Healthy Eating Qs, Answered: Inflammation, Weight Loss, Hormone Health & More with Functional RD Brigid Titgemeier

Hello friends and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast.

I'm your host Liz Moody and I'm.

A best selling author and longtime journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life. Whether we're learning about the hidden health benefits of having more fun, debunking common myths about skincare, or hearing how to be more productive in our daily lives. And yes, those are all real episodes. So if any of those topics sound good to you, scroll on back in the archives. Today we're talking about how what we eat impacts all parts of our body, from our blood sugar balance to our inflammation to our gut health to what to eat at various points in our cycle. We've of course touched on these topics before on the podcast, but in this episode we're getting into the nitty gritty with tons of action plans and all of the details. If you've ever wondered why you might be feeling a certain way after you eat, or if your food is impacting an ongoing health issue, or just how to improve your overall health through the foods that you eat, this episode is for you. I am so excited to welcome Brigid Tigemeyer to the podcast. Brigid is a registered dietitian who is board certified in Integrative and Functional Nutrition. She was a founding dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic center for Functional Medicine, co created a graduate level integrative and functional nutrition course at Case Western Reserve University where she teaches as an adjunct instructor and has personally helped 30 thousands of people, herself included. As you will hear in the episode Transform Their Health with Food. She's been featured on the Today show in GOOP and on Mind Body Green where I actually got to know her years ago. We did a big feature on her as one of the top dietitians in the country. Anyway, she is clearly brilliant and she gave the most straightforward science backed answers.

That I have ever heard to some.

Of the questions that you all ask the most about eating well. We talked about why you're so tired all the time, plus an exact plan to get your energy back. Three things that you should do on a daily basis for blood sugar balance, what functional medicine actually means and how to find a functional doctor. The one step everyone should take before taking a food sensitivity test why low carb diets can actually be harmful for metabolic health, the one food that every single person should remove from their diet, what mitochondria are, plus exactly how to support your mitochondrial health. The shocking most effective way to change the microbiome composition completely. But we do not recommend that you.

Try this one at home, but it.

Was still a crazy, crazy story. The three best foods to eat for microbiome health an exact food and lifestyle plan for fighting inflammation the number one.

Food group you should prioritize if you have hormonal imbalances.

The number one thing you should do for low libido what to eat plus the best workout for every phase in your cycle, why you always wake up hungry at night and what to do about it how much protein we really need plus protein powder recommendations, how to lose weight in a healthy way, the science behind how calories work in your body plus how much they actually matter and so much more. As you can tell, this is a jam packed episode. So Bridget and I would both love to hear your thoughts as you're listening and I am so interested to hear what your biggest takeaways are for your own lifestyle. So definitely screenshot and tag us both on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody and she.

Is at Bean Bridgid.

If something really resonates with you in this episode, please share it with someone you love so they can hear all of Brigid's amazing advice as well. There are so many things that can.

Help people in this episode, as you heard from that entire list that I just rattled off.

And sharing is also the best way to support the podcast. Last week's episode has been trending on Spotify all week, which means it's one of the most shared episodes out of all of the episodes. Like every single podcast episode on Spotify, which is absolutely wild and is 100% because of all of you putting it on your company slacks and sending it to your friends and sending it to your family members. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I see you and I appreciate you. Also, we have such a good giveaway for this episode that you are absolutely not going to want to miss. Hint. It includes a completely free one on one session with Bridget herself, so be sure to stick around till the end of the episode to find out how to enter that. Okay, are you ready to have your mind blown? Let's get right into it with Brigid Tiggemeier.

I am so excited to have you on the podcast today. I was telling you how many DMs I got when I announced that you were coming on. People were like, oh my gosh, I love her.

She's helped me so much. So I'm excited to get into your brilliant brain.

Thank you. It's such an honor to be here with you, Liz.

Amazing.

Okay, so let's just start Off. When I asked people what problems they were having that we could address on the podcast today, one of the number one questions I got was, I am.

So exhausted all the time.

I feel like I'm doing everything right, but I'm still just tired all the time.

And I thought that would be kind.

Of a fun place to start giving your own personal story and how you kind of found functional medicine. So can you kick us off with a little bit of your own history and then we can get into how to help us all feel less tired? Sure.

If there's anyone that knows what it's like to be tired, definitely is me. I started my functional medicine journey as a patient falling asleep every single second of every single day as a teenager. It just came on suddenly, and my grades dropped very significantly, and I was sleeping my way through life and then developed about 20 to 30 mini seizures a day that are called cataplexies. So I ended up being diagnosed, actually with narcolepsy, which is when you can't control when you fall asleep or stay awake. And it's a neurological autoimmune disease. So that was also why I was having the 20 to 30 any seizures. Not that the diagnosis really explains why anything's happening, but it helps to at least understand mechanistically, once you dive deeper, what exactly you can do to help to improve it. So we went to a conventional neurologist at one of the best hospitals in the country and was told, here's your prescription. Just pulled out the prescription pad and said, based on your diagnosis, we want you to take this drug and this drug for the rest of your life. Your symptoms will only get worse as you age. And that's the plan. And my parents have no background in medicine, but they both were like, this doesn't make a lot of sense to us. Why aren't you asking more questions about what her sleep habits are like or what her diet is like or other factors that could be impacting how she's functioning? And they didn't want to have any conversation around it. So my parents took me to see a functional medicine doctor. It wasn't called functional medicine at the time because this was 2004, but they were practicing essentially, functional medicine, and they ran advanced testing and tried to help me get to the root cause of what exactly was happening. And changing my diet significantly started to help me within one month. And we went back to the neurologist. My mom and I were so excited to tell him about the improvements. And he literally just said, nutrition has nothing to do with your condition, there's absolutely no science to support anything to do with dietary changes. And refused to continue seeing me. He was the only pediatric neurologist in the department. So I then was referred to an adult neurologist at the age of 15. And that was really when I had this awakening where I went from actually hating the idea that nutrition had anything to do with my condition. I just kept dismissing my parents, saying, you're not doctors. We need to just listen to the doctor. Because this is a real disease. Nutrition is not going to solve it. And I went from that to becoming a believer because of the sacrifices that my parents made to go to a million grocery stores at the time to be able to accommodate the needs that I had. And turned into this idea that it's like if I'm experiencing this, where my doctor is denying my own experience with using food to change my disease state, there has to be a million other people in the world that are experiencing the exact same thing. And that was before anyone really was talking about nutrition, functional medicine. I just followed my intuition to say, this is not right. And as a patient, it doesn't feel like a very caring experience where someone's really trying to help you understand what's happening and how you can optimize your life. And that's why I ended up going on to study nutrition, to become a dietitian and did the advanced training in functional medicine. And here we are.

I love that you weren't completely dissuaded from sort of the western medicine approach that you were like, I'm going to take the western medicine angle, I'm going to get the credentials that I need and then I'm going to even improve it or advance it, or be part of this new movement that you just didn't turn your back on everything entirely after your experience.

That was really important to me because I wanted to understand the science for as much as there's deficiencies, I would call them, in the traditional dietetics approach. There is so much science in the courses that you're required to take with biochemistry, organic chemistry. I mean, it's two classes short of pre med. So being able to understand the actual medical nutrition therapy side was really important to me because I felt like that would give me legs to stand on when then venturing out to try to change the minds of other physicians as well.

And then you said you did this functional medicine, advanced training. I think there's a lot of confusion about what functional medicine actually means or is. Can you explain what perspective that training gave you? And what functional medicine means.

So there's two. I would say that they're probably the largest advanced credential organizations. One is the Institute for Functional Medicine, and then the other is the Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy. They both allow for you to get a board certification in either integrative and functional medicine or integrative and functional nutrition. So I did both of those trainings, and they essentially take practitioners that are conventionally taught in Western medicine to say, here's how we're going to expand your toolbox for the offerings that you have for your patients. I always think of a physician who is just operating in a regular primary care model where they're seeing 20 patients a day, they're spending 20 minutes with each patient. They feel like they don't have the time to really make an enormous impact. And they're just seeing their patients progressively get worse and worse every year. If they're even lucky enough to follow a patient because most of their schedules become overwhelmed, they don't even know the people who are in front of them. So that's something that I've heard a lot of doctors and even dietitians talk about that are going through. The functional medicine training is, I wanna be able to help my patients actually get better because it's exhausting to put all the effort in when I'm not seeing the same results. And we know that this is the case for conventional medicine as a whole. I mean, it's statistically shown that we're spending $4.1 trillion on healthcare cost increase every single year. We have 93% of the population that's metabolically unhealthy. So we owe it to patients. We owe it to people who are going through different health disruptions in their life and in their family to say, how can we expand on the research that actually exists instead of turning our eyes to it? Because it might not have been exactly what we learned in our conventional training to take that functional medicine lens and say, how is the gut microbiome connected to your symptoms? How is inflammation driving this? How are your blood sugar imbalances impacting your energy levels or other downstream health consequences that are happening so that you, as the patient. Patient, can take ownership of your health Instead of feeling like there's nothing that you can do, your hands are tied. Advanced functional medicine training really helps empower practitioners to say, there's another way to do things.

How do you find those people? If somebody listening is like, I would love to see a functional medicine practitioner, but I have no idea where to begin.

So the Institute for Functional Medicine has a directory that you can search and it allows for you to see like functional medicine doctors in your area. And that would probably be the best place to start.

And what do you think made the biggest difference for you? What changes did you make that you felt actually impacted the amount of these mini seizures, the amount of these narcoleptic experiences you were having?

One of the biggest for me was removing gluten from my diet that actually has resolved all the seizures that I used to have. And I don't take any medication for them. So within about two years of changing my diet, because I had to progressively get more and more serious about it, it was like I knew something was happening and I knew it wasn't benefiting me, but I was in denial about having to go 100%. So that was probably one of the largest changes. Anytime that I accidentally have it, I can feel the onset of the seizures almost immediately. The other thing actually is removing things that have a lot of artificial ingredients in them because everything to me hits neurologically. So I can neurological effect happening, not with fatigue, but it's kind of like a mini seizure in some ways that isn't actually manifesting. And then the other thing was balancing my blood sugar. Blood sugar plays a huge role in anyone's level of energy. But if you already are at a deficit, knowing how to really regulate that makes a huge difference in day to day energy for a normal person. And then especially if you have a sleep disorder and an energy deficit, nutrients, certain vitamins and minerals that I take to support my mitochondrial function, sleep hygiene has played an enormous role. I have been trying to go to sleep and wake up at the same time most days of every week to stay as consistent as possible for my circadian rhythm for the last 10 years, and that's something I've taken really seriously. And the research is coming out showing that actually the time that you're going to bed and the time that you're waking up the next day, trying to stay as consistent as possible is one of the most important things you can do to improve your heart rate variability and your recovery time and then also optimize sleep quality. And then breathing techniques have made a really big difference for my energy as well. That's something that I utilize regularly if I'm starting to feel really tired.

What breathing techniques do you do?

A combination of a few. I like to do the 4, 7, 8 breathing technique, which was developed by Dr. Andrew Weil.

I didn't know Dr. Weil developed that. I've Grown up with my dad. He's a psychologist. He's also a huge fan of Dr. Weil, but I didn't know that that was his thing. I just thought it was a forever thing.

I'm pretty sure he originated it.

So that's in for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight, right in for.

Four through your nose, hold for seven, exhale for eight through your mouth, making like a swishing sound through your mouth as you exhale. And then I also do 5, 5, 5, 5 box breathing where you inhale for 5, hold at the top for 5, exhale for 5, and then hold at the bottom for 5. And sometimes I'll just take really big inhales or exhales. I do a variety. It's not necessarily, I'm like, this is the time that I use 4, 7, 8 compared to this is the time that I use deep inhales and exhales. But if I'm feeling really tired, I use it reactionarily. And I try to be more proactive as well to just help to balance my parasympathetic nervous system. You have your fight or flight sympathetic or your rest and digest parasympathetic. If you're in your fight or flight all day long, running off of cortisol and adrenaline eventually will burn you out and lead to massive amounts of fatigue. So being able to get ahead of that by activating more of that rest and digest so that maybe you don't feel as fired up like you do when you're running off of adrenaline and cortisol, but it just feels like a more balanced state. That makes a big difference. One other thing that made a huge impact was my doctors kept telling me I should drink more coffee. So actually wasn't drinking coffee at all. They kept saying drink coffee to, to help you stay awake. And so then I started drinking coffee for several years and that really threw me off. Once I stopped drinking coffee and switched to green tea and now I drink Matcha. That actually creates a much more sustained energy release for me compared to the high and then complete low that I would experience a few hours after drinking coffee.

So if somebody listening was just like, I feel like I'm sleeping okay. I feel like I'm doing the bare minimum, but I feel tired all the time. Would you recommend all of those things or is there kind of low hanging fruit that they could add into their day?

So some of it is hard because you could have 10 people that are experiencing fatigue and all of their reasonings are different.

Right.

Like one person could have an overdrive on their sympathetic nervous system. Another person could have complete mitochondrial depletion, another person could have blood sugar imbalances, another person's dealing with chronic inflammation. So it's hard to say this is the protocol. But if you're trying to start out with a few things where you feel like you're already checking most boxes, I do think that potentially considering switching from coffee to Matcha could be an interesting experiment to see how it works for you personally, looking at breathing techniques that help keep you more calm and present. Also, there is people that experience neurological symptoms from gluten. Not that everyone needs to be avoiding gluten, but the second most common bucket of symptoms that people experience if they have what's called non celiac gluten sensitivity, is neurological symptoms. Whether that's cognitive decline, difficulty with memory, difficulty with energy, all of those types of things are second to GI symptoms. And a lot of times it's harder to pick up on a gluten sensitivity for someone that has neurological symptoms because most doctors are only trained to really think about it if a person has a lot of GI symptoms. So it could be an interesting experiment to remove for three weeks and then reintroduce back into your diet to see the impact effects that that makes. But I do think that stabilizing blood sugar would be a huge thing that I would recommend for literally everyone, because there's no one that doesn't benefit. And if you're having blood sugar regulation now and you're not changing your diet that's driving the blood sugar regulation, it will only get worse with age. It doesn't stay the same, it only gets worse.

Could you give us maybe two to three things we could do on a daily basis or kind of have in the back of our minds for keeping our blood sugar balance?

There's over 40 factors that impact a person's blood sugar response, and that's even outside of the field of just nutrition. So I'll talk about nutrition, but remember that poor sleep and stress levels we see very closely correlated with blood sugar spikes. I actually work with a company called Levels, that's a continuous glucose monitor software company. And I've worked with hundreds of clients through LEVELS and have seen direct spikes in blood sugar. When a person is in a stressful meeting, when they're trying on clothes after they've gained weight, when they're meeting with their ex wife for lunch, all of these scenarios, blood sugar spiking 100, 200 points. So stress is definitely a factor. But if we're talking about nutrition Alone. So I would say the first place to start would be really trying to limit added sugars, because we know that added sugars, especially if you're eating them at several times of the day, are going to spike your blood sugar. I really like for people to start with condiments and dressings and other things that aren't necessarily desserts that you might not realize are actually in your food as the perfect place. Really limiting refined grains would be the next thing that I would recommend. And you don't have to be perfect with these things, but definitely making 80% changes are going to make a drastic change in your blood sugar. And the next thing I would say is incorporating your non starchy vegetables, proteins and fats with each of your meals. That makes a massive difference in your ability to control blood sugar whether you're eating a form of carbohydrates or not. And two, something that I commonly see is people who are trying to follow really low carbohydrate diets. And I want to emphasize that the issue with very low carbohydrate diets all the time that you're not ever rotating out of is that it creates a level of carbohydrate intolerance where then anytime that you have a carbohydrate, it's going to spike your blood sugar. Now, for someone that has very bad beta cell function, like you have higher levels of insulin resistance, you are in a state of very poor metabolic health. Very low carbohydrate diet may be what's necessary in order to restore some of that function and insulin sensitivity. But if that's not the case for you, you want to focus on metabolic flexibility, which is training your body to be able to control your blood sugar regardless of the foods that you're putting on your plate. And by incorporating some carbohydrates that feed your gut microbes and help your microbes actually better control your blood sugar. It's like a cycle that continuously repeats. So if you're starving your microbes of these foods that then impact the chemicals that they're secreting, then impact your overall blood sugar control, you may be creating more carbohydrate intolerance by not incorporating those foods. And then it creates a level of deprivation long term.

All right, so you don't want us to give up carbs. I feel like that's a, a lesson a lot of people are very willing to take. Yes, thank you.

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And then you've mentioned food sensitivities a little bit. Is there a way that we can know what our food sensitivities are like? What do you think of those at home food sensitivity tests?

Before you do any at home food sensitivity tests, I would recommend getting very strict on removing ultra processed foods from your diet as often as possible. And there's not a lot of foods that I'm like really try to remove those entirely because I try to create a level of flexibility for people. But the way that ultra processed foods continue to demonstrate in the research is that they are our modern day smoking. The way that they impact the body and increase risk of short term death. About 10% for every 14% increase in consumption that was shown in 2019 by the hall study. And ever since then, we've had an explosion of research showing the issues with ultra processed foods, the way that they impact metabolic health. Dysregulate blood sugar, increase chronic inflammation, impair your gut microbial diversity. These foods are the first place that I would start with trying to eliminate before you're advancing to something like a food sensitivity test. I think that if you're not trying to focus on strategies and hacks that you can use to limit those foods and even just swap to more whole foods, if you're not doing that first, you're doing it in the wrong order. And it's not often that I say right or wrong because I really think that so much of it comes down to what works best for you. But I don't know a person who wouldn't benefit from that as their first step or their intervention.

Can you define ultra processed? Like, is the kefir that I'm getting at the grocery store considered processed?

Is the cereal from Whole Foods considered ultra processed?

So most foods that you eat are processed. I think that's important to note, is that kefir is a great example. It's an amazing nutrient dense food that is so good for reinoculating your microbes with those healthy strains of bacteria, but it is processed to get it to that point that it's in the grocery store. Ultra processed foods is when you're creating hyper palatability of foods through the modification of them to the point that you can't even recognize the actual foods where it has 40 ingredients, you would be able to look at the ingredient list and not even know what the food is.

So when you're grocery shopping, are you just kind of scanning the labels and seeing if you can recognize? Because there's those Tiktoks and Instagrams that are like, here's the ingredients in a banana listed out and they're all these chemicals or whatever. And people use that as a reason for why what we're calling ultra processed actually isn't that different. They're just using chemicals, names for things, if that makes sense.

For sure. So there are a ton of natural chemicals that exist in a banana or in any whole food. And I get upset when I see those types of things because there's so much money that goes into marketing and influencing policies within the food industry. And even in my own training, it was like all these foods fit everything in moderation. That is literally what you are taught. And we would take people that had type 2 diabetes in my nutrition classes, and we would switch their whipped cream to artificially sweetened Cool Whip. And that was one of the diabetes interventions. And I kept thinking, why is this what they're teaching in these institutions to the future of nutrition professionals and also physicians? And when you tie back the financial influence of the food industry and how much it impacts education, then you become kind of like a conspiracy theorist for even thinking or questioning the safety of some of these ingredients that have so quickly swept into our food supply without even the ability to test or research them enough before they're in 15 to 20% of the food products in the United States. The other reason that I get a little upset about it is because it's a endless cycle of people that I have seen thousands and thousands of people that literally reclaim their health from removing these foods from their diet. When you're able to see someone switch from these processed foods to whole foods and completely get off of all of their allergy medication, stop all of their flares, ulcerative colitis, reverse their prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, go from literally not being able to walk because they're in so much pain from the joint pain that they're experiencing, being able to cancel surgeries that they're supposed to have, for all of the supposed inflammation that was uncontrollable, that was happening underneath the surface that was leading to the issues. The fact that we as a society have normalized prioritizing pharmaceutical drugs and surgery as the first line of intervention without even giving people the opportunity or the chance to take action with their pantry is so disappointing. And then the fact that some people try to promote the safety of chemicals, as far as a lot of these substances that are allowed in the United States food supply with a lot of questionable science to back up their safety. When you look at studies that aren't funded by industry, it's really upsetting.

And that's kind of where I fall on it too, because I'm not like, everything that is man made is bad and everything that's natural is great, because I obviously think that's been disproved so much. But I think people want to almost fall on one side or the other versus saying, well, what does the science actually show us? What studies do we have in either direction?

Exactly.

You've mentioned your mitochondria a few times. I think that's a really interesting thing to talk about, because a lot of people don't know what it is, but it impacts our health so much. Can you explain the concept of a mitochondria as if you were talking to somebody who never heard about it before.

So mitochondria are one of the four key areas of upstream health mechanisms that we focus on. The first is blood sugar. Second is chronic inflammation. Third is gut health. Fourth is mitochondria. So when you think about other downward spiraling issues with health, like hormonal disruption, for instance, a lot of hormonal disruption can actually stem from imbalances in the gut, or imbalances in the mitochondria, or imbalances in blood sugar and inflammation. So being able to just understand exactly the big areas or the big systems in the body to focus on, when you think about systems biology helps so much. Mitochondria, you probably learned about in seventh or eighth grade. And, and it essentially is the powerhouse of your cells. So all of your cells have mitochondria, and that's what energizes them. That's what fuels your body. And you take your food, your proteins, your fats, and your carbohydrates, and then you convert them into what's called ATP, which is the energy that is your mitochondria. So when we talk about the fact that nutrition impacts every single cell in your body, it's because it impacts your mitochondria so directly and the ability for your mitochondria to get the highest level of ATP that it needs in order to function at its best. This is why looking so much deeper than just for accounting macronutrients is so key for true optimal nutrition. That's because there's so many cofactors that are your micronutrients that actually power that entire process of converting your food into energy that fuel your mitochondria. So if you have deficiencies in certain B vitamins or magnesium, or if you have too much toxic extract exposure or higher levels of inflammation, it will actually impair that process. That's called the Krebs cycle, that converts your food or your macronutrients into the energy that your mitochondria need in order to give you energy to produce hormones to support your metabolism and your mitochondrial health. I mean, it impacts everything.

So is it not like your mitochondria themselves are running into an issue? It's kind of like they're hungry and you're not feeding them the right things that they need to create the outputs that you want.

You're either feeding them the things that aren't giving them the nutrients that they need, or they're burdened by reactive oxygen species, which is basically inflammation. And when that's Created. It's typically created when you get cell damage by an imbalance of your reactive oxygen species and your antioxidant consumption. So in order to actually lower inflammation, to free up your mitochondria to work in the most efficient way possible, you, you have to have more antioxidants to basically compensate for the reactive oxygen species. And if there's an imbalance there where you have too much of those reactive oxygen species, toxic exposure, environmentally ultra processed foods, those types of things, then it creates more of a difficulty for your mitochondria to power themselves.

Is it the kind of thing where you would ever be like, here's the way you can support your mitochondria, or is it more like here's a way you can quell your inflammation so you're not putting this undue burden on your mitochondria.

There are studies to show certain choices that you can make that actually impact your mitochondria. One would be removing ultra processed foods, which I think is my recommendation for everything. Exercise helps your mitochondria significantly, and that doesn't have to be extremely intense exercise, but movement of any kind, sleep helps improve your mitochondria function significantly. Certain B vitamins, antioxidants, magnesium. So getting those nutrients through your food can help power them as well.

Would you recommend supplementing with B vitamins.

Or magnesium or antioxidants?

For a lot of people, yes, but not for everyone. I think that it really depends on the person. But more than one third of Americans are estimated to have a nutrient deficiency based on conventional standards. That's not even thinking about the optimal dose. That's thinking about the dose of a nutrient that's really required to prevent a nutrient driven disease. The Dietary Guidelines were established for nutrient recommendations that are based on preventing the likelihood of developing like rickets or scurvy. For vitamin C as an example, that doesn't necessarily mean that the level for vitamin C is what's most optimal. It means that that's the level that's going to prevent you from getting scurvy. So even with that criteria, we know that one in three Americans has at least one one nutrient deficiency. If you were to look at optimal levels, I would say that percentage would rise significantly. So the reason that it's difficult to get more nutrients through just dietary sources, although I do think that food is necessary as the first line of intervention, that you can't ever supplement your way out of less optimal diet. Looking at the way that our food system has changed with farming practices and tilling and decreases in Soil quality that have really decreased the microbes of the soil. And when the microbes are less healthy in the soil, it leads to less of a nutrient production and more sterilization actually of our own microbiome so that we're actually not able to absorb as many nutrients. Because nutrient deficiencies happen from either not consuming enough in your diet or from not absorbing the nutrients that you're consuming. So you really have to have not only nutrient dense foods that are ideally grown in healthy soil, which can sometimes be difficult. In addition to that, you have to have a microbiome that is able to absorb all the nutrients that you're eating. And if you have a history of a lot of antibiotic use, proton pump inhibitor use, omeprazole or any of those kinds of drugs, or if you have high levels of stress, excessive use of alcohol in your history or past, all of those things impact your microbiome's ability to actually absorb the nutrients that you're eating. And then when you compile the issue of stress and stress actually decreasing nutrient absorption for certain B vitamins and magnesium, you're left with sometimes making it difficult to have optimal nutrient status. So one thing that we are regularly looking at for people that we work with and that go through our programs is nutrient deficiencies. Because I believe that nutrient deficiencies are one of the largest drivers of chronic inflammation.

Can we ask our normal doctor to do a nutrient panel? Or is that something you need to see a functional expert about?

You would need to see a functional medicine expert for it. There are certain conventional tests that do exist in traditional healthcare systems. Like you have vitamin D. Technically, a doctor could order selenium or iodine, or red blood cell magnesium or folate or vitamin B12, or can do a full anemia panel looking at your iron and ferritin. It's called tibc, which would be total iron binding capacity. All of these can tell you certain levels of certain nutrients. If you convince your doctor to order them, because they do have the ability to order them. Now, the issue is they might tell you that they can't because it's not going to be covered by insurance. And because insurance inflates the cost of labs, that then could create a lot of out of pocket costs. Typically, people that have underlying comorbidities, meaning hypertension or high blood sugar, they will be more likely to get those types of things covered. Unfortunately, our medical system doesn't prioritize proactive care. So if you're a female that, let's say, has issues with regulating your cycle and issues with fertility, that's not in the same comorbidity category. That would lead to insurance being more likely to. To cover those labs.

What are your favorite things to do for microbiome health? Like, could you give us a few things we could do every day?

So there's a lot of things that you can do to support your microbiome through your food and lifestyle choices. And when I started lecturing physicians that worked in other areas, when I worked at the Cleveland Clinic, I would routinely say to them, as more research comes out about the gut microbiome, it will become impossible for anyone to deny the significance of nutritional changes and what they can do for every single area of. Of your health. Because as conventional doctors, you know that the microbiome is currently being studied in every area of medicine, primarily because what they're trying to do is associate different disease states with increases in certain microbes, meaning that if a person has higher levels of certain microbes, then it would increase their likelihood of having Parkinson's disease or other diseases that are being studied because they want to be able to create pharmaceuticals that change the balance of your microbiome. So given that, right now all that we know that can dramatically change the microbiome is one, fecal transplants, which are only allowed to be recommended in the medical system. If a person has resistant C. Diff, meaning you're diagnosed with C. Diff and you're resistant to the intervention, and then you have to have a fecal transplant. They're being studied right now for other things outside of resistant C. Diff, but currently it's not allowed to be used for anything else because there are risks doing a fecal transplant in the future. I think that people will actually just take oral capsules of people's poop. Poop. It's actually one of the most effective ways to change the entire composition of the microbiome.

I feel like we've already gotten on board, a lot of us, with the idea of taking placenta capsules. Like, we've eased ourselves into that being a normalized concept. And now I don't know. If you promised me good results, I could do it. Maybe if you didn't tell me what was in it. Like, take this little capsule. You'll feel a lot better. And then, like, a month later, you're like, it was poop. It was somebody else's poop.

You know, I had a client when I was working at the Cleveland Clinic who had inflammatory bowel disease, and she and her husband would do fecal transplants at home. I'm not recommending this by any means at home, but anytime that she had a flare, he would basically donate his stool to her and she was able to stay off of all steroids as a result of it.

Wait, donate?

How.

So? It's not as advanced as taking capsules. You would actually insert it into your butt.

Okay, and let's be clear, you're not recommending this.

I'm not recommending it, no, no, no. But it's fascinating to me. You know, I've seen a few case studies of people who are on their deathbed in the hospital of some kind of horrible infection. At the university that I teach at, actually one of the researchers was sharing a few case studies that he had been tracking on where the person is in a life threatening state and they're given a fecal transplant. Because that would be the only other exception is if a person is direly ill and all of a sudden their white blood cell count like cuts in half within 12 hours and the person leaves the hospital one week later as that one particular instance. So it's fascinating to me how much the microbiome is regulating literally everything. And the reason that I bring that up is just because that person had an inflammatory bowel disease and she was able to control her inflammation in a way that typically requires steroids by changing the microbiome composition so quickly. It's the fastest way to change it. Not that I'm recommending it at all, but it is fascinating in the way that it then points you to the fact that the only other way to change your microbiome, since we know the power of it, even just through some of these preliminary studies on fecal transplants, is through diet. Diet is the only other way. And it's not just eating a few fermented foods. It's actually your entire comprehensive diet. This is why short term diets don't work. Because the second that you go back to eating the foods that you used to eat, your microbiome is going to revert back to how it used to be. This is the same with probiotics. When you stop taking probiotics, the benefits of the re inoculation actually stop. So that's not to say that probiotics aren't extremely helpful for a lot of people, but it is to say that they cannot be the only intervention that you're using to actually change the composition of your gut. Diet has to be the first line of intervention. And that's predominantly whole foods that are rich in polyphenols, prebiotics and dietary fiber. As three of those crucial elements of a foundational gut health diet, in addition to then of course, fermented foods for some of those healthy bacterial strains.

So just to make it abundantly clear, the idea is that your microbiome is impacting your entire body, but it is sort of hubbed in your gut. So you're feeding it from your gut, but then that's impacting your brain and your skin and your inflammation levels. Generally, it kind of spoking off from your gut. Is that correct?

Because the foods that you eat are being consumed by your microbes. You have hundreds of trillions of microbes living inside of you, and you are, are what your gut bacteria eat. So if you're feeding your gut microbes less optimal foods, they're going to release less optimal chemicals that create more dysbiosis, more inflammation, and actually make it harder for healthy microbes to thrive. If you're eating a diet that's higher in optimal foods, then it actually creates a increase in beneficial chemical releases and things like short chain fatty acids that are proving more and more to be the foundation of gut health, in addition to the ability for them to compete with your less beneficial microbes. So you create an environment where you have more thriving microbes, and a lot of times your microbes actually drive your cravings. So it's really a vicious cycle. If you're eating less optimal foods, you're feeding less optimal microbes. The microbes release these chemicals that actually change what you crave, so they pretty much sabotage you and increase the desire to eat more sugary foods, more processed foods, so that they can survive and thrive and do more damage. Damage to your gut. I know.

It's actually one of my favorite facts though, is I, I think it gives people hope when they start eating. Well. I was a person who never craved vegetables. I didn't like any of that stuff. I was like a Ben and Jerry's Lean cuisine sugar cereal girl. And I think it gives you hope when you start going down that path that even if you're not craving vegetables.

Now, that if you eat vegetables, you'll crave more vegetables.

And it's, it makes it feel like.

It'Ll get easier and more enjoyable.

Because we want our diet to be enjoyable. We don't want to be sitting there with a grumpy face chomping a carrot. But the more carrots you eat, the more carrots you'll crave. And I find that really helpful.

100%. Your taste buds crave what you feed your microbes, and so you can Always retrain your taste buds. And this is something that I see in people that are wearing continuous glucose monitors, is that they can feel defeated because they're seeing so many blood sugar spikes or they have prediabetes or something like that, and they feel like they just need to be eating like a ketogenic diet for the rest of their life. And the really promising and hopeful thing is that because of metabolic flexibility and your ability to actually change your microbiome through your diet, long term, you can change your glycemic response to different foods by changing various microbes, feeding more of those beneficial microbes, and decreasing the foods that you're feeding those harmful microbes. So I think that can be promising too, that it's like your health is not a static point that you can always focus on optimizing through different ways. If you feel like your labs aren't where you want them or your continuous glucose monitor data isn't exactly how you'd.

Like it to look, can you give.

Me three microbe friendly additions that we could add to either our daily or weekly diet?

So some foods that you can eat to improve your microbes that help to improve your metabolic flexibility are a category of of polyphenols called anthocyanins. And those are going to be found in things like blueberries, pomegranate seeds, the berry family in general, things that are more blue and purple pigmented then also green tea. And matcha tea has been shown to do the same thing that helps to improve the microbial growth, that helps to improve metabolic flexibility. And dark chocolates that you're going to find in 100% cacao. So whether you're adding cacao nibs to some yogurt, or you're adding cacao powder to a smoothie, or you're adding dark chocolate at the end of your lunch or dinner, all of those are great ways to increase that metabolic flexibility.

All right.

I do a berry cacao smoothie almost every day, so I'm excellent. I'm metabolically flexible. So metabolically flexible. I'm actually going to try levels. I have a box that's been staring at me on my counter. So I'm curious to see how that actually all plays out in my body.

Oh, that's so exciting.

What about fermented foods? Do you think that eating fermented foods makes a big difference in your microbiome?

So there is research that shows that eating fermented foods can improve your microbiome. And actually there was a 2021 study that was published by Researchers at Stanford that showed that it can also help to decrease the inflammation that is created by your gut microbiome. So when you have more dysbiosis or microbial imbalances, it will increase production of chronic inflammation. This is why I'm so focused on blood sugar inflammation and gut health, because they literally all three feed into one. So your gut health, if you have imbalances, increases your inflammation. If you're having blood sugar increases, it's going to increase your inflammation. It's also going to increase your poor gut health. If you have chronic inflammation, it's going to make you more susceptible to blood sugar rises. It's also going to make you more susceptible to poor gut health. So it's like this triangle that continues to feed into one another. But I think that fermented foods are a very promising way to continue to reinoculate your microbes with healthy bacterial strains. There's not an abundance of research showing whether fermented foods are more effective than taking a probiotic capsule, but I find it to be more sustainable. Being able to create habits and food and finding foods that you really love, that you're incorporating into your diet on a regular basis is a super sustainable way to feed some of those beneficial microbes.

If we wanted to attack the third prong of that pyramid inflammation directly, what would you do? If somebody came to you and they said, I am suffering from a lot of inflammation, I feel like I'm really inflamed. Is there anything that they could start to do at home to help with that?

It's kind of like your fatigue question, where There could be 10 different causes, but there are definitely certain things that are gonna give you the most bang for the energy that you're putting into the intervention. And that would be eating more color as the first to get more of those polyphenols and antioxidants. The way that I think that we will continue to evolve as thinking about foods will be directly tied to the way that foods impact inflammation. And what I mean by that is today we have a food LA label that shows you the number of calories and macronutrients and a few other nutrients that they list at the bottom for micronutrients. But in the future, I really think that we'll scan a food, see exactly where it came from, and then also the entire polyphenol and phytonutrients composition of that food. So it depends on where the food is grown. And that's also why buying more local foods, organic foods if possible, can also help with increasing some of those polyphenols, because the less pesticides that are used to protect the plant, the more the plant has to use its own internal immune system to defend it and support it, which increases the phytonutrient and polyphenol composition of the plant. So thinking deeper than just what you see on the nutrition facts label and really trying to count your colors is a huge way to impact inflammation. Another way that you can do that is by really decreasing alcohol consumption, because alcohol can really increase inflammation. The other thing that I would recommend is limiting added sugars. Not necessarily meaning that you have to never eat added sugar again. But added sugars have been shown to increase inflammation directly through that blood sugar mechanism. Another way is by improving your fatty acid profile. So you probably see a lot of things on social media about the inflammatory nature of omega 6 oils compared to omega 3s. Both of these are polyunsaturated fats and they are essential, meaning that your body can't actually produce them. Your body has to get it from external sources. What we see extremely commonly, because we test fatty acid profiles in every person that goes through any of our programs, because it's so fundamental for inflammation, the big thing that we see is most people having a disproportionate amount of omega 6s in their blood compared to omega 3 markers that are measured. If a person has a healthy fatty acid profile, then if you're eating small amounts of sunflower oil or sesame oil or other seed oils that are higher in omega 6s, the likelihood of them actually generating an enormous inflammatory release or production is very low. So it actually has less to do with this idea of like never eat added sugar, never eat omega 6 fatty acids. It has more to do with understanding your own biomarkers and your own personal tolerance for some of these things that isn't actually dysregulating your inflammatory processes, Knowing your own threshold for how many of those certain omega 6 oils that you can add to your diet without creating a huge imbalance in that omega 6 to omega 3 ratio which you ideally wanted, a 4 to 1 ratio or less.

I don't eat seafood. What would you recommend for me to get in my Omega 3s?

That's tough. I know you have a mild seafood allergy.

Wow. Okay. So help me.

But you can take fish oil because it's not the protein, right?

It's not the protein. Yeah.

The positive is that there are some plant based foods that are high in omega 3s. Chia seeds, ground flax seeds, hemp seeds, the Issue is that it's not EPA and dha. It's something called alpha linolenic acid that has to be converted into EPA and DHA. And there's only about an 8 to 10% conversion rate for alpha linolenic acid into EPA and DHA. Now, your nutrient status will impact actually how efficiently you're able to convert those alpha linolenic acid fats into your EPA and dha. So making sure that you don't have B vitamin deficiencies and other things will help to increase the amount of omega 3s that you're getting from those plant based sources. But unless you are also supplementing with fish oil, it's nearly impossible to have an optimal omega 3 index. From thousands of fatty acid profiles that I've reviewed in the last eight years of my career, I don't know if I've seen anyone that is only eating plant based sources without a supplement that has optimal levels of omega 3 fatty acids.

Do you have a favorite omega 3 supplement?

Nordic naturals is typically the company that we recommend. There's a few different products that I recommend based on what a person's levels are typically, but the one that I personally take is the Pro Omega 2000D. It has 1000ius of vitamin D and 2 grams of fish oil.

Okay, and you do that every day? Two grams a day.

One to two grams is typically the starting place. Yes. Unless you have heart arrhythmias. That's something that actually recently came out in the research where we then have to rely solely on food based sources. Because it has been shown in a few recent research papers that when a person has arrhythmias, fish oil supplementation can make them worse.

Okay.

So if you have heart arrhythmias, probably consult your doctor before you start any sort of plan to try to balance your omega 3s and omega 6s.

Exactly.

Okay, let's talk about hormone health for a second. I got a lot of questions about different variations of hormone things and I'd be curious for you to start us with. How can your diet impact your hormones? I think we've touched on a few different ways, but I love it. Just kind of clearly spelled out.

So the foods that you eat impact every cell in your body. They impact your microbiome and your micro balance, it impacts your blood sugar, it impacts your hormones directly. The way that it does this is through a few different ways. One is certain micronutrients that help to keep your different hormones balanced. Your consumption of higher glycemic foods that can dysregulate your hormonal balance. Also, not eating enough carbohydrates for a menstruating woman can also negatively impact hormones, which I actually personally experienced. So it's kind of like a U shaped curve where sometimes more is not better when it comes to regulating your glycemic control. So figuring out exactly what that balance is for you is extremely important. So the first way to optimize hormone balance is by balancing your blood sugar. I personally, if someone's like, should I get a hormone test? I recommend first, of course, removing ultra processed foods. Second, looking at blood sugar before hormonal balance. Because if you're spending $400 or $300 on a hormone test or maybe your insurance is covering it, your hormones will change when you change your blood sugar control. So don't start there. It's much easier to start with blood sugar regulation, knowing where your blood sugar is at before. Then you move on to testing hormones. The second thing is lowering inflammation because inflammation can actually suppress production of various hormones. And then the third thing is that gut dysbiosis can negatively impact hormonal production as well. So when we look at hormonal production and, and the important thing is having proper production of estrogen that isn't too much higher than progesterone, having proper production of progesterone, which is more of that calming hormone that increases in the second half of your cycle. And sometimes the most common thing that we see for hormonal disruption is low progesterone levels and high estrogen levels, which your audience is probably familiar with estrogen dominance. And that's the ratio of estrogen to progesterone is imbalanced. So one of the things that you can do to help to optimize that is one, eating more cruciferous vegetables to help to increase the excretion of estrogen through your gut. If you have gut imbalances, it will actually impair your ability to excrete any environmental toxins that you're exposed to and can create a buildup of estrogen. So the cruciferous vegetables can help. Sometimes people will come to us taking dim. It's a very popular supplement extrapolated from cruciferous vegetables and is in a very dense source, like a very high source. And if you haven't tested your estrogen levels or you haven't tested your genetics to understand, sometimes people can have genetic imbalances or they're called SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms that decrease the ability for a person to actually excrete estrogen. So DIM will help to decrease estrogen. But what we see sometimes is people on DIM without ever getting a hormone test. And it's not a good thing. It's not a supplement to just start casually. Because you read about the benefits online, it's definitely something that you have to monitor with your labs. So first, eating cruciferous vegetables. Second would be actually maintaining enough carbohydrates in your diet to help to support progesterone production production. So what we see often in women especially that are losing their menstrual cycle and are doing high intensity interval training and 16 hours of intermittent fasting and eating very low carb, we often see progesterone levels drop. So having an adequate amount of carbohydrates in your diet can help to balance your progesterone levels. The other thing would be for women that have pcos, blood sugar control is the first thing to really work towards to help to improve the your hormonal balance. Since we know that PCOS is a complex disease that impacts not only metabolic health, but also hormonal health and gynecological health. And then also looking at the role of stress. Stress is just as large of a contributor to hormonal imbalance as nutrition. Sometimes we see people very willing to change their diet. They're like, tell me anything, I'll remove all the foods. But then when it comes to actually managing their stress, they're actually in denial of the fact that it's even a problem problem because they're used to just being on this overdrive and like never shutting down and being this type A personality that's like achievement, achievement, achievement. And it actually makes it very difficult to balance hormones. So incorporating more yoga and deep breathing and meditation and more relaxing activities into your day can be a huge way to impact your hormones.

I think it's just hard to believe.

That stuff really works, you know what I mean? Like you can get your head around how taking a supplement or putting a food in is going to make this concrete difference. I'm very go, go, go person. It's hard to believe, like, oh, if I do this breathing it will make a concrete difference in my health.

100%. It's definitely challenging. And sometimes that's where even using a continuous glucose monitor can be helpful because people will see a 10 point drop in their blood sugar after a meditation.

It's honestly even helpful to hear that if you don't want to wear one. I think that's the thing. It would be helpful to see more quantifiable evidence that doing these things to reduce stress, like, here's how cortisol went down, here's how your blood sugar was impacted. I like seeing those numbers to be like, this is a worthwhile use of my time, even if it does make me feel really good after. But on a really busy day, sometimes it's hard to justify it unless you have that evidence. So even hearing you say that's really helpful.

It's a good point because CGMs definitely aren't for everyone. So just knowing that that's something that we see is definitely helpful. And knowing that we see 200 point glucose spikes when people are stressed is also something to keep in mind because that is direct feedback. The other direct feedback that you would get would be heart rate variability. Typically it's like the cumulative changes that you make will continue to impact heart rate variability, but that would be the other marker that you could measure to be able to see whether something that you're doing day to day is actually making a difference in your physiology.

Which I know I can measure that with my aura. Can you measure that with like an Apple watch?

You can measure it with aura Whoop. And I think that Apple has integrated it as well.

Are there any other changes you would recommend to somebody who's trying to get their period back?

One other thing that we do recommend sometimes for some women, not everyone, is MACA supplementation. There's a specific company called Femmesence that has several clinical trials. They're a very research focused company, which is why I like them so much. And they have actually MACA for several phases of life. They have have a perimenopause maca, a menopause maca and then they have a reproductive health maca to increase. Actually, what we see in a lot of women is helping with getting their period back. Increasing libido, increasing energy levels, regulating mood. Because of course, your hormonal imbalances can impact all of those things.

Interesting. If you have low libido, that could be because of a hormonal, an underlying hormonal issue. Interesting. What would you prescribe to somebody who had low libido?

Balancing their blood sugar is number one. Balancing blood sugar actually makes a huge difference for libido, both for men and women. Erectile dysfunction is one of the most common signs that men can experience from insulin resistance and poor blood sugar control. And then for females, it also plays a role. I'm a medical advisor for a company called Wenatal and we have a Wenadle for her and a Wenadle for Him. And we looked at all of the nutrients that are necessary for changing egg quality and sperm quality because we know that 50% of infertility is driven by males. 50% of the overall fertility equation is male driven. So being able to bring your partner into that for making it a team based approach, like if you are both eating the same diet, then you might both have low libido. If you're both thinking about, of course, conception, that would have to be together. So thinking about all of it as a team based approach, MACA can actually help men. But this specific supplement by feminescence is for women, for libido. But thinking about the overall role that sex hormones play on energy, on ability to create healthy egg quality, healthy sperm quality, and actually even the intersection of metabolic health and your hormones and how much insulin resistance and poor blood sugar imbalance is connected to increases in infertility is super interesting to me. So thinking about ways that you can improve libido and maybe even if you're thinking about conceiving, improve your egg quality and your partner's sperm quality, it really comes down to improving blood sugar balance, balancing your sex hormones, which is associated with blood sugar, looking at decreasing chronic inflammation because that can create damage to the egg and to the sperm, and then being able to make up for any nutrient deficiencies, which would involve going.

To a functional medicine practitioner and getting the panel to figure out what nutrient deficiencies you actually had.

Exactly.

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Okay. Are there better or worse foods to eat at different points in your cycle?

Yes. So typically in the first half of your cycle, your hormones are going to be less fluctuating. Typically women, before they ovulate, from the first day of your cycle to the time they are ovulating, you'll notice fewer changes in mood, maybe you'll feel more productive, more energized. And then typically it's in the second half of the cycle that we actually see changes in energy and mood and also an insulin sense of sensitivity. So this is really interesting to think about carbohydrate tolerance because as progesterone rises in the second half of your cycle, it actually will change your glycemic response to the same exact foods that you're eating in the first half of your cycle. So insulin sensitivity goes down as you evolve through your cycle. And typically you can get away with eating a little bit more added sugar or dark chocolate or something like that in the first half of your cycle compared to the second half.

What about on your period? Because that's when I head over to see's and I get all my favorite truffles.

On your period or leading up to it?

No, like on it, I feel like the first day of my period I'm like, all right, cease gonna get my definity.

So when you're on your cycle, that's technically when your hormones start to balance out. When you're starting your period, that goes back to day one of your cycle. And that is typically where your hormones are gonna be a little bit more balanced. Now then you have an additional week of being in that first phase of your cycle. That's if you have, let's say a 28 day cycle, that's between day seven and day 14. That will also be the time to really work out harder and to do more lifting, power lifting, those types of things, if that's something that you're interested in doing. But it's interesting that you say that because usually people experience the most cravings in the days leading up to their cycle.

I mean, it might not even be a craving. It might just be like, poor Liz, you get to treat yourself, you know.

Of course I know what that's like.

Is there a best workout to do when you're on your period? I've Heard you're not supposed to do heavy lifting or like hiit or really intense stuff. Is there truth to that?

The problem is that there's not an abundance of research on females that have cycles. So, yes, there may be some truth to it. What we see is actually in the second half of the cycle, women are more prone to burnout from excessive lifting and those types of things. So that's usually when we recommend not doing super intense exercise.

Okay. So that would be not necessarily on your period. It'd be like the two weeks before.

Your period, the two days after you ovulate.

Okay. I'm always looking for the times where I can be like, you shouldn't do a hard workout, Liz. Go just walk your little butt to seas and get yourself some chocolate, because that's what you deserve right now. That's what your body wants.

Well, at least you're getting your steps in.

Yeah, walking's absolutely. If I could just walk everywhere all the time, that would be my go to.

I mean, it definitely is. One of the greatest markers of longevity is getting 10,000 steps a day. There was a recent study that just came out last week actually showing that getting 6,000 to 9,000 steps per day also help to decrease risk of dementia. So when you look at the benefits of walking across the board, the research is so incredibly robust. And that's also like when you think of organization like the Cleveland Clinic, for instance. Before I worked at the center for Functional Medicine, I worked at the Wellness Institute, which was the institute that initiated all the company wellness policies. And Cleveland Clinic was on the forefront of having people wear pedometers before there was even, like, Fitbit or Apple watches, because the Chief Wellness Officer, Dr. Roizen, being such an advocate for all the research that had come out even 15 years ago on the benefits of getting 10,000 steps per day. As far as increasing lifespan, increasing cardiovascular health, increasing blood sugar balance, increasing hormonal health, I mean, you name it, and walking helps with it. So at the Cleveland Clinic, they initiated a policy where in order to get savings on their health insurance, all the employees had to wear. It was a little clip that clipped to your pants or to your shoe that tracked the number of steps that you were getting per day, and then you had to submit it to the health insurance. So when you look at initiatives like that that are so large, a company or a hospital like the Cleveland Clinic isn't going to take so much time to initiate something like that if it doesn't have enormous impacts on health.

One of my guests recommended taking microwalks as a way to reset your focus throughout the day. So just doing a five minute walk here and there. And then now that we're in one place, I really want to get one of those treadmill desks that you see everywhere. Like the tiny treadmills you just put under your desk and you walk all day.

Oh, yeah. It makes a huge difference because in the day you're overexerting your brain and under exerting the rest of your body. So it creates a large disconnect. But there is a lot of research to show the benefits of microwalks for blood sugar as well. And they recently did a study that looked at employees that were working in an office setting. They walked three minutes every hour for 10 hours. Compared to the other group that did 30 minutes of exercise at the end of the day and sat all day, they actually found higher levels of insulin sensitivity and better blood sugar control for the people who did three minutes of walking every hour for 10 hours compared to the group that did just 30 minutes of exercise at the end of the day.

Oh, I love that. I love anything that supports the benefits of doing these little tiny tweaks that are actually attainable and accessible for most people. I would love to just get into a few quick listener questions, if you're okay with that.

Of course.

All right, so a big one. I constantly wake up hungry at night, even if I have a snack with protein before bed. Why is that?

So it's possible that you're experiencing a hypoglycemic response, which we actually see sometimes in people that are wearing continuous glucose monitors. With your blood sugar, you want it to stay between 70 to. We recommend 120. My personal recommendation is 70 to 140. If it goes too low, then it can lead to you waking up feeling very hungry. And it could be a hypoglycemic episode that is happening from dysregulated blood sugar that's happening throughout the day. Because the higher that your blood sugar levels go, typically, then the lower that they go as well. So if you're experiencing an Elevation at 6pm Then maybe by 11pm when you're sleeping, you start to really experience a low. So I would recommend potentially considering tracking your blood sugar as the first place to start.

How much protein do we really need? And are there any really great forms of protein powder that you recommend?

1.2 grams per kilogram is where we start. The dietary recommendations, the government recommendations are 0.8 grams per kilogram. So you take your body weight and then you divide it by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms and then you take your weight in kilograms and you multiply it by 1.2. The reason that 1.2 seems to be more effective than just 0.8 grams is 1, because protein is the most satiating macronutrient and 2, because it helps to increase your ability to maintain lean muscle mass, supporting your overall body composition and also improving insulin sensitivity as well. If you are able to increase your lean body mass mass. So that's where we start. Some people need more depending on their physical activity. Typically with age, protein needs increase as well. There's some controversy in the protein space. I don't usually recommend extremely, extremely high levels of protein because I get concerned about the impact that it has on the gut microbiome. But overall we start with 1.2 grams per kilogram.

And do you have any protein powders that you like?

I love Be well by Callie protein powder. It's a grass fed beef protein powder and I like it because there's so few ingredients. It's just beef and cacao and monk fruit or beef and vanilla and beef. Vanilla and monk fruit or unflavored you can buy as well. And it's coming from Swedish cows that are pasture raised. And Kelly has really high standards for where she's sourcing her ingredients. I also like grass fed whey protein for people that can tolerate dairy. And if you can't tolerate, there's two dairy proteins, casein and whey. So some people actually can't tolerate casein but they can tolerate whey very well. So if you can tolerate whey, it's a great form of protein because one, it's higher in branched chain amino acids than most others and two, because it actually helps to increase glutathione production. Glutathione being your master antioxidant that helps to support detoxification. So if you're trying to just increase your ability to detox, also hormonal health is tied to detoxification ability as well. Grass fed whey can be a good option. I like Tara's whey. Tara's simple is the grass fed whey. And the other reason that I like whey is because you can get away with one that's not flavored and it doesn't alter the composition of the smoothie adversely like some plant based proteins do.

Are there any plant based proteins that you like?

I've heard you advertise news. I actually like news Ask as well. And I also like the Orgain NSF sports Certified protein powder. It has a few additional ingredients in it compared to what I'll usually go for, but it has higher branch chain amino acids and it also is NSF certified, which means that they're testing it to make sure that it doesn't have additional toxins or things that it's not reporting inside of it.

What is your go to meal to kick an unhealthy food rut? I'm not sure that you experience these, but if you wanted to just leave a client maybe who's been on vacation or something, and they wanted that meal that's gonna flood their body with nutrients, is there something you could recommend there?

I definitely experienced that. I mean, I'm human.

I also don't know how strict you are simply because you have this very serious thing that you're trying to control for, which is obviously more motivating than somebody who's just like, well, I just want to feel healthier, you know, for.

Sure I have non negotiables. This is what we work on with people in my Food is Health program is identifying your personal non negotiables because they're going to look different for everyone and it should always be based on how you feel. And if you're trying to control various labs because we work with people that are trying to improve autoimmune conditions, GI disorders, metabolic disorders. So looking at how foods make you feel and then establishing your non negotiables. So for me, gluten is a non negotiable that I will never intentionally eat because of how bad it makes me feel. That's for me personally. But someone else's might be dairy because it inflames all of their joints. So figuring out what that looks like, I think. And then within those bounds. There are times that I eat things that are not optimal. But we really try to focus on not letting a less optimal choice create a downward spiral for days. A lot of people go through our programs and they feel so much food peace because they're like, wow, this is the first time that I ever went on vacation. That one. I wasn't tempted to get waffles and pancakes and the cinnamon roll that I used to equate to joy on vacation. I actually feel better not eating those foods. Starting my day on vacation doesn't mean not splurging with something, but it's like starting your day in a little bit more control and knowing that it's okay to have alcohol or a dessert or something like that. Not feeling the guilt that pulls you into this spiral that leads to five more days of less optimal foods. So I think that trying to prevent that spiral is probably the first place to start in your mindset and working on your relationship with food. So that doesn't feel so all or nothing. And then when it comes to actually getting yourself back on track, we talk about increasing bounce back ability, which I think is one of the greatest superpowers for increasing the nutritional choices that you're making. So when you're trying to increase your bounce back ability, going to something like a salad with fermented foods that has more bitter and fermented profile that actually will change your taste buds a little bit faster. I also like drinking apple cider vinegar with sparkling water for that reason because it just kind of helps to reset my taste buds. Same with adding it to a smoothie can do similar things.

I would the idea of putting, sorry, I'm making a face. I love my smoothie. I enjoy apple cider vinegar, but combining them together sounds like the most disgusting thing on the planet.

It's not as bad as you would think, honestly. So I guess my answer would be like more bitter greens, fermented foods, and apple cider vinegar to help to just change your taste buds a little bit faster once you're back from vacation.

I love that. Let's do this. As the last one, I'm very curious what you're gonna say about this. I know I'm not supposed to want to lose weight, but I do. If I wanted to do it in a healthy way, what would you recommend?

So I also think that there's this stigma that it's a bad thing if you want to lose weight. And I personally think that if that's a goal of yours and you don't feel confident at the current weight that you are. Of course, sometimes it can be a lot deeper and you want to do a lot of work to be able to establish what those triggers are, whether you have realistic expectations. I love Liz. I just saw your Instagram reel where you showed like my stomach you would maybe categorize as bloated if it were happening to you. But this is like how I normally look. I think that finding the ability to be confident and also identify if it's something that you want to do to feel better. And also because there's a downward effect of insulin sensitivity and metabolic health and inflammation, decreasing inflammatory cytokine production. It's interesting to me that there's such a level of shame around me. So I think that my recommendation would be, if you want to lose weight, focus less on the weight loss and more on how you want to feel. So that the weight loss comes as a side effect of just improving your health. We talk a lot about eating food for health and finding what that looks like for you. And if you're eating a diet that's continually causing you to gain weight, there might be opportunities for not only optimizing your actual weight, but also internally something that might be off balance that the weight difficulties you're having are a side effect of.

Can you explain that a little bit further?

So, for instance, if you have difficulty losing fat around your abdominal area, sometimes for some people, that's insulin resistance. It can be driven by insulin resistance. So it could be actually a sign of something else that's happening underneath the surface that is having other downward effects on your overall metabolic health. Since we know that insulin resistance then impacts hormonal balance, we know that it increases risk of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. Sometimes chronic inflammation can lead to weight gain. So sometimes weight is a symptom of something else that's happening underneath the surface. And I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, I'm at a higher weight than I used to be, and I want to figure out why that is.

So then do you recommend seeing a functional medicine expert and trying to explore those things, or what would be step one for somebody who is just like, I would like to lose weight, especially if they couldn't afford to or don't have access to a functional medicine expert.

So when it comes to weight loss, it's gonna sound kind of silly, but I would focus less on the weight and especially the number on the scale. Because if you're weighing yourself every day, that would definitely be a recommendation that I have is to stop doing that, because it's not helping your mental health, and it really does nothing. And it doesn't actually tell you much either, given that it's more about body composition. So what we help people work on is improving body composition, increasing muscle gain and lean body mass so that then their overall metabolic function is working better. The first recommendation that I would have beyond just not weighing yourself is to focus more on how you want to feel based on the foods that you're eating. And a lot of that starts with even just mindfulness, Being present with your meals, trying to see, are you overeating? Are you eating because you're stressed? Most people that we work with, they come to us and they're like, I eat really healthy. I don't think there's a person that we work with that doesn't categorize themselves as someone that eats healthy, but it's those additional nuanced layers. Like maybe you're eating really healthy and you're buying simple milk crack crackers and dark chocolate and you're stress eating with them. So even though the quality of the ingredients is great and calories should never be the immediate focus, because there's a lot of limitations with calorie counting, to some extent, calories do matter. So if you are overeating or stress eating, that might be impacting your metabolism. So I would focus more on how you want to feel because typically when you're overeating, it's going to make you feel more tired and not being present with your meals is going to lead to eating faster and not being present with those internal hunger cues and satiety cues. So slowing down, being more present, being more intentional with the foods that you're eating, and being able to do an assessment of where you're at, I think is helpful. Getting enough protein in your diet would be the second thing that I would recommend. So even just taking three days to calculate how much protein you're eating compared to even just 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight, to make sure that you're kind of trending on the same page with that and then working on decreasing inflammation, those would be the first places that I would start. Something like focusing on blood sugar balance can also of course help because it naturally decreases cravings and it helps you better self regulate. Some people actually have issues with blood sugar imbalances that are driving more weight gain. So that could also be a potential factor for you. One thing that we find very often in people who are eating more nutritious foods is that, and of course they've awakened to the fact that fats are not bad and fats don't make you fat is that sometimes they overeat fat. This actually happened to me. I was working for Dr. Hyman when he came out with his book Eat Fat, Get Thin and I read the manuscript for it before it came out and just started adding so much more fat to my diet because I'm like, oh, the benefits of extra virgin I olive oil and avocados and all these things. And to some extent that is 100% like, you need healthy fats in your diet, but there's a U shaped curve right for everything. So I would say that focusing more on how you feel, being more present and mindful, increasing your protein to make sure that you're getting enough, paying attention to Just generally, are you potentially eating too many fats in your diet if you've gotten on board with the fact that fats can really help your overall health? And lastly, focusing more on volume based foods, so looking at how many nutrients you can get for the fewest amount of energy or the lowest amount of energy, which is essentially caloric consumption. But if you can eat more nutrients for fewer calories, again, I feel so silly talking about calories because I typically do not, but that really helps so much. So when you think of high nutrient density, this is really the future of nutrition is just coming down to nutrient density is looking at how many nutrients are in this food. And most of those volume based foods are gonna be your non starchy vegetables that have the most nutrients for the fewest calories.

Can you explain how we should be approaching calories as best you can? Because I do think that, like you've said, I don't wanna be talking about calories too much, but also how important are they, should we be counting them, et cetera, et cetera. So can you kind of give us some guid to how we should be approaching them?

Yeah.

Let me first just say that the calorie counting approach has definitely failed us. We know that we spend $70 billion on the diet industry and 75% of Americans report difficulty with their weight. It's just so much more than the number of calories. And some of the limitations with the way that the diet industry has approached this with points and calories is that one, every person expends a different number of calories calories, and you need basically thousands of dollars of equipment to really know the exact number of calories that you're expending on a daily basis. Two, the fact that the nutrition facts label can actually vary up to 20% for the calories that are reported. And three, the fact that your microbiome actually influences 2 to 9% of your overall caloric expenditure. So just thinking about that, in addition to the fact that you would have to weigh literally every single food in order to know the exact, exact number of calories that you were eating in order for the whole calories in calories out model to truly work, and the fact that not all calories are created equal, and 100 calories of orange juice is going to create a different metabolic response than 100 calories of broccoli. So it's pretty clear the limitations that exist for calorie counting. And this is why I think that starting with focusing on your micronutrients and antioxidants, and the actual comprehensive nature of your diet is so important. In addition to thinking about are you getting enough protein, Are you balancing your carbohydrates and your fats as another element and thinking more about how you feel. So the first place that we recommend for people to start when they're changing their diet is actually I have a free download. It's a seven day food symptom journal. We use it in all of our programs because it's the easiest way to start to think about the foods that you're eating and then the symptoms that you're experiencing and how you feel at the end of the day. So that's where I recommend starting. Because if you have a history of only thinking about food as calories, it helps you start to think about food as health and how it is affecting the way that you show up on a day to day basis. Then when it comes to thinking about calories, I think that it comes down to paying attention to your internal hunger cues and balancing your blood sugar as two very essential components to be able to self regulate the amount of food that you're eating. I personally don't count calories because I know when I should stop eating based on signals that I'm getting from my body and just how I feel. Where if I'm eating to the level of fullness rather than just satiety, I'm going to feel more fatigued. A lot of people eat to the point of fullness rather than just the place of satiety. And being able to pay attention to even just that and decreasing your stress response so that you can be more present with that and less likely to overeat makes a huge difference.

That makes sense. We have obviously covered so much information here.

I would love for you to leave.

Us with just one tip. One homework assignment that everybody listening could go and add into their diet today or change in their diet today to start feeling like the best version of themselves, regardless of any specific issues they might be dealing with.

The best recommendation that I can give is tuning into what works best for you and your body and trying to quiet some of the noise of what you read or hear about. As far as being overall beneficial for others, just because a research study shows that it's beneficial doesn't mean that it's going to be beneficial for you. Just because it's beneficial for your friend doesn't mean it's going to be beneficial for you. And the more that you can stop outsourcing information, health information and just overall health, the more ownership you start to Learn how to take of your own body. So we always talk about the fact that there's no doctor that knows your body better than you. There's no dietician that knows your body better than you. There's no one that you're listening to or reading about that knows your body better than you. And the absolute best investment that you can make in your health and being able to course correct throughout your life is better understanding how you feel in response to how you're fueling your body and the lifestyle choices that you're making on a daily basis. That's why I think that the Food Symptom Journal is so powerful because it starts to just train you to think about how you're feeling based on the inputs that you're giving to your body. If that's something that's very foreign, I love that.

I absolutely love that answer. Okay, so you've mentioned the Food Symptom Journal, you've mentioned a few programs. Can you just tell us a little bit about everything you have going on in your own words and where we.

Can find all of this amazing stuff?

So the Blood Sugar Reset is actually something that we have coming up in November, which is a free 10 day program where I test recipes on my continuous glucose monitor and then we provide a framework which is basically just like a starting place for balancing your blood sugar. Of course there's the individual variation, but it's just a template to start with that we can offer for free. And we also have a My Food is Health program that we run four times per year with my team of functional medicine dietitians. That is where we look at nutrient deficiency testing and fatty acid profiles and personalize your recommendations. But it's a 10 week group program. There's so much power in healing in a community versus in isolation. So we try to leverage the benefits of being able to do group coaching calls and the channels that people have to communicate in addition to them being able to personalize their needs.

Would you say that we're healthier together?

We're healthier together, of course, 100%.

And are these on your website?

They're on my website@beingbrigid.com you can also find them@myfoodishealth.com and you can follow me on Instagram at Beingbrigid.

You have so much amazing information on your Instagram. Sometimes I'm like, how is this free? This is such a robust wealth of information.

Oh, thank you.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to join me. Today I learned so, so much. You are a font of knowledge and I knew I would enjoy it, but I didn't even expect I would enjoy it quite this much. So thank you so much.

Thank you Liz for having me.

I'm literally so obsessed with this episode.

I was taking so many notes as I was doing my edit and I have been telling everybody that I know about the three minute walk thing because.

It'S so cool and it's just so doable. Okay, a few quick things before we wrap up. One, if you haven't already, go join the Healthier Together Podcast Club Facebook page. The conversations keep getting better and better as the group grows. I am loving all the recommendations that you guys are giving each other, seeing you guys discuss the podcast and even share life advice. I will leave a link for that in the show notes or you can just search Healthier Together Podcast Club on Facebook. You can also join the in person clubs on the Facebook group and we'll be sending out emails to everyone who has already signed up for those soon. Actually, a little birdie told me that Kelly, the lovely Healthier Together family member who posted about starting a pod club in her local Denver neighborhood and actually launch this whole podcast club journey, had a birthday this week. So shout out Kelly, Happy Birthday. I hope you had a beautiful day and thanks for inspiring me to bring thee together into our Healthier Together community.

And finally, we have an incredible giveaway for this episode.

One winner will receive a 45 minute one on one session with Bridget herself where you can ask her her all of your personal questions about literally anything that you want, which I honestly cannot even imagine how helpful that would be. You heard how wildly knowledgeable she is.

In this entire conversation.

You could also give it as a gift if there's someone in your life who you think would benefit. Because I always want to give you guys as good of a chance to win something as possible. Three additional winners will get a free copy of her blood sugar recipe bundle which is filled with healthy recipes designed to help balance blood sugar and increase metabolic flexibility. To enter, just make sure that you're following me. I'm at Liz Moody and Brigid. She is at Being brigid on Instagram that is @b e I N G B R I G I D on Instagram and then comment on my most recent post mentioning something that you loved or learned from this episode. The post does not need to be about the episode. Just mention Brigid so that I know that you're entering. And then if you'd like a bonus entry, you can also take a screenshot of this episode and share why everyone should listen on your stories. Just make sure that you tag me and Brigid so that that we can both see if you're new here. Make sure that you're subscribed so you.

Don'T miss out on any future episodes.

We have amazing ones coming up, including an episode all about managing chronic pain. It will completely, completely transform how you conceptualize and think about pain.

It's a fascinating episode I am so excited to share with you. And then we have one coming up.

That'S all about setting healthy boundaries with.

Literally every type of person and situation.

That you can possibly think of. So subscribe, subscribe, subscribe so you do.

Not miss out on anything. Okay?

I love you and I will see you next week on the next episode.

Of the Healthier Together podcast. I have an obsession.

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Are very few skincare products that I think pretty much everybody should have in their routine and one of them is retinol. It helps with cell turnover and it's just one of the most effective products that exists in terms of making skin look clear, smooth and bright. But a lot of people experience a lot of irritation with different retinols and it absolutely is not helping your skin if you are hurting your barrier layer or drying it out.

A ton of.

And it's also really hard to be.

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