Anti-Inflammatory Diets, Antioxidants & Glutathione Ep 77

Every endurance athlete remembers the moment when things finally click. Your swim feels smoother, your pacing makes sense, your fueling works, and suddenly the sport feels not only easier, but more fun. And for many athletes, that moment happens at training camp. That's exactly why we created the Endurance Edge Triathlon Training Camp happening April 22nd through 26th at Lake Jocassee in South Carolina. For 4 incredible days, you'll train in a small group with expert coaches, sports nutrition support, and sports psychology guidance, all designed to help you train smarter, race stronger, and finally connect the dots in your performance. We swim in crystal clear mountain water, ride beautiful and challenging roads, run scenic trails, and spend the rest of the time recovering, learning, laughing, and eating some seriously amazing chef-prepared food. Mm-hmm. Camp is intentionally small, just 20 athletes, so you get real coaching, true connection, and amazing breakthroughs. So if you want an experience that can transform your entire season, we invite you to join us. Head to theenduranceedge.com and click training camp and reserve your spot with just a $100 deposit. Come train hard, learn a ton, and leave stronger than you ever imagined. I'll see you there. Hey y'all, welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. Today is all about, well, a bunch of different things to be honest, but anti-inflammatory and antioxidant diets and glutathione and all kinds of other fun stuff. Talk about some rabbit holes that I went down today. Part of this was stimulated by our upcoming 21-Day Nutrition Reset Challenge. So we have been diligently putting that program together based on our decades of experience, and, and not only in nutrition but also in sports psychology. And you'll see how that ties into the program. It's gonna be really amazing, but also with specific dietary intervention for this 21-day nutrition reset. So this isn't just like making up some random stuff, it's actually developed, or I should say, based on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. So this is actually a program that was created to support clients with inflammatory bowel disease, so our IBD, which can include anything from Crohn's disease to ulcerative colitis, celiac disease, diverticulitis, cystic fibrosis, chronic diarrhea, and much more. Why did I choose this particular dietary plan for the 21-Day Nutrition Reset? Well, so many of us have some sort of inflammation going on in our bodies, in particular during the holidays, which this is not intended to induce any shame. I hope you are enjoying your holidays, hopefully not by overdrinking or overeating, but enjoying the foods that are new and different at this time of the year. And also balancing that with getting outside and being with your friends and family and getting your exercise and all that good kind of stuff, right? So there's a lot of pieces that go and go together when it comes to nutrition. So anyway, why did I bring this up? There are a couple of things that are key considerations when it comes to whether you're going down the, this particular eating plan of this specific carbohydrate diet, which we call our reset plan, or whether you're just going to want to get on an anti-inflammatory eating plan or anti-high antioxidant eating plan. Some of the key considerations So I always like to try to step back and what are some of the main things that we're really focusing on? Hydration is key. Absolutely. Always, no matter what. But other things that are important are fiber, and it is very specific to the types of carbohydrates that are allowed in this particular dietary plan in order to help your gut, in essence, calm down. And that in turn helps your brain health and overall body health. It actually shifts your microbiome, which is absolutely and never-endingly fascinating to me. So it's higher fiber and leads to better digestive health and reduced inflammation. So the other thing that it helps with is immune support. Here we are in the winter, and of course we're inside, generally speaking, more and around other people. So we're passing things around, and of course we want We wanna be social and that's part of the human condition, but immune support is also key there. In particular, things like zinc and selenium. And these are not necessarily things that you should be taking separately. It can be, and certainly wanna be, and let's make sure we've got our little disclaimer here, but the importance of making sure that you are seeking the advice of a qualified healthcare provider in any questions that you may have regarding medical condition or your health goals. So I just wanted to make sure that that was out there as we're discussing these things, especially as I'm thinking of selenium, which can affect your thyroid and is a great antioxidant as well as supporting your immune system, but can certainly be easily taken in the wrong doses. So we've gotta be really careful about that, working with a good functional nutritionist or functional healthcare provider in uh, directing you on that. But that being said, you can get selenium in your diet from foods like eggs and bananas and things like meats, right? So other things that this takes into account, and we've already talked about this for at least a moment, are antioxidants. I feel like that's one of those terms, just like anti-inflammatory, is thrown around. Everybody's like, oh, okay, I guess that's a good thing, right? But what What does it even mean? So I wanted to get a little deeper into what does it mean to reduce oxidative stress and what does that mean in terms of our dietary patterns? So antioxidants in terms of nutrition can mean including good amounts of vitamin A. So good sources of vitamin A are things like bell peppers, pistachios, squash. I like to think of vitamin A as anything that's generally orange. And not fake orange, right? So like pumpkin, butternut squash, carrots, things like that that are generally orange, and then varying it up. So I actually have seen someone with an excess of beta-carotene because she ate so many, and by I mean so many, like every single meal of the day she was eating raw carrots. So it's not necessarily— there can be too much of a good thing, you guys. Other things in terms of antioxidants, vitamin C. And I know a lot of people are taking things like products like Emergen-C or other things that are, have extremely high doses like 1,000 milligrams, 2,000 milligrams or more of vitamin C, which can be implicated in certain instances. But generally speaking, again, too much of a good thing is not a good thing. Usually I see kind of the sweet spot with vitamin C is somewhere around 250 to 500 milligrams. But some of us are genetically not able to absorb vitamin C very well. So that's one of the thing that, the things that we do in our 3x4 genetic testing. Regardless, if you can get it through your diet, please do that. So high foods in vitamin C include things like citrus fruits, so oranges, lemons, and things like tomatoes. I also love strawberries, one of my favorites. So anyway, I wanted to make sure to at least touch on that in terms of food sources, but also what does it mean to have— what does it mean to be an antioxidant, right? So we have something called reactive oxygen species, or ROS. They're byproducts of cellular metabolism, which is really kind of fascinating when you think of all the different things that can affect our ability to get rid of some of these these things that don't necessarily belong. So external sources or exogenous sources of these reactive oxygen species are, can be quite numerous. In fact, there can be several different things like nutrients. I just mentioned a couple of them. So excess doses of antioxidants, especially things like vitamin C, alcohol, no surprise there. Certain drugs, industrial solvents. Not to say that any of us are drinking industrial solvents, but this is really pointing to the necessity of having Good, clean, healthy drinking water. Heavy metals, also things like, uh, and transition metals. So things like arsenic, things like mercury. So not eating excessive doses of things like tuna, um, talking to your farmers and really getting to know them if you can, so that you know that the soil isn't necessarily contaminated with heavy metals that you're let's say fruits or vegetables are grown in. There's also a big one with air pollution. And of course some of these things are out of our control, but some of them are definitely in our control. And then there's other things like physical stressors like UV rays. So not putting your sunscreen on, x-rays among other things. And then of course various lifestyle things that act as external sources of these reactive oxygen species. So another thing that I wanted to get into as it relates to that oxidative stress or getting into maybe just kind of dipping our toe into some of these genetic SNPs that are related to oxidative stress. So when we, if you ever do our, and you'll be hearing about this over the next month or so, and if you do our challenge, you're definitely gonna hear about it, of our longevity nutrition coaching program, which includes this 3x4 genetic testing and a one-on-one session with yours truly to go through what does all this mean, what are your action items in terms of lifestyle, in terms of nutrition, and in terms of perhaps even a supplement strategy. But the oxidative stress category in— involves quite a few different genetic SNPs. Okay, so it's kind of like the human equivalent of, let's say, rusting, for example. So in a healthy functioning cell, enzymes that are able to sort of act as a rust block, if you will, are created to counteract, counteract this oxidative damage. But the ability to make these enzymes that help you sort of create this rust block are genetically determined. A good diet and lifestyle can aid towards this lower oxidative burden and help maintain the health of your cells, of your DNA, Things, for example, that are recommended, generally speaking, if your oxidative stress load is high or if you have certain genetic SNPs that make you not so great at creating these enzymes that help us prevent that impact on our energy levels and our memory and premature aging, aging, and sometimes your cancer risk. And Even more, as I mentioned, energy level. So this process happens so heavily within your mitochondria. Your mitochondria are located within the cell and help you with aerobic metabolism. Anybody heard of that term at all? So aerobic exercise, which is with oxygen, which creates a ton of energy or ATP. So zone 2 training, y'all, how many times have we got to talk about it? We'll talk about it more. It's okay. But zone 2 training is really critical to keep that quantity of mitochondria in your cells. So the more you train, so to speak, and you don't necessarily have to be training for an event, but the more you keep your body healthy doing some of this zone 2 training, the more your mitochondria are going to proliferate. and the better you can metabolize fat, and the better you can actually deal with an overload of oxidative stress. So how cool is that? So tying into some of those recommendations, if your oxidative stress load is high, if you've been exposed to a lot of, say, heavy metals, especially maybe when you were a kid or something like that, or if you just want to be generally healthy, or if you know that this ties into your genes. So many different things. But generally speaking, consuming 1 to 2 cups of whole plant foods like dark leafy greens— and this includes your spinach, your kale, collard greens, Swiss chard, so many of them— chili peppers, olives, beetroots, pomegranates, berries, and olive oil. And then again, eating those foods that are rich in zinc, like your good quality meats. And selenium, we mentioned that also, because again Again, excessive consumption of supplemental selenium is not good. Again, we don't want too many antioxidants, but generally speaking, you're not gonna get a ton of them, or you're not going to quote unquote overdose from a good diet. But I will say a word on supplements. I'll say more than one word on supplements, but it's so easy as I was going down this rabbit hole and diving into some of the recent research, like for example, let me give you one about postmenopausal women and using glutathione, citrulline and glutathione supplementation, and how it improves endothelial function and blood pressure reactivity. Like, super cool. Why I mentioned that is that any type of— and there was another one, a long-term oral glutathione supplementation on the gut microbiome, microbiome of type 2 diabetic Indian individuals. That was another one. Generally speaking, you're going to have a pretty high rate of compliance in these, and that from what I've seen, at least in this, uh, little research that I've done here, when it's like, okay, take this pill or take a placebo. Interestingly, one of the studies I looked at is 2 people out of these 61 people that they had in this particular group is that 2 of the people dropped out of the study and happened to be in the placebo group because they were complaining about, you know, some other type of issue with, say, their gut or having some sort of allergic reaction. Well, it wasn't the placebo, right? So it must have been something else. But I always find that kind of interesting anyhow. So that being said, I get that it can be more difficult to eat healthy food on a regular basis. And honestly, I feel kind of bad for all of us. We are bombarded with unhealthy food choices on a regular basis, from everything to, I don't know, how many fast food joints did you pass on the way to work or dropping off your kid at swim practice or going to the office? Probably a lot. And similarly, you walk into any grocery store and you're going to be bombarded with all of the different things that various companies are promoting. Oftentimes it's going to be candy or the things that are easily grabbed that you're like, "Oh, well, you know, I'm hungry. It's 4 o'clock. I don't know what I'm going to have for dinner. I'm walking into the grocery store and that looks yummy right now, so I'm going to grab it." It's easy. It's tasty. but it's not healthy for us. That doesn't mean that we have to eliminate it completely from our diet, but where's the balance anyway? So all of that to say is that I get the difficulty in eating a healthy diet. I get that. And I also get the fact that consuming supplements are generally a pretty easy strategy for making sure that we stay healthy. But man, there is a lot of ways that you can go really wrong in your supplement strategy. I get people all the time who have lists of things. They don't know what the doses are, they don't know what the brands are, and they don't even know why they're taking it. And I appreciate when some people literally come out and say that, like, I don't know why I'm taking it, but I heard that it was good for me. Anyway, I wanted to tie that all back into our recommendations for oxidative stress, for dealing with inflammation, because again, we're bombarded with additional stress from the holidays. Choosing those anti-inflammatory foods and spices are really key, even during a time like right now during the holidays, or maybe even making some holiday foods that are rich in some of these things like cocoa, like berries, like curcumin, which is turmeric, which you can include in things like curries. You can put turmeric on your scrambled eggs in the morning, add a little bit of black pepper, which is Bioprene, the active ingredient Bioprene, which increases the absorption of turmeric, which is a very, uh, high-potency anti-inflammatory compound from— or the active ingredient is curcumin. It increases the potency by 2,000%. Like, what? That's insane. So a little bit of turmeric, a little bit of black pepper, doing great. And then you don't necessarily have to consume a supplement, which, uh, when it comes to curcumin, that's a, that's a pricey supplement. Price may not be an issue for you. That's totally fine. And also, I want to make sure that people are justifying why are you doing turmeric. Now, when it comes to turmeric or curcumin, there are also some genetic SNPs that actually don't do well with curcumin, interestingly. So I know there's not one size fits all supplement strategy for everyone, which is why it drives me nuts— as a side note— when so many of the— these other podcasts and whatnot are promoting various supplement products that everybody should eat. That is not the case at all. Not everybody should be taking all the same things. You guys are all different and unique in both your lifestyle, your dietary patterns, your preferences, and the things that you're trying to do. So anyhow, lifestyle things that can help when it comes specifically to oxidative stress, since we're going down that reactive oxidative species, uh, hole today, are things like excessive— I know I mentioned zone 2 training, that's super important— but extensive or excessive High-intensity interval training or excessive endurance training can actually increase your potential for oxidative stress. So that, you know, I'll call this a shameless plug. Work with one of our coaches so that you have, if you're trying to get somewhere, doesn't even have to be one of our coaches, but work with a coach. If this is something that, if you're doing ultra running, if you're doing Ironmans, if you're doing lots of high-intensity exercise, make sure that you're mitigating it in a way that is allowing for proper rest and recovery, especially if you know that you have some of these genetic SNPs that are more susceptible to higher levels of oxidative stress. So manage that training regimen, ensure that rest and recovery, and ensure that you're getting that good quality nutrition, that you're not eating excessive amounts of sugar or alcohol, things like that. And then limit contact with strong pro-oxidants like your heavy metals. You can get your water tested. In fact, if you think that there might be heavy metals in your water or in your soil, let's say you have your, uh, have a garden and you know you don't know where, what was on your land in the past, could there be some sort of metal contamination from something in the surrounding soils? Excess pesticides, things like mold, radiation, high doses of iron. So definitely don't be taking iron unless it is prescribed by a healthcare provider. Based on your specific numbers, because high doses of iron and copper can be pro-oxidant. And like I had mentioned before, that long-term high-dose oral vitamin C, uh, vitamin A, and vitamin E also can interfere with the body's natural antioxidant response. So just like I had mentioned just a moment ago, sleep— so adequate rest and recovery, sleep. Some of us need 9+ hours, but certainly 7 to 8 hours a night. And when we look at genetics, oftentimes we will see the importance of more sleep. And I know oftentimes that just rocks people's boats, like, oh my gosh, I could never get more than 7 hours of sleep because of X, Y, and Z. I'm not a magician, y'all. I'm just telling you what's on paper, and I know what can be helpful for you to live a long, active, and healthy life. That's At the end of the day, our goal, and that's certainly our goal when it comes to the 21-Day Nutrition Reset Challenge, is giving you the tools you need. So recipes, plans. In fact, I just added another plan, another week's worth of recipes to— so we now, we have 80, probably over 100, 110 recipes now in our repertoire for this 21-Day Nutrition Challenge. Because I wanted to make sure that y'all had access to easy, convenient options for going through this plan. So I added air fryer recipes, I added pressure cooker recipes, and I also added slow cooker recipes. So trying to make it as easy as possible for you to prepare meals. And there can be some other paths to doing that. We can talk through that once we get into the challenge, but they— you don't have to be a a gourmet cook every single night of the week or every single morning. It's all about finding a dietary pattern that works best for you, perhaps hitting repeat on a lot of these things so that you know that you're getting these whole plant foods, so you know you're getting your good quality protein, as we were just talking about when we started off. As you're getting your higher fiber, y'all gotta poop. I'm telling you what. And I hope that you're pooping every day. That is really critical when it comes to appropriate detoxification, and that ties into all of this as it relates to antioxidants, right? Another thing I wanted to mention, because it's related to oxidative stress, is one other supplement called glutathione. And I've, I've mentioned it a little bit already, but just found some interesting information, wanted to make sure you guys were updated. So historically, just taking just any old random glutathione has not been shown to raise your glutathione levels, and there's multiple ways in which they can be raised. So typically we're sort going in, if you'll, if you will, sort of the back door by doing strategies using something called N-acetylcysteine or NAC in order to raise your glutathione. 'Cause that's part of the, the glutathione process. And, and your body does this really well on its own, but as we start to age, it doesn't do it as well. And again, certain genetic SNPs are gonna contribute to not being quite as effective. What I have found in several different research studies is Liposomal glutathione is one that can really be more effective at raising your levels and getting through the gut in order to actually improve your glutathione. And in fact, some of these are pretty long-term investigative research studies, which is great. So what I did is on our blog for this page, so I'll put it in the notes, there's a couple of my favorites that you know you're at least getting a high-quality product. One of them is related to the postmenopausal women's study that I had mentioned, which is NO Inducers Nitric Oxide Support by Allergy Research Group. So that includes this very specific type of glutathione that is a liposomal form. So it's called Cetria. And then it also has some other things that are related to nitric oxide and heart health. And, and I find it fascinating that they're doing that post or that they did that postmenopausal research because when women are menopausal, their heart health— so without menopause, pre-menopause I should say, you are generally— is generally heart protective. And then post-menopausal, now we need to really be dialing in on our heart health, on our blood sugar support, etc. And interestingly, some of this glutathione is actually helping both of those. And to support that heart health too, we've also got some L-arginine in there as well, which helps with some of those vasodilation and beetroot powder, which you may have heard of as a typical NO or nitric oxide support. Anyhow, I will put that one on the show notes and the blog, and then some other liposomal glutathione that you might want to look into or consider in terms of your strategy for what you're doing. But again, making sure that you are checking with your nutrition-knowledgeable healthcare provider in this process. So anyway, all of that to say Hopefully this gave you some interesting information as it relates to what is anti-inflammatory eating, what is antioxidant foods, and the strategy. And then why did we create this 21-Day Nutrition Reset Challenge based on science to help you create those healthy choices as we go into the new year to support your body and your health and your energy levels and your ability to do really cool things like you're already doing, but just do them I'm freaking better, telling you, right? So as I always say, you are way stronger than you think you are, and I am so impressed with you. And thank you for following me all the way to the end here. Kudos to you. I'm so excited that you are interested in supporting your body so that you can continue to do great things and pass that along. When you do great things, your friends do great things, and your family does do great things. So high fives to you. So if you want to join us for that 21-day nutrition reset challenge, check it out, theenduranceedge.com/challenge. So theenduranceedge.com/challenge. It's only $57, and like I said, I just added even more recipes to keep it super simple for you to help your gut reset, to help your kitchen help you help your kitchen detox. And we're also going to do a lot of mindset work, and it is going to be amazing. I'm so excited for you guys to work with Coach Carly. So I hope you join us. $57, theenduranceedge.com/challenge. And y'all have a wonderful rest of your week. Thank you for listening. Thanks for listening to the Find Your Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And if you're interested in learning more about our endurance coaching, sports and wellness nutrition, metabolic and sweat testing, triathlon training team, or our triathlon training library, be sure to check us out at theenduranceedge.com. And don't forget to follow us on social media at The Endurance Edge. Thanks again, and we'll catch you next time.