Dhru Purohit Show - How to Uplevel Your Gut Health with Dr. Deanna Minich

Starting point is 00:00:01 Hi everyone, Drew Brod here. On today's Monday mini episode, we have some gems for you, some knowledge bombs that sometimes seems so simple, but honestly, over the years of me being in health and wellness, I've seen that some of the simplest things practice correctly and consistently can have radical impacts on your health. And today we have Dr. Deanna Minnick talking about some of those simple things and themes with the primary theme being diversity in our foods and diversity in our diet. Diversity. What's the point of it? Diversity of foods. You know, our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a lot more diversity, regardless of what types of

Starting point is 00:00:44 diets they ate. Some were more carnivore. Some were more, you know, other things, having more carbohydrates inside of their diet. So regardless of what they had, they ate way more than we do in terms of diversity, primarily because they had to. They lived seasonally. So whatever grew outside is what they ate. They didn't have grocery stores as we all know.

Starting point is 00:01:05 So when it comes to our modern diet, it's crazy to think, but Americans, especially, North Americans, their diet primarily consists of the same types of vegetables and foods on a regular basis. In fact, the most commonly consumed vegetables are corn, whether in the form of corn as processed corn that is fed to animals or included in high-fructose corn syrup, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, and sometimes different surveys show like cucumber and stuff. But really, they're just eating those basic and simple foods. We can do better. And that's the goal of this podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:41 It's teaching you how to do better and to get you excited about the things that you already know. So in today's episode, we have Dr. Deanna Minnick talking about how a diverse diet and diversity in our diet improves our immune system, reduces inflammation, and improves cognitive health. why diversity of our gut microbiome is so integral to our overall health, our gut bugs like diversity, how phytochemicals and polyphenols influence the gut microbiome, how to get your kids to eat more diverse foods for those you that have kids out there, and how to test your food variety level. Some really interesting thoughts from Dr. Deanna Minnick, who's a PhD and a certified functional medicine practitioner and nutrition scientist and international lecturer teacher and author with over 25 years of experience in academia and in the food and dietary

Starting point is 00:02:32 supplement industries. Deanna has some gems for you. I hope you enjoy today's episode. So when you talk about diversity and we're talking about diversity in our diet, what do we actually mean? Yeah, well, it's been referred to as food variety, botanical diversity or even dietary diversity. Dietary diversity can be quantified. There are actual validated questionnaires in order to gauge whether or not somebody is engaging in a diverse diet. I don't even think we have to go to that level to see whether or not people are eating the same things. But essentially, you know, when I think of something that is diverse, I think that every day

Starting point is 00:03:13 we are examining and assessing where we're at in terms of what we feel like eating, where our body is. And in functional medicine, one of the things that we are really good at is all these different therapeutic diets. And one of the ones that I did a lot with clients was the elimination diet where people take things out, then they slowly add things back in in a very, very measured fashion to see how they respond. And so what people, I think, learn in that whole process of trying out a different way to

Starting point is 00:03:47 eat is they try out different foods, they try different preparations. because it's not just the food itself. So making sure that we have more diversity within fruits or within vegetables, but even within one species of food, like an apple, right? So not just getting a huge bag of apples from the store because it's cheap and you just don't want to have to think about apples, but actually taking some time to select the different varieties of apples, maybe a Red Delicious, maybe a Fuji, maybe Pink Lady. because each of them have different phytochemicals.

Starting point is 00:04:24 So there's that aspect. And then there's also the aspect of how we prepare food. And we can create variety within that. And some people won't change the foods that they're eating. So they're not going to take the time to self-select all of those different apples. And, you know, even though it just takes maybe an additional minute. But they may change how they cook, prepare, or take in that food and maybe how they combine it with other things. So I think there are many different ways to slice and dice diversity.

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Starting point is 00:05:50 Right now, InsideTracker is offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com slash Drew. That's D-H-R-U to get your discount code and to try it out yourself. That's Inside, I-N-S-I-D-E, Tracker, T-R-A-C-K-E-R dot com slash D-H-R-U for 20% off today. Did you know that the health of your entire body is rooted in the health? of your gut. Hippocrates said this many, many years ago, disease begins in the gut, and so does health. Over the last decade, research on the importance of the gut microbiome has exploded, which led myself and my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman, to ask the simple question,

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Starting point is 00:07:15 You know, we created this product because it's exactly what we wanted for ourselves and what we wanted to offer to our community because nurturing your gut health can literally transform your life. I'm so excited about gut food and I want you to know that you're going to love it too. If you want to learn more about gut food and what we've been up to, go to gutfood.com. That's g-ut-f-o-o-odd.com to learn more. So let's directly connect that to the topic that we were just talking about in the context of the pandemic and our gut microbiome. So how could something like diversity, which initially a lot of people hear that, it sort of feels like a very soft intervention.

Starting point is 00:07:51 But it's actually a very hard intervention and has a real impact on our life. So how could that be impacting our immune health and make us less likely for any sort of, you know, opportunistic virus, build up our immune resilience, make us less. likely to get the cold or the flu as we record this now getting into flu season. So how does that actually work? What is it about diversity that actually leads to better immune health? So let's get into the mechanism. I think that diversity can give us something on the positive side, so it can impart better nutritional status. So people who eat more diverse diets tend to get a larger array or a bigger spectrum of nutrients. So they tend to have just better nutrients overall, whether it's phytochemical, or whether it's vitamins or even types of fats. And this has been shown in kids and also in adults.

Starting point is 00:08:46 On the other side of the coin, we can go much deeper into that too because I do want to talk about how those different phytochemicals then impact the gut microbiome. On the other side, being more diverse also protects us from environmental toxicants. That's another area that I love teaching on because, gosh, you know, the planet is becoming more toxic as we know, those toxins are making their way into our bodies. And people are really confused about how to eat. Like, oh, Deanna, do I do fish or do I not do fish? It's like, well, if you have variety within fish and you're not doing fish all the time, you can partake without feeling like you're becoming toxic, right? I think back, I've been in nutrition long enough to say that

Starting point is 00:09:29 you know, like back in the 90s, it was all about like, don't eat butter. And then it became don't eat margarine. And so there's always a, we're pointing the finger towards some food or class of foods within nutrition science. A boogeyman. Yes, a boogeyman. That's right. And I think that rather than have those boogeymen and have outcasts in food, to really think about small amounts so that we're protected, so that we're not overdoing any one thing where we feel the guilt of, oh my gosh, I was doing butter for 20 years. And now I needed to stop. And I just looked. learn this, if we are cultivating diversity, and that could even mean, let's just go back to fish for a second, because people have a lot of concerns about fish and whether or not people eat fish.

Starting point is 00:10:13 Let's just take that as an example. To have fish from different parts of the world, if it's wild caught, if you are shopping from different stores, that's another way to get diversity is to go shopping to different markets, because they're going to have different suppliers of things. And I always say that I'm not brand loyal. I never stay wedded to a brand. I must say, because the brand kind of sticks with the same ingredients. And I do think even with supplements, I think it's important to cultivate diversity there.

Starting point is 00:10:45 One of the principles that I've learned from so many amazing people, and one of my mentors mentioned to me this concept of changing up how we bring plants into our bodies based on a supplement. because from an adaptogenic perspective, because the body is so amazing and so adaptable, we could stop seeing the signal of something after some time. So we don't respond quite the same way. I mean, just think about just even being around people that you always see, like, family members. Like, if they say something to you, it's just kind of like it rolls off your back. But if you see somebody that you haven't seen in a while and they say maybe the same thing, it just kind of hits you differently.

Starting point is 00:11:24 So similarly, with a food or a plant or a supplement, if we, take it for some time and then we go off of it and then we come back to it again it's almost like we have the opportunity to see it in a different way like the body can see it fresh so I do think from a botanical perspective one of the principles and again it's not hard fast science at least not in this realm but what I've learned within botanical medicine is something like three weeks on one week off five days on two days off to give yourself a break so that the body can see it again. What I find so often is that people just continue to be on automatic pilot, just taking their supplements, they have them all lined up, they have them

Starting point is 00:12:10 all measured out, which is good because, you know, we do need structure. I don't want to say, like, we need to live chaotic lives that are super creative and, you know, we just kind of fly by the seat of our pants. We need some structure. But we've become a little bit too, I would say we have analysis paralysis. We have ingrained ourselves in structure in such a way that we're not cultivating flow, fluidity, plasticity, and how we think. We're not going with how our body is feeling. So I really do see this. You asked about the immune system specifically. And again, just to bring it back home in terms of that nutritional status, that when we are bringing in more diverse foods, we're getting a sampling of many different mass.

Starting point is 00:12:56 macronutrients, many different micro nutrients and even those phytonutrients of which there are a thousand. And then we protect ourselves on the toxicity side. So we're not taking in any one thing over and over again to the point that it compounds in the body. Yeah. You know, going back to the idea of like the combination of the duality of like structure and fluidity, you're right. We need both because often in the beginning, especially when people are hurting, they're in physical pain, Their gut is inflamed. They don't feel good.

Starting point is 00:13:29 They're dealing with some sort of symptoms or maybe even diagnosed with something. They're looking for a pathway forward. And often that pathway forward, when they start to find something that works, that gives them some sense of alleviation of pain or suffering, it usually needs to be a little structured. It needs to be a little structured because it's so hard take any subject that either one of us is going to get into for the first time if we've never done it before. like let's say if you and I take on archery and we are going to a teacher if that teacher is like well you could do it this way you could do this way you could do this way it can be very overwhelming

Starting point is 00:14:06 right but they're like look we're going to start with this and then once you've mastered this particular skill now I'm going to teach you how to think for yourself so that you could see how you could put your own twist on it and I think that that's the beauty of the combination of your approach is it's it's both we help people get structured okay great now we're at a level where actually the routine that was benefiting us so much might actually be holding us back. And the other layer that I'd add on to this, and I know you have a comment about all this, is that diversity was kind of like we didn't have to go out and seek it. It was nature changing throughout the seasons.

Starting point is 00:14:42 And it was the change of environments. And it was just the struggle of trying to be a human being, a homo sapien, trying to live life. So there was that natural variability that was baked into our life that actually is a big part of what made us who we are. Now we have to seek it out. It's almost like we're surviving today, but we may not be thriving. And if you want to thrive, that variability is a huge part of it. Oh, my gosh, you got all my neurons firing.

Starting point is 00:15:10 Well, first of all, you mentioned something that I hadn't really thought about in that particular way of having the structure and then needing to transition into more of an intuitive matrix of knowing when to do certain things, right? And I think that most times people haven't made that transition. They stay in the structure. And I'm sure you've heard of this like I have where people stopped getting results. Initially, a routine, a health regimen worked really well. They were waking up. They were doing this exercise. They were taking these supplements.

Starting point is 00:15:42 And they had amazing impact where it's like, oh, my symptoms went down. And then all of a sudden they kind of plateaued. Why did they plateau? Was it that they weren't connecting into what they really need? need at that time. I think, again, because the body is so intelligent and adaptable, we shift. We shift our baseline, and we have to accommodate for that shift. And I think we can think about this bigger and broader into all kinds of things. I mean, even a marriage, right? You see that same person every day. You have to find your new baseline that allows you to fall in love again, right? Because it's like

Starting point is 00:16:18 you see that signal over and over again. And so, again, to be thinking of those parallel. laws in our lives. And so what you said, too, about how diversity in terms of being in nature, that nature, when we are within that context, naturally creates the situations where we can extract diverse experiences. I mean, just even traveling here, it's so much more enriching for me to be here with you rather than be at home where I am most of the time working on Zoom, because my neurons and who I am in this travel experience has already changed me. It's perspective. It's perspective.

Starting point is 00:17:00 Yes. It just kind of it resets us. And so I do think that nature's overall principle when it comes to food, people, experiences is really about this diversity message. Yeah. And let's go back to something that you said before because we're going to give a ton of practical tips and I want to hear about your life and how you include this. I'll share about my life and that sort of thing.

Starting point is 00:17:26 Let's go back to the side. So for somebody who's listening, it's like, okay, I'm following along. And let's talk about, I think, some of the research and the world of the gut microbiome. You know, for a long time, we often thought of food as being for our human cells, right, that we're eating. And we think in terms of, you know, macro nutrients and then sometimes these micronutrients that are there. But a lot of the diversity that we're talking about, especially when we talk about these phytochemicals, is actually not just for our human cells, it's more so for our gut bacteria. Talk about that and why diversity of our gut microbiome is so integral to our health, reducing inflammation, you know,

Starting point is 00:18:06 feeling better, having regular bowel movements, having, you know, even your mood be improved through a diversity of your gut microbiome. Yeah. And I'm going to be a little disruptive in this conversation because I don't think it's just about the gut microbiome. I do think that we've got lots of micro we have diversity of microbiomes to be talking about whether it's the nasal oral vaginal skin eyes you know we have so many and they all need to have that diversity coming in but we will talk about the gut i do think that our food impacts a lot of those other microbiomes though so i just want to say that and i also want to be a little bit disruptive in saying that my take on probiotics has changed a little bit as a result of this diversity message and all the things that i'm

Starting point is 00:18:51 seeing in the science. Because what we really want to see, what I take away based on articles that I read, talking about the meta-biome and really looking at the connection between the environment and our inner milieu is that we need a diverse culture of bugs, not a monoculture, not 15 strains, just plugging away every day that large bolus, you know, that's not. Enough. And I don't negate the therapeutic intervention of probiotics. If they have been tested a particular strain for a particular condition, I think that that's great. But I think that the higher path is really to go after the milieu, the terrain, and to adjust that with prebiotics. And the other P, in addition to prebiotic, probiotic is polyphenols. You and I were talking about that a little bit before we got on the call or on this podcast. But I would say, that it's really creating that flux and the constant interplay of having plant-based compounds from the diet that are diverse, interacting and creating a diverse gut microbiome, and then that diver's gut microbiome is actually taking those things like polyphenols

Starting point is 00:20:15 and converting them into even more active metabolites. So we can, it's like a full circle, right? We can get that gut microbiome in a diverse way working for us where they then create more diverse phytochemical metabolites that come from the original compounds. So it's diversity upon diversity, if that makes sense. And, you know, that's why it's so hard to get our arms around the phytochemical family tree because it's not just the 10 to 25,000 different compounds in nature. It's what our gut microbiome is doing. in the best of all cases, to metabolize those phytochemicals into many different phytochemical metabolites. And I think that even for a lot of people, you know, so this understanding that, so let's just break it down as like a refresher, not everybody knows, what are phytochemicals, what are polyphenols, and then what's the mechanism that they would be impacting the gut bacteria, right? People know about probiotics, and they know that certain probiotics, you know, can be, can maybe spearhead a certain strain as long as you're taking them.

Starting point is 00:21:25 And then other probiotics could potentially or prebiotics could help cultivate your body's own, you know, beneficial bacteria. But I think a lot of the understanding around phytochemicals and polyphenols, people are just trying to imagine, like, how does that connection work or mechanism that they actually influence the gut bacteria to do positive things in the body? So what are phytochemicals? What are polyphenols? And then what's the mechanism that they influence our gut bacteria on?

Starting point is 00:21:49 It's really good that we unpack this a bit. Okay, so let's do a phytochemicals 101. Sometimes phytochemicals are called phytonutrients, so I may use those terms interchangeably. In nutrition science, we have the macronutrients, protein, carbohydrate, and fat. They all give us calories, and that's where many nutritionists spend their time is, okay, are you on a low fat, low carb, low protein? You know, all the nutrition wars seem to be around the macros, right? And then we have the micronutrients, which are vitamins, fat soluble, water soluble, and minerals,

Starting point is 00:22:23 macro minerals, micro minerals, ultra trace minerals. It's like a whole universe onto itself. And then separate from that are phytochemicals. So these are very specific plant-based, hence the word phyto plant. So they're derived from plants. And these are, they are, gosh, it's an expanse that goes. beyond even the amount of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, vitamins and minerals. We have here these, and many people would say, well, they're non-nutrative.

Starting point is 00:22:55 They don't give calories. They just make food look pretty. Well, what we're finding... Which means that they're not essential, but here you're about to jump in and what you're about to say. Yeah, so they may not be seen as essential. And it's hard for people to relate to them because you don't find them on a nutrition facts label.

Starting point is 00:23:13 And the closest you can get to something from the plant is usually dietary fiber. But you don't see on the label flavonoids, carotnoids. I mean, you might hear about beta-carotene and carrots. But we're talking thousands and thousands of compounds. And I don't even think that we've actually keyed into the whole array. We haven't even identified all the ones that are out there. That's why sometimes people call it like the dark matter of the nutrition world. Yeah, that's a really, I like that terminology, although I would see it as the

Starting point is 00:23:43 rainbow matter, but yes. Dark in the sense of it's invisible, but of course, as you're sharing in here, it's actually visible. It is visible. I mean, each of these colors connects to a certain wavelength of light, right? That's what makes them, you know, we think of infrared or red has a certain wavelength or spectra to it. And you're talking about the reds in basically plant foods and nutrients.

Starting point is 00:24:06 So tomatoes, raspberries, cranberries, strawberries, however, even though we, we, we would talk about red foods, there can be different phytochemicals within each of them. There are some staple phytochemical families that you find in those, but you can find differences, which is why we need variety even within a color. You know, I think about the standard school lunch, and it's kind of like the maximum diversity that they tend to have at most places. There are some schools that are doing very innovative things that are out there. The maximum diversity is like, okay, great, Wednesday's pizza day, Thursday's chicken nuggets,

Starting point is 00:24:40 Fridays is burgers, you know, and by the way, pizza is a vegetable, right? So that's how we're going to get like the vegetable quota that we need to get in as a school. And you see a rise in anxiety amongst kids. You see a rise in so many different mood disorders that are there and a general sense of feeling like a disassociation with the world. And is it to say that this is all as simple? as a diversity in the diet. No, but we're talking about a diversity of all things.

Starting point is 00:25:14 But I often, I do a balancing act because, yes, everything matters. Of course, sleep matters, exercise matters and other stuff. But largely still, diet is one of those things. Like you see an amazing change right away. So I do want to say, yes, everything matters for sure. And we need to look at all aspects. But sometimes the diet today is so, undiverse, so processed that it has such a negative impact on people. And I think in this instance,

Starting point is 00:25:48 probably a huge impact that it's having on kids. It is. I have some ideas around kids because this is one of the biggest concerns that people have when they come to me. Deanna, how can I get my kids eating better? So let me just talk about some of the research findings and then some tools that I think could help people. First and foremost, this message of dietary diversity. And even infants, there are some studies showing that when a child, an infant, has greater introduction of foods earlier in life that they can see decreased rates of things like allergy and asthma and atopic diseases. So dermatitis and things of that nature. So what does that translate into? That's telling me that a child with an immature immune system can be best benefited by having more

Starting point is 00:26:40 diverse foods to help to create a more resilient, robust immune system to give them a better chance against some of the immune type conditions that they may be set up for, whether environmentally or genetically. So, and I know that your sister just had a baby. And so I was thinking about her as I was thinking about all this research. Like, wow, it would be so great to let people know that more diverse foods earlier on in life could actually impart greater resilience to that child long term. So there's that. So then the question becomes, okay, well, how do I get my child to actually eat more diverse? They won't. They have texture

Starting point is 00:27:17 issues. They have sensory issues. So some of the studies, and this is really interesting, and I've actually seen this born out with some kids, greater presentation of more varied foods, let's just take vegetables. So if I gave a five-year-old peas, carrots, and beets to choose from, they would end up having more collectively of all of those vegetables compared to if I just gave them peas. You know what I think it boils down to? I think it's locust of control. It's kind of like, oh, this looks interesting and the different, maybe the different colors

Starting point is 00:27:55 and the different tastes. And even if they could take a little bit from each, that's what you want versus just piling on the plate. Here's this, you know, half pound of spinach. I need you to eat this now. I need it now. Yeah. No, they, and to involve them in it, to give them that sense of locus of control, I think is really important. One of the tools that I created is it's very simple. Nothing like, you know, it's not so scientific outside of like being like a rainbow bingo for kids. Rather than having kids focus on nutrition. So when I was very young, my mom focused on nutrition and it really wasn't the hip, trendy thing to do. She was kind of a health nut in the way of being very, very, new to thinking about food and nutrition. And so, you know, it wasn't fun to have to read labels at the age of nine and to know what mono and diglycerides were and to say, oh, I can't eat that

Starting point is 00:28:49 because of these things. So what I have done is rather than focus on the negative with food, especially thinking about kids, focus on the fun and the positive, what will make them want to be at that table eating the food? So colors, creating a very simple rainbow-type bingo exercise, where for seven days, you have the seven colors listed out, and they just put an X whenever they have in the box for when they have matched that color with their food. Super easy, right? And it just really cues people, especially kids,

Starting point is 00:29:23 into all things color. And when I have done this with adults, what I have seen is that when they wake up to colors of their food, now all of a sudden their mood starts to change. They begin to wear different colors. They start to put different furniture in their living rooms. There was one woman who participated in one of my colorful food type programs, and she was working in an office cube that was gray.

Starting point is 00:29:48 And so she showed us pictures of how she put up banners and color, and she decorated her cubicle to make it more inviting. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you're tuned into color, it's like, wow, I'm seeing it everywhere. So I do think that helping kids earlier on is so important because when they frame up their palate at that point of being very young, that's going to set the stage for later. And they're watching you. They're watching us as adults to see what we're eating. And that's something that we see in the literature as well, mothers and daughters especially.

Starting point is 00:30:29 So we can't say, a mom can't say, hey, you need to eat this. but then the mom doesn't do it. So the way to cultivate variety and to ensure better outcomes for our kids is to actually do it ourselves. And that's a good thing, right? Yeah, absolutely. To have families doing the health practice.

Starting point is 00:30:47 In addition to kids, I'm sure people come to you all the time because everybody is in different stages of their life and is juggling a lot of different things. Some people are working multiple jobs. Some people are just trying to figure out how to survive as a mom, you know, whatever it might be.

Starting point is 00:31:04 So people are often thinking, as is baked into our evolutionary history, human beings look for shortcuts, right? And it's a big part of how we ended up, where we ended up. Even our need for concentrated calories has come out of the shortcut of us making sure that we can feed our brain and get what we need to do because we don't want to spend any more effort and energy looking for food than we need to. I think sometimes people think of like hunter-gatherer ancestors, it's like intentionally going out and maybe looking for diversity. And I think in some cases it was, it was an entire,

Starting point is 00:31:35 you know, village of people. So some people had different jobs. And food was so central into our lives, right? So we put a lot more effort and energy into it. And we had to do it. And then the seasons changed. So we were forced to do it, right? But I don't know necessarily if anybody was purposefully, you know, on an ongoing basis, exceeding extra calories simply for the sake of diversity. It's that they knew that they got an end result on the end of it. They'd be less likely to get sick that winter, they'd be more likely to survive. Or in the case of fruits, just like we just had Dr. Robert Johnson on the podcast, who's done all this incredible work on uric acid. And I don't know if you're familiar with his research, but one of the things that he was talking about, he's like,

Starting point is 00:32:15 fruit especially, you know, these plants pump all the sugar into these different fruits that are there. And they signal to us like, hey, eat me, eat me, eat me. We eat it. We end up spreading their seeds and especially where fruit ends up blossoming and becoming ripe, because a lot of animals will not eat the fruit until it's ripe. It doesn't taste like the thing that they want. It's late summer, early fall, and then in return, we're sort of piling on and beefing up our uric acid, which has a store weight, and so that we could survive through the winter. So there's all these benefits that we get. And so here's where I was going with all this, is that when people, are trying to juggle a lot of things. Do you ever get the question of what is the minimum

Starting point is 00:33:00 viable or the shortcut hacks that I can do? If I can only do a couple things that are there, what are those things that I can do to make sure that I'm still getting some diversity in the diet, right? You never want to shortcut something so much so that you undercut the core premise of the idea that's there. But are there a few things? You gave us some tips for kids. Are there a few things for adults that are listening today? Yes, there are. But before we get into tips, I first want to say that we all have to figure out what is our motivation, right? And if we want to feel better, we want better mood, just want to go back to what you were saying about fruits because it made me think of some of the research on fruit. I think people, for the most part, what I see is that

Starting point is 00:33:41 people are fruit phobic. They're even fruit and vegetable phobic in many ways. They say, well, what about those antinutrients, those oxalates? And, you know, they go through that whole battery, but there's a great review article that was looking at whole fruits and looking at the research, simply looking at, and it wasn't just looking at reduced risk of chronic disease, because we kind of, our eyes glaze over when we think about that as our motivator. Is that really a motivator? We might feel so far away from something like that. But some of the research on fruit and even vegetables, but let me just focus on fruit for a

Starting point is 00:34:15 second, is that the number of servings of fruit that we have is correlated with better life satisfaction. There is a sense of, and in fact, just even at the conference I was at, I presented showing vascular aging was correlated with number of servings of fruit. So the more that we had the fruit servings in our lives, the less vascular aging we have, or at least has been shown in this literature. So fruit is signaling something to us. You know, I guess, you know, when you have uric acid as a metric, but let's just take it even broader into seasons for a second. Please. Because this is a place where diversity enters in, and there's some interesting animal research

Starting point is 00:35:00 going on where they take animals that have been acclimated to a short day period, so more like winter, and then a long day period, so more like summer. And then they give them fruit, and there was one particular study where they looked at oranges. The oranges were either grown in the northern hemorrhages. or the southern hemisphere. So the animals had different diurnal rhythms, right? They were seasonality, from a seasonal perspective, they were different. When they were given the oranges from two different hemispheres with different phytochemicals differing by about 39 different phytochemicals, what they showed was that the animals that were given the summer orange

Starting point is 00:35:45 that were mimicking the winter months, that they actually exhibited a more, I would say, a more a fattier phenotype. So they tended to put more fat on. Now, that doesn't mean I just touted and extolled the virtues of fruit. And then I said, but if you have an orange in the winter, you may actually put on more fat. Well, this was in the study where they had concentrated amounts. And I don't think, you know, as long as we, again, diversity. and that we're changing things up. Right. What I'm hearing from what you're sharing

Starting point is 00:36:19 is that food is information. And so when we're doing our best to eat seasonally and when we're doing our best to include that diversity, we're not overdoing any one particular food. And especially in the case of fruit, it's like, you know, I think that we went one degree where people talking about keto and fruit phobia and other stuff, and I think it's coming back,

Starting point is 00:36:40 especially with all this literature on phytochemicals, polyphenols and other stuff, that as long as we're not overdoing fruit juice, which is a different sort of thing. That's different. And we're sticking to this whole fruit. And we're mixing up the diversity. So it's not always the same oranges all the time. And it's diversity of our whole diet as a whole.

Starting point is 00:37:03 We can get the benefits of all these different things. How do you feel about, so one of the hacks that I have, in addition to I have, you know, Whole Foods diet and I've definitely broadened my diet because like you, I kind of was, immersed in the world of the elimination diet. And I would often recommend that to a lot of people that were there. And one thing that happens for people in the health world that are probably a lot of folks that are listening to the podcast is that you naturally first when you take out things like gluten and dairy and other stuff that especially of their processed forms that we especially rely on here in America, different than Europe and other parts of the world, you tend to feel better.

Starting point is 00:37:37 You tend to feel better because those things were not really meant for health food for us today or they've been so bastardized that they're completely different from their natural forms of, I think about, you know, my business partner was in Sardinia hanging out with the Sardinians over there, and they eat cheese all day long, and they're taking their goats and their sheep, and they're having them feed on all these different things like rosemary and all these different herbs, and that's how they say that they season their milk and their cheese before they even put it on the table as they get these goats to eat all these different herbs and things like that that are out there. And we're not doing that with, you know, the cows that we have here in America that are primarily eating corn and skittles.

Starting point is 00:38:18 That's the only rainbow that they have is skittles that they have access to, unfortunately. So where I was going with this is that for in my life, in addition to eating a whole food diet and pulling back because when you do the elimination diet and you initially feel good, then you're kind of scared a little bit. Some people are like scared to go and add additional things and to figure out how to have diversity. And as a byproduct, we had a friend of our Sean Stevenson on the podcast. a few months ago, and he said that he had gone so down the rabbit hole of a restricted diet that any time he tried to eat other things outside of it, initially he'd feel like a little bit of bloating, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And he had to work with the nutritionist to help him mindfully expand his diet. And that meant including things that he never thought he would

Starting point is 00:39:00 eat before, like beans, and that actually made his gut microbiome a lot better off that was there. So for me, I've broadened my diet from being a lot more elimination diet focus. And I try to include a lot of different things. And my whole point in travel is to try to go and try different foods in a different area that are, you know, whole foods that are there. So one hack I have in my own life is because I know that we don't want to overdo anything. And I'll have these different freeze-dried organic powders that are there that have like no sugar content inside of them from all different companies and brands that are out there.

Starting point is 00:39:35 And I will try every day a different version of those in my low glycemic, you know, smoothie that I'll mix with fat and unsweetened almond milk and other things like that. And, you know, what are your thoughts now? I'm not saying that's the only place that I'm getting things from, but it's just another way of me adding in variety inside of my diet. Why not? You know, I get that question all the time. In fact, I just got it lecturing over these past couple days. Should I do a fruit and vegetable powder? I think that that's fine. And many of those products are combinations of many different things, kind of the mixology approach. I don't see it as a primary strategy. I see it as an adjunctive or secondary strategy. It's definitely something to bring in

Starting point is 00:40:16 some of those powders are very expensive for some people. And I'm always in the back of my mind, because one of the other objections that people raise is, but Deanna, fruits and veggies are expensive. And so here's what I would say to do. The first step is it's kind of like toxicity. How do you know you have how do you know you need a water filter and what kind of water filter you need? First you have to test to see what your water has in it. Similarly, you have to test your own variety level. So here's how I do that with people. You can just take a piece of paper. And over the course of seven days, you write down all the different plant-based foods that you had. So if you had a red delicious, let's go back to the apple. If you had a red delicious apple, you could write that down. If you had another red delicious apple, you would not write that

Starting point is 00:41:03 down again because now that counts as a duplicate item. So then you go on. And by the way, is this your your seven-day variety challenge? Is this kind of play into this? Yes, it's a 50-food seven-day tracker. And the way it looks, if people want to sketch it out for themselves or you can give it out to them, however you want to do it, it's essentially in different categories. So I have each of the plant-based categories, teas, drinks, beverages, because that all counts. By the way, you brought up kind of a smoothie and those are great conduits, especially herbal teas.

Starting point is 00:41:36 When you look at cultures that have lived the longest, many of them have punctuated their day by tea. If you look at Japan and you look at all that green tea, and then you look at the varieties of green tea within green tea. And I love green tea. I just had some great gunpowder. But then I want to change it up. So I'm getting different phytochemicals. So you track your variety for seven days. And I did this in one of my large Facebook groups where give everybody that tracker.

Starting point is 00:42:03 and I said every unique plant-based food, even if it's a spice, I don't want you to measure it. I don't want you to count servings or nothing like that. We're going to go for the art of eating here. And I just want you to track the different foods. I think I had something like 121 unique plant-based foods over those seven days. The goal is 50. And why do you say plant-based? I mean, meaning like can some of the different variety of animal foods fit into that?

Starting point is 00:42:32 They sure can. Sure can. And my approach has been to focus on phytochemicals that eating more plants is the common denominator for many different groups. Even carnivores are essentially getting plants just indirectly through the animal. Right. So I just stick there. Meat does have phytochemicals inside of it too, especially if you're getting the higher quality things. But you're using plants because then that's accessible to everybody. It's accessible. Yeah. It's and then because I focus on colors so much, that's kind of where I'm tracking their varieg. to these different phytochemicals. Yeah, got it. And so when we did this exercise within the group, first of all, there was many people had some question about, well, what is even variety? Like, they actually had to question, what does it mean to have a unique food that is varied? And I don't think many people were thinking within one category. Like if I have, just what you were saying about the fruit and vegetable powder, or even within the cup of coffee or the tea or even, gosh, anything.

Starting point is 00:43:33 I mean, some people, and I let them count things like extra virgin olive oil, but even to vary the kind of olive oil that you have because you're going to have different olive polyphenols in there. And by the way, you've mentioned polyphenols a couple of times and I bet people are waiting for me to define it. It's one of the classes of phytochemicals, right? So it's got, you know, typically when we think of flavonoids, it's a large class of compounds like 700 on up compounds. So it has a certain chemical structure. But you have carotenoids, you have all different kinds of phytochemicals. That's just one class. So polyphenols is not a synonym for phytochemicals. It's just one of the types. So you first have to get a sense of where you are in variety. Like if we, if I followed you around for like three days and just kind of watch what you ate and saw your choices, we can get a good tabulation. I think a week is a good time frame because then you bring in the weekend days where people eat very differently. and, you know, looking at spices, are people eating spices? I let them count that as part of their variety tracker regardless of the amount.

Starting point is 00:44:39 So if they had cinnamon or, you know, any of the number of the different spices. And it's really cool. Maybe we can talk about spices a little bit because this is one of the most cost-accessible ways for people to bring in variety, I would say. So get a sense of your variety. Where are you? And from there, start to bring in, even if it's one new food per week where you say, you know what? I haven't had a starfruit and I just saw them in the store. Let me just try that.

Starting point is 00:45:06 Or maybe you haven't tried a food in a long time. Like maybe Salaac or maybe you haven't had a leak in a really long time. Just stepping out and trying that food. Deanna, thank you for coming on for making time and talking about something that is so obvious when people hear about it. But we forget how to do it because we are living in a world that's kind of taken us in. one direction of kind of repetitive routines, mostly out of survival and responding to the times and just trying to be able to juggle all the responsibilities that are there and not having the same village support that we had when diversity was a lot more, you know, but I see that coming back

Starting point is 00:45:47 now. I see more villages. I see more people, intentional communities and education about how we can go from just surviving, which we're all surviving, right? Everybody's living, everybody's surviving to really stepping into thriving. So you reminded us how to do that today, and I appreciate you. Thanks so much, Drew.

Dhru Purohit Show - How to Uplevel Your Gut Health with Dr. Deanna Minich

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