Eating the Phytochemical Rainbow: Red and Purple Foods for Brain and Heart Health

Welcome to the Holistic Matters podcast sponsored by Standard Process. Standard Process is a trusted brand at the forefront of high quality whole food based nutritional supplements. Visit holisticmatters.com for a wide range of holistic health content, including articles, videos, continuing education and more. To keep you up to date on the latest nutrition, science and herbal health trends. I'm today's host, Dr. Dana Parent, naturopathic doctor and Standard Process clinical educator. Thank you for joining us and I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Hi everyone and welcome to the Holistic Matters podcast. My name's Dr. Dana Parent. I am so excited to be here with you today. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a clinical educator at Standard Process and I have an amazing guest with me today. I have Dr. Deanna Minick. I. Dr. Minik is a Ph.D. nutrition scientist, an international lecturer, educator and Author with over 20 years of experience in academia and the food and dietary supplement industries. And she's currently the chief science officer at Symphony Natural Health. And she has been active as a functional medicine clinician, in clinical trials and in her own practice, which is called Food and Spirit. And she also is the author of seven consumer books on wellness topics, four book chapters and over 50 scientific publications. And through her talks, workshops, groups and in person retreats, she really helps people to transform their lives practically and artfully through nutrition and lifestyle. So Dr. Minick or Deanna, thank you so much for joining us today. You're very busy with all of your speaking engagements and you just launched a new book as well.

I did. In February we had the launch of the new edition of the Rainbow Diet. So I'm really excited because it was the opportunity to make it very colorful, very hands on. It's just one of those books where you can keep it as reference and just pull it off your shelf when you need to get inspired to get back on track with eating again.

So I actually, I have the book right here. I am loving the book. I just thought I would show everyone and just like you mentioned, it is, it's. I don't know, is this a reference book? Is it a recipe book? I mean, it informs all of the colors of the rainbow. I mean, just practical, you know, I'm in the process of reading it right now and I'm just, I'm loving it.

Well, thank you. That's really great feedback. I mean, it can always be further improved. But again, I was trying to figure out like, how do we make this easy? Eating shouldn't be complicated. So I often think about that word simplex. Where we take clinical, complex science and distill it into the simple everyday. And that's what I was trying to do with the rainbow diet. So we'll see if I've succeeded or not, and I'm sure I'll get lots of other feedback. But it's nice to hear that it did appeal, at least to your eyes and to how the information was assembled.

Yeah, absolutely. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. I mean, I actually can't read the book at night because I get hungry of all of the beautiful pictures. But I did want to take a moment and I wanted to read this one at the very beginning. I loved the way that you worded this. You mentioned most people don't need studies to tell them to eat more fruits and vegetables. They intuitively know that information. What you believe is missing is the what, why, how, and when to eat those foods.

Yes. You know, I think that nutrition science, you have probably seen this over the years in naturopathic medicine, too. There's so much focus on people trying to figure out what to eat. And even further on from what, what are the macronutrients, what are the micronutrients? And as I got into nutrition, whether through the clinical work that I did, the research work, whatever it was, what I was starting to see was that food and eating are much more expansive than we realize. There is the how of eating, so the mindfulness component. So are we doing dashboard dining? You know, we're in the car trying to multitask, eating that healthy salad, or are we in a space of mindfulness so that we're connecting with the food? Right. So that the how is important, the when is so important. And we're learning much more about circadian rhythm, lunar rhythm. You know, one of the things with standard process and the acknowledgement of plant science is the growing cycles. Well, we as people have cycles as well. We have seasonal cycles in addition to the diurnal cycle. So eating according to rhythm is really essential. So it's not just the what, it's not just the how. It is also the when. And if we look at the science that's usually referred to as chrono nutrition. Chrono means time. Nutrition is obviously nutrition. So putting together the aspect of time with eating, so if we have a healthy meal really late at night, it can not be as well, metabolically received as it would have been at an earlier time. So timing does make a big difference.

Yeah, that's fascinating. And just going back to what you said, I think there's so much literature Right. There's so much literature showing that plants and phytonutrients really could offer those health benefits. I love that you've just. You're so much deeper into, like, how do we make this applicable to our patients? How do we help them to understand and not just eat more fruits and vegetables? I think that we all know that. We hear it all the time. So I love that you're diving deeper into this.

Well, yeah. And one of the things that people have heard a long time is eat more fruits and vegetables to reduce your risk of chronic disease. So there are so many different opinion leader organizations out there talking about five a day eating the rainbow. I'm not the only one. And what I was also acknowledging is that there's much more there than just even reducing the risk for chronic disease. When you start to look at the current literature, you start to see a connection between food and mood. And even if you look at nutrition science, one of the first parts of nutrition actually come from nutritional psychiatry, looking at this dynamic between what we eat, how we eat, when we eat, all of those things, and the effect on our mental health. So I do think that it's not just about reducing the risk for chronic disease, which is very important for many people. Right. Because having a good quality of life is coming from their ability to be healthy. But then there's also this separate, I would say, thread of research being developed into this tapestry of looking at food and mental health. And when we're eating a lot of these colorful whole plant foods, we're having colorful moods, we're having greater curiosity, less psychological distress, we're having a greater sense of curiosity. And just even in the literature, it's referred to as flourishing. And I think that nowadays people are looking for that. They are desperately looking for what will help them to regain balance and help to alleviate them from just these kind of mood states that are feeling heavy or anxious or depressive. So I would say one of the first places to look and to start talking with people about is the inclusion of different colorful foods to generate those colorful moods.

Yeah, I love that. And speaking of. Yeah, brain health, I mean, cognition, just mental health, especially probably since 2000. I think we've a lot of clinicians, we've really all seen that increase in our practice. And you talk about the brain in your book specifically as related to kind of the color purple. So how does purple influence brain health?

Yeah, you know, blue, purple, and I would even say black foods. There's. There's almost a spectrum within each of the individual colors and some of them share the same spectrum. So blue, purple, black is a continuum that I see that connects to pigments in plant foods like blueberries or blackberries or figs, grapes, things of that nature, which would impart either a structural effect, in other words, that certain of these pigments may actually localize in certain parts of the brain that are responsible for learning, memory and mood. We also see that some of those blue, purple, black pigments play a role in the gut and help to better orchestrate the gut brain access. Now that also does bring us into red colored foods. Because one of the things that I talk about with the color code of red foods is, yes, inflammation, yes. Looking at antioxidant potential and this healthy inflammatory response. However, there is a piece of red that is shared in this blue, purple, black category. And that's in part due to a class of phytochemicals called polyphenols. So many times you can find polyphenols in red colored foods like cherries or raspberries or even things like strawberries. So I think about those too. So even though I'm trying to make it easy in the book, but there is some shared property between each of the colors as far as how some of them take up multiple functions. But, but you can kind of see a consolidation or a pattern of certain of these colors. But in general, blue, purple, black, these are really important because it's also the color that people eat the least of. So there was a survey on that back in 2009 and I've even seen this clinically, when people take pictures of their food and send it to me, what I see is that there is a deficit of this color. So if we think about that with implications for the brain and mental health, that becomes more concerning. So we do want to ensure that we are getting those precious purple and other deeply hued fruits and vegetables when they are in season. There's a reason for those seasons and why they're bringing up those foods.

Yeah, that's, you know, just to relate that back to the rhythms. Right. We used to, I mean, you hear this often, often that you, we used to just eat what was in season. We didn't have a grocery store, right. Where we could just go pick up any fruit from any country in the entire world. And so you're really, you're really getting into, you know, you live in a colder climate, you're going to eat different foods than if you live in a warmer climate. I think that's so important as well.

It is. And in fact, again, when I was at the standard process farm. What I heard when I was on the tour was that there is that appreciation of what can grow in Wisconsin with those particular seasons, with that particular amount of humidity. And so working hand in hand with scientists to look at different varieties of plants, but then also honoring nature. What can nature withstand and potentiate in that particular location? Because you can't have a mismatch. If you have a mismatch, eventually you won't potentiate the phytochemicals in the plant. Right. It won't really be optimized for what that plant can do. So it's like a dance. It's kind of like our bodies are in the environment. So too are plants. Plants really need to connect with where they're at. And that environment then imparts certain stressors that can make that plant into what it can become. And then we take in that plant, hopefully again seasonally, and then we can really reap the benefit of a lot of the effects of that plant.

Yeah, that's great. And, you know, you're wearing the color red as well. It's, you know, I can only see the top, but you're wearing a beautiful red color. And you had mentioned the color red as well, kind of conferring some of even going into the brain health aspect. But I would love to cover more in your book. You talk about red foods as being associated, you know, kind of alertness. You talk about, you know, how there's a stop sign or a red light and it just kind of alerts us. I'd love to hear more about, you know, where you're coming from with red foods and kind of that alert sensation.

Yes. Well, as you read about in the Rainbow diet, what I've assigned to each of the colors is a code, and I call it the functional code of nature. Nature isn't just spurious or just kind of random. Nature is very intentional and intelligent. So if I'm looking at the science of the different phytochemicals that are in those different colors, what I see with red is that there seems to be a pattern as it relates to certain classes of phytochemicals that would track into healthy inflammatory and immune response. So I often think of those polyphenols that I mentioned before, but then also things like nitrates. Nitrates are another class, a separate class of phytochemicals. But just to kind of back it on up, the way I start every chapter in the Rainbow Diet, I talk about the psychology of the color. So there is a strong pull into looking at how color informs us. How does color inform our space, our even societal and environmental signals? You had mentioned the stop sign, which I have a picture of a stop sign in the book. It's kind of like in most places in the world, stop signs are red because red is evoking a response. When we see stop, that evokes a response. But when it's in red, it's a cue of alert. I often think about other things like an ambulance. I think about a fire hydrant. I think about even a siren on top of a police car, which, you know, you find different colors now, but, you know, I think about something red and alerting, like a fire alarm, a smoke alarm, or an exit sign. You know, again, so many things in nature or through human created society and different types of signals, we see that red is something that evokes a response. It's allowing us to react. So when I think of red, I think of react. I think of the adrenals, I think of stress response, survival, safety. And red is a very, you know, I think of blood. I think of, you know, so much of our activity is connected in the body through this whole inflammatory immune response. And so we often start there. And when I think of, again, red, I'm also thinking of psychologically thinking about. If you look at studies, they align red with vigor, vitality, and even passion. You know, it's kind of loose in the psychological literature because there's a lot of room for subjective interpretation of color. And also we need to acknowledge that there's also red, green, colorblindness. So not everybody sees red in the same way. It may not be perceiving red in the same way. However, there is an energy or a vibration to red that I think people can pick up regardless of how they're taking in that color red. So, yeah, I see it as, you know, I don't know if you remember this, but back in the day when people were doing job interviews and they would, it would be circulating like, wear your red power suit. Red denotes some kind of authority or some kind of energy. It shows that you're ready for something. So if we take all of those psychological meanings and distill them into how would that translate into a physiologic response? I see that through the hallmarks of inflammation. So in inflammation, we think of rhubar, choler and dolor. You're probably remembering this back to your naturopathic education and training, right? So the redness, pain, heat, swelling, this is all part of that cascade of inflammation. Inflammation is also very Much connected to, I would say, the immune response. So the immune response can be heightened. We might have an infiltration of certain immune cells as one of the steps of the inflammatory response. So a little bit of inflammation can be good because it recruits the immune system. But then when we've gone too far now we have a fire. We don't have just a slow burn of getting things initiated and catalyzed. We now have, whether it's low level, chronic inflammaging, which is actually a word, it's taking inflammation, connecting it to aging. Because when inflammation is not controlled for this we see in functional medicine, also naturopathic medicine, integrative medicine, we see this as one of the foundations of leading to the process of creating a chronic disease of some sort. So it's that initiating step. So that's why it's really important to be focused on red and having a good balance of red. And Dana, as you would have seen in the book too, I also talk about that red has two sides. It's a double edged sword though, certain red colored foods. And here's where I think about especially young children, you have kids and so you might have seen this yourself, where there can be an underdeveloped immune system that doesn't respond well to certain foods. And so we look at foods that contain high histamines. So we look at something like strawberries or even creating a histamine kind of response to a food, which could lead to redness or itchiness or swelling or a rash. So many times the body is alerting us through those inflammatory signs. I don't see it as a negative thing unless we don't take care of it and heed those signs and do something about it.

Yeah, sure. I remember that part very specifically in the book. You had mentioned it as well with the nightshades and the saponins. Right. And the lectins and how, you know, you just, you have to be cautious with, with certain foods even though they might be perceived as being healthy.

Right.

That's not every food is not for everybody.

Well said. And the nightshades, I'm glad that you bring those up. So the tomatoes would be one category. A red bell pepper could be another one where people just get inflamed. And I saw that in clinical practice. I saw something on the order of probably like 10 to 15% of people would have some connection to an intolerance of nightshades. So they'd actually get joint pain, they get swelling. The most common thing I would see would be like hands that would get swollen after having something like tomatoes. Me personally, I actually did have something with tomatoes that I feel like I've kind of worked through that. But I remember for me, I would get a rash, it was a skin rash. So I was like, there you go, that's right. But now what is really beautiful about nature is that what helps us with the histamine response, one of the things that helps to break down histamine is vitamin C. And if you look at a lot of the foods that are vitamin C rich, they tend to be red colored foods like berries actually. Also tomatoes can be rich in vitamin C depending on how they're prepared. So it's kind of interesting how nature almost has this built in recovery system in this whole food matrix. Of course, standard process very much honors. So when we have the whole food grown in the proper season, through the proper preparation, where we inactivate things like lectins through cooking, then we start to see that, oh, the body can receive this message from nature in a much better way. So that's kind of how I see red foods. Red is, I'm glad that we're focusing in on red because, you know, all of the different colors, it's like each one is a rabbit hole of discovery. And even within red, I think about the deep hue of red, like a beet colored almost like a purplish red. And then I think about, you know, we can move that all the way through the spectrum to like even like a dragon fruit where it's kind of pink, pink on the outside. You have different colors of apples. Some of them are a little bit lighter red than others where it's deeper or more pink red. So as everybody's listening, I want you to imagine a spectrum of red and it goes from a very deep purple red, which would be more enriched in those polyphenols I spoke to all the way to kind of that light red or even a pinkish red because it's like, well, where does pink fall in the spectrum of foods? I don't really talk about pink in the rainbow diet because, you know, there are very few foods that are natural and whole and plant in origin that are classically pink. I mean, of course dragon fruit, we think of things like that. We could even venture to say something like a passion fruit, even though that's a little bit more purple orange. But you know, just keep in mind like that whole spectrum of red. And so therefore, if you have a beet where it's deeply hued, I mean there are so many different kinds of Beets, you have red beets, you have candy cane beets, you have more of a purplish beet. Where I live in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest, we get all different colors here. We get yellow, orange print, yellow, orange beets. So what you're looking for is the color tracks to the different class of phytochemicals that you're looking for for that specific functional signature.

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Yeah, I, I actually, I love that you are discussing beets because I'm reading your book and I'm like I thought beets were purple, but I think that came from childhood. You know, when it stains and it kind of stains dark purple. I'm not sure you know what, what phytochemical stains so dark purple. But beets, I mean, and then I read it and I said, oh, this is actually red. Beets are actually, you know, red. There's a red beet variety, right? And so yeah, you know, I would love if you could dive a little bit deeper into beets. Specifically, specifically those red beets. I always think about them more from a like cardiometabolic perspective, maybe helping, you know, nitric oxide production. I mean there's much to even unwrap with beets.

Correct. Goodness. You know, every food is a rabbit hole. Again, it can take us deeper and deeper. And the beauty of beets, just to look at the beet for a second, if we can imagine a beet, we have the beetroot which typically that's where we see the highly pigmented color of red or purple or yellow or orange. So that's the beetroot and then we have the beets stem and then we have the beet leaves that Grow above the ground so many times a beet is not just that red, purple, orange, or yellow. It also is bringing in the color green through the leaves, the above ground portions that are rich in chlorophyll and that are harvesting the light through photosynthesis in order to create other compounds. So if you're truly eating a whole beetle. And again, speaking to the beetroot, beet stem, and beet leaves, you are getting different phytochemical classes just through one plant food. It's really beautiful in that way. In fact, I have to tell you the story, Dana, that I was doing a cooking class with Dr. John Principe. He is a medical doctor in Chicago. He's really. He's Italian. So he really gets into food preparation and had a really creative idea. We were making a carrot curry soup, and this again was a class and it was a teaching kitchen and making that carrot soup. But then we took the beet and he actually took the beet leaves for the salad. Took the beetroot also, I believe, for the salad. But then he took the beet stem part because most people just toss that. They don't know what to do with the stem because it's kind of fibrous and yeah, it's chewy and people aren't really sure. It's tough. So what he did was he diced that beet stem and then he used it as a garnish on top of the carrot curry soup, which is such a great idea. It just makes me think of, like, how we can maximize and not be composting and tossing away parts of the plant which actually are full of value. So because beets embody so many different phytochemicals that can be good for different body systems. So one of the body systems that I talk about in relationship to cardiovascular health is green. And when I think of the green leaves of beets, and even we're going to talk about the nitrates in the beetroot itself, what we see is that the key word for heart health, at least in the rainbow diet book that I wrote, is expansion. Expansion. So what is in beets and these beet greens that is creating expansion of those blood vessels? And that's what brings us to the nitrates. Before we get into the nitrates, though, I just want to back up because not many people know what betalains are. Beta lanes are what make that beetroot pigmented. So they'll either be red, purple, or yellow. They do have some properties that would connect to maintaining a healthy inflammatory response and you see two different classes of betalains, you see the red violet kind, those are called betacy. So when I'm thinking of like your fingers getting stained, and that happens to me too, if I'm cutting beets and then I look at my fingers, you know, these are water soluble pigments, but they do initially stain. And then you have the yellow, orange, the betaxanthins. So you have this class of betalains. And there is some literature around betalains being important for healthy antioxidant and inflammatory response. Also things that would connect to cardiovascular health like healthy blood pressure, healthy blood sugar, just healthy heart health overall. So yes, the beets or the betalains, which are a them as a separate family of phytochemicals, we then have the nitrates. Nitrates are also in beets. And in fact beets are on the list of the top nitrate containing foods. I remember though I just want to back up on nitrates because when I was, I would say before I was 10 years old, so I was like between 8 and 9. And this was in the 1970s because I'm 54 now, so it's been some time. But at that time there was a lot of awareness. My mom was helping our family to eat healthier. And so we had to read labels. She taught us how to read food labels. So one of the things we were on the lookout for was making sure that we didn't have foods with sodium nitrite. So I think when people hear nitrates in this day and age, I often get the question, but Deanna, I thought that those were not good for us. Well, you have different kinds of these, I would say the nitrate containing foods, right? And you have nitrates, nitrites, and then ultimately you get this nitric oxide, which again is this whole process that forms in the body through the action of different microorganisms to just gently open up those blood vessels. So those inorganic nitrates. And typically you find them in more than beets, but beets is really a good source. So things that typically are leafy greens, so arugula and spinach, different kinds of lettuce, even celery. So when people were into the celery juice craze, I think part of the reason why they may have had some benefit there could have been connected to the nitrates. So the nitrates, that's not just like a stop right there. There's a subsequent reaction that needs to happen in the body. And depending on the health of our gut and the composition of our microorganisms that will then determine how well we convert into nitrite and then into nitric oxide. So we need a bit of chemical, I would say a catalytic process that occurs. So not everybody will form nitrate into nitric oxide in the same way. And there's actually a way to test this, and I've done this before, where you get the NO strips and you can get a sense of, you know, it's just a little strip, it turns a red or a pinkish color when there is more nitric oxide. These NO strips, again, you just put it on the tongue, just assess it through the saliva. And so people who tend to be more well trained or have better vasculature or maybe even better intake of a number of these different dietary nitrates, they might tend to have better nitric oxide levels. And that nitric oxide is important as a vasodilator. So again, back to that green of the heart as it connects to. I just simply call it expansion. But really what I'm talking about here is vasodilation, improving the blood flow, lowering the blood pressure, and overall supporting endothelial health. And if, even if you listen to cardiologists talking about the genesis of cardiovascular disease, it is often starting with impaired endothelial function. You've got some kind of dysfunction in that single cell layer of the blood vessel. So again, we're looking at expansion, and we're looking at that from a food perspective. But then also, we want an open heart. Right when we start to get tight in our heart, tight in the vessels, it's like a stress response. So in theory, when we're eating lots of dietary nitrates, we are helping to modulate some of expansion in the body, and that should give us a feeling of ease and relaxation. I mean, that does need to translate in some way over time to having just more of a sense of regulated nervous system because of that connection through the vasculature.

Yeah, I love that. Now, is that an immediate response when you're doing the nitric oxide strips? Like, could somebody, you know, consume a product with a beet in it and see how that influences nitric oxide, or is that over time that they would see an improvement?

You know, I've trialed that with different people and even myself, everybody's kind of different in that response. And again, I think that that goes back into the composition of their salivary microbiome, because 25. I think it's around 25% of that nitrate is taken up by the salivary glands, and then, you know, excreted back into the mouth. And then much depends on the acid in the stomach, which then leads to the nitrite. So it kind of. There are many pieces here, and for everybody, that might be a little bit different. So depending on the composition of the microorganisms, the digestion, you might be able to see that. But I would say it probably takes a little bit to build that up over time to give the body a better reserve. And I have seen that people have very low. No, very low. Like when in that. I'm gauging by the strips. So you. Well, I have tended to see this, and maybe some of the clinicians listening would say that they have seen otherwise. And it just kind of depends. Is it an athlete who has very good vasculature and good blood flow? But what if you have somebody with chronic venous insufficiency or somebody with high blood pressure? It might take those folks a bit longer to have the effect. And for me, I always reflect on consistency of any type of measure. Right. In order to have a health benefit. So just going low, going slow over time, and just even doing the color check with the strips to see. Okay, how am I doing? Because that'll be your test as to whether. And also I would say your feeling, you know, how is your blood pressure? How is your overall mood state, your sense of relaxation? Because again, blood flow, the vasculature, does connect to the overall health of your sympathetic nervous system as it connects to your parasympathetic nervous system. So it's very highly. You know, the heart and the brain work together. And if we have open circulation, better blood flow, you can only imagine what happens for the brain. Right? So then we got. I mean, if you think of the poor brain, it's got to work against gravity in order to get blood flow from the heart. So the heart has to really pump and make sure that the vasculature is open and being able to transport a lot of the blood. So what we typically see with opening up the vasculature and improve blood flow is actually better cerebral blood flow and ultimately better cognition. Now, I'm connecting a lot of dots there, but it makes sense. If you're taking care of your heart and you're taking care of your blood flow, you're going to be taking care of your cognition and your brain flow. So that's something for us to be thinking about as well. And that's why there's so much of a focus, I think, on cardiovascular disease, because it's kind of the gateway to other body systems. Whether we think of endothelial function or erectile dysfunction or even hot flashes in menopause, which may have some connection to vasculature and increased risk for certain cardiovascular parameters. So vasculature is a big thing, Right. You don't want varicose veins where you just feel fatigue and a sense of heaviness in the legs.

Right.

You want to have, you want to be enabling flow in the body. I think that that's one of the markers of healthy aging.

Yeah, that's so insightful. I mean, it makes sense, right? When we're working on the heart, when we're working on the blood vessels, we don't get to be extremely specific on where all of the blood will flow. It's going to flow generally kind of you open up and support the endothelium and, and supply those nutrients. It's going to go to the, you know, vasculature in the brain. It's going to, you know, work on the periphery as well. So that's. Yeah, that's always, you know, that's really key. The other area where I, when I think red, I always think of muscles as well and maybe even like post exercise recovery or, or even longevity because there's so much research to really support muscles being connected to kind of improved health span and lifespan. I mean, we're always talking to our patients, you know, about consuming enough protein and all of these other pieces. But that's the other, the other piece where I really think about red is muscles and exercise and kind of longevity, you know. Is that correct thinking as well?

Yeah, many times I do put muscle into the red color system because even though we're not getting into it in the podcast, per se, I usually connect red into protein, the protein parts of the body. And so muscle being highly rich in protein, I tend to put muscle there as well. And muscle, just like you said, under conditions of where we're taking in more oxygen because we are exercising or through breathing, we have a high number of mitochondria in muscle, in muscle mass. And muscle has been referred to as the organ of longevity. You know, I think that's part of it. I think that there are many different organs of longevity, but I think that muscle is a big deal, especially as we get older, where we start to see a natural decline in lean body mass and a natural rise in fat mass. So that starts to change our metabolic flexibility. So with things like nitric oxide coming in to act as a vasodilator, helping to better create blood flow. And that can also Change the dynamics of muscle. It can help with mitochondrial efficiency and even the neurotransmission, which we know that muscle is highly innervated. So yeah, I mean, I think that we could make connections throughout the body because as you and I both know, the body is a systems web. Nothing is going to not be connected in. There'll be some things that are connected a little bit tighter. You know, like we were just talking about the blood vessels, but the muscle is definitely like that next concentric circle out from thinking about vasculature is how I see it. And because, you know, there are even studies looking at athletes or people who are exercising, taking things like beet powder or beet actives before or after activity to maximize the effects of that exercise and to help with things like oxygenation and also recovery. And we would look at that link there as again, back to blood flow, back to oxygen. These are the hallmarks of vitality.

Right.

Which brings us into aging. And you know, I think it depends on who you talk with. But you know, if you talk with a cardiologist, they're so bullish about how, you know, you only have one heart. And the health of all of your body systems is so dependent on heart and the blood vessels because the vessels are going everywhere in the body to transport nutrients, take away waste, to deliver oxygen, take away carbon dioxide. So when you have healthy blood vessels, then you can get nutrients and just extract the waste. So when you're, in some ways, when your vasculature or your blood flow is impacted or impeded, you start to see issues. You can start to see clots, you can start to see narrowing, and that could be due to atherosclerosis and buildup of plaque. So all in all, whether we're talking about aging or muscle, it's so important to have what I would refer to as this sense of flow, fluidity and coherence in the body in order to facilitate healthy aging.

Yeah, I love that. And like you said, I mean, this is all interwoven, right. I mean, the body is. We don't just look at the, the human body from the lens of just individual parts. We're really putting everything together and everything is connected in the entire body. Like you said, it's just maybe some things are connected, maybe a little bit stronger. But certainly there's connections to all of these different foods. But certainly the red food category is highly interesting and highly valuable, as I'm hearing it is.

Yeah. And fortunately, I think people, they do okay on red colored foods. You know, I think we can be better on all the colors. And what I tend to see happening with red foods is that people just hammer on one food. Because I can remember just working with people and hearing, like, you know, I'd go through the different colors, and people kind of get in a rut with certain foods, especially red foods. Like, they do the same tomato. It's like, are you getting red foods? Yes, I eat tomatoes every day. It's like, well, within one color, again, we need to create diversity. And diversity is also one of those pinnacles of healthy aging, because when we're getting diverse foods and diverse foods within one color, we're maximizing the phytochemical palette. So if we think of phytochemicals, like, on a palette like that an artist would have. It's almost like we can get and paint this picture of health through the body, is how I see it in a more arty way, is how I like to talk about it.

Yeah. And I think that's such a good reminder for everyone. You know, as you're talking about the phytonutrients, you know, in apple, all apples are not created equal. Or when you go to the store, even if you're at the apple section and you pick up this apple and you pick up that apple, and they're slightly different colors, and you have a red apple and a green apple, and you just like the honeycrisp apple, you just like the gala apples. But really branching off from that type of apple gives you different phytonutrients, Right?

You're absolutely right. And actually, I'm really glad that you use apples as an example, because it's often the one that I show in a chart. There's a great book called Eating on the Wild side by Jo Robinson, and she went into each of the food categories and showed how each food and each variety of food can be very different in its phytochemical composition and even nutrient status. So with apples, that was shown clearly through all the different colors of apples. And that's why I. What I say is not that one apple is better than another. It's not like you want to say, like, oh, I just need to have the apple with the most amount of phytochemicals. That's not really the end game. The end game is diversity, that apple. So when people go into the store, and many times they'll go into a store and they'll just buy because they don't want to really think too much about it, they'll just go and pick out of the produce section, a big bag of apples. And it's all the same apple variety. So it might be Red Delicious apples, but like you're saying they're not getting the complexity of all the different kinds of phytochemicals. If they were to just take 30 seconds of time and choose a Granny Smith, choose a Red Delicious, choose. I like Pink lady. So I would choose a Pink lady for sure. You know, just making sure that we've got all those different ones because they're grown in different parts. So you get kind of like the, the actual phytochemical signature of those respective locations. Right. You get different colors, you get different levels of polyphenols. Again, that would be expressed per those different locations. So what I would say is, you know, that one of the. This is such an easy thing to do is again, just choosing the individual varieties rather than just going for bulk. Because I think, you know, bulk is okay. Like, let's just say you're really rushed. You have a large family and it's like you just don't have the time. Having a big bag of apples is better than not having any apples, I would say. But if you can just spend a little bit more time and do that selection of different varieties of whatever your grocer has, or maybe it's your community supported agriculture, which I think is one of the best ways to do this because then you're actually getting what is locally grown in that time of season that would, you know, just kind of think about it in layers. Like just do the best you can with what you have available to you.

Yeah, and that's actually, I kind of want to switch gears a little bit and talk about an event that you will actually be keynote speaking. You're the keynote speaker of this event and it's called the Whole Systems Nutrition Symposium. And it's a virtual event. I'm sure we can post the link for everyone. But what you're talking about here is what essentially this event is going to discuss. It's actually going to get in kind of harnessing the body's, you know, wisdom and kind of the innate wisdom of the body and the innate wisdom of, you know, there's going to be talks on soil health. I mean, something that's probably under discussed is in plants you can only get out the nutrient content that goes into the soil. So in this event it's going to talk about seed selection and soil health and it's going to discuss, of course, nutrient depletion and really how to help patients optimize. But there's so many different pieces to this. But ultimately oil is very important. Like you said, kind of going to locations that are in season and local and organic. Right. Those are the kind of agriculture that we want to support. Yeah. So you're the keynote speaker and I have your topic here. It's called Eating by Nature's Principles. You'll be talking about color, creativity, diversity and rhythm. So I, you know, this is up and coming, so are you able to share anything, you know, with us, kind of what you're going to be venting?

Sure. So these four principles that you just mentioned that I'll be talking about, they are what I would say, not even my principles, they're nature's principles. So I give credit to nature here. I just observed it, I wrote about it in the Rainbow Diet book. So color, creativity, diversity and rhythm. And we've touched on all of those things here, except for probably creativity. So in the talk we're going to go through color, I'm going to talk about color and the many different benefits of color. Kind of showing the different phytochemicals, looking at the phytochemical family tree, why each of the colors has its own function, and how when you omit a color in the diet, you can actually be changing the status of your health. So then we're also going to talk about creativity. Creativity, I think, is a big one. Creativity, to me, one of the aspects of health and healing that often gets overlooked. So when I look at creativity, I'm looking at how can we create more through food in our everyday relationship with food, whether it's cooking, growing. You talked about the soil. What about just even how we put the plate together and the foods on the plate, the colors, again, I talked about the palate. So creativity is really key. Then diversity, goodness, dietary diversity is again such a big, important topic right now in nutrition science. I'll be talking about how to emphasize more variety. How do you do that? How do you help to get out of your food ruts? Because how we eat tends to be how we live, and how we live is how we eat so many times. For people who don't have enough diversity, that could actually be signaling that they don't have enough diversity or I would say inspiration in their lives. And then the last one is rhythm. And that's the one that I think is very intriguing for many people right now. Looking at the 24 hour circadian rhythm, we looking at the monthly lunar rhythm, looking at seasonal rhythms. How do all of these rhythms of nature influence our food's nutritional quality and also our physiologic needs because we're different people in the winter than we are in the summer in terms of what we need and what foods are available to us. So that's what I'm going to talk about. I'm really honored to be the keynote for this important symposium and to really just drill deeply into these four different principles of nature and how to make the most of them in our everyday lives.

Yeah, that's great. I think sometimes too, just as a clinician, I think, like you mentioned creativity. Right. I think that's a hard one for us and just fascinating. I've read some of your research actually with the, with the rhythms and there's so much to it. I think this is going to be just a really well received lecture and I'm of course excited to be attending that as well, virtually.

Of course. I'm excited to have you there. I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah.

And so just for everyone listening, that's actually, it's a live, it's a live event. It's going to be Friday, October 24th. That's of this year of 2025. So of course we can always post a link so you can learn more about it for some of our healthcare practitioners, depending on your license type and your licensing board and all of those things, you may be eligible for continuing education credits too. So bonus for some of our healthcare practitioners. It's been amazing talking with you today. I want to give you the opportunity to just tell us what else you have going on. I know you are incredibly busy. I mean, you, you are just, you're, you're speaking. I know you're traveling, you're writing, you're publishing, you have so much going on. Is there, is there anything you'd like to share with our listeners and what could, you know, what we can see up and coming?

That's a good question. You know, I would say the events page on my website is such a great place to see what is being offered and when. I love to have just free education that goes out to people. So you'll find a lot of different things, whether it's webinars or in person events that I do. But I would say, you know, it's exactly what you just described, a lot of different things simultaneously. So I'll be speaking a lot in September, October and November. I hope to see you either virtually at those events or even person, even better if possible. But yeah, in terms of like what's on the horizon, you know, so many different areas to explore. And being that I just finished the Rainbow Diet book, I'm not quite ready to write a book just yet. But I do have some ideas for papers that I want to write. So I want to go a little bit deeper into detoxification, certain aspects there so that I could predict is most likely on the horizon.

Yeah, well, that's, that's wonderful. I just want all of our listeners. I'll show you again if you haven't picked up a copy of the Rainbow Diet. It's just, it's beautiful. It's, you know, there's so much here. I mean, you get to the back, you have all of your, you know, your references, there's recipes in the back, you have food trackers. You know, I think the utility of this book goes just above and beyond. So, yeah, if you haven't picked up your copy, please do so. And Deanna, it's been amazing having you on the Holistic Matters podcast. We're just honored to have you with us today. And, you know, hopefully we can do this again sometime.

I would look forward to that. Thank you so much, Dana, for having me. And I'm excited to see you at the conference coming up. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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