Explore additional stories about optimal health at https://nathancrane.com/ Join me in this conversation with the brilliant Dr. Monisha Bhanote, a quintuple board-certified physician. Dr.Bhanote brings a wealth of knowledge on holistic well-being, specializing in cancer, chronic health issues, and much more. We delve deep into the intricacies of health and healing from an integrative and functional standpoint. Discover how to regain control of your well-being, re energize your life, and achieve optimal health. You’ll learn about lifestyle approaches, ancient medicine, and how to make your body function better on a cellular level.
Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insights that can change your life. Make sure to tune in and join the conversation!
Your host, Nathan Crane, is a Certified Holistic Cancer Coach, Best-Selling Author, Inspirational Speaker, Cancer-Health Researcher and Educator, and 20X Award Winning Documentary Filmmaker with Over 15 Years in the Health Field.
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Audio Transcript
(This transcript was auto-generated so there may be some errors)
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:29:01
Speaker 1
What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. I am excited to have my friend here, Dr. Monisha Bhanote, who is a quintuple board certified physician, quite an extraordinary human being and someone I’ve gotten to know over the last couple of years who knows a lot about health and healing from an integrative and functional standpoint. We’re going to get into a lot of that in this discussion.
00:00:29:10 – 00:00:51:05
Speaker 1
She has a specialty in cancer, but also helps people dealing with all kinds of chronic health issues, from digestive issues to autoimmune and you name it. She’s got a great YouTube channel and Instagram that’s got some good content pushing out there. You can go check out. And I actually found out about you, Monisha, from where we’re local residents, we’re local neighbors here in Jacksonville.
00:00:51:06 – 00:01:09:05
Speaker 1
I moved here couple of years ago and then saw your book. You were doing a book signing at one of the only like all organic restaurants here in Jacksonville that we found. And I was like, you had a flier there and your book about your book, I was like, This person sounds amazing. I need to get to know her.
00:01:09:05 – 00:01:10:24
Speaker 1
So here we are. How you doing?
00:01:11:20 – 00:01:35:07
Speaker 2
Yeah, thank you. Nathan. Yeah, that’s kind of interesting how people come together, right? We’re living in the same town, and you just came across something I was doing locally in a restaurant. Really? To share the message. And we are both very aligned in our message. So I think that was just perfect timing, timing, divine timing.
00:01:35:23 – 00:02:01:16
Speaker 1
So quintuple board certified, that is five board certifications. What did you do? Just study medicine for like 18 hours a day for like ten years nonstop or what? How did you talk about that? Why these which five? Why these five? And how much time of your life did that take to get these certifications? Because you still are very because you still are very young, which is amazing.
00:02:02:17 – 00:02:09:04
Speaker 2
Well, I’m luckily knock on wood aging pretty well due to all the knowledge that I have.
00:02:09:04 – 00:02:13:12
Speaker 1
So answering your thirties, I thought you were like 35 or something.
00:02:15:03 – 00:02:17:09
Speaker 2
But we don’t talk numbers or.
00:02:17:20 – 00:02:20:19
Speaker 1
Talk numbers.
00:02:20:19 – 00:02:53:04
Speaker 2
But so my, my formal trainings where the board certifications are in anatomic pathology, clinical pathology pathology, integrative medicine and culinary medicine. But my, my training is quite long in the past and spreads over a couple of decades in the sense that I started in internal medicine is, you know, this was the type of doctor I was quite familiar with a couple of decades ago, that this is how I’m going to help and heal people.
00:02:53:19 – 00:03:24:07
Speaker 2
And very quickly, within the first year, actually, of residency in New York, I realized that nobody was getting better. And I’m like, I’m working so hard. I’m working these long hours. I’m giving them everything they need to know my notes. Like I don’t even write like doctor notes, like scribble like mine or literally a typewriter. This is back where before we had EMR and we actually had handwritten notes on the most beautiful notebooks that you would ever see, a patient agent piece.
00:03:24:16 – 00:03:48:04
Speaker 2
And I would see those same patients again and again and again in a clinic. And I’m like, Wait a minute, you have this illness. Your I gave you this medicine, mind you, and you’re not getting better. So I’m like, Something isn’t making sense here. And I think it left both myself and my patients deeply unsatisfied with their health care experience.
00:03:48:20 – 00:03:56:03
Speaker 2
And so I decided to then go into well, I had two options. I said, I can’t do this for the rest of my life.
00:03:56:03 – 00:04:15:14
Speaker 1
What conditions were you for? Two options. What conditions were you seeing that were not getting better that opened your eyes? Were these chronic conditions, chronic health conditions, like we think of like diabetes and cancer and heart disease and these kind of things that medication is just to basically manage symptoms. Was that more of what it was or what were you seeing?
00:04:16:00 – 00:04:44:10
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes is some cancers. But in in in internal medicine and you’re kind of dealing with a chronic diseases, kidney diseases, this kind of stuff, right. And yes, they weren’t getting better and everything else kind of goes out to specialists at that time. And so I decided that I had a very, very strong foundation and background into two areas.
00:04:44:10 – 00:05:09:07
Speaker 2
One was radiology, which I had almost nine months of radiology and really interventional radiology and doing procedures and pathology. And that came from a metal medical school training and anatomy and pathology. I had a very strong foundation and I said, okay, I’m going to pick one of these two. And I picked pathology only because I didn’t want to sit in a dark room all day.
00:05:09:07 – 00:05:38:17
Speaker 2
And I’m like, That’s not going to be, well, good for my mental well-being. So I picked pathology, and I think they’re both two very compatible specialties. And then the fact that you’re really looking at the human body on this multidimensional level. And when I delved into pathology, there’s so many aspects of pathology and we really are looking at how do diseases develop, how are all of these diseases developing, not just symptom management.
00:05:38:17 – 00:05:59:02
Speaker 2
So I thought, all right, if I go into pathology, I might be able to help people get the correct answers they need in order to find the treatment they need. So I did a pathology residency and then I did a at it’s called NYU Winthrop now and.
00:05:59:05 – 00:06:01:17
Speaker 1
That’s four that’s a four year residency or how long.
00:06:01:17 – 00:06:30:02
Speaker 2
Was it that is. It’s a yeah. So I did a year of internal medicine for pathology. If we’re going to, if we’re going to do the math of how many years I’m training, trust me, it’s a lot. And then I did a year of psycho pathology in Cornell in the city, in the Upper East Side. I then began private practice, and in between there somehow, once again, after sitting and diagnosing disease after disease.
00:06:30:02 – 00:07:01:04
Speaker 2
Now, whether that’s a benign disease, like a reflux or colitis or a malignancy, like a breast cancer or colon cancer, and I’m looking at these patients charts and I’m going, Huh, there’s missing pieces in here. And I’m sitting in a tumor board week after week. And, you know, in the early years, we would just have, depending on the size of your hospital, you would have, you know, one tumor board where they present multiple different types of tumors.
00:07:01:04 – 00:07:31:10
Speaker 2
Now, so many facilities, or at least the latest ones that worked in our service, have specialized where we have just a breast tumor board, just a colorectal tumor board, just a head and neck, because those meetings are meant to create a multidisciplinary approach where you’re bringing together a oncologist, a surgeon, maybe a radiation oncologist, the pathologist and the whole health care team in order to help this person.
00:07:32:04 – 00:07:54:03
Speaker 2
But what I found was that we’d go in and have these meetings and it would be about, all right, here’s the size of the tumor. This is where it’s located. This is what we going to cut out. This is how we’re going to radiate it. And it’s like women. Where’s the person in all of this? All right. And I’m like, okay, still doing that for years and years and years.
00:07:54:03 – 00:08:18:07
Speaker 2
And I’m like, but if they’ve had the cancer, they’ve had the surgery, they’ve had the radiation, they’ve had the chemo. Why am I seeing these patients names back on my desk? And not just their names, but their actual glass slides of their tissue because now they have another colon polyp or now they have another breast lesion in the opposite breast.
00:08:18:17 – 00:08:38:00
Speaker 2
I’m going, what’s going on here? So for me, it was like I’m one of those people who I need answers, right? So I’m like, there’s got to be more to the story. And so that’s when I spent additional training. So I did a two and a half year fellowship at the Integrative Center for Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.
00:08:38:04 – 00:08:41:00
Speaker 1
That’s an area that’s a that’s an Arizona. Yeah.
00:08:41:10 – 00:09:15:08
Speaker 2
That’s in Arizona. And then I also did a culinary medicine training to kind of bring all of this to together. Right? So taking all these different things that I know, I basically combined this into the approach that I use now to take care of my patients. So if you actually add up the years of undergrad, medical school residency, multiple fellowships, some simultaneously, but if you actually add them up, it’s about 19 years.
00:09:15:14 – 00:09:29:24
Speaker 2
So it’s actually more than your 12 years of high school and then another 90 on top of that. So now I just gave away my age, plus more. So if somebody wants to sit down and do that math, they can.
00:09:29:24 – 00:09:32:16
Speaker 1
49 is that right? So there may be.
00:09:32:16 – 00:09:33:06
Speaker 2
No.
00:09:33:14 – 00:10:02:04
Speaker 1
No, no. Now, I mean, it’s amazing how much what’s amazing to me and I think a really important takeaway is your mindset through all of this, which is, look what I am, what I’ve been told to do and what I’m doing is not working. I’m not seeing results. So let me try and find another path, another way forward, another way to get results.
00:10:02:04 – 00:10:31:21
Speaker 1
Most people, not just doctors, not just conventional doctors, which we know of today that are trained in pharmacology, they’re trained surgery, you know, radiation, drug therapy, etc.. Most doctors never asked questions. They’re so busy, right? Just patient after patient after patient outpatient, as I’m sure you were when you opened your practice, where it’s like it’s just, you know, get them in, get them out, get them in and get them out where before, you know, doctors would spend half hour to an hour with a patient just talking to them and taking notes, all kind of thing.
00:10:31:21 – 00:10:51:18
Speaker 1
Now it’s like you’re in and out in like 10 minutes, right? It’s just get them in and out. Get them in and out. And so a lot of doctors don’t have the time or don’t choose to ask those hard questions. And it’s true for so many people in their lives to where something’s not going right. It’s not going right in their business that, you know, in their work and their relationship with their health.
00:10:51:18 – 00:11:16:02
Speaker 1
And they’re seeing diseases pop up or they’re seeing weight gain or they’re seeing, you know, they’re losing the mental clarity they used to have. They don’t have the energy they used to have. And they don’t ask the questions, why? Where is this coming from? Why is it getting why am what I’m doing not working okay? If what I’m doing is not working, then let me figure out what to do to actually achieve what I’m trying to achieve.
00:11:16:02 – 00:11:41:13
Speaker 1
And the fact that you’ve asked those questions again and again and again and it led you down this long path to now where you basically are, you know, an integrative, functional medicine doctor, somebody who takes the best of of all worlds. Right. The best of natural medicine, of ancient medicine. I know you bring all your Vedic medicine and dietary and culinary and nutritional science into your patients.
00:11:41:13 – 00:12:11:08
Speaker 1
You look at the mind and the emotions, the spiritual well-being, the environment. You look at everything you look at the person and the the internal environment, the external environment of that person, which is any doctor who I’ve come to know or call a call a friend or a colleague over the last 17 years in my pursuit, you know, I’ve I have been on this pursuit of education research independently outside of school, you know, on my own and on, you know, through learning from others.
00:12:12:08 – 00:12:39:11
Speaker 1
The same thing has led me to this exact finding and all the doctors that I know in our circles. Right. You know, many of them and our friends and colleagues with them, they’ve come to a very similar conclusion. It’s very interesting where it’s like eventually all roads lead to here, but a lot of people have to go through a lot of dark times, a lot of challenges, a lot of lost lives, you know, a lot of pain and suffering until they get there.
00:12:39:11 – 00:13:14:06
Speaker 2
But absolutely, I think the key here is to really understand that. And and just to break some of the confusion for individuals that integrative medicine is not alternative medicine. It’s it’s really not dropping. What we know may help. Okay. It’s it’s looking at the individual person as a whole and taking the best approaches from all the possible health systems.
00:13:14:06 – 00:13:41:13
Speaker 2
And, you know, you can use whole body health systems like your data in traditional Chinese medicine, much more ancient systems. And you can use some of the things from conventional and then you can use some of the things from lifestyle approaches. And then you can use even the more advanced things like neutral genomics, right? So taking all the information we have available to us and saying how can we do a little bit better?
00:13:42:05 – 00:13:58:17
Speaker 2
How can we make this human’s body function better on a cellular level? Because, you know, I’m always talking about the cells and how can we then give them the tools in order for them to take care of themselves as they age in life and have a better life?
00:13:59:05 – 00:14:21:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly. And that’s the questions, I think, that need to be asked and answered in all medical schools. But they’re not today. And we know why. I mean, we know just follow the money, right. And see where the the funding goes towards the medical literature, where it comes from, where the largest percentage of it comes from. And you know why students aren’t learning this?
00:14:21:00 – 00:14:49:16
Speaker 1
I mean, imagine if, you know, you went to medical school and part of your training as a conventional medical doctor, whatever path you chose as a medical doctor included functional medicine as a big part of it, you know, diet and nutrition and in convention of medical school, when you were when you were studying for you, what was what training did you receive in in nutrition or lifestyle approaches for health?
00:14:49:16 – 00:15:09:16
Speaker 1
Did you receive any at all did you receive much at all? Because a lot of doctors, I know over the years at different schools received very little nutritional education or health, you know, health related disease prevention, natural disease reversal education in school. What was it like for you before you chose, you know, other.
00:15:09:16 – 00:15:47:07
Speaker 2
So you’ve got to remember, I did I trained a long time ago. I trained in the 1980s and the early 2000. Right. So even before people were having conversations around lifestyle and so the education within the institution was limited in a sense, meaning very minimal. And if you wanted to learn it, you were really learning it outside of that, I’m happy to say and happy to see that we’ve made some progress towards having integrative programs in different schools and universities and medical schools.
00:15:47:07 – 00:16:17:19
Speaker 2
Now also having culinary medicine, cooking kitchens in different universities. So we are slowly moving ourselves in the correct or better, but better direction. Right, because it’s that you don’t throw away the baby with the bathwater, right? You take everything and you build upon it. You say, what can I do better in the system? And the system definitely has a long way to go because as you said, a lot of it’s actually out of the hands of doctors.
00:16:17:19 – 00:16:43:17
Speaker 2
So I would never blame a doctor that they don’t have more than 10 minutes because I’ve been a patient myself and I’ve gone in and I spent more time in the waiting room than I actually spent with the doctor. Right. And it’s extremely frustrating as a patient. Yeah. But unfortunately, it’s not the doctors fault. It’s the way the system is set up via insurances and what they want you to do in order to make things happen.
00:16:43:19 – 00:17:13:14
Speaker 1
It’s a is a profiteering system like you said. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s very often not the doctors, it’s the hospitals, it’s the systems that they’re part of. It’s it’s it’s about profit. Right. And that’s the problem. There’s nothing wrong with profit. The problem that I see with our health care system is that it does put profits over people, just like pharmaceutical companies, put profits over people like a lot of, you know, very top level corporations today, certainly in the United States put profit over people.
00:17:13:22 – 00:17:24:11
Speaker 1
And you see it in our hospitals, in the health care system all the time. That profit comes first. People come sometimes very far down the list, you know, not even second maybe.
00:17:24:11 – 00:17:45:10
Speaker 2
Let me let me throw this this idea out to you, because this is something my mom always, often says to me. My wife’s mom, she goes, what are people going to do with all this money? They’re going to die and what’s going to happen right with their money? Okay. I’ll go on to to another family member who will go into this other cycle.
00:17:45:10 – 00:18:13:19
Speaker 2
Right. At the end of the day, your health is really your wealth, right? Because once you lose your health, you wish you would have done everything possible to to be ten steps ahead in the right direction. So, you know, I take care of patients as young as ten and 11 to up to the eighties. Right. And and all they want is to know how they can be healthy at whatever stage they’re in and continue on that path.
00:18:13:19 – 00:18:36:00
Speaker 2
Right. So your health is really your wealth. And I never want you to forget that. And I never want you to forget that you actually have control over it. And I was thinking about this thing. I was having this conversation with somebody the other day about the less you know, about how your body works, the more controlled you are by other people.
00:18:36:12 – 00:18:55:11
Speaker 2
Which is why I spend so much of my time educating my patients or educating people wherever I’m speaking about. How does your body actually work? Because that gives the control back to you. You don’t want somebody else controlling your outcomes, your future.
00:18:55:11 – 00:19:25:02
Speaker 1
It’s such a powerful thing to think about. And I mean, we saw it with this, you know, viral pandemic, right? Where people’s minds were completely taken control of through fear and ignorance. Ignorance not and I’m not shaming by saying people are ignorant. Ignorance, just the definition of ignorance, meaning you don’t know what you don’t know. And so the ignorance of not knowing that literally we we need viruses to survive.
00:19:25:02 – 00:19:47:10
Speaker 1
Viruses are a part of every part of our body, from our skins to our organs to our brains. And it’s this fear that viruses are evil and they attack you and they try to kill you. And it’s and it’s like, that’s not what viruses do at all. Right? In fact, some viruses obviously can affect our bodies in a negative way.
00:19:47:10 – 00:20:21:07
Speaker 1
But we also a lot of that has to do with our internal environment of our bodies, isn’t it? And it’s and it’s so much as you said, it’s like the more you understand about your body, about the the symbiosis, the symbiosis that we have with bacteria and viruses and fungi, and this interdependence, you know, beyond the old mindset of just sort of, you know, survival of the fittest, which we know, anybody who’s really studied nature knows that it’s not about survival of the fittest at all, actually.
00:20:21:07 – 00:20:37:12
Speaker 1
It’s about survival of the symbiosis, about, you know, about the harmony between all living beings. That’s what creates true survival beyond survival, but thriving. But yeah, I mean, can you talk about that from your perspective? Let’s talk about viruses for a little bit.
00:20:38:04 – 00:21:06:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. So I want you to think of your body as a you have this inner ecosystem right in your body. And this ecosystem in itself has to work harmoniously because if it does not work harmoniously, that’s when you end up with symptoms, which then symptoms become diseases and so on, right? So an example I like to often give is imagine Lake Tahoe, right?
00:21:06:00 – 00:21:27:12
Speaker 2
And Lake Tahoe is is always in these pictures as this pristine blue lake where you can if you stand in it, you can see your feet all the way to the ground. And there’s fish swimming around. And the water is super clear that the flora is just thriving. The fish are thriving. Everything around that, the air, the sky, everything looks great.
00:21:27:24 – 00:21:54:15
Speaker 2
Now, imagine if Lake Tahoe all of a sudden gets designate it as a waste dump site, and the next week a truck backs up and starts pouring all of its refuse. The plastic water bottles, the garbage, the extra wires that we collect because we can’t find our cell phone charger wires. Right. Like all this excess stuff going into Lake Tahoe.
00:21:54:21 – 00:22:28:23
Speaker 2
Right. And then you go back and you visit Lake Tahoe a week later. You can’t stand in that lake. Those fish are no longer alive. The flora is dead. That entire ecosystem has basically died. Now, you have to take that analogy that I just gave you and think about what’s happening in your body, right? So when we talk about all the different things and and how to make them thrive, it makes a difference what you put in your body, what you put on your body, and how much you love your microbiome.
00:22:28:23 – 00:22:52:20
Speaker 2
Your microbiome, which consists of all kinds of organisms, whether they are bacteria, yeast, viruses, whatever they are. You want the good guys there, right? Because those are the ones that are going to help protect against inflammation, protect against DNA damage, protect your immune system. Right. So think about it in this more bigger aspect of our own inner ecosystem.
00:22:54:09 – 00:23:14:15
Speaker 1
Speaking of, I’m remembering a this is a dad joke. Actually, my daughter told me this joke the other day, you know, my daughter and she’s 12. She’s turning 30. She’s going to be a teen. Can you believe it? She’s turning 13 next month. Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe it. Anyway, she told me this joke we’re talking about fungus, fungus, fungi, yeast.
00:23:15:16 – 00:23:21:17
Speaker 1
She said, why was the mushroom invited to the party? Because he was a fun guy.
00:23:21:17 – 00:23:23:21
Speaker 2
The fungi they.
00:23:25:07 – 00:23:48:17
Speaker 1
Know. But really, it’s seriously, though, we the less you know, the more you can be controlled. If you’re told, you know, fungus is bad for you, viruses are bad for you, bacteria is bad for you. So what does that mean? As much hand sanitizer as possible, as much, you know, sanitization of everything as sterilization of everything as possible to keep everything super clean and kill all bacteria.
00:23:49:02 – 00:24:12:08
Speaker 1
That’s what antibiotics do, right? We want to go in and basically destroy the good and the bad inside of your microbiome. We don’t really care what it’s doing to the good. We’re just going to wipe it all out. So we’re going to give you antibiotics by otic, literally meaning life, anti meaning against life, antibiotic against life. We’re going to literally destroy life within you with this antibiotic.
00:24:12:08 – 00:24:40:00
Speaker 1
Now, some antibiotics could be useful in certain times. Again, this is where, you know, integrative medicine can come in. But a lot of times they’re very unnecessary and can cause more damage than good. But if you didn’t know that and you didn’t know that you need all these bacteria and viruses and different kinds of fungi in your system and in your body, and you live try to live a super sterile, fearful life away from all of the natural environment.
00:24:40:00 – 00:25:07:05
Speaker 1
What would happen is look at a hospital. More people get sick inside of hospitals. They’re supposed to be the most sterile places, right then. Then many other places. Also, look at these antibiotic resistant or these bacterial resist superbugs, right. Resistant to antibiotics. Why? Because it is against life. It’s against nature for us to try to over sterilize things.
00:25:07:05 – 00:25:33:11
Speaker 1
But if you don’t know this, then you just walk this path and end up like unfortunately, so many people today with all kinds of chronic diseases earlier or earlier cancers or earlier in earlier. Right. Cancers kills over 10 million people annually. A hundred years ago, cancer was almost unheard of. Diabetes type two diabetes, primarily diet and lifestyle is exploding into the millions and millions of people.
00:25:33:11 – 00:25:58:01
Speaker 1
And that’s something that is preventable in like almost, almost every single person Alzheimer’s, dementia, autoimmune, all these issues, chronic inflammatory issues are preventable diseases. And yet because people don’t because of what you said, people don’t know what they don’t know. They do pretty much what they’re told. They eat, you know, a lot of the poor foods that are out there that are leading to sickness and disease.
00:25:58:01 – 00:26:07:22
Speaker 1
And now we have, you know, a very sad pandemic of suffering among our fellow human beings that otherwise could be prevented.
00:26:07:22 – 00:26:40:19
Speaker 2
And so this is a great time for me to introduce you and your audience to a concept of functional culinary medicine, which is really something that, based off of my multiple trainings, I’ve really compiled into the principles of functional medicine, whether culinary arts, right? Because at the end of the day, this is going to help both prevent and it aims to treat diseases like cancer ultimately through a personalized evidence based approach.
00:26:41:01 – 00:27:07:12
Speaker 2
Right. Considering the individual’s genetic makeup, considering their lifestyle and of course, environmental factors. Right. Because it’s not just our lifestyle, it’s what’s going on in that environment. And we as individuals can influence that by our actions. So some of the key principles that I might incorporate in functional culinary medicine is a really a focus on food quality, right?
00:27:08:06 – 00:27:37:12
Speaker 2
What people are eating is not real food. If you don’t give your body nutrient dense food, it will. The cells basically get angry. They shrivel up, become damaged, become dysplastic because they’re asking for ingredients and you don’t give it to them. And over time, when they replicate, they replicate into something that’s not even a normal cell. It becomes an abnormal dysplastic precancerous cell.
00:27:37:22 – 00:27:57:21
Speaker 2
Right. So we want to make sure we’re focusing on our food. We also want to take a personalized approach to this. Right? So doing in-depth testing, if that could become the norm for everybody and not this testing that we wait until it’s bad enough that we’ve got a medication that we can stick on it, like cholesterol, for example.
00:27:57:21 – 00:28:21:00
Speaker 2
If you start seeing that year after year, slowly start creeping up, don’t wait for your doctor to tell you, Oh, it’s fine. Come back next year, see what you can do. And if your doctor can advise you, find another doctor who can. Because this is a lifestyle things right. Always a heavy emphasis on gut health right. In your Veda.
00:28:21:00 – 00:28:48:11
Speaker 2
We believe all the disease starts in the gut. It’s been said before all disease starts in the gut. Right? Our immune system lives in the gut. Our neurotransmitters are made in the gut. So if you don’t have a strong or healthy gut, which is, by the way, highly influenced by the food you put in your mouth and the plate you have in front of you, you’re going to at some point have some illness that you’re going to have to deal with.
00:28:49:05 – 00:29:06:00
Speaker 2
Some of the other principles and functional culinary medicine I might incorporate would be mindful eating right. So how many of us are eating in the car on the go, walking, talking, eating and not actually sitting down and giving ourselves a chance to absorb the nutrients?
00:29:06:10 – 00:29:29:10
Speaker 1
I’m very guilty of that. Still, even as much as I know about mindful eating, as much as I’ve practiced, as much as I’ve taught about it, I’m still guilty of it. I sit and eat and I play chess. I love to play chess. So that’s like one of the things that I do and I’m eating is I play chess, which is to me is kind of calming and relaxing though.
00:29:29:11 – 00:29:50:15
Speaker 1
So I wouldn’t call it mindful eating, but it’s it could be better than sitting and watching some intense, you know, drama or something, right. Because talk about why mindful eating, it’s because you’re you’re basically engaged doing certain hormones that may disrupt with digestion. Can you talk a little bit about it?
00:29:51:12 – 00:30:27:17
Speaker 2
So a little bit more about mindful eating. So we want to take away the TV dinners that were developed in the eighties where you’d pull up like, you know, the fold up table, you put the TV dinner out, you sit in front of your TV and then you just eat whatever was there, right? We want to go towards mindful eating and that mindful eating can start as early as the preparation of your food, meaning you’re actually looking at the food you have in front of you, what you’re preparing, that you have a well-balanced, predominantly Whole Foods plant based diet as much as possible, wherever you are on your journey of nutrition.
00:30:27:24 – 00:30:59:24
Speaker 2
But you’re looking at the colors of the rainbow, making sure you’re getting nutrients in there, phytonutrients, all these different ingredients. Right. Most people are eating basically brown, white and a little bit of green food, very little. But a majority of their plate is a brown or white food. Right. And I want you to focus more on this colorful array, because each of those things has multiple nutrients, hence phytonutrients, whether they’re carotenoids, flavonoids, whatever they might be in there that are going to fight disease.
00:30:59:24 – 00:31:27:10
Speaker 2
Right. So like I said, it starts as early as making your what I call mise en place, right? So this is a chef’s term where you put everything in front of you and you look and you’re like, everything’s organized and it makes everything super easy to put together. And then next step, start smelling it, right? So as you’re cooking the food, when you start inhaling it, your olfactory senses go into hyperdrive and then tell the body in the brain that, Oh, it’s time to eat, right?
00:31:27:10 – 00:31:56:02
Speaker 2
So any time you can imagine, you smell something that has a good smell. I remember one of the hospitals I used to work in around lunchtime. You’d always smell in the hallways chocolate chip cookies because they had the Otis whatever, chocolate chip cookies baking and it smelled the entire hospital hallway. But by that smell, what you’re doing is you’re activating things to start releasing digestive enzymes, right?
00:31:56:02 – 00:32:19:01
Speaker 2
So your digestion process is already starting before your food even gets into your stomach. Then as you have the food and you put it in your mouth, remember to chew. We often don’t allow the food to break down even before it gets to our stomach. And then we wonder why we’re so bloated and after we eat a meal is that you didn’t take time to chew?
00:32:19:01 – 00:32:44:20
Speaker 2
And if you need if you’re one of those people like me, like I am not a fan of I love salads. I eat salads every day, but I do not like the cutting of the salad. So I actually have a device that like when I travel, I bring with me to cut it down and chop it up. So that way I’m making sure that I’m able to start getting as much of these veggies in right and these fruits and veggies.
00:32:44:20 – 00:33:09:23
Speaker 2
And so and then if you think about the process of digestion, it does start in the mouth over the salivary glands, releasing digestive enzymes. It progresses through your esophagus, which essentially is more of a muscular type of organ because it’s pushing the food. And then it goes to your stomach where your stomach releases more enzymes to in order to break down the food that stomach needs.
00:33:09:24 – 00:33:35:07
Speaker 2
The help of the pancreas to send pancreatic enzymes that needs the help of the liver and the gall bladder to send bile, especially if you have eaten a very heavy fatty meal because bile is necessary to break down that food. Right. And then it continues its journey from the stomach into the small intestine, mostly duodenum, all the way into the small intestine, and then the large intestine.
00:33:35:07 – 00:33:59:16
Speaker 2
Right. So there’s this process that’s going on. And if we are basically sitting at a TV or sitting in a car, shoving down food, driving, being angrily talking to somebody, we haven’t taken the moment to slow down, to actually absorb any of those nutrients. So what’s going to happen? One, you’re not going to have the nutrients you need in order for your cells to function to you might become bloated.
00:33:59:16 – 00:34:08:22
Speaker 2
Three, You might become constipated and wonder why that? Because you didn’t really support digestion to the best of your ability.
00:34:08:22 – 00:34:37:22
Speaker 1
I interviewed a neuroscientist many years ago, this probably 12 years ago, maybe maybe longer than that. About mindful because they did studies on this in his laboratory and they would look at the brain and they would look at and they would do mindful eating and take like a raisin or an almond or something. And just like slowly, you know, kind of suck on it and chew it slowly and just really experience.
00:34:37:22 – 00:34:56:01
Speaker 1
I recommend anybody. It is. It’s actually a really cool practice. Just take it like spend 5 minutes with like just a raisin at a time. For example, look at it, observe it and put on your tongue and feel it and kind of taste it and then slowly chew into it. And, you know, they were doing studies on the brain.
00:34:56:01 – 00:35:17:01
Speaker 1
What happens? And, you know, what he found is it takes roughly 20 seconds from that food entering into your mouth and you chewing it for your brain to then signal the rest of your body, Hey, this is a raisin. Here’s what we need to do. Boom. We need these enzymes. We need this process. We need da da da da da.
00:35:17:01 – 00:35:38:10
Speaker 1
As you said, it can happen. It can start to happen even before that with certain smells, but with a, you know, food like a raisin, you’re not really going to smell it. So you put it in and it’s 20 seconds. Now, go think about what a lot of our grandparents and even parents may have said growing up. Make sure you choose your food choo choo at least 20 times.
00:35:38:10 – 00:36:00:21
Speaker 1
Write 20 times. You’re chewing one time per second. That’s 20 seconds. We have the neuroscience actually back that up now, which is which is incredible. Some of these, you know, kind of old ways of of being that somehow people have known way before the science and and yeah how many of us are just like on the go chewing swallowing you know, swallowing down our food?
00:36:00:21 – 00:36:22:13
Speaker 1
I mean, I grew up with four brothers, so if there was a good meal and you liked it and you wanted seconds, you had to wolf it down quick before you can get anymore. You know, that was like a habit I’ve had to, like, unlearn and probably still unlearning some of it to this day where, you know, slow it down to a little, spend a little more time chewing a little more time appreciating the food.
00:36:23:17 – 00:36:35:05
Speaker 1
I do look at my food. I do, you know, pray for it and give gratitude and thanks, you know, send good energy to it while I eat it. But I could certainly do better with mindful eating for sure.
00:36:35:05 – 00:37:05:15
Speaker 2
Yeah. And what you’re kind of talking about is something that’s often if individuals go through any mindfulness based stress reduction techniques, that is one of the techniques that we use when we’re helping people learn mindfulness more. Now, me personally, I’m not a fan of reasons that I feel like the texture gets really weird in the mouth and it kind of disrupts the experience, though I’ve actually taught taught this in my own retreats and depending on where I am.
00:37:05:15 – 00:37:29:02
Speaker 2
The last one, we did it with coconut water from a fresh from a fresh coconut. And can you imagine you’re on holiday and you haven’t taken like you’re drinking coconut water, but you haven’t taken a moment to actually stop cause he actually tasted it after the people did this exercise. And really, that was some of the best tasting coconut water I’ve ever had in my life.
00:37:29:07 – 00:37:44:11
Speaker 1
It’s true. It’s true with anything I’ve tested, with a bunch of stuff like I’ve tested with my kids. I take them through this mindful eating practice with almonds and like the flavor that comes out of the almond is like, I didn’t I didn’t know almost tasted this good, you know?
00:37:44:11 – 00:38:06:03
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m glad to hear that you are thankful before your meal. I’m going to give you one more thing to consider is to be thankful after your meal. You know, often, often we are very thankful before we have the meal, but taking a moment at the end which will then also allow you to process, am I full?
00:38:06:22 – 00:38:22:01
Speaker 2
Am I still hungry? You know, when you take that moment to pause, yeah. You can give yourself time to recognize where you are in your state of being full hungry. Maybe you overeat, right? So just a moment of pause with that after meal thankfulness.
00:38:22:14 – 00:38:50:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s really smart. There’s a and there’s a term maybe you can remember it. I think it’s from very common in Okinawa, Japan. That basically is a there’s a word I can’t remember is but it basically means like eat until you’re 80% full. And that’s that’s a part of the culture there. And it’s a really smart I mean, for health and longevity as a really, really smart thing to do.
00:38:50:02 – 00:39:14:04
Speaker 1
Right? Eat a little bit slower, let the food come down and settle in and then you can pay attention and go, okay, yeah, I’m feeling good. I don’t need anymore. You know, if you’re eating potato chips and Doritos and fried foods, you know, and processed garbage foods that have no nutrients, I mean, you can eat that stuff all day and not ever feel full, right?
00:39:14:04 – 00:39:33:16
Speaker 1
So what we’re talking about is real foods here because we’re eating basically garbage, food and candy bars and stuff like that. You don’t get full. That’s why you can just keep eating, eating, eating, eating, eating until you, you know, weigh £400 because that your body’s like, I need nutrients. I need nutrients. So you keep feeling hungry, hungry, hungry, and you’re like, I’m eating, but I’m still hungry.
00:39:33:21 – 00:39:43:05
Speaker 1
I’m still hungry. It’s like that because you’re not getting any nutrients from that food. Yeah. Versus you eat a real food because you get full very quickly.
00:39:44:03 – 00:40:03:24
Speaker 2
Yeah. Your cells are speaking to you. You have to take a moment to pause and listen to them. Otherwise they will speak very loudly when they develop a symptom. You know, that’s basically these are all signs of your cells. Speaking to you as I talk, you know. So pay attention to what your body is saying to you.
00:40:04:19 – 00:40:29:20
Speaker 1
It’s a good point. It’s something I, you know, try to help people understand as much as possible is, you know, things like diabetes, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, cancer, heart disease. Those are symptoms. All right. We think of them as this does. Invading disease has taken over my life. And it’s like no heart disease is a symptom of a unhealthy lifestyle.
00:40:30:05 – 00:40:59:15
Speaker 1
Cancer in most cases is a symptom of a toxic internal environment. External environment. Diabetes is a type two. Type one is still very questionable. Type two diabetes is a symptom of a unhealthy lifestyle. These are symptoms that present themselves due to how we live and eat. And if we can change the underlying causes that led to those symptoms, well then very often we can change the result of that symptom.
00:41:01:12 – 00:41:01:23
Speaker 2
100.
00:41:01:23 – 00:41:28:01
Speaker 1
Percent. I wanted to ask you so you’re really smart person, obviously very well educated, a lot of experience. We’ve worked with a lot of patients, have seen a lot of good results in your practice and your research and experience led you to a plant based diet, a whole food plant. What is that, a vegan diet, if you will, or, let’s say, a healthy version of a vegan diet?
00:41:30:21 – 00:42:01:09
Speaker 1
What do you think of people like? I don’t know if you follow Paul Saladino at all, Carnivore, M.D., or some of the other doctors out there, health doctors who are promoting a carnivore diet and saying or an animal based diet, which is, you know, meat in organs and fruit and saying that plants are actually bad for you because they have defense chemicals, they have anti nutrients, they have blah, blah, blah that are hurting you.
00:42:01:09 – 00:42:07:13
Speaker 1
And so you should avoid plants and you should eat meat and organs and fruit.
00:42:09:03 – 00:42:11:21
Speaker 2
Well, Nathan, that is a loaded question.
00:42:11:21 – 00:42:15:06
Speaker 1
And hey, we got time. We got time. So you gave.
00:42:15:06 – 00:42:47:07
Speaker 2
Me a loaded question here. All right. So I and I’m going to say this from my point of view, just from what have seen, like I said, I have been looking at literally trillions of human cells under a microscope for years and years and years. And they are being influenced by multiple factors, not just our diet, but the diet is one of those things that we are doing every single day, right?
00:42:47:08 – 00:43:16:14
Speaker 2
What we are eating, we’re going to continue to eat and the research, although young, I still find is enough to have converted me from eating everything. I mean, I remember a hospital food is basically pizza, turkey sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, whatever, you know, is in the doctor’s lounge, processed soups, mini soda cans. I mean, I grew up eating the stuff and in the hospitals, this is the stuff they have, right?
00:43:17:16 – 00:43:42:15
Speaker 2
When you look at a doctor, I want you to first of all, any doctor you are taking advice from, see how healthy they are. Right? Because I know plenty of cardiologists who go out in the back of the building of the hospital and smoking cigarets. I would not want to take health advice from them. Right. So definitely take a look at how healthy your doctor is that’s giving you advice they should be walking their talk right now.
00:43:43:07 – 00:44:12:15
Speaker 1
Too. Too. I agree with that 100%. And to defend Paul and I can’t remember the other, there’s a few other kind of, you know, medical doctors today who consider themselves, you know, functional medicine, doctors, teaching nutrition, carnivore as a way they they do look very healthy. And the funny thing about Paul is that his his cholesterol is very high.
00:44:12:20 – 00:44:38:22
Speaker 1
He shared his numbers, but he has a theory that cholesterol only matters in an environment of insulin resistance. And so, I mean, I could come to believe that theory, you know, if there’s evidence to support it. The problem is, is that he kind of tries to force that belief on everybody without solid evidence that that’s a fact. But he himself claims, you know, of energy.
00:44:38:22 – 00:44:52:07
Speaker 1
He’s is lean, he looks healthy, and some of the other doctors as well who promote this diet. So, I mean, just to defend them in this particular case, they do seem healthy. They don’t have insulin resistance and but anyway.
00:44:52:14 – 00:45:15:13
Speaker 2
Can give them a few years. All right. Since any of you just. Yeah, you just reminded me that. So I met Bob Harper, who was one of the hosts of Biggest Loser at a U with us Open one time. And I remember talking to him. He was promoting his book at that time. This was the year, years and years ago.
00:45:15:22 – 00:45:44:21
Speaker 2
And and and I’m just looking at I’m like, yes, totally fit, totally ripped person. Only years later to find out he had a heart attack, which most people would not have survived that heart attack. The reason he survived it is because he he was so like he his heart had the muscle. But that he was too young to have a heart attack because he was eating an extremely heavy protein diet that was not well balanced.
00:45:45:04 – 00:46:12:24
Speaker 2
Right. So when I’m thinking of these people who are eating a very heavy carnivore style diet and not well, balancing it, their actually missing out on phytonutrients that are going to fight their diseases. Right. Because you’re not going to get phyto, which means plant from animal products. Right. Then I’m thinking about the fact that there’s things in animal products.
00:46:12:24 – 00:46:34:20
Speaker 2
Not everybody, first of all, has access to grass fed beef and all these clean meats. And this is not what these people who are these celebrity doctors that are telling you to eat. Most people don’t have access to the foods that they’re eating, first of all. So that’s that’s another thing to keep in mind. But I want you to think about let’s just take it from the perspective of colon cancer.
00:46:34:22 – 00:46:59:10
Speaker 2
So just one cancer, which is absolutely on the rise in our younger population, in fact, colon cancer. And in fact, I have a friend who had colon cancer in their thirties. He still eats his steaks. And I’m going, well, you know, that is definitely your choice, but I wouldn’t be doing my duty as a doctor without sharing what I know.
00:46:59:10 – 00:47:34:02
Speaker 2
Right? So what I do know is that the more saturated fat and you get saturated fat from animal products, right? More saturated fats you eat, the more you stimulate your liver to produce more bile acids. Okay. So the more bile acids you have, the more it alters your gut microbiome. And remember, 80% of your immune system lives and your gut microbiome, when that microbiome gets altered, it creates a pro-inflammatory environment in your gut.
00:47:34:02 – 00:47:55:12
Speaker 2
Therefore increasing your risk of colon cancer. All right. So that’s one one reason for me to go. I’m not I am not messing with my gut microbiome in a bad way right now. Imagine those individuals who have actually had the gall bladder taken out because so many people had their gallbladder is taken out and they still continue to eat these fatty.
00:47:55:12 – 00:47:55:22
Speaker 1
Foods.
00:47:56:10 – 00:48:17:04
Speaker 2
Who don’t digest them very well because they don’t have the bile acid and the storage that the gallbladder used to do in order to break down the food. Right. So these these saturated fats are influencing your microbiome in a negative way. The other thing that I’ve noticed in and the research says, I mean, this is coming from the research, right?
00:48:17:04 – 00:48:41:11
Speaker 2
So whether you choose to believe it or not, and there’s going to be research on both sides, but to me, I’m looking at the individuals whose colon is sitting in front of me because they’ve had to now go into the operating room and have like a 12 centimeter piece of colon removed from them. And these tumors in real life, which you guys don’t get to see, which I wish I could show you, they are nasty, they are ugly looking.
00:48:41:11 – 00:49:06:24
Speaker 2
They look nothing like normal tissue in your body. Right? The second thing that happens, especially with a lot of red and processed meat, is heme iron. Heme iron, a heme iron which is found in red meat and processed meats. Basically, it produces a reactive oxygen species and so you can think of it as a pro oxidant instead of an antioxidant.
00:49:07:11 – 00:49:40:17
Speaker 2
And what does that pro oxidant do? It causes DNA damage. And that DNA damage is basically a catalyst for changes in compounds in your gut and changes to contribute that have a way of carcinogenesis from, you know, maybe a nothing in the colon to a toddler adenoma, which is essentially low grade dysplasia to a more cancerous lesion. And then the other one that I often talk about is heterocyclic amines, right?
00:49:40:17 – 00:50:10:07
Speaker 2
So, you know, summertime, everybody’s on the barbecue, the grill in their meat, they’re charring it down to the bone. Right. And when meat is cooked at high temperatures like grilling or frying, it actually creates heterocyclic amines that cause DNA mutations. DNA mutations contribute to cell proliferation, and which means that your human cells are turning over faster than they should, therefore contributing once again to colon cancer.
00:50:10:15 – 00:50:32:15
Speaker 2
So for me, that I mean, those are just a few reasons. Obviously, I know hundreds more. It’s enough to the when I’ve held in my hand your colon cancer your breast cancer, your uterine cancer, your lung cancer, all of this this is happening on a cellular level, right? All of this DNA damage that’s happening, there’s multiple things going on.
00:50:32:15 – 00:51:04:17
Speaker 2
It’s not just your food. It’s the you know, the beauty products you’re putting on your body. It’s the air you’re breathing. You know, there’s some things that are obviously out of our control, but I’m surprised to see some people are still smoking cigarets some people are still drinking alcohol like it’s a good thing for that. Me I’m protecting my DNA because if I can protect my DNA, I can protect myself and my cells will continue to flourish and replicate in a healthy state rather than a damaged state, if that makes sense.
00:51:04:17 – 00:51:28:04
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s that’s the more I saw, the more I dug into the literature and research and the more people I interviewed and the more cancer patients I worked with and the more I experimented in my own life. I came to the same conclusion and I still believe a whole food nutrient dense, plant based diet is the best diet for majority of people on the planet.
00:51:28:14 – 00:51:54:00
Speaker 1
And people go, Oh, there’s not one diet for everybody. Yeah, but you got to remember a whole food nutrient dense, plant based diet literally means you have hundreds of thousands of options of it within that diet. Now, at your local grocery store, maybe you don’t have that many options, but we have that many food, you know, edible. And I would consider most a medicinal plant species on the planet.
00:51:54:00 – 00:52:15:01
Speaker 1
You might not have access to them. We have access to dozens, sometimes hundreds, certainly in in powders and things now as well. But Whole Foods, you can buy from the grocery store, you know, dozens and dozens of options and mix it in so many different ways. So, I mean, I still believe that, but I but I do and I will continue.
00:52:15:01 – 00:52:40:17
Speaker 1
I’m not a zealot and I’m not so closed minded. Right. It’s like I’m always seeking truth. And that’s one of my early spiritual mentors when I was 20 years old, really helped me become serious about like the dedication to always seeking truth. And even if that truth means that maybe what I believe to be true up until a certain point maybe is not the full truth.
00:52:40:17 – 00:52:59:04
Speaker 1
And maybe it’s wrong or partially wrong. And so, you know, when I see people saying, oh, I have these issues and I switch to Carnivore diet and they went away and I’m healthier than I’ve ever been. You know, these doctors promoting carnivore diet, they’re saying, hey, it’s healing these kinds of chronic health issues and people are getting better, their numbers are better, diseases are going away.
00:52:59:04 – 00:53:11:11
Speaker 1
And I’m seeing this more and more and more and more. I’m like, okay, I’m going to pay attention. I’m going to watch, I’m going to listen, I’m going to research it. I’m going to question it as much as I possibly can. I’m not going to close my mind to it. Five years ago, I closed my mind to it.
00:53:11:19 – 00:53:32:19
Speaker 1
You guys are still beyond what you’re talking about now. I’m like, No, I can’t be that way. I need to be open to everything attached to nothing. That’s a Buddhist principle taught to me by Buddhist monks in San Diego over a decade ago, open to everything, attached to nothing. And so so I have to question and be like, okay, so what’s really going on there?
00:53:33:07 – 00:53:53:12
Speaker 1
I do believe, Paul, you know, I’ll say this publicly. I believe Paul Saladino is a brilliant man, but I also think he’s stupid. And I don’t mean that in a in a I’m not attacking him. I’m saying I think you can be brilliant and stupid at the same time. And he may be on to something I don’t know.
00:53:53:23 – 00:54:18:24
Speaker 1
But when he comes out and then says, you know, it comes with all these claims that you should not eat plants because, you know, kale and bok choy and broccoli and legumes and beans and these things, they have anti nutrients and they don’t want to be eaten and they have lectins and they have all these, you know, things that that are bad for you and saying plants are bad for you shouldn’t eat them.
00:54:18:24 – 00:54:42:05
Speaker 1
That’s a stupid part like that, is it? Number one, there is zero evidence showing and you can look into the research and I’m sure you have because I have zero evidence. And in fact, evidence that does show if you eat a whole food, nutrient dense, plant based diet, those little tiny so-called anti nutrients don’t affect you in a way that would be important.
00:54:42:06 – 00:55:03:07
Speaker 1
Like they’re not. We’re talking minimal percentages of of calcium binding molecules that pull out, you know, a few percent of calcium. Well, when you’re getting lots of calcium through a nutrient diverse diet like we’re talking about, you don’t have to worry about it. An unhealthy vegan diet. You would have to worry about it if you’re eating Doritos and potato chips and garbage food.
00:55:03:07 – 00:55:26:24
Speaker 1
Yeah, you’ve got to worry about being lacking nutrients. Right. But you know, the other thing too is like the way we prepare foods and the way we’ve prepared foods for centuries and our ancestors have prepared plant foods for centuries and have done so safely and healthfully, removes most of those things anyway, like lectins and so forth, removes majority of it.
00:55:26:24 – 00:55:51:20
Speaker 1
Like when you cook beans fully, no one’s going to go eat a raw B, right? Like, would you? You’re going to break your teeth. People may undercooked it and then have excess lectins, but you don’t want undercooked. You cooked the beans until they’re soft and that’s something you would naturally do anyway. Well, guess what? You’ve just. Or if you soak the beans or soak the rice, you know, ahead of time, like people have done for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, all of these.
00:55:51:20 – 00:56:12:12
Speaker 1
So anti nutrients are deactivated, majority of them. So that’s the part I say, well, yeah, you’re kind of stupid when you come out and maybe you’re on to something with the meat in the fruit. I don’t know because I don’t know any studies that we have that have looked at 20 or 30 have followed patients for 30 years on a carnivore diet the way that they teach it.
00:56:12:12 – 00:56:29:04
Speaker 1
Right. Most of studies we have people are on, let’s be honest, junk food, American diets, they eat a lot of meat, but they eat a lot of processed food, a lot of hamburgers from McDonald’s, a lot of garbage food. So we know there’s a lot of toxins and and, you know, all kinds of additives and all kinds of other junk in there, too.
00:56:29:16 – 00:56:46:07
Speaker 1
So, you know, that’s that’s where it’s like, okay, but we don’t have evidence, long term evidence to say this is good or bad for you. So I think you have to take it really carefully and with a grain of salt. And I think where the problem is, these people are coming out and saying plants are bad for you.
00:56:46:12 – 00:57:03:08
Speaker 1
You carnivore diets the way to go. You know, this is the only thing I might did. You’re like, I mean, maybe you’re leading millions of people down a path of devastation in ten or 20 years, you know? And then what about to do no harm, right.
00:57:03:08 – 00:57:29:24
Speaker 2
I definitely feel there is a lot of this versus that and a lot of confusion out there right. But I highly advise you, first of all, start with the simple aspect of what are you eating to begin with? Because if you are eating the standard American diet and you’re picking up, take out or drive thru every night, you don’t need to worry about meat versus plant.
00:57:29:24 – 00:57:52:17
Speaker 2
We’ve got somewhere else to start with. You. Right? So you got it like, you know, before everybody loves controversy, right? But but I want you to remember that anytime you engage yourself in controversy, you’re also increasing your own internal stress hormones, your cortisol. Right. So what happens then? You’re going into your own sympathetic psych response, right? What happens then?
00:57:52:17 – 00:58:14:24
Speaker 2
You’re decreasing anything you’re going to digest because digestion happens in your parasympathetic state. So if you’re creating this whole environment of this versus that in any aspect of your life, you’re losing the game. And I want you to win the game. So start with the simple aspects of it. So I think probably people would love to know Nathan and I’ll share what I did.
00:58:15:01 – 00:58:18:07
Speaker 2
What did you eat for lunch today?
00:58:18:07 – 00:58:38:22
Speaker 1
I made a green curry with tofu and sugar snap peas and brown rice with garlic and onion and a lot of good herbs and coconut water.
00:58:40:09 – 00:58:42:15
Speaker 2
Okay. And you didn’t invite me over for lunch, and.
00:58:42:15 – 00:58:44:08
Speaker 1
I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
00:58:45:05 – 00:58:48:05
Speaker 2
I know you could have done this interview in person.
00:58:48:12 – 00:58:56:00
Speaker 1
It was so good. You know what? That’s a great idea. Why don’t we think of that? Next time we do it, we should do it in person. But anyway.
00:58:56:00 – 00:59:28:11
Speaker 2
So for me, lunch is usually my my salad sub, five cups of mixed greens, edamame. So I did have my, my story for the day. I believe there was some black rice in there and then a bunch of almost cubed and diced different veggies, which include included carrots, zucchini and cucumber, and then always topped with either nuts or seeds.
00:59:28:11 – 00:59:35:14
Speaker 2
So this this was a combination of cashews and hemp seeds with a green dressing like a homemade green sauce.
00:59:35:14 – 00:59:46:08
Speaker 1
You know what would have been amazing is that salad with my curry and my curry with your salad. Like, we split that half in half. That would have been perfect. You’re kidding me.
00:59:46:14 – 00:59:47:24
Speaker 2
Yes, we should do that.
00:59:49:14 – 01:00:06:02
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, I try to get normally when I make a curry, I actually put more veggies, but we were like running out of veggies. My wife hadn’t gone to the store yet. She literally went soy yesterday evening. And I made this dish yesterday at lunch, so I had some yesterday and today. Usually I’ll put more veggies in it actually.
01:00:06:02 – 01:00:28:10
Speaker 1
But literally the only fresh veggies I had were the peas. But I try to get, you know, anywhere. I mean, on the low end, I think days I might get four servings of veggies on a high end, six or seven. But I, you know, the way to get more veggies in for me is in the morning in my smoothies.
01:00:29:08 – 01:00:55:13
Speaker 1
I mean, I’d have green juice most mornings, but you’re not getting the fiber. I’m still getting the nutrients from the vegetable green juice. But then I’ll do a smoothie and I’ll put in like celery, cucumber. I’ll put in, you know, let’s just let’s say veggies right now, calorie, celery, cucumber, spinach and or kale. And I’ll put a good amount of each in or I’ll do carrots and I put fruit and other things in there too.
01:00:55:22 – 01:01:12:12
Speaker 1
But so that way I can get anywhere from, you know, about three servings just first thing in the morning in my smoothie. And then that way the rest of the day, it’s like I get one or two servings at lunch, one or two servings at dinner, and I’m already at like six or seven servings of veggies for the day.
01:01:12:12 – 01:01:13:22
Speaker 1
It makes it so much easier that way.
01:01:14:16 – 01:01:34:20
Speaker 2
Okay. I’m going to I’m going to give you a little bit of a challenge, Chair. I’m going to take my functional culinary medicine approach on you and combine some data. So in our data, we, we don’t want to be putting that whole of a food into our body. So hopefully you’re not adding ice or something to make it very cold because.
01:01:34:23 – 01:01:44:24
Speaker 1
That’s how hot it is. It depends how hot it is in the morning because yeah. Lately here in Jacksonville been insanely hot in the morning in my garage when I’m working.
01:01:44:24 – 01:02:19:18
Speaker 2
And you, I don’t want you to turn off that digestive fire or that agony that that you really want in order to digest all of these, like, raw foods. Because for for the people listening who go, oh, well, that I can do that in the morning, I can do that smoothie. And then all of a sudden and then I’m like, Well, now I’m not feeling well because I did this smoothie of all this raw stuff and it’s not something they’re used to eating right that then they blame the plants and it’s not the plant’s fault can be people who do not blame you blame your plant it’s just maybe the timing of that is not
01:02:19:18 – 01:02:42:20
Speaker 2
right for you, or maybe this is not the correct thing for your particular dosha per se, right? So for me, I always think about personalizing your your own profile of what you’re going to have for the morning and really taking the concept of these are the foods I eat for breakfast, these are the foods I eat for lunch, and these are the foods that I eat for dinner.
01:02:42:24 – 01:02:54:12
Speaker 2
And looking at which of these foods is better for your body at that particular time. So for me, you know, my body loves cooling foods just based off of my dosha, right?
01:02:54:15 – 01:02:58:01
Speaker 1
So anything if you find you must be fire like me.
01:02:58:01 – 01:03:34:15
Speaker 2
I’m like fire on the fire TV. Yeah, the cooling foods are going to be great, right? So cucumbers, watermelon, all all of those cooling foods are going to be great. But sometimes maybe if you’re imbalanced and you want some more warming foods. So like somebody who is not so fiery and maybe somebody who is slow and sluggish and has more of a cough auto show where they’re more slower and then they put this this smoothie in there that they cannot digest because it’s raw, uncooked food.
01:03:34:23 – 01:03:39:13
Speaker 2
They might be better off having a smoothie for breakfast. Like a cooked one. Like a vegetable.
01:03:39:17 – 01:03:58:22
Speaker 1
Like a vegetable soup. Yeah. Yeah. So my wife’s that way. She’s like, we’re opposite. So she’s, like, really cold all the time. I’m more warm, right? She wants more warm foods. I generally want more cooler foods. Depends on the temperature, too. Like if it’s warm out, like, I do not want warm food or like, like a hot soup or something.
01:03:58:22 – 01:04:21:21
Speaker 1
Like if it’s hot out, you know, but generally, yeah, so we have those, those opposites. But that’s how like she loves a warm something, you know, in the morning and I start with a warm drink in the morning like I do, I make a decaf latte with mushroom powder into cow first thing in the morning, but.
01:04:21:22 – 01:04:22:20
Speaker 2
Well, that sounds good.
01:04:23:07 – 01:04:39:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s really good. That’s. Oh, but, but, but yeah, like you’re saying, it’s like learning what works for your body, at what time of the day. I also think what the temperature is too, I mean, it doesn’t make a difference because depending how the temperature is, depends like what I want to put in my body.
01:04:40:11 – 01:05:00:21
Speaker 2
So. So there is this concept, an area where you want to eat seasonally, right? So there’s a reason why in the summer we have more cooling foods like fruits and watermelons and why in the winter we have more pumpkins and sweet potatoes and all of this available to us. Obviously, this is going to vary across where you live, like in California.
01:05:00:21 – 01:05:17:13
Speaker 2
You can probably get anything any time of the year. Think temperature wise, right. So you want you want to look at where you’re living, what’s available. Not only is that food going to be better for you, it’s going to be fresher, meaning it’s going to have more nutrients because it didn’t have to travel miles and miles to get to you.
01:05:17:13 – 01:05:29:02
Speaker 2
Because if you’re trying to get fresh strawberries in New York City in the winter, I guarantee they’re coming from not in New York. FARMER But the California farmers and now Mexico.
01:05:29:15 – 01:05:52:08
Speaker 1
Come in from Mexico and Central America or South America, and they pick them way too. It’s like, I can’t eat strawberries. It sucks because, you know, unless it’s local or they’re seasonal because they taste so terrible when they’re out of season because they pick up so early, by the time they get to you, they ripen, but they there’s no flavor in them, you know, like they taste terrible.
01:05:53:00 – 01:06:19:11
Speaker 2
That that is a very good point. And I and I don’t think most people realize how good different foods can taste until they’ve tasted really good real food. Like, I know, avocados. I’m sorry. I’ve been spoiled. I’ve lived in California. So avocados from California are absolutely delicious. And in other places, they taste like absolutely nothing. You’re right. Same thing with strawberries, right?
01:06:19:20 – 01:07:00:24
Speaker 2
So try and buy locally whatever is available, that food is going to taste better. Another thing you just reminded me of is some of our big retail of ours that are selling produce. I was very disappointed to to say, since we’re talking about different foods, that sometimes in order for them to reach these far destinations, like if they’re coming from South America or they’re coming from the West coast to get to us, they are actually sprayed with chemicals in order to keep them looking fresh.
01:07:01:10 – 01:07:15:02
Speaker 2
Okay. What are those chemicals happens to be petroleum. And so the local peaches right now that we are getting in, the stores are drenched in petroleum in order to fill that lot.
01:07:15:03 – 01:07:21:23
Speaker 1
Some petroleum doesn’t love some petroleum on their fruit. Come on, patrol petroleum all day, all instead all day.
01:07:21:23 – 01:07:45:19
Speaker 2
And on the side of the box. And I really I really should take a picture of it because I was blown away that a more consumer friendly retailer was doing this. And I’m like, Well, that’s quite disappointing. So I think at the end of the day, once again, we go back to the less you know, the more you are controlled.
01:07:46:05 – 01:07:53:09
Speaker 2
Therefore learn as much as you can and don’t get overwhelmed by it, but apply a little bit every day.
01:07:54:04 – 01:08:18:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good point. So what do you think about, you know, obviously promoting a whole food plant based diet, a healthy version. So I always have to qualify a healthy version of a vegan diet because like vegan can mean so many things and so many people and it can’t just because it’s vegan doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
01:08:18:18 – 01:08:39:00
Speaker 1
So that’s why it’s it it sucks. But I always have to qualify when I’m talking about it. Talk about a whole food nutrient as like real food biodiverse diet. Like think about a salad that you just shared with us. I mean, in that alone, you had, you know, nuts and seeds and vegetables and I think some healthy fats in there.
01:08:39:00 – 01:09:19:06
Speaker 1
You had, you know, just different colors in there, different kinds of veggies and nuts and seeds in there, and just one salad alone. And you’re mixing and increasing that diverse ity throughout all of your meals throughout the day. But just because we say vegan or even plant based doesn’t necessarily mean it’s healthy. This big push, you know, these these fake vegan meats and people who are like, yeah, I want to go vegan because I heard it’s healthier, I want to go vegan, I heard it helps the planet or I wanna go vegan because I actually like animals and I don’t want to kill them, you know, or, or whatever the reason is.
01:09:19:18 – 01:09:41:23
Speaker 1
But then you go down a vegan or plant based path and you end up buying all of these fake meats because they taste delicious. They look like something you’re similar to. You’ve been eating. They look and taste kind of like meat. But what are your thoughts on on the vegan fake meat should people eat them or should they avoid them?
01:09:43:06 – 01:10:16:14
Speaker 2
Processed is processed is processed no matter whether it’s a processed vegan meat or a processed actual meat. Hot dog. Right. So processed food is the category that you want to stay a very far, far away from, no matter no matter what. And I know that companies are trying to find a happy medium between what the standard American diet is and really getting people to a Whole Foods diet.
01:10:16:14 – 01:10:38:12
Speaker 2
But at the end of the day, those burgers or chicken nuggets or whatever that are made from ingredients that aren’t really identifiable or made in a lab is still processed. Right? So nothing wrong with eating a veggie burger. But imagine if you made your own veggie burger with black beans, quinoa, maybe sweet potato, put some spices in it.
01:10:38:14 – 01:10:58:18
Speaker 2
And that’s your burger. Not something that I like personally. I don’t even like the texture of those things. I find it very strange and I used to be a meat eater. I absolutely did. I remember when I finished my board exam decades ago, what did all of us do after our board exam? We all went to the steak house and we had a big piece of stick.
01:10:58:18 – 01:11:20:19
Speaker 2
Each of us I remember it like it was yesterday. It was decades ago. But but at the end of the day, it’s still processed, right? So that goes back to a Whole Foods plant based and as much as possible. And I know on your good day you’re at six that my challenge was going to be to try and get you to ten a day.
01:11:21:04 – 01:11:27:13
Speaker 2
I really challenge you to look at ten servings veggies and fruits a day.
01:11:28:05 – 01:11:30:05
Speaker 1
Ten the ten of each.
01:11:30:20 – 01:11:32:00
Speaker 2
No, ten to get there.
01:11:32:01 – 01:11:49:06
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get two, I get ten together. Yeah, yeah, I get ten together. I was just I was just seeing how many veggies that I get in a day? How many vegetables which I’d get between four to 4 to 7 usually, but fruits. Same thing. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll get at least four to a day of fruit.
01:11:50:15 – 01:12:16:17
Speaker 1
Blueberries. Blueberries are my favorite. I put blueberries in everything. I put them in my smoothie. I put fresh blueberries in my in my oats. But I do, you know, bananas and oranges and Mandarin and when my wife gets mangoes, fresh mangoes and cuts them up and they’re ripe, oh, there’s nothing better than a good, ripe, fresh mango. You’re kidding me.
01:12:16:17 – 01:12:48:10
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, I love fruit. Who doesn’t love fruit? Like when you when you start to you know, I used to be addicted to sugar processed sugar ice cream like I could eat. So much ice cream. I get so many candy bars, I get so much, you know, processed sugar, junk food and obviously never feel satiated. But as I started back in 2007 or 2008 when I did my first cleanse and then, you know, went five days without food and basically just water and lemon juice and things like that.
01:12:48:10 – 01:13:07:14
Speaker 1
And then I started getting really in tune with my with my body and my digestive system and kind of coming out of that cleanse and then starting to research health and nutrition and then doing more and more cleanses. So like the more that I cut, the more time I had away from those processed sugars, the the lessened. I felt called to eat them.
01:13:07:23 – 01:13:25:15
Speaker 1
And over time, like when I always had ice cream in the freezer, I mean, I’ll go months now, I’ll go years without ice. Like, no desire to have ice cream if I like. The other day I was like, Oh, I’m going to make some ice cream. And I make like frozen strawberries with frozen mango and throw a banana in there, splash orange juice, blend it up.
01:13:25:15 – 01:13:41:13
Speaker 1
And it’s like, that’s the most delicious ice cream you could ever have, you know, versus these tubs, ice cream with so much processed sugar in it, where I used to be addicted to. Like I had to eat tons and tons of it I have no desire. Like it is so hyper powdered, really sweet that I have no desire for it.
01:13:41:13 – 01:14:02:10
Speaker 1
I’m sharing that because the more you clean in my case and many others I’ve talked to, the more you clean out your body, the more fresh foods you put in, the less and less of these, you know, hyper palatable super sweet, you know, delicious foods, fake foods that you put in. It’s like the less you want them. I have no desire to eat many of those foods anymore.
01:14:02:10 – 01:14:18:19
Speaker 1
And if I do like I wasn’t potato chips or something, it’s like once in a blue moon. Like, I’m not so strict, like, oh, I can’t have some potato chips once a month, you know, on a trip traveling somewhere or whatever. I’ll let myself have that, but I’ll eat a couple of handfuls and I’m done. Like I can’t eat anymore and I’m good for like a month or two, you know?
01:14:19:20 – 01:14:30:17
Speaker 1
And that’s possible for everybody. If you do what you’re telling is clean out your body by starting to implement more of these healthier foods into your diet. Is that what you found as well?
01:14:31:14 – 01:14:54:05
Speaker 2
I did it, yeah. And actually, palate is so clean now that if somebody tries to give me a salad and it’s not organic greens, I can taste the pesticides. I can taste the chemicals on food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think the message really here is that you give your body a chance to kind of clean itself up.
01:14:54:15 – 01:15:19:05
Speaker 2
Because one of the things people don’t realize is that the symptoms that the cells are angry and they’re getting bloating or they’re having skin issues or they’re having headaches or whatever they might be experiencing that those aren’t normal. Like it’s not normal to be bloated after a meal. It’s not normal to feel like you have a migraine coming on because you eat a meal.
01:15:19:09 – 01:15:51:23
Speaker 2
There’s something going on and this is your opportunity to, hey, I need to listen to my body. I need to talk to somebody who can help me understand what’s going on in my body because I feel people spend so time suffering in pain, whatever kind of pain they’re dealing with and all their different symptoms. And they just go on with their day because they have to go to work and they have to do this and time passes by and they ignore this stuff to a point where then they can’t ignore it anymore.
01:15:51:23 – 01:16:21:21
Speaker 2
Now they’ve ended up in a doctor’s office or they ended up in a hospital. Right? So I want you to start being really more mindful about what you’re doing with your body. And that really comes back to loving yourself, having self-respect, self-love and self-care. And, you know, my hashtag is hashtag self-care is self-care. So always incorporating that aspect and loving on yourself and taking care of your body.
01:16:21:21 – 01:16:43:10
Speaker 1
So you said bloating after a meal is not normal, even though it probably is normal for most people. But you shouldn’t. But what you’re saying is you shouldn’t have lots of bloating after a meal. But what about gas? Like nicer bloating where it’s stuck in all this stuff, but it’s like you just have gas throughout the day. What’s your thought on gas?
01:16:43:18 – 01:16:50:17
Speaker 1
Because I’ve I’ve interviewed some interesting scientists on this and I have an interesting perspective, but I want to know what you think about it.
01:16:50:17 – 01:17:17:15
Speaker 2
Yeah. So gas, basically, this is a byproduct of how your microbiome is functioning and it’s being influenced by the food you eat. Now, some people might have gas when they eat vegetables. Some people might have gas when they eat beans, right? That Just means that your microbiome doesn’t have the ability to break down those nutrients the way it needs to.
01:17:17:19 – 01:17:39:13
Speaker 2
I mean, these are foods that I eat all the time and I know other people who eat a lot of plant don’t have a problem with gas. Right. So this is about understanding that your microbiome, in order for you to eat those foods, will need some time to adjust and change. In addition to be able to break those down, you have to look at all your other organs that are responsible for breaking down food.
01:17:39:13 – 01:18:00:24
Speaker 2
So not just your microbiome. Are you missing a gallbladder? First of all, have you had surgery? All right. So how is your bile production? How is your pancreatic lactase production? How is the acid in your stomach? So you want to look at all these different factors before you go, oh, okay. That I just it means I have gas.
01:18:02:05 – 01:18:31:21
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Because I, you know, I’ve come to the conclusion that gas is actually if you just have gas like you pass gas throughout the day, I would say normally like that’s actually a healthy sign of a healthy gut. And the reason being, and I’ve interviewed a gut scientist with the hydrogen specialty in his background on this particular topic.
01:18:32:03 – 01:19:02:02
Speaker 1
And one of the things that he brought to my attention that I went and reviewed a lot of the science on it is how important hydrogen is to so many functions in the body and the gas that we produce in our intestines is full of hydrogen. So it’s our bodies way of making hydrogen. And that hydrogen then gets sent to the cells where then those cells, I mean to produce hydrogen is necessary for producing ATP at a cellular in our bodies, which is essential for energy production.
01:19:02:02 – 01:19:21:15
Speaker 1
Right, essential for thousands of different mechanisms of action within the body. And so, you know, one of the things he said is like, look, if you’re farting like that’s a good thing. It means you’re actually having a healthy, you know, digestive system. Your body’s producing hydrogen like it needs to to keep the cells alive and functioning and producing ATP.
01:19:22:11 – 01:19:33:01
Speaker 1
So it changed my perspective about gas where I was like, Oh, maybe I shouldn’t be farting or it’s bad. It’s like, well, actually from that perspective, it’s a healthy thing to do. I don’t know, what do you think?
01:19:33:02 – 01:19:48:20
Speaker 2
But you didn’t mention it. The gas had a smell to it like a sulfur based smell or anything like that. Right. So are we just talking about gas with or without a actual scent to interesting question.
01:19:48:20 – 01:20:15:14
Speaker 1
So in so we’re getting really personal here. Now, in my personal case, majority, my gas does not smell and that’s a fact. Now, that didn’t used to be the case. But Major, I would say 80 to 90% of it, they may be loud, my kids may laugh about it, but they don’t smell. And I and I’ve said it a hundred times and they agree once in a while.
01:20:15:14 – 01:20:36:07
Speaker 1
And oftentimes it’s like, you know, and I kind know where it came from was like, oh, I ate that thing that didn’t really sit well in my stomach. For some reason there was something weird or weird combination, or maybe it was old or something right where it’s like it smells for, you know, maybe ten or 15 minutes while, you know, fart a few times and then it’s gone.
01:20:36:07 – 01:20:43:08
Speaker 1
It’s like my body processed it. But I’d say 80 or 90% of the gas that I do pass doesn’t smell at all like nobody could smell it.
01:20:44:02 – 01:21:08:24
Speaker 2
Okay, so, so I do believe there’s a difference there between whether it’s just the body’s process of making the gas in order to break down the food versus it’s now making it. And most people think when you have gas, it’s it’s more of like a smelly gas, right? So that’s where I would be more concerned that. Oh, we need to look at what’s going on in your digestion.
01:21:08:24 – 01:21:16:21
Speaker 1
When it’s smell, if it’s if it’s smelling. Yes. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Let’s say you’re farting all the time and it smells terrible the time it’s.
01:21:17:06 – 01:21:22:21
Speaker 2
It’s about good gas. Really talks about good or non smelly gas. So I thought you were asking me.
01:21:24:07 – 01:21:44:04
Speaker 1
Well, that’s I mean, I haven’t had this conversation very many people. So I’m like, hey, let’s, let’s talk about it because I’m interested in, you know, let’s talk about farts for a little bit because yeah. From like again, for me personally as an athlete who burns 5000 calories a day, I have to eat so much food, otherwise I lose weight.
01:21:44:16 – 01:22:11:13
Speaker 1
And on a plant based diet, that can be challenging. It can be challenging to keep up with the demands, the caloric demands of my body, of one of my athletic goals, what I’m working towards. And if you can imagine trying to eat 5000 calories a day on a whole food plant based diet, I mean, the amount of fiber, but the amount of mixing of foods you have to do and the amount of, you know, it’s like, you know, huge plates of food and things like that.
01:22:11:13 – 01:22:31:20
Speaker 1
It can be challenging. The last few weeks I’ve been like just taking a break, like not eating as much. I dropped £7 in two weeks and I spent three months building up that extra body weight intentionally. And then boom, I just don’t eat like one meal a day. And then in two weeks it’s like, boom, £7 gone. For some people.
01:22:31:20 – 01:23:13:00
Speaker 1
I’d be like, Oh my God, I wish I had that. For me, I’m like, No, I want that seven. Pounds But because of them, yeah. So, you know, like my kid and, and, you know, this new brand I’ve started plant powered athletes. So it’s a whole audience of people who want to achieve higher athletic potential as athletes, but doing it in a healthy way with a plant approach, you know, they’re going to have similar issues versus my main audience and your main audience, you know, that I’ve been working with for over a decade and you’ve for decades it’s primarily people dealing with chronic health conditions already cancer, diabetes, etc. or you know, in the later
01:23:13:00 – 01:23:25:03
Speaker 1
years of life and experience, a lot of fatigue and symptoms and problems. It’s a it’s a different concerning issue altogether. But it’s still interesting to look at opposite sides of that spectrum right? Yeah.
01:23:25:08 – 01:23:58:14
Speaker 2
Where it’s mostly I had locally a cooking class at one of the cooking studios here where. We did cooking classes specifically for athletes for high protein plant based meals so they could learn how to incorporate plant based protein into their different meals and to get enough specifically for athletes, right? Yeah. Yeah. So so that’s where it once again, it comes around like use your kitchen as your lab, right?
01:23:58:14 – 01:24:17:21
Speaker 2
Experiment with what’s going to work for you and what your end goals are. Maybe we have a spectrum of people whose goals are to not deal with chronic disease, and then maybe we have individuals who are looking to more advanced to their health. Maybe the people who are right in the middle who are like, I just want to live longer and live my best life.
01:24:18:02 – 01:24:20:06
Speaker 1
And not have so much smelly gas.
01:24:21:03 – 01:24:22:10
Speaker 2
Yes, they’re a little.
01:24:22:10 – 01:24:24:21
Speaker 1
Longer and not have so much. Yes. Yeah.
01:24:26:04 – 01:24:31:04
Speaker 2
A place for everyone to to eat more plants. There’s really a place for that.
01:24:32:00 – 01:24:43:16
Speaker 1
Speaking of. I just did a video this morning about do you know Novak or do you know of Novak Djokovic? It’s like arguably like the number one tennis player right now, probably arguably one of the best.
01:24:43:21 – 01:25:01:03
Speaker 2
You realize what a big tennis player I am. I used to play at the USTA. I don’t know your tennis fan. Federer, of course, is my favorite, but I would love to hear what your conversation about Novak. He’s maybe like my third favorite, but.
01:25:01:22 – 01:25:25:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, so I said arguably the best player in history, right? It depends who you talk to. Anyway, top of his game, one of the best athletes in the world, 2010 was having asthma, health issues, energy issues. And he wasn’t doing that. Is still a pro player, but not doing that great. I met with a doctor. Doctor put him on a primarily plant based diet.
01:25:25:14 – 01:25:51:19
Speaker 1
They did some emotional healing as well. He doesn’t talk as much about the emotional part. He talks mostly about the diet, but at first he got out, dairy gluten got out, all the milk and cheese got out, all the wheat and the gluten and processed sugar. All the things you’ve been talking about started feeling better and then got all the red meat out and basically went to primarily plant based or like I called plant powered diet as an athlete.
01:25:51:19 – 01:26:23:07
Speaker 1
And the rest is history from over the next 13 years has become, you know, one of one of the most dominant players in tennis and he gives a lot of the credit to his improved health and performance, to the plant based diet that he’s been on. Point being, here’s an athlete who, one, is dominating and achieving peak health potential into his late thirties on a plant based diet.
01:26:23:07 – 01:26:46:15
Speaker 1
But he primarily does like a lot. He does a lot of fruits, he does a lot of vegetables, does a lot of salads. He does warm lemon water first thing in the morning, which we know is amazing for digestion, getting the digestive juices going first thing in the morning. He does smoothies and he does a lot of like sweet potato and wild rice and quinoa and things like that.
01:26:46:15 – 01:26:59:08
Speaker 1
And talking about athletes, there’s a lot of them. But here’s one I was literally researching, doing a video on today who, you know, has been it wasn’t like two years ago. It’s been like years now.
01:26:59:08 – 01:27:23:22
Speaker 2
I think it’s pretty amazing. No, I recall when that information came out and he shared about his diet and stuff and I’m like, you joined the enlightened, right? Because once you you can see the difference in how your body can function. And I think when when people are going towards more plant based, they get confused and lost because they don’t feel good right away.
01:27:24:04 – 01:28:02:16
Speaker 2
Or instead of really going whole foods, they have incorporated these processed cheeses, processed burgers which aren’t really plants and then going, oh, being plant based or being vegan is not good. My body didn’t like it. I felt very tired and fatigued, my iron levels dropped and all that stuff. It really working with somebody who understands plant based nutrition and tests your blood to see what does your body need, understand and more about what your goals are and is really looking at your whole picture.
01:28:02:16 – 01:28:26:16
Speaker 2
Because the last thing we need is for somebody to develop an eating disorder around me versus plants. Right? Because we don’t want to create eating disorders out of I’m trying to help people and really just looking at the full picture, looking at your genetics. Right. So some people can’t metabolize certain nutrients, so they might need more emphasis on certain foods.
01:28:26:16 – 01:28:49:05
Speaker 2
For example, vitamin D, vitamin D is one that my body does not metabolize as efficiently. So even if I’m out in the sun all the time, I mean, we live in Florida, right? My body doesn’t have the ability to make as much vitamin D as it should. So I’m making sure that I’m getting vitamin D, rich foods. I’m also making sure I’m supplementing to get to the level I want to.
01:28:49:11 – 01:29:16:20
Speaker 2
All right. So really looking at that personalized approach, looking at your genes, at your lifestyle, looking at your environment and looking at what do you want to accomplish. So for a plant powered athlete, right. So you’re looking at your 5000 calories in a day. I’m going to give you a new challenge that I want you to look at how balanced that is with other plant powered athletes.
01:29:17:02 – 01:29:48:09
Speaker 2
Right. Because this is a great thing to look at, is somebody else who’s a six foot tall like you. What what are they consuming? Because as professional athletes, more than likely, they’re not preparing their own meals. They have somebody that’s very curating what, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks? I mean, you see it with Nadal on the court. He’s got his his different drinks lined up and he has the different things in between sets that he’s always taking down.
01:29:48:09 – 01:30:02:24
Speaker 2
This is what an athlete does. Right. And so if you’re entering in this journey and now, you know, we went from chronic diseases to talking about athletes, working with the people who understand everything you need is going to be your key to getting to where you want to go.
01:30:03:09 – 01:30:24:16
Speaker 1
Mm hmm. Yeah, that’s a point a lot. I think some of the things I still need to fine tune. I mean, I’ve been doing I’ve been, you know, an athlete most of my life, but plant plant based since thousand ten. So 13 years we’re recording this and a really serious athlete for the last six years. So since 2017.
01:30:25:06 – 01:30:49:08
Speaker 1
And so I’m you know, and I’ve learned a lot like most of the plant based diet I was familiar with was more longevity, disease prevention, health in general versus a, you know, building for my sport for CrossFit, like you have to have a certain amount of mass body mass, certain amount of muscle, a certain amount of ability to move heavy objects through space at fast distances.
01:30:49:16 – 01:31:28:21
Speaker 1
And you have to have a high metabolic capacity. You have to have very high ability with cardiovascular potential to run a five minute mile and lift £500 at the same time. Like that’s what this sport is. It’s like about can you create yourself as a super human being? And to me that’s interesting. It’s like, that’s really cool. If I could do that, naturally, do it, you know, on a plant based diet and, and learn all these really cool, fun things in the process gymnastics and cycling and swimming and weightlifting and all other creative, fun stuff we get to do, walk on our hands and, you know, swim open water and do all kinds of stuff.
01:31:28:21 – 01:31:53:02
Speaker 1
So like to me that’s really fascinating. And at the same time, the approach for, you know, building muscle in size and strength and recovery is still similar to I found with longevity in disease prevention. But it’s also different. Like I wouldn’t advise one of our cancer patients or anyone in our cancer coaching program that we have, the cancer clients that we have.
01:31:53:02 – 01:32:02:19
Speaker 1
Like I wouldn’t put them on the exact same diet that I’m on. It would not make sense for someone with cancer, but the principles are the same, right? The Whole Foods.
01:32:03:03 – 01:32:03:11
Speaker 2
Are the.
01:32:03:11 – 01:32:09:14
Speaker 1
Organic, the plant based, the, you know, but even so, there’s going to be some some differences.
01:32:09:16 – 01:32:30:21
Speaker 2
No, no, no, no. There there’s significantly different. Okay. So principles that are the same stick with Whole Foods plant based as much as possible. Right. But when we’re thinking of a athlete, we’re thinking of are they’re doing this much physical activity in the day, right. So they are burning through fuel, they’re sweating. They need a different types of electrolytes.
01:32:30:21 – 01:32:58:24
Speaker 2
They pre-workout nutrients. They need post-workout nutrients. Because when you’re working out, what is your body doing? The muscle is breaking and rebuilding. Breaking and rebuilding, right. So that is a very traumatic process on the body. If you are not also taking into consideration recovery and recovery comes both from your nutrients, but it also comes from all the other things you’re doing in your life.
01:32:58:24 – 01:33:22:19
Speaker 2
Right. So infrared sauna is great for recovery. Simply great for recovery, right? Myofascial release great for recovery. So we’re thinking about all these different aspects when we’re taking a personalized approach. Now, somebody who’s dealing with cancer possibly does not have the best diet in the sense that they don’t even have an appetite because they might be going through treatments.
01:33:22:19 – 01:33:51:10
Speaker 2
Right. So trying to get nutrients into them is going to be a 100% different approach, right? Because, one, you’re tired, you’re fatigue, you’re fatigued from your treatments. Right? So the last thing you want to do is go in the kitchen and try and make a healthy so their entire menu becomes something simplified that they can do that is not going to expend more energy and instead give them the energy they need from the food, right?
01:33:52:01 – 01:34:00:21
Speaker 2
So everybody is personalized wherever they are in their whole health journey. But at the end of the day, I will always say eat more plants.
01:34:02:07 – 01:34:23:24
Speaker 1
Yeah. Especially when you’re trying to gain weight like this guy on a plant based diet. I got to eat more plants every day. Thanks for reminding me. Cool. What the time has flown by what’s already? Already almost time to wrap up. So do you have a cookbook for people that people can buy?
01:34:23:24 – 01:34:50:09
Speaker 2
I do. I do. I have a free cookbook on my website doctor, have an outcome that they can download and it’s 20 plant based gluten free recipes from anything from lunches, dinners to even snacks that you can make. My popular, gut friendly chocolate chip cookie recipe is one of the most made and downloadable recipes. I recommend you get that.
01:34:50:12 – 01:34:57:20
Speaker 2
Yeah, everybody needs a good chocolate chip cookie, but maybe a gut friendly one and a gut brain friendly one. It would be a better way to do it.
01:34:57:20 – 01:35:08:18
Speaker 1
And that’s Dr. Bonneau account d r b h A.T. dot com. And people can download that. Where, where do they download it.
01:35:09:08 – 01:35:28:02
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, so that’s soon as you get to my website, it will be your pop up on my website. So you catch up, do that. I also have available if you want to learn how your body works more, you can get my bestselling book, The Anatomy of Well-Being, and that is also on my website. But you can find it at Amazon.
01:35:28:17 – 01:35:33:01
Speaker 2
And if you are not ready to read all that, it’s a thick one.
01:35:33:12 – 01:35:47:20
Speaker 1
It’s a good it’s a good book. I have I have it. I recommend people get it seriously. It’s a it’s a good book. It’s very in-depth, covers a lot of ground diet, nutrition, lifestyle, functional approach. I highly recommend.
01:35:48:02 – 01:35:48:20
Speaker 2
Everything.
01:35:48:21 – 01:35:49:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, I highly.
01:35:49:08 – 01:36:08:00
Speaker 2
Recommend every single page in there. Covers it covers a lot. And it’s not one of those books you’re going to want to look on Kindle because it’s literally one of the ones you’re going to want to highlight based off of where you are in your health journey. So having the paper version of that is going to be really helpful and the audiobook will be coming out later this year.
01:36:08:00 – 01:36:16:23
Speaker 2
So you can listen in and walk and listen with me at the same time to kind of get another another dose of it.
01:36:16:23 – 01:36:33:15
Speaker 1
That’s awesome. Sweet. Well, Monisha, thank you for taking the time. We covered a lot of different things and I feel like the time just flew by and I still have like 20 other things I want to talk to you about. So we’ll have to do this again in the future.
01:36:34:12 – 01:36:41:01
Speaker 2
We’ll do it again. We’ll do it in person. Make me some tofu curry. I’ll bring you a salad. I think that sounds like the plan.
01:36:41:17 – 01:36:45:04
Speaker 1
That’s awesome. All right. Well, thanks so much. Take care, everybody