I spotted this week’s paper on the Medical Xpress news website and a couple of people also emailed me about it. The headline I saw was “Keto vs. vegan: Study of popular diets finds over fourfold difference in carbon footprints” (Ref 1). The paper behind the news headline was called “Popular diets as selected by adults in the United States show wide variation in carbon footprints and diet quality” and it was by O’Malley et al (Ref 2).
The study
The aim of this study was to estimate the carbon footprint and diet quality of what were called “popular diets” among US consumers. This paper used data on 16,412 people from the NHANES 2005-2010 population study. The NHANES study was based on one 24-hour recall of diet from the participants. Based on the diet information from this one recollection, the researchers assigned participants to one of six diets: vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian, paleo, keto and all other diets. We’ll cover how the diets were defined next.
The authors said that they then calculated the average daily greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) in kilograms of CO2 equivalents per 1,000 calories. The word estimated would be more accurate. The GHGE were estimated using a database that the authors had developed previously. Diet quality was assessed using a standard US index called the Healthy Eating Index (HEI).
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: What is going on, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on the leaky gut and mental health connection.
I’m going to be flying solo today. I felt pretty inspired to create this one, just to start a conversation and educate some people that might need that education or remind people that need a reminder. We’re going to be talking about leaky gut and its relationship with autoimmune diseases and especially mental health. I gotta start off today’s show by just talking about a testimonial really that we got recently at my own practice.
This is not to shout out our own business. I do not work with clients one-on-one. It is very rare, it is something that I do with family, friends. So, please do not reach out to us thinking that I’m going to do that. Unfortunately, I will not do that.
But what we’re doing right now at my in-person business in Bucks County, Pennsylvania is we have, I’ve mentioned this a million times, so I apologize if you’ve heard this a few times, we have my girlfriend, best friend and his girlfriend going through the course to really be practitioners. This is going to help them kind of get away from their nine to five grinds because they want to transition into stuff that they like a lot more, and also do things from anywhere in the world.
I think that’s one of the biggest allures for them. At the same time, they all like health and are interested in helping people. I mean, who isn’t to some degree. So, it’s kind of a perfect thing.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Similar Symptoms
One of the things that I’ve been doing, because Maddy, my girlfriend, is about to graduate and we’ll have her on the show relatively soon, she has been consulting with some of the clients. To be clear, I know that she’s not a graduated FDN. It’s not that being a graduated FDN gives you any legal standing anyway, so technically there’s nothing that stops you from working with someone just because you haven’t finished the course. We’re not doing anything wrong. But I also think it’s just wise until someone is done with the course to not have them work with super complicated cases.
What we’ve been doing is we have a little Jumpstart Program that we do that uses two things. It is the MRT Food Sensitivity Test and the Metabolic Typing Diet. These things don’t necessarily have anything to do with leaky gut directly because I’m going to be talking about a leaky gut test today, and then, again, the implications with mental and physical health. But I’m mentioning this client testimonial and why they went through this program because it’s just inspiring. It got me thinking about this topic. It got the wheels turning.
What happened is, this person that I know, I met them through a separate work thing. I’ve known them for about five, six years now, probably five. When we first started talking, I was in shock at how similar our symptoms were in terms of the mental health stuff we had dealt with. Except for him, he was still actively dealing with a lot of the stuff, but it was managed fairly well through medication.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Get the Body Healthy Enough
Now that’s great, but obviously most of us have a goal in a perfect world to not use medication. That’s something that is true whether you’re in the functional space or not. If you ask most people whether or not they would want to be required to need a medication for the rest of their life, overwhelmingly, the majority I have talked to say, well, yeah, that’d be great not to use it.
It’s not that as FDNs we get anyone off medication unless you also happen to be a doctor. I suppose you could do that then. But I’m not a doctor so I can’t do that. And no one else at our clinic is a doctor, so they can’t do that.
What we can do though, is help the individual get their body healthy enough that they might realize they don’t need certain medications and they can go consult with their doctor to discuss whether or not those options are right for them. This is not just a cute disclaimer, right? I sound like the end of a commercial right now.
But I mean this quite seriously. If you’re going to be a functional practitioner or a health coach and you don’t have the proper credentials, you need to do this correctly. Medication does help people and there are certain medications that obviously cause severe side effects. There are certain medications that when they don’t work have horrendous consequences for the individual. But guys, we gotta still remember, any medication that is on the market is on the market because it works to some degree.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: A Time and a Place for Medication
This is one I always kind of get myself in trouble for in the functional space. A lot of people will look at me a little funky when I talk about mental health medication because, yes, if you look at some of it, it is some of the worst medication out there. The SSRIs are not particularly great. The benzodiazepines are awful in terms of their potential side effects or consequences. People are like, well, dude, what do you mean that medication’s not a big deal?
I’m saying that it’s not a big deal in the sense that it could be really supporting this person in that season of their life. I mean, what would you rather? Would you rather them going to work or school every single day suffering with severe panic attacks? Would you rather them going to work or school every day suffering with debilitating depression and battling back and forth with suicidal ideation? Because these medications, in some circumstances, can actually help those things.
Now, again, going back to the main point, we can still accept that truth, but also try to help support the person to get to a healthy enough spot in their life where maybe they don’t need these things. That would be ideal.
Anyway, this guy, I’ve known him for about five, six years and we had very similar mental health symptoms in so much that he had a overall good life growing up and still had mental health symptoms.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Good Life but Bad Mental Health
Many of us, when we talk to someone who has been through very traumatic experiences or even abuse, even if you’re not a mental health professional, you can still use your head and think, yeah, I see why that person is struggling mentally. They had this really bad thing happen to them or set of things, and now they have mental health problems as a result. That’s kind of common sense, even for the lay person.
What’s a little trickier and highly stigmatized, honestly, is the idea that someone could have an overall subjectively good life, or even objectively good, I guess, and yet still have severe mental health symptom. This has cause for a lot of confusion, but I’ve seen it in myself, and I’ve seen it in so many people, especially our youth. This is happening all the time.
Unfortunately, society approaches mental health in such a way that you have to put one thing in to get one thing out. The abuse or something has to go in, or the trauma has to go in before you can get the mental health issue out. When you take away that part of the equation and you’re just left with the result being the mental health issues, there’s a lot of, ah, come on, maybe you’re being dramatic. Or come on, it can’t really be that bad, or you can’t be depressed, you can’t have anxiety. You’re just stressed.
I’m sure in some cases, some of the time, those can be true. But there are real people out there that meet the diagnostic criteria and have received diagnoses such as myself, that feel like everything’s going pretty well, but something’s not going well mental health wise.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Starting with MRT & Metabolic Typing
Him and I talked for a long time. We’ve been on multiple calls about this stuff. He’s not a hard client to work with by any means. This is a friend of mine at this point. But he was skeptical. He had a healthy level of skepticism and things would kind of fall through the cracks. To his credit, I think what was happening is he doesn’t know many people like me who have dealt with these symptoms and then overcome them through natural means and lifestyle changes. I don’t think he’s seeing that that often.
Well, finally what happened is, I guess the in-person business probably helps out. There’s some credibility there. We have a bigger team now. I don’t know what, but something along the lines of that pushed him over the edge and made him realize, okay, I actually want to give this a shot.
So, what he did is he started out on our basic program, again, MRT and Metabolic Typing Diet. Now, I thought it was totally appropriate to have Maddy work with him, even not being graduated. He understands that; it’s not like it’s a secret because those are two of the simpler tests. It’s a good thing for her to start with. We’ll consult privately before she goes over the results in person with him and we can figure this out.
What happened to this guy is we found some sensitivities, don’t get me wrong, we found he was eating completely wrong for his metabolic type, and so we told him what we thought would be best.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Getting Great Results
He decided to implement it, and mind you, he did not even implement it perfectly. Actually, I would say he only implemented at about 60% to 70%. Yet, within two weeks, between the consults, I overheard from the other room cause Maddy and I live together, that this guy was feeling tremendously better.
Surprised, I thought like I was hearing parts, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if I heard it correctly. So, I walk into the other room where Maddy’s doing the consult with this guy. I just hear him going through this entire testimonial of, I can’t believe how good I feel. I’m not getting these anger spells, not being stuck in bed all morning, and able to get through my workday. And some days I find I accidentally didn’t eat for several hours.
Now we’re not recommending that, but he had to eat frequently, and he felt very hangry if he didn’t get his meals. He was so shocked that he could go for hours without eating, and yet still feel pretty good and not even notice. That’s how good he felt.
So, this is a guy who at one point in his life had very severe suicidal ideations, and for the last eight or nine years has predictably needed medication at around the same time every single year for a few months, at the very least, to help him get through that season. Yet two weeks’ worth of changes when we didn’t even get to run all the FDN labs and he’s choosing to only do this at a 60% or 70% compliancy rate, and those are the results that he got.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Another Component to Mental Health
Is that how this is going to go with every client under those circumstances? No, not necessarily. In fact, I know it won’t because I’ve seen it done before and that doesn’t happen like that. But what I’m trying to say is that there are so many people out here that have these different components to their mental health challenges that they are never told about, and so they never think about this and never connect it.
These might be our brothers and sisters out there with severe suicidal ideations, thinking about, or even attempting, or unfortunately even successfully taking their own life. I mean the word “successfully” there very loosely. Yet they just needed to make some dietary changes.
Now the dietary changes can be pretty broad. So, the reason I’m focusing on leaky gut today is because leaky gut is something that is very mainstream. You can hear a lot of practitioners talking about it. But one of the things I think we really excel at as FDNs is being able to understand leaky gut.
There’s not a lot of people that can actually explain this to you in an intelligent way. I am sure there are people out there who can explain it in an even more intelligent way than I can. I’m trying to give you some useful information today, something that you could perhaps even share with a client or potential client of yours. It would be something that they could at least digest overall, no pun intended, very crappy pun. They could have their mindset changed a little bit about how to address the mental health side of things. So, let’s get into leaky gut and how to test for this.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: What Leaky Gut Is
When we are talking about leaky gut, we need to define what it actually is that we’re referring to. Many people can’t even give you a basic definition.
For the sake of our conversation today, what we’re talking about when we say leaky gut is we’re talking about direct damage to the epithelial cell layer of the gut lining. The epithelial cell layer is that outermost layer.
You can very easily find pictures of this online. In fact, I will put in the show notes a picture that I like. It’s a cartoon, it’s very simple. But it is something that’ll help you get a visual, and I highly recommend taking the two seconds to click on it. You don’t have to follow along with me, but what you can do is just get that visual. Then if you’re listening for the rest of your car ride, or while cooking food, you have an idea of what I’m going to be getting at here. I’ll actually take a second to pull that up myself.
Now what you should see in the top left corner of this image, if you clicked on the link, is Dr. Ax. That is for Dr. Josh Ax. Shout out to him. He has this cool little diagram here, and it’s not as complicated as it could be, but it’s as complicated as it probably needs to be in terms of, again, helping a client in an effective way or just helping you get an understanding of this. When we’re talking about leaky gut, this is what you want to visualize. Let’s talk about what all these moving parts are.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Dealing with Toxic Exposures
On the outside, on the upper end of this, you have things like toxins, those are labeled. You have the microorganisms, which could be bacteria, parasites, or whatever. You have food particles like gluten. All this stuff are things that we’re exposed to on a daily basis.
I mean, we’re exposed to toxins on a daily basis, maybe not a parasite every single day, but certainly bacteria, definitely gluten. You’re going to interact with these things every single day that you exist, assuming that you don’t live in a bubble. Now, that’s fine. That’s not the problem in and of itself, but we’ll talk about how that can become problematic when we’re dealing with leaky gut.
The next thing we want to look at here, and if you look on the left, you’ll see mucosal membrane cells. That is referring to those pudgy little pink things that have what looks like hair on the top of each of them, or these little fingers. That’s your epithelial cell layer. That’s what we were talking about before. These are the outermost cells of the gut lining.
When we say leaky gut, when we say intestinal permeability, what we’re talking is this. Now a leaky gut would probably never actually look like this diagram, but it kind of helps us paint the picture. Because in this diagram, you see on the left side that cells look great, they’re totally close together, everything looks cool. Then when you go to the right, you see that clearly, even if you don’t know much about this, which you probably know something, certainly more than the average person, you can see what we already mean by leakiness. The cells are kind of split apart and things are getting through.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Nice and Tight Spaces Needed
Most likely if someone’s gut was leaky, you would be seeing this as an issue throughout the whole gut, not a few cells look fantastic and a few cells look terrible. There’s also a bit more to this, which is not expressed in this diagram, but I do think is worth mentioning.
Then on the final part there, of course you have the bloodstream. That’s what the red is, and it’s showing all these things getting into there. So, let’s break this down.
When you have a healthy gut lining, it does in fact look like the left side of the diagram. That is called the tight junctions. Well, the tight junctions can be loose. It’s still called that, even if, I guess they’re not tight. But they start out as tight junctions. Those are the spaces in between the cells, and they should be, as the name implies, tight. The cells are nice and close together. It would be pretty hard for stuff to get through.
Although, to be clear, just to be accurate with our science here, our gut lining is always somewhat permeable. You’re never going to really have a gut that is perfectly tight and doesn’t allow anything in, especially not in today’s world. That’s unrealistic.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Adding on Certain Stressors
The gut is also interesting in that it gets damaged and heals rapidly. When you eat food, even if you ate the cleanest, most organic, best food for you ever meal, you are still going to temporarily damage the gut lining. How nature designed this is that when you stop eating, otherwise known as fasting, our cells in the gut actually heal rapidly. In fact, it only takes a few days before those cells completely turn over.
That’s why if someone goes and does a 72-hour water fast, which I’m not advocating for, you should always check that kind of stuff with your doctor, I’m just saying if hypothetically someone did that, I’ve done one in the past, then you are going to have some really serious gut restoration, assuming that they introduce food back in a slow and steady way.
Don’t just go eat a pound of beef after 72 hours of fasting. That would be a terrible idea. You need to get the digestive juices flowing again in a progressive manner. You can’t just load up on a pound of beef afterwards. That would be a little rough, almost even counterproductive, I’m assuming.
So, you have these tight junctions, they’re looking good over there, everything’s going well. But as certain stressors add on in our lives, that’s when the gut becomes leaky. Now, we just said the gut is sensitive enough that even when you have things like normal food, healthy meals, the gut actually temporarily becomes more permeable.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Allowing Direct Access
So, what happens when modern people are eating all day long as a whole? I know there’s obviously still starvation in the world, but most of us have the opposite problem where we’re eating all day long.
We have a lot of mental stress that’s very chronic. We do know mental stress, any form of stress actually, does lead to increased permeability of the gut. Over exercise can lead to permeability of the gut. Glyphosate can lead to permeability of the gut.
We’re not really doing so well as a society in terms of addressing this whole leaky gut thing. And this is a main player in chronic disease. I wouldn’t say it’s a main cause, but it’s a main player in chronic disease. The whole cause thing kind of gets misrepresented a bit in the world of functional and natural medicine.
As all of these stressors are hitting us faster and faster and more and more consistently, that’s when we’re seeing the right side of the diagram. What will happen is those tight junctions are not so tight anymore.
Now you have this paracellular transport, which means it’s going kind of in between these cells. And you can already see the obvious problem here. Again, our body’s already getting exposed to these toxins and microorganisms, except now we don’t have these tight junctions to protect ourselves from it. What happens is the gut lining spreads apart and now these things have direct access to your bloodstream and they’re going to go right in.
Well to the body, and this is correct that the body does this, it sees it as a foreign invader. It says, this is bad. We don’t want this. We need to do something about this, and it starts creating reactions.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: The Vicious Cycle
This is a very common way for people to develop food sensitivities. Even though we use a food sensitivity test, and I stand by this completely, one of the reasons you might hear functional practitioners condemning food sensitivity tests is because they make the argument that if you heal the gut, a lot of the food sensitivities might just go away on their own because this food is no longer getting to the bloodstream.
I hear what they’re saying. I don’t disagree that it’s possible. They’re just missing a few factors there. One is the fact that ironically, the stuff that is now going through the cells and into the bloodstream is now contributing to leaky gut, so you have this vicious cycle.
The other side of that is, healing leaky gut is quite complex. I mean, this isn’t something that you do in a few weeks necessarily. Definitely not for most of the clients that we take on as FDNs or for most Americans, for example. You’re going to need a little more than just a cute little gut protocol to actually do this.
So, in theory, it may be correct to say get the leaky gut addressed, and you’re not going to have to worry about most of those food sensitivities. But in my opinion, from what I know after all these years of doing this, it’s an overly simplified argument. I don’t think that makes sense or is the best route for people, especially if they’re already spending money on the other labs.
I mean, what’s another few hundred on a food sensitivity test? It also depends on what food sensitivity test are we talking about. I could hear them on that side too. Anyway, I digress.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: A System-Wide Inflammatory Response
Now this stuff’s going into the bloodstream and you’re having these immune reactions. This is a very common way that people develop autoimmunity.
You can see the stuff at the bottom of the chart too, food intolerances, like I already said, there’s an issue too with the blood-brain barrier breach. We’ll talk about that in just a few minutes. And then you have systematic inflammation. This is causing a system-wide bodily inflammatory response. Then on top of all of this, you have nutrient malabsorption. You’re not getting the stuff that you need to get.
So, when we think about leaky gut, this is kind of the diagram that we want to think about. The one thing I will add is you’ll notice on the leaky gut side, the right side, they still have the hair-like/finger-like things on top of the cells completely normal. That’s not really what would happen in reality. In reality, those hair-like things would start to get broken down and you would have what’s called a blunted brush border. This is particularly bad in individuals who have celiac disease.
For those that don’t know, celiac disease is a very common autoimmune condition. It’s a strange autoimmune condition, in my opinion, because it is particularly relevant to gluten, although there are some other things that people talk about, and I think that’s probably correct. But as of right now, celiac would be defined as when people consume gluten, they have an autoimmune reaction directly to their gut lining.
It’s very profound and much more significant than even people who are just sensitive to gluten like myself. It’s kind of strange what can happen to these individuals. Again, we’ll touch on that more in just a second.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: A Blunted Brush Border
But they will really have that blunted brush border. In fact, it’s so dramatic that one of the only guaranteed ways to get a true Celiac diagnosis is, in addition to the blood testing, they’ll actually do an endoscopy. They’ll go in and get a biopsy. When they’re down there, they’ll also look around and see if that brush border is just completely shot, like if there are no hair-like things left, there’s no finger-like things left. When we’re looking at that, we know that this person’s had an immune reaction for a really long time.
So again, that’s normally going to be a case of celiac. However, you will see those hairlike things damaged, in the meantime, in other people just not to the same degree usually as celiacs. That’s very important for the nutrient absorption thing. That’s one of those things that those hair-like things do. It’s very problematic to not have those operating in the way that they should be.
With that said, the way that we test for this at FDN is actually one of our core labs that we teach in the course. I love this. It is our Mucosal Barrier Assessment. We actually only look at four markers on here. We look at something called zonulin, DAO, histamine, and then a DAO to histamine ratio. This is kind of a brief overview today. But again, we’re connecting all of this to the mental health side and things that we were talking about earlier in the podcast.
Mucosal Barrier Assessment: Measuring Zonulin
Let’s break down the zonulin thing really quick. I’m reading right from the sheet. We’re going to get a little technical and then I’ll pop in with my 2 cents.
Zonulin is a protein found in intestinal cells with production and release mimicking the effect of certain bacterial toxins on the tight junctions of the small intestines. Remember what those tight junctions were; it is that thing keeping those cells together.
Zonulin and a small family of closely related peptides bind to specific receptors only on the luminal surface of the intestinal epithelial (that epithelial cell layer) and triggers a cascade of biochemical processes that induces tight junction disassembly and a subsequent permeability increase of the intestinal epithelial. This is often referred to as, you guessed it, leaky gut.
When zonulin is high, in layman’s terms, on this test, we can get a good indicator that their gut has been damaged. Is it a direct measurement of that? No. It’s an indirect measurement, because when zonulin goes high, it causes these tight junctions to disassemble. One can make a reasonable assumption that when you see this high on the test, chances are this wasn’t an overnight thing, it wasn’t a temporary thing. Most likely the gut has been leaky for quite some time.
Moving on. Intestinal permeability changes due to zonulin have been implicated in many diseases and dysfunction, notably in celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, but also in others, including the brain, respiratory system, and skin.
It’s kind of interesting to connect these things, especially for me, someone who suffered with acne. And there’s others out there with psoriasis, eczema, whatever, we treat those as a society as skin issues. But how often do people, and their dermatologists, think of this as something going on in the gut?
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: The Dangerous Two-Way Response
Reading on further. The gluten glycoprotein, alpha gliadin, can activate zonulin signaling irrespective of the genetic expression of autoimmunity. This generates a two-way response. Not only can fluid exit, but intestinal contents are able to gain entry in the opposite direction into the bloodstream.
This isn’t too complicated when you looked at that chart that we talked about. We have things like gluten and specifically that glycoprotein in it called alpha gliadin, that can activate the zonulin signaling. Remember, this is irrespective of the genetic expression of autoimmunity. This can happen to people who have sensitivities but are not celiac.
Then you have that two-way response. Not only are we allowing the fluid into the gut, which is problematic in and of itself, but more problematic is that the intestinal contents are able to gain entry in the opposite direction. This gliadin/zonulin leakage effect is longer and more pronounced, up to fivefold greater, in the intestinal cells of people with celiac disease. That’s why celiac disease is so bad.
When intestinal tissue is taken from celiac disease patients in remission and from non-celiac disease controls with digestive complaints, results show that celiac disease sufferers may produce up to 30 times as much zonulin as non-celiac disease sufferers and have a threefold greater intestinal permeability even though the non-celiac disease people are still eating diets containing gluten while the celiac disease sufferers have been gluten free for over two years. Isn’t that crazy?
This is why there’s this implication that celiac disease might have more to it than just gluten itself. So, there might be more to it than just gluten itself.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Devastating Results of High Zonulin
It actually says that next in this thing I’m going to read. This strongly suggests that something besides gluten may be contributing to permeability changes in people with celiac disease. It may be that certain types of intestinal dysbiosis, which is improper balance of bacteria and yeast in the intestines, prime genetically susceptible individuals to develop CD, celiac disease, in response to gluten.
In addition, many people who suffer from celiac disease also suffer from other autoimmune disorders. Very true. Increased levels of zonulin are implicated in corticosteroid use as well as the pathogenesis of insulin dependent diabetes, Type 1 specifically, and juvenile non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. There is also evidence of its implication in multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, skin diseases, as we mentioned, as well as inflammatory bowel disease and obesity.
Zonulin also plays an important role in permeability changes in the brain, working as a gatekeeper, not only in the intestine, but also at the blood-brain barrier. Remember, this was a key part in the mental health thing. This is clearly in the evidence when there is an intake of foods containing the alpha gliadin or similar proteins. The resulting high zonulin levels leads to disassembly of the tight junctions in the vascular epithelium, permitting many molecules, including toxins, to slip through the blood-brain barrier, resulting in activation of a brain inflammatory response.
Neuroinflammation. What have we talked about before on this podcast? Neuroinflammation seems to be more related to mental health issues than the whole serotonin theory. I do believe that there is an aspect there, but I think that’s an effect, not a cause. And when I say it’s an effect, I mean it’s a cause of the mental health symptoms. But it’s an effect of something deeper like neuroinflammation then leading to the imbalances.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Is It More than the Serotonin Aspect?
This is my theory, by the way, so don’t go around saying that this is a hundred percent true. This part is a theory that I have and I’m just sharing with you. I encourage you to challenge it and think through these things.
But the reason I suggest that is because, and this was one of the coolest studies I ever found, because I love sharing this with people, and I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth talking about again. There was a meta-analysis done with about 30 studies, and it was maybe 26, showed the efficacy of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Advil and Naproxen in the short-term treatment of mental health conditions, like depression and anxiety.
Now tell me this, how on earth would NSAIDs help mental health issues unless there was an inflammatory aspect to the mental health issues? Maybe when someone is inflamed, this would make sense, I believe, they’re not processing food as well, or they’re not able to produce serotonin as well. They’re not able to utilize the nutrients that they’re getting to produce serotonin or a combination of all of those things, that could be happening. But there seems to be something there that’s missing from the mainstream narrative that when you address the inflammatory side or cause inflammation, it seems to lead people to have mental health issues, which shouldn’t have anything to do with the whole serotonin theory. I hope that makes sense.
So, zonulin is something that we check for. And this is the last part I’ll read about zonulin. It says, the resulting symptoms may include, this is from the blood-brain barrier thing, may include anxiety, depression, brain fog, slow mental processing, and emotional disturbances.
Mucosal Barrier Assessment: DAO and Histamine
Over time, this can even progress to neurodegeneration, which might be things like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia as a general factor. Kind of crazy what this can do, right? So, we test for this to figure out where this individual might be.
Now, if they have some type of gluten sensitivity, it wouldn’t be uncommon for this to be super high, but you’ll see this high in people all the time, even when they’re not consuming gluten. There’s other things that we can do there, right?
The other ones I’m going to go through a little quicker. But we also look at, like I said, histamine and DAO. DAO is diamine oxidase. Histamine is a nitrogenous compound, known to be involved in 23 different physiological functions, which include local immune responses, neurotransmission, as well as regulation of physiological function in the GI tract.
Histamine either is stored or it’s rapidly metabolized and inactivated by either of these two enzymes. So, you can have histamine and methyltransferase, or DAO, which is again, diamine oxidase. The latter is a principle enzyme observed in the digestive tract. Okay? So that’s why we’re looking at these two things together.
Then when we test histamine together with DAO levels, we are provided with important information that is not revealed with standard food sensitivity tests. The latter is often thought to be the underlying cause of gut inflammation and dysfunction, when in fact the reason may actually be an imbalance of accumulated histamine and the capacity for its degradation by enzymes such as DAO.
Mucosal Barrier Assessment: DAO to Histamine Ratio
So what does this mean? It means that when we’re looking at histamine and DAO, the reason that the fourth marker on this test is that DAO to Histamine ratio is because, in theory, you could have histamine super elevated, but if the DAO can match it, it’s not that this is great, but at least the person might be getting some relief.
When that histamine goes super high and the DAO can’t match it, now you got someone who doesn’t feel so good. And what might some of those symptoms be? They’re things that you might be familiar with.
We’ve all probably taken an antihistamine at some point in our life. These would be things like Benadryl. Some of the symptoms could be a runny nose, sneezing, congestion, itching, hives, skin flushing, dizziness or vertigo, headache, migraines, nausea, vomiting, intestinal cramps, gas, diarrhea, abnormal menstrual cycle, shortness of breath, abnormal heart rate, high blood pressure, and severe allergic reactions at the most extreme, which could be anaphylaxis.
I look back, I’m like, dang, I had a lot of these when I was a kid. I always complained about a shortness of breath. It’s just kind of weird to look back and think that this is maybe something that could have been a contributing factor to these mystery symptoms that I had going on. But do you think anyone thought to test this back then? Unfortunately, no.
Other abnormalities may also arise in these areas, okay. You might have issues with memory, body temperature, circadian rhythm, and even learning. There’s so much that goes into this.
Do You Like These Kind of Podcasts?
I know so many people that feel like they’re not smart or their brain doesn’t work, and really, they just needed some good testing to figure out what was going on. And it turns out maybe they’re not a genius, but they’re a lot smarter than they thought.
All right. I think that covered just about everything for today. That’s a lot more dense than we typically get on here. Sometimes it’s very story based with information in between. So, I wanted to make sure that we got a little bit nerded out, but I also gave you guys some things to chew.
Again, check out that diagram. It’ll just give you a good visual for what we’re actually working with when we are testing. I will see if I’m allowed to do this, but I’ll also put one of our sample lab reports in the show notes as well, if I’m allowed to post that publicly. I don’t know why I wouldn’t be, but you will see if you have that or not.
If you guys like me kind of going over and connecting certain tests that we do, or even conditions, if you’ll consider leaky gut a condition, to specific things, let me know; I would love to do more of these. This one was super easy for me today simply because I’m passionate about it. But I also just had that inspiration from a client recently, and I thought it was amazing.
Leaky Gut & Mental Health: Share this Possible Life-Saving Message
More people need to know what’s going on here. I talked about leaky gut from a very general perspective, but I hope you caught me highlighting those parts about the blood-brain barrier. That is the part people are missing. Yes, it is true that certain bacteria and fungi can actually contribute to mental health symptoms in and of themselves. I think that’s how a lot of mainstream people, if they talk about this at all, think about this whole gut-brain connection, but it’s a lot more than that.
You do not necessarily need the presence of any terrible bacteria to still have someone suffering with mental health issues, there’s the neuroinflammatory aspect as well. Make sure people know this. Tell them about this, right? Share this podcast with them if you feel inclined. Or share something off YouTube. Let people know that there could be something going on internally that’s leading to the mental health things.
Guys, again, like I was talking about with that client from earlier, I never mean to be dramatic, I’m just trying to inspire action in people because it’s this important. This is a factual statement, I don’t know how many, but I know I can say this as a fact. There are people out there who have taken their own lives because they needed to make some dietary changes, and they needed to address gut health, and other things. We’re getting a little simplified, but we could have helped them. They just never knew it was an option.
So, please make sure you’re sharing this with as many people as possible, or just having conversations. Let them know that it exists. It means a lot to me, and I’m sure it’ll mean the world to them.
Conclusion
I’m looking forward to talking to you guys again soon. We will be back with a very interesting interview next time. We have functional medicine for pets. She was a hit on our Health Space Unmasked event that we did back in early March. You guys will love this one. I’ll see ya then. Thanks for listening.
This amazing Herb Tahini Dressing will add so much flavor to your next salad or grain bowl.
Our core belief here is that balanced eating should be both nutrient-dense and delicious-dense!
One of the unique elements in our Foundational Five system for creating balanced meals is the Flavor Factor, which is all about adding ingredients that help make your meal taste delicious and even more nutritious, including sauces, dressings, spices, and herbs.
Made with tahini, lemon juice, cilantro, parsley, chives, and dill, this Herb Tahini Dressing will turn into a staple dressing for all of your spring and summer salads.
Make this Flavor Factor recipe on your batch cooking day and you’ll be able to enjoy it in a variety of ways throughout the week!
What Is The Foundational Five Flavor Factor?
In case you’re new to the NS Community and the Mindful Nutrition Method, the Foundational Five system is part of how we teach you to build balanced meals. It makes it easy for you to give your body the nourishment you need while having the flexibility to enjoy the foods you love without stressing about food.
The Foundational Five is made up of five elements of nutrition including Protein, Fat, Non-starchy Carbohydrates, starchy & Sugary Carbohydrates, and the Flavor Factor (which brings vibrancy, deliciousness, and enjoyment to your meals).
You can download our free guide that walks you through our Foundational Five system for creating balanced meals that you can use to meal prep or cook fresh this week!
Tahini Nutrition Benefits
Packed with heart-healthy unsaturated fats
Rich in free-radical fighting antioxidants
Disease fighting as a result of its anti-inflammatory properties
Ingredients Needed To Make This Herb Tahini Dressing
Tahini
Lemon juice
Cilantro
Parsley
Chives
Dill
Garlic
Olive oil
Water
Sea salt
Pepper
Lemon zest
How To Make This Herb Tahini Dressing
First, simply gather your ingredients. Next, add them to a food processor or blender and blend until you’ve reached your desired, creamy texture!
Tips for Making This Herb Tahini Dressing
Here are a couple of tips you should keep in mind that will help you easily store and make the most out of this Herb Tahini Dressing.
Store in Air-tight Glass Swing Bottles
Utilizing air-tight glass swing bottles for storage will keep your dressing tasting fresh and delicious for up to a week. Plus, their pour-friendly tops make it easy to mix into any salad, grain bowl, or stir fry!
Double or Triple the Recipe!
Want this dressing to last you all week long for many delicious salads and balanced meals? Then just double or triple the recipe amount to fill up a glass jar to coast you through many balanced salads.
What To Serve With This Herb Tahini Dressing To Make It Balanced
This dressing is a great source of flavor factors and fat, meaning it will add a boost of enjoyment and satiety to any meal!
To help round it out and make a Foundational Five meal, be sure to add it to a bowl, dish, or plate that has your other Foundational Five components (protein, starchy or sugary carbohydrates, and non-starchy carbohydrate).
Salads and grain bowls are particularly easy ways to incorporate all of these ingredients!
FAQ About How To Make This Herb Tahini Dressing:
How long will this recipe last?
When stored in an air-tight glass container, you can use this dressing for up to two weeks.
Avocados, greens, and lutein and zeaxanthin supplements are put to the test for improving cognitive function.
Dark green leafy vegetables are packed with a brain antioxidant called lutein, so increasing our greens intake “could be an important public health strategy for reducing the risk of visual or cognitive impairment.” Lutein is the dominant dietary pigment in the retina of the eye, as well as the brain. So, “it is not surprising that macular pigment density”—the concentration of lutein in the center of the eye called the macula—“was found to be significantly correlated with their levels in matched brain tissue.” This may explain the link between cognitive function and how much of these nutrients from greens you can see in the back of the eye. It’s assumed the neuroprotection is thanks to lutein being such a powerful antioxidant, but it has anti-inflammatory properties, too.
“This relationship between lutein and zeaxanthin [another greens nutrient] and visual and cognitive health throughout the lifespan is compelling.” That statement, however, was based on observational studies, where you observe that higher lutein levels and brain function seem to go together.
You don’t know if it’s actually cause and effect, though, until you put it to the test. As I discuss in my video Friday Favorites: Do Lutein Supplements Help with Brain Function?, “Could L [lutein] and Z [zeaxanthin] be supplemented as part of a lifestyle intervention to both improve central neural [brain] function and reduce the probability of progression through the various stages of dementia?” There’s a reason everyone is so excited about the possibility. Hopeful data from eye health studies have convinced many ophthalmologists to start recommending people to increase their intakes of lutein and zeaxanthin to prevent and treat macular degeneration, a leading cause of age-related vision loss. You don’t have to take pills, though. Adding as little as 60 grams of spinach a day for a month can significantly boost macular pigment in most individuals. That’s only about one-fifth of a ten-ounce package of frozen spinach.
Greens aren’t good for just treating diseased eyes. A randomized, placebo-controlled study found that the goodies in greens can improve visual processing speed in young healthy people—like when you’re trying to hit a fastball and your body has to begin reacting even before you consciously register that the ball is coming towards you. There are also real-world benefits outside of the Major League, though, such as improving visual performance during driving.
What about cognition? A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial gave adults with an average age of 73 the equivalent of either a daily half cup of cooked kale or a full cup of cooked spinach, and found significant improvements in cognitive function compared to those randomized to the placebo.
It may even work in young adults averaging around age 21. In one study, daily supplementation with that same amount of lutein and zeaxanthin not only increased their macular pigment, but it resulted in significant improvements in brain function, including spatial memory, reasoning ability, and complex attention.
Have researchers ever tried putting whole foods to the test? It’s hard to get Americans to eat greens every day, but not so hard to get them to eat green guacamole. A six-month, randomized, controlled trial tested the effects of the intake of avocado on cognition. What was the control? Study participants either ate a daily avocado, potato, or cup of chickpeas, and those in the avocado group had a significant improvement in cognitive function. But, to the Hass Avocado Board’s chagrin, so did the subjects in the potato and chickpea groups. That’s the problem with having healthy placebos! Maybe they should have used iceberg lettuce as the control.
What about the impact on cognition of those who really need it, like Alzheimer’s disease patients? Researchers found that their vision got better, so that’s good, but their cognitive function didn’t change significantly. Now, it’s possible that eating whole foods, like dark leafy greens, might have worked better than just the pigments in pill form.
Yes, “oxidation and inflammation appear to be key to both diseases [Alzheimer’s and macular degeneration], and neither seems particularly amenable to late-stage treatments.” That’s why prevention is critical. Reducing oxidation and inflammation in the earliest stages may be our most promising approach.
Avocados, greens, and lutein and zeaxanthin supplements are put to the test for improving cognitive function.
Dark green leafy vegetables are packed with a brain antioxidant called lutein, so increasing our greens intake “could be an important public health strategy for reducing the risk of visual or cognitive impairment.” Lutein is the dominant dietary pigment in the retina of the eye, as well as the brain. So, “it is not surprising that macular pigment density”—the concentration of lutein in the center of the eye called the macula—“was found to be significantly correlated with their levels in matched brain tissue.” This may explain the link between cognitive function and how much of these nutrients from greens you can see in the back of the eye. It’s assumed the neuroprotection is thanks to lutein being such a powerful antioxidant, but it has anti-inflammatory properties, too.
“This relationship between lutein and zeaxanthin [another greens nutrient] and visual and cognitive health throughout the lifespan is compelling.” That statement, however, was based on observational studies, where you observe that higher lutein levels and brain function seem to go together.
You don’t know if it’s actually cause and effect, though, until you put it to the test. As I discuss in my video Friday Favorites: Do Lutein Supplements Help with Brain Function?, “Could L [lutein] and Z [zeaxanthin] be supplemented as part of a lifestyle intervention to both improve central neural [brain] function and reduce the probability of progression through the various stages of dementia?” There’s a reason everyone is so excited about the possibility. Hopeful data from eye health studies have convinced many ophthalmologists to start recommending people to increase their intakes of lutein and zeaxanthin to prevent and treat macular degeneration, a leading cause of age-related vision loss. You don’t have to take pills, though. Adding as little as 60 grams of spinach a day for a month can significantly boost macular pigment in most individuals. That’s only about one-fifth of a ten-ounce package of frozen spinach.
Greens aren’t good for just treating diseased eyes. A randomized, placebo-controlled study found that the goodies in greens can improve visual processing speed in young healthy people—like when you’re trying to hit a fastball and your body has to begin reacting even before you consciously register that the ball is coming towards you. There are also real-world benefits outside of the Major League, though, such as improving visual performance during driving.
What about cognition? A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial gave adults with an average age of 73 the equivalent of either a daily half cup of cooked kale or a full cup of cooked spinach, and found significant improvements in cognitive function compared to those randomized to the placebo.
It may even work in young adults averaging around age 21. In one study, daily supplementation with that same amount of lutein and zeaxanthin not only increased their macular pigment, but it resulted in significant improvements in brain function, including spatial memory, reasoning ability, and complex attention.
Have researchers ever tried putting whole foods to the test? It’s hard to get Americans to eat greens every day, but not so hard to get them to eat green guacamole. A six-month, randomized, controlled trial tested the effects of the intake of avocado on cognition. What was the control? Study participants either ate a daily avocado, potato, or cup of chickpeas, and those in the avocado group had a significant improvement in cognitive function. But, to the Hass Avocado Board’s chagrin, so did the subjects in the potato and chickpea groups. That’s the problem with having healthy placebos! Maybe they should have used iceberg lettuce as the control.
What about the impact on cognition of those who really need it, like Alzheimer’s disease patients? Researchers found that their vision got better, so that’s good, but their cognitive function didn’t change significantly. Now, it’s possible that eating whole foods, like dark leafy greens, might have worked better than just the pigments in pill form.
Yes, “oxidation and inflammation appear to be key to both diseases [Alzheimer’s and macular degeneration], and neither seems particularly amenable to late-stage treatments.” That’s why prevention is critical. Reducing oxidation and inflammation in the earliest stages may be our most promising approach.
Welcome to the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. Today we will be discussing many things including body image mindset, business tips, and the reversing of Hashimoto’s and digestive issues.
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: All right. Hello there, Sarah. Welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?
[00:00:03] Sarah Baker: Thank you so much for having me. I’m super pumped and excited to be speaking with you today, Evan.
[00:00:08] Detective Ev: Yeah, and this is really cool. We will talk about this specific part later in the podcast. You’re an interesting person cause you actually have a decent long experience in history in this space already, and then are still choosing to go through the FDN program. I’m excited to talk about what led you to doing that. We’ll get to that later.
I always start off really similarly on this show, and any regular listener already knows that. I love to dive into the person’s health journey and story if they have one, and 99% of the people in our space do have one. Of course, I checked out your website and stuff, so I already know some of it, but it’ll be interesting to kind of dive deeper into this. What health symptoms were you experiencing and when did they start in your life?
[00:00:51] Sarah Baker: I actually have a few different healing journeys that I’ve gone through.
I started my practice 10 years ago. My initial healing journey was way back when I was a young little pup. Before I worked within the wellness space, I was in the fashion industry.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Switching Careers
I was an international model and had a completely horrible lifestyle. I smoked cigarettes, a pack of day to try to maintain a certain weight and look a certain way. Even though the fashion world is very superficial, I ate horribly. I just did not live well, did not treat myself well.
The industry that I was in was very superficial, very cutthroat, very fake. Nobody treated themselves well. We didn’t treat each other very well. I was actually living in Turkey and Istanbul at the time.
I remember I was at a casting, and I was looking around the room. All the models were talking about what they were or were not going to eat that day to maintain a certain weight. Everybody was looking at each other as competition and everybody was gazing at each other like we were a threat to one another. It was just a vibe and an emotion that you do not want to immerse yourself in when you feel like you are reduced to looks and nothing else.
I was doing that for a good 13 years; I started when I was a child. I decided one day I’ve had enough, and I wanted to switch careers where I could help empower women to feel good about themselves, to love themselves, treat themselves well, nourish themselves, and to support one another.
That was my initial initiation into the health space. But most recently is when I experienced, I guess I would say, my biggest health crisis. Of course, I got pregnant two weeks before COVID officially started, back in March of 2020, is when things went down.
[00:02:42] Detective Ev: Almost three years now. Isn’t that insane?
[00:02:44] Sarah Baker: Wild.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: A Huge Cascade of Symptoms
I couldn’t, of course, go to the gym or do the things that I wanted to do while I was pregnant. We moved to the suburbs from where we were living in the city of Chicago at the time, just two weeks after I gave birth. That is when things went south.
So, prior to having my child, my second baby, and when I started my practice 10 years ago, as you could imagine, I am a very health-conscious person. I helped mitigate all my health challenges I had 10 years ago and was on the straight and narrow. This just goes to show you that it’s not always lifestyle induced when you have a health issue. It could be something in your environment or a virus that is dormant and pops back up.
For my second kind of health crisis, it was a combination of my environment. I found out the house we moved into had a mold issue, which caused a lot of complications and symptoms that I was experiencing. My child was not sleeping well, so I was waking up every 30 minutes throughout the night. I literally felt like I was dying, that’s how bad the sleep deprivation was. Also, I had postpartum anxiety.
My husband loves to blame the fact that on my first pregnancy I took placenta pills to remineralize and renourish myself, and this second time around our doula lost them in the mail. I was devastated cause I didn’t get the re-nourishment after I gave birth. So, there was a lot of different factors that kind of triggered a huge cascade of symptoms.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: A Diagnosis
I had an Epstein-Barr reactivation, which I never even knew I had before. So, I could have been dormant since childhood and creeped back up. I had everything from digestive issues like SIBO, candida, then had mold toxicity that I later uncovered.
Also, I had bad neurological issues. My eyesight started going wonky. When I typically would have 20/20 vision, things would get very blurry, straight lines would get squiggly, very strange symptoms neurologically. Even after my baby started sleeping, I was still waking up throughout the night, multiple times a night. My sleep was just wrecked. I felt fatigued, I had brain fog.
I wasn’t getting answers from my midwife. They ran their traditional blood tests. I work with a functional medicine doctor who now is one of my colleagues, and she ran way in-depth panels. Turns out I had Hashimoto’s, but it didn’t affect my other thyroid labs, didn’t affect TSH or T4 to T3 or anything like that. But I had some antibodies creeping around and a lot of depletion, a lot of depleted nutrients, minerals.
I was pretty much postmenopausal, but not technically postmenopausal. My estrogen, progesterone, all my hormones were rock bottom, and my mitochondria health was rock bottom. I had toxicities that showed up. Literally everything was wrong within my body. It was a consequence of a perfect storm, lack of sleep, giving birth, moving into a home that had mold. It’s just a combination of my circumstances in the environment, even though I was eating well, still, to the best of my ability.
Sometimes that’s not enough. There are circumstances that are out of your control, which is why working with somebody like an FDNP, this is why we’re health detectives, you can uncover what could be potentially infiltrating your system.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Body Image Battles
[00:06:20] Detective Ev: I don’t want to throw you off with anything, but I want to go back, if I may, to the whole modeling thing.
Again, we have a largely woman audience and this is not something that’s that uncommon. It might not be modeling specifically, but this whole idea of the body image thing, this is unhealthy for people, man, like it really affects them. I mean this in a serious way, I don’t have an opinion on this. So, I’m coming from a place of actual ignorance.
I always hear, especially in my generation, I don’t know if you hear this, but in my generation, I hear all the time about a lot of the blame goes to some supposed male out there that wants a woman to look a certain way. Now, I fully admit that I have my biological desires that lead me towards a certain woman.
My girlfriend to me is very attractive, right? I always felt like that goes both ways, obviously. Like when I look at certain magazines, it’s a jacked-up dude that has a really nice jawline, super handsome, great eyes. I could say the same exact thing about that. Everyone has their own individual things.
But what I thought was so interesting about what you just described, and I know it’s a health show, but I wanted to touch on this. I feel like this is a mental health aspect. You described this like viciousness going against each other amongst women. That had nothing to do with the males. I’m sure there is a part of that, but I’m saying that was like women going against women. How does someone end up in that position where now you’re like competing with other women? What do you think brings people there?
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Basic Need for Validation
Are they looking for validation to begin with? Which, by the way, I’ve looked for in many ways myself, so this isn’t to put Sarah on the spot. But are people looking for validation or how do they get into that to begin with, if I may ask?
[00:07:46] Sarah Baker: How do they get into the modeling industry?
[00:07:48] Detective Ev: Yeah, like how did they get there? Because it sounds like it was terrible. It sounds like you guys are all unhealthy and everyone’s fighting each other, like that doesn’t sound fun.
[00:07:54] Sarah Baker: It’s really terrible. Yeah. I wish I could write a book to expose the modeling industry, but I can’t, of course, at this point. Maybe I could, but too much work.
Well, you know when, you are a little girl you love to play dress up, you love to look in the mirror, put clothes on, pose, and take photos. And when people tell you, oh my gosh, you’re so beautiful, obviously, that gives you a huge dopamine boost. That builds your confidence, that makes you feel validated, that makes you feel wanted. Then you want more of that.
It starts when you’re a child, essentially, when you’re a teenager or even a pre-teen. When you get that validation, you want more of that. So, a lot of little girls’ dreams is, I want to be a supermodel, I want to be a singer, I want to be an actress.
They want to have that validation. They want people to validate them, to want to be like them, to want to be with them. We want that connection. It’s a basic human need to want that connection and that validation. That’s how it started for me when I was a little girl.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Worth Based on Appearance
My neighbor went to some modeling school, and they were talking about it, and I said, wow, I want to do that too. I want to play dress up and take photos and feel beautiful. At the end of the day, it’s all about a feeling. You want to feel wanted, beautiful, worthy, right? So, you find this whole industry that feeds that.
When you get selected for a job, you feel that emotion of, I am worthy because I was selected. Then when you don’t get that job, you feel like I am unworthy. I don’t look right. What is wrong with me? They didn’t choose me.
So, me as a teenager, when I would go to these agencies, I was 13 years old. I remember this so vividly. I went to a modeling agency to be represented; I went to an open call. They told me, you know what, you just need to do some more Pilates to slim down your thighs and then come back to us after you’ve done that. I was 13, Evan. That devastated me. That started a whole trajectory of my worth is based on my appearance.
I lived in Milan, I modeled in Milan, I modeled in Greece, I modeled in Turkey, I modeled in Miami, like all over the place. When you get that validation, you want more of it. Because one side of the industry is very glamorous, where you meet a lot of cool people, you do a lot of cool things. You can travel the world, and people are validating that need to nurture your inner confidence, right? Of course, everybody at the end of the day wants to look in the mirror and think that they look beautiful.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Self-Esteem & Body Dysmorphia
So, when you’re in an industry that directly gives you that validation, you’re beautiful or nope, you’re not good enough, that is such a huge mental mind f right? What seems like it’s a beautiful, cool, awesome industry, quickly turns into an extremely mentally degrading, exhaustive, and depleting industry because there is more rejection than there is acceptance.
Every time you’re rejected, that just chips away at your self-esteem. That’s why so many models get body dysmorphia. Then what is resulted in all these magazines, all these photoshopped images, and all these size zero women is what all these little girls are seeing. That is continuing to condition that belief into women from the age of childhood, essentially, of this is what beauty is. If you don’t look like this, you gotta figure out a way to look like this. Otherwise, you’re not going to be validated in this world. It’s a vicious cycle.
That also is what feeds to all the models within the industry essentially working against each other or viewing each other as a threat because you’re literally everybody’s competition. When I would go to casting calls or auditions and the commercial, for example, was looking for a 5′ 9″ blonde female. It was all me and other five-foot nine blonde females, we’d all be sitting like, Hmm. That’s just not my vibe. I am a very approachable person. I want to be in an environment that feels inclusive, positive, uplifting, inspiring, and it was turning out to be the complete opposite.
On top of that, you are literally doing whatever you can to drop two inches in like a week to fit a certain guideline. It’s just extremely intense and it is not what people think it is.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Degrading Comments
Of course, I will say nowadays the industry has changed tremendously where there’s a lot more body positivity. There’s a lot more models out there that are in all shapes and sizes. Where if I would’ve reentered the industry now, I’m pretty sure it would be a completely different experience than it was maybe like seven or eight years ago.
[00:12:50] Detective Ev: Gotcha. Well, first of all, thank you so much for answering that for me. I’m glad I asked and I’m glad that you’re willing to go there. Because again, even if it’s not the main focus of the show today, that’s fine. That answer’s going to resonate with someone out there. I would bet a lot of money on that.
It’s unbelievable to me the comment that was made to you at 13. I don’t mean that so literally. I actually do believe it because my friend Anna, she’s actually been on the show. She was on way back, like episode 93. But Anna did dance when she was younger.
Now Anna is a fully grown woman that is small. She’s like 5′ 2″. I stand like a foot taller than her basically. As an adult, no one in their life would say, oh, this is a large person. You would actually say the opposite, this is a small person. She said when she was doing ballet, when she was a kid, like the dance instructor told her like, her shoulders were too broad.
I’m like, well, who are you comparing yourself to? I’m just like, you’re already tiny. I just can’t believe that these comments are made to people, and that’s certainly not right. It’s definitely not helpful.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Keeping It All in Line
I see what you’re saying with the modeling thing. I think there’s a very small subset that gets over glamorized, that’s not actually the point of this. Clearly, they’re doing the modeling thing where sometimes they’re promoting people that are unhealthy. The extreme is there. I believe just like we shouldn’t promote those extremes, we should not promote anorexic extremes either. That’s just what makes headlines.
What they’re actually trying to do is what you’re talking about, a happy medium and actually shows what a realistic woman looks like, what most men look like; they’re trying to do that. If you’re healthy and it’s realistic, I think that’s a great thing. I think that can help people. Especially in the age of social media, I mean, this kills all of us, right?
I can go online all day and just thank God I’m not a three outta 10. I’m certainly not a 10 outta 10 either. I could spend the rest of my life on this phone comparing myself to other people who look better than me or have bigger muscles or a thicker beard or whatever it might be, right? We can all play that game and it’s never ending. Because if the best-looking person, gosh forbid you happen to be that person in the world, congratulations, you know that’s not going to last. It goes away as you age. Then it’s like this constant thing.
It’s okay to be fit, it’s okay to be healthy. I think we all do things to try to make ourselves look better, but it’s that balanced perspective, right? Trying to just keep this all in line, that this is not the only source of my validation or worth as a human. I think that’s really what this is, right?
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: A Healthy & Vibrant Person
[00:14:58] Sarah Baker: Definitely 100%. And it bleeds over into the influencer and the fitness and health influencer world as well.
You see all these little 20-year-old fitness and health influencers touting their lifestyle and people are like, why can’t I look like that? It’s like, hello? When you were 20 years old, you probably looked pretty similar if you had a decent metabolism, right? Come back to me when you’re 30 and you’re still within the health and wellness space, and let’s see how you have changed and what you’ve changed with your approach and your protocol. Just saying. I had to get that out there.
[00:15:30] Detective Ev: Yeah. For most of us, listen, we’re not going to be the top tier, 10 outta 10. I think the best thing that we can do, and I mean this, the healthier I’ve gotten, the better that I look. So, you can actually do this in a lot of different ways.
I know we don’t know each other. I had like severe cystic acne, right? Getting healthy, like actually doing the right thing that I was supposed to do anyway led to me becoming a more attractive person. I think that’s the way to do it, and I think it’s the way to do it long term.
Reed Davis, the founder of FDN, he either is 70 or is about to turn 70, and this guy looks fantastic. Is he a 10 outta 10 model? No, I don’t think Reed’s at that level. But there’s something to be said about the longevity of just looking like a healthy, vibrant person versus this very temporary period where you feel like you’re top of the world.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: An Entire System Out of Whack
If that’s where your validation’s coming from, it’s not going to last, whether you’re a body building male that’s 250 pounds, or a size zero woman. I mean, these are such temporary things. Do it if you got it if it makes you feel good, but don’t make that the only source of your validation and worth. That’s crazy and it’s not sustainable.
So, moving on with the health stuff, again, thank you for doing that with me. I think you already had kind of alluded to this. Did you already know once all this stuff started like coming out, that it was more than just the second pregnancy that led to those symptoms? Were you already aware of that because you seemed like you were a health-conscious person of course by that point? Did you know, all right, this wasn’t just the second pregnancy that did this? This is like an accumulation of stuff.
[00:16:48] Sarah Baker: Yeah, I knew 100% it was an accumulation of something. I had a very deep suspicion that something infiltrated my body when I was at my most vulnerable state and really aggravated and threw my entire system out of whack. Because essentially every single system within my body was dysregulated.
I had extreme nervous system dysregulation. My whole digestive system was out of whack. All of my hormones were severely depleted. I knew this wasn’t just oh, pregnancy, right? Because I had my first child, and I sure was fine. I renourished myself after that first pregnancy and maintained my level of health between the first two pregnancies. I just knew that something external infiltrated my body to create this level of chaos.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Having a Baby & Falling Behind
For me specifically, it wasn’t necessarily lifestyle related. I will say though, a lot of my lifestyle choices right before the epicenter of my health crisis happened, I was making poor lifestyle choices.
Because we moved two weeks after I gave birth, obviously, my stress levels are peaked out. We were ordering a lot of takeout to get by, so, of course, I wasn’t eating how I normally would eat. I wasn’t supporting myself from a nutritional level as I could, 100%.
Too soon, I tried to throw myself back into work, so I was adding a lot of emotional and mental stress on myself when I was already dealing with severe sleep deprivation. When I should have been taking a step back and trying to figure out, okay, I don’t feel okay, let me pause my life, I was trying to go, go, go.
Unfortunately, when you’re a woman and you have a baby, you feel like you become so far behind, like everybody else in the world is moving forward when it comes to your career and what you do, unless of course you’re a stay-at-home mom, then that’s your new career. That’s a whole other type of career.
But it’s really unfortunate that when you give birth, you feel like you have to kind of reenter your career path, whether that’s working for yourself or working for somebody else within three months so that you don’t feel like you’re falling behind. That also is what contributed to all of my symptoms popping up all at once.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: The Jump to Functional
[00:19:14] Detective Ev: Yeah, we could do a million side topics. That’s kind of crazy in and of itself, right?
Like what does that do for the child’s development that we’ve created a world where the vast majority of people have to do exactly that, basically separate themselves for significant parts of the day from this being that they created that just came out of them. Probably, I don’t know that that’s the best thing to be doing, but we’re again, more or less forced into it. So, it’s a real kind of unique and interesting point just from even the health perspective of the baby, let alone the mom.
One thing, as well, we usually go into this a little deeper, but I think this is kind of clear today, so correct me if I’m wrong. I like to know how people made the jump into the functional side, but it sounds like based off your experiences with the modeling thing and just the last years prior to the second pregnancy, you seem very aware of the health stuff.
Even just this whole remineralization thing after pregnancy, like I haven’t heard of that. I’m sure maybe many of our female listeners have; I haven’t. Was it a big thing for you to go to like functional medicine or was that like a pretty quick transition after maybe you went to Western medicine first and they were like, hey, we don’t know what’s wrong?
How long did it take, I guess is what I’m trying to say from the symptoms to, okay, I’m going to a functional doctor that many people would look at as woowoo, even though we know it’s not?
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Save Time & Look Much Deeper
[00:20:22] Sarah Baker: For me personally, it didn’t take very long just because I’ve been working with other functional practitioners for the past decade.
Since I thought, I’m generally healthy, I’m first going to go to my OB/GYN and just get basic labs; see if everything’s okay. When I did that and all my labs came within the normal range, even though we all know what’s normal in conventional medicine when it comes to lab ranges isn’t actually optimal, I still knew something was wrong.
I immediately then dived deeper into more functional labs and full thyroid panels, right? Because when you go to your primary care provider or your OB/GYN, or even an endocrinologist, they will only test your TSH if you feel like you have something going on with your thyroid. They don’t test anything else, and they don’t even care that you have Hashimoto’s antibodies. They only want to know if it is so severe that it has impacted your entire thyroid.
Because of what I know, luckily, I was able to have access to functional medicine fairly shortly afterwards. But for the general population and for a lot of individuals and women that aren’t really aware of everything that functional medicine entails, it takes them going from multiple different doctors and multiple different specialists, more time of trial and error in trying to troubleshoot their own health until they finally make their way to somebody like myself or an FDNP.
At that point, they could have saved so much time if they could have accessed whatever labs they needed to from their primary care provider and then came straight away to a functional medicine practitioner or an alternative healthcare provider to really see what is going on in a much, much deeper level.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: A Little TSH Discussion
[00:22:05] Detective Ev: So true. Autoimmunity, in general, just gets screwed over by Western medicine. But the thyroid one is particularly close to home for me. My mom had the same thing just with Graves’ disease. They didn’t test the thyroid at all for like six, seven years.
For better or worse, the Hashimoto’s/hypothyroidism thing is more common. You might have more doctors that’ll be like that kind of sounds like this or sounds like that. Whether they test properly for it is a whole separate thing. But my mom, since she had the symptoms of hyperthyroidism, it was so easily written off to just stress or it’s in your head.
She’s getting put on anti-anxiety meds, but that wasn’t the case. I mean, this woman had severe antibody development. She had Graves’ disease. Her TSH, for those listening that have always probably heard it the opposite way, I think was like, zero point something. It was very low because there’s like this inverse relationship with the TSH. You know, when someone’s actually underactive, it’s super high.
I think the easiest way to get people to remember that is, well, what is it? It’s thyroid stimulating hormones. The reason it’s going up is it’s trying to stimulate versus like down is because, wow, this thing’s going crazy right now. My mom’s sitting there with 130 beat per minute heart rate while she’s sitting on the couch or something. It’s crazy and I’m just glad that there’s people like us out there and like you out there getting to help these individuals.
I wanted to ask when you decided to make this your career, but it sounds more like this was an add-on to the things that you were already doing. You were already serving people in a health sense.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Not Treating the Paperwork
[00:23:28] Sarah Baker: Yeah. I started my practice 10 years ago. But the one missing link for me was having the ability myself to order extensive functional labs.
One of my girlfriends, is also an FDNP. That’s how I kind of came upon you guys. She said, yeah, I can order all my own labs. I can run GI MAPs, do neurotransmitters, do like thyroid, all sorts of them. I said, what?
Because what I do is typically work collaboratively with naturopathic doctors, functional medicine doctors, and I fill in all the gaps. They pretty much will run labs and create a supplement protocol on their perspective, then I fill in everything else. Over the many years of doing this, I have learned how to read all of these labs.
But the one problem I’ve been finding is that I don’t always necessarily agree with other doctors of how they’re approaching the labs. What I’ve noticed when you go to a ND or another type of functional medicine practitioner, a lot of times they will just treat the lab results. If they see you have low iodine; take some iodine. Or you have low testosterone and low estrogen; just take some DHEA and don’t really do anything beyond that.
I know your institute talks greatly about that as well, the importance of not just fixing the labs, but understanding what is causing these situations. What’s going on in the body that is causing these lab results? That’s why I was really excited about this institute. Cause now I have the opportunity to run my own labs, create my own protocols, and do everything that kind of completes the practice that I’ve already established.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: A Time & Place for Supplementation
[00:25:33] Detective Ev: Sarah, I really appreciate you bringing this up. I hope everyone looks at me as like a genuine person. But you know, I’ve been through FDN so long ago that they look at me as like, an employee. Like, he’s just saying this cause he works for the place and that’s not the case.
But it’s nice to hear this from someone who has been in the industry for a while. You are actively going through the course. This isn’t something that, again, you get something for, or you’ve been doing for a few years. You’re even recognizing the clear problems right now with functional and natural medicine.
We know not all practitioners are like this. Sarah said that too, it’s not everyone. But a lot of the functional and natural medicine stuff basically becomes Western medicine with supplements and no surgery. That’s really what this is.
There is clearly a time and place for supplementation. We pride ourselves in being one of the best schools for teaching appropriate supplementation, so we’re all for that. But it’s this idea that that’s all you’re going to do. We’ll run the hormone panel. This is high, this is low. We treat it with a supplement. Again, conceptually speaking, how is that any different than Western medicine? Except maybe it’s a little safer because they’re not going on a medication.
You are no more deficient in X, Y, Z supplement than you are in X, Y, Z medication, generally speaking. Obviously, a supplement could be a vitamin, and someone could be deficient in vitamin A, for example. But with a lot of these supplements, it’s not that you’re actually deficient in them, it’s that they might be helpful for the time being.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Root Cause Isn’t Necessary for Healing
So, the way that we utilize supplementation is we call it intelligent allopathy. Allopathy is this idea that we’re going to treat symptoms or diagnoses with drugs or surgery. Now, of course, we don’t treat anything specifically, but we can also make someone feel better. That’s why it’s intelligent allopathy. We’re not hurting them and we’re also trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
The idea of the FDN system is it’s designed in such a way that you can kind of help the person whether or not you ever really figure out what was that one specific root cause. I mean, Sarah, you work with people probably all the time that have been sick for a decade. The idea that we’re going to tell these people a hundred percent of the time that we know their root cause, I mean, yes, we’re getting closer than most people, but you might not never know if it was the gluten sensitivity or the trauma as a kid or whatever by the time you come to us with a decade worth of health symptoms. We could still help you regardless.
So, when did you actually start the course? I didn’t ask that.
[00:27:38] Sarah Baker: Oh, my goodness. Literally like, a week and a half ago.
[00:27:42] Detective Ev: Okay, cool. So, you’re fresh into it. If I may, I’d love to have you back on then once you graduate, maybe give it a few months and just see how this is working in your practice.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Why Not Get the Training?
You also mentioned this idea that it’s kind of hard-to-get labs consistently unless you have these credentials. It’s one of the things that FDNs have the privilege of. This is a very dramatic example, but unfortunately, I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head.
When I was on the course enrollment side of things, I was talking to people if they were interested in enrolling in FDN. One group of women called, there were three women, and they were health coaches. Now, they went and worked under a doctor, and the doctor passed away in an accident. Their entire business, overnight, was like completely screwed because he was the one that facilitated the lab orders. They didn’t have any other connections for this, and they didn’t have anything. So, they literally all went through FDN super-fast because of this.
Again, I don’t mean to fear monger, that’s just the only example I can think of off the top of my head. But it was a real thing, and they were stuck in their business. To me, I’m always like, if you’re utilizing lab testing in your practice, cause I’ve seen a lot of people like you, why would you not try to get this yourself? Then you get the additional training, you get to see it from a whole different perspective.
So, in terms of how you work with people now, I mean, you’re fresh to FDN, so were you already in this mindset then of, hey, I’m not just going to treat the paperwork. How did you figure that out then without some type of course? Where did you learn that maybe it’s not just as simple as treating the paperwork?
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Data Only Isn’t Helpful
[00:29:05] Sarah Baker: It was very innate to me just because I’ve been doing this for so long. I speak with clients very extensively about their history, what’s going on right now. I dive deep into every area of their life.
Also, just by working collaboratively with doctors throughout the past 10 years, I would see firsthand how doctors would prescribe 20 supplements. I would try to support from nutrition, lifestyle, at home therapies, everything else that would entail within a program. They would be taking all these supplements and sometimes would be feeling worse because of the supplements.
Especially with DHEA, if you’re taking that, that could increase any of your hormones essentially. It can increase cortisol more so than estrogen or can increase testosterone too much. If you’re not doing it carefully, it could just make you feel worse.
Just pretty much from experience, realizing that certain supplements would not be good for a client. One example is I had a client who had extreme anxiety and a lot of mood disorders and some issues sleeping. We ran a lab that’s really similar to the Fluids IQ that looked at the DHEA to Cortisol ratio and whatnot.
One of the doctors that I used to work with wanted to give her a supplement that had Rhodiola in it. I knew that Rhodiola could be very simulating. In that doctor’s protocol it said to take it twice a day, one at morning, one at night. She took that supplement at night and was up all night because she already has that hyper vigilance and anxiety that she’s dealing with.
I’ve had so many situations similar to that, where physicians are relying just on supplementation based on only the data they see and nothing else.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: The Art of Intuition
They’re not listening to the person, not listening to their circumstances, not thoroughly absorbing what’s going on in their life, what’s causing certain stress triggers. How are they coping with stress and what are their circumstances? What are you eating, how are you sleeping? What are you doing every day?
When you just lead with supplementation and nothing else, you don’t intuitively, like I kind of view it almost as an art, right? There’s obviously a science to everything, but there’s also an art of being intuitive with who you’re talking to and picking up on their nuances and their characteristics, how they live their day and how they respond to their environment. Which plays a very, very large role in the type of program a practitioner would want to create for them. That is much more than just supplementation.
[00:31:51] Detective Ev: Yeah. I think the only time I’ve heard this described as an art is by the mentor I had when I went through the FDN course, Brandon Molle. Brandon’s been doing this for 10 years.
So, just a little hint for the audience out there, two veterans consider this an art. And this matters, because FDN is a system and it’s predictable and that’s great, but there’s other sides to this.
I’m not an expert coach by any means. I went through FDN, I’ve always worked with clients to some degree. Personally, just for me, I don’t know if it’s my personality or whatever, but I have always found this idea of working 40 hours a week with clients, absolutely overwhelming. So, I’ve always mixed it in with other things. Then others, they’re like, send me 60 hours a week of clients, I could do this all day. Everyone’s a little different with that.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Always Consider Bio-Individuality
But even myself, I’ve picked up that the word is, an “art”. It’s not just you get 1, so you plug in A, it’s not like a formula like that always. And if you’re doing it like that, I’d be a little hesitant because eventually that’s not going to work on every single person because we’re all bio individuals and there’s very unique circumstances that lead to us having health challenges.
I’m just impressed. I mean, again, I know that you have the clinical experience, but still coming to these realizations, I don’t think I ever would’ve done that. Before FDN I was looking for this diet, for this thing, this supplement for that, that was my own healing journey. Then this opened up my mind completely.
I know that you already probably have a good idea of what FDN is since your friend has gone through it and since you chose to purchase it. But I, really do believe that you’re just going to continue to love it more and more as you go through based on what you just said. So, it’ll be fun. It’ll be great to be able to talk to you afterwards.
How do you work with people as of now? Obviously, you’re still utilizing some labs and stuff. This episode will be released long before you actually finish FDN, and it sounds to me like you have plenty to offer people. Guys, we’re not like a cult here, right? You can work with someone who’s not an FDN even if they’re becoming one.
So, if I was someone who’s sick, like, how would I come to you? You can even talk about too, like what is the stereotypical type of person that would come to you?
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Helping with Women’s Issues
[00:33:46] Sarah Baker: Yeah. So, I have a naturopathic doctor that’s at my practice. I love her, she’s incredible. She is the gal that orders all the labs for all my clients since I cannot, yet. She also is very, very deep within the functional health world.
When clients come to us, we see primarily women. We see a lot of women who are trying to get pregnant. We see a lot of women who are pregnant because they’re having a lot of symptoms and they’re doctor is only doing so much.
I, personally, see a lot of moms who experience health issues after having kids. That could be from postpartum period all the way up to your child as a teenager. Cause sometimes when your body experiences a big shift in hormones after delivering a baby or whatever kind of falls out of balance after you give birth, and it doesn’t go back into balance, the body tries to deal with and function with the cards that it’s been dealt. It just kind of carries on with a lot of imbalances.
You may feel okay because you’re compensating for what’s going on within your body. But then after a while, the messages, via little subtle symptoms that your body’s trying to give you, eventually turn into very loud messages via very extreme symptoms.
I also see a lot of women that have autoimmune issues, thyroid conditions, IBS, digestive conditions, insulin resistance, PCOS, things like that. Pretty much all women issues that they could come upon. And of course, more complex cases like mold and Lyme as well, we see that as well.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Not Wasting Any Time
Typically, clients would come to us, they would meet with both of us. They would have an initial with the naturopathic doctor and then they would also have an initial with myself because I am able to, after all the years of doing this, I’m able to create personalized nutrition, lifestyle, at home therapy protocols for clients based on just a conversation before we see the lab work. I’m able to gather so much data as far as their eating habits, what they’re eating, what they’re not eating, how they’re living their life, that I can tell right away very important shifts that can help them as they’re waiting for labs.
People probably don’t realize this, but if you go and you see just like a traditional functional medicine doctor and they don’t really have anybody else at their practice, maybe they have nurses and whatnot, you have your initial appointment, you get your labs, and then you don’t have your next steps for you until maybe a month later. That month time period of waiting for labs to come back and then you have to set up an appointment to review the labs, and then you’re just put on like a supplement protocol, that’s very stressful. You’re sitting there waiting to make some improvements or to get some answers.
We kind of bridge that gap by creating kind of a foundational shift that they can make while they’re waiting for labs. Then Dr. Galino, she’s my ND right now, and then myself, we have two follow-up appointments where we both go over the labs and provide different perspectives. Then everything from there is very personalized based on each person’s circumstances.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Make Use of Others’ Expertise
[00:36:49] Detective Ev: This is excellent. So as of right now, at the very least, if I come and work with your practice, I’m getting both of you on and off?
[00:36:56] Sarah Baker: Yeah. We’re like a bundled package.
[00:36:58] Detective Ev: Nice. But that’s really cool. I think one of the things that people that might not be in our world don’t realize is like, Dude, you can be really good at this, but there is constantly new science, especially in the world of functional. I mean, that happens in all of medicine I suppose but especially in the world of functional. There’s new science, there’s new things out there.
I still, to this day, when I work with a client, and I recommend every person that goes through FDN does this, I still utilize our medical director program even if I think I know what the test results mean. I’m like, why would I not go talk to someone who’s been doing this double the triple the time of me or been alive double the time I’ve been alive and has looked at thousands of labs where I’ve only looked at maybe, you know, 100 to 200. That’s probably actually an underestimate, but still hundreds to thousands. That just makes sense.
I really think you’re probably doing a huge service to your clients by being able to have two sets of eyes that have their both unique experiences in education. You don’t have to give examples, but are there times where you guys are like, oh no, we don’t really agree on something, and we want to go a specific way? Or are you pretty in sync at this point?
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Health Symptoms Reversed
[00:37:56] Sarah Baker: Sometimes. And we usually are really good at getting on the same page before we move forward with like different protocols or whatnot. Or I’ll provide like additional shifts on my end to compensate for another type of decision.
Again, that’s one of the reasons why I’m so excited about this program because I want to be able to offer my own labs to my clients and assess it myself and create the supplement protocol myself. I think that’s like one of the biggest values that FDN provides for nutritionist, nutrition therapy practitioners, health coaches, is that ability for you to have more control of how you run your practice and your coaching program and your business.
[00:38:42] Detective Ev: Yeah. I have a biz question for you, but I didn’t realize, I didn’t even ask this explicitly. I already know the answer, but it’s still cool to hear. It’s just inspiring for people. How are those health symptoms of yours doing nowadays?
[00:38:53] Sarah Baker: I’ve reversed my Hashimoto’s. All my hormones are back in good shape. No more digestive issues. The only thing I am working on now is just mold detox because we are unfortunately still in this house that has a mold issue.
We’re moving out in the next month. So, I’m trying to mitigate the mold symptoms as much as possible while we’re here. Then I’m planning on doing like a hardcore mold detox once we’ve moved. One interesting thing that I’m going to be adding to my list once I’m in a very clean environment is ozone therapy. I’m really excited to try that.
Hashimoto’s and Digestive Issues: Prevalent Mold Issues
[00:39:28] Detective Ev: Cool. I feel like I’m the only functional practitioner nowadays that isn’t going through some type of mold situation. I don’t know if ignorance is just bliss or what. No, I’m kind of kidding.
But you know, there’s such an awareness in our space. I feel like so many houses and apartments do in fact have it, that I’m kind of wondering sometimes like, am I just ignorant to this or what? There are people that I really respect their mindset and really respect their knowledge, they come on and like, everything’s going well but that’s one thing that they’re working through.
This is not a solution, I don’t mean to oversimplify this, but I’m someone, I’m always outside. I always have my windows open when I drive and I drive like 40,000 miles, 50,000 miles a year. I’m outside most of the time anyway. My windows are open at home, even in the cold. I’ve always just liked that. Again, not a cure-all for mold, don’t use that as medical advice. It’s certainly better than sitting in it all day and not getting any fresh air.
So, my biz question for you, if I may. You know, you’re so established at this point, you’re like living the dream of so many of our practitioners. Because again, for me, like I’m not someone who wants to work with clients all the time, I like mixing that in. I think it’s one of my purposes here, but it’s not my only purpose all the time.
Business Talk: Establish a Specific Problem You Want to Solve
A lot of the people that listen to this show and watch this, they want to do this. They want to do exactly what you’re doing. And some of them are really scared. We can give them all the knowledge in the world, their health issues can get better, and yet for some reason they still walk around with a lack of confidence.
May I ask, what advice would you maybe give to someone just starting off their business in the health side of things? What do they need to know? Especially women because a lot of the times, I feel like it is the women coming to me that say like, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t feel like I’m worthy. I’m like, you’re awesome, you definitely can do this. I think they’d rather hear it from you.
[00:40:55] Sarah Baker: Evan, you just opened up a whole can of worms because I don’t think you know this, but I also have a marketing firm business that is geared strictly towards health practices and health professionals. That has been my side business that I’ve also had for eight years. This is another passion of mine.
When you’re just starting off as a health coach or health practitioner or whatnot, you want to first establish who you want to serve and maybe a specific problem you want to solve.
Sometimes when everybody has so many ideas, and so many issues that they want to help resolve, it’s like throwing so many balls against the wall and all those balls just kind of bounce back. I always recommend that you zero in and focus on one problem that you want to kind of present as you break out into this industry as you’re first starting out.
Business Talk: What Have You Resolved in Yourself?
Sometimes when we act a little too vague, our messaging, when it comes from a marketing perspective, can become diluted and we’re not attracting a lot of sales. Because we want to attract our dream client, the client that has the exact type of health issues that we want to help address. Of course, another way to go about it is, I help people get to the root cause of their symptoms. But still, everybody essentially does that.
So, you want to think, how can I position myself in a way that separates me from everybody else? That takes you to step two. The second question you want to ask yourself, what have I resolved in myself? Because, you said it Evan, a lot of people that are going through FDN also have a health challenge that they are currently healing or have overcome.
You want to walk the talk; you want to be able to give your personal story and be able to resonate with who you are speaking to. Whether that’s, you know, I specialize in helping women with their metabolism; I specialize in helping women with their hormones; I specialize with thyroid.
That doesn’t mean you’re pigeonholing yourself in one topic and you’re just going to be the thyroid health coach forever. You want to launch yourself with something specific so that you are attracting your exact type of client. When you get too broad in the health space and you’re just trying to target everybody that wants to be generally healthy, a lot of people that are looking online for general health advice aren’t at a point that individuals that have an actual health crisis going on. They’re not in a circumstance where they are actively looking for a practitioner to help them.
Business Talk: General Health Issues Won’t Get Them Over the Line
Because when you get to the point when you are looking for a functional health practitioner or coach, you have kind of exhausted all other options and you need help. So, if you’re going to just be a general health coach, I’m going to help you with your symptoms. You know, Cheryl down the street just has like some bloating after she eats, but not much. You’re attracting a bunch of Cheryl’s that have some symptoms but not enough that causes them to take action. Then you aren’t going to be growing your business as well as you should be.
I guess that’s my two reflective questions you want to ask yourself when you’re first starting off.
[00:44:03] Detective Ev: I love it. Thank you.
I like the spiel because I’m not an expert marketer, but I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years of doing the FDN podcast because they’ve taught me a bunch of stuff on the marketing team.
Actually, I really like the way that you package that, cause I’ve heard the whole thing of like make sure you’re talking to someone. I just thought it was cool that you’re basically describing it as like, think about what’s going to happen if someone has just general health issues and they’re online, that’s not going to actually put them over the line.
The way I always tell it to people, I’m like, because it made so much sense to me when I heard it, although I wasn’t applying it prior to that, I’m like, duh, there’s like 7 billion people in the world, a billion plus are online actively. I’m sure there’s some people that have acne, cause that’s, you know, my thing. I’m sure there’s some people that have mental health issues.
Business Talk: Be Specific & Talk to SomeONE
People get so they think they’re pigeonholing themselves by creating content only for that person. But look at your business. You even said yourself, you work with other types of people.
I wish I could put this in every practitioner’s head. Just because your niche is acne does not mean you are not allowed to work with someone who has GI issues. FDNs don’t even treat anything specifically. This is business stuff. So, if someone comes to you for that, you’re more than welcome to intake them and work with them. No one has to know that. It’s who are you creating the content for?
Because it can’t be the cancer patient one day, the acne person the next day, the mental health issue the next day. Why would I follow you? I already got like a thousand accounts that are pissing me off online. You’re just confusing me now. I want to know that you’re going to bring me value every day and that you know about me and my conditions. So, great advice. Awesome.
Where to Find Sarah Baker
We’re coming up towards the end of our time here. I’d love to be able to shout out your businesses, not only the health side. I did not know about the marketing one, but just the fact that you’ve been doing that for eight years and have had the success you’ve had in the health stuff, I know enough to know that you’re having success with that. Many of our practitioners could benefit from this. So please shout out both, where can people find it?
[00:45:43] Sarah Baker: Yeah. On Instagram, you could find me at sarahbakerhealth, Sarah with an h. My personal website is sarahnicolebaker.com.
My marketing firm, the website’s currently under construction, but it’s just Baker pr. But I have grown that primarily from word of mouth. All clients just kind of send me to other clients.
So, I would say if you are looking to fix your health or you’re another practitioner, you want some guidance on how to start or grow your business, come to Instagram, sarahbakerhealth.
[00:46:14] Detective Ev: Very cool.
My final question for you, which I think you already know what I’m going to ask. If I could give Sarah, in this case, a magic wand and you could get every person in this world to do one thing for their health, (so, now we talked about business, we’ll talk about health), if you could get them to either stop doing one thing or start doing one thing, you could pick either, what is the one thing that Sarah would get them to do?
Signature Podcast Question
[00:46:32] Sarah Baker: Number one thing is to optimize your sleep.
I know firsthand how if you’re eating well, you’re working out, you’re trying to regulate your nervous system with stress management techniques, but you’re not sleeping well, you are going to create a huge roadblock on your healing journey. Because if you have insomnia or you’re waking up multiple times throughout the night, or you wake up early in the morning, you can’t get back to sleep.
When you sleep is when your body is healing like regeneratively restoring. Your human growth hormone spikes up the first few hours of when you’re sleeping. I mean, you need that time for your body to actively repair cells, get rid of damaged cells, to repair the liver, to really go through your entire body and heal it.
So, if you have a health challenge, and your sleep is still struggling, I tell every single client, first, we want to establish your sleep again, healthy sleep, and then we can target everything else.
How can we make that actionable? You want to kind of set your circadian rhythm, you know, make sure you see sunlight 20 minutes within waking up. I always tell people to work out earlier in the day versus later in the day.
Then we all know all the commonsense ones, like, no screens two hours before bed, blue blocker glasses, keep the room cool, blah, blah, blah. But really doing whatever you can to prioritize fixing any sleep issues first. That should be the number one priority whenever you’re on a healing journey.
Conclusion
[00:48:04] Detective Ev: Love it. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on today and just congrats on becoming an FDN. I’m excited to talk to you on the other side of your journey.
[00:48:11] Sarah Baker: Yeah, I’m going to be really excited too. Thank you so much, Evan.
When it comes to healthy cooking, it’s relatively easy to swap out common allergens or ingredients such as butter, milk, cream, and cheese with dairy-free alternatives. Many cooking recipes are fluid and flexible – that means switching dairy milk for almond milk in your cream of broccoli soup isn’t going to dramatically alter the consistency or flavour of the dish. Dairy-free baking is somewhat trickier. Since baking is a scientific process that relies on specific properties of ingredients to help with shape, consistency, texture and the rise of baked goods, it’s not always as simple to work with dairy-free baking substitutions.
We have experimented a lot with gluten-free and dairy-free baking (it’s a tough job, we tell you) and have discovered several dairy-free ingredients that can generally be swapped 1:1 and no one will be the wiser.
An important thing to keep in mind about dairy-free baking is to fine-tune your mindset and expectations. Dairy-free ingredients are beautiful, delicious and sumptuous in their own right, and shouldn’t be viewed as inferior to their dairy counterparts.
If you are constantly comparing a vegan cheese sauce to traditional alfredo, it’s likely that you will be disappointed based on deep-seated emotions and attachments to the latter. Instead, celebrate and appreciate dairy-free baked goods for what they are: wonderful.
Here are our 9 favourite dairy-free baking substitutions for you to try.
The more water you use, the thinner your milk will be, so if you need a thick, creamy consistency then add less. We use homemade nut milk in a ratio of 1:1 in baked goods. Also, if you are looking to create buttermilk, add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to your dairy-free milk to help it ‘curdle’.
Instead of Butter: Use Coconut Oil
For a completely vegan and dairy-free option, opt for organic unrefined coconut oil. Coconut oil hardens in cold temperatures, softens at room temperature, and melts to a liquid, so what consistency you choose will depend on how you plan to use it.
How To Use It
When chilled and grated or cut into cubes, coconut oil can be worked into crusts and doughs just as you would with chilled butter. In its softened form, you can cream coconut oil with a dry sugar, such as coconut sugar, as the base for a variety of cookies and cakes. Melted coconut oil helps moisten batters for muffins, breads, cookies, and cakes, too.
Instead of Cream: Use Coconut Milk or Coconut Cream
Photo: golubovy on iStock
Sometimes a homemade nut or seed milk just won’t cut it, and you’ll need something thicker and creamier. Enter coconut milk or coconut cream. Coconut milk, a blend of coconut milk and water, is quite thick on its own and adds richness to dairy-free baked goods (and you can even make your own!). Coconut cream is much thicker than coconut milk. Essentially, it’s the ‘cream’ that rises to the top of coconut milk. You can buy coconut cream separately, or make your own by chilling a can of coconut milk and skimming off the thickened part (save the water for another use, like smoothies).
How To Use It
Coconut cream is a great option when making frostings or fillings for your dairy-free baked goods. Simply whip it with your flavouring of choice (cacao powder, maple syrup, almond butter, jam, etc.) and spread over your goodies. The more ingredients you add to your coconut cream, the heavier it will become and this may affect your ability to whip it up. If this happens, simply chill your coconut cream and then re-whip it.
If you’re truly not a fan of coconut’s flavour, then try cashew cream.
Instead of Cheese: Use Nut Cheese or Nut Parmesan
If you are making savoury baked goods that use cheese, instead of using processed vegan cheeses, try making your own dairy-free cheese or healthy flavour substitute.
How To Use It
For a cheesy flavour, try blending 1/2 cup of nuts or seeds with 1/4 cup nutritional yeast in your blender or food processor. You can then adjust the amount of nutritional yeast or add salt to taste.
Nut or seed cheeses (or fermented nut cheeses) are also a great option – simply chop them up and add them to breads or muffin batters.
Instead of Butter: Use Ghee
Photo: subodhsathe on iStock
Although ghee, also known as clarified butter, is derived from butter (which has dairy in it) ghee doesn’t have milk solids, making it a great substitution for butter. It has some amazing health benefits, too, so don’t be afraid to use it in dairy-free baking (remember that ghee is still an animal product, so it’s not suitable for vegans).
How To Use It
Ghee helps us make amazing pie crusts, cookies, muffins, and cakes, and we tend to use it 1:1.
Instead of Milk Chocolate: Use Dairy-Free Dark Chocolate or Cacao Nibs
We love our chocolate baked treats! Milk chocolate not only contains dairy but typically has a higher amount of sugar (the greater the percentage of cocoa, the less sweet chocolate will be).
How To Use It
For chocolate chips, try chopping up a bar of dark chocolate, use dark chocolate chips, or try cacao nibs, which are crushed cocoa beans.
For recipes that call for milk chocolate powders, you can easily swap in raw cacao powder or dairy-free cocoa powder.
Instead of Yogurt: Use Dairy-Free Yogurt
Yogurts add acidity to baked goods to help them rise. Instead of dairy-based yogurt, there are a wide variety of dairy-free yogurts made from coconut, almonds, cashews, oats, soy, rice and more.
How To Use It
It’s very easy to make your own yogurt – all you need is your dairy-free milk of choice and a probiotic capsule. In a pinch, coconut cream and cashew cream are also good dairy-free baking substitutions!
Instead of Butterscotch: Use Date Paste
Butterscotch is sometimes used in baking recipes instead of sugar, or it applies a finishing drizzle after the goodies come out of the oven.
How To Use It
You can make an absolutely delicious sauce that replicates butterscotch or caramel by soaking dates and blending them into a smooth paste. The more liquid you add, the thinner and more drizzle-able your sauce will be.
Instead of Buttermilk: Use Vegan Buttermilk
Similar to dairy-based yogurt, buttermilk is an acid that helps baked treats rise and become fluffier. But you can achieve the same effect with a dairy-free version.
How To Make It
Make dairy-free buttermilk by mixing 1 Tbsp lemon juice or apple cider vinegar into 1 cup of nut/seed milk. Stir well, and then leave the mixture for 5 –10 minutes to curdle. Making vegan buttermilk is that easy.
Have fun experimenting with these dairy-free baking substitutions!
What is the best source of lutein, the primary carotenoid antioxidant in the brain?
“An extensive [scientific] literature describes the positive impact of dietary phytochemicals [plant compounds] on overall health and longevity…However, it is now becoming clear that the consumption of diets rich in phytochemicals can influence neuro-inflammation”—that is, brain inflammation—“and mediate the activation of signaling pathways, leading to the expression of cytoprotective [cell protective] and restorative proteins.” As I discuss in my video Friday Favorites: Brain-Healthy Foods to Fight Aging, just “over the last decade, remarkable progress has been made to realize that oxidative and nitrosative stress (O&NS) and chronic, low-grade inflammation are major risk factors underlying brain aging,” so it’s no wonder that antioxidant and anti-inflammatory foods may help.
“The brain is especially vulnerable to free radical attack,” oxidative stress, due to its high fat content and cauldron of high metabolic activity. You don’t want your brains to go rancid. You’d think that one of the major fat-soluble dietary antioxidants would step in, like beta-carotene, but the major carotenoid concentrated in the brain is actually lutein. Our brain just preferentially sucks it up.
For example, look at the “oldest old,” like in the Georgia centenarian study. Recognizing that “oxidative stress is involved in age-related cognitive decline,” researchers figured that “dietary antioxidants…may play a role in the prevention or delay in cognitive decline,” so they looked at eight different ones: vitamin A, vitamin E, and on down the list. Only lutein was “significantly related to better cognition.” Now, in this study, researchers looked at brain tissue on autopsy, but by then, it’s a little too late. How could you study the effects of diet on the brain while you’re still alive? If only there were a way we could physically look into the living brain with our own two eyes. There is. With our own two eyes.
The retina, the back of our eyeball, is actually an extension of our central nervous system, an outpouching of the brain during development. And, as you can see at 2:02 in my video, there’s a spot right in the middle. That is what the doctor sees when looking into your eye with that bright light. That spot, called the macula, is our HD camera, where we get the highest resolution vision, and it’s packed with lutein.
And, levels in the retina correspond to levels in the rest of our brain so our eyes can be a window into our brain. So, now we can finally do studies on living people to see if diet can affect lutein levels in the eyes, which reflects lutein levels in the brain, and find out if that correlates with improvements in cognitive function. And, indeed, significant correlations do exist between cognitive test scores and the amount of macular pigment, these plant pigments like lutein in your eye. You can demonstrate this on functional MRI scans, suggesting lutein and a related plant pigment called zeaxanthin “promote cognitive functioning in old age by enhancing neural efficiency”—that is, the efficiency by which our nerves communicate. Researchers conducted a fascinating study on white matter integrity using diffusion tensor imaging, which “provides unique insights into brain network connectivity,” allowing you to follow the nerve tracts throughout the brain. As you can see at 3:14 in my video, researchers were also able to show enhanced circuit integrity based on how much lutein and zeaxanthin they could see in people’s eyes; this is “further evidence of a meaningful relationship between diet and neural integrity” of our brains, “particularly in regions vulnerable to age-related decline.”
So, do Alzheimer’s patients have less of this macular pigment? One study found significantly less lutein in their eyes, significantly less lutein in their blood, and a higher occurrence of macular degeneration, where this pigment layer gets destroyed. As you can see at 3:45 in my video, the thickness of this plant pigment layer in our eyes can be measured and may be a potential marker for the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. Let’s not wait that long, though. We know macular pigment density is related to cognitive function in older people, but what about during middle age?
“One apparent consequence of aging appears to be loss of some aspects of cognitive control,” which starts out early, in mid-adulthood, but not in everybody. This suggests that “it is possible that behavior, such as one’s diet, could drive some of these differences.” As you can see at 4:16 in my video, a measure of cognitive control showed that, on average, younger adults do better than older adults, but older adults who have high macular pigment, a lot of lutein in the back of their eyes, do significantly better. These results suggest that the “protective role of carotenoids” like lutein within the brain “may be evident during early and middle adulthood, decades prior to the onset of older age” and more apparent cognitive decline later in life.
You can take 20-year-olds and show superior auditory function, or hearing, in those with more macular pigment in their eyes. “The auditory system, like the rest of the central nervous system, is ultimately constructed and maintained by diet and it is therefore, not surprisingly, sensitive to dietary intake throughout life”—all the way back to childhood.
Higher macular pigment is associated with higher academic achievement among schoolchildren. You can look into a kid’s eyes and get some sense of how well they may do in subjects like math and writing. “This finding is important because macular L [lutein] is modifiable and can be manipulated by dietary intake in most of the population.” And where is lutein found? The avocado and egg industries like to boast about how much of these macular pigments they have in their products, but the real superstars are dark green leafy vegetables. A half cup of kale has 50 times more lutein than an egg. So, a spinach salad or a 50-egg omelet? You can see a chart of lutein/zeaxanthin content of some common foods at 5:33 in my video.
When should we start loading up on lutein? It seems the earlier, the better, and pregnant and breastfeeding women especially should definitely be checking off my Daily Dozen greens servings. But, it’s also apparently never too late to start. “While some age-related cognitive decline is to be expected in healthy aging…these effects may be less pronounced” among those eating more leafy greens, but you don’t know for sure until you put it to the test, which I explore in my next video Friday Favorites: Do Lutein Supplements Help with Brain Function?.
What is the best source of lutein, the primary carotenoid antioxidant in the brain?
“An extensive [scientific] literature describes the positive impact of dietary phytochemicals [plant compounds] on overall health and longevity…However, it is now becoming clear that the consumption of diets rich in phytochemicals can influence neuro-inflammation”—that is, brain inflammation—“and mediate the activation of signaling pathways, leading to the expression of cytoprotective [cell protective] and restorative proteins.” As I discuss in my video Friday Favorites: Brain-Healthy Foods to Fight Aging, just “over the last decade, remarkable progress has been made to realize that oxidative and nitrosative stress (O&NS) and chronic, low-grade inflammation are major risk factors underlying brain aging,” so it’s no wonder that antioxidant and anti-inflammatory foods may help.
“The brain is especially vulnerable to free radical attack,” oxidative stress, due to its high fat content and cauldron of high metabolic activity. You don’t want your brains to go rancid. You’d think that one of the major fat-soluble dietary antioxidants would step in, like beta-carotene, but the major carotenoid concentrated in the brain is actually lutein. Our brain just preferentially sucks it up.
For example, look at the “oldest old,” like in the Georgia centenarian study. Recognizing that “oxidative stress is involved in age-related cognitive decline,” researchers figured that “dietary antioxidants…may play a role in the prevention or delay in cognitive decline,” so they looked at eight different ones: vitamin A, vitamin E, and on down the list. Only lutein was “significantly related to better cognition.” Now, in this study, researchers looked at brain tissue on autopsy, but by then, it’s a little too late. How could you study the effects of diet on the brain while you’re still alive? If only there were a way we could physically look into the living brain with our own two eyes. There is. With our own two eyes.
The retina, the back of our eyeball, is actually an extension of our central nervous system, an outpouching of the brain during development. And, as you can see at 2:02 in my video, there’s a spot right in the middle. That is what the doctor sees when looking into your eye with that bright light. That spot, called the macula, is our HD camera, where we get the highest resolution vision, and it’s packed with lutein.
And, levels in the retina correspond to levels in the rest of our brain so our eyes can be a window into our brain. So, now we can finally do studies on living people to see if diet can affect lutein levels in the eyes, which reflects lutein levels in the brain, and find out if that correlates with improvements in cognitive function. And, indeed, significant correlations do exist between cognitive test scores and the amount of macular pigment, these plant pigments like lutein in your eye. You can demonstrate this on functional MRI scans, suggesting lutein and a related plant pigment called zeaxanthin “promote cognitive functioning in old age by enhancing neural efficiency”—that is, the efficiency by which our nerves communicate. Researchers conducted a fascinating study on white matter integrity using diffusion tensor imaging, which “provides unique insights into brain network connectivity,” allowing you to follow the nerve tracts throughout the brain. As you can see at 3:14 in my video, researchers were also able to show enhanced circuit integrity based on how much lutein and zeaxanthin they could see in people’s eyes; this is “further evidence of a meaningful relationship between diet and neural integrity” of our brains, “particularly in regions vulnerable to age-related decline.”
So, do Alzheimer’s patients have less of this macular pigment? One study found significantly less lutein in their eyes, significantly less lutein in their blood, and a higher occurrence of macular degeneration, where this pigment layer gets destroyed. As you can see at 3:45 in my video, the thickness of this plant pigment layer in our eyes can be measured and may be a potential marker for the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. Let’s not wait that long, though. We know macular pigment density is related to cognitive function in older people, but what about during middle age?
“One apparent consequence of aging appears to be loss of some aspects of cognitive control,” which starts out early, in mid-adulthood, but not in everybody. This suggests that “it is possible that behavior, such as one’s diet, could drive some of these differences.” As you can see at 4:16 in my video, a measure of cognitive control showed that, on average, younger adults do better than older adults, but older adults who have high macular pigment, a lot of lutein in the back of their eyes, do significantly better. These results suggest that the “protective role of carotenoids” like lutein within the brain “may be evident during early and middle adulthood, decades prior to the onset of older age” and more apparent cognitive decline later in life.
You can take 20-year-olds and show superior auditory function, or hearing, in those with more macular pigment in their eyes. “The auditory system, like the rest of the central nervous system, is ultimately constructed and maintained by diet and it is therefore, not surprisingly, sensitive to dietary intake throughout life”—all the way back to childhood.
Higher macular pigment is associated with higher academic achievement among schoolchildren. You can look into a kid’s eyes and get some sense of how well they may do in subjects like math and writing. “This finding is important because macular L [lutein] is modifiable and can be manipulated by dietary intake in most of the population.” And where is lutein found? The avocado and egg industries like to boast about how much of these macular pigments they have in their products, but the real superstars are dark green leafy vegetables. A half cup of kale has 50 times more lutein than an egg. So, a spinach salad or a 50-egg omelet? You can see a chart of lutein/zeaxanthin content of some common foods at 5:33 in my video.
When should we start loading up on lutein? It seems the earlier, the better, and pregnant and breastfeeding women especially should definitely be checking off my Daily Dozen greens servings. But, it’s also apparently never too late to start. “While some age-related cognitive decline is to be expected in healthy aging…these effects may be less pronounced” among those eating more leafy greens, but you don’t know for sure until you put it to the test, which I explore in my next video Friday Favorites: Do Lutein Supplements Help with Brain Function?.
I spoke at Low Carb Breckenridge in February 2017. There were a number of stalls around the conference hall, where low-carb products and services were being sold, or given away, to delegates. As meals were not provided and the days were long (talks from 7.30am to 7.30pm), the most popular stalls at lunchtime were the ones selling or giving away food. One of the stalls featured a new sweetener. This sweetener was based on six others: Tagatose; Erythritol; Maltitol; Stevia Leaf Extract; Monk Fruit Extract and Xanthan Gum.
I forget all the sweetened food options on this stall, but I do remember a cream, berry and granola pot, which was easy to eat standing up. Andy and I shared one and didn’t finish it, as it was way sweeter than anything we are used to. We thought nothing more of it until later that day and the next morning when the talk of the conference was the number of people who had spent the rest of the day/night on the toilet!
Two of the sweeteners in the new sweetener were sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols end in “ol”, e.g., erythritol, maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol etc. They are INcompletely absorbed and digested by the body. They come with a ‘laxative effect’ warning on food labels. They can cause gas, bloating, discomfort and diarrhea. A number of people at the conference found this out for themselves.
I share this story as background to this week’s note, which is about the sugar alcohol sweetener called erythritol. A paper has just been published in Nature Medicine. The paper was called “The artificial sweetener erythritol and cardiovascular event risk” (Ref 1). The lead author was Witkowski.
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Well, hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show about KetoCon.
We’re talking to a guest that we’ve had on once before. Her name is Robin Switzer and she’s the founder of KetoCon. KetoCon is a conference that has been going on since 2017. We, as FDN, attended last year for the first time, and we loved it.
Now, you guys also might have heard of Paleo f(x), that will no longer be a thing it looks like. I think KetoCon’s going to be even better this year because they not only landed the same event center that Paleo f(x) is normally in, but they landed similar dates because Paleo f(x) was typically in April or May from my understanding.
I think this is the event this year that is going to completely fill up with all these wonderful people from around the country and world who are dedicated to natural healing, biohacking, all this kind of stuff. It’s really a unique and cool crowd to be a part of. I was impressed with how many people she had there last year in July. Paleo f(x) hosted in April of last year, and she was already throwing this down in July. I would say she was busier than Paleo f(x).
So, when you have this year set up, everyone, I think, is more than ready to travel again. They’re just open to this idea of getting back in person, going to these conferences. Then when we take away one of the bigger health conferences of the year and replace it with this, I think this is going to be awesome.
KetoCon: Not Just for People Interested in Ketosis
Reed Davis, the founder of FDN, will be keying. I will be down there at our booth doing podcasting. I’ll have my girlfriend with me, she’ll be at the booth. My best friend will be with me doing the booth. His girlfriend will be doing the booth. It’s going to be really fun. We have so many people coming down.
Anyway, we wanted to bring on Robin today. She actually did an Instagram Live with us, so I apologize for the phone call quality audio, but the information’s still cool. It’s not super long. We’re not going to sit here for 50 minutes today. You’ll just get the information on KetoCon and learn who it’s for. It is not just for people who are interested in ketosis, that is for sure.
It’s similar to the Paleo f(x) title, right? That might have started out as something that was exclusively about Paleo, but it evolved over time and now you have sleep sciences, biohacking, light and stuff. That’s exactly what KetoCon is. In fact, Robin went out of her way to state on this Live that she purposely actually brought in less food vendors this year to have more diversity and make it a true health conference as opposed to just keto.
So, we hope you guys enjoy this one. If you do want to attend KetoCon with us, we have a $50 discount, and you can check that out in the show notes. I’ll be excited to see you guys there. If you have any more questions about it, you can find them at KetoCon on Instagram. That is at K E T O C O N on Instagram. Without further ado, let us get to today’s episode.
Hey, Robin, how are you?
Robin Switzer: How are you?
KetoCon: Robin Switzer – One of the Original Founders
Detective Ev: I’m doing good. It’s good to get to see you again. It’s been, well, I guess it feels long in one sense, but not that long because you guys had enough success that you were able to move this event to April of this year, even though we just had KetoCon in July. This is going to be great.
[00:03:01] Robin Switzer: Oh, yes. But it was really a matter of, we had no choice.
[00:03:06] Detective Ev: You’re too humble. You just take it, just take the compliment and run.
[00:03:10] Robin Switzer: We always wanted to get earlier dates, but the venue that we work with is always booked 18 months in advance. It’s always hard to get dates, and we’ve always been stuck with July days. We were able to get April this year, although I can’t get April for next year. So, we’ll see.
[00:03:28] Detective Ev: Cool. Well, alright guys, if you are just tuning in and you don’t know what we’re talking about, this is Robin. She is one of the original founders of KetoCon and now is just kind of running this thing. I know that you would be, again, too humble to say, by yourself, but you are the leader, right? You’re the one organizing this and really making it happen.
You guys know I get on Lives all the time, so it’s not like I can just say super nice things about everyone if I didn’t actually mean it. You would notice inconsistencies. Robin, I said it to you last year, and I stand by it.
KetoCon: Event Dates and Location
We talked about this at FDN, we go to wonderful events. We love everyone so far that we’ve ever worked with, as far as I know. I haven’t been here forever, but as far as I know, it’s all been good. But the organization that you approached with KetoCon and just how seriously you took the relationship with the vendors, from my understanding, it’s the main reason we’re coming back this year.
Then of course it was just a good event. So, we’re just excited to work with you. This is what we really need right now.
There is a lot of people, I think, getting into this conference space, especially post pandemic. We’ve gone to some of these, and you guys might have been to some of them. We don’t need to mention names, but they’re just a little crazy. And then KetoCon was awesome. I remember your son coming up. We had like one little minor technical difficulty, and he just was so adamant about getting it fixed.
You guys have a lot of vendors at these things. I’m excited to talk about what we’ll be able to do this year. First and foremost, even though it’s in your bio, let’s just go over this real quick. When are the dates and where’s it happening?
[00:04:42] Robin Switzer: KetoCon is April 21st, 22nd, and 23rd in Austin, Texas at the Palmer Event Center. We’ve been doing this event since 2017.
[00:04:51] Detective Ev: Nice. The pandemic did mess you guys up a little bit, right? Then you keep the pushing through afterwards.
[00:04:56] Robin Switzer: We did 2020 online. We could not do 2021, and then we did 2022.
KetoCon: Morphing Over the Years
[00:05:04] Detective Ev: Nice. This is what I love. It’s like you’re just not going to take no for an answer. You’re going to figure it out one way or another. And so, it’s cool.
Now this is what we really need to specify today, cause I’ve talked to you before. Obviously, we talked last year. Robin’s actually been on the Health Detective Podcast, so if you guys are interested in her story, I would go there more for that. Today we’ll talk about more of the event itself.
I think one thing that any trainee FDN or active FDN might initially think it’s like, okay, KetoCon. Is it just keto? Because in the world of FDN I mean a lot of us do utilize ketosis. I’m one of those people, you already know that. Some people, depending on where they’re at, we have actually found that there’s a smaller portion, but some portion that just seems to do a little better going off different things.
So just to be clear, even though it has the name KetoCon, this is not just an event for that, right? Like how does FDN fit in? What other type of vendors will be there? Let us know about that.
Robin Switzer: Sure. So, no. KetoCon launched as an event that was solely dedicated to the ketogenic diet and lifestyle, but we have definitely morphed over the years. And I would say that, while we still have a banned ingredient list, the underlying theme of the event is improving metabolic health and utilizing ketosis as a tool.
KetoCon: Brain Health, Hormonal Health, Sleep Optimization, and Anything in Between
[00:06:11] Robin Switzer: We have changed. This event is now much more of a health optimization event.
You’re not the first person who said to me, KetoCon, if I’m not following a ketogenic diet, why would I come? I would tell you, look at the list of speakers and list of companies that will be there, and you’ll see why this event is much more of a health optimization event.
If I hadn’t invested seven years in the branding of all of this, I may have changed the name. We may still have to change the name to be quite honest with you. I would say that we are covering more topics related to biohacking and optimizing your health, improving your metabolic health than we’ve ever done before.
We have over 70 speakers this year. Reed is one of those speakers. 15 or 16 keynote speakers, and the rest are speaking in breakout sessions, in breakout rooms. I tell you; we are covering everything from brain health to hormonal health to sleep optimization, meaning everything and anything in between.
So, what’s there for everyone, it’s truly a learning experience because there’s just so much information. But it’s also a like experiential type of event. There’s much more there than just walking by and getting free food samples.
[00:07:33] Detective Ev: Although that’s a pretty cool part I may add.
[00:07:36] Robin Switzer: That is a pretty cool part.
We do have some amazing sponsors and exhibitors that will be offering that. But if you’ve attended KetoCon in the past, don’t expect to see a hundred food vendors. They’re not there. This event has definitely changed. You’ll be experiencing things this year that you may not have experienced before.
KetoCon: Combination of Learning & Celebration
Last year, BodySpec was at the event, they’ll be back this year. Twice as many vans doing DEXA scans throughout the entire weekend. We are working on wrapping up the details on a cold plunge experience, doing ice baths. There’ll be several companies that offer various forms of saunas, like home saunas.
Gosh, there’s going to be so much there this year. It’s really a combination of learning and celebration. You’re learning about your current state of health, how to improve it, where to go from here, and all these tools that you can use to improve your health.
The other thing is when companies like FDN attend this event, we find that we have a large percentage of attendees that are already like either health entrepreneurs or people who are in this space because they’re in that transition of moving into becoming a health entrepreneur. And there are things there for learning more about certification programs and education programs that they can use to improve their career as well.
[00:08:54] Detective Ev: Yeah. That’s why we’re happy to be there. It’s going to be cool. I did not know at all that you were thinking about trying to implement, like the cold plunge stuff and the double of the DEXA scans. Genius! You guys gotta take advantage of that.
I was so stupid. I didn’t, admittedly, fully understand the benefits of a DEXA Scan. So, I ended up getting one at a different conference over that year. I’m like, for 40 bucks, or whatever, even if it’s anywhere under a hundred, it’s actually a very good deal compared to how you would do this normally. And it’s very insightful to see where you’re at body-wise.
KetoCon: Similar to Paleo (f)x
I was happy to know that my visceral fat was super low. The guy said this is excellent. You don’t have that fat around the organs. I’m like, all right, cool. I’m doing something right. This shows how these things can work a little differently for people because I am someone, like I said, who utilizes ketosis a lot. I do like it. It seems to work for me.
Some people get so freaked out, they’re like, dude, you got all this saturated fat, cause that’s how I eat. This is personally how I do it, yet my numbers look great. My triglycerides are perfect, my visceral fat, I now know is fantastic. For different people it can really be lifesaving and it can just make you feel so good cognitively.
But again, the event’s so much more than that. I think you’re in a unique position and I’m really excited for you. I’ve talked to the FDN people about this because, as far as I know, there’s no more Paleo f(x). I think this is similar to what they were trying to do and did not succeed at, unfortunately. It was called Paleo, but everyone knew it was more than that.
Then it’s like, all right, cool. Well, we have this really cool person, you, that runs things extremely well, knows how to organize it. I mean, I think this is the new thing. And it’s even in the same city, right? So, it’s like people get to do that same kind of process of going to Austin.
A lot of us always go to like PICNIK after the event. We love that place. I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I learned about it last year. And so, yeah, we’re excited.
KetoCon: Close to 100 Vendors
Jo Pate asked, “How many vendors will there be?” I know we talked about speakers. How many vendors?
[00:10:32] Robin Switzer: There will be close to a hundred. We’re almost sold out right now.
[00:10:35] Detective Ev: Nice! And yeah, Reed will be key noting. We’ll all be there, by the way, guys. I’ll be down at KetoCon. Jo will be there. My girlfriend will be there. My best friend will be there. His girlfriend will be there. We just got that all set up. They’re coming through.
Rayen said, “Love PICNIK.” Yeah, I mean, we gotta go. You know, it’s already on the schedule and we’re not even there yet.
But yeah, they’re all going through FDN right now. My girlfriend will definitely be graduated by then. My best friend might be there by then. And then his girlfriend is just a little bit behind, but she also started later. They’re just so excited. This is like their first health event that they’ve ever been to.
They had a few options to choose from. This is the true testament. I said, no, come with us to Austin, go to the KetoCon one. We have to like do a couple different flights. It was a bit inconvenient just from where we’re at. I’m like, it’s worth it. Just go to a good event and actually see what this stuff’s like cause it’s a whole new world for them.
Just tell us and it’s shameless right? You can be more in love with certain speakers or vendors than not. Which ones are you really excited for people to get to see? Like is there any talks in particular that you’re excited about?
[00:11:29] Robin Switzer: Not any in particular. I mean, we literally have 75 speakers.
Detective Ev: I know.
KetoCon: 75 Speakers
Robin Switzer: I mean, every single person brings something different, you know, another element to this conversation.
Dr. Ken Berry is attending this year and he has not been to KetoCon since 2018 for various reasons. He’s had two children in the past few years. And I’m really excited for him to come back because he’s very passionate about living a ketogenic/no-added- junk type of diet. He’s an MD, so he’s seen it all and he uses this in practice. He’s very animated, very full of personality, and people just love to watch him speak. I’m really excited to have him back again.
Let’s see, Ben Azadi will be speaking again this year. Very excited to have him back.
Catharine Arnston will be speaking again this year about algae. There are so many speakers. Mindy Pells.
[00:12:31] Detective Ev: Catharine Arnston always comes like, cause I follower at a lot of these conferences, and she spits out so much information that you’re like, there’s no way she’s going to be different next time. Then she has like a whole nother master’s level education for you at the next conference, like a few months later. She’s always fun to watch.
And Ben, that’s awesome. He’s cool too. He’s kind of standard now at any Keto Conference, but he’s also an FDN. It’s nice to get to connect with him.
Raewyn and Reed will be there. We just have a lot of FDNs in Austin, so personally have a bias towards it. I love it, just getting to see everyone at these events.
KetoCon: A List of Banned Ingredients
If you guys are already signed up and coming to KetoCon, please drop that in the comments. If you have any questions about the event, this would also be the time. This isn’t really a Live for FDN necessarily. It’s more of a Live for KetoCon. So, let me know if you’re coming and also let me know if you have any questions directly.
I just wanted to shout this out because again, I think it’s a testament to the way that you run on this event. I know that you’re not running as many food vendors as you did in the past. You’re trying to actually diversify that a little more. But you did mention this quickly. You said a banned ingredients list. Can you tell people what are the banned ingredients lists? You don’t have to list off the things. Like why do you even have that?
[00:13:36] Robin Switzer: Well, anybody who’s been to a grocery store in the past year has seen the explosion of products that are labeled keto.
I have been on a mission since we started doing this to try and educate people that just because something is labeled keto doesn’t mean that it’s good for you to eat. Most of them are like processed food products, but they contain things with substitutes or ingredients that cause inflammation, that are cheap ingredients, and the macros look great.
They look like they fit into a ketogenic protocol, but the ingredients suck. It would just basically be eating keto junk food. We started doing this in 2017, there was a lot of confusion out there because there were so many like miracle ingredients hitting the market and we were trying to bring some clarity to the conversation when it came to ingredients.
KetoCon: Certified Ketogenic
So, if you look at a website called Certified Ketogenic, that’s our website, we have a full long list of banned ingredients that we will not allow. Well, we work with food product manufacturers to certify their products, but we won’t allow those ingredients and those products. We use that same list at KetoCon.
I would imagine that in the future as like dietary protocols change, we will be accused of being overly strict. But, you know, people come to us in a state of ill health. Even if you don’t realize that you’re in ill health, if you’ve been eating the standard American diet or you’ve been transitioning away from a poor diet, there are things in your body that need to heal. You will not heal if you continue to take in these types of ingredients that we’ve banned.
I think you and I had this conversation last year; we’ve turned away a lot of companies with really deep pockets because of this banned ingredient list. I mean, at this point, it’s what I stand for and I’m not going to let it go, period.
[00:15:38] Detective Ev: This is why I love you.
This is why this event is going to be here five, 10 years from now. Because people, especially in my generation, I’m seeing this all the time, they are so done with the gimmicks. We smell this stuff out so quick, all these companies and corporations just trying to make extra money. The irony is it’s like people are still following these tried and true tactics just to make an extra buck, but that’s actually a losing strategy.
Doing Business Ethically
We’re in this awesome time of business where, in my opinion, being ethical, doing the right thing and standing for what you believe in, is actually going to attract people. I know this is not your primary motivation, but it is a business and it needs to be profitable. It’s kind of cool that you can do the right thing and also make good money.
This is why FDN is the only company that I work for. Everything else I do outside of this is self-employed to work for myself cause I can never find something that I’m aligned with. FDN, I’ve been here for several years already; and unless they kick me out, I’m going to stick around for at least several more, right? Because I like waking up and knowing that we’re actually doing the right thing. You can go make some money; you can make a great living. But you can do the right thing at the same time.
We had someone actually applauding you down in the comments. That is awesome.
So, what are the different tickets that people can get? I know actually if they follow FDN, I think we have a $50 off or something like that. But I know that a three-day event can be a lot for people. Some people can make all of it. Some people want the VIP thing. Can we break down the different options for possible attendees?
KetoCon: Ticket Info & Expected Excitement
[00:16:54] Robin Switzer: Sure. We offer a one-day ticket that’s for Sunday only. If you just want to come explore the expo hall and meet the vendors and see the speakers for that day. We also offer a three day, like a general admission pass that gets you access to everything at the event.
Then we also offer a VIP ticket, which gets you the three-day ticket access to everything at the event, the VIP dinner, we do like VIP seating in the front two rows of the keynote staging area. And we also have a VIP breakout room that is solely for the VIP ticket holders. They get to have like a more intimate conversation with a select number of speakers in that VIP breakout room. They also get, we do unlimited water and coffee all day in the VIP lounge. And they get a VIP swag bag that’s probably going to be hard to carry this year.
I have to say that your excitement is kind of contagious. And I’m in the trenches here, you know, in the last final weeks leading up to the event ordering lanyards and swag bags and stuff. But you’ve reminded me how uplifting an event like this can be.
That’s what I mean, that’s probably why I keep on doing it. Because when you walk in the hall and you walk in the Convention Center, the first thing you feel is the energy. It’s really kind of like buzzing. People are so excited to be there.
KetoCon: There for the Same Reason
They’re so excited to be in an environment where they have something in common with everybody that’s there because everybody that’s there are there because they care about their health. They want to improve their health. It doesn’t matter where they are in their journey, if they’re ill, recovered, fit, not fit, it doesn’t really matter, they’re all there for the same reason.
It’s kind of like going to a rock concert, everybody’s there for the same musician. Feel that electricity. And that’s how it feels at KetoCon. It stays like that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday until we close it down. Then, I mean, I’m right away planning, when are we going to do this again?
[00:18:54] Detective Ev: Yeah. I appreciate you saying that because I’m not big on flattery because flattery is fake. But I do go outta my way to look for the genuine positives I see in something and share that with someone. I’d want them to do that with me.
It is nice to be able to say, okay, this event was awesome last year. I know her well enough at this point to know that it’s only going to be equal or better. So that’s a win.
It’s saying something when, like my friends, I mean, they’re in a transitional period of their life. They’re leaving their jobs to go pursue FDN, so they’re not just reigning in money throwing in around everywhere. So, we’re particular about the events that we’re going to.
KetoCon: Like-Minded People
I just told them, I mean, one mixing in Austin is great too, right? I’m like, guys, trust me in April, good time to go to Austin, cause July, yeah, that can be brutal. But at least it’s a drier heat. I didn’t think it was that bad as like 106 degrees would be up here. April’s going to be a beautiful time to go. We got PICNIK, you got a guaranteed good event.
I’m like one of those people, I feel like not everyone’s like this, but my friends laugh, my girlfriend laughs. I like take responsibility for how things that I told my friends to do went. If I’m like, yo, let’s go to this restaurant, and the restaurant sucked. I don’t know why, but I take personal responsibility for that. So, yeah, when we go to the event, I want it to be cool.
Someone said, “I recently learned that KetoCon is a thing, would love to attend.” Hey, you still got like a month and a half to get this figured out. Hopefully we will see you there. Super excited. There’s a lot of energy there.
I think that’s the main thing, I wanted to go back to that. You brought up this idea of almost going to a rock concert. What’s funny is I never actually understood these events for the longest time, I’ve only been to a couple concerts in my life, and I was mostly forced to go. I think I’ve only went to one voluntarily. I’m not a big sports guy, so I don’t like the sporting events. I was always like; how does so many people go to these things? I’m like, well, duh. When you love a specific thing and you get to meet like-minded people, that’s it.
KetoCon: A Way to Make a Difference
When I started going to these health conferences for FDN, those were the first health conferences I ever went to. It’s so awesome when like, I’m the weirdo walking around with the blue light blocking glasses, right? My girlfriend and I look nuts. Then you go here and it’s like, oh no, everyone does this kind of stuff. Everyone’s into health.
What’s nice about our groups too, and I don’t know that all sporting events can say this, is since when people are healthy, their brain works a lot better. When you have an inflamed brain, you can be mean, you can be moody, you can be anxious. I’ve been all those things, so I’m not judging people. I’m saying that I’ve been that way myself. When you go to meet healthy people that are on a journey, the consciousness is just so high. I don’t mean to sound woowoo.
I’m just saying like the spiritual aspect, like there is a higher vibration, I guess is what I’m trying to say. Like everything is just such a high-level conversation. There’s no gossip, there’s no pettiness or BS. You’re just talking about ideas and the amazing stories. You do leave inspired, that’s why this is worth a year’s worth of work.
We all leave and we’re like, all right, we got these awesome new ideas to pursue. Last year was amazing. This year will be epic.
[00:21:28] Robin Switzer: I know I keep saying that’s why we do it. There’s a lot of reasons why we do it. But you know, this mission that I’ve been on related to wellness and nutrition, it’s been a lifelong thing for me. I’ve realized that this is my way of making a difference.
KetoCon: Aligned with FDN
I’m probably twice your age, so I’ve been on this journey for a long time. I feel like if I can keep doing this, if I can bring a few thousand people to KetoCon every year, I know that they go home and influence at least one other person.
So, if I’ve got 3000 people there, then I’ve touched 6,000 people, and that feeds on itself. That’s how I get fulfilled with all of this. That’s why I keep these crazy hours and do this for a whole year to plan an event that you know is over in three days. It’s kind of like cooking for Thanksgiving. You cook for a week and then everybody eats in 20 minutes and it’s over.
But I mean, I believe that one of the reasons that we are so aligned with FDN is because your mission is making a difference in people’s lives and my mission is the same. We’re doing it from different regards, different spaces, but we’re doing the same thing. And that’s why I think we’re so well aligned.
[00:22:39] Detective Ev: Yeah. That’s really true. It’s special to be able to do that. That’s why I’m always actually thankful for the health experiences that I’ve had, and I’m sure you would agree in the same way.
You’re right, as a younger person, I’m 27 right now, I was dealing with all these health issues from like five to 19, 20 years old. So, of course I was sitting on the pity potty a lot of the times wondering like, why is this happening to me? This isn’t fair. But then I realized I was given this gift that all my other friends, for the most part from high school didn’t get.
KetoCon: Find What You Love and Do It
That gift was, I don’t hate the rest of my life from Monday through Friday for the next 40 years. I love it. I can’t wait to do this Live with you. We’re doing workshops last night. We’re doing the podcast. Like, life should be fun. Yet most people, unfortunately, haven’t necessarily identified that passion for them yet. But it’s obvious for us because we were forced into it more or less.
When you don’t identify that, you might be going to these nine to fives, or let’s be honest, eight to sixes that you don’t even really like and enjoy. That’s a fraction of your life, man. So, I mean, if nothing else just, my gosh, the best thing you can probably do for your health is just finding those things that you love and then going and doing them. The stress of hating your life is probably a lot worse than any particular diet, although I’ll put a little asterisk on that one. I think you know what I mean.
So, if you have any last second questions here for Robin, I won’t keep you too long. I know you got a lot to do.
Oh, next someone said, “Same. I gave up my 20 plus year nursing career to pursue holistic health, which turned into being my own boss and now enrolled in FDN.” Okay. And you’re enrolled in FDN. Awesome. Well, we hope to see you down in KetoCon and we do get a $50 discount.
I hope Jo doesn’t kill me for this one, she manages the Instagram. I think you guys can just DM us for the discount. Unless do you know it offhand? Cause I should have gotten that beforehand. I’m sorry.
[00:24:12] Robin Switzer: I’m pretty sure your code is FDN50.
KetoCon: For All Who Want to Optimize Their Health
[00:24:14] Detective Ev: Keep it simple, right? Try the FDN50 please, before messaging us. Even if you’re watching it afterwards, feel free to give it a shot and then message us, if need be. We want to see people there. There’s nothing cooler, a lot of this is digital nowadays, which is amazing. Because, like you said, we can spread this message to more people.
Oh, that is the code. It’s FDN50. You don’t need to message us. It’s FDN50. Thank you, guys.
The amazing thing is like when I’m at these booths and someone’s like, I followed you guys forever, or I listen to the podcast, or I saw you on this Live with whatever, that’s just a special feeling. It’s really awesome.
My girlfriend said, “Amazing!”
What’s a final thing to finish up on here? I guess, I know it should be obvious, but again, there’s this biohacking mix in it. There’s the keto mix, whatever. So, just to be as clear and concise as possible, someone’s been watching this on the recording, or they’ve maybe stuck with us the whole time and they’re like, all right, I think I like this, but I need them to talk to me directly. Who is KetoCon for? Because it’s not just for people that want the ketogenic diet or like the ketogenic diet even.
[00:25:12] Robin Switzer: It’s really for anybody that is interested in optimizing their health – all of it. Doesn’t really matter what diet protocol you’re on, whether you’re paleo, low carb, carnivore, keto, it doesn’t matter. I’m still going to have the banned ingredient list. You can follow a paleo diet without the banned ingredients. We’re not a diet event. We’re not about a diet anymore. We’re about nutritional protocols, metabolic health, and health optimization.
Conclusion
[00:25:39] Detective Ev: Perfect. That’s really what it is, right? If you want to be with the latest and greatest for this stuff. I know a lot of the speakers, not always personally, but I just know of them, and these are people that know stuff that becomes trending online like five years after they were already talking about it, right? Because they’re on that front line researching this stuff. So yeah, if you want to just learn about the newest things going on in the world of functional/natural healing, biohacking, whatever, this is the place to be.
Robin, again, we’re super excited to be with you. If there’s no questions, I’ll let you go now because I’m sure this is a nice break. But I’m also sure, like you said, you got no shortage of work. Right? I think we covered everything today unless you got anything else you’d like to share.
[00:26:14] Robin Switzer: Absolutely. I really appreciate you having me on. Thank you so much. If anybody has any questions, go to KetoCon.org. There’s lots of information there about the event. And you can message us on the KetoCon Instagram account. That account is manned constantly, and we will respond to any questions that you have. We hope to see you there. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
[00:26:36] Detective Ev: Cool. We’ll be there. I’m looking forward to meeting some new people, it happens every time. So, see you, Robin. I will see you in a month and a half.
If you’re keen to make an impression on someone with a truly delicious meal then I think I have the solution for you…
This is my recipe for Baked Teriyaki Salmon with Ginger Spinach Rice, Broccolini and Zucchini Ribbons. It’s ready in no time at all, tastes like the most yummo comfort food, is simple as a bit of chop chop, mix, cook, and with SunRice Low GI White Rice helps you feel fuller for longer so you can enjoy quality time with whoever you’ve decided to cook it for or maybe you’re serving it up just for you (… and oh wow does it make the best soul food for those nights when you just need to chill.)
Infusing SunRice Low GI White Rice with some grated fresh ginger and spinach takes it up a notch but if you don’t have these on hand you can absolutely go for delicious SunRice Low GI White Rice straight up as it comes – the flavours of the salmon, sesame seeds, spring onion and veg bring it all to life.
BAKED TERIYAKI SALMON, GINGER SPINACH RICE, BROCCOLINI AND ZUCCHINI RIBBONS
Serves 2
Gluten free : Dairy Free
¾ cup Sun Rice Low GI White Rice, rinsed and drained
1-1.5 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 cups baby spinach leaves, firmly packed
2x 160-180g pieces salmon
1 bunch broccolini, trimmed
2 medium zucchini, sliced about 5mm thick
1 ½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 spring onion, finely sliced
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
Teriyaki sauce:
4 tablespoons tamari or gluten free soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey or maple for vegan
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Heat oven to 180C and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Place Sun Rice Low GI White Rice in a small saucepan and add 1.5 cups water and fresh grated ginger, cover with a lid and bring to the boil on a medium heat. Remove the lid, reduce heat to low and cook until water is almost absorbed. Add spinach leaves, toss gently through the rice, cover and turn off the heat allowing the spinach to wilt. Keep rice covered and warm until ready to serve. Add broccolini and zucchini ribbons to baking tray, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and toss to coat. Spread the vegetable around the tray to make space for the salmon. Whisk ingredients for teriyaki sauce together in a bowl. Place salmon tray, top with teriyaki sauce and cook in the oven for 15 minutes. Once salmon is cooked, spoon ginger spinach rice into bowls, top with broccolini, zucchini ribbons, teriyaki salmon, then sprinkle with sliced spring onion and sesame seeds and tuck in.
Jacqueline is an Australian Ambassador for SunRice.
This is a partnered post. All thoughts and opinions expressed are the authors own.
Crispy skin barramundi with a Vietnamese style salad
Fresh, abundantly flavoured and full of fibre, protein and micronutrients to fuel your health, this Crispy Skin Barramundi with Vietnamese style Salad is guaranteed to make your taste buds and tummy happy.
Barramundi is a very light fish, yet still rich in:
+ Omega 3 fatty acids (essential because we must acquire these fatty acids from dietary sources, our bodies are not able to make them) to support brain function, cardiovascular health and reduce inflammation
+ iodine to support the production of thyroid hormones and the function of the thyroid gland which governs the body’s metabolism. Iodine is typically low in most modern diets due to depletion in soils. Seafood including seaweed is one means of consuming more iodine.
+ protein for growth, development and repair, DNA synthesis and hormone production. Remember protein is an important macronutrient for stabilising your appetite too, so if you find you’re still hungry after ‘a light meal’ it may well be there is insufficient protein to meet your body’s needs.
CRISPY SKIN BARRAMUNDI WITH VIETNAMESE STYLE SALAD
Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 10 minutes
Serves 4
¼ cup olive oil 4 x 200g barramundi fillets, skin on 1 tbsp flour of choice 1 Lebanese cucumber, cut into batons 1 carrot, peeled, shredded 120g cherry tomatoes, quartered 1 cup bean sprouts, trimmed 150g sugar snaps, halved on the diagonal 2 green onions, thinly sliced ¼ cup coriander leaves +extra, to garnish ¼ cup mint leaves 1 long red chilli, finely chopped 1/4 cup fish sauce 2 tbsp coconut sugar Juice of 1 lime +extra wedges, to serve 2 tbsp roasted peanuts, chopped
In a large non-stick frying pan heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium-high heat. Coat fish lightly in flour and season with sea salt and pepper. Cook fish, skin side down, for 2-3 minutes. Turn fish and cook for a further 2-3 minutes or until cooked through. Set aside on a plate loosely covered with foil to keep warm. In a large bowl place cucumber, carrot, tomatoes, bean sprouts, sugar snaps, green onions, coriander and mint. Season and toss well. In a shallow bowl place remaining oil, chilli, fish sauce, coconut sugar, lime zest and juice and 2 tablespoons cold water. Season and whisk dressing ingredients together until sugar dissolves. Drizzle ¾ dressing over salad and toss well to coat. Serve fish with salad topped with peanuts, coriander sprigs and lime wedges on the side.
How do contamination rates for antibiotic-resistant E. coli and ExPEC bacteria that cause urinary tract infections compare in kosher chicken versus organic chicken?
Millions of Americans come down with bladder infections or urinary tract infections every year, including more than a million children. Most cases stay in the bladder, but when the bacteria creep up into the kidneys or get into the bloodstream, things can get serious. Thankfully, we have antibiotics, but there is now a pandemic of a new multidrug-resistant strain of E. coli. Discovered in 2008, this so-called ST131 strain has gone from being unknown to now being a leading cause of bladder infections the world over and is even resistant to some of our second- and third-line antibiotics. What’s more, it’s been found in retail chicken breasts sampled from across the country, “document[ing] a persisting reservoir of extensively antimicrobial-resistant ExPEC isolates,” or bacteria—that is, the extra-intestinal pathogenic E. coli, including the ST131 strain—“in retail chicken products in the United States, suggesting a potential public health threat.” I discuss this in my video Friday Favorites: What About Kosher and Organic Chicken?.
Urinary tract infections may be foodborne, predominantly from eating poultry, such as chicken or turkey, so maybe we shouldn’t be feeding antibiotics to these animals by the tons in poultry production. Hold on. Foodborne bladder infections? What are you doing with that drumstick? Indeed, eating contaminated chicken can lead to the colonization of the rectum with these bacteria that can then, even months later, crawl up into the bladder to cause an infection.
“The problem of increasing AMR [anti-microbial resistance] is so dire that some experts are predicting that the era of antibiotics may be coming to an end, ushering in a post-antibiotic era…in which common infections and minor injuries can kill” once again. More than 80 percent of E. coli isolated from beef, pork, and poultry exhibited resistance to at least one antibiotic, and more than half isolated from poultry were resistant to five different drugs. One of the ways this happens is that viruses, called bacteriophages, can transfer antibiotic-resistant genes between bacteria. About a quarter of these viruses isolated from chicken were found to be able to transduce antibiotic drug resistance into E. coli. And one of the big problems with this is that “disinfectants used to kill bacteria are, in many cases, not able to eliminate bacteriophages,” these viruses. Some of these viruses are even resistant to bleach at the kinds of concentrations used in the food industry; likewise, alcohol, which is found in many hand sanitizers, is also unable to harm most of them.
The irony is that the industry has tried to intentionally feed these viruses to chickens. Why would it do that? They can boost egg production in hens and increase bodyweight gain in broiler (meat-type) chickens to get them to slaughter weight faster. The only thing that seems to dissuade the industry is any practice that affects the taste of the meat. That’s why the industry stopped spraying chickens with benzene to try to kill off all of the parasites. The meat ended up with a “distasteful flavor,” described as “strong, acidic, musty, medicinal, biting, objectionable, and good.” Good?!
What about organic chicken? For another type of bacteria, Enterococcus, antibiotic-resistant bugs were found in both conventional and organically raised chicken but were less common in organic. A study found that only about one in three organic chickens were contaminated with drug-resistant bugs compared to nearly one in two conventionally raised birds. But in a study of hundreds of prepackaged retail chicken breasts tested from 99 grocery stores, carrying the organic or antibiotic-free label did not seem to impact the contamination levels of antibiotic-resistant E. coli from fresh retail chicken. Purchasing meat from natural food stores appeared to be safer, however, regardless of how it was labeled.
Kosher chicken tested to be the worst, with nearly twice the level of antibiotic-resistant E. coli contamination compared to conventional chicken, which goes against the whole concept of kosher. As you can see in the graph below and at 4:17 in my video, there was no difference in drug resistance between the E. coli swabbed from conventionally raised chickens versus chickens raised organically and without antibiotics, but, either way, kosher chicken tested worse. But how could organic and raised-without-antibiotics chickens not be better? Well, it could be cross-contamination at the slaughter plants, so bugs just jump from one chicken carcass to the next.
Or it could be the organic chicken loophole. USDA organic standards prohibit the use of antibiotics in poultry starting on day two of the animal’s life. “This is an important loophole” because even antibiotics “considered critical for human health” are routinely injected into one-day-old chicks and eggs, which has been directly associated with antibiotic-resistant foodborne infections.
What’s more, there was no difference in the presence of ExPEC bacteria—the bacteria implicated in urinary tract infections—between organic and conventional chicken. “These findings suggest that retail chicken products in the United States, even if they are labeled ‘organic,’ pose a potential health threat to consumers because they are contaminated with extensively antibiotic-resistant and, presumably, virulent E. coli isolates.” Indeed, even if we were able to get the poultry industry to stop using antibiotics, the contamination of chicken meat with ExPEC bacteria could still remain a threat.
How do contamination rates for antibiotic-resistant E. coli and ExPEC bacteria that cause urinary tract infections compare in kosher chicken versus organic chicken?
Millions of Americans come down with bladder infections or urinary tract infections every year, including more than a million children. Most cases stay in the bladder, but when the bacteria creep up into the kidneys or get into the bloodstream, things can get serious. Thankfully, we have antibiotics, but there is now a pandemic of a new multidrug-resistant strain of E. coli. Discovered in 2008, this so-called ST131 strain has gone from being unknown to now being a leading cause of bladder infections the world over and is even resistant to some of our second- and third-line antibiotics. What’s more, it’s been found in retail chicken breasts sampled from across the country, “document[ing] a persisting reservoir of extensively antimicrobial-resistant ExPEC isolates,” or bacteria—that is, the extra-intestinal pathogenic E. coli, including the ST131 strain—“in retail chicken products in the United States, suggesting a potential public health threat.” I discuss this in my video Friday Favorites: What About Kosher and Organic Chicken?.
Urinary tract infections may be foodborne, predominantly from eating poultry, such as chicken or turkey, so maybe we shouldn’t be feeding antibiotics to these animals by the tons in poultry production. Hold on. Foodborne bladder infections? What are you doing with that drumstick? Indeed, eating contaminated chicken can lead to the colonization of the rectum with these bacteria that can then, even months later, crawl up into the bladder to cause an infection.
“The problem of increasing AMR [anti-microbial resistance] is so dire that some experts are predicting that the era of antibiotics may be coming to an end, ushering in a post-antibiotic era…in which common infections and minor injuries can kill” once again. More than 80 percent of E. coli isolated from beef, pork, and poultry exhibited resistance to at least one antibiotic, and more than half isolated from poultry were resistant to five different drugs. One of the ways this happens is that viruses, called bacteriophages, can transfer antibiotic-resistant genes between bacteria. About a quarter of these viruses isolated from chicken were found to be able to transduce antibiotic drug resistance into E. coli. And one of the big problems with this is that “disinfectants used to kill bacteria are, in many cases, not able to eliminate bacteriophages,” these viruses. Some of these viruses are even resistant to bleach at the kinds of concentrations used in the food industry; likewise, alcohol, which is found in many hand sanitizers, is also unable to harm most of them.
The irony is that the industry has tried to intentionally feed these viruses to chickens. Why would it do that? They can boost egg production in hens and increase bodyweight gain in broiler (meat-type) chickens to get them to slaughter weight faster. The only thing that seems to dissuade the industry is any practice that affects the taste of the meat. That’s why the industry stopped spraying chickens with benzene to try to kill off all of the parasites. The meat ended up with a “distasteful flavor,” described as “strong, acidic, musty, medicinal, biting, objectionable, and good.” Good?!
What about organic chicken? For another type of bacteria, Enterococcus, antibiotic-resistant bugs were found in both conventional and organically raised chicken but were less common in organic. A study found that only about one in three organic chickens were contaminated with drug-resistant bugs compared to nearly one in two conventionally raised birds. But in a study of hundreds of prepackaged retail chicken breasts tested from 99 grocery stores, carrying the organic or antibiotic-free label did not seem to impact the contamination levels of antibiotic-resistant E. coli from fresh retail chicken. Purchasing meat from natural food stores appeared to be safer, however, regardless of how it was labeled.
Kosher chicken appeared to be the worst, with nearly twice the level of antibiotic-resistant E. coli contamination compared to conventional chicken, which goes against the whole concept of kosher. As you can see in the graph below and at 4:17 in my video, there was no difference in drug resistance between the E. coli swabbed from conventionally raised chickens versus chickens raised organically and without antibiotics, but, either way, kosher was worse. But how could organic and raised-without-antibiotics chickens not be better? Well, it could be cross-contamination at the slaughter plants, so bugs just jump from one chicken carcass to the next.
Or it could be the organic chicken loophole. USDA organic standards prohibit the use of antibiotics in poultry starting on day two of the animal’s life. “This is an important loophole” because even antibiotics “considered critical for human health” are routinely injected into one-day-old chicks and eggs, which has been directly associated with antibiotic-resistant foodborne infections.
What’s more, there was no difference in the presence of ExPEC bacteria—the bacteria implicated in urinary tract infections—between organic and conventional chicken. “These findings suggest that retail chicken products in the United States, even if they are labeled ‘organic,’ pose a potential health threat to consumers because they are contaminated with extensively antibiotic-resistant and, presumably, virulent E. coli isolates.” Indeed, even if we were able to get the poultry industry to stop using antibiotics, the contamination of chicken meat with ExPEC bacteria could still remain a threat.
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: What is going on everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on severe acne.
We have the privilege of getting to talk to a younger FDN out there, someone who is out there already doing the work, starting her own business, taking on clients. I think this is really cool in a few ways. One, I admit selfishly, it’s awesome to be able to connect with another young person who is engaging in the world of functional healthcare. That’s always sweet. But on the other end, I talk to a lot of people at FDN, and some people just go right into business for themselves. They have no problem with it, don’t think twice. Others have a lot of, unfortunately, limiting beliefs around, can I actually do this? Is this something that people will actually pay for?
Yet we have our 22-year-old guest today who just graduated in December of 2022, and she’s already taking clients. She’s out here doing the business stuff, just not even thinking about it. She knows it works because it worked for her. She wants to go share that with other people. I think this can be inspiring for those that are 40, 50, 60 years old listening to this, and they might have a ton of limiting beliefs or hesitancy.
Severe Acne: Helping Others
Here is a 22-year-old going out and doing the work. Her name is Johanna Updyke, and she actually was in college prior to starting FDN, studying human anatomy and biology. It was actually really cool. She spent time as a research assistant studying genetic components to autism. This is something that her younger brother has dealt with.
She wants to get into neurodiversity in the future and how things like FDN can actually support that stuff, which is such a great niche because it actually does work for things like that. It can be really life changing for people. I don’t know that it could fully fix every case, I think that would be a bit ignorant for me to say that. But I do know people have made tremendous strides using stuff like this. Even if it’s not the FDN system, just applying functional medicine principles and nutrition really, really can help those people.
For now, she is helping women with their cycles and hormones and also cystic acne. This was another place Johanna and I completely related. She had pretty bad acne like myself, and that was the main motivating factor. Despite all these other symptoms that she had and that I had, acne is the thing that’ll really kick you in the butt and get you into high gear.
She found FDN by just seeing a few practitioners online who happened to have this certification, posting about acne and the other things that they did. So, when you think someone’s not listening out there and you’re wondering, oh, what’s the point of this social media stuff? This is the proof. Someone’s always watching, someone’s always listening. Maybe they don’t become a client, maybe they end up doing the dang FDN course, that’s still pretty cool.
Severe Acne: Didn’t Know FDN Exists
I think we are in a community where we all have to make money, we have to make a living. But there’s no shortage of sick people. So, even to see someone be inspired by your posts and content and then go pursue this themselves, I would consider that a win in my book.
I love this conversation. Very high energy. I think you guys will enjoy this as well. It can be a good episode to share with maybe a young person in your life that is trying to get into this stuff. We don’t necessarily go over anyone’s head by any means. We do talk about labs to a degree, but it’s very story based. We also talk about some of the struggles our generation is dealing with. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.
Alright. Hello there, Johanna. Welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?
Johanna Obydke: I’m good, Evan. How are you?
Detective Ev: I’m doing great.
Guys, this is a really cool episode for us. I didn’t realize this until Johanna actually got on, I’m like, you look pretty young. Are you in your twenties as well?
So, Johanna’s 22.The reason that’s special is because I was making a joke with her. It’s not a joke, it’s just funny. When I went through the course six years ago at the age of 21, that was the youngest practitioner at the time to have ever gone through. That’s not a bragging right, unfortunately. It’s not that it’s that cool. Anyone could really do this if they have the dedication.
I just couldn’t believe that my friends were going out, super interested in health, sometimes paying tens of thousands of dollars to college, and they didn’t even know something like this existed.
Severe Acne: Everything Started as a Preteen
Of course, we need people that go to college and have credentials for specific things. But in my opinion, they would’ve loved something like this and they never knew about it. My two friends that are going through right now, they’re both chemists. One has already quit his job to move into FDN and the other one wants to leave the job.
It’s just kind of crazy that they spent all this money and this is kind of what they wanted to do anyway. But it’s also exciting for me because I’m so used to working with people who are in their forties and fifties, which is awesome. I’ve seen over these last several years that we’re attracting people now on both ends of the spectrum, which is interesting.
It’s not just people in their twenties, but we have practitioners in their sixties and seventies now. They’re retired and they’re like, Hey, I want to go through FDN. So, really just cool to get to talk to you today, Johanna. We’ll dive into your story first. You’ve listened before, you know how we start this show.
When did the health symptoms start for you and what did they look like?
[00:04:56] Johanna Obydke: Although I’m young, I feel like it’s saying it goes way back, you know, so young. It’s just silly to say that but it really does. Ever since I’ve was a preteen, when I started getting my first menstrual cycles, that’s really when everything started.
I always thought it was normal to have severe menstrual cramps. I never thought that it was something that was bad or anything. I just thought every woman experiences it because all the women that I was close to were experiencing it. So, it was just something I always dealt with.
Severe Acne: Getting Older and Getting Worse
I always had a few breakouts here and there. But what really was the driving factor is when I became a young adult, I started to turn 18, getting into college, those cramps were getting worse, and then my acne was getting worse.
I’ve been always told, you’re a young girl, you’re a teenager, your acne will go right away. But over time, my acne has only gotten worse as I get older. It kind of felt opposite. It was really that period of time when I was becoming a young adult and my acne was getting far worse, that was really the wake up call for me.
[00:05:54] Detective Ev: Johanna already knows, and probably many of the listeners do, if you’re listening regularly, that was a huge thing for me. We had all these other things going on, sure. But acne, especially cystic acne, is a heck of a motivating factor.
For those that are just listening on audio, what’s really cool is both of us are looking good today. I would never know that you struggled with this if you didn’t tell me that. Obviously, something’s worked here. Few people, sadly, get the results that they want with the cystic acne. Many of them do find exactly what you and I found. Were told, you’ll outgrow this. For us it was the exact opposite. The older I was getting, the worse it was getting.
At a certain point I remembered my dermatologist. I think she made a prediction like, once you’re over 18, similar to yours, it’s going to be fine. Well, I was 19, and my skin was the worst it’s ever been, not even comparable to any other time. I knew, even though she meant well, she was definitely wrong about this.
Severe Acne: Going on Meds
What were the first things that you started doing? I know that when we’re trying to get help for acne, especially, many people might not realize this unless they’ve dealt with it like us, you’re in the online forum. You’re on the Google search, you end up in some weird places. All of a sudden, someone’s telling you that like you need to use your own urine on your face in a concoction. I’m being funny, but I’m not kidding. That’s actually the stuff that you’ll see online. It’s nuts.
So, did you just start searching around or did you try Western Medicine first?
[00:07:08] Johanna Obydke: Yeah, so it’s funny you say that cause I read all those things. I’ve even read the thing with the urine. Of course, never tried that. That’s a little way too crazy for me. But in my college I was a biology major. So, I was very into western medicine and like medicine is the only answer. That was kind of my mindset at the time.
I went to my dermatologist, and I also went to another doctor, I got antibiotics, and I got birth control because I figured might as well tackle the cramps and tackle the acne. I was like, there’s no harm. I’ll figure it out.
I went on both of those medications, and nothing worked for the cramps, absolutely not, no difference at all. But my skin actually cleared up completely. Like I had no breakouts, and I was doing great. This is the part of my story that makes me so upset because I had the clear skin, like I was there at that point. It was time to come off of the antibiotics.
Severe Acne: Stopping the Meds & Getting Worse
I was on it for about eight months, which is very long. I was taking about like 150 milligrams of doxycycline every day. So, I was taking a lot. That’s definitely why my skin cleared up so quickly.
But when it was time to come off of it, my acne ended up coming back within the next month. Then it started to double and double and double and got so worse. I had severe cystic acne. Not a part of my face was not covered in acne. It was really the worst experience for me. So, I had stopped both medications, both the antibiotics and the birth control around the same time. On top of that, my cramps ended up getting far worse, way beyond that I ever experienced in my life.
I also started to develop new symptoms, a lot of GI related symptoms, severe constipation, pain, gas pain, bloating, and I never had stomach issues. I had like a stomach of steel. I could eat anything growing up, no problem. All of a sudden, everything was bothering me. I would have my morning coffee, bloated; my lunch, bloated; dinner, bloated. It was just absolutely terrible.
So, I was like, do I go back on medication to mask this, or do I find something else? That is when I switched from the western medicine mindset to the more holistic route of things, except I found like the vegan holistic side first. I feel like that’s pretty common in FDN too.
Severe Acne: Angrily Trying to Accept the Fate
I see a lot of people talking about how they went dairy free, you know, vegan, whatnot. I wasn’t full vegan, but I decided to go dairy free for about six or seven months. During that time my acne got even worse. It was severe, painful. I’ll send over pictures and things like that, but it was just so terrible, and I was really feeling at my worst.
Those other constipation and bloating pains, they continued to persist as I went dairy free. I was basically vegan. I didn’t really eat a lot of meat, but I did still have some in my diet. As I was experiencing this, like I did the western medicine, I did the holistic side; I’m like, now I feel lost. I feel like there’s no other route and I was just like, doomed. I’m going to have cramps; I’m going to have acne for the rest of my life. I’m just going to have to deal with it. And I just hated my body for giving me these experiences. Like, why do I have to have acne? Why do I have to have cramps?
I was just mad at myself and my body. I honestly had a terrible relationship with a lot of the foods I was eating because I felt, okay, well I’m doing this to myself, or these foods are doing this to me. I just had this really angry relationship with food and wellness and health. This was going on for probably about close to a year, that post medication phase of like anger and upsetness, just accepting my fate.
Severe Acne: Finding an FDN & A Gateway to Healing
When I was scrolling on Instagram, I had found an FDN who literally just stood right out to me. She had posted something where she said, do you have severe acne?
I’m like, yeah.
Did you go on a dairy free or close to vegan diet?
I’m like, yes.
She’s like, did it not work?
And I’m like, yes.
Of course, I ran right to her page, and was reading all about what she does. I had noticed she really talks a lot about polyunsaturated fatty acids. That was my gateway into the world of FDN, the world of pro metabolic healing.
[00:11:03] Detective Ev: This is just complete luck that you found this scrolling on Instagram.
[00:11:05] Johanna Obydke: It’s so crazy. I mean, people don’t like to talk religions, but I’m a pretty religious person. Actually, I had found this page on Easter. I had spent all Lent praying and being upset and trying to accept this as my fate. I have to appreciate the way I look because, you know, God makes us perfect, right? That was always my mindset.
So, once I was scrolling, it was on Easter. I’m like, oh my gosh, I feel like this is straight from God, like a sign. I just thought that was so wonderful to find her. I actually never ended up working with any FDNs, cause I figured I’m going to do this on my own, do my own research.
Also, I couldn’t really afford it as a college kid. I can’t afford a lot of these labs and whatnot. So, I decided to just do all my own research online. I switched my whole diet over and I found raw milk, like unpasteurized dairy. That was a huge gateway into my healing process.
Severe Acne: The Importance of Sharing Your Story
[00:11:54] Detective Ev: This is awesome and a huge testament to people. There’s a lot of FDNs in the beginning, especially if they’re new to business, they’re very scared to share their truth and share their stories. This was someone who is now an FDN, simply because someone was posting something.
I also think it’s our duty. I really believe this because it’s one of the reasons I like doing the podcast. We have to share this message with as many people as possible. Cause you’re out there suffering, praying literally for something to come your way. Sure enough, here it comes. But if that person had never engaged in that action, you would’ve never found this either.
It’s interesting that you took this approach of going through FDN. Many people don’t realize this, one of the reasons I went through FDN is because, you’re right, I actually found FDN practitioners first. I was like, okay, I’m 21. This is crazy. I can’t do that at the time. I’m like, I can get monthly payment plans that are cheaper though, I want to learn it anyway. I bet I can do the course super-fast and figure this out. Make some money somehow. That’s the exact same strategy I took. I’m like, I can afford the monthly payments, but I can’t afford the FDN right now.
That’s not to discourage anyone out there from doing their own business. There are many people that don’t want to go through the course and all it offers, cause it’s a heck of a lot. But there’s people out there that if you’re desperate enough, especially with cystic acne, you’re desperate doing anything that you can to find this and then you get lucky enough.
Severe Acne: Holistic Influence
I want to just rewind a little bit. You talked about how you stopped using the medication and all this stuff came back and that’s when this idea of holistic came into your mind. I’m still curious though, because I know that our generation might just generally be more accepting of these ideas.
But for me, I can remember this transitional period where I went from, whoa, wait, nutrition and all these things affects this stuff and I never really thought about it. Was there some kind of particular moment that led you to that? Or did you always know intuitively that, maybe you can do this holistic thing. Was there any influence in your life that led to this?
[00:13:48] Johanna Obydke: Yeah, I always had an interest in nutrition when I was growing up. I actually wanted to be a nutritionist and then, I was kind of guided in a different direction. But it wasn’t just my own intuition. My boyfriend’s brother was actually going through a very similar experience, not acne, some other symptoms. He was trying to find a more natural solution.
We would actually spend a lot of time talking about the things we’re going through, things we read online. At one point, he also thought dairy free, and vegan was the way to go. It’s pretty funny. We always would sit and talk about these things. We’ve actually crossed paths so many times in our healing journeys.
When I found FDN, found out about raw milk, and things like that, he was actually finding the raw primal diet. We had both messaged each other around the same time about changing our diet towards eating meat again and things like that. It was definitely influence from the people around me as well.
Severe Acne: The Start of a Career Path Change
[00:14:41] Detective Ev: Cool. So, then you decide, hey, I’m actually going to go through this FDN thing. And you graduated in December of 2022, which is really recent. What was cool, her and I were talking today trying to get this figured out.
One of the things that you actually said is, oh, I have a discovery call. So, this is a 22-year-old person that graduated in December of 2022, coming out of college, and yet is already getting discovery calls. Now, I don’t care about the success of your business or lack thereof. I don’t know that; it doesn’t matter to me.
It’s the fact that you’re already out there doing this. Yet, I hear, I don’t want to say excuses, I want to be kind, but I hear a lot of reasons from people double our age that, oh, they can’t do this, or they can’t get on calls or do whatever. Yet here you are just like, okay, I’m going to go do this. I’m really curious about this whole career thing too, because from what I saw on your Instagram, it seems like you’re pretty dedicated to this.
How did you decide, I just went to college for, I’m assuming, the four years and now I’m transitioning into this? It’s a heck of a change.
[00:15:33] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. When I was going through my whole acne story and change, whatnot, I was still going to college to become an occupational therapist, actually. I was studying biology and I had this change of heart, like, I don’t know what I want to do anymore.
Severe Acne: Switching to FDN as a Career
I never thought about FDN as a career at first. I always thought about it as this is just going to be for me to get me healthier, whatever. As I was having that crisis for what I want to do with this degree that I just got, I realized like, wait, I can make this into a career and help people just like me.
I also noticed so many people asking me questions as my skin started to clear up, like, what did you do? What are you doing? I realized I enjoy sharing this with other people, why not make it my career. So, I decided I’m going to do FDN.
I waited till I graduated, started in May of 2022. Spent the whole summer in full doing the program. That was really just my way in realizing that I love helping other people like that.
[00:16:30] Detective Ev: That’s awesome. We’re glad to have you obviously. I will say, I mean, even though I don’t necessarily think someone should have to pursue it for just this reason, we can’t deny that having those extra credentials, especially as a young person, that’s going to help so much when you’re interacting with people. I get this, I’ve experienced this.
I’m not just some random 20-something that’s trying to sell health coaching. I have legitimate certifications; I have legitimate knowledge in this, and I can help you. Then we have the story on top of it. No one can take away the story, especially since you have pictures. And this is tough because not every condition can be something that someone takes pictures of. Not to mention, a lot of us don’t want to take pictures when we are in the worst of our things if we can see it.
Severe Acne: Family and Friends Adjusting
I thank God that I have the pictures I do because they are horrendous, but they’re my best marketing. They’re the best way to tell people, this actually works, and it can work for you as well.
Just based on your boyfriend’s brother, based on the people that you’re talking to, it sounds like people are open to this. But how have you found your circle of friends or family, are they accepting of this because you already have such a powerful story, or how did this go initially? Like, by the way, I know I went through college, but now I’m going to go do this.
[00:17:31] Johanna Obydke: My parents had a hard time adjusting to the idea of me opening my own business, they still are. Like my mom will mention to me, there’s an opening at a hospital, you should get a job.
I’m like, well, I don’t want to work for someone else right now. I’ve found that this is really what I want to do. I think it’s just their mindset. I’m from New York, so they’re both city workers. It’s like here, you get your city job, you get your pension, you have to have that security. They’re super supportive, but they’re like maybe get a city job as well. Either way, everyone around me is super supportive.
All my friends are always asking me for advice. You know, it was really great. I got a lot of practice on my friends. I got to run labs on all of them. They were lining up, fighting over who’s going to get the next service. I think it’s also just our generation as a whole just really cares about their health and wellness overall. Everyone’s so curious to see what’s going on inside.
Severe Acne: Many Hindrances to Healthy Choices
[00:18:22] Detective Ev: Yes, and I agree with this. Again, our generation also statistically speaking, has way more health issues, both mental and physical than previous generations. It’s kind of like the whole thing, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I don’t think that’s true, cause again, we have 70-year-old people going through FDN sometimes. But I will say, a 19-year-old that has health issues and doesn’t really know any better is quite receptive to any idea that they believe could actually help them through this.
It’s really encouraging. I mean, it’s one thing for your friends to be supportive, to know that they were actually interested in saying, hey, I want to do some labs and stuff that, that’s amazing. I know that you just graduated, but are you finding that these people are actually okay with doing the work and making the lifestyle changes? Because I think this is one of the hardest things as people in our twenties, especially the early twenties or college days.
I didn’t go to college in a normal sense. I went for like a semester and a half of community college, so I never had a traditional college experience. But I’m very aware from friends, girlfriend, and family members, what that traditional experience is like. You have every influence in the world, basically discouraging the healthy lifestyle that would be necessary to get these conditions better. You’re staying up late, you’re binge drinking, you’re hooking up with people, like there’s a lot going on, man. It’s very tempting and many people want to engage with it.
So, even though they might be interested in how you did this, are they willing to put in the work? I mean, is that something that you’re finding?
Severe Acne: Motivated Clients
[00:19:43] Johanna Obydke: It definitely varies from person to person. Believe it or not, I actually see more of the people who are willing to make a change than not. Especially my age, there’s quite a few.
I primarily work with young women just like myself, and most of them have made incredible changes. Sometimes they do better. I look to them, I’m like, wow, you’re doing better than me, I feel like sometimes. Like you’re so motivated, you’re so on top of things. I tell them to do something, and they do it.
For example, I tell them to, for example, go gluten free maybe, or try something. Yeah, I’ll do it. No problem. You know, send me what things I should order. I’m like, that’s huge. If someone told me like, you know, not knowing anything about this, just like, go gluten free without all the research I have, I’d be like, oh no. I can’t do that. Are you crazy? I say it and they do it, which I think is just so incredible. They’re really willing to make these changes to feel better.
[00:20:30] Detective Ev: Nice. That leads me to my next question. Again, I mean, you graduated basically less than three months ago, so we’re not expecting something crazy here, but I mean, you literally went right into it, dove in headfirst, and you’re going for the business side of things. This is awesome.
I think, again, it’s very encouraging for people that have been in a traditional career for maybe 30 years, and now they’re coming out and they’re scared of the business side. To hear from a young person that’s just like, no, screw it. I’m just going to go do that and take the risk.
Severe Acne: Using Social Media & Word of Mouth
It sounds like you’re already having some success. What’s been your approach? Have you been using just the social media side? Are you doing anything else? Like, have you gotten any real clients that are outside of friends and family? No worries if not. I’m just curious to see where you’re at.
[00:21:05] Johanna Obydke: You know, I’ve gotten a few clients that, these people, I have no idea who they are, which I was like screaming. I have like my Calendly, whatever, when I got that first thing, I was like jumping around. I’m like, I can’t do this every time cause like my cortisol is through the room. I’m like freaking out every single time I get a client. But it’s quite exciting.
I have gone only through social media and word of mouth. I didn’t believe anyone. A lot of FDNs told me, word of mouth is the way to go. I didn’t believe anyone. I’m like, there’s no way. But that’s really been the biggest thing for me, just going and speaking in my neighborhood, making myself known.
Even just like speaking to people like in a non-lecturer setting. Just when I go to the store, if I meet someone, or you know, just organically meeting people has been huge for me. Then for social media, every time I post my personal story or pictures, I get a message. So, I feel like that’s really the way to go. It’s not just about sharing information; it’s about sharing your own personal experiences.
[00:21:59] Detective Ev: Very cool.
Severe Acne: Learning Along the Way
I’ve had the same experience where I almost like never worry in the back of my head. I do a lot of other things outside of FDN stuff and it’s pretty actually rare that I take a one-on-one client, now.
We’re doing some stuff at our local business where we’re actually like funneling clients basically to my girlfriend, best friend, and stuff as they get through the FDN course. But I will never worry about money because I always know that if I just post my personal story in that acne transformation, just like you said, I almost always get messages from this. People are like, wow, this is awesome. How can I do something here?
I also have experience with this, so maybe that’s helping. But it’s like I can post that, get a message, we have a conversation. I now know I can help this person, almost always, I can help them. And you can make money doing a really ethical thing, like actually serving someone. That’s a great way to do business.
I don’t need you to tell us the specific numbers here, I’m just curious. With these first few clients that you’ve brought on, are you going like, full out FDN pricing? Did you discount it a little bit? What are we working with there?
[00:22:54] Johanna Obydke: Yeah, I definitely think Reed would tell me that I’m undercharging for what I do, he always says.
Whenever I hear the packages, I feel like it’s so expensive. I definitely am on the lower side right now just as I get to be adjusted to being an FDN and working out things cause it’s not perfect. There are still things that I’m learning along the way.
Severe Acne: New FDN’s First Clients
Then also I’ve noticed a lot of people tend to gravitate towards not working for 90 days and just wanting to run labs and meet once. I found that’s really where people like to go. Then after one session, then they end up booking later on and adding more labs.
So far, it’s really the less expensive side.
[00:23:32] Detective Ev: Sure. Listen, it’s always tough because, especially being a part of FDN, I gotta be careful about the advice I’m giving out. There might be advice that’s really great for me or one person and it’s not great for all the people listening. It could be misleading, especially if maybe they’re new to FDN. They’re listening to me and thinking that I know it all and I don’t. I know maybe more than someone who’s not an FDN, but I don’t know everything about this. There are different ways to handle business.
I think what you said is realistic. In the beginning, there might be some different ways that you need to handle the clients. I think what you did with your friends is genius. That’s pretty much the only time I recommend working with someone for free.
If you can get some friends that are willing to pay for the labs that say, tell me my results. Then you’re very realistic with them saying, just so you know, you’re supposed to work with me for three months minimum, but if you know that and just want to get some results, fine. You show them some stuff, you get them a little better.
They probably weren’t the sickest people in the world anyway, and they write you a nice testimonial. Cool. That can be a great time to work with someone for free.
Severe Acne: With More Experience Comes More Confidence
It can also be okay to work with someone at a discount rate right now to build that confidence. But the way that you’re going, you’re going to end up like all these other FDNs. I would love to see what a year from now brings for you. I genuinely believe if you’re already out here with the confidence to do this, you’re going to be someone that is one of our FDNs that just has that referral-based practice and is probably either hiring other people or has some type of wait list.
Then when you get to that point, guys, it’s nice because one, you have a genuine confidence with this, but two, it’s like, why would I not just do the packages I’m supposed to do and charge the price that I’m supposed to charge. It’s like, you know, in the back of your head you have a wait list, you know that you got like 10 other calls that week. So, you walk around feeling a little bit different about it.
You know, you’re like, all right, well if you don’t buy this $5,000 package that I know can serve you at the highest level, totally cool. I got nine other calls this week and I’ll work through that. So that’s cool, mixing the community with the social media type of stuff.
I’d love to ask too, especially as someone who went to college for science-based things, how did you find the FDN course? I know it’s tough as you’re on a public podcast, but I always invite people to be objective. There’s a nice way to give constructive feedback. You’re more than welcome to say things that you wanted improved as well, if you found that there were any.
Johanna’s Opinion of the FDN Course
Did the course meet your expectations? Did you think it was worth the money? I just want your opinion of it overall.
[00:25:41] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. Once again, the course, I found on Instagram, not from the same FDN that I had found about my healing journey. It was actually another person I realized, wait, they have the same certification. So, I was like, this is definitely something great that I’ll want to go through.
Honestly, I really did love the course. I enjoyed every second of it. I found it to be very challenging, well, not super challenging, but pretty challenging. I learned things that I didn’t learn in my biology courses in college. I always thought that was great to learn something new. Because I kind of went into it thinking, well, I’m going to know most of this stuff, just like the nutritional aspect will kind of be the new part. But there was a lot of anatomy and physiology that I learned in the FDN course, and I was pleasantly surprised.
I really did love, like really enjoyed the course, but I think some of the things that I would’ve loved to see more of, maybe more of the lab trainings too. Like for some of the more advanced labs that aren’t included in the FDN, for like the DUTCH.
I got out into the world, and I was like, what is this? Everyone’s running it, this is stressing me out. I need to know it. It was actually pretty easy to find resources from FDN later on, but I just felt like I was kind of shocked with a few of the labs that I haven’t heard of.
Detective Ev’s Opinion of FDN
[00:26:50] Detective Ev: Fair enough. And that’s a great point. It’s something worth addressing.
I think this is tough for us cause we always want to offer more. But then yeah, once you graduate, it’s like, holy cow. For those that don’t know, you get access to over 60 labs and counting once you graduate. I mean, it’s stuff that we don’t talk about at all in the course and there’s a bunch of advanced courses, so people always kind of wonder why is that there?
My opinion of this is the FDN course is made in such a way that if that’s all you ever did as of right now, you could get the vast majority of people that you work with better. Don’t work with stage 4 cancer patients, that’s probably inappropriate for a freshly graduated FDN. They need oncologists, they need a lot of other technical things, and even much more advanced functional people.
But where we really kill it is these very common but not normal hormonal issues that you’re talking about. Autoimmunity, we are so great with that, I feel like because autoimmunity, not all of them, but most of them, you can kind of live a normal life expectancy, but you’re suffering the entire time. So, we don’t have the same urgency that a cancer person does, and it’s usually the lifestyle factors that are triggering the autoimmunity to begin with. We work really well on those populations.
And so, if that’s all you ever did and then you just went out and pursued the FDN side, you would be fine.
Adding all the Tools to Your FDN Belt
However, we attract a fair bit of nerds, such as myself, seems like yourself, many other people in the AFDNP group, our professionals’ group. Even if we don’t necessarily always need it to serve a client, we want to learn and just want to say, all right, how can I add every tool possible into my tool belt over time?
So, you could still go out and do FDN on day one of graduating, you should do that actually. But then you can increase your knowledge over time, and you end up like Ryan Monahan, I’m sure you’ve seen him at this point. He’s been on the podcast. Ryan’s brilliant. Ryan has gone through almost every advanced course that we have. I think he might have gone through every single advanced one that we have.
This guy’s operating at a whole different level in terms of education here. But you know what, his clients are somewhat similar to yours and mine. It’s not that much different always.
The Dutch, I will say, can be useful. I’m glad we don’t include it in the course because we’d have to charge a lot more and then we’d add like another 20, 30 hours of technical stuff. But if you are a practitioner who is working with women in any way specializing in hormone stuff, I mean, you’re doing that, I can see how that’s beneficial and I think it’s worth taking that advanced course.
Then we even offer the addendum stuff that’s free once you graduate. So, yeah, that’s why we have those types of things. I hope that makes sense to people.
Severe Acne: Johanna’s Test Results
One other thing I’m curious about then is because you, of course, went through the course at a time where we now include four physical lab tests that you actually got to run on yourself. Were you surprised at some of the results or just maybe not even surprised, were you just finding some of that interesting? What showed up for you that was notable?
[00:29:27] Johanna Obydke: I was so surprised. Also, those labs really were what got me through the rest of, like, of course, I’m not perfectly healed, right. I’m not in like a great, wonderful, a hundred percent state of health. But it was really the pushing, like it got me to where I am today, like finding those lab results.
I was so surprised. I had been on antibiotics, so I was pretty sure that my GI MAP would be like starved of bacteria. It was like the complete opposite. Also, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. So, I did not expect to see anything on that liver panel or the oxidative stress. I was like, I’m not worried about that.
That was actually like one of the biggest issues for me. I’m embarrassed to share my oxidative stress level. It was over 25. I was like so shocked to see that on myself. I was like, for someone who doesn’t drink, who doesn’t smoke, and for someone who’s young, like, why is this the case?
But I’ve learned that over time, all those medications I was taking, throughout my whole life with the severe cramps, I was taking like half a bottle of Advil every single month.
[00:30:23] Detective Ev: Oh my gosh. How many pills is that a day, roughly?
Severe Acne: Gluten Sensitivity
[00:30:24] Johanna Obydke: It was probably about like three to four a day for like three to four days a month.
[00:30:30] Detective Ev: That’s not how you’re supposed to use Advil and people don’t read the back of the bottle. They don’t realize people are going to the hospital every day for the gastric bleeding because of those.
[00:30:38] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. When you’re in pain, it’s like, I only care about the pain relief right now. That was a major thing for me. Just realizing that all those medications really screwed up my detox pathways and like I’m not detoxing, I’m full of oxidative stress. Like, I’m just not in a good state of health. So that was kind of a wild awakening for me. I was like, wow, I need to kind of start shifting more things and working on my health to be even better.
[00:31:04] Detective Ev: I gotta just ask, this is such an oversimplified thing. We do so much more than this, but I’m just curious, did you have some sensitivity to gluten or wheat?
[00:31:11] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. My Secretory IgA was so low that the anti-gliadin came up low too. I never did the food sensitivity, the MRT. But since my Secretory IgA was so low and the anti-gliadin was so low, you know, if you put it to scale, the anti-gliadin would be high. You know what I mean?
[00:31:27] Detective Ev: I believe in that wholeheartedly. I think that’s a reasonable connection. I apply that with clients when I’ve worked with them in the past. So, yeah. We’ll scale that. We’ll say like, yeah, you’re probably sensitive to this.
Severe Acne: Supplement Mindset
[00:31:35] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. So, that was like one thing. But for me, like I also was kind of not anti-supplement, but I just didn’t think supplements were the answer. I was like, oh, I don’t need supplements. Until I saw how bad my labs were and I was like, okay, I could bring in some antiox support or you know, detox support.
I haven’t retested, I’m going to do it very soon. I have the kit waiting in my room. I’ve just been putting it off.
[00:31:57] Detective Ev: Yeah, and you know what? I don’t even discredit what you just said about the supplements, because some supplements are marketing businesses, they’re not supplement businesses. They don’t care about the products; they don’t care about the quality. They are good at selling these things and they’re crap.
But with a lot of the stuff that we’re recommending at FDN, like when you’re talking about companies like Bio Botanicals or Microbiome Labs, I mean, these are pharmaceutical grade stuff. These are fantastic companies. So yeah, both are true. There are really lame supplements out there that don’t do much. And then there’s stuff, especially Microbiome Labs, shout out to them.
I’m shocked consistently by how much something like MegaSpore can do. You’re like, these two little capsules make me feel this different and help the bowels this much. Yeah, that’s actually what they do.
What phase were you in for the HPA axis dysfunction? Did you get yourself to the exhaustion?
High DHEA
[00:32:43] Johanna Obydke: Yeah, like super exhaustive. It’s too much to pull it up now, but it was very, very low, like nothing. And my DHEA was through the roof, like I think it was like 14 point something. But that’s also very common, we see in PCOS patients. I do have PCOS, so it was kind of like just a confirming factor for me right there, just seeing that.
I do see it quite often in cases where the female has severe period cramps. I often see that really low cortisol, really, really high DHEA.
[00:33:14] Detective Ev: Okay. This is just interesting in general cause I’ve noticed this correlation with younger people, believe it or not. In the course, for those that might be out of the loop here, Reed talks about that most people will see a low cortisol and DHEA. Then he estimates that about 10% of people, and he wasn’t even a hundred percent sure why when he did these, but he’s like 10% of people, it seems that their cortisol goes low, but their DHEA spikes.
The only time I’ve actually ever seen that is myself, my 27-year-old friend, and now you. So, I don’t know if that’s also correlated with maybe if we are younger, we’re holding on a little better hormonally and the DHEA is trying to compensate. Cause mine was like two or three times the reference range when I ran this.
And then my buddy Brian just got this done. Sure enough, exhaustive phase of HPA axis dysfunction at 27 years old. Cortisol was tanked, but DHEA was high. Johanna, it makes me wonder. Think about all your friends and the people that you know.
Are you in New York City or just New York?
Exhaustive Phase of HPA Axis Dysfunction
[00:34:05] Johanna Obydke: No, New York City. I’m in Brooklyn, actually.
[00:34:07] Detective Ev: I feel like people are just getting hit in the city so much harder. I mean, you can’t even walk down the streets of Philly or New York City. I don’t go to New York City as much, but for work I end up in Philly or some of these cities a lot. When I’m walking, I’m like, just what I’m inhaling. I’m like, I don’t want to do this.
Can you imagine how many of our friends are walking around in the exhaustive phase already, and you just hope to God that they’re going to wake up to these concepts. Maybe we can at least be there for them when they finally do. Because if they’re already in this phase now, what are they going to be at 30, 40 years old? I mean, this is a one-way ticket to chronic disease, in my opinion.
[00:34:40] Johanna Obydke: I completely agree. I was shocked about the exhaustive phase for myself as well. I was just kind of like, I thought I would have super high cortisol cause I tend to be a high anxiety, stressed out person. It was kind of like, oh my goodness, I’ve been in this state. I’m just like, I need to get out of this exhaustive phase like soon because, obviously, my stress and anxiety is causing this exhaustive phase rather than that really high cortisol, which is what I expected to see.
Severe Acne: Period Cramps That Are Common, Not Normal
[00:35:04] Detective Ev: I wanted to focus on like this generational thing and like how we actually deal with this. Are you finding that a lot of your female friends, do they have what we were talking about off air where like they almost like think it’s normal to not have a period or have irregular ones? Do you have to almost like educate them on this idea that this is not ideal?
[00:35:20] Johanna Obydke: Yeah, I mean at one point I thought that that was normal. I thought that period cramps were just a part of being a woman. I just thought that that’s what everyone had to experience and endure.
I find that with a lot of my friends too, thinking that severe cramps where they’re just like absolutely nauseous. They have to stay out of work for like a week. They can’t even get out of bed. They’re so weak, they can’t do anything. They think that that is normal and just a part of womanhood and no problem. I see that all the time just thinking that it’s normal and that you need birth control to regulate it. That’s super common in my generation thinking, oh, birth control will just solve all your problems. But it won’t
[00:35:58] Detective Ev: It’s scary because by the time that a lot of women call me, it’s always been like mid to late twenties. They’ll call and say usually something along these lines, all right, I got off birth control. So, they did this themselves.
Severe Acne: No Period at 27 is Not Normal
They’re in that phase where we started out in, where we’re interested in this, but we’re not working with anyone yet. So, we’re cycle of trial and erroring for natural health. We’re just going through different diets or whatever. And they’ll come to me like, hey, I got off my birth control a year ago or six months ago because I was having symptoms.
When I got off, I haven’t had a period since. I’m like, Dude, you’re like 27 and you have not had a period for six months without the birth control? She’s like, yeah. Like, I know it went away on birth control. But again, the OB/GYN told her that that was normal. Yeah, it can go away sometimes on this.
In my opinion, I’m not radical, like one way or the other, I don’t try to be, at least. I think anyone that has listened regularly would say that I am fair to western medicine. But doing this to young women, I feel like this is one of the more criminal things that we’re doing. I mean, we are like altering their hormones for years during their developmental phases. And we’re doing this under the guise of, oh, well you’ll have a few less pimples, which might be true, but it’s never actually solving this. Like this is crazy, right?
[00:37:07] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. It’s like these symptoms might be masked for a while, but as soon as you come off of it, it’s going to come right back out and it’s going to be worse because the birth control does so much to the body. It’s going to harm our gut, our gut microbiome, it’s going to hurt our mineral balance. There are so many things that birth control does that’s harmful.
Severe Acne: Ignorance Around Birth Control
But, like you said, these young women in these developmental phases, I was, I think 17 or 18 when I went on it. That’s really young to be going on a pill like that. And there’s girls I know who go on it at 15 or 16, there’s no need for that. There are so many other options out there. Like you said, we shouldn’t be too harsh towards western medicine cause there’s a need for western medicine.
Birth control is something that should be very, very heavily debated going on. I was never told any of the symptoms or anything that it does. I was just told that it’s going to regulate my period, that was it. I didn’t even know really what hormones I was putting into my body. I honestly couldn’t even tell you what it was that I was taking.
[00:38:04] Detective Ev: Exactly. Ask any 16-year-old girl that’s on this, you know, what is it that you’re taking and what does it do fundamentally? We probably already stopped the conversation. It’s not because they’re dumb, it’s just genuine ignorance that is kind of promoted by western medicine because you’re not really told the full story.
Did you ever get offered Accutane? I’m going somewhere with this.
[00:38:21] Johanna Obydke: Oh yeah, so many times. I could go down the list of the medications. I’m going to go on a tangent now, but after I got off my birth control, I went to a different doctor. I said, I want to still fix my cramps, but I don’t want to be on birth control. But she actually gave me a different type of birth control.
Severe Acne: Spironolactone & Accutane
And I was like, no, I don’t think you understand.
She’s like, oh no, this one’s so much better than the other one.
I was like, forget it. Then I went to another doctor. For the acne, she said spironolactone, which like mimics testosterone, I believe. I could be wrong.
[00:38:46] Detective Ev: I don’t know that, but I’ve heard. And it’s not often, but I’ve heard this being recommended for acne.
[00:38:49] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. I actually was like, well, can we test my hormones and stuff like that? No, no, that’ll work. Then I went on an online forum, and I read about spironolactone and like women having terrible experiences growing facial hair, like losing their period, things like that on this medication. I was just like, oh my goodness, I’m so done.
And I’ve been offered Accutane plenty of times. But there was just something always instilled in me the fact that you have to get the blood tests every month, like to check your liver health. I was like, that just doesn’t sound like it’s a safe drug.
[00:39:15] Detective Ev: Well, and that was kind of my point because as much as I absolutely detest the idea that we are taking advantage of pimple face teenagers and young adults and convincing them that a former chemotherapeutic drug is somehow necessary for their acne, I detest that.
But what I do appreciate is even the dermatologist that recommended that to me did not for one second, I believe, underplay the side effects potentially that could come with that. I mean, there was the whole packet that you have to sign. She did tell me this is a last resort. She did try many other things before we got there.
Severe Acne: Meds’ Side Effects
In her world, she did do everything that she knew how to do and was trained to do before she recommended Accutane. So, no condemnation towards her at all. At least you kind of, even as a young person, you kind of get what you’re going into. It’s like, okay, I’ve never had to sign for any other medication before. But yet, we’ll hand out the eight months of antibiotics like it’s nothing. We’ll hand out birth control, like it’s nothing.
I’m not necessarily comparing those things to Accutane, but they’re not particularly side effect free things either. There are studies showing that one or two basic courses, one-week courses of penicillin increases the risk of anxiety and depression in the person over 20% for the next year. I mean, these are things that greatly can affect us, and yet we’re throwing you on doxycycline for eight months.
Isn’t that the one that they use for lime? I believe.
[00:40:34] Johanna Obydke: I’m not sure.
Detective Ev: I think that’s important.
Johanna Obydke: Yeah. I’m not super familiar with a lot of antibiotics. But yeah, it’s crazy too. I was on it for a while, and I had started developing these crazy like constipation pains and just like bloating.
So, I went to two different doctors, one for the antibiotics, one for the birth control. I went to both of them, asking them like, is this causing this pain? The dermatologist told me, no, that’s probably the birth control. There’s no way that antibiotics could be causing you stomach pain like that. That’s exactly his words. And I was like, oh, okay, no problem. Never was recommended a probiotic, anything.
Severe Acne: All-Natural Skin Care
Went to the gynecologist, my dermatologist told me it’s probably the birth control. Do you know why this is causing stomach pain? No, no, no. That’s the antibiotics. There’s no way the birth control could be causing you stomach pain.
I’m like, well, obviously something’s wrong, so I have to figure it out.
[00:41:19] Detective Ev: Well again, your skin looks awesome now. It’s so cool that you’ve made this progress. This isn’t bad either way, no one cares. Just I want to be realistic for the audience. May I ask, are you currently on any medications or like prescription creams for the acne, or did you just nail this by doing the lifestyle stuff?
[00:41:35] Johanna Obydke: No, a long time ago I was on it, but the creams did nothing for me. I do no medication, no medicated creams. I have a skincare routine and go get facials every now and then. I get red light therapy on my face, things like that. I know you have a red-light therapy place. I do some other outside, external things. You have to make sure you take care of your skin on the outside as well, it’s not just your diet, but a huge aspect is that diet.
Also for me, exercising was a huge thing, adding it, and I never used to. That was where I really felt a huge difference.
[00:42:07] Detective Ev: This is inspiring for people. This is a severe case of cystic acne done naturally. I’m in the same boat. And I think the problem is, Johanna, most people, and I understand this, they never actually are able to fully test what natural can do because they get so desperate that they do go on Accutane or something.
Severe Acne: People Making False Claims
I won’t mention the name, but I saw this with a vegan person before. They were online on YouTube claiming to cure their acne naturally, but they had been on three courses of Accutane as well as well. Now I’m not giving this person crap. I’m not even saying that they were being malicious. I don’t believe that for a second. But with all due respect, how can you possibly promote your diet, whether it was paleo, whether it was keto, even if it’s something that I’m in more favor of, how can you promote your diet when you took three courses of Accutane?
I mean, for many people because of the side effects, that’s actually why Accutane works. Most people don’t realize it’s the side effects of the original intention of the drug that leads to it being quote/unquote “beneficial” for acne. You are permanently changing things in your body, in your sebaceous glands, especially.
So, when you do that, how could you argue that any supplement or any dietary changed was the thing that helped you, if you’ve permanently changed your body? Versus, you know, someone taking the antibiotics, yes, that sucks, but it’s a temporary thing and clearly it did not work permanently because you got worse after stopping them. It’s just tough.
We need people out there like you and I, who it’s like, no, we haven’t taken these drugs that permanently changed our body. We did have the severe cystic acne and we got it better by doing the lifestyle stuff.
[00:43:35] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. And like for me, my skin did clear up after I went on medications, but as soon as I stopped them, that’s when my problem really started.
Johanna’s Business Goals
I look back at pictures before I went on medication and I’m like, what was wrong with me? Like my skin looked so clear compared to what it did later on. I thought like a few breakouts was like the biggest deal in the world. I was very obsessed with the way I looked, and I didn’t want to have to wear makeup and things like that.
But for me it was really the medications caused the severe cystic acne. And I was like, there’s no way I’m going to do this to myself again. So that’s really how I found that natural path.
[00:44:06] Detective Ev: Awesome. I won’t ask, because again, you only graduated like two and a half months ago, so it’s not really fair to be like, hey, what’s your craziest client testimonial. We’ll hopefully have you back one day and then we can ask that then.
One thing I will ask, just like, what’s your goal? Are you just shooting for that full-time FDN thing? Is that what you see for in the future?
[00:44:21] Johanna Obydke: Yeah. That’s what I want to do. I hit the ground running. Like I opened the business right before they did like the final oral exam cause I was like, I want to start right away. And I had my Instagram since I was a student. I was just like posting and things just as I learned throughout the course.
So, my goal is to just be full-time FDN, hopefully build up my business to be successful enough to hire other FDNs maybe in the future. But within the foreseeable future, I just want to build up that wait list right now. That’s my main goal.
[00:44:48] Detective Ev: Yeah, day by day.
Where to Find Johanna Obydke
Where can people find you and follow you?
[00:44:51] Johanna Obydke: You can find me on Instagram at nutritionbyJohanna. That’s really it. You can just find me there, or you can always email me [email protected] with any questions or if you want to chat.
[00:45:01] Detective Ev: Oh, I apologize. I’ll make sure I do that in the beginning of the episode. So, it’s Johanna, it’s not Joanna.
Johanna Obydke: Yeah.
Detective Ev: Okay, got it. Well, I like getting people’s names right. Unfortunately, I just looked at that, I’m like, oh yeah, it’s probably Joanna, but it’s always the ones that seem more obvious that get me.
So Cool. That’s where they can find you. We’ll have those links in the show notes, of course. And I hope this works out well for you because it’s a unique thing. We have a wide variety of people that listen. They’re mostly women, but the age ranges do vary quite a bit. Hopefully there’s going to be someone on here listening today that’s like in their twenties. Maybe they didn’t fully resonate with some of the other people that came on and they’re like, oh, okay, this is my person. Like, this is who I needed to come on today.
Conclusion/Signature Podcast Question
I believe you know this, if you’ve listened to full episodes, I have my signature question for you to finish up today since we effortlessly got to our 50 minutes. My signature question for you is if I could give you a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, whether that’s actually do one thing or stop doing one thing, what is the one thing that you would get them to do?
[00:45:56] Johanna Obydke: Oh, wow. That’s a tough question. There are so many things going through my mind right now. Okay. If there’s a magic wand, I would make everyone stop eating seed oils. That’s like my thing. That’s one of the things I post about the most. I’m always talking about it.
If I had a magic wand, I could get rid of something in the world, it would be seed oils. It’s terrible. Look at the packaging. Things that seem healthy, have sunflower oil, have canola oil, so always look for that.
[00:46:20] Detective Ev: Cool. Johanna, thank you so much for coming on today. Welcome to FDN and just congrats on what you’re already doing. I’m sure you’re going to have much success in this.
Travel and vacation is all about taking a break from the ordinary, but it’s often difficult to stick to your diet and wholesome nutrition when on the road and travelling with kids. There are restaurants, drive-thrus and buffet lines, time zone interruptions, cultural culinary delicacies and busy schedules. However, holidays shouldn’t un-do your family’s health goals, because you’ll all come home with more than just great memories: bloating, digestive upset and moodiness are all common consequences of travel nutrition sabotage!
Here are some helpful tips to help keep the family’s health on track while travelling with kids on vacation and even on one-day outings.
How to Keep Nutrition On Track With Travelling with Kids
1. Don’t sabotage your snacks
The worst culprit for sabotaging healthy eating are those moments when you’re off schedule, running around, coordinating activities and children and hunger strikes. This moment, affectionately known as ‘hangry’, is anger caused by hunger. It manifests as a cranky state from a lack of food. More precisely, ‘hanger’ is really a blood sugar crash and results in moodiness.
Whether you, your travel companions or children are hangry, the best prevention is having an arsenal of prepared and healthy snacks. I’m not talking granola bars, chips or Krispie squares, but rather a variety of nutritious, whole food snacks. Like their convenience-food counterparts, nutritious snacks must be portable, easy to grab and distribute, and simple to pack and store.
To make the most of your snacks and avoid ‘hanger’, follow the Protein-Fiber-Fat rule of eating to maintain blood sugar levels – which means include these three important nutrients in your snacks.
Here are some examples of blood sugar-balancing snacks:
If you’re planning to visit a warm destination, all you really need to pack for clothing is your bathing suit, flip flops and beach towels. So pack light and reserve a suitcase to bring your and your children’s favourite foodstuffs. Most airlines allow you to pack food as long as it’s in the checked luggage.
I always pack:
a tetra pack of non-dairy milk
a variety of tea bags
protein powder
greens powder
a jar of almond butter
cereal
I also pack a small portable “bullet” blender, empty jars with lids (to shake a quick protein drink with water), reusable water bottles and insulated travel mugs. These accessories and food not only help with mornings, but they provide the comforts of home and help to establish a routine when you’re away. By starting your day by preparing your own breakfast, you’ll save time and money by not eating out, too.
3. Navigate the buffet and eating on the road with smarts
Eating out is inevitable when it comes to travelling, holidays or day trips. But eating out doesn’t have to mean you feed your kiddos at all-you-can-eat buffets, greasy spoons or drive-thrus. Your family can certainly eat nutritiously when eating out, you just have to be conscious about your food choices.
On cruise ships and all-inclusive destinations, the buffet is generally part of the package deal. Buffet doesn’t have to mean all-you-can-eat! The first rule when navigating the buffet line is to only fill your plate once. Browse the buffet menu options with your children before everyone grabs a plate, and encourage everyone to pick their 3 favourite items. Having a tough time deciding? Most buffets rotate and repeat their selections, so chances are, you’ll have another opportunity to try a dish that piques your interest. Reserve half of your plate for salad or veggies and portion the rest of your plate with protein and whole grains.
When eating out at a restaurant, the same rules apply. Pass on the deep-fried foods, refined carbs and appetizers. Instead order salads (with dressing on the side), wraps and substitute fries, potatoes, pasta and rice with extra veggies. Most restaurants will happily accommodate your requests. Include a protein with your meal – if you’re ordering meat or fish, make sure it’s grilled or broiled as opposed to fried.
4. Stay regular
If you and your kids eat healthy on a regular basis, then travelling or eating out can often affect everyone’s regularity! That’s why when eating out, I suggest including a variety of veggies and pack a greens supplement in your suitcase.
Staying hydrated with water, supplementing with healthy fats from Omega 3s, and a good quality probiotic will help to keep you and your kids regular, aid in preventing traveller’s diarrhea and reduce chances of constipation.
5. Keep moving – exercise and stretch
Car rides, airport lines and long waits are also part of travelling, vacations and day trips. Make the most of these situations by periodically moving and stretching to keep the blood flowing. Kids have a lot of energy to burn, so this will help them work off that extra energy.
If you’re lucky enough to include an excursion or activity in your plans, then make sure to properly warm-up prior to exercising. And follow-up strenuous activity with a cool-down to prevent injury and sore muscles.
Be adventurous and have fun during your vacation. Take an opportunity to try something new and get out of your comfort zone. Look for active and family-friendly events and activities to stay moving. Keeping kids active and busy is also a great way to get them to sleep! A welcome reprieve for parents after a long day, right?
With these tips in mind, you and your family can travel healthfully and return from your vacation refreshed and relaxed – not immediately in need of another vacation!
What tricks do you have to keep nutrition on track when travelling with kids? Please share in the comments!
What is low-acid coffee? Does it help those who suffer from acid reflux, heartburn, and indigestion?
“Dark roast coffee is more effective than light roast coffee in reducing body weight,” but what is the effect of different roasts on heartburn and stomach upset? I discuss this in my video Does Low-Acid Coffee Cause Less Acid Reflux?.
We know that “coffee consumption sometimes is associated with symptoms of stomach discomfort,” so researchers put pH probes into people’s stomachs to measure the amount of stomach acid generated by different types of coffee. A gastrogram is a way to chart acid secretion in the stomach, as you can see at 0:30 in my video. You give people some baking soda so their stomach starts out alkaline, then measure the pH in the stomach to see how long it takes the body to restore the stomach to an acid bath—about 15 to 20 minutes. If you mix that same amount of baking soda with dark roast coffee, however, it takes longer, which means the dark roast coffee is suppressing stomach acid secretion because it takes longer to normalize the pH. If you give people more of a medium roast coffee, though, there is a dramatically different effect—an acceleration of stomach acid secretion, returning the stomach to acidic conditions three times faster than drinking dark roast coffee. Thus, dark roast coffee is less effective at stimulating stomach acid secretion than medium roast coffee. But you don’t know if that translates into symptoms, or clinical effects, until you put it to the test.
“The most commonly used coffee bean roasting process is referred to as convection or ‘flash’ roasting,” which usually takes less than ten minutes. “An alternative method is conduction roasting….[which] roasts the coffee beans at a lower temperature for a longer time, typically over 3 – 4 h,” and results in so-called low-acid coffee. “Anecdotal evidence from coffee-sensitive individuals has suggesting that this latter roasting method [for low-acid coffee] does not precipitate or aggravate heartburn.” However, when you look up the citation for this finding, the paper just cites data from the Puroast Coffee Co., makers of low-acid coffee. It should therefore come as no surprise that it was the same company that funded the study.
At one point, the Puroast Coffee website claimed, “The health benefits associated with drinking Puroast Low Acid coffee will become almost immediately obvious to those who suffer from acid reflux, heartburn, or indigestion,” with more than 90 percent of customers surveyed receiving symptom relief. So, the company decided to put its money where its mouth was. Before I get to the results, though, it’s important to realize that when they say “low acid,” they aren’t talking about stomach acid, but about roasting coffee beans so long that they destroy more of the chlorogenic acid within them. That’s the antioxidant, polyphenol, phytonutrient chlorogenic acid—that is, the “anti-diabetic, anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory and anti-obesity” antioxidant.
That’s like an orange juice company going out of its way to destroy the vitamin C in its orange juice and then branding the juice as “low acid.” Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, so it would technically be true, but it would be bragging about destroying some of the nutrition, and that’s exactly what low-acid coffee makers are doing. But, if low-acid coffee causes less stomach discomfort, might it be worth it?
In the Puroast Coffee-funded study, 30 coffee-sensitive individuals completed a “randomized, double-blind, crossover study in which the symptoms of heartburn, regurgitation and dyspepsia [stomach upset] were assessed following coffee consumption” of Puroast brand low-acid coffee versus regular, conventionally roasted Starbucks coffee. To the study funder’s chagrin, no benefit whatsoever was found with the low-acid coffee, as you can see at 3:39 in my video. “Consumption of both coffees resulted in heartburn, regurgitation, and dyspepsia in most individuals.” So much for that ridiculous 90-percent-of-customers claim. “No significant differences in the frequency or severity of heartburn, regurgitation, or dyspepsia were demonstrated between the two coffees either in the fasting state or after the test meal.” The researchers couldn’t find any way to make the low-acid coffee look better.
They initially thought that a difference in coffee acidity might explain the company’s claims; however, when put to the test in a randomized controlled study, they found no difference in symptoms, suggesting that coffee acidity does not explain the sensitivity some people have. This, I think, further acts as a reminder that we should never believe claims made by anyone trying to sell us something.
Isn’t that amazing!? I love that Puroast’s own study did it in, but good for the company for allowing it to be published and not just quietly buried. Though, maybe it tried to make it disappear but the researchers held strong. Either way, this is how science is supposed to work, and I’m excited to bring it to you.
What is low-acid coffee? Does it help those who suffer from acid reflux, heartburn, and indigestion?
“Dark roast coffee is more effective than light roast coffee in reducing body weight,” but what is the effect of different roasts on heartburn and stomach upset? I discuss this in my video Does Low-Acid Coffee Cause Less Acid Reflux?.
We know that “coffee consumption sometimes is associated with symptoms of stomach discomfort,” so researchers put pH probes into people’s stomachs to measure the amount of stomach acid generated by different types of coffee. A gastrogram is a way to chart acid secretion in the stomach, as you can see at 0:30 in my video. You give people some baking soda so their stomach starts out alkaline, then measure the pH in the stomach to see how long it takes the body to restore the stomach to an acid bath—about 15 to 20 minutes. If you mix that same amount of baking soda with dark roast coffee, however, it takes longer, which means the dark roast coffee is suppressing stomach acid secretion because it takes longer to normalize the pH. If you give people more of a medium roast coffee, though, there is a dramatically different effect—an acceleration of stomach acid secretion, returning the stomach to acidic conditions three times faster than drinking dark roast coffee. Thus, dark roast coffee is less effective at stimulating stomach acid secretion than medium roast coffee. But you don’t know if that translates into symptoms, or clinical effects, until you put it to the test.
“The most commonly used coffee bean roasting process is referred to as convection or ‘flash’ roasting,” which usually takes less than ten minutes. “An alternative method is conduction roasting….[which] roasts the coffee beans at a lower temperature for a longer time, typically over 3 – 4 h,” and results in so-called low-acid coffee. “Anecdotal evidence from coffee-sensitive individuals has suggesting that this latter roasting method [for low-acid coffee] does not precipitate or aggravate heartburn.” However, when you look up the citation for this finding, the paper just cites data from the Puroast Coffee Co., makers of low-acid coffee. It should therefore come as no surprise that it was the same company that funded the study.
At one point, the Puroast Coffee website claimed, “The health benefits associated with drinking Puroast Low Acid coffee will become almost immediately obvious to those who suffer from acid reflux, heartburn, or indigestion,” with more than 90 percent of customers surveyed receiving symptom relief. So, the company decided to put its money where its mouth was. Before I get to the results, though, it’s important to realize that when they say “low acid,” they aren’t talking about stomach acid, but about roasting coffee beans so long that they destroy more of the chlorogenic acid within them. That’s the antioxidant, polyphenol, phytonutrient chlorogenic acid—that is, the “anti-diabetic, anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory and anti-obesity” antioxidant.
That’s like an orange juice company going out of its way to destroy the vitamin C in its orange juice and then branding the juice as “low acid.” Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, so it would technically be true, but it would be bragging about destroying some of the nutrition, and that’s exactly what low-acid coffee makers are doing. But, if low-acid coffee causes less stomach discomfort, might it be worth it?
In the Puroast Coffee-funded study, 30 coffee-sensitive individuals completed a “randomized, double-blind, crossover study in which the symptoms of heartburn, regurgitation and dyspepsia [stomach upset] were assessed following coffee consumption” of Puroast brand low-acid coffee versus regular, conventionally roasted Starbucks coffee. To the study funder’s chagrin, no benefit whatsoever was found with the low-acid coffee, as you can see at 3:39 in my video. “Consumption of both coffees resulted in heartburn, regurgitation, and dyspepsia in most individuals.” So much for that ridiculous 90-percent-of-customers claim. “No significant differences in the frequency or severity of heartburn, regurgitation, or dyspepsia were demonstrated between the two coffees either in the fasting state or after the test meal.” The researchers couldn’t find any way to make the low-acid coffee look better.
They initially thought that a difference in coffee acidity might explain the company’s claims; however, when put to the test in a randomized controlled study, they found no difference in symptoms, suggesting that coffee acidity does not explain the sensitivity some people have. This, I think, further acts as a reminder that we should never believe claims made by anyone trying to sell us something.
Isn’t that amazing!? I love that Puroast’s own study did it in, but good for the company for allowing it to be published and not just quietly buried. Though, maybe it tried to make it disappear but the researchers held strong. Either way, this is how science is supposed to work, and I’m excited to bring it to you.
Many thanks to Ellen Calteau Registered Dietician for this week’s note. Ellen is the Food Addiction Resources Operation Manager for the PHC charity. She spotted a pre-print paper announcing a protocol for a cluster randomised trial for the management of type 2 diabetes. The trial is called “Dietary Approaches to the Management Of type 2 Diabetes”, which has been called DIAMOND (Ref 1). The lead author was Jadine Scragg.
The background to the trial was given as there is “strong evidence” that type 2 diabetes (T2D) remission can be achieved with a low-energy (meal replacement) diet. There is “promising evidence” that low-carbohydrate diets can achieve remission of T2D. The DIAMOND trial aims to combine both approaches i.e., low-energy and low-carbohydrate. DIAMOND also plans to involve nurses in primary care to influence patient behaviour to achieve outcomes.
Two trials were used for references for the low-energy “strong evidence” – DiRECT and DIADEM-I (Ref 2). Average weight loss at 12 months in DiRECT and DIADEM-I were 10kg and 12kg in the intervention groups and 1kg and 4kg in the control groups respectively. DiRECT found that 46% of people randomised to the intervention went into remission at 1 year compared with 4% in the control group. At 2 years, the corresponding figures were 36% and 3%. The DiRECT trial found that weight loss was the only meaningful predictor of remission i.e., losing weight made achieving remission far more likely. In DIADEM-I, 61% of participants in the intervention group went into remission at 1 year, compared with 12% of the usual care group.
