The Chef Doc’s Blend: Lifestyle Medicine & the Oral-Systemic Link

Hi, everybody. I'm Dr. Sandhya Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way. As a periodontist, I started incorporating the chewable probiotics early in my career. The reason being is we started about 10 years ago to get research that probiotics are so beneficial to improve periodontal disease in conjunction with treatment in the office. So I started using this particular product, which was really, at the time, the only one at the market. And my patients didn't like it. They said, oh, this is too chalky. They sorbile. And also it was with probiotic strains that were actually grown on a milk medium. And a lot of my patients were vegan. So I decided that I'm going to contact a lab in Wisconsin and work with a chemist there to really formulate something that tastes great, that even children would like. And let's face it, I think kids are the best to tell if something's good or not because they're going to tell you the truth. So we created two flavors. One is a mint flavor and the other one is actually a wild berry flavor. And actually kids love them both because the mint is not a strong mint. And also what you need to know is that these probiotics are grown on a vegan certified medium. So we were able to get a vegan certification for our chewable probiotics. So those of you that are worried about taking probiotics because you have a milk intolerance, do not worry. Ours are vegan certified and they also taste great. They're sweetened with xylitol, which helps against cavities. And overall, you're going to have a great experience and you're going to see a difference in the coating of your tongue and the health of your gums. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Today's show. I'm Dr. Sandha, your host, and I'm very excited to have with us today Dr. Colin Zhu, who is a board certified physician, family practice and lifestyle medicine practitioner. He is passionate about the intersection of medicine, physical food and nutrition. And you're also Dr. Zhu, a trained chef and health coach with the Natural Gourmet Institute of Health and Culinary Arts and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Sanda. It's really nice to have met in person and also for having me on the show. I've been humbled to have done a lot of these, but very rarely do you get to meet the podcast hosts in person. So thank you for having me.

Yeah, it was a pleasure. So just to tell everybody listening how we met. You know, we met at the dental office. Your mom is a big advocate of biological dentistry. So you came to the office and I was just so impressed with you because I never met anybody who's a chef and a coach. So I would love to hear how that started for you, the journey into, you know, health and nutrition.

Yeah, for sure. So I love starting this with talking about my mother, who you mentioned. And my mother has been still practicing traditional Chinese medicine for four and a half decades. She is what I consider one of our greatest modern day healers. And her foundation has taught me to really look at an individual holistically. She's taught me the values of compassion, authenticity and integrity, but also to really look at things. You know, I like, I like looking at the forest instead of, you know, really concentrating on the trees. And sometimes we can get too caught up on the meticulousness nature of the trees, but sometimes we need the 35000 square foot view. Right?

Yeah. And so lucky, you know, to grow up with a mom, you know, in your family. Probably from, as a little boy, you actually were int to this notion, which is amazing.

Well, growing up, growing up, you don't appreciate that until you're a adult. And you don't appreciate that until you're in a career or profession that reminds you that, you know, you're going to encounter things. And so things in the background that you're taught, you know, kind of come flooding in per se. So yeah, so she instilled a foundation for me and it came to a point where that's how I went into medicine. I went to an osteopathic school that is the title of a do, so that's Dr. Of Osteopathic Medicine. And the philosophies and principles of being a do is already grounded in that nature. So very, very holistic. And then long story short, like a lot of medical schools at that time, it's improved a lot, a lot more now. But a lot, a lot of times when I went to school, the biggest things that we were taught is really how disease was created and manifested and how drugs work. That really represented the majority of our curriculum. It was very, very, very seldom, very rare that we learned about self care, the intricacies of diet and nutrition and lifestyle and all the pillars of healthy living. And we didn't learn it for ourselves. We didn't learn so much in terms of how to convey that information to our patients.

That's surprising to me. It's really surprising because I would think a new doctor, you know, in an osteopathic school you learn all these because it's really a holistic profession.

It is, it is, but it still follows the same, same structure as an allopathic school. Right. The only thing extra in terms of osteopathic is that we have 300 extra hours for manual manipulation to be able to diagnose and treat with our hands. And we do believe that mind, body, spirit is one unit. We believe that structure and function are very intertwined and interdependent on each other and vice versa. But in terms of the healthy, the other pillars like diet, physical activity, sleep, hydration, etc. Etc. Relationships, all that stuff, it wasn't really that emphasized. In fact, nutrition for me came in the form of biochemistry and that probably no more equated to like 10 hours, right. When you do a survey, when we looked at surveys for what is required for nutrition for medical schools, not more than a, not more than 25% actually required a nutritional course. So suffice to say at that time, and amongst our colleagues of my class, we weren't really taught. And so studies have also shown that when you're not taught it, you are less confident to dispense it as well. And so when I followed and followed my predecessors in clinical rotations and clerkships, no matter who walked through our door, a low back pain, cough, sore throat, whatever, right. They always had some sort of chronic lifestyle risk factor attached to them. High blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, a lot of things that plague us and kill us. Right. And yet I felt very ill prepared. So long story short, as per what you said in my intro, I went to culinary school, I got my health coaching certification, I did all these types of detours because I felt that it was nice, necessary in order to help my patients. And so fast forward, that's where I'm at right now.

Yeah, that, that's awesome that you integrate that because you know, just like you, my nutrition course in school, in dental school, even as a periodontist was like a few hours. What are macronutrients? What is protein? What is carbohydrate, what is deficiency in vitamin B? Very, very basic. And for me I actually have to go to institute of functional medicine to really learn about lifestyle medicine. Let's Go back to what is lifestyle medicine.

Lifestyle medicine is a profession. It's a specialty that uses evidence based approaches to prevent, treat and reverse chronic lifestyle related disease processes. Right. So we're using, it's based off of the six pillars. Food, diet, nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, social connections, and reducing and avoiding risky substances.

Yes, that's great because none of that can be replaced by a pill.

Yes, it's the basics. It's not rocket science. It's the basics. But we have a mountain, mountains and mountain loads like Mount Everest equivalent of evidence to back it up. And it's very, you know, it's very different from functional medicine. It's different from integrative medicine, is different from complementary and alternative. So as a client and a layperson that's seeking health services, it's important to distinguish, not to undermine others. It's just different. Right. And so it's important to understand what you're receiving. A clear example is, for example, 19, in the 1960s, the first surgeon General to be able to say, you know, smoking is bad for your health. Right. Until that report came out, we had about 7,000 pieces of literature to say that smoking is bad for you. But it took that long until the first surgeon general announced. Right. So there's a lot that is delayed. They, you know, it's 17 years. It takes 17 years of scientific literature to accumulate before it's actually implemented in practice. So we have a lot of work to do, we have a lot of information to educate for our patients.

Yeah. So then after you finish culinary school in 2017, you launched the Chef Doc. So tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, around 2011, 2012 is when I finished pretty much all my schoolings. 2017, I launched the Chef Doc because as working as a family practitioner, I was an outpatient clinician, so office clinic. I really enjoy talking to the patients one on one, developing that rapport and relationship. And I really enjoyed education and I really enjoyed teaching. And so I realized that when you're working under the auspices of the healthcare machine, or what I, what I like to call the corporate healthcare machine or system, you're only given a certain amount of time. Right. Patients work, you know, wait two hours just to be in the office with their primary care for what, 15 minutes. And the bulk of that visit is really just talking about how do we manage your medications, how do we check some boxes off of this electronic medical record, how do we do your referrals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So very small periods is actually dedicated towards educating. And like I said before, if the practitioner or the provider is not well versed in the six pillars or if they're not practicing that themselves, less likely they're going to dispense it for their patients. So basically at the end of the day our system is really geared towards being in a reactive state. Meaning that if something happens then we intervene. When you and I both know is that in order to thrive, in order to have a optimal well being, we need to be on the proactive tract, we need to be on the preventative tract. But guess what? No one makes money off of the being proactive. We, you know, there are certain entities that make billions and billion dollars a year, billion billion dollars per year based off of people being sick and staying sick. Right.

And I do have a disease model for sure. It's not a health model, it's definitely a disease model that's in the corporate healthcare machine that you're talking about.

And morally and ethically I can't really go by it anymore. So I, you know, I, I left corporate healthcare, I started the chef doc afterwards. I started a chef doc before I left and the chef doc is the answer for me to combat the inefficiencies of it. Right. Because I really enjoy educating and knowledge is power and knowledge awareness and implementation is power. Right. So in order for that to happen I have to be able to create a resource that I would go to. Right. That's reliable and credible because we have in our, in our error, we have misinformation and we have an over saturation of information through the advent and evolution of the Internet, social media and now AI absolutely.

Let's talk about food is one of my favorite topics as well because I love to eat but I also have a nutritionist, so, so I would love to see, you know, your opinion about food and prioritizing whole food plant based or vegetarian. There's so much, you know, misinformation. So I would love to hear your, your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I would probably say from the get go it's defining basics. Right. You had mentioned there's a difference between vegetarianism, veganism and whole food plant based. Right. Vegetarianism is basically, you're incorporating some plants, maybe it's predominantly around fruits and vegetables, but some people eat eggs, some people eat fish, some people eat some, you know, dairy. That's kind of lumped into vegetarianism. Veganism is basically the original definition of veganism. Really based is based off of animal welfare and the ethics of not harming animals. So. But what's not defined is that, you know, when someone comes to me as a vegan, it doesn't tell me what you eat. You know, it tells me what you avoid, but it doesn't tell me what you eat. Right. So whole food plant based. Right. Is defined in the actual name whole food plant based. So what this means is that you're consuming plant food in its whole intact form how mother nature intended it. So to me, if it's not grown out of the ground off of a tree or off of a vine, then in our current error, man has messed it up or manipulated it in some way. And this is where you have the, the spectrum of unprocess all the way to ultra process. And this could mean cereal, this could mean bread, this could mean cupcakes as ultra natural process. And unprocessed is whole grains. Right. Unprocessed is anything in the produce section. Right. Because real food doesn't have a nutrition label. Real food eventually dies. Real food has an expiration date. It doesn't, you know, real food doesn't live on the shelf. That's, you know, that's, that's not real, you know, real food. So that's food relate. That I would call that food related product.

Yeah, no, for sure. And you know, nowadays people like that are, you know, vegan or vegetarians, they actually go for that meat substitute which is ultra processed. It's got ingredients that you can't even pronounce. Pronounce. So it's, it's really, it's not a good way to go because not necessarily. You know, now we're going into this vegetarianism healthy. Is veganism healthy? Well, it depends what you're eating.

Yeah. But yeah, there is many layers to this. And to me, it's like it's not really an all or nothing type of deal. Right. As, you know, as you're seeing patients, you know, that come from, you know, that come to you for their, you know, oral health. You realize that people fall along a spectrum. And my job and my team's job is not to turn someone vegan overnight. It's really about incorporating more plants into your diet as much as possible. Because studies after studies after studies, and we're not talking about like, you know, the, the end of like 5 or 10 or 20. Right. We're talking about meta analyses, we're talking about systematic reviews, we're talking about ends of tens of thousands of populations that have been studied based off of these, you know, literature that we, that we found over time is that the more plant food you incorporate we find that not only can it reverse some chronic diseases, okay. The earliest evidence that whole food plant based can actually reverse heart disease, which is the only lifestyle that is documented, not Paleo, not keto, not carnivore, is a whole food plant based diet. That's all the way back in the early 90s. We can, you know, we can put diabetes in remission, we could even prevent cancer up to 40%. Right. Strokes up to 80% is preventable. Right. What's our, what's our number one killer of heart disease of Americans? It's heart disease. Right. Heart and heart and stroke combined. Claims 900,000Americans every single year. Right. And yet we don't question what we put into our bodies. Right.

Plant, you're mentioning all this, the, all these studies because people don't know, People think, oh, you know, that's just a bunch of, you know, baloney because my doctor didn't talk to me about it. But I think there's a lot of doctors out there. I remember me being a resident at UCLA and at the cafeteria, fried chicken, you know, Mac and cheese, all the things with butter and you know, inflammatory foods that actually cause heart disease. And this is what the doctors and the nurses are eating.

Yeah, exactly. I don't know if this quote originated from Hippocrates, but the quote goes, in order to heal someone, they need to be willing to give up what makes them sick to begin with. So in the environment that we're in, we're really good at intervening, we're really good at giving Band aids. And like we talked about, we only live in a disease model. We only live in sick care. It's basically a, we're just preventing, you know, slowly preventing you, you know, dying. So yes, with the advent of modern, you know, medicine and technologies, our lifespan has gotten longer, but our health span the quality of our lives, the quality of the years of our lives is very, very poor. Right. If you look at the blue zones, the highest concentrations of people, over a hundred. Right. There's, there's five, there's four of them outside of America. Right. And if you compare their health systems, their healthcare models versus ours, we're one of the wealthiest nations on the planet yet, and we spend the most, one of the top in terms of, you know, dollars. Right. A lot of our healthcare expenditures, they equate to almost about 20% of our gross domestic product. And yet where is our health outcomes? It's one of the lowest. Right. And so, you know, that's what we're turning into. That's, we're feeding. We don't need more advances, to be honest, we don't need more advances. We don't need more technologies. We just need to be more in a proactive and preventative state. You know, it's not rocket science. You know, the Bonnie just lives in homeostasis and yet we voluntarily put it into imbalance all the time.

Yeah. So somebody listening to this who maybe has heart disease and is thinking, wow, I should incorporate and eventually go more plant based whole food diet. How. How do you recommend that they start?

Well, I recommend it's multi steps and I've been able to develop services and programming in order to help people. What really why Americans do not succeed, you know, no matter what it is, you know, because at the end of the day it comes down to fundamental behavior change, lifestyle changes. Right. It doesn't matter what it is. Right. And so that's the hardest for people. People refuse to change. People refuse to go outside of their comfort zone. And if they feel good, then they're like, what's, you know, why do I need to change anything? I like to use analogies. So one of my favorite analogies is using a car, right? So you don't bring your car in only when it breaks down, right. You maintain it, right. How do we maintain it? We change the air filter, we change the oil, we, we rotate tires, right? Why? Because we know that a car eventually breaks down. But in order to delay that as much as possible to get the most bang for your buck. Right. We have to maintain it. But people don't understand that your body is a car. And we only get one car. We can get several cars in our lifetime. Right. For transportation. But we only have one car in terms of physical body. And I also apply this for physical, mental and emotional well being. They're all connected because they all live inside you. Right? So you got to take care of yourself. So to answer your question, it's very multi step. But I would say that your house starts in the kitchen. Why? Because you know what goes into your food if you don't know how to cook, learn. All right? We have the Internet, we have Google, we have YouTube. Learn, okay? Because you know what goes into your food Once you start eating out of your household, I call that outsourcing your food. Okay? So when you outsource your food, covet is a very good example. When you outsource your food to deliveries, takes out restaurant, fast food, guess what? You're outsourcing your health to others. Right? You need to make that connection. Because when people prepare Your food. They're not thinking about your health. They're only thinking about the bottom line because at the end of the day, it's a business. So if they're thinking about the bottom line, what are they doing? They're cutting costs by using lower quality and cheaper ingredients in order to prepare your food. Right. So what does that mean? For example? That means frying everything that you. That means using process, you know, oils longer because it's cheap. Right. In our country, we. Your. Your tax dollars goes towards certain crop subsidies. Right. So your tax dollars goes towards certain crop subsidies like corn, soybean. Right. Those ingredients make the fast food. They become the foundation of fast food. They become the foundation of restaurant food. They become the foundation. Right. And so if you don't prepare your own meals, you're basically outsourcing your health to someone else. Right. Your health is your job. That's your job.

Right, exactly. And you can't avoid going to a restaurant. What kind of corn are they using? Pesticides. What kind of pesticides are in your food? Non gmo. Are they Non GMO product? We don't know. As you said, they're going to use the cheapest things possible. I like that. Yeah, we don't want to outsource our health to someone else. You gotta be in control of your health. Definitely. So with your program that you have online at the Chef Doc, is that how you help people? Basically, if they sign up for one of your programs, then you kind of take them step by step through this or what does that look like?

Yeah, thank you for asking. So at the Chef Doc, we want to be able to create a platform, a hub that people can come to to learn about the pillars of healthy living, which, which we call lifestyle medicine. And so when you come to the Chef Doc, we have many different types of resources. We have everything from podcast episodes to books to audiobooks to on demand video content and audio content for you to consume. And you know, over time I've learned that there's two different types of learners. You have ones that are very self motivated. Okay. I can, you know, read, you know, everything on an audiobook and call it a day. And I'm very self motivated and I like to consume it that way. Right. Which is great. Then you realize that other people need more assistance. They need more assistance in terms of, well, I don't know what to eat, I don't know what to cook, I don't know where to shop, I don't know how to blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And so here we have Created services where we can address that. We have coaching services. We now have an app that got launched last year and it's basically a consolidation of all the offerings under one roof. And it's in the form of an app. So you can just go to your app store, whether it's Apple or Google Play and just download it. There's free lessons that you can consume and if you wanted to, you could schedule a call with us to talk about coaching. Coaching from us is we do it in the style of group coaching. So you're in a group with other participants. So we realized that why Americans are not successful is what I whittled down to three things. One is you're not in, we're not in a, an environment that fosters healthy living. Right. Not everyone's going to be having access to a public park. Not everyone's going to have access to pedestrian friendly walkways. Right. You know, cycling friendly roads. Right. So the environment. Second is support system. Not everyone has support. When people, typically when people come to me, a lot of times they're doing things by themselves. They're doing things very lonely. Their, their spouse don't support them, their children don't support them, right. So a lot of times they're doing it themselves so they don't have the support system. Third is being plugged in into the right community. Right. A lot of times, man, we thrive. If you know what's a popular sport, Tennis, racquetball, pickleball, right. That's a popular sport. But that invol playing with others, right. If you wanted to go play chess, that involves, well, you can play chess by yourself, but you, you know, that involves, you know, playing with other. So when you are in a community that is like minded, like you, right. You will have a higher likelihood of succeeding. So it's community support and environment. So our environment, our services and offerings is to support that. We want to plug you in the correct environment. We want you to be placed with other people that have similar struggles and challenges with you. And we also want you to be part of a community. So our coaching services address that. Currently we are helping people with weight loss, we are helping people with chronic disease prevention and we partner and collaborate with others to do this together. We realize that collaboration over competition is really the way to go. Right. There's a lot of people that are sick, right. Heart disease claims a lot of us. Cancer claims a lot of us, Chronic kidney, chronic liver, asthma, obesity. Right. This affects oral health as well.

Absolutely. I'm glad you brought it up since this is the holistic dentistry show.

You mean all things are connected?

What, what a concept. I mean, when we eat processed foods, that inflammation in the body will show up in the mouth. And one of the things that I love about the whole plant based food diets is that the fiber in those whole plants actually help to clean the plaque off the teeth. And we do see less plaque accumulation in people that have a higher fiber diet. Do you check, out of curiosity, do you ask people about their oral health?

I personally do not ask them about their oral health. I do ask them on occasion, you know, how many times you brush, you know, floss, things like that. What was interesting going off of what you said, for example, if we eat. So blood pressure, let's take blood pressure as an example. Right? Blood pressure affects more than a billion people on this planet, right? Very, very. It's one of the most highest single risk factors for heart disease, stroke, kidneys. Right. And so by reducing that as much as possible, you're reducing your incidence and prevalence of heart attacks and strokes by, by a huge percentage. And so just by eating nitrate rich foods like dark green leafy vegetables, right. That helps to be converted and metabolized into nitric oxide. Right. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator. It helps to open up the blood vessels and to be able to reduce and regulate blood pressure like that. What I've learned, which is really cool, you probably already know this, is that when you eat a more plant forward diet, you actually increase the bacteria, you know, in your mouth that promotes this metabolism. Neisseria flavance, for example. Right. So when you're eating that, right. And you know you're increasing that, right, because it goes through your mouth, it gets converted, it gets put, put, you know, get put in systemically, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to bore your, you know, audience, but for example, what I've also learned is that, for example, if you, if people use mouthwash, especially antiseptic, what I, what I also read was that it doesn't really distinguish between the good and bad bacteria in your mouth, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. And so what I've also learned is that tongue scraping also is actually really good in terms of promoting this type of strain. So this is a nice connection to say that yes, food does matter, but food also matters in terms of your oral health and also, you know, downstream, it also affects your systemic health as well.

Definitely. I'm glad you, you brought that up about the change in the microbiome of the mouth, because that does happen and I do see it with my patients. I remember this one extreme case actually. I had a patient who came in, he had periodontal disease, inflammation of the gums, bone loss, bleeding. He was a little bit overweight. And then he told me he also was having some health problems, some gut issues. He had a very western diet. But he disappeared. I didn't see him. He came lost, I don't know, £30 or so. And I looked in his mouth, all his periodontal disease had vanished without any treatment. So I said to them, what have you been up to? How is your health? He's like, yeah, I went on a, basically a plant based whole food diet. I cut out all the meat. I started to have some heart issues, gut issues. So went on plant based. And it's amazing to me that his whole microbiome turned around to where the body, I mean he was practicing good oral hygiene and it just reversed. He didn't do anything different, but changed his diet. So that to me was like the power of, okay, you're just practicing good oral hygiene. You change your diet, you can literally change the microbiome to where things start reversing. Like you mentioned earlier, you know, lifestyle medicine, you're looking at reversing diseases even though you're not using medication. And that's the most powerful thing about it, I think.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I like to think of things in ecosystems. So you know, you're, you're, you're, you have many different types of ecosystems and we're learning more about the microbiome in our gut more and more, you know, all the time. We have at least 39 trillion different types of microorganisms in your gut. And guess what? It has a direct two way pathway to your immune system. 70% of your immune system is in your gut. And there's a two way cross talk with your gut and your mental, mental health and brain health via the vagus nerve. And so it's huge. Everything, there's a lot of cross talk, there's a lot of interrelationships. And we also are now talking more and more from a medical point of view on how the different choices we make also affect and create a ripple effect outwardly from ourselves, our community, our planetary health, right? We have, you know, Pacific Ocean, you and I are on the west coast, right? The Pacific Ocean is right next to us. There is the equivalent of two Texas state size pieces, say sizes of trash in the Pacific Ocean. That's just floating, right? So if you're consuming a lot of seafood, guess what? Your seafood Follows the food chain. A sardine anchovy like fish is going to be gobbled up by medium fish, which will be gobbled up by, you know, a bigger fish and blah, blah, blah. Right. So when you're eating a bigger piece of fish or just at this point maybe any type of seafood, you're. You're not just eating fish that they consume, you're eating trash. We're finding a lot of plastics microplastics in the ocean. In fact, the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, has been documented to find plastics at the deepest part of the ocean. We found documentation of microplastics in lungs and lung tissue in a living organism, in a living human organism. Right. And not only that, we have heavy metals. Right. So many different things that make our world super, super, you know, toxic. We can do a whole episode on this. So we have to be very careful.

Definitely. I want to talk about your book Thrive medicine on cultivate your desires and elevate your life. How did you get the inspiration to write a book?

So thank you for mentioning that. So my book have it right here.

Oh, nice.

It's found on Amazon and it's paperback ebook, Kindle audiobook. I had to narrate my own book. You'll be surprised on how I narrated it. I did not go to a studio, I did not rent anything. But anyway, this inspiration came where I love traveling, I love learning and I've. And I'm a huge learner. I think that if I wasn't in the health field, you know, I would be learning about something because I always have a curious nature. But when you're in the health field, you're. You signed up to be an internal learner no matter what. Right. So personally, professionally, I love having light bulb moments. I'm a natural conversationalist, as you can tell, and I love having aha moments and those periods and moments of breakthrough. And so when I travel the world, I've had many moments. And so I realized that. You know what, it would be nice if I can put this all into paper. Right. So the book is half memoir, half action oriented, personal development type of book. So every chapter focuses on a certain topic. Fear, love, authenticity, inspiration. Right. The concepts of being a being a human being as opposed to a human doing. You know, as an American, we're always go, go, go. We don't know when to stop. No pain, no gain. Go big, go home. That's, that's very detrimental for the health, for your body.

Yes, I can relate to that. But I know we have to stop ourselves and really learn to just be. I agree.

Correct, correct. And so it's a lot of different types of experiences and learnings that I compiled in a book. The book is not sequential. You can read an individual chapter. And what I like about it is that there's self reflective questions and then there's also journal lines that you can write. Because I love the concept of writing into a journal and there's action oriented questions at the end of every chapter and you can just write right next to it. So it gets people. It's not, I feel like, great, it's great to be informed, but you need to have awareness, you need to implement, you need to write your stuff down and just go, you know, don't talk, just do.

Yeah, absolutely. And besides the book, you also have a podcast, Thrive Bites, and you also have health and wellness experts on this show. You incorporate plan powered lifestyle emotional wellness, which I feel emotional wellness is something that as health practitioners we don't talk enough about, my own practice included. It's hugely important. So I'm glad that at least you put it in a book, mentioned a podcast.

Yeah.

We learn how to deal with our emotions.

Yeah. Well, being like I, like we talked about earlier, we're not taught self care. Right. I think what I love about lifestyle medicine in general is that it's really a profession of accountability. I feel that in order to really dispense well to your patients and really to teach, you have to be the example. You have to be lifestyle medicine. I feel like there's no greater arsenal or, or tool in my tool bag than actually being the example. Right. And so the, the podcast, the, the content that I create talks about those pillars. My specific angle is how to get people from surviving to thriving. Right. How can we add quality to the years and not just simply live and survive and just go by a day to day. What gets you up at the, you know, in the morning? What motivates you to just continue? Right. These are, these are questions where we don't really give ourselves enough pause to be able to refle and just aimlessly just go without having a reason or purpose.

Definitely with this whole concept of group coaching that you created. A lot of people listening don't know what group coaching is, why is it beneficial, and how can people like, you know, be confident that this, this is for them, for example?

Yeah. So from my angle as the, as the coach, I've coached many people one on one, and I find that, that the amount of time and energy and education you can place to one you can actually do this for mass, you know, mass groups of people. So after I was done training, I started public speaking, I started doing demos and started doing workshops. And I realized that there's power when you're in an audience and people are learning together at the same time. Why? Because there's a lot of, of, there's a lot of strength. You get to gain insight from other people having similar challenges and struggles as you. Some people may be shy and don't ask questions, whereas, oh, I didn't know and someone else asks a question but you didn't think of it right. So you gained their insight as well. There's a lot of power in sharing experiences. This is why like AA are very successful, right. Being in a room and circle with people that have gone through very similar journeys. So we developed this program. Group coaching is not, it's not a, you know, new concept, but the way we curate it is that, you know, there's two parts. One is you get, it's a three month program, 12 weeks, you get live calls, coaching calls that's facilitated by your own coach every single week for 12 weeks. And then we also, when you're not on the coaching call, you have assignments and homework and learn on our Educational Academy app. And so this is where everything is curated. We tell you step by step what to learn and not be overwhelmed because we know that people are busy. But you get to learn, you get to apply, you get to engage. We have that community feature where you could, you know, put in. So it's kind of like a private Facebook group. Right. But it lives on the app. We have a personalized recipe system that's AI powered so you can put in your references, put in what kind of appliances is used and it spits out a curated recipe for you, lists. And then what's great is that you can do ingredient swaps, it generates grocery lists, it generates how to meal plan. Because we find that people are just stuck because of all these different types of mini barriers. So our goal with the programming is to be able to get people from a certain state of health and well being to, to a higher state, but we to be able to assist and handhold and teach as much as possible. So the group coaching is really geared towards people that are willing to take the next steps. They're kind of stuck in their path and they want to prevent disease. They don't want to be a victim of their family history, they want to lose weight and be able to reduce their risk of metabolic diseases and all the different things that are preventable. Right. So absolutely.

Can you share with us? Can you think about, like, a patient story, you know, that comes to mind of someone who struggled?

Yeah. So, for example, we. We started a weight loss cohort last quarter of last year, for example, and we had one patient just two months in, lost eight pounds, and they struggled to even just lose eight pounds over two years. So they were able to lose eight pounds by following our program within two months. We have another participant that has been addicted to drinking coke or pop or soda since the 70s. She would bring two liters of coca Cola with her to work every single day. Two liters every day. And she's able to taper it to maybe two or three cans a week.

Oh, wow. That's a huge improvement. I can only imagine what her teeth look like. I'm sure you can soda.

I'm sure you can. Guys, you're probably getting goosebumps. You're like, oh, you're cringing right now. You're like, oh, can your teeth. Can your teeth cringe? I wonder if your teeth can cringe.

Yeah, I. I think so. You know, the individual little organ. So.

Yeah, so those are just a couple examples. And. But that at the end of the day, it's not to turn people overnight because we find that anywhere from 21 to 66 days, you know, you would really need from intention and repeated actions to be able to adopt a healthy behavior. Right. So our programming is covers that overlaps that and exceeds that. So we could set them up for success and let them go. They can come back to us. We have alumni programs. They can come back to us if they want. Right. Even better. But we don't want them to come back. We just want to set you up for success. You know, I'm not the pharmaceutical company. I'm not the healthcare system. I don't want you to come back. There's plenty of people that are sick. You know, I want to set you up for success and then let you go. Right. So.

And it's that sense of community, as you mentioned, with. I think it's so important to have a community to support you because doing things by yourself is so difficult, especially if, let's say, your significant other doesn't believe in what you're trying to do is not supportive, or your kids are eating a totally different diet.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So for those that are listening, if you remember the code, Sanda with a.

D. I love it. Yeah.

2024, you'll be able to get 5% off your first month of programming or you can choose to get our really, really cool swag bag, which includes a signed copy of my book. It also includes a whole food plant based tip guide. It's like a starter guide. And you give me one second, you'll be able to get your full customized journal.

Oh, fantastic.

Yeah. And that's a, that's a swag book. That's a swag bag. And so you can choose that.

Yeah. We're gonna put the, the code up 2024 in the show notes below and a link where people can go to take advantage of your gift. Thank you very much for being generous with our listener. One question that I got actually from someone who knew you were going to be on the show is going whole food plant based. After being like somebody who eats animal protein, she was worried about being hungry. Is that something? How does somebody. Or do you see that problem? Do you see that being an issue?

For sure, for sure. And that's not knowing which types of, of. Number one, there's protein in everything. Let me just dispel that myth number one, okay? There's protein in everything and it just comes in different types of ratios. Right?

Okay.

I've never diagnosed, I've never diagnosed protein deficiency in my career. Just number one, the only places where I've diagnosed protein deficiency are in third world countries. Okay. We are malnourished because we are nutrient deficient because we eat, eat a bunch of crap. Crap stands for calorie rich and processed. We each eat a bunch of crap. Okay. So what we eat is calorie. There's calorie full nutrition poor. When you're shifting more towards plant based and plant predominant, you're, you know, doing the seesaw where you're increasing your nutritional density and you're lowering your caloric density because fruits and vegetables are very low in calories. So you don't have to count carbs, you don't have to count calories. You can eat fruits and vegetables all day long and you know, you don't have to do any of that. And what makes you feel satiated, you know, is the fiber. But in order to get your calories and, and to also, you know, increase in that satiety, you need to know that if you're swapping animal protein for plant protein, you have to know where your plant protein rich sources are. And this is in the form of whole grains, beans, legumes, lentils, peas, nuts, seeds, you know, tofu, you know, tempeh, seitan. Right. We have a lot of protein rich plant sources. You just have to know about Them, Right. So you can't just eat, you can't just eat a salad all day long and give up. Most people do that. They just eat salads all day long because that's what they know. Right. And then they're dissatisfied because they're not full. Well, duh. Because it's not, there's not a lot of calories there. Right. You have to be very balanced.

And that's why I feel your group programs are so important for people to learn to go plant based in a healthy way to make sure they fill in those gaps. They stay, you know, full. They take in all, all their nutrients instead of just eating salads. Because a lot of people think when they hear plant based, what is that? Eating salads all day long. It's actually not true. Yeah, correct. Well, this was hugely enlightening. Dr. Zhu, Chef Zhu, thank you very much for being on the show. Any last minute wisdom that you'd like to say before we close?

I would probably say at the end of the day, whether you're a client, a customer, a patient, lay person, or even a health practitioner, I know that you have health practitioners, dentists and hygienists that listen at the same time is at the end of the day, it's, you know, you kind of have to look at, be take some time and look at your own health and just assess where you're at. And every day is a new day. Every day you wake up is a new day. Every day, you know, you don't have to wait for New Year's to start. You know, a new change, it can start today, can start tomorrow, whenever. And yeah, we're just here to help. We want people to get better. We don't want people to die prematurely. And if things are preventable, why not understand the tools and education strategies to be able to do that for yourself.

What's the name of the website?

The website. So we're on, you know, all social media platforms at the Chef Doc. The website is thechefdoc app or app, not.com app. So fantastic.

All right, well, thank you very much for being a guest on our show and we're looking forward to hearing everybody else's comments. Go to our YouTube channel and if you want to leave comments, comments or questions for Dr. Zhu.

Alright, thank you so much.

Thank you. See you next time. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram. DrSanda, this is Dr. And remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health. So take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.