Dr. Deanna Minich: The Power of Phytonutrients; New Insights, Controversies and Practical Tips

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Welcome to the NMI podcast and today we're speaking with Dr. Deanna Minick and what fun this is going to be. So we're going to dive into the topic of phytochemicals broadly and get into some specific areas. But before I before we get into this discussion, I'd like to speak to Deanna's background and academic achievements and so on briefly. And we'll and then we'll get into into the conversation. So she's largely an educator, scientist, international lecturer, teacher and Author with over 20 years of experience in academia and in the food and dietary supplement industries. Throughout the years she's been active as a functional medicine clinician and involved in clinical trials and her own practice, which is food and spiritual, that's now become orientated towards groups and workshops and retreats. She's the author of seven consumer books on wellness topics, four book chapters, over 50 scientific publications, and her act. Her background academically is in nutrition science, which includes a Master's in science sorry, Master of Science degree in Human nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Illinois in Chicago, a doctorate PhD in medical sciences with a nutrition focus from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. For a decade she was part of the research team which was led by the Father of Functional Medicine. You know I'm talking about it's Dr. Jeffrey Bland served on the Nutrition Advisory Board for the Institute of Functional Medicine as well as on the Board of Directors for the American Nutrition Association. Since 2013, she's been part of the Faculty for Advanced Practice Module in Environmental Health by the Institute of Functional Medicine, has been teaching a graduate level course on Metabolic Detoxification at University of Western States, and over decades has taught thousands of nutrition classes for health coaches, fitness trainers, healthcare providers and many others globally by the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, the Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. In conjunction with her academic degrees and teaching experience at university level, she's both a Fellow SO FACN and Certified Nutrition Specialist CNS through the American College of Nutrition. She's currently Chief Science Officer at Symphony Natural Health, where she leads the medical advisory team overseas scientific communications and provides education leadership for that nutraceutical company. And more broadly, as you'll see, she's really passionate about helping others really understand these connections between diet many, you know, which are novel I think, and really connect the dots between physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. So a huge privilege to have you on the podcast, Deanna. We're looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for your time.

Oh My pleasure, Ben. In fact, I was listening as you're reading the bio of how you and I through these years have been very dynamic in our dance on nutrition. You inviting me over to the UK to give talks and getting to know the audience there. And then you and I also co writing articles and even a book chapter. So it's been a pleasure to share this journey with you.

Yeah, likewise feelings the same. It's funny where life leads us and I'm really glad that since that early connection we had that we've been able to maintain that continuity and collaborate on things and you know, always a privilege to, you know, have you come and speak at things that we're doing over in the uk. So, you know, thanks for the kind words. And I think a fun area to get into is this big area of focus for you, which is the rainbow of foods. And more so specifically speaking to the concept of color and its relationship to like clinical nutrition as well as, you know, the biochemistry which we can get into. And I thought a fun question to ask you is like, why the rainbow? You know, usually people give a diet a name like Paleo, plant based, vegan, you know, something else, it just goes on and on, you know. What led you to focus on color?

Well, that has both personal and professional underpinnings, I would say, you know, if I think about my professional journey, going through graduate school, doing my PhD research, you know, just really exploring color as my own personal healing modality. And that was not even an intellectual thing. I wasn't even marrying that with my pursuit of, of phytochemicals and a lot of the scientific work that I was doing. It's not like I said, oh, I'm looking into phytochemicals, let me look into color as a method of psychological healing. But in some way all of these paths started to converge. And I must admit, you know, being a nutrition for as long as I have, I've been pretty polarized to this word diet. Even though my book is called the Rainbow Diet. That was more of a publisher decision because that's how people think about food. But I, but it's not necessarily how I think about food in the way of a relationship to food. We can think about diets as therapeutic type of interventions and I think that that would be a more clinical way to contextualize that conversation of diet. But truly, as you and I both acknowledge what is food, food is our connection to nature. So I don't like to think about categorizing it within this type of box of a Diet, which I think it was. You know, various people had made comments about that word diet. You know, what does it really mean? Is it truly a way of life? Or is diet like die with a t on the end, as Dr. Brian Wan Sink would say, you know, and. And so. And I've always felt like people go on diets. They go off of them, they feel temporary. They don't feel part of your everyday life in a more meaningful way. So when it came to the rainbow, and I attribute this to a lot of my teachers, including Dr. Jeffrey Bland, because when I was working with him at the Functional Medicine Research center, we did a lot of work on phytochemicals. Right? Yeah. So it wasn't even like we set out to look at the rainbow or to look at color. It was just phytochemicals. And during my graduate school training, the three years that I spent in the lab were all on carotenoids, which were, well, and still are the. The plant pigments that make nature look really pretty, like a lot of the red, orange and yellow compounds. So I think I've always been destined to connect with color, you know, through nutrition. I made it a more artful connection because I just feel that that is where we want to go in our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual relationship with food. And it was scientifically more irrefutable than looking at diets, which seem to be. They would seem to come. They would seem to go. They were shiny objects, and I wanted something with a little bit more scientific gravitas. So plant foods seem to come to the top of the list for me.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I remember a publication of yours and Jeff's actually, which was speaking to metabolic syndrome. And it was quite novel at the time in that, you know, the main focus of managing metabolic disease was on diets, you know, so different ratios of macronutrients. And you guys come out and. I can't remember the title of the publication, but it was essentially like, there's all these phytochemicals that we're not talking about, basically, that are really important in this conversation, but people are, you know, not really acknowledging. And, you know, as you say, it's, you know, it's a different way of connecting people with food, I think, you know, versus the. A more conventional dietary approach.

Yeah. And I think it shows us what we don't know, because I kind of feel like the merry, merry go round of protein, carbohydrate and fat and continuing to belabor the macronutrients, like how many of those seesaw conversations are we going to have? Yeah, right. There's even greater nuance of different kinds of protein and ratios and all of that. But I feel like the underdogs of nutrition have truly been the phytochemicals because we're still actually exploring them. And even the secondary metabolites of these phytochemicals are worth exploring. And then there's also, as you know, this whole conversation to be had about microorganisms and their interaction with phytochemicals. In fact, there are even, I would say, commercial pursuits at different companies looking at what the microorganism population of foods is contributing to our overall nutrient intake. Right. So the conversation continues to expand. Like you and I were talking about the dark matter of nutrition. Phytochemicals have been part of that dark matter. We haven't really known that they were there and we still don't really have a proper estimate. But I do think that that's where a lot of the activity is happening in a non caloric way, but in a cell signaling way. And a lot of the work on epigenetics and even genetics is informing a lot of that research on phytochemicals.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I think that contrast is really powerful where we talk about, I don't know, it's 40 or so essential vitamins and minerals and. And then you discover that there's literally hundreds of thousands of different phytochemicals and more metabolites and like, you know, as you mentioned, dark matter, which is, you know, the uncategorized ones that we don't, we haven't even studied yet. Right.

It's true.

Yeah.

And all those interactions, you know, Dave Jacobs at the University of Minnesota and others have talked before about food synergy. And so often what has happened in nutrition science is the isolation of one compound and looking at it as a silo rather than as a synergistic complex and blend. You know, case in point, I just gave a talk on carotenoids actually for a UK based group this past weekend. And if we look at antioxidants in the 1990s and through my training in the 1990s, when I was studying phytochemicals, there was a lot of fear about having isolated amounts of these phytochemicals because of their potential to interact in a more like a pro oxidant way.

Yeah.

I think that with these plant compounds, there's still a lot that we have yet to uncover and discover in the way of how they Work in isolation versus as a complex as nature had intended them in this synergistic blend. So when people start to fear things like, and let's just get this out there now, like goitrogens, phytates, lectins, phytoestrogens, there are a lot of fear mongering messages around these anti nutrients as they've been called, which I'd like us to even question that term because in isolation perhaps those compounds work very differently than in the matrix of the food in which everything is in this harmonious balance and can also be altered depending on how we're preparing that food. And we're doing a lot of things differently with food than we haven't done over the past decades or even, you know, 50 to 100 to 100 years ago. You know, making these raw kale smoothies, celery juice, you know, just a lot of these different things that we haven't seen genetically and are changing us epigenetically. So we do need to look at how we're relating to plants and how we're preparing them and how that serves our physiology.

Yeah, it's a, that's, you know, there's so much food for thought in that, excuse the pun. But one of the things that really springs to my mind is that it's almost like, you know, there's a big piece of human behavior that we're not really acknowledging here. Like that is related to getting so like focused on individual things that we lose sight of the forest for the trees. And you know, kale smoothies are a great example is where, you know, it's all about this particular food or phytochemical. And so we've got to like eliminate that or increase our intake of it massively. And you know, just seems quite disconnected with the history of humanity's relationship with food in our environment. Does seem like quite a modern phenomena. Do you have anything to say around that?

Yeah, it does. It's like if a little is good, more is better. And that's not always the case, especially when it comes to phytochemicals, because if I look at how nature operates, it is very much in the way of diversity and complexity and using the best of both of those in order to operate. And so that's why if you have a crop, a garden, it will be much more abundant and fruitful if you have diverse plants versus just a mono culture, a monocrop.

Yeah.

So I think the same principle applies that we have to look at all of those interconnections and really honor what nature is bringing to our plates rather than forcing a lot of these different types of structures and plants, product isolations. And you and I are both in the nutraceutical industry, so we need to acknowledge that there is a role for therapeutic nutrients. There's no doubt about that. But when we isolate just one thing and just hammer on that day after day, how can we think that we're not throwing something potentially out of balance? It's kind of like when people take a lot of vitamin D and not think about, well, what does vitamin D utilize in the body to become active? It utilizes magnesium. So are we provoking a latent magnesium insufficiency or deficiency because we're hyper dosing on vitamin D? Right. Because nutrition is a relationship science. And I think that we have become accustomed to nutrition as an all or nothing, black or white, yes or no, polarized kind of conversation. And this is something that I've learned from Jeff Bland, you and other people. Right. It's like it's the spectrum. And the more that we can see it as a whole in its completeness, I feel like the more it could work for us.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I think that's something that your work has done really, really well. Is, is tap into this a different way of thinking that's not about reductionism, not about exclusion. It's about, you know, connecting us back with food and diversity through, you know, spiritual and, you know, by, you know, behavioral and other tight relationships. So, you know, huge, you know, acknowledgment of the work that you've been doing to, I guess, reconnect us with, you know, with what we eat and, you know, on this theme of color, you know, I'd like to dwell on that for a little bit before we get into other areas, but, you know, I know, you know, you had a fantastic publication and I'll signpost some of your writing to listeners in notes, but one of the publications you, you authored was back in 2019 in the journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, a Review of Science of Colorful Plant Based Foods and Practical Strategies for Eating the Rainbow. And I'd like to unpack that a little bit. And, and the first question I've got for you is, well, what does color tell us about the biochemistry of food? Is it telling us anything important?

Well, that's what that paper was about. I, as I started to look at eating fruits and vegetables, which is very simplistic in the literature, but then you start to look at phytochemicals, fruits and vegetables, the copious science to look at reduced risk of different chronic diseases. I began to see a pattern, so kind of a pattern recognition of, okay, what? Red colored foods seem to have some connection to inflammation and immune health. Now, not exclusively. So where we could say, like strawberries are only for your immune system or to help with inflammation. But you know how just kind of a loose grouping of research because we could also see cardiovascular disease in tomatoes, but is that because of its connection to inflammation? So I was looking at it more mechanistically. So if we take a functional medicine approach to phytochemicals, I was seeing that each of the colors had a functionality and assigning them that based on what I was seeing as a grouping in the literature. So just very quickly, red foods, again, inflammation and immune health. Orange foods, seeing a connection with fat, solubility and also reproductive health. So adipose tissue, carotenoids, which are. They tend to be fat soluble and also connected to the reproductive system in a lot of different ways. Yellow I saw as a connection to digestive health. Green as it connects to cardiovascular health, and then blue, purple, connecting to the brain. So, and that was easier to teach, that was easier to talk with clients and groups about. By the way, I'm back in clinical practice one day a week where I'm back seeing people and I. It's just kind of an interesting experience because I did a lot of that, but now I'm coming into it in a different headspace and of taking a more just, I would say even more well rounded approach with that. So that became easier for me to convey to people. If I could say, well, you're not getting enough blue, purple. Do you know that that has implications for your brain health? There are a lot of great studies on blueberries helping with learning and memory and mood. And if you don't have blueberries, you may not be able to have that function. So I kept it within the context of thinking function, functional medicine, functional health, and knowing that nature is purposeful. It's not just kind of like a, I don't know, just a generic thing that there are red berries in the green forest at certain times of year. Right. If you kind of look at the progression and you know where these foods appear and when they appear, there's purpose to them. They have function in our bodies. So that's why I think having these distilled messages makes it more simple and applied for people to remember. Okay, this is why I need all seven colors or even all five colors on my plate throughout the day, because they're giving Me function. I mean, we can even nuance that further and say, within red, we need the whole spectrum of red colored foods. Because I remember talking with people and they would say, oh, I'm getting tomatoes. Every day, I get tomatoes. But then there's no diversity within red.

Yeah, yeah. And that's something actually I was going to touch on because something you do really well in that particular paper we've just, you know, referenced is, you know, it's easy to slip into this trap of like, oh, I need to eat red, I'll eat tomatoes, I need to eat blue, I'll eat blueberries. But you've got like these enormous lists of, you know, different foods that I wouldn't have even thought of that fit these color patterns. You know, like aubergines are purple. Yeah, of course they are. But you don't necessarily think like that. So, you know, in terms of practical translation, it seems like a great tool for encouraging diversity and having people connect with different plants that they may not have thought of eating before.

Yeah, well, in. In the Rainbow diet book, the one that I just finished, I tried to figure out, like, how do I make this even more simple? Or as Jeff Bland would say, simp, where you take the simple and the complex and you weave them together. And what I distilled it into was not just color, but then creativity, diversity and rhythm. And so then talking with people about, okay, it's not just getting the colors, but then also the diversity of those colors, being creative with those colors and having those colors within the natural rhythm of the seasonal cycles that we live within. You know, I think that that is one of the overlooked principles of plants, because plants are very intelligent. Depending on the environment that we're living in, they could inform our physiology. Right. So if we're really in tune, and you and I have talked about some of these papers, right? So eating cherries out of season and altering things like lipid metabolism or even changing gene expression because of the polyphenols. And what we're finding out, I mean, one of the things that most excites me is what I spoke on last year at the IFM aic, which was the chronobiotic nature of phytochemicals. How these phytochemicals are actually helping our bodies to tell time, or I see it a little bit deeper in the way of connect to nature. So what is the circadian rhythm? Right. It is the way that every night we are becoming hinged back into nature's rhythm in case we have fallen out of it, thanks to Melatonin and the circulation of a lot of these different hormones. I mean, we are perfectly orchestrated and tethered to nature. And phytochemicals are coming in to fortify that rhythmic connection because we are falling out of it. Artificial light at night is one culprit. It's one of the largest endocrine disruptors. I would say that would be societally accepted. Many people know that plastics are bad, but they don't necessarily see that going to the supermarket at 8pm with fluorescent lighting is an unhealthy thing to do. Right. And there are ways to mitigate that artificial light at night. So what I feel like phytochemicals are doing, and the most exciting of where I see research going is the chronobiotic effects. And polyphenols as a class, as a large category of these phytochemicals seem to play this role. And if we look at the organic chemistry of these polyphenols, they have that benzene ring together with a hydroxyl group. So it has this type of chemical configuration that can carry electrons very well. Right. And somehow this structure is also. It looks like a sex steroid. It looks like some kind of hormone. So it may even have light hypothalamic pituitary signaling roles or maybe pineal signaling. I don't think we quite know, because a lot of this work is being done in animals. So. And what they do is they change the photoperiod of the animals because usually rodents sleep during the daytime for us and then they're awake at night. So then they flip their photo period and then they change their sleeping cycle to mimic the different seasons. So that's a lot of the extent of what we have in terms of looking at these different phytochemicals and how they might modulate things like melatonin synthesis or changing vitamin D levels. Ben, one of the studies that I did present that is just coming to my mind is even here's where we need to go clinically, but we're not there yet. The timing of when to take phytochemicals through the day. So there was a study looking at grape powder and showing how if we had grape powder during the morning, it helped to a greater extent with the immune system than when it was given at a different time. There was another study, this was in animals, however, in which they were giving resveratrol and found a pro oxidant effect when it was given at a different time of day. I think it was like the nighttime for the animal. Like it Was when it was in the active phase, resveratrol was the antioxidant. When it was in the resting phase, resveratrol became the pro oxidant. So isn't that interesting, like, the dual nature of how these different phytochemicals can change their function depending on time.

Yeah.

And look at us with, with supplements, Right. We just say, like, take this twice a day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And. And there's been very little work really investigating that. But there are pieces, you know, as you say, like, I'm aware of some work on, you know, diet suggesting that where you land the food rather than the overall calories will help improve your metabolic health. And same with some supplements. I think there was some work done on Coenzyme Q 10 years ago where they found timing with. That's really important. You know, it's, you know, which we overlook. It's like, take it with breakfast and that's it. You know it.

Right.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think also something that comes up for me in, in hearing you speak is this idea of plant intelligence. And it seems like a lot of these, like, biological benefits of the foods that we're eating. You know, there is this reciprocal relationship with plants. And if you look at, you know, the history of agriculture of a lot of the foods that are the mainstay of our diet, it's quite likely that the plants are speaking to us and vice versa. And there is a relationship, but we're. We're not really acknowledging or unpacking that. I think, you know, food is a commodity in our society. It's not seen as something that interacts with our biology and in really unique and interesting ways that can influence our, not only our health and risk for chronic disease, but our vitality and flourishing. And, you know, things like circadian rhythm are not. It's not a disease, but it's, you know, it's a really important part of our biology that we'll get overlooked because it's not a disease. Right.

It's true, but it oversees so many different things. Like our clock genes are determining our metabolism, how we detoxify. I mean, the liver is one of the greatest oscillating organs to that. That clock gene rhythm. And eventually we might even be doing genetic testing, looking at clock genes in people and how, how to optimize different organs because they're all a little bit different if you look at animal studies. But yeah, just to what you said, I don't feel like there are a couple of things we don't have reverence for in our current society. One of them is plants. In fact, a lot of this, you know, as we talk about plant based diets, I often don't like to use that terminology because sometimes that means processed food plants and that's not really what we're after, right? And then, I mean, plants comprise 80% of the biomass on this planet. And one of my mantras has been that plants are going to be what save us from extinction and we just go extinct. I mean, plants will take everything over. I mean, there's just an intelligence here that we're not connected into in that deep level of sharing the plant and having that be part of us and helping to modulate. And we even see that with adaptogens, right? Kind of like the beauty of how a plant can help us to adapt to our environment, to give us a little bit more stimulation if we need it. I mean, that has long been seen in traditional medicine frameworks. The other thing we don't revere is aging, right? So we don't revere aging or elderhood and we don't revere plants. And it's like two of the things that I feel like could even converge. And I feel like we're really at a loss not bringing certain things together. But when I say that plants will save us. One of the things, since I teach on environmental health is there's a lot of concern that my colleagues and I have about things like microplastics. I mean, just to think that what do we have, like the equivalent of 7 grams of microplastics and nanoplastics in brain tissues, right? And one of the things to help offset the effects of those nano and microplastics may potentially be polyphenols. So, and I don't think we, we have a lot of, you know, solutions to a lot of these toxicants, these environmental toxicants, But I do think that plants can help to undo a lot of that damage. So if we are not buffering from the effects of the toxicant in the initial phases, then I think some of the oxidative stress, the inflammation that results can be helped by things like polyphenols or even carotenoids. But again, it's like that Goldilocks principle where we need just the right amount. And this is why not supra physiologic dosing, whether through a supplement or other type of, I would say just any other kind of modality is, is best because we don't want to flip that phytochemical into a different kind of function.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It feels like, yeah, there's great potential for these things to have untoward effects that we don't fully understand. If we're, you know, as you. As you opened up this conversation, we're really deviating from that traditional relationship with food to highly potentizing it, synthesizing it, and, you know, and just assuming that it's good for us when we don't really know. You know, sometimes I want to touch on the whole plants will save us thing because that's. That's a fun thing to talk about. And, you know, it's something I've been thinking about a bit as well, is like, this reverence for nature around us, you know, and. And I, you know, I think in general, probably the most of humanity do resonate with this is like, we do have reverence for living things all around us all the time, and we see spirit and, you know, connection in things. It's. I think it's probably just inherent in humanity, but it does feel like our, you know, our modern. Sort of heavily influenced by, you know, that Western European sort of movement around the globe. That sort of culture is more about commodity and reductionism. And, you know, nature is. Is not something to be revered. It's something to own or harvest or, you know, turn into a product or, you know, along those lines. And, you know, I'm just wondering, like. And, you know, you're deep in this area of reconnecting people with food from a. A spiritual perspective, like, how, you know, how can we bridge that gap and get people to revere more their connection with food and plants?

The best way that I can explain that is I just had a recent client, and she's in her late 50s, and like many of us, you know, just kind of scrambling with everyday life, trying to get it all in, but yet wanting it all right, because you really do want that sense of community. You do want that sense of a spiritual practice because, you know, it's good for you and it feels good. You want to eat right, you want to sleep right, you want to poop right, you want to do everything right. So it's like, how do you do all of this in one day? So one of the things we talked about was. Well, I just mentioned habit stacking, you know, kind of like merging things together into one. So as an example, making eating a spiritual practice, like, instead of going out to join a spiritual community. But you can do that too, if you want. But why not take eating and make it your spiritual practice? So one of the things that I've done over the years, because I'm one of those people. I want it all, and I know all of these things are good for you, and I. I really resonate with a number of the different things, like nutrition and spirituality. So one of the things I did in my kitchen, and I'm talking with you, thinking of all the clinicians listening and just giving ideas. So in our kitchen, you know, I use the windowsill as, like. I think it's too strong to say an altar, but it's a. A very sacred space. So I have things like my little statues of things, and I have little artwork. I have plants that have meaning for me. I have different crystals and stones that I like to look at in the morning because, you know, how we're informing our vision and our sense of beauty. And I call it the ABCs, right. The sense of art, beauty, and creativity. And I feel like those are nutrients, too. And spirituality is very much connected into those ABCs. So setting up the windowsill, getting that going, and, like, my breakfast is, like, a whole thing. My husband knows. Like, we even woke up this morning, and he was about to make his breakfast, and I'm like, wait a minute. You know that I'm like, breakfast queen here. Like, this is my spiritual practice. He has to get up early on certain days, so sometimes he starts that. But, you know, to me, it's like, how do we create spirituality within the. Every day, in the every moment? So sitting at the table, like, just having intention. I think that there are little things that we can encourage clients to incorporate that evoke a sense of intention. And in functional medicine, I know we talk about spirituality being purpose, meaning, and connection. I would also add to that list. Personally, I also feel like it's intentional, its awareness and its consciousness. So in my mind, if I'm thinking making breakfast is a spiritual practice, it becomes spiritual. It's whatever. We assign our perspective and our framework around that. So then you don't have to, you know, go out and do spirituality separate and say, oh, I just have to meditate here in this time slot of my day. No, because everything you're doing becomes spiritual.

Yeah. I love. It's so cool. I mean, that is such a brilliant idea. And it's not something I've ever really thought about before is like thinking of the kitchen or the food environment as a sacred space. I mean, that's. That's amazing. And. And also those little things, you know, to. And. And the way you frame it is not. It's not really religious. Or even, I guess it is spiritual, but it's very agnostic. So it's really just grounding yourself in, you know, being present and acknowledging things. And I do remember actually once we, you know, you joined us for a dinner while you're in London once with a few other people. And I still remember it quite distinctly, you sort of stopped everyone before they ate and got them to be present and sort of acknowledge some sort of intention around the food, which I, which I was very powerful like in, but very simple at the same time and not, you know, one of the dangers with spiritual practice is it can be a bit woo woo, or it can be a bit hard to do or you know, it's like, where do I even start? But you know, these very simple grounded exercises that could be done on a day to day basis. You know, really powerful.

Yeah, thanks for bringing that back. I forgot about that. But yeah, that's one of the things that I learned from one of my teachers where before we would start a meal, instead of imposing upon the group like a religious invocation of like a prayer, which not everybody feels comfortable with, just saying an intention, one word, intention. Everybody just goes around and it could be something like friendship, community, love, grace. You know, people have said different things. So yeah, again, I feel like spirituality. In fact, you and I had this conversation a little bit when we were just together. But I feel like within functional medicine, within the matrix, to me, spirituality is the frame of that whole matrix. Because our spiritual view, the way that we approach life, our perspective shapes how we work with a client or even how we approach our day, it approaches our body systems. Right? So I feel like science is the method, spirituality is the overarching operating system of how we navigate life and our decisions. And so, and even, I mean, just to bring it into a biochemistry aspect, because I've been looking into this a little bit more. The different phytochemicals and the different cell signalers that can even evoke self transcendence. There's a lot of even older research, believe it or not, looking at different serotonin receptors. And if I can recall it right, I think it's 5T 1A. Like there's one specific serotonin receptor that is connected to greater self transcendence. So you could ask the question, is spirituality genetically wired into us? Like, is it, do we have receptors where we receive it through the action of certain things like phytochemicals or neurotransmitters or hormones that plug into those receptors to initiate gene expression of proteins that would lead us into a more spiritual mindset. So it's almost like, well, what comes first, chicken or the egg? Are we born constitutionally, spiritually capable? And that just becomes part of who you are? Because why isn't everybody like that? You know, are there personalized approaches to spiritual health that we need to acknowledge as clinicians? And I think we do. You know, even my father, who is 77, you know, he is now retired, regretfully so, because, you know, I feel like his whole purpose and meaning of life has been around his work. So when you don't have that anymore, how do you now engage in your sense of purpose and meaning? So spirituality and spiritual health, it's one of the determinants of health and well being. And I would say, especially as we move into our elder years, right. How do we start to redefine ourselves now that we don't have the overlay of all the different projects and books and things that we were preoccupied with? Now we have stillness and we start looking at life a bit differently in terms of what are we leaving behind? What. What gives meaning? And what you and I heard at the IFM conference was, and this was from Tracy Gaudette's talk and Mary Jo Kreutzer was not what is the matter with you? But what matters most to you? And I feel like we need to be asking ourselves that question every decade because it's going to change every decade. I remember Jeff Bland talking about that when he turned 60. It was kind of like, you know, the 60s or about. You start thinking about your legacy. And I mean, I'm in my 50s, so, you know, I think about, you know, I feel like this is a great time of life. I still have my health and so I feel like I can, I want to contribute. But every generation and every decade is going to bring different challenges and different opportunities. And all the while we have spirituality kind of as the bedrock of all of that, kind of quietly leading us. And then eventually it becomes louder and louder as a lot of things start to kind of dissipate and then we're left with what we're really about.

Yeah, I mean, that, that's a really big, powerful idea. And, you know, I think a lot for listeners to digest there, but the. Sorry, keep on with the, the puns. But I think one of the things that really stood out for me was that intersection between phytochemicals and spiritual aware, you know, and there are definitely examples of this in the literature where you can see an impact of phytonutrients and other Nutrients as well, on things that we often overlook, like intelligence, cognition, you know, compassion, flourishing, like. But we just don't talk about this stuff because our culture, and medical culture in particular is so focused on disease, you know, so we've got loads of studies on food for depression now, but how many do we have for, like, flourishing? Or has anyone even looked at spirituality yet? Like, that is a big idea. You know, it's. That's.

Let's do a study, then. Yeah, basically. You know, I love what you're saying because even when I was in the UK last year, I presented on this how plants, plant foods in general, can help us with mental health. And so looking at less psychological distress, like you mentioned, flourishing, there was a really neat article about that. Better mood state, less anxiety, and in fact, just even looking at more dietary diversity could incur better mood states, just even being diverse, you know, and to me, that signals neuronal plasticity, signals better brain health overall. Right. Because we're changing things up. And there is this one article, I think it's something like on carrots and curiosity and looking at different plant food intake and looking at how we're fortifying the brain. I think one of your questions to me in advance of this podcast was talking about fruit, which is kind of an interesting one because it's a very polarizing topic. And people always ask me, Deanna, about fruit. Don't they just increase blood sugar? And I've been told by my doctor not to eat fruit. However, if you look at some of the studies, what you see is that there is a decreased risk of depressive symptom score with increased fruit intake. Isn't that wild? And then you also, there was one other study. I can't give you the citation off the top of my head, but it was looking at fruits and vegetables and finding that fruits were more specific to helping with depressive symptoms.

Mm.

So I just find that that's kind of interesting. Why have we veered so far away from fruit intake? Something to possibly add to our happiness.

Yeah.

And maybe it's a seasonal thing, too, where we need more of those antioxidants in the summer months when fruit is more readily available. You know, we have a different mood state typically in the warmer summer months, and maybe fruit is contributory to that. But on the other hand, we don't want to go overboard on fruits either, because then we may incur some of those glycemic impacts.

Yeah.

So again, it's the happy balance of it all.

Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, it is Quite polarized like it. But the weird thing is there's a bit of a disconnect between the literature and that polarization. So a lot of the anti fruit stuff is more, you know, coming from sources outside of the scientific literature. I would say the only case where it would be particularly relevant is like on low carb, very low carbohydrate diets perhaps, but even things like fructose intolerance in the scientific literature, really speaking more to avoiding refined fructose in processed foods. It's not fruit that's the problem. Like because the density of fructose is so low, you can eat an apple if you have fructose intolerance, not a problem. It's, you know, it's pastries and cakes and, and, and so on. So I think, you know, a fun area to get into just to add to the controversy is, is some of the more extreme approaches that are emerging at the moment. And you know, where I'm going with this, it's like very low carb or even carnivore, where, you know, you know, I don't want to discredit like people are having good experiences on these sometimes, which I think, personally, I think we need to ask why, you know, what is it that's, that's working there? But you know, there does seem to be a trend towards completely eliminating plants. Do you want to speak a bit to that and your perspective? Because it's quite at odds with what we've just spoken about.

Well, I agree with you. I think that there's room for all kinds of therapeutic interventions for set timeframes. Right. And I do think that some people need a reset or a reprieve from what they were eating. And you know, moving over to something like a carnivore diet may actually help. It's almost like a mono diet if you think of it. Right. Because it's all just a lot of protein and it's all animal based. So. And what I have seen clinically in certain people is that moving at least for a shorter period of time to something more like a mono diet. So if we think of like the least allergenic foods, like I remember Learning from Bob, Dr. Bob Lehrman, like lamb, sweet potato, rice, you know, just putting somebody on like a bland diet for some time just can help to stabilize people. So I acknowledge that and I can acknowledge that some people may need certain nutrients and so possibly the meat provides that. But we're all still tethered to plants, Those animals are still eating plants. But you as the End receiver of that carnivore diet are not getting the benefit of fiber, the prebiotic effects. You're not getting a lot of different types of minerals and vitamins. On the flip side, you might be getting certain ones that might be relevant. So what's interesting about the carnivore diet though, if I'm just thinking about a few people that are the spokespeople of that way of eating, at least in the States, is that some of them have allowed for fruit to come in like fruit and honey and meat. You know, it's kind of like we saw with an Atkins approach from long ago where it was really hardcore just in protein and fat and then it kind of morphed into a more balanced approach and I kind of feel like we're carn. The carnivore diet is now within, within certain circles is okay, let's allow certain fruits at certain times of year and bring in things that are, you know, again, more natural, like honey.

Yeah.

So it's morphing a little bit. And again, as Jeff Bland would say, the pendulum is always swinging in nutrition which is why again adopting a more sustainable way of eating with perhaps like temporal, I would say interventions like the elimination diet, I have to say is truly a diet and is meant to be temporary and short term and works wonders for people. Yeah, really do. In my experience, they have really improved on an elimination diet. It's such a great level set. So you know, carnivore diet, it might be something temporarily for people to explore, but yeah, you better make sure that your protein digestion, that you don't have metabolic endotoxemia. I mean there are just a lot of things to be on the lookout for clinically.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's a bit, a bit like any, you know, diet that is, I don't know if extreme is the right word but you know, restricts whole food groups or you know, it's. And it's. You could argue that it's the same even with vegetarianism or veganism. There are watch outs because you will become deficient in certain things and you know, the long term effect of that is is, is concerning potentially.

So it can be. Yeah, let me get your thought on this too because this is one of my. Over the years as I have lectured on the mitochondria and even most recently at your conference, one of the things that came to me, and I don't have any literature, science to support this, but I'm curious to get your thoughts is if the hub of Our metabolism is truly through the mitochondrion and so oxidative phosphorylation, I mean how we deal with energy sources from the diet are through this little organelle which is from the maternal DNA. Do we need to explore looking at the lineage of the maternal line with respect to food, Is there something that our mitochondria have seen over time that we need to be in tune with? So in other words, do we need more maternal ancestral diets to key into potentially kind of the long served needs of energy for by the mitochondria?

Yeah, it's a, that's a great question. And I mean the easy answer that, you know, I'd probably need to think about that a bit more. But the easy answer is it's very likely. Like if you just look at a practical, relatively well established example of like genetic variants, like you know, like single nucleotide polymorphism variants and the variant in activity of different enzymes often which intersect with food and diet, it's, you know, that's inherited. It's through, you know, through multiple generations, over, you know, decades or thousands of years of environmental exposures that our body is adapted to, including food. It's quite likely that there are long standing multi generational influences on, you know, cellular energy metabolism that would have direct implications for personalized nutrition. That makes sense. But there's probably bigger things that I, you know, I beyond my comprehension around this that it would be important as well, like, you know, because the whole of cell cellular metabolism is sort of hangs on food. You know, you could, you can say gene variants. Yeah. But then there's like, you know, the mitochondrial membrane is heavily dependent on diet and you know, the interaction with different enzymes that shuttle the energy into the cell and so on and so on. So yeah, it makes sense that there would be a connection. And it is like the big elephant in the room, isn't it? Like we talk about ancestral diets and traditional Mediterranean diet, but what would be really cool to know is where you came from as an individual and what your ancestors ate. Because there's no such thing as a paleo diet. Like what people were eating in the Paleolithic in Europe was very different to the Paleolithic in Central America, which was very difficult, you know, and so on and so on. I'm not just talking about grains. Like, you know, the Paleolithic diet contained grains depending on where you were and it was seasonal. So yeah, you know, that'd be cool to work out. Is like what is your history as a, as a person? And we just don't know that stuff.

No. And we don't know the significance or even the contribution. But where my thinking was going was when you asked me about the carnivore poor diet is the, the curiosity that people have with exploring different extreme diets, if you will, an attempt to kind of hearken back to perhaps something ancestral or. Because meat and a carnivore approach I could see would be very fundamental to certain lineages. So is it kind of like, do we feel called to that? You know, and some people might say, well maybe that's a blood type thing. And you know, there's that whole portal of conversation, but, you know, it just kind of begs the question, like, where does the impetus for our need to explore certain dietary patterns? Where does that really come from? Where does that originate? So what is in the signal before the signal? Yeah, you know, I'm always curious, like, what is like the precursor to the, you know, in functional medicine we're kind of looking at the end result of a lot of things, whether through labs or, you know, even genes. We're still looking at functional labs to look at the functionality of those genes. But what is priming, psychological exploration or the need to follow a certain diet? I don't know. I don't know. It's just interesting. And sometimes I think we need to take a more well rounded exploration to things to kind of uncover and foster our relationship with food in a more, again, a more creative way that gives us a little bit more of an eye opening portal into like the why.

Yeah, absolutely. And it feels like a big unexplored area. Nutrition in general, you know, these hereditary influences which you've touched on, but also just behavior in general, like what drives people to do things. You know, on one hand, you know, with a carnivore diet or any other diet, you know, people may be motivated for health reasons to try and get an improvement in symptoms, but there are many other reasons people engage with food and different dietary approaches. As you say, it could be primal, it could be ancestral, it could be trying to reconnect with things that, you know, and they might, you know, sense of spirituality. Who, who knows, like there, there could be all sorts of things that are driving, you know, the way people are thinking, but it, it just feels like a, a hugely untapped area in terms of our understanding of what motivates people.

Yeah. And how would you even study that? Right. It's so complex. I think for the clinicians listening, you know, one of the fun tools that I have used clinically is a Timeline. That is an eating timeline. You know, how we use the timeline in functional medicine to kind of chart somebody's symptoms and point of origin. But I like to just use the timeline for eating. And I give it a little bit of structure by saying, like, give me the top 10 events that framed your eating relationship, like, wherever you want to start, but just 10. And so we kind of. And I've workshopped this as well. But then underneath, your relationship, going with your mother's relationship as much as you remember, and even the grandmother's relationship, like, what do you remember about your grandmother? What were you told about your grandmother's connection to food? You know, my grandparents were on a farm in Wisconsin, so it was a dairy farm. Like, so it's interesting. I had dairy in my maternal diet. Right. So I know so many people are polarized to dairy, but my genes have seen that. So it's just kind of interesting, you know, if we start to, like, map three lines, all parallel, but, you know, we start with ourselves, and then we engage in a little bit of exploration with our mother, just as much as we know, or if she's still living, to ask her. And then again, the grandmother and kind of like, look, where are the threads that interconnect? Again, pattern recognition of, like, oh, I crave dairy. You know, I don't crave dairy, but I'm just giving this as an example, like, to kind of see where are those cravings? Where are this. Where is, though, the. The draw where potentially kind of coming from. Is there an ancestral connection transgenerationally? I don't know. Yeah, just look at.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I think you certainly see that in, you know, in. In Europe, you know, where people have got a very strong, strong sense of food identity. Like, there is a really strong connection to food culture, and they're very diverse cultures, but where you're from is a huge determinant of, you know, what you want to eat, basically.

That is so true. You can see that in the Europe. In Europe and the uk, Very, very distinctly.

Yeah.

There isn't a lot of mobilization. Right. It's kind of like, you know, the families carry on similar patterns.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of people, like, genetically have been there for, you know, tens of thousands of years. Like, it's, you know, or, you know, or thousands. So, yeah, it's old food history and food culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think we're gonna have to draw to a close and, you know, we've covered some ground. You know, we've gone through color and culture and behavior and the biological and practical implications of that. And I think it sort of marries together your overall approach really well, where you've, you know, you've built out this, you know, connection to color for people and then intersected it with biology and function and spirituality. So, you know, unless. Unless you've got any closing remarks for listeners. Yeah, we might draw. Draw to a close.

Yeah. No, I feel like you've. You took me on an intellectual and imaginative tour of topics, which is kind of nice and refreshing. But, yeah, I guess I would just bring it back to, like, the four top things that I always come back to, which would be color. You know, making sure that people have the color signals so that we're getting those phytochemicals. And then you have the artful engagement, the creativity. I feel like that is really something that I would like to see eventually built into the functional medicine matrix, or even for clinicians to ask your patients, how do you define creativity? Because we could actually wax on creativity like we did with spirituality. What is creativity? I know I would define that probably different than even you would define it. Right. We all have personalized versions of that, and I feel like that needs to come into health and healing. The third thing would be the diversity. So there's a whole conversation to be had about that, but we touched on that. And then the fourth is the rhythm. And I know we talked about circadian rhythm and seasonal rhythm. I would encourage everybody to think about all the rhythms. We have lunar rhythm. We have the menstrual rhythm. We have the hormonal rhythms. You even have the month of birth rhythms. So where there was that study, looking at hospital records and looking at what conditions people developed, and you can start to see clusters of people that are born in March versus November have different predispositions to certain risks for certain diseases. So do we need to even look at the month of our birth? You and I have the same month of birth. So, you know, that's kind of like our time zero of like. Okay. We look at ourselves from that point forward. Maybe that's when we start to get our labs. So anyway, that just speaks to rhythm. That speaks to cycles, and it speaks to nature. So those four things to me are, you know, kind of what I see as clinical underpinnings and easy gateways into conversations with clients.

Yeah. No, and, you know, thank you for, you know, wrapping up like that. I think it, you know, speaks to some of the originality and creativity that you're breathing into nutrition and functional medicine. And, you know, on behalf of the listeners, I'd really like to just acknowledge the great work that you do. We're really appreciative of, you know, all the commitment you've made over the years and, and, you know, your role as an educator and researcher and scientist and, and, you know, and just in general, like, pushing things forward, you know, something that always strikes me about conversations I have with you. It's almost like creativity is just flowing through and, and that really comes back into the kind of medicine that we're doing that and helps progress it in a positive way. So, you know, thank you for that great work.

We're on the same wavelength, Ben. What can I say? We're in this together, and it's great.

Yeah. It's been a lot of fun and more to come. Thanks for your time.

Thank you.