The Rainbow Diet: A Colorful Approach to Nutrition (ft. Dr. Deanna Minich) | SNH Podcast #111

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Welcome back to the Smarter, Not Harder podcast, your home for $0.01 solutions to $64,000 questions. I'm your host, Jodi Deval. So today we're diving into the fascinating world of nutritional science, food colors and.

The mind body connection with our amazing.

Guest, Dr. Diana Minick. So Dr. Minick is a nutritional scientist, functional medicine expert and international lecturer with over 20 years of experience in academia, clinical trials and the food and supplement industries. She is currently the Chief Science Officer at Symphony Natural Health and the author of the Rainbow Diet, a book that brings together science, color and nutrition to.

Create a vibrant whole body approach to health.

So so in this conversation we explore why eating a rainbow matters and the.

Science behind how food colors impact different.

Systems in the body. We talk about the phytonuro endocrine system, a powerful connection between our brain hormones and diet, and how food colors can support emotional and physiological well being. And why the Rainbow Diet is a sustainable approach to long term health and.

A guide and a support.

We also talk about practical strategies for.

Incorporating more colors into your meals and.

Lifestyle for optimal vitality. So Dr. Minick's work blends scientific research.

With ancient wisdom, making the art and.

Science of nutrition accessible and actionable for everyone.

So before we jump in today's episode.

Though, I'd love for you to leave.

Us a review, share and like because.

This is the way that we reach you.

This is the way that we can.

Give the beautiful, valuable information like Vienna's to the world.

So it really helps us bring these.

Powerful conversations to more and more of you.

So without further ado, let's welcome Dr.

Diana Minnick to the show.

Dr. Diana Minick, we are so happy to have you on the show for the Smarter, Not Harder podcast. And it's just been an incredible journey that I see that you've been on and many, many years in this field. So I'm very, very excited for your expertise and to chat you about to chat to you about this wonderful topic.

Well, it's exciting to be here with you to have the conversation and yeah, it's interesting to see how our paths evolve, right. How one thing can lead us into another thing and it's all kind of interconnected. So thank you for making that observation and we'll see where this conversation takes us.

Amazing. So Deanna, I always like to start with your journey and I wanted to ask you, how does one land in the space of food, of colors, of food and discovering the science behind that? How did you land here?

I think it was a multifaceted path that involved a lot of different people, but it truly started with my mother. So I grew up in the 1970s when it wasn't really cool to be into food and eating. And I had a mother who was at that time considered a health nutrition. So she was very conscious of the foods that we were eating. She was also very into her faith. So that's kind of where that entry point was for me with spirituality. I think for her it was more religion. For me it became more of a spiritual approach. So with her having that kind of, I would say, setting the stage for me when I was very young, I had a lot of resistance to that, though I must say. It wasn't just a slam dunk of me listening to what my mother was saying. I actually was very polarized to that information. And I even developed an eating disorder in my teen years because everything was so. I don't know, it just felt so constricting and constraining and so many rules and different aspects around food. And at that time, again, it wasn't really in vogue to be eating in a certain way. So you were kind of an outcast like. Like when you were among your peers. Right. But I would say later in life, what happened to me was I got into college, I started studying science, and I was always kind of nerdy. I love science. I love to understand mechanisms and why things worked. And then I got into graduate school and I decided not to do pre med, to go and study nutrition. So one of the other, I would say the other part of the path and how it unfolded was truly my graduate school advisor. So Dr. Phyllis Bowen and I had the opportunity to study carotenoids with her. So carotenoids are plant pigments. So that kind of got me turned on to color. But then later, after my PhD, I went on to work in the natural products industry and to work with Dr. Jeffrey Bland, who is the father of functional medicine. Yeah, you probably know him, and, and all of the wonderful things that he has done. And I would say that he brought phytonutrients for me into a different arena that I did not know and that I did not have any familiarity with, like, through graduate school. So I was doing studies on detoxification and phytonutrients. We were looking at cell signaling pathways and phytonutrients. And so, yeah, you know, at the end of the day, I kind of looked back at everything and I was thinking, what in science is irrefutable? And there wasn't a lot. Right. Because nutrition has always Been like a pendulum. If you want studies on meat or no meat, you can find them. Studies on eggs. No eggs, you can find them. Soy? No soy. Gluten? No gluten. It was like, well, what is true. What is really true in this that people can't poke holes in because there's just so much data, and you see it play out clinically. And that to me was phytochemicals through whole foods. So that would be looking at, especially fruits and vegetables, and then also just looking at, you know, the swath of colors like herbs and spices and condiments, even, you know, mustard as an example, which is yellow because of the turmeric and the mustard. So, you know, really looking at colors, looking at nature and the diverse colors that are in nature, I think that's kind of how I got there. Although people did come to poke holes in eating the rainbow, and we could talk more about that, because that was actually kind of a surprise to me. But, you know, we see again, the birth and I would say the death of so many different dietary fads. So whether it's keto, whether it's carnivore, whether it's vegan, vegetarian. And that's why one of the things that Dr. Bland had always taught me was about these nutrition pendulums, right. And that stay in the middle because things swing and we need to stay personalized with respect to food. So that's how I kind of landed on the rainbow, because I feel like everybody can relate to that, whether they're five years old, whether they're, I don't know, 25, 50, 80. And it holds true for most people, depending on how we're eating the rainbow and how we're cooking certain foods. But essentially, it holds true throughout the spectrum of life.

Yeah.

And it can be a very simple concept to teach people initially when that's an entry point into nutrition. And for me, I've done a master's in human nutrition as well, and naturopathic medicine. So for me, in clinic, it's really hard to decipher for people what they're seeing, like you say, the different fads out there. And to come always back to that basics and looking at the foods for themselves, because we lose sight of, even children, they don't even know where our food comes from and how it's grown. And we have lost that basic, in general, that. That chronobiology as well as that, you know, the inside look at how our food and what nourishes our body. So I really. And this is why I've been following you for years and your beautiful Instagram and social media posts that really teach people around the rainbow. And I love the way that you present the information and I even share a lot of that with my clients because I feel that it's a really easy way to see that and to show that in a very diagrammatic form. And I think speaking to where you were in teenage years, I had very similar impact when I was going through my studies. There was an orthorexic side that came from that because there was so much information that we were given and you had to integrate that and look at it from a layered perspective of where this applies to me. So that personalized impact of nutrition and then looking at how that's impacted our environment as well now. So I want to sort of want to, to dive into your rainbow concepts, but then I also wanted to touch on a little bit more on, you know, what we are looking at for the future of our food. Because for me, when I look at minerals and I look at phytonutrients, it's something that differs according to where the.

Food is grown, you know, the environmental.

Concepts around that as well. So I think that could sort of round off the discussion right at the end where we talk, talk through that as well. I also wanted to touch on because I many, many years ago, I came across the concept of the doctrine of signatures and I it's not based in solid data, but I think it's a beautiful concept around the rainbow as well. And when you're actually looking at foods and how they are, you know, walnuts, brains, so the phytonutrients within those and the picture of the diagrammatic forms of those foods as well. So I really find that a very poetic view of food. And that's how we need to look at food. It's our nourishment, it's our, it's our poetry that we use to fuel our bodies. So let's start, I guess, with your four main principles. Talk me through what the rainbow diet is and what you look out for and how you teach that and the science behind that.

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We continue exploring the science of nutrition and vibrant health, where Dr. Diana Monique.

Super. Yeah, the, the four principles, just to kind of get that out there, first and foremost, you know, and these are four principles, not just of eating, but of living. And they're not my principles, but they're nature's principles. Like, again, what is irrefutable, what is true in nature, and what helps plants and animals to survive in nature as part of nature. So the four principles are color, creativity, diversity, and rhythm. So, yeah, we can clip through each of them. I did a podcast today just on creativity, and it was great. And we were thinking of doing like, four separate podcasts on each of them because there's so much there. Right. But let's start with color, because that is, I would say, where I really stepped out from a nutrition point of view and started to put my stake in the ground as to like, okay, this is what I stand for, this is what I support, and this is what I've seen work clarity, clinically. So when it comes to eat the rainbow, I want to go back to what you mentioned with the doctrine of signatures, which is really astute and I love that kind of symbolism. And again, seeing not just the literal aspects of food, like calories and nutrients, but also what is the food connecting to on a deeper level, we could call that symbolism. We can call it more of a natural connection. Just overall, it could be also very philosophical. I would say that the closest I get to the doctrine of signatures with the rainbow is what I use. I'm going to show you this. You probably have have seen this, but I use this over and over as my operating system. So it's a rainbow and it is a. I call it an operating system because it's a roadmap to the why of the rainbow. It's not just that it's, oh, it's a bunch of pretty colors and you get lycopene from tomatoes. And we know that that's good for certain things. When I was going through the rainbow, what I was seeing with food is that. And you know, I think like a scientist first and foremost. I know you're a naturopathic physician and your orientation might be more clinical. Mine, I would say is I start with science and mechanism and I look for patterns and then I move into the clinical aspect just to see are these things working. And you do that as well, I'm assuming, right, because naturopathic medicine is based in science. But I'm always thinking mechanism. I'm like, okay, what is true? What are the threads here that we see from an interrelationship? So one of the things that I noticed was that the colors in nature seem to have a functional signature. So sometimes when I look on social media, I'll see people making posts on eat purple foods because it'll help you with, you know, they're anti aging foods, they are good for their antioxidants and blah, blah, blah. You know, there'll be a whole list of things and all of them, you know, maybe not related to each other directly. But what I came to see when I was going through the science is that there was a code, there was a color code. Now it's not a strict code in the way of like very firm lines around each of the colors, but it is a directional code. So when I think of red colored foods, what I see in the literature is support for the inflammatory immune response. It's kind of like the red of inflammation. Red foods can actually either create inflammation for certain people or reduce inflammation. And we can get into each one of these. But I'll just quickly go through them. Orange is all about reproductive health, yellow is about digestive health, and green is about the heart. Usually people think of red when they think of the heart, but red connects again to the inflammatory component that might be implicated in cardiovascular conditions. But when I talk green, we're looking at green leafy vegetables that would be high in nitrates and folates and vitamin K1 and magnesium. Like the heart of a plant gland. It's, it's molecule of chlorophyll has magnesium at its center. Just kind of like our, you know, our lifeblood has iron as part of hemoglobin. Right. So the green of nature really feeds a lot of the cardiovascular system. Then I see blue green foods, spirulina, different sea plants as being nourishing for the thyroid and metabolic health. When it comes to the brain, I think of blue, purple, so blue purple foods I could do. I mean, goodness, we could just talk only about blue purple foods and have a whole hour. Because blue purple foods, I would say, do have a lot of data because of the anthocyanins, the proanthocyanidins, certain flavonoid compounds within the polyphenol class that truly do track to brain health. So when we say brain health, that that also means cognition, learning, memory, and also mood states. So there were some animal studies done years ago by some researchers at Tufts University showing that many of these colorful compounds do make their way into the brain and are responsible for learning in memory structurally. So it's beyond just, you know, when I went to school in the 90s, when I did my graduate training in the 90s, it was kind of like we just thought of plants in one bucket. Antioxidants, you know, they just help to protect our cells. And it was very generic. And that was some of my first inclination with carotenoids. It's like, okay, kind of generic. It's just they're all antioxidants. Some of them are fat soluble. But now we have further delineation and mechanism. And so that's again where Dr. Bland came in to kind of illuminate for me some of like the protein kinase pathways. Just science has evolved so we understand better the epigenetic modulation effects, genetic expression effects, structural. I mean, some of these colorful compounds are actually structurally part of our physiology. Like orange carotenoids are part of our ovaries, and they actually help in the ovulatory process. So they're not just hanging out there just by way of like just being, I would say, without function. They are there intentionally in the body, these different colors for certain functions. So that's kind of like when you say doctrine of signatures. I often think of the functional signature of these colors and what are they doing in the body. So that when you say, well, Deanna, how do you then teach this to people? What I teach them is if you're missing a color, you could be missing a function, right? And even within each color, you have a spectrum. So with red, you've got a whole spectrum. With orange, you've got also a different spectrum. Some of those foods are a little bit pink, orange, some are light orange. You know, just like even the, the gradient of the color can be implicated in the phytonutrient density. So that's kind of like the color aspect fact that the eat the rainbow. I do have a tracker for people. I have a list. So that people know how to classify the colors because the skin of a food counts as much as the flesh of a food. So an apple, an apple that is red on the outside will actually count for two colors, white. And if it is red on the outside and not green, it'll count for red. And so, yeah, so I kind of walk people through, like, how do you count the rainbow? And hey, does it matter.

When you'll play?

But it really breaks that down. But I love this so much that we can relate science, intricacies of compounds and molecules to foods. And what immediately comes to mind, and you would have this all the time, is that the traditional medical training and even to the degree of naturopathic training, we never dive into this. And there is such an ignorance around how, yes, we dive into some of the different compounds that it's more to do with prescription, you know, on how to prescribe these specific ones, not actually eat the foods around it. But how much. I guess ignorance is when we talk to specialists or you know, people who are treating or supporting our clients and then they're not even willing to be open minded around. Well, food actually supports us. No, we just need the calories, we need the nutrients, like the macros. That's it. And this, it's it really, it just makes me so excited you're talking about this.

Well, and what you're describing is kind of where nutrition has been. But nutrition is changing because the science is changing, right? Food is just so much smaller, smarter in terms of what it's providing. And you know, even the microbiome conversations that we're currently having, whether it's the gut microbiome, the skin microbiome, we are now learning about the food microbiome and how the food microbiome is interacting with our microbiomes, but also as kind of its own nutritional entity. Right. And even an apple, just to go back to that apple again, there was one study that showed looking at organic versus conventional apples, showing different microorganisms and also locationally on that apple, different kinds of microorganisms depending on if it was the calyx. So the underside or the actual stem or the core, the seat, like it all had different microorganisms. So it's like, wow, we are so out of the, I would say out of the loop as far as like what we're eating in terms of microorganisms. And what if the food ends up like us, where it's actually much more about the microbiome than about the actual cells of the food. Right. I mean, What? It's just a delivery system. So anyway, our. All of which to say we continue to evolve in our knowledge, we're never going to stop. I mean, it's just the more you know about something, the more it's like, oh my gosh, we don't know a lot about this or that. You start to see that so soon.

Absolutely, yeah. Covering that off quickly, you know, what do you say then for the production of food? And this is a bigger topic in itself. But you know, my immediate thoughts, as I said right at the start, is around the quality of our food now, like you said, the organic versus non organic and how that impacts not only the microbiome, but then the nutrients within the food. Like, are we also having an understanding from an agricultural perspective of actually how our food's being produced in relation to these. Is that, is that becoming a bigger topic now as well?

I think so. I think that more people are having that conversation and having like grassroots types of initiatives around things like soil or regenerative agriculture. I don't know how it is in Australia, but I know in the States there's a lot of momentum around. Yes, regenerative farming and agriculture on the whole, you know, one of the things that is being talked about more from what I can see is the, the soil. So I really like where you're going with this conversation of bringing up how food is different now. You know, I was just listening to Sadhguru was talking about, you know, he has this whole soil initiative, save the soil. And he was also talking about how a one orange in the 1950s, in order to get that nutrition of what we had then, we would need eight oranges as an equivalent.

Wow.

And we know this. I mean, the science is there to support how the soils are becoming depleted. Right. And the minerals, to me, the minerals are so much. Yes. Phytonutrients are important in 80% of the planet is plant biomass. We are surrounded by plants. And I think that that plant intelligence is constantly informing us, especially when we eat seasonally. But then there's a whole other aspect of minerals which is the foundation of so many of our different biochemical pathways. No minerals, no metabolism, you know, no brain activity, no neurotransmitters. You know, we just stop. And so many people have nutritional deficiencies and even insufficiencies. And then, you know, we know that nutrition is relationship. Right. So sometimes people overdo things like vitamin D, then they drive down magnesium because you need magnesium in order to convert that vitamin D to its active form. So now we perpetuate what we already had. Perhaps a magnesium insufficiency becomes a deficiency. So I think what has happened in society is that people look at nutrients like a hammer to a nail. Like if you only have a hammer, you're only going to be hitting this nail. Right. But really in nutrition there's a web. So if you tug on one thing, then you start to see the effect on all the other nutrients. So I think minerals are a huge thing. And I also teach a lot on detoxification. And what we tend to see is that essential minerals compete with toxic metals. So in other words, if you keep your selenium balanced, you prevent mercury from being overly high. Right. Those two work hand in hand. Iron and arsenic kind of have that dynamic as well. So a lot of these divalent cations or things that kind of look similar from a chemical perspective, like cadmium, iron, you know, they all minerals and metals all kind of look the same. So if we're not getting the minerals in the soil, we are more at risk for heavy metal toxicity because they just naturally will start to perpetuate. And plus they're in our food, air and water supply. So I don't want to paint a dismal picture, but it is a, it is realistic and it's, that's what we see. You know, at least in the States, the number one toxin according to the Centers for Disease Control is arsenic. And arsenic is a carcinogen, it is neurotoxic, it's toxic for the skin. One of the first signs of arsenic toxicity can actually manifests through the skin, greater rates of skin cancer, but it's in water. So, you know, so how do we help to bind these things? And that brings us back to plants and making sure that we're getting enough fiber and nutrients to offset the damage from these, these toxic metals.

Absolutely, yeah. I love all that you're saying. It's just so important to bring the awareness to. I think, you know, yes, it's dismal, but I think without the awareness and without the teachings and without the changes that we need to make, then we're never going to get anywhere and it's just going to become worse and worse. So I think that's very important to be stating. And it's a lot of the education process that we have with our clients or with the people that we're, we're teaching or lecturing, it's something that really needs to be constantly re reminded and retort. And from this perspective, it's just so fascinating how it's interacting with the body and how we. We know it does, obviously, but to the degree that we can learn from the. From the biochemistry component. So it's just really, really fascinating. So let's, I guess, go through the next components.

Okay, let's move to creativity, which is.

The like, well, very important.

You know, and people would. They tend to not acknowledge creativity. Many people will actually dismiss it just out of hand and say, you know, I'm not creative. Creativity is not important. You know, just give me the goods, give me the information I need. And, you know, what is creativity anyway? But if we think of it, before medicine became private practice, which is such interesting terminology, it was the healing arts. You know, medicine was practiced as an art because it required intuition, information, personalization. My husband is an acupuncturist. And so when I look at traditional Chinese medicine, looking at the face, actually looking at the person, looking at the tongue, taking the pulse, talking with the person, you know, so many different inputs in order to create a more holistic picture of what's going on with the person. Right. So when I think of creativity, I think of flow. I think of, you know, how do we find ourselves in these creative rhythms where we are just open to outcome and possibility rather than structure and being confined? That could be applied to food. It could be applied to one's life. When we look at the science of creativity, it's vast. I mean, when people find themselves in flow states, they think better, they have better ideas, they have less stress, they can modulate their stress better, they find more joy. They are open to things like seeing. Like having moments of awe or beauty or just being happier people. And I, I, again, I feel like this is one of those things that we have to actually create space for. You know, I. I was pretty sick as a teenager, so even though I had, you know, a lot of eating disorders, one of the things that emerged for me was reproductive issues. That was like my big thing because I have a family history of endometriosis and. And all kinds of dysmenorrhea and a number of things going on. So I developed those things. And I wish I kind of knew what I know now about then, because I think I would have made some changes. But one of the things that helped me on that path to resolving those issues was actually getting out of my head, getting out of, like, the thinking mind and finding that space of creative expression. And what I started to do was paint. I see that, like painting on your wall there. It looks really pretty in terms of the colors, right? But I would just start painting these bright colors, typically pink, orange, and yellow. And those were all the colors I would never wear. I especially never wore pink. I was like, anti pink now and even just didn't wear it. It was like I didn't like pink anything. But yet, crazily enough, I would be painting with pink, and I would paint the same shapes over and over. And then eventually, when I got together with my husband in my early 30s and we. We got together, we. We lived together and we had a home together, he was like, why. Why do you put these paintings all over the house of your reproductive organs? And I'm like, what are you talking about? He was like. He's like, don't you see it? It's like your ovaries and your uterus, right? I kind of had the same configuration. And once he said that, it was like something clicked. It was like, oh, my goodness, Like, I didn't even see that I was painting something from my body and something that needed to be seen and heard and given attention to. So creativity, at least for me, in the way of artistic color expression, really helped me and helped me to resolve a lot of issues. And I think one of the things that can happen for people when they get sick is they get really locked into a certain path without kind of opening wide to like, okay, I could do this, I could do that, or maybe I need to have a hobby, or how do I allow myself to be emotional? Because I really feel that in our societies, emotions are dumbed down into like, okay, if you have to be emotional, you don't have control of yourself. And one of the things that creativity allows one to do is to express emotions in ways that can actually be quite productive. I mean, if you look at Facebook, it was created through anger. You can create things jealousy, you can create things through envy. That could be actually quite beautiful. So emotions, you know, without putting any kind of stigma or judgment on them, many times that can propel us into motion. And I feel like that's what creativity does. So in a way of, practically speaking, it could be all kinds of things. And I have a whole course on this where I talk about the seven kinds of creatives that we have within as archetypes. So if people are feeling like, I don't know where to start, I'm not so creative. But, you know, we have a thinking creative, we can be a movement creative. We can be, you know, you with you with a podcast, you know, that tells me you're probably a speaking creative. Like, you like the. The written word. The spoken word. Right. There's so much creativity around that, so there are all kinds of places to start.

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Yeah, I love this, Diana. It's something that in my practice I've got always a subset of things that I would recommend and send off with my clients in a prescribed description email and you know, number one's food. Yeah. So the expansive, you know, variety and rainbow colors. And then number two is always creativity, vitality. So I'll, you know, some of the mums come in, I think emotion, we actually have lack of emotion. And so when, when people walk in and they can just relax in the space of, you know, the intuitive healer, you know, not that we're saying that way we're healers in any, any way or in an egotistical way, but it is, you know, we need that, that matrix of information and we have to be creative around how we also get through and give that to the client or get that from the client. But then they, if I don't, I've got a running joke with the clinic team and if I don't sit down and cry within the first five minutes, my job's not done. But happen within that space of the healing, the dynamic that happens. But when they go and I'll joke and laugh, you know, sexuality is creativity and dance. Make it and play with your children and do handstands if you can. And it's sort of, you know, draw and art and books and change the perception of how you see things. You know, it's really just shifting that different way of thinking so you can see outside of that. And music. You know, I play the flute, my son plays the guitar. You just into flow state with music as well. So as you say, there's, there's so many beautiful ways that we can do this. But I feel we, we're in our boxes, we go to our boxes, we look at our boxes and we're always in this sort of very narrow minded viewpoint and it can really create less vitality and really bring down the energy of the body. So I love that you're talking about this, it's so important.

Well, your word of vitality is I feel spot on because creativity equals vitality. So the more creative that we can be and allow ourselves to step into the. It's like that's hormones, that's vitality. That is. I mean how did we get here? Through creativity? No, like it has to start somewhere. So you know, that sense of play, fun, joy, beauty, you know, I feel like, I mean even look at somebody like Jim Carrey who is a, a method actor, right? I mean that you could say already that's creativity. And then you see how creativity has evolved in his life where now he paints on these massive canvases. So it can take so many different forms through our lives. Like you said, music just even how we think too, you know that so allowing ourselves more stillness so we can get perspective on things so that we get ideas. Like some of my best ideas are in a hot shower. I'm just standing there, I'm not even doing anything and it's like I'm so relaxed that it's just like oh, all of a sudden the neurons start connecting. It's like oh yeah. I get out of the shower with like a great idea or the other morning I was meditating. I have a big like a human bean bag thing. So I'm laying in this beanbag with my cat, my husband is still sleeping and I'm just laying there meditating. And it's like all of a sudden it's like I got this image of a graphic for social media. It was like, ah, I have to go and like make that now. Right. But I don't feel like we arrive at those points unless we give ourselves like a stillness point or an incubator where we can receive. It's a very yin experience to be creative. Yes, there's an output usually, but we also need the input of like just being quiet and that many of us get that time. I, I had a client many years ago, she had 11 children. She was in her 40s and she had 11 children. And she was so stressed out. She had so many issues. And for me to even say to her, you need to do the elimination diet would have been like, oh, my goodness, like, another thing that I have to do. And it just sounded terrible. So what One of the things I asked her, I said, can you get one minute by yourself? Just go in the bathroom and lock the door. Because she said, if she does, doesn't lock the door, people are walking in. Like, she's constantly bombarded. I'm like, just go and lock the door. Give yourself one minute, just one minute of stillness. You don't even have to be doing anything in the bathroom, right? Just. Just get a closed space where you will not have any interruptions. And just start with a minute. Like, that is like a nutrient for your creative juices, right. And then you build there. And then people start to get used to you having kind of like your separate time. But you have to put your stake in the ground on that. Right. And it feels like for so many women, they're definitely great at giving and they need to balance that with receiving. That is really healthy for the heart to have that balance of back and forth, the giving as well as the receiving, because otherwise we're in a state of overnourishing everybody else and then being depleted.

It can be really quite a cross point for women when you're coaching through this, as they feel very selfish when they make that initial shift and there's that. That real resistance against giving boundaries to self. But there's a lot of, you know, and we'll go through it in the clinic as well. You know, it's talking through the fact that if you don't have enough to give, then you can't give what you want to give, and you will always be taking from your reserves. So. And that's how you get sick. That's how you become low energy. You have never nothing that you can give to yourself and therefore give out as well to the best degree that you want to.

So very.

Yeah, very important. I love this. Absolutely love this. Yeah, Wonderful.

Yeah.

So let's talk through. I know we are going to be short of time. I could do, as you say you could do podcast on all of these. And I want to sort of complete with the next two parts of the principles. So I'll let you lead on to the next one.

Yeah, the next one is diversity. And this is, gosh, one of my favorites, because when I was working with people eating the rainbow I was noticing that they felt pretty good about checking all of the boxes for the colors. But then when I was looking, I'm thinking they're eating the same red foods every day, they're eating the same blue, purple foods every day. Like there's no variety. So I'm missing the boat if I'm not talking about diversity of colors within that spectrum. So, and I gave a 90 minute talk in the UK some years ago on just dietary diversity. There's so much literature. Just in a nutshell, having more dietary diversity is better for the gut microbiome, it's better for the immune system, women. There was one study in women showing better mood state, less anxiety, with better dietary diversity, just increased dietary diversity. Not even, we're not even talking about the rainbow here, just diversity in general. There were also studies looking at children showing that when children have greater diversity from a younger age, they have less allergic diseases later in life. And we would know why that would be right? Because we're enriching the gut microbiome. We're creating a more polyculture milieu which gives rise to many different pleiotropic metabolites, which is going to be much better for the body than just having a monoculture. Same foods every day. We need to shake it up. So what I have noticed philosophically is people that are in food ruts tend to be in life ruts. You know, many times one of my mantras that I have found just from working with people is that how we eat is how we live and how we live is how we eat. So your food intake is a reflection of your life. So there's that direct parallel, right? So because especially we're eating multiple times every day and we, we sometimes are just so stressed and so busy, we don't have time to be thinking about all the different meals that we could have. And so what I try to do is I try to stack the deck for diversity as part of my breakfast meal. I know that for some people that's difficult to do because they have to run off to work, so they don't have the time. But at least even like a complex smoothie, right, where you've got a protein powder, you know, everything counts. When we're looking at diversity, the numbers would suggest 50 unique foods in seven days is, well, actually 30 to 50. But I have seen both in the literature to help the gut microbiome that that will give us more in the way of short chain fatty acids and different prebiotic fibers to then fortify the gut brain access. Yeah, so diversity is so protective and also it'll help us to reduce toxin load because then we're not just hammering on one food and concentrating some substance in that food. And also we bolster our nutritional status when we eat a variety of foods because we're getting lots of different nutrients from many different foods rather than just again, hammering on one food. And I even say to people to make sure that you bring in different brands. Yeah, I'm actually very loyal to certain food brands because I kind of feel like there are pros and cons to certain of them.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Some people, I've found, have been reliant on a specific brand and then they'll change their ingredients within that brand and then you are the wiser because you trusted it in the beginning. So it's really good to continue to check in terms of that and also be diverse in how you're choosing.

Right. And especially even I'll mention, go to different grocery stores or markets if you can. Yeah, so I actually, I have a community supported agriculture with a farm system that I order from once a week. I go to, I think one, two, three, probably about three or four different grocery stores. So you get different brands, different people, different experiences. It all counts. You're going to have different produce.

Yes.

So even though people may not have thought of that one, it's. It's important.

Yeah, yeah. So you become more creative in the way that you're seeking out food then feeds into that.

That's a good insight. Yeah, for sure. You become very creative and then you're taking a different way to that store. So you're changing up your neurons in that perspective as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I love that. I think diversity of interaction, even your diversity, can be put across multiple areas of your life. And yes, food, very, very important. But like you say, changing the pathways of the brain in various interactions, various connections, seeking out different forms of information, reading different areas of, or even just, you know, audio versus reading books and so many different ways that we can get started stuck in life. So trying to be diverse in all those areas means that we are always open and creative and learning.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's the way to enrich the brain. You know, all the podcasts that are available now, like just letting your mind listen to something that's completely different. Right. Because I, I just tend to get so fixated on health topics and nutrition and I start listening to all the health podcasts, which are great and I could stay there endlessly, but I feel like in order to enrich My mind, you know, sometimes I'll, I'll let myself listen to like an entrepreneur podcast. There's one I like to listen to. I also started listening to one on near death experiences just to kind of listen to people kind of going through their whole, their whole like, process and what happened to them. So yeah, you know, just exploring different things is, is good.

I've been watching the OA recently, so right on topic, the series. Definitely recommend that one if you're interested in the near death experiences. It's a fabulous.

What is it called?

It's the oa. It's on Netflix. It's a, it's a really good series.

I am interested in that. I'll have to check that out. Thank you for that. You know, the other thing is travel here know when we talk about diversity, not only do we meet different people and have different experiences, but we actually get the microbiome of wherever we're going.

Absolutely.

And it's, it's so good. I mean I, I used to travel a lot. I've been to Australia a handful of times, Europe, you know, just you, you feel your sameness but your differences and it's like you just start thinking differently. And then the last.

Yeah, the last one.

Yeah, yeah, sorry, last principle is rhythm. And that one I brought in a little bit later. And that came when I was doing some work on melatonin and circadian rhythm. And I was thinking, how could I have neglected to bring in circadian rhythm? Because if you look at it, rhythms of all types actually provide the infrastructure for everything that we've been talking about, like color, creativity, diversity. So when I think of rhythms, I think of the day, night cycle, the circadian 24 hour rhythm. But then also, goodness, we have so many rhythms. We have the lunar rhythm, the cycle of the moon, 28 day cycle. We have menstrual rhythms for women, we have seasonal rhythms which are really important. We even have our month of birth rhythm. And what that means is that the month that you were born in. So, so this is not astrology, it's just kind of like the month of birth and then your life trajectory kind of like your rhythm. There was some research that basically found that people born during certain months of the year had certain, I would say certain risks for certain diseases later on in life. So a lot of that was established in utero in that prenatal development time, potentially under the influence of things like melatonin and vitamin D, which may or may not have been in adequate supply, depending on the time of the year that doesn't mean that you're, you know, you're destined to, you know, certain outcomes. If you were born in November or something like that. But it's just kind of like everybody has their own rhythm, right? So if you're born in May, it's kind of like that's like your time zero. It's like. And oftentimes I'll mention to people, depending on what month you're born, make that like your month to get all of your labs and then like your halfway point, whatever that is. Like if you're doing vitamin D or, you know, sometimes you want seasonal aspects as well. But I think it's really important to kind of look at kind of you as a person in your own rhythm. There are hormonal rhythms. You know, we have all kinds of pauses. We have anti adrenopause, menopause, perimenopause. So it's like all kinds of rhythms. We're always fluxing and moving. And in fact, I think that where we're going to go in medicine, and you probably see this as well with your clinical work, is we're going to move into subtle rhythms. We're going to move into rhythms of sound, particles, of light, kind of the, the particle wave kind of conversation. It's already happening. So I think we're going to get into the quantum physics side of things through this rhythm aspect. But also color. Color plays into light as well. But there's so much there about rhythm and cyclicity and patterns of things and how they move through us. I think it's really important to acknowledge that.

So important. And I think many people don't even know and aren't aware of this. And I talked to, again, it's another one. One of the main things that I try and teach and support my clients with and anyone I interact with is that we don't live by the nature's laws any longer. We don't live by the nature's rhythms any longer. So no wonder we're sick. You know, are we meant to have bright light at a 12 o' clock point, midday after dark? How is our body healing? So there's just so many simple concepts that people can understand from the rhythms that we need to be abiding by, to actually live in a, in a healthy, healthy way. And so it's quite obvious for us, I guess, knowing this information and knowing how it applies from a scientific point of view and from a biochemical point of view. But from, from, from the, the way that the industrial age has sort of shifted us into These rhythms. And that's what we think is normal now to now move out of that, to become healthy and heal is. Is almost.

Yeah.

Unknown to a lot of people. So yeah, it's, it's. I love that you talk about this. And there's rhythms, as you say, in everything. And there's organs have their own rhythms and their own cycle. And Chinese medicine, you know, we apply a lot of that in naturopathic medicine too. We sort of integrate a little bit of that. We do a lot of iridology, we do a lot of different concepts around that. But chiming and organ clocks is huge. And I see you write about that a lot as well. And you know, everything has a rhythm. Like you say, we, everything, our heartbeat, you know, our hr, measuring so many different rhythms for the body. And there's almost like data points that we can use to track and support and to know where the body is shifting in, in terms of a healthy or an unhealthy habitry.

Yeah, so true. It's so true. Even when I was, you know, had my menstrual period, what I would try to do is take the month and use the rhythm of how I felt through my hormones. So in my follicular phase, I would do a lot of active things. I really tried to do this because I was working for myself anyway. So it was like, let me just stack the deck in terms of like, presentations. Anything outward, anything that required a lot of energy. And then in my luteal phase, I was at home writing presentations, writing books, doing creative projects, just going within. And I didn't quite have the energy and the reserves to be more externalized. So that was one way that I took that rhythm. But there are rhythms upon rhythm. I think even if people start with circadian rhythm because you could have a healthy meal, but if you eat it at the wrong time, it actually has a counteracting effect. So you did all of that work to get the healthy meal. But then if it's not in obeyance with the circadian rhythm, I mean, in some ways that really does trump a lot. Like that is like nature's giving us the umbrella, we need to work under that umbrella. And then we make choices to eat different colors, creativity. But it's very powerful. And sometimes I think we're going to have all this technology just to bring us back into the basics of like, okay, light and dark, go to bed when it's dark and be awake when it's light. Right? Yeah.

Concept of like us having to create technologies to bring us back to Just the same of where we were meant to be. But we know because the turning point is the turn back around.

I know when I, I can see that we're probably going to go there and, you know, perhaps that's okay. Perhaps we need metrics in order to change our configuration and our relationship with nature. I think that eventually nature and technology will have to fuse together. Right. And kind of be integrated because otherwise we're going to live in very polarized, siloed areas that won't be as conducive to health either, I think.

Totally agree. And I think the space that, you know, both of us sort of practicing or in researching is that bridge, you know, towards that mesh in between the two fields. And I think that's really lovely that it is happening much more now. And I'm noticing that, which is incredible. So we didn't get into like the concept itself of the phyto neuroendocrine so system. I guess just quickly covering that and then my last question for you is always, we always at the end of the Smarter, not Harder podcast, we always ask. So three things in your expertise or in. In it can be anything that you recommend or say for people to be as a last three tips of what you would do to live Smarter, not harder. And so you might even be able to bring the, the.

The. I was just thinking that. Can't I have four.

Five if you really want. Yeah.

No, no, no, no, no, no. That makes sense. Well, okay. Very quickly. The phytonuro endocrine system. So there is a lot of talk in the literature about the psychoneuro endocrine immune system that's called pnei. So it's looking at the connection between the psychology with neurotransmitters with hormones and ultimately the immune system. So I, I had come up with a different term that was phyto P H Y T O neuroendocrine system to really speak to how plants plug into our neurochemistry through whether we're taking in neurotransmitters from plants or we're even just fueling our own neurotransmitter pathways in a variety of ways. Also from an endocrine perspective, like all the different hormonal systems, like if we think of the adrenals, we think of the ovaries, testes, pancreas. The heart is now considered a neuroendocrine gland, the thyroid, the pituitary, the pineal gland. Like, how are plants modulating us and making us smarter and more intuitive? So that's what I mean when I say the phytonuro endocrine system, like it's more of a harmonization with nature rather than seeing nature on the outside. It's like no, nature is informing us. We're allowing it to come in and be like a divining rod into our own intelligence through nature's intelligence. Because plants are really smart, you know, they can't move, they've got to survive. So we need to harness that wisdom.

Absolutely. And how it interacts with us. And there's so much more around that. You know, I'm thinking about the sounds of the trees that they make. People are researching songs of the tree. It's just, it's incredible. It's so. It's. Yeah.

Beautiful. Well, I. I would bring back these principles and I'll give you one example of each just so people can kind of see that in their lives. Okay. So color. I'm not going to say eat the rainbow because you already know that. I'm going to say for people to tune into color in the way of wearing certain colors to evoke certain emotions. Like even my wardrobe, I put it into a rainbow and I really reflect, like, what is the kind of day that I'm wanting to have? Right. So color yourself with clothing. Like today for me is a very grounding day. I'm wearing a burgundy top with this kind of tan, tan top and like gold earring. Like, I just felt like I need to ground. Today was going to be a busy day for me. Right. So I use color to inform my psychology because, you know, I'll be connecting to that color by seeing it. So that's number one. Number two, I would say creativity in the way of. Gosh, so many different ideas here. But let's just say using sound music. Music can make people really creative and it can harmonize the hemispheres of the brain. And I feel like it's a natural way that people can find the flow state when they have a difficult time in silence or in meditation. Number three, with diversity, meet somebody new and just start talking with them. You know, one of the things that I try to do is I try to go on LinkedIn on a daily basis and see who I haven't liked their post, who I can accept into my network. It's kind of like, you know, diversity in the way of people and connections. Some people like to do that on social media. So, you know, just whatever way that you connect, maybe it's somebody more locally and in, in person. And then fourth, since you're giving me four I'll take it. So, rhythm. I would say less dark, less artificial light at night, you know, because that artificial light at night is an endocrine disruptor. It's disrupting thyroid, pineal, our adrenals. It's very stimulating, and yes, it might be making us productive in our work, but it's not allowing us to sleep well. And we're just creating more dysregulation of our pineal gland, which is really important for. For healthy aging. So I would say less artificial light at night. Wear blue light blocking glasses or just be in darkness or be in, like, dim light. I think that's, you know, I. I think it's kind of fun. We have colored light bulbs in our home. My husband's kind of techie as well, so we. We can have purple light. You know, you just change the light bulb and, you know, there's an app for it where you can change the kind of. The intensity of it. So bring color and kind of that rhythm together through your lighting, even in your home with some light bulbs, and see where that takes you.

I love all of this and I agree with everything you say, and I'm just so grateful that you are educating the world, and I just can't thank you enough. And I'm so happy to be able to meet you in person and chat through. Through this with you. I hope we can do something more in future and have another episode possibly. But I just. I really am so grateful for you, Diana. So thank you so much for coming.

So sweet. And thank you for the invite. I'm so glad to connect with you all over the planet. It's so great that we have this infrastructure. Right. And I'd be happy to do more with you and to talk and have other conversations with you about other topics. So thank you so much more to cover.

I feel. So. Thank you. And I'll put and everything in the show, notes to where to find you and your books and so quickly. Where's the best contact? Where can people find you? What would you say is like the. The number one?

Yeah, my website, which is DeanNaminic.com that would be the best place because I have blogs, resources, things that people can download as educational handouts. That would be the best place.

Incredible.

We'll put all that on there. So thank you. Have a lovely rest of your night and. And I will. We'll send all that through and we'll be in touch shortly.

Sounds great. All right, take good care. Bye. Bye.

See you, Diana.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us once again.

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