Dhru Purohit Show - #254: The #1 Thing You Can Do to Reduce Inflammation & Diversify Your Microbiome with Dr. Deanna Minich

Episode Date: December 30, 2021

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker. When you think back to what you ate today, yesterday, three weeks ago or even last year, how different is the food on your plate? Some people naturally include a wide range of diverse food when choosing their meals, but for many of us, it is easy to fall into a trap of eating the same foods day in and day out.   Did you know that by not consuming a diverse range of foods, you are missing out on the potential for many health benefits? Despite the promotion of superfoods, no single food contains all the necessary nutrients for overall health and wellness. By eating a balanced diet filled with a wide range of foods, it is easy to ensure that you consume adequate amounts of all essential nutrients. This not only reduces the risk of nutritional deficiencies; it also provides numerous health benefits.   This week on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sat down with Dr. Deanna Minich to talk about one simple thing anyone can do today to improve immune resilience, reduce overall chronic inflammation, and improve cognitive health.   Dr. Deanna Minich is an internationally-recognized teacher, author, scientist, speaker, and artist. She has more than 20 years of diverse, well-rounded experience in the fields of nutrition and Functional Medicine, including clinical practice, research, product formulation, writing, and education. She has authored six books on health and wellness and over forty scientific publications. Currently, she is Vice President of Scientific Affairs for Organic India USA, President of the American College of Nutrition, and Faculty for the Institute for Functional Medicine and the University of Western States. In this episode, we dive into:   -What diversity in our diet really means (10:29)  -How diversity in our diet impacts immune health (12:52) -Why diversity of our gut microbiome is so integral to overall health (22:43) -Phytochemicals, polyphenols, and how they influence the gut microbiome (26:15) -How heart health is impacted by gut microbiome diversity (36:15) -How to get your kids to eat more diverse foods (46:05) -How to test your food variety level (1:00:42) -How to incorporate more spices into your diet (1:11:47)  -Physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual diversity (1:24:42)  -How being in nature changes your immune system (1:29:51) For more on Dr. Deanna Minich, follow her on Instagram @deannaminich, and through her website www.deannaminich.com. Check out her podcast, Color Can Heal Your Life at https://deannaminich.com/podcast-2/. This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker. InsideTracker looks at everything from metabolic and inflammatory markers to nutrients and hormones. Traditional lab tests can be hard to read on your own, but InsideTracker makes their results easy to understand and provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 25% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And I don't think that many people appreciate that even something like getting more diversity in our diet can actually impart more immune resilience. That that in and of itself is changing our gut microbiome even in short order. Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. Today we're talking with Dr. Deanna Minick on one simple thing that anyone can do starting today to improve their immune resilience, reduce overall chronic inflammation, and improve their cognitive health. One simple thing. No matter who's watching, you can do it today. One simple thing. Find out what that thing is. Stay tuned. Have you ever gone to your doctor for your normal

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I-N-S-I-D-E, Tracker, T-R-A-C-K-E-R-com, backslash Drew, D-H-R-U for your 25% off. Welcome to the Drew Perrault podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the with one of the brightest minds and wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Dr. Deanna Minnick. Dr. Minnick is a nutrition researcher, educator, and functional medicine-trained clinician with a unique approach to nutrition that combines physiology and psychology. She's served on the Institute of Functional Medicine's Nutrition Advisory Board and Curriculum Committee,

in addition to being a faculty member, teaching nutrition for the advanced practice module for environmental health. She currently serves on the board of directors for the American Nutrition Association and is president of the American College of Nutrition. Her academic background is in nutritional sciences, including a master's degree in human nutrition and a PhD in medical sciences nutrition. In conjunction with her academic degrees and extensive teaching experience at the university level, she's also a fellow of American College of Nutrition and Certified nutrition specialist. For over 20 years now, she's worked in both food and dietary supplements industry and is the vice president of science affairs of Organic India, an incredible company,

and serves as an advisor to various food, academic, and health organizations, and has more than 40 published scientific articles in journals such as nutrients, Journal of Nutrition, and Metabolism and Nutrition Reviews. Dr. DeAnna Mennick teaches the graduate program for human nutrition and functional medicine at the University of Western States. She's the author of six books on nutrition, wellness, and psychology, and is passionate about helping others live well using therapeutic lifestyle changes. And speaking of those changes, there's one simple change that we're diving deep into today that anybody can do that can have profound impacts on all areas of their mental and physical health. Dr. Deanna Minnick, welcome to Elis.

L.A., by the way, and welcome to our little studio here in Santa Monica. I haven't seen you in person in such a long time. It's a pleasure to have you here. We're going to jump right in, and I want to give the audience some immediate value, those that are watching on YouTube and listening on the podcast, and you're known for all things, phytochemicals, colors, diversity, the rainbow. We're going to unpack what that all means. But let's start off with the basics.

What are three, two or three or a few, however many you want to toss out. what are a few things that people are struggling with in their daily life that might be an indication that they're lacking a diversity in their diet the full range of colors different types the phytochemicals that are all associated with that so what are some problems that people are experiencing today that could be directly connected to not having enough diversity in how they live Wow, it's such a good question. And if I look over the course of this past 18 to 20 months or so, you look at how people are living. It's very different now than it was pre-pandemic. So people are at home. They have these routines. They're getting into ruts. And the question becomes, you know, gosh, how do I get out of this rut? How do I start to see my life different? I'm getting bored. We see that rates of even suicidal ideation are up, right? Mental health is on everybody's radar. People are sleeping poorly. They're not really. I would say tending to their food, like maybe they were initially during the pandemic. So people are kind of, you know, I think initially when everything happened in March 2020 or so, we kind of got

into this thing of like, oh, this is new. And you kind of have to course correct and you find your new way. You get your bearings. And now I think now that we're in the thick of it, it's like people are not feeling a sense of hope. They're feeling a sense of despair. And they're in that place of, I would say, just feeling like they need to get out of that ditch of being in that rut. Yeah. And, you know, it's like, how do you even know you're in a rut, right? Well, are you eating the same things every day? You know, it's been said that Americans, and this is even pre-pandemic, are revolving amongst

like five to seven different recipes or five to seven different meals per week. And I'm curious what that is now. And it's interesting because you've seen like both aspects. There was people that were living on autopilot even before. the pandemic and they thought you know what I'm not healthy but I'm too busy to pay attention to that area and I think the stats are we just wrote a newsletter on this topic I think there's 15 crops that basically is 90% of our entire food supply with the vast majority of it being soy corn you know potatoes and I think a couple other

ones that are there in the top five tomatoes is one of those and it's kind of sad I mean I love coffee but you know you always see that that coffee is the largest source of polyphenols in the American diet, the standard American diet that's there. So what I was getting to earlier is that you saw this split where a lot of people thought, you know, I'm too busy to really invest and pay attention to my health. Now COVID-19 comes and it's an opportunistic virus that takes advantage of the people that in a way are, don't have that full resilience in their body. So I saw a lot of people. people and now being at home and they don't have to commute to work. They have that time that

they can make food. They could do other things. So I've seen it both ways, right? I've seen both that split. That now people finally have a little bit extra time and they're scared. They're like, well, I thought I was a little bit overweight. My metabolic help didn't look that great, but I figure, you know, I'm just too busy to invest into it. But now it's like a real priority. It is. It's definitely coming to the surface even more. And I think initially what happened is people went this root of vitamin D. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So people equated the immune system to vitamin D. And everybody started to think, oh, you know, maybe I just need to help my health by taking more vitamin D. And I don't think that many people appreciate that even something like

getting more diversity in our diet can actually impart more immune resilience. That that in and of itself is changing our gut microbiome, even in short order. So let's unpack that. That's a lot right there. There's a lot that we can go into it. And that's the beauty of, you know, these conversations. And first of all, I'm just so thankful to be able to do this in person with you. It's a delight.

You've been somebody that's been in, you know, I've learned so much from you over the years. Even prior to having this podcast, I met you a really long time ago when you were working with Dr. Jeff Plan on some projects. And I just want to say hats off to you. because so much of what you were talking about then, which was a little bit over my head, because I didn't have that background in functional medicine and I was just learning. I'm not a practitioner. I didn't go through all that. It's just all not only become true, but it continues to be proven in the science that's out there. So firstly, you were ahead of the times. And secondly,

thank you for being somebody who I've learned so much from. So let's unpack a little bit about what you shared. So when you talk about diversity and we're talking about diversity in our diet, what do we actually mean? Yeah. Well, it's been referred to as food variety, botanical diversity, or even dietary diversity. Dietary diversity can be quantified. There are actual validated questionnaires in order to gauge whether or not somebody is engaging in a diverse diet. I don't even think we have to go to that level to see whether or not people are eating the same things. But essentially, you know, when I think of something that is diverse. I think that every day we are examining and assessing where we're at in terms of what we feel like eating, where our body is. And in functional medicine, one of the

things that we are really good at is all these different therapeutic diets. And one of the ones that I did a lot with clients was the elimination diet where people take things out, then they slowly add things back in in a very, very measured fashion to see how they respond. And so what people, I think, learn in that whole process of trying out a different way to eat is they try out different foods, they try different preparations, because it's not just the food itself. So making sure that we have more diversity within fruits or within vegetables, but even within one species of food, like an apple, right? So not just getting a huge bag of apples from the store because it's cheap and you just don't want to have to think about apples, but actually taking some time

to select the different varieties of apples, maybe a red delicious, maybe a Fuji, maybe Pink Lady, because each of them have different phytochemicals. So there's that aspect. And then there's also the aspect of how we prepare food. And we can create variety within that. And some people won't change the foods that they're eating. So they're not going to take the time to self-select all of those different apples and, you know, even though it just takes maybe an additional minute. But they may change how they cook, prepare, or take in that food and maybe how they combine it with other things. So I think there are many different ways to slice and dice diversity. So let's directly connect that to the topic that we were just talking about in the context of the pandemic and our gut microbiome.

So how could something like diversity, which initially a lot of people hear that, it sort of feels like a very soft intervention. But it's actually a very hard intervention and has a real impact on our life. So how could that be impacting our immune health and make us less likely for any sort of, you know, opportunistic virus, build up our immune resilience, make us less likely to get the, you know, the cold or the flu as we record this now, getting into flu season? And so how does that actually work? What is it about diversity that actually leads to better immune health? So let's get into the mechanism. I think that diversity can give us something on the positive side, so it can impart better nutritional status.

So people who eat more diverse diets tend to get a larger array or a bigger spectrum of nutrients. So they tend to have just better nutrients overall, whether it's phytochemicals or whether it's vitamins or even types of fats. And this has been shown in kids and also in adults. On the other side of the coin, we can go much deeper into that too because I do want to talk about how those different phytochemicals then impact the gut microbiome. On the other side, being more diverse also protects us from environmental toxicants. That's another area that I love teaching on because, gosh, you know, the planet is becoming more toxic as we know. Those toxins are making their way into our bodies.

and people are really confused about how to eat. Like, oh, Deanna, do I do fish or do I not do fish? It's like, well, if you have variety within fish and you're not doing fish all the time, you can partake without feeling like you're becoming toxic, right? I think back, I've been in nutrition long enough to say that, you know, like back in the 90s, it was all about like, don't eat butter. And then it became don't eat margarine. And so there's always a, we're pointing the finger towards some food.

or class of foods within nutrition science. A boogeyman. Yes, a boogeyman. That's right. And I think that rather than have those boogeymen and have outcasts in food to really think about small amounts so that we're protected, so that we're not overdoing any one thing where we feel the guilt of, oh my gosh, I was doing butter for 20 years. And now I needed to stop and I just learned this. If we are cultivating diversity and that could even mean, let's just go back to fish for a second because people have a lot of of concerns about fish and whether or not people eat fish. Just let's just take that as an example.

To have fish from different parts of the world, if it's wild caught, if you are shopping from different stores, that's another way to get diversity is to go shopping to different markets because they're going to have different suppliers of things. And I always say that I'm not brand loyal. I never stay wedded to a brand, I must say, because the brand kind of sticks with the same ingredients, and I do think, even with supplements, I think it's important to cultivate diversity there. One of the principles that I've learned from so many amazing people, and one of my mentors mentioned to me this concept of changing up how we bring plants into our bodies based on a supplement, because from an adaptogenic perspective, because the body is so amazing and so adaptable,

we could stop seeing the signal of something after some time. So we don't respond quite the same way. I mean, just think about just even being around people that you always see like family members. Like if they say something to you, it's just kind of like it rolls off your back. But if you see somebody that you haven't seen in a while and they say maybe the same thing, it just kind of hits you differently. So similarly with a food or a plant or a supplement, if we take it for some time and then we go off of it. and then we come back to it again.

It's almost like we have the opportunity to see it in a different way. Like the body can see it fresh. So I do think from a botanical perspective, one of the principles, and again, it's not hard, fast science, at least not in this realm. But what I've learned within botanical medicine is something like three weeks on, one week off, five days on, two days off. To give yourself a break so that the body can see it again, what I find, so often is that people just continue to be on automatic pilot, just taking their supplements, they have them all lined up, they have them all measured out, which is good because, you know, we do need structure.

I don't want to say, like, we need to live chaotic lives that are super creative and, you know, we just kind of fly by the seat of our pants. We need some structure. But we've become a little bit too, I would say, we have analysis paralysis. We have ingrained ourselves in structure in such a way. that we're not cultivating flow, fluidity, plasticity, and how we think. We're not going with how our body is feeling. So I really do see this.

You asked about the immune system specifically. And again, just to bring it back home in terms of that nutritional status, that when we are bringing in more diverse foods, we're getting a sampling of many different macro nutrients, many different micronutrients, and even those phytonutrients, of which there are a thousand, and then we protect ourselves on the toxicity side, so we're not taking in any one thing over and over again to the point that it compounds in the body. Yeah, you know, going back to the idea of like the combination of the duality of like structure and fluidity, you're right, we need both because often in the beginning, especially when people

are hurting, they're in physical pain, their gut is inflamed, they don't feel good, they're dealing with some sort of symptoms or maybe even diagnosed with something, they're looking for a pathway forward. And often that pathway forward when they start to find something that works that gives them some sense of alleviation of pain or suffering, it usually needs to be a little structured.

It needs to be a little structured because it's so hard take any subject that either one of us is going to get into for the first time if we've never done it before. Like, let's say if you and I take on archery and we are going to a teacher. If that teacher is like, well, you could do it this way, you could do this way, you could do this way, it can be very overwhelming, right? But they're like, look, we're going to start with this and then once you've mastered this particular skill, now I'm going to teach you how to think for yourself so that you could see how you could put your own twist on it.

And I think that that's the beauty of the combination of your approach is it's both. We help people get structured. Okay, great. Now we're at a level where actually the routine that was benefiting us so much, might actually be holding us back. And the other layer that I'd add on to this, and I know you have a comment about all this, is that diversity was kind of like,

we didn't have to go out and seek it. It was nature changing throughout the seasons, and it was the change of environments, and it was just the struggle of trying to be a human being, a homo sapien trying to live life. So there was that natural variability that was baked into our life that actually is a big part of what made us who we are.

Now we have to seek it out. almost like we're surviving today, but we may not be thriving. And if you want to thrive, that variability is a huge part of it. Oh my gosh, you got all my neurons firing. Well, first of all, you mentioned something that I hadn't really thought about in that particular way of having the structure and then needing to transition into more of an intuitive matrix of knowing when to do certain things, right? And I think that most times people haven't made that transition. They stay in the structure. And I'm sure you've heard of this like I have where people stopped getting results. Initially, a routine, a health regimen worked really well. They were waking

up. They were doing this exercise. They were taking these supplements. And they had amazing impact where it's like, oh, my symptoms went down. And then all of a sudden they kind of plateaued. What did they plateau? Was it that they weren't connecting into what they really need at that time? I think, again, because the body is so intelligent and adaptable, we shift. We shift our baseline. And we have to accommodate for that shift. And I think we can think about this bigger and broader into all kinds of things. I mean, even a marriage, right? You see that same person every day. You have to find your new baseline that allows you to fall in love again, right? Because it's like you see that signal over and over again. And so, again, to be thinking of those parallels in our lives. And so what you see,

said too about how diversity in terms of being in nature, that nature when we are within that context naturally creates the situations where we can extract diverse experiences. I mean, just even traveling here, it's so much more enriching for me to be here with you rather than be at home where I am most of the time working on Zoom because my neurons and who I am in this travel experience has already changed me. It's perspective. It's perspective. Yes.

It just kind of it resets us. And so I do think that nature's overall principle when it comes to food, people, experiences is really about this diversity message. Yeah. And let's go back to something that you said before because we're going to give a ton of practical tips and I want to hear about your life and how you include this. I'll share about my life and that's the thing. Let's go back to the side. So for somebody who's listening, it's like, okay, I'm following along. And let's talk about, I think, some of the research and

the world of the gut microbiome, you know, for a long time, we often thought of food as being for our human cells, right, that we're eating and we think in terms of, you know, macro nutrients and then sometimes these micronutrients that are there. But a lot of the diversity, that we're talking about, especially when we talk about these phytochemicals, is actually not just for our human cells, it's more so for our gut bacteria. Talk about that and why diversity of our gut microbiome is so integral to our health, reducing inflammation, you know, feeling better, having regular bowel movements, having, you know, even your mood be improved through a diversity of your gut microbiome. Yeah. And I'm going to be a little disruptive in this conversation because I don't think it's just about

the gut microbiome. I do think that we've got lots of micro, we have diversity of microbiomes to be talking about, whether it's the nasal, oral, vaginal, skin, eyes. You know, we have so many, and they all need to have that diversity coming in. But we will talk about the gut. I do think that our food impacts a lot of those other microbiomes, though, so I just want to say that. And I also want to be a little bit disruptive in saying that my take on probiotics has changed a little bit as a result of this diversity message and all the things that I'm seeing in the science. Because what we really want to see, what I take away based on articles that I read, talking about the metabiom and really looking at the connection between the environment

and our inner milieu is that we need a diverse culture of bugs, not a monoculture, not 15 strains, just plugging away every day that large bolus, you know, that's not enough. And I don't negate the therapeutic intervention of probiotics. If they have been tested a particular strain for a particular condition, I think that that's great. But I think that the higher path is really to go after the milieu, the terrain, and to adjust that with prebiotics. And the other P, in addition to prebiotic, probiotic is polyphenols. You and I were talking about that a little bit before we got on the call or on this podcast. But I would say that it's really creating that flux and the constant interplay of having plant-based compounds from the diet that are diverse, interacting and creating a diverse gut microbiome.

and then that diver's gut microbiome is actually taking those things like polyphenols and converting them into even more active metabolites. So we can, it's like a full circle, right? We can get that gut microbiome in a diverse way working for us, where they then create more diverse phytochemical metabolites that come from the original compound. So it's diversity upon diversity, if that makes sense. And, you know, that's why it's so hard.

to get our arms around the phytochemical family tree because it's not just the 10 to 25,000 different compounds in nature. It's what our gut microbiome is doing, in the best of all cases, to metabolize those phytochemicals into many different phytochemical metabolites. And I think that even for a lot of people, you know, so this understanding that, so let's just break it down as like a refresher, not everybody knows, What are phytochemicals? What are polyphenols? And then what's the mechanism that they would be impacting the gut bacteria?

People know about probiotics and they know that certain probiotics, you know, can be, can maybe spearhead a certain strain as long as you're taking them and then other probiotics could potentially or prebiotics could help cultivate your body's own, you know, beneficial bacteria. But I think a lot of the understanding around phytochemicals and polyphenols, people are just trying imagine like how does that connection work or mechanism that they actually influence the gut bacteria to do positive things in the body. So what are phytochemicals? What are polyphenols? And then what's the mechanism that they influence our gut bacteria on? It's really good that we unpack this a bit. Okay, so let's do a phytochemicals 101. Sometimes phytochemicals are called phytonutrants,

so I may use those terms interchangeably. In nutrition science, we have the macronutrients, protein, carbohydrate, and fat. They all give us calories. And that's where many nutritionists, spend their time is, okay, are you on a low fat, low carb, low protein? You know, all the nutrition wars seem to be around the macros, right? And then we have the micronutrients, which are vitamins, fat soluble, water soluble, and minerals, macro minerals, micro minerals, ultra-trace minerals. It's like a whole universe onto itself. And then separate from that are phytochemicals. So these are very specific plant-based, hence the word phyto. plant. So they're derived from plants. And these are, they are, gosh, it's an expanse that goes beyond

even the amount of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, vitamins and minerals. We have here these, and many people would say, well, they're non-nutrative. They don't give calories. They just make food look pretty. Well, what we're finding... Which means that they're not essential, but here you're about to jump in. and what you're about to say? Yeah, so they may not be seen as essential. And it's hard for people to relate to them because you don't find them on a nutrition facts label. And the closest you can get to something from the plant is usually dietary fiber. But you don't see on the label flavonoids, carotnoids.

I mean, you might hear about beta carotene and carrots. But we're talking thousands and thousands of compounds. And I don't even think that we've actually keyed into the whole array. We haven't even identified all the ones that are out there. That's why sometimes people call it like the dark matter of the nutrition world. Yeah, that's a really, I like that terminology, although I would see it as the rainbow matter, but yes. Dark in the sense of it's invisible, but of course, as you're sharing in here, it's actually visible. It is visible. I mean, each of these colors connects to a certain wavelength of light, right?

That's what makes them, you know, we think of infrared or red has a certain wavelength or spectra to it. And you're talking about the reds in basically plant foods and. So tomatoes, raspberries, cranberries, strawberries, even though we would talk about red foods, there can be different phytochemicals within each of them. There are some staple phytochemical families that you find in those, but you can find differences, which is why we need variety even within a color. And let's even go back a little bit more so, because a lot of people don't understand the connection between plants having colors and that signaling something around their environment. So what was the role? Before we even come back to humans and the mechanism of gut the gut microbiome and how phytonutrients and polyphenols

impacted, how did plants evolve or what sort of evolutionary process is like what role do these phytochemicals play inside of the plants? So it's so interesting to look at our rods and cones. the ability of the eye to see color and how different animals, different species, can see different colors. And the idea is that, and I know, I would say, in terms of looking at all the animals and what they can see, but I do know that in general, with humans having certain numbers of cones and certain combinations of that red, green, and blue, that we're able to make these color compositions and to identify them in nature, in order to, we might think to ensure our survival. Like we might see certain things in nature like a red berry.

And we would think, oh, there's a food supply, right? Color keys us into our survival. And for that reason, I often like to say that color is medicine. Color is healing. Color is psychological. It's physiological. And especially red. Red is that color of urgency, emergency.

I mean, look at a stop sign, an ambulance, a stoplight. So in nature, seeing. red might catch our attention. There might be some reason why we see that food as red. And for a lot of plants, these phytochemicals from my understanding, and feel free to toss in any layer that you have on top of it, is like these are their defenses. These are their survival components. You know, human beings can run. We can fight back. And, you know, we can go to a different destination. Plants don't have that ability. So when it comes to their ability to, reproduce when it comes to their ability to ward off and it's not just animals it's ward off

infection bacteria other opportunistic plants in their area these phytochemicals and their ability to evolve over time and bring in these defenses made them more resilient i think about the classic example uh you know we mentioned him earlier uh dr geoffrey brand one of the fathers of functional medicine. He is really big into this Himalayan tartary buckwheat. And this buckwheat, the story is that this buckwheat has so many phytochemicals inside of it because growing in the Himalayas at high altitude and having to survive in extreme environments was a big part of why it developed all these resources around it. Anything you want to add to that? That was brilliant. That's exactly spot on, right? this is the whole concept of xenohormesis. Xeno meaning foreign and hormesis meaning balance or a sense of

homeostasis, if you will. So taking the environmental concepts of what's coming through and then responding accordingly. Now, that could be seen as stress because if you think of something that would be seen as a threat, whether it's a pest or it's really hot or it's very moist or like you said, with the altitude being high, less oxygen, those could be seen in our lives as stressors. However, for the plant, because they have the genetic machinery that allows them to acclimate, they can create the metabolites that will ensure better survival for them, because they can't move, just like you said, right? And they're smart, smarty plants. Yeah. And I think about it as I went to go, I went to wine country in Argentina. It's this

famous region Mendoza, right, where a lot of the Malbac and other stuff comes from. And we were at this organic vineyard and they were talking about how they, you know, practice dry farming and organic and everything else with the wine. And it sounds so basic, but they were like, you know, there's a balance that's here as we're growing these grapes. Good wine is not grapes that have been left to be too lazy. They're overfed. They have all the nutrients. They have every that they need. They have all the water that's there. And then on the flip side, we don't want to give them nothing because then they shrivel up and, you know, they get eaten. So we want them right in the middle with the right healthy dose of stress because that creates strong grapes and strong

grapes turns into this incredible flavor that we all enjoy. Same thing with us as human beings. We want to have, you know, our opinions in a way challenged. We want to have other people say, okay, I understand where you're coming from. Have you ever thought of this idea? Like when somebody challenges you, it's like debate class. It's like, debate class. It's like, You learn, even if that makes your opinion or idea about how the world should run better. Or you might change your mind and have a different perspective. Or for human beings, we have exercise, right? Exercise and inflammatory process.

It makes, you know, I wear a continuous glucose monitor. Your blood sugar shoots up a little bit. But that is good stress and good stimulation to you. So in that same way, both for the plant kingdom and for us, we want to have those stressors that are there. And I think of, I think of corn. I think about this monocropping, soy. I think of corn, soy, and the standard sort of farming practices, I see those as like lazy crops. And the animals that are eating them are also sort of, quote unquote, lazy animals because we're trying to reduce all the different things that are there and have them live one way, eat the same thing, and they're unhealthy.

And then we eat those things and we become unhealthy. Spot on. And just to circle back to diversity and foods and the variety, that's exactly what we're doing is we're cultivating resilience by allowing the body to have that particular kind of micro stress, if you will. So when we see different things over and over again, it's like, oh, we have to respond. We have to be intelligent. We have to be intuitive to that response. It's not something that we get kind of lazy and we're doing the same thing every day with the same food. We have oatmeal every day of our lives. We have oatmeal every day of our lives. for 70 years and then we wonder why we don't feel good, right? So I do think that what we're talking about here, I'm glad that you took us down this path because you talking about xenohormesis, this is representative. What happens with plants is something that we would want to mimic as humans. You know, I'm reading these notes that you put together in front of the interview and I have all these little gems that are here. One that I'm going to pull out here, gut microbial diversity is associated with lower arthritis, arthritis stiffness in women.

Talk about how that even could be connected. That seems like you pulled that from one of your studies. You're deep in the research that's out there. How does that happen that somebody might have lower arthritis? In this case, we're talking about women, but probably it translates for men too. And how that could be linked to the diversity in the gut microbiome. So actually, that is arterial stiffness. I might have a typo.

I think I read it incorrectly. Sorry. Okay. So, yeah, that study was looking at. an association between the gut microbiome and heart health arterial stiffness. So like, you know, how flexible your arteries are. And there was another study that showed that systolic blood pressure could be improved by having eight or more diverse food items per day. You know, that's just really amazing to me that our heart health could be impacted by variety, by diversity,

of those foods. So how does that work? Let's go back to the gut microbiome because what we're seeing is that ancestrally, we probably had access to something like, it's been postulated, something like 3,000 different plant species. And right now, we might have access to 300, but the average person is selecting from about 100. And I would say that's pretty, that's probably on the high side. And I'll cue you into like a way to assess one's variety and some work that I've already done in that area where, you know, people are not always at even at that 100 level in a week. So based on that, if we can bring in more diverse organisms as best we can, even to that 400 level in a week, perhaps we create a more robust gut microbiome and the gut

will change signaling molecules to things like our vascular to our heart. And I mean, I just got off of a conference right now just teaching on nutrition and cardiovascular health. I'm glad that you asked about this actually because there is a link. The gut is connected to the heart is connected to the brain and everything is interconnected. And when I think about having diversity in those three respective big areas. We even have this term metabolic flexibility in the literature, the ability of the body to be able to switch from carbohydrate to fat in terms of metabolic activity. So again, having that variety enables us to produce what we need perhaps metabolically and give our gut a sense of resilience, which then works upstream. You mentioned this term signaling molecules,

And I think that's going to be new for a lot of folks. Some people have heard about it. But these, and I don't know the full spectrum of them, but one of them that I hear often and that people have discussed in this podcast are that your gut bacteria produce these metabolites. And in exchange for us feeding them, prebiotics, a diversity of foods that are out there, different herbs, things that contain all these incredible phytochemicals, polyphenols, they then release these compounds. And I want to know if there's more than metabolites.

You know, if you know anything about the subject, feel free to chime in. And then that then goes into our bloodstream and is basically telling different things in real time on how to modulate. Is that an example of epigenetics in real time? I don't know if it's an example of epigenetics, but I would see it as the systems web. the body connecting through the gut. Let me just give you an example. As you relayed that one of the things that came to mind is maybe not everything needs to be absorbed, but has an effect. So let's even talk about turmeric.

One of the hottest herbs, spices, medicinals, you know, turmeric on its own is not very well absorbed, even at higher amounts. And often what is done is that turmeric is modified in some way through the addition of oil and dietary supplements. there are various preparations that maybe there are phospholipids or different kind of fats in order to enable it to slip on through to get better absorbed. I have a general feeling or a sense of this that maybe not everything needs to be absorbed in order to have an effect. Sure. Maybe that turmeric is being worked on by the gut microorganisms to produce secondary compounds

that then can get in naturally without any modification and then have that system wide effect. One of the things that I have seen in the literature is serotonin. We know that the gut makes so many things just on its own, and yes, potentially through those gut microorganisms. And serotonin that is made in the gut can actually signal and cross-talk with bone. So we can create different changes throughout the body just by having that initial, as you called it, the signaling molecule from the gut. One of the hotter ones today, I would say, would be the short-chain fatty acids. When we think of prebiotic fibers and different things, fermented foods, I think of the short-chain fatty acids. My PhD was all on fatty acids. And I often think about how

fats don't get the respect they deserve. There are so many different families and they all have different personalities. Once you're born as a, you know, just colloquial speaking, but once you are brought into the essential fatty acid family as a compound, you will always be within that family. There is no crossover where you're going to become a part of a different family. So with this short chain fatty acids, what is intriguing is that there are a variety of them, whether acetate, buterate, propionate, and these are often metabolites of these fibers that we take in, and then they signal through the body, but they can also change the gut milieu to change pH. They may change pH in such a way to change immune modulation, or even to change inflammation.

They can also change mineral uptake. I don't know if you saw the study somewhat recently, I think it was in the summer, showing how the gut microbiome can change mineral absorption and really have an impact with just nutrients. So if we keep, I guess the lesson, the takeaway from all of this would be if we can keep our gut microbiome happy and in check, our entire system web, our heart, our bones, our brain, everything about us can stay in a healthy balance. But I don't think it's limited to the gut. I really do think that we're on the horizon. If we think about the next year and where we're trending, I think one of those trends is

is really looking at the skin, looking at the skin microbiome. I think the skin is great big, huge, because you see similarities between the gut and the skin, the tissue. So I'm curious what will evolve in terms of technologies. You know, Dr. Rob Knight is so good. He's a researcher who has done a lot in terms of looking at. the different microbiota on different parts of the skin. I remember listening to one of his lectures. I mean, even the face, the face had, and I'm no expert in this area. You know, somebody like him would be, but basically you have different microorganisms on different parts of your face. And they reside there. That's just where they hang out. So how can we get, again, more diverse and expansive in our conversation about the gut microbiome? I think I'm really excited to see where else it's going to take us. Yeah. And going back to what you were saying about serotonin, when you understand, that and the role that the gut plays and who knows what else as we start to go deeper down the rabbit hole,

you could start to make sense of headlines like, here's one headline in the notes that you sent over to me, dietary variety is associated with lower odds of feeling worried, sad, or unhappy as studied in fifth graders. You know, I think about the standard school lunch, and it's kind of like the maximum diversity that they tend to have at most places. There are some schools that are doing very innovative things that are out there. the maximum diversity is like okay great Wednesday's pizza day Thursday's chicken nuggets Fridays is burgers you know and and by the way pizza is a vegetable right so that's how we're going to get like the vegetable quota that we need to get in as a school and you see a rise in anxiety amongst kids you see a rise in so many different mood disorders that are there and a general

sense of feeling like a disassociation with the world. And is it to say that this is all as simple as a diversity in the diet? No, but we're talking about a diversity of all things. But I often, I do a balancing act because yes, everything matters, of course, sleep matters, exercise matters, and other stuff. But largely still, diet is one of those things. Like you see an amazing change right away. So I do want to say, yes, everything matters for sure. And we need to look at all aspects. But sometimes the diet today is so undiverse, so processed that it has such a negative impact on people. And I think in this instance, probably a huge impact that it's having on kids. It is. I have some ideas around kids because this is one of the biggest concerns that people have

when they come to me. Deanna, how can I get my kids eating better? So let me just talk about some of the research findings and then some tools that I think could help people. First and foremost, this message of dietary diversity and even in infants, there are some studies showing that when a child, an infant, has greater introduction of foods earlier in life that they can see decreased rates of things like allergy and asthma and atopic diseases. So dermatitis and things of that nature. So what does that translate into? That's telling me that a child with an immature immune system can be best benefited by having more diverse foods to help to create a more resilient, robust immune system to give them a better chance against some of the immune type conditions that they may be

set up for whether environmentally or genetically. So, and I know that your sister just had a baby. And so I was thinking about her as I was thinking about all this research. Like, wow, it would be so great to let people know that more diverse foods earlier on in life could actually impart greater resilience to that child long term. So there's that. So then the question becomes, okay, well, how do I get my child to actually eat more diverse? They won't.

They have texture issues. They have sensory issues. So some of the studies, and this is really interesting, and I've actually seen this borne out with some kids, greater presentation of more varied foods. Let's just take vegetables. So if I gave a five-year-old peas, carrots, and beets to choose from, they would end up having more collectively of all of those vegetables compared to if I just gave them peas. You know what I think it boils down to? I think it's locus of control. It's kind of like, oh, this looks interesting and the different, maybe the different colors and the different tastes. And even if they could take a little bit from each, that's what you want versus just piling on the plate. Here's this, you know, half pound of spinach. I need you to eat this now. Eat it now. Yeah. No, they, and to involve them in it, to give them that sense of locus of control, I think is really important. One of the tools that I created is it's very simple. Nothing like, you know, it's not so scientific outside of like being like a rainbow bingo for kids.

Rather than having kids focus on nutrition. So when I was very young, my mom focused on nutrition. And it really wasn't the hip, trendy thing to do. She was kind of a health nut in the way of being very new to thinking about food and nutrition. And so, you know, it wasn't fun to have to read labels at the age of nine and to know what mono and diglycerides were. say, oh, I can't eat that because of these things. So what I have done is rather than focus on the negative with food, especially thinking about kids, focus on the fun and the positive. What will make them want to be at that table eating the food? So colors, creating a very simple rainbow-type

bingo exercise where for seven days, you have the seven colors listed out, and they just put an X whenever they have in the box for when they have matched that color with their food. Super easy, right? And it just really cues people, especially kids, into all things color. And when I have done this with adults, what I have seen is that when they wake up to colors of their food, now all of a sudden their mood starts to change. They began to wear different colors. They start to put different furniture in their living rooms. There was one woman who participated in one of my colorful food type programs.

and she was working in an office cube that was gray. And so she showed us pictures of how she put up banners and color and she decorated her cubicle to make it more inviting. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you're tuned into color, it's like, wow, I'm seeing it everywhere. So I do think that helping kids earlier on is so important because when they frame up, their palate at that point of being very young, that's going to set the stage for later. And they're watching you. They're watching us as adults to see what we're eating. And that's something that we see in the literature as well. Mothers and daughters especially. So we can't say,

a mom can't say, hey, you need to eat this, but then the mom doesn't do it. So the way to cultivate variety and to ensure better outcomes for our kids is to actually do it ourselves. And that's a good thing, right? Yeah, absolutely. To have families doing the health practice. In addition to kids, I'm sure people come to you all the time because everybody has different, is in different stages of their life and is juggling a lot of different things. Some people are working multiple jobs. Some people are just trying to figure out how to survive as a mom, you know, whatever it might be. So people are often thinking, as is baked into our evolutionary history, human beings look for shortcuts, right? And it's a big part of how we ended up, where we ended up.

Even our need for concentrated calories has come out of the shortcut of us making sure that we can feed our brain and get what we need to do. Because we don't want to spend any more effort and energy looking for food than we need to. I think sometimes people think of like hunter-gatherer ancestors, it's like intentionally going out and maybe looking for diversity. And I think in some cases it was, it was an entire village of people. So some people had different jobs. And food was so central into our lives, right? So we put a lot more effort and energy into it and we had to do it. And then the seasons changed.

So we were forced to do it, right? But I don't know necessarily if anybody was purposefully, you know, on an ongoing basis, exceeding extra calories simply for the sake of diversity. It's that they knew that they got an end result on the end of it. They'd be less likely to get sick that winter. They'd be more likely to survive. Or in the case of fruits, just like we just had Dr. Robert Johnson on the podcast, who's done all this incredible work on uric acid.

And I don't know if you're familiar with his research, but one of the things that he was talking about, he's like fruit especially, you know, these plants pump all this sugar into these different fruits that are there. And they signal to us like, hey, eat me, eat me, eat me. We eat it. We end up spreading their seeds. And especially where fruit ends up blossoming and becoming ripe, because a lot of animals will not eat the fruit until it's ripe.

It doesn't taste like the thing that they want. It's late summer, early fall, and then in return, we're sort of piling on and beefing up our uric acid, which has a store weight, and so that we could survive through the winter. So there's all these, like, benefits that we get. And so here's where I was going with all this, is that when people are trying to juggle a lot of things, do you ever get the question of what is the minimum viable or the shortcut hacks that I can do? if I can only do a couple things that are there, what are those things that I can do to make sure that I'm still getting some diversity in the diet, right? You never want to shortcut something

so much so that you undercut the core premise of the idea that's there. But are there a few things? You gave us some tips for kids. Are there a few things for adults that are listening to do? Yes, there are. But before we get into tips, I first want to say that we all have to figure out what is our motivation, right? And if we want to feel better, we want better mood, I just want to go back to what you were saying about fruits because it made me think of some of the research on fruit. I think people, for the most part, what I see is that people are fruit phobic. They're even fruit and vegetable phobic in many ways. They say, well, what about those anti-nutrients, those lectins and those oxalates?

And, you know, they go through that whole battery. But there's a great review article that was looking at whole fruits and looking at the research, simply looking at, and it wasn't just looking at reduced risk of chronic disease because we kind of our eyes glaze over when we think about that as our motivator. Is that really a motivator? We might feel so far away from something like that. But some of the research on fruit and even vegetables, but let me just focus on fruit for a second,

is that the number of servings of fruit that we have is correlated with better life satisfaction. There is a sense of, and in fact, just even at the conference I was at, I presented showing vascular aging was correlated with, number of servings of fruit. So the more that we had the fruit servings in our lives, the less vascular aging we have, or at least has been shown in this literature. So fruit is signaling something to us. You know, I guess, you know, when you have uric acid as a metric, but let's just take it even broader into seasons for a second. Please. Because this is a place of where diversity enters in,

and there's some interesting animal research going on where they take animals that have been acclimated to a short day period, so more like winter, and then a long day period, so more like summer. And then they give them fruit, and there was one particular study where they looked at oranges. The oranges were either grown in the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere. So the animals had different diurnal rhythms, right? They were seasonal, from a seasonal perspective, they were different. When they were given the oranges from two different hemispheres with different phytochemicals differing by about 39 different phytochemicals, what they showed was that the animals that were given the summer orange that were mimicking

the winter months, that they actually exhibited a more, I would say a more a fattier phenotype. So they tended to put more fat on. Now, that doesn't mean, I just touted and extolled the virtues of fruit. And then I said, but if you have an orange in the winter, you may actually put on more fat. Well, this was in the study where they had concentrated amounts. And I don't think, you know, as long as we, again, diversity and that we're changing things up. Right. What I'm hearing from what you're sharing is that food is information. And so when we're doing our best to eat seasonally and when we're doing our best to include that diversity, we're not overdoing any one particular food. And especially in the case of fruit, it's like, you know, I think that we went one degree where people talking about keto and fruit phobia and other stuff.

And I think it's coming back, especially with all this literature on phytochemicals, polyphenols and other stuff that as long as we're not overdoing fruit juice, which is a different sort of thing. Yes, that's different. and we're sticking to this whole fruit and and there's and there's and we're mixing up the diversity so it's not always the same oranges all the time and it's diversity of our whole diet as a whole we can get the benefits of all these different things how do you feel about so one of the one of the hacks that I have in addition to I have you know whole foods diet and I've definitely broadened my diet because like you I kind of was immersed in the world of the elimination diet and I would often recommend that to a lot of people that were there and one thing that happened is

for people in the health world that are probably a lot of folks that are listening to the podcast is that you naturally first when you take out things like gluten and dairy and other stuff that especially of their processed forms that we especially rely on here in America, different than Europe and other parts of the world, you tend to feel better. You tend to feel better because those things were not really meant for health food for us today or they've been so bastardized that they're completely different from their natural forms of, uh, I, I think about, you know, my business partner was in Sardinia hanging out with the Sardinians over there, and they eat cheese all day long, and they're taking their goats and their sheep, and they're having

them feed on all these different things like rosemary and all these different herbs. And that's how they say that they season their milk and their cheese before they even put it on the table, as they get these goats to eat all these different herbs and things like that that are out there. And we're not doing that with, you know, the cows that we have here in America that are primarily eating corn and skittles. That's the only rainbow that they have is skittles that they have access to, unfortunately. So where I was going with this is that in my life, in addition to eating a whole food diet and pulling back, because when you do the elimination diet and you initially feel good, then you're kind of scared a little bit.

Some people are scared to go and add additional things and to figure out how to have diversity. And as a byproduct, we had a friend of our Sean Stevenson on the podcast a few months ago. He said that he had gone so down the rabbit hole of a restricted diet that any time he tried to eat other things outside of it, initially he'd feel like a little bit of bloating, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And he had to work with the nutritionist to help him mindfully expand his diet. And that meant including in things that he never thought he would eat before like beans. And that actually made his gut microbiome a lot better off that was there. So for me, I've broadened my diet from being a lot more elimination diet focus.

and I try to include a lot of different things. And my whole point in travel is to try to go and try different foods in a different area that are, you know, whole foods that are there. So one hack I have in my own life is because I know that we don't want to overdo anything. And I'll have these different freeze-dried organic powders that are there that have like no sugar content inside of them from all different companies and brands that are out there. And I will try every day a different version of those in my low-glycemic. you know, smoothie that I'll mix with fat and unsweetened almond milk and other things like that. And, you know, what are your thoughts now? I'm not saying that's the only place that I'm getting things from, but it's just another way of me adding in variety inside of my diet.

Why not? You know, I get that question all the time. In fact, I just got it lecturing over these past couple days. Should I do a fruit and vegetable powder? I think that that's fine. And many of those products are combinations of many different things, kind of the mixology approach. I don't see it as a primary strategy. I see it as an adjunctive or secondary strategy. It's definitely something to bring in some of those powders are very expensive for some people. And I'm always in the back of my mind because one of the other objections that people raises, but Deanna fruits and veggies are expensive. And so here's what I would say to do. The first step is it's kind of like toxicity. How do you know you have, how do you know you need a water filter and what kind of water filter you

need. First, you have to test to see what your water has in it. Similarly, you have to test your own variety level. So here's how I do that with people. You can just take a piece of paper, and over the course of seven days, you write down all the different plant-based foods that you had. So if you had a red delicious, let's go back to the apple. If you had a red delicious apple, you could write that down. If you had another red delicious apple, you would not write that down again, because now that counts as a duplicate item. And by the way, is this your seven-day variety challenge? Is this kind of play into this?

Yes, it's a 50-food seven-day tracker. And the way it looks, if people want to sketch it out for themselves or you can give it out to them, however you want to do it, it's essentially in different categories. So I have each of the plant-based categories, teas, drinks, beverages, because that all counts. By the way, you brought up kind of a smoothie, and those are great conduits, especially herbal teas.

When you look at cultures that have lived the longest, many of them have punctuated their day by tea. If you look at Japan and you look at all that green tea, and then you look at the varieties of green tea within green tea. And I love green tea. I just had some great gunpowder, but then I want to change it up, so I'm getting different phytochemicals. So you track your variety for seven days. And I did this in one of my large Facebook groups where give everybody, that tracker and I said every unique plant-based food, even if it's a spice, I don't want you to measure it. I don't want you to count servings or nothing like that. We're going to go for the art of

eating here. And I just want you to track the different foods. I think I had something like 121 unique plant-based foods over those seven days. The goal is 50. And why do you say plant-based? I mean, meaning like can some of the different variety of animal foods fit into that? They sure can. They sure can. And my approach has been to focus on phytochemicals that eating more plants is the common denominator for many different groups. Even carnivores are essentially getting plants just indirectly through the animal. Right. So I just stick there. Meat does have phytochemicals inside of it too, especially if you're getting the higher quality things. But you're using plants because then that's accessible to everybody. It's accessible. Yeah. It's, and then because I focus on colors so much, that's kind of where I'm tracking their variety to these different phytochemicals.

Yep, got it. And so when we did this exercise within the group, first of all, there was many people had some question about, well, what is even variety? Like, they actually had to question, what does it mean to have a unique food that is varied? And I don't think many people were thinking within one category. like if I have, just what you were saying about the fruit and vegetable powder, or even within the cup of coffee or the tea, or even, gosh, anything. I mean, some people, and I let them count things like extra virgin olive oil, but even to vary the kind of olive oil that you have because you're going to have different olive polyphenols in there.

And by the way, you've mentioned polyphenols a couple of times, and I bet people are waiting for me to define it. It's one of the classes of phytochemicals, right? So it's got, you know, typically when we think of flavonoids, it's a large class of compounds, like 700 on up compounds. So it has a certain chemical structure. But you have carotenoids, you have all different kinds of phytochemicals. That's just one class. So polyphenols is not a synonym for phytochemicals.

It's just one of the types. So you first have to get a sense of where you are in variety. Like if we, if I followed you around for like three days and just kind of watch, what you ate and saw your choices. We can get a good tabulation. I think a week is a good time frame because then you bring in the weekend days where people eat very differently. And, you know, looking at spices, are people eating spices? I let them count that as part of their variety tracker regardless of the amount. So if they had cinnamon or, you know, any of the number of the different spices. And it's really cool. Maybe we can talk about spices a little bit because this is

one of the most cost accessible ways for people to bring in variety, I would say. So get a sense of your variety. Where are you? And from there, start to bring in, even if it's one new food per week, where you say, you know what, I haven't had a starfruit and I just saw them in the store. Let me just try that. Or maybe you haven't tried a food in a long time, like maybe Sellerac or maybe you haven't had a leak in a really long time, just stepping out and trying that food. And I think, One of the things that I have seen to is that we've been used to thinking in bulk. We've been used to thinking in batches because people needed to have the time to do other things. It's not to say that we shouldn't still do that, but then freeze it or have some way that we're not having to be stuck to a particular food for a whole week, right?

Because what you were saying about the elimination diet is so true. When we've eliminated, it's now time to go the other way. and I call that dietary micro rotation, where you have small amounts of foods that you might even have a little bit of fear factor around, but you're bringing that food in such a small amount so that the response that it would evoke would be nominal. What's one of those foods for you? That I haven't had in a long time? Or like that would be in that category that maybe it might be seen as somebody else. It's like, oh, is that really part of a healthy diet? It could be red wine.

It could be, you know, organic pizza. It could be that. But you bring it in because that's part of the diversity of you, you know, trying to include different things. And is there a food like that that you have? Yeah, tell me. Well, all things, cocoa and chocolate. Aren't those things like just still good for you? Like, isn't that still good?

Not necessarily. So this is another one of those things. It's like alcohol, coffee, and chocolate kind of fall into that bucket of like, are they or aren't they? And they can be really good healthy things, right? It just depends on the diversity of each of those and how we consume them with what we consume them with. So when it comes to something like my love of chocolate, how can I be diverse in that? Well, I do cocoa powder. I do raw cacao.

I do a chocolate that is 100% cocoa, although my husband's like, Deanna, can we bring it down to at least 90? So it's like palatable. But I don't need that. I really, there's something about the cocoa. And we know that cocoa has polyphenols that can be worked on by the gut. We know that blueberry, just blueberries in general, when we take them in, they can be modified by the gut microbiome, again, to create more interesting bacteria. So cocoa, you know, I guess in my mind, I justify or I'm using my principle of variety within cocoa and then changing it up, making sure I'm not doing it every day. trying not to or at least getting different formats of it but I really you know there are those

foods like where we think if we were stranded on a desert island which foods would you definitely want to have like yes you'd be open to variety but what would be a staple that you just feel so naturally inclined towards yeah and Coco is one of those for you totally yeah I am pretty much after dinner every night you We've done a lot of conversations on blood sugar and other stuff and metabolic flexibility and how it's important to have metabolic flexibility and then variety. And then when people start tracking their blood sugar, they start to become phobic of certain things. And we're trying to pull them out of that and say, we've had some great experts on the podcast like Dr. Casey Means, who's very plant-based and is teaching people about the power of using a CGM, but how to also mindfully include all this variety and plant foods that's in it.

So for me, because I know also a lot of, and I've tested it, a lot of the fruits that we eat today, you know, naturally, because they're bred for our taste that's there. So in general, everything is made sweeter and bigger, even if it's still organic. That's there. Every so often we get a chance to go out and try some wild fruits and go on hikes and other things like that at wild berries. I love to, like my favorite thing is when I get to travel is if I can find somebody who's a local expert who can take me on an edible, hike. And whether it's fruits, berries, twigs, herbs, other things. I did one in Utah, up nearby Powder Mountain. I did one in Italy last time. Me and my wife were there. It's just like a fun thing to do. It's just like a great way to be outside and to do that. Okay. So because I know a lot of fruits in, you know, you eat them and it's like they taste great. You want to eat more and more and more. and how much that spike is. My sort of hack is that I do fruits and dark dark chocolate after like my meal. You know, it's kind of a classic go-to dessert for me and my wife.

And we try all, we have a great shop here, Air One. I don't know if you've ever been to it before. A little bit on the price your side. But they have all sorts of like they have a huge chocolate rack with so many different types of companies and veritals and other stuff. Some 100% like super dark, different types of cacao powders from all around the world. We'll pick one up. We'll grab like a different type of berries. We'll make our dinner. And like that's kind of like our time to like have our quote unquote dessert in the day. That's lovely. Yeah. And you know, you're bringing in the part of ritual and really just being intentional in that and feeling good about it. You know, so I think it's good. Do you cycle through the different berries and the different types of chocolate? I tend to be more exploratory on the chocolate. No shade to my wife. She kind of has her favorite couple of chocolates that she does. But, you know, it's one of those things where you hear it now in this interview and you're like, you know what, next week, I'm going to try something different.

Just try something different. I'm going to try something different. And that goes back to your core message because it's not about quantity of these foods. You know, one of the notes again here that you sent over in preparation of this interview is that the variety is more important than the quantity. So just even once a week saying what's something new? what's a weird vegetable fruit. I just learned about this website called Miamifruit.org.

It's like a cooperative of farms in Miami that grow this tropical fruit and you can get kind of like a random box of fruit shipped to you every month of different things like charamoia and other stuff

that a lot of people haven't tried before. No plug, I have no relationship with them. I haven't even ordered, but it looked really cool. Like the idea of being on a little bit of a food adventure and just every week I'm going to try something in you,

some different mushroom. A leak. I've never tried leaks before. Let's try that. That's one simple way. And spices. Spices and tea, I think actually, that's a hack right there. It is a hack. That's a hack right there. And can we just talk about spices a little bit here? Because I'd like to give some tips. And, you know, even my mom, who's a health nut, when I went into her spice cabinet, I was thinking, oh my gosh, she has not replaced these spices in so long. You know, we have to keep our eye on spices, even if we can focus on five, right? Because, you know, she had these caked spices. They were in metal containers. I'm like, mom, you need glass jars. You need organic spices. This is high quality material from plants. And what we see is that even, you know, all the

different countries have their own spice palette, right? And when you look at the Mediterranean diet, you see that they use a large repertoire of spices and their incidence of something like cardiovascular disease is the lowest compared to like, I think the Middle East was looked at. You know, all the countries are so different, of course, but in absolute amounts, or even India, India had higher rates of cardiovascular disease, despite the fact that they have spices, but I don't know about the variety. I mean, when I was in India this year, I noticed that there were a lot of the same spices, a lot of them, but I wasn't sensing the diversity.

So I would say even to start with five, five in your spice cabinet, you know, gift yourself with just five that you start to use and maybe ones that you haven't used before. You know, just this past week I was looking at a study that had come through, and this is really amazing just to really focus on the study. And there are so many of these studies now coming out on spices. And this one was about being fed the same diet, but having different levels of spices. And there were 24, I think it was 24 different spices that were used throughout the meals. So one was a lower quantity spice, 0.3 grams, I think. The other one was maybe around 3 grams.

And then the higher amount was like 6.6 grams. So that's a little bit more than a teaspoon of spice throughout your daily meals. And they found that the higher spice group with these 24 different spices, and each of them had 24 spices, the same amount, that their ambulatory blood pressure went down over this course of feeding them. Even though the contents of the meals were the same. except for the spice amount. I mean, spices, they're so little. They're so small. But yet, I mean, think about a dietary supplement. Much of that is a concentrated extract or essence of a plant. So when I think of a spice rack, I'm thinking of a little mini pharmacy in our kitchen.

It's like a supplement. Yes. I love it. You know, I think there's a lot of shade that's thrown at technologies these days. And there's fair criticism on social media and tech and screens and other stuff. But one of these things that I do feel is that I think that technology is going to be a part of us solving this problem. I look at even the fact that just most people, two years ago was the first year, it was two years or three years ago that the amount of money that we spend in North America on eating out surpassed the amount of money that we spent on groceries. Right? So we know the trend. The trend is. And even for people with a lot of education and that have the means, we have busy lives. want to do things like this, we want to self-actualize. And it turns out throughout history that when people start to take on on more, you know, generally speaking, and they kind of rise up the ranks

and socioeconomic ability, which is correlated with also education, usually you get some sort of help, right? You get help because it's too much for one person do, and a lot of that falls upon the women. right so a big part of this world that we're in right now where we have we're trying to create more equal opportunity for both you know women and and men that's there is that there's going to be some things that end up being a little bit sacrificed but then we have to figure out how do we fix it and i know this sounds crazy but looking at the trend of like smart ovens and other things like that people love to eat diverse it's the making of it that's actually tough so i i don't know what that's going to look like whether that's a robot arm that is

is like a little chef in your house that you bring all the ingredients together and you hit a recipe and it's kind of putting it together. Yes, I know making food is beautiful. I know it's romantic. I know it's the art of slowing down. But I just look at the vast majority of people and just even trying to support them in their cooking is so tough because of the system that we live in right now. Well, I share your, you know, it's a fine line like a love, hate and perhaps it's too strong of words to choose. but around technology, I think we can use it to our advantage, right? It's not that we have to be at the foot of technology. We are using technology in order to make our lives better. You know, case and point, I decided to just get a continuous glucose monitor

and just do an experiment with myself for a month. And people around me were thinking, you're not diabetic. You're not even pre-diabetic. What are you doing? And I said, I want to be smarter about my foods and what I'm doing. and just get a little window in. Now, continuous glucose monitor is not the be-all end-all because I started soon to realize that it's like,

well, this is kind of predictable, and I'm kind of seeing this. This is good. It's good information, but it doesn't tell me how much my body is putting out in terms of insulin in order to keep my blood glucose healthy, right? It's got some limitations. But what I did notice, I fall short on exercise. I fall short on getting out and moving. I'm really good with food, solid on food,

not so good with activity. And when I looked at my continuous glucose monitor results after I had taken a 30-minute walk in the neighborhood and it went down 20 points, my blood sugar just shot down 20 points. It's like, wow, that is something that will change my behavior going forward. Absolutely. Go for a walk after my meal or go for a walk before my meal and buffer that response.

Yeah, it's another input of us learning about these things that the ancients on you, My grandmother would always say, after eating dinner, we always go in a walk. And I just thought, like, what is the point? And we would walk around the neighborhood, like this big posse, this Indian family mafia that's walking around the neighborhood. And I'd feel like everybody's looking at us and like, this feels really weird. And we do it every single night.

But looking back now, like, she knew something, right? She innately knew something about how this made us feel, how this let people sleep that night. How healthy it would keep us. and she looked super fit, you know, and just like, we knew that now. And now we're just catching up with the science and the tech inputs to help us understand that it's actually real and it makes a difference. It is. Yeah.

And this goes back to your point of not just diversity with diet, but diversity with all aspects of our life. With all aspects. And you know, one of the questions I get asked on podcasts and such, and I don't even know if you were planning on asking me this, but how do you live your days? What do you do when you wake up? And you know what I say? I mean, I really struggle with this because every day is very different for me. And I intentionally make it different.

Like, I don't want to be the person that wakes up every day at 7 a.m. And does X, Y, and Z. Like, I want to be really aware and intentional about how I feel that day. Like, do I need a little bit more asleep? Do I need to exercise and go take a walk just straight out of the bed? Every day I live very differently. And I have just created my routine. to be diverse, if that makes sense.

But just back to technology, for people that can't afford it, because again, I'm always thinking about social determinants of health and where people are at and what they can do. Most people do have a phone. So I do think that taking pictures of our meals, just from up above, just even for ourselves, right, to kind of look at like how diverse. You know, you take a picture throughout the day,

and then at the end or at the end of a week, you kind of look at a sampling of like, okay, what did I see as far as colors? do a qualitative artistic assessment rather than, oh, I only got 40 grams of fat here, 50, you know, that's not sustainable. And I do think that variety tracks with creativity, Drew. And I think that creativity is one of the, I would say, even in my personal journey and story has been so instrumental in helping me to, like, get out of the box. Like sometimes we put ourselves in pathological boxes and we say, I live here.

This is what I am. This is what I do. This is how I define myself. I do feel, at least for me, I can't speak for other people, but that box needs to be disrupted, right? Like sometimes it needs dashed line. It's like a cell membrane. A cell membrane doesn't do so well when it's got like a firm, rigid border and membrane. It needs porosity, permeability to the best degree for that person. So I can't tell any of the people listening how much variety you actually need, how much creativity you actually need, how much creativity you actually need. How much. permeability of new things need to flux in through your every day. I don't know. And on some days you're going to need more than others. Like after this travel stint that I've been on, it's like, okay, I can kind of like get back into the structure of home a little bit. Now, I welcome that now because I've had that stepping out. My neurons got fired in plastic, plastic in a good way. You know, neuronal plasticity is a marker of healthy aging. And one of the things we didn't talk about, but you can infer it is that being diverse in our diet confers greater benefit for cognitive ability. And we've, I mean, you've heard it before, like take a different way to work in the morning.

Like that old concept of doing something different every day, crossword puzzles, whatever it is, that translates into different neuronal activity, different behavior, and then ultimately, possibly into our food choices, right? And we can go the other way as well. Right. There was this whole phase where everybody was on flights and everybody was doing Sudoku because they were reading that like there was some literature around Sudoku. And then another paper came out. I'll see if our team can find it and put in the show notes. They were like, look, it's not that our brain gets better by doing Sudoku every single day. It's that actually it might be good to pick up salsa lessons and you have to learn a new move and you have to challenge yourself. That's why I love doing podcasts is that you have to prepare. You have to listen to people differently. You have to see what's the viewpoint. It's some other aspect. So it's the diversity within those things. And then people thrive on different aspects. Like my wife tells me like if I had to wear the same thing every day, I'd go nuts.

And I love wearing the same thing every day because for me, and that might be a little bit of the masculine and the feminine, that keeps me not having to think about something that's not as important for me so that I can give other things that is more important to me in where I get my diversity from, like having these types of conversations or building a company and hiring you. people and taking on new challenges that are in there. So that's the beauty of even the diversity amongst different individuals. I probably am a lot more in the classical way, might be more structured in my day than you are. But we're both doing it. You have more, you know, your every day is different for you so that we can give the love and attention to the things that matter to us.

And then regardless of what we do, I think for everybody, regardless of what your game plan is, every so often breaking it. Like I love coffee and every two months I'll take a week off and I don't have any coffee. And I challenge my brain to see how do I feel. I want to challenge my body to see how I feel. Take a little break from it. And from you, I actually learned this. I would take my supplements during the weekday for the ones that are more maintenance and the weekend I take off.

And that's just a way of giving my body a break that's there. And every so often, if I'm not feeling called to that, I'm trying to pay attention and listen that, hey, maybe my body's trying to tell me something that even if this thing is good for me or people are telling me it's good for me. I don't want to give it, you know, attention right now. I don't want to include it. So I think part of this is also, you know, you clean up your gut. Your gut intuition starts speaking up a little bit and starts to direct you in the direction that, you know, it intuitively knows that it wants you to go. That's beautifully said.

And in fact, you just gave me an idea of it's really personalized diversity. Yes. It's how we want to shape it in our life. It doesn't matter if you want to wear the same thing every day. As long as you're getting diversity in other manners. And the way that I see you is you're really about. community, you're really about people and diverse people in your life, you know, that could be feeding you in all those ways. Maybe it's the brain level, the mental sphere, and then that can

ultimately change other things physically in your body. Yeah, we don't want everybody to be the same as us. We want everybody to be different so that they could show up. Exactly. We want things that are complimentary. As we start to wind down here with the time that we have, because, you know, you're about to fly out soon and everything. What are the points do you want to? want to bring up whether it's about diversity of diet, diversity of life, or just anything else that you want to include in that you feel is maybe an underrated area when it comes to our just overall living healthy. So let's go through the cascade of everything we are.

There's physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. And let me just walk through diversity through those different portals. Please. So we talked about physical a lot. We talked about having more food diversity imparts to us greater resilience in terms of the gut microbiome, which gives us a better immune system, can give us better nutritional status, can give us better cognitive health, better mood, and that will tie into the emotional as well. So bringing in the diversity on that part confers physical benefit. I don't think we can dispute that. Now, one thing I did not speak to, but having too much diversity like at a food.

buffet where there can be lots of different things may cause us to have more things within that. You know, variety's inviting. Our instinct goes for things that are unique, diverse. You know, we become intrigued. So I think that there's a way to use variety as proper medicine for the individual. So there's that. There's also some studies in older individuals showing that having greater dietary diversity is associated with longer life, healthier life, just overall looking at mortality, and also associated

with less things like frailty or risk of falls. So it's not just like we talked about kids. I want to say that it's actually all through the lifespan that we see the message of physical diversity in the way of foods being really important for health. So there's that. Super important. And then emotionally, you touched on it talking about mood and food. And I do think that emotional diversity, you know, the more that we express those different emotions and allow them to come through, I think the healthier that is. And one of the tools that I do for that is an emotion log where I have about 25 different emotions on a tracker and people start to look at, what am I feeling?

Do we have diverse emotions? Or are we just playing in the anger camp? I remember having somebody I worked with a man who did do the emotion tracker. for a week and he had anger with like angry check marks every day and he didn't have any other emotions. And I was, you know, that provided a portal into discussion about number one, the anger. But then number two, how do we balance? It's okay to be angry. How do we bring in some of the other emotions to be supportive?

So there's emotional diversity, right? And then mental diversity, changing up how we think. It feels so good. That's why I love going to conferences and talking with people like you because. is, you know, you just learn things that you might not have otherwise thought. I was out for dinner with a group of colleagues. And, you know, we've all been kind of cooped up over time. And I read a lot of articles and I read things.

But being in a conversation, I don't know. I just feel like you learn things. You wouldn't otherwise learn. You can't find a blog on that particular thing. It's kind of like you heard it through the great fine. Like it got me thinking differently just to have one dinner with, you know, like eight colleagues or something listening to. what's what's in their life and it got me thinking differently. When we think differently,

we begin to make different decisions and we act differently. Our behavior can change through that thought. So it's powerful. Power of the mind, I mean, even in science, that's why we have a placebo effect and we control for the placebo effect in studies, right? And then finally, where all land is spiritual diversity. What is spiritual? Well, in functional medicine, we define it as a sense of purpose and meaning. Purpose and meaning. And oftentimes, gosh, you know, people don't have that sense of connection with all that is, like with what is the bigger meaning of their lives. They get into the macro of their food, but they're not into the macro of their entire life purpose. And I feel like if we had a dietary supplement to impart to somebody their life purpose,

that would probably be all you needed. I think it's called psilocybin. I don't know, but it's really trying out different things to illuminate what is our sense of purpose and meaning, right? And so looking at the great big hole, but to bring that back down to Earth, I do think that there's a greater and greater connection now between planetary health and people health. We are very intricately interwoven, right? And so what is in one is in the whole, what is in the whole is in one. And therefore engaging with the planet in many different ways, whether it's maybe nature biomes. You know, there's such great data on, and I just presented on this, on being in nature and that changing your immune system. Just being in nature changes your, you don't have to do anything to your diet other than be around nature, feel that lowered stress vibe.

that you get from that experience. And it's even been postulated that there are things that we're breathing in the air that are changing our immune system. They call them fight on sides. You know, I love what's how I'm a tree person. I'm a tree and mountain person, even more than ocean. And what I see happening on the tree front is how more research is coming out. They're talking about how trees talk to one another.

And then it's like, well, how are they talking with us? How are they communicating? So I do think that the more biomes we can put ourselves into, whether it's ocean, river, mountain, desert. I remember being in the red rocks of Utah and having a very different type of experience and different thoughts in that space than I do at home in a shrouded forest. So that is the planetary message. And aside from nature, I think, interacting with people. Right now we live in a time of great polarity. It's like you're either in this camp or that camp. It feels very dual-natured. And so there's a lot of charge. And my feeling, and I was just having this conversation

with somebody because they were asking like, are you pro or anti or, you know, what's your position? I'm like, you know, I see it all. I zoom out in those moments and I look at the diversity of all these different opinions and I feel like I'm part of this experience, right? So rather than attach to a plus or a negative, a charge, I'm looking at the whole of it and really zooming out. So that's kind of how I see. I mean, it's beautiful. I know that it doesn't feel so good that we're we're going through this time of polarity because it can feel sticky and we can get attached with our emotions. And I would say, like, the more that we can hold in diverse opinions and diverse conversations,

I just feel the more happy we can be. Yeah. And this beautiful art of being able to hear somebody and really hear them without the need to, you know, interject your thoughts as you're kind of listening and cut them off. and also see like, wow, I can totally see it from their perspective. I don't agree with that, but I could totally see it. If you can't even see something from somebody else's perspective, that's an indication that your mind is so closed off.

You're not fully exercising empathy to put yourself in that person's point of view. There's so many of the craziest ideas in the world that I hear them or the craziest political viewpoints in the world that I deem quote unquote crazy or somebody else might say crazy, that I'm like, I actually can completely see it. Because if I grew up in that person's world, if I was born that the way the way we're born, if I had all the experiences that they had, I would have ended up thinking about the world the same way that they did because human beings are often a byproduct of the circumstances and the inputs that come into them. So I often use as one way, you know, you gave all these great little hacks, I'll throw one in about diversity

of thought and idea, anytime we say, I just don't understand. And then we say that about another political party, another tribe, another group of people, even our parents, our kids, or whatever. That's usually indication of, let's stop right there. Actually, you don't understand. So let's step into that now and think whatever method you want to do it. There's all sorts of different processes, but how can we put ourselves in the other person's shoes and say, how can I understand? We often use our ability not to understand somebody as a reason to write them off because we see their circumstances, their actions through our viewpoint. And when we're only looking through our viewpoint, we can't understand.

So as soon as you say, I just do not understand and it's usually with that energy and it's that thing, how could they possibly, you know, I just don't understand. all right, that's a moment and an opportunity to say, you know what, let me pause. Let me just say it could be so many different things. Maybe they went through a tough time. Maybe they don't see this other side that you see. Whatever it is, because most people are not crazy. Most people are not bad people, even if they have completely different viewpoints than you do or that I do. So if we can understand, now we can have a different level of conversation. I think about this often in the space of everything that's happening in the world of COVID-19.

And I've been firmly pretty vocal on Twitter and other stuff that I see myself as a COVID-moderate, right? I see all the different lenses that are out there. I can see how vaccines can be very useful, especially for people with poor metabolic health, the elderly, the people that are very vulnerable. I can see how that, you know, there's also this element of, you know, companies wanting to continue the cycle of boosters and economics and other stuff. You don't have to be on one side or another, but I do know this. The people that I pay attention to and that I trust the most, regardless of what camp they're in, they're willing to see the other side. Okay, I understand why parents might be nervous, especially when the risk of COVID-19 for kids

and ending up in hospitalization and severe death might be a lot lower than this. And I can understand how politically, when we try to push this down people's mouths, that it can make people feel this way. Anybody I truly respect being somebody who is a moderate in the middle, there are people that are willing to adopt the other side and say, there's something that you see right about this viewpoint. And I want to acknowledge it. Because if we don't acknowledge people and say that, hey, I can see the world through your view and I can repeat back to you how you see it, then they're not going to listen to us on any side of the spectrum that we find our cell phone. It's so true. I mean, I got goosebumps listening to what you said. I've seen a lot of that. And when I am scrolling

through social media, I'm reflecting on, you know, I think initially I did have feelings. I was like, I was feeling like I was getting caught in that fray. And then I had to shift out of that. And I realized, I'm learning. Everybody has a different perspective. And I'm adding those viewpoints into my own perspective and again to come from that place of holism so it's really great that you you know i think that that's something we are similar in like you know just being open being open and that really takes us into you know being in that spirit of flow being connected to that spirit of variety diversity fluidity creativity there's something really juicy there in terms of what we're missing I really feel like it's the antidote to our modern life.

And you can still take a really strong stance on things. And you can still say like, hey, there's so much fearmongering going on right now. Or there's so much of our world that's being overtaken by these ultra-processed foods that are out there. Or there's so much inequities out there in the world of socioeconomic components. So you can take a really strong view, but you're actually going to be more likely to end up getting to the solution when you understand. understand why the world is the way that it is versus just writing off aside. Yeah, big companies, they care about profits. And now as the health world is starting to get a lot more interesting, you see them scooping up a lot of these, you know, other companies that are more healthier

or companies that are trying to do more healthier things that are there. Yes, people are very, you know, I could go on and on and give different examples, but it's like when you understand the problem and you see the world that there's a reason that the world is the way that it is, and I have a strong viewpoint, I think the news is just trying to hijack people's attention. Okay, great. How are we going to solve that? How are we going to step into doing things like this that I'm just so excited every month that I look at like my channel and YouTube and other stuff and other people's channels, friends of minds that are there? It's like, people are cutting the cord. And it's like, yeah, let's like maybe not watch the news and then check out other stuff. Does that mean that all journalists are bad? Does

I mean this? No, of course not. But it does mean that we can take a strong stance and understand that there's a lot of different views that are there in the world. And it actually makes you more likely to fight for the thing that you care about because you can accurately and in a way that actually gets to the root problem present options for people that they can go in a different direction than the circumstances they find themselves in. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and, you know, I think having a techno detox moving away from a lot of those inputs. I mean, I even try to do that with social media. I think social media can be great because it gives a lot of voices.

But then there's also time to move away. And I think that at the end of the day, it's coming back to our center. And how often do you do that? Would you say, do is it sort of like, hey, do I feel like doing it today? Because one of the challenges that people have going back to like waking up every day and sort of feeling that fluidity is that sometimes we don't realize that our brain is sort of like caught up in something. That's true. It's hard. It's actually addictive. Right.

It's addictive. So, you know, any tips that you have around that or any structure and it's okay if you don't. Well, you know, it's funny because I actually use social media more when I'm traveling because I have more downtime. I'm in more lines. So I'm just kind of like scrolling and I'm able to respond more. But when I'm at home, I don't know. It's really a different feeling. I tend to look at it early in the morning and then at night and maybe intermittent.

But basically I'm, I kind of go with. the flow on that one. I think I look at somebody like yourself, you're so, you're so on fire with the work that you do and that you contribute to that I think about it like diet. Oftentimes we want to say, what's that one food that we want everybody to remove and take out? But actually, if we focus on adding in, we crowd out stuff and we sort of make more room for the good. And I think of purpose that way is that when you are lit in up by your work that you're doing and that could be, you know, the job that you have, the passions that you're into, you just tend to not have as much time for everything else. It takes a secondary point of view. So sugar's not bad when you have a diet

filled with with all the whole foods and phytonutrients that are there because it's just not as much room for that space. It's when we don't have that core basis that the other things tend to take over a little bit. Yes. And sometimes it's also our perception of those things. I'm sure you've seen the study like perception of sugar intake could be more impactful than the actual sugar itself. So we kind of have to keep everything in that balance, in that flow. But my final, you know, words to everybody, I would say is, you know, really honor your sense of who you are and really being authentic with that sense of spirit of, you know, having diversity as good medicine to help you to be. more creative in your every day. And when I think about healing, I think about the healing arts,

right? Art is a healing. And so we need a bit of that fluidity in order to be in that place. And sometimes it's more stillness. Sometimes it's more upbeat behavior. But yeah, thank you so much for seeing this passion. You know, I've been on the mission of nutrition for some time. And I feel like it's morphed with so many other things because I recognize that how we eat is how we live and how we live is how we eat. So it's really hard just to talk about food in a vacuum without seeing it connected to all the other things that we are as human beings engaged with. So it's it's the life we lead, Drew. It's been such a pleasure to have this conversation with you. Absolutely, Deanna.

Thank you so much for doing it. Let's give a little bit of an overview of your world. You're involved with a lot of really cool stuff and cool companies. Tell us about your world and people go down the rabbit hole of finding out more about what you're up to. So there's DeAnne Matic, the personal brand, and take us from there. You have still some nutrition courses or programs that people can go through. Yeah. So diversity plays out in my professional life.

I find I work best when I have multiple things going on. So I am. I have a business called Food and Spirit. so people can access all things food and spirit from my Deannaminic.com site. So I do, you know, I'm kind of a hybrid in the way of like looking at general audiences of people and getting the word out, but then also being on the health practitioner side. So I do a lot of lecturing still for health professionals. I lecture for the Institute for Functional Medicine for A4M. I just got back from that.

I'm also adjunct faculty at the University of Western States. They have a master's program in human nutrition and functional medicine. And I love nerding out, right? I just love being more academic. I also consult and I work with a variety of different companies like Organic India is one and metagenics. Going back to that tea conversation of hacking, my favorite, I want to hear about your favorite organic India tea. I love the rose. Well, that's mine.

I love that one. And you know what, Drew? I've actually visited the fields where those women are picking those roses. I did too. And it's really beautiful. And they sing, they're singing to the plants. They're, you know, it's actually a really beautiful company and their products are really great. So rose.

And then recently we had Dr. Jed Fahey on the podcast and he was talking about Moringa. Oh, Moringa. In addition to Blocke's sprouts. And I saw that Organic Indian. I had a maringa tea. And so I started including that in the repertoire, you know, again, trying to diversify the whole situation. Yeah.

And, you know, Meringa is so interesting. I've been learning more about it as well because I didn't know a whole lot. It's kind of a superfood with so many different nutrients. Like it's a very complete, I think spirulina and Moringa kind of compete in terms of the complexity of what they carry nutritionally. It's so interesting to see Meringa. And even in India, you know, people grow Meringa plants and it's part of, like, we don't see those plants here, at least I haven't. But when I think of Jed Fahey, I think of his, the broccoli

tea. He often talks about how broccoli sprouts don't grow in a lot of places in the world. So he uses Meringa as another opportunity to get a lot of similar benefits that are out there. Lower cost food, easier to grow places, very resilient. And just on that idea of phytochemicals, polyphenols, being able to hugely impact the world and us finding the right foods that are out there that are more accessible and can be localized in these different countries. But yeah, sorry to interrupt. You were going through the different projects you were involved in. You mentioned organic. Oh, yeah. No, it's great to chime in about tea. And by the way, I do like the broccoli tea. And some of my students were like, you can actually get broccoli and tea. And I'm like, yes, and you can get sulforaphane.

And it's good stuff. So, yeah, that. And working on a new book idea. And I'm, you know, I feel like I'm always, Thanks to Dr. Bland, who really, well, actually, it even went earlier than Dr. Bland. My graduate work was on carotenoids, and I worked with Dr. Phyllisbone at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and that's really what turned me into looking at plants and what they're doing and then working further with Dr. Bland, who you mentioned as part of the Himalayan tartary buckwheat. But when I was working with Jeff at metagenics, gosh, we got into phytonutrients at the level of cell signaling and really looking mechanistically at what these plants were doing. and asset related to detoxification.

So I want to give credit at the very end here to everybody that has ever touched my life in terms of this platform. I mean, starting with my mom, you know, that Health Nut Mom, and then all of my science teachers and, you know, Jeff Bland, Barb Schultz, Phyllis, Bowen, Maria Sopenzakas. I mean, I've had such incredible people. And I feel like whenever we listen to somebody, like when I'm listening to your podcast, I'm always thinking like, wow, the little. lineage of people that have gone into that one person's voice and it's never just them. You know, there's so much behind that, so much research and all those articles I read, you know. So I give lots of kudos to all those shining stars out there. All comes back to diversity, diversity of mentors, diversity of teachers.

That's true. Deanna, thank you for coming on for making time and talking about something that is so obvious when people hear about it. but we forget how to do it because we are living in a world that's kind of taken us in one direction of kind of repetitive routines. Mostly out of survival and responding to the times and just trying to be able to juggle all the responsibilities that are there and not having the same village support that we had when diversity was a lot more, you know, but I see that coming back now. I see more villages. I see more people, intentional communities and education about how we can go from just surviving, which we're all surviving. right everybody's living everybody's surviving to really stepping into thriving so you reminded us how to do that today and i appreciate you thanks so much drew