Finding Trigger foods, The Right Amount of Fat and My Top Superfoods

You. Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call. Your chance to ask me your questions. Now, we're going to do a bunch of questions today. We're going to talk about how do you find your trigger foods? How do you know the right amount of fat to eat, and what are the best superfoods? So let's take a look at our first question, which is a video submission. And this question is from Julie. So let's watch Julie's video.

Dr. Hyman, I've been following your Eat Fat, Get Thin program for six weeks, and I've lost weight in inches. And I'm joining the challenge starting January 12th. And my biggest question and my real reason for joining this challenge is to have some help with the transition. How do I get a good read on whether certain foods are okay? For me, I seem to have a pretty long delay before I get any negative reaction. Like, dairy often creeps up over several weeks. So my question is, what's the best indicator that a food is good or not good? Thanks for your help.

All right. That's a great question, Julie, because, yeah, people, you know, go on elimination diet. They cut out certain foods, they want to add others back, and then they don't know, like, what should I do? When should I add it? How do I know if it's affecting me? So I think that's really important. How do we figure out what foods work for us and what foods don't work for us? After following the Eat Fat, Get Thin plan or any other diet where you're removing foods? Now, how do you know if a food's good or not? Let's, let's, let's talk about that. Now. I do this all the time with patients. I get rid of everything, and then I add things back. So, you know, let's say I get rid of a lot of the trigger foods, which are gluten, dairy, grains, sugar, alcohol, caffeine. You know, this is often what I do, and it's pretty standard elimination diet. It's a little more aggressive than, for example, keeping whole grains, but basically it's a way for you to hit the reset button. You know, if your computer, that thing, that little wheel spins around and around, how annoying that is. Sometimes your metabolism is like that and you need to hit the reset button, and that's by going on elimination diet. Then you want to add stuff back. So what do you do first and how do you know if it's affecting you? And some people don't get affected right away. Some people do the key to food sensitivities as opposed to a food allergy, is that the food sensitivity causes you to actually have a very slow response or reaction. Whereas a food allergy, like peanut allergy, you'll die in three minutes. Right? You get immediate allergic reaction. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about do you get a little more brain fog, a little more joint pain, a little more achy, don't sleep as good, your digestion isn't good, a little more bloating, do you have any problems with skin rashes, do you feel just sluggish and brain fog? These are all low grade reactions. So when you're adding foods back, you want to notice any of these things and watch your body carefully and you just want to give it at least three to four days between adding food. So I would sort of add the lower risk foods. For example, if you're off eggs, you add back aids. If you're on, for example, you know, off grains, you want to add back gluten free grains. If you're off dairy, you want to add back maybe some yogurt or even sheep or goats. Yogurt or dairy. These are really simple ways to add things back. And then you sort of see how they affect you. Now, if they affect you immediately, okay. If you feel bloated or are you tired, okay. But it might not be for two or three days. That's why you keep eating it for two or three days and then you'll see how you feel. So that's the way to figure out if a food's affecting you. It's a really good question. Next, we have a question from Sandra and it's a tweet. So let's see what Sandra says. Is there such a thing as too much good fat? Well, here's the deal. Bodies are different, genetics are different. People actually respond very differently to different foods. So there are people who thrive on a high fat diet, others who need a moderate amount of fat, and some who maybe need a little lower fat. I would say the majority of people need more fat. And in fact the ones who need the most fat are the diabetics and in fact the diabetic treatment historically. This is from the Joslin, Dr. Joslin, who was basically the guy who they named the Joslin Diabetes center at Harvard after this guy treated diabetics with 70 to 75% fat diets and a little bit of carbs and like 15, 20% protein. So it was like mostly fat and protein, a little bit of carbs and he found he could keep people healthy, lose weight, and that's actually how most of obesity was treated for over a century. But then we got into this low fat crazy stuff and that's when things went wrong. So the best way is to experiment with your body, see how you do, keep a journal. How do you feel? Do you have more energy, have more, less brain fog? Do your joints hurt less? You feel good? Like what is the right thing for you? And that's the best way to know. Some people might feel worse, they might gain weight, they might have worsened cholesterol. But the majority of people, by the way, 70% of Americans are overweight. Women have over 2 point, I think 3 or 4 billion people now overweight. Bottom line, most people need more fat and very few people need less fat. All right, next question is from Anna. It's a tweet. Let's hear what she says. She says, what are your favorite superfoods? Well, I have a lot. In fact, you know, when I go to the grocery store, I think of it as my pharmacy. That's F A R M A C Y. That's where I get my drugs, is at the pharmacy, meaning the grocery store. Right. That's where medicine is. And that's what I go in looking for. Every aisle I go down, I'm thinking, okay, one of the most powerful foods are going to help provide the right information to turn on all the right genes to change my biochemistry for the better. That's going to help me reduce inflammation, that's going to help my gut flora, that's going to fix my brain and help it work better. I look at all that stuff. So plant foods are superfoods, but some other things are superfoods. I think like grass fed meats are superfoods. So the first thing is when you go in the grocery store, look for a rainbow of colors of food and try to get organic because there's a lot more phytonutrients and chemicals in organic food. Why? Because organic food doesn't get as much help from fertilizers. It doesn't get as much help from, from, from having to fend for itself. You know, it has to actually get help from herbicides and pesticides. So when plants have to fight for themselves, they are so much more nutrient dense. In fact, spinach, even organic spinach, is far less effective in providing nutrients than for example, wild dandelion greens. I mean, it's by a factor of 5 or 10 or sometimes 100, like wild blueberries and regular blueberries. Wild potatoes, then regular potatoes. You know, even you know when you're thinking about buying foods, make sure you're thinking about getting weird foods. I call it strange and weird food. For example, I like things that are kind of funky like dandelion greens or broccoli rabe. Things that are not likely to be a gmo. A lot of categories are great, but one of my favorite is the cruciferous vegetables as broccoli, collards, kale, rugula, broccoli rabe, broccolini. All this stuff is my one of my staple go to foods. The other are mushrooms. Shiitake mushrooms are great. You can also sometimes buy maitake mushrooms. You can buy other kinds of mushrooms. Seeds. Also my favorite chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds, good fats, olive oil, extra virgin coconut oil, MCT oil, wild fatty fish, sardines. Those are all my go to food is medicines. And there's so much more I've written a lot about in my books. You can read all about it, but it's really one of the most powerful tools you can use to help stay healthy is eat the right medicine. Eat your medicine. In fact, the word in Chinese for take your medicine is eat your medicine. So let's learn from that. Now that, sadly, is all the time we have today for questions. If you like this video, be sure to share it with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter. And if you have any questions, you can tweet them to me or send your video submissions to drhyman.com and maybe next week I'll make a house call to you. Thanks for watching.