observed the resistance and released it. It’s hard to describe exactly what I did. It was something like, letting the sensations of pain flow through me like leaves on a river, rather than trying to cup my hands around them, or understand or making meaning out of them.

The sensations ebbed and flowed. Some might have been called “unpleasant” but I wasn’t in a space to judge them while I was just a casual observer, watching them flow by. They just were.

And when I have intense feelings of loneliness, boredom or heart-break I try to remember the experience I had with pain and discomfort on my meditation cushion. I try to allow them.

“This too shall pass”.

When I have a craving to jump off my couch and surf, or an intense restlessness in the rest of my body, the parts that aren’t broken, I try to let those sensations move through me.

I notice how my foot feels. How while apparently still, beneath my external flesh my body is busy: it’s in a process. It’s becoming something different than it was before. It’s becoming more than a foot that is unbroken. It’s becoming callused and perhaps stronger.

Maybe my spirit is in such a process as well.

The antidote to boredom and loneliness very often is a process of letting them move through, of observing the sensations and stepped back, out of the river to watch them flow by. A patience. Letting go.

I can’t surf today. But, it is the nature of waves that there will always be more.

Pima Chodron in her book When Things Fall Apart also references physical pain and restless in meditation while speaking of loneliness.

She writes,

“Usually we regard loneliness as the enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.”

She continues,

“When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart?

“The next time you get a chance, experiment with this.”

In other words, something will come of this.

Preventive Medicine: 9 Root Causes of Disease

Preventive Medicine: 9 Root Causes of Disease

I often get emails like this, “Dear Doctor, please tell me your favourite natural cure for anxiety”, to which I often reply:

Dear, Anxiety,

Imagine you are a gardener, tending to your garden. You are a skilled gardener: you tend lovingly to your plants every day and you care deeply for their welfare.

You are the perfect gardener in every way, except for one: for some reason you don’t know anything about soil.

No one has ever taught you about the damp, dark soot that envelopes the roots of your beloved plants, kindly offering to them its protection, water, and nutrients.

You are a gardener, but are innocently oblivious to the fact that soil must be nurtured by millions of microbes, and that nutrients in the soil must be replenished. You have no idea that the other plants sharing the soil with your garden form a complex network of give and take, depositing nutrients into it, while greedily sucking others away.

Now, as this soil-ignorant gardener, imagine your surprise when, despite your care and attention, the plants in your garden wither and die, bearing no flowers or fruit.

Imagine your frustration when your efforts to prop up tired stems fail. You apply water and fertilizer to buds, leaves and stems. You stand by, powerless, as your garden dies.

Notice the weeds taking over your garden, which you lop off at their stems, unaware that their roots reside deep inside the earth.

When the weeds pop up again and again, you slash at them, burn them, and you curse the skies.

“Why me?”

Why you, indeed.

You are unaware of root gardening, soil gardening, just as many of us are unaware of root medicine—soil medicine.

You see, Anxiety, there are many natural remedies that can help.

However, tossing natural pills at twitching nerves, imbalanced blood sugar, unregulated stress responses, and various nutrient deficiencies, might be as naive a practice as spray painting your roses while they wilt in sandy earth, beneath their red paint.

It might be akin to prescribing anxiety medication or a shot of vodka to calm your trembling mind; you might feel better for a time, propped up with good intentions, before collapsing in the dry soil encasing you.

With no one to tend to your roots you eventually crumple, anxiety still rampant.

“Why me?” You curse the skies.

Rather than asking, “Why me?” it might help to simply start asking, “Why?”

While it is important to understand the “What” of your condition—What disease is present? What is the best natural cure for anxiety?—naturopathic doctors are far more interested in the “Why”.

As Dr. Mark Hyman, functional medical doctor, asks:

Why are your symptoms occurring?

Why now?

And why in this way?

Naturopathic doctors prescribe natural remedies for conditions such as anxiety, it’s true. However, naturopathic medicine is a medicine that first tends to the soil.

Naturopathic doctors first look for and addresses the roots of symptoms, working with the relationships that exist between you and your body, your food, the people in your life, your society, your environment—your soil.

Healing involves taking a complete inventory of all the factors in your life that influence your mental, physical, and emotional wellness. It requires looking at the air, water, sunlight, nutrients, stressors, hormones, chemicals, microbes, thoughts and emotions that our cells bathe in each day.

Healing means looking closely at the soil that surrounds us. It requires asking, What are the roots that this condition stems from? And, What soil buries these roots? Does it nourish me?

Do I nourish it?

The causes of disease can be interconnected and complex. Very often, however, there are common root networks from which many modern-day chronic health conditions arise.

Starving Gut Bacteria.

It was Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who first proclaimed that “All disease begins in the gut.”

Our digestive systems are long, hollow tubes that extend from mouth to anus, and serve as our body’s connection to the outside world. What enters our digestive system does not fully become the body until the cells that line that digestive tract deem these nutrients worthy of entering.

Along their 9 metre-long, 50-hour journey, these nutrients are processed by digestive enzymes, broken down by trillions of beneficial bacteria, and sorted out by the immune cells that guard entrance to our vulnerable bodies.

Our immune cells make the judgement call between what sustains us, and what has that potential to kill us. For this reason, about 70% of our immune system is located along our digestive tract.

Our gut bacteria, containing an estimated 30 trillion cells, outnumber the cells in our body 3 to 1. Science has only just begun to write the love story between these tiny cells and our bodies. These bacteria are responsible for aiding in the digestion of our food, producing essential nutrients, such as B vitamins and fat-soluble vitamins, and keeping our intestines healthy.

However, this love story can turn tragic when these little romantics are not properly fed or nurtured, or when antagonists enter the story in the form of pathogenic bacteria or yeast.

Our microbiome may impact our health in various ways.

Studies are emerging showing that obese people have different gut profiles than those who are normal weight. Our gut bacteria have a role in producing the hormones that regulate hunger, mood, stress, circadian rhythms, metabolism, and inflammation. They regulate our immune system, playing a role in soothing autoimmune conditions, and improving our ability to fight off infections and cancer.

Psychological and physical stress, inflammation, medication use, and a diet consisting of processed food, can all conspire to negatively affect the health of our gut. This can lead to a plethora of diseases: mood disorders, psychiatric illness, insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, chronic pain and inflammation, obesity, hormonal issues, such as endometriosis, autoimmune disease, and, of course, chronic digestive concerns such as IBS, among others.

As Hippocrates long knew, one doesn’t have to dig for long to uncover an unhappy gut microbiome as one of the primary roots of disease.

Our gut has the power to nurture us, to provide us with the fuel that keeps our mood bright and our energy high. However, if we fail it, out gut also has the power to plague our cells with chronic inflammation and disease.

To be fully healthy, we must tend to our gut like a careful gardener tends to her soil.

This involves eating a diet rich in fermented foods, like kefir, and dietary fibre, like leeks, Jerusalem artichokes, and black beans. It also means, consuming flavonoid-rich foods like green tea, and cocoa, and consuming a colourful tapestry of various fruits and vegetables.

Healing our gut requires avoiding foods it doesn’t like. These may include foods that feed pathogenic bacteria, mount an immune response, kill our good bacteria, trigger inflammation, or simply those processed foods that fail to nurture us.

To heal ourselves, first we must feed out gut.

Confused Circadian Rhythms.

For hundreds of thousands of years, all of humanity rose, hunted, ate, fasted, and slept according to the sun’s rhythms.  

To align us with nature, our bodies contain internal clocks, a central one located in brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is susceptible to light from the sun, and peripheral clocks located in the liver and pancreas, which respond to our eating patterns.

Our gut bacteria also respond to and influence our body’s clocks. 

However, the invention of electricity, night shifts, and 24-hour convenience stores, means that our bodies can no longer rely on the outside world to guide our waking and sleeping patterns. This can confuse our circadian rhythms, leading to digestive issues, insomnia, daytime fatigue, mood disorders, and problems with metabolism, appetite, and blood-sugar regulation.

Dr. Satchin Panda, PhD, a researcher at the Salk Institute in California, found that mice who ate a poor diet experienced altered circadian rhythms. However, he found that when these mice were fed the same diet in accordance with their natural rhythms, they weighed less, had lower incidences of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, had better cognitive health, and lived longer.

These findings indicate that perhaps it is not what we eat but when that may impact our health.

Perhaps it is that an unnatural diet disconnects us from nature, or that this disconnection tempts us to choose non-nutritive foods, but the research by Dr. Panda and his team reveals the importance of aligning our daily routines with our bodies’ natural rhythms in order to experience optimal health.

According to Dr. Panda’s findings, this involves eating during an 8 to 12-hour window, perhaps having breakfast at 7am and finishing dinner early, or simply avoiding nighttime snacking.

For many of us, this may involve making the effort to keep our sleep schedules consistent, even on weekends.

For most of us, it involves avoiding exposure to electronics (which emit circadian-confusing blue light) after the sun goes down, and exposing our eyes to natural sunlight as soon after waking as possible.

Nature Deficit Disorder.

Nature Deficit Disorder is a phrase, coined by Richard Louv, in the 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods.

According to Louv, a variety of childhood problems, especially mental health diagnoses like ADHD, are a direct result of our society’s tendency to increasingly alienate children from nature.

With most of humanity living in cities, nature has become a place we visit, rather than what immerses us. However much modernization might remove us from nature, our bodies, as well as the food, air, water, sunlight, and natural settings they require to thrive, are products of nature, and cannot be separated from it.

A Japanese practice called Shinrin-Yoku, or “Forest Bathing”, developed in the 1980’s to attempt to reconnect modern people with the healing benefits of spending time in a natural setting. There is an immediate reduction in stress hormones, blood pressure, and heart rate when people immerse themselves in natural environments, such as a forest. 

Whether we like it or not, our roots need soil. It is possible that the components of this soil are too complex to manufacture. When we try to live without soil, essential elements that nourish us, and the various relationship between these elements are left out.

When we remove ourselves from nature, or ignore it fully, we become like gardeners oblivious to the deep dependency their plants have on the soil that enshrouds them.  

Connecting with nature by spending time outside, retraining our circadian rhythms, connecting with our food sources, and consuming natural, whole foods, may be essential for balancing our minds, emotions, and physical bodies.

A Lack of Key Building Blocks.

Our bodies are like complex machines that need a variety of macro and micronutrients, which provide us with the fuel, building blocks, vitamins and minerals that we need to function.

As I child, I would play with Lego, putting together complex structures according to the blueprints in the box. When I discovered that a piece was missing, I would fret. It meant that my masterpiece would no longer look right, or work. If I was lucky, I might find a similar piece to replace it, but it wouldn’t be the same.

After looking long and hard for it, sometimes the missing piece would turn up. I’d locate it under the carpet, my brother’s bottom, or lodged in a dark corner of the box. Often our bodies don’t get that lucky.

Nutrients like vitamin B12, perhaps, or a specific essential amino acid, or a mineral like magnesium, help our body perform essential steps in its various biochemical pathways.

These pathways follow our innate blueprint for health. They dictate how we eat, sleep, breathe, and create and use energy. They control how our bones and hair grow. They control our mood and hormones. They form our immune systems. These pathways run us.

Our bodies carry out the complicated instructions in our DNA to will us into existence using the ingredients supplied from food. If our bodies are missing one or several of these ingredients—a vitamin or mineral—an important bodily task simply won’t get done.

Dr. Bruce Ames, PhD, theorized that when nutrient levels are suboptimal, the body triages what it has to cove tasks essential to our immediate survival, while compromising other jobs that are important, but less dire.

For example, a body may have enough vitamin C to repair wounds or keep the teeth in our mouths—warding off obvious signs of scurvy, a disease that results from severe vitamin C deficiency. However, it may not have enough to protect us from the free radicals generated in and outside of our bodies. This deficiency may eventually lead to chronic inflammation, and even cancer, years later.

According to Dr. Ames’ Triage Theory, mild to moderate nutrient deficiencies may manifest later in life, as diseases that arise from the deprivation of the building blocks needed to thrive.

In North America, despite an overconsumption of calories, nutrient deficiencies are surprisingly common.

25-50% of people don’t get enough iron, which is important for the transport of oxygen, the synthesis of neurotransmitters, and for proper thyroid function.

One third of the world’s population is deficient in iodine, which affects thyroid health and fertility.

Up to 82% of North Americans are vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D regulates the expression of over 1000 genes in the body, including those involved in mood regulation, bone health, immunity, and cancer prevention.

Vitamin B12 is commonly deficient in the elderly, vegans and vegetarians. It is important for lowering inflammation, creating mood-regulating neurotransmitters, and supporting nervous system health. Deficiency in vitamin B12 can result in fatigue. Severe deficiency can lead to irreversible nerve damage, dementia, and even seizures.

Magnesium is an essential mineral involved in over 300 chemical reactions, including mood and hormone pathways. Over 40% of North Americans do not consume enough magnesium, which is found in leafy green vegetables.

Our bodies have requirements for fats, which make up our brain mass and the backbone of our sex hormones, and protein, which makes up our enzymes, neurotransmitters and the structure of our body: bones, skin, hair, nails, and connective tissue.

Our gut microbiota require fibre.

Our cells need antioxidants to help protect us from the free radical damage from our own cells’ metabolism and our exposure to environmental toxins.

We certainly are what we eat, which means we can be magnificent structures with every piece in place, thriving with abundance and energy.

Despite reasonably good intentions, we can also suffer from nutrient scarcity, forced to triage essential nutrients to keep us from keeling over, while our immune health, mood, and overall vitality slowly erode.

A Body on Fire: Chronic Inflammation.

When we injure ourselves—banging a knee against the sharp edge of the coffee table, or slashing a thumb with a paring knife—our immune systems rally to the scene.

Our immune cells protect us against invaders that might take advantage of the broken skin to infect us. They mount an inflammatory response, with symptoms of pain, heat, redness, and swelling, in order to heal us. They recruit proteins to the scene to stop blood loss; they seal our skin back up, leaving behind only a small white scar—a clumsiness souvenir.

Our inflammatory response is truly amazing.

One the danger has been dealt with, the immune response is trained to turn off. However, when exposed to a stressor, bacteria, or toxin, for prolonged periods, our immune system may have trouble quieting. Chronic issues can contribute to chronic inflammation.

Scientists argue that an inflammatory response gone rogue may be the source of most chronic diseases, from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, to schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. 

The gut is often the source of chronic inflammation as it hosts about 70% of the immune system. When we eat something that our immune system doesn’t like, an inflammatory response is triggered. This can cause digestive issues such as inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, and the more common irritable bowel syndrome. It can also lead to more widespread issues like chronic pain, arthritis, migraines, and even mood disorders like Bipolar.

Ensuring optimal gut health through nurturing the gut microbiome, and eating a clean diet free of food sensitivities, is essential for keeping the body’s levels of inflammation low.

Constant Fighting and Fleeing.

Like inflammation, our stress response is essential to our survival.

When facing a predatory animal, our body is flooded with stress hormones that aim to remove us from the danger: either through fighting, fleeing, or freezing. Our stress response is affectionately called our “Fight or Flight” response.

However, like inflammation, problems arise when our stress response refuses to turn off. Traffic, exams, fights with in-laws, and other modern-day struggles, can be constant predators that keep us in a chronically stressed-out state.

Chronic stress has major implications for our health: it can affect the gut, damage our microbiome, alter our circadian rhythms, mess with mood and hormones, and contribute to chronic inflammation. Stress gets in the way of our ability to care for ourselves: it isolates us, encourages us to consume unhealthy foods, and buffer our emotions through food, alcohol, work, and drugs.

We also know that stress has a role in the development of virtually every disease. Like chronic inflammation, it has been found to contribute to chronic anxiety, depression, digestive concerns, weight gain, headaches, heart disease, insomnia, chronic pain, and problems with concentration and memory, among others.  

Discomfort with Discomfort.

To assess its impact on health, it helps to determine between two key types of stress: distress, the chronic wear and tear of traffic, disease, and deadlines, and eustress.

Eustress is beneficial stress—the short-lived discomfort of intense exercise, the euphoric agony of emotional vulnerability, or the bitter nutrients of green vegetables—that makes the body more resilient to hardship.

Whenever I feel discomfort, I try to remember the ducks.

Several years ago, on a particularly frigid winter day, I was walking my dog. Bundled against the cold wind, we strolled along the semi-frozen lake, past tree branches beautifully preserved in glass cases of ice. Icebergs floated on the lake. So did a group of ducks, bobbing peacefully in the icy waters.

With nothing to protect their thin flippers from the sub-zero temperatures, they couldn’t have felt comfortable. There couldn’t have been even a part of them that felt warm, cozy, or fed.

There was no fire for them to retreat to, no dinner waiting for them at home, no slippers to stuff frozen, wet flippers into. This was it. The ducks were here, outside with us, withstanding the temperatures of the icy lake. A part of them must have been suffering. And yet, they were surviving.

Far from surviving, the ducks looked down-right content.

I think of the ducks and I think of the resilience of nature.

We humans are resilient too. Like the ducks, our bodies have survived temperature extremes. Our ancestors withstood famine, intense heat, biting cold, terrible injury, and the constant threat of attack and infection, for millenia. You were born a link on an unbroken chain of survivors, extending 10,000 generations long.

Our bodies have been honed, over these hundreds of thousands of years, to survive, even thrive, during the horrendous conditions that plagued most of our evolutionary history.

Investigations into the human genome have revealed genes that get turned on in periods of eustress: bursts of extreme heat or cold, fasting, and high-intensity exercise. When our body encounters one of these stressors, it activates a hormetic response to overcome the stress. Often the response is greater than what is needed to neutralize the threat, resulting in a net benefit for our bodies.

These protective genes create new brain cells, boost mitochrondria function, lower inflammation, clear out damaged cells, boost the creation of stem cells, repair DNA, and create powerful antioxidants. Our bodies are flooded with hormones that increase our sense of well-being.

It’s like the old adage, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Our bodies were made for discomfort. In fact, we have entire genetic pathways waiting to kick in and heal us as soon as they experience hardship.

There are a growing number of studies on the healing power of small troubles. Fasting may have a role in treating autoimmune diseases, decreasing the signs of aging, and as an adjunct therapy for cancer; sauna therapy boosts detoxification and may prevent dementia; cryotherapy, or exposure to extreme cold, has the potential to heal arthritis and autoimmunity; and High Intensity Interval Training has been shown to boost cardiovascular health more than moderate-intensity exercise.

Plants may benefit us through flavonoids, which, rather than serving as nutrients, act as small toxins that boost these hormetic pathways, encouraging the body to make loads of its own, powerful antioxidants to combat these tiny toxins.

Mindfully embracing discomfort—the bitter taste of plants, the chilly night air, the deep growling hunger that occurs between meals—may be essential for letting our bodies express their full healing potential.

Not Minding Our Minds.

Our ability to withstand powerful emotions may have healing benefits.

Many of us avoid painful feelings, allowing them to fester within us. We buffer them with excess food, or drugs, leading to addictions. Mindfulness can help us learn to be with the discomfort of the emotions, thoughts and physical sensations that arise in the body as inevitable side effects of being alive.

Research has shown that mindfulness can help decrease rumination, and prevent depressive relapse. It also helps lower perceived stress. How we perceive the stressors in our lives can lower the damaging effects they have on us. Research shows that those who view their life stressors as challenges to overcome have lower stress hormone activation, and experience greater life satisfaction.

According to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), our thoughts create our emotions. Becoming more aware of our thoughts, through CBT or mindfulness, allows us to identify which thoughts may be limiting us or exacerbating our reactions to stressful situations.

When we learn to observe our thoughts, we create some distance from them. We become less likely to see the dismal thoughts in our minds as absolute truths.

Practicing mindful meditation, CBT, or cultivating positive thoughts, such as engaging in a daily gratitude practice, may improve our resilience to chronic stress.

Inattention.

According to Stephen Cope, yoga teacher and author of The Great Work of Your Life, “You love what you know deeply. Get to know yourself deeply”. We get to know things deeply by paying attention to them.

Georgia O’Keefe’s admiration for flowers, or Monet’s adoration of landscapes, is apparent to anyone who sees their work. In order to commit images to canvas, the artists gets to know their subject matter deeply. Their art celebrates what they took the time to pay attention to, and eventually came to love. 

As a naturopathic doctor, I believe that healing begins with attention. When we become aware of our bodies, we begin to know them deeply. Awareness allows us to respond to symptoms lovingly, the way a mother learns to skillfully attend to her baby’s distinct cries.

When I first meet a new patient, the first thing I have them do is start to pay attention.

We become curious about their symptoms, their food intake, their sleep patterns, their habits and routines, the physical sensations of their emotions, the thoughts that run through their heads.

Through paying attention, with non-judgmental curiosity, my patients start to understand their bodies in new ways. They learn how certain foods feel in their bodies, how certain sleep habits affect their energy levels the next day, and how specific thoughts contribute to their feelings.

Once we begin to open up this dialogue with our bodies, it becomes impossible not to answer them with love. It becomes hard not to eat, sleep, and move in ways that convey self-respect.

A gardener who pays deep attention cannot ignore the obvious—her plants have roots, embedded in soil. The gardener quickly learns, through careful observation, that the health of this soil is vital to the health of her plants.

And so, back to the original question, “What is your favourite natural cure for anxiety?”

My favourite remedy isn’t a bottle of pills we reach for, it’s a question we reach for from within:

“What do I need to heal?”

After asking the question, we wait.

We wait for the answer to emerge from some primal place within, just as a gardener waits for new buds to rise out of the mysterious depths of the dark, nutritious soil.

 

Pin It on Pinterest