Dhru Purohit Show - Fat, Stressed, & Sick: The Role of Glutamate and Hidden MSG in Our Food Supply with Katherine Reid, PhD

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

This episode is brought to you by WHOOP, Bioptimizers, and Lifeforce.  Glutamate is a neurotransmitter essential for our health and plays a crucial role in activating our nervous system and immune response. However, when foods are ultra-processed, they can create glutamate in excess amounts, which, when overly consumed, can cause symptoms associated with anxiety, ADHD, Autism, and increase chronic inflammation in our body.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Katherine Reid to discuss glutamate, its link to monosodium glutamate, and the alarming amount created in our food supply through processed proteins.  Dr. Katherine Reid earned her PhD in biochemistry, specifically focusing on protein chemistry. She switched focus soon after her daughter was diagnosed with autism and discovered that reducing MSG in the diet managed many of her daughter’s symptoms. Dr. Reid is the founder of Unblind My Mind, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to improving health through informed food choices, and now works closely with the public, including the medical community, to devise food solutions for people suffering from a wide variety of chronic inflammatory conditions. She is also the author of the newly released book Fat, Stressed, and Sick: MSG, Processed Food, and America’s Health Crisis. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Reid dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): -What is glutamate and its connection to monosodium glutamate (MSG) (2:51 / 2:51) -The top food sources of glutamate and MSG (11:00 / 8:00) -Independent testing for glutamate in a product (28:15 / 25:10) -Dr. Reid’s personal experience with changing her daughter’s diet after a diagnosis of Autism spectrum disorder (35:14 / 30:38)  -The FDA’s position on glutamate (58:40 / 54:12) -Why are some individuals more impacted by glutamate exposure and lifestyle factors that can reduce glutamate release within our body (1:02:42 / 58:06) -The REID Diet protocol and who can benefit from it (1:11:25 / 1:06:49)  -The correlation between glutamate levels in gluten and dairy in Europe versus America  (1:31:44 / 1:27:10) -Research on glutamate and the work that still needs to be done (1:41:26 / 1:36:54) Also mentioned in this episode: -Dr. Reid’s new book  Fat, Stressed, and Sick: MSG, Processed Foods, and America's Health Crisis -Unblind My Mind - Dr. Reid’s Nonprofit -The REID Diet  WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker. To get yours, go to join.whoop.com/dhru and get your first month free. Get 10% off and a special bonus gift with your Bioptimizers purchase. Go to magbreakthrough.com/dhru and use the code DHRU10 at checkout. Right now, get 15% off your first purchase of Lifeforce at Mylifeforce.com with code DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ultra-processed food category containing high proteins are going to create free glutamate. And people are just not aware that the MSG glutamate connection from processed proteins is rampant in our diet. The standard American diet has 10 grams of consumption of MSG per day. Did you know that there's a neurotransmitter that's essential for a help? But at high levels, which is what we're getting here in the Western world, that are mostly found in ultra-processed foods, this neurotransmitter could be breaking our brains? Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest

minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Dr. Catherine Reed. Dr. Catherine Reed is the founder of Unblind My Mind, and she's here today to talk about her new book, Fat, Stressed, and Sick, MSG, Process Foods, and America's Health Crisis, which focus on the extremely high levels of MSG and glutamate that we're getting in our diet largely from ultra-processed foods and how this MSG and glutamate is linked to a whole list of brain disorders as well as chronic diseases. Now, a little bit more about Dr. Reed.

Catherine earned her PhD in biochemistry with a specific focus in protein chemistry. She's had a 20-year career in biotechnology focused on the development of protein pharmaceuticals and cancer diagnostics. She switched her focus soon after her daughter was diagnosed with autism, and she discovered that reducing MSG in the diet managed many of her daughter's symptoms. She now works closely with the public, including the medical community, to devise food solutions for people suffering from a wide variety of chronic inflammatory conditions. Stay tuned for a fantastic episode on all things, glutamate and MSG and ultra-processed foods, how they are increasing or a risk of chronic disease with Dr. Catherine Reed.

Dr. Reed, welcome to the podcast. So here's a few additional list of disorders, dysfunctions, brain disorders, as well as chronic diseases that you say are tied to glutamate and MSG consumption, which we're going to break down in a second. You have addiction, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, autism, autism, and you have a personal testimony about your daughter who was diagnosed with autism at the age of four. She's 17 today, and she is thriving. We're going to talk about her in this episode.

Cancer, depression, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, seizures, and so many more neurological conditions. So let's start at the basics. What is glutamate? what it's it's tied to MSG and why is there now in our modern day and age an abundance of it in our diets, especially in the Western world and in America? So what is glutamate? Let's start with that.

It's an amino acid, which is the building block of proteins. And like I said, it's critical for our functioning in a number of ways, but it needs to be regulated. so level is important. How is it related to some of the diseases that you just rattled off? I mean, neurologically, because it functions as a neurotransmitter, again, it's activating 40% of our nervous system. There needs to be a balance between activation of the nerves and inhibition. And we call that excitatory inhibitory balance. And when that is not in balance, you get more excitation than inhibition when it comes to a glutamate gab of balance, or imbalance that can contribute to symptoms associated with anxiety.

Even, you know, you mentioned ADHD, autism. I mean, autism, excitatory, inhibitory balance. I just came from an autism conference speaking there. It's kept getting repeated throughout these talks. Excitory, inhibitory balance is critical for helping with resolving a lot of symptoms that people are experiencing with autism. or ADHD and anxiety. And so there is an imbalance if you're getting a bunch of the glutamate from the food supply.

So where is glutamate coming into the food supply? What's really not well understood with the public is that the amino acid is being created with the processing. And so my background in protein chemistry allowed me to kind of dive in deep to dissect, you know, what is going on here? So we call it MSG in the food supply because it just has a monosodium attached to the glutamate, monosodium glutamate. So if you have free glutamate, meaning the amino acids, you know, freed up from the foods,

let's say from the processing, you start to create monosodium glutamate essentially. So free glutamate, monosodium glutamate, same thing. As soon as we put free glutamate in our, you know, mouth, it's the same thing as if you were eating MSG pure. So where is it coming into the food supply is the processing of proteins. And, you know, we've seen a lot about what, you know, refined sugars or carbohydrate processing does or fat processing does, but there's not a lot of awareness about processed proteins. And so I'm sounding the alarm saying the ultra-processed food category containing, you know,

high proteins are going to create free glutamate. And people are just not aware that, that you know, you know, the MSG glutamate connection from processed proteins is rampant in our diet. The standard American diet has 10 grams of consumption of MSG per day. 10 grams. That is far beyond any safety study that's ever been conducted under chronic, you know, consumption of that every day, years, months, you know, of consuming that much. No safety study has looked at it at that levels.

And even when you go on to the FDA website, you're not seeing 10 grams per day is the average consumption because they're lumping glutamate bound in a protein with glutamate free. And they're not the same. And so the sounding of the alarm is that's not the same. That's like saying, you know, a high fructose corn syrup is the same as inulin. You know, they're not the same. They're completely absorbed and metabolized differently. And so you have one is a polymer and one is a monomer in terms of the glutamate bound and free.

And so the levels that people are consuming are under the radar. And so if they're having a health issue, they're not associating it with free glutamate because they're just not aware of how it's coming into the food supply. This episode is brought you by Woop. Now, everyone can agree that exercise is legit one of the greatest tools in our toolbox for longevity. And Dr. Sarah Godfrey, Cynthia Thurlow, and many other guests on my podcast and experts in hormonal health have shared that there is such a thing as overdoing it and over training without recovery, especially for women. So how do you know when you're doing too much or when you can push your body just a little bit harder? That's where Whoop comes in. Whoop is a digital fitness wearable that monitors your physiology 24-7 and gives you real-time

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Let's pick up with that number that you mentioned, 10 grams. Yes. Right? That the average American is having about 10 grams of MSG and their diet on daily basis. And again, a lot of people know MSG from like Chinese food or this. It's the thing that gives things their flavor, the umami. And many people are listening and saying, okay, the average is 10 grams, which means that if you don't think,

you're eating a lot, somebody else is eating a lot more. Where is the source of this? For example, we know the top-consumed vegetables in the United States are potatoes and tomatoes. Not because people are eating a bunch of potatoes by themselves or tomatoes. It's in the form of French fies, ketchup, pizza sauce, ultra-processed foods. So when it comes to glutamate and this MSG exposure at 10 grams, what are, if you would say, or based on your research, like the top three sources or the top five sources of where people are getting this exposure from? So the top source is hydrolyzed proteins. And let me give you, you know, some examples that everybody can relate to.

So I like to mention the gluten protein. So the gluten proteins, a class of proteins found in wheat and barley, for example. And the gluten protein, you know, has a bunch of protein. of amino acids like, you know, any protein, but it is comprised of 25% of glutomic acid in that protein. But if you are subjecting it to ultra-processes like hydrolysis through fermentation or fat, you know, reprocessing fermentation, you know, so you think about breads and baked goods, a lot of those things that they're hydrolyzing that gluten protein, it will start to break apart those peptide bonds creating free amino acids. And because there's so much glutomic acid in there,

you're freeing up a bunch of glutamate from the gluten protein that then is acting as a neuro, glutamate or MSG. And in fact, glutamate was named because of its abundance and its discovery in the gluten protein. They used to make MSG by hydrolyzing gluten. So it's well known that it is a source of MSG because that's how they used to commercially produce MSG was to hydrolyize the gluten protein. And could you just define the word for people that are not being? Sure. Hydralized, right? Hydroized, yeah. So that's just a fancy word. Yeah, sorry, just to add in because people are thinking, again, not that we regularly recommend bread on this podcast, but help us understand hydroization

and bread making in especially the Western world today and largely increasingly around the world, compared that manufacturing process with this sort of ancient process or more pre, you know, I want to say prehistoric because we probably weren't making bread. Breads and grains are probably about, you know, 25,000 years old, you know, 50,000 years old

based on different estimates, which would be the, you know, sourdough type of, you know, bread. So could you just explain and kind of contrast? those in the explanation of hydrolyization. Right. So hydrolysis could come about from a number of different, you know, food manufacturing processes. So let's just take fermentation with the example of the breads. So you've got your wheat, which evolution, you know, it's actually been genetically modified

to be gluten and rich. So it's now protein-rich wheat that we're consuming. So there's more gluten protein. And we are typically, you know, you said sourdough, which is lactobestine. but we typically are using yeast fermentation and a lot of active yeast cultures there to make the bread nice and fluffy and yummy. And that fermentation process, depending on the extent of time, you know, so the longer the duration of the fermentation, the more that those microbes are acting upon that protein

and breaking apart the peptide bond that holds these amino acids together. So that's hydrolysis, is that it's breaking apart the peptide bond that's holding these amino acids together, and now the amino acids free to go about its business as a free amino acid. So hydrolysis is just referring to the breaking apart of the peptide bond in the protein. So taking a step back, I was saying what is a list of the top food sources based on sort of data that you've come across, where people are getting this 10 grams of exposure. We'll get to the FDA in a second. Their own website says, well, MSG and glutamate is not a big deal, right?

And again, you have your own take on it, which we're going to talk about. But let's just start off with that 10 grams. So gluten, and especially hyper-processed gluten, not made in a way that it used to be made, including genetically modified wheat to be higher concentrations of protein. that's one example. So people would get that in what cereals, processed cereals, breads, processed breads. You know, muffins, you know, baked goods. Yeah. So, you know, anything that's, you know, sometimes you can have just ground up wheat in a cracker that's not going through an extensive amount of hydrolysis. But again, it depends on that process if they're

adding some acid. And if they know it's creating MSG and that increases profits because people are liking that, you know, they have an incentive to try to tweak the palate in their favor. So, you know, pizza is a great example here. So we've got the dough that's typically going through a bunch of gluten hydrolysis. And then cheese is my next one. So dairy, casein protein is also high in glutamic acid. And again, we're not drinking raw milk where it's not going through. a process. I mean, some people are, but it's illegal in many states. And it's usually going through the cheese process, which is typically adding a bunch of cultures to that dairy to create cheese. And again, that fermentation process is creating glutamate, free glutamate, as a function of

fermentation time. And the aging. So more aged cheese, as well as the fermentation time of that cheese will create more glutamate. So you throw that onto the pizza dough. And then the tomato sauces that are like, you know, part of like Domino's pizza, for example, they're typically adding processed tomatoes with tomato powder or tomato paste where they're trying to make it more glutamate concentrate coming from tomato because tomato, whole tomato actually has a little bit of natural glutamate, but they're making sure they're creating a concentrated source of glutamate with some of the processing, like tomato powder or tomato paste. So then you've got that on there. Add some salami, which is cured meat, and it's fermented

meat. Again, fermented protein. So let's just take pizza, domino's pizza, not to pick on dominoes, because a lot of these commercially available pizzas are similar. You probably have five grams of MSG in that pizza. In the whole pizza? Or you think in one serving? No, per serving. which would probably be at least probably like two to three slices. For me too. Two slices. Yeah. For a male might be more.

Yeah. Exactly. Right. So then you're dealing with body weight and such. So just in those two to three slices or two slices, you're saying there's five grams of MSG. That would be in there. Part of the reason that it's in there is because it's the natural. I want to say natural.

It's in quotes. I'm not saying natural in a good way. Right. But it's a biproids. of the ultra-processing method. There's a big difference between homemade pizza. Exactly. And there's a big difference between that and ultra-process pizza.

So just so everybody's listening on here, because we're not trying to fearmonger. No. You know, you're not saying that people can't have, you know, if they enjoy bread, or cheese, but there's a big difference to how these products and foods were made originally and how. and how they're being made as a byproduct of our industrialized ultra-process food system. Is that correct? Exactly, exactly. And, you know, I like your quotes of naturally occurring, right?

So, you know, naturally occurring would be no processing. That's truly naturally occurring. And then when you're subjecting it to all these manufacturing processes, you know, I would say we're venturing into it's not so natural anymore. And that's the alarm I'm trying to, or the where. And not necessarily an alarm, because I think each individual's low tolerance for glutamate is just that. It's very personalized. You know, what health issues are you dealing with?

But at some level, it's not healthy for anybody. And I think we're reaching those levels with the ultra-processed foods that we're typically consuming in the standard American diet. So you were going through a list, right? You talked about gluten as being one of the big ones. Casein. Casein. And obviously that's connected to diet. products, one clarification that's there, which is that you mentioned, you know, the longer the

fermentation process. And even with bread, you mentioned the fermentation process. We've had a lot of people come on this podcast, and even listeners have heard, you know, people like Dr. Will Bolshevitz, you know, have talked about the benefit of fermented food. What's the difference between fermented food, like kimchi or homemade sourcrow or certain fermented pickles or vegetables and the fermentation process that you're talking about. Yeah, and I like, you know, that's why I put a whole chapter in the book about microbiome because I'm fascinated and love

the whole microbiome element with respect to glutamate, but also, you know, what is beneficial for these microbes in terms of synergistic with our health versus not working for our health. So when you take, like, for example, breads, it's fermented, but it's baked. You're not getting any probiotics there. It's dead, you know, so you're not getting any actual live probiotics, unlike, you know, the kimchi or the sauerkraut, where you're getting live microbial activity. And then let's just take something that's got live cultures. Let's take yogurt. So yogurt, you're actually getting cultures, and there is a benefit to the bifido bacterium, especially for younger human beings, you know, that's very important for immune development and such.

You are releasing glutamate as a function of fermentation time even with yogurt. So, you know, that becomes like a balance, you know, is the glutamate outweighing the benefits of the actual live probiotic there? With cheese, it's required to be pasteurized. So a lot of people will say, well, now there's raw cheeses. Well, that's raw milk being fermented. aged at a certain amount of time, but it requires to go through a pasteurization process for, you know, FDA safety requirements. So you're killing. You're killing all those live microbes. There's not live microbes in the cheese. So you're not getting a probiotic benefit with the cheeses.

It's all dead microbial waste products, one of them being glutamate. So now let's take sauerkraut, which I love that idea. Now you have these microbes that are being trained on fermenting fiber, which is exactly what we want in our gut. We want the microbes to be fermenting fiber, preferably in the large intestine, not the small intestine. And that produces the short chain fatty acids that are providing an important fuel for our cells in our large intestine. That's synergy.

That's beautiful. But we're talking about the fermentation process being used on the proteins on glutamate rich proteins that's creating more glutamate without any live probiotic source there. So the bread, it's dead. Cheeses, it's dead. So there is no probiotic benefit there. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. So let's continue down the list. Again, you mentioned gluten. Gluten. You mentioned dairy, specifically casein, and that ultra-processing of dairy. There may be some better ways to have dairy. And again, you mentioned that glutamine tolerance is a spectrum. Everybody needs a certain amount of it. In fact, our body makes it, which is part of what you're

talking about. We'll come back to that in a minute. But we're getting an overabundance of it from our ultra-processed diet. So gluten, casein, what would be the next major source of glutamate, excess glutamate that could be linked with these things that you've mentioned? addiction, which there's a large body of research that's there, probably one of the strongest ones you mentioned inside of your book. Autism, you work with a lot of families with autism, and you're not saying that glutamate is the cause of autism, but you're saying that there is a large body of evidence and many N of one's stories like your own daughter where people notice by going on a low glutamine diet.

Glutimate. Glutamate, sorry. Yeah. low glutamate diet that the symptoms of autism can be lessened. And we're going to have a whole breakdown. Autism is obviously a very controversial topic for a lot of people, but you've been studying this for a long time. So what's the next major source after gluten and dairy?

Yeah, I'd say, you know, with the dairy industry, they were, the dairy industry was getting a lot of pressure, you know, for those that were making cheese because way was a waste product of cheese. So there was pressure about using way. And we started to see way protein entering the food supply as the ideal, you know, protein and such. And so you're seeing like in protein powders, protein bars, things that are protein enriched. You see protein concentrate isolates or way protein, yeah, way protein concentrate is the buzzword ever. They did something to it. So whey and soy, I would say, are the next two, like soy sauce because it's a fermented soy protein. You get MSG from there. And the way concentrates that are being dumped into the food supply

to figure out how to use this cheese waste product has been entering the food supply for the last 10, 15 years, you know, much more so than when we are consuming more milk than cheese. So those were the next two, is processed soy and processed whey. So way protein, for example, is something that I have inside of my diet. You know, I get it from a grass-fed source that's there. Do you have any sense of what levels would be coming? Like if somebody was having, you know, way protein is consistently sort of listed as one of the most bioavailable. Previously on the bioavailable index, egg was the highest, you know,

level of bioavailability. And then when way protein came out, it was so bioavailable that they listed it as number one in terms of its bioavailableness for protein concentration. So how much MSG is coming for weight protein? This is me just genuinely asking for myself. Right, because you're using the way. Because I'm using it. And again, this goes back to your larger idea, which is that you're not saying glutamate in any form inside of our diet, because there's even things like mushrooms that have it. Correct. You're talking about this total load that's there that over long periods of time, and we

don't have safety data on it, is there a link with a whole list of brain disorders and chronic diseases? So any sense of how much glutamate would be in a serving of way protein? So, you know, the protein is, are you consuming it in a way? the protein powder. Yeah, protein powder. And I like to raise awareness with protein powder specifically because, again, it's going to depend on the manufacturing process.

But when you have way protein concentrate or weigh protein isolates as the actual ingredient label, there's a big huge range as to how much hydrolysis of that protein can exist under that label. And so the consumer doesn't really know based on that label how hydrolyzed that protein is. Again, hydrolysis being that it's breaking apart that, you know, peptide bonds and creating free amino acids. There's about 15% of the way protein that contains glutomic acid. So you have a percent, you know, if it's completely hydroized, you're getting 15% of that protein intake as MSG. So the answer depends. So then you go to the actual manufacturers that might have that in there. They have no idea. Well, we just get this from the source.

supplier, you know, or we don't, you know, so they're not really testing it. There's no end product testing required for glutamate. So there's not really an awareness to the consumer as to how processed is that way protein in your protein powder. So it could be completely hydrolyzed under that label. Most manufacturers, you're saying don't even know themselves. Right. Can you independently test a product for the level of glutamate in it? Yeah, like I said, it's not required to be tested. And I did look into that thinking maybe that's the business. You know, maybe that's the benefit I provide to society as I come up with a testing, you know, method to do independent testing on products to provide that to the consumer.

So there are, you know, mass spec is probably the best. That's kind of my favorite. A mass spectrometer. A mass spectrometer, you know. Which is quite expensive to say. Half million, you know. Well, the actual device is quite expensive. Yes.

But sending it in even because it's a little bit more time consuming than some other test, you know, there are independent labs that you can send things to. True. I wanted my own laboratory, but yeah. I would love a mass spec in my garage or something. But, you know, so liquid chromatography attached to mass spectrometer would be like one method that you could use. There are enzymatic colorometric assays that you could use. but you're then having to come up with sample processing depending on the type of food and you'd have to have that all worked out in your methodology to accurately and reproducibly

be testing that in different food products. So your question is, is it possible to test it? Absolutely. There are a variety of different methods out there. And product testing for glutamate is not required so people aren't doing it. Before we continue down the pathway of getting into your story and how to be, how you came about this. You know, a big part of what we're going to be talking about today, and we're going to go through a lot of the nuances of a lot of different categories of foods and,

you know, conditions and your own daughter's story in this. But largely, just so that people don't feel like, okay, I get it. Like everything we're eating is toxic. I got to avoid every single thing in the world. This is another list of stuff that I have to do. What you're largely talking about, again, and you correct me if I'm misportraying this, is that our modern ultra-processed diet, ultra-process that becomes 70 to 80% of people's calories based on study and data, right? Yes. We're seeing, especially amongst young kids, at least 70% of their diet, even prior to the pandemic, is coming from calories coming from ultra-process foods, which is different than minimally processed.

processed foods, and probably a lot of our MSG exposure is from that ultra-processing, at those levels we're getting this glutamate exposure, this MSG exposure that is a giant experiment. And if you want to immediately protect your family today, besides getting awareness through books like yourself, is jumping to the conclusion is go towards a more Whole Foods diet. Exactly. For the vast majority of people, a minimally processed whole foods diet, that doesn't mean that occasionally you can't have things. That doesn't mean that occasionally you can't have that bread roll or that.

But genuinely, when we're talking about occasionally, we're talking about that it's not a large concentration of your calories. So that's the, for most people. Correct. That's going to be it. Would you say so? Absolutely. Absolutely.

And then there's a second group. The second group is there are people that are truly suffering. They either are in pre-diagnosis that they're very clearly on their way to Alzheimer's, maybe even some addictive disorders, and even amongst young people that they're exhibiting, even if they haven't been diagnosed yet, with some autism spectrum type behaviors. And if you're in this second category and you found yourself in this category, now many years ago when your daughter was four, that you might need to be paying attention to this topic at a deeper level than most people because either you or your family member or your child could be becoming worse off because of their hidden MSG exposure. Is that accurate? This episode is brought to you by Lifeforce. I've always been into learning about the latest longevity research, but ever since I

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Just go to MyLifeforce.com. That's My, My, M-Y-Life, L-I-F-E-F-E-F-E-D-com and enter the code D-H-R-U that's Drew to optimize. your health span today. Yes, yes. And, you know, what would be the people that would be needing to pay attention more would be if you're in a chronic inflammatory state, the glutamate is very much related to our internal stress response where we are producing glutamate when we need it, where we need it, how much we need it, to signal a variety of different functions. But when we're inflamed, we're producing glutamate as part of that stress response at more elevated levels. So you see a correlation between the extent of inflammation within the body and the level of glutamate

produced in that area of inflammation. So if it's a specific inflamed area, like you've got arthritis in the knee, you're going to find elevated circulating glutamate in there to help signal that stress response. So anybody suffering from a chronic inflammatory condition, are going to find themselves potentially sensitive to glutamate coming in from the foods because it might exacerbate their internal inflammatory condition. Let's talk about your personal story. Tell us about your daughter and her diagnosis. Okay.

Yeah. And before this came, you know, you have your moments in your journey, right? And this was one of my moments where my youngest daughter, you know, was diagnosed with autism. And, you know, as a mom, I'm like, it's not in the manual. There's a lot of things missing in the parenting manual. Okay. And this was one of them. How do you parent a child who is not thriving, barely surviving in terms of development?

She was tantruming, you know, around age three for hours. And I called it the yes, no loop where she had such a state of indecision with, you know, just everyday life decisions. You know, I want the water on. I want the water off, but every time she would loop, she would go through more and more uncalm. So it was almost like this stressful event going on in her brain that she couldn't decide with everyday sort of life functions. And so, you know, as a mother, I'm like, okay, this is not sustainable.

I didn't know how to parent that. I mean, I mean hours of tantruming. So you try to do whatever you can to help your child. So the evaluation process for autism can be quite lengthy. You know, so you're going through trying to get an appointment with a psychologist or the school depending on the age of the child. There's waiting lists, you know, depending on how, what city you might live in. I mean, some people are waiting up to six months to even get into a psychologist for the evaluation. And I didn't feel like I wanted to necessarily wait through all that process.

And so I'm like, what can I do that's within my power? And that's when I was reading, you know, Mark Hyman's, you know, books and just looking at a variety of different things of what's in my power is what she's eating. And at that time, she was eating a completely processed diet. Her diet was white. I mean, it was like bagels and cream cheese for breakfast, macaroni and cheese. If I put broccoli on that child's plate, she literally would get up, jump, and just slam her knees down and throw a fit about this green broccoli being on her plate. So I wasn't getting a lot of vegetables in her. And a lot of times most parents are like, okay, that's not a battle worth fighting, you know. And then like pizza, you know, I mean, those were like the things that the child wanted.

She craved it, you know, lots of dairy and milk and such. And so I decided to start taking matters into my own hands. I'm like, okay, this child's not getting nutrients. And so what can I do to start adding nutrients? Thus, the smoothie was born in our household. So I'm like, okay, I'm putting in things and I'm calling it ice cream. I'm trying to make it, you know, palatable for her. And I'm doing, you know, a song and dance to try to get this child to be, you know, consuming my newfound ice cream there. And so it's like, did that, you know, at all change the needle with where she was at developmentally or even inflammatory-wise a little bit, you know, but like, you know, not much. And so I just started to investigate more. And a lot of parents who have children on the spectrum,

you know, try a variety of different diets. And gluten-casing-free is a common one. And, you know, I'm like, I don't know what's going on with this, but okay, we've got a lot of that in our diet. So let me try removing gluten and casein. And, you know, that was an education process. And my grocery cart changed significantly because I didn't I couldn't believe how much gluten and casing, you know, were being consumed in our diet. So removing those. And I started to see significant changes in her behaviors. Now, she was still special needs school. She was still, you know, developmentally delayed. But eye contact, a little bit of imagination. Like I didn't even realize imagination wasn't there until I started to see it, you know, appear. Her language was still,

significantly delayed. And like I said, she was still in a special needs school. But I was like, okay, you know, so we did that, you know, for maybe three or four months. And I'm like, okay, I wonder what the connection is, why those proteins, you know, removing those proteins had such a significant benefit. And so I started to dive in deep, you know, and just like, and so I'm a protein chemist. So I'm looking at the amino acid structure of gluten and casein. And I'm like, Okay, and I'm like, wow, you know, there's a lot of glutamic acid in here, you know. And so I just started on Google Scholar, glutamate and autism. Bam.

I mean, it was just all over these Google Scholar, you know, peer-reviewed literature, but not just autism, you know, a bunch of other, you know, disorders or diseases that I mentioned in the book. And so I'm like, glutamate, you know, what? And so I wasn't even making the connection there about glutamate and monosodium glutamine at that point, because it's not very well known. And so I started to look into food patents, Google food patents and looking at the processing of a variety of different proteins. And I'm like, I wonder if the connection is glutamate. So I decided I'm going to try the experiment and go hardcore and remove as much free glutamate or MSG in the food supply. Like you said, going towards all whole foods as much

as I possibly could. I had to convince my husband at the time to give me, you know, one month because he's like, this has nothing to do with diet. You know, let's get back on track with, you know, other therapies. And so it became like this negotiation where I had one month to see if this was the right path, right? No disrespect to your husband, but can I ask, what is his background education or trading? He's also a scientist. Okay. And yeah, so he's, you know, more, you know, cell culture, you know, on the protein chemistry was more in cell culture and the business element of in biotechnology. And so, you know, that was the deal, though, I had one month. And so because I only had one month,

you know, I went through my kitchen. I'm like yanking out condiments, you know, any pre-made sauces, you know, anything that I'm like reading ingredients. I'm like, nope, don't know what that is. You know, beet powder. I don't know what the heck that is. You know, why not just be adding beats? You know, like anything that I could think of how to replace it with the whole food, I replaced it. If I didn't understand the ingredient label and the processing, I either looked it up. And if I didn't know, I just got rid of the food. So I had a big huge bunch of bags, you know, donated it to Second Harvest or my nanny if it was already open if she wanted it.

Like, okay, here we go. And I decided to also do the dietary approach with my daughter so that she felt included and she didn't feel like she was being isolated. And within the first week, I noticed huge changes. Like that yes, no loop that I was just referring to. Which, by the way, I think that maybe we can ask you for the video. You put it in your TED Talk. Correct.

And so maybe we can play that video now for those that are watching on YouTube and we'll have the audio for those individuals. Good talk is a breaky's bitch. It's okay. It's on a book of course. I believe the video, if I'm correct, is your daughter deciding about whether or not she wants the blanket on the bed, off the bed. On the bed, off the bed. I was like walking on tip, you know, my tiptoes or on the eggshells, like what's going to

trigger that yes-no loop? Because it was horrible. I mean, I didn't know how to help her out of it, but it looked like it was so emotionally painful to her to be experiencing it. So then in one week, for example, you said you noticed a behavior. What did you notice? Yeah. So the yes-no loop didn't occur, you know, from that point, forward, gone, you know, and that was something that was, you know, at least once or twice a week on the gluten-cassine-free diet we were having it. So it was less frequent, but we were still, you know, encountering that. The language, I couldn't believe, it was almost as if the channels of learning where you know that there's a neurological signaling with learning anything, but it was almost

like the channels were open. This child was now looking more interested when people were talking, was responding to her name better. And the language where, you know, she didn't even understand any questions. If you asked her, what is your name? How old are you, the most, you know, basic questions that are typically asked of a four-year-old. She couldn't answer that. You know, she would try to do it from memory, but oftentimes if you asked her how old she was, she would say, Brooke, because she remembered the answers. Oops, Taylor. Right. There's a video I think you have also. of her in the park and she's trying to explain something.

She's not playing with other kids, which is something you highlight in your TED Talk, but you cannot understand what she's saying. Right. So I didn't understand, you know, so not only was she not answering questions, her, you know, articulating her words, you couldn't understand her. So in that first week, it's like you could start to see she was interested and she started to do one to two word sentences that I was understanding, you know, so this. That's within the first week.

Like I said, yes, no loops completely went away. But the other thing I have in the TED Talk is just the lack of expression on her face. You know, you really weren't able to see a child that was experiencing joy or happy or engaged in her world. And it's like all of a sudden you're just seeing more life and expression on her face, including joy. And that's first week. Now, did language catch up to her peers when that first week? No, it took about six weeks for her to relearn language, and we were going to speech therapy at that point. So the speech therapist is like, I don't know what you did. And I said, diet. And she's like, she's caught up to her

peers. I mean, we can kind of continue this. And, you know, but she wouldn't even qualify for speech therapy at this point. So it's like, you know, we're seeing the therapy, you know, element drop off. And what was so, you know, as a mother just touching to the heart, was seeing her engaging with people and enjoying that, her little friends. And, you know, I called her the Pied Piper at that point. She loved initiating play with the park. And so you see the park scene in the TED Talk where she's oblivious to the children. And now she's like the Pied Piper. She's engaging with children and asking them to play with her and play tag. And what I find fascinating when I was putting that TED talk together, she was about six. So she's doing great. She's thriving. In fact, she lost her

diagnosis at that point. And I'm putting together some slides and such. And so she's kind of, you know, interested because she's seeing herself on the video. And she looks back at the time of some of the park scenes and she's like, why am I not playing with children? And I just thought that was fascinating. that she couldn't even relate to her not playing with children as a six-year-old. So it was just fascinating to see the neurological wiring just firing. So that was my story. And so I didn't know what to do with this information because I just felt like, okay, I am thrilled that we are on this track.

So I decided to go to a couple like parents helping parents, you know, little community meetings in my local area. and this one woman's like, you know, why don't you come to, you know, to my house? I would love to hear, you know, she had a daughter also on the spectrum. And I'm going through with her in the kitchen and just like she's, you know, ripping out her pantry that, you know, reminded me of the days of me doing it too. And it was adorable. Like two days later, she says, I literally dropped my coffee cup this morning because my daughter said, hi, mom, and she wasn't talking before. Wow. And what age was her daughter at the time? She was four. She was four years old as well. Incredible. No language before that.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's mind blowing. It is. It's mind blowing. And of course, you know, again, because this is such a touchy topic for so many people, we're being clear. And this is where you have always been clear, especially with your science background,

is that you are both sharing your story honestly. and just like this other friend of yours whose daughter had this experience, there's many other families. People reach out to you all the time through your website, which is, if you could mention. Yeah, unblindmymind.org. It's the name of the nonprofit. Right.

And I've been doing personal consultations now for 10 years. So I have, yeah. So 10 years of people reaching out to you, every case of autism, autism spectrum disorder is different. And there's going to be different things that are going to be. the culmination of things that might be exasperbating those symptoms for one child versus another, right? But you've seen enough of these situations to see that there does seem to be some sort of link between total levels of glutamate in the diet and maybe other components because you're switching them to a whole food diet. They're staying away from excess calories from ultra-processed

food anyways, which means that they're not getting exposure to high fructose corn syrup. They're not getting exposure to a whole host of other things that you're generally going to not get exposed to when you're staying away from. Excesses chemicals, pesticides, because you're also steering families towards organic. So you can't just say that it's glutamate, but again, your hypothesis is that you're removing a lot of these foods that would have it. So it's not that these families are not having meat anymore in instances. they're just having not super ultra-processed meats,

and it said home-cooked meats that are there. So it's essentially they're still getting that protein if they're choosing to eat meat, for example, just as one. But they're not getting all the bad stuff associated with this ultra-hydrolization or ultra-processing. And how many would you estimate families that you've seen a significant difference in their child who has autism or is on the spectrum? that being a significant difference from going on a low glutamate diet.

Yeah, so, you know, and we did surveys to kind of find out, you know, how people were, you know, feeling that the lifestyle change was worth the benefit. And so 85% were saying it is worth the effort we're seeing improvements in our children. Now, like you said, you know, you've met one person with autism. You've met one person with autism. I mean, it's manifesting itself very differently in terms of what potentially could have tipped their excitatory, inhibitory nervous system in the imbalance and what they might be most sensitive to. So I work with clients where I'm like, okay, let's start with the basis of eating healthy is going to be a necessary ingredient as part of the journey. I do work with a lot of microbiome imbalances too because I do think that's a significant part of

the gut-like the gut issue kids, you know, and there's a lot of them. And so there's nuances there. And then as a scientist, I do like to look at the more complex cases that might be autoimmune, where there's an antibody that's attacking a certain brain receptor. And so depending on the complexity, you know, you're going to find a varying responses. So, you know, I was fortunate that food alone was enough to get my child off the spectrum in terms of the diagnosis. So she lost her diagnosis when she was re-evaluated in first grade. And the person who was, you know, it was, what, a pediatrician at the time that was seeing her that basically reevaluated her or who was it that saw her again and said, okay, she's not on the spectrum. Yeah. So the pediatricians at this time,

And there's a lot of pediatricians that now specialize, like the functional medicine that might specialize in this. The general practitioner, kind of pediatrician at that time, did not do diagnosis. They referred you to the psychologist. And so only a psychologist was allowed to evaluate and diagnose. So initially, we had to hire a private psychologist because she was outside the school boundary. She wasn't in school yet. And so we didn't want to wait.

It was going to be an eight-month wait if we waited for the county to take over for the evaluation. So the first one was a psychologist, a private one. Who gave her the initial diagnosis? And so then she, you know, was qualifying for services and qualified for what's called an IEP or individual education plan. And so she was in the school system. And we just signed her up for normal. kindergarten because at that point we were like we didn't have any concerns with her. So we didn't tell the school at that point. When she went into school, we didn't even tell her

them that she was on the spectrum. And so all of a sudden they get notified that she has an IEP and they're about to be dinged for not having this student as part of the IEP process. There's no individual, you know, education plan for her in the school at that point. So the special need school was a preschool. So we went from preschool into the regular school system. And so in first grade, they're like, oh, my gosh, you know, the districts, you know, we have to reevaluate her. You know, we don't have her with any sort of, you know, individual education plan. And so they were kind of panicking because they were behind the eight ball and evaluating or providing the student in trouble because they dropped the ball. They dropped the ball, right? And they didn't even know there was a ball to

drop, right? And so I'm like, yeah, let's go through the process again. So it was a, you know, three-member team that consisted of a psychologist, a learning specialist, and there was some other, I think it was not OT. There was another third member, and I forget, you know, what her specialty was, but it was a three-member team that, you know, was part of the school evaluation process for evaluating and diagnosing. And we get to the table and they're discussing the results, and they're like, this was the best IEP evaluation we've ever done. And she didn't even qualify for a 504 accommodation, which is just a much more minor school accommodation for children that have some sort of deficit.

It didn't qualify for ADHD, nothing, nothing, you know. And so she went from the fifth percentile in a learning developmental issue to the 79th. You know, so that's, you know, we were seeing it in the numbers when she was redoing the test. And can I ask a question, which is obviously it wasn't the same people that gave her the diagnosis as reevaluated her, but it was a three-person team. And I've heard this a lot. You know, I mentioned to you before we start recording. There's a friend of mine, Dr. Teresa Lyons.

You know, she works with a lot of autism spectrum individuals was one of the first podcast that we had on here. And I've heard this from her. I've heard this from other friends, moms, families that have gone through this, that when the child got re-evaluated, that there was a sense of, oh, they must have been misdiagnosed. Was that the case with your daughter? No. I mean, you know, I was observing the changes also in the channels, and she wasn't learning to, you know, like her peers when she was, you know, in the throes of, I would say, her state of inflammation.

I mean, there was a lot of inflammation going on. So, you know, was physical signs of her face was just like very, very rosy cheeks and red eye shining. and, you know, bloated. Her gaze just wasn't there. I mean, so there was just so many things as a parent that you're just noticing your child's not looking well. But the yes-no loop. I mean, like.

And if I could interrupt. Yeah. You definitely, and obviously with your training as a scientist, you had documented it. You had seen it firsthand. I was less asking in terms of what she actually misdiagnosed versus the doctors coming in and saying, oh, somebody must have. given her a misdiagnosis. Was there any pushback or was there an openness? At the time, I think, just like you do now, you live in California and you live in an area that's generally known to be

kind of like pretty healthy, northern California. So there might have been more openness. Was there openness or did people push back and say there's no way that she went from that to this? What was the sense? I mean, I think, you know, as I was getting interviewed for certain things, I mean, the lay person was saying she was misdiagnosed, you know, like, you know, so there was definitely that kind of feedback from the person, you know, observing on the outside, you know, I know what was happening. The private psychologist was very thorough. It was like a three-day process and she interviewed, you know, much of the family members in terms of what they thought. I mean, it was a very thorough process that she ended up getting the initial diagnosis. And I agreed with the diagnosis

at that time. Of course, of course. But sort of building on that. Were they like, what the hell are you guys doing? Like, because they had probably, as you mentioned, they had never seen that type of transformation before. Oh, at the school, you mean? Were they asking you questions? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Were they asking you questions?

Oh, yeah. Were they starting to say, what are you guys doing? We need to talk about this with other people? Or was this kind of like, hey, this is an anomaly? Keep doing what you're doing. But we're just going to go about our job. Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about, wow. You know, and I said, I mean, I said it's being managed through this dietary

approach, I suspect if we completely went back to the standard American diet, we would be having a different discussion. And so, I mean, all they're doing is like, okay, we just went through the evaluation. We don't see any 504 or IEP, you know, we don't see any diagnosis at all. And they're like, well, that's fantastic and fabulous, you know, but they're not, yeah, they're not ready to take on the dietary thing for, you know, anybody that they're diagnosing the school because they're educators, you know, that wasn't their, you know, were they willing to share that piece of information with other parents, yes, you know, but, you know, it wasn't

something like they're shouting from the rooftops. I'm shouting from the rooftops. Let's bring up the FDA website, Tessa, if we could. You know, the FDA has this whole section called Questions and Answers on MSG. And largely, can you describe what the purpose of this Q&A is on the website and generally what the FDA's position on MSG? and glutamate is? They're labeling it as generally regarded as safe. So it's in the gross category for a food additive. And what I find misleading about this website is they're making it seem like the naturally

occurring glutamate that we were just talking about in the ultra-processed category is somehow different than MSG that's made from corn for me. That's how they make commercial MSG now. And so getting back to that fermentation process. Corn fermentation is what is used now to commercially manufacture the 3.5 million metric tons of commercial MSG. The other million metric tons is coming from hydrolyzed proteins. So they're calling it naturally occurring if you hydrolyze, for example, the gluten that we're

talking about and comparing that to what might be. found in mushrooms. And mushrooms do have naturally, what I would really truly call naturally occurring. True naturally occurring. True. Created by nature. So I'm making the distinction that what they're calling truly, you know, what they're calling naturally occurring is not naturally occurring. It's in the ultra-processed category. So you go down here, so they're saying, while intake of added MSG is estimates at around 0.55 grams per day. And they're not distinguishing the 13 grams of glutamate each day. They're not distinguishing that 13 grams between processed, free glutamate, or bound glutamate. And that's why that's misleading. They're not making the distinction. So just a recap for

our audience. They're saying that MSG is estimated to be around 0.55 grams a day. And what you're saying is this 13 grams that people are having of glutamate is essentially acting like MSG in the body. Well, that depends on their diet. In the ultra-processed. In the ultra-processed. Yeah. So if you're eating the standard American diet, the majority of that glutamate is free glutamate. And you're adding that onto the 0.55 milligram or I'm sorry, 0.55 grams of MSG that's actually labeled as MSG.

So most of the MSG that's in the food supply is not labeled. And that's kind of where I was raising awareness here is like it's not labeled. And so if somebody is actually truly trying to avoid it, you're going to find maybe 1% of the time it's labeled as MSG. The other times it's hydrolyzed way protein, hydrolyzed, you know, this or, you know, it's in the gluten or in the casein stuff. So what's misleading is that 13 grams is not distinguishing between something like whole protein like walnuts. versus hydrolyzed gluten. They're not making the distinction. And so that's where I find this very misleading

is that we're talking about 10 grams of MSG per day, and they're saying, oh, it's about 0.55 grams and you're getting some of this, you know, 13 grams of glutamate in your food. It's misleading. Besides ultra-processed foods being the main source, again, for kids and adults, we didn't even get into the topic of flavors,

which is a big source of sort of hidden MSGs, even some concerns around natural flavors that you have. Is there anything that we can do? Are there any lifestyle behaviors, all the things that could be good for other aspects of our body, improving our sleep quality, working out on a regular basis? And maybe even before getting into that,

the question being, why is it seen that some people are more impacted by higher levels of glutamate exposure and MSG exposure? And some people are not as impacted, or it seems to be that they're not as impacted by, you know, the equal amount of glutamate exposure. Any thoughts about that? Yeah. So that, you know, that gets back to the inflammatory load, right? So we all have, you know, inflammation that we. are subjected to from, you know, probably in utero to, you know, all throughout our life. And

that, I call it the inflammation bucket, right? So it's like you stub your toe, you cut yourself shaving, you're dealing with, you know, these varying degrees of inflammation, you know, in everyday life. But if you have a chronic inflammatory or a neurological imbalance that is signaling stress, so we get back to the excitatory inhibitory imbalance, you're, you're not, you you're now more prone to a stress or inflammation that might be coming in from the diet. So those are the people that are more sensitive as if they're already dealing with an underlying kind of inflammation load that's elevated. Chronic inflammation load, like a pathogen, an infection that might be there. It could be, leaky gut could be causing heavy metal exposure.

Even obesity, right? Obesity is a... obesity itself, mold exposure. So environmental toxins, obesity is the number one source of inflammation that people are dealing with because they have so much... It's at the root. Visceral fat. Yeah.

That's there. Right? So what you're saying is that, okay, there might be some people that can handle a more processed diet which would expose them to more glutamate and MSG, but those individuals, might have a lower or probably have a lower inflammatory load. And it could be that they're doing a lot of other things right. They're working out on a regular basis, right? Because even though there's a short-term inflammatory impact on the body,

long-term working out is good for reducing our inflammation load because it also helps us, you know, improve our body composition, lower visceral fat, increase muscle mass. Lean muscle mass supports our metabolic health. health and helps us make use of all the free flowing glucose inside of our body that's there. They might be sleeping better. Yeah. And the one, you know, because I just gave a talk at an autism conference yesterday.

And another one that a lot of people have control over right now, every minute, every day, is our thoughts. And so meditation, where you're focusing and, you're focusing and, practicing on more positive thoughts because fearful thoughts will release glutamate from our brain as part of the stress signal. And so you think about like a obsessive compulsive disorder and things like that that are also on the rise, particularly since the pandemic and anxiety. And how much our thoughts can create that fear stress response in our body. And glutamate release is part of that stress response. And so you can see then how a load of glutamate coming in from the food

could potentially exacerbate that addiction to negative thoughts. It's neurologically wired as part of our survival response through these glutamate receptor maps if we're constantly focusing on the negative, negative, negative. And we become thinking like the tiger's chasing us constantly. That will create such a stress response. So I say to people thinking, better thoughts does amazing things with calming the stress response related to glutamate release in our body. One of my favorite quotes is from Dr. Andrew Huberman, who's been on this podcast twice, and he says, the best way to quiet the mind is often through the body.

And what a lot of people have seen if meditation doesn't work for them is even things like breath work. Yeah. That can improve HRV. I love heart rate variability. Heart rate variability, which is naturally going to lead to, you know, an improved H.R.V. is going to be linked to a quieter mind and your body not kind of constantly being in a stress response state. It could be, again, for some people, that's going to be exercise. It's going to

be walking. Something simple as walking. Yeah. And I consider those meditative if you are finding, you know, your mind calming, right? The idea of meditation is to find that calm, you know. And so, yeah, I think nature walks or grounding or, you know, I think, you know, when I work with the children, I'm like, children under 10, a meditation-like activity is something that absorbs them so much that they're not thinking about their future fear. So it could be that they're building Legos or their finger painting or they're out, you know, making mud pies or whatever. So those are meditative-like activities and because you don't typically get a 10-year-old willing to participate in the breathing or doing the OME. What countries have the lowest rate of, going back to your story, what countries have the lowest rate of autism? You know, that discussion actually came up in the autism conference yesterday because different countries have different ways of going about diagnosis.

There's also a different cultural stigma, you know, potentially attached to it. You know, certainly in China when there was only one child laws, you know, it was not really. something that parents would want to say that their only one child was on the spectrum. So I think there was just a completely different approach across these countries in terms of how the diagnosis. So it's really kind of hard to compare like the apples to oranges. So I don't know that. You know, data I don't look into it because it is hard to say, how are they going about their diagnosis, when, and looking at all those variables. So somebody was mentioning about how Cuba has an extremely low rate. People are like, well, how do we know what the evaluation process is and such like that?

So, yeah, that's a tough question to answer. It's tough to measure. Yeah. Have there been families that you worked with because initially it might have been a child that had an autism spectrum diagnosis? And whether it was a parent or another child who didn't have a diagnosis saw an improvement in some other aspect of their health. I can imagine that can happen.

Oh, yeah. In fact, I say this is the face. family plans. And when I'm talking about like the dietary element there, I'm like this general first step is good for everybody. You know, everybody should be eating this way. I mean, the health improvements I noticed were just, I mean, tremendous. I didn't consider myself ill. I was just doing it to support my daughter. So for myself, you know, low-grade headaches disappeared. Pollan allergies, which we always associate with IG went away because my inflammatory load went down so much. The pollen didn't bother me anymore. In fact, my daughter also lost her cat allergy.

She was no longer sensitive to the cat because her inflammatory load went down. I shed weight, and that was not my objective, but I was just like, you know, I shed some excess weight, my energy level, my mood. I mean, I just, I couldn't believe. I felt like I was living the same hectic life now having rose-colored glasses on. So, yeah, so a lot of parents will say, oh my gosh, my eczema, you know, disappeared, or I lost weight, or my energy is so much better, moods. You know, the joke I would always have with my husband at the time would be I could tell when he cheated on the diet. Because his face would just be irritable.

You could just see this like irritable face. And I'm like, what'd you eat? So, yeah, you know, definitely seeing all sorts of family members, you know, benefiting from the approach that, you know, just all sorts of everyday things that we just associate with our normal baseline. No, that's normal. That's normal. And it's like, oh, there's room for improvement in our normal. So in your book, you have a whole section on this, chapter 8, the roadmap to health, the read food lifestyle, right? That's what you talk about, your protocol being, right? The plan that parents can try. And again, you notice changes in your daughter in a week, right? And you've seen

and any other families like that. So generally, can you describe the program and how long individuals have to be on it before they can see if this hidden source of MSG that's in our diet is one of the things that's being linked to, or maybe even the main thing, their child symptoms or their own symptoms because this isn't a book just about,

it's not about autism. No, no. It's about people who are dealing with a whole host of different components. So describe the program, and generally, how long do people have to be on this program to notice a difference? Yeah, so the program I call, you know, reduced excitatory inflammatory diet, which is conveniently my last name. So that way I don't forget it. And, you know, people often ask me like,

okay, do I have to go hardcore? So what I'm describing as the plan is hardcore. You know, it's getting rid of processed foods. It's talking about macronutrient balance because we don't want a super protein-rich diet, and I get into that with the whole microbiome element. We want mostly vegetables with the animal protein, flavoring it, even good quality animal protein. And people say, well, how long? And I said, you know, let's give it a 30 day to see what you're noticing in terms of response. So I like to categorize people in terms of, is there no response? And if there's a response, what is the degree of response? You know, and that kind of helps guide the journey of, you know, what additional things might be beneficial for that particular person.

Now, when people say, do I have to live like this forever? Well, the more you adhere to it, the better off you're going to be with being able to combat these things that come to you, you know, but that ends up being a very individualized lifestyle sort of choice. You know, you're on vacation, and I often get that, you know, when you're traveling and you're on vacation, you might find yourself falling off the wagon. and it may be a reminder like, oh, gosh, I feel terrible. Like, I can't wait to get back home.

And that's a good reminder of, you know, how much the food is providing, you know, that sort of well-being. Some people might find, like, they have an acute kind of inflammatory condition that, like, after surgery, and it would help them if they were, you know, being really, really good through their healing process. And now they're on the other side, they're feeling, like, really healed. and, you know, a piece of pizza here and there, they don't feel the negative consequence. And I think that's a very individual question, but the more you're in touch with your body, the easier adults can kind of figure that out. And look at us as adults, you know, with alcohol or whatever, that we're constantly

testing those boundaries of, you know, what's kind of overdoing it or, you know, feeling good. With children, it's tougher. And the children are unfortunately being bombarded with the majority of unhealthy, choices. And it's really sad. So it's like, you know, if the parents are able to better quality control the foods, at least what's coming into the house, and, you know, giving their children the best, you know, chances of here's our family value. We really emphasize health here. And, you know, they may, they're more likely as adults, independent adults, to come back to that roots. And they'll realize, okay, yeah, I actually feel better when I'm eating better. And they'll be able to better

associate that because they had some of the training early on. So I say to people like, it's a lifestyle and it's called lifestyle for a reason. It's not something you just do for a little bit and go back. You know, if you're going back to Doritos, you're going to inflame yourself and not to pick on Doritos, but you know, you know, I saw it, but a Dorito here and there, you know, what is it doing? So personally, if I'm like at a holiday party and I love cheese and I'm like, I'm just going to have one. Oh, I feel hung over if I eat too much cheese now because I just have removed that much from my diet now

that I feel the consequences of that inflammatory kind of load. But that's going to be a very individual journey for most people. Yeah, and you're not saying that, well, actually, let me ask you, you know, does if you don't have a condition that you talk about in your book, right? Do you have to do the hardcore version or when you generally talk to individuals, right? Are you recommending that everybody has to eat this diet that is only eating things that are basically essentially cooked at home? Yeah. So, I mean, individuals coming to me are typically not like, oh, I just want to improve my health. I'm doing, you know, I'm thriving already, but I want to

families that are sick. These are typically families that are, you know, have either complex diseases or their children were diagnosed with, you know, autism, ADHD, OCD, or seizures, you know. And so these are people that really need to go hardcore in order to see the more drastic lowering of their inflammatory lobe because they are so inflamed. But like I'm a classic example, like you were talking about other family members who are doing it, they're feeling improvements even though they weren't, you know, they don't have a diagnosis, but they might be suffering with eczema. for example, or bloating. And so these are things that, you know, they're seeing improvements. And the choices then become, do the benefits outweigh the challenges of sometimes eating

this very clean, whole food diet? Just like, we make those choices every day, right? One of the areas that I would love to talk to you a little bit more about, both for, you know, your own opinion on it, but also for these families that are looking to heal, and you kind of mentioned it earlier, which was protein, right? You're recommending that people lower, even from what would be considered minimally processed, right, like a, you know, a pasture-raised chicken or a grass-fed beef or whatever. The program is recommending that people lower their protein intake. Is that right? It's more about the ratios.

So, and the protein, you know, so this is getting a little bit more nuanced with the fermentation that we're talking about as a fermentation commercial process in foods, well, fermentation can also occur in our gut with these microbial inhabitants that are part of us, so the microbiome. And so those microbes, if they're given sources of fuel where it's the majority of protein, they're going to ferment the protein. And by fermenting that protein, they're also creating protein fermentation byproducts, which glutamate is one of them, as well as like a number of other really toxic chemicals like hydrogen sulfide or phenols or, you know, you start to create these fermentation byproducts

that are then toxic and then we're having to metabolize or detoxify these microbial metabolites. So what I'm trying to emphasize here is the ratio of animal. protein flavoring your bed of medley fiber-rich vegetables. And so that you're then focusing on fiber fermentation in the gut that is more synergistic with health than protein fermentation, even carbohydrate fermentation, which creates a lot of alcohol. And I do have a lot of children that are drunk, auto-brewery syndrome, right, because of the microbial imbalance that's going on. And it's from, you know, fermentation of carbohydrates. And then fermentation of fats creates a lot of free radicals and inflammation also.

So we want to make sure that we are giving the fuel, the right fuel, to these microbes, fiber fermentation. So part of what I'm hearing you say is that in your view, it's the right ratios. But the other part of it is that also fixing the gut and the bacteria that's there to, you know, Generally, if you have a healthy gut, right, like on a daily basis, I strive to have about 140 grams of protein. And a big part of that is that as I turned 40 last year, I'm not diagnosed with any chronic disease. I feel like I'm... You look like you're thriving.

I feel like I'm thriving. All my blood work shows that I'm thriving. When I did my body composition, breakout, using caliber testing, I saw that. that I was essentially skinny fat, even though prior to me upping my protein, and I was getting a lot of my calories from, prior to, let's say, like me going down the, wearing like a continuous glucose monitor and other things,

I'd eat a lot of carbs and I eat a lot of fat, even though they were from largely like whole food sources. I was getting a lot of excess calories that would come from those things. So my body composition was all. And then I met a friend of mine, Dr. Gabriel Lyon, who's really big on sort of muscle-centric medicine. And she kind of changed my viewpoint on things. And I started training regularly.

I got measured. And like a lot of Indians, I was in that sort of skinny fat category, right? Had a little bit of a belly, but just like a little bit. But you look at my arms, my legs. I'm skinny. Right? I was like, okay, I don't want to be that because muscle is so important as we age. It's protective.

So I started upping the amount of protein. I started shifting my macros a little bit personally to me, and I started training more on a regular basis. And I was able to get into that sort of more ideal window of about 14% body fat for me. And I was able to add about 8.9 pounds of lean muscle mass that was there over the period of like eight months, eight, nine months. And I'm asking this because as I was reading your book, part of what I'm paying attention to is that even though, you know, I've generally avoided a lot of gluten products.

Dairy was kind of what got me started on this journey is that I had terrible acne growing up. And then I took dairy out of my diet and my acne went away within about a month. Now today, I've sort of figured out and I don't try to demonize any major categories of foods and definitely not macronutrients. I don't demonize carbs. I don't demonize fats. I don't demonize protein. I used to, and then I just learned more and more over the years from talking to incredible people,

that doesn't really do us any good. But I'm mindful about the sources of these foods. Right. Right. I'm mindful to get the vast majority of my protein outside of maybe 20 to 40 grams of weight protein that I'd get from a protein powder, which I want to send to a testing facility. I'd love to talk to you. I want to go to get it testing.

How much MSG is inside of this process, right? How much are you hydrolyzing? And then can I make a better protein, you know? Can I make a better protein powder? that's out there. Well, if you're doing like smoothies, what I say to people is like, just add flax seeds and hemp seeds and, you know, nuts and seeds, you know, which have a fabulous whole food, protein, fat, fiber, mineral source, done. The only challenge with that, and I was vegan for seven years. And out of those seven years, I was a raw food vegan for three years. And I was the one

touting this. And I was telling me, look at what guerrillas eat. Grillas eat nothing but like leaves and fruit and look how big they are. It's not the complete story because the bioavailability of protein and the amino acid breakdown. We've had Dr. Don Lehman on the podcast, who's a major protein researcher, is that it doesn't lead to muscle protein synthesis primarily because flax, hemp, these other things are very low in leucine. And it's not that you can't do it. It's just that the ratios are off in the total complete amino acids that turn into muscle protein synthesis. So it's not that there's not protein in it. It's just that it doesn't exactly turn into... Egg. Right. Eggs. Right. So just add eggs. Yeah. So I eat eggs. Yeah. All I'm saying is this,

is that I am trying to be mindful now, especially after reading your book about, hey, okay, cool, let me pay attention. Let's see. Is there a low, you know, is there a low glutamate protein powder that's still highly bioavailable, right? Whether people are eating a vegan protein powder or whether they're eating, you know, an animal-based protein powder. But I'm also now a little bit more mindful about I don't eat a lot of it, but okay, I might have some turkey cold cuts. That's going to be a more processed version. My guess would be that glutamate would be higher in that. Correct. Compared to getting a more minimally processed. Would that be accurate? Yes, yes. And so, you know, so the animal protein source being like, you know, I say to people, you know, the happiest animal

that you could possibly imagine living on the farm before it hits our plate is, you know, ideally it's fed its natural diet, it's in its natural environment, it's not being given a bunch of antibiotics, and it's not being sliced and preserved and put into a package that is going to start creating, you know, this glutamate release because of how they processed it to get into the package. Certainly cured meats, you know, are going to be worse than just sliced turrets. in a package, but they're often adding preservatives and things like that that can start to increase glutamate. So it depends on their manufacturing and preservative process.

But yeah, so it sounds, so you're concerned about protein content because of your metabolic needs for your exercise load. And I get that when I'm working with like the, well, the 20 somethings here. When the males are like, okay, you know, I'm doing this in college and da-da-da-da. And I'm like, okay, you know, let's figure out what gives you enough energy to complete your workouts because you don't want to be crashing for sure. Less so energy for me. It's more just actually maintaining muscle mass. Muscle mass, yeah.

Right? And actually in my case, because I didn't grow up eating, I grew up vegetarian, processed food vegetarian. I was skinny my whole life and just looking at a lot of the data that like Peter Atia and other individuals talk about inside of their book, you know, muscle mass is a protective element. As a good older, it protects us from falls. It has a direct link with our ability to have lung capacity and V-O-2 max. Like strength is not just for visuals. It actually helps us combat chronic disease. It helps us fight off obesity.

And, you know, grip strength is like correlated. Again, correlated, largely because of its link with muscle mass. It's correlated with longevity, right? Yes. And so these are all the different reasons why I want to make sure. that I believe that the stats are after the age of 40, every decade you lose. It might be a little bit more for women, but for men, it's like 8% of your total, 8% to 10% of your muscle mass every decade.

And then as you get older, this is how we end up having people that are quite frail. And that can lead to a lot of different things, hip fractures, et cetera, other stuff. So that's the main reason that's there. But I was largely saying that is it that you're telling people to avoid people. protein or we're really talking about really the sources and what I got from your book was hey be mindful now if you have one of these chronic diseases or mental disorders or you're dealing with addiction or other things that you might need to go hardcore and that's what you outlined inside of the book even if people are dealing with arthritis or other stuff knock on wood I'm not dealing with any of those

things right now but my diet is largely like my diet is going to be 99% better than the average person in America right right in terms of source quality and just the fact that I'm staying away from processed foods. So maybe some people have to go hardcore and they're going to get the benefit, just like your family got the benefit. For me, the takeaway has been, hey, even for myself, I'm going to be a little bit more mindful about, oh, maybe that's why I ate that food and I had a headache that day. Oh, maybe I'm going to take the precautionary approach with these proteins and say,

oh, let's look for a better alternative to, you know, I don't know if there is, but is there, what's the cleanest version of a way protein that exists out there? Right. Right. Or if I'm going for, you know, cheese, for example, I'll share with you, even though I don't drink milk or anything, when I have raw cheese, you know, that you get like at your local co-op or supermarket, I don't feel like I don't get the breakout. I don't feel like off a little bit if I have a lot of dairy that comes from more pasteurize.

And again, that could be the connection from what I'm really. reading in your book, it could be this connection to glutamate. Right. And like, you know, something like a newer cheese like mozzarella is going to be a heck of a lot better with the MSG content than like a Parmesan, you know, aged or like craft parmesan cheese is probably, you know, more loaded than, you know, even normal Parmesan cheese. So yeah, there's even, there's a huge range even in the whole cheese category of, you know, what that MSG content or free glutamate content would be. Yeah.

And the protein thing, you know, it's mainly about. what I'm saying is the ratio. So if you're at least giving the microbes, their share of fiber, and you're adding the protein there, I'm just, I'm hearing more and more about these carnivore diets where it's like a lot of animal protein, animal protein specifically versus like plant protein, where I'm like, okay, that is going to set up the microbiome for fermenting proteins. And we know that's associated with a lot of inflammation in the gut and throughout the body. Have you heard a little bit about, sorry to interrupt, have you heard about some of these modified carnivore diets people are going on where now the latest trend is, and I'm not on a carnivore diet. But people like Paul Saladino and other individuals, they're basically their carnivore diet is they're eating, you know, obviously a lot of the organ meats, the muscle meats, etc.

But now they're having honey and they're having as much as fruit as they want. That's kind of like the latest in the carnivore diet. Yeah. You have any thoughts in that? You know, I would think if the protein is outweighing any other category there, you're setting up for protein fermentation and the gut. In terms of calories? So calories.

When you say outweigh, what do you mean exactly? Like by what measure? Yeah, that's a good point. So I'm doing it by weight. And so, and it's really kind of thinking about the animal protein flavoring the vegetables in terms of like not encouraging protein fermentation in the gut. And so, but calories wise, I'm like, okay, each person's going to have their own, you know, metabolic rate, their exercise level and such like that. And I'm like, eat as much as you want, consuming in the ratios that meets your body's energy needs. and how do we know if we're in an energy balance? Well, you know, weights one, but like muscle mass,

you know, are you meeting your energy needs? And I'm like, yeah, eat as much as you want. And sometimes when people are in the inflammatory survival response, they're burning through energy, you know, so when I'm working with some kids that are stimming, you know, that is incredibly energy, energetically caught. I'm like, that child likely needs to eat every hour and a half, you know, make sure it's balanced so that we're not, you know, throwing off the balance of microbial metabolism and getting their macronutrients, you know, in each meal and feed frequently because that child's burning through energy and I can see it on metabolic reports and such that the Krebs cycle is all messed up and, you know, just kind of like, wow, this person's going through desperate pathways

to meet their energy needs. So I love data to kind of help support that too, but it's like I'm all about, you know, making sure you're getting enough protein, but making sure that the ratios when you're consuming it aren't encouraging protein fermentation. So if that makes sense about the message. I'm sure you've heard this for, you know, families that you work with or even friends. People go to Europe and the same foods that they eat over there, even things like bread, even things like cheese, even things like baked goods, that they feel different than they feel in the U.S. first of all, have you heard that? And is there any connection to glutamate? Do you think when families share these anecdote with you? Yeah, and I feel like I experienced that also going to

Europe, but I do hear that. I mean, I do have a lot of clients in Europe also that are kind of like, okay, especially when I'm speaking with the Italian family living in Italy and I'm saying, you know, okay, cut the gluten, cut the dairy. Do you know who you're talking to? That's like the Italian diet. process of the gluten is different in the fermentation processes, which would relate to, you know, the degree of processing going on in the bread category. The cheese, you know, I think if you're going into these places that, you know, have done the cheese processing for hundreds of years in some of these places, you know, that they're not manufacturing where they're monitoring glutamate content to get the bliss point as in some of the manufacturing processes in the U.S.

These are, you know, traditions that are handed down from one generation to generation. Is it still going to have MSG? Absolutely. But I think the extent to which they're trying to tweak and get that bliss point, where they're monitoring glutamate, they're not doing that. You know, these are just, you know, things that were handed down from generation to generation old artisan kind of cheese things that I don't think have the same content. content, same processing as the U.S. So different cultures being used, different processes,

I think can contribute to that different effect. As there's still an issue, yeah, I mean, I do think the U.S. is leading some of the health crisis in modern countries. And hopefully we lead the way to better healthy strategies. But I think the food is the big culprit there. There's a lot more EU regulations on food than in the U.S. So, for example, Kraft macaroni and cheese, we have our own formula in the U.S. because the U.S. formula is banned in EU. So rather than just have the same formula for EU and U.S. because EU is more strict, no, they're going to continue to give the U.S. the one that's banned in the EU. So they've got much tighter, not much, tighter regulations. Skittles, Band, and EU.

It's a popular Halloween treat as we approach Halloween. So I do think there's a lot. There's some differences there. I had a client in Europe send me a grocery aisle where it's just a normal kind of like, you know, small, cute little local grocery store. And they had, you know, a big shelf, American food. And it was like the worst offending foods that you could pause. And it was literally labeled, you know, American food for people, you know, who wanted that stuff.

Doritos, you know, it was just like all those stuff. And I'm like, you know, they're probably not eating as much of that too. But, yeah, so back to your point with the gluten and the cheese, though, specifically. They are processing it differently. Any data on, you know, an upper limit of what would be a safe level of MSG that people would be finding in sort of dietary forms? You know, is there is there sort of a level that you've seen when you talk to, you know, especially a lot of the more forward thinking functional medicine doctors, clinicians, researchers, maybe people at this conference that it's like, hey, up to this level is like,

you know, okay. And when we go beyond it, that's when we start to have problems, whether that's on a daily basis. Or is there anything like that? You know, so the amount found naturally in foods, like truly natural foods like walnuts or broccoli or mushrooms, I think that is around the half gram per day level that the FDA is mentioning, but they're associating it with the actual chemical MSG. That is probably what people are consuming on a truly natural whole food diet element. And I do think that's well tolerated.

We are evolutionarily conserved to have, you know, glutamate in our foods signaling part of, okay, this is ripe, this is a protein-rich food, and it helps signal the brain and the pancreas and all these digestive sort of functions with naturally occurring glutamate in truly whole foods, not processed. And I think then you go beyond that with your processing, then it becomes an individual question, you know, of what is, what's going on with your genetics, what's going on with your, you know, even your stress levels and whatnot. That's going to be an individual question, but I would say, like, if you're going over one gram per day, you might just start feel some negative consequences.

10 grams per day, I'm saying we're seeing it in our statistics in our U.S. health. With MSG and glutamate being so pervasive in our food systems, even in a lot of healthy foods, et cetera, in trying to make this more accessible for especially, you know, typically people who are listening to this podcast are going to be families that have some degree of means. Obviously, there's a whole group of people that are not listening to podcasts. They don't have time to read books. They're working three or four jobs. They might be in certain disenfranchised, you know, societies. Nothing really changes for them until there's a major awareness shift that ends up happening. What do you feel is that awareness shift, especially for some of these

chronic diseases and disorders like autism spectrum disorders, what is that tipping point that will have people wake up? Is it better research? Is it a groundswell of activism? Is it independent companies now starting to sort of test and label products that have high concentrations of glutamate and MSG? What are your thoughts? What actually gets this to be something? that the communities that need it the most actually start to be able to have some sort of navigation around their decision making on certain foods that contain high levels of glutamate and MSG. Yeah, and, you know, I think one, if somebody is slapped with a sudden health, you know, diagnosis, they're typically like, oh, wow, wake up, I need to do something like cancer.

You know, so I'll get people who, you know, were just recently diagnosed with cancer, want to do better with the food, you know, what can they do? And so there's certainly that population that then is seeking more information on there, but there is a lot of suppression of information here that is tying any health condition with MSG at this point. You know, it's just not there. Well, there's some books that are coming out that, you know, luckily I'm not the only one out there, but it's not bubbling to the top.

And then, you know, when you are dealing with people who have diabetes or obesity and they are saying, okay, I'm not feeling well, you might have a little bit more of them probing the research or probing, you know, what's working for other people. And right now a lot of it is word of mouth before this book came out and, you know, hopefully more and more people are kind of putting that association for that. Does that seem to correlate with what I'm experiencing, you know, what I seem to be suffering from? And I think that is, you know, kind of part of the journey. In terms of getting the information out there, there is a woman, actually she just wrote,

released her second book, Adrian Samuels, you know, who talks about the suppression of information going on with this whole glutamate MSG issue. And she took more of the political side trying to get the FDA. and the World Health Organization with labeling at least, you know, and product testing labeling glutamate. And there's a reason why there's a trillion dollar international technical glutamate committee. It's protecting the interests of glutamate to be in the foods because it helps their profits. It is addicting.

And we know that. It is the underlying mechanism of addiction is glutamate signaling in our body. And you stick that in the food. it makes you feel like that food is great. That's how it entered the food supply. That's why it's in the food supply. That's why it continues to be in the food supply. But the International Technical Glutamate Committee depends on the consumers thinking that isn't a health issue.

And so it's very suppressed. And you're up against big, huge corporations. And unfortunately, U.S. is very highly influenced by these corporations. from the medical system, what we're calling dietitians, very highly influenced by some of the worst offenders in the ultra-processed food category. So I'm not out to take them on. I'm just saying for those interested, there's this. It's tough to hit big food. Is there anybody that's doing or what would an example of a high-quality study in relation to glutamate and autism look like? Right? What would that look like?

Yeah. And so I did contact like John Hopkins University when they were doing a CMS, which is a complex motor stereopaties, you know, a study, a cohort, which is even a, you know, smaller cohort than autism would be. And they were looking at a glutamate blocker drug for this particular cohort. And so I was saying, you know, would you entertain an arm in your study that looked at a low glutamate diet approach in this particular one? because I've had a number of clients that have done great with the low glutamate diet. No. There's not a lot of funding, even with the National Institute of Health, even with the rise of mental health issues, particularly since the pandemic, there's not a lot of funding going on looking at dietary approaches with any particular illness. So we don't have a lot of funding going on there, but what would the ideal study look like?

Kathleen Holton has conducted a couple of studies looking at low glutamate in like, fibromyalgia. I believe she's even got one approved in the clinical protocols for autism now. So her dietary approach, though, isn't as strict as mine. She's putting, I think she's allowing gluten because of the hydrolysis process is now not something that is well aware unless you're dissecting there. But at least it's, you know, something that somebody is entertaining a researcher there. But these studies are far fewer than what the International Technical Glutimate committee is putting out there saying not only is glutamate safe, it's actually great for you. It helps with this.

And that's not even peer reviewed. They go to these national conferences where these lectures and studies are being presented and then they're put into nutrition journals and such. And they're often not peer reviewed. So an ideal study would not be industry sponsored by the glutamate industry if we're looking at removing glutamate in a particular cohort. And I've looked into conducting these studies because I used to work for medical centers and biotechnology and I'm very familiar with how to conduct these studies.

So ideally, you know, 50, you know, normal population, 50 in the patient population, and doing a double crossover where you're able to, and, you know, it's hard to do blind because it's food, but having people start off with the standard American diet, switch over to. to the, such as a read approach, with both the cohorts and, you know, monitor what that looks like with normal versus any population. And how long, ideally six weeks with each one, with a, you know, one week in between where you're cleansing, so you're not getting contamination from the Doritos over into the cleaner diet. And so, you know, and that's not hard to do. Where we're seeing a lot of the studies are in different countries with universal health care.

You know, until we are concerned about the gross domestic product or, you know, the amount of money the U.S. is spending on health care and how much of that is our GDP with the poorer outcomes, we're not going to move this needle with foods very easily. As we wind down here, I'm sure the audience would want to know, how's your daughter doing? I feel like I want to write another book for the teenager. She's definitely going through like, you know, no, I want to eat what I want to eat. And, you know, and it's interesting to, I feel like I've conducted my own double crossover study just anecdotally because she's now challenging that. And so that's where I'm just natural for teenagers. Very natural, right. So she's being a very typical teenager like, mom, you're an idiot.

You know what you're talking about. I'm going to do what I'm going to do. And it's interesting how I'm seeing like more obsessive thinking. or just a little bit more readily stressed over things that weren't stressing her before. So I am seeing more inflammation in her. And my philosophy now is dilution is the solution to pollution. She's not financially independent, so she's on the payroll still. So I'm controlling what I'm bringing into the house.

And she's not really desiring to make her own dinner. So I'm still doing those things. And so I'm able to control some of it. But at some point here, I'm like, hopefully in her early 20s, she will come back to the family value here that has helped her tremendously. But there's a little bit of slipping going on. Yeah, which is natural. And some of those changes in behavior that could even, obviously some of it might be related

to food. Some of it could just be just being a teenager. Yeah, but it was so, it was so like, ooh. Yeah. Well, like all situations, you know, you have to leave the home. I don't know if she's thinking about going to college or, you know, what the next step is for her after high school. I don't know either. No. What's that? I said, I don't know either.

Yeah. But, you know, you have to leave the home and then you have to kind of figure it out for yourself. Exactly. But the beautiful thing is, and I grew up in a home that was, you know, very healthy. But I was eating, like, processed vegetarian food in the school. I was eating, you know, I would literally leave school and I'd have like skittles, twinkie, mountain dew. You know, I come home and I'd eat like a really well-balanced, you know, traditional sort of Indian goodrati, you know, food. Uh-huh. And, you know, you grew up with these Ayurvedic traditions and other things. When you get sick, your parents give you turmeric and honey and other things like that. Mm-hmm.

Not that we were doing everything perfect. But then it was when I got in college and, you know, I started, you know, experimenting more and doing this and doing that. And then you kind of always returned back to, you know, what you feel. were those values that made you feel good. Right? But you have to go through that contrast. And your daughter is going to have to go through her own journey as well too. And I just meditate like crazy on it.

I'm like, okay, you know, I have to acknowledge what I can control with the 17-year-old at this point. And because she is, she started off with being so independent, you know, she is exercising, you know, her independence and choices in these areas. you know, I look at some, you know, teams and I'm like, okay, there could be worse things. Oh, totally. Totally. And how amazing that her health is even brought to this level where she can push back a little bit and not. And give me the lip. Right. She can do all these things. She has communication. She has all these abilities because of the transformation that she happened. Exactly. Exactly. So the pushback is all a benefit of how better she's got. I know. It is. It really is funny. And she's probably going to be ecstatic to hear you talking about her on a podcast. Oh, I know. And,

And, you know, in fact, like, you know, maybe, you know, and that's what I like to emphasize. Like, this is no longer about my daughter. This is just so much, you know, huger in terms of the mission I did. And so I don't even like to, like, talk about what she's doing now because I'm like, okay, because I do want to kind of protect her and what she's doing and her privacy and her choices. And like every teen, she's definitely a exercise. The thing that I would imagine is that still, not just because your daughter is eating a lot of meals at home, but her diet probably too is like 90% better than, you know, the average American that's out there.

So as much as she may not be doing things in your eyes like perfectly and there's foods that she wants to do, her diet is still better, right? The level of, if you probably equated by calories just as an easy measure, the percentage of her calories that comes from any food that would be in that ultra-processed category, I mean, it's probably going to be less than 10% for her. Yeah, I mean 10, 15, yeah. And that's why I'm saying dilution is a solution to pollution right now. I'm just like, hey, I know what I'm bringing it to the house.

Yeah. And it can, and then stuff flares up or she'll notice this or that or she'll meet somebody else. You know, she'll be able to dial that in. And it's interesting that I'm noticing some of the increased inflammation. And it's and I think that's about her awareness, you know, and bringing, you know, kind of, that's part of the journey, right? You have to feel it. Yeah. So it's a journey.

It's a journey. It's a journey. So I said, I'm like, okay, do I have to write a second book on teenagers? Well, right now you're getting the message out with this book. Yeah. Fat, stressed and sick, MSG, processed foods, and America's health crisis. Any final words that you want to leave our audience with? Well, I want to thank you very much for having me on this podcast.

And, yeah, I mean, I just feel good health. That's my message to everybody, you know. It's all well-intentioned and just raising awareness on this issue. How can people be in touch with you, support the organization that you founded? And of course, the book is available. We'll put it inside of the show notes for people that are watching on YouTube. That's just below the captions and everything, the video. You can find the show notes there.

In audio format, you just click on show notes in the Apple podcast. But how can people keep in touch with you and support the organization? Yeah, so I started an author page that does then list the organization within there and puts the book. So Catherine Reed, PhD.com is the name of the author page. And then unblindmymindmind.org is the name of the organization. So you can actually go directly to unblindminemind.org or also see the book on Catherine Reed, PhD.com.

Amazing. We'll have all those links below. Dr. Catherine Reed, thank you for coming down here. Thank you. And for sharing your message, for sharing your story, and talking to us about a hope hopeful vision, you know, every year the autism diagnosis is going up. Every year the old summer's diet. 1 in 36. That's what I just heard yesterday. One in 36. Crazy. Every year addiction is going

up. Every year mental health disorders are going up. And while glutamate and MSG may be one part of it, right? There's other parts of it too, but we have to collectively, here you are highlighting this area that you're very passionate about, glutamate and MSG, but it's largely that also highlighting the larger problem that we are. We are living in a way that's gotten so far off. Yes, it brought a lot of beauty. It brought convenience. There was a point in time where many people in this world were dying from not having access to any calories. Now people are dying from chronic disease and obesity, more than people that are dying from lack of calories and hunger and severe starvation. Obviously, we don't want people to die from any of those things. And it's through

education and awareness that we can collectively as a human species change that. So thank you for doing your part in it and coming on this podcast to talk about your journey and your story. Yeah. And thank you. Hi everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes,

every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This, or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.