137. Ask Me Anything 2023

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:06

If you're waking up in the middle of night, 2 to 3am, same time every night, bright eyed, bushy tailed, you probably need some phosphatidyl serine and that'll really help just calm your adrenals so that you can reset your circadian rhythm and get back into normal sleep patterns. Today you get to hear from me. Every day in patient appointments, I get asked so many questions and I feel like I'm answering the same things over and over again, so I thought it might be a good idea to answer some of those on the show today. I also post it on social media and a few other places to garner other common questions. So today I'll be speaking to those questions. And talk about why eating organic is important why using clean personal care products are important if hormones cause cancer, the relationship between toxins and weight gain and hormone imbalances, and also dive into how we should be eating on a daily basis. We're going to cover a lot let's get started. Welcome to the your longevity blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life. Welcome to another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast today. Your guest is me Stephanie gray. Okay, so I'm going to just start reading off some questions and answer them as best as I can here. To be honest, many of these answers come right from my book, Your longevity blueprint, so be sure to check that out. The first question was, why is eating organic, so important? And I'd say well, because our food is so tainted with chemicals and chemicals lead to chronic disease. Real organic food is most packed with nutrients. And this does matter. So specifically eating organic can reduce the amount of chemicals in your diet, particularly pesticides, right. So the use of insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers, weed killers are monitored with organic food production. So organic farming is going to produce healthier food without the use of those toxins, right. eating organic is also the best way to avoid genetically modified or GMO foods. Those ingredients and contamination, so no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives are also allowed in organic foods. And if you haven't noticed, those are everywhere. So start reading labels, because you're going to find those artificial colors, flavors, words you can't pronounce everywhere. For Christmas, my son got some some treats from family members. And I was just kind of reading, reading over the list of the ingredients. And I thought, oh my gosh, I mean, I do allow him to have some of those, for instance, over the holidays, right, but not on a daily basis. And you actually if you did explore, probably what you're putting in your mouth and your child's mouth on a daily basis, it's going to have a lot of these crappy ingredients. And so you really want to limit those and really elect for organic where you know those ingredients will not be allowed. Plus there are other benefits organic farming can help create healthy soil and healthy soil creates healthy food and a healthy environment. Right. So our food comes from our soil and we need healthy soil because that's the basis for all of our agriculture. Organic farmers are going to use organic fertilizers and organic matter things you can compost an animal manures and those sorts of things to build healthy soils. Organic food is also going to contain more vitamins, minerals, enzymes and micronutrients than conventionally raised food. And this is well evidenced in the literature. So we know Studies show higher antioxidant activity, higher omega three fatty acid content in organic foods. And I'll reference one study here there's a 2001 study published by the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, where they looked at already published literature to compare the nutrient content in the five common organic vegetables versus conventionally grown one. So they looked at carrots, spinach, lettuce, potato and cabbage. And there was significantly more vitamin C, iron, magnesium and phosphorus and less nitrates in organic versus the alternatively grown foods. I'm not a big advocate for dairy. As you know, if you've listened to my show, I know it tastes delicious, but it's just not good for you or your weight or your hormones, which I'll get to later in today's episode. But a 2019 study on dairy products also showed that antibiotics were detected and 60% of conventional milk samples just like milk off the shelf, right, versus the organic samples which didn't contain antibiotics. So when you're eating organic, hopefully you're not going to be exposed to those things like the antibiotics that are going to negatively impact your microbiome. Okay, so next question is how do toxins relate to weight loss and hormone imbalance and I really dive into this in chapter five of my book, but again, this is something that I say to my patients every day your body will hide toxins in fat or fluid to protect your internal organs. So the problem is then people who are exposed to these toxins keep gaining weight. Now, on the contrary, if you can get your fat cells to release the toxins, your fat cells shrink and you lose weight, so you really need to think about where you're exposed to toxins. And you know, some of my friends are big makeup junkies and some have even done hair right for a living so they are exposed two products that have been laced with chemicals that can cause Well, allergies, cancer, chronic disease, but also these endocrine disruptions. So specifically, parabens and phthalates are two well known endocrine disrupting chemicals that can bind to our hormone receptors and lead to estrogen dominance. These endocrine disrupting chemicals have been implicated in neurological diseases, reproductive disorders, thyroid dysfunction, and immune and metabolic disorders. You can definitely read more about these chemicals at the endocrine disruption Exchange Online. So I often mentioned these big three things to avoid for back to the question like losing weight and optimizing hormones. Those three things are plastic, fragrances and dairy. So this also kind of answers the next question that I was asked as far as why do we care if ingredients are even clean? Well, because we don't want the dirty ingredients messing with our hormones. So plastic is toxic and it's not meant to be ingested. But think of how often you may be exposed to it right? Cough spray baby formula, peanut butter, ketchup, those all likely came from plastic a lot of things in your kitchen may be in plastic, you may even store your food in plastic, plastic contains Bisphenol A, or BPA, which is an endocrine disruptor that again, can have negative impacts on your reproductive organs and your hormones, specifically, the breasts and females and prostate in males. So we certainly want avoid plastics. And I guess I'll kind of go off on a tangent and also say aluminum is also not safe. Yes, I still eat some food out of cans. But these can, unfortunately also contain BPA, which can be leaching into your food. So glass is absolutely the most safe alternative that we're aware of. So choose glass containers to store your food in. Especially if you go out to eat. I know this is annoying, but all of those to go containers are really lined with plastics that can leach into your food. So if you can just take a container with you glass container, put your leftovers in their story for you to home and glass. And please do not microwave your food. Definitely no microwave in plastic if you have to microwave microwave and glass. So other than plastics, I also mentioned fragrances and dairy are other things to avoid, again for losing weight and optimizing hormones. So our personal care products can contain things called parabens and phthalates. So we want to read the labels and avoid products that have these these can often come from fragrance fragrance is kind of a catch all term that just means hidden balades however we pronounce that, which again can impact our hormone so avoid plastic, avoid fragrances and avoid dairy. So unfortunately, dairy has layer upon layer of endocrine disrupting chemicals. So think about it, the cows injected with growth hormones, he's likely eating pesticide laden grains, right with mold toxins potentially too and then that dairy is stored in a plastic line plastic container. So dairy is just unfortunately one area of exposure that we commonly have that can disrupt our hormones. Now, I guess what I'm saying also what applied to other produce so you really want to think about if you have to have dairy you want to really purchase organic that would not just apply to dairy though if you choose to partake in that it would apply to chicken, beef, pork, anything that you're purchasing. So if you have to not purchase organic kind of going off on a tangent here, I'm gonna go to a website as I'm talking to you, I'm gonna go to the Environmental Working Groups database so not the skincare database for personal care products, but they actually have a shoppers guide to pesticides and produce. So I'm looking at online here, ew g.org The 2022 Dirty Dozen so these are the foods that are going to be most heavily laden with pesticides that you really really want to buy organic so they are from the top strawberries spinach kale, collard greens and mustard greens, nectarines, apples, grapes, Belen hot peppers, cherries, peaches, pears, celery and tomatoes. So for dairy for meat for these fruits and vegetables by organic now they have a list of the clean 15 foods you don't have to buy organic. Although I'm shocked at one of these I'm gonna have to look more into this but they're top 15 clean, cleaner foods in regards to pesticides. Okay, are avocados sweet corn? I would think that's a GMO but that's the one I want to look into pineapple onions, papaya, sweet peas, asparagus, honeydew melon, kiwi cabbage, mushrooms, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon and sweet potatoes. Oh, and so there's an asterix here at the bottom it does say that some sweet corn, papaya and summer squash are from genetically modified seeds. So you still would want to consider organic, very interesting. Again, I'm gonna look more into them. But I do I do heavily advocate for eating organic back to just minimizing one's toxic burden right? Minimizing weight gain and hormone disruption.

Okay, so next question is do vitamins even do anything? Yes, yes, yes, I talk a lot about the importance of nutrients and supplementing and chapter four of my book Your longevity blueprint. So just to remind you nutrients are so important. They're involved in a variety of chemical reactions in our body. I've read a lot of Michael Pollan's books. And he says that foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts. And so you know, after food is digested nutrients are transported through our body to assist in all the different metabolic processes that happen in our cells that are necessary for life. And every cell in our body has a receptor site that receptors bind to kind of like a key fitting in a keyhole. And for that receptor to bind correctly to unlock that door. Your body requires all the micronutrients possible that hopefully we're getting from diet or supplements. Terry wall says when our cells aren't getting what they need, the body doesn't work, right. And usually, many things will go wrong somewhere our mitochondria won't produce energy efficiently and that can lead to a slew of chronic diseases. I guess another way I could say this is when you visualize a wilting flower or plant like what do you think it needs? Maybe it needs a little TLC, but it also needs water, proper soil, nutrients and sunlight. So you don't take houseplant to the doctor to get recommendations for drugs or surgery. Right. Instead, when you see it wilt you kind of ask okay, what does this plant need to be healthy and grow. And the same is true for our human body. So plants need nutrients the same way that our bodies and our cells need nutrients. So we need macronutrients for life, right? These are the carbohydrates, proteins like amino acids, lipids, aka fats, and fiber. But we also need micronutrients things like vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and of course water. But those micronutrients many times we have to get from supplements. I also in my book, really break down, like why we're so nutritionally deficient, like why we need to supplement. I'm just briefly going to answer that here. So we have very deficient soil. Again, we want to nurture our soil, I want to have organic soil that can produce high quality organic foods. But unfortunately, our soil has been very over farmed. And it's we've been using so many herbicides and pesticides and GMOs, our our soil is just deficient. And it's not producing foods high and nutrient content like it used to are harvesting, processing, storing even freezing techniques. And cooking with high temperature like back to the microwave can also rob our food of nutrients. And medications deplete nutrients as well. And so there are just a slew of reasons why we do need to supplement. But I can tell you that my patients who take their supplements are healthier, and they're definitely living longer. So do your supplements. Do you need vitamins? Like do you need supplements? Do they do anything? Yes, they absolutely do. But I guess the other part to that answer would be only if you're getting high quality, well sourced products at therapeutic potencies. Right. So just something that you might get over the counter from drugstore might not do anything. You want to make sure you're getting high quality products. And I heavily discussed that in another supplement episode. All right. Next question is what is the relationship between stress cortisol and longevity? I probably could do a whole episode on this. But there is a huge relationship here. I will, I guess in short, condense that answer to saying that being in a sympathetic fight or flight state long term right with high cortisol can lead to high glucose, which means insulin resistance, right? diabetes, heart disease, ultimately, the top leading causes of death, right? So that'll reduce your longevity. high cortisol can also suppress the immune system. And then conversely, activities like meditation, where we're putting you more in that parasympathetic calming state can help you live longer, right? I'm reducing the risk for chronic disease. And my goal was, which will be launched by the time this episode launches that I would have for three or four episodes on just this in January 2023. So be sure to listen to those. Now, next question is do most women need progesterone? What are the benefits and the downsides? I wish I could say no, but I actually think the answer is yes, I do think at least in my patient population, I do think a lot of women need progesterone. And I think that's partially because back to the stress state I was just talking about, I say that stress is our body's biggest hormone hijacker. So when we have this high stress state, unfortunately, our progesterone levels can be very low. Progesterone is the most soothing, calming hormone great for sleep and anxiety. So women many times need progesterone because they're stressed with high cortisol because they have high estrogen. Back to what we've talked about earlier in the podcast today, use of pesticides and herbicides and consuming dairy and plastic and you know, fragrances all of those things can increase estrogen. And then you combine that with a stress state and low progesterone and boy boy, do you have some hormone imbalances. So what are the benefits? It's of progesterone. It promotes normal sleep patterns again provides that relaxing calming effect it can inhibit breast tissue overgrowth can increase metabolism and promote weight loss help balance your blood sugar levels and actually acts as a natural diuretic, it can help you get rid of some fluid. It can normalize blood clotting, unlike synthetic progestins, which can increase blood clotting. It can stimulate the production of new bone and enhance the action of the thyroid receptors. It can definitely alleviate depression and reduce anxiety. I see this in my patients all the time. It's great for preventing cyclical migraines. And of course it can reduce symptoms of menopause, perimenopause and PMS. That's why we use it. It can protect against breast cancer, osteoporosis and heart disease. And it moderates many side effects of estrogen dominance at estrogen access, like reducing fluid retention, bloating, bleeding, and headaches. I can also really help regulate cycles. When patients have the heavy irregular bleeding. Many times cycling the younger women on progesterone can help to regulate things and get that bleeding under control. For postmenopausal women, they can just take it every single night. They don't need to cycle it. Next question is, I thought hormones cause cancer long term? So how is what you prescribe different? And what would you do differently if I have a strong family history of breast cancer? So I'll answer the first part of the question here. So if hormones cause cancer, we have a bunch of teenagers with high levels getting cancer and then elderly people with low levels not getting cancer and that's not the case. Right? So maybe we'll break down some breast cancer facts first, I believe 75% occur in postmenopausal women and 80% are hormone receptor positive with a median age being about 61. Now the I would say the negative hype, stemming around hormones causing cancer comes from the Women's Health Initiative study, which was of about 17,000 women. That study did show increased risk of stroke, heart attack, blood clots, Alzheimer's and breast cancer risk. But a lot of things were done wrong in that study. The Women's Health Initiative did use the wrong hormones and the wrong route. No hormone levels were tested, which is different from patients who see me we certainly test levels, and we combine the levels with symptoms to see what our patients actually need. We only give bioidentical natural hormones. But I should point out that the Women's Health Initiative, estrogen alone arm actually did not increase breast cancer risk, which might surprise you. It was only not with natural progesterone, but with synthetic progestin when that was added to that arm that the cancer risk increased. Interestingly, the long term follow up to that study, which I think was published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2017, actually showed hormone therapy is not associated with either increased cardiovascular disease or cancer mortality. But we are still dealing with the initial negative hype from that study. And so what we try to do, at least in my practice, I try to not replicate what was done in that study. So I don't use the synthetic hormones right from horse urine. I don't give estrogen orally in a capsule, I don't give synthetic progestins orally in a capsule. So we use safer routes of administration, we use a lot of hormone pellets. In my practice, sometimes we'll do topical gels and creams. If I have very sensitive patients, I will give sublingual hormones, I will give oral natural progesterone, not the synthetics. So not a synthetic course you're not synthetic progestins, but natural estradiol or progesterone. If you're taking a hormone replacement therapy, and your prescription does not say estradiol or progesterone or testosterone, then it's not natural. It's something else synthetic, I will say what's more important than hormones themselves, or hormone levels, is really the hormone metabolites. And so I think all try to answer the next question and blend it in with what I'm saying. So that next part of the question was what I would do differently in a patient who has a strong family history of breast cancer. So if you have a strong family history, I'd want to know specifics. I'd want to know if the hormone was you know, hormone receptor positive or whatnot. There are so many things we could do from a functional medicine standpoint to reduce your individualized risk. If the cancer if you have family history of specifically estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, then we would want to test your urine hormones to see how you specifically metabolize estrogen to ensure it's cleared more appropriately. So my doctorate was on this really just looking at how your body eliminates detoxifies metabolizes whatever word you want to use estrogen. So if we find that your estrogens are not metabolized Well, in this urine hormone test, we can only do this with your in hormone testing. There are ways we can supplement we can use nutrition and different supplements to influence the metabolism for the better to reduce risks of estrogen related cancers. fibroids, cysts,

endometriosis, et cetera. Okay, next question is what can I do? You'd better promote sleep. This is such a great question because sleep is when your body rejuvenates. And that's when you detoxify. So you want to do everything you can to minimize stimulation at night like through either using blue light blocking glasses if you have to be on your devices, or trying to minimize the use of your devices and TV and instead read a book, listen to calming music. I'm a big advocate for turning off your cell phone or putting it in airplane mode at night or even turning off your Wi Fi at night. And if you really need there are calming supplements, I heavily recommend use of magnesium Many times we'll use phosphate tidal serine. Magnesium, of course has a mineral Phosphatidyl serine as a phospholipid, which can really dampen the release of cortisol or adrenaline. If you're waking up in the middle of night at two to 3am. Same time every night, bright eyed, bushy tailed, you probably need some phospho, title serine that'll really help just calm your adrenals so that you can reset your circadian rhythm and get back into normal sleep patterns. l theanine and GABA are calming amino acids, which can work very quickly, they can be very helpful. And if you need get a bio tracking device, something like an aura ring, so you know your sleep is improving. I don't really like the concept of patients tracking their sleep, like using their phone, there are some like phone apps that you can set up your phone by your head and I'd like suppose to monitor breathing and different things, then you're getting exposure to EMF. So that doesn't make any sense to me don't use those things, that using a bio tracking device, something like an aura ring, which is not going to emit the EMFs unless you're Bluetooth to your phone, I think can be very helpful because you can kind of see, okay, I took magnesium or I took phospho serine. Right, was my sleep better? These devices can help you monitor that. All right, next question is, how important is mold and parasite testing when you have hormone imbalances and autoimmune issues? So this is kind of a loaded question. I think the answer depends because for one person, you know, knowing that they have parasites can be their answer, and for another it might not really impact their situation. So I might bring this back to kind of three things I'm always thinking about, especially in younger individuals who still have like gland function left. So I mean, you know, someone who still has per se their ovaries, right, not a seven year old, postmenopausal woman who, who's maybe had a hysterectomy, but younger woman who's wanting to improve hormone imbalance symptoms. So the three things I many times mentioned, and I have a little cheat sheet for these on my website, three tips to boost your hormones naturally, I always talk about reducing stress, detoxing the body and fixing nutritional deficiencies, again, for the purpose of optimizing hormone function. Now, tying in the parasite question to this parasites can lead to nutritional deficiencies, and they certainly are a stressor on the body that can again rob you of hormones. So when I'm working with a client who has hormone imbalances, I may 1, work with them on stress reduction, but then concurrently, test them for nutritional deficiencies, and then eventually, right, help them work through like a liver cleanse to help detox the body, I'm not going to really necessarily start testing them for parasites. But if they have a lot of nutritional deficiencies and gi concerns, and they're not improving, you bet we'll we will look deeper, we'll run a stool test and, you know, if they then are found to have a parasite, which we treat, right and eradicate, then could that improve hormone imbalance? Yes. Now the second part of that question is kind of asking if parasites can trigger autoimmune conditions, they can, they can also treat them I once had a patient who used I can ever pronounce his helmet with treatment, he basically got parasites from India and wrapped them, put them on his skin and let them crawl into his skin. And there is some evidence on that sort of treatment for specific conditions. But in general, intestinal parasites are a known cause of some inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. So we know again, autoimmune diseases can have infectious triggers as a root cause like the parasites, bacteria, fungus or viruses, toning this down a bit, I can say like in my career, I've seen 1000s of patients with autoimmune diseases, and I can't say Oh, treating one parasite, you know, cured, I would never say that cured their autoimmune disease. But I can say that many of my patients with autoimmune diseases have GI issues and that are, you know, discovered through food sensitivity testing and a stool test. So they may have too much bad bacteria in their gut. For instance, in my office, I have this little kind of chart showing various autoimmune diseases and then infectious agents that are associated with that disease, which is actually pretty cool and exciting, because once I started running more stool tests on patients, I would actually find, like on a patient who had Ankylosing Spondylitis or rheumatoid arthritis, I'd find Klebsiella and I thought, holy smokes. So you know, from my perspective, reducing the burden that infectious burning by treating the Klebsiella right should then help the patient with those autoimmune symptoms and I was finding home a stool test was matching my little autoimmune disease and infectious agent charts. So it was at least exciting for me that what it was Finding was congruent with that table, and then I would treat patients appropriately. And then all in all, again, if we're minimizing the stress on the immune system, minimizing some of the infections, we don't cure the autoimmune disease, but in time, the autoimmune disease symptoms lessen. And so that's been very exciting for me. Next question is what is the biggest problem with PCOS patients? Is it diet and lack of exercise? Or is it toxic exposure and the link to the body holding on to such toxins? What half to recommend you listen to my two part PCOS episode with Dr. Felician Gersh episodes, I think 54 and 55? Because she dives into this heavily. But in my personal opinion, yes, it's toxins first and foremost, toxins, toxins, toxins. And so if I can get these patients to detox, they always feel better. Many of my patients are so symptomatic. And so I've had a handful of patients who really needed progesterone. I've mentioned the importance of progesterone earlier in this episode. But these patients not tolerated. And many of these patients are so toxic, that what I needed to do is take a step back, be a little more gentle with them. And first, just get them better detox and get their lymph now moving and then eventually work them into foods that help with detox and a liver cleanse program. And so, yes, I think the biggest problem with PCOS really is toxins. Okay. Next question is supplements for kids, which ones are worth buying? Well, obviously, I'm biased to what we carry here. And I explained this in long episodes, 108 and 109. What more you need to know about the supplement industry with Thomas Pennell. So I would say first and foremost, always read labels, so tons of supplements and even medications have dyes and extra sugar. So which ones are worth buying? Well, I heavily think kids need a multivitamin, vitamin D probiotic, and fish oil and that is really, I would say well, by the time this episode launches, my son will be four years old and those are what he takes daily. So I give him the orthomolecular super newts multivitamin that's chewable many times I'll give him a chewy, vitamin C gummy, and then vitamin D drops. And then at dinner, the chewable orthomolecular probiotic, and then Nordic Naturals chewable fish oil. Occasionally I'll give him the viral kid product when he is going to be exposed to sick kiddos or when we go to church whatnot during flu season, and I really liked the nature next cough syrup that we also carry from ortho. It doesn't have all the extra crap, right that a lot of the over the counter cough syrups have. We carry the full line of the orthomolecular kid products here at the integrative health and hormone clinic. But I would also encourage you listen to my episodes. So I already mentioned a couple episodes with Thomas Pennell. I also have a third episode with him. Number 117. How to not get sick. And we do talk about kids products at the end. I think it's around 50 minutes, you can certainly listen to episode 97 which is about getting your kiddos into the kitchen with Katie Kimball. So if you have picky eaters, I think her top tip is to get them involved in cooking, it makes a world of a difference. And I've I've seen this with William also if he can help us make chicken and rice soup, he wants to eat it. He cut those carrots, right he wants to then enjoy the fruit of his labor. And he's proud, proud that he did that and added the spices and so I've taken her advice. And I think that's one thing I would recommend for picky eaters is certainly getting those kids into the kitchen. And then a third episode for just tips on supplements for kids is 76. It's on creating immune resilience for your kids with Dr. Elisa song. Just huge resources there. I know I keep referring to past episodes, but there's just more information. There's more free episodes on these topics. And so it's hard for me to not mention them. What about kids that deal with constipation? That's the next question. So I have a lot of friends whose kiddos are constipated as well. And we treat kids the same way as adults. Right? We need to assess their diet and are they getting good fiber and water and exercise? Are they just eating right wheat and cheese laden crackers all day long? Right? They gotta get their vegetables. Can you get them into a smoothie? Can you get more fiber in that right? I would say please don't give your child MiraLAX it has formaldehyde and and it's not safe long term.

So try the call magnesium powder or we have as a supplement even for just little ones even babies called Ready set go basically it's very high fiber it has I believe plum, figs, psyllium, fennel, caraway, coriander and ginger. Which can really help and it really doesn't taste too bad. Also remember probiotics can help with regularity and then I also find that electrolyte drinks so I do a lot of the like the ultimo electrolyte drinks I like elementi also the elementi which we carry here is very high salt so my little son William does not need that. But I find that when I make like a big 3040 Answer of my ultimate electrolyte mix, I'll give him just a cup full and the little bit of mag citrate in there can also really help him with regularity. If your child is old enough, even topical castor oil packs can help. But I just I really want to emphasize how important diet changes are so many times if we see kids with constipation we test For food sensitivities, and they eliminate them, right things like gluten and dairy, the constipation resolves. So are supplements available to help? Absolutely. But rather than spend money on supplements, changing the diet is I think, first and foremost, top thing to do.

Alright, the next question is, if I could recommend three things I would want each patient to invest in, what would they be? Like? I don't want to say like their health, obviously invest in their health, but but I think this question is in pertains to their health, like, what specific things could they invest in. So it's hard to pick, I'd have to say, cleaning up their diet, right, getting the gluten out, like if they change, nothing else, get the gluten out, it's just not helpful to anyone. And I guess when I say clean up the diet, I would also say to eat organic, which we've talked about today, for patients who have some gaps there with how clean they're eating, that's where the supplements come in, right. So I'd say cleaning up the diets number one, and then cleaning up your air and water, if I can combine those as number two, I will. So this means making sure you're not drinking tap water, you're not drinking bottled water right out of you know, plastic bottles, that you have some sort of water purification system going we do have reverse osmosis in our home, and then to clean up your air. So we do have air doctors going couple different ones in our home to clean up the air. So when we're sleeping at night, we're breathing air, we're drinking clean water, and eating clean, right. And then thirdly, I'd say manage stress, we already talked about, you know, when you're in a high stress state, your cortisol rises, and then you're at a greater risk of all chronic disease. So I would say making sure you're taking time every single day to do something that you enjoy, right, as far as managing your stress, whether that's doing a meditation, could be going on a walk or could be hanging out with friends, reading a book, doing something that brings you joy, and helps you get back into that calming state of mind would be the third thing. Okay, next question is I want to understand better ways to eat. So I had some other questions that were very similar. And I think I'll walk you through a presentation that I have for my patients just centered around healthy eating. And that's how I can answer that question. So with healthy eating, I do you want to mention that habits are really important. Because, you know, after you listen to all these things, I'm going to say as far as how you should be eating, it can be very overwhelming. And I don't expect patients to you know, change everything, do a 180 You know, change how they're eating by the next morning. No, they need to just start with small habits. Even if you get 1% better each day, those small changes are going to lead to a big result, getting again that 1% better every day counts in the long term. So to answer the question, how you should be eating? I think it depends, but I would say it always, the answer is always to eat real food, right not processed, stuff that comes out of boxes, like eat actual real colorful fruits, vegetables, proteins, and you really need to get tested for food sensitivities. Because, again, one person may be can eat eggs that are rich and choline and that they need and another person shouldn't. So you really want to avoid whatever your inflammatory foods are. You really want to lead with green leafy vegetables, those help with methylation has helped with so many things. So really fill your plate lead with green leafy vegetables and make sure you're having protein with each meal. That really surprises me when I go through my new patient packets. I ever have every single patient write down what they're eating, breakfast, lunch, and dinner and many patients aren't getting any protein for breakfast. So make sure you get protein with each meal, healthy fats with each meal. And then again, make sure your foods are minimally processed, packaged, that they're not genetically modified. Really go for organic, at least for the dirty dozen foods that I mentioned. And then drink half your body weight in ounces of purified clean water every day. So I already mentioned the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15 That I I'd love for you to print lists for which you can get from the EW G site. And then just kind of going back to what inflammatory foods can many times be they could be the eggs I mentioned they could be gluten, dairy, soy, corn, peanuts, sugar, artificial sweeteners, fruit seeds, spices, it's really different for each patient, which is why testing is so important. A good overall recommendation is to eat Mediterranean diet like which is heavy in fruits and vegetables, fish and seafood, which we don't get a lot of here in Iowa. I'm gluten free grains, things like potatoes and quinoa, nuts and seeds. Lots of olive oil. Olive oil has Omega nines and I just really doubt that on my salad. I have salad every day for lunch and I just put tons of olive oil in there with some sea salt. Mediterranean diet includes dairy and eggs, but again, sometimes these are inflammatory for people. So I'm not heavily advocating for that. But generally speaking the Mediterranean diet is really kind of good advice. And then you want to avoid foods that have numbers on the label that you know means it's a chemical formula. You want to avoid anything that says enriched anything with artificial flavors, colors and sweeteners, and anything with MSG monosodium glutamate So maybe we'll talk about what you could do for breakfast, right? So for example, do something like a smoothie. With healthy fats. You can even put an avocado in there. I'm okay with eggs. For patients who can have eggs with sausage bacon Smokies. Try to get organic. Of course, don't do something like carbs alone. Don't do a bagel or toast, don't have just fruit alone. That's right, high sugar. Don't have dairy laden yogurt or sugar laden coffee, right? So we're gonna make sure you're having a protein rich breakfast with healthy fats and you can have some fruit in there as well, to make sure it's not high carb. So for lunch, again, I already mentioned I have a salad. So I highly encourage meal prepping, so that you can have something like a salad every day. You want to add to that protein so you could consider chicken, beef, lamb or fish. You can add nuts, walnuts, cashews, almonds, I add an avocado almost every day. You could add vegetables, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers. Many times I'll chop up cilantro or green onions and then your dressing can be something safe like olive oil that I mentioned, apple cider vinegar, honey mustard, and you can always add a modest amount of fruit to that as well. If you want to make some homemade salad dressings, if my olive oil doesn't appease you, you could make a balsamic vinegar, which is really just balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, you could add some maple syrup or honey, salt and then the olive oil. You could try making your own Italian dressing, which is really white vinegar, Dijon mustard again, you use maple syrup, you could use a clove of garlic graded if you can tolerate that. You can add some dried oregano, thyme, basil, again salt and olive oil really pretty easy and these will last a while as well. Now for dinner How should you be eating well similar here, but protein veggies and then it for dinner, I'm okay when patients have a few more carbs. I personally do not do well when I have carbs at lunch I just crash I mean to 3pm I am just a crash so I try to not have a heavy carb lunch. So for dinner I'm okay if you want to have rice, quinoa, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, gluten free pasta, but make sure you're combining that again with healthy fats and then protein so maybe salmon, cod, lamb beef, chicken, pork, something like that. And then go nuts with vegetables. You could do broccoli, cabbage, asparagus, onions, mushrooms, zucchini, peppers, carrots, cauliflower, make a sheet pan of vegetables. I love it when my husband does that at the dinner is very colorful, right? If you're doing zucchinis and tomatoes and peppers and onions, you're getting green and red and yellow and potentially purple right on that sheet pan. Those vegetables that are dark and pigmented have more nutrients. So make sure you get tons of colors on your plate and mix up the different vegetables you're trying. Now for snacks. I'm a big fan of like trail mix. So you could do nuts, a little bit of dried fruit, you could do cacao nibs and be like chocolate coconut flakes. You could also snack on like fruit with different nut butters or vegetables with nut butters or hummus, salsa, guacamole. And you can even make your own protein bars. You can purchase them but I also am a huge fan of making like oatmeal based protein bars, I should say oat based, many patients want to lose weight and I do need to kind of re educate them on portion distortion because many individuals will say okay, I'll eat how you're telling me but they might be eating twice the amount they really should. So for many people who really need to lose weight, they do need to be careful with their portions. And so even from a habit standpoint, just cutting back a little bit each day each week can be very helpful. I do want to talk about good fats versus bad fats. So you want to keep bad saturated fats to a minimum. So things like palm coconut, cacao, dairy, those are saturated fats. It's not that you can't have them I just say, especially for patients trying to lose weight, I would keep them to a minimum. Your good mono unsaturated fat fats are things like found in olive oil that I was just mentioning and polyunsaturated fats are found in foods like fish, and walnuts, so I'm okay with those sorts of fats. Now for beverages, filter your water water first always, hopefully, I'll add some electrolytes to it, which is something I certainly need to do, especially when I'm drinking the dead water right, which really the electrolytes have been removed from, you can certainly drink some organic black coffee makes sure it's mold free. You can drink organic teas, and then carbonated beverages on the acceptable list of some companies. You'll see this all over Instagram have gotten a really bad reputation. So not all the carbonated beverages out there are acceptable. So yes, I'm gonna refer you to those lists for that. Now, in regards to alcohol patients often ask me about this. Everything in moderation, but I would say typically, I'm recommending patients avoid beer and liquor from foods that they're sensitive to Now what's acceptable, or more are more things like vodka, seltzers, those sorts of things. Those are going to be gluten free and dairy free, they're not going to have, hopefully sugar alcohol. Some do, you gotta read the labels, and many of them are not high sugar either, which is great. Patients who really need to snack, I would say, if you feel like you're needing to snack, make sure you increase your protein and fats with each meals that should cause you to feel more satiated, so that you don't feel like you need to constantly eat. You can also consider brushing your teeth after your last meal of the day or after each meal. For many people, that just kind of gives them that sweet feeling. And then they don't eat until the next meal. We do have a lot of different supplements for cravings though. My favorite is called Epi curve. It has five HTP, chromium, phenylalanine, tyrosine, glutamine, and Jim nema. So all of these agents help to boost our happy neurotransmitters, and also help with blood sugar regulation. And so that can be very helpful as well. For many of our patients. Currently, we're using semaglutide, the GLP one agonists, which really help patients feel full longer, it helps minimize cravings as well, and works on insulin resistance. So we're having tremendous benefit with using that for weight loss. But we also, many times use our liver detox program for patients and Prolon, which is kind of that five day prolonged fast regimen to help pilot patients into better eating behaviors. Because again, if we can kind of start having them make some changes, especially with their habits, because life is all about habits and habits determine your future, right, then hopefully, we can kind of budge the needle here. So anything that you can anchor new changes to will help you creating that new habit.

So I want to definitely propose to you a new kind of weekly challenge, I'd love for you to pick one of the last few things I had mentioned, to work on. So that could be either improving your sleep, increasing your water intake, switching to organic for the dirty dozen foods, at least, maybe it's meal prepping, maybe it's Reducing portion sizes, maybe it's making your own salad dressing or just making a sheet pan of vegetables. If you can just start each week, implementing one of these things, your health will be positively impacted. So remember, I think I've said this already, but people do not decide their futures they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures. So this really your your future health is up to you. In conclusion, I know this episode kind of went all over the place but the trends throughout this really stemmed in the same topics right eating clean to improve your weight and your hormones. So if you enjoyed the show and want me to do another Ask Me Anything show, please send your questions to me on Facebook or to info at your longevity blueprint.com. Be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck, you can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time the course is 50% off, check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the Course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I do read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics guests and for how you're applying what you learn on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. This podcast is produced by Team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting. The information provided in this podcast is educational no information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.