Feeling Awful? Discover Why and Fix It Fast

Foreign. This is open mind. FLC syndrome. Now, what the heck is FLC syndrome? Well, it means you feel like crap, and you know what I'm talking about. And people walk around feeling like this, and they don't have to. I coined this term FLC syndrome after seeing thousands of patients in my clinical practice. Now, these are these low level, insidious symptoms that hold you back from feeling great and living your best life. They're our body's way of saying, ouch. Something is going on beneath the surface and you need to deal with it. It's not normal to have these things. It's not part of the human condition. It really isn't. I promise you. Hi, I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and welcome to Health Hacks. Now, before we begin, I want to ask, do any of these symptoms sound familiar to you? Chronic fatigue, joint pain, muscle aches, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, and acid reflux. You got any of those? How about congestion, allergies, asthma, and sinus issues? Or maybe your flavor is brain frog. Headaches, insomnia, depression, anxiety and mood swings. Or maybe you get weight gain, cravings, or trouble losing weight. Or maybe your skin's not great and you got acne or eczema or psoriasis. How about canker sores, frequent colds, feeling sick and run down a lot? Maybe you got low libido or PMS or PCOS or menopause. Well, you get the picture. If you answered yes to any of these, you might have something called FLC syndrome. Now, what the heck is FLC syndrome? Well, it means you feel like crap, and you know what I'm talking about. And people walk around feeling like this, and they don't have to. I coined this term FLC syndrome after seeing thousands of patients in my clinical practice. Now, these are these low level, insidious symptoms that hold you back from feeling great and living your best life. Then our body's way of saying, ouch, something is going on beneath the surface and you need to deal with it. It's not normal to have these things. It's not part of the human condition. It really isn't. I promise you. And when you leave these problems untreated, they often can spiral into more serious and more chronic diseases. Now, the worst part about this is that FLC syndrome is just so common. It's become normalized. But just because something is common doesn't mean that it's normal. In fact, it's anything but normal. Now, what's really good to know, and this is the important part to listen to, is that we have way more control over how we feel than we realize, and we have way more control over our health than we've been led to believe. You just have to understand that what you eat and how you live is deeply connected to how you feel and your risk for chronic disease. Now, we're never taught how to make this connection between what we eat and what we feel. So we're leading this lifestyle that doesn't make us feel good. And, and it's not our fault because nobody ever taught us how our bodies work. I mean, who got the operating manual for the human body when you were born? Did it come out of the birth canal with you? Probably not right now. Today's episode is all about giving you the tools you need to make better food choices to serve your health so you can start feeling better now. I mean, I always say I want you to help turn your body back to its original factory settings. Most of us don't realize we're just a few days away from feeling better. And I want you to feel better now. In my treatment of my patients, I discovered that these issues stem from one common root cause. Can you guess what it is? That's right. Chronic low level systemic inflammation. You don't really notice it, but it's there and it's causing all these symptoms. And what's the main way we can get rid of this food? Getting rid of the bad stuff, adding in the good stuff, because you literally are what you eat. New cells, organs, tissues, brain cells, skin, muscles, bone that's just manufactured out of thin air. The raw materials all come from what we eat. The structure of our cells, which determines our function and how good or bad we feel also depends on what we eat. The proteins, the fats, the minerals, and more are the building blocks of who we are. Now let me ask you this. Would you rather be made of Doritos or maybe grass fed steak? Would you rather be made of Coca Cola or wild blueberries? It's not too hard to figure that out right now. This relationship between what we eat and how we feel comes down to the impact that food has on our DNA and something called gene expression. We can't change our genes, but we can change how our genes are expressed, whether we turn on or off health genes or disease genes. Now this whole new field is emerging that's shedding light on this. It's called nutrigenomics or nutrigenetics. Different people call it different things. Now, Nutrigenomics is A study of how food interacts with our bodies to create health or disease. Simply put, food is code, and you can literally upgrade or downgrade your biological software with every single bite. It's information that talks to your genes and controls the expression of those genes, which then impacts your hormones, your metabolism, your immune system, your microbiome, your brain chemistry, and lots more. With every bite, the food we eat sends messages to our genes, instructing them to express health or disease. Now, contrary to what we've all been told, not all calories are equal. The composition and quality of those calories that make up your diet can determine if you feel good, energized, lean, or if you feel tired, sick and inflamed. In other words, if you have FLC syndrome. Now, let's talk about calories. Is a calorie a calorie a calorie? Well, in a lab it is, yes. If you burn a thousand calories of Coca Cola or a thousand calories of broccoli in a lab, it releases the same amount of energy, which is essentially a calorie is how much energy it requires to raise the temperature of 1 liter of water 1 degree centigrade. That's just a scientific definition, but when you eat those calories, it's different. If you drink a thousand calories of Coca Cola or eat a thousand calories of broccoli, it has profoundly different effects on your body. So they're not really identical when you eat them. A calorie burned is a calorie burned, but a calorie eaten is not a calorie eaten. So most of us understand that food provides energy in the form of calories. The food you eat gets digested into vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, carbohydrates, sugars, which combine with oxygen that we breathe to make energy in the form of something called ATP that's inside our cells in these little energy factories called mitochondria. Now, the APD produced by our mitochondria powers each and every one of the trillions of biological processes that take place in our bodies every second. And so, when we gum up our engine with junk and junk food, our energy declines, our inflammation goes up, our oxidative stress goes up, disease goes up, symptoms go up, and we have FLC syndrome. Now, there's a more serious version. We don't see that as much. It's called fls. We have treatments for that, too. So why does the quality of our fuel matter? Well, think of the food you eat like loading fuel into a car. Whole foods are premium Clean burning. Whereas ultra processed foods are like dirty diesel running on fuel made from starch, sugar, refined grains, additives, preservative gums, emulsifiers, contaminated food with toxins like bpa, pfas, phthalates. Not good for you, right? And all that. Junk food also doesn't contain the essential nutrients that the engines need to run smoothly because basically the nutrients, vitamins and minerals are the, essentially the grease that lubricates the wheels of our metabolic engine. And so we need the right nutrients, we need the right protein, fiber, micronutrients, and when we don't have that, we basically get into trouble when we burn dirty fuel, in other words, junk food, it creates a lot of free radicals or what we call reactive oxygen species. It's like pollution or exhaust, which comes out of our mitochondria. And that causes all sorts of problems like inflammation, more oxidative stress, FLC symptoms and chronic disease. Now, the body produces its own antioxidants to protect us from this damage. However, over time, a buildup of exposure to environmental toxins, infections, food sensitivities, too many calories, a poor diet, an unhealthy microbiome and nutrient deficiencies all damage our energy producing centers in our cells called the mitochondria. And they do that to the point where the body's own protective mechanisms and antioxidant systems can't keep up. And then you get an energy crisis, you get mitochondrial damage and chronic disease. You see, poorly functioning mitochondria are an underlying root cause of many FLC symptoms and chronic disease, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, GI issues, dementia, Parkinson's, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. In fact, a study published in the British Medical Journal or BMJ linked ultra processed foods to 32 adverse health outcomes, including cancer. All cause mortality means death from anything. Insomnia, depression, anxiety, asthma, hypertension, fatty liver, prediabetes and lots more. Studies linking ultra processed foods to chronic fatigue syndrome found that 70% of people suffering from chronic fatigue ate unhealthy fats, had low fruit and vegetable intake, and 95% had a low fiber intake. What about migraines? Well, a study of women who suffer from migraines found that higher dietary inflammatory foods, there's an index for that is associated with a higher number of headaches per day and per month versus a lower inflammatory index of the diet. And lots of things can trigger inflammation. Msg, nitrates, artificial sweeteners, processed sugar, refined grains, gluten, seed oils, all trigger inflammation. I remember a patient who'd had migraines debilitated migraines for decades. Turned out she had a leaky gut and she was sensitive to eggs. We got her off the eggs and her migraines went away. Another patient had, for example, horrible microbiome from eating a bad diet. We fixed her microbiome and her migraines. Other conditions also are connected to ultra processed food, which, this is more of an FLS problem, which is dementia. And in 2022, a study published in the Journal of Neurology found that for every 10% increase in your intake of ultra processed foods every day, people had a 25% higher risk of dementia. An irritable bowel. It's the most common reason people go see the doctor. When your digestion's talking to you and it's not supposed to, you're really not supposed to know about it, supposed to do its job. And when you have to go to the bathroom, you get a little urge, you go to the bathroom, and that's the end of it. But the problem is most Americans suffer some sort of digestive issue. In fact, digestive drugs are the third top selling drugs after statins and psychiatric drugs. Now, a study examining the long term risk of IBS associated with ultra processed food consumption reported an 8% higher risk of irritable bowel with each 10% increased risk of ultra processed food. So the more ultra processed food you eat, the more likely you are to get irritable bowel. What about heart disease? Well, studies have shown that consumption of ultra processed foods have been associated with higher mortality from any cause and from heart disease causes. And loading our cars with crappy fuel also negatively impacts our hormones. So not just heart disease and irritable bowel and dementia, but just our hormones are screwed up. Empty calories from sugar and inflammatory fats from ultra processed food make you hungrier, whereas calories from protein and good fats make you feel full and satisfied for longer. Why? Because the quality of the calories that make up our diet impacts these appetite regulating hormones such as insulin, ghrelin, which is a hunger hormone, leptin, which is the fullness hormone, and cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And all those hormones regulate your well being, how you feel, your energy, and contribute to FLC syndrome when they're not working right. A diet that's high in sugar and starch, which spikes blood sugar signals to our pancreas to release insulin to deliver those glucose molecules and energy and fuel to the cells. But sometimes the insulin overshoots and your blood sugar drops too low and that can cause hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. And again, that's a stress to the body. And it tells the body to release fight or flight hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. And that leads to all sorts of symptoms like anxiety, palpitation, sweating, panic attacks and nervousness. And blood sugar swings like this lead to high insulin levels over time, which creates more free radicals, more inflammation, more insulin resistance. You can see it's a vicious cycle where basically we're eating all this crap, it's causing our metabolic system to become dysfunctional, it makes us gain weight, it makes us inflamed, and it just makes you have FLC syndrome. It can cause all kinds of symptoms from this kind of stuff, including headaches, lack of focus, fatigue, weight gain, imbalances in your sex hormones, in fact, sex hormones. Let's talk about that for a minute. Many hormonal imbalances that people suffer from, particularly women, including pms, pcos, or polycystic ovarian syndrome, premenstrual syndrome, female cancers, they're linked back to bad diets, particularly diets that cause high insulin and high estrogen levels, which is our processed, sugary diet. Now, for men, testosterone levels are inversely related to insulin. So the higher the insulin, the lower your testosterone, meaning the higher the sugar and starch you eat, the lower your testosterone. So if you want to get testosterone to go up, you cut down on sugar and starch and you increase fat. Also, here's a big one, and this is really a large part of why people suffer from FLC syndrome. It has to do with their gut. It has to do with something called gut dysbiosis and leaky gut. And you probably heard of it, maybe you didn't. Your doctor probably thinks it's quackery, or probably he or she shouldn't, because it's been well proven. Now, although years ago when I talked about this area, I thought I was a nut job. But it is real and it's in the scientific literature and it's kind of well accepted now. But essentially, leaky gut is what happens when bad gut bacteria outnumber the good ones. And why does that happen? Well, you get poor diet, obviously, the sugar starch, ultra processed food, the bad fats, the environmental toxins, all that damages your gut. And these bad bacteria produce toxins that cause inflammation, and they cause a little connection between our cells that line our gut to separate, causing food particles, bacteria and toxins to leak through into the circulation. So basically, it's like Lego blocks that are stuck together, but they come apart and then instead of food and everything going through the cells, it goes between the cells and that creates an interaction with your body. And by the way, 60% of your immune system is in your gut. So when all the food and that bacterial frap gets across that protective lining and your immune system goes, wow, this is bad, and starts creating an inflammatory reaction. And that creates systemic low grade inflammation. And that, my friends, is what causes FLC syndrome and worse. And that increases your risk of all sorts of problems, from autoimmune diseases to food sensitivities, to food allergies. And these low grade food sensitivities are really common. They're a really, really common cause of FLC syndrome. And they're not allergies like a true allergy, like you get a peanut allergy. They're a different mechanism, a different part of your immune system, often a different part of your antibody system called igg and sometimes iga. And these low grade symptoms are not true allergies. They're basically coming from this inflammation. And when you stop eating those foods, you might even feel worse for a short time because you get immune complexes that kind of make you feel like you have the floor. Now, the key to fixing FLC syndrome is making the connection between what we eat and how we feel. And so getting rid of those foods for a short time and then removing the most common food sensitivities, gluten, dairy, ultra processed food grains, beans, for just a short time, like three weeks, and then adding them back is the best way to see how food affects you and to reset your system. Think of it like hitting the reset button on your computer or putting your body back to its original factory settings. And it happens in days, it doesn't take weeks, literally within days. In fact, I wrote a book called the 10 Day Detox Diet about 10 years ago because I was doing so much repetition, explaining to people what to do. I wrote a book to help my patients and to help the average person just implement this. And we've seen amazing results. I'll tell you more about them in a minute. But we've seen dramatic results with this approach in a very, very short time. So when you, when you do the opposite, right, when you load your car with clean fuel, it balances our sex hormones, it helps our energy, it reduces inflammation. And so what is really clean fuel? Well, it's obvious, right? It's real nutrient dense whole food that has all the essential nutrients, proteins and vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, fiber, all of which help you maintain a stable blood sugar. And they keep you full and energized for longer, and they're crucial for protecting your mitochondria and maintaining optimal health. So what is the functional medicine approach to preventing and reversing FLC syndrome or worse? First it's taking out the bad stuff and then it's putting in the good stuff. So what should you not eat? Well, over 30 years of practice, I developed a simple addition subtraction diet, or what we call an elimination reintroduction diet to help you reset your body to its original factory settings and identify how many of your FLC symptoms are related to what you're eating. So just take out the bad stuff. Don't eat ultra processed food. You shouldn't. I've ever eaten anyway, but especially for this initial period, I would say ideally 21 days, but minimum 10. Ultra processed foods are basically engineered to be hyper palatable, to be addicting, to make you crave them, to make you want to eat more. They're high in added sugars, in flour, in unhealthy fats, in sodium, refined oils, gums, artificial flavors, dyes, preservatives. And they're low in really things we need like essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fiber. Now certain things are worse than others. Thickeners, gums, emulsifiers like carrageenan, xanthan gum, lecithin, locust, bean gum, all can cause inflammation and dysbiosis, the overgrowth of bad bugs in the gut. And these emulsifiers, these thickeners which are in all the processed food, essentially irritate the gut lining, they cause a leaky gut and they cause this low grade systemic inflammation which is the driver of FLC syndrome, right? Joint pain, fatigue, headaches, irritable bowel bloating, gas. So ultra processed foods comprise more than 60%, up to 70% of our standard American diet or SAD diet. They account for 90% of our added sugar consumption and 73% of the food in grocery store shelves. Think about that. 73% of the food that's in the grocery store is not actually food. It actually makes you sick and have FOC syndrome and even worse, makes you suffer from so many chronic illnesses. Don't ever eat it. Please don't eat it. There's one thing you can do for your health is just swear off all your processed foods forever. There's lots of things to eat. You don't need to eat franken foods, you don't need these science projects, and you don't need to eat ultra processed vegan foods and fake meats and all kinds of Weird stuff. So just eat food. So how do you know something's ultra processed? Well, easy. I used to teach in churches and I said it's really easy. Ask yourself if God made it or man make it. Did God make an avocado? Yeah. Did he make a Twinkie? No. Right. Is it something your great, maybe great, great grandmother now wouldn't recognize as food? Right. Anything wrapped in plastic and boxes, Pre made meals, freezer section. I mean, some of the stuff's okay, right? If it's just frozen berries or if it's a can of tomatoes, water and salt or whatever, sardines and olive oil, that's fine. That's processed food. It's not ultra processed food. Ultra processed is basically deconstructed foods from commodity products like corn, wheat and soy that are reassembled in totally different chemical structures to something that the body doesn't even know what to do with. And that's what makes it sick. Now, the center aisles of the grocery store are full of processed junk, and you don't want to go down there. I mean, occasionally you want a condiment or something, fine, but just stay out of the aisles. Now, what are the big things that seem to be causing FLC syndrome? I think dairy, gluten and sugar are probably the top three. So if you don't want to do everything, you don't get rid of everything. I would say dairy, gluten, and sugar. Generally, I recommend that people actually really limit their sugar and most gluten and most traditional dairy because they definitely cause inflammation, they disrupt our gut health, and they contribute to a wide range of chronic illnesses, from migraines to chronic fatigue to autoimmunity. The list goes on. That's not to say that some dairy's not fine, like sheep or goat or some forms of grains can be fine, not create all kinds of issues for people. But most of the time, I would say dairy and gluten are the number one and two culprits. And this is after decades of practice and also what the literature supports. Now, this can occur even with people who don't have celiac disease. Why? Because dwarf wheat, which is the kind of wheat we're eating now, has a much higher starch and gluten content today than it used to a hundred years ago because it's basically been hybridized and has way more gluten proteins and it's more likely to cause leaky gut and more likely to cause inflammation. Now, on top of being inflammatory, today's wheat is often sprayed with the weed killer glyphosate at harvest to dry it out, which, aside from being a known carcinogen, acts like an antibiotic, wiping out our good gut bacteria and even damages the lining of the gut. So it's bad, bad for your gut. And that can lead to intestinal permeability increases or leaky gut. So you want to avoid all the starchy stuff, right? All the gluten free stuff, everything, right? Bagels, wraps, pasta, pastries, bread, even ones that say gluten free on the label, they're often worse because they're even more starchy. You want to avoid sugar in all forms, right? Everything. Syrups, nectars, honey, stevia, sucralose, xylitol, any of the sugar, alcohols, they all can drive inflammation. Just quit it. Cold turkey for 10 days. You can do anything for 10 days, right? Just 10 days. See how you feel. You don't want to trust me? Just trust your body. It will tell you whether it likes it or not. At the end of 10 days, you'll know if you feel good or if you feel bad, if you have your symptoms resolved or if you've still got lingering symptoms. And maybe it's something else besides food. Maybe it's heavy metals or mold or lime or something else, but most of the time it's food. So when you get to the cleaning up of your diet, you get rid of all the inflammatory foods. You get rid of a lot of the FLC syndrome and more serious diseases. Now I've written a lot of books about this. If you really want to learn about how to do this really well and avoid a lot of the pitfalls of and getting rid of the crap from your diet, you can check my book out the 10 day detox diet. Excess starch and sugar in the diet disrupts your hormone balance. It slows your metabolism and impairs your body's ability to burn fat. So don't eat it, okay? Or just very little, right? Dairy. Stay away from industrial processed milk and cheese. Conventionally raised dairy cattle are often treated with hormones and antibiotics and that messes up your hormones and can contribute to antibody resistance. And dairy also contains allergenic proteins and inflammatory compounds that can trigger immune responses and lots of inflammation in the body. You also want to avoid flavored and sweetened things like yogurt or kefir, which can have upwards of 20 grams of sugar per serving, which is a lot. Now choose plain unflavored varieties. I would encourage you to have maybe even sheep or goat dairy as cheese and even yogurt heirloom sources for example, grass fed A2 cows, there are out there which are better locally sourced cheeses that are often better tolerated from regenerative farms or grass fed farms. With A2 cows, A1 casein is essentially the one that causes a lot of the inflammation. Also, don't drink liquid sugar, right? Fruit juice, sugar, sweetened beverages, all these lead to sugar spikes in the blood, increased belly fat storage, a greater chance of developing pre diabetes and type 2 diabetes. And many juices, even green juices or smoothie bowls are made with a really high glycemic tropical fruit like bananas, mango, pineapple, and they may have as much sugar as soda. Now there's vitamins, minerals and fiber and a few better things, but still it's a whopping load of sugar. Juicing and blending destroys fiber, which helps slow the fructose absorption and promotes satiety. So you just basically don't want to drink juice even if it's healthy. You know, juice like orange juice you think is good or apple juice, it's basically drinking liquid sugar and fructose in particular, which has some problems. And we've talked about that on the podcast before. You might want to check the one I did with Dr. Robert Lustig where we go in detail about what fructose is and what it does to the body. Also, alcohol, not a good thing to do if you want to reset your body. Just get rid of alcohol actually, just, it's amazing epigenetic tests that I recently did on myself and they can actually tell how much alcohol you drink just by looking at your genome and the epigenetic marks, which will scare you off alcohol for good, I think, and amazing your body. Alcohol turns to sugar, especially when mixed with sweetened. Mixed. I mean, so many mixed drinks are so sweet. I just, I can't ever drink those. But also all the sugar and sweetened coffees and teas, not good. Diet soda again, diet sodas sound like they're healthier, but they actually may be associated with other issues. Got microbiome changes. I mean, they're for sure better than soda, but not better than water for weight loss. Animal studies have linked artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, xylitol, maltitol in diet drinks to gut dysbiosis, to insulin resistance, to weight gain, cancer risk. I mean, we need more data. The human data is mostly observational, but still, it's not looking good. And why drink that stuff? It's just chemical science projects, right? And it's probably not good for you, even if we haven't figured out the exact mechanism yet. Also avoid drinks with more than 5 grams of sugar per serving. Four grams is about a teaspoon and that includes flavored nut milks. Watch out for those creamers, protein drinks, green juices, kombuchas, which have a lot of sugar. So that's what not to eat. That's what you get rid of, right? Processed food, sugar starch, all the high glycemic fruit, get rid of all the liquid sugar, calories, get rid of gluten, dairy, I would also say grains and beans. And the reason for that is that a lot of people have gut issues, a lot of people have metabolic issues, and they're just a little starchier, a little more high dose of carbohydrates that can be harder to digest. We just want to give your body a break, not say grains or beans are bad. It's just for the 10 days I would get off of them. All right, what should you be eating? Well, you should be eating medicine, right? And now you might think, oh my God, Dr. Hyman, that just sounds overwhelming. I don't know, it's a lot. But there's so many delicious foods that we can eat to fuel our bodies while reducing blood sugar spikes. Now if you're thinking to yourself, gee, can I have monk fruit? Can I have this, can I have that? It probably means you're an addict, right? You're negotiating. So just be aware of that. When you eat in the right way and you add in the right foods and you take out the bad stuff, your blood sugar balances, you get less inflammation, your cravings that are like very addictive tend to go away, usually by day two or three at the latest. And at the same time, you know you want to eat all the good foods that are going to support your optimal health, right? Nutrient dense whole foods that control blood sugar, that make you feel full quality protein, about a gram per pound of body weight, ideal body weight. We generally raise meats like wild game, elk, venison, bison, grass fed beef, wild caught fish, the small ones like salmon, mackerel, anchovies, herring, sardines, pasture aged pulte chicken, turkey, peasant. If you can get that, I don't know you can get that, but sometimes that's okay. Duck, whole organic, non GMO soy like tofu, tempeh, although it's a bean, but it's processed in a way that's easier to digest and less reactive. Eggs are fine, pasture raised eggs or omega 3 rich eggs, goat and cheap cheese. I probably would stay away from for the first 10 days if you want to do ideally a full elimination to see if you really want to hit the reset button. I would just get rid of all dairy, but you want to add back stuff. Add mat goat and sheep which are a little bit better tolerated and a lot of healthy fats, right? Good fats don't make you fat, right? If you want to replace the bad fat with the good fat, just get rid of all the soybean oil, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, vegetable oil, hydrogen oil, margarine, palm oil. Those are all just not things that we consume and eat. The good fats, right? Anti inflammatory omega 3s, olive oil, right? From monounsaturated fats, macadamia nuts, which are like the olive oil of nuts. Lots of omega 3s from your diet, the smashed fish I just mentioned, salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines and herring, walnuts, chia flax, hemp seeds, lots of olives, olive oil, avocados, almonds, pecans, macadamia nuts, almond oil, macadamia nut oil. That all is monounsaturated. Although they are often complex mixtures of other fats as well. What about saturated fat? Well, some people can do fine in it, some people don't. Just be aware of what your body does. But coconut oil, grass fed butter, ghee, things that are rich in prebiotic fibers that help your gut, bacteria and phytochemicals like probably 30 to 50 grams to feed and grow your good gut bugs to help your gut stay healthy. Which if you haven't understood from this podcast yet, getting your leaky gut sorted is a key part of getting rid of FLC syndrome. Eat lots of veggies. Non starchy veggies. Unlimited refills. You know you can have six to eight cups, which is not five to nine servings, it's more like 12 to 18 servings. So fill your plate with 75% veggies, kale, broccoli, lettuce, radishes, arugula, celery, bok choy, asparagus, bell peppers, watercress, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, dandelion greens, hearts of palm, eggplant, cucumbers. The more color the better. So when you walk into the produce section of the grocery store, consider this your pharmacy with an F, right? F a R, M a C Y. Now each vegetable is cut a cold because they have different medicines and different phytochemicals. So for example, sea vegetables or seaweed have all sorts of minerals like Iodine, calcium, iron, which can be hard to access from land plants in the proper form being metabolized and used by the body. And they help restore the body back to balance by decreasing acidity and boosting detoxification, even help weight loss. Sea vegetables, meaning seaweed. They're wonderful additions to your meals and they add flavor, they improve digestion of certain foods. Even beans, for example. Grains, I would say skip those for the first 10 to 21 days, but then you can add them back. Ideally non gluten grains. Right? And some small beans, half a cup to a cup a day, and only if you tolerate them. You know, stick to whole grains, not flours from whole grains, because that acts pretty much like sugar. Also non starchy legumes, not the big fava beans or lima beans, but the small little beans like black beans or dookie beans. You can also soak, sprout and cook them, which will help digestibility and do that after your initial 10 to 21 day break. For grains, if you're gonna add them back, I would add the non gluten grain back first, like black and brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, which is not wheat, by the way. If your body tolerates them. You can have lentils, red, green, yellow, black beans, kidney beans, aduki beans, mung beans, chickpeas can be fine, but pay attention to what's going on with your gut. Certain beans can be more starchy, so be aware they can cause gut issues. Starchy vegetables are often fine for people, like sweet potatoes, potatoes, small potatoes. But if you have pre diabetes or belly fat or a lot of digestive issues, you want to be careful because you don't want to be eating a lot of the starchy things because that's going to make things worse in your gut. So you can have some sweet potato, yam, winter squash, parsnip, pumpkin. Those are fine but limited amounts. What about fruit? Can you eat fruit? Yeah, you can have fruit, about a half a cup of berries or one piece of fruit a day. Keep it low because again, it turns into sugar. We're trying to just keep the sugar really low for the detox and then you'll see how you feel, you know, like, oh my God, my FLC syndrome's gone. My joints feel better, I don't have migraines, my digestion's good, my sinus is better when I'm posting a little drip. My PMS is gone, my energy is better, I'm sleeping better. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. So make sure you if you're going to have fruit, the citrus is fine, lemon slimes are fine. Stick with the berries. Blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, wild blueberries. The higher tropical fruit you don't want to eat, like the pineapple, bananas, mangoes, those can spike your blood sugar. Obviously no fruit juice, lots of spices and herbs go for it, right? Cinnamon, fenugreek, ginseng, berberine, oregano, sage, all that's great. Vinegar is great. And especially apple cider vinegar. It helps inactivate alpha amylase, which is the enzyme that starts breaking down starch into glucose. So vinegar helps curb blood glucose spikes by slowing the absorption of glucose. Also, it delays gastric emptying and it helps our muscles convert glucose to glycogen. Improves insulin sensitivity. So apple cider vinegar is good stuff. Probiotics. You want to eat plenty of probiotic rich foods every day like kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh, miso. If you're eating dairy, you can have goat and sheep eventually when you add those back in, what should you drink? Well, water, ideally half your weight in water in ounces per day. The brain shrinks when the body's dehydrated, which can impact our cognitive function. So fatigue actually might just be dehydration. So try to drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with electrolytes when you wake up. Certain nut milks can be fine. Almond, hazel milk, herbal teas, green tea is fine. Eat your food in the right order, right? Start the day with protein and fat for breakfast. Avoid carbs and sugar for breakfast. That should not be what we're eating. Make sure when you eat carbs, you're eating them with fat to slow the absorption of the blood sugar spikes. Plenty of veggies, fat and protein before carbs, which again slows spikes of sugar and exercise, especially after meals because you kind of help metabolize the glucose very quickly. Resistance training, which is important for building muscle and muscle boost glucose absorption, helps insulin sensitivity. All really important. Make sure you're exercising. Obviously aerobic strength, not even interval training can help. And obviously weight training is important because that just helps your body get fit in terms of building muscle. Sleep also important. If you're feeling crap, sleep is really good medicine. So try to get in bed for seven, eight hours a night. Honor your circadian rhythm. No devices stick to the same time. Manage your stress better. Also helps you feel better in terms of stress reduction with FLC syndrome. Although I would say the biggest thing is the 10 day complete elimination diet, adding in all the Good stuff. So learn how to manage stress better. Yoga, breathing, reading, journaling, dancing, whatever makes you feel relaxed and not being in front of your computer. What about supplements? Well, in an ideal world, we would be consuming a nutrient dense diet of whole foods. It's unprocessed, it'll be rich in natural nutrients and polyphenols. But sadly, much of industrial agriculture that we have access to in the United States basically is such a nutrient poor diet. And there's been farming practices that destroy the soil microbiome like tillage, herbicides and pesticides that is needed to actually be able to extract the nutrients from the soil. We've also hybridized them to be more starchy and less protein and less nutrients. And this soil depletion from industrial farming and hybridization, it just means that fruits, veggies and animals that we consume have fewer nutrients than they did in the past. So even if we eat foods that are organic or regenerative, we still will need to complement our diets with a good multivitamin and mineral. And even if we have a perfect diet, the increased stress of modern life with all the toxins that we're exposed to, increases all of our nutritional demands. Toxins and stress will deplete our bodies of nutrients, making it harder to get what we need from food alone. And there's certain supplements I recommend everybody take. Multivitamin, mineral, omega 3 fats, vitamin D, magnesium, particularly magnesium, because it's essential for your cells to make energy. It's involved in over 600 enzyme reactions. It's so necessary for the creation of ATP or energy. It helps your muscles relax, it's important for proper nerve function. It's just dope. Magnesium is such an important nutrient and it's so common to have magnesium deficiency. And it's been linked to higher levels of inflammation and C reactive protein and all kinds of bad stuff. So I want you to try for 10 days. Just do for 10 days what I'm telling you. Get rid of the bad stuff and the good stuff. So no sugar, starch, ultra processed foods, no dairy, gluten, grains or beans, no starchy veggies, except for maybe a sweet potato. And add in all the good stuff, Protein, veggies, nuts and seeds, lots of good fats, a little bit of berries, and you're gonna see an incredible change in your body. In fact, I led a group of 600 people through this detox. They lost 4,000 pounds in 10 days. An average of 2 inches from their waist, 2 inches in just 10 days, 1.4 inches from their hips, the average blood sugar dropped 18 points. Blood pressure dropped 11 points. But more importantly, it fixed their FLC syndrome. Now, here's what was remarkable. In just 10 days, all symptoms from all diseases dropped by 62%. And that included things like fatigue, migraines, irritable bowel reflux, joint muscle pain, rashes, hives, acne, depression, anxiety, binge eating, cravings, and the list goes on. In other words, any symptom of FLC syndrome seemed to get better. Now, there is no drug on the planet that can produce those results, except for food. So as we wrap up, understand that this isn't about imposing some strict, arbitrary dietary limitation or fearing the occasional indulgence. It's about empowering us each to make informed choices that nourish our bodies. We need to reject the complacency of just being okay when we have all these symptoms, when we actually are just a few days away from feeling good. So I hope you walk away with the knowledge that diet and lifestyle choices we make every day affect every cell in our bodies. The food we eat is in constant dialogue with our genes and it controls our health towards either good health and vitality or disease. And I think we need to realize that we can make choices that help us feel exceptional one meal at a time. And most people have never done this. Most people have never taken the time to do a reset. So just take 10 days for yourself, be strict about it, see what happens. You will see a remarkable change. That's where we see a 62% reduction, even up to a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. So good news is you're just a few days away from getting rid of FLC syndrome.